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I’ll Ask the Questions: Sunny Jacobs

In this series of interviews I have had the good fortune to meet a number of people who have had a real passion and understanding of the law. Some have wanted to uphold it and some to amend it. During the last month I have however met a lady, who had no interest in the law at all. She kind of “fell into the system” so to speak. At 26 years of age she had the American dream; a husband Jesse Tafero who was her “soul mate” and two “wonderful children”. Then one evening she met Walter Rhodes and experienced the American nightmare. She was ultimately to spend seventeen years on death row. This is the story of Sunny Jacobs in her own words.

On the evening of 20th February 1976, Sunny Jacobs through the failing of her motor vehicle “it was the kind of car that just spewed black smoke” was forced with her family to take a lift with one of Jesse’s friends ex-con Walter Rhodes.

The journey through Florida was tiring and eventually it was agreed that they take a rest and a few hours sleep. They pulled over into a rest area. A state trooper Phillip Black and a visiting Canadian Constable Donald Irwin were undertaking a routine inspection of the vehicles in the rest area.

“Well there was nothing going on, there was no crime, we had just pulled over to a rest area which is part of the highway and we were resting. There was no reason for anything happening”

But something did happen. A gun was spotted between Rhodes’ legs. Black radioed in details of the gun to the police station to discover that Rhodes not only had a criminal record, but was on parole. “that changed everything because having a gun is a violation of your parole and he was immediately going to be taken back to prison, that was it. And that created a different situation.” 

As Rhodes had no intention of going back to prison, he pulled out a second gun and fired.

“I covered the children [in the car]. And then when the shooting stopped I looked up to see where Jessie was…… to see if he was ok. And he was standing there in the middle of the cars. And Walter Rhodes was running between…., around the cars with a gun in his hand saying that we were to take the police car and to hurry”.

Black and Irwin were dead. Rhodes had shot and killed both of them.

“Walter Rhodes then ordered us in to the police car. At that point we were kidnapped. Because we did not have a choice. Jessie said that if we did not listen to him he might kill us as witnesses so we had to go with him”

Rhodes bundled his captives in the police car and within moments was driving at speed in an attempt to evade the chasing police helicopters and cars. In the melee that followed Rhodes was shot and injured and Sunny, Jessie and their family were released from his custody into the polices’.

“Oh I thought we were being rescued.  When the police came I thought that that was our salvation, but then as they did not really know what was going on they just arrested everybody. And that was the beginning of the ordeal.”

Whilst Sunny and Jessie were explaining that they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time and that they were little more than innocent bystanders Rhodes was painting a somewhat different story from his hospital bed. “He’d been in prison before, he knew how the system worked. And so he was claiming that he didn’t do it – we did.”

Rhodes entered a plea bargain on the basis that he had not been involved in the crime and that more than that Sunny had shot the officer twice before Jessie had taken the gun from her, shot the officer for the third time and then killed Irwin. Evidence was hidden by the Prosecution which would have proven that neither Sunny nor Jessie had fired the gun. In Sunny’s case the Prosecution also presented the testimony of a jailhouse informant Brenda Islam:

“They brought in a girl who had been in jail for drug charges, she was afraid, they got her to testify, that I had spoken to her in jail, because they needed something more against me. She later went on national television. She told what happened to her. She told how if they wouldn’t tell the truth, then I have to and I hope that Miss Jacobs will accept my apologies.”

Over twenty years later I asked Sunny for her thoughts on Brenda Islam.

“I feel that she was very heroic. She was desperately afraid even then”

When you say that she was heroic?

“To come forward and say that she had done something like that. Now everybody knows, her neighbours didn’t know about her past and yet she needed to right the wrong and so she put herself out like that and shamed herself in order to make things right. I think that that was quite heroic.”

But I digress. With tainted evidence, a plea bargain the details of which did not come before the Jury both Sunny and Jessie were charged with the murders.

“I really thought that as soon as they took us to court they would figure out that I did not do it and I would be let go. Anybody who knew me for five minutes would know that I would not kill anybody…I was one of those peace and love people. I was a hippy and a vegetarian, how could you possibly think that I could kill someone”.

Both were found guilty. Both were sentenced to the death penalty. The Jury in Sunny’s case recommended a life sentence. But Judge Daniel Futch Jr, himself a former Florida Highway Patrol trooper, who coincidentally just happened to keep a miniature replica of an electric chair on his desk, imposed the death penalty.

To extenuate matters, as if that is possible under the circumstances Sunny was then imprisoned in solitary confinement for the next five years.

“Yes because I was the only woman in the United States at that time who had a sentence of death. That was what they did. They did not feel that they could put me with the men or with the population of women and they thought that people with death sentences have nothing to lose so I would be a threat to the population so I was housed in isolation. Really what amounted to solitary confinement for five years.”

So you spoke to no one?

“Basically not. I was the only one who lived in that building. So the only sound I heard was the sound that I made. It was more like a tomb than a cell, really. I finally got a court order to allow me four hours of interaction with my peers each week to give me..,”

Four hours a week?

“Yes, basically the equivalent of what the men had and as there were a number of men on death row at the time they had each other and I did not have anyone so I had four hours a week and the occasional visit.”

But Sunny refused to wait idly by for her appointment with the executioner. Appeals were lodged and numerous lawyers appeared on her behalf. But you have to ask how she coped with it all.

“I was very angry. And I had lost faith in everything that I had been taught to believe in, including God”

It was clearly a horrendous experience, one with which many people would simply not cope.

“At one point I just made a decision. If I didn’t do something, then they may as well have killed me. I would be dead. Because I was losing my sense of identity and I was made to believe that I was just a whole lump of flesh, who could be locked up in a cage, no name, I had a number and that this was all that there was to it. And I was to just wait in this cell until they decided, that they were going to kill me. First of all, I decided it was not for them to say when I died, for there was a higher authority in the universe and until it was such time for me to die, then my life was still my own and did not belong to them. They could just restrict my movements”

After five years on death row Sunny was released into the general prison population and did not as it happens stop talking for the next three days, until rather ironically she lost her voice. The following year she lost her parents.

“My parents decided that maybe they could go on a vacation for once and not have to come to prison. So they dropped my daughter off with Jessie’s parents and went off for a holiday and unfortunately on the way the plane crashed and they were killed. And that was…that was the most difficult day of my life.”

And what of Jessie?

On the 4th May 1990, after fifteen years of incarceration Jessie Tefaro was executed by the electric chair. It was to be the last time that they used the electric chair in Florida, before rather reassuringly switching to lethal injection.

“It took thirteen and a half minutes for Jesse to die. Three jolts of electricity that lasted fifty five seconds each. Almost a minute. Each. Until finally flames shot out from his head, and smoke came from his ears”

Jessie did not have the benefit of the same legal team which finally assisted in having Sunny exonerated.

“Jessie had a prior record. When somebody has a prior record they are considered no good anyway. You are criminal. So if you did not do this then you will be doing something else. As such the system is comfortable in putting him away. Jessie’s trial lasted four days and then he was convicted and sentenced to death by his jury. My trial took two weeks because I did not have that kind of a record and I was a mother and it took longer.”

Perhaps rather unsurprisingly she continues to have fears and concerns about the debate over capital punishment and the criminal legal system in America.

“That is why they call it capital punishment. If you do not have the capital then you took the punishment. That is the way it is. No rich ends up in death row. The prosecutor’s office selects the cases that will be death cases. They select them. So they select the ones that they are going to win. They select the cases where the person has limited means to defend themselves, maybe they are uneducated, if this piece of evidence is not presented then well.”

And Sunny is in a unique position to evaluate this disease.

“In every one of the cases that I know about, that I have spoken to, between 30 and 40 of the exonerated in America and there are over 115 of them now. In every case there are prosecutorial misconduct; hiding of evidence which could have in the first instance shown their innocence; admission of false evidence; there is the plea bargain; and the jailhouse informant. Those are the elements that are always there. Always. I even met a man from Ireland who was an exonerated and we talked about the cases. And the same method. The face of injustice is the same everywhere.”

In October 1992, Sunny Jacobs was finally released from prison on the basis that she entered a plea in which she did not admit guilt.

“The police escorted me to the door with my little box of belongs. That was all I had after 17 years. And opened the door and handed me my box and told me to have a nice life”

In many ways Sunny seems incredibly reconciled with the hand that fate has dealt her. Hers in not a story of anger, bitterness or even hatred. Hers is one of optimism, of love and of her future, whatever it brings. She has a new husband (himself a former exoneree of the Irish legal system) a loving family and dogs to walk.

“The prize for me is that I have a beautiful life now. That is the prize; otherwise I might be a bitter woman blaming somebody else.”

Sunny’s story is presently being shown, with others in the Exonerated until the 11th June 2006 at the Riverside studios in Hammersmith and tickets can be obtained via the box office on 020 8237 1111 and via the website www.riversidestudios.co.uk.

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I’ll ask the Questions: Zahida Manzoor

When Zahida Manzoor decided to impose an unprecedented fine on the Law Society of England and Wales in the sum of £250,000 for failing to handle its complaints service adequately, she undoubtedly got their attention. She also got mine! Manzoor is in a unique position; not only is she the first Legal Services Complaints Commissioner but also the Legal Services Ombudsman and whilst perhaps not looking for a fight with the Law Society; she is determined to bring its complaints handling into the twenty first century, by hook or if necessary by crook. As such I rather felt I had little choice but to interview her about her life, her passions and her challenges with the Law Society.

Zahida Manzoor was born in Rawlpindi Pakistan in 1959 and moved to West Yorkshire when she was just three years old. Her father a member of the army unfortunately died twenty five years ago. “He was my kind of inspiration” Her mother had the unenviable task of bringing up five children, including Manzoor who confessed “I must admit I was a bit of a Tomboy, cycling around and getting into all sorts of scrapes that perhaps I should not have been getting into!” Oh how times have changed!

In common with a number of my other interviewees, Manzoor is both passionate and a workaholic. “I want to make sure that there is a right, just and fair society for all. I felt that no matter what I did, I always wanted to do something for the good.  I know that sounds very idealistic but it is something that is within me.”

So Manzoor began her working life as a nurse, midwife and as a health visitor. “I moved very quickly.  I qualified in all of those roles. Let me give you an example, when I was a health visitor I worked in Durham during the miners’ strike. Once again that began to bring home the issues about public services. Where changes needed to be made. Fairness for all. Access, equity and accessibility.”

From there she went on to sit on both the NHS Policy Board and the Commission for Racial Equality, holding the position of Deputy Chairman from 1995 to 1998. She also chaired Bradford Health Authority and the NHS's Northern and Yorkshire regional executive. “We wanted to improve services in terms of access for patients and for consumers. This was really key and fundamental to me. Getting real improvements in waiting times; getting real improvements in looking at the money that was being spent; how it was being spent and where it was being spent. Real grassroots improvements in service that patients could actually see.”

She was to be rewarded for her dedication.  In 1998 she was made CBE for services to Race Relations and the Health Service and the following year voted National Asian Woman of the Year.

But arguably her biggest challenge was still to come. In 2003 the Lord Chancellor appointed her to the role of Legal Services Ombudsman for England and Wales and a year later she was also made the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner.

So before we get too carried away with all these successes I thought that I should ask about the two roles and what they were really all about?

“Well I am the Legal Services Ombudsman and in that role I assess individual complaints that come to me from consumers who are dissatisfied by the service that they received from any one of the six legal professional bodies, which includes the Law Society and the Bar Council. “

And presumably ILEX?

“Yes.  Yes it does. Those complaints, by statute, have first got to go to the individual Lawyer or Executive concerned.  They then go to their professional body and then, if the consumer still remains unhappy with the service that they received, they can refer that complaint to me.”

So it is a very long drawn-out process. 

“Yes. I sit at the apex of the complaint-handling systems as Ombudsman but I review individual complaints as the Legal Services Ombudsman.  As Legal Services Commissioner, this post really is looking at the systems and processes of the Law Society, and asking the Law Society for a plan in terms of how it will improve its complaint-handling.  I was appointed to this post as well as the Ombudsman’s posts, simply because the Law Society was failing to deliver the improvements in their complaint-handling.”

One of the improvements being sought was that the Law Society should reply to the majority of complainants within 60 days instead of the present 90 days. So before dealing with the Law Society, let me check are you happy and satisfied with ILEX’s complaints-handling?

“I do not see very many complaints coming through to me from ILEX at all.  In fact, I can not recall if I have seen one this year.  In the scale of things I really do not get any concerns or complaints in that area”

Well that appears to be excellent news. But it does sound like the two posts could constitute something of a conflict of interest. Well certainly that appears to be the view of the Law Society in the past?

“Well, can I put it bluntly?

Oh please do

“Well. Utter rubbish.  I think it is just a red herring.  I was appointed to the Legal Services Ombudsman post. The Commissioner position was advertised at the same time. If the Lord Chancellor felt it necessary, he could also appoint whoever was appointed as Legal Services Ombudsman to the role of Commissioner. He did. So the decision was made well before I was appointed.  There is no conflict of interest at all between the two.  One as Ombudsman reviews individual cases, the other one has oversight of the Law Society, fulfilling its complaint-handling and to set its targets and review its progress against the plans it submitted to me, with a view to assessing what improvements it has made in its own systems and processes and indeed what improvements it has brought about in its complaint handling.”

Asked and answered. It was in fact the Chief Executive of the Law Society Janet Paraskeva who made the comment.

“Yes I know. I am not quite sure where she is coming from. I have a role to do.  I have a job to do.  So let us talk about what the real issues are.  Which are improving performance and improving the Law Society’s complaint-handling.  Let us tackle those issues. These are the real and meaningful issues. Both in the interest of the Law Society and of the practitioner as well.”

Alright – no conflict. I get it. So what do people complain about?

“Usually about their Lawyer not following advice; following instructions; not giving costs information; not keeping them updated.  Perhaps not turning up to Court; poor communication; being rude; being overbearing; giving bad advice or giving no advice.  Not giving options. Communications; costs and the delays appear to be the biggest factor.”

Readers take note. So why do you think the Law Society is getting it so wrong?

“Well, I think, certainly the Law Society’s Council has made quite a lot of money available for its complaint-handling.”

That’s thirty-eight million pounds.

“Yes.  This seems a slightly staggering amount of money, for the number of complaints that they deal with.  Having done independent audits of the Law Society’s systems and processes, there is an awful delay, in terms of the way that those cases go through their systems and processes.  I think they can be better managed.  They need to become much more efficient in how they deal with complaints than they currently are. But perhaps they are not getting as much value out of that money as they should.  My view would be perhaps the legal profession should be asking what they're getting for their thirty-eight million.”

The Law Society estimates that it will receive between 17,000 and 20,000 complaints between April 2006 and the end of March 2007. If you do the maths that is an awful lot of money being spent per complaint.

“Well, I think you are absolutely right, Jason, to say that the Law Society needs to be looking at its processes and tightening up those. Very much so.  It needs to be looking at the flexibility of its workforce.  It needs to be looking at how many cases they have, as opposed to how many people they have in management positions.  I understand they have something like just over four hundred people in the complaint-handling service, of which I understand just over two hundred are case-workers.  Now I don’t have to hand the exact job titles or what the other perhaps nearly two hundred people do, but perhaps these are the areas that the Law Society needs to look at. I would like to see much greater improvement at a much faster pace than currently is the case.”

