On Sunday morning I had the pleasure of appearing with Rowan Dean and Ross Cameron on their Sky Australia show, "Outsiders", to talk mainly about the Obama Administration's attempt to subvert the Trump campaign in the 2016 US election, and in particular the remarkable Anglo-Australian contribution to that effort. (You can view our exchange here - and/or listen to it here, starting about 17 minutes in).
But, just before I came on (about 15 minutes in), Rowan and Ross addressed recent events in the United Kingdom and in particular the fate of, er, someone whose name they weren't permitted to mention but who, um, had been gaoled for, er, something or other... This was somewhat astonishing to me, as I'd assumed empire-wide D-notices had lapsed with the passage of the Statute of Westminster. But mein hosts circled back, cautiously, to the topic toward the end of my interview - and I observed, as I have before, how in almost the entirety of the western world, whenever anyone draws attention to some of the more problematic aspects of Islam, the state cracks down not on the problematic aspects, but on the guy who draws attention thereto. In Britain and Europe, we are an incident or two away from literally "shooting the messenger".
Rowan, Ross and I all knew we were referring to a gentleman by the name of Tommy Robinson. I expect many of you know that, too. But I doubt most Australian viewers had much of a clue about it, and I'm pretty certain the overwhelming majority of his fellow Englishmen are unaware of his fate. As readers may recall, I have met Mr Robinson just once, at an event at the European Parliament in Brussels. He is an engaging, charismatic fellow, albeit a bit rough-hewn for the refined sensibilities of the metropolitan media - although I thought he had the better of a rather somnolent Jeremy Paxman in this BBC interview.
On Friday, Robinson was livestreaming (from his telephone) outside Leeds Crown Court where last week's Grooming Gang of the Week were on trial for "grooming" - the useless euphemism for industrial-scale child gang rape and sex slavery by large numbers of Muslim men with the active connivance (as I pointed out to the Sky guys) of every organ of the state: social workers, police, politicians. Oh, and also the media. Me last year, on my time in a certain municipality about thirty miles south of Leeds:
Tracking down the victims of Rotherham required a bit of elementary detective work on my part, but it's not that difficult. What struck me, as my time in town proceeded, was how few members of the British media had been sufficiently interested to make the effort: The young ladies were unstoppably garrulous in part because, with a few honorable exceptions, so few of their countrymen have ever sought them out to hear their stories.
You can say a lot of things about Tommy Robinson, but he's one of the embarrassingly small number of Britons who recognizes the horror inflicted on those young and vulnerable girls on the receiving end of "diversity" and seeks to do something about it.
So on Friday he was outside the Crown Court in Leeds. He was not demonstrating, or accosting or chanting, or even speaking. He was just pointing his mobile phone upon the scene from a distance. Within minutes, seven coppers showed up in whatever they use instead of a Black Maria these days, tossed him inside it and drove off. In other words, these were not "investigating officers" called to the scene: They showed up with the intent to take him away. Within hours, he was tried, convicted and gaoled - at HM Prison Hull, a Category B chokey, or one level below maximum security. The judge in the case, one Geoffrey Marson, spent all of four minutes on trying, convicting and sentencing Robinson. It is not clear whether that leisurely tribunal included his order expressly forbidding "any report on these proceedings" (the case is Regina vs Yaxley-Lennon because that's Robinson's real name).
Which is why, all the way over in Sydney, Messrs Dean and Cameron were being so vague and cautious. In Britain itself, early online reports at The Mirror, the Scottish Daily Record, The Birmingham Mail and elsewhere vanished instantly, and silence has been maintained, especially on radio and TV, ever since.
The justification for this is Robinson's previous conviction in a previous Grooming Gang of the Week case at Canterbury Crown Court. On that occasion, the judge sentenced him to three months' imprisonment suspended for eighteen months. That was almost exactly a year ago - so, suspension-wise, he came up six months short when the plods collared him on Friday. That doesn't explain why Judge Marson in Leeds added an additional ten months (ie, he quadrupled his sentence) and disregarded a point that Judge Norton last year took into account - that the British state insists on banging up Robinson in gaols full of Muslim blokes who violently assault him. In Canterbury, Her Honor was sympathetic - up to a point:
I accept what Mr. Kovalevsky [Robinson's barrister] tells me about the dangers that you might face were you to be sent into immediate custody. I have to say it is on a knife edge so far as I am concerned because a very large part of me thinks so what? you could be put into protective custody.
Given that Judge Marson devoted a full four minutes to his drive-thru trial on Friday, I seriously doubt whether 25 seconds of that was devoted to any consideration of "protective custody". Indeed, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the British state would quite like it if Robinson were to be offed in HMP Hull. Yesterday UKIP Euro-MP Gerard Batten Tweeted:
UKIP Peer Malcolm Lord Pearson has written to Home Secretary Sajid Javid today saying : if Tommy is murdered or injured in prison he and others will mount a private prosecution against Mr Javid as an accessory, or for misconduct in public office.
Two and a half years ago, when I appeared at the Danish Parliament to mark the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons, there was some brief discussion of Tommy Robinson. My friend Douglas Murray noted that in 2014 Robinson had been gaoled for ...go on, guess: Islamophobia? Hate crimes? Yanking off some Muslima's hijab on the streets of Luton?
