Geoffrey Bindman was unassuming in his demeanour and as sharp and hard as a nail in his decision-making. While he was alive I always knew that if I got into trouble with the law, or needed legal help, I’d have advice that would be clear, realistic, tough and also, and this was important, kind – while being up for whatever fight was necessary.
He died on 4 November. He was 92. In this short, personal tribute, I’d like to salute what he stood for as well as his little-known but important contribution to openDemocracy, writing over 40 articles for us from 2003 to 2010, and chairing the independent charity the Open Trust.
In 1974, at the age of 31, Geoffrey started Bindmans, a firm of solicitors whose purpose was “protecting the rights and reputations of local Londoners”. Two principals were embedded in this apparently modest objective, from which the firm has never deviated, making it today one of the most important legal partnerships in the country.
The first principle is that of ‘rights’. It would be a quarter of a century before the UK had a Human Rights Act. In the 1970s, across most of the left, the notion of legal and constitutional ‘rights’ was regarded as giving power to ‘bourgeois judges’. But Geoffrey understood that the principle of rights for all was an essential safeguard against arbitrary power, whether commercial or official.
I only got to know him in 1988 when he signed Charter 88 (of which I was the first director) with its call for a UK Bill of Rights and a democratic, written constitution. But he was way ahead of those like me who had come round to these arguments. In 1966 he had been appointed legal adviser to the newly established Race Relations Board, a role he continued to hold at the board’s successor, the Commission for Racial Equality, from 1976. He’d also co-authored the pioneering Race and Law for Penguin Books with Anthony Lester as early as 1972.
The second principle, which is not so easily summed up in a single word, but is even more important, is that Bindmans exists to protect the underdog, regular ‘local’ people who suffer injustice and would otherwise be deprived of redress. It’s not just that Geoffrey created the firm to be ‘on their side’ – he understood that without the practical existence of justice for all, there cannot be rights for all.
These themes came together in Geoffrey’s heroic efforts to secure and safeguard legal aid. His thinking, and his frustration, can be seen in a powerful article, ‘The Rule of Law is at Risk’, which he wrote for openDemocracy in 2008. I quote at length because it is so succinct that no summary can capture his argument. It is one that still cuts through as powerful advice for a future progressive government:
What I am looking for is a much more principled approach to endorsing the need for public values that explicitly face down the marketisation of government that has been the tragic hallmark of New Labour. After a lifetime of support, I have witnessed this process at first hand, as the legacy of 1945 is systematically undone. What is happening is wrong. We need the new generation to identify that it is wrong and pledge to reverse it.
There cannot be democracy, let alone social democracy, without the rule of law. The rule of law is meaningful only if there is equal access to the courts. Justice demands a level playing field. That is only possible if everyone has equal access to legal advice and representation. That means legal aid – public funding to provide necessary help for those who cannot afford the cost of legal services.
The Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949 was a striking achievement of the post-war Labour government, parallel to the National Health Service and just as remarkable. It put those too poor to pay lawyers on a par with those who could. By so doing it, made everyone more equal before the law. It did so by using legal aid to pay fees out of public funds. As a monopoly funder, the government could keep rates to a minimum and did so.
He went on to criticise Tony Blair’s home secretary, Jack Straw, for commissioning Lord Carter, who had been “best man at both [Straw’s] weddings” and “run a highly profitable private health care company” to produce a report called ‘Legal Aid: A Market Based Approach’. Carter, Geoffrey noted, in his straightforward manner, “has a track record of really bad ideas”. He concluded:
But what is happening with legal aid is much worse than a misconceived initiative. For all the talk about empowering the individual and expanding choice, the fundamental obligation of progressive government is to assist the weak, when their case is just, against the strong. No one disputes that legal aid must be managed efficiently and economically but the Government has pursued economy at the expense of justice. Its priorities must be reversed.
After 2010, as the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition got to work imposing austerity, the situation became far worse.
In his 2013 article, ‘Justice in the Balance’, Geoffrey noted that “623,000 of the one million people who have benefited from legal aid will be denied it as a result of the draconian cuts”. He then engaged with then-Tory justice minister, Michael Gove, across a series of articles in 2015 and 2016, arguing that a 10% levy on legal fees of over £150,000 would go a long way to fund legal aid. It remains a superb proposal awaiting a government with the will to implement it.
Also in 2008, he published ‘Gaza: unlock this prison’. It was one of a number of international interventions: calling for Blair to be tried for invading Iraq, on the war on terror, on the European Court and on Pinochet and Chile.
His first contribution to openDemocracy was ‘Justice in the world’s light’ – a three-way discussion with Isabel Hilton and Juan Garces, the Spanish prosecuting lawyer whose charges against Pinochet for overseeing the torture and murder of thousands when he was the dictator from 1973 to 1990, led to his arrest in London.
Congratulating Garces, Geoffrey began: “Augusto Pinochet visited London on several occasions. On two of them I tried to have him arrested.” When the ageing ogre was finally charged in 1998, thanks to the detail of Garces’s case, Pinochet’s lawyers argued that he was immune from prosecution. Geoffrey’s swift intervention, representing Amnesty International and victims of torture by the Pinochet regime, helped make sure the then Law Lords found that he had a case to answer and should be put on trial. Hilton was in Chile and describes the explosive responses of relief (and the rage of his supporters) at the news that, finally, Pinochet had to face trial for the crimes he had overseen.
In the last years of his life, the battle over Gaza and antisemitism came to the fore. He saw that the campaign against then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for being an antisemite was contrived. His analysis of the manipulation that took place is set out in his 2022 interview with David Hearst in Middle East Eye. He gave important support to Jewish Voices for Liberation. In what was probably his last political action, in August this year, he signed an excellent public letter condemning the proscription of Palestine Action as a policy that “represents an attack both on the entire pro-Palestine movement and on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, assembly and protest”. The letter concluded with a demand for “an immediate stop to the escalating genocide and to end all UK complicity with Israel’s crimes”.
That was Geoffrey. You might not expect a gentle-spoken knight of the realm and bibliophile to be so apparently outspoken. But he simply said it as he saw it. His viewpoint was that of a genuine democrat who wanted everyone to have the voice and representation they deserved. His book buying reflected this. He acquired and had bound a rare collection of English revolutionary pamphlets from the 17th and 18th centuries. His favourite republican was ‘Freeborn John Lilburn’, the Leveller who, after suffering brutal treatment under the monarchy, helped draft The Agreement of the People in 1647, the first attempt at a modern constitution. Lilburn, Geoffrey announced, was “A hero for our time.”
