By Caroline Godwin One of Britain’s most

By Caroline Godwin

One of Britain’s most distinguished judges – and the
only one ever to be unjustly confined in a British prison
– retired today Friday.

His brief incarceration as a teenager at Lewes Jail
was when he was rounded up as an ‘enemy alien’ during the
last war, and then sent to various detention camps.

The German-born judge later fought against the Nazis
and was at Belsen only days after the liberation.

Judge George Shindler, QC, left his state school in
England at 16 and the only university at which he studied was
– as he puts it – ‘The University of Life.

‘
In his final speech today to a court room packed with
fellow judges, barristers, solicitors, magistrates, probation
officers and other court staff, the ex-professional actor
hit out at the proposed televising of the courts and insisted
on the independence of the legal system.

He said: ‘In a criminal trial there is always someone who
suffers – at least one person and probably more, be they victim,
witness or defendant.

Sometimes it is a combination of them all
who suffer.

‘Despite all the high falutin’ words we hear about educating
and instructing the public, an element of television is to
entertain, and in my view it is immoral to use the suffering
of people for the purpose of entertainment.

‘
He added: ‘It is contrary to everything I believe in
and it would devalue the criminal justice system.

‘
Speaking on behalf of the judges at Inner London Crown,
Judge Brian Pryor, QC, told the gathering he could find only
‘a laconic reference’ to Judge Shindler in Who’s Who.

‘But I can speak of his humanity.

In passing sentence his
words were often fiercer than the length he imposed.

‘
Judge Pryor recalled Shindler’s anger when he heard that
some racist graffiti had been left on a cell wall at the court.

‘He thought of some young black defendant sitting confined
in that cell and staring at that graffiti, and of the feelings
he must have had at the “impartiality” of the criminal justice
system.

‘
For the Bar, Mr John Hilton, QC, told the audience: ‘The
hearts of some people tick.

George’s heart thumps for the
hard done by, for the socially inadequate and for the weak.

‘
In his farewell, Judge Shindler told the many young
lawyers present: ‘I came to the Bar when I was almost 30 with
no academic qualifications, having left school at 16, without
any funds or money and no solicitor friends or relatives,
but I suppose The University of Life had given me the
basics of the gift of the gab.

‘It is, and I fervently hope it will remain, a great
independent profession.

It doesn’t need politicians to introduce
the concept of market forces.

It has always been highly competitive.

‘Our system is the envy of foreign lawyers.

I urge all of
you to cherish and to maintain your independence and by that
I don’t mean isolation.

I mean independence in the true sense
which is so vital to a truly free society – independent of the
executive and the legislature, and dare I say it, the civil
service.

‘You must go out and explain to ordinary people what
independence really means – not restrictive practices – but the
basic freedom which which depends on having an independent legal
profession.

‘
He urged young lawyers to heed ‘the forces at work’ that
wanted to turn the legal system into a branch of the civil service
‘beholden to the executive.

‘
‘Beware.

Beware.

The dead hand, the strangling hand,
of bureaucracy which forgets it is dealing with human beings.

‘You must fight and fight and fight to maintain
this independent profession.

‘
Earlier in the week, as he was clearing out his desk
in his private office, he granted an informal interview to
Caroline Godwin of Central News, whom he has known professionally
for years, and spoke frankly of his early life.

Born in 1922, the son of academics – his father was
a classics scholar, his mother a teacher – his boyhood was
much like that of any other youngster.

But all that changed when in 1933 his father had
the ‘tremendous foresight’ to leave Germany and the family
of four arrived as refugees in England.

His wife, Eva, was also a German refugee and arrived in
England in 1938.

They married in the 1950s.

They have three sons and three
grandchildren.

When he left school he followed his love of acting and
the theatre.

Even the outbreak of war did not drastically change his life
– until one summer’s day in 1940, soon after the evacuation
of Dunkirk.

With the Nazis across the Channel security measures
were brought in and all so-called ‘enemy aliens’ within
12 miles of the British coast were rounded up.

George, then 17, just happened to be in Dover when the orders
came through – at the time he was indulging another life long
passion playing cricket.

Before he could contact his family, by then naturalised citizens,
he was whisked off first to Lewes Prison, where he spent three days.

From there he was shipped out to a camp on the Isle of Mann
and finally to New Brunswick, Canada.

‘It could have been worse.

Some of the detainees ended up even
farther away in Australia,’ he said.

One of the awful ironies of the convoys and camps was that
officials at first made no distinction between those fleeing
persecution at the hands of Hitler and the German POWs and Nazi
sympathisers.

‘On one deck there were those who opposed the Nazis and
all they stood for; those who had everything to fear from them –
the communists, Jews, artists and intellectuals – and on another
deck the Nazis singing their rallying songs,’ he recalled.

Even in Canada officials in the detention camps refused to
acknowledge the ‘worlds apart differences’ between the refugees and
Nazis.

Among the refugee detainees were many artists and intellectuals,
like George Shindler, as well as communists and many who had
fought with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil war.

‘It was there I went to the school of life,’ he remarked.

To keep up their spirits the detainees put on concert parties
but it was many years before the teenage George was to live down
having to play the role of a girl in one production.

They also worked as loggers.

Eventually he returned to Britain where he joined the Pioneer
Corps.

Still officially categorised as an ‘alien’ he was not
allowed to become a combatant.

