Lord Woolf

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

Presenter0:26

My castaway this week is the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Wolfe.

Presenter0:32

Throughout his career he's been at the forefront of shaping our justice system. Following the Strangeways riots, he issued far-reaching reports on penal reform.

Presenter0:42

His part in authorizing the release of James Bulger's killers attracted huge attention, and as Master of the Rolls he made an historic judgment allowing Diane Blood to use her dead husband's sperm to have a child.

Presenter0:54

But his appetite to see justice done was sharpened a good deal further back than the highest courts in the land.

Presenter1:00

As a wartime schoolboy prone to getting more than his fair share of canings, he developed an early antipathy towards any perceived unfairness, and was more than willing to make a stand against his stern schoolmasters, however unpopular it made him.

Presenter1:15

So, Harry Wolfe, offender rehabilitation, the freedom of the citizen, prisoners' rights the causes that you've fought for have often brought you into conflict with with politicians and press alike. You don't appear to be someone too concerned about winning any popularity contest.

Lord Woolf1:31

No, but concerned in persuading people that the things I say are things that should be listened to, and perhaps influence them to do things rather better than they have been doing them in the past.

Presenter1:42

And are you um I was going to say, are you comfortable swimming against the tide, but do you actually prefer to swim against the tide?

Lord Woolf1:49

No, I don't think I prefer to swim against the tide, especially now as my swimming's got a lot slower. But I believe that things I've been saying during my career should really be with the tide, and I'm an eternal optimist that the day will come when I will be swimming with the tide.

Presenter2:06

It it takes a great deal of not just um knowledge and self confidence, but it takes a lot of of courage to say the things that people don't want to hear. Do you consider yourself to be somebody who has a a good deal of courage?

Lord Woolf2:21

No, I don't but I don't believe that popular conception as to what people want to hear is necessarily right, and I've got great faith in the power to persuade people by logical argument if your cause is right.

Presenter2:38

We shall talk more about that later. For now tell me about your first piece of music to day.

Lord Woolf2:42

My first piece of music is Schubert's Death and the Maiden, played by the Razumovsky Ensemble, the celloist of whom is Oleg Kagan. The music is beautiful, and my wife also likes it. It was played for her birthday in our home, a memorable occasion.

Lord Woolf3:02

It's also important because the recording you're going to hear is at the Wigmore Hall, and we both have had wonderful evenings listening to various ensembles at the Wigmore Hall.

Lord Woolf3:17

Yeah.

Presenter4:14

The opening of Schubert's Death and the Maiden, played by the Razumovsky Ensemble and recorded live at the Wigmore Hall in two thousand and six, and also a connection, intriguingly, in that piece of music, to your hometown, Gosforth, just near Newcastle.

Lord Woolf4:27

That's right. I I was brought up in Gosforth. I stayed there till an age of about five, when I went to live in Glasgow. My father was a builder in a small way.

Presenter4:38

Interesting, your father had started out as he was a fine art dealer.

Lord Woolf4:41

That is correct.

Presenter4:42

And why did he give that up?

Lord Woolf4:43

Well, he gave that up under the persuasion of my mother, who was a formidable personality. My mother thought that the right occupation for the male members of the family was to earn money earn business, and her father ha had been involved in building, among other things, and so she persuaded my father that this would be more sensible. And in fact, they started off the business by building a house, occupying it, and then selling it, and then moving. And I've forgotten how many houses they occupied in that way.

Presenter5:15

Was he happy to embrace this entrepreneurial spirit, because it's quite a distance between that and fine art dealing?

Lord Woolf5:20

He had a very close relationship with my mother, and I think his desire to please her would mean that he could bridge that in any way. But he always maintained his interests. I mean, I've got early recollections of my parents having musical evenings with my mother playing the piano and singing duets with my father. When I decided to go to the bar, my mother said to me I will never forget this she said, Well, that's all right for a hobby, Harry, but uh you've got to have a business as well. I think she came to change her views, because fortunately she saw me become a judge, but she really didn't think that was a proper occupation for a Jewish man.

