I recently blogged about the new Lord Mayor of the City of London, Michael Mainelli and his plans for his year in office. I received very positive feedback from readers who appreciated the blog in that it explained what a Lord Mayor actually does, something of which they had not had much prior knowledge. In this blog I wish to attempt to do something similar regarding the post of Sheriff in the City of London. I've had some special insight into this as I've been personally involved in three election campaigns for Sheriffs, two of which were successful. There are two Sheriffs in the City of London and their role is to uphold the rule of law as custodians of the Old Bailey; liaise with and support the judiciary; support and represent the Lord Mayor as part of the Civic Party; host, facilitate and promote influencer and themed lunches and other events at the Old Bailey; and support both the Livery and the Ward Clubs. In most years one of the Sheriffs known as the Aldermanic Sheriff is chosen from the current Court of Aldermen by a vote of that body. The other known as the Non-Aldermanic Sheriff is elected by the Livery as one of its members and only Liverymen are entitled to vote in this election. It is sometimes competitive, and the vote takes place at the Guildhall in June with the new Sheriffs taking office in September. In some years the Court of Aldermen decide that both the Sheriffs will be elected from the Court of Aldermen. This is because the Lord Mayor must have first served as Sheriff and so there must be a sufficient pool of Aldermen who qualify in that way.

The title of sheriff or shire reeve evolved during the Anglo-Saxon period. The reeve was the representative of the king in a city, town or shire, responsible for collecting taxes and enforcing the law. By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, the City of London had sheriffs, usually two at a time. The sheriffs were the most important city officials and collected London's annual taxes on behalf of the royal exchequer; they also had judicial duties in the City’s law courts.

Until c. 1130, the sheriffs were directly appointed by the king. London gained a degree of self-government by a charter granted by Henry I, including the right to choose its own sheriff. In 1189, an annually elected mayor was introduced as chief magistrate for the City of London; this change was reaffirmed by a charter granted by King John in 1215. As such, the sheriffs were relegated to a senior role in the running of the city and became subordinate to the mayor. The mayor (later Lord Mayor of London) generally served as sheriff before becoming mayor, and in 1385 the Common Council of London stipulated that every future Lord Mayor “should have previously been sheriff so that he may be tried as to his governance and bounty before he attains to the Estate of Mayoralty”.

Two years ago my longtime friend and fellow Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Marketors Andrew Marsden declared his intention to campaign to be elected as Sheriff for the year 2022-23. He invited me to be a member of his campaign team knowing of my previous experience and he ran a very fine and successful campaign which in the end put anyone else off from competing with him and so he was duly elected nem con. Andrew has produced a Shrieval Report on his year as Sheriff which goes into considerable detail complete with excellent photographs of what has clearly been a fascinating if very demanding year. Here are some highlights of that report.

He attended 499 events in the year. These included 116 dinners variously with livery companies, other civic bodies, clubs, societies and charities, business as well as five civic state banquets. There were 127 lunches and breakfasts again with livery companies, civic and business, but also over half of these were as shrieval influencers. Other meetings included briefings, church services, receptions, civic, charity, tours of the Old Bailey, prize givings, lectures, tree planting, laying foundation stones, turning on Christmas lights, market visits as well as five royal engagements.

As the Monarch's representative to the Judiciary the Sheriffs reside at the Old Bailey, the only privately owned court in the country where they bring in a range of key influencers to meet the judges and more generally support an understanding of the complex legal cases they deal with. Uniquely in the Old Bailey there are now more female judges than male. On several days the Sheriffs will lunch with those judges sitting in court and will invite various guests from different walks of life to meet the judges. I have been invited to these lunches on a number of occasions including one with Andrew as host.

