Suella Braverman’s former chief of staff felt “exhausted” and “harassed” by an activist known as Stop Brexit Man, who regularly plays music outside Parliament, a court has heard.
Steve Bray, 56, allegedly flouted a police ban by playing anti-Conservative and anti-Brexit edits of The Muppet Show and Darth Vader’s theme tunes through amplifiers on March 20 last year.
He was protesting before then-PM Rishi Sunak arrived for Prime Minister’s Questions.
PMQs is the target of his demonstrations each week, except during Parliamentary recess, City of London Magistrates’ Court heard on Thursday.
Police approached Bray on the traffic island at about 11.20am and said he was prohibited from playing the amplifiers in the controlled area, the court heard.
The music resumed intermittently and shortly after 12.30pm officers seized the speakers, the court was told.
An office manager to then-Conservative MP Anna Firth told the court: “Wednesday is always the worst day of the week because we knew what we were were going to be subjected to.”
After several witnesses described the negative impact of Bray’s music, heard as high as the sixth floor in nearby buildings, the defendant apologised.
He later told Deputy District Judge Anthony Woodcock: “It’s a balancing act, judge, sometimes you get it wrong, but I hope I get it right.”
The chief of staff for Mrs Braverman, the former home secretary, said she would arrive early “so I had a little period of time which was quite peaceful”.
Susan Colson said her job was “quite complex”, adding: “You’ve got to concentrate, you’ve got to think what you are doing, so I did quite well until about 10 o’clock,” which was roughly when Bray would turn on the music.
“You couldn’t ignore it” and “really I could only stand it for about two or three hours or so”, she said.
“By the time it came to lunchtime I was quite exhausted, and intimidated and harassed, and I just wanted to go home.”
She continued: “You feel a real victim of this, and that if this was occurring outside a shop or someone’s home they would surely be able to do something about it quite quickly.”
Later in evidence, she said: “Even from the sixth floor I could hear abuse – I could hear in particular quite often an attack on Tories.
“And there were times when I heard him say the Tories are sex pests, and I just thought, as a person in my sixties, I just felt this was ludicrous that I have to listen to this, and I felt it personally.”
She questioned how then-leader of the House Penny Mordaunt “could sustain working in a sensitive job listening to you for hours and hours. I couldn’t believe how she could do that”.
Mrs Colson frowned after Bray replied: “I had some good chats with Penny Mordaunt, she was very friendly.”
She told the court she was “sure” the Speaker of the House (Sir Lindsay Hoyle) was “quite fed up of talking about this”, adding “you had to pluck up the courage” to raise it.
“This is someone who has crossed the line in terms of fanaticism, or possible fixation, and why should we be subjected to this?”
During cross-examination, Bray asked if Mrs Colson has ever protested.
She paused to think and said: “Only once did I join a rally, in about the 1970s, about the closure of the MG factory.”
Asked if it was noisy, she said: “I don’t remember that, I don’t remember that, no. It was a long time ago.”
Bray said: “Maybe you could come join us,” and she said: “No.”
During cross-examination he told her: “I would like to say sorry if you felt intimidated, that was never our intention.”
He said he only made the “Tories are sex pests” comment when there were allegations that party members had committed “sexual misdemeanours”.
He also said “sound and vision” is a key part of protest.
The regular anti-Brexit demonstration has since been moved outside the controlled area, 10 metres away from the traffic island.
Bray said they would have relocated there at the time had officers asked them to do so.
As the trial neared the end, Bray played from his laptop a song often played in Westminster, titled Brexit Tragedy and set to the tune of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.
The lyrics said: “So they threw us off a cliff, in the reddest bus you’ve ever seen, and the country fell apart, in a Brexiting tragedy.
“We all live in a Brexit tragedy, a Brexit tragedy, we all live in a Brexit tragedy, a Brexit tragedy.”
That portion of the track ended with “and the band begins to play” before cutting to the chorus of Kaiser Chiefs’ I Predict A Riot.
The prosecution alleges his music played in total for 40 minutes on March 20.
Bray, from Port Talbot, South Wales, has denied failing without reasonable excuse to comply with a direction given under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 “re prohibited activities in Parliament Square”.
The defendant said he has never previously been arrested or charged for protesting.
The judge will give his verdict on April 14 at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
