Free Tibet March: On Saturday 9th March 2002 I photographed the annual Free Tibet march and a short time later put some of the photographs online on My London Diary.
Tibetan nun imprisoned for protest in Tibet
I wrote only a very short text for My London Diary then – here it is in full (re-capitalised):
9 March was the occasion of an annual march from the Chinese Embassy to Whitehall to protest against Chinese occupation of Tibet. Among those taking part were those who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for their protests in Tibet.
Back then the library I was sending pictures to only accepted prints or transparencies of colour pictures and I was only then working with colour negative film.
But I did take colour pictures, knowing that they would at some time be a part of a historical record of protest, along with my black and white pictures.
Financially it wasn’t worth me making colour prints, which was a rather slower, more expensive and rather trickier business than printing in black and white – even though I had an expensive colour enlarger and C-Type roller transport line in my darkroom. Many newspapers and magazines were then still totally or largely in black and white and sales were unlikely to cover costs.
But of course things were rapidly changing, and publication quality digital cameras were arriving on the market at affordable prices. By the end of 2002 I working with my first DSLR, a Nikon D100, and soon I was able to write files out to a CD and take those to the library.
But there were sometimes still advantages to working in black and white. In colour the Tibetan protests were dominated by the strong colours of the Tibetan flag which gave every image something of the same look.
And the 6.2Mp RAW files from the Nikon couldn’t quite produce the same quality as black and white film, though good enough for press and magazine work. As digital cameras and processing software both improved though, it soon became possible to produce digital files that could more or less match or better than those from film and eventually I switched to work only on digital.
The pictures here were put on the web in 2002 by scanning 8×10 silver gelatin prints on my flatbed scanner which I filed at around 32Mp files – a size I think I wasn’t able to achieve with a digital camera until over 10 years later. The quality was also better than the files from my first film scanner.
The pictures here are all those I put online in 2002, though I probably took over 200 black and white images. But I would only print and scan those I wanted to submit. At the moment I am going though my many years of working on film and digitising rather more to put on Flickr and the Internet archive, though it will be a few years before I get to doing this for my 2002 work.
International Women’s Day: I’m not sure if this march on Friday 8th March 2002 was the first International Women’s Day event that I photographed, but it was the first that I published on My London Diary.
Back then all the pictures I published were in black and white, though I was also taking pictures in colour but was unable to easily digitise them. I still have to do so for many of the colour pictures I made on film, though I did make prints of a few of them in my darkroom.
Looking through these pictures I recognise quite a few faces I still photograph at protests, among them the founder of the Global Women’s Strike and the the International Wages for Housework Campaign Selma James.
International Women’s Day seems to have become much more widely celebrated since 2002, or at least getting more media attention, though this seems still very much around the very real problems faced by middle class professionals (including of course women in the media) than those faced by by working class women, refugees, asylum seekers, poor women being targeted by social services, those with disabilities, sex workers, victims of domestic violence, rape etc which are at the centre of this event and continuing protests.
Back in 2002, I didn’t write much about this march, at least in partly due to ignorance, but also I seldom wrote much about the events I was covering as I had a full-time job writing about photograph on the web, as well as my own photography – where the pictures I submitted had only brief captions.
“The 8 March is a World Woman’s Day and was celebrated by some as a Global Women’s Strike. The march in London stopped outside key sites including the War Office and World Bank for speeches.”
This was the full set of textt and images I posted in 2002 on My London Diary.
Iran & Midwives: On Sunday 7th March 2010 I photographed a protest marking International Women’s Day organised by Iranian women over the 31 years of repression and calling for an end to the Islamic regime who marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square. I then went south of the river to Geraldine Harmsworth Park for the start of a march back to Downing Street in support of better integrated midwifery services for all women.
Of course there were Dads as well on the midwives march
Both Iran and maternity services are now still live issues. Baroness Amos’s interim review into maternity and neonatal services in England is harrowing and two thirds of maternity services are rated either “inadequate” or “requires improvement”.
Today I will be at a protest against the illegal war by Israel and the USA on Iran. Of course few if any support the Iranian Islamic regime, certainly not among those who like me will be at the protest.