So why is the Law Society getting it so wrong? After all it is spending a lot of money on the problem.

“Yes. A vast amount of money on their complaint-handling.  You have to look at how many complaints the Law Society gets and that has not changed dramatically over the past five years. You would expect greater efficiency or greater turn-around times, or greater improvement in service than we are seeing. The Bar Council is better. I think the Bar Council continually tries and reviews and improves on its processes; invariably I find that it does what it says.”

You fined the Law Society a quarter of a million pounds. Which I understand was because they had submitted a plan that was inadequate for securing improvements to its complaints handling services for 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007. I wonder whether the figure was so high because you thought the Law Society were not taking you terribly seriously.  And thus it needed to be high. A kind of hit across the brow?

 “Well yes but I do not think it was high. I think it was reasonable.  If it was high, then it would have been a million pounds.  Because of course I can fine up to a million.”

Yes I know that. But a quarter of a million pounds is still an awfully lot of money.

“I do not think that the penalty level that I set the Law Society was unreasonable.  That may well be a view that the Law Society have, but it is not unreasonable and when you look at how much overall the Law Society budget is (over £110 million) it is very, very minor. But it is reasonable. It is about the failings of the plan and that is the only way that I can make a judgment. It was based on simply that – the plan.  Not anything else that anyone else may well want to say.”

The reality may well be that the purpose of such a high fine was to ensure that the Law Society did in fact take Manzoor seriously when discussing the new improvement plan for 1st April 2006 to 31st March 2007 and when implementing it. The Law Society has now agreed that consumers will receive a substantive response to complaints within 55 days and that 94% of people who lodged complaints will have them concluded within 12 months. Amazing what a fine can do.

I have seen your proposals to get yourself sacked, so to speak.

“Well yes. The government’s White Paper in relation to legal reforms. I have taken a totally selfless position on the legal reforms. I said to David Clementi, that if we really are going to get an effective and efficient service, then the numbers of tiers of organisation should be reduced and thus my offices, both the Legal Services Ombudsman and as Legal Services Complaints Commissioner, should cease to exist.”

A brave decision

“But perfectly proper. Not because I did not feel that the positions were important, because indeed my powers will be transferred to the new Office for Legal Complaints and Legal Services Board.  Of course that is a very difficult decision to make, for both my offices and particularly for my staff.”

But the correct decision for the future of the profession?

“Absolutely. But you must have a Legal Services Board which has real teeth, so that if you need to use them, then you can, but presumably very rarely. Some people are talking about having a weaker Legal Services Board. They are wrong. If you have a strong Legal Services Board, frontline Regulators, should have nothing to fear at all. A strong Legal Services Board is a benefit for both the consumer and the regulators.”

Zahida Manzoor has certainly shown that teeth when used properly can make all the difference in her battle with the Law Society. Her vigour and passion for her work should be a credit and an example for us all. As lawyers perhaps we have a natural reluctance when a third party wishes to investigate our work or practices, especially if it is put there by an over-bearing government. But the fact is that where complaints are made they ought to be resolved, as effectively and efficiently as possible. Ideally internally and without the need for fuss or further recourse to our professional bodies. For lawyers as much as for consumers (I still remember when they were called clients) we want prompt action on problems and complaints. It does not help the legal profession, our legal profession, where we as lawyers are pilloried in the press especially when our professional bodies (and I am delighted to exclude ILEX in this analysis – but one brush can taint all) can not get it right quickly or efficiently enough.

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I’ll Ask the Questions: Helena Kennedy QC

Helena Kennedy QC is a remarkable woman. She has been involved in almost every leading human rights case over the last thirty years and is seen by many as the saviour of the unfortunate, the lost and the politically forgotten. The nation’s Portia.

Yet rather than leave her on the outside looking in (or words to that effect) the political establishment made her “one of us” and laudably ennobled her.  An incredible journey for a “wee lass” from the tenements in Glasgow to a seat of power in Westminster.

When I meet Ms Kennedy in the lobby in the House of Lords I am somewhat surprised as she is perhaps smaller than I had expected; immaculately presented; fierce and with an accent which sometimes flickered between her origins in Glasgow and years of living “down South”.  She is now in her 57th year (a factor which far too many reporters link to her name in articles) “to a working class family; my father worked with newspapers as a printer on the Daily Record and was a trade-union official, my mother was a housewife. There were four daughters in the family and they all left school at fifteen. I was the lucky one. I went to a local school in Glasgow and at the last minute decided that I would do law at University”.

She was originally planning to read English at Glasgow University but a last minute change of heart found law the more natural calling. The reason:

“Debating! In Scotland debating is very much part of the culture.  In schools we all debated, and this was in the big working-class schools.  I can remember that when I was about eleven or twelve my teacher would explain the procedures about debating and, well they are very similar to the law. I remember him pointing at me and saying ‘we’ll have a debate and you, Helena, will argue in favour of the death penalty.’  And I said ‘oh no, I can’t do that, because I am not in favour of the death penalty,’ and he said ‘but that’s not what this is about. You have to be able to understand what the argument of the other person is, you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes, and that’s the whole point.  And you will argue for the death penalty…’and so I did. It was about learning to make an argument; to make it as cogent as possible, and to understand the logic of it. As I said, very similar to the law”.

And to that end she chose to become a lawyer and travelled down to London and the Bar.

“I remember that I was surrounded by people who had gone to public school, who were very confident, who I thought were like the people on the radio, and had posh English accents. I was an outsider.  I spoke with a South Border accent.  I was rather conscious of it, in a way very Scottish. I was not welcomed, I did not feel that I belonged, and it took quite a long time to have that sense of entitlement to be there, while everyone else seemed to be very comfortable. But you can never tell.  They can each have their own insecurities too.”

The treatment of women both in the legal profession and in society generally has always concerned Kennedy. In particular "the women who came in as clients. I started to represent prostitutes and people like that and that really sharpened up my sense of how the law did not work for whole groups of people."

In 1993 she published her first book, a look at the way British justice treated women, Eve Was Framed. She also became a fixture on television in standing up for the rights of the individual in programmes such as Blind Justice and Raw Deal. More and more of her career became dominated by the preservation of civil liberties and human rights.

“I think these are things that we can be boastful about, and the rule of law was invented in this country, with the idea that you have to hold to account the people in power, and it started off, of course, being the King, but then of course the government, Ministers, people who are employed by arms of the State, whether they are policemen, immigration officers, prison officers, and we are entitled to expect those who have power not to abuse it.”

But do you really believe that our civil liberties are at risk?

“I really believe that they are in danger; of trial by jury; of torture. In the seventeenth century our Judges decided that torture was unacceptable, and that evidence that might come from torture should not be accepted in court.  These were things that were taken up by the rest of the world and being very important principles for any state to adhere to, and we are cavalier about how important they are.  So, of course, as you probably know, I have had my battles with the Labour government about it and this is a very painful business, because I am someone who prefers to see Labour in government to anyone else, and yet at the same time my first loyalties, when it comes to these issues, has to be to the law.

It was in 1997 that the Labour government ennobled her as Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws for her work as a campaigner; a Labour Party supporter and her work in a large number of prominent cases. Amongst others these include the Brighton Bombing, the Michael Bettany espionage trial, the Guildford Four appeal and the bombing of the Israeli embassy. However in the last ten years she has moved from being one of Labour’s more high-profile supporters to one of their more high-profile critics.

"I think that when it comes to this business of law and legal principle, I think they [Labour] are getting it seriously wrong and nothing will persuade me otherwise. There were times when I have to stand up and say ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to vote with you.  I’m going to vote against you.’  For people who don’t care in the same way about these issues, they find it very hard to understand, and they get very angry with me."

But as a Member of the Labour Party in the Lords, have you ever considered resigning the Labour whip?

“No, but on occasions, I have been advised to consider my position. But I am standing up and saying it is not good enough. Law matters!  That is what I am saying.  That is my slogan – the Law matters.  Actually it is the mortar in a civilised society, and once you start losing respect for that, and cease to understand why it is important then I think you start making a rod for your back.”

 

So why do you think that this disregard for civil liberties has become so prevalent?

“I think it is partly about the nature of society where we have politicians who no longer have to work as hard about winning people to their argument.  Everything can be done so much more readily, because of the nature of communication.  You know, you do not have to have a political party to defend ideas and to argue over why things should be as they are, or why you might change things.  You actually just sit on Richard and Judy’s sofa, and tell the nation why you think crime’s a bad thing, and what ought to be done.”

But crime is of course a “bad thing”.

“I agree that crime is a bad thing; that terrorism is a terrible thing, but what you do not need to do, is, in a knee-jerk way, reject the things that have been struggled for over many centuries.  And there’s always a way which Government for once, even after modernising, become cavalier with things that are considered to be old.  You know, the thinking, ‘they’ve been around for hundreds of years…’”

But the thing is of course that governments want to show, perhaps even think that they have to show the people that they are doing something?

“They want to be seen to be acting very quickly.  They reach for legislation as an answer to problems, and often legislation is not necessary.  We have had the creation of eight hundred new criminal offences and that is about a formula, which is that the Government feel that something has to be done.  The tabloid press run campaigns on crime.  We have to be seen to be tough on crime.  We have to legislate, and what’s the best way to be seen to be doing that.  It’s to be tough on these folk who, we think, may have done it. You know, it is very easy in the circumstances, to erode the fundamentals.”

So is it all doomed?

“Look society requires the rule of law, and it requires a vibrant democracy, and both are at the moment, actually, slightly kind of quaking in their boots. We need to revive democracy, and we need to be conscious of the principles which underpin the law.  Because, I think you start unpicking the mortar…you start taking out from our foundations, the stuff that holds it all together.  And I think, you know, that there are serious consequences from doing that.”

So what can we do as lawyers to protect this system?

“One of the great things about the legal system in Britain is that you actually have an independent legal profession and guarding that independence is very important. It is about making sure that without fear or favour you are prepared to defend people with the law. Challenging government, government officials and you can do this fearlessly and you are prepared to take on, as most of our firms do, suing government, suing the Ministry of Defence. We have to have a profession that is prepared to do those things, and from that profession we get such a terrific judiciary.”

But one of the problems that the profession has is that legal aid is being diminished and lawyers it would appear are becoming less respected.

“This is why we have to keep Legal Aid available, because you want your Criminal Justice Courts to be respected and seen to be fair.  Once you start becoming, you know, making fast and loose with that, I think you end up praying a price.  And it’s all short-termism.  It’s all so daft.  Because in the end, it’s about not seeing what the consequences might be, say, ten years from now. Because it all hangs together, and that makes for our reputation around the world.”

You mention reputation, in the world of miscarriages of justices cases which was the most important for you?

“People always think it must have been the Guildford Four Appeal, because it was such a high-profile case and it was such an important case in terms of being one of those lines in the sand cases.  But I have done lots of other lesser miscarriages of justice, where I have seen real pain, and I have seen people suffer because they have lost, or almost ended up losing their liberty for life.”

That must have been incredible sad?

“Well some of the saddest cases, of course, are cases involving domestic killings, where people have killed family members and it has happened in some horrible argument, where somebody lost their life and I have done lots of big high-profile cases, but the cases often haunt you most are, you know, often not the ones that make the headlines.”

Are you haunted by many?

“Just a few years ago, I did a case involving a little girl from Bangladesh, who was fourteen, brought here by her family, and could not speak a word of English.  She had lived with her grandmother, back in Bangladesh, and she came here and was made pregnant by one of her relatives – her mother’s brother – and did not tell anybody. She was so frightened and gave birth on her own, in a toilet, and threw herself from a multi-storey block of flats. The baby miraculously survived, but ended up in care. The whole story was just desperate. The little girl, the fourteen year old, ended up on trial at the Old Bailey.  He was a wonderful judge, and gave her probation and actually gave her an absolute discharge.  And I spoke about the responsibility of the relative who made her pregnant, and obviously sexually abused her, who had disappeared.  But it was a terrible thing.”

Are we a safer society now there are fewer miscarriages?

“I think we are much more vigilant and much more conscious of miscarriages of justice. But I am concerned that, in relation to terrorism, it is always when there are highly charged cases, where emotions run high and we all do feel very strongly about terrorism, and rightly so, but it is important that we show that the justice system can deal with these challenges to our system, because that is what makes ours different from terrorists, that we do respect the rule of law. And I think juries are fantastic.”

It is perhaps not only juries who require such an accolade. Perhaps society is safe when there remain people such as Helena Kennedy who are prepared to fight for our liberties and our rights even when it sometimes puts her at odds with our own. But then again all rights require some sacrifices and Kennedy’s political affiliations may yet prove such for her.

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I’ll ask the Questions:- Lady Brenda Hale

I'll answer the questions: Lady Brenda Hale

When I was a child in the mid 1970s my mother was somewhat out of the ordinary in our community. She went to work. As such I was labelled amongst other things as a “latch key kid”. It was still even in the mid 1970s the norm for most women, well certainly in Kent to stay at home and ‘look after the family’. But things have moved on somewhat in the intervening period. There has been a period of catch-up for women in all professions. A climate of equality between the sexes, so to speak. But perhaps rather surprisingly (or not) the legal fraternity has been somewhat slow in inviting women into its ranks. It was only in 1962 that Elizabeth Lane was appointed as the first female county court judge and not until 1988 that Elizabeth Butler-Sloss became the first woman judge in the Court of Appeal. Now finally the last bastion of male hegemony has been breached: Lady Brenda Hale has become the first woman to enter that most austere of legal clubs: the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. Heady times indeed for women everywhere.

Lady Hale’s story is all the more remarkable because her background was more academia than practising barrister. So when I met her recently in the House of Lords I started by asking her why she chose such a male dominated profession (as it was then):

“My Headmistress was convinced that I had the ability to go to Oxford or Cambridge and I thought of Law, and instead of her saying ‘oh, rubbish, girl’ or ‘girls don’t do Law’ or ‘nobody in your family does Law’ she actually said ‘what a good idea, but there’s not much we can do to help you’, but she did encourage me.  And I was right.  It was the right subject.”

Lady Hale born in 1945 was brought up in North Yorkshire. Her father the headmaster of a small boys’ boarding school whilst her mother “was in that generation of women, who qualified as teachers between the two World Wars and were really quite emancipated in their whole approach to things, as were indeed their husbands, but who were obliged to give up work when they married.” 

But circumstances were unfortunately to change that situation “when my father died, when I was thirteen, she picked herself up and dusted down her teaching certificate, and became the headteacher of the local primary school.  She was quite a remarkable woman”.

Perhaps it was her mother’s motivation which gave Lady Hale the drive to embark on in fact three different careers.

“After Cambridge I went straight to Manchester University as an Assistant Lecturer, as they then were, to teach Law. Whilst I was a student I had contemplated but rejected trying for the Bar, because I had no money and no connections and so on and so forth. But one of the attractions of Manchester was that they said at the interview ‘we would like you to take the Bar exams and do a pupillage and have some practical experience alongside the academic work’ so that is what I did”

Fortune favoured her. She spent the following three years in part-time practice at the Manchester Bar and at the University lecturing. Upon the advice of her then dean of law Julian Farrand she opted to concentrate on academia. A decision she was presumably not too upset with – she was later to marry Farrand.

