Harriet Wistrich, lawyer
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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. MUSIC PLAYS

My castaway this week is the lawyer and campaigner Harriet Wisterich. She's one of the country's most prominent human rights lawyers and has spent over 25 years advocating for women and the powerless and pressing for change within the legal system. She's won landmark victories in exceptionally difficult cases and has been a great advocate for women and the powerless.

helping women imprisoned after killing their abusers regain their freedom, seeking justice for the victims of the so-called black cab rapist John Warboys and representing the women at the centre of the ongoing spy cop scandal. Female activists who had relationships, sometimes children, with men who were really undercover police officers.

Born and raised in London, she started her working life as a filmmaker, sharing her ideas in documentaries, but in her early 30s, retrained as a lawyer to help people directly. In 1990, she co-founded the pressure group Justice for Women, the Sexual Offences Act, the Equality Act, the Modern Slavery Act, the inclusion of coercive control in the Serious Crime Act and...

the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act, all exist today thanks in part to their efforts. And in 2016, she founded the Centre for Women's Justice. She says, the thing which keeps me going is that you can make huge changes for individuals. Just fighting out those cases is hugely important for survivors because they feel that someone is fighting their corner. Harriet Wistrich, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Good morning.

Harry, you've said that terrifyingly often the law is not fit for purpose for half the population. I mean, that's quite a scary thing to hear from somebody so well qualified. Tell me more about that. Well, the work I've done, particularly after forming the Centre for Women's Justice, is really looking at how violence against women is treated within the criminal justice system by the police, prosecution service and so on.

And through that work, but also from the work I've done over the many years, we see really widespread failures in relation to protection and prosecutions and various different aspects around violence against women and also the criminalisations.

of survivors of abuse is a huge issue. And that's where I first entered the arena, really, was around women who kill their violent partners. So one of the memorable phrases that you use in your book is that men kill out of anger, women kill out of fear. Yeah, you can see it no more clearly, really, as to how the law is

is sexist when you look at a domestic homicide. And this was where I first came into the law, through the defence of provocation. And what we saw there and what we highlighted there was that the defence of provocation worked for men who killed children

out of anger, but it didn't work for women who kill through fear of violence. And it led to these really, really stark contrasts between the experience of men who killed their wives and often were able to say, oh God, she nagged me, or I thought she was having an affair, and were successful in those use of defences, whereas women who may have been subjected to the most horrendous domestic abuse, but may have had to

hold off before responding because of the fear that if they responded at the time, they would come out much worse from it. And the law wasn't working for them because they were said to be, well, you waited and you could have just left. So a complete lack of understanding of the context

And the figures are really quite stark at the moment. I mean, and they keep coming at us. There was a recent report from the National Police Chiefs Council saying that violence against women is now a national emergency. 2022 to 23, the reported cases of domestic and sexual violence, of stalking and harassment in England and Wales were 37% higher than the same period four years ago. Is that something that you've seen in your work at the Centre for Women's Justice?

is probably not that much more than it has been, but it's now being recorded and recognised more. So I think we've always seen the scale of violence against women. So the figures are showing us the reality in a way? Yes, the figures are reflecting more of the reality, and in fact it's still not reflecting the full reality because so many women don't report crime still. There is more recognition, there is a growing understanding, the fact that the police...

are now recognising it as a national emergency, as a huge change from, you know, 30 years ago where domestic violence, for example, was seen as something that happened in the home. It's now seen, as it should be, as on par with terrorism-type offences in terms of the seriousness of that and the threat to...

Harriet, you've got such a demanding job. And I'm very pleased to hear in that case that you are able to switch off and have fun. And that brings us to your music. I know you love music. And I did hear that apparently you're sometimes known as DJ Hazza. So I have to ask you when and by who?

When lockdown happened, we were all stuck in our separate homes and came up with the idea of having a Friday night Zoom disco. I volunteered to put together the playlist and in our separate houses, we all had our screens. We all dressed up in outfits and put on glitter balls and lighting and stuff.

We took selections and people could send their selections in and we just had a Friday night groove. And DJ Hazza was born. That's right. So that's very much who's in charge of this first track, I think. What are we going to hear? It is a classic of its time and it is also a classic for the violence against women's movement. It was a piece of music that was often played at the end of women's discos when we were having an event together.

