Interviewing Helena Kennedy, QC, Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, is an intimidating prospect. Not only is she a formidable legal, political and broadcasting presence, the chair of numerous councils and commissions, a member of the board of the British Museum and Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford but she is also something of a personal hero.  Baroness Kennedy is in Cambridge to give a series of lectures for the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities entitled ‘The Illusion of Inclusion: Women and the Law’, revisiting the issue of women’s rights in a constantly shifting, increasingly globalised world that she first dealt with in her 1993 book ‘Eve was Framed: Women and British Justice’.

Helena Kennedy is clearly used to being interviewed, and she is a gifted public speaker, used to clarifying and standing up for her point of view. She needs no encouragement to initiate discussion on the issue of women and the law, acknowledging the fact that in the almost two decades since she first published ‘Eve was Framed’ many issues that faced women have at least begun to be addressed, and Kennedy notes that even just the acknowledgment that there was discrimination in place is a step forward: “I’ve seen women’s issues come up the agenda and now it is finally generally accepted that all was not well”.

By no means, however, has the battle for equality been won, with Kennedy stating that “A lot has certainly happened, and there has been a lot of shifting of the sands, but not enough. Sometimes the last mile is the hardest mile”. She also emphasises the fact that we should continue to question the presence of any injustices in the system, and also query why it has taken such a long time for the barriers faced by women to begin to be dismantled, stating that, ultimately, the legal system and the configuration of our society itself “was a system created by men, with men in mind, and you really now have to reconfigure the system to make it conducive to the lives of both women and men today”.

Kennedy is matter of fact in her discussion the issues she is passionate about, and has devoted her legal career to combating, and is adamant that “This is not just a women’s issue: it’s a men’s issue too, and it’s ultimately about quality of life”. In her career as a barrister Kennedy has focussed specifically on the legal and civil rights of women, time and time again coming up against sexual and domestic violence as key issues. She pronounces the statistics on rape conviction “shocking”, noting that part of the issue is society’s attitude towards women as a whole: “so much that happens in courts is unacceptable, and it is because of the mythology of women ‘asking for it’”.

Equally, she observes that problems are posed by “the blurred edges of anything connected to sex, because people bring so much baggage to it”. She goes on to talk about how the “crisis of masculinity” hasn’t lessened as equality has increased, saying that “I do blame a lot of it on the commodification of sex, the way our lives centre around money and the way in which there has been a coarsening of our world due to the easy access to pornography and the way in which it normalises abuse”.

Kennedy has always taken a liberal stance on pornography, which she maintains, but she does believe that it is a contributing factor to the damage society imparts upon women : “I don’t believe people run out an commit rape because they’ve seen pornographic films, but I do think you end up in some ways coarsening the way in which people relate, and there is an addictive quality to the ease of access to pornography now, and it becomes relentless and takes over their thinking in terms of how to relate to women. It destroys the mutuality of pleasure in sexual intimacy”.

Baroness Kennedy was born in Glasgow, and identifies herself as being from a working class background, and this informs her commitment to standing up for equality: “I feel incredibly privileged, although from a working class background, to have had the kind of education that has changed my life, and we have a duty and a responsibility to speak for those who haven’t had those opportunities”.

When asked if she would consider herself to be a feminist she answers yes without any hesitation, and goes on to talk about the problem of young women being unwilling to embrace the term.  Feminism has to a certain extent become a kind of dirty word, and Kennedy believes “the media has been successful in demonising feminism”, particularly in the UK: “In Britain there has been a co-option if the idea of the independent woman, saying that it’s only alright to be independent as long as you articulate women’s efforts to be equal in a way that is not threatening”.

Only 20% of the House of Lords is female, and Kennedy is in a minority in her position as a Labour Peer. She is also a minority in another way, however: she is the peer in the House of Lords who votes the most frequently against her party, with a dissent rate of 33.3%. Kennedy may now be officially sitting in opposition, but she acknowledges wryly that “the truth is, I was always in opposition”. She still believes fervently that the erosion of civil liberties and legal rights that occurred under Blair’s government were inherently wrong, and are now entrenched in law, going on to suggest that “the political class in Britain has lost the trust of the population”, observing that people have begun to realise that “there is an incredible amount of power that lies outside of the nation state. Due to globalisation the ‘money men’ often have far more power than any elected government”.

 

Helena Kennedy is an indomitable public speaker, and her belief in the importance of the fight for women’s rights is both unswerving and pragmatic: with a champion such as her there is hope for the equality cause.