Ian Macdonald obituary

Leading barrister who specialised in immigration and human rights law for more than half a century

Ian Macdonald, who has died aged 80 from a heart attack, was the leader of the British bar in immigration law over the past half century. His forensic commitment to equality and race relations dated back to his successful defence of the Mangrove Nine in 1970, when an Old Bailey jury rejected an attempt to frame denizens of the Mangrove cafe in Notting Hill, west London, and he was still working on immigration and extradition cases at the time of his death.

Although some of his comrades took, in time, knighthoods and judgeships, Ian remained to the end a jobbing advocate – one with an intellectual influence on the subject, through his textbook on immigration law, greater than that of any judge or academic.

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