Between August 2007 and June 2008 Professor Hepple was interviewed three times, to record his reminiscences of his career, including his involvement with South Africa, and his long association with the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. The interviewer is Lesley Dingle.
These interviews were recorded and the audio version is available on this website with transcript of those recordings:
– First Interview (21 August 2007): South Africa (1934-1963)
– Second Interview (2 May 2008): Cambridge and UK (1963 – present)
– Third Interview (13 June 2008): Professor Hepple’s Published works
For more information, see the Squire website at http://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent_scholars/
Professor hippo this is our second interview the first was in August last year when we covered the period in your life between your early years as a boy in Johannesburg through your training at Vitz and to the point at which you left South Africa in 1963 perhaps today we can deal with your
Life P 1963 when you were based in the UK and can I ask you to cast your mind back to the end of that year when you first arrived here yes well I arrived uh in England on a cold December day uh seeking Asylum um and I said to the immigration officer
That I intended to study uh at University and he asked me where are your um letters of acceptance and of course I didn’t have any um so he immediately served me uh with a deportation order to go back to Tanzania where I’d already been granted Asylum uh
But my friends out outside um contacted Canon John Collins who was a great friend of those involving anti part struggle H and he I was told then phoned on a Sunday morning the Home Secretary who was then Henry Brook and I was let in for 7 days and then I was let in
Indefinitely and after 3 years uh I was granted British citizenship on the basis of patriotic that was my grandfather had been born in England um so uh that was how I came into the country uh and I then had um a wife and two small children to support and I had thought
About tried to practice at the bar in England but I had no contacts and I had would then have to do all the training as well and I thought I would go back to an academic career and in I realized I needed to get a degree in English law
And I was thinking of going to London University but a South African friend put me in touch with Ken poac who is a was a former South African a fellow of kings and lecturer in Roman Dutch law in the university and he invited me met him and his wife
Rosemary poac who was a Cambridge solicitor I can remember meeting in their small flat in King’s parade and there I met for the first time Colin turpen and another South African who was a fellow of CLA and I also met again my old friend Charles Feinstein who had
Known at bits who was a fellow in CLA at CLA as well in economics and between them they encouraged me to come to Cambridge to study and they put in a good word for me with the then Master s Eric Ashby and the senior tutor Dr noram and I was
Admitted to read the for the what was they called the LL is now called the LNM right and this took you two years rather than the normal 3 years because you had already qualified no I was no it was a 2ye degree cuz I came as an Affiliated
Student and I had the choice of either doing the tripos in two years or doing the postgraduate LLB and I opted for the LLB I didn’t feel like going through the tripos regime and um the uh at that time you had to spend two years in Cambridge
Now it’s only one um but uh the first year was I took four subjects the second year I had to write a dissertation and so I got there be over two years and this dissertation was this supervised by oh hiin that right it was yeah um the uh when I finished the first
Year um I was looking for a subject and I had been struck uh I mean perhaps I can talk about this in a later interview but I can explain then how I came to the subject but oh Higgins was wonderful uh supervisor so I got to know him uh then
The the subjects I took in the first year um also uh introduced me to some wonderful teaching first of all I did conflict of laws and had Professor lipstein he’s one of the best teachers I ever had uh then I took a subject called negligence in English and Roman law uh
With uh Mr Micky dasas and he too was a very systematic very clear teacher and it was a wonderful bridge for me between South African law Roman Dutch and English law uh because we were comparing what I was familiar with Alexa quilia with the English concepts of Duty
Of care and so on I learned really my foundation in English law of taught through Mickey Das uh and for a long time I was very influenced by his approach but later I changed my mind um and then I the third subject I took was uh administrative law
And there I had some wonderful teachers as well uh Professor Tony Bradley he wasn’t a professor then he was fellow Trinity Hall Jeffrey Wilson later who founded the law school of boric later uh he was a fellow of queens and also Paulo hiin uh who did some of the
Administrative law teaching so that took me into uh that that field as well and um I did company law uh and there I had um Ken po and Len cely were my two teachers and I I had studied comp in South Africa but this was a much broader
Course which had originally been devised by Bill wurn later Lord wurn and wurn had just left Cambridge he had been a fellow of care and he used to send me um every week his handouts from the Lac which gave me a lot of ammunition to fire difficult questions at Ken and S um
And so it was a it was was a very stimulating year a very busy year yes because uh you were also called to the bar that year yeah I was uh over the vacations I did the bar uh course which was different from what it is now I had
To um I was given exemption for most of the first part but I had to do the second part and I took the exams and it was quite frustrating because for example you had to do company law and in those days they didn’t let you take into
The bar exam a copy of the statute and I can remember writing essays there was a firm called Gibson and welon who used to do this a correspondence course and I would write these essays and it would come back with a very poor mark saying don’t quote all these cases just
