Dan Kieran

by I Fought the Law- A Riotous Romp in Search of British Democracy (epub)

  I opened my rucksack and looked at the furry humiliation I’d lovingly packed a few hours earlier. The tarpaulin in front of me now held about twenty slightly bedraggled small teddy bears in a heap. There were plates of sandwiches and cakes too. Someone began to assemble the teddy bears into a circle and gave them a tiny plate each. It was a teddy bears’ picnic, but it was not quite what I’d had in mind. Doubt took me over completely. I looked around for support but was met only by strange blank faces. A few more people emerged and produced more small teddy bears, which they laid down with the others on the sodden plastic sheet. I’m not sure what I’d imagined. Perhaps a certain sense of camaraderie, smiling strangers unified in defiance of an unjust law. I’d always thought these protester types were full of kindness and good cheer. I put their unspoken hostility down to my Starbucks cup and the rain and began to unpack my suit. After all, what was the worst thing that could happen? I was hung over. I’d had three hours’ sleep. I was standing in the rain with a load of people I didn’t know and I was about to put on a teddy bear suit in an attempt to get myself arrested. What could possibly go wrong?

  As I climbed into it I heard a few sniggers but still no-one spoke to me, no doubt suspicious of this unknown lunatic in their midst. Matthew appeared when I was fully dressed and began to laugh. I like to think that I brought some much-needed good cheer to the proceedings. At least 1 was up for it. Either that or they all thought I was some kind of desperate maniac and they were simply too terrified about what I might do if they didn’t laugh supportively. At least my humiliation had broken the ice with Matthew. I started to quiz him about what had made him come to Parliament Square in the rain to eat a bowl of cold curry.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I wrote to my MP about SOCPA and she told me I’d have to get arrested if I wanted to expose it. She said someone had to push it through the courts. I got done a few weeks ago for breaking Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.’

  At this point two policemen appeared on the other side of the road and began to walk around the perimeter of the square. Matthew pinned a sign on my back that said ‘Serious Criminal?’ There was no escape now. The sign had turned me from a random lunatic in a teddy bear suit into an illegal demonstrator.

  ‘Those two policemen are going to come over and tell us to move,’ Matthew said. ‘They’ll give us a warning.’

  He looked completely unfazed. I felt my bowels twitch for the second time that day. I could see the headlines now: INCONTINENT TEDDY BEAR SECTIONED AFTER ARREST IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE.

  I asked Matthew what had happened when he got arrested.

  ‘When I first heard about the law I thought, “It’s got to be a joke.” But then I got arrested for having a picnic.

  After they gave me a warning I made a decision not to do anything remotely protesty. So I just lay face down in the grass, literally doing nothing, and they still came back and arrested me - for not moving.’ What would it mean for him to get arrested a second time? ‘I think I’d be in a lot of trouble. I might get my bail conditions changed so I can’t come anywhere near here. There is a small chance of being detained [he shakes his head] but to be honest I’m not going to get arrested again. It’s not a good idea. I’ve got school.’

  Matthew was sixteen. He was studying for his A Levels. By this time the police had made their way over. Matthew leant over to me and whispered, ‘That policewoman is particularly nasty. I know that from experience.’ This is an exact transcript of the exchange that followed:

  Policeman: Hello, people, what are you having here? A teddy bears’ picnic?

  Protester 1: What do you think?

  Policeman: That’s what it looks like.

  Teddy Bear: [to Scary Policewoman] Would you like a muffin?

  Scary Policewoman: No. Thank you.

  Teddy Bear: They’re very nice.

  Scary Policewoman: No, honestly. It’s fine.

  Policeman: Right. No protesting in this area at all. I will inform you of that. Right?

  Matthew: Why not?

  Policeman: You cannot protest within something like five hundred yards or something of Parliament without the permission of the CX [Charing Cross police]. If you do carry on protesting in this area you are liable to be arrested.

  Protester 1: But are we protesting?