It was however following her return to full time academia that her judicial progression really took off.

“Yes, there was a natural progression. Neither particularly quick nor particularly slow.   Obviously, I started writing articles and textbooks and the things that Academics do. I wrote a book on Mental Health Law which caused the Regional Chairman of the Mental Health Review Tribunal (who had known me at the Bar) to suggest that I might become a member of Mental Health Review Tribunals.  So I started doing that”

So that was the first step?

“That was the first sort of traditional step.  And then, at the beginning of the 1980s, the Lord Chancellor’s Department recruited a few Academics with some practical experience to sit as Assistant Recorders. I think that they were trying to diversify the Bench, and that seemed the obvious first step.  And so I trained and sat as an Assistant Recorder.”

And the rest as they say is history. But what attracted you to sitting on the bench?

"Two things!  One is new challenges, and the other is actually keeping in touch with the world of Litigation. Because I enjoyed it when I was a Barrister.  It was a good thing to be doing it - diversification - and of course, I am very glad I did it.”

What is so unique is that you followed a distinctly untraditional path.

“Yes completely different. The academic work led me to becoming a Law Commissioner in 1984 almost the same time as I started the baby judging. I carried on doing the part-time sitting while I was a Law Commissioner doing more and more of it and of course that was very convenient for everybody. And it, no doubt, made me visible with the powers-that-be who thought that just possibly it might make me appointable to the Bench in some capacity or another, so that’s what happened.”

It was also in 1984 that she wrote the influential tome Women and the Law, the first comprehensive survey of women’s rights at work, in the family and in the State. With that in mind I enquired as to whether she thought it helped that she was a woman?

“I don’t suppose it was a hindrance…”

Touché

“I think there does come a time when any system has to look at itself and say hang on – we have lots of women lawyers and hardly any women judges, and at least open itself up to the possibility that there might be appointable women in odd places.  To the extent that I, and one or two others, exemplified the fact that there might be appointable women in odd places well, yes, I'm sure it helped, and I hope it will go on helping.”

But would you agree that the law is still a gentleman’s club?

“As you know more than half of law students are women.  Entrance to the profession is at least half and half, and sometimes more than half. But the problem is that the attrition rate, especially the attrition rate from the places where women become visible for certain types of judicial appointment, is very high. But the Law is not the most family-friendly or flexible of careers. So it is obviously easier for men to make progress than it is for women.  That is obviously not an inevitable sex difference, it is a ‘the way people run their lives’ difference.”

And the judiciary?

“Our system of judicial appointment, especially for the senior posts, relies on long experience.  They are beginning to realise that the experience could be in a number of different fields. But that is a relatively recent realisation. So any club that you join by long experience of doing something else is likely to mean that there are fewer women, because there are fewer women with the long experience of doing something else for structural reasons and that also means that they will be men of a particular generation and a particular background.”

So were you accepted as a new member into the Judiciary with open arms?

“I think one of the good things was, I genuinely was in Family Law, unlike some of the earlier women appointments, who weren't genuinely in Family Law but they were put in the Family Division, possibly because it was thought that they could do less damage there, but I was genuinely a Family lawyer. This may have enabled me to demonstrate that I could do the job.”

So are you enjoying it here in the Lords?

“It is not possible not to enjoy it. There are only twelve Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, so it is a small, pretty friendly group of people.  Everybody has been very friendly – we are all very different.  I mean, although eleven of them are men and I am a woman. The men are all very different from one another, in character and personality.  So, very individual.”

So do you find it a struggle coming to judgments?

“It’s very interesting.  It’s nothing like as much of a struggle as an Appellate Judge, as it is as a First Instance Judge.  [As a] First Instance Judge, certainly in the Family Division, you are usually doing three things.  You listen to the evidence, work out who you believe and where the truth lies, or wade through the mass of documentary evidence, deciding which is the most important and which is not so important.  Then you exercise a discretion. There may be a point of law that you also have to think about, or you may have to remind yourself what the law is. Finally, you try to express your decision in a way that does not make things worse rather than better.”

So how is it different in the Lords?

“As an Appellate Judge, you are not on your own for a start. You are either one of three, five, seven, or even nine. So you are not shouldering the whole burden by yourself and also you are simply reviewing what the poor, bloody foot-soldier did in the first instance. But you are also very conscious, as an Appellate Judge, that whatever decision you come to is going to be binding on everybody else”

I read with interest that you are proud to be called a feminist. What does that mean?

“If you are asking me whether I am a feminist, I would say of course I am a feminist. But if you are asking me what is a feminist? I would say that I believe that women are entitled – you know, as the Declaration of Human Rights puts it – to equality, in dignity and rights.  And it’s as simple as that.”

If it were only as simple as that?

“Well, of course you then have to work out what we mean by equality, and you have to work out what we mean by dignity and what we mean by rights.  These are all difficult and I have devoted a certain amount of my time and thought processes to writing and talking about these things.  But that is what I mean by a feminist.  I think I would probably add to that the recognition that there are a lot of different ways of leading one’s life, and that it is, on the whole, in the interests of the human race if women can be persuaded to have babies.”

Have you seen the world’s population?

“Not too many babies. The babies that they want to have, no more and no less. But that being the case, there are certain inevitable distinctions that have to be drawn.  Again, it is difficult to work out which are inevitable and which are not.  Which are biology and which are sociology. And just as I would say that there are many different ways of proving one’s ability to be a decent judge, there are many different ways of succeeding in the world, and that’s what I'm interested in.”

You mentioned the Declaration of Human Rights, are you in favour of the legislation?

“Yes, I'm in favour of the legislation.  I think it has made us think about certain fundamental issues, in a way that we didn’t think about them before, and that’s a good thing.”

But are there too many laws?

“I was a member of the Law Commission, whose statutory duty was to simplify and modernise the law. This included reducing the number of separate enactments by consolidation and codification of both statute and common law, two very different matters. So yes of course, I believe that, if at all possible, law should be simple, clear and accessible.  We do seem to find it very difficult to do that.  There is a great enthusiasm to take a problem and say ‘there ought to be a law about it’, when maybe a better solution might be found elsewhere than in the law for tackling that particular problem.”

Or arguably there’s a law already there…

“Yes.  That is true.  Or arguably you could try and make more coherent the law that is already there, so that it was simpler and clearer.  And that is what we tried very hard to do in the Law Commission.  I think we succeeded with the Children Act in 1989, in taking a mass of separate pieces of legislation, which were incoherent and turning them into one coherent scheme that fitted together, so that everybody could understand what it meant.”

Do you believe that there is still a passion for the law? Or is it now all about the money?

“That is a very interesting question, and of course different people enter the Law for different reasons.  Having spent eighteen years amongst undergraduates, three of them as Admissions Tutor at Manchester University Law Faculty, one was aware of a wide range of different motivations of people coming into the Law.  You had some who came in because of family pressure, which sometimes had to do with parents wanting their children to get ahead, and have a profession, and be respectable. There were certain groups within which it was seen as being a step up from whatever they had previously been involved in.   Now you could say that that was a natural thing, but it wasn’t really, it was more a status and position thing.”

So it is no longer about righting a wrong?

“Well there were some who went into it for idealistic reasons.  They wanted to right all the wrongs of the world.  And there were some who went into it for unmixed materialistic reasons.  But most people probably have a mixture of those three – status, idealism and money.  And some went into it because they were genuinely interested, which is not quite the same.”

And you?

“I went into it because I was genuinely interested.”

An idealist then?

“No I did not go into it because I had a burning sense of the injustices of the poor, or the disadvantaged. Because I am not sure I knew much about that. I certainly did not go into it for monetary reasons, because again I do not think I knew much about that.  When I went into it, my ambition was to become a high street solicitor.  Because that was all I knew about the Law, and although they were comfortably off, they were not brilliantly well off, and so I do not suppose that I was that unusual.  But on the other hand, there are now many, many more people going into the Law, and universities are very anxious to offer Law courses because so many people want to do them.”

The problem with that is that there are almost too many people going into the law. Not enough jobs and a considerable degree of debt follows.

“That is absolutely right.  There are so many people going into the profession, or wanting to go into the profession, that it will  be difficult for them all to find legal careers of the sort that they probably thought of, when they first went into it.  They won't have wasted their legal studies if they’ve made good use of them. That’s the other thing about the Law. It plugs into so many other areas of life, that you should end up, after a Law degree, much better qualified for life than you were before.”

So are you in favour of increasing the gene pool for Judges?

“For the reason that I gave earlier, I do strongly believe that we ought to have a more diverse judiciaryIf the only people who can become High Court Judges are successful silks, who practise regularly, and visibly, before other High Court Judges, well then it more or less stands to reason that there will be fewer women and fewer people from minorities, than there might otherwise be. It does not follow as night follows day that the only people qualified to do judging at a high level are the people who have been Advocates at a high level.  The Advocates may be very good judges, but they may not.”

It was in January 2004 that Baroness Hale became the first woman ever to join the ranks of that highest legal table in the country. By doing so she has brought a form of hope and emancipation to female lawyers everywhere. It is true that the appointment of a woman Law Lord is long overdue. But perhaps her wider legacy will be that recognition that senior members of the judiciary are no longer obliged to follow a single path. She has with her appointment brought a belief and an expectation that hard work, energy, diligence and common sense will finally be rewarded in the law and the judiciary. If the judiciary is to move with the times then such appointments must not be symbolic but the start of fresh ideas and real change. There are after all a considerable number of excellent legal executives just waiting for that opportunity to take their first step along the judicial ladder and perhaps eventually sit with Baroness Hale at that top table.

I’ll ask the questions  George Galloway

I’ll ask the questions George Galloway

George Galloway appears at every turn to be something of a personal and political enigma. He is a life long socialist yet he was expelled from the Labour Party. He was so desperate to get back into the House of Commons that he set up his own political party; called it Respect and won the seat of Bethnal Green & Bow at the 2005 General Election, with a swing of 26.2% from ironically, the Labour Party.  To compound it all he rarely attends or votes in Parliament. He has one of the worst attendance records amongst MPs having only attended 16% of votes. He is referred to as Saddam Hussein’s only friend in Westminster, yet seemingly is off George W Bush’s Christmas card list. Some call him a rogue and others merely “Gorgeous George” and oh yes there was that Celebrity Big Brother episode. Love him or hate him he remains one of the few real ideologists in a somewhat sanitised Parliament, so obviously I had to go and meet him, well really...

George Galloway was born in Dundee on the 16th August 1954 into a traditionally left-wing family. His father’s side of the family were Trade Union activists whilst his mother’s side were Irish at odds with Britain’s policy on Imperialism and Colonialism.

As such “I ate it [politics] up for breakfast really from the earliest age.  I was handing out leaflets on school gates on Polling Day, when I was seven or eight years old.  And by my teens, I had no intention of doing anything else with my life other than what I have done.  So I have been very lucky.” 

Lucky indeed. He left school at sixteen to become a factory worker with Michelin Tyres. In the 1987 General Election, Galloway aged 33 won the Glasgow Hillhead seat for the Labour Party,  which he held until 2003 when he was expelled from the Labour Party for his opposition to the Iraq War and,  amongst other things,  for suggesting that: "... the best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders." Blair and his New Labour revolution were not impressed. So what made him become so out of touch with his Party?

“My actual political position has not really moved at all. But the centre of gravity has.  The first time I saw Alistair Darling was when he was a bearded Trotskyite, pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. I later saw him as Transport Secretary denouncing the records of the RMT Union for their work to rule on London Underground. And that metamorphosis is only one.  I remember Stephen Byers when he was a militant; Alan Milburn when he was in the International Marxist Group. I knew John Reid very well when he was in the Communist Party of Great Britain, as were a lot of them, to the left of me. Times have changed.”

Indeed they have. But perhaps one of the differences is that they actually turn up and vote in the House and well to be honest you rarely do.

“What I have to do is find more and more ways of speaking directly to the people. There is no point in appearing as a one man Party in the House.”

What do you mean? You chose to stand for election.

“Look, in voting terms for example, you can almost always, more than ninety percent of the time only vote for the Prime Minister’s Motion; or the Leader of the Opposition’s Amendment.  There are rare occasions when you can vote for a Liberal Amendment.  I rarely want to vote either for the Prime Minister’s Motion or David Cameron’s Amendment, and even sometimes I do not want to vote for the Liberal Democrat Amendment.  There is no other means of voting in the Commons.  There is no Abstention Lobby.  So there is no point in being there, and there is no point in listening to the ’poodles’ baying according to the latest instruction from their pagers.”

So what do you do instead?

“Yesterday I did three things.   I appeared on the Politics Show on the subject of the London Regional Opt-Out.  Then I went to speak at a demonstration and then I drove to Birmingham to address a rally. I got home at two o’clock in the morning. That was a Sunday.  Most of my days are spent meeting and speaking to as many people as I can.”

Well whilst that might be good for George Galloway and Respect, can it actually be to the benefit of your constituents?

“Well my constituents are served by my office.  My office is the biggest Constituency office in the country.  It is got more staff and a better qualified staff than any other.  I have got two first-class Oxford graduates, First Class Degrees, working for me, and four others.”

Is there not somewhat contradictory? You, a working class socialist, turning to the alleged Upper classes for supporters?

“The people I meet from Oxford and Cambridge are the brightest … [people I ever meet] and [are the] most politically developed people I ever meet”

I see.

“So my constituents are served by the biggest and best Constituency Office in the country.  It is not my job personally to sit and take the details of a problem with the wheelie bins, and the high flats in Bethnal Green, but somebody has to.  And my office does.  And they do it in my name.  And the rest is just cant and hypocrisy.  The idea that the job of being a political leader is to be a social worker 24/7 is absurd.  The job of being a political leader is to be a political leader.”

Alright, you mentioned Bethnal Green, can we discuss the local elections and the thorny subject of vote rigging.

“We won 12 seats in the local elections and if the House of Lords does its job, on one of the cases very soon we will have 15, or 18 or 21, or even 24 Councillors. Because we were cheated, systematically by someone who has been rewarded now with the job of Chief Inspector of Schools. Christine Gilbert the Chief Executive of Tower Hamlets wife of a Labour Minister presided over a system of election which was at best wide open to systematic fraud.”

What do you mean?

“Well the failure to even enquire as to whether 18 out of 21 flats really did sign forms asking for their ballot papers to be redirected to a small flat somewhere else.  When taxed as to why they had not checked on this, they said it was not their job to check on whether these people really had asked for that.  But any sensible system would have said that is inherently unlikely.  We had better check on that.  Why would 18 out of 21 households redirect their ballot papers to a single address?”

It is pretty unlikely is it not?

“Well when it was pointed out to them that that single address was intimately connected to one of the candidates in the election, you would have thought that even the most nasally-challenged would have been able to smell a rat.  But they did not.  And only when Andrew Gilligan, in the Evening Standard, blew the whistle, and the other media piled in behind it, was there any appreciation shown that Tower Hamlets might be in the grip of a system of political corruption that would, to borrow a phrase from a judge, shame a banana republic.”

I understand that this is not just restricted to London.

