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The Man Who Stood Up to a Bank, and WON ! / NatWest Pays Dung Protest Farmer £300,000
Paul Stokes
Sept. 14, 2009
The Man Who Stood Up To A Bank, And WON
NatWest pays dung protest farmer £300,000
By Paul Stokes
17 Oct 2000
A FARMER who showered NatWest buildings with manure during a 10-year dispute over the handling of his account has accepted a £300,000 settlement from the bank, a court was told yesterday.
David Cannon yesterday
David Cannon, 71, who carried out four attacks on two NatWest branches using cows and a dung spreader, was given a suspended prison sentence by South-East Northumberland magistrates yesterday. The court was told that Cannon had accepted the settlement three weeks before the dispute was due to be decided in the High Court. After yesterday's hearing, he claimed that this amounted to victory.
Cannon had claimed that an unauthorised transfer of £70,000 had been made from his partnership account by a bank manager at Silloth, Cumbria. The court was told that the transactions almost wrecked his business and caused him and his wife Mary, 71, to live in "abject poverty" at South Dissington Farm, near Ponteland, Northumberland, at a time when they were both ill.
Cannon launched his slurry protests on the bank's branches in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he also nailed the doors shut, and Ponteland, where he barricaded himself inside. In the latest incident he dropped 10 tons of manure in the doorway of the Ponteland branch before being chased on his tractor by police.
Foul deposit: David Cannon dumped more than a ton of farm waste outside the doorway of the NatWest bank, Ponteland, in June 1997
He was convicted of causing criminal damage, breaching a conditional discharge, making threats to damage property, careless driving, failing to stop, and using an unlicensed vehicle. The magistrates gave him two concurrent 60-day prison sentences, suspended for 12 months, for the first two offences. He was also ordered to pay £845.60 compensation, £250 in costs, and a £100 fine and had nine penalty points put on his licence for careless driving.
Stuart Elliot, presiding, said: "Whatever your grievance against the bank you deliberately embarked on a course of criminal damage in the full knowledge your act was in breach of a conditional discharge. Despite the fact you ignored a verbal police warning to stop and they deployed considerable resources to stop you, you continued in the act."
The court was told that the last offence was in June after the bank had applied for Canon's legal aid to be withdrawn in his civil claim against them. Brad Stephens, defending, said: "His whole life and that of his wife is their farm. This has taken that away from him. When he should have been enjoying a reasonably comfortable lifestyle, he has been living in poverty and you can understand the frustrations of that. It was perhaps silly but nevertheless you can understand his frustrations after all those years of not getting an action settled."
Mr Stephens said that Cannon and his wife would be left with a little of the money to retire on and would now leave the farm to their son, Alec. After the hearing, Cannon said he had now ended hostilities against the bank's buildings.
He said: " It has taken 10 and a half years for them to stand up and be counted. It is a big difference to eight years ago when they offered £8,000 and said I should be grateful. I can't turn the clock back and all the money on the planet can't put right what has happened to me and my wife over the last 10 years. I have got no more to complain about but I've got no regrets at all. I would do the same all over again if I had to. I will be getting on with my life from today and there will be no more manure spreading.
"I can't explain the stress we've all suffered and the effect it has had on us. But it's sorted now and we will just call it a day. It has gone on too long. My wife will be pleased it's all over. She knows how I feel. I am going to retire. I might even write my memoirs."
Although the original grievance against NatWest arose out of a £70,000 transfer, the £300,000 should cover Mr Cannon's overdraft, substantial debts, legal costs, and interest. A NatWest spokesman said: "Both sides now consider that this long-running matter is best settled by consent and the bank has agreed, without accepting liability, that it will make a payment to Mr and Mrs Cannon and meet their reasonable legal costs to bring the dispute to an end."