Below, Khan and Martin Mears, scourge of political correctness, put their points of view
Imagine this. The Metropolitan Police has been found to have discriminated against a senior black officeholder on grounds of race and gender. The force denied the discrimination. The finding resulted from a six-week trial at an employment tribunal, in which the complainant was cross-examined by a leading QC for many days. The Met spent more than a million pounds on legal costs defending itself and two of its staff. Since the decision, the Met has offered no apology or quarter. It has refused to conduct an internal inquiry into the findings. In fact, it arrogantly asserts that there is no discrimination problem, that if there were it has been dealt with.
In the post-Macpherson period, this would be appalling. The complete denial of responsibility, the decision not to apologise and the failure to take remedial action, would smack of institutionalised racism and sexism. Yet the surprise is that it this is not the Met but the Law Society that has been found to have discriminated in this way. The case was that of Kamlesh Bahl.
Since the employment tribunal decision, the Law Society has stated that it does not have an internal discrimination problem. We do not know on what basis this assumption is made. There has been no internal investigation. One of the two people found against by the tribunal, Robert Sayer, a former President, remains a prominent figure on the ruling council. The Law Society supports his appeal. It continues to use our practice certificate fees to fund further Sayer’s legal fees.
Astonishingly, it also continues to fund the legal fees of the other person found guilty of discrimination, Jane Betts, former chief executive, although she is no longer employed by the Society. (The Law Society has been invoiced for more than £1.3 million over this case). This is a scandalous waste of money. It is a level of support that not even the most unrecalcitrant senior officer in the Met would dare to suggest, let alone approve at board level. Sayer has not been investigated, suspended pending any investigation or even removed from office. He continues to influence policy. The complaint made by Bahl against Sayer in December 1999 has still not been investigated.
The Law Society’s failure to take responsibility is a matter of shame to the profession. For this reason, 137 solicitors and myself have taken the unprecedented step of compelling the Law Society to hold a Special General Meeting at 2.30pm on Thursday. We have signed a requisition demanding an internal inquiry and the suspension of Sayer pending the completion of that investigation.
We did not choose the date; the council has. It is a date on which the whole council was already due to meet, so those who support the status quo will be there in force. We will not be put off. I have learnt that the institutions with the most ingrained problems of racism, do their utmost to avoid responsibility and further inquiry. The Met fought tooth and nail to avoid a proper consideration of the issues. I also understand that contrary to improving its diversity role, the opposite has occurred. Last autumn the African, Caribbean and Asian Lawyers group had its society funding cut and the society cut its equal opportunities officers by half. This looks like a hardening of its position, if true.
Unfortunately, not far from all recent decisions is the President, David McIntosh. He apparently supports Sayer (and Betts). But the Society, through him, refuses to apologise. There are no equal opportunity champions within the predominantly white Law Society. McIntosh should be the champion but this is a source of confusion among ethnic minority solicitors. We did not elect him. We were not consulted. We do not want him.
We have no voice on the council. We have one seat, almost always silent, against the overwhelming conservatism. Hence, we had to take the radical step of compelling the Law Society to address its inaction. Ethnic minority solicitors and prospective ethnic minority solicitors will continue to suffer and be discriminated against until the society grasps the nettle.
Many solicitors to whom I have spoken are frightened. They feel that if they vote against the society, it will victimise them. Many would not sign the requisition on this basis. So we have bright, assertive professionals apparently in fear of the society’s vindictiveness. In practice as they say, all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Law Society is a monopoly that has reached the end of the line. It must become truly representative and truly accountable.
I urge all solicitors who care about the future of the profession to attend on Thursday and vote the way their consciences dictates. If they do, there will be change and it will be the first time in living memory when conscience outweighs the party line. Only then can we begin to build a profession to be proud of.
