Press Releases & Updates 2003

Today the presiding magistrate at Newbury imposed the order after finding Allen (41), from Cromer in Norfolk, guilty of criminal damage. He also ordered him to pay £100 in court costs and gave him a two-year conditional discharge.

Allen said: "The magistrate was obviously attempting to make an example of me. I will not be paying the order, especially since the cash would go to the Atomic Weapons Establishment. There is no way I am contributing to a factory whose purpose is to make Trident warheads which are appalling weapons of mass destruction. The compensation order bears no relation to the slight damage that was done and I am considering an appeal."

Ulla Roder (48) a Danish Trident Ploughshares pledger currently living in the UK, who was jointly charged with Allen, is at present in Low Newton prison in County Durham, on remand after an action at RAF Fylingdales on 28th December last year and did not appear. She will now be tried on 18th February on the Aldermaston charge.

Allen’s compensation order brings to over £52000 the total of fines, compensation orders and court costs imposed on Trident Ploughshares activists since the campaign began four years ago. Very little of that has been paid and the punishments have had no visible effect on the determination of campaign members to challenge Britain’s blatant and hypocritical deployment of illegal nuclear weapons.

Printer friendly version

Home | Top