Category Archives: Stray memories of life at the English Bar

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First, Steal A Chicken

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This post is one in the line of reminiscences of my life at the English Bar. More exactly, it is another story of my days of pupillage (“on the job training”) as a newly-minted barrister in 1992-93, still under the control of a “pupilmaster” (though, as explained in other posts, my “pupilmaster” was in fact the same age as me, a consequence of my “rolling stone” or “wander-bird” youth). It tells the story of a fairly minor series of thefts, but at the same time says something about UK and even European society generally.

A timeworn joke says that the first line of an old Hungarian recipe for chicken goulash starts, “First, steal a chicken”…Well, in this story there was no chicken but what there was was an Arab Gypsy woman in East London who was expecting a baby. Well, a baby needs all kinds of things and especially clothing, so the family of that woman– a man, a boy of 14, the pregnant woman, our defendant (an exceptionally beautiful girl aged about 18 who was a cousin of the pregnant woman), and another woman– set out one fine morning to steal the requisites. Their chosen emporium was British Home Stores, Ilford, part of East London.

The aforesaid shopping expedition was initially successful, but came to an abrupt end when the “shoppers” were arrested by police as they were getting into their car, laden with their “acquisitions”. A woman store detective had noticed them and had alerted her colleagues and the police.

It is at this point that the story becomes interesting from the “crime and punishment” point of view. The man arrested was not charged, on the basis that he had not entered the store, not handled the goods and had not admitted knowing anything of the thefts. The 14 year old boy, having admitted acting as a look-out (a pretty poor one, as it turned out), received a police caution. The other women admitted theft in the magistrates’ court and were fined £50 each. So that left our defendant, who was called something like Maroush or Marousha.

Now it transpired that Maroush was also going to be sentenced for being part of a gang which had visited towns in Dorset and Somerset and had stolen quite large amounts from shops by distracting the cashiers while the tills were open (in fact, they could somehow get them open, silently and in seconds, even when the tills were closed). Maroush was a minor player in that game but would be sentenced with several others, they like her having pleaded to those offences, after the conclusion of her shoplifting trial.

Now the point was that theft is an either-way offence and Maroush could have pleaded guilty in the “mags”, in which case she would no doubt have received a £50 fine like the others. Why she had decided to elect Crown Court trial, God knows. We only got her case at the Crown Court stage.

So it was that we all appeared at Snaresbrook Crown Court one day. Snaresbrook is a large rambling building near the end of the Central Line in Essex, and which even then had, I believe, 26 courtrooms (Wikipedia says 20, but that was in 1988; trial was in 1992; it’s pretty big, anyway…). One thing that struck me was when pupilmaster and I were provided (by the Crown Counsel) with a copy of a short Home Office report marked “Restricted”, all about Maroush’s clan origins.

It seems that Maroush came out of a clan of Arab Gypsies who lived (no doubt in poverty and on the margins of Arab society) in pre-WW2 Libya. The Second World War dislocated the states and colonies around the Mediterranean. The clan took the opportunity, after the war finished, somehow to get to Italy. They were eventually granted residency, and some, citizenship. The EEC/EC/EU arrived, with its “free movement” provisions. The clan then moved to somewhere where they could live off the host population more easily– the UK. The Home Office report was fairly direct, which perhaps was why it was “Restricted”: one would not want the British people or Press to see the truth…In fact, the report made it clear that few if any of the 5,000 Arab Gypsies of that clan then living in and around London had remunerative work. They all lived from theft, begging and State benefits.

The trial itself should have taken a day, but in fact took three, to the irritation of the judge. Pupilmaster was usually extremely long-winded, almost absurdly so. In fact, because the trial only ended late on the third day, sentence had to be put off to a fourth, because the other “£50 note trick” defs would be sentenced alongside Maroush. In the event, she was –almost inevitably– convicted of the Ilford shoplifting, and was sentenced to, if memory serves, 22 months’ imprisonment, though most of that was for the Dorset/Somerset offences. Still, she would have been better off pleading to the shoplifting, in the mags. She cried in the dock. I felt sad (I was younger and perhaps more sensitive then).

Not sure why that trial has stuck in my mind: the Home Office report? The youth and beauty of the defendant? The manifest silliness of her decision both to fight the shoplifting charge and, far worse, to do so in the Crown Court? All was put to one side over a few beers in the nearby Spread Eagle pub (if I recall the name aright) not long after. Life went on.

Note:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snaresbrook_Crown_Court

 

Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged…

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This blog post has been triggered by my happening to have seen a couple of minor news items while idly browsing the Internet. The first reported that my old head of chambers –shall we call him M.B.?– from when I practised as a barrister in Exeter (2002-2007), has been elevated to the Bench as a Circuit Judge and is now styled His Honour Judge M.B.

The other news item was that the old (dating from 1905) Tower Bridge Magistrates’ Court and police station have been turned into “a luxury boutique hotel”. Sign of the times.

These reports have led me to muse on some of my own experiences with the judicial classes.

M.B. will probably make an effective judge. An erudite civil lawyer, I met him when I decided to stop being an employed lawyer (a situation I was in, intermittently, from 1996 through to 2002) and re-start Bar practice in England. I had been living and/or working overseas for much of those six or seven years, and in London, where at one time I was the leaseholder of property in Gray’s Inn (I lived at that time at Higher Denham, Buckinghamshire, from where I travelled in by rail from Denham Golf Club halt to Marylebone, a short journey lasting about 20 minutes).

I was in Kazakhstan for a year (1996-97) and after that also lived in or made shorter visits to a number of other countries: Egypt (where I lived for a while in Aswan, on a remote Red Sea beach under canvas, in a flat in Alexandria and in the desert oasis of Siwa); Turkey (I drove UK-Turkey-UK in 2001, which was quite an adventure at times: France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, a 4-month trip); the USA (based in Charleston, South Carolina, but I also stayed for a while in Tampa, Florida); Qatar; Liechtenstein; the Channel Islands, the Eastern Caribbean (several islands); the Cayman Islands, Minorca, Czech Republic, Northern Cyprus etc.

I remember one member of my future chambers remarking at my interview that my CV read in parts like that of James Bond. I had to point out that any resemblance between me and James Bond was purely co-incidental and very implausible (and not only because I have never belonged to any secret service!).

Still, I joined that set and in general found it OK, though at first it (and so I) had very little work. I had taken on the lease of one of the largest country houses in North Cornwall and liked the relaxed lifestyle of the Cornwall/Devon upstream Tamar River area.

As to M.B., not long after I joined the set, M.B. and I won a multi-day action in contract and trust together (though appearing for different people) at Plymouth County Court. After that, we did appear on opposite sides a couple of times during my 5 years in chambers, but he lost out despite being (arguably) a better advocate and (unarguably) a better lawyer than me.

I may as well add that, despite what some Jewish individuals claimed after I was disbarred in 2016 (about 8 years after I had left chambers and ceased Bar practice!), M.B. and the other fellow members of chambers (with one, possibly two exceptions: see below) did not want me to leave chambers, whether for political or any other reasons. Indeed, M.B. wanted me to stay on despite my having decided to resign.

In fact, I was commuting on a weekly or 2-weekly basis across the Channel to Finistere, where my wife and cats were living. This resulted in financial strain, in that I was only available for half the time, was paying out large amounts for ferries (return trip with car, luxury cabin too, about £300 return, every week or so…), hotels in the UK for 10-20 nights per month.

Putting the seal on it all, I was starting to have “discussions” with the Revenue (which only ended in 2012).

My only misgivings about M.B. as a judge would be that, firstly, he tends to stick with black-letter law; in my view, he is unwilling to bend the law to fit the justice of the case. Whether that is a strength or a weakness is a matter for debate.

Secondly, when I decided to leave chambers, I quite liked the idea of remaining as a door tenant [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_tenant] and M.B. said that that would not be a problem and implied (indeed expressed, though in some other words) that it would be nodded through, but that the correct form would be for me to resign my tenancy first and then apply for door tenancy, though approval would “in my case” be automatic.

However, when it came to it, a couple of new tenants (I believe) cut up rough because one was married to some kind of Indian and was very hostile to (what he assumed were) my political views; I think (guessing) that a recent ex-pupil (a humourless bespectacled woman with an invisible sign round her neck saying “Politically-Correct Virtue-Signalling Christian”) may also have blackballed me.

