Cork Circuit Court overturns convictions against Fintan Lane for anti-war postering

cork | anti-war / imperialism | news report Thursday June 23, 2005 16:54 by Cork Anti-War Campaign

Attempt to undermine CAWC defeated

At Cork Circuit Court this morning, two District Court convictions against Fintan Lane for allegedly ‘directing’ the erection of anti-war posters near Glanmire in County Cork were quashed by the judge.

The case relates to the putting up on ESB poles of cardboard A2 posters by members of the Cork Anti-War Campaign (CAWC) advertising the first of two 4,000-strong marches that occurred in Cork city in March 2003. Nobody was seen erecting the posters in question at Glanmire, but as Fintan Lane was the publicly identified chairperson and spokesperson for the campaign, Cork County Council moved to bring charges against him. However, they were unable to successfully serve summonses on him and waited until he was serving a two-month sentence in Limerick Prison for his part in a mass trespass at Shannon airport. In December 2003, two summonses were served on him while he was in prison.

Subsequently, he was convicted on both counts in the District Court in his absence and fined e125 for each. An appeal was immediately lodged, coming before the Circuit Court today. The essence of the Cork County Council case was that as chairperson at the time of CAWC, he was legally responsible for any breaches of the law with regard to postering. The posters at Glanmire were allegedly up for three days beyond the seven days allowed to remove them. Furthermore, a Mr Dooley of the county council gave evidence that he had phoned Fintan Lane about posters in another part of the county some time previously and that he had taken responsibility for these.

Under cross examination from Donal Daly, solicitor for CAWC, who did a superb job, Dooley admitted that Lane had not taken responsibility but had merely tried to be helpful and had offered to bring the matter up at a meeting of CAWC. Dooley also admitted that Lane and he had discussed the legal context and Lane was fully aware of the legal situation, and so on, with regard to postering and Dooley at the time did not believe CAWC to be in breach of the law.

Ultimately, the judge accepted the appeal and quashed both District Court convictions because he was not satisfied that Lane could be linked to the ‘offences’. In other words, the chairperson of a broad-based campaign cannot be held responsible for the activities of every single member.

This was an important victory because if the council had succeeded in upholding the convictions, then any publicly identified spokesperson or official of any campaign could be convicted for any postering done by members of the campaign, regardless of whether people had been stopped on the night or not. Moreover, if a pro-war individual decided to ‘set up’ a group for a conviction, it could easily be done by simply plastering the city with posters with the group’s name appended.

A small but important victory in the resistance to the ongoing crackdown on oppositional postering.