I am writing to urge you to pressure the government to repeal the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill – Demonstrating without authorisation in a designated area – passed on 7th February 2005.

Since being passed this law has not increased public safety. It has merely increased police paperwork and led to the false arrest of peaceful protestors. Brian Haw, who has protested peacefully since the beginning of the Iraq war, is not to be treated as a pariah. He is a hero for saying what millions in the country believe: that British involvement in the Iraq war has been immoral, illegal and a waste of British taxpayers’ resources.

The notion of a designated zone in which one is not allowed to protest without prior police permission is poor in theory and absurd when applied in practice.

The precise dimensions of the ‘designated zone’ have been limited, on a rather arbitrary basis, to 1km. of Parliament Square. These dimensions, which could have better informed the debate, were not revealed to the public until four months later in Statuory Instrument 2005 No. 1537.

This is an example of a creeping authoritarianism in the UK. Prosecuting those who read out names of soldiers killed in Iraq next to the Cenotaph is nothing more than a smokescreen covering the real issue: a proper timetable for the removal of British forces from Iraq and the severance of this shocking and awful coalition between the governments of Tony Blair and George Bush.