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Trash Trident Case will go to a third Trial

In Manchester on September 20th a jury found Rosie and Rachel, of Aldermaston Women Trash Trident affinity group, Not Guilty on a minor charge of criminal damage, but told the judge they were unable to reach a majority verdict on the major charge of disarming radar testing equipment. After a two week delay, the Crown Prosecution confirmed that they will continue with the second charge to a third trial, following a mistrial at Lancaster In January, and the hung jury in Manchester.

Rachel’s reaction to hearing that the next trial will be next March, two years after their disarmament action, was ‘Great! It’s another opportunity to bring the argument against Trident before another British court!

The refusal to convict the two was particularly encouraging for TP as the jury were only allowed to consider the very narrow grounds of defence of necessity and self defence allowed under English law, the judge having ruled out defences based on international law. In a brief explanation of his rejection of the defence team’s arguments, he made the extraordinary statement that "crimes against humanity are not crimes in English law". In his summing up he informed the jury that the British government was not committing a crime in preparing or deploying Trident. However, the jury were evidently not entirely convinced.

The powerful testimony of the expert witnesses must have left a lasting impression on the jury: Paul Rogers of Bradford Peace Studies calmly outlining how close to ‘accidental’ nuclear war the world has been; Angie Zelter dealing with TP’s and other’s exhaustive efforts to get the legal system to deal with the illegality of Trident; and Rebecca Johnson, a defence analyst, emphasising how the British government continues to rely on Trident as a first strike weapon.

But above all, it was the straightforward and dignified explanations of Rosie and Rachel from the witness box which must have brought home to the jury the rightness of the action. Rosie described making paper cranes after hearing the story of Saddako as a child, and how she swam out to the submarine to protect everyone she cared about. Rachel, when asked what she thought they had achieved by their action, replied simply ‘It worked’.

Perhaps the best part of the trial was hearing, through the guarded statements of prosecution witnesses that the action had indeed worked - for a certain length of time, perhaps weeks, perhaps even months, one quarter of Britain’s nuclear fleet was delayed from deployment.

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