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Press Releases & Updates 2004
17th February 2004
Trident Protesters Will Appeal Byelaws Verdict in Marathon Case
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A three-year legal challenge to the validity of the military byelaws at the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport entered a new phase today when JP John MacPhail found Scottish CND’s Campaigns Worker Phill Jones from Drymen, Stirlingshire, and Zoe Weir, a resident of Faslane Peace Camp) guilty of entering the Depot by boat in August 2000. Phill was also found guilty of driving a vessel into a protected area.
After hearing a two-hour submission by Phill, the JP gave Zoe Weir 28 days to pay a £50 fine while Phill was ordered to pay a £50 fine for entering the base and another £40 fine for driving the boat.
The protest had taken place during a Trident Ploughshares camp at Peaton Glen in August 2000. The two along, with TP activist Ulla Roder, had used a small inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor to drive alongside the Explosives Handling Jetty inside Coulport. Ulla had jumped out of the boat to swim ashore whilst Zoe had climbed a ladder onto the jetty which is used to load nuclear warheads onto missiles on the Trident submarines based at Faslane. Whilst Zoe was on the ladder the boat, driven by Phill, was rammed by a police rigid inflatable boat, more than twice its size, and sank.
Over the last three years, in 18 separate court appearances, Phill and Zoe have argued that the byelaws they were charged with breaking were invalid as it was uncertain what area they were meant to apply to.
Phill said: “In 1986 when the byelaws were made by Michael Heseltine the Coulport base was only a third of the size it is today. The byelaws are only meant to cover an area of land within the perimeter of Coulport which was a lot smaller then than it is now. As well as that, the MoD have sold off bits of land which were covered by the 1986 by-laws but the byelaws have never been changed. A judicial review in the House of Lords, twelve years ago, ruled that at bases in England where similar things had happened the byelaws were invalid, but it seems that JP MacPhail thinks he knows better than the Law Lords.”
Both defendants intend to appeal the verdict.
Phill said: “Just like everyone else the MoD have to follow the law. There are clear rules about how byelaws should be made and they haven’t followed them. It seems that instead of recognising that the MoD can break the law and giving us the benefit of the doubt, Justice MacPhail thinks there should be one rule for protestors and another for the Ministry of Defence. Either that or the complexity of the case just baffled him.”
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