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Whistleblowers could have averted some of recent history’s worst transport disasters, financial collapses and public scandals.

That they didn’t might be down to employees' fear that speaking out will cost them their job, career and livelihood suggests Kate Ritchie, Open University Associate Lecturer.

Writing on the new Legal Verdict blog  Whistleblowing – A Lose, Lose Situation? she examines how there is, theoretically, legal protection for those who uncover wrongdoing at their place of work in The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 but many employees remain ignorant of it.

Kate considers how there could be a legal requirement for some to speak out - justified only if there is clear support for employees and a shift in the mindset of employers towards whistleblowing.

Legal Verdict has its roots in The Open University’s Law School. Some of the authors are legal academics at The Open University and others are guest authors. Debate and comment is welcomed.

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Amnesty! When They Are All Free - an OU/BBC co-production - takes an unprecedented look into the world of Amnesty International as it approaches its 50th anniversary.

Professor Gary Slapper, the Director of the Law School at the OU, was an academic consultant to the film which is being broadcast tonight (Tuesday 31 May) at 9pm on BBC4, highlighting challenges and changing attitudes to human rights.

The film, directed by James Rogan, has been produced to mark the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International in May 2011. It is a critical documentary which brings together a wide cast of interviewees, from Sting to Rowan Atkinson, from Sir Louis Blom Cooper, one of the founders, to Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary who released General Pinochet.

The film poses the fundamental question: has the human rights movement been able to hold back mankind’s capacity for atrocity?

Useful links

• More about the film
• OU on the BBC: Justice Season
• More about Professor Gary Slapper

Born with spina bifida, Tanni Grey-Thompson is a wheelchair user, one of the UK’s most successful disabled athletes and three times BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year. In 2004 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Open University. In an interview in 2010 she talks to Platform’s Robyn Slingsby about London 2012, the challenges of being a mother, discrimination, her heroes and skiing.

She’s just turned 40 and although she no longer trains to compete at world-class level, Paralympian Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson certainly has her hands full. While she admits that not having to watch her weight anymore is a huge relief, she’s a huge advocate of the fact that exercise fuels the brain. She still does a lot for sport since retiring in 2008 – with 16 Paralympic medals to her name - but confesses that her biggest challenge yet is being a mum.

“Winning the 100 metres in Athens for me, as an athlete, was the best thing I did. It was probably the closest thing to perfection in terms of any race I did, technically and in terms of my preparation. The trouble with me is I’m never ever  happy with what I’ve done, I’m really self critical so for most of my athletics career I didn’t think I’d done enough, and then at the point I didn’t think I could do any more, I retired.

“But, to be honest, having Carys, my daughter, has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Being a mother is way harder than any of the work stuff I do because it changes every day. One day she eats peas, the next day she refuses to eat peas and she’ll sit there and say she’s never eaten peas in her life. We’ll be in a shop and I’ll buy her an outfit she says she likes and then you get home and she won’t wear it. It changes every day.

“I was in Beijing for two months last year and before we went, Carys went into school and told the teacher that I was making her going to the Olympics . We had tickets to the opening ceremony and she asked if there would be fireworks, that’s all she was interested in. But once she was there she loved it.”

Permanent state of chaos

Tanni juggles a lot of commitments and has to manage her diary carefully so she spends enough quality time with her husband Dr Ian Thompson and daughter Carys, seven, at their home in Eaglescliffe. How does she do it?

“We live in permanent state of chaos, and that’s fine. There’s a lot of guilt put onto mothers that you have to be perfect mother who cooks, cleans, washes and can hold down a job. I just think that’s nonsense, it’s about not beating yourself up over things and I don’t feel guilty if I give my daughter cheese on toast for tea, even though my own mother would have thought it was dreadful. It’s about not feeling guilty about the stuff you can’t change.

“I really enjoy my work and do lots of different things and I love it, and that has consequences on my husband and daughter but you try and balance it the best you can.

“When I was little my mum stopped working when my sister was born – she’s two years older than me – and went back to work when I was 19, and the world’s not like that anymore. Very occasionally Carys will ask me why I’m away – usually because she wants something out of me. I’ve learned from right back when she was really little that children are amazing at making you feel guilty.

As well as her charity work, Dame Tanni has been involved in the bidding for and planning of the Olympics in London in 2012 – and she’s very excited about it.

Tall poppy syndrome

“London will do an amazing job, when you look at the bid process the team were really professional and did their homework. There’s a bit of a tall poppy syndrome within UK culture, we do sometimes see the negative. This is the best opportunity in sport to showcase what we do and show the world what we’re good at.”

