Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 7

[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.

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Abbreviations:

AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, senior counsel - barrister for SW
RW = Robin White junior counsel to SW - assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, senior counsel - barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell junior counsel to GC - 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)

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

Thread 4 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4546945-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-4

Thread 5 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4548160-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-5

Thread 6 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4550451-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-6

This is like those politicians who are hugely sympathetic to the T because they have a T friend/family member. Fine, but you've got to look at the bigger picture and how these policies affect everyone.

You really have to wonder why having female friends and family members doesn't trigger a similar effect in these people.

'Apparently X is vulnerable and has a female family member and his vulnerability would mean he would be extremely upset by anything he would perceive as being "anti-women"' just doesn't work as an argument.

Weird.

God, this is bad management.

I find this so strange. My chambers is old school to the max but we've been radicalised by Mumsnet aware of this debate and how it impacts our policies and dealings with each other for years. GCC is one of the main players in this field. How could they not have understood the debate at all?

Exactly, Necessary. I don't know how they say it with a straight face.

What I don't understand is that once Allison raised these concerns, no-one took the time to look into them properly it seems.

It's not as thought the media haven't been reporting on it for several years. One might have missed the Nolan podcast, but couldn't fail to see mainstream newspapers reporting on it. Even beginning to call Stonewall a trans organisation.

Haven't they noticed all the politicians being asked what a woman is? What do they think that was all about, then??

Because they're all Guardian readers?

Goodness, we could play bingo here

'Not on twitter'
'too busy'
'didn't know what terf was'
etc....

The "I'm not on twitter" defence. One of my favourites in this case.

I'd like BC to ask someone senior at GCC whether, once they'd learned about Alex Sharpe's abusive tweets, they took any action, such as suggesting that they moderate their tone.

So LF was a HoC but too busy travelling to look into this properly. And JK was too busy to look into it. Not a great advert for their skills

I’m stealing this line. 😂

How many times should AB have made Hoc aware? FFS

If its anything universities (where no one wants to me head of department) I can totaly believe this. - It is a thankless task as anything you do will anger someone. I guess as well that if you are a successful barrister being HoC means that you don't get to work on the really interesting cases that make your job worth doing

I hadn't made the connection between bad policy (of this type) and this institution before but it totally make sense and might explain the shitstorm in the uni sector too

Not caught up with the thread yet but I am getting an enormous it-is-unreasonable-to-expect-us-to-read-anything-carefully-ever vibe. 🙄

"Is that from her 32 page response....?"

Go Allison!

We've had almost all the tribunal bingo from JK just waiting for 'Allison was my friend, I was nice to her' said as a way of showing Allison is being a big meanie

At this stage, GCC claims of busyness, stress and ignorance are their best defence. They can't flat-out say they took Stonewall's side - especially now Maya's judgement has made GC beliefs 'worthy of respect' - and they can't say it's a niche issue they wanted to brush off as they were taking their 'vulnerable' members of the chambers much more seriously.

If I received a 32 page letter, I think I'd have got the impression that someone has some real concerns.

From so many answers from the big-wigs at GCC, this hearing is showing how an organisation that is seen as 'mainstream' can blind and/or soothe people who should clearly know better - intelligent, assertive, well-versed in the law, esp equality and discrimination law - into simply accepting that the organisation and everything it says and does, MUST be fine/good/acceptable/respectable/right and that everyone who questions it must be wrong/unacceptable/punishable.
They abandoned or purposely forfeited their critical thinking capacity to SW. Really shocking and unforgivable.

JK is saying here that GCC will react to a twitter storm but not the substance itself, ie Alex Sharpe's tweets. That's quite some admission.

oh god. Just got in on my iPhone to listen during the commute. So scary going in with camera and mic on. Hope nobody saw my thumb

If Chambers was in such a terribly parlous position then, I wonder how they’re doing now?

That was all a bit later though, wasn't it? The Nolan podcast was earlier this year (or last year)? The MSM were terrifyingly silent unless it was pro-trans. (Eg I remember BBC reporting on "transphobic protests" at Pride, sometime pre-covid, and thinking "it won't have been that" and sure enough, it was the Get hte L Out protest.) But a civilian/busy barrister wouldn't look into that, would they? The asking politicians what a woman is has largely been in the last 2 years hasn't it?

I'm not defending them btw! Even if they weren't first aware, they should have investigated properly, for god's sake.

I genuinely think this is a reflection of how strong and ubiquitous the "anyone objecting to twaw is a nasty irrational bigoted terf" argument has been successfully pushed into mainstream society/culture. Everyone feels vaguely uneasy to question it.

They probably can't pinpoint exactly why, what they've read suggesting that decent liberal people shouldn't even question it, no debate, because it's everywhere. An accepted belief that is never examined

As we see on here, when people are asked to answer or define even the most basic underlying tenet of TWAW, they can't or won't.

Aaaand this filters through to so many people's actions and decisions, small and large, until they snowball and we have this situation, and Maya's, and Sonia's, and Katie's, and Raquel's etc etc

Surely Sharpe will be called as witness?

God knows how Ben is staying so calm - why are all these seemingly intelligent people claiming ignorance as a defence?

If you don't know what something means, look it up! In my day that meant Encylopedia Britannica and a laborious trawl through the record cards at the library, but now everyone has the sum total of the world's knowledge (plus cat videos) in their pocket.

I look things up endlessly. I didn't know who Sam Ryder was when I woke up today. Took about three seconds to find out.