Seeds of Hope

Seeds of Hope was a plowshares group of women who damaged a BAE Hawk advanced trainer aircraft at the British Aerospace Warton Aerodrome site near Preston, England, in 1996.[1] As they stated in the explanatory video film left in the aircraft after their attack, they wanted to inspire hope instead of violence and greed, hence their choice of name. The group was also called the "Warton Four."[2] The jet had been due for export to Indonesia, and the activists had objected to this due to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

For other uses, see Seeds of Hope (disambiguation).

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 training aircraft that was to have been supplied, along with 23 other jets, to the New Order regime of Indonesia.

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". Meaning the one taking place in East Timor. They were found not guilty of criminal damage at Liverpool Crown Court, after a jury deemed their action was reasonable under the Genocide Act 1969.[3]

gollark: And both seem like a reasonable response to "people will be eternally tortured if they do not do this".
gollark: I don't *agree* with religious evangelism, I'm saying that it does not seem inconsistent with "true Catholicism" as qh4os says.
gollark: How? Consistently, if you believe that people not believing your thing will go to hell, and hell is bad, you should probably tell them. I'm not sure exactly what Catholic doctrine wrt. that *is* though, I think it varies.
gollark: And our experiments with understanding the underlying ethical particles have been halted after it transpired that colliding ethical entities at 99.99% of *c* actually had ethical associations itself, which caused bad interference.
gollark: Experimental moral philosophy has ethical issues, unfortunately.

References
  1. Gregory M. Maney, ed. (2012). Strategies for Social Change. University of Minnesota Press. p. 274. ISBN 978-0816672899.
  2. Movement for the Abolition of War - SONGS WITH 'AN ATTITUDE' ABOUT WAR p. 12
  3. Campaigners face jail for raid on military jet - Home News, UK - The Independent
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