Roger Smith considers the possible impact of ‘Manchesterism’ on government policies on access to justice
We are undoubtedly fated to hear much more about ‘Manchesterism’ in the next few months. It is the new buzzword associated with Labour’s likely new leader. There will be innumerable articles speculating on what it might mean for various areas of government policy. Let me get in early on access to justice.
An honourable history
Before we get to its ‘ism’, however, take a minute to contemplate the role of Manchester itself in access to justice. It has, after all, an honourable history. In the late 1970s, the Law Society established a Greater Manchester Legal Services Committee to bring together all the private and public access to justice provision. A subtext was undoubtedly the attempt to halt the advance of law centres. The good news was that the committee played a major role in showing what something we might now call a public-private partnership could do in identifying need and seeking innovative ways—by no means limited to vanilla legal aid—to meet it.
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