Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Black Day

Tamils have little to celebrate on Sri Lankan Independence Day following their catastrophic defeat in the civil war, brought to an end after 26 years of fighting with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

As a placard states, this is a ‘Black Day for Tamils’. Sri Lanka got its independence from British rule as Ceylon on 4th February 1948, with a government including prominent Tamil leaders. But in 1956 S W R D Bandaranaike became prime minister declaring himself “defender of the besieged Sinhalese culture” and made Sinhalese the only official language of the government greatly heightening the tension between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities, whose language and culture was under threat. When Bandaranaike tried to soften his approach to avoid the conflict, he was assassinated by an extremist Buddhist monk in 1959.

Increasing conflict between the two ethnic groups led to the formation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1976, calling for an independent Tamil state, Tamil Eelam, in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Intermittent clashes developed into a full-scale civil war in 1983. The LTTE as well as conventional fighting also carried out suicide bombings and assassinations and was designated as a terrorist group by many countries, including the UK, where it remains a proscribed organisation.

Since the end of the war efforts at peace and reconciliation appear to have been rather half-hearted, and attempts to bring war criminals to justice have been prevented by the Sri-Lankan government.

The LTTE adopted a flag showing a tiger jumping through a circle of bullets, with crossed black bayonets on a red background, with their name on it, and in 1990 a version of this without the English and Tamil text was adopted as the national flag of Tamil Eelam. Though banned in Sri Lanka it is widely used by Tamils at protests abroad, and though some feel its association with the LTTE makes it illegal in the UK, the police seem to be decided against attempting to take action which would probably fail in the courts.

It was a dull and damp morning in London, and I only stayed around an hour at the protest outside the Embassy in a Bayswater backstreet before leaving for another event in South London.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

Yellow Conspiracists

While the gilets jaunes continue their protests in France, though little reported in our media, it’s perhaps surprising that there has been no real comparable movement here in the UK. What started out as an angry defiance against rises in fuel duties which would have severely hurt rural communities across France has morphed into a wider social movement against inequality, demanding reforms to the democratic system, an increase in the minimum wage, a wealth tax and higher corporate taxes. The movement has also tried hard to distance itself from both the organised extreme right and the extreme left.

Here in the UK virtually the only groups to have associated themselves with the yellow vests have been small groups of extreme right Brexiteers, particularly a group in London who have been coming to shout insults at the permanent pro-Europe protesters opposite parliament, aggressively questioning MPs as they go into and out of parliament, and wandering the streets of Westminster on Saturdays holding up traffic and being watched and occasionally harassed by a large number of police. Of course many of us agree with them that our mass media, controlled by a handfull of billionaires, fails to give us unbiased reporting, and that the BBC, at least in its reporting on the UK and in particular on political matters, has wandered from its charter to become too often the voice of the political establishment.

As well as Brexit they have also taken up a number of right-wing conspiracy theories. Of course some things which are derided as conspiracy theories turn out many years later to have been true. There are some very shady things that go on particularly in the name of national security here and in other countries and are only revealed when documents become available perhaps 30 or a hundred years later. And behind many of them there is perhaps some small nugget of fact.

So family courts do make some very strange decisions in their secret deliberations, some of which arise from middle-class failures to appreciate the lives of the working class. Children do sometimes get taken away from parents and grandparents who love them and would look after them because their lifestyles don’t match middle-class expectations. But to suggest it is some kind of organised process for forcible adoptions rather than well-meaning people making well-meaning mistakes is simply conspiracy theory.

There are people on the extreme right – including of course Tommy Robinson – who are happy to exploit situations for their own ends, including many allegations made by fantasists with mental health problems. Of course child abuse exists, and paedophilia, and there have been numerous convictions for such offences; of course there has been a great deal of corruption in many police forces, some exposed, but none of the causes espoused on the back of the protesters yellow vests stands up to any investigation.

One failure to which some of them do point is actually much wider than they suggest; an almost complete failure of our government, police and legal system to deal with fraud and tax evasion. While a little of this may at one time have involved companies registered at a particular address on Finchley Road it is much more deeply embedded in our political and financial systems, something which has made London the money-laundering capital of the world.

