Olympic Torch in Brixton: On Saturday 26th June 2004 the official torch of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, presented by Coca-Cola and Samsung came to London for a day and was ferried around by taxI from Wimbledon to Brixton, Peckham and elsewhere before a concert on the Mall in the evening.
Dancing along Brixton High St after the Olympic torch
Urban 75, a fantastic non-profit site about all things Brixton and surrounding areas of South London, running since 1995, gave information about the event and a discussion on its Forums, including this post from “Well-Known Member” Gramsci (I’ve taken the liberty of correcting a few typos – as I do with my own work) :
Like most sport this is something you cant avoid. At least England have lost in the Europe so wont get any more St Georges flag waving. Now its the Olympic torch. Its all so shallow and meaningless. We live in a world divided into a rich powerful West and a Third World dealing with IMF led “structural adjustment” and US military might etc.
Every few years a carefully staged fake coming together of the world as though we are all equal and happy with our lot. Parts of the Olympics remind me more of a Nuremburg rally. When its going on its like you have to know something about whose won or lost. If you don’t your not being patriotic or something.
Why is it that people who go on about sport eg football are quite often the most unfit people I meet?
My own post about the event on My London Diary also reflected a certain scepticism – here it is with the usual corrections.
Frank Bruno
Wimbledon can doubtless be blamed for the rain, and it fell relentlessly if not too heavily all Saturday morning as we waited around in Brixton for the precursor of the next example of sporting madness.
However it was an occasion for a little fun, with music and some attractive samba dancers from Quilombo do Samba, some athletic capoeira (a Latin American version of Morris dancing?) from Abada Capoeira and a little carnival from South Connections and Angell Town community group (and some drumming from Sandy Lamb) lifting the greyness.
Eventually the caravan arrived, although it was actually a black taxi, carrying an Olympic torch. I gave the photocall a miss so as to get in position to catch Frank Bruno ambling down the street with the torch, across the traffic lights and into Brixton’s high street [Brixton Road] where he passed it to a rather more attractive Davina Mccall, apparently a TV presenter (well, I don’t have a TV, so I wouldn’t know.)
It all seemed rather a sad non-event (thank goodness I missed the concert.) The whole Olympic bit seems little more than a commercial event now, publicity for the sponsors. Surely its time for a new Olympic Movement to pick up the old ideals again?
But in Brixton the carnival was bright and colourful and fun for those taking part and watching.
Looking back at it I think Gramsci was spot on, though I also fail to understand how anyone could design an Olympic torch to look like such an ordinary old bit of stainless pipe. People in Brixton are still rather short of bread and this was something of a crumby circus, but they made the most of it.
Stamford Brook, Ravenscourt Park and a Bull: My photographs on Sunday 7th January 1990 began with a couple of views of the Thames though the window of my District Line train which I’ve not put online, but my walk started after I got off at Stamford Brook station and walked south down Goldhawk Rd.
This fine house at 397-399 attracted my attention. It had been Grade II listed in 1976, but the listing text was unusually vague about its date, calling it “Early to mid C19” and the Westcroft Square conservation area document is equally vague.
Beyond the house is a large noticeboard for ‘Z GREGORY BROTHERS, BUILDING CONTRACTORS’ at 399a, still there and I think only the phone number has changed, and another fairly grand semi-detached house which I think are late Victorian.
St Peter’s Square, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-53
Since I was so close I couldn’t resist another short visit to St Peter’s Square south of the main road which changes its name here from Chiswick High Road to King Street. After the county of London was formed in 1889 this was the boundary between London and Middlesex and it is now the boundary between the London boroughs of Hounslow and Hammersmith & Fulham.
I’d photographed this square fairly extensively the previous month – see my post here) and only stopped to take a handful of pictures – this the only one online – and I was rather pleased with it.
Back on the main road I photographed the corner of Goldhawk Road and King Street, known as Young’s Corner and, as a plaque at first floor level also informs us, ‘REBUILT 1894’, though I’m rather surprised the architect wanted his name on the rather drab two storey buildingon the corner. But at least it doesn’t completely hide the much grander Victorian building at 417 Goldhawk behind behind with its slim turret – and it is perhaps this building for which the architect was claiming credit rather than the shop.
