Good judges die young. They agonise, they lose sleep over the sentences they pass, they suffer the stress of trying to move the justice monolith a fraction of an inch forward. Peter Taylor's illness, and now death from cancer at the age of 66, has deprived the nation of good leadership and good judgement from the first Lord Chief, Justice to see himself as accountable not only to the law, but to the public as well.
The greatest of Peter Taylor's many achievements was to restore faith in the criminal justice system after scientific developments - DNA, ESDA testing and the like -- had exposed major miscarriages of justice which had taken place in the 1990's. Appointed Lord Chief Justice in 1988, he determined to slough off the judicial complacency of the Hailsham era, and to apply with greater strictness the rules and principles designed to avoid wrongful convictions.
His judgements articulated them with clarity and learning; more importantly, his decisions applied them without the fudge which can be so tempting in a court of crimininal appeal.
Towards the end of his life, he was called upon to play a political role which he regretted, but undertook with true courage. The Government abandoned principle in simplistic pursuit of the "law and order" vote. With measures which would involve much heavier punishment than would fit the facts of some crimes, and which would give politicians arbitrary rights to increase sentences. These measures were blatantly in breach of the constitutional rule of separation of powers. But Britain has no written constitution, and Michael Howard's proposals were sufficiently popular to mute criticism from ;timid opposition politicians. Lord Taylor stepped into the breach, throwing the - weight of the judiciary behind the propositions (so unattractive to writers of newspaper editorials) that criminals should be treated fairly, and that failure to catch them is generally the fault of clue- less policemen, not clever lawyers or liberal judges.
Peter Taylor was born in 1930, the son of a Newcastle doctor who had emigrated to escape the pogroms of eastern Europe. He attended Newcastle Royal Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in 1954. He practised mainly in crime, prosecuting and defending on the Northern Circuit until his appointment as a High Court judge in 1980. An alternative career as a concert pianist beckoned, and would doubtless have given him greater pleasure: he opted for law out of duty, but was determined to make it as much fun as was decently possible. He will be remembered as fondly for his good humour as for his good judgements; he was unstuffy, occasionally sardonic, always ironic and amusing at the failings of the system and the foibles of fellow lawyers, but never sarcastic at the expense of litigants and defendants.
Peter Taylor made his mark, as barrister and silk, with an unusual combination of academic excellence and powerful, incisive cross-examination. Aficionados of that art rate his interrogation of George Pottinger. the brilliant but bent head of the Scottish Office, as one of the most devastating cross-examinations of the century. The co-defendant, crooked architect John Poulson, was easily broken by Taylor's leader: the clever and sophisticated mandarin fell to an opponent who outmatched him, even in Latin epigrams.
After this. it came as no surprise that Jeremy Thorpe did not enter the witness box to face up to Taylor, who prosecuted him for conspiracy to murder Norman Scott, an ex-boyfriend. The Sunday Telegraph secured Thorpe's acquittal, by doing a "double / your money on conviction" cheque-book deal with: Peter Bessell, Taylor's chief witness. Jurors later told the New Statesman that the Telegraph deal for Bessell's story-£25.000 down, and a further 25.000 on Thorpe's conviction - had made his evidence worthless.
As a judge, Taylor immediately showed qualities of humanity and independence. He granted bail to several of the Bradford 12 -- young Pakistanis mistakenly treated as terrorists when they made (and then abandoned) petrol bombs in fear of an attack on their community by the National Front.
In 1984, he became the first judge in English history to make the security services account for themselves, when he directed MI5 to justify its behaviour in tapping the telephones of CND. This was a revolutionary step judges; had always permitted the Government to get away with whatever it chose to cloak under the blanket defence of national security. Although Taylor did not, in the end, hold in CND's favour, he did force admissions of the truth of many of Cathy Massiter's allegations. His refusal to be spooked by MI5 set such an important precedent that CND was persuaded by civil libertarians that it should not appeal, lest Taylor's unprecedented open- minded approach were to be disapproved by more executive-minded appeal courts.
By 1988, Taylor was the obvious choice for Chief Justice (although credit for appointing him should, nonetheless, go to the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay). Lord Hailsham's apparent prejudice against the criminal Bar had left the higher courts largely bereft of judges who knew much about criminal law from experience. At the time Taylor took office, his experience included the humbling discovery that one man he had successfully and confidently prosecuted for rape, and put away for many years, had been proved by unassailable DNA tests to be innocent. This affected him, as much as the more publicised miscarriages like the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. He determined that his Court of Appeal should, so far as humanly possible, produce rules which would protect the possibly innocent. Many judges begin with similar ideals and soon become cynical. Taylor, to his everlasting credit, never became case-hardened. If trial judges made mistakes, appeals must be upheld even if the probably guilty went free (although sensibly he made more use of the power to order re-trials in such cases). When government interference was to blame, as in several of the` Iraqgate prosecutions highlighted by the Scott Inquiry, Taylor's condemnations were ferocious.
Last year, he had to postpone hearing the Ordtech appeal while his beloved wife was dying: he said he was too blind with weeping to read the documents that the Government had wrongly withheld from the trial. After her funeral he returned, as fair-minded and no-nonsense as ever, to read the documents, appreciate their relevance and allow the appeal.
Peter Taylor's contribution to the development of criminal law in the last eight years was immense. It has been a most difficult era, requiring a delicate balance between the demands for fair trial and the need for the state to protect valuable criminal informants and to use in evidence fruits of electronic surveillance. His judgements have struck this balance, not always successfully but by genuine attempts to be fair.
He understood concerns about the law's inherent biases against blacks and women. On Desert Island Discs he lamented the unfairness to women of the law of murder and the mandatory life sentence: a few months later, in the case of Kiranjit Aluwhalia, he fashioned the defences of diminished responsibility and provocation so as to make such injustices less likely.
Peter Taylor was no radical. He opposed changes in the judicial appointments system and never forgave the press for its unfair criticisms of his predecessor Geoffrey Lane, but he supported a Bill of Rights and did much to diminish media ignorance by his openness and availability to the media. He will also be remembered for the farsightedness of his report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster; for his attempt to abolish wigs (which failed as a result of opposition from barristers addicted to this pantomime flummery) and for his appearance on a special edition of Question Time in which he shone moderately between a very liberal policeman and a very conservative silk (George Carman -- whom most viewers assumed to be the real Chief Justice).
The present generation of advocates will count their appearances before Peter Taylor amongst the highlights of their career: he would pummel and punch like a Shiatsu master but (succeed or fail) you felt better after for undergoing the experience. He was a private man whose achievements owed much to the emotional sustenance he drew from a close and loving family. It is the saddest of ironies that one who did so much to bring fairness into the lives of others should have his own unfairly and arbitrarily, short,
Peter Murray Taylor, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, judge, born May 7, 1930; died April 28, 1997