This group have taken on the high-viz vests, but not the ideas and aims of the gilet jaunes, nor the French approach to violence. While I’ve encountered a little suspicion when photographing them, there has been none of the threats and physical violence against journalists that have been a feature of the EDL and ‘Free Tommy’ protests.

Venezuela at the BBC

It was a protest at the BBC, so important to show this in some way. So there are several pictures which include the ‘BBC’ sign. I did try also to take some pictures in which Broadcasting House, a very recognisable building, was in the background, but people just were not in the right place. I could have asked some people to turn around, but I don’t pose people when covering news stories. The two other pictures with a BBC sign also had someone holding a Palestinian flag as well as the banner about Venezuela, which I htink is rather confusing. I support Palestine, but the flag was out of place.

A rather clear statement of a point of view very relevant to the protest, and a rather nice graphic. The expression I think suits the picture, as do the dark glasses.

A lively looking speaker and a couple of Venezuelan flags with a fairly plain background. I took several of her speaking and I think this was the best.

Another poster with a clear and colourful message – which doubly incorporates the Venezuelan flag, which is also repeated three times at the right of the frame. It doesn’t worry me that there are some rather random figures in the backgroun – and of course they were not under my control when I took the picture. The man’s head just above the poster is a little odd – and it does looks as if he could be holding the poster.

What would have been again a little confusing is that the woman with the poster is actually holding not a Venezuelan flag but an Ecuadorian flag (and is I think Ecuadorian.) The three flags of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela are all similar, and in this picture there is no way of knowing which this one is. Other pictures clearly show the difference, with the wider band of yellow and the coat of arms in the centre. The three countries gained independence in 1822 as a confederation, Gran Colombia, and although they later separated, retain flags based on the tri-colour of Venezuelan military leader and revolutionary Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816).

Miranda spent some time in London, where he was welcome as he was plotting to end the Spanish domination of South America, and there is a striking statue of him not far away from where this protest was taking place, in Fitzroy St. Miranda’s life story is an remarkable one, too far-fetched to be fiction, including involvement in the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution as well as in South America.

More at Hands Off Venezuela.
______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Venezuela

Events in Venezuela appear to be reaching a critical point now, with a botched coup attempt by Juan Guaidó apparently easily defeated on Tuesday. Both sides called for mass rallies on May Day, but press photos appear to show a relatively small crowd of a few thousands coming out to support Guaidó while news reports suggest President Nicolás Maduro was considerably more succesful in bringing people to Caracas. But heavy security prevented the opposition holding a rally in the city centre and Guaidó was unable to get to the main rally that did take place.

Of course it is hard to know exactly what is going on in Venezuela, with most if not all of the West’s mass media rallying in support of Guaidó, or at least reflecting the views of an urban middle-class Venezuelan community rather than the great mass of people across the country who have benefitted greatly from the Bolivarian revolution initiated by Hugo Chavez and continued despite crippling US sanctions by Maduro.

And certainly the US are heating up the rhetoric and almost certainly its practical support for the opposition, though much of this is covert. President Trump’s national security advisor has labelled Venezuela, together with its allies Cuba and Nicuaragua as “the troika of tyranny” and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said “military action is possible – if that’s what’s required, that’s what the United States will do.”
President Trump has also clearly been on the warpath.

Back at the end of January, supporters of Maduro, including a number of Venezuelans came to Downing St to demand that the UK should not recognise Juan Guaidó as president, rather than the choice of the people of the country in last year’s elections in which he got 67.8% of the vote, with his nearest rival Henri Falcón at only 20.9%, a thumping mandate that it seems impossible to beleive could have been prejudiced by the relatively minor irregularities his opponents allege – and that one of them called for the election to be re-held without Maduro seems a clear admission that he would be impossible to beat even in the most scrupulously fair of elections.

They also called for an end to the unfair sanctions against the country and in particular for the Bank of England to immediately hand back the 14 tonnes of Venezuelan gold it is withholding form the Venezuelan authorities as a part of these.

More pictures at No imperialist coup in Venezuela

______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Long Live May Day

1st May 2009

Today I’ll be out photographing May Day in London. There is a march every year to celebrate International Workers’ Day, organised by the London May Day Organising Committee, and there has apparently been some kind of socialist celebration on May Day in London since the 1880s, although it was apparently only in 1904 that the Sixth Conference of the Second International in Amsterdam called for “all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace.” (thanks to Wikpedia for the quotation.)

