Michael Mansfield (born 12 October 1941) is an English

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...

and head of chambers at Nexus Chambers. He was recently described as "The king of

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

work" by

The Legal 500 Legalease Ltd. is a global legal research and publishing company founded in the UK in 1987. The company assesses global law firms and lawyers for its publications, annual lists and guides, including ''Legal Business'', ''GC Magazine'' and ''The ...

and as a Leading

Silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the coc ...

civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...

and human rights (including actions against the police). A British republican,

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetarianism m ...

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

and self-described "radical lawyer", he has participated in prominent and controversial court cases and inquests involving accused

IRA Ira or IRA may refer to: *Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name *Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name *Iran, UNDP code IRA Law *Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...

bombers, the

Birmingham Six The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the C ...

, Bloody Sunday massacre, the

Hillsborough disaster The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the ...

and the deaths of

Jean Charles de Menezes Jean may refer to: People * Jean (female given name) * Jean (male given name) * Jean (surname) Fictional characters * Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character * Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations * J ...

and

Princess Diana Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Frances Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of King Charles III (then Prince of Wales) and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her ac ...

and the McLibel case.

Early life

Mansfield grew up in north Finchley, North London, and attended Holmewood Preparatory School (

Woodside Park Woodside Park is a suburban residential area in London. It is located in the London Borough of Barnet, in the North Finchley postal district of N12. Description The area to the east of the tube station consists predominantly of large Vict ...

) before going to Highgate School and the University of Keele, where he graduated with a BA (Hons) in history and philosophy, and was Secretary of Keele's Students' Union.

Career

Mansfield was called to the bar at

Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and W ...

in 1967, became

Queen's Counsel In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel (post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of a queen, is a lawyer (usually a barrister o ...

in 1989 and was elected as a

Bencher A bencher or Master of the Bench is a senior member of an Inn of Court in England and Wales or the Inns of Court in Northern Ireland, or the Honorable Society of King's Inns in Ireland. Benchers hold office for life once elected. A bencher can ...

of Gray's Inn in 2007. He is currently the president of the

Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers is a socialist and legal campaigning organisation in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1930 to provide legal support to the then Labour government. The Society was named after Viscount Haldane, a Liber ...

, and is a professor of law at City University. Mansfield is an after-dinner and keynote speaker.

Notable cases

As well as representing those wrongly convicted of the IRA's

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...

and

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

pub bombings, Mansfield has represented: the

Angry Brigade The Angry Brigade was a far-left British terrorist group responsible for a series of bomb attacks in England between 1970 and 1972. Using small bombs, they targeted banks, embassies, a BBC Outside Broadcast vehicle, and the homes of Conservati ...

; Dolours and

Marian Price Marian Price (born 1954), also known by her married name as Marian McGlinchey, is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer. Price was born into a strongly Republican family in Andersonstown, west Belfast. Both of her parents ...

; Brian Keenan; the Orgreave miners;

Mahmood Hussein Mattan Mahmood Hussein Mattan (1923 – 3 September 1952) was a British Somali former merchant seaman who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Lily Volpert on 6 March 1952. The murder took place in the Docklands area of Cardiff, Wales, and Mat ...

, Ruth Ellis and

James Hanratty James Hanratty (4 October 1936 – 4 April 1962), also known as the A6 Murderer, was a British criminal who was one of the final eight people in the UK to be executed before capital punishment was effectively abolished. He was hanged at Bedfo ...

(in posthumous appeals); those involved in the Israeli Embassy bombing; Frank Crichlow, owner of the Mangrove restaurant;

Stephen Lawrence Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; ...

's family;

Michael Barrymore Michael Ciaran Parker (born 4 May 1952), known by his stage name Michael Barrymore, is an English actor, comedian and television presenter of game shows and light entertainment programmes on British television in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s ...

at the Stuart Lubbock inquest;

Barry George Barry Michael George (born 15 April 1960) is an Englishman who was found guilty of the murder of English television presenter Jill Dando and whose conviction was overturned on appeal. Dando's profile and popularity ensured high public interes ...

at the inquest into the death of

Jill Dando Jill Wendy Dando (9 November 1961 – 26 April 1999) was an English journalist, television presenter and newsreader. She spent most of her career at the BBC and was the corporation's Personality of the Year in 1997. At the time of her death, her ...

; the gangster

Kenneth Noye Kenneth James Noye (born 24 May 1947) is an English criminal most recently sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Stephen Cameron in a road rage incident while on licence from prison in 1996. He was arrested in Spain two years later and c ...

