Mark Wallinger's State Britain occupies the vaulted and columned Duveen Galleries, Tate Britain's most solemn and portentous space.[*] It consists of a meticulous reconstruction, overseen by Wallinger, of a notorious eyesore: the material Brian Haw accumulated on 40 metres of pavement opposite the Palace of Westminster. Haw first set up camp there in June 2001 in protest against economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. In May 2006 the police removed the lot: banners, slogans, posters, cards, photographs of deformed babies, cartoons of Blair, Brown and Bush, the parliamentary voting records of MPs, grubby teddy bears and toys (as well as the plastic sheets and cans that constituted Haw's accommodation). They acted under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act: a rather heavy legal vehicle - and a clumsy one. It designates a one kilometre zone around Westminster within which demonstrators must obtain police permission. The first conviction under this legislation was of Maya Evans, arrested at the Cenotaph for not having received permission to read out the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq.

LRB 8 February 2007 | PDF Download