Independent menace

‘It’s a petty, mean-minded, short-sighted policy to say, “Let’s scrap it”,’ says solicitor advocate Lionel Blackman the day after the Conservative party launched its election manifesto, pledging to scrap the Human Rights Act (HRA), and curtail the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

While many of the legal profession took to social media to condemn Tory proposals that would effectively break the formal link between the British courts and Strasbourg, Blackman – a criminal lawyer and human rights campaigner – is putting his money where his mouth is by standing in the general election against the Lord Chancellor, Chris Grayling, in his home constituency of Epsom and Ewell.

Blackman is no stranger to politics, having been an Epsom councillor from 2005 to 2007 and
a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Esher and Walton in 2010. Five years ago he came second in the Surrey constituency with 13,541 votes, but unfortunately for Blackman, it was not enough to take what was seen as a safe Tory seat from former Linklaters’ lawyer Dominic Raab.

Yet running for parliament this time round is not an accurate description of Blackman’s ambition for the general election. ‘The reality is that the sitting MP has a large majority, and this constituency has always returned Conservative MPs with large majorities,’ he said. ‘I have been motivated singularly by the language of the candidate in the Tory conference of 2013 to “scrap” Labour’s Human Rights Act, language which I thought was rather offensive. Even if there were some arguable problems with the Act, to use that language, in that public forum, demeans so much that is valuable in human rights.’

Distorted arguments

Blackman, who has lived in Epsom for 45 years, said he felt vindicated in standing in the election having now read the Tories’ manifesto. ‘To my amazement the same verb was used – “scrap”. I feel fortified in my decision, in this small, little place in the big world, to make a stand. The inroads I may make could send a message to the Conservative party that thinking people, the floating voters, even in a safe constituency, stand up.’

However, he accepts that if by bringing attention to human rights as an issue he confers a far greater majority upon Grayling, then lessons will have to be learnt, such as how campaigners can better dispel the myths and distorted truths propagated by certain elements of the media and seized upon by some politicians.

‘The damage that’s been done to the understanding about what human rights [are]
by the relentless distortion of cases reported in newspapers such as the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and The Sun are then – whether intentionally or recklessly – echoed by some politicians. They echo the sentiments generated by these newspapers, with a view to gaining their own popularity or applause in conference halls, or they are innately prejudiced – I don’t know,’ he adds.

‘If Grayling’s majority actually goes up, and that’s interpreted as a vote for the repeal of the HRA, then that in itself is an education for those of us fighting for the HRA as to the depth with which people have been misled. I’m not seeking to be patronising and suggest people don’t know what to do, or what to vote for, but those who have knowledge and read those judgments see the disparity between what a judge said and what the Daily Mail has reported. People are being misled.’

Such ‘extraordinarily’ inaccurate arguments, Blackman says, are there for all to see in the Conservative’s manifesto. ‘They refer once again to the Abu Qatada case, which is such a big distortion. The ECtHR rejected his appeal against deportation. It went back to a British tribunal, who looked very closely at the situation, and they said, “Well, actually, we haven’t got the guarantees from Jordan required”, but then with inter-government negotiations they got the guarantees and he was deported. And then of course he was acquitted anyway. That’s neither here nor there – it’s the principle of whether you deport someone when torture evidence might be used.’

Blackman is quick to point out that it was the Conservatives that, quite rightly, ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture in 1988, ten years before Labour’s HRA. ‘It is that convention which states it is illegal to extradite a fugitive from justice if his trial in a foreign country will rely on evidence obtained from torture. There are very few countries outside the convention – Iran is one – and if you take the objections to the courts’ upholding Qatada’s right not to be extradited until there were guarantees not to use evidence based on torture, we join in company with states like Iran,’ he observes.

While it would make little difference to life in
the UK in the medium term, Blackman says a failure by the next government to accept in full the jurisdiction of the ECtHR would be to send a highly symbolic message to the rest of the world that other nations should feel free duck out of their obligations to universal human rights.

