Thousands of lawyers staged a half-day strike on Monday 6th January in protest at Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s measures to cut legal aid fees by 30%. Both solicitors and barristers participated in the walkout which, for barristers, is the first strike ever in the 800 year history of the Criminal Bar Association. That the Tories have provoked the first strike by barristers since the 13th Century says much about the scale of attacks on living standards being carried out by this government.
Thousands of lawyers staged a half-day strike on Monday 6th January in protest at Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s measures to cut legal aid fees by 30%. Both solicitors and barristers participated in the walkout which, for barristers, is the first strike ever in the 800 year history of the Criminal Bar Association. That the Tories have provoked the first strike by barristers since the 13th Century says much about the scale of attacks on living standards being carried out by this government.
Since 1997, legal aid has been cut by 40%, and now the Tories want to cut a further 30% off the budget. This could leave self-employed lawyers earning as little as £20 a day before travelling and other expenses; as one junior barrister put it: “you’d get more for working in a shop – it just doesn’t seem worth it”.
The government claims that roughly 1,200 barristers received payments of over £100,000 last year for legal aid work. The lives of such individuals are clearly a million miles removed from the day-to-day conditions facing ordinary working people. However, while the older generation may be complaining about having to cut down on the luxuries, the thousands of young people currently in or seeking jobs in law will find themselves completely cut out of the picture on account of the inability to fund themselves through the training and early stages of their career. The profession, which already has a bad reputation, will become the sole preserve of a wealthy elite. According to The Independent (6th January 2014):
“Barristers believe they are being deliberately misrepresented as “fat cat” lawyers, milking the public purse. Gareth Hughes from 2 Pump Court, said that Grayling’s claim of criminal barristers taking home an average of £100K a year was “simply not true” and that the Ministry of Justice were “cynically manipulating the figures to influence public opinion”.”
What will be the result of the cuts?
These changes can ultimately only mean one thing: the demise of the self-employed barrister and small solicitors’ firm, and the rise of multi-national businesses geared to make a profit out of legal aid. Indeed, this is what the government has unashamedly declared itself in favour of, with a proposal to cut the number of solicitors firms it contracts with to carry out legal aid work from 1,600 to 400, with the most work going to the lowest bidder. Not only that, but non-legal businesses are circling like vultures to pick up some of these soon-to-be lucrative legal aid contracts, including Serco, G4S and even Eddie Stobart (the lorry company).
Lawyers working for these companies will then be faced with all the cost cutting measures that private businesses are imposing on their employees at the present time – cuts to wages, attacks on conditions and relentless driving down of living conditions, all the while making more profit for the bosses of these companies.
But the consequences of these changes stretch beyond the living standards of the thousands of young people working in the legal profession. Cutting corners when it comes to legal representation will lead to serious problems regarding the right to decent representation at police stations and in courts for those accused of crimes or with other legal problems. Without decent legal advice, the appalling prospect of miscarriages of justice becomes increasingly likely and the basic right to defend oneself against criminal charges is undermined. In short, basic legal rights will be limited only to those who can afford them.
The power of strike action
The significance of this strike action should not be underestimated. Not only is it the first time that barristers have ever been on strike, but this is also the first time that both wings of the legal profession have taken co-ordinated national action. This reflects the depth of the present crisis and the proletarianisation of a growing layer of workers formerly considered “middle class”. A similar process has been seen among teachers, lecturers and civil servants over the past period. As Marx and Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto, capitalism has “stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.”
Courts all over the UK have been hugely disrupted by the strike action, with courts in Wales being described as “inoperable”. The strike has served to demonstrate the power of labour and of organised mass collective action, with lawyers able to take control of the court system by withholding their labour. The stated aim of the strike action is to force the justice secretary to re-think the cuts to legal aid; but the government is unlikely to offer any meaningful, long-term concessions. The Tory policy of licking the boots of the bourgeoisie means that all it can offer is cuts to public spending and the opening up of as much of the economy as possible to big business.
Instead of placing hopes in government-granted concessions, lawyers should take heart from the success of this strike in flexing their muscles as organised workers. Currently lawyers are loosely organised with Monday’s strike having been called by the Criminal Bar Association which is closer to an administrative body than a trade union. Lawyers must organise themselves into a fighting trade union that encompasses both barristers and solicitors, and which can affiliate to the TUC. It’s vital that the lawyers build links with other sections of the working class, most obviously with court staff, many of whom are members of the PCS union.
The embryo of this kind of organisation is present in the Justice Alliance – an organistion of lawyers, trade unions (including PCS and Unite) and charities that is fighting cuts to legal aid and which supported Monday’s strike. This loose organisational structure and broad support must be translated into concrete tactics for taking the struggle forward. Lawyers must unionise, adopt a clear socialist programme and build links with other organised workers. Only through a militant struggle will we be able to stop the criminal behaviour of the government.
