Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 8

[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 please choose a non inflammatory/offensive name, everyone can see it in the chat - This is a court room, please behave accordingly.

The court chat function is there for official court purposes, not for observers, please don't use it unless you have a technical issue.

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, 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

Thread 7 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4551757-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-7

😂😂😂

I admit I had forgotten how much they had to BEEP out!

As for The Times ... I'm sure there would be a copy in Reception, where clients wait

I know nothing about barristers practising on other areas of the law but I imagine they have to be equally as dispassionate as criminal defence barristers.

Criminal defence barristers are actively trained not to see a victim, not be emotionally moved by victims stories (how else could they cross examine victims of sex crimes etc without removing their own emotional response).

I do wonder if the complete vacuum of empathy for Allison is for this reason - don't see a victims, don't feel compassion for them, push ahead and do what they consider to be just (regardless of what is moral).

“But Oliver Postgate, who died in 2008, had already admitted in an interview that an early episode had featured a jammed door incident in which swearing had occurred.

He told how Major Clanger was caught whistling the words: “Sod it, the bloody thing has stuck again.”

…… I now have visions of BC reading the tweets through a penny whistle!

We recognise that in society groups of individuals are oppressed and/or disadvantaged on grounds of their race, ethnic or national origin, social class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability and age. We further recognise that there is acute discrimination both in the criminal justice system and the legal establishment.

It's not just that sex is replaced by gender. Gender reassignment is also missing, so gender is covering (and conflating) both protected characteristics. That seems to be similar to the arguments made in eg the Scottish all women's shortlist case that someone who transitions literally acquires the protected characteristics of the opposite sex.

Does anyone have a link to the wonderful article on cronyism one of you fabulous woman shared a day or 2 ago?

I've been through all the threads I've been through my Internet history and I can't find it. I did manage to read half of it and I want to finish it and share it but finding it seems to be beyond me.

If any of you have a link to the article I'd really appreciate it thank you

This one?

meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/

Is it this one? meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/

Though, turn your cynicism up high for the adoring references to the LessWrong community in there, and then Google what that community says about gender. And then despair of human rationality.

Oops, should have refreshed the page!

I've only just caught up reading the threads from today.

Agog again.

Mrs Ben is waiting for them in the kitchen, with a Support Twix for Ben and a Support woodlouse for the Support Wren.

I’m a Support Mealworm kinda gal myself <chirrup>

@NancyDrawed @ClocheEncounter
That's it!!

Thank you 🙏

I'm sorry I can't find it now in this unsearchable morass that mn now is, but someone earlier made a good point in response to something I said - that the GCC people are not the sort of conservative oldish white men who will have the attitudes I described that all "right on" attitudes are as silly as each other but "nowadays" demand lip service.
No, I guess they aren't, but I think I was looking for a sort of general explanation for the weird and utter hegemony that gender ideology had, back then, apparently completely achieved. I am often puzzling over this. I don't know if there is one general explanation, or whether it's a series of "well, it does this for these people and it does that for those people..." combined perhaps with a certain set of conditions that pertained in society at that moment.

I suppose the only universal job is does it that it keeps women in their place, and respecting and championing women (as a habit) is very, very rare (even among women).

Just catching up. Thanks for the new thread!

Thanks, @IdisagreeMrHochhauser .

So I think we have:

Allison Bailey - claimant

Witnesses for the claimant:
Dr Nicola Williams - Fair Play for Women
Dr Judith Green - A Woman's Place
Lisa-Marie Taylor - FiLiA
Kate Harris - LGB Alliance

Witnesses for the respondents:
Stephen Lue - barrister for GCC
Kirrin Medcalf - head of trans inclusion Stonewall
Sanjay Sood Smith - Stonewall
Shaan Knan - LGBT consortium - on STAG
Zainab Al-Farabi - ex Stonewall
Leslie Thomas - barrister at GCC
Rajiv Menon - joint head of chambers
Maya Sikand - barrister at GCC
Mia Hakl-Law - HR senior for GCC
Judy Khan - barrister at GCC

To come?
Stephanie Harrison - joint head of chambers
Michelle Brewer - barrister at GCC at time, now left and a judge.
David de Menezes - something at GCC? Marketing?