  Policeman: Well, I don't know. You tell me. Are you protesting?

  Protester 2: I’m not protesting.

  Protester 3: I’m protesting!

  Policeman: So this is a teddy bears’ picnic, that’s what you’re telling me? If you’re telling me that then I can tell my base that you’re having a teddy bears’ picnic on Parliament Square. You start shouting and screaming then those guys over there [pointing at the policcmen on the gates of Parliament] are going to say, ‘No, they’re protesting. There’s no teddy bears’ picnic going on there.’ Right?

  So I will tell them that you’re having a teddy bears’ picnic. Don’t start charming me, right?

  Protester 2: It’s a stupid law. Why is it a law?

  Policeman: Parliament brought it out. They brought it out to try to get rid of Brian but because Brian was here before it was brought in—

  Protester 4: It’s bollocks!

  Policeman: Well, tell them that [he points towards Parliament]. They’re the ones that brought it in!

  The policeman and the scary policewoman walked off. Now, I don’t know about you, but these days, when I think of protesters being threatened with arrest, I think of large men wearing facemasks running at riot police or smashing up branches of McDonald’s, not a group of bedraggled sixth formers, assorted adults and a man in a teddy bear suit sitting on sheets of tarpaulin in the rain. It was like some kind of school trip gone wrong. The policeman didn’t seem to understand the exact terms of the new law but at least he knew why it had been brought in.

  Then someone asked if they could take a picture of me in my suit. This turned out to be Prasanth Visweswaran, one of the people who’d been arrested a week after SOCPA became law. After spending over a decade running a taxi company in Madras, Prasanth was working in London as a ‘provider of rare services’ according to his business card. I assumed this was a euphemism for ‘drug dealer’ but when I pressed him about it he shook his head and laughed, ‘Drugs aren’t rare!’ I then asked him why he had been prepared to flout the new law. ‘Because this is Britain!’ he replied. ‘You expect these sorts of things to happen in other places in the world, but this is Britain! Britain is supposed to be the gold standard when it comes to democracy. The gold standard that everyone else aspires to. So it’s more important to protest about it happening here than to protest about it happening anywhere else.’

  Prasanth had gone on a protest about the police’s shoot-to-kill policy after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead fifteen days after the 7 July bombings. Someone in the crowd during the demonstration told him that in the near future such a protest would be illegal. A week after SOCPA became law he went to Parliament Square with a banner. ‘I found a quote from Noam Chomsky that said, “If you don’t believe in freedom of expression for people you despise then you don’t believe in it at all.” I was just holding it in Parliament Square. I did get a warning. They were handing out leaflets saying, “You are breaking the law”, then an officer came over and said, “Have you been given the leaflet?” I said, “Yes, I have.” He asked, “Have you read it?” I said, “No.” So he started reading it for me, and then he asked me if I understood. I didn’t say anything, then he said, “The defendant has not made a statement,” while another policeman made notes. Then they arrested me. And now I think I’m going to end up with a criminal record for holding up a banner made out of fridge packing.

  ‘At the-station they took my DNA,-photographs and fingerprints. They bagged up my banner, wearing gloves, into an evidence bag. I spoke to the sergeant who was booking me and he said, “Well, you broke the law. Laws are not supposed to be broken.” And he’s right, there are
laws, but there is also morality, and that’s my main law. I don’t have to follow a law just because it’s a law. It’s common sense. If I have a problem with the government there’s no point arguing about it in Tesco or at home, or in my street. You have to go where the problem is. People should be able to say what they feel like saying. Anyone. Anti-war protester, pro-war protester, BNP supporter, whatever. That’s what freedom is supposed to be about.’

