SocialistLawyer Magazine of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers n Number 61 l July 2012 £3

FREE Jeremy Deller artwork see back PLUS: Egypt: Greece: towards Interview Paul Preston Obituary: Lord Wedderburn, defending the a creditors’ with Mark on Baltasar Zimbabwe and revolution constitution? Serwotka Garzón much more SocialistLawyer Contents Number 61,July 2012 Editor: Tim Potter Special thanks to: Liz Davies and Russell Fraser Many thanks to all our other contributors, readers and members who have helped with this issue. Design: Smith+Bell (www.smithplusbell.com) Print: The Russell Press (www.russellpress.com) ISSN 09 54 3635

News & comment...... 4 Defending human rights defenders, On the picket line, John Carlos, 'Ecocide'and more...

Haldane Society of Young Legal Aid Lawyers ...... 13 Socialist Lawyers Connor Johnston on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s abolition of a minimum salary PO Box 64195, London WC1A 9FD Greece: towards a creditors’ constitution? 14 www.haldane.org Jeremy Smith on how the Eurozone’s ruling elite intend to bleed the Greek people dry The Haldane Society was founded in 1930. Another door shut? ...... It provides a forum for the discussion and analysis 16 of law and the legal system, both nationally and Maryam Masalha on the axing of the independent appeal panel on school exclusions internationally, from a socialist perspective. It holds frequent public meetings and conducts Interview: Mark Serwotka ...... 18 educational programmes. Adiam Weldensae and Natalie Csengeri speak to the PCS general secretary The Haldane Society is independent of any political party. Membership comprises lawyers, Obituary: Lord Wedderburn ...... 23 academics, students and legal workers as well as John Hendy QC pays tribute to an immense socialist lawyer trade union and labour movement affiliates. The list of the current executive, elected at the Haiti cholera victims sue the UN ...... 24 AGM in November 2011 is as follows: President: Michael Mansfield QC Bill Bowring reports on an unprecedented petition against the United Nations Vice Presidents: Geoffrey Bindman QC, Louise Christian, Baltasar Garzón: Unlikely hero ...... 26 Tess Gill, Tony Gifford QC, John Hendy QC, Paul Preston on a judge sacked after branding Franco’s collaborators ‘murderers’ Helena Kennedy QC, Imran Khan, Kate Markus, Gareth Peirce, Michael Seifert, David Turner- Egypt: defending the revolution...... 28 Samuels, Phil Shiner & Frances Webber Taimour Lay looks at the role lawyers are playing both for and against the military regime Chair: Liz Davies ([email protected]) Vice-Chairs: Kat Craig (katherinec@ Whose treason? ...... 32 christiankhan.co.uk) and Anna Morris ([email protected]) Brian Richardson reports from a ‘treason’ trial of six socialists in Zimbabwe Secretary: Chris Loxton ([email protected]) The trial of Lord Coe ...... 34 Assistant Secretary: Sophie Khan As imagined by David Renton Socialist Lawyer Editor: Tim Potter ([email protected]) Reviews ...... 37 Treasurer: Declan Owens The film Cocaine Unwrapped, Albie Sach’s memoirs and David Renton on tribunals ([email protected]) Membership Secretary (job-share): David Renton ([email protected]) with Debbie Smith ([email protected]) International Secretary: Bill Bowring ([email protected]) Executive Committee: Cover picture: Jess Hurd (Report Digital). Martha Jean Baker, Jacob Bindman, Sarah Collins, Natalie Csengari, Rheian Davies, Spanish miners in Asturias, northern Russell Fraser, Joanna Gilmore, Margaret Gordon, Spain salute as they march past Poso Mike Goold, Agnieszka Grabianka-Hindley, Maria Luisa coal mine, famous for Owen Greenhall, Richard Harvey, Paul Heron, struggles in the 1930s. The miners have John Hobson, Angus King, Stephen Knight, been on strike since the Spanish Saleh Mamon, Carlos Orjuela, Ripon Ray, government announced cuts to mining Brian Richardson, Hannah Rought-Brooks, subsidies due to austerity cuts which Marina Sergides, Adiam Weldensae, Azam Zia. will mean an end to mining.

2 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Message from the Chair

Since the last issue, The Haldane Society has holding future conferences and facilitating Standing organised one of its most successful conferences electronic networks and communication. The in its history: Defending Human Rights issue of impunity was a recurrent theme: how to Defenders held jointly with Amnesty hold governments, and corporations, responsible up for International and European Lawyers for for their crimes by due process of law. Democracy and Human Rights. 150 people The passing of the Legal Aid Sentencing and human heard from human rights defenders from Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, despite the Belarus, Chechnya, Dagestan, Colombia, record number of Government defeats in the Palestine, the Philippines and Turkey. This issue House of Lords, means that the changes to legal rights contains a short report and pictures can be aid come into force next April. The lobbying viewed on our website. A longer report will be campaign against LASPO was one of the most available in the autumn. impressive and effective I have ever seen and, Our comrades from overseas are an crucially, turned the issue from lawyers' interests, inspiration to us. Lawyers, trade unionists, as claimed by the Government, to an issue about journalists and even judges put their lives at risk welfare rights and access to justice. by standing up for human rights. We were sad How can we now stop the decimation of legal that Aleh Volchek, a lawyer in Belarus, was aid, the NHS, welfare benefits and the other unable to join us because he had been detained a pillars of the welfare state? Clever lawyering is month before the conference and his passport one way forward. There are complex provisions had been confiscated. In the Philippines, the in the Act permitting the Lord Chancellor to National Union of Peoples' Lawyers is increase the scope of legal aid. But our interests, challenging impunity by bringing a private and those of the public, are identical to public- prosecution against retired Army Maj. Gen. sector workers. Legal aid lawyers are effectively Jovito Palparan, accusing him of complicity in public-sector workers employed in the private disappearances. The retired General is evading sector. As the minimum salary for trainee the court process. In Turkey, lawyers solicitors is outrageously abolished, the representing Kurdish or left-wing prisoners are profession will become more and more distant frequently arrested. Perhaps the most striking from the public we serve. observation was from the Palestinian comrades: Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the since they came from East Jerusalem, Ramallah Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and Gaza, our invitation to visit London meant spoke with Christine Blower, General Secretary that the three of them could meet each other. In of the National Union of Teachers, and John Palestine, Israel prevents travel between those Hendy QC at a meeting jointly organised with areas. In Colombia, several leading members of the Institute for Employment Rights. Mark is the National Movement for the Victims of State also interviewed in this magazine. He tells us that Crimes (MOVICE) have been detained by the his members' fight to defend their pension rights State, and, when they eventually face a trial, are is certainly an industrial dispute but it's also at risk of false accusations. ‘clearly a political dispute’. We will be joining the Our exclusive back page artwork has been kindly donated by We could only invite representatives from a TUC and trade unions on their march for Jeremy Deller. Jeremy is an few countries and are conscious that human ‘A future that works’ on 20th October 2012. artist who won the Turner Prize rights defenders are at risk in many countries. Watch out for The Haldane Society banner. in 2004. His work has included a film re-enacting the Battle of In this issue, Brian Richardson describes We are very sad to report the death of Lord Orgreave which took place political persecution in Zimbabwe: the Bill Wedderburn, pre-eminent labour and during the Miner’s Strike in prosecution of members of the Movement for commercial lawyer of his generation and a 1984. His artwork was recently exhibited at The Hayward Democratic Change. committed Vice-President of The Haldane Gallery in London at the show The Haldane Society was pleased to provide Society. His life will be remembered at a ‘Joy in People’. His previous a platform to bring some of those well-known memorial service on Tuesday 3rd July 2012, 6pm projects have included ‘Acid Brass’, a musical collaboration and less well-known struggles together. We are at the London School of Economics and the with the Williams Fairey Brass committed to providing practical solidarity to Haldane Society will be in attendance. We send Band from Stockport, in a fusion our comrades, with calls for urgent action, our condolences to his family and comrades. of traditional colliery brass band music with acid house and statements in support and denunciations of Liz Davies, chair, Haldane Society Detroit techno. repressive measures. We will work towards [email protected]

Socialist Lawyer l July 2012 3 News&Comment

Defending human rights defenders

ctivists, journalists and foundation nearly 80 years ago. normal in a country where 600 session chaired by Haldane’s lawyers from seven The conference was organised people, including presidential President, Michael Mansfield QC. countries came to over the concern that across the candidates, their supporters, Four workshops were set up ALondon in February globe, human rights defenders human rights defenders and for people to share their 2012 to participate in the face constant threats. In journalists were arrested experiences and knowledge in Defending Human Rights Colombia, for example, at least following protests in the particular areas with the aim of Defenders conference. 14 human rights defenders and 51 aftermath of the Presidential building solidarity among the The conference, jointly trade unionists were killed in elections in 2010. delegates. organised by The Haldane 2010 alone. In Turkey, lawyers The Human Rights defenders The human rights defenders Society, Amnesty International representing Kurdish and other had an opportunity to share their also had an opportunity to speak and European Lawyers for political prisoners are frequently experiences during a plenary to Members of Parliament at an Democracy and Human Rights, arrested and made subject to was held at Amnesty’s Human criminal charges because of their Rights Action Centre on 24th work. Similarly, in Belarus, February 2012. An audience of human rights defenders risk over 150 people heard from imprisonment for doing their human rights defenders from work. Belarus, Chechnya, Dagestan, The Belarusian delegate had Colombia, Turkey, Palestine and been detained the month before the Philippines. the conference in a freezing prison The Haldane Society has in Minsk for using offensive worked in solidarity with activists language. Criminalisation of from across the globe since its human rights defenders seems

Over 150 people took part in the conference and heard speakers such as Haldane President Mike Mansfield QC. Pictures: Ripon Ray Pictures: February 6: The Special Immigration Appeals 7: In California, a federal appeals court 13: Lord Justice Moses launches the 17: The High Court rules that the Commission rules that Abu Qatada ruled that the State’s prohibition on new Quality Assurance Scheme for trebling of tuition fees this year was not should be released on bail. Abu same-sex marriage was criminal advocates. In a speech to the a breach of human rights. The judges Qatada had spent six-and-a-half years unconstitutional. The measure known Middle Temple he said that it was not accepted some students would be in immigration detention. His bail as Proposition 8 was defeated 2-1 after always a lawyer’s job to please the deterred from applying to university. conditions included a 22-hour curfew the court upheld the decision of the judge, particularly if doing so may not The court also criticised the and a ban on communicating with a court below that the ban was a violation be in their client’s interest. Government’s impact assessment of number of individuals. of the civil rights of gay and lesbian the measure on groups of minorities. people.

4 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 On the picket line How to stop the Coalition’s event hosted by Jeremy Corbyn MP in the House of Commons on employment reforms 23rd February 2012. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how British Parliamentarians can provide practical support and hroughout the past year the employee’s protections on consider a collective response. If solidarity to activists who face The Haldane Society, transfer of employment to which so, this is not before time. Not only persecution because of their along with many others, the employer will now have a are individual claimants in the commitment to defending human Thas been doing catch-all ‘harmonisation’ defence, Coalition’s firing sights, so rights. everything in our power to resist the emasculation of the employer’s undoubtedly are the unions The Haldane Society is the Coalition’s attacks on legal aid. duty to consult in collective themselves. currently working on a proposal Employment law has been an redundancies, the phasing out of Most trade unions have a legal on how to take the conference important if subsidiary part of this unfair dismissal and of redundancy budget, which has to cover more and the ideas that came from it story. Even before the Legal Aid payments for employers with than just Tribunal claims, of forward. and Sentencing and Punishment of fewer than 10 employees (with around £10 per member per year. Siobhan Lloyd Offenders Act 2012 was passed larger workplaces undoubtedly If it would take 150 members’ there was no provision for next in the Coalition’s firing line), contributions to cover the cost of representation at the Employment and, most troubling of all, fees of just issuing a claim, let alone doing Tribunal to be funded by legal aid. between £400 and £1,500 for initial work on it, or still less With the Act, things get worse: Employment Tribunals to be paid representing the member at a full legal help is removed from unfair solely by Claimants, not hearing, then we are reaching the dismissal and wages claims and employers. This in a jurisdiction point where unions might no remains only for discrimination which has never required fees. longer be able to offer claims. What, if anything, can be representation to their members. However for the claimant- done? The primary task must be to For many years, unions have focussed employment solicitor encourage voters to complain in marketed themselves to potential contemplating the ruins of their large numbers. The Haldane members on the basis of benefits career, LASPO is far from the Society is playing its part, by including protection, amounting to worst culprit. April 2012 sees the touring trades’ councils and trade legal insurance, where a worker is extension of the qualifying period union branches, speaking to the dismissed. The Coalition’s reforms for unfair dismissal from one to proposed changes, and attempting will price unions out of the game. two years, the removal of Tribunal to rally the sort of public revulsion One question we are often panellists from unfair dismissal that is necessary to cause the asked is whether any of these cases (now heard by a sole Judge) Coalition to think again. Indeed if measures, particularly fees, could and the doubling of the amount of there any trade unionists reading be challenged by judicial review? costs orders – a favourite threat of this who would like to invite us to On the face of it yes. The fees are Respondent representatives to speak at a meeting, we would be high and will have a unrepresented Claimants, happy to do so. You can approach discriminatory impact. Unions especially ones with a strong case. the Society via our Secretaries, have co-funded judicial reviews The Coalition’s plans for [email protected] and before, as in 2003, over the Sexual October 2012 remain subject to [email protected]. Orientation Regulations. Time consultation. At the very least we It may be that some senior trade though is running out. can anticipate the weakening of unionists are at last starting to David Renton

Unions in court: Video journalist Jason N. Parkinson (centre) pictured with NUJ and PCS supporters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in April this year, before the Dale Farm production order judicial review. The High Court appeal is challenging a previous Crown Court decision granting 23: Ministry of Justice figures a police production order for published reveal that nearly 1,000 unpublished footage over two people were sent to prison for an days of the Dale Farm traveller average of 14 months following the eviction. The NUJ’s London 2011 London riots. The length of Photographers’ Branch has sentence was four times the average of organised a ‘Not Fit’ 3.7 months given for similar offences campaign. during 2010. Picture: Jess Hurd / reportdigital.co.uk Jess Hurd Picture:

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 5 News&Comment

What are the legal issues faced by Occupy protests?

he last of Haldane’s measure that would fulfil the current series of human relevant ‘social need’ should be rights lectures took place adopted, it declined to investigate on 14th March 2012, whether there were less intrusive

T / reportdigital.co.uk Jess Hurd Picture: with a timely discussion of the measures than ordering the camp’s legal issues facing the Occupy removal. movement. Michael Paget of In Samede, the City of London Garden Court Chambers spoke made clear that there would not be about the legal issues faced by costs consequences; it was this protests of this sort. The use of measure which allowed the action occupations advances a political to be fully defended. However, this message and on the face of it is has not been the universal protected under ECHR Articles 10 experience of Occupy activists. In and 11, rights to freedom of Sheffield, for example, where the expression and of assembly. Occupy camp was located However, both rights are qualified adjacent to the cathedral, the rights, with the State retaining the Church demonstrated its intention right to curtail them under certain to seek costs against defendants. conditions as ‘prescribed by law’ Where costs are sought this poses and ‘necessary in a democratic an obstacle to the defence of a case. society’. Without an individual prepared to Domestic legislation, in stick their head above the parapet Police make arrests during the Occupy LSX eviction outside St. Pauls Cathedral on particular the Highways Act 1980 and act as a named defendant the section 130 and the Local case will effectively go undefended. victories, but nonetheless, we buy prohibited. The only safeguard Government Act 1972 section Costs consequences therefore pose time to make a point. currently proposed against the 222, gives local authorities wide a barrier to the movement’s ability Paul then went on to discuss abuse of such powers appears to ranging powers to ensure the to make its voice heard in a legal new powers under the Police be that, before the powers are highway is kept clear, including by forum. Reform and Social Responsibility used, specially trained police bringing occupiers to court. It was Paul Ridge of Bindmans LLP Act 2011, which entered into force officers will carry out a these powers which allowed the talked about the role of lawyers in on 19th December 2011. The ‘proportionality review’ to complicated ownership of St protest cases. According to Paul, powers allow for the prohibition determine whether the exercise of Paul’s churchyard to be ignored whereas the real work is done by of the use of certain items, such as the power would breach when the Corporation of the City the activists on the ground, our job loud hailers, tents, and chairs, protesters’ human rights. of London brought proceedings as lawyers is to ‘buy time’ for the which might facilitate protest. The lecture heard finally from against the Occupy camp in City movement to get its point across. Although the geographical scope George Barda, one of the named of London v Samede and others. Ultimately, on the legal side of of the powers is at present limited defendants in the Samede case. In Samede, it was held that the protest work, it is extremely to Parliament Square and the George explained that the removal of the camp was difficult for us to win. Democracy adjoining pavements, the 2011 proposal by the Corporation not necessary despite the occupation Village stayed for four months in Act gives local authorities to seek costs was dependent on having been arranged to minimise Parliament Square. The UBS throughout the country the power there only being one named the inconvenience to the users of occupation stayed for three-and-a- to make bylaws to the same effect, defendant, and was made in order the churchyard. Although the half months. Eventually both were potentially allowing for all to prevent the issues which the court held that the least intrusive evicted. This is the limit of our legal Occupy style protests to be Occupy camp existed to address March 2: Around 1,000 interpreters boycott a 5: The House of Lords inflicts a series 6: The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, 14: Congolese warlord Thomas privatised contract (with its cut-price of defeats on Government plans to admits he is unsettled by special Lubanga is found guilty of war crimes employment terms) for translation destroy the legal aid system. The advocates’ criticism of the by the International Criminal Court. services in English and Welsh courts Lords’ fierce opposition to much of the Government’s Justice and Security Lubanga conscripted, enlisted and by Applied Language Solutions. Since bill was ultimately largely unsuccessful green paper which proposes used child soldiers during an ethnic then the company has come in for and the bill became law on 1st May extending the use of secret evidence conflict in Eastern Congo between further criticism for its employees not 2012. into all civil proceedings. Clarke 2002 and 2003. turning up to court and for providing appeared before the Joint Committee inaccurate translations. on Human Rights to defend the Government’s proposals.

6 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 News&Comment

political parties independent of ‘Campaign Kazakhstan’ the government. Since 2010, the trade union movement, in particular the new backs opposition activists trade union federation Zhanartu (‘Renaissance’ in English), has been at the forefront of azakhstan is an During the month of April opposition to the regime and the authoritarian State, 2012, Kazakhstan authorities main defender and advocate for ruled by President refused, without giving any democracy and workers’ rights. KNursultan Nazarbayev reason, to issue visas to members Campaign Kazakhstan has and a small rich elite. The central of an independent international been set up with the aim of co- Asian country lies in 162nd place commission of inquiry, led by ordinating world-wide out of 178 countries on the ‘press Paul Murphy MEP, that condemnation of the regime and freedom’ ratings compiled by intended to travel to Zhanaozen the international corporations Reporters Without Borders. The to investigate last December’s and governments that organisation World Democracy shootings. collaborate with it. The Audit ranks Kazakhstan at Recently the European Union Campaign seeks to win number 83 out of 149 states on passed a resolution condemning maximum support for victimised its corruption ratings and just the Kazakhstan regime’s track opponents of the regime. 29th from the bottom in relation record on human and labour Prominent among them are to democratic rights. rights. Prior to country-wide Zhanartu leaders, Ainur Nazarbayev and the ruling peaceful opposition rallies on Kurmanov and Esenbek elite have looted the country’s 28th April 2012, the Ukteshbayev, who have been vast natural resources, such as oil, Kazakhstan International forced into exile. Another to grow obscenely rich and to buy Bureau for Human Rights and prominent figure is lawyer and international allies. The vast Rule of Law (KIBHR), the human rights’ activist, Vadim majority of the population lives in International Partnership for Kuramshin. He has spent over 28th February 2012 poverty. Those who speak out Human Rights (IPHR) and the ten years in brutal prisons, against the regime and organise Netherlands Helsinki subjected to torture. Vadim from being fully represented in mass resistance face harassment, Committee (NHC), expressed Kuramshin is now on trial on court. Consequently, as an imprisonment and violent attacks concern about plans by the trumped-up charges and facing additional defendant, George was from the State, as do many Kazakhstan authorities to up to 15 years in prison. at risk of being ordered to pay the human rights advocates and obstruct or prevent the protests. In Britain, Campaign Corporation’s costs in the case. lawyers. Subsequently the protesters were Kazakhstan has the backing of George talked about how the Thirty seven oil workers are brutally attacked by riot police leaders of the RMT and PCS original case timescale allowed no currently involved in a show trial and organisers were summarily trade unions, among others. The time for what Occupy would have on trumped-up charges in jailed. campaign urges lawyers and wanted: to put neo-liberalism on connection with the events of Campaign Kazakhstan was human rights activists and their trial, and to address the fact that 16th December 2011 when riot established last year to give organisations to add their names any harm caused by the Occupy police shot dead scores of oil maximum support to to the public list of sponsors and camp was tiny in comparison to workers and their supporters opposition activists, including supporters of Campaign the harm caused by capitalism. during a protest in Zhanaozen workers’ leaders and human Kazakhstan and to send letters of The addition of named defendants city in western Kazakhstan. This rights activists and lawyers and protest about the denial of other than Samede allowed for took place during a long-running journalists. This means democratic rights in Kazakhstan. some of these points to be raised in oil strike that has seen the supporting the struggle for basic For more information visit the the court of public opinion even if workers’ leaders and their democratic rights, free speech, website at: http://campaign they would never be adequately families subject to brutal physical freedom of the media, freedom kazakhstan.org/ addressed in the Court of Appeal. attack, including rape and of public assembly and the right Paul Heron and Niall Stephen Knight murder. to establish trade unions and Mulholland

15: The European Court of Human 21: The Supreme Court gives its 21: A gay judge wins a residence 27: Campaigners call for urgent Rights rules that the use of kettling judgment in a case involving The case against decisions of the Chilean reform of the Criminal Cases Review during the 2001 May Day protests was Times newspaper which is seen as a courts which in 2004 ordered that her Commission on the 15th anniversary of lawful. The court called the tactic the restoration of the so-called Reynolds three daughters should be removed its formation. The campaigners ‘least intrusive and most effective’ public interest defence. The from her custody ruling that her released to The Guardian newspaper tactic available to the police at the time. newspaper published allegations of sexuality put their development ‘at risk’. a list of 45 cases of individuals they say police corruption involving the The Inter-American Court of Human have plausible claims of innocence but extradition of Russian businessmen. Rights allowed her appeal and whose applications to the CCRC have Detective Sergeant Gary Flood had criticised the decision of the Chilean been refused. claimed the article libelled him. Supreme Court.

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 7 News&Comment

The salute that shook the world – and still inspires

n 21st May 2012, the It was with great excitement London RMT and the that I went along to listen to John FBU unions held a Carlos. I was not disappointed. Omeeting ‘Resistance – The hall at Friends House in the best Olympic spirit’. Euston must hold anything from The main draw was John 800 to 1,000 and it was full well Carlos. John was the 200m bronze before the meeting began. medalist at the 1968 Mexico The meeting was chaired Olympics. The black power salute brilliantly by Hassan that he and gold medalist Tommy Mahamdallie. He began with a Smith made when they received quote from the great slave rebel their medals rocked the world at Frederick Douglass: ‘without the time and has been resounding struggle there is no progress’. ever since. It was a protest against Doreen Lawrence spoke racism, discrimination, poverty, about her 19-year campaign for oppression, police brutality and justice for her son Stephen the denial of civil rights to black Lawrence. Janet Alder spoke Americans. passionately and eloquently Nineteen sixty eight was a about the campaign to bring tumultuous year, with unrest in the those police officers who killed USA, Ireland, France and Mexico. her brother Christopher to I can remember that during the justice after he died in a police summer we had two Czech cell. Sam and Marcia Rigg spoke students staying with us at home – about their brother Sean who refugees from the clampdown died in Brixton also at the hands following the Prague Spring. of the police. Mexico 1968 Olympic Games: Tommy Smith (centre) and John Carlos (right) April 3: The Guardian newspaper wins a bid 4: The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick ‘It is not the official name of the 10: Five men, including Abu Hamza to obtain access to documents used to Clegg, attempts to break with the shoe’ Nike spokesperson defending and Babar Ahmad, lose their appeal to justify the extradition of two British men, Tories on the plans contained in the their ‘Black and Tan’ shoe. The Black the European Court of Human Rights in Jeffrey Tesler and Wojcjech Chodan to Coalition’s Justice and Security green and Tans were a notoriously brutal which they contended that their the USA. The Master of the Rolls and paper. Clegg called on civil liberties British army unit sent to suppress revolt extraditions to the USA would violate two appeal court judges ordered the groups to oppose the plans. Clegg’s in Ireland in 1920. their human rights. The court said the release of the information stating that statement came after one of his own ‘The Black and Tan sneaker men’s likely detention in a supermax the courts should assist rather than MPs threatened a rebellion over the takes inspiration from the fine prison would not be a breach of their impede the media when they sought proposals. balancing act of a Stout on top Article 3 rights. documents used in criminal cases. of a pint of pale ale’ Nike advert

8 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 News&Comment

Fahad Ansari spoke about discrimination back home was simply sit back and let things Babar Ahmed, who has now been worth a lot more than fifteen happen to us. in custody for over seven years. minutes of fame on the track or in Unjum Mirza of the RMT His continued detention without the field. observed that the Olympic torch charge or trial is an affront to ‘I am not afraid to offend my was introduced by the Nazis for anything calling itself justice. oppressor,’ he proclaimed. the 1936 Games. Finally, the John Carlos started by Matt Wrack, the General socialist sports writer Dave Zirin, remarking on the applause that Secretary of the Fire Brigades who co-authored The John Carlos had met his introduction as an Union, which had sponsored the Story, looked to Greece, the Olympic medalist: ‘My life is not meeting, declared, ‘You cannot birthplace of the Olympics and about winning medals,’ he said, ‘it separate sport and politics’. He said, ‘Greece has now given us a is about being a freedom fighter’. spoke powerfully about the new torch – the anti-austerity Tommy Smith, John Carlos and tradition of struggle in Britain and torch.’ others tried to organise a boycott especially in east London where Throughout, the meeting was of the 1968 Olympic games but the 2012 Olympics are being held enthusiastic and involved, with failed to get enough support from against a backdrop of regular standing ovations and fellow athletes. John argued that militarisation and erosion of civil shouts of encouragement and doing something noble and rights. We can look to past anger when speakers referred to worthwhile for fellow blacks victories in Cable Street and Brick another injustice. suffering poverty and Lane, he said, and we must never Nick Wrack The Rendition Project

n 21st May 2012, two associated with rendition. The • Profiles on the aircraft used academics in duo highlight how they are to move detainees from site to participation with the indebted to Reprieve, who have site, and the companies which Olegal non-governmental provided access to large amounts were often involved in operating organisation (NGO) Reprieve of data, as well as guidance and these aircraft; launched the website ‘The advice on public source materials. • Access to the key primary Rendition Project’. The website is to feature: documents made available by Dr Ruth Blakeley and Dr Sam • A comprehensive timeline of those researchers that have Raphael have created a resource key events; worked to uncover the renditions aimed at bringing together and • Detailed profiles and analysis programme, including prisoner analysing the extensive amount of of detention facilities used by the lists, flight logs, and land data that exists on rendition and US and its partners, integrating all purchase agreements. Many of secret detention. This followed a public data on their construction, these have become available collaborative research project location and operation; through the use of Freedom of funded by the UK’s Economic and • Detainee profiles, which will Information legislation; Social Research Council. bring together available evidence • An extensive library of A database is being developed on their detention, movement and governmental and of all known victims of rendition treatment in the system; intergovernmental reports and and secret detention in the ‘War on • The world’s largest public inquiries in relation to rendition Terror’ and its aftermath, as well access database of flights by CIA and secret detention, as well as as the facilities in which these aircraft connected to rendition, major investigative reports by individuals have been held. Also fully searchable, and based upon NGOs and others working in the being compiled is the largest the compilation of all public field. publicly available database of source information about the For more info go to: www. flight records for those aircraft renditions programme; therenditionproject.org.uk

12: George Zimmerman, the 19: Ministers and officials of the 26: Charles Taylor, the former 30: Tomás Borge Martínez, the last neighbourhood watch volunteer who Council of Europe meet in Brighton president of Liberia, is found guilty of surviving founder of the Sandinista killed the unarmed black teenager where Ken Clarke seeks to persuade aiding and abetting war crimes in guerilla movement that overthrew Trayvon Martin in Florida, is charged his fellow members of the need for Sierra Leone. The Special Court for Nicaragua’s rightwing dictatorship in with second-degree murder. It took radical reform of the European Court of Sierra Leone found Taylor provided 1979, dies aged 81. Borge joined prosecutors 44 days to act after Human Rights. The meeting support for rebel groups during war in Carlos Fonseca Amador and others in Zimmerman initially claimed immunity culminated in the draft Brighton the neighbouring West African state. 1961 to found the National Sandinista under the state’s ‘stand your ground’ Declaration. Liberation Front. self-defence law.