On one occasion, we organised, I think it was November the 25th, which is International Day to End Violence Against Women and Girls. We organised a big torch lit march through London. It was just at the height of when we first started campaigning around justice for women. And we ended up in Trafalgar Square.

And there were some speeches from the podium. And then we did a minute silence for women and girls who died all around the world as a result of men's violence. And at the end of the minute silence, we...

across the whole of Trafalgar Square, this song, which was a kind of almost spine-shivering moment. And then everyone in their overcoats and woolly hats and stuff started grooving in the middle of Trafalgar Square. So this is Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive. MUSIC PLAYS

Gloria Gaynor and I Will Survive. So Harriet Wistrich, you were born in 1960 in London to Ernest and Enid and they were married for more than 60 years. They sound like pretty extraordinary people. What kind of parents were they? Tell me about them. As I got older particularly, I more and more appreciated my parents as really exceptional people who were very positive, encouraged, very pro-feminist, both of them. My mum was a feminist of sorts, my dad...

I was incredibly supportive of my mother. And they were involved in really interesting stuff. So it was a pretty good uproar.

upbringing. They were both local councillors, Labour councillors in the area that you grew up in Hampstead. What was it like being out and about in the community with them? They were locally well known because they were both involved. They were representatives, both elected on Camden Council's Labour councillors. My mum was then went on to be elected to the GLC in the 1970s and she got a

bit of fame then because she had quite a controversial campaign around trying to end censorship for films. Yeah, she clashed with Mary Whitehouse a few times I think. She had a big clash with Mary Whitehouse so there was, I remember I was only about 12 or 13 I was coming home from

a dental appointment and I saw a headline and it was like the two Mrs W's pitched against each other. Didn't she call by one newspaper the most dangerous woman in Britain? Apparently, yeah. Why was she so dangerous? What was dangerous about Enid? Well, I suppose she wanted to end...

And that was seen as, you know, highly problematic at the time. And she was very much pitched against the moral majority types like Mary Whitehouse, Lord Longford and so on. And there was this sort of big debate.

kind of clash of viewpoints around that. So before she got into politics, she'd been an academic and you mentioned that your dad was always very supportive of her and her career. Yeah. So she went to the London School of Economics. This was just at the end of the Second World War. She studied politics there and obviously an exciting time. And then she met my dad. He was actually a refugee from Newcastle.

Nazi-occupied Poland, but he was working in business at the time, although not very happily. And after she finished university, her professor said, oh, there's an opportunity for you to go off and have a post in the United States at a women's college in Massachusetts. And she'd only just married my dad a year or two ago and was like, oh, well, going off for a year. And he said, no, go, this is a fantastic opportunity. I'll come out with you.

And I'll come and meet you at the end of the holiday. We can travel around the United States. And they did. And what about a sense of developing your own ideas? Because, you know, your political awakening came a little bit later. But that sense that you were at the table and allowed to disagree with your parents, you know, in that generation, that wasn't always the way things were. It was often very much, you know, do as I say, and I'm not interested in what you think about it. Yeah.

What I learnt quite quickly was when I could win an argument and when I couldn't. I remember my younger brother used to try and argue with my dad and he was hopeless, whereas I kind of listened more and then worked out when I could kind of really engage around the particular arguments. That must have come in very handy to your career. All right, Harriet, it's time for some more music. Your second choice today, what are we going to hear and why?

This is going back to my teens really, one of the areas of music which I kind of got an early passion for and it was at the time when there was quite a lot of racism. It was in the 70s, the National Front was at large and then there was this movement around Rock Against Racism and it kind of brought all this really great music and particularly this wonderful music from Jamaica.

When I was 16, I managed to get a couple of tickets with some school friends to go and see Bob Marley play at the Rainbow, which is quite an iconic gig, I've later learned. And so I've chosen one of the songs that he played at the Rainbow, which is a classic that used to, whenever it came on, everyone used to sort of join in and sing, and this is No Woman, No Cry. No woman, no cry No

No woman... Both Marley and the Wailers, no woman, no cry. So, Harriet Wisterich, tell me a little bit more about your dad, Ernest. So he was from a Jewish family, grew up in Poland and very narrowly escaped being caught up in the Nazi invasion of the country during the war, by the sounds of it. Yes, he was at school in Krakow and there was quite a lot of anti-Semitism within Poland anyway and I think things were getting quite difficult there.