The attacks on Iran, including the assassination of Ali Khamenei, are extremely unlikely to lead to regime change – and if anything are likely to lead to even greater repression, hardship and bloodshed in a country which is being pounded into greater poverty and extreme disorder, with possibly many years of destructive multi-sided civil wars. The decision to attack now appears to have been prompted by the Israeli fears that an agreement between the US and Iran might have been imminent – and perhaps also by the US feeling that a war might improve Trump’s position in the US mid-term elections.
Support the Iranian Women’s Struggle
Iranian Embassy to Trafalgar Square
Women and men, mainly Iranians, held a rally opposite the Iranian embassy in Kensington to mark International Women’s Day and protest against the 31 years of anti-women Islamic laws and repression and calling for an end to the Islamic regime.
The protest was organised by the 8 March Women’s Organsiation (Iran-Afghanistan) and they marched from there to Trafalgar Square where there was a larger rally on the North Terrace with speeches and messages from the 8 March Women’s Organisation, the European Democratic Women Movement (Turkey), Hands off People of Iran, the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and the Million Women Rise movement.
The speches were followed by performances by a number of artists including Iranian singers and poets.
Hands off our Midwives – London Anarcha Feminist Kolektiv – Royal College of Midwives
The Albany Midwifery Practice in Peckham in South London – one of the most highly deprived areas of England – was widely regarded as a model of best practice and a centre of excellence in NHS midwifery, giving support to women throughout pregnancy, birth and the post-natal period, encouraging women to make informed choices about how and where they give birth.
But at the end of 2009, King’s College Hospital terminated their contract following a critical report from the Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries (CMACE) which King’s claim showed “serious shortcomings” over one aspect of their work, forcing the centre to close down. This report was shown to be based on incorrect use of statistics.
King’s decision was seen as an attack on on alternative ways of maternity care that provide better overall outcomes and better meet the needs of women.
Their perinatal mortality rates were well below the national average and well under half those for those in its London Borough. And far fewer of their mothers gave birth by Caesarean section – just over half of the rate in King’s College Hospital. Perhaps at the root of King’s objection to Albany was that almost half of the women chose to give birth at home – compared to 1 in 16 for the area as a whole.
More than three quarters of Albany mothers also continued to breastfeed their babies, well over twice the national average.
The march and rally was supported by AIMS (Association For Improvements In The Maternity Services), NCT (National Childbirth Trust), ARM (Association of Radical Midwives), IM UK (Independent Midwives UK) and Albany Mums.
As well as calling for a public inquiry into the decision to end the Albany contract it also called for a move across the country to replace the current doctor-led hospital services , often un-supportive and even traumatic for mothers, with services following the Albany example which provide a much more comprehensive service with better information and fuller support for women at no greater cost.
Peckham has a record of innovative medical services, with the groundbreaking Peckham Experiment in community health which began 100 years ago in 1926 and was ended under the NHS in 1950. The case of the Albany model of care echoes this, and there approach was fully vindicated in a detailed analysis published in 2017 which concluded “consideration should be given to making similar models of care available to all women.”
Tibet Freedom & Women Rise: On Saturday 6th March 2010 I photographed a march marking the 51st anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising and calling for freedom from China and then went to Marble Arch for Million Women Rise, an all-women march calling for an end to male violence against women.
Tibet Freedom March
Chinese Embassy to Westminster
China Stole My Land, My Voice, My Freedom – the march at Piccadilly Circus
The Tibetan National Uprising began on 10 March 1959, prompted by fears that the Chinese authorities in charge of Tibet would arrest the Dalai Lama. The protests soon developed to demand independence from China which had annexed Tibet in 1951.
As well as civilians those taking part included Tibetan guerillas who had been trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency in camps in Nepal and the CIA organised several aerial supply missions. The Agency had supported Tibetan guerrillas from the mid-1950s and even after armed resistance ended in 1962 the CIA continued to train Tibetans in the USA, returning them to stir up revolts in Tibet until at least 1972.
The National Uprising was bloodily put down by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, with widely varying estimates of the number of Tibetans killed, possibly over 80,000. The Dalai Lama and others fled to India where he and his followers were granted asylum.
