THEIR worst nightmare has happened. Just when Tory ministers and right wing British tabloids thought the reviled Greenham Common women had vanished forever, along with the Iron curtain, four of them appeared before Liverpool Crown Court and won a historic victory.
Despite admitting causing over £1.5 million worth of damage to a British Aerospace military Hawk jet, the jury acquitted the four women, accepting their argument of justification because the plane was to be exported to Indonesia, where it could have been used against the civilians in East Timor.
According to Amnesty International since Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 some 200,000 Timorese have, been killed. "It is because of their suffering that we disarmed that jet. We think we have a very good case to prove that British Aerospace is aiding and abetting murder," explained Ms Angie Zelter, one of the activists and a mother of two.
With the collapse of the Cold War and the dismantling of the nuclear weapons, many of the Green ham Common women inevitably turned their attentions to other political causes. For Ms Zelter (45), Ms Joanna Wilson (33), Ms Lotta Kronlid (28), and Ms Andrea Needham (30), all veterans of the peace campaign, their next battle was to be against the Indonesian government.
At Greenham in the mid 1980s hundreds of women religiously broke the law everyday by cutting perimeter fences, invading the base and daubing paint on the nuclear bunkers to publicise their case. Criminal action was necessary to prevent the far greater evil of a nuclear war, they argued.
These four women, who arc all Christians, knew this doctrine off by heart and so armed with hammers, crowbars and other tools they broke into the British Aerospace plant at Wanton, Lancashire, and spend 2 1/2 hours smashing the plane up.
"We expected to be seen right away and thought there would he alarms on the doors of the hangar," admitted Ms Kronlid, a gardener who moved to Oxford in 1994 from Sweden to join the campaign.
The women then draped the Hawk fighter jet with banners bearing the slogan "Peace and Justice in East Timor, and left a minute video explaining the reasons for their actions in the cockpit before alerting security.
They made no effort to escape.
Following their arrest, the women spent six months at Risley remand centre, where the other inmates regarded them as curiosities, but the prison officers treated them as a security risk.
Imprisonment for anyone is hard, it is a very difficult and harsh environment. But we have had an enormous network of support from people all over the world and received thousands of letters showing how strongly people feel about the situation and that we should not be selling weapons to mass murderers, recalled Ms Needham, from Kirby, Merseyside.
During the seven day trial, the four women, three of whom defended themselves, dismissed prosecution claims that the attack was a publicity stunt, arguing that they had exhausted all other legitimate means to persuade the British government and British Aerospace from exporting the plane and so had to use "reasonable force to prevent a crime".
Ms Wilson, who stands as an independent councillor on Knowsley Borough Council, Merseyside, insisted that the action had been a last resort. "Last October we held demonstrations and presented evidence that the Hawks were being used in East Tim or and export licences were being breeched. The East Timorese themselves have presented evidence about the use of Hawks there.
"We would have preferred not to have had to do this. If the deal had been cancel led, obviously there would have been no need for us to go ahead and take personal responsibility for the disarmament," she argued.
After five hours of deliberation, the jury of seven men and five women, agreed with this justification and cleared them of causing any criminal damage.
As Tory ministers, the judiciary and media pondered the implications of the jury's "perverse" decision, the four women and other protest organisations were in no doubt that direct action can be regarded as a legitimate and necessary form of political activism.
The Treasury Minister, Mr Michael Jack, could hardly contain his incredulity at the jury's decision. "It would appear there is little question about who did this damage. For whatever reason that damage was done, it was just plain wrong. The ramifications of this case are, however, very important in terms of future security, jobs and the question of being able to do damage and getting off with it," he said.
The four women now intend, to bring a private prosecution against British Aerospace, accusing the company of aiding and abetting the murder of civilians in East Timor.