Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 4

[ickky]

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

On the first page underneath where you put your screen name, select the video and mic that are not crossed out (top option), 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)

Witness Statement of Allison Bailey: allisonbailey.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Witness-Statement-of-Allison-Bailey.pdf

Kirrin Medcalf's complaint to GCC: allisonbailey.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PH-Bundle-pp-331-2-Stonewall-Complaint.pdf

Thread 1 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

Thread 2 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4542466-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-2

Thread 3 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4545725-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-3?

Just to add to this IO attempted to weaponise this against AB, by saying if the viewers couldn't behave in the chat we should all be kicked out!!!!

I noticed that when there was the feedback problem and the judge said it was possible that the hearing was being live streamed and that if it didn’t stop they may have to make everyone leave, IO was very adamant that this must be what was happening. I realised at that point that it would suit Stonewall just fine if the public were ejected from the hearing.

Does anyone know is it technically possible to restrict the chat function. If it is that's what they should do. Just legal people and maybe accredited journalists. No-one else should be anywhere near it.

I’ve seen people who are familiar with the software say it is possible. Hopefully they will switch off comments. It only takes one idiot to spoil it for everyone.

Whatever happens, I've found Allison's witness statement eye-opening, and have shared it with others.
I wonder how much of that she'd have been able to publish without this having gone to a tribunal?

Eeew!

Not Marsan - he's creepy!

I mean - he might be kind and gentle, looking after stray kittens and putting baby birds back in the nests and stuff - but creepy.

Better than support dog/mum/solicitor.

Wow what another fabulous thread.
Glad allison held her own, sounds like she has been through the wringer today.

Well, quite. Both @Motorina, other posters and and I have variously chaired tribunals, panels and quasi-judicial committees and while I am currently in 'retirement', others are very active in the field I believe.

I love this board, mostly this evening for the responses to this particular post!

If there's going to be a film of this, I vote Viola Davis to play Allison, she's brilliant at playing kick ass women!

I'm thinking of designing myself a tee-shirt or possibly a mug.

'Here We Go' - Yes We Bloody Well Do.

Viola Davis is a very good call.

Spindle there were lots of excellent suggestions for T-shirts on Twitter yesterday.
I'm not going to risk a deletion by telling you what they said

I haven’t been able to keep up with this today and the thread has moved on a lot since I left it this morning!
Would anyone be able to offer a quick summary of main points? What’s ‘here we go’ about? And clearly something involving RMW?

Just to add to this IO attempted to weaponise this against AB, by saying if the viewers couldn't behave in the chat we should all be kicked out!!!!

I imagine that there are a few people that absolutely hate it that women can follow the tribunal and discuss it together here. Far too much solidarity.

judge said it was possible that the hearing was being live streamed

tbh, given the technical incompetence on display from most parties, it's better to go for the obvious explanation that it's feedback from the microphones and the generally very poor quality set-ups. It's bad form for people to share cameras and microphones in a room that isn't set up for good acoustics. Add to that that there seem to be several rooms in the same location with open microphones and connections on the same call, and this is the most obvious cause of the problems.

A decent platform is the best solution. A good interim one is a separate facilitator to manage the technical issues and to block the public from being able to unmute and to be able to limit the chat function.

My understanding is that it was a stupid remark - and an offensive one at that - made during Allison Bailey's evidence about being threatened by people online; and it appeared to originate from the room where IO and RW were located. RW denied saying it. I don't believe that IO commented one way or the other as to whether she had any knowledge of who made this remark.

The judge will have to deal with it at some point.

It's extraordinarly poor professional practice from a barristers' chambers.

Lots of observers made comments in the chat box blaming RMW for the "Here we go" remark, with one in particular "misgendering" her with an unflattering description which sadly side tracked the EJ from dealing with the interruption itself. But PPs have suggested that Judge Goodman will be having words with those responsible for the audible remarks behind the scenes, so hopefully they won't get away with it. It seems pretty clear that all of the observers were muted, so there's a limited number of suspects and AH and RMW both explicitly denied saying it themselves...!

Today at the end was really the only time it's been properly abused but there's an argument that that was provoked by counsel as if they'd stayed on their best behaviour, so would all of we.

Incivility is contagious and the effect spills over to those who are bystanders and relatively uninvolved. It leads to a lack of team work and poorer outcomes. There's been some research about this in healthcare systems and, iirc, there was a conference about it within the NHS in the last year.

General website: www.civilitysaveslives.com/

I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that this is more widely applicable.

@Faffertea Allison was being cross examined about whether it was reasonable for her to give an interview to the Times and whether she shouldn't have attempted to resolve matters with chambers.

Allison was explaining how GCC's tweet about her had caused a pile on and they had acted outrageously by doing that. She was just explaining that she was receiving death threats... and someone was audibly heard to say, "here we go" in a patronising tone.

Only the legal teams and the tribunal panel were unmuted (as far as anyone can tell).

Allison stopped and asked for whoever had said it to apologise and asked was it from the Stonewall counsel's room.

Then “oh god” was heard.

I think Allison asked if anyone else had heard it, there was a deathly hush and then Martin Reuby charged in on his white horse to confirm he heard it.

Cue loads of members of the public then piling into the chat box to confirm they’d heard it. Then an observer misgendered the Stonewall junior counsel (who denied saying it).

Cue the judge asking for the observer to be ejected.

High drama.

Sorry about lack of paragraphs. The Mumsnet app is totally broken.

Your paragraph breaks are showing up for me but I'm on a laptop. I've given up trying to read this thread on my phone.

Crikey, I didn't know someone said oh God. Was it the same person who said here we go, presumably when they realised everyone had heard it? What a farce!

And for the avoidance of doubt, I do think that the phrase that was addressed to RMW could be an intentional insult. My point was to address the reason why it's been
allowed to get to the point where it's considered an insult. And how it's been deemed heinous beyond all reason, when in reality the outrage is manufactured as a tactic.

A tactic so successful that even someone, somewhere else entirely, who is merely quoting it, is considered unacceptable.

"A tactic so successful that even someone, somewhere else entirely, who is merely quoting it, is considered unacceptable" - Indeed, we truly are down the rabbit hole.

I really hope they close the chat down to everyone except the Panel members and lawyers or else it will continue to be abused and then everyone will be booted out.

The Stonewall barrister already seemed very keen to promote the idea that the tribunal was being "live streamed" today which would have meant everyone being booted out. They also discussed that people were sharing screenshots of KM's witness statement on social media the day before.

With the repeated misgendering of one of the barristers in the chat today which was totally rude and inappropriate, I imagine it won't take much more for the judge to want to close the trial to the public.

The judge has already had to spend a fair amount of time dealing with public interference like inappropriate user names and some people thinking the chat is a place to air some personal grievances about people listing their pronouns next to their user name.

At the end of the day, this isn't entertainment, it's Allison's future, her livelihood, reputation and career that is at stake and I hope people will put Allison's needs ahead of pronoun and misgendering/correct sexing battles. There's a time and a place for those kind of discussions and it isn't the tribunal chatbox.

I can see that there is a possibility that the chat would be deliberately targeted by interested parties to force the closure of the tribunal to the public, if they thought that was an option.
So the techs need to sort it out so that the general observers can't use it, or at least not use it so that it is publicly seen.

I'd go with Jo Martin (the first black Doctor Who). I've not seen any of the tribunal, but photos of Ben Cooper remind me of Mark Gatiss with a beard, although Damian Lewis is a much more flattering option. From the description of Martin Reuby, I'd like to suggest Gary Oldman, as although his natural accent seems to wander a little bit these days, he shouldn't find doing proper South East London too tricky.