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Brian Haw 7/1/49 - 18/6/11 RIP

IMC UK Features | 19.06.2011 10:23 | Anti-militarism | Terror War | World

Early on Saturday morning 18 June 2011, veteran peace protester Brian Haw, 62, passed away just after the camp he established right opposite the Houses of Parliament had celebrated its tenth anniversary of highly visible opposition to the wars being waged on ordinary people. Brian had been suffering from lung cancer, diagnosed less than a year ago.

Newswire: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Links: parliament-square.org.uk | brianhaw.tv

Brian Haw at the Downing Street Demo against the Fallujah Massacre, Sun 11/04/04
Brian Haw at the Downing Street Demo against the Fallujah Massacre, Sun 11/04/04

Brian Haw on Friday 7th May – shortly before his arrest. Vigil Day 1,072.
Brian Haw on Friday 7th May – shortly before his arrest. Vigil Day 1,072.

Tony Blair apologises to Brian for the attack on Iraq!
Tony Blair apologises to Brian for the attack on Iraq!


cindy sheehan and brian haw
cindy sheehan and brian haw

Mart Thomas drops by to show his support.
Mart Thomas drops by to show his support.

Brian Haw lectures the Mass
Brian Haw lectures the Mass




brian arriving at the court
brian arriving at the court

Brian Haw
Brian Haw


A long-term chain smoker who spent the last ten years of his life inhaling Parliament Square's toxic traffic fumes during his continuous protest, Brian Haw was diagnosed with lung cancer in September 2010. Although he started treatment almost immediately at St Thomas's hospital and subsequently spent six months in Germany undergoing private treatment, he has lost his fight for life and the peace movement has lost one of its most committed campaigners.

Brian Haw held up a big, shiny, in-yer-face mirror to government foreign policy, which ministers failed to smash or obscure in spite of their best efforts. He first came to Parliament Square in June 2001 to protest the economic sanctions placed on Iraq by the West. These had led to the unnecessary deaths of many thousands of civilians, including at least half a million children under the age of 5. Having witnessed the suffering and premature death of one of his own children, Brian felt obliged to act. His objections to conflict were certainly heartfelt having visited the Killing Fields of Cambodia, even travelling to Iraq in the early nineties and seeing for himself the impact of UK + US foreign policy. Always focusing on child victims, Brian's display contained graphic images of suffering mainly from Iraq and later Afghanistan, and included pictures of children with tumours and congenital abnormalities in areas such as Fallujah where uranium and other highly toxic munitions had been used against the civilian population.

Various legal (and illegal) attempts were made by the authorities over the years to remove Haw, but each one was successfully challenged and resisted. Consequently, his campaign became synonymous with not just his opposition to war but also the right of freedom of assembly. An early attempt to remove Brian for obstructing the highway failed miserably when a judge ruled that there was plenty of room for people to get past his display. Ministers then had the bright idea of writing a new law to get rid of him and the parts of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) limiting the freedom to protest in vicinity of Parliament were specifically drafted with this aim. However, the courts eventually decided that Brian Haw's protest, having already been in situ when the law was introduced, could not be retrospectively deemed illegal and he became the only person not required by law to seek permission for his protest, although the cops still imposed restrictions under the Act's provisions. Other efforts to remove Brian have included fencing off the whole grassed area of the square, which is controlled by the Greater London authority, and eventually obtaining a ruling against the camp encroaching on the grass, although this did not stop tents being pitched on the adjoining pavement.

Apart from the occasional absence to attend court hearings, Brian Haw maintained a continuous presence on the pavement opposite the British Parliament for over nine years and was often to be heard loudly declaiming politicians through his megaphone, which the authorities also tried to ban. His makeshift camp, originally very modest in size, grew as supporters donated signs and artwork until it was trashed and largely removed in 2006 by the cops alleging infringement of a SOCPA restriction. In 2007, artist Mark Wallinger won the Turner Prize for his installation 'State Britain', a re-creation of Haw's display before this attack.

IMC UK Features

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

R.I.P, Permanent Memorial at parliment sq

19.06.2011 11:06

R.I.P Memorial at parliment sq would be fitting

gs


Sad, sad, sad.

19.06.2011 14:27

A great example of conscience has been stilled. Very sad.

I didn't agree with Brian about everything, but he was a great example to everyone (especially those scumbags in the "Palace" of Westminster. They should be ashamed about their inaction over their many wars, but I imagine they will be delighted Brian is no longer able to be their conscience.



A N Other


Brian Haw presente!

20.06.2011 12:38

Brian encapsulated best Dan Berrigan's advice during the Vietnam War
"Don't just do something, stand there!"
As mass movements, and 2 million Iraqi dead (genocidal sanctions/ direct bombardment/ et.al)., came and went ....Brian spoke truth to power from close proximity.

You were in the right place at the right time for a long time, Brian.
A place where the lies (now exposed) were invented and told
and the orders to kill sprung from
...it will be impossible to walk past that place without thinking of you and the witness you gave for life against death.

