His Honour Brian Clapham (1913 - 1998)

If there is any reader of this obituary who did not know that Brian was a retired Circuit Judge, a Registered Arbitrator and a past-chairman of the Branch or if they want more details of that kind then they will have to look elsewhere. I have pondered a great deal over the writing of this obituary and I have had the benefit of reading the obituaries in The Times and other newspapers. The result is that I am not going to follow the normal pattern for obituaries. I have come to the conclusion that, when dealing with someone like Brian, one of the problems for obituary writers is the same as that suffered by small children at Christmas, spoilt for choice when confronted with all the goodies in one go and uncertain about what to play with first.

For those of us who attended Branch meetings, Brian was seemingly an ordinary guy but he had extraordinary characteristics. In the real sense of the word he was one of us but he was also one of those special people who had the quality of being able to make everyone else feel important without any side of demonstrating his own importance. It did not matter who was speaking at a Branch function, he sat near the front and he listened carefully to every word spoken (I know that to be true because of our frequent discussions following a meeting). He made every speaker, formal and informal, feel that they were saying something important and that he was anxious to hear about what they had to say. He never interrupted and he never asked general questions, but when he had a real point to make he raised the issue with an air of someone who had thought out the point very carefully and, moreover, that he was really keen to know what the other person had to say. His observations were always expressed with conciseness and courtesy.

Even in casual conversation, Brian was a great listener; always showing such interest that one sometimes felt that one ought to be saying something important. However, one soon learnt that Brian was interested in the ordinary aspects of life in general as well as the difficult intellectual and practical problems of dispute resolution.

In Brian we had a true supporter of the Branch, both in its business and social activities. In addition, Brian was a worker who quietly and diligently attended to many useful things in connection with the Branch, and also the Institute generally.

Here we have a man who spoke of ordinary matters in dispute; usually in terms of a boundary problem or some other relatively minor matter. However, it was not an affected false modesty in contraposition to those who can only speak in terms of £millions and £billions, rather it was because he knew that in such topics there was the true heartache of society and, moreover, where it was the numbers of disputes which could be counted in the millions. Here we have someone who deplored the waste of money in dispute resolution and who was uncomfortable with a legal profession where he saw too many operators who were eagerly looking upon the problems of ordinary folk as a money making opportunity.

Brian was delighted to see advertisements by solicitors competing for the non-contentious business of conveyancing where the fees were stated, i.e., "We will convey your property for only £x" Indeed, long before the publicity given to Lord Woolf's novel ideas he was himself forecasting that the time would come when arbitrators and others involved in disputes would undertake dispute work on a documents-only basis for fixed fees. These remarks are not stated to indicate the achievement of such forecasts but rather to demonstrate the thinking a man who was dedicated to fairness and truth and, moreover, anxious to see the excesses of professional people eased out of the system by sensible means.

Brian saw a great future for arbitration and also he saw the person who understood the trade or profession as being the arbitrator. He regarded the technical arbitrator as the essential ingredient in the effective and economic determination of issues about technical aspects. In fact, he often told of the many times during his role as Circuit Judge how he had got the parties to allow him to appoint a technical person to report on the facts of the matters in dispute. Which action was, in effect, the equivalent of obtaining a decision on the issues of fact by the technical person and which, in the absence of abuse by the parties, was adopted by himself. He found the procedure was really effective for technical matters. Perhaps Lord Woolf had been peeping over Brian's shoulders. However, Brian did stress that he personally was very careful to make sure that the nature of the dispute lent itself to such a procedure because there are always dangers in adopting a good idea and applying it indiscriminately.

Although I have been determined to confine myself to Brian's impact upon the Branch members, I am adopting one observation from outside because it seems to sum up how many people regarded his contribution. I have been told that when there was a problem to be settled in the various organisations in which Brian was involved there developed an expression of common consent, namely: "Let's bring in the Clapham omnibus." This expression seems to sum up in a few words what I have been trying to say in many.

Of course, I could go on and on about the man we had the pleasure of knowing as one of the members of the Branch but I will restrain myself and conclude by saying that in remembering Brian we do not forget Margaret, his wife, who was also seen at most of the social activities of the Branch adding a further special dimension to the pleasure of having Brian's company.