In the event, the door tenancy would have been a waste of time because the Revenue was on my back at a cross-Channel distance. Still, that made me think that M.B. was not necessarily reliable, a thought that had occurred previously once or twice.

Now to another judge of sorts. Tower Bridge Magistrates’ Court, long before it was (quite recently) turned into a luxury boutique hotel, was for some years often presided over by one Jacqueline “Jackie” Comyns, a notoriously despotic “stipendiary magistrate” (the rank now renamed “District Judge Criminal”). Her reputation was fearsome.

I only appeared once in front of this gargoyle: I was “briefed” at 11 am to appear at 12! That was in 1993. I read the brief on the way to court. The defendant had refused to get off a defective bus and had then assaulted the conductor and gone on to smash the side window of a police car. She was pleading guilty.

At court, the case came on minutes after my arrival. The magistrate interrupted my mitigation to ask some petty question about the defendant. I did not know the answer, having not had time for a brief conference.

Instead of simply asking the defendant for the information, this ghastly frustrated prize bitch, sitting on her seat of petty power, told me venomously that Counsel had to be properly prepared when appearing in her court, and told me to go ask the defendant! I did, the pitying or amused eyes of dozens of police, court staff, members of the public on me as I traversed the unusually large courtroom and extracted the information.

I was told that that magistrate was going to be elevated to the Circuit bench in Essex, but that turned out to be wrong, because I see from the Internet that she was still dispensing justice from Thames Mags (on the other, i.e. North, side of the river from Tower Bridge Mags) as recently as 2013, the year that she retired (aged 70).

The problem of “judge-itis” (the tendency to be a despot sitting on the pedestal of power) is worse, usually, the further down the pecking order you go. It is rarely found in the higher courts.

At one time (1993-1995) I appeared on a frequent basis, at least once weekly, in the High Court. If I had a problem, it was never because the judge was reprising am-dram Nero or Caligula.

In the County Courts, the problem is occasionally encountered. HH Judge Overend, the presiding civil judge for Devon and Cornwall until 2006, was often a horrible despot when seated (at Plymouth County Court, usually), but in his case his bullying manner, and apparent tendency to make up his mind before you had finished —or even started— speaking, was mitigated by fairness and compassion for those suffering (so long as they were not Counsel!).

The barristers of the South West used to describe bruising encounters with that judge as one having been “Overended”…I have to say that on the odd occasion when he saw me outside court, he did always nod affably and even briefly smiled at times.

The magistrates’ courts are often the zoos where the wildest judicial animals roam their constricted territories. I once saw a stipendiary magistrate in London refuse bail to a defendant who was in court on a stretcher and on a drip !

Other judges have the opposite tendency, a pretty fatal one for a judge, a difficulty in deciding anything, especially if it would involve penalizing (eg imprisoning) those who break court orders. Judges whose Bar practice was entirely in civil work tend to fall victim to this; at least, that was my experience.

I have to say that I only found a few judges who were completely impossible. One was not a judge proper, i.e. the lady who presided over Tower Bridge Mags; another was one whose name escapes me now, but who sat at Uxbridge County Court 25 years ago. His connection with justice was, as far as I could see, purely formal. A horrible man. The many others, particularly on the High Court bench, might not always have seen eye to eye with me on the law or facts, but were almost always courteous in manner and impressive in their grasp.

Notes

Reminiscences and Musings, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Paid Bar Pupillages

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There is, currently, discussion yet again at the Bar of England and Wales about whether all sets of chambers should “tax” their members in order to pay pupils (i.e. trainee barristers) a certain minimum during their year of pupillage. The figure mooted has been put by some at £25,000; others put it at £12,000, i.e. about where the present legal “minimum wage” is set. Not all barristers agree. I saw a contrary-leaning article by Jew-Zionist silk Simon Myerson QC. I expect that this is the only issue on which I would ever agree with him (I attach his views at the bottom of this blog post).

I understand that chambers are currently not forced to have pupils, but if they have them they must be paid £12,000 p.a. Apologies if that misrepresents the current position; I have little contact now with affairs at the Bar. [update: see below]

Many who know me or of me may wonder why I am bothering to write about this. After all, I ceased Bar practice in 2008, and was actually disbarred –for political reasons– in 2016, after a pack of malicious Jews cobbled together a complaint to the Bar Standards Board about my socio-political tweets. My answer to such a query would be that I have a view and the time in which to express it. Simply that. I can revisit Memory Lane, too.

The idea that all chambers must fund at least one pupil has superficial appeal to many. Poorer people of merit would be assisted etc. The problem with that is that most young (as most are) Bar pupils are not very poor anyway, and many come from families with considerable incomes and capital. In short, from affluent families. No-one forces chambers to take poor pupils rather than rich ones. In other words, chambers might be forced to pay for pupils who do not even need the money.

When I myself was looking for pupillage in the late 1980s and then early 1990s (interrupted by my going to live in the USA and travelling back and forth in those years), I had handicaps: apart from lack of money, I was, having been born in 1956, about a decade older than most candidates, and (worse) until late 1988 had a beard. That last might seem a small matter, but at least two barristers who interviewed me mentioned it…

I found that, at that time, the Bar was even less well-run than most things in the UK. We (students at the Inns of Court School of Law, at the time the only place where the Bar Finals course was offered) were told by some stuffy blue-stocking administratrix that we should write our applications by hand and preferably in ink, using a fountain pen (though CVs could be typed)! By some miracle, quill pens and parchment had been superseded. Well, I laboured to write maybe a hundred applications (though not with a fountain pen). Most went unanswered. Imagine that… that a letter written in good faith on a quite usual subject (after all, it happens at least annually that people apply to such places) will simply be ignored. Arrogant. Rude.

Of the interviews I had, a few stand out: there was one at a leading commercial set, in which interview I was interviewed by one Christian du Cann and some young woman who was obviously very junior. Du Cann was the son of perhaps the best Bar advocate I ever heard, Richard du Cann QC, who wrote one of the best books on the subject, The Art of the Advocate (highly recommended, by the way, if any Bar students are reading this). Du Cann junior was OK, even pleasant, but the young woman was unpleasant, scornful, contemptuous. Huge chip on shoulder from somewhere. I think that she felt inferior, so abused her half hour of power. Fortunately for her, I have forgotten her name.

Then there was the interview elsewhere, which obviously was not going very well, though in a low-intensity way. One barrister saw me out and made two suggestions: one, never shake hands with another barrister; two, beards are usually unacceptable.

Another interview that was (perhaps on purpose, to put one on one’s mettle) very hostile was with three then fairly well-known people, often in the newspapers: Michael Worsley QC [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12118332/Michael-Worsley-barrister-obituary.html], who died in 2016; Roy Amlot (later QC) who was often seen prosecuting IRA bombers etc (and, later, defending in huge fraud trials such as Blue Arrow), now 75 and retired from the Bar; a blonde woman smoking like a chimney (I cannot quite recall after more than a quarter-century whether that was Joanna Korner, now QC and a judge, or Ann Curnow QC, now deceased). All in a room got up to look like a cross between a country sitting-room and a study: panelling, soft-ish lighting, leather sofa etc and a couple of desks. In summary, Worsley appeared to be a stuffed shirt (very different from the figure portrayed in the Daily Telegraph obit), Amlot a funereally-serious and hugely self-important little man, and the blonde woman someone whose interview style seemed to rely on ill-bred mockery.

I did have one interview which was almost Kafka-esque. At that time, my mother and brother were both Members at Ascot (my brother also owned a racehorse at the time). One frequently-encountered fellow-member was a woman whose son happened to be a head of chambers in the Temple. The two ladies arranged an interview for me. I was loath to go for interview under such conditions, but went out of politeness.

In those pre-Internet days, it was not always easy to find out what a particular set did in detail. I went thinking that it was a general Common Law set. On my arrival, on a Friday early evening, about 1800, the members were all enjoying glasses of champagne; bottles of Bollinger were everywhere. I was given a glass. Turned out that they did this every Friday at sundown. The head of chambers, obviously talking to me because his mother had asked him to do so, was not very pleasant and asked me what I knew of family law. I replied not much, never having studied it. He said “We only do family…” End of “interview”.

