Why I’m backing Danny Tommo

A few people have attempted to convince me this week that Tommy Robinson and Danny Tommo are grifting over this whole thing. But I judge on results. Certainly, a bunch of black clad lads showing up at Portsmouth put the shits up the establishment, to the extent that they have quadrupled security around dinghy migrant operations, and we can see that the police are on high alert. This is costing them and eating into their budgets.

As to Tommo puncturing a migrant boat, the establishment response tells us a lot, and further exposes the two tier justice dynamic. I notice that if you are a moslem who batters a police officer in an airport, the trial will be set back for months on end, and the police will liaise with “community leaders” - but when a white man commits a misdemeanour in protest of an invasion, the justice system works at lightning speed.

Of course, I do understand why. When it comes to matters of public order, it is necessary for the state to expedite the process. The social contract demands that vigilantism is stamped out. The other side of that contract is that the state will actually enforce the law on our behalf. When it chooses to be selective over which laws it will enforce, they can't be surprised to see more of the same.

Because of this, I expect it will have operational consequences because Tommo has sent a clear message that members of the public have the means to go one further. This time it was an empty boat. Next time, who knows?

This has the Guardianistas quaking in their boots. It’s comical because they think this is a frightening rise of the far right. It shows how parochial they are. They evidently don’t look at fringe politics on the continent. They have an actual far right and they really aren’t messing around. The British version is tame by contrast.

But with just two or three operations, Danny Tommo has made a very serious statement and the vibe shift is palpable. Best of all, nobody got hurt, and Tommo is facing a relatively trivial charge. Shutting down RNLI operations was the icing on the cake. It takes guts to put something on the line like that. That’s why this isn’t a grift.

I have in the past been quite scathing about Tommy Robinson. I often don’t like the way he operates. He very obviously has a defiant personality and he simply cannot help himself - and that, more than anything else, is the reason he ends up in jail. Contempt of court is not something you play fast and loose with. But you can’t take it away from the man that he is prepared to go to jail to make a point - and we need men like that.

I was very taken by something Tommy Robinson said the other day about this. Prison very much is “mind breaking”, as is the legal process (which is at least half of the punishment). I’ve only had a taster of this having been detained for just a few hours over a tweet. It is not an experience I am in any hurry to repeat. To experience it even once and risk it again requires a certain resilience.

As such, living the life of a professional agitator changes things. Life doesn’t go back to normal. Again, this is something I feel on my own shoulders, albeit to a much lesser extent. I sail pretty close to the wind with my tweets, because certain things need to be said, and as a consequence I’m never truly relaxed at home. I fully expect that one evening I’ll get another knock on the door, which fills me with anger and dread, because I don’t know how I will respond next time. I have lost all trust in the police.

If we want people to put something on the line, then we do have to have their backs. Once you’re in that deep, there is no returning to a normal life, and even large sums of money do not compensate for the lack of privacy and peace. Moreover, they do need a decent legal defence they can trust. The best part about it, nobody is forcing you to contribute. If you don’t approve or you think it’s a grift, you don’t have to donate.

To my mind, in the last three weeks, Danny Tommo has accomplished more than the last three big Tommy Robinson jamborees put together, and there are now plenty of men standing ready to assemble when the moment calls for it. It has my compete backing and I am looking forward to seeing what they do next. I wish I had half their influence because I have ideas of my own on how to disrupt the system.

There is now no doubt in anyone’s mind that the government has zero intention of stopping the boats, and will continue to distribute dangerous illegal immigrants into our communities. They have made it quite clear they hold us in contempt, and we are obliged to remind them that it cuts both ways.

Danny Tommo is right that it does have to be non-violent and disciplined, and rioting isn’t going to achieve very much. Tommo is establishing techniques that can be replicated elsewhere, so that independent cells can cause disruption without even having to break the law. Forcing them to deploy a massive police escort for migrant buses is terrible optics for the regime, and we can force them to have to escort every bus every time we get wind of migrant movements.

With very little effort, we can make the entire operation expensive and unsustainable and reduce the effectiveness of the police - and force them to spend a fortune on surveillance and OpSec. A successful protest is one that forces authorities to deploy resources in ways they don’t want to.

I think we’re way past voting and family friendly Tommy Robinson jamborees in London. It doesn’t work. We have no option but to up the ante, and if you’re unable to participate, either show your support or just stay out of the way. Or better still, show us how it’s done otherwise. I’m all ears.

If I were to criticise Danny Tommo, I’d say it was time to up the frequency and intensity of protest operations, but for that the movement needs to grow, and we need a lot more men willing to put their freedom on the line. That’s what the establishment fears the most which is why they throw the book at Tommo and Robinson as a deterrent. We need to send a message that we do not fear them.