Thomas did not want his friend to become a martyr. Peter Lynch, he told me, was never one to look for trouble at protests. “He was an ordinary working-class man. He was calm,” Thomas said, clutching a rosary and a sign bearing Lynch’s name. “He would stand on the outside of a rally, but he had a booming voice and you could always hear him above the rest. He would shout, ‘Tommy, Tommy, Tommy Robinson.’”
Amid Britain’s summer far-right riots, Lynch’s booming voice found a new purpose. As rioters in Rotherham tried to set alight a Holiday Inn housing asylum seekers, he screamed that the police were “protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them”. In August, the 61-year-old was convicted of violent disorder and sentenced to nearly three years in prison. Last week, he died in HMP Moorland. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman is carrying out an independent investigation into his death, with some reports suggesting Lynch may have taken his own life.
Now, his name has become a symbol. On Saturday, thousands marched past parliament in a protest organised by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the English Defence League (EDL) founder who renamed himself Tommy Robinson after a renowned Luton Town hooligan. Many wore tops or held signs proclaiming: “I AM PETER LYNCH.” “For Pete’s sake,” declared one T-shirt hanging from a railing.
The demonstrators began forming outside Victoria Station before 11am, brandishing flags and signs that announced a mixture of grievances, from tax policy to the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme. Around the corner, more protesters spilled out of a Wetherspoons, pints in hand.
The march, Robinson had declared in a video that was shot in a branch of Nando’s the day before, ought to be a “festival”. Everyone should have a great day and enjoy themselves. When the hour came, however, he was nowhere to be seen. On Friday, he had been remanded in custody over an alleged breach of the Terrorism Act. Two days after the march, the self-styled citizen journalist was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court after repeating false accusations that a Syrian refugee “violently attacks young English girls in his school”. But with or without him, Britain’s far right—fragmented and leaderless but newly energised—sense an opening under Keir Starmer.
When the state cracked down following the riots in summer, Robinson began honing a narrative: that “two-tier Keir” is repressing freedom of speech and persecuting patriotic activists to stop them from defending the British people.
Mike, holding a sign accusing British police officers of acting like Nazis, and his friend Mike, with a sign condemning the New World Order, said they agree with the message. “Our police are copying and dressing like the Gestapo,” said the first Mike. “The public are allowing it. It’s like Germany in the 1930s. They’re bringing in anti-protest laws because they want a world communist government. It’s led by Klaus Schwab [founder of the World Economic Forum], the World Health Organisation, they’re all in cahoots.”
As the demonstrators began walking to their police-designated muster point on Victoria Street, I moved through the crowd, past vaping teens, smiling families and men with Stone Island jackets and face tattoos. While a thin fluorescent line of police officers stopped us from advancing and attendees chanted Robinson’s name, the mood began to build. A construction worker watching from the base of a skeletal tower block started to wave a small Union Jack.
At the head of the protest I met Shane, an older gentleman dressed smartly in the uniform of a 1950s public schoolboy. His grey blazer, shorts and headboy badge were intended, he told me, to recall a brighter time in our nation’s history.
“We’re here to let the government know we want our British way of life back,” he said. “They’re changing laws to accommodate a faith that doesn’t want to follow rules. They want us to have no pubs, no dogs. It will be a living hell. We had trouble with Sikhs and Jews before, but only one faith wants to take over.”
Then, pointing at a badge on his chest reading ASB.NET, he told me he is an adult schoolboy. “There’s only about 1,800 of us. It’s not all about dressing up as a schoolboy, that’s 2 per cent of it. I want to represent the time when Britain was ruled by the British and it was still Britain.”
Nearby stood siblings Michael and Debs and their mother Lydia, a diminutive old woman smoking a rollie and wearing a hot pink blazer over a T-shirt that proclaimed: “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. The beast in me is sleeping, not dead.”
Those attending the march are moderate, really, said Michael. “Immigration should be controlled. Now our economy is being harmed, you can’t get an NHS appointment.” “You won’t be allowed to write anything that we say,” said Debs. “Tommy has been locked up for speaking the truth.”
Robinson, who used to be a member of the BNP, has stoked anti-Muslim hatred for years. His latest book, however, indicates his target has shifted slightly. “For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe,” its blurb claims—a seeming endorsement of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which holds that elites are trying to eliminate Europe’s white majority.
As his arguments become more extreme, Robinson seems to be drawing more support than ever before. On X, he now has a million followers after he was reinstated by Elon Musk last year. The up to 30,000 people who attended Robinson’s last demonstration far outnumber the numbers he could draw during the EDL’s pomp, Hope not Hate’s director of research Joe Mulhall said at a press briefing before the rally.
This is partly due to the movement’s expanding social base. No longer confined to football hooligans, Tommy’s marches now attract vaccine sceptics, anti-Ulez campaigners and trans rights opponents, among others. “This is the worst of both worlds,” Mulhall said. “Normally, people who espouse the Great Replacement theory can only get a few hundred people out on the streets.” On Saturday, calls via a megaphone to “deport the invaders” draw huge cheers.
Having moved through Parliament Square, the protest arrived on Whitehall to watch Rikki Doolan—a peroxide blonde pastor who quit drugs for Christ—on stage strumming an electric guitar. Then, after a series of speeches, we watched a new documentary produced by Robinson detailing Britain’s alleged migrant crime wave and Starmer’s reaction to the riots.
As it began to rain, the crowd thinned. Marchers seemed faintly bored. “I’m yet to do my research on paedophile gangs but he’s put a lot of proof up there,” a man brandishing a large camera told me unconvincingly.
According to estimates released later, around 15,000 to 20,000 people protested on Saturday. The far right, researchers say, has entered a post-organisational phase. There are no mass parties or serious election campaigns, but charismatic influencers can draw large and sometimes violent mobs. Even as Robinson serves 18 months in Belmarsh, his supporters are convinced that their demonstrations will only grow.
“There are men and women inside prison now that got put in there for nothing,” Thomas told me. “They’re being abused, taking beatings. They’re sacrificial lambs. Peter Lynch will inspire resistance.”
