Mark McDonald

Mark McDonald (born 1965) is an English lawyer and political activist.
Biography
McDonald was born in London in 1965 but spent his childhood in the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham.
Mark left school when he was 16, his first job was working in a factory as a labourer. At 17, Mark began working in his local hospital as a Porter and later trained to become an Operating Department Assistant . During this time, he was active in the trade union NUPE and became a shop steward.
Mark worked for a number of years in the operating theatre but became disillusioned with National Health Service cutbacks.
At the age of 26, he went to night school at the Working Men's College in Camden and took A-levels while he was working full-time. Later he went to the University of Westminster, though still worked in the operating theatre on a part time basis.
Mark was called to the Bar in 1997. He is a tenant at 1 Pump Court, Temple, London. His areas of practice are criminal defence and human rights. He is a member of Lincoln's Inn and sits on the Inn's Disciplinary and Bar Representation Committees.
While at university, Mark became involved in the promotion and protection of human rights and spent a summer in Tennessee, USA, where he worked in a civil rights centre, assisting in the representation of inmates on death row. On his return, Mark became a founding member of Amicus , a charity that sends lawyers to the US to assist in the provision of legal services to inmates on death row. Mark is an active campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty.
In recent years Mark has become involved in Palestinian human rights issues, particularly the right to a fair trial for Palestinians detained in Israel. In 2007, Mark spent 2 months in the West Bank providing training in international human rights law to Palestinian Lawyers. This trip was sponsored by the UK Foreign Office.
In 2006 Mark created the London Innocence Project (LIP). LIP is composed of student volunteers and criminal barristers who work in partnership to overturn the convictions of people claiming to be innocent. The project is currently working on 15 cases, including several high profile murder convictions.
Politics
Mark has been a Labour Party activist for around 20 years. He stood for parliament in Wantage in 2005 against Ed Vaizey who took over from the incumbent Conservative MP Robert Jackson who defected to the Labour Party just before the election campaign. Robert Jackson later described Mark in the News Statesman as an “excellent first time candidate”. Whilst studying he founded the Inns of Court Labour Society and is currently a member of the Society of Labour Lawyers. He is an associate editor of Labourhome.
In January 2008, Mark launched an unsuccessful bid to become the Treasurer of the Labour Party. The then Treasurer, Jack Dromey, had been in the position since 2004. There had not been an election for the position in the last 15 years.

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