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 9 News&Comment Pictures: Ripon Ray Pictures:

NUT General Secretary Christine Blower and chair John Hendy QC PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka

consensus then no effective opposition would exist in the Union leaders call for effective country. It is that absence of a true opposition that Serwotka says the unions must address and occupy. opposition to cuts and austerity Serwotka believes that the tactics needed to face down austerity should be dictated by the or the third consecutive Government’s plans for education continue to oppose low pay and confrontation with which one is year The Haldane Society as a natural extension of those job losses but represent wider presented. The PCS will shortly and the Institute of initiated by Labour. The types of concerns in people’s lives. ballot its membership on whether FEmployment Rights measures we are witnessing the Serwotka rejected the suggestion it should in certain circumstances staged a discussion with figures of Coalition imposing on schools: that all political parties were the stand candidates in political the labour movement, chaired fragmentation of schools; same but said that while each elections. He is fortified by the once again by Haldane vice threatening localised pay; and the remained part of the neo-liberal notion that if some independent president and IER chair, John loss of centralised roles such as candidates were to stand on Hendy QC, on 15th May 2012. educational psychologists were all platforms such as opposing This year John was joined in driven by the belief in the power of privatisation of public services or conversation with Christine the market. Blower believed it was welfare support cuts it could Blower of the National Union of now the challenge for unions to resonate with sections of the Teachers (NUT) and Mark become more central to public. Serwotka of the Public and community and family life. One ‘Debate is healthy’ and Commercial Services Union (PCS). reform she wished of the Labour something he welcomes, Serwotka The three speakers conducted a party was that it would told the audience. With signs that state-of-nation type analysis of the reintroduce Clause IV. A forlorn the people of Greece and France challenges facing trade unions as hope perhaps. are rejecting Government- the effects of first of the Mark Serwotka also conceded enforced austerity there may be Government’s doctrinaire cuts that the scale of austerity meant cause to believe that the argument (around 80 per cent of cuts are still unions would have to adapt. To be that there is an alternative may yet to come) begin to emerge. relevant to the community, trade win out. Christine Blower saw the unionism would have to not only IER’s Carolyn Jones Russell Fraser May 25: Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff 28: The Special Immigration Appeals 28: At the Leveson Inquiry, Tony Blair’s 30: Julian Assange loses his Supreme partially vetoes a controversial land law Commission denies bail to the evidence is interrupted when protestor Court appeal against his extradition to which came to be known as the Forest Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada. The David Lawley-Wakelin bursts in Sweden. However, the court granted Code that would have hampered her court said that releasing him on bail shouting: ‘This man should be arrested his lawyers 14 days in which to submit Government’s attempts to protect the during the Olympic games would for war crimes.’ further arguments after his QC, Dinah Amazon rainforest. Environmental place an unmanageable burden on Rose, expressed concern that some of groups such as Greenpeace had the police and security services. the judges had decided the case with urged President Rousseff to reference to the Vienna Convention on completely veto the bill. a point not argued before the court. The court decided not to reopen the appeal.

10 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 News&Comment

‘Ecocide’ – will this be the fifth international crime against peace?

n September 2011 an UN Law Commission proposing the environment. Ecocide is post- economic and social development. independent jury at the that ecocide be the Fifth operative as fines, imprisonment Priority areas highlighted within Supreme Court in London International Crime Against and restoration processes can be these include energy, food security, Ifound two Chief Executive Peace. The paper argues that applied. These criminal sanctions decent jobs, sustainable cities, Officers guilty of committing ecocide is a crime against peace would aim to amend harm caused agriculture, water, oceans and ‘ecocide’, an International Crime because the possible consequences thus changing the focus from disaster readiness. Against Peace, in a mock trial. of damage, destruction and/or loss imprisonment to restorative Conflicts, pollution and Bannerman and Tench were to ecosystems increases the risk of justice processes. They would disasters against nature and found guilty of damage and conflict, leads to breaches against replace the current defunct system humanity are occurring on a destruction in Athabasca in the tar nature and humanity; and reduces of mass fines which corporations regular basis. According to Tar sands in Canada. A restorative the health and quality of life of can factor into their business and Sands Watch, three billion barrels justice process was available prior inhabitants of a given territory as a profits. It would make of oil a day is produced in Alberta, to the sentencing. It provided an result of pollution, disasters, and governments accountable for Canada and the production opportunity for victims’ unnatural climate change. A law what is taking place in their States process has destroyed ecosystems, representatives to meet with the of ecocide would impose an and elsewhere. caused trees to be stripped away CEOs and identify solutions. international duty of care, to A small amendment to the and toxic chemicals to leak into Tench refused to participate. He protect the earth and its Rome Statute would make ecocide water, with sulphur dioxide and received a four-year prison inhabitants, on governments, an International Crime Against nitrogen polluting the air. It sentence. Bannerman took part corporations and individuals: Peace. Under the Rome Statute the reports that there has been an and agreed to set up working anyone with superior duty of care would be on States to increase in autoimmune diseases groups, investigate alternative responsibility in a public or private take action first and if they were including cancer. Gerald Amos, energy sources and the future of capacity over a given territory. unable or unwilling to, then the indigenous leader from the Haisla tar sands. His sentencing was Under a law of ecocide, strict International Criminal Court First Nation in British Columbia suspended pending the outcome of liability would apply; intention (ICC) could intervene. Individuals stated that indigenous people are agreed targets. would not exist. could apply directly to the ICC if affected by the tar sands industry, Bannerman and Tench are A law of ecocide aims to be States refused to act. Ecocide that five rivers are now extinct, fictitious individuals. The pre-emptive, preventative and would become law if adopted by they are unable to eat fish and International Crime of ecocide is post-operative. It is pre-emptive one member State and agreed by foods contain benzene while not currently a law. The mock trial because it creates a duty of care 80 signatories to the Rome Statute companies dodge responsibility was a serious attempt to test how nationally and internationally, resulting in all 120 States being and forests are destroyed. Gerald an International Crime of ecocide ensuring consequences of actions bound. stated ‘we are all in this together would work in practice. are considered in advance and As we went to press, world and all have responsibilities’. Ecocide is defined as: ‘The alternative ways of working leaders, corporations, NGOs and For further information on extensive damage to, destruction identified. This would involve many others were gearing up to ecocide see www.eradicating of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a creating new means of accessing attend the Rio+20 Earth Summit. ecocide.com. For the Rio+Summit given territory, whether by human resources, more jobs, making Activists were campaigning to go to: www.uncsd2012.org/ agency or by other causes, to such sustainable cities, reducing food have ecocide included on the Earth rio20/about.html. an extent that peaceful enjoyment scarcity and prioritising the ocean Summit agenda. The Earth To sign the petition go to: by the inhabitants of that territory and its inhabitants from disasters. Summit was due to focus on long www.avaaz.org/en/petition/NOW has been severely diminished.’ Preventative measures would help term global sustainable _IS_OUR_CHANCE_TO_END_ In 2010, the barrister Polly avoid dangerous industrial development within the key areas ECOCIDE/?cmfScdb Higgins put forward a paper to the activity, pollution and damage to of environmental protection, and Rebecca Harvey

30: The former Liberian president, ‘Crush the working class, 30: David Cameron’s former director of ‘I just thought it was so unfair’ Charles Taylor, is sentenced to 50 years crush the scum, the yobs...’ communications, Andy Coulson, is Former Labour Home Secretary in prison for the assisting the Margaret Thatcher – according to a arrested and charged with perjury. The Jacqui Smith on the MPs’ expenses commission of war crimes during the Russian pirate version of the film The former editor of the News of the World scandal. civil war in Sierra Leone. The Special Iron Lady! is alleged to have lied to the court Court for Sierra Leone had earlier found during the perjury trial of former Scottish Taylor guilty of 11 counts of aiding and socialist politician Tommy Sheridan. abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity when supporting rebels in return for ‘blood diamonds’.

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 11 News&Comment

Video shows state collusion with violent Israeli settlers

n 21st May 2012, The know some of the women in the Guardian posted a village very well and visited shocking video that regularly. Ohad been released by Colleagues and I from Israeli human rights group WCLAC met Khadra for the first B’Tselem. The video shows Israeli time in June 2009 in her home on settlers from the settlement of the hillside just down from where Yitzhar shooting at a group of the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar is Palestinian protesters in the West located. She told us about the Bank village of Asira al-Qibliya frequent attacks from Yitzhar while police and soldiers stand by. settlers. She lives on the outskirts One of the settlers is seen of the village and we could just see crouching while aiming and then the settlement over the brow of the firing his pistol at the group of hill and also the Israeli military Palestinians. Two other settlers are tent which is just 300 metres away seen firing assault rifles. Fathi from her house. She told us that Asayira, a 24-year-old Palestinian, she thought that there were 10 is hit in the face and is seen in the soldiers living in the tent but that video collapsed on the floor. He is they never did anything to stop the taken to hospital with facial settlers from attacking the village. injuries following the shooting. Her family was one of the A shocking attack, but not families that had been given video surprising or unusual, as I know cameras by B’Tselem to record that the people of Asira have been what happened when they were experiencing violence and attacked by settlers. The video shows Israel settlers from Yitzhar shooting at Palestinian protestors while harassment from both the Yitzhar A year later Khadra contacted settlement and from the Israeli us, devastated to tell us that her army since at least the year 2000. I 16-year-old son Mohammed had in Hebrew – ‘army, army’. table violently to scare him, know the village of Asira al- been arrested by the Israeli army Mohammad’s hands were tied shouted at him and threatened to Qibliya from my time working and that they didn’t know where with plastic ties, he was electrocute him if he didn’t with the Women’s Centre for he had been taken. On 10th June blindfolded and taken away on his confess. He said he was terrified Legal Aid and Counselling 2010 the family had been woken own by Israeli soldiers. Khadra but still did not confess to (WCLAC) in Ramallah. We got to up at 2am by somebody shouting later found out that Mohammad something he did not do. Then on and his friend, Fadi, were accused 1st July 2010, without prior of starting a fire which had spread notice, Israeli soldiers dropped the up the hillside from the village and two boys off at a checkpoint far threatened the settlement of from their home at 8.30pm and Yizhar. Mohammed was held for told them to ‘go home.’ 22days in Israeli interrogation and Mohammed is one of just 700 detention centres including six Palestinian children who are days in solitary confinement. He arrested, interrogated, prosecuted told his mother later how the and detained in the Israeli military interrogator had banged at the court system each year. Children June 8: The Government confirms that ‘An unfortunate logistics 12: Ministers pledge to push ‘I recall the drink, I don’t forced marriage will be outlawed in planning problem’ Molly Prince, through legislation to give same-sex recall the dinner’ England and Wales. The Prime boss of workfare firm Close couples the right to marry. However, ‘I can’t remember’ Minister said he was persuaded to act Protection UK, on the job seekers the move faced opposition from Tory ‘I don’t recall’ after listening to victims. However her firm left to sleep under a bridge. backbenchers and the Church of ‘I don’t think so’ some rights groups expressed England. The Home Office has had Prime Minister David Cameron in concern that it may discourage victims over 100,000 responses to its another display of selective memory from coming forward. consultation. during the Leveson inquiry.

12 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Young Legal Aid Lawyers This regular column is written by YLAL members. If you are interested in joining or supporting their work, please visit their website www.younglegalaidlawyers.org Goodbye to minimum salary?