Presenter6:05

So it sounds like a rather colourful, rich household that you were brought up in, culturally rich.

Lord Woolf6:09

My m mother was mercurial. She uh could explode, and I think it wasn't helped the fact she lost her first child, and she had a sense of insecurity because of that. But my father was very tolerant and uh and knew she needed support.

Presenter6:27

And given that she had lost her first child, was was she a an overprotective mother? Was she somebody who who not necessarily fussed around you, but but wrapped you in cotton wool?

Lord Woolf6:36

I think she wrapped all three of her children who survived in Cottonwool in that way. She was very protective, but at the same time she had this difficulty in dealing with the stresses of looking after three fairly strong personality children.

Presenter6:51

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Lord Woolf6:52

It's a Burns medley played by the Fetters College pipe and drums.

Presenter6:57

And why have you chosen this?

Lord Woolf6:58

Well, I think Fetters made a big contribution to what I am to day.

Presenter7:03

This was where you were schooled, which we'll talk about in a moment.

Lord Woolf7:05

Yes, well, it's a a public school. It fancied itself as being sort of Eton of Scotland. It was undoubtedly a robust school in the sense that everybody had coal baths. There wasn't much in the way of heating. It was open to the North Sea winds. In winter it could be very cold indeed.

Presenter7:55

The Fettis College pipes and drums playing a Burns medley. You were saying during that, Lord Wolf, that you have a memory of watching the pipe band. Tell me about that.

Lord Woolf8:02

Yes, well, I had a a dormitory right at the top of College West, as it became, at Fetters, and it had a window that looked down. When they were having pipe practice, they would practice outside this window, marching up and down, and it's a really stirring sight to see a pipe band. And when I hear the pipes to day I always think of my time at Fetters, and think about that very warmly.

Presenter8:29

So your family had moved up to Scotland. You spent your first five years near Newcastle. You'd moved up to live in Glasgow. Your parents had sent you to Fettis in Edinburgh. It's the same school that later Tony Blair was to go to famously. You've described it as having aspirations, if you like, to be the Eton of the North. And it was unusual in Scotland to be going to a public school. What were your parents' ambitions for you at that point? Why did they want you to go to this highly academic and special school?

Lord Woolf8:33

Yeah.

Lord Woolf8:38

Yeah.

Lord Woolf8:43

Yeah. Was

Lord Woolf8:54

All their children they wanted to do their best for, and they thought any money that was spent on education was not wasted.

Presenter9:01

And so I'm imagining, as you say, this stiff North Sea wind blowing into the school porridge in the morning, plenty of cold baths and canings. Is that about right?

Lord Woolf9:11

About right, except there was also porridge for supper as well.

Presenter9:14

Oh, yes, even better. And did it suit you? Did you enjoy it?

Lord Woolf9:18

I did enjoy enjoy it, in the ups and downs I am very fortunate in being able to be content most places.

Presenter9:26

But you did s I mean you stood up for yourself. You weren't somebody who just knuckled down and took whatever was given to you.

Lord Woolf9:32

I I was, I think, a bit of a b barrackroom lawyer in some ways, even at that stage, that I thought well some things were right and some things were wrong. Also, uh being the only Jewish boy at Fetters at that time, I was uh subject to uh quite a lot of uh teasing, but I had friends who were always supportive, and so I was never alone.

Presenter9:56

You were truly the only Jewish boy in the school.

Presenter10:01

And you use the word I I wonder if you're being diplomatic. You used the word teasing. I'm wondering if it was closer to bullying.

Lord Woolf10:09

On occasion I I suppose you would see it as bullying. I can remember there was a spiral staircase, and as a small boy you had to go down the spiral staircase, and there were times when I would really be kicked down that staircase.

Presenter10:26

Did you at the time you didn't speak to people about this, you didn't certainly I'm I'm imagining you didn't speak to your schoolmasters, did you speak to your parents ever about that?

