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Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell – 2014

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell: On Thursday October 16th 2014 I went with housing campaigners on a march to Southwark Council Offices. They claimed that the council leader and other councillors and officers have accepted gifts and jobs from developers and were selling off council estates at knockdown prices. I had some time free after that and took a short walk along the Thames making some panoramas before rushing to the National Gallery where the Art Not Oil coalition were protesting outside a gala evening for special guests including unethical sponsors such as Shell.

CPOs for Southwark Councillors

Elephant to Southwark Council Offices

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell

Housing campaigners from Southwark were joined by members of the Focus E15 Mums ‘Housing for All’ campaign at the base of the Strata Tower at Elephant and Castle, a tower nicknamed ‘The Razor’ for its three entirely decorative ‘greenwash’ rooftop wind turbines – which cannot be used as they generate unacceptable vibration for the upper floor flats.

Facing them was One The Elephant, then under construction, a 44 storey block of luxury flats with no social housing, being sold abroad, with ‘studio flats’ starting at around £320,000 or 640,000 Singapore dollars.

They marched to protest briefly at the Elephant Park Sales Office on the Walworth Rd before walking on through the Heygate council estate where over 1200 homes were demolished and the site sold to developers for a knock-down cost – apparently less than the costs of ‘decanting’ the tenants and far below its proper valuation. Despite this leaseholders were only given compensation of around half the true market value of property in the area, forcing them to move out into the suburbs to buy property in far less convenient areas giving them long and expensive work journeys.

The replacement by Elephant Park means a loss of over a thousand social housing units, with a small number of so-called affordable units at 80% of market rates, still well above what most Londoners can actually afford. The new flats were being sold to overseas buyers in Singapore and elsewhere as second homes, investment properties, homes for wealthy overseas students studying here, buy-to-let etc.

From there they walked through some of Southwark’s 1930’s and postwar council estates, now seen as prime targets for demolition of social housing. Its replacement with higher density high price ‘luxury’ flats would generate huge profits for the developers (and lucrative rewards for councillors and council officers.)

The march carried on to a similar area of council properties around Long Lane and Tennis Street where again similar changes – gentrification labelled as regeneration – seem likely, before going through Guy’s Hospital and London Bridge Station to Tooley St and the Southwark Council Offices.

There they held a short rally after which security stopped them entering to hand in letters for Southwark Council Leader Peter John and two other councillors containing ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders‘ for their homes, but after much argument and the presence of police Liliana Dmitrovic of the ‘People’s Republic of Southwark’ and another protester were allowed in. As Southwark residents they argues they had a right to enter the council offices.

They went to reception and asked to see the three councillors and were told to take a seat and wait. They sat there for some time but eventually Stephen Douglas from Southwark Council came to tell them that all three named on the letters were in meetings and unavailable, but promised he would personally deliver the letters. They handed them in to him and left.

More on My London Diary at CPOs for Southwark Councillors.

Bermondsey Thames Panoramas

City Hall to Angel Wharf

I crosssed the road from the council offices and went through the gardens by City Hall to walk by the Thames, going briefly down Horselydown steps just downriver from Tower Bridge onto the foreshore.

I came back up to Shad Thames, a painful pastiche of its former industrial past. Quickly I made my way to the riverside path and walked on, stopping as usual at the footbridge across St Saviour’s Dock to take more pictures.

I walked on in some interesting lighting and got very involved in taking pictures, rather losing track of time. At West Lane I realised I was in danger of arriving late at Trafalgar Square and ran down to the bus stop on Jamaica Road.

Many more pictures – not all panoramic – at Bermondsey Thames Panoramas.

Art Not Oil – Rembrandt Against Shell

National Gallery

The Art Not Oil coalition had earlier gate-crashed the press launch of the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery in a protest against oil company sponsorship of the arts and the privatisation of gallery staffing.

*Protesters with banners in front of the Sainsbury wing*

I arrived in time to meet them on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields just before they marched the few yards to the National Gallery where a gala evening was being held for special guests – including from the sponsors – and highly ranked staff.

They turned down a protest pen the police had set up some distance from the entrance the guests would be using where their protest would not be noticed (what the police call ‘facilitating’ but campaigners know is minimising) and instead protested close to the entrance. Here there were some speeches and a repeat performance of their earlier performance which included a short playlet as well as some specially written songs.

Some of those who appeared at the press launch were professional actors now on stage elsewhere and so there were some changes in the cast. But it was still a very professional performance.

Here is the Art Not Oil statement:

The presence of unethical sponsors like Shell and the contracting of external security firms shows the growing influence the private sector is having over our arts and culture. With its meagre contribution to the gallery, Shell is buying social legitimacy for its dodgy deeds worldwide, including:
- its failure to clean up its multiple spills in the Niger Delta
- its reckless plans to drill in the Arctic for yet more oil
- its tar sands projects in Canada that are undermining Indigenous people's      rights

More at Art Not Oil Rembrandt Against Shell.

