Faced with mounting community resistance, Tommy Robinson and the political party/support act For Britain have abandoned their planned anti-BLM rally at the site of the famously dethroned Colston statue next Saturday, April 9th. Bristol Against Hate, the coalition formed to oppose them, say their mobilisation is still going, both as a celebration and a deterrent to any far-right stragglers.
Freedom spoke to one of those behind Bristol Against Hate. “From the outset we aimed to build as big a coalition as possible, involving a range of community groups. Bristol has taken a bit of knock from the sentences handed out for the Kill the Bill demos, but we were confident we could pull this off”. The BAH demo, which is still going ahead will foreground prominent Bristolians from the last two centuries, active in anti-racist and working-class struggles, all of whom are a million times more worthy of being commemorated than slave trader Edward Colston.
Now Tommy Yaxley-Lennon has his own problems, having got busted and deported by Mexican authorities after an effort to take a family holiday in Cancún. The fact that he’s technically bankrupt and was accompanied by his ex-wife (now in possession of all the proceeds of of his hard grifting) will hopefully raise eyebrows during his forthcoming insolvency hearings. He is, of course, bankrupt due to losing a court case against a Syrian teenager who he libelled. Then, to add to his not inconsiderable woes, it looks like he got nicked on return to Heathrow.
Faced with the loss of her star turn Anne Marie Waters, head of For Britain (currently awaiting a GoFundMe for a charisma transplant) panicked and threw in the towel. Whinging in a livestream to followers, she moaned that somehow the rally of white supremacists at a slave trader’s statue had been mistaken as “a celebration of slavery”. Unfortunately with hundreds, if not thousands of Bristolians having got the wrong end of the stick about this wholly innocent picnic, thanks to dastardly collusion between those best of mates, Avon and Somerset Police and the local anarchists, she was forced to conclude “It’s not safe, it’s just not safe”.
Freedom would like to raise a pint of cider to the Bristol crew and celebrate the fact that community mobilisation and direct action works!
Bill Stickers
Follow the excellent Bristol Cable for updates.