Quote: Amanda Amaeshi

“Issues of equality and justice can easily be sidelined in terms of self-interested party politics. But justice has to be braver than that. It has to put people and their dignity at the centre.”

Background music lyrics:

“We’re musicians in exile and this is the song of hope saying…”

Jen Ang

Welcome to the Lawmanity podcast where we explore the complex relationship between law and activism and discuss the different ways that law can oppress but can also lead to real social change. 

I’m Jen Ang, a human rights lawyer and activist based in Scotland and your host on the Lawmanity podcast. We’re back this week with more one-to-one guest interviews. And kicking things off is today’s interview with Amanda Amaeshi: activist, law graduate and – as announced a couple of weeks ago – Lawmanity’s new Legal Caseworker. 

Amanda writes and campaigns on gender equality, anti-racism and youth political participation. Her advocacy journey began as a Year of Young Person 2018 Ambassador and a member of the Girlguiding UK Advocate Panel. For her work, Amanda has won numerous awards including the Young Women’s Movement 30 Under 30 list for 2020, the Glasgow Times Young Scotswoman of the Year award in 2021 and in November 2024 she was named My Life My Say’s Next Generation Changemaker of the Year. 

Last year Amanda graduated with an LLB from the University College London. She currently serves as a trustee for the Young Women’s Movement and until recently – alongside me – as a member of the First Minister’s Advisory Council for Women and Girls in Scotland. 

I’m delighted to welcome Amanda to the show today, and also to her new role as Legal Caseworker at Lawmanity.

Jen Ang

Just to get us started or warmed up, I have a kind of surprise opener question which was indeed a surprise for you today, and it is this: so a good friend of mine told me that our sense of smell is our oldest sense as a species, because it connects really quickly to deep memories that we might have of a place or a time. So I like to ask people, what is a smell that is meaningful to you? Maybe one that you like or one that just, you know, takes you to a place in your memories or your imagination that you like to go to?

Amanda Amaeshi

I thought this was quite a funny question because I notoriously have quite a bad sense of smell! But, I was trying to think of something quite recent, actually I went, I went to this candle-making session at UCL East with my friend a couple weeks ago. So we got to make our own candles. And I remember the scent that I picked out was like chamomile and lavender, I think. And I just really liked that smell. And I thought it was quite peaceful and it was a really nice, relaxing activity to do with my friend in the midst of assessment season, all these deadlines, all the stress, and also because I made the candle for my mum, so I just felt this is something that she really likes. It was kind of like that combination of doing the nice, fun activity and then also making something that would be for someone that’s really meaningful to me. It brings back lots of nice memories.

Jen Ang

Oh, that’s lovely. Those are such soothing smells, aren’t they? Very much. It reminds me of, I have a sleeping time tea and chamomile lavender is very much a part of that.

Amanda Amaeshi

Yeah. Because I know my mum really likes chamomile tea. So I felt like she would like it. And I mean, she did like it. She was really delighted when I brought it back.

Jen Ang

Oh, star gift. Star gift and lucky mum. Thank you so much for sharing that. 

So now we’re going to turn from fun opener into kind of, you know, why we’re here. Ah, so the first question, it’s a big one. Okay, so the first question is basically, do you feel that the law treats you or your community equally? So does it work equally for you or your community, however you wish to define that and why or why not?

Amanda Amaeshi

I was thinking about this, I thought about my community as like… I’m a young Black woman, so I was thinking about it through those lenses of youth, of race, of gender. And I mean, there’ll be plenty of ways where the law does work, but, I focused on examples where I found that it hasn’t worked so well. 

And, one of the first things that came to mind is just how the legal system is failing survivors of gender-based violence in regards to their access to justice is being denied because – legal aid is technically available for these cases [but] – nearly a third of survivors were forced to represent themselves in courts in 2023, which has nearly doubled since 2011. And this means that survivors are having to navigate these complex, and often retraumatising, legal processes, and they have to face their abusers without that legal representation. And also Rape Crisis England & Wales has also raised concerns about how the asylum system retraumatises survivors of sexual violence, particularly those who are housed in unsafe and unsuitable accommodations by the Home Office. This shows the overlap between gender and then race and migration status as well. And whilst these people are trying to face or trying to seek protection, they’re met with these systems who are then compounding their trauma rather than alleviating it. 

Another thing that I found was in regards to policing, policing is actually one of the first things that came to mind because anytime I see police in the street, even though I’ve never personally had a bad experience, just instinctively because I know about the rates of over-policing in Black communities, I always feel a bit unsettled whenever I see them about… but there’s been civil orders like the Serious Violence Reduction Orders which have been disproportionately targeting Black communities and particularly Black men.

Jen Ang

That is a long and sobering list of really poignant I suppose statistics just to illustrate the wide range of ways in which the law may not equally protect or equally support women. You’ve highlighted as a community, so women survivors of violence but also Black communities and migrant communities.

Do you then as an activist and a law student, you know, knowing that the law doesn’t treat communities that you care about equally, do you see the law as more of a tool or a barrier for change or maybe a little bit of both?

Amanda Amaeshi

I think it’s definitely both. Like it’s a barrier and a tool.

In regards to being a tool obviously people go to court, have a case and especially with cases of like strategic litigation where individual cases can be leveraged to advocate for wider legal precedents that can address broader systemic issues. And there’s also legal protections embedded in anti-discrimination legislation like the Equality Act for example, which equality is in the name. So I suppose in that sense it’s definitely a tool but I think it can also be a barrier as well. 

So firstly in regards to the practical barriers, so I thought about this through – I’ve volunteered over the past year at UCL’s Integrated Legal Advice Clinic. So it’s located in East London in Stratford and the clinic offers legal aid and also pro bono support in regards to housing, welfare benefits, community care and education. And so I had the opportunity to volunteer there both as an admin volunteer and also through one of my final year modules which is called Access to Justice and Community Engagement. So I got to help out the lawyers with their casework.  

So I guess thinking about that experience, it really illuminated for me the practical, barriers that come with accessing law. 

First off, to do with the cost: the fact that so many people are having to access legal clinics like UCL’s iLAC, it shows that just accessing legal support is really prohibitive if private legal services are charging exorbitant fees and it just becomes really inaccessible. 

And then even where obviously Legal Aid does exist and the aim of that is supposed to be to provide access for those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it, Legal Aid is being slashed. There’s been lots of cuts and it’s had a major impact on the sustainability and Legal Aid sector. And as a result I’ve seen that there are relatively few services offering free legal assistance, especially when it comes to ongoing support or representation beyond initial advice. And the limited numbers of clinics that do exist, like UCL’s iLAC are often inundated with inquiries and they have no option to signpost clients elsewhere. And especially when I was working on the telephones, answering client enquiries, I found myself having to do this a lot, having to do some research to find other places that the enquirers could go to. But then it also becomes a kind of inescapable loop because I remember quite a lot of the times I would say, “oh, maybe you can go here or you can go here”. And then the enquirer would be like, “oh, I’ve already been there and they already didn’t have capacity and in fact they were the ones that told me to come to you”. It almost becomes a bit hopeless. You’re kind of just going round and round in circles

And if you are lucky enough to get that support, there’s then so much bureaucracy and opaqueness within the legal system. Statutes, regulations, guidance, it’s often difficult to find and even more difficult to understand, lots of technical language. And I remember I was helping out with the casework, having to come up with legal arguments and I’d spend ages reading these documents. And even for me as a law student and even talking to the other lawyers as well, it wouldn’t always be so straightforward to figure out what does this mean? So if it’s already difficult for those of us who have some experience already with the law, then how much more difficult would it be for those who are in a legal crisis and then in a heightened state of vulnerability and perhaps with other compounding inequalities on top of do with race or disability or age, how are they supposed to navigate this system? 

And sometimes, maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but it also sometimes seems that this opaqueness and difficulty to navigate the system is not just a flaw, but kind of a purposeful design. I remember there was a client we had once needed to challenge a decision, regarding the Department for Work and Pensions. And the deadline for submitting the application to challenge the decision had technically passed. But the lawyer who was supervising me said that appeal could probably still be made because of exceptional circumstances, in this case to do with recent house moves and disability-related difficulties. It raised the question for me of who gets the benefit of this procedural flexibility? And the fact that late appeals could be accepted suggested to me that deadlines could function more as deterrence as opposed to absolute cutoffs, which could potentially discourage claimants who assume that they have no further options after they’ve gotten this decision.

And if there is this flexibility in regards to extenuating circumstances, why isn’t this more explicitly communicated? Why is this something that claimants actually have to fight for and in this case fighting for with the support of the legal professionals? It’d be even worse if the claimant was trying to do it by themselves. It almost seemed that the system is designed in a way that if there are fewer, challenges and it becomes like a more manageable caseload. But that’s not how justice is supposed to work, is it?

Jen Ang

As I listened to you talk about your experience at the UCL clinic, I mean, what you’ve described feels very, very familiar. in terms of my own observations from frontline advice, work and legal casework, all of those frustrations around potential clients not being able to find anyone to help them. So just a total lack of access to advice. But then also raising that question about whether access to justice, of the law working unequally for people is not just kind of an accident or not just because of quote, like barriers, like capacity barriers, but whether there’s actually something baked into the way that some of the process works.

Amanda Amaeshi

I mean there have definitely been good things as well. It’s been really, throughout my year of volunteering nurse, it was also really great to just see how many people the clinic were able to help in terms of getting a case outcome that was desirable or even just the clients feeling more confident and empowered to advocate for their rights and for the rights of their community. 

I remember actually getting a phone call from a client, her case had actually been resolved and she was actually saying, oh, someone else from her community had a similar issue. And she knew because her lawyer that she had at iLAC had really empowered her, really given the confidence, not just the practical advice of what to do, but also just making her feel heard and respected, that she knew, I have to send my friend here as well, because they were able to help me, maybe they can help her as well, my friend as well. So there’s definitely positive sides to it as well.

Jen Ang

That leads nicely on to my next question, which is, in light of what you’ve seen and learned, what do you think is the role of lawyers and the legal system in supporting social justice movements? Just bearing in mind that when we talk about the law and the legal system, both the actors within the system and also our opponents in the system are all lawyers. So it’s a broader question, for you, what do you think is their role?

Amanda Amaeshi

This question really, drew my mind back to some conversations I’ve been having during the seminars that I’ve had as part of the Access to Justice module. This idea of, what are lawyers supposed to do? Are they supposed to simply just advocate for their client in regards to how the law currently is, or is there kind of like a broader role as well of like, advocating for social justice? And I think it was called cause lawyering. And so that’s what this question really got me to think about. 

And I remember coming across a quote when I was reading, from an academic called James Douglas. And he said that a lawyer’s role in society is not to change the rules of the game, but to assist in maintaining the rules and to help resolve conflicts established under the rules. And I guess to an extent I can kind of, I can understand the logic behind the view. Like, it reflects a very traditional procedural understanding of the legal profession. And basically lawyers keep the system stable and functional by working within the rules that currently exist and in theory it makes the law predictable and fair and perhaps would increase public trust. Especially since lawyers are supposed to be seen as neutral figures to represent their clients, not to advance their personal ideologies. So it would ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can expect an objective and fair representation. And there’s also the constitutional argument that you don’t want lawyers or the judiciary to step over too much into what could be considered the role of legislators, like creating policy. 

But… so I think about these points and I get it, makes sense. I mean, it’s what I’ve been taught to think, from a very traditional law degree. But at the same time I also feel like it paints a fairly narrow picture of what the legal profession can be, because it assumes that the legal system is fixed and unchanging. But in reality it always evolves and sometimes I think it has to be challenged head-on when it fails to deliver justice. And I think lawyers are very uniquely placed, particularly those who are on the frontline of issues like housing or immigration, welfare or criminal justice. So in regards to housing and welfare, again I’m thinking back to the lawyers at the legal clinic. These lawyers in particular are often able to see the real-world effects of legal gaps and injustices and so then to suggest that their role is only to uphold the system no matter how flawed, it ignores the deep ethical questions that arise when the rules themselves are actually part of the access to justice problem. And laws, a lot of the time they aren’t just imperfect, they’re inherently outdated or harmful. Especially if they’re designed by decision makers that don’t have lived experience or don’t actively attempt to engage meaningfully with those with lived experience. So upholding these laws blindly, laws that are really outdated and harmful… in my view. It conflicts with the profession’s broader commitment to justice. Because if lawyers can’t or don’t challenge these unjust laws or practices, then, especially with their knowledge and their unique positioning, then who else will? And I think it is possible sometimes that lawyers can do both, still advocate for your client, but then also kind of pushing the boundaries when justice demands of it. 

So there’s another quote, from Jennifer Gordon, in her article ‘The Lawyer Is Not The Protagonist’. And then she outlines what she calls the conventional narrative, where a social problem arises, a lawyer steps in to fix it, the lawyer identifies the legal strategy, and either the case is won or lost. But I really liked how she challenged that whole framing and she offers an alternative view where the community group instead is the protagonist and the lawyer is instead part of the supporting cast. So the lawyer is not supposed to take over and be like, oh, ah, I’m the one that knows all the legal information, I’m the one that knows the fancy words, all the arguments. It’s not about that. So the question that the lawyer should be asking is not “how do I fix this?” But “what can legal tools do to support the broader strategy of the community?” And I thought it was really great rethinking because law can be used as a really good tool, but it’s not just law in isolation that could solve the big societal problems. Legal work has to be in service of a much bigger vision which is in line of collaborative community action, community-oriented actions as well… like getting rid of the top down solution, which is quite patronising I think and kind of like having the humility to lean in more to these grassroots movements and using law and using that legal expertise as one of many tools in a toolbox to help that process.

Jen Ang

That’s.. I’m sort of, I’m sort of in awe because that was first a very powerful critique of your view around the obligation of lawyers to think critically about whether to participate in injustice. And then a description of what movement lawyering or community lawyering could look like. That was really quite inspiring actually. It’s also a hopeful message for me to hear you describe that and to hear that vision as something that you think is possible or it’s possible for us to get better at moving towards. 

My last big question is a big question, and it’s this: in light of everything you’ve described about inequalities in the law itself, inequalities in access to the law and the role of lawyers, what for you does justice look like for you or your community?

Amanda Amaeshi

It’s a very big question. But I think it’s something that’s really important to think about because when it comes to dealing with problems it’s very easy to focus on the negatives and be like: oh we don’t like this, we don’t like this. But if you don’t have a clear idea of how do we want things to be instead then can be easy for the action that is happening to… fizzle out a little bit, without that kind of sustained hope of this is what we’re fighting for. 

But for me I’d say that justice looks like a legal system, a political system that is designed by, with and for the people that it aims to serve, especially those who are currently most vulnerable, most marginalised and furthest away from this power. And it’s not just about abstract legal principles which are in legislations or in courtroom decisions. But it’s really about whether the people at the sharpest edges of injustices feel seen, heard and protected. Like the example of like the clients from earlier where they felt heard and empowered in regards to their case. 

And it’s really important that justice has to be intersectional, it has to be collective, it has to be rooted in empathy. And it’s really important that these don’t just become buzzwords. They’re really essential core principles. And there has to be a commitment to listening to communities rather than just prescribing solutions based solely on labels that might be put on them by society. And I think especially the idea of empathy and humanity are really central to this vision. I think throughout my law degree, sometimes it’s kind of the case you have to focus on these, very quote unquote “intellectually serious” ideas, like rationality. But I think throughout the three years, especially in the modules that I’ve taken in final year, it’s really helped me understand this idea of empathy is transformative and it is as intellectually serious as any other idea. And, it’s a rigorous, necessary foundation for legal thinking and legal practice as well. 

And another thing, part of justice is that, something I see right now is that too often legal systems are shaped by fear. And I’m thinking about around the world, the rollback of rights under pressure from far-right movements and how as a result in Scotland and in the UK perhaps laws or policies are becoming a bit weaker in response to that. Issues of equality and justice can easily be sidelined in terms of self-interested party politics. But justice has to be braver than that. It has to put people and their dignity at the centre of the conversation. It can’t just be moved aside because it’s become politically inconvenient. It should always be at the core of what anybody’s doing. 

And as I’ve already alluded to, I don’t think that law alone can carry this burden of striving for justice. It’s definitely an important part. But, I think justice requires more than just legal reform. It needs moral imagination and sustained inclusive activism. And so law is a tool that must be wielded alongside storytelling, organising, mutual aid, education, care, all these other aspects. A lot of it comes from the community and I think that’s how real change and real justice happens.

Jen Ang

Amazing. I was almost again holding my breath, not wanting to interrupt you. But justice has to be, intersectional, collective, rooted in empathy. It has to come from the community. 

So my final, final question is, this: so the Lawmanity podcast will go out to all sorts of listeners and there will be some people out there who will be listening to your thoughts and what you’ve accomplished already as an activist and a law student, and will be wondering how you got here or maybe how to be you. 

So, my question is, what is your advice maybe for your younger self? And I know you’re still probably identifying as young! but you’re still a mentor to some, and if not your younger self, then to other people out there who are curious and who want to do some of the things you’ve been doing.

Amanda Amaeshi

This is a really lovely question and actually I remember last year I wrote an article all about this actually for The WOW Foundation, giving my advice to aspiring changemakers… and then the key points related to identifying one’s key interests and goals, finding the opportunities, building community, dealing with imposter syndrome – especially when you’re doing quite big roles like being on the National Advisory Council – and then also resisting that fear and apathy. So I would definitely encourage interested listeners to check that out. Perhaps that could be linked in the show notes. 

But I wanted to mention one other thing that I feel like I’ve not spoken about elsewhere before. Something new. Sometimes… especially when I’m thinking about younger me, maybe what 14, 15-year-old me would have wanted to hear when I first started doing this activism, advocacy stuff properly is that sometimes not everybody is going to understand why you care so much or why you want to do the actions that you’re doing. I mean, to be fair, a decent amount of people will, this is not to be off putting. I guess the reality is that some people might try to mock you, make fun of you, try to belittle you in the hopes that you might stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing and it can be quite disheartening to be honest. But I think it’s important to remember that advocating for change is never easy. And kind of like facing such remarks from other people is just one part of how it might not always be easy. But it’s really important to try not to let that get to you and just stay true to the value system that’s guiding you. Keep in your mind the changes that you wish to see, which again why I said that, think about the problems, we also have to think about the solutions as well, the ideal scenario, and keep in focus the changes that you wish to see which are possible. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise and find yourself a community of changemakers who you can learn from, who you can seek support and solidarity from, and put in your best ability, and… don’t let other people’s small minds limit your imagination.