In the end, I went back to the USA, though I did get a pupillage in London in the end, in 1992, unfunded and making the first six months (when you are forbidden to accept fees) a trial of strength.

In my last few years at the practising Bar, I was based in Exeter. The head of those chambers decided that we should take pupils and (a year or two later) also fund them. At least one per year. Everyone would be “taxed” for this. I think that my share was about £50 a month, something like that. I thought that absurd. Those funded were not in real need of money (as I had been when a pupil) and I saw no need for us to have pupils in chambers anyway. I was there to make a living, not to provide the English middle classes with career or CV opportunities. My Head of Chambers disagreed though. He no doubt wanted to keep in with the the Bar Council etc, and I note that he has since then (in recent years) sat as a Recorder in civil cases.

Thus it is that, for once, I find myself in agreement with Myerson QC, whose view is linked hereinbelow:

https://www.legalcheek.com/2012/02/simon-myerson-qc-12k-minimum-pupillage-award-is-fair/

Update (July 2018)

My one-time Head of Chambers has, since I penned the above, been elevated to the Bench as a Circuit Judge, I read somewhere or other. May he temper the law (of which he has an impressive grasp) with not only justice but also mercy…

Update, 23 August 2019

I saw this:

So those fortunate enough to find a pupillage at all (only about 1 in 10) will be paid the above sums per year (or pro rata— many pupils are in two different sets for the two halves of their pupillage year). Nice for them.

My objection to the above is not merely (in fact scarcely at all) that “I had to struggle; they should also struggle”, because in any case most Bar pupils are from relatively affluent (sometimes very wealthy) backgrounds. They do not really need the money.

There is another point: a Bar pupil is almost useless in the first 6 months. Barristers in chambers are therefore not only subsidizing people most of whom do not really require subsidy, but paying out for nothing (unless you regard it as akin to noblesse oblige). A Bar pupil may be helpful in terms of research etc, but the barrister who is pupilmaster has to be pretty sure of the pupil to rely on the results. In other words, the pupillage award is not quasi-pay for work done by the pupil, but a kind of de haut en bas largesse. Oh well, not my problem now!

Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

A Day Out in Cambridge

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Introduction

This is another vignette from my time at the Bar, specifically from my first six months (of a year, split up into two segments, in 1992 and 1993, with six months sojourn in New Jersey and New York in between) as a Bar pupil, which is a trainee barrister. I have, in a previous blog post, introduced the slightly comical figure of “the pupilmaster”, the anxious little Mauritian Indian barrister who was supposedly supervising me (we were the same age, 35). This account tells the tale of our day out in the university town of Cambridge.

Town and Gown

I had been to Cambridge a couple of times before. The first time was when I was about 25, with my then girlfriend. She was 32, a graduate of Cambridge University, and had contemporaries who were establishing themselves in academia and elsewhere. We stayed for a day or so with a couple who still lived in Cambridge; one of that couple was having his PhD thesis published as a book, and worked at the famous Scott Polar Research Institute.

My second visit to Cambridge, a decade later, was again University-connected, this time invited, by a friend at the Bar doing a Master’s degree, to Queen’s College, to the annual dinner of something called the E Society, a society which existed only to give its annual dinner; a club reminiscent of that written about by G.K. Chesterton in The Queer Feet [http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/QueeStep920.shtml].

That dinner took place in the richly-panelled rooms of the Dean of the College, a pleasant though cunning-seeming host and fellow (or should that be Fellow?), who later became briefly famous in the tabloid Press for two things: firstly, fulminating against “guests” of undergraduates (i.e. girlfriends/boyfriends) staying overnight in College; secondly, having a young woman actually living with him! (I believe that, by tradition, his office was reserved for bachelors living alone). The dinner was for about a dozen and was black-tie.

I also remember the dinner for other reasons: the Wagnerian-themed menu (“Valkyries on Horseback” etc); also the administrative slip when my “vegetarian request” (put in by the person who had invited me) turned out to have been lost in action. I was then ceremoniously served by the butler with a couple of poached eggs on toast! OK for me, but a hard-core veggie or vegan would have had a fit. I also recall the shock with which a fellow guest received my account of a TV programme I had seen about Filipino “psychic surgeons”. Turned out that he was the Something-or-Other Professor of Cardiac Surgery (and was unamused)!

Cambridge Crown Court

I saw Cambridge Crown Court on TV news recently. A horrible building which might be described as “public loo meets nuclear bunker” (with a nod to the Guggenheim in New York, in my opinion Frank Lloyd Wright’s least-successful conception).

https://courttribunalfinder.service.gov.uk/courts/cambridge-crown-court

However, in 1992 Cambridge Crown Court was still held in the ancient-seeming Guildhall (in fact built only in 1939).

It soon became clear that Cambridge was a little behind London in attitude. In London, when someone on bail “surrendered to custody” on day of trial, the “surrender” was nominal: he checked in with the Usher and his name was ticked off a list. In Cambridge, the defendant checked in and, despite having been on bail for months, was shoved into a cell! So it was that pupilmaster and I, having robed, found ourselves witness to an argument between two court guards and our defendant, who had arrived not long beforehand and had been roughly pushed into a cell with an injunction to “get your arse in there”… Having pacified the ongoing argument, we settled down (well, stood there– no furniture) to hear the defendant’s story already read in the brief.

According to the defendant (who was of “gypsy”, i.e. Irish tinker or, in today’s politically-correct terminology, “traveller” origin), he had been invited to travel with his friend (co-defendant) to Cambridge, far from their homes in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, in order to see a used car which the friend wanted to buy. While walking in the centre of Cambridge, he encountered a person described by him as “a hippy”, who had offered him a cigarette. Well, that cigarette “must have been drugs”, said the defendant, because when he regained consciousness he was in the back of a car which was being chased by a police car. He had been unable to understand why the police car, blue lights flashing and sirens sounding, was trying to chase the car in which he was now a passenger. The chase ended and, despite his having tried to explain himself, he had been arrested. Unlikely that he had ever read Kafka’s The Trial, but his surprise echoed that of Josef K.

The police account, which formed the case for the prosecution, was different. In their view, a car had been stolen by the co-defendant and defendant, had been sighted and chased and our defendant had exited the car on a bend and rolled under a parked car. His attempt to hide had been brought to a swift conclusion by a police dog.

This depressing and hopeless case might have caused pupilmaster to think a little unclearly. Never very punctual [see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/06/19/home-and-away-or-neighbours/], pupilmaster was in danger of yet again irritating a judge by appearing late in Court (a massive discourtesy if the judge has already taken his seat). He poo-poohed my warning about this, saying, “Don’t worry– I know a short-cut into this court; it’s up those stairs. I’ve been here before”, indicating a dark stairway not far away. The defendant was bid au revoir for the moment, and we ascended the stairs.

In the words of Victorian novels, “imagine my surprise” when, instead of emerging outside the courtroom, we found ourselves in the dock! Worse, the judge was seated, looking livid, and the court was packed to such an extent that it reminded me of the famous courtroom scene in the old black and white film of A Tale of Two Cities. This was not good. Pupilmaster hissed at me to find the (hidden) catch so that we could exit the dock and take our proper place. After some fumbling, this was done. The judge, quite the Judge Jeffreys type, had turned that odd red-purple colour which might be called Judicial Livid, and which I myself may have triggered a couple of times in succeeding years. Not good.

The barrister for the co-defendant was there and all we now awaited was the putting-up of the defendants. It was at this point that it turned out that the co-defendant had exercized his non-existent right not to turn up for his trial. As a result, the trial collapsed, the defendant was bailed again and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the co-defendant.

So it was that another day in the pursuit of Justice ended.

Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Home and Away, or Neighbours?

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Prologue on the Stage [with apologies to Goethe’s Faust]

At the belated age of 35, in early 1992, I embarked upon a Bar pupillage (which, for anyone reading outside England and Wales, means being a trainee-barrister for a year broken up into 2 6-month parts). The system was archaic. Having acquired a law degree and completed the 1-year Bar Finals course, and having passed all exams, you were expected, as a “pupil”,  to trail around after a barrister (“pupil-master”) from whom you were expected to learn not so much the law as the practical procedure and habitude of the Bar and the courts.

