We can reveal that a Gloucestershire-based former supply teacher is the Bristol region contact for the fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA). Patrick Lawler, recently featured in a BBC exposé of the group, fantasises about race war and said the only way to deal with migrants who refused to leave the country would be to “kill every single one of them”.
Since early 2022, Lawler has been PA’s local contact for the Bristol and South Gloucestershire region, under the pseudonym “Pat from Gloucestershire”. He was appointed by Claire Ellis, the former regional organiser for the South West, to help welcome and vet new members. As part of this process, Lawler arranges introductory telephone calls to ensure new participants are a good fit for the group before attending local events.
Lawler filmed by the BBC at PA’s annual conference in 2024 Lawler is the owner of PA South West’s channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, having remained loyal to PA leader Mark Collett following the April 2023 split which saw Ellis and two-thirds of PA’s officers leave to form the Homeland Party. Ellis is now engaged to marry Homeland leader Kenny Smith.
From left to right: Aaron Spreadbury (South West regional organiser), Maria Cowle (Bristol resident), Lawler (Bristol region contact) and Jodie Swingler. In the BBC documentary, Lawler is filmed speaking to an undercover journalist at PA’s annual camping trip and hike, which Red Flare photographed. In our surveillance photographs, Lawler can be seen walking with the PA South West contingent.
During the hike, Lawler expresses admiration for the Nazis, arguing that PA should follow their path to power. Lawler said: “If you look at what the National Socialist Party did in Germany… community organising, talking to people about local issues, not as politicians… that is what paved the way for them skyrocketing to the elections from 1929 onwards.”
Lawler trying to mock people who aren’t Nazis. In a blog about returning to teaching after the Covid-19 pandemic, posted on a British government website, Lawler claimed to have worked in schools across the country, served as head of year for history and as a lead teacher for humanities. He describes himself as having a “passion for helping lower ability pupils”.
The photograph which accompanied the now-deleted blog on the government website. Lawler has written about education and teaching for the PA website. In one article, titled From Energiser Bunnies to the Borg, he claims that schools are “anti-Western, anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-heterosexual, anti-factual and quite literally, anti-reality”. Elsewhere in the same article he claims that the “vast majority of teachers… are, consciously or unconsciously, leftist Socialist and a sizeable number are active, proud Communists”.
He also claims to have met with PA leaders Collett and Laura Melia, along with “two other teachers”, to discuss PA’s cultish homeschooling curriculum.
In another article, titled Why is Education so Important, Lawler claims to have been a “card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers Party” and rants about the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci. The Frankfurt School were a group of left-wing intellectuals who are accused by neo-Nazis of propagating “Cultural Marxism”, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory based on the German Nazi Party’s notion of “Cultural Bolshevism”. Gramsci was an Italian communist intellectual who died during imprisonment by Mussolini’s fascist regime.
Lawler ends the article, “We will secure a future for our children”, paraphrasing the “14 Words” slogan coined by neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane while imprisoned for his role in the murder of Jewish radio host Alan Berg, as a member of The Order.
In the BBC documentary, Lawler claims to be an “ex-history teacher”. Whether or not he is still in the teaching profession, it is alarming that a man with such extreme racist and neo-Nazi views has had responsibility for children and their education.
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Patriotic Alternative Bristol
