MichaelMoore.com

A War Resister Outshouts a Law Meant to Quiet Him

By Jonathan Allen / New York Times

LONDON - It is just over four years since Brian Haw began camping on the sidewalk across the street from Parliament to protest government policies in Iraq.

In that time, his single placard has blossomed into several dozen banners, sculptures and photographic displays that stretch about 20 yards across the green at Parliament Square.

At first, his protest was directed at the impact of United Nations economic sanctions, imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, on the children of Iraq. After the American-led invasion of 2003, which Prime Minister Tony Blair's government supported, it became, to use Mr. Haw's preferred term, a protest for peace.

Mr. Haw, a 56-year-old former carpenter, may seem the very embodiment of British freedom of speech to the tourists who photograph him. But some lawmakers viewed it differently, complaining in particular that his use of a bullhorn to get his views across was distracting them from their work.

So they designed a law to remove him.

The law requires anyone wishing to demonstrate within roughly a half-mile radius of Parliament to seek written permission from the police at least six days in advance (24 hours in exceptional cases), effectively banning spontaneous protests. Organizers of an unapproved protest face up to 51 weeks in prison and a fine of up to the equivalent of $4,500.

But the lawyers who drafted the legislation neglected to make it retroactive to cover already existing protests, though, so Mr. Haw remains, the only individual exempt from the new police powers.

Indeed the law, inspired a renewed burst of bullhorn activity as other people gather now to protest the restrictions on their right to protest.

"Parliament makes itself look utterly ridiculous when it claims to be the mother of Parliaments and the cradle of democracy and yet tries to ban protests like Brian's," said Jeremy Corbyn, a legislator from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party who opposed the new law. "I think it's a question of some people being embarrassed about having this beautiful building and this beautiful square with Brian there, reminding them about their decision to vote for war."

On Aug. 1, Mr. Corbyn joined protesters who demonstrated in the square on the law's first day in effect. Many wore symbolic black gags over their mouths. The police arrested five demonstrators, including a 70-year-old woman and a Palestinian man with a bullhorn, and charged them with "protesting in a designated place without authorization" - a criminal offense for which the maximum penalty is a fine equivalent to $1,800. Another six demonstrators have since been arrested at similar protests and face charges. All have pleased not guilty and are facing trial.

Although police have now charged a total of eleven demonstrators under the new law, it was always Mr. Haw - and the noise associated with him - that featured most prominently in the debate in Parliament.

John Bercow, a Conservative Party legislator, argued in favor of the measure, saying, "There is a difference between free speech and a licensed, permanent cacophony of a destructive character."

Patrick Cormack, another Conservative, said, "I do not think that any individual has the right indefinitely to deface the center of a great capital city, which is what we have seen over the past three years with Mr. Haw."

That the lawmakers missed their target gives little pleasure to Mr. Haw. "It's not about the messenger, it's about the message," he said in an interview, pointing to a display of weather-bleached photographs showing Iraqi children born with deformities, which his exhibit contends is a result of depleted uranium munitions used by the United States and British forces during the Persian Gulf war.

"Doesn't that move you?" he said.

He is baffled that his photographs have not attracted more permanent supporters onto the sidewalk. "I can't kiss my own child each night, but I'm doing this for all the children," he said. "Isn't my neighbor's child as precious as mine? Isn't it sad that it's exceptional to value someone else's kid as much as mine?"

Mr. Haw has seven children. His wife, Kay, filed for divorce about a year into his demonstration.

The protest is not Mr. Haw's first. He traveled to trouble spots in Cambodia and Northern Ireland before embarking on his vigil opposite Parliament.

Parliament Square is, for now, his home. His mail is delivered there (a letter marked "the man in the hat opposite Big Ben" got through safely). It was his registered address when he ran for Parliament in last May's general election. (He took 0.8 percent of the vote in his area.)

He subsists on donations of coffee, food and rolling tobacco. The heavy sheepskin coat that gets him through the winter was left by a mystery benefactor, and his lawyers are working pro bono. At night, he sleeps under a green tarp, and he spends his days hectoring the powerful across the road, urging passers-by to do the same.

There are no pedestrian crossings onto the green in the middle of Parliament Square, but many people will cut though the traffic to read Mr. Haw's fume-blackened banners and to hear his impassioned and practiced arguments. An occasional driver gives a supportive honk of a car horn. There are dissenters too: Mr. Haw says that his nose has been broken on three occasions by irate passers-by.

Although his place in the square is assured for now, he is still bound by other new legislation that restricts electronically enhanced sound near Parliament.

His lawyers have advised him to keep his bullhorn switched off, but he thinks loose wording in the legislation might have created another loophole: "There's an exception for megaphones in the case of an emergency," he said. "I believe genocide and torture could possibly constitute an emergency."