Government and Military

Woodwoses,

c/o 42-46 Bethel St,

Norwich,

Norfolk,

NR2 1NR.

9/7/98.

Dear Rt.Hon. John Morris, Q.C., M.P., Attorney General,

Trident Ploughshares 2000 wrote on 18th March 1998 to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, (Encl.1) copying the letter to you and the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and the Chiefs of Military Staff, amongst others. We outlined the reasons for the necessity of immediately disarming and decommissioning all British weapons of mass destruction and outlined a series of visible and verifiable steps that the British Government could undertake towards this end. We also made it quite clear that if the British Government is not prepared to act in a humane, responsible and lawful manner then we as global citizens will begin the work of disarmament ourselves on August 11th 1998 at Faslane in Scotland.

We would like to inform you that all the members of the Woodwoses Affinity Group, who are listed at the bottom of the page with their full names and addresses, are members of Trident Ploughshares 2000 and have signed the Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime (Encl.2) and the Nonviolence and Safety Pledge (Encl.3). We are actively committed, as responsible and humane global citizens, to the practical, safe, accountable and nonviolent disarmament of the unethical, dangerous, polluting, and criminal British nuclear Trident system. For an explanation of what we mean by disarmament we refer you to Part 3 of our ’Tridenting It Handbook’ (Encl.4) entitled Practical Trident Disarmament, where you will find suggestions for cutting through fences, hammering sonar arrays and prising off anechoic tiles, cutting through towed arrays, damaging steerage, pouring glue and syrup over computer equipment, damaging communication networks etc.

These facts present you, as senior law officers, with a simple choice. You are compelled either to take the view that the signatories to the Ploughshares Pledge are involved in a conspiracy to break the law without justification, or that HMG is in breach of international and humanitarian law. If you take the first position it would then be in the public interest to take legal proceedings against the signatories, perhaps in terms of a charge of conspiracy. If you take the latter view it would be in the public interest to take legal proceedings against the Prime Minister and HMG’s present nuclear ’defence’ policies. If you are at all uncertain as to which position to take, then at the very least all British nuclear weapons should be taken off 24 hour alert with nuclear war-heads removed from delivery systems whilst a full legal review is undertaken.

You are probably aware that there have been many attempts by the public to get the courts’ permission for a private prosecution against successive Government Ministers for threatening to use nuclear weapons. Some of us in Woodwoses tried without success to get the permission of various local Magistrates’ courts to allow such a private prosecution (Encl.5). However, we refer you to the most persistent and competent of these groups - Pax Legalis - and their continued attempts to get their local court to agree to hear the arguments and decide on the basis of factual evidence whether or not HMG is in grave breach of the law. I have enclosed their latest letter to Mold Magistrates Court (Encl.6) which is, effectively, still unanswered.

We are writing to you as part of our open and accountable policy to give you the opportunity of either helping us to bring a prosecution against the Prime Minister for threatening to use weapons of mass destruction that could never be used in a way consistent with international humanitarian law, or of prosecuting us for ’conspiracy’ if you think (unlike us) that our plans to disarm Trident might be illegal.

We wrote to Chief Constable Kenneth Williams (Encl.7) and on Wednesday 24th June 1998 we went as a group to our local police station in Bethel Street, Norwich. There we had a discussion with the police which is recorded in our meeting notes (Encl.8). We asked for their help as our local police force to try to stop the crime of threatening mass nuclear destruction.

We feel we have done everything we can possibly think of to act in a responsible manner and to try to persuade the British Government, Police Authorities, Military and Judiciary of our concerns and to give them every opportunity to help us uphold international law.

We have made quite clear in our Letter to the Prime Minister, our Handbook, Video and the other materials we have produced, that we believe we are respecting and upholding national and international laws and acting nonviolently in our own defence and the defence of all other life on the planet. We would ask that you act with us and do all in your capacity to persuade the Government to disarm and decommission all nuclear weapons in the UK. We rely upon the Judiciary to independently oversee the activities of the Executive and to ensure their lawful activity and feel that it is time, now that we have the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (Encl.9), that the British Judiciary act to prevent nuclear crime.

