Vote for Brian on 5 May 2005
vote for peace and justice

Brian Haw - Parliament Square Peace Campaign
An independent voice for peace & justice

"I have more respect for Brian and his vigil outside parliament than almost all of those who troop into the building to fill the benches of the two houses. I can think of no other person who has been the subject of new legislation, bought in specifically and overtly to silence him. Such is the power of his stance against war." from Jeremy Hardy, radical comedian and campaigner

"...Now they wish to evict Brian from his place of protest. Maybe because he is an embarrassment to such a war mongering government. Whatever their reason it is wrong. A democracy that can not stand one man and some placards outside its front doors doesn't seem to have much faith in itself. That is why I support Brian for Parliament." Mark Thomas, comedian and campaigner

Watch Brian's election night speech, 5/6 May 2005
Brian didn't win the election for Cities of London and Westminster but he made a powerful and moving challenge to those who have been elected.

See election results

Read the manifesto Download the leaflet and poster in pdf format. Read press releases. Read statements of endorsement for Brian's election campaign For a useful list of other anti-war candidates see here Many people have pledged to support this campaign by donating a small amount. If you would like to help share the load and join the popular demand for Brian to stand, please donate here. We also need people to offer their time for canvassing, press work, publicity, leafleting etc. If you can help, please contact us here.

AN INVITATION TO MEET, DISCUSS AND SHARE WITH PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE with Brian Haw, Independent, Parliament Square Peace Campaign; Tristan Smith, Green Party; and other candidates invited Sunday 1 May from 2pm onwards by Brian's display in Parliament Square.

On the peace bus: Brian with Maria and other supporters

Brian Haw has kept up a 24 hour peace vigil in Parliament Square since June 2001 to protest about the Government’s foreign policy towards Iraq. These policies, economic sanctions, invasion and occupation, have had a devastating impact on the country. In 2002, Brian won a high court case in which his protest was accepted as lawful. However, the Government has now passed a law aimed at removing Brian. This law will also severely restrict everyone’s democratic rights to protest within 1km of Parliament.

Dear Citizen,
Imagine a man who, 24 hours a day, every day for four years, has been campaigning for you and everyone on a public pavement outside Parliament, because he cares for others as if they were his own family. Would you want this man to represent you inside the House of Commons?

I am this man. As a parliamentary candidate, I offer none of the usual bribes or ‘pledges’. But I will give my all as an advocate of people’s needs and rights. In me, you have a person who has proven he cannot be bought off and who has demonstrated actively that he gives, cares and shares with every ounce of his being. As an MP, I would use my experience and knowledge, gained from all the good people I have met on this pavement, to help change the way our society is run.

I would like now to tell you about two people I met recently, whose stories affected me deeply:

Richard from London: It’s two o’clock in the morning and I look up to see a big, strong, young man approach me. He can’t sleep at night and he’s walking the streets and wants to talk. ‘The Queen gave me a medal and called me a hero for killing kids,’he tells me. His heart is breaking at the thought of those kids. ‘You kick down the door, the hand grenade goes in, then you go in and pump 30 rounds into everybody inside. And then afterwards you look to see who and what you’ve killed.’ And there’s a man, sitting at his table in his own house having a meal, minding his own business, in his own country if you please. He’s been liberated now. Ricky killed the kids as well. And this boy of 22 has to live with that and he can’t. He’s got a three year old boy of his own. His wife is doing her best with what she’s got. It’s just before Christmas and her husband is walking the streets, a destroyed soul, a lost soul.

Nora from Venezuela: She’s a poor single mother, who’s had to strive and struggle all her life. Now, she’s been put in control of a micro-banking system, not like the World Bank or the IMF, who rip off the poor and enslave them in debt. Nora knows who to give the money to and where every penny can be used effectively to change people’s lives. In Venezeula, the resources of the country are being given into the people’s hands by a good president. We could help people to help themselves here. In the same way, in the right way.

We are destroying ourselves as well as others with this endless war, both economic and military, against the poor. I stand for a just future for people at home and abroad. I can be visited any hour of the day in Parliament Square.

Independently yours, Brian Haw

Let us treat our neighbour’s kids as if they were our own. Bottom left: Brian with his grandchild Jessica. Bottom right: an Iraqi baby born with anencephaly, a defect in brain development, in a Baghdad hospital in 1998. His shocked mother disappeared soon after. War in the Gulf has seen US/UK forces use huge quanities of Depleted Uranium Munitions. These nuclear weapons will have a huge impact on the health of people in the region for generations to come, but their effects are already being felt. Iraq has experienced a huge increase in the numbers of babies born with congenital disorders and cancers. From an exhibition, Children of the Gulf War, by Takashi Morizumi.

At home and abroad, love is the answer
Our young people are sent to kill abroad. We throw away a third of our food each year while Africans starve. Our banks get rich on the poverty of other countries. We need to keep remembering that a better world is possible. Let’s start by treating our neighbour’s kids as we would treat our own. And let’s support the troops - let’s bring them home.

It’s the kids, stupid!
It shouldn’t be ‘the economy, stupid’; it’s the kids who are the future. They should be the target of our love and investment. Ask a kid, they know that it’s the adults who have to grow up - let’s stop squabbling, bullying, lashing out in fear.

