Damage to Brick Court after the raid of 15th October, 1940

Damage to Brick Court after the raid of 15th October, 1940

By the end of the war Middle Temple had lost 122 of its 285 sets of chambers, giving rise to a massive task of reconstruction. Miraculously, however, in the whole of the war there were no fatalities in the Inns caused by enemy action. The destroyed range (see above), which divided Brick Court from Essex Court, was not rebuilt, and a temporary library

was put up in a prefabricated building in Brick Court, opened by Queen Elizabeth in November 1946. Moreover, importantly, not a single bottle of wine stored in the Middle Temple cellar was broken during the bombing.28

Review of the law reports at this time shows a number of references to counsel “on war service”. One might have thought it was unnecessary to mention counsel who was absent and not involved in the argument in court. In fact, in October 1939, the Bar Council had passed a resolution requiring a barrister who took over a brief for someone on war service to acknowledge that fact and to share the fees with the barrister either as agreed, or if there was no agreement, on a 50:50 basis.29 Thus in Imperial Smelting Corporation Ltd v Joseph Constantine Steamship Line Ltd30 reference is made to Alan Mocatta as counsel on war service. This charterparty case was argued by Sir Robert Aske KC, leading Devlin. Aske did not pronounce the letter “H” and it was said about him that when he was arguing a damage to cargo case no one was sure whether his complaint was that the weevils had been eating or heating the maize in the hold.31 They lost in the Court of Appeal but won in the House of Lords.32

Jowitt remained Lord Chancellor throughout the 1945–51 Attlee government. In that capacity he had to deal with the Nuremberg trials, the introduction of Legal Aid under the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, the United Nations Act 1946, and a variety of important legislation establishing Britain’s post war society. It was noted that none of his appointments to the bench were socialist lawyers notwithstanding his being a Labour Lord Chancellor, at least until Terence Donovan (who had a high reputation at the Revenue bar) was appointed in July 1950. Jowitt was created an earl in the 1951 resignation honours list, sat in cases in the House of Lords seventeen times after he ceased to be Lord

28 “London’s Burning”, Pat Edwards for Middle Temple 29 Sackar p57 30 [1940] 1KB 31 Kerr p244 32 Imperial Smelting Corporation v Joseph Constantine Steamship Line Ltd [1940] 2 KB 430 (Court of Appeal); Joseph Constantine Steamship Line Ltd v Imperial Steamship Line Ltd [1942] AC 154 (House of Lords).

Lord Jowitt (second from right) at the beginning of the Legal Year, 1950

Chancellor, and died in 1957 after writing a book shortly before his death on Alger Hiss; as he had no male heirs, his peerage became extinct.

Meanwhile Tom Denning went on the bench in 1944, shortly after arguing a shipping case in the Court of Appeal against Devlin.33 In 1946 Rayner Goddard became Lord Chief Justice after Viscount Caldecote, who had been Lord Chancellor before the war and moved from Dominions Minister to Lord Chief Justice in 1940, had suffered a stroke. Goddard was a hard liner and a dominant figure in the post-war years who is now regarded much more unfavourably than he was in his lifetime.

Others began to join 1 Brick Court. Charles Fletcher-Cooke was President of the Cambridge Union in 1936 and was called to the bar in 1938 after taking a first both in finals and in his bar finals. After spending the war on the Joint Intelligence Staff, he built a successful practice, producing a textbook on monopolies and restrictive practices. He was led by Devlin shortly before the latter went on the bench in early

33 Halcyon Steamship Company Ltd v Continental Grain Company [1943] 1KB 355

1948 in a Court of Appeal case which went on for many days.34 It was another shipping case involving allegations of breach of warranty and negligence.

However, Fletcher-Cooke’s real interest was politics and, after originally being a Labour parliamentary candidate, he became a Conservative MP in 1951. He took silk in 1958. His parliamentary career never lived up to its glittering promise, perhaps because “he could not control his barrister’s trick of scoring off the less clever,” where “his slightly supercilious whimsy stood out among mostly stodgy Tory MP lawyers”.35 He was a Home Office Minister 1961–63 but resigned after his “handsome eighteen-year-old friend” Andrew Turner, a delinquent with previous convictions, was arrested when driving Fletcher-Cooke’s Austin Princess without a licence or insurance. The next year Wilson’s Labour government was elected and, although Fletcher-Cooke remained an MP until 1983, he never again held ministerial office.

Fletcher-Cooke did not loan his cars merely to delinquent eighteenyear-olds. He lent Ronald Burley (more on him below) his Hillman Minx shortly after the war before Burley purchased his first car. We do not know what the insurance position was in this case.

Academics also began to be attracted to 1 Brick Court.