Your formal consent to the institution of proceedings against the Prime Minister and Minister for Defence for Conspiracy to Commit Grave Breaches of the Geneva Conventions Act would be a worthy start. And we hereby ask that you give us this consent so that we can take out a private prosecution. We are willing and able to provide any necessary legal papers pursuant to such a prosecution.

We look forward to your response to this letter. Should you ignore this communication which we have sent by registered post, we will take the view that your silence implies your opinion that any disarmament action that we do which is within the Trident Ploughshares 2000 groundrules (expressed in Section 2.3 of the Handbook) is justified in the circumstances and thus lawful. Your failure to respond would in itself be valuable evidence in any court proceedings that may arise out of our disarmament actions.

Yours sincerely, Kathryn Amos, Rachel Boyd, Maggie Charnley, Clive Fudge, Hannah Griffin, Davida Higgin, Peter Lanyon, Richard Lewis, Angie Zelter.

Copies to: Lord Hardie QC, Lord Advocate of Scotland and Dame Barbara Mills, Director of Public Prosecutions.

Enclosures:

[Encl. 1] From Trident Ploughshares, 18^th March 1998 18th March 1998.

[Encl. 2] Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime.

[Encl. 3] Nonviolence and Safety Pledge.

[Encl. 4] Tri-Denting It Handbook (nb. this link is to the current handbook).

[Encl. 5] Chairman, St. Edmundsbury Justices letter of 29/11/89 to Angie Zelter.

[Encl. 6] Pax Legalis letter of 19/1/98 to Mold Magistrates Court.

[Encl. 7] Letter to Chief Constable of Norfolk, Kenneth Williams.

[Encl. 8] Notes of 24/6/98 meeting at Bethel Street Police Station, Norwich.

[Encl. 9] Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, 8th July 1996.

Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime

I am aware that the U.K. has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, Article VI of which stated that each of the parties `undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and to a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control’. Thirty years have now passed and the U.K. still continues to deploy nuclear weapons and NATO is still a nuclear alliance containing three of the major nuclear powers. The Trident system is an escalation in the U.K.’s nuclear capability having three times the range, being far more accurate and being able to hit eight times as many targets as the Polaris system it replaces.

I am also aware that on 8th July 1996, the President of the International Court of Justice (which is the highest legal body of the United Nations), Mohammed Bedjaoui, stated, `The nuclear weapon, the ultimate evil, destabilises humanitarian law which is the law of the lesser evil. The existence of nuclear weapons is therefore a challenge to the very existence of humanitarian law, not to mention their long-term effects of damage to the human environment, in respect to which the right to life must be exercised’. The Court confirmed that the Declaration of St.Petersburg, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions, and the Genocide Convention all apply to nuclear weapons. It stated very clearly that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally contrary to international humanitarian law. The Court could find no lawful circumstance for the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

I believe that the Trident nuclear weapon system is illegal, dangerous, unjust, polluting, a terrible waste of resources, and deeply immoral. I think Trident poses a threat rather than a defence.

It is the duty of every citizen to uphold the law relating to nuclear weapons and under the Nuremberg Principles carefully, safely and peacefully to disarm any weapon system that is breaching humanitarian law. I am also aware that most national legal systems, including the U.K.’s and other NATO countries’ legal systems, allow serious damage to be done to objects if the damage is done in the belief that this would prevent serious crime from taking place. I believe that the damage Trident Ploughshares 2000 activists intend to cause to the U.K.Trident system will stop the ongoing crime of threatening to use nuclear weapons contrary to humanitarian law.

As a global citizen with international, national and individual responsibility, I will endeavour peacefully, safely, openly and accountably to help to disarm the U.K. nuclear weapon system by the year 2000. I will do this by actively joining with others in the Trident Ploughshares 2000 Project. This means that if the U.K. Government has not guaranteed to completely disarm the British Trident system before 1st January 2000, then I pledge either, personally to enter Faslane, Coulport and any other Trident related facility from 11th August 1998, or to help and support other Trident Ploughshares 2000 activists to enter these places, in order that I or others can dismantle the system in such a way that it can not be used to threaten or harm living beings.

Our acts of disarmament are and will be intended to stop ongoing criminal activities under well recognised principles of international law.

