When Tommy Robinson first entered the national consciousness, it was as an angry young man leading a group of football fans onto the streets of Luton to clash with Islamist activists disrupting a homecoming parade of soldiers returning from Afghanistan.
Fifteen years on and while the message and the rage remain, plenty has changed.
As the 41-year-old’s supporters are arrested up and down Britain, the man whose name they chanted while they terrorised communities was notable by his absence. No need to take to the streets in person any more – today Robinson wields his malign influence from wherever he chooses.
Tommy Robinson is seen resting and relaxing on a sunlounger in a pool while inciting violence at home
And at the moment that happens to be in a £400-a-night all-inclusive hotel in Cyprus, lying on a sunbed in a pair of swimming trunks.
Because in the modern world you can not only work from the beach – you can also fuel a riot from there too.
This week a reporter from the Mail watched on as Robinson, armed only with his phone, seamlessly merged holiday-making with rabble-rousing. Having first secured his lounger with a towel, there were trips to the gym, for pizza and to the pool – all interspersed with a constant stream of inflammatory social media posts.
There were messages attacking the police for going soft on Muslim protests, on the media for labelling protesters as ‘far right’ and on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper for calling them ‘thugs’.
The father of three, 41, has been stoking far-right race riots across Britain from the safety of a £400-a-night all-inclusive hotel in Cyprus
He also shared a series of fake stories over the weekend including claims that Muslims had stabbed protesters in Staffordshire and attacked three women in Scotland. On and on the messages went, almost around the clock.
And yet when accused of having a hand in whipping up the on-going disorder Robinson was outraged.
‘It’s not on me, it’s on you,’ he posted in a video. ‘This mess is your doing not mine. Your policy failures gave birth to these tensions, your failure to listen & to lie & label everyone far right has caused this. Your cowardice to enforce the law equally has caused this. Two-tier policing has caused this not me.’
With nearly 900,000 followers on Twitter/X, Robinson, a violent, convicted criminal, has transformed himself from street fighter to social media influencer. He was banned from the platform in 2018 but allowed back on last year by its new owner, Elon Musk. Analytics published by Robinson last week showed that his posts had been viewed 1.2 billion times in the three months to August.
No wonder he personally thanked the billionaire Tesla-owner for his reinstatement.
‘I am grateful to @elonmusk for giving me my voice back at such an important time,’ he posted last November. ‘I’ve been censored, attacked, slandered & imprisoned for shining a light on uncomfortable truths that our government wish to hide, the public are now aware I was telling the truth. We have lots to do.’
And, it seems, whatever he does, he is unlikely to be banned again any time soon.
Because Musk himself is currently at the centre of a war of words with the British government after he used his platform to make a series of inflammatory statements.
‘Civil war is inevitable’ he wrote in response to images of rioting in Liverpool. He then responded to a video posted by the PM stressing attacks on mosques and Muslims would not be tolerated. Mr Musk, who has 193 million global followers, replied, asking Sir Keir: ‘Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on ‘all’ communities?‘
With ‘friends’ like that, no wonder Robinson can afford to lie back on his sunlounger and think of England – rather than actually be there. And ‘afford’ in every sense of the word.
Because while Robinson was declared bankrupt in 2021, he continues to lead a life of luxury. In the past, financial support has come from an opaque network of right-wingers in Canada and the US as well as from online donations and through his work as a ‘journalist’.
Campaigners have claimed he is worth millions and called for his taxes and finances to be investigated. Robinson claims to have squandered a fortune on gambling, drinking and partying. As for how he is funding his current five-star family holiday, that is unclear. But one thing is for sure, while British towns and cities are engulfed in flames, the only thing Tanning Tommy is at risk from burning is his skin beneath the Cypriot sun.
Born to an Englishman and Irish-immigrant mother, Tommy Robinson’s real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. His double-barrelled surname evolved from his natural father leaving home and his mother’s second husband, Thomas Lennon, stepping in to raise the two-year-old. His mother worked in a bakery and his adoptive father worked at the local Vauxhall car plant.
Raised in Luton, Robinson was an able-enough student, recording 11 A-Cs at GCSE at Putteridge High School,
But there were problems outside the classroom that he would claim shaped his view of the world.
When he was a teenager Muslims comprised 15 per cent of Luton’s population. Today they make up more than a quarter of it and Luton is one of a few British towns where white Britons are an ethnic minority.
In interviews, Robinson has claimed that he was warned about immigrants from a young age with family members telling him: ‘Don’t look at the Asians. Don’t make eye contact’… and I thought what the fxxx am I walking around looking at the floor for?’
With nearly 900,000 followers on Twitter/X, Robinson, a violent, convicted criminal, has transformed himself from street fighter to social media influencer
At school, ‘the divide’ was particularly clear, he claimed.
‘They had their playground,’ he said. ‘We had ours. And that’s not just our school. That’s every school in Luton. There’s always been problems.’
Having left school at 16, Robinson saw off stiff competition to win an apprenticeship as an aircraft engineer at Luton airport.
