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Why Tommy Robinson is in prison
As Nigel Farage pointed out last week, far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known to the public as Tommy Robinson, has been in prison several times for several different reasons. He has a string of convictions for fraud, public order and drug offences, as well as contempt of court. Whilst Elon Musk might have millions believe that Yaxley-Lennon is the political prisoner of a woke/tyrannical regime clamping down on freedom of expression (aka the promotion of islamophobia), the truth is far less conspiratorial.
In 2021, Yaxley-Lennon lost a defamation claim brought against him by Jamal Hijazi (Hijazi v Yaxley-Lennon [2021] EWHC 2008 (QB)). The background to the claim was a video that had 'gone viral' in November 2018 showing Hijazi – then a 15-year-old Syrian refugee - being attacked on his school playing field during a lunchbreak. The video showed Hijazi being dragged to the floor by his neck with water then being forced down his mouth, simulating the ‘waterboarding’ torture technique. At the time, Hijazi had a cast on his arm, having suffered a broken wrist in a previous attack. His younger sister had reportedly also been the subject of a separate attack at the school.
The video caused national outrage and attracted considerable sympathy for Hijazi and his family, including from the MailOnline, which published an article under the headline ‘He escapes war and tyranny, only to be bullied by some low-life thug in the UK’: massive outpouring of support for ‘water-boarded’ Syrian refugee, 15, as donations soar past £108,000 after attack that shocked the nation.
Yaxley-Lennon saw matters differently, and on 28 and 29 November 2018 published two videos on Facebook suggesting that Hijazi was a bully himself. He specifically accused Hijazi of violently assaulting and injuring a young girl, and threatening to stab a second child. Hijazi sued for libel.
At trial, Yaxley-Lennon maintained that his allegations were true, relying on a handful of school children as his witnesses. This defence was categorically rejected by Mr Justice Nicklin following a four-day trial in 2021. The evidence given by Yaxley-Lennon’s witnesses was found to be wholly unreliable and/or dishonest.
Yaxley-Lennon was ordered to pay Hijazi £100,000 in damages, as well as his legal costs. Significantly, Yaxley-Lennon was made the subject of an injunction prohibiting him from repeating the defamatory allegations or similar allegations about Hijazi. Such an injunction is normal when a libel claim succeeds.
You can read more about the original trial at our blog here.
For around 18 months Yaxley-Lennon complied with the injunction. However, in February 2023 he appeared to have a change of heart and repeated the false allegations against Hijazi in a film called Silenced published on YouTube, and in online interviews with Gareth Icke, Gavin McInnes and Emerald Robinson.
In June 2023, at the request of Hijazi’s solicitors, the Solicitor General made an application for Yaxley-Lennon’s committal to prison for contempt of court, alleging four breaches of the injunction.
Yaxley-Lennon was ordered by the Court to attend a directions hearing on 29 July 2024 and warned that a warrant for his arrest might be issued if he did not attend.
On 27 July 2024, Yaxley-Lennon seemingly decided to double down and play the martyr card. He organised a march from the Royal Courts of Justice to Trafalgar Square, where he broadcast the Silenced film. He did not attend the directions hearing and left the UK. A warrant was issued for his arrest.
In August 2024 a second application for contempt was made, in which six further breaches were alleged. These related to the playing of the Silenced film in Trafalgar Square, the sharing of the film on X, the publication of the film on YouTube, and online interviews in which the prohibited allegations were said to be repeated, including with Brogan Garrit Smith and Jordan Peterson.
Yaxley-Lennon was arrested on the warrant on 24 October 2024 and brought before the Court on 28 October 2024. He admitted the 10 alleged breaches and the presiding judge Mr Justice Johnson proceeded to sanction him.
The judgment in HM Solicitor-General v Yaxley Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) [2024] EWHC 2732 (KB) provides helpful guidance on the purpose of contempt proceedings arising from breaches of injunctions and their role in the administration of justice. If Musk’s followers took the time to read it, they might also understand why Yaxley-Lennon’s imprisonment was inevitable.
In his judgment Johnson J explained that contempt proceedings of this nature have “everything to do with enforcing the rule of law and facilitating the delivery of justice by protecting the integrity of legal proceedings”. They are not concerned with relitigating the original matter, or reviewing a trial judge’s findings and/or any decision to grant an injunction. Their purpose is to ensure that the rule of law is being applied. If an individual wishes to challenge an underlying decision made by the court, they must seek to appeal that decision and follow the correct procedure rather than disobey the court. Yaxley-Lennon had chosen not to seek permission to appeal the outcome of the trial or the granting of the injunction. As Johnson J put it: ‘In a democratic society underpinned by the rule of law, court injunctions must be obeyed. A party who has lost a case is entitled to appeal, or to disagree with the result, or to criticise the decision. But they are not entitled to disobey a court injunction.’
