Category: Political Issues

The march from Parliament Square to the Home Office was unusual in that it was called and organised not by a group, but by one incensed individual, Sara Burke who wrote that “the government’s abhorrent treatment of those from the Windrush generation is a national embarrassment”. Other groups including Docs Not Cops, Stand Up to Racism, Movement for Justice and the Socialist Party joined in to support her initiative, but it did give the event a slightly different feel.

The event began with people gathering in Parliament Square, where there was some organised chanting mainly led by people from Stand Up to Racism and the Socialist Party, but Sara Burke declined to speak there and led a rather quiet march through Parliament Square and on to the Home Office, insisting that the marchers kept to the pavement.

Sara Burke did give a carefully prepared speech outside the Home Office, and there were other speakers including from all of the supporting groups.

A few of the same people were back on Monday afternoon for a protest during the parliamentary debate on a petition with 170,000 signatures calling for an amnesty for all the ‘Windrush reneration’ who arrived here up to 1971, calling for a change in the burden of proof  – instead of individuals being assumed illegal unless than can prove their right to remain, it should be up to the authorities to prove that they arrived after 1971 or are otherwise not entitled to stay, and calling on the Home Office to provide compensation for any loss and hurt they have caused.

Among those who spoke was Harold, above, who came to this country legally in the 1950s and and has worked here since, but  who the Home Office has been refusing a passport and was threatening with deportation, others whose parents and grandparents are from ‘Windrush’ families, and anti-racism campaigners including NEU General Secretary Kevin Courtney and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.

Windrush march to Home Office
Protest supports Windrush amnesty debate

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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.

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International Workers’ Memorial Day is observed on April 28th. It is also called International Commemoration Day (ICD) for Dead and Injured or sometimes just Worker’s Memorial Day, though the acronym for this, WMD, has other connotations.

IWMD is an international day of remembrance and action for workers killed, disabled, injured or made unwell by their work, and highlights the fact that most workplace incidents are not ‘accidents’ but the largely predictable result of failures by organisation to have proper safety procedures and training. It promotes campaigns and organisation to fight for improvements in workplace safety under the general slogan for the day ‘Remember the dead – Fight for the living.’

The day was inaugurated by the US AFL-CIO in 1970, and was later taken up elsewhere. In Canada parliament made  April 28 an official Workers’ Mourning Day in 1991. Since 1989 it has been celebrated in North America, Asia, Europe and Africa and it came to the UK in 1992, being adopted by the Scottish TUC in 1993, the TUC in 1999 and the Health and Safety Commission and Health and Safety Executive in 2000. The ILO, part of the United Nations, recognised Workers’ Memorial Day and declared it World Day for Safety and Health at Work in 2001.

Since 2010, Health and Safety standards in the UK have dropped and the system of safety inspections greatly weakened as a part of a government drive against what they call ‘red tape’. This means workers’ lives are now at greater risk than for many years.

This slackening of regulations appears to have been an important factor in allowing the Grenfell Tower disaster to take place. Rather than face tough fire inspections and have to make improvements they paid a contractor to make less strict inspections that would allow highly dangerous situations pass without comment.

Among the speakers at the main London remembrance at the statue of a building worker on Tower Hill was Moyra Samuels of the Justice4 Grenfell campaign, and after wreaths were laid and the event ended, some of us travelled to Notting Hill for another brief ceremony close to Grenfell Tower.

Most of those who take part in this event are building workers, as the building industry is one of the most dangerous in the country. Because of the way that statistics on work-related deaths are compiled, most are not recorded as such. In particular many thousands of work-related deaths occur annually from cancer following exposure to materials such as asbestos and other carcinogens. There is typically a 20 year or so period between exposure and death, and it is usually hard to show a definite causal link in an individual case, though overall figures may be clear.

International Workers’ Memorial Day
Workers’ Memorial Day Grenfell vigil
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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.

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It was only in 1948 that we became British citizens, or more accurately, Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC), before which all those in the UK or its colonies had been British subjects. But new countries which were former colonies wanted to have their own nationalities, and so change was needed. But those who had been born in the UK or the former colonies retained the right to come here unfettered until the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, introduced by a Conservative Government largely at the behest of right-wing Conservative extremists in the ‘Monday Club’.

