We are all Rajiv Menon
JVL Introduction
It’s not often that an entire 90 minute video of a webinar makes compelling viewing. This one holds your attention every moment as legal luminaries, including household names such as Michael Mansfield KC and Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, step forward to defend Rajiv Menon KC, the first lawyer ever in this jurisdiction to face criminal trial for what he said in his closing speech to a jury.
Mike Cushman posted for JVL on X:
Even though I thought I knew the extent of the attack on our civil liberties and the right to protest, the detailed explanation by so many leading lawyers, speaking with exemplary clarity for both a lay and a legal audience, sent many shivers down my spine.
The judge- and prosecution-led harassment of Rajiv Menon ought to shame everyone who has played a part in victimising him for trying to uphold basic legal principles. It would be an abuse of major proportions for him to be held in contempt.
On the other hand everyone who fears the intensifying authoritarian state outside of legal constraint ought to hold everyone of those who played a part in his persecution in the utmost contempt. I have no hesitation in acceding to Keir Monteith’s injunction to declare ‘I am Rajiv Menon’ because his prosecution endangers us all.
See also this article in the Law Gazette: Kafkaesque – Lawyers rally to defence of silk cited for contempt.
Follow Rajiv’s case on X @DefendourLawyer.
Descent into Authoritarianism? Undermining the role of defence lawyers: The Rajiv Menon KC case
Video of an online event on July 22, 2026, co-hosted by Garden Court Chambers and others.
Peter Weatherby KC, who chaired the webinar, said: ‘For the first time ever in this jurisdiction, a lawyer is facing criminal trial for what he said in his closing speech to a jury. Wholly unprecedented here, but in my experience not uncommon in certain other jurisdictions – authoritarian ones. It represents a very dark turn for the rule of law here.’
A couple of letters in the Guardian today and one of them signed by Hillsborough victims and campaigners . I hope they will speak to Burnham to stop this utter travesty which was started by the proscription of PA and the suppression of Protest under Starmer with Yvette Cooper totally in the frame. But Burnham has, unwisely, not sacked her but made her Health Sec. Prosecution KC’s were involved in this Menon persecution and should be ashamed. They were the Elbit trial prosecutors. They told so-called ‘Justice’ Johnson that Rajiv was guilty of contempt, which he was not. Deanna Heer KC was one as was Tom Little KC. Johnson’s authoritarian character took note and he then began pursuing one of that increasingly narrow band of lawyers who are committed to defending human rights. It is chilling. Lets hope Little and Heer realise what they have begun for it is the end of a level playing field for defendants and those who speak for them. Passionate argument to a Jury will now be avoided. The Horizon Post Office scandal for which I am a core campaigner, has revealed a crisis of confidence in the law . The public have justifiably .lost faith in the legal profession, many of whom were up to their neck in malfeasance, and many judges had a gravely inadequate understanding of how code and computer system software works. They sent a pregnant woman and a young girl in her first job to prison. 13 SPMRs committed suicide. Many more post office lawyers have been involved in a cover up of monumental proportions. I say this to stress how much damage has been done to the law with these draconian actions. It is oppression that must and shall be resisted. I am Rajiv Menon!
[Editor’s note: we are running this comment at unusual length in order to accommodate a testimonial for Rajiv Menon from Stephen Solley KC.]
The first thing to say, for those who have not read his whole speech, is that it was a masterpiece. What a superb, delicate, powerful address, and that you can be sure that any member of the High Court or Court of Appeal would never have been able to equal.
Secondly, those with long memories recall that defence counsel in the 1980s and 1990s would, if the case required it, go for the jugular of the Old Bailey judges, red and otherwise. Mike Mansfield may remember the terrifying Ronald Thwaites KC who was the bane of the bench, but his independence made him untouchable. We all learned from that.
Third, it was the prosecution in their opening speech who introduced the background into the case by telling the jury that Elbit was “an Israeli linked defence company”. It was not. It was not a defence company; it was an “offence” company, supplying weapons for offence not defence. The prosecution opened the wrong fact and it allowed the defence to challenge it at their pleasure. The judge should not have intervened.
Finally may I repeat the reference I sent to his solicitors,
I have known RM for 30 years. Both in practice at the Bar and also occasionally socially. Recently he appeared in an old photograph where I found him sitting with Sydney Kentridge QC around my dinner table in deep discussion about the many issues a young barrister has to absorb as his practice grows. Sydney’s influence has never left him. Both had to be fearless in the most difficult of circumstances. Indeed when I called many many young barristers to the Bar in my Inn, I would single out fearlessness as the key element in a barrister’s armoury. They would, I said, come across judges who need a strong fearless advocate so as not to be bullied or put down. The client expects. Counsel must stand firm and high. The bar will suffer a devastating, long lasting blow if RM is subject to criticism for what he had done or not done. RM is a great example to the young bar that they must play a pivotal role in society, not just advocating in private law matters, but in holding the line of liberty in criminal work, between the power of the state and the individual. RM has done no more than that. No more could be expected of a KC. Indeed looking back over my not insignificant experience through many highly contentious decades of criminal cases, the greatest number of manifest injustices and convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal was in cases where pusillanimous counsel, prosecution and defence, failed to stand up when they should have. You will recall that the 1984 PACE was partly as a result of prosecution counsel’s abject failures in cases that preceded it. RM however has a top reputation, and a fine mind with properly honed senses of fairness and responsibility. Nothing should be done to dent this reputation.
The attack on Rajiv is part of the attack on all our democratic rights as speakers made clear in the webinar above. But the prosecution of Rajiv is not an aberration. It is the end result of judges withdrawing defences, refusing to allow defendants to explain why they undertook the actions they did.
It is the end result of waves of anti-protest legislation and the depiction of Palestine solidarity marches as ‘hate marches’ whereas rallies in support of genocide (quaintly terms opposition to ‘antisemitism’) attract no such opprobrium.
As speakers made clear the proposals of the unlamented Lammy (one of the few gains in the removal of Starmer) to remove Jury trials are consistent with all that’s gone before. What Injustice Johnson did in citing Rajiv Menon for contempt is what other judges also want to do which is to remove Jury Nullification or Equity.
In other words a jury can make a decision that regardless of the law, justice comes first and if a law is oppressive then it is to be disregarded or reinterpreted.
What didn’t come across at the webinar, which isn’t surprising as it was lawyer led, was that the attacks on democratic rights and civil liberties have been led by the judges. We have the most reactionary Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in living memory. We had the first woman Chief Justice Lady Carr lying through her teeth in the decision to uphold the ban on Palestine Action.
Carr stated repeatedly that the ‘violent’ Palestine Action should be contrasted with the ‘peaceful’ Suffragettes whereas anyone who knows anything about the Suffragettes knows full well that they boasted of their violence – physically attacking politicians, burning down race courses, bombing churches even.
Historically the judiciary, far from being independent, has been the enemy of all progress, anti-working class and pro-police. It was the judiciary above all who were responsible for the miscarriages of justice in the Irish cases in the 1970s and 80s.
What sort of legal system is this that works for some and not for others (activists).
It must be incredibly stressful to have to face such charges.
Solidarity with Rajiv.
I am reminded of the Garden Court Chambers motto – Do right. Fear no one.