t was the winter of 1795 aid firms and Law Centres are public school boys’. It would be a when Samuel Whitbread, already struggling to keep the damaging prospect if the scion of the great brewing lights on. As the cuts contained in profession were to slip back Ifamily, first tried to introduce the Legal Aid, Sentencing and toward those days. legislation to allow Magistrates to Punishment of Offenders Bill take It is vitally important that the enforce a minimum wage effect, their situations will become legal profession is representative wherever they felt it was needed. more precarious. The likelihood is of society as a whole. Working in It was not to be. In the House of that it is these firms who will opt the Magistrates’ Court I Commons, Whitbread’s attempts to pay trainees at the minimum frequently come across young at social reform were wage. The result is that those who people who struggle to relate to comprehensively demolished by do the most socially valuable and understand their lawyers the Prime Minister, William Pitt. work will receive the least reward. who, all too often, come from Relying on the economic For many aspiring solicitors, legal very different backgrounds from teachings of Adam Smith, Pitt the aid work will simply be out of the themselves. Younger decried Whitbread’s Bill question. It seems ironic that Ask these same young people as an unwise and futile trainee legal aid solicitors may be whether they would consider interference in the laws of supply one of the few sectors of the incurring upwards of £40,000 in and demand. population still eligible for legal university tuition fees followed by Introducing the National aid. £13,000 on the Legal Practice Minimum Wage Bill to the House Scrapping the minimum salary Course only to be paid the same of Commons 200 years later in would constitute a huge step as they could get now, working in 1997, Margaret Beckett declared backward for the legal profession. McDonalds and they would that the legislation would end The SRA’s figures show that probably laugh in disbelief. And once and for all ‘the scandal of women and black and ethnic so, for them, another door closes. poverty pay’. The Bill was passed minority trainees are the most The SRA argue that in and Whitbread’s vision finally likely to be paid the minimum reducing the minimum salary to came to fruition. salary. The inference can be the level of the national minimum Against this historical drawn that it will be these wage, more training contracts background the proposal of the individuals who will be hardest will be offered. There may be an Solicitors Regulation Authority hit by the change. The legal element of truth in the SRA’s (SRA) to abolish the minimum profession is by no means as argument, but it misses the point. police and soldiers stand by. salary for trainee solicitors diverse as it should be but it has The fundamental question should (£18,590 in Central London and come a long way in the last 40 be what kind of society do we £16,650 elsewhere) seemed all the years. In her book Eve Was want to live in? Is it one where the are interrogated in the absence of a more astonishing. If given effect Framed, Baroness Kennedy legal profession is closed off to lawyer and family member, and the proposal would have paved described how, qualifying as a anyone who is not from an the interrogations are not audio- the way for trainees to be paid as lawyer in the 1970s, she was affluent background? visually recorded as an apprentices at £2.60 an hour. ritually humiliated by ‘blustering It is telling that even as the independent oversight. Reports of In May 2012, following country slides back into recession ill-treatment, and in some cases consultation, the SRA opted Margaret Beckett and unemployment hovers torture, are common, and the instead for a slightly watered said the National stubbornly above eight per cent, overwhelming majority of children down and more politically Minimum neither the Conservative Party Wage would confess. palatable alternative of ‘partial end, once and nor its allied think-tanks have Khadra, her family and her deregulation’: from September for all, the suggested that the abandonment neighbours deserve to live in peace 2014 firms need not pay trainees scandal of low of wage regulation would be an and they deserve an end to the more than the national minimum pay. The SRA has acceptable way to boost violence and harassment which wage. The opaque policy other ideas... employment. will only end with an end to the statement accompanying the As a regulatory body the SRA occupation. announcement expressed the is charged with protecting and Hannah Rought-Brooks view that ‘setting a promoting the public interest and minimum salary level for with encouraging an trainees above the independent, strong, diverse and national minimum effective legal profession. It is 27: Sir Nicholas Bratza, the British wage main rate for both surprising and President of the European Court of employees was not in disappointing that the SRA Human Rights warns senior politicians the public interest’. believes that the removal of the against using ‘emotion and The change is not current minimum salary could in exaggeration’ to criticise the court. In as drastic as was any way be compatible with these an article in The Independent, Bratza responded to increasing hostility from feared but it is still responsibilities. Tory frontbenchers. misguided. The l Connor Johnston is the Co- timing of the decision chairperson of Young Legal Aid

is poor. Many legal Lawyers / reportdigital.co.uk Jess Hurd Picture:

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 13 Greece: towards the creditors’ constitution?

The battle against austerity is starkest in Greece. Jeremy Smith looks at how the Eurozone’s ruling elite intend to bleed the Greek people dry.

Despite the close win for pro-bailout debt servicing payments. This provision will be parties in Greece’s second General Election in introduced in the Greek constitution as soon as June, the results of this and the election in May possible.’ clearly demonstrates the revulsion of the This is truly startling and worrying stuff. It majority of Greek people against the is one thing for creditors to seek to insist on humiliating manner in which they have been practical conditions attached to a loan or bail- treated by the troika of the European Central out (though best not to make them so onerous Bank, European Commission and IMF. as to lead to widespread revolt). It is quite Take the Eurogroup’s (of Eurozone Finance another matter to interfere directly in the Ministers) statement of 21st February 2012 on constitutional set-up of a sovereign State, to ‘support’ to Greece, which had more than a impose a duty to pay creditors to take whiff of colonialism and hubris about it: precedence over all other human and citizen ‘We therefore invite the Commission’, it concerns, needs and rights. says, ‘to significantly strengthen its Task Force Article 2.1 of the Greek Constitution for Greece, in particular through an enhanced currently provides, for example, that ‘respect and permanent presence on the ground in and protection of the value of the human being Greece, in order to bolster its capacity to constitute the primary obligations of the State.’ provide and coordinate technical assistance.’ Can this survive? Or will it be revised to state There is not even expressed the usual that ‘protection of creditors constitutes the pretence about the occupying Task Force being primary obligation of the State’? invited in by the Government. The last sentence above from the Its high water mark of external interference Eurogroup Statement makes no pretence that was the following: the new constitutional provision, to place ‘Finally, the Eurogroup in this context creditors’ rights above human rights, is the welcomes the intention of the Greek Greek Government’s ‘intention’ – it is a bald authorities to introduce over the next two assertion of an overriding imperial imperative. months in the Greek legal framework a Fortunately for Greek democracy, ‘as soon provision ensuring that priority is granted to as possible’ is not very soon. There is time to Picture: Jess Hurd / reportdigital.co.uk Jess Hurd Picture: 14 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 regroup and say no. The Greek Constitution, In outline, the process is this: any proposal which came into force in 1975 – after the for a revision must be put forward by at least ousting of the right-wing military dictatorship 50 MPs, and then get the support of a majority – and last amended in 2008, has some very of the total number of MPs, voting twice with important protections built into it. at least one month between. First, as to sovereignty. The troika’s first Then, it is for the next parliament to decide stumbling block is Article 1: on the amendment. If the proposal was put ‘1. The form of government of Greece is forward by the last parliament with a majority that of a parliamentary republic. of three-fifths of the total number of MPs, then 2. Popular sovereignty is the foundation of a simple majority of the new parliament will government. suffice. If it had the support of a majority of 3. All powers derive from the People and MPs in the last parliament, but less than three- exist for the People and the Nation; they shall fifths, then the constitutional amendment be exercised as specified by the Constitution.’ requires a three-fifths majority of the And beware all who would seek to membership of the new parliament. undermine this popular sovereignty. Article So there is still a very long way to go before 120 provides a fierce rampart against the Creditors’ Constitution becomes a reality in ‘usurpation’ of the Constitution: Greece. The technocratic government of Mr ‘3. Usurpation, in any way whatsoever, of Papademos did not try to introduce the popular sovereignty and of powers deriving amendment, and the prospects of the next therefrom shall be prosecuted upon restoration Government, whenever installed, doing so of the lawful authority; the limitation from seem more than a little remote – especially which punishment for the crime is barred shall since it could not take effect until the begin as of the restoration of lawful authority.’ Parliament after that so decides. (My emphasis). This is not just a story for Greece. What is Greeks may even, in some cases, resist ‘by being tried there can be tried anywhere. The all possible means’: new European Treaty to outlaw Keynesianism, ‘4. Observance of the constitution is officially known as the Treaty on Stability, entrusted to the patriotism of the Greeks who Coordination and Governance, already shall have the right and the duty to resist by all ‘constitutionalises’ conservative economic and possible means against anyone who attempts fiscal policy by requiring States to transpose the violent abolition of the Constitution.’ the ‘Balanced Budget Rule’ into national legal In addition, the Constitution wisely systems through ‘binding and permanent contains provisions which make impetuous provisions, preferably constitutional’ which revisions impossible, even, or especially, those are subject to the jurisdiction of the European resulting from powerful external pressures. Court of Justice. They are set out in Article 110. It is in our common interest, as Europeans, First, revision of the Constitution is not to resist these attempts to override our permitted before the lapse of five years from democratic constitutional traditions by making the completion of a previous revision. This protection of the rights of bankers and means no revision is permitted before 28th creditors the supreme obligation of our States. May 2013. Second, the process and voting has to be spread over the lifetime of two Parliaments. Jeremy Smith is a barrister and Co-Director of Third, it requires support from majorities PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics, (including at one point a super-majority) of the www.primeeconomics.org) total number of Members of Parliament.

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 15 Another door shut ?

16 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 powers of the independent appeal panel, a assumption that vast amounts of exclusion The government has channel through which young people can decisions are being undermined in a systematic argue their case, will only worsen a system and widespread ‘interference’ with a head axed the independent which is already reaching crisis point. teacher’s right to manage their school. Similar Independent appeal panels are currently arguments are often used to justify the appeal panel on made up of a panel of three to five members of ongoing assault on legal protection for school exclusions. the public who hear exclusion cases and have workers and individuals. Why, for example, the power to reinstate pupils if they feel that the should a former employee take their employer Maryam Masalha head teacher’s original decision was flawed. to court following a potentially unfair The new review panels will have much more dismissal when this interferes with an asks: has another door limited powers, and will only be able to: employer’s right to manage their business? The ‘(a) uphold the decision of the responsible question assumes that decisions made by shut for children body, people in power or authority are always (b) recommend that the responsible body correct and should never be challenged, seeking justice? reconsiders the matter, or despite the impact this may have on an (c) if it considers that the decision of the individual’s life. The independent appeal panel responsible body was flawed when considered is not an alternative to a system which in the light of the principles applicable on an minimises exclusion by investing in schools application for judicial review, quash the and communities, but it is an opportunity for decision of the responsible body and direct the life-changing decisions to be scrutinised. responsible body to reconsider the matter.’ Gerry German is the director of the The panel will no longer be able to direct Communities Empowerment Network, an reinstatement. At most, it can order the organisation which advocates on behalf of decision-making body to ‘reconsider the children who have been excluded from matter,’ but only where there has been a breach mainstream education. He is concerned about of judicial review principles. the use of permanent exclusion in schools, and This immediately raises two problems. thinks that more must be done to challenge the First, it is likely that the process of current regime. ‘I would like to see the Equality reconsideration will simply provide an and Human Rights Commission undertaking The independent appeal panel, the opportunity for schools to vindicate selective casework and formal investigations body which currently hears challenges to themselves, rather than genuinely re-evaluate aimed at exposing individual and institutional school exclusions, is being axed. Provisions in the situation and reinstate a pupil where a poor discrimination,’ he said. ‘Law enforcement is the Education Act 2011 will see the appeal decision was originally made. Second, the the key to bringing about change.’ panel replaced with a ‘review panel,’ affecting reference to ‘judicial review’ principles in the Exclusion from school can be the catalyst the majority of schools in England. The move Act raises serious concerns that the panel, for a host of further problems, from poor simultaneously strips the panel it of its power whose members are often totally without legal employment prospects to the breakdown of to reinstate pupils whom it finds to have been training, will not be able to decide on relationships with family and friends and wrongly excluded from school, and is a further potentially complex public law issues relating involvement in criminal activity. The changes blow to a process which already shows to the fairness or otherwise of a permanent to the appeal panel do nothing to address the worrying patterns of inequality. exclusion. The majority of young people underlying causes of school exclusion. They At present, black children are statistically appearing before the panel have no legal may possibly lead to further injustices three times as likely to be excluded from school representation whatsoever, and are therefore occurring in a system which is already plagued as white children. Children in care – many of very unlikely to invoke the public law by inequality. The long term consequences of them black – are eight times as likely to face principles which appear in the Act. these decisions remain to be seen. exclusion. Children with special educational Exclusion appeals can be seen to mirror the n Since the time of this article being written, needs are also at much greater risk. The legal system and its flaws in many respects; the Gerry German has sadly passed away. disproportionately high rate of exclusion process seems fair, but imbalances in resources among black pupils in schools, coupled with and ability to navigate the system result in Maryam Masalha has worked as a volunteer current political fervour for academies, shown only a small portion of exclusions even for the Communities Empowerment Network, to exclude twice as many pupils as State- reaching the appeal stage in the first place. an advocacy charity which assists children funded schools, raise serious concerns about Consequently, the stripping back of this quasi- and young people who have been excluded the UK education system. Curtailing the legal appeal process is based on the false from mainstream education

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 17 Socialist Lawyer interview ADIAM WELDENSAE and NATALIE CSENGERI speak to trade union leader MARK SERWOTKA

‘The strike last November was something we’ve not seen in this country for generations’

Why has the PCS taken strike action? decisions and had already announced them in The action on 10th May was our third strike. Parliament during Osborne’s spending review. Essentially, we are going on strike because we The issues of substance one wants to talk have not had meaningful negotiations with about, ‘length of time you work, how much the Government on pensions. Our members money you pay, what your pension comes are some of the lowest paid public sector back as’, we couldn’t talk about. The workers in the UK. They pay thousands of Government’s idea of negotiation was that it’s pounds for their pension and they are getting all done and dusted, so we will talk to you a lot less out. None of those things are about that ‘thing’ in the margins, rather than justified by any valuation of pension scheme. talk about things that really matter. My view This is an economic decision taken by George of that is they are using the economic issues

Osborne and therefore the choice we have is / reportdigital.co.uk Jess Hurd Picture: we have in this country to actually not talk to either stand up and fight back or have about a whole raft of things they disagree pensions suffer. with. Pensions are one of many things they Can you elaborate more on the state are using on that basis. So even though we of dialogue with the Government? met for a year, it was a farce. Despite claims by the Government I went to How do you respond to criticism that every single set of negotiations with the the strike will disrupt public services Government’s ministers. My understanding of at a time when the public services are negotiation is that for any negotiation to be a desperately overstretched? success it requires movement and it requires It’s never a good time to strike, but my answer an attempt to try and meet somewhere in the MARK SERWOTKA is General Secretary of the to that is what are we supposed to do? If you middle so that people can be happy with the Public and Commercial Services Union. He was took the view that one can only strike when outcome. What we had here was the first elected to the post in December 2000 and things are in a better state than they are now, was re-elected in 2005 and 2009. s Government who had already made political then it will take all our ability to defend

