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Law created to get rid of protester
Oct 26 2004
By Jonathan Walker
A new law is to be passed solely to evict Midland carpenter Brian Haw from his one-man peace protest outside Parliament.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will announce he is to outlaw "permanent encampments" outside Parliament as well as the use of megaphones, according to reports.
The measure will be included in legislation establishing the Serious Organised Crime Agency, a new FBI-style body designed to fight drug and gun crime.
But Ministers have been forced to include a special clause aimed squarely at Mr Haw because no one currently has the power to evict him. Mr Haw, aged 55, has spent more than three years living under a roll of plastic sheeting in Parliament Square, a large roundabout opposite the House of Commons.
The square, which features a well-known statue of Winston Churchill, is now adorned by Mr Haw's exhibition of banners and flags protesting against the war in Iraq and conflict in general.
But even many MPs sympathetic to his views have come to believe he must be removed, mainly because he frequently shouts slogans through a car battery-powered megaphone into their offices.
The sub-dean of Westminster Abbey, which is next to the roundabout, has also complained that the encampment is an eyesore.
Mr Haw began his protest with a day of contemplation in his back garden in Redditch, Worcestershire, before heading to London.
Westminster Council has tried to evict him, but when the case came to court the judge sided with Mr Haw.
Then the House of Commons authorities suggested he might be in breach of medieval statutes guaranteeing MPs safe passage through the streets of Westminster, but after trawling through the statues they concluded nothing could be done.
Scotland Yard threatened to move him on because his banners constituted a terrorist threat. Someone could hide behind them and take pot-shots at MPs, officers claimed. But Mr Blunkett's decision to create new laws is a recognition that no one has the power to make Mr Haw go away.
