"Founded almost 50 years ago, Garden Court Chambers has built a top-notch reputation for fighting Left-wing causes.
Be it securing last-minute injunctions to stop asylum seekers being deported to Rwanda or fighting for the rights of gypsies and travellers, its line-up of 200 well-paid barristers are there to help. Or as its motto reads: 'Do right, fear no one.'
Brave words – but ones that some think should carry the addendum: 'Except the trans lobby.'
In recent months, the London-based chambers has found itself in the deeply uncomfortable position of having its progressive credentials challenged in a landmark employment tribunal.
To make matters worse, the person doing the challenging, Allison Bailey, is not only one of its own barristers – but ticks many of the same boxes as its roster of clients.
The daughter of Windrush-generation Jamaican parents and a survivor of child sexual abuse, Bailey is a lesbian gay rights champion.
With that background, it might be assumed the insight she has into fighting prejudice and inequality would have been regarded as an invaluable asset by her colleagues.
Instead, the 52-year-old claims that because of her belief that biological sex is immutable and those who are born male cannot transition to become women, she has been branded a transphobe and discriminated against, losing out on lucrative work.
Her chambers, she told the hearing, had fallen under the thrall of Stonewall, the UK's leading LGBT charity, parroting its position that everyone should be accepted as the 'gender' they say they are, without exception.
That view was promoted, she alleged, through the campaign group's controversial Diversity Champions scheme. The workplace programme has faced wide-ranging criticism, with organisations including the BBC and the Cabinet Office quitting it after questions were raised about whether they could be impartial on issues the charity campaigns on.
'The inducement offered with its scheme is reputational protection or reputational harm,' the tribunal was told by Bailey, who counts author JK Rowling among her supporters and who successfully crowd-funded more than £500,000 to fund her case. 'It is like a criminal protection racket.'
Yesterday, after deliberating over four weeks of evidence, the tribunal's panel delivered its ruling, finding that Bailey had indeed been discriminated against by Garden Court Chambers because of her beliefs."
There can be no doubt that the evidence heard has damaged the reputation of both Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers, which will be ordered to pay Bailey compensation. But it also shone a light on the wider debate about transgender rights – and some of the views held by influential figures shaping it.
Kirrin Medcalf, Stonewall's head of trans inclusion and the person who instigated the complaint about Bailey, told the tribunal that humans are not naturally male or female.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11055651/Barrister-wins-historic-battle-victimised-standing-trans-extremist-group.html
), so Alphabetical Girls' and Boys' Names Oct '25
Word pairs. New game 9th November
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