A Northumberland teacher has been banned from the profession after publishing online content that claimed “sex between two men was unnatural, unhealthy, disgusting perversion”.
It’s just one of a long list of comments made in the classroom and in the public sphere by 62 year-old teacher Patrick Lawler, who taught at Bebe Academy.
The Teaching Regulation Agency has issued a prohibition order which means he can no longer work as a teacher, but he can apply to have his registration status reviewed in 2029.
Lawler’s views first came to attention after an undercover investigation by journalists from BBC Wales who infiltrated far-right group Patriotic Alternative.
In the documentary Lawler told an undercover journalist that he believed a race war was inevitable in Britain and all foreigners had no rights to be in the country before saying “the only way to get rid of them will be to kill every single one of them. And we will have to have hearts of steel to do that”.
Those comments did not form part of the investigation into his teaching by a review panel did find he’d published homophobic comments online and made racist statements to students.
In the hearing he was found to have “authored or co-authored” a series of online newsletters saying Islam was “demonic” and calling sex between two men an “unnatural, unhealthy, disgusting perversion”. He was found to have distributed material that was intolerant of other people’s religious beliefs.
The panel found that in the classroom he had described US civil rights leader Martin Luther King as a “fraud” and Rosa Parks did not really exist. They also found he had told students that he was “surprised you were not all hanging from lamp-posts” and in another lesson said “back in the day you used to be able to get cocaine purer”.
The panel said an immediate revoking of his license to teach was warranted due to the seriousness of the incidents and the fact that Lawler had shown no remorse. Lawler had previous been warned over his views in 2019.