And his older brother had managed to get over to England to study. So his parents were able to send him to a boarding school when he was, I think, 14 in England. And then he would...

come back in the summer to visit and he was there in the summer of 1939 and the Nazi invasion was building up and he fortunately on his way back to England got the last train through Germany before the invasion by the Nazis.

Unfortunately, a lot of family were trapped there, including his mother and younger sister, who had quite an extraordinary survival during the whole of the war by eventually taking false papers and raping.

posing as a Polish Christian mother and daughter. There's a lot of close shaves. But staying with your dad, so he made it to England just skin of his teeth and then later became part of the Polish army in exile during the war. He was 16 when he came back to England and then he and his older brother George...

lived in a flat in London. He did the matriculation, as it was called then. He was maybe too young still to join the army, I'm not sure, but then he got sent off to do some engineering in Derby or something. But then eventually he got called up to the Polish Army in Exile,

which was quite a tough time. There was quite a lot of anti-Semitism there as well, I think. Within the army? Within the Polish army. He then sort of switched over to the Royal Air Force, actually. I guess he wanted to fly, but he was colourblind, so he wasn't allowed to fly, which is probably just as well. He continued the war within the Air Force, but because he spoke several languages, he ended up being a translator, mainly.

So your parents, Harriet, had three children, but your older brother Matthew was very sadly born with health problems and he died when he was just 14, which must have been devastating for all of you. How do you remember him now when you think back?

Well, Matthew, in fact, I was born on his birthday. He was three when I was born. And I think initially he was OK. But when he was like a toddler, he developed these brain tumours and it was very touch and go. My parents managed to get somebody to perform an operation to get rid of the tumour.

tumours, but it left him with a form of brain damage. And he was, as a consequence, he was what we used to describe in those days, you wouldn't use these terms now, mentally handicapped. So he had a number of issues around behaviour and learning that were problematic and some physical disabilities as well.

As a younger sister, I think I found that all quite difficult when I was growing up because if somebody's got behavioural problems, you kind of want to hide away and was a bit embarrassed. So if you were out and about and he was being loud. Yeah, that's right. He was throwing a big tantrum in the shop or something. It was kind of like, oh, God, you know. My parents were very good. And in fact, my mum, the other big issue that she became really interested in was around special education because it was not a very developed area at that time.

that time. And had she had challenges with that with Matthew? Yeah it was a real struggle and in fact he he went to a school but the school found him difficult to deal with it was a special school and then the head there just asked him to leave and he was without education for about a year my mum managed to get someone one of his former teachers in to do some home education and then shortly before he died they found another school for him which was actually a boarding school up in

Aberdeenshire. He went there and seemed to be having a great time but unfortunately and this may be because they didn't recognise some of the signs of illness. My mum had said you know you always if he gets the slightest cold give him antibiotics straight away and they didn't recognise that and he just didn't wake up one morning.

So he caught something and that was it? That must have been devastating. It was a terrible thing for the family. For my mum and dad, it was their first child and...

It was very tough. And for you, you were, what, 11? I was 11 at the time. I'd just started secondary school. And I found it quite difficult to deal with that and about telling people about it. I just kind of found the idea of talking about, you know, your brother's just died. I couldn't tell friends about it. You didn't have the language for it. I didn't really have the language.

Harry, let's take a minute for some music. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear? This was a song which makes me think particularly about Matthew. He was very musical and he used to sing a lot and he also learnt to play the recorder and he had a music teacher who really helped him and it was his big thing. So this song, which is a reggae version I've chosen, it wasn't the reggae version we listened to, is Puff the Magic Dragon. So could he play this? I think he played the main tune on the recorder and he certainly would have sung along to it.

Pup the Magic Dragon who lived by the sea And frolicking the autumn mist in a land called Analee Little Jackie Paper loved the rascal Pup And brought him strings and ceiling walk and all the fancy stuff Pup the Magic Dragon lived by the sea

Gregory Isaacs and Puff the Magic Dragon for your late brother, Matthew Harriot.

So hearing about his death must have been absolutely devastating and for it to happen at a remove, for him to be away at school. Do you remember how you heard? Did you get a phone call? Were you home? The whole day is a bit embedded in my memory, actually, because I think my younger brother was staying over with a friend. And my dad, because of his work in Europe, he often went over to Brussels and places like that. So he was actually away.

