Press Releases & Updates 2004

Jane Tallents (46), from Helensburgh, and Adam Conway (25), from Northumberland, were fined respectively £150 and £120 for cutting the perimeter fence at the Coulport nuclear weapon depot on Loch Long in Scotland in August last year.

Jane explained to the court that she and Adam had been attempting a citizen’s weapons inspection of the WMD base, and that their authorisation to do so came from the UN through its nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. This was not a symbolic gesture since evidence from citizen’s inspections like theirs was regularly presented to NPT conferences. Her action at Coulport had come after many attempts to report the presence of nuclear weapons at Coulport, including submitting a complaint to the police.

Adam, who was in Greenock Prison last week for refusing to pay a fine for a previous anti-Trident action, reminded the court that Britain was the only country in recent years which had specifically threatened to use nuclear weapons. He wanted to draw attention to this and to double standards about WMD. It was apparently alright to kill thousands of people in order to respond to a WMD threat as in Iraq, but those who intervened peacefully and nonviolently in this country were arrested. The charge against him referred to malicious damage, but there had been nothing malicious in his actions, which were deliberate and considered.

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