When the attorney general Sir Hartley Shawcross introduced the Legal Aid and Advice Bill in Parliament in 1948, he called it ‘a charter of the little man to the British courts of justice’. The new legislation, the barrister promised a war-weary nation, would do its bit in building a new, fairer and more egalitarian Britain. ‘It is a Bill which will open the doors of the courts freely to all persons who may wish to avail themselves of British justice without regard to the question of their wealth or ability to pay,’ he declared.

Sir Hartley, who served as the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, repeated ‘the familiar taunt’ (his words) about the courts being open to all ‘just as the grill room at the Ritz Hotel is open to all’. In other words, theoretically available but only accessible to the rare few who could afford to pay their way. In fact, he quipped that the Ritz had become a more democratic institution than our courts ‘at any rate in the grill room’, where he reported that costs were ‘largely controlled’ compared to the costs of court users which were ‘not subject to any legal limit at all’.

Sadly, Sir Hartley's point is as valid today as it was then. His taunt is reminiscent of the Lord Chancellor's 2015 damning assessment of ‘a two-nation justice system’.

* * *

This book has so far been focused on the impact of ‘austerity’ and the 2013 legal aid cuts on the justice system. It would be wrong to leave readers with the impression that the problems faced by the legal advice sector somehow began in 2010. The demise of the advice sectors in Manchester (as outlined in the Chapter 6) and elsewhere long predate the arrivals of New Labour and of the Coalition government. This chapter provides an overview of the legal aid scheme and a history of access to justice.

As we will explain below, the legal aid scheme never delivered ‘access to justice’ in any comprehensive sense. Nor was legal aid one of ‘the pillars’ of the welfare state. That was a claim often made by advocates of publicly funded law in the debate over LASPO; but it is based on misunderstanding of its origins.

New Jerusalem (1945 to 1970)