I am not a member of the EDL. I have no inclination to become a member of the EDL. But it does seem to me that Stephen Lennon is an articulate, reasonable and ordinary Englishman, who has put his life on hold for the sake of principles which matter to him, and should matter, in one way or another, to all those who wish to preserve our English culture and society as something worthwhile and unique. It is almost past saving. At the very least we should listen to the questions which the EDL poses and make sure that we have answers which will satisfy our children and grandchildren as they enter into the England we bequeath them.
I am providing here a transcript of a recent letter Stephen Lennon sent to his supporters from Bedford Prison. I believe that it is worth reading, and that it raises serious questions about the treatment of an Englishman who appears to have been accused of no crimes which would warrant an extended detention on remand in a maximum security prison. It seems that none of the human rights organisations in the UK are willing to consider his case. I am not able to say if Stephen Lennon is guilty of any of those crimes he has been accused of, but his case does surely warrant a closer investigation, especially if we are about to enter into a world where a Conservative Government is ready to implement secret courts. If it is so easy for a man who seems to have become a thorn in the side of a left-leaning political establishment to find himself in prison, then we must be aware that any one of us might be next if nothing is done.
He writes…
So here I am, Bedford Prison, closer to home. I arrived here on Thursday the 29th after standing trial in Luton Magistrates for breaching my football banning order. I was found not guilty. I bet that’s not been put in the press? When I was charged it was all over the press, it turned out in court that the police had withheld documentation that proved my innocence which is why the judge dismissed the case. On the 27th the police came to see me again in Wandsworth Prison, the 27th being my 30th birthday.
2.5 years ago I was arrested on many charges, all to do with finances. Charges such as tax evasion, money laundering, mortgage fraud, etc. The police have spent the last 2.5 years going through my private financial affairs dating back 6 years from the time of the arrest, forensically going through my accounts. During this time all my bank accounts were froze, all direct debits cancelled, my tanning salon frozen, and I was put under a financial restraint.
My wife was also arrested, and the same conditions put on her. At the end of the 2.5 year investigation I have been charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud. 7 other charges relating to money laundering etc were dropped. I’ve heard and seen on TV, radio, papers, quite a big deal has been made of these 3 mortgage fraud charges. None of the charges relate to any mortgages I have taken out. None of them relate to me lying or committing mortgage fraud on properties I’ve bought.
I’ll briefly explain one of the charges. I bought a bungalow in Bletchley, Milton Keynes in 2007. By the way all the offences I am alleged to have committed are all prior to 2009, before the EDL. I bought the bungalow for £60,000. I didn’t have a mortgage, I bought it outright. At this time I had a plumbing company employing 6 people and turning over 100’s of thousands each year. I sold the property, which when I bought it was a repossession, for £70,000 to a friend. The property had subsidence damage. When my cousin bought the property she got a mortgage off a mortgage broker. It is alleged she lied about her income. What this has to do with me I don’t know, but this is my charge!
The other 2 are very similar to this. I was doing well in business prior to the EDL. Since my restraint and the police harrassment of any business linked to mine, the tanning shop went under. The restraint meant we couldn’t meet overheads. And my plumbing business has also collapsed. The police still have many of my belongings, watches, even my engagement rings were taken along with my wife’s jewellery, computers etc. All this for 3 trumped up mortgage fraud charges which don’t actually relate to me.
Will the press give coverage when I am cleared of these charges in a court of law? I doubt it! I’ve been granted bail for these mortgage frauds, which says a lot! There is no case! I’m innocent of the charges!
I am currently on the hospital wing of Bedford Prison. Again isolated from prison population. I’ve asked again to be put on a normal wing! The Governor refuses as he has a duty of care for me and his staff. I’ve had many lads shout up to my cell window that they’ve got my back if I go on the main wings. Half of Luton is in here. Some good friends, Irish travellers, black lads from Luton, all ready to back me up. Although I know I’m going to be competely isolated whilst I’m in here.
The Governor really don’t want me here either. My presence in jail is a hot potato for any Governor to deal with. Many of the screws are ex-Forces and very sympathetic. Again, I am yet to be allowed any exercise, or to go outside for fresh air! The journey here is a lot better for my children to visit so is better than Wandsworth. I will be returned to a London prison on 7th January.
Thanks to people showing support out there. Never give up. Stay strong and keep fighting. History will judge us all. The English Defence League will be remembered for our commitment to fight the Islamisation of this great, green and pleasant land which has the black cloak of Sharia shadowing above it. English Defence League, created by the people for the people. Islam created by a ***** for *****’s.
Enjoy your Christmas and have a well deserved break.
God bless
Tommy
Bless his heart.