Grocer John Young had leased a shop here in 1830, and it later also became a post office. When at his death in 1860 his youngest son Charles Spencer Young took over the business he eventually turned it into a shop to display prints as a successful picture dealer. When horse-drawn trams ran to here in 1882, the tramway stop was named Young’s Corner.
King St, Stamford Brook, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-56
A fine row of three shops at 352- 356 King Street. At left is a basic and rather ugly more modern building – described in the conservation area document as “modern infill of no merit and bulky appearance“.
Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-45
Ravenscourt Park is not just an Underground station, but a decent sized park with a lake fed by Stamford Brook, which originally was part of a moat around the manor house of Palingswick (or Paddenswick) Manor. It and the area got its name after the house was bought in 1747 by Thomas Corbett who renamed it Ravenscourt, thought to be a not very good pun on his name – ‘corbeau‘ being French for raven.
I hardly went into the park, and this house is 260 King Street.
The house at 260 King Street is at the left of this picture, followed by a row of shops including one of more interest to me than most, Mac’s Cameras. Max Irming-Geissler set up the shop here in the late 1950s and it continued more or less until his death in 2012. It was a great place to look at a window full of second-hand cameras and lenses, though I don’t think I ever actually bought anything there.
The Bull, Ravenscourt Arms, King St, Hammersmith, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1990, 90-1d-31
This Grade II listed black bull was created by Obadiah Pulham of Pulham & Son in Woodbridge, Suffolk, a well-known maker of garden ornaments, grottoes and follies. It is almost certainly made from Pulhamite, their own proprietary artificial rock, similar to the better-known Coade stone. I think it might actually have been William Lockwood’s Portland Stone Cement. James Pulham was an apprentice to Lockwood and became manager of Lockwood’s Spitalfields office around 1820 with his brother Obidiah as his assistant.
It was created as a pub sign for the Black Bull coaching inn at 122a Holborn and gets a mention from Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit published in 1843. The pub was demolished in 1904 for an extension to Gamages but the bull was saved by Hammersmith MP Sir William Bull to put above the entrance to his law firm in King Street.
When these offices were demolished it was located outside a 1960s pub, at 257 King Street, a short way down Vencourt Place. The pub later changed its name from the Ravenscourt Arms to the Black Bull. The pub closed around 2018 but it and the bull are I think still there.
Last Saturday I photographed a couple of protests, went to a disappointing photographic exhibition, took a snap of the Red Arrows and found myself with time to spare to go and photograph the 2025 London World Naked Bike Ride at its start and then later on my way to my last protest of the day.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
The first year I photographed this event was in 2006 and I came back to it in almost every year until 2014, then again rather briefly in 2019. Here I’ll post some of what I wrote about it on that first occasion and then my comments on returning to photograph it in 2019, and end with my thoughts about the 2025 ride. All the pictures in this post are from Saturday 14th June 2025.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
Unfortunately Facebook’s “community standards” prevent me from publishing an album of my pictures there, but you can find a selection of images on my Alamy portfolio pages. Though you may have to search or browse a few pages to find them after I upload more work.
2006
People in over 50 cities around the world were taking place in the World Naked Bike Ride as a protest against oil dependency and car culture. In London. over 600 cyclists, along with a few rollerskaters, rollerbladers and others took part.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
As a change, I congratulate the Met police for allowing the event (unlike the Brighton cops.) Police cyclists – looking rather over-dressed in their usual uniform – led the event in its ride around some of the busiest streets in central London, and kept riders safe from traffic. Most of them seemed to be amused by the event.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
So too were the crowds in central London. Many obviously found it hard to believe the evidence of their eyes, but all I saw seemed amused and none offended. Riders handed out a leaflet explaining the purpose of the event and advising “if you don’t wish to see nudity, please avert your gaze – we’ll soon be out of sight,” but I didn’t see anyone following this advice. Indeed it looked like the event should attract even more tourists to the city.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
I don’t have a great problem with nudity. I was brought up told we were created in the image of our maker, so feel it would be blasphemous to object about the display of the naked body, although generally we may find it more prudent to keep it covered, especially in our climate. As my pictures show, not all those taking part rode entirely naked: the invitation was to ride “as bare as you dare!”
