When Real Media published Rajiv Menon KC’s closing speech in our detailed coverage of the first trial of the Filton 6, we knew we had just witnessed an extraordinary plea for moral justice, but had no idea of the scale of the fall-out and the potential repercussions for the entire legal profession that would follow.
The Filton 6 were members of Palestine Action who, a whole year before the organisation was controversially proscribed as ‘terrorist’, drove a repurposed prison van through the fences at Elbit Systems’ flagship R&D factory near Bristol, and managed to destroy forty quadcopter drones thought to be destined to aid Israeli Occupying Forces’ war crimes in Gaza.
The Filton trial judge, Jeremy Johnson, ruled early on in the trial that the six defendants had no defences in law, and he consequently restricted any examination of the business of Elbit Systems, or any evidence of the company’s deep complicity in what most genocide scholars agree has been a genocide in Gaza.
In cases where moral conscience has led ordinary citizens to commit criminal acts as protest, new laws and updated legal rulings leave defendants with no ‘lawful defence’. It’s as though they are simply invited to confirm their guilt and leave the witness stand with no explanation, no context and no reference to any conscientious motive.
Many readers will be aware of the Attorney General’s failed attempt to prosecute Trudi Warner for silently holding a placard with the words “Jurors – you have the absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience”, and of the widespread accompanying campaign by supporters of Defend Our Juries. The campaign reasserted a centuries-old right (known as Bushel’s case) which is enshrined in a plaque at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) for all to see.
Judge Jeremy Johnson appeared determined that the jury in the Filton case would have no option but to find the six defendants guilty. Having ruled out any lawful defences, he wanted to ensure that they would also not exercise their conscience over an Israeli arms company increasing its profits on the backs of death and destruction in Palestine, even to the extent that in response to a jury note during the course of evidence, he told them that “If a defendant genuinely believed that they were performing lifesaving action and was morally compelled to destroy weapons they believed were going to be used to kill civilians in what they believed to be an illegal genocide, then that would not count as a lawful excuse”.
Out of sight of the jury, on 22nd December 2025, Johnson also set out some directions ahead of closing speeches which included the following instruction, that “No counsel is permitted in their closing speeches to invite the jury to disregard the court’s rulings of law or to disregard their juror oaths or to apply what has been described as the principle of jury equity or to inform them of it.”
In his speech, the lead defence barrister Rajiv Menon KC, closing for his client Charlotte Head, reminded the jurors several times that they must always follow the judge’ directions on law, but that these could never amount to a direction to return a guilty verdict, and without ever mentioning the term ‘jury equity’, he told them that they must consider ALL the facts, and that Bushel’s case had established in law that their verdict was a matter for their own conscience.
Mr Menon was not interrupted during his speech, but immediately afterwards and again out of sight of the jury, the judge invited the prosecution to submit that Menon had contravened his directions. Lead barrister Deanna Heer KC did so the following morning in a written note, expressing the view it was not necessary to dismiss the jury and that the issue could be resolved by further directions to the jury.
Subsequently, after several days’ deliberation, the jurors could not find any of the defendants guilty of any of the charges.
Following the verdict, and under strict reporting restrictions, Johnson instigated unprecedented ‘contempt of court’ proceedings against Mr Menon.
It is not unheard of that a judge takes issue with something said in a closing speech, but what usually happens is that it is rectified by directions to the jury, but in really serious cases, the alternative would be to refer the lawyer to the Bar Standards Board, and the jury could be discharged and a retrial ordered, with an order for wasted costs to be made. All of this would have very serious implications for the lawyer involved.
What has never been done before in the UK, and what is extraordinary and unprecedented in a democracy, is for the trial to continue, apparently unimpeded, but for the lawyer to then face a criminal prosecution after the event.
When the Filton retrial took place in April this year it became all too clear that Jeremy Johnson’s actions had had a powerful chilling effect on the defence counsel, to such an extent that five of the defendants felt their advocates’ effectiveness was so compromised that they had no option but to sack them and make their own closing statements.
Johnson’s promotion was announced after four of the six received guilty verdicts.
Once the news of Rajiv Menon’s prosecution was finally public, 24 of his colleagues at top-ranked human rights chambers Garden Court Law signed a statement of support. After a hearing on April 30th, three High Court judges ruled that Jeremy Johnson did not have the authority to refer Menon’s case to the High Court directly and should have sought intervention from the Attorney General or Solicitor General, or referred the matter to the Bar Standards Board, or seek a summary process by a High Court judge sitting at the Crown Court.
Unperturbed by this ruling, and again rather than referring the matter to an independent law officer (the Attorney General), Johnson chose the last of those options, first summoning Rajiv to the High Court for a day-long hearing on 19th June, and subsequently ordering referral to a Presiding Judge. As a result, Rajiv Menon received a summons ordering him to attend a two-day trial at the High Court, set for Tuesday next week. His legal team immediately began a procedural appeal, but in another apparent first, the trial judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb indicated she was going to go ahead despite the pending appeal.
On Wednesday evening, a Zoom meeting – “Descent into authoritarianism? The Rajiv Menon KC case” – was jointly organised by four highly-regarded human rights legal chambers (Garden Court, Garden Court North, One Pump Court and Nexus), chaired by Pete Weatherby KC and attracting speakers from the top echelons of the legal profession, civil rights and non-governmental organisations. The outpouring of support for and solidarity with Rajiv Menon was as unprecedented as the proceedings against him, and demonstrated a powerful willingness to stand up against the government’s ongoing descent into authoritarianism. The full 90-minute meeting is embedded below, but here is a written account of the main points made:
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Former Director at Liberty and former Shadow Attorney General Shami Chakrabarti spoke about the shame of government plans to restrict the right to a jury, and expressed her hope this would not only be reconsidered but that the right of lawyers to speak freely on behalf of their clients be enshrined in law.
Lord Hendy KC, an expert on trade union law, said that several trade unions have already agreed to sign a statement expressing concern over rights to freedom and highlighting the absolute duty of defence counsel to represent their clients effectively in proceedings, as well as that juries must be able to make decisions according to their conscience. He hoped that the Bar Council would do likewise.
The Chair of the Criminal Bar Association, Riel Karmy-Jones KC, said she’d received multiple reports of barristers feeling they have had to change their own closing speeches out of fear of criminal contempt. The usual procedure might be that a judge interrupts a speech and asks an advocate to correct or retract a statement, and then might further direct the jury either immediately or prior to deliberation. In a particularly heinous situation, as mentioned above, a report to a regulatory board and even a wasted costs order could follow an abandoned trial. But a criminal/summary process has always been reserved for urgent use, for instance where a defendant is swearing at the judge or misbehaving in some other way in the dock. To bring criminal proceedings months later not only makes no sense, but risks undermining trust in the criminal justice system as a whole.
Fellow silk, Keir Monteith KC described Rajiv as a phenomenal lawyer, always committed to social justice, who had set up a fund at Garden Court which had donated more than a million pounds to good causes. With reference to Jeremy Johnson’s direction that “the jury must not be informed that a judge cannot direct a jury to convict”, he said that in 30 years he had never heard such a direction, and that it was a cornerstone of our system, established by Bushel’s case, that the jury has a constitutional right to independence.
Akiko Hart, current director of Liberty, spoke of the worrying trend of some judges making draconian ‘case management’ decisions, which on top of the past few years’ increasingly repressive framework around protest, was leaving protest defendants with little or no room to mount meaningful defences.
Michael Mansfield KC is a world-renowned human rights lawyer who, it was recently revealed in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, was the subject of a (now missing/destroyed) intelligence file, and was known to the Met’s Special Demonstration Squad and Special Branch as ‘devil incarnate’.
As someone used to calling out abuse of power, he highlighted the essential role of lawyers at a time when politicians, governments and states are dismantling the rule of law across the globe. He said that the plans to restrict the right to a jury were part of that dismantling and were political, not economic, and it was important for Rajiv to stand firm, backed by incredible solidarity, when certain members of the judiciary seemed to be colluding with that.
A message from Baroness Helena Kennedy KC spoke of the equal importance of independence for both judges AND lawyers, and that in her view it was wrong for judges to restrict evidence that gave context to criminal acts. She described Rajiv’s prosecution as yet another assault on our justice system which should be resisted.
Legendary human rights solicitor Gareth Peirce quoted U.S. civil rights activist Howard Zinn, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train” – a call to pay attention and resist when historic and social events are moving in the wrong direction. With moves towards abolishing juries as the tribunal of fact for all crimes with a penalty of under three years, limiting what a jury can be told about the motivation of defendants, and now the threat of criminal sanctions against a defendant’s advocate for a closing speech, the train is moving. She described all this as terrifying and abnormal, and to ignore it, to be ‘neutral’, is not what we should do.
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC is a recognised expert in human rights, crime and international law at Matrix Chambers. She began by quoting William Penn’s exhortation in the Bushel case “You are Englishmen. Mind your privilege. Give not away your right.” and linked it to the wider context of an onslaught on fundamental rights and crackdown on speech we are seeing. Principled and conscientious people are facing extreme sanctions and penalties for exercising their freedoms, and the proposed restriction on juries removes the fundamental right to be judged by one’s peers. She quoted Lord Devlin who described the jury as “the lamp that shows that freedom lives”.
