Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A QC and civil rights lawyer, known for defending the Guildford Four and authoring 'Eve Was Framed'.
On the island
Eight records
I've chosen it because, well, I think that Judy Collins is a wonderful singer, and I love many of her songs. This one is called My Father, and it has always reminded me of my own father, because he was a very ordinary working-class man in many ways, but he was special in that he was very committed to his children having an education.
I love it because it's it's about the horror of war, and I've always felt very strongly anti-war. I I my own grandfather, my grandgrandpa Kennedy, was one of the uh first soldiers to be killed in the First World War.
The Troubadours of King Baudouin
I loved the fact that it was the Mass, but it was the Mass in a different language from the one in which I was brought up with it. It wasn't in the Latin, but it was somehow it was about other peoples in the world and it was embracing other experiences and cultures.
I wasn't brought up in a household which was familiar with classical music at all. And it was only when I came to London and I started making friends with people who were much more musical than I was and had a real knowledge of music that I learned about classical music.
Oh, I want to do a bit of dancing on this desert island, and this is one that this is for my husband. This is for Ian. It's about. The sixties and uh seventies and the time when I did most of my dancing, although I still do some still.
Roy Goodman and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge
Oh, it's just one of those pieces of music where, you know, you think you've gone to heaven, you've died and gone to heaven when you listen to it. It's lovely. And um I think that I might want to be um have spiritual moments while I'm sitting on my desert island.
There was something so wonderful and magical about the moment when South Africa, you know, became. free and new and that hope that came with that, hope for South Afr for not just for South Africa, but hope about Ireland, hope about the Middle East, that somehow there can be a way through these things.
Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007: I. PréludeFavourite
I've asked for Pablo Casalles to play it because he was the person on the original uh record that I had of this, and it's just such an exquisitely wonderful piece of music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:06What would your father, who was a newspaper packer and a very active and ardent trade unionist, and he died 20 years ago, would he have been impressed or appalled to think of his daughter as Lady Kennedy?
I think he'd have been thrilled. I think he'd have been thrilled because he really did believe that change happened bit by bit. And I think that he also felt that too many working class people really were kept in their place. And so I think he would like, it would rather amuse him, the idea that I was in the position that I'm now in.
Presenter asks
4:54There was one deeply humiliating incident, I think, when you were eating one of your statutory dinners in Gray's Inn and your dress was questioned. Tell me about it.
Well, it was um I mean coming to the Inns of Court was absolutely extraordinary for me from Glasgow. I mean I really had hardly been outside of the south side of Glasgow, never mind anywhere else. And I came down and of course the majority of people then in the late 60s were from upper middle class families and we had to eat these dinners in hall at refectory tables and very grand surroundings and we always had to dress in black and wear a gown. And of course as was the mode at the time, I was wearing a mini skirt. It was a little black crocheted dress, which was, I thought, reasonably decent in that I had a slip under it. And there was a process in which people were taught advocacy and so they would stand up and they would challenge each other and they would have a sort of mock trial. And in this room in which I was probably one of a handful of women, suddenly I heard my name being mentioned and a challenge was being made to Miss Kennedy, who was inappropriately dressed. And they could see through my little scheme. I had only been, I think, in the dining hall twice before. And then the senior in hall bid that I come forth so that he could examine the scene of the crime. And I was propelled forward up to the front, and uh the bottle of port was awarded to me on the basis that I was very appropriately dressed, said this gentleman, having had a good old look at me.
The keepsakes
The book
The Works of Virgil with a Latin primer
Virgil
I always found Latin at school was like doing a puzzle ... this would be like bringing a whole collection of the Times Crossword.
Presenter asks
7:26Why did you choose to come South and why did you choose to go into the law, which [is] such a bastion of white middle class males?
It was partly that I came down in the in the vacation before I was due to go to university in Scotland, which everybody did. You know, if you went to university at all, you went to the one that was on your doorstep. And you had a place to read English at Glasgow. And I and I and that was what I intended to do. But then I uh I came for the summer holidays to London and I suddenly had my eyes open to a wider world, which was exciting and uh and particularly at that time in the late sixties. And I just wanted to spread my wings. I wanted to taste new things. I wanted a bigger canvas, I suppose.
Presenter asks
9:02Did you always feel that strong sense of who you are, strong with family about you?
Oh, absolutely, and still do. Um I my mother's still alive, she's in her eighties, and I have three sisters who are, you know, very much part of my life with all of their children. And I just feel that I have this great supportive network, all of whom are there for me.
Presenter asks
21:11What's the most satisfying victory you've ever had?
Oh, I do think that probably the Guildford case was a very satisfying result because it did open up that whole issue about miscarriages of justice. It meant that we were prepared to admit that we had had failures. And then, of course, it unraveled. Not just, of course, you know, the Irish cases like the Birmingham Six, but then there were the cases involving Stefan Kiskow, who was convicted of killing a child, a man who quite clearly was innocent, and the forensic evidence was there to show it. All that corruption in the West Midlands, which became exposed, and the miscarriages of justice there. We it was a ghastly clearing out of terrible wrongs. But um but it was a healthy thing to do and you know I think it's been humbling for us. It that the system did get things wrong. And justice is a very, very fragile thing. And you can't ever become complacent.
“Well, I've always been a boat rocker and I but I think that I I've made a conscious decision that when rocking the boat you have to win people with you to be persuasive. I mean I think that's part what advocacy is all about, is to get people on side.”
“I thought, maybe I shouldn't be here doing this at all. Maybe I'm Maybe I'm not tough enough. Maybe I'm not Um I can't stand back enough. Maybe maybe I'm not good enough at it. And so I became determined that I was going to be ve I was going to become very good at it.”
“I think it's been humbling for us. It that the system did get things wrong. And justice is a very, very fragile thing. And you can't ever become complacent.”