It was, as then Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskell said, “cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation“, and later Acts made things even worse. But that 1962 law had an important exemption as Wikipedia states:

Commonwealth citizens who were residing in the UK or who had resided in the UK at any point from 1960 to 1962 were exempted, as well as CUKCs and Commonwealth citizens holding a passport issued by the British government or who were born in the UK. The exemption also applied to wives and children under 16 of these people, or any person included on these people’s passports.

That exemption was necessary  because of the huge contribution by 1962 being made to the running of our hospitals, buses and other services by immigrants particularly from the Carribean, where Minister of Health  from 1960-63 ran a very active recruiting programme for nurses.

It is these people who came to the UK up to 1962 – including wives and children under 16 and others on their passports who make up what we think of as the Windrush generation, part of a process that began with the Empire Windrush docking at Tilbury in June 1948, but involves many, many more than the  492 passengers on board. Others too who arrived between the 1962 Act and the 1971 Immigration Act which gave CUKCs the ‘right of abode’, a somewhat curious concept that results in the UK being in breach of international law.  The 1981 British Nationality Act made them (and those born here) British Citizens.

More directly the problems for these people arise from then Home Secretary Theresa May’s 2014 Immigration Act which introduced draconian and discriminatory provisions and changed the legal immigration landscape. Among the speakers at the event was Labour Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbot, one of only 8 Labour  MPs to vote against that act, pointing out then the problems it would cause.

The Home Office, with its policy of a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants has been deporting many who have British Citizen status (or refusing to allow them to return to the UK after they take a holiday or trip to visit relatives. It is doing so as a part of a racist ‘numbers game’ which has involved both major political parties in trying to appease racist pressures to cut immigration.

People who came here legally – often by invitation from the government or major employers at the time – are being asked to produce documentary proof of their residence and employment many years ago, to prove that their status was covered by the various twists of UK immigration policy over the years.

It’s a quite unnecessary and virtually impossible process, clearly designed simply as harassment. If anyone has the records that they seem to require it should be the relevant government departments as these people have paid taxes and national insurance over the years. And to learn that the Home Office has recently destroyed vital historic documents related to the Windrush generation rather than sending them to the National Record Office or the Black Cultural Archives in front of which this protest was held adds injury to the already significant insult.

More on the protest in Windrush Square Brixton on My London Diary:  Solidarity with the Windrush families
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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.

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It is hard to understand why cutting down forests which have taken hundreds or thousands of years to establish to burn them as fuel could ever have been considered as a viable renewable energy source.

That we have to pay a surcharge on our electricity bills which enables ancient forests in the south of the USA to be cleared of threes, converted into woodchips and shipped to be burnt at Drax is irresponsible madness. Apart from the environmental damage in felling, wood is a dirtier fuel even than the coal it is replacing at Drax.

And there is the ‘double whammy’. As well as putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the destruction of the forests means the destruction of the only large scale method of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Without the photosynthesis that converts CO2 and water into carbohydrates, releasing oxygen in the process there would be no life on earth.

The science is clear – even to primary school children – but there are still companies promoting biomass, trying to expand their businesses and profit from contributing to global catastrophe. And some of them were holding the largest international biomass conference in the Landmark Hotel opposite Marlebone Station in London.

Environmental group Biofuelwatch came to the hotel in what they called a ‘Time to Twig’ Masked Ball Forest Flashmob, bringing posters showing some of the environmental degredation caused by forest felling for biofuel, banners, a bike-hauled sound system and some rather strange masks showing a cut section of a tree trunk. They had also brought a small bag of wood chips similar to those used at Drax.

There were also speeches giving more information about the destructive nature of biofuels and their impact on global warming, including from one activist who had attended the conference and talked with some of those taking part.

More pictures: ‘Time to Twig’ Masked Ball
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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

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A large protest in Parliament Square included Kashmiris and Indians from many sections of the community including Tamils, Sikhs, Ravidass, Dalits, Muslims who say Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is pursuing policies dictated by the ultra-right Hindu supremacist RSS.

