Anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, is a convicted criminal and one of the UK’s most prominent far-right activists.
Robinson, who now calls himself a journalist, travelled to Ireland this week and has said he is here to make a documentary about anti-immigration protests taking place around the country. He said he has not been invited to Ireland and is “not being accommodated by anyone.”
Robinson, whose criminal convictions include assaulting an off-duty police officer, stalking, fraud and drug possession, has served multiple prison sentences. In 2013 he was jailed for attempting to use a false passport to enter the US.
He was a founder of the Islamophobic English Defence League and a former member of the British National Party and various other groups with fascist or white nationalist links.
Over the years, he has raised millions of pounds in donations from followers. In 2021 he declared bankruptcy after losing a costly defamation case resulting from him falsely accusing a refugee schoolboy of attacking a girl.
In 2019 he had his official Facebook page and Instagram profile removed because he posted “in ways that violate our policies around organised hate”, according to the social network at the time. Facebook said Robinson’s page had “repeatedly broken these standards, posting material that uses dehumanising language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims”.
In 2018 he was jailed for contempt of court for filming outside the trial of men later convicted of sexual abuse which was the subject of reporting restrictions.
