Activists From England

"Does he concede that the whole basis of the Maastricht treaty is the establishment of a European central bank which is staffed by bankers, independent of national Governments and national economic policies, and whose sole policy is the maintenance of price stability? That will undermine any social objective that any Labour Government in the United Kingdom—or any other Government—would wish to carry out. Does my hon. Friend recognise that the imposition of a bankers' Europe on the people of this continent will endanger the cause of socialism in the United Kingdom and in any other country?"

"My hon. Friend is right in saying that the Bank of England has often operated against the interests of Labour Governments. That is due to the mandarins who run it. If the hon. Gentleman has such doubts about the running of a bank which theoretically is state-owned and state-controlled, what influence does he think will be possible in the case of an independent central bank dedicated to a course of Euro-monetarism?"

"I thank the Foreign Secretary for giving way. I assure him that at least 60 Labour Members voted against the Bill on Second Reading and I am sure that they will vote against the Maastricht treaty again tonight, primarily because it takes away from national Parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community."

"Far from there being a constant flow of resources and aid from northern countries to southern countries, the opposite is the case, and has been for most of the past 200 years. Colonialism was not about exporting civilisations; it was not about improving the lot of people in the poorest countries—it was driven by greed and avarice and a determination to control other people's lives. It was about ensuring that the work, the raw materials and the food of the poorer countries flowed out to the richest parts of the world. That is the legacy of colonialism and imperialism that we have to deal with today. I honestly believe that the role of the world's twin financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, is essentially to reassert that old-world order so that once more a minority of northern, predominantly rich countries dominate the majority of southern, predominantly poor countries."

"Word of advice to #JeremyCorbyn - if #BorisJohnson delivers #Brexit, Labour will be crushed anyway. If the Tories flunk it, you'll be in power anyway. So just expel all these pro-Zionist traitors and at least have a clean, radical party."

"Unless we address those problems from the point of view of a world where development is genuinely sustainable, where protection of the environment is vital, where the earth's wealth is redistributed in favour of the poorest people in the poorest countries, in the next few years we shall face a growing imbalance between north and south. Ever-increasing numbers of people will flee from environmental destruction—from rain forest destruction, increased desertification and the increased flooding linked to that. Millions of people will have to flee from the places where they grew up and live and there will be growing imbalances in the world, and growing poverty. There has to be a change in the relationship. That means that higher prices must be paid for commodities. It means that there must be an increased aid programme, and an understanding that we are all in this together."

"Suspending Parliament is not acceptable, it is not on. What the prime minister is doing is a smash and grab on our democracy to force through a no deal,"

"The world is a troubled and divided place. I will conclude with this thought. As we speak, the poorest of the poor countries in the world are getting poorer. There is more unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger. Resources are being transferred rapidly from the poor to the rich. Most conflicts stem from poverty and from arguments about resources and power. If one tenth of the money that this country is putting into the defence estimates had gone to the people of Somalia and the other countries that were facing terrible economic strife in the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps there would not be the awful conflicts in that region now. We should be dedicating ourselves to a peaceful world, rather than arming ourselves for war upon war upon war. We should deal with the basic problems of the planet. I hoped at least that there would be a defence review. The review could look at what is, I believe, the unanswerable case for a large reduction in Britain's military spending to make an example to the rest of the world."

"[The Maastricht Treaty] takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community"

"The last century was defined by physics. From the minds of the world’s leading physicists there flowed a river of ideas that would transport man kind to the very pinnacle of wonder and to the very depths of despair. This was a century that began with the certainties of absolute knowledge and ended with the knowledge of absolute uncertainty. It was a century in which physicists developed theories that would deny us the possibility that we can ever properly comprehend the nature of physical reality. It was also a century in which they built weapons with the capacity utterly to destroy this reality."

"A scientist in the late nineteenth century could be forgiven for thinking that the major elements of physics were built on unshakeable foundations and effectively established for all time. The efforts of generations of scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians had culminated in Isaac Newton's grand synthesis in the late seventeenth century."

"It seems incredible that we should willingly trade certainty for quantum confusion and doubt. But, make no mistake, despite its simplicity, its appealing visual images and its resonance with our common understanding, classical physics failed. The quantum description was built amidst the ruins of the structure that preceded it, and it is therefore appropriate that we begin our journey from within this classical landscape."

"I am reasonably certain of one thing. The unquestioning acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation has served to hold back progress on the development of alternative approaches. Blind acceptance of the orthodox position cannot produce the challenges needed to push the theory eventually to its breaking point. And break it will, probably in a way nobody can predict, to produce a theory nobody can imagine. The arguments about reality will undoubtedly persist, but at least we will have a better theory. I have tried to argue that quantum theory is a difficult subject for modern students of physical science because its interpretation is so firmly rooted in philosophy. If, in arguing the case, I have only made the subject seem even more confusing, then I apologize. However, my most important message is a relatively simple one: quantum theory is rife with conceptual problems and contradictions, and its most common interpretation is anti-realist in nature. If you fine the theory difficult to understand, this is the theory's fault—not yours."

