#TommyRobinson Prepares For Retrial — As Politicians And The Press Seek To Get Their Story Straight

The trial of the Huddersfield grooming gang, heard in Leeds, has now finished. 16 men were sentenced to a total of 221 years for grooming and raping girls in and around Huddersfield between 2004 and 2011.

For those following these cases, those dates ‘between 2004 and 2011’ are of note for a number of reasons. As they represent the Edge of the City affair and Andrew Norfolk beginning to investigate and write about the scandal. They also mark the time period when outlets such as the Guardian and the Independent would regularly write editorials denying anything was going on, and anyone saying anthing to the contrary was acting in bad faith and a racist.

I recommend the Rotherham Politics blog if you want to study these matters. It is well worth your time and effort to read the whole blog, and all the comments, from the start as they have far more detail, and gossip, than you will find in the main-stream.

The Leeds case is also of interest because it led to the contempt of court case against Tommy Robinson, his conviction and subsequent imprisonment: and then to his conviction being overturned, and the retrial this coming week. I wrote about the appeal at the time.

Before moving on, I just want to clarify something I have constantly heard from ‘right-wing’ commentators, particularly American commenters. There was nothing unusual about the imposition of reporting restrictions, due to the number of defendants the case were split into three parts, running concurrently, and the reporting restrictions were imposed to attempt to prevent evidence in one case influencing the jury in another case, for which it may have had little or no relevance.

And contrary to the assertion of these commenters, this is routine in courts on both sides of the Atlantic, and American courts often impose such reporting restrictions, and in fact these restrictions are imposed more regularly in America than in Britain, they being routine in Grand Juries, I believe.

Not that there is much one can do with regard to the paranoia of the extreme left and extreme right. And on balance the paranoia of the extreme left in these cases has done far more damage: because had the Guardian and the Independent, and their ilk, not imposed a racial purity test many of those giving testimony in the Hudddersfield case might not have been raped.

At which point it is worthwhile considering what is meant by rape. Undoubtedly rapes occurred. I am loath to use the term ‘actual rapes’ to differentiate but in a sense it useful to distinguish forced and/ or drug and/or drug induced sexual offences from statutory rape. Though when one reads about these cases, the two types of crime become somewhat tangled as what might start out as a statutory rape — often portrayed by those seeking to diminish events as the actions of ‘sluts’, ‘silly girls’ etc — often became something far more ‘serious’, and in some cases went into darker areas of crime such as forced prostitution, people trafficking, physical assaults, and in a number of cases murder, arson, and various forms of gangsterism such as intimidation and witness tampering. Not that I am stating all of this happened in the Huddersfield case, rather I am referring to the totality of the cases that have been prosecuted thus far, leading to possibly several hundred convictions.

Also contrary to the way this is portrayed on both the right and left — from differing perspectives and for differing reasons — , this is not about white slavers dragging off helpless maidens, but it is more often about teenage sexuality — both male and female (since their have been boys as well as girls who have been victims of these gangs). And while their is evidence the police were reluctant to get involved for fear of being accused of racism; often there was little they could do when dealing with a love-struck teenager. The parents were in a similar situation. I have known a few families who were caught up in this mess, and their position is best described as ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’… I know the popular view is that the father should have gone round with a shotgun, or whatever, but in the real world things are never that simple… particularly with regard to way in which the Children’s Act operates and is enforced.

As Tommy Robinson has always pointed out….

Speaking of left-wing paranoia, the Guardian (who has an utterly shameful and thoroughly racist record in these matters) decided that the important thing about this story was a tweet by Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary.

And of course they had to drag in Tommy Robinson.

In fact following the convictions and the ending of the trial, most of the press has piled in to criticise Tommy Robinson. And they are all running roughly the same story of how he could have jeopardised the trial with his reckless behaviour.

Which is fine, if you ignore they were the same news outlets that didn’t challenge the original reporting restrictions of Mr Robinsons contempt trial, and then when they were lifted (in part due to foreign reporting) the press everyone that there was nothing wrong with Mr Yaxley-Lennon’s conviction for contempt of court… and anyone telling your otherwise is acting in bad faith and was probably a racist. They then wrote articles about how there was no way his appeal wouldn’t be thrown out.

Let’s just say it is rather to be expected that having been so badly wrong about this situation for so many years, it is hardly surprising that they should all pile in once more. I suppose we could get into the irony of that by doing this they are doing exactly what Tommy Robinson is being accused of, i.e. jeopardising the chances of a fair trial.

It will be interesting to see what happens at the retrial on October 23rd.

My hunch will be some kind of legal fudge, that convicts Mr Yaxley-Lennon (let’s face it, after the Canterbury debacle he was a fool to turn up in Leeds) sufficiently to prevent a claim, or perhaps more accurately a large claim, for wrongful imprisonment, while seeking not to make the law a laughing stock — which given the criticism by the appeal judges of the way in which the first trial was handled, not making the law look like an ass, will be a tricky thing to do.

The other factor to be considered is the anger the original trial provoked and the number of marches and protests that followed from it.

I mention this because at some point those in authority are going to have to acknowledge the role they have played in creating this mess.

If you cast your mind back to 2005/06 there were similar attempts to use the law in a heavy handed manner to silence the BNP. This resulted in Nick Griffin and Mark Collett being found not guilty — John Tyndall died days before his trial began. It achieved absolutely nothing except increasing number of protest marches, and the BNP winning seats on local councils, and a number of seats in the European Parliament.

That those protests, despite what the left claim, were not linked to, or in support of, the BNP are neither here nor there. Nor were they on the scale of the protests that have occurred throughout the summer in support of Tommy Robinson.

Another factor is the release of Amjem Choudry, who has been released after serving two years of a five year sentence for inciting terrorism. Mr Choudry is directly linked to a number of people who committed acts of terror and various atrocities. He is also linked to Tommy Robinson due to their direct opposition and occasional run-in’s in Luton.

The release shouldn’t have an effect on the retrial but it would be naive to believe it won’t. As the press have already written stories linking the two events. And matters were not helped when the police announced early in the year that the main targets for them were Islamic and Far Right groups. Indeed politicians made hay from this, thinking they could kill two birds with one stone. The only problem was that a number of what were clearly intended to be high-profile cases of hate-preachers and Islamic terrorist sympathisers were over-shadowed by the poor handling of such events as the arrest and imprisonment of Tommy Robinson. Meaning that whatever political capital it was hoped would be gained from playing the two sides against the middle, was entirely lost.

We shall have to wait and see what happens at the retrial…