Memorize the sections of the statute I was telling them too much and um I had to sort of refine my technique having done the university course for the kind of very lowlevel bar cour that we had in those days so I did those exams and then I was called
Um uh to gra by gra in in 1966 yeah in that same year you went to Nottingham University where you stayed for 2 years were you a lecturer there yes uh what had happened was that when I I got a first class in my uh LLB exam
And one of the examiners I think in the negligence course was Alan Pritchard the brother actually of Michael Pritchard of keys College he was a Prof I don’t think he was a professor then but he was a lectorate at Notting University extraordinarily nice and warm generous
Man and he was on the lookout for lectures and he asked Kurt lipstein uh was there anybody who was interested and Kurt unknown to me um suggested my name and I was then invited for an interview and they offered me the job um and held
It open for a year while I finished my second year yeah station so then I moved to Nottingham and there I I came very much under the influence of Professor Sir John Smith uh who was one of The Originators in this country of case method teaching he had
This wonderful case book on contract it’s a well-known American style and I was slightly familiar with it from my earlier days in South Africa where Professor har my head of Department had used it um but he encouraged me to use it in the law of taught I was primarily
Responsible for teaching taught and uh uh I found this the best way of teaching I really enjoyed it and I developed my own set of cases and materials which eventually led to the publication of my case book and one of my students there was my first year there was Martin
Matthews who then when I came back to Cambridge came to do graduate course and we wrot and we edited this book together so that was I think a a big influence John Smith and Ellen Pritchard a very productive time yes early in your career at the in in the UK
Yes you became an assistant lecturer at Cambridge in 1968 and you stayed in his position for the next 8 years what were the circumstances of your return to C well I like I like the Nottingham law school but um my then wife um just didn’t settle very well in Nottingham and she
Was very keen to come back to Cambridge we’d had two very happy years living in college accommodation in Cambridge and so I applied uh to Cambridge and I was appointed first to an assistant electrip and after 3 years upgraded to electrici um in Cambridge and uh I at
The same time was invited to become a fellow of CLA college so that was uh for that 8-year period uh those were probably my most productive years do you have reminiscences of any of the people who were in place when you came back to Cambridge yes um well I mean let me say
That um in my career I’ve had a number of very important academic influences one always is learning from one’s colleagues and it would be invidious to to single out too many individuals but I think um the people who influenced me most uh were first of all Paulo Higgins
Because he had supervised my research arranged its publication in the form of a book called race jobs and the law in Britain 1968 second edition 1970 um but he immediately invited me to share the labor law lectures with him um and uh we developed a a remarkable partnership over that period because
First of all we got um a lot of research students that was a time when labor law was very prominent on the public agenda there’ been a report by the Royal commission under Lord Donovan um the conservative government introduced its industrial relations act in 1971 to try
And uh restrain the unions uh there had been the miners strike of 1984 and the heath government fell and a lot of new law was coming out the law of unfair dismissal all these things we didn’t have before and um Paul and and I um got the opportunities then to write quite
Extensively we wrote first of all a book um on individual employment law and and various other things which I can talk about on another occasion but we did that and the other big thing we did was we got together a group of research students research students uh it was
Easier for those from the UK to get research Awards in the 1960s and’ 7s and um we had had at one point as many as 16 people doing research in Lael in the early ‘ 70s and many of them have gone on to important careers such as Patrick
Elias who’s now the president of the employment appeal tribunal um uh Brian napia who became a professor he was a Lector here and then a professor and um in our practices at the Scottish B um a whole range of other people who went on to become either academic or
Practicing lawyers in this field and we used to hold regular weekly seminars just on labor law and we also attracted in that period some visiting professors so three of the two of the arthor goodart professors were labor lawyers one was Sir Oto K FR about whom I say
Something in a moment the other one was Professor fuler Schmidt of um uh from Stockholm and uh we also got archal Cox uh he was the pit professor of American history but in fact was a well-known leading American labor lawyer as well as having been the man who um was sacked by
Richard Nixon when he was investigating the Water Gate or other scandals so um we it was a very fruitful and enjoyable period for labor law but I was also labor La wasn’t even regarded as my main subject by The Faculty my main subjects were contract taught and also administrative law in the
LLB and um the LLB um at that time had a rather small class about 50 people and I shared the administrative law with my friend David Williams who later became vice Chancellor um and uh then Professor Stanley desmith who’s really one of the founders now modern administ of law uh
Was appointed to the Downing chair and I was asked to sort of move aside so he could take over which I was very glad to do because he was such a distinguished and and very nice man and I worked uh with him in other capacities um but that
Meant I gave up administrative law which I’ve always thought was one of the biggest mistakes of my career because it was just the most exciting moment for administrative law uh the case of R and Baldwin had been decided in 1964 and there were huge developments in judicial