Jen Ang

Ah, that’s brilliant. Wise advice from a wise woman! 

Thank you for that and thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today, and to share with me your thoughts, which we’ll now get to share with a wider audience than just you and me. I could honestly sit and talk to you, Amanda, for, you know, another hour and have lots of questions about everything, but in the interest of letting you get on with your day, I’m going to draw the interview to a close here. But it’s been lovely to see you and I, and probably all of our listeners, will keep an eye out for what you do next because doubtless it will be just as bold and inspiring and interesting as today. 

And that’s a wrap for today’s episode with Amanda Amaeshi, activist, law graduate and my new colleague here at Lawmanity. If you were inspired by what Amanda has shared and want to learn more about the Legal Aid crisis that’s preventing survivors of domestic violence from accessing the legal advice they need, or if you want to explore what it means to be a community lawyer or a cause lawyer, check out the links in our episode notes. And for those of you who are practically minded, reach out to your local Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis organisation or your local Citizens Advice Bureau, educate yourself and others, and maybe consider volunteering. 

We’ll be back again soon with our next episode, an amazing one to one with Davie Donaldson, a young activist from the Scottish traveller community, who shares his perspective on the challenges of preserving and protecting travelling culture under laws that are written and enforced primarily by and for settled people. Davie vividly illustrates what it looks like day-to-day in his advocacy on behalf of his family and his community. 

Thanks for tuning in to our Lawmanity podcast again and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please do hit the like and subscribe buttons and share our episodes with friends and colleagues who might enjoy learning a little bit more about how law really works in practice and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place. 

The Lawmanity podcast is co-produced by me, your host Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe. Shout out to Helena Refai for mentoring us through our first year of this incredible project. And welcome to Amanda Amaeshi, who’s joined the team to support us with graphics and socials. The music you’ve been listening to is Always On The Move by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow-based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland. Thanks so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed listening and see you next time.

Quote: Amanda Amaeshi

“Issues of equality and justice can easily be sidelined in terms of self-interested party politics. But justice has to be braver than that. It has to put people and their dignity at the centre.”

Background music lyrics:

“We’re musicians in exile and this is the song of hope saying…”

Jen Ang

Welcome to the Lawmanity podcast where we explore the complex relationship between law and activism and discuss the different ways that law can oppress but can also lead to real social change. 

I’m Jen Ang, a human rights lawyer and activist based in Scotland and your host on the Lawmanity podcast. We’re back this week with more one-to-one guest interviews. And kicking things off is today’s interview with Amanda Amaeshi: activist, law graduate and – as announced a couple of weeks ago – Lawmanity’s new Legal Caseworker. 

Amanda writes and campaigns on gender equality, anti-racism and youth political participation. Her advocacy journey began as a Year of Young Person 2018 Ambassador and a member of the Girlguiding UK Advocate Panel. For her work, Amanda has won numerous awards including the Young Women’s Movement 30 Under 30 list for 2020, the Glasgow Times Young Scotswoman of the Year award in 2021 and in November 2024 she was named My Life My Say’s Next Generation Changemaker of the Year. 

Last year Amanda graduated with an LLB from the University College London. She currently serves as a trustee for the Young Women’s Movement and until recently – alongside me – as a member of the First Minister’s Advisory Council for Women and Girls in Scotland. 

I’m delighted to welcome Amanda to the show today, and also to her new role as Legal Caseworker at Lawmanity.

Jen Ang

Just to get us started or warmed up, I have a kind of surprise opener question which was indeed a surprise for you today, and it is this: so a good friend of mine told me that our sense of smell is our oldest sense as a species, because it connects really quickly to deep memories that we might have of a place or a time. So I like to ask people, what is a smell that is meaningful to you? Maybe one that you like or one that just, you know, takes you to a place in your memories or your imagination that you like to go to?

Amanda Amaeshi

I thought this was quite a funny question because I notoriously have quite a bad sense of smell! But, I was trying to think of something quite recent, actually I went, I went to this candle-making session at UCL East with my friend a couple weeks ago. So we got to make our own candles. And I remember the scent that I picked out was like chamomile and lavender, I think. And I just really liked that smell. And I thought it was quite peaceful and it was a really nice, relaxing activity to do with my friend in the midst of assessment season, all these deadlines, all the stress, and also because I made the candle for my mum, so I just felt this is something that she really likes. It was kind of like that combination of doing the nice, fun activity and then also making something that would be for someone that’s really meaningful to me. It brings back lots of nice memories.

Jen Ang

Oh, that’s lovely. Those are such soothing smells, aren’t they? Very much. It reminds me of, I have a sleeping time tea and chamomile lavender is very much a part of that.

Amanda Amaeshi

Yeah. Because I know my mum really likes chamomile tea. So I felt like she would like it. And I mean, she did like it. She was really delighted when I brought it back.

Jen Ang

Oh, star gift. Star gift and lucky mum. Thank you so much for sharing that. 

So now we’re going to turn from fun opener into kind of, you know, why we’re here. Ah, so the first question, it’s a big one. Okay, so the first question is basically, do you feel that the law treats you or your community equally? So does it work equally for you or your community, however you wish to define that and why or why not?

Amanda Amaeshi

I was thinking about this, I thought about my community as like… I’m a young Black woman, so I was thinking about it through those lenses of youth, of race, of gender. And I mean, there’ll be plenty of ways where the law does work, but, I focused on examples where I found that it hasn’t worked so well. 

And, one of the first things that came to mind is just how the legal system is failing survivors of gender-based violence in regards to their access to justice is being denied because – legal aid is technically available for these cases [but] – nearly a third of survivors were forced to represent themselves in courts in 2023, which has nearly doubled since 2011. And this means that survivors are having to navigate these complex, and often retraumatising, legal processes, and they have to face their abusers without that legal representation. And also Rape Crisis England & Wales has also raised concerns about how the asylum system retraumatises survivors of sexual violence, particularly those who are housed in unsafe and unsuitable accommodations by the Home Office. This shows the overlap between gender and then race and migration status as well. And whilst these people are trying to face or trying to seek protection, they’re met with these systems who are then compounding their trauma rather than alleviating it. 

Another thing that I found was in regards to policing, policing is actually one of the first things that came to mind because anytime I see police in the street, even though I’ve never personally had a bad experience, just instinctively because I know about the rates of over-policing in Black communities, I always feel a bit unsettled whenever I see them about… but there’s been civil orders like the Serious Violence Reduction Orders which have been disproportionately targeting Black communities and particularly Black men.

Jen Ang

That is a long and sobering list of really poignant I suppose statistics just to illustrate the wide range of ways in which the law may not equally protect or equally support women. You’ve highlighted as a community, so women survivors of violence but also Black communities and migrant communities.

Do you then as an activist and a law student, you know, knowing that the law doesn’t treat communities that you care about equally, do you see the law as more of a tool or a barrier for change or maybe a little bit of both?

Amanda Amaeshi

I think it’s definitely both. Like it’s a barrier and a tool.

In regards to being a tool obviously people go to court, have a case and especially with cases of like strategic litigation where individual cases can be leveraged to advocate for wider legal precedents that can address broader systemic issues. And there’s also legal protections embedded in anti-discrimination legislation like the Equality Act for example, which equality is in the name. So I suppose in that sense it’s definitely a tool but I think it can also be a barrier as well. 

So firstly in regards to the practical barriers, so I thought about this through – I’ve volunteered over the past year at UCL’s Integrated Legal Advice Clinic. So it’s located in East London in Stratford and the clinic offers legal aid and also pro bono support in regards to housing, welfare benefits, community care and education. And so I had the opportunity to volunteer there both as an admin volunteer and also through one of my final year modules which is called Access to Justice and Community Engagement. So I got to help out the lawyers with their casework.  

So I guess thinking about that experience, it really illuminated for me the practical, barriers that come with accessing law. 

First off, to do with the cost: the fact that so many people are having to access legal clinics like UCL’s iLAC, it shows that just accessing legal support is really prohibitive if private legal services are charging exorbitant fees and it just becomes really inaccessible. 

And then even where obviously Legal Aid does exist and the aim of that is supposed to be to provide access for those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it, Legal Aid is being slashed. There’s been lots of cuts and it’s had a major impact on the sustainability and Legal Aid sector. And as a result I’ve seen that there are relatively few services offering free legal assistance, especially when it comes to ongoing support or representation beyond initial advice. And the limited numbers of clinics that do exist, like UCL’s iLAC are often inundated with inquiries and they have no option to signpost clients elsewhere. And especially when I was working on the telephones, answering client enquiries, I found myself having to do this a lot, having to do some research to find other places that the enquirers could go to. But then it also becomes a kind of inescapable loop because I remember quite a lot of the times I would say, “oh, maybe you can go here or you can go here”. And then the enquirer would be like, “oh, I’ve already been there and they already didn’t have capacity and in fact they were the ones that told me to come to you”. It almost becomes a bit hopeless. You’re kind of just going round and round in circles

And if you are lucky enough to get that support, there’s then so much bureaucracy and opaqueness within the legal system. Statutes, regulations, guidance, it’s often difficult to find and even more difficult to understand, lots of technical language. And I remember I was helping out with the casework, having to come up with legal arguments and I’d spend ages reading these documents. And even for me as a law student and even talking to the other lawyers as well, it wouldn’t always be so straightforward to figure out what does this mean? So if it’s already difficult for those of us who have some experience already with the law, then how much more difficult would it be for those who are in a legal crisis and then in a heightened state of vulnerability and perhaps with other compounding inequalities on top of do with race or disability or age, how are they supposed to navigate this system? 

And sometimes, maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but it also sometimes seems that this opaqueness and difficulty to navigate the system is not just a flaw, but kind of a purposeful design. I remember there was a client we had once needed to challenge a decision, regarding the Department for Work and Pensions. And the deadline for submitting the application to challenge the decision had technically passed. But the lawyer who was supervising me said that appeal could probably still be made because of exceptional circumstances, in this case to do with recent house moves and disability-related difficulties. It raised the question for me of who gets the benefit of this procedural flexibility? And the fact that late appeals could be accepted suggested to me that deadlines could function more as deterrence as opposed to absolute cutoffs, which could potentially discourage claimants who assume that they have no further options after they’ve gotten this decision.

And if there is this flexibility in regards to extenuating circumstances, why isn’t this more explicitly communicated? Why is this something that claimants actually have to fight for and in this case fighting for with the support of the legal professionals? It’d be even worse if the claimant was trying to do it by themselves. It almost seemed that the system is designed in a way that if there are fewer, challenges and it becomes like a more manageable caseload. But that’s not how justice is supposed to work, is it?

Jen Ang

As I listened to you talk about your experience at the UCL clinic, I mean, what you’ve described feels very, very familiar. in terms of my own observations from frontline advice, work and legal casework, all of those frustrations around potential clients not being able to find anyone to help them. So just a total lack of access to advice. But then also raising that question about whether access to justice, of the law working unequally for people is not just kind of an accident or not just because of quote, like barriers, like capacity barriers, but whether there’s actually something baked into the way that some of the process works.

Amanda Amaeshi

I mean there have definitely been good things as well. It’s been really, throughout my year of volunteering nurse, it was also really great to just see how many people the clinic were able to help in terms of getting a case outcome that was desirable or even just the clients feeling more confident and empowered to advocate for their rights and for the rights of their community. 

I remember actually getting a phone call from a client, her case had actually been resolved and she was actually saying, oh, someone else from her community had a similar issue. And she knew because her lawyer that she had at iLAC had really empowered her, really given the confidence, not just the practical advice of what to do, but also just making her feel heard and respected, that she knew, I have to send my friend here as well, because they were able to help me, maybe they can help her as well, my friend as well. So there’s definitely positive sides to it as well.

Jen Ang

That leads nicely on to my next question, which is, in light of what you’ve seen and learned, what do you think is the role of lawyers and the legal system in supporting social justice movements? Just bearing in mind that when we talk about the law and the legal system, both the actors within the system and also our opponents in the system are all lawyers. So it’s a broader question, for you, what do you think is their role?

Amanda Amaeshi

This question really, drew my mind back to some conversations I’ve been having during the seminars that I’ve had as part of the Access to Justice module. This idea of, what are lawyers supposed to do? Are they supposed to simply just advocate for their client in regards to how the law currently is, or is there kind of like a broader role as well of like, advocating for social justice? And I think it was called cause lawyering. And so that’s what this question really got me to think about. 

And I remember coming across a quote when I was reading, from an academic called James Douglas. And he said that a lawyer’s role in society is not to change the rules of the game, but to assist in maintaining the rules and to help resolve conflicts established under the rules. And I guess to an extent I can kind of, I can understand the logic behind the view. Like, it reflects a very traditional procedural understanding of the legal profession. And basically lawyers keep the system stable and functional by working within the rules that currently exist and in theory it makes the law predictable and fair and perhaps would increase public trust. Especially since lawyers are supposed to be seen as neutral figures to represent their clients, not to advance their personal ideologies. So it would ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can expect an objective and fair representation. And there’s also the constitutional argument that you don’t want lawyers or the judiciary to step over too much into what could be considered the role of legislators, like creating policy. 

But… so I think about these points and I get it, makes sense. I mean, it’s what I’ve been taught to think, from a very traditional law degree. But at the same time I also feel like it paints a fairly narrow picture of what the legal profession can be, because it assumes that the legal system is fixed and unchanging. But in reality it always evolves and sometimes I think it has to be challenged head-on when it fails to deliver justice. And I think lawyers are very uniquely placed, particularly those who are on the frontline of issues like housing or immigration, welfare or criminal justice. So in regards to housing and welfare, again I’m thinking back to the lawyers at the legal clinic. These lawyers in particular are often able to see the real-world effects of legal gaps and injustices and so then to suggest that their role is only to uphold the system no matter how flawed, it ignores the deep ethical questions that arise when the rules themselves are actually part of the access to justice problem. And laws, a lot of the time they aren’t just imperfect, they’re inherently outdated or harmful. Especially if they’re designed by decision makers that don’t have lived experience or don’t actively attempt to engage meaningfully with those with lived experience. So upholding these laws blindly, laws that are really outdated and harmful… in my view. It conflicts with the profession’s broader commitment to justice. Because if lawyers can’t or don’t challenge these unjust laws or practices, then, especially with their knowledge and their unique positioning, then who else will? And I think it is possible sometimes that lawyers can do both, still advocate for your client, but then also kind of pushing the boundaries when justice demands of it. 

So there’s another quote, from Jennifer Gordon, in her article ‘The Lawyer Is Not The Protagonist’. And then she outlines what she calls the conventional narrative, where a social problem arises, a lawyer steps in to fix it, the lawyer identifies the legal strategy, and either the case is won or lost. But I really liked how she challenged that whole framing and she offers an alternative view where the community group instead is the protagonist and the lawyer is instead part of the supporting cast. So the lawyer is not supposed to take over and be like, oh, ah, I’m the one that knows all the legal information, I’m the one that knows the fancy words, all the arguments. It’s not about that. So the question that the lawyer should be asking is not “how do I fix this?” But “what can legal tools do to support the broader strategy of the community?” And I thought it was really great rethinking because law can be used as a really good tool, but it’s not just law in isolation that could solve the big societal problems. Legal work has to be in service of a much bigger vision which is in line of collaborative community action, community-oriented actions as well… like getting rid of the top down solution, which is quite patronising I think and kind of like having the humility to lean in more to these grassroots movements and using law and using that legal expertise as one of many tools in a toolbox to help that process.

Jen Ang

That’s.. I’m sort of, I’m sort of in awe because that was first a very powerful critique of your view around the obligation of lawyers to think critically about whether to participate in injustice. And then a description of what movement lawyering or community lawyering could look like. That was really quite inspiring actually. It’s also a hopeful message for me to hear you describe that and to hear that vision as something that you think is possible or it’s possible for us to get better at moving towards. 

My last big question is a big question, and it’s this: in light of everything you’ve described about inequalities in the law itself, inequalities in access to the law and the role of lawyers, what for you does justice look like for you or your community?

Amanda Amaeshi

It’s a very big question. But I think it’s something that’s really important to think about because when it comes to dealing with problems it’s very easy to focus on the negatives and be like: oh we don’t like this, we don’t like this. But if you don’t have a clear idea of how do we want things to be instead then can be easy for the action that is happening to… fizzle out a little bit, without that kind of sustained hope of this is what we’re fighting for. 

But for me I’d say that justice looks like a legal system, a political system that is designed by, with and for the people that it aims to serve, especially those who are currently most vulnerable, most marginalised and furthest away from this power. And it’s not just about abstract legal principles which are in legislations or in courtroom decisions. But it’s really about whether the people at the sharpest edges of injustices feel seen, heard and protected. Like the example of like the clients from earlier where they felt heard and empowered in regards to their case. 

And it’s really important that justice has to be intersectional, it has to be collective, it has to be rooted in empathy. And it’s really important that these don’t just become buzzwords. They’re really essential core principles. And there has to be a commitment to listening to communities rather than just prescribing solutions based solely on labels that might be put on them by society. And I think especially the idea of empathy and humanity are really central to this vision. I think throughout my law degree, sometimes it’s kind of the case you have to focus on these, very quote unquote “intellectually serious” ideas, like rationality. But I think throughout the three years, especially in the modules that I’ve taken in final year, it’s really helped me understand this idea of empathy is transformative and it is as intellectually serious as any other idea. And, it’s a rigorous, necessary foundation for legal thinking and legal practice as well. 

And another thing, part of justice is that, something I see right now is that too often legal systems are shaped by fear. And I’m thinking about around the world, the rollback of rights under pressure from far-right movements and how as a result in Scotland and in the UK perhaps laws or policies are becoming a bit weaker in response to that. Issues of equality and justice can easily be sidelined in terms of self-interested party politics. But justice has to be braver than that. It has to put people and their dignity at the centre of the conversation. It can’t just be moved aside because it’s become politically inconvenient. It should always be at the core of what anybody’s doing. 