The pupilmaster was the same age as me (a source of many a joke from him) and was a Mauritian of Indian descent, by name Raj N., whose father had been Minister of Justice, I believe, back home. At short notice, the pupillage had been set up by a friend of mine who shall be nameless (now that I am apparently “notorious” as a “far right” “extremist”– if you believe the “Lugenpresse” aka msm liars). I had to take what I could get. Having said that, Raj N. was basically a very decent little chap and we became quite friendly. His practice was an odd mixture: partly civil law with quite a few High Court judicial reviews; the rest, Crown Court criminal trials ranging from armed robbery to blackmail and almost everything else.

The first six months were unpaid (in those days, but not so now, when most if not all pupils are subsidized); not even unavoidable expenses such as travel were covered. The only expense that could be relied upon, if the pupilmaster were decent, would be a supply of drinks at the Cittie of York pub in Holborn or at Daly’s wine bar in Fleet Street (in Rumpole of the Bailey, “Pomeroy’s”), at the time called something else, a change which the Bar did not accept (and the Bar won that one, because I noticed recently that Daly’s is now called Daly’s again…).

I had come back from the USA to do the pupillage and had very little money. I got by, God knows how…I may have forgotten to pay my Underground fares at times, and one day, en route to Wood Green Crown Court in North London, I noticed, while ascending the escalator at Bound’s Green Underground Station, where –ticket-inspectors permitting–the pupilmaster usually picked me up, if our case was in North-East London or beyond, that the soles of my expensive handmade shoes were starting to part company with the uppers. I was not allowed to do my own cases (initially, “rubbish” cast off from barristers in my Chambers) and so make any money at all until I was in the second six-month period of pupillage. It was hard. Steps had to be taken. They were. However, that would be another story in itself.

One thing that made the first six months of pupillage bearable was the degree to which the pupilmaster got himself into amusing pickles, often in Court. Here is but one example.

The One Where Home and Away was the Alibi

So to that Rumpolian staple, Inner London Crown Court, situate halfway between London Bridge and Elephant and Castle. A rather grim old setting for many a case of serious and often “heavy” crime. In this case, serious rather than heavy. In legal terms, robbery; in lay terms, a mugging. The primary facts were that, on the ghastly North Peckham Estate in South London, a young man was hit in the face and money stolen. What distinguished this case from the many was that the victim had actually met and been introduced to the alleged robber some months prior to the robbery, a fact that (presumably) the defendant had forgotten, but (unfortunately for the defendant) the victim had not. There had been an identity parade, what the Americans call a line-up. The robber had been picked out.

Now, on the facts as stated above, you might think that the best course would be for the defendant to hold his hands up, plead to it and hope that his Counsel might mitigate the sentence. In any case, the Court is supposed to knock a third off for a guilty plea, though that is of course notional, because the guidelines for judges have latitude built in. In this case the defendant insisted on pleading Not Guilty. So there we were: an alleged robber whose victim knew him personally or at least had met him, and had identified him. What did the robber have to say?

The defendant was a rather large West Indian, a former amateur boxer of about 30, with a considerable criminal record for theft, robbery, drug misuse and so on. His alibi was that he not only was he not guilty and not at or near the scene of the crime but that he could not have done the crime, because every single day, without fail, he and his girlfriend (also West Indian) and her sister sat down at (I think it was, about) 5 pm to watch the Australian soap, Home and Away. Needless to say, such an alibi was thin, even with a supporting witness (the girlfriend). He thought, God knows why, that he had a good chance of getting off. In the meantime, he was being held in custody at “high security” Belmarsh Prison.

The first day of trial was absurd, with the perenially-late pupilmaster being told off not once but twice for tardiness. On the second occasion, after lunch, the plump-faced but not unattractive lady judge also waved her beringed fingers in front of her (the middle finger housing a massive rock that looked like it belonged in the V & A) and had taken the trouble to procure a printed copy of a page which she pointedly invited the pupilmaster to “peruse at your leisure, Mr. N.” It turned out to be the responsibilities of Counsel not to waste court time and the power of the judge to recommend that his (Legal Aid) fees be docked accordingly.

When the Defence opened on the second day, it turned out that the judge required that both sides should agree on when Home and Away was screened. Much quiet amusement from public gallery and jury box, but the judge and all Counsel had no idea of the timings. Judging from looks and smiles, the jury already knew the timings. Prosecution Counsel, a jolly fat little man, acquired copies of Radio Times and TV Times. These were perused. At that point, it was discovered that Home and Away was screened twice on every weekday afternoon, once at 5-something and, before that, at 2-something. These were, apparently, identical episodes, so it would have been possible for the defendant to see the first showing and still be free to mug the victim.

In the event, the sole Defence witness, the girlfriend (the defendant did not give evidence) scarcely came up to proof. Prosecution Counsel’s killer question asked whether, if she and defendant watched the first showing on any particular day, they would sit down again 3 hours later and watch it all over again. Her angry “YES!” carried little weight. The jury took little time to convict. When it was all over and the Prosecution Counsel was leaving, he jovially remarked to us, “well, I’m off home, home to watch Home and Away!”, to which the family and girlfriend of the defendant, having heard the remark, addressed a few choice epithets before scurrying off.

When we saw the defendant in the cells below (they are always below…), he was happy enough, despite the pretty stiff 5-year sentence that he had received about an hour before (the pupilmaster liked to give convicted defendants time to cool down…). Defendant’s formerly vice-like handshake was limp, explained by his “Ah’m OK, man. I can do a 5 on my ‘ead. Ah’ve just ‘ad a smoke, ani-way”…Where he got the stuff (cannabis) from, God knows. Better not enquired after.

So there we have it. Justice a la mode. Followed by a drink at a convenient hostelry.

[this little remembrance forms part of an occasional series on the absurdities of Bar practice as it was for me between 1992 and 2008]

 

 

MPs, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Fame is Often Fleeting

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[preliminary note: this is a personal rather than a political or social blog post, though it does touch on both of those aspects of life]

It is hardly original to say that fame often tends to be fleeting, but indulge me. I was thinking about this matter recently in the context of hearing about a number of persons and their life-trajectories. In particular, in the past 6-7 years I have observed the meteoric rise of a Jewish Zionist lawyer (solicitor) to fame; he rose to public prominence (after years of provincial obscurity and a slide into near-madness) on the basis of one type of notorious case, only to slowly deflate ever since. That person’s fate, still unfolding (or should that be “unravelling”?) gave rise to other, connected, thoughts.

I was on holiday in Hammamet, Tunisia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammamet] in 1994 when my then girlfriend and I met with a young Englishman and his girlfriend. They were both struggling or at least very junior young journalists, twenty-somethings. The young man explained that they had been in a not very pleasant hotel and so had upgraded to the one in which I was staying, the Phoenicia, one of the best in the resort, all marble and staff wearing white uniforms topped by a fez.

The young journalist said that his name was Jasper Gerard (the girlfriend’s name I forget). We had lunch and the odd drink in the succeeding days and they were in the grounds of the hotel when they noticed someone nearly get killed when his parascending canopy collapsed at altitude. Yes, that was me (I pulled too hard on one side to descend) and apparently Gerard cried out “isn’t that Ian?!” as I appeared to be about to fall, mortally wounded, to the beach. However, I survived with nothing worse than a minor story to tell.

I kept in touch with Jasper. I invited him, not long after, to dinner at Lincoln’s Inn (of which I was then a member). He attended not with the Tunisia holiday girlfriend but with a pleasant, very quiet young lady who (judging by more recent Press photos) was probably his later wife. A week or two later, in the English way, he invited me to dinner at his club, a members-only but non-traditional place in Mayfair called Green Street. The sort of place full of young or youngish people who were probably pop stars whom I would probably not have recognized even by name. At dinner, the next table was occupied by a lady and her two guests. She was, Gerard whispered, the journalist Marie Colvin, already noted but who became rather famous later on, after she lost an eye and took to wearing a dashing eye-patch. She was killed in Homs, Syria, in 2012, making Gerard’s dinner comment to the effect that connections had helped her into her job seem in retrospect even more envious than it did at the time.

