Transcript: An Honest Conversation With Tommy Robinson – TRIGGERnometry Podcast

I didn’t get any of that. Yeah, I just got invited in, but by the end of the presentation, I got standing ovation and all the people there said, “I didn’t know any of this.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I brought them back every time to growing up in Luton because… And I remember saying to the audience, “I don’t know where you grew up, but please picture yourself. I’m going to tell you my story, what I saw growing up, what happened to my family members, all the changes I saw, and then ask yourself what you would have done. Keep asking yourself, what would you do if you saw this?”

Growing Up in Multicultural Luton

So, yeah, I was born in 1982 in Luton Town. My mum was an Irish immigrant to Luton. She’s one of eight from a poor family. And I grew up in a town that is one of the most diverse and multicultural towns in Britain, in Europe, actually, in Europe. So I saw firsthand what it’s like to grow up in a multicultural community, but also what it’s like in a town that, when I was born, had one mosque in 1982 and now has 45. So we’re nearly a 50% Pakistani population of Muslims.

And I saw the problems from that and I spoke about them. And I guess when people say I’m guilty of things, I’d say, yeah, I’m guilty of being a decade ahead. But that’s not because I had some golden light bulb or could see into the future. I just saw my hometown. I saw from growing up as a child to what had happened and when I grew up.

And again, I’ll start off… So if you line all my friends up and you get 30 of us, the majority of us are sons of immigrants, whether it be Saint Lucian, Bulgarian, Italian, Irish, all of us are sons of immigrants. Yeah, I went to school. Some of the best people I met growing up, some of the people I love from growing up are Muslim. But that doesn’t change that there’s a massive problem.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So talk to us about that. Tommy, you mentioned… Look, I imagine most people listening to this can imagine what happens when a place goes from being mostly one group of people to mostly another group of people, right? And we have friends. We have a close friend of ours who grew up in Bradford and he talks about what he experienced as a white guy in a mostly Pakistani school, right? Most people don’t think about that. So when you talk about problems, right, what do you mean? Like, give us the example.

Experiencing Racism and Violence

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I mean that going to school… So when I went and I noticed it when I got to high school, or even just I talk about when I was… We used to have an under 18s nightclub. And when people talk about racism and victim of racism… So I’ve been a victim of racism untold times. I remember going as a young group of lads going to an under 19s nightclub where we had to walk through the town, we’d get robbed, we’d get spat, we’d get… In the end, we had to hide our money in our socks. Because every time you went, you got robbed and mugged by Pakistani gangs. You get called a “dirty gula,” little white boy, slapped around. So when people talk about racism, I think I’ve experienced it my whole life. I’ve seen it my whole life.

And when we’re at school, so if you come into our high school, I went to a high school called Putridge High School, which was still a majority non-Muslim school, but then they bust children from the Muslim community up on buses into the school. Now when you went into our school and there’s never been a racial tension in Luton. Never seen it, never seen racism. The town is divided by religious lines. That’s it. It’s white and blacks like this growing up. And it always was, especially in Luton’s football scene, which we can get onto all of our groups of lads. We’re a very diverse bunch of lads, always have been.

Luton’s football hooligan element was always seen… The actual racist clubs from the 70s and 80s would always have a big day out in Luton because Luton’s lads that would be resisting them, always white and black, because that’s what Luton has always been. But there was never really racial tensions at school. And we didn’t create this Muslim playground, that was the front playground, non-Muslim playground at the back. So even in the playground it was divided.

When you walk into the school dinner hall, say go into the school dinner hall and when you walk in, you’d have everyone sitting in the mix, Chinese, Indians, blacks, everyone sitting at tables together in the corner, there’d be 10 tables of Muslims. That’s just how it was.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And the playground, is that the school mandating that or is it just how kids saw themselves?

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s just how it divided. Right. That’s just how it divided. And if one Muslim got in any fight, 100 of them got in a fight. So something very different. I’ve never seen that until I got to high school. And then I got to high school and see 10 or 20 men booting one kid. And I’d never seen that because people had a fight before and they just had a fight now, literally.

And then when you get outside the school gates afterwards, if you say when we were 13, 14, and we had some trouble with some Pakistani kids at school, and trouble’s going on when you come outside school, there’d be 30 men.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Men.

TOMMY ROBINSON: There’s no 30 black men or white men coming up to school. They’re all at work.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But there’s 30 Pakistani men waiting outside school to confront the 12, 13, 14 year old kids. So I saw that also at school.

Personal Tragedies and Grooming Gangs

I very quickly saw young girls that were at our school. We didn’t… We viewed them at the time as children. I’ll be honest. We used to view them as slags at that time, because the girls who were 13, were getting picked up by Pakistani men outside. They’d come up to the school gates and literally pick the girls up in school uniforms and the girls would be going out and giving blow jobs to taxi drivers and we’d all know what’s going on. But we never viewed them as victims at that time, as children. We were children and they were going out, basically. They were victims of this grooming gang.

My cousin, when she was 14, my cousin was 14, she woke up naked in a house in Berry park being raped by loads of bearded men. She run out on the streets and the prostitutes rang her dad, the street prostitutes rang her dad. She was just a child.

Sorry to interrupt. Tommy, when was this? This was when I was 4, when I was 13 years old. So that would have been ’96 or ’95. ’96. ’95. And a lot… I do this. Oxford University. A lot happened in my life at that time, which… Whatever happens in your life shapes your worldview, shapes your view. You understand, even… There was a murder of a gentleman called Mark Sharp. Google this murder.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Mark Sharp was with his son. His son was my age, probably… When I was 11, 12, his son was my age. He was friends with my uncles and he’s drove past and he’s… He’s had a bit of a road rage with a car full of Pakistanis and he’s called them a name as he’s gone past, they’ve followed him, they’ve called for reinforcements. More cars have turned up as he’s got out with his 12 year old son to get a takeaway. They’ve jumped out, they’ve beaten with bats, beaten with poles.

There was an explosion of violence in Luton that we didn’t understand at the time because coming from the Muslim community, when we go back and speak to the elders in our community, it seemed to have been stemming from the Gulf invasion. After the Gulf, something was happening in Luton which none of us knew about.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And it’s only later as we, as I get in, in my life, which I’ll get to, that I started to understand, “Oh, this is what’s made it. This is what, this is what this is.” Because there was always something different which I didn’t put down to the Muslim community because at the time it weren’t about them being Muslims, it was just Pakistanis are very different. That’s how I saw it.

But Mark Sharp, they snapped a knife off in his head and killed him. He survived for three, four days in hospital. I remember family left the town, the Pakistanis all went on the run. They got them back in the end from Pakistan. I think they got four years. It’s not justice. They got four years for a brutal murder where six to eight of them jumped all over him, snapped knife, knives off his head in front of his son. So I remember seeing all these things.

And then my cousin, when she was being prostituted, in the end the police just say she’s a drug addict because she was, she was on heroin because they got her hooked on heroin now.

Confronting the Media

And I remember even when I got a chance on Jeremy Paxman years later, and I remember saying to Jeremy Paxman when I went on in 2010 and it’s now, it hasn’t aged well for him. And when I went on the chat show, I said, “They’re picking up our daughters up from schools, they’re picking our sisters up from schools. The gangs are operating so different, they’re not challenged.” And he was like, “Really? You expect us to believe this?”

I remember saying, “Jeremy, do you know anyone who’s hooked on heroin sold by Muslim gang? You don’t? I do. Do you know anyone who’s been killed by Muslim gang? You don’t. I do. Do you know any girls that now wear full niqabs that don’t aren’t allowed to see their family? You don’t, do you? I do. Do you know anyone who’s been prostituted and groomed and you don’t?”

FRANCIS FOSTER: I do. Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I said so. “I don’t expect you to understand, but I do expect you to listen because this is happening in towns.” The reason why the English Defence League has gone bang is because what I’ve seen is what is mirrored across every working class community in this country. If Islam was to evolve, which it needs to evolve, to fit in with, to fit in with Western democracy, which is clearly not. Clearly there’s a problem. Clearly the English Defence League is a phenomenon that swept this country.

And with the issues I’m talking about, Jimmy, if I ask, “Do you know anyone that’s hooked on heroin sold by Muslim gangs? You probably don’t. I do. Do you know any beautiful girls that you went to school with that are now wearing a burqa, that don’t see their family? Probably don’t. I do. Do you know anyone who’s been murdered by a Muslim gang? You probably don’t. I do. Do you know any 15 year old girls that you know that you’ve grown up with that have been raped or pimped? You don’t, so I don’t.”

These are all… Understand it, these are all personal issues of yours. Personal issues in towns and cities like mine that are happening. And they’re not happening with Sikh community, they’re not happening with the Jewish community.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And indeed they’re not happening with most Muslims.

The Islamic Community Problem

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, they’re happening within the Islamic community. That’s what I’m saying. It’s an Islamic problem. And when I’m just a simple person, so I’m just a normal person, but when I’m looking at, I have to look for where this hatred is coming from.

Are you seriously suggesting there aren’t white drug dealers and there aren’t white gangs? Of course I’m not. Sikh gangs or any other kind of. No, I’m not. But I’m saying some of these specific issues are coming from the Islamic community, solely the Islamic community. Terrorists wanting to blow us up. Constant hostile activity towards our youth. All these problems and from sitting back, there’s got to be something it’s coming from. None of the other communities are spreading it.

So we’re a symptom of the problem. The English Defence League, you’re claiming the community is spreading it. Actually what we’re talking about here. Yes, exactly. As you could talk about members of the white community doing all sorts of atrocious things. Yeah, but not 24 year old groups of 10 of them hanging around outside school gates. You’ve never seen a white gang and purposely targeting. Never seen a White gang.

Are we going to pretend that Muslim groups are not out there purposely targeting our youth and pimping them? Are we going to pretend it’s not out there? You’re not pretending white people aren’t doing that. Not in the same manner, not in the same group. They’re saying it’s a cultural thing which is going on within their community.

So I grew up in Luton. I’ve seen all these problems. And again, I’m going to reiterate again, that doesn’t mean. Because some of the best lads I know were Muslim lads at school. But when there’s a divide, and I’ll explain the story again, when there’s a divide, something very different happens with this.

I remember being in. Coming out of a nightclub in Luton and I remember seeing about six Muslims beating one man. And it was my ex wife said, “Stop them, stop them.” And I remember going in to pull them off him and then they attack you. And then as it’s all going on, a Muslim friend of mine stood on their side against us and he didn’t even know him.

And afterwards I spoke to. And the whole town’s going. The whole. There’s all this chaos going on. It’s us and them, the divide. You can think your friends, it’s us and them. When that divide line comes, it’s us and them. And that divide, which I never understood again, I’ll tell you the moment I understood it.

But all this is going on. I’m seeing lots of changes in the town, seeing a level of aggression, a level of hate, criminality. Fast forward to 20. So when I’m 19, I think I’m doing my apprenticeship. I left school. I left school at 16. I got an apprenticeship as an aeronautical engineer at Britannia Airways. I went to work there and I saw. Do you remember the Beslan school massacre?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So in Russia.

TOMMY ROBINSON: In Russia, that was my.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: For people who don’t know, Chechen terrorists took over a school. They held it, I think, for one or two days and then the Russian special Forces went in and it was a bloodbath.

The Beslan School Massacre Wake-Up Call

TOMMY ROBINSON: And for people who don’t know that’s coming to the UK, I think that’s. So this happens. So Chechen terrorists take over the school. And I can still see it. Yeah, Because. And this was my real. You know, everyone’s had that moment that wakes them up. Everyone’s had that moment that I think a lot of people would wish they could just close their eyes to it. I think once you’re awake to this and you understand some of the problems you can’t, you can’t turn off from it.

But they take over a school, not one Muslim, not two, a whole massive gang of them. Yeah, jihadists take over school. The parents then get phone calls so they know their children are in the school, they know terrorists have got their kids. The parents come to school gates, the military there, you know, the Russian army there and the parents are outside and like the women are dropping on their knees, holding their hands, heads as. Then you start hearing the Muslims butchering their kids and they’re killing them and butchering them.

And I remember watching it going, “What the hell is this? What that? What the hell is going on here?” Yeah, two. So that was my moment to start looking at Islam. And two weeks after this I saw a group in Luton called Al-Muhajiroun. The leader, the second in command of that group was a gentleman called Sayful Islam, which translates as Sword of Islam. He’s in a chicken shop in Luton and he’s doing an interview and in that interview he says an attack like Beslan would be justified on a British school.

And this is when I’m probably, I don’t know, I might have been 19, might have been 19. I can’t remember. I was young and I’ll be honest and from my background growing up in Luton, as I said, Luton is a. So people understand the town. It’s probably one of the most poverty stricken towns in the country. It’s a rough and violent town. It has a lot of problems. Take Islam out of the equation, it’s still got a million problems. Yeah, it’s. And growing up there, I’d say chiseled who you become.

But I grew up and I looked up to my uncles rule lead members of Luton’s football hooligan scene. So whilst I went to school, stayed out of trouble, I was always in the group that was, was getting in trouble, the likely lads. But I never got involved in any criminality whereas a lot of the kids I grew up with did my mum, probably because of my mum and my parent and her parenting. My mum was strict but I left, done my apprenticeship.

But when I saw this I was a young lad full of testosterone and I used to go to the football element with the, with Luton town football scene. And when I watch this Muslim say this I thought who’s this man? And I start. Then I looked at him and I understood Al-Muhajiroun. Now remember there wasn’t a terrorist attack in the UK till what, 2007 was it? So There hadn’t been terrorist attack. There hadn’t been. No one understood jihad.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Discovering Al-Muhajiroun and Open Celebration of 9/11

TOMMY ROBINSON: I look at this group, Al-Muhajiroun, who are now a prescribed terrorist organization. But at the time they weren’t. And I look and they’re holding weekly events in our town center outside Don Miller’s bakery. Outside the local bakery. So I looked at them, the head and I looked at. They were Global Caliphate Network and their head office was on Biscuit Road, which is where we from. And it’s like who the hell are this lot?

And in my presentation at Oxford University I showed. So after September 11, but when you went to your local shops, I don’t know what it was like but at my local shops there was p. Not pictures of the 19 suicide bombers with “magnificent 19.” It was celebrated in Luton. It was celebrated at local college. They held a march for the anniversary first year through the town center. So it was celebrated. September 11th was celebrated openly.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: People just openly celebrated.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Look, look at my. Look at my presentation. Oxford University. They. I show the posters at my shop and all over the phone boxes, all over the shops. “Magnificent” on in. Yeah, it was celebrated.

And so I looked at this group and I went down the town center the next Saturday. And I’ll be honest, because on a Saturday back then as a young man there might be 100 of us on a Saturday that would go to Luton football and we’d travel around the country going to football together as young men.

And I looked at this group and when I went down, there’s a police officer there. And I said. And they were openly like now it’s now they try and hide it. They were openly recruiting to send people to fight against our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were openly promoting jihad. It was a. Remember this is at a time when Abu Hamza Hook.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: When he was holding his seminars in Finsbury park when he had hundreds of men on the floor in the road calling for war against Britain. Remember they weren’t getting a nicked on hate speech or anything like that. They were just allowed to do it.

So as I looked at this group, I thought they’ve been operating a mass network. Have been operating for 20 years in my town. Which then explains. And I tried, I tried having this. I sat down with BIM arms when we started the English Defense League and explained to him, your community, the Islamic community is very entrenched. It’s inward looking. You’re all here.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now within this little community you’ve got. Let’s. Let’s just say 200. We’ve got more, let’s say 200 pure radicals.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Radical Network Operating in Luton

TOMMY ROBINSON: Who are working 25 days, seven days a week, and they’re working to promote jihad, supremacy, intolerance against the non Muslim community. So once they’re operating all these, all these years, the explosions of violence that are coming out, and they weren’t just coming out onto us in the streets.

Remember 7/7 bomb plot. They picked up their bombs in Luton. Fertilizer bomb plot come out of Luton. Stockholm bomber come out of Luton. Luton was named by the CIA as the epicenter of terrorist atrocities and the planning for Europe. That’s Luton.

So when people are saying. I said, well, you know these lads, like the ones who were killed fighting for ISIS, the ones who Sayful Islam, who’s done jail for terrorism. Roger Ibrahim, the ginger convert. I used to hang around them as a kid. So we’re not talking about. When you read about terrorists, to some people, this is a million miles away. I went to school with that mug.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I queue up next to him in the bank. His sister lives around the corner for me.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So this isn’t a million miles away from us. So when they. When in 2004. In 2004, I went downtown, center police were there. I said, “What is this? How are they allowed to do this?” She said, “It’s free speech.” I said, “Okay, let’s see if it’s free speech next week.” And then the next week I organized my first ever protest, which was called “Ban the Luton Taliban.” That’s what I called it.

Football Hooliganism Context

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And Tommy, can we pause there for one second? Because one thing that I wanted to ask you about, and honestly, I’m not coming at it from a place of judgment, but I do think it’s an important part of the conversation. You mentioned the football hooligans, right. Which you were part of a lot of people. It’s a very. It’s not a uniquely British thing now that you get these ultras in Italy, you get them in Russia.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But it is kind of, to most people who don’t know about it, they really don’t know about it. Right. So can you explain the firms and the hooligans? Because you say you go around the country supporting Luton, but it’s more than that, Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: It’s one that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It’s young lads who like to get to a football game and have a fight with others. Right. Is that fair?

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s fair.

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s fair. Which is going to sound moronic.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So most people watching this, they’re going to think idiots. Yeah, absolutely. But remember, I’m 42 year old, 42 years old now and I’m a father of three. I was 20.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Finding Identity Through Football

TOMMY ROBINSON: I was 18, 17, 16. Young men finding their identity together, which I’d say I found my identity going to football. I found it.

And when I say I found it, I look at the problem in Luton and I look at the erosion of our identity as young English men. It’s gone. And I’ll give an example. When it’s St. Patrick’s Day in Luton, there’s a three day festival for St. Patrick’s Day. When it’s St. Lucian Day, we have massive tents, park, fairgrounds, everything.

When it’s Eid, the whole place is locked off. Everything. They’ve got fairs, they’ve got everything. When it’s St. George’s Day, it’s banned.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So we’re made to feel ashamed. Anyway, I remember it was St. George’s Day and the local school, Icknield High School. Now, do you remember the Trojan horse plot where the Muslims have infiltrated the schools and got on the boards? What’s his name? Michael Gove was leading on it. He’d done very well trying to expose it. So Trojan horse plot.

So the best head teacher in the school, in Icknield, he come out and the girl come in wearing the full niqab, and he sent her home and Cherie Blair represented her. They sued the school.

And when they sued the school and was redeemed because that girl was – which Cherie Blair represented her. But that girl was the sister of one of the main terrorists in Luton. One of the main extremists in Luton.

So then they protest outside school gates and they put pressure on the school and in the end, Mr. Kelly, I think his name was, who’s a great head teacher, the one the best at school. They ousted him. He had to go because he stood up against the niqab in the school. It’s insane.

