Seychelles, Singapore and Northern Rhodesia, where we persuaded the local Law Society to provide legal aid for Africans accused of political and industrial offences. We had set up committees to consider the appointment and status of colonial judges and the staffing of native
courts.
In the years that followed we established branches or working groups in Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Uganda, Tanzania, Trinidad and Jamaica but, with the coming to independence of these territories, the direct links with JUSTICE were broken and political conditions have not been favourable to the development of effective national sections.
We also campaigned vigorously for a Commonwealth Convention of Human Rights and the transformation of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council into a real Commonwealth Court with peripatetic juris- diction, but the opportunity was lost through governmental indifference. The report further records the setting-up of JUSTICE Committees on contempt of court, the need for a revaluation of legal penalties, and the Scandinavian office of Ombudsman (which was to lead nine years later to the appointment of a Parliamentary Commissioner). We also at the urgent request of Miss Margery Fry fired the first shot, through a letter to The Times, in our ultimately successful campaign for a scheme to compensate victims of crimes of violence.
The paragraphs on finance and membership show that in June 1958 we had 375 members and set our budget requirements at £1,500.
We can therefore regard our subsequent achievements with some sense of pride and satisfaction. They are reflected in a long series of authoritative and practical reports, and submissions to government committees, which have directly or indirectly led to important reforms in many aspects of our procedural law. I think it is enough to call attention to the list of our publications at the end of this report. Their reputation and influence is not confined to the United Kingdom. They are sent under standing orders to some 40 Law Libraries and law reform agencies in the Commonwealth and the United States and a leading American law book company has recently reprinted and published in one volume our first eighteen Annual Reports.
It is further true to say that the status of law reform has radically changed in the lifetime of JUSTICE. Twenty years ago many anachronistic features of our procedural law were virtually unquestioned. The movement for law reform had no real impetus and lacked a focal point. Today the law and its machinery are viewed in quite a different light- not sacrosanct or immutable but requiring adaptation to the needs of society and of all those who look to the courts for protection or redress. For this change of climate, JUSTICE may rightly claim a large share of the credit.
If we have any regrets, it is that too many of our recommendations have failed to find their way to the statute books through the indifference of ministers or an excess of caution on the part of their advisers, or pressure from those whose interests might be affected. Thus we cannot have any meaningful reform of the criminal law because this would involve curtailing the very wide discretion enjoyed by judges and the police. We cannot have an Administrative Division of the High Court because
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