“OH, it’s YOU! I want a little chat with you!”

When the second-in-command to Britain’s most infamous fascist, Tommy Robinson, sticks a camera in your face and says this, you can’t help but wonder what’s coming next.

I’d been nervous the night before what turned out to be the HUGE, triumphant Together Alliance anti-fascist demonstration on Saturday.

For the first time, I was going to be carrying a banner for my group, Survivors Against Fascism.

Or was I? Should I even bring it with me? Would anybody help me carry it?

Grooming gang survivors in my group can’t be photographed, for obvious reasons. Many don’t want to go on demonstrations where they might encounter the far right — who’ve sometimes threatened them for refusing to support the racist narrative around child sexual abuse.

What if it was just me on my own — a short woman trying to carry a six-foot banner was going to be impossible, and look ridiculous!

Should I leave it behind?

I’m glad I didn’t — and grateful to those who helped me. 

Initially I’d expected a far-right “Together for the Children” counter-protest. 

It was being organised by the DFLA (a far right group who laughably call themselves “Democratic Football Lads”). In the end it didn’t happen — and the reason for that is worth a sidebar here. One of the main DFLA organisers was Justin Smith — who embarrassed the group with his ties to actor John Alford, convicted of sexually assaulting two girls.

When Alford died in prison mid-March, Smith talked to the press about his “best mate.”

A terse DFLA statement soon appeared, stating Smith had “taken a step back” because he wanted to clear Alford’s name. Even the DFLA found fighting the conviction of a paedophile incompatible with a “For the Children” group. 
Smith got the boot, and the whole “rally” collapsed. 

But I was there; and as we waited two hours to even start moving, such were our numbers, I had some incredible conversations because of that banner.

I’ll never forget the amazing Scottish woman who said she had goosebumps just seeing the banner and knowing the group exists. 

She told me she hasn’t often spoken about the fact that she was abused by her own close relative; and hadn’t said anything at all for decades.

Another young woman told me about the abuse she’d experienced from her ex-husband.

Another still told me about experiencing both CSA and adult rape, then paused: “You know it makes me feel strange just talking about this. I feel like… am I allowed to? Other women have it so much worse.”

All of these women gave me strength, and clarified so much of what I and my fellow SAF members feel. Historically we’ve often been silenced, or too afraid to talk about childhood abuse. And when we do start to, we may be surprised how many people come for us, and who those people are.

As adults and socialists, a strange new thing happens.

We think like collectivists, as well as survivors and women, with all the self-silencing those latter two identities involve. 

So we censor ourselves anew when we want to talk about our experiences, especially on the left — “It’s not about YOU,” shout the voices in our heads; “Individual experiences aren’t important, it’s about the group.”

Feminists had the same issues when they first began speaking out in political circles — often shut down, told their experiences of oppression were “personal” not political.

Now, survivors are fighting the same battle, with the added difficulty that it’s an identity that isn’t visible, and that not everyone wants to claim.

Survivors should be given a voice when the far right is discussed; we’ve been unceasingly used by them to recruit and monetise — we’re the putative reason Elon Musk has given Tommy Robinson millions, and why the country was set on fire with the 2024 riots.

But are we on every platform? Sadly not, and we often have to fight to be on the ones we CAN access.

I’ve written about why I started the group and I’m hugely appreciative of the support of this paper, and unions like the PCS who have given me entire meetings to talk about our work, and the FBU. 

In the end, as we got to Whitehall on Saturday, I was glad survivors had been represented on the largest anti-fascist march in the history of Britain — larger, even, than the estimated turnout at the glorious Battle of Cable Street in 1936.

When I finally got to the stage I was relieved, pleased to see old friends, and also a vast number of people i didn’t recognise — a great sign.

But one person wasn’t pleased to see me.

I became aware something was happening to the side of the stage, and recognised Danny “Tommo” Thomas, a man with an unbelievably chequered past, even for the far right.

He began his “career” as a failed kidnapper, whose gang abducted the wrong person in a dispute over drug sales. 

He has many times had to step back from his role as Robinson’s deputy after “mistakes,” like an alleged cocaine-fuelled affair with a woman whose employer at one point alleged he and she had misappropriated funds.

And here he was, with his mobile phone in my face: “You’ve lied about me!” he said; “you said I had sex with victims in Telford!”

I definitely had said this; I say it still. Sources in Telford have gone on record to talk about the fact that while Tommy Robinson and Thomas were running their “Rape of Britain” campaign from the town, and professing to be supporting victims of CSA in the area, something much darker was going on.

The fascist crew had in fact been driven out of the town because Thomas was having sex with one of these vulnerable survivors. And he wasn’t the only one in Robinson’s team doing this, locals and relatives of the woman in question said.

Unsurprisingly this had never been officially confirmed by Robinson’s team — so I was very interested to see what Thomas was going to say. I expected flat-out denial of the sexual relationship. What he actually said had me flabbergasted: “…but she isn’t, is she? She isn’t a survivor — she’s an adult.”

I was gobsmacked. He not only hadn’t denied the sexual exploitation of this woman, he admitted it — AND revealed his ignorance and contempt for survivors is such that he thinks it’s acceptable to sexually re-exploit them if they’re over the age of 18. 

All the while Robinson and co make millions in donations, including from men like Elon Musk, by professing to be supporting and standing for survivors.

I could hardly believe I had all this on camera. 

It’s important to state too that Thomas knew he was talking to a survivor when he said it — as he acknowledged, he knows who I am; and if he hadn’t, I was wearing a Survivors Against Fascism badge even he couldn’t have failed to notice.

He thought it was fine to effectively tell me CSA survivors were fair game as soon as we’d reached 16.

This confession puts the final nail in the coffin of the far right’s disgraceful grift. 

And survivors need it to end: every time we’re kicked around like a political football, it bruises, adding new pain to the old.

But Robinson’s mob won’t quit their lucrative racket easily. 

On the May 16 the police have given Tommy Robinson and the fascists the run of Trafalgar Square. We must be there to oppose them in huge numbers; these abusers and predators are a danger not just to women and girls, but to every one of us.