Seeds of Hope was a plowshares group of women who damaged a

BAE Hawk The BAE Systems Hawk is a British single-engine, jet-powered advanced trainer aircraft. It was first flown at Dunsfold, Surrey, in 1974 as the Hawker Siddeley Hawk, and subsequently produced by its successor companies, British Aerospace and B ...

warplane at the

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

Warton Aerodrome Warton Aerodrome is located in Warton village on the Fylde in Lancashire, England. The aerodrome is west of Preston, Lancashire, UK. Today the airfield is a major assembly and testing facility of BAE Systems Military Air & Information. It ...

site near Preston, England, in 1996. Their aim was to stop the aircraft being exported to the

Indonesian military , founded = as the ('People's Security Forces') , current_form = , disbanded = , branches = , headquarters = Cilangkap, Jakarta , website = , commander-in-chief = Joko Widodo , ...

, for use in the illegally occupied country of East Timor. They left a video and booklet in the cockpit of the aircraft in order to explain their motivation.

Direct action

On the 29 January 1996, Andrea Needham, Joanna Wilson and Lotta Kronlid broke into BAE's Warton Aerodrome at Warton and caused £1.7m worth of damage to Hawk tail number ZH955, a warplane that was to have been supplied, along with 23 others, to the New Order regime of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. In the tradition of plowshares actions, they stayed at the site until they were found by security. They were arrested for criminal damage and conspiracy to commit criminal damage. A week later, a fourth woman, Angie Zelter, was also arrested and charged with conspiracy. The four spent six months on Remand in HMP Risley before coming to trial in

Liverpool Crown Court The Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, in Derby Square, Liverpool, are operated by His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service. The building is used by the Crown Court, the Magistrates' Court, Liverpool District Probate Registry and the Liverpool Yout ...

in July 1996.

Trial

Accused of causing, and conspiring to cause, criminal damage, with a maximum ten-year sentence, they argued that what they did was not a crime but that they ''"were acting to prevent British Aerospace and the British Government from aiding and abetting genocide"'', referring to the one taking place in

East Timor East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...

. They were found not guilty of criminal damage at

, after a jury deemed their action was reasonable under the

Genocide Act 1969 The Genocide Act 1969 (c 12) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It gave effect to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1948 ...

.Campaigners face jail for raid on military jet - Home News, UK - The Independent
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References

Direct action Peace organisations based in the United Kingdom People acquitted of crimes 1996 in England Pacifists Genocide prevention Aircraft manufactured in the United Kingdom