On 23 January 2020 we will welcome members of the public and our invited speakers for a lecture on System Change for Climate Change.
Speakers:
Richard Harvey, counsel for Greenpeace International and barrister, Garden Court Chambers.
Farhana Yamin, Track 0 CEO, climate lawyer and activist.
All are welcome to come to join us for the debate.
Latecomers are welcome to enter quietly.
The lecture will be followed by our members-only AGM.
On 7 February 2020 at 18:30 join us for a showing of the film SOLIDARITY.
Blacklisting in the UK construction industry impacted thousands of workers who were labelled ‘troublemakers’ for speaking out and secretively denied employment. Activists uncovered alarming links between workplace blacklisting and undercover policing. SOLIDARITY follows meetings between activists and law students, brought together for the film, revealing the determination of a community working together to find a route to justice. SOLIDARITY was made by visual arts organisation City Projects and filmmaker Lucy Parker, who has been working alongside members of the Blacklist Support Group for over four years.
Find out more about the film at solidarityfilm.com.
Attendees will need to obtain free tickets. Free ticketsa are available at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/solidarity-film-showing-tickets-81068115917
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1H 0PD.
When: 27 November 2019, 18:30-20:30
Where: Room S101, The University of Law, 14 Store Street, London, WC1E 7DE
Speakers:
Franck Magennis (barrister)
United Voices of the World (UVW) union activist
The title for this Haldane lecture does not contain a question mark. Franck Magennis is starting from the premise that there is no real doubt as to the merits of unionisation in the legal sector. Franck is Head of Legal at the United Voices of the World union, which has made the innovative and far-sighted step of setting up the Legal Sector Workers United branch. Franck will outline the history of the struggle to organise and the achievements so far, including the solidarity that legal workers have shown to outsourced cleaners at the Ministry of Justice, who are denied the London Living Wage and key employment rights.
Franck will be joined by one of the Ministry of Justice cleaners who will outline the background to this vital industrial struggle, which has consequences for all in the legal sector.
Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 ('no fault' evictions, and the consequent total lack of security of tenure in the the private rented sector) was a key plank of the Thatcher government's housing settlement. Its existence has been unquestioned by successive governments for for more than 30 years.
But in the last few months both main political parties announced their intention to abolish section 21.
The Haldane Society welcomes you to a discussion about the importance, necessity and consequences of re-regulating the private rented sector.
David Watkinson is a leading expert on housing law, having been a barrister at Garden Court Chambers for many years. In practice he was particularly committed to representing squatters and residential occupiers. David will speak about the importance of this proposal, and draw on the Rent Acts as an example of what a protected private rented sector looks like.
Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth (HASL) is a direct action casework and campaigning group based in south London. Izzy Koksal and others will speak about the reality facing HASL members - do they really need stronger rights to stay in terrible privately rented accommodation, or is a more ambitious programme of restoring council housing the only effective approach?
This is a particularly timely event as the government is currently consulting on its section 21 proposals.
Latecomers are welcome to enter quietly.
Speakers:
Kushal Sood (prison lawyer at Instalaw)
Amal (IWOC)
And a further speaker from SmashIPP
Join us for an evening of learning about the current prisoner movements in the UK, their struggles of building solidarity between people inside and outside of prison and how lawyers can help.
We’ll have presentations by an eminent prison lawyer and speakers from two abolitionist organisations at the forefront of fighting against the poor treatment of prisoners – Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee and SmashIPP. After the speakers will lead a breakout discussion on practical tips for success at parole hearings and strategise creative solutions to the problems encountered in prisoner organising.
Tickets are available for free at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/social-movements-within-and-beyond-the-prison-how-can-lawyers-help-tickets-72261069805.
Latecomers are welcome to enter quietly.
Date: Thursday, 23 May 2019 from 19:00
Venue: London Irish Centre, 50-52 Camden Square, NW1 9XB London, United Kingdom
Tickets: £10 + £1 Booking Fee (all proceeds go to the film’s creative team)
Details: Exposing Britain's secret collaboration in the murders of over 120 people on both sides of the Irish border during the recent conflict.
Unquiet Graves: The story of the Glenanne Gang details how members of
the RUC and UDR, (a British Army regiment) were centrally involved in the murder of over 120 innocent civilians during the recent conflict in Ireland.
It will detail how members worked hand in hand with known sectarian murderers in the targeted assassinations of farmers, shopkeepers, publicans and other civilians in a campaign aimed at terrorising the most vulnerable in society.
Now known as the Glenanne Gang, the group of killers rampaged through Counties Tyrone and Armagh and across into the Irish Republic in a campaign that lasted from July 1972 to the end of 1978.
Come join the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers in conjunction with the Haldane Feminist Lawyers at this special International Women's Day edition of our yearly human rights lecture series.
