Fifty years after their dads stood trial in a landmark court case, Yinka Inniss Charles and Jamila Bolton-Gordon talk about police harassment, their fathers’ legacy and their ongoing work against injustice
Fifty years ago next month – on 16 December 1971 – long before Black Lives Matter, taking the knee and the Windrush scandal, a group of black activists made headlines after a ruling at the Old Bailey, the court that hears only the most serious of cases. Dubbed the “Mangrove Nine”, seven men and two women had been on trial there for weeks, arrested during a protest that started outside a Caribbean restaurant called the Mangrove on All Saints Road, in the heart of Notting Hill, west London. After 55 days, the nine were finally acquitted of the most egregious of the charges brought against them – incitement to riot.
It was a magnificent victory in a case thought by many to have been politically motivated. Two of the defendants, Darcus Howe and Altheia Jones-Lecointe, decided to represent themselves (another, Rhodan Gordon, sacked his lawyer five days in to the trial and did the same) and the judge surprised and dismayed the establishment of the day by referring to “racial hatred on both sides” in his summing up.
