First of all let me restate my long held position on political violence, which is that it is wrong whoever does it. This is because political violence is something that never, ever ends well. Nobody should be physically attacked because of their political views, not even the Guardian columnist Owen Jones, who is claiming that supporters of the ‘far right’ attacked him whilst he was out for a birthday drink.
Owen Jones has been trolling around various media outlets complaining that he was attacked by a group acting, in his words, with ‘military precision’ and that he was kicked and punched. Owen Jones claimed that this attack was carried out on him by ‘far rightists’ who do not like his political views.
But, how credible does the account of the incident by Mr Jones appear to you? It certainly seems to lack some credibility to me after examining the account of the alleged incident. At first I gave Mr Jones some benefit of the doubt but the more this story has dragged on the less credible I find Mr Jones’ account to be.
For one thing his description of the incident seems, as others have also pointed out, remarkably and suspiciously precise. He seemed to be able to gauge exactly how far away his attackers were, what they were doing and how they were attacking him. However, he doesn’t seem to have mentioned anything that would verify his claim that these attackers were ‘far right’.
He has just claimed that without any real evidence that this is the case. My suspicion about Jones’ preciseness comes from personal experience of being attacked on a few occasions by randoms when I was a much younger man. When someone jumps you they actually jump you suddenly, there is little time to estimate distances between parties when the trouble starts. It is this preciseness of distance that Jones claims existed prior to the attack that makes me a bit suspicious of Mr Jones’ narrative.
Also, on the one occasion that I was jumped by people who I suspected were motivated by dislike of the race of the people I was walking with, the assailants made it quite clear and plain why they did it. I can recall quite plainly that it was because they saw me as a ‘race traitor’ for walking in a mixed race group. However, the Owen Jones incident does not include any memorable comments from the alleged attackers that would indicate that he was being attacked for the ‘far right’ reasons that Owen Jones has claimed was behind the alleged incident.
The second thing that gives me cause to doubt the veracity of Mr Jones’ narrative is that there doesn’t seem to be any CCTV being put out about this. You would think wouldn’t you that the attack on a high profile Establishment Leftie would have a Met Police that is excessively subservient to the Left, going all out to catch the culprits? London is one of the most intensively monitored cities in the world and all pubs would have some form of CCTV either covering the inside of the place, the outside or both. I find it highly unlikely that this incident was not picked up on one of more CCTV cameras. If it has been found then why have not the Met or Jones put it out in public as a means of capturing Jones’ alleged assailants?
Finally there is the extent, or rather lack of them, of the injuries suffered by Jones. Yes he has a black eye but his injuries look nothing like those that would likely be incurred by the sort of attack that Owen Jones describes. The minor back scratches and a black eye look remarkable fortunate for such a serious attack.
I’m not going to say that Owen Jones is an outright liar, I have no proof that he either has or has not. What may well have happened is that Jones, who was visiting a late night central London bar, managed to piss someone off and get into the sort of normal physical argy-bargy that can occur in such establishments. This incident may have little or nothing to do with Owen’s politics or his sexuality, it may be that one or more people in the bar thought that Jones was a bit of a dickhead and made their opinion known with their fists. It’s the sort of shit that can happen in many city centre pubs, especially in late bars at 3am. Jones may be embellishing his tale of woe for political reasons, something that is evident from his constant repetition of the words ‘far right, far right’ in a television interview.
What I do believe is that Owen Jones has not told the whole story and that is leading me to think that his tale is fishier than the fishiest thing at London’s Billingsgate Fish Market. I think that Owen Jones should put the CCTV out there so that we can see how much his perception of the incident matches up to reality.
