Latest news with #GarethPeirce
Telegraph
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Retired police officers to be forced to give evidence to new ‘Battle of Orgreave' inquiry
Retired police officers are to be forced to give evidence at a public inquiry into the alleged 'framing' of miners at the ' Battle of Orgreave ' in 1984. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has announced that a public inquiry will be launched this year to investigate the events surrounding the clashes between police and miners during the pit strike at the Orgreave Coking Plant in South Yorkshire on June 18 1984. Some 95 picketers were arrested and initially charged with riot and violent disorder, but the case against them collapsed in court amid allegations that South Yorkshire Police had falsified evidence. Gareth Peirce, who acted as solicitor for some of the picketers, said the charge of riot had been used 'to make a public example of people, as a device to assist in breaking the strike'. Human rights barrister Michael Mansfield called it 'the worst example of a mass frame-up in this country this century'. The inquiry was a manifesto commitment by Labour and will be statutory with powers to compel people to provide information where necessary, the Home Office said. Anyone who refuses to give evidence could face fines of up to £1,000 and/or six months in jail. The Bishop of Sheffield, the Rt Rev Dr Pete Wilcox, has agreed to chair the inquiry, which the Home Office said was intended to 'aid the public's understanding of how the events on the day, and immediately after, came to pass'. Ms Cooper said what happened at Orgreave 'cast a shadow over communities in Yorkshire and other mining areas'. 'The violent scenes and subsequent prosecutions raised concerns that have been left unanswered for decades, and we must now establish what happened,' the Home Secretary said. 'I pay tribute to the campaigners who never stopped in their search for truth and justice, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we build an inquiry that gets the answers they and their communities deserve.' The closest parallel is the public inquiry into the Hillsborough football tragedy, after which two senior South Yorkshire police officers and the force's lawyer were prosecuted for perverting the course of justice but acquitted after court ruled it was not a statutory inquiry. Bishop Wilcox said he was working with the Home Office to agree a terms of reference. 'I expect the panel to begin its work in the autumn, and we will endeavour to deliver an inquiry which is thorough and fair, and which will uncover what happened at Orgreave as swiftly as possible,' he said. The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) said it wanted to know who was responsible for 'organising and ordering the deployment of multiple police forces, including mounted police armed with truncheons, shields and dogs, against striking miners'. The campaign group said it wanted the inquiry to find out how it was decided that 'striking miners should be attacked and arrested at Orgreave and charged with riot and unlawful assembly, which carried heavy prison sentences'. It added that it wanted to know why 'the police operational order for police deployments that day disappeared and other evidence been destroyed or embargoed until 2066 and 2071''. Kate Flannery, the OTJC secretary, said the announcement of an inquiry was 'really positive news'. Ms Flannery added: 'We now need to be satisfied that the inquiry is given the necessary powers to fully investigate all the aspects of the orchestrated policing at Orgreave, and have unrestricted access to all relevant information including government, police and media documents, photos and films.' Chris Kitchen, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary, said the inquiry was 'hugely welcome'. Mr Kitchen added: 'The events at Orgreave, and throughout the strike, destroyed the trust between the police and mining communities even now, 41 years later. 'It is vital that this trust is won back and the NUM believe this inquiry will go some way to rebuilding that trust.' Kevin Horne, a miner arrested at Orgreave, said: 'It is now over 41 years since a paramilitary style police operation was planned at Orgreave and it is important to remember that some of the miners attacked and arrested there are now dead and many others are old and ill. 'We need a quick and thorough inquiry with a tight timescale so that surviving miners can at last obtain the truth and justice they have been waiting for.' Oliver Coppard, mayor of South Yorkshire, also welcomed the news of the inquiry, saying it was a 'landmark moment for justice and accountability'. Mr Coppard added: 'The Inquiry represents an opportunity to examine not only the actions of South Yorkshire Police and other forces on that day, but also the broader role of government at the time. 'It's a step towards setting the historical record straight, ensuring lessons are learned, and restoring public trust.'