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Land Mines and the Lea Valley – 2006

Land Mines and the Lea Valley: Fortunately these were two entirely separate events on October 14th 2006. The landmines were in Hyde Park in a display by Handicap International and after visiting this I took a walk across the Lea Valley from Holloway to Tottenham and Walthamstow where I was going to collect a set of my pictures which had been on show at Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. Here is a slightly edited version of what I wrote in 2006 with a few of the pictures from the day – and a link to many more from the walk on My London Diary

Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs

Handicap International, Hyde Park

Saturday in Hyde Park there were land mines. Fortunately they were mainly carefully marked as well as having been made harmless. For many people around the world they are daily hazard, the deadly and maiming residues of war.

Just as dangerous, if not more so, are cluster bombs. These are produced by the sophisticated weapons industries of many countries including Britain and America, and also used by our armies and air forces, dropped from aircraft or fired as artillery.

Each cluster bomb contains from a dozen to several hundred lethal bomblets, which are distributed over a wide area, intended to kill infantry or guerillas, but entirely indiscriminate in their action. Between 5-30% fail to explode on impact, usually getting buried in soil; those dropped over 30 years ago in Vietnam are still killing and maiming people, especially children, there. Almost 2,000,000 were scattered over Iraq in 2003-4.

I went to Hyde Park to sign the petition organised by Nobel peace prize-winning charity Handicap International to aim for a world-wide ban on these weapons.

Handicap International now has urgent appeals for Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan and invites you to join them in campaigning to “Fully implement the treaties banning landmines and cluster munitions without delay and encourage non-signatory states to sign their petition.”

Tottenham to Walthamstow

After my brief visit to Hyde Park, I was on my way to Walthamstow to collect some of my pictures of the Lea Valley that had been on show at the Pump House Museum, and as it was a nice day, decided to walk the last few miles across the Lea Valley and take a few more pictures.

I began my walk in Holloway, going post the Emirates Stadium and then across South Tottenham.

In King George V Park I found some graffiti artists at work, and took pictures of a few of the many murals, before heading down the Lea Navigation to Springfield and across to Walthamstow Marshes, a surprising area of open space so near to the centre of a major city.

Then I made my way between reservoir and waterworks to the Lea Flood Relief Channel and St James’s Park, surrounded with remarkably brooding lime trees.

There are many more pictures from the walk on My London Diary, but surprisingly I don’t appear to have taken a picture of the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum on this occasion. I think I had stopped to take so many pictures on the way that I was in rather a hurry to collect my pictures which had been on show for Open Heritage Day there and get home.

More pictures from the walk on My London Diary

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Deforestation in Tasmania & a Walk in Bethnal Green – 2007

Deforestation in Tasmania & a Walk in Bethnal Green : Australians were protesting outside Australia House against plans for a wood pulp mill to use wood from Tasmania’s ancient forest which had become an election issue there. I left them to go to a guided walk around Bethnal Green led by a friend and author of a new book on the area for which I had provided sixteen photographs. The walk was among the last events arranged by the much missed London Arts Café which ceased activities at the end of 2007, though the web site is still online as a record of some of its life. Here with some small alterations is my 2007 account of the day with a few of the pictures I took.

No Pulp Mill – Save Tasmania’s Wild Forests

Australian High Commission, Strand

Deforestation in Tasmania & a Walk in Bethnal Green - 2007 — *Tasmanian premier Lennon and Australian PM Howard at Australia House*

The cutting down of ancient ‘old growth’ forests is a major political issue in Australia, and no more so than in Tasmania. With national elections announced for Australia on November 24th 2007, logging could play an important part.

Supported by liberal party (Conservative) Prime Minister John Howard and Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon, a new pulp mill will speed the loss of the old forests, destroying valuable habitats and threatening extinction for unique species such as the Tasmanian Wedge Tailed Eagle.

Cutting down the forest will also remove a valuable sink that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (and of course produces oxygen), and pulp processing in the new plant will emit 10 million tons of CO2 a year, as well as discharging 64,000 tons of toxic effluent into the ocean each day.

Ironically, part of the pressure for the cutting down of forests comes from the growing business of carbon offsetting. Much of the land currently occupied by the forests will, after the existing ancient forest is cleared, be replanted with trees that will be used to produce an income in carbon offset schemes.

more pictures – no pulp mill – save tasmania’s wild forests

The Romance of Bethnal Green

We had a fine day for our book-related walk around Bethnal Green and a good audience. Our meeting point was the Museum of Childhood, which features in two of my sixteen pictures in the book ‘The Romance of Bethnal Green‘ (ISBN 9781901992748), Cathy Ross, 2007). Our tour took in a number of art shows open in 2007 as well as the buildings in the area.

