The Set-Up

The arrangement was fairly simple, or so I though: from 10AM to 12PM as many as we could attract would protest against the right to protest while having official permission to protest and saying that we should, at very least, keep this demand in place.

In the event it turned out that the Scribo Ergo Sum authors were the only ones there, myself included, and I turned up almost half an hour late as a consequence of getting to sleep at around quarter past six that morning but, this considered, I was in a surprisingly suitable state for the protest. It was cold but this only left things brisk.

Douglas I had already met in person, through a mutual friend, but meeting Ali was an introduction, at least in person. It was not the most extreme example possible but it remains strange to me that you can “Meet” somebody upon and via the internet yet never have seen them and never have heard their voice. This is an instance of futureshock, I imagine.

“Shall we protest, then?” I was asked. I replied in the affirmative and we got to work.

Baby Steps

The actual arrangement of the protest was rather tricky: the terms set by the approval were both meticulously precise and bafflingly vague. We ended up wandering around Westminster and leaving a leaflet through DEFRAs mailbox. Unfortunately the Home Office seemed to have no equivalent, presumably due to some cowardly fear of explosives being inserted into it. Whaever happened to real men?

Oh, right, Jacqui Smith is…Uh, moving on.

Eventually we found a crowded location which seemed to be beyond the boundary but devoid of many police, thus suitable. Unfortunately we later realised that it was immediately outside the guest entrance to the House of Commons and thus a police officer but thankfully this particular one seemed fully occupied with their role and thus left us unmolested.

We got through a surprising amount of the leaflets, in the event, albeit primarily to tourists. Which means we might well have convinced Japan but the number of English people we got them to is unclear.

How well the irony of the leaflets {which hopefully somebody more technologically literate can post a picture of} translated is also something which I am uncertain of but the people walking away seemed to be reading the literature we gave them so I am pleased enough.

That said it was very cold and many people ignored us entirely but that comes with the territory for winter and leafleteering in general, respectively. A policeman walked by on a few occasions but I managed to resist the urge to give him one.

The finest moment came when a maternal looking woman from an unknown foreign location stopped opposite from us and asked us what we were protesting about. I informed her that we were protesting against the right to protest and she seemed rather bemused, pausing for a short while to consider this before asking the obvious: ‘Why?’ This I found surprisingly hard to handle and eventually opted for: “They’re subversive”, doing my very best to keep a straight face and only barely managing it.

I also mentioned that they damage our society and handed her a leaflet.

This was read with a slightly concerned, slightly uncomprehending fashion and eventually she looked up and I told her that we were not exactly being entirely serious and she replied she had hoped as much.

After this exchange we did our best to rid ourselves of the rest of the leaflets before the time limit expired but did not stoop so low as to giving them out to the massive cluster of Americans congregating across the road from us. After this we went off for coffee and foods and then a meeting with a rather more tenacious, high-profile demonstator…

An Audience With Haw

We had seen the tents and posters, for they are hard to miss, in passing and decided to pay the arch-dissenter himself. Upon the approach a fit of nerves overtook us all and our noble editor hung back while Ali and I advanced.

Having seen him in various photographs, film footage and cartoons seeing him it was rather odd to view him up close and in the flesh. He was a good deal more weathered than the photographs of him taken a few years ago, as you would expect but I rather hadn’t.

I had rather anticipated it being a case of him holding court, the leftists of London congregating around him in rings and offering him their reverence and respect in return for his blessings and wisdom, an impression hardly dispelled by the sight of a middle aged woman cavorting around the area in a top hat. Upon arrival, however, it became clear that it was more a case of him and a few trusted allies {one of which gave him a supermarket sandwich} with everyone else regarded warily, as a gawper or potential threat. Asceticism reigned here and the ideal, not the man, was king.

My first question was how long he had been there {as it was a question which we had discussed amongst ourselves earlier} and he expressed disdain towards it, scoffing and tutting and wondering why I could not have asked a more original one {it later turned out that he had actually been there since June 2001, originally over sanctions} but things improved rapidly when I asked Ali to hand him the leaflet.

