Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 15

[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 Hochhause

r QC, senior counsel - barrister for GC (teehee)
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

Thread 9 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4553181-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-9

Thread 10 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4553754-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-10

Thread 11 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4555145-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-11

Thread 12 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4555687-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-12

Thread 13 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4556235-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-13

Thread 14 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4556407-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-14

Allison Bailey - claimant (4-9, 11-13 May)

Witnesses for the claimant:

Dr Nicola Williams - Fair Play for Women (29 April)
Dr Judith Green - A Woman's Place (29 April)
Kate Barker - LGB Alliance (3 May)
Lisa-Marie Taylor - FiLiA (4 May)

Witnesses for the respondents:

Stephen Lue - barrister for GCC (3-4 May)
Zainab Al-Farabi - ex Stonewall (10 May)
Kirrin Medcalf - head of trans inclusion Stonewall (10 May)
Leslie Thomas - barrister at GCC (13 May)
Sanjay Sood Smith - Stonewall (16 May)
Shaan Knan - LGBT consortium - on STAG (16 May)
Rajiv Menon - joint head of chambers (16-17 May)
Maya Sikand - barrister at GCC (17-18 May)
Mia Hakl-Law - HR senior for GCC (18 May)
Judy Khan - barrister at GCC (19-20 May)
Charlie Tennent - clerk at GCC (20 May)
Luke Harvey - clerk at GCC (20 May)
Louise Hooper - Barrister at GCC (20 May)
David Renton - barrister at GCC (20 May, 25 May)
Marc Willers - Barrister at GCC (23 May)
Stephen Clark - Barrister at GCC (23 May)
Liz Davies - Barrister at GCC (23 May)
Cathryn McGahey - Bar Council Ethics Committee's VC (24 May)
Tom Wainwright - Barrister at GCC (24 May)
Colin Cook - Head clerk at GCC (24 May)
David de Menezes - GCC, Head of Marketing (25 May)
Kathryn Cronin - barrister at GCC (25 May)
Michelle Brewer - barrister at GCC at time, now left and a judge (26 May)
Stephanie Harrison - joint head of chambers (26 May)

To come:

failure to tow the party line (when they didn't have a party line) if we just explained to AB (why she was wrong).

/uggggggh I feel slightly sick poor Alison

I think Helen Joyce should send them all a copy of her book as a matter of urgency!

Their brains are obviously bigger than mine - it's incapable of holding two such contradictory positions. Sigh.

Astounding that senior people made their decisions on what Benjamin Cohen said in Pink News. No checks, no balance, nothing.

I wrote to the clerk to complain about that in the first week but nothing was done.

They gave me the link though so all is forgiven....

I was resisting, but I think I need the support Earl Grey & cookies at this point (blood orange & chocolate cookies IIRC from last night's food order).

You could have looked at the claims underpinning their mission statement and aims, researched them impartially listening to both sides, and made a judgment that didn't rely on your own confirmation bias and dubious media sources.

So, someone of the calibre of SH, a joint HoC no less, outsources their thinking to Pink News and The Independent and takes as gospel what they say, fuck me if that's the standard of how cases are conducted at GCC I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot barge pole if I needed services of a Barrister.

An early summary of the day:

MB: Of course I don't consider many of the things I called transphobic in 2018 to be transphobic, why would you think that?

SH: I'm not saying that these gender critical groups and people are transphobic, I'm just reporting that other people said they were transphobic so why wouldn't I go along with that, which I didn't?

This. And I don't think the tribunal will find it hard to make the decision that in supporting trans rights, GCC did not support Allison's right to free speech.

probably highlighting a comparison between gender ideology (she/her pronoun nonsense in usernames) and any other religion...

The lack of intellectual rigor and critical thinking amongst these barristers is really gobsmacking.

They had a chance to apply their brilliant legal minds to this issue. They had the opportunity to get together and thrash out the legal implications of self ID and single sex exemptions and all the rest of it, without hyperbole or dramatics or accusing each other of literal violence, and then taking their findings out into the world and sharing them in an even-handed way with their clients and partners.

But I guess there's no lovely cash in that.

This.

Someone really needs to sue Pink News as some point for defamation. Evidence here that their reporting has caused reputational damage.

If a shop refused to hire a black person because they felt that customers would not want to be served by them; that would still be (legally) racial discrimination wouldn't it? - you can't get out of the charge of discrimination by blaming an outside source

How extraordinarily emotional and unthinking all these cerebral QCs are.

All affront and feelings when it comes to asylum seekers, transpeople and a long-dead colleague, not a moment of sympathy for a black lesbian.

And they get their hard information, which they research carefully, from the Independent. The Independent which, since it was acquired by Lebedev in 2010 has lost all credibility as a reliable news source.

They've never had their thoughtless assumption that they are on the right side of history challenged, have they? Their complacency and their assumption that they know who the victims are is rock solid. I've volunteered for years, supporting asylum seekers and I know the reality first hand.

Bindel did, but I wish JK Rowling would.

Well, you'd think. But here we are, at an employment tribunal on this very issue.

Has a single representative of Garden Court at any time spoken of any concern for the rights LGB people?

They certainly seem to have laid out a case that as far as they are concerned, only Trans rights & the voices of TRAs matter.

I didn’t hear the very beginning of this was out getting support groceries but have we established whether SH has ever encountered the magical thing known as Twitter yet?

i think we all know what FFS means

ooh existential threat

Oh FFS, FFS!

EJ is very tired of hearing again about the crises going on at GCC.

Is "200 barristers" on the bingo card?