And my mum got a phone call. It was just me and her. And she then had no one because, of course, this is before, you know, you have mobile phones or internet or anything. So she couldn't get hold of my dad. So I was really the first person she was able to tell. And I remember her waking me up and telling me that my brother had died. And I started crying. And then she started crying. And you never see your mum cry. So that was quite... Really difficult. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I even had a note from my parents to give to the teacher, which I hid and didn't give to the teacher. So nobody at school knew? Well, I guess they must have known. But I mean, it was an odd way to react. But that was how I reacted at the time. No, I can understand that. It's just too big, isn't it? It's just too difficult. Yeah, I think so.

So tell me about school then, Harriet. You hid the note explaining what had happened in the family with Matthew. You were at a comprehensive school in Hampstead in London. What kind of pupil were you? I don't remember school as a happy time. That makes sense. I mean, it may be, you know, partly because of that, what was going on and because maybe my parents were quite diverted.

You know, some people really love their teens and some hate it. And I think I was more in the hate version. But, you know, there were good things about the school and I had a few good mates there. But I did leave when I was 16 and went on to a further education college. So what was difficult about being a teenager for you? Was it finding your groove, finding your tribe? Yeah.

There was such a sort of condemnatory kind of attitude, you know, around, you know, you were either a swot or you were a bad girl, you were a lezzer or a slag, all those sorts of things. And I found it really hard. I had a couple of friends. We used to just sort of hang out together and do things. And I was quite sociable, got on with people, but I just remember it was a pretty unhappy time. Did you know you were gay back then? Well, I...

Probably was gravitating towards that, but I think that such an anti-lesbian sort of attitude made me very frightened and it probably stopped me gravitating there until I was a bit older because it was like, oh, that's a really dirty thing to be. You want to avoid that. I would never want to admit that I was. And so instead, I kind of when I was 15, I started going out with boys and kind of

suddenly I was much more popular because I was doing the right thing, you know. So sixth form college doing your A-levels, it sounds like that was a bit of a turning point for you. You then went off to study PPE at Oxford University. Had that been an ambition to get into a top flight uni like that? I kind of got really good A-level results and I thought, oh, I could do something different from the expectations. So it sounds like you were quite surprised by doing so well. Yeah, I think I was, yeah. And did you enjoy the course?

It was 1979. It was a really kind of blossoming time for radical feminist thought and ideology. And I got involved in all sorts of different political things and discussion groups and women's theatre and stuff and became a very passionate feminist. Oxford...

was quite traditional. You know, the courses, they were sort of very sort of traditional liberal kind of approach things. So I kind of took it as a personal challenge to try and make sure I got women into every essay that I wrote. Start as you mean to go on. Yeah. All right, let's have some more music. This is your fourth choice. What are we going to hear next?

This is a slightly a bit of shameless promotion of my younger brother, Daniel, who is a musician. So Daniel studied music and then he ended up going to Israel. Then he met this woman and married her. And then they they were searching for something very different, searching for some sort of spiritual life.

answer. And he eventually landed on Hasidism, which is a very orthodox form of Judaism. How was it for you? I mean, you know, you've just talked about your pretty radical politics. Yeah. So we couldn't be more opposite, really, in terms of our belief system. I mean, I'm entirely secular and atheist, and he's sort of completely into this very, you know, kind of

a Kabbalist religion, that I suppose the music was the one thing that kind of brought us together. And actually, when he found that kind of culture, his music actually really developed because he found a sort of soul, I suppose, to play. And so he played a form of klezmer, which was based on old kind of folk tunes. And he became a performer primarily at

and weddings and things, but he's very well known in that area. The next tune is one of his tunes. It was played... He did a gig at the Spitz in Shoreditch, and this is from there, and it's called Romanian Freelack. MUSIC PLAYS

Romanian Frilac, performed by your brother, Daniel Ahaviel. You left university but didn't go into the law at that stage, Harriet. You ended up in Liverpool working as an assistant film editor. What kind of work were you doing? It was in the early 1980s and this was at a time when there was quite a bit of funding flowing into the independent film and video industry.

And when I moved back to London, I wanted to sort of try and continue in the industry. And that's when I did some assistant film editing. That's when I did the cutting and the steam beck and all that kind of stuff. I found it quite hard to, you know, you have to raise money to make films, certainly in those days, and found it really hard to...