"I think it's important just to distinguish between Islamism and Islam, a religion. What I mean by Islamism is the desire to impose any version of islam over society. Although ideology was sold to me as if it was the religion of Islam and that's what I adopted. I grew up facing a very, very severe form of violent racism, domestically within the UK. I'm talking hammer attacks, machete attacks by Neo-Nazi skinheads, thugs. On many occasions I had to watch as my friends were stabbed before my eyes as a 15 year old. I began seeing myself as separate from the rest of society and an islamist recruiter found me in that state as a young, angry teenager and it was very easy for that recruiter. I joined a group called Hizb ut-Tahrir and that's the group I spent 13 years of my leadership on. … It's the first islamist organization that was responsible for popularizing the notion of resurrecting a modern day theocratic caliphate, as we now see that ISIS has laid claim to. But, my former group, they were the first ones to popularize that term. I ended up in Egypt where I continued to recruit people to this cause. … I am still a Muslim, but I am now liberal. Now, when I was in prison and I was living with the Who's Who of the jihadist terrorist movements and islamist movements, we had a leader of the Muslim brotherhood. When I saw him I thought, "my God, if these guys ever came to power and declared a caliphate, it would be Hell on Earth." Of course, when ISIS eventually did declare the caliphate, that utopian dream that we all used to share has become that dystopic nightmare that we see now."

"In today’s Britain, the weakest among us are often assumed to be minority communities. In fact, the weakest among us are those minorities-within-minorities for whom the legal right to exit from their communities’ constraints amounts to nothing before the enforcement of cultural and religious shaming."

"As he continued to talk to me, I realized one of the fundamental points about Islamism that so many people fail to understand. The way Osman was speaking wasn’t in the orthodox, religious way of the imam with a stick; he was talking about politics, about events that were happening now. That’s crucial to understanding what Islamism is all about: it isn’t a religious movement with political consequences, it is a political movement with religious consequences."

"The one reason that I could not ignore, the one reason that grew deep inside me till it consumed me with guilt, was the realisation that I was abusing my faith for a mere political project. After learning in prison that Islamism was not the religion of Islam, but rather a political ideology dressed up as Islam, I no longer felt guilty simply for criticising a political system inspired by modern European constructs, while justified by seventh-century norms."

"If the dangers of racism are apparent, even in a non-violent form, then it was the same for Islamism. Communalist identity politics, self-segregation and group-think are far more damaging to societies in the long run than the odd bomb going off here or there, because it is such a milieu that keeps breeding bomb-makers."

"There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism."

"Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society."

"There is a disproportionate number of convicted terrorists who've come from a conversion background"

"For if liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation and free speech over offense."

"A certain neoorientalism has crept upon us, partly in reaction to the failed militarism of the neo-conservative years, but mainly attributable to historical self-critical attitudes towards the British Empire. This neo-orientalism interprets liberalism as a Western construct ill-fitting to non-Western cultures. Struggling, dissenting liberals within minority community contexts find that they have no greater enemy than these neo-orientalists who lend credence to the idea that they are somehow an inauthentic expression of their ‘native’ culture."

"[The Prevent definition of Islamism is] so broad that it fails to distinguish between Islamists and politically active Muslims inspired by Islam"

"I didn't imagine sharing a panel with a former neo-Nazi, because, of course, I joined the group I did, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, at 16 after being chased in the streets by [the right-wing extremist group] Combat 18, and being stabbed."

"What we've come to realise is those two extremes - far-right fascism and Islamist extremism - have a symbiotic relationship, where they mutually reinforce the other's very generalised view of the other, and they feed off each other's propaganda."

"It slowly dawned on me that what I had been propagating was far from true Islam. The more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became."

"Food poverty comes in two strands. The first is not having enough money to buy food for yourself and your family. The second is poverty of education. If you give someone £20 and say, 'Feed your family for the week on it,' a lot of people just couldn't do it adequately and that's because there's – and I do blame the readymeal industry for it, because it is so easy and so attractively packaged, and you just put it in a microwave – a disconnection between what's in that packet, and how simple and cheap it might be to make it for yourself. I think if we can solve food education then we are part of the way to solving food poverty."

"75 years ago, people all over Europe clandestinely listened to the BBC to hear the voice of Winston Churchill. His voice was the voice of liberty, the voice of courageous resistance against Nazi totalitarianism. Churchill, by the way, had no illusions about Islam, either. He said there exists "no stronger retrograde force in the world" than Islam and called Hitler's vile anti-Semitic book Mein Kampf a "new Koran of faith and war". I know a British citizen, today, who is as staunch a freedom fighter as Winston Churchill was, who holds the same opinion on Islam and is not afraid to say so. His name is Tommy Robinson. [...] Tommy embodies the hope of many, whose voices are not heard. [...] Tommy is a hero."

"Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and supporters of far-right extremist organisations like the English Defence League are not welcome at our community's events. Their message of hate and division must be confronted and defeated. We utterly reject their bigotry."

"I was very struck by the fact that on the march against antisemitism, which Campaign Against Antisemitism organised and was attended by a large part of the Jewish community, there were only two arrests, one of which was at the request of the organisers when Stephen Yaxley-Lennon—Tommy Robinson—turned up. Far from being welcomed, as we heard in the previous evidence, he was rejected and the organisers got him arrested."

