Rikki Blue
Not Mitch. Photo: Rikki Blue
Sporting a wide range of banners, the ‘March against Corruption’ in London on 1 March was a strangely mixed crowd, with overtly right-wing elements, ‘anons’ in V for Vendetta masks, and anti-capitalists. Aside from one minor scuffle leading to an arrest, the march passed off as intended, peacefully, but I’m not sure if many passers-by would have understood the message.
The London event was organised on Facebook by a controversial character named ‘Mitch…
Mark Wallinger's “State Britain” installation, a loving recreation of the whole forty metres of Brian Haw's Parliament Square anti-war protest site in all its former glory, opened on 15 January at Tate Britain.
One week on, Brian was at Westminster Magistrates' Court to hear whether he had a case to answer for allegedly breaching conditions imposed on his demonstration last May.
Masterclass of absurdityHis defence had asked for the case to be thrown out on two grounds, and…
On 8 May, Brian Haw's exemption from the ban on unauthorised protest under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) came to an end.
The Home Office won an appeal against last year's High Court decision that the Act could not be applied retrospectively and Brian's protest has, in theory, been brought under police control.
Attempts at controlDespite media headlines to the effect that this would be the end of Brian's epic stand against this government's foreign…
Every Sunday afternoon, campaigners stage an open picnic on Parliament Square to plan ideas to subvert or test the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (section 132). SOCPA requires advance written police permission for demonstrations around parliament, thus criminalising spontaneous protest.
Dozens of people have been arrested since this law's inception last August (see PNs), but its operational enforcement appears related to the size of the demonstration and media…