One of my pictures in the book shows the sculpture which was in the space at the front of the museum for many years, and I was surprised to find it now inside, at the rear of the café area, its bronze given a white coating (perhaps so the ice-cream won’t show), and another features some of the panels on the outside of the building about agriculture.

[The museum has since been revamped as Young V&A and was the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2024.]

Just down the road we stopped at St John’s Church, its frontage and tower still clearly the work of Sir John Soane, although the rest of the church was remodelled after a fire in the 1870s. Jane Prophet’s ‘heart’ then on show in the organ loft brought back too many memories of my own surgery for comfort, and I quickly left.

We went across the Roman Road and into the library where Foster Spragge is building a cylinder of thousands of used rail tickets. Unfortunately she was at lunch when we were there, and the cylinder was protected by a roll of corrugated paper, though this perhaps improved the photograph.

Down Roman Road we went into IAP Fine Art to look at the work of Maggi Hambling and Chris Gollon, who has been commissioned to produce Stations Of The Cross for St Johns and also a work on Henley for the 2012 Olympics.

Opposite the former site of Camerawork I talked a little about photography, the Half Moon Photography Workshop, and the work of Jo Spence and Paul Trevor, as well as the decline of Camerwork magazine into the quagmire of theory.

[Camerawork merged in the early 2000s with cinema workshop Four Corners a few doors down the street and after a rebuilding project reopened in 2007 and continues to hold shows continuing the social documentary and community spirit of HMPW.]

Around the corner the Usk Street Estate is a real architectural gem by Denys Lasdun from 1952, looking more modern than many recent developments thanks to a recent refurbishment. Work on the Grade II Listed Sulkin and Trevelyan tower blocks cost £2.8m. These are buildings that perhaps deserve to be better known, certainly some of the more interesting of their era, and perhaps more radical than his later Keeling house (1959) a mile or so away.

I also find Usk Street rather more interesting than the Cranbrook Estate across the road, by Skinner Bailey & Lubetkin (1965) which proves that sticking bilious green rectangles on ugly blocks still leaves them as ugly blocks. At least it provided a refuge for Elizabeth Frink’s Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green when vandalism forced his move from his intended home in the market square.

We took the bus back along Bethnal Green Road to the top of brick lane and walked up to admire Arnold Circus, before visiting Nomoregrey in Redchurch Steet to look at Jock Mcfadyen’s work there – I particularly liked his images of the wide open spaces further east – such as Dagenham, River Road and Showcase Cinema, reminding me of my visits to these areas.

Finally I went to view a projection of photographs by Paul Trevor at Rich Mix, and as I wrote found his fine images were getting rather lost by a poor display – which we later got them to improve.

I first met Paul Trevor many years ago and have long admired his work. He is living evidence to the almost total lack of interest by major British galleries and museums to most British photography. He is a truly inspired photographer who has lived and worked in the east end for years, creating a fantastic stock of images from the area.

More on My London Diary at the romance of bethnal green.

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Iraq Oil, Freedom, Rosary Crusade & Parliament Square – 2008

Iraq Oil, Freedom, Rosary Crusade & Parliament Square: Saturday 11 October 2008 was another varied day, beginning with protests against the US grab of Iraq’s oil and tthe increasing control over our lives by governments and corporations. I then photographed a walk of public witness by Catholics in London before going to Parliament Square were I found a number of smaller protests.

100 Days to stop Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab!

Shell Centre

Iraq Oil, Freedom, Rosary Crusade & Parliament Square - 2008 — *A giant Dick Cheney looms over Iraqi Oil outside the Shell Centre*

In 1972 the Iraqi government took over Iraqi oil, nationalising the Iraq Petroleum Company which was jointly owned by the world’s largest oil companies, and it provided 95% of government revenue.

Many of us thought that the main reason behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq was to get the country to hand over most of the oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.

In 2007 the US-backed Iraqi cabinet had approved a new oil law, strongly opposed by Iraqi trade unions and oil experts, but driven by expert consultants supplied by the UK and US who previously worked at a high level for companies like Shell and BP which would give the foreign oil companies control over oil production and in 2008 the Iraqi Oil Ministry began to announce contracts with former partners in the IPC, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and BP as with Chevron and others.

The protest came at the start of the final 100 days of President Bush’s administration in the US and was organised by ‘Hands of Iraqi Oil’, a coalition whose members include Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and supported by the Stop the War Coalition and others.

The samba band, brass band, ‘oil workers’ and others came to protest at the Shell Centre with a giant figure of US Vice-President Dick Cheney and a mock oil well as well as some with Iraqi flags.

I left them shortly after they set off to march first to protest outside BP’s headquarters in St James’s Square and then on to the US Embassy to go to New Scotland Yard.

Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab

Freedom not Fear 2008

New Scotland Yard

Freedom not fear 2008 was an international protest in over 20 countries against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organisations.

*A camera behind this person dressed in a sinister black suit and hood*

The main UK event was a protest outside the Metropolitan Police headquarters, New Scotland Yard, then still in Victoria Street, Westminster. The protest was against the restriction of the right to demonstrate under SOCPA, the intimidatory use of photography by police FIT squads, the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.

The protest was within the area where restrictions on protests were introduced by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) which required the protesters to have given written notice to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police six days in advance for the event. But of course they had not as a part of the protest.

Police tried hard to give protesters SOCPA notices telling them that the protest was illegal but few took them or any interest in them. Some of the officers joked with the protesters who included People in Common and FitWatch, but sensibly they did not attempt to break up the protest or make any arrests, or at least not in the three-quarters of an hour or so I was present.

Freedom not Fear 2008

Rosary Crusade of Reparation

Westminster Cathedral

*Young girls in white communion dress walked beside the statue of Our Lady of Fatima*

I walked the short distance along Victoria Street to Westminster Cathedral where people were gathering for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation. This began in Austria in 1947 as a campaign by a Franciscan priest to free the country from communist control, and is said to have played a part in the Russian decision to allow Austria its independence in 1955.

THe first annual procession with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima took place in 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12th. This feast was set up by Pope Innocent XI in 1683 after Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna were defeated by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.

*Families at the front of the large crowd in the procession*

The procession in London takes place on the nearest Saturday to the final appearance of Our Lady at Fatima in October 1917, close to the end of the First World War, when those present saw the sun dancing around in the sky, and she promised peace and an end to war if men showed contrition for their sins and changed their lives.

This was the 25 annual procession in London and had as its special theme atonement for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill then passing through Parliament.

I photographed the start of the procession which was making its way slowly to Brompton Oratory.

More at Rosary Crusade of Reparation.

Parliament Square

I’d gone to Parliament Square to look for a two-man protest by the two Bens from the ‘Still Human Still Here‘ campaign dedicated to highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country. The two men had spent two weeks in a tent in the square living on the emergency rations that the Red Cross will supply to these inhumanely treated asylum seekers.

In the square I found a number of other protests taking place. Of course Brian Haw was there – as he had been for over 7 years – and I saw him being insulted by a man who smelled strongly of alcohol. There was a small group of Tamils who told me that they were part of a campaign giving out leaflets all over the centre of London about the ethnic cleansing taking place in Sri Lanka. Another small group, ‘London Against Detention’, was campaigning to close down Asylum detention centres.

In the corner close to the statue of Churchill was a man who told me he had been on hunger strike for two weeks in a protest to get his case properly investigated. He claimed to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother.

Finally I saw another group of people hurrying along the street opposite towards Whitehall carrying posters. I chased after them and found that they were Obama supporters hoping to persuade Americans they met to register and vote in the US election.

More at Parliament Square.

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Mare De Gras & Choose Life – 2004

Mare De Gras & Choose Life: On Sunday 10 October 2004 I photographed two very different events on the Streets of London, a carnival in Hackney and and ant-abortion march. Perhaps the only thing they had in common was that both were misnamed.

Hackney Mare de Gras

Dalston, Hackney

Mare de Gras – Fat Tuesday – is a season celebrated in New Orleans as carnival season, from 12th Night at the end of Christmas on January 6 to Fat Tuesday itself, Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. In England our celebrations are rather shorter and involve pancakes and pancake races.

But in Hackney it was the name adopted for the carnival which began there when some residents decided it would be a good thing for them to have a carnival like Notting Hill, and since the main street is Mare Street it seemed a good name, even though it took place in September.

It wasn’t the first carnival in Hackney – there is a tradition of English carnivals dating back mainly to the late 19th century, held in many towns and villages across the country, though most have now died out. Two of my friends got Arts Council money to document some of them – and I showed work from Notting Hill with them in a show, English Carnival, in 2008. Others are still going strong particularly in the West Country. Hackney had its carnivals way back around the 1900s but I don’t think they lasted too long.

Those traditional carnivals had one thing in common – “they received no core public funding. Many were almost entirely organised by volunteers; most also raised money for charities.”

For the show I wrote: “Carnival in England has been enlivened over the last forty or so years by the Caribbean influence, and West-Indian style carnivals have received considerable funding and become a popular celebration of our multi-cultural society within the larger metropolitan areas of the country, joined in recent years by Latin American, Asian and Central European communities.”

The revival of carnival in Hackney is thought to have started as the Street Carnival Theatre in De Beauvoir, organised by Centerprise, in 1973. Later came a new Hackney Carnival – Mare De Gras – bringing together many of the carnival groups that had their roots in Caribbean culture and had begun in the 1970s, 80s and 90s taking part in the Notting Hill Carnival.