One special lunch that Andrew held was with youth reform charities. He hosted a meeting at the Old Bailey for the leaders of key reform charities discouraging young people from joining drug gangs, stopping female genital mutilation, preventing knife murder and reducing recidivism. Andrew hosted a special briefing on the current actions being taken to reduce cyber-crime which is now over 40% of reported crime in the UK and in fact, given considerable underreporting, is probably more like 80% of all crime. As a nation we spend some £50 billion online and the Cabinet Office calculates that UK consumers lose £3 billion and industry £29 billion from cyber-IP fraud each year. It's a huge issue and developments in AI will make matters much worse. Amongst the 19 tours of the Old Bailey that Andrew gave for organisations, two were for overseas legal delegations:

Both delegations were fascinated by the Old Bailey and the significant differences between our legal systems from jury selection to sentencing practice. There were some very interesting exchanges between the Old Bailey judges and the delegates.

In various activities to support and represent the Lord Mayor as part of the civic party highlights included State Visits including one by the President of South Africa and a visit to Ukraine accompanying the London Chamber of Commerce as The City's Civic representative. They received a massive and heartwarming reception in Kyiv throughout that was reciprocated by a visit of the Mayor of Kyiv and senior members of that city to the Old Bailey and Andrew was deeply humbled to be presented by the City of Kyiv with the arm badge - one of the original 200 made after the invasion and still worn by the Mayor of Kyiv and other members of Kyiv City Council.

Andrew received the senior Civic Delegation from Xi’an in China. They were able to see the Terracotta warrior they presented to the Financial Services Group of Livery companies when Andrew led a delegation of that group to five cities in China in 2019: Beijing, Nanjing, Chengdu, Shanghai … and the first Civic City visit to Xi’an, the birth home of President Xi.

Andrew held almost 70 influencer lunches and was particularly focused on events to increase the profile of women. One themed function focused on senior women of achievement from a range of careers including entrepreneurs, insurance, retail, the judiciary, journalism, psychology, engineering, HR, accountancy, waste management, local government, communication businesses and charity all reflecting what is required to achieve senior management success.

Andrew held several events to increase the understanding of business, particularly SMEs. 99% of all businesses in the UK fall under the definition of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). These employ under 250 people, turn over less than £36 million, and have gross assets of under £18 million but that is simply a numerical definition but not a defining characteristic of success. Microbusinesses face very different problems to larger businesses such as lack of strategic inputs; funding and support needs; marketing communication capability; employment and HR capabilities; and the capacity in people and time to deal with external issues such as sustainability.

Other events included a special luncheon to celebrate 10 years of same sex marriage, a special luncheon to mark Armed Forces Day with Normandy veteran 98 years old Ken Cook as guest of honour and the first Mansion House scholarship scheme reception in two years at the Old Bailey where talented individuals from all over the world receive support to study financial and professional subjects in our world leading UK education establishments.

The Non-Aldermanic Sheriff has of course a special relationship with livery companies whose membership form the electorate for the two Sheriffs and the Lord Mayor so numerous meetings, dinners and briefings with livery Clerks were held.

It is not the most important thing but it is a feature of a Sheriff's year that they will meet several famous personalities and Andrew attended a state visit at Horse Guards Parade, met with the Duke of Edinburgh, HRH the Duke of Gloucester, Lord Heseltine who is an Honorary Liveryman of the Marketors, the Chancellor of the Exchequer the Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, the Lord President of the Council the Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP,  the then Foreign Secretary the Rt Hon James Cleverly MP, and the President of South Africa President Ramaphosa.

During his year Andrew and his good lady Marian got married at the Old Bailey. This was the first time that the sitting Sheriff of the City of London got married during his year of office in over 800 years.

The other person whom I helped get elected as Non-Aldermanic Sheriff is my friend the Hon Liz Green. She was Master Framework Knitter when I was Master Marketor in 2016 and we have both served on the Committee of our Past Masters’ Association. I worked on her campaign team for the post of Non-Aldermanic Sheriff in 2017 and she won a competitive election quite comfortably and served in 2018 alongside Vincent Keaveny. But I won’t go into more detail about her year as it would be very similar to Andrew’s. However, Liz is now serving in a different Shrieval role as the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire. Last week she invited me to attend the High Sheriff’s Justice Service for the County of Hertfordshire at St Alban’s Cathedral. It was a remarkable occasion and I will blog about it next week. It should also be recognised that these posts are unpaid.