But this was going on that same school. Then, few years later, when it’s St. George’s day, they told all that. We’ve just seen the recent thing with the British Culture Day where the girl got sent home in the union jack dress. Did you see this?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yes. Yeah.

The Suppression of English Identity

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s nothing new. Right, so young children in school in Luton, they sent out letters saying, “If anyone brings in the emblem of St. George on St. George’s Day, you’ll be sent home.” So kids, our parents sent them with just a little pin badge with St. George flag on it. You’re going home. Yeah, because my mate’s kids were at school at school time.

So I rang the school when Pakistan won the cricket, they had a massive celebration in the school, Pakistani flags everywhere. It’s our National Day. What message are you sending to the children now and all this?

The reason why I’m explaining this, because it plays a part, I guess, into us as young men feeling like we don’t have an identity in the town. Now, on a Saturday, we’d come together from that estate, that estate, that estate, that estate, as young English lads and we’d go to Luton together and form a brotherhood where we’d travel the country and.

Yeah, I think I’m quite tribal. I think we are as men and humans, we’re tribal. If you go to certain places in the Amazon now, I bet one tribe fights the other tribe for no reason at all. Just they fight.

That’s what it was like growing up in Luton. Our school would fight that school. Every week there’d be fights. Our town and I guess that developed onto our town would fight that town. Our football club would fight that football club.

Now, since people understand because it does sound moronic, speaking about now, lads go to football and even if they’re not fighting, it’s giving them a sense of identity. It’s a cultural fit. It’s a culture. They’re having a good day out and when men are going to football and fighting, they’re not pulling out knives. They’re not. You’ll get 20 lads, 20 lads in a back street and they’re turning up and having a punch up feature again.

I get it. If you’re watching anything, it sounds moronic, but unfortunately in a town like Luton that was plagued by Islamic gangs taking over everything. Yeah. All these migrant gangs taking over everything. Well, on a Saturday, there’s 100 English lads on a Saturday.

So I used 100 English lads in 2004 to tell this group, Al-Muhajiroun, “You’re not in the town anymore, lads.”

The 2004 Demonstration

TOMMY ROBINSON: So. And we turned up and it was called “Ban Luton Taliban.” Now I made leaflets at that time and I actually went. So before I’ve done my Oxford Union press. Tommy, can I just stop you there? Just to make it clear for people, when you say English lads, it’s not white lads, it’s white and black. No, white and black. Yeah, I don’t. Yeah, yeah, I don’t. Because people could. People think, no, I don’t see color. White, black and Asian lads.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: We’ll Sikh lads in the group. So I don’t see color anyway when I’m. And I’ve never, I’ve sometimes journalists have said that when they’ve come here and said, “Bloody hell, there’s a lot” I don’t see that I’ve just grown up in that white English or minority movement.

I’ve just grown up with that. Not bothered. But then, so we’d all come together and we’ve done this demonstration and I went. When I was doing the Oxford Union presentation, I went into the library and I went back through all the old newspapers because stupidly I stood bare faced with this leaflet, I made leaflets, I went around the whole town and basically said, “On Saturday we’re coming out against this lot.”

Now in the leaflets, my rhetoric has never changed. We’re sitting here now, think the country’s, I think, shifted totally shifted. And my rhetoric’s the same as it was in 2004. So my first demonstration, which I dug the leaflet, they basically put the leaflet that I made on the front page of the news, the newspaper.

So I went into library, got it to show people at Oxford University. Here’s what I said in 2004. Now in 2004, what I said, “Whites and blacks are being racially and religiously targeted in this town.”

They’re being attacked violently, the Pakistani gangs. And I named the gang, they’re called the Gambinos. Very original lads for Pakistan, but their gang’s called the Gambinos and they’re 100 strong, Pakistani mobile from the Muslim community who use heroin. And what I said is, “They’re using heroin as a weapon against us.”

Because they are, right. They’re coming into our estates with heroin and they’re destroying the estates. And in fact, back in, when I was a few years younger, there were little riots in an estate in Luton. And Muslims come from all over the country for these riots. Yeah. But it was one estate fighting against them. And that started because they bought the heroin in the estate. They damaged families and people tried to resist it.

But the police crushed the English lads basically at that time. But as this is going on, so we. The leaflet said “Whites and blacks being religiously and racially targeted.” So I named the Gambinos in 2004. And I say that they use heroin to prostitute our youth, to then use them in paedophilic gangs.

FRANCIS FOSTER: That.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Screaming. Yeah, that’s now labeled as grooming. This was 2004. And I said, “If we know the shops are doing it and we know which men are doing it and we know which businesses are doing it, because they all use the businesses.” You know, we’ve. This is now common practice. We know each tax, it’s taxi ranks, it’s takeaways. But we’ve known that the whole time growing up. We’re looking at it thinking, “Well, look what they’re doing.”

Nothing’s happening. You don’t crush them, you crush us all the time. So at that time, I made the leaflet and I stood up and about, I don’t know, probably 200 lads turned up, 200 young lads turned up that day and they weren’t there, the extremist mob, that it didn’t turn up that day. I thought, “It’s worked, it’s worked. They’re not here.”

But then it didn’t work because I’d done it bare faced as Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Yeah, I stood up and I’ve done it. I read out the leaflet on the town hall and boy, I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting but the fallout from that probably because then I probably bought a lot of heat on the gangs because I named them.

The Aftermath and Consequences

TOMMY ROBINSON: And this was 2004 and I’ll show it. Oxford University presentation. Fast forward 2007. The Daily Mirror run a national story on “Chemical Jihad” and they named the gang in Luton who are working with the extremist terrorist groups funding them.

So they’re working hand in hand. The street gangs work with terrorists. Which is why I, when I come out against this, all the young little Pakistani mobs, I was the target after this I was a target. And if I wanted to go out in the town for the next few years, I had to go out and 20 lads.

So I learned very quickly. But I also had a lesson growing up in my life with the Pakistani community that if you shut with the Muslim community, if you show them any weakness, they’re going to run all over you. It’s like when I start. So if you showed them any fear, they’re going to run all over. There’s only one language I understand. There’s only one thing they understand, they respect. And it’s strength, not cowardice, not appeasement they actually respect.

I have Muslims now shake my hand in the town who don’t like me. So “I don’t like you, Tommy. I respect you. You stand on your values.” But. So this is 2004. I organized this protest in my name and the fallout from it comes comes at me big. They smashed my mum’s house up. I was targeted by them. We had. I’ll be just being honest, as young football lads, we had clashes with their gangs. Then after that, for years, for years.

But it got to a sort of truce point after a few years because there was clashes either side, it got to a truce point and I knew some of their gangs because I went to school or something.

But it’s like, no, you’re not, you’re not. You’re absolutely taking the piss. And I’ve seen so much in the. And I’m only giving you a little, little two seconds of growing up in Luton, of what I’ve seen all the problems and the wrongdoings and the and, and in Oxford University I showed there were 68 attacks against, against non Muslim houses in the area of Bury Park.

You’ve got to watch. If you watch the presentation, you’ll see now, The Howards were 88 years old, an old white couple. They don’t repair their windows anymore.

FRANCIS FOSTER: You know, they did.

TOMMY ROBINSON: They stopped repairing their windows because they just get smashed again. Palmer, who’s rest in peace because I know the lady died recently, but I know her son is. Her son’s one of the most respected black men in Luton.

Now. And I grew up looking up to the man.

Now he. At that time, his mum’s house had been attacked and the police done nothing. And the reason they’re getting attacked because members of the Muslim community wanted them out because there were non Muslims living in the Muslim community. Now there’s actually national news stories on this. Back then.

And when we sat, when we went to football, our football hooligan liaison officer. Because every football club has a officer whose job it is to understand the hooligans, know who they are, get intelligence. He pulled us aside and said, “Just going to tell you honestly, you need 200 men down there. He goes, they’re not going to listen to her. You need 200 men.” That’s our police telling us nothing’s going to happen here.

The Formation of United People of Luton

TOMMY ROBINSON: Unless you get men together. And there was a game against Rochdale. This is going back then as all these attacks were going on and about 2,300 Luton lads come out and there was a bit of trouble that day. But it was in response to the attacks, the continued attacks. Then the police launched investigations. Then the police started dealing with it. Only then because they don’t otherwise.

So this has gone on. 2004, first demonstration. 2009. In between this period, I was an aircraft engineer. I’m then now by 2009, I’m running a successful plumbing business. I’ve got a sunbed shop in the town center and between me and my wife, I’ve got seven properties and I’m doing well. And I had done what everyone else is trying to do. My passion was making money. I had enough money. Get out of Luton like everyone else does. Get out. Run.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Get into a village, get into a nice area, set up my family. I had my first child and then first child. 2008 and then the soldiers homecoming parade in Luton. Soldiers. It’s a Tuesday morning. Soldiers given the freedom of the city. And again to make it personal, because it is personal as Lutonians, it’s personal because it’s our town. Every time you hear our town’s name is terrorism. We’re fed up of that. Every time our town is. Every football away fan sing about our town being full of terrorists, everything’s about terrorism. And then they attacked our soldiers. And in that regiment which was the Royal Anglians, Scott Montbridge was 26 and he died. He’s from our estate. Michael Swain was 19 and lost his legs.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The 2009 Soldiers’ Homecoming Incident

TOMMY ROBINSON: And when they’d done that, they’re then attacked by the same group, Al-Muhajiroun, that we’ve already been confronting for years. Yeah, they’re attacked by them. So 2009 comes and when they’re attacked, just to understand, I remember and bear in mind at this point, I know who this group are. These are jihadists. These are the Nazis of the millennium, that’s who they are. And they’re free to do what they want. No one’s stopping them. Council aren’t stopping them, police aren’t stopping them. In fact, they’re letting them.

And that day I stood in the town, so it’s Tuesday morning, stood down my cousin, got down the town hall to show some respect for the armed forces and saw police everywhere. Too many police. What’s going on? Saw 30 niqabs all together, then started spotting the main Muslim radical lads safely Islam, Omar Ibrahim started looking and think, right, what’s going on? And then the police took them through the town hall. They opened up the doors of the town hall and they took a group of 20 of them and walked them through the town hall.

So I’m watching it thinking, what’s going on? They walked them through the town also as the soldiers marched down here, which is the back of the town hall, they put the Muslim protesters this far from the soldiers and let them attack them. They spat in one of the lads, mum’s faces, soldiers, mum’s faces. They shouted, “butchers of Basra. Baby killers.” They shouted all this stuff and done this protest.

And there was probably 20 of them there, 60 of them down here by the town, by Dom Miller’s bakery, because that was their little medium, which was where they always are. 60 of them there. But the police actually stopped because some of our lads got arrested on that day. The police actually stopped 330 of them coming into Luton off the motorway. So imagine there was 500 of them, imagine the damage they would have done that day. But this story went worldwide about Luton and it was that day.

And bearing in mind I’m getting on my life by this point, I’m doing all right. And I remember speaking to my cousin and speaking to some lads after that and said, we can’t let them do this. Like, they can’t get away with this because if they do, what’s next? And we’ve seen the progression. That same group that attacked the soldiers is the same group that burnt poppies on Armistice Day is the same group that Michael Adebolajo is part of that went from attacking soldiers, one of the Lee Rigby Killers, attacking soldiers on the street, burning poppies, beheading soldiers. I made a video about Lee Rigby’s killer two years before he done that, we showed him in a video. Here he is in Harrow.

And then so in 2009, this happens. We know who they are and we said, no, like, enough’s enough on this issue. Enough is enough. And you know what we’ve done. And that’s why I kept asking people, what would you do? This is your town. Anyone watching this, you live in this town, you’ve seen all these problems. There’s a total two tier policing now. Two tier policing is part of national vocabulary. Yeah, but it wasn’t. But it was for us. We’ve always seen it.

So, I organized a protest. But before we’ve done any protests, I set up a petition, got three and a half thousand signatures and I approached the council and the petition said, ASBO. Anti Social Behavior orders, which is what they use. So in our estates, if two kids are continually causing trouble together, they’ll give them an ASBO from being together and then they’ll give them a perimeter around the shops they can’t hang around so they, so that normal people can go to shop without loads of little hoodies causing mayhem.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Petition and Council Response

TOMMY ROBINSON: So what we ask for is implement these orders against this group so that when my mum or my auntie or any of our families go down to town center, they’re not being accosted, recruited, vulnerable men aren’t being recruited because the Stockholm bomber was an innocent Iraqi Muslim who come to Luton University from Sweden and on Freshers Week, which is when these groups were active in the universities, he was recruited and he was on his own. And then he ended up going and blowing himself up. This is a process of grooming, of radicalization.

So we done this petition said, look, stop them, ban them. The council won’t even meet with us. The council would just ignored it. And when they ignored it, then I said, right, okay, why do you think they ignored it, Tommy? They’re so scared. They’ve never said no. At this point, I’m looking at them taken through a town hall and think you’ve never told them no.

Like, if I say, now we’re going to protest outside East London Mosque, the police can say, no, you can’t. Yeah, you can’t come outside the mosque on a Friday afternoon because it’s going to cause mayhem. Well, you can’t stand in front of our armed forces. If you want to protest. Those soldiers who were peacemakers, they weren’t at war. The Royal Anglian regiment, they were training their armies. Yeah, you want to protest that group, go to the government. Yeah, protest the council, whatever you want to do. Spitting in their faces on their return home, tour of duty.

So we were angry and really angry. So I organized and I went, I made leaflets and again. And I said to my cousin, and it’s only because there was two of us, because I never. We shook hands because you can’t go into this one foot. We knew that. Yeah, we can’t do this half hearted. We’re either in it or we’re not. And next is a soldier’s funeral. I knew that they’ve done this today if they’re allowed to carry on. And then there was big tensions in Luton at that time. Big tensions. Like there was problems going off against them and against us. And it was like there was so much trouble going on.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And then.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And then I remember because there was a. I think there was a. The Salafist mosque in the town, which is the old synagogue.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Which is where the Islam. Which is where the Salafists went. So as I drive, when I was younger, my Muslim mates would say, that’s the problem. And as we’re driving a car, that one there, the ax, that one there, I said what? I said, that’s the terrorist mosque. So we knew locally that’s the terrorist mosque. But when all this blew up, the main leader of the terrorist mosque, Qadir Baksh was his name, become a chair of the Luton in Harmony program. So they set up a program to try and counter our protests, called it Luton in Harmony and brought the main terrorists and sat around the table as one of the men called in for harmony.

The First Protest

We organized. I organized my first protest over this issue and we set up a group called the United People of Luton. And we turned up to protest that day. And it was bank holidays, two bank holidays in May. So we’d done the first bank holiday on the Sunday. Now we were angry, but it was a community. It wasn’t just football lads, because this was an issue that everyone was upset about.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So it was on. My aunties were there, families were there, kids with kids were there. And I paid those cameraman 450 pound to come and film everything. And the reason I’ve done this is because I understand two tier policing. I’ve seen my whole life. So I know what’s coming.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The minute we try and come out, so we’ve turned up, cameraman’s turn up with us, they stop us in the street, put their hands in our pockets, make us take our shoes off, search us, what’s your name? And as they’re doing this, I said, you didn’t do this to them on that soldiers Hong Kong parade. You did not do this to them. I know you didn’t because I watched it. Why didn’t you put your cameras in their faces? Why didn’t you ask them their names? You just walked them through.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So why are you doing this to us now? We’re coming out as community and we’re trying to get to the war memorial which is at the other end of the town. And the police kettled us for three hours. They locked us in at the front, locked us into the back. They come through on a horse, knocked down my mate’s teeth, the police did. A little black lad called Isaac took his teeth out. So they kettled. My auntie had to urinate in the street. I remember standing there as women were urinating the street thinking, well, Muslim women, women wouldn’t have to urinate in the street. You would never dare lock Muslims in a group like this.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I went back again to previous protests because I’d been following this group. They held an anti Gaza war, anti Gaza protest.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Which is just a pro Hamas protest. And in this protest there’s about thousands, thousands coming out of the Muslim community. And it’s led by this group, they’re leading it safely. Islam, all the terrorists, they’re at the front of it. Yeah, They’ve organized it and they’re going, “Khaybar, Khaybar, Khaybar.” And I remember thinking, I wonder what that is. So I started looking at it and Khaybar was where Muhammad beheaded 600 Jews. The leader of Jewish tribe’s wife married her that night. So I started, I’d gone through a process of understanding a lot of this stuff when most people weren’t understanding it. So I was becoming knowledgeable on it, thinking, okay, I know they are, I know what that is, I know what’s going on.

So we held our protest and the police just locked us in. And they locked us in, didn’t let us get to the war memorial. So I think will you let them get to the war memorial? And we know you won’t let us. So first of all, we’re angry with them, the Muslim community and the extremists within it. And after this it’s become more about civil rights. It become more about no, you’re not doing this to us.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Police Raids and Intimidation

TOMMY ROBINSON: So the next. And then after that first protest, they come to my house. The police did. They raided 14 properties.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And what they did is cleverly, which is what they’re still doing now. It’s their tactic is to put fear into the community from speaking out. It’s what Starmer just done by weaponizing the judiciary after the riots. But Lucy Connolly, Peter Lynch me. They try and put fear set as our pool by people to make sure everyone else shuts up. So when they come in our houses, they went to my mums and anyone who got nicked, I wasn’t at home, so I didn’t get nicked. Anyone who got nicked got given bail conditions not to enter Luton town center 24 hours a day, seven days a week for three months. So then we sat down after and said, well, that’s what we wanted for them. So rather than give it to the terrorists they’ve given to us. We’re. And everyone was arrested on public order offenses.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The State’s Arrest Tactics and Growing Tensions

TOMMY ROBINSON: No one got prosecuted. So these were just… And this became a tactic of the state. This was arrest to then imply to enforce bail conditions, to limit and prohibit your freedoms from protesting and standing up.

So then comes the next protest three weeks later. And this is what changed it for us because I turned up that morning, I was wanted as were all the other lads who were banned. And I turned up with 100 balaclavas and we met at a pub and it was… And it was football lads and we met up. I gave everyone balaclavas. We all had T-shirts that said it was a Luton logo with “no surrender to Al-Qaeda traitor.”

We met up and again I brought the cameraman and I brought the cameraman. I rang the police anonymously and said, “Stay out of the way today. If you…” And I’m just giving you a warning because if you could have lit a match and threw it in the air, I think Luton would have just gone. It was ready.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve grown up in the town my whole life. And I remember at the time, after the first demonstration had Pakistani lads ringing me up saying, “Yaks, like these are terrorists. Like you’re not messing with the street gangs, like you’re upsetting everyone here.”

I remember saying, “Yeah, well there’s 500 of us.” Because at the time there was 500 of us. I said, “There’s 500 Luton lads and everyone’s had enough of it. We’ve had enough of the terrorism, we’ve had enough of the… We’ve had enough of the heroin. We’ve had enough.”