They say Modi encourages mob violence against Muslims and Christians, protects rapists and promotes caste hierarchy and the persecution of Dalits, and attacks on both the free press and the judicial system. Modi’s policies inflame Hindus to take illegal actions and the police and army ignore them. Modi also promotes the corporate plunder of Indian resources by global mining companies such as Vedanta. Kashmiris call for an end to the military occupation of Kashmir by India, and and for an end to the atrocities committed by the Indians there.

Many well-off Hindus welcome Modi’s Hindu nationalism and the benefits it brings them and their friends in India and dismiss many of the stories of atrocities or blame them on others. One was a group of Hindu women, many looking rather too well-fed, who came holding placards with a picture of Modi on one side and the logo of his ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ initiative (Save girl child, educate a girl child) on the other side.

Most of the richer Indians living in the UK are Hindu, and many are supporters and donors of the Tory party. Their representations to the government here have prevented caste discrimination being made an offence in the UK. Although outlawed by the Indian constituion, it is still rife in India, and those from the lower castes, such as the Dalits, feel that the Modi government encourages it.

And although the Sikh religion also opposes discrimination, many in the Sikh community felt that they were discriminated against by high-caste Sikhs who in 2009 were responsible for the murder of cleric Ramanand Dass in Vienna. Following this many Ravidass Gurdwaras declared themselves to be a religion fully separated from Sikhism, although some still consider themselves to be Sikhs. The two groups differ in their regard Guru Ravidas, a North Indian mystic poet-sant who lived around the 14th to 15th century and has many poems attributed to him in the Sikh scriptures.

Many Sikhs, particularly since the 1984 Indian army attacks on the Golden Temple massacring many of those in the complex, and later that year government encouraged riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in which many more Sikhs were murdered, call of the establishment of a separate Sikh state, Khalistan.

Kahmiris were there to call for India to get out of Kashmir, a country divided into three parts with three occupying powers, Pakistan, China and India, with boundaries between the Indian and Pakistani held region swhich have changed little since the British left in 1947 despite three major wars in Kashmir between the two countries and many border skirmishes. The Chinese army quickly seized the area it considered part of China in 1962, easily defeating the Indian Army.

One recent atrocity in January that united many of the protesters against Modi was the hideous rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl, Asif Bano in Indian occupied Kashmir by Hindus who kidnapped her and kept her in a temple where she was violated before her body was dumped in bushes. Not only were the details of the crime horrific but regional officials allegedly tried to cover up the crime and there was organised intimidation of those trying to get justice. Eventually 8 men were arrested, including two police officers and and former government official.

Parliament Square was surrounded with flags of the Commonwealth Countries, flying there because of the Commonwealth Conference Modi was in London to attend. Some of the protesters attempted to burn the Indian flag, but it proved to be rather fire resistant, though they did finally persuade it to melt an smoulder a little. There was quite a scrum of protesters and photographers around this group and it was difficult to get any clear pictures.

More on My London Diary:

Indians protest President Modi’s visit
Hindus support Modi
Save Girl, Educate Girl

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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

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Although it was a good idea to try and simplify the benefits system, Universal Credit has proved to be a costly failure, which has created a great deal of hardship for many of the claimants who have been transferred on to it.

Those who have been putting the system into effect – particularly the truly evil IDS (Iain Duncan Smith) have simply failed to understand how most people on low incomes or on benefits actually live. They inhabit a world where people have bank accounts which are seldom empty at the end of the month, who never have to think whether they can afford to buy food or pay the electricity bill or rent. People who if they find themselves a bit short – perhaps because they have just bought some luxury item or had an expensive holiday – have relatives or friends who can lend them the odd thou or can get a bank overdraft which they can pay off after the next pay cheque or two, or when the next deal comes through. People who probably own several houses, and are profiting from the rental on some of them.