And as I’ve already alluded to, I don’t think that law alone can carry this burden of striving for justice. It’s definitely an important part. But, I think justice requires more than just legal reform. It needs moral imagination and sustained inclusive activism. And so law is a tool that must be wielded alongside storytelling, organising, mutual aid, education, care, all these other aspects. A lot of it comes from the community and I think that’s how real change and real justice happens.

Jen Ang

Amazing. I was almost again holding my breath, not wanting to interrupt you. But justice has to be, intersectional, collective, rooted in empathy. It has to come from the community. 

So my final, final question is, this: so the Lawmanity podcast will go out to all sorts of listeners and there will be some people out there who will be listening to your thoughts and what you’ve accomplished already as an activist and a law student, and will be wondering how you got here or maybe how to be you. 

So, my question is, what is your advice maybe for your younger self? And I know you’re still probably identifying as young! but you’re still a mentor to some, and if not your younger self, then to other people out there who are curious and who want to do some of the things you’ve been doing.

Amanda Amaeshi

This is a really lovely question and actually I remember last year I wrote an article all about this actually for The WOW Foundation, giving my advice to aspiring changemakers… and then the key points related to identifying one’s key interests and goals, finding the opportunities, building community, dealing with imposter syndrome – especially when you’re doing quite big roles like being on the National Advisory Council – and then also resisting that fear and apathy. So I would definitely encourage interested listeners to check that out. Perhaps that could be linked in the show notes. 

But I wanted to mention one other thing that I feel like I’ve not spoken about elsewhere before. Something new. Sometimes… especially when I’m thinking about younger me, maybe what 14, 15-year-old me would have wanted to hear when I first started doing this activism, advocacy stuff properly is that sometimes not everybody is going to understand why you care so much or why you want to do the actions that you’re doing. I mean, to be fair, a decent amount of people will, this is not to be off putting. I guess the reality is that some people might try to mock you, make fun of you, try to belittle you in the hopes that you might stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing and it can be quite disheartening to be honest. But I think it’s important to remember that advocating for change is never easy. And kind of like facing such remarks from other people is just one part of how it might not always be easy. But it’s really important to try not to let that get to you and just stay true to the value system that’s guiding you. Keep in your mind the changes that you wish to see, which again why I said that, think about the problems, we also have to think about the solutions as well, the ideal scenario, and keep in focus the changes that you wish to see which are possible. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise and find yourself a community of changemakers who you can learn from, who you can seek support and solidarity from, and put in your best ability, and… don’t let other people’s small minds limit your imagination.

Jen Ang

Ah, that’s brilliant. Wise advice from a wise woman! 

Thank you for that and thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today, and to share with me your thoughts, which we’ll now get to share with a wider audience than just you and me. I could honestly sit and talk to you, Amanda, for, you know, another hour and have lots of questions about everything, but in the interest of letting you get on with your day, I’m going to draw the interview to a close here. But it’s been lovely to see you and I, and probably all of our listeners, will keep an eye out for what you do next because doubtless it will be just as bold and inspiring and interesting as today. 

And that’s a wrap for today’s episode with Amanda Amaeshi, activist, law graduate and my new colleague here at Lawmanity. If you were inspired by what Amanda has shared and want to learn more about the Legal Aid crisis that’s preventing survivors of domestic violence from accessing the legal advice they need, or if you want to explore what it means to be a community lawyer or a cause lawyer, check out the links in our episode notes. And for those of you who are practically minded, reach out to your local Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis organisation or your local Citizens Advice Bureau, educate yourself and others, and maybe consider volunteering. 

We’ll be back again soon with our next episode, an amazing one to one with Davie Donaldson, a young activist from the Scottish traveller community, who shares his perspective on the challenges of preserving and protecting travelling culture under laws that are written and enforced primarily by and for settled people. Davie vividly illustrates what it looks like day-to-day in his advocacy on behalf of his family and his community. 

Thanks for tuning in to our Lawmanity podcast again and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please do hit the like and subscribe buttons and share our episodes with friends and colleagues who might enjoy learning a little bit more about how law really works in practice and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place. 

The Lawmanity podcast is co-produced by me, your host Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe. Shout out to Helena Refai for mentoring us through our first year of this incredible project. And welcome to Amanda Amaeshi, who’s joined the team to support us with graphics and socials. The music you’ve been listening to is Always On The Move by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow-based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland. Thanks so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed listening and see you next time!

Host: Jen Ang

Davie Donaldson

“..but at the very baseline of all of this is the fact that everybody in Scotland should be allowed to live respectfully and in a dignified way, right? 

And for gypsy travellers, that means we want to experience our culture, our indigenous culture that’s been passed down by our ancestors for generation after generation. We want to ensure that our children and the next generation get to hear the stories and songs which link us to the landscape.”

Jen Ang

Hello and welcome to a special series of three podcasts – part of our Equal Under the Law? Series – which explores three big questions about the complex relationship between the law and social justice, through interviews with some of Scotland’s most inspiring and impactful activists campaigning today.

Over the past few months, we have interviewed 11 guests for the Lawmanity podcast, who work across a range of social justice issues, including: LGBT+ rights, racial justice, migrants rights, Scottish travellers rights, disability justice, and the rights of women and girl survivors.  

We asked each of our guests three big questions, because we wanted to understand what their personal experiences – whether drawn from just a few years’ of campaigning, or sometimes, over as many as four decades of activism – told them about the relationship between law and justice.

Jen Ang

 Today, we’re going to look the answers we got to our final question – and it’s a big one! 

What does justice look like for you, or for your community? 

Heather Fisken, Chief Executive Officer of Inclusion Scotland, a disabled peoples’ organisation (DPO) – opened by pointing out how we will know that we have truly achieved justice:  

Heather Fisken

Well, I suppose that goes to justice, achieve justice in practice. When it’s happening, we wouldn’t have a need for justice because would be no injustice. 

Sorry, I’m not lawyer, so that’s the kind of thing I would say.

Jen Ang

And Heather goes onto describe justice for disabled people:

Heather Fisken 

So justice would look like ready availability of support, and a willingness to see the law as a route that is accessible, attainable, appropriate, when it is – and something that’s for you, it’s for everybody.

Jen Ang

Tressa Burke, Chief Executive Officer of Glasgow Disability Alliance, expands this into a compelling vision of what justice looks like for disabled people across Scotland, for her and her colleagues 

Tressa Burke

So, I’ll take it from a broader perspective first. So social justice for disabled people, and if they were having all their legal rights realised and fulfilled, would be about having access to a meaningful life and a life of purpose and a life of choices.

It would be about participation. It would be about being included in their communities and their families in wider society. It would be about having a job, a job that pays well, a job where the employer knows what access to work is, the scheme itself, the programme of support, but also what access in the workplace means.

It would be about disabled people not living in abject and deep and long-term poverty. It would be about disabled people you know accessing the health and social care services that they need. 

So you know in terms of social justice, it would be all of those things: fairness, freedom, having dignity, having choices, and the same choices as non-disabled people take for granted. 

So when we are talking about choices like that, Sometimes disabled people aren’t able to choose when they get up, what they wear, if they wear anything, when they have a shower, if they have a shower. We’re frequently told about disabled people being told that they’re only entitled to so many showers a week, or a month. I’ve got disabled people who lost their social care packages at the outset of lockdown when 1,884 packages were cut by Glasgow City Council and other local authorities around Scotland, but that’s the figure they themselves gave to the BBC in April 2020. And they haven’t all been reinstated, and many not reinstated at all, and all of them requiring new assessments and people being told: “You coped then, how can you not cope now?”

So, I mean, these are the types of, you know, breaches to human rights that we’re talking about. 

 I think for disabled people to have justice, both legally and in in that wider fairness and social justice way, not only would they have those things, but if they didn’t have them, there would be better complaint systems.

They would be transparent. They would be independent before you even got to the legal situation. And then, of course, you would be able to access the legal system. You would know the lawyers to go to because it wouldn’t just be one or two that might be good because they’re good people or, you know, somebody that’s married to a disabled person or because we do have examples of that. …

You know, and that’s how desperate things can be. So it would be much more readily available access and it would be affordable because people would be able to access it through legal aid.

But hopefully things would be better than needing to take it to the legal route because you would be able to have your complaints or your issues resolved at an earlier stage and that sense of fairness and freedom and would be observed and realised.

I think you know it’s not to be ignored how difficult things are for local authorities. But when people in Glasgow are now referring to feeling as brutalised by social work and social work assessments and how they are treated, not in every case by any means.

So it local authorities are struggling for sure. And local government funding is definitely an issue. But it is about choices. And disability is a political and a social and economic choice. And disabled people need to be prioritised. So I know that’s a long-winded answer, but these are the ways that disabled people’s lives would look if they were, you know, having their rights and their freedoms observed and realised, and we would have access to that redress, which at this point in time we just don’t have.

Jen Ang

As for how to get there, Pheona Matovu, Founding Director of Radiant & Brighter who also works with racialised and migrant families, believes it is crucial that the people who are impacted by policies are brought to the table, to help design our future legal system.

Pheona Matovu

That’s a big question, very big question. I couldn’t possibly say that I know. What I can say is that I know how that could be achieved.

And even then, maybe I think I know, but I think for it to look how we want it to look, it requires engagement for my community, for the communities that I work with, for the local communities I engage with, people who are affected by poverty, people are affected by migration, people are affected…

When you think, for example, about migration, right? People in these Western countries who can travel to every part of the world do not actually stop to think that they can travel to every part of the world, many times.

There is sometimes an assumption that the immigration law works for everybody the same way. But I know – as a black woman who had to come from Africa – I understand that the hoops that you have to jump through to even just go and pay an education, for an education even that, is significantly, .. it takes everything out of you. It takes everything out of your family. 

And they can choose to say, no, you are not coming. And guess what? Your money is lost. And that’s not just a little bit of money. That’s thousands of money usually. 

And so I think we need to redesign in a way that we are engaging everybody, in a way that is healthy and dignified for everybody. 

And I don’t think that that’s happening. So I think we need to consider bringing other people to the table, perhaps even those people being the core elements and the core designers of what we are looking at, particularly if it is going to affect them the most.

Jen Ang

And Satwat Rehman, Founding Director of One Parent Families Scotland, agrees – explaining what this looks like for single parent families:

Satwat Rehman

Okay, I want to start small, then build big. I think dignity, fairness and equity. 

Do you know if people can actually experience those things in the single parent community, not just in the law, but also the fact that what’s in law can drive how society behaves, you’d begin to see the beginnings of justice, alright? 

Because if you have that, if you have equity and justice as the cornerstones, then and you build up from there, you should be actively designing poverty out of your systems, alright?

You should be actively designing sort of things I’ve spoken about in education for families, it would be like the law would recognise that there is more than one type of family and they’re all equally valid. 

They’re all equally important, but actually they require different things, and that should be the cornerstone for me.

Over and above, that it would be great if we had accessible, responsive legal systems that protect our rights without making us jump through hoops. That would be great. 

Yes, a voice in actually shaping policies and understanding what the laws are behind those policies and how you can influence them as they’re being designed and not feel excluded from them because of the language and the process, would be really important. 

Jen Ang

Talat Yaqoob, political commentator, activist and co-Chair of the National Advisory Council for Women and Girls (NACWG) tackles this question from a different angle, the perspective of what making law just could look like.

Talat Yaqoob 

Wow. Okay, so what does law as injustice look like for the community I do? You know what I have to say that I think if, if we can use law as a way to redistribute power, that would be justice. 

That’s not, that’s not the way in which we think about law and write law. A lot of law is written as in a reactionary way. An issue has occurred, a law is required. This is what will be done in the future, and it is focused deeply on criminalisation. It’s focused on and I know that sounds like of course it is, but actually no the thinking around it about the realisation of rights and law as a tool to redistribute power, to create accountability. That is law that creates justice. That’s law that people can have more trust in, you know. 

So if we think about things like, we’re in Scotland, the acts that we pass, the law that we implement, actually, regardless of whether it’s Scotland, UK, any nation, actually, if we’re we write law that centres the redistribution of power that centres the ability for accountability to be closer to people. That’s transformative. That’s transformative justice, in my in my view, that is social justice being realised to the law. 

And for me, it’s about looking at the way in which law is written and the rationale with which new laws are created, the mindset behind that is what needs to change. 

And if that can be more about redistribution, that can be more about transformation and social justice, in which laws we choose to prioritise, and the mindset behind them. I think, I think that would, that could, that could change the face of society in a radically short time. 

And actually, it would make law and law making an accessible feature of society. But it’s about the mindset behind why law is created and what law is for, if we could do more about that, if we could do more to challenge that, that it doesn’t need to be this traditional, archaic view of what law is and why law exists, and that law is to pursue the criminalisation of society or the…or for a hierarchy to come and protect society rather than enabling the protection of itself. I think that would be transformative.

Jen Ang

Pinar Aksu, migrant rights activist, tells us that justice for the community she works with – migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees – looks like being treated equally, with humanity and dignity.

Pinar Aksu 

For me is, I guess, justice within the migration – especially when you look at how there are so many violent policies being implemented on people –  is for people to just live a normal life. 

I would say, for me, that would be justice for people to just be treated as a human being and to live a normal life where they don’t have to go through many hurdles to prove themselves of who they are, where they don’t have to continuously go to give evidence at the Home Office, or where they don’t have to continuously fight for their rights within society and live with long term difference that’s been created in communities. 

Yeah, I think just being treated as human being and to have a normal life, that, for me, would be justice and also to seen as equal. I think that’s the most important thing. 

Jen Ang

For Davie Donaldson, Travellers rights activist, justice for his community looks like achieving equality and dignitiy in practice, but also recognition of the rights and validity of the traveller culture and way of life.

Davie Donaldson

Yeah, and it’s a question that I ask myself every time I visit a camp or every time that I’m speaking to someone who’s just experienced hate crime or someone who is terrified of losing their kids to social services and just doesn’t know how to how to go about even challenging decisions, right?

And because of that, I think justice… is something which is experienced on a really individual level. Justice is something that really relies upon former experience. It relies upon an acknowledgement of past trauma, both collective and individual.

But it also recognises that everyone has a right to live in a dignified and respected way, right? And that’s where our justice system falls short, right?

Let’s pull it right back. I mean, I’m really keen to talk about legal arguments and legal frameworks, but at the very baseline of all of this is the fact that everybody in Scotland should be allowed to live respectfully and in a dignified way, right? 

And for gypsy travellers, that means we want to experience our culture, our indigenous culture that’s been passed down by our ancestors for generation after generation. We want to ensure that our children and the next generation get to hear the stories and songs which link us to the landscape.

It’s about knowing where you come from, learning your language, having the ability to come together as a community and experience your own sense of identity and your own sense belonging.

Currently, the justice system in Scotland is a barrier to all of that. Now, how justice would look, to paint a picture, I imagine, would be a gypsy traveller family would be able to travel unimpeded to their ancestral stopping places.

There would be significant and sustained support for gypsy travellers travelling and shifting, is our word for that, but shifting around the country. Basic support, access to basic sanitation, access to running water, access to refuse collection in bins, toilets.

You know, really basic human needs should be met in a just society. We should recognise and respect that there are very few nomadic communities left in the world, particularly in the Western world.

And so having a nomadic community in Scotland, like the gypsy travellers, is something that should be celebrated, it shouldn’t be impeded, right? I mean, living in a nomadic way, having a particular unique relationship to the landscape and the oral heritage of the land, is something that we should all want to celebrate, whether or not we’re gypsy travellers.

And to be able to travel and not worry about eviction, not have that constant stress, that constant feeling of surveillance every single time you move, knowing that local settled communities will respect your right to be there and will support you to be there in a safe and dignified manner.

You know, they won’t expect you to have to remove all of your rubbish and travel from place to place with these cartloads of rubbish because you can’t access a council recycling facility. Because if you burn the rubbish, you you’ll get charged because you aren’t provided any bins.

You know, they don’t expect you to have the toilet behind a hedge because they won’t provide you toilets or they’ll lock the public toilets you don’t get to access them, or they’ll refuse to allow you access to toilets in a local shop.

Dignity, you know, that’s what the justice system should look like. And I think if we move to a place where there are legal protections on the right for gypsy travellers to travel, it won’t only positively impact the gypsy traveller community, but it’ll positively impact the settled community as well, because it’ll allow that travelling to be done in a safer, and more community cohesive way.

Jen Ang

And to conclude this podcast today, here’s a reflection from Amanda Amaeshi, an activist with the Young Women’s Movement and a former law student at the University College, London (UCL), who speaks to what justice looks like from the perspective of someone aspiring to activism from within the legal system.

Amanda Amaeshi

Justice looks like a legal system, a political system that’s designed by women for like, the people that it aims to serve – especially those who are like most who are currently most vulnerable, most marginalised and furthest away from this power. 

And it’s not just about like abstract legal principles or which are in legislations or in courtroom decisions, but it’s really about whether the people at the sharpest edges of injustice feel seen, heard and protected, like the example of like the clients from earlier, where they felt heard and empowered in regards to like their case. 

And it’s really important that like justice has to be intersectional, has to be collective, it has to be rooted in empathy. And it’s really important that these don’t just become buzzwords like, they’re really like, essential core principles, and there has to be a commitment to listen, listening to communities, rather than just like, prescribing solutions based on like, based solely on like, labels that like might be like, put on them by society. 

And I think especially like the idea of, like, empathy and humanity are really central to this vision. I feel like, throughout, throughout my law degree, like, sometimes it’s kind of, here’s what you have to focus on these very like intellectually see, like, quote, unquote, intellectually serious kind of ideas like rationality. 

But I think throughout, like the three years, especially in the modules that I’ve taken in final year, like, it’s really helped me understand, like, this idea of, like empathy kind of is transformative, and it is as intellectually serious as, like, any other idea, and it’s a rigorous, necessary foundation for like legal for legal thinking and legal practice as well. 

