The jury took a mere eight hours to return their verdict, after a trial that had lasted 55 days. They acquitted all the defendants on the charge of incitement to riot, and acquitted Howe and Lecointe-Jones of all charges. The most astonishing consequence was Judge Clarke’s volte-face. He acknowledged that the case had revealed ‘evidence of racial hatred’ existing within the Metropolitan Police. This was a groundbreaking moment, met with astonishment amongst the establishment, with Maudley beseeching Clarke to withdraw his comments. He refused.
Macdonald did not take star billing in the Mangrove Trial, that went to Howe and the other activists who demonstrated legal acumen and forensic examination skills that belied their experience. He did, however, play an integral and necessary role in the exposure and unravelling of systemic police racism, a role he continued to play throughout his career. The trial was crucial in the shift of public opinion, with the decision of the jury showing that white people were not universally prejudiced, whilst it provided momentum to the black power movement, revealing that not all challenges to the state had to be noble, yet lost causes, but could truly succeed.
Macdonald continued to work to counter racism throughout his career, acting for Duwayne Brooks in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, and leading an inquiry into racism and violence in Manchester schools in the 1980s. Whilst racism still lurks within public institutions, with ethnic minorities still disproportionately exposed to the worst instincts of some institutions, Macdonald has done much to redress the balance, as Professor Gus John writes.
Ian Macdonald’s work in exposing institutional racism forms only a small part of his enormous role in the development and protection of civil rights in the UK. Beyond this, he laid the foundations of immigration law, publishing Immigration Law and Practice in 1983, providing the blueprint for challenges to the operation of immigration law. He was a special advocate to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which heard immigration cases that went to matters of national security, resigning after the House of Lords’ decision in Belmarsh, where he felt that his role had become one which lent ‘false legitimacy’ to a law which was an ‘odious blot on our legal landscape’.
Macdonald’s legacy will live on, his work a permanent tribute to his indefatigable efforts to resist, challenge, and overcome discrimination and prejudice in society. Thejusticegap online article Nicholas Langen 29 November 2018, ‘Mangrove Nine: When Black Power took on the British Establishment’
Black power: the words that can send shivers down the spine of the nervous white man. While the white man struggles with his nightmare, the black man struggles with his dream. Black Power: A British Story of Resistance, contemporary commentary of march, BBC 2021
West London 1970: a group of protesters march against harassment by the police of a black-owned restaurant called The Mangrove. Black power had arrived in Britain. Young black people were fighting back against a hostile environment. They stood up to the state and they defied the brutality of the police. It was a conflict that reached the highest courts in the land. ibid.
The migrants played a key role in rebuilding Britain. ibid.
Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua, was stabbed to death by a white gang one night near Notting Hill. The police denied that the killing was racially motivated and nobody was prosecuted. ibid.
Even at school children were not safe from institutional racism. ibid.
Stokely Carmichael’s visit had the Labour government so concerned that Special Branch ordered him to leave the country and he was banned from re-entering. Soon afterwards the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, set up a secret police department specifically to monitor radical black groups in Britain. ibid.
On Sunday 9th August 1970 a crowd of over 100 people gathered outside the Mangrove restaurant to show their support … ‘They [Conservatives] wanted to justify the Immigration Bill’ … For the 9 people arrested following the Mangrove Demonstration, it seemed that the whole machinery of the state was now set against them, and the idea of Black Power in Britain was being unfairly demonised. ibid. activist
Oval 4: When a BBC journalist started investigating Winston’s case, it was revealed that Detective Sargeant Derek Ridgewell’s testimony was directly contradicted by eye-witnesses … ‘The only [mugging] witnesses were the anti-mugging squad themselves’ … The media’s account of Winston’s case helped him appeal and his sentence was reduced, but the judge did not overturn the criminal conviction. ibid.