A GRANDMOTHER has lost her legal bid to stop her taxes being spent on defence and weapons.

Brenda Boughton, of Plantation Road, North Oxford, and six other peace campaigners, have lost their case for judicial review at the Appeal Court.

But the former teacher at Bartholomew School, Eynsham, has promised to continue her fight to force the Government to set up a ring-fenced 'peace tax fund', if necessary taking it to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

She said: "If we are forced to do that, if that is the end of it being heard in our own courts, then that is what we will do. We won't give up on this."

Ms Boughton has been withholding a proportion of her tax since 1988 as a protest against the Government's spending on the army and nuclear weapons.

Lawyers for the group, known as the 'Peace Tax Seven', had argued that the lack of such a fund was a violation of their human right to manifest their religious and philosophical beliefs.

But three judges rejected their claims at a one-ay hearing at the Appeal Court, telling them that European law was clearly against them.

Ms Boughton, 80, has already faced several court orders which have taken the money directly from her bank account and now risks prosecution or being sued in the civil courts if she continues to withhold tax.