Three months inside for Gina Miller posts
A racist aristocrat who offered a £5,000 bounty for someone to run over Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has been jailed for 12 weeks.
Viscount Rhodri Colwyn Philipps, 50, called Ms Miller a ‘hideous jumped up immigrant’ and a ‘f**king boat jumper’ in a series of offensive and racist Facebook rants.
The polo-playing peer said immigrants should ‘go back to their stinking jungles’ and offered £2,000 to ‘carve up’ and African dad of eight.
Lord St Davids, as he likes to be called, also posted that torturing Tony Blair and David Cameron would give him an orgasm.
Ms Miller claimes she has been left ‘scarred’ by Philipps’ abuse.
In a victim impact statement she said since the Article 50 challenge she had been the target of a ‘vicious hate campaign’ and ‘vilified of social media’.
Wearing a tweed gillet and pink shirt Philipps was jailed for 12 weeks for two counts of sending menacing communications on social media between September 11 and November 7 2016.
He was also slapped with a five-year restraining order not to contact Ms Miller, African immigrant Arnold Sube – and Matthew Steeples who found the posts.
He was also banned from talking about them on any form of social media.
From the dock Philipps claimed he was a changed man after his conviction as the judge’s words had hit him ‘like a streak of lightning’.
He claims he now knows his actions were ‘self indulgent’ and ‘deeply unchristian’.
Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot said he was motivated by ‘hatred of anybody who has different views to yours and to any who have recently arrived in this country’.
Phillips calmly put his gillet back on and walked from the dock as he was told he would be going straight to prison.
One charge related directly to Ms Miller while the other two concerned a migrant named Mr Sube who Philipps to exception to when he turned down a five-bedroom council house for himself and his eight children.
Styled the 4th Viscount St Davids, he wrote about Ms Miller on 7 November last year: ‘£5,000 for the first person to ‘accidentally’ run over this bloody troublesome first generation immigrant.
‘This f***ing boat jumper come to country, then believes she knows better than the people of our country, what is best for us.
‘If this is what we should expect from immigrants send them back to their stinking jungles.’
Ms Miller reported the post to police and hired minders because she was so scared for her safety, the court heard.
This was found to be both menacing and racially aggravated.
Following the article about Mr Sube in September 2016, Philipps wrote: ‘Please will someone smoke this ghastly insult to our country?
‘Why should I pay tax to feed these monkeys?’
‘A return to Planet of the apes is not acceptable’.
He admitted to posting this comment but was acquitted of the charge after it was not found to be menacing.
In a second post, he wrote: ‘I will open the bidding. £2,000 in cash for the first person to carve Arnold Sube into pieces, piece of s–t.’
This was found to be menacing but not racially aggravated.
On November last year Philipps had replied to a post about ‘naughty suggestions, dirty ideas and anything that will give me an orgasm’.
He said: ‘Mine includes, torturing Tony Blair, Hilary Clinton, ISIS, Dave (PM) the forgettable, Murdoch…Oh and that hideous jumped up immigrant Gina Miller’.
In another post about a ‘collective register’ for Muslims he said ‘I would vote for Trump if I could’. He spoke of a ‘New Crusade’ to destroy the ‘tyranny of Islam’ and its ‘goat f—ing brethren’.
Philipps, whose preferred title is Lord St Davids, also holds the titles Lord Hungerford, Lord de Moleyns, and Lord Strange of Knockin.
Back on 17 August 2016 he posted: ‘I would vote for Trump if I could. The world needs a collective register of Muslims who in an individual capacity for the defence values of their adoptive countries.
‘Their DNA etc etc would be held on file., Makes the job a lot easier for out collective SIS to track down non-conformists, and frankly, shoot them on the spot.
‘Muslims have denied responsibility for their own.
‘The NEW CRUSADE has begun. Whether Jewish, Christian, Hindu Buddhist or atheist, the tyranny of Islam and it’s ignorant (goat f–king) brethren has to be destroyed.
‘The fourth dimension does not include these people. Civility has to survive by turning the politically correct liberals onto the right path.
‘Please forward this message to all humanity. The NEW CRUSADE.’
Prosecutor Philip Stott described this as a ‘threat of violence towards Muslims’.
Philipps said he didn’t consider himself ‘the messiah’ when talking about preaching to humanity.
In another on 12 August Philipps, a Roman Catholic, said: ‘We need a new crusade to extinguish the Muslim invasion. These desert dweller need to be repelled and they’re pleadings in Western society terminated.’
Then on 11 November he posted: ‘Mine includes, torturing Tony Blair, Hilary Clinton, ISIS, Dave (PM) the forgettable, Murdoch…Oh and that hideous jumped up immigrant Gina Miller’.