In 2004, Mare De Gras in late September was cancelled after 16-year old A level student Robert Levy was killed on Mare Street, stabbed after he had tried to keep the peace in a fight between boys close to his home, and the event was rearranged for the 10th October.

Hackney Carnival continued in later years, though the name Mare De Gras was dropped soon after 2005. In 2024 there was a parade, but for 2025 there were only a number of activities and no real carnival.

More pictures from Mare De Gras.

Choose Life March

Westminster to Lambeth

I left the carnival in Hackney soon after the parade began to photograph a much more somber event, the Chose Life March opposing abortion. Again its name seems misleading to me – opposition to abortion is not about choosing life, and as I commented in 2004, “the misuse of language in using slogans such as ‘Choose Life’ disturbs me greatly, as an attempt to preempt rational thought.“

*One of the few parts of the march that did not seem lacking in life*

I also wrote “Nature is profligate, full of false starts, and life cannot sensibly be considered to begin at conception” which I suspect is a quote but cannot find the source.

Many other Christians and other religions do not accept the Catholic teaching on abortion but take more sensible and more scientifically bases views. But “this doesn’t mean we should take abortion lightly or allow scientists to play as they like with human genetic material. ” And of course our laws do have important safeguards on abortion and the use of human material in research.

More pictures, including a couple of Brian Haw and one of the River Thames as the march passed them on My London Diary.

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Uganda, Green Belt, Olympic Site – 2008

Uganda, Green Belt, Olympic Site: Thursday 9th October 2008 was Uganda Independence Day and I began work at a protest at the Ugandan Embassy in Trafalgar Square against the persecution of gays in that country. In Parliament Square I met protesters who had come from Dorset to bring a petition against a proposed new town on Green Belt land on the outskirts of Bournemouth and Poole. Then as I had a few hours before a meeting it was an opportunity to take another walk to see what I could by then of the fenced off Olympic site.

Demonstration Against Ugandan Human Rights Abuse

Ugandan Embassy, Trafalgar Square

*Peter Tatchell of Outrage! and Davis Makyala of Changing Attitudes in the demo outside Uganda House*

As I wrote in 2008, “October 9 is Uganda Independence Day, but for gay Ugandans in particular there is little to celebrate… “Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and the penalty can be imprisonment for life, and gay rights campaigners have been imprisoned and subjected to torture. The Ugandan Anglican church is a leading force in anti-gay campaigns.”

The Ugandan government intimidates and tortures gay people and excludes them from healthcare. British arms exports have been used against protests there, killing at least three demonstrators by 2008.

*Kizza Musinguzi who was jailed and tortured in Uganda receives the 2008 Sappho in Paradise book prize*

Ugandans fleeing the country because of persecution and seeking asylum in the UK were among those forcibly sent back to the country without proper consideration of their cases under our “fast-track” process which was later declared unlawful.

*Emma Ginn of https://medicaljustice.org.uk/ Medical Justice*

The LGBTQ rights situation in Uganda is now even worse following the passage of ‘the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023, which prescribes up to twenty years in prison for “promotion of homosexuality”, life imprisonment for “homosexual acts”, and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality“.’

More on My London Diary at Ugandan Human Rights Abuse.

Green Belt Protest Rally

Westminster

People from villages on the outskirts of Bournemouth and Poole had come to protest against the proposed Lychett New Town on Green Belt land in Dorset.

Apparently Hazel Blears, Secretary of State, had told Dorset County Council it must build a New Town at Lytchett Minster with over 7,250 houses in the Green Belt around Poole & Bournemouth, and local residents had set up a campaign about it.

Octavia Hill had first proposed the idea of green belts in 1875 but it was the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act which allowed local authorities to set them up and they were further encouraged to do so by Tory Housing Minister Duncan Sandys in 1955. The idea was to put an end to the unplanned sprawl of ribbon development along major roads leading out from all our cities and provide areas for local food growing, forestry and outdoor leisure.

As I commented, “it has made a valuable contribution to improving the quality of life in our towns and villages and to conserving the countryside.” But as I also wrote, “Many of us feel that the whole of the current planning structure works against sensible and ecological development, but the answer to this is not to relax planning controls but to bring in improved – and in some respects tighter – controls.”

Unfortunately the changes announced by Labour in 2024 which include some Green Belt being re-classified as ‘Grey Belt’ seem largely intended to make things easier and more profitable for developers.

Consultations took place in 2025 over proposals for Lytchett Minster & Upton in the Dorset local plan which lists opportunity sites for over 5000 new homes – and a new petition was set up opposing them.

Green Belt Protest Rally

Stratford Marsh (Olympic Site) & Hackney Wick

*Looking towards the main stadium in left half of picture, along what was once Marshgate Lane.*

“It has always been an interesting walk through Stratford marsh on top of the Northern Outfall sewer, although rather more so in the past when there were so many places one could leave it to explore further rather than coming up against the big blue fence.”

