[images and captions added by this website] September 2, 2005   Lord Donaldson October 6, 1920 - August 31, 2005 Veteran of the presidency of the National Indutrial Relations Court who became a reform-minded Master of the Rolls IN 1982 Sir John Donaldson was handed the near-impossible task of replacing Lord Denning as Master of the Rolls (the president of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal and the third most senior judge in England and Wales). In contrast to his high-profile predecessor, Donaldson -- though undoubtedly astute -- was not a profound legal thinker, had no grand plan to go down in legal history and did not monopolise the biggest and best cases. David Irving comments: IN 1989 we issued an edition of the famous Leuchter Report to which I wrote an Introduction, stating that, while it might contain in my view minor methodological flaws, the forensic tests carried out by a reputable New England laboratory needed explanation.    The tests showed no significant trace of cyanide compounds in the Auschwitz buildings where allegedly a million or more human beings had been "gassed" with the chemical -- while a fumigation room in the same wartime slave labor camp using the toxic chemical for fumigating the clothes of inmates showed substantial quantities of the cyanide compound.    We sent copies to every Member of Parliament in the UK and to every member of the House of Lords who had voted on the recent and controversial war criminals bill.    To our surprise we received a letter from Lord Donaldson, second highest lawyer in the land (see the image below) revealing that he too was concerned. House of Lords 22 June 90 Dear Mr Irving, Thank you for yr letter of 14 June about the Gas ovens. I have read it with interest, but am less than convinced. However, I think there is a case, for history's sake, for a full enquiry. Yours truly Donaldson Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge   Donaldson nonetheless made a significant and lasting contribution during his decade as Master of the Rolls. Many of his judgments were of a high calibre, even if few now stand out. And, turning his attention to an area that had been neglected by Denning, he won admiration for a series of much-needed procedural and administrative reforms that slashed the Court of Appeal's huge backlog of cases. Less happily, Donaldson's name will also be linked to two of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history -- the trial of the Guildford Four in 1975 and the trial of the Maguire Seven the next year. In 1990 his handling of the 1976 Maguire hearing was criticised by the May inquiry's interim report -- criticism that, as with his colleague Lord Lane, somewhat disproportionately overshadowed his achievements. The son of a Hampshire gynaecologist, John Francis Donaldson was born in 1920. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became the Union's secretary of debates and chairman of the Federation of University Conservative and Unionist Associations. After graduating with a second-class law degree in 1941, he was commissioned in the Signals Corps. He served in the post-D-Day campaign and then with the military government of Schleswig-Holstein, leaving the Army as a lieutenant-colonel. Called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1946, he entered the chambers of Sir William Willink QC at 3 Essex Court in the Temple. This was then the country's leading commercial set, with a workload which comprised principally shipping, marine insurance, banking and other big-money cases. Nevertheless, Donaldson's main source of income during his early years at the Bar was a solicitor who regularly instructed him in Rent Act cases at Edmonton County Court. Much of his spare time, meanwhile, was devoted to rewriting the standard textbook on an esoteric area of maritime law. Donaldson was a Conservative councillor in Croydon from 1949 to 1953 and served as a member of the Bar Council for five years from 1956. He was junior counsel at the bank rate inquiry in 1957 and junior counsel to the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements in 1959-61, appearing in many of the early important cases in the Restrictive Practices Court. As an advocate, Donaldson was known for his no-frills approach and concision. After establishing a substantial commercial practice, he took silk in 1961. Unlike many QCs, he made few demands of his juniors, preferring to do the work himself. He was leading counsel at the Vassal spy tribunal in 1962, deputy chairman of Hampshire Quarter Sessions from 1961 to 1966, and a member of the Council on Tribunals in 1965-66. Donaldson was appointed a judge of the Queen's Bench Division in 1966. At 46, he was the youngest High Court judge for many years. He proved solid, sensible and polite, if a little pompous on occasion. Having assisted the Solicitor-General, Sir Geoffrey Howe, in drafting the Industrial Relations Act 1971, Donaldson was an obvious choice as the first president of the National Industrial Relations Court. He certainly wanted the job and assumed his new role with immense enthusiasm and efficiency. To put everyone at ease, he wore plain clothes rather than a wig and robes. Donaldson went out of his way to give the unions a fair crack of the whip and worked hard behind the scenes to win their leaders' trust. Although he achieved some success in this, he could not overcome the unions' extreme antagonism to both the court and the Industrial Relations Act and found himself dubbed "Black Jack" and the judge with the "fastest gun in the West". No British judge can have operated in more difficult circumstances. During his three-year presidency, Donaldson was subject to constant media surveillance and was repeatedly attacked by Labour MPs as a political appointment. Breaking with the tradition that members of the judiciary should not indulge in public debate, Donaldson defended his role, declaring that he was merely fulfilling the will of Parliament: "It may or may not be a