We will be discussing the state of women within the welfare state in 2019, including "benefits reform", the effect of austerity and fighting back against these policies. We will be hearing from Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC, a barrister from Doughty Street who have been involved in successfully challenging the benefits cap and the bedroom tax.
There will be time for contributions from the floor, as well as questions and answers. Latecomers are welcome to enter quietly.
Date: 19 March 2019
Time: 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Place: University of Law, Store Street, London
Sign up on Eventbrite to give us an idea of numbers (recommended but not required)
Today, for the third year running, women across the world are going on strike as part of a militant, joyful feminist international, against a world lurching towards barbarism.
With fascism on the march, emboldened by the ascent to power of far-right politics in the U.S.A, Brazil, Poland, India, and Italy, feminist movements in the past year have continued to occupy the front-line of the international fight against barbarism. Among these: the Ele Não movement against Jair Bolsonaro’s fascism in Brazil; the Marea Verde for free, safe, legal abortion in Argentina; the Keralan women who formed a 620 km long human chain to protest for equality in India, the Ni Una Menos movement across Latin America, the Ni Una di Meno movement resisting Salvini’s ‘Security law’ in Italy, and the Kurdish women’s revolution which continues to be instrumental in both the military and ideological defeat of ISIS.
Here in the UK, the past year has seen migrant women in precarious work organise strikes in London, and thousands of public sector working women on strike in Glasgow, as well as the growth of a new feminist anti-fascist movement, which in December led the march against Tommy Robinson and Fortress Britain, carrying a vast banner that read “The enemy doesn’t arrive by boat, he arrives by limousine.”
By withdrawing waged and unwaged labour today, the feminist international is making visible - and making connections between - the many forms of work women do: from the exploitative work of commodity production to the invisibilized work of social reproduction; from the struggle for bodily autonomy, to the struggle for anti-imperialist self-determination; from the fight against gender violence and femicide, to the fight against capitalist extractivism and ecocide. As the Feminist International says, this is a movement that is shaped by feminist movements in the South, and is unequivocally anti-colonial, anti-cisheterosexist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist.
It is a fight to change not only our conditions of work, but our world. In the words of Women’s strike UK: “We are not asking for our fair share under capitalism, we are seeking to destroy altogether a system that is designed to divide and oppress us.”
The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers stands in full solidarity with the International Working Women’s Day strike.
We call for donations to the UK Women’s Strike Fund, to help offset the costs to women leaving work and attending strike action and women’s assemblies.
Forward comrades, to a red feminist horizon!
The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers AGM will be held on Thursday 7 February 2019 at 6.30pm, at the Universtiy of Law. The AGM will also elect the Officers and Executive Committee of the Society.
There will also be an informal discussion with Executive Committee members about socialist amd the law. Refreshments will be provided, and members will be invited to a social event afterwards.
Please join us at the Turkish Embassy at 12:00pm on 24 January 2019 for the Day of the Endangered Lawyer protest.
The Day of the Endangered Lawyer is the day on which we turn the spotlight on lawyers all over the world who are being harassed, silenced, pressured, threatened, persecuted, tortured. Murders and enforced disappearances as well are not out of the ordinary. The only reason for these outrages is the fact that these lawyers are doing their job, and fulfilling their professional obligations, when they are needed the most.
The 24th of January was chosen to be the annual International Day of the Endangered Lawyer because on this day in 1977 four labour rights lawyers and a coworker were murdered at their office address at Calle Atocha 55 in Madrid. This is known as the Massacre of Atocha.
The International Day of the Endangered Lawyer aims, on the one hand, to create awareness that the practice of the legal profession in many countries involves significant risks, including that of being murdered, but it aims as well at denouncing the situation in a particular country, where lawyers are victims of serious violations of their fundamental rights because they exercise their profession.
Every year on 24 January lawyers’ organisations dedicate this day to the endangered lawyers in a particular country: 2010 Iran, 2012 Turkey, 2013 Basque Country/Spain, 2014 Colombia, 2015 Philippines, 2016 Honduras, 2017 China & Egypt. The European Democratic Lawyers (AED-EDL) established the Day of the Endangered Lawyer in 2010. Since then it has been coorganized by AED-EDL and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy (ELDH) and the foundation “The Day of the Endangered Lawyer”. Many other lawyers’ organisations and bar associations have supported this project. In 2019 the Day of the Endangered Lawyer focuses on the endangered lawyers in Turkey.
There are around 78 separate criminal prosecutions and investigations against human rights lawyers. Hundreds of lawyers are charged within these criminal procedures. Most of them are under judicial control with a ban from travelling abroad or with the duty to give signature to the police headquarter on certain days of the week. A
In all the cases which have been chosen as examples (see the attached Report) lawyers were accused just because of practising their profession. By so doing, the Turkish State systematically violates the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and it is obvious that this violation has direct impacts on the right of defence.
