Anti-fascist' cranks face jail after "vicious" attack follow up report

Fresh faced thug Jonathan Wood could soon be behind bars

A mob of up to 30 'anti-fascists' attacked two men making their way to a nationalist rock concert at Welling train station in Kent. The masked and hooded 'anti-fascists' had lined a railway platform waiting for the two men to get off a train and then attacked them on hearing the signal "Kill the Nazis!", a court heard. Patrick O'Donovan was punched and kicked to the ground by the 'anti-fascist' mob, while his companion Michael Heihl, a German tourist, was chased along the railway tracks and violently assaulted by other members of the mob. The attack happened in March 2009 and the 'anti-fascist' mob had earlier joined up to 35,000 demonstrators on a 'Put People First' march through central London as part of the anti-capitalist G20 protests which later turned violent. They had then met at London Bridge station before travelling by train to Welling to wait for people to ambush and attack. Twenty three individuals were arrested by police after the attack and eleven later prosecuted. Seven were convicted and four acquitted after a trial. For future reference, the twenty three individuals arrested were: Andrew Baker, Alexander Bilton, Thomas Blak, Pavel Braun, Christopher Bray, Ian Childs, Toby Coe, Sean Cregan, Philip de Sousa, Mark S De Wolf, Ravinder S Gill, Benjamin Hayes, Richard Hindes, Austen Jackson, David J Lewis, Duncan J Money, Stephen Pelly, Dominic Rollin, Joseph Rollin, Farad Salas, Charlotte Travers, Jonathan Wood and Maurizio Zippo. Ringleaders Andrew Baker, 40, from Basildon, Ravinder Gill, 39, from Bedford, Sean Cregan, 44, from Streathem, Philip de Sousa, 37, from Brighton, Austen Jackson, 40, from Westcliff-on-Sea, Thomas Blak, 34, from Hackney and Jonathan Wood, 22, from Leeds, though originally from Maryport, in Cumbria, were convicted of conspiring to commit violent disorder. Baker, Gill, Cregan and de Sousa, who were jailed for 21 months, are currently in HMP Wormwood Scrubs in London following the trial, while Jackson, Blak and Wood will be sentenced in August and face a maximum sentence of five years in prison following their convictions. During the trial, Mark Trafford, prosecuting, said: " Whatever these people's actual views about life, politics or anything else, whatever groups they may or may not be members of, they didn't deserve to be attacked in this way. The attack was vicious." Police used mobile phone records and CCTV footage to link the masked attackers to the scene of the attack. Jonathan Wood and his friend Duncan Money, both originally from Maryport, were members of the trotskyite communist Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW), the successor organisation to the far-left Militant Tendency which successfully infiltrated the Labour Party after the Second World War until Labour leader Neil Kinnock purged them in the 1980s. Despite his membership of SPEW, Wood actually contested a seat on Allerdale Council for the Labour Party in 2008. His parents Janice and Martin Wood are both Labour Councillors on Allerdale Council representing a ward in Maryport where they both live. Duncan Money recently graduated from Oxford University where he studied Politics and History. He aspires to be a journalist but while members of SPEW, both he and Wood campaigned vigorously against the British National Party in Cumbria. While his friend Jonathan Wood faces possibly five years in jail, surely a job at the BBC now beckons for Duncan Money? Civil Liberty will watch future career developments with interest.