I’m fortunate now not to have to worry about money. Not particularly rich, but enough to meet my needs – and have the occasional small treat. I’ve lived on relatively little (by the standards of the wealthy) all my life, but grew up in poverty. My mother wrote down every penny she spent in a small red notebook, added it up at the end of every week. Usually there was enough to pay the baker, the butcher, the grocer (in those days they delivered and called for their money later) but sometimes she had to borrow a few pennies from a neighbour (or one of us children’s money boxes we saved the odd penny in) and pay them back with a little scrimping the next week.

People on low wages or relying on benefits don’t generally have the kind of back up that the middle classes take for granted. If they have to wait weeks without money (and most of those transferred to universal credit it is a minimum of 5 weeks, often much longer) they get behind with rent, often get threatened with eviction. They have to rely on food banks to eat.

Those most affected by the changes in the benefits system have been the disabled. Not just by changing to Universal Credit, but by other changes in benefits that have led to many losing the support that enabled them to live decent and productive lives. They have been targeted by deliberately poorly designed assessments of ability to work, administered to them by largely unqualified people who have targets to fail as many as possible. Its a system which has been clearly found to be unfit for purpose and where many are subjected to a repeated series of failed assessments followed – months later – by successful appeals.

Its a system that has rightly been called Kafkaesque, and is probably beyond saving. The effects of all the cuts are even worse, a national scandal in which thousands have died. But the government still claim that despite the problems it is a success and in any case there is no simple way to stop it and go back to a system that, however complex, actually more or less worked.

Some of the problems of Universal Credit are down to the failure to get a working IT system that could not only deal with the many differing circumstances of those claiming benefits, but even more more importantly give the kind of instant communication of personal details between the DWP and the HM Customs & Revenue. It seems unlikely that this will ever be got to work, with truly huge sums being wasted on yet another failed IT project.

The Conservatives when elected as a part of the coalition in 2010 picked on the disabled because they thought they would be an easy target. But the activities of DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) have proved them wrong, producing some of the most determined of protesters, and a group the police find difficult to deal with, not wanting to invite public outrage.

I met with the group outside Parliament, where some were intending to go inside and hold a protest there. I didn’t go with them as I was fairly sure I would not be able to take pictures, but instead went with others who were holding a rally in front of Parliament.

When the protesters came out after a noisy protest inside, the rally continued for a while and then Paula Peters told us more about what had gone on inside. She then asked those present if they were ready for some DPAC action, getting a resounding positive response.

The group then moved off towards Parliament Square, where, as expected, they blocked the road, holding up all traffic wanting to go to Millbank or Victoria St. Police came to talk to them, telling them they were committing an offence and might be arrested, but most protesters ignored the warnings. A little over half an hour later, the protesters decided the road block had gone on for long enough, and made their way to the side of the road.

More on My London Diary: Stop & Scrap Universal Credit say DPAC

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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

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We had come to Brown Hart Gardens in Mayfair for the start of a Land Justice Network event, loosely based on the board game ‘Monopoly’, The Landlords’ Game, an illustrated tour of London’s wealthiest areas reminding us that land ownership in Britain is one of the most unequal in the world, both in rural areas and in cities.

The unequal ownership of land, much deriving back to the Norman conquest and its aftermath is the basis of our class system and the inequalities which still persist which arise from it.

There is an excellent report of the event on the Land Justice Network web site (including one of my pictures) which also has links to the great map and guide for the walk by Nick Hayes which people at the left of the picture above are looking at, and those of you who missed the event can repeat it on your own if you wish.

Much of Westminster is owned by the Duke of Westminster, since 1677 when an area of swamp on the outskirts of the city came into the possession of the 21 year old Sir Thomas Grosvenor by his arranged marriage to the 12 year old Mary Davies (arranged marriages at an early age were not unusual then), who had inherited the land from her father. At the time it was hardly worth much, but eventually it became Mayfair, Park Lane and Belgravia, and the backbone of the enormously wealthy Grosvenor Estates.

Although the land belongs to the Grosvenor estate, many of the buildings are owned by overseas companies, particularly those in tax havens – such as the British Virgin Island – outside whose offices we stopped for several speakers, including Christian Eriksson talked about his investigations for Private Eye tracking the massive increase in tax haven ownership of UK property by various dubious characters.