London, UK. 14 June 2025
Photographing an event like this could be awkward, but I recognised many of those taking part and they knew me. There were a few conditions, but only one person out of the several hundred made it clear she didn’t want me to take a picture, and of course I didn’t.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
It was an afternoon when it was more comfortable to be without clothes than in them (so long as you had plenty of sun-screen) and it certainly made an interesting spectacle. I had chosen not to ride a bike, and just pretended to be one as I ran up Piccadilly fully dressed with the mass of cyclists. By the time we got to the top of Haymarket I was pretty much whacked, and continued by tube to Waterloo to meet the ride as it came up York Road and get a different viewpoint.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
2019
I’ve never been too impressed by the protest side of this. It’s more a fun ride for people who want to ride around London with no or very few clothes on. For those of us watching on the streets it is certainly unusual and entertaining, and I think very few could be seriously upset by it. The normal response seems to be a lot of pointing and laughing.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
Perhaps if it were more of a protest there would be more women taking part. This year the imbalance seemed even greater than previously, with perhaps 10 or 20 men for every one woman, though I didn’t try to make an accurate count. My pictures do tend to concentrate more on the women than the men for various reasons. To state the obvious, these pictures involve nudity. Please do not click on the link if you may be offended or if you are in a place where others may be offended.
2025
This year there were even fewer women on the ride which now seems to be dominated by male nudists, with some coming from the continent to take part. It has become an event very much more about “body positivity” than a protest about car culture and cycle safety. And it illustrated the huge anatomical variation of male members of our species.
London, UK. 14 June 2025
A mere handful rode with political messages written on their bodies and even fewer with flags or posters on their bikes. There was little of the creative face and body paint and fancy dress which had enlivened earlier years. It’s an event that has lost much of its interest for me and is far more drab than my pictures, which concentrate on the things that still interest me. Perhaps this is an event which has outlived its times.
Wimbledon, Pensions & Hammersmith: On Saturday 19th June 2004 I paid a short visit to Wimbledon Village Fair before photographing a TUC protest calling for changes in pension law and better pensions in Westminster and then going for a short riverside walk in Hammersmith. There are more pictures from the protest on My London Diary, I’ll include the short text I wrote at the time about the day as well as some from the captions I wrote in 2004.
Wimbledon Village Fair
Home of tennis and the Wombles, Wimbledon always strikes me as an alien implant in London by some civilisation with a time machine, a sense of humour and a very fat wallet. I dropped in to the Village Fair just to see it still existed.
Pay Up For Pensions – Trade Union Congress March and Rally
Half an hour later I was back in the real world. Where companies make off with the pension funds leaving people who have paid in to schemes for years with no pensions. where other creditors come before pension holders when companies go bust.
Where millions of lower paid workers now have no employment pension rights at all. Where women have always been treated unfairly in many respects. Where government has worsened conditions for civil servants, teachers and others. As TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber says “Those who used to have good pensions now have poor pensions. Those who used to have poor pensions, now have no pension.”
Around 5-10,000 people marched down from Temple towards the Houses of ParliamentMarchers included many workers who have already lost their pensions when their companies foldedBanners on the march included many union branches including those for civil servantsPeople of all ages took part; not only the old are affected by pensions.Marchers included pensioners who had served in WW2Women have never been treated fairly over pensions by employers or stateThe pink pensions pig caught between Big Ben and Parliamentary OfficesWorkers from Samuel Jones lost their pensions when the company was taken over‘Protect the Pension Promise’, ‘NO to work ’till you drop”. The labour movement looks to the government to act on pensionsPensioners want a better deal, and the unfairness of pension theft is widely recognised
Unfortunately the New Labour Government wasn’t listening and the “the great British pension theft” begun by Margaret Thatcher and taken over by Gordon Brown continued, while ineffectual legislation introduced after the scandal when Robert Maxwell stole £460 million from the Mirror pensioners continued to allow companies to steal pensions from their workers. Despite pension protection schemes, workers can still lose when companies are taken over or fail.