This is a very worrying case. Having read it after viewing the CCTV of the Plebgate incident any confidence I had in our criminal justice system and its personnel, in its new politicised form, is rapidly diminishing.
I wonder what a post Levinson regime where possibly even the web is controlled will be like.
James102 10:38
“This is a very worrying case. Having read it after viewing the CCTV of the Plebgate”
James102 mentions Plebgate, even though the video footage shows that there were no members of the public to witness this event and that a policeman has now been charged with serious anomalies in his statement that he was a witness nor was he a “member of the public”.
Nobody is pointing out that the two police officers must have been in collusion either before or after the event, else why have they not publically denying that there were witnesses instead of going along with this lying scam?
David Ossitt
December 19th, 2012 – 10:51
There are a number of outstanding questions about this incident as well as potentially very serious damage to the public’s faith in the police.
The new developments in the Mitchell affair make this a very timely piece from Peter. I hope that someone with influence will take up these concerns. At the least, we here should continue to ask the politicians and media to consider whether there is a link between the Michell and the Robinson cases, that link being the perversion of the role of the police, and whether, if there is the obstruction of justice by the police or outright criminal conspiracy, it is in either case on the orders of some grouping in the country. It will be instructive to see whether the Spectator is willing to view the possibility of a connection.
Mal – F
At the very least this case raises a big question on proportionality.
I will write to my MP and ask for his views on this – views which will be filtered by CCHQ – which will give us something to chew on.
Mr Shakespeare said something like ‘there is something rotten in the state of England’
Lets see what they are willin to admit to…
On occasion I had to confront ‘the Establishment’ or ‘The State’ over some iniquitous bit of bile. The usual response was ‘that’s just the way it is’. My response of ‘ It’s the way it is is because fkrs like yourselves make it so’ was accepted as truth but was not enough to chamge anything – embarrassment never is.
What must be done?
Quite a lot but ‘small steps’ etc ….Vote for anyone but Lib lab con…and I mean anyone. Left/right/local/loony. The bill of fare served up by DaveEdNick is the response of a class of little boys unable to acknowledge that they ride a very grumpy stallion.
I find it disturbing that there really is no interest on the Spectator site about Stephen Lennon. A few of us from here have made comments. I’m now generally being told not to mention him because it is trolling. Do we deserve anything better than we have? Are conservatives really so stupid and lazy that they will put up with anything as long as they get to gossip about the Chief Whip?
Sheesh. It’s going to be a long and lonely walk home with so many people oblivious to what is going on around us and what has already happened.
Do they really think that a few policy changes here, a different emphasis there, will make everything alright?
The removal of the Spectator Coffee House Wall was surely intended to confine discussion within very narrow and editorially defined limits. And it works. You even get other commenters to police it for you.
Peter from Maidstone
December 20th, 2012 – 08:26
I’m not convinced that some poster and some journalists on the Spectator’s Coffee House site are not the same people.
If you allow contributors the right to object to postings, on political grounds, then you can control the content as long as the editor sympathises with the complainant’s political stance.
Left wing blogs are not as successful as right wing blogs because the left is too intolerant of dissent. Can you detect much difference between the policy of the Spectator’s Mods and the Guardian’s?
“No American should be in a Mexican jail for five months without being able to have his case in front of a judge,” [United States Senator]Nelson said in that statement. “We’re grateful; this is a good Christmas present.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/22/mexico-frees-ex-marine-jailed-bringing-gun/
“No Englishman should be in an English jail for two and a half months without being able to have his case in front of a judge.”, Tommy Robinson’s member of Parliament did not say.
Happy Christmas, Tommy Robinson, wife and children…
Any improper political pressure brought to bear to influence the treatment of Tommy Robinson through or outside the law is likely to be connected with the single issue in the English Defence League’s mission, which is peaceful protest against militant islam or, put more controversially perhaps, against the islamisation of England. Tommy Robinson was of course attending a conference in New York to discuss how to resist islam when he used the passport which was the ground for one of the charges which has him locked up without bail.
We should therefore consider and try to discover whether there is in England the same connection with and penetration of government and the wider political world as in the United States by the Muslim Brotherhood and believers in and transmitters of what appears to be the norm of jihadism in muslim ideology. The alleged situation in the USA was disclosed to Bill Whittle here by two unidentified whistle blowers, a former analyst for the US Department of Defence and a former Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
http://www.pjtv.com/page/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/127/
The International Civil Liberties Allianced, I have just seen, already took a position on Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment in their statement of 26th November at
http://www.libertiesalliance.org/2012/11/26/the-right-to-oppose-sharia-the-case-of-stephen-lennon-2/
I wonder if they have developed that support. On Monday, 7th January, a hearing is scheduled for Mr. Robinson at the Luton Magistrates Court, so we may learn more next week.