After that, I did not see Jasper Gerard for nearly three years, during which time he had become the head of the Diary column in The Times. After I finished a year working in Kazakhstan, I called him and suggested a drink. He suggested lunch at El Vino, not the original wine bar but the branch at the foot of Ludgate Hill. He failed to turn up and when I called to ask whether a problem had arisen, did not even apologize but got some underling to say that “something had come up”. That was discourteous, but personal loyalty is important to me, so I agreed to a second lunch date. This time, Gerard did turn up, but the pleasant, rather hesitant young man had become a blase, vain fellow obviously very much spoiled by his career uplift and hugely full of himself. He scarcely bothered to talk, obviously found me not famous enough to waste even the lunch break on, then did not offer to pay, or even to pay half the bill, but waited until I did before saying “do you mind if I take the cash and pay, so that I can claim it back”! With such a brazen attitude, it is not surprising that the bastard later tried to be elected as an MP!

I did not meet with Jasper Gerard after that, though I noticed that he was later to be found in the Sunday Times as chief interviewer. He lasted for some years before being removed. He then became restaurant critic in The Observer for a year or two, until 2008. He was even mentioned (once) in celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s memoirs.

Gerard fell into obscurity after that, though he came second in the Maidstone and The Weald constituency in the 2015 General Election, standing as a LibDem (well, after all, the LibDems are now the last resort of the scoundrel!).

The last I heard of Jasper Gerard, in 2016, he had become the Head of Press for the LibDems. Whether he still is, I have no idea.; and his last tweet to the public was in 2015…

The above is just one reminiscence about, mainly, one person. I suppose that the moral of my brief story is that some people really cannot handle fame or even minor celebrity, and that obscurity often beckons.

 

Update, 29 December 2020

I saw that there were recently a few hits on this rather obscure blog post, so am updating it.

The Maidstone and the Weald election results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidstone_and_The_Weald_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s.

Jasper Gerard’s 2015 vote share of 24.1%, though far below that of the 36% attained by the LibDem in 2010, was still better than that garnered by the LibDems of 2017 and 2019 (16.4% in both cases). Gerard was the last LibDem to get a second place at Maidstone and the Weald; Labour has come second since 2015: 22.1% in 2017, 18.3% in 2019.

As for Gerard himself, it turns out that his full surname is Gerard-Sharp, and that his sister is also a journalist, with a Twitter account: [https://twitter.com/LisaGerardSharp] and a personal website [https://www.lisagerardsharp.com/].

“In the soup for playing down the Lord Rennard scandal (‘It’s hardly Jimmy Savile’) Liberal Democrat candidate Jasper Gerard stands accused of playing down his poshness. Colleagues at Durham University remember him as Jasper Gerard-Sharp. Once he secured the post of head of the university’s Lib Dem society he morphed into plain Jasper Sharp. But by the time he arrived at The Times as a trainee journalist, he reverted to Jasper Gerard. Keep up at the back!” [Daily Mail, in 2013] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2285672/Is-boastful-Vince-Cable-ready-new-challenge.html

Professionally, and politically, Jasper Gerard —or Gerard-Sharp— now seems to have vanished without trace. He may have retired early; he would now be 53, must have been extremely well-paid when he was Chief Interviewer for the Sunday Times, and there may well be some family money, despite his grammar school secondary education.

Update, 18 March 2021

I noticed that there were several hits on this old article today.

I recall seeing an interview in the Sunday Times, in 2003, written by then-Chief Interviewer Jasper Gerard. It was with, and the article about, the wife of Kevin Maxwell, the part-Jew son of MOSSAD chief European agent, millionaire Jew fraudster and later food-for-fish, “Robert Maxwell”. At the time, the Maxwells were trying to sell their expansive country house on the Thames, somewhere near Wallingford.

That is a nice part of the world, one I knew well as a child and teenager in the early/mid 1960s and in the 1970s. I remember, reading the interview, thinking “there is a horrible brash Jewish or part-Jew family living in luxury on the banks of the Thames near Wallingford, and I am scraping a modest living from the law…“. The fact that Kevin Maxwell was living off the proceeds of crime, such as the frauds perpetrated by his despicable father, made the feeling all the stronger.

Well, the wheel of life has certainly turned for Ghislaine Maxwell, “Captain Bob’s” daughter, currently resident in a 9 foot by six foot cell in a US Federal prison.

Hey! I have an idea! Jasper Gerard should go interview the declining Ghislaine before she gets bumped like Epstein, or does herself in. He could write a good (well, adequate…) article about the contrast between her present circumstances and those days long ago with her brother and family by the sweet Thames…If, that is, anyone would now publish him.

Notes

https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/08/11/the-jew-epstein-and-prince-andrew-the-british-royal-family-has-another-scandal-maybe-its-time-to-just-get-rid-of-them/

https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/grey-cardigan-so-where-has-jasper-gerard-gone/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/living-maxwell-house-mtz0crcfv7q

Alison Chabloz, Alt-Right, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Icke, free speech, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, London Forum, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

The Slide of the English Bar and UK Society Continues and Accelerates

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[Addendum and Update, 5 September 2021: since I blogged in relation to my disbarment etc, there have been developments, some of which are covered in the updates at the foot of the original blog. However, two other important changes have been that, firstly, the Bar Standards Board wrote to me a couple of years ago, explaining that I should never have been “tried” by a 5-person Tribunal (the only type that has the power to disbar), but only by a 3-person Tribunal (which can only impose lesser penalties). The BSB offered me the chance to have my case reheard. In that event, whatever happened, I should be reinstated as a barrister.

I decided at the time not to reopen the matter. My decision was partly a gesture of contempt towards the System and the Jew-Zionist lobby that procured the “prosecution”, “trial”, and eventual disbarment. Also, as someone over 60, I had no practical use for my “Barrister” status.

The second development, arising out of one of the more recent parts of the Henry Hendron case, is that, as an “unregistered” barrister (since 2008), I should never have been “prosecuted” at all, because the relevant parts of the Bar Code of Conduct would not have applied to me on the facts. I did, I believe, make that point in early correspondence with the BSB in the 2014-2016 period.

In other words, my 2016 disbarment was not only wrongful, but actually unlawful].

[Original blog article from 9 July 2017]

When I started to blog, I intended to write about things of general or objective importance. I intended to avoid the personal and subjective. Above all, I wished to avoid mixing the objective and the subjective. However, I think that some of my personal reminiscences and thoughts might be of interest to others. I also consider that objective conclusions can be drawn about UK society from some of my experiences.

Many of those who are reading this will be aware that I was disbarred in late 2016. That happened after a group of Jew-Zionists calling themselves “UK Lawyers for Israel” (some of whom, probably many, also belong to the so-called “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism”) made official complaint (in 2014) about a number (at first, several dozen) of tweets which I had posted on Twitter. Eventually, the number of tweets comprising the subject-matter of the charge was reduced to seven. Seven (7) tweets (reduced to 5 at Tribunal) out of, at the time, at least 150,000.

Now, though I may blog in detail about the manifold injustices around my own case at a later date, my purpose today is to compare the overall “justice” I received with that meted out to another Bar defaulter recently, in order to illustrate wider points.

Now the bare bones of my own situation were that:

  • I ceased Bar practice in 2008 and last appeared in court in December 2007;
  • I did not hold a Practice Certificate after 2008;
  • I joined Twitter in 2010 and started to tweet in 2011 or 2012;
  • My Twitter profile and picture never made any reference to my being or having been a barrister (whether practising, non-practising or employed);
  • Only a tiny handful of the 155,000-200,000 tweets I had posted made any mention of the fact that I had, years before, been a practising barrister; none of the supposedly “offensive” tweets did so;
  • The tweets I posted (whether complained of or not) were all posted as part of my “personal or private life”, I having had no professional life after 2008 anyway.

It should be said (without getting too technical) that the Bar Code of Conduct was once a slim volume but has expanded into a fairly lengthy and complex code. Suffice to say that the now-usual “race and religion”, “diversity” etc stuff is now included (and I think that we can be sure what kind of persons drafted those clauses…).

In the past, a barrister’s private life was not justiciable under the Code except in a few carefully-drawn exceptions, the main one being where a barrister had been convicted of a (serious) criminal offence (parking, speeding etc excluded). The new Code, in force for a number of years, kept those boundaries but, crucially, made them advisory only, taking away the cast-iron defence that whatever was complained of had been done in the course of the barrister’s personal or private life.

