Press Releases & Updates 2004

The court rejected appeals against breach of the peace convictions from Brian Quail from Glasgow, who was appealing two convictions, Barbara Dowling also from Glasgow, David Turner from Edinburgh, Andrew Gray from Newcastle and Rev. David McLachlan, minister of Langside Church in Glasgow. There was a crumb of comfort for Andrew Gray who had his fine reduced from £250 to £175.

Lord Gill, Lady Cosgrove and Lord Hamilton took as their benchmark the rejection in May this year of the appeal of Gaynor Barrett by five law Lords and gave their view that each of today’s cases were legally identical to the Barrett conviction.

At one point, during David McLachlan’s appeal, Lord Gill said that protesters had many options for protest, without sitting down in the gateway at Faslane. As "respectable people" they could for instance stand on the pavement with a placard.

A second batch of appeals will be heard tomorrow.

A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said: "The appellants today gave powerful and dignified presentations and were not in any way intimidated by their surroundings. The court was left in no doubt what the basic problem is Britain’s weapons of mass destruction.

After a couple of appeals had been heard it became obvious that their Lordships would perform any contortion required to avoid taking on board the arguments that they heard today. We presume Lord Gill would have told Rosa Parks to stand meekly and respectably by the roadside with a banner protesting against segregated buses in Alabama rather than confront the abuse directly by sitting on a white-only seat. The basic reason for our peaceful confrontation is that the legal justice system in Scotland has not lifted one finger to challenge the Trident crime."

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