The Guyana-born mother-of-three Ms Miller said Philipps’ posts ‘genuinely shocked’ her and made her feel ‘angry’ ‘violated’ and ‘upset’ that ‘somebody on social media could post racist and personal words about me’.
She said she spent £60,000 beefing up security after reading that someone had put out ‘a bounty’ to run her over.
Philipps said his opinion that Ms Miller, as a first generation immigrant, did not have the right to have a political opinion, as she was ‘not part of the furniture’.
He said he was ‘incandescent’ following Ms Miller’s Brexit challenge.
If you are in the public eye people will say nasty things about you it’s the rough and tumble of public life,’ he said.
‘I don’t mind immigrants, particularly from war torn countries,’ he said.
‘She is a first generation immigrant, she has a legal right but she shouldn’t express political view.
‘She’s not part of the furniture yet.
‘I believe that assimilation to society is essential but it does irk that she has been in our country for less than a generation.
‘It is not for first generation immigrants to behave the way Gina Miller did.’
Phillips said he had called her a ‘boat jumper’, ‘because she is a boat jumper’.
The viscount, who was recently made bankrupt, accepted writing the posts but claims he is not a racist.
He told the court he had black and Muslim friends.
The viscount insisted his posts were only for open debate and tried to claim it was just a ‘joke’ ‘satire’ and ‘banter’.
But admitted to being ‘fuming’ at both Ms Miller and Mr Sube.
He told the court his motivation were led by his family’s motto: ‘Love of Country’.
Sabrina Felix, defending, said: ‘Lord St Davids want to express his sincere apologies for his actions.
‘He accepts the comments made were not only disgraceful but unacceptable, unkind and irresponsible.
‘Lord St Davids did not pursue these matters to cause any further upset, distress or fear to others,’ she said.
‘He want’s to express the fact that he understands that these actions has impacted on those effected and he now hopes, wishes and prays that they do accept his sincere apologies.’
Philipps no longer uses Facebook or social media as he was ‘disgusted at himself how he had abused the platform’.
Judge Arbuthnot commented that this was quite a change in just two days since conviction when Philipps was happy to express his ‘racist views’.
From the dock Philipps said what Judge Arbuthnot said when convicting him had ‘struck a chord’ although he ‘believed passionately’ in his defence.
He said that when the Judge looked at him and said the word ‘ashamed’ ‘in a tone he respected’ it was ‘like a streak of lightning’.
‘Much more is expected of me and so it should be,’ he said.
‘They were wholly unkind, wholly unnecessary, they were self indulgent expletives of anger I couldn’t contain at the time, for that I apologise.
‘More importantly they were deeply unchristian.’
Sending him straight to prison Judge Arbuthnot said: ‘Unsurprisingly due to the obvious menace and language used Ms Miller felt frightened.
‘She had already been receiving a number of threats form people like you, people no doubt who should have known better but somehow thought it was appropriate to abuse this businesswoman.
‘She felt menaced and your threat of a reward was one of the main reasons she employed personal security to protect her.
‘You tried, on Tuesday afternoon, but failed, to justify the racist abuse by saying Ms Miller and Mr Sube and his family deserved this language as they were immigrants.’
Judge Arbuthnot said Philipps chance of mind was ‘sudden’.
‘You have told me that your family motto is Love of Country and that is your motivation but it seems to me on the evidence I have seen that you are not motivated by love of country but by hatred of anybody who has different views to yours and to any who have recently arrived in this country.
‘You show this hatred by publicly directing abusive threats at others which is a criminal offence in this multi-racial society we are lucky enough to live in.
‘The sentence on count one will be 12 weeks immediate imprisonment. It would have been eight weeks but for the uplift for the racially aggravating feature.
‘The sentence on charge two is four weeks.’
The sentences will run concurrently.
Philipps, of Hans Place, Knightsbridge, denied but was convicted of two counts of sending malicious communications on social media.
He was sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment for the posts about
Ms Miller and four weeks for his posts about Mr Sube to run concurrently.
Philipps was also slapped with a restraining order for five years.
He was ordered to £500 compensation to Ms Miller, a £115 victim surcharge and £250 costs.
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MEMO:
Philipps previously told the court he had spent 374 days in solitary confinement in a German prison when he was convicted of embezzlement 12 years ago.
He was convicted of a reckless breach of duty when he moved 11million Euros from the company he was running and used it to set up other companies.
He received a two year suspended sentence.
Philipps also received a £100 fine for having firearm without a certificate 16 years ago and was given a community order changed to a fine on appeal for a drink driving charge.
MEMO ENDS
