Press Releases & Updates 2000

Clive Fudge, from Norwich, had taken part in a blockade in November 1999 at the main gate of Coulport Armaments Depot where Trident warheads are stored. Under cross-examination by Clive the second police witness admitted he was not sure whether any traffic had been held up by the blockade. Clive argued that not only were the facts not proved but that the Fiscal’s assertion that his behaviour could reasonably be expected to cause alarm, had no basis. Justice of the Peace Viv Dance found him not guilty because the evidence presented was not adequate for her to convict. A court source later explained that her decision was based on both the weak police evidence and Clive’s convincing argument about the issue of alarm. Two police officers waiting just outside the court handcuffed Clive and took him away to serve his seven-day sentence.

Also today at the same court five Trident Ploughshares activists were facing breach of the peace charges arising from the Crimebusters blockade of Faslane on 14th February this year when 185 people were arrested. Marcus Armstrong (40), a counsellor from Milton Keynes, ended his powerful witness statement by telling the story of Japanese girl Sadako who began, as she lay dying from nuclear sickness after the Hiroshima bomb, to make a thousand paper cranes. When she died her classmates completed the task and her statue is now surrounded by paper cranes from all across the globe. As he spoke, Marcus placed some cranes on the table in front of him. He was found guilty and fined £100. Lyn Bliss (48), a systems analyst from Luton, told the court: "It makes a mockery of British justice that I am on trial when the people actually committing the breach of the peace, those who approve and run the Trident system, are not." She was also fined £100.

Mary Millington (52), a teacher from South Wales, told the court that she had not committed a breach of the peace. No one had been alarmed by her behaviour. After her arrest, as she waited in a long queue in the pouring rain to be processed by the police she had watched the cars in the roadway and no one had been upset or angry -they were simply bored, resigned or amused. She called as a witness in her defence Ray Davies, a County Borough Councillor from Wales, who had also been arrested. Giving evidence, Ray said: Nuclear weapons threaten the planet. I want the planet to survive for my children and grandchildren and all the children in the world." Mary Millington was found guilty and fined £100.

Three other activists had their pleas of not guilty accepted by the court due to missing Crown witnesses.

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