In April 2009, Brian Haw dissociated his Parliament Square Peace Campaign (PSPC) from the 'Peace Strike' protest in the adjoining area of the square led by Maria Gallestegui "by mutual consent", wanting to end any confusion between the two campaigns. For reasons that are not clear, the 'Peace Strike' has been allowed to have a considerably larger physical presence in the square and has not been the subject of the same campaign of police harassment as the PSPC.

The election has increased the pressure on Haw and his small group of supporters at the PSPC, including Barbara Tucker who has also been in Parliament Square full-time for some years. David Cameron has gone on record as saying that he would have cleared out their protest long ago, and a Conservative government is likely to both increase the pressure on the police to take action and to have an even blinder eye towards illegal police harassment and further vigilante action against them. The protesters are particularly worried that action may be taken in the days leading up to the state opening of Parliament on May 25th, possibly on the anniversary of the 2006 raid, which happened on May 23.

Those in the Democracy camp see themselves as reinforcing the long term protest by the peace campaign, and hope that their presence there will make it harder for the incoming government to get rid of the protests in the square. But unfortunately the PSPC regard the activities of the 'Peace Strike' and of this week's 'Democracy Camp' organised in conjunction with it as providing a pretext for more draconian police action against them, and have suggested that some at least of those involved may well be agent provocateurs in police pay.

The Democracy Camp has been in Parliament Square since the May Day demonstration there last Saturday, and police appear to have taken no action over various irregularities. Drinking alcohol for example is prohibited in Parliament Square - and the Democracy Camp has a notice telling people not to do so, but on both occasions I've visited there were people openly drinking, and the people from the PSPC have been protesting to the campers about this.

At one point the dispute between the camp and the PSPC deteriorated with a man on the camp's sound system making what were possibly intended as humorous put-downs of Barbara Tucker who was at the time attacking the Tory Party for the backing it receives from the oil giants. Clearly some of the campers were distressed by this and he was asked to desist, and some of those present tried to calm the situation. But generally the camp's activities were more positive, and while I was there considerable work was taking place making banners and placards, as well as people discussing and dancing.

Brian Haw too was continuing his campaign, and gave a spirited rendering of the poem 'Kabullshit', written this February, one of a number of war related poems from the Freedomlite site.  http://www.freedomlite.org/?p=67

Shortly before 6pm, a procession set out from the camp towards the media village opposite the Houses of Parliament on College Green with these banners. The TV crews largely looked rather bored and mostly pointedly ignored the protest but a few did bother to point a camera in their direction.

After a few minutes of music and dancing and some short speeches, the campers turned around and made their way back to Parliament Square. As they arrived several police vans drove up, apparently worried that the protesters might disrupt media coverage of the election. Police stopped and talked to a few of the campers, and one young man drinking from a can of beer was warned that it was an offence to drink alcohol in public there. But otherwise they seemed just to stand around an watch.

A similar report with some more background information and a different set of pictures is on Demotix:

 http://www.demotix.com/news/324773/arguments-democracy-camp

and in time I'll post more pictures on My London Diary.