Collection

High Court papers re trade union disputes; typescript notes on industrial relations and the unions.

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Ben Hooberman (born 1921) was a solicitor who specialised in labour law and industrial relations. Ben Hooberman's grandfather was one of three brothers who left Russia (now Ukraine) in the late 1890s to settle in London's Whitechapel Road. When England joined the war, Ben Hooberman moved to stay with family in Dublin where he later entered Trinity College Dublin to study law. He curtailed his studies and was then called up in 1943, taking up a range of roles at home, France and India before being demobbed in 1947. Hooberman then refocused on his law career, becoming an articled clerk and qualifying as a solicitor in 1950. He worked for two employers before setting up Lawford & Co with Michael Kelly in 1954 with a specialisation in collective labour law. Hooberman was secretary of the Industrial Law Society and a friend of its President Sir Otto Kahn-Freud. He occasionally gave seminars at Brasenose College Oxford for Kahn-Freud and also at the Universities of Leuven and Berkeley. He was also on the executive committee of the Society of Labour Lawyers up to 1981 and published 'Introduction to British Trade Unions' with Penguin in 1974. Hooberman acted on behalf of the Council of Civil Service Unions in the legal case over GCHQ and union membership and was legal advisor in the case of Sir Leslie Cannon v. the Electrical Trade Union. He retired as senior partner from Lawford & Co in 1986 and then became Hon Treasurer of Article 19, a new NGO set up to combat censorship. He also advised and/or worked for a range of charities during the 1960s and onwards, including the Minority Rights Group, the Runnymede Trust, Writers & Scholars International. He served on various school boards including in London and at Bedales School.

Open

Papers of and relating to Sir Leslie Cannon (1920-1970), trade union leader; Records of Electrical Trades Union / EETPU

English