Today we bid adieu to the Gazette’s second-longest-serving regular columnist, after the venerable James Morton. Anthony Edwards began writing for us about criminal law in the year the Birmingham Six were freed and John Major launched the Citizen’s Charter (whatever became of that?).
‘When I joined the profession, there were just two criminal law firms in Tower Hamlets and just two criminal lawyers in the City of London,’ Anthony tells Obiter. ‘With the necessary coming of the two duty solicitor schemes, this number increased significantly but it is now reducing again and, unless something is done, I fear it may end up where I began in 1974. I remember the days before the coming of the duty solicitor. The treatment of defendants was truly appalling.
‘Somehow we must not let it happen again.’
A sage valediction indeed. Enjoy your retirement sir.
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