Another thing a part of like justice is that, something I see right now is that, like too often, like legal systems are shaped like by fear, and I’m thinking about like around the world, like the rollback of rights under pressure from like far right movement, and how, as a result, like in Scotland, in the UK, perhaps like laws or policies are becoming a bit weaker to kind of like in response to that. 

But Justice has to be like, and also as well about like, issues of like equality and justice can easily be sidelined in terms of, like, self interested, like, party politics, um, but justice has to be braver than that. 

It has to put people in their dignity at the centre of the conversation. It can’t just be like, moved aside because, like, it’s become politically inconvenient, like it should always be at the core of what anybody’s doing. 

And as I’ve kind of already alluded to, like, I don’t think that law alone can carry this burden of like, striving for justice. It is definitely an important part, but I think justice requires more than just legal reform. It needs like, moral imagination, and sustained, inclusive activism. 

And so law is a tool that must be wielded alongside, like storytelling, organising, mutual aid, like education, care, like all of these other kind of aspects, a lot of it comes from, like the community, and I think that’s how real change and real justice happens.

Jen Ang

And that concludes today’s episode, in which a number of prominent Scottish activists sat down to talk to us about what justice looks like for them, and for their communities, under the law.  Some big ideas and inspiring visions here – which I hoped sparked some curious thinking on your part, the listener. 

What does it mean if we hold a vision of justice that is separate to the law and the legal system as we know today? What is the impact for those who are excluded?  And what about for the rest of us?  Does the answer to bridging this gap lie within the law, or outside of it?

Big questions, and I’d love to hear what you, our listeners, make of it all, and indeed of this special three-part episode on equality under the law.

Meanwhile, a very big thank you to Heather Fisken, Tressa Burke, Pheona Matovu, Satwat Rehman, Talat Yaqoob, Pinar Aksu, Davie Donaldson and Amanda Amaeshi for their contributions to today’s episode.

And thanks so much to you, the listener for tuning into our Lawmanity podcast and our special series on Equality Under the Law in Scotland.

If you loved this podcast, please do hit the subscribe buttons, and also like and share our episodes with friends and colleagues who might enjoy learning a little bit about how law really works in practice, and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place.  

Our Equality Under the Law series has been generously support by a grant from the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, hosted by the London School of Economics.  The Lawmanity podcast is co-produced by me, your host, Jen Ang and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe.  And the music you’ve been listening to is “Always on the Move” by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow-based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland.  

Thanks so much for tuning in today, we hope you enjoyed listening, and see you next time!

Host: Jen Ang

Pheona Matovu

We need to reconsider what the law does. It’s in what it does, not in what it is.

What it is can be changed. We can rethink, we can remodel, we can redesign. We must consider that when these laws were put in place, perhaps the people that should have been in the rooms were not in the rooms.

Jen Ang

Hello and welcome to a special series of three podcasts – part of our Equal Under the Law? Series – which explores three big questions about the complex relationship between the law and social justice, through interviews with some of Scotland’s most inspiring and impactful activists campaigning today.

Over the past few months, we have interviewed 11 guests for the Lawmanity podcast, who work across a range of social justice issues, including: LGBT+ rights, racial justice, migrants’ rights, Scottish Travellers’ rights, disability justice, and the rights of women and girl survivors.  

We asked each of our guests three big questions, because we wanted to understand what their personal experiences – whether drawn from just a few years of campaigning, or sometimes, over as many as four decades of activism – told them about the relationship between law and justice.

We also have a content warning for you: as mentioned, some of the activists we interviewed with work with women and girl survivors of violence and that means there are some references to sexual violence, including rape, in this episode.

Jen Ang

Today, we’re going to look the answers we got to our second question: 

Is the law a barrier, or a tool (or both) in the struggle to achieve greater equality for people and communities that are marginalised and excluded? 

Across the board, our guests told us that they saw the law as both a barrier and a tool for change.

Talat Yaqoob, political commentator, activist and co-chair of the National Advisory Council for Women and Girls believes the question of whether law is a barrier or a tool for social change, can only be answered by looking at the wider political and social context, at any given time. 

Talat Yaqoob 

So I think it can be both, but I think it is so deeply influenced by where society, people and politics is at the time. 

So if you’d asked me a few years ago, I think I’d be much more secure in saying both. In the current political landscape that we’re in, where law is being very successfully used to demonise communities, either to eradicate rights that are in law, or to manipulate the interpretation of the law, or to change completely the law, implement new ones. Now I’m not just talking about America here. I am talking about here in the UK. We’re seeing it across Europe as well. The rise of far-right politics and populism actually uses the law to its advantage and exceptionally with exceptional strength, with exceptional clarity. 

So with that influence right now, it feels more like a barrier than a positive tool. But it is so dependent on where society is, and I think that really reinforces how politics, how law, is not separate from politics and society. 

Where we are as a society dictates what laws we prioritise, implement, write, and how they’re written, who they’re written by, all of those things. So I think, I still hold strong to the fact that it can be both, but it is so dependent on where politics and society is at the time.

Jen Ang

Similarly, other guests spoke about the function of the law and the legal system as essentially a neutral tool in the hands of different forces. The determining factor, therefore, being: Who is using the law? And for what purpose?

Pinar Aksu, a migrants’ rights activist and PhD student at the University of Glasgow had earlier spoken about the the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill 2025, passing through Parliament as an unjust law that benefitted some people, but harmed many others. She told us, for example:

Pinar Aksu 

It depends who uses the law and how they use the law. 

It’s a combination, because when we talk about migration, such as, right now, the new Borders Bill that’s been going through and being debated, that’s going to make things very difficult for a lot of people, and that is using the law. 

And how can we challenge that is very difficult, I think, as activists, or even people who are lawyers themselves or by the general public, because I think we have reached a state, or we have reached a moment in the UK that becomes very difficult to intervene and challenge, and the government is able to just pass policies, just there and here, just like that. 

And that, for me, is concerning for democracy, and it’s concerning for all of us.

How do you reverse that? How do you mobilise the whole community, the whole country, basically, to say what you’re, what you’ve written there, is wrong, and how do we, how do we change that? 

Jen Ang

Tim Hopkins, LGBT+ activist and former director of the Equality Network, also sees the law as both a tool and a barrier in advocating for LGBT+ rights, again very much tied to how particular issues are seen in a political and social context. Reflecting on change he has seen as an activist from the 1980s to the present, he said:

Tim Hopkins

So I guess for LGBT people, obviously at the beginning when we started this work, the law was a big barrier because there were so many things that were wrong with it. 

Section 28, sex offences law, treated gay men in particular very different from anybody else. There was no gender recognition for trans people, there was no recognition of same sex couples in any way, same sex couples couldn’t be joint parents. And then there was no protective law, so there was no equality law or hate crime law protection. So in that sense, the law was a big barrier.

As we’ve gradually got things changed, some of those changes were about barriers disappearing, so I wrote down that it took four separate acts, two of them at Westminster, and two of them in the Scottish Parliament, to remove all of the discrimination against gay and bisexual men in sexual offences law. It started in 1980, but it didn’t finish until 2009. So that was removing the barrier.

And then of course apart from removing all the barriers, I would include in that, you know, the introduction of civil partnership, and then the introduction of equal marriage, and actually before even civil partnership, the recognition of cohabiting same sex couples, and the laws around parenting. 

All of that is about removing barriers, but there are also the more positive laws: the Equality Act and the hate crime legislation, which are about protecting people.

So I think the answer is the law has both been a barrier, a huge barrier, but for LGB people, those barriers have been bit by bit taken down. But also the law is a protector, and it has been genuinely protective: you know, the Equality Act has genuinely protected people. It doesn’t always work of course, but some people have been protected from sexual orientation discrimination, and hate crime law has given some people some justice.

But the law at the moment is a huge barrier for trans people, especially after the [For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers] Supreme Court judgment in April [2025]. Really, the situation of trans people now is I think worse than the situation was for LGB people, even going back to the 1980s. The legal situation, the fact that it looks like trans people are not going to be able to use toilets, is just appalling.

Jen Ang

Pheona Matovu, Founding Director of Radiant and Brighter, looking to her own experience, personally and professionally, working with racialised and migrant families, is firmly convinced that the law as it stands is designed to treat excluded and marginalised groups unequally, but also believes it can be redesigned to achieve inclusion and positive social change.

Pheona Matovu 

My experience is that it’s more of a barrier. It can enable, but it is more of a barrier. And that’s not because it’s the law.

It’s because I think we need to reconsider what the law does. It’s in what it does, not in what it is.

What it is can be changed. We can rethink, we can remodel, we can redesign. We must consider that when these laws were put in place, perhaps the people that should have been in the rooms were not in the rooms.

And so at the point of design, the point of where the thinking was happening, there wasn’t enough critical thinking perhaps around equity. I do know I’m not a master of the law – I have, very little understanding of law in how it operates and how it’s designed, because I’m not a lawyer, but I am aware that women were not even allowed to be lawyers for a while, I believe.

And so if the very people that that that that have to adhere to the law are not in the room, what is being designed? And who is it being designed for? And for what?

So it’s in the design that there is a fault and therefore it creates barriers. It creates barriers where we are seeking to a society that’s engaging. 

So here in Scotland, one of the key one of the key statements is: Scotland welcomes refugees, right? Another statement here in Glasgow is: people make Glasgow. And we know that Glasgow is made of very many migrant communities. But those statements do not mean anything when you try to get into a system that says, hang on a minute, we don’t know who you are, we don’t understand you, and it pushes back.

And so the law can do good, and it perhaps has done good in some areas. But I think in the design of it, we need to rethink that to make it do the good that it should.

It should protect, it should look after, should engage and consider the way in which people experience it, particularly those that are most excluded and marginalised.

But I don’t think it does that enough. or even at all in certain cases.

Jen Ang

Some guests spoke about the law as a tool for change – acknowledging for example that the law establishes a basic framework of rights against unfair treatment, which people do benefit from. 

Satwat Rehmat, Chief Executive Officer of One Parent Families Scotland, reflects.

Satwat Rehman

I really do believe that laws empower us ,and can empower us and can offer us those protections against unfair treatment and securing rights to housing, benefits, support services, do you know. And that absolutely, I think without them, we’d be in a much, much worse position than we are now. 

Jen Ang

Amanda Amaeshi, an activist with the Young Women’s Movement and former law student at the University College of London, agrees…

Amanda Amaeshi

In regards to being a tool like, obviously, people can, like, you go to court and have a case, and especially with cases of like strategic litigation where like it can use like individual cases can be leveraged to kind of advocate for wider, like wider legal precedents that can address broader systemic issues. 

And there’s also like legal protections embedded in like anti-discrimination legislation, like the Equality Act, for example, which, equality is in the name. So I suppose, like, in that sense, it’s definitely a tool…

Jen Ang

Although, Pinar Aksu, points out that there can be challenges in using the law to challenge the law.

Pinar Aksu

Obviously, there are lawyers out there who uses the law to protect people and who uses the law to find different ways to uphold their human rights and find different mechanisms as well. 

And I think it’s a difficult one, because they are challenging the law itself as lawyers, but then it’s the law that’s the problem.

Jen Ang

And Tressa Burke, Chief Executive Officer of Glasgow Disability Alliance, points out that strategic challenges even when successful do not have the strategic impact hoped for because the public authority that has been challenged will settle to avoid a strategic win that could positively affect many more people.

Tressa Burke

What we find, for example, what I mean by that is if you look at situations of social care where somebody maybe threatens judicial review, the next thing the case is settled.

And so we don’t have case law established. And it’s to you know on a case-by-case basis, that seems to be how local authorities resolve things, where they think they might lose. 

So where it could be a tool, I mean, it is a tool for that person. The threat of it is helping that individual, but it’s not changing the systemic inequalities or barriers that people are facing, so I think it’s both.

Jen Ang

And Satwat Rehman points out that even where a legal challenge has been successful, there is also a risk in the wider political, social and economic context, that the legal victory is unenforceable.  

She describes here an example of a right that might have been “won” in law, or in court but that fails to achieve real world change for the families that need it.

Satwat Rehman  

But we always are pushed back to the fact that what we can do is constrained by the system and the finances within the system. 

I mean, you know, if we want to look at a really fundamental right, every child has a right to an education, right? Every local authority has a duty to fulfil that right to that education. But what we do is do it in a way which will suit what we think is the majority. You know, so it may work for 70% of children and young people, but there are 30% whose rights are often compromised. And when you speak about why that is, you’re told it’s because of resource constraints.

You know, so if you’ve got a child with additional needs, if you’ve got a child who might require more one-to-one support to settle in class. Those rights aren’t realised in terms of their access to education being equal, because the resources aren’t there, you know. And they’re incredibly difficult things to challenge as an individual, as a parent, and that’s where I think that there is a real role for the law as a tool in terms of collective action and being able to look at an issue and say, okay, then do you know that parent there spoken about it? But actually, the evidence is showing us that this is a pattern, and then it’s the pattern that you need to be challenging in law. 

The problem then becomes, you could win that, but how do you implement, do you know, your victory? Where are those resources going to come from? You know, are those who’ve got the duty to provide and to realise that right, going to be able to do so? 

And so, you know, I mean, let me just give you an example of something that’s coming up more and more, which impacts on single parent families. Will impact on lots of families, but obviously we’re hearing about it from single parent families.

Where, due to the fact that resources are so limited in so many schools, if they’ve got children who’ve got additional needs, or who may be, you know, playing out the impact of early life trauma, or any of those things, parents will tell us about the fact that sometimes they haven’t even got as far as walking back home and through the door before the school will phone to say: “we don’t have the staff and we don’t have the resource. It’s not safe. Can you come and pick your child up?” 

What parent is going to say no?  You know, and we’ve been hearing about this beginning to happen more and more to the families that we’re working with. And so there’s a fundamental there about that child’s not receiving an education, right? 

But then if you look at the welfare system and the fact that we’ve got a welfare system which has conditionality built into it, and you’re sanctioned if you can’t then meet those conditions, these are parents who are also being expected to be looking full time for work, enter work and increase their hours in work. And all of those areas have conditionality, which, if they don’t meet, they would be sanctioned. 

Jen Ang

Many of our guests focused on barriers to accessing justice for individuals and communities – pointing out that not only is the court system (and access to courts) an issue, but that huge unmet legal need and the difficulty that people experience in accessing legal advice, information and lawyers is for many people – the insurmountable barrier to securing rights supposedly provided under law.

Amanda Amaeshi shares her experience of volunteering a free legal advice clinic during her time as a law student at University College London

Amanda Amaeshi

In regards to like, the practical barriers. So I thought about this through like, I’ve volunteered over the past year at UCL Integrated Legal Advice Clinic. So it’s located in East London, in Stratford, and the clinic offers like legal aid and also pro bono support in regards to housing, welfare, benefits, community care and education. 

And so I had the opportunity to volunteer there, both as an admin volunteer and also through one of my final year modules, which is called access to justice and community engagement. So I got to help out a bit with helping the lawyers with their casework. So I guess, thinking about bad experience and it really illuminated for me the practical barriers that come with accessing law. First off, to do the cost. Well, the fact that so many people are having to access legal clinics, like UCL ILAC, it shows that just accessing legal support is really prohibitive, like, if private legal services are charging exorbitant fees, and it just becomes really inaccessible. 

And then even where, obviously, legal aid does exist and the aim of that is supposed to be to provide access for those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it, legal aid is being slashed. There’s been lots of cuts, and it’s kind of had, it’s had a major impact on the sustainability of the legal aid sector. 

And as a result, I’ve seen that the relatively few services offering like free legal assistance, especially when it comes to like ongoing support or representation beyond initial advice. And the limited numbers of clinics that do exist, like UCL’s ILAC are often inundated with inquiries, and they have no option that to signpost clients elsewhere. 

And especially when I was working on telephones, answering client inquiries, I found myself having to do this a lot, having to, do some research, find other places that the inquirers could go to. But it also becomes a kind of inescapable loop, because I remember quite a lot of the times, I would say,: “oh, maybe you can go here. You can go here.” And then the inquirer would be like, “Oh, I’ve already been there, and they already didn’t have capacity. And in fact, they were the ones that told me to come to you.” So it just, it almost becomes a bit hopeless. You’re kind of just going round and round in circles. 

And I suppose, going off of that, if you are lucky enough to secure that kind of full time, if you are lucky enough to get that support, there’s then, like so much bureaucracy and like opaqueness within the legal system, and statutes, regulations, guidance, that it’s often difficult to find and even more difficult to understand, and lots of technical language. 

And I remember, as I was helping out with the casework, having to come up with legal arguments, and I’d spend ages reading these documents, and even for me as a law student, and even talking to other lawyers as well, it wouldn’t always be so straightforward to figure out what does this mean? 

So if it’s already difficult for those of us who some experience already with law, then how much more difficult would it be for those who are in a legal crisis and then in a heightened state of vulnerability, and perhaps with other compounding inequalities on top, they do have, like, race or disability or age… how are they supposed to navigate the system? And sometimes, and maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but it also sometimes seems that this opaqueness and difficulty to navigate the system is not just a flaw, but kind of like, like a purposeful design.

Jen Ang

Having highlighted the idea that the difficulty of navigating legal and bureaucratic systems might be a purposeful design, Amanda goes on to give an example of what she means, and to question the justice of a system that is so difficult for ordinary people to navigate.

Amanda Amaeshi

I remember there was a client we had once needed to challenge a decision regarding the Department for Work and Pensions and the deadline for submitting the application to challenge the case, challenge the decision had technically passed. 

But the lawyer who was supervising me said that, like, oh, appeal could probably still be made because of exceptional circumstances, in this case, to do with, like recent house moves and disability-related difficulties. 

And then it raised the question for me of, like, who gets the benefit of this procedural flexibility. And the fact that late appeals could be accepted suggests, it kind of suggested to me that deadlines could function more as like deterrents, as opposed to like absolute cut off, which could potentially discourage claimants to assume that they have no further options after they’ve gotten this decision. 

