As I looked around the reunion dinner, I reflected that history had smiled upon many of our campaigning causes.

Foreign troops had left Vietnam, the Berlin Wall had fallen and South Africa stood on the brink of democracy.

At home, higher education had expanded and the binary line was a thing of the past.

The radical student leaders over whom I had presided 20 years ago were now gathered round the table as financial analysts, management consultants, union officials, journalists and academics.

Running the system rather than overthrowing it was clearly the order of the day.

Bringing about the collapse of capitalism appeared to be of concern to only one of our number but as an insolvency practitioner he regarded it as a business opportunity rather than a political theory.

But the satisfaction of successful careers and campaigns fulfilled was marred by the knowledge that in one crucial area matters had got worse not better.

Twenty years ago I walked away from my last student conference with my one-year-old son on my arm thinking that by the time he went into higher education the anomalies of the student grant system would have been resolved and that the lottery of local authority discretion would have gone forever.

Little did I think that 20 years on I would see my son attempting to piece together a package of loans and contributions from charitable trusts to fund his year of postgraduate study as a musician.

I did not think that the passage of two decades would find me again at a parliamentary lobby protesting at the poverty and debt resulting from an inadequate and discretionary system of student funding.

For trainee solicitors, the issue of funding goes beyond personal hardship, it is about access and consent to the system of justice.

The government, and in particular the Lord Chancellor, must address the problem of student funding with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.

Four years ago, two-thirds of the fees paid to the College of Law came from local authorities.

Now less than 10% of fees come from that source.

That dramatic and near total collapse of public funding for the training of lawyers means the only routes to qualification are family assistance, horrendous debt or sponsorship from firms.

Of these, sponsorship by firms is by far the most significant route.

But student sponsorship comes predominantly from the larger firms based in the major cities and dealing predominantly with corporate clients.

It is to these firms that an increasing proportion of trainees will go as the smaller high street practice, with its heavy dependence upon legally aided private client work and a depressed conveyancing market, simply cannot afford the cost of sponsorship.

Denied the life blood of newly qualified recruits, the struggle of those firms to survive will become even more acute.

It cannot be right that the funding of training should tip the balance of entry to the profession so heavily towards the major firms and their corporate clients.

Access to justice depends on a network of high street firms serving private clients.

A system of student support that steers trainees away from that type of work is a threat to access to justice that no Lord Chancellor should ignore.

Even more serious is the damage that will be done to confidence in and consent to the system of justice.

The removal of public funding will narrow the social base of the profession.

How can people have confidence in a system from which they are alienated? If able young people from working class, or under-privileged backgrounds or from ethnic minorities cannot aspire to careers in the law how can we expect them, their families or their communities to have respect for the system? If ability is denied opportunity through a lack of funding then alienation will surely set in.

Respect for and confidence in the system of justice is essential to the working of any civilised and democratic society.

If that respect and confidence is undermined, if the system of justice is seen as belonging to 'them' and never to 'us' then consent to the operation of the system of justice will itself be eroded.

The loss of that consent will undermine the fabric of society to an extent that would exceed the wildest dreams of any 1960s student revolutionary.

All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

The good man who sits on the woolsack must act now whilst there is still time to prevent the erosion of access to and confidence in the system of justice.

At the Trainee Solicitors Group conference in Cardiff last weekend the group's publicity officer had his seven-week-old son on his arm.

I hope that in another 20 years time we will not be fighting this same battle for that generation, for by then the damage will already have been done.