Basil Wigoder, Baron Wigoder

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Basil Thomas Wigoder, Baron Wigoder QC (born February 12, 1921 in Manchester ; † August 12, 2004 ) was a British lawyer and politician of the Liberal Party and most recently the Liberal Democrats , who was a member of the 1974 Life Peer under the Life Peerages Act 1958 House of Lords was.

Life

Degree, public prosecutor and lawyer

Wigoder, whose father and mother dentist judge was graduated after attending the Grammar School in Manchester to study History at Oriel College of the University of Oxford . During the Second World War between 1942 and 1945 he did his military service with the Royal Artillery . On August 14, 1942, he was promoted to second lieutenant . After the end of the war he began to study law at Oriel College and was also President of the Oxford Union , the university's debating club , until 1946 . After completing his studies, he was admitted to the bar in 1946 as a barrister at the Bar Association ( Inns of Court ) of Gray's Inn .

Subsequently, he dealt mainly with criminal law and was introduced by his lawyer partner A. P. Marshall in the case against Clarence Henry Willcock ( Willcock vs. Muddle ) in 1951 , which led to the end of the use of the wartime identity cards used in World War II .

In the following years he became one of the leading specialist lawyers for individual rights . As Attorney ( Prosecutor ) he worked in such diverse method as in the opposite Anthony Reuter, a leader of the youth protest movement Teddy Boys , who was sentenced in 1956 for malicious injury to five years imprisonment, or against a man who in 1961 to 50  pounds Fined after kicking a greyhound in a greyhound race at Wembley .

Unsuccessful lower house candidates and a political career in the Liberal Party

Like many other Barrister located Wigoder engaged in politics and ran for the lower house elections on July 5, 1945 and a by-election ( by-election ) on 15 November 1945, the Liberal Party in the constituency Bournemouth each unsuccessfully for a parliamentary seat in the House of Commons .

He later ran unsuccessfully in the general election on October 8, 1959 and on October 15, 1964 for the Liberal Party in the Westbury constituency .

In 1963 he succeeded Desmond Banks as chairman of the Liberal Party ( Chairman of the Liberal Party Executive ) and held this position until he was replaced by Gruffydd Evans . Subsequently he was chairman of the committee for the organization of the party congresses of the Liberal Party between 1965 and 1966.

Crown attorney and major trials as criminal defense attorney

On April 20, 1966, Wigoder was appointed Crown Attorney ( Queen's Counsel ) for his legal services and then dealt with numerous important cases before the Old Bailey , the Central Criminal Court .

One of his first defenses after his appointment as Crown Attorney was a successful trial before Gerald Thesiger , a judge of the civil chamber ( Queen's Bench Division ) of the High Court of Justice responsible for England and Wales, known for his harsh sentences . In the trial involving a man accused of the murder of another guest at a party in Notting Hill , he successfully defended the accused by stating that the defendant had defended himself against an unprovoked attack.

After that he was in demand as a trial lawyer and had over time known clients like former Paymaster General ( Paymaster General ) George Wigg , which in the case of prostitution method was acquitted, or Sheila Buckley, a mistress of former Labor Party -Politikers John Stonehouse , who was charged with faking suicide in 1974. In other proceedings he defended the painter Francis Bacon for possession of cannabis and Alfred Berman, one of the defendants in the trial of the so-called Richardson Gang in 1966. Unlike most of the co-defendants, Berman was acquitted.

Also in 1966, Wigoder appeared in a mysterious case against Orishagbemi, a Nigerian student who was charged with the murder of his tenant. In defense, it was presented that this girl was a witch who cast a curse on Orishagbemi and his wife; Orishagbemi had only tried to ward off this curse. In the face of this futile defense, Wigoder lost the trial. In 1967 Wigoder was commissioned by the Ministry of Trade ( Board of Trade ) to investigate the events surrounding the financial services institute Pinnock Finance .

His other clients included the journalist and later conservative members of the House of Commons , Jonathan Aitken , who in 1971 under the law on official secrets ( Official Secrets Act ) because of the disclosure of classified information about the Biafran war of the weekly newspaper The Sunday Telegraph was charged. In his plea, Wigoder successfully argued in favor of Aitken that it was his duty to act "in the interests of the state". Since this procedure, this plea has become a basis in similar processes. Over the years he has been a constant critic of the provisions of this law, which he considered illiberal and unfair.

Most recently, Wigoder appeared as a criminal defense lawyer in a number of proceedings against the Irish Republican Army (ORA), for example for a defendant in the 1972 bomb attack on the Aldershot garrison , as well as against the so-called Guildford Four , who were alleged to be IRA terrorists for bomb attacks on a pub in Guildford were sentenced innocent 1975th It was not until 1989 that revision proceedings were initiated that led to the rulings being overturned.

Engagement in legal organizations and member of the upper house

In 1970 he became a member of the General Council of the Bar and was a member until 1974. Furthermore looked Wigdor 1971 to 1977 as a member of the Rule Committee ( Rules Committee ) at the Criminal Court ( Crown Court ) and next to it from 1972 to 1984 as rapporteur ( recorder ) of the Crown Court. During this time he was with the Attorney-General Lewis Hawser Co-Chairman a judicial committee that proposed the transfer of criminal proceedings from the police to an independent public prosecution agency. In 1972 he co-founded the Criminal Bar Association with Jeremy Hutchinson , John Hazan and Michael .

By a letters patent dated May 16, 1974, Wigoder was raised to the nobility as a life peer with the title Baron Wigoder , of Cheetham in the City of Manchester, and was thus a member of the House of Lord until his death.

During his upper house belonging he was following his appointment by the leader of the Liberal Party in the upper house, Frank Byers, Baron Byers , first from 1977 to 1984 Parliamentary General Manager of the Group of the Liberal Party ( Liberal Chief Whip in the House of Lords ) and later spokesman for his group, for domestic and health policy. In his House of Lords speeches, he was extremely critical of government proposals both to restrict jury trial rights and to curtail the right to appeal in so-called “lenient sentencing cases”.

Furthermore, Baron Wigoder became chairman of the Health Services Board in 1977 and, after its dissolution in 1980 by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was first chairman and then vice-chairman of the health company Bupa between 1981 and 1992 . He also served as President of the Statute Society from 1984 to 1990 .

His marriage to Yolanda Levinson in 1948 resulted in four children, including entrepreneur and business manager Charles Wigoder , who is, among other things, executive chairman of the telecommunications company Telecom Plus .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 35666, HMSO, London, August 14, 1942, p. 3549 ( PDF , accessed October 16, 2013, English).
  2. ↑ London Gazette . No. 43960, HMSO, London, April 22, 1966, p. 4949 ( PDF , accessed October 16, 2013, English).
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 45540, HMSO, London, December 9, 1971, p. 13475 ( PDF , accessed October 16, 2013, English).
personal data
SURNAME Wigoder, Basil, Baron Wigoder
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wigoder, Basil Thomas, Baron Wigoder (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Manchester
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 2004