“Take Birmingham where 6 Labour councillors were thrown out of office and prosecuted having been caught at midnight in a car-park actually filling in hundreds of ballot papers.”

So what is to blame for this?

“New Labour has become an agency for political corruption.  They have instituted changes to the Law which make political corruption much easier.  They have resisted the calls of the Independent Election Commission which they themselves set up, to make corruption more difficult, and you have to ask yourself ‘is this a coincidence, or is it an intended consequence?’  My belief is that it is an intended consequence.  And there are local rotten boroughs, of which Birmingham is one and Tower Hamlets was another where the only way Labour could cling on to power was by institutionalised political corruption.”

Tough words, but so what can be done?

“Most people know that what we are crying is right, but they do not care to help us, so most of them sit on their hands and wait and see.  Ironically, one of the last uncorrupted parts of the British Constitution is the Judiciary. The place that Left-wingers like me used to routinely denounce as an integral part of the Establishment.  But time after time, the House of Lords, the Law Lords, the Judiciary have turned out to be and, it must be because of their independence, just about the last uncorrupted part of the British State.  Everything else – Parliament, the Executive, the Security Services, the Military top brass, the commanding heights of the media, the BBC are all on-side.  Or were all on-side, for the New Labour Project.”

So have you been getting it wrong all these years by attacking the Judiciary?

“Well….maybe not.  Maybe we were right then and we are right now.  Maybe the veneer of bourgeois democracy has been stripped away and the last piece of the veneer, which is refusing to be stripped away, is the Judiciary, but maybe it will be, in time, maybe it won't.  Maybe Labour will lose power before it succumbs.  I do not know.  But on the so-called Terrorism front, on civil liberties generally, or on any idea of justice, the Judiciary have turned out to be the last defenders of what used to be the things that made Britain a kind of special place.”

So what about the government’s recent comments about the failures of the Judiciary over their implementation of the Human Rights Act?

“Well it has come to something when a Labour Government spends so much of its time pouring vitriol on something called the Human Rights Act.  Something which they themselves incorporated into British law and which they waved as a flag of their ‘New Labourness’ and now excoriate at every opportunity, both as a means of slandering the judges, and because, intrinsically, they find that the Human Rights Act impinges on their ability to discard as they see fit, as they roll across each wave of controversies, the traditional freedoms and liberties of the people in this country.”

So what you define as the individual’s human rights?

“Well I think the main problem in this country has been that we have no Constitution. We have no Bill of Rights. We have no clear set of rights and obligations to the society.  We always argued that ‘it would be alright on the night’ that traditional British pragmatism would be a better way of securing freedom than these foreign ideas of Constitutions and Bills of Rights.

Most would have said that it has

“Well it may have for a time but it does not now”

Arguably it has been one of Britain’s strengths that it does not have such a constitution to tie it. That good will win out through the midst.

“For a time, but that depended on Parliament being a Parliament worthy of the name. We no longer have a Parliament worthy of the name, as I have just been saying and, consequently, the Executive can order the Parliament what to do, including orders to discard the very things that made Britain Britain.”

What do you mean?

“My father is dead now, but if he had lived to see the day when a Labour Government would preside over a system whereby people could be detained, first in Belmarsh, now at home under house arrest, without charge, without trial, without limit of time, without sight of that of which they were accused, without the ability to choose their own legal counsel. He would simply not have believed it.  Because for people of his age these were things that happened in other people’s countries not ours.  The absence of these things was one of the emblems of Britishness, but we slipped so quietly into that good night.  Only the judges tried to cry ‘freedom’ about it and all that happened was that the Parliament then said ‘well, if it is illegal to discriminate against foreign residents in Britain in this way, we’ll change the Law.  We will change it to apply to every person, whether British or not’, and they got away with it.  They got re-elected, and thus an absolute corner-stone of liberty was abandoned.” 

So I take it you were not in favour of the government’s proposal earlier this year for terrorist suspects to be imprisoned for up to 90 days then?

“Now these young men were freed from what will now become known as Forestgate after I think nine days but they had to appear once at least in court in that period.  If Labour had got its way these young men would have disappeared into the maw of the State for three whole months.  And yet we see that the basis for their arrest was entirely false, utterly fatuous, and with very grave consequences for confidence in the Law, in the Police and the Security Services, in the Government and the State, to boot.  We were in the past able to depend upon a Parliament worthy of the name.  We no longer have it.”

You state “a Parliament worthy of the name”. Presumably you did not think Thatcher’s Conservatives between 1979 to 1987 was worthy of it’s the name?  Is it just the fact that you feel so let down?

“No I did not think it was worthy of the name in a sense. I probably didn’t. You are right. At the time. But in retrospect I can see that it was…”

Well what was the difference?

“Well when I came into Parliament in 1987, there were upwards of a hundred people that you would describe as men and women of independent minds in all parties.  Who would have, and did stand up for liberty. Stand up for justice, stand up for the right thing, irrespective of what the Whips said. Irrespective of what the Party leadership said.  Now I look at the green benches, and I see a shiver running along, looking for a spine to run up.”

Alright let us talk about America. In May 2005 a U.S. Senate committee accused Galloway along with former French minister Charles Pasqua of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme. Galloway attended the Senate to argue his innocence and also took the opportunity to denounce the invasion of Iraq as having been based on "a pack of lies".

“It was my finest hour. I do not think even my worst enemies would deny that”

Last I heard the Senate was going to commence proceedings against you.

“Coleman [the Chair of the Committee] accused me of perjury. I said ‘put up or shut up’. Well they appear to have shut up. It has been nine months since Mr. Coleman opined and not a single letter or phone call so it was a pantomime. So he started that day, a year ago as a Presidential hopeful. But he did not end that day in quite such a good position”.

Your thoughts on Guantanamo Bay?

“You have to understand how the rest of the world views this scar on the face of civilised opinion that is represented by this Guantanamo festering sore, which was the United States’ biggest problem in the world. It is their recourse to such coarse and vulgar and implicitly threatening language that is the main reason why anti-Americanism is a wave which is sweeping the entire world and if they can not see that, then they are blind as well as stupid.  But I am afraid they are blind, and stupid and we have a world in which we have a single super-power, which is a giant with the mind of a child.  And a spoiled brat child at that.”

I am thinking about the three recent suicides there and the fact that I understand you recently met Moazzam Begg who spent approximately two years in Guantanamo.

“Yes I met Moazzam Begg recently.  It was amazing to be there, holding, shaking hands with a young man who, himself, had regularly contemplated suicide because he knew that he was in this legal black hole and he imagined that he would be there forever.  He had no anticipation that he would ever be released.  And, I know Cuba very well.  I know what it is like.  I can imagine what it is like to be in a cage in the tropics, where psychological, and other forms of torture, are regularly visited upon an inmate.  It is a surprise that more of them have not committed suicide.”

So is there a place for torture when dealing with terrorists?

“No. Torture is an absolute Rubicon, and as a moral question, it absolutely defines the difference between a civilised society and a barbaric one.  Absolutely defines it. Whatever information, extracted under torture, most of the information extracted under torture will be false.  Because people will say anything under torture.  But even insofar as any accurate information was extracted under torture, the seepage into the soul, of the society responsible for that torture, would be more damaging than anything averted by the extraction of that information.  I think it is an absolute moral Rubicon.  And the United States has crossed it.”

Does anyone really care?

“Yes. There are those of us who do care.  Or, we will be complicit in that good night.  And I don’t care if I was the last man saying this, I would still say it.  But I am very far from the last man saying it.  I think the majority of British people, if they could be reached, in a proper way for such a discussion, would agree with me.”

And that brings us to Big Brother. Was that the right thing to do?

“Definitely.  I had three goals.  I attained them all.  The three goals were to raise a substantial amount of money for charity, in my case, a Palestinian charity feeding desperately poor and hungry people in Gaza, which I achieved.  We doubled the amount of charity income. To use my fee to employ two new members of staff in my constituency office, which I have done and to take the existence of my politics, my Party’s existence, to a wider public.”

Yes, but …

“Now I can assure you that, on that latter point that has been done.  Everybody in the country now knows me.  Everyone in the country, more or less, has heard the name Respect.  For a small Party two years old, with no money, that’s a very difficult thing to do without thinking and acting outside the box.  And that is what we did.”

Yes and I accept that a lot of people now know your name, but for the right reasons?

“Now, I am not saying that being known is the same as being supported.  I am not even saying that the people who run down the road after me to get their picture taken with me, which happens on every street, in every town and city in the country, I promise you that. I am not saying that those people, who want their picture taken with me, necessarily agree with me, or even like me.   But it is not a bad start.  It means that the next time they see I am on Question Time; they are more likely to watch it.  That is one of the reasons why the Question Time audience last time was three million, instead of the two million it had been the week before.”

Alright I understand that more people know you now, but really the purring thing was not really your finest moment, now was it?

“Well, actually, I do not quite get that. I knew that the leotard would be a grotesque image that would haunt me. It was a compulsory task.  The punishment for not doing it would have been the starvation of my housemates and myself.  It was a game of charades.  And I played it.  And to this day I do not get why doing quite a passable impression of a cat should be so extraordinary.”

In many ways George Galloway appears something of a contradiction. One moment he is puffing robustly at his cigar, the next the smoke is pierced by the anthem of the Soviet Union ‘the East is Red’ playing on his mobile. We even had the highlight of a short adjournment during the interview to watch a clip from London Tonight which he had filmed earlier that day. Whether he is right in everything he says is up for debate. On occasions he speaks with vitriol and perhaps even regret and disappointment. Some think he is a fool, others a rogue and some even an enemy of the state. But can that really be true? Maybe he is a dying breed. A passionate politician who looks outside the box and uses bright emotive language and, oh yes a degree of rhetoric to make his point. Or maybe he just calls it as he sees it. Whether we agree with him or not and that is a matter for you, we can not help but listen. After all I just ask the questions.

I’ll ask the Questions: Esther Rantzen

It was way back in 1973 that the BBC brought out a television programme which was to live with many of us for the next twenty years. The programme entitled That’s Life gave us many things: silly songs; performing pets; Jobsworths; real issues of the day and of course an annoying campaigning gappy toothed presenter. Improvements in dental treatments have filled the gap but Esther Ranzten remains, as enthusiastic and as campaigning as ever.

“I’m a trained journalist, working both in television and in the newspapers and as such when I come across, if you like, good causes, that deserve a platform or areas of injustice that could be changed, my instinct are to try and bring that to as wide an audience as possible. I suppose that has meant that during all my working life I have tried to campaign for issues and causes that I have really believed in.”

Esther Rantzen was born in Hertfordshire on the 22nd June 1940 and is thus at the time of this interview half way through her sixty fifth year. Retirement however is not on the agenda. And there have of course been many, many issues. So in Esther’s own words:

“Let me give you an example from That’s Life.  We had one story of a mother whose child had fractured her skull in a playground accident falling from a slide from no great height but onto tarmac. We discovered as a result of broadcasting the story, that serious accidents happen all over the country using playground equipment, and secondly, nobody had been collecting any kind of statistics because the A&E departments of hospitals recorded the accident but not where it happened.”

Before my eager campaigning readers get too over excited in stretching for their Personal Injury protocol letter let me remind you that this is an example from the late seventies.

“We did some more research and discovered that there are safe surfaces with either rubber tiles or woodchip which can mean that if children do fall, it is a soft landing. So I started to drop china plates in television studios just to demonstrate the difference. A china plate shatters on tarmac and bounces on rubber. As a result Parent Teachers Associations and local authorities around the country began to dig up the tarmac and replace it with safe surfaces.”

I remember it well. Overnight playgrounds were transformed from concrete to smelly wood chip.

“Now if That’s Life were on the air now, I would be doing a story about the local councils who have not maintained their playground surfaces and therefore chain up the gates because they do not have a statutory duty to provide play space and they are terrified of litigation if they provide an unsafe surface. So I would be saying is it not time that we made it part of the local authority’s responsibility to make sure that children have somewhere to play.”

‘Terrified of litigation’? Now I am sure she meant that in a positive way. After all Esther is all in favour of personal injury.

“Well personally I am also a spokesperson for one of these, personal injury, no win, no fees organisations, namely the Accident Advice Helpline”.

See I said she meant it in a positive way.

“My experience has been that we are a very non-litigious population. That we would rather get on with life, than keep the pain alive by going to lawyers and there is a huge sum of money by way of compensation that people are actually entitled to but that they do not claim. So I think that we are not litigious until we are pushed”.

So are there exceptions to the rule?

“Of course, there is always an exception to the rule, there always has been, what do you call it, the vexatious…

The vexatious litigant?

“Yes, the vexatious litigant. Actually there is one in my village, but I better not name them for fear of litigation.”

Very nice! So no win no fees get the Rantzen backing?

 

“Yes, well, it is actually a campaign that we ran for years on That’s Life, saying that all lawyers ought to offer no win, no fees and that people ought to have access to compensation because our experience of investigating people who were clearly entitled to compensation was that there would be interminable delays that insurance companies managed to spin things out and it was causing real hardship. I have spoken to a minicab driver who was blocked by the other side’s insurers even though the other car has smashed into the back of him when he was stationary at the lights, and as a minicab driver it was his livelihood at stake, so for me it is just a continuation of a campaign that I started on That’s Life.”

And thus we find ourselves back on campaigns. Her biggest to date relates to her involvement with children and in the particular reference to the chilling statistic that on average sixteen children commit suicide every year as a result of bullying, “literally bullied to death”. In the 1980s Esther produced and presented three programmes about child abuse called Childwatch, following which she founded the charity Childline, the free 24- hour national helpline for children in distress or danger.

So what can lawyers do?

“Now I believe in good law as a basis for good conduct and I certainly think that it would be very interesting if lawyers were prepared to take maybe group actions or single actions against schools and education authorities. I think that there are certain schools who are in such deep denial [of bullying] and who take so little action to protect the children they nominally look after, that they need what could best be described as a short sharp shock. They need to understand that it is in their interests to make sure that they do protect their children.”

Well I am sure with Esther around they are not going to forget their obligations and if any lawyers decide to take up the challenge they will not have to look too far for a willing expert witness.

And what law reforms would Esther bring in?

“I would ask the criminal bar to recognise how badly they are failing children.  We do not provide justice for our children, particularly child witnesses.  Our system of the adversarial legal system is designed to frighten adults into telling the truth.  Now what it does, is intimidate children into being unable to speak at all and I believe that we need to create an inquisitorial system which would mean that we could find proper corroboration for the children who are disclosing crimes such as abuse and we would find a language for child defendants like, for example, the children who killed Jamie Bulger so that they could understand it.”

Is it really that bad?

“I think the system is a disgrace at the moment, in the sense that it has let our children down so badly and there are plenty of other countries that do it better.”

So what basic rights do children have?

“I tend not to talk about children’s rights.  I tend to talk about what they need because I think when you talk about children’s rights then you sort of inflame people’s own rights such as discussions, you know, about women’s rights. Children’s rights they find that difficult to accept, but if you talk about what children need, there’s no question that children need proper legal protection from dangerous criminals because at the moment they do not get it.

By dangerous criminal what exactly do you mean?

