‘ANGRY BRIGADE' TRIAL 10-year sentences on conspirators

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33094, 8 December 1972, Page 13

‘ANGRY BRIGADE' TRIAL 10-year sentences on conspirators

(N.Z Press Association —Copyright? LONDON, December 7. By a 10-2 majority verdict, an all-male jury at the Old Bailey last night found four of the eight defendants in the “Angry Brigade”trial guilty of conspiring to cause bomb explosions.

APOLLO 17 LIFT-OFF.— Apollo 17 riding on a flaming Saturn 5 rocket, cuts a while-hot path (below) across the night sky at Cape Kennedy, framed by a lunar-lander and a rocket at the space centre. Left: Photographers and other watchers are silhouetted against the glare of the blast-off. —T.ast night’s rablo nhnfnt»ranh

James Greenfield, Anna Mendleson, John Barker, and Hilary Anne Creek, who had all pleaded not guilty to conspiring with Jack Leonard Prescott and others to cause explosions in the United Kingdom between January 1, 1968, and August 24, 1971, were each sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by Mr Justice James.

James Stuart Christie, Christopher M ichael George Bott, Catherine Judith McLean, and Angela Margaret Weir, were acquitted. The jury was discharged after a trial lasting 111 days, the longest to be heard at the Old Bailey. Christie and Bott, who were cleared of ail charges had been in custody since their arrest in August, 1971. Arms seized Among the explosions for which the “Angry Brigade” claimed responsibility were those at the homes of the Home Secretary (Mr Robert Carr, then Employment Secretary) Mr John Davies (then Industry Secretary), Sir Peter Rawlinson (AttorneyGeneral), Sir John Waldon (Metropolitan Police Commissioner), and Mr William Batty (Ford’s managing director). During the trial, which is estimated to have cost £750,000, the prosecution said that the police had seized 33 sticks of gelignite, 11 detonators, two machine-guns, a pistol, and ammunition during a raid on the flat shared by the convicted four defendants, and the documents linking the four and others with the “Angry Brigade” were found. The accused maintained that these had been “planted.” Judge’s comment As the trial ended, Mr Justice James called before him Commander Ernest Bond, the former head of the Scotland Yard’s bomb squad, who led the investigation, to tell him that, by its verdict the jury

had refuted the “planting” allegation. "That ought to be made public," the Judge said. Passing sentence, he said, in part: “The conspiracy of which you have been convicted had as its object the intention of disrupting and attacking the democratic society of this country. “That was the way it was put by the Crown, and it is the way that has been proved to the satisfaction of the jury, once the suggestion of the ‘planting’ of evidence had been got rid of on overwhelming evidence. “The philosophies to which you subscribe are those which are set out in the various Angry Brigade communiques, but 1 am satisfied, on the evidence, that the devices used were not deliberately designed to cause death or injury, but rather, damage to property.

“Nevertheless, in every one of these cases there was a risk of death or serious injury. Fortunately only one person suffered an injury. There is, however, evidence that it was fortunate no-one was killed.

“Your participation arose because you objected to the orderly way of society. One of the most precious rights is that an individual should follow his own opinions and be able to express them and be able to protest—and when one finds there are those who set out to dominate by exercising their opinions to the extent of enforcing them wtih violence, it undermines that precious right.”