Our fight for Legal Aid

What a fantastic week it’s been!  On Wednesday, the product of weeks of hard work by many people manifested itself in the largest demonstration against government cuts to legal aid that there has ever been.  The full article can be read here: http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/hundreds-attend-legal-aid-protest-rally.  It was followed in the afternoon by a thousand lawyers passing resolutions at The Friends meeting house unanimously rejecting price competitive tendering and any further cuts to legal aid.

Never has there been such unity of the whole legal profession.  Unfolding, are two very serious constitution issues; access to justice, choice and the right to a fair trial alongside the continued existence of an independent legal profession. 

The fight is on to defend these principles in our society. 

Thank you to the LCCSA

 

A little late,  but  heartfelt  thank you  to  the LCCSA  for conferring Honorary Life Membership.  It's a great  organisation which has excellent officers and committee members who work hard in a hostile environment  to promote the collective interests of Solicitors and Paralegals  working in  the London  Courts.   

 

What makes our work so important is that miscarriages of justice are more likely to be found in the everyday toil of the police station and Magistrates Court   and are also likely to slip by unnoticed without committed Defence  Lawyers and prosecutors with integrity.

 

For some great recent results  see  http://www.psplaw.co.uk/

The Threat to Jury Trial

The erosion of legal rights should not be decoupled from the economic - it is an attack on all fronts. Savage cuts to Legal Aid, the re-engineering of welfare benefits, the forced migration of the jobless from their homes, and now trailed as a softening up process, cuts to the rights to jury trials. Throw in mass surveillance, secret courts, the tiering of health and education and the conformity of the political class to the austerity agenda - a class which is also in thrall to big finance. These are the years of repression.

In memory of the late Victor Harold Powell

(25.03.1919 to 21.09.2011)

In the beginning it was 25th March 1919.

Mrs Daisy Powell gave birth to her fourth and youngest boy four months after the end of the Great War and he was named Victor Harold Powell. His dad was Edwin Harold Powell, always known as Harry. Eight children; Lily, Eddie, Frank, Elsie, Kathleen, Tom, Vic and Joyce. They lived in Stonebridge in North West London and in a few years, moved to a house on the North Circular Road near Neasden and later to Rayners Lane.

Vic always remembered a happy, crowded, lively time. His dad was a Metropolitan railway Driver, a left arm spin bowler for the railway team and a careful and prudent man, who took the nails out of old wooden boxes to straighten them for later use.

He had made the children's shoes and worked all hours he could to provide for his 8 children. Not being well off, you could have butter on bread or jam; but not both. If you had a cold, his dad brought sulphur and made a tube and blew it down your throat. Elsie dropped hot bacon on his back when he was running through the kitchen, frank lit a fire under the bed to warm them and in the teenage years and Frank also swam across the Welsh Harp Reservoir in the mornings for pleasure and fitness. Vic would say he never had trouble at school as he had those big brothers, Eddie and Frank.

They were ambitious parents, but these were hard times. Vic left school at 14 to go to work in Cricklewood and used to go to Golders Hill Park with a buttered bun for his lunch and once told me that he had lost his first wages under a bus. But he had acquired a love for books, which he learnt by heart and for art and knowledge.

This was a Labour family for whom the 1926 general strike, the treatment of miners and his teenage years in the Spanish Civil War loomed large. Blue eyed, fair haired, he ran 400 yards, was the fast bowler in his cricket team he ran with Alan Hawkes, was a huge fan of films and recording stars, especially Bing Crosby. He would sing and whistle every day of his life and wear his hear like the Bings.

But then came the Second World War and at just 20, Vic joined the Army as a private in the Royal Artillery, learned gun laying and went on to be an unarmed Combat Instructor before joining the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders as an officer in charge of a troop of self propelled anti tank guns supporting infantry. Vic fought in North Africa and then Italy, but undoubtedly, his saddest moment was being given leave to come home after the death of his mum Daisy. Everyone always said he was her favourite.

Although Vic's return to civilian life was delayed by the army and spells of duty in Greece and Palestine when he came home, Rootes the makers of the Humber Hawk the Sunbean Rapier and Hillman Minx and IMP motor cars kept open the jobs of the men who had gone to war and Harrow Council housed returning soldiers in prefabs in South Harrow and Rayners Lane.