Irish Post
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Post
Protest and policing concerns echo past bans
Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen's University Belfast BRIAN DOOLEY reports on a London symposium on human rights Gareth Peirce (image by Martin Gavin) AT A SOLD-OUT event in London, prominent human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce compared the recent crackdown on free speech over Palestine at Glastonbury with the banning of the 1988 Song Streets of Sorrow/The Birmingham Six. Peirce's legal career has involved representing members of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four — all wrongly sentenced to long years in prison for IRA activity including terrorism — and was part of the legal team representing Kneecap's Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh who was charged under terrorism legislation for allegedly display a flag supporting Hezbollah. The charges were subsequently dropped The event at St Ethelburga's Centre for Peace and Reconciliation also discussed the wider repression of protest in Britain, and the findings of an international panel of experts into British state impunity during the Northern Ireland conflict. Dr Aoife Duffy, Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex and a member of the expert panel explained why, after examining hundreds of cases of killings, torture and collusion, we had concluded in our report Bitter Legacy that there had been 'widespread, systemic and systematic' impunity afforded to British security forces during the conflict. Paul O'Connor of the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre, briefed on the Sean Brown case, and why holding a full independent public inquiry into the 1997 Loyalist paramilitary murder of the GAA man was now the only sensible option left to find out the truth about what happened. Daniel Holder of the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice provided context on latest efforts to reform and repeal the controversial Legacy Act, and why many families of the bereaved want the current mechanisms overhauled or scrapped, and replaced with better access to justice. Human rights lawyer Rajiv Menon spoke about the fight for justice for the families of those killed in the Hillsborough football disaster, and emphasised how it was years of campaigning by bereaved relatives of those killed which finally achieved a measure of truth about what happened, a sentiment echoed by Deborah Coles, Executive Director of INQUEST in the context of her work on deaths in police custody in England and Wales. The discussion provided a stark reminder that what happens in Britain has many echoes of the experience of Northern Ireland, in terms of a lack of police accountability, a dismissal of campaigns by bereaved families, and the long, slow struggle for justice. Brian Dooley is a member of the independent panel of experts on British impunity, senior advisor at NGO Human Rights First, and Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen's University Belfast reports on a London event focused on truth and accountability See More: Brian Dooley, Gareth Peirce, Human Rights
Telegraph
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The human rights lawyer battling Palestine Action's legal ban
From IRA bombing suspects in the 1970s to alleged al-Qaeda terrorists at the turn of the millennium, veteran human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce has built her career on representing some of Britain's most reviled defendants over the past 50 years. And now, aged 85, she is once again taking on the state. Peirce has agreed to represent Palestine Action in its fight against the Home Office ruling to proscribe it as a terrorist organisation, putting it on a par with al-Qaeda and Isis. After a destructive five-year campaign targeting Israeli weapons factories in the UK, the Government was moved to ban the group this month after it forced entry into RAF Brize Norton, spray-painting two aircraft red, and causing £7 million worth of damage. With membership – or even support – of Palestine Action now carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, the group has employed the services of Peirce to fight what it believes is a draconian measure that conflates protest with terrorism. 'She specialises in representing pariahs of society,' once observed Moazzam Begg, the British Muslim who spent three years detained without charge at Guantanamo Bay and later sued the British government for its complicity. 'I know because I'm one of them.' Indeed, if Peirce were a different kind of lawyer, she might now be in the House of Lords, reflecting on a glittering career and polishing her CBE. Instead, she politely refused the honour in 1999 – and has remained a relentless thorn in the side of successive governments ever since. Her client list reads like a roll-call of recent history's most controversial figures – from hate preacher Abu Qatada and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to British Isis bride Shamima Begum. And her list of landmark victories against British officials is equally formidable. 