In 2008 there had been further protests and demonstrations in Tibet against the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment and persecution of Tibetans which began around the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Uprising. The protests were again violently repressed, with over 200 young Tibetans killed and many imprisoned. Over 1000 were still unaccounted for in 2010 and two, Lobsang Gyaltsen and Mr Loyak, had been executed in October 2009.
The protest by around 600 people, many of them Tibetans, began outside the Chinese Embassy with a short speech and the singing of the Tibetan National Anthem was sung, followed by a minutes silence in memory of the dead and prayers.
A small delegation went with a letter to the door of the Chinese Embassy, but no one from the Embassy was there to take it so they handed it to the police officer there and the march set off down Regent Street to a rally at Downing Street.
I reported, “Near the front of the march was a large banner with the Tibetans’ message “China stole my land, my voice, my freedom.” Among the slogans chanted by marchers were “Tibetans have no voice in Tibet“, “China: stop silencing Tibetans“; “Britain: stand up for Tibetans in Tibet” and “Stop the torture in Tibet”.
I left the Tibet Freedom March to rush to Marble Arch where several thousand women had gathered for the Million Women Rise march, arriving just before they set off.
Million Women Rise (MWR) founder Sabrina Qureshi addresses the women before the start of the march
The Million Women Rise movement was founded by campaigner and former outreach worker Sabrina Qureshi in 2007. I photographed their march in 2008. It takes place every year around March 8th, International Women’s Day, when there have been other events in London for many years which I had often photographed.
Kurdish women with the ROJ banner
Million Women Rise differs in being a women-only event and “led by Black/ Global Majority Women for all Women and Girls.” The annual march is supported by a wide range of groups and they included some left-wing organisations. But others have been excluded from speaking at the rallies or told they are not welcome on the marches.
In 2010 I wrote a little about the violence women experience:
“In this country almost 1 in 4 women are said to have experienced some form of sexual assault and on average two women are murdered each week by a partner or former partner. A third of all teenage girls who are in relationships suffer unwanted sexual acts and one in four are the subject of actual physical violence.”
“Trafficking is a large-scale global industry, with two million girls between the ages of 5 and fifteen being sold into sex slavery each year. Lack of health provision is also a major problem; one woman dies in pregnancy for every minute of the year, and most of these deaths are preventable”
Now, particularly after what we have seen in Gaza with so many women and children among the dead, I might perhaps have also written about affect of wars. Among those on the marching were Tamils and women from the DRC where wars were killing many women and children, as well as from repressive regimes including Iran.
Climate Rush & Cleaners: On Thursday March 5th 2009 Climate Rush and friends staged a colourful protest against the huge support being given to the banks while the people were having to pay the price for their irresponsible and dishonest behaviour which had precipitated the financial crisis. I left their protest to photograph cleaners who were protesting at Willis Group insurance brokers demanding to be paid a living wage and better conditions of service.
Climate Rush hits RBS HQ
RBS, 250 Bishopsgate
Tamsin Omond says ‘Give us our money back and stop trashing the planet’
Here’s what I wrote back in 2009:
“The banks would have gone bankrupt but the government stepped in and paid off the former bosses – including Sir Fred Goowin of RBS – with double gold plated platinum pension pots as a reward for their greed, incompetence and dodgy investments. But even under the new management – unfortunately not of the people who are still just ripped off – the banks continue to bankroll the trashing of the planet, backing schemes such as a coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth.
So the Climate Rush came to the HQ of the RBS in Bishopsgate to protest (and party), drawing media attention to the bank’s crimes against the planet. Around a couple of hundred protesters, some in various costumes, a cycled hauled sound system for speeches and music and some lively dancers made it an enjoyable protest for those taking part and those passing by – and a little more to remember and talk about than a simple static protest.”
This was a piece of street theatre but the police had come out in force, obviously expecting something different, part of a growing paranoia about the coming ‘Storm The Banks‘ protest which this was advertised here and elsewhere to take place on April 1st. Obviously the police do not understand hyperbole.
A young ‘banker’ accepts the ‘RBS FInancial Fool’ award – a dead parrot – on behalf of RBS
In the lead up to April 1st, the G20 Meltdown – Financial Fools Day police (and politicians) released a number of provocative statements to try and justify the actions they were intending to take against the protesters – including the peaceful Climate Camp on Bishopsgate.
