autobiography
BASTARDRY AND HIGH PRINCIPLE
David Marr
Geoffrey Robertson
The Justice Game
Chatto & Windus $35hb, 415pp
0 7011 6348 8
THE MEMOIRS OF ANY BARRISTER still in harness are, by definition, advertising. The mystery of The Justice Game is what on earth
Geoffrey Robertson needs to sell. He's much too busy
already. A queue of life's victims wanting his help in court
would stretch twice round the Temple. But drumming up business
is not what the book is about. It's real purpose, I suspect, is
to show that despite a certain radical reputation Robertson is
a sound man.
True he's from Australia but he reached Oxford in the '60s
on a Rhodes Scholarship, found a toe hold at the London Bar and
fixed his vowels. Very early on, a chambers' clerk advised him
not to work for the National Council for Civil Liberties if he
wanted 'a career' in the Law.
Robertson has holidayed in Tuscany with Tony Blair, could have a peerage if he wanted one, puts a lot of daylight between himself and 'the Left', deplores people making jokes in Who's Who, has attended at least one Anglican harvest festival, trowels on the flattery of judges and QCs, can ask 30,000 pounds to take a case, is silent on changing the 'pantomime' of Bar rituals, believes in trials not truth commissions, can see the 'poetic justice' of summary execution, takes tea with the morals campaigner Mary Whitehouse and sits from time to time as a judge of the Knightsbridge Crown Court.
Sounder still is the pervading optimism of The Justice Game. He admits the Establishment is as mired as ever in self-regard. He's good on what he calls 'the canker of cover up'. The argument he makes for a bill of rights is as persuasive for Australia as it is for Britain. He acknowledges how terrible the libel laws are ('pay attention again, Australia') and has a shrewd outsider's eye for the way class infects the operation of British justice.
Yet in all his years in London he hasn't lost faith in the high romance of the Bar. He reckons advocates are better these days, juries more merciful and judges are being appointed with 'a more acceptable social, sexual and racial mix.' (Note: nothing about a more acceptable political mix.) He claims the Law as portrayed by writers and dramatists is caught in a time warp. Horace Rumpole, Robertson says, would be bankrupted these days by costs awarded against him for wasting everyone's time.
Sound chap. But that this is the memoir of a man eligible for high office in Britain is the least reason for recommending it to Australian readers. Writers forget that lawyers, too, are story tellers to the tribe and Robertson tells the tales of his great cases with passion and clarity. These are stories of gun running, government deceit, negligence in war and cruelty in peace, the thuggery of dictators 'Malawi, Singapore, old South Africa', the inexhaustible madness of morals campaigners and the pretentions of the very, very rich. This is life beating fiction at its own game, complex tales told with a sure instinct for detail against a background of high political drama.
'Take my Guv'nor' "Lewis Hawser QC" 'He is the best fucking silk there is. And why is he never going to be made a fucking High Court judge? Just answer me that. I will tell you why he's never going to be made a High Court judge. Because when he was a young barrister, he took calls from the National fucking Council for Civil fucking Liberties.'
Robertson took those calls, fought some famous cases very well, prospered hugely and after thirty years has reached that legal plateau where only the mountain range of the high judiciary is left for him to conquer. Now he's written The Justice Game which lays out a version of his career from Abbie Hoffman saved at Heathrow in 1971 to the Tory sleeze Neil Hamilton destroyed in 1996. He's caused havoc to the Establishment yet argues on his own behalf that he's a cap to be trusted.