VIC newly married to Barbara who he had met while stationed near Welwyn Garden City moved into one of the prefabs and I was born in 1948. In those days of cotton nappies, he changed me perfectly except he passed the safety pin in and out of the skin as well as the nappy.

In this strange post war time the recently vacated prisoner of war camp known as 'the buildings' was converted into the Rayners Lane Tenants Association Club, complete with snooker table, bar, and a dance hall. Vic was a terrific snooker player ( not to mention cards and darts, drafts and pool) as a result of many hours of practice in his youth in the snooker hall above Burtons in Cricklewood. He said it gave him conjunctivitis.

He became the Secretary, Treasurer and President of an Association which gave rise to some extraordinary episodes. The previous Treasurer ran off to Blackpool with the secretary’s wife and the takings. I saw my dad break the arm of a drunk; and in a public meeting expose yet another treasurer for fiddling the books, with the evidence collected by my mum who traipsed around south Harrow checking the dodgy receipts with me in tow.

My mum ran the snack bar. I sat with a lemonade and crisps and VIC, on the star lit walk home would point out Orion’s belt, The Plough and the North Star . He loved stars and ice cream.

Every summer the big event was the flower show in Roxeth when dozens of onions were measured to find the six which were perfect and beans and marrows and chrysanths and zineas until Vic won best exhibitor in the show. He always loved growing flowers and more vegetables than he could ever eat.

In 1958 Harrow Council built a street of houses in Pinner for rent and sale to the tenants of South Harrow and Rayners Lane. Vic and Barbara moved to 35 Latimer Close with a bike, some furniture a radio and me.

Vic built patios, walls, paths, a garage; and it seemed Aunts and Uncles came every Sunday for tea. Kath, Jack, Marion, Anne and Tom; or we went to Aunt Joyce's in Uncle Jacks van, sitting in the back on cushions. Vic loved fireworks and each November bonfire night when we had all given up and gone indoors for hot dogs. Vic would still be letting off rockets and call us out for the biggest fire work saved to last.

And he quoted poetry ''There's a one eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu'' and ''The Jabberwockey'' and the nonsense rhymes and he liked a drink or two.

And Vic had a firm belief in those years that alcohol enhanced driving skills as we did the rounds of family homes, especially to Chesham where his dad lived with Lilly and Dan, on Christmas Eve and every visit to Arthur (Barbara’s dad) was adjourned to the pub, but there was Pam and Johnny's for tea too - and some odd skills - the icing of Christmas cakes and cutting cloth to patterns for my mum.

The years passed in a blur, my dad always there in support, football, cricket, rugby, we played golf, and he always had an amazing work ethic. For a long time driving to and from Coventry everyday and in the early 70's dropping me as an articled clerk in Stanmore at 7.30 every morning.

And then one afternoon my mum died.

And what Vic had was a second life. A move from Pinner to Stonham Aspel, Suffolk to a vast garden, sheds and wood work galore, the unceasing project of restoring his cottage home and the love of Gloria.

And I think this was the life he had in his imagination, from visiting his uncle George in his carpenters shop, his teenage walks in the Chess valley to see his mum’s family. There were chickens, ponds, ducks, Bruno (he had always had dogs when he was growing up), and antiques to be restored, golf, pub lunches, wine, cigars, whisky and every manner of book. His collection of the films he loved. Any kind of cowboy film, but particular favourites he watched many times. Bridge in the River Kwai, The Magnificent Seven, Laurence of Arabia and earlier films and stars Fred Astaire, Myrna Loy, Paul Muni in Fugitive from the Chain Gang, anything with Alec Guinness and the music, Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and of course Bing Crosby. I do not think there was ever a more cheerful man; he had loved Italy and visited it again and there is something about a style of living that is at ease with sunlight and wine and the feel of wood and growing things that spoke to his soul.

And I must mention his courage; in the last 2 years, incredible fortitude, an unshakable desire to live, a stoicism which was a part of the way he had been brought up and always so polite and so concerned to be well presented, shaved hair still combed in the style of Bing Crosby with a ready smile on his lips and in his eyes.