Instead he was assigned to the
Engineer Corps and employed in mainland Britain on road building
and similar projects.

But by 1943-44 with the war turning in favour of the allies
the authorities allowed the ‘alien’ volunteers to go into combat.

George was appointed a motor cycle despatch rider.

But his skills on two wheels certainly did not match up
to his subsequently brilliant legal ones and he realised he
was in the wrong job.

A few words with his CO led to his being transferred to a
tank regiment as a wireless operator and gunner.

And it was with the Desert Rats, newly returned from their
successes in N.

Africa and Italy, that he joined the liberation
of Europe.

The most profound experience of his life and one which was
to affect and colour all that followed was the day he went into
Belsen three days after it was liberated.

But the horrors he saw did not embitter him, rather they
sought to increase his humanity, something which he always kept
throughout the six years he sat as a senior circuit judge latterly,
as senior resident judge at Inner London Crown Court.

If anything his sentences erred on the lenient and each time
it was clear he searched his soul long and hard before reaching
any decision.

His becoming a lawyer and a brilliant advocate owed more
to fate than intent.

Because he was fluent in German, George was employed to act
as an interpreter in the post-war Military Government Courts.

‘It was a very slow process because I was using the German
of a ten-year-old boy,’ he said.

It was there he met Roger Winn, an established advocate at
the outbreak of war and later a Lord Justice of Appeal – ‘an
extraordinary man, Winn, crippled by childhood polio, was in
charge of U-boat intelligence.

‘
He took a liking to Shindler who became his interpreter
and PA and later persuaded him to quit professional acting and
embark on a legal career.

After being demobbed Shindler returned to the stage.

But he kept in touch with Winn and over lunch one day he took
his old mentor’s advice and started a legal career.

In 1950 he enrolled as a student member of the Inner Temple
and 18 months later passed his Bar finals.

He financed his studies by doing BBC German language broadcasts
from Bush House for two guineas, three nights a week and moving in
to the refurbished garage of his parents’ home.

That coupled with his ex-service grant saw him through.

He did his pupilage at Winn’s chambers and after initially
practising civil law moved into criminal advocacy.

In 1970 he
became a QC.

His skill as an advocate saw him defending in many famous
cases including the Parkhurst Prison Riot and the Angry
Brigade trials.

His other speciality was fraud and for some time he was
standing counsel for the Inland Revenue.

In 1987 he became senior resident judge at Inner London Crown
Court.

There he found himself ‘battling’ against a changing system –
one in which bureaucracy reigned supreme.

He often gave top barristers hell if they failed to do their
jobs to the meticulously high level he expected, but no defendant
was ever sentenced with indifference.

He was intolerant of ineptness and sloppiness and was often
the terror of lawyers, police officers – and latterly the Crown
Prosecution Service.

He was a stickler for doing things properly.

The worst change in recent years, he reflects, is the advance
of bureaucracy both into the legal system and other areas of
life.

‘I am afraid my battle with bureaucracy has been
unending.

‘It is like kicking at a brick wall, sometimes you make a
dent and knock a bit off.

But the dead hand of bureaucracy can
be strangling.

‘The criminal law is about people, whoever they are.

Young
lawyers should never forget that it is about human beings, whether
victims or defendants.

‘
Echoing his own hardship as a refugee, he maintains that
every country must take in persecuted people.

‘Everybody has got to do something.

Eventually the majority
of them will want to return to their homeland.

‘We should remember what happened in the last war when the
quotas were full and people would queue at the various consulates
all over Germany – many of them committing suicide in desperation.

‘My parents were academics and as they had no real material
possessions they had nothing to lose and in some respects it
was easier for them to leave Germany.

They had tremendous foresight.

They were in their 40s and 50s when they packed up and came to England
with two sons to a completely different culture and language.

‘It was a struggle but the people here were remarkably kind
and tolerant and that is why I have always loved this country.

‘
His mother looked after refugee children of German parents
who sent their children but could not bring themselves to leave
because they had material possessions and could not let go.

He continued: ‘I am not a religious person but I am conscious
of being Jewish and I believe there should be a state of Israel.

The raison d’etre for that is that if people ever have to flee
again it must not be because they have no sanctuary.

I do not
believe in the ill treatment of the Arabs.

‘
The retiring judge believes strongly there should be greater
representation in the legal system and the judiciary of the minority
groups – ‘people from all sorts of background.

‘
‘I myself was no Oxbridge public schoolboy.

I don’t think academic
qualifications necessarily make a good advocate and similarly a good
advocate does not necessarily make a good judge.

‘There has been discrimination against women in the past.

But it is no good saying that simply because one group represents
X-per cent of the population that group should automatically be
proportionately represented.

‘It has to be earned through merit and it is a gradual process.

That process is coming around and there are some excellent up and
coming people from the so-called minorities.

‘They will make great judges in the future.

But it has to be
done on merit, and not just for the sake of it, otherwise it will
undermine the quality of the system.

‘
In and out of court Judge Shindler never lost his sense of
humour.

It was appropriate that he of all judges, in the last weeks
before his retirement, should have been presented with a note from a
juror exactly one minute before the lunch break.

‘When is it dinner time?’ said the scrawled message.

The juror
was apparently ‘dying for a pint.

‘
The judge publicly but gently rebuked him, but afterwards
in private he chuckled about it.

‘I suppose I’ll always be ribbed
about that one,’ he said.

ENDS
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