Review and I always felt that’s what I should have been doing as well as labor law uh but I I kind of missed the vote because I got into so I was taught and contract nebor law and some administrative law with what I was teaching both in supervisions and in
Lectures very interesting well your work was very significant during that period because your next appointment was to a chair and that was Vis it um university of Kent yes um well the university uh of Kent um I was invited by um Professor CLA P who is also former South African uh and
Professor Brian Simpson um to come to Kent and they created a chair for me and I think I succumbed to flattery um and it turned out I’m afraid to be a mistake uh because when I I got got there um I thought it was a university based on a
Collegiate system like Cambridge but it couldn’t work uh in a new modern University because the individual colleges there were four colleges had no resources of their own and everything was planned by Central bureaucracy so one moment you would be teaching in keen’s college and next moment in Elliot
College on the other side of the campus and um the students were law students were divided between the four colleges there was no faculty building you didn’t ever meet your other law College colleagues who were in other colleges rather like an unreformed Oxford but Cambridge never suffered from that and
So um we uh after a year there um I was approached to become a full-time chairman of industrial tribunals I had been a part-time chairman in Cambridge since 1974 and I just kind of needed a way out of Kent but I wanted to stay living in Canterbury because my children were at
School there and uh my parents had moved to Canterbury as well so I didn’t want to disrupt that and this job in Ashford in Kent came up so I spent 5 years in Ashford as the as a chairman of industrial tribunals but I remained an honory
Professor at Kent and I used to lecture on the course on I think it was called um labor law and Industrial relations at Kent I used to go up you know once a week and give my lectures so I kept a connection with the academic world and I also wrote what was probably
Regard as one of my more important books because I had a lot of free time as a chairman of was a much easier but better paid job than being a professor well this period must have coincided with that time of considerable unrest leading up to the 84 85 minor
Strike um that happened afterwards um while I the the the uh there was a period of unrest um I mean it had been going on since really the 1960s right down till um you might say 19 um the early 1980s the minor strike of 84 so it was going
Through the period but as a chairman of industrial tribunals I wasn’t much concerned with that because industrial tribunals deal with individual disputes so I was dealing with unfair dismissal race and sex discrimination for example when I was sitting in Cambridge I heard the very first case of indirect sex
Discrimination here in Cambridge and the first decision on the subject reported was given by me in Cambridge and similarly when I was sitting in Kent I um developed because of my academic knowledge the notion of the duty of mutual cooperation which was very little used in labor law until then but I gave
A judgment which was reported and it’s it’s now the one of regard as one of the basic tenants of labor law but it I was able through my judicial work um to actually develop some ideas because you’re always getting rich new material in in cases so it must have
Been very fulfilling work uh well it was actually um in one respect fulfilling because you were dealing with real people in the real world but it became very boring um because I think most traditional work is about facts and every case is different there’s not a
Lot of law in it so as somebody who’s always been intellectually fascinated by law um and had been a professor of law um I I think I was frustrated and I stayed for 5 years and then thought well now’s the time to get back and I
Was in about to go back to University of Kent who said they could find position for me and the famous um letter came around from the University grants commission 1981 82 uh making drastic Cuts in funding and Kent could not then found the post and that’s when I applied
For the job at University College London and this was a chair yeah which you held from 1982 to 1993 and you were the professor of English law yes do you have any specific memories at this time well I mean the interesting thing uh you might ask why am I
Professor did I become professor of English law um University College London was the first university in the United Kingdom to have um Regular teaching English law blackon had started lectures on English law at Oxford uh but all of this soon died out and Cambridge although it had the Downing professor of
The laws of England was not teaching English law until late in the 19th century but in 1828 University College was London was founded for the denters for the the non anglicans uh the Catholics the Jews the agnostics and all the rest and the first thing they did was establish a faculty
Of Law and they had two chairs the one was the chair of jurist prudence who was held by Austin Who U was the famous disciple of benam and the other was held by Andrew Amos who was actually practitioner and judge who was the professor of English law and I was
Appointed to the Amos chair and I remember sir James litill um who was then provest of University College saying he had Amos in me and he had in Professor William trining he was appointed at the same time a he wanted to reestablish that kind of um connection because I came from the
Practical side of law whereas William Twining was a great theorist so um and I I think in many ways I I had some of my very best teaching years at UCL I had a thoroughly enjoyable time I think it’s a wonderful institution and a wonderful um
Faculty of which I became Dean and head of Department in 19 uh 89 I think it was yes 89 did you move down there profess all did uh yes I me I’ve been living in Canterbury and then lived in in London until 1993 yes so during this time um what
