YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Mansfield

lines on the record: 44
first: 2010-10-17
most recent: 2010-10-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right, well, as I said, I would want to try and communicate with the outside world, but I like to do it in a musical way like a drum kit.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, I'm going to have to ask permission probably. I would want a book I haven't read I know nothing about. Other than by reputation, what I would like to take it is in fact one book, but it's a trilogy, the Cairo trilogy by Mafus. It's set in Cairo and Egypt, and I think it's intricate. And I think I would need something that would consume my interest from day to day.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is jazz by I think a maestro, and you have to imagine a cold November day a few years ago now. Yvette and I were wondering what to do. We wandered to Balatano, and there in Battersey Town Hall was Antonio Fortioni. So we got to know him very well, and we've been to nearly every gig he's had, certainly in the United Kingdom. He plays brilliantly, but he's also very funny, and it's called Touch Wood, and there'll be plenty of that on the island.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I find it difficult, I have to say, I'd be wanting to find ways of communicating with the outside world cooking dare I say, I am quite good at now. It's taking me a while to get there, but I'm there. And I'm very experimental. So on this island, I'm imagining things will be growing. And I say, what about that over there? I wonder if I can eat that. Now, some days obviously it'll lay me out because I shouldn't be eating it. Other days I'll cook it. Vegetarians I won't be catching fish, and if there's a few animals around, they'll be perfectly safe.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love it Well you've only allowed us eight records, though me So I use the tree, I imagine myself just dancing around a tree as the partle, you know.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I often think of what he would have thought. I think ultimately quietly he would have smiled to himself that, you know, I've gone off in this direction. He wouldn't have said very much, but he knew that I wanted to go into the law, and I discussed it with him, and he said you'll never make it. We haven't got the connections, we haven't got the money, so forget it. So I think he would be amazed and probably gratified.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is Forevet. If that's been a member of a rather large chorus, as it were, or choir in South London, the festival chorus it's called, and they have three concerts a year, and over the last sixteen years, I think something like that, I've been to all of them. So I've listened to many pieces. And the piece that would take me back is Herbert Howell's Requiem. The way this is described as a kind of hushed intensity. I need to have a bit of a hushed intensity, and this will give it to me.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then he used a word that is rarely used, and this was a conservative prime minister apologizing to the Irish community. They could not believe their ears, either it's worth a penny.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well the figures are wrong. The figures are wrong. And on the fees front, I'm not afraid to discuss it. I mean, anybody who cares to look it up will see that I'm nowhere near the top league of earners. And I'm certainly not in the top league of people who are earning money out of the bloody Sunday inquiry. I was paid what was the state. The state determined the fees. I didn't determine the fees. The state determined the fees that were relevant for the hours that I put in on that case. Now, yes, perhaps, I don't know because I wasn't there. I'm not behind the scenes. Maybe a year or two could have been knocked off. Maybe they could have done the job quicker. I don't know. But I think if you then go to the situation this year, David Cameron stands up in the House of Commons. He did not mince any words unequivocal in the way he said this should never have happened effectively, and it was unjustified killing.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was, in fact, Lord Taville, had a remit much broader than that it was part of the pre peace process at that time. Looking back at what had happened in the twenty years before that which had led to this situation where British troops were effectively occupying the streets in this way and led to the shooting. Now that's an enormous task and if you were a mother or a father or whatever or a relative and you had had your relatives murdered. You would want that to be, as it were, recognised. This was a moment that they'd waited for, and there was emotion welling up in all of them, and I think it was one of those days, in fact for me probably, the most moving day of forty two years.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and it's not just for my sake I say that. I think you ask any of the families because they felt, quite rightly, that the truth about what happened in nineteen seventy two when people died on the streets of Derry shot by British military forces had never been uncovered. Now it took a long time, it certainly did, but it's worth every penny because it wasn't dealing with an isolated incident that took maybe four minutes, which is about the length of time it took”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, amongst the children there are a number, as Jonathan, my eldest and Kieran and Freddy the youngest, who are deeply interested in music, and in Freddy it's kind of rap. And I'm very proud of all their achievements, but this leads into homegrown sounds, and this particular number won't wait for hope. It's to do with consumerism, and that we need to consider we all need to consider whether now is not an extremely apposite time to reconsider our values, our priorities for the future”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps too understanding, but I think she is now translating her understanding into action and saying, you know, now's the time. And I appreciate that. It's time now to readjust in this sort of seventieth year. Readjust and look at other things.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The answer to that is a tribute to the families, actually. I mean, my own family have provided unstinting support, and I think without that I couldn't have done it. I've taken them for granted, and I shouldn't have.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think the reason for that is partly because we both recognize we drive each other mad Also, altogether six children, you are taken down to ground level what they want to do is what I've tried to do. So I switch off. So a lot of lighthearted matter.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yes, she was making a film about The Way in which civil liberties were being encroached at that time, and she heard from other people that I was involved and that I might be able to contribute to this, although I have to say, much to my amusement and hers probably she cut me out entirely of the film because she couldn't edit it, probably listening to me now you think, well, I understand that.