18 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Picture: Ripon Ray

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 19 s ourselves out of our hands. Disruption is regrettable, but although this particular strike is primarily about pensions – generally it is more than just that. It is also about austerity, it is about job cuts and privatisation. Therefore, 24 hours of disruption is a small price to pay if it defends jobs and defends services. Your strategy involves a programme of joint national strike action which is composed of more than one union

across a variety of pension schemes. / reportdigital.co.uk Jess Hurd Picture: Your strategy also includes groups like UK Uncut. Why do believe this coordinated approach is a more effective form of opposition in the current political climate? The idea that one union on its own can defeat the proposals is highly unlikely. The amount of industrial action you would have to wage on your own would be enormous. So we’ve recognised that our dispute is with the Government and it is as much political as it is industrial. Therefore, a strike of two million people which we saw in November 2011 is something we’ve not seen in this country for generations. It was a political event. It was about public opinion and it was about putting on the political spotlight. 30th November 2011 was the high tide and the Government reacted to this, upped the ante and started getting tough, threatening that if we didn’t sign up then and there that they would take everything off the table. My view of that was: so be it, but it follows that you have to start doing more. We think part of that has got to be alongside UK Uncut, Occupy, the pension movement, the disability activists because it’s about making a common cause. We all are suffering through austerity. Many know it’s the wrong choice for the country. If we stand alone we will inevitably lose, but if we build the broadest possible alliance we have a chance of, well, I wouldn’t put it as winning, but certainly limiting a lot of the damage the Government wants to do. Do you have any ideas as to a mechanism which would get more workers and more activists involved in a strategy to counter the Coalition Government’s harmful policies to public sector workers? Well that is a very difficult question, because in some sense we can control what happens May 2012 may have the effect of reigniting working industries. Our membership has here, but we are less able to influence what some of the resistance in other unions. There begun to fall now, but for a long time we were happens in other people’s unions. I made a is now a major union within the last two the fastest growing union in Britain and if I’m speech just before Christmas that caused a weeks whose members in the health service honest about that there are two reasons why few waves because it was actually designed have voted not to accept the pension deal this was. The first is that there was a period not only as a talk for our members, but when everybody thought they would, because where the Labour Government created a members of other unions. I did a couple of that is what their leadership wanted them to number of public sector jobs and we managed speeches where I have deliberately thrown in do. It is a very narrow result, but it’s still to unionise a lot of those that were in the civil that if you are a dinner lady or a nurse or a incredibly significant as a signifier that there is service. Secondly, I’ve always taken the view council worker and you have gone on strike independence there. Our strategy in the PCS is that people will join the union if they think to stop this and now you have been asked to to empower people in the grass-roots to take there is a point and where unions are actually agree with it, then that doesn’t look right to a lot of the control themselves, with a big doing something. For example, every time we me. focus on organising and decision-making in have a strike our membership goes up, even Now the idea is for our activists who live their own communities. this year when the public expenditure cuts are in towns and communities to rub shoulders What do you think accounts for the fall eating into our membership. At the moment everyday with activists in other unions. We’ve in trade union membership overall? there are 4,000 jobs a month going in the civil also encouraged a lot of grassroots meetings I think that if you look at trade union service. Most of them are our members. So and meetings with anti-cuts groups when we membership across the board, in fact it’s our strategy has been that if you can’t stop the have different unions coming together to talk halved since the 1970s and undoubtedly that’s cuts there is huge sway of people who have at a local level. because of cuts in manufacturing, the huge now joined the unions. You have to go and In the long-term, the strike on the 10th inroad in the old trade mining and steel try to make yourself attractive to them.

20 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 expertise in the voluntary sector. I think what we could see here is a much closer working relationship between Britain’s biggest unions, Unite, and what many would perceive as one of the more radical unions, the PCS, in the years to come. Do you have any thoughts on the current balloting requirements for trade unions? What would you suggest to improve them or, alternatively, to replace them? I think the current laws are ludicrously imbalanced. They were designed to be. The real tragedy is that while Mrs Thatcher brought them in due to her political perspective, when Labour came into power in the 1990s the one thing they could have done was to create a level playing field. They didn’t. I think because they are so bowed to business interests that in this Rupert Murdoch era they refused to do so. I think it was Tony Blair who said that we’ve got the most restrictive union laws in Western Europe. They make our lives very, very, very difficult, in some cases verging on the impossible to have a lawful strike when you look at all the loopholes and the complexity in the balloting arrangements. The Government always criticises the low turnout of votes, but I think it suits them because it gives them their propaganda point. We want higher turnout, but with postal balloting it is notoriously difficult to keep a track of where everyone is. If the Government really wants to increase the turnout then they should allow people to vote by internet, by telephone, by allowing voting in the workplace in a controlled environment by a secret ballot. I think there is a drastic need for reform. Do you think all civil servants should have the right to strike, such as prison officers or police officers? My own view is that the right to strike is a human right that should be an absolute right. The withdrawal of the right to strike from prison officers gives them no leverage whatsoever. Although they then get the mechanism of a pay review body, what we have found now is that whatever mechanism is in place in times of economic difficulties is subject to the Government overriding the lot. It removes any chance of them being able to protect themselves. If I was running the The PCS is quite interesting in that More importantly, how can numbers Prison Officers Association I would only use its membership includes those and union sentiment grow at the PCS it as an ‘absolute last resort’ to prevent working both in the private sector in times of austerity and more potential riots and dangerous situations, but and the public sector. What is the generally among workers as a that is all doable. The unions have a fine experience around organising two whole? tradition, where they have had strikes in the usually distinguished groups of One of the things we are doing right now health service for example, of agreeing workers? which is quite exciting is that we are procedures to ensure there is no life or death People say trade unions have it easier in the developing a close working relationship situation. The same can be done I think for public sector rather than the private sector, with Unite. We have the expertise in the prisons. which is often called a ‘no-go’ area. We have public sector and they have the expertise in What is interesting to me is that when we actually found that we have been much the private sector. The old notion of the were on strike on 10th May 2012, the Police more successful negotiating decent TUC was that the whole is divided into Federation were marching in protest. They agreements with the private sector. As you public and private workers, with Unite are talking about balloting for the right to are dealing with a company which wants to dominating the private sector and UNISON strike and, therefore, we are reaching this make profit we have some leverage as they in the public sector. What our relationship point where right across professions it seems are willing to make concessions. One can with Unite actually says is that this is the to be the penny is dropping: we are all losing compare that to the problem with the wrong way of looking at the world and out in these times. I thought the Tories would Government in that they don’t want to rather what you should do is have a union say we’ll try to keep sweet at least the people make any concessions because they are so that actually does both because then you we depend on, those who keep law and order. on this path where any deviation from their can be the bridge when there is I thought they would give the police holy grail will mean the world will cave in. privatisation. You then also have your something a bit more than they did. s

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 21 the problem with the British electoral system is it forces everyone to the centre. Think of the difference between Cameron and Blair. Think of the difference between the main policies which are usually all now pro-privatisation,

Picture: Ripon Picture: Ray pro-austerity to different degrees. Clearly Labour would be 100 per cent better than the Coalition but ultimately they did introduce the market into the NHS, the market into tuition fees and they introduced the beginning of the attack on public service pensions. In the short term, clearly the hope has to be that in opposition Labour maintains some of their scepticism of what is going on at the moment. And I think that is the short term battle which you hope would mean that in 2015 Ed Milliband would mean some of the stuff Hollande has got elected on in France. Do you have any long-term political plans? The final jigsaw, if you like, that is breaking new ground here is, next month, we are going to ballot all our members asking them to give us the right as a union to stand candidates in parliamentary elections. The premise is that if nobody in the election says anything remotely near what you like, it will be a really good democratic choice to stand someone different. Also, it’s a good way to take our message to the political arena. In some sense what we have recognised is if you look at Bradford West and George Galloway, whatever people think of George Galloway, the reality is that there was an election that dominated the news and there was a brilliant local campaign. So what if a public sector worker did that somewhere? What if somebody committed say to be the opposition of the closure of a hospital? So that is taking us in the direction where we intend to be much more political, but not party political. That is the way we have defined it. The PCS does not affiliate to the Labour Party, so it is about saying political is an all-year round thing in the community and we want to do more about engaging the public. One can see that in that sense, we therefore have different strategy in Scotland with the SNP Government and in Wales. So our attitude has been that you don’t work with people because of the colour of their rosette, you work with them because of what they say, and I think that gives us the key to build broader alliances. Do you think the unions are correctly poised for this sort of political s What are your thoughts regarding the everybody with the Treasury. Now we have change? divvying up of the civil service into about 140 different sets of negotiation. This is I consider the unions to be the opposition in different agencies and its effect on the incredibly intensive. Lots of resources are Britain at the moment because Labour is not ability of PCS members in these required and we are faced with the same making the arguments that you would expect. different agencies to act in concert straightjacket. Therefore, we have published pamphlets on with one another? With the election of politicians like an alternative economic strategy and an Our view is that all our members are Francois Hollande in France do you alternative welfare state concept. We are employed by a single entity, the Crown. see any future for a backlash to attempting to say that we will industrially try Therefore what we say to our members is, by austerity packages in Europe? Do you to stop things, but it is also about putting breaking you up into different business see a future for a politician with forth positive agendas. This is all about streams and agencies it is about dividing up similar views to Mr Hollande ever recognising that we have got to up our game the workforce to actually give you all less being elected to the UK Government? politically and do some things which may be collective strength. I think a lot of the Well if I didn’t then we should all give up challenging, but that is what trade unions divvying up is about privatisation, it’s about because if this is as good as it gets then it’s have been doing for hundreds of years. It’s breaking it up into different units making it pretty depressing. All of these things can about keeping the industrial angle going as easier to sell some of it off, which had nothing change but they won’t change on their own. much as we can but also making the to do with efficiency. We used to have pay I’m personally a strong advocate of arguments politicians should be making but negotiations every year on behalf of proportional representation because I think aren’t making. n

22 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Obituary of Professor Lord Wedderburn QC, FBA Born 13th April 1927; died, 9th March 2012 Picture: Ripon Picture: Ray

Immense and insightful The Haldane Society mourns the passing of age of 80, ‘Labour Law 40 Years On’, academic base for labour law renowned one of its Vice-Presidents, the great labour subsequently published in the Industrial Law throughout the world. He served on the lawyer, Bill Wedderburn, who committed his Journal at [2007] ILJ 397, which is a brilliant editorial boards of a multitude of labour law life’s work to the advancement of the interests example of both the breadth and the depth of publications. He was appointed a life peer in of the working class, writes John Hendy QC. his analysis of the many facets of labour law, 1977, having been the chief architect of the His towering intellect, his brilliance as an domestically and internationally, and its Labour government’s trade union legislation of academic lawyer, his profound knowledge of interplay with the events and forces of the the 1970s. His principal role in the House of labour law, both here and abroad, his elegance world outside the courts. Lords was, as he saw it, to defend workers’ and as a writer, his inspirational teaching and his It was The Worker and the Law, first trade union rights, a task which he consistently immense enthusiasm and energy were devoted published in 1965 and in many editions sought to fulfil until illness prevented him from to this end. But these immense gifts never thereafter, that made his name throughout the doing so late last year. He had resigned the masked his warmth, generosity and impish wit. labour movement. The book, in language Labour whip, but not from the Party, in disgust Bill’s partisanship could never be used accessible to all, is a masterpiece of exposition at the worst excesses of New Labour but against him because of the faultlessness of his of a hideously complex legal subject. Eventually resumed the whip when Gordon Brown legal analysis. His insight and breadth of vision the law at work became too big for a single became Prime Minister. as to the context, function and purpose of volume. Bill was never prepared to reduce its Though called to the Bar in 1953 and made labour law was matched only by his immense scope from ‘labour law’ to ‘employment law’ an honorary QC in 1990, he rarely appeared in command of the detail of it. Like Kahn-Freund which meant disregarding collective aspects. In court. However, he was junior counsel in before him, his exposition of the comparable fact, he disparaged those who suggested that several of the textbook strike cases of the law of other countries provided a tool for the law at work need no longer concern itself 1960s including Torquay Hotel co Ltd v highlighting – at the same time – the with collective labour relations. Cousins [1969] 2 Ch 106. I had the honour to universality of the role of labour law in Bill Wedderburn was born in Deptford – his lead him on behalf of the National Union of moderating the endless struggle between capital team was Charlton Athletic FC – to parents Mineworkers in some of the crucial civil and labour and also its national characteristics, who ran a scale-makers in New Cross. litigation of the miners’ strike of 1984-5. For moulded by history, economics and culture. Educated at a local grammar school he got a both of us I think the high point of our court- As an academic he produced an endless scholarship to Cambridge. After national room collaboration must be the case of Wilson flow of some of the most insightful writings in service in the RAF he taught at Clare College, and Palmer & ors v UK [2002] IRLR 568, the the field of labour law. His chapter on ‘The Cambridge from 1952 to 1964 when he joined first successful trade union case before the Economic Torts’ in Clerk & Lindsell on Torts the London School of Economics. His chair European Court of Human Rights. He and I was the ultimate analysis for practitioners and was that of Cassel Professor of Commercial also worked together to establish the Institute judges of the intricacies of industrial action law Law. It should not be overlooked that Bill’s of Employment Rights, a think-tank for the in the UK, a chapter which he updated brilliance as a lawyer did not confine him to Labour Movement, in 1989 – of which he was extensively in every new edition (with labour law – he was the editor of the Modern the first President. footnotes on many pages exceeding the length Law Review for 17 years. Bill leaves four children. His third wife, of the text). In contrast to the unsurpassed Labour law was the core of his work. At the Frances to whom he had been married since focus of that chapter is his lecture, given at the LSE, over some 30 years, he established an 1969, was with him at the end. n

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 23 Haiti cholera victims sue the United Nations

Mario Joseph, of Bureau des Avocats very significant threat to all colonial and slave Internationaux (BAI) is Haiti’s best-known by Bill Bowring regimes. In 1817 Simón Bolívar received human rights defender and is the lead advocate soldiers, weapons and financial assistance in the cholera case against the UN. He is long- from black Haiti. standing friend of Haldane, through his work In 1904 the US imperialist President for many years on the Bureau of the Theodore Roosevelt established the ‘Roosevelt International Association of Democratic corollary’ to the 1823 Monroe doctrine, itself Lawyers (IADL), of which Haldane is a a response to the successful liberation founding member. He is supported by Brian struggles against Spain and Portugal. This Concannon of the US-based Institute for asserted the right of the United States to Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), which intervene in Latin America in cases of ‘flagrant in November 2011 filed a Petition for Relief and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American with the UN’s Claims Unit in Haiti on behalf of Nation’. On this basis, Haiti was occupied by more than 5,000 victims. the USA from 1915 to 1934; the departing US This unprecedented petition against the forces established the border between Haiti UN has its roots in centuries of anti-colonial and the Dominican Republic, and laid the struggle. Haiti has a proud history of basis for the brutal hereditary dictatorship of revolution, and was the scene of the first the Duvaliers, ‘Papa Doc’ and ‘Bébé Doc’. decisive overthrow of slavery. C. L. R. James Bébé fell from power in 1986. wrote of the ‘Black Jacobins’, part of the The former priest and continuing threat to French revolutionary movement of the 1780s. US hegemony, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was The Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1794, led elected President in 1990, ousted in a coup in by Toussaint Louverture, culminated in the 1991, and returned to power in 1994. He left Haitian Constitution of 1801, which power according to the Constitution at the proclaimed ‘There cannot exist slaves [in end of his term in 1996 and was re-elected Saint-Domingue], servitude is therein forever with 92 per cent of the vote in 2000. In 2004, abolished. All men are born, live and die free in what was termed a ‘new coup-d’etat or new and French.’ The Haitian revolution was kidnapping’, US forces removed Aristide from crushed by France within two years and Haiti, and engineered a compliant vote in the Toussaint died in captivity. However, from UN Security Council. 1804 until US occupation in the 20th century, The United Nations Stabilization Mission Haiti was an independent black state, posing a in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been there ever

24 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Karl Michel LaFrance, 10, got sick at 1am and died at home at 10am this morning. His mother says she didn't realise the gravity of his illness until it was too late. After he died, she brought him out to the road to be picked up by the government. Workers, hired by the department of health to pick up dead cholera victims, spray the body with disinfectant. LaFrance is put into a truck with 14 other bodies and taken to a mass grave.

