Memoirs of a radical Lawyer

By Dark Politricks

I have just watched Michael Mansfield QC on Adam Boulton’s Sunday Morning political news programme on Sky News.

Mansfield has a new book out on September 7th entitled “Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer” and was discussing some of his famous cases. For those that don’t know who he is, Mansfield is one of the most famous and probably one of the best paid Queen Counsels in the country. He is a very well spoken and well educated man who holds anti-establishment views which may account for some calling him a “champagne socialist”. He claims that up to 95% of his work comes from legal aid cases and if that’s true that’s very admirable however its the big cases that he famous for including:

-Representing the families of Stephen Lawerence in their fight for justice against the “institutionalized racism” within the metropolitan police force.

-Representing Al-Fayed in the coroners inquest in Diana and his Dodis death in Paris.

-Representing the Birmingham six and Guildford four, those famous miscarriage of justices which occurred in the seventies and were overturned in the nineties.

-Representing the family of Jean Charles de Menezes who was assassinated by British police on the London Underground after being mis-identified as a terrorist suspect.

And many more which I will not list here. However what I found interesting having never really heard him be interviewed before was his views on the Orwellian nightmare that is the surveillance state that we now find ourselves living within in the UK. Whilst this modern technology that enables the state to invade our privacy and monitor our movements may help the police in their work at what cost is it to our overall sense of freedom? As Mansfield said in the interview who monitors the monitors?

Every tool can have a dual purpose and he can see these new privacy invading tools and powers of search and detention being used by those who may not have the publics best interests in mind. He most definitely believes in a state within a state using the words of our Queen to Paul Burrell to describe “Dark Forces” that are at work in this country.

As I also believe myself, these dark forces or deep state center around the intelligence services and those that control them. They are not those who supposedly represent us in parliament but the people who control the real levers of power and who can make or break an MP with a well placed story or information gained through nefarious means. The intelligence services are a powerful tool to be able to control and we should not believe they are working for our best interests all of  the time. There is too much publicly available historical evidence for us to believe in a sugar coated world where people with extraordinary powers do not use them for their own interests and have the super human self control to never cross any limits that we as a country impose.

Michael has good reason to distrust giving the authorities and the police in particular more power and technological tools as he has experience through his many legal battles of  police brutality, corruption and outright fabrication of evidence (see Guildford and Birmingham miscarriages of justice). Thinking about the Lockerbie bombings (for obvious reasons) and the main piece of evidence, circuit board from a toshiba cassette player that supposedly linked Libya to the bombing we have a wonderful quote from Mansfield regarding the use of forensic science:

“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.”

He has found through his numerous fights for justice against authority and the government in particular that they are almost always in the wrong but will never admit it. Only a constant fight for truth that usually takes many years if not decades by those strong enough to fight it can overcome the establishments preference for silence and cover up. First there is denial then more denial and then some more until there is a revelation of some sort and then the admissions come flooding out.

A recent example he gave was the MPs expenses scandal although he went into more detail about the Lawerence enquiry. He also believes that Princess Diana’s death has not been fully explained with unanswered questions remaining about a supposed dossier she had compiled against the arms industry which she was planning to expose in her fight against land mines. The arms industry is one that our country excels at and we are world leader in exporting death to children in far off countries who play with those shiny objects in the dirt only to have their limbs torn off when they turn out to be unexploded ordinance. These big arms companies that bring huge amounts of money into our countries coffers could be the same dark forces that Mansfield mentioned in the interview. They are certainly powerful enough to bribe Saudi princes to gain contracts and then get any resulting fraud investigations dropped by the government but who knows…

Anyway I for one will be buying his book.