It is still shocking to recall that until the UK’s first Race Relations Act was passed in 1965, people could perfectly lawfully be refused accommodation or refreshment on the grounds of their race or nationality. Through the work he did to start putting this right, Geoffrey Bindman, who has died aged 92, stood out both in his profession of solicitor and the political world that surrounded it as a principled, committed and scholarly jurist, and a fundamentally decent man.
Quietly spoken, attentive and humorous, he lent his voice and his talents to the movement for racial equality and to the cause of justice for all. He did this at first as a partner of Lawford & Co, a north London firm of trade union lawyers (1965-74), and as legal adviser to the Race Relations Board (1966-76) and its successor, the Commission for Racial Equality (1976-83).
Geoffrey realised that the initial legislation, brought in by Harold Wilson’s Labour government, marked only a beginning, and he helped shape a further Race Relations Act in 1968, focused on eradicating discrimination in housing and employment. It aimed to ensure that the children born in Britain of 1950s immigrants would get “the jobs for which they are qualified and the houses they can afford”. The definition of discrimination to include indirect discrimination – any practice that disadvantaged a particular racial group – came in the 1976 Act.
In 1971 Geoffrey was elected as a Labour councillor for Camden London borough council. With his colleagues he founded the Camden Community Law Centre in 1973, and Geoffrey and was the first chairman of its management committee. The Penguin book Race and Law (1972), which Geoffrey wrote with Anthony Lester, was among the first in the field.
Geoffrey stood down as a councillor in 1974 and established Bindman & Partners, from 2008 Bindmans LLP, continuing as its senior partner until 2004, and then as a consultant.
High-profile clients began to gravitate to his firm. The campaigning journalist Paul Foot had already recruited him in 1969 to act as lawyer for the satirical magazine Private Eye, whose editor, Richard Ingrams, was fearless in criticising powerful figures.
It was said in the legal profession that, even if you rarely won cases for Private Eye, at least you were sued by a nicer class of litigant. His account of being the solicitor to the periodical’s fictitious owner, Lord Gnome, in the New Law Journal, tells of how he “had never previously conducted a libel case to trial. My only advantages were that I was young, keen and cheap.”
Private Eye survived largely because potential litigants did not wish to bankrupt a popular institution. However, in 1977 Sir James Goldsmith launched a substantial campaign that came to an end only when journalists on the Daily Express, which he wished to buy, said they would refuse to work for him if the assault continued.
Geoffrey continued with the Eye until 1984, but was becoming busier with human rights work which from the 1970s to the 90s took him to Uganda, Zimbabwe, Chile, the Soviet Union, South Africa, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland, Namibia and Malaysia. Since they were generally unofficial, these visits frequently carried risks to his personal safety.
Going to South Africa with an International Commission of Jurists delegation to investigate apartheid led to him editing the book South Africa and the Rule of Law (1988).
As Amnesty International’s legal adviser, he acted in 1998 for the organisation in the extradition proceedings from the UK against the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
He was a visiting professor of law at University College London (1990-2023), and at London South Bank University from 2003 onwards. That was the year he started writing for the openDemocracy website, and 40 articles followed. In 2007 he was knighted, and in 2011 made an honorary QC.
Born and educated in Newcastle, where his Jewish forebears had settled as immigrants, Geoffrey was the elder son of Rachel (nee Doberman) and Gerald Bindman, a GP. His brother, David, went on to become an eminent art historian and professor at UCL.
From the city’s Royal Grammar school, Geoffrey went to Oriel College, Oxford, where he gained a law degree and a postgraduate bachelor of civil law degree (1956). Having been told by the Newcastle law firm where he had been offered articles – a traineeship – that he would never be made a partner because he was Jewish, he completed his training with Rowley, Ashworth & Co, another firm of trade union lawyers.
He was admitted as a solicitor in 1959, and in 1961 married Lynn Winton, a research physiologist at UCL. They had three children, Jonathan, Dan and Miriam. Firmly secular in his beliefs, Geoffrey was a patron of Humanists UK.
As a solicitor instructing barristers, Geoffrey was meticulous in his preparation of cases and courteous in his dealings with the opposition. A brief to counsel would typically include a thoughtful analysis of the evidence and issues, and a roadmap designed to avoid elephant traps. A neutral observer might well have felt that Geoffrey could perfectly well handle the case himself.
In an article on The Pathology of Book Collecting, Geoffrey suggested that it could be a congenital condition, as he inherited and expanded the collection of early Romantic literature that his father had built up largely from local dealers in the north-east of England. Eventually the cost of preservation and insurance forced him to sell it to the Wordsworth Trust, of which he was a trustee. Unable to resist the lure, however, he went on to build up in its place a library of radical pamphlets and accounts of treason trials from the early 19th century.
Lynn and his brother died earlier this year. Geoffrey is survived by his children and six grandchildren.
• Geoffrey Lionel Bindman, human rights lawyer, born 3 January 1933; died 4 November 2025