"You knew perfectly well that you were not welcome in the United States. You knew that because you tried before and you had not got in, and you knew the reason for that - because, rightly or wrongly, the US authorities do not welcome people in their country who have convictions of the kind that you have. With that full knowledge, you equipped yourself with a passport. I am told that it was given you by way of a loan from your friend Andrew McMaster, to which you bore, I am told, some resemblance. And by use of that passport you did what you could to get into the United States. [...] What you did went absolutely to the heart of the immigration controls that the United States are entitled to have. Had it been known in this country that you were proposing to leave under a false passport, you would not have been accepted on to the plane and you would not have been permitted to leave this country on a false passport. It's not in any sense trivial."

"In late October Lennon did a short livestream where he explained he was working on a long article unpacking the Ye [Kanye West] situation where he would outline his thoughts on supposed Jewish influence. He has now published it on his Urban Scoop website. Titled 'Tommy's Statement: The Jewish Question', it is much more extreme than expected. While accepting that Ye used "imprecise" language about Jews, and at pains to say he was not talking about "all Jews", Lennon's long and rambling article is full of conspiratorial antisemitism about supposed Jewish influence. It opens with a long attack against the American-based Jewish organisation the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a favourite target of antisemites."

"I want us all to give him a message… I dare you to charge me again because I just want to see the scenes outside court."

"So Theresa May has lost her vote. Many people will be asking what does that even mean. It means we were betrayed. Today is supposed to be our Independence Day."

"Tommy Robinson is not far-right... and does not have far-right views. He is someone who can give some information and research which is useful to me. We have always been a democratic, non-racist party. That has always been in our constitution and that is exactly the way we are going to keep it."

"I guess it's ok to rape white women then?"

"All the British media do is lie. I have a lot to say but nothing to you. I want to thank the British public for all their support."

"A moment like this makes it all worth while. Today I met real British heroes."

"The media are the enemy of the people. The government, police and social services are responsible for sacrificing a generation of our daughters at the hands of the multiculturalism altar."

"Mr Batten’s obsession with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (to use Tommy Robinson’s real name) and fixation with the issue of Islam makes Ukip unrecognisable to many of us. I believe he is entirely unsuitable to be involved in any political party. The fact is that his entourage includes violent criminals and ex-BNP members. Many Ukip members - including Ukip's NEC – urged that Robinson should not become an advisor to Batten. Sadly, these pleas fell on deaf ears. In the photo [published in The Sunday Telegraph a few dats earlier], Tommy Robinson can be seen seated beside Gerard Batten. Next to Robinson is a man called Daniel Thomas, a convicted armed kidnapper. There are other pretty unsavoury-looking characters dotted around the room."

"Islam is not up for reform or negotiation – so we have no other choice than to fight it."

"The reality is this is a war. These people are waging war on us. This has gone on for 1,400 years. This is nothing new. And the whole time while this goes on, the police leaders or political leaders want to invite more! They want to invite more!"

"No matter how [haram terrorists'] life has been, if they wanna get to heaven, they just have to kill non-Muslims in a holy jihad. That's all they have to do, then they get to heaven. It's like an easy "card out" for Muslims who've behaved badly their whole life. And we've seen this time and time again with the terrorists that we find. They say, "He wasn't a practicing Muslim". No, but because of the scripture in Islam, he genuinely believes he is going to eternal hell fire for the life that he's lived. He sees going and running down 20 or 40 people, and killing coppers, and killing innocent people, he sees that as a "get out" because of the scripture in Islam. That's why."

"I had some left wing fella ask me this, he started asking me my views on most things. I'm liberal in many senses, like when it comes to (probably not when I was younger) when it comes to gay people's rights I fight for a gay man's rights – so on all of these issues, as I've grown up, I said,... when people say that I'm far right, well what makes me right wing? Am I right wing just because I don't like Islam? Does that make me right wing just because I don't like a fascist ideology? If I didn't like scientology, does that make me right wing? No, it's an ideology. So I said like, "most of my views, they're very liberal – many of them would be left-wing"."

"I made sure that extremists were never allowed into that party. [...] They then got a leader that thought Tommy Robinson was the great saviour of this country. Now, he might be a working class hero to some but I'm afraid the truth of it is he's an out of control yob. He's been in prison four times for four separate offences. When you get someone like that involved in a political party, their fortunes will literally fall off a cliff and I warned them, and I warned them, and I warned them."

"Do you know how many times I have gone into Bedford police station, I have gone into Kempston police station, to say here are comments to kill my family but nothing ever gets done. I have three kids, an innocent wife, my family are scared."

"We are offered silence, free speech is all but dead in Europe. We live in a post free speech era, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo have proven that to the whole world."

"The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going. Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more."

"Previous prime ministers, be it William Gladstone who said, 'There will never be peace on this earth as long as we have the Koran, it's an accursed and violent book.' Then we have Winston Churchill who said, 'Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog.' And then we have David Cameron, who says Islam is a religion of peace. What's changed? Because the Koran] hasn't changed."