Malfleur 12:31, I have written to the ICLA asking what, if anything, they have been able to do for Stephen Lennon, and asking whether they know of other agencies and organisations which would be able to provide legal review and support in his case. I will report back if I hear anything.
I am addressing my MP on this issue which I find absolutely appauling. No matter how one approaches the issue the way in which it is being handled is a through disgrace.
My thoughts go out to a man who has the guts to speak out and act according to his beliefs and I hope someone can do something to bring justic to him rapidly. Derek
Ostrich (occasionally) @ 18:18 on this week’s thread (7th-13th January)
Home Thoughts from Abroad
Is the following, then, the proposed fingerprint scenario? Mr. Robinson reserves a seat on Virgin Atlantic in the name of a friend, Andrew McMaster, and leaves England on McMaster’s passport. Mr. McMaster, possibly had one or more recent US visa stamps in his ID document and, if so, will have had his left index fingerprint placed on the US database upon arrival in the States on one of those trips.
In New York, Customs and Border Protection takes a print of Tommy Robinson’s left index finger. For some reason, he is then singled out and has “an interview” with them. At this point, the left index print of Robinson has not checked out against McMaster’s on the database (if any) or the mismatch would have been discovered and Robinson would have been arrested for an offence under US law. It is of course possible that McMaster had never entered the USA on his current passport and/or that his fingerprint was not taken if he had.
Nonetheless,on the date of his arrival in New York, US Customs and Border Protection, having presumably said to Robinson “wait here for a while, sir”, call him for a second interview based on concerns other than those to which a print mismatch would have given rise, by which time he has “slipped into” the country. From the point of view of the US authorities, “Andrew McMaster” had at that moment entered the country illegally.
If Mr. Robinson had flown to New York to commit an extremist, criminal act, instead of to make a speech at a conference in a New York hotel, one might argue that the procedures put in place to prevent such a thing had rather let the US people down.
By the time Mr. Robinson flies back to England the day following his arrival, the Customs’ and Border Protection’s computer system does not yet seem to have alerted the US authorities to a mismatch between McMaster’s print (if any) and Robinson’s or to have recorded an illegal entry by “McMaster” .
For, while the Southwark Crown Court judge states that Tommy Robinson then uses his own passport to re-enter the United Kingdom as Paul Harris, he presumably left the USA showing the McMaster passport to US immigration because the Harris passport would not have had an entry stamp – but of course neither would the McMaster passport except if it had been stamped with a visa before the second interview!
Furthermore, when leaving the USA, Robinson would have had to have shown his ticket with his passport. The ticket would have been in the name of Harris, because the court tells us that he used his own passport to travel home.
So either he showed ticket and passport in the name of McMaster and the US immigration should have arrested him for having illegally entered the USA because the computer would note that he had failed to attend the second interview and/or a fingerprint mismatch. Or the ticket and the passport would have been in the name of Harris, and with no entry visa in the passport the US immigration should have arrested him for having illegally entered the USA.
Thus, on the US records, someone calling himself McMaster or Harris would have been permitted to leave the country despite having entered the USA illegally; unless as I am sure they would have done, they liaised with their counterparts at Heathrow and in effect told the British “this is your turkey”?
Which does not go all the way to explaining why Mr. Robinson was charged in the name of Stephen Lennon instead of Paul Harris or why it was not until 22nd October that Tommy Robinson was arrested..
For the alert border guards in England saw “Andrew McMaster” leave, because the ticket reservation and the name in the passport shown at check-in would have had to correspond, and they then saw Harris return. Vigilant as they are to all threats to the security of the United Kingdom,especially if the US authorities have been laising with them, they might be expected to have noticed, on asking the questions “Where have you come from, sir? how long have you been away?”, that on a flight from New York, Mr. Harris did not have a US entry stamp in his UK passport or a stamp showing the date in September last year when he had left the UK.
In the meantime, the real Andrew McMaster is up the creek without a paddle, as the United States government might be expected to be a little slow in returning his ID and the British government slow to renew it, were he to declare it “lost” or “misplaced”. I hope he is not planning to go to Ibiza for a summer holiday.
Has anyone spoken to Mr. McMaster…?
“…He sentenced Lennon to 10 months in prison, minus the days he has already served in custody.
Prosecutor Simon Sandford said it was the Crown’s case that Lennon committed the offence while on bail for breaching an International Football Banning Order – of which the court heard he was acquitted….
…With remission for good behaviour and taking into account time spent on remand his provisional date of release is 7th March…”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/bloga.cfm/blog_id/45563/EDL-leader-jailed-for-being-illegal-immigrant-after-entering-US-on-friends-passport
http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20130307T00&p0=136&msg=Tommy%27s+release