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Is This Why Brian Harvey Turned Up at 10 Downing Street?

It seems that he's a "freeman-on-the-land", which is basically where you believe that UK laws don't apply to you.

BREAKING: Brian Harvey currently outside Downing Street with a ring binder demanding to see @david_cameron #notadrill pic.twitter.com/U1owqhFibJ

— Ronnie Joice (@ronniejoice) October 20, 2014

Yesterday, Brian Harvey – a man who famously cannot 100 percent be trusted not to run over himself with a car – stormed Downing Street demanding to speak to David Cameron. And the internet got very excited about it.

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But what was the motivation for Brian Harvey wanting to talk to David Cameron? Well, it’s probably a fair assumption that it has something to do with Brian apparently identifying himself as a “freeman-on-the-land”.

In this video, at 1:38, Brian seems to suggest that his political allegiances are with the freemen.

But what is a freeman-on-the-land? It’s complicated.

In short, freemen-on-the-land are a loose collective who claim statute law is merely contractual, meaning the "law" – there are a lot of inverted commas involved in freemen explanations, so get used to it – as you or I know it only applies if we consent to it, and thus can be opted out of at any time. That means they live under natural law, with three simple tenets: don’t harm others, do not damage the property of others and don’t use fraud and mischief when drawing up contracts. Essentially: be excellent to one other and PARTY ON, DUDES. And also don’t use fraud and mischief when drawing up contracts.

So if, as it appears, Brian identifies as a freeman-on-the-land, then he has chosen to opt out of being governed by UK laws. To him, David Cameron is nothing but an unbreaded Scotch egg with a face drawn on it who keeps charging him money for things.

Often, freeman-on-the-land tropes are invoked by people trying to wiggle out of debts – or mischievous contracts, I guess – by claiming that only "lawful debts" can be upheld, demanding that gas or electricity companies provide "validation of debts" and hand-signed invoices in line with ancient laws. That’s, presumably, where Brian Harvey comes in: in 2011, he filmed the police as they supervised Southern Electric fitting a new pre-pay electricity meter in his Walthamstow home, mainly while saying “police state” and “civil liberties” a lot.

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Which makes you think he might have a point, until Brian explains – repeatedly, while a man in a cagoule sadly connects a meter – that he refused to pay his electric bill because it was addressed to "Mr H Harvey", and not "Brian Harvey", due to a Southern Electric cock-up (read: mischievous contract). There’s this whole thing with freemen-on-the-land where they disassociate their name and their "legal person" at the moment of birth. There is a strawman, in this case "Brian Harvey", who is subject to statute law, and there is a freeman, Brian of the family Harvey – and never the twain will meet. Hard to know which one of them turned up outside Downing Street yesterday shouting for the Prime Minister, but it’s a pretty safe bet to say it was the latter.

Told you it was complicated.

If all the stuff with names and strawmen and inverted commas pseudo-legalese wasn’t yet enough of a clue, then yes, the Venn Diagram of "people who claim to be freemen-of-the-land" and "people who have a really detailed conspiracy theory about how 9/11 really happened, and basically an interconnected network of lizard queens did it" is essentially one big circle. I mean, David Icke endorsed Harvey’s electricity meter fight by putting the video up on his site. Which is the conspiracy equivalent of getting a Christmas number one.

Brian’s relationship with alternative politics runs deep. Last year, he showed his support for Ben Fellows, a self-billed crusader against corruption who was arrested for perverting the course of justice after making allegations against senior Tory minister Kenneth Clarke and campaigner Bill Maloney on a march to Westminster to demand transparency in the wake of the Jimmy Savile. So yes, it seems a bit like Brian Harvey may be moving in the same direction as famed pop conspiracy theorist Jim Corr.

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Brian’s former manager released a statement after the whole jacket potato car accident thing in 2005, saying Brian had previously suffered with depression and had a “reasonably unstable” mental state. So let’s hope that both Brian Harvey and Brian of the family Harvey are OK and that he stops spending his time standing outside Downing Street with a binder full of evidence and a crowd of laughing tourists.

@joelgolby

More stuff about this kind of stuff:

The Conspiracy Theory Community Are Dangerous Enemies to Make

Don't Mess with Chemtrails Conspiracy Theorists

Some British National Treasures Who Deserve a Blue Plaque