Well, if you sexually abuse children and you make sure you damage them so badly they can not give evidence or you abuse children so young, they can not give evidence, you will get away with it for life. Because you are getting away with it there has been an estimate, which says that a paedophile in an average career makes a thousand assaults either on different children or on a single child.  So how much misery and suffering are you condemning children to with a legal system which never brings paedophiles to justice?”

It can not be as simple as just changing the way the courts run to prevent this?

“Let me tell you a story.  Two children I know very well were sexually abused by an old neighbour.  The older child physically attempted to protect the younger child; we are talking about a seven year old and a five year old. She flew at him with her fist to try and stop him doing the same to her younger sister.  She disclosed to her mother.  It was decided by the CPS that the younger child was too young to give evidence; therefore the seven year old was not allowed to refer in any way to the sexual abuse of her younger sister.  When the man was charged, an older young woman came forward, a woman of 24, who he had also abused, using the same form of bribery.  The older woman gave evidence to the police but the judge would not allow it to be heard, because he said it would be prejudicial. That meant the seven year old was uncorroborated either by her younger sister or by the older woman. The man was only convicted of one offence against her, when in fact he had assaulted three that we know of, probably more.” 

Harrowing stuff, there is more..,

“Another example, took place in my local authority in London. Ten children, whom I knew who were in care, were sexually abused by a house parent there.  They decided as young adults that they would go to court together.  The local authority had lost the papers.  The judge stopped the case.  So, what are we talking about?  We are talking about criminals who are going unpunished.  We are talking about victims who are going unheard.  Now that is not what our criminal law is there to do.”

It was the English philosopher, Edmund Burke who stated that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. Whilst Esther is around ‘nothing’ is not really an option.

 

I’ll Ask the Questions:- The Countess Mar

I’ll Ask the Questions:- The Countess Mar

It was in Hamlet (Act I, Scene IV) that Shakespeare recanted that there was “something rotten in the state of Denmark”. His statement would appear to retain common currency in today’s society, especially within the echelons of Britain’s immigration service. Or so would be the case if we were to believe the views of Margaret, Countess of Mar: an independent peer in the House of Lords with one of the oldest hereditary titles in the country. After twenty-one years as a non-legal member of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal she controversially resigned calling the entire system an utter shambles. So, I asked for her “warts and all” view of the system which she was all too eager to tell.

Countess Mar was born Margaret Alison Lane on the 19th September 1940, the daughter of James Lane, Master of Mar and the Heir Presumptive of Lionel Erskine-Young, 28th Earl of Mar. In light of the families rights to the hereditary title of Mar they formally changed their name in 1959 to “Mar”. It is apparently all about presentation. In 1975 after her father’s death she became the 31st holder of the Earldom of Mar. The Earldom itself being “one of the 7 original Princedoms of Scotland going back into the mists of antiquity”.

Alexander I of Scotland awarded the title in around 1114 when the titles were Normanised. Apparently before then they were the MorMares of Mar. As such the Earldom is one of the oldest titles in the House of Lords. “My family tree goes back to 350 AD”.  This in itself causes a considerable degree of responsibility and pressure.

“Well it is quite a lot to have on top of your shoulders.” Something, which the present incumbent seems very capable of handling.

In 1999 the House of Lords Act set about reforming the House and in particular reduced dramatically the number of hereditary peers permitted to sit in the Upper chamber to ninety-two. In a bow to democracy an election was called in the Upper House to determine which ninety-two Peers would be permitted to stay. Countess Mar topped the poll. “I was so surprised that I was struck dumb. I lost my voice. Totally. It just disappeared. In seconds. It was extraordinary. I was so overcome with emotion that I just could not speak, so I got on a train and came home. Because all sorts of people wanted to speak to me and you know I just could not.” She was unable to speak for two days!

But she is speaking now.

“The [immigration] system is crazy. It is nothing to do with merit or upholding a fair immigration policy. It is just an expensive, legalistic game that undermines the integrity of our borders and our judiciary, making a mockery of any concept of public service.”

Strong words indeed. Lady Mar, a cross bench peer is a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords and Vice President of the association representing tribunal members. She has been married three times “it took me a long time to find the right one, but I have got him now and I have been married to him for nearly twenty-five years”. In the last few years she was paid £242 a day for sitting on the Tribunal and as such I enquired as to what attracted her to the role of immigration in 1985?

“Not having anything to do on Tuesday mornings”

Excuse me?

“Well it was Lord Pitt of Plumstead who got me started. He was the first black Peer to sit in the Lords and we became friends. I was talking to him about things to do and he said that he had got a friend who was a member of the Immigration Tribunal and that well they had some vacancies”

Gosh you just can not beat a system of checks and balances.

“So I said right, I will write a letter to the Lord Chancellor. Which I did. I was then invited to an interview with the then President (of the Tribunal) David Neave at Thanet House at the top of the Strand and I was duly appointed.”

Well at least there was an interview.

“It was a very funny interview. It was just a cup of coffee and a chat, really. None of these tests and things.”

Yes I see. I think (and rather hope) it is a little more stretching these days. But at least there was training…

“My training consisted of sitting on a wing for a day. No formal training. You learnt as you went along. You have also got to remember that life was much simpler in those days.”

Clearly

“We did not have asylum cases as such and our decisions were based on good sense and I think that that is where things have gone wrong. The law has taken over too much and there have been many occasions where I have felt unhappy about decisions that we have had to make because they have had to be made on a point of law and not the basis of good, sound sense, I would not say common-sense, because sense is not common.”

Alright, but what do you mean by saying that law has become too involved? Because obviously lawyers would say that having the “law involved” is good and proper.

“Well of course it is. It gives them bloody employment…sorry. It gives them employment. No. Let me give you some examples of what I mean.”

By all means please do.

“We had an example of an Iranian chap, a young man who was doing his National Service in Iran. The practice there was for the Mullahs to have some of these National Servicemen as chauffeurs and general dog bodies. It was described through the papers that he had been put through some horrendous homosexual experiences. He was not a homosexual himself but he had been chained to a bed and assaulted. Now to my knowledge of these people, gained over twenty-one years, is that they are extremely reluctant to talk about things like these unless they are true. They do not want that stamp homosexual on them. This is the Middle East generally. And his description was so vivid that it had to be true.”

Well it sounds terrible.

“Now the Adjudicator said that it was too lurid and that he must have made it up. But I do not think that a young man in his position would have made up those things and the Appeal was made not on that point but on the basis that his father had been a member of the Communist Party and that he was therefore entitled to asylum simply because of his father’s activities in the Communist Party and that he would have an implied membership of the Communist Party. Now that was the only point of law on which the Appeal was made so from a point of law, we could only hear the Appeal on the basis of this Communist business. And not on the basis that Adjudicator got the rest of the story wrong…”

Okay

“So his Appeal was dismissed. So if we had been allowed to use our sense, our good sense that Appeal would probably have been allowed on the basis of what had happened to him and the fact he was going back to those same Mullahs”.

So is part of your complaint that fact that the law tightens your hand too much?

“Yes it does not allow us to exercise good, sound sense!”

Well we will come back to the law and lawyers in a moment. I understand that there has been a somewhat dramatic change in the actual system during the past twenty years or so.

“Yes. We dealt mainly with cases of bogus marriages, deportations on grounds of criminal or other undesirable behaviour and children brought here under false pretences, usually by other migrants masquerading as the child’s ‘family’.

So not generally asylum seekers?

“Well I only saw one asylum case between 1985 and 1992. But you see the people who used to come in and claim asylum were generally the intelligentsia of a country. The teachers, the doctors and they would I assume be given asylum at the first stage by the Home Secretary. So they would have no needs to appeal.”

But the system of the Tribunals was presumably efficient?

“Oh, it was run in a sort of happy muddle. I think that this is the trouble. It sort of grew from nothing. The Immigration Tribunal only came into being in 1971 and it just sort of grew, like Topsy. There was not any planned system. Just a happy muddle.”

So pretty much like England full stop.

“I think that that is the way generally. Until somebody tries to encapsulate it into a book of some sort.”

And post 1992?

“We suddenly started getting all these asylum cases and we realised that a lot of them were the other end of the scale from the intelligentsia.”

What do you mean?

“I do not want to be rude, but the bottom of the pile. The labourers and people; let me give you an example. The people from Sri Lanka who said that they were escaping from the civil war in that country. Now normally speaking civil war is not a reason for claiming asylum. Because you are not being picked on in particular.”

I see

“Well it is happening to everybody in your country. But they would come with these extraordinary stories and we sort of cottoned on quite soon that they had all been through Elephant Pass and they had all dug bunkers for the Tamil Tigers and they had all got an Uncle in Colombo who knew an agent. The stories were so similar that it was clear that they were being tutored. And then eventually when you got people to talk a bit, they would admit that they had had to pay between £4,000 and £8,000, which meant selling Mummy’s jewellery and Granny’s jewellery as well, to get there. We had thousands of Sri Lankan cases”

And how did you feel by all of this?

“I found it all very sad. Because they had been conned by these blooming agents into coming over here. They had been through terrible hardships. They had been made to tell these stories, many of which were not entirely true. For example, we went throughphase when it was decided that anyone who had scars would be stopped at Colombo airport, so they produced scars. We had one girl who produced sort of plastic scars for photographing and when you actually looked at it, there was not a scar there. They would pretend because they thought that that would get them through!”

Tough.

“And the fact that out system was such that we were making them fabricate stories I found dreadful. The agents knew that if they could get these people into this country; they could probably stay here for four, five, six years or forever, as many of them have.”

So do reforms work?

“Every time we tighten up things, it is just a sticking plaster job. It is not looked at why are all these people coming here? You know John Reid (the Home Secretary) blithely says ‘Oh, it is ever since the Cold War stopped and there have been these huge changes.’ But it is not! The Eastern European influx is, but the rest is not. Most of it is the sheer grinding poverty that these people have to live in, and if they can get away from it, to somewhere better, then they will. It is natural. And these people are in fact the enterprising ones.”

So John Reid has got it all wrong then?

“I think that the rot began in 1992 when the Conservative government severely restricted the use of temporary work permits for immigrants. So those who wanted to work or settle here had to seek alternative avenues.”

And the consequences of this?

“It created a vast immigration industry, complete with false documentation, bogus claims of asylum and an army of lawyers and advisers depending for their living on processing applications. The Home Office has been struggling to cope ever since. The Home Office is so badly mismanaged and politically misdirected; staff morale is at an all-time low which only feeds the cycle of chaos. The Labour government have made the problems even worse, in part through the removal in 1998 of embarkation controls – so they do not have a clue how many people are leaving the country and how many are here legally - partly though the cutback on immigration control staff and of course the Human Rights Act.”

You mentioned agents a few moments ago?

“The agents know how to get into this country and they are exploiting their own people. They come through to Heathrow and they never go through Immigration Control themselves because they dump their poor “bodies” just before Immigration Control and they themselves go back into the Departure Lounge and get on to the next plane home. So the “bodies” are left with no papers. And then they go through the Appeals process and they try to drag this on as long as possible and many simply disappear into the system. Lost, forgotten, here.”

But how do you know this?

“They tell us! After all many had no reason to lie to us. When we are going to throw them out anyway, they will tell us. For example, the Sudanese would pay the agents something like five thousand dollars to get into the country. The Sri Lankans between four and eight thousand pounds. In the long run for many this is cheap, especially as the sheer, grinding poverty that these people come from. If they can get away from it, to somewhere better, then they will. It is natural. And these people in fact are the enterprising ones.”

And your thoughts on the subject of lawyers?

“They are bleeding the legal aid system by sending bundles of papers in (with regard to Appeal hearings) to us, which are sometimes three, four or five inches thick and each sheet has cost so many pence to photocopy which has gone on to the Legal Aid bill. In every single case you would just have the same bundle of papers, more or less, with a few bits added or taken away.”

Well not wanting to overly defend my colleagues, but presumably the lawyers would respond by saying ‘we have to provide you with all the documents to support our client’s case or we are not doing our job properly.’”

“Yes but there is a limit on the number of documents and they know damned well that there is a limit on the number of documents anyone can read. So if their client has a good case the lawyer will send a small bundle which is very appropriate. If it is a rubbish case then the large bundle. It is somewhat generalised but you can often guarantee that the more paper the less basis for a claim.”

So not a big fan of lawyers then?

“We do get some very good lawyers on behalf of their clients, but we get some who are clearly in it just for the Legal Aid. They are clearly trying to get as much as they can out of the system.”

But her ultimate condemnation lies with the Home Office and with the government.

“I fear it [the Immigration Service] will remain a farce and I no longer want to be a part of it.”

Countess Mar is exceptionally cynical of the immigration process, but perhaps with good reason. She believes that the “British people deserve better” and blames government (both Blue and Red) of being too “addicted to gimmickry and empty slogans”. The past twenty one years working within the system has provided her with a unique opportunity to speak honesty, openly and without fear of condemnation. Not only is she a Peer of the realm but perhaps more importantly she is an ordinary individual with nothing to gain, but an opportunity through rank, nobility and common sense a right to be listened to. She will I imagine be referred to by many as a crank; an unelected peer out of touch with any real constituents. That may well be the case. But for a generation she has been at the heart of Britain’s immigration system. She has been able to inspect it both from the inside and from Parliament. She has found system to be not only on the brink of collapse but in such apparent maladministration that our society could be in jeopardy. It is correct that she lost her voice once. Not again. If there is to be a debate on the future of our borders and our immigration policy then the Countess may well be prepared to speak for the silent majority.

I’ll Ask the Questions: Constance Briscoe

I can not deny it. As a boy I occasionally wet the bed. Look this is no great admission. We all did it. I was a very young boy, alright a baby even. My mother forgave me, changed the sheets and that was the end of it. So she occasionally mentions it to girlfriends, but it is no big deal. No really. But it was for a least one girl. Bed wetting that is. As a child Clare, also wet the bed. Not just the once, or even the odd time, but practically every night. She even had attached to her bed something called a bed-wet alarm to warn her of the impending danger. But for her the danger was not so much the bed wetting, but her mother. For Clare was abused, both physically and mentally throughout her childhood, and to this day lives with the scars. This is not a story of pity and of shame; but one of bravery and of hope. This is the story of an abused child who through courage and dedication became a barrister; a part time Judge and a bestselling author. This is the story of Constance “Clare” Briscoe.

“I removed the top from the bottle of bleach, diluted it with tap water, drank it and went back to bed. I chose Domestos because Domestos kills all known germs and my mother had for so long told me that I was a germ. I felt very sick, happy and sad. I was happy because if the bleach worked, I would die.”

Earlier that day Clare had attended her local Social Services office to ask them to take her into a Children’s Home. It was their failure to act that persuaded her that suicide was her only option.

Clare Briscoe was born on the 18th May 1957 and lived in and around Camberwell in South East London. She was one of six children. Her father George walked out soon after she was born as a result it would appear of one too many fights with his wife, Clare’s mother Carmen. Like the occasion when the Carmen allegedly took a machete to her husbands head; or the coat hanger which “pierced his face just below the jaw and came out the other side” or the time when she stabbed a pair of scissors into his stomach. But this is not the story of a marriage; this is the story of a child and of lost innocence.

