Whether opposing martial law in Pakistan or fighting racism at the bar, Sibghat Kadri has spent a lifetime battling injustice. Anita Rice meets the veteran campaigner


'I still believe it is every lawyer’s duty to fight inside and outside the court. What you do in court doesn’t matter, because that is money – anyone will do it. It is not a lawyer’s duty to get a fat legal aid cheque.’



Ruffled your feathers already? That is hardly surprising – veteran campaigner and co-founder of the Society of Black Lawyers, Sibghat Kadri QC, as those who know him best would testify, is not shy of courting a little controversy.



Kadri, head of chambers at 6 King’s Bench Walk, in London, first got involved in politics and protest as a student activist studying science at Karachi University in the late 1950s. He was a leading youth campaigner against the imposition of martial law when General Ayyub Khan seized power in Pakistan in 1958. Shortly afterwards, aged 20, he was arrested and detained without charge.



'There was one judge at the time who we had heard would entertain petitions… so I drafted my own habeas corpus petition. On the eve of the hearing they released me, but first they said I should promise not to take part in any “anti-Pakistan” activities,’ he recalls.



Internment without charge was a pivotal experience for Kadri. It not only ignited his interest in the law, but continues to underpin his thinking on authoritarianism, democracy and social justice to this day. In the intervening 50 years, he has taken a stand against racism, notably when Enoch Powell delivered his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, and opposed the National Front in the 1970s, the ‘sus laws’ of the early 1980s, and discrimination in the legal profession.



'My commitment to demonstrating and protest started in Pakistan. That experience radicalised me if you like. It was then that I realised what human rights actually mean… The state will always want to control people and it is only the people who don’t let them in a democratic country,’ he says.



Finding himself sidelined in Pakistan at the end of the 1950s, and unable to resume his studies in Karachi, Kadri and his family joined his elder brother in England.



He became a regular contributor on the BBC’s home and world service programming, offering an opposing view to those voiced by Powell and his supporters, and an insight into what was still going on in Pakistan. Determined to support his fellow activists back in Pakistan, he was a founding member of the Pakistani Student Association in the UK – an organisation General Khan also sought to ban.



He also set about becoming a barrister. In keeping with his life to that point, Kadri soon found himself on a collision course with the bar over what he believed to be institutional racism in the profession.



In the 1960s, black and Asian student barristers, many from overseas, complained that they were failing exams because they did not have access to tutorials. At the time, claims Kadri, the bar said tutorials were ‘for English students and by that they meant white’.



‘They didn’t say “white boys”, they said “English university graduates”. That is indirect racism.’



The bar denied the charge of racism, insisting it was ‘colour blind’. Kadri and others responded by organising that stalwart of student protest in the 1960s – a sit-in. Eventually, concessions were made and a student race relations committee was formed.



Despite passing his exams, he almost did not make it to the bar. The Inns initially said no, he says, ‘because I was known as a trouble-maker’, but following another sit-in and a disciplinary hearing for bringing the profession into disrepute, he finally became a barrister in 1969. He made silk 20 years later.



After pupillage and with a string of immigration cases under his belt – he recalls his first case was at the Old Bailey, which he won – Kadri faced difficulties in getting tenancy. His response was typical: he set up his own chambers – the first specifically multi-cultural set.



‘People said I was crazy to be applying for rooms, but I applied for four rooms at 11 King’s Bench Walk – and it was finally set up in 1973. One thing I always believed in was a multi-racial, multi-cultural society, and that we should be accepted

as equal, so I said it would be multi-racial chambers.’



He then co-founded the Society of Black, Asian and Commonwealth Lawyers with another veteran campaigner and barrister Rudy Narayan, who died in 1998. They renamed themselves the Society of Black Lawyers because, says Kadri, ‘the Commonwealth thing was nonsense; we meant the discrimination going on here’.



In the 1970s, there were plenty of incidents of racism to be found. ‘The sus laws came in and black boys were being harassed, “paki-bashing” started. Racism took on an ugly face and we, as lawyers, had a duty to the community at large – both inside and outside the court – to defend them.’



While much is known about Kadri’s political activities, his casework seems largely ignored. The introduction of the Immigration Act 1971 allowed for people who had entered the country before then to be declared illegal entrants and potentially deported. His work on the earliest cases challenging deportations led to a general amnesty for thousands of immigrants.



He represented young black defendants accused of offences during the 1980 Bristol riots – a period of widespread violent racial unrest further aggravated by the sus laws. The defendants were acquitted and Kadri successfully argued for a multi-cultural jury, a decision later overturned by the Court of Appeal.



Perhaps more famously, he also represented the Bradford Twelve. A group of Asian youths were charged with possessing petrol bombs in the early 1980s – a time when violent clashes with the National Front were still common. All defendants were acquitted after Kadri argued that they were acting in self-defence – the first time a judge allowed self-defence to be extended to defending a community.



Today, he believes things have improved both inside and outside the profession but eyes the current and impending counter-terrorism legislation with much concern.



‘Now it is Muslim-bashing. These are the new sus laws. I am not defending terrorism – I think it is all evil and, don’t forget, I stood up for Salman Rushdie and said he had the right to write that book, whatever I thought of it.



‘Today, we have people detained for 28 days without charge, we might have had a mini-Guantanamo Bay in Belmarsh… these are extreme measures and can be used on anybody. While the trouble may go away, the [law] itself may remain. We know [the counter-terrorism measures and the threat] are community-specific, but the law doesn’t,’ he says.



Though within the profession things are much improved, Kadri is disappointed that many lawyers do not appear to be fighting against existing inequalities in society, and for greater access to a legal career for those from less well-off backgrounds.



He says there are not enough radicals left who can take on the challenge – ‘I’m too old’ – but is clear that lawyers must do so.



‘Young people should be organising and doing this for themselves like we did. There are black and Asian people who have achieved things, but they don’t seem to remember that they did that with the support of their communities – and they owe it to them to fight.



‘If you come from the working class, people fought for you. If other people simply took what was there and didn’t fight for you, you wouldn’t be where you are. People should see they owe it to the next generation to ensure they can get to the same place,’ he says.



Kadri might say he is ‘too old’ but, at the age of 70, he is still an activist and has been a driving force behind protests in support of sacked Pakistani judges and lawyers, demonstrating throughout Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to the UK in January this year.



He also formed the UK Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and Justice in Pakistan to lobby for the reinstatement of sacked judges, lawyers and the constitution. Characteristically, at a recent meeting he noted bluntly how few non-ethnic minority UK lawyers had chosen to get involved.



Provocative, contentious and often colourful, he has given enough people enough bloody noses to ensure mixed reviews. But perhaps Kadri summed himself up best when collecting his Lifetime Achievement Award at last month’s annual Society of Asian Lawyers dinner: ‘I don’t know why I’m getting this award really. I just protest. That’s what I do.’