In memory of Brian Haw

A World to Win salutes the uncompromising determination of Brian Haw, who became a symbol, not only for the anti-war movement, but for the basic democratic right to demonstrate and protest. His death from cancer at only 62 robs us of an unbending voice and symbol of resistance to the state.

Haw began his vigil directly outside the House of Commons on June 2, 2001 to protest against the UN-NATO sponsored sanctions on Iraq on June. He said he would stay there “as long as it took”. The carpenter from Essex, also a father of seven, used a megaphone to denounce war-mongering politicians. He survived on donations from supporters.

His campaign against what he termed the genocide of Iraq’s children took on a new meaning after the September 11 twin tower attacks in New York. New Labour joined the United States to invade Afghanistan not long after. In March 2003, Britain and the United States attacked Iraq, a war which ultimately led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, with many more fleeing into exile to avoid the ensuing violence.

Over the years, Haw was joined by supporters and campaigners including the Global Peace Strike, Democracy Village and fellow camper and hunger striker Maria Gallastegui, who was arrested for reading out the names of dead British soldiers outside the Cenotaph. Embarrassed by the vocal protests, Blair’s government sought to change the law to end Haw’s protest.

In 2003, House of Commons procedure committee recommended the law be changed to prohibit “unlicensed” protests in the square. The committee’s proposals were incorporated in the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) which, despite its name, gave the police vastly increased powers to remove protesters.

On one occasion Haw was injured by a police officer who shoved Haw’s camera into his face and then forced him to the ground. In 2006, 54% of Channel Four television viewers voted Haw the most politically inspiring figure of the year. Haw used the prize-giving ceremony to demand support for his campaign to put an end to the genocide and the looting. “It’s about oil, it’s about the arms industry,” he said.

In 2007 police removed all of Haw’s placards but one and arrested him under SOCPA. He was acquitted under a technicality a year later, but continued to be harassed by not only the police, but by the Greater London Authority under Mayor Boris Johnson. At the time of his death, Haw was still battling the authorities for the right to stay in Parliament Square.

Haw inspired artist Mark Wallinger who recreated his array of banners and placards and installed them in the Tate Gallery. Wallinger went on to receive the Turner Prize for his “State Britain”, which pointed to the severe restrictions imposed on the right to demonstrate in Westminster.

Haw sought to name and shame the successive Parliaments which approved the decisions made without reference to any democratic procedures to go to war. He hoped that his moral stand would inspire others to put an end to wars for profit, oil and political careers

The truth is that attacks on sovereign states by major capitalist powers are endemic to the economic and political system we live under and are used by desperate leaders of all parties. Yesterday’s admission by NATO that they bombed a residential area in Tripoli killing nine civilians provides more evidence if any is needed.

Haw’s marathon protest and sacrifice should be not only make us to mourn his passing and celebrate his achievement. It must be an incentive to unmask the sham façade that is misnamed democracy and create in its place a real alternative based on the needs of ordinary people.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Stop the vandals at the gate!

Since its foundation in 1984, the Turner Prize has stimulated widespread debate and a popular interest in contemporary art. Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar said yesterday that last year’s prize drew a record 90,000 visitors.

Work by the four artists shortlisted for the £25,000 Turner Prize traditionally provides a target for those with axes to grind. And indeed, even those enthusiastic about contemporary art have often found that finalists in previous years conformed too heavily to the taste of an elite circle of curators and galleries.

But this year’s group, which goes on display today at Tate Britain, has bucked the trend. There is an unusual and powerful sense of beauty in the art works by Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright.

And, odd man out Enrico David’s surreal group of lanky stuffed legs and humpty-dumpty shaped figures, has a wry, thought-provoking sense of humour. He uses a cast of characters to order his confused reactions to reality, thus performing psychoanalysis on himself.

Hiorns’ ash-coloured dust heaped on the floor has a haunting, almost apocalyptic feeling. When we learn that it is metal dust ground from an atomised passenger jet engine, the sense of mystery deepens. It morphs before our eyes into an exquisite shifting landscape in delicate shades of greys and blacks.

Wright’s vast wall painting, which will disappear forever when the show is over, invites contemplation as it evokes decorative designs by Rococo masters like Tiepolo as well as visionary elements drawn from artists like William Blake.

The Tate’s formidable trio of female interpreters, introducing the finalists, yesterday drew attention to the strong formal and psychological aspects of these works. But in addition, as a group, the artists have made a successful direct appeal to a sense of beauty combined with rather ominous undertones (the use of bovine brain matter, Skaer’s gigantic whale skeleton, for example) and the transformation of materials.

There is a sense of enigma, of foreboding, of things to come – which relates to the psychological climate of a Britain on the eve of massive social and cultural transformation. In the microcosm of artistic experimentation, the search for new languages and forms of communication outside and beyond the accustomed channels, a larger reality begins to emerge.


So, we must thank these artists who have eschewed the cheap thrills and rampant commercialism of recent years to explore new aspects of reality and imagination to expand the realm of human knowledge and perception.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum, far from the privileged spaces of the Tate and galleries in major “hubs”, educational institutions and local museums are struggling for their very existence. Local authority leaders like Tory Mike Freer says that his Barnet council in north London, “does not do culture”. And Broxtowe Council near Nottingham plans to cut £60,000 from a heritage centre which provides visitor and educational facilities for the D. H. Lawrence birthplace museum, which is the area’s major cultural attraction.

In London, in measures whose legality is under scrutiny, trustees at the Courtauld Institute of Art have sacked the staff of its world famous photographic libraries, in a desperate cost-cutting measure which means that some three million images will be withdrawn from public view.

Whilst glittering parties continue at private venues like the Saatchi and Gagosian galleries and the global auction houses gamble in the markets, culture in other areas faces death by a thousand cuts. We need a leap in imagination in the field of social and political action to match the inspiration provided by the Turner Prize artists to stop the vandals before it is too late.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary