>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Yorkshire Interlude – Hornsea – 2008

Yorkshire Interlude – Hornsea: On Saturday 12th July 2008 when we were staying for a few days in Hull with an old friend we took a bus to the Yorkshire coast at Hornsea for the day.

I’d first visited Hornsea, a small coastal resort, back in 1965 when I made my first visit to the Hull home of my future parents-in-law, but my wife’s memories of it go back further.

Until Beeching swung his axe there were trains from Hull to two seaside towns, Hornsea and Withernsea which stopped at her local station, Botanic Gardens, a quarter of an hour’s walk from her home. People would often go to them for an outing, for a day or even an evening, and many who lived in these towns would commute to work in Hull.

My wife’s family took their annual holiday most years with a week in Hornsea, staying in a cottage that one of her great-aunts had bought for £25 after it had been condemned for demolition in the near future. I think it was more than 25 years later that it actually came down – and the site is now just a small garden on the main street, a few minutes walk from the seafront.

Most times when we go to Hull now – not as often as we used to as most of those we knew there are now dead or have moved away – we take a bus to Hornsea. What used to be around 40 minutes on the train now takes around twice as long on the buses, though at least it is now free for those of us with bus passes. And the old railway line is now part of a long-distance footpath. Perhaps we will visit again this summer.

We’ve also stayed there, in a holiday cottage in the town centre and a couple of times for a few days at a hotel on the seafront there, where we’ve enjoyed some remarkable sunrises over the wide expanse of the North Sea – as well as some battering storms.

But in 2008 we were staying in one of the finest houses in Hull, West Garth, (more here) then owned by an old friend – an ‘Arts & Crafts’ house which gets a short mention in the guide to Hull’s architecture. It had been one of our friend’s childhood homes and after some years of retirement he bought the property. Various ‘improvements’ had been made which meant it had been denied listing and he spent considerable time and money in restoring it to its original state but sadly died before he completed the job.

The weather wasn’t too good, with some heavy showers, but this did mean that we had the town almost to ourselves, as most of those who would normally have come for a day out at the seaside in July stayed home.

We visited Hornsea Mere, a large freshwater lake at the centre of the town, and a shower gave us a good reason to go into its café before we walked down to the seafront. The sea looked cold and uninviting and for once Linda didn’t paddle.

Then along to another café at the Floral Hall where the sun came out briefly after we had taken shelter there and on the the large park, Hall Garth before it was time to get the bus back into Hull.

This time we took the slower route back via Beverley, getting off in Hull on Beverley Road where I took a picture of Bethnal Green, here just a short terrace of houses, before returning to our friends house to cook dinner.

Despite the weather we had enjoyed a good day.

But it wasn’t a good day to have afternoon tea on the south-facing loggia. You can see many more pictures and some captions from our day at Hornsea on My London Diary.

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BHS, Rolls-Royce, Pubs & Funerals, Hammersmith – 1990

BHS, Rolls-Royce, Pubs & Funerals, Hammersmith: The previous post from my walk on Sunday 7th January 1990 was Latymer, Cromwell, Britannia, Chapels, Shops & Bevan – 1990.

*Bridge Avenue, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-65*

Bridge Avenue used to run from King Street to Hammersmith Bridge Road close to Hammersmith Bridge, but was severed with the building of the Great West Road through Hammersmith in the 1960s, the section to the south of this now being Bridge View, though the two are still linked for cyclists and pedestrians by a crossing.

This derelict building was demolished and replaced by a block of offices which is now occupied as the sixth-form block of a Free School. You can faintly make out its former name above the doorway BRITISH HOME STORES. This had its main 1937 Deco frontage at 111-117 King Street, still visible above more recent shopfronts (see below.)

I also photographed the Grade II listed mid-nineteenth century terrace at 1-31 on the east side of Bridge Avenue but have not yet digitised this.

