A short while ago, in a piece on the banning from Britain of three activists from the identitarian and libertarian part of the political spectrum, I predicted that creating free speech martyrs was a bad course of action by the Government. After this last weekend and in particular the recitation by Tommy Robinson of the speech by banned Identitarian Martin Sellner, at Speakers Corner in London on Sunday, I believe I may be being proved correct in my predictions.

The banning from the UK of Mr Sellner, his girlfriend Brittany Pettibone and the libertarian Canadian journalist Lauren Southern, along with the gaoling of the Britain First leadership for ‘hate crimes’, and other instances of the State attempting to stop people from talking about certain issues is backfiring on the Government. As I thought would happen, those like Ms Southern, Ms Pettibone and Mr Sellner, along with the latest person to be silenced, counter-Islam activist, Lutz Bachmann of Pegida Germany, who have been banned from voicing in Britain, are starting to act like seed-crystals for a revolt against Britain’s increasingly unfree speech culture.

Banning these people and their words from Britain, and imprisoning the likes of Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen of Britain First has not, as the government may have assumed it would, put an end to the increasingly voluble grumblings about Islam and the problems that this ideology and all too many of its adherents are causing. Perversely, but somewhat predictably, the attempts to silence Ms Pettibone, Ms Southern and Mr Sellner, and now Mr Bachmann, have instead given all those whom the government has attempted to silence by bannings and imprisonment, far greater publicity than they may otherwise have had.

This is especially so in the case of those who were banned from entering the UK, on the grounds that they would upset community cohesion, a code phrase that translates as ‘may upset the volatile Muslims’, as it has focussed public attention on the lack of free speech in the United Kingdom. The fact that the bannings of Islam-critical individuals like Mr Sellner etc have occurred whilst Islamic hate preachers are given entry to the UK, has woken up a lot of people to the double-standard that the Government have where Islam is concerned.

The result of the actions of the Government in shutting down free speech is that this issue is becoming a rallying point and prompting people to become more active to both defend free speech and to draw attention to the problems that Islam is causing for thousands upon thousands of ordinary decent Britons no matter what their race or creed.

We saw an example of how these bannings are feeding the flames of resentment and also awareness as to the depths of Britain’s problems at the weekend. On Sunday, at Speakers Corner in London, the historical British home of free speech, Tommy Robinson read out the speech that Mr Sellner had wanted to give himself in Britain but could not do so because he had been deported from the UK. Previously the police had tried to stop Mr Robinson from going anywhere near Speakers Corner even though he should in theory have a right to speak there just as everyone else should have. This was yet another example of the police doing all that they can in their power to shut down all and any criticism of an Islamic ideology that not only invites criticism, it deserves it.

I must say that this was a stupendous speech. It was not an overtly hateful harangue as many on the Left may have assumed it might have been, but instead it was a stirring and inspiring call for Britons to protect their rights to speak freely and also to tell Britons that they have a right to protect their culture, and especially protect it from a rapacious and violent ideology such as Islam. You can read the full text of the speech at the Breitbart London site and it is well worth reading. Even if you don’t agree with all of it, it is in places, as stirring as one of Churchill’s speeches. Here’s a short section of the speech, partly written whilst he was in custody. The speech has impressed many people and it was a speech that one commenter on Breitbart said gave him ‘goosebumps’ and on this, especially with regards to this quoted section, I’m tempted to agree with them.

……..I should be speaking in neat, warm a conference room right now, and you should be sitting in comfortable chairs. Instead, I’m in my cell and you are on the street in a stand-off with the enemies of freedom of speech.

And this is very telling! Today there is a war going on for our freedom of speech. This war is being fought on the streets,
by you!

Every man and woman showing her face today, standing shoulder to shoulder, is standing up against a new totalitarianism
that has been growing for far too long. You can be proud of yourself. You might not even agree with me on every point — you are simply giving a statement that I should have the right to speak my mind freely.

I would love to be among you now. They prevented me from it. They locked up the speaker, but I know that the speech will
find a way through the iron bars. It will find a way to you and you are going to hear what you government so desperately wants to protect you from.

Those words which they consider more harmful to you then rape gangs or terrorists who are let into your country again and
again.

These are fantastic words and show how far the Government has sunk with regards appeasement of Islam that they consider Mr Sellner’s words, and his defence of free speech more of a problem than the Muslims who rape our children and our sisters on an industrial scale. It says a lot about the contempt that the government both national and local, hold ordinary people in that they will go to enormous lengths to stop the likes of Mr Sellner and others speaking in Britain, but refuse to even hold a public enquiry into the massive amount of Islamic sex crime that has gone on in Telford. Mr Robinson did a brilliant job of articulating Mr Sellner’s words and also highlighting just how much of our traditional free speech rights we’ve lost at the instigation of Islamic and leftist groups and the issue of those in government and administration who collude with them, even though such collusion is to the detriment of many Britons.

You can see a video of Tommy Robinson giving this speech below:

But, Tommy Robinson did not give his speech alone. This time the bully boy police could not stop him as he was accompanied by what to me looked like at least a thousand people who turned up to defend the right to freedom of speech. According to the various reports on this event out there, they turned up in their hundreds, people from all walks of life and of political opinion, defiantly showing their faces to the police officers watching over this event. The demonstrators stood in front of police officers who in recent years have too often turned from helpers to oppressors and a now heavily politicised enemy of those Britons who demand the right to speak freely, a right dearly bought for us by our ancestors. In any other situation the police would not have hesitated to arrest a person for ‘hate speech’ for calling for freedom of speech or for criticising Islam or migration policies, but on this occasion there were far too many people for the police to either arrest or intimidate.

The demonstration, which appeared to be almost entirely peaceful was marred when it was attacked by violent Muslims such as the one pictured below. However, people stood their ground as Islamic thugs attacked the pro-free speech demonstrators with sticks and fists, attacks that the police seemed to have done too little to prevent.

I believe that this demonstration is the start of something very big, the start of a fightback to reclaim the right to speak freely about every issue under the sun, including Islam. I can’t help but perceive that the Government has been so heavy-handed over the way that they’ve dealt with the issue of Mr Sellner et al and others who have criticised Islam, that it is having the opposite effect to that which the Government may have intended. The Government’s actions are not shutting people up or shutting them down, instead these actions are alerting ordinary people not only to the extent of our Islam related problems, but our inability to speak freely about these problems without fear of arrest or intimidation by the State, or violence from Muslims and their Leftist allies. To put it another way, knowledge of this culture of censorship and intimidation of Islam’s critics is escaping from the confines of those of us who pay attention to these things, and into wider public view. The ‘normies’ are waking up to the extent of the problems we face and they are doing so because the government has foolishly created a whole lot of free speech martyrs around which those who may have previously kept their heads down, but who may have been uneasy about the way the country is going, are starting to coalesce around.

I am mightily heartened by the Speakers Corner event. It showed the value of freedom of speech, it showed the value of defiance and especially defiance in large numbers and it showed our violent Islamic guests in a terrible, but highly honest, light. The Government have tried to sow the wind by clamping down so hard on both Britons and foreign opponents of Islam but, if what happened on Sunday is anything to go by, they will reap a whirlwind of defiance and protest. This defiance and protest will come from those Britons who must surely now have had enough of being silenced on the matters that concern them by an increasingly authoritarian and unjust State.