Category: Political Issues

The university moves in to try and stop free speech

You might expect universities to be enlightened employers and to respect freedom of speech, but while that might once have been so, nowadays you – like me – would be disappointed. When workers at London University staged a number of in noisy protests last academic year for a living wage and proper conditions of service, the response of the university management was not to support them but to ban further protests and threaten to call in the police.

The ‘3 Cosas‘ campaign for proper pay and conditions for low paid staff at the university has widespread support from students and academic and other staff employed by the university. Earlier campaigns by the low paid workers have resulted in some of them now getting a living wage, but even for these the conditions of employment – things like sick pay, holidays and pensions – are far less favourable than they would be if the university employed them directly, rather than buying them in as cheap labour from contractors.

IWGB supports the ‘3 Cosas’ campaign

Its a curious position to work at the university but to be employed by another organisation, as their work is vital to the running of the institution. Even if the university engages another company to manage the cleaners, security and catering staff etc, they are still a part of the institution and it surely has a duty towards them to ensure they get proper pay and conditions. Many other organisations have realised this and made paying the living wage and proper conditions a requirement on companies contracting to run services for them.

But rather than standing up for those who work there, London University has said it is none of their business and objected to protests warning members of the university they may face arrest if they protest on campus.

Security on the gate to the Senate House car park

The protest by the ‘3 Cosas’ movement on 24 Oct was in direct defiance of this ban, and resulted in far more disruption than any previous protest – and greater cost to the University. Extra security staff were on duty, with gates around the Senate House locked and checks made on all those entering.  At first this kept the protesters out, but a few students and academic staff made their way inside the closed area and started to protest, resisting arguments by security and managers to leave.

Eventually the bulk of the protesters decided to walk around some of the barriers and make their way to the Senate House, and I followed them. Some had actually climbed the tall fence or gates in front of Senate House, but I was considerably less athletic, simply walking through a gap in a very threadbare hedge and across a lawn.

Protesters outside the Senate House, guarded by security

Having defied the ban on one side of Senate House I was a little surprised when it turned out to be equally easy for the protesters to walk round to the other side and do so again. But if the authorities really intend to stop protests they will need to invest heavily in barbed wire! By this time the university management had called in the police, though I don’t think the police were all that pleased or sure what their role should be. It was after all a peaceful protest and causing little or no disruption – and what disruption there was mainly from the action of the university security.

Protest continues on the other side of Senate House

Finally as the protest was almost at its natural end, the police decided to act, moving in and trying to stop the protest ending!  The result was something of a farce, with a handful of police grabbing the odd student while the others simply walked past – as I did.  After a little argy-bargy and some actual barging the police came to their senses and walked away, leaving the protesters to rightly claim a victory. They had stood up to the university authorities and to the police in a protest not just about the ‘3 Cosas’ but about freedom to protest and freedom of speech.

Police try to stop protester leaving while other police are shouting ‘Let them through!’

It may not end there. While the protesters were inside around the Senate House, there was a man on a balcony filming them – to which the protesters took exception. It seemed an unnecessary provocation, and suggests that the authorities might be considering disciplinary or legal action against those taking part.  This would be an extremely inflammatory act, and one that would reflect badly on the university.

More at 3 Cosas Defy London Uni Protest Ban.

Continue reading Cops Off Campus!

I don’t often go to Hounslow, although its only a few miles away. I can get on a bus a short walk away and it will take me there, though it’s faster to either take the train to Hounslow or get off a stop before and catch a bus, depending on which part of Hounslow I want to go to. But not a lot happens there. Not a lot happened there in the eighteen or so years I lived there until I left for university. A few years later my family had all moved away, and there didn’t seem a great deal to go back there for.

But on a Thursday morning I found myself standing alone at a bus stop outside Eaton House, the Hounslow Reporting Centre. Most asylum seekers have to report either daily, weekly or monthly at one of these centres – there are around 15 covering the whole country – or sometimes at a police station. They get fingerprinted and their biometric ID cards are reactivated. Or they may be taken from the interview room and put into a holding cell, to be transferred to one of our immigration prisons (officially called detention centres) to await deportation. Eaton House serves those living in much of West London and further afield, and certainly wasn’t chosen as the easiest place to find or travel to, on the western edge of Hounslow. Reporting often seems to be a way to harass asylum seekers rather than anything more.

Southall Black Sisters was founded in 1979 to fight for the human rights of Black (Asian and African-Caribbean) women and like many others are appalled at the growing racism of government legislation and activities against asylum seekers and other migrants. I’ve photographed them taking part in many events over the years, but I think this was the first organised by them I’d been to.

I have a suspicion that Eaton House was chosen as a reporting centre (and I think as a base for some of the UKBA officers who go out on immigration raids) because it is rather out of the way. The journey is intended as a disincentive to wanting asylum or a punishment, and to make organising protests more difficult. Although bus services in London have improved since my youth (then the route between Southall and Hounslow was particularly unreliable, and on several evenings I stood for an hour or so waiting for a 120 before giving up and walking home.)

