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Press
Conference: Free Speech in Parliament Square
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A lively press conference in the House of Commons on 17 June defended protesters’ right to be seen and heard in Parliament Square. Many who packed the room have supported Brian Haw’s two-year, 24-hour protest against the genocide of Iraqi children, or have come for the open microphone at the community anti-war picket organised by the Global Women’s Strike. The protests are now under threat through legislation, and from roving anti-protest police units. At the same time, Mr Haw, who has won a precedent ruling based on the right to freedom of speech under the Human Rights Act, told the meeting he had been violently attacked in the night by an off-duty US marine. His nose was broken while police stood by “defending Parliament”. (This is being pursued.) |
 Photo credit: Chrissie Warren  Tony Benn listens to Eritrean woman speaking Photo credit: Fanny Weed |
| Chairing the meeting, John McDonnell MP welcomed the protests for “bringing attention to issues that in this place often get forgotten”, and Selma James from the Strike said people who do not feel represented by Parliament were finding a way to be politically active, beginning with women who, as the carers of society, are “even more anti-war than men”. And “if the speeches at the picket are bothering MPs, that’s what it’s there to do.” One by one speakers made clear how important it was for them to be heard – as asylum seekers, women with disabilities, pensioners, a churchwoman, a Jewish anti-Zionist man, Greenham women who had used the courts against the military, a woman protester from the coaches hijacked by the police on the way to Fairford US airbase. Nawal Karem from the Iraqi Women’s League said the picket’s support and exchange of information had made it a vital “home” for them. Explo Nani-Kofi from the African Liberation Support Campaign said the attempts to silence the picket was a measure of its achievement: the message was getting into Parliament – in fact more than they wanted to hear! Black people, who were not represented anywhere in any “house of representatives”, had found a way to represent themselves. Tony Benn said how much influence the protests had, and pointed out, “It’s not just the picket that the government doesn’t like. The government doesn’t like Parliament.” The event was proof of a vibrant and increasingly united movement – facing up to alarming times. |