At the same time, the old and sensible distinction between barristers who are in practice, or who are employed as barristers, as against those not practising, or not employed as barristers, was removed in relation to “Core Duty 5”, i.e. in effect “bringing the Bar into disrepute”.

In short, I was, in effect, “bringing the Bar into disrepute”, or so decided a Bar Tribunal panel of 5 chaired by a retired Circuit judge, when (6+ years AFTER having given up Bar practice) I tweeted the seven *reduced at Tribunal to five) “offensive” tweets (on my Twitter account that made no mention in its profile etc that I had ever been a barrister).

I should say that the presiding judge made the point in his summation and sentencing that I had had an unblemished record at the Bar throughout the years since I was Called in 1991.

Other barristers had and have Twitter accounts. Some post obscene comments, such as the “lady” QC whose every sentence contained a swear word. Many have pictures of themselves in wig and gown, or advertise their practices via website links etc (which is now OK but would have been a serious Bar offence only 20 years or so ago). None of those who have used obscene language etc (including telling people to “fuck off” etc) has ever been hauled before a Bar Tribunal, despite their proclaiming their professional status, despite having photos of themselves in Bar clothing in some cases, despite their being in practice at the Bar and talking about it and the law constantly. The presiding judge at my 5-person Tribunal called my case “unprecedented”.

There are so many examples today of barristers doing things which would have meant disbarment decades ago but which are now laughed at and even applauded. We see, for example, the Jewish barrister known to the public as “Judge Rinder” (not in fact any kind of judge) on TV, the show aping that of (also Jewish) “Judge Judy” in the USA. The barrister who plays the role of “Judge Rinder” is acting entirely within the ambit of what is now tolerated by the Bar regulators, but one could not imagine such a show on TV in, say, 1967 or even 1987.

That is even leaving aside the vulgar advertizing and self-promotion undertaken by members of the Bar in practice. That was not permitted until the 1990s. The following example of a Bar defaulter was also one of the most shameless self-promoters.

Now let us look at how the Bar treated so-called “celebrity barrister” Henry Hendron, who, despite being a horrible little bastard –from what I have heard on radio and read in newspapers (I have never met him, admittedly)–, was treated very leniently by the Bar Tribunal, certainly as contrasted with my case.

Hendron supplied so-called “chemsex” drugs, apparently used in gay orgies, to his 18-y-o foreign boyfriend, who died as a result.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/09/celebrity-barrister-sentenced-after-supplying-drugs-that-killed-teen-boyfriend-5870206/http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/09/celebrity-barrister-sentenced-after-supplying-drugs-that-killed-teen-boyfriend-5870206/

Hendron was ALSO found guilty, on his own admission, of failing to administer properly his chambers (which he headed as Head of Chambers) and in respect of that was fined £2,000, a trivial sum for someone who made hundreds of thousands of pounds in a year.

https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases-and-news/barrister-henry-hendron-suspended-for-three-years-following-criminal-convictions-for-supplying-illegal-drugs/

So the Bar Standards Board and a Bar Tribunal think that a barrister and indeed head of chambers who was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of supplying illegal drugs for immoral purposes, and that supply having resulted in death (within the Temple itself at that!) AND failing to run his chambers properly should get suspended from practice for three years (in fact only two, because time was ruled to run from 2016!) and get a modest fine, whereas I, “found guilty” of having tweeted five (reduced at hearing from seven charged) supposedly “offensive” tweets about Jews, and not a practising or employed barrister at all, had to be disbarred! You really could not make it up.

This is what the Bar Standards Board official , Sara Jagger, Director of Professional Conduct, said about the Hendron case:

“A conviction for supplying illegal drugs is a serious matter. In this case, it had tragic consequences. Mr Hendron failed to meet one of the core duties of a barrister, which is to uphold public trust and confidence. The suspension imposed by the tribunal reflects this.”

This is what the same woman said about my case:

“The use of such offensive language is incompatible with the standards expected of barristers. The Tribunal rightly found that such behaviour diminishes the trust and confidence the public places in the profession and the decision to disbar Mr Millard reflects this.”

The Board’s press statement (still on its website today) also repeated the lie that my Twitter account “made it clear that” I was a barrister. An out and out lie.

Who, I wonder, would the public think less properly able to reflect the standards expected of a barrister? A snivelling, drug-taking degenerate, convicted of illegal drug supply resulting in death, and who also ran his chambers improperly, OR someone who, as part of his non-professional life and indeed post-professional life, posted seven supposedly “offensive” tweets (taking them as described by the Bar Tribunal)?

You decide.

Postscriptum: The BBC Radio 4 “PM” programme interviewed Henry Hendron in a very sympathetic way recently; the popular Press handled the story with a relatively light touch. Contrast that with the day or three of msm storm around my case last year! We can see the way society is going: downhill, fast.

Update, 26 January 2019

Now he is or has been selling “legal packages”! Perhaps he could set up a stall or barrow in one of the London street markets? Is the Bar Standards Board OK with this? Is the Bar itself OK with this?! I begin to think that the whole bloody system should be chucked into the mire…

https://www.legalcheek.com/2018/05/suspended-chemsex-barrister-sells-4000-legal-advice-for-life-on-facebook/

And what is one to make of this? He now intends to sail around the world! Hello sailor! He even has the cheek to solicit donations from the public! As for his hypocrisy, in pretending to be a “victim” of “unequal justice” when he has been treated so incredibly leniently compared to me (read the blog article, above!), words fail me…(his crowdfunding page from August 2018 raised….just £40. Seems that the public are not so stupid after all). [Update, June 2019: Hendron has now deleted all his blog posts about sailing around the world with a bumboy etc and seems to be intending to use his website to flog more “legal services”]

https://henryhendron.com/

According to the blog below, he set off in August 2018, not knowing how to sail, and had to be rescued by the Coastguard the same day…then set off again a day later…The blog writer wants him to give up his “suicidal” journey. Seems that Hendron has one friend, anyway. [see above update, however]

https://www.russelldawkinsbackontrack.co.uk/my-mates/

In fact, it seems that he survived at least until 4 September 2018 (see his blog, below). What appals me about it is the poor grammar, spelling, use of English generally. That such a person was not only treated better than me by the Bar “regulators”, but was at the Bar at all, makes me fume (almost literally). Incidentally, and as of September last year, he had managed to get as far round the globe as Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, having started off in…the Isle of Wight or the nearby Hampshire coast.

https://henryhendron.com/author/hhendron/

[see update above]

I have to wonder, looking at his obviously disordered mind and his poor use of the English language, whether there really are mugs stupid enough to want to retain him on any basis. He asks for £600 an hour. Apparently, in the past his services were utilized by Nadine Dorries MP! Comedy gold.

Ah, seems that Hendron is no longer sailing around the world, unless his navigation is up the creek (literally)…he’s in Romania! https://twitter.com/henryhendron/status/1079764170…

[again, please refer to update, above]

or was, as of New Year’s Eve. Listening to him, I have to admit that I start to feel sorry for him, so pathetic is he. Compassion is my weakness, often.

A Few Stray Bits of News

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4618544/Celebrity-barrister-fighting-sibling-court.html

a dissatisfied client of Hendron having his or her say… 

https://twitter.com/VobeShy/status/1007513247224877056

https://twitter.com/VobeShy/status/1046465514736881664

Update, 15 March 2019

Now he is on Question Time! (ironically, I agree with most of what he is saying!)

https://twitter.com/BenJolly9/status/1106535042115870726

Update, 10 May 2019

Just noticed this (see below). Made me laugh that a young (?) lady calling herself @pussycatt1984 tweeted that she wanted to have the babies of “pink jumper man”. She might be disappointed…

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/03/drug-suspension-barrister-goes-viral-after-pro-brexit-rant-on-bbc-question-time/

Update, 21 July 2019

The online legal news site, Legal Cheek, reports on Henry Hendron’s return to Bar practice, presumably operating from home or his boat (if he still has it):

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/06/henry-hendron-returns-to-practice-three-years-after-drug-conviction/#.XQZ78yEYw-k.twitter

Another barrister does not sound very thrilled at the news (or at Hendron being described in a “newspaper” as “QC”!)…

https://twitter.com/darrylcherrett/status/1140896761294270465

Quite. Rather a shame, though, that Cherrett apparently does not know the difference between “practise” (as in “to practise”) and “practice” (as in “his practice is criminal”). Still, I suppose that one could be broadminded or charitable and say that, in the USA, the words are reversed…I should not want to be too much of what some call “a grammar nazi”…Oh, fuck it! Why not?! I am sick and tired of semi-educated or narrowly-educated people at the Bar (especially..) and elsewhere in good positions in this sliding country! The Bar, journalism, msm generally, Westminster.

