Dan Kieran

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

  After a few more ales the three of us stumbled off towards Teddington after getting a tip from a woman on the next table that fishermen sometimes camped along the river there so our tents wouldn’t arouse undue interest. My legs and feet ached. It took us three hours. We stopped only so that the two Marks could roll a few joints because Mark K smoked weed for self-medication. ‘I’m supposed to be on morphine every day because I’m in so much pain, but I can’t stand how it makes my mind feel,’ he said. He pulled up his shirt to show us some of his twenty stab wounds. ‘I can’t eat big meals because my stomach was so badly damaged,’ he added. I’ve never seen anything like it. (We had paused at that spot quite by chance, but as coincidence would have it I discovered some time later that we’d actually stopped in Canbury Gardens, which is where the ‘King’s Stone’ sits from which Kingston gets its name. On New Year’s Day 1998 ‘Arthur Pendragon’ - the former hairy, tattooed biker and Mensa member called John -went there for his coronation and became the first king in over a thousand years, since Ethelred the Unready in 978, to be pronounced king on that spot. He celebrated by jumping fully clothed into the Thames.)

  Eventually we made it to Teddington via Ham, and it was like walking into a lost village in the heart of London.

  I’d had no idea it was so secluded. We found a spot near Teddington Lock and the two Marks began to put up the tents. I, meanwhile, was finding the swaying bushes in the twilight terrifying and was trying my best to remember that violent crime rates are going down and statistically it was very unlikely that we would get attacked in our beds by an axe-murderer. I told myself over and over again not to worry, but it was no use. Mark K obviously saw the fear in my eyes and patted my back. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘if anyone tries anything on I’ll slit their throats. I can look after myself.’ I smiled nervously.

  Camping and I have never really got on. Spending the night in a tent was probably more difficult for me to cope with than spending one in a police cell.

  There are lots of things I hate about camping, and it would be totally out of context to start ranting about them here, but the single most irritating one, the one that makes me want to destroy every branch of Millets on the planet, is the fact that I can’t stand up to put my trousers on when I’m inside a tent. Camping turns all the small but important things that make life wonderful into incomprehensible quadratic equations. The only way I’ve found to make it bearable is to ensure the experience is as little like camping as possible. But by the time you’ve bought all the gadgets that make it survivable you might as well go and stay in a five-star hotel. Every simple, normal part of life becomes agonizing torture. Drinking tea filled with sand is supposed to taste great when camping because you’re in the ‘great outdoors’. You soon find yourself eating overcooked pasta with Dolmio and making orgasmic sounds of glee as the tepid slop slimes its way down your throat like an incontinent slug. But that’s all beside the point. (Incidentally, Rachel and I went on a camping holiday in the South of France once. When we got home we stood outside our flat, put our tent in the wheelie-bin, poured white spirit over it and set the fucking thing on fire. Just to make absolutely sure we never even thought about going camping ever again.)

  Back on the banks of the Thames, I drank as many beers as I could lay my hands on to help me sleep. Then I realized that even if I did get any sleep I’d now be getting up every hour to go to the bloody toilet. It was actually quite serene sitting there, until the aeroplanes began to roar a few hundred feet overhead every thirty seconds. It reminded me of another of my camping experiences, in a hippy commune called Findhorn in Scotland that sits next door to an American air force base. You’re probably wondering what the hell I was doing there in the first place. Well, that’s a whole different story too.

  I woke the next morning at 5.45 with Mark shouting, ‘Dan! Get up! We’re in the river!’ I’d had a predictably bad night's sleep, punctuated with shivering cold, and I sat up bleary-eyed. ‘Look! We’re in the fucking river!’

  There are many bad ways to start the day, but that has to be the worst I’ve ever experienced. I put my glasses on and looked out of the tent. The first thing I saw was a swan floating past a few inches away. I took my glasses off, rubbed my eyes in shock, and replaced them. The front of the tent was indeed in the river. The water was about three inches deep. Then I noticed that my feet were wet and my ‘sleeping’ mat was marinating in the festering swamp that is the Thames.