So you were back in London and in 1990, you co-founded the feminist law reform group Justice for Women with your partner, the feminist writer and journalist, Julie Bindle. What was it like to be a part of that?

One of your earliest cases, Harriet, was that of Emma Humphreys. So Emma had been convicted of murder after killing her violent pimp boyfriend. She was only 17 when it happened. And it was a pivotal case for you in all sorts of ways. So tell us a little bit about Emma and how you got involved. We used to get letters from women in prison for Justice for Women. And we got this letter from Emma Humphreys, who had by then been in prison for...

And she wrote this incredibly powerful letter just describing what had happened to her and how she had lost hope in fighting for justice. But now, having seen these cases, she wanted help to appeal her murder conviction. She'd been in prison for seven years, so she was 17 when she committed the offence. And she was convicted of murder because...

She couldn't speak about the abuse she'd been suffered. She had an all-male team. She didn't feel like there was any way she could talk about what happened to her. So she remained silent and she was...

unsurprisingly convicted of the murder. She knew in her heart she wasn't a murderer. I mean, she'd been subjected to the most horrendous abuse. She wrote it in a letter and we got this letter. It came to our home address and I thought, God, we've got to take this case on. We weren't lawyers. So we went to Rohit Sanghvi, who was a lawyer, and said, look, could you take this case on?

And he said, well, I need a volunteer. So you go to visit Emma to try and get her story? Yeah, so basically Rohit said, look, what I need, and he gave me these sort of instructions about this account. And because I'd been involved in filmmaking, I kind of approached it a bit by capturing a story on tape, which was then eventually transcribed by the solicitor into a statement. We've kind of put together this very powerful story

of her life and what had led her to that point. And then that formed the basis eventually of an appeal and we built up a huge campaign and successful appeal, which happened just...

as I was qualifying my legal practice course to become a solicitor. You helped Emma secure her freedom, but it wasn't just that. You and Julie both took her into your home at one point to look after her because obviously, as you say, she had been through hugely traumatic experiences and she never really recovered from that, I don't think. Yeah, that's right. I mean, as well as what had led her into street prostitution, if you like, had been a kind of childhood of abuse, obviously.

her mother and father separated. Her mother was married to this very violent man and she kept running away from home and that's how she ended up in...

in prostitution. So she kind of suffered a whole kind of range of different forms of violence. She was also sort of anorexic and bulimic and various things. So by the time I met her in prison, she was this skinny little thing. She had sort of cut marks all the way up and down her arms. She was self-harming. Self-harm. And yet she was this incredibly bright spark. She was very funny. She had a great sense of humour. You know, she had a really, really strong sense of justice as well. So she became...

a friend and when she was coming out of prison and we we looked at finding somewhere for her to go but initially we won the appeal and the court said she'd been in prison for 10 years you know we'll let you out now and you know she came out to this big crowd and then we sort of took her home for a few days and it was immediately um headed into kind of really difficult time you know she kind of

got hold of some drugs and, you know, kind of had a near overdose within days. And, you know, she stayed with us for a few days and then we kind of had got her into a therapeutic community. But she was too much for them, I think, and caused mayhem and then was sort of things, things kind of got really bad. They began to then get better and

She was eventually housed in a flat that was quite near us, so we used to visit her. She became addicted to some medication that they gave in prison, which is sort of known as a chemical kosh, and she still had that, and she used to take that to knock herself out because I think there were too many demons. And sadly, three years after she came out, she overdosed. I don't think she intended to take her life, but... Who found her? Me and Julie. Yeah.

Oh, that must have been so difficult. We were trying to get hold of her and we couldn't get hold of her and we had keys to her flat, so we went round and, yeah, she was... You must think of Emma a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think Emma, for me, out of any case really that I've been involved in, has been the most important and taught me a hell of a lot. And it was a terrible outcome, really.

Harriet, it's time to go to the music. I'd love to know what we're going to hear next. Tell us about disc number five. This is an Amy Winehouse song. Amy, you know, is a brilliant, absolutely wonderful singer, musician. I love all her stuff. But it is also, I guess, you know, something about Amy that really reminded me of Emma, her vulnerability, but also her cheekiness and her strong sense of purpose, but also her self-destruction. All those things are kind of very...

very reminiscent of Emma and this is Back to Black. Amy Winehouse and Back to Black. Harriet Wisterich, you were involved in the landmark case to free Sally Challen. She'd been convicted of murdering her husband Richard with a hammer after three decades of horrendous abuse.