Otto Kahn- Freund, who had fled Berlin in 1933 after being dismissed as a labour court judge for giving judgments of which the Nazis disapproved, was called to the bar in 1936 whilst an assistant lecturer at the LSE, and was also one of Devlin’s pupils. Although he did not appear in court, he remained a tenant (the distinction between tenant and door tenant may not have been as clear cut at the time) whilst Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Brasenose College. He was appointed QC in 1972 and knighted in 1976. He died in 1979.

Jack Hamson was another distinguished academic who became a member of chambers. He was a member of the Special Operations Executive, was captured in Crete in 1941 and subsequently taught law to keen POWs. Those POWs sat exams; the scripts were sent to England

34 Owners of the Steamship Towerfield v Workington Harbour and Dock Board [1949] 10 35 Obituary, The Guardian 1st March 2001

and marked by Professor Winfield (of Winfield and Jolowicz fame). When asked subsequently by Hamson whether he made allowance for the conditions of those examinees when marking their papers Winfield said, “Goodness gracious – certainly not.”

Raf Valls joined in 1936 and in due course became the longestserving member of chambers. His full title was His Excellency Do Rafael Valls y Carreras, LVO, Marques de la Fuente Olivares, Marques de la Cabra, Knight Grand Cross of Civil Merit, and Knight Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Valls had come over from Spain before the war, was proud of being Spanish, and his friends included some bullfighters as well as Ava Gardner. He brokered a number of Spanish deals which came through London. He was a colourful character who changed his Bentley every three years when the warranty ran out. It is said that on one occasion he went into town to buy a pair of shoes and came back with a Bentley instead. Burley regarded him as a man of great charm, gentleness and kindness. He started work at 6am every morning in chambers and held himself out as an expert in the law of many Central and South American states (“Burley, do I do Peru?”) which were based on Spanish law and appears both as counsel in the law reports and also giving expert evidence on foreign law. There are reported cases where he gave evidence of Mexican36 and Ecuadorian37 law. In giving expert evidence he described himself as “a practising member of both the Spanish and English Bars and Legal Adviser to the Spanish Embassy and the Spanish Consulate-General in London”. In Re Duke of Wellington’s Estate38 he gave expert evidence when WynnParry J had to determine a point of Spanish inheritance law concerning the Duke’s estates in Spain. What is most curious about the case is that Valls appears not as expert but as junior counsel in the appeal to the Court of Appeal.39 He used to reproduce a standard form advice to many Spanish and South American clients. He retired in 1975 and died in 1992.

36 Mountbatten v Mountbatten (No 1) [1959] P 43 37 John Walker & Sons Ltd v Henry Ost [1970] 1WLR 917 38 [1947] Ch 506 39 [1948] Ch 118

Another joiner was Walter Gumbel. He was a Jewish lawyer in Stuttgart who was called to the bar in 1927. His licence to practise law in Stuttgart was withdrawn in 1933 in one of the early Nazi purges and he came to practise at 1 Brick Court.40 He was interned at the beginning of the war, joined the British army as a private and rose to Lt Colonel, interrogating Nazi officers at the end of the war. Gumbel appears in a large number of reported cases in the post war years, usually acting for government entities or ministries41 but in the 1960s his practice focused on the Restrictive Practices Court where his expertise was wellknown: in that sense he might be described as a forerunner of the Euro practitioners.42 He died in 1981.

A further politician who was briefly at 1 Brick Court at the start of his career was John Peyton. Captured in Belgium in 1940, he studied for his bar exams whilst imprisoned in Bavaria and joined chambers briefly after the war. Peyton was offered but declined the position of assistant private secretary to Jowitt when the latter was Lord Chancellor, but became personal assistant to Monckton on his 1946 tour of duty in India in preparation for independence. His career at the bar was shortlived as he became a Lloyd’s broker on return from India before entering the Commons in 1951, was Minister of Transport in Heath’s cabinet and stood as a candidate in the first ballot in the first conservative leadership election in 1975 when Thatcher unseated Heath. He came last and was eliminated. His one reported case involved appearing as junior to Devlin in a case that went to the House of Lords.43 Airey Neave was a pupil in chambers just after the war. He had escaped from Colditz, was

40 His son, Nicky, is well known as the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton and the developer of the “Alpha” course in evangelical Christianity. 41 E.g. R v Industrial Disputes Tribunal ex parte Queen Mary College University of

London [1957] 2QB 483, where he was counsel for the Ministry of Labour and National

Service. 42 E.g. Re Wire Nails Manufacturing Agreement [1961] 1WLR 914, Re Black Bolt & Nut

Association’s Agreement [1960] 1WLR 884, Re Blanket Manufacturing Association

Agreement [1959] 1WLR 442 43 Panamena Europea Navegacion Compania Limitada v Frederick Leyland & Co Ltd [1947] AC 428. Devlin was in fact second silk in the case behind the Labour politician

DN Pritt.