I attended the memorial service for Lord Joel Joffe this morning. I had the good fortune to know Joel towards the end of his life. He was a good friend of tax justice by providing funding and and practical support, not least in the Lords.
Joel was quite remarkable. Pretty much his last act in his native South Africa before having little choice but leave and come to the UK in 1965 was to defend ANC activists. As a young lawyer he did, when no one else would, defend Nelson Mandela and his colleagues at this 1964 trial.
Joel only ever got one of his ANC clients off a charge: the rest got life sentences. But that was his great achievement: the state had demanded the death penalty. As Nelson Mandela joked in later life Joel was the man who got him 27 years in prison. But that changed the course of South African and world history.
Joel did not shout about what he did. A recurring theme of this morning was his modesty. But he was a massive champion of social justice. He empathy was seemingly limitless and in tribute his daughter sang this song from Joan Baez this morning (and beautifully, too). I thought I would share it in memory of a truly great man who really did change history, who was also a simple delight to know and who really did understood the true power of charity. And that there, but for fortune, go you and I.
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One of Phil Ochs’ songs which I used to sing myself, 50 years ago.
He was never as popular as Bob Dylan, but at his best was as profound.
The triumphs in the constant battle against powerful interests are few and far between.
The people who just keep nibbling away at it are an inspiration, their patience is awesome.
We can all nibble. And if we don’t the ‘bastards’ will win.
The driver of the bus I was travelling on yesterday quite possibly saved two lives by braking sharply to allow an idiot to overtake him without hitting the oncoming vehicle at a closing speed which would have been well in excess of 100 mph. That driver did a good days work and I told him so and made a point of shaking his hand when getting off the bus.
That was my ‘nibble’ for the day. Some days I don’t manage a nibble at all, but most days there’s some little thing that makes the world better against the ever-rising tide of ‘shite’ that threatens to engulf us. I didn’t save any lives and maybe I never will.
Joel Joffe was someone who may have saved many lives of people he never met and didn’t even know of his existence.
So it goes.
The Joffe(s) were in a great Jewish tradition of principled and active opposition to apartheid, going right back to the great original SA communist party. As a Catholic, I was always envious of that Jewish streak of unselfish doggedness in confronting injustice. We had two brave champions in Bishop Hurley (as he was then) and the editor of the East London Daily Dispatch, Donald Woods; but that was about it.
On a totally different point, here is an article about the IRS that may reinforce your warnings about our own tax services –
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/15/john-koskinen-taxes-215830
I was lucky enough to meet him when I was closely involved with Oxfam where he had been the Chair and still kept in touch. His modest manner belied his incredible past and the commitments which he kept up to the end. A great man
Indeed
“There were giants on the earth in those days–and also afterward–when the sons of God lived with the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4)
We tend only to recognise giants as being from the past, and apparently always have done. There are giants amongst us now……… but we don’t always notice their stature and all too often we (through our petty and divisive media) try to diminish them by cutting their legs off.
Many of the powerful would have had the legs out from under Joel Joffe if they could have.
(PS I’ve never understood the thing about the sons of God and the daughters of men. It’s one of those quirks that Eric Von Daniken raised and which seems to have no satisfactory answer.)
Andy,
TITANS?