  Mark leapt out and, standing there up to his ankles in water, gestured for me to hand him everything from the tent. At this point Mark K, who had pitched his tent further away from the river, began to laugh and film our predicament with his phone. I passed everything out and stood there hunched over in disbelief. Mark looked at me and laughed. ‘What are you doing? Come on, get out, I’ve got to move the tent!’ But my legs wouldn’t move. ‘I’m in denial,’ I said. ‘I can’t possibly leave this tent. I can’t believe this is happening.’ I sat down to consider my options. There was no way I was allowing myself to enter the Thames. ‘Mark must have a knife, can’t I cut myself out the back? Then I wouldn’t have to get my feet any wetter than they already were.’ Predictably, Mark’s reaction was not what I’d hoped for. Eventually I took off my socks, rolled up my trousers and winced as I took the plunge.

  Going paddling in the Thames is not something I would recommend at 5.45 in the morning. Still, it took my mind off the blisters on my feet — which would no doubt now become infected with some hideous virus — and the possibility of being arrested in about eleven hours’ time. Only I could find myself camping, for the first time in years, on the banks of the Thames on the night of a spring tide. We later spotted a notice warning all river dwellers to be prepared. According to the signs, the spring tide would affect the river only as far up as Teddington Lock. Typical.

  We got ourselves together, I sipped at the inevitably muck-filled cup of tepid piss that Mark was trying to pass off as tea, and then we were on our way again. I was chasing the image of a proper English breakfast and stormed off ahead. Mark and Mark K were, staggeringly, already smoking a joint. I shouted back at them, ‘For God’s sake, guys, we’ve only got ten hours to get to Downing Street!’ They giggled at me and I cursed the day I’d let myself get involved with the kind of weirdos who exist only on the fringes of society. I was in a very bad mood. Like I said, I really, really hate camping.

  On the way to Richmond we met a man out on a mountain bike taking his small, aggressive dog for a walk. He had a tattoo of the Union Jack on his forearm and started talking to us to find out how far we were going. He looked and sounded like Alf Garnett. We told him we were celebrating the 791st anniversary of the Magna Carta and were on our way to Downing Street, and he looked amazed. ‘I bet you’re the only buggers who are!’ It soon emerged that he was ex-army, although he didn’t divulge what rank he’d attained. He did, however, tell us that the war in Iraq was a ‘fucking disgrace’ and that he would have refused to go. ‘I was in Malaya so I know what it’s like, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t go because it’s hard, it’s because we’ve got no bloody business there, that’s why. It’s illegal, this war.’ He then told us about the large number of fat people he’d seen walking along the Thames and how stupid they looked and went on to expound his fervent views on immigration: ‘Keep England for the English! Kick the lot of them out unless they’re working. They can come here and work, I’ve got no problem with that, but none of this hands-out “give me the dole” bollocks.’ Mark tried to tell him about the families with children being detained near Heathrow without a trial. He was unmoved. He then tried pointing out that there was no such thing as ‘English’ and asked the man if he realized that he was probably of German ancestry. He looked suspiciously back at Mark. ‘Er, I’ve got to go now, mate. Good luck with your walk. Shoot Blair and Brown if you see them, won’t you, the c**ts.’ He rode on a few yards then stopped, turned his head round and shouted, ‘And another thing: Fuck Europe!’ before laughing and cycling o
ff, his dog chasing after him with an enormous stick between his teeth. Unfortunately the dog opted for a narrow path that ran between two metal posts, the stick was too long to fit between them, and he was running at quite a speed when the stick hit the posts. The man returned to retrieve his stunned companion and laughed at us nervously before tottering off on his way.

