By Sheila Mckenzie-
A barrister has been reprimanded and fined £500 over tweets accusing his former colleague of a campaign of fabricating stories about antisemitism.
The Bar Standards Board fined Daniel Bennett(pictured) in relation to ‘inappropriate and offensive’ tweets sent between September 2018 and June 2019 from the account @arrytuttle towards the high-profile human rights barrister Adam Wagner.
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The BSB found it unnecessary to establish whether Bennett sent the tweets himself, satisfied instead that he ‘allowed’ them to be sent. and by so doing so behaved in a way which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence in him and the profession.
Barristers are expected to uphold high standards of professionalism because of the high status they hold in society but have been found on a number of occasions to lack common sense, making nonsense of their academic credentials which led to their profession.
Bennett had joined Doughty Street Chambers in 2009 with high prospects ahead of him but 10 years later in 2019 resigned from his high-profile London set Doughty Street Chambers after being accused of running a controversial Twitter account which harassed activists campaigning against antisemitism in the Labour Party.
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Daniel Bennett, who specialises in personal injury – admitted breaching the chambers’ code of conduct, according to fellow Doughty Street barrister Adam Wagner, one of those who was targeted by the Twitter account @arrytuttle.
Victim of social media abuse: Barrister Adam Wagner Image: daughtystreet.co.uk
His twitter account targeted activists campaigning against antisemitism in the Labour Party, including Wagner, also a barrister with Doughty Street Chambers.
The account, which had around 4,500 followers, accused fellow barrister Wagner of being a ‘lying propogandist who brings shame on our entire community’. It said that Wagner’s stories about antisemitism were ‘fraudulent’ and that left-wing Jewish people were targeted for factional political gain.
One of the tweets sent in relation to Wagner and two other barristers described them as ‘an awful threesome’.
He was believed to be affiliated with the Twitter account @arrytuttle, which targeted a number of individuals
Known as Harry Tuttle, the name of a character played by Robert De Niro in the film Brazil, the now-deleted account was characterised by aggressive support for Jeremy Corbyn and attacks on Jewish people questioning antisemitism in Labour.
In his Twitter biography, @arrytuttle described himself as “The wrong kind of Jew, apparently”, and referenced being Jewish himself. He often suggested that Jewish people defending Mr Corbyn and Labour were themselves the victims of antisemitism.
In one of the tweets, @arrytuttle described Mr Wagner as a “lying propagandist who brings shame on our entire community”.
Wagner said he was accused of “being an anti-semite, an absolute danger, a hater of leftist Jews, of being hired to ‘get Corbyn’.”
Mr Wagner said: “I take no issue with people disagreeing with me politically or legally but this is something different: personal/professional abuse and harassment from an anonymous account which held itself as being run by a barrister.
“On a personal level this has been an extremely distressing experience.
“I get a lot of this kind of abuse from anonymous accounts but to find out this was happening in my workplace is something else.”
Mr Wagner continued: “I was shocked to find out a month ago that Daniel Bennett was connected to @arrytuttle, because he is a fellow barrister and a member of my chambers – and Jewish. I don’t know him personally. I had nothing to do with his identity being exposed.”
After the revelation by @TwelveScouts, “he told me (by email) as well as the Jewish Chronicle that ‘Many people run that account and I have not been involved in it for years’”.
Mr Bennett then set up a personal Twitter account and tweeted: “I have spoken today to @DXWQC [David Wolfson QC of One Essex Court] with whom I was at school and emailed @AdamWagner1 with whom I work.
“I wish to apologise unreservedly for any offence caused to them by the account @arrytuttle and confirm that I do not support or endorse any attacks on them.”
Mr Wagner tweeted: “He later told me that he was part of a group which set up the account, that he continued to access it to look at the feed and the mentions but tweeted rarely. He saw most of the tweets about me and did nothing as he thought, at the time, I ‘deserved’ them…
“I and others submitted a complaint to my chambers about Mr Bennett’s conduct. Shortly after receiving it he sent me a fulsome apology, saying every tweet was ‘completely unacceptable’. He admitted a breach of Doughty Street’s Code of Conduct and resigned…
“I take no issue with people disagreeing with me politically or legally but this is something different: personal/professional abuse and harassment from an anonymous account which held itself as being run by a barrister.
“On a personal level this has been an extremely distressing experience. I get a lot of this kind of abuse from anonymous accounts but to find out this was happening in my workplace is something else.”
In February 2019 the Labour party was thrown into crisis following the resignation of seven MPs who said Labour is “now racist and anti-Semitic”, with more peers leaving the party in July. The party eventually said it was against discrimination of all forms.
Following the BSB decision Wagner tweeted: ‘This has all been incredibly stressful as you might imagine so I’m not going to say anything more about it for now.’
Professionals like Bennett are examples of the reality that high education does not always equal common sense.
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