Facebook and PayPal remove UK ‘yellow vest’ organiser James Goddard’s accounts Facebook said it removed James Goddard’s pages and groups for ‘violating our policies on hate speech’

A yellow vest-wearing Tommy Robinson supporter at the centre of the protests that have seen MPs abused outside Parliament has had his account deleted by Facebook amid calls for police to take action.

James Goddard said, on his still-active Twitter account, that he had been “silenced” by Facebook and urged people to send him money online, adding: “I rely on the support of real people to carry on doing what we’re doing.”

i understands Mr Goddard has had at least four pages and groups removed in total, including one in December.

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‘We will not tolerate hate speech’

A spokesperson for Facebook said: “We have removed James Goddard’s Facebook pages and groups for violating our policies on hate speech. We will not tolerate hate speech on Facebook which creates and environment of intimidation and which may provoke real-world violence.”

Mr Goddard has featured prominently in a number of videos outside Parliament posted on social media in which Anna Soubry and the journalist Owen Jones were surrounded and harassed by a mob.

In another video from last year, Mr Goddard was filmed shouting over the heads of police officers: “If you want a war, I’ll give you a war. You want it – it’s on. Fair game.”

A photograph on his Twitter feed shows Mr Goddard on a London train carrying a defaced EU flag with the words “f**k EU” and “No Deal”.

Mr Goddard has previously taken the stage at a Tommy Robinson rally in the capital, where he told the crowd: “This is a message for the Establishment, this is a message for the Left. We are coming for you.”

In another video he said: “We voted for Brexit because we wanted to retake control of our country… this is our land and we’re taking it back. If the political class don’t like it and they are going to see a revolution like they have never seen before.”

‘Now they’ve shut down my PayPal as well as my Facebook’

Hope Not Hate last night said Ms Soubry and journalists including Kay Burley and Owen Jones were targeted by a “hardcore element of far right ‘yellow vest’ protesters”.

Linked groups of yellow vest, with many far-right elements, were already planning to hold protests in cities including Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds this weekend.

Mr Goddard also had his PayPal account shut down, in line with a number of previous far-right activists, including Tommy Robinson, whose account was shut down in November.

Other UK ‘yellow vest’ groups remain on Facebook.