Britain’s first female director of public prosecutions
When Barbara Mills became the first woman to lead the Crown Prosecution Service in 1992, she stepped into one of the toughest jobs in British public life. Her appointment marked a turning point – not just for women in the legal profession, but for the justice system itself.
Born Barbara Jean Lyon Warnock in Chorleywood in 1940, she attended St Helen’s, an all-girls school in north west London, and was one of only four in her year to go to university. She studied Jurisprudence at Oxford’s then-all-female college Lady Margaret Hall – at a time when male students at the university outnumbered women 10 to one. She was also one of just two law students in her college.
Called to the Bar in 1963, she found it difficult to secure a tenancy – her first real struggle against discrimination. Finally, in 1967, she found a professional home at 3 Temple Gardens – one of the few criminal chambers willing to give women a fair chance.
In the early 1980s Mills was promoted to senior positions at the Bar, where she gained a reputation for meticulous attention to detail. Her most famous case as a QC came in 1986, when she secured the conviction of Patrick Magee, the IRA bomber who had planted a bomb at the Brighton Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference in 1984, where five people died.
Mills also took on the complex trial of four men accused of conspiring to drive up the price of Guinness shares during a proposed £2.7bn takeover of the Scottish drinks company Distillers in 1986. After a 112-day trial, the ‘Guinness Four’ were convicted in September 1990. Her success in achieving guilty verdicts in such a delicate case led to her appointment as director of the Serious Fraud Office in 1990.
Two years later, Mills broke new ground by becoming the first female director of public prosecutions, where she was responsible for shaping criminal justice policy in England and Wales alongside her role as a prosecutor.
At the helm of the Crown Prosecution Service, Mills tackled entrenched inefficiency and declining public trust with reformist zeal. She introduced victim impact statements and streamlined case management. However, she experienced widespread opposition from conservative elements within the CPS, and stubborn disapproval among older members of the Bar at the appointment of a woman.
Her six-year tenure ended with controversy in 1998, when she stepped down early in anticipation of a report critical of the CPS’s poor record, commissioned by the incoming Labour government. Despite the turbulence of her period in office, Mills initiated vital reforms which her successors then continued.
After standing down as DPP, Mills continued to play an active role in public life, serving as chair of the Professional Oversight Board, governor of London Metropolitan University, and chair of the council of the Women’s Library.
Mills’s success in the British legal profession was all the more remarkable because she was bringing up four children at the same time – one of the first women lawyers to combine a family with a successful practice. She blazed a trail for other aspiring female lawyers in an era when it was difficult for women to reach the highest ranks of the profession. As a working mother she is known to have inspired female legal professionals such as Cherie Blair.
Commenting on the challenge of juggling motherhood with a high-flying career, Mills said: “It really wasn’t easy… But I am a very determined person, blessed with a lot of energy.”
Dame Barbara Mills died in 2011, aged 70.