Were your impressions of government legislation in the early 80s that so drastically reduced the power of the unions well I found myself quite often on television commenting on things like the minor strike and so on not on the merits but more on the legal position because this was a huge confrontation
Mrs thater wanted to restrain the power of the unions and uh ER she uh basically took away the right to strike limited it very severely uh restricted collective bargaining and um generally that coincided with an economic period in which Britain was moving from manufacturing where the uh unions had
Their greatest strength to service Industries and also the feminization of the workforce is taking place so the huge structural changes as well as legislation and one saw the role of the unions changing dramatically in the same time what was happening was what some people call the juridification of law
That is all sorts of disputes like dismissal discipline discrimination which would have been dealt with informally now became the subject of legal regulation so it was a period of major change But the irony was that that I wasn’t actually teaching much labor law because there was already
A professor of Labor La at UCL called Professor Roger R out and although I did a bit of teaching on that course I think I did some discrimination when I started my own seminars on discrimination I wasn’t in the mainstream of labor law at that time I was rather teaching my main
Course was contrac and T and there came the influence of glan Williams which had existed before because uh when I was at Cambridge as a lecturer uh one day in the early 1970s Glanville Williams knocked on my door and he said I’ve got these boxes of
Papers on the law of Tor I’d like you to look at them I started writing a book I’m now concentrating on criminal law and I would like you to look at this and see if you’re willing to complete this perhaps I can talk more about that later but Glen will Williams’s
Conception uh was of if you like a unified law of obligations not a narrow division between contract of Tau and restitution uh and that influenced my Approach so when I came to UCL and had complete Freedom unlike Cambridge you don’t have freedom because you’ve got so
Many other people teaching uh in a topic you have to get that agreement I could devise my own course and I divis a course on the law of obligations so we taught in an inter ated way over 2 to 3 years the law of obligations and we mixed it up between contract ordin
Institution all in the same cycle of three years for all students so that was a very interesting experience and there were some um you know young colleagues who worked very hard to to achieve that so that was what the main work I was doing it had to be reduced when I took
On the role of head of Department nevertheless you still maintained your interest in industrial relations oh yeah this time oh yes yes and I remained a part-time chairman of industrial tribunals I used to sit in London North tribunals about once a week over that period as well so Professor he what actually are
Your views on this new if you like sort of industrial the relationship between um the government and the unions and know that’s a big a big a big topic I don’t know if I can give a simple answer um I think my views have changed um I’m I’m
Certainly um not a supporter of the neoliberal ideology of Mr Thatcher um which seem to think I think she famously said there is no such thing as Society there are only individuals and I don’t accept that I think um there is society and I think um what what we’ve moved
Towards is a notion of human rights to protect the individual but you still got to recognize the collective interest of society an important part of a collective interest are the groups of if you like autonomous organizations um universities or one which have lost so much of their power and
Autonomy uh another would be the ends of court and a third is the trade unions where um it seemed to me uh they needed some reform but unions are a basic expression of democratic will because they involve Ordinary People in deciding on their working conditions and their
Lives and I thought the you know I therefore was opposed to a lot of her legislation although I fully recognize that the unions too were um in a sense abusing their power at one point went they they were um you know going in for all these um strikes for example in the
Famous win of discontent uh in 1979 1980 which seem to be an abuse of their position and so in a way they were asking for it did you even meet any of these um personalities um Union um yes no I knew uh quite a number of leading Union figures like Jack
Jones um and others and and um I did a lot of work for the TU and I was involved in helping the advising the TU on its proposals for legislative reform uh I also advised somebody called Tony Blair who was the employment spokesman for the labor party at that time I was
On a group of academics who were giving advice but he didn’t always follow advice um so no I was I was much I was involved in that but in a way in the background um EU legislation has had quite an effect on this area of the law
In in your view for the better uh from British point of view for the better but I think uh my first contact with it came in the 1970s when I was still in Cambridge and I was appointed to one of the Committees of experts at that time dealing with the directive on the
Transfers of undertakings and then I was on several other EC committees and I began to realize that the mistake the EC was making was to make very specific directives on particular matters where you couldn’t really harmonize even partially the laws of the member states and I started
Advocating um in the I think it was the early 80s uh that a different approach should be taken and that was to have a broad framework directive uh particularly enshrining fundamental Al rights and uh that the member states should then have greater Freedom as to how to achieve the
Objectives and that I’m glad to say is what has happened in the EU and it was inevitable once they enlarged the EU 27 members you couldn’t regulate directly all of the countries in that way so we’ve had um more like a famous director on health and safety at work which is a
Framework directive and then a lot of guidance as to how to implement it and this has happened in other areas as well so I think uh uh labor legislation in the EU is necessary but the current approach of rather seeking to achieve objectives on prescribing detailed regulation is a much better