The tour included stops outside one large house empty for around 15 years, the London offices -‘Grouse House’- of Odey Asset management whose owner Crispin Odey formed ‘You Forgot the Birds’ to oppose the RSPB who want to stop the killing of birds.

Then there was Foxtons, and along Park Lane to the Grosvenor Hotel, which hosts many of London’s most dubious events including awards for property developers, and into Hyde Park, the scene of many former battles over the public right of access, before walking along what was called London’s most expensive street, Grosvenor Crescent, where there is a statue of the first Marquis of Westminster (the family continued climbing, from Baronet to Baron to Earl to Marquis and finally Duke in 1874.)

I left the tour briefly to photograph another event, catching up with it again at the final rally in Cadogan Square, part of the second largest of the surviving aristocratic freehold estates in central London, owned by the Cadogan family, one of the richest families in the United Kingdom. The Cadogan estate began with another marriage, that of the second Baron Cadogan to Elizabeth Sloane, the daughter of Sir Hans Sloane, who had purchased the Manor of Chelsea in 1712.

More pictures at: The Landlords’ Game

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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

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I suppose on average the 13th of the month falls on a Friday once in seven months, and there is no real significance in this. This year, 2018, we had one in July (for Trump’s visit) but also there was one earlier in April, and slightly unusually for a Friday I photographed three events.

Inminds human rights group hold regular protests every couple of weeks, usually on a Friday against various aspects of the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians. They are at various locations, often outside companies who support the Israeli military or prison system in various ways, which provides some variety in the pictures on those occasions I go to photograph them. A constant feature is of course the Palestinian flag, rather a lot of them, including some on some very tall poles, which look good from a distance but are often difficult to photograph. Flags are often a problem too in seldom flying as the photographer would want, sometimes hanging limp, sometimes spelling out their message back to front.

As well as the flags, there is also some great Palestinian music which I never tire of hearing, extremely evocative. The speech about the reason for the protest of course differs depending on the location and the particular event, but many of the large banners they erect are the same, and it is sometimes difficult to produce different pictures.

Today it was Palestinian Prisoners Day and the protest highlighted the plight of the roughly 6,500 Palestinians currently in Israeli jails, around 350 of them children, and the protest was on the South Bank embankment in front of the Royal Festival Hall. And it was next to the downstream footbridge attached to the rail bridge into Charing Cross, which gave me a different perspective to play with.

It was also conveniently on my way across the bridge for the short walk to Downing St, where Stop the War had called a protest calling for Theresa May to stop her plans to take part in bombing Syria, together with French and US forces, following a possibly unreliable report of a chemical attack by Assad’s forces.

They were not the only groups there to protest, with a number of Syrian Assad Supporters, Veterans for Peace, and others who continued the protest after Stop The War, having had a few speeches from their members and taken a letter to Downing St (fortunately they went with an MP who was allowed in to deliver it, though they were not) in their highly controlled protest packed up and left. Things then got a little more interesting with people going on to Whitehall and blocking traffic, eventually being removed by police.

Though better to photograph, this also threatened my schedule, as I was hoping to cover a small protest at the Ministry of Health by NHS staff from hospitals across London opposed to the proposed pay deal for all NHS staff other than doctors, dentists and very senior managers.

It would have been easy if the Dept of Health was still in Whitehall, in Richmond House where it had been since this was built in 1987, just a few yards from Downing St. But unfortunately it recently moved out to new offices in Victoria St around half a mile away, rather a long way to run carrying cameras and bag. I saw the protesters outside in the distance as I trotted down the street, but then looked again when closer and they had disappeared, having occupied the foyer.

Fortunately security had not locked the door, and I was able to follow them in to take a few pictures, but was rather out of breath and perhaps not at my best. After a few minutes they went outside and posed for some group photographs.

More on all three protests:

Palestinian Prisoners Day protest
Don’t Bomb Syria protests
Ditch the Deal say NHS Staff

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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

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