In fact, reverting to Hendron, I was just reading a few of his recent tweets. He is at least not too bad from the political point of view:

and he seems to be an animal lover, so not all bad in that respect either, having retweeted this:

https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/1108377430962696193

Update, 30 July 2019

Seems that Hendron has yet again been suspended from Bar practice, though only for 3 months:

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/chemsex-barrister-suspended-again-by-tribunal/5071174.article

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/07/henry-hendron-suspended-again/

https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases-and-news/barrister-henry-hendron-ordered-to-be-suspended-from-practice/

So Hendron

  • supplied illegal drugs to his foreign teenage boyfriend;
  • as a result of which the boy died;
  • at a “chemsex” orgy held
  • within the precincts of the Temple in London;
  • as a result of which Hedron and others were convicted and sentenced
  • at the Old Bailey

and

  • also found guilty at Bar Disciplinary Tribunal of failing to run his Chambers (of which he was Head) properly

and now also has been found guilty by a BDT of

  • failing to pay a lay client monies
  • despite having been ordered to by the Legal Ombudsman

but instead of being disbarred, has once again been only suspended. He must really have some good contacts in the Bar establishment! Or does he “know too much”?

Still, he only did what is chronicled above (oh, and sold so-called “legal packages” to the public from a metaphorical barrow), all of which have been in the newspapers. It is not as if Hendron did something really bad, like tweeting a few critical remarks about Jews…

I was looking at a few of Hendron’s tweets from 2016 and 2017. Only semi-literate. Does he claim to have dyslexia or something? No wonder that the Bar has lost most of the prestige it had half a century ago. It is just a multikulti dustbin now.

Update, 2 September 2019

Jew-Zionist hypocrite Simon Myerson Q.C. belongs to both main organizations that have persecuted me, “UK Lawyers for Israel” and “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism” [“CAA”]. Now he is playing the Jewish “victim” because others are trying to get him disbarred for his tweets etc…Ha ha! What goes around comes around.

It must be yet another case of “anti-Semitism”!…Another Jew hypocrite. Myerson was one of those who conspired to have me expelled from the Bar, and he has been both snooping on me and trolling me on Twitter for a decade.

Ha ha!

Update, 25 October 2019

“They” are still mentioning me online, really getting “full value”…

https://antisemitism.uk/new-guidance-from-bar-standards-board-tells-barristers-to-avoid-heated-social-media-spats/

Update, 5 January 2021

Henry Hendron wins appeal against second suspension

“Mr Justice Fordham wrote: “[T]he BSB’s position is that a barrister whose practising certificate has been suspended is not a ‘BSB regulated person’”, adding that “I have heard no argument and seen no analysis to the contrary.”

The judge praised the BSB and its barrister, Zoe Gannon, for telling him about the “suspended-barrister problem” even though it cost them the case. Hendron himself “had not identified it or relied on it in his grounds of appeal”.“

“Hendron himself had not identified it…“, Well, it is well known that “a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client“. I would not want his barrister to represent me, though! Semi-literate, and unable to identify legal issues, as well as morally suspect in various ways.

I should remind myself and my blog readers that the purpose here is not to attack Hendron but to show up the Bar itself, and to highlight the injustice to which I was subject.

I saw a few tweets from Hendron:

The “Crime Bar“?! As I said, semi-literate…

More?

I don’t care if he does claim “dyslexia”; if so, he should never have become a barrister.

As for this, what is one to make of it?

“Your“? (Should be “you’re” or “you are“, of course). Calls his chambers his “office”, and seems to be in a position to pay someone up to £60,000 p.a.! Not sure that I believe a word that he says, though.

An older tweet, from 2011:

The Petersham Hotel? All human life must have been there! I certainly have been, though in the 1980s. “SS Headquarters Normandie”, as my friends and I used to call it! https://www.petershamhotel.co.uk/. Used to be a good place for a quiet drink.

Update, 3 February 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9220171/Barrister-40-tells-misconduct-hearing-charges-against-rubbish.html

Looks like Hendron has finally run out of road. Not that I was ever personally hostile to him; I have never met him, and indeed only heard of him after the scandal involving his “drugs and sex” activities came to light in the Press a few years ago. My aim in the blog was to compare his very lenient treatment by the Bar with the totalitarian repression that bore down on me because I said (on Twitter) a few supposedly “offensive” things about Jews.

Update, 20 March 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9376997/Barrister-40-dealt-chemsex-pills-represented-client-banned.html

Update, 16 May 2021

Lest anyone think that the Hendron matters have been the only ones where leniency has been egregrious as compared to my own case, take a look at this report from 2019: https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/12/controversial-barrister-suspended-for-two-years-over-obscene-tweets/.

“Controversial barrister” merely “suspended” for 2 years. In my case, I tweeted general socio-political comments in 5 specified tweets. Contrary to the lying statement put out by the BSB, I did not “identify” myself in any of them, nor on my Twitter profile, as a barrister. My tweets were not “addressed” to any particular person, either. Sentence? Disbarment.

“Controversial barrister” Barbara Hewson? Merely suspended for 2 years:

“A controversial barrister has been suspended for two years for “obscene” and “abusive” language on social media” [Legal Cheek magazine]

“Her social media activity has drawn attention for many years. In 2015, Legal Cheek reported several examples of tweets sent from Hewson’s Twitter account telling people to “grow up you cunt” and “get off my tits, you cunts”.” [Legal Cheek magazine]

“[Sarah] Phillimore has said that Hewson’s past behaviour included telling her “fuck off” and calling her a “nasty C**t” and “continually making references to my daughter when she knows full well that her tweets are ‘liked’ and ‘retweeted’ by at least one convicted and unrepentant paedophile”.” [Legal Cheek magazine]

In fact, the sentence was reduced later to suspension for 1 year, because Ms. Hewson was suffering from terminal cancer, and died of it in 2020 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Hewson]. That does not vitiate my point about the earlier leniency.

The difference between my case and hers (apart from the fact that I did not address comments to any named individual, posted only 5 tweets complained of at Tribunal, did not post anything obscene or threatening, and did not identify myself in those tweets or on my Twitter profile as a barrister)? Jews. I mentioned Jews and their behaviour etc; Ms. Hewson did not.

Any fair-minded observer would surely conclude that Ms. Hewson’s defaults (like those of Henry Hendron) were far worse than mine; indeed, I committed no default anyway, as far as I am concerned.

Pro-Jewish bias meant bias against me.

Also:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9625043/Barrister-dealt-chemsex-pills-killed-boyfriend-avoids-struck-off.html

Update, 28 August 2022

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/barrister-dealing-drugs-henry-hendron-court-nadine-dorries-b1021206.html

“A barrister who has represented Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries and Apprentice winner Stella English has been charged with encouraging a client to supply drugs.

Henry Hendron, 41, whose rostrum of well-known past clients also includes the Earl of Cardigan, is facing allegations he bought crystal meth and party drug GBL.”

Please continue to monitor this blog post for further updates…

Update, 8 October 2022

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/barrister-nadine-dorries-woolwich-crown-court-london-dagenham-b1030813.html

“A barrister accused of encouraging his client to supply drugs has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Henry Hendron, who previously represented high-profile figures including the Earl of Cardigan and Nadine Dorries, is alleged to have bought crystal meth and GBL.

The 41-year-old represented himself, and barrister Kerry Broome was prosecuting, as he appeared at Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London on Thursday.

Wearing a grey suit and striped shirt, he pleaded not guilty to all counts.“

[Evening Standard].

Update, 14 March 2023

I have no idea what was the result of Hendron’s latest trial; it may have been deferred, as many have been in the past few years.

Whatever the fact of that, I notice that Hendron still has a Bar Practice Certificate, valid until April 2023! See https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/barristers-register/28719507B95237D35C7E529721FB5145.html.

