Press Releases & Updates 2002
22nd February 2002
TP Pledger Margaret Jones gets 40 days
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Peace activist and Trident Ploughshares Pledger Dr. Margaret Jones was
sentenced to 40 days at Eastwood Park Prison on Tuesday 19 February for
non-payment of fines relating to her peace activities. Dr Jones was one of
those arrested at the Plymouth demonstration in early February (Red Pepper
March 2002, p.7).
Fines totalling around £1500 had been levied from 3 ’offences’: ’sitting in
a puddle at a Faslane Blockade’; cutting a hole in the fence at Aldermaston;
and painting the walls of the Foreign Office with slogans such as ’What have
the Iraqis ever done to us?’.
Dr Jones was in the Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for a means-testing
enquiry to set repayment levels on the fines. She refused repayment on the
grounds that she felt she had not committed any crime but had been acting to
prevent far greater crimes against humanity and the planet (a copy of the
statement she read out in court is given below).
HMP Eastwood Park, Falfield, Wotton Under Edge, Gloucestershire, GL12 8DB
Statement from Dr. Margaret Jones to Bristol Magistrates’ Court
Trident is a war crime. Bombing and sanctions on Iraq are war crimes. The
question of my income is irrelevant. I have taken direct action to protest
our involvement in crime.
Our present government’s slavishness to the Unites States is leading us
deeper and deeper into complicity with US acts of genocide. We should be
speaking out against American sponsored massacres - taking a stand. Instead,
we are squandering the funds that could be used for our schools and
hospitals on carrying out killings, and preparing for further killings. Over
the past ten years we have helped to kill half a million children in Iraq.
We have bombed Afghanistan to help the US build an oil pipeline there. We
have used taxpayers’ money to maintain a weapon that can wipe out one third
of the planet - that endangers us more than it threatens anyone else.
In a few week, or months, the United States will again launch all-out war
against Iraq - against a society that has been knocked to its knees, and
whose people are only slowly rebuilding normal lives in spite of us and the
United States. No doubt the British government will be dragged along to play
its part in justifying the slaughter. The puppet governments set up in
Europe after Nazi occupation had more honour than this.
When will we all stand up and say, ’Enough! Not in our name. This terrorism
has got to stop!’?
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