Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 9

[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

Thread 8 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4552521-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-8

Allison Bailey - claimant

Witnesses for the claimant:

Nic Williams - Fair Play for Women
A Woman's Place
FiLiA
Kate Harris - LGB Alliance

Witnesses for the respondents:

Stephen Lue - barrister for GCC
Kirrin Medcalfe - head of trans inclusion Stonewall
Sanjay Sood Smith - Stonewall
Shaan Knan - LGBT consortium - on STAG
Leslie Thomas - barrister at GCC
Rajiv Menon - joint head of chambers
Maya Sikand - barrister at GCC and in charge of writing report on AB/complaints
Mia Hakl-Law - HR senior for GCC
Judy Khan - barrister at GCC

Current Witness - Charlie Tennant - Clerk at GCC

To come

Luke Harvey - Clerk at GCC
Louise Hooper - Clerk at GCC
Stephanie Harrison - joint head of chambers
Michelle Brewer - barrister at GCC at time, now left and a judge

God I hope he made the judges skin crawl as much as he did mine!
How did AB cope with sharing a room with such a patronising prick for 10 years?

Are there any more clerks due to take the stand? Colin Cook? It seems to me that GCC and BC between them have made Allison's point for her on nearly every other part of the case but the stuff about clerking seems weak.

Thanks you lot of vipers for being such great company this week.

I'm going to make a support lemon Jubilee trifle this weekend, from scratch of course - it serves 20 so I will probably be living on it through next week.

I actually think he was a reasonably good witness for his side. Because you have to be VERY up with this debate to understand what he is actually saying.

For example, on the issue of gender neutral toilets in schools, an observer would presume, I think, from what he said, that schools were introducing gender neutral toilets alongside single sex toilets. He made it sound as if Alison disagreed with gender neutral toilets as a standalone concept.

Which, I presume, she doesn't. None of us do. Unless there are ONLY gender neutral ones. It is the loss of single sex ones that is the problem. But someone listening to him may not pick up on that.

I also found it interesting - I wasn't aware - that nearly all the male prisoner on female prisoner sexual assualts were committed by one person.

His take on that is 'one bad apple'.

My take on that is that one sexual assault that could have been prevented is one too many. But unfortunately, some will see it as a balancing act and that some sexual assualts are a price worth paying for (other, blameless) transwomen to be housed in female jails.

I imagine he would agree wholeheartedly that men shouldn't harm girls. It's not on, not cricket, and they should be rightly told off.

That's not the same as agreeing that all men - including the 'good' ones - need to understand and accept that women and girls need to be able to have boundaries of their own choosing, and that those boundaries can rightfully exclude all men - even the 'good' ones - in the interests of protecting women's emotional and physical safety and well being.

And that difference, I think, is how they get to a position where collateral damage in the form of awful harm to women and girls becomes 'acceptable'. It's acceptable because otherwise the right and entitlement of 'good' men to do whatever they want has to be curtailed. And THAT collateral damage would absolutely NOT be acceptable.

I understand the alpaca identifies as a vicuna, but otherwise this is pretty much how I think the Judge's household is likely to be organised.

wonders what a polycule is 🤔

I couldn't stomach listening to it all and clicked on a random point and heard "in some circumstances the aggressor has the moral high ground'!

I wish it had ended on a less disturbing note.

His emphatic denial of women's thoughts and feelings, his authoritative insistence that they "shouldn't" feel the way they do....

Urgh, stuff of nightmares

David Renton, renowned former SWP member, ticking all the 'boxes':

"I am not sexist - I share my office with a women". 🙄

"I am not homophobic - I share my office with a lesbian". 🙄

"I am not racist - I share my office with a black person". 🙄

None of this prevents him from being the deepest of misogynists, as already in evidence from his short period of testimony this afternoon.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Renton

I also found it interesting - I wasn't aware - that nearly all the male prisoner on female prisoner sexual assualts were committed by one person.

That part didn't make sense in the Tweets, there was a reference to 174 assaults and then that bit about them nearly all being committed by one person. I hope that's not accurate but what was actually said?

BC: recent data provide by UK government, said 174 sexual offences were by TG prisoners. At least 5 times more assaults, u may disagree but this isn't bad faith. Its evidence.
DR: I looked it up for today as it troubled me. Understanding all assaults were carried out by 1 person

I also found it interesting - I wasn't aware - that nearly all the male prisoner on female prisoner sexual assaults were committed by one person.

He said this like it made it OK. I mean why wasn't this person removed from the women after they'd committed the first sexual assault? How many chances do you give a sex offender before you wonder if putting a male sex offender in the female estate is a bad idea?

That's not the same as agreeing that all men - including the 'good' ones - need to understand and accept that women and girls need to be able to have boundaries of their own choosing, and that those boundaries can rightfully exclude all men - even the 'good' ones - in the interests of protecting women's emotional and physical safety and well being.

Exactly. So many men are very invested in the feelings of trans people, but seem to completely disregard the rights of women and girls to privacy, dignity and feeling comfortable and secure and free from the harassment of the male gaze. If we can't prove that we are at significant risk of rape we have no right to sex segregated spaces, apparently. Why is the bar set so low for men and so high for women?

But presumably the tribunal will all understand the nuance that introducing gender neutral usually is the same as getting rid of single sex. And it's not the observers who judge the case.

All this talk of twixes (twixii?)

Because the priority here is how the sex offender feels, not the women. They are unfortunate collateral damage on the offender's journey of self discovery.

well quite - we all know NAMALT <sigh>

You can have 99/100 fantastic men - we all know great guys. This doesn't change the fact that 1 "bad man" can harrass and assault 99 or more women in a relatively short space of time.

WE CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE.

Men are highly unlikely to even get prosecuted for rape anymore in UK.

Troubled him, eh? Did it, aye?

I actually think he was a reasonably good witness for his side. Because you have to be VERY up with this debate to understand what he is actually saying.

This judge was in charge of Sonia Appleby's employment tribunal. And she's clearly nobody's fool. I think she must be well clued in to this debate by now.

Late to this as I’ve been working. But I find it hard to believe that the office crisis and Twitter storm, reported in the newspapers, is not the subject of any office gossip by the clerks and the barristers.

@Iknowitisheresomewhere

"I also found it interesting - I wasn't aware - that nearly all the male prisoner on female prisoner sexual assaults were committed by one person."

Without realising it, he is agreeing with us here; he is saying that one man can do damage to many women.

Honestly, GCC would’ve been better off putting Mark Renton in.

I think M Reuby found it hard to believe too.

Glad I decided to get the groceries on Sunday, shame about the support snacks.
So this is what Eton is turning out. They don't allow girls there do they? No matter how they identify. I wonder what he would think of that?

‘I also found it interesting - I wasn't aware - that nearly all the male prisoner on female prisoner sexual assaults were committed by one person.’

There could be no sexual assaults by males on female prisoners and I still wouldn’t think they should be housed with women. It‘s against women’s human rights to force them to share intimate spaces in this way.

Perhaps it's not hard to believe that they found themselves fighting to survive at one point and swamped with several crises.

After all, they were all too busy, too abroad, too [insert bingo item] to read emails, basically understand written materials or what was happening with other people in chambers. wrt to colleagues, iirc, they effectively practised monastic silence about anything but football or work-related matters that strayed outside narrow parameters…

And then they were startled that they were blindsided by several crises at once.