Mick Hartley

Tony Benn says you gave your life for peace….that you took your "campaign against the Iraq war to Parliament Square opposite the House of Commons and stayed there for years". But you went there in 2001. The Iraq war started in 2003. Were you clairvoyant then, along with all your other virtues?

You started off campaigning against the UN sanctions. "Stop killing our kids". That was your catchphrase. But your kids – all seven of them – were at home with their mother who divorced you after you walked out.

You thought that 9/11 was an inside job. You had large posters saying the number killed in Iraq was 2,000,000. Even the editor of the Lancet didn't think it was that high. You ranted at Americans like some demented downmarket Harold Pinter. You thought Iraq was all about mass torture and boiling people in oil. There may have been some truth in that while Saddam was in power, but that's not what you meant, was it? Your politics were the politics of the street ranter. Speakers Corner on a Sunday morning, yes: Parliament Square non-stop for 10 solid years, no thanks. A right to protest, yes: a right to live in a camp opposite the Houses of Parliament displaying lurid and absurd posters with barely any connection to reality…frankly, no.

And yet you were universally lauded by all the right people. Mark Wallingford won the Turner Prize in 2007 for his replica of your protest site, State Britain:

"Brian Haw is a remarkable man who has waged a tireless campaign against the folly and hubris of our government's foreign policy," Wallinger said.

"For six-and-a-half years he has remained steadfast in Parliament Square, the last dissenting voice in Britain. Bring home the troops, give us back our rights, trust the people," he added.

The jury commended Wallinger, 48, for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance".

They said: "The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths."

But our rights don't need to be given back to us. They're there, across the road from your ridiculous charade, in the Houses of Parliament. That's where our democratically elected representatives voted to support the overthrow by force of Saddam Hussein. They may have been right, they may have been wrong, but that's democracy in action. There, in the Houses of Parliament – not with you and your self-regarding friends shouting loudly across the road.   

Still, we've not the heard the last of you, have we? John McDonnell MP is campaigning for the erection of a permanent monument to you. London Assembly Member Jenny Jones has called on Westminster Council to give you a blue plaque:

Brian Haw was an extraordinary man, his protest was the anti-war emotion of millions of us, made visible outside parliament, to the fury of some.

Yes, truly an icon for the right-thinking: a hero for those who think democracy's just fine as long as it doesn't come up with stuff they disagree with.

Last word to Zia Trench, talking of her 2009 play about you:

There is a messianic illusion around him, something so Jesus-like about him. He has taken on our fight but what has this cost him? The play looks at the man behind the protest and how battles fought for liberty can cost a man his wife, home and sanity.

Half way to canonisation already.

[And, in case anyone else hasn't suggested it, let me be the first: a permanent statue of you for the fourth plinth. With all the protest gear. Ask Mark Wallingford.]

Update: this comment by teganjovanka on Tony Benn's piece at CiF is worth a read.