It is now 20 years since the ban on gay men and women serving in the military was lifted and I acted (together with David Pannick QC, Laura Cox, the late Peter Duffy and several others) in the ground breaking case which led to this change. I represented one of the applicants, the naval claimant John Beckett. The case which led to the new open policy being adopted was decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on 27 September 1999. We had lost at each stage in the UK but won at Strasbourg and that led to the change in practice which did not require legislation (there was an announcement in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Defence).
In retrospect, with the distance of twenty years (and the changes in societal attitudes) it just seems so obvious that we should have won the case in the UK but it was very hard fought and success was not at all assured.