As a child her name was either Clear, Clearie or Clare. She was also however called “Ugly”, “Pisshead”, “Miss Piss-the-bed”, “Scarface” and the “Black Bitch”. But that was just by her mother. The irony is that she never actually knew that her real name was “Constance” until she applied for University and a discrepancy as to the name on her birth certificate and her qualifications became apparent. “This came as an almighty shock. It had never occurred to me that my name was not Clare Briscoe. I had no idea that I was really Constance Beverley Briscoe.”

Constance’s book Ugly: The true story of a loveless childhood tells the story of Clare’s life. It tells the story of how Clare was shamed and humiliated, continually told that she was worthless and ugly. It tells how she was starved, kicked and beaten. “At the age of six my beatings were as regular as ever. My alarm continued to fail to wake me in time, and my wet bed would earn me a beating with a shoe or a belt or a cane”. Two years later she was still wetting her bed “I prayed to God to stop me wetting my bed.” Her prayers were unfortunately not answered. She continued to wet her bed and she continued to experience abuse. It was discovered that she had lumps in her breast. “When I examined them [her breast] after one of my mother’s nipple-squeezing sessions, that I realised that both were lumpy and deformed”. As a form of punishment for the bed wetting her mother would ritually punch her and pinch and pull at her breast. “She dug her nails in my nipple and pulled me towards her. The pain was such that I imagined my nipple coming off in my mother’s hand. The tears welled up in my eyes”.   She was taken to hospital, examined and operated on. Doctors thought that her “deformity” was so rare that they used her as a teaching aid to seventy or so other doctors.  She was twelve at the time. Whilst in hospital nobody visited her and she never wet the bed. However when she went home again the bed wetting started again.

Her mother cut her arm with a knife and inflicted upon her serious head injuries. Bumping into her; pushing her; punching her; shoving her; kicking her; even taking a piece of wood from the stairs to create a weapon the “split-split plank”.

When I met with Constance Briscoe in her London Chambers, she looked like any other barrister. Cool calm and somewhat serene in her black elegant almost regimental barristerial suit. She has come such a long way. I asked her the most obvious crass question anybody could ever ask an abused child. What do you put the abuse down to?

Constance explained “I put it down to my bedwetting, I think”

Why is bedwetting a bad thing?

“Because I was the only one that wet the bed, and if I had not then she would not have become so obsessed with trying to get me to stop wetting the bed”

The unanswerable question. What comes first? The bedwetting or the abuse?

“Yes, that is true. I had not really taken that on board until after I wrote the book and then some people were saying ‘well hold on a minute. Is there not a connection between bedwetting and your mother?’ And it had not crossed my mind that there may have been a connection. I think that my mother became obsessed because I wet the bed and I was the only one that wet the bed and it was this kind of trying to control me, to stop me wetting the bed. When that failed we went to see the various experts and I had all of these bed alarms.”

But the bed alarms failed to work, creating even more tension.

“When that failed my mother was completely exasperated with me and then my mother decided to try and get me to stop wetting the bed her own way, and that got out of hand. Because it was stopping me drinking to start off with and then instead of washing the sheet which was causing her a lot of financial hardship, because they had to be washed. Well daily really, in times when you did not have a tumble dryer. So there was quite a lot of financial hardship there and so, when that failed, she was then saving up the sheet to put back on my bed at night and then when that failed to stop me, it then moved on to, you know pulling my pubic hairs out, twisting my nipples, that sort of thing. So I think, if I had not wet the bed, then my mother would not have behaved in the way that she did.  And that sort of thing”

So how long have you had that thought?

“All my life, all my life, when I was a child, that was you know, all about wetting the bed. So yes”

 

So you blamed yourself?

“Oh most definitely yes. If I had not wet the bed, then she would not have, she would not have done what she did”

She made you feel isolated?

“Yes because I would not have been isolated. I would have been one of all of them. I would have been one of all of the children. And I would not have been different”.

And that is why you prayed on occasions not to wet the bed?

“Definitely, definitely, yes. I think it was me wetting the bed that caused my mother to behave in the way that she did.  Definitely.  Definitely.  Yes, I mean I had my own room, because the stench kept everybody else out and my mother did not want everybody else sharing a room with me, and that was because I wet the bed.”

It is a sad fact that a considerable number of people abused or bullied blame themselves, if only they could have done something different it might all have been so different.

It was however not just from her mother that she experienced abuse. Her step father Eastman also abused her. “He took his belt from around his waist and hit me twice in the face with it and then he punched me. The belt had a large buckle”. There were other incidents and as a result she took action.

A private prosecution against him at the Magistrates Court. It was her first court case and inevitably her first win. He was convicted and bound over on good behaviour for the following twelve months. Her reaction was “No more beatings for the next twelve months!” She was twelve.

I asked her whether she thought that someone would come and save her. Her father had tried but (and she does not blame him) just never could.

“No. I wanted to get away. I had already made up my mind I was going to get away and sooner or later I was going to get away.”

And on occasions she did escape. She went to live with a polish school teacher, a “Miss K” (for Miss Korchinskye). However as often appears the case in these stories of tradegy, disaster was always just around the corner. Miss K went home to Poland for a visit when her car was trapped between the tracks on a level crossing. A train reached her before she could escape, and as a result of the subsequent accident one of her legs was amputated. The second was saved only to protect her sanity. On Miss K’s return to England she would struggle to look after herself never mind anyone else. Clare returned home to her Mother.

In this heartbreaking story there are so many other tales to tell of Clare’s existence, and in truth this article can simply not do justice to their telling. That every Christmas she received the same presents, a spinning top and a black doll called “Dollie”. And when I say same, I mean same. Her mother would repackage the same present every year. The rest of the family received normal, different presents. Of the child baldness; of her mothers refusal to sign University grant papers; of being home alone and perhaps of all the sins the lack of love.

But the story is not simply of heart wrench. Her mother moved the family out of the family home, leaving Briscoe there home alone. Not for a few hours, or a few weeks, but years. She was 15 years old and her mother just moved out lock stock and family, less one. There was of course no food, no furniture and no electricity. Briscoe took three jobs and school and survived. Survived through grit, determination and because she had to.  She had ambition also, to be a barrister. When she was twelve she taken with her school to the Knightsbridge Crown Court where she met one of the barristers. His name was Mike Mansfield. At that meeting she asked for pupillage for when she qualified as a barrister. He made that promise. A promise he was subsequently to keep.

She went to University and subsequently became that barrister. Her mother was not impressed.  She had not been in contact with her mother. But in 1999 with Constance making progress at the bar her mother made contact. She wrote to the Bar Council. She alleged that “I was trying to have her murdered and that I had got some Yardies, who were going to shoot her; she said I was a thief; that I was bringing into the country illegal immigrants; sorting our passports and she said that I should be struck off, because I was just a common thief pretending to be a barrister, or something along those lines”. Motherly love so to speak.

The Bar Council dismissed the complaint stating that there was no evidence of professional misconduct and wrote to Carmen stating “you obviously have a problem with your daughter and we hope you can resolve it.” Yes you could say that.

Constance wrote on that occasion to her mother “I always wondered why she was still alive, because I could not understand what purpose she served and if it is right that only the good die young, then I can quite understand why she is still around.  And I said that every night when I go to bed, as a Catholic, I pray, that she goes sooner rather than later.  And I said ‘if I never speak to you again, it will be too soon’.  So that was that.

Attempting to look at this situation from an objective perspective we find ourselves full of sadness, pity and a resolve to blame. The system which did not find her; her own family who did not save her and her mother who had simply no right to be a mother. For many Constance is a hero, an inspiration and a soul mate. I say Constance because Clare is no longer with us. “The book is definitely Clare but that person does not exist any more”. When I met with Constance I struggled with this concept. But for her it was clear, very clear that the two lives had now been separated. “Well she is gone. I meant Clare never really existed, my name was not Clare. My name is Constance and when I discovered my name; when I was applying to University I became the person, the person that I always was, which is Constance”

At the end of the book Ugly, readers are left with romantic visions of a ‘happily ever after’ But there is to be a sequel: the years from 1979 to 1985. Her University years and her time as junior counsel. “No it was not good. It was the worst time of my life actually, if I am honest”.

Constance Briscoe is a remarkable woman. Endowed with courage, grit and ability. She rose to become a barrister (under Mike Mansfield’s pupillage) and in 1996 became a part time Judge – one of the first black women to sit as a judge in England. Constance is an extremely reluctant role model, somewhat embarrassed with the success of the book and media’s demands upon her. She just wants to get on with her life; write and spend time with her loving family. The book and this interview show that from despair there is hope; but also cause and effect and hopefully for Constance the book will give Clare the peace she deserves.

Constance Briscoe’s Ugly: The true story of a loveless childhood is published by Hodder & Stoughton and is on sale in hardback at £12.99. ISBN 0-340-89597-7

I'll ask the questions: Cherie Blair

I'll ask the questions: Cherie Blair

In the Public Eye

Cherie Booth QC talks to Jason M. Hadden

As a young girl in Liverpool, Cherie Booth once watched a television series based around the life of Rose Heilbron QC. It was said of Dame Rose Heilbron, who died last year, that almost everything in her notable career had been a first. She had been the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray’s Inn, the first woman to take Silk, the first to lead in a murder case, the first woman recorder, the first woman to sit at the Old Bailey and the first woman treasurer of Gray’s Inn.

Dame Rose Heilbron was also, of course, extremely popular in Liverpool, where she had grown up, gone to University and then worked as a barrister, becoming one of the outstanding defence barristers of the post-war period and a Liverpool celebrity. So it was perhaps natural that the young Cherie should have regarded Dame Rose with particular admiration and sought to emulate her achievements.

Cherie Booth, of course, was of a later generation. The daughter of actor Tony Booth, she was Called in 1976, took Silk in 1995 and became a Recorder in 1999. She is a Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.

She made one tilt at the windmills of the politics - unsuccessfully contesting the seat of North Thanet in Kent at the 1983 general election – before returning to practice as a barrister. Despite this, Cherie Booth is probably more widely recognised than any active British politician, except her husband.

She is also, ironically, one of the least understood people in the public eye.

Her marriage to Tony Blair has placed her in the uncomfortable position of being the object of searching scrutiny by the media, the public and politicians, on everything from fashion sense to foreign affairs. Yet she is rarely able to express a personal point of view. She once made the wistful observation to the effect that she started as somebody’s daughter, turned into somebody’s wife, and would probably end up as somebody’s mother. She would like to ‘speak for England’. And as a highly regarded Advocate and prominent human rights lawyer, who better able to fulfil that responsibility than her? Alas. All too often this advocate of human rights and fundamental freedoms is usually denied our common law liberty of freedom of speech – and we are no doubt the poorer for that.

It is thirty years since she started out in practice – so, I want to know, has the law changed at all since that time?

 “Oh yes. It has changed a lot.  When I was a young barrister, I was in a general common law set.  I did crime. I did divorce. They had just stopped doing the undefended divorces, but I certainly did undefended nullity petitions.  I did simple personal injury actions.  I did debt collecting in the Crown Court.  I had a wide range of small county court experience and I did my Employment Law Tribunals, which were just starting up at the time. Today, young tenants in these Chambers [Matrix] do not get that wide range of experience.  They are much more likely to get their experience being juniors, junior juniors and in much bigger cases.  It took me until 1983 to get to the House of Lords.  Some of our young people may well be in the House of Lords as a junior junior in their second or third year of qualification.”

 So, I ask, does she think that is a good thing for the profession?

“I think specialisation is a good thing.  I think that we have to make sure that since the Bar is about specialist advocates, that the young people actually do get the proper experience of being an Advocate. We try and do that through Chambers by making sure that they do get those opportunities.  But in the end you can’t beat practice to be a good Advocate.”

Cherie Booth is not in court on an everyday basis any more. Her work in now in the Appeal Courts – though she says she likes to do “one big trial every year, because I do enjoy witness actions.” She goes on, “But what with my life at the moment, it is difficult to devote that amount of time – weeks and weeks – to a single case. Whereas Appellant Advocacy is a lot easier to do in short bursts of time.”  

But surely, I suggest, she must miss the cut and thrust?  

“Well, I think that if you argue a case in the House of Lords, I think you might find that it was full of cut and thrust. I am very happy with the mixture that I have at the moment, actually.  I get to argue very interesting cases in the highest courts in the land and some in international courts as well.  I think I am very, very lucky.”

As she has made mention of the international courts and tribunals, I want to know what matters to her, in terms of the law? Not just in Britain, but internationally.

“What matters to me, in the law? I think the rule of law is of vital importance in any country and the idea of an independent judiciary, incorruptible, and dedicated to protecting people’s human rights is of fundamental importance across the world. And sadly, not every country in the world has that.  And anything we can do to help inculcate that spirit of why the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the legal profession is important. I think it helps to make the world a better place.”

When she says, that not every country places this value on the rule of law, I want to know which countries she has in mind – and I receive a predictably guarded answer.

“Well”, she replies, “I think it is perfectly obvious that there are many such countries in the world. One only has to read reports where there are difficulties there with the independence of the judiciary and the difficulties where lawyers are under attack because they have stood out against the regime.  I would not want to single out any one in particular – it is a problem across the world, but not an insurmountable problem. It is one where there are a lot of efforts - both through the UN and through the Commonwealth - to do something about it.”

What does she think that lawyers in Britain can do about it?

“Well, I think we can do many things. One of the great things about being a barrister, when I was called in 1976 – and because I was top in the Bar Finals – was that I had to give the speech on behalf of the students.  I can remember being told by Lincoln’s Inn that I should acknowledge the foreign students there because they were due to go back to their countries to become the leading lawyers and judges in their country. And the fact is that this was true.  For a long, long time, throughout the Commonwealth, we trained the Chief Justices and the Judges across the world. And one of the sad things about the new proposals for deferring Call is that this is going to have an impact on whether people from abroad who want to come and study here in the various Inns of Court. Which I think is a shame.”

If education is still the most important factor in becoming a lawyer, I wonder, is ‘Tesco law’ a sort of dumbing-down?

She says it is not. The idea, she says, “is to enable the community to have access to lawyers in the way that they feel comfortable with and which is accessible to them.  I think there is a huge problem about access to justice.  And I think that people deserve to be able to have access to lawyers. And if that means that they get it through Law Centres, through Citizen’s Advice Bureaux - and indeed, if necessary, through something like Tesco law - then that is important.  What is important is that people get access to good quality justice.  And how you get access to good quality justice is by ensuring that lawyers are trained properly, that the principles of the profession are upheld by the professional bodies and by the general peer pressure that operates within our system.”

Cherie Booth once worked as a tutor for Students and Members of the Institute of Legal Executives. This was in 1976, when she was doing her pupillage. “I was a tutor for the Fellowship exams at what was then the Polytechnic of Central London. So I taught the Tort Paper at that time to part-time students. I know what goes into qualifying as a Legal Executive and the great work that they do. There is no doubt at all that the legal profession could not operate if it was not for the great work they do.”

It would appear to me, I suggest, that sometimes Legal Executives do not receive the recognition they deserve.

This is a pity, she thinks. The exams for Legal Executives were quite as tough as those for the other branches of the profession.  “I certainly know from teaching Legal Executives myself,” she says, “that the Legal Executive Tort course covers everything in the Solicitors’ Tort course, and maybe [everything] in the Barristers’ course as well. The one thing I remember about the paper was it had more questions - they had to answer more questions. I do not know if the exams are still the same for Legal Executives, but they had more questions which they had to answer.  Not in such great depth. But they had to have a wide range of knowledge.”

