They were the young black radicals — the lawyers who forced their profession to tackle the discrimination and prejudice they encountered in trying to make their way. Twenty years ago, the Society of Black Lawyers was a force to be reckoned with. And largely thanks to its campaigning, the legal establishment was made to take their problems seriously.

During its heyday — from the mid-Eighties to the mid-Nineties — the society scored notable successes. It grabbed headlines, organising street protests and embarrassing legal institutions such as the Bar Council and Law Society into taking a lead on race issues.

In 1993 the Society of Black Lawyers (SBL) persuaded both groups to introduce (nonbinding) targets to tackle discrimination — firms and chambers were to aim to recruit 10 per cent of their lawyers from ethnic minorities. The society was also instrumental in getting the Law Society to pass a practice rule against discrimination, and it won a dedicated ethnic minority seat on the ruling council.

“We achieved targets way before they were recommended by the Lawrence report [published in 1999], long before they had been recommended or accepted by any other profession or even any trade union in this country,” Peter Herbert, the barrister and former chairman of the society, says.

The SBL’s achievements were controversial — and all the more remarkable given that, at the time, most of the legal profession was still to be persuaded that racism really was an issue. Some council members talked in all seriousness about the problem not being racism but the chip that black lawyers had on their shoulders.

Makbool Javaid, a solicitor and chairman in 1993, says: “We changed the climate for ethnic minority lawyers. In those days, there were no role models for black lawyers. We blazed a trail that others have followed.”

The society’s activism was not without cost to those most closely involved. Such an overtly political organisation was not to everyone’s taste. Chris Boothman, a solicitor and a former leading light of the society, says: “I went for one job and the guy refused to appoint me because I was in the SBL.” Herbert was rejected eight times before being appointed as a part-time judge. “It was quite clear my card was marked,” he says.

Now, many of the issues they fought over have become main-stream. Black lawyers have made good headway within the profession. In 2005, 17 per cent of trainee barristers and 10 per cent of practising barristers were from ethnic minorities. The debate has not gone away, but it is lower key, more polite. Even the language has been sanitised. Where the talk was of racism and prejudice, it is now of diversity.

So do Herbert, Javaid and Boothman believe that the issues that so fired up the SBL have really been resolved? “It is quite clear that there’s still a strong feeling among many Afro-Caribbean and Asian lawyers in particular that they are not getting through the profession in as great a number as their qualifications require. There are still many parts of the profession where they are not properly represented,” Herbert says.

Javaid — who spent 11 years with DLA Piper, the City firm, and is now head of employment at Simons Muirhead & Burton — agrees: “There are very few black employment lawyers at a senior level. When you walk around the City, you don’t see many black faces — unless it’s at night when the cleaners come out.”

There are also concerns that proposals on competitive tendering for criminal legal aid work will all but wipe out the gains that ethnic minority lawyers have made. Boothman, who is head of legal services at the Standards Board for England, the Government watchdog, and was formerly legal director at the Commission for Racial Equality, says: “It’s almost as if things have gone full circle. At a time when there are more black lawyers coming through and starting their own firms, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) is effectively going to make sure they can’t earn a living.”

In a bid to reduce costs, the LSC proposes to exclude smaller firms from tendering for criminal defence work. However, according to research commissioned by the LSC, 65 per cent of firms that would be affected are run by ethnic minority solicitors.

As recently as 2003, Steve Orchard, then chief executive of the LSC, accepted that, however much the LSC might want to take an axe to smaller suppliers for financial reasons, it could not, because if it did the profession’s diversity would be lost. It is hard to see what has changed in the interim to explain why the commission now thinks it can safely restrict contracts to bigger firms.

The competitive tendering proposals — which are still being negotiated — are exactly the kind of issue that would have had the SBL of old in full cry. Although it still nominally exists, the society has been all but hibernating for the past ten years. Herbert reckons the time is ripe for a revival: he is working on a paper about black people in the criminal justice system and a website is planned. His aim will be to mobilise today’s successful, young black lawyers and encourage them to see themselves as part of a bigger movement for change within the profession and the black community generally. “The big question is, what do we do when we get in the room where the decisions are made? Are we content just to change the reality for ourselves or do we want to change it for everybody else as well?”

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