The Second Demonstration and National Recognition

So the second demonstration comes, balaclavas are given out, we all get then go into the town center, police attempt to stop it. And I warned them at the time, I said, “Don’t try and stop it because the town’s going to burn. I’m telling you now, let just let people get to the war memorial. Let us have our day at the war memorial.”

But they tried to stop it. And then there was running battles through the town. And then the images that then took this to international recognition was men wearing balaclavas with England flags on our town hall steps, which was then seen, which I understand why it was seen.

I then took the video of Luton’s lads that day and I went on messaging boards around the country, which is football chat forums at the time. This was before the rise of social media really. But every football club has a chat forum. So Millwall’s football lads, Tottenham’s football lads, Chelsea football lads, they all have their own forums where they talk and then put the video up and said “Luton are making a stand basically against this.”

And people talked about the tactics at the EDL. This was the United People of Luton. And when on that first demonstration, when we all met up, when they kettled us with the second one, I remember we sat in, it was called Brooksies in the town center. And I walked in, some big white skinhead lad come in, he said and he sat down, he goes, “Are you the organizer?” I said, “Yeah, this is all Luton’s lads.” He goes, “What we’ve heard about what’s going on, there’s 30 National Front getting off the train station.” I said, “Great.” I said, “Because we’re going to smash their heads in lads.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: He’s like, what?

TOMMY ROBINSON: I said, “Look around this pub.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: When the National Front come into this town, they’re going to get battered, they’re going to get run out.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And that… And they did get chased out.

Addressing the Far-Right Label

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Tell people about the National Front because this is one of the big issues with you, Tommy, isn’t it? For people who are not educated about this issue is a lot of people call you far right and in doing that now we can talk about, you know, the different aspects of your behavior, some of the street violence and all that, which is an issue and we’ll talk about it.

But when they mean far, when they say far right, what they really mean, what they really mean I think is that you’re racist, you hate black people, you hate brown people, you hate Jews, et cetera. And the National Front are people who actually are all those things.

TOMMY ROBINSON: National Front are all those things, they’re Nazis, they hate everyone. And there’s never been the presence of those sorts of people within the town of Luton. So.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So people say that about you, but what you’re saying is you have always actually fought with and against those people the whole time. Why don’t you like the National Front?

TOMMY ROBINSON: They’re the same as the radical jihadists. It’s exactly the same. In fact, they’re now coming together, aren’t they? They’re now joining together.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: In fact, they’re now coming together. They’re now joining together. Yeah, they’re now joining together. It’s mad. You now see Nick Griffin sitting down with radical Dilly Hussain. They both want supremacy. He wants white supremacy, he wants Islamic supremacy. And here they are together, coming… They basically all come in together just because they hate Jews and everything’s a Jew’s fault. Yeah, that’s what’s brought them together now.

But at this time, that and our first, if you dig up the first Luton United People of Luton. We had “NF go to hell” from our banners because we thought, you know, when you try and do something like this, we knew it would attract certain, certain types. So we made it very clear when we had off.

So this is Luton. We’ve had these two issues in Luton. All hell’s going off. We then watch our… And if you look at the footage, go on. Luton Protest was a YouTube channel and it’s called the United People of Luton. You’ll see the first ever protest and you’ll see hundreds of us and we’re standing outside the town hall cheering. “We are Luton Town.” Everyone’s trying… And then I see the leader of the council saying, “All these outsiders have come into our town.” It’s like, not outsiders. It’s our town. It’s our town. And they’re taking a piss in the town. So this is all going on.

The BNP Connection

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Tommy, one sec, Sorry, you’ve got lots to say, which is great. And we want… We’ve got loads of time, as we discussed, so we’re just going to jump in every now and again because there’s little bits that we want to… I do remember seeing somewhere I haven’t fact checked this, so correct me, but something about you joining the BNP or something. What is the truth of that?

TOMMY ROBINSON: So 2004, I joined the British National Party. So 2004, because they are basically the…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Continuation of the National Front. Nick Griffin was the leader.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Nick Griffin was. They’re the political wing of the… They were.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So 2004 was when I held the first protest band. Luton Taliban.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now that time, that’s when I started going down the rabbit hole, looking online for who’s talking about this. And to be honest, the only people talking about it was a group called the BNP.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The BNP then were talking about it and they set… And then we… I think I messaged and they set up a meeting at a pub called the King Harry Pub. And this is documented by Searchlight. Searchlight was a far left magazine. Magazine. Now, Searchlight documented as when the MIGs fell out with the BNP. The MIGs is Luton’s football hooligan element. It’s called the Men in Gear.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So we’ve turned up to this meeting where this is the group that’s talking about these issues. Even back in 2004, they were talking about the grooming, you know, the rapes in Bradford and things like… So they turn up to the meeting and we all turn up and they say, “Oh, he can’t come in, he can’t come in, he can’t come in.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: It’s like what?

TOMMY ROBINSON: Listen, non whites can’t join. So you’re joking. So at that point, so you can’t have a meeting in the pub. In fact you can’t operate in any pubs. You can’t operate in any pubs in Luton.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because that’s what Luton is, our problem, which was my… And you know when you went on the BNP website at that time, it had 10 points “TVs for old age pensioners.” Every point, every point you’d go, “I agree with that, I agree with that. I agree with that.”

Now at this point, bearing in mind before this I just, I didn’t know the difference between left wing, right wing and I didn’t care because I was just, I was a working class kid on a building site earning money, didn’t give a shit about politics, understood Islam, what was going on, but never ventured into politics. I didn’t understand there was left wing newspapers and right wing newspapers until I set up the EDL and then I got a shock of my life, absolute shock of my life. And I went through this learning curve.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And this is kind of before the Internet really is what the Internet is now. So you can’t just like AI search stuff.

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, there was nothing.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The way to get your message across was get on the street.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So you turn up to this meeting of the BNP, you realize they’re racist but you still joined.

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, I was joined at that point for as soon as come online now there was a leaked list, there was a leaked BNP membership and you joined.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Online and then you realized.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Okay, but then when I realized… So the leaked list shows the membership say from 2002 to 2008. I joined in 2004 for one year. So I’ll join up with a year’s membership. Don’t rejoin that. You can see the league list. There’s no rejoining.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So at that point it’s like my you lot cough. We’ll do it our way.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Taking Direct Action

TOMMY ROBINSON: Which is as lads in Luton, we’ll do it our way. We organize our protests. Then we set up the first protests, had to had the two protests then after they’d attacked our soldiers and this still for me is still insane. Yeah, they’d attacked our soldiers.

And then I look online and I’m following this group, they’re holding an Islamic roadshow. So we’re looking at them. They were in Wood Green. So they had a street stall in Wood Green and we went in the back of a lorry about 40 of us. And we pulled up down the end of the road, jumped out, had a little… There was one in… Police were there, but we shut down their stall again.

So our tactics at that time was, “Let’s follow these terrorists. Let’s see, instead of going to football against Chelsea on Saturday, let’s go find these cunts up.” That’s basically just the truth of what we were doing. Yeah, let’s shut this lockdown.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Let’s.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Let’s confront them. And remember, the police were letting them act the way they wanted. Now we… Now they become a prescribed terrorist organization. By 2010, after one year of the English Defense League chasing them around the country, then the government stepped in. The Home Secretary sent in, said, “We’ve got to ban him.” Well, you know, you should have banned them 20 years ago. Yeah, you banned them because there was street problems. They only listened to that. So at the time… I understand. So we went, we went, you know.

The Police Response Pattern

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Something, I interrupt you there because what you just said, I think 10 years ago people would have been like, “the police only react when there’s tree problems.” But I can’t argue with that now. When I look around at what’s happening now, I can’t argue with it because they cover up and ignore stuff until people are really angry and then they act on it. I mean, that’s just. People can say, that’s whatever. That’s just a fact.

If you look at our country now, if you look at the protest outside Micron hotels and all of this stuff, they have been ignoring all this until people actually started getting angry. That’s just a fact.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right?

TOMMY ROBINSON: It’s a fact. And I’d say since 2001, when the Muslim community rioted in Bradford and the riot spread to Oldham and the riot spread to Stoke. And at that time, those riots, if you look at the cost of the riots this was after, I think an old, old, old age British pensioner was beaten by a gang of Pakistanis which provoked 200. Again, football lads at the time, I think from Oldham. Yeah, I think they marched into an area, a Muslim area, which then triggered race riots where entire places burned through Bradford. They come out in Bradford and burn everywhere since that point.

If you look at it, it looks like the government just went, “okay, Muslims, do what you want.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. And.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And the Muslim leaders, which they always do, and I’ve seen example after example, this, which we’ll get on to, they just threaten violence. They just say, “we won’t be able to control our youth. Yeah, you’ve got to stop these people. You’ve got to arrest him, stop him, shut down this.” And then the government just go and “we’ll just pander to them.”

So you’ve seen and then now the country’s seen it. You saw it on Hamas riots. You saw them calling for jihad on the streets, literally calling for jihad. And then the police are putting out a statement saying “jihad has lots of different meanings.” Not when it’s coming from Hizb ut-Tahrir. It doesn’t. No, because that man saying it is a. Is part of a prescribed terrorist organization in most countries.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But not this pathetic country.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It is now. It wasn’t at the time.

The Formation of the English Defence League

TOMMY ROBINSON: Again, right, it is now. Why now? Why wasn’t it for the last 20 years Hizb ut-Tahrir, every Islamic society in every university around this country was Hizb ut-Tahrir. So kids, kids are going to university and a terrorist group because they’re now a terrorist group, but they’ve always been a terrorist group. Just our weak, pathetic government didn’t prescribe them because they didn’t want to upset people. It’s like mad. You don’t upset them until they’re calling for jihad. Until they’re openly saying the madness that we know they’ve been promoting anyway. Yeah, they’ve made universities total no go zones for certain communities.

And whilst jihad once. So at that time this is going on, we look at the Islamic group, we. Then we. Then I see a young boy called Sean, he was 11 years old, he’s in Birmingham. And they get him up on stage, about 200 of them. I use this video in my Oxford Union presentation just to show people look at what happened. Because there’s a story to what happened before the English Defense League was born.

You have to understand the 15 years in Luton. Then you have to understand what went on with the UPL. Then you have to understand that the government, the local community council, ignored us, suppressed us. Then you have to understand the police attacked us, silenced us, charges to control us. Then comes the English Defence League.

And it only come because Sean was 11 years old and they got him up on stage and they had a banner saying “Jesus was a Muslim” in the city center. Imagine we had a banner saying “Muhammad was a Christian” or something. That would upset you, just couldn’t do it anyway. They’d kill you but the police would stop you and all. But they had. “Jesus was a Muslim,” hundreds of them screaming “Allah Akbar” whilst they converted an 11 year old boy who was out with his mate shopping in town.

And I remember watching it going, “right, they can’t do that, right, they cannot be doing this in city centers to kids.” So we then went as a group of Luton lads. We said, “right,” called ourselves the English Defence League. I made T shirts. We all wore them. And we went to Birmingham for our first ever. And it was, if you watch up. And this is where I learned a lot about the media. We went to Birmingham as a group of 50 and we got run and smashed everywhere.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Lads were getting beaten unconscious on the floor. There was newspaper clippings of men with English men with blood all over them. And there must have been a mob of a thousand Muslims. And the police put us in a pub.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And we were in this pub for three hours and they couldn’t clear the streets. So then the police end up getting us buses. They go and take buses to try and get us out of there. They bring in buses, all the bus windows go through. And as we get out on these buses, everyone’s getting smashed to hell. We’re looking down the side streets and it’s bricks littered everywhere. So I think they’ve been rioting for hours. Yeah, we’ve been rioting for hours, but that’s.

And our banners read, “Nigerian Christians, we stand with you as victims of jihad.” Because again, I’m down the rabbit hole at this point and I’m organizing it. And I saw that five Christian churches were blown up on Christmas Day and it didn’t even make our news. And I’m thinking, Christians are being massacred, Christian Nigerians are being butchered, and nothing’s even to be, why is no one speaking about this? Where’s the Christian leadership in this country? And I’m going down all these rabbit holes thinking, what’s going on?

So we’ll go to Birmingham. And our banner said “Muslim, no problem.” Because I hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole that much on the reality of Islam. I’ve just been looking at groups. “Muslim, no problem. Extremist Muslim, big problem.” But what happens is Salma Yaqoob, which we didn’t know Salma Yaqoob went in a mosque. And she told the crowds of Muslims that the BNP, the National Front and the racists were here to attack them, which was us, 50 lads.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So we. They come out and they rioted, but no one spoke. I remember watching it, thinking, well, we’ve come here about Sean because we had banners. “What about Sean’s rights?” We’ve come here about this Christian kid who’s been converted and no one’s even spoke about it. So no politicians spoke about it, Police didn’t speak about it, no one mentioned it. We were called racist we were called far right and we were bad. That’s basically it.

So I watched this and then after this I saw this is how the EDL developed from 50 men. These images went all over the country.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And people were talking about “bloody Luton went to Birmingham today and got battered.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Movement Grows

TOMMY ROBINSON: And when I say people, I guess football elements in clubs we’re talking about then there’s a Christian graveyard, a church has been bought in Longsight in Manchester and there’s. They’re just bulldozing over the headstones. I remember them watching that going, “well you ain’t doing that either.” Yeah, that’s insane.

So we then said, “right, we’re coming from Birmingham, we’re now the English Defence League are coming to Manchester.” And that was a real default changing moment because when we turned up in Manchester as a group of 52, 2,000 young men were there, 2,000 young men were there like that.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because they’d watch the videos, the Muslims smashing everyone and men who were not going to be smashed. That’s how it started. Who were going to defend other English men at that time. Which is so people talk about. Well, the English Defence League was a bit of an explosion. I said after what happened to us in Birmingham, it was never going to be female school teachers and nurses that were coming out on the street.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And, and although, and I, I, I went for four years leading this group and I think we’re very lucky. And I decided to leave myself because I felt it wasn’t, it was counterproductive to continue marching into cities. I understood then maybe we weren’t having the right effect because maybe we were given the radicals and the extremists the ammunition for some other Muslims to join them to say “look at this lot.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Reality on the Ground

TOMMY ROBINSON: But we went around the country and remember at this time when I left Luton and I started meeting families and people and understanding Jesus Christ in every town, city, our daughters are being raped in it. What I’ve seen in Luton are then sitting with families and again I’ll tell this story. We had our Blackburn demonstration. We went from Manchester to Stoke to Blackburn. Blackburn was chaos but there was thousands.

And I went the night before and sat with a family whose 12 year old daughter had been missing for three days and her 16 year old brothers there and they’re all, they’re crying, the family are crying. And then when we went to the demonstration there’s trouble flaring with the police and I remember going down the front of that demonstration to try and calm the trouble and who’s at the front, fighting the police, her 16 year old brother. Who am I even selling? I’ve just sat with that family last night. The police ain’t doing nothing. His daughter, his sister’s missing for days. So that level of anger and the reason people talk about the phenomenon of the English Defense League at the time.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because we went from here one day to within six months, we had divisions in every town city and with the largest street protest movement in the Europe scene. And we didn’t plan it, we didn’t have control of it. The police had no idea or intelligence on it. So it just went home across the whole country.

And why did it go home across the whole country? Because everyone, if you just look at Rotherham, 1,400 victims, those 1,400 victims have probably got four family members each. That’s 10,000 people just in Rotherham who have been directly affected by the gangs in that town. So when all these people have been silenced and scared of talking about it. People used to whisper about Islam. All of a sudden you’ve got 3,000, 4,000 men walking through the streets singing “we are infidels and we’ve had enough of this.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Impact and Results

TOMMY ROBINSON: And if. And I’ve got. And I go back and again when we say what was the. I can look at mistakes we made, look at errors I made, my personal behavior at times, I can look at all that and you learn a lot from it. But I just look at the graph and if you drew a graph and you set 2009, which is the formation league and you have a line like this for the Muslims who are arrested for grooming of children in gangs and the line goes like this. The English Defence League forms and again, this is the only time they act when there’s a resistance.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Unfortunately, it just goes through the roof. Yeah. They realized behind in corridors of power up and down this country in government, they all of a sudden realized, “we’ve got to do something.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And in fact, Andrew Norfolk, I don’t want to speak ill of a dead man because I know he’s died recently, but this is his words. He knew his words in an interview. He knew the gangs were operating, he knew the victims were young white girls and he was too scared to report on it. Along comes the English Defence League and what he says is “we needed to take it back from the far right.” Far right. What you mean by far right is families, fathers and Englishmen who ain’t, who ain’t backing down on this issue.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The English Defence League and Community Disparities

TOMMY ROBINSON: And we went through our daughters are not. In the end, our banner said from 2009 of our daughters are not halal because that’s how they’ve been treated, literally. And no one’s doing anything about it. So then arrests start going through the roof. The government’s not listening. And when I say they’re listening, they were listening.

I had. When we set up the English Defense League, we’re in Luton and they called me for a meeting, the council did. And I go to the meeting and they’ve got about 10 of them and they had cameras set up like this. And they had a labor baroness, she was baroness from the labor government, a black lady. And they sat me down and said, “Tell us what’s wrong.”

So I’ll tell you what you want to know what’s wrong. And then I went through and I said, “Where do you live?” She said, “St. Albans.” “Where do you live?” “Hitchin.” These are the people who represent us. “Where do you live?” Not one of them lived in Luton. I said, “You know, none of you even Lutonians.” Yeah, and Mohammed was there. And I said, “You live in Berry Park. Didn’t you profit?” He said, “Yeah, I do, yeah.” I said, “I know you do. So you represent your community, you’re on the ground in your community and you know what’s going on in your community. You lot have got nothing in common with me or any of us. In fact, none of you are probably working class either. You’re middle class, you’ve come into the council, you’re in high roll, 100 grand a year, and you’re the people making decisions.”

And they said, “Well, what’s wrong?” I said, “Okay, you see this park?” And I took them up to Farley Hill in Luton and this is a problem across. This isn’t just. What I’ve seen in Luton is mirrored for every town.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The problems of the gangs, problem, the drugs, the problems of the police, the problems of appeasement, but the problems of funding and neglect of the working class. So I took them up to Farley Hill and I said, “You see that park there? That was built in 1960. This is a predominantly white council estate. So let’s go down the Muslim community.” So we drove down the hill. “That’s a £330,000 state of the art park. Why? How come they’ve got that and we’ve got that? How come? How come? Because they class the Muslim community as a regeneration community. How come their community centers are free? How come for their kids to go play football is free and ours is not? We have to pay five pound each, which we don’t have. So everything’s built for this and nothing’s built for this.”

And if you look at the achievements of working class kids now, white working class, the biggest academic underachievers, there’s a reason for that and it’s what I’ve experienced my whole life. It’s the two tier policing, the two tier funding, the two tier council, the acceleration for this community and the ignoring and neglect of this community. So there’s so many different things that played into it.

The English Defence League’s Peak and Dangers

But the English Defence League went bang. We travel around the country. I think, I think in hindsight now we’re lucky no one was killed. We’re lucky there weren’t a sectarian conflict when I think in 2014 was it six Muslims got caught with guns, bombs, IEDs on the way to kill us. They got 30 years in prison. All the, that if they would have successfully targeted the English Defense League demonstration, this country would have blown up.

