I gave evidence at the trial of the Mangrove Nine – thankfully, the prosecution hadn’t done its research

As a young journalist active in the anti-Apartheid movement, I found the Mangrove restaurant the perfect place to dine but the police were also regular visitors, for very different reasons

Steve McQueen’s ‘Mangrove’ is based on the case of the Mangrove Nine (BBC/McQueen Limited/Des Willie)

Almost half a century ago, I had my 15 minutes of, well, not quite fame, but time in the witness box at the Old Bailey. The trial still lives in the memory, and not just mine. Last night, BBC One broadcast Steve McQueen’s Mangrove, a dramatic reconstruction of the events that led to one of the great legal battles against racial discrimination by the Metropolitan Police.

At the heart of the story was the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill. Run by Frank Crichlow, a Trinidadian civil rights campaigner as well as a restaurateur, it served Caribbean food to a mixture of local West Indians and anyone who enjoyed the combination of progressive politics and inexpensive fried chicken, rice and peas. As a young journalist active in the anti-Apartheid movement, I found it the perfect place to dine.

The police were also regular visitors, but for other reasons. They conducted nine drugs raids between January 1969 and July 1970. This was odd, as the locals knew Frank was fiercely anti-drugs, and involved in programmes to rehabilitate addicts. Needless to say, no drugs were ever found. Complaints to the Home Office were dismissed out of hand. On August 9 1970, a demonstration was held to protest against the persistent harassment of the local community and, in particular, “the persecution of the Mangrove Restaurant”.

Around 150 demonstrators turned up – together with more than 700 police officers. Despite the overwhelming police presence, things got out of hand. The police denied starting the fighting by snatching demonstrators’ placards. Whatever the detailed truth, the day ended with Frank and eight other demonstrators being charged with affray and incitement to riot.

A local magistrate heard the case, and rejected it out of hand, dismissing the police assumption that black radicalism was evidence of criminal intent. Normally, that would have been the end of the matter. But the director of public prosecutions would not let go. He reinstated the charges. Which is how the Mangrove Nine went on trial at the Old Bailey and I played my tiny role in the drama.

The defence team had two objectives: to demolish the police account of the demonstration, and to persuade the jury that the defendants were not dangerous subversives but reasonable citizens with a justifiable grievance. To achieve the second objective, the defence team lined up a range of respectable, white, middle-class character witnesses.

One was intended to be Derek Humphry, a senior colleague of mine on the Sunday Times. He was an outstanding journalist: one of the few on a mainstream paper to report tenaciously in those days on the scandalous treatment of the black community by the police. Derek agreed to be a character witness for Frank. However, he told the defence team that if he was out of London at the time, he would be unable to appear. He suggested me as a reserve witness.

I was happy with this, but did not expect to be called and put the matter out of my mind. I was caught by surprise on the evening of November 17 1971, when one of the defence team telephoned me at home and told me that Derek was away. Could I report next morning to Number 2 Court at the Old Bailey?

My evidence was brief. I told Frank’s barrister, David Croft, an imposing, 6’7” figure, that I had dined a number of times at the Mangrove and had not seen anything amiss going on, and certainly nobody selling, buying or using drugs.

When Croft had finished, one of the prosecution barristers stood up. He opened a large file in front of him and asked me whether I had ever written about the police and the black community. No, I hadn’t: I had joined the paper two years earlier and wrote for “Business News”. The barrister paused for a moment, closed his file and said “no further questions”.

Afterwards one of the defence team told me that the file contained Derek’s articles. It was clear that, had he given evidence, the prosecution would have sought to discredit him as anti-police. In the event, the defence team were delighted that it was I who had given the evidence.

Oddly, had the prosecution done its homework, it could have painted me as a left-wing radical: not just on the Anti-Apartheid Executive, but as a student who, in the late Sixties, had taken part in pretty well every demonstration going – Vietnam, South Africa etc. But it seems the prosecution hadn’t researched the background of a young Sunday Times financial writer wearing a suit and tie. (Not that my political views had any bearing on the truth of my evidence; but it was probably just as well that it did not become a matter of contention in court.)

The trial lasted three months. In his summing up, the judge, Edward Clarke, said that the trial had “regrettably shown evidence of racial hatred on both sides”. Three decades before the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it was the first judicial recognition of racism in the Metropolitan Police.