NORTH-EAST campaigners fighting for the posthumous pardon of soldiers shot for cowardice were last night celebrating a High Court climbdown by the Government.

A hearing in London was told yesterday that the Defence Secretary John Reid is to reconsider the case of Private Harry Farr, a First World War soldier shot for cowardice.

Lawyers for Mr Reid also indicated that he would give serious consideration to a request for a personal meeting made by the legal team acting for Pte Farr's 92-year-old daughter, Gertrude Harris.

The extraordinary move came at the start of a challenge by Mrs Harris, of London, to the Government's latest decision to refuse her father a pardon of any sort.

Edward Fitzgerald, representing Mrs Harris, told the High Court in London that there was now even more evidence to support her claim that the case for a pardon was overwhelming.

Asked what she would like to say to Mr Reid if she meets him, Mrs Harris said: "I would just like to say: 'Please give him the pardon, just to prove he was not a coward'.

"He was a very brave soldier who died for his country.

"Harry was no coward. He was a brave soldier. He was just ill. He had shell shock."

North-East campaigner John Hipkin, who attended the hearing, said: "If the court finds in Pte Farr's favour, it will encapsulate the principle that you cannot just shoot sick soldiers.

"Some of the eight Northumberland Fusiliers and seven Durham Light Infantry soldiers shot at dawn were, if not sick, then on the verge of it.

"If we are successful, we will examine the cases of the other 305 British, Irish and Commonwealth soldiers who had been executed by firing squad."

Among the executions were those of three DLI soldiers shot together in a French farmyard.

They were Sergeant Joseph "Will" Stones, 25, of Crook, Lance Corporal Peter Goggins, 21, of South Moor, Stanley, both County Durham, and Corporal John McDonald, 28, of Sunderland.

Yesterday's hearing was the second time the case of Private Harry Farr has come to court.

His family was angered when, last month, Mr Reid upheld earlier decisions turning down the request for a pardon.

The family has always maintained that her father was no coward but a victim of shell shock, and his plight was ignored.

Pte Farr, from North Kensington, London, fought with the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment and was shot at dawn on October 2, 1916, aged 25.

He had been in hospital for five months, suffering from severe shell shock.

Family lawyers say he had served continuously in France from 1914 to 1916 and seen many horrors, including those at Neuve- Chappelle, when 11,200 Allied troops died in four days of fighting, and the Battle of the Somme, when there were more than a million casualties on both sides in months of fighting.

Despite the time he spent in hospital, where nurses noted that he trembled so severely he was unable to hold a pen, Pte Farr was found guilty of cowardice and sentenced to death.

The Defence Secretary rejected Pte Farr's case on the grounds that it could not be proven conclusively that shell shock was behind Farr's refusal to go back to the front.

Mr Fitzgerald said he accepted assurances given on behalf of Mr Reid that the minister would now reconsider the case on genuinely open grounds, and would not rely on the policy that a pardon could not be obtained on procedural grounds.