*Frank Dale & Stepsons, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-66*

Frank Dale and Stepsons was an unusual business name and the shop, a high-end car showroom, seemed an unusual building for a high street here. The company, trading in Rolls-Royce and Bentley motor cars was set up by Frank Dale in 1946 in Paddington, moved to Holbein Place off Sloane Square in 1966, on to Fulham in 1972 and to these larger premises in Hammersmith in 1985. In 2000 they went further west to Harlequin Avenue off the Great West Road in Brentford and since 2020 has been based in Sandhurst on the borders of Berkshire, Hampshire, and Surrey. The company history is well illustrated on its web site.

This building at 120-124 King Street was on the site of a pub established in 1419 and later known as the Plough & Harrow Public House. The building dated from 1903 and the pub closed around 1960. The facade was retained when the site was rebuilt around 2002 and its ground floor resurrected the old pub name as a Wetherspoons. A pleasantly airy alternative to the William Morris a short walk away it was closed by the company in June 2025. The upper floors are a hotel.

*Wades, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-51*

This is the 1937 Deco frontage of the former British Home Stores. When I made this picture it was Wades’ NATIONAL UPHOLSTERY CLEARANCE CENTRE, but was holding its Branch Closing Down Sale. Wade Upholstery are apparently “recognised as one of the finest British makers of sofas and chairs, with a history dating back to 1921, and is sold by the best furniture retailer’s around the world.”

*Amalgamated Plating Works, Railway arches, Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-54*

Two bridges carry the District and Piccadilly lines across Cambridge Grove and this entrance is on the west side of the road next to the northern of the two. Since 2020 this has been The Clay Garden, a ceramics studio running pottery classes, membership, private hire and masterclasses.

*The Cambridge Arms, pub, Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-55*

The Cambridge Arms was built in 1853 but following a major refurbishment in 1997 it was renamed The Stonemasons Arms and it mainly caters for young professional people and prides itself for “serving craft beer and sourdough pizzas daily.”

Behind it is St John the Evangelist, Glenthorne Road, by William Butterfield built 1857–9. Grade II* listed, it closed as a church in 2005 and is now used by Godolphin and Latymer School as a performing arts centre.

*The Cambridge Arms, pub, Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-41*

Another pictures of the Cambridge Arms. Formerly a Watney Combe Reid house it was revamped by Fuller’s. On its side are what I think are the arms of the Prince of Wales – the Duke of Cambridge is a hereditary title of nobility in the British royal family.

*Arthur Luckett, Funerals, Glenthorne Road, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-56*

Arthur Luckett was an undertaker with this shop at 59 Glenthorne Road, Hammersmith. Later it became a Unisex hairdressing salon who added an awning which rather spoils the frontage and more recently a property management company.

The modern offices at right were for Phillips Medical Systems and have since been replaced.

*Ashcroft Square, Leamore St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1e-42*

Finally in Hammersmith I made this picture of Ashcroft Square in Leamore St, a 1973 housing estate on top of a shopping centre designed by Richard Seifert. The shops were only officially opened in 1979. The Kings Mall Shopping Centre is now owned by IKEA.

But this was not the end of my walk. I jumped on a bus to take me a mile or so to the west before the pictures in another post.

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Limehouse Workshop – 2005

Limehouse Workshop: Twenty years ago today I led a small workshop of photographers around parts of Limehouse, stopping at a number of key places where I gave a short introduction and some suggestions then set them free for a quarter of an hour or so to take their pictures. And while I then gave those who seem to need it some support I also found time to make some pictures myself.

This was an area I’d photographed on a number of occasions over the years – and of course had revisited shortly before the workshop to check and plan our route. And on the day I made sure to be there well in advance in case there were any problems with transport across London. For once there weren’t and I arrived in time for an hour or so wandering and making pictures before we met up.

Because of the preparation the workshop went smoothly and I also had a lot of material to write a post on My London Diary – though a lot less than I told people on the workshop about the area. Here it is below with the usual corrections.

Limehouse is an area of London, with a varied population and an interesting history. it grew up around the river and seafaring trades, including ship-building, and had many warehouses and similar buildings. as well as the river Thames with its national and international connections (the first voluntary passengers to Australia are said to have left from Dunbar Wharf, close to Limekiln Dock.) It gained more traffic through its two canals, the Regent’s Canal linking the Thames to inland England, including Birmingham and the midlands via the Grand Union Canal, and the Limehouse Cut, taking traffic from the Lea Navigation to the Thames by a safer route avoiding Bow Creek.