*Bridge over City Mill River from the Greenway*

I commented back then of my annoyance at the statements made by the Olympic authorities that after the Olympics they would be opening up the previously inaccessible area to the public. In fact they were destroying the area where it had always been interesting to wander along the various largely riverside footpaths – many of which had been cleared to make them easier to walk in the 1990s.

*Work by Hackney Wick’s most prolific artist*

You can see many pictures that I took in the area on my Lea Valley website And as a replacement we now have a park which seems rather arid. Perhaps by 2112 it might look better.

In 2008 most of the Olympic area was fenced off, but I enjoyed the walk along the ‘Greenway’ on top of the Northern Outfall Sewer to Hackney Wick where I dound much to interest me and “taking the train back from Hackney Wick to Stratford there were many signs of fairly frenzied activity visible.”

*Wanted – Laura Norder – $5oo Reward – advertising an art fair at Decima Gallery in Hackney Wick*

Many more pictures, particularly around Hackney Wick at Stratford Marsh (Olympic Site) & Hackney Wick.

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Al-Quds Day 2007

Al-Quds Day 2007: On October 7th, the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel I find myself thinking about the long fight by Palestinians since so many were displaced and dispossessed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the many thousands who since then have been killed by Israeli attacks.

And of course for those Israelis who have been killed – though in much smaller numbers – by suicide bombers, by rockets and during the October 2023 incursion or among the hostages, and including those Israelis killed by Israeli forces.

What we have seen since however is not a war, not self-defence but genocide, the bombing and deliberate starvation of the entire population of Gaza. It comes on top of years of siege with restrictions on essential supplies and of the bulldozing of people’s homes as well as the establishment of more and more illegal settlements across occupied Palestine.

And our country remains complicit, still supplying arms to enable the genocide despite government statements to the contrary, still labelling protests calling for peace as ‘hate marches‘ and still making false allegations about antisemitism while failing to deal with the real anti-Semites who plan and carry out attacks such at that we all condemn in Manchester.

Thinking about what to post here for today, I came across the Al Quds Day march which took place in London on Sunday October 7, 2007. It was I think only the second time I’d photographed the annual event and I didn’t write a great deal about it then.

I did mention that this event was begun in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeni declared the last Friday in Ramadan as Al Quds Day, (al-Quds being the Arabic name of Jerusalem), an annual anti-Zionist day of protest. In the UK the march has generally taken place on the following Sunday and is a demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people, largely by Muslims though also by anti-Zionist Jews and some of the UK left (many of whom are also Jewish.)

In 2007 a mixture of groups came to demonstrate against the march, largely because of its links with Iran both from its founding and also as it was organised by the Iranian Human Rights Commision (Inminds) which is alleged to receive funding from the Iranian government. Unlike later years I saw no counter-protests by Zionist groups or individuals.

Back then many of the march carried flags of the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah which emerged there after the Israeli invasion in 1982 and has strong ties with Iran. As well as running schools and hospitals and other social services it has also taken part militarily in opposing the various attacks by Israel on Lebanon.

Many Hezbollah leaders have been assassinated by Israel, some in what many describe as terrorist attacks. Until 2019 when its political wing was also proscribed the showing of the Hezbollah flag remained legal though contested in the UK.

As in earlier years the march ended with a rally in Trafalgar Square, though after 2008 the GLA refused to allow them to use the square, citing insurance problems.

Many more photographs of both the marchers and the rally and those who came to protest against the march on My London Diary at Al Qud’s Day March And Protest

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Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq – 2013

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq: On Sunday 6th October 2013 I photographed a protest against the Daily Mail, Kurds marching calling for their leader to be released from Turkish jail, protests for and against the removal of President Morsi of Egypt and a protest calling for the release of hostages in Iraq.

Daily Mail You Told All the Lies – Kensington

The Daily Mail has a long history of publishing lies against the BBC, NHS, public sector workers, trade unionists, socialists, women, Muslims, travellers and others, but the protest came after people were outraged by their smears and distortion in an entirely unfair attack of Ralph Milliband.

Their campaign against the father of Ed Milliband was intended to discredit the then Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition and many felt the Daily Mail had gone over the line of what is acceptable in British politics with their headline ‘MAN WHO HATED BRITAIN’, based on an out of context adolescent observation. Of course things in our press have worsened since then, particularly in the orchestrated attacks on Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of anti-semitism.

Ralph Milliband had fled Belgium with his working class Polish Jewish family in 1940 aged 16 when Germany invaded the country and went on to serve in the Royal Navy during the war. He settled in London after the war and became a British subject in 1948. As a sociologist he became one of the most respected academics of the post-war period, respected by people across the political spectrum.

The Daily Mail had supported the Blackshirts and Hitler in the 1930s and continued after the war to express hate for most of those institutions that have truly made Britain great – like the welfare state, the NHS and the BBC and the public sector generally. And more recently it had backed French fascist Marine Le Pen.

The protest was organised by The People’s Assembly, a nationwide group set up in opposition to the current government’s austerity programme and to defend the provision of education, health and welfare from general taxation and available to all. Several hundred came to the show they were proud of Britain and its welfare state and there was a great deal of chanting against the Daily Mail and and some songs before two people delivered boxes of a petition to their offices and the speeches began.

Daily Mail You Told All the Lies

Freedom for Ocalan & Kurdistan – Wood Green

The speeches agains the Daily Mail were continuing as I rushed away to Wood Green in North London where Kurds were marching on the 15th anniversary of the kidnappping of their national leader Abdullah Ocalan by Turkey in 1998.

Since then Ocalan has been held, mainly in solitary confinement, in a Turkish prison.

I left the march as it went past Wood Green Station on its way to the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey to make my way to Mayfair and the Egyptian Embassy

Freedom for Ocalan & Kurdistan

Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood – Egyptian Embassy

Opposite the Embassy in South Street were a group of protesters supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and opposing what the military coup which had recently removed the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi the suppression of protests in Egypt against this.

Many carried placards showing the R4BIA four finger and thumb on palm sign to show support, begun after a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo was violently attacked by the military in August 2013 – Rabaa is ‘four’ or ‘fourth’ in Arabic.

A short distance away a smaller group of Egyptians protested, many carrying pictures of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces who had led the coup and the massacres of protesters – a total of around 3,000 were killed and almost 19,000 arrested, They supported the removla of Morsi, who after a narrow win in the 2012 election had granted himself unlimited powers and issued an Islamist-backed draft constitution.

Sisi installed himself as leader and became president after elections in 2014, remaining in power as a dictator since then (including two further elections in which other candidates were barred from running or boycotted the election due to repression – said to be even worse than under Mubarak who had been forced to step down by the popular revolution in 2011.

Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood

PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq – Trafalgar Square

Finally in Trafalgar Square I photographed an elaborate display by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the PMOI (aka MEK and MKO) which since 1986 had been exiled in Iraq (and is now in Albania.)

*Photographs of the 52 killed by Iraqi forces on 1st September*

After the 2003 Iraq invasion the MEK came to a ceasefire agreement with the USA, giving up their weapons – which included 19 British-made Chieftain tanks. When the USA left Iraq they were left at the mercy of the Iraqi authorities and have been subjected to a long history of attacks on their refugee camp.

*Seven hostages are sill held in Baghdad*

The latest of these, ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Mailki, was at Camp Ashraf on September 1, 2013 and killed 52 with 7 hostages taken and held in the Baghdad Green Zone. In response hunger strikes started at Camp Ashraf and in Geneva, Berlin, Ottawa, Melbourne as well as London where they set up a camp in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

A line of hunger strikers, on the 36 day of their strike, was seated at the front of the audience at today’s rally, holding roses and taking an active part in the event, raising their fists and shouting.

The rally called for immediate release of the seven prisoners, and for UN forces to be stationed permanently at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty to provide the protection the PMOI, who the UN granted asylum status.

PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq

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Battle of Cable St – 75 Years On

Battle of Cable St: On Sunday 2 October 2011 well over a thousand trade unionists and anti-fascists celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when Mosley’s fascists were prevented from marching into London’s largely Jewish East End.

Since 2011 we have seen other celebrations of this famous event and the people of the East End have also come together to stop other racist organisations marching into the East End, notably the EDL.

In 1936 Oswald Mosley led the ‘British Union of Fascists’, an organisation modelled on Mussolilni’s Italian fascist paramilitary groups on a march designed to intimidate the large Jewish community in the East End.

Although various groups tried to get the march banned the Home Secretary sided with the fascists insisting their democratic right to march had to be upheld by the police. The fascists were also supported by the right wing press, particularly the Daily Mail, while more liberal newspapers urged people to stay away from the counter demonstration.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews had condemned the march as anti-Semitic, and they had advised people to stay away from the march as did the Labour Party. The opposition to Mosley was led by local members of the Communist Party of Great Britain including Phil Piratin who nine ears later became Communist MP for Mile End. They eventually persuaded the party to back the counter-demonstration.

Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people turned out to stop the fascists. Many were Jewish, and many were members or supporters of the Communist Party but the call brought out many others from the East End, including “Irish Catholics, Jews, Orthodox Jews, dockers and Somali seamen” in a huge mobilisation across the community.

There are three routes leading into the East End from the City of London where Mosely and people gathered at key points on them, particularly at Aldgate, where most of the fighting between police and protesters took place, particularly around Gardiner’s Corner – where a ten years ago Class War carried out their long series of Poor Doors protests against social apartheid in housing.

