Brian Haw – now in his 7th year!

Parliament Square peace campaigner Brian Haw is now in the seventh year of his protest. He started on June 2nd 2001 and despite numerous attempts to evict him including specially enacted legislation – SOCPA – he is still here. A selection of photos is attached – including some of Brian in 2005 before most of his display was removed by the Met. The number of tents in the Square was 9 at the time of his 6th anniversary party on June 2nd but it had risen to 11 on July 8th and Brian has his megaphone back – so he can continue to remind those in the `Mother of all Parliaments` of the lies that were used to justify the war.

There is also a photo of Brian’s display in the Tate gallery and one of Tony Blair’s somewhat more upmarket residence in London’s fashionable Connaught Square.


Brian’s website:  http://www.parliament-square.org.uk/



SOCPA

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) (2005 c.15) is an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament aimed primarily at creating the Serious Organised Crime Agency. It was introduced into the House of Commons on 24 November 2004 and was passed by Parliament and given Royal Assent in April 2005. Measures to introduce a specific offence of "incitement to religious hatred" were included in early drafts of the Act, but then dropped in order to get the bill passed before the UK general election, 2005. (The offence has since been created as the Racial and Religious Hatred Act.)

Protests near Parliament

The Act is controversial primarily for an additional, entirely unrelated provision, which restricts the right to demonstrate within an exclusion zone of up to one kilometre from any point in Parliament Square. Demonstrators have to apply to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police six days in advance, or if this is not reasonably practicable then no less than 24 hours in advance. No equivalent provision is made for any other Parliament in the United Kingdom. The area itself is defined by a Statutory Instrument rather than the Act. It specifically excludes Trafalgar Square, a traditional site of protest on the northern boundary of the area. Apart from Parliament it also includes Whitehall, Downing Street, Westminster Abbey, the Middlesex Guildhall, New Scotland Yard, and the Home Office. It also covers a sliver of land on the other bank of the River Thames, including County Hall, the Jubilee Gardens, St Thomas' Hospital and the London Eye.

These provisions of the Act are widely believed to have been introduced as a result of Brian Haw, a peace campaigner, who has since 1 June 2001 protested against Britain and the USA's policy towards Iraq. He uses placards and a loudspeaker to get his message across, which some British MPs find disruptive. Patrick Cormack MP said in a Parliamentary debate on 7 February 2005 that the lives of "members of staff in Portcullis House and 1 Parliament Street, as well as the police who are on duty at Members entrance day after day … are made intolerable by those people baying away, without a crowd to address, merely repeating themselves ad nauseam."

However, others, such as Jeremy Corbyn MP disagreed, saying "The Minister should think carefully about removing rights that are enshrined in our history," and Glenda Jackson MP agreed with him. "I regard it as the voice of democracy", she said. Lembit Öpik MP drew attention to the comments of the Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, on 7 April 2002, said: "When I pass protestors every day at Downing Street... I may not like what they call me, but I thank God they can. That's called freedom."

The legislation initially appeared ineffective against Mr Haw. The High Court of Justice ruled that as Haw's protest had begun in June 2001 he wasn't required to get authorisation. The three-strong judicial panel accepted arguments by Mr Haw's lawyers that the law only applied to new demonstrations taking place after it came into force, not those which had been in progress for some time. However, on 8 May 2006, this decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal. On August 1, the day that the Act came into force, the Stop the War Coalition and others organised a protest against the prohibition. They pointedly did not ask for permission. The action attracted some 200 people according to reports — among them Lauren Booth, Tony Blair's sister-in-law — and saw five people arrested.

The first conviction under the Act was in December 2005, when Maya Evans was convicted for reading the names of British soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed in the Iraq War, under the Cenotaph in October, without police permission.


In January 2007 Tate Britain opened State Britain, an installation by artist Mark Wallinger that recreated the display confiscated by the police from Brian Haw's protest. The Tate press release on the exhibition mentioned that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 prohibited "unauthorised demonstrations within a one kilometre radius of Parliament Square" and that this radius passed through the Duveen Hall, literally bisecting Wallinger's exhibit. Wallinger marked this on the floor with a black line running through the Tate. Press reports dwelt on the potential dangers of this infringement, speculating that the police might even remove the half of the exhibit on the "wrong side of the line". Charles Thomson of the Stuckists art group wrote to The Guardian, pointing out that the exclusion zone ended at Thorney Street, 300 yards before the Tate.


Gordon Brown has said he plans to repeal this section of the SOCP, meaning that protesters will be able to protest freely in the kilometre-radius of parliament without prior permission being granted. Groups such as People in Common and Brian Haw's supporters who have been at the forefront of protesting against SOCPA 132 await his decision.