Quote: Fiona McPhail
To be clear, what SERCO were proposing to do was to change locks. We were talking about bypassing any procedure before a court or tribunal.

Jen Ang: Welcome everybody, to the Lawmanity podcast, where we explore the complex relationship between law and activism and discuss the different ways that law can oppress people, but can also lead to real social change. I’m Jen Ang, a human rights lawyer and activist based in Scotland and your host on the

Lawmanity podcast.
Today we’re speaking to human rights lawyer, legend and my very good friend, Fiona McPhail. Fiona is a lecturer in social justice law at the University of Glasgow School of Law alongside me and former principal solicitor of Shelter Housing Legal Service at shelter Scotland. In 2021, she won the University of Glasgow’s World Changing Alumni Award in recognition of her work in relation to homelessness and housing poverty and her work in 2019 as a leading member of the legal team that challenged a private housing contractor to the Home Office, SERCO, when they decided to start evicting asylum seekers in Scotland without court process – they would simply wait until the person was not at home and change the locks before that person returned. She built a voluntary coalition of lawyers, third sector advocacy groups, and grassroots activists that brought public attention to the unfair and unequal treatment of asylum seekers in Scottish housing law and ultimately prevented hundreds of evictions. Fiona and I were both founder members of that coalition that started it all and we’re here today to talk about social justice lawyering in defence of asylum seeker housing rights and those cases.
Welcome, Fiona, to the podcast.

Fiona McPhail: Good morning, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Jen Ang: Thank you for joining me. So, in this podcast, I’ve been experimenting with a surprise opener question to get us settled and to learn a little bit more about the people behind the legal legends who we are interviewing. So if you don’t mind, please, can you tell me about a smell that is meaningful to you? Maybe a smell that you really like or one that is connected to a place or a time that you like to bring to mind?

Fiona McPhail: Mmm, what a good opener. Well, I think it’s a beautiful morning here in Edinburgh where we are, and I think this time of year what we smell often is grass being cut. And for me, every time, freshly cut grass takes me back to some happy memories in childhood. It was always a sign that we were close to the summer and that I could play outside. So I think, yeah, now, today I’m going to say that, but I love smells in general. That’s an interesting fact about the sense of smell.

Jen Ang: Thank you for sharing that. And, yeah, that’s quite transporting actually, isn’t it? I also like the idea that even as adults you can go back to that, like the idea that, you know, school’s out and it’s playtime, all of these things.

Fiona McPhail: Nice thing to be able to do, to think back to life when it was much simpler.

Jen Ang: So true. So true.

Jen Ang: We’re here today to help listeners understand how the law can be used to achieve really significant change by looking at how you and colleagues led a successful campaign to preserve and protect the right to safe, dignified housing for asylum seekers in Scotland through the Roof Coalition, your role in that campaign and your reflections now. So to start with, could you explain to us how you got involved with this campaign and what it was about?

Fiona McPhail: Okay, so, yeah, there is nothing straightforward or simple about this. I’m going to do my best to cover a lot of ground both in terms of time and also in m terms of the legal challenges. And I should say, maybe at the outset, because you framed that in the context of significant legal change. This is a bit of a spoiler alert for listeners who are not familiar, but the legal challenges were ultimately unsuccessful for us. But I think there were successes and hopefully we’ll come on to talk about those, there’s a lot of positive learnings from this campaign.
So how did I get involved?

I mean, I, as you said in the introduction, my role then was principal solicitor at Shelter Scotland. I was, I am a housing lawyer by background, but I’ve always had an interest in other areas of law. And I think, if I am wanting to, I suppose, shed an insight into how we might continue doing this. We in the broadest sense, anyone with an interest in social justice, lawyering, the questions of connection and collaboration are key. So although I was a housing lawyer, I had an interest and where possible worked with lawyers in other fields, and not just lawyers, but charity organisations. So the

SERCO lock change issue arose understandably with the charities that work in the front line with refugees: Scottish Refugee Council, British Red Cross and several outstanding community-based organisations in Glasgow who had very good relationships with some immigration and asylum law firms,