Over these long years of war without end, publica apathy, it was nourishing and challenging to have someone there for so long saying the emperors have no clothes, no credibility, no integrity.
Today, they stand butt naked surrouded by the corpses they have generated.
See you on the other side Brian

Ciaron - Giuseppe Conlon House, London Catholic Worker
- Homepage: http://www.londoncatholicworker.org


Were did the money go?

01.07.2011 19:41

Ask Emma where the thousands £££ publlic donated to Brain Haw campaign went? Ask for the bank accounts, expose the lie

Snickersnacker


Brian Haw, peace campaigner, died on June 18th, aged 62

07.07.2011 00:07

WHEN Brian Haw sat in his old canvas chair in front of his banner-hung tent in Parliament Square, people kept coming by. Tourists with their cameras. Teenagers drinking beer. Commuters on their way to work. Taxis, vans, bicycles. Bloody big black cars with lying politicians in them. Buses with passengers all on their phones or buried in their papers. Drivers who wound down the car window, not stopping, and shouted “Get a job!”

Wasn’t that nice. But he had a job. He had it for ten years in sun, rain, sleet, snow. Never left the square. And his job was this. Get the people to wake up. Get them to realise that the USA and the UK were killing babies. Hundreds were dying every day in this place called Iraq and this place called Afghanistan. He had their photographs on his wall of shame. Bloated, pathetic, missing limbs. Sanctions were killing them. Sanctions and bombs. And especially, check out depleted uranium munitions. That poison was everywhere, in the air, in the water, even between the grains of sand. There wasn’t a Hoover in the world big enough to suck up all that shit. And everyone was responsible. Everyone. Raping and pillaging and murdering the world. Just to get that stuff called oil. FOOD YES, BOMBS NO, his banners said. COLAT DAMAGE, NO. A GENOCIDE TOO FAR. STOP KILLING MY KIDS.

People from the whole wide world filmed him on a regular basis. They liked to photograph his old corduroy hat—more badges than hat—which said THE WAR IS THE ENEMY OF THE POOR and SUPPORT US TROOPS—BRING EM HOME! They asked him how he slept. (Badly. How would you sleep if 200 babies were dying every day?) They fussed over how he ate. (Mostly chips people brought him and coffee with five sugars. He was lean as a twig. But you know what? People in Calcutta would think he was a king to have so much pavement to live on.) They asked about the mice. They had nested in his sheepskin coat once. He was far more worried about the rats across the road.

When he talked, he sounded tired. He was. Tired of the bollocks. Tired of people not taking responsibility for their inhumaneness to their fellow man. He probably smoked too much, too. Breathed in too much exhaust. Between sentences he would work his stubbly chin as if chewing on unpalatable facts. Then he’d sing:
Last night I had the strangest dream, I’d ever dreamed before;
I dreamed the world had all agreed, to put an end to war.

He spoke like an evangelist, because he was one. His parents were Christian, and he’d found Jesus too at Sunshine Corner beach school in Whitstable. After the merchant navy, he went missionising round Redditch in a minivan. He moved to Parliament Square in 2001 to express his Christian outrage about sanctions. Bush’s and Blair’s wars kept him there. He loved his neighbour’s kids as his own because he was a Christian. Other so-called Christians bombed them. Other “believers”, also in the square, didn’t care. (WESTMINSTER ABBEY, WAKE UP!) If the people who had marched in 2003 against the Iraq war had stayed, like him, the politicians would have thought again.

Police abuse

His megaphone helped spread the message. ARREST GEORGE BUSH, WAR CRIMINAL! HI TONY! 45 MINUTES, MR BLAIR. MR B-L-I-A-R. They could hear him even in the Commons chamber. At first Tony Blair said good old Brian, what a champion of free speech. Yes, he was. He defended the right to free expression in front of Parliament: 350 years of peaceful protest. Some rapper boys from South London came up and hugged him once. They said they totally supported him, fuck Parliament, fuck ’em all. But he wouldn’t have that. He just answered Love, Peace, Justice, stop killing my kids.

The authorities soon got tired of him, though. Westminster Council tried to remove him because he was a nuisance and “obstructing the pavement”. It failed. By 2005 Tony decided he’d had enough of the name-calling. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act said Mr Haw had to give six days’ notice, if you please, of any demonstration within a kilometre of Parliament. How could he do that? The High Court ruled against it, and said he was legal. But the police never acted as though he was. Any morning they might wake him up with a siren, whoop, whoop, Are you there Brian, yank up his plastic, rifle through his private property right in front of Parliament. Who was abusing whom then? In 2006 78 of them came to tear down his wall of pictures, smashed it, trashed it, left it like a bomb site. Left him with one sign. He stayed, of course.

People asked him about his own kids, seven of them. An off-limits topic. Family was left behind when he came to the square. His wife had divorced him, he’d learned. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t wanted to stay eight bloody years away from them, with the pollution and the drunks who broke his nose and the thugs who shouted “Wanker!” at him. He stayed because he wasn’t finished yet. And you know what? It was never fundamentally about free speech and the rights of Englishmen and all that stuff. It was about the dead children. And not walking by. [/quote]

The Economist Obituary
- Homepage: http://www.economist.com/node/18895032?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/brianhaw