‘That then has implications for Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and others that have fragile respect for their own citizens’ human rights,’ he adds. ‘The only other country of significance in Europe that is outside the European Convention on Human Rights is Belarus.’

Europe’s last dictatorship, which has been
run by its president, Alexander Lukashenko, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has long been criticised for human rights violations. The former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice previously labelled the country as one of the world’s ‘outposts of tyranny’, which also included Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe. The country’s leaders recently introduced a new law against ‘social parasitism’, making it illegal for thousands
of Belarusians to be unemployed.

‘We want to join Belarus? It’s a disgrace,’ declares Blackman. ‘The ECtHR has upheld only 1.35 per cent of cases that have been lodged against the UK. It’s a small price to pay, for a little bit of sovereignty, to extend the development of universal human rights for the betterment of mankind.’

Voter appeal

Blackman is hoping to appeal to those Tory
voters that see themselves in the mould of former attorney general Dominic Grieve, or justice secretary Ken Clarke – who have long disagreed with party policy on Europe and human rights – and who, he says, appreciate and understand the error in repealing the HRA and seeking to break away
from Strasbourg.

‘I give those potential Conservative voters an alternative to appearing to betray their party by voting for one of their main party rivals. I make
it clear in my election leaflet that I’m not seeking
to take votes away from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens. Those parties support
the HRA, so for those who are not comfortable with those alternatives, they could vote independent,’
he explains.

‘It would be a great achievement if we were
able to add up the Labour, Green, Liberal, and independent vote, and that together it equalled,
or was greater than, Grayling’s vote. If we closed that gap in a Conservative constituency, it wouldn’t be insignificant, would it?’

While not impossible, this would likely be a Herculean task for Epsom and Ewell’s parliamentary candidates. In 2010, Grayling received 30,868 votes or 56.2 per cent of the vote share. The closest contender to the then shadow home secretary was the Lib Dem’s candidate, Jonathan Lees,
with 14,734 votes. Labour’s Craig Montgomery finished a distant third with just 6,534 votes –
a loss of 8.1 per cent from the 2005 election.

Nevertheless, Blackman remains optimistic
and is hoping to attract 5,000 to 6,000 votes for himself come 7 May. Whether this is realistic or not remains to be seen, especially when you consider that the last independent to stand in Epsom and Ewell, Peter Ticher of the Radical Reform Group, took only 266 votes in 2010.

Self-serving venture?

The offices of Lionel Blackman Solicitors are far from the stereotype often portrayed in the tabloid press. Instead of the ivory tower populated by
a great host of ‘fat cat’ lawyers, Blackman’s is a nondescript office above a William Hill bookmaker just off Epsom high street. Like the law firm equivalent of King’s Cross station’s fictional Platform 9 ¾, you are unlikely to know of its existence unless you were specifically looking for it.

As someone who has represented clients in the criminal courts for 30 years, legal aid practitioners up and down the country may well have assumed Blackman would also be using his campaign to
rail against the cuts to criminal legal aid and controversial two-tier duty contracts. Those
who have, however, will be left disappointed.

‘I’m not campaigning on that, for a number of reasons,’ he explains. ‘As a legal aid lawyer, it would be interpreted by some as a self-serving venture.
I would be happy for a non-lawyer who has been unable to obtain justice being that candidate on a legal aid platform, but it’s not appropriate for me.’

The complexity of the legal aid argument, coupled with the limited window to the public
that Blackman is able to take advantage of,
were yet further reasons he decided to limit his campaign to the issue of human rights. ‘To convey that in a leaflet or a local newspaper is not going to be achievable. Legal aid is part of our welfare and our culture. It is something that is programmatic for political parties to present what their policies are; it’s not for a one-man band.’

