7 Days 2 2 December 1971 The Mangrove Trial is over with Five acquitted and Four on suspended sentences ANTHONY CARLYLE INNESS RHODAN GORDON ALTHEA JONES-LECOINTE Acquitted of Riot, Affray, GBH, possessing an offensive weapon. Acquitted of Riot. Guilty of Affray. Sentence: fifteen months Acquitted of Riot, Causing Actual Bodily Harm, Possessing an Guilty of causing actual bodily harm. Sentence: nine months suspended for two years Offensive Weapon. Guilty of Affray, Causing Actual Bodily Harm. suspended for two years Sentence: 15 months suspended for 2 years FRANK CRITCHLOW RUPERT GLASGOW BOYCE ROTHWELL WESLEY KENTISH Acquitted of riot, affray, possessing an offensive weapon Acquitted of Riot, Affray, GBH. Guilty of Causing Actual Bodily Acquitted of Riot, Affray, Possessing an Offensive Weapon Harm, Possessing an Offensive Weapon. Sentence: 9 months suspended for two years BARBARA BEESE GODFREY MILLETTE RADFORD LEIGHTON HOWE Acquitted of Riot, Affray, Assault, Possessing an offensive weapon Acquitted of Riot and Affray Acquitted of Riot and Affray Now 7 Days talks to members of the Nine about 5 1 7 Days 22 December 1971 7 Days 22 December 1971 BLACKS IN BRITAIN TODAY E'VE BEEN subjected in this trial to spectacles of naked Photographs of the Mangrove Nine — Tom Picton/7 Days judicial tyranny. The judge has given the defence some ‘W latitude, but the only alternative was to send them down or non-lawyer, is that lawyers accept a on our backs. We said “oh yes”. to gag them like Bobby Seale. Our legal system relies on people certain code of behaviour. There are When I go to the Old Bailey to defend myself, I see exactly the class But he could be replaced by any accepting the roles they are allotted, but in this case, people have said innumerable deals that they seek to make with each other over the relation between myself and the ruling number of judges . no. We don't accept absolute power anywhere. We went to war with heads of the defendants, to see that the class; I see that relation very clearly. Germany against this; we're not in Russia, not in the United States, system continues to function. The They are sitting on my back. I get up to Oh yes. When I talk about Clark I don’t why tolerate it in the Old Bailey? Whatever verdict you return, that is a whole attempt by judge and counsel to ask a question that has some intelligence talk about him in isolation. By and large truth that will echo through the Old Bailey long after we have left." mystify everybody about the profound and creativity and they run from it like Clark is typically ruling class. A bit things that they are going through is all the plague. I asked a police officer hamfisted, but nevertheless ruling class. These stirring words came from Ian MacDonald, a defence counsel, hogwash. They have no understanding about his understanding of the Grove They have a striking familiarity. You who was addressing the jury during the closing stages of the £70,000 of life. and the situation in which black people see, when we talk about the ruling class, judicial spectacular at the Old Bailey, the trial of the Mangrove Nine. I think Justice comes to life only live. “That is inadmissible”. They admit we tend to blanket them all. I look at The defendants, seven men and two women, were all black and with people. Otherwise it is a whole lot some kind of fuckbrained police officer British society, I am not part of it — I am just here, I don’t feel emotionally militant, and they faced a total of 31 charges. These had been slammed of words in books. You find that these who comes to say that he was in court judges, lawyers, counsels and all that, and he saw Miss Beese taking notes and charged if Parliament burns down, or if on them after last year's demonstration against police harrassment of are representing a degenerate Mrs Lecointe come to see her husband the Queen is dead, or even if some the blacks in Notting Hill. state. And the state of Britain is — they admit that shit. But when we radical revolutionary is dead. If in Frank Critchlow, one of the men in the dock, owned the Mangrove particularly degenerate now. Look at wanted to bring truth into the Law at Trinidad, they kill a revolutionary, then Restaurant, the starting point of the demonstration. It had been raided Alec Douglas Home and the Rhodesian the Old Bailey, we are not permitted. If I’m emotionally charged. But by and large in Britain we stand outside and we three times by police, who said they were looking for drugs. situation. Total failure of the British you ask a question and the judge says no, they have a prison officer to slam look in. All nine were acquitted of riot. The basis of this charge, said the state to assist the lives of five million people. The total failure to bring any you down the stairs. It is as naked and Now, when I first came here, the prosecution was that the outbreak of violence had been deliberately justice into industry, work relationships, immediate as that. He’s got a heavy mob ruling class used to be people like Alec planned. The case was brought in an attempt to crush the black into the lives of women, of children, of behind him and it is a very close Douglas Home, that kind of aristocracy. movement by attacking its supposed leaders. Radford Howe said, black people. relationship between prison officer and But there has been a revolution in the "They believe that by raising this charge they could silence people in Lawyers talk about objectivity and the judge, and the police and the judge. Conservative Party, you have a new type of ruling class, you have Heath and his the black community from raising the question of police brutality." they are the worst practitioners of I could have read Lenin’s State and objectivity that you could find. They Revolution from now till kingdom capitalist heavies. You have John Davies Five defendants were acquitted altogether. Four got suspended are full of all kinds of vulgar emotions, come, I would never have been able to from CBI, or Barber who has no politics sentences — only two of these were convicted of affray. all kinds of nationalistic traits. understand the nature of the state and but is a hatchet man for the capitalists. But the acquittals on 25 of 31 charges are a victory for the defence. Everything that is vulgar and its class relationships in the way that I When you look at the judiciary, people The eleven week trial became a focal point for the black movement degenerate, reproduces itself in the have through nine weeks of the Old like Clark belong to the new kind of ruling class. You see, things form the in Britain. Judith McFadzean Ferguson went to talk to Radford Howe British court. Today, I don’t respect any Bailey., of them, I don’t respect anything they Black people know what is going on dialectic, they break up, they form and Rothwell Kentish about the context in which the case had been have to say, all I see is that they are at the Old Bailey, because they have to again. People like Alec Douglas Home, set: the position of black people in modern Britain. people who exercise naked power. And go to the National Assistance, they have they really look down on Edward Heath for the time being, history has placed to look for a flat and they know what is when he goes to conduct whatever Darkus Howe: me in their grasp — they can send me to going on in life and society generally. So nonesense he is conducting — he is a "N OTTING HILL has a history of people talking at meetings, about prison, and take away the little who are they fooling? Just some white vulgar man so far as the old ruling i t s own, peculiar and unique capitalism, about American imperialism. bourgeois liberty that I have. people. “We are giving you latitude”, class is concerned. But he’s got power. I didn’t learn that in Britain. Certain So you have a new variation of the same among black communities across that’s the Judge’s favourite word. He experiences and sharp conflicts in says it because he wants to fool some class. In the same way as you have a the country, because in 1958 it Britain brought these things to the fore Naked Power white liberals who he knows could make new proletariat. The proletariat doesn’t had a race riot. That race riot was once more. We didn’t learn the struggle There you see state power, its a scream, because liberals scream more remain cloth capped, white and over 30. an attack on black people by here. We’ve been struggling against the strengths and its weaknesses. Its than anybody else. He is gearing that to it changes as history moves. And you white people. In response, black same state in its colonial form and we strength is purely physical and naked: a them. have black people in this country. broke the back of colonialism in the prison officer slams me down the stairs, The Original Demonstration. people organised themselves to West Indies. the judge shouts at me. And then on the The New Men Judge Clark population is not yet ready. I’m afraid resist.