Chakrabarti was born in the London Borough of Harrow, and studied law at the London School of Economics. After graduating, she was called to the Bar and then worked as an in-house legal counsel for the Home Office. When she was the director of Liberty, she campaigned against what Liberty considered "excessive" anti-terror legislation. In this role, she frequently contributed to BBC Radio 4 and various newspapers, and was described in The Times as "probably the most effective public affairs lobbyist of the past 20 years". She was one of the panel members of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards throughout 2011 and 2012. Between 2014 and 2017, she served as Chancellor of the University of Essex.
She studied law at the London School of Economics, at one point acting as a research assistant to Leonard Leigh, who wrote a paper on the British approach to terrorism and extradition; the paper was finally published in 1997.[6] After graduating with an LLB degree in 1991,[7] Chakrabarti was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1994.[8] In 1996, she started working as a barrister for the Home Office.
Liberty
Chakrabarti in 2014
After working as in-house counsel, Chakrabarti was appointed director of Liberty in 2003. As director, she campaigned against what the pressure group saw as the "excessive" anti-terrorist measures that followed the September 11 attacks in the United States, such as the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA). The organisation is a prominent opponent of recent counter-terrorism legislation.[9]
Chakrabarti is a frequent contributor to BBC Radio and TV and various newspapers on the topic of human rights and civil liberties. The Observer wrote that she puts in "seemingly endless appearances on Question Time and the rolling news bulletins".[10] She was also described by David Aaronovitch in The Times as "probably the most effective public affairs lobbyist of the past 20 years".[11]
In December 2005, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme ran a poll of listeners to establish "who runs Britain." After many hours of debate, Today placed Chakrabarti on the shortlist of ten people "who may run Britain."[12]
In 2009, Shami Chakrabarti called Prevent the "biggest spying operation in Britain in modern times".[14]
Chakrabarti stepped down as the director of Liberty on 31 March 2016.[15][16]Martha Spurrier was announced as her successor.[17]
Andy Burnham
In June 2008, Andy Burnham, the British Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, made what Chakrabarti claimed were "insinuations" in an interview in Progress magazine at Shadow Home SecretaryDavid Davis's resignation over the 42-day detention for terror suspects. Davis, a Conservative MP, was said by Burnham to have had "late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti." Chakrabarti received an apology from Burnham for his "innuendo and attempted character assassination".[18][19]
Damian Green
On 18 April 2009, it was reported in The Times and The Daily Telegraph that police officers who raided the parliamentary office of the Conservative frontbencher Damian Green and arrested him as part of an inquiry into the leaking of Home Office documents had searched through e-mails and computer documents going back a number of years, using Chakrabarti's name as one of the keywords. The Times reported her as saying that she believed the action of Scotland Yard's anti-terror squad "raises very serious questions about just how politicised, even McCarthyite, this operation was."[20][21]
Phil Shiner
Phil Shiner is a British former human rightssolicitor and was Head of Strategic Litigation at Public Interest Lawyers (International) from 2014 until the firm's closure in August 2016, when he was struck off the roll of solicitors in England and Wales over misconduct relating to false abuse claims against British troops.[22] Shiner's disgrace resulted in criticism by former army officers of Chakrabarti and her support for Shiner.
