1 - The future of the criminal courts

Summary

It seems like the twinkling of an eye since I attended my initial lectures as a first-year law student at the University of Leeds. That was forty-eight years ago, in October 1964. Life was a little different from today. Leeds United were then in the old First Division – and in fact only just failed to top the table, beaten by Manchester United on goal difference. The decimalisation of our currency was seven years away. A bus fare into town cost one old penny. The environment was terrible. My digs on the Burley Road were opposite a vinegar works and a tannery. With back-to-back housing, the only place to hang washing was across the street. The linen went grey in the course of the day, a result of the smog which hung across the Aire valley.

I came to the university on a full grant – £300 for the whole year – and managed frugally, with just enough for those priorities when you’re eighteen: liquor, and the occasional trip to Elland Road. But I was lucky. Just one in twelve young people went to university, only a tiny handful from backgrounds like mine. On our street on an Essex council estate, my family was the only one whose children went onto higher education. The university seemed very big. It had 6,000 students. It’s five times that size today.