BY ELSPETH GUILD
On 2 September 2025, ILPA held its second Solidarity meeting to support immigration law practitioners facing threats and attacks both physically and online on account of their work providing legal advice on immigration, border controls and refugee protection. The meeting marked one year on from the summer 2024 riots and provided an important place and time to take stock of how the profession has defended itself in the face of threats and acts, as well as the political framework within which ILPA members now work. Reflecting on the themes of the evening, ILPA Patron Professor Elspeth Guild of the University of Liverpool, applauds the resilience shown, in spite of attacks on legal practitioners having become a new dimension of the troubled relationship between migration and racist violence.
Racism, racist violence and hate speech are no strangers in the UK. In 1968, Enoch Powell MP gave his infamous Rivers of Blood speech which has remained a hate speech watershed in British politics. Among other things, he stated that the British ‘found themselves made strangers in their own country.’ The more recent echo of this sentiment in the current Prime Minister’s evocation in May 2025 of a Britain at risk of becoming an ‘Island of Strangers’ has been the subject of much revulsion. The PM has expressed regret at his use of the expression. But the tone of the debate is set and the politically driven damage to any reasonable discussion about the law of immigration, border controls and refugee protection is immeasurable. The relationship between political statements, press coverage, social media and racist violence is the subject of much scholarly work which generally concludes that there are strong linkages. Politicians, through the language they use, are by no means innocent bystanders when racist violence erupts.
In the early hours of 5 August 2024, details of 39 addresses of law firms and advisory services which undertake immigration legal work were circulated on an encrypted messaging platform, Telegram, (then re-posted on other sites) which exhorted readers to violence: ‘They won’t stop coming until you tell them’, along with ‘Mask up’ and a flame emoji (see LegalFutures, 6 August 2024). This call to attack lawyers took place at the height of the violent rioting directed first against migrants and people seeking asylum, but which rapidly spread to target ethnic minorities. The violence had begun on 30 July 2024, following the killing of three children in Stockport. It was extreme, including two attempts to burn down hotels housing people seeking asylum (with those people still inside) and extensive attacks on individuals, criminal damage and looting. According to a House of Commons report, 29 riots and ‘demonstrations’ took place in over 27 towns and cities. The police arrested 1,250 persons, of which 795 were charged with offences. The call on social media constituted a real threat of violence to immigration law practitioners and it was immediate. The police advised those practitioners targeted to take specific actions to protect themselves, their staff, clients and premises.
This was not the first time legal practitioners providing immigration and asylum advice have been the subject of violence or threats of violence related to their work. In September 2020 a British nazi supporter attempted to kill a senior solicitor at the firm Duncan Lewis on account of work the firm was undertaking to protect people seeking asylum. The attacker was found unfit to stand trial, although the jury found that he had made a threat to kill the solicitor and prepared a terrorist act. But, to my knowledge, the list that circulated on 5 August 2024 was the first time a coordinated attack on law firms and advice centres was taking place with the sole link being their professional work in the field of immigration, border controls and refugee protection. Further, the objective was to harm individuals and intimidate firms from acting for their clients, who are among the most vulnerable people in the UK. The President of the Law Society and the Chair of the Bar Council immediately denounced the attacks and offered support to their members.
On 3 September 2024, ILPA held its first Solidarity meeting for members providing a venue for our part of the profession to meet virtually and discuss the events of August, provide support to one another and share experiences of the summer. Both the President of the Law Society and the Chair of the Bar Council attended the meeting (by invitation) and expressed their horror at the targeting of their members, outlining the steps they were taking to support their members, including extensive use of their bodies’ political pressure to raise the issue with the Government. The legal practitioners who attended the meeting described the consequences of the threats to their persons, firms and clients with great dignity. It was clear that these coordinated and targeted threats had the effect of changing many of their practices in the office, increasing use of virtual meetings and working from home as well as enhancing security measures in their office spaces. The sense of personal and professional vulnerability was very present.
One year later, ILPA organised a second event to examine where we are now. The immediate shock of the 2024 riots was over, but new riots at the end of August around hotels housing people seeking asylum were very much on everyone’s mind.
Sunder Katwala, Director of British Future, and Dr Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust, set out the research which their organisations have been undertaking into the 2024 riots and their aftermath. In particular, their research revealed a strong link between public and political rhetoric scapegoating migrants as a problem, including the language of ‘illegal’ migrants, and violence against those perceived as migrants but also spreading to attacks on visible ethnic minorities. But it also reveals a substantial resilience in society, evidenced by the immediate response in August 2025 of civil society actors to protect people seeking asylum from violence at the hotels in which they are housed.
Zoe Bantleman, ILPA Legal Director, alongside a member affected by the summer 2024 riots, and several King’s Counsel from a barristers’ chambers that has been affected since the riots, examined the challenges for the profession which the targeting has created. Again, the link between public and political discourse and the threat to practitioners was highlighted. From a member’s own personal experiences of 2024, where her neighbours came to help board up her office windows to protect the premises from attack, to a comprehensive plan of action to prepare the profession to respond to the undermining of equality and the rule of law of which racist attacks against practitioners are only a part, the message of the evening was resilience – both personal and as a profession – and counter action using all the available tools of law. Ours is not a field where practitioners are easily intimidated or cowed. One does not choose immigration, border controls and refugee protection law if one is seeking a simple, uncomplicated life. Rather, the principles of equality and access to justice are central to our work which we undertake to protect the most vulnerable in our society from violence and abuse. As all practitioners know, those who are vulnerable make easy targets for hatemongers and pseudo-patriots. Their defence is the measure by which our society is judged and is our obligation as legal practitioners.
Elspeth Guild is Global Professor of Social Justice at the University of Liverpool and Senior Legal Counsel in the Immigration team at Kingsley Napley. She has been a Patron of ILPA since 2022.
ILPA invites members and other leading experts to contribute articles to its monthly blog. The views expressed in all blog posts are the authors’ own and are not necessarily those of ILPA.
- Document Date
- Thursday September 4, 2025