Enhancing Democratic Habits: An oral history of the Law Centres movement

This project is an in-depth archival analysis and oral history of the development of Law Centres over the past 50-years. It aims to explore the relationship between legal case work, community based strategic litigation, social campaigns and the participation of the citizenry in the civic sphere. We will collect and analyse all the annual reports produced by Law Centres.

Life story interview methods will also be employed to gather the personal accounts of Law Centre activists. Using the records and testimony of pioneers and Law Centre workers, we will explore the people who fuelled these changes, the complex internal dynamics of the 'movement' and the ways in which Law Centres challenged conventional legal practice.

This research will allow us to reflect on the successes and failures of this form of radical lawyering, including the extent to which the issues it brought to the fore remain live today and the origins of some 'radical' practices that have now been absorbed into mainstream legal practice.

This project brings together a unique interdisciplinary team of socio-legal and community justice scholars, oral historians and civil society partners. It is a collaboration between the Oxford Centre of Socio-Legal Studies and Queens University, Belfast, with the support of the British Library, National Life Stories and the Law Centres Network. The research represents a rare opportunity to consider the influence of Law Centres on the legal and democratic system based on the testimony of those who made it happen.

Capturing the views of pioneers of the movement is particularly urgent given the ages of the early pioneers.

The first Law Centres were established in impoverished areas where they acted for those who could not afford to pay for legal services. They dealt with subject areas, such as welfare rights, immigration, housing, discrimination and domestic violence, which had been marginalised in mainstream legal education and practice. Law Centres also acted to achieve broader political and social change through case work, strategic litigation and community based campaigns.

They also rejected the established legal profession's claim to neutrality, recognised the expertise of those without legal qualifications and sought to work without workplace hierarchy. The project will provide greater understanding of the contribution that those who worked in Law Centres made to changing conceptions of lawyering.

The proposed work also has much broader scholarly and practical implications. There is considerable contemporary debate about the extent to which mature liberal democracies are seen as relying on institutions run by social and political elites from which the disadvantaged feel remote. This has given rise to widespread debate about the dangers of an emerging 'democratic deficit' in which citizens are increasingly retreating from engaging in public life.

By focusing on the stories, motivations and perspectives of pioneers and activists in Law Centres, this research will consider how the engagement of Law Centres with impoverished local communities promoted active citizenship. A key goal of the project will be to explore what can be learnt from the many stories of the movement that could inform current attempts to tackle failures in democracy, access to law, regimes of rights and community 'voice'.

The sound and documentary archives created and curated by the research team will provide a valuable addition to collections of British contemporary life held at the British Library/National Life Stories and by the Law Centres Network. These will provide a rich resource for scholars and members of the public interested in the dynamics and everyday practicalities of grass roots social movements.

Expert training and support in oral history skills and archival management provided to Law Centres will also enhance their capacity to curate their own histories at a local level.