Bartholomew's Notes

From Mail Online:

Pro-Leave demonstrators donning yellow vests took over three bridges in central London today as they demanded Britain’s exit from the EU.

Campaigners chanting ‘Brexit now’ stopped cars from crossing Westminster Bridge, Tower Bridge and then Waterloo Bridge as Theresa May held crunch talks with EU leaders in Brussels.

A live stream, hosted on a Facebook page titled Fighting for Justice, showed yellow vest-wearing activists blocking the bridge for about 20 minutes. They chanted “Brexit now” before they were moved on by police.

…The identified themselves as the ‘Fighting for Justice’ Group, which was set up following the deaths of George Wilkinson, Josh McGuinness, both 16, and 17 year-old Harry Rice.

The three teenagers were killed by drink driver Jaynesh Chudasama when he lost control of his Audi A5 trying to overtake another vehicle in Hayes, west London.

Former EDL leader and far-right figure Tommy Robinson lent his support to the families by attending the court hearings, which ended with Chudasama being jailed for 13 years.

I previously blogged about this campaign, also known as “Justice for our Boys”, in September: supporters claim that Chudasama killed the boys deliberately as an act of jihad, but that the police and CPS refused to take this into account as part of a cover up. The organiser of the protests seems to have been James Goddard, who a few months ago received cheers when he told a “Free Tommy” rally that the UK is run by an elite of “Satanic paedophiles” – although Tracy Blackwell, the mother of one of the boys, has a higher media profile.

The campaign has been a visible presence at fringe-right marches and demonstrations associated with Robinson, and in recent weeks it has expanded to include various grievances associated with the populist movement around Robinson. Blackwell recently gave a speech outside the Royal Courts of Justice in which – while holding a Bible – she described Melanie Shaw and Sabine McNeill as prisoners who should be freed (see 14:15 here): the “Free Melanie Shaw” campaign (backed by Robinson and UKIP leader Gerard Batten) alleges that Shaw has been imprisoned as part of a cover-up of VIP sex abuse, whereas McNeill was convicted just yesterday for offences related to her promotion of distressing false claims about a murderous Satanic Ritual Abuse cult in Hampstead, which saw parents of children at a school in the area being falsely accused on social media and threatened.

Videos uploaded to the Fighting for Justice Facebook page suggest that Brexit was the main focus of yesterday’s protests, with Remainers denounced as traitors and passers-by being asked to say whether they were British or European. Goddard gave a short interview on the subject to Sputnik, and a clip of the protest was promoted on Twitter by Leave.Eu with the commentary “This is what happens when the Establishment ignores the will of the people”. This clip prompted criticism of the protesters – Westminster Bridge leads south to St Thomas’ Hospital opposite Parliament just across the river, and a rapid response car ambulance making an emergency journey was forced to stop (Goddard says it was let through, but the extract suggests that the protesters didn’t anticipate the problem and were slow to react – and one protester apparently initially told the driver to take a different route).

However, the Facebook uploads also show that Blackwell used her megaphone to refer to tax evasion by “elites”, and that she urged people to investigate “788-790 Finchley Road”. This address, and others nearby, is used by many companies as a service address, and a campaigner named Gordon Bowden (of “Pandora’s Box Investigations”) believes that he has uncovered a multi-million pound fraud associated with the location involving prominent politicians. Bowden’s website also points out that the address is “in a pre-dominantly Jewish part of North London”, although he adds that he not anti-Semitic. The protest also returned to the Royal Courts of Justice, where Blackwell highlighted other campaigners outside protesting against the family courts and perceived injustices around “joint enterprise” convictions.

The Fighting for Justice Facebook page includes rhetoric suggestive of “Freeman of the Land” beliefs (e.g. “Know the law people which is common law No Loss No Harm No Injury.. they do not like it when they know you do not fear them”), and the acronym “WWG1WGA” makes an appearance – a reference to the American “QAnon” conspiracy, which has a number of British supporters. WWG1WGA also appears on the yellow vest worn by Goddard in his Twitter avatar, along with slogans that include “Have you found Jesus?” and the obscure phrase “Hats off constables” [UPDATE: A reader suggests that this may relate to a belief that a police officer cannot perform an arrest unless wearing a police hat or helmet].

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