So, and I think so I get to 2014, I have a refreshing moment in jail at the time as well. Thinking about my life. Where’s it heading, what’s going on, what’s our objectives? And at that point I decided to leave the street protest element, the Joe Y as well. Every interview, if I was sitting in our leading defensively, you’d both be grilling me on negative behavior of members of the English country. Yeah, rightfully so.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because some of it was moronic.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But we were never talking about the issue. We were, I think any opportunity I got where I should be talking on chat shows and new shows. I want to talk about the problems this country faces. I want to talk about what I’ve seen. It wasn’t, it wasn’t. That wasn’t happening.

Class, Violence, and Media Perception

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, this is the issue, isn’t it, Tommy? And it speaks to, you know, the reason we had to postpone the interview, right? Because I think, I don’t know. Tell me what you think. But I think partly the way you’ve been treated historically is bad class. I don’t think anyone can deny that, right? You’re making the same points as Douglas Murray. You know, Douglas, Douglas speaks very, very, very well. You do too, in your own way, right? But you make the same points. But the difference is Douglas is never on camera punching people. Do you know what I mean?

And so I think it’s partly about class, but partly it’s also about that element of it. This is why I asked you about the football hooligan stuff, because I think a lot of people, I tell you my opinion, right? Because we talked about this before, before we started. We haven’t had you on for a long time, even though a lot of people have wanted us to. And it’s always the concern for people who have an audience, right? Which is, I think the point you’re making on many, many issues are incredibly important and much more than that. You’ve been proven, right? Let’s just be honest about it, right? On the grooming gangs, on the two tier policing and all of these things that you’re talking about.

But the worry always is we can all feel now the country is a. I mean, it’s a fever pitch, right? We can all feel it. And the question for all of us is, what is it that we are amplifying? Where are we trying to take this? Do you know what I mean? So when people see you getting involved in all these physical altercations and fights and you know, you’re standing there, some guy’s been knocked out. The worry for a lot of people is I might agree with what he’s saying, but by pursuing this further, are we actually increasing the risk of a lot of violence? And that’s a worry.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I totally understand.

FRANCIS FOSTER: So.

Self-Defense and Street Background

TOMMY ROBINSON: So people understand. If I hadn’t had the upbringing I’d had and I hadn’t grown up basically off the streets of Luton, then the first punch in the nose I got and the first threat to my life, I’d have run away and I would never would have stood in the face of Islam. I never would have stood and continued saying, no, no, no. Yeah, it was my upbringing that done that and my background had done that. But there’s not one single image of me or video of me being an aggressor. Yeah, I’m defending myself.

So for example, last week, the incident last week, I’m not lucky enough to have a half a million pound security like Nigel Farage.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I challenge Nigel France towards country, walk the country with no security and tell me he, you won’t end up seeing him getting attacked. We’ve seen him get an egg on him even when he’s got 20 security. Yeah, well, go and walk through the towns. I walk through. I walk everywhere on my own, lads, everywhere.

So last week as a perfect example is I’ve been out in London and I uploaded pictures of some lovely encounters with Muslim lads. Everything was good. I spent the whole day in London. I was in Parliament Square. I had Brian Rose podcast. I’m going about my business and unfortunately I’ve had to. For 15 years I have been beaten unconscious in Essex, I’ve been beaten in Luton. I’ve had to sit my kids down. I remember my face was rearranged, absolutely rearranged. A car pulled over because I was. I’d been getting jumped on on the side of the street by a gang of Pakistanis. And the car, if the car, the car driver said when he. When I woke up, “If I didn’t pull over, you’ll be dead now. They were the jumpers on you non stop.”

And then my face was. I remember having to tell my kids, it was just before Christmas, my kids were only this big. So I said “I got kicked in the face by Santa’s reindeer.” So I remember having to sit these stories down and for too long I said, I’m not a punchback, I’m not a punchback.

The St. Pancras Incident

So for example, last week I wish I had security that could intervene and tell people to stand back and don’t start on him. But for example, this gentleman. Now, unfortunately, there’s been time and time again where I’ve had the need to defend myself and I’m not going to apologize for being a man either. Yeah, I will defend myself if I’m put. And you know, for too many years now, when I started the English Defence League, I realized, damn, the police want to get me. Prison’s a dangerous place for me. And I sort of had my hands be on my back because how I would have reacted and I had to change how I’d react, how I would have reacted as a young man in Luton with someone calling me a cunt. I’d probably have banged him out as a kid. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have tolerated that.

Then I realized, well, I have to tolerate some. Yeah, yeah, I’ve got one. And I learned very quickly to use my mouth rather than my hands as, as I become this figure that has to tolerate people who haven’t. And I don’t blame even the gentleman last week. I don’t blame him for having a hatred of me.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because he has a hatred built of me.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What happened, Tommy?

TOMMY ROBINSON: What happened was I walked through the train station and now I’ve seen the CCTV as well.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: When I say this was the most scary week of my life, there’s been an instant. I sent you the voice note. Yeah. So I’m walking through and what I now know is a gentleman steps off the train at St. Pancras. So he’s ready to leave St. Pancras. I come into St. Pancras and I go to get my train. He sees me and he beelines for me. He follows me, but he don’t just follow me, he gets here in my face. Yeah, he’s in my face. He’s confronting me, telling me he’ll end me, telling me how little I am. Screaming at me. I mean, screaming at me. Yeah, screaming at me. And I’m the whole time just going, “Mate, cough.” And I do warn him multiple times. I said, “Look.” And. And what as I was watching. I’m paranoid anyway. I’ve just come out of seven months in solitary confinement.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’m pretty on edge. I remember the last couple of months. I’m not myself anyway. I know that. Yeah, I know that. So I don’t feel myself just.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, in fact, you did ask to postpone our interview one time because you didn’t feel right.

The Underground Incident

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because I don’t feel right because I felt… And I remember going into London to see some document. A lady who’s terminally ill – oh, God bless her, she’s died now. I remember going in and I was like, I’m ready to blow here. Yeah, I’m really going to blow. But I’ve been saying myself for seven months on my own and then I’ve been bang, thrown out. So I had all this.

So I took… I made a decision to take a backseat. For two weeks I took my son away, played paddle, walked. Daily routine. I needed routine. I’ve got this. But as this gentleman comes up to me, he’s aggressive, he’s threatening and what a lot of people… And I’m so relieved because as this has gone on, basically he follows me for two minutes and he’s getting in my way and I’m trying to get around him and I get away from him once and he comes back after me again.

And then I’ll say to mate, “If you come back in with my space, I’m going to defend myself” because in my mind he was just trying to get close enough to snake me. That’s what I was thinking the whole time. I know what you’re doing, but I know what you’re doing. So I was trying to move back and I get to the top of the escalators at the stairs and he’s following me. So now I think, well, he’ll keep me downstairs. Yeah, I’m going down to a train, he’ll keep me in front. And he was a big fella. If you look at his bit, he was a much bigger fellow. It’s not hard to be bigger than me, but he was a big fella.

I then stepped back to let him go. So gone you go. Yeah, you go down the stairs. But he doesn’t go down the stairs. He gets to the top of stairs and he turns on me. And at that point, which this is the problem we have at that point, let’s just say there is a recording. Yeah, there is a recording that has exactly what he’s saying.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now, the police are not probably aware of this. They don’t have this.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So there is a recording of exactly what he’s saying. It makes very clear who the aggressor is. It makes very clear who’s threatening who.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now, at this point I just know, because things happen quick, don’t they? Yeah, this has all happened quick to me. I know I’ve had to defend myself. He’s ended up asleep on the floor. I’ve only hit him once. Yeah, I pushed him and as he continued to come at me, the whole time I’m going backwards, but I couldn’t really remember at the time or straight afterwards. So as soon as this has happened, he don’t look in a good state.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’m thinking, right, I’m on London Underground, I’m on my own, crowds are going to come. This isn’t going to be good. So I leave. As soon as I leave, I contact the police, which is the recording you would listen to. Contact the police and say, “Look, lads, this has happened. I’ve been walking, I’ve been accosted, I’ve been threatened, I’ve tried to get away multiple times. I had no option.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I don’t think I want to be out fighting, so I don’t want to be.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Oh, I do, though, Tommy.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Do you?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You’re a football hooligan, right?

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, I’m 42 years old.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But do you see what I’m…

TOMMY ROBINSON: I see what you say.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Have you seen Trainspotting?

TOMMY ROBINSON: No. I have. Years ago.

The Begbie Comparison

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Do you remember there’s a character in that called Begbie, right, who’s always starting fights and I don’t know if this is true of you, but I’m going to be honest, from the outside, yeah, it does. It does look a bit like that’s your persona. You like…

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, but if I don’t see what I’m saying, the feeling for me, I’m not Big Joe feeling for me. So when he come up here, I was startled.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And there may be times when people watch me.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I may seem confident, right? Because I have to seem confident, of course. But at the same time, I’m shitting myself. Every time I’m going to jail, I’m shitting myself. When I walk down the street sometimes and full ad stop, I’m thinking, for sake. But again, I’ve learned there’s only one language people understand. So there’s only one language.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But do you see, all I’m saying is, the only reason I’m challenging you is I think you are someone. Look, 500 years ago, right, the country would be desperate for people like you, right, because you’d be on the front line fighting some war, right? You’re a warrior. So when you say, “I don’t want to be fighting people,” I don’t believe it.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Well, if I wanted to be fighting people, I could have a fight every day because people say things to me every day. I don’t want to be fighting people, least of all a drunk idiot at a train station. All I wanted to do is get home now, what this developed into was the worst week of my life because obviously this happened at the train station. I’ve contacted the police, said, “Look, lads, what do you want from me? Let me know what I need to do. I’m up for an interview. I’m telling you, he was the aggressor. I’ve had to do this.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Media Circus and Police Investigation

TOMMY ROBINSON: I contact the police for that. I then go home and then I’m seeing things develop and blood transfusions. He didn’t have blood transfusion. They made it look like he’s dead. Have you ever seen forensic tents? Not forensic tents, full boiler suit officers. I’m thinking, oh, he’s dead, he’s dead. And then I’m thinking, Jesus Christ. And then I think, there’s not going to be any CCTV. They’re going to get rid of this, is what I’m thinking, because I don’t trust the system. I think they’re going to get rid of CCTV, they’re going to get rid of it. And then I look and think, right, I know there’s a recording of how this… Of this last moment and I know there is. There’s a recording.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What do you mean? How do you know?

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because I’m… There is a recording. Yeah, there’s a recording. We’ll see who goes to court. Because the recording get played. What I’m saying is the witnesses, the witnesses.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because…

TOMMY ROBINSON: So the witness statements. Am I allowed to talk about… I’ve got bad condition that I can’t identify the witnesses. But the witnesses say stuff that didn’t happen and it’s on the recording, right? And guess what? The witnesses don’t like me. Don’t like me. Even the police officer said after interview, “Do you think maybe their negative opinion of you is what’s made them say this?”

Because when I get… So when I get to the police interview, I’ve obviously contacted the police and this is where it’s all mad. The media are chasing me down, they’re in gyms, they’re at people’s houses looking for me. In Tenerife. I’m not on the run. They’re telling everyone I’m on the run. I’ve been in contact with the police the whole time. I’ve told the police I’m coming back on Monday because that was my flight booked, was already come back on Monday. So I’m coming back into Manchester Monday. They said, “Can you come back into London?” So I said, “Okay, I’ll change my flight, I’ll be on this flight going into Luton at this time.” So I’ll give them my details.

I then turn up and there’s police everywhere and I’m thinking, well, I’ve arranged to meet you lads. And then they’re like, “Are you surprised to see us?” I said, “Well, I’m not surprised to see you because it’s me that told you I’m here.” But when I get to the police interview, bearing in mind at this point I’ve had to ring my kids on FaceTime, cry my eyes out, saying, “Kids, I’m gone.” Yeah, I’m watching what’s being said. I think they’re going to remand me. A judge is just going to say, put him in jail. I’ll sit in jail now on solitary for a year, GBH, isn’t it me, that’s 10 to 12 year sentence. I think I’m going to spend five, six years. I’m finished, my life’s over. So for this week I’m thinking my life’s over because I’ve been accosted friend and attacked and I’ve had to defend myself. It’s like…

Other Incidents and Football Culture

So when people say there are images, there’s an image of me in Hitchin. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video where some young hooded Gambian migrants were coughing in an old couple’s face. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. They attack an old couple during COVID give her a black eye. I’m with my kids, I get out of the car, I end up fighting three of them.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So, yeah, I’m again, maybe if I was like 90% of the other men in England, I’d have drove off and pretended I didn’t see it. Yeah, maybe. And the same with threatening me. So if you’re going to come up to me and threaten me and want to commit violence on me, I’m going to defend myself. I don’t want to. Yeah, I don’t want to.

And when they say football violence, just so people understand again, so it might… So people understand the football element in it. Football met… Lads who go to football have usually got good jobs. They work five days a week. They’re good people, they’re working class men, but they don’t mind a rival punch up with other lads. It’s not like they’re out robbing people, out terrorizing people, or 20 of them are jumping one person. If 20 lads started booting one lad at football, the other lads wouldn’t let it happen.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, they wouldn’t let it happen.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I know it sounds mad I remember going to Bristol. We went to Bristol and there was 11 of us and 60 of them. This one, I was probably 18 or something. There’s a big fight on the bridge. One of our lads got knocked out. We’ve all had to give it legs. And then we’ve rung his phone and the Bristol lads answered it. We said, “We’ve got him here. He’s in the pub with us.” Right. And I said, “Is he all right?” They said, “Yeah, we’ll drop him a meet.” Yeah. And they’ve dropped him off. So there’s like…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I see what you’re saying. I get… I guess the only reason I was challenging it. Is it hard?

FRANCIS FOSTER: I’m…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I’m not judging, genuinely, but I’m just saying my honest opinion, right? And we can disagree about it. When you say you don’t want to get in a fight, I’m like, Tommy, you spent most of your youth going to football to have a fight, and now you’re sitting here saying you don’t want to get…

TOMMY ROBINSON: I don’t want to get in a fight with random people walking down the street. And most of them… And I’ll give you another example, there’s a lad called Bob.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Some man. Hitchin.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Hitchin.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Lovely, by the way. Different world. And I realized there’s places outside I thought, Jesus, what I think’s normal is not normal.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I thought, growing up, this is normal.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: This violence is normal. This is normal.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Confronting Violence and Misconceptions

TOMMY ROBINSON: Everyone has aggression. If you look at someone, you might be in a fight. I went to Hitchin. Wow. Lovely place. But I went to Hitchin and I was out and this bloke went online and he put that, “anyone who wants to attack, get Tommy Robinson. He’s in this pub.”

I was with my friend and both our partners when I left the pub. There’s six lads waiting. I get rushed. They come at me again. I catch him, this attack. I get a blood clot. So this gentleman this week had a blood clot. I had a blood clot here. I had to go have an operation. This happens.

I then go home. And on the business ownership hub of pubs in Hitchin, because they’re all part of some group. They’re all saying, “the far right racist Tommy Robinson was in Hitchin fighting last night.” And one by one, they’re going, “he’s barred, he’s barred, he’s barred.” I’m thinking, I’ve never caused a problem in Hitchin. How am I getting barred? I got attacked.

So I’ve gone to the pub and said, “how are you barring me? I didn’t do anything wrong last night. I got rushed” or it was two days later. So I found the gentleman who said this and I found his address and I went to his house. He’s in Letchworth. Knocked on the door, sister answered, she said, “what the hell are you doing here?” So tell Bob I’m here. Tell him to come outside. This is the man who promoted violence against me. He wouldn’t come outside. He shut the door.

So I put my phone number through the letter box, leave my phone number there, and then I go home and I put a picture of him on my social media at the time. I said, “you need to call me mate.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And now I get a text message, “sorry, Tommy, I was drunk.” Yeah, tongue in cheek moment. So it’s not tongue in cheek moment. I’ve got violently attacked. You need to see me mate.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I said, “well, I’m just going to come back round, right?” So he agreed to meet me next day in Cafe Rouge in Hitchin. So I’ve walked into Cafe Rouge and he sat there with his two little steadheads. He’s an Asian lad, two little juice heads. And I said, “come outside.” And they said, “you can talk in here.” I said, “shut up. If I wanted to get him, I’ll get him.” I said, “so just come outside.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right?

TOMMY ROBINSON: As he comes outside, my mate’s waiting for camera. I said, “tell the camera why I should be violently attacked.” He’s like, I said, “I got violently attacked because of you. But you’re calling me the thug. You’ve incited violence against me. Why should I be attacked?” He goes, “well, you hate the immigrants.” I said, “okay, let’s start there, right? I don’t hate the immigrants. My mum was an immigrant. Most people I love of sons of immigrants or immigrants. So I don’t hate the immigrants. So what else do you think? You want to deport all the Muslims?” Never said that that would mean deporting people I love. So when I went through all of the things he thinks we established, I don’t believe any of them.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So you hate me because you think I stand for sake. And at the end of it, I said, “I’m going to do Bob.” And I shook his hand. You know, we. He was open board of policy. He. We had totally different views, but he was all right. And he goes, “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have been attacked.” I said, “so, Bob, I’m going to delete this. I’m never going to share this video. This video ain’t going out. I’ll shake your hand on it. We’ll forget it. I’m going to delete everything. But you, you’re making these judgments. The nearest mosque to you is in my town. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And then. So then I found out who the kids were that beat me up, the six of them. And I went and found him. He lived in a 1.4 million pound house with his mum and dad, you know, a little student. So they, they didn’t really. Well, they beat me up because there was six of them, but they couldn’t fight. And then when I went to his house, I knocked on the door and his mum’s answered. I said, “you need to tell your son I’m here.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Where is he?

TOMMY ROBINSON: She goes, “at university.” I said, “get him on the phone and tell him I’m here.” So she’s ranging him up and he’s saying, “mom, ring the police. Quick, ring the police.” I said, “don’t ring the police. Trust me, don’t ring the police. And I think, don’t ring the police. Your son’s in trouble. I’m not in trouble.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So anyway, she brings the police. I then leave. Police run away. The copper rings me, says, “Tommy, right, we understand you’ve been to our house today.” He goes, “now, I’ll be honest with you, I went to meet the police. He goes, I’ll be honest with you, we would have thought you were there to threaten them. But we spoke to Bob, whose house you went to previously, and Bob spoke very highly of you.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I said, “how come he spoke to Bob?” And they said, “because you put the picture of him online.” I goes, “okay. So I put a picture of the line. So you went to see Bob, but you saw what he said then. So you saw that he incited violence, but you went still to see him as a victim. When I’m the victim. So, you know, I’ve been attacked by six men.” They then prosecute. So this has gone on. And I said, “mate, I, I was just going to see the kids to challenge him, which is what I do with most people if on this issue, which is why people say, oh, you’re threatening us and I’m challenging him.” The police end up charging these kids. Now, this kid was a university student who’s probably never been in trouble in his life.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I didn’t want him getting charged and I said to the police, “I don’t want him to get done.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I wanted to have a conversation. And through that one of his friends, boss rang me up who was friends with my friend. I said, “what’s going on?” I said, “I don’t want them to lose their careers.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I don’t.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: They’re stupid, they’ve attacked me but they need to learn a lesson. And then I didn’t turn up at court so they, the case got kicked out. But that is a prime example of when I went through this kid. The six kids that attacked me, they’re all white. I went through their school group, all their photos, not a single non white friend.