Johnny MercerMP, a retired Army captain, chided Chakrabarti for her "almost child-like understanding of military operations" and for "trying to retrospectively apply European Human Rights Law to the battlefield". Richard Kemp, a retired Army colonel and commander of the first Task Force Helmand in Afghanistan in 2003, accused Chakrabarti of being "one of [Shiner's] greatest supporters". She said that she had been saddened by Shiner's downfall and had said that, before "losing his way", he had "given good service to the public" and "did some very good work that has been upheld by a judicial inquiry".[23]
When the London School of Economics accepted a £1.5 million donation from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Chakrabarti was on the governing board of the institution. Chakrabarti stated that she did not "attend the 2009 Council meeting which approved a donation to the school from Saif Gaddafi's Foundation" and that she "only subsequently raised concerns about links with Mr Gaddafi, given his father's appalling regime." She went on to state that she did not think "the decision in question resulted from anything other than a naive assessment, made in good faith, of the democratic reforming ambitions of the dictator's son."[24]
Howard Davies, LSE Director at the time, resigned over the issue, citing "personal error of judgement."[25] Chakrabarti was accused of hypocrisy by the Student Rights project of the Henry Jackson Society[26] as being "the director of a human rights group while legitimizing murderous regimes" as a governor of the LSE and they called for her (and others) to resign from the LSE.[27] Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University's Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, also said Chakrabarti should resign.[28]
On 9 December 2011, Chakrabarti wrote to the Metropolitan Police asking them to investigate the legality of the donations.[29] Chakrabarti admitted to feeling "bucketfuls" of embarrassment and shame about the affair and in April 2013 her spokesman confirmed that she had severed all ties with the LSE.[30]
In July 2011, Chakrabarti was announced as one of the panel members of the Leveson Inquiry, a judicial inquiry into phone hacking in the UK. Chakrabarti described her invitation onto the Inquiry as "a daunting privilege" and said it reflected Liberty's "belief in an appropriate balance between personal privacy and media freedom and above all in the Rule of law".[31]
On behalf of Liberty, Chakrabarti welcomed the principal recommendation of a more robust and independent press self-regulator, but said Liberty would be unable to support the Report's last-resort alternative of compulsory statutory regulation.[32]
She was one of two panel members to waive their right to claim fees or expenses for the duration of the inquiry.[33]
Following her appointment in April 2016 as chair of an inquiry into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the Labour Party, Chakrabarti announced that she had joined the party in order to gain members' trust and confidence, and expressed confidence that this would not compromise her independence.[34] Chakrabarti criticised the Conservative Party for not conducting their own inquiry into Islamophobia, following allegations from Sayeeda Warsi in London's 2016 mayoral election against Sadiq Khan.[35] The Chakrabarti Inquiry report was published in June 2016 and concluded that Labour was "not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or other forms of racism," but that there was an "occasionally toxic atmosphere".[36]
Jeremy Corbyn announced her as the only Labour appointment to the House of Lords in August 2016. This was a necessary step to her subsequent appointment as Shadow Attorney General. However, some (including Labour MPs Tom Watson and Wes Streeting) saw this as creating the potential for bias in what should have been an independent inquiry.[37] When asked about the appointment, a spokesman for Corbyn said that Chakrabarti was "an ideal appointment to the Lords".[38]
Chakrabarti was married to Martyn Hopper, a litigation lawyer, from 1995 until they divorced in 2014.[3]
She opposes grammar schools on the grounds of social divisiveness and because she says they enforce segregation.[10][43][44] Her son was a former pupil of Dulwich College, a fee-paying private school, leading some to attack her views on education as hypocritical.[45][46][47]
She was one of eight Olympic Flag carriers at the London 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony (the announcer incorrectly described her as "the founder of Liberty").[55] She was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4,[56] and in 2014 she was included in The Sunday Times's "100 Makers of the 21st Century" list.[57][58]
On Liberty, Chakrabarti's first book, was published by Allen Lane in 2014.[97] In November 2015, a settlement was announced of a High Courtlibel case brought by Martin Hemming, formerly the Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, concerning false allegations made by Chakrabarti. The publishers apologised for the "hurt and distress caused" by the allegations, confirmed they were "without foundation", and agreed to pay Hemming damages and legal costs.[98][99]
^Aaronovitch, David (26 February 2008). "Ignore the paranoid fantasists". The Times online. Retrieved 5 August 2016.(subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries)
^"Who runs Britain?". Today Programme. BBC Radio 4. 2005. Retrieved 16 October 2016.
^"This Year". British-American Project. 2007. Archived from the original on 7 November 2007. Shami Chakrabati of Liberty (and BAP member) will chair a session of BAP members involved in faith