Picture: Ben Depp since. China Miéville (2008) has suggested Epidemiologists calculated from the record established in over 60 years of UN that ‘… multilateral UN sanctioned speed at which the outbreak had spread that a peacekeeping, even though most SOFAs imperialism is more of a threat to justice and full cubic metre of cholera-ridden water was provide for such commissions. emancipation than its unilateralist dumped into the Artibonite and moved The UN has confirmed receipt of the Rumsfeldian sibling’. downstream like a plume, infecting the petition, and its official response is that it is On 12th January 2010, Haiti was struck by Haitian families that drink, bathe, play and do ‘studying’ it. Liability has so far been denied, a massive earthquake. The International Red their laundry in the river. despite the overwhelming evidence. However in Cross estimated that about three million In March 2011, Bill Clinton, by then UN a Security Council meeting on 8th March 2012, people were affected. The Haitian Special Envoy to Haiti, acknowledged that France acknowledged the damage cholera had Government reported that over 316,000 MINUSTAH was the ‘proximate cause’ of the done to Haitians and to the reputation of the people had been identified as dead, an outbreak. UN, declaring, ‘We can regret this, but we estimated 300,000 injured, and an estimated The Petition for Relief seeks: cannot ignore it.’ Pakistan called for a UN one million were made homeless. a) the clean water and sanitation apology, adding that the UN must do ‘whatever An outbreak of cholera began in October infrastructure necessary to control the is necessary to make this situation right.’ 2010. Five hundred and twenty five thousand epidemic; Unofficially, the UN responded to the Haitians contracted the disease and 7,025 b) compensation for victims who have lost petition several months after it was filed, by have died since then. family members or were ill from cholera; and creating a ‘coalition force’ including the World MINUSTAH personnel deployed from c) a public apology from the UN. Health Organization, Pan-American Health Nepal brought the vibrio cholerae bacteria to MINUSTAH’s operations in Haiti are Organization (PAHO), UNICEF, and others. Haiti, as has been established by numerous governed by a Status of Forces Agreement These organisations have announced a ‘One DNA tests and epidemiological studies, (SOFA), which gives the UN and MINUSTAH Team Against Cholera’ initiative to eradicate including those carried out by the UN itself. broad immunities from civil or criminal cholera through investments in comprehensive Although Nepal has endemic cholera, the UN actions in the Haitian courts. To balance this water and sanitation. did not test or treat the Nepalese peacekeepers immunity, the SOFA requires the Haldane is part of the international for cholera prior to their deployment to establishment of an independent Standing campaign of solidarity, with the UK Haiti Mirebalais. There they lived on a base with a Claims Commission to hear claims and Support Group, to demand that the UN ‘haphazard’ and ‘inadequate’ sewage system compensate victims who have been injured in admits its liability to the cholera victims of that dumped all waste into an unfenced pit. It the course of the UN’s operations. Despite this Haiti, and provides effective and speedy relief was entirely foreseeable that human faeces requirement, no Commission has been as demanded by the petition. n containing cholera bacteria could contaminate established during the seven years a tributary that runs just metres from the base MINUSTAH has operated in Haiti. In fact, no Bill Bowring is Haldane’s International into the Artibonite River. Standing Claims Commission has ever been Secretary

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 25 Unlikely hero Baltasar Garzón is a Spanish judge stripped of his position after his campaign to brand Franco’s collaborators ‘murderers’. Renowned historian Paul Preston explains the background.

The Spanish Civil War came to an end 73 years as the Gürtel case. The case implicated a This was because of the existence of the law ago and is ancient history for most of the world. number of leading members of Spain’s ruling of political amnesty passed on 15th October In Spain itself, on-going and bitter memory Partido Popular, especially those from the 1977, one of the pillars of Spain’s bloodless wars mean that it is still ‘the past that has not Valencian region. Garzón was tried for ordering transition to democracy. The law effectively passed away’. The war is still being fought in in early 2009 illegal wiretaps of conversations stated that acts of terrorism in opposition to the books and in political actions and the latest between the accused and their lawyers. He Franco dictatorship and crimes against human victory has gone to the right with the trial and claimed in his defence that his actions were rights in its defence could not be subject to condemnation of the judge, Baltasar Garzón, approved by State prosecutors because he judicial proceedings. This was the basis of what internationally renowned for his championing ordered the wiretaps on suspicion that suspects is often called ‘the pact of silence’. Essentially, it of human rights and most notably for his bid to in the case were involved in money laundering. was an agreement not to rake up the past have the Chilean dictator, General Augusto The Spanish Supreme Court found him guilty which, given the numerical discrepancy Pinochet, extradited from Britain to be tried for and suspended him for 11 years, effectively between the relatively few people involved in the execution of some three thousand leftists ending his career, on the grounds that he had acts of violence against the Franco regime and between 1973 and 1990. violated the fundamental rights of defence. the many involved in its brutal defence, The Garzón case is immensely complicated. It is widely believed in Spain that what constitute a major sacrifice made by the He was charged with three separate offences all brought down upon Garzón the wrath of a pro- democratic forces in order to avoid bloodshed. of which related to his role as a juez instructor Franco judiciary was mainly his attempt to There is little doubt that Garzón had made – an investigating magistrate – that is to say a investigate the crimes of the Francoist military himself unpopular within the overwhelmingly judge with police powers. One related to the rebels who, between 1936 and 1945, were conservative judiciary in part because he was fact that he had accepted a visiting guilty of fifty times the number of killings perceived as a celebrity-seeking self-publicist. professorship at New York University to attributed to Pinochet. For this he was accused However, the three cases amount to a vendetta lecture on human rights in 2005-2006. The of ‘prevaricación’, an offence which has that went far beyond personal issues. The post was partially financed by a grant from the nothing to do with the English word investigation into the corruption involving the cultural foundation linked to the Banco prevarication meaning evasion or hesitation but Partido Popular made powerful enemies but it Santander at the same time as he was acting in means rather knowingly pursuing a judicial or is popularly believed that the real clincher a case involving another part of the bank. A administrative action knowing it to be contrary against Garzón was the branding of General complaint was filed charging that Garzón had to the law. In this case, in the wake of the so- Franco and his collaborators as murderers. The accepted payment which came indirectly from called law of Historical Memory of 2007, fact that he was acquitted of the charges of the bank in return for dropping a tax fraud Garzón had initiated an investigation into the ‘prevaricación’ in this third case has been seen investigation against the bank’s owner. The crimes of the military rebels and their allies. As as a sign of cunning on the part of his right- case was eventually dropped on the grounds an investigating magistrate, he was entitled to wing enemies. The charges began with a that the judicial reasons for dropping the fraud open investigations into suspected offences private prosecution brought by two extreme investigation were sound. which could lead to criminal prosecution. ultra-rightist groups. That they were allowed The second set of charges against Garzón However, in this case, there was no possibility to go forward caused public outrage. Garzón’s related to the corruption investigation known of any such prosecution. acquittal on the charges is seen as a whitewash

26 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Garzón: from Spanish judge to anti-fascist hero.

coming after he has already been neutralised in the ‘Gürtel’ case and the investigation into the crimes of the Francoists blocked. To this day, General Franco and his regime enjoy a relatively good press in Spain and in many other countries. This derives from a series of persistent myths about the benefits of his rule which were easily propagated during the nearly four decades of the dictatorship. A virtually totalitarian control of the media and the education system was the basis of a process of national brain-washing that created a sociological Francoism that survives to this day. Along with the carefully constructed judge, Garzón falsehoods that he masterminded Spain’s has become a hero to economic ‘miracle’ in the 1960s and heroically millions of Spaniards. kept his country out of the Second World War, They are the descendants of there are numerous myths about the origins of the nearly one hundred and fifty his regime. These derive from the initial lie that thousand men and women the Spanish Civil War was a necessary war supporters of the democratically elected fought to save the country from Communist Second Republic who were murdered extra- take-over. During the Cold War and after, these judicially or executed after flimsy legal process. prisons and concentration camps. Others died same myths were spread in the Western They were killed as a result of the military coup in the slave labour conditions of work democracies as Franco’s Axis connections were of 17th-18th July 1936 against the Republic. In battalions. More than half a million refugees wiped clean because he was regarded as a response, another fifty thousand were killed were forced into exile and many were to die of crucial ally. Moreover, anti-communism, a behind the lines in the Republican zone. In the disease in French concentration camps. Several reluctance to believe that officers and rebel zone, unknown numbers of men, women thousand were worked to death in Nazi camps. gentlemen could be involved in the deliberate and children were killed in bombing attacks All of this is what Garzón wanted to investigate mass slaughter of civilians and distaste for and in the exoduses that followed the and it constitutes what I believe can anticlerical violence go some way to explaining occupation of territory by Franco’s military legitimately be called the Spanish Holocaust. a reluctance to believe that Franco should be forces. In all of Spain after the final victory of considered in the same bracket as Hitler or the rebels at the end of March 1939, Paul Preston is a Professor in International Stalin. approximately twenty thousand Republicans History at the London School of Economics. For his efforts, and in response to his being were executed. Many more died of disease and He is the author of We Saw Spain Die and The condemned to be stripped of his position as a malnutrition in overcrowded, unhygienic Spanish Holocaust.

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 27 Egypt: defending the revolution

28 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 A small group of radical lawyers is at the forefront of Egypt’s left but the wider profession is veering towards cautious alliance with the military regime. Taimour Layreports s

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 29 Egypt: defending revolutionthe s ‘I studied law in prison actually,’ says Ahmed Seif Al Islam, taking a Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) swept to victory in the parliamentary drag on a cigarette at the end of another long day in the criminal courts. elections. But the current balance of forces is far from stable, says one In 1983 he was jailed for his involvement in an armed communist Cairo journalist, who predicts further social upheaval as economic group, ‘Al Matraqa’ (‘The Hammer’). Being caught with two pistols conditions worsen. ‘The past year is an astonishing vindication of the meant five years inside. He used the time to become one of the country’s capacity of a few thousand dedicated street fighters to change history,’ leading human rights lawyers, spending the period before the 2011 he says. revolution defending protesters and strikers across the country. The radical lawyers defending protesters in both criminal and ‘Legal struggles are important when there is no mass movement in military courts are a small minority within their profession. They the street,’ he argues, looking back to life under the dictatorships of include Mohamed Aziz, Ragia Omran and others who formed defence Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. ‘But when there is a mass movement, committees to assist protesters and union members who find we are less important. Politics is what matters, not the courts.’ themselves prosecuted by military judges. They continue to cope with Some of his courtroom protégés today may disagree. At 61 Seif Al arbitrary decisions, often handed down in writing by officers, appeals Islam is the grandfather of Egypt’s revolutionary left and the new vetoed by the army and refusals to allow cross-examination of generation of lawyers who see themselves as key defenders of the witnesses. February revolution. Now his son, renowned blogger Alaa Abd Al- It is better in the ordinary criminal courts, but not by much. The Fattah, is facing prison himself. He was released from detention last year Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) is also changing the pending further investigation into a trumped-up protest charge and is game under pressure, choosing in recent months to send people through one of 12,000 people who have been trapped within the army’s judicial the Emergency Supreme State Security Court (ESSSC), technically part system since 2011. of the civil, not the military, court system but with few additional As the protest movement gradually weakens, Egypt is now facing safeguards. legal battles more than street fights with the police. From military Outside the stone halls of the Court of Cassation in central Cairo, prosecution of activists and strikers to the Muslim Brotherhood- 1km from Tahrir Square, families and football ultras are camped out dominated assembly that is meant to write a new constitution by the calling for justice. The imposing sides of the court building are covered summer, politics is shifting back into the corridors of State institutions. in the ubiquitous graffiti of 2011: black stencil prints of dead protesters The conclusion of Mubarak’s trial on 2nd June 2012, in which the and red-lettered slogans in English: ‘A.C.A.B’ (All Cops Are Bastards) former President was handed a life sentence for complicity in the deaths and ‘Fuck SCAF’. Inside, torn Lawyers’ Union (‘Syndicat’) and Bar of 900 demonstrators in February 2011, was a verdict that spared his Association election posters still adorn the walls. security service lieutenants from blame – another sign, along with the The vast majority of the 100,000-strong legal profession voted for dozens of recent acquittals handed to police charged with abuses, that cautious accommodation with the army earlier this year. Sameh Ashour, Mubarak has been sacrificed to protect the officers and officials who leader of the Nasserist party, was elected as Union chairman. He has still run the country. called on SCAF to ‘intervene to protect the nation’ from the Muslim Some revolutionaries bemoan the drift away from radical Brotherhood and resigned his seat on the Constitutional Assembly in confrontation; others accept the new reality since the Brotherhood’s March to undermine his rivals among the Islamists.

