Jailed Trident protester Brian Quail writes letter from prison to The National
by Brian Quail
BANGED up again! It’s been many years since I last supped porridge as a guest of Betty Windsor.
Memories of slopping out and sharing a smoke-filled cell did not prepare me for a sojourn in Low Moss. A cell to myself, tv, and shower were unexpected pleasures. Coming from Coulport Camp it was a relief to get a proper bed. The sad truth is at my advanced age moving the body beautiful from the horizontal to the vertical is a real problem when tackled from ground level.
So, truth to tell, I’m quite enjoying it! It’s just a pity that these comforts come with incarceration, and loss of liberty to leave my cell unsupervised. Apart from that, my main feeling is one of intense disappointment and irritation at the Court’s reaction to our blockade.
The magistrates refusal to look at the context of our action is unreasonable, “You blocked the road and stopped the traffic,” was all she would say. She refused to take cognizance of the fact that the traffic was serving a war crime.
I asked the magistrate what we had to do to get the legal system to recognise that Trident is a real and present, existing, ongoing war crime. Preparing to commit a crime is itself a crime, and the greater the crime being planned, the greater the crime. I pointed out that while we were talking, a young man was sitting at a control panel waiting for an order to launch, and Theresa May has already boasted that she would “press the button”.
So, here and now we are willing and able to bring death by blast, burning and radiation to untold thousands, as well as causing catastrophic environmental danger.
Her reply threat “that was a matter for Westminster and bit a concern of this court” is incredible, but typical. So what do we have to do to get the courts to recognise that Trident is a war crime?
Even if there were no Geneva or Hague conventions, no genocide act of 1948, even if the vast corpus of International Law did not exist.
It is inconceivable that the Common Law of Scotland should regard the indiscriminate slaughter of millions as a permissible strategy in war.
On 7th July the UN made the most important decision it has ever made since its foundation in 1946 after WW2. The draft international treaty agreed by 122 batons means that nuclear weapons must be banned, as are chemical and biological weapons.
We might have a future after all. One thing is for sure: either we have a nuclear free future or we have no future at all.
Scotland is the one country in the world that can break the nuclear chain because it is the one country with (by independence) that can free itself of nuclear weapons.
So while the cell door slams and the key turns in the lock, here in Low Moss prison, I promise too redouble my efforts to rid our land of the obscenity that is Trident and urge all people of good will to join in this, the most important campaign in the world.
