THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Robinson might have spoken for many if he weren’t so unsavoury

Robinson might have spoken for many if he weren’t so unsavoury

Re: “Exaggerated views?”, Have your Say, June 23.

Nigel Pike challenges me to admit that my views on Tommy Robinson, the English “activist” and troublemaker, are exaggerated, but I cannot oblige. In view of Robinson’s numerous convictions for violent and abusive behaviour and other misdemeanours too numerous to mention, my description of him as a convicted fraudster and football hooligan is, if anything, somewhat restrained.
 I also need to point out to Mr Pike that the mainstream media reporting of the recent demonstration in London in support of Robinson was more accurate than he claims. Even the irritatingly left-wing newspaper The Guardian reported that thousands (not hundreds, as claimed by Mr Pike) participated, and named some of the speakers, including MEP Gerard Batten.
Like their counterparts in many other countries, the British white working class has had to bear the brunt of immigration and of economic changes, which have transformed Britain, and British society, in recent decades. The political class has largely ignored their plight. 
They are badly in need of charismatic leaders to champion their cause, and Robinson could have fulfilled that role if only he had not been such an unsavoury, unruly and dishonest character.
I cannot understand why people such as Mr Pike, who are so agitated by perceived and largely imaginary threats to freedom of speech in faraway Britain, seem not to care about much greater threats in Thailand under the current regime.
There is however one aspect of British current affairs which ought to be of interest here. Some of those participating in a large anti-Brexit demonstration in London on Saturday revived the disgraceful claim by some “Remainers” that those who voted for Britain to leave the EU (and many were white working class) were too stupid to know what they were voting for.
Does that ring a bell? Yes, of course one remembers the equally disgraceful description by some in the self-styled Bangkok “elite” of red shirts as “ignorant rural buffalo” and “uneducated”. Maybe democracy in Britain isn’t as mature and well established as many, including myself, had assumed.
Robin Grant

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