Ian Macdonald - The Struggle for Racial Equality & Social Justice in the Courts

itw (1991) by/par Mogniss H. Abdallah / Agence IM'media
Ian Macdonald QC (1939 - 2019) was a lawyer involved in antiracist politics since the early 1960s. He worked in close collaboration with black feminists and educationalists, and with trade unionists in defence of workers’ rights.
« I learn't resistance in the courts from my clients. I used to get black clients amongst others ». In 1971, during the Mangrove 9 case (a group of black activists tried for inciting a demonstration, in 1970, against the police targeting of the Notting Hill Mangrove restaurant), he wanted to « take into the court the resistance which the Black Panther Movement in the U.K. - the largest mass movement of black youth that there's ever been in this country - had been conducting out in the streets... I was really there to ensure that there was no split between those who were defending themselves - among them Altheia Jones-LeCointe and Darcus Howe - and those who were represented, because the tendancy of all lawyers is to take over and manage their clients. » He fought back the 'Judicial tyranny' and eventually, the defendants won their case.
As Professor Gus John recalls, Ian Macdonald contributed for decades with “‘The Alliance’ of the Black Parents Movement, the Black Youth Movement, Race Today Collective and Bradford Black Collective, placing defendants at the centre of their defence against police/CPS prosecution and having solicitors and barristers work with their testimonies and not be led by their instinctive reactions to the police/prosecution’s account of events and the circumstances surrounding them.”
After the New Cross (South London) fire during a party on 18 January 1981, resulting in the deaths of 14 young people, several families were represented by Ian Macdonald - one of the three barristers giving their services free at the inquest. « The mass response to the fire was of critical importance to, first of all preventing there being a whitewash over the inquiry, secondly preventing some of the people who where attending the party from being accused of setting the fire. »
In the aftermath of the murder of Ahmed Iqbal Ullah, a 13 year old Bangladeshi student stabbed to death by a white classmate at Burnage High School in South Manchester on 17 September 1986,
Manchester City Council commissioned Ian Macdonald to conduct an inquiry into racism and racial violence in Manchester schools. His report, leaked in the local press in april 1988, provoked a national debate on anti-racism in education, including criticism of a “moral” anti-racism evading any sens of 'structural' or 'institutionnal' racism. In 1989, the inquiry team published the full report in book form with the title Murder in the Playground.”Some of the Asian youths who saw what had happen to Ahmed Iqbal Ullah as a metaphor for their own lives attempted to organize an independent movement, and the traditional community leaders used every single possible means through the mosque; the city council, the police and through the parents to stop it...”
“The situation today [in 1991] is a lot more confused because there are undoubtedly large sections of youth who are demoralised... Through drugs, psychological disorders, they don't have the appropriate human responses, there targets are completely indiscriminate ». … In a lot of attacks you have integrated gangs of white and black youth attacking a group of Asians... And there is a much greater quitism among the working class. »
Ian Macdonald reckons that « some of the gains in the 60s and 70s have in a sense been formalised and institutionalised in the practice of the courts. » After our interview, Ian Macdonald, acting for one of the witnesses of Stephen Lawrence murder, stabbed by a gang of racists on April 22, 1993, questioned the Metropolitan Police investigation incompetence. The case resulted in 1999 in the MacPherson Report, admitting the existence of 'institutionnal racism', provoking again a mainstream debate wondering 'How racist are our institutions ?'(The Gardian, Februaruy 24th, 1999) .