We hear all the time about miscarriages of justice in our legal system and in fairness most of the time it is down to the public’s lack of understanding of the law and how it works but what I have just witnessed with Tommy Robinson being arrested on an imaginary breach of the peace charge and then in a truly unprecedented short period of time, his charges were changed to contempt of court, he was put before a judge and then sentenced to thirteen months in prison, in less than four hours. That to me is nothing other than a Travesty of Justice…

I honestly cannot believe that this has been allowed to happen and I personally feel that a full investigation into what has actually happened should take place immediately and possible charges brought against those responsible, especially should anything whatsoever happen to Tommy Robinson whilst he is incarcerated, which sadly is a very high probability as there is a price on his head in prison.

I watched the full Live stream of Tommy outside the courts in Leeds, all one hour and fifteen minutes of it and I did watch it with a critical view because I was seriously trying to ascertain what it was that Tommy had done or said, that could be deemed as a breach of the peace. I found nothing whatsoever and was absolutely shocked that they just blatantly arrested him for a breach of the peace for two main reasons.

Firstly, in Section 24 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), under S24 1(d) which applies in this scenario, an officer can only arrest someone whom he has reasonable grounds for suspecting them to be committing an offence. That clearly was not the case as Tommy had meticulously made sure that he did not divulge any information that had not been previously released by the mainstream media and he most certainly was not threatening anyone with violence, in fact, he was shoved by one person and a woman who was there actually received death threats and the police present were simply not interested. Tommy most certainly did not try to retaliate when provoked, so the breach of the peace arrest was most certainly farcical in itself.

The other thing I find alarming is the fact that a breach of the peace is not actually a criminal offence, it is common law and you cannot be imprisoned for it, nor can it be used as a breach of a suspended sentence. This does lead me to wonder if this is the reason why they switched the charge to a ‘Contempt of Court’? Had he actually committed such an offence then that would breach his suspended sentence and he would get the three months plus whatever the judge decided to set, I think the maximum is two years. So I can only presume the judge gave him twelve months plus the three months. Unfortunately, due to the gagging order placed on the case, we will not find out what actually happened until after the final case of the grooming gang, which has already been going on for years.

Now just stop and think about that for a moment, twenty seven men and two women accused of grooming girls, some as young as eleven years old and it has taken years to get their case to court, yet a man who is doing nothing more than trying to raise awareness of these cases by reporting on them, is arrested, put before a judge and sentenced to prison in less than four hours, how can that ever be justified as being right? It also has been said that his solicitor was told he had been released and so it may also be a case that he never had any form of defence in court but as I said we will not know because the judge has conveniently put a gagging order in place and nothing can be revealed about what actually took place in that courtroom for the time being. If that doesn’t concern you, then it really should.

So what about the contempt of court charge itself, Tommy Robinson certainly did not seem to do anything in his Live stream that I could see, that could ever be classed as contempt of court, there was certainly nothing to suggest that anything Tommy was doing outside of the courts grounds, could have come even close to ‘seriously’ impeding or prejudicing the case that had already been concluded and it was simply a sentencing court. Once again we will have to wait and see what the judgement states once the other grooming case has been concluded but to me, it seems Tommy Robinson’s rights under Article 5, 10 and 11 of ECHR have most certainly been breached and I certainly hope that Tommy’s legal team are on the ball and get him out of prison just as quickly as they can. I also hope that grounds can be found to sue the authorities for false arrest and false imprisonment. If there is one thing I learned very soon in my law degree is that no one is above the law, not even judges and this certainly seems to be one case where a judge needs to be reminded of that fact.

It would be a very worrying state of affairs if the judiciary were ever freely able to use the law to unlawfully silence others. This would only lead to a breakdown of trust in the law which would then undoubtedly lead to anarchy and civil unrest. Something that needs to be avoided at all costs because that would only ever lead to innocent people being hurt and/or killed on both sides. I have seen a few worrying videos suggesting this in the past and I fully realise there is a lot of anger and uncertainty at the moment but the law is the thread that holds the fabric of our society together, do not be rushing to break that thread or things could turn far worse than they are at the moment. In the same way they say fight fire with fire, learn to fight law with law, it is the only way there can ever be any chance of a successful outcome.

Let the law take its course and justice will prevail…

Marty Caine

Leader of Engage

www.engage-uk.org.uk