FRANCIS FOSTER: They.

TOMMY ROBINSON: If ever there’s white privilege, it’s them.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Media Narratives and Policy Failures

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yet they hate me from Luton when they have no idea what it’s like. So they have no idea what it’s like living there. And that’s the majority of the problem. So even this gentleman who’s confronted me at the train station this week and it hasn’t ended well for him, even him, I don’t blame him because he’s feeding on probably a narrative that you probably swallowed 10 years ago. He’s racist, he’s extreme, he’s a Nazi. All the things the media told you.

Now why did the media tell you that? Because they didn’t want to talk about the grooming gangs. They didn’t want to talk about Islamic radicalization. They don’t want to deal with these issues because these issues are their policy failures. They’ve failed this issue that we’re all worried about now, the reason why mums are out on the streets, the reason why there’s protests outside the migrants hotel is because of their failures they’ve imported this problem into the country and they’ve tried to scare the hell out of everyone.

And when I say the level of we’re talking about these grooming gang inquiries now. When I started the English Defence League, in the first six months I had three police raids. They fabricated charges. They put me under bail conditions. Bail conditions not to contact the English League. The bail date Yorkshire police traveled down.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Ben.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Bearing in mind Rotherham’s in Yorkshire. Yorkshire police traveled down to my mum’s and my kids house, raided them with machine guns.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Then give me bail conditions for a criminal damage on a 30 pound door. They said I was in a hotel, they said I damaged a 30 pound damage. And then the bail conditions was not to send an email, not to be in a group of two or more people with the English. Tennessee, My bail date was the same date I was due to talk about grooming in Yorkshire and I put in a complaint through the IPCC and said, “this is all politically motivated. The reason for this arrest is fabricated. You’ve done it to stop me talking.” It took two years for the results. They just accepted it all. Yeah, we did.

But remember, at this time, no one was talking about grooming. No one knew about grooming. The police were still in full on, full on cover up mode. If you look at the. Look at who was in charge of robbery police during the biggest scandal, which is 2006 to 2012, probably the officer in charge of Robin Police is now in charge of counterterrorism. I face counterterrorism trial next month in October. It’s like everyone who had dirty hands is why labor can’t allow this inquiry. Because every, every counsellor in labor or worker within the council who was in charge 15 years ago or during the height of this scandal, they’ve all rose to the top.

Tommy, when you look back at some of your behavior, do you think that it’s tarnished your message? I think that my behavior was impossible. Like as a young man walking down the street, I’ll tell anyone, try and talk about Islam. I think Cyber Khan, was it Cyrakhan. I was on a chat show with her and they’re all attacking me and I was trying to talk about grooming. This is 2010.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And they’re all screaming at me that I’m a racist. And all I kept saying is what I’ve always said, that’s racist.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Like there’s not one thing I’ve ever said that’s racist. Why are you shutting down this debate? And she said, “well.” And I said, “I’ve got death threats threatening my family.” And she said, “well, I haven’t got death threats. Do you know why I haven’t got death threats? Because I’m a nice person.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I said, “try and talk about Islam, you’ll have death threats.” Seven years later, she spoke about Islam and then she’s sitting on loose women crying, saying, “I’ve got death threats.” It’s like, welcome to the real world, darling.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Personal Cost of Speaking Out

TOMMY ROBINSON: What’s happened to me through having this opinion and speaking out the way I do, it’s destroyed my life, it’s destroyed my wife’s life, it’s destroyed my mother’s life. I live with constant death threats. I’ve got some of them here if you want to read. When we talk about a two tier policing system, I have to wear a bulletproof vest. I’ve got people wanting to murder me in massacre.

Well then stop being a racist and a bigger racist. Can you please, please explain one thing I’ve ever. I am a British citizen, I was born in this country and I do not spout off rubbish like you. Please, what am I saying to rubbish? I’ve got death threats. You know why? Because I’m a nice person. Please explain. You talk against Islam. You’d have to.

In this culture it’s even more taboo because once you bring shame to your family, that’s it, you know, the consequences are you could be killed, you could be ostracized and literally you just, you know, the whole family splits up. When I came on here to talk about what happened to me, it was a family member. It took me years to come out and say it and I just did it spontaneously on Loose Women. The repercussions on my family have been horrendous.

Did some of them not believe you? They didn’t believe me. They had to go at my mum, you know, it went all the way back to Pakistan and the family there. So look illustrates perfectly why as a 13 year old or whatever, you wouldn’t come out and say something. Absolutely you wouldn’t.

So when they talk about my behavior, I don’t think I can. I understand people’s questioning of the tactics of the English Defense League or the aggressive street presence of things. Defense League, but without the English Defense League. But we still won’t have the conversation. But it’s not just the English defensive, Tommy.

The Canterbury Court Incident

So for instance when I think it was in Leeds Crown Court where you breached a court order where you’re recording those again. I didn’t breach a quarter. So let me tell you what. Okay, you tell me and then we’ll talk. So I reached, I did breach a law in Canterbury Court.

So basically there was a. I read this story, I got contacted by people in Canterbury who said that Muslims running a takeaway. A young 14 year old girl was drunk, she got lost, she went in, asked for directions, they took her upstairs in a mattress. And six, one by one, all of their DNA was found and they’re all out on bail. One of them escaped, gone to Italy. They changed the name of the shop and reopened the shop. Yeah, so I think that can’t really be have happened.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I’ve gone down there, I’ve gone down to Canterbury, I’ve looked, stood and watched the shop. I’ve looked at the ownership, looked at the change of name, thinking that’s still the shop, they’re still the same people as I’ve done that, kids are walking past, going in the shop. So I went up to people and said, do you know what these men have done in this shop?

FRANCIS FOSTER: It was like, what? No.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’m thinking, well, people need to know. So then I thought, well, I’m going to get them in, I’m going to get a picture of them. So I went outside Canterbury Court because the men were starting their first day of trial.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I went outside Canterbury Court and they were already in court. Now, I didn’t know at this time that you cannot film on court property. So if you stand on the court steps and film, which is what I’d done, I filmed myself. The judge let the men use a back exit. So the judge protected the alleged pedophiles. Alleged. They got 25 years in the end. Yeah. One of them never got.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So at this point I went home after that video. And you say, protect Tommy, but isn’t that part of what the judge should have done for that? I’ll tell you what the judge should have done. When they had 60 DNA matches on six pedophiles with young English child, they should have been in jail on remand. But they weren’t. They were walking the streets. They were still a danger to the community and someone needed to warn the community.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So that’s what I went to do. Now, the next morning, at six in the morning, boom, the door goes through and I’m dragged down to Canterbury Court before the same judge.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Who bear in mind, again, it’s pretty embarrassing for the judge. She’s let these out on bail. They shouldn’t be out of bail. So then I’m before the judge and she gives me a three month suspended sentence.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Becoming a Citizen Journalist

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because I breached the law by filming myself on court property. Now after this. Have you heard of Kingsley Napoli? No. One of London’s leading law firms. Remember, I’m a citizen journalist.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I haven’t studied, I’ve become a journalist. I’ve gone from street protest movement and I left the English Defense League in 2014 and I went to prison. And I come out of prison and Ezra Levan in Canada offered me a job and said, please make videos for us. And then I started making videos, realized that instead of talking to people on the street, what I need people to see is what I’ve seen.

I need them to understand what I understand now from growing up in Luton, the problems, the dangers. I want to bring the issues that these lot aren’t talking about into the average home. So we’ll bypass the mainstream media and we’ll have people sitting on their, sitting at home in their lounge watching this.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So that’s, I realized this is what we need to be doing. So I become a citizen journalist and I didn’t know the laws. So I said, I paid myself to go on a course with Kingsley Napoli where they taught me you cannot assume guilt. I didn’t know all this. Yeah, you can’t say he’s a people. It’s an allegation. If someone’s charged with. If I didn’t know this, if someone’s charged with an attack, by the way.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I’m only laughing because it sounds funny. To be fair, when we started it, we started this in exactly the same. We weren’t trained journalists either. We had to have people explain, like libel laws because we used to joke about, you know, big corporations, they’re all stealing money, they’re all doing this. And then somebody will be like, you’re going to get done for this.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Halal authority, they sue everyone. Yeah, talk about halal. So again I, I went, I’m just.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Giving context to what you’re saying.

Learning Media Law and Reporting Restrictions

TOMMY ROBINSON: I went through that same process, right. Of trying to understand. So I paid this law firm and went down and had training, we had a training all the time to understand. You can say this, can’t say this, don’t assume guilt. And you see if there’s a reporting restriction, right. This is the government, this is on the judiciary website. The judge has no power to put a reporting restriction on information that’s already in the public domain.

So when the grooming gangs, the police start making arrests and they start charging and bringing court cases against these gangs. 2012, it probably started new cases. There’s a case in Oxford in that case in Oxford, what we heard. Because when there’s a six week trial and the media are sitting in court, they’re writing everything every day. So we’re getting six weeks worth of news, we’re finding out the girls are called “Gula,” dirty “Gula.” So they’re racial crimes against the girls. There’s religious comments against the girls.

The girl was heated up an iron rod. She was 12 years old and he had a letter M and he heated it up and he scolded her bum because she was the property of Muhammad. Another girl, they took her tongue and they nailed it to a table.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Another girl they took to the woods and they poured gasoline over her and to scare the hell out of her, she’s urinating herself in the woods. These are the. So we found out a lot of the details here in this one case, what the government did after that, because whilst they have to deal with it, they don’t want everyone knowing what’s gone.

What they then did is they brought in reporting restrictions for every single case. So now, so with the Leeds case, for example, there’s a six to eight weeks trial and there’s reporting restrictions, which, what that means is they banned any of the details being spoke about until the end of the trial. So instead of getting six weeks worth of news and commentary, you get one day’s news at the end. 30 men convicted. Yeah, you don’t get the details, you get one days on me.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Leeds Court Incident

TOMMY ROBINSON: So very clever by the government and that’s what they’ve done on all these trials. So when I went out to Leeds, I stood outside, I said, right, but if you watch the video, what I said is, I’ve got Muslim lads I grew up with who would want to punch these men’s head in. Yeah, for the allegations they face. So again, it’s not all Muslims that are doing this, but there’s a problem here.

And I get the facts of the case that were already in the public domain. Bearing in mind I’d looked at this gang, I knew what chicken shops they were working in, I knew they were still in contact with kids. I didn’t let on any of that. I said, these are the men’s names from a BBC website hit. Let me read you their names. I read the 30 names, or obviously 30 of them called Muhammad. All of them are Muslim, bar one. Yeah. So I read the names, read the alleged crimes, read, read the alleged victims.

Police then come up to me outside court, they arrest me for breach of the peace and I say, what breach of the peace? I’m then put before the judge. Now he, the judge, Judge Marston gave me a 13 month prison sentence within two hours. So I wasn’t allowed to speak to my own legal brief. They said no, I wasn’t asked if I was guilty or not guilty. I was carted off to prison for 13 months and then two hours later, my car’s still outside the court, I’ve gone to work, I’m a journalist, I’ve gone to work.

But before I’ve done that, I also know the rules of court are if there’s a reporting restriction, it has to be on the door and it has to be on the screen. So I went into court, I took a picture of the door, I took a picture of the screen, I kept those pictures, I produced them in court. There was no report restriction knowledge, but I believed there was a report restriction. So I still stuck to the guidelines of if there was a report restriction. So I didn’t mention anything other than what the judge has no power to limit. So originally the allegation was I breached a reporting restriction.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So they locked me up for 13 months. Tell the whole country I pled guilty. I’m sitting watching. I’m in jail.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I’m.

Prison Conditions and Mental Health Impact

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’m transferred from. I’m putting HMP Hull 13 months. When he put me in jail that day, he let all the. We can now call them pedophiles because they’re all convicted. He let them go home. One of them packed his suitcase and has never faced justice. He was more worried about me than he was about the people.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So they’ve all gone to prison. I’m in jail 10 to 11 weeks. I get moved from HMP Hull, which has a 4 or 5% Muslim population, where I was okay, to HMP Only, which has a 33% Muslim population.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Now.

TOMMY ROBINSON: This was a damaging sentence for me and it was damaging for my mental health. It was. Damn. It changed me as a person. I went into jail, one person to come out, another, because I spent 11 weeks on solitary confinement with no food, no one to contact because I couldn’t eat the food because it’s by Muslim. I had five tins of tuna that got me for a week, five tin tuns. Tuna was all I had. Mine was.

So I went through all this during that prison sentence. They played so many games. They come to my cell and said, “Where’s your wife?” I said, I don’t even get a phone. I get a phone call at lunchtime.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Prison Experience and Legal Battles

TOMMY ROBINSON: My wife worked in a school, my kids were at school, so I only got to speak at a weekend. So I’m sat in the cell all day. What do you mean, where’s my wife? Well, there’s intelligence she’s going to be attacked with acid. And then they shut the door and that will drive you mad. And they knocked on my wife’s door, they knocked on my mum’s door, giving them all these intelligence.

I’m in there, I get 13 months and after 11 weeks it goes to the High Court of London where we find out. Not my words again. The entire process was flawed. Judge Marston done nothing that he was supposed to have done. I wasn’t asked to plead guilty or not guilty. I wasn’t given time to prepare anything.

So I’m released from prison now. The story they went with was that I breached a reporting restriction. They then had to change that. Because I’m released from prison, I’m let go, I walk out. And at this point 660,000 people signed a petition demanding my release. 30,000 people marched on parliament.

When I come out of prison, the government were doing government funded questionnaires on social media about people’s views of me. So they were obviously worried, saying his popularity has grown from this case. There was a Free Tommy movement worldwide. Geert Wilders just flew into London, spoke at a demonstration, he’s now won the election in Holland. A Congressman Gosar, Paul Gosar flew in from America and spoke at the same event saying “releasing now. This is outrageous. He’s a journalist.”

Americans can’t understand the reporting restriction thing because rather than limit the public in America, they just limit the jury. They put them in hotels, they let the public know thing you can watch live cases but this all happens. I’m released from prison. I then find out when I’m released that there’s a documentary being made by Panorama to called “To Take Me Down.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yes.

TOMMY ROBINSON: You ever watch Panorama?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: What a work of art it was.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Hey. So, yeah.

The Panorama Documentary and Counter-Investigation

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I then find out they’re doing a documentary against me. I send someone undercover to them. So when I send someone undercover to them, at the same point the government have took this case back to the Old Bailey. Now when it goes to the Old Bailey, now I’ve got a chance to defend myself.

I produce the pictures that show there was no reporting restriction. I produced the judiciary guidance on their own website that the judge has no power to report to limit anything that’s already in the public domain. I produce all this. It goes before the head judge and he kicks it back to the government and lets me go. There’s a video of me coming out of court. We’re all singing. It’s great. It gets kicked back to the government. The case is gone.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I then produced a documentary called “Panadrama” where I exposed that Panorama was being used. It basically had the head of Panorama sitting down telling people what to say in interview, making agreements and deals with people making sexual allegations against me. If this documentary would have gone out, it finished me, I’d be finished.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Maybe that’s what’s happening. Russell Brand, who knows? Maybe it’s what’s happening with other people. Who knows? I don’t trust anything anymore.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But Panorama, I produce a counter documentary to it which ends their documentary and I produce it and release it online. It has 2 million views in 48 hours. From this, I’m deleted off of every social media and the Attorney General re-prosecutes me for the offense that’s gone.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Done. Yeah.

Return to Court and Dame Victoria Sharp

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’m taken back to court. You know what they’ve done? The judge that. The judge, the head judge of the Old Bailey who removed it. And you can look this up. The head judge of the Old Bailey who said no and sent it back to the government. They removed him and they replaced him with the first ever head female judge, Dame Victoria Sharp. I then go before Dame Victoria Sharp.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And this is. I should do a documentary about it to show people what happened. When I’m outside Leeds Crown Court, what I said in my video is, I said to the media, to the journalists who have harassed me even this week, harassing me, flying to Tenerife, you’re always flying to my holidays. I said, “instead of harassing me, why don’t you harass these men? 100 kids, why aren’t you at their businesses? Why aren’t you taking pictures of their families instead of targeting me?” I said, “so don’t harass me, harass them.”

But it’s very clear if you watch the context of the video that I’m talking to the media. Dame Victoria Sharp cuts that video and says that I caused fear alarm to the Muslim pedophiles as they walked into court. Because I asked. To be fair, Tommy, because I know people in that courtroom. They also said then these were people who were just involved in the case, but not the Muslim pedophiles. They were scared because there was an element of the crowd that looked pretty menacing.

Now that on my case, it was just me. My first case. It was just me. So my first case, as they walked into court, I said all I said to him, very calmly, “how’d you feel about your verdict?” He said, “you up with your mum?” Okay. Not a surprise for me. Hearing that from you. But that’s it.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: It’s like, okay, so, I mean, that’s one way to incriminate. So then. So all I asked was that as a journalist. All asked was that. So when. When Dame Victoria Sharp has me in court, what I’d done is as I walked into court and all the journalists, a whole scrum of them come around me, I just showed her the video. I said, “well, what’s the difference? Because look what they just done to me.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s all I’ve done to them. So if I made them feel unsafe, they’ve made me feel unsafe.

FRANCIS FOSTER: No. Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But this is where they can show me the man. I’ll find the crime.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: All right, we’re getting. We’re getting into the weeds here.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yeah, yeah, let’s talk about what we’re. Actually, they sent me back to jail for that, for causing alarm and distress to the Muslim pedophiles. They gave me another 10 months. So I spent. I spent time in solitary. They sent me back into Belmarsh for a crime I’ve already sent jail for. And they. And deplatforming. I was deleted off YouTube, deleted off Facebook, made a. Made a dangerous person.

The reason and the point of this is all because I exposed the BBC, all because I made a documentary. Watch it. “Panadrama” at trfilms.co.uk all my documentaries are there. I’m not just saying it. My journalism and investigative journalism. I think it’s the best in the country. Okay, so go for it. Do you want to?

Understanding Islam Through Study

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What I’m really interested in, Tommy, and I think it’s really important to have this conversation properly, right? Is you talk about the fact that you’re a very smart guy. I can tell. Very smart. We’ve sat across from some of the most intelligent people in the world. You’re a smart guy, right? But you were not educated. You just had experiences when you were growing up. Is that fair to say? Right, so you know this, you know this, you’ve seen that, you’ve seen this happen to your cousin. All of these things are going on. You experience things.