30 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Another busy day for lawyers, protesters and the public at Cairo's Court of Cassation. Pictures by Tom Dale

If most lawyers occupy this conservative ground – worried about protest but also the degree to which the FJP-Muslim Brotherhood more protests, anxious about the Brotherhood – it is also because of the attempts to redefine the legal system to promote Islamist objectives realities of the profession outside of Cairo, according to one veteran under pressure from increasingly vocal Salafist groups. lawyer. ‘In smaller towns you can’t work without a good relationship There are other, more subtle, currents of change, including a with the local police and prosecutor. Lawyers have a direct interest in the diminution in deference within courtrooms. Across Cairo, frustrated State’s bodies and are reluctant to challenge them, accuse the police of families have chanted at judges and destroyed benches in response to the torture, for example, and that hasn’t changed since the revolution.’ acquittal of police officers accused of shooting protesters. Nadeem Mansour, 23-year-old director of the Egyptian Centre for Lawyers are also asserting themselves against a key document Economic and Social Rights, says it will take a long time for lawyers to governing their working lives: the so-called ‘Judicial Authority Law’ raise their standards and reputation. ‘Law is not the most prestigious job which a committee of conservative judges is seeking to draft in line with in Egypt. If you get the best marks, you do medicine or engineering or pre-revolution provisions, including the notorious Article 18, which business. Because of the way politics had developed the last few decades, allows them to arrest anyone, including lawyers, who ‘disturb a court lawyers were seen as part of the system.’ session’. Disputes over the retention of Article 18 led to punches being The incomplete revolution has left the legal system untouched and thrown between judges and lawyers in October 2011 and even gunshots liberal judges isolated. Khaled Ali, a 40-year-old socialist lawyer running outside the Judges’ Club. for President, argues that judges have in fact been more cautious since The biggest uncertainty hangs over the prospect of immunity for the revolution than before. In 2006, dozens held sit-ins against political Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and his army. A retired air force general interference in the judiciary, sparking solidarity protests. ‘But they told the New York Times in January: ‘SCAF’s biggest fear is if they give suffered defeats after that and have stayed quiet,’ he says. up power, they will be held to account for corruption under the old Most Judges are former State prosecutors or police officers. regime and for the deaths of protesters in the past year.’ Analysts say that Moreover, constitutional amendments in 2007 took elections away from the UK and US are already advising the Muslim Brotherhood to put judicial supervision and escalated the use of emergency measures such as stability before justice to ensure a ‘smooth’ transition. the use of military courts. Today the ‘Judges’ Club’, as it is informally These legal decisions will create new fissures and reactions, from known, having formerly been run by reformers, is headed by a military both the left and the establishment centre. The danger is that the smaller regime loyalist, Ahmed Al-Zend. groups of the revolutionary left continue to be marginalised. But Seif Al- But the system is not uniform. Khaled Ali made his name winning Islam refuses to be downcast. ‘Remember the Brotherhood also suffered landmark labour cases in the Constitutional Court, arguing law before a under the old law, many were jailed, so I think they will attempt some body of judges who have developed a reputation for impartiality. Public good reforms to make the courts better. [As for preventing immunity] it’s law, following the French system, is invested in a dedicated up to the youth to keep fighting. They crossed a red line [in 2011] and administrative court which has produced a string of important they won’t go back.’ judgments, raising the minimum wage in 2010 and halting the corrupt sale of State-owned assets. Taimour Lay is a journalist specialising in African politics and used to The future of Egypt’s courts will depend on the next wave of youth investigate oil companies for PLATFORM

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 31 A global audience of billions watched in awe in downtown Harare are named after a number ordinator of the International Socialist and admiration in early 2011 as the people of of Africa’s great freedom fighters, among them Oganisation. In short, he is a man with a high Tunisia and Egypt struggled to shake off Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Nelson political profile. decades of tyrannical rule. Thirty years Mandela. It is a measure of how far Mugabe As Haldane’s recent ‘Defending Human previously many of us experienced that same has betrayed those traditions that such a Rights Defenders’ conference illustrated, sense of thrill as we witnessed the culmination gathering was deemed necessary by those who international solidarity is a fundamental of a previous liberation struggle in another part organised it, but also that it could not be principle for The Haldane Society. We were of Africa. In 1980, the lowering of the Union tolerated. Dozens of police stormed into the therefore deeply concerned about the possible flag marked the demise of British colonial rule building and arrested every single one of the 45 outcome of the trial and determined to show in Rhodesia and the birth of independent people present. They were held for four days our support for activists who were simply Zimbabwe. Anyone who has seen the recently before being brought to court and charged with exercising their internationally guaranteed right released documentary about Bob Marley will treason, an offence which carries the death to freedom of expression. It was for this reason have caught a glimpse of this. The great penalty or life imprisonment on conviction. that we drew up a proposal to send somebody Jamaican reggae star was the headline The allegations against the majority of the out to Zimbabwe in order to observe the performer at the celebration concert that detainees were so pitiful that Magistrate proceedings. There is a tradition of such activity followed that ceremony. The leader of that Munamoto Mutevedzi released 39 of them on among lawyers and political activists which is freedom movement meanwhile was Robert 7th March 2012 citing ‘glaring weaknesses’ in intended to demonstrate to the authorities that Gabriel Mugabe who went on to become the prosecution case. The remaining six were their activities will not go unnoticed and Zimbabwe’s first real Prime Minister. remanded in custody however on the ground unrecorded. Some things seemingly never change. that there was a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they By the time the trial was due to commence Despite his advancing years and ailing health, had committed an offence. The six defendants on 18th July 2011 the charge had been Mugabe clings to office, now elevated to the were Munyaradzi Gwisai, Antonater Choto, amended to conspiracy to commit public position of State President. The radical Tatenda Mombeyarara, Edson Chakuma, violence or alternatively incite public violence. promises of black power that accompanied his Hopewell Gumbo and Welcome Zimuto. These are lesser charges than treason but rise have long since been abandoned however The most high profile of these defendants nevertheless attract sentences of up to 10 years’ and his rule has been characterised by violence, was Gwisai. A graduate of the law faculty at the imprisonment. Just three days before this date corruption and economic catastrophe. University of Zimbabwe, in the 1990s he had and with the defendants still awaiting service of It was in these circumstances and for these been general secretary of the students’ union. the case against them the State Prosecutor reasons that a group of political activists and The president at the time was Tendai Biti, now announced that he had more pressing business trade unionists met at the Zimbabwe Labour Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the High Court. There was no choice but to Centre in Harare on 19th February 2011. Secretary General and Minister of Finance in adjourn the matter for a month. While there they began watching recorded news the Inclusive Government. Gwisai himself was I arrived in Harare on 20th August 2011 bulletins of the events in Cairo and Tunis and a subsequently elected MDC MP for the and joined a spirited crowd at the regional number of speakers addressed the audience Highfield constituency in Harare in 2000, a Magistrates’ Court in the appropriately named about the political significance of the uprisings, position he retained until 2002. He is now a Rotten Row the following Monday morning. the parallels that could be drawn and the practicing lawyer and lecturer at the University The case had clearly attracted considerable lessons that should be absorbed. of Zimbabwe. In addition, he is the chair of the attention. In addition to the grassroots activists The streets surrounding the Labour Centre Zimbabwe Labour Centre and general co- and lawyers there were representatives of both

Brian Richardson reports from a trial of six socialists in Zimbabwe, which showed further evidence how far Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF has betrayed the traditions of Africa’s great freedom fighters.

One of the six accused, Munyaradzi Gwisai, a Whose practicing lawyer, lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, chair of the Zimbabwe Labour Centre and general co-ordinator of the International Socialist treason? Oganisation. 32 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 the British and French embassies in attendance. matter was adjourned I was invited to for the crackdown is a growing sense of The building itself seemed in many ways accompany both sides to the magistrates’ office unease within ruling circles. Mugabe’s days emblematic of the dilapidated state of the to witness them discussing how the matter are clearly numbered. He may be able to country. Built during the colonial era it had would proceed from then on. continue cheating the electorate but he cannot clearly seen better days. It came as no surprise The bare facts of the case do not begin to tell cheat death indefinitely. The succession is to learn that in February 2012 the building had the real story however. There was a widespread uncertain with many people who have to be closed following a cholera and typhoid consensus among activists, opposition parties benefited from his patronage set to lose out scare. and wide sections of the media that these when he finally departs. Those who have been In the event, not only did the trial not take proceedings amounted to a show trial intended handed farms, diamond fields and other place in the week that I was present, it was to send a very clear message to anybody largesse are desperate to hang onto them and adjourned on several further occasions and did opposed to Zanu PF’s continued domination; determined therefore to quash any revolt from not get going until 14th September 2011. It was the political activity that was occurring beyond their ranks. subsequently adjourned several more times elsewhere in Africa would not be tolerated in The perspective that this crackdown is before finally concluding on 19th March 2012 Zimbabwe. symptomatic both of the power struggle within with the conviction of all six defendants for This was certainly the view of those Zanu PF and the ruling party’s fear for its own conspiracy to commit public violence. They members of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human future is not confined to those on the left. were sentenced to two years imprisonment Rights (ZLHR) that I met during my visit. They During my time in Harare I met with Senator suspended for five years, fined $500 and compared the prevailing atmosphere with that David Coltart, a member of the minority MDC ordered to complete 420 hours of community which had existed three years previously. 2008 faction led by Arthur Mutambara and, in fact, service. At the time of writing these sentences had been a year of heightened repression when the single white Cabinet minister in the are subject to appeal. Mugabe faced the real prospect of defeat in the Inclusive Government. Coltart’s opinion of the When set against the possible outcome when presidential election to the MDC candidate trial was that even if there was a prima facie the defendants were originally charged, these Morgan Tsvangirai. Despite the repression, case against these activists, one had to question sentences can be viewed with a sense of relief. Mugabe’s own Zanu PF party conceded that why they were being charged in this case at this On the surface they appear to confirm that they Tsvangirai polled more votes than Mugabe. time. By comparison he indicated that he was did indeed receive a fair trial. The adjournments However ‘official’ figures revealed that his lead able to cite numerous examples where there were undoubtedly frustrating, leaving those in the original poll was not sufficient for him to was very clear evidence of serious criminal charged with a genuinely terrifying sense of avoid a second round run-off. The violence and offences committed by senior members of Zanu uncertainty. At first glance they could be read as intimidation that followed the first election was PF, yet, no action was taken against them. an indication of the State’s commitment to so severe that, fearful for his own life, When considered in that wider context transparency and justice. One of the reasons the Tsvangirai pulled out of the reconvened poll therefore, he argued, the decision to proceed matter was postponed was because a number of thus handing victory to his nemesis. A measure with this trial was clearly motivated by political magistrates recused themselves because they of the brutality that was unleashed is that in considerations. were familiar with Gwisai. He had taught them that year ZLHR dealt with 1,445 cases of The State’s ‘star witness’ Jonathan Shoko at the university during their time as law alleged abuse. testified that he was a police officer attached to students. In addition, the proceedings were held Mugabe clung onto the presidency but the Central Intelligence Unit and that he had in open court with the public free to sit in and worldwide disgust at his antics led to the ‘sneaked into a planning meeting’. observe. Indeed, on the first day when the imposition of sanctions which forced him into Consequently the police knew in advance that a power sharing agreement with Tsvangirai the meeting was taking place and officers were appointed Prime Minister. The relative stability lying in wait, ready to pounce. That in itself that this brought led to a reduction in ZLHR’s exposes the State’s real agenda. There was more caseload to 358 in 2009 and 400 in 2010. to come. While this witness was giving evidence Following the arrest of these defendants in the trial took a dramatic turn when the defence February 2011 the numbers rocketed once exposed him as being Rodwell Chitoyo, a secret again. Over the next six months ZLHR State agent rather than a police officer. In the represented 875 people including Gwisai and wake of this there was an application to dismiss his comrades. the charges against the defendants. It was not Away from the set piece façade of the granted. Nevertheless, they succeeded in courtroom the treatment of the defendants was revealing the real reasons for their arrest and savage. Seventeen of the original detainees were conviction. kept in solitary confinement while being My abiding memory of my time in Harare interrogated. All, including the women, allege will be of the courage and steely determination that they were struck repeatedly with sticks on of the defendants. The day before the trial was their buttocks and backs in an attempt to force due to begin we met at an outdoor music confessions out of them. Meanwhile a number festival at a park in the city centre. Tatenda were denied urgent medical treatment. This Mombeyarara casually remarked that his was a particular concern as several of the children had asked him if he was going to be detainees were activists from HIV/AIDS coming home the following day. When I asked campaigns with serious conditions that how he felt about the prospect of being sent to required monitoring and careful management. prison he replied that this was the price that had One detainee, David Mpatsi suffered a lung to be paid for living under a dictatorship. infection during his detention. He subsequently Such rulers are not all powerful though. died after a rapid deterioration of his health on That simple fact is illustrated by the very events 14th July 2011. that these activists were watching, indeed, it is When members of ZLHR originally precisely why they were arrested. Before they attempted to gain access to the defendants on were so rudely interrupted there is little doubt the day of their arrest they were chased away that these unsung heroes had absorbed the from the police station by men, some of whom spirit of Tahrir Square. Bloodied but unbowed were dressed in civilian clothes. It is believed they live to fight another day and for a future that these men were from the notorious Central that can consign Mugabe’s decades of betrayal Intelligence Organisation. to the dustbin of history. It was submitted by ZLHR that this increase in harassment and intimidation was Brian Richardson is a barrister and author of by no means coincidental. The explanation Tell it Like it is – How Schools Fail Black Children

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 33 The

trialof Lord Coe

It is 2022, and following the successful prosecution of the so-called ‘Seven Sisters’ (BP, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil, and their subsidiaries, Standard Oil, Texaco and Gulf Oil) for crimes against the environment, Sebastian, formerly Lord, Coe is indicted for aiding and abetting ecocide. In the early days of the trial before the New International Criminal Court in Johannesburg, Coe, despite his As imagined by advanced years, appears jaunty. He denies his guilt. His opening speech reminds the court that the London David Renton Olympics organisers had promised the world that their Games would be the Greenest ever. And he speaks of the work done by the Olympics’ Sustainability Partners. ‘The organisers did nothing wrong. I should not be here.’