On April 1st, there was some disruptive action by protesters but the police went wild. I’d left a peaceful protest at Bank when I saw that police were beginning to kettle the protesters as I wanted to cover an event at the US Embassy. Had I stayed I too might have been assaulted by police like a fellow photographer. A police baton took out much of his teeth – he later received a large cash settlement from the police for his injuries and the cost of extensive dental treatment.
Later riot police stormed peaceful protesters in the Climate Camp who raised their hands in the air chanting “this is not a riot!” and later got they even more out of hand, wantonly smashing property and people. It was a riot, but by the police.
And Ian Tomlinson, an innocent bystander, going home through the Bank area after his work as a newsvendor, died after an unprovoked attack by a riot police officer.
On March 5th, the police simply stood and watched the protest – more a carnival, with presentations of the ‘RBS Financial Fool‘ award – a dead parrot – and the ‘No New Coal Award‘ and much music and dancing.
Cleaners at Willis Group, one of the City’s largest insurance brokers with offices facing those of Lloyds, were protesting outside the Willis building after five cleaners were sacked for trying to organise cleaners to take action and campaign for a living wage and better conditions of service.
Unite had been one of the unions involved in the Justice for Cleaners campaign which was launched in May 2006, but were no longer supporting the cleaners – and Unite had even agreed with the Willis management that these outsourced cleaners would not hold demonstrations outside the offices without informing them, They refused to support the sacked cleaners against their employer Mitie.
So the cleaners decided they needed a union that would support them, and went to the London branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, established in 2005 at the time of the centenary of the international IWW movement.
Later cleaners formed their own grass roots unions, the IWGB, CAIWU and the UVW who branched out to support other low paid workers, with very successful campaigns against outsourcing, low pay and harassment, gaining the London Living Wage for many of their members.
Pancakes and Pickets: Tuesday 4th March 2014 was very much a day of two halves for me, starting with the City of London at play in Guildhall Yard and going on to the School of Oriental and African Studies where cleaners were beginning a two-day strike demanding an end to bullying by their employer ISS and to be brought back into direct employment and treated with respect by SOAS management with equal rights to other employees.
City of London Pancake Races
Guildhall Yard
It was a toss-up whose hat was silliest
It was Shrove Tuesday and The City of London’s 10th annual pancake races took place in Guildhall Yard between teams representing the livery companies, wearing guild robes, white gloves and hats.
As might be expected in the City this is a highly organised event, complete with clipboards, stop-watches and judges, and with a series of rules about dress and behaviour, with points being lost for various infringements.
Various of the guilds contributed their expertise: Gunmakers used a small but very loud cannon to start each heat, Clockmakers timed the races, Fruiterers provided lemons, Cutlers plastic forks, Glovers white gloves to be worn by each runner, and the Poulters, who had started the event, the eggs to make the pancakes.
This event supports the annual charity Lord Mayor’s appeal, and in 2014 Fiona Woolf, the 686th Lord Mayor of London, had chosen Beating Bowel Cancer, the Princess Alice Hospice, Raleigh International and Working Chance. As well as the more formal races there is also a fancy dress competition and race with one entrant from each livery company in costumes based, some with great ingenuity, on the charities.
As I commented, “competition was extremely fierce and the regulators had plenty of work to do keeping up with the infringements. If only they had paid as much attention to what the banks and other city companies were doing!”
This was an event I photographed in several years, but I think 2014 was the final time. Like many events it had become more difficult to cover as more and more photographers came to cover it, some making rather a nuisance of themselves, leading to more restrictions. In earlier years there had only been myself and a few friends and we were welcomed and able to work freely.
Cleaners dance to Colombian music on the picket line
It was the start of a two-day strike by cleaners at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, part of a long ‘Justice For Cleaners’ campaign to be treated equally to other staff at SOAS and to be brought back ‘in house’, employed directly by the university.
They were then employed by the outsourcing cleaning contractor ISS, a multinational company with a reputation for bullying workers. The previous day some ISS managers had assaulted students who had stopped them trying to bring in scab workers to do the work of the cleaners.