Approach during this time Professor hippo you were committ commissioner for racial equality from 1986 to 1990 can you tell me something about this role yes um of course I had been active from the time I came to United Kingdom in the uh campaigns against um discrimination and I’d written on the
Subject and I’d had various academic Commissions in that field and then I was asked in 1986 to become a member of the commission for racial equality and um uh that was extremely interesting but also rather frustrating experience uh the and while there I shared various inquiries
For example uh the inquiry into the St Mary’s Medical School for racial discrimination in their Admissions and also inquiries into London Underground and so on I was chairman of the complaints committee and chairman of their employment committee so it was very um interesting four years frustrated because during that period
The salon rushy Affair occurred where the fwell was issued and I think the commission wasted a lot of time debating this because some of us who are Advocates of free speech were very um disappointed at the um way in which some people were protesting about Rush’s free speech um
Uh but on the other hand that wasn’t the job of the commission I thought and and it it it rather frustrated some of the work we did interesting um in 1990 the Banning order was overturned that you’d um been under on your days in South Africa and you went back to South
Africa you were immediately invited to the labor Congress in Duran yes and you acquainted yourself with a new the new sort of generation of labor lawyers Thompson Andie yes do you have any Recollections of that trip back to South Africa in 19 I uh it was a very um emotional
Experience um I can’t remember if we talked about this previously but when I came back um I uh was immediately met by my old friend John Dugard who had been a student here with me when I did the lb and he took me straight um back through
Johannesburg which I hadn’t seen for 27 years and which had U Been Changed in you know a lot of New Roads and buildings and so on but I went and visited the house in which I was born and another one which I had lived and uh
Went to the university and then I flew down to Durban and gave a lecture to the labor law conference so it was a very emotional experience from me get back I was actually on route to uh Namibia the international labor organization had appointed me as an expert to draft a new
Labor law for Namibia which I did I spent sometime in Namibia H and then at the the same just after that I was invited by the new South African government um in I think it must have been about 94 to uh join a ministerial task force to draft the Labor Relations
Act in South Africa and that involved extensive meetings both in Geneva at the io and in South Africa and I worked with some of the people you mentioned uh in that and also I worked with my very close friend monfred Vice professor of law at at frankfur University he was one
Of the other experts on the committee and um it was a very stimulating experience because I felt all the years I’d SP spent in the UK um trying to gather knowledge and understanding of labor law um I could pay back because I I could bring that experience to Bear
When they were devising new laws and I’d like to say that some of the provisions in Labor Relations Act I’m not sure how successful were based directly on my own um knowledge and experience of Labor Relations in 1993 you became master of Clare yes and you stayed in that position for 10 years
2003 and um in 1994 you became a member of the LA Chancellor’s advisory committee on legal education and conduct yes uh well yet another South African enters the picture uh Lord Johan stain uh who was chairman at that time and I had a phone call from him would I
Join the committee now I had been while I was in London the uh chairman of the heads of University University law schools so and I had been attending meetings convened by the advisory committee on legal education conduct atle um and um I worked quite closely with Professor Peter Burks who was the
Secretary of the society public teachers of law um on this field so it wasn’t altogether a surprise um Peter Burks himself disliked the committee so much that he didn’t want to remain a member so in a way I was his replacement and uh that was an extremely interesting experience but again there were
Frustrations uh the positive side was that I was asked by Lord stain to draft the report of the committee on legal education its first report which is a very substantial document and I put a lot of work into it there were a lot of discussions by the committee and I gave
My inaugural leure as a professor at Cambridge on that report called the renewal of the uh liberal law degree I won’t go into detail on it now but I think the report was uh in many ways quite an important uh turning point in legal education in this country uh and
Um the frustrating part of the work on that committee was our main task was to deal with the rights of audience of um the crown prosecution service in the high court and the committee was completely divided on this issue and my South African experience taught me as it
Taught Lord stain uh that it’s a bad idea for the prosecution uh to uh be too closely tied into the high court proceeding in other words I think the traditional English system of drawing as your prosecutors people who are also people at acting for defendants uh is is
Admirable because it means you can see it from both points of view and you form a more objective View and I didn’t like the idea of a professional Crown prosecution service at the highest level drawn only from people who had experienc as prosecutors and had never defended
Anybody so for that reason I was opposed to extending uh the rights of audience in the highest courts and um so there was a divided report on this eventually the government uh disregarded the report uh completely and did its own thing and now they’ve all got rights of audience
And the whole situation has been transformed but I they were very stimulating years but eventually the acli um didn’t fit the government’s agenda and it was wound up and a much more limited body called the legal services consultant panel was set up and I became a member of that
