Brian Haw's peace camp - pre trashingConnoisseurs of the life and works of Brian Haw will be tickled by this story in the entertainment section of the BBC news website...
Brian Haw, who has held an anti-war vigil outside the Houses of Parliament for six years, has been immortalised in art in London's Tate Britain gallery.
Now former Turner Prize nominee Mark Wallinger has recreated the protestor's camp, and his banners, in the Tate. The gallery falls within a 1km zone around Parliament in which unauthorised demonstrations are prohibited. Wallinger has placed his exhibition, called State Britain, half inside and half outside the exclusion zone - which is marked on the floor.
Marvellous
Not Brian Haw's peace camp - but still trashed anywayFor some reason that’s beyond me, an accidental oversight presumably, the article neglects to mention that the SOCPA exclusion zone also encompasses my own birthplace which is a real pain for all my followers I can tell you.
Brian Haw’s antics have been a constant source of amusement and wonder to me since he started his protest back in 2001. First the government tried to turf him out on the basis that he was making too much noise and disturbing the parliamentary chamber. That would be the same parliamentary chamber filled with drunken and/or comotose middle-aged men so tanked up on taxpayer-subsidised booze and making such a spectacle of themselves that television cameras are forbidden by law to capture their antics.
Then those same men passed a new law targeted at removing Haw - trashing centuries old rights in the process. However, our law makers were too pissed, or too stupid, to draft the new bill properly and failed to make it retrospective and therefore applicable to existing protests including Haw's.
Then their mates at New Scotland Yard got on the case and seventy-eight of them jumped out of vans at three o’clock one morning, thoughtfully pointing nearby traffic cameras away from the peace camp beforehand, and trashed the camp on the basis that it might be a terrorist base.
Fans of the Who Dares Wins school thought, which maintains that all peace protesters are at best foolish traitors and at worst Arab-funded terrorists hiding AK-47s and Semtex in their packed lunches and sandals, no doubt approve of the Met's treatment of Brian Haw. Personally, I miss the days when our police force didn't behave like some bizarre hybrid of the Gestapo and the Muppets.
Anyway, like I said, marvellous entertainment. Keep it up Brian...
.
3 comments:
"A court was told last month that police feared Mr Haw could be exploited by terrorists wanting to bomb Westminster."
Oh please. The more one dives into the realm of police and justice, the more one has to question if people are really the "crown of the evolution"...
... or even the 'Crown of Creation'
What a strange creation this would be...
Post a Comment