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was the very flame. The sky was black with missiles. And what we attempted to share, and it's not just me, obviously, there was a team of lawyers involved in defending the miners. But what the police hadn't bargained for, there was an official, if you like, police photographer standing on the roof of one of the buildings. Police took a video and it showed quite clearly that the police were not bombarded. There were missiles occasionally, but they were very rare, and it certainly wasn't black with missiles. The allegations against the miners just were not true.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was shocked, yes, I never ceased to be shocked, I think the moment you sort of anesthetized to it all, then you've lost the plot. So yes, I was shocked, but I Politics does influence not only decisions about prosecuting but also the very forces on the ground.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, this piece has me in fits of laughter I'm going to control myself on this. I'm a great goons fan, I have to say, brought up with the goons on the wire less as it was then called, and I met Spike some years later because he was interested in the same kind of issues as I was, and I'd met him before, and I said to him we're in Trafalgar Square, and I said, look, you won't remember me, but my name's Michael Manswell, and you used to come and support. And he said, and he just had one of these, he said, well, the point is, as long as you remember who you are, that's fine. So, you know, he's one liners, and he's brilliant. And this little sketch has it all.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On that one, I was actually on that particular occasion going somewhere else, but I mean, there was an occasion, the first trial relating to Barry George, who was accused of killing Jill Dando. And I was upset about it. I thought, you know, this shouldn't be. He shouldn't have been convicted. Is it my fault? So I've got to re-examine this. How am I going to do this? So I just walked home about seven miles. You know, pounding the pavements is pretty good exercise. It's also very good for just letting it drain out. And so each paving stone was another thought, another development. So by the next day, I'm sort of centered again and I think, right, we get up and we start again.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Long running saga of struggle, Dorin and Neville have made things change. They've set agendas by persisting and insisting in the end, and to give the Labour government their due, they set up a public inquiry to investigate all the background matters to find out what's gone wrong in this case.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're always in a sense partly by chance, and partly because the connections that you already have formed with people, and I knew the solicitor who was originally approached by the Lawrence's, and he approached me about this, so I just said yes, fine, I'll certainly take this on. Unusually though, representing not a defendant but a family. But of course the longer one became familiar with the sequence of events that had affected Doreen and Neville, then you then begin to appreciate the magnitude of the injustice. It's not just the killing. The killing's bad enough, but then when you're not getting answers from the authorities, whether they be police or politicians, and you're having to bang on doors and persevere until the door opens a tiny amount. So this became obviously a long”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Benjamin Zephaniah, the death of Joy Gardner This is spoken word because I am thinking of the island and I'm thinking of the fact I'm not very good at being on my own, I have to say. If I'm at home, you know, I tend to have the radio on in every room. On my own, I'd probably be quite hopeless. So I would want to listen to this. because it would remind me of why I've done the things I've done, because in this poem is measured anger, and I hope that's what I've had. So here it is.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's the Obama phrase we can do it, you can do it, I can do it. I understand why some people are driven to extremes which I don't accept. However, change actually can be affected, and the example I'm now giving, of course, is what happened with the Bloody Sunday families. I mean, they waited thirty years and they got it in the end.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what I'm saying is that what one has to understand here is a situation in which they felt their democratic voice had not been listened to. So you may have the vote, it depends on whether it counts.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They go about the business. Well, that was the discussion that I had with them. Their answer to that was we have it's rather like the ANC in South Africa. They were saying that we've tried all the democratic means, and I have to say it applies to Hamas in Gaza.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anywhere in the world. I'm not somebody who's ever done that. But on the other hand, I do understand the origins of a lot of what makes people in the end. Often it's not mindless there is a political background it doesn't justify, but it does explain.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean I've been educated by the cases that I've done. I've become, in a sense, angry as I've gone on. Now in this particular instance here were two young people who had And doing what I have already explained, the procedure that I adopted, which is I've got to get to know these two people. I mean there were more than the two women, but I represented the two women. And the longer I spent with them I suddenly realized, well, wait a minute, if I had been born in their situation facing enormous obstacles to dealing with discrimination, housing, employment, and so on, all those well known factors, only wanting civil rights, I don't applaud and I don't support any kind of violent terrorism.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next is a piece of music which again is evocative. When I went to university, I went to Kiel, I went to with my first wife in fact, went to a concert in the Hanley Town or one of the pottery towns. We arrived a bit late and I came in the middle of this most brilliant piece of meat. I'd never heard it Arachmanoff's second piano concerto and you know when the sort of hairs on the back of your head bristle and all the rest of it I just sat there again captivated by this brilliant I don't know who the pianist was, but you have a recording of the Halle playing it and it takes me back to that and you drift away with this.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People didn't really. Yes, and I think my father wouldn't have wanted me to know. He's very anxious that I did succeed at everything I did, because he was working in order to provide for that situation, and he would have thought that if I'd known, because I was at a very crucial period trying to get into university just finished at school, so it was a crossover period for me. But he was very stoic about everything.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't I didn't He worked extraordinarily long hours, difficult hours, but he never let on that he'd in fact got throat cancer. I went away with some friends to Torquay on a tennis holiday of tennis at that time. I got a phone call from my mother Not only was my father in hospital, but he was seriously ill. In fact, he was dying, and I had no idea, so I rushed back, obviously. I got back too late. He was dead. I mean, I'd seen him before I went away, but I didn't realise how serious the situation was.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was. I think my father really wanted me to do that, and at school what an admission I was very fond of the combined cadet for And my mother sewed creases in my trousers, you're not supposed to do that. My brother showed me how to polish the boots by melting the black polish so they were like mirrors and how to blank o my belt and gaiters and all this kind of thing. And I was in charge of a drill squad. I can hardly believe I did all this. And we went off to Sandhurst. And I think my father thought that's where he's going to end up. I mean, he died before he could know that I didn't end up there, but that was a very strong possibility.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had two brothers I didn't see much of them because they enlisted during the war I was born during the war. So I didn't see very much of them, but the eldest brother had joined during the war the Scots guards, and after the war he stayed in the Scots Guards as a bandsman. He used to play in all the big occasions, and the one that he found the most moving and the most important and significant was the Cenotaph. And I just remember standing at the Cenotaph as a boy with my parents. It's very difficult for tears to be held back, very emotional, and there always were autumnal leaves in Whitehall, covering the ground, and you could hear them rustling. That's how I remember it.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was it? No, in the days, I mean, there were no meters and all the rest of it, no yellow lines, but there were studs and a pedestrian crossing, and she was being summoned for parking between the studs. She said, no, I didn't do it, and I'm not going to accept this. There she was summons to the magistrates court. And she took it on herself fought the case defended as unheard of and of course the perry mason moment in her case is calling my father who was disabled as a witness because he was sitting in the car and the police officer hadn't noticed. That was it. She was acquitted and it became, you know, it was well it was certainly in the newspapers whether it was on the front page. That was the lesson.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm very grateful for it. It was secure, I mean, we had the same house throughout. I went to school on a bike just up the road, I was able to go behind across a railway. There were sort of allotments and meadows and a brook, and I looked back on that period with great fondness, because although it was stringent and there wasn't a lot of money around and it was a small house, it didn't seem to matter.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, never did, but to give her adieu we always got a letter well my mother did, saying I'm so grateful you've stuck down three thousand four hundred twenty two envelopes yet again, and I assure you that is the reason for our victory. My mother sort of stuck them on the wall. Later on I stuck em on the wall and people said what? But in a way I think you disagree with the politics maybe, but on the other hand she was involved. She participated and she wanted me to be involved and so that was a lesson.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, while I have to admit to all this it started really with my mother who we lived in Finchley and my mother campaigned for her and she got me to campaign for her and she got me to join the young conservatives and all of that.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, I think it improves with age, like maturing good wine, I suppose, but conventional politics particularly and certainly what's been going on over the last twenty five years has got me so angry about and I'm particularly concerned with social justice as well as legal justice that I'm more vociferous now than I was when I started.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In his house and I suddenly realised that here is the drummer of the pink Floyd and then he invited me and my family to go and see the wall and you know this is terrible admission I hadn't really been to a pop concert before and I think when you hear the track you'll realise you just get enveloped and I want this on an island so that it fills the island.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pink Floyd There's a slight story attached to it because Nick Mason, who's in the group, was the father of some children whom my children knew rather well at school. And we used to go round for lunch or to his house when the children were playing together. I never knew what he did. And he didn't talk about it. And I think it was a lunchtime, and I try and play the drums not very well. So I was tapping on the table or something, and he said, oh, do you play the drums? And I said, well, actually, as a matter of I do play the drums, yeah. And I said, do you? You know, and he said, well, yeah, I do. I said, oh, really? And he said, I've got a drum kit. All that's. And he said, upstairs. Would you like to have a girl? And I go up and see the drum kit is huge and all the rest of it. And I said, well, this is more than a hobby then, you know. The pit by now is extremely large. I think he loved the whole experience because it was only when I saw posters on the wall.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's the stage at which I suppose I recognise being high profile mattered if I can be above the parapet, the risks funnily enough are less they're still there, but they're less. High visibility is, I think, my protection.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, personal safety certainly it can be timed almost with the Irish cases particularly, the bombing campaign that took place from nineteen seventy three onward, and I was affected directly, my own car got blown up with the first one outside the Al Bailey, and people quite naturally hugely hostile to those alleged to have committed these crimes. And so I found myself marginalized for doing these cases, and there were people who felt that I should receive death threats and so on, which I did do, and so I have to watch my back.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's like topsy it's just grown. I mean you don't notice it. I mean I've been at it a long time forty two years odd. I haven't asked for it but it's attended the case.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, you'll definitely told that it's regarded as a professional distance in a sense that you stand off a bit like surgeons, I suppose, and each case comes along as another body. You mustn't become identified or involved because you get too close, you lose your sense of judgment. Well, seem to me the only way I really wanted to do the job was to get inside the shell, the shoes of the person or persons that I'm representing. You have to live their lives in order to communicate the feelings and understand how they've gotten the position they're in.”
2010-10-17 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Mansfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source