No. The British state sentenced Mr Robinson to eighteen months in jail for misrepresentation on a mortgage application. At HMP Woodhill he was savagely attacked by the Muslim gangs who operate with impunity in many UK prisons. As Douglas remarked, many people make "misrepresentations" on mortgage applications, but the vigor with which the constabulary hunt down this particular mortgage-misrepresenter is unique. In one of the few mainstream publications to risk comment on Friday's events (read it while you can), Rod Liddle underlines the point:
I'm not remotely a fan of Robinson. But I do not like the idea that simply being Robinson is enough to get you arrested.
Just so. With respect to this particular citizen among sixty million, the police function as the Old Bill of attainder: Get Robinson - on anything.
Supposedly Judge Marson ordered a media blackout because news reports would "prejudice" the trial of the groomers. Surely the opposite is true - that widespread reporting of the arrest of Robinson would lead to fewer citizens attempting to "prejudice" the trials of groomers. At the very least, when a man loses his liberty and is gaoled immediately without due process on an instantly quadrupled sentence, it would be nice to think that a free press would be free enough to mull the pros and cons of such an action. But Geoffrey Marson seems to have been minded to teach a more basic lesson - that in England, as in Argentina under the junta, you can be disappeared by the state, and it won't even make the papers.
And the lesson is not lost on those few who question the cozy bipartisan multiculti consensus: Best to fall into line - or at least pipe down.
Rod Liddle notes another aspect - the contrast between the urgency of the flatfeet when it comes to Tommy Robinson and their utter lethargic indifference when it comes to the young women I spoke to in Rotherham and the thousands of others like them in Leeds, Telford, Oxford, [Your Town Here]... West Yorkshire Police in Leeds are not to be confused with South Yorkshire Police in Rotherham. The latter are institutionally corrupt and depraved. As I told Mark Steyn Club members last year of my meeting with the victims of Rotherham:
To Mad Ash and his fellow 'Asians', the likes of Jessica and Katie are 'white slags'. To Her Majesty's Constabulary, they're mere 'Paki-shaggers', and thus unworthy of valuable police resources. The girls recall the night Mad Ash's brother Bannaras was in his car having sex with a twelve-year-old. A 'jam sandwich' - a police cruiser - pulled up alongside, and the officer rolled down the window. 'She's just sucking my c**k, mate,' said Bannaras Hussain.
The cops drove away...
Jessica kept a detailed diary of what had happened to her. She took it to the cops. It 'disappeared'. There was one kindly officer, but the others told him to back off, and, when he didn't, he died in an accident. Katie puts the word 'accident' in air quotes. Rotherham is a land of coincidence. 'Some of these things can happen, but not all of them, not in one town.'
A couple of years after taking them her diary, Jessica went back to see the police. This time the detective told her none of the officers who'd witnessed her abuse would support her story because if they gave evidence at trial they'd wind up 'getting in the shit'. She left the room having taken the precaution of covertly recording the conversation. And thus the cover-up began to unravel...
It is striking to read Judge Norton's sentencing remarks from last year (Judge Marson's do not appear to be available: he rules in darkness). Her Honor huffs and puffs about Mr Robinson referring to "Muslim paedophiles" and "Muslim child rapists". I can appreciate that that might be vaguely annoying if one were a non-paedophile Muslim - although evidently not so annoying that spokespersons for the wider Muslim community ever rouse themselves to object to all the industrial-scale sex slavery. But it is a fact that in 21st-century England - in Yorkshire, in Shropshire, in Lancashire, in Oxfordshire, in the Home Counties - child-rape gangs are Muslim. It is a phenomenon, one that has never existed previously in the British Isles and one which will continue and metastasize until there is honest debate about it.
And, while Judge Norton is evidently outraged by Tommy Robinson's ill manners in referring to Muslims who rape children as "Muslim child rapists", one notices that neither she nor anybody else display any such outrage about the ruined lives of thousands of victims of men who get away with their evil for years ...because officialdom has chosen to prioritize "Islamophobia" over real crimes.
One more thought from my trip to Rotherham:
The cops drove away. It must have been an abiding image for Jessica, for Katie, for Bannaras Hussain's twelve-year-old, for the girl who would later testify that all three brothers pissed on her like 'a pack of animals', for a thousand and more 'Paki-shaggers' and 'white slags' all over Rotherham, year in year out, for decades: The police driving away ...and leaving them.
...and heading off to arrest one man with a cellphone, over and over and over.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with a Tales for Our Time sampler for those who've yet to hear any of our audio adventures, with yours truly introducing and reading Conan Doyle, H G Wells, Conrad, Kipling, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and more. On Saturday morning we presented the results of our "Oh Happy Day" competition: It wasn't exactly a D-notice, but we were under considerable legal pressure from a vexatious litigant. Our Saturday movie date offered contrasting movie treatments of an ingenious stage thriller: Dial RM for Remake. And for Memorial Day we offered a song for the season, some thoughts on war and sacrifice, and a word from the real talent in the family. If you were busy with your own Memorial Day observances, we hope you'll want to check out one or two of the foregoing as this brand new week begins. We shall have a Tales for Our Time birthday bonus to launch the start of our second year later this week.
In June I'll be back in my hometown of Toronto next month to celebrate the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms and to accept the signal honour of the very first George Jonas Freedom Award. Hope to see you there.
Thank you so much for all the Mark Steyn Club subscription renewals this past month - and for all the new memberships, too. Tomorrow, Tuesday, we will be presenting another of our Clubland Q&As live around the planet at 4pm North American Eastern - and we may return to the subject of Tommy Robinson and related matters. For more information on the Steyn Club, see here - and don't forget our limited-time Gift Membership.