'The fickleness of society means that one day a pariah can be a hero, and vice versa,' the usually media-shy lawyer told the BBC in a rare interview in 2014. Peirce has often claimed her motivations lie not in sympathy for her clients' cause necessarily but instead in the legal principle to ensure fair protection for all, no matter the state of public feeling or political will. Her critics, however, haven't always quite seen it that way. Some say she conflates advocacy with activism. In 2005, Michael Gove – then a Tory candidate for MP – branded Peirce a 'passionate, committed and effective supporter of the Trotskyist Socialist Alliance', an organisation intent on 'destabilising the props of the establishment'. Indeed, her rare forays into public protestation have not always appeared to follow the principle of law first, feeling second – and never more so than when it comes to the subject of Israel. As far back as 2009, Peirce was speaking out against the 'occupation' of Gaza, which she said was being 'bombed almost out of existence'. In more recent times, she has signed open letters condemning the 'genocide' of Palestinians and has also taken up the brief for Mo Chara – one third of the notorious Irish rap group Kneecap – over terrorism charges for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London gig last year. Therefore, while Peirce has not commented on her work with Palestine Action, it would appear to follow a theme. For a figure who has been at the heart of so many of Britain's fiercest legal controversies, Peirce has a surprisingly timid persona, with a quiet voice and hiding behind a fringe that hangs half over her eyes. Some might recognise her from the 1993 film In the Name of the Father, where she was played by Emma Thompson. It told the story of Peirce's crucial role in exonerating the Guildford Four, who had spent 14 years in prison after being wrongly convicted for the IRA pub bombing in the Surrey town. Representing Irish defendants at the height of the Troubles was certainly no easy task. The case cemented her reputation as not only a star lawyer with painstaking attention to detail, but as someone drawn to defend those whom others would denounce. A surprising calling, perhaps, given her genteel upbringing in the Cotswolds and later the Yorkshire Dales. Born Jean Margaret Webb in 1940 to parents who ran a grammar school, she enjoyed a privileged education at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Oxford. But it was her subsequent work as a journalist in 1960s America, following Martin Luther King Jr's civil rights campaign and witnessing the systematic injustice for African Americans first hand, that forged her world view. Returning to London in 1970, with an American husband and young son in tow and having changed her name to Gareth (she has never revealed why), Peirce took up law at the London School of Economics. She then took up a training post with radical London law firm Benedict Birnberg – one of the few practices then championing civil liberties – and qualified in 1978. The following decade saw Peirce establish her name. 'My job is to get you out and I'm going to get you out,' she told Gerry Conlon, the leading member of the Guildford Four, when they first met, in Long Lartin prison in 1987. 'Within 20 minutes, I felt, 'This is the person who's going to get me out of prison,'' he would later recall. 'She was so convincing in her belief that the system had the ability to own up to huge errors and mistakes.' Her meticulous investigation uncovered suppressed evidence, including a police statement that provided Conlon with an alibi. In 1989, the Guildford Four walked free. They were soon followed in 1991 by the Birmingham Six, again as a result of Peirce exposing unreliable evidence over their conviction for a pub bombing 16 years prior. The great theme of Peirce's one and only book – Dispatches from the Dark Side, published in 2010 – is that justice dies when the law is co-opted for political purposes. And if the Irish were in the crosshairs of the state during the 1970s and 1980s, Muslims soon took their place after 9/11. Peirce began representing those facing injustices within the Islamic community, advocating for British nationals held at Guantanamo Bay and fighting the detention of the so-called Belmarsh detainees, who were being held indefinitely in the high-security prison under Tony Blair's anti-terrorism legislation. The latter were mostly Muslim refugees who were 'suspected international terrorists' with links to al-Qaeda, according to the home secretary at the time, David Blunkett, including Abu Qatada. The evidence, however, was based on intelligence that the suspects were not allowed to see or challenge, which Peirce argued created a shadow justice system that abandoned basic legal protections. When the House of Lords finally ruled their detention illegal in 2005, Peirce had scored another landmark victory. 'We have lost our way in this country,' Peirce had warned a year earlier, commenting on what she saw as 'unchecked fascistic' language directed at Muslims. 'We have entered a new dark age of injustice and it is frightening that we are overwhelmed by it.' In 2009, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan raged, she warned that the US and UK had not launched a war on terror but a war on human rights. Her strength of feeling on the issue continued long after. In 2016, Peirce accused the British government of waging a 'covert war' on political dissent amid proposals to outlaw non-violent extremism. 'The UK is further than any other in terms of thought control legislation,' she told an anti-Prevent event at Goldsmiths University. Unsurprisingly, Peirce's work has not gone unnoticed among the Muslim community. The esteem in which Peirce's Arabic-speaking clients held her saw them nickname her 'al-Umm', meaning both 'mother' and 'the greatest', according to Begg. Such has been the extent of her success, even some of Peirce's opponents revere her. 'All her geese were swans, of course, but she always represented her clients to the very best of her ability,' described legendary prosecutor Sir John Nutting KC about his 'old sparring partner' to the BBC in 2014. 