United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

BAILII case number: [1993] UKEAT 315_93_0812

Appeal No. EAT/315/93

I N T E R N A L

EMPOLYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

At the Tribunal

On 8 December 1993

Before

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE TUCKER

MR J R CROSBY

MRS T MARSLAND

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MR S GRAEME          APPELLANT

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION          RESPONDENTS

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Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised


 


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APPEARANCES

For the Appellant NO APPEARANCE BY

OR REPRESENTATION

ON BEHALF OF THE

APPELLANT


 


MR JUSTICE TUCKER: We have all considered the papers in this case. We have a file before us which includes the Notice of Appeal which runs to eight pages. We have read that and of course we have read with care the Full Reasons which the Industrial Tribunal sitting at Manchester gave for the decision which it reached in September 1992. Their unanimous decision was that the Applicant's application under the Race Relations Act 1986 should be dismissed.

We note that in the course of the hearing the Applicant himself said after they had heard two full days of evidence that he freely conceded that having heard such evidence there did not appear to have been any racial discrimination against him on the major issue of comparability. However, the Applicant, albeit with some hesitation, still contended that he, as an English national, had been treated less favourably on racial grounds than a Scottish national would have been. It is unusual to hear in this Tribunal an Englishman complaining of racial discrimination against him. Nevertheless, it is a complaint that has to be viewed seriously. It was viewed seriously by the Industrial Tribunal who clearly spent a good deal of time on this case.

They saw the Appellant as he now is, and we note that at the end of the decision the Chairman said:

"...he is in danger of becoming both obsessional and vexatious. It is to be hoped that this Tribunal will never again be troubled by him in pursuing what can only be described as a wholly misconceived claim."

That was the view of that Tribunal after hearing two days of evidence and after hearing the Appellant's submissions.

We are quite unable to detect in the grounds of appeal settled by the Appellant anything which should cause us to allow this appeal to go forward to a full hearing. It would, in our view, be bound to fail. The decision of the Tribunal was well-reasoned and was fully justified by the evidence which the Tribunal heard. There is no reasonable prospect of that decision being upset on appeal. Accordingly this appeal is dismissed.

We ought to say that we also had before us a letter from the Appellant dated 29 November 1993 addressed to our Registrar in which he applied for today's hearing to be taken out of the list. The grounds of that application were that he had not yet received legal aid but having regard to the delay that has already occurred, we see no reason to accede to that application. Consequently we have conducted the preliminary hearing in the absence of the Appellant or anyone else but having read, as we have said, all the papers in the case this is not a case for any adjournment. It is a matter that must be grasped, must be dealt with today and we have dealt with it in the manner which we have set out.