Much of the centre of Limehouse is occupied by the Regents Canal Dock. In the 1960s a new short length of canal joined the Limehouse Cut to this, enabling the separate lock from this to the Thames to be closed. A year or two later all commercial traffic on the canals ceased, leaving them for pleasure cruising.

A hundred years ago, docklands in general and Limehouse in particular was a closed world to those who lived outside the area. Lurid and racist stories, particularly those of Sax Rohmer, painted the area as a den of vice, run by the infamous (and totally fictional) Dr Fu Manchu. The area had become home to a number of Chinese and Asian sailors and their families, becoming London’s first Chinatown. Even thirty years ago there were still some signs of this, but [by 2005] most of the Chinese businesses and people have moved away to other areas, including Soho.

*St Anne’s, Limehouse flying its naval White Ensign*

Thomas Burke’s tales of Limehouse [Limehouse Nights: Tales of Chinatown] from the same era as Rohmer paint a more accurate and sympathetic view of the area and its English and Chinese population, although his language is fully of its time, with many terms that would now be considered derogatory. But Burke had been raised as an orphan in neighbouring Poplar and his Limehouse stories reflect a close knowledge of the people and the place. The figure who dominates his stories is not a sinister criminal warlord, but the old Chinese sage, Quong Lee.

More recently, Limehouse came under the diggers and cranes of the London Docklands Development Corporation. Canary Wharf was raised on its eastern edge, and the Limehouse Link tunnel excavated through the heart of the area. The need to build this route to join docklands with inner London meant that the LDDC had to get round a table with the local authority, leading to the first real attempt by them to take social considerations into account in their development plans.

More pictures and some captions begin here on My London Diary.

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Against Clerical Fascism, & Women For Choice – 2011

Against Clerical Fascism & Women For Choice: On Saturday 9th July 2011 I photographed a protest against the imposition of religious laws outside a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference in East London and then a larger protest at Westminster against amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill which would severely damage the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act.

Protest At Hizb ut-Tahrir Conference – Whitechapel

Against Clerical Fascism, & Women For Choice - 2011

Hizb ut-Tahrir were proscribed in the UK as a terrorist organisation in January 2024 after a protest following the Hamas attack on Israel at which they called on Muslim armies to attack Israel. I had photographed various protests by them for around 20 years and had found them to be a deeply worrying organisation both in their views and in the way their events were run and was surprised that they had been allowed to continue their activities so long. They appeared to many to have some kind of special secret licence from our security organisations for their extremism.

Hizb ut-Tahrir were holding their International Khilafah conference at the former Wickham’s department store in Whitechapel and a small group of protesters including Peter Tatchell had come to protest outside.

On My London Diary I quoted Tatchell’s statement about the group:

“Hizb ut Tahrir opposes democracy and wants to establish a religious dictatorship where non-Muslims and women are denied equal human rights. The group has a long history of anti-Semitism, homophobia and bigotry towards Hindu people. It is also guilty of extreme intolerance towards Muslims who do not share its harsh, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.”

There were separate entrances to the venue for men and women and photographers who attempted to photograph the women in front of their entrance were approached by security and told they must not photograph the women – and shortly after “a group of around a dozen Hizb ut-Tahrir security men and male stewards came and stood around the women to make further photography difficult.”

I’d earlier photographed a poster advertising the event on a cabinet in the pavement outside, and was photographing Peter Tatchell holding a placard reading ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir = clerical fascism No to Hizb / EDL /BNP‘ when one of the security men came and ripped the poster from the cabinet.

