Taking liberties

IN-HOUSE: LIBERTY

Liberty was formed in 1934 over concerns about the police inciting riots.

TODAY, ITS IN-HOUSE TEAM FACES EVEN TOUGHER CHALLENGES SUCH AS ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS, SAYS CHRIS BAKER

On any given day, you could be asked to represent a Whitehall whistleblower or someone who has been imprisoned without charge under anti-terrorism legislation.

You might have to give interviews to the media pack, advise on how best to seek a test case, or give human rights support to other lawyers.

Welcome to Liberty's litigation department.Since 1934, the human rights charity has lobbied governments, given legal advice to people who think their rights have been infringed, and has also sought test cases when it believes legislation is too draconian.

It also has an arrangement where lawyers from firms across the country can ring its team of solicitors - four-strong at present - for advice.'We are always dealing with interesting cases,' Liberty's legal director James Welch says.

'There's nothing routine at all.

We only take on a case when we think it will set a useful precedent.'After graduating from Newcastle Polytechnic, Mr Welch went straight into private practice at Alexander & Partners in Harlesden, north-west London, before joining Liberty's litigation department.

He was not always interested in a legal career, but he says: 'I've always been interested in social issues and working for people who are up against it.

It seemed to me that being a lawyer and working in a legal aid practice would be a good way to do that.'After 11 years working on legal aid cases in Harlesden, he saw that a job was going at Liberty.

It was a post he had been interested in for a while.'I had a great deal of respect for Liberty from when I was training as a lawyer,' Mr Welch explains.

'I was happy to get out of private practice - this is much more intellectually demanding.'It is the sheer range of issues covered by the charity that Mr Welch enjoys most.

In one of his most recent high-profile cases, he represented Katharine Gun, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) whistleblower who faced imprisonment under the Official Secrets Act.

The charges were dropped.

'At one stage I was working on two criminal cases at the same time - one at a magistrates' court and one at the House of Lords,' he says.

'It can be that varied and it's always interesting.'The scope of work also tempted Mona Arshi over from Ealing firm JR Jones - a firm perhaps best known for its work on the Stephen Lawrence case four years ago.

A practice with a strong civil liberties ethos, Ms Arshi was largely concerned with asylum and immigration work, an area in which Liberty is also heavily involved.'I have a passion for human rights,' she says.

The biggest benefit of life at Liberty for Ms Arshi is the type of cases undertaken.

'All of our cases are test cases,' she explains.

'I call myself a public human rights lawyer but we also test the law and very rarely do you get the opportunity to do that in any other environment.'Ms Arshi represented Diane Pretty in the controversial 'right-to- die' case.

'There's no typical day at all,' she enthuses.

'The great thing about this job is you're not working as a normal lawyer - you don't have to get to your desk and phone barristers or seek counsel.

It's very much joined up with the rest of the organisation.'For example, if Home Secretary David Blunkett were to make a potentially controversial remark about bringing in stop-and-search powers, the entire Liberty team would spring into action.

'The campaigns department would tell us about that so we could advise them on bringing a test case,' Ms Arshi says.

'We will drop everything to think about creative ways of bringing test cases.

And on high-profile cases, we will have to do a lot of press work.'Because it is such a small team, not a huge number of cases are dealt with at the same time, Mr Welch says.

'But we work intensively on the ones we do work on.

You might spend the entire day working on the one case.'Liberty also has a contract with the Legal Services Commission to provide support to other solicitors and advisers on human rights issues, so time has to be spent waiting for the calls to come in.

Then there are always the meetings to hammer out how Liberty is to respond to civil liberties issues as they arise.The newest member of the team is Emily Grabham, who only started at the beginning of April.

She is working as a three-month locum to cover for another lawyer on secondment to the European Court of Human Rights.'If you are looking to do human rights litigation in the UK, this is one of the best places to do it,' she says.