After dismissing the evidentially bereft rationale that the move will reduce court backlog (it won’t!), Blinne quoted Trump’s White House Policy Advisor Stephen Miller who appeared to say the quiet part out loud when he described the principle of jury equity/nullification as an evil, and called on allied states to clampdown unflinchingly on these “enemies of civilisation”.
Blinne described juries as “ambassadors of conscience”, a fundamental safeguard against authoritarianism, and characterised lawyers as ambassadors of those juries’ rights. It’s essential, she said, that lawyers continue to advocate for the fundamental freedom of conscience and for fairness, without fear nor favour.
Ed Fitzgerald CBE KC, recognised as “one of the original godfathers of human rights”, sent a message of support raising his concern at the “entirely novel and disturbing development” of invoking criminal contempt proceedings against a barrister for words in a closing speech. He wrote “Criminal barristers have a duty to zealously defend their clients, and it can never be in the interests of justice to deter them from doing so in accordance with their professional judgement by the threat of criminal sanctions”.
Sarah Jane-Ewart is a junior barrister at One Pump Court, and she gave a worrying account of the chilling effect she is already seeing amongst lawyers in their first years of practice, especially in protest cases and in the face of severe restrictions on defence evidence that have been imposed in recent years. The way this is applied varies widely (and unfairly) from court to court, but increasingly judges are ruling out defences even before evidence is heard, and now the unprecedented threat of criminal sanctions is making barristers rewrite their closing speeches.
Sarah reported that almost every one of her colleagues has considered the spectre of contempt in their defence, and that confirmation of rewritten closing speeches as a result of Rajiv’s case were ‘too many to mention’. The trial process is meant to be adversarial, with a judge always having the right to rein in an over-zealous approach with robust directions to the jury, who are the final arbiters of innocence or guilt. A nervous and uncertain defence counsel simply cannot deliver fearless advocacy.
Sarah ended by reference to the seminal case of Wang, which established the principle that a judge can never direct a jury to convict, noting that the jury is an insurance that criminal law conforms to the ordinary man‘s idea of what is fair and just, so that the executive knows that if it seriously disturbs the conscience of the jury, then that jury will not be a party to the law’s enforcement. For this system to work, it’s essential that barristers be allowed to do their jobs.
Marcia Willis Stewart KC is a director at Birnberg-Peirce. As an expert in inquests, she worked with Rajiv on the Hillsborough Inquiry, and wanted to convey multiple messages of support and solidarity that she had received from Hillsborough families.
Another Garden Court colleague, Henry Blaxland KC, spoke about widespread anger not only at the Chambers, but even at the Attorney General’s Treasury Counsel. He said that the fact a prosecution submission initiated these proceedings (over a speech which was not misleading and which involved no dishonesty) amounted to an abuse of prosecutorial power. He felt that if something happened ‘in the face of the court’, then it should be up to a judge to decide if his order had been disobeyed or ignored, and deal with it accordingly. He felt that a line has been crossed, and the important trust between counsel on both sides betrayed or corrupted, leading to resentment. He also raised the issue of the strong appearance and taint of bias – difficult to avoid in these circumstances – which actually puts the trial judge in an invidious position.
Founding partner of Bhatt Murphy, Raju Bhatt, has known and worked with Rajiv over very many years. He said he was reassured and encouraged by the support and solidarity of so much of the legal profession in the face of what he described as a wholly unjustified and unacceptable attack on Rajiv. It was also an attack on Rajiv’s client, Charlotte Head, for the way she had sought to stand by the people of Palestine in the face of an onslaught in which our government has been so complicit. And it was an attack on the jury system on which Charlotte sought to rely, in which they had a right to return a verdict according to their convictions.
He proposed that some within the judiciary had felt they needed to embark on this targeted attack simply because they were threatened by the reality and fear that the jury might just do the right thing. He highlighted the fact that the Court of Appeal had already shown that it was not Rajiv, but rather, two senior members of the judiciary who had flouted the rule of law and exceeded their jurisdiction – Jeremy Johnson, the trial judge who triggered the attack, and Lord Justice Edis, who was all too willing to run with it until stopped by the appeal court. He hoped that the huge expression of solidarity would send a clear message both to the Court of Appeal considering the new attack on Rajiv, and to the new administration under Andy Burnham.