This might seem odd coming from a practitioner whose very future may depend upon bidding for the highly derided and controversial 2015 duty provider crime contracts. ‘A few years back, I had all sorts of great ideas about how I could manage a quarter of the duty work in Surrey,’ he discloses. ‘I’d worked out systems to be able to manage a bigger operation, but I’ve lost enthusiasm for that and I’m not going to bid in coalition or otherwise. The remuneration for these duty contracts is not perhaps as great as it was when first trailed and there are some substantial risks involved. I’ll be 55 this year, have been in the business 30 years; I’ve got other things of interest in my life to pursue.’

Blackman says he has never truly been an expansionist, and instead has been happy to have a caseload that ebbed and flowed. He admits to taking greater satisfaction in the work when his firm is less pressured, meaning he can devote more time to individual cases.

‘I don’t want this to reflect on the rights and wrongs of consolidation’, he says. ‘There are some arguments on its merits. I look at it from the point of view of equality of arms – even though the prosecution is in disarray due to underfunding. There’s no limit to the resources the police and prosecution throw into a murder case, and sometimes you need a good, strong, powerful defence force to meet that. I don’t really want to disappoint anybody, it’s purely a personal position I have in my time of life not to be pursuing it.’

Labour’s stance on legal aid has, however, impressed Blackman. ‘Sadiq Khan is certainly making a lot of noise in favour of legal aid. He’s said he wouldn’t go ahead with the dual contracting. It would be nice to hear it from the leadership, instead of going round and round the mulberry bush with the health service, and this tax cut, or that tax rise. It would be nice to hear something different from the leaders.’

Vitriolic attacks

Perhaps surprisingly, Blackman admits to agreeing with some elements of Grayling’s cuts, such as the Lord Chancellor’s efforts to reduce QC fees in long fraud trials. ‘It’s not really deserved and is draining the fund for more deserving causes. Of course, that’s not to say I’m without sympathy for all those people being deprived
of legal aid. Far from it.

‘I appreciate that Grayling gets a lot of vitriolic attacks from many lawyers, but he’s just the fall guy. It’s because the coalition agreed to certain cuts, and he’s expected to implement them. Whoever the Lord Chancellor was, I doubt it would make an enormous amount of difference. They would have found someone prepared to take the challenge on.’

Blackman has previously written to the justice secretary offering him advice on where money could be saved. ‘Before I even thought of standing, I offered: “Look, I’m quite happy to advise you as someone at the coalface where you can actually save money in a more sensible way”. The Crown Prosecution Service is in disarray.
I have trial upon trial adjourned because the prosecution hasn’t got its act together. If he spent a bit more on the CPS, he’d save money for the legal aid fund.’

It is clear from speaking with him that Blackman has sympathy for his counterparts at the CPS.
‘I don’t understand the short-sightedness of underfunding the CPS,’ he says. ‘They’re all hardworking, dedicated individuals doing their best with the resources available. On top of the cuts, they’re all trying to manage their cases electronically. They don’t have paper
files half the time, or it’s not on their system to assist the court. It’s all embarrassing. Every other trial at the magistrates’ court, the prosecutor asks me to help him with his papers, and I’ve now said, “Sorry, no”. It doesn’t give the right message to be feeding the prosecutor the information he needs to prosecute my own client.’

While confessing he is sorry not to be campaigning on legal aid, Blackman says that having made his decision to stand on the HRA,
he can’t now let legal aid hijack the campaign. ‘I understand the importance of Britain’s leadership of, and commitment to, international human rights. Around the world, Britain is still – even after Iraq – looked up to. Grayling is totally underestimating the influence we have around the world. Our parliament, our court, Magna Carta – May is the 70th anniversary of the defeat of fascism in Europe. All these things, Britain is looked up to still for being a beacon of liberty,’
he continues.

‘Around the world the people who understand the importance of the international community will be staggered and amazed if the message
is given that Britain is somehow withdrawing from its European mechanism. They’ll be dumbstruck.’ SJ

Image copyright: symbiot/Shutterstock.com

 

John van der Luit-Drummond is deputy editor of Solicitors Journal

@JvdLD

johnvanderluit@solicitorsjournal.co.uk