Disarming the war state
In the cockpit of the Hawk Jet lay a number of unusual objects: a VHS tape, an A4 pamphlet, and a calling card with the names of four women - Andrea Needham, Joanna Wilson, Lotta Kronlid, and Angie Zelter - under "Seeds of Hope: East Timor Ploughshares" and the words "Women Disarming for Life and Justice”. The control panel of the jet had been smashed by a single blow from a hammer.
This describes part of the crime scene from an action carried out at the British Aerospace factory in Warton, Lancashire on 29 January 1996, where four women listed on a calling card smashed up a Hawk jet bound for Indonesia. Indonesia was at the time waging a genocidal campaign of mass killings and brutal repression against the East Timorese people.
Since these objects were left at the crime scene, their content was able to be considered during the court case. The VHS tapes contained a collage of material, testimonies from the women about why they did the action, an indictment of British Aerospace and the British government for conspiring to contravene, amongst others, the 1969 Genocide Act, documentation of the murder of at least 250 East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators in the Santa Cruz cemetery in the capital Dili in 1991, and a British Aerospace sales advertisement as evidence of the 'trainer' jet's offensive capabilities. This footage of the killings in East Timor, was much harder to come by in 1996 then those happening in Palestine which are live streamed on our phones daily.
The four women faced charges for over £1.5 million in criminal damage and spent six months on remand in Risley Prison. At Liverpool Crown Court, they invoked the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which allows reasonable force "in the prevention of crime," which in this case was the prevention of genocide. The three women were found not guilty by the jury and acquitted in a landmark ruling.
The court case and action brought prominence to the idea of direct disarmament within anti-militarism and the peace movement. Zelter argues in People’s Disarmament, that ordinary citizens have both the right and responsibility to physically disarm weapons of mass destruction when governments fail to do so.
Today, Britain is entering a new cycle of rearmament, expanding the reach of its nuclear capability, increasing military spending for NATO, and continuing to support Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. Those opposing this escalation have been met with increasing repression, through the use of counter-terror legislation and draconian sentencing of protesters. It is important to remember the rich tradition of resistance to the British state's preparations and capacity for war, and the moral and political arguments in favour of the idea of 'people's disarmament'.
Another historical example of 'direct disarmament' is an action taken by members of Trident Ploughshares in 2000, to demobilise part of the Trident nuclear weapon system near Faslane in Scotland. The Faslane and Coulport naval bases on Gare Loch and Loch Long house Britain's nuclear fleet. Faslane is home to the Royal Navy's four nuclear submarines, while Coulport stores and loads Trident missiles onto the vessels.
The Faslane Peace Camp, the world's longest running peace camp, started next to the military base in 1982. Over the years, the camp has been fertile ground for different forms of protest and direct action, with protesters at various points breaching the Naval Base perimeter by cutting the fence, in canoes, or by swimming into the base waters. Road blockades and lock-ons have disrupted the moving of Trident missile warheads. Trident Ploughshares, which was established in 1995, had a slightly different emphasis - they aimed to use direct action to disarm Britain's Trident nuclear weapons system.
In January 2000, three women, Angie Zelter, Ulla Roder and Ellen Moxley, rowed across in a rubber dinghy to a floating sonar testing station in Loch Goil. In an interview, Angie Zelter described how the fact that a barge was a key part of the Trident nuclear weapons system was key to their defense. They had to demonstrate that they were there to make the barge inoperable, since within this context disarmament could not be a symbolic act of protest, but actual destruction of military capacities to prevent a greater crime. Crucial to the idea of disarming the nuclear weapons is the knowledge that any use of them is a potential crime against humanity because of their destructive power. They are designed to kill hundreds of thousands of people without any distinction between civilians and combatants. A nuclear war would claim the lives of millions and be devastating to survivors and the natural world.
Once they boarded the barge, they set to work destroying the facility, they tipped 20 computers and monitors into the loch, smashing electrical equipment with hammers, cutting an antenna, and jamming machinery with glue, sand, and syrup. They even had a picnic on board and waited to be found by the police. The three women were remanded in prison for 5 months and charged with causing £80,000 worth of damage and trying to hijack a lifeboat and in a groundbreaking case at Greenock Sheriff Court, the women were acquitted. The jury accepted their defence that their actions were legally justified to prevent the greater harm posed by the use of weapons of mass destruction, which they contended violated international law, including the Geneva Conventions. The Trident Three case became a key moment in the anti-nuclear and disarmament movement.
These cases show how direct action against the state’s military infrastructure and its associated beneficiaries in the arms industry has been increasingly criminalised in the last 25 years. While challenging the war state remains fundamentally a political struggle, these precedents highlight how our legal rights to resist the military machine have been systematically eroded through legislation by Labour and Tory governments alike.
To view the material in this article as well as a more detailed history of peace and anti-militarist movements check out MayDay Rooms' online exhibition For Peace!
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