Former Ukip leader Gerard Batten reacts to Tommy Robinson verdict
Episode Stats
Words per minute
159.33835
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
3
sentences flagged
Summary
Jared Batten, former leader of the UK Independence Party, speaks outside the Old Bailey after Tommy Robinson was convicted of contempt of court for allegedly contempting a court order banning him from speaking in public. He tells the BBC's Nick Davies outside the court that he is shocked by the verdict.
Transcript
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I'm outside the Old Bailey with Mr. Jared Batten, the former leader of UKIP.
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You're welcome. I'm pleased to be able to speak to you.
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Well, what can I say? I keep thinking I can't be surprised by what happens in this country,
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I followed this case. I was here at the last hearing in the Old Bailey
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Well, it was obvious that no offence had been committed.
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The judge then obviously didn't want to deal with the case
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so he put it upstairs to the Attorney General, the government's pet lawyer.
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And several months later, we come back on trumped-up charges of contempt of court.
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Essentially, because as the convicts were going back into court,
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he said to them, how do you feel about the verdict?
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It's unbelievable, but unfortunately not unbelievable.
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We had a trumped-up charge, and we've had a political verdict.
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I'm so sorry to be standing outside the principal court of the country, the Old Bailey,
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and having to say now that we have a corrupt legal system.
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When you were standing before the European elections,
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you stood up and very defiantly supported Tommy Robinson, even then, as the leader of a party.
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And it takes a level of fearlessness for that, and some would say insanity, given the media climate.
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But in all seriousness on this, where did you get the fortitude to stand up for that,
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knowing that it would put the media against you, it would put the political elites against you,
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During my lifetime, I've never had to go to war.
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I've had a comfortable life built on what my father's generation did in the Second World War
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and what generations of Englishmen and women have done in the previous hundreds of years.
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Defended this country and worked to keep it free and independent.
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So what courage does it take to stand up and defend a man
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who has stood up and tried to defend our country
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against one of the greatest threats that faces Western civilisation now,
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which is literalist, fundamentalist, extremist Islam, the ideology of Islam.
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My God, if I haven't got the guts to stand up and just speak and defend somebody like that
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and speak out against this evil, then I don't deserve to live in a free country.
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And I think, who was it one of your American founders of the Constitution said,
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you know, people who want security but are not prepared to defend it don't deserve it.
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Let's talk then about the forecast of the country here.
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Do you believe that this will serve to further cement the lack of free speech in the UK
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or do you think this could actually have a galvanising effect, what happened to Tommy,
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and really start moving the pendulum the other way perhaps?
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I don't know what's going to happen because now you can be convicted
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for reading what Winston Churchill said about Islam in 1898
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when he said he wrote a foreword to a book that he'd written
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Islam in a man is as dangerous as rabies in a dog.
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you can be found guilty of hate speech or some other Trump's up charge, I don't know.
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You are not allowed now to have freedom of opinion about things.
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I'm not talking about inciting hatred or inciting violence or whatever against individual people.
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I'm talking about the ability to address ideas and ideologies.
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You can now be convicted of crimes for doing that.
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We're living in a very, very dangerous place now in our country.
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And how do I think this verdict is going to affect free speech?
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Well, for one thing, all the lying smear merchants of the mainstream media
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won't now be able to go up to people going into court and saying,
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Except, of course, they'll be exempt because it doesn't apply to them.
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and people who the establishment and the media don't like.
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I think what's happened here today is sickening.
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And what the aftermath of this will be sickening,
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because you'll see the political establishment saying he's a convict,
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with all the people that support him are thugs,
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and you will have that message amplified and repeated over and over again
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by our rotten, lying, smear merchant mainstream media of the BBC and Sky and Channel 4.
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We are sleepwalking in this country towards a police state, a dictatorship,
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a gulag of the mind where you're not allowed to speak your opinions.