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07th May 2006
WARMONGERS SURRENDER IN HIGH COURT
FINAL VICTORY FOR PEACE PROTESTERS AGAINST ARMS COMPANY’S
HIGH COURT HARASSMENT CLAIM.
The attempt by arms manufacturers EDO MBM to restrict protest outside
their Brighton factory has ended in expensive failure. Their attempt
to secure a no-protest exclusion zone with an injunction under the
Protection from Harassment Act has ended in unconditional surrender
after a year-long High Court battle. The case is estimated to have
cost the company upwards of £1 million and this week US parent
company EDO Corp announced 2.7 million dollars losses this year
and citing losses from legal actions as a contributing factor. EDO
MBM will pay the protesters costs, expected to be tens of thousands
of pounds.
Big questions remain over the handling of the case. What has come
to light is a behind-the-scenes deal between EDO MBM, their lawyer
Timothy Lawson Cruttenden (the solicitor responsible for the injunction
restricting protests outside the Oxford Primate Lab), Sussex Police
and possibly the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordinating Unit.
Andrew Beckett press spokesman for SMASH EDO said, ‘We were
accused of harassment by EDO, and Sussex Police, who secured an
interim injunction on trumped-up evidence, but it must be clear
to the world after the collapse of the injunction and the dropping
of so many criminal cases that we are ones who have been harassed,
and it is they in who have been harassing us’.
EDO brought the injunction claim against 14 protesters and two protest
groups in April 2005, and by bringing spurious evidence into the
case were able to get an interim injunction against all protesters
(i.e any member of the public campaigning outside the factory, regardless
of their conduct).
The defendants argued consistently that the use of the Protection
from Harassment Act to restrict protest infringed their rights under
articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR. This was
dramatically illustrated by the imprisonment on remand
of two protesters for alleged breaches of the injunction last summer.
Both cases were subsequently dropped before reaching court. Protesters
were placed under threat of five years imprisonment for any breach
of the injunction terms that prohibited simple acts such as standing
in the road.
The two-week trial date that had been fixed for 21st November was
then lost because of the delaying tactics of EDO and their legal
team. Judge Walker expressed “grave concerns” about possible
“bad faith” on the part of EDO. The defendants complained
about this in a counter attack that detailed evidence of EDO lawyer
Tim Lawson-Cruttenden’s abuse of the legal process.
To try and head off these damaging claims by the
defence team and realising the danger of losing this important argument,
EDO Corp flew in their Vice-president and General Counsel Lisa Palumbo
to try and settle the case out of court. Those defendants who were
represented by publicly funded lawyers had no choice but to accept
the generous settlement offer or as it spelled the end for legal
aid funding, but the three litigants in person who did not rely
on public funding refused the deal as it involved signing undertakings
that placed restrictions on their future conduct.
The first litigant in person Ceri Gibbons who had joined the case
voluntarily to defend his right to protest, was then offered discontinuance
and full costs without condition of an undertaking, and he was released
from the case on February 13th 2006. Since the injunction against
all protesters had been narrowed only to included named defendants,
and EDO
had withdrawn all allegations against him personally,
the basic human rights battle had been won.
The remaining two defendants Chris Osmond and Lorna
Marcham then continued the legal ‘abuse of process’
attack against EDO which they eventually won. EDO had
clearly expected that after the settlement the resulting absence
of defence lawyers, and the new arrival of a QC and improved legal
team working for them to prove too intimidating for the litigants
in person to fight. In the event they put their case without lawyers
and Judge Walker’s ruling condemned EDO’s “negligent
and unprofessional conduct” in the case, and also blamed former
managing director of EDO MBM David Jones for the way the case had
not been prepared more quickly for a full trial. David Jones resigned
on December 31st 2005 for undisclosed reasons.
Meanwhile in Brighton peace protesters facing criminal
charges for alleged incidents related to protests at
EDO’s factory have had dozens of cases dropped by the
CPS after a pivotal case in January where a District
Judge brought in from Surrey had ruled that documents
concerning police communications with EDO before the
injunction was brought, should be opened to public
scrutiny. Criminal Defence solicitor Lydia Dagostino
of Kelly’s Solicitors,who had demanded that an outside
judge deal with the case, said that there was likely to be evidence
that implied improper relations between Sussex Police
and EDO and it was possible that arrests of protesters
were made to provide an atmosphere of disorder to
convince a high court judge to give the injunction.
The CPS documents could have supported this argument
if they had been released. The CPS now face the
prospect of having to drop all further criminal cases
against protesters if they want to keep the documents secret. Many
protesters believe they contain further evidence of a deliberate
covert operation involving Sussex Police, the National Extremist
Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU), EDO
Corporation, and Lawson-Cruttenden and Co. to suppress protests
at the factory.
In the year-long High Court case it was that Chief Inspector Kerry
Cox of Sussex Police had changed her witness statement to exaggerate
her view of the anticipated threat by protesters to company employees
after direct pressure from EDO’s lawyer Tim Lawson-Cruttenden.
The altered statement was instrumental in gaining EDO an interim
injunction against protesters
that restricted their human rights.
The collapse of the EDO injunction case and also the 23 criminal
charges against anti-EDO protesters cast a shadowover all similar
injunction cases against animal rights protesters, as it highlights
a shady practice by police and court officers in a political operation
to suppress freedom of expression, acting in a manner that is clearly
an abuse of the powers of the state over political activity, but
has been supported
by the highest levels of the government.
Notes for Journalists
Brighton & Hove is a UN Peace Messenger City
The injunction referred to was served under the 1997
Protection from Harassment Act (originally designed to
protect women from stalkers) and is the first of its
kind directed at activists outside of the animal
rights movement. Crucially it is a civil injunction
but carries criminal penalties. It affects anyone
deemed to be a protestor. Initially EDO/MBM requested
a large "exclusion zone" comprising the whole of Home
Farm Industrial Estate.
They and Sussex police also wanted to limit
demonstrations to two and a half hours, with less
thanten people who had to be silent. Judge Gross
refusedto impose these conditions at the initial
hearing of an interim injunction, which was put in
place in the period before the full trial to be heard
at the High court in London from November 21st. In his
summing up he said, "The right to freedom of
expression is jealously guarded in English law" and
consequently refused to impose the requested limits on
size, timing or noise made at demonstrations. He also
said that he doubted that protesters were 'stalking'
employees of EDO MBM.
EDO MBM Technologies Ltd are the sole UK subsidiary of
huge U.S arms conglomerate EDO Corp, which was
recently named No. 10 in the Forbes list of 100
fastest growing companies. They supply bomb release
mechanisms to the US and UK armed forces
amongstothers. They supply crucial components for
Raytheon's Paveway guided bomb system, widely used in
the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq.
EDO also withdrew a threatened libel action against
Indymedia over being named as "warmongers".
Lawson-Cruttenden & Co
Solicitors firm working for EDO have been instrumental
in developing the Protection of Harassment Act 1997
from a measure designed to safeguard individuals to a
corporate charter to make inconvenient protest
illegal. Theyhave pioneered to use of injunctions to
create large "exclusion zones". They have secured
numerous injunctions against anti-vivisection and
anti-GM protestors.
Campaign against EDO MBM
People involved in the anti-EDO campaign include, but
are not limited to: local residents, the Brighton
Quakers, peace activists, anti-capitalists, Palestine
Solidarity groups, human rights groups, trade
unionists, academics and students. The campaign
started in August 2004 with a peace camp. It's avowed
aim is to expose EDO MBM and their complicity in war
crimes and to remove them from Brighton.
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