The facade of Garden Court Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is reassuringly traditional. The barristers who work there occupy buildings which were once home to the Earl of Sandwich and the Tory prime minister Spencer Perceval. If there were any building in London in which wigs and gowns would seem a natural form of dress, it would be here.
But the facade is just that. For behind the pedimented Georgian windows there operates arguably the most radically effective cell of left-wing activists in Britain. Barristers are supposed to adhere to the cab-rank principle: they act for the first client who comes calling. Many of Garden Court’s lawyers, however, though they operate across a wide range of cases, appear to be united by one thing – their unerring tendency to champion the most left-wing causes conceivable.
The chambers have recently been in the news as the home of Franck Magennis, a proudly communist barrister who is acting pro bono for Hamas in its quest to overturn the government’s decision to classify it as a terrorist group. (Garden Court said in a statement last month: ‘The barrister concerned has chosen to undertake this application and publicise it in his individual capacity. This in no way indicates that Garden Court Chambers supports his client.’)
Magennis’s social media posts offer illuminating perspectives on contemporary issues. He extended ‘full solidarity’ to the Irish Republican rap group Kneecap after they proclaimed ‘Up Hamas! Up Hezbollah!’ at one of their concerts. He celebrated having some time off from work over Easter so he could catch up on essential reading, Marxism and Transgender Liberation – Confronting Transphobia on the British Left by Red Fightback.And
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