This film is part of Free
North Kensington Law Centre
A pioneering law centre with a radical agenda: ‘bringing law to the people’ in the early 1970s.
Overview
Peter Kandler, co-founder of the North Kensington Law Centre explains, with hard-hitting directness, that he switched from a private legal practice to establish a free legal service because he was ‘fed up with rich obnoxious clients’, and wanted to ‘bring law to the people’, by enabling those with limited means ‘to stand up for themselves’. He is shown helping a family who have been evicted to ‘break in’ to a barricaded house, and also assisting a woman whose landlord was failing to deal with repairs. This documentary report includes office and street scenes in North Kensington, including a shot of the Trellick Tower.
The North Kensington Law Centre in Golborne Road (opened 17 July 1970) is widely acknowledged to be the first ever law centre to open in the UK. The project received the support of the Law Society, the professional body for Solicitors. Today there are around 50 law centres across the UK. This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.
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