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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: The DPP, my mother, and a lump of cannabis
Laura Peek The Times
Monday 18 Aug 2003 KEN MACDONALD, the newly appointed Director of Public Prosecutions, ended up with drugs convictions after sending cannabis to an old friend from school only days after arriving at Oxford University as a student. The man whose convictions resurfaced after his appointment found police knocking at his door in Oxford 32 years ago after his friend's mother became suspicious about a small lump in the envelope. Mark Townsend's mother, Joan, was so distressed on opening the letter and finding cannabis that she first went to the family doctor, who advised her to contact the police. Mr Townsend, who had been at Bishop Wordsworth's grammar school in Salisbury with Ken Macdonald, told The Times that the letter contained enough cannabis to roll a single joint. He said: "Ken decided to send me a very small amount of grass as a friendly thing when he was at university. We had not planned it, but he had said: 'If I ever get a bit of grass I'll send you some.' I probably said the same. I think he thought: 'I've got a little bit of grass and maybe Mark might like a bit.' It was just one smoke's worth." A note inside the envelope opened by Mrs Townsend led police to the young student's rooms at Oxford, which were searched. Mr Macdonald, who had just started reading philosophy, politics and economics at St Edmund Hall, was arrested. He was convicted of possessing cannabis and procuring a drug and fined a total of UKP75 with UKP5 costs. The envelope contained, according to a statement from the Attorney-General's chambers, 0.1g cannabis valued at 25p, though a newspaper report of the court case says it was 550 milligrammes. Mr Townsend, 17 at the time and now a bus driver, said: "I never got to smoke the grass. I never even saw it or the note. "Being a young hippy and travelling all over the country, I was not at home and my mother found it. She could feel something in the envelope and she opened it." Mr Townsend, 49, of Alderbury in Wiltshire, said that he did not know why his late mother, whom he described as a mixture of the Queen and Margaret Thatcher, had opened the letter. But, once she had done so, he admitted: "Ken did not stand a chance." He said that he had felt guilty that his mother's act had led to a friend receiving a criminal conviction. "It was very upsetting, the fact that my mother had opened my mail and that a totally innocent friend of mine ended up with a criminal conviction." But the schoolfriends later met and Mr Townsend explained what had happened. "I remember telling him the details and that it was my mother's fault. I was devastated that I should be instrumental in a friend getting arrested. He was not angry. He did not have an extreme reaction; he was an intelligent person. "He did not fly off the handle, but he was not too happy about it. I think he was quite embarrassed about the whole situation. "Thank God he was not sent down from Oxford - I think that was a possibility - or I would have had that on my conscience as well. I saw him a couple of times after that. Then our lives went in different directions. Those were the last times I ever saw him." Mr Townsend, whose mother died in 1985, had been in the year below Mr Macdonald at school in Salisbury. The two boys were in the same rebellious group of upper and lower sixth-formers with a shared passion for rock music. Smoking pot was part of their social life, according to Mr Townsend. "We all smoked a bit, but it was not a major part of our lives and it was just cannabis. We smoked dope, but we didn't really drink - it was a sort of twisted sense of morality," he said. Like thousands of other teenagers of the late Sixties and early Seventies, the future DPP was swept along by the excitement of rebellion fuelled by the student revolt sweeping Europe. The full force of his rebellious spirit was felt in the sixth form where he brought a "smell of anarchy" to the country grammar school. He had long hair, wore John Lennon-style glasses and loved the music of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. Bill Thomas, an actor who was also a pupil at the school, said: "Ken was scruffy with long hair. He was part of a left-wing clique that dominated the common room. There were about a dozen of them. They brought a smell of anarchy to the school." He added: "It was a typical boys' grammar school, so it was very exciting to have people like him around who were very left-wing." Stephen Griffiths, a chartered accountant, said: "He was a child of his time, a complete rebel and a hippy at school." Rebel he may have been, but few at the school doubted his academic prowess. He won a place at Oxford but, within weeks of arriving in the autumn of 1971, the rebellious teenager was in trouble. On December 7, 1971, he appeared before Oxford magistrates on drugs charges linked to the sending of the cannabis to his friend. He admitted possession of a dangerous drug and procuring drugs contrary to the 1965 Dangerous Drugs Act - the equivalent of supplying drugs under today's law. Magistrates fined the 18-year-old undergraduate UKP25 for possession of cannabis valued at 25p in 1971 prices and UKP50 for the procurement offence - equivalent to a total of UKP405 today. He was ordered to pay UKP5 in costs. Mr Macdonald asked for two months to pay. Under the 1965 Act, the maximum fine for possession was UKP250 or 12 months in jail or both. Mr Macdonald was guilty of procurement because, under the Act, he had "procured" his friend to commit a criminal offence by sending him an illegal drug. Within weeks of his appearance in court, the 1965 Act was replaced by the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, which came into force in 1972. Possession of cannabis remained an offence, but procurement was replaced by a new offence of supply. Had that new legislation been in force, Mr Macdonald would have faced a charge of possessing cannabis and supplying the drug. Someone who committed the offence would face a maximum fine of UKP1,000 and/or three months in jail. For supplying the drug the offender would face five years in jail or an unlimited fine, or both. In 1971, after pleading guilty, Mr Macdonald promised the college authorities that there would be no more dabbling in drugs. But the record has had to be explained as he rose through his profession to become a pillar of the legal establishment. When the Attorney-General's chambers released details of Mr Macdonald's conviction, it said the details had been disclosed at the time he was appointed to succeed David Calvert Smith, QC, as the UKP145,000-a-year Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service. It added that the conviction had been declared when Mr Macdonald applied to join the Bar in 1978 and when he applied to become a QC. It had also been disclosed when he was appointed a part-time judge in 2001. Mr Townsend said: "I feel quite sorry for him. This is only a big deal because he has got himself a good job."
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