Title: The Passionate Advocate
Author: Anthony Gifford
Publisher: Arawak Publications, 288 pages, Kingston, Jamaica
Reviewed by: Barbara Gayle

Every so often, as you pick up a non-fiction book and begin to read it, you think you have some idea, from the title, of what to expect. And then, as you turn the first few pages, you really try to categorise it. Sometimes it fulfils your expectations, sometimes, it doesn't.

Racism in Britain

But as you start reading The Passionate Advocate, you find that it is immensely more appealing than the typical lawyer's memoir you feared it was. From the first page, it rewards you with a fascinating insight into the life of the privileged; into racism in Britain, including aspects of it which, at times, seemed pretty much institutionalised in the police force there; into the scope of the struggle for equality in Northern Ireland; into understanding the independence movements' fight against oppressive Portuguese colonialism in Africa, and into the continuing uphill battle for respect for everybody's human rights throughout the world, including Jamaica.

All this, and more, through the discerning eyes and descriptive powers of Anthony Gifford, an English Lord (the 6th Baron Gifford of St. Leonard's in the Country of Devon), as he made his sojourn over 40 years, through Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, to Jamaica. In these years, he matured from a somewhat reluctant barrister, to follow his 'boyish enthusiasm for good causes" - helping to form a pioneering law centre in North Kensington, London, devoted to achieving justice for the unfairly targeted, defenceless, voiceless Black poor- to heading chambers in London with 60 barristers, while still devoted to community legal issues. For the past 16 years, he has been practicing in Jamaica as a distinguished and successful Queen's Counsel.

Don't fear for a minute that The Passionate Advocate is written in boring or difficult-to-understand legalese. On the contrary, it is a most readable and smooth-flowing book, whether Lord Gifford is recounting an incident which occurred while skiing on the slopes of the Swiss Alps, where, as a young man, he witnessed the tragic accidental death of a friend, or telling how he was once deported from Morocco. It is compelling as he describes his activism in support of friends such as freedom fighters Eduardo Mondlane, Amilcar Cabral, Joaquim Chissano and Samora Machel, in their struggle against repressive Portuguese colonisation in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, by giving lectures in the cause, before august audiences, writing papers and reports, participating in street demonstrations, or visiting FRELIMO guerrillas deep in the "liberated areas" of Mozambique.

Defending the defenceless

He is familiar not only with the repression by the Portuguese authorities of its African subjects, but with the brutal supporting aggression of the apartheid regime in the South Africa of the past. Reading The Passionate Advocate, you certainly get the impression that LordGifford, a lifelong human-rights lawyer and advocate for the freedom struggle, has done more than his fair share to better the lot of the world's oppressed.

The book really is an important study in the power of law, contemporary history and politics, international relations, slavery, and the resultant modern-day racism it bred.