Uh but after 2 years I gave that up also during this time from 98 to 200000 you were on the runny me commission for the future of multiethnic Britain that um was set up by the runy me trust which is a charitable body to try and look at the problems that were
Had developed in Britain um through immigration and settled ethnic minorities it was chaired by parek Lord perek who with whom I had worked on the commission for racial equality and um it um produced a report um which on which I made I have to say a fairly limited contribution my contribution with the
Sub the chapters relating to the law on discrimination and the setting up of a single commission and this coincided with research I had been doing at the time in Cambridge with my wife Mary cusy on um u a review of UK anti-discrimination legislation uh for which we worked in this faculty the law
Faculty in Cambridge while you were the master of CLA you became a professor in the faculty of law at Cambridge this was in 1995 did you find Professor hipple that the faculty altered greatly in the almost 20 years that you’ve been away what did well first of all it increased largely in
Size H it was a much bigger faculty than one I’d known uh secondly it had been transformed in terms of the administration I had been Secretary of the faculty Board of law from 1970 to 72 and we were all in the old schools and and there was also a secretary of
The board of Graduate Studies here my time was Gareth Jones and the two of us um sort of basically ran the faculty with the chairman at that time was Dick goodison was the chairman of the faculty but when I came back this was highly efficient professional uh
Administrators um and um a much larger administrative staff the other change was the library because um I had as a student and my earlier appear in Cambridge of course always worked in the Squire law library in this wonderful setting uh when I came back this current building was under
Construction I think it was opened about 1995 yes yes and um so there was that transition into the new building and I’m a great fan of the new building because I think it’s got the space and the light and the facilities we need I was rather sorry they didn’t build rumors for
Faculty members as well but I understand first of all the pressures of money but secondly the feeling that we shouldn’t take people away from their college activities and if they had a faculty office they would never be in the college so uh the um they were major Transformations there
Were other there were some quite a few colleagues who hadn’t been here before but there were also some others who I knew extremely well like John colier uh and um David Williams and and I’m just say at this point a word about David Williams Because when I first joed
The Faculty David Williams um and was my more or less next door neighbor he lived over the road with his young family and my young family so we got to know each other very well and then we shared the administrative law course when I came back David had already become president
Of wolson college and he’s always been extraordinary kind to me and I particularly uh thought very highly of his work Works which I don’t think have been highly enough recognized in the world um he wrote a book on not in the public interest about official Secrets
He wrote a book called keeping the peace about public order which are really seminal works but uh are a style that I approve of that they’re addressed to the general public or the intelligent public not just to the legal profession so I I admired his work and then of course um
He uh was also became VI Chancellor of the university and it was he who admitted me on behalf of the chancellor as master of Clare college so it was a nice rounding up of our relationship do you have any recollection of the translocation from the old pises to the new site well I
Mean first of all it caused me some disruption because I used to be able to just slip out of the Master’s lodic CLA through the back door it’s the old Squire library and it was very convenient I could go there at weekends now I had to walk for 5 or 10 minutes to
Come to the new building but uh I wasn’t personally very much involved in the move but it went I thought very smoothly the only uh difficulty was about the soundproofing of the library where we had extensive meetings as others can tell you um and eventually we got in the
Screens which I think it made it into a very attractive library and a nice place to work for had a sabatical year 1999 to 2000 and I worked in the faculty most of the time on the research project funded by nfield and the round Tre Trust on the enforcement of UK anti discrimination
Legislation and it was I found it a very good working environment very pleased to hear that um Professor he do you remember Professor Dugard from this period because he was in C yes well he was an old friend from my back from 1964 my student days and we’d always kept in
Touch he went back to South Africa and played a very important um role uh in the uh resistance if you like to parate laws and he became the leading South African International so it was very nice to welcome him back when he was a good art professor and he stayed for a
Second year as the acting director of the lb uh Research Center during this time presumably you still your major interest was labor law uh well no when I first came back I was asked to teach taught and I did taught for about two years uh but then
Um as I was a non University teaching officer and I was standing in for people on leave I wasn’t asked to continue with that and then I got involved well from the start as because I was involved in labor law so together with Simon Deacon and Katherine Barnard two wonderful
Colleagues uh we really ran labor law together for um the whole period I was there after I retired in 2001 I carried on doing some laboral teaching for the faculty for a year or two professor hepp your retirement seems to have been extremely busy I don’t know whether you originally planned a more
Peaceful retirement but then just became overwhelmed by offers from various bodies yes but you seem not to have really well it was in two stages uh first of all I retired as a professor of law at the age of 67 and then I stayed on as master of CLA college for a
