Helena Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws


Helena Ann Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, is a Scottish barrister, broadcaster, and Labour member of the House of Lords. She was Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, from 2011 to 2018. A bencher of Gray's Inn, she is an Honorary Writer to the Signet and the recipient of 42 honorary degrees from many universities including those of Glasgow and Edinburgh in recognition of work on women and the law and on widening participation in higher education. She is president of Justice, the law reform think tank, and director of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute. In 2024, Kennedy succeeded Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury as chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom.

Early life and education

Kennedy was born on 12 May 1950 in Glasgow, Scotland, one of the four daughters of Mary Veronica and Joshua Patrick Kennedy, nicknamed "Mae" and "Joss", respectively. Her parents were committed Labour activists and devoutly Catholic. Her father, who served for six years in the British Armed Forces during World War II, was a printer with the Daily Record and a trade union official, and her mother, who worked in a grocery store, volunteered to help women who suffered from domestic violence or alcoholism in the family.
She attended Holyrood Secondary School in Glasgow, where she was appointed Head Girl. After applying unsuccessfully for a degree in English at the London School of Economics in 1968 and taking a gap year on the advice of her interviewer Bill Wedderburn, she studied law at the Council of Legal Education in London.

Legal career

In 1972, Kennedy was called to the bar at Gray's Inn. In 1974, with the help of a loan, she co-founded Garden Court Chambers at Lincoln's Inn with two female and three male colleagues, including Michael House, Marguerite Russell and David Watkinson. Among her many cases, Kennedy acted as junior counsel for child murderer Myra Hindley during her 1974 trial for plotting to escape from Holloway Prison, and was involved as a barrister in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing trial in 1986 and in the successful Guildford Four appeal in 1989. She moved to Doughty Street Chambers in 1990.
She was a member of the General Council of the Bar from 1990 to 1993 and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1991.

Politics

Kennedy was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the early 1970s, which she later regretted. She gained wider recognition with her appearances on radio shows, including BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, in the 1980s.
She served as the chair of Charter 88 from 1992 to 1997, and became closely affiliated to the educational charity Common Purpose.
She was a high-profile supporter of Tony Blair's New Labour during the 1990s. She was made a life peer in October 1997 on account of her role as chair of Charter 88, whose constitutional reform policies had been adopted by the Labour Party, and joined the party on the same day. Following her appointment, she became a prominent critic of the party's direction, although she wrote in 2008 that the first Blair ministry "produced more far-reaching reforms than anything seen since the Great Reform Act" of 1832. She has rebelled against her party whip in the House of Lords more frequently than any other Labour peer, with a dissent rate of 11.5% as of 2025.
In May 2009, in reaction to the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, she launched the campaign for a referendum on a "more proportional electoral system" at the following election with an open letter in The Guardian, which eventually led to the 2011 United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum. She was subsequently reported to be organising a coalition of independent candidates to run in the election against the MPs involved in the expenses scandal, who included members of her own party, but denied the allegation.
In April 2017, she led the open letter call for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to stand down its candidates in the seats of Brighton Pavillion and the Isle of Wight in favour of the Green Party at the 2017 general election, following two similar concessions by the Green Party.
In 2020, she worked with the Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith and democracy activist Luke de Pulford to create the global pressure group Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. In March 2021, China placed sanctions on her. The sanctions were condemned by the Prime Minister and led the Foreign Secretary to summon the Chinese ambassador. The sanctions were lifted on 30 January 2026 during a visit by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to China.

Academia

Kennedy became the first chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, serving from 1994 until 2001.
In 1998, she agreed to lend her name to Ann Limb's charitable initiative to fund higher education for disadvantaged students, which became the Helena Kennedy Foundation.
She was elected principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, in July 2010 and served in the role from September 2011. She retired in 2018 and became chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University on 26 July 2018.

Personal life

From 1978 to 1984 she lived with the actor Iain Mitchell, and together they had a son. In 1986, Kennedy married Iain Louis Hutchison, a surgeon, with whom she has a daughter and a son. She has five grandchildren.
Kennedy regularly attends Mass and professes that her Catholicism "remains very much part of who I am", even though she eschews its more traditional values.
In 2023, Kennedy took part in King Charles and Queen Camilla's coronation at Westminster Abbey, carrying the Queen Consort's Rod with Dove.

Honours

She has received numerous awards, including:

Legal, political and governmental