When I get to Parliament Square on this hot May morning, the signs hit me right in the face. From the sidewalk, indistinguishable pictures wiped out by the rain, obscure objects covered in red paint and pompous sentences written in big black letters create a bizarre scenery. On the square, Brian has built his own headquarters of signs, dolls with missing limbs, protesting teddy bears and pictures of atrociously mutilated babies and children.
A few other people, just like me, are here to get a few words from Brian, 24 hours after the Court of Appeal ruled against him and made his protest outside the Houses of Parliament illegal.
Unfortunately, I’m told that, today, “he’s not in a talking mood”. A bit surprising for someone who is trying to get his message across, I think to myself. But actually, although he is not in a one-on-one talking mood, but he is still up for shouting, ringing his bell at people across the road, and asking them to “come and see!”.
I finally manage to get to him to ask if I could talk to him for a little while. “I’m tired of people coming every day, every night, to chit chat.” “Not in talking mood”, I remind myself and decide to just watch. If he doesn’t want to talk to someone, I can surely observe how he tries to make himself heard and maybe get some answers to the questions I wanted to ask him and I’m asking myself. Brian reaches for his bell, stands behind the barriers and shouts across the road. He also grabs a close-up picture of a deformed baby’s face, kept in a plastic jacket. He cries for the parliament guards’ attention: “Officer, are you a father? Look at what we do to other people’s babies!”
While Brian delivers his monologue, I wonder what he is trying to do: start a movement? just raise awareness? However I find myself suddenly moved by this man, exiled across the road, shouting at a herd of busy people, amused tourists, ironically smiling guards and scornful drivers. A verse of Victor Hugo’s poem "Ultima Verba" (The Last Word) keeps coming back in my head. The great poet was himself engaged against Napoleon III and exiled. From the anger he felt for his leader, he wrote a collection of poems (Les Châtiments) which he concluded heroically in this verse: “Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là” (“If there is only one left, it will be me!”). Could it be that Brian Haw is the ultimate democrat, trusting the regime so much he believes that his voice is as powerful as the voice of those he’s governed by?
As my mind wanders and finds answers to its own interrogations, Brian spots a priest across the road: “Father, didn’t Jesus say “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” Look at what we’re doing to babies! What do you say to this brother?” The priest signs himself and keeps walking. “Repent! Repent!” Brian starts shouting, ringing his bell harder and quicker. “Repent while there's still time!”
Now I’m really confused. Is this man fighting for democracy, or is he trying to get people to “repent”? It doesn’t seem exclusive: he’s ready to fight against his government because he feels like he’s doing the Lord’s will. I thought Brian was a man with no fear, a man with an ideal of democracy, with a proposal against “greedy politicians”. But his fight just seems too religious all of a sudden.
He doesn’t seem to have any opinion on democracy; his signs don’t mention anything about freedom of speech, equality or justice. There are only religious sentiments; demonized pictures of Blair and Bush dipping their hands in bowls of blood, Virgin Mary statues, and cross-bearing teddies. All this confirms a feeling I have that Brian Haw doesn’t have a clear agenda or proposal. At the end of his speech he looks at me and says: “You’re Muslim, you’re Jewish, fine by me, but try being Jesus Christian for once”.
I am disappointed. Where I thought I would find a peace promoter, I found a peace fighter; where I thought I would find a non-violent protester inspired maybe by Gandhi’s teachings I found an angry and sour man; where I wanted to find someone different with real ideas on democracy, on war, on foreign policy, I found a man who was following commandments of a higher authority.
But the question is: is his being banned from Parliament Square Garden against democracy? Is it an attempt to curtail freedom of speech? There’s no simple answer to this. Brian poses himself as a martyr trying to be silenced by the government because he’s “telling the truth”. But is he revealing anything? He is showing pictures of deformed, dead or mutilated children which we don’t see in newspapers or on TV. He’s trying to make his audience react to his speech more than anything else.
The decision to remove him can however be seen as a threat to democracy in the sense that it seems to prove that freedom of speech and of expression, as well as the basis of democracy that every citizen is equal and has a right to be heard are things that need to be negotiated with the police before they can be expressed. Of course this law was arguably only passed to get rid of Brian himself but it just shows that a government can threaten its own regime (democracy) by passing laws against its basic principles. Instead of wondering whether Brian Haw is or isn’t a martyr, a victim of an unfair law; this is what we should reflect on: how far is a government prepared to go to protect itself from its own regime?
