Spotlight Interview with civil rights lawyer Marcia Willis Stewart

To launch our Spotlight Interview series, we have multi award-winning civil rights lawyer Marcia Willis Stewart KC (Hon), managing director of the prestigious civil rights law firm Birnberg Peirce. During a long and celebrated career, she has represented the families of Dawn Sturgess, the Grenfell Tower fire, those killed at Hillsborough, Mark Duggan and Jean Charles de Menezes, among others. In 2023 Willis Stewart acted for the family of Ruth Perry, a head teacher who took her own life following an Ofsted inspection.

An arts lover, avid reader and champion of young people, Willis Stewart speaks to Words of Colour’s executive director Joy Francis about how her Jamaican background shaped her passion for social justice, pressuring public institutions to be accountable in the wake of a tragedy, what these miscarriages of justice say about Britain and why wellbeing and creativity plays an important role in her work and life.

Tell me a bit about your upbringing as a child of Jamaican parents and where your sense of social justice stems from.

I was brought up in a pretty strict Jamaican family setup. I am from the Windrush generation, and we were very much children of our Christian community. Church was key. Saturday soup on the weekends was a really big thing. People would come around as you never just cooked for the household, you cooked for anyone who might drop in. In my household, we were always reminded that we were not just our brother’s keepers. We had to look out for those who were less fortunate than us, who we could help and assist.

My parents decided that we all ought to have our secondary education in Jamaica. As you can imagine, being a British child going to Jamaica after being able to watch television, it was different. My grandparents were my guardians, and we come from a brethren background. They were extremely strict: no telly and the radio only on devotion. That was a bit tough, but I am so grateful that my parents, especially my mother pushed that for us. The idea of being responsible, not just for us, but for our community, is in my genes.

It’s interesting hearing about you having discipline and boundaries in your life from your grandparents. I wonder how much that played a part in the fact that you took a few steps before becoming a lawyer as you were first a nurse and then you worked in local government. How did those roles, and the role of your parents and grandparents, equip you to be a human rights lawyer?

I think it’s fair to say that I’m good with people. I should never have been a nurse. I cannot stand the sight of blood – to this day. I was always fainting. As I was a registered general nurse, I moved quite easily into local government social services, into community work, and organising care for people in their homes, including meals on wheels which relied on organisational skills which helped me climb through the ranks. When I got to the top of the local authority tree I thought: “Everybody else has a second career.  I’ll do law.” After studying, one of my friends invited me to her firm to see what they did. I got hooked. I then got a training contract at Birngerg Peirce and qualified there. I left, came back and have been there ever since. It’s human rights in action; human rights at its best.

How old were you when you then chose to study law and when did you start with Birnberg Peirce?

I qualified when I was 30 and I started with Birnberg Peirce in 1996. I had already had a sojourn into law from South Bank University. I won a scholarship to go to CUNY in America and worked with the amazing Judge Bruce Wright. He was a very famous New York lawyer who stood up for the right for justice. He was also known as ‘Turn Them Loose Bruce’ or then he became known as ‘Mr. Civil Rights’. He was a real man of the people, who enjoyed music and poetry, and really enjoyed the practice of law and how the law could assist not only the fortunate but the unfortunate and disenfranchised. I worked with Judge Bruce Wright for three months, and the following year I went back to New York as a coordinator because I had administrative and management skills. Interestingly, a certain politician, Mr [David] Lammy was also a student on that exchange.

I move between calling you a civil rights, a human rights and a social justice lawyer. How would you categorise yourself because, as you’ve said, it’s human rights but it’s about rights?

I suppose it’s all three of them because at any given time I am a civil litigator, but I don’t just litigate, I act in matters of inquest law on behalf of the bereaved. So you can call me anything. I suppose I would be happy being known as a human rights lawyer or a social justice lawyer, but I think the one that people don’t think of or use enough is civil rights because it’s a very American concept. But I am, for all accounts, a civil rights lawyer as well.

Being a civil rights lawyer isn’t an easy route. We see Grenfell and the Windrush scandal. We see the lawyers when an inquest has an unfavourable and sometimes favourable outcome for those who are under duress and have experienced traumatic loss. What we are less aware of is what goes on behind the scenes. A lot of this work is legal aid funded which is continuously under threat. Can you explain how the process starts and how you choose cases as they are often against the state and are high profile?

I can honestly say I don’t choose these cases. These cases choose me. It never ceases to amaze me how people will find you when they want to find you or they need to find you. What I’ve learned to do is to consider the enormity of the atrocity. To consider how am I going to deal with and manage all the people affected. I’ve been blessed with quite a creative mind, and I am in a practice which is committed to assisting. So rather than saying no, we can’t do this, we say, how can we do this? How can we help?

One of the ways of managing and working with these cases is ensuring that the people you’re assisting are in the driver’s seat. It’s about looking at which community groups or support groups you can work with. It is not just about the lawyers. It’s about taking a holistic approach. It’s about collaboration. We have a Jamaican saying that one hand can’t clap. We do the law, they do the activism, and we focus on using our skills as lawyers to obtain justice.