  From then on it was hard going until we got to Richmond, where we found ourselves a proper English breakfast. I began to feel human again, and we set off for Kew Bridge. The heat was stifling. I became paranoid about sunstroke and kept covering myself with sun cream and drinking as much water as I could get down my throat. After a while we got a bit lost and found ourselves walking between a main road and a huge wall that blocked our entrance to Kew Gardens, which led back down to the river. There was a turnstile but the entrance fee was £11.75 and that seemed a little steep when all we wanted to do was get back down to the Thames. Mark noticed a digger going through a gate a bit further on and we followed behind, hoping to nip through the gardens and get back on track.

  We soon found our way to a car park where we were waylaid by an angry lady with a Kew Gardens badge who had just parked her car. ‘Look here, who are you? You can’t just walk in here, you know. You’ll have to pay like everyone else.’ She held out her arms as if she would wrestle us to the ground if we tried to walk past her. We must have looked a pretty odd sight, shorts and T-shirts, soiled after our night by (and in) the river, carrying rucksacks. Mark started chatting to her and explained that we were on a pilgrimage; we had no interest in Kew Gardens, we were just trying to find our way back to the river so that we could continue our thirty-five-milc walk. ‘I don’t care who you are or what you’re doing, you’ll have to pay like everyone else.’ Mark looked amazed and turned to us. ‘Let’s just go in anyway,’ he said. ‘This is ridiculous.’ The woman got even angrier. ‘Look, I’ll radio the office and send for the police if you walk another step. I will!’ And she began to speak into her radio. ‘We’ve got intruders, can you call the police, they’re refusing to pay, get the police ...’ We were all so tired and astonished that we just stood there with open mouths. Mark tried again to explain what we were doing. ‘I don’t care what you’re doing, you have to pay if you want to come through here,’ the woman repeated. ‘Everyone has to pay, there are no exceptions.’

  So there you have the perfect example of the mindset that is eating like a cancer through this country. Profit is the only thing that matters. We were not people to that old lady employed by Kew Gardens, we were just £35.25, and she was damned if her employer was going to lose out. We’d lost our status as human beings and had become a small pile of £5 notes on fire instead.

  She was going bright red with rage by this point. No doubt we were dirty freeloaders in her eyes. I said to the others, ‘Look, let’s keep walking along the road. I don’t want to ruin this lady’s day. She’s clearly very agitated by us being here.’ She breathed deeply, as if her faith in manners had been restored, said ‘Thank you’ and smiled at me. But then I added pointedly, ‘Although she doesn’t seem to be remotely concerned about the fact that she’s ruining ours.’

  We stumbled along the road, eventually found our way back to the river and trudged to Putney where we stopped for another pub meal. It was two o’clock by the time we finished lunch so we decided to cross Putney Bridge and walk up the King’s Road before going through Green Park and on to Downing Street. It was either that or we’d have to keep walking along the river and then get a bus. I was now refusing to use any mode of transport other than our feet, but Mark K got one because he now had more blisters on his feet than toes.

  Mark and I got to Downing Street at 3.15. The nerves began to kick in once again. Perhaps it was the heat, or dehydration, or even just plain old exhaustion. After all, it’s not very often I walk thirty-five miles in scorching heat. Our journey had included many painful steps, but these were the ones I’d been dreading the most. Being arrested had not lost any of its ability to strike fear into me, and this was the moment of truth. There was no going back now. Everyone I’d met who had demonstrated illegally outside Downing Street had been arrested. Suddenly I didn’t feel empowered or noble, I just felt plain scared.

  During the half-hour we waited in the sunshine for Rikki, the cameraman and reporter from Indymedia, there were many comings and goings from Number Ten. The BBC’s George Alagiah went through Security along with photographers and other members of the press. Policemen with machine guns slung over their shoulders hung around among the tourists, though they soon began to drift away over the road towards the Ministry of Defence. Prasanth appeared with his camera to take photographs of what was about to unfold. He had been in India for months filming a documentary about an old friend of his who had started an impromptu orphanage with twenty abandoned children ten years earlier and now had over two thousand children and disabled people in his care. It was so good to see him. I hugged him a little too hard. ‘Good luck!’ he said before letting out his trademark cackle.

