To Kill a Mockingbird

The present government is removing our ability to access justice. It is ensuring that the only way in the future that you will be able to challenge its decisions and properly defend your rights is if you have the money to do so. It calls this “reform”

It continues to play to prejudice. It encourages us to cheer the destruction of the British justice system by personalising it and demonising lawyers. They are “fat cats”. They deserve what they get

What the senior civil servants prosecuting these austerity cuts fail to mention is that they typically earn three times the salary of the vast majority of legal aid lawyers. Nor do they mention why legal aid lawyers do what they do. They do not mention, for example, that legal aid lawyers choose the poorest paid area of the profession – akin to the salaries of school teachers, sewage workers and other public sector workers – because they believe that everyone, no matter what their means and situation, should have an equal ability to seek justice. They do not mention that battles between the individual and the state are weighted against the individual. They do not mention that they are personally profiting from the destruction of our rights through financial involvement in the profit driven insurance companies, outsourcing services, public sector service companies they are grooming to replace commitment-based professions: nurses, fire services, police officers, lifeguards, legal aid lawyers. They certainly do not mention the commitment and humanity of the public defender. They have put a price on justice and are ensuring we are unable to pay

They call it “reform”

I say they are oath-breakers, charlatans who peddle lies for their own gain. I name them enemies of promise

Before we succumb fully to the prejudice and media-supported hysteria about the legal profession, about human rights, about legal aid lawyers, remember one thing:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it

And to the people who have not given up and are still fighting for justice, to those that I am proud to call friends, just this:

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. 

No matter what.

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