#FreeTommy!

We have a crisis in the UK. A dilemma for which a cause has risen around and now we even have a martyr to this cause. The person I am referring to is Tommy Robinson - real name: Stephen Lennon.

As persona non grata for virtually a decade, Robinson continually remains under threat from people who benefit from curtailing free speech. A swift rebuke to Tommy's right to disseminate information proved fast in delivery when police fell on him outside Leeds Crown Court yesterday. Tommy was streaming a live report on a case within the court, regarding a number of men convicted of abusing girls, one of many Muslim grooming gangs unearthed in recent years.

Acting with a decisiveness one would think lawmakers should have enacted upon the rape gangs, police swooped in on Robinson and arrested him for 'Breach of the Peace.' Despite the fact that journalists outside of a courtroom are common practice, this failed to deter their rapid execution of justice and Robinson now faces 13 months in prison. Allegedly, imprisonment comes as a result of breaking a condition of his suspended sentence for a previous incident. A police law blog defines breaching the peace as follows:

Officers should not forget:

- there must be sufficiently real and present threat to the peace to justify the extreme step of depriving of a person of their liberty when they are not at the time acting unlawfully;

- the apprehension of the breach must relate to the near future;

- arrest or restraint without arrest may be unlawful if disproportionate and if there are less drastic means of preventing a breach;

- continued detention will be lawful only for such period as is necessary to prevent a breach recurring;

- the obligation to bring an arrested person before a court remains - and this must be done as soon as reasonably practicable. Failure to do so may result in unlawful detention.

It fails to escape notice that a handful of people filming in a public place on a newsworthy topic, hardly constitutes a breach of the peace. Neither did the litany of abuse perpetrated by gangs in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford and many other locations. The result of such peace came due to authorities turning a blind eye to systemic rapes of girls as young as 11. Freedom of speech is not free. Though Nye Bevan referred to the NHS in the original quote, to paraphrase his words: "freedom will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it. Be in no doubt that there are those folk. I am one of them."

#freetommy, #news, #minds, #uk, #freespeech, #tommyrobinson.