ISS director Paul Cronin had also threatened to stop paying the cleaners the London Living Wage which they gained through industrial action several years ago.
SOAS UNISON Branch Secretary and union secretary for the London Higher Education Executive Sandy Nicoll
Outsourcing always results in a poorer level of service, with employers cutting hours of work and giving workers poorer conditions of service, making high profits at the expense of low paid workers.
Reputable employers could not possibly be seen to employ people on the poor pay and conditions of contracting companies, but SOAS seemed happy to benefit from the exploitation of people who work in its building by others despite the poorer service for students and others.
And as the Justice for Cleaners campaign stated “SOAS is known around the world for promoting dignity and equality. Yet, its maintenance, cleaning, security and catering all have less rights than other workers, because they are outsourced. At the moment SOAS is built on inequality and exploitation.”
The strike ballot had an over 60% turnout out and all who voted back the strike. I was told that many had arrived by 4am to start the picket and by 6am virtually the whole normal morning shift were there taking part.
I rushed away from the pancake races to get there for the lunchtime rally, where there were speeches supporting the strike from students and trade unionists. The cleaners are members of the SOAS Unison branch.
Many students and teaching staff had refused to cross the picket line; lectures and tutorials were rescheduled, no registers were taken, and library fines and deadlines were postponed. But for the following second day of the strike the cleaners had asked students and staff to work as normal so that the effect of the building not being cleaned could be seen.
After the speeches there was music and dancing, with the event going on until the picket ended at 5pm. Then the union bar which had been closed for the strike was to open for students and cleaners to have a party. But I left much earlier.
The campaign to bring the cleaners at SOAS back into direct employment continued and after ten years they were finally brought back in house in 2018.
Boycott Workfare, Million Women Rise & Greece: On Saturday 3rd March 2012 I photographed a protest outside companies using people forced into free labour under the government workfare scheme, then a women-only march against male violence against women which I left to go to the Occupy meeting on the steps of St Paul’s which supported the protests in Greece against austerity measures imposed by the EU.
Boycott Workfare – Oxford St
Oxford St
The group Boycott Workfare came to Oxford Street to lead a protest against companies who use unemployed and disabled people forced to work without pay but just a small allowance under the government workfare scheme.
As the protesters emphasised, workfare reduces the number of real jobs available in the workplaces, giving workers to the employers by forcing the unemployed to do work at no cost to the employer on an allowance roughly one quarter of the minimum pay – and around a fifth of the London Living Wage.
The event began with some good news when they met outside BHS near Oxford Circus by praising that company for having withdrawn from the scheme since the protest had been planned before moving off to protest elsewhere.
Around a hundred campaigners had arrived and were being carefully watched by police who went with them, guarding shop doorways and keeping a path along the crowded pavements clear when they stopped to protest.
The organisers had kept their route secret and had come with two ‘Boycott Warfare’ flags on long poles, white with the letters BW, and those taking part were told to follow the flags.
Police were also guarding some shops which had previously been targeted by UK Uncut over their failures to pay tax, though most of these were not involved in workfare and so of no interest to this protest.
The first stop was a Pizza Hut, where police managed to stop any of the protesters entering – but the protest put off a number of customers entering while there were a few speeches. There we were handed a map showing the locations of some of the other businesses on Oxford Street taking part in workfare, including McDonalds, Holland and Barratt, Superdrug, WH Smith, Argos, and a little way north of Oxford St, Holiday Inn and Barnado’s.
Police just managed to arrive at Holland and Barratt before the protesters, who only paused briefly there before rushing on to McDonalds, where a few managed to go inside. Police soon ejected them into the noisy crowd protesting outside, most of whom soon moved off towards Argos, with police following them.
I soon realised that not all the protesters had left for Argos, and hurried back to see another group being ejected from McDonalds. Another small group had returned to Pizza Hut – where again they were ejected by police.
The main body of protesters turned into a shopping arcade, but were not sure which of the shops were using workfare and hesitated, allowing police to rush in and form a barrier. After a few noisy minutes they left and held a rally on a street corner with a few short speeches – including at least one by someone passing by.
At the Holiday Inn on Wellbeck Street a few protesters again beat the police and were rather forcibly ejected.