River Thames at Hammersmith – Furnival Sculling Club
On the way home I went for a walk by the river in Hammersmith, another area of London strongly associated with William Morris. The Funivall Sculling Club here was established in 1896 as the Hammersmith Sculling Club For Girls – the world’s first women’s rowing club – by Dr Frederick Furnivall; it went unisex in 1901. Furnival had earlier championed rowing for working men. He served as the model for Ratty, the water rat in ‘Wind In The Willows’, as well as being involved with the preparation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Hammersmith Mall – The second building is the Furnival Sculling ClubWeeds and pollution in the ThamesPlastic bottles and other rubbish collected up by this landing stage near Hammersmith Bridge
The former BBC Riverside Studios – part converted to offices which were advertised by the banner at roof level. It was imaginatively redeveloped in 2014-6 to provide better public facilities, a riverside walkway and 165 flats.
Poplar, Bow, Leyton, North Woolwich & Silvertown: These pictures come from a number of visits to areas of London working on several different projects and are my final selection of colour panoramas made in 1995. There are a few more colour images, including some panoramas I made in 1995 in the images in the Flickr album as well as many I have not digitised; some very similar to those online, others that I now find of less interest. Some of these were taken as a part of my project on the Greenwich Meridian in London – you can see a set of 16 images from this on the urban landscape web site.
Bow Locks, River Lea, Bow Creek, Bow, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-752
Bow Locks separate the tidal River Lea from the Lea Navigation and the Limehouse Cut which offers an alternative route to the Thames to avoid the winding and dangerous Bow Creek. First built in 1850 they were remodelled in 1930. At the highest Spring tides water from Bow Creek would overtop the locks and raise the level of the canals here – the locks were modified in 2000 to stop this and avoid the silting it caused.
London Galvanizers, Leven Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 95p4-743
The Poplar Gas Coompany built a local gas works here in the 1820s at the request of the Poplar Vestry after ratepayers lobbied them to provide gas street lighting. The site was cleared in 2011 and I was commissioned to photograph the removal of toxic earth from the site using barges on Bow Creek. Something around an eigth of the material was removed in this way, tides making the removal of more difficult. The original gasholders had to be built to special safety standards because of their proximity to the West India Dock wall. The last of the gasholders was removed in 2017.
London Galvanizers had modernised their galvanizing plant here in 1983-5 and were one of the most important jobbing galvanizers in London and the Home Counties.
This street corner is close to the Meridian and I had stood here for some time outside the Chinese restaurant which was having some joinery work done. I liked the contrast between its orange paint and the blue on the opposite corner and the warm brown of the Birkbeck Tavern at right. I think I had made at least one exposure when a young girl in a red coat on roller skates came to see what I was doing – and I made this exposure as a red car come around, filling an otherwise rather empty grey space.
The Meridian also passes through this cemetery and I chose a viewpoint which included the cemetery chapel with a fine group of monuments in the foreground, I think all for people of Italian origin.
Stratford Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford, Newham,1995, 95p4-963
I’m unsure what this railway building to the east of the station was, perhaps a 1930s signal box. Parts of this area have now been redeveloped, and this has been behind fences for more than ten years and could stil be there, as least in part.
King George V Dock, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-171
Finally four pictures from a walk along Woolwich Manor Way, this taken looking westwards along the south side of the King George V Dock. You can see the bridge over the dock entrance at right and the City Airport terminal and Canary Wharf at the end of the dock.
Royal Albert Dock Basin, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-161
At left is the old swing bridge that took the road over the dock entrance from the basin. To its right is the elevated DLR and the pumping station at the centre of the Gallions roundabout. Further on only two buildings were standing along the side of the Basin, the Gallions Hotel and the Royal Docks Pumping Station.