Education, health & a shared wealth
A fair deal for all, humility, peace, honouring our old and our young and all those in between, love, common sense and real ethics: these are the qualities I stand by, and will continue to respect, in making decisions. Billions for bombs but peanuts for pensioners and crumbs for the poor does not make sense. It’s about genuine priorities. If we work on the foundations, with a strong sense of values and a fair divison of resources, then the means to run our schools and hospitals effectively, to defeat crime and create security, will fall into place.

Crying out against genocide
When you inflict economic sanctions on a country like Iraq, destroying countless ordinary lives, or when you pound cities with bombs and use depleted uranium munitions - a nuclear weapon - you are destroying a people, a nation: that’s called genocide. Killing is all too easy when you have the biggest gun and all too tempting when there’s oil and other wealth to be gained. What did the people of Iraq do to deserve this?

A parliament committed to humanity?
650 MPs are chosen by 60 million of us. Over 400 voted to go to war and destroy the lives of others. Let’s have truly ‘honourable’ MPs with integrity and independence, not subject to a party whip. I’ve shown my active commitment to peace and justice for nearly four years now. So many have fought so hard across the world to gain their right to vote. Please use your vote for peace, for justice, for people.

A selection of endorsements for this campaign

from Mark Thomas, radical comedian and campaigner

"The right to protest, one of the most fundamental rights,is being undermined by the Labour government. Frankly it is slightly odd that for all the lawyers in the Labour party have never really taken on board the concept of protecting human rights. Control orders and house arrest now mirror the tactics used by the apartheid state in south Africa, practices that many Labour MP's condemned. Protesters can be stopped and searched by the police with no reason needed or given. Coach loads of demonstrators were hijacked by the police and denied the right to attend peaceful protest during the run up to the illegal war in Iraq, in a move that mirrored the police tactics used in the miners strike, again something many Labour MPS's condemned. Now they wish to evict Brian from his place of protest. Maybe because he is an embarrassment to such a war mongering government. Whatever their reason it is wrong. A democracy that can not stand one man and some placards outside its front doors doesn't seem to have much faith in itself. That is why I support Brian for Parliament."

from Dr. A. Butt

I wish Brian success in the forthcoming elections.Brian's compassion, honesty, and sacrifice are strikingly admirable.

from Peggie Preston, long-time campaigner for peace and justice

I am so happy to see Brian Haw the peace protestor in Parliament Square standing as an MP for Cities of London and Westminster. Day after day we hear the three main parties vilifying each other. Brian's message is clear, and what our country needs. There is no Peace without Justice, and this government has destroyed Peace in Iraq and is trying to destroy the Justice we have tried to uphold for hundreds of years. And their latest Police Bill was aimed specifically at getting rid of Brian.

I am going to vote for Brian, and I hope hundreds of others will do the same. He is not only giving his life for the children of Iraq, but is involved with other aspects of our national life. Read his leaflet. He is trying to help me, because I am a pensioner, 81 years old. And I used to work for the NHS, in the days when the Matrons ran the hospitals, and we really cared for our patients and they were the priority, not the number of beds or hours worked. Medical personnel were treated with respect, and not attacked in hospitals. And the War, with thousands of Iraqi civilians, and especially children, being killed, as a result of Depleted Uranium and Sanctions, and cluster bombs. I was in Iraq three times, during the First Gulf War in 1991, and later I made a document which went to the USA, Iraq, the Foreign Office, and many other places. In 2000 three young women went with me to Iraq, to check on the situation with the sanctions and depleted uranium.

I have seen the results of war. During the second world war I was a WAAF, working as a Radiotelephonist on a Lancaster bomber station in Lincolnshire. That was when I started to learn about peace and pacifism. I was in South Africa, and saw how the blacks were being treated. I was in Vietnam for six years during the war working in a hospital. I was in Bosnia, and realised how hatred can turn a peaceful land where people lived together into a land where people killed each other where before they had lived and worked together. I worked with refugees from East Timor, those gentle people, where they suffered so much.

There is so much hatred in the world, it is such a wonderful thing when someone like Brian shows us such an example. If anyone wants to get in touch with me three days a week I can go to an e-mail, peggiepreston@hotmail.com. Bless you, Brian, and THANKYOU!!

from Jim Addington. Chair: Action for UN Renewal.

I am happy to endorse him and send my best wishes. As the organisers of a similar campaign to support Reg Keys' candidature and oppose Tony Blair in Sedgefield have said, it is essential to prevent the government succeeding in covering up the attack on Iraq which an election victory would enable them to do. Action for UN Renewal exists to persuade the government, politicians and the media to support the United Nations, set up 60 years ago "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war".

from Jeremy Hardy, radical comedian and campaigner

"I have more respect for Brian and his vigil outside parliament than almost all of those who troop into the building to fill the benches of the two houses. I can think of no other person who has been the subject of new legislation, bought in specifically and overtly to silence him. Such is the power of his stance against war."

from Helen Tomkins

Brian Haw is our conscience speaking. Many of us speak, not many of us act. No one has sacrificed himself or herself for the slaughtered innocents of Iraq. I salute you Brian and thank you.

from Jessica Gatty

All the best, and thank you for your witness to civil liberties and peace and especially the situation in Iraq.