CIVIL servants should be proud of the Tory government’s “anger and bitterness” after their groundbreaking legal challenges frustrated Downing Street’s dangerous anti-refugee policies, Stand Up To Racism’s Weyman Bennett said today.

The veteran anti-fascist campaigner praised Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) members for taking a stand against plans to push back small boats in the English Channel and deport vulnerable asylum-seekers to Rwanda. 

He was speaking at a fringe meeting of the union’s annual conference in Brighton after the Home Office was forced to abandon plans to make Border Force officials potentially risk the lives of migrants at sea following the threat of legal challenges from PCS and campaign groups last year.

Mr Bennett urged delegates to “worry more about yachts than small boats,” a reference to the booming trade in luxury goods among the growing number of billionaires in Britain and elsewhere.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka called on his members to be “loud and proud” about their role in resisting the government.

“One of the proudest things our union has ever done is being prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to stop [former home secretary] Priti Patel turning back migrant boats and saving lives as a result.

“We’ve also been part of a campaign that has meant not a single person has yet been deported to Rwanda.”

The ex-TUC president blasted ministers for “normalising racist language and policies,” which is emboldening a resurgent far right.

Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, which was also involved in the anti-pushback legal action, said: “A trade unionist said to me, society is made up of a lot of ordinary people and a very few rich people.

“When you live in a democracy, how do you get that large number of ordinary people to consistently vote for policies that disadvantage them?

“The Tories have the answer — give them someone else to hate. Refugees are an easy scapegoat.”

The fringe meeting, chaired by PCS vice-president Jackie Green, also heard from two campaigners whose family members died in what they believe were racist attacks.

The body of Sukhdev Reel’s son Ricky was found in the Thames in October 1997 after two white youths had told him and his friends: “Pakis, go home.”

Michael Abatan’s brother Jay was murdered by a group of men outside a Brighton nightclub in January 1999.

No-one has been prosecuted in either case.