But his career came to an abrupt end in 2004 after he was jailed for 12 months for actual bodily harm after punching and kicking an off-duty policeman during a domestic incident.
He duly lost his job and retrained as a carpenter and plumber, earning a good living renovating properties before selling them on. At one stage he also owned a tanning salon.
Having briefly been a member of the deeply racist British National Party, his rise to national notoriety came as a result of a small demonstration in 2009.
Violence and rioting by far-right protesters in Rotherham where a hotel for asylum seekers was targeted
As soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through Luton town centre after returning from Afghanistan, Islamist protesters shouted ‘terrorists’ and held placards saying ‘Anglian soldiers go to hell’ and ‘Butchers of Basra’.
Robinson and other local white football fans led a backlash against the protesters.
So it was the English Defence League came into being, with Robinson, then 26, as its leader.
In one of his first interviews, in September of that year, he complained to the BBC of town centres ‘plagued by Islamic extremists’.
Soon, the EDL would have so-called ‘divisions’ linked to other football supporters’ groups across the country.
The attitude was aggressive, the rhetoric profoundly anti-Muslim and often overtly racist. EDL marches usually ended in violence.
Former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson at the Oxford Union in 2014
It was around that time that Robinson decided to go by an alias, fearing reprisals, borrowing the name of the organiser of Luton Town’s football hooligan firm, Tommy Robinson. The name stuck. At about the same time he married his childhood sweetheart, with whom he has three children. But Robinson was not about to settle down to family life.
In 2011 he received a 12-month community rehabilitation order after a massive football brawl. As the fists flew, he led his followers in a chant of ‘EDL till I die’.
Next, in January 2013, Robinson was jailed for ten months for travelling to the United States on someone else’s passport in an attempt to sidestep an entry ban.
When he was released, he quit the EDL and briefly – and bizarrely – joined a Muslim-led anti-extremism think tank. In January 2014, Robinson was jailed again – this time for 18 months – for his part in a complicated mortgage fraud.
When he was released, his focus switched to sexual grooming gangs, accusing the police of facilitating the problem for fear of being branded racist.
‘We have a two-tier police force that treats crimes within the Muslim community differently,’ he said in a theme he continues to echo to this day.
As the decade progressed and the use of social media increased, Robinson found himself able to cash in on his growing notoriety.
He established himself as a ‘journalist’, claiming he could sidestep the untrustworthy ‘legacy’ media and bring the truth directly to his ‘followers’.
It has been reported that in 2016 and 2017 he received up to £10,000 a month from The Rebel Media, a Canadian-based far-right brand that funded his film-making.
EDL marches usually ended in violence so it was around that time that Robinson decided to go by an alias, fearing reprisals
Followers on Twitter and Facebook would be encouraged to donate using PayPal, bitcoin or other routes. A series of stunts and legal skirmishes followed.
In 2017, he was convicted of contempt of court for filming inside a crown court and calling the defendants ‘Muslim child rapists’.
The following year he was jailed for almost collapsing the Huddersfield grooming-gang trial after live-streaming outside Leeds crown court.
His supporters were outraged at what they framed as a threat to free speech, launching a fundraising campaign that turned him in to a cause celebre for the global far right. The wealthy US-based Middle East Forum, which describes itself as working to ‘protect Western civilisation from the threat of Islamism’, helped pay for lawyers.
More legal problems arose from lies he spread about Jamal Hijazi, a teenage Syrian refugee at the centre of a school bullying row in West Yorkshire in 2018.
In 2021 Hijazi won £100,000 in damages after a defamation case against Robinson, who had falsely accused him of attacking other pupils at school.
A judge ordered Robinson never to repeat the lies, but last year Robinson allegedly began doing just that, including in a film distributed online and recently broadcast at a mass rally of his followers in Trafalgar Square, London.
His breach of the injunction led to legal action by the Solicitor General for contempt of court. Robinson failed to attend a hearing last Monday, at which it emerged that he had travelled abroad. A High Court arrest warrant was issued – which could be carried out in October.
Police officers arrest far-right protesters after trouble flared in Plymouth on Monday night
At the weekend, the Mail revealed that Robinson, now divorced, had travelled to Aiya Napa with a group of family and friends. Photographs showed him making full use of the luxury surroundings – while providing a near-constant commentary on the ongoing riots gripping Britain in the wake of the Southport stabbings.
He later denied that he had fled the UK, saying: ‘I am on holiday with my children, that was planned. I never received any court documentation summoning me to court.’
In the past, Robinson has claimed his holidays are funded by his best-selling books, saying that critics believe that because he is working class ‘I should be confined to living in a council house, I should be confined to driving a basic car, I should be confined to going to a Haven [holiday camp]’.
The resort in which he has been staying is clearly much more than that. According to its website it is ‘the ideal place for a family vacation and for those seeking a serene environment’. Something those suffering from the on-going fall-out from the public disorder back in Britain can currently only dream of.