What does she think is her most significant case to date, I want to know.

“I think that is very difficult.  I think, like all lawyers I feel whatever the case I am working on at the moment is [the most important].” 

Has there been, I ask, a case where she had turned around and said, “That made a difference” or at any rate, “That made a difference to me?”

“I am not sure that any of my cases have made a difference to me personally. But clearly every win you make as a lawyer makes a difference. Actually, quite often you will find that many barristers say that it is the cases they lose that incline them to be more grateful for the ones they win.”

What about cases which have established a precedent?

“As for precedent cases, I am very lucky.  Because of the sort of work I do, there are many cases that I had which are in the Law Reports. That has made a difference to the Law, whether I have been on the winning side, or the losing side. In fact, some times I have been on both sides.  For example, with the Lisa Grant v. South-West Train case, when I argued in the European court that there should be equal pay for lesbian couples. I lost that case.  Several years later I did Pearce v Governing Body of Mayfield School, where I argued for the employer, that you could not treat sexual orientation discrimination as the same as sex discrimination. Which was the opposite of what I was arguing in Lisa Grant. I lost in Lisa Grant and I won in Pearce. Or take the case of X in Bedfordshire, and E in Dorset, when I was arguing for the local authorities in the House of Lords that they should not extend the law of negligence to cover local authorities’ responsibilities for educating children with special needs. I lost that in the House of Lords, and then I went on and won the first-ever case by a dyslexic pupil for compensation, the Phelps case.  That is the joy of being a barrister. You can argue both sides, in different cases – obviously not in the same case.”

Does she find it tough being a judge, I ask?

“I enjoy being a judge.  It is a different.  It is a different experience and one which I enjoy.”

Where did she see her future?

“Well, I think my future – as my past – is in the law.”

Has you struggled, as a lawyer and a mother?

“Let me at least say that I do not think I am at all unique, as a parent in the Law.  Most male barristers are parents, actually, but [they] are not often asked about their difficulties with work/life balance. This is a shame because they do have difficulties with work/life balance.  I think that, for all lawyers, the question of the long hours culture, and the macho idea of presentee-ism is a real problem.  But clearly, it is a problem that women experience more acutely than men.  But you only have to look at the list of Queen’s Counsels this year, and look at the women there, many, many of whom have children, so I am by no means unique in becoming a Queen’s Counsel.”

Well it certainly did appear to be tougher for women, I observedThere seems to be an obligation that they had to worker harder or for longer hours – and yet more women were coming into the profession now than ever before.

“Well, I think women lawyers, like women in every other walk of life, do find it harder.  There still is a male-dominated culture out there; I think it would be foolish to disagree. I think the problem is not actually in relation to male and female starting out.  I think the problem arises more when you have children, when the assumptions about the role of women, in relation to that, can mean that women struggle more than men to get their work/life balance right.  And as a barrister, of course, I have been lucky, because I am self-employed and therefore can to some extent choose my lifestyle myself. I think it is a bigger problem for women solicitors and partners in firms where they have their obligations to the firm to think about as well.”

Are things getting better? I ask.

“I think there is no doubt, whatsoever, that things have changed.  When I had my first baby in 1984, I took off four months.  I had to pay my full rent the whole time, my full Clerks’ fees and did not get any allowances for the fact that I was pregnant. The woman member of Chambers before me had become pregnant and had left Chambers and did not practise at the Bar any more. I was determined to go back and prove that you could both be a mother and a barrister. It was not until my third child that I got three months rent-free. So, you know, you just had to get on with it in those days. That is not the case now.  In fact, it is professional misconduct to penalise a woman for taking maternity leave now.  So that is a good thing.”

But there is still, I suggest, that work/life balance. I wonder whether there is more that we can do as a profession.

“I am sure that there is a lot more we can do as a profession.  I think we do need to look at our practices and whether they are just what we have always done, or whether there is some utility in some of them.  I think a lot of the ways we organise our life and a lot of the ways we define who is successful and who is not successful, are based on the outdated assumption that a lawyer is someone who has a wife at home, who looks after the family and the children. And the lawyer is dedicated totally to the office.  I mean that is not the case, I think, for most men, as well as it is not the case for most women. Indeed, I think if you want to be a rounded, better person and therefore a better lawyer, you need to have some work/life balance.”

A traditional, end-of-interview sort of question: how would she like to be remembered?

“Actually, I was not thinking of leaving at the moment,” she retorts, before continuing. “n the end, what matters is, I think, what the people who know you think of you.  And the most important thing is what your family and your friends think of you, and in the law, of course, your colleagues.”

But the funny thing is, I point out, that in your case everybody thinks that they know you.

“Now, that is absolutely true,” she agrees. “The strangest thing about being in the public eye is there are thousands of people have an opinion about me. None of whom have ever met me and that is just the way it is… In a sense, it is difficult to ignore it.  If you are in the public eye, you can’t ignore it, in one sense. So you have to know how to deal with it.  And the way that I deal with it is to say that you can not be answerable to people who don’t actually know you.  You have to be answerable to yourself, to your family and to your friends.”

It must be very difficult to live in the public eye, I suggest.

“Frankly, I do not have any choice.  I am not sure I have a choice. I do live in the public eye and therefore you have to find a way of dealing with it.”

Cherie is relaxed and put ease she is charismatic and is an utter delight: radiating energy, pride, enthusiasm and commitment. But she clearly finds it difficult to speak openly and freely on matters which are of concern to her. One of the questions I had planned to ask her had been this: Whether, in years to come, on looking back at her time as the wife of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, she would feel that she had made a difference. That is clearly a question that only she can answer. I hope, however, that her answer will be – Yes.

Jason M. Hadden with James Schofield

I’ll ask the Questions: - Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen

In the last thirty years almost 1000 people have been executed in the United States of America. Of that number we have no idea how many were innocent. What we do know however is that during that same period there were 112 people who were wrongly imprisoned, sentenced to the death penalty and subsequently released and exonerated.

It is the universal nightmare. To be sentenced to death for a crime you did not commit. To spend decades on death row with only one way out – execution. But in the summer of 2000, two jobbing actors in New York, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, met, fell in love and decided that two people can make a difference. They embarked upon an idea, at first a small one, to understand why people found themselves on death row and how some were ultimately released from the worst miscarriage of justice. Blank and Jensen present their study in an award-winning play based on the testimonies of six of those survivors of death row in their tour de force, The Exonerated.

I met with Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen at the Riverside Studios in London where their play, The Exonerated is presently playing to sell-out audiences. They are a young, fresh, energetic, and friendly couple clearly very much in love. In many ways the last people you would expect to be interested in either the death penalty or civil liberties. Whilst I interviewed them they would frequently interject and play off the other.

So I started by asking them where it all began. Erik picks up the baton: “It was probably date number five or six and she [Jessica] said ‘I want to take you on a conference on the death penalty’ as a date! At that point in the relationship you pretty much say yes to everything, so I said ‘Yes’. And if she had said, do you want knee surgery? I would have said yes at that point. So we went to this conference on the death penalty at Columbia University.”

Jessica cuts in: “There was this workshop at the Conference about the Death Row Ten in Illinois. They had all had their confessions tortured out of them by a particular police commander. He was fired and everybody had found out about the corruption, but these guys were still sitting in prison.”

Erik continued “The confessions had come purely because the police commander had been using torture. And this is torture we are talking about! Tied jiffy bags over their heads; electric shock to their genitals; phone books to the back of the head. Real brutal stuff that they had learnt in Vietnam.”

It was Jessica’s turn “So the organisers had staged a telephone call with one of the ten prisoners and mostly he was saying he just wanted to go home, but by the end of the call we were both crying and everybody in the room was crying and it was just a very moving experience.”

Most people in such circumstances would have just gone home, watched some television and allow the emotion and guilt to pass. The politics of apathy. But they decided to do something. “We wanted ordinary people to see what we had seen. But the people who really needed to be having this experience would not put themselves in a situation like this. How do you bring this kind of human story to ordinary people? Ordinary people who would not think that they were interested in this kind of subject matter. Being actors we both immediately hit on the idea, of theatre. Because when theatre is done right, that is what it does.”

They then spent the following two months researching everything that they could about the death penalty and its history. They put their idea of a theatre piece on the death penalty to Allan Buchanan who runs the 45 Bleeker Theatre in New York. He agreed to give them his theatre for free for three nights if they could write a play before the November Presidential Elections. The timing was in response to George W Bush who “was running for President, with more executions under his belt as Governor of Texas than all the States combined which had the death penalty.” Allan said ‘Here is one thousand dollars, go, go.’ So we were out of the door and immediately started calling absolutely every person that we knew saying we are doing this thing, help.”

So Erik and Jessica phoned journalists whom they knew and asked basic questions about how to undertake interviews; what the law was; what it meant; how appeals worked and who they should speak to. Jessica explained “So we had been dating for a few months and had no previous contact with the legal system, threw our dog in the back of the rental car, went on the road, criss-crossed the country meeting former death row inmates with the most extraordinary stories we had ever heard”

Erik picked up the story “We wanted to talk to people who had been arrested, found guilty by the courts in the United States for a capital murder, were sentenced to death, had spent time on death row and were freed and then to consider all the evidence”

So they set out in the Summer of 2000 to interview over 40 people who had been exonerated. “We were driving and sleeping in the car to these interviews. We did not have money for even motels. We had a video camera and a tripod. Well we were actors. The tripod and the camera were duck-tapped together. Some of the folks had not done media. Some of them had had CNN trucks and satellite and we had a nice tape recorder from Radio Shack; not that I am saying Radio Shack does not make nice recorders, but….”

 

On their travels they met people like Sunny Jacobs, a mother of two who spent 17 years on Death Row on the basis of false evidence; Kerry Max Cook, a Texan who was wrongly convicted of murder; Delbert Tibbs, a black Chicago poet who was falsely accused of rape and murder while hitchhiking across America. When they met with these people they had no real idea of what to expect or find.

 “We would be walking into interviews thinking that the last interview was the worst thing we had ever heard and it was also the best as the person had come out of it and they were stronger than they had been before; or it would be the worst because the person obviously had not dealt with a lot of the issues that resulted from being there, the anger or the person had some mental illness or something like that. But then we would go into the next interview and our minds would be completely blown again, in a totally different way.”

Jessica continued “one of the things that surprised us was the tone of the stories we heard. When we first started out, we expected lots of tragedy, injustice, rage, depression, loss. We certainly found some of those things. You do not spend years on death row for a crime you did not commit without some anger and loss. But you also do not survive an experience like that without finding something much larger to tap into.”

As Jessica paused for breath her husband continued the theme “so all the people we met had found something inside themselves that helped them to survive, whether that was religion, a sense of personal spirituality, a connection to their community on the outside, simple hope or humour. Humour is one of the most incredible survival tools we have as human beings, and we were amazed to find that many of the exonerated folks we met made us laugh!”

Yet what was of greatest surprise was that “the one thing that every single person had in common was that none of them had the money to hire an attorney who could match the resources of the prosecution.”

Erik took up their case “In a capital case the state often gets upwards of $500,000 to investigate and try a case, sometimes into millions. While a public defender is lucky to get $15,000. And that money does not just go to pay the lawyers, it goes to reinvestigate witnesses, dig up evidence, hire expert witnesses…So what that imbalance means is that often, there is an enormous amount of evidence that the Jury simply does not hear until the appeal state.”

Jessica continued “And that is only if a defendant is lucky enough to find a good attorney who will champion their case pro bono. We heard all kinds of stories of jurors saying that they would never have convicted these individuals if they had had all the evidence that later came to light”

“Sometimes there can be so much pressure on the cops “to get the guy” that getting the right guy gets lost in the shuffle. Other times the police build the case against someone based on prejudice because they are black, or because they work in a gay bar; or because they are bored or a shoelace or that they simply do not want to do the hard work”

So who is to blame?

On this they were in unison. “It is not a who, it is a what. It is hubris. It is the feeling of a person in power, who says that I am in power therefore I am right. I am not to be questioned. In the United States a prosecutor can not be sued for example if you unlawfully convict someone, alternatively, there is no avenue for a prosecutor once he realises that he may have gone down the wrong road with a case to honourably back up and say hold on lets put on the brakes here, I have made a mistake. There is this culture of life. You win your cases. You get those notches on your belt.”

As such Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen blame the system, and in blaming the system they blame themselves. “Is it just the people in power who have the power to exonerate someone or is it all of us? Is it the people? It is for the public to decide. We hope that people leave the theatre coming to terms with the word exonerated. And also coming to terms with their culperability, especially in the United States where the audiences are implicated and they leave going ‘why’”

A message which seems to be getting through. The play ran for a year and a half at 45 Bleeker Theatre. Since then it has toured Philadelphia, New Orleans, Texas, Illinois, Edinburgh and London. Not only has the play attracted the plaudits, it won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award; but also the A-list celebrities, Stockard Channing (West Wing), Kristin David (Sex in the City), Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon) and Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek Voyager) to name but a few.  The play has also raised over half a million dollars for the people whose stories appear in the play. Most people exonerated in the States are given no compensation upon their release.  

And to take the tale full circle, we return to Illinois. In one of his last acts as Governor of Illinois, Governor Ryan decided after watching The Exonerated that he too had doubts as to death penalty and verdicts upon which they rely. To that end he commuted the sentences of nearly 200 Illinois Death Row inmates.

Sometimes one person can make a difference, with two; well they might even be able to find justice.

I’ll ask the Questions: Lord Bingham

Lord Bingham has held some of the most significant and important legal offices in the country. He has been Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice and is presently Britain’s most Senior Law Lord in the House of Lords. As such I was somewhat nervous about meeting the man who has been referred to by Louis Blom-Cooper, QC as “Alpha Plus” (his mind as opposed to anything else) and others as “frightening clever”. And on meeting him this becomes almost frightening clear. Lord Tom Bingham of Cornhill not only oozes intelligence, but charm, magnetism and energy. Perhaps what is most unnerving about meeting Lord Bingham in soft surroundings as opposed perhaps to in open court is that he also comes across as that respected older member of the family: Uncle Tom perhaps. It is of no surprise that in times past he has been referred to as both “Gandulf” and “Frodo”, with a little bit of Doctor Who thrown in for good measure.

So as we sat down for tea in his resplendent office in the House of Lords I started by enquiring as to why he became a lawyer?

“Well, one has to earn a living somehow, doesn’t one” he answers mischievously.

Okay, how would he describe his job now?

“Judge”

This is going to take a while.

What does that consist of as you do it now?

“It consists of first, second and third, sitting in court, listening to argument and deciding cases in conjunction with the other members and writing a judgment.”

As simple as that then! Such an answer, deep in modesty, appears to omit however that he is the only Englishman ever to have served as the Master of the Rolls, the Lord Chief Justice and senior law lord in succession.

I decide to raise the stakes. Are Judges really the custodians of our fundamental freedoms?

