Dame Rose Heilbron and Hilary Heilbron QC

consequence it is extremely difficult for a woman to find a vacancy in chambers. It is difficult enough for a man, but far worse for a woman.

Moreover, on the whole, solicitors do not care to brief women and the public still appears shy of entrusting its fate to a woman...Unless she has quite outstanding qualities and luck it is almost impossible for a woman to succeed unless she can find a vacancy in really good chambers, and many chambers will not accept women.

In 1972 Hilary Heilbron became the first woman to join chambers at a time when she was almost the only woman at the Commercial bar. The position of women at the bar in those years can be seen vividly from Hilary’s biography of her mother, Rose Heilbron.66 Called in 1939, and practising in Liverpool, Rose Heilbron encountered all sorts of prejudices against women. At that stage the main argument used was that women’s voices were too light and high-pitched to be effective in court. That was an attitude that continued in other spheres into the 1970s: when Thatcher became Conservative leader in 1975 she was advised to have (and did have) voice lessons to lower the tone of her voice although she denied it for many years thereafter. Rose Heilbron succeeded despite such difficulties and in the 1950s became an enormously well-known public figure defending murder cases in an era where there was still capital punishment and capital trials received enormous public attention. In 1943, four years after being called, she appeared without a leader in several cases defending murder charges. It seems inconceivable now to imagine a barrister of four years’ call doing so. She was one of the first two women Dame Rose Heilbron QCs appointed in 1949, the first and Hilary Heilbron QC woman senior judge when (part-

66 Hilary Heilbron, Rose QC (2019) Hart Publishing

time) she became a Recorder in 1956 and the second woman High Court judge in 1974.67

Women barristers were not permitted to attend Bar Messes on the grounds that rude stories were told. Rose Heilbron was similarly barred as a female member of the bar from attending judges’ dinners. By 1969 of the 2,448 practising barristers in England only 133 were women. In the twenty years since Rose Heilbron had taken silk four female QCs had been appointed county court judges, but in 1969 she was still the sole remaining practising woman QC. When Hilary was taken on at 1 Brick Court, Burley tried to push her into family law, which is what women at the bar generally did in the 1970s, but she resisted and forged a commercial practice for herself.

Apart from Owen, the only QC was Gatehouse, who had taken silk in 1969. In 1971 Gatehouse had led Alexander for the (unsuccessful) defendants in the House of Lords in the landmark case Herrington v British Railways Board68 as to the liability of an occupier of land to foreseeable trespassers who injured themselves on the land. A young Nicholas Chambers was the junior on the other side. Alexander took silk in 1973 and soon established himself as a QC, and soon as the top silk at the bar. His first significant brief as a QC was in the Summerland Inquiry, after a 1973 fire in a leisure centre in the Isle of Man which killed fifty and injured eighty more. At 6’ 6” he cut an imposing figure. Adopting a low-key conversational style in court, he was able to encapsulate complex issues in a handful of sentences and made advocacy look easy. He and Burley were a terrific team, although very different. Burley was to many an intimidating figure, but had the contacts Alexander needed to establish himself at the Commercial bar, and was by now adept and authoritative in handling City solicitor clients. Alexander was approachable and charming and was the sort of ambitious hard-working barrister Burley was looking for.

Alexander’s rise once he took silk was meteoric. This was the period when 1 Brick Court began to be regarded as a top commercial set. Although Alexander always had a practice of considerable breadth,

67 Mrs Justice Lane was the first. 68 [1972] AC 877

much of the work in chambers, and at the Commercial bar, was now shipping.

Shipping arbitrations were curious animals. They usually involved parties who dealt in very large sums of money arguing about relatively small sums, with the shipowners and charterers fighting cases out at the Baltic Exchange or some similar venue. There the clients would call each other liars all morning, then sit down together with the lawyers to a long, substantial and alcoholic lunch before going back to calling each other liars in the afternoon session. It was regarded as rude to refuse alcohol at these lunches, and that very much included the lawyers and arbitrators, so concentration in the afternoon session sometimes was less than it might have been. The shipping arbitrators were a rather mixed bunch. A couple of them were invariably appointed by owners and invariably found in favour of owners. Today there would be applications for removal based on apparent bias, but it was difficult to find evidence to support what everyone knew. The disputes were often about demurrage, where the ship stood idle outside port incurring charges whilst arguments carried on as to whether the vessel could be permitted to discharge. Withdrawal from hire was another favourite issue: when the market moved in one direction, the shipowner was keen to find an excuse to withdraw the vessel from hire in order to let it elsewhere more profitably, and if the market moved in the opposite direction it was the charterer who wanted to play that particular game. One of the most famous such cases was The Nanfri,69 which Alexander argued leading Nicholas Phillips in the House of Lords. The client had telephoned a City firm of solicitors for advice on whether he could withdraw the vessel from hire and asked to be put through to the senior partner. When told that he was not available, he asked to be put through to someone on the same level. The hapless receptionist duly put him through to someone on the same level, thinking that he wanted to speak to someone on the same floor of the offices. There he spoke to a young associate who advised him that he could withdraw the vessel, which led to a very large negligence action when the case in the House of Lords was lost.

69 [1979] AC 757

Nicholas Phillips was very much at the centre of the shipping practice, but almost everyone in chambers did shipping work in those days. Pupils were told that if they wanted to buy one book, the best choice was Scrutton on Charterparties, probably not a popular choice today. But even Nicholas Phillips did not just do shipping and carriage work. An arrangement with Peter Carter-Ruck took Alexander and Phillips to Paris where Alexander (picking up the plum brief as always) was required to interview Brigitte Bardot and Phillips interviewed Nancy Mitford. They were never paid.

In 1973 there was an exodus of members leaving for other chambers in what has been referred to as Burley’s “Night of the Long Knives”. Burley had ambitions for 1 Brick Court which did not include some of whom he regarded as the lesser lights, and wanted rid of the sort of criminal work that kept them engaged, such as causing death by dangerous driving cases at the Old Bailey. He made it clear they had no future in chambers. John Rankin had done an inquiry in Nigeria where he had contracted a disease which was ultimately responsible for his early death. Although he had had a decent practice, he did not thrive in competition with Alexander. Rankin, Neil Butter and Adrian Whitfield, none of whom had been in chambers long, all left for Carpmael Buildings. Paul Curtis-Bennett also left for other chambers and Robert Coleman (who had barely been in chambers for any length of time) left the bar.

Meanwhile Roger Buckley joined in 1974 from common law chambers, bringing with him work from Clyde & Co and carriage of goods by road work. Peter Irvin joined in 1973, Richard Aikens joined in 1974 and Peregrine Simon shortly thereafter, then Jonathan Hirst in 1976. Aikens had been a pupil in 4 Essex Court and Simon in 1 Hare Court, following what was now becoming a chambers tradition of picking up outstanding talent not taken on by the other commercial sets. Aikens’ pupillage was obtained because Anthony Evans said to him, when he was told there was no work and no tenants were being taken on in 4 Essex, that he was doing a case against Nicholas Phillips and he would ask Nick if he wanted a pupil. At least Aikens had the last laugh when, after he had done a pupillage with Nicholas Phillips and been taken on at 1 Brick Court, 4 Essex changed their minds and he had the satisfaction of rejecting their offer.