Priti Patel’s Home Office just used the term ‘lefty lawyers’ again

Priti Patel
Support us and go ad-free

The Home Office just attacked “lefty lawyers” after it tried to deport around 50 people to Jamaica. But it’s not the first time the government has used this language. Nor is it the first time a deportation flight to Jamaica has made the headlines. And on both occasions, the Home Office has shown itself to be “racist” and ‘brutal’ according to one campaign group. Moreover, the “lefty lawyers” comment has already incited hate.

“Dangerous criminals”

As The Canary previously reported, the Home Office was due to run a deportation flight to Jamaica on 2 December. It wanted to send dozens of people there; individuals the Telegraph called “dangerous criminals”. Reports on the exact number of people the Home Office attempted to deport are conflicting. But as the Telegraph reported, in the end, the Home Office managed to deport 13 people. It noted that:

The 13 had been convicted of offences earning more than 100 years in jail and included three murderers, a paedophile convicted of grooming a child, and four drug dealers.

Although only three of the cases it listed were of “drug dealers”. The fourth drugs case, according to the Telegraph, was for possession.

But it also failed to mention what the people not deported had been convicted of.

Meet Osime

In February, a previous flight to Jamaica turned into a national scandal.

As The Canary reported at the time, the government made similar claims about the people it was deporting being criminals. But MPs and campaigners disputed this. One example is the case of Osime Brown.  A petition to stop his deportation said:

Read on...

Brown is 22 years old, he is profoundly autistic and developmentally younger than his peers. Osime is also learning disabled, dyslexic and due to his time in care has since been diagnosed with PTSD, and suffers with depression.

Osime was jailed in 2018 over the theft of a phone in a street robbery, despite a witness for the defence stating Osime had not taken the phone and had in fact asked the other teens carrying out the robbery to stop. He got 5 year’s in prison under the Joint Enterprise Law

The joint enterprise rule allowed judges to convict people of crimes such as murder. The rule was used in situations where someone was involved, but did not actually kill the victim. As the Guardian reported, in 2016, the Supreme Court said that judges had been ‘wrongly interpreting’ the law. This has led to people raising questions about a number of convictions using the rule.

So, it is possible that the people on the 2 December flight who were not deported are not the “dangerous criminals” the Telegraph made them out to be.

“Racist” and ‘brutal’

As campaign group Movement for Justice tweeted:

It also said:

This government is steeped in racism, immigration laws are stacked against poor & working class black & Asian families – to win we need this movement not just today, but every day, for every racist injustice & brutality of this immigration system by any means necessary

But the government is unrepentant. In fact, it seems to be actively engaging in incitement.

“Lefty lawyers”

A “Home Office source” told the Telegraph:

Lefty lawyers are going to spend all evening on the phones to judges in their pyjamas to try to get people who have committed heinous crimes dragged off this flight.

The Guardian reported that one legal case was bought by the children of one of the potential deportees. Another person on the Home Office’s deportation list told it that:

I’ve lived here for 20 years. What the Home Office is doing to us is like torture. They are killing us. My life is here, my kids are here. I can’t bring myself to tell my kids I’m being deported. I’m not a murderer, I’m not a rapist. I made a mistake by selling drugs.

Yet still, the Home Office pours scorn on those trying to protect the deportees and their families. Moreover, its source’s use of the phrase “lefty lawyers” is dangerous.

Real world consequences

Priti Patel and Boris Johnson used the same language earlier in the year. And it led former Tory MP David Gauke to write in the Guardian that:

Patel has attacked “activist lawyers” for frustrating the removal of migrants. In her conference speech, she attacked “do-gooders” for defending a “broken” asylum system, and predicted that those “well-rehearsed in how to play, and profit from, the broken system would lecture us on their grand theories about human rights”. Her remarks were soon echoed by the prime minister, who stated in his conference speech that the criminal justice system was “being hamstrung… by lefty human rights lawyers

There were real-world implications because of Patel and Johnson’s language. As Gauke wrote:

This is no abstract concern. This week, a 28-year-old man has been in court charged with a racially or religiously aggravated attack on 7 September on a solicitor at a law firm that has been involved in high-profile immigration cases. Subsequently, both the Law Society and the Bar Council wrote to the home secretary to raise their concerns about her language putting lawyers at physical risk.

