A drunk man who subjected a female lawyer to a racist rant on a train has been widely misidentified as a solicitor, rather unfairly bringing the profession into disrepute.

Sanaa Shahid was travelling back to Glasgow from London with her four-year-old son when another first class passenger, Alexander Mackinnon, told them, “You don’t deserve to be here. Bloody foreigners. Where were you even born?” Without waiting to hear the answer (Scotland), the man widely described by the press as a solicitor asked why she didn't “go back there”. 

Shahid, who qualified as a solicitor last year, captured the rest of the encounter on her mobile phone. In the footage Mackinnon tells a friend on his phone that Shahid is a "stupid cow with a child" who "does not belong in this country", Mackinnon slurs, "now she'll accuse me of insulting her and discrimination, it's her word against mine", but is interrupted by a train manager:

Manager: It's not just your word against hers, it's mine as well 'cos I heard it all.  
Mackinnon: Yeah, i wa-wanted you to.
Manager: You're a drunken racist and you need to get off the train.
Mackinnon: I'm not a racist. I love people. [To Shahid] I'm racist am I? You're racist . [Downing the rest of the wine straight from the bottle]. You're so...wonderful, wasting police time. 'Miss'. And your fucking son.
Shahid: You're a disgrace to humanity, do you know that?

  Describing a man with a cane like that as a solicitor is a disgrace

Police removed Mackinnon from the train at Carlisle in handcuffs. He continued to rant about the Glasgow-born lawyer in his police interview. This week he admitted a racially aggravated public order offence at Carlisle Magistrates court and was fined £1,154. However media outlets from Scotland's Daily Record to the BBC have inaccurately reported that Mackinnon is a solicitor (The Sun even called him a "high-flying" one). Mackinnon, who follows Trump, the BNP and the EDL on Twitter, is not registered as a solicitor in Scotland or in England and Wales, and is in fact an ex-marketing executive. A spokeswoman for the SRA told RollOnFriday, "We are aware that the Alexander Mackinnon in question is being been identified as a solicitor in media reports and we are making enquiries into this". 

RollOnFriday can reveal that Mackinnon does have some experience with the law, but not with practising it. In 1997, aged 27, Mackinnon  was fined £5,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service after he drunkenly brandished a 12 bore shotgun on the platform of Crianlarich station in west Perthshire. He wielded the antique Purdey gun after being thrown off a train bound for Glasgow for smoking.

In other ranting solicitor news, two more alleged lawyers have been caught fighting over an armrest on a plane. If you know who either of them is, get in touch at [email protected].

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Comments

Anonymous 10 February 17 10:17

If only train managers had tranquilizers. To be fair it sounds like if they threw a 175ml bottle of Blossom Hill out of the window he would have probably followed it, thus solving the problem

Anonymous 10 February 17 12:59

SRA told RollOnFriday, "We are aware that the Alexander Mackinnon in question is being been identified as a solicitor in media reports and we are making enquiries into this". So 2022 then?