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 he shared with his online followers the request from his mother that they ‘watch an anti-Zionist film tonight’, adding: ‘Any suggestions gratefully received.’ The irony of deprecating transphobia and acting for Hamas may be lost on Magennis, but he is far from the only barrister at Garden Court whose radicalism is either out in the open or is otherwise thinly disguised.
One barrister suggested that the Tory party should be ‘dealt with as you would deal with the Nazis’
Several of the chambers’ lawyers simultaneously work as barristers representing asylum seekers in immigration tribunals and as judges sitting in those same tribunals. There is no doubting the skill or zeal of Garden Court’s advocates when it comes to securing the continued presence in Britain of a variety of intriguing individuals. But the question remains as to whether lawyers who advertise their determination to prevent people being deported should also be the judges deciding on deportation cases.
Among one of Garden Court’s most accomplished barristers is Rebecca Chapman. She has three decades of experience representing clients with asylum claims, with a particular focus on unaccompanied minors and those facing persecution on account of their gender or sexual orientation. She also has substantial experience in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), claims based on family life, and Article 3, claims based on health and medical conditions. In 2021 she co-authored A Practical Guide to Health and Medical Cases in Immigration Law.
Chapman, however, also works part-time as a judge in the Upper Tier Immigration Tribunal, where she recently granted two Albanian lesbians the right to stay in Britain on the grounds that Albania is a patriarchy and homophobia is rampant in rural areas, even though the country’s law forbids discrimination against people on the grounds of sexual orientation.
One of Chapman’s colleagues, Greg O Ceallaigh KC, is another barrister-cum-judge in the Upper Tier Immigration Tribunal. He gave a sense of the thinking he brings to that responsibility when, prior to his appointment, he reposted on LinkedIn a demand by the Asylum Aid charity for the repeal of the Illegal Migration Act. In another social media post he suggested that the Tory party should be ‘dealt with as you would deal with the Nazis’.
Other Garden Court barristers have displayed signal success in ensuring that convicted criminals can stay in the country. Patrick Lewis managed to ensure a Jamaican rapist avoided deportation on human-rights grounds, since the crimes the man committed in this country meant he was not eligible for witness protection in the Caribbean. Eva Doerr helped an Albanian offender to stay in Britain because sending him back to the Balkans would mean he could only communicate with his 15-year-old stepson via Zoom, which would be unfair on the boy.
The main tool used by Garden Court’s barristers to keep criminals in the UK is an inventive interpretation of the right to a family life. Well-meaning clauses written into the ECHR in 1950 have been stretched by lawyers to challenge governments that try to tackle illegal migration.
Garden Court’s housing team is led by Liz Davies KC, who was deselected as a Labour candidate for being too left-wing. She briefly chaired a Trotskyist umbrella organisation called Socialist Alliance. One of her protégés in Garden Court is Nick Bano, whose polemic Against Landlords makes the case for driving ‘landlords and house price speculators from the face of the Earth’. He proposes, among other things, a 100 per cent capital gains tax on property and cites Das Kapital as his principal influence.
In addition to its housing team, Garden Court has an entire protest rights team who act for climate-change activists causing obstruction or criminal damage. Although they don’t always win, they can often find enough sympathetic jurists to extract perverse verdicts. Garden Court barrister Michael Goold did not deny that six Extinction Rebellion activists had used an old fire engine to spray red paint over the Treasury in 2019, but convinced the jury that ‘anyone who knew the full scale of the climate crisis would have consented to the damage’ and that therefore this ‘provided them with a defence of lawful excuse’. In other words, I can damage your property if I think you ought to share my beliefs.
Using the ‘climate crisis’ as a tool to change policy, challenge governments and get the courts to embed left-wing principles was a feature of one of Garden Court’s most notable recent successes. The chambers acted for a group of elderly Swiss citizens who claimed their government had breached their right to family life by taking insufficient action to counter climate change, thus making it too dangerous for them to go outside in a heatwave.
Activist lawyers are going to triumph so long as our elected representatives hand them the ammunition to fight
The case was heard by the European Court of Human Rights, which found in favour of Garden Court’s arguments. In this landmark ruling, the chambers’ barristers established that a dedicated team of activist lawyers can overrule the policies of a democratically elected government if they use the provisions of the ECHR with sufficient tenacity and guile. The former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption has warned against ‘law’s expanding empire’ over the domain of elected politicians. No group of lawyers has contributed more to this process than Garden Court.
The success of the chambers in making a mockery of migration law shows just how much power has drained away from our elected representatives to the courts in recent years. The fact it attracts lawyers of undoubted intellect and skill is a demonstration of how many idealistic left-wing minds pursue a career in law, rather than politics, as their way to change the world.
Not every progressive lawyer is welcome in Garden Court, though. One of its former barristers, Allison Bailey, who is a criminal defence specialist and a campaigner for racial equality, found her comrades turning against her when she came out as a gender-critical feminist. She opposed the chambers becoming members of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme and she expressed her view – which has been subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court – that no one can change biological sex. The chambers tweeted that it was going to investigate her for ‘transphobia’. One person deeply involved in the case against Bailey was Maya Sikand KC, Keir Starmer’s ex-girlfriend, who was then at Garden Court. Bailey left the chambers soon afterwards but won compensation and is pursuing Stonewall through the Court of Appeal.
It is clear that Garden Court’s barristers are idealists, gifted advocates and politically passionate. There is much to admire in their willingness to fight so hard and effectively for their clients. But their propensity to act again and again for left-wing causes undermines the cab-rank principle that barristers should not be judged for their clients any more than taxi drivers should be criticised for their passengers.
Any suggestion it is mere coincidence that Garden Court barristers bring so many cases against the state on behalf of asylum seekers, protestors and even terrorists is belied by how many of them openly champion their hard-left views. And while Garden Court racks up victories, the manner in which it has pushed the boundaries of the ECHR and sought to extend the remit of the right to family life to the point of absurdity leaves the ECHR looking less like a neutral instrument of law and more like a weapon in an ideological battle. Activist lawyers are going to triumph more often than not so long as our elected representatives keep handing them the ammunition to fight. The limp suggestion this week from the Home Secretary that the government should ‘review’ how the ECHR is interpreted in the courts will have done little to deter the idealists of Garden Court. (The chambers were approached for comment about this article but no reply had been received by the time we went to press. However, they have previously said members of the independent Bar should not be conflated with their clients’ interests or views.)
Given that in many sensitive migration and asylum cases, judgments are made by lawyers who are open about their ideological opposition to tough border controls, the public might understandably think that our legal system is not operating with the impartiality it should. If the same lawyers who champion asylum seekers with criminal convictions or defend vandalism on the grounds of ideology cannot also tolerate a gender-critical feminist in their midst, then such worries will only worsen. For those who believe the rule of law matters, the expanding role of Garden Court’s lawyers in our national life may well be a cause for concern.
Additional reporting by Sophia Falkner
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