Legal aid cuts meted out by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition have resulted in “gross unfairness” for parents involved in disputes over children, according to Mr Justice Mostyn.

The High Court judge could have gone further. The removal of financial support from cases involving employment, housing, welfare, debt, immigration and medical negligence under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 prices poor people out of justice on a whole range of issues.

Combine it with the introduction of hefty fees for bringing cases to employment tribunals and a fivefold increase in court fees — meaning claims at the High Court or county courts could now set you back £10,000 — and the Con-Dem message is clear. Working-class people don’t deserve access to the courts.

Britain’s judicial system has never been the beacon to the world liberals like to brag about, of course.

The innocent often get jailed, as high-profile miscarriages of justice such as the incarceration of the Shrewsbury Pickets or the Guildford Four demonstrate.

By contrast others go unpunished all the time, whether we’re talking about police officers who kill innocent people, MPs who fiddle expenses to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds or business tycoons who dodge millions in tax.

The judiciary is an arm of the state, and in this country that means a capitalist state. It serves the ruling class and is frequently used to oppress working people and persecute those who fight for their rights.

Glaringly obvious flaws in the system are taken for granted — few even object to lawyers selling themselves to the highest bidder, even though everyone knows that means the rich get access to better representation than everyone else.

But it is precisely the injustice at the heart of British justice that made legal aid so important.

As Mr Mostyn points out, it has been called the “fourth pillar of the welfare state.”

And like the rest of the welfare state from the NHS to pensions, it was not given to us by our wise masters.

The bourgeois media has made much out of this year marking the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.

Just as the barons had to force King John to concede their rights all those centuries ago, the working class has had to drag our rulers kicking and screaming into the modern world, winning the right to access justice over long years of campaigning.

John didn’t stand by his commitments and the barons had to go to war to secure them. Today’s bid by the Con-Dems to take back our rights demands equally uncompromising resistance.

Because while Mr Mostyn claims the principle of individual justice has been “sacrificed on the altar of public debt,” the debt is only a cover story. As MPs state today, the changes don’t even save money.

The god the “no such thing as society” Tories have sacrificed it to is the capitalist system itself — a system that recognises no principle but profit and no rights except for those who can afford to pay.

Miscarriages of justice were an “entirely predictable” consequence of Tory reforms, the judge continues.

Just as the fragmentation of the NHS was an entirely predictable result of Andrew Lansley’s privatising Act and the deaths of disabled people deemed “fit for work” by Atos were the entirely predictable fruit of Iain Duncan Smith’s assault on welfare.

Predicting the calamitous human cost of the Con-Dem austerity programme didn’t stop it. It is up to the labour movement and its party to show that we can reclaim our rights.

Ed Miliband needs urgently to commit to restore legal aid and scrap employment tribunal fees.

Justice for the workers. If Labour doesn’t stand for that, it’s hard to see what it stands for.