From the Spectator article posted above: The chambers have recently been in the news as the home of Franck Magennis, a proudly communist barrister who is acting pro bono for Hamas in its quest to overturn the government’s decision to classify it as a terrorist group. (Garden Court said in a statement last month: ‘The barrister concerned has chosen to undertake this application and publicise it in his individual capacity. This in no way indicates that Garden Court Chambers supports his client.’)
Magennis’s social media posts offer illuminating perspectives on contemporary issues. He extended ‘full solidarity’ to the Irish Republican rap group Kneecap after they proclaimed ‘Up Hamas! Up Hezbollah!’ at one of their concerts. He celebrated having some time off from work over Easter so he could catch up on essential reading, Marxism and Transgender Liberation – Confronting Transphobia on the British Left by Red Fightback.And he shared with his online followers the request from his mother that they ‘watch an anti-Zionist film tonight’, adding: ‘Any suggestions gratefully received.’
The irony of deprecating transphobia and acting for Hamas may be lost on Magennis, but he is far from the only barrister at Garden Court whose radicalism is either out in the open or is otherwise thinly disguised.
One barrister suggested that the Tory party should be ‘dealt with as you would deal with the Nazis’
Several of the chambers’ lawyers simultaneously work as barristers representing asylum seekers in immigration tribunals and as judges sitting in those same tribunals. There is no doubting the skill or zeal of Garden Court’s advocates when it comes to securing the continued presence in Britain of a variety of intriguing individuals. But the question remains as to whether lawyers who advertise their determination to prevent people being deported should also be the judges deciding on deportation cases.
Among one of Garden Court’s most accomplished barristers is Rebecca Chapman. She has three decades of experience representing clients with asylum claims, with a particular focus on unaccompanied minors and those facing persecution on account of their gender or sexual orientation. She also has substantial experience in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), claims based on family life, and Article 3, claims based on health and medical conditions. In 2021 she co-authored A Practical Guide to Health and Medical Cases in Immigration Law.
Chapman, however, also works part-time as a judge in the Upper Tier Immigration Tribunal, where she recently granted two Albanian lesbians the right to stay in Britain on the grounds that Albania is a patriarchy and homophobia is rampant in rural areas, even though the country’s law forbids discrimination against people on the grounds of sexual orientation.
One of Chapman’s colleagues, Greg O Ceallaigh KC, is another barrister-cum-judge in the Upper Tier Immigration Tribunal. He gave a sense of the thinking he brings to that responsibility when, prior to his appointment, he reposted on LinkedIn a demand by the Asylum Aid charity for the repeal of the Illegal Migration Act. In another social media post he suggested that the Tory party should be ‘dealt with as you would deal with the Nazis’.
Other Garden Court barristers have displayed signal success in ensuring that convicted criminals can stay in the country.
Patrick Lewis managed to ensure a Jamaican rapist avoided deportation on human-rights grounds, since the crimes the man committed in this country meant he was not eligible for witness protection in the Caribbean. Eva Doerr helped an Albanian offender to stay in Britain because sending him back to the Balkans would mean he could only communicate with his 15-year-old stepson via Zoom, which would be unfair on the boy.
The main tool used by Garden Court’s barristers to keep criminals in the UK is an inventive interpretation of the right to a family life. Well-meaning clauses written into the ECHR in 1950 have been stretched by lawyers to challenge governments that try to tackle illegal migration.
Garden Court’s housing team is led by Liz Davies KC, who was deselected as a Labour candidate for being too left-wing. She briefly chaired a Trotskyist umbrella organisation called Socialist Alliance. One of her protégés in Garden Court is Nick Bano, whose polemic Against Landlords makes the case for driving ‘landlords and house price speculators from the face of the Earth’. He proposes, among other things, a 100 per cent capital gains tax on property and cites Das Kapital as his principal influence.
In addition to its housing team, Garden Court has an entire protest rights team who act for climate-change activists causing obstruction or criminal damage. Although they don’t always win, they can often find enough sympathetic jurists to extract perverse verdicts. Garden Court barrister Michael Goold did not deny that six Extinction Rebellion activists had used an old fire engine to spray red paint over the Treasury in 2019, but convinced the jury that ‘anyone who knew the full scale of the climate crisis would have consented to the damage’ and that therefore this ‘provided them with a defence of lawful excuse’. In other words, I can damage your property if I think you ought to share my beliefs.