And if there is this flexibility as regards, like, the extenuating circumstances, why isn’t this more explicitly communicated? Why is this something that claimants actually have to fight for? And in this case, we’re fighting for with the support of legal professionals – so it’d be even worse if the claimant was trying to do it by themselves. And it almost seemed that a system is designed in a way that, if there are fewer challenges and it becomes, like a more manageable caseload. 

But that’s not how justice is supposed to work, is it? 

Jen Ang

Guests highlight other barriers in the legal system as including the time, money and emotional capacity involved in pursuing legal justice:

Tressa Burke explains why, in her experience, many disabled people do not pursue legal cases even where they have a clear right to do so:

Tressa Burke

People can’t afford to access legal justice.

They can’t afford, not just in financial terms, and I would argue that is the biggest barrier, but actually in terms of capacity, emotional energy, you know being disabled and relying on services – it is a battle. Your life is a battle, and people don’t always have the energy and for what’s required.

Jen Ang

Heather Fisken, Chief Executive Officer of Inclusion Scotland, a disabled person’s organisation, agrees, saying of the law:

Heather Fisken 

It shouldn’t be a barrier. and it should be a tool. It should be something that we can use and we readily use it. But it’s not easy to do that. There’s all kinds of reasons why disabled people don’t use the law.

As individuals, disabled people and their families are up against a huge weight of officials involved in their lives. 

Which piece of discrimination do you activate here? Which piece of discrimination are you challenging here? 

Because from when you wake up in the morning until when you go to bed –  and everything you do in between – whether that’s employment, learning, being a family member, trying to access services, socialise, use transport, use general services like shops, etc – there’s discrimination in all of that. 

Which bit do you challenge? It’s exhausting.    

Because I had one ex-colleague and I remember her telling me that she had something like 24 different professionals involved in her life. She had a filing cabinet in her hall for all of these different types of professionals involved in her life.

And then we’ve got people being refused health care, and people who don’t have their social key care needs met. You have people who… young people who have an educational needs assessment – assuming you can get that in the first place – and the needs aren’t being provided for. 

Which one are we going for here? And then, of course, where do you find the lawyer? Where do you find the lawyer who can, and understands, and has the competence and the willingness, to take on your case?

Where do you find the legal aid to do it if you’re not on the passport benefits for it? Where you find the capacity and the time and the energy? 

And one of the other things, perhaps the biggest thing really, a or one of them, is the fear, the fear of losing social care support if you try to challenge that.

I remember going to an event in a town up north, and we were being told by the parent of a disabled child about how their child had been excluded from the school trip because there was no wheelchair accessible bus.

So they stayed at home, or they stayed at school in the library, while everybody else went for a fun day out. And the mother tried to complain about this. But the problem was that in such a small rural place – and I think it’s important to remember what it can be like living in a rural place – the headmistress lived on the same street.

And she didn’t feel she could take serious action, whether that be legal or complaints processes, knowing that this person was her neighbour.

Jen Ang

Satwat Rehman talks about the long time frames it can take to resolve issues using a legal route – such as judicial review which is a challenge to a decision made by a statutory authority – as a major deterrent for people pursuing a legal remedy.  

Here Satwat talks about trying to find a family to participate in a judicial review being brought by a charity called the Child Poverty Action Group, or CPAG.

Satwat Rehman

That’s right. I mean, I remember speaking to a group of firm parents, because CPAG were looking for parents who might consider, you know, taking part in things that they were wanting to do as part of judicial reviews. 

But you have to commit to be around for a long time for that, you know. And the family said they were just not in a position to say, actually, yeah, I can be on this journey with you for two years. 

Jen Ang

And Heather goes on to caution that lawyers themselves – who people approach to help them bring legal challenges – can themselves create insurmountable barriers to accessing the legal system.

Heather Fisken

I do remember somebody years ago, to be fair, who pulled out of working with a lawyer because the lawyer said, it takes me an extra hour to speak to you because of your impairments. Therefore, I’m going to charge you double. 

And I was thinking, that’s a reasonable adjustment. Shouldn’t you as a lawyer understand the concept of reasonable adjustment in the Equality Act?

Jen Ang

During today’s podcast, we’ve heard guests discuss the law as a barrier or a tool to achieve equality for marginalised and excluded groups.  

We have had reflections that look at this question in social and political context, and have also noted that changes in the law can promote equality and provide protection for some groups, but also that laws designed without excluded groups in mind can just amplify discrimination and exclusion.

We’ve seen some discussion, as well, on barriers in accessing justice due to the complexity of legal procedures, the costs of legal advice, the inaccessibility of lawyers and the legal system and also the exhaustion that is a real life part of life for people who are marginalised and excluded.

We’re ending today with a final reflection from Sandy Brindley, CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland and a part-time PhD student at the University of Glasgow School of Law. Sandy explains why she still believes the legal reform is important but for the impact on the lives of people in the justice system, and also as an educative tool for change in wider society.

Sandy Brindley 

I think it is both. I mean, I think as a feminist engaging with the concept of law reform, I think we need to be aware that there are, I think, really powerful arguments, particularly from black feminists, about the intrinsically hostile nature of the justice process and potentially intrinsically racist. 

There are limits, I think, when you be realistic to how much we can improve a system that really wasn’t set up to achieve justice for women who’ve experienced such an intimate violation. 

But I don’t think that means that we can try, and I feel like as long as women are still seeking justice from the criminal justice system, to me, we have an onus to improve that system to minimise the harm it causes.

So I’ve been doing interviews for the PhD. I’m doing a part-time PhD at the University of Glasgow. I’ve been interviewing women –  they’re called complainers in Scotland, survivors going through the justice process around sexual crimes. I’ve interviewed 24 complainers, and part of what I’ve been exploring is: what does justice mean to you? 

Because I think that’s a question we don’t ask often enough, for women who have been raped: what would justice look like? What would it feel like to get justice for what you’ve been through?

And overwhelmingly, what women have said to me is that justice means safety. 

And I think it is hard to see any way for women who have been raped to feel safe without engaging with the criminal justice system. Like that that prison does actually have – as much as there are many flaws to the system – prison does have an important role, and that it enables women to feel safe for at least a period of time while their rapist is in jail. 

There was one woman that I interviewed who was just terrified because her rapist was up for parole and she was saying, “I know he’s going to kill me, when he gets out.” 

So I think it’s important to bear that in mind about as much as there are limits and criticisms of feminist engagement with law reform, these are really urgent issues for women who’ve experienced rape or sexual crime.

So I think law reform is important. I think the law can play a really important role. I think it can also play an important educative role. So we reformed our approach to look at the definition of rape and gave a definition of consent for the first time back in, I think, was it 2009, the Sexual Offences Act.

But anyway, we set out a definition of rape, which included male rape for the first time, which I think was important. We also defined consent as “free agreement,” and it set out a list of circumstances where can consent is presumed to be absent.

And I think that is so important as an educative tool, particularly for speaking with young people. 

I think one thing that the government should have done and didn’t when they introduced the Sexual Offences Act that redefined rape and defined consent was I think there really should have been and a proper public education campaign and community engagement, particularly with young people, to say: this is what the law is.

Because you can have really great law on the books, but if people don’t know, for example, that having “sex” (and I’m putting sex in quotation marks) with a woman who’s sleeping is rape, then the law really is failing its function. So I think as an educative tool, it can be really important. 

We had another example that recently where there was a judgment, an appeal judgment came out that confirmed that you can’t consent to non-fatal strangulation. We’re seeing this a lot.

In rape cases, like forensic nurses are reporting to us, I’ve really seen quite a lot of this in rape exams, like forensic rape exams.  Defence lawyers – I was speaking to an advocate, in a case the other week, who was saying they’ve just seen this so much in cases where they’re defending young men – like so many of these cases, sexual offence cases involving non-fatal strangulation.

To me, it’s clearly coming from what young men are seeing online, and particularly the impact of pornography and depictions of sex, that portray, for example, women enjoying this or this being a normal part of sex. 

So I think it’s so important that young people are equipped with knowledge about the law, both for young men, so they don’t end up carrying out this behaviour thinking it’s normal and then they end up before the courts.

But also for young women, I think it’s really important because young women are under so much pressure to perform in a particular way in relation to femininity, and in relation to heterosexuality, that I think it can be hard for young women to really connect with what feels pleasurable to them and what feels okay to them.

And that’s not just societal pressure and fed by the narrative of pornography. 

So I think that is really important that we can speak to young people and say, this is actually what the law says.

And I think we shouldn’t forget the power of that while we also look at other ways of trying to change societal attitudes. The law has a really important role there.

Jen Ang

And that was Sandy Brindley, concluding today’s podcast by reminding us that the different ways the law can be a tool for change – where, for example, it works to keep us safe from people who do harm, and where it is an educative tool for setting, or even changing, social norms.

Lots more big ideas today, from our guests, and I’d love to hear what you, our listeners, make of it all: for you, is the law a barrier or a tool to greater equality, or perhaps, both?

Meanwhile, heartfelt thanks to Talat Yaqoob, Pinar Aksu, Tim Hopkins, Pheona Matovu, Satwat Rehman, Amanda Amaeshi, Tressa Burke, Heather Fisken and Sandy Brindley, for their contributions to today’s episode.

And thanks so much to you, the listener for tuning into our Lawmanity podcast and our special series on Equality Under the Law in Scotland.

If you loved this podcast, please do hit the subscribe buttons, and also like and share our episodes with friends and colleagues who might enjoy learning a little bit about how law really works in practice, and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place.  

Our Equality Under the Law series has been generously support by a grant from the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, hosted by the London School of Economics.  The Lawmanity podcast is co-produced by me, your host, Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe.  And the music you’ve been listening to is “Always on the Move” by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow-based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland.  

Thanks so much for tuning in today, we hope you enjoyed listening, and see you next time!

Host: Jen Ang

Talat Yaqoob

“In one case that was described, it was because a young woman had decided to start wearing the hijab, that was reason enough for her to be considered potentially radicalised. Now that is the demonisation of our religion, that’s a demonisation of the expression of religion and religious belief, and so that is an example of where the implementation of so-called protection in law is implemented in way, and in my view also written in a way that demonises a particular community.”

Jen Ang

Hello and welcome to a special series of three podcasts – part of our Equal Under the Law? Series – which explores three big questions about the complex relationship between the law and social justice, through interviews with some of Scotland’s most inspiring and impactful activists campaigning today.

Over the past few months, we have interviewed 11 guests for the Lawmanity podcast, who work across a range of social justice issues, including: LGBT+ rights, racial justice, migrants rights, Scottish travellers rights, disability justice, and the rights of women and girl survivors.  

We asked each of our guests three big questions, because we wanted to understand what their personal experiences – whether drawn from just a few years’ of campaigning, or sometimes, over as many as four decades of activism – told them about the relationship between law and justice.

We also have a content warning for you: as mentioned, some of the activists we interviewed with work with women and girls survivors of violence and that means there are some references to sexual violence, including rape, in this episode.

Jen Ang

Today, we’re going to look the answers we got to our first question: 

Do you feel the law works equally for you, or for your community?  Why, or why not? 

Across, the board, the answer for our guests was, “no – the law is not working equally for me, and my community,” and it was easy for them to express the reasons why…

Let’s start with this reflection from Pheona Matovu.  Pheona founded the charity Radiant and Brighter in Glasgow to create opportunities for racialised migrant people and families to overcome barriers to successful and healthy living, in Glasgow.  

She thinks the law treats racialised people unequally – and that is exactly what it is designed to do.

Pheona Matovu

I don’t think, at least at this point in time, I’m not quite sure that I would put equality in the same sentence with law. I think the law is there to do…something else other than equality.

It’s there to keep those it thinks are wrong, right. And perhaps those that are wrong and can pay more, do different.

 So my work is with the adversely racialised communities, people who experience exclusion from systems, from processes, primarily.

But I also work, of course, with organisations looking at what policies they can put in place. And in my research, one of the areas, of course, that I do touch on is the human rights, which obviously come from the law against the law about discrimination against people on the basis of colour.

Now, when we think about where it started, where human rights started, we’ve come so far that it’s barely recognisable that it had anything to do with racism.

And so I think the law is… I don’t know, it just, it leaves you in a place where should we be doing something different? Should the law be rethought?

It feels like we keep adding layers to either dilute equality or increase power for those that hold power.

So I wouldn’t say works. I think it does what the system wants it to do, which is often around exclusion. I understand that it is important to have the law, of course, but I don’t think that it is it has been um designed equitably in order to achieve equity.

Jen Ang

Satwat Rehman, who has served as the Chief Executive Officer of One Parent Familes Scotland for 14 years, agrees – sharing from a related perspective why she, and the single parents she works with, feel the law is working exactly as it is intended to do so: by excluding and impoverishing single parents and their children.

Satwat Rehman

That is a really big question, and I’m going to answer it by starting off by saying that there is no one answer to it. It depends on so many factors, and I’ll speak about that from the perspective of the single parent families that we work with, but also I’ll speak about that as somebody who’s grown up in a racially minoritised community here in in the UK.

And for me, it’s also about a number of levels, because sometimes the issue isn’t with how lawyers are trying to test the law or to support people to realise their rights through the law. It’s the flaws that are built in by the lawmakers. And some of those aren’t flaws which are unintentional. Some of that might be exactly what they want the policy to do you know. 

And for single parents, you see that a lot in the design of benefit support, for example, where we might take, you know, and lawyers have, through organisations like Child Poverty Action Group, taken cases to challenge things like the two-child limit, for example, or the benefit cap and other things which disproportionately impact on single parent families. 

Jen Ang

So here, Satwat mentioned the benefit cap and the two-child limit. These were both reforms made to the welfare system by the UK Government which limits the amount of income a family can receive when they are receiving mainstream benefits. And these cases were taken by Child Poverty Action Group, which is a charity, in conjunction with other organisations in order to challenge the effect of the welfare reform limits for poor families across the UK.

Satwat Rehman

But those cases haven’t been successful because of the way the law was made and its intent. So I think there is something there about what role lawyers, who are activists and who believe in social justice, can play in the development of the laws, which is critical, I think, from this point of view. Because I think what quite often happens is after the bills are passed and they become acts, and they’re being enacted. It can be too late. 

And so there is something about how you can be more active as a profession, in supporting campaigns and activism, which is completely and utterly grounded in the experiences of the individuals who are meant to be the benefactors of these laws, or actually being completely and utterly, and I’m not using this word lightly, but destroyed by the changes that are going to be taking place – as we can see at the moment when we looked at disabled people’s organisations and their response to the latest set of welfare reforms that the UK government is considering – which is all about reducing the benefit bill by forcing people with lifetime conditions to be considering how they go into work, even though work may never be sustainable or affordable for them in terms of lifting them out of poverty. 

You know, there is so much evidence to show that the two-child limit keeps and pushes families into poverty. You know, so on the one hand, you’ve got a child poverty strategy being developed at UK level. On the other hand, you’ve got them sticking with and pushing through further reforms that’s going to increase poverty levels amongst families. So there I would ask, is there a hierarchy in terms of which laws are considered important? 

Jen Ang

Picking up this theme of a disconnection between how the law is made, who the law serves, and who is impacted by inequalities in the law, Pinar Aksu, a migrant rights campaigner, theatre practitioner and PhD Student at the University of Glasgow sees this disconnection as intentional, and rooted in deep historical tradition designed to reinforce inequalities.

Pinar Aksu 

So within my work, I work in the migration sector, especially people who are seeking asylum and refuge. I think witnessing the changes of the immigration law has been really interesting in the last few years, and also observing the pattern of the laws that was generated over the time. 

The first immigration law we had in the UK was the 1905 Alien Act. And then when you compare that to the current immigration laws we have, and the language, when you look at the language of the way it’s been described within the legislations, but also within the title of the law as well. It makes you question: has anything changed since more than 100 years ago? 

We still use similar, divisive languages within the law when we are talking about movement, and when we’re designing and defining what migration is. And I think that’s something that is very disappointing to see that nothing has really changed. 

What’s been interesting for me is, since I’ve started my PhD, every single year there was a new law on immigration that has passed. So we had the Nationality and Borders Act, and then we had the Illegal Migration Act, and then we had the Rwanda Act, and now we have a new bill that’s being proposed in the parliament as well. So that’s been very crucial for me to witness it and see how the law itself is developed and to see who it benefits. 

And obviously it sometimes benefits certain people, it doesn’t benefit other people who really need protection.

I also find it fascinating the way the performative side of the law as well, and that’s something I’ve been looking into within my research about how the laws are designed, how legislations are designed, how they are being proposed, and such as in House of Lords, House of Commons, and then you have this monarchy, and then you have this place where decisions are being made by a elite group of people who are, I think, truly disconnected from realities.

And the performative side element of it, of the fact that it’s just, yeah, group of people making decisions for 1000s and millions of people. And then that makes me question, is this what we want, and is this how the law should be drafted? What about people’s voices? Can we have a structure where we reimagine how the law should be, and how that should look like?

Jen Ang

Similarly, Talat Yaqoob, a political commentator, activist and co-chair of the National Advisory Council for Women and Girls, sees the law as intentionally unequal, but because it sits within a wider context of systemic inequality – and is just one of the ways in which that inequality is perpetuated.

Talat Yaqoob

So if I was to talk about it for myself and the vast majority of communities I work with, that would be, you know, the community of women of sisterhood, the community of colours that I work with. So whether it’s black, Asian, minority ethnic communities, disabled people’s communities that I work with, and then Muslim communities of which I am part and also work with… and it’s a resounding no. 

With the intention, you would hope, the intention of the law – seeing everybody as equal – would be there. But the law in itself does not sit in a vacuum away from the realities of society, whether historic or or current, existing. The institutionalised, the systemic inequalities, are threaded into which laws are made, how they are made, and critically, how they’re implemented. And the mindsets, the thinking, the institutionalised inequalities, across the board within that, they will come to the fore in all of those spaces: wherever law is being written, developed, implemented. 

So unless there is some real proactive work to rectify that. Then, actually, in the current society we exist within, can it ever treat everybody equally?

Jen Ang

In Talat’s view, this leads to a kind of double-speak, where laws designed to keep the public safe, in reality operate to create unsafe spaces, for some people, and the law becomes an instrument to exclude, harm and demonise minoritised groups.