And he remained a romantic man proposing to Gloria on Valentine’s Day, and a kind man who was readily amused by life, a man for whom cross words were strangers and laughter a habit and his small superstitions daily knocking on wood, throwing salt over his shoulder, crossing his fingers and especially breaking the bottom of the soft boiled egg when he had finished to ''kill the witch'', green is unlucky and if you go out and came back for something you forgot, sit down and count to 10.

It was a paradox that such a sociable man should communicate so rarely with the brothers and sisters he loved but the answer is that he was self contained, content, happy and fulfilled.

Gloria said I could say it was her idea that I read one of my poems:

This is called In the Beginning - Loves Shawl
The ripples of leaves like dreams
In the lee of the rain gleamed
Wall that overlooked the sea
Enfolding endlessly beneath
The gulls call, the pebble beach
Where we walked
And folded ourselves in Love’s Shawl.

And that is what we are doing here with our thoughts, our memories, our stories; Folding ourselves and Vic in our Love’s Shawl .

Is there a trend to Police misconduct?

Another astonishing case from the Court of Appeal. A Court led by the Lord Chief Justice held that a sentence of 11 1/2 years imposed on a Police Officer who pleaded guity to misconduct in public office, perverting the course of justice, various offences of conspiracy and the posessuion of prohibited weapons and ammunition was not manifestly excessive.

The officer, amongst other things, held weapons at the behest of an unknown criminal.

How we get paid in the Crown Court

It will be repetitive, and in the repitition some of the astonishment may lessen, but the extraordinary cuts to Crown Court fees for solicitors deserves some sustained attention. What we get paid matters because in the end it will determine the quality of the work done for defendants and the quality of information available to the courts.

I recently completed a case in which the client was found not guilty after a two day trial in relation to allegations that she was in posession of stolen credit cards. There were only 55 pages of evidence in the case of this young woman of good character who had her car returned to her by her violent, abusive ex boyfriend a short time before her arrest. Her explanation for the stolen credit cards beneath a seat in the car was that they had been left there by him.

I had to make repeated requests for disclosure of all of his criminal record in order to write a very long letter to the CPS to show that there was a clear link between the types of criminality for which he had been convicted, and the criminal use of the credit cards. The Crown refused to discontinue the matter which went to trial when our client was happily acquitted.

In the Crown Court, fees are determined by a formula which links the number of pages of evidence, the seriousness and value of the case and the stage it reaches. The litigator fee for all the work will be £399. The fee is cut in part because we took the case as a transfer from other solicitors with whom the client was unhappy because they were doing no work!!

Misgivings about what is going on inside the Criminal Justice System are made worse when I interview a man who is on a suspended prison sentence who cannot remember which solicitor represented him. In part, this is because he was never asked to visit their office, never had any kind of proof of evidence taken from him to assist in the task of mitigating, and at face value, the guilty plea was probably wrongly entered.

All of this is a consequence of the abolition of time based fees and the imposition of formula based fees because it was claimed that they would lead to greater effecieny. In reality, they lead to less justice.

Sentencing and the Riots

The defendants accused of riot related offences are experiencing 'the full force of the law.' The Bail Act seems no longer to apply and immediate custody or committal for sentence to the Crown court is the norm. On a cost benefit basis, this appears to lack thought. Prisons cost a lot of money - it's far better to impose suspended sentence (to act as a deterrent to with regards to future behaviour) coupled with a community penalty (curfew and/or community punishment.) But practicality was never the strong point of thieves or Magistrates!

Teams of riot police smashing down doors to extract some retribution may look 'tough,' but is another step down in the relationship with 'youth,' emotion not the best driver of action.

You couldn't make it up

Even the case hardened can be amazed by the facts of the case reports. R.v. Maxwell (Paul) the Supreme Court 29th July 2011.

Mr. Chapman was the main prosecution witness in the case of robbery and murder. The case report says 'the police has systematically misled the Court, the Crown Prosecution Service and Counsel by concealing and lying about a variety of benefits received by Chapman and his family. These included not only financial rewards, but also visits to brothels and permission to consume drugs in Police company.'

London Weighting

We are the consultation period for the Funding Order which will abolish London Weighting in Magistrates Courts cases for defence solicitors. In researching the background to this arbitrary cut it has become clear that defence solicitors we are now paid less than in 1991. The rate then for preparation was £44.50 per hour. the rate from October 2011 will be £49.70 per hour, but in 1991 travel and waiting time was paid in addition. Unbelievable!