Barbara Beese

They were all acquitted of the most serious charges and the trial became the first judicial acknowledgement of behaviour (the repeated raids) motivated by racial hatred, rather than legitimate crime control, within the Metropolitan Police.

Beese came to public attention in 1970 as one of the Mangrove Nine, who on 9 August that year marched to the police station in Notting Hill, London, to protest against police raids of The Mangrove, a restaurant run by Frank Crichlow, which was a meeting place for the Black community in the area.

[3] Violent clashes between the police and the Black marchers led to charges and an important trial that is said to have "changed racial justice in the UK forever".

[6][7][8] Beese appears in the 1973 Franco Rosso and John La Rose documentary film The Mangrove Nine.

[9] Actress Rochenda Sandall portrays Beese in the Mangrove episode of Steve McQueen's 2020 film anthology/television miniseries Small Axe.

Beese during the Mangrove Nine demonstration of 9 August 1970