I pledge that I will harm no living being by any of my acts and pledge to be calm and peaceful at all times.

Signed:

Dated:

Name and address printed clearly:

Individual Nonviolence And Safety Pledge

  I am a member of ............................................... affinity group, have signed the Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime, am registered with Trident Ploughshares 2000 and have been through a minimum two-day empowering workshop.
  I will not engage in physical violence or verbal abuse toward any individual and will carry no weapons.
  I will not bring or use any alcohol or drugs other than for medical purposes.
  I will respect all the various agreements concerning the actions.
  I will act safely at all times and act responsibly to ensure that no harm comes to any living being including myself.

Signed: ....................................................

Dated: ...........................................

Name and address printed clearly:

Text of letter from Frank W. Allen Chairman, St Edmundsbury Justices, 29^th November 1998

County of Suffolk

Justices’ Clerk’s Office

Shire Hall

Bury St. Edmunds

Suffolk

IP33 1HF

29th November 1989

Dear Ms Zelter Application for issue of warrants against H M Principal Secretary of State for Defence the Rt Hon Thomas Jeremy King, MP When you attended to lay Informations on 14th November 1998 against the above-named, I gave you my assurance that whatever my decision I would provide supporting reasons.

Having given careful consideration to the bundle of documents supplied alleging conspiracy to incite genocide; conspiracy to incite a grave breach of the Geneva Convention; and conspiracy to commit murder abroad, I am not prepared to grant your applications for warrants.

Firstly, in respect of all three informations, I am drawn to the view that the actions complained of, if true, arose from Thomas King acting in the course of performing his duties as Secretary of State. I incline to the view therfore that such actions would constitute am act of state and on this ground alone refuse your applications since any prosecution, if allowed to proceed to conclusion, would, in my view, be destined to fail.

Secondly, I decline to issue any form of process in respect of the genocide proceedings until satisfied that the Attorney General has given his consent to the institution of such proceedings. (The consent of the Attorney General is not necessary to institute the proceedings for conspiracy to incite murder.)

Thirdly, I am aware of the power of the Director of Public Prosecutions to take over the conduct of any prosecution and it seems to me that for the reasons given in point one above, the matter would not be allowed to proceed even if I felt able to grant your applications.

Yours sincerely

Frank W Allen

Chairman, St Edmundsbury Justices

Pax Legalis letter of 19^th January 1998 to Mold Magistrates Court

From Pax Legalis

3 Llys Fammau

Pantymwyn

Mold

Clwyd, CH7 5EZ

To Mr J.N. Humpherys

The Chair of the Magistrates

Mold Magistrates’ Court

Civic Centre

Mold

Flintshire, CH7 1AQ

19 January 1998

Dear Mr Humpherys,

We, the undersigned, are writing to you to place on record our concern over what we regard as a serious state of affairs in which, to some extent, your Court has played a part.

In July 1991 our colleague, Robert Manson, laid informations before the Mold Court alleging conspiracy on the part of the then Secretary of State for Defence to incite various grave breaches of the criminal law. In December 1991, two months after a special hearing in which the Treasury Solicitor was represented by counsel, the Court refused to issue summons on the grounds that the Crown was exempt from criminal law and was not bound by the Geneva Conventions Act nor by the Genocide Act ’by necessary implication.’

In May 1993 a ’case stated’ appeal was terminated when Lord Justice Watkins in the High Court ruled that this procedure was inappropriate since no proceedings had taken place. Subsequently Mr Manson, following Watkins’ advice, in order to be ’in time’ laid further informations. These were rejected by the Clerk to the Justices on the grounds that the matter had already been decided (so called res judicata).

Mr Manson, representing Pax Legalis, now found himself in the extraordinary position of being told on the one hand that there had been no proceedings against which he could appeal, and on the other that the matter had been settled. Further action was effectively stopped when the Clerk now relied on the totally different grounds of ’abuse of process’, a cover-all block effectively impossible to challenge.

Once again, in one way or another, sometimes not altogether to the credit of the judicial system, the substantive issue of the lawfulness of preparations, however conditional, to launch nuclear weapons was successfully kept out of court.