; the

Bloody Sunday Bloody Sunday may refer to: Historical events Canada * Bloody Sunday (1923), a day of police violence during a steelworkers' strike for union recognition in Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia * Bloody Sunday (1938), police violence aga ...

families;

Arthur Scargill Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the UK miners' strike (1984–85), a major event in the history of ...

;

Angela Cannings Angela Cannings was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK in 2002 for the murder of her seven-week-old son, Jason, who died in 1991, and of her 18-week-old son Matthew, who died in 1999. Her first child, Gemma, die ...

;

Fatmir Limaj Fatmir Limaj (born 4 February 1971), is a Kosovo-Albanian politician. He is the leader of ''Nisma për Kosovën''. Limaj served as Minister of Transport and Telecommunication in the government of the Republic of Kosova. He was known as "Çelik ...

, a

Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...

-Albanian leader prosecuted in

the Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

; Mohamed al-Fayed in the inquest into the deaths of his son

Dodi al-Fayed Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Mena'em Fayed (; arz, عماد الدين محمد عبد المنعم الفايد, ʿImād ed-Dīn Muḥammad ʿAbd el-Munʿim el-Fāyid , 17 April 1955 – 31 August 1997), better known as Dodi Fayed ( ar, دودى ...

and

Diana, Princess of Wales Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Frances Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of King Charles III (then Prince of Wales) and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her ac ...

; and the families of

and Mark Duggan. In March 2019 Mansfield was engaged by the family of footballer

Emiliano Sala Emiliano Raúl Sala Taffarel (; 31 October 1990 – 21 January 2019) was an Argentine professional footballer who played as a striker. After playing youth football in Argentina and following a short spell in Portugal's regional leagues, Sala ...

to represent their interests in the dispute over his death. Mansfield has been referred to as a "

champagne socialist Champagne socialist is a political term commonly used in the United Kingdom. It is a popular epithet that implies a degree of hypocrisy, and it is closely related to the concept of the liberal elite. The phrase is used to describe self-identifi ...

" though he has said that 95 per cent of his work comes from

legal aid Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to co ...

Lockerbie bombing

Warning against over-reliance upon

forensic science Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal ...

to secure convictions, Mansfield in the BBC Scotland '' Frontline Scotland'' TV programme ''Silence over Lockerbie'', broadcast on 14 October 1997, said he wanted to make just one point:

Forensic science is not immutable. They're not written in tablets of stone, and the biggest mistake that anyone can make—public, expert or anyone else alike—is to believe that forensic science is somehow beyond reproach: it is not! The biggest miscarriages of justice in the United Kingdom, many of them emanate from cases in which forensic science has been shown to be wrong. And the moment a forensic scientist or anyone else says: 'I am sure this marries up with that' I get worried.

Personal life

Mansfield has been married three times. He was married for 19 years to Melian Bordes, with whom he had five children (Jonathan, Anna, Louise, Leo and Kieran), and for 30 years to the artist/filmmaker Yvette Vanson, from whom he separated in 2014 and with whom he had a son (Fred). He has been with his current wife, Yvette Greenway, a well-known snooker player, since 2015. His daughter, Anna, took her own life in May 2015.

Political views

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Mansfield signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...

, describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world", and endorsed Corbyn in the 2019 UK general election. In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."

Charity work

Mansfield is a patron of the animal rights organisation Viva! (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) and refers to animal production as "genocide". He is also patron of Hastings Advice and Representation Centre, a charity providing free welfare benefit advice and representation for local people in

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

, East Sussex and the surrounding area. He is a co-founder and trustee of the charity Silence of Suicide (SOS). He is an environmental and animal rights activist and has recently stated that meat may become banned in the future, and there should be a law made to criminalise

ecocide Ecocide is human impact on the environment causing mass destruction to that environment. Ten nations have codified ecocide as a crime. Activities that might constitute ecocide in these nations include substantially damaging or destroying ecos ...

, or destruction of the environment as a result of intensive animal agriculture.

References

External links

Nexus, the Chambers of Michael Mansfield QC
Michael Mansfield's Chambers {{DEFAULTSORT:Mansfield, Michael 1941 births Living people People from Finchley People educated at Highgate School Alumni of Keele University English lawyers Members of Gray's Inn English barristers British King's Counsel British republicans English animal rights activists English environmentalists English human rights activists English legal professionals English legal writers English socialists Human rights lawyers