TIM EXTRAORDINARY action of the Home Office in handing over
the transcript of a tapped telephone call has excited so much interest that the squalid role the Bar Council has played in the affair has been virtually ignored. However the Council got hold of the transcript, it is quite clear that the proper thing for it to do as soon as it realised what it had got was to return it immediately. One does not expect much from the Home Office but one does expect from the Bar Council rather higher standards of procedure than those exercised by, say, a district committee of the Electrical Trades Union. Wire-tapping was described by Mr. Justice Holmes as 'dirty business,' and it is almost incredible that the Bar Council should have sullied its hands by getting mixed up in it. Instead of returning the transcript to the Home Office with expressions of disgust, the Council was shameless enough to use it as a basis for cross-examination of the barrister concerned—in the first place, apparently, without even telling him what it was doing. No wonder a number of barristers have already cancelled their subscription to the Coun- cil. Its chairman, Sir Hartley Shawcross, has lately been doing work for the International Commis- sion of Jurists; it looks as if it is high time that he turned his attention to matters very much nearer home. Meanwhile it might be helpful if I remind the Bar Council of the regulations which govern its functions. According to these it is the duty of the Council inter alma to deal with 'matters affecting . . . the maintenance of the honour and the independence of the bar in its relations with the judiciary and the executive.' It might also brood on this dictum of Mr. Justice Brandeis : 'Writs of assistance and general war- rants are but puny instruments of tyranny and oppression when compared with wiretapping.'
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