Press Releases & Updates 2003
8th December 2003
£50 for Kicking Police, £100 for Peaceful Sit-down!
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Anti-Trident campaigners are incensed by what they see as the latest example of the lack of justice at Helensburgh District Court after a man convicted of police assault was given half the fine handed down to two people involved in a peaceful sit-down at Faslane naval base.
The £50 fine was given today by Justice of the Peace Bert Alexander to a man who pled guilty to breaching the peace and kicking a police officer during a local fracas. On trial for taking part in the really Big Blockade on 22nd April this year were Jane Smith (49), a teacher from Granton-on Spey, and Owen English (20), a student from Oxford. Police witnesses agreed that the behaviour of Jane and Owen had been peaceful and non-violent, and had caused no alarm.
Summing up her defence Jane told that the charge against her was ironical, given the contrast between her behaviour and the machinery of war that lay beyond the gate she had been sitting at. At the same time she wanted to disturb “that enforced peace that is known as complacency, the complacency which can accept the incineration of millions of children and the killing of innocent Iraqis.” Owen was convinced he was justified in what he did, even if the court found him guilty of breaching the peace.
JP Alexander, accepting the Crown argument that their behaviour had been “flagrant”, found them both guilty and fined them each £100. Jane was adamant that she would neither pay the fine nor submit to a Supervised Attendance order.
A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said: “The court today gave a crystal clear demonstration of its values. Actual and deliberate physical violence against a person is less serious than causing some temporary disruption and irritation, when the reason for the latter is a challenge to the behaviour of the state. How we wish these magistrates would grasp the profoundly damaging signals they are giving out?”
Meanwhile Trident Ploughshares activists Matt Bury and Sue Brackenbury appeared at Plymouth Crown Court today to plead not guilty to charges of going equipped to commit criminal damage to HMS Vanguard on 22nd September. Sue is on remand and has been returned to Eastwood Park prison.*
[* Sue Brackenbury HT 6792 HMP Eastwood Park, Falfield, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire. GL12]
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