JustRight Scotland being one of them. And if I remember correctly, Jen, it was a call from yourself in the summer of 2018 where you had indicated that there was this intention by SERCO, who were, for those that don’t know, the multinational private company that the Home Office had contracted to provide asylum accommodation to asylum seekers in Glasgow between 2012 and 2019. So SERCO had, indicated their intention to start lock changes on those persons who were appeal rights exhausted. And being connected to the issue of asylum and refugee rights, you had reached out to me, the, housing lawyer, to ask, is this lawful? So that was how it all started. It was a phone call.
But I think the point I want to make is that we need to work with each other in this sector. Right. People think of lawyers as being driven by kind of a very individualistic and competitive sense, but you’re not going to get far in the social justice field if that’s your approach. It has to be about collaboration and connections. And what was at risk, I remember, I remember getting that call because there was an element of me that felt that this was so unjust and unfair. So that was just a sense, a gut feeling. But obviously that’s not law, that’s not how we advise clients in relation to that. But there was that gut. This just didn’t feel right. And if there was scope to challenge that and to use the law in challenging that, that’s just one way of challenging something like that. But if there was any legal argument available, then it should be tried. And I think this touches into other ingredients in social justice lawyering about having conviction and having courage. And I did have a sense that there should, that there would be a human rights argument here and particular interest in

Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights, which is incorporated into our domestic law. And that says in very general and broad terms that any person at risk of proceedings by a public authority ought to, in principle, have the opportunity to challenge the proportionality of that eviction before a court or tribunal.
And to be clear, what SERCO were proposing to do was to change locks. We were talking about bypassing any procedure before a court or tribunal where that person could say, “I don’t think it is proportionate for an eviction order to be granted”. And the people concerned, asylum seekers who were appeal rights exhausted, had a lot at stake. Eviction for any person is an extremely stressful thing to contemplate and years of experience in dealing with people at risk of eviction by social landlords, private landlords and lenders who all had the opportunity of defending their case in court, it was in those circumstances, it was also stressful. The risk of losing your house is of concern. But for this particular group, it’s important to emphasise, contrary to what some people may think, they had no entitlement to statutory homeless services. So eviction for them more often than not would mean the streets or being pushed underground and making arrangements. So statutory services was pretty much a closed door and there were real concerns about the impact on their health, physical and mental, their impact on their ability to engage with – and again, something that was perhaps overlooked was although they were appeal rights exhausted, many if not most people affected were working with immigration and asylum lawyers to prepare a fresh claim or judicial review. They were still, they maintained that they were entitled to protection. And there’s obviously an impact there if they go underground and are forced onto the streets that their ability to engage with their lawyers and progress those claims would be affected. So a lot was at stake for those individuals. I can’t speak for them, I wasn’t in their shoes, but I can’t stress just how draconian that policy was. As I said earlier, eviction for anyone is a stressful incident. But here, the consequences were greater. Many of the individuals concerned had underlying mental health issues. So we were talking about retraumatising traumatised people. But there was a wider level question or a bigger question here, of wider public interest in a question of legal principle and of procedural fairness. Was it lawful to remove an appeal rights exhausted asylum seeker without due process? That was the kind of the big picture question. And we as housing lawyers and others said there were several strands of legal argument, but I think the main ones that may be of interest today was common law in Scotland prohibited that. And if it wasn’t the common law that prohibited that, then human rights law as incorporated. And this was important not just as a wider point of principle in the context of asylum seekers who were appeal rights exhausted. But there were other categories of people, notably homeless persons in hostel-style accommodation. I’ll maybe stop there, we’ll pick some of that up. But those, that was the kind of the small and the big picture stuff, which was, as I say, of wider public interest.

Jen Ang: Thank you so much for, setting the scene so clearly. And actually it’s funny that you say that your involvement started with a phone call from me because on the one

Jen Ang: hand, and I’m not sure I remember

Jen Ang: the actual phone call as you do, but I do remember the day that we’d had the news that SERCO was intent on using lock change evictions in Scotland in order to evict people seeking asylum. And yes, the cruelty, the idea that you would just leave your house one day and then come back and you’d not be able to get in because the locks had been changed. Along with after some discussion with colleagues, the realisation that this wouldn’t have been a lawful procedure, for people in Scotland who are not asylum seekers, drove me to, give you that call because, I also knew that you’ve had a sustained interest in protecting migrant communities from homelessness and eviction over a long period of time. And, ah, yeah, there was no question that you were who I was going to call next.

And that was the start of a very initially loose coalition and eventually quite a tight and productive, of voluntary coalition of lawyers and activists and frontline workers, who became, over the number of years, the Roof Coalition. But it’s lovely to actually hear you talk about it from that perspective. However, as you’ve noted, however, this work still isn’t done, at least all of the work of the Roof Coalition.
My next question is, what were some of the challenges that you saw in the different forms of legal work that you did with other legal colleagues in that first year?

Jen Ang: So, in 2018, 2019, were there any

Jen Ang: particularly tricky moments or tricky things about coordinating legal work with a coalition of, you know, campaigning activists?

Fiona McPhail: It’s a nice and actually surprisingly easy question because I would say in relation to the campaign or coalition, when it initially kicked off, it was not difficult to coordinate people. That was one of the most inspiring things about this whole project and one of its great successes. There were five law firms heavily involved, meeting weekly or as often as necessary at one stage. And I’m perhaps escaping the question or the timeframe you’ve given me, Jen, but over the period of two years, those law firms also at times worked alongside the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the

Scottish Human Rights Commission, and all of us had the benefit of expertise from council on different points. So there was a collaboration of lawyers where we were very open, with respect to our professional obligations of confidentiality, but we were very open in discussing and teasing out potential legal arguments, discussing legal strategies and coordinating that was not problematic because there was a shared desire and ambition to test the law, to do what we could for the clients at the different stages. And we’ll maybe talk through, because I do think it’s quite interesting to look at the chronology of legal action. But all of that work was done very, very closely with the third sector. It was the third sector that reached out to us and we would, thinking back to that first summer of 2018, one of the things that we first did was to come together in a room and say, well, what practical steps do we need to do? And one of the first things we did was to coordinate legal surgeries. There was a commitment by the lawyers around the table to offer legal surgeries and do outreach at the Scottish Refugee Council. So we had the Refugee Council offer their premises and interpreting services and we set up a rota and we offered anybody who was given a lock change notice the opportunity to come in and speak with us. And I think, I was reviewing an impact report that was done, there was about 41 legal surgeries ran in that first year. And so when the policy had been announced, there were from memory, five clients who’d been served with the notices. And those five clients were immediately linked up with solicitors and proceedings were raised. So Govan Law Centre had raised proceedings in the Court of Session and Shelter Scotland and Legal Services Agency, representing the other persons concerned, had raised proceedings in the Sheriff Court. And we were all asking in these different forums for interim orders to prevent or to stop a locked change eviction from taking place, pending clarification of these bigger questions of law. So the Sheriff Court cases were sisted or suspended whilst the Court of Session was to consider those questions. In the first case that Govan Law Centre were taking, and at that point, that was sufficient for SERCO to announce that they would pause their lock change. So we had a public statement and a public undertaking that they would not, despite having given notices to many many individuals. And I didn’t say this at the outset, but there was in the region of 300 people affected. So there’s a volume here. This isn’t five, six people. There was in the region of 300. And we had this public undertaking which was the sensible, reasonable, appropriate thing for SERCO to do, that they would not carry out with their SERCO lock change policy pending determination of this issue by the Court of Session. So that was, well, not a small win, that was a big win early on. I feel I’ve deviated from your, from your question, but, yeah, the point to stress coordinating, it wasn’t difficult because there was a drive, there was an ambition and that was immensely inspiring. And I do want to stress that a lot of this was done, nobody had planned for this, this was a reaction, this was a campaign that reacted to something that was happening and reacted on an urgent basis. So this was on top of the very very busy workloads of solicitors and charities involved. And many of these meetings that I speak about in terms of coordinating strategy next steps happened out of hours. So it speaks to the commitment and the conviction of those concerns. So I would say the challenges weren’t the coordination and that’s not to say that there weren’t difficult conversations about, you know, messaging and legal strategy. You know, it’s not to say it was all straightforward, but the most difficult part of it was not the coordination. I think the greatest challenge for me, if I were to reflect on it, was twofold and it was mainly to do with the legal work but the challenge of testing the law. We were effectively arguing that the common law required proceedings to be raised, failing which human rights law did.

