The Times Law supplement interviews Sir Geoffrey Bindman
Publication date: 30 January 2007
The legal profession used not to be so self-seekin
g...
Dominic Carmen
30th January 2007
The Times Law Supplement
(Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd)
Expect to hear more from the solicitor Sir Geoffrey Bindman — his knighthood has, he says, 'given him the confidence to be himself...'
“ ‘The Prime Minister has asked me to let you know that he is minded to...’ A letter arrived out of the blue. I was very surprised.” Recalling the moment when he first learnt that he had been offered a knighthood, Sir Geoffrey Bindman smiles.
|
|
The 74-year-old solicitor reclines in the same red leather armchair where his father, a Geordie GP, habitually took an afternoon nap. “My father was the only doctor in the local area who supported the NHS when it was introduced,” he says, offering the quietest of tones. “He didn’t like private patients and I don’t much like commercial clients.”
Bindman sees himself as he always has done: “Modest, retiring, something of an outsider and an underdog — that’s an advantage.” His new year honour finally confirms Establishment recognition for a life’s work dedicated to human rights. Not that he needs an outsider’s ticket to the heart of the Establishment. As legal adviser to Jack Straw and Lord Levy, to name but two, Bindman has been the automatic choice for Labour’s elite over many years.
But he dislikes being labelled as a left-wing lawyer. “Do you ever read about right-wing lawyers?” he asks. “I don’t choose my clients according to my politics. They choose me. I have a purist view of my professional role. Client interests are paramount. About six months ago, a right-wing Conservative former Cabinet Minister approached me for advice. Some of my best friends are Conservatives,” he quips.
Raised in Gateshead, close to the mines, Bindman saw real poverty at first hand. Joining his father on patient visits, he felt “an affinity with the workers”. His fellow pupils at Newcastle Royal Grammar included Peter Taylor, later Lord Chief Justice, and Lawrence Shurman, later managing partner of Kingsley Napley. “After Oxford, we set up in partnership from 1961 to 1963,” Shurman says. “Geoffrey persisted with his beliefs. Many people talk about things, he made them happen.”
A civil liberty and human rights champion, Bindman became legal adviser to the Race Relations Board, renamed the Commission for Racial Equality, from 1966 to 1983. Bindman believes that “Britain was a racist society then and, to a large extent, it still is — although it’s much better among young people”. He adds that “the race relations industry has been very beneficial to society, but it has provided a lot of jobs for people who haven’t used their time effectively”.
As chairman of the British Institute of Human Rights since 2005, his interest in the rights of minorities stems from personal experience: “My grandfather was a minister at the local synagogue. Being a descendant of Eastern European Jewish immigrants was my inheritance.” One early anti-Semitic experience had a profound effect. When a successful solicitor offered him articles, young Bindman decided to join his firm. “The man was very friendly,” he explains. “Just before I was due to start, he said he felt he had to make it clear I could never be a partner because he had certain clients who wouldn’t go to a firm that had a Jewish partner. It was a bit of a bombshell.” He left instantly.
Among his many causes célèbres, Bindman has helped to keep Private Eye in print by assuaging an army of hostile libel litigants, even seeing it through the onslaught of the billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, who tried to break the magazine in the Seventies by issuing more than 60 libel writs.
Today, Bindman & Partners, a firm of 40 lawyers set up in 1974, is never far from the headlines when it comes to challenging legislation, fighting discrimination or “protecting the rights and freedoms of ordinary people”.
“A lot of lawyers are embarrassed to disclose their earnings because they earn so much,” Bindman says. “I’m embarrassed because I’ve earned so little.” Despairing of a long-term decline in professional ethics, he considers that “the legal profession used not to be so entirely selfish, self-seeking. The profession has become very greedy and materialistic. The amount of money that some lawyers earn is obscene. There’s now a kind of ruthlessness in dealings between lawyers which is unpleasant, not good for the client or for justice.”
Bindman believes that his knighthood has given him “more confidence to be myself and to express my views more forcefully. It makes me feel less of an outsider. Fewer people are likely to say this man is an idiot. What I say may be listened to.” His comments flow fast and free: “Our legal system is very badly organised, the trial process is cumbersome and ineffective and much of the culture of the Bar and judiciary is wasteful and alienating to the public.”
“The present Government,” he adds, “has lamentably failed to provide access to justice, adequate funding and a coherent legal system. But they have done a wonderful, tremendous job with the Human Rights Act. Unfortunately, having embraced it, they faltered and failed to give it the support and commitment they should have done.”
He turns his attention to the tabloid press: “Some have a lot to answer for. They have distorted and deceived readers about human rights by putting far too much emphasis on the rights of criminals undermining the safety of the public. Human rights”, he argues, “is about giving each individual dignity, fairness, equality and decent treatment, particularly by public authorities. The main purpose of human rights culture and framework in law is to give everybody the ability to challenge unfair treatment by government — protection from abuse of power. We all need that.”
