One of the pleasures that I find most agreeable on a leisure based late summer holiday is abandoning the daily newspaper and most TV news programmes and taking unrushed minutes and/or hours to read books which have been lying on the table or desk just waiting for months and years to be opened. Two such publications were hurriedly packed a couple of weeks ago; "Munich" by Robert Harris and the first offering from the "Secret Barrister" published in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Two such different forms of writing and topic that at first glance one would thought that there was nothing within their pages that could be compared.
The novel I read in full and the outpourings of the cynical legal eagle are so far unread past pp107. Those pages however included SB`s diatribe against magistrates and the system in which they operate. Robert Harris is rightfully recognised as a master within his field. His scholarly narrative is well constructed of what in his imagination lay behind the appearance and words of Neville Chamberlain on 30th September 1938 when Chamberlain's aeroplane landed at Heston Aerodrome and he spoke to the spectators there:
"The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine [shows paper to crowd]. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: " ... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again".
Harris`s acknowledgements occupy two and a half closely typed pages. His fictional account of the momentous four days prior to that speech is masterful and credible unlike the bile that the SB vomits over 38pp in his vile and outrageous descriptions or depictions of what life is like for all those who use the magistrates courts i.e. witnesses and all those who fulfil their professional functions within that arena. S/He reserves her/his contemptuousness for lay magistrates by anonymous accounts of the ineptitude supposedly experienced in her/his presence. I can honestly say that in my 17 years on a London bench with c300 members when I retired nine years ago the majority as a presiding magistrate or chairman in the old parlance, I have never heard, seen or experienced such language, action or behaviour as s/he purports to be the norm. Unlike Robert Harris, a world renown writer of wonderful fiction, the SB is using untested anecdote to undermine a whole justice system to vent what seems to be personal frustration and/or antagonism. There is no doubt that there are serious criticisms that can and should be attended to in the magistrates courts. Since the book`s publication these problems have intensified. There is unquestionably an argument that magistrates courts should have a single government salaried District Judge presiding: that eg [as was my practice], all defendants found guilty at trial should be told and have literature given to them of the appeal system: that trials should be in front of DJ with two lay magistrate wingers as currently in appeals before a crown court judge flanked by two magistrates. Magistrate selection and training leave a lot to be desired. But venomous castigation and atypical quotations and observations to suit her/his purpose are not the way to process a needed investigation. Latest figures from the Ministry of Justice indicate that there is no current trend to have more courts with DJs presiding than is the case now.
About 20 years ago there was an academic inquiry, the exact name and terms of which are now lost to me, which came to the conclusion that if District Judges forfeited their need for a legal advisor [they are of course their own legal advisor] the costs of their employment would be in touching distance of the then current costs of magistrates` expenses plus associated advisors` salaries. Indeed it will, IMHO, be when or if such an inquiry showed conclusively that lay magistrates cost more than district judges and only then. that there will emerge a valid argument that lay magistrates have had their day in court.
The Secret Barrister should consider retiring from writing whilst s/he is ahead and concentrate in performing the duties for which s/he is presumably ably qualified. "Fake Law" and "The Memoir of an Unlikely Lawyer" are not on my future reading list. However with the £millions already pocketed from sales of over 600,000 copies perhaps s/he will conclude that the law was merely a stepping stone to her/his true vocation following in the footsteps of many of her/his legal predecessors. At least then lay magistrates could hold their heads level if not high as they continue to prop up a system decaying in front of all us all.
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