“I think they are very important custodians.  I think it would be rather childish to get involved in some kind of nursery type arguments about whether we are more important guardians of freedom than you are, whether addressed to the House of Commons or whatever. I think if you were to take a long view over the centuries, you could make a plausible case that both bodies have been neglectful of personal freedom at certain stages of history.  But I certainly do regard the judges as a fundamental guarantee of lawfulness and I certainly look to the law to protect liberty to the maximum possible extent.”

You can with respect to Lord Bingham, almost see his brain whirling with energy and dynamisium as he prepares his answers.  He pauses frequently before answering, considering not only the question; his answer; but also the consequence of his answer on a wider public. He has famously been caught out before; when misquoted (he says) by the flamboyant Conservative MP and former editor of the Spectator magazine Boris Johnson on the subject of cannabis and its legalisation.

I pressed on. The media seem to suggest that the Judges are at war with the government. The true opposition to their policies.

“I think we probably all have a rather unhistorical picture of some golden age in which the parties were very evenly balanced and therefore the government of the day was held rigorously to account for everything it did, or did not do by a vigorous and powerful and alert, vigilant opposition.  I think for most of recent history it has not really been like that, and certainly I do not think it’s been like that over the last twenty-five to thirty years, because we had a very strong and dominant Conservative government with a very, very weak Labour opposition.”

 And now the reverse is true?

“Yes it has been reversed because over the last eight, we have clearly had a very strong and dominant Labour government, with a very weak Conservative opposition.  So, I think it is a natural thing to say 'well, who is putting the spokes in the wheel of the government?’  And the answer has, on a number of prominent occasions, been 'the judges have'.  It is not, of course, because the judges have any crusade, to attack the government, it is because governments with very dominant majorities can more or less do what they like and the Judge’s role is to say well you can do what you like, provided it is lawful, and it is not always.”

This brings us on to the politically sensitive subject of terrorism.

“The growth of terrorism undoubtedly is a stimulus to governments to take every kind of step they possibly can to protect the people against catastrophe, and therefore from their point of view, to strain against the bounds of what is legally permissible.  This is always, I think, the way.  There is nothing novel, except that the situation as it now presents itself is novel.”

It was Bingham and seven of his fellow law lords who delivered the landmark ruling against the government in the case of the nine men being held at Belmarsh prison of suspicion of having links with terrorists. They ruled that indefinite detention without trial contravened the European convention on Human Rights.

“The decision went in favour of the challengers, there was, clearly, you could call it a conflict or a situation of tension between the two, and, the Judges did tell the government that what they were doing was not lawful, and no government likes being told that, of course.  I mean, what I found, on the whole, both surprising and rather refreshing, was the extent of support that there was for the judgment.  I do not suppose many people read very much of the hundred pages or something that it ran to, but there was, on the whole, and with some exceptions, really rather strong support for it.”

So, if the position is clear in Britain, what about our cousins across the Atlantic, do the Americans have any justification for holding prisoners without trial in Guantanamo Bay?

“My impression is that the legal justifications for doing so are not very strong.  It seems to have been a rather suspect decision to incarcerate them in Guantanamo Bay in the first place, because its main qualification seemed to be it was outside the United States”

What do you mean?

“Well this has an interesting parallel with our own history, because, immediately after the Restoration, the government of the day in England, took to sending prisoners to Scotland and the Channel Islands, because habeas corpus did not run in those places and an Act of Parliament was enacted, prohibiting that practice so that it would look as if three hundred and something years ago we actually spotted the strong undesirability of such a practice.”

Well they do say that history often repeats itself. And to that end he is against governments using evidence obtained through torture?

“The principles of the common law, standing alone, in my opinion compel the exclusion of third-party torture evidence as unreliable, unfair, offensive to ordinary standards of humanity and decency and incompatible with the principles which should animate a tribunal seeking to administer justice”

So you must be happy with the European Convention on Human Rights?

“Yes!  I think, on the whole, it has worked extremely well.  And the reasons that led me to favour making it a directly enforceable part of our law I still totally support.

Despite, the general concerns of the media?

“I do not mind whether they are anti it or not.  I think one has got to take it case by case.  Obviously I do not agree with every decision that any court makes in this country and I do not agree without qualification to every decision that is made in Strasbourg, but it is the nature of the beast that nobody agrees with every decision that any court makes anywhere, ever.  On the whole, I do not have much difficulty with the decision-making in Strasbourg and I am rather encouraged at the appearance of dialogue that there is between the courts there and the courts here.  We are required to take account of what they decide and they have shown every sign of favour in respect of what we decide.”

And whilst on the subject of civil liberties I asked about ID cards and whether he accepted the popular argument that 'if you have got nothing to fear, then what is the harm in having it?'

“I think the argument that if you have nothing to hide, there is no objection, could be applied to abolish almost every immunity that every citizen has, so that I think one needs to look at that rather sceptically.”

So having the benefit of questioning the interpreter of our laws and I enquired as to whether we have too many laws in this country?

“I think there is much too much legislation, particularly in the criminal field.  I do not know if you are alive to the rate at which Parliament has been enacting criminal law statutes over the last few years?  It is actually more than anybody can keep up with, so that there are appeals that reach the Court of Appeal where the Judge, with the best will in the world and having scanned the website has not been able to discover all the relevant material that he should be taking account of and applying.  I question the usefulness of a good deal of it.”

So why is this?  Is it law for law's sake?

 “I think there is a very strong and understandable political feeling 'we must be seen to be doing something about this problem or that problem, or the other problem' and I think there is probably a strong belief among politicians that amendments to criminal legislation affect the level of crime in the country to a significant extent.  I am unconvinced that the connection is nearly as close as many people would like to think.”

 So what should be done, or could be done to prevent this?

“I am obviously not in a position to suggest any golden cure for a problem that has been with us since the beginning of time, but I actually think that education and the inculcation of proper values from an early age”

Is that by way of schooling?

“Well, that would certainly play a big part in it, and something that the government has shown a great interest in, quite rightly in my opinion, an attempt to detect delinquency at quite an early age.  I am not an expert in this field, but those who are have certainly told me in the past that you can really quite often recognise a child who is going off the rails at a young age, and what I think has proved to be a very great mistake is to wait until the child has offended again and again and again and everything has been tried, before some draconian order is made.  By which time, the child is really quite a hardened offender.

And in that way, does prison work? 

“I think prison works in the sense that people do not, on the whole, commit offences whilst they are inside them. But as a means of, so to speak, reforming people, so that they do not commit offences when they come out, the record is not at all encouraging.”

From crime the natural path is to representation and the hue and cry over criminal legal aid, as discussed in this column last month.

“I think it is an important principle that, if anybody faces a criminal charge, that is liable to result in a serious penalty, and certainly in their losing their liberty, and they can not afford to have the assistance of a professional lawyer, then the State should provide it. 

Is that in your view by way of the system as it is presently or are we open to other ideas? Perhaps a Public Defender system?

“Provided the Public Defender system was professional and efficient and did its job of protecting the interests of the defendant in an effective way, I would not object to it in principle.”

So would it be better than private practice?

“I would have doubts as to whether it would achieve that. I think there is a tendency for private practice to sharpen the appetite and make people stretch themselves to make sure they do their work as well as they possibly can which would not exist if they had a salary rolled in anyway.”

So what next for the judiciary? After yet another long pause, Lord Bingham gave his opinion on the challenges ahead

  “I think the long term challenge of the judiciary is to maintain its standing and authority.  Now, it’s very easy to point to a lot of public disaffection with the Judges”

Do you find there is public disaffection?

“Well, I do not really. But you would think so if you read certain sections of the media, which are continually lambasting people for doing things that they think are wrong.  But I, in fact think, that there is considerable and almost surprising confidence in the Judges overall, as evidenced by the fact that when there is something really serious and you want somebody who is going to be intelligent and thorough, and can be deeply independent and conscientious, everybody says 'well, let's get a Judge to do it' and this is the same person who, a moment before, in a different column of the same newspaper, is some geriatric who's never lived in the real world and is slobbering into his soup”

Bingham two, the Media nil. So does the judiciary get a balanced press?

“I think they, on occasion, get a bad press.  On occasion, they get a good press.  I think there is an astonishingly low level of understanding among the British public of what they are doing and what it's all about.”

So why is that?

“I think it is partly because I do not think much instruction goes on in schools. I do not know what title you would put on the lesson, at which you would be told about. I mean it could be called Civics or something”

What do you mean?

“I gave an address, to an audience including quite a lot of very intelligent sixth-formers. I was making a lot of very routine points, among which I alluded to the necessity for judges to be impartial, and one of these schoolgirls said she was fascinated!  It had never occurred to her that Judges were meant to be impartial, and I suppose that her vision was that the judge was a man who sat up there in a criminal court and his job was to try and make sure that the defendant got convicted, which, at some stages in our history, was not a thousand miles away from the way the Judges did carry on, but it is an astonishing lacuna in the education of an intelligent child that they end up not appreciating that the Judge's duty is one of impartiality.”

And that is Thomas Bingham. A man at one with his intellect; his integrity and his judiciary. If ever a man was destined to be a Judge, then it was he and as it has proved he is one of our best. A quiet defender of the faith who embodies the ethos of fairness, common sense and impartiality in a post 9/11 society.

I'll ask the questions: Tony Benn

When we think about inspirational people in our society; people who will stand up for what they think, irrespective of image or public support, one man’s name comes to the forefront. As Prime Minister Harold Wilson described him as an "Old Testament prophet", who "immatures with age". That man is of course Tony Benn, formerly a Peer of the Realm, formerly an MP and presently the busiest he has been in his life, as a civil liberty campaigner at the ripe old age of 82.

I met with the Right Honourable Anthony Wedgwood Benn, “just call me Tony” in the foyer of the Soho Hotel in London. He was slightly smaller, older than he perhaps looks on television, but none the less rather dapper for a man in his twilight years. Despite being as sharp and as a passionate as ever, he was also relaxed and perhaps for the first time in his career at peace with himself. That said, he surprising appeared a little nervous to meet with me as he explained;

“I am always a bit over-rawed when it comes to meeting lawyers. As you may know I once appeared in court and made a speech that lasted for nine days, getting out of the House of Lords. The result was that two judges said that a peerage was an incorporeal hereditment affixed in the blood and annexed to posterity”.

This was very much in the days before the recent Buy a Peerage row which has so ensconced his old Party.

“My dad was a politician in the war, he was an MP,”

Referring to his father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal MP before subsequently defecting to Labour.

“Churchill wanted more Labour Peers and my dad took it. I had an elder brother who would have inherited it on my father’s death as there were no life peers in those days. But then my brother died. I entered Parliament as an MP” at the age of 25 “but then my dad died and his title came to me. I was disqualified as an MP and I had to become a Peer. There was a by-election for my seat and I stood in that election. I increased my majority. The election court gave the seat to my runner up and there was then such a row about that. I learnt such a lot from that”

The position was overturned three years later with the enactment of the 1963 Peerage Act which allowed for the renunciation of peerages. It was made law shortly after 6 p.m. on 31st July 1963 with Benn becoming the first peer to renounce his title some twenty-two minutes later.

So I asked him what he learnt from the experience?

“I learnt that you do not get justice from the top. Well when does justice come from the top? Who at the top wanted women to have the vote? Nobody. This is why suffragettes went to prison, went on hunger strike. How did apartheid end? Mrs Thatcher said that Mandela was a terrorist. There is a stature of Mandela now in Parliament Square. All justice comes from the bottom and comes from the people. It has always been the case. A lot is said about Magna Carta as the foundation of our legal rights, actually Magna Carta was a row between the King and the Barons and he wasn’t strong enough to beat the Barons so he had to make some concessions, it had nothing to do with common people at all.”

It is now seven years since Tony Benn, after 50 years as an MP decided to give up the trappings and power of Parliament.

"Well I resigned so that I could devote more time to politics"

But I thought politics was about being in Parliament?

“Not real politics. I have never been busier in my life. I am completely enjoying it. For the first time in my life I don’t want anything. I don’t want anyone to vote for me. I can just speak my mind. I just do what I think is right. I just say what I mean, mean what I say and don’t attack people personally. That’s my principle.”

So what has concerned you since “your retirement”?

“The question of our civil liberties and the battle allegedly against terrorism”

 

 

Benn has been a very active campaigner involved in supporting the release of the Birmingham six, the captives at Guantanamo Bay and against both Iraqi Wars. He has also since leaving Parliament been “campaigning for peace and pensioners, students, trade unionists, civil liberties and more generally for human rights, democracy and internationalism".

“I think our civil liberties are being taken away. People are beginning to realise that the role of fear, whether realised or imagined. It is a very important element in the maintenance of power of the establishment. The fear of the danger of invasion, the danger of revolution or the danger of riot justifies governments in doing anything they want to do. They are being used to frighten us.”

But why would the government elected by us, want to frighten us?

“If they can frighten people then they can persuade people to give up their rights.  The government want to do know everything they can about us, but they don’t want us to know anything about them. That is why they added the thirty year rule on documents so you can not discover what they are doing. It is all tied in official secrecy. Information is the lifeline of democracy.”

But do people really care?

“Well you don’t care until you discover that you live in a Police state.”

Is that where we are?

“Well we are moving into a situation where the normally accepted principle of privacy is being abandoned. Well takes ID cards. Well I don’t know what is on my id card and I might find that I could never go to America because they have made a mistake on my ID card. What do you do about that?”

Should lawyers do more for society?

“Being a lawyer does not separate you from humanity.”

Now here was an announcement which might come as a surprise to some of our brethren.

“We all have the same interests. Society tends to divide us. As a divided society is an easier society to control. I don’t want to give lectures to lawyers, but we are all in the same boat and we are all in it together we are members of the human race and I think that is what we perhaps need to be reminded of. When that is made clear we see what our responsibilities are.  Lawyers have a specialisation and perhaps that is what they have to be reminded of now and again.  We are all members of the human race and when that is made clear we see what our responsibilities are. We all have responsibilities and you have to work it out yourself. Some people give it back with voluntary work, some people give money. It is very simple and straight forward. I am just reminding people of something so very obvious.”

Is there any advice which you could give to lawyers?

“It is not for me to lecture lawyers but I once worked out my five democratic questions. If you meet a powerful person, ask them question: What powers have you got? Where did you get them from? In whose interests do you exercise them? To whom you are accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”

So does anything else particularly concern you at present with regard to state of legal affairs?

“The campaign on legal aid is one of the campaigns that I have taken up. Legal aid was set up to protect the poor and ensure that all people had an access to justice and to law. This is being eroded because of financial limitations”

But Lord Carter said that it cost too much?

“Well there is always a case against helping the poor. But I think that it is becoming increasing difficult for people to get legal aid and as such people will be denied their rights. It is becoming like America where you have no legal aid or health service. If you see Michael Moore’s movie Sicko, you will see that over fifty million people in America have no health insurance or access to health care whatsoever. I see the analogy here with the removal of legal aid.”

Perhaps Wilson was thus right when he called his old ally and occasional nemesis an “Old Testament Prophet”. Benn has fought against injustices all his life; frequently taking positions which at first sight would appear to have him at odds with the popular feeling. It is interesting to note that with time and passion his arguments have frequently won but common support and favour. Maybe we need more lawyers to adopt a similar stance over the erosion of our civil liberties and our civil liberties.