A veteran of peace campaigns

A grandmother who scaled the gates of Buckingham Palace today is a veteran peace campaigner who has repeatedly trespassed on military bases.

Lindis Percy, 61, from Hull, has campaigned against the development of weapons of mass destruction for more than 20 years.

And during this year’s war in Iraq, Mrs Percy, a Quaker and joint co-ordinator of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB), was charged after she breached security at an airfield where US B-52 bombers were being prepared for deployment to the Gulf.

Born in Leeds, Mrs Percy is a trained nurse, midwife and health visitor and has worked in the NHS all her working life.

She is married to Christopher Percy and has three grown-up children and four grandchildren.

She first became involved in campaigns against nuclear weapons when she was working as a midwife at Southampton General Hospital and learnt about Cruise missiles to be deployed at Greenham Common.

And she was first arrested in 1990 when she started work with the Otley Peace Action Group at an RAF base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire.

Since then, Mrs Percy has campaigned tirelessly with CAAB at a number of establishments including Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall and the Menwith Hill Station and has been taken to court on numerous occasions for trespass.

This year, Mrs Percy was charged after she spent two hours underneath one of the giant B-52 aeroplanes at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

The non-violence campaigner was jailed for nine months in 1999 for trespassing on to MoD land at Menwith Hill and also served nine days of a 14-day sentence in 1992 for climbing over a perimeter fence and trespassing at RAF Alconbury.

In April 2001, Mrs Percy hit the headlines again when she was cleared of disorderly behaviour after she was accused of forcing a United States citizen to drive over the Stars and Stripes flag during a protest.

And in December of the same year, the peace protester won a High Court challenge to a conviction over defacing the American flag at a US airforce base.