Thanks Hobby & Joy (good to see you've emerged from your new-semester-burrow!) for your comments. Hobby, what you say is correct (who can argue with it), but the realities of dangerous situations often make compromise, to the extent of playing along with the 'baddies' to some extent in small matters, necessary so that room can be created for dealing with larger issues. The sort of thing that I mentioned in my story wasn't indicative of the way the Civil Liberties people worked over-all. If they had made a big issue of every little case like mine, they might never have scored any victories, because all their energy would have been taken up. As it was, they looked after my friend & me & got the case out of the way speedily. No bribes were paid, so although it was a compromise that in other circumstances (e.g. today) would have been unacceptable, I couldn't possibly say the lawyers were behaving in a corrupt manner. I'm firmly convinced that they were highly motivated idealists - they didn't charge me a cent for their very skilful work, and with many others like them, they took the trouble to see that defenceless victims of a corrupt system came out of terrifying situations unscathed. And they worked tirelessly educating the public, lobbying politicians & other powerful figures, writing articles and sticking their necks out in many ways, until everyone cared, & then change occurred.

I know a little about the way HR lawyers work here. It is similar. The problem is that at present there are not enough idealists in the legal field. It's 'early days' here, & terribly dangerous in many ways.