It says something when a former Tory Department for Work and Pensions boss turns on the government. But that doesn’t seem to matter if you work at the Home Office. Because despite the outcry, the same language about immigration and human rights lawyers is still being used.

Toxic

The Home Office is now one of the most toxic departments in government. This is on top of Patel being accused of bullying and abusive behaviour. There’s a twisted irony in that. Because the same attitudes civil servants accused Patel of permeating through the department are now being acted out by that department on others. The public pick up on this. After the source’s “lefty lawyer” comment, people on Twitter called them ‘scum bags’; called for them to be deported; said they were “enemies” of the “great people of the UK” and called for them to be ‘crushed’.

Not only is the Home Office is ripping families apart, but it’s also inciting hate against the legal profession despite previous warnings. This has to stop.

Featured image via the Telegraph – YouTube

We know everyone is suffering under the Tories - but the Canary is a vital weapon in our fight back, and we need your support

The Canary Workers’ Co-op knows life is hard. The Tories are waging a class war against us we’re all having to fight. But like trade unions and community organising, truly independent working-class media is a vital weapon in our armoury.

The Canary doesn’t have the budget of the corporate media. In fact, our income is over 1,000 times less than the Guardian’s. What we do have is a radical agenda that disrupts power and amplifies marginalised communities. But we can only do this with our readers’ support.

So please, help us continue to spread messages of resistance and hope. Even the smallest donation would mean the world to us.

Support us
  • Show Comments
    1. Politicising legal advocates is usually associated with ‘anti-establishment’ types, or it seems by politicians who simultaneously also give an impression of being ‘The right sort’, ‘upright individuals’, ‘conventional’, ‘honourable’ and so on. Their behaviour is very similar to strategies used by people who intend to ‘con’ others. That strategy is an attempt to construct an image that will appeal/fool their intended ‘marks’. In terms of our own ‘Con’ party, part of that process involves ‘defining’ or ‘labelling’ any opposition; which is where the ‘left’ label comes into the equation. As I’ve written before, my perspective on similar thinking people to myself is that they are better understood as humane or humanist individuals that want to work towards communal solutions that will improve the common weal. Many Tories, especially the Conners in Government, only wear such aspirations on their sleeves. It’s unfortunate that so many of them seem to hold positions in the Labour Party of Grande Britannia and use the same strategy to hold on to their ill-gotten gains. Consequently normal politics in this nation is a pantomime. ;o)

        1. ill-gotten gains here relates to wearing the aspirations of voters only on their sleeves and not truly representing their electors. These people are sometimes referred to as blue-labour. Thus their ill-gotten gains are those votes. Sorry if that was too obscure. In this context I believe the list is to long. I hope that answers your question Airlane1979.

    2. The Canary is using a dangerous argument here, as are the anti-deportation campaigners. The reason for not deporting someone seems to be that they are not as criminal or dangerous as the media or the Home Office portrays them. I don’t know who’s telling the truth but that’s not the point. What of the people whom no-one supports, the people who did commit heinous acts, perhaps against children? Presumably, it’s fine for them to be flown to Jamaica or another low-income, chaotic society and left there without support, friends, family, access to offending behaviour programmes or any monitoring by the Probation Service as in the UK. If they’re too dangerous to go free in the UK, why is it okay for them to roam free elsewhere? Is the reason ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and it doesn’t matter what happens in those destination countries, with their populace of colour without much money or political power?

      We need to ask why people who’ve served their time, who’ve paid their debt to society, should be further punished by being deported. And why we don’t care what happens to them or if they create further victims in their destination countries.

      1. Regarding “The reason for not deporting someone seems to be that they are not as criminal or dangerous as the media or the Home Office portrays them.” I’m not sure that is the argument that is being put forward. The methodology and use of such hyperbole by the Home Office and M$M is suggestive of a propaganda campaign rather than one that addresses the issues of immigration, nor is it as well thought out as it does not appear to consider the relevant points in the rest of your comments. In some ways it seems a somewhat ironic excercise of propaganda directed toward white-supremist ‘little englanders’ and ‘visible’ immigrants.

    Leave a Reply

    Join the conversation

    Please read our comment moderation policy here.