Some at least of the police who I and the campaigners talked with clearly shared their disgust at a scheme which forces people to work without payment, and were also worried about leaked plans to part-privatise the police and other cuts, but insisted that it was their job to keep order and protect property.
Women were gathering in the street on the west side of Selfridges to march through the centre of London calling for an end to domestic abuse, rape and commercial sexual exploitation. They called for prevention of abuse and support and protection for women.
They came from various womens groups and organisations around the country for this all-women march calling for and end to male violence against women.
Some of London’s more active women campaigning groups, including those that have been the leaders in previous celebrations around International Women’s Day were absent from the protest, and I was shocked to learn that they had been told they were not welcome at this march, despite the coalition’s aim to be non-partisan and to bring “together women who want to highlight the continuation of all forms of violence against women and demand that steps are taken to put an end to this.”
Among those marching were women from a number of political groups from London’s ethnic communities present, including Kurds, some in traditional dress and some holding posters calling for the release of their leader Abdullah Öcalan from prison in Turkey, as well as groups opposed to the Iranian regime.
The Million Women Rise Coalition has a statement of demands for government and societies here and around the world. They demand the recognise and reflect in policies the discrimination faced by all women and those from black and other minority groups in particular. They demand that domestic abuse, rape and commercial sexual exploitation are linked together in a definition of violence against women and that support is given to support organisations for women in the not-for-profit sector.
Their long statement called for support for various groups opposing violence against women, and end to child prostitution and pornography and proper support for trafficked women and children.
They called for International Women’s Day to be made a Bank Holiday in the UK and Ireland, and oppose “the continued misrepresentation, misappropriation and abuse of the female body throughout all forms of media.”
Their statement also made clear that wars and conflicts around the world perpetuate violence against women, and on the march a group carried a banner ‘Raped, Abused, Widowed and Forgotten – Tamil Women in Sri Lanka Still In Tears’ and others highlighted the ongoing abuses against women in DR Congo.
I left the march at Bond Street Station to report on a protest at St Paul’s Cathedral against the terms of the Eurozone rescue package for Greece at Occupy meeting on the steps there and to show solidarity with the protests in Greece.
London University & Israeli Prisons: On Friday 28th February 2014 I went with students as they hunted in and around Senate House for a meeting of University of London Vice Chancellors to protest against the attacks on students and the idea of a university as these managers have called in police onto the campus rather than engage with students and staff.
From there I went to a protest outside the London offices of security firm G4S who supply services to Israels notorious prisons where many Palestinians have been tortured and prisoners including many children are kept under inhumane conditions.
Students tell Vice Chancellor to Resign
Senate House
Students and many academic staff have been appalled by the actions of London University (UoL) managers under Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Adrian Smith who have called in police to subdue student protests, and were calling on him to resign.
This has led to mass arrests, injuries and blood on the streets. The UoL was shutting down its student union, exploiting and intimidating low-paid staff, leading the lobby for a huge fees increase fees and attempting to prevent protests, taking out an injunction against any student occupation of the University.
One student earlier in the week had been convicted of criminal damage for chalking “sick pay, holiday, pensions now” on a foundation stone at a protest in support of low paid staff last July. She was was ordered to pay £200 towards prosecution costs and £810 to cover the cost of repairs to the stone – almost certainly the most expensive wipe with a damp cloth in history. Fortunately a video of her arrest made clear that police were lying when they accused her of assaulting an officer when she was arrested.
The gates to the undercroft were locked
The protesters met outside the University of London Union (ULU) and then walked towards Senate House, where security guards locked the gates to the area under the building in front of the entrance.
A samba band ensures the protest is heard inside Senate House
After a short and noisy protest there, they decided to walk to the pavement outside the south side of Senate House as they thought the meeting would be taking place in one of the rooms there. After another short protest there they walked back to the east side of Senate House where again the gates were locked.
A few students were inside the building and they managed to unlock one of the side doors into the building and I went inside with some of the students.
We wandered around the corridors without finding the Vice Chancellors, although the building was in use for various other meetings and events. Eventually the protesters came to the balconies above the Crush Hall where some other conference delegates were taking lunch and explained to them from above why they were taking action.
