Press Releases & Updates 2002

Ulla was one of eleven activists arrested at the protest last June on the Stirling to Buchlyvie road. The protest, organised by NUKEWATCH, aimed to draw attention to the grave risks these road convoys, with their combination of high explosive and plutonium, bring to the communities they pass through.

Ulla had been arrested in the roadway in front of the convoy and police witnesses for the Crown, Constables Sneddon and McDonald, said that she had refused to move when asked and had had to be carried off the roadway. This was contradicted by Ulla herself and by defence witness Roz Bullen (31) from Edinburgh. There were also a number of discrepancies in the testimony of the two officers. Ulla’s solicitor, Gerry McClure, highlighted these inconsistencies and argued that the Crown’s case had not satisfied the requirements for a conviction of breach of the peace in the terms of the recent High Court Opinion in the Smith v Donnelly appeal.

Sheriff Wylie Robertson, finding Ulla guilty, said that while her actions might not in isolation have been enough to warrant a conviction, they were sufficient when taken in the context of what was happening, which, if continued, could have caused a serious disturbance in the community. He gave her three months to pay the fine.

Ulla (46), from Odense in Demark, is one of the Trident Three, famously acquitted after disarming a Trident-related research barge in Loch Goil in 1999. In April this year she swam to Trident submarine HMS Vengeance in its "high security" berth in Faslane and spray-painted "USELESS" on its hull. In October/November she served a month in Cornton Vale Prison for anti-Trident actions before going to the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm to receive, on behalf of the Trident Ploughshares campaign, the Right Livelihood Award.

David Mackenzie said: "It was bizarre to hear these police officers claiming to be alarmed by Ulla’s gentle protest while just ten feet behind them in the leading truck, there was enough high explosive to obliterate everyone within 600 metres and enough plutonium to make Central Scotland uninhabitable."

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