Brian William Haw (7 January 1949 – 18 June 2011) was an English protester and peace campaigner who lived for almost ten years in a peace camp in London's Parliament Square from 2001, in a protest against UK and US foreign policy. He began the Parliament Square Peace Campaign before the September 11 attacks, and became a symbol of the anti-war movement over the policies of both the United Kingdom and the United States in Afghanistan and later Iraq. At the 2007 Channel 4 Political Awards he was voted Most Inspiring Political Figure. Haw died of cancer in Berlin, where he had been receiving medical treatment. Early and personal life Haw was born on 7 January 1949, in Wanstead Hospital, in Woodford Green, Essex a twin and the eldest of five. He grew up in neighbouring Barking and in Whitstable, Kent. His father, Robert William Haw (1925–1964), served as a sniper in the Reconnaissance Corps in the Second World War, and had been one of the first British soldiers to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He later worked as a railway clerk, and also worked in a betting office. He committed suicide by gassing himself when Haw was 13. Haw's mother was Iris Marie Haw (née Hall). Haw's family were involved in an evangelical Christian church in Whitstable, which Haw joined when he was aged 11. Haw was apprenticed to a boat-builder from the age of 16 and then entered the Merchant Navy as a deckhand. He travelled widely before spending six months at evangelical college in Nottingham, after which he preached world peace. Haw visited Northern Ireland in 1970 during The Troubles, as well as the Killing Fields of Cambodia in 1989. After returning to London, he worked as a removals man and as a carpenter, and later with youth in Redditch, Worcestershire. He married his wife Kay in Redbridge in June 1977. They lived in Redditch with their seven children until he left them in 2001 to begin his Parliament Square protest. The couple divorced in 2003. Parliament Square protests On 2 June 2001, he began camping in Parliament Square in central London in a one-man political protest against war and foreign policy (initially, the Economic sanctions against Iraq). By his own account, he was first inspired to take up his vigil after seeing the images and information produced by the Mariam Appeal, an anti-sanctions campaign. Haw justified