But then, and this is what I really want to hear, your opinion, right, is you started to actually study. You started to look at Islam, you read the Quran, you. You tried to understand the scriptural part of all of this.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And this is really why I think a lot of the conversation is now at. Which is about Islam and the west compatibility. Why is it that things are becoming more tense? Why is it that thing you talk about how when Muslims fight non Muslims, even your Muslim friends will join them rather than you? Right. So what is it that you’ve learned and what is it that you believe about Islam? Can you explain that part to people?

Prison Study and American Warning

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yeah. So 2010, it’s Quran 2010, I’m in jail. I’m doing 22 weeks of solitary confinement at that point.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. For what?

TOMMY ROBINSON: For illegally entering America. Stupid move.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’ll tell you the truth, I sort of like, lived my life where I think if you worry about consequence, you’re never going to bring about change. And I wanted change.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I felt at that time in 2000, I. I went to America. 2009 or 10, I was detained at JFK and deployed. And I thought, no, I’ve got an important message to give America. And so I went again on a friend’s passport. I got in. Yeah, I got in and I gave a speech called “A Warning to America.”

And what I’ve always said is, I wish someone come to my town 30 years ago and said, “listen, this is what’s going to happen unless you stop it.” So I went to America knowing what I was doing was wrong, knowing what was risky. I thought I’d end up in jail in America, but I didn’t. I got detained here when I got back, and I spent 22 weeks in solid confinement now a Muslim outreach.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You know what? You’re insane.

TOMMY ROBINSON: You know that?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Like, from what I’ve seen of American prison, that is not a place you want to go to volunteer, you know, crazily.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Crazily. I thought. I thought at the time with, remember we began the English Defense League.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I. I’m a deep thinker.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

Beliefs About Freedom and Government Control

TOMMY ROBINSON: I believe this country is in danger and I believe my children are in danger. And I believe the enjoyment and freedoms we’ve all had are going to be eroded and taken and the kids won’t have them. And this is far bigger than me or my kids. This is about a generation of our kids. And I believe that. And I’ve believed it since my. Since growing up. I agree with you.

So when this was starting. What do you mean by freedoms, by the way? I mean that the ability to speak because they just curtail and suppress and it suits the government as well. So they create the problem a lot of time, which they’re doing. And I think maybe I’ve played my part in that role where they want us all clashing with each other because as we’re clashing with each other, we’re not looking at them.

And they want everyone separated into gay, straight, black, white, BLM, this group, that group. You’re all warring with each other and whilst you’re warring with each other, they’re implementing so many laws that you’re not, not even listening about. And all those laws are going to curtail and prohibit your speech and your ability to even have discussions on any of these issues.

And the reason being that, that most issues are coming from the government. It’s their failure, it’s all their problems. I don’t blame Muslims for coming, I don’t blame Muslims in the UK for wanting Sharia law because this tells them to leave.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I don’t blame them.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Let’s come back to that. Right, so, so, so you go to America, you, you, because you thought you had an important message, you.

Tommy Robinson’s Prison Experience and Study of Islamic Texts

TOMMY ROBINSON: I spent two days in New York. If I knew I was going to do 22 weeks on soldiers confinement, I’d spend a few months touring. I spent two days, I’ve got 22 weeks in solitary.

Whilst I’m in there I’ll get sent a Quran by Muslims to try and convert me. So I take the Quran. I think, right, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands here. Let’s have a look at this book.

Right now I don’t know how many people know this but the Quran is not in chronological order. I didn’t know this. So one thing Muhammad says one day is next to something he says 20 years later. So for you to try, and any of us to try and make sense, it’s like what the Christians used to do. They wanted everyone illiterate so they could control the population.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The Quran is like an encrypted war machine that you can’t make sense of.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Understanding Islamic Abrogation and Contradictory Verses

TOMMY ROBINSON: And it’s important that you can make sense of it. Because abrogation in Islam means whatever Muhammad says late in his life supersedes what he says earlier. So if there’s two contradictory verses, if he says love the Jews and then later he says kill the Jews, then which one did he say later? This one matters. This prohibits this one.

So they give me the Quran. And then I thought, right, let me make a few points here. “Do not be friends with Christians or Jews.” And I challenge anyone to do this. Pick up a Quran and go through and make reference to the verses that tell you not to be friends with Christians or Jews.

And I started writing these verses and I had pages of them and I was like. It was like a jigsaw just fell into place. Everything I’ve seen growing up, the Muslim playground, the Muslim denial, the friends who side with them, well, they’re taught from a little age supremacy. They’re taught not to be friends with us. They can’t be friends with us. Seventy percent of this book talks about us, how they need to treat us.

So as I’m reading it, I started making sense of it. And that was my. And I didn’t stop after that, if I’m honest. I didn’t stop learning.

Comparing Muhammad and Jesus Through Historical Sources

TOMMY ROBINSON: And then I got. When I got out of jail. Many people watching this probably just think Jesus is like Muhammad. Muhammad is like Jesus. Two prophets, two alleged prophets, right. They’re nothing like each other because I took the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq.

So I like to go to the sources, the most recognized and renowned sources in the Islamic world. So again, not Tommy Robinson’s opinion. This is not my story. This is the Islamic scholars of history, the best ones there are of their life of Muhammad.

So I started reading life of Muhammad. And I read it. The Jewish tribe surrender. And this is why it’s important, so people understand how important scripture is. Do you remember the Peshawar school attacks in Pakistan? So the Taliban or Al Qaeda, one of the two, they attacked a school and there was outrage about it.

But what they did when they attacked school is they pulled the pants down of all the kids. And anyone who started puberty was killed and beheaded. And anyone who hadn’t was sacrificed as war booty. Well, that’s exactly what Muhammad did. This is why the scripture is important.

So the Jewish tribes surrender. Now when they surrender, Muhammad tortures Kinana, he’s the leader of Jewish tribe, setting fire to his stomach to rob his gold. So profit is this. I’m thinking, what sort of man is this? Jesus says, “turn the other cheek.” Muhammad’s torturing and burning people and robbing them.

So he’s robbing them and then after robbing them, he takes that night Safiya. So anyone, any Muslims? And when I have this conversation, Muslims, they don’t even know about this. Half of them. I said he took the man’s wife that night and married her.

Now here’s the two different worldviews. I see that as raping the man’s wife that night. Other Muslims have said, “well no, he saved her from a life of slavery, from all the other men raping her because he took her. He was actually really good because he saved her.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: It’s like, what?

TOMMY ROBINSON: But anyway, he beheads these people, he does this. And I started going through his life and he walks past another Muslim at another point and this is all in scripture and he says, “have you deflowered her?” He’s talking about another slave said, “no, give her to me.”

So then I started understanding and I started finding verses in here. There’s four that say outside of the four wives, what Muhammad tells you is you can take non Muslim women as sexual slaves.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And you’ll blame. One of the verses says you’re actually blameless. So I think, well, Rotherham, Telford, all these towns and cities, are they taking non Muslim women as sexual slaves? Now this is not confusing.

Boko Haram’s leader, when they took the girls in Nigeria come out and said, “Muhammad has commanded us to do this.” Well, he has read the scripture.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Modern Terrorist Groups Following Islamic Scripture

TOMMY ROBINSON: Al Qaeda, ISIS, what did they do to the Yazidi? This is not made up. There’s not 30, 40 different terrorist groups all singing off the same hymn sheet. This is a problem.

And again, it’s great that the majority of Muslims don’t read this and take it literally, that’s great. But the problem’s coming from this. And I tried to have this conversation with Piers Morgan. We get onto him. I tried to have this conversation.

So what I’ve done, as I learn and learn more, I then learned about Islam, I learned about Muhammad. I think everyone, I think we need to understand who Mohammed was. If we’ve got 4 million British Muslims now who think Muhammad was perfect and Muhammad married a six year old girl and consummated when she was nine. We’re going to have a problem if Muhammad beheaded and took sexual slaves. We’re going to have a problem if Muhammad taught all this in the Quran.

Seven percent of Mein Kampf is Jew hatred. Seven percent. Eleven percent of that book Mein Kampf is banned. This isn’t banned. This is taught across the whole country now you’re not even allowed to have this conversation.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, we’re having this conversation.

TOMMY ROBINSON: We’re having it. But Labour government want to bring in Islamophobia laws that would prevent us even having this conversation.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And you say you allowed it. We’ve come a long way.

The Question of What to Do Next

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You are now. Yes, this is fair. Look, this is why I wanted to ask you about this, Tommy, because I don’t know exactly what I think about it. I just want to hear your opinion because you’ve been talking about this for a very long time and I think you have been. I was going to say demonized, and I think it’s probably the correct term. You have been demonized for talking about it.

But I also think, as the nature of what has been happening in this country is coming out, that I know just speaking to lots of people, these are people who are not going to be on the streets in a riot. These are people who are sitting in TV studios and they’re doing comedy and they’re doing journalism and they’re doing politics and none of them will ever say anything publicly.

But there are a lot of people now who are going, “you know what? Tommy’s been saying a lot of things that have been proven correct.” So that’s just where we’re at. People can pretend that’s not happening. That is what’s happening.

But what I’m trying to understand is what it is that you’re saying. Because one of the things that I don’t understand, genuinely don’t understand, is where we go from here. What is it that you think we ought to do? Because what you’re saying, correct me if any of this is not your view. What you’re really saying is Islamic doctrine is divisive and hateful towards non Muslims and it is about domination.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And it’s incompatible with Western freedom.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And it’s incompatible with Western freedom and democracy, which is where I think a lot of. If people’s concern with that message is for the simple reason of like, what do we do?

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s the point. Is that a fair question? If we accept this, if you accept we’re right, what the hell are you going to do? Because you’ve got 4 million Muslims here.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

Foreign Influence and Radicalization

TOMMY ROBINSON: So we’re going to. And not just got 4 million Muslims, but you’ve got Saudi and Qatar own half the capital city. The money is embedded in the nation. Qatar has spent three quarters of a billion pounds. Qatar, that houses Hamas. Qatar have spent three quarters of a billion pound radicalizing Muslims across Europe. They’ve messed up the whole of France.

To be fair, Tommy, Qatar and Saudi are two very different states. They are. Because Saudi actually, Saudi under the new king are actually coming quite progressive and actually trying to deal with some of these. And the UAE this is part, this.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Is another part of the discussion which is really, I think, really important. And you keep saying that. And I think it’s important to emphasize. I’ve come back from Uzbekistan a couple of months ago and I grew up in Uzbekistan.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Okay.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Soviet Muslim country.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: They don’t have a problem with this. They don’t have grooming gangs. They don’t have extremists. The extremists they have all leave because they make life intolerable for them. UAE, Saudi Arabia, a lot of Muslim countries are actually much better at dealing with Islamic extremism than we are.

Why Muslim Countries Handle Extremism Better

TOMMY ROBINSON: There’s a reason for that as well. There’s a reason for that. So UAE, Saudi, they ban all these extremist groups. Muslim Brotherhood not allowed to operate. We actually give home to these groups because it supported British foreign policy with the war in Afghanistan, with the Soviet. We wanted a mujahideen.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah. We funded the Americans, didn’t the Americans?

TOMMY ROBINSON: And us, yeah. We give home to their leaders in Europe. We allowed them to grow, foster. And all of a sudden that Boris Johnson put it on here, says Boris Johnson, Remember what this is Boris Johnson before seven seven.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Remember what it says in the Holy Quran, “Slay the unbelievers wherever you can find them. We will perform jihad against the Kafir, the unbelievers.” That was in Boris Johnson’s book, 72 Virgins. So he knows what Islam is.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But then when he comes in power, he totally pretends he doesn’t. He fully gets it.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And why did he do that? So there’s many that understand it. Boris Johnson is one of them. But he’s a coward. And that’s. And he took a different line. So when we say what we’re going to do and most of these countries come down hard, but we didn’t. We give home. The Muslim Brotherhood have got offices in our capital cities. It’s like they wouldn’t be allowed to operate in the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: No.

The Speed of Islamic Revolution

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now Saudi, Saudi Arabia understand that you can’t give any homage to Hezbollah, Hamas, these terrorist groups and that. Look at what’s happened in Iran. But I think most people in our country need to understand how quickly a country can change. Look what happened to Iran under the Ayatollah. Look at the Islamic revolution. They went from freedom loving women walking.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Around in miniskirts to.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And I remember there’s videos of them laughing in halls when they say women will have to wear a hijab. “You will.” Now you get killed if you don’t and that happened quickly.

The Challenge of Good Muslims vs. Problematic Doctrine

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So the question always is, what do we do? What do we do? Because as you say, there are lots of Muslims in this country who are great. Like the stereotypical grooming gang perpetrator is like a taxi driver. I’ve said this before. The taxi driver that drives my wife and son around when they need to go somewhere is an Afghan man. I would trust no one more than him to take care of my wife and son because they’re really good people. Middle class, family, wonderful people. So there are millions of Muslims in this country actually, who are not in any way a threat or a problem.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Is that fair?

TOMMY ROBINSON: That’s fair. But there’s millions. Here’s the problem. I don’t know.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, you think there’s millions of them.

Cultural vs Religious Factors in Crime

TOMMY ROBINSON: 23% want Sharia law in this country. It’s well over a million that are a problem. They need to leave. I would say how much of this is culture? Like we know, for instance, with the grooming gangs, they come. The vast majority of them come from a very specific region in Pakistan, Maripur and Kashmir. So how much of that is a cultural issue and how much of that is Islam? Because we also need to separate that. Well, there’s lots of Sikhs in this country who come from Kashmir. They’re not raping kids.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But there’s also Omanis and Saudis in this country are not raping kids.

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, they’re not. But then if you look at the gangs, and I’ve done the demographics of the gangs, Somali, Afghani, Iraqi. The vast majority of Pakistani, the vast majority, because the vast majority of Muslims in the UK are Pakistani. That’s it.

Now if we look at, it’s Moroccans who are doing it in Holland. There was a film called “Lover Boy” created in 2007. And our pathetic country didn’t allow it to be played in our schools. They clamped down because it was racist.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now that film was an educational film to be played to children to educate them on the Lover Boy techniques.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Grooming. Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: 2007, how many kids could have been saved but because of racism?

The English Defence League’s Mission

And if we just rewind a little bit, just to make one clarification, when I set up the English Defence League as a street protest movement on the street, what would you want? Because we had a lesbian and gay division, we had a Jewish division, we had a Hindu division. We made it very clear of who we were and what our mission statement was.

Do you know the Scotland Yard have a metropolitan domestic extremism unit? And then headed that unit come out and made a statement saying, “The English Defence League, they’re not far right.” So although everyone now believes it was a far right movement. That’s because the media told you 10,000 times it was far right. So it becomes far right, same as me. But it wasn’t.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: There were problems with it. It attracted the brave. The brave and the strange and the dangerous at times. But fast forward to where we are. What do we do? If you accept this problem and that’s this, where the government just buried the head and what do we do? Well, you need to start addressing it. You really need to address it.

And what we’re seeing now, the swing across the whole of Europe, I’ve been saying it for years. When this, when it, when the cat’s out of the bag, which it is now, the bubble’s burst, the dam’s broke.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The country’s awake. Everyone can see it. This isn’t going away.

Messages of Restraint and Channeling Anger

So to keep on what Keir Starmer tried to do after the riots in, after Southport, which again, people talk about, there was a worry about me because there’s an element of violence at times. That’s just me defending myself. If you listen to my message after Lee Rigby’s attack, after Lee Rigby beheaded someone, I stood to 10,000 English Defence League supporters in Newcastle. My speech said, “There’s 600 Muslims serving in the British armed forces. They’re doing a hell of a lot more for this country than we are.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: “If you abuse a Muslim woman walking down the street, you’re a coward. Smash up a mosque, you’re a…” So my message has always been this.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now, that doesn’t excuse that there’s elements of, there’s been problems because there’s a level of aggression and anger in this country which has been simmered and underneath and boiling for decades. And at times it’s come up. So how to do that? You need to harness it and channel it.

When the riots went in the Southport, I made it very clear, I made videos. And the reason why I made videos, because I was worried for those young men.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Because I understand their anger. Because 20 years ago, I put on the balaclava.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I run through the streets of Luton. So I get what you’re doing, but there’s a better way than that.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Which is what? Which is, I remember making a video saying, “Where are the men? Get those kids masks off their faces because they’re all kids.” When I was watching the trouble going on. They’re just young kids. They’re going to ruin their whole lives. They’re going to get put in jail and they’re angry. I believe they are justifiably angry and that’s what I believe, that level of anger.

Recent Incidents and Public Anger

If we look at where the protests were, Hartlepool. In Hartlepool, a Muslim man in the hotel left the hotel and stabbed a pensioner to death for Gaza.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Don’t even know if people know about this. In a terrorist attack. He was in the hotel. There were trouble outside that hotel during the riots. Of course there was. There was trouble outside the hotel in Tamworth during the riots because Mohammed left the hotel and raped an English woman who was walking home. Of course there was.

In the last, there’s been eight Muslim migrants in hotels who have women. There’s been 25 sexual assaults against kids from migrants in hotels this week. There’s been two, a 12 year old girl, two men Afghanis. There’s been the attack in Warwickshire, there’s been the sexual assault in Epping and I challenge anyone to do this.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Some of those cases we have to say for your benefit, allegedly. I wouldn’t like you to go to prison for something you said on here. Just for people who don’t understand British libel law, you have to say that until someone…

TOMMY ROBINSON: Until they’ve been proven guilty.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But even, there’s been a, even, Afghan, they put Libyan forces in a military base. They rape two men. They rape two men.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now, so all this is going on, right. We know it’s going on. Everyone who lives in these towns and cities knows it going on. The difference is this used to be confined to Luton.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And sounds like Luton.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Not anymore. It’s a new village.

Immigration Policy and Deportation

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So just, there’s a lot of the stuff you’ve just mentioned there that we’ve talked about ad nauseam on the show a lot. Right. As you know, I’m first generation immigrant myself. I think illegal immigration is completely unacceptable and just shouldn’t be happening. There shouldn’t be boats coming over the Channel. They should be turned around and taken back to France. Like none of this should be happening. We shouldn’t be putting people up in hotels at the taxpayers expense. We should be, if you want to have asylum, you process them outside of the country.

TOMMY ROBINSON: They could stop that like that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Of course they could. And I think it’s a balls problem. It’s not, we don’t know how to do it. We don’t have the balls to do it right.

TOMMY ROBINSON: They will have the balls when they see the public opinion.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Exactly. But what I’m asking you is, for example, you mentioned 23% of Muslims in this country want Sharia law and you said they need to go, right, so what are you saying? If someone believes in Sharia law, we have to deport them?

TOMMY ROBINSON: If someone wants to overthrow the democracy of this nation and replace it with a violent ideology, we need to deal with it. And most of these people say, for example, there’s 40,000 British Muslims or Muslims on a terrorist watch list, right? 40,000?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Cost of Monitoring and Demographics

TOMMY ROBINSON: Out of that, 40,000, I think 50 of them hold dual nationality and they’ve got to go, why are we following them? There’s 3,000 of that 40,000 who are monitored 25 hours day, seven days a week at a cost of 9 billion pound a year.