Appealing a criminal conviction from the Crown Court is not an easy thing to do. Talk me through some of the challenges that you had to overcome. Sally was convicted of murder and then I was contacted by her niece, who was a lawyer herself, and she said, look...

would you be able to look at this? Because the family just completely shocked and nonplussed that Sally had done this. She was always a very, very devoted wife and mother. And the family were very supportive of her. And the family were very, very supportive of Sally. She was very submissive and he was a very controlling man. But her concern was that

the story of the controlling behaviour and the abuse hadn't been told and therefore inevitably perhaps a jury had convicted her of murder. So at that point coercive control not a crime? No. And not really understood as a phenomenon so it just hadn't kind of been present in the courtroom? So this was in 2011 I think and I read about the case and with a lot of these stories you know it always looks really bad and impossible you know she was like a

a jealous housewife who just out of the blue took a hammer to her husband's head. And what was all this about? And anyway, I met with Sally. And when you're looking for an appeal, you know, there are only basically two or three ways you can appeal. One is that there was some sort of legal misdirection or technicality, or that there's some fresh evidence that arises that wasn't available at the time.

So there was this psychiatric evidence, but I still wasn't sure that would be enough. And then I became aware of this new law that was just being debated in Parliament and became law in 2015, which was criminalising the offence of coercive and controlling behaviour, which is basically a very different way of understanding...

not as a physical act of violence, but as a whole system of control that entraps somebody in a relationship so fundamentally that they see no way out. And it was at the time there was a storyline in The Archers around where a woman attempts to kill her coercive and controlling partner, which was Helen in The Archers. Helen and Rob, wasn't it, in The Archers. And so there was a kind of an awareness of it. And it just seemed like actually...

We weren't aware of this way of looking at it. Once you actually thought about coercive control and looked at it in a different way, it was a bit like, you know, you put a new magnifying glass and suddenly...

The whole story becomes clear. This makes sense because it's in the prism of coercive controlling behaviour. And you got it through at work. There is a photo of you and Sally outside the Old Bailey in 2019. She's been released. You've both got massive smiles on your faces. And that case is one of several of yours that's gone on to change the law.

Tell me about that, the sense of satisfaction that you must have when you've helped secure a judgment of that magnitude. Obviously, when you win justice for somebody, it's a fantastic outcome and the sense of you've done something for an individual, but also that it has had a much wider resonance. So it was a very, very exciting.

exciting moment. Women are still regularly being convicted of murder and there's a huge change still needs to happen. That's one of the very depressing aspects of my work as opposed to positive, which is that even when you achieve these victories, it doesn't necessarily change things very much in the short term. Harriet, it's time to go to the music. This is your sixth choice today. Tell us what we're going to hear next. This is a

great disco song so it's a great one to dance to I chose this song around my relationship with Julie so when I first met Julie she was very passionate feminist as well and as well as

on the political level, we both were really into music and she was a great fan of Chaka Khan, as was I. And so this was one of the songs that we used to dance to when we first got together and it's Ain't Nobody by Chaka Khan. Do you still dance to this now? We do. MUSIC PLAYS

Shaka Khan and Ain't Nobody. So, Harriet Wisterich, you've worked on cases several times where you've taken the Metropolitan Police to task for the way that they've carried out investigations. One of those was in 2014. You were representing two victims in the case of John Warboys, the London taxi driver who drugged and assaulted, as it turned out, over 100 of his female passengers.

How significant was that case in changing police procedure and changing the accountability for rape victims? When these women came to me separately, they said, look, what happened was terrible. But actually, what was even worse was that the police didn't believe me when I went to report it.

And, you know, I feel more damaged really by the way the police treated me and about the fact that he, because they didn't believe me, he went on to attack so many other women than I do about War Boys himself in some ways. And can we actually sue the police? The problem is that you can't sue the police in negligence. So this is a problem that has been tested in the law a number of times. And that's the way the law is.

