I take he is really just an everyday guy thrust into speaking out because his elected officials have utterly failed him. It takes some balls to put your life and livelihood at risk. It's hard to control your emotions when events like this take place. In general someone like this on the right tries to clarify themselves but are branded for life. Someone on the left does the same or far far worse, and they are given a pass if ever even reported on. The double standard is not an accident.
He was educated to GCSE level (and did quite well - he's not stupid) which is roughly equivalent to a high school diploma in the US as I understand it. Like many working class men, he applied for an apprenticeship and was working at an airport doing that. He also at some point had several small businesses on the go. So yes, just an average working Joe.
I think the scene needs to be set somewhat in terms of what happened. At the time he went active politically, the left wing Labour party were in power, their ground level activists would go into local Mosques and offer to help deal with things like Islamaphobia in exchange for votes (Muslims as a group tend to vote as a bloc). I saw this first hand as they still do it today and up until 3 years ago was involved with friends with a local Imam, regularly attended Zikr and helped to prepare the food. Essentially, for votes, they would receive light touch policing.
Now comes the tricky bit. Most Muslims in the UK are from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, within the Pakistani community there exists some seriously deep seated xenophobia and sectarianism. Non Muslims in general (just ask the Sikhs and Hindus) are looked down on with Europeans in particular viewed as inferior. Even among white converts there is a general feeling of being treated as second class, and god help you if you as a white person marry a Pakistani. Doubly so if you're a white girl. They take a very dim view of miscegenation. Non Muslim white girls however are reserved a whole other level of contempt - being viewed as less than dogs. "Easy meat" is a term I frequently hear on busses around here coming from Asian boys and girls about them. These views however are not shared by other nationalities that are predominantly Muslim.
All of this, coupled with a view within the Pakistani community that any girl who started menses is a woman is what led to Rotherham happening. And this has happened in at least a half dozen major cities across the UK, including Luton where Robinson is from.
Going to the police didn't help as they viewed the girls as a bunch of slags and junkies (one of the way these grooming gangs would operate was in pressuring their victims into taking drugs, at which point they knew most of society would write them off). Social services were ordered by their head at the time to bury it for fear of the news causing riots (I leave it to the reader to judge who would be rioting) and the Labour party nationally had no interest in disturbing a large, reliable voting bloc that maintained their power in a lot of poorer cities.
So he organises a small protest about a particular radical Islamist group in Luton that had links to Al Quieda.
All hell breaks loose and he's now on the government's shitlist for {bleep} with their voting bloc, the media denounce him as the second coming of Hitler and on and on. Robert correctly points out that the response the police gave him and his small group of activists was the primary cause of the formation of the EDL. A lot of this is very very old and my memory clearly isn't what it used to be.
Thing is, he's not (or at least wasn't) right wing, hell, before all of this kicked off he was a Labour supporter. He was worse than a right winger - he was a heretic.
And it sounds like he is blamed for for radical elements taking over. Also, it is amazing the how so many of the left become apologist for radical Islam over, and over, and over, based on some sort perceived slight or injustice. That same mentality does NOT extend to non Radical Muslims and most certainly does not extend to white people.
The left's protection of Islam originally stemmed from the right's broad generalising of all Muslims being secret terrorists in the wake of September 11th (freedom fries anyone?). But you're right - he was nominally in charge, so he took the blame. But well before that, the media had written him off as a neo nazi even as actual neo nazis were burning EDL banners and issuing death threats against him.
I'm glad you and your daughter are OK. It sucks even worse when it is so close to home.
My daughter lives with my ex wife, who goes through men at a similar rate to that which I eat cooked breakfasts. Each new man is then called "dad", so whether or not she is OK remains to be seen. Certainly she fits the profile that many of the girls who fell into the hands of these gangs did - lower class, from a broken home. But I do genuinely appreciate the sentiment.
We had the recent Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting here which is 5 minutes away. Radical Islamic Terrorism isn't some abstract concept to be debated by the upper class and limousine liberals while sipping Moet, this is a very real life or death concern for average citizens.
As with all things I think a careful, balanced approach is necessary. I think most Muslims are sick to the back teeth with the loonies, they're angry that local governments only ever seem to want to talk to the loons as being representatives of the Muslim community, fed up of the media overlooking their genuine efforts to try to build bridges with the communities around them etc etc. So finding a workable solution is a tricky one.
