Tommy Robinson, former leader of the EDL, has written a memoir, called Enemy of the State. According to the blurb:
Former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson descrives the uncomfortable truths about growing up in a town blighted by Islamic extremism and criminal gangs. When he led a street protest in support of British troops, the state set about destroying his livelihood and persecuting his family, before throwing him to the violent Muslim underworld that runs England’s prisons. Finally, they tried to blackmail him into working for them.
The “persecution”, of course, refers to his convictions for travelling to the USA on someone else’s passport and for mortgage fraud.
The book also includes an account of his 2013 departure from the EDL at a press conference with the Quilliam Foundation – according to details in the Huffington Post, Robinson claims that he allowed Quilliam to take the credit in return for money, and he is now scathing about the organisation.
The book, out next week, is being published by The Press News Ltd, which is run by a man named Danny Lockwood; Lockwood previously used the imprint to publish his own Islamic Republic of Dewsbury in late 2011, and he also has a newspaper, called The Press.
In 2014, Lockwood was convicted of assault following an altercation in a pub, although he was subsequently cleared on appeal. Lockwood had been accused of headbutting and hitting a man who had accused him of publishing “discriminatory” articles; Lockwood successfully counter-argued that he had been subjected to abuse and had acted in self-defence. The appeal judges agreed that the headbutt had not been deliberate.
Lockwood was profiled by Hope Not Hate in 2012:
Lockwood first came to our attention in 2003 when his newly launched newspaper started giving a huge amount of positive coverage to the British National Party.
The coverage increased alarmingly when the BNP had three councillors elected in the Kirklees area between 2003 to 2006.
Writing mostly sympathetic articles regarding the BNP councillors, Lockwood even called two of them, Colin Auty and David Exley his personal friends.
With a letters page dominated by BNP members as well, you can understand why Kirklees BNP liked the newspaper as much as it did…
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You had me until you quoted Hope Not Hate. HNH had little credibility,but in publishing a report that referred extensively to Henry Jackson Society and Douglas Murray, and then mysteriously removing those references, it blew what credibility it had.