The Filton 8 trial: Lead barrister Henry Blaxland KC demolishes the government’s case in his closing speech

Since the shocking sentencing, on June 12, of four Palestine Action activists as terrorists, even though a jury had only convicted them of criminal damage for the direct action they undertook against an Elbit Systems arms factory near Bristol in August 2024, the world’s attention has, sadly but understandably, largely moved on.

I wrote about the devious sentencing here: andyworthington.co.uk/2…

In a media landscape of rolling news, it’s hard to stay focused on the aftermath of a huge miscarriage of justice, although Novara Media are to be commended for having conducted, despite draconian reporting restrictions, an interview with two of those convicted, Ellie Kamio and Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Head, which I wrote about here: substack.com/@andyworth…

Ellie also posted a defiant message of her own on Instagram, which I amplified here: substack.com/@andyworth…

However, it’s important to remember that the six Filton activists who were tried, and then retried until four of them were found guilty, were just six out of 25 people in total who were arrested and are facing trials for their alleged involvement in the direct action against an Elbit Systems factory in August 2024.

As the retrial came to an end at Woolwich Crown Court, the trial of eight others — the Filton 8 — began in the Old Bailey in the City of London on June 15. The eight defendants are Madeleine ‘Maddy’ Norman, 31, Hannah Davidson, 53, T Hoxha, 30, Ian Saunders, 47, Sean Middlebrough, 33, Yulia Brigidirova, 33, Aleksandra ‘Ola’ Herbich 41, and William Plastow, 35, and all were charged with violent disorder (for which the original six were acquitted) as well as criminal damage.

Crucially, however, the charges don’t relate to the defendants’ own actions in relation to the break-in at Elbit’s factory, but to their alleged supporting role, as part of a deeply contentious decision by the CPS (the Crown Prosecution Service) to include all 25 defendants as part of a “joint enterprise”, whereby, even though they were not at the Filton action, they are being portrayed as “equally responsible” for allegedly buying tools and providing reconnaissance beforehand.

On July 6, the judge, Patrick Field, dismissed the violent disorder charge against William Plastow, because, as he said, “The prosecution has not produced enough evidence against him to show that he intended that there would be violent disorder at Filton or that he assisted anyone to commit that offence.” However, it still stands for the other seven.

Last Monday, July 27, Henry Blaxland KC, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, who has a long history of acting in prominent civil liberties and human rights cases, made his closing statement, as the trial draws to a close, as the lead barrister for all eight defendants, and specifically, for Maddy.

The Free the Filton 25 posted his closing speech on their website, and I’m posting it below in the hope of reaching some readers who haven’t already seen it. It demonstrates, I believe, the feebleness of the government’s case, and it will, I hope, lead to the jury acquitting them, both through the flimsiness of the supposed evidence, and because of understandable fears that, otherwise, they, like the four before them, will be subjected to an outrageous and unjustifiable augmentation of the charges against them at the sentencing phase, whereby they too may find themselves sentenced for terrorism despite that never having been mentioned during the trial.

Henry Blaxland KC’s closing speech for Madeleine Norman

In his closing statement, [Henry Blaxland KC] asked the jurors to think back to the sort of case they imagined they would be hearing after being called to the Old Bailey, perhaps the most famous criminal court in the world.

He said, “I would be surprised if you imagined that you might be asked to return verdicts in a case in which the defendants found themselves in the dock because they considered it their moral duty to do what they could to prevent harm to others, in circumstances where the state had failed to act.”

He reminded the jury that “when you come to consider the evidence you don’t put your sense of what is right or wrong to one side. On the contrary, you bring it to bear in weighing the evidence, in deciding who you believe, in deciding whether the prosecution has proved its case.”

He emphasised the seriousness of the charges, even though the jury had been specifically instructed not to consider potential sentences when making their verdict. And he emphasised, as a result, the importance of the role of the jury in cases of such significance, and in the context of a massive backlog of criminal trials and a government attempting to remove trial by jury. He quoted a senior judge who referred to trial by jury as “the lamp that shows that freedom lives” — a reference to the lamp carried by coal miners to measure oxygen levels — reiterating the jury’s importance as the safeguard against a wrongful and unjust conviction.

From here, he turned to Maddy’s case specifically and reminded the jury that Maddy had “frankly told you that they have been fully committed to the cause of Palestine Action. They have told you of their involvement in a number of actions aimed at those who they believed to have been involved in providing arms to the IDF for the purpose of killing and maiming Palestinians. They have not shirked from that. They thoroughly approved of the action to damage equipment at Elbit’s factory near Bristol.” 

He told the jury that the prosecutor Deanna Heer had attacked Maddy’s credibility and of being deliberately “opaque” on the stand. Blaxland asserted by contrast that Maddy had been quite open and that Heer did not take the opportunity to ask questions that would have cleared up this apparent opaqueness when she had the chance.

He pointed out how much of the prosecution’s case was based on “generic” Palestine Action documents, not related specifically to the Filton action. He argued that the question was not how these documents said an action should happen but how Palestine Action operated in practice and, specifically what happened in this case. He made the point that this was a very loose, grass-roots organisation which, as Maddy said on the stand while giving their evidence, did not have line managers or a corporate structure. He pointed out, “This was not some super-disciplined quasi-military organisation. It was a group of disparate people committed to a cause in an often undisciplined way.”

He reminded the jury that the prosecution’s case at the start of the trial had been that Maddy played a “key organisational role” in the action, but the evidence over the course of the trial had not borne that out, and they had “moved the goalposts” and were now merely alleging that Maddy was a coordinator, along with their seven co-defendants in Trial 2. There is no direct evidence of Maddy coordinating this action in the mountains of evidence the police and prosecution had put together.

So if not a “key organiser”, he turned to the question of whether there was evidence that Maddy had assisted or encouraged the actionists in any way. The Filton cases involves the controversial legal idea of “joint enterprise” – where someone can be charged with an offence even if they didn’t commit it, if the prosecution argues that the other person encouraged or assisted an act (and intended to encourage or assist it).

Blaxland made the point that to be guilty of assisting or encouraging, you have to be shown to have assisted or encouraged somebody to do something before or at the time of the action, and that there has to be evidence that this encouragement or assistance was received or seen by the actionists. He insisted that there is no evidence of Maddy contacting any specific actionist in this way, and that, as Maddy said on the stand, there was need for them to encourage anyone — all those who participated were “committed PA activists.”

He suggested that Maddy and their co-defendants will, like the suffragettes, anti-Apartheid activists in South Africa, and other protestors before them, prove to have been on the right side of history, but that the judge had repeatedly directed the jury that this was not their concern.

He said, “By involving themselves in Palestine Action, Maddy has put themselves in harm’s way for what they believe to be the greater good. They have always understood that they risk arrest and punishment for their actions, but were unshakeably committed to the justice of their cause.”

Blaxland then reiterated that there is no such thing as guilt by association, and that is what the prosecution’s case amounts to.