BORROWED FROM the Knights Templar, who ruled Jerusalem during the days of the Crusades, the insignia of the English Defence League reads “In Hoc Signo Vinces”, or “In This Sign You Will Conquer”.
Its members think a lot of the Knights Templar. Yesterday, Tommy Robinson, the organisation’s leader, sat in a busy pub bearing the knights’ name off London’s Fleet Street at lunchtime.
Robinson, who lives in Luton, does not come to London often, but he came across the pub during a recent visit to his lawyers to discuss some of the prosecutions and convictions he faces. “Isn’t it great?” he says, looking at a painting of a long-dead knight.
For more than a week, Robinson, whose mother, Rita Carroll, left Dublin for Birmingham at the age of six, has been a feature on British television. The reason: the Norwegian massacre carried out by Anders Behring Breivik.
Breivik had claimed links with the league. He also, in his rambling manifesto, criticised it for being “anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-Nazi”, and for accepting non-white members.
The Norwegian’s description of the league is not one that would be shared by those who saw it in action on British streets over the last year, where it has begun to replace the British National Party as the face of white extremism.
Robinson quickly decries the Norwegian killings, but he does not want to decry the beliefs that led to Breivik’s actions. He agrees with them: “It has been a disaster from humanity’s point of view, the killings.” However, the slaughter “might wake Europeans up”, he says. “I feel so passionately about stopping Islamism and Sharia law and what is happening to our communities, but I would hate to [see] this atrocity be the thing that brings it to the forefront.
“He planned all of this, he even planned his court case, so it is so wrong to let his message out there, but I so strongly want that message out there, do you know what I mean, I don’t disagree at all with his views that Islam is a serious threat to Europe,” he says.
In Robinson’s world, the United Kingdom is facing “growing Islamification”, where millions of Muslims, supported by “terrifying” birth rates, and obeying Saudi Arabian-funded “command-and-control” mosques, are gradually taking over.
Liberals, who regard the league as nothing but a bunch of ill-educated thugs, know nothing, Robinson believes. “They don’t know anything. They don’t know what Luton is like. They don’t know what other places like Luton are like.
“I know so many people who have been attacked. We are eating halal meat. I’m Catholic, I don’t want to eat meat blessed by another God, but I am eating it on a daily basis without even being told about it. My kids are having to visit mosques as part of the national curriculum in school. If you want to go swimming on a Tuesday you can’t because it is the Muslim swimming day. It is just renamed women-only days,” he goes on.
“The whole face of our town and celebrating anything that is English is being suppressed. Icknield High School, last St George’s Day, completely banned the emblem of St George. If anyone brought in a pin badge they were suspended. What sort of message is that sending out? That we should be ashamed to be English? That is why our kids are walking around with their heads down and theirs with their heads held high because it is cool to be Islamic and it is not cool to be English,” he says.
Robinson’s real name is Stephen Lennon, which he has not used since he marched, wearing a balaclava, in Luton in 2004 against Muslims who had protested against the Iraq war “recruiting for, and promoting jihad”, in his words, without police hindrance.
However, his counter-protest was met with a different police response. “That is when the two-tier system became apparent to everyone. It wasn’t hooligans, it was the community – men, women and children. We were met by police on horseback with coshes out.”
In March 2009, Robinson was involved again when an Iraq homecoming parade for the Royal Anglian Regiment was heckled by a group of Muslims, who shouted “Anglian soldiers go to hell” and “Butchers of Basra”.
“When it comes to the war, I am against the war, I think it was an unjust war, a war for oil, but all those boys and girls out there suffering and dying, they were there to broker peace and then they came home to that reception,” he says.
“It wasn’t the fact that they protested; it was the fact that they were allowed to do it, that they were facilitated to do it. The Luton police knew that they were going to do it, they allowed them to stand right next to the soldiers to do it.”
Before and since, Robinson claims he has been persecuted by the authorities, detailing a conspiracy around charges he has faced, from racially aggravated abuse to criminal damage of property, while he also faced the freezing of his assets last year.
“They put a restraint order on me so that I can only have £250 a week. I have lost my plumbing business. I have nearly lost two of the houses that I own because I am behind on my mortgages. They just f****d my whole life. They have put pressure wherever they can put pressure,” he says.
Extremist Muslims, he claims, had attacked his tanning-shop business.
“They’ve attacked my Mum’s house; they went for my cousin’s house with a shotgun. People have jumped out of cars and chased me with knives.
“It is a daily thing. It is like walking a gauntlet going down my own town. I have had to move the three kids to different schools. I won’t go near the schools, I don’t want anyone to know that they are my kids,” he says.
To offer evidence, he replays his voicemail, containing 56 messages – including one from a Norwegian radio station. Another is an expletive-filled rant from a man threatening to “get” him. “I could play them all day long.”
His parents, Rita and Tommy, disagree with his views. “They disagree with it, strongly. I believe that they don’t understand Islam, as many people don’t understand Islam. But if it was my son doing this I wouldn’t want him to be doing it either. But I say, let it be me, rather than my son. That is the way that I look at it, let our generation be the one that stands up, rather than our children’s generation. I don’t think the next generation will forgive us for standing by and doing nothing,” he says.
Robinson’s prediction for his own future is as bleak as his prediction for his country. Asked where he will be in five years’ time, he stops briefly, thinking. “Where? I’ll be in jail. For what? For whatever they can get me for.
“I am not saying that I have never committed a crime. I don’t claim to have a polish on a halo. I am not an angel, I never have been and I never will be. I am a working class boy from a working class estate,” he says.
Despite the evidence to the contrary, he argues that the league’s support is growing and broadening, attracting increasing numbers of women and the middle-aged. However, the future does not lie in street protests, he argues.
“We want to hold conferences to attract middle England so that we can talk to them, because if we just go and protest we are not getting our message across a lot of the time. We have loads that we want to do but we have no money to kick them off,” he says.
“There are people of similar views in higher society. But if we accept that Islam is not going to integrate and that this is not going to work and that there are five million of them here, then that is terrifying.
“So people are choosing to bury their heads and just pretend that it is not happening. But it is happening, and there is an elephant in the room and everyone is pretending that it is not there.”
Finishing his pub lunch in the Knights Templar, Robinson insists powerful supporters lie in the wings, out of sight. “So many high-end people support us. I was in the Temple [law buildings] a few weeks back where all the lawyers are.
“I went for a meal in there with other barristers – not the ones representing me, but ones that want to help and believe in what we are doing. All the images in there were of the knights. I thought, maybe there are Knights Templars after all. Maybe it is the legal system.”