Who is Tommy Robinson: From apprentice aircraft engineer to right-wing activist

The English Defence League founder has made a career of anti-migration activism, and being jailed has done nothing to deter his many followers

(Yui Mok/PA Wire)

Tommy Robinson is an angry man: angry at Islam and migration into Britain, angry at the BBC and “mainstream media”. He claims to be angry over antisemitism. He’s often angry about the way police have treated him.

He’s confessed to wasting money on alcohol and partying while receiving thousands of pounds in donations; he’s been in court and in prison – and yet he has huge numbers of devoted followers online.

Robinson, who is one of the most provocative figures in the UK today, made his name – and a career – from being a right-wing activist.

Robinson was arrested at Folkestone Police Station (Jordan Pettitt/PA) (PA Wire)

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – his real name – grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, which had a large Muslim minority, and in 2004, he joined the far-right British National Party, but left a year later.

He was apprenticed as an aircraft engineer at the town’s airport, but was sentenced to a year in jail after he assaulted an off-duty police officer during a drunken row in 2005.

With a group of like-minded young men, he founded the English Defence League (EDL) in 2009, reportedly having been angered by local Islamists trying to recruit men in Luton to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

When riots erupted in English cities this summer, police suspected the EDL, which has links to football hooliganism, of having initially incited the violence.

Robinson stood down as the group’s leader in 2013, citing fears over the “dangers of far-right extremism”. The same year, he publicly apologised to Muslim communities and offered to give evidence to the police to aid their investigation into EDL members.

In 2018, he was jailed for 13 months for breaking contempt of court laws with a Facebook Live video that could have prejudiced a trial.

He was already subject to a suspended sentence for committing contempt during a rape trial in Canterbury the year before.

Three years later, as The Independent investigated reports he misused donors’ cash, he shouted abuse at the home of the journalist involved, defamed her partner and threatened to return. Convicted of stalking, he was banned from contacting them for five years.

In 2022, he spent £100,000 gambling before declaring bankruptcy, the High Court heard.

Robinson said he also owed £160,000 to HM Revenue and Customs when he declared himself bankrupt a year earlier, but later said this was an estimate.

At one point he was spending about £100,000 on gambling in casinos and online, wasting money on “drink, alcohol, partying” while receiving thousands of pounds in donations from supporters, he told the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

In 2020, he received about £1,000 a month from supporters but that at times that figure was between £3,000 and £4,000, he said.

Asked about a claim in his 2009 book Enemy of the State that he owned seven properties but that six of them were in his wife’s name, he said: “I had a ghost writer that helped me with the book. I like to give off that I am a successful man when I am not.”

Last November he was accused of failing to follow a police order to leave an antisemitism march in London. In a trial attended by many of his supporters, he was cleared after a Metropolitan Police officer who signed the order admitted it may not have been lawful because he used the wrong date on the paperwork.

This summer, he told supporters on Facebook that a counter-protest to a Stand Up To Racism march in the capital would be the “biggest patriotic rally the UK has ever seen”.

He was arrested at a march against antisemitism last November (PA)

Most recently, he was arrested in July this year under anti-terror laws over allegations he breached a 2021 High Court order.

The order banned Robinson from repeating libellous allegations he made against Syrian refugee Jamal Hijazi.

Mr Hijazi successfully sued Robinson after the then-schoolboy was assaulted at Almondbury Community School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in October 2018.

When a clip of the incident went viral, Robinson made false claims, including about Mr Hijazi attacking girls in his school, which prompted the libel case.

Mr Justice Nicklin also ordered Robinson to pay Mr Hijazi £100,000 in damages and his legal costs.

The latest case is the result of a £43,293 fee Robinson owed from that court order. The 41-year-old is due to appear at Woolwich Crown Court on Monday for a two-day hearing.

On Friday, he attended Folkestone police station, where he was separately charged with failing to provide his mobile phone pin to officers, Kent Police said.

Being remanded into custody means he will miss a march in central London for thousands of people that he himself organised, and which has sparked a counter-protest by Stand up to Racism.