The purpose of imposing a sanction is three-fold: (1) to punish the breach of the injunction, (2) encourage belated compliance and (3) to deter future breaches of injunctions (National Highways Ltd v Buse [2021] EWHC 3404 (QB)). As such, the sanction includes both penal and coercive elements. The coercive aspect of a sanction is intended to secure future compliance with court orders. This element of a sanction can be remitted provided the contemnor ‘purges’ their contempt.
The sanctions that can be imposed for contempt are a period of imprisonment, a fine of unlimited amount and confiscation of assets. A Court may choose to suspend a prison sentence.
The maximum term that a contemnor can be committed to prison is two years. This remains the case regardless of how many separate acts of contempt are proven to have occurred (re R (A Minor) (Contempt: Sentence) [1994] 1 WLR 487).
A contemnor will normally receive a reduced sanction where they have admitted the contempt. The amount of reduction that is applied is linked to when the admission is made. An early admission will attract the greatest reduction. Johnson J applied criminal law principles, whereby the maximum reduction in sentence for a guilty plea not made until the start of the trial is 10%.
Courts may also impose a lesser sanction where the judge believes it is likely that there will be future compliance with court orders.
Johnson J explained that whilst the motivation of the contemnor does not need to be considered, the culpability of their contempt is relevant. This looks to the level of involvement and awareness the contemnor had when they breached the injunction. In Yaxley-Lennon’s case it was found that he held the highest level of culpability for each breach of the injunction as the breaches took place over a long period of time, the film remained on social media, he was not subject to any pressure from others and took a leading role in the publication of the material. Johnson J found that ‘there was a degree of sophistication in the breaches in that they involved the planned release of material in a way to seek to achieve maximum coverage.’
As with criminal offences, breaches of injunctions can be found to have ‘aggravating’ factors. The presence of such factors will normally result in a heftier sanction. In this case the commission of further breaches after the first contempt application had been issued was significantly aggravating. Previous findings of contempt can also be held to aggravate the seriousness of breaches of an injunction. Yaxley-Lennon had previous findings of contempt made against him, first in 2017 and again in 2019 and 2022 (one of which had related to his disruption of a grooming trial). These were found to aggravate the breaches as he should have been aware of the seriousness of breaching court orders.
Johnson J found that Yaxley-Lennon showed no intention of complying with the injunction in the future, remarking ‘all his actions suggest that he regards himself as being above the law, and not subject to the same requirement to comply with injunctions of the court as everybody else.’ This, combined with the high level of culpability in respect of each breach and Yaxley-Lennon’s lack of engagement in the proceedings until he was brought before the court, led Johnson J to conclude that there was no realistic prospect of rehabilitation and that a non-custodial sanction could not be justified.
After applying a 10% discount for the late admissions, a term of 18 months’ imprisonment (less 3 days for the time already spent in custody) was imposed. Johnson J explained that this was made up of 14 months (less 3 days) for the punitive element of the sanction, and four months for the coercive element. Yaxley-Lennon was also ordered to pay the legal costs of the applications.
Yaxley-Lennon is entitled to apply to the court to seek to ‘purge his contempt’ and have his sentence reduced by four months. This is done by demonstrating his commitment to complying with the injunction going forward. To do this he could remove the Silenced film from social media and provide an appropriate undertaking or assurance to the Court. Whether this happens or not, Yaxley-Lennon will serve one half of his sentence.
Contrary to what might be suggested on social media, Yaxley-Lennon is not a political prisoner – he has not been imprisoned for his views on immigration or race. He is a seasoned criminal who has repeatedly defied court orders or otherwise sought to interfere with the administration of justice. In this case, he published serious libels about a schoolboy who had been the victim of an assault. He had the opportunity to prove his allegations were true at trial and was unable to do so. Even then, there was no question of him being imprisoned until he brazenly and repeatedly breached a injunction. The injunction is narrow in scope (only covering his allegations against Hijazi which were found to be untrue following a lengthy trial) and does not prohibit him from otherwise ventilating his far right views on Muslims and immigration.
Musk and others may say this is an injustice and a political act, but the reality is that it is a textbook example of an independent judicial system upholding the rule of law against an entirely unsympathetic character.
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Articles are intended as an introduction to the topic and do not constitute legal advice.