But we were trying to break new ground. We weren’t in a position where there was established recent case law to that point. And the pace and volume at which this proceeded. 2018 to 2019 was relatively quiet once we got that public undertaking. But in April of 2019 the Court of Session ruled that the policy was lawful and Govan Law Centre took steps to appeal that. And in the process of doing that we had the Scottish Human Rights Commission who decided to intervene. But notwithstanding the appeal process starting, SERCO announced in, I think, July of 2019 that it was going to enforce its lock change policy. So we went from having a safe space to lock changes being imminent. I can’t remember at the time if it was a seven day or a 14 day, but there were changes, even things like that. The communication that was being given was not always clear and could change at, ah, short notice, but seven or 14 day notices were being given to people and that’s when the pressure really, hit because the four law firms involved went from the position of doing legal surgeries to having to raise urgent proceedings. And those were proceedings in the Sheriff Court where we were asking, it was interdict proceedings where we were asking and requesting interim orders. And in the space of three months or so, there were 159 thereabouts, 159 such cases raised. So that was, you can imagine the pressure on the solicitors involved, you can imagine the impact on the courts. It got to the point where you had to really push to get a court hearing fixed in the court would fix, effectively SERCO courts because it would just have 6, 7, 8, 10, possibly more similar hearings. And I think what was interesting there in terms of challenges was just again having to frame this litigation as a housing law matter. The subjects were appeal rights exhausted asylum seekers. There may have been media coverage. There was a perception that this was a refugee or asylum issue. It wasn’t, it was a question of housing law. And we were at pains to kind of reiterate that, that this was about questions of due process and eviction in the process eviction rather than the merits of somebody’s asylum claim. So that was arguably the most challenging point, was just the pace and volume because if we didn’t get in time, then the lock change happened and the person was out.

Jen Ang: I actually, I remember that time period, so that that period of the three months after the April ruling when you, along with colleagues at the other law firms at Latta & Co, a legal services agency, went through an incredible volume and pace of legal representation, basically, in order to get these cases heard and dealt with. I just remember being in awe actually of the effort that poured into this, to prioritising this group of people and protecting them from eviction. Particularly because, just to emphasise what you said, particularly because this work was being done by third sector lawyers on top of what is already recognised to be a caseload or an area in which the need for housing and homelessness advice is already beyond the breaking point.

I think it’s unusual in law, to be honest, particularly, in social welfare, social justice law. But for me it was a kind of living example, or a living test, if you like, of what can be done when people work together.

Fiona McPhail: For me it was the biggest success and takeaway of this, wasn’t the outcome but the process. I don’t think we could have done this had we not worked together. I spoke about the kind of sharing of legal strategy and collaboration. I mean we would openly discuss the types of legal arguments and share appropriately redacted pleadings and whatnot. Because these cases were so conjoined in a way, there was, as I say, it was a much wider argument. It didn’t make sense to not do that. And it was every opportunity that we, any one of us had to be in court making these arguments was an opportunity to one, to win the case for all, if that makes sense. So we got through the summer of interdicts of interim orders. I mean, I appeared in a case where my interim orders were refused. I had to appeal that at every juncture. Do you know, it was, and I should say all of this was done under legal aid. We needed that and the clients needed that in terms of protecting them against an adverse order. But there were, as I say, steps. There was never a guarantee that you were going to get what you wanted. And as I say, I had to appeal our refusal of interim orders. The appeal was successful. But we got to the point where again, SERCO, you know, decided because what we had said proceedings should be raised in the Sheriff Court, SERCO decided to go down that route. And we then were faced with multiple cases where we were trying to defend eviction proceedings. So it’s what we had asked for and welcomed, but it was the opportunity to then go along and explain. And this is where the particular facts of the individuals were relevant. Because this client, for example, was about to make a fresh claim that was imminent and therefore it made no sense, or this client had these particular health issues, and this brought them within the category of an Article 3 case. So it was non-stop. But we were talking about different processes, different types of proceedings. When we got to the eviction cases, the orders were being granted. Every eviction order that was sought by

SERCO was granted. If I remember, some of them were maybe continued or sisted. But again, there were appeals. And at that point we decided, right, well, rather than having hundreds of appeals being heard, let’s propose, let’s have different grounds argued by different counsel who were instructed and again, just have a more strategic approach to that. So that was, I think that was 2020 because those appeals were heard just before the pandemic.

