Distinguished friends
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia
Riz Ahmed
Sughra Ahmed
Keith Ajegbo
George Alagiah
Claire Alexander
Peter Atkins
Julian Baggini
Richard Beswick
Dinesh Bhugra
Karan Bilimoria
Geoffrey Bindman
Karen Blackett
Nicholas Blake
Ian Blatchford
David Blunkett
Achim Borchardt-Hume
Mihir Bose
Alain de Botton
John Bowers
Des Browne
Rickie Burman
Paul Canoville
Saimo Chahal
Reeta Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Stephen Claypole
Robin Cohen
Linda Colley
David Crystal
Angélica Dass
Prakash Daswani
Navnit Dholakia
Ibrahim Dogus
Lloyd Dorfman
Alf Dubs
John Dyson
Damien Egan
Shreela Flather
Daniel Franklin
Edie Friedman
Manjit Singh Gill
Teresa Graham
Susie Harries
Naomie Harris
James Hathaway
David Hencke
Sophie Herxheimer
Afua Hirsch
Michael Howard
Clive Jacobs
Kevin Jennings
Adrian Johns
Shobu Kapoor
Jackie Kay
Ayub Khan-Din
Francesca Klug
Tony Kushner
Kwasi Kwarteng
Kwame Kwei-Armah
David Kynaston
Brian Lambkin
Mark Lewisohn
Joanna Lumley
Michael Mansfield
Sue McAlpine
Neil Mendoza
David Miles
Abigail Morris
Hugh Muir
Tessa Murdoch
Sandy Nairne
Bushra Nasir
Susheila Nasta
Eithne Nightingale
John O’Farrell
Kenneth Olisa
Kunle Olulode
David Olusoga
Julia Onslow-Cole
John Orna-Ornstein
Herman Ouseley
Ruth Padel
Panikos Panayi
Bhikhu Parekh
Nikesh Patel
David Pearl
Caryl Phillips
Mike Phillips
Trevor Phillips
Sunand Prasad
Aubrey Rose
Michael Rosen
Cathy Ross
Salman Rushdie
Jill Rutter
Philippe Sands
Konrad Schiemann
Richard Scott
Stephen Sedley
Maggie Semple
Saira Shah
Babita Sharma
Nikesh Shukla
Jon Snow
Robert Soning
David Spence
Danny Sriskandarajah
Stelio Stefanou
Dick Taverne
Robert Tombs
Rumi Verjee
Patrick Vernon
Edmund de Waal
Iqbal Wahhab
Yasmin Waljee
Jake Wallis Simons
David Warren
Iain Watson
Henning Wehn
Janet Whitaker
Gary Younge
Benjamin Zephaniah
The eclectic nature of our nation is a testament to tolerance and liberal values and a history of movement, and association is vital to an understanding of how this works. This museum will provide hopefully an active resource for people to visit and an archive.
Michael Mansfield
Michael Mansfield QC is one of Britain’s best known lawyers. He was born in 1941 and educated at Highgate School and Keele University. Called to the Bar in 1967, he established Tooks Chambers in 1984 at the height of the Miners’ Strike, and became Queen’s Counsel in 1989. He has represented defendants in criminal trials, appeals and inquiries in some of the most controversial legal cases the country has seen, particularly where civil liberties issues have arisen. He has represented the Orgreave miners, the Birmingham Six (who were released in 1991), Barry George (accused of killing TV presenter, Jill Dando) and the family of Stephen Lawrence, amongst countless others. He has participated in the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and represented families at inquests following the Marchioness Disaster and the Lockerbie/Omagh bombings. He was a member of the jury panel on the Russell Tribunal inquiry into the legal ramifications of Israel’s human rights and humanitarian law violations in Palestine. He is President of Amicus, the National Civil Rights Movement and the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers.
Michael has presented a number of television documentaries and series, including Presumed Guilty for BBC1. He is a regular contributor to television and radio current affairs programmes and was a panel member of The Moral Maze for many years. He has also published numerous articles for all the major broadsheets and law journals, a children’s book, The Whale Boy, and, most recently, The Home Lawyer – A Legal Handbook. Over the last few years he has also given a number of successful talks at theatre venues around the country in a series entitled ‘An Audience with … ’
Michael’s latest book, Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer, was published by Bloomsbury in 2009.