However, with the advent of the Human Rights Act in 2000, there was another route that some of us were beginning to explore, which was around the duty on the state to have in place not just a system of laws that prevent its citizens from being subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, and that's Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, but also that the operation of those laws has to be consistent, it has to be effective.

And so we mounted the argument that essentially the failure of the police to investigate and properly investigate this perpetrator. And in fact, War Boys was reported on about 10 occasions before he was eventually caught. And his pattern was very similar every time. And he had a very, you know, very, very similar modus operandi on each occasion. So, you know, he could have been caught many, many times.

years earlier and saved many, many women from

devastating attacks. And the failure to investigate, we argued, amounted to a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention. Because that failure to investigate allowed the subsequent degrading and inhumane treatment. Well, it was a failure in itself that the police are under a duty to have in place not just the system of laws, but also they have to operate the laws. The

And where they fail in such a fundamental way, that can be held to be a human rights violation. And that was the case that we brought. And the police fought it. They fought it all the way. In fact, they fought it all the way eventually to the Supreme Court, in fact.

It has now created a precedent. We now have a way of holding the police accountable when there are these abject failures to investigate. You also worked on behalf of eight women who had unknowingly been in relationships with undercover police officers. This is the case that we referred to in the introduction.

What was your initial response when you realised what had been going on? Because some of the stories are absolutely extraordinary. This was an extraordinary case and one that I lived with for a number of years because I worked very closely with the women. So eight women all together came forward bit by bit and we kind of worked together as a group. They were all very political people.

They'd been activists and that was why they were targeted. Yeah, so they'd all been involved in mainly left-wing environmental or anti-racist groups. I...

quite related to it because I'd been involved in group campaigning as well and around some of these groups and just the idea that you could be doing something that was around social justice and then be targeted by an undercover police officer who went so deep undercover that he would form a relationship sometimes with somebody for a number of years and then vanish from their lives. So quite extraordinary stories. And it was one of those cases where I was surprised that the Met Police had

decided to fight the case because it seemed to me that it was so outrageous that they would just have to hold their hands up. But they did fight it. And in fact, the fight continues now in a public inquiry many years on.

But we were able to secure a very powerful apology and settlement of damages eventually for those women. I think the inquiry is due to report in 2026, isn't it? So, I mean, the scale and the extent of the subterfuge is still coming out and being talked about. I mean, there's now well over 50 women who know that they were deceived in long term intimate relationships.

probably many more, by this unit, well, these two units that operated deep undercover, which no one was really aware of. You know, undercover policing, obviously there is a role for it in certain contexts, or at least it's my belief there is. But the use of intimate relationships I don't think is ever justified. Harriet, we've got to go to the music. This is disc number seven. Tell us about your next choice.

So the next choice is picking up on the theme of policing, really, which has been a theme of many of my legal cases over the years. I first heard this track played by The Clash, actually. It's Police and Thieves, which I enjoyed, but then I later discovered that it was based on an earlier reggae version and really enjoy it. It's a really good dance piece as well, kind of slightly more laid-back dancing, but I often play it on my piano.

So Police and Thieves by Junior Mervyn. MUSIC PLAYS

♪♪ ♪♪

Guns are not my nature. Junior Mervyn and Police and Thieves. Harriet Wistrich, you've recently looked back and written a book about some of your landmark cases, Sister-in-Law. I wonder which took the most out of you because, you know, even just talking to you today about some of the experiences that you've had and the stories that you've worked so hard, the people that you've met, it must be a lot to deal with emotionally. Yeah.

Some of the cases are very, very painful. Some of the tragedies, it's always, you know, if you're doing a case where somebody has died, inquest cases, and those are very hard cases to take anything positive out of at the end. You represented the family of Jean-Charles de Menezes. Yeah. He was the Brazilian electrician who was shot dead in a case of mistaken identity by the Metropolitan Police in 2005. That was, you know, very, very tough for the...

Every time you represent a family of someone deceased, even if you get what might be deemed a good outcome, an inquest, you're still left with somebody whose life has been lost. So there are some of the cases, the murder appeal cases, which I haven't succeeded on. And that's very unbearable when you get an outcome that isn't just, that is wrong. And I find, you know, that kind of boiling rage that this is an injustice. What do you do with that? How do you deal with it?

Well, just try to find other ways to look at it, to move on, to help someone believe that's not the end of the matter, that there are other ways forward. Try and build something positive out of, you know, at least you fought the case, even if you didn't win it. And that's sometimes enough.