  Mark and I walked towards the gates of Number Ten, put our packs down and got out our props. I had the thought bubble sign Neil had given me with ‘Free Speech’ written inside it; Mark had a Blair mask and a copy of the Magna Carta to burn. I held up the sign to my head and Mark began to speak. The policeman on the gates of Downing Street immediately began to chunter into his radio, and within seconds three officers on motorbikes had pulled up. Mark was telling the story of the Magna Carta and how it was the anniversary of its signing. He went on to explain that it had become a symbol for a higher power than that of the state, the rule of law, and it was there to protect the people from any leader behaving with impunity. I braced myself for some kind of altercation when I heard someone else shouting. It was Mark Kemp, who had arrived just in time to handcuff himself to the gates of Downing Street. ‘Justice for the victims of crime! Justice for the victims! Basic checks, that’s what victims need, basic checks!’ The policemen didn’t know who to deal with first. But then they spotted Mark K’s standard police-issue handcuffs (he’d got them from a ‘friend’) and headed towards him, leaving us alone.

  Mark Barrett was now in full flow. A party of French schoolchildren walked over, about twenty in all. They stared at us as though we were some kind of street entertainment, along with an assortment of bemused adults. One of the children shouted to Mark, ‘En Fran^ais!’ So Mark began to explain what we were doing in English and French, pointing out that we could no longer say ‘freedom of speech’ without breaking the law, we could only think it. Someone in the crowd shouted, ‘But for how long?’ The crowd began to murmur. I could see the French schoolteacher standing at the back with an enormous grin on his face. His class were fascinated, and I could imagine him thinking, ‘Perhaps these Rosbifs have some courage after all.’ When Mark put the Blair mask on everyone began to laugh and then the burning began. The children screamed. A couple of pensioners patted me on the back and said, ‘Good for you! Blair and Brown need shooting!’ It was odd that so many people seemed to agree on that point.

  The three police officers around Mark Kemp had by now become six. The Magna Carta was on the pavement in flames and I began to stamp it out. The schoolchildren clapped and cheered as Mark took a bow and thanked their teacher for letting the children listen. When the embers were out we picked up what was left, so as not to be arrested for littering. A few more people came over to ask what it was all about, and once again the news that protest without permission outside Parliament had been made illegal was met with shock and derision. Then the crowd dispersed, and at that point I knew we’d got away with it. I felt elated and relieved that again I had evaded arrest. I hugged Mark with adrenalin coursing through me. So what if no-one knew we had done it? So what if the media hadn’t come? We had done something, and I knew then that we would carry on fighting in our own way until this raft of unjust legislation had been repealed.

  Eventually Mark Kemp was given back his handcuffs and the police decided not to arres
t him either. As we were all free men we set about finding somewhere to watch the football. England beat Trinidad and Tobago, but only just.

  The day had an interesting postscript. We all stayed in the pub for quite some time and there we met a man called Jim who had just come out of an energy industry jolly in the House of Lords. The pubs around Whitehall always seem to be full of interesting characters. By the time he sat down With us the two Marks had headed off to a squat somewhere for a party and I was with Prasanth and two of my old schoolfriends, Hugh and Henry. Jim was clearly suffering like a man who’d been drinking all day, and after hearing about what we’d been up to earlier he suddenly became rather agitated and began to accuse us all of being members of MI5. He turned to Hugh and said, ‘You definitely are. I can tell just by looking at you.’ At the time Hugh was studying for a Ph.D. in the media’s representation of fear and was quite taken aback by the news that he could be mistaken for a member of the security services. ‘You have no idea how bad the energy crisis is going to be,’ Jim then added conspiratorially. The situation was utterly ridiculous, but Jim was clearly terrified about something. I told him not to worry about it, that if he thought we were genuinely working for MI5 he’d be better off changing the subject. We turned our attention to Sweden v. Paraguay, which was boring everyone in the bar.