“My life has been on hold – work, plans, the future. Everything…”
Sara Morrison, whose legal case against the Belfast Film Festival is being backed by JK Rowling, has been told she will need to wait at least another month before getting a ruling.
Morrison took Belfast Film Festival to a two-week employment tribunal in November last year, claiming constructive dismissal. The origins in the case stem from a speech Morrison made in 2023 at a Let Women Speak rally in Belfast and her employer’s treatment of her thereafter. You can read the story here.
The tribunal began on 10 November. It was a dramatic couple of weeks, which I covered in court (see the archived daily newsletters now free to read on this website). During her evidence Sara spoke about her isolation, the effect on her mental health and the destabilising effect of being denounced as a bigot within a small industry in a small community.
At the end of the tribunal, the judge warned the parties she was not going to make a ruling before Christmas as she intended to “take a lot of time to go over it”. Most people assumed that meant a decision in January, or early February. A polite enquiry made by Morrison’s legal team in early February received a response from the Northern Ireland Office of the Industrial Tribunals and Fair Employment Tribunal telling them the judge “hopes to have the judgment finalised no later than May/June”, putting the delay down to “work pressures”.
Unresolved
In early June, Morrison’s legal team once more made a polite enquiry. We are now in late June. Sara Morrison has just been told that due to “a period of unexpected personal leave from mid-March to mid-June”, the judge has not been able to stick to the earlier, estimated schedule and “now endeavors to have the judgment with the parties by the end of July 2026”.
First tier tribunal judgments should not normally take this long. As the judicial system itself acknowledges, justice delayed is justice denied. Delays seem to be an inherent factor in our justice system (witness the farcical scenes at Stratford Magistrates Court last week). It is therefore intrinsically unjust. This matters to the people involved, invariably caught up in a process over which they have little or no control.
Sara says she understands “these things take time” but emphasised this has been more than just a few months wait:
“In April 2023, within days of speaking at a women’s rights event, as a private citizen, I had my email access revoked, was removed from the [Belfast Film] festival programme, and was put on statutory sick pay. Organisations I had worked with successfully for years suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. I have been on Universal Credit since August 2023. Years of career-building were gone in a matter of months. My reputation was damaged by people who had never met me and never asked what I actually said. That was three years ago. I am still waiting for a judgment. In the meantime my life has been on hold – work, plans, the future. Everything suspended while the case sits unresolved.”
Morrison hopes “July brings an end to it”. For everyone’s sake, so do I. The waiting game continues.
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