  The rain was falling steadily by this time. Rachel had disappeared for a coffee somewhere and just standing there now seemed pointless. A few of the protesters decided that the teddies should storm Parliament and rushed over the road to attach them to the railings. It was descending into a farce. It was time to leave before things became embarrassing. I removed my suit, falling over in the mud in the process, swore as the wind blew my paws off towards the road, chased after them, slipped over again because of a lack of grip on the underside of my teddy feet, finally gathered my soiled, furry suit into my bag and crept over towards Brian Haw with as much dignity as I could muster. I thought I should try to catch a few words with him, seeing as it was his plight that had, indirectly, brought me to Parliament Square in a teddy bear suit.

  He looked as if he’d just woken up. When he saw me approach with a video camera he nodded, crouched down and lit a cigarette. I asked him how his cause was going and he literally exploded.

  ‘Well, you’re missing the point if you think like that. Your cause, you said. Whose cause is this? It’s not my cause. It’s your cause; it’s everyone’s cause. It’s the cause of humanity! It’s not right that only one person in Britain can be outside this Parliament protesting! They’re not going to take away my right! I bloody fought for it. I’ve been to the Royal Courts of Justice twice now; I’ve had six court cases. It’s six-nil now. Mr Ex-Barrister Blair doesn’t have a very good track record. It’s a good job he left the law, isn’t it? They don’t know law. They don’t respect law. They have contempt for law. For them, law is about getting what they want and making you do what they say, and that’s not law. It’s what’s right for me, what’s right for you, what’s right for all of us - that’s law.’

  I asked him whether he thought we should have a constitution to protect our rights and he shouted at me for interrupting him before letting me know his thoughts on whether or not we should have one.

  ‘Yes, we should have a constitution. But unlike America we should actually practise it. “All are created equal.” [He rolls his eyes.] “What do you think of British civilization, Mr Gandhi?” You know what he said? “Yes, it’s a good idea.” It’s still a good idea, isn’t it? When are we going to bloody do it?’

  I opened my mouth to say something but thought better of it. Brian looked up, smiled as if in recognition, and started talking again.

  ‘Look at the Race Relations Act. It says we must treat people decently regarding their ethnic origin in this country. You must not abuse them verbally, physically. You must not do it, that’s the law, it’s on the statute book. But then we go and bomb the shit out of them everywhere else in the world. Isn’t that nice? Doesn’t that sound very British?’

  Then, having said his piece, he gestured for me to go away, threw his cigarette into the gutter, and crawled back under his sheet of tarpaulin to shelter from the rain.

  As I said, Brian Haw is slightly deranged. He seems to have paid a high psychological price for his staunchly held beliefs. But being deranged, or passionate if you’re being charitable, shouldn’t disqualify you from having the right of free speech. After all, a democracy has to have frayed edges if it is to be truly democratic. My few minutes with Brian reminded me of a quote I heard once, which at the time made me feel proud to be British. ‘When I pass protesters every day at Downing Street - and believe me, you name it, they protest against it - I may not like what they call me, but I thank God they can. That’s called freedom.’23 (Tony Blair.)

  Chapter 3. Down in Albion

  If something so essential to our sense of common identity can be criminalized with barely a murmur from the British people, then do the people of Britain exist in any real sense any more? I found it hard to correlate this sense of despair with my own growing sense of excitement. Taking on the law, albeit dressed as a teddy bear, had awakened a certain spirit inside me. It wasn't a sense of power, or self-righteousness; it was more a sense of responsibility and exhilaration I’d never felt before. It was refreshing to be around people who were simply not prepared to accept the government’s behaviour. I had stumbled on a group of people who were trying to reclaim what Britain is supposed to stand for, even though most of them would have baulked at the idea that they were patriots.

  I was brought up on tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and I had a vague sense that I had tapped into the spirit of something that was supposedly once found in every corner of this country -the spirit of Albion. I had no firm understanding of what Albion actually meant, but that hadn’t stopped me being desperate to go there, wherever and whatever it was.