But this time, coming from Feltham, my bus was dead on time and I arrived a few minutes early and I walked up and down, then sat down at the seat inside the bus shelter and waited hopefully. I like to get to protests a few minutes early, but it’s always nice to have a others gathering there so you know something will happen, and as the start time approached I was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time.

But Southall Black Sisters arrived on the dot, a minute before the advertised time and the protest got underway. Many of those taking part were wearing the group’s white t-shirt with the message ‘Do I look illegal!’ printed very large on its front, and with the protest involving quite a lot of activity it proved surprising difficult to get images in which this was fully legible, as you can see in Southall Black Sisters Protest Racist UKBA.

There were a few interesting moments, particularly when police officers tried to liaise with the women, and when one officer complained about the language one of them had used shouting at a man walking by who had made a racist comment, and was surrounded by the women telling him he should be taking action against racists, not those who stood up to them. The officer claimed to have been unaware of the comment that had been made, and eventually backed away as women shouted at him and blew whistles and vuvuzelas. But although I took pictures, it was perhaps something that would have been rather better recorded on video.  I’d not heard either the racist comment or the response the officer objected to.

My time at the protest was limited as I wanted to be in central London for another event, involving a journey by bus, then a short walk to the underground at Hounslow East from where the Piccadilly line would take me, very slowly, to my destination.

I was beginning to get worried that I hadn’t really managed to take an image that really worked about the protest as a whole, when I made the one at the top of this post, showing the Director of Southall Black Sisters, Pragna Patel speaking. I’d moved around very close behind her using the 16-35mm on the D700.  This was the sixth of seven frames; at first I’d been a little further back, and working at 16mm, and she had been partly obscuring the banner.  I’d been working with the banner and to its right a group of the women with drums and horns in front of the UKBA fence and building, and Pragna Patel was reading from a list of slogans in her hand. As she turned her head around more towards me I zoomed in slightly for a frame and then stepped closer to tighten the framing a little. Even so, the image, taken at 20mm, needed a little cropping mainly at the right of the frame, and this also enabled me to bring the top of the image to the top of the banner.  I’ve retained the 3:2 aspect ratio, though I think it might improve the picture with just a little more off the right hand edge. You can see my shadow in the bottom right by the way, and the t-shirt of the woman holding the banner is nicely legible, with a curve in  her stance that seems to send my eye back into the picture.

I took one more frame immediately after this, almost identical except that the speaker’s mouth had closed and her head moved very slightly forward. As soon as I had taken these two images I thought I had managed what I needed, and, moving back a little, made a quick check on the screen on the back of the camera to confirm this. I don’t often stop to ‘chimp’ when taking pictures (and often get annoyed with photographers who keep standing in the way of others to do so) but wanted to be sure.

As I looked up from the camera, I saw my bus coming down the road, and quickly waved goodbye and jumped on it, on my way to take more pictures elsewhere.

Continue reading Thursday

It was raining fairly heavily as I made my way into Hyde Park for the protest by CasteWatch UK, but I didn’t want to put my umbrella up. It’s days like this that I wish I had an assistant to hold an umbrella over me, as it isn’t really practicable to photograph holding one yourself, though I have sometimes done so. I like to get close to many of my subjects and it just gets in the way, apart from being rather tricky to manage. But at least I have a decent hood on my jacket that keeps me dry without getting too much in the way, though it does make it just a little harder to work, and in particular restricts peripheral vision, making it easier to miss things going on around me.

I’ve also experimented a little with waterproof housings for the two cameras (D700, D800E) I like to use, but have yet to find anything I like though Op-Tech make a cheap one that looks interesting. Perhaps readers have some other suggestions?

So I work with the front of my waterproof jacket partly open, slipping the cameras partly inside when I’m not taking pictures. Two Nikons with large lenses don’t really fit easily inside, especially if one has a flash attached. Though flash is seldom a good idea in the rain unless you want to take pictures of raindrops. I put a large microfibre cloth over them, or spend my time wiping them down to try and keep them dry. The cameras are fairly well sealed against water, but the lenses – even the pro 16-35mm f4 – not so good.

Caste Discrimination is illegal in India, though that hasn’t stopped it remaining to be a real problem there, and one that has now been exported to the UK. It’s a problem that has a religious dimension too, with many of the lower caste Dalits being followers of the 14th century Indian guru Guru Ravidass. He is considered holy (but not a Guru) by Sikhs and  many Ravidassia places of worship are called Gurdwara and until recently many considered themselves as Sikhs (and some others as Hindu.) But in 2009 the murder of a Ravidass leader, Ramanand Dass, by Sikh extremists in the temnple at Vienna led to a decisive split between Ravidass and Sikhs. Ravidass Gurdwaras that had previously flown the Sikh
Nishan Sahib flag with its Khanda symbol now adopted the distinct Ravidass Harr Nishaan, and in place of the Guru Granth Sahib they brought out their own Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji containing the hymns of Guru Ravidass.

Ravidassia complain they are discriminated against because of their low caste by both Hindus and Sikhs. The government didn’t want to act, but were forced to do so by the House of Lords and MPs, and in April legislation was passed to ban caste discrimination