Press Releases & Updates 1999

Last week in Greenock on the western seaboard of this Union three brave women, Angela Zelter, Ellen Moxley and Bodil Ulla Roder, were tried on a charge of criminal damage. They had acted to impede the Trident missile system based on the Clyde. Their aim was to prevent what they considered a grave crime under International Law. The Judge, Sheriff Gimblett, directed the jury to acquit them on the ground that the prosecution had not proved that they acted with any criminal intent. The acquittal cannot be reversed but the judgement can be appealed. If it is, the Lord Advocate of Scotland will have to appear in our highest Appeal Court to explain the lawfulness of a defence policy based on the threat to use weapons of mass destruction.

The courage and judicial independence of Sheriff Gimblett, the courage of Angie Zelter and her companions has been in sharp contrast with the petulant failure of the US Senate to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty.

The legal issue about the use and threat of nuclear weapons concerns the doctrine of ’double effect’. But there can be no clean surgical strike with a nuclear weapon. Slaughter on an unimaginable scale is not a case of "collateral damage" it is what the weapon in its intrinsic nature is designed to do.

Like most of my fellow countrymen I am deeply hostile to the use of Scottish waters for Trident. I am proud to represent a Party, the SNP, which opposes this absolutely, and glad that the whole Green/EFA Group is in complete solidarity with us on this.

A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said:

"We are delighted that the Lord Advocate has not run away from this one. We have been looking forward to the day when the legality of Trident would be properly debated at this level. We are ready to demonstrate again that Britain’s nuclear weapons system is utterly irreconcilable with the principles of international humanitarian law."

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