It’s Gatwick airport, mid-afternoon, and on the runway there is turmoil. Public policy playing out in full view of the public. Voters, citizens, seeing what they don’t normally see.

“Murdaar, murdaaaaar,” screams the bucking, brawling, brawny man as a clutch of male security officials, with solid intent and hi-vis yellow jackets, collectively fight to pin him into a seat at the back of the airliner. “Me caaan go back a Jamaica,” he hollers, the visceral sound reverberating around the 777. “Dem kill me bredda. Dem a go kill me.”

There are five or six security guards – and they are hardly slight – but bundling a large, hysterical man into an economy-sized seat was always going to be a challenge, and he has the strength – for a while at least – to confound them. One man leaning forwards grabs him in a form of headlock, prompting gasps and shrieks from the other passengers. A few pull out their phones and start filming, ignoring a flight attendant’s pleas that they remain in their seats. Others, eager to fly but drawn to the melee, drift rearwards for a look at this theatre of the macabre.

There is a fraught stalemate as the irresistible force that is the deportation team meets the immovable object that is the would-be deportee, and it is during that brutal, noisy standoff that the mini mutiny begins. “We can’t fly like this,” declares one angry passenger. “It’s not safe,” protests another. “He’ll calm down,” says a flight attendant, but everyone has eyes on the pulling, pushing and the wrestling: no one believes her. She doesn’t sound as if she quite believes it herself.

The scene gets noisier: screams from the man, loud pleas from the security guards merged with outraged, anguished protests from the public. And then, suddenly, there is retreat. “OK, you’re not going,” says a guard as they wrench the man out of the seat and hustle his writhing frame through the light of the exit. His screams recede and he is gone. The hubbub dies down – and on the way out, one exasperated guard grabs their travel bags from the overhead locker. Observers are relieved of the drama and take their seats. The storm has passed. Soon, doors closed, the plane moves.

There is an abstract quality to our democracy. It allows us to vote for action and change and mandate others to take care of the details. If that policy involves kindness, we largely hear about it secondhand and feel pride that in some small way we played a part in it. But when it involves harshness, and when it is distressing and messy, we enjoy the luxury of knowing that someone else does the dirty work and we never have to see it.

Forced deportations sit at the heart of our government’s immigration policy. Ministers parade them as a mark of effectiveness. In February, the Home Office said that almost 60,000 unauthorised migrants and convicted criminals have been removed or deported since Labour took office.

The practice is clearly also catnip to members of the right and far right, who want it bigger, better, faster – but few who support the policy with such gusto ever have to force a non-compliant, brawling man into an aeroplane seat or listen to the pitiful cries that accompany that endeavour. I am guessing few of them would ever have to witness it. Indeed, I’m wondering how Keir Starmer, Shabana Mahmood, Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage would have greeted the prospect of a 10-hour flight in the immediate, closed vicinity of a security operation involving a desperate, volatile figure with guards who clearly couldn’t control him.

And if that would be anathema to them, I am wondering why they think it is OK for ordinary citizens on ordinary passenger flights. I am guessing that outsourcing the implementation problem to a commercial airline and beleaguered flight attendants moves it one step away from ministers who devise the solution and those who support it.

It could be a wheeze to make the public acutely aware of what it is they have voted for and thus more supportive. But I suspect that probably plays out differently. Like the passengers revolted by what they saw last Friday at Gatwick, many who feel our migration policies are unworthy of a nation that prizes human dignity will feel that the ugly spectacle reinforces all their reservations. It might also be that those who support forced deportations would begin to question their endorsement if they were made to see it play out in practice. It was hard to watch the scuffle and not remember Jimmy Mubenga, the Angolan asylum seeker who died in 2010 after being physically restrained on a deportation flight at Heathrow.

It’s worth knowing that very many of the frequent attempts at forced deportations on passenger flights follow the Gatwick pattern: struggle, combat, outrage, retreat.

I make no case for that deportee. I don’t know what led to a forced removal. He might have a terrible track record. He could be exactly the sort who should be ejected for the public good. The point here is the how, not the why. But it is also the feeling that democratic decisions made at arm’s length ultimately place a responsibility on all who argue for them – and all who implement them. Perhaps as citizens it sharpens our appreciation of that fact when we meet the repercussions face to face.

• Hugh Muir is executive editor, Opinion

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