good idea to inject the law into industrial relations. That is a political matter and not for us." Upon its return to power in 1974, Labour quickly shut down the NIRC. Its former president went back to the High Court with a rebuke from the Employment Secretary, Michael Foot, who claimed Donaldson had a "trigger-happy judicial finger". Over the next five years, he was repeatedly passed over for promotion. Margaret Thatcher viewed Labour's treatment of Donaldson as a scandal and, just two months after her election victory in 1979, sent him to the Court of Appeal. However, his passion for efficiency continued to generate friction. He became renowned for interrupting counsel and -- in an echo of his time at the NIRC -- was frequently charged with having made up his mind too quickly. Two years after his elevation, Donaldson was asked to reduce a queue of more than 600 cases in the Queen's Bench Divisional Court. Displaying remarkable enthusiasm and ruthlessness, he all but eliminated the backlog within six months. When Lord Denning retired in the summer of 1982, Donaldson had been sitting on the Court of Appeal bench for just three years. At Thatcher's direction, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, ignored the reservations of a number of judges and appointed Donaldson Master of the Rolls. Instead of focusing on case law, Donaldson chose to devote his greatest efforts to much-needed reform and to reducing delays between first instance judgments and appellate hearings. He lobbied for more judges and, by the end of the decade, the number of lords justices had risen from 18 to 26. He broke new ground by introducing annual reviews of the Court of Appeal's performance, computerising the administration of the appeals system and drafting a small number of qualified lawyers into the Civil Appeals Office to assist with case management. To reduce the length of oral hearings, counsel were required to submit in advance written "skeleton arguments", setting out the points they were proposing to use in court. This innovation, supplemented by increased pre-reading on the part of judges, removed the necessity for interminable opening speeches and reduced the need to read out documents and authorities. Donaldson also insisted that judgments be "handed down" rather than read out in court. To Donaldson's surprise and disappointment, his reforms did not succeed in reducing appellate delays. They did, however, prevent any worsening of the situation. It would eventually fall to one of Donaldson's successors, Lord Woolf, to build on his work and implement a truly radical overhaul of civil justice procedures. Though Donaldson owed his position to political patronage, he proved to be no puppet. He insisted on judicial independence from government and refused to allow the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, to interfere with the running of the Court of Appeal. He was also highly critical of many of the reforms introduced by Mackay in the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, which he saw as a threat to the survival of an independent Bar and, therefore, to the quality of administration of justice. Donaldson's reputation took a dent in July 1990, when the former Court of Appeal judge Sir John May released his interim report into the trial of the Maguire Seven. The report concluded that Donaldson had failed to see the significance of a key document, discovered late on in the trial, that cast doubt on a vital test for nitroglycerine used by the Crown. It also criticised him for failing to rule that evidence on another ad hoc test was inadmissible. Declaring that it is part of a judge's job "to remain silent in the face of criticism, whether right or wrong", Donaldson had declined to give evidence to the inquiry. But he would escape censure over his part in the trial of the Guildford Four when May delivered a final report in 1994. Rather than continue until retirement age, Donaldson chose to stand down from the Bench in September 1992. As well as devoting more time to sailing, skiing and his family, he served on a number of inquiries and reviews. He also used his seat in the House of Lords, which he had been awarded in 1988, to speak out on issues that gave him concern. Last year he entered the battle over the Government's ban on hunting with dogs. As a crossbencher, he backed a legal action in which campaigners argued that the way the Hunting Bill was railroaded on to the statute books was unlawful. "I have no strong views about hunting," Donaldson declared, "but I have very strong views about freedom and the right of choice, and I think the evidence is very strongly in favour of the hunting people." As recently as this July, he was among a number of senior judicial figures who spoke out against politicians, including Tony Blair, who called on judges not to block new anti- terrorism proposals. Donaldson indicated that judges would continue to interpret the law independently of the Government's demand. "It is the job of the judges to ensure that the government of the day does not exceed its powers," he stated, "which is a permanent desire of all governments." John Donaldson married Dorothy Mary Warwick in 1945. The couple had met at Middlesex Hospital, where Mary was working as a nurse and Donaldson was visiting a sick relative. Like her husband, Lady Donaldson enjoyed a successful public career. She was the first woman member of the City of London Court of Common Council, the City's first woman alderman and its first woman sheriff. In 1983 she became the first woman Lord Mayor of London and was appointed GBE. Far from feeling threatened, Donaldson was hugely supportive of his wife, happily trailing behind her at numerous functions. Lady Donaldson died in October 2002. Lord Donaldson is survived by two daughters and a son. Lord Donaldson of Lymington, Master of the Rolls 1982-92, was born on October 6, 1920. He died on August 31, 2005, aged 84. also BBC report

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