'She has great integrity, although was always terribly earnest and serious. The prosecuting team in one case had a bet once as to who could be the first to make her crack a smile during the trial. I won, but it took me several days.' While some of her peers may have cashed in on their courtroom fame, Peirce has always trodden a quieter path. She lives fairly modestly in a Victorian terraced house – albeit on a street of million-pound houses – in north-west London, with much of her work financed either by Legal Aid or given pro bono. Her latest case, the legal action brought by Palestine Action, is set to be funded by £300,000 donated by more than 8,000 supporters. Earlier this month, a last-minute legal challenge by the group to suspend the proscription under anti-terrorism laws failed and, on July 5, it officially became a criminal offence to become a member of, or show support for, the organisation. Another hearing is now scheduled for July 21, when Palestine Action will apply for permission for a judicial review to quash the order. The group's own aims to end 'global participation in Israel's genocidal and apartheid regime' do not appear to stray far from Peirce's personal views. In May, she signed an open letter alongside more than 1,000 other lawyers, legal academics and former judges calling for the UK to act within its 'legal obligations' to stop the genocide of Gaza, including sanctions. Such action has not been taken. The irony is probably not lost on Peirce that she is facing down a Government run by a prime minister who began his own career as a human rights lawyer. Before moving to Downing Street, the pair lived only a short 15-minute walk from each other in the wealthy suburb of Kentish Town – though that's as far as the connection seems to go, with neither appearing to have worked together or faced each other in court. As she now prepares to go to battle with the state once again, Peirce will perhaps be readying herself as much for the scrutiny that comes with her clients as for the judicial challenge ahead. Indeed, it was once put to Peirce in a 2014 BBC interview that some might feel her defence of those deemed enemies of the state must mean she was 'in cahoots' with them. 'That's a reflection of the shallowness of understanding of what the law is intended to do and the guarantees it's intended to provide for anyone,' she answered. 'Particularly the outlaws and outcasts of society… the people that the majority in society wish to have no protection.'
Times
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Times
Palestine Action raises £100,000 to fight being proscribed
Palestine Action has raised more than £100,000 to fight the government's attempts to proscribe it as a terrorist organisation. It has instructed Gareth Peirce, a veteran human rights solicitor who has represented Guantanamo Bay detainees Moazzam Begg and Shaker Aamer, the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, to represent the group in court. As of yesterday evening, Palestine Action had raised £113,000 on the Crowd Justice website, which describes itself as the UK's leading fundraising platform for legal issues 'big and small'. It is the platform that Palestine Action has frequently used to raise money for the legal costs for its activists facing court trials following its direct action protests. The group believes it can block efforts by the government to add it to a list of proscribed terrorists organisations in the UK, which would make it illegal to be a member, invite support for or donate to Palestine Action — with a maximum punishment of 14 years in jail. However, it said it was preparing to de-proscribe the group if the government succeeds. Only five groups have succeeded in being removed from the list of terror groups since the proscription process was set up 25 years ago. Hamas is currently fighting a legal battle to de-proscribe it from the Home Office list. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, will introduce secondary legislation to ban the group on Monday, followed by votes in the House of Commons on Wednesday and in the House of Lords on Thursday. If successful, Palestine Action will be banned by the end of next week, which would place the group alongside terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda, Isis and Hamas. Cooper said she had decided to ban Palestine Action after a 'long history of unacceptable criminal damage' culminating in its 'disgraceful attack' at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday. On its crowdfunding page, the group said it needed £100,000 to fund the legal fight, which it received within 48 hours of the home secretary's announcement. It said: 'Whilst we hope to stop the proscription process, we need to also prepare for the potential fight to de-proscribe Palestine Action.' Neil Basu, the former head of UK counter terrorism, has backed the government's attempts to proscribe Palestine Action. He suggested the government should also lower the bar for proscription, a process that takes months of legal preparation for the Home Office. He told Global Player's Crime Agents podcast: 'This is a really difficult issue, and I think they [Palestine Action] may have done their own legs with the Brize Norton incursion. We all feel like we're on the edge of war, if not actually actively at war, in our support to Ukraine and what's happening in the Middle East with our most powerful ally, then you invade a military base, you are crossing a line there, there's no doubt about it.' Basu cited previous moves to proscribe al-Muhajiroun, the Islamic extremists, and National Action, a far-right organisation, as examples of how it took years to proscribe them but they were suddenly disabled once they had been added to the list of banned terrorist groups because it allowed counterterrorism policing and the intelligence agencies to target them and 'break them'. Making the case for lowering the bar for proscription, Basu said: 'Up until that point, they'd been a serious threat, so maybe the time is right to lower the bar, and we made mistakes in the past, and actually, it would be better to cut off a potentially extremist group before they've developed their reach and they've developed their narrative and they've developed the people they want to radicalise.'