Further two years so I was 69 so I gradually got out of the faculty side although I was still doing bits of work for the faculty various inquiries and so on such as inquiry to whether we should have a course of professional legal education here and then uh in 2003
I was really wanted very much to finish a book I’d been working on for 10 years so the first year of So-Cal retirement was worked full-time on getting this book out on labor laws and global trade uh which I did and then as you say other
Things came up I was um I’ve been particularly involved in four uh human rights and educational charity uh the first was something which had a long connection called the Canon Collins educational trust for South Africa which raises money for projects and students uh at University of South
Africa were to study in this country in in the UK um the second was the European Roma rights Center where I was asked by my old friend Anthony Lester Lord leester to take over from him as chairman of that it’s based in Budapest but it um seeks it’s a public interest
Law organization which takes up cases on behalf of the Roma who are the most uh oppressed minority in Europe and uh we’ve had some very important Court victories most recently against the segregation of Roman children into special schools in uh uh Czech Republic in
Slovakia uh and um I gave that up I came to the end of my term of office in 2007 uh then I was involved as a board member of the international center for the legal protection of Human Rights inter rights and um more recently I become chairman of something called the
Equal Rights trust which seeks really to uh promote equality of opportunity and anti-discrimination legislation worldwide so uh those have particularly kept me busy and I’ve kept up research I’m still working on um a major comparative study with colleagues from other universities in Europe on the history of labor law so uh
And and finally if I can just mention perhaps the most significant of my activities in this period uh was my chairmanship of the na Council on bioethics which took about an average one day a week uh that um uh council is an independent body funded by the naille foundation welcome trust and medical
Research Council which looks at bioethical issues and while chairman I’ve myself chaired two working parties one on the subject of the ethics of research into genetics and human behavior like the connection between your genes and your intelligence or your sexuality and so on uh and that was a a
Report on the subject which hadn’t been looked at before and then more recently I chaired the working party on um the forensic use of Bio inflammation in particular DNA and that was very interesting we got a report out rather quickly and it’s had a lot of coverage
Because it deals with all the current disputes about civil liberties police powers on the one hand and the benefits of DNA in in fighting crime fascinating how did you come to be involved in these areas I think nfield Council I became involved in because of ignorance um I
Think the qualification the job was not to know anything the subject like the famous Cambridge advertisement for a lecture in what was then called Mohammad in law in the 1960s and the advertisement said no knowledge of the subject is required what they had in mind was that they were going to train
Somebody um into the field and I I learned on the job I I was chosen because I had um I think U it was perceived I had qualities of chairmanship and I had a general interest in the field um partly through my work in the Lord taught and on human
Rights so uh this came in useful and I I developed my knowledge over period and just as I sort of reached the period of thinking beginning to understand this my term of office ended at the end of 2007 but I still do odd bits of work for the
Council and in the meantime in 2003 he became fellow of the British Academy yes and in 200 before you nighted um how did this honor transpire well I there was a leaked a minute uh which got into the press that the committee which considers honors it said there are too many um
Knighthoods in the law faculty of Cambridge I think I was the sixth or seventh uh such nude it was a complete surprise I had no idea it was going on I have no idea what processes come into play in it and the citation was simply for services to legal studies so you
Know it was a great honor to be given this but I I took it in part as an honor to The Faculty because we have this tradition I fear I may be and and James cord the chairman said he thought I would be the last because there’d be in
This publicity there were too many Cambridge Knights but wom the long lines John Baker um s lar and going all the way back yes Derek Bard yes also one of that’s right yes well that takes us then to your work current work as a judge of the United Nations administrative
Tribunal this was an appointment in 2006 yes uh I mean that again was a total um mystery to me because I was asked by the foreign office where they I would like to um accept a nomination but I heard nothing further and then one day I was in Geneva for another purpose and
A French judge came up to me and congratulated me on the fact that the general assembly of the UN had elected me as a judge of this tribunal uh it is in fact a kind of employment Tribunal for all the 100,000 or more employees of the UN all over the
World it’s the final kind of court of appeal because the UN being a sovereign body is not subject to any national jurisdiction uh people who are sacked by the un can’t go to uh an American or British court so this is their only legal recourse and I’ve only in fact um
Been doing it for a year now uh and it’s quite quite interesting it only involves two months a year one one month in J year and one month uh in New York see and it’s being the whole thing is being reformed at the moment I’m not sure how much
Longer I will be a member if there’s a new system I may fall by the wayside so for example when your term comes to an end they won’t necessarily appoint someone from the UK no it’s not a UK appointment there are seven judges uh each from a different region of the
