A giant among men

Oh please, no:

The peace campaigner Brian Haw, whose 10-year-old camp directly opposite the Palace of Westminster was finally cleared away last year after his death, could soon be back there again, if a campaign to erect a statue in his memory succeeds.

Haw's camp, which at one point stretched all along one side of Parliament Square, London, inspired an installation in Tate Britain when Mark Wallinger recreated it down to the last battered teddy bear and harrowing photograph of refugee children. The artist went on to win the Turner prize.

The peace campaigner's years on the pavement began as an outraged protest against the war in Iraq, and eventually cost Haw his health and his family life. He died of lung cancer at 62.

No no no. He originally set up camp in Parliament Square in June 2001, long before the Iraq war, as a protest against the sanctions. "Stop killing our kids", I recall was his original slogan - addressed, of course, not to the person who was actually killing the kids in Iraq, ie Saddam Hussein, but to the parliament he was facing. As for his actual kids, he abandoned all seven of them when he opted to set up permanent camp on a pavement in the centre of London. His wife, very sensibly, divorced him. 

The campaign for a permanent memorial to his life and protest is being organised by friends and supporters It has already attracted patrons including the actors Vanessa Redgrave and Sir Ian McKellen, the politician Tony Benn, the film director Ken Loach and the CND veteran Bruce Kent.

What you might call the usual suspects - though Sir Ian McKellen's something of a surprise.

From the farewell I wrote on the occasion of Haw's death last year:

You thought that 9/11 was an inside job. You had large posters saying the number killed in Iraq was 2,000,000. Even the editor of the Lancet didn't think it was that high. You ranted at Americans like some demented downmarket Harold Pinter. You thought Iraq was all about mass torture and boiling people in oil. There may have been some truth in that while Saddam was in power, but that's not what you meant, was it? Your politics were the politics of the street ranter. Speakers Corner on a Sunday morning, yes: Parliament Square non-stop for 10 solid years, no thanks. A right to protest, yes: a right to live in a camp opposite the Houses of Parliament displaying lurid and absurd posters with barely any connection to reality...frankly, no.

And yet you were universally lauded by all the right people. Mark Wallingford won the Turner Prize in 2007 for his replica of your protest site, State Britain:

"Brian Haw is a remarkable man who has waged a tireless campaign against the folly and hubris of our government's foreign policy," Wallinger said.

"For six-and-a-half years he has remained steadfast in Parliament Square, the last dissenting voice in Britain. Bring home the troops, give us back our rights, trust the people," he added.

The jury commended Wallinger, 48, for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance".

They said: "The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths."

But our rights don't need to be given back to us. They're there, across the road from your ridiculous charade, in the Houses of Parliament. That's where our democratically elected representatives voted to support the overthrow by force of Saddam Hussein. They may have been right, they may have been wrong, but that's democracy in action. There, in the Houses of Parliament - not with you and your self-regarding friends shouting loudly across the road.   

Still, we've not the heard the last of you, have we? John McDonnell MP is campaigning for the erection of a permanent monument to you. London Assembly Member Jenny Jones has called onWestminster Council to give you a blue plaque:

Brian Haw was an extraordinary man, his protest was the anti-war emotion of millions of us, made visible outside parliament, to the fury of some.

Yes, truly an icon for the right-thinking: a hero for those who think democracy's just fine as long as it doesn't come up with stuff they disagree with.

Last word to Zia Trench, talking of her 2009 play about you:

There is a messianic illusion around him, something so Jesus-like about him. He has taken on our fight but what has this cost him? The play looks at the man behind the protest and how battles fought for liberty can cost a man his wife, home and sanity.

Half way to canonisation already.

And so it proves.

The planned inscription:

"A giant among men: the establishment said he was mad: yet for 10 years in all weathers he defied parliament and saw that with our wars we were destroying and maiming generations of children with appalling weapons causing grotesque birth defects."

 

Comments

[Fabian]

Oh noes!!!!

[Julie]

I wish Jenny Jones would go to the hairdressers.

[Bob-B]

'Campaigner for the preservation of dictators' would be good label for him.

[Kellie]

A conventional metal statue seems far too conservative a way to commemorate such a successful and long running piece of street theatre. A better memorial would be a living statue - his supporters could take it in turns to paint themselves bronze and stand on a box, perfectly still.

[Mick H]

With a swivel-eyed rant, on the hour, every hour.