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
UK protest group Palestine Action denies Iran funding as it faces ban
Palestine Action has condemned a briefing by Home Office officials that it could be funded by Iran as 'baseless smears'. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced on Monday plans to ban under anti-terrorism laws the protest group, which takes direct action against Israeli arms companies in the UK. She made no mention during her statement of suspected Iranian links but the Times reported that Home Office officials had said they were investigating whether the group is funded by Iran. A Palestine Action spokesperson said: 'This is a baseless investigation and ridiculous investigation. We are funded by ordinary people who support us. 'They are doing it because they don't believe that banning an organisation causing damage to weapons factories and companies who enable the production of weapons sits well with a lot of the public, and therefore they're trying to create a smear campaign in order to justify the proscription. 'You would think that politicians would want to vote based on hard facts. Instead, it's just saying you're investigating someone for X, Y, Z.' The group also pointed out that a crowdfunder posted on CrowdJustice on Tuesday afternoon, to raise £10,000 in legal fees to fight proscription, had raised over £5,000 in its first hour. It says that Gareth Peirce from Birnberg Peirce solicitors, who represented the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, has been instructed to represent the group. The anonymous Home Office briefing about Iran came two days after the advocacy group We Believe in Israel tweeted: 'Behind Palestine Action's theatre of resistance stands a darker puppeteer: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … Palestine Action is the mask. The IRGC is the face.' The only evidence it provided was saying that the IRGC's vocabulary 'echoes in Palestine Action's slogans'. We Believe in Israel launched a campaign to ban Palestine Action this month and language from a report it published was similar to that used by Cooper in her statement. The decision to proscribe the group – the first time such a proposal has been made in relation to a direct action protest group – came after activists from the group broke into RAF Brize Norton on Friday and defaced two military aircraft with spray paint in an embarrassing security breach. The ban would place Palestine Action alongside the likes of al-Qaida, Islamic State and National Action, and make it a criminal offence to be a member of the group or show support for it. The proposal, which will go before parliament next week, has been heavily criticised by groups such as Amnesty International and Liberty. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Areeba Hamid, Greenpeace UK's co-executive director, said: 'Proscribing Palestine Action would be a grave mistake. Unlike al-Qaida, Wagner group and the other groups classed as 'terrorist organisations', Palestine Action does not advocate for violent armed action or for people to be harmed – they exist to decommission the weapons used to commit war crimes. Proscribing them would mark a dark turn for our democracy and a new low for a government already intent on stamping out the right to protest. 'The police already have laws to prosecute any individuals found guilty of a crime. And as a non-violent organisation with 'peace' in our name, we would never defend violence. But outlawing an entire organisation and all of its supporters would be a dangerous step.' The former justice secretary Charlie Falconer said on Sunday that the 'sort of demonstration' at Brize Norton would not justify proscription, 'so there must be something else that I don't know about'. Cooper's statement appeared to offer no new information about the group. It also referred to an action against 'a Jewish-owned business in north London' as neither 'legitimate or peaceful', but did not mention that Palestine Action said it targeted the business in question because it is registered as a landlord of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems UK's factory in Kent.