Containers, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-162
Land to the south of the Royal Albert Dock Basin just east of Woolwich Manor Way.
King George V Lock, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-153
This swing bridge across the dock entrance is still there.
Royal Victoria Dock, Silvertown, Newham, 1995, 95p11-262
This was taken from Silvertown Way, looking across the Royal Victoria Dock. There are still cranes along the dockside here but the foreground now has flats. The Millenium Mills are still there, but there is nothing in the picture where the Excel Centre now stands and none of the other new developments on the north side of the dock. The council flats at the right have been demolished.
You can see these and some other colour pictures I took in 1995 at 1995 London Colour.
Chariot Festival & Vigil for Custody Deaths: On Sunday 17th June 2012 I photographed the Rathayatra Chariots Festival in Hyde Park, leaving as it set off to go to Brixton. Families of men killed in police custody were holding Fathers Day vigils outside police stations and at Brixton, the family of Ricky Bishop was joined by the sisters of Sean Rigg, whose inquest 4 years after his death there had just started and was in the news.
Hare Krishna Chariot Festival – Hyde Park
Effigy of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) the founder of ISKCON (Hare Krishna)
The annual Rathayatra Chariots Festival is now one of the largest and most colourful religious processions in London with more than a thousand devotees pulling the three giant chariots through the streets from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ and dancing.
The ceremony which began at the Jagannatha temple in Puri, Orissa on the Indian east coast at least a thousand years ago celebrates the time when Krishna grew up on earth; when he became a great lord he moved away from his childhood friends who were cowherds and they came with a cart and tried to kidnap him and take him back to their village.
Jagannath means ‘Master of the Universe’ and his name and the chariots in the festival give us the word “juggernaut”.
The first Rathayatra festival in the west was in San Francisco in 1967 and two years later it was begun in London by disciples from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (better known as the Hare Krishna.)
Krishna, his sister Subhadra and elder brother Balarama each have a chariot and an effigy of the founder of ISKCON, C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) is also carried on one of the chariots in the festival.
Fathers Day Vigil for Custody Deaths – Brixton Police Station
At the vigil outside Brixton Police Station the family of Ricky Bishop was joined by the sisters of Sean Rigg; both were young men in their twenties died after being taken into the police station, Bishop in 2001 and Rigg in 2008.
On My London Diary you can read more about the two deaths and the steps police have taken to stop the truth about their deaths emerging with lies and failures to investigate. The inquiry by the IPCC wailed to question the officers concerned until 8 month after Sean Rigg’s death and the inquest was delayed for four years, beginning a few days before this protest. It was only because of the huge battles by his family that many of the facts emerged. A report into the IPCC investigation in 2013 had concluded they had committed a series of major blunders.
Two months after this vigil, Wikipedia states ‘the inquest jury returned a narrative verdict which concluded that the police had used “unsuitable and unnecessary force” on Rigg, that officers failed to uphold his basic rights and that the failings of the police “more than minimally” contributed to his death.’
Other vigils were taking place on the same day at Birmingham West Midlands Police HQ and in High Wycombe for Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah, in Manchester for Anthony Grainger, Slough for Philmore Mills and at New Scotland Yard for Azelle Rodney.
North Woolwich Photos: My account of my day on Friday 16 June 2006 is rather short – and manages to include a mis-spelling: “I took a trip to North Woolich and made some pictures there.” And the 45 pictures I posted had only the additional heading “North Woolwich, Thames, Royal Docks & Silvertown” but no captions. I think they deserve more, so I’ll correct that for a few of them in this post.
Woolwich Ferry, North Woolwich, 2006
The ferry is the James Newman, built in 1963 and named after a prominent local figure who was Mayor of Woolwich in 1923–25 and was taken out of service in 2018. But I hadn’t arrived on the ferry but had put my folding bike onto a Silverlink service on the North London Line which then ran from Richmond to North Woolwich Station (the section from Stratford to North Woolwich close at the end of 2006.)