Now, as the demographic changes, as the demographic changes in this country, we could deal with this, these problems. When it was 1 or 2% Muslim population. If we get forward to where we’re at now, 6, 7%, and we look at the projected growth forecast in the Islamic community, when we get to 25%, say, for example, well, that 40,000 is going to double or treble. That’s an army. That’s a problem. How do we afford it?

Say Pakistani Muslims make up 3% of the British population. They’re responsible for 33% of child defects. How much that costs?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Due to cousin marriage, due to consanguinity.

TOMMY ROBINSON: 76% of Muslims in Bradford, Pakistani Muslims marry their cousin. How much is that costing? Why are we tolerating this nonsense? Because Muhammad married his cousin. I don’t care what Muhammad done 1400 years ago. You’re in Britain, sort it out. We’re not paying for it anymore.

Our country’s struggling, our people are struggling. Our own people on the streets, they’re homeless, they’re hungry, they can’t heat their homes. And whilst this is all going on, you’re spending how much on hotels of who? Men who are culturally impossible to integrate or assimilate into this country. And that’s just, and that’s not being…

Manchester Demographics and Abu Halima

And what’s mad here, which I think needs to come out, is Abu Halima. Abu Halima, sorry, I’m going to talk about you. Abu Halima was on the documentary called “The Jihadi Next Door.” He’s one of the country’s most biggest jihadi terrorists.

After the Salman Abedi attack in Manchester, I started looking at Manchester and I saw the Muslim population went from 25,000 to 50,000 in 10 years. The next 10 years went from 50,000 to 100,000. What’s going to happen 10 years later? Another 10 years, Manchester’s gone. That’s the reality of it. We were walking into a ticking time bomb and no one’s addressing it. No one’s talking about it. Nigel Farage even said, “I’m not bothered about demographic change.” You need to be, mate. You need to be. Because as these problems progress and they get bigger and bigger and bigger, how do we deal with it?

But anyway, Abu Halima, so I’m messaging him, I get a message just now when I was arrested on terrorism charges, which I’ve got a court case coming up for. And he messages saying, “Tommy, been watching. What’s going on with you? Do you want to know what’s happening?” So who’s that? He goes, “Abu Halima, do you remember me? You come to my house.”

So after the terrorist attackings with Salman Abedi, I looked up the country’s most feared terrorists or the biggest jihadists, and I thought, right, where are they? So I went to Abu Halima’s house in Northampton. He’s four doors up from a school, so if he wants to get a knife, bear in mind what they’ve just done. If he wants to, no one’s stopping him. He’s next door to the school. Whose kids are in that school? There are not Amber Rudd’s at the time was out. No, Amber Rudd definitely, she was Home Secretary. Her kids aren’t in that school.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I went to his school. Police come and see. Said, “You remember, you come to my, you come to my house, Tommy.” So I’m replied, saying, “Are you still a little jihadi?”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Are you?

TOMMY ROBINSON: And he said, “No, I’m not, Tommy.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Conversation Continues

TOMMY ROBINSON: And it was surprising me. I said, “What do you mean you’re not? I’m still a Muslim. I don’t believe any of that madness anymore, right?” And I went, “Okay.” He goes, “What they’re going to do with you now under terrorism legislation is what they’ve done with all of us. So we’ve all been silenced. We’re not allowed to talk, we’re not allowed to do this, blah, blah.”

So I’m going back and forth with him in this conversation, trying to get a sit down with him like this, so the public can hear this conversation. He said, “You know the biggest threat to Britain, Tommy?” I said, “What?” He said, “The boat people.” This is the country’s biggest jihadist. He’s telling me the boat people. He said, “What’s happening to British people’s houses? What’s happening to the British people born in.”

So I think so many people from immigrant background and even Islamic backgrounds are looking at what’s going on. Going, “What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on?” Everyone’s too scared to talk about and the government.

The English Defence League Ghost

So when the riots happened, well, as soon as they mentioned English Defence League bearing in mind I left English Defence League in 2015. It’s been redundant since then. There’s no English Defence League. I saw Sadiq Khan talking about it this week. It’s like, mate, it’s been gone a decade. What are you talking about? You’re trying to dig up this old ghost and you dig it up for your own political benefit.

And the reason being that rather than Keir Starmer and Labor government say people are angry in every town and city which is. Is it Friday today?

FRANCIS FOSTER: No, Thursday.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Thursday. So tomorrow there’s. I know there’s 14 protests in different cities. Yeah, it’s coming.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Okay.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Things are. This problem’s not going away for the governments. So as this is going on, rather than say the public are angry, “far right English Defense League, everyone’s a racist.” And not just that. What we’re going to do is we’ll get the courts and we’re going to scare the hell out of you. And they thought it would work and it didn’t work, did it? Because people are coming back.

Learning from Experience

So when people say about me and my element. I have held three huge rallies now called United Kingdom. I learned a lot leading English Defence League held 80 national demonstrations. I learned when there’s problems. I’ll be honest, there’s demonstrations going on this Friday night. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I wouldn’t organize demonstration on Friday night. You’re going to get people drinking. You’re going to get people when it turns dark.

If you look at all the demonstrations we organized, they’re early, they’re away from pubs and we make sure it’s over at an early time to stop these elements. And the reason being the government want that. They want you wearing a mask. Take off your mask. Don’t wear a balaclava because what you do by doing that, if you allow it, which are we don’t allow. If you allow that, you’re allowing infiltration.

Government Infiltration Tactics

When those riots happened last Southport, if you look at the Sunderland riot where they burnt the police station is 10 men wearing fully black. That’s the government. I’m telling you. Look up Special Demonstration Squad. The government have squads, police squads. We’ve seen it on January 6th in America. The FBI, they have squads which infiltrate legitimate protests.

If we look and this may sound like a conspiracy theory. Ten years ago, I watched it with the English Defense League. I know how they operate. I watch what they’ve done. They provoke trouble. They have the media waiting to take pictures. What did they just do? Last week in Epin, they bust in. The police brought in protesters to provoke reaction, to then label the innocent families and scared families who want to protect their daughters as far right thugs. I know what they do.

The United Kingdom Movement

So we made it impossible in our meetings with the police. I come back after being. I was censored. I was deleted. I was invisible for five years. Elon Musk 2023-24 gives me back my social media. I come back to the UK. I was exiled pretty much. I wasn’t in a good place. I’d obviously made this film that I’ve recently went to jail for. I was too scared to release it. I didn’t want to go to prison.

I come back to the UK and we start organizing rallies and our rallies under this banner, United Kingdom is about unite in Britain and it’s about uniting. Do you know that? You know what’s sad, which is worrying situation which we should be worried about is as this progresses, as in terrorism attacks, there’s a problem coming from a section of immigration into the country. That’s my view.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And it’s Islamic immigration. What’s happening now is there’s a rise in ethno nationalism. There’s a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Sentiment. There’s a rise in these groups that are growing and there’s a rise in people who don’t understand or are just blaming everyone else. So you have. So our movement is saying no. Most migrants come to this country and they love embrace. My mother one of them, they love embrace and celebrate it.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: We want to bring them people together under one banner and we want to do it in a joyful manner and a celebrationary manner where we focus on our identity as British people, not our white identity as British people. Everyone who wants to be part under that banner, come along and we’ve held three rallies and our lot. The last one I’ve done was Trafalgar, July 27th. 100,000 people. Not one arrest in each of these events.

Working with Police

And to know how our relationships change with the police, it’s insane really. Any patriotic rally was met with violence with the police up until 18 months ago. Yeah, when I had my first sit down with the police. And unfortunately again, I’ve learned you have to deal with the police and the government in a certain way.

When I sat down for my first meeting with the police, I said, “I’m going to tell you what, what we’re going to do. Yeah, we are. I could if I wanted to. Lads, bearing in mind these Hamas rallies, if I want to, I can organize protest on Tower Bridge in London on the same day and same time as they do this and we can have a confrontation with the Hamas radicals. Yeah, we don’t want to.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: What we want is a family event in parliament, outside parliament with music, celebration. So let us do what we want, Stay the hell away. We will police ourselves. We will not allow face coverings, not allow us alcohol. We will monitor our own supporters and if there’s a problem with our supporters, tell us and we’ll deal with them.

Yeah, because you coming in mob handed with crash helmets and riot gear, just don’t wear riot gear. Stay away. We’ll work with you in any way. If, if, if, if antifa and left wing extremists are here, we’ll change our donation, our location and we’ll start here. We just want to have a peaceful day.

And that worked with the police and in the end we’re clapping the police because, and so any of the people organizing demonstrations now at hotels, you have to liaise with the police because if you don’t liaise with the police then you’ll see conditions coming in where you can’t go down this road, can’t go down that road. And when those conditions come in, you’ll then get riot police blocking the road. You’ll then have a clash of support of people.

FRANCIS FOSTER: It.

Past Tactics and Lessons

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I’ve learned a lot. I know how these demonstrations work. I know how to liaise, negotiate with the police and even, you know, again, it’s a sad state of affairs but the English Defense League, do you remember they’re opening a mosque in Luton on Down Center. And I went down to the shopping center 2013 and I met with the owners of the shopping center and just basically said, “I’m going to tell you what happens here.”

I went to the bakery, which was Bobby’s family bakery, it’s been there 40 years. I went to the Muslim restaurant next door and spoke to the Turks and said, “What do you think about the mosque opening there?” And they said, “We don’t need a mosque here. We don’t need.” And this is the Muslims. They said if you put a mosque there, it’s going to be 100 men outside our shop.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: So I went through this. So I said to the shopping center, “If you open a mosque there, I’m going to shut down the shopping center. When the intensely come and demonstrate it cost 500,000 to a million pounds to police. And you will board up your shopping center. That’s what’s going to happen. I’m just letting you know. Yeah, we don’t want to do this. You need to listen to the shops here and what they want.”

It worked. They canceled the mosque. By then they opened up toilets in Burnley. Burnley or one of the northern towns. And the toilets were a hole in the ground in the shopping center.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Center.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Like a sandy toilet.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I rang the shopping center. “So you’ve got two weeks. Change the toilet now.” This isn’t good. But at the time I knew what worked when 364 councils. I wrote a letter to. You can Google this. And it was Christmas and six councils changed the name of Christmas. They took the word Christ out of it and they called it Winter Illuminations, Winter Festival.

So I sent 364 letters off personally to the councils. I said, “I’m warning you, as the English Defense League, we’re going to hit your city if you change the name of Christmas.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: If you.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And they. It all went in the news that we were blackmailing the council. So I said, “Well, I’m just warning them. Yeah, we don’t want to come to your city, but we will now.” They all listened.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Not one.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The next year, not one single council took the word Christ out of it.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Understanding the Real Issues

TOMMY ROBINSON: And you know what’s upsetting or what’s. When I had meetings with Muslims about this. With the Muslims don’t care if we celebrate Christmas. This is some liberal joke. In a council making a decision for communication which doesn’t work for communication, you’re actually causing resentment.

So I learned very quickly that unfortunately, when you have a bit of power like the Islamic leaders have, you can threaten things and it gets done what you want. But I think we’ve now reached a point, Tommy, where things are febrile, to put it mildly. Febrile means. If it’s like it’s going to boil over, it’s a powder keg. It’s where we are, unfortunately. You can admit it or you can’t.

So do you think what we do and for people who are concerned about this, is that people need to have peaceful demonstrations. They need to be activists. There needs to be people talking about this in a calm and respectful manner. Totally. I think that, again, which is what we’re planning on doing September 13th, I think we’re going to have half a million to a million people. I think it’s going to be the biggest patriot gathering this country’s ever seen.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And our diversity of our crowd and the demographic of our support base is totally changed. It’s mainstream.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Whereas they had us as a fringe element. They had us.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Changing Mood

TOMMY ROBINSON: And they had control of social media. Remember, we were banned from every social media so that when they had control, they could tell everyone who we are then. Now people can see our videos ourselves. They can see what our events are like. They can see what the gathering’s like.

I would be what I’m worried and I think the government should be worried and the country should be worried about the mood of the nation. Because the mood in the nation is people had enough. People ain’t going to be silenced anymore.

When you. When people. When you take away the freedom of an English man or woman’s children to walk the street, which is what’s happened in Epin, they can’t walk down the street in their school uniform. When you take that away, what do you. What do you expect is going to happen? And that’s not. That’s mirrored across every town, city in a minute.

So if you ask the British public how they’re feeling on safety, they don’t feel safe. And when you. And whilst you don’t feel safe, what Keir Starmer should have done after Southport, if they should have come out as a government and said, “We’re listening, we understand, we understand the anger, right, let’s try and work together to stop this.” But they didn’t do that. They said, “You’re all racist. Shut up.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: And.

The Current State of Britain

TOMMY ROBINSON: And what that’s led to is where we’re at now, 12 months later. You put a load of people in jail, you let criminals out, you locked up patriots, you murdered Peter Lynch, Lucy Conley. Still, some of them were racist. And there were riots which were unacceptable. Some of them were. But there were also Muslims rioting along the street. Agreed. None of that was on the mainstream media.

Keir Starmer didn’t mention it. Keir Starmer said, “We’re going to protect you, the Muslim community.” It’s like, well, no, hold on. It’s our daughters who have been raped in every town, city. Why are you going to protect us? It’s our daughters in every town and city who are being gang raped, not Muslim girls. There’s no, there’s not one. Find me a case. Anyone of a group of non-Muslims raping a Muslim, find me one case.

Because the fact is there’s hundreds of thousands across this country and when you even try and talk about or get angry about it, you just need to shut up. “You’re all far right” or “you’re racist.” When that doesn’t wash anymore. That’s not going to wash. People have had enough. People don’t remain silent. But what’s happening now is it’s organic, which is good. I said I was going to go up in the other week, didn’t I? Wrong move for me.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Wrong move for the people of Epping. Because if I went there, it’s all about me. And it gives the government and the council and all the opposition the chance to diminish the local community’s fears and put them under. Which is what they’ve done after the riots. They put them under the bracket of far right, bracket of Tommy Robinson. They blame me for the riots. They blamed me. I was calling for peace, calm and non-violence and they made out that I was the instigator of riots across the country when I wasn’t even here. But I think that most people are sitting where we’re sitting, as in something big is happening here.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

The Mood of the Nation

TOMMY ROBINSON: When I say the country’s prime for revolution, it is the mood of this nation. I’ve just, you know, down the end of here, there’s a petrol station with the Greggs. I had two people come up to me in that Greggs who are talking about September 30th. The level of feeling in this country is. And the emotion and passion and fear that the public are having.

When I see people, I remember I’ve gone through this 15 years. I’ve gone from being spat at to being punched, to being hugged, to being embraced, to have my hand shaken. And that process is now where the country’s at, where they’re going to look when the public realize the state of our nation, the safety of their children, the absolute destruction of our culture, our identity and our future.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: When they realize they’re going to look who’s to blame and they’re going to look to the politicians and they’re going to look to the journalists, they’re going to look at who lied and they’re going to look at who told the truth. And that’s why even I’ll talk about Katie Hopkins. Katie Hopkins had to flee Britain four years ago.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: She was hated. She now come back. I walked the streets of her. She gets a hero’s reception because people see that. Some people. And doesn’t mean anyone’s perfect. Same with me. It means I made mistakes. People accept my flaws.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Free Speech in Britain

TOMMY ROBINSON: But we told the truth. We stood on principle and continued regardless of their threats, their intimidation, their silence. And I don’t blame people who are sitting out there who are scared to talk. You should be scared to talk because we don’t have free speech. We don’t live. How many people do you hear say, “We live in a free country?” No one anymore. Everyone knows we don’t. They’re locking you up.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I haven’t heard that phrase for years.

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, no, no.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I remember when I came to this country, I was a boy, right? That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought Britain was. That’s what I thought the west was. And people would use that phrase. And in fact, I remember kids would tease me for being Russian.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And I’d be like, shut up. And they’d be like, “It’s a free country.” No one says it anymore. No way.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Not to say anyone say it. You see what you just said, I. Up until 2009, when I started my activism, I thought I lived in the country with free speech. And then I realized, well, this country doesn’t exist. And I’ll give you an example. You know, I was just arrested for this GBH 16.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Two-Tier Policing

TOMMY ROBINSON: To do with the gentleman. When I was arrested, I was detained and questioned and arrested for three tweets. One of the tweets I was arrested for was sharing a Daily Mail article.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Now what they said is, they said, “Are you.” They’re basically trying to say, “Have you got qualifications as mainstream journalism?” So I said, no. And then from a solicitor said, “Well, all he’s done is share what the Daily Mail said.” And then they said, “The Daily Mail protected because recognized media are protected by this law. You’re not.”

So I was like, well, I’ve shared something that’s factual from the Daily Mail, but you’re going to arrest me for it. And they arrested me for that. And also sharing a Palestinian flag that said Hamas, Palestine, Islam. And I shared it and just said this, I’ve been arrested for that. We don’t live in a free country now what mind. But they weren’t arresting people calling for jihad.

This two tier level of policing, they’re not arresting. It’s like hate speech laws are not there to prevent hate. They’re there to shut us up. And one level’s being shut up and the other level get amplified opportunity to promote their hate and intolerance. If we had, if they want to implement real hate speech laws, this would be banned. The Quran will be banned tomorrow because there’s 100 verses near the call for violence. Lots of books will be banned. You can buy Mein Kampf, but that’s fine. No, okay. You can buy Mein Kampf. I thought you were going to pull it out there. You can buy Mein Kampf. But these three books are banned by Amazon. Yeah, this is just my life story. This is a. This is, this is not my opinion. This is the Quran. And what this Quran does. Do you know the term “Islam is the religion of peace?”

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I have heard that, yes.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But no one had ever said it until George W. Bush. We sat for months trying to find historically figures, military, religious, political, that ever said Islam was wisdom, peace. And all you’ll find is Islamic leaders saying, no, it’s a war manual. It’s warrior manual.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Demographic Change and Cultural Concerns

TOMMY ROBINSON: So that lie which was told by George W. Bush is now just repeated as some sort of fact. But these books were all banned by Amazon. As you just said, you can buy Hitler’s book, so how can you ban. There’s nothing hatred in these. But you’re literally burning books now and you’re burning books that challenge your failures again. And what is, what is the demographical change to this nation and what does it look like?

So as anyone watching this, okay, 5, 6% of the country are from the Islamic background. Look at the mayhem from 5, 6%. What do you actually think it’s going to be like at 20? This isn’t fear mongering. We’ve got a duty as English men and women to protect this country and to protect our kids. And everyone’s seen what’s happened since October 7th. It’s accelerated. Well, what are we going to do?

Because unfortunately a lot of the groups that were for harmony are actually calling for the obliteration of an entire state of people. And people have seen it now. There’s no smoke screens. People can see the hate. And it’s not a minority. It’s mainstreamed. And unfortunately that mainstream hate is coming from the left and the liberal left along with an Islamist alliance which we’ve seen this alliance before. We’ve seen it in Iran. We’ve seen where the communists and the Marxists joined along with the Islamists to overthrow and topple the country. And the first thing that he is the miss done is kill them.

