During the past few months I have received letters from presidents of law societies in Australia and New Zealand urging me to join in protests against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

I regularly sign appeals to foreign heads of state urging the release of lawyers imprisoned for political offences.Nuclear testing and imprisonment of human rights activists are, of course, 'political' issues.

Should the President of the Law Society become involved in them or in politics at all? The answer depends on the view you take of the Law Society.In former times the words 'attorney' and 'pettifogger' were virtually synonymous.

No one expected solicitors to have anything other than a worm's eye view of the world.

But those days are gone.

It is now recognised that ours is a liberal profession whose proper concern is with justice as well as law.

To be concerned with justice rather than narrow legal issues is necessarily perilous.

One person's view of justice differs from another's.

The left has its own justice issues which are not the same as those of the right.

If the Law Society is to preserve its credibility, it needs to take the utmost care not to be seen as falling into one camp or the other.

Here, we can learn a lesson from Amnesty International whose human rights targets are drawn from the whole range of regimes, far right to far left.Occasionally I receive letters complaining that I have involved myself and the Law Society 'in politics'.

But that is never the real complaint.

What the writer is actually saying is: 'How dare you take up a position which is different from the one I myself hold.' There are also those letters which do not complain about what I actually say but rather about my undesirable 'tone'.

This brings me to the speech I made a few weeks ago at the Law Society's annual conference.

In the course of it, I referred to the hijacking of some tribunals by the discrimination industry.

These words aroused high indignation among the right (ie correct) thinking.

And yet, let us look at the facts.I mentioned the awards in the pregnant servicewomen cases.

It is not surprising that these provoked a public outcry.

It was notorious that particular tribunals were far more generous with the taxpayer's money than others.The worst excesses of the tribunals in the pregnant servicewomen cases were, of course, eventually curbed by the Employment Appeals Tribunal.In the course of my speech I mentioned particular abuses -- ie awards in discrimination cases, which appeared to have no rational justification.

No one ever attempted to justify these awards.

It was said merely that they were 'unrepresentative'.

The point is however, that a few of these 'unrepresentative' cases are enough to discredit a w hole and fundamentally beneficial system.

It is the same with legal aid green form fraud.

The number of successful prosecutions in this area is tiny.

But the press coverage gives the impression of a serious and widespread problem.The 'unrepresentative' cases continue to emerge.

The latest example is that of the trainee pilot awarded £21,500 damages for sexual harassment by the principal of her employer, an aviation company.

The tribunal found that the claimant had been 'hugged and kissed at every opportunity' and that her boss had 'wined and dined her' with ulterior motives.

No doubt it was all very disagreeable and no one is saying that she should not have been properly compensated.

But what was the compensation? Her financial loss was £1500 and she was awarded this.

She also received £15,000 for 'injury to feelings' and £5000 'aggravated damages'.Compare these figures with the awards made by civil courts in personal injuries cases or by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.

Or relate them to the awards made by tribunals in 'ordinary' unfair dismissal cases (ie those without the magic ingredients of sexual or racial discrimination).

I am told that to draw attention to tribunal excesses 'demeans the work of employment lawyers'.

This is absurd.

One might as well say that to mention legal aid abuses is to insult legal aid practitioners.

The great majority of tribunals do a good job and the great majority of cases they deal with have no discrimination element.

For years it has been the Law Society's policy that legal aid should be extended to tribunal applications.

Any such extension would need to be supported by public opinion and the press.

There would be no chance of such support being forthcoming while cases of the trainee pilot kind (no matter how untypical) continued to emerge.The chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, Kamlesh Bahl (for whom I have the greatest respect) has made the reasonable point that it is unfair to blame the EOC or the Commission for Racial Equality for the excessive discrimination awards.

It is not, after all, they who assess the damages.

This is true.

But it would be refreshing if, just once, the commissions suggested that it is possible to go too far down this particular road.