Ian Macdonald

Ian Alexander Macdonald QC (2 January 1939 – 12 November 2019) was a Scottish barrister who was "a pioneer of committed anti-racist legal practice" in the UK. During the 1970s he appeared in many notable political and human rights cases, including those involving the Mangrove Nine, the Angry Brigade, and the Balcombe Street siege. He took silk in 1988 and was leader of the British bar in immigration law for five decades until his death at the age of 80. Biography Macdonald was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Ian Macdonald, a banker, and his wife, Helen Nicolson. He attended Rugby School, then studied law at Clare College, Cambridge, going on to be called to the bar via Middle Temple in 1963. He became a member of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) when it began in 1964, lobbying the Labour government for race relations legislation, which resulted in the enactment of the 1968 Race Relations Act and the establishment of the Race Relations Board. In 1970, Macdonald was instrumental in the successful defence of the Mangrove Nine, a group of British Black activists tried for inciting a riot following a protest against repeated police raids of The Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill, west London. He continually challenged the prejudices of the judge, as well as the prosecution and their witnesses, and what amounted to institutional racism in the justice system was given judicial recognition for the first time, including acknowledgement of behaviour (the repeated raids) motivated by racial hatred, rather than legitimate crime control, within the Metropolitan Police. He later wrote in Race Today: "The Mangrove Nine trial was a watershed because we learnt through experience how to confront the power of the court, because the defendants refused to play the role of 'victim' and rely on the so called 'expertise' of the lawyer. Once you recognise the defendant as a self-assertive human being, everything in the court has to change. The power and role of lawyers – the advocacy and the case preparation … What all radical lawyers have to decide is whether they want to retain their slice of the traditional lawyers cake or to participate in a bold new experience."