Tommy Robinson supporter Marco Gill received 4 years in prison for targeted harassment of Nick Lowles, attempting to buy a gun and several bomb threats to hotels housing migrants.
In December 2023 Marco Gill, from Rossendale, plead guilty to five offences and was today sentenced to 4 years in prison. Over a six-month period Gill ran a campaign of harassment against HOPE not hate, especially targeting our CEO Nick Lowles.
Gill began his campaign of harassment within days of the release of Tommy, Nick Lowles’ expose of Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Lennon.
It began with regular nuisance phone calls to our office line where he would repeatedly play a recording of people chanting “Oh Tommy Tommy, Tommy Robinson.” Our investigation later proved that much of Gill’s harassment was inspired by his support for the far-right activist Steven Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson).
Not content with phone calls he then acquired the home address of two HNH staff members and began harassing them with unpaid takeaways, often late at night. Lowles received at least 48 such deliveries in a clear attempt at intimidation.
He also paid an as yet unknown individual in bitcoin to “swat” Lowles. Swatting is a method of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police response team to another person’s address. In the US, swatting has often led to armed officers storming an innocent person’s house.
Gill also plead guilty to three separate bomb hoaxes to hotels housing asylum seekers and calling the BBC and alleging that a man was trapped in a room where there was a gas leak. These offences are contrary to Section 51(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1977. The call to the BBC led to their Salford headquarters being evacuated.
The Gun
Most worrying is that Gill was found to have attempted to buy a gun online from America in the spring of 2023. Security services in the USA intercepted his attempt to order a .38 calibre Smith and Weston pistol.
The weapon was subsequently seized upon arrival in the UK and swapped with a fake replacement containing surveillance equipment before being forwarded onto Gill’s address. Police then seized the fake gun, the phone he used to order it and arrested Gill.
Tommy Robinson Supporter
In July 2023 HOPE not hate was contacted by the National Crime Agency, who informed them that a young man had been arrested for an unspecified crime and on his phone was the home address and phone number of Nick Lowles. The NCA merely said that he was a Tommy Robinson supporter but at that time they were unaware of the man’s campaign of harassment.
It was only when Lowles made a statement to the NCA that we were informed of the person’s name. Within minutes we discovered that he had been arrested for attempting to by a gun and within half an hour our research time discovered his social media profile. From there, we quickly learnt the extent of his radicalisation and the campaign of harassment he had waged against HOPE not hate.
We quickly discovered that Gill had recorded his pro-Tommy Robinson phone calls to our office and published them on his private Telegram account under a pseudonym. He even posted screencaps of one of the takeaways he ordered to Lowles home.
It’s clear Gill was a supporter of Lennon and was whipped up by his attacks on HNH. Gill’s Telegram account was a member of the ‘Tommy Robinson’s Official Telegram Chat’ channel where he is known to have posted numerous messages.
Gill appears to have joined the Tommy Robinson chat in the spring of 2022 and his radicalisation was brisk. Shortly before he was arrested, he had been advocating attacking pro-migrant activists and antifascists. He even offered his research services to the administrators of the Tommy Robinson chat.
While the National Crime Agency never discovered why Gill bought a gun, largely because Gill refused to answer questions during his interviews, it is not hard to see a link between this and his increasingly aggressive behaviour and racist narratives.
Gill’s harassment of HOPE not hate, and of Nick Lowles especially, came at a time when we were being viciously targeted by Tommy Robinson in anger at the release of Tommy and our repeated exposes of his financial shenanigans. Robinson’s online abuse led directly to dozens of death threats and threats of violence and intimidation. While most were from anonymised accounts, others were quite brazen in their threats.
At exactly the same time that Gill was sending takeaways to our houses, key Robinson sidekick Danny Tommo, was sending WhatsApp messages to Lowles threatening to come round and visit others in the household. Danny Tommo, real name Daniel Thomas, has previous been jailed for an attempted kidnapping in a drugs deal that went wrong.
Gill may have acted alone but he is just the latest troubled and vulnerable young men to have been wound up by Robinson’s hateful and violent rhetoric.
“For 6 months, myself and my colleagues were subject to a campaign of harassment by Marco Gill. He was determined to make our lives a misery including targeting my home on Christmas Day.
I want to thank the National Crime Agency for taking action on this case. Whilst it is important that justice was served, this case highlights the need for a greater focus on far-right extremism.
Marco Gill is a young man radicalised online who became obsessed and determined to do something about it. Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced harassment, threats and abuse, and it likely won’t be the last.“
A statement from our CEO, Nick Lowles
Since 2004 our mission is to work tirelessly to expose and oppose far-right extremism and we’ve made plenty of enemies along the way.
Threats against us have become more severed but we will not be scared off by intimidation.
Please help us keep our work going and our staff safe and join the HOPE Action Fund today.
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