John Rankin interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/39/11. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

Given this new current situation we’re in about climate change, we are looking at different grasses and not just rye grasses. [...] there are a lot of things that we can learn from how our fathers and grandfathers farmed and I think if we can harness that, I’m a great optimist when it comes to human race.

John Rankin on learning from past farming practice

Poul Christensen interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/08/01. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

It was an exciting time. I mean a lot of things were going on, new developments, particularly with machinery, combine harvesters were coming in. [...] All the things that we just take for granted now were just really taking-off and becoming part of the landscape. [...] The farm abutted Ashdown Forest [...] and we had some fields that might as well have been forests still. You know, they were fields, but they were covered in scrub and so on. And I can remember myself going out there and pulling the scrub out.  Explosives were two a penny, so [...] we used to blow all the tree stumps out, which as a kid was just amazing, fantastic. Big bang and all the roots would go into the air. [...] So, massive change from forest, scrub to farmland.

Poul Christensen on changes from forest to scrub to farmland

Poul Christensen interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/08/01. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

So, massive change from forest, scrub to farmland. And this didn’t happen over the whole farm because a lot of it was fields anyway, but it did happen in some parts of it. And there were two very big fields that I can still remember that were reclaimed. And he received a lot of accolades for doing that, which wouldn’t be the case today. [...] At that time [...] there was no question that that was the right thing to be doing. Not quite then, just a bit later, there was some question marks started to be raised.

Poul Christensen on common practices to ‘improve’ the land

Pippa Woods, interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/17/12. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

The [...] Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food [...] wanted England properly farmed [...] They were all for getting organised and getting productive so that we wouldn’t have to [...] depend on imported food [...] There was a general sense that we must all get our farmland much more productive. [...] If it was grassland it should produce proper grass, sort of thing. And if it was cultivated land, it should be done properly. I think that was sort of a general feeling. I don’t know that it was ever stated like that.

Pippa Woods on the drive for productive farmland

John Conant interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/10/01. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

Old Hall Farm at the time [was] in a valley and it’s now of course underwater. [...] You see after twenty years, all that work I’d done, it was flooded, taken away from me. [...] And I have a grievance.  [...] I did forty [drainage] schemes before I was finally dispossessed. And presumably there are fish swimming up the pipes. [...] There was a drainage officer [...] and he would draw up a drainage scheme for me, or with me, and then we would get the work done. Such a waste when the reservoir came.

John Conant on the sale of his land for the establishment of a reservoir

John Conant interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/10/01. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

I was rather anxious to make money because because I was faced with the prospect of children to feed and educate. [...] I was an avid searcher after advice, probably too – I don’t know – perhaps too much. But I was very keen.  I came from Cambridge for my farm and I was a very keen farmer, yes. Keen to, keen to make some money. My father didn’t give me any money; what I had was what I earned.

John Conant on the need for his farm to make money

David Houston interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/33/13. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

So, I think up until sort of, when I came home [in 1973] my father had [...] farmed in a fairly traditional way. And I suppose, you would now regard it as low intensity, although, perhaps, people are now moving back to lesser intensity. [...] In fact you would probably now say that my father farmed in an environmentally friendly way. [...] mainly his nitrogen was from clover.

David Houston reflects on his father’s farming methods

Christine Hill interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/16/03. © British Library Board.

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

I can remember, and I was eleven, so it must have been [after] the time when my father had died that summer, I was actually carting corn [...] And I can even picture where I was on the farm, it was a lovely sunny day and I thought to myself, well crumbs, who’s going to run this farm, who’s going to be able to keep it all together for the family. And I can remember making a conscious decision, thinking, well, I’m going to farm. And I never wavered from it.  I’m going to help keep the family together. That was it.

Christine Hill on her decision to be a farmer

Jim Orson, interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/07/02. © British Library Board. 

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

And that all came together – the availability of pesticides, better varieties, crop varieties, and better nutrition – in the seventies and eighties. And it wasn’t – it just, developed, evolved, more than a deliberate thing saying, if we did all these things together, it would double yields or whatever. It, it just happened in a sort of a, organic way.