The charity's reputation for quality work and a supportive environment was a further draw, she adds.Ms Grabham did her training at City firm Macfarlanes, specialising in employment law before moving on to Lesbian and Gay Employment Rights (LAGER), where she specialised in workplace discrimination.'I got interested in human rights cases in the absence of any specific legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexuality in the workplace,' she says.

'At that time there was no law to prohibit it - and LAGER found Liberty was always very helpful.'Getting settled in to her new post at Liberty, Ms Grabham admits she is 'doing a lot of reading'.

She explains: 'At the moment I'm working on a potential judicial review, possibly engaging article 8 issues [right to respect for private and family life],' she says.Despite the team's obvious commitment to work, there are downsides.

Mr Welch's complaint is one that will be familiar to anyone who has undertaken publicly funded work.'Even though we are not in private practice, we still have to deal with legal aid, and all the frustrations and challenges that come from that,' he says.

'There are strictures and demands set down by the Legal Services Commission that seem to me to be unnecessary and restrictive.'Funding is always an issue.

'We are a charity so we are strapped for cash,' Ms Arshi says.

'It would be lovely to do more cases and have more lawyers, and we would to do a lot more pro bono work.

Also, coming from the private environment, you [finally] get used to not having the secretary and the money to do things, but it is difficult.'Mr Welch agrees that it is the nature of the beast.

'To be fair, one is always working for an organisation that is trying to do an enormous amount with a very limited amount of funding,' he admits.From supporting the rights of the hunger marchers of the 1930s to trying to put an end to internment in 2004, Liberty has been at the forefront of civil liberties campaigning for 70 years.

As fears about terrorist activity increase the potential for legislation that seeks to protect the majority at the expense of the rights of the individual, the workload of the four members of Liberty's litigation department can only get heavier.Chris Baker is a freelance journalist

A HISTORY OF LIBERTYLiberty was formed as the Council for Civil Liberties in February 1934, and was renamed the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) shortly after.

The founder, journalist Ronald Kidd, was inspired by the use of police agent provocateurs to incite violence during hunger marches in London in 1932.

The first president was the author EM Forster, and vice-presidents included Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan, AA Milne, JB Priestly, Bertrand Russell and HG Wells.

Membership reached 1,500 by the end of 1934.

It took on the issues of the day, centred around the rise of Fascism, such as public order.

By late 1940, there were 3,000 individual members and 700 affiliated organisations.The outbreak of the Second World War saw the NCCL addressing censorship, internment and democratic rights for members of the armed forces, and offering legal services to employees who were victimised on the basis of belief, such as threats to dismiss BBC workers who showed Communist sympathies.After the war, the NCCL was in some turmoil as public support declined, partly because of suspicions of Communist influence and a perceived move away from its traditionally non-partisan stance.

That led to EM Forster's resignation.

In 1948, the NCCL focused new energies on mental health, its campaign doing much to encourage the Mental Health Act 1959.

Into the 1960s, its agenda broadened from mental health and miscarriages of justice to address race relations and immigration, and the rights of children.

In 1971, with membership of more than 5,000, current cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt became the NCCL's general secretary.

The current Solicitor-General, Harriet Harman QC, also made her name as a legal officer there in the late 1970s.

The NCCL took on anti-discrimination in the 1970s, establishing a gay rights committee in 1974.The mid-1980s saw deep divisions within Liberty around two crucial issues: whether to give advice to National Front members and support for closed-shop agreements, leading to the resignation of then general secretary Larry Gostin.In January 1989, the NCCL was relaunched as Liberty.

Under the leadership of Andrew Puddephatt, it developed a broader focus on human rights issues, with two inter-related strands: popular campaigns and other initiatives aimed to promote and develop a culture of human rights; and including use of the European Convention on Human Rights in its casework.

This second strand was developed primarily by solicitor John Wadham, who was Liberty's director until last year, when he left to become deputy chairman of the new Independent Police Complaints Authority.

He was replaced by barrister Shami Chakrabarti, a former Home Office official who joined Liberty's legal team in 2001.