TUCKERS LUCK

Respecting the recently deceased hasn’t lasted long as Brian Haw’s demo camp protesting against the illegal Iraq war was dismantled by a police raid in the early morning of Wed 31st August.

At 8am a team of about 20 police and government Policy Enforcement Officers stole Brian’s display from Parliament square, where it had been for the last 10 years. They claimed that had authorisation under the SOCPA (Serious Organised Crime and Police Act) and protesters in the square tried to vain to argue that there is no provision in this act for power of seizure, but to no avail.

Since Brian died of lung-cancer in June, his spot had been occupied by Barbara Tucker. His last words to her were, “Babs, our work is not finished” and she’d manned the site since up until her arrest on 11th August, on charges of ‘obstructing a search’ of the site (which she claims was illegal), and assaulting a police officer (which she denies). She was then not allowed to have her requested representation whilst on remand, and so refused consequently to leave her cell for her hearing.

The ‘judge’ (Nicholas Evans) was not to be denied however. He came down to to her cell to ask her for her plea, which she refused to give. So back in his courtroom he held a one-sided court case with himself – entering a plea of ‘not guilty’ then declared her guilty and sentencing her to nine weeks in Holloway!

David ‘call me Dave’ Cameron was interviewed in July 2009 about his vow to get rid of the site, which had previously been granted permanency by the High Court. He stated “ I don’t have all the answers... I’m all in favour of free speech, the right to demonstrate, the right to protest... I’m all for demonstrations... but my argument is enough is enough.”

Babs alleges that after this, the police sergeant and judge were out to persecute Brian and herself  from that point on - although the inept Sgt. David Cole didn’t foresee being caught on Brian’s camera during a stitched-up arrest during the State Opening of Parliament in May 2010.

Nonetheless, the dismantling of the site was enabled because Babs was not present and the site was deemed ‘litter’ as it wasn’t occupied. As Babs points out, if you were protesting in Libya, the UK and NATO would give you a machine gun, a rocket launcher, and arrange arial bombing so that people can, in their own words, “take matters into their own hands”.

* See www.brianhaw.tv