World and my predecessor was an Irish judge uh they’re all people who have to have had Senor usually traditional experience and so they very interesting group of people uh drawn from different regions and different legal systems and I’ve got the kind of common law slot there’s also always an American judge uh
And and I would be rep when I leave I would be replaced I think by Common lawyer but not LLY a English one I noticed the jurisdictions include Greece Sri Lanka Argentina France Singapore there currently I get changes from time to time yeah on your visits to the United Nations do
You have any contact with the South African delegations at all um not directly no I mean I with I have contact with the United Kingdom delegation I mean that’s seem to be my origin I’m now British not South African no yes Professor hipple I noticed that you played a substantial role in drafting
Certain important government bills between 1975 in 2003 I’m thinking now bills for new labor and also under the Wilson government what Springs to mind there is for example the 1975 Sex discrimination bill was also the 76 race relations the equality Bill more recently um how did you find this
Experience of collaboration yeah I must say I didn’t actually have a direct hand in the drafting of any of the 1970s legislation um other than the Discrimination legislation uh I had been involved in the race relations field since I read the first book on the subject in
1968 and I was involved in what became the race relations act of 1976 and the sex Discrimination Act I was quite closely involved with that and then I more recently have been involved with these proposals for a single equality act based on our Cambridge research uh
But I must say I I haven’t really been involved in the drafting process at the government level with any of this legislation I’ve been more an outside commentator making contributions in the South African context and Namibia I did draft life ble legislation I also drafted legislation
For Hong Kong um and uh just before the Chinese take over and the Chinese repealed what I done was Trade union legislation so looking back over your very eventful career what would you say are your most outstanding memories or achievements well I I won’t talk about achievements that’s for others to judge
But I think um I’ve been extraordinary lucky uh whenever things seem to be going badly then another you know one door closes another one always opens and I’ve had some very similar experience I suppose Above All I’ve enjoyed teaching I like the contact with students but I
Have a kind of reputation as being a hard teacher who expects Perfection from his students um and there are others who are much um gentler and perhaps get more out of their students in one way but my Approach has been to be quite demanding but I’ve enjoyed it um secondly uh I
Think that period with up to 16 or 20 research students in Cambridge in the 70s working with Paul Higgin uh was extremely stimulating and we were kind of laying down the foundations for a new subject with all the changes that were going on so I enjoyed that I enjoyed the
Creative side um one um Lord of appeal who shall be nameless describe me as a sensible radical and I I really like that description I hope I live up to it because I like to do radical things but I like to do them in a rational way so I
Was lucky in having as influences uh on the one hand um s oton with whom I worked on various things he was a radical but a very clear thinker on a comparative basis and the other hand I worked with Glenville Williams he was the most rational utilitarian man I’ve ever met um very
Shy man but on the other hand somebody who would subject everything to careful analysis on on a rational basis and I think those were both influences which I’ve tried to bring in to bear in my work so I enjoyed all of that and I finally I think I’ve enjoyed very much
The comparative legal scholarship I mean one of my failings is an inability to speak many languages and it’s partly due to my South African background and um the result uh however has been that English is becoming more frequently used and I can get past in one or two other
Languages at the reading level so uh the result is that I’ve I’ve gradually developed context and we’ve done a lot of comparative work together and I think working with these colleagues working for the uh expert Committees of the Europe commission and also working as an expert for the international labor
Organization the international of Labor studies traveling for them uh we sent for example to to Russia to advise the new government there in 1992 there have all been very real highlights in my uh in my career and I suppose I should say that the most emotional thing was going back to South
Africa in 1990 and then seeing the new South Africa and having a little role in the new South Africa 27 years yes yes Professor heppo do you have any regrets things that you think you good I uh well we have many regrets but I think um academically as I’ve said I’m
Sorry I gave up administrative um and uh I think that would have been a very interesting I suppose I would have had to give up something else but one always has to teach a range of subjects and you’re not always interested in all of them I think
I was interested in everything I taught but I couldn’t keep them all up to the same level but uh in the fields of Labor law and discrimination law I suppose I had I’ve had the greatest passion and therefore it’s been the greatest commitment but I again the law of TS I
Sort of faded out of that in the mid90s and a new edition of my casebook was just coming out with others doing it and looking through the proofs I think I wish I’d be able to write on that you know it’s very interesting yes so what do you still hope
For well I hope to keep up as I am that’s all I can say uh it’s a wonderful environment Cambridge and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else because uh The Faculty is very kind to its retired professors and you know we have full use of the facilities and you feel part of
The family and the same applies to my college of course so I think uh uh it’s it’s a great environment it’s intellectually stimulating lots of friends in Cambridge and so on well thank you so much for yet another fascinating interview my pleasure I’m