Talat Yaqoob 

The Counterterrorism and Security Act of, I think, 2015. So in law, in writing, that is about keeping the nation and the nation’s people safe. But actually it has created unsafe spaces, insecurity and concern for those of us who will appear Muslim, who are – particularly for black and brown men – for hijab or burqa wearing women and we see that largely through the way in which the Prevent strategy, which is obviously part of that Act, is implemented. 

Jen Ang

Talat has referenced the Prevent strategy. The Prevent strategy is the UK Government’s flagship counterextremism policy. It aims to identify people at risk of committing terrorist acts and to intervene.  But controversially, to achieve this aim, the Prevent duty requires public bodies including schools, nurseries, universities, social services and health care providers to monitor and report people they suspect are vulnerable to extremism. That brings teachers, doctors, social workers and others into the realm of people who have responsibility for doing this.

Talat Yaqoob 

Now, human rights organisations have repeatedly called out and evidenced the racism and Islamophobia that is inherent in the way in which the Prevent strategy has been implemented, and how it is being used as a method to penalise rather than protect. 

And in particular, what I often go to is a way in which the Prevent strategy has a obligation on those who work in public sector, public authority spaces – so within our NHS, within schools – to report what they determine as extremism, and the definition of terrorism within it is so wide, and if you think about systemic inequality and leaving it to the perceived objectivity of an individual to decide what is extremism, we have seen multiple reporting and referrals to Prevent which have been wholly inappropriate, unevidenced, a disproportionate number of children and young people. 

In one case that was described, it was because a young woman had decided to start wearing the hijab. That was reason enough for her to be considered potentially radicalised. Now that is the demonisation of a religion. That’s a demonisation of the expression of religion and religious belief. And so that is an example of where the implementation of so-called protection in law is implemented in a way, and in my view, also written in a way that that demonises a particular community.

Jen Ang

Another way of looking at this question – does the law treat you and your community equally – is to look at equality under the letter of the law, or reform of the actual language and substance of the law in order to make it more equal.  

This is an area where many of the activists I spoke to have first-hand experience of advocacy success – leading to, among other things, the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010.

Tim Hopkins, who is an LGBT activist and also former director of the Equality Network, describes his assessment of how equality under the law for LGBT+ people has progressed since the 1980s in Scotland, but also ponders the challenges that remain for defending the rights of trans and non-binary people – under those same laws – today. 

Tim Hopkins

Yes, so I suppose when I thought about this, I was also thinking about the definition of law. There’s kind of two dimensions to that, for the work that I’ve been involved in for a long time. One is what the law itself says, what is in criminal law, what is criminal and what isn’t. In a civil law, what are people’s rights and so on. So that’s one dimension. 

Then the other dimension is how the law works and you know, being able to uphold your rights and what’s involved in that. To answer the question, when I started campaigning, which was back in the 1980s, the whole environment was that the law treated us very unfairly as LGBT people. 

 And that’s really what got me involved, so it was all about changing the law. 

Over the past 30 years, or a little more, 35 years, there have been big changes, big positive changes to the law as it affects LGBT people in Scotland and across the UK and other places as well. I made a list, and there’s about 10 really important things on the list. 

And if I look back at the Equality Network’s first manifesto for the first Scottish Parliament election in 1999, almost everything on that manifesto has been done, and most of the things on the manifesto were about changing the law. And since then, we added some additional things that weren’t such high priorities, but a large number of them have been done. 

So in terms of whether the law works for LGBT people: for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, the law is far better now than it was 30 years ago. For trans people, things are really quite different. There have been some improvements: the two key things are the gender recognition system that came in in 2004 and the anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws which are now in the Equality Act which date back to, originally, 1999. 

But both those things have been seriously undermined this year, in particular, by the Supreme Court judgment back in April in For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers which is a huge problem for trans people. So for trans people, the law is definitely not working at the moment. 

Jen Ang

Sandy Brindley, CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland, has also seen legislative change in seeking justice for survivors of sexual violence, and she reflects on how we may have come far, but we still have far to go.

Sandy Brindley

So I started in Rape Crisis as a volunteer, in I think it was 1994. it was only 30 years that I’ve been involved in Rape Crisis, and a lot of that work has been working around legal responses to sexual crime and trying to improve and legal responses to sexual crime.

And I still remember really vividly the first woman that I supported in court when she was given evidence in a rape trial. I think it must have been like maybe ‘96. And I was so shocked at how she was treated. I actually couldn’t believe it, and it wasn’t just the questions. It was just the demeanour of the defence lawyer was almost mocking and so demeaning towards her. And I thought here is a woman who – this is devastating for her. It is terrifying going to give evidence in court, and we’re treating her with such a lack of humanity. And that experience did have really quite a profound impact on me in terms of I suppose a lot of the work I’ve done since then which has been engaging with the justice process to try and make it a little bit less traumatic for people and particularly women who are seeking justice.

So all the time I’ve worked at Rape Crisis, that I have seen really, really significant changes. I think there is no doubt that the law in Scotland and in many jurisdictions fails women who are seeking justice after rape. 

Undoubtedly, you just need to look at the statistics, how many cases never make it to court, and the low conviction rate of those that do. It is the lowest conviction rate of any crime type, rape has, in Scotland. But also just the stories that survivors tell us about how traumatic and violating experience it has been – particularly of court and of cross-examination.

So I think it’s fair to say my strategies have maybe changed over the years. I was like in my early twenties filled with anger, you’re not always that constructive, I think, in your approach – when you just really feel the injustice of it.

Whereas as time has progressed, I’ve realised that the way to make change really is relationships and finding common ground. And I think we have built some really positive relationships with the Faculty of Advocates, with the Crown Office, with the Court Service, and really trying to work together to make things better while still retaining enough of a critical edge to stand outside and criticise where it’s absolutely necessary.

So that’s a long way of saying no, I don’t think the law does treat particularly women equally if who have experienced sexual crime. I think it’s getting better but think there’s still a lot to do.

Jen Ang

In the last part of their reflections, both Tim Hopkins and Sandy Brindley pick up on another way in which activists assess whether or not the law is working equally, and that is, by looking to outcomes – as experienced by some of the communities the law is supposed to be serving equally.

The disability justice movement was also key behind the move to adopt the Equality Act 2010 and a range of other modern legislation designed to better protect and support disabled people to access their rights.

Tressa Burke, a disability rights activist with over 30 years of experience, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Glasgow Disability Alliance, expresses her frustration at the failures of the law on the books to lead to real, lasting change for disabled people.

Tressa Burke

So we have a raft of pieces of legislation. So my background is I’m a social worker to trade, so I’m not just talking about the you know the Human Rights, the Disability Discrimination Act, the Equality Act. I’m also talking about and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, the Disabled Persons Act, the Direct Payments Act, the Self-Directed Support Act. 

So there is a raft of legislation that tells disabled people that they should have rights across a whole range of areas. Some of them are about social care to enable independent living. Some of them are about education and employment and provision of goods and services.

 I would confidently say that disabled people do not have those rights observed or realised across most of those areas. I don’t think there is any area where I could say that I think disabled people fully have the rights. 

So, I mean, it’s a long answer, but I don’t think that the law is working for disabled people, for diverse disabled people who are not only people with conditions and impairments, but who are also black and minority ethnic or people of colour, they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, they are women, they are older people and younger people, so the law is not working for disabled people, but also very marginalised disabled people within that.

Jen Ang

Heather Fisken, Chief Executive Officer of Inclusion Scotland, Scotland’s leading disabled people’s organisation, agrees.

Heather Fisken

I think the short answer is no, unfortunately. It should. absolutely should. But no. And I think the evidence spells that out.  We still have a massive employment gap.

Disabled people are not getting jobs they apply for. We still have discrimination in every walk of life. So the short answer is no, whether you’re looking at the statute, or whether you’re looking at the system, and the process.

Jen Ang

And finally, some of our guests turned from thinking about the law as it is made in Parliaments, or the failures of the law to achieve the aims of legislation, to the actual physical and emotional experience of people as they become subjects of the legal system – by being drawn into a legal process – or as they encounter the court system.

Let’s start with this recent example from Davie Donaldson, a leading Travellers rights activist.  Davie describes in this longer excerpt his attempts to bridge the disconnect between a bureaucratic court system and a bewildered Traveller family who were pursued by a Scottish local council in an attempt to prevent them from settling on their ancestral lands.

Davie Donaldson 

Well, mean, where do I begin, right? I mean, my work since I’ve been about 15 has been trying to disentangle and navigate paths that were never built for Gypsy Travellers, right?

Infrastructures that were always built for settled populations and settled people are inherently difficult for Gypsy Travellers to navigate for a number of reasons.

But when it comes to the legal system and the law, that task just becomes mammoth.

I think as well it’s important to recognise that for Gypsy Travellers, the law has always been weaponised in Scotland. um I mean, you can go right back to the early 1500s and see some of the first anti-Gypsy legislation being brought into play.

And from that point onwards, the law has always been seen by settled communities –  particularly settled authorities who don’t want a Gypsy Traveller or nomadic people to exist at times – the law’s always been their tool in which to curtail that. 

And so for Gypsy Travellers, it’s always been this David and Goliath battle since the very start of their, I guess, experience with our modern law system and its foundations.

For me, my experience has been trying to navigate that both as an individual, but also as an advocate for communities, right? And what that often means is trying to take wording from this really alien,.. alien educated environment to the layman, to the local kind of communities who perhaps have had very limited education, certainly not third, um you known, second and third levels of education, but also trying to think about, well, where is the law trying to confuse communities?

Because oftentimes when they bring me in, it’s: we’ve received this document and we don’t know what it means. Or we’ve received this citation and we have no idea what it means. I mean, only recently, give you an example, last week I was contacted by a family who were travelling.

It’s also important to notice that for Gypsy Travellers’ experience with the law and with the justice system, it tends to be at these, what could be called conflict points.

Regularly, those are experienced as Gypsy Travellers travelling. And because we don’t own the land in which we travel, oftentimes it leads to evictions. And evictions are kind of the key trigger point for our experience with the justice system.

So I was contacted by this family who were travelling. They stopped on a disused airfield. And they’d stopped at eight o’clock at night. They pulled onto this airfield.

And by three o’clock the next day, they’d received a Supreme Court of Session document, outlining that they were to be evicted with immediate enforcement.

And they had 24 hours to respond to this written enforcement letter, which was about 15 pages long. And that they had to respond in the form of answers to the Court of Session, which also meant that unless they were able to appoint a solicitor between three o’clock and five o’clock that day, and the solicitor was to be able to read over this document and be able to submit answers on their behalf, they were going to have to put the answers into the Court of Session by hand delivery.

Now, you can imagine the mammoth task that that would be for anyone, but particularly for this family, it’s important to notice that they’d just been evicted from an industrial estate. All of their ancestral camps in the area had been blocked off.

And so they had a number of young children. We had elderly people, a number of disabilities present on the camp as well. And so for this family, it was really important, perhaps more than others, to be able to be in a very safe location. A number of their children had quite severe autism, so they couldn’t stop at the side of the road because of the worry of traffic and the bairns needing space, right?

So they were beside themselves with worry. They had no idea what this meant. All they knew is that the letter threatened sheriff officer action where their vehicles would be town away, where their caravans would be removed from the site, and where police enforcement might happen. So they were terrified.

So they contacted me. They sent me photographs of the citation that that evening. I did my best to read through it from the kind of garbled photos. And then we together pulled together some answers.

And I then drove from the north of Scotland to Edinburgh and to hand deliver it to the Court of Session.

Now, when I got to the Court of Session, I was immediately faced with a security barrier.

I’d got there at one o’clock. I had to go up to the main office to speak to the reception and say, look, I need to go to the Court of Session and hand this document. And they said, well, I’m sorry, but the Court of Session’s on its lunch break. So you won’t be able to get down there until two o’clock.

I said, OK. And they said, but you can wait. So I sat down and I waited for the hour. 

And in that time of waiting, and this is why I mentioned this, what might seem quite, and I guess, an insignificant part of the story, but waiting is something that is highly triggering for Gypsy Traveller communities.

Because waiting, particularly in a formal environment like a court or even just in an office building, it triggers all of those juvenile memories of being excluded at school, of being made to feel different, of dealing with the justice system in a way that’s inherently unjust.

And so even for me, I guess I’m used to dealing with professional folk and police and social services and so on. But nonetheless, waiting in that moment was highly triggering.

I felt my anxiety peaking.

I felt my heart rate going.

And at moments, I wanted to walk out, right? I wanted to leave that building.

I didn’t want to be there anymore in this really structured environment that was felt like the walls were closing in on every side.

Eventually I got through. We got through the barrier, went down to the office.

When I got there, I handed the document to the reception. They said, right, we need to check this. So then another period of waiting. So I then had to wait for another hour.

By that stage, and one of their office staff had had the document reviewed and checked by some seniors. They came back and they said, right, have you contacted the solicitor?

And I said, no, because I know the name of the solicitor, but it’s a big multinational kind of firm. But I don’t know the name of the individual solicitor who’s dealing with the case.

I wasn’t given any contact details because interlocuter that we’d been given missed out a lot of the appendices. So we weren’t given all the information that the Court of Session had been given.

We weren’t given contact details for the solicitor’s firm. Instead, we were just given the formal address of the Court of Session. 

So the admin said, “well, you have to speak to the solicitor. We can’t accept these as answers because they’re not in appropriate format.”

I said, “Right, okay.  But what is the appropriate format?” 

“I can’t tell you that.”

I said, “Right.” 

He said, “You know, you can have these in online.”

I said, “I can’t because I’m not a solicitor.” 

He said, “Ah, okay. In what capacity are you acting with the occupiers?”

Now, I knew before going there that I couldn’t do anything that would imply I was a solicitor because then I’d be breaking the law.

So I was very, very careful, but then I also wanted to ensure that it was clear that the document had been written with the occupiers and therefore that these families, you know, they weren’t having something placed on them, but they’d actually written this document alongside me, albeit with some support around, you know, their rights and legislation and so on.

And I said, “Well, I’m an advocate, so I’m just wanting to help the families get their voices heard.”

“Ah, but you have to be acting in some capacity. What capacity?” 

And I said, I knew I couldn’t admit that I had no idea what he was asking. But at the same time I was terrified to do anything which might get me in in hot water. So I think he eventually realised this and he said, “look, I would go to the and solicitor’s office.”

So I left there. I drove to the headquarters of the solicitors, went in.

Of course, I had no idea what solicitor I was asking for. I had no case reference or anything like that. I just had this legal document.

And I just handed it to someone and I said, look, I said, I really hope this counts as within the 24-hour period because otherwise these families are facing eviction to nowhere. There’s nowhere for them to go.

Eventually, I got an email back from the solicitors and they said they would consider the position, because there was clear evidence that there would be a breach of public sector equality duties. There was clear evidence of there was no EQIA – no Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessment – had been carried out. It was impossible for it to have been carried out in that time period anyway.

So there were significant concerns because it was a public authority who was doing the enforcement.

So I then went back that night, drove up to the north-east of Scotland, went to visit the families, showed them, told them what had happened, gave them a hand copy of the letter, and so on, for their records.

And when I was speaking to them, they said, “I don’t know what all the problem’s about. There’s no mess. There’s no antisocial behaviour. There’s been no complaints. All we want is somewhere safe for our kids to stay.” 

And I think that one example shows you just the David and Goliath task that often exists for families. 

Jen Ang

Davie described earlier his own anxiety whilst waiting in the Court of Session to be seen, rooted in his own experiences with places of formal authority – and he goes on to describe the impact for the families he works with of encounters like these with the legal justice system.

Davie Donaldson 

Many of the families that I work with have low rates of literacy. They have an absolute fear of the justice system. 

So if they’re ever given anything formal, their minds immediately go to: “What will happen to my children? Will social services get involved? Will my children be removed? What will happen to me? Will I end up in prison?” 

You know, there’s such a lack of information around the rights of Gypsy Travellers within the community. But there’s also this predetermination of, well, they’re going to find it wrong against me anyway.

So what’s the point? You know, so it’s a difficult situation. 

Jen Ang

And finally, I’d like to return to Pheona Matovu, whose opening reflections we listened to at the start of the podcast.  

She asks us whether the law – as we know it, and define it – is even the right place to start as a way for humanity to deal with the deep, disturbing and difficult problems we bring to our courts – and her questions gently urge us to consider whether the law can ever treat us equally, and whether, as a tool, it can be wielded with humanity.

Pheona Matovu

So I have worked over a period of 17 years with people who seek refuge and who seek asylum. And one of the elements around asylum seeking, of course, we know that the [Refugee] Convention expects that people should be protected if they’re seeking asylum. However, what we know is that when people are seeking asylum, they are expected to go to court to present their case because the law stipulates that they have to present a case. 

But when you think about people are presenting the case, they are already operating from a position of being disempowered just by putting them in a position where they have to express themselves by law rather than express themselves by the experiences that they have.

What does that do to society? What does that teach us that asylum seekers or people who are seeking asylum –   don’t even like the language asylum seekers, but people who are seeking asylum – it says to us that they should be dealt with by the law.

When in fact, we should be dealing with them on the basis of humanity and dignity. And so if you even begin to question that, then people, of course, will respond with the law: This is what the law stipulates. This is what you should do. 

But is that what we want for humanity? So in that regard, that’s just one example. I could spend a whole day giving you examples here, you know that.

But for me, that is painful. It’s critical that we rethink why would you put somebody who is going to tell their story of perhaps by having been raped, having been beaten, having been damaged by war, to actually go into courts to express themselves and be judged by law.

How can you judge a situation so dire, with the law? 

Jen Ang

 And that concludes today’s episode, in which a number of prominent Scottish activists sat down to talk to us about our first big question: does the law treat you, and your community, equally?

Across the board, our guests said: ‘no’ the law does not treat us equally – and they told us exactly why they thought that. 

Some people asked whether it makes sense to speak about the law as separate from political, economic and cultural forces. For them, the legal system is a reflection of systemic inequality, which is either intentional or due to an oversight, a failure to think about equity in designing the law and a failure to include or involve and communities in the designing who would be most adversely impacted by it. 