He is clearly a man not devoid of humour, despite his hard-boiled demeanor, and when we were approaching he was discussing his idea for a t-shirt poking fun at Gordon Brown {which the Fifth Way may well create and post upon Scribo Ergo Sum shortly} and he seemed to see the amusing side of the leaflet, although Ali took pains to make it perfectly clear that his intention was satirical, an act of great wisdom.

He seemed scornful, however, of our use of the word “Permission” when we described our difficulties arranging the event, arguing that since the authorities could not technically deny any request it was really “Approval” instead, and that under the Human Rights Act the Freedom of Expression was explicitly protected.

Taking legal advice from him might not be the best of ideas but he certainly had a well reasoned approached to the legal system. According to him such legislation was not for peaceful people but outlaws, a group which he implicitly distanced himself from. Considering his unshaven visage and his interaction with the police I found it hard to imagine a more suitable Platonic Ideal for an outlaw, but was polite enough to keep this observation to myself…

He was clearly, though, a man of principle and the embodiment of commitment to the cause. Despite having seven children and a wife he decided to spend his time waiting outside an institution that feels nothing but disdain and contempt for him to make a series of decisions that he is aware will never come.

Behind him was a rather revolting picture, barely distinguishable as human and in fact resembling some sad accident involving an omelette and tomato ketchup rather than anything even animal. I knew from a YouTube video that it was, in fact, a severely mutated child that most likely died shortly after the picture was taken. He claimed that this was a consequence of the use of spent uranium shelling in Afghanistan and that seems to be a likely allegation: the use of such ammunition results in a fine, radioactive dust that coats the surrounding area.

I once talked to a former soldier who had been exposed to it before seeing his health rapidly disintegrate, tests showing his blood to be heavily irradiated and his body suffering heavily from the exposure to these substances in almost every way possible. Worse still this form of weaponry is used in civilian areas and the settlement’s inhabitants are then not informed of the condition that their home has been left in. Given how much damage was done to an adult in peak, military appropriate physical condition I would hate to consider the effect of it upon a child within the womb.

I did not have to imagine it, though, it was in my face.

Although far harder to make into an amusing leaflet for any but the blackest of wits this seems as good a cause as any to include for our next protest.

I asked him the rather more pertinent question of when he was leaving, to conclude, his reply being that “I will leave when I’m told.” We looked rather surprised, at this, both presuming that this had already happened at least once. “But not by them.” Divine orders, I enquired? He stated that he would leave “When it ends, but it hasn’t even started.” he seemed slightly disdainful at the small numbers of people sleeping there, saying he wanted more and that “People need to wake up”.

He said that we were doing our part, though, although I have to say that I consider an hour and a half or so of aimless wandering and light leafleteering rather less strenuous than living on pavement for over six years.

Meeting Haw was an intense event, that alternated between incredibly awkward {for us, at least} and highly lucid. He mentioned his website so it only seems fair to link it here and hope that he checks his trackbacks on the hacked House of Commons wi-fi he presumably uses to update it:

http://www.parliament-square.org.uk/

Aftermath, wind-down

Afterwards we chatted politics on the green, then Ali left and gave me some bread since apparently they would not allow him to carry it into where he was headed. Thankfully the two loaves had cost him all of 30p.

In hindsight we should perhaps of been a good deal less cautious: a true activist sees the entire affair of protest as an inconvenience that they must endure to convince others and considers arrest to simply be yet another manifestation of the bother. Unfortunately a trio of polite middle class white boys are often not quite capable of emulating this attitude and this proved the case today. We distributed plenty but not all we had, and hardly caused a stir.

The amount of good we did was dubious but without having attempted anything we would have stood no chance at all. For an effort executed at short notice, on strictly limited funds and with the government not letting us know that it was even permitted {or authorised, as Haw would have it} until the night before the event it was certainly not a catastrophe and regardless of achievements was certainly an enjoyable day, well spent and certainly something that I intend to repeat.