Distinguished friends
Khalid Abdalla
Maria Adebowale-Schwarte
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia
Rajesh Agrawal
Riz Ahmed
Sughra Ahmed
Keith Ajegbo
Claire Alexander
Kitty Arie
Julian Baggini
Zelda Baveystock
Haidee Bell
Richard Beswick
Dinesh Bhugra
Karan Bilimoria
Geoffrey Bindman
Karen Blackett
Nicholas Blake
Ian Blatchford
David Blunkett
Hina Bokhari
Mihir Bose
Alain de Botton
John Bowers
Stephen Briganti
Des Browne
Mukti Jain Campion
Paul Canoville
Gus Casely-Hayford
Michael Cashman
Saimo Chahal
Reeta Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Stephen Claypole
Robin Cohen
Linda Colley
David Crystal
Angélica Dass
Prakash Daswani
Sandie Dawe
Navnit Dholakia
Sherry Dobbin
Ibrahim Dogus
Lloyd Dorfman
Alf Dubs
John Dyson
Damien Egan
Graeme Farrow
Daniel Franklin
Edie Friedman
Jitesh Gadhia
Manjit Singh Gill
Teresa Graham
Ann Grant
Susie Harries
Naomie Harris
James Hathaway
David Hencke
Sophie Herxheimer
Afua Hirsch
Michael Howard
Clive Jacobs
Kevin Jennings
Adrian Johns
Shobu Kapoor
Malik Karim
Jackie Kay
Ayub Khan-Din
Francesca Klug
Tony Kushner
Kwasi Kwarteng
Kwame Kwei-Armah
David Kynaston
Brian Lambkin
Mark Lewisohn
Joanna Lumley
Michael Mansfield
Sue McAlpine
Neil Mendoza
Nick Merriman
Munira Mirza
Abigail Morris
Hugh Muir
Tessa Murdoch
Sandy Nairne
Bushra Nasir
Susheila Nasta
Eithne Nightingale
John O’Farrell
Kenneth Olisa
Kunle Olulode
Julia Onslow-Cole
John Orna-Ornstein
Sameer Pabari
Ruth Padel
Panikos Panayi
Bhikhu Parekh
Nikesh Patel
David Pearl
Caryl Phillips
Mike Phillips
Trevor Phillips
Sunand Prasad
Kavita Puri
Charles Rix
Trevor Robinson
Aubrey Rose
Michael Rosen
Cathy Ross
Salman Rushdie
Jill Rutter
Philippe Sands
Sathnam Sanghera
Konrad Schiemann
Richard Scott
Stephen Sedley
Maggie Semple
Babita Sharma
Nikesh Shukla
Jon Snow
Sonia Solicari
Robert Soning
David Spence
Danny Sriskandarajah
Stelio Stefanou
Dick Taverne
Jane Thompson
Robert Tombs
Rumi Verjee
Patrick Vernon
Edmund de Waal
Iqbal Wahhab
Yasmin Waljee
David Warren
Iain Watson
Debbie Weekes-Bernard
Henning Wehn
Nat Wei
Janet Whitaker
Gary Younge
The people of this country are its greatest treasure and cultural asset. Many, probably most, are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants or have people of immigrant stock in their families. A museum which celebrates this history and diversity would remind people of what they have in common, be a great educational tool for future generations and also act as a tourist attraction.
Manjit Singh Gill
Manjit Singh Gill KC is one of the foremost human rights silks at the Bar. He has argued some of the most highly publicised and ground-breaking constitutional, public law, international law and human rights cases of the last 10 years. He is particularly well known for having done many of the landmark cases in immigration law.
In the 1980s he was very active in the Society of Black Lawyers and involved in a number of initiatives to counter race discrimination in the legal profession, and in the mid-1990s he was involved in setting up the Discrimination Law Association. In 2001 he led an NGO delegation to the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, which resulted in the successful introduction into the 2001 UN Durban Declaration of a clause to promote cultural diversity and protect groups whose identities are drawn from multiple factors.
He is a regular contributor to national and international conferences, speaking on a range of topics from corporate social responsibility to human rights, terrorism and Sharia law. He has given seminars and training sessions in his various areas of practice, appeared before UN human rights committees, carried out fact-finding missions abroad (e.g. to the West Bank to assess the operation of alternative legal systems of communities under occupation) and attended many UN conferences and worked closely with other NGOs on diversity issues. He continues to be involved in various human rights organisations on a pro bono basis.
He was founding editor of Immigration and Nationality Law Reports and a contributor to Jackson & Warr’s Immigration Law and Practice as well as being the author of various articles.