That was never a requirement to be met in developing the law, and by and large and it still isn’t – although there are strong moral and principled arguments, and some legal arguments, in favour of doing so. 

 What does it mean, some of the guests ask, that we allow there is such a wide gulf between those who make the law, and those who experience its impacts – and so few ways of bridging that divide?

Some of our participants reflected that they had seen progress towards equality under the law, but others – looking to outcomes – pointed out that whilst we may have seen progressive modernisation of our legislation (the laws passed by Parliaments) we are not seeing real change on the ground for excluded and discriminated against groups, including disabled communities, racialised communities, nomadic peoples, and, of course, trans and non-binary people. 

We heard a few different perspectives on how triggering and traumatic interactions with the formal court systems can feel, and ended the episode with a poignant question – whether the law can ever treat us equally, and can it, as a tool, ever be wielded with humanity?

Big questions, and I’d love to hear what you, our listeners, make of it all.  
Meanwhile, a very big thank you to Pheona Matovu, Satwat Rehman, Pinar Aksu, Talat Yaqoob, Tim Hopkins, Sandy Brindley, Tressa Burke, Heather Fisken and Davie Donaldson for their contributions to today’s episode.

And thanks so much to you, the listener for tuning into our Lawmanity podcast and our special series on Equality Under the Law in Scotland.

If you loved this podcast, please do hit the subscribe buttons, and also like and share our episodes with friends and colleagues who might enjoy learning a little bit about how law really works in practice, and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place.  

Our Equality Under the Law series has been generously support by a grant from the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, hosted by the London School of Economics.  The Lawmanity podcast is co-produced by me, your host, Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe.  And the music you’ve been listening to is “Always on the Move” by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow-based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland.  

Thanks so much for tuning in today, we hope you enjoyed listening, and see you next time!

For those of you who don’t follow legal matters or trans justice issues so closely, a brief explainer:

On Wednesday, the UK Supreme Court delivered a judgement in a case brought by a group of Scottish women against the Scottish government, in which the court determined that the definition of “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 means, exclusively, “biological woman” and “biological sex”.

Why does this matter?

It matters because previously, the common legal and public understanding of the definition of “woman” – both in the relevant part of the Equality Act and in wider laws designed to promote equality and protect women from harm – was based in a gendered understanding of what it is to be a woman.

The majority of women’s organisations globally – including UN Women – adopt a gendered approach (and not a biological approach) to their work because decades of research, policy and activism have shown that a gendered approach moves us closer to the kind of equality we want to see in the world, for both genders.

What do you mean by “gender”?

Let’s try this thought experiment. Picture a young person in your life, a child or a teenager or even a young adult. Now bring to mind the things that worry you about the future of that young person – the things you want to guide them through, the things you want to protect them from.

Some of those fears will be gender-neutral – you might hope that they find a greater sense of confidence in themselves, that they learn to make and keep good friends, that one day, they find a loving partner.

But some of those things will be very gendered.

Can you give an example?

Sure.

For example, girls are (still) raised in Scotland with a social expectation that they will strive to be agreeable, cheerful and polite, attractive to males and suitable for holding caring and homemaking roles in their future families.

Boys are (still) raised in Scotland with the expectation that they will be bold, successful and strong, attractive to females and suitable for maintaining careers that will financially support their future families.

And gender norms – like many other types of norms – are not neutral because they exist in societies where power is unevenly distributed.

The further you step away from expected gender norms, the greater a risk of ridicule, humiliation, exclusion and harm you will face.

We know plenty of people – most of you who are reading this article, probably – who are living out roles in your work and family life which are much less binary than what I have just described above.

But have a think about the young people in your life, and what they are navigating in school today: girls who choose not to look “pretty” and feminine will be ridiculed and humiliated by fellow students (and possibly, also teachers) – and so too will boys who choose not to appear “strong” and masculine.

And because our young people are literally our future, in 2025, we cannot deny that gender norms continue to play a powerful role in society and are an important part of determining how equal our future world can be.

Legal frameworks that protect us against sex discrimination, actually protect us against gender discrimination

Our legal frameworks which were designed to protect people against sex discrimination – such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 1964 (in the US) and the Equality Act 2010 (in the UK) – have largely been used to tackle discrimination on the grounds of gender.

Famously, one of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s most significant sex discrimination cases was taken not on behalf of a woman, but on behalf of a man, who was unfairly denied a tax break because he was a single unmarried man caring for his 89-year-old mother (and not a single unmarried woman). The law discriminated against him because he and his mother were not conforming to a gender norm – one in which unmarried women and not men cared for their elderly parents. In this case, RBG managed to prove that this discrimination was unlawful – as immortalised in the film based on this true story: On the Basis of Sex.

Therefore, I return to my previous point: until Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, the common legal and public understanding of sex discrimination was that we were talking about gender, and not (sorry, I do have to say this) genitals.

So why is this a case about trans rights, and not women’s rights?

Such a great question. The Long View has history on the For Women Scotland (FWS) case because JustRight Scotland supported the charity Scottish Trans in 2020 to intervene in the predecessor to this Supreme Court case.

FWS had challenged the Scottish Government’s decision to include trans women in the definition of “women” when selecting people to sit on Scottish public boards.

Yes, the Supreme Court case turns on something both as mundane and as significant as this: the FWS case is about whether or not, in meeting its own goal to have women make up at least 50% of people sitting on public boards – like Historic Environment Scotland and NHS Highlands – Scottish government agencies can include trans women in that tally.

This was a Scottish Government initiative, probably aimed at exercising a new power (to set a minimum quota for women on public boards) in an inclusive and thoughtful way.

No one asked me, so I’m allowed to speculate, but I’m guessing the reasoning was: if the goal of having diverse representation on public boards is to make sure that people with a wide range of experiences are part of the governance structures that keep our public services accountable, trans women have wisdom and insight to contribute about what it is like living as a woman in Scotland and interacting with public services, that should be welcomed.

Given the very modest number of trans women living in Scotland, and the smaller number still of women in Scotland who might consider applying for a role on a public board, the actual number of people affected was … also very modest.

Now. If that’s all this case was about, why would you challenge this decision?

More importantly, why in the wake of challenging this decision are people talking not about the women on Scottish public boards – but about the many other public places where trans people might face exclusion, lawful or otherwise, in the immediate future?

In short, exclusion of trans people from public places was – and remains – the end goal of the FWS litigation.

FWS were seeking change through the law – in this case, a judgment of the UK Supreme Court was the mechanism for change.

And did they succeed? What does the ruling mean for trans and non-binary people?

So I’m not actually going to answer that here, because there are plenty of trans and non-binary people out there who have done an excellent job explaining that already.

If you want to learn more about the legal impact of the ruling, I recommend you follow the barrister Robin Moira White (she / her) who literally wrote the book “A Practical Guide to Transgender Law” and who has published clear and well-informed commentary in The Independent and The Guardian yesterday.

If you want to learn about the human impact of the ruling, I really loved this warm, reflective and passionate letter from Josie Giles on spending the day in the Pentlands, titled While the Supreme Court ruled, I tore up a fence.

And if you want to keep up to speed with what you can do to support the community most adversely impacted by this rule, I would recommend you follow the Scottish Trans project at the Equality Network for news and updates.

But the important thing is: the UK Supreme Court made it very clear that trans people are still protected against discrimination and harassment both on account of their trans identity, and also where they suffer discrimination and harassment because of the sex or gender they are perceived to be

So why does legal recognition of identity matter?

Well I have a great deal more to say about that, but I trust you have to get on with your day.

So I’ll make it snappy:

People have always identified themselves in lots of different ways: I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Chinese-American, but also maybe a Scot, I am a lawyer, I am a reader, I am a ramen-noodle-eater,… I am, I am, I am…

Some of those ways have legal consequence (like being a mother, or a lawyer) and some do not (like being a reader, or a ramen-noodle-eater). Some statuses, like “woman” or “Chinese” “American” and “Scot” have mixed legal and non-legal consequence.

Sometimes the state (and other people) label you with that consequence, whether or not you choose it. Here is an article I wrote last year about being legally required to declare my race on my marriage certificate.

Legal recognition of identity, and cases like FWS v Scottish Ministers is important because the real battleground is about whether and how the state recognises our identities, which identities are recognised and for what purpose, who decides, and who those decisions serve.

I am honestly at a loss as to who is actually served by this week’s Supreme Court decision.

But I do know what is at stake, and why we need to continue to watch this space very carefully in the years to come:

We all have a stake in ensuring that rights and protections for disadvantaged and excluded groups – including trans people but also all LGBT+ people, disabled people, racialised people, migrants, religious minorities, the elderly, children and women and so on – are maintained or extended, and not narrowed.

Because legal recognition has real life consequences. The law will protect or harm you based on those legal identities. Belonging (legal recognition) is safety. And in a more equal world, we all deserve to be safe.

That would have been a simpler test, one that the court did not – in seriousness – apply.

But we can judge – for we are not the UK Supreme Court – in future, whether what a party is seeking to achieve, in their campaigning, their strategy, their tactics and ultimately their goals – seeks to increase or decrease safety for others.

And particularly, where someone seeks to use the law to harm others, we can call that out, for what it is. That is the least we can do. And what I hope we all continue to have the strength to do, for today, for tomorrow, and for always.

…

Thanks for reading The Long View again this week and my apologies for giving you a bit more down than up this week.

To make that up to you, I’m digging deep: this is my very favourite song when I was a child, I used to listen to it on my cassette tape, over and over. And I sang it to my children, relentlessly when they were young too: Kermit the Frog – The Rainbow Connection

First published on LinkedIn on 18 April 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/safety-belonging-why-legal-recognition-identity-matters-jen-ang-f9qce

This week, I feel some reflection on how we speak truth to power is timely as we ponder what to do when truth is publicly contested, undervalued and sometimes, intentionally suppressed – but the stakes for people who confront power remain high.

Power is real, and inescapable

You may not be able to see it, taste it, hear it, or touch it or feel it, but power – defined as the ability or capacity to influence people or things around you – is real.

And therefore, if you are speaking to someone who holds power over you, the first step is to recognise that you are engaging with a dynamic (and potentially unpredictable) force that poses real dangers to you.

Examples of places where people hold power over others include:

parent / child – supervisor / employee – teacher / student – influencer / follower – state / citizen

An argument in favour of the justice of a democratic system, is that voters should hold power over politicians, and therefore, the power dynamic should look like: “citizen / state.”

An inescapable truth is that in any group of people – ranging from family to society – some people will wield power over others. The more interesting questions that follow: how is this is done, with what authority, and in whose interest?

My point is: proceed with caution; power wielded against you can result in loss of friends, family, livelihood, home and possessions – and sometimes, life.

Power is always conditional

I believe that all people are born equal in dignity and worth. For me, there is no intrinsic reason why any one person should have power over another person.

Therefore, when confronted with people in positions of power, I find it helpful to break down the reasons why they hold power, because that helps me think clearly about whether or not I should respect it.

Here are just a few examples:

Physical Force, Law (and the State): many unequal power relationships are backed by physical force – or the force of law, meaning, if you disobey the state, for example, you can expect to face violence: civil or criminal sanction for that action. That can include significant and life-changing punishments, including: fines or imprisonment, poverty and homelessness, exclusion and exile.

The law also distributes and reinforces power in private relationships: for example, the law is responsible for upholding the power of parents over their children (up to a certain age), and of teachers over students (where education is compulsory), and of supervisors over employees (for example, in enforcing terms of employment). This form of power comes from the threat of state sanction.

Money and Resources: people who have greater resources than others – in a capitalist world, this usually means money or the capacity to convert assets into money – wield power over others. In some places, being able to offer resources that people need, like clean water or food or safety from others, is the key to gaining power over others. This form of power comes from holding scarce resources and being able decide who gets a share of those resources, and who doesn’t.

Knowledge, Skills and Ideas: people who have knowledge, skills and ideas that we lack or find attractive can also hold power. Examples include: scientists and doctors, teachers and engineers, farmers and chefs, plumbers and electricians, faith leaders and influencers… as well as artists, writers and musicians.

Our regard for their skills, knowledge and ideas gives them a kind of social capital – power, in short. This form of power comes from belief of people around them.

For example, a scientist whose discoveries are refuted, or a faith leader without a following, or a writer or influencer with no audience, holds no power.

My point is, power is conditional and even if you are on the losing end of power imbalance, it is helpful to recognise that also means that conditional power is vulnerable, in some way.

Many great stories – ancient and modern – are about tackling and toppling unjust uses of conditional power.

How to speak truth to power

So, as promised, here are some suggestions for speaking truth to power:

Consider your audience, and your aims: We may choose to speak truth to power because we want to see a change in current practice or behaviour. It might be that we want our needs to be taken into account; it could be that we just want to be better understood – for our experiences to be acknowledged.

But take a good, hard look: will your actions lead to change? Can you reach the right audience, and if so, do they have the power (or patience, or maturity, or empathy) to deliver the outcome you’re looking for?

Remember that most people with power, seek to retain power: Not always, but usually. If you are looking for people with power, to share power, also consider realistically the levers for change – how is their power conditional?

Identify the risks, and find your allies: Sometimes we choose to take action even when the stakes are high. Better to do that after a sound appraisal of the consequences, and building your own safety net / exit strategy / shelter (from the storm).

Have your say, and find your peace: Do your thing, and remember that at the end of the day, you are doing this thing for you. You can’t control how your words will be received and there might be quite a lot of turmoil, distress and backlash to follow… but the important thing is that you did the thing. That’s your contribution, and where you need to find your peace.

…

There is probably a second article, that needs to be written: how to hear the truth, when other people speak it.

But for today, I need to close out here, because there’s lots for me to do before the day is done

Thanks for reading The Long View again today, and leaving you with this sweet little poem, which I keep near the front door, so we see it every time when we home, and every day when we return again:

First published on LinkedIn on 21 February 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-speak-truth-power-jen-ang-wcbye

What does it mean to be human.

That’s what I wrote this morning, and it was a declarative sentence, not a question.

Today, the announcement that the Israeli cabinet is due to approve a ceasefire in Gaza is on my mind, and all my heart pulls towards the hope that peace comes soon, but that is mixed with sadness for everything already past, and some fear about what is yet to come.

Also, guilt.

About a year ago, I was commissioned to write a brief reflection on Holocaust Memorial Day for an audience of Scottish lawyers.  It was briefly published online on 26 January 2024, before it was taken down because of a complaint from someone senior in the organisation.

I was told that I was free to self-publish what I had written; but I was too hurt and angry to do that.  In hindsight, I wish I had published it last year.

A year on, yesterday, I took it out to have a look and I thought there might still be some value to publishing it now. Sometimes it is good to return to our reflections on the future, and get honest about where we got it right and where we got it wrong.  Sadly, I think I got this one right – but will let you be the judge.

(If you don’t feel like wading through the article, feel free to scroll down to the postscript and reflections at the end …)

Fragility of Freedom: Reflections on Law and Lighting the Darkness for International Holocaust Memorial Day 2024

What is IHMD?

Every year, on 27th January, we mark International Holocaust Memorial Day, in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, as well as the millions also murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups. We also remember the victims of more recent genocides, including in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

To mark this day, we light a candle – in memory of those who perished, and also in solidarity with millions of people who are, today and in this moment, sitting in their homes, in the dark and the cold, facing state-led persecution and the injury and death of their families because of something that made them who they are, for example their ethnicity or faith – for example, the Rohingya, Uyghurs, Yazidis, Ukrainians and Palestinians in Gaza.

Why Does IHMD Matter?

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, a charity funded by the UK Government to support and promote IHMD in the UK, was founded to help us “learn from genocide – for a better future”. The Trust supports events that bring people together to learn about the past, in the believe that doing so will promote empathy and renew our hope and resolve to take collective action for a better future.

This year, in the context of the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza, the Trust has issued a statement which deplores the death of innocent civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, and calls for an end to the conflict.  They have taken special care to remind organisers:

“The men, women and children murdered were of many different faiths, ethnicities, classes and many other different characteristics, but they all shared a common humanity. At a time of division remembering our common humanity is more important than ever.”

Holocaust Memorial Trust, Guidance to Organisers in Light of the Conflict in Israel and Gaza, January 2024

The Fragility of Freedom: Lessons from History and the Role of Law

Every year, the Trust chooses a theme and this year they have focused on: The Fragility of Freedom, noting:

“Freedom means different things to different people. What is clear is that in every genocide that has taken place, those who are targeted for persecution have had their freedom restricted and removed, before many of them are murdered.”

We have seen states use identity-based restrictions of freedom historically, and at present, in order to control populations, and the use of these types of restrictions are now widely recognised to form a crucial early part of the Ten Stages of Genocide.  Taking, for example, solely the example of restrictions on freedom of movement that have preceded significant and large-scale harm, injury and death of populations:

• During WWII, as the German army started occupying European countries, Jewish people in those countries were often forced into ghettos, living in cramped conditions and often doing hard labour for the Nazis or German industries.
• The Rwanda Genocide in 1994 when Tutsis were ordered by state radio broadcasts to stay in their homes – we now acknowledge this order enabled perpetrators to target and kill Tutsi households – ending in the murder of over 1 million Tutsis in just 100 days.
• Uyghur Muslims in China are forcibly relocated to Xinjiang Province and since 2017, forced “re-education” in internment camps with the aim of eradicating Uyghur cultural identity.  It is estimated that up to 1.8 million people, not only Uyghurs but also Kazakhs, Krygyz and other ethnic Turkic people have been detained in these camps.
• Since 2005, the 2 million Palestinians living as refugees in the Gaza Strip, an area only 25 miles long, have been subject to a total blockade imposed by the Israeli state – by land, sea and air.  Today’s estimates are that 25,000 people have now died in Gaza since October 2023, approximately 2/3 of them women and children.

The Role of Law: In Whose Service?

As members of the legal profession in Scotland, we should pause to reflect on the role of law in preventing or redressing genocide – or even, in its use in halting steps towards an outcome that might one day be recognised as genocide.

We must recognise that the law has often been used in the past to legitimate and reinforce targeted discrimination, ill treatment and killing that has preceded genocide, rather than as a force that protected our common humanity and our better values.