Jim Orson on the incremental nature of changes in farming practice

David Houston interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain, British Library, catalogue reference C1828/33/13. © British Library Board. 

This clip was played at the National Life Stories symposium 30 June and 1 July 2023 and features in Oral History vol. 52 number 3, 2024 - online special issue.

Transcript:

I remember my father – we had a group of farmers came round to our farm – and he felt ashamed about all the wild flowers in his permanent pasture, particularly buttercups. And, now of course, you know, people value those wildflowers tremendously [...] but in those days it was very much production-orientated agriculture, nobody thought of the value of plants for biodiversity or anything, not at all.   

How did you know that your Dad was ashamed on that occasion? 

He told me. Yes. [laughs] In fact, it was, his comments were in the local paper, the Melton Times. Yes. But – because, this group of people – and my dad said there was far too many – I think he used the word ashamed, that they saw the farm when there were a lot of what were then classified as weeds in the grassland.

In this interview, Anna Loutfi brings The Dickson Poon School of Law's Dr Hannah Quirk into conversation with Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin (Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law). Together, the group draws on its legal expertise to examine the weaknesses and failings of criminal justice systems in the US, UK and around the world. Hannah recalls how she came to meet and develop a speaking tour of Ireland & the UK with these two pioneering lawyers, whose representation of client Brendan Dassey was a key part of the dramatic events depicted in hit Netflix series, 'Making a Murderer.' If you are interested in why millions across the world loved 'Making a Murderer,' how TV entertainment can result in serious changes in public attitudes and reforms to the law, and why young people are such vulnerable targets when it comes to bad policing, then listen in. We hope you enjoy the podcast. 

External links:

Find out more about the Center on Wrongful Convictions:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/

Listen to Laura and Steve's podcast series 'Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions': https://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/wrongful-conviction-podcast/

Podcast Guests:

Dr Hannah Quirk is a Reader in Criminal Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. Her research is about the increased difficulties that defendants' face in getting a fair trial, the risks of miscarriages of justice and unjust sentencing. Before she became an academic, she worked for the Criminal Cases Review Commission investigating claims of wrongful conviction and sentence.  She then spent six months on a research sabbatical at the Innocence Project New Orleans, before joining the Law School at the University of Manchester for 12 years. Her book The Rise and Fall of the Right of Silence was published by Routledge in 2016. You can follow her on Twitter @ HannahQuirk1

Laura Nirider is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago. Nirider represents individuals who were wrongfully convicted of crimes when they were children or teenagers. The case of her client Damien Echols, of the West Memphis Three, was profiled in the documentary West of Memphis. She has been featured in film and television programs on interrogations and recently co-authored an amicus curiae brief that was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in J.D.B. v. North Carolina for the proposition that the risk of false confession is "all the more troubling...and all the more acute...when the subject of custodial interrogation is a juvenile."

Steven Drizin is a Clinical Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He served as the Legal Director of the Clinic's renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions from March 2005 to September 2013. At the Center, Professor Drizin's research interests involve the study of false confessions and his policy work focuses on supporting efforts around the country to require law enforcement agencies to electronically record custodial interrogations. Drizin co-founded the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) in 2008, the first innocence organization to focus on representing defendants who were only teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted. Steve was a leader in the successful effort to outlaw the juvenile death penalty and co-wrote an amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court's decision striking down the juvenile death penalty as unconstitutional. 

Steven and Laura jointly represent Brendan Dassey, a central figure in Netflix's smash documentary, Making a Murderer.

Fess Up! Hannah Quirk Talks False Confessions with Making a Murderer’s Steve Drizin & Laura Nirider

The Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College London is one of the oldest law schools in England and recognised globally as one of the best law schools in the world.* The School was established in 1831 and has played an integral role in the life of King's since the university was formed almost 200 years ago.

Fess Up! Hannah Quirk Talks False Confessions with Making a Murderer’s Steve Drizin & Laura Nirider

The Dickson Poon School of Law

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