You need such an interesting combination of qualities to do what you do, I think, Harriet. You know, that combination of pugnaciousness and emotional openness and being compassionate and connecting with people. And also, you know, this idea that you will go into court and you will take on institutions, you will fight. How much of that came naturally to you and how much have you had to develop over the years?

I think I owe a lot to the women's movement, actually, and understanding of... It's taught me everything, really, about understanding violence against women and the issues there. What have you learned about what that does to people and how to connect with them when they've been through it? I think it's just sort of understanding what it means. If you're a victim of rape, you know, there's often... You'll blame yourself for getting into that situation or just the kind of culture of women blaming is so strong and it's about really just...

trying to understand that and then to discover ways to encourage people encourage women to see things in a different way and to not not blame themselves to to have a sense of solidarity also to give them a sense that I guess with with so many of the cases that I've brought what's really quite extraordinary is how how many of them are the women who who take the cases on say they do it

It's not just for themselves. They're doing it because they don't want this to happen to anyone else. And that's something I've definitely learnt from the work I've done. Harriet, your next challenge is, of course, completely different. It's the desert island. I'm going to be casting you away soon. OK, how are you going to get on? There's an oh my God already. This is not great. Tell me how you feel about the prospect of being cast away. I like the idea of being on a beautiful desert island and being able to watch the sun set.

That's the positive. That's the positive. The discs are sounding pretty good. I mean, there's going to be a fair bit of grooving on this island. Yes, there will be. Obviously, being on my own, I find that a little bit daunting, although I enjoy my own company, but not exclusively. Survival-wise, I wouldn't say I'm the most resourceful of people. I did read that you spent a lot of time going to the Woodcraft Folk when you were young, which is kind of like a left-wing brownies. Yes.

Exactly, yeah. Didn't you learn knots and things there and campfire building? I did, but it's a very, very long time ago. I've got some basic skills, but I wouldn't put myself at the top of the survival techniques mechanism. OK. Well, listen, we'll let you have one more disc before we send you off to the desert island. Harriet, it's your last choice today. What have you gone for?

One of my favourite grooving songs. Invariably, it will get me onto the dance floor on any occasion. It was certainly a choice for DJ Hazza. And it's just a lovely dance floor. It's called Shame, Shame, Shame by Shirley and Company. So just listen to me, can't stop me now. Hear what our feet want to move. So I have a take. I'm gonna dance, dance this shame. Shame on you.

Shirley and Co and Shame, Shame, Shame. So Harriet Wisterich, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I will of course give you the books to take with you, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare and one other book of your choice. What's that going to be? Well, I struggled quite...

a lot to find something. So I've chosen a book that I read when I was probably 18 or so. It's got so much to it and I kind of fancy having another read of it, which is Middlemarch by George Eliot. A classic. It's yours. You can also have a luxury item to make life on the island a little bit more enjoyable. What will that be?

So I was thinking about these lovely sunsets that I'm going to watch every evening and I'd love a glass of chilled wine to go with it. So I'm going to take a wine fridge with, you know, an endless supply of delicious white wines. OK, you can have that. That sounds nice. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you choose to save above all the rest?

Very, very difficult decision. I think given how it will be a struggle, I will need to be reminded that I will survive. Gloria Gaynor it is. Harriet Wisterich, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you. And it's been a pleasure. Hello. It was lovely to chat to Harriet and I hope she's very happy on her island, looking at the sunset with a glass of chilled white wine in her hand.

There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast other lawyers away over the years, including former judge and crossbench peer Heather Hallett, Nazir Afzal and Baroness Hale. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website.

The studio manager for today's programme was Bob Nettles. The production coordinator was Susie Roylance and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the musician and artist Laurie Anderson. MUSIC PLAYS

I'm Matthew Side and Sideways, my podcast from BBC Radio 4, brings you stories of seeing the world differently. From that moment on, I feel like my life and the way that I view life itself just shifted, literally. Stories about the ideas that shape our lives. If a missile had come down and killed us all, it wouldn't have mattered. It was just me and a moment of bliss in the middle of a war zone.

Stories about everything from the ethics of using AI to simulate conversations with the dead to viewing decay as a vehicle for rebirth. Listen to Sideways first on BBC Sounds.