2 min read
ByAdrian Cohen, Adrian Cohen
Jews have always been prominent in the legal profession and no more so than at the bar and bench. Lord Neuberger, the President of the Supreme Court, and Sir Terence Etherton, the Master of the Rolls, spring to mind. Sir Jack Beatson, a Lord Justice of Appeal, is another example.
Those who have made it to the top of their profession have done so because they are possessed of fine minds and have demonstrated exceptional talent. More than that, they have had to show absolute integrity.
Lord Justice Beatson was a Law Commissioner, had a successful practice at the bar and has been a very able judge. He is also a sometime professor of law at Cambridge University.
He presided over the three judge Court of Appeal panel which considered the appeal brought by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee last week against a High Court ruling in favour of five disgruntled supporters of Jeremy Corbyn's campaign to be re-elected as Labour leader.
The five had fallen foul of the decision by the NEC to allow a vote in the election only to those who had been registered as members prior to January 12. The Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the High Court and ruled in favour of the NEC. As a consequence, some 130,000 registered members will not have the vote. A majority of them were thought likely to vote for Mr Corbyn.
A number of the Labour leader's supporters, presumably having availed themselves of the few biographical facts available online, launched into an attack on Lord Justice Beatson's impartiality due to his place of birth and attending a Jewish boarding school. Dr Chris Jones tweeted: "Is lead judge, Beatson, in #Labour NEC appeal case a supporter of Israel lobby? He attended 'Zionist boarding school'."
Clare Ayton-Edwards tweeted: "Waste of time & money, NEC have conned a Zionist judge (I am NOT antisemitic but the judge is anti-Corbyn). JC will win."
The authors of the offensive tweets have been reported to the Labour Party Compliance Unit.
There is nothing in the public domain about Lord Justice Beatson's affiliations. So the Twitterati were left to base their assault on his place of birth and a school which he left in 1966.
Of course, this is nothing less than a scandalous attack on the judge's impartiality and professional integrity. And it raises the old canard of dual loyalties.
Anger was not only directed at Lord Justice Beatson. Lord Justice Sales, who presided alongside him in the Labour case, had his impartiality challenged due to connections with the Blair government.
It is all reminiscent of the then Labour backbencher Paul Flynn's attack on the appointment of Matthew Gould as the previous British ambassador to Israel, in relation to whom he raised the spectre of dual loyalties.
Mr Flynn, as it happens, now serves in Mr Corbyn's shadow cabinet.
Adrian Cohen is a lawyer and lay chair of Labour Friends of Israel