Not sure where Zainab fell but as I seemed to miss a lot of Kirrin - Shaan Knan, I put them in after SK.

Do you think the Marvellous Ben will try and debunk the whole "I didn't know, it wasn't me" by bringing up these Trans Rights seminars etc held in 2017/2018 at Garden Court Chambers ? Perhaps to MB?

He's steered clear of the extent to which GCC was embedded in the gender ideology establishment up til now. (Indeed looking at an earlier post of mine from today, I was buying that they didn't know in 2019, but should've investigated anyway. Oh how naive!)

Or isn't it relevant to his argument? I suppose it must be if they use "I didn't know" as a defence.

👏

Woodlice. Mealworms. We positively embrace the subterranean here.

There's a reason that Sarah Pedersen styled MN FWR as a subaltern counterpublic.

Full article: “It’s what the suffragettes would have wanted”: the construction of the suffragists and suffragettes on Mumsnet

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2022.2032788

MN thread with added contributions from Prof Pedersen: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4478528-theyve-got-an-absolute-army-behind-them-womens-cooperative-constellation-in-Scotland

I really fucking hope this gets brought up. This.... "Oh we didn't kno"....? BULLSHIT.

I imagine Ben Cooper QC is saving his questions about the GCC seminars and the GCC leadership's embeddedness in gender ideology from 2017 onwards for the Big Cheese in all this, Michelle Brewer.

I wonder if she's been involved in the Gendered Intelligence training to judges in any way?

I was so invested in this - both for the issues at hand and the thrilling insight into tribunals - that when I had to drop my Dad's car back to him, I walked home listening to it, then logged on with the laptop before I disconnected the phone.

I am curious about at what point Bailey decided that legal action was in her future. It doesn't matter, I am just wondering: was there a point early on her struggles where she started thinking "my emails and everything about me are going to get pulled up in court one day and they will be unfuckable with" - or was it relatively later that she got to making that decision? I would love, when all this is over, to hear a really friendly unguarded long chatty interview with her, by someone with whom she has real rapport

Thanks to all for commentary and posts - have been lurking and reading. I am very much hoping that AB wins her case. She has been treated appallingly. Cant wait for the judgement when it's all done - and the mainstream media coverage. I am unable to imagine the psychological stress that AB has had to endure. She is a very courageous and formidable woman. I wish her every success with this.

@SenselessUbiquity Just speculation here, but from my own personal experience over a long working life I would imagine that after GCC sent that disgraceful tweet about her being investigated, that she suspected GCC might try to get shot of her in some way. Maybe she drew on the resolve then that she had built up over the years, and knew that she couldn't take it lying down.

There won’t be either liability or professional indemnity insurers involved.

Public liability policies only cover liability for claims in tort (negligence, nuisance). They do not insure against a liability under the EqAct.

Stonewall doesn’t provide professional services of the kind that come within that sort of insurance cover (architects, accountants, doctors, lawyers etc etc) so it won’t have professional indemnity insurance.

Individual barristers all have to have professional indemnity insurance but it also doesn’t cover liability under the EqAct. It only covers your liability for the work that you do specifically as a barrister which doesn’t include acting as head of chambers etc. It only covers services you provide to your clients.
GCC members will have paid for their legal costs out of their own pockets and if Allison wins they will be paying any damages too. That probably explains why they have let it go to trial. They have to throw everything at it and hope they don’t have to pay massive damages. If an insurer was paying the claim they’d have settled long before now, partly because no insurer would have let such shit witnesses get anywhere near the witness box, and partly because if someone else was paying, as a chambers it would be a no-brainer to settle quietly and avoid the adverse publicity.

I wouldn't otherwise hesitate to agree for exactly the reasons you set out DelurkingLawyer except that I think there's a passing mention somewhere when GCC tell Allison they are notifying their insurers and it's given as some sort of reason for whatever it is they are doing.
Maybe they said that as a warning or they did indeed contact insurers but later discovered they weren't covered for this type of claim. If the latter, it might explain some of the anger. I'm just speculating. I agree it seems unlikely that insurers are backing this.