The protest was multi-racial and multi-ethnic and one Muslim woman held a poster stating ‘Hizb-ut-Tahrir does not represent Muslims.’ And, as I reported, ‘A Muslim man in his thirties walking past asked me what was happening and when I told him, described Hizb ut-Tahrir as “absolute nutters.“‘

Protest At Hizb ut-Tahrir Conference

Pro-Choice Rally at Parliament – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

*The crowd, mainly women, applaud one of the speakers at the rally*

Many different groups had come to the rally to oppose the “attempts by right-wing Christians and some Conservatives to turn back the clock towards the position before the 1967 Act, where many women had dangerous illegal back-street abortions, often with disastrous effects on their health. “

That Act, legalising abortion, had “led to one of the greatest single improvements in health for women of the last century.” But the amendments proposed by Nadine Dorries and others to the Health and Social Care Bill being debated in parliament in 2011 would have imposed “a further delay on abortions and would open the door to counselling provided by unregulated and unlicensed organisations including those opposed to abortions on religious grounds, and would remove the current obligations to provide medically sound and unbiased information.”

Under the coalition government a new advisory group on abortion had been set up which excluded ‘the Pregnancy Advisory Service but includes Life, an anti-abortion group which preaches abstinence and, according to its web site, “is opposed to abortion on principle in all circumstances.’

The government was also under strong “pressure from anti-abortion groups to lower the time limit for abortions from the current 24th week of gestation” despite clear medical advice against this from The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

On My London Diary you can also see many of the speakers at the event, including “including those wanting an extension of abortion rights to women in Northern Ireland, along with Labour MP and women’s rights campaigner Diane Abbott, columnist Penny Laurie (Penny Red), Green Party London Assembly member Jenny Jones, and doctor and former Liberal Democrat science spokesman and MP Evan Harris” – who was the only man who spoke while I was at the rally.

More at Pro-Choice Rally at Parliament.

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Anti-Racist & Migrant Rights reclaim Pride – 2017

Anti-Racist & Migrant Rights reclaim Pride: On Saturday 8th July 2017 Pride stewards stopped the Migrants Rights and Anti-Racist Bloc from joining the Pride procession in London.

Instead the Bloc reclaimed Pride as protest, gate-crashing the route at Oxford Circus and marching in front of the official parade along the route lined by cheering crowds.

Pride had changed drastically over the years since I first photographed it in the 1990s and had “degenerated from the original protest into a corporate glitterfest led by major corporations which use it as ‘pinkwashing’ to enhance their reputation.” It now “includes groups such as the Home Office, arms companies and police whose activities harm gay people in the UK and across the world.”

This year, 2025, there are reports that much of the corporate money behind these changes has dried up as companies and major organisations are finding times harder, and Prides in towns and cities are feeling the pinch, with at least one having had to cancel this year’s event.

In 2017 the organisers had decided to “strictly limit those who could take part in the procession, with only those who had applied to take part officially and been granted permission being issued with armbands allowing their members to go on the route.”

Until 2017, the event had been open to “open to anyone who wished to take part, who could join on towards the end of the parade as the Migrant Rights and Anti-Racist bloc did” in 2016.

I’d met the Bloc as it gathered on Oxford Street and walked with them as they made their way to Oxford Circus where they had hoped to walk up Regent Street towards the back of the procession. Stewards and police tried to stop them as they marched through a gap between police vans and lifted barriers to make their way into Oxford Circus but failed.

They were now just ahead of the official head of the procession but the stewards were adamant that they could not walk up Regent Street towards the rear where they wished to join it, and with the help of police were able to prevent them.

The Anti-Racist & Migrant Pride bloc were refused entry to the official march but were on the road in front of it and were not going to move out of the way.

Some minutes of threats of arrest and negotiations followed, but the Bloc stayed on the road preventing the Pride parade from starting. Eventually police decided to let the bloc march along the route in front of the main march – which otherwise was unable to move.

They got a lot of cheers from the waiting crowds – and some puzzlement – but a lot of people took photographs as they went past, and a few managed to come and join them.

They let off smoke flares as they went down Regent St, in the lead the 2017 Pride march in London, and as I walked with them I was able to photograph many of the people cheering them on.

They marched to the end of the route in Whitehall, where most then left the road, but a group of No Pride in War protesters lay down on the road. By now the head of the official parade had reached Trafalgar Square, but had to stop there and wait while police slowly tried to get them to move.

