Former Bede Academy teacher Patrick Lawler has caused a nationwide outcry for his statements and behavior. Roberts’ transparency sparked a federal investigation, which eventually forced him to resign. Lawler began his first term at the academy in 2019. Since then, he has been accused numerous times of making incendiary comments regarding civil rights leaders, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ issues.
During a medieval history class, Lawler got fired up about American civil rights activists. He really opened a hornet’s nest by asserting that Rosa Parks “wasn’t real.” Forthcoming, he took to accusing Martin Luther King Jr. of plagiarism. His comments on these complex historical figures turned heads and brought anger among parents to many of his students.
In a separate incident involving a group of year six students, Lawler expressed extreme views about foreigners, stating that “all” foreigners had no right to be in the UK. He further escalated the situation by suggesting that if foreigners refused to leave, “the only way to get rid of them will be to kill every single one of them.” Such comments have sparked outrage — and rightfully so — and put his fitness to be a teacher in serious question.
Lawler’s controversial statements did not stop there. He had first achieved infamy for his starring role in an undercover BBC Wales investigation into the spewing of extreme far-right poison. In this race report he called a race war “inevitable.” This shocking news has led many to express alarm over the rising impact of extremist ideologies in our nation’s schools.
Lawler spoke directly to civil rights and interests of noncitizens. He, unfortunately, repeated even more scary stuff about drug use when talking about mental health and declining life expectancy. He told students, “back in the day, you used to be able to get cocaine, purer.” This statement has raised alarms about the messages being conveyed to impressionable young minds.
Lawler’s assertions reached one of the most prominent cultural conversations that took place, the debates around the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. He distorted the movement by suggesting that “BLM” really means “burn, loot, murder.” This, in turn, misrepresented the conversation around social justice themes even more.
His social media rants exposed his fixed and radical extremist beliefs on sexual orientation. Lawler referred to sex between two men as an “unnatural, unhealthy, disgusting perversion,” which has led to further scrutiny of his viewpoints and values as an educator.
Despite a long history of warnings about his behavior from the school Bede Academy, Lawler finally decided to quit his position even as he continued to be investigated. After leaving Bede Academy, he joined a supply teaching agency in Bristol in September of 2022. His resignation has alarmed many in the educational community. People like you are asking the difficult questions about how we hire and oversee our teaching staff.