1st May 2013

And while we may generally have the 8-hour day (or something even shorter) there is certainly a long way to go on the demands of the working class and universal peace. The socialists of course took over May Day from its general celebration as a Spring festival, which had earlier in the 19th century become promoted as a traditional festival with the coronation of May Queens, something else I’ve also photographed.But until I gave up teaching, I was seldom able to celebrate May Day unless it happened to fall at a weekend. May Day this Wednesday is for most workers a normal working day, and we have instead a rather silly Bank Holiday on the first Monday in May.

1st May 2000

Possibly the first May Day celebrations I photographed (or at least the earliest I’ve shared online) were on May 1st 2000, which was a Monday, and the events in Parliament Square and elsewhere were an anti-capitalist event rather than the rather more staid trade union and socialist march.

1st May 2000

Later in the day things turned rather nasty and police charged the protesters, a small number of whom had broken the windows of a McDonalds on Whitehall.

1st May 2003

It was not until 2003 that I first posted pictures from the official May Day March in London, though it wasn’t the first time I had been there, rather the first time I’d photographed it digitally. As usual I was very struck by the various socialist groups from London’s ethnic communities that were taking part. There is a long list of supporting groups on the May Day Committee‘s site which as well as other trade union and community groups includes ” organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Bangla Deshi, Kashmiri, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, South African, Nigerian migrant workers & communities”.

But even then, once I’d photographed that march, I went on to photograph anti-capitalists also celebrating May Day in their own way, and this May Day I’ll also be with friends celebrating it rather than listening to the speeches in Trafalgar Square, though I may manage to cover some other protests later in the day.

My London Diary has pictures from May Day for every year since 2003 and I’ll have more to add after today’s events. Long Live May Day!

______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Angry Drivers

Private hire drivers are angry and I think they have every reason to feel aggreived. Transport for London are going to make them pay the congestion charge in Central London while licencensed taxis will remain exempt.

TfL claim that the reason they are making the drivers pay is to reduce air pollution in the city, which is certainly something that needs doing. But those licenced taxis – black cabs – are actually a much larger source of pollution, both from their own exhausts, tires and brakes, but also because of the huge effect they have on congestion on city streets, resulting in extra pollution from other vehicles.

Minicabs drive to pick up customers at a particular location, then drive to their destination. Taxis drive around where they think they will be hailed by customers, cruising for trade, and it is this that increases their road mileage, pollution and their share of the almost 10,000 early deaths per year of Londoners from air pollution. Plying for hire made sense in the old days, but hardly does now in the age of the smart phone, and apps which can summon a cab (or minicab) on demand.

Black cab drivers through their trade organisations are a powerful lobby, and it is hard to see this differential treatment as not being a consequence of this. Most Londoners can only afford to use them on rare occasions – I can only recall a handful of taxi journeys I’ve made in London, when escorting aged and frail relatives and a few times when wealthy friends who were paying dragged me into one with them – and at least one of those journeys would have been much quicker by tube and DLR.

Of course there are problems with minicabs too, particularly with cowboy anti-union outfits such as Uber who are trying to evade their responsibilities as employers – and appealing court decisions without success. The UPHD (United Private Hire Drivers), a part of the IWGB International Workers Great Britain trade union which organised this protest is also organising drivers to get them fair treatment from employers like Uber.

I left the protest early to go on to cover another event, and things apparently got rather livelier after I had gone. It’s always difficult to know when to leave lengthy protests, and often things seem to warm up soon after I’ve left. At times there is a connection, though not I think in this case. Often protests get more intense because of police actions, and the protesters objections to being ordered around, assaulted or arrested, all things which sometimes seem to happen once press reporters and photographers have left. But on this occasion, although I’d left there were plenty of others who stayed on.

End TfL Discrimination against private hire

______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Whaling or a woman?

I’m not sure why a protest against Japan’s plans to resume commercial whaling should be such a Conservative occasion as this clearly was, with a strong presence from the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation as well as Boris’s father Stanley Johnson and Tory MEP for the East of England John Flack as speakers.

Animal rights is an issue that cuts across party divides, but the more radical side of the movement including most of those I’ve photographed at protests against the annual slaughter of dolphins at Taiji cove outside the Japanese Embassy seemed to be missing.

I’m clearly not sufficiently aware of the political nature of conservation and animal welfare, and this does appear to have been organised by Conservatives for Conservative conservationists, with no speakers from Labour, Lib-Dem, Green or other parties in Cavendish Square.

But we did see some disgraceful behaviour by some photographers, pushing protesters and other photographers out of their way as they rushed to photograph conservationist and former Tory spin doctor Carrie Symonds, not for anything she had to say, but because she was Boris Johnson’s girlfriend. I try to avoid occasions where the paparazzi are at work, as on this occasion butressing their reputation as the scum of photography.

And unfortunately their rudeness and assaults were rewarded at least by the popular press, whose accounts of the event hardly mentioned whales and were almost entirely illustrated by pictures (some rather poor) of Symonds and gossip about her and Boris. For the media it was about the woman rather than whaling.

Of course I did photograph her too, and did file four of her in the 44 pictures to the agency from the event, rather more than of the others who spoke, and you can see those pictures along with many others at ‘No Whaling’ rally and march.

______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Marzieh Hashemi arrest protest

The USA decided to move its London embassy a few years ago, and probably a major factor in the decision to go to Nine Elms was that Grosvenor Square was such a convenient location for demonstrations. The most notable of these was back on on 17 March 1968, when police horses ran amok in a relatively peaceful crowd that was filling the square. I can’t see myself in the videos but I’m fairly sure (it was the sixties, and if you can remember …) I was there and certainly remember the panic as out of control horses rushed towards me. I don’t think horses were used at the other protests I was at then, though I’ve seen them used at other London protests in recent years.

Not the embassy

It seemed an example of cruelty to animals (which the nation might be expected to violently object to) and also of cruelty to protesters, about which many would care little. Quite clearly those horses were frightened and out of control of their riders, who rode them into peaceful crowds heedless of the injuries that might be caused. The BBC and much of the other media described it as a riot, but the only rioters where the horses were deployed, well away from the embassy, were the police.

A part of the embassy

In recent years at Grosvenor Square there were probably several protests most weeks, mostly small but some sizeable, though virtually none reported in the media, where only protests abroad against regimes we don’t favour or those involving so-called celebrities seem normally to qualify as news.

This is the embassy

Things are certainly much quieter for the us at Nine Elms, which for many Londoners seems almost on the edge of the known universe. though actually it is only a short walk from one of London’s major transport interchanges at Vauxhall. But it isn’t just getting there that is the problem; the embassy is on a relatively minor road and its entrances hidden away some distance from that road. While people and cars move through Grosvenor Square, virtually nothing goes past the new Embassy which is still in the middle of one of the largest building sites in the country.

Back on the main road in front of the embassy, there is nothing to tell you that this is the US Embassy, though the building itself, on the other side of a garden and lake, is made distinctive by some odd wrapping on three sides (but not that actually facing the road.) Unlike in Grosvenor Square, there is no giant eagle on its roof, and the US flag, rather than being on the roof, is hidden away behind the embassy.

It’s hard from the pavement in front of the pedestrian entrance to the embassy site to get a convincing view of the building, as it is too close for the widest rectilinear lens. Bits of it – as the top two images show – are not that distinctive or convincing, and to get the third image I had to use a fisheye lens. As usual I’ve converted the image using Fisheye-Hemi to make the side walls straight, but the top of the building does retain a curve. The latest version of this utility is now available as a Lightroom export plugin, making it no longer necessary to use Photoshop for the conversion.

I had two main reasons to attend the protest, first that it was about the mistreatment by the FBI of a fellow journalist, but also because it seemed a clear case of Islamophobia, FBI harassment of the Muslim community. America never really was the ‘land of the free’ so far as many of its inhabitants were concerned, or for the rest of the world, but things have got even worse since 9/11 and such shameful US activities such as the illegal rendition and detention of detainees in Guantanamo.

More about the event at Marzieh Hashemi arrest protest.

______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Arms Dealers feast while Yemen starves

I didn’t much enjoy taking pictures outside the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London’s Mayfair on a cold January night. The pavement is fairly narrow and fairly dark, and it was very crowded, with a lot of pushing and shoving, with some police getting rather more physical than the situation demanded. And police took no notice when some of those attending the dinner assaulted the protesters. At least they hadn’t brought their weapons with them.