After around 15 minutes the people lying “on the floor got up after police threatened them with arrest if they stayed.“

“They had made a very effective protest and had reclaimed Pride as protest. But somehow all of the mainstream media covering the event managed to avoid seeing several hundred people leading the protest and setting off flares.” Our mass media operate a very effective censorship on behalf of the establishment.

It was hard to choose just a few pictures from the event for this post – there are so many more on My London Diary as well as more about the event – from which the quotes above come – at Anti-Racist & Migrant Rights reclaim Pride.

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Rainham, Purfleet, Thurrock & Ponders End – 1993

Rainham, Purfleet, Thurrock & Ponders End: On Saturday 11th December 1993 I took a train from Fenchurch Street to Rainham and then walked along by the river to Coldharbour Point. There the path stopped and I returned to Rainham and took the train to Purfleet where I could pick up the riverside path again and walk on to Grays. Probably I walked about 9 miles in all and by the time I finished it I think the light would have been fading, with sunset at around 4pm.

Tilda Rice, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-64 — *Tilda Rice, Rainham, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-64*

On this walk I made a little over 200 black and white images, a selection of which you can find on Flickr in my 1993 London album beginning here.

*Waste Paper, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-51*

There are more colour images from this walk, including a number of panoramas, mixed with pictures from other occasions starting here on the final two pages of my Flickr album of colour pictures from 1993.

*Notices on Fence, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-53*

But today I found some more pictures from that walk at the start of my album 1994 London Colour and I’ll share these in this post. They will have come from a cassette of film which I took in 1993 but only developed a month or so later in 1994.

*Waste Paper, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-56*

Works, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-46

*QEII Bridge, Dartford Bridge, Pipeline, River Thames, West Thurrock, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-11*

The final image in today’s post is something completely different on the same film, a shop window in Ponders End which I found it strangely weird. As it is on the same film as the others I think it was probably also taken in December 1993 although my caption stated 1994.

*Shop Window, Ponders End, Enfield, 1994, 94-01-1-14*

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Pride in 2002

Pride in 2002: Back in 2002 Pride was still in black and white, or at least the pictures I posted on My London Diary were, as were those I took to the picture library I was then working with. They still only worked with black and white prints and colour transparencies and I was working with colour negative.

It would have been possible for me to convert those colour negatives into transparencies, but it wasn’t worth the time and expense in the hope of possible sales to do so.

For my personal use and to exhibit work I could make colour prints – and I had crammed a colour processor into my darkroom so could feed the exposed Fuji paper in at one end, shut the lid and let the machine do the rest before I took the print to the print washer.

I had a smart colour enlarger with a linked probe that at least almost got the necessary filtration somewhere close, though I always ran at least one test strip – and often 2 or 3 – before making the final print. Making prints was a rather tedious business working in near total darkness with just a very, very dim sodium light.

The way forward was obviously to scan negative film to provide digital files, but in 2002 the equipment I had was fairly primitive and the scans I produced in 2002 looked rather poor, which is probably why I only posted the black and white images on My London Diary at the time. Scanning the black and white 10×8″ press prints gave rather better results.

Back then I only wrote two short paragraphs about the event in My London Diary – and here they are in full (with the usual corrections):

July started for me with the annual Pride march. This year it was probably the smallest I’ve attended, and was a rather sad event compared to previous years.

It was enlivened a little by some visitors from Brazil, but the whole thing seems to be more of a commercial event now. Much less fun and joy.

For this post I’ve revisited some of those 2002 scans and improved them significantly with the aid of some smart sharpening and other minor adjustments to post here. You can click on these colour images to see them larger.

Most of the colour images are of the same subjects as I took in black and white, and at least for some I still prefer them in black and white. But generally I think the event is best seen in colour.

More black and white pictures start here on My London Diary.

