Who is 'Tommy Robinson', the far-right figurehead of Britain's anti-Muslim riots?

As far-right riots have continued to wreak havoc across parts of the UK, fingers have pointed in many directions to apportion blame.

For some, the fault lies with a political and media class who have been too willing to play up to fears of immigration and Islamism.

For others it is a social media landscape that is prone to misinformation and scaremongering.

One name that has regularly featured in chants by the far-right agitators as they torch libraries, attack mosques and smash windows, however, has been "Tommy Robinson".

The nom-de-guerre of former tanning salon owner Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Robinson has over the past two decades built a violent street movement focused on intimidating the British Muslim community and stoking fears of an Islamic takeover of the UK.

Although his English Defence League no longer exists in official form, the hand of Robinson can still be felt across the British far-right, even after repeated jail sentences and spates in exile abroad.

Middle East Eye takes a look at the life of the Islamophobic figurehead.

Where did Tommy Robinson grow up?

Born in the city of Luton in 1982 to an Irish mother and an English father, Robinson early on developed a reputation for hooliganism, serving a 12-month prison sentence in 2003 after assaulting an off-duty police officer in a drunken scuffle.

The name "Tommy Robinson" supposedly derives from a prominent member of a football hooligan firm in Luton, of which Yaxley-Lennon was a member and was initially used as a means of hiding his identity in combination with an England-flag adorned face mask when demonstrating.

What are Tommy Robinson's political views?

Prior to founding the English Defence League in 2009, Robinson drifted in and out of other far-right groups, including the British National Party (BNP).

However, while the BNP's politics focused on explicit white supremacy and antisemitism - while also trying to exploit anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of 9/11 - the EDL made Islamophobia its primary focus.

Luton had long been a hub of far-right activity, with the neo-fascist National Front particularly active in the 1970s and 80s in targeting the city's large Black and Asian population.

But right from the beginning, Robinson attempted to distinguish his new movement by claiming they were focusing on "Islamic extremism" rather than non-white communities or even Muslims as a whole.

"There are women who don't want to go shopping because there are 20 men in long Islamic dress shouting anti-British stuff and calling for a jihad and stirring up religious and racial hatred. Those are our town centres, and we want them back," Robinson, then still hiding his identity, told the BBC in 2009.

"We want them back, not from the Muslims, but from the jihadist extremists that are operating in the Muslim communities. And the Muslim communities need to deal with their extremists."

Coming in the wake of 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the bombings by al-Qaeda supporters in London on 7 July 2005 that left 56 people dead, there were plenty willing to hear his message.

What do Tommy Robinson and his supporters believe?

The EDL emerged as a part of a wider European far-right network known as the "counter-jihad" movement.

The movement's leadership emphasised the "threat" posed by Muslim immigration to Europe while toning down earlier neo-fascist obsessions with Jews, non-white immigration in general, or opposition to liberal democracy - even if all these issues often bubbled just beneath the surface still.

At times, Robinson and leaders like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands would try and exploit fears that Muslims posed a threat to secularism, women's rights or LGBTQ+ rights, issues traditionally associated with their opponents.

Another important pillar was staunch Zionism - Israel came to be seen by counter-jihadists as the vanguard of the fight against Muslim terrorism and a state which was uncompromising in its willingness to use force to suppress a largely Muslim population.

Even the EDL's name resembles that of the Jewish Defence League, a much older far-right Zionist organisation based in the US and Europe that has hosted Robinson at a number of events.

Another significant pro-Israel, anti-Muslim group is the Middle East Forum, which provided roughly $60,000 on three demonstrations defending Robinson’s legal trial.

Some links have also emerged with far-right Hindu and Sikh organisations that approve of the movement's anti-Muslim sentiments.

Robinson's earlier claims that he only targets "extremists" bear little resemblance to his rhetoric or actions since then, however.

"I'm not far-right…I'm just opposed to Islam. I believe it's backward and it's fascist," he said in 2016.

"The current refugee crisis is nothing to do with refugees. It's a Muslim invasion of Europe."

He also pushed the common conspiracy theory that British police were refusing to prosecute sexual assault of children by Asian men because they were afraid of being seen as racist.

"We have a two-tier police force that treats crimes within the Muslim community differently," he said in 2014.

And regardless of Robinson's own views, the EDL since the beginning was filled with explicit neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Christian fundamentalists and other far-right disciples.

It was the preponderance of these other elements, Robinson claims, that led him to publicly leave the EDL at an event hosted by the counter-extremist Quilliam Foundation in 2013.

However, this did little to temper his views and he soon attempted to set up a British wing of the Pegida movement, a German anti-Muslim group.

At a rally for the German group in Dresden, he said he wanted a Europe “free from halal food”, “free from Muslim rape gangs”, free from “the visual scars of minarets” and the “sounds of call to prayer” and free from people “who cover their faces, walk around our streets and refuse to integrate”.

Has Tommy Robinson been prosecuted?

Robinson's propensity for violence and law-breaking has often made it difficult for him to operate consistently.

He has received prison sentences and community orders since 2003 for, among other things, football brawling, travelling on another man's passport to the US, mortgage fraud, possession of drugs, threatening behaviour and breach of a court order.

He has also received sentences for contempt of court in 2017 and 2019, the latter of which saw him jailed for nine months after filming people involved in a criminal trial and broadcasting the footage on social media.

UK: Tommy Robinson loses libel case against Syrian schoolboy

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In 2021, he lost a libel lawsuit over his slurs against a Syrian schoolboy who was filmed being attacked at school. In a video posted on Facebook, Robinson had claimed the boy "violently attacks young English girls in his school", comments for which he was sued.

On 29 July Robinson fled the UK, a day before he was set to again appear in court for allegedly breaching an order not to repeat the lies he made about the schoolboy. From abroad, his location is unclear, he has said the rioters have “legitimate concerns” and called for “mass deportations”.

It is worth noting that the riots that have taken place across the country do not stem solely from Robinson's supporters.

Another key group involved is Patriotic Alternative, a white supremacist group whose leadership have openly praised Adolf Hitler. Their neo-Nazi leanings have also led them to try and exploit anger at the Israeli assault on Gaza to spread anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than solely anti-Muslim sentiment.

And regardless, few would dispute that there are many reasons for the outburst of racist and Islamophobic sentiment in Britain - and that they can't solely be attributed to a Lutonian on holiday abroad.