Security were standing in front of the Vice Chancellor’s Office, possibly the most likely location for the Vice Chancellors to be meeting. One of the security men assured them it wasn’t there and they did not try to push past.
They went down the the lobby in front of the main entrance and managed to hold the gates open as security officers tried to close them so more of the protesters could come inside, managing to push their way back into the building for another tour. But again they could not find the meeting.
Some students climbed through a window to a balcony at first floor level around the side of the building; I didn’t go with them but made my way out of the building. The main entrance was closed and anyone wanted to leave had to make a long detour through a basement corridor to neighbouring Stewart House.
Students were still walking along the balcony when I arrived at street level outside, and were walking back into the building through an open window that I was told led into one of the Vice Chancellor’s rooms.
It seemed unlikely I would be able to get inside the building to take more pictures and I left to photograph another event.
It was International Israeli Apartheid Week and Inminds Human Rights Group were protesting outside the offices of G4S, the worlds largest security firm, complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and gross human rights abuses, including torture of men, women and children.
One of their banners gave details of the tiny cells in which child prisoners are held, about 2 metres by 1 metre, with a just a mattress and behind a low concrete wall a hole in the ground toilet. There are no windows, and food is delivered through a flap in the door. The light is kept on 24 hours a day and the walls have sharp protrusions to prevent them being leaned on.
Children as young as 12 have been kept in solitary confinement in these cells for up to 65 days, being taken out only to be interrogated while shackled hand and foot for up to 6 hours at a time. Some complain of having been sexually assaulted.
This mistreatment is continued until they confess to such crimes of throwing stones at Israeli army vehicles – for which they can be sentenced to 20 years in jail.
Placards showed the five Hares boys, and leaflets were handed out telling their story. After Israelis from an illegal settlement complained that stones had been thrown at them when they stopped their car to change a tyre, 50 children from Hares were arrested by Israeli soldiers with attack dogs, and 19 of them taken to the G4S secured children’s dungeons at Al Jalame, locked in solitary for up to 2 weeks.
There they were violently tortured and threats made against female members of their families to force confessions from them. Five of the boys were then each charged with 25 counts of attempted murder, despite the occupants of the car being unharmed. At the time of the protest their trial by military court had been postponed month by month, probably because of a lack of any evidence.
In January 2016 the five Hares boys were each sentenced to 15 years in prison following a plea deal “that involved ‘fines’ of NIS 30,000 (appr. €7,100 or $7,750) per boy to be paid to the settler driver as ‘compensation’” Otherwise they would have received longer sentences despite the only evidence against them being their ‘confessions’ extracted under extreme torture.
Stop Trident March & Rally: Britain first deployed submarines carrying nuclear missiles in the Polaris programme from 1968, and these were replace by Trident in 1994-6. In 2006 Tony Blair won a vote on the principle of renewing the Trident system in the House of Commons with the support of the Tory opposition, though 95 Labour MPs rebelled.
People from Bradford had arrived with their own Trident missile, painted with the message ‘Trident – Immoral, Obsolete, Militarily Useless’
Research into the replacement continued and this march came a few months before a House of Commons vote in July 2016. Again there was a significant Labour revolt, with 41 MPs voting against and 41 not voting, but 140 Labour MPs backed the Conservatives and it passed by a large majority.
Rev Gyoro Nagase and another from the Nipponzan Myohoji order at Battersea’s Buddhist Peace Pagoda
Around 60,000 marched through London on Saturday 27th Feb 2016 to a mass rally in Trafalgar Square against the plans to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons at a cost of £180 billion or more.
They say Trident is immoral and using it would cause catastrophic global damage with a global nuclear war possibly bringing all human life on the planet to an end. These weapons of mass destruction don’t keep us safe, though they do hugely enrich the arms companies and their shareholders.
Lindsey German, Stop the War, Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, SNP First Minister, Scotland and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas
Many argued that the use of nuclear weapons was illegal under international law, and a year after the decision to update Trident was taken the UN adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Nicola Sturgeon takes a ‘selfie’ of herself with Kate Hudson
So far 74 countries have signed up to the TPNW which “prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons” and for those already possessing them it gives “a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination” of their nuclear weapons.