The building in the background of the second image is North Woolwich Station, though it had by that date been abandoned by trains which stopped being used as a station in 1979, replaced by a considerably less grand and basic structure on its south side. For some years it was a museum and this fine 1854 building is now home to the New Covenant Church. My picture is taken from the riverside path.
Old Bargehouse Draw Dock and Causeway
Next came three pictures showing the reverside flats just past the Old Bargehouse Draw Dock and Causeway at the end of Bargehouse Road. Until the Woolwich Free Ferry was introduced in 1889 this was where ferries ran across the river to Woolwich. On this occasion I’d cycled past the remains of the Free Ferry without taking any pictures, probably because I had photographed them on several occasions before. You can see the other two pictures of the flats on My London Diary.
I took a few pictures looking across the River Thames most of which I didn’t post on My London Diary and then this one after I’d crossed the lock gates of the King George V Dock entrance and had come to the lock entrance to the Royal Albert Dock Basin. The building here has since been replaced by the flats of Lockside Way.
The riverside path – part of the Capital Way – continues north to an abrupt end close to Atlantis Avenue and this view from its end shows the remains of the jetty which brought coal to the Beckton Gas Works. I retraced my path, taking more pictures – some concrete pipe sections, a disused lock gate and a lorry park on My London Diary and then made my way to Woolwich Manor Way.
Royal Albert Dock
Here I could photograph across the dock. At the left are new flats built between the dock and University Way and in the foreground are two yellow towers carrying approach lights for the runway of London City Airport.
A plane takes off from London City Airport
The haze that you see in this picture, taken with a 300mm (equivalent) lens is a little more obvious than in the other pictures thanks to air pollution, which the airport contributes to.
I made some more photographs in North Woolwich – tthere was a Football World Cup taking place in Germany – England were eventually knocked out by Portugal in the quarter-finals.
London City Airport DLR station had opened in December 2005 and I was able to take photographs from there both of the Airport Terminal and of Tate & Lyle’s sugar refinery.
Thame Barrier Park
I took more pictures in Silvertown and Canning Town, some of which you can see on My London Diary, before making my way back to Central London. There I took some more pictures around Brick Lane, some of which I put on My London Diary in a seperate post. It had been a good day for me.
The ‘Carnival of Dirt‘ united activist groups from the UK and around the world in a funeral procession for the many killed by mining and extraction companies, powerful financial organisations whose crimes are legitimized by the City of London.
Mining companies have exploited mineral resources in countries around the world, mainly in the majority countries to feed the industrial development of countries such as ours, and have done so with little or no regard for the environment or the people who work in their mines or live in the areas around, creating large amounts of pollution and destroying vital habitats and traditional ways of life, driven by producing minerals at the lowest possible cost.
Many of those companies are based in London, in part because of our imperial past and are listed on the London Stock Exchange and trade on the London Metal Exchange. They are propped up by our pension funds and protected by our government and even allowed to get away with evading millions (if not billions) of UK taxes – as well as often evading taxes in the countries where they mine. Among the major criminals named were Xstrata, Glencore International, Rio Tinto, Vedanta, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, BP and Shell.
Turtle & Dugong – Xstrata has destroyed their homeland in the Macarthur River
The carnival procession began at St Pauls and stopped at the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England and the London Metal Exchange for speeches about the various crimes, before going to stop for lunch at Altab Ali Park.
There had been several heavy showers and by lunchtime my zoom lenses were all steamed up internally – zooming draws in damp air which condenses on the glass – and I only had a 16mm fisheye giving totally clear images. I needed to dry the others out and decided I had taken enough pictures and it was time for me to go home – although the carnival was going to continue to the West End and end with a ‘Reclaim the Streets’ style party starting on the Embankment at 6pm.
I described the event at length in 2012 and here I’ll quote some of it, but you can still read it all at Carnival of Dirt on My London Diary.
The funeral cortege that gathered at St Pauls included a large snake, a turtle and a tortoise, a reminder of XStrata’s criminal diversion of the McArthur River, destroying the ecosystem and despoiling the sacred sites of Australian aborigines.