Police decided to try and force a way through at Cable Street a little to the south and tried to force a way through the crowds and remove the barricades they had set up.

According to Wikipedia, police managed to take and dismantle the first barrier but the anti-fascists set up another a few yards down the road.

“The police attempts to take and remove the barricades were resisted in hand-to-hand fighting and also by missiles, including rubbish, rotten vegetables and the contents of chamber pots thrown at the police by women in houses along the street … children’s marbles were also used to counter charges by mounted police.”

Eventually the police gave up and told Mosley to march with his followers back to the West End, where they held a rally in Hyde Park rather than those they had intended in Limehouse, Bow, Bethnal Green and Hoxton.

Seventy five years after the battle the crowd was rather smaller, but the well over a thousand who met at Aldgate included several veterans of the 1936 battle, among them 96 year old Max Levitas who led the march and spoke at the rally. He was also there and spoke at the 80th anniversary event in 2016.

The oldest person on the march was 106 year old lifelong political activist and suffragette Hetty Bower who had also been at the 1936 demonstration and was later one of the founder members of CND. I photographed her on several occasions at CND and other protests, the last at the Hiroshima Day commemoration in 2013 where she spoke briefly, a few months before her death.

*Beattie Orwell, 94, was another of the veterans of 1936*

You can read more about the Cable Street 75 event on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures.
Battle of Cable St – 75 Years

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Make Them Pay March, London – 2025

Make Them Pay March: Thousands came to the ‘Make Them Pay’ march from the BBC to Parliament Square in London on Saturday 20th September 2025, part of a global week of action on climate justice backed by an alliance of trade unions and campaigning organisations representing millions of workers, citizens and communities across Britain. They say ‘Billionaires have broken Britain – Make THEM pay to fix it‘ and demand the government tax the super-rich, protect workers rather than billionaires and make polluters pay.

The march assembled in nine blocks, in anticipation of this being an extremely large protest given the number of organisations supporting it, but many of these were hard to spot on the march, though they may have been more obvious at the rally that followed.

After a couple of hours photographing before the start and on the first mile or so of the march I was getting rather tired, but also finding that I was beginning to photograph exactly the same people and groups.

It was time for me to take a rest and eat my sandwiches before going to photograph a protest over job losses for cleaners working for University College on the campus and at halls of residence.

Here I’ll try to post a picture from each bloc as well as the list of the organisations involved – although there were many groups I could not identify on the march – and I apologise in advance for any pictures I have featured in the wrong blocs.

Bloc A: Parents, families and kids

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Create a better future.

Parents for Future, Mothers Rise Up and Mothers’ Manifesto.

Bloc B: Economic and social justice

Action Aid UK, Another Europe is Possible, Compass, Debt Justice, DPAC, Equal Right, Equality Trust, Fuel Poverty Action, Greens Organise, Green Party of England and Wales, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, It’s Just Economics, Just Treatment, MenaFem Movement, New Economics Foundation, Patriotic Millionaires UK, Peace & Justice Project, Positive Money, Tax Justice UK, 350.org.

Bloc C: Palestine solidarity

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Ecocide in Gaza.

No named group took part, but there were a few Palestinian flags and a few individuals reminding us of the vast ecocide being inflicted on Gaza

Bloc D: Migrant and racial justice

Black Liberation Alliance, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants,
Migrants Organise, No Borders in Climate Justice.

Bloc E: Workers and trade unions

Bakers’ Union, Equity, Fire Brigades Union, Greener Jobs Alliance, National Education Union.

Bloc F: Billionaires out of fashion

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Billionaires out of fashion.

Labour Behind the Label, No Sweat .

Bloc G: Faith groups

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. No More Fossil Fuels.

CAFOD, Christian Climate Action, Christian Aid, Church Action on Poverty, Faith for the Climate, Muslim Aid, Muslim Charities Forum, Quakers in Britain.

Bloc H: Restore nature

River Action, Take Back Water, Zero Hour. I can’t find a picture featuring these groups, but there were Extinction Rebellion supporters with a large fish.

Bloc J: Climate justice.

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Cut the ties to fossil fuels.

Anticapitalist Resistance, Campaign Against Climate Change, Climate Resistance, Debt for Climate, Ecojustice Ireland, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth EWNI, Global Justice Now, Global Witness, Greater Manchester Climate Justice Coalition, Green Economy Coalition, Greenpeace, Heat Strike, London Mining Network, Make Polluters Pay, Oxfam, People & Planet, Possible, Stop Rosebank, Tipping Point, Working Class Climate Alliance, War on Want, Yorkshire and Humber Climate Justice Coalition.

Many more pictures in my Facebook album Make Them Pay March including some that didn’t seem to fit in any of the blocs.

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