In every one of the above cases, the state actors imposing divisive restrictions like these have contested claims that their actions were unlawful or unjustifiable – maintaining their actions to be lawful, necessary and legitimate.

Furthermore, very often, in recent times, state actors who have justified imposing restrictions of freedom that directly impact, or disproportionately impact, specific populations have found ways to do so within the law – relying on established exclusions to the application of the law – for example, the interests of combatting terrorism (protecting public security).

A reflection, therefore:

Studying the history of genocide suggests that the global international human rights law as it stands, and leaving state actors to hold themselves to account for breaches of people’s rights – be that the Genocide Convention, or the European Convention on Human Rights – is not, and never will be sufficient to protect us from intentional, state-led persecution of minoritised groups, or the erosion of mechanisms of accountability, like the rule of law.

And therefore, we require both international courts and tribunals – as well as curious, interested and critical global public opinion and movements – to continue to independently scrutinise states that seek to restrict peoples’ freedoms and, where necessary, hold them to account.

Bringing it All Back Home: The Role of Lawyers in Scotland and the Fragility of Freedom at Home

So what can we do?

First, we can acknowledge our common humanity and the interdependence of our communities, and look for ways – large and small – of engaging in the sharing, learning and reflection that the Trust seeks to encourage on IHMD.

The conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Bosnia may feel far, in time and place, from Scotland.  But as our world grows ever smaller, you may find that connections between you and these conflicts only one, or two, relationships apart.

Second, we can take collective action for a better future.

We can take action to support people facing persecution around the world, by: lighting a candle in remembrance and solidarity, donating to humanitarian efforts to sustain and support people in current conflicts and using our own legal and professional skills, resources and networks to amplify the calls for justice from victims of discrimination and help preserve the evidence of harmful and genocidal activities.

And finally, we can take collective action at home, too.

The Trust goes on to warn that our own freedoms are fragile, too.  They urge us to remain vigilant where states seek to restrict our other civil liberties, as a means of reducing challenge to unlawful state action and the ability to hold the state to account.  They add:

“Not only do perpetrator regimes erode the freedom of the people they are targeting, demonstrating how fragile freedom is, they also restrict the freedoms of others around them, to prevent people from challenging the regime.

Despite this, in every genocide there are those who risk their own freedom to help others, to preserve others’ freedom or to stand up to the regime.”

We have seen, in the past several years, attacks by UK Government figures on lawyers and the rule of law, and on the independence of our judiciary – and we have seen the law societies across the UK denounce these attacks and vigorously defend the work of public lawyers who act on behalf of individuals holding the government to account.

We have also seen UK legislation with the aim of restricting the right to protest, and a concern that increasing restrictions to the right to protest, together with an attempt to discredit the work of public lawyers and an independent judiciary, may herald the start of an erosion of state accountability that ends with increasing loss of freedoms for us all.

So in conclusion, as members of the legal profession in Scotland, and of wider global legal community, we can collectively do our part – at home and abroad – to urge governments and institutions to uphold the rule of law, to protect the human rights defenders who defend the freedoms of others and to remain mindful of the fragility of our freedoms and vigilant over the small flames we tend in the darkness.

Jen Ang is a human rights lawyer and co-founder of JustRight Scotland.  She is also an ambassador for Human Rights Measurement Initiative and founder of Lawmanity, a legal consultancy that seeks to make the law more equal for humans.

Postscript

1. The current estimated death toll attributable to the 15-month conflict in Gaza is now 46,707, approximately 18,000 of whom are children. This represents 1 in every 50 people in Gaza. Al Jazeera, 15 January 2025.
2. South Africa instituted proceedings at the International Court of Justice pursuant to the Genocide Convention, to which both Israel and South Africa are signatories, accusing Israel of committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza. In March 2024, the ICJ imposed interim measures ordering Israel to halt its assault on Rafah. Israel did not, in the end, abide by this order.
3. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant (Israeli Minister of Defence 2022-24) for the alleged commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza strip from October 2023.

Thanks for reading The Long View again this week and it’s okay if you didn’t make it to the end of the article! This is a tough subject, especially so when the news is so bleak and difficult to process at what is already a dark and unforgiving time of year.

Final reflections:

I’m glad I decided to publish this article today.

The freedom to think, write and dream of alternate futures and to engage in discourse that aims to make sense of our present – in all its imperfect, contradictory and confused glory – is precious.

And one we should use wisely, remembering that our freedoms exist to uplift, nurture and protect our common humanity.

First published on LinkedIn on 17 January 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/genocide-humanity-censorship-role-lawyers-jen-ang-m1qee/

This is a tricky time of year for lots of people; we’re all looking forward to a break, and many people are going to get one, but there’s an awful lot of social pressure: to conform, to perform, and to achieve during that break – and that can make for unhappy times.

Navigating other people’s expectations

Lots of conversations this month have highlighted that friends and family are navigating many different demands on their time – and over and again I’m being told that people are planning events, meet-ups, and activities that are just – not them.

Or that requires them to curate an image of themselves that sits uncomfortably far from who they feel themselves to be, inside.

Because I know lovely people, this usually comes from a good place – a desire to please others, to put collective expectation above individual preferences, to not make a fuss or be a burden to others, and so on.

But also, because I know lovely people, I have an important general announcement

Remember to respect who you are, when you’re negotiating your time, energy and resources with others

This is yet another “do as I say, and not as I do” bits of advice, but it is heartfelt.

Power, dominant culture and the risks in being visible, and vulnerable

I know I’ve raised a complex issue, and you were hoping for an easy read this week.

So I’ll make it quick, and get us back to the upbeat stuff.

We all know that “be yourself” and “be authentic” talk can feel very blah blah blah.

That’s because in our society, it is much easier and safer to be authentically you when your inner identity is consistent with dominant cultural norms, and assumptions people make about you.

For example: I present as a modestly dressed, petite Asian woman with glasses. People might expect me to be:

• agreeable (maybe even submissive)
• a little bit foreign, exotic
• neurotypical, able bodied
• cisgender
• most likely heterosexual

But take another look, could I also be the opposite of all those assumptions?

Of course I could.

I navigate my life within the dominant cultural gaze that others hold me in – but that doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of who I am inside, or of the complex interplay between outer and inner identities.

I’m also aware of the very real dangers people face when their inner identities are not safe in the outside world.

And that’s why “authentically you” doesn’t mean just letting it all hang out, come what may.

It just means examining much more closely and consciously the line between the “you” that you feel yourself to be (and can safely honour and nurture) and the “you” that others assume you to be.

Being authentically you is the best gift you can give

Why should you do this?

Because you show up better for people when you are calm, confident and cared-for yourself. And we are the first, best, people to care for ourselves.

So here’s my pitch:

Sit down right now and map out your holiday plans

Feel the feelings (and pay special attention when dread or fear shows up)

Renegotiate – ditch the unnecessary, adjust the plans, make new possibilities … even if that means making new traditions … and show yourself just a little bit of respect…

…

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a wonderful break and before you go, here are handful of extra treats to send you on your way to finding your own best gift.

This poem by Chen Chen: When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

This little gem of fortune cookie wisdom:

And finally, a throwback, this legendary Spanish J&B Christmas advert from 2022 – about finding the courage to be authentically you, and extending grace and acceptance to others when they do the same.

First published on LinkedIn on 20 December 2024:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/courage-authentically-you-jen-ang-pw7ee/

Here’s how I got there.

Most of my career, I’ve worked in the charity sector, and one of the reasons this has really suited me (and I have stayed so long) is that I do not mind being seriously – sometimes embarrassingly – underpaid for my labour.

(* This is not a cheap dig at my previous employers, or indeed at JustRight Scotland where our brilliant and values-led CEO commissioned an independent review of pay scales and actively encouraged staff to unionise. More just a recognition that charity sector salaries are lower across the board – and the gap is particularly stark in professions that command high salaries in the private sector, like law.)

Also, for reasons that I haven’t fully explored but know to be true, charities tend to undercharge for their work, across the board.

This makes no sense tactically, because who needs money more than charities, who are going to use it for the public good?

How we feel about money

But I think the wider issue might go to internalised attitudes towards money. This includes the possibility that in a capitalist society where value is linked to financial reward, people may think services provided by lower paid professions are actually less valuable.

It also includes our own biases about money, and how we feel when we monetise our labour.

For me, the issues stack up like this:

• I definitely grew up in a “money is bad” home. My dad was a small college professor for many years before he joined the diplomatic service – and even as a diplomat, he saw himself more as a public servant than a working class boy from Roxbury, embracing the rewards of upward social mobility. He was pretty awkward about it, actually, much to my mom’s distress. She was raised middle class and entirely comfortable with money.
• My dad’s professional choices meant I was raised middle class, but – perhaps because of his own discomfort – he took the opportunity to knock me down a peg or two, whenever I returned home from school or college, a little too big for my boots.
• Partly for this reason, I’m aware of my positionality – my social location in relation to things like gender, class, ethnicity, ability and geographic location. When I think about asking people market rate for the work I do – even when I know it’s a fair price, that I’ll do a good job and probably even overdeliver – I feel deep discomfort.
• I’m not consistent or even very principled about this. For some reason, if someone else is taking market value for my work (and paying me less), I seem to cope better. Something I also find disturbing.

If my dad were still around, I would like to speak to him about this. As it is, I’m just left puzzling over these pieces, looking for solutions that will be effective and also feel good. For my own wellbeing, I need answers that sit right with me.

Why now?

As many of you know, I’ve stepped down from JustRight Scotland, the charity I co-founded, earlier this year, and now run a legal practice at Lawmanity. Lawmanity is, for the moment, a private limited company and I am a sole practitioner. That means I don’t work with or for anyone else, and I set my own fees for my work.

The good news (for people who hire Lawmanity) is that overheads are really low at the moment and I do all the work. This is arguably very good value for clients at market rates – and exceptional value, below market rates.

But I also want to do work for people who can’t afford market rates – this is consistent with a guiding principle for me: people who cannot afford to pay for lawyers deserve the very best lawyers.

So, Pay It Forward?

That’s how I got to the idea of a Pay It Forward fund. I already do a lot of free advice through Lawmanity for community organisations and individuals who approach me, but on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes, people ask if they can offer me a donation or compensation for my time, and until now, I have declined.

I have also (for lots of reasons) held back from paid client casework – but now that things are settling and I’m starting to think about Year 2, I wonder whether a Pay It Forward fund would be a great solution for all of these different challenges.

One of my favourite local bookshops, Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh has an unbelievably great pay it forward scheme which allows people to donate money so other people can afford to buy books.

Another example, perhaps more well known, is the concept of a suspended coffee (from Naples: a caffe sospeso) – when customers are invited to pay for two coffees, one to drink now, and another left “suspended” to be served to another person, later in the day, who might ask for one but not have the means to pay.

I love these initiatives because they are about people helping people – but more importantly, people helping strangers, who they recognise as having the same needs and desires as themselves.

This is an act of solidarity, and a very humanity-affirming thing to invite people to do.

But what if…

Of course it’s not entirely as simple as that.

I also struggle with the idea that we shouldn’t increase reliance on charity, or “taxing people” to fund what should be public services rather than just lobbying for government to spend more money on equality and access to justice. Setting up private donation schemes feels like defeat, surrender of that principle that government is responsible for all of us.

I’m also really troubled by the idea that poor people give more to charity than rich people, and that wealthy young people are more generous than wealthy older people. I would prefer a system where government gets on with the job of running a progressive system of taxation and distributes our collective resources to all, according to their need.

But, we are a really, really long way from that, at least in Scotland, the UK and the US, right now. And even if we get closer, making those systems work fairly for everyone is a longer way off still. I love looking back over 20th century progressive victories like winning the franchise for women, and desegregation in most western democracies – but the lessons we live with are that racism and misogyny are alive and kicking, still today.

Over to you!

So help me out – should I start a Pay it Forward fund? Are there any great models out there for what this can look like in legal services? Have you got any advice for me?

And, where do you sit on that line between individual and collective responsibility for funding things that other humans need?

…

Thanks for joining me again this week at the Long View, and if you made it to the end, for helping me doing the thinking. Sending warmth and gratitude your way, today and for the weekend.

First published on LinkedIn on 15 November 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pay-forward-acts-solidarity-surrender-jen-ang-ekxne/

I’ve written about this before: ‘How to stop avoiding stuff‘; there are lots of reasons why we put off doing things we are supposed to.

This time, it is the challenge of not quite knowing where to start with a task I have never done before.

(This follows on from another bit of great advice: embrace opportunities that scare you, and lean into things you think you’re not good at. My dad gave me this advice in my late teens, and it’s still paying off…many decades later, and beyond our short time together.)

So this week, I’m going to do something a bit different – I’m going to share some thoughts about the project I’m working on, ask you to help me critically examine those ideas, and hopefully, with everyone’s help, figure out where to go next.

The problem: inequality and social injustice are on the rise in the UK

The UK has very high inequality of income compared to other developed countries; the 9th most unequal incomes of 38 OECD countries. Wealth inequality is also high and rising. In the UK, the bottom 50% of the population owned less than 5% of wealth in 2021, and the top 10% a staggering 57%. The top 1% alone held 23%.

Income and wealth inequality matters if you care about social justice because in a capitalist society – and in a state with a limited commitment to public welfare like the UK – there are very close links between our economic purchasing power, and our ability to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, healthy and prepared for future opportunities.

Personal savings are the safety net for life’s unexpected setbacks – loss of employment, sickness and injury, relationship breakdowns – and they are also springboards that propel people towards greater wealth – like investing in assets, or further education, or building your own business.

According to Google AI, “Social justice is when each person can exercise their rights within a society. A government that promotes social justice ensures that everyone has physical security, education, healthcare, and employment.” (Google AI, 2024)

(Feeling a little weird that Google AI can get this so right, and also learning – along with my students – how to cite to generative AI, after spending so many years telling students not to rely on Wikipedia as a credible source. Having said that, the real world result was probably that they kept using Wikipedia, but they just didn’t cite to it . If you are feeling a bit meta, here is the Wikipedia article on whether Wikipedia is a credible source.)

The law is a tool that can create and reinforce inequality

Many people think about the law as a neutral, inevitable force in their lives – or they don’t think about the law at all.

People who study the law (and also those who make it, or enforce it) know that the law touches every part of our lives, whether or not we acknowledge its impact, for example:

How loudly I can play my music when I make my morning coffee

How safe (or not safe) I am from robbery or assault when I step out my front door

Whether I will travel to work by foot, or by bus, by train or by car

These are very simple, basic experiences I have every day which are profoundly impacted by laws that we may take for granted, but the operation of which are very real.

This leads on to the next big question :

• Who makes the law? Who gets to decide how loud is too loud? Who decides how much money and resource we should spend on policing, criminal justice and the courts? Who decides where we build housing, how we develop public transport, how we tax fuel and how we ensure equal access for everyone, including disabled people, older people and visibly different people?
• Those people who make and enforce the law, whose interests are they upholding and protecting?

The truth is, the law is just a tool – it can be used to make the world a more equal place but it can also be used to create and reinforce inequality.

…

The legal project that I’ve founded, Lawmanity, is about finding solutions to the problem we face when the law does not treat everyone equally.

The thing that is really bothering me right now, is this question:

What happens if ordinary people in the UK feel the law is unequal, unfair and unjust?

We talk about a concept, particularly in the UK, called the rule of law

The rule of law as a concept can include a lot of things, but is usually associated with the principles that the law applies to everyone just the same, everyone can expect to be treated fairly and equally under the law, and that everyone has equal access to justice.

Lawyers and people interested in justice systems in the UK are quite interested in the safeguarding the rule of law – which is more often discussed in terms of procedural justice – although some people also talk about it in a wider sense to refer to whether the law is substantively just.

Substantive justice is about the legal rules themselves – for example, whether or not it’s fair that rich people are allowed to set up complex schemes to shelter their income from taxation, and poor people are charged penalties for failing to pay relatively small tax charges on their earnings.

Procedural justice, in contrast, is about the process for accessing justice – for example, whether a rich person or a poor person, both accused of a crime or misdeed (fraud, for example) of the same magnitude, can expect equality of treatment and outcome in the courts, regardless of their very different financial resources.

So what happens, here in the UK, if people increasingly feel the law is not protecting them… and what should lawyers, judges and people interested in the justice system do about it?

Is this just a first world problem or is there something deeper and more troubling to look at here? This feels linked to work that is done in political science around the idea of a democratic deficit and my interest is, of course, sparked by a fear that if ordinary people withdraw from participation in politics and the justice system, this could be very, very bad for society.

That’s as far as I got, and now I need help

I would like to convene a series of conversations with people who believe the law is unequal, unfair and unjust – speaking from their own experience – as well as with people who believe in the rule of law and maybe even that we are knocking it out of the park on that front. I imagine people who are willing to defend our record on the rule of law will be senior lawyers and members of the judiciary, but willing to be wrong there!

Ideally, I would like to speak to people who hold these views and would identify themselves as both left- and right-leaning because I suspect there are minoritised and silenced perspectives on both sides of the political spectrum, and a lot of commonality. I am interested in people who feel alienated from the law, for any reason.

I would love to do this as an oral recording, as a series of conversations or orchestrated discussions – this will depend so much on finding the right people, working out the technology and I suppose getting ethics clearance as well as academic approval.

But mostly I would like to be a witness to real conversations between people who care about fairness and justice, and who are divided in their views on law’s role in society in making that happen.

Oh also, I have about 10 months to make this happen.

So, please write in the comments, if you can give me any advice at all on:

• people I should speak to
• stuff I should read / watch / listen to
• bright ideas you have that you want to share
• major flaws you spotted in anything I wrote above

If you have a lot of advice, or you want to spare me the humiliation of lengthy public criticism, you are also very welcome to write me at jen@lawmanity.com

…

…

PS: I have avoided mentioning the US elections thus far because I do realise that is a super stressful subject for some people – but please vote! - and here is a little gift of hope John Legend’s stunning version of Georgia on my Mind during the 2020 US presidential election, after the Georgia results came in

First published on LinkedIn on 1 November 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/law-unfair-unequal-unjust-so-why-should-we-care-jen-ang-oskge/