There were coffins representing the dead and naming many of the companies involved one said ‘Glencore Values – Toxic Assets, Toxic Environments‘, another ‘XStrata – X-Rated on Human Rights‘ and pointed out the CEO Mick Davis “Gets £30 million to stay in job while 2 Dead 80 Injured protesting at Tintaya mine in Chile.’
A small coffin represent the over 18,000 child miners in the Phillipines, while another read ‘10 Million Dead Through Conflict in 16 years equals a 9/11 every 2 days‘. A black coffin carried on the side the message ‘Resist Corporate Terrorism‘ and on the top the message ‘London Metal Exchange – Setting the Global Standard in Bloodshed‘ with red drops bleeding from it. Another testified to the genocide in West Papua where Indonesian troops have torched villages.
Many carried placards with photographs of a few of the better-known activists who have been murdered for standing up to corporate terrorism, and marchers distributed a leaflet naming 15 of them – Valmore Locarno, Fr Fausto Tentorio, Victor Orcasita, Alexandro Chacon, Fr Reinel Restropo, Dr Gerry Ortega, Armin Marin, Dr Leonard Co, Elizer Billanes, Jorge Eliecer, Floribert Chebeya, Raghunath Jhodia, Abhilash Jhodia, Damodar Jhodia, Petrus Ayamiseba. Others carried photographs of unnamed and horribly mutilated victims.
Carnival, Racist Deportations & more Naked Cyclists: I began work on Saturday 13 June 2009 photographing a carnival procession in Carshalton in the south of London, travelled to Islington in north London for a protest against Britain’s racist and inhuman immigration policies and finally covered the uncovered cyclists taking part in the 2009 London World Naked Bike Ride, photographing the preparations in Hyde Park ad the start of the ride there and then on the ride at Waterloo and in the West End.
Carshalton Carnival Procession – St Helier – Carshalton
Sutton’s May Queen 2009 came to look at my cameras
My account of this event on My London Diary begins with a slightly unkind description “of the St Helier estate, a huge sprawling area built by the LCC 1930 to a kind of debased Garden City plan almost entirely without the charm of those earlier developments on what had previously mainly been the lavender fields of Mitcham.”
The procession began next to the “St Helier Hospital [built] in the modern style of the 30s, facing the imaginatively named St Helier Open Space” outside the Sutton Arena leisure centre and as usual I found the more interesting pictures were those I took there rather than on long procession to Carshalton where it was to end at a fair in Carshalton Park.
I’d come to the carnival largely because I was then working on a project on London’s May Queens, with several groups of them from across south London taking part in the procession, along with various other local organisations. And a Dalek and others in fancy dress.
The Rotary had brought their Father Christmas coming out unseasonably from the chimney of a small four-wheeled house towed behind a car at the rear of the procession. He’d been there too when I photographed the carnival previously in 2004.
It was a long an hot trek to Carshalton from St Helier, and the procession paused at Carshalton College for a break. I’d walked enough and made my way to the station missing the rest of the event and the funfair in Carshalton Park.
Speak out against Racism and Deportations – Angel, Islington
Britain’s major political parties at the prompting of our mainstream press have long promoted myths about migrants and asylum seekers, the more rabid of our tabloids in particular promoting the views of clearly racist columnists who publish stories about them getting homes and huge benefits, depriving the working class of housing, pushing down wages, taking “our jobs“, making it impossible to see doctors and more.
Nothing could of course be further from the truth. It’s the greed of the wealthy and government policies that have led to these problems – and without the migrants we would be in a considerably worse position. It’s something that is glaringly obvious when we need to make use of the NHS which would have collapsed entirely without them, but also in other areas. Demonising migrants is a deliberate policy divert public attention and anger away from the real problem of our class-based society. Divide and rule by our rulers,
Most of those who settle here from abroad want nothing more than to work and contribute to our society, though we make it hard for many of them to do so. They want a better life, particularly for their children and often work long hours for it. Migrant workers who clean offices are often more qualified than those who work in them – but their qualifications are not recognised here, and asylum seekers are unable to work except in the illegal economy.