What Mold Magistrates’ Court was not prepared to examine, the legality or illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, was put to the International Court of Justice at the request of the UN General Assembly in 1995, and in July 1997 the Court delivered its Advisory Opinion. The Court decided unanimously that any use or threat of nuclear weapons had to satisfy the requirements of international humanitarian law including the laws of war. We enclose a copy of the Opinion and we should like to draw your attention to the ’dispositif’ which you will find on page 26. We enclose also a copy of The Pax Legalis Papers in which you will find a complete record of the events I summarised above.

While the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice is not binding as such, the findings are held by most jurists to be indicative of customary international law, which is itself binding on our domestic courts. Pax Legalis played a significant part in the work of the World Court Project, an international organisation of doctors, lawyers, and ordinary citizens, which was instrumental in persuading the United Nations General Assembly to act.

We believe that the Inventory of Nuclear Illegality which we published in the 1997, a copy of which is enclosed, shows that the nuclear weapons states, including the United Kingdom, hold and deploy weapons of such power that they could never satisfy the requirements of international humanitarian law. The British Government has indicated that it does not intend to discontinue patrols of the Trident fleet. There is therefore, in our view, a continuing danger of the commission of acts by the public authorities of a criminal nature.

We wish to bring this state of affairs to your attention. We understand that your court has jurisdiction to hear a compliant of something done or left undone, and would argue that the all pervasive nature of this situation, affecting as it does all the citizens of the United Kingdom, is to be considered within your commission area (Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 s52).

We should welcome the opportunity to discuss the problem with you at an early date.

Because of the interest and support for Pax Legalis shown by many people in Mold, as well as by people in this country and abroad, including some lawyers of eminence, copies of this letter are being made available to them and to the media.

Yours sincerely,

F.C. Starkey

N.S. Guy

Letter to Chief Constable of Norfolk Police, Kenneth Williams

The Woodwoses

C/o Trident Ploughshares 2000

42-46 Bethel Street

Norwich Norfolk

NR2 1NR

Dear Chief Constable Kenneth Williams,

We are writing to you, as a Norwich-based affinity group, to inform you of our intentions as part of the Trident Ploughshares 2000 project, to encourage you as chief of our local police force to respond to this in whatever way you believe to be appropriate, and to request a meeting with you to discuss these issues in person. We shall be attending Norwich Police Station at 3.30pm on Wednesday 24th June, and ask you to meet with us at this time, if this is not possible we ask you to arrange for a colleague to meet with us. This is one of the initiatives we are taking to ensure that our group and its activities are as open and accountable as possible.

Trident Ploughshares 2000 (TP2000) is an international network of affinity groups such as ours, The Woodwoses, who have all pledged to disarm the UK’s ’Trident’ nuclear weapons systems openly, accountably, nonviolently and safely. We believe that this course of action will not only be morally right, as Trident is unjust, undemocratic, polluting, a terrible waste of scarce human and material resources and poses a direct threat to all life on Earth, but will also be legally right, upholding national laws and fulfilling our obligations under the Nuremberg Principles to uphold international law. The UK Government is currently breaching these laws through its deployment of Trident.

The Trident weapons system is unable to distinguish between civilian and military targets, as the effects of any nuclear explosion would be so widespread, and the potentially lethal radiation would remain for many years. This clearly makes it in breach of international law, as the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons (ICJ opinion) reaffirmed. The ICJ opinion also clearly restated that the threat to use illegal weapons is as illegal as the actual use of those weapons. At least one Trident nuclear-armed submarine is on patrol at all times, which constitutes a clear threat to use those weapons, and hence a direct breach of international law- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Trident also breaches national law, by threatening genocide, and by breaching Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK has ratified.

The TP2000 negotiating team are currently attempting to enter into dialogue with those who have the power to stop this ongoing crime, but if no action is taken by the UK government to disarm this illegal system, we are all committed to openly and nonviolently attempting to disarm the system ourselves. We shall make our first attempt in August, at the Trident submarine base at Faslane in Scotland, and then at three month intervals, at Trident-related facilities around the country. We will continue this until Trident is fully disarmed, or the year 2000, which ever comes sooner.

We are aware that our attempts to disarm this illegal weapons system may be seen by some as criminal damage, and our current preparations to disarm as conspiracy. We are therefore taking this opportunity to let you arrest us and charge us if you believe that to be appropriate, and we would welcome this chance to defend ourselves in a local court. However, we believe that this would be inappropriate action, as English law makes it legal to take an action which would otherwise be a crime, if you believe that in doing so you are preventing a greater crime, which we shall be doing when we disarm Trident.

We urge you, as chief of our local police force, to consider how you are best able to uphold national and international law and help prevent the continuing crime of threatening genocide and murder, and to keep us informed of any action you choose to take.

We enclose copies of our individual pledges to prevent nuclear crime, an introduction to our group entitled ’The purpose of the Woodwoses’, a copy of the TP2000 handbook and video, and a copy of the open letter sent by the TP2000 negotiating team to the Prime Minister.

Yours Sincerely,

The Woodwoses

Kathryn Amos, Rachel Boyd, Maggie Charnley, Clive Fudge, Hannah Griffin, Davida Higgin, Peter Lanyon, Richard Lewis, Angie Zelter.

Meeting between The Woodwoses and Inspector Foulds & Sargeant Clabon, 24^th June 1998

Wednesday 24th June 1998; 3.45 - 4.15pm.

Woodwoses present: Angie Zelter, Peter Lanyon, Davida Higgin, Richard Lewis, Maggie Charnley, Clive Fudge, Kathryn Amos, on behalf of Hannah Griffin and Rachel Boyd.

We (The Woodwoses) arrived at Norwich Police station at 3.30pm, and met with Inspector Foulds and Seargent Clabon at 3.45pm. We gave inspector Foulds a copy of the International Court of Justices Advisory Opinion (IJCAO) and a copy of ’The purpose of the Woodwoses’. He said that he had already recieved and looked at the handbook and video we had previously sent to him.

We notified the Police officers of our intentions to initiate disarmament of the Trident nuuclear weapons system from August, if the government had not taken serious steps towards disarmament themselves. We explained that we believe that the British Government is breaking the law by continuing to keep, maintain and threaten to use the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Inspector Foulds said that they would not arrest us for conspiring to cause criminal damage. He said that this did not mean that the Norwich police agreed with us that when disarming we will be upholding international and humanitarian law. Inspector Foulds said that he would not make a statement on the matter of whether or not international law is being broken, or on the opinion of the police on our intentions to disarm from August 1998.

Inspector Foulds was of the opinion, after reading our literature, that people involved in Trident Ploughshares 2000 (including us) wanted to get arrested, so that we could present our evidence in court. We assured him that this most definitely was not the case. We told him that we do not want to have to carry out any disarmament actions ourselves. We want the government to agree to disarm Trident themselves, or for a private case to be brought against the government for breaking international law by continuing with the Trident nuclear weapons system.

The policemen said that they do not believe that it is their duty to uphold international law. Angie and Peter mentioned the Nuremberg laws. These state that anyone (therefore including Norwich Police Force) would be entitled to carry out an act to uphold international law, even against their orders. It is therefore the duty of the Norwich police to uphold international law, and to press for disarmament.

They said that they did not see what the Norwich police could do about the matter, and weren’t clear as to why we had gone to see them, instead of those people in charge of the Trident system.

We replied that as local citizens who felt that a law is being broken, going to the local police station is a natural thing to do. Inspector Foulds repeated that he did not think that what we were talking about concerned the local police force and was a matter for someone else to deal with. We mentioned that disarmament actions as part of Trident Ploughshares 2000 may happen at Faslane or at any other Trident related sites in Scotland, England, or Wales, and therefore would affect the Police in that location, not just Scottish police.

We told them that TP2000 has contacted MP’s, the Attorney General and Lord Advocate, and so far have not been granted permission to hold a private prosecution against the government, and have not been able to meet with government ministers. We need the permission of the Attorney General or Lord Advocate to hold a private prosecution, under the Geneva Conventions Act, and that they could help us by passing on our concerns to the Lord Advocate, Attorney General and the chief of police.

Inspector Foulds said that he would pass on our concerns to the Executive of the Norfolk Constabulary.

[Inspector Foulds wrote a note signed by him and the Woodwoses present saying that he would pass on their concerns to the Executive of the Norfolk Constabulary.]

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