Jen Ang: Did the legal action that you took with colleagues, did it have the impact you hoped it would have? and why or why not?

Fiona McPhail: Okay, it didn’t have the impact I wanted. Okay. I was hoping that we would have a decision from the court. So it wasn’t about changing the law but clarifying the law, that we would have a decision from the court that this was, as a matter of Scots common law or human rights law, unlawful, and that whether it was SERCO or it’s now Mears, there would be a requirement to raise proceedings. And it’s not just a tick box exercise, but it’s fundamentally about the opportunity for someone to go along and say, this is why I shouldn’t be evicted. And for some people there might not be anything to say, but it’s the opportunity to go along and explain your personal circumstances and why that would be disproportionate or otherwise unlawful. So we lost that and I didn’t cover this earlier. So the case was appealed and the Human Rights Commission had intervened. We had not just a decision from the

Inner House which said that the, the policy was lawful, which was the position at first instance. But the Inner House went further and went so far as to say that SERCO were not a public authority for the purposes of the Human Rights Act. And I don’t think any of us had anticipated that. And that, obviously had much wider ramifications for a whole host of reasons. And we don’t necessarily have time to go into that. But that, as I say, hit us sideways. So, no, we weren’t successful with the legal challenge, but the success was elsewhere. The fact that we were able to put the question before the court, I think protected people. And in that time, I think, you know, in that first year or in the first 18 months or so, those people were continuing to engage with immigration lawyers. Some of them went on and had a grant of refugee status, so kind of fell out of the risk, at risk category. That’s an important point to stress. The time in and of itself enabled things to progress. So the legal action wasn’t successful, but there were small wins along the way. And Mears, who took over the contract, had said initially when that contract was taken up by them, that they would go down the route of raising court proceedings. So they obviously felt, I, don’t know whether it was a question of whether they felt the pressure or they felt it was the right thing to do, again, I don’t know. I can’t speak for them, but for me those are significant wins. But besides that, as I say, is changing or shaping a culture of social justice movementing, lawyering, where we saw the impact, the real life and immediate impact of working together. And that has not changed. I think, the relationship between those law firms and the third sector to this day continues. It worked and got us through some of the challenges of the COVID pandemic. And the lawyers that did all that work continued to meet for the time afterwards with funding in place. And one of the big successes was the ability, we were able to persuade the Scottish Ministers to amend relevant legal aid regulations so that legal aid would be available in the Asylum Support Appeals Tribunal. Because ultimately, and this is important, sorry for listeners, we maybe want to give the link to the various decisions, but the Inner House decision, the Court of Session ultimately said that the remedy or any kind of human rights issue would be resolved by a claim or taking this to the appeals, the Asylum Support Appeals Tribunal, that this wasn’t a matter for the Sheriff Court or Court of Session. We had a whole regime that the Home Office operated, particularly with reference to Section 4, that if there was a human rights issue, that was the avenue, but that was not a procedure where legal aid was available in Scotland prior to, as I say, some successful influencing that those lawyers did

Jen Ang: So, and again, I so much enjoy listening to your reflections and I agree, actually, I think that, I think that a major success of the coalition is not the foundational legal work which you’ve spoken about, but actually the formation of a social justice movement that went on to ensure that people were protected or that people with irregular migration status and people who were seeking asylum were protected from street homelessness during the COVID pandemic. And also, although it may not be highly visible outside of the circles who do this work, also the win that the Coalition had in speaking to a wider public audience about the unfairness of having one system of rules for, you know, for homelessness, for people who are not migrant, and another system for those who are. There are differences that still persist in the law.

So access to social housing, for example, is still linked to different forms of migration status. But I feel like the on the ground impact of the Roof Coalition’s advocacy work, which you also saw at a wider level taken to protests in the streets, sort of community centre, awareness raising exercises. It was visible sometimes in football stadiums in other forms of activism. So, yeah, I also reflect as a member of that movement the experience of working with frontline activists and lawyers in this way really changed how I think of myself and how I think about the relationship between lawyers and campaigning. Yeah, so absolutely a favourite topic for me.

Fiona McPhail: No, I just think this is important to, and I don’t think I’ve done justice to this, but the key role that those organisations played, like I was struck and you know, blown away by just how connected, involved, invested, supportive those organisations were. But for them we would not have had, I mean they were the bridge between the appeal rights exhausted asylum seeker and the lawyer. They were able to link us together and were not just knowledgeable about the issues faced, but particularly knowledgeable and supportive of the individuals. You know, just practical things like making sure that that person knew, you know, which lawyer to go to, which offices to go to, trying to set up, I mean all, all the stuff that we, you know, take for granted, like making sure they have a mobile phone and helping out with grants for food and appeal rights exhausted asylum seekers, not just at risk of losing their home, but they’ve got no money coming in. And I think, yeah, the level of support that was available, some of it presumably funded, but a lot of it was the generosity and the commitment of those individuals who again were coming to meetings out of hours and at weekends. And then there was a very grassroots stuff, you know, networks of people who were just making sure that word was out that if you had one of these lock change notices you could go and see a lawyer. So it was formidable. It was formidable from bottom to top or… not that there was a top. From the grassroots, up to legal.

Jen Ang: So I agree. I feel much the same.
I just have two more questions for you.
So the next one is. It’s a bit of an invitation, really, Fiona, because I started this saying there is plenty more work to be done here.

So the next question is, in your view, what more needs to be done to secure justice and safe, dignified accommodation for people seeking asylum in Scotland today?

Fiona McPhail: Well, regrettably, a lot. Have things got better or worse? I mean, they’re different. Right. If I were to be involved in anything like this, again, I would be encouraging a discussion from the outset as to what success and failure might look like. And success can’t always be about the legal outcome, because, as we’ve discussed, there were successes despite the ultimately unsuccessful litigation. But it’s also just, man, I think there was understandably, like, demoralisation with that, legal outcome. And we weren’t ready to think, so attached to that is the question of legacy planning. What do you do if you lose? Whether it’s at court or, you know, in the media, What. What is the kind of backup or what do you do if you win? That’s a much. That’s a much more, it’s a much better situation to be in, in terms of thinking about distributing, positive news and influencing decisions. but if you lose, what do we do? And I think one of the things that I had tried at the time as principal solicitor at Shelter Scotland was to look at scope for legislative reform. And there is, it sat within the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, section 7, the power for the Scottish ministers to, by way of regulation, set certain standards, like what period of notice needs to be given to persons who are in hostels, and impose a requirement to raise court proceedings. That’s a provision that Ministers have never issued regulations on that front. That was an example. Now, there’s not much I would do differently, but we did that. There was that again, that nobody has regrets as to the model that was adopted, but it is not a sustainable model. And so the reflection is, that the many, many issues that asylum seekers and other destitute migrants face now that are about housing and other aspects of the system face, you know, there are so many of them. There’s no doubt legal and other angles to challenging some of those, but it can’t be done without proper resourcing and without proper funding. So I don’t know. That’s maybe not the answer you were hoping for. But there is now more than ever a need to invest in both the legal, the policy and the support angle. And the Fairway programme goes some way because it obviously has, there is a national commitments to look at destitution of migrants across the spectrum. We have been talking about asylum seekers, appeal rights, exhausted asylum seekers today. But in that period of time we also had Brexit and the impact that that has had on European citizens who find themselves homeless can’t be understated and there’s an immense amount of work to be done. So I think I can’t give you, you know, the 1, 2, 3 policy recommendations, or

I’ve given you one, but there will be many more, Jen. But I think, what is clear, that way of working works. You have to bring together the housing and the immigration lawyers, social security lawyers. You have to pool together the different fields of expertise with the frontline organisations. But that has to be funded, it has to be funded on a longer term because this stuff can’t be fixed overnight.

That’s a more than adequate answer.

I’m fully on board with those reflections, but thank you very much for your time.

So I have just one final question for you and that is this. So there will be people listening to this podcast today, much as you don’t like to think of it, who look up to you a bit, see you as a bit of a role model and they will be wondering, they’ll be wondering what advice you might have, for someone who could be a younger version of you, who’s looking at what you have accomplished in your career today and maybe wants to be you one day. So what advice would you give a younger you?