34 Socialist Lawyer July 2012 Under cross examination by lawyers acting for It is put to Coe that involvement in the Olympics Gaia, Coe’s initial confidence slowly recedes. The first ‘green-washed’ companies such as those of the Seven morning of the cross-examination is given over to the Sisters, and held off the day when their crimes would activities of BP, the Olympic Games’ nominated be prosecuted. ‘You are not asking me, are you’, he ‘Sustainability Partner’ and ‘Official Carbon Offset counters, ‘to support their prosecution, or my own?’ Partner’. Long before the Games opened, Coe accepts, What about Meredith Alexander, the Games’ the organisers were well aware of the part played by ‘Ethics Tsar’, who resigned six months before the BP in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, in Games, in protest at the involvement of these which around 200 million gallons of crude oil were polluters? Didn’t her departure cause the organisers to released into the marine environment of the Gulf of re-think? ‘No’, Coe answers, ‘by that point we were Mexico. bound by our arrangements with BP and others. If we Shown images of dying birds and fish, Coe admits, had returned their funds, the London Games might ‘Yes, I knew about Deepwater. Everyone did at the have lost money. That would have been unacceptable time. All the pictures you’ve shown today were on our at a time of cuts and austerity.’ news channels for weeks.’ The prosecutor breaks in, ‘But you were already ‘It was the worst case of oil pollution in history and losing money at a colossal rate. When you won the yet you chose BP as your sustainability partner?’ the bid, you said their budget would be £2 billion. By the prosecutor asks. Coe shakes his head and does not time of the Games itself, this had gone up to £23 answer. billion, half of it from general taxation.’ The prosecution moves on to BP’s involvement in ‘Yes, I know that’, Coe says, ‘We were over the mining of the Canadian Tar Sands. ‘We now know budget, and I didn’t want it to get any worse. The that by 2012 these alone were responsible for 8 per decisions of the organisers have to seen,’ he cent of Canada’s carbon emissions. They kept the maintains, ‘in the right context. You have to think world’s car economy going for years beyond peak oil. back to the very different world in which we were ‘If so’, says Coe, ‘you’re telling me things I didn’t operating. It was 2012, we were hosting the Olympics know at the time. I take them very seriously.’ and we were looking for sponsors. We needed to raise ‘But you made BP your Carbon Offset Partner? large sums of money. The distribution of wealth was You had researchers, you could have Googled BP, more concentrated then than it is now. The only none of this was secret at the time.’ Coe pulls his companies capable of raising the millions we needed glasses down his face and again says nothing. were the major corporations.’ In the afternoon, the prosecution moves on to the ‘You have pointed out the poor environmental other major sponsors of the games. Dow Chemical record of BP,’ Coe continues, ‘but every large had produced the poison gas used at Auschwitz. Its corporation at that time was joined to the same subsidiaries were responsible for the 1984 Bhopal networks and ran their business in the same way. They disaster which killed around 25,000 people in India. invested in each other’s shares. There was barely a ‘I had heard about Deepwater, you couldn’t miss company on the London Stock Exchange that wasn’t that’, Coe answers, ‘but by 2012 I considered Bhopal involved in the sectors we all now find troubling, very old news.’ mining, oil extraction, or military-related technology. ‘The poison was still responsible for birth defects Who else could we have gone to?’ and premature deaths by the time of London 2012’, ‘Yes, we got the Courts to pre-emptively injunct the prosecutor counters. people on the basis that they “might” have protested ‘I was a sports administrator’, Coe says, ‘I knew the against the Games. Yes, we were criticised for that and length of a running track and how to build a successful for so many things: for failing to get more people games. Neither I, nor I suspect anyone involved in involved in sport, for allowing local sports to be closed administering London gave a first thought to Bhopal.’ down, for building on green spaces. Well, you couldn’t ‘Rio Tinto had mined the gold, silver and bronze have the Games without athletes and they needed that was used for the athletes’ medals in Utah, areas to practice. I remember articles in The Guardian processing the metal in a factory whose airborne about the 10,000 soldiers we deployed, the jets and pollution caused several hundred deaths each year.’ the helicopters and the battleships that were stationed Coe denies any knowledge. ‘Coca-Cola and on the Thames. But it was just ten years after 9/11. McDonalds’, the prosecutor continues, ‘had caused How was I to know if the Games would or would not obesity across North America. You authorised the be attacked?’ largest McDonalds in the world, right in the middle of ‘We were criticised for closing roads all across the athletes’ village.’ Coe insists his conscience is clear, London so that the organisers and the sponsors could ‘I was not troubled by McDonalds’s record on health be driven quickly to the events. Well, the sponsors had or the environment.’ given us hundreds of thousands of pounds. They were In his opening remarks to the Court, Coe had entitled to better treatment. But we had a legacy, and referred to the activities of the Olympic Delivery one which still leaves me proud. We may not have Authority which held annual safety, health and made any contribution to education or to housing, but environmental awards. Coe is now shown a list of the we brought the Westfield shopping centre to prize winners at these ‘green’ awards. One winner, Stratford.’ BAM Nuttall, had been a member of the construction ‘People pointed to our salaries; 15 managers on industry blacklist, Coe accepts, while other over £150,000, two on over £1 million including blacklisters, Carillion and McAlpine, were also bonuses. Yes, many of our security guards were paid involved in building the main Olympic sites. less than £10 per hour. But it was more than many of Coe agrees that the Olympic Games were seen the guards in London who didn’t work on the Games.’ worldwide by a population of billions, that the ‘You can criticise the Games, but in 2012 every sponsors’ logos were ubiquitous on television. He international sporting event was being organised in accepts that viewers all over the world were the same way. We were the very most typical encouraged to believe that the companies were ethical. expression, no better but no worse than anyone else, ‘And I could hardly criticise them if that’s what they of the way the way the economy worked in 2012.’ concluded. If we hadn’t believed the sponsors were legitimate, we would not have allowed them to be David Renton is a barrister at Garden Court associated with the Games.’ Chambers and the author of Struck Out

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Stories from the ‘war’ on drugs

FILM: Cocaine Unwrapped on drugs’ and takes us to South Morales himself explains, the and horrifying levels of violence. Directed by Rachel Seifert America. coca leaf in its natural form is not The film director Alejandro Dartmouth Films (2011) In Colombia 140,000 cocaine, it is just a leaf. Indeed as González Iñárritu specialises in members of the police are fighting a leaf it can be made into among films that tell multiple stories in Cocaine Unwrapped looks at one the ‘war on drugs.’ This is backed other things herbal tea and one film. Amores Perros and 21 drug and its impact in two up with a para-military force and creams for skin disorders, Grams are two of his best works. different worlds, the relatively billions of dollars of ‘aid’ from the something Bolivia itself is keen to The seeming unrelated stories he wealthy west and the poorer USA. The effects for small farmers exploit. depicts inevitably crash and southern hemisphere. In the in the Tumaco region are that However, as we see Bolivia collide. Cocaine Unwrapped process it tells several stories. The their crops of chocolate, bananas abandoning the ‘war on drugs’ takes a similar format, showing film travels from London to and yucca plants are destroyed as the film focuses on Mexico, in the stories of the casual user, the Baltimore and from Colombia to indiscriminate aerial spraying particular the town of Ciudad drug mule, the dealers, the Bolivia. Ecuador and Mexico are occurs regularly. As local Juarez. A local journalist displaced farmers in Colombia also visited along the way. It community leaders explain, the describes how the violence has and the violence in Mexico. In so examines the simple coca leaf and spraying results in ill health, escalated in recent years. 50 doing it takes us from capitalist its production and economic stagnation and mass freshly dug graves are shown, countries in the North to transformation into cocaine. The migration. An interview with the ready for more casualties as the developing countries in the South, film looks at drug mules, prisons, former president of Colombia, conflict between the army and from production to consumption, poverty, death squads, gang César Gaviria, succinctly outlines local gangs as well as inter-gang highlighting that the human crime and its political impact. It is the social damage this ‘war on rivalry escalates further. suffering is at its most acute an eye-opening and riveting drugs’ causes: ‘…it destroys the There are suggestions that the closest to where the production account of the devastating lives of people who are not ‘war’ in Mexico against drugs has starts. Director Rachel Seifert repercussions of the war on criminals and who are just trying been used as a smokescreen to accounts for the environmental drugs. Above all it is a human to survive.’ hide the abuse of the democratic and human costs of the drug in story. Bolivia is taking a different process. The current President of Latin America and also the The film opens in London as approach. For 20 years the Mexico, Felipe Calderón, was seemingly illogical way in which we hear individual users talk previous Bolivian Government, elected following a suspect the ‘war on drugs’ is conducted. about how they enjoy the drug backed by the USA, waged a war election at which the final ballot The tragedies that unfold and how it helps them on a night against coca growers. This all was hotly disputed. The Mexican consist of a network of out. In Baltimore, Seifert casts her changed in 2005 with the election Government has sent in the army miscommunication, violence and camera on the industrial of Evo Morales and the to deal with the problem. Given cyclical poverty that feeds on the devastation of the city; the rise in Movement for Socialism. The that soldiers are not trained in the demand for and illegality of unemployment and the Government now allows the subtleties of civilian policing, this cocaine. neighbourhoods where dealing limited growth of the coca leaf. militarised intervention has led to Cocaine Unwrapped does not drugs is a way out for many of This is monitored by the growers an escalation of the conflict. A have answers but it holds up a the poorest as famously depicted themselves through the trade situation of mounting human clear mirror to the effects of the in the HBO series The Wire. unions. It supports the farmers to rights abuses pervades as ruthless ‘war on drugs’. The film then tackles the ‘war diversify into other crops. As drug cartels resort to increasing Paul Heron

Socialist Lawyer July 2012 37 Reviews

that Sachs was simply ahead of Constitutional Court who has his time and that in fact, he was participated in several landmark Sensuous memoir describing the tortuous journey rulings; from declaring the death that the people of a constitutional penalty as a violation of the right democracy must engage with in to life to creating a positive duty Soft Vengeance his beloved country. Many will order to re-build a broken society: on the new South African of a Freedom already have read and enjoyed ‘The complexity prefigured in Government to provide anti- Fighter this book and the personal Albie’s painstaking voyage retroviral drugs to HIV positive Albie Sachs journey it describes. Since its first through wounding, recovering, pregnant women. These Souvenir Press publication in 1990 when he healing and living, did not come contributions to ‘hard law’ can be ISBN: returned to South Africa after 20 across strongly enough (in 1990) seen as the framework in which 9780285640207 years in exile, this book has to override the character of the the ‘soft vengeance’ of which he become a crucial voice in South moment. Twenty years later we speaks could truly be delivered. On 7th April African literature and a widely had moved from being a country Through the ‘soft law’ of the 1988, the detonation of a car- read accompaniment to his other of policies, to one that needed to Truth and Reconciliation bomb reverberated in Maputo, key works such as his 1963 Jail re-imagine the minutiae of daily Commissions, Sachs had to face Mozambique. It was planted by Diary. It is a sensuous work, life; and that such minutiae would those who sought to destroy him the South African Security describing in great detail each inform a new sense of personal and explore the issue of Services and its target was the touch and caress of those caring capability within families, forgiveness first hand and exiled anti-apartheid activist and for him and emotions and communities, organisations or deciding to spare them the fate lawyer Albie Sachs. The blast was affections he holds not only for institutions.’ they sought for him. intended to rid the apartheid those around him but for the There is in this a recognition The ‘soft vengeance’ that Albie regime of one of its most country and ideals he holds true. that constitutions, laws and Sachs envisaged was not just the vociferous opponents and do In the introduction to this new policies are only part of the work simple decision that he and the what two periods in prison with a edition, Professor Njabulo S necessary to heal the wounds that nation he loves will not be broken total of 168 days in solitary Ndebele unflinchingly states that apartheid left on the body of by racism and violence, but by confinement could not, to finally when he first read The Soft South Africa’s people. It is ironic showing through words, actions break his body and spirit. Vengeance in 1991, he felt that then that Sachs himself has played and capability that in the words Sachs not only survived the Sachs spent too much time such an important role on both of Professor Ndebele, ‘there is a blast, but despite losing his right describing the minutiae of his the constitutional and personal willingness to succeed through arm and the sight in one eye, rehabilitation, the slow and rehabilitation of the rainbow “cumulative, small, unspectacular refused to break. The Soft painful progress that he made nation. but formative victories” and the Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter towards the acceptance of himself Now known as one of the recognition that every South charts the recovery of Sachs’s and his inner strength and architects of the 1996 South African must strive to embrace physical body and the parallel qualities despite his physical African Constitution and as one their own completeness.’ developments and healing within scarring. Now, Njabulo reflects of the Judges of the Anna Morris

friction between strengthening workers and not the law. He does A poor last resort workers’ rights through collective however offer three sensible and bargaining and individual relatively straightforwardly Struck Out. Why casting its central claims. This victories which reward the achievable reforms to the system: Employment provides a delicious contrast to the claimant, usually inadequately, the elevation of reinstatement to Tribunals Fail Government’s recent Beecroft but leave the workforce worse off. the primary remedy in unfair Workers and Report on employment law which In many respects the increased dismissal cases; the reconstitution What Can be even the fallen angel Vince Cable resort to the employment tribunal of panels comprising four lay Done deemed to be a collection of ‘one has not advanced the worker’s persons which would decide by David Renton man’s anecdotes’. cause: equal pay claims which consensus on cases’ merits; and £17.50; Pluto Press The work is a pleasing mix of damage unions but compensate simplifying the instances in which legal exposition, historical analysis small groups of workers; victims tribunals can reduce awards so as When the Coalition heralded its and sociological discussion. of racism whose claims are viewed to ensure a successful claimant is Protection of Freedoms Bill we Renton charts the development of sceptically by courts wedded to left closer to the position she were not to know that the liberties the tribunal from the orthodox notions of how would have been in had she not it sought to guarantee were those recommendations in the 1968 witnesses ‘should’ behave; and the been dismissed. of Government departments to Donovan Report, through the subversion by judges of legal tests However, while successive withhold evidence in court and report’s implementation in the which supplant objective with governments and business leaders employers who sought to discard form of the Industrial Relations subjective standards of continue to peddle the lie that workers arbitrarily. Act 1971 to the present day. It is, reasonableness. employment regulations in the UK To that end, David Renton’s in the author’s words, intended as Renton concludes by are too onerous, it will be some book is timely. Its strength is a policy statement rather than a emphasising that collective time before these types of changes derived from the volume of practical guide. bargaining has achieved the are seen. statistics and cases it relies upon in Renton vividly illustrates the historic gains made in favour of Russell Fraser

38 Socialist Lawyer July 2012