Veteran Worcestershire anti-war campaigner Brian Haw has died after losing his battle with lung cancer.

A statement on www.brianhaw.tv said that “our father” Mr Haw had been having treatment in Germany.

Mr Haw, from Redditch, had been battling for his right to remain living in a tent in Parliament Square.

The statement, signed “Brian’s family” continued: “With your help we have been able to share months more than we should have had with him, and for that we are eternally grateful.

“We would like to have this time to be together as a family, to share in the love he gave us, and respectfully ask that you allow us this time undisturbed.

“We will make further arrangements known to you all in due course.”

Fellow members of the Parliament Square Peace Campaign said the authorities “should forever be ashamed of their disgraceful behaviour towards Brian”.

He had been stationed in Parliament Square for 10 years, and had fought of a series of legal objections to his presence there.

The latest saw the Greater London Authority get him and his supporters thrown off the grass area at the centre of the square.

Later this year Westminster Council is set for a court bid to get the camp moved off the pavement, which could see it removed permanently.

Mr Haw, 62, began his round-the-clock protest opposite the Houses of Parliament against the UK’s policy in Iraq and elsewhere on June 2, 2001.

It began as an angry response to economic sanctions and British and American bombing raids on Iraq, but the scope grew wider after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that followed.

His tent and ragtag collection of horrific pictures of war victims and hand-written posters with slogans like “baby killers” was a familiar sight in the square.

Civil rights campaigners got behind the protester as he saw off various attempts to force him to move.