Lord Woolf10:32

Certainly not my parents. I would never dream of speaking to my parents about it. And I didn't speak to schoolmasters. I mean, I thought this was part of growing up.

Presenter10:43

And then when it came to your school work, y y you say your parents thought that any spare money, or indeed any money that there was, should be given devoted to their children's education. Were you an industrious schoolboy?

Lord Woolf10:54

I wasn't particularly good at school. Looking back and knowing my own children, and knowing these things can be genetic, I'm quite certain I was dyslectic. But I made progress, and I got my A-levels, and I eventually got a place at Cambridge, which I didn't take, instead went to university college. So I did quite well.

Presenter11:14

We'll talk a little more about that in a second, but for now tell me about your next piece of music.

Lord Woolf11:18

My next uh piece of music is from a most beautiful and wonderful opera, Don Carlos, music which thrills me.

Speaker 411:36

Uh

Speaker 311:54

Yeah.

Presenter12:26

Part of the third act of Verdi's Don Carlos with the orchestra and chorus of La Scala Milan, conducted by Claudio Arbardo. So, Lord Wolfe, injustice, punishment, fairness, all of these things, it seems, were ingrained in you pretty early through the type of schooling that you had. You met what you saw as unfairness head on at times.

Presenter12:49

There's a particular incident to do with a caning that you thought you certainly didn't deserve. Tell me about that.

Lord Woolf12:56

Well, for very good reasons, no doubt at Fetters at that time it may still be true in the dormitories there would be cubicles, and of a heinous offence was to be caught in another boy's cubicle. And there was an occasion when one of the prefects saw me leaning into a neighbouring cubicle, doing my hair, because something had happened to my mirror, and he still had his mirror. I knew I shouldn't go into somebody else's cubicle. Right. So I I kept my feet outside. Unfortunately I was spotted, and uh the prefect reported me, and as a result of that I was called to be beaten. I wanted to protest that I hadn't been in the cubicle. I'd had my feet outside, and to explain my case. And I was sent to the housemaster, who had been in the army and felt very strongly about the need for discipline, and I can still picture him sitting there and saying, Wolf, when I was in the army the practice was to take your punishment and then appeal. Go back and take your punishment. Well, that had the consequence that instead of getting six blows of the cane, I got eight, and I felt that was very unfair.

Presenter14:12

And and the idea I mean, these ideas of of fairness and what is due punishment and what isn't, and that people should be treated with respect truly, I mean, you see the seeds of your life in the law sown in those times at Fetters.

Lord Woolf14:25

Yes, yes, even though I'd already read books about great lawyers, and so I this was all in keeping.

Presenter14:31

Did you tell your masters that you you wanted to be a barrister?

Lord Woolf14:34

I told my housemaster not the same one I've talked about now, and at that time and some would say I still have it I had a bit of a a stutter, and not unreasonably he said that's the one profession that you were not cut out for, and I'm afraid that did it, because that meant I continued to want to go into the law.

Presenter14:52

I see, so when you say that did it, that simply made you more determined.

Lord Woolf14:55

Yes.

Presenter14:56

And so you won a place at Cambridge, but you didn't take up your place at Cambridge. Why not?

Lord Woolf15:00

Well, my parents had moved down to London by that time, and they really wanted me to come and live near home. It's also possible that they thought if I didn't finish my studying, knowing I wasn't the best of students, they were worried I'd never go back to it.

Presenter15:05

Near her

Presenter15:14

It's funny that you say, knowing you weren't the best of students. You I mean, you and they seem to have had incredibly high standards for yourself, given that you did win a place at Cambridge and then went to London University.

Presenter15:25

Well

Lord Woolf15:25

Yeah.

Presenter15:25

Uh

Lord Woolf15:25

Uh

Presenter15:25

I mean, what were you expecting for yourself when you said you weren't the best of students?

Lord Woolf15:25

Uh

Lord Woolf15:28

The best of students gets a scholarship to Cambridge. I certainly hadn't got a scholarship to Cambridge.