  Albion has always conjured up an image in my mind of rolling hills, a free and tranquil England, punctuated by laughter and frothing pints of ale, but according to my friend John Moore that’s probably what you’d come up with if you were trying to sell a beer called Albion. In reality, ‘Albion’ is just a feeling. A wonderful feeling of pride and hope in our nation and a nagging feeling that it is slipping through our fingers at the same time. It seemed to have become out of date. As though it belonged to a different age. A time of colour and happiness, perhaps, or the time of your life you could no longer expect to have.

  As you may have seen at the beginning of this book, according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary Albion means ‘Britain or England, unrecorded’. I stumbled on it one night while looking up a word a politician had used on Newsnight. Taking that definition literally, it occurred to me that if I did record the ideas and values of people in Britain who felt they were not being listened to and had decided to demonstrate and protest - those few people who were taking seriously their responsibilities as citizens - I would be creating a map into ‘Albion’. The thought made me as excited as a child waking to discover five inches of snow outside his bedroom window.

  If you want to know more about Albion then you have to find a man with an enormous beard, a penchant for drinking frothing pints of ale and swearing like Father Jack. Luckily for me, I knew just the chap. John Nicholson is one of my more interesting friends. He has worked with Ant and Dec, has appeared in the Harry Potter films, Gormenghast and Extras, and was once photographed in the nude by David Bailey. John is also an amateur historian who specializes in dissent. And when I say ‘amateur* I mean that he is not recognized as an academic, which isn’t to say that he doesn’t know more than anyone in Britain about riots, rebellions and revolts - a fact proved by his staggeringly impressive library that takes up an entire floor of his house.

  Only talking to amateurs rather than professionals wherever possible was one of the signposts I’d decided to follow as I drafted my map into Albion. If the professional, recorded world was failing us then it made sense that some insight might be found in the unrecorded world of the amateur. I was hoping that the ideas of all the unrecorded people of Britain would reveal a different way of thinking that might improve the lives of all of us who live here. We all know the recorded world because it’s the world we work in, the world where we stare at the clock willing the precious minutes of our lives away. Once we get home from the office and the mindset of work slips away - when we get to put our feet up, or enjoy a tipsy reunion with our closest friends - we become ourselves again. All of us are able to snatch a glimpse of Albion in the bits of time we haven’t had to sell to an employer. This amateur world is where none of us really knows what we’re doing but where most of our fun, love, joy and laughter lie. So I had decided to ask people who were not professional politicians questions about politics. Those who knew nothing about town planning would be the ones from whom I would seek a
dvice about how to protect our towns and cities, and anyone not practising law would be my first choice for questions about justice. Because the amateurs of Britain are where you will find the soul and the conscience of the country. By embracing this amateur world, I hoped I would, at last, be able to turn Albion from myth into reality.

  I got the train from London Bridge to Bedford, where John lives, with a clutch of newspapers under my arm. It was the day after Maya Evans became the first person to go to court under Section 132 of SOCPA, and the papers were filled with stories about her. The Daily Mail and the Independent were very unhappy about her conviction. Both had a picture of Maya on the front page. I had gone to Bow Street Magistrates Court for her hearing to offer moral support to Prasanth, who was understandably taking an interest in the proceedings. I’d also met Mark Barrett there, the chap with the feather in his hair at the first meeting, the original picnicker, who was also keen to see what would happen to Maya before his hearing in January 2006. In court, a surprisingly cool retro room with oak panelling (later in the year Bow Street was closed down and sold to a property developer to be turned into luxury flats), the magistrate found Maya guilty of breaching Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005. She was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £100 costs.

  Maya Evans was not the first person to fall foul of Section 132, just the first of the cases to go to court. There were two other pictures beside Maya’s on the Independent's front page under the headline WAR CRIMINALS: one of Douglas Barker, seventy-two, who had been threatened with prison for withholding ten per cent of his income tax bill in protest against the Iraq war, and another of Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a thirty-seven-year-old medical officer who was facing a court martial for refusing to go on active service in Iraq. This appetite for law breaking seemed to be getting sharper by the day.