4:49pm Wednesday 11th February 2004
By Tom Spender
Michael Mansfield, a Queen's Counsel and one of the country's leading defence lawyers, has an engaging story to tell about how he was inspired to advocacy.
It all began when a policeman wrongly accused his mother of parking on a pedestrian crossing near Totteridge & Whetstone Tube station while she was doing her weekly shop at Sainsbury's.
"For my mother, a loyal citizen, to be accused of committing a criminal offence was unbelievable," he said. "So she defended herself in court. And won.
"My mother said, If they do that to me, what are they doing to everybody else? What other injustices are occasioned to other people?'. She said it throughout my life. And you hear it once, you hear it twice and an attitude is absorbed. If you see an injustice done, you should do something about it.
"It is a simple story, but it has affected nearly everything I did."
And Mr Mansfield, 62, has covered some of the country's most high-profile cases over the last 30 years, developing a reputation as a fierce defender of human rights.
Giving the first in a series of talks, entitled An Audience with Michael Mansfield, at the Wyllyotts Centre in Darkes Lane, Potters Bar, on Sunday, he said the case he feels most strongly about at the moment is that of Angela Cannings, a young mother charged with murdering her infant babies.
Describing the judgment in the case as one of the finest to be handed down by the Court of Appeal', he welcomed the judge's scepticism over the veracity of forensic evidence.
"This is something I have been saying for a long time. Science is in the eye of the beholder. There was a time when somebody in a white coat said X means X and you believed it. But when you ask questions, you begin to see the role of human fallibility in science."
As a result of the ruling, the scientist whose 'expert' opinion blamed Ms Cannings for the death of her babies is being investigated, and other similar cases are being reopened.
Mr Mansfield grew up in Whetstone and attended Holmewood Preparatory School now Woodside Park International School before going off to Keele University.
He has fond memories of playing in Hadley Wood with two friends in an alliance known to the boys as the Three Musketeers.
"We only lived in a two-up two-down near Totteridge & Whetstone Tube but I always remember the holidays as being outside and rural. My friends and I traced Dollis Brook from High Barnet through sewers and people's gardens to Hendon and the North Circular. This was in the days when parents were relaxed about three young boys going away with a packed lunch and coming back at dark, thoroughly dirty."
Now the old Labour supporter, who represented Arthur Scargill during the miners' strikes, is an outspoken critic of Tony Blair.
Denouncing the war in Iraq as illegal and describing the Hutton inquiry as 'iniquitous', he encouraged his audience to be prepared to fight injustice and be politically active.
Mr Mansfield said: "I think Hutton addressed the wrong question. It is iniquitous what he did. Why didn't he ask Tony Blair about what turned out to be weapons of little destruction? "This is an unlawful war. If Iraq isn't looked into, what's next?"
He continued: "I think I am the only lawyer doing talks like this. There are lots of politicians and actors who do, but not lawyers. But I want to demystify the law for people."
In fact, he and his second wife, Yvette Vanson, have brought out a book called The Home Lawyer, which explains the mysteries of legal representation in order to give people the tools they need to speak out against injustice.
That policeman in the 1940s who wrongly accused a woman of parking on a pedestrian crossing might just regret writing that ticket.
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