Press Releases & Updates 2002

In November 2000 Barbara McGregor (33), an artist and warehouse worker, and veteran anti-Trident campaigner Brian Quail (64) were part of a group of activists who stopped the Trident warhead convoy* in the village of Balloch, beside Loch Lomond. They were charged with a breach of the peace and appeared today in Clydebank District Court where they were fined respectively £60 and £80, Brian’s higher penalty reflecting his long string of honourable convictions. It was noted that the fines were much lower than those given in Argyll and Bute court.

Brian drew the court’s attention to reports in the papers about Blair’s speech on Iraq and speculated that if a group of Iraqi citizens had interfered with a transport of weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad, we would be applauding them, but people doing the same thing in the UK were punished by the courts.

Brian also quoted a passage from Martin Luther King, in which he distinguishes between just and unjust laws and which ends: "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

Brian has already been in prison a number of times for refusing to pay fines imposed for peaceful protest.

*Convoys of large vehicles travel on UK roads about every six weeks, carrying Trident warheads from the assembly plant in Burghfield to Coulport on Loch Long, where they are stored in bunkers and loaded onto the Trident submarines. Although not armed for detonation the warheads contain plutonium and high explosive.

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