John Donaldson, Baron Donaldson of Lymington

John Francis Donaldson, Baron Donaldson of Lymington, PC (6 October 1920 – 31 August 2005) was a senior British judge who served as Master of the Rolls for ten years, from 1982-92. He is best known in some circles for his role as presiding judge in the infamous Guildford Four miscarriage of justice, especially his closing remarks where he regretted his inability to hang those wrongly convicted.^[1]

Early and private life

He was born at 6 King Street, St Marylebone, London, the son of Malcolm Donaldson (1884-1973), consultant gynaecologist, and his first wife, Evelyn Helen Marguerite, née Gilroy. His father was a Harley Street-based gynaecologist.

Donaldson attended first Charterhouse and then Trinity College, Cambridge. He served as chairman of the Federation of University Conservative and Unionist Associations, and harboured ambitions of becoming a Conservative Party Member of Parliament. He was an Independent Ratepayers Councillor for the County Borough of Croydon from 1949-53.

After graduating with a lower second class degree in 1941, he joined the war effort as a commissioned officer in the Royal Signals. He then served with the Guards Armoured Divisional Signals, both domestically and in North-West Europe, until the end of the war in 1945. He served in the military government of Schleswig-Holstein, and was demobbed as a lieutenant-colonel aged 25.

He married Dorothy Mary Warwick (later known as Dame Mary Donaldson), in 1945, having met her at Middlesex Hospital where she was working as a nurse. She later became the first woman to be a Member of the City of London Court of Common Council, the first female Alderman, the first female Sheriff and, finally, in 1983, the first female Lord Mayor of London. Together, they had two daughters and a son; his wife predeceased him in October 2003.^[2]

Legal career

Donaldson was called to the Bar in 1946 as a Harmsworth Scholar at the Middle Temple. He joined the chambers of Sir Henry Willink, QC at 3 Essex Court and built a successful tort and commercial practice. He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1961, and became a High Court Judge when he was appointed to the Queen's Bench Division and knighted in 1966 at the age of 45. He remained the youngest High Court judge for a number of years.

He became the first (and last) President of the National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC, also known as the Industrial Relations Tribunal) from its formation by Ted Heath's Conservative government in 1971 under the Industrial Relations Act 1971 until it was abolished in 1974. The trades unions, pointing to his Tory inclinations in his youth, nicknamed him "Black Jack", and 181 Members of Parliament (MPs) signed a House of Commons motion calling for his dismissal.

Two months after Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979, he became a Lord Justice of Appeal, thus was automatically appointed to the Privy Council. He replaced Lord Denning as Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England in 1982, becoming the presiding officer of the civil division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, where he pushed forward modernisation efforts, including the introduction of skeleton arguments in civil appeals, judgments being "handed down" rather than read, and enhanced case management.

Donaldson decided in O'Kelly v. Trusthouse Forte plc [1983] ICR 728, Donaldson's early reforms would later be overtaken by the Civil Procedure Rules introduced by a later Master of the Rolls, Lord Woolf. In 1988 he was elevated to the House of Lords as a Life Peer: Baron Donaldson of Lymington, of Lymington in the County of Hampshire.

Criticism

In his various roles, Donaldson was involved in many high-profile cases from the 1970s onwards. He presided over the trials of the Guildford Four in 1975 and the Maguire Seven in 1976, and was later criticised in Sir John May's interim report of his inquiry into the miscarriages of justice. At the trials, he achieved a degree of notoriety for declaring in his closing remarks that he wished the men had been indicted for high treason, which still carried the death penalty, rather than for murder, which by then no longer carried the death penalty. These remarks bore an uncanny resemblance to the words of another leading judge of the era, Sir Nigel Bridge, who commented in a similar IRA-based miscarriage of justice, the Birmingham Six trial, that he wished that he could still hang murderers.

Donaldson refused to prevent newspapers from publishing the Spycatcher memoir of Peter Wright in 1988, against government policy; and he ruled in 1991 that the then Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker was in contempt of court over an extradition case, in which a man was deported to Zaire while the case was still pending, contrary to a court order.

In retirement

After retiring as a judge in 1992, he wrote reports regarding two maritime accidents involving the grounding of oil tankers and subsequent spills of crude oil: the grounding of the MV Braer off the Shetland Islands in January 1993, in which 85,000 tonnes of oil escaped; and the grounding of the Sea Empress at the entrance to Milford Haven in February 1996, and subsequent escape of more than 70,000 tonnes of oil off the Pembrokeshire coast.

In the 2000-01 session of Parliament, he presented a Private Member's Bill in the House of Lords (the Parliament Acts (Amendment) Bill), which would have had the effect of confirming the legitimacy of the Parliament Act 1949 to address concerns raised by legal academics as to whether the use of the Act was valid. . The Bill was not passed, and Donaldson supported the legal action by the Countryside Alliance to overturn the Hunting Act 2004, which was passed under the provisions of the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949.

Judgments

• Re T (Adult: Refusal of Treatment) [1993] Fam. 95
• O'Kelly v Trusthouse Forte plc [1983] ICR 728

References

External links

• Former judge Lord Donaldson dies (BBC News, 1 September 2005)
• Obituaries
  • Obituary (BBC News, 1 September 2005)
  • Obituary (The Telegraph, 2 September 2005)
  • Obituary (The Guardian, 3 September 2005)
  • Obituary (The Independent, 9 September 2005)
  • Obituary (The Times, 9 September 2005)