Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 2

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The Tribunal started on 25th April at 10am. If you would like to view online you need to send a request for access as early as possible.

Send an email to

[email protected]

The subject heading of the email request should read

“MEDIA OR PUBLIC ACCESS REQUEST – Case number 2202172/2020 - Ms A Bailey – 25th April 2022.

Then ask for the pin for the online access.

You will be contacted with instructions on how to observe the hearing.

When joining the live tribunal
select the video and mic that are not crossed out, this is the courts vid and mic.
On the next page select NONE on the drop down windows for vid and mic, these are your own video and mic.

You must be muted so as to not disturb the hearing.

There is also live tweeting from twitter.com/tribunaltweets

Abbreviations:
AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, barrister for SW
RW = Robin White assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell assisting AH
RM= Rajiv Menon QC & SH = Stephanie Harrison QC (jointly respondent 3 along with all members of GC except AB)
EJ = Employment Judge Goodman hearing the case
Panel = any one of the three panel members (EJ and two lay members)

Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 1 👇

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

Well yes this is where we can chat and the court is where we respectfully observe ! The desperate need to troll the proceedings can’t end well.

Dare we hope that it is TAs who are making prats of themselves?

"No idea how Tribunal Tweets are handling it."

I second that, it must be a nightmare. I've not really been able to follow proceedings because it keeps getting bogged down in so many technicalities.

Thank you so much to all of you for keeping Twitter and this thread up to date.

They should be chucked out just like they would be in a real court if they were chatting. Its so disrespectful to everyone involved.

I'm struggling to follow what IO is trying to get at currently.

Actually unfortunately, I think it is people can't assume they are women that are GC.

Is it not just possible to turn the chat off. That must be possible, surely?

It's almost too perfectly Handmaid's Tale isn't it, with all this talk of 'The Wall' being somewhere a woman can be punished for her thoughts.

True, the most persistent chatter at the moment is: NoTa (clown/clownself).

Is it purposeful to try and shut down public access to viewing the case?

It's both, what's she/her/them about?

Can the judge (virtually) throw them out?

I don't know. AK (she/her) has made herself very busy in chat in previous days.

They're friends again now. That's a relief, I don't like to see tension between people.

clown/clownself is silly but the display of pronouns is a gender dogwhistle (to use their terminology).

'It's almost too perfectly Handmaid's Tale isn't it, with all this talk of 'The Wall' being somewhere a woman can be punished for her thoughts.'

It's doubly ironic. They probably used it as a reference to Atwood (because in the novel they sent gender non-conforming and gay people to the Wall), but didn't (or didn't quickly) realise that they had become the Sons of Jacob.

The chat is embarrassing .. they should sling them out .. using it like Facebook chat. I'm finding the case easier to follow today, I think reading Allison's witness statement helped. Allison is so impressive.

Well, quite, this is the shocking thing. Discrimination is difficult to prove if it's all off the record. However in this case it wasn't all off the record, it was in writing.

If they feel so unassailable that they'll do this to an actual barrister what chance do women who aren't barristers have to retain their rights as human beings? Surely they won't let us 'get away with this' (having opinions different to theirs).

They're a legal chambers. Allison had already said that she considered their formal tweets about her defamatory before they began their formal investigation. You'd really think that they would have been more circumspect with their personal communications in the light of that. As some of them are arguably inappropriate and dismissive about people who wrote to them and about AB herself, and obviously Brewer with her close trans lobby connections (TELI etc) might be considered as a member of the organisation with the potential to be looked at in any case of ill treatment by GCC, requiring disclosure.

Both the judge and AB have said that straightforward pronoun declaration is not objectionable, but I'd expect the judge to think that goady pronouns like clown/clownself are objectionable.

The names and the chat are really shameful. I've just noticed someone who's chosen to call themselves Tanya Iterfalldaylong. I've no idea whether that's some adolescent GC person or a TRA seeking to bring GC people into disrepute, but it's disrespectful and they need to cease and desist.

I had hoped that Sally Wainright was the Sally Wainright and I was hoping that she would soon be writing Bailey, an everyday drama of a black lesbian radfem lawyer facing discrimination in her own chambers, but having seen the chat I suspect not. That saddens me.

Shit! Mr Drummond! 😂😂😂

I once worked in an environment having a strong focus on litigation in the US and there was an ebb and flow between "write nothing down! only discuss over the phone!" and "shit, we don't know what we decided to do and why we decided to do it". That cycle just went round and round again.

Mr Drummond. Every bloody time.

Did IO just correctly sex Alex Drummond?

I'm only 30 pages into Alison's witness statement, and if they don't make a film out of this, I'll be gutted.

The amount of adversity that woman has had to overcome is phenomenal.

She's bloody nails.

So many on the SW side are rarely circumspect, I think because they feel so very justified and on the right side of history that they can't fathom what they're saying to be ever viewed otherwise.

I mean, this morning I was called a supporter of genocide because I said it's better for women to have single sex spaces...you would only say that if you were furiously, frothingly, convinced of your righteousness.