Lord Woolf15:35

No well, their standards were high, I suppose.

Presenter15:38

Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Lord Woolf15:40

My next one is a very, very important one because it's a song that was hugely popular at the time that I got married to my wife Marguerite when we went for a honeymoon to Jamaica.

Speaker 415:56

Yeah bird, way up in banana tree

Speaker 416:04

Yeah

Lord Woolf16:05

Uh

Speaker 316:05

Yeah.

Speaker 416:08

You sit all alone like me Did your lady friend leave the nest again? That is very sad, makes me feel so bad You can fly away In the sky, away

Presenter16:26

Johnny Tillotson singing Yellow Bird and memories, that song brings back strong memories of your honeymoon with your wife Marguerite. So how did you meet Marguerite initially?

Lord Woolf16:35

Well, we met just purely on a social occasion, which was organised by a mutual friend at of all places the National Liberal Club, over a cucumber sandwich tea.

Presenter16:45

And she was Jewish?

Lord Woolf16:46

She was Jewish, but unlike myself she was a Sephardi Jew that's those who come from Spain, Portugal, or the Middle East and I was an Ashkenazi Jew, whose background can be traced to Central and Eastern Europe.

Presenter17:02

How important was your Jewishness to the relationship?

Lord Woolf17:07

In a way, for a Sephardi girl like Marguerite to marry an Ashkenazi was really sort of rather marrying beneath her. Her family wouldn't be as enthusiastic as another Sephardi. Indeed, she's told me more than once that if her late father had been alive, he would have strongly objected. But uh her mother, who had six children, was very glad to get one of her daughters off her hand.

Lord Woolf17:34

Marguerite very youngly has gone to my synagogues, though I know she'd be happier in Sephardi ones. But we're both going to get buried in a Sephardi cemetery. We've already got our plot it's a matter of amusement between Marguerite and I that I produce that on a wedding anniversary.

Presenter17:54

So that's what will happen in death. Let's spool back to talk about the early days of marriage. What stage were you at in your career when you were first married?

Lord Woolf18:01

Well, I was a barrister not particularly successful, making his way through the ranks on the Oxford Circuit, one of the circuits in which barristers went round looking for work.

Presenter18:13

When you began to practise at the bar, did you did you find I mean, you said that at school you'd had a bit of a stutter and that you think probably these days you would have been diagnosed as dyslexic. Did you automatically find it easy to stand up with confidence and ease and argue a case?

Lord Woolf18:28

I probably did. I think I probably w was always.

Lord Woolf18:33

Quite emotional, forceful advocate.

Presenter18:36

Emotional, that's an interesting word to use, because of course we tend to think of lawyers and barristers being

Presenter18:42

Individuals who can clinically dissect an argument and present the case and its facts in a way that is relatively dispassionate. That's not your view.

Lord Woolf18:52

Well, I think that is how you should do it, but I don't think I always do do it, because I a great one for a cause. Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Presenter19:00

Uh

Lord Woolf19:00

Well, my next piece of music is connected with my feelings about uh the law and imprisonment, because it's the prisoner's chorus from Beethoven's Fidelia.

Presenter20:10

The Prisoners' Chorus from Beethoven's Fidelio, sung by the choir of the Berlin Opera with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion. Important to you, that piece of music, because of, more than anything, yes, its beauty, but also its its symbolism of these prisoners coming out into the light.

Lord Woolf20:25

Yes, th and that partic particular part. I think that really is revealing. And something we forget about that especially when prisons are in the overcrowded state they are now, people are spending the great majority of the day, day after day, locked up for many, many hours. And anybody who thinks that there's nothing involved in imprisonment and suggests a holiday camp wants to have spent even one night in custody.

Presenter20:56

There are very many people, of course, who become very exercised about all of the facilities that are given to our prisoners these days. They say, you know, they have frequently televisions in their cells, they have exercise yards, they have gyms that are fully equipped, and they see people like you as the the enemies of punishment, if you like.

