Arms trade activists not guilty – but the UK will keep selling to Saudi Arabia
Fiona Robertson-Snape, Staffordshire University Two anti-arms trade activists, Sam Walton and Dan Woodhouse, have been found not guilty of criminal damage after they were accused of breaking into the BAE Systems plant in Warton, Lancashire, with the intention of disarming warplanes bound for Saudi Arabia. Their protest has strong echoes of a case in 1996, when four women broke into the same plant and used a hammer to damage a Hawk jet . Known as the “Ploughshares Four”, those women made legal history when they were acquitted despite having admitted criminal damage . The court accepted that their action was lawful because it prevented the greater crime of genocide by the regime of former Indonesian president Haji Mohamed Suharto against the people of East Timor, which was then under an illegal Indonesian occupation . The trial of the Ploughshares Four put defence exports firmly on the political agenda. When Labour came to power in 1997, arms sales became a litmus t...