Of course we shouldn’t be selling arms to be used in Yemen. I’d be happier if we didn’t have one of the larger arms industries in the world, which despite claims about strong export controls is still happy to sell arms to countries where we have serious human rights concerns. We still sell them to over two thirds of the countries on that list – including Saudi Arabia, which is using them in Yemen.

Although it makes big money, the arms industry employs relatively few people – around 140,000 according to the industry body. There surely must be better ways to employ these workers, many who are highly skilled, than in making arms to kill people.

And it is obscene of the Aerospace, Defence and Security industry to hold a luxury dinner celebrating their activities causing death, starvation and devastation across the world. Since Saudi Arabia began its bombing of Yemen in 2015, the UK have continued to supply weapons costing almost £5 billion putting 14m Yemeni people – mainly uninvolved civilians – at risk of famine and starvation.

I arrived after the protest had started, a little earlier than advertised, and it seems that neither the hotel or the police had really prepared for the inevitable and widely advertised protest. Traffic was still flowing on the lane next to the pavement, putting protesters and passers-by at risk, and the barriers were perhaps poorly placed.

Police began handling demonstrators rather roughly, and at least one or two officers were clearly enjoying themselves doing so, while others were clearly trying to treat people carefully. There does need to be some system for officers to report rogue fellow officers and clean up the police. Policing is a difficult job and needs the support of those being policed and this is clearly eroded by the behaviour of some.

I wasn’t too badly treated by police, though as often one or two deliberately moved in front of me to prevent me getting a clear view of their colleagues and I did at times get pushed a little more roughly than necessary. But at one point I was knocked into the road by a protester who had been bodily thrown in my direction by police, but fortunately there was no traffic in the nearside lane at this point.

For obvious reasons I don’t have a picture of that incident, and others were blurred as I was pushed or people were rather rapidly moved. The pictures I took with flash were as expected rather better with subject movement, but even some of those were blurred.

More at Stop Arming Saudi while Yemen starves
______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

London solidarity with Russian anti-fascists

While some of my anarchist friends are always happy to be photographed, others fear being identified in pictures, and have very negative feelings towards photographers. I sometimes am told that I should blur all the faces in pictures that I publish showing anarchists and aniti-fascists, something that in general I am not prepared to do. Generally I reply that if people are in public and wish to hide their faces they should ‘mask up’. It usually makes my pictures more dramatic too.

We do have some control over our appearance in public, and many hide all or part of the time behind masks or other face coverings, make-up or even beards. But if we are in public we will be seen by others, and also photographed, if only by the many security cameras that litter our streets and public and private buildings.

Many are particularly suspicious of being photographed by the press, feeling that any pictures will be used in a way that discredits them. Clearly there are photographers working for some publications who have these as an aim, but I’m not one of them, and those who know me generally know they can trust me, although once a picture goes to an agency I will have little or no control over how it is used. It’s certainly important to think carefully about what you do and don’t file.

Although I don’t believe their fears of being photographed have any real foundation (or sense), unless there seems to me a good public interest reason to do so I will try to avoid taking pictures of people who clearly do not wish to be photographed.

Quite clearly at the rally in front of the Cable St mural to oppose racism, xenophobia, fascism and the upsurge of far-right populism and to show solidarity with Russian anti-fascists there were people who did not want to be photographed, and both I and the videographer who was recording the event for the organisers were careful to avoid upsetting them. It did make for a slightly edgy situation, and there were a few times I would have liked to take a picture but did not. Except for the images of those speaking at the event, I think for all of the pictures which are dominated by a single person or small group I asked permission before making the picture. There were very few who said no, though one did hold the placard I was interested in up in front of his face.

There were half a dozen other freelance photographers who had come to photograph the event, but I think I was the only one who took pictures during the rally, with others waiting in the street outside the public park until people came out for the march – and all those who were camera-shy were appropriately masked up.It ws during the march, and particularly as it passed under the railway bridge that it became most dramatic. But although I like to make dramatic pictures when I can, the most important thing is to tell the story, and I wanted to include the pictures of the speakers and banners underneath the mural, as well as some of the rather short rally in Altab Ali park at the end of the march.

More pictures, text and captions: Solidarity with Russian anti-fascists

______________________________________________________

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________