One story which hardly rippled the news last week was the removal of tents and display material belonging to the late Brian Haw and Barbara Tucker, currently held in prison, from the pavement of Parliament Square. Brian’s protest is continuing, with a band of volunteers taking shifts in manning the site.
Around 20 police arrived at 7am last Wednesday, 31 August, and, ignoring the protests of those present, removed the two tents and the 3 metres or so of the display, describing them as “litter.” One of the tents they removed is normally home to Barbara Tucker who was sentenced to nine weeks imprisonment for obstructing what she claims was an illegal search of her tent while she was in it. She also claims that she was refused legal representation and the proper disclosures and access to her paperwork for the trial, having been remanded to prison the day prior to the trial.
The officer who led last Wednesday’s raid to remove the tents and material was the same officer, Sgt David Cole who she had obstructed him on the morning of the State Opening of Parliament on 25 May 2010. The incident was filmed on Brian Haw’s camera, which police unknowingly left running after they had arrested him. He was also the officer who Brian on the video claims had assaulted him and subjected him to unnecessary violent restraint for some 40 minutes on an earlier occasion. The video is on the Parliament Square blog.
One of the team who has kept Brian Haw’s Parliament Square Peace Campaign running 24/7 since his death and was there at the time of the police raid
Police earlier stole Brian Haw’s rather larger display in May 2006, after which it was re-created as the work of art, State Britain’ by Mark Wallinger down the road at Tate Britain. His last words were to Barbara Tucker, “Babs, our work is not yet finished“.
Just a few yards along the front of Parliament Square a second peace campaign, Maria Gallestegui’s Peace Strike, continues. One rather well-known political columnist (who just happened to go to the same primary school as my wife) paraded his ignorance and lack of observation and attention in The Guardian a few weeks back, suggesting that the slogan ‘ Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori’ (it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country) were rather an unsuitable slogan for a peace protest. Possibly the splattered pool of red paint – blood – from which the words stand out in white might have give him a clue what it was about, or even the words underneath “the old lie”.
Hard to believe that Simon Hoggart was not aware of the most famous poem from the ‘Great War’, the First World War, Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est, its title taken from an ode by Horace, with its vivid description of the terrible effects of a poison gas attack, which ends with the words “The old lie” followed by the quotation ‘Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.’
But then the comment did come from a man with a rabid fear of bicycles.
But perhaps the greatest scandal of Parliament Square is the continued denial of access to the public, with an ugly fence around the whole area encaging Churchill, Lloyd George and the others, with a few wandering ‘heritage wardens’ making sure we and the many tourists don’t enjoy our heritage.