The township of 12 people
which sells four million
cans of beer a year
Scotland
in the
heat
Listening
to the
other side
R D Kernohan discovers common ground in unexpected places
Get SR free in
your inbox three
times a week
Click here
The Store
The new space for articles you may
have missed
The history of
our post-war progress
is not all it seems
Click here for
Jill Stephenson
The Cafe
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
North Berwick flowers
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The case of
Barbara Dowling, 67,
c/o Cornton Vale prison
David Mackenzie
A 67-year-old retired occupational therapist from Knightswood is currently doing a three-month stretch in Cornton Vale. She was sent down for vandalism, in her case a matter of spray-painting a comment on an internal wall of Dumbarton Sheriff Court in 2010. That’s right, she did not bop a police officer, or sell illegal narcotics, she had a few minutes thoughtful work with some red cellulose paint.
Although the charge was vandalism, it is clear that Barbara Dowling’s choice of location for her art work was what motivated the sheriff to wind-up the tariff to squeaking point. Courts don’t like defiance, even from mild-mannered sexagenarians. However, if the sheriff had been forensically correct he would have made the charge one of contempt of court, given that Barbara wrote: ‘This JP court does not uphold international law’.
A bit of background. Barbara and some friends had taken part in an entirely peaceful blockade of Faslane. They were charged with a breach of the peace (yes, enjoy the little ironies here) and appeared in the local Justice of the Peace Court, which happens these days to meet in the Dumbarton Sheriff Court complex. The justice in charge that day appears to have been particularly crass in brushing aside their attempts to explain their motivation and in giving a sense that she had made up her mind about the outcome right at the start of the trial. The £500 fine was one thing but the contempt the justice had shown for the context of the protesters’ actions merited a definite response. Hence the quick visit to the local hardware shop.
The decision by the procurator fiscal to make the charge one of vandalism rather than contempt of court is revealing. The advantages of that choice for the system are obvious. On the one hand it offered the sentencing sheriff an elastic tariff to allow him to show the system’s displeasure at Barbara’s defiance. The tariff elasticity was also enhanced by holding the trial in the Sheriff Court proper rather than in the JP court, the usual location for vandalism charges. The choice of charge also meant that what the protesters regard as the nub of the case – the right to take peaceful action to uphold international humanitarian law and its condemnation of weapons of mass destruction – would not become the heart of the trial. Very neat, though utterly dishonest.
The Scottish courts, when faced with justifications for peaceful direct action based on international law in regard to nuclear weapons, fall back on the opinion of the judges in the lord advocate’s reference of 2001 which, in a muddled and indirect kind of way, appeared to find no hint of a stain of criminality in the UK’s readiness to prepare for and threaten mass murder. The opinion is both feeble in law and feeble as an excuse for Scottish judges to shelter behind. With just an ounce of smeddum they would bend an ear to the heart of the international law argument and at least show a measure of doubt. There would be a fine stushie then.
Defiant is an odd epithet to apply to Barbara. She simply sees herself as doing what the criminal justice system should be doing, ie taking a stand for humanitarian law. At a time when the Scottish government is ready to appeal to international law on the issue of the right to self-determination but remains steadfastly reluctant to link it to Trident, she is an essential inspiration.
