A peace campaigner will spend Christmas behind bars after breaching a suspended prison sentence.

Sylvia Boyes was sentenced to three months by Bingley magistrates today after they heard the 65-year-old grandmother had failed to attend any unpaid work sessions.

She will spend the festive season at New Hall prison, near Wakefield.

Boyes, of Wimborne Drive, Keighley, appeared at Scarborough Magistrates’ Court on November 13, where she was sentenced to three months' imprisonment suspended for 12 months and ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work.

She had been found guilty of criminal damage following an attempt to breach security at RAF Fylingdale in North Yorkshire, in August.

Probation officer Richard Page told the Bingley bench yesterday that Boyes had attended the first interview when she revealed she would not carry out the order.

After the court hearing, her husband the Reverend Robin Boyes said he intended to visit her tomorrow and said he was “miffed” she would not be home at Christmas.

Boyes had cut the fence at the early warning radar station at Fylingdales to mark the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

It is not the first time that the anti-nuclear campaigner has faced a prison sentence at Christmas.

In 2001, she was released after 14 days of a 28-day sentence in time to enjoy the festive season at home.

Boyes had been jailed for refusing to pay £314 court costs and £300 compensation imposed by Bingley magistrates. The offences related to a peace demonstration at which she was among a group who cut their way into the Aldermaston nuclear weapons plant.