Lord Woolf21:14

I fully recognize that for the protection of the public that people have to go to prison and some of them have to go to prison for a very, very long time. But I think that the idea that prison isn't a severe punishment is nonsense. However, more important is that imprisonment can be and should be constructive.

Lord Woolf21:36

And I think the great mistake we make is not focussing on the need to prepare people for when they come out of prison. And that takes me back to that little bit of music from Fidelio, because the contrast between life on the inside when you don't have any cares and responsibilities, and life when you come out, especially if you haven't got any arrangements waiting for you, and if your connections with your family have been broken, is stark.

Presenter22:07

Let's take a break for your next piece of music, then. What have you chosen?

Lord Woolf22:09

Well, the next piece I think is a very, very beautiful solo part from the lovely Tchaikovsky Eugene O'Negan, which is one of the most beautiful operas, I believe, that exist.

Speaker 422:26

Monsieur was depart.

Speaker 423:06

Agenias Kriva Chinyisa.

Presenter23:20

Nikolai Gyodurov singing the Aria Love is near Respectre of Age from Tchaikovsky's Eugene O'Negan, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter23:31

So, Lord Wolfe, you were just forty-five when you were made a High Court judge. That that sounds young to me. Typically, is it young?

Lord Woolf23:37

It it it it was young, yes, indeed very young.

Presenter23:41

Did you yourself feel it was a heavy responsibility at that age?

Lord Woolf23:45

I I suppose I did, but you'd had a very

Presenter23:46

You don't sound convinced.

Lord Woolf23:48

Well, I'd had very heavy responsibilities as Treasury Junior. I mean, I was appearing in case after case when the Government thought there w there was an immense amount at stake, and I've boasted in the past that uh administrative law, for example, was made on the cases I lost on behalf of the government before the court of appeal, which was then presided over by Lord Denning, Master of the Rules.

Presenter24:15

Yes, what about Lord Denning? I mean, they're, you know, a terrifically um impressive, not to say intimidating figure to be uh to be alongside.

Lord Woolf24:23

Yes, well, I got a fair old drubbing from time to time, but he was a wonderful judge to appear before, because his mind was of such quality. But if you were appearing for the citizen, you got a rather more sympathetic hearing than if you were appearing on behalf of the Government, and that's how it should be.

Presenter24:41

And in those early days as a High Court judge, w are there particular cases that stand out for you?

Lord Woolf24:47

I was involved in some really fascinating cases. You've mentioned dying blood, but there was also the case which involved what age should children b b be allowed to have contraceptives, which was a very important case. The first memoirs of a cabinet minister case I was in, the Crossman Diaries, and I mean they were just interesting case after interesting case. Of course my family had to be very tolerant. I have one son who was a very good athlete and I used to go on sports days to see him run and do things, and then slip away and be reading on the bank the papers for the next day, and I'm afraid my children didn't get the attention I'd like to have given them.

Presenter25:25

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Lord Woolf25:28

Well, my next piece of music is a wonderful piano sonata, No. twenty six, by Beethoven, played by a young but very distinguished pianist called Leo Macaulay.

Presenter25:39

And why have you chosen this?

Lord Woolf25:40

Well, I've chosen it because of the beauty of the music. I've chosen Leah Macaulay because Marguerite, late in her life, has taken up painting, and his wife teaches Marguerite.

Presenter26:51

The opening of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. Twenty six, Les Adieux, played by Leo Macaulay. Let's talk for a moment, Lord Wolfe, about your often uncomfortable relationship with politicians. Um memorably, one significant tussle you had was with the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, who had decided to increase the sentence on the killers of James Bulger at the time and and even now, of course, seared into the public consciousness because it was such a horrific case, this little toddler who'd been led away by two boys and killed.

Lord Woolf27:21

It's fair to say, personally, that the politicians and I have always had good relations, but we have had a number of situations where our views came in conflict.

Presenter27:32

And remind us once again briefly, if you would, exactly what it was that happened with Michael Howard on this.

Lord Woolf27:38

The European Court of Human Rights had said it was wrong for the Home Secretary to determine the period in custody because he wasn't independent. They said, therefore, that any fixing of that period had to be reviewed. I'd just become Lord Chief Justice, and the job of reviewing it came to me. And although I recognise how strongly many people felt

Lord Woolf28:06

The reports showed that these two young men who'd committed this I agree with you heinous offence.

Lord Woolf28:14

had in fact done remarkably well and I'm afraid it's ironic, but it's none the less true that they had probably done remarkably well because of the tension which they had been given after the sentence had been imposed upon them.

Lord Woolf28:31

And it was equally clear that the time was coming when it would be very much in their interest to be given an opportunity of proving they'd put their crime behind them.

Lord Woolf28:44

But, in any event, the principles embedded in the law required you to adopt a wholly different attitude to a crime which is committed by youngsters from a crime which is committed by adults.

Presenter28:57

There is undoubtedly an entire discussion that could last for not just many minutes but many hours on the subject of the way that these young men were treated. Probably not the time and place for that. I want, though, to ask you about not just the politicians that you've had run-ins with, but also the press. The press on many occasions have not been kind to you. How do you respond to that? They've called you things like toothless wolf in headlines and said that you represent woolly thinking and liberalism at its worst. How do you respond to that?

Lord Woolf29:03

So

Lord Woolf29:21

Then had

Lord Woolf29:26

They sent a s sent a removal van to the courts to help me move out. They sent uh the reporters to my home and questioned my wife about

Presenter29:35

Didn't didn't they send a couple of men with swag bags over their shoulders dressed as burglar?

Lord Woolf29:37

Yeah.

Presenter29:39

And of course you you've had to uh keep stumm in public, but in private, has it sometimes left you fuming?

Lord Woolf29:45

Yes, it's a good fair way of saying it. No purpose in showing that you are affected by it.

Presenter29:52

Well, whatever you and your family have uh gone through throughout your career, it clearly hasn't put off your sons. All three of them have uh gone into the legal profession.

Lord Woolf30:01

They have. We'll see if any of them become judges.

Presenter30:04

And as a family, do you spend time together wi with them and your your extended family?

Lord Woolf30:08

I think this is the most important part of Judaism Judaism in the home. And one of the things that has been very important, and one of the things again part of my wife's contribution, is that we always spend Friday nights together if we can. None of us are particularly religious, but we do attach great importance to home life.

Presenter30:30

Let's have your last piece of music, then.

Lord Woolf30:32

Well, my next piece of music is Brahm's Quartet for Piano and Strings. The piano part is played by Murray Periah, who I regard not only as a friend, but a brilliant pianist.

Presenter31:37

The opening of the first movement of Brahm's Quartet for Piano and Strings, opus twenty five, played by Murray Pariah and members of the Amadeus Quartet. So we're coming to the point where I will give you a copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you may take one other book. What's your book going to be?

Lord Woolf31:53

I may choose the Koran. I really do feel deeply conscious that I am ignorant about the Koran, and I would welcome an opportunity of making myself as familiar with the Kor'an as I am with other parts of the Bible. Strife between different uh religions has been down the centuries, but greater understanding I believe will reduce strife.

Presenter32:17

You may have the Qur'an and your luxury.

Lord Woolf32:20

I've already got a photograph of my children and grandchildren, but it hasn't got my two newest grandchildren on it, and it hasn't got Marguerite on it. The photograph I've got is a hugely happy photograph.

Lord Woolf32:36

And I'd like the same photograph to be taken again, but include the whole family now, as well as Marguerite.

Presenter32:43

We can easily do that, and you may have it. We'll even put it in a frame for you. And if you were able to keep just one of these pieces of music, which one would it be?

Lord Woolf32:45

Thank you very much.

Lord Woolf32:53

It would be Fidelio, because it seems to me it is the ultimate in music and in singing.

Presenter33:00

Lord Wolfe, Harry Wolfe, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Lord Woolf33:04

Thank you very much.

Presenter33:12

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.