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NHS at 65, Lewisham & the DLR – 2013

NHS at 65, Lewisham & the DLR: Friday 5th July 2013 was the 65th anniversary of the founding of our National Health Service and I photographed three events connected with this, two in Westminster and one opposite Lewisham Hospital where campaigners were fighting to keep services. And on the way back from Lewisham I took some pictures though the window of the DLR train, mainly as we went past Deptford Creek.

The National Health Action Party was a publicity stunt and single issue parties such as this are never likely to make much widespread impact on British politics. But given the strength of the recent Labour rebellion over Starmer’s attack on the disabled I wonder if a new left of centre political party might result in a radical change in our political system, with possibly a significant number of Labour MPs deserting the sinking ship in favour of a party which represents traditional Labour values. We could then have two different parties fighting out the next election.

NHS 65: GMB – Westminster

The GMB trade union came with three vintage ambulances to protest outside Parliament where trade unionists in vintage ambulance uniforms posed with MPs including Dennis Skinner and Sadiq Khan warning that the NHS is at risk.

I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who the other MPs were, but you can see a couple more in the pictures on My London Diary I took as the photographer for the GMB posed and photographed them. I have a personal antipathy to posing people, though I might occasionally deliberately attract their attention and even very occasionally ask them to keep still or look at me. But generally I see my role as recording what is happening rather than directing it. And here what was happening was that people were being photographed.

Later I went with them (and the ambulances) as they took 65th Birthday cards for the NHS, with the message inside “Do Not Pension Off Our NHS’ to the Ministry of Health, then still in Richmond House on Whitehall.

More at NHS 65: GMB.

NHS 65: Lewisham Hospital

In the memorial garden opposite the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign were holding a lunchtime party to celebrate the 65th Birthday of the NHS, and as a part of their campaign to keep this busy, successful and much needed hospital open.

The plans for its closure were not related to the hospital’s performance in any way but because the health authority needed to make drastic cuts to meet the disastrous PFI debts of a neighbouring hospital.

There had been a massive community campaign to save vital NHS services at the hospital, backed by “Patients, NHS staff, Lewisham Council, MPs, schools, pensioners, families, businesses, faith groups, charities, unions, students and health campaigners” – the whole community including the Millwall Football Club.

Later at the end of July 2013 the High Court ruled in favour of the Judicial Reviews by the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign and Lewisham Council and quashed the Government’s closure plans. And ten years later in July 2023 on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the NHS a newly engraved community bench was unveiled to celebrate the victory. I’m sorry I wasn’t present to record that occasion.

More at NHS 65: Lewisham Hospital.

DLR Views – Deptford-Canary Wharf

I decided to travel back from Lewisham into central London by taking the DLR to Canary Wharf where I could change to the Jubilee Line because I could try to take some pictures from the train, particularly on the section where the viaduct goes alongside and over Deptford Creek.

There are many problems in taking pictures from trains. Finding a reasonably clean window is the first, and avoiding reflections another. It was easier back in the 1970s when there were windows you could pull down and lean out! And now apparently AI can remove reflections, though I’ve yet to try it.

DLR Views

NHS 65: Rally & Camarathon – Westminster

On the 65th Birthday of the NHS, Dr Clive Peedell began a 65 mile ultramarathon to David Cameron’s Witney constituency to bury the NHS coffin and launch the National Health Action Party plan by doctors and health professionals to revive the NHS.

Dr Clive Peedell posed in a Cameron mask with the coffin and wreath and had come with a small group of supporters, including one wearing a mask of his coalition partner Nick Clegg. Campaigners accuse both of deliberately running down our NHS, with more and more NHS services being delivered by private healthcare companies.

After posing in front of the Ministry of Health, the campaigners crossed Whitehall to stand in front of the gates of Downing St before processing behind the coffin to Parliament for more pictures, ending with some street theatre involving severed hands and speeches by several distnguished health professions including the Chair of the Royal College of GPs in Old Palace Yard.

I left before Dr Peedell and two others set off on his long run – though I’m sure others would be carrying the wreath and coffin. The event had clearly been set up to attract the media, but received little publicity.

