When it came to campaigning for justice, Obiter's late friend Andrew, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, was no quitter. But we recall he once tried to retire from the House of Lords, to which he was elevated in 1998.
It was July 2006 and despite being a spritely 67, a year younger than the average of his peers, Phillips decided it was time to make way for ‘younger blood’. He applied to vacate his seat, only to be told that it wasn't allowed. Instead he was granted a ‘leave of absence’ that ended in 2009, meaning he was back in time to lambast the coalition government's legal aid cuts.
Eventually, under the provisions of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, he was able to hang up his ermine in 2015 to make time for his many other interests.
In his last correspondence with the Gazette, Phillips looked back to his legal roots, wondering if any other readers had the privilege of working for a firm that had practised from the same premises for a continuous 149 years. He was referring to the Sudbury premises of Bates, Wells & Braithwaite, where Thomas Bates put up his plate in the 1870s. 'The firm continues contentedly from the same splendid 18th century building to this day.'
He revealed that, 'as one who started in the building as office boy in 1957 before Cambridge, qualification and setting up on my own in the City in 1970 as ‘Bates, Wells & Braithwaite’ (to gratify my father, who was principal in Sudbury), the place still enchants me!'
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