A champion in fight for equal rights
Lord Lester of Herne Hill Human rights lawyer BORN JULY 3, 1936 – DIED AUGUST 8, 2020, AGED 84
LORD Lester of Herne Hill drafted groundbreaking legislation on racial and gender equality and was one of the leading figures of human rights in a career spanning almost 50 years. The QC was credited for his contributions to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Race Relations Act 1976.
His campaigning influenced the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 and the Defamation Act 2013, long after leaving the Bar in 1993.
Lester’s decades-long battle to see the European Convention on Human Rights recognised in the courts was finally enshrined in law through the Human Rights Act 1998. It was passed by then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Government, of which Lester was an occasional member.
In 1981 he followed Roy Jenkins to the newly formed Social Democratic Party but when he was appointed a life peer in 1993, he sat as a Liberal Democrat in the House of Lords.
His distinguished record was marred in 2018 by accusations of historic sexual harassment by Jasvinder Sanghera, a campaigner against forced marriages. Despite denying them as “completely untrue”, he resigned from the House of Lords in December of that year.
Anthony Paul Lester was born in London into a Jewish family. He was the eldest son of a barrister, Harry Lester, and milliner Kate, nee Cooper-Smith.
Educated at the City of London school, he completed his National Service with the Royal Artillery before studying history and law at Trinity College, Cambridge.
His crusade for equality started early after he spent two years completing his masters at Harvard Law School and learned of the Ku Klux Klan’s murder of three civil rights activists. He wrote the paper Justice in the American South, published in 1964. The year before he was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn and took silk in 1975.
Lester’s work in race relations saw him join several organisations.
He had a benchmark test highlighting racial discrimination in 1960s Britain. Applying for jobs, he would send out two CVs, identical but for the names Mr Singh or Mr Smith. Most employers would invite Mr Smith to interview.
Lester married fellow barrister Catherine “Katya” Wassey in 1971 and they had two children, theatre director Gideon Lester and lawyer Maya Lester QC.
He died of heart disease and is survived by his wife and children.