(Photo Courtesy Rocklyn Maynard)
Mr. John Benjamin QC
Friday, September 20, 2013, was a historic date in the life and legal practice of Mr John Benjamin, QC. His diary shows that it was thirty years ago that, born in St Kitts , partly of Anguillian parentage from North Side, he returned to Anguilla from that island to set up what has become a most successful legal practice, aptly named Caribbean Juris Chambers. Originally, he could have been an Anglican Priest, like his first cousin, Bishop Errol Brooks, as their grandmother, Hannah-Waver, had desired, but switched to study law in England instead.
Before his arrival in Anguilla,Mr Benjamin spent two-and-a-half years in St Kitts following his return there from England where he resided and worked for fourteen years. Part of that period he served as a youth worker with the Anglican Church in Birmingham and later as a community worker at the Hansworth Law Centreto which he was seconded. He did his legal studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry. Mr Benjamin QC is grateful to the late Sir Lee L Moore of St Kitts, a former lecturer at Birmingham University Law School, who obtained a scholarship for him, through the British Government, to attend the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica to pursue the Certificate of Legal Education. It was through Mr Moore’s encouragement that he returned to St Kitts. It was also at the encouragement of the late Dr William Herbert and his (Benjamin’s) uncle, Alwyn Brooks, that he came to Anguilla to open his legal practice.
Steeped in humility, he has not forgotten his roots including those who welcomed him to Anguilla on September 20, 1983, and assisted him to establish hispractice. Now, three decades later, he acknowledges his gratitude to all of them.“I came to Anguilla a few months before setting up my office. That’s when my cousin, Sleepy (the late Steven Bryan of Stoney Ground), brought down my desk and books on the Betsy R,” he recalled. “Then Kenneth Maynard (of North Side), another cousin, was actually working on the building at the back of Albert Lake’s Home Decor. Mr Lake rented that building to me at a reduced rate. He was very helpful and a number of times he would come across to keep my company and to chat. He wanted to see me do well as he knew my parents and when he went to St Kitts he would sometimes meet with my father.”
Mr Lake has expressed pleasure that he provided assistance to Mr Benjamin QC at a critical time of his career. “He is a good man,” he commented last week at St Mary’s Parish Church, following the opening of Law Year 2013-2014.
Mr Benjamin QC occupied Mr Lake’s building for about two years before moving to the Caribbean Commercial Centre next to the office of the late Dr William Herbert. He later took up residence at Little Harbour where he still lives in a dwelling house he purchased from Mr Osbourne Fleming, his friend and former Chief Minister.
“All of those persons were very helpful to me and I thank them for their assistance,” Mr Benjamin QC said, including former Chief Minister, Sir Emile Gumbs, who was familiar with his early work on the island and became one of his friends.Mr Benjamin QC is also grateful to Revolutionary Leader, Mr Ronald Webster, who gave him the keys to a building he owned in the Caribbean Commercial Centre pending later payment. That building ‘shell’, which was substantially remodelled from being a potential bank or restaurant, is now known as Caribbean Juris Chambers.
“People were very helpful,” Mr Benjamin QC reiterated. “Therefore, as the old people say, ‘to whom much is given, much is expected.’” He indicated that it was for that reason he became involved in various community services in Anguilla and was able to draw from his long experience in social work in Birmingham. Over the years he has been actively involved in leadership roles in pro bono work (legal aid to persons unable to meet the cost of representation),the Anguilla Football Association andfootball clubs, the Anguilla Summer Festival and Carnival, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Rotary Club of Anguilla and the Anguilla Tourist Board and as a Talk Show host. He is especially known for the Talk Your Mind programme which resulted in a constitutional case on freedom of expression which has become a regional and international precedent. Such has been his intense involvement in voluntary socialwork that he has long been referred to as ‘the community lawyer’.
“Tell me what hat you are wearing,” he recalled his legal mentor, the late Dame Bernice Lake QC, once asking him as she tried to draw him solely into her unswerving passion for and involvement in the law. She was in fact one of the first persons to welcome him to Anguilla and offered to work with him. She actually gave him some of her responsibilities and research work during her absence in Antigua. Apart from serving as Head of Chambers of his busy law firm – Caribbean Juris Chambers – Mr Benjamin QC has had a long commitment as Magistrate, Additional Magistrate, Coroner and Businessman.
One of his two notable appointments has been Acting High Court Judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court on three occasions, during which he served in Nevis, Montserrat and St Kitts last year and this year. The other has been his appointment as Queen’s Counsel in February this year.
Notwithstanding his humility, Mr Benjamin QC is known to be a disciplinarian especially when it comes to observing the letter of the law and the responsibility of lawyers. Asked how he saw the legal profession developing and what was expected of lawyers in that regard, he replied:
“I wish we can develop not only in Anguilla, but in the Eastern Caribbean, a higher level of maturity and less intellectual dishonesty. It is unfortunate that a lot of our public officials across the Caribbean are perpetrating a high level of intellectual dishonesty. I picked this up a lot moreso when I was on the Bench in Nevis and St Kitts – that people would say one thing to the public, but when you talk with them behind the scenes, they say something opposite.
“I had people in Court who tried to persuade me to take a certain course of action. But if you were a weak person, not having a strong will, and the determination to do what you think is your gut feeling, and what the law tells you is right, you could fall in those traps. You have to be strong and do the right thing.”
“I never thought that I would be a lawyer because I wanted to be a Priest from the time I was a child. That was my first calling, but I then switched to social work. It was the public and Jamaican families in Hansworth, Birmingham UK who encouraged me to do law along with Labour Party supporters in England. So where do I go from here? I don’t know. Where the lord, the law and the community take me, I will go.”
Mr Benjamin QC takes pride in the “tremendous celebration” organised for him by his staff when he was called to the Inner Bar as Queen’s Counsel. The celebrations were held in April 2013 and the firm held an intimate prayer session and breakfast at their office on Friday, 20th September 2013 followed by a church service at Central Baptist Church to give thanks for their milestone.
Mr Benjamin QC added: “In closing, I would like to thank the general public of Anguilla and my staff members who have been the backbone of the office. There are staff members who have been here for twenty years and more – people like Patricia Hodge and KayGumbs, and then people who have been my friends for all my life like Venis Carty. And I have two AnguillianLawyers – Tara Carter and Kristy Richardson – who are scholars and were members of the Anguilla Debating Society, so they are strong on their feet and good academically. There are a lot of young lawyers now who can make Anguilla proud, as these two are making me proud and Anguilla proud as well. I wish to thank them for their support.”