On My London Diary you can read a long statement by Dr Peedell about how the “2012 Health and Social Care Act, will result in the NHS being increasingly dismantled and privatised” with the Labour Party whose “previous pro-market, pro-privatisation reforms, actually set the platform for the current changes” had failed to sufficiently oppose. Health professionals had “formed the National Health Action Party to raise awareness and inform the public about what is happening to their NHS” and had today “set out our own 10 point plan to reinstate, protect and improve the NHS“.

Much more on My London Diary at NHS 65: Rally & Camarathon.

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Darent Valley Path & Thames – 2015

Darent Valley Path & Thames: The route we took on Saturday 4th July 2015 was new to my wife and son, but one I’d taken quite a few times before, both on foot and on my Brompton, but this time I left the bike behind and walked with them.

Or rather more or less with them, as I often stopped or walked a few yards to one side or other to take pictures, and then had to scurry after them to catch up. Walking with a camera is very different from walking. My son does have a camera (one of the Fuji fixed lens X100 series) but takes far fewer pictures than me – and did much less running about.) But his captions are often rather more droll than mine, and seldom constrained by the 5W’s – Who What Where When Why.

It was a bad day for this walk, hot and sunny with virtually no shelter between Dartford and Greenhithe along the banks of the Darent and Thames. But I’d heard that there would be a boat sailing up Dartford Creek, a rare occasion at the time and decided it would be good to photograph it.

This route is now one end of the Darent Valley Path, a 19 mile path which ends at Sevenoaks, most of which I’ve walked or cycled on other occasions, and the part beside the Thames is on the England Coast Path.

The Darent used to be navigable at least up as far as Dartford, where barges brought in and took out cargoes. Close to Dartford is a half-lock which holds back water above it when the tide goes out, long out of use but now slowly being restored to bring the waterway back into regular use.

*A fixed low bridge impedes navigation. This bypass was built as University Way, but the University never came so they renamed it Bob Dunn Way*

There used to be a lock which craft could go through when then the tide was high enough downstream, but that was replaced by a fixed barrier. Boats can still go through in either direction close to high tide when their is enough water for them to clear the sill.

*The yacht arrived later than expected and I had to run back to photograph*

*it coming under the flood barrier. It was too late to get under the bridge on the same tide.*

As well as the Darent, barges also went up the River Cray which joins the Darent downstream from the half-lock. This too is being brought back into leisure use.

By the river in the centre of Dartford was the industrial estate dominated by the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant of Burroughs Wellcome who took over a former paper works here in 1889. In 1995 this became Glaxo Wellcome, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. The works was wound down from 2008 by the then owners GlaxoSmithKline with manufacturing ending in 2013. Much of the site was empty by 2015 and now has large blocks of flats.

On the west side of Dartford Creek had been paper mills, but the last of these, owned by Wiggins Teape closed in 2009 and there was by 2015 housing on the site.

*QEII bridge and Littlebrook Power station, River Thames, Dartford*

When the third Dartford Bypass was built around 1988 barges were no longer bringing esparto grass and other raw materials for the paper works up the river and no thought was given to navigation. Boats that can lower masts or without them can creep under the road for a short time on a rising or falling tide when there is enough water to allow them to float but not high enough for the bridge to block their transit.

Much of the land to the east of the creek was marshes, which made it a suitable location for the Wells fireworks factory, long closed. But I think it or an adjoining site was now in use for clay-pigeon shooting, and for much of this section of the walk we sounded under gunfire.

There had once been a pub, Longreach Terrace, and a ferry to Purfleet on the Thames close to the the mouth of Dartford creek, but both were long gone. It was here too that smallpox victims were brough ashore to the islolation wards of Orchard Hospital, demolished around 1975, part of the Joyce Green Hospital which was demolished around 2000.

*The Purfleet to Zeebruge ferry goes under the QEII bridge*

Further downstream on the banks of the Thames we passed Littlebrook power station – the final plant there, Littlebrook D, had ceased operation only four months earlier – before going under the Dartford QEII bridge and past Crossways Business Park. I had meant to climb up the hill to Stone Church, but missed the footpath and ended our walk in Greenhithe. But I was too tired anyway – and had stopped taking pictures on this last part of our walk.