So we’ve seen it this and I just think that Joe, as a generation of British men, are we really scared to talk about this year? Are we actually going to remain silent and look at our country and see that there’s a thousand years of Christian history in this country. Over 1800 years Christianity has been in Britain, but a thousand years of England, we’re going to let in 70 years spineless, corrupt, globalist politicians import medieval backward cultures into this country and allow them to grow dominant and superior to us. That’s what we’re seeing. Luton is a blueprint for every town and city. You can ignore it because you think it’s Luton, it’s your town tomorrow. And the demographical change in the growth in this nation shows that.

So, yes. You made the comment earlier about your taxi driver who’s probably a lovely man. I bet a lot of Germans were lovely during the war. I bet loads of them were lovely. It doesn’t stop the dangers of Nazism, what we see with Islam.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Distinguishing Between People and Ideology

TOMMY ROBINSON: Not Muslims. Again, people don’t understand. So if I criticize the Bible or Jesus, it doesn’t mean I hate Christians, does it? Doesn’t mean I hate every person that follows it. So separate the two. Muslims are people. If you speak hatred against Muslims, it’s bad. You entice or encourage violence against Muslims. Totally wrong. Your God given right is to look at this book as an Englishman and say, what is, what does this bring? It’s a book. It’s my right to look at Muhammad’s life and say having sex with children is pretty wrong though.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: You’re not really a moral compass that we should be following. In fact, we shouldn’t be following you. Joe. My local politician, Gavin Suko, he was a labor politician and at the height of the English Defense League. I’d never met him and there was a chicken shop in Luton and he was in there. So I walked in and said, “All right, all right, Gavin.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: “You held a celebrate Mohammed day at parliament.” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “What do you know about Mohammed? What do you actually know about him?” He goes, “Well, I know Muslims respect him.” I said, “Okay, well, Nazis respect Hitler. Celebrate Hitler, shall we? What do you know about him?” And he’s just looked gobsmacked. “You don’t know anything, do you? You don’t know anything about him. Yet here you are pandering.”

It’s like Jess Phillips basically sitting on her knees in a Mosque. It’s mental. The level of absurdity, appeasement, cowardice from those politicians. We’ve got 650 politicians in parliament and not one of them’s ever spoke about Islam since Churchill and Gladstone. No one in that House of Parliament. Bearing in mind the jihad attacks. Think about Manchester. Think about seven seven. Think about Lee Rigby. We’ve had all these attacks, but it’s.

Political Cowardice

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Worse than that, man. It’s worse than that. One of their colleagues was killed by an Islamist, Sir David Amess. Do you remember this?

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yeah, but the public probably don’t even know who he is because all the MPs stood up. Do you remember what they talked about in the House of Commons?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Probably Islamophobia.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: No, they talked about online hate. We got it. We got a crackdown on. Their colleague has just been murdered by Ismaili Jadis.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Murdered by an Islamist in a constituency surgery. I either think that they all go and do.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And his family are still trying to fight.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: They’re still trying to get.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The whole family is still trying to fight. His daughter. His daughter’s still trying to fight against a system that. Do you know why they can’t have that conversation again?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I can tell you why. Because I’ve speak to them.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Them.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: They’re all terrified. And by the way, like you said, they’re not wrong. They’re not wrong to be terrified.

TOMMY ROBINSON: The problem is they’re terrified. But we’re not anymore.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t think. I don’t think the public is terrified.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Not terrified anymore.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

The Reality of Prison and Personal Sacrifice

TOMMY ROBINSON: It’s like you. It’s like, oh, you put us in prison. Yeah, well, that didn’t work, did it? Me, I mean, that doesn’t work. Okay? That doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work because once there’s a reality that the country is at stake, that the entire Christian nation, that the entire population and cultural identity and children’s future is at stake. We don’t care about you putting us in jail. Yeah, because. And these an argument I had my ex wife so many times.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: She’s not. Just shut up. What about the kids? I said, this ain’t about the kids. But what about their kids? I mean, it is about the kids. Yeah, it is. But what I mean is she’s like, just shut up. To make sure our kids have a say. I said, okay, but what about when they have kids?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yes.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yeah. And they’re a minority. I know what it’s like to be minority in Islam. I’ve seen it my whole life. I know it’s like, go ask the Christians in Afghanistan, go ask the Christians in Iraq, go ask them in Syria right now. Go and ask the Druze. Go and ask them what’s happening. Why? Because they’re dead and they’re all dead or getting killed.

The Murder of Sir David Amess

And the thing to remember about this is, you know, we say these names, but these victims are real. I knew Sir David Amess. He’s a big West Ham fan. I met him a few times at West Ham. He was a lovely man. And nothing changed after his death. Yeah, he was a fantastic MP and he was a wonderful constituency MP. He was murdered.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I remember.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I was in shock. I didn’t know him, that man. I met him two or three times, but he was a lovely man. Had lunch with him and then I just saw people, just his colleagues. He gets murdered. We’ve got to stop Tommy Robinson. Well, we talk about online hate, and I’m just going, this is cowardice of the worst sort. Of the worst sort.

An innocent man dies who is your friend and colleague, and you do nothing. That is an abdication of responsibility. I was. I’ve never actually spoken about this, but it made me feel physically sick. It made me feel physically sick and it actually changed a lot of my opinions because I saw firsthand the cowardice, because it’s very different when you’ve never met. You know, you say names and there’s a part of you that finds it. You can empathize, but you can’t sympathize because you’re not there.

But when he was murdered, and bear in mind, this was just someone I used to sit with and have the occasional lunch with two or three times, and we’d talk about West Ham and he told me about the glory days of, you know, the 1970s of West Ham and, you know, Billy Bonds and all this. And then I saw, like, the way they just didn’t even talk about him. Did you know that feeling you’re feeling?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: In every town. And see, that’s our daughters.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Community Bonds and Shared Pain

TOMMY ROBINSON: So these attacks, these. I’ll explain. There’s a Tom Costello, he got the best grades, he went to a private school, got the best case at Oxford University. And he’s a journalist and he’d done a documentary with me and he come and spent. I said, come spend time with me and Luton. We’re at the local estate and we’re at the pub. And when you walk anywhere here, everyone knows each other, so everyone’s hugging, embracing.

And when we sat down, he goes, “I haven’t got this. I’ve never had this.” I said, “What?” He goes, “The community, you all know each other, everyone loves each other. Everyone’s hugging” because he’s gone private school, then he’s gone to university and then he’s gone to a new town. He doesn’t know everyone. I said, “So you see what you’ve just seen there, Tom?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “So say when Sarah is raped by migrants, do you understand how all of us are feeling it?”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Do you get how we’re all raging about this? Yeah, that. So that sense of feeling when we talk about the moral cowardice. Let’s look at Piers Morgan, for example.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Media Complicity and Moral Cowardice

TOMMY ROBINSON: Piers Morgan was in charge of Daily Mirror. Are we going to pretend that he didn’t know about grooming gangs? Are we going to pretend the head of Daily Mirror at the height of the grooming scandal? We know Andrew Norfolk knew because he says he knew. Yeah, we know the government knew, we know politicians knew, we know the police knew. Let’s not. Piers Morgan knew. They all knew. And what did they do? They shut us down. They shut down the debate. Trying to be morally virtue for everyone. Like, we’re not like this.

It’s like most people now, I look at the same people who shut me down now are all trying to be as loud as they can about what happened to the victims. It’s like you knew what was happening. You’re trying to rewrite history here. These people are. You’re trying to rewrite history. You knew. Certainly Piers Morgan, the head of a media outlet, knew. I understand how some people in different backgrounds and living in different towns and cities or villages were not aware, but everyone in our towns knew. We all knew.

So that. That feeling, you get there and I’ve had, I’ve just. So people say, I’ve. I’ve got to know survivors, families. I look at some of them, I look at Sammy Woodhouse and I don’t. I don’t. If you had Tammy on, not yet. You should get along, because I look.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: At her, we’ve had a number of survivors.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: But I look at her and think how the hell she stayed in River. Have you had Martin, the Muslim AD from Oldham?

FRANCIS FOSTER: No.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Oh, mate. He’s like a warrior. A lot against the ground. He’s Pakistan. He’s like a warrior. Because I know what it’s like trying to talk about these issues and I’m a man.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And as you said, I don’t mind a punch up, I’m a man, but I’m not. I’m not really up for backing down to them.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Unrecognized Heroes

TOMMY ROBINSON: Yeah, but I look at some people like that Sammy Woodhouse, single parent, taking on the Robin gangs, still saying, live in the same area. The threat she must have faced, the threats her family must have faced. I look at Raj Meera and he’s in the community and he’s exposing all of them. He’s exposed all the corruption in Oldham Council from the Labour Party and the grooming gangs and everything. So I look at these people and think none of them have had any recognition or none of them have had any support. None of them, none of them.

Do you know what they’ve done? So there’s a group called Sikh Awareness Society. You should have him on Mohan Singh.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Sikh Community’s Response

TOMMY ROBINSON: So they’re a charity. So when I started the English Defense League, we sort of formed a relationship with the Sikh community to try and I’d say, understand each other. So there was racist attacks against Sikh schools down in Essex by young white kids showing EDL. I’d go down, they’d ring me and say, “Can you come down? There’s problems with the kids.” So I’d go down to the estate, there’d be 50 kids there. I’d walk over, they’re like “Tommy Robinson.” I said, “What’s going on with the school?” And I said, “They’re all terrorists. They’re the best, best immigrants this country’s ever had. Sikhs, they’re for 88,000. It’s education.” I’m going through it with them and then the sea.

And then I spent time traveling around to Sikh temples and Hindu temples watching their education program. They do an education, so they get all the girls and all the sisters and they hold a seminar and they’ve been doing this for decades.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: And they, the women sit down and they show them how the grooming gangs operate. And I remember, mate, I spent a couple of years, we were going around and my mate pulled me out after who was filming us. He said, “What do you think of this?” I said, “This is brilliant for the Sikhs, brilliant for the Hindus. Who’s doing this for us? Who’s educating the white working class children and women and sisters and mothers on how to stop these gangs? You’re not even allowed to have a conversation.”

Do you know how much criticism Sikh Awareness faced? Because it’s only till Rotherham. When Rotherham come out, a lot changed because then they realize we’re telling the truth. They realize they’re telling the truth. But the Sikh Awareness and these groups were seen as hostile because of India’s problems. They thought it was just, they didn’t like the Islamic community. And then when, when all this grooming come out, the funding went to the Muslim community, to taxi companies to report it. And it’s like you’re funding the same prop. They were the problem.

So I just think the whole thing and, and just the emotion you saw, I could see there you’re getting upset because it’s someone you know.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, I knew.

TOMMY ROBINSON: We knew you knew. Yeah, we know these girls.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

The Telford Investigation

TOMMY ROBINSON: So that level of, that level of emotion, I’d say it’s what drives me half the time because I think, I think, no, no. Do you know these girls? I’ve done a five part series called Brim. We’re on to episode six. I’d love to be able to finish it without all this police nonsense. We’re on to episode six, that five part series. If anyone wants to watch it, go to trfilms.co.uk we investigate the gangs.

When we investigate the gangs, I sit down with 12 to 18 survivors and we heard their story and there’s a team behind me, so I get the credit of the documentary. But there’s a team of volunteers who. We’ve done a police style investigation. As we started investigating, I’d sit down with a survivor, I’ll interview her for 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours. The team would, we’d then put it into a database and we’d. We got 254 names and just so you just so people haven’t listened to my stories. You need to watch these films. You need to understand the scale of the problem.

Telford has a 1.7 Muslim population. There’s none there. That’s why we picked that city. The police identified a thousand victims in Telford.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Of The Muslim gangs, five of them are dead, murdered.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Five out of a thousand. We sat down with 12. 20 out of those 12 to 18. We identified 254 names of rapists. The police investigation identified 200 rapists.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Demographics and Future Concerns

TOMMY ROBINSON: They prosecuted 11. So when you see the trials going on, they’re just like a little symbol. The police going, “Yeah, we stopped them in Telford, prosecuted 11.” What about the other 189 that raped? They’re not getting prosecuted now.

Take the demographics of the Muslim community for Telford. Get rid of the under 16s and get rid of those 70. So let’s get the men that fit the age bracket of that could have been raping. There’s only a thousand men. Out of that thousand men, the police identified 200 of them. We identified 250 odds.

Then the independent inquiry, which wasn’t statutory powered. Which if it had statutory power, it means that. So when you see this argument going on now with the government and they’re on about doing an inquiry into the rape gangs and the government won’t give statutory power. So if the inquiry has statutory power, it means the police, the council, all of them can be summoned to court under oath and then ask the questions.

Political Cover-Up Allegations

Yeah, the government. And this is where the insanity. Sean Davies is the MP. Sean Davies is the MP for Telford. I watched him in Parliament recently talking about the need for this inquiry, statutory power. I’ve got a letter that he signed. He signed a letter to Amber Rudd. He signed a letter to block the inquiry and now he’s trying to rewrite history in Parliament.

I figured, “No, you blocked it.” I’ve got 10 of them. We call it the Telford 10. 10 of them signed a letter secretly. All labor, all counselors, to block statutory power. So Telford had an inquiry, but identified a thousand victims. It had no power. So the council and the police just ignored it. They didn’t give any evidence, they just stood back.

So the only way that solicitors got the evidence with their inquiry was to sit the victims down like we’ve done. Yeah, these investigations. If there’s an investigation now, if there’s a historic investigation in towns and cities, I think they’ve say five or six to come forward. It has to have statutory power because no one can be exempt. Politicians need to tell the truth and if they don’t, then they’re viable for jail. That’s where we’re going to get to the bottom of it.

Labour Party Involvement

The reason why labor won’t do that, because Councillor Hussain in Rochdale went to court. Labor councillor went to court and gave a character reference for the rapist. The ex mayor of Bolton Muslim went to court and gave a character reference for the rapist. Yeah, they gave character references to a rapist. They didn’t lose their job in labor, they didn’t lose their position. They accelerated.

What did Sarah Champion try to speak about? They got rid of her. She said about the Pakistani gangs. They ousted her, replaced her with Nashar, who was on record sharing tweets saying that the children and the victims need to shut their mouths for the sake of diversity. There has been a cover up.

Oldham, one of the men in charge of Labor Council for protecting kids is in jail as one of the gang rapists. Councillor Jaglia. This is the Rotherham case. Labor, he was the counselor. He was working with the gangs. All proven labor are in the middle. These are. We’ve got somewhere. They used to call them Asian gang. Asian gangs. We got finally to Muslim gangs. They’re trying to call them Pakistani. They’re not. They’re Muslim. We need to get to Labor’s Muslim gangs, because that’s what they were.

Tommy, final question is always the same. What’s the one thing we’re not talking about as a society that we really should be.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What has been the most bitter pill to swallow? What role do you think your social class and the way you express yourself plays in how elites and the political class have responded to you? Can you share any stories of growing up in Luton around Stacy Dooley and Andrew Tate? Yes. What’s the one thing we’re not talking about as a society that we really should be.

Demographic Change Concerns

TOMMY ROBINSON: Demographics. By 2041, white British are a minority in Britain. That’s not acceptable. It’s just not acceptable. Same way wouldn’t be acceptable if black Nigerians become a minority in Nigeria. It’s not acceptable. It’s something we need to look at, we need to talk about massively, because no one wants to talk about. And we always hear it’s minorities, minority, minority. No, it’s not.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Are.

TOMMY ROBINSON: Not anymore. And when it becomes a majority in towns and cities, the minority rights to protect them are not protecting our English kids. So it’s not good. So I think that the demographical change in towns and cities and the projected growth forecast birth rate accelerate.

I see even Nigel Farage now saying he’s going to get rid of the 2 cap for benefits. No, you need to keep the 2 cap for benefits. My local imam’s got 14 kids with three wives. I don’t want to pay for that. And that’s. And the Islamic community, if you look at the birth rate and the demographical change compared to the non, the black community, the Hindu community, the Sikh community, there’s no explosion in demographical change.

The explosion, democratical change in this country is Islamic birth rate and Islamic immigration. We either stop it now or we’re going to be in a situation where we can’t so that. That now we’re running out of time. We’re running out of time. I think we need direct democracy, but by 2041, we lose on direct democracy.

Addressing Perceived Inconsistencies

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Tommy, not necessarily in disagreement with you, broadly speaking, but to a lot of people it’ll sound like there’s quite a bit of inconsistency with what you’re saying. On the one hand you’re saying, you know, black, white, sec or great. But then you’re saying.

TOMMY ROBINSON: I’m saying that England is. England is historically a white nation.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It is, yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: They cannot become a minority in their own nation. It just is. And unless you talk about this, you leave it to the ethnats and the Nazis. Unless you address. Because the majority of the public are worried by demographic change. The majority. It’s not racist. It’s not racist to say that England has to remain a majority white country. That’s not racist.

Exactly the same like Japan should remain a majority Japanese nation. If it was changing. How come it’s only Western nations that have to accept this sort of diversity, nowhere else has to. So unless you actually have this conversation and actually address the general public fears, you leave the only people talking about this as ethno nationalist and ethno nationalists are growing in number, growing in confidence. And if they’re the only people addressing this specific topic of a conversation, then you lead people to join them, listen to them and be radicalized by them.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But what I don’t understand is what’s the difference between their position and your position on this issue? You’re kind of basically saying the same thing, aren’t you?

Distinguishing From Ethno-Nationalism

TOMMY ROBINSON: No, they’re saying that non whites need to be expelled from this country. All of them. I’m saying that we need to address the Islamic demographic. I believe we need remigration of many of the so called fake asylum seekers because they’re not asylum seekers. They’ve gone through 16 safe countries. They’ve come to this country.

Any, all the foreign nationals in prison, 12 thousand of them got to go. Anyone on the jihadi watch list got to go. There’s so many issues we should be doing. I’d stop the Qatari money, I’d stop the Iranian money, I’d stop it all. I’d stop the. And essentially. So Biggles raid again, little example. Biggles raid is a town near Luton. There’s Muslims there. There’s no mosque. They’re pretty well integrated. Pretty well integrated. No extremism.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

TOMMY ROBINSON: There’s no Saudi funded or Qatari funded or Wahhabi funded or Salafi funded mosque which is promoting this insanity to all of them from a young age. So I would love. I want freedom of speech for us. I want freedom for everyone. I want freedom for Muslims. They need to leave Islam. Tommy, thank you very much. Thank you guys. Make sure to head over to Subset, where we’ll carry on the conversation with your questions we do have.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: We had more questions for you than any guest in the history of the show, so there’ll be a lot of content behind that paywall. So go on over there, subscribe, join our substack, support the show, and you get to hear a good chunk of time with Tommy behind the paywall. See you there. What’s one thing you wish your critics understood about your motivations? And is there anything you wish you could have done differently to limit the alienation that you have on some people?

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