Islington Tribune - News: Protest

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

Islington Tribune - by MARK BLUNDEN
Published: 10 August 2007

Fr Martin Newell

Protest priest: My days in prison

A CATHOLIC priest has spoken for the first time about being jailed for daubing anti-Iraq war slogans on the walls of the Ministry of Defence.
Father Martin Newell, a Passionist priest based at Dorothy Day House in De Beauvoir Town, close to the Islington border, served his sentence at Brixton Prison in May.
His graffiti was part of a protest by the Catholic Worker resistance movement on the lawns outside the MoD in Whitehall in 2004.
As part of the Feast of the Holy Innocents festival, the religious movement turned the Whitehall lawn into a cemetery for the war dead and dug “graves” in the manicured grass.
Father Martin, 40, said: “We dug graves and had a child-size coffin and wrote on the walls of the MoD, the headquarters of the war, in red paint.
“The police turned up pretty quickly after four graves had been dug in the lawn. One tried to stop us by grabbing our arms but we still had an arm each free to paint.
“There was a bit of a struggle but we kept very calm.”
Father Martin, who was charged with criminal damage, was jailed for two weeks at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in May. He spent two-and-a-half days in prison.
“It was certainly no holiday camp,” he said. “I had to share a cell with a couple of tough guys.”

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

Your Comments: