Tories – Stop attacking principled lawyers to cover your failure!
JVL Introduction
The government want to distract attention from their own failings by seeking to clampdown on “leftie lawyers” as though they are responsible for the failings in the asylum process. People doing their job as Immigration or Human Rights lawyers must be able to do their jobs without such personal attacks. One prominent lawyer affected is Jacqueline McKenzie, a respected Immigration lawyer who has been advising the government on addressing the Windrush scandal. The document produced by the government “centred on Jacqueline’s supposed links to the Labour party and her work on a multi sectoral group chaired by Baroness Doreen Lawrence to examine race disparities in the UK which she was invited to volunteer for. Omitted from the briefing was Jacqueline’s involvement on another group chaired by Priti Patel MP on the Windrush Scandal and the 90% of her work which is focused on legal support for victims of the Windrush Scandal.”
Below we publish an interview with her conducted by The Voice and also the full statement from her fellow Partners at Leigh Day. You can also read a statement by Ms McKenzie here.
LL
This article was originally published by The Voice on Thu 10 Aug 2023. Read the original here.
Windrush lawyer stands firm amid Tory efforts to “demonize” her work
In an interview with The Voice McKenzie says a “vile Tory party-led attack on me hasn’t worked”
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Prior to every General Election, the Tories bring out the anti immigrant race card and for them, it will never change. However, this time it’s a little different. Ever since the Brexit debacle, which was largely fought on anti immigration, racial prejudice and its promotion has been at the top of the Tory agenda for the whole of their term in government. Anyone who stands in their way, by fighting for human rights, whether here or abroad, is labelled by the far right in the Tory Party as anti British.
If “lefty lawyers were the cause of the mammoth asylum backlog and immigration problems then there must be many hundreds of them, working eighteen or twenty hours a day to achieve the scale of the problems which the poor dears in government are now burdened with. What government needs in order to combat the onslaught of “lefty lawyer” that are causing them such grief is to demonstrate in Parliament Square about the rank injustices they are subjected to, appeal to the United Nations and anyone who will listen. They could appeal for donations to fund their protests for greater fairness and justice for poor beleaguered ministers and raise money by crowdfunding. They could appeal to churchmen to support their cause for fair treatment for government ministers and start petitions to plead their cause with King Charles. Poor things, my heart goes out to them.
This attack on Jacqueline McKenzie constitutes yet further proof that the governing party must properly be regarded as a lawless mafia, requiring exactly that combination of collective contempt, cooperative resistance and personal caution appropriate to dealing with a criminal underworld.
One aspect of the rabble rousing cowardice of the attack is its transparent illogicality: for it is not ‘lefty lawyers’ who actually make the judicial decisions of which the mafia so disapprove, but judges. So it would be far more logical for the mafia to attack ‘lefty judges’. Of course they have been working on that for some time, but discreetly. Launching an attack too early on ‘leftie judges’ could prove counterproductive as a previous mafia boss discovered. Far better to wait until they can be certain that all the most senior judges are entirely reliable.
After all who bothers to examine the arcane details of the process of judicial appointments? And who would be foolhardy enough to comment on them?
I heard Jacqueline McKenzie speak at the ‘Windrush – 5 Years On’ meeting in Parliament earlier this summer. She spoke from the floor, and compellingly with a huge wealth of detail compressed into a short response which held the pathetic government minister to account in the politest way.
The latest deliberate leaking and hounding of named lawyers is something we’ve seen in Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Hungary and of course Israel .. but not as much in the UK . Brexit marked a turning point. We should all be scared – I know I am!
Which lawyer was it that drafted/ instructed it to be drafted, legislation acknowledging the it breached international law but determined to proceed with it anyway……Oh yeah that’s right that Home Secretary alleged lawyer, Braverman…..typical Tory behaviour.
Don’t suppose that ‘human rights lawyer’
K. Starmer has spoken up I’m her defence? Thought not.
We are clearly (as yet) some considerable distance from fascism in this country, but this calculated attack on Jacqueline Mckenzie by the Tory Party, in concert with its media supporters, has some disturbing parallels with events in 1930s Europe. When a political party mounts a public attack on an individual which it knows will result in certain verbal abuse, and a strong possibility of physical assault, we are uncomfortably close to the tactics used the Nazis in the runup to 1933.
Given that there are so many Caribbean-British deportation victims still waiting for compensation the government has a bloody nerve blaming left Black lawyers for its problems.
FYI Bravaman’s and the governments Rwanda and general deportation strategy for refugees is not new.
For most of the 20th C Australia, like New Zealand practiced a whites-only immigration policy designed to specifically keep out the Black commonwealth. In the mid-70s Australia became interested in trade with the Pacifica-Rim countries. By the 80s Australia also became aware that this was an IT tech hub to which it wanted access. Australia changed its immigration rules to meet these aims.
However to global condemnation, it off-shored its refugee responsibilities to the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Manus for processing and pays Papua New Guinea to take refugees too.
Essentially this means that Australia will hold its nose and take people of colour if they have a high degree of technical expertise and/or wealth. But poor refugees of colour are shunted abroad.
Disgracefully, Bravaman’s Tory immigration policy are based on this historic segregationist template.