WHATEVER moral justice there was in the jury's decision to clear the women peace protesters, who admitted breaking into a British Aerospace hangar and doing £1.7million damage to a Hawk jet, there was also much dangerous absurdity.

There is no doubt many will share their opposition to the regime of Indonesia's vile dicatatorship to which the plane was being sold and would, the women alleged, be used in the suppression of the civilian population of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor which has undergone virtual genocide since it was illegally seized in 1975.

Nonetheless that high-minded motive - the basis of their defence that, in effect, they were deliberately doing wrong to prevent a much greater crime - cannot, despite what the jury agreed, triumph over the greater moral issue that this case throws up.

It is that of condoning people breaking the law and doing harm just because their consciences tell them to.

It may be that, in this case, Christian virtues were attached to that premise, but, nonetheless, in stark principle it is not a noble ethic at all - but simply an excuse for anarchy.

And, chillingly, it is the code that terrorists and extreme animal rights bombers follow to justify their deeds.

Justice, the courts and the law cannot sanely uphold that notion.

That is why the jury was wrong in this case.

And so was the judge for allowing that defence.

As a result, carte blanche may have been given to anyone to attempt to destroy things they disapprove of and, yet, believe they have lawful grounds for doing so.

Certainly, that notion will send a chilling note of concern right across the defence industry, which frequently finds itself straddling the divide between the legitimate manufacture of weapons and the moral question of the use to which they are put and by whom.

For recklessly it encourages the crossing of the line beyond the sort of legitimate protest - which a democratic society allows and upholds and which these women should have employed instead - into the realm of lawlessness.

This unwise decision of the jury goes against the very reason why we have laws in the first place - for the protection of society.

Otherwise, we let every individual with a grouse - for good or ill - off the leash to take matters into their own hands.

It is crazy for a court to uphold that.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.