Update, 19 March 2023

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-barrister-chemsex-death-case-29495008.

As previously noted, Hendron is still being described, risibly, as a “top barrister“! I have blogged more than once about how, for tabloid scribblers, there are only two types of barrister, “top” and “disgraced” (or both?).

Update, 17 June 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/13/judge-jails-barrister-who-tried-to-buy-drugs-from-two-men-he-represented

Well, there we are…

As said previously, I have no personal animus against Hendron (whom I never encountered). I just think that he has no reasonably-good ability, in that he is unable to reason clearly, cannot spell or use the English language properly, and overall should never have been at the Bar. Also, I still think that, until this week, he was treated very leniently by the Bar establishment, whereas I was treated very badly (and contrary to law), and that because the Bar and Bench always seem to run scared of the Jewish lobby these days.

Update, 1 September 2023

Note: https://news.sky.com/story/barrister-ian-millard-disbarred-for-offensive-anti-jewish-tweets-10635920

Addendum: In respect of the above:

“He was jailed for 14 months by Judge Mann after previously admitting two counts of intentionally encouraging or assisting the supply of class A drugs, one similar charge involving class C drugs, and possession of a class A drug.

Mann described Hendron as “clearly bright and capable”, adding: “It is clear you are a well-thought-of person both professionally and personally.”

“I want to make it clear that it is not the fact that you are a barrister that is so serious.

“What is so serious is these offences have been committed by you in the context of you asking those you represent, or represented, to supply you with drugs.”

The said Judge Mann called Hendron “clearly bright and capable” and that he is or was “a well-thought-of person both professionally and personally.”

Read my above blog. Would the assessment of Hendron by Judge Mann be yours? It is not mine.

Hendron was sentenced to 14 months, so will be released, at latest, after 7 months, i.e. on or before 1 April 2024; April Fools’ Day.

Update, 17 April 2024

I happened to see the Evening Standard report below, which tells the story of how Hendron’s appeal has just now been dismissed:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/disgraced-barrister-henry-hendron-bought-drugs-from-clients-loses-appeal-bid-b1151568.html

Apparently, “The Court of Appeal noted that Hendron had not been disbarred after that conviction, noting “unusual and very serious” feature of his case.“

Ambiguous. Does that mean that Hendron’s not having been disbarred was an “unusual and very serious feature” of the case, or was he not disbarred because there was some (unspecified) “unusual and very serious feature” in the matter? The way I read the (nowadays, typically) semi-literate newspaper report, the former seems to be the case.

Anyway, there it is. On the face of it, Hendron, when released (he may already have been released) can resume, it seems, his Bar career, if he can find any clients.

Update, 20 May 2025

https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/resources/press-releases/barrister-henry-hendron-ordered-to-be-disbarred.html

Well, that’s that, then (finally). I only today noticed that Hendron was disbarred last year, only months after the last update to this blog post.

free speech, historical, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Darcus Howe and the MSM: Cultural Musings

25 Comments

Introduction

The deaths of two people came to notice particularly in the past week. One person had been a significant cultural influence in the Soviet Union, was world-famous, is still oft-quoted. The other was a West Indian immigrant to the UK, best known for his support for black rioters, gangster criminals and others, as well as his assault on British cultural norms.

The first was Yevgeny Yevtushenko [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Yevtushenko] about whom The Guardian newspaper published this by way of obituary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/02/yevgeny-yevtushenko-obituary.

The second was one Darcus Howe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcus_Howe], about whom the Guardian said this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/02/darcus-howe-writer-broadcaster-and-civil-rights-campaigner-dies-aged-74.

It can surely be seen that even the Guardian was unable to make out Darcus Howe as being a greater cultural figure or a more positive one than Yevtushenko.

Comment and Personal Musing

I knew neither of the two recently deceased. I had heard of Yevtushenko vaguely, en passant, as a child and teenager, about the poet who was able to fill stadia in Russia with fans listening to his declamations. Black and white pictures from Life magazine and books. Later, in my twenties, I knew a few people who had been well-acquainted with Yevtushenko in Moscow. I even met his third wife on a couple of occasions during that time and once swam with her and her children (Yevtushenko’s) in a semi-private wooded beach area in some expensive part of Bournemouth, on England’s southern coast.

I never met Yevtushenko himself, though I heard plenty about him. His private life was messy, not always commendable, but that is hardly unusual in the biographies of poets and artistic people generally. One cannot judge a poet primarily by his private life (think of Byron etc). At a distance, he seemed to me to be a Soviet cultural windvane, able to change direction not so much with the prevailing wind but at the moment before it changed. Thus Yevtushenko was seen by some , e.g. Irina Ratushinskaya [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irina_Ratushinskaya] as an “official poet”, with all the moral compromise and material benefits which that term implied; by others, as a brave and anti-official –even a little bit anti-Soviet– quasi-dissident.

Certainly Yevtushenko was willing to argue even with such as Khrushchev on occasion. He was lucky, perhaps, to have been born in 1932 and not 1922 or 1912. He escaped Stalinism to a large extent. Also, he was born and mainly brought up in Siberia, where (ironically) the Stalinist pressure was slightly less. Having said that, he lived in Moscow from age 18, studied there, was never in political trouble. I once heard privately that his mother had been an informant (“secret co-worker”) for the KGB and went weekly to an address not far from the Lubyanka to receive her stipend, signing for it on a list which had all the other names blanked out via a kind of stencil. Perhaps. That would not imply, however, that Yevtushenko himself was implicated with such work (and as I heard it, his mother only went through the motions anyway, giving little but avoiding conflict).

Certainly, Yevtushenko lived rather well by Soviet and indeed Western material standards. Robert Conquest [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest] described that as “well-rewarded collaboration”. By the 1970s, if not before, he had a house or “dacha” at Peredelkino [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peredelkino] with (I believe I was told), 4 or maybe 5 bedrooms –unheard of luxury in the Soviet Union for all but the highest-regarded citizens. He also had an apartment near the Kremlin with no less than (from memory) 14 rooms (a friend of mine was offered the chance to stay there for a week while it was unoccupied; she returned to London gushing about how wonderful it was and how she had not realized that people in the Soviet Union lived like that!); the apartment had been occupied at one time, I was told, by Beria [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria] though Beria did have a mansion in Moscow, perhaps in addition. Yevtushenko also had a house on the Black Sea, situated, I believe, at Yalta.

Yevtushenko is now known for several “soundbites”, in today’s terminology, as much as for his poems: “in Russia, a poet is more than a poet”; and the 1962 lines usually slightly changed to (and improved?) “double and triple the guard on Stalin’s tomb, lest he return….and with him, the past” [http://osaarchivum.org/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/60-4-47.shtml].

Whatever one’s view of Yevtushenko, there is no doubt that he was a significant cultural figure, who personified the changes in the Soviet Union from Stalin’s rule, through the Thaw of the 1950s and early 1960s and on to the retrenchment which led up to Gorbachev, corrupt laxity and then complete collapse. Yevtushenko himself spent his later years living partly in the USA, paid generously by the University of Tulsa (Oklahoma) and the City University of New York (CUNY). A weathervane to the last.

As to Darcus Howe, I know little of him beyond a few items recently read, though I do recall that rather menacing figure on “British” TV from time to time, always promoting the idea that the blacks in the UK had been and were oppressed by white British people and culture.

I cannot imagine that Howe ever contributed much to the UK, though others, in the mainstream media especially, seem to think otherwise. On Twitter, the death of Yevtushenko was like an express train at night, flashing quickly through a country station (Zima Junction?) without stopping. Darcus Howe’s death was trending for far longer. The mainstream TV and radio almost ignored Yevtushenko’s death (and life), while eulogizing about the life of the West Indian rioter and troublemaker. Channel 4, the tax-subsidized “independent” channel, was especially loud in its praises.

Where the msm did notice Yevtushenko’s death, the reports concentrated mainly on his poem “Babi Yar”, about the death of Jews in the Ukraine during the war with Germany. Typical.

The cultural sickness of the West can be seen in the juxtaposition of the two recent deaths and how they have been treated. The time must come when real merit is respected, when people are able to properly discriminate between what is worthwhile and what is not. Most of the existing cultural organizations and faces must be removed.