Sir Henry Hodge (1944–2009)

Born in Peterborough in 1944, Sir Henry Hodge devoted his career to making justice accessible before becoming only the third solicitor appointed as a High Court judge in England and Wales.

Peterborough and education

Henry Egar Garfield Hodge was born in Peterborough on 12 January 1944, during the closing years of the Second World War.

Published accounts record his Peterborough birth but provide little detail about his earliest childhood in the city. He was subsequently educated at Chigwell School in Essex, attending from 1955 until 1961.

Hodge went on to read law at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1965. Rather than following the more traditional barrister’s route towards the senior judiciary, he trained as a solicitor and qualified in 1970.

That choice would define much of his professional life. His career began close to the everyday problems faced by people trying to navigate welfare benefits, housing, family breakdown and an often inaccessible legal system.

Using the law to challenge poverty

In 1972 Hodge joined the Child Poverty Action Group, commonly known as CPAG, as its solicitor. He later became the organisation’s deputy director and assumed responsibility for its network of local branches.

At the time, welfare law was emerging as a distinct field of legal practice. People refused benefits frequently lacked the knowledge or money required to challenge official decisions, while the rules themselves could be complicated and difficult to interpret.

Hodge developed a test-case strategy through which carefully chosen individual cases could establish wider legal principles. Successful challenges did more than secure help for one claimant: they could force government departments to reconsider their interpretation of benefit regulations or change the rules themselves.

His work helped demonstrate that social-security decisions were not simply administrative acts beyond effective challenge. Poorer citizens had legal rights, and those rights could be asserted through courts and tribunals.

For Hodge, access to justice meant more than formally possessing a right. People also needed the advice, representation and financial support required to enforce it.

Civil liberties and family rights

Alongside his work at CPAG, Hodge became a prominent figure in the civil-liberties movement. In 1974 he became chairman of the National Council for Civil Liberties, the organisation now known as Liberty, serving during a period of intense debate about policing, protest, discrimination and government power.

He was also involved with the Legal Action Group and helped establish the Family Rights Group. The latter emerged from concern about the treatment of parents whose children were being taken into local-authority care, sometimes without the safeguards families would later receive through the courts.

The organisation brought together lawyers, social workers and campaigners seeking improvements in both the law and professional practice. It would later contribute to the principles and guidance surrounding the Children Act 1989.

These organisations reflected the developing movement sometimes described as radical or community law: using legal expertise not only to deal with individual cases, but also to expose recurring injustice and improve the system itself.

Hodge Jones & Allen

In September 1977 Hodge joined Peter Jones and Patrick Allen to establish the solicitors’ firm Hodge Jones & Allen. Its first premises were modest offices above a shop on Camden High Street in north London.

The founders had little capital, but they shared a clear purpose: to provide high-quality legal representation to ordinary people, including those who could only pursue their cases with public funding. They built relationships with local law centres and participated in duty-solicitor schemes serving communities across north London.

The practice handled criminal defence, housing, family law, conveyancing and general litigation. Hodge resisted narrow specialisation and became known as a capable generalist who could turn his attention to almost any area of personal law. During his later years in practice, immigration became an increasingly important part of his work.

As senior partner, he helped guide the practice from its precarious beginnings into one of the country’s largest providers of publicly funded legal services. The firm developed a reputation for representing individuals confronting powerful institutions, public authorities and government departments.

Hodge Jones & Allen continues to operate from London. Although considerably larger than the practice founded in 1977, it retains its founding emphasis on civil liberties, human rights and access to justice regardless of a client’s means.

Politics and public service

Hodge’s commitment to social justice also found expression through Labour politics. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in Croydon South at the February 1974 general election and subsequently served as an Islington borough councillor between 1974 and 1978.

It was through Islington politics that he met Margaret Oppenheimer, then Margaret Watson, who would later become a Labour MP and government minister. They married in 1978.

Hodge also assumed influential positions within the legal profession. He served as a vice-president of the Law Society and, from 1996 until 1999, as deputy chairman of the Legal Aid Board.

The Legal Aid Board administered public funding for legal advice and representation. Hodge brought to it direct experience of running a practice whose clients depended heavily upon legal aid, together with a longstanding belief that financial circumstances should not determine whether someone could enforce their rights.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1993 for his service to the Social Security Advisory Committee.

From solicitor to High Court judge

Hodge began sitting judicially as an Assistant Recorder in 1993 and became a Recorder in 1997. These part-time appointments enabled an experienced practising lawyer to hear cases while continuing his work as a solicitor.

In 1999 he left private practice to become a full-time Circuit Judge. His appointment marked an important stage in a journey that remained highly unusual within the English legal system.

Hodge’s solicitor background brought a different kind of experience to the bench. He had advised people in crisis, managed a busy legal-aid practice and worked directly with the tribunals and public bodies responsible for welfare, family and immigration decisions.

In October 2004 he was appointed a judge of the High Court’s Queen’s Bench Division. In accordance with convention he received a knighthood and became professionally known as the Honourable Mr Justice Hodge.

Immigration and asylum

Before his High Court appointment, Hodge had been selected as Chief Immigration Adjudicator in 2001. The position placed him in charge of the judges hearing appeals against government immigration and asylum decisions.

The jurisdiction was legally complex, politically contentious and under considerable administrative pressure. Hodge was credited with reducing a substantial backlog of appeals and making the system more efficient without losing sight of the profound human consequences of its decisions.

In April 2005 he became President of the newly constituted Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. He was responsible not only for deciding cases but also for managing judges and helping the tribunal navigate major structural and procedural changes.

His new judicial responsibilities required a clear separation from his earlier role as a campaigner and Labour activist. He left party politics and approached immigration cases as an independent judge required to apply legislation and legal precedent, including in cases where the outcome remained controversial.

Colleagues nevertheless remembered the humanity he brought to a jurisdiction dealing with people facing displacement, family separation, persecution and removal from the United Kingdom. His administrative experience also helped him command the loyalty of the judges and staff working within the tribunal.

Family, character and final years

Hodge and Margaret built a family life alongside two demanding public careers. They had two daughters together, Anna and Amy, while Hodge also became an engaged father to Margaret’s two children from her earlier marriage.

Friends and colleagues recalled a sociable, generous and humorous man who readily gave time and advice to younger solicitors. He helped lawyers interested in opening practices in working-class communities and encouraged others to regard social-welfare law as serious and valuable professional work.

Away from the law, he was a committed Arsenal supporter and enthusiastic motorcyclist. The sight of a High Court judge arriving for work in motorcycle leathers became part of the affectionate picture painted by those who knew him.

After experiencing serious heart problems, Hodge was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in September 2008. He underwent chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant but died at University College Hospital in London on 18 June 2009. He was 65.

A lasting legal legacy

Hodge’s legacy can be traced through several different parts of British public life. Hodge Jones & Allen continues to represent people in civil-liberties, housing, criminal, family and human-rights cases. The Family Rights Group remains an important voice for families involved with the care system, while welfare rights are now recognised as an established area of legal expertise.

His judicial career also helped demonstrate that solicitors with practical experience of clients, tribunals and community law could make a valuable contribution to the higher judiciary.

In 2011 Supreme Court Justice Lady Hale delivered the Sir Henry Hodge Memorial Lecture on equal access to justice. She presented Hodge as one of the pioneering lawyers who had helped put social-welfare law on the map and carried that commitment to fairness into judicial office.

From his Peterborough birth to the High Court, Hodge’s career was united by a deceptively simple principle: the protection offered by law should be meaningful for everyone, not only those wealthy enough to secure it.