Barrister Macdonald was
called to the Bar by the
Inner Temple in July 1978 where he became the first
pupil of barrister
Helena Kennedy. As a junior barrister he defended a number of terrorist suspects (both
Provisional IRA and those from the Middle East), fraudsters and major drug dealers. He was also on the defence team for the
Matrix Churchill trial.
Director of Public Prosecutions In August 2003 it was announced that Macdonald would succeed
David Calvert-Smith as
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in October of that year. In his last month in office he warned against excessive use of
surveillance powers being introduced by the government, saying: "We should be careful to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we cannot bear." He was awarded a
knighthood in the 2007
New Year Honours.
Later career Macdonald retired as DPP on 31 October 2008, returning to private practice at
Matrix Chambers and becoming a regular contributor to
The Times, where he writes on law, security and politics. He was succeeded in the office by future Prime Minister
Keir Starmer. In 2009, he was appointed a Visiting Professor of Law at the
London School of Economics. In 2010, he became a Deputy High Court Judge and a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Criminology at the
University of Oxford. On 14 December 2009, Macdonald wrote an article in
The Times about the
Chilcot Inquiry into the
2003 Iraq War. This article was more critical than anything that has been said so far by any of the senior civil servants who worked in Whitehall when Blair was prime minister. It attracted media interest also because Macdonald is a member of
Matrix Chambers as is
Cherie Blair. Macdonald describes Blair's "sycophancy towards power" and wrote that "since those sorry days we have frequently heard [Blair] repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a
narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death." On 28 May 2010,
Downing Street announced that Macdonald would be made a Liberal Democrat
life peer in the
2010 Dissolution Honours List, which was
gazetted on 15 June. The
Letters Patent were gazetted on 15 July, dated 12 July granting him the title of
Baron Macdonald of River Glaven,
of Cley-next-the-Sea in the County of Norfolk. On 13 July 2010,
Theresa May, the
Home Secretary, announced to Parliament that she had invited Macdonald to oversee a government review of counter terrorism and security powers, to ensure that legislative measures in place were proportionate and consistent with the rule of law. In October 2010, as part of
Turkey's accession negotiations to the European Union, and on the recommendation of the
Council of Europe, the
European Commission invited Macdonald to lead an EU mission to Turkey to assess that country's commitment to free expression and a free press. In January 2011, it was announced that Macdonald was to succeed the late
Lord Bingham of Cornhill as the chair of
Reprieve, the leading international anti-death penalty and prisoners' rights organisation. In April 2011, he joined the Council of the
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. In 2015, he became Chair of
The Orwell Foundation which awards the
Orwell Prize for journalism and political writing. Macdonald publicly criticised the
Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 in February 2016, saying it was a threat to freedom of academic expression and research. In 2020, he became President of the
Howard League for Penal Reform. In October 2020, he said that the
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill had "gone too far" in protecting Government authorities from prosecution: he called for explicit limits on the crimes covered by the bill, so that it would not permit murder, torture or sexual violence. ==Personal life==