Some facts:
Over a quarter of NHS doctors were born abroad (and others are the sons and daughters of migrants);
Immigrants are 60% less likely to claim benefits than people born in Britain;
Studies sho immigration has no significant effect on overall employment, or on unemployment of those born in Britain.
This campaigning protest in a busy shopping area outside one of London’s busier Underground Stations was organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group and was also part of a campaign by the Suarez family to prevent the deportation of John Freddy Suarez Santander, a 21 year-old father with a 3 year-old son. He came here from Colombia when he was six and grew up here. As a teenager he committed an offence and served 7 months in a young offenders institution.
Two years after he had served his sentence, the New Labour government passed a law to deport all immigrants with a criminal record, and an order was made for him to be sent back to Colombia, where he has no remaining relatives. His case in 2009 was still being considered at the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR generally asserts that juvenile offences should not be seen as a part of a criminal record, but the Home Office decided the month before this protest to deport him anyway, and this was only stopped by his family going to the airport.
I’ve written rather often about this event, intended as a protest against the domination of our lives by ‘car culture’ which has resulted in our towns and cities and transport networks being designed around the priorities of motorists and road transport rather than us as pedestrians and cyclists – and to serve the interests of the companies that make cars and lorries. And it has resulted in illegal levels of pollution causing massive health problems.
Although it’s certainly an eye-catching event, it isn’t always very clear why it is taking place to those standing on the pavements, gazint at it in amazement, laughing and recording it on their phones. It’s probably good for our tourist industry, though I rather think London has too many tourists anyway, particularly as I struggle to walk over Westminster Bridge.
Heres one paragraph of what I wrote in 2009 – you can read the rest on My London Diary.
Some riders did have slogans on their bodies, mainly about oil and traffic, and some bikes carried A4 posters reading REAL RIGHTS FOR BIKE and CELEBRATE BODY FREEDOM or had flags stating ‘CURB CAR CULTURE’ which made clear the purpose of the event to the careful onlooker, but for most people it seemed simply a spectacle of naked or near-naked bodies. Though of course also a rare treat for any bicycle spotters among them.
I didn’t censor the pictures I put on line from the event though I’ve carefully selected those in this post. I think that there is nothing offensive about the naked human body but I included the following statement with the link to more pictures I posted then and which you can still see online.
Warning: these pictures show men and women with no clothes on. Do not click this link to more pictures if pictures of the naked human body may offend you.
The final post on walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is West India Dock Road & Limehouse Cut – 1990. As usual you can click on the images here to view larger versions on my Flickr pages.
Looking south towards the blockage across the canal through the bridge which carries the DLR over Limehouse Cut. At the right are the temporary buildings for the construction work on the Limehouse Link tunnel. The Limehouse Cut turns around to the right past the blockage to join Limehouse Dock and I think the industrial buildings you can see are in Brightlingsea Street.
I walked along the towpath to Commercial Road carried over the canal by Britannia Bridge, named for the Britannia Tavern which stood here until 1911, when it was probably removed to allow the bridge to be widened for traffic and also to allow for a towpath under the bridge.
At spring tides when the water rose to its highest it would overtop the old Bow Locks, with water flowing into both the Cut and the lower stretch of the Lea Navigation. This created a problem, particularly when the Cut was connected to the Limehouse Dock. In this picture you see the vertical guillotine gate which was fitted here after the Cut was taken over by British Waterways in 1948 enabling the canal to be isolated from the dock. It was removed soon after I made this picture.
You can also see the 1923 Empire Memorial Sailors’ Hostel on the corner of Commercial Road and Salmon Lane, built as a memorial to all the seamen who had lost their lives in the First World War. Later used as a hostel for the homeless and to house immigrants it had by 1990 been converted into luxury flats.
H W Bush, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1c-16
Island Row, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1f-66
Taken from near to the end of Island Row. But my walk was coming to an end. I made only one more black and white picture, not yet digitised, of the Regents Canal Lock from Commercial Road on my way to Limehouse station.
But I had also carried a second camera body loaded with colour negative film and I made the occasional colour picture during the walk. Here are four of them:
