Michael Mansfield
Michael Mansfield QC (born 12 October 1941) is a well known English barrister. [1] He is also representing Mohamed Al-Fayed at the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul.
A republican, vegetarian, and bicycle-riding socialist, he has been referred to as a "champagne socialist" though he has said that 95 per cent of his work comes from legal aid.[1]
Personal life
He grew up in Finchley, North London, and attended Holmewood Preparatory School (Woodside Park) before going to Highgate School and the University of Keele, where he graduated with a B.A. (Hons) in history and philosophy, before becoming Secretary of Keele's Students Union. He was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1967, became Queen's Counsel in 1989 and was elected as a Bencher of Gray's Inn in 2007.[2] He is a patron of the animal welfare organisation "Viva!" (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals), and refers to animal production as "genocide"[3]. He has been married twice, to his first wife for 19 years, and then to Yvette. He is currently the President of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers.
Famous cases
As well as representing those wrongly convicted of the IRA's Guildford and Birmingham pub bombings, Mansfield has represented the Angry Brigade, the Price sisters, IRA member Brian Keenan, the Orgreave miners, James Hanratty (in posthumous appeals), those involved in the Israeli Embassy bombing, Stephen Lawrence's family, Michael Barrymore at the Stuart Lubbock inquest, Arthur Scargill, Angela Cannings,[2] and Fatmir Limaj, a Kosovo-Albanian leader prosecuted in The Hague. http://www.luqmanithompson.co.uk
Lockerbie bombing
Warning against over-reliance upon forensic science to secure convictions, Michael Mansfield in the BBC Scotland Frontline Scotland TV programme Silence over Lockerbie, broadcast on October 14, 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."
See also
Further reading
- Who's Who, 2006
External links
Tooks Chambers Michael Mansfield's chambers