On the passing of Conor Gearty

In my early twenties I once got on a train to Durham that didn’t stop at Durham because I was so engrossed in a book. That, you might think, is to be expected of any academic. But as I sailed over the viaduct, a story for the conductor in the back of my mind, I barely glanced at the great cathedral. For I was buried deep in Conor Gearty’s writings on rights and terrorism. This was the aftermath of 9/11; almost every legal academic was wrestling with these questions. But as I read I appreciated that Conor had already been doing this for years.

He was one of the great intellectual forces behind human rights in the UK. His work led the way in developing a set of rights protections that could be made to work in the context of parliamentary sovereignty. And if this didn’t suit purists at either end of the debate on rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 was a massive step forward for rights protections in the UK. When too many people reached for familiar comparisons between US and UK constitutional law, he injected a different strain of thinking about rights into legal thought. It is a testament to the effectiveness of Conor’s influence in policy making circles in the 1990s. As a legacy, it has been remarkably enduring, in spite of the most phenomenal political pressure. Because it works.

Conor had a debaters’ spirit, and the Irish schools and university debating circuit does indeed mould people. He walked into any room and sought out the big topics in his field. That doesn’t do him justice, it makes him sound like he was always on a soap box. What I mean by a debater is that he knew that having an argument sharpened his own thinking. And an argument was never a harangue. A conversation with Conor was in parts charming, cajoling and probing. He really did not care that I was the most junior postgraduate in the room the first time I met him. He sought out a point well made, and didn’t put much stock in the rank of the sayer.  He could tease out a way to bring you round to his way of thinking. He always left an impression. He was fantastic fun.

He was a great patron to young public lawyers of all stripes, but particularly, amid the financial crash, to the great wave of Irish legal academics who sought out jobs in Great Britain. He had done it all first. He took the time to comment on draft articles, to give career advice, to ask how you were doing. He would be endlessly encouraging. This is the man that I would rely on when I needed a reference, and he’d always come through.

He was often not the intellectual voice that many in the UK establishment wanted to hear, but that they needed to hear. His diagnosis, little over a month ago, of the malaise afflicting public discourse was the last time I messaged him; “Britain has little credibility for three reasons. One, it is seen as the child of America, with no independent engagement. Two, Britain is an imperial nation that has not yet addressed what imperialism meant; it still largely believes that it granted independence to grateful global south entities. And three, having left Europe, it has no strategic vision of anything.” It is a rallying cry to confront these realities – for all that he was close to Labour, he called out their failings in office.

And, for a Northern Protestant steeped in a family of police and military service, this Longford man did more than anyone else to challenge and reshape my own thinking on rights, conflict and security. He was an academic powerhouse, a public intellectual and a real friend and mentor. I’m heartbroken for Aoife and the kids. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Conor Gearty’s influence, and I’m left in bits by his passing.