What about disabled access?

“I joined the board at Transport For London (TFL) last year, and going into it my view was why can’t we make all underground stations accessible? But then you look at putting a lift into a tube station and find out you don’t get much change out of £150 million. A lot of work has gone into making the newer stations accessible, but there are issues about air conditioning on the tubes, line upgrades, platform rebuilds, health and safety, and access is one part of it so it all has to go in the melting pot that is the TFL budget and it’s a hard balancing act.

“Every single London bus is wheelchair accessible, every taxi is, so we’re starting off at a much stronger point than any other Olympic or Paralympic city has for quite a while and, for me, the key is educating people. Not a lot of people will know this but there’s a really cool underground map which shows the accessible stations, so the ones I can’t use are in pale grey so they don’t cloud my view of where I can travel. So for me the key is education and we’ll have amazingly well trained volunteers at Games times to help people get to where they want to go. Education is key.

“2012 can be a platform to try and make London more accessible in a wider sense to everyone - mums with prams, wheelchairs, blind people.”

Discrimination

Dame Tanni has no problem getting around but says disabled people do suffer discrimination and things like access to higher education are more challenging.

“The reality for disabled people is that education is harder. So whether they miss school time because of illness or they’re in hospital of if they’ve missed things because of their impairment, I sometimes think that higher education isn’t seen as an option.

“When I was in school I’d just sat my O Levels and the careers teacher told me he could get me a nice job answering phones. I said I wanted to go to uni and he basically said ‘Don’t be so silly, what do you want a degree for, it’ll be difficult and won’t help you because you’ll probably end up answering phones anyway.’”

As it turned out my first job was working for British Athletics and part of my job was in fact answering phones, and I really enjoyed it. But lots of people look at impairment and it starts off as inherently negative and if someone tells you that you can’t do something then it’s very easy to believe that. The beauty of the OU is that people come back when they feel they’re ready to but they also have the flexibility, which makes a real difference.”

So, if Dame Tanni could study an OU course, what would it be?

“Law, I always wanted to do law. I went to Loughborough University, which didn’t offer law so I did politics. It was something I was interested in and actually it’s been incredibly useful. I always thought there wasn’t politics in sport and then you get involved and realise there’s loads.”

Self belief

And what about trying a new sport, what she go for?

“Skiing, but I hate the cold and the wet and being out and going downhill doesn’t appeal to me. I like the concept of skiing and saying that I will ski one day, but I don’t think Ill ever actually go skiing.”

Dame Tanni is an inspiration in her own right, but who does she admire?

“I was at the Young Sport conference, to look at what you can do beyond sport to help people, and Desmond Tutu was there and he was just so cool. His charisma and his personality and the way he talked about Africa was just incredible, so I’m a huge fan of his.

“My mum, who has passed away now, was stroppy and stubborn but just an amazingly strong person to have around, she was really cool. We used to argue a lot but she brought me up to have a lot of self belief.

“And Gareth Edwards. I was brought up by mother to believe that he is the closest thing to perfection that will ever walk this earth and it was the way he played, he knew he was good but he wasn’t arrogant and you listen to some of his stories and he was a really cool bloke. I still get awe struck when ever I meet him.”


 

The Open University mooting team were victorious in their semi-final moot against Durham University - reaching the final for the second year running. The mooting team, all Open University Law Society students, are Philip Zack, Damian Wynne and Craig Breed, who defeated their opponents at the Law Society, Chancery Lane, London.

The final will be a repeat of last year’s, against Exeter University, and will take place in London on Wednesday 30 March. 

The current advocates will proceed through to the final as the rules require that the team at this stage of the competition remains unchanged. In previous rounds Naomi Cross, Craig Breed and Gwyn Hopkins have also taken on the advocate role and their involvement in the process has been vital to the team's ongoing success.

Mooting is the oral presentation of a legal issue or problem against an opposing counsel and before a judge. It is perhaps the closest experience that a student can have whilst at university to appearing in court.

Any students interested in mooting should contact The Open University Law Society at ww.ouls.org

Restorative justice – bringing offender and victim into communication – offers the promise of a fresh approach to crime. But its practice, policy and research base need improvement.

This is the conclusion of a new report arising from a seminar held by the Open University's International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research (ICCCR) in partnership with the independent think-tank, Independent Academic Research Studies (IARS).

The seminar brought together practitioners, researchers and policy makers in restorative justice to discuss gaps that they experienced in their effort to work together. It was attended by 45 experts in the restorative justice field including representatives from the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Youth Justice Board, academia and practice.

