Gareth Peirce: Tough case
From the Guildford Four to the 'Blunkett Nine', she has made her name taking on some of the most politically charged and high-profile cases of the past 30 years. And while Emma Thompson may have played her on film, the campaigning solicitor fights shy of the spotlight
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Your support makes all the difference.Every lawyer is taught that there is no place for emotion in the pursuit of a client's cause. It is the head that has to rule, not the heart. So when the QC Anthony Scrivener was first approached by the solicitor Gareth Peirce, he was startled to hear her kick off with the emphatic declaration that her clients were innocent, and that if Scrivener was not prepared to proceed on that basis, then she would take the brief elsewhere.
Scrivener retained his composure and told Peirce that he would like to look at the papers before making any such commitment. He took them away on holiday, and after six weeks he realised that Peirce was right. And not only that, Scrivener found that he too had been infected with the quiet zeal with which Peirce went about her business.
The case in question was that of the Guildford Four, the Irishmen whose conviction in 1974 for their part in an IRA bombing was – thanks in large part to Peirce's efforts – sensationally overturned 15 years later and then given the Hollywood treatment in the 1993 film In the Name of the Father.
For Peirce – played on screen by Emma Thompson – the case of the Guildford Four is just one of a series of miscarriages of justice that she has taken up over the past 25 years. Many of the most famous ones involved alleged IRA terrorism (the Birmingham Six and Judith Ward), but they also embrace such causes célèbres as the police killing of the protester Blair Peach, the unlawful detention of striking miners and so-called Middle East terrorists, and the campaign fought by families of victims of the Marchioness disaster.
The man who first hired Peirce when she became a solicitor in the 1970s – Benedict Birnberg – believes nothing less than that Peirce has "transformed the criminal justice scene in this country almost single-handedly".
Peirce's latest victory came last week when a court ruled that keeping nine suspected international terrorists in jail was a breach of their human rights. It was a classic example of how Peirce seizes on a potential injustice, won't let go, and by sticking rigidly to the principle of law ends up outmanoeuvring a seemingly all-powerful state.
The nine Muslims for whom Peirce was acting were held under anti-terrorism legislation brought in by the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, in the wake of 11 September. In rushing the legislation through, Britain opted out of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights which bans internment, but failed to opt out of Article 14, which bans discrimination on the grounds of race or nationality. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission then ruled that interning the nine was unlawful because the legislation was discriminatory in applying only to foreigners. Peirce had struck again.
The beliefs that underpin her career were shaped in the 1960s when, as the unlikely product of Cheltenham Ladies' College, she went from Oxford University to work in the United States, where she became involved in the civil rights movement. Returning to London, she did a postgraduate course at the London School of Economics, where she was recommended to Benedict Birnberg's radical law firm. Among the solicitors she was articled alongside was the young Paul Boateng, now a member of the Labour cabinet, and Peirce quickly established herself by taking up a case involving two men serving life imprisonment for a murder in Luton. According to Birnberg, "she had an appetite for more". Birnberg, who is now retired, ran the firm as "a loose federation", and Peirce was soon striking out in her own direction, with spectacular results. The IRA's lawyer of choice she may be, but Birnberg believes Peirce has "no particular hidden agenda except to right injustices".
Plenty of lawyers who could boast of a record of success to match Peirce's would have difficulty keeping quiet about it. In a week when even the Lord Chief Justice has seen fit to give a wide-ranging interview to the BBC – a gesture of openness that he agreed would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago – another of the layers of mystique that the legal profession have felt the need to hide behind has been removed. Lawyers are celebrities today: one thinks, for example, of the late George Carman, and a QC noted for the work he has done alongside Peirce, Michael Mansfield.
Peirce herself is not like that. In fact the intensity of her dedication to her clients' causes is matched only by her determination to keep out of the limelight. The idea of the glory-seeking lawyer is anathema to her, no matter that, metaphorically speaking, her trophy cabinet is full to bursting. She hated being portrayed in the film version of the Guildford Four story. She refuses to be interviewed. "She is not one to blow her own trumpet," says Deborah Coles of the legal pressure group, Inquest. "She is driven by her clients' interests." Peirce would see any action that might be interpreted as self-promotion as inconsistent with that aim. Even the way she presents herself reveals a desire for anonymity; her face is framed by long hair, severely parted down the middle, a style that has never changed over the years. Her clothes are plain, functional, and never memorable.
Her desire to avoid the limelight has had an effect on those around her, many of whom aren't prepared to talk about her even off the record. Yet the power she imparts is of an unobtrusive kind. "She comes in with her view, and nothing's going to change it," says one barrister. "She's very firm, but quiet and unassuming." Benedict Birnberg speaks of her "enormous persistence and incredible attention to detail. You only win cases like those Peirce takes on by spending hours of concentrated time on them. She's the most prodigious worker I've ever met."
So exacting are her standards, says Scrivener, "that working with her creates a tremendous pressure", and there's a sense in which you are either with her or against her. When Scrivener had to withdraw from one of her teams because he was already representing Lee Clegg, the British soldier controversially jailed over a shooting at a Belfast checkpoint, "she took it very personally". Others speak of a "passive-aggressive" tendency that can irritate. In a rare interview last year in The Marxist, the magazine of the Marxist Party, she hinted at the passion that drives her work when she spoke of the need for "instinctive, reactive, imaginative work in criminal defence, responding to a state which has unlimited resources to prosecute". She also admitted that "the work I do is almost always financed by Legal Aid or it is not financed at all; it is without remuneration." While other lawyers enjoy an affluent lifestyle thanks to high fees, Peirce lives in a modest, Victorian terrace in need of a lick of paint.
Her personal style is characterised by a modesty bordering on asceticism, according to one of her neighbours in the north London street where she lives with her American husband Bill. They have two grown-up sons, and between work and home, Peirce has had little scope for much else.
There have even been times when the two aspects of her life have merged. After Peirce had succeeded in having the conviction of Judith Ward overturned – she had been found guilty of an IRA bombing of a coach on the M62 – she had her to stay. That's not in the lawyers' handbook, either. But then few lawyers have ever done things quite their own way, as Peirce has.
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