The CEO of Inquest, Deborah Coles, has worked closely with many of the families Rajiv has represented over decades, among them Hillsborough, Grenfell, COVID, Undercover Policing, and Stephen Lawrence, and has seen the very worst of how the state can operate, including cover-ups, demonisation of victims, and attempts to discredit those seeking truth and justice. She said that lawyers like Rajiv understand the wider context and the human consequences of injustice and can even bring about wider accountability and legal and policy change – as seen in the Hillsborough Law. In the face of criminalisation of protest and threatened removal of juries, lawyers with Rajiv’s level of independence and integrity are more than ever important. The attack on him is an attack on anyone committed to speaking truth to power and must be resisted.
Criminal and human rights lawyer Matt Foot, co-director of the legal charity Appeal, reminded us that in 2020 David Lammy stated that jury trials are “a fundamental part of our democratic settlement”. He described the current judge-led Leveson Review as a power-grab to take over whole swathes of trials, and in particular protest trials. If successful it will mean ordinary people will no longer decide whether protesters are innocent or guilty, but individual judges with their particular prejudices. It follows a process of censoring protestors from explaining to jurors their motivation, and now the extension of this to threatening the legal representative of a protestor not just with censorship but with imprisonment. The chilling effect of such a sanction would be unimaginable.
Matt Foot recalled the 2016 case of the Rotherham 12, who fought fascists who had come to attack their community. The trial judge was so moved he cited Cable Street 1936 in his closing speech, where the community put up barricades and threw missiles at police and fascists. Matt asked whether such references to history or culture would have to be taken out of speeches if we are banned from speaking about Bushel, as Rajiv was. He called for a large visual protest in support of Rajiv with a Bushel anniversary approaching.
Jane Deighton, a founding partner at DPG Law, represented Duwayne Brooks and others over the past decade at the Undercover Policing Inquiry alongside Rajiv. She said the Rajiv was recommended to her in 1998 at the start of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, and that his warm and frank approach won over a vulnerable 23 year-old Duwayne suffering from PTSD, helping build trust to fight within the justice system and eventually unveil the racism and incompetence of many officers. The confidence he gave Duwayne allowed him to become a local authority councillor.
The final speaker was Asad Rehman, who is now the CEO at Friends of the Earth, who said he first met Rajiv four decades ago at the Newham Monitoring Project, which challenged racist policing and the threat of the far right on their communities. Asad spoke of Rajiv’s constant commitment to truth and justice. He outlined the increasing repression of climate activists, anti-racist campaigns and now the pro-Palestine movements, facing new powers and long prison sentences which were once reserved for the most exceptional circumstances.
Protests exist because every democratic advance, from votes for women, trade union rights and civil rights, to environmental protection, was won when ordinary people came together to challenge unjust laws. Juries exist to ensure that justice is not just the mechanical exercise of state power, and the attack on them should be of concern to everyone.
Authoritarian politics is rising across the world, United States to India, Hungary to Israel, and the playbook is always the same and include attacks on the independence of the judiciary.
The UK government has received warnings from UN Special Rapporteurs over restrictions on protest and long sentences that risk breaching our human rights obligations, and independent monitor Civicus has downgraded UK civil rights to that of Orbán’s Hungary.
History teaches that rights are seldom abolished suddenly, but rather eroded bit by bit, and that is why Rajiv’s case is so important, when we are seeing peaceful protest treated as extremism or even terrorism, threatening democracy itself.
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Rajiv Menon spoke briefly at the end of the event, saying he was humbled and overwhelmed by the incredible support he’d received. He said that his legal team had filed an appeal against the orders made by the three High Court judges which had led to his summons to trial next week. The assumption was that Judge Cheema-Grubb would therefore vacate that trial pending appeal, but surprisingly had not done so. Accordingly, his team had written to the Court of Appeal asking them to intervene, and were waiting for a response to that.
Rajiv also wanted to mention the unflinching bravery of the young Filton defendants who had risked everything to speak truth to power. He was visibly overcome by emotion describing the privilege of working with Charlotte Head and the others, who now face unprecedented draconian sentences from the same judge that was pursuing him, but he said that the battle for their justice would continue.
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LATEST NEWS: Just before the weekend the Court of Appeal indicated Rajiv’s trial dates WILL be vacated, pending the new procedural appeal, so a planned rally on Tuesday has been postponed. Netpol and Defend Our Juries were planning to deliver a petition to the new Attorney General on Monday, but that now remains open for more signatures (around 40k signatures and rising at time of publication).
Full Zoom meeting chaired by Pete Weatherby KC – courtesy of DefendOurLawyers
