Press Releases & Updates 2002

Helen was one of the 385 people arrested at the "Big Blockade" of the nuclear weapon submarine base last year and on October 5th was fined £200 at Helensburgh District Court for an alleged breach of the peace. The fine was transferred to her local court.

The ’cheque’ presented by Helen Steven, 58, from Dollar, was written on a cardboard model of a Trident submarine which Helen and her friends paraded through Alloa town centre and into the District Court. When she was called to explain why her fine had not been paid she brought the model into the courtroom and told Justice of the Peace William Whyte that she had now decided to pay, with considerable reluctance. She had not breached the peace, it was Trident which was doing so. JP Whyte was unfazed by the appearance of the 10 - foot long submarine in his courtroom and said he was pleased that Helen was paying up since he did not want her to have a "criminal classification".

Helen, a veteran peace activist and a member of the Trident Ploughshares campaign, is Co-ordinator of the Scottish Centre for Nonviolence in Dunblane. She is the partner of Ellen Moxley, one of the Trident Three famously acquitted in 1999 at Greenock Sheriff Court after damaging a Trident-related research barge in Loch Goil in June that year.

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