More at Darent Valley Path & Thames.

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Ahwazi Crash Secret UK-Iran Business Meeting – 2015

Ahwazi Crash Secret UK-Iran Business Meeting: On Friday 3rd July 2015 I went into the offices of the British Iranian Chambers of Commerce (BICC) with a group of British-Iranian Ahwazi Arabs and human rights activist Peter Tatchell to gatecrash a secret meeting promoting UK-Iran trade and investment in NIOC (National Iranian Oil Company) House in Westminster.

Iran of course is very much back in the news now, following the attacks on its nuclear installions by Israel and the USA, concerned that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons. At the moment Israel is the only state in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and they and their US partners are very much concerned to keep it that way. But this protest was against the continuing savage oppression of the Awazi in Iran.

Iran is of course a state with a highly oppresive authoritarian religious regime – as Amnesty International report they surpress “the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly” with “Women and girls, LGBTI people, and ethnic and religious minorities” experiencing “systemic discrimination and violence.”

The Awazi Arabs are Iran’s largest Arab speaking community and their largely autonomous state of Al-Ahwaz was forcibly taken over by Persia in 1925. And they suffer more than any other ethnic group from Iranian oppression.

Oil was first discovered in Al-Ahwaz in 1908, and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company formed to exploit it (in was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1935) was directly controlled by the British government from 1914 to 1951 when oil was nationalised under the the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC.) Almost all of Iran’s oil is in the Ahwazi regions. Anglo-Iranian is now rather better known as BP.

Iranian violent persecution, forced displacement and the suppression of Ahwazi Arabs and their culture has continued since 1925, turning their homeland, thought to have been the inspiration of the Biblical ‘Garden of Eden’ into a a desolate wasteland, the poorest area of the Middle East.

*Peter Tatchell talks with some of those taking part in the secret meeting*

A recent Facebook post gives a short clear summary of Iran’s history – here’s the text:

“IRAN ONCE HAD DEMOCRACY – THE WEST DESTROYED IT.
Every time Western leaders talk about “freedom and democracy” in Iran – they either don’t know history – or they’re hoping you don’t.

IRAN HAD DEMOCRACY – Until the CIA and MI6 overthrew it. Why? Because Iran dared to nationalize its own oil. That was 1953. The elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was toppled by Operation Ajax. Why? Because British Petroleum (yes, that BP) didn’t want to lose control.

So let’s stop pretending the West ever cared about the Iranian people.
It was always about oil and imperial control. And those parroting “freedom” today – without this context – are sadly, useful idiots for empire.”

The post goes on to promote the book “The Devil’s Chessboard” by David Talbot, founding editor of Salon, which apparently “tells the full story” of how the “Dulles brothers weaponized the CIA to crush democracy abroad – from Iran to Congo to Guatemala” though I’ve not read it.

*‘We demand Dignity and Justice for Ahwazis’*

You can read more about what happened inside NIOC House on My London Diary, though I think the pictures and captions give a good idea there are many more there. I had some difficult in working in the low lighting in the corridor and from some trying to stop me taking pictures, but was not seriously harrassed, though I was stopped and wasn’t able to get a picture of Lord Lamont as he was confronted by some of the protesters, although the other photographers did.

One man – recognised by the protesters as an Iranian Embassy official – began to assault one of the photographers but was restrained by others from the meeting. After ten minutes the protesters decided they had make their point and we all made our way down to the foyer. Here we were met by police who stopped us leaving.

While we were not arrested we were prevented from leaving for over 45 minutes, although I and the other journalists all showed our press cards. It was hot and I was pleased to drink some of the cold fruit juice the building manager hospitably offered. The photographer who had been assaulted complained to the police before went up to the sixth floor – when they came down he was told his assailant might have diplomatic immunity and the photographer decided not to press charges.

Eventually all of us were released, presumably as the BICC wished to avoid publicity about their meeting. The protesters including some who had stayed outside the building then posed on the steps for photographs.

More on My London Diary at Ahwazi crash secret UK-Iran business meeting.

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