Imran Khan
The author will be speaking at 2.30pm
Martin Mears replies:
Last summer an employment tribunal ruled that the Law Society’s former vice-president, Kamlesh Bahl, had suffered racial and sexual discrimination at the hands of the society’s chief executive, Jane Betts, and the former President, Robert Sayer.
This verdict came as a shock to the Law Society though it should not have surprised anyone acquainted with recent tribunal decisions in discrimination cases. Bahl’s victory was not wholly a triumph since the tribunal also found that in giving her evidence she had perjured herself.
Early in 2000 a committee of inquiry presided over by Lord Griffiths, the retired Law Lord, found Bahl guilty of humiliating and bullying a number of Law Society staff. A perjurer and bully? Bahl’s credentials as a martyr figure are ambiguous. This notwithstanding, she continues (as she has done throughout) to represent herself as a plucky little victim, the proof of this being in the employment tribunal’s finding of discrimination.
It might be thought that Bahl and her supporters would feel some embarrassment in brandishing those parts of the tribunal’s judgment favourable to her while repudiating the disagreeable bits. Far from it. Imran Khan and others have now requisitioned a Special General Meeting of the Law Society at which the dirty washing of the Bahl litigation will again be exhibited to the public gaze. Khan’s resolutions, if carried, would be draconian: Resolution One calls for the removal of officials and staff members whose actions led “or contributed” to Kamlesh’s martyrdom. Resolution Two calls for an “independent” inquiry into the events leading to Bahl’s forced resignation to be chaired by a person. nominated by the Society of Black Lawyers. Resolution Three would, pending the outcome of the inquiry, discontinue the society’s funding of Sayer and Betts in their litigation with Bahl.
The remarkable thing about Khan’s resolutions is that he is asking them to be carried and implemented when the employment tribunal’s findings against the Law Society, Sayer and Betts are under appeal and when Bahl has cross appealed.
In due course, the employment appeals tribunal will deliver its ruling. It is at least possible that the matter will not stop there and that the play will have a final performance at the Court of Appeal.
The whole Bahl case, therefore, is as sub-judice as it is possible to be. Of this Khan and his co-proposers (all of whom are solicitors) are well aware. What game, therefore, are they playing? They have presumably heard of employment protection legislation. How can they argue that Law Society staff should be disciplined and possibly dismissed in respect of acts of discrimination that an appeal court might find did not exist? How can they think it proper that those held responsible for the Bahl’s defenestration should be hunted down and punished before it is finally established that Bahl is the injured party? Khan and his supporters are presumably aware also that there is no chance that the Law Society’s Council would take any notice of the resolutions (assuming they were carried) pending the outcome of the appeals.
Imran Khan is a luminary of the discrimination industry and was one of the lawyers who represented the family of Stephen Lawrence after his murder. His association with the Lawrence family, however, was not entirely a felicitous one. It may be recalled that, advised by Khan and his associates, the family launched a private prosecution against three of the prime murder suspects. Why a private prosecution? Because the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had decided to discontinue its prosecution because there was, in the words of experienced counsel “not a cat in hell’s chance of a conviction”. This decision is discussed at some length in the Macpherson Report. It is endorsed by Sir William himself. In the event it was shown to be only too correct.
The CPS was at some pains to make its views known to the Lawrence legal team. The Macpherson Report (para 39.46) says: “So far as Mr Youngerwood was concerned, the decision to go ahead was a disaster ... When he heard that the private prosecution was being mooted, he at once contacted Mr Khan because he was very worried that the prosecution was bound to fail...” None of the CPS’s representations had any effect. The private prosecution duly collapsed. The consequence was the immunity from further prosecution of three prime suspects no matter what further evidence might turn up.
The Bahl resolutions and the Lawrence private prosecution form a pattern: in each case a course of conduct plainly misconceived and predictably doomed to failure; in each case actions whose sole practical effect is a further stirring of the pot of racial grievance, animosity and discord.
Martin Mears
The author is a former President of the Law Society.
Source: The Times, 29th January 2002.