Of course no countries which currently have nuclear weapons have so far signed the treaty, and Britain continues on its program to extend its capabilities. In June 2025 Keir Starmer announced the RAF is to buy at least 12 new F-35A fighter jets which can drop nuclear bombs as a part of its commitment to NATO.
As well as increasing the risk of nuclear war, these new nuclear aircraft hugely divert more much needed money from essential spending on services like the NHS, schools and housing.
Costs of the Trident replacement over its 30 year lifetime are currently estimated to be at least £205 billion and the MoD estimate for the F-35 programme of £57 billion is bound to be subject to the usual huge cost overruns.
There was a long list of speakers at the rally, too many to list here, and I think I photographed most or all of them and put them on-line.
You can read more about the 2016 march and see many more pictures from the march and the rally on My London Diary at Stop Trident Rally and Stop Trident March.
Police Farce at Poor Doors: The protest outside the ‘rich’ door of One Commercial St on Thursday 26th February 2015 was just another in the regular series of weekly protests by Class War against the separate entrances to the building – one into a spacious foyer with a reception desk, comfortable seating, flowers and works of art on the walls for those in the privately owned flats and the other a long empty corridor from a door down a side alley for those in social housing.
But a larger contingent of police had turned up than usual and they had come determined to show they were in charge.
As soon as Class War arrived and unrolled their banners a police officer, Sergeant C, came to tell them that the ‘Party Leaders’ banner was offensive and they must remove it.
They were told that nobody had objected to it and so according to the law it was not an offence to display it, and it remained on display. Sergeant C and a woman police officer then began stopping people passing by and entering and leaving through the rich door and trying to get them to say it was offensive.
It seemed to me unacceptable behaviour for police to try and manufacture an offence in this way, and I was pleased when person after person responded with either ‘No’ or ‘Not particularly’ or words to that effect or said they found it amusing rather than offensive. But eventually after around ten minutes of asking people they found three young men going into the rich door who were willing to be prompted to agree that they found it offensive, and came back to the protesters.
Triumphant, Sergeant C then returned to those holding the banner and told them that unless they put the banner away they would be arrested. The protesters rolled it up and continued the protest.
The police should have known better. In 2010 police had raided the home of a photographer a mile of so away for displaying the posters the banner was based on in the windows of his house, forcing him to take them down. He did, then replaced them with the word ‘wanker’ replaced by ‘onanist’. Later the police apologised for their action, upholding the right to to freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act and paid compensation for the raid on his home.
For some reason police don’t find the Lucy Parsons banner offensive
Sergeant C also warned Ian Bone he would be arrested if he continued to use offensive language, in particular the ‘f’ word. As Bone told him, this this was now commonly heard in almost all situations, but perhaps his contributions became just a little more muted.
But Martin Wright took up the challenge, giving a spirited discourse on the words he found offensive such as ‘poverty’ and ‘war’ and using various terms related to sex and bodily functions which were not. The police took no action.
Class War had brought out their posters with the message ‘YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF ALDGATE’ and they invited the police to leave, offering them safe conduct out of the PRA. The police failed to take up the offer.
As the protest was coming to an end there was “a moment of pure farce after an orange flare had been set off, when Sergeant C and another officer tried to put it out in a puddle.
Unsurprisingly this had little effect. It was burning out fairly harmlessly in the puddle on the pavement, the red smoke mainly blowing along the pavement parallel to the road when the sergeant decided to pick it up and carry it to a bin at the side of the traffic lights.
Red smoke continued to pour out of the bin, now being blown into the traffic, and some of the rubbish in the bin appeared to catch fire, though fortunately it went out.”
One of the protesters then mime the police action in dealing with the flare in the puddle and the others were soon in stitches, along with the security man; some of the police were unable to hide their amusement, trying desperately hard not to laugh.
It was time to go home, and I left with the impression that Class War had rather decisively beaten the police on this occasion.
But clearly the local police had an obsession with the ‘Political Leaders’ banner – and a few months later – as I wrote here in Police nick Class War banner – seized it at another Poor Doors protest, arresting one of those holding it. They took the banner back to the police station and then ‘lost‘ it.
