The Independent reports:

The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain’s green agenda and could encourage further direct action.

Kingsnorth was the centre for mass protests by climate camp activists last month. Last year, three protesters managed to paint Gordon Brown’s name on the plant’s chimney. Their handi-work cost £35,000 to remove.

I wonder if the Ploughshares folk who knocked out the Waihopai dome will try the same tactic in court. It seems there may be a legal precedent…

The campaigners had a prominent ally who turned up to testify on their behalf:

During the eight-day trial, the world’s leading climate scientist, Professor James Hansen of Nasa, who had flown from American to give evidence, appealed to the Prime Minister personally to “take a leadership role” in cancelling the plan and scrapping the idea of a coal-fired future for Britain.

Professor Hansen, who first alerted the world to the global warming threat in June 1988 with testimony to a US senate committee in Washington, and who last year said the earth was in “imminent peril” from the warming atmosphere, asserted that emissions of CO2 from Kings-north would damage property through the effects of the climate change they would help to cause.

The acquittal was the second time in a decade that the “lawful excuse” defence has been successfully used by Greenpeace activists. In 1999, 28 Greenpeace campaigners led Lord Melchett, who was director at the time, were cleared of criminal damage after trashing an experimental field of GM crops in Norfolk. In each case the damage was not disputed – the point at issue was the motive.

A conservative parliamentary candidate also testified on their behalf. If Greenpeace can get prominent scientists and politicians to turn up to their trial, I wonder who the Ploughshares folk could get to testify on their behalf? 

There is a rich intellectual tradition to civil disobedience. It cannot be easily dismissed as ‘vandalism’ or ‘crime’. By engaging in civil disobedience the participants are not merely committing a crime. They are forcing the people whom they are protesting against to confront their own actions and test whether those actions meet the test of their own ethical beliefs. For many civil disobedience is also about the motive expressed in the Ghandi quote that I used for this post’s title.

Peter Suber’s essay on civil disobedience is a succinct introduction to much of the intellectual tradition behind the practice, and Henry David Thoreau’s earlier and longer essay Civil Disobedience is also a fascinating insight into the theory behind such resistance. (Thoreau famously went to jail in the USA for refusing to pay tax in protest against war). Martin Luther King said of Thoreau:

I became convinced that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.

Uniquely, New Zealand’s most famous and probably original non-violent protestors preceded much of this. Te Whiti, Tohu and the people of Parihaka who resisted the confiscation of their lands in the Taranaki in the 19^th century by erecting fences across the roads, ploughing up survey lines and paddocks and removing survey pegs.

Yesterday’s Ploughshares actions sits squarely in the middle of this tradition forcing us to confront the existence of the Waihopai spy base and its violent purposes.

Anyway, you can join the debate one way or another by supporting the Ploughshares movement (I assume they are going to need financial help with their upcoming legal costs) or by supporting the US government to build more spybases. As always, it’s your choice.