Former Eastenders actor Kemp interviewed Tommy Robinson on camera as the activist was serving his sentence last year, with the documentary episode to be shown on tonight’s Welcome to HMP Belmarsh with Ross Kemp.
"This has been as best as it has been for months, being left on my own for months”, Robinson starts off, from inside his solitary confinement cell.
"I haven't been in Belmarsh, I haven't looked around. I haven't seen another prisoner”, the right-wing activist speaks of his solitary confinement in London, where he served 9 weeks before being released in September. The interviewer counters saying he “sees Julian Assange through the window”.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, upheld the topic noting he even sees Assange’s cell window from the top.
“Jesus man, I try and get my head around what he's going through”, Robinson continues.
When asked about how he feels, Robinson immediately appears on the verge of tears:
"You seem very emotional”, the presenter says with Ronbinson giving his reasons for this:
"I'd say that my thing is cos I'm going home to my kids and you just want to be normal”, Yaxley-Lennon adds, implying the repercussions of his nine-week solitary imprisonment.
Robinson was convicted of contempt of court in July and served exactly 10 weeks in Belmarsh's Contingency Suite, a one-of-a-kind unit designed to keep prisoners separate from one another for security reasons.
The documentary couldn’t go unnoticed by socially active netizens, with opinions divided on his confinement.
“Crying on TV about having no TV or proper food. You absolute mugs”, one posted attacking the right-winger with another attempting to break the sentimentality around Robinson’s figure saying he actually had friends and family visiting him while in prison:
Some even laughed it all off:
However, a whole slew of pro-Robinson posts also arrived, with many stating how unjust it was to imprison the activist at all given the exact charges he faced:
“Tommy Robinson in Prison for highlighting Muslim rape gangs and Twitter goes mental, yet the same liberals stay silent about radical Islamists who want to commit terror upon this country”, one posted with many more echoing the stance:
The former English Defence League (EDL) leader was jailed for nine months in London’s notorious Belmarsh prison for contempt of court, or, as his proponents put it, “doing journalism” as he filmed and named suspects in a grooming gang trial. He was released in September after serving 10 weeks, as England saw rallies both in support for and against him.