You’ve been involved in some of the most high profile and unsettling miscarriages of justice cases in this country, including Charles Jean de Menenez, Hillsborough and Grenfell. How do you navigate these legal, political and moral minefields, support the families and look after your and your team’s wellbeing?

I’m an individual who likes to listen. I often listen not just to what is being said, but to what isn’t being said. As I said before, I always try to seek out who else can assist. For example, with the Hillsborough families, they had a very good Hillsborough Family Support Group where the families and survivors had come together.

It was important to make sure the voices of these groups were very present, and they continued to work with us as lawyers while we navigated, as you say, the minefield and complexities of the law. I also think about whether we need more resources. If I need to build a new team and identify their skillset, including language and IT. It’s about being practical. If you can imagine the sheer volume of documents and having to manage that.

At Birnberg, we have been blessed to have staff who are committed to the cause. It’s sometimes unrelenting work. It’s about looking after our clients and it’s my responsibility to look after my team, including their emotional and therapeutic needs such as providing confidential therapy space – should they require it.

What does fighting these cases say about the rule of law and the accountability of public institutions in this country that after a tragedy it takes decades to get justice. How do you keep the faith in a system that often works against the people that you’re representing?

It isn’t easy. Resilience and fortitude are key. It’s frustrating when year after year, day after day, we come up against a battle that we won or an issue that we dealt with 10 or 20 years ago and nothing seems to have changed. The so-called learning hasn’t worked. To this end, we continue to persevere, and we try to find ways to keep the state on its toes. In the light of Hillsborough, there’s a drive to institute Hillsborough Law. This is centred on state bodies coming to the table under a duty of candour. It’s about being honest saying, we did this, or this didn’t happen instead of us arguing over many years about whether they did or they didn’t, when they know that they did.

We’re also pressing for a national oversight body that will take all this so-called learning or recommendations that the state says it has taken on board and put that learning or recommendations into action.

Take Grenfell. There were recommendations that came out of the Lakanal House fire. It went into the drawer. Years later, we had Grenfell. Though it’s disheartening as a lawyer, we press on. We have seen some changes as when I started in the profession, there was no legal aid for inquests.

You’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years. What do these cases tell you about Britain and the systemic inability to learn the lessons without external pressure, without repetition, without visibility and without tragedy, including racial and socioeconomic disparities?

It tells me that we have yet to shake off the chains of colonialism. Sadly, we are seeing that colonial mentality rising again, in a different form, and that is a worry. I’ve seen the word slavery used recently. There’s been a lot in the media about Vietnamese people who are coming over in small boats and the word slavery is being used. We are in very tricky times. While there have been steps and drives to shake that off, it feels like something else is coming which is a new and modern interpretation of that mindset.

I know that the arts, literature and culture are important to you. Words of Colour strives for social justice through creative interventions, particularly centring unheard or ignored lived experiences from global majority communities in the UK, as well as supporting artists and their artistry. What was the last play you went to see and what is on your reading list?

The last thing I went to see, and I want to see again, is Every Brilliant Thing with Lenny Henry. A monologue, it’s basically a story of mental ill health, and how a child and an adult try to deal with that and respond. Lenny brings his own personality and full of life-ness to it which was just amazing. The performance touches your heart in a way where you think you’re not going to be able to breathe for a moment, then you’re taken out of it to a place of joy. It was just wonderful. In terms of books, I’m reading several. I’m reading a lot of law. I’m listening to a lot of audio books. I do like crime mysteries. There’s Donna Leon who writes about a policeman in Venice and is just a joy to listen to because it takes you through Venice – I love Venice – and you feel like you’re walking through the streets yourself.

Another passion of yours is supporting the next generation, particularly young Black people. What are your aspirations for them, and what role would you like to play in attracting them into law or anything around social justice?

I heard a young person say one day that there were no black civil liberties lawyers, no black human rights lawyers, and I was quite shocked, and I thought, I do have to step up. I have to be present, and I have to be seen. It has taken me some time.

I’m the lawyer I am because of my two previous careers, but for the young people I’m speaking to, my message is that they too could become lawyers and for them to think about it as the law in action. That the law is engaged in every aspect of their lives, and that you can practice it without having to be at the forefront in a legal practice or at the Bar.

I do believe that there is elitism. There was a short period when most people would think I could do law. I could complete an access to law course, but the profession has become, I believe, inaccessible again. And that has happened largely because of student fees: university fees, the professional fees and then getting the required post qualification training contract or pupillage.

If you want to practice law, you need to find a sponsor, if you can. If you want to come into a legal aid practice, we can try to find a way of funding them. I cannot say that it’s easy. It wasn’t easy when I then entered the profession, but I had an income. Everybody goes on about lawyers but let me tell you, when you’re in any trouble, who do you want? It’s a lawyer.

On Wednesday 15 October 2025, Marcia Willis Stewart KC (Hon) will give a keynote at the sold out Public Law Project’s Annual Conference, on Inquiries and Investigations under the heading of Strengthening the Constitution.

Find out more here: https://publiclawproject.org.uk/events/public-law-project-annual-conference-2025/

Photo credits: Paul Burrows (banner) / Sarah Booker (thumbnail)