Fiona McPhail: Yeah, yeah, don’t, don’t want to be me! It’s the starting point.
But here I, I would encourage and I want there to be more social justice lawyers. You know, that, there needs to be. There’s a desperate need for it, more than ever.
What advice? I mean, there are a number of things and I said at the outset, I started talking about the importance of working with others, right? You cannot do this, if you set out – you could have the best legal mind and the best arguments – do not work by yourself. Find others both to lean on, and to influence. This has to be about collaborations and not just with lawyers, but, these are social justice issues, right? We cannot remove the law, from that wider context. So find that space that you want to be in, surround yourself with those people and have the courage. It’s those people, it’s those networks that will give you courage. Right. And I often… and it is, it’s daunting, sometimes to step into a courtroom and try and advance an argument that sounds a bit mad, you know, I’ve been there many occasions, particularly in the context of some human rights stuff, have the courage and conviction. And you do that by surrounding yourself with those people.
I often, having spent time in other parts of the world, in Mexico, for example, where human rights lawyers and human rights activists literally risk their lives doing that work. And I, for me, that’s just something that I will tell myself when I am trying to put something out there that sounds a bit mad, but, yeah, I am not at risk of losing my life. And I think we all need that perspective. We all need something that keeps us going. And I think if I can end maybe with this, because it does take courage and conviction. That’s never easy, even though it can sometimes be enjoyable. And even times there are, you know, when there are wins, which obviously are hugely rewarding, there needs to be a strategy of resilience. That’s maybe not the best word. But we have to look after ourselves. We have to be in the best shape and the best state of mind to give the best fight that we can.
And so I would be encouraging anybody looking at, a career or looking at working in this area to firstly think about what are the things that make them feel good, what keeps you going, what makes you happy? Because we need to be able to go to those places when the going gets tough. and the going gets tough regularly. We’re not going to last if we don’t have that. So, yes. who are you? What do you like? And yeah, just carve out time on a continual basis to step into that happy place.

Jen Ang: Thank you very much, Fiona, for those wise, wise words. And knowing you, I know that you’re also true to that advice that you gave yourself.

And I guess I just want to close by saying that you are one of those people who exemplifies courage and conviction, who I keep close to myself. So thank you very much for indulging me today, and also for being that person. And it was lovely speaking with you and I’m sure that you and I will see each other quite soon actually. So take care for now and have a great day.

Fiona McPhail: Thank you. Thank you, Jen. It’s been a pleasure.

Jen Ang: And that’s a wrap.
Thank you again, our lovely listeners, for joining us for another episode of the Lawmanity podcast.
If you wanted to learn more about the Stop Lock Change eviction campaign, later renamed the Roof Coalition, and the legal cases that Fiona and I discussed, we’ll put those in the show notes.
Fiona in her interview also mentioned the Fairway Scotland Initiative, which is a private sector government-funded partnership that provides alternative accommodation and advocacy and legal support to appeal rights exhausted asylum seekers and others in Scotland. She and I have both also been involved in that effort so I will link some resources there too.
Inspired to take action? The tenants’ union Living Rent in Scotland was a coalition partner and does some incredible work to defend the rights of all tenants organising locally across the country. Have a look at their resources and become a member if you want to support their work.
Shelter Scotland provides free housing advice to tenants on their rights and Scottish Refugee Council supports people seeking refuge across Scotland. You can also check out their campaigns and donate to support their work.
Next week, join us for a one-to-one interview with feminist scholar and activist Pheona Matovu. We’ll speak to her about co-founding the organisation Radiant and Brighter and the challenges of tackling migrant destitution under the UK’s hostile environment policies. We’ll also hear about her research as a PhD student and James McCune Smith Scholar at the University of Glasgow where she looks at what employers can do to take action against racism in the workplace.
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The Lawmanity podcast is co-produced by me, your host Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe. Shout out to Helena Refai for mentoring us through our first year of this incredible project. And thanks also to Amanda Amaeshi, on graphics and socials. The music you’ve been listening to is Always On The Move by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow-based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland. Thanks so much for tuning in today. It’s always lovely to have you. We hope you enjoyed listening and see you next time.