A young British anti-immigrant protester has been jailed for two years and two months for swearing and shouting outside an Islamic centre and having firelighters in his pocket.
Apprentice bricklayer James Martin, 18, appeared in York Crown Court on Thursday where he was sentenced by Judge Sean Morris, who gave him a long lecture about his actions while demonstrating in Scarborough on August 8.
Martin pleaded guilty to charges of racially or religiously aggravated harassment, having an article with intent to destroy or damage property, and obstructing or resisting a constable in the execution of their duty.
“You and others marched down that street. You brandished the English flag. That flag, by the way, belongs to everyone in this country and you disgraced it,” Judge Morris told Martin, The Scarborough News reported.
“This offending calls for an immediate prison sentence because there has to be an element of deterrence so that other men in work, aged 18, with no previous convictions, realise that actions have consequences.
“Whether these actions are online or on the street, the court will keep the peace by deterring others from such action.”
But just a month earlier in the same courtroom Judge Morris refused to jail paedophile couple Thomas Anderson, 35, and Christopher Ternent, 39, who sent each other videos of children as young as four being sexually abused, BBC News reported.
Judge Morris referred to chat logs of the men discussing their “fantasies” in relation to the child sex abuse material in giving the pair a 12-month suspended sentence, saying it was “unusual to see what was in the minds of people looking at these images”.
“But it is what every paedophile will be thinking,” he said, but described the case as “ancient history” since their arrests dated back to 2020, and said because they had not offended in the four years since there was “every prospect of rehabilitation”.
The court heard on Thursday that Martin shouted disparaging comments at Muslim men praying inside the centre, refused to leave the area, and then resisted arrest.
Police found firelighters in his pocket when he was searched after refusing to give his name and details, but his defence barrister Nick Peacock said Martin’s admission to carrying them with intent to damage property was “strange” because he had “no matches, no fire”.
Martin will serve half of his 26-month sentence before being released on prison licence.
The 18-year-old is the latest in a string of anti-immigrant protesters who have been given harsh sentences by judges who have let paedophiles walk free.
These include:
- Wayne O’Rourke – three years for a series of X posts
- Billy Thompson – 12 weeks for a Facebook post
- Kenzie Roughley – two years and four months in youth custody for rocking a police CCTV van
- David McGuire – two years and two months for spitting at police
- Michael Williams – two years and eight months for fighting and kicking another male
- Brandon Kirkwood – two-and-a-half years for pushing bins at police
- Andrew Stewart – two-and-a-half years for hurling missiles and a large ignited bin at police
- Christopher Douglas – two years and eight months for hurling missiles at police
- William Morgan – two years and eight months for being present at a protest which turned violent and resisting arrest
- John O’Malley – two years and eight months for throwing bins at police
- Charlie Bullock – 18 months for throwing rocks at police while wearing a balaclava and resisting arrest
- Leanne Hodgson – two-and-a-half years for shouting racist abuse at police, barging into an officer, pushing bins at police and pulling up paving stones
