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’
Last summer the brutal killer of George Floyd ignited huge protests in the cause for change. Fifty years ago the Civil Rights Act brought the promise of equality for all. In America today, if you are black, you are five times more likely to go to prison than if you are white. And the average black family is eight time poorer than the average white family. This is the story of the key moments since the Civil Rights Act where there was a change to make America more equal in housing, education and justice, and why it didn’t happen. The Black American Fight for Freedom, BBC 2021
Dorothy’s case exposed how aldermen had repeatedly refused to allow public housing to be built in white neighbourhoods. ibid.
In 2017 black students were twice as likely to attend a high-poverty school than white students. ibid. caption
In 1980 the number of black men incarcerated was 143,000. In 2019 it had increased to 435,000. ibid.
Sixteen are about to come up in court in Bodmin, Cornwall, charged with ‘serious crimes’ which did no harm to anyone.
There are no witnesses – only confessions given to the police that these men had sex with one another. Yes, that’s still a crime. It’s called ‘gross indecency in a public place’.
A ‘public place’ includes a car, a party or even a flat to which anyone apart from the accused has access.
The Cornish case is not an exception. All over the country, police forces, which constantly complain about overwork are straining at the leash to ‘run to ground’ anyone who can be proved to have had sex with someone of his own sex.
All this is happening ten years after the law was changed to allow homosexual relations between adults.
Nettie Pollard, Gay Rights officer of the National Council of Civil Liberties, reckons that these prosecutions have ‘doubled at least since 1967, when the law was changed’. Paul Foot & Lionel Starling, How Much Longer Must These People Be Hounded & Humiliated?
Civil rights activists began to be portrayed in the media and among many politicians as criminals. 13th, 2016
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Howard Zinn
In America the civil rights movement was reaching a climax. 1968: A Year of War, Turmoil and Beyond, Sky Arts 2018
De Gaulle’s complacency seems hard to believe 50 years on but he wasn’t alone: few imagined how momentous and tumultuous 1968 would turn out to be. So how did it happen within five months of that new year speech France was brought to a standstill and De Gaule’s government almost toppled by the worst rioting seen in Paris since the revolution – the earlier one? Vive la Revolution! Joan Bakewell on May 1968, BBC 2018
As the anti-war protests gathered strength they began to coincide with that other great movement that had been sweeping America since the 1950s – the Civil Rights movement. ibid.
Three months into 1968, on March 17th that year, London’s Grosvenor Square became a battleground. ibid.
Czechoslovakia: But for the time being the dreams were not fulfilled. After three months of dizzy optimism the Russian tanks rolled across to the border to suppress what had been a defiant challenge to the Soviet grip on eastern Europe. ibid.
Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the great feminist writer, both came out in favour of the students. ibid.
On May 13th the trade unions announced a general strike … the workers had their own objectives … By May 22nd that figure had swollen to ten million. ibid.
The Utopian dream of May had not been realised. ibid.
Since Trump took power activists have seen a disturbing escalation in state repression against civil liberties. Abby Martin & The Empire Files: Trump Expands Police-State Crackdown on the Left, Youtube 25.17, 2017
I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence. Suella Braverman, Home Secretary, letter to Chief Constables 10 October 2023