Dr. Theo Gavrielides, author of the report, Director of IARS and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at ICCCR said: "This is the first of a series of seminars that aim to encourage a dialogue and consensus amongst practitioners, researchers and policy makers in the restorative justice movement. There is clear evidence of a relationship breakdown and at this critical point in time for restorative justice bridges must be built if the practice is to be rolled out".


‘Drawing together research, policy and practice for restorative justice’ was published today 9 March  by IARS. See OU media story to download a copy.
 

Oscar Wilde’s Mrs Cheveley noted that “Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.” In law courts, there are many recorded instances of people giving unexpected replies to legal questions, says Gary Slapper, Professor of Law and Director of the Law School at The Open University...

1. In a Canadian case, a woman was testifying about getting hurt during a bout of social disorder.
Judge: Just a moment, were you actually kicked in the fracas?
Witness: No, Your Honour, I was kicked about halfway between the fracas and the belly button.

2. Witnesses sometimes move from being too talkative to being too obedient.
Counsel: You must not go off on a tangent when you answer my questions. From now on you must simply answer “yes or no”, just “yes or no” to everything I ask. Are you clear about that?
Witness: Yes or no.

3. In an American case brought under a 1910 law controlling prostitution and immorality, a woman from an exceptionally rough background was accused of crime. Her language was very coarse. In an effort to clean it up before the hearing, her lawyer, Mr Dawson, coached her in the proper terms for various sexual acts. Then, early in the case, she was questioned by the prosecution about the nature of the charge against her.
Prosecutor: Miss, do you know what intercourse is?
Defendant: I didn’t before I met Mr Dawson, but now I know very well what it is.

4. Having successfully defended a nice old man prosecuted for stealing money from the bank in which he worked, an American attorney asked his client to thank the jury that had just acquitted him. The client duly obliged.
Defendant: Thank you so much for your not-guilty verdict, ladies and gentlemen, and I truly promise I won’t ever do it again.

5. At the end of a long but unsuccessful cross-examination of a plaintiff, the advocate who had failed to shake his evidence concluded with an acerbic comment.
Counsel: Well, Mr Whitmore, you have contrived to manage your case very well.
Witness: Thank you, counsellor, perhaps I might return the compliment if I were not testifying under oath.

6. In an old case, a 17-year-old was charged with having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl in a field. A farmer who had seen the event from a distance supported the prosecution’s case. The farmer was cross-examined by the young man’s counsel in an effort to suggest that what he had seen was innocent canoodling.
Counsel: When you were young did you never take a girl for a walk in the evening?
Farmer: Aye, I did that.
Counsel: And did you never sit and cuddle her on the grass in a field?
Farmer: Aye, I did do that.
Counsel: And did you never lean over and kiss her while she was lying back?
Farmer: Aye, I did that.
Counsel: Well then, anyone in a nearby field seeing that might have easily thought you were having sexual intercourse with her?
Farmer: Aye, and they’d have been right too.

7. Defendant I want the court to appoint me another lawyer.
Judge: And why is that?
Defendant: Because the public defender isn’t interested in my case.
Judge [to public defender]: Counsel, do you have any comment on the motion?
Counsel [long pause]: Oh, I’m sorry, Your Honour, I wasn’t listening.

8. Counsel: Are you married?
Witness: No, I’m divorced.
Counsel: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
Witness: A lot of things I didn’t know about.

9. Traffic accident cases have produced their share of unexpected replies.
Counsel: Thank you Miss Robinson, so you were travelling at 29 mph, and would you please tell the court what gear you were in at the time of the collision?
Witness: Yes, I was in Armani jeans with a Gucci T-shirt and a Prada jacket.

10. Finally, it is worth noting that not only witnesses give unexpected replies. In an indecency case, a woman giving evidence was asked what the man in the dock had said to her. She was too embarrassed to repeat it out loud, so the judge asked her to write down. She duly wrote “would you care for a screw?” on a piece of paper and the note was passed around the jury until it reached juror No 12 – a middle-aged man who was dozing.
Sitting next to him was a young lady. She read the note, nudged her neighbour and handed it to him. He woke with a start, read the note and, with apparent satisfaction, folded it and put it away in his wallet. When the judge leant forward and said: “Let that note be handed up to me” the juryman shook his head and said: “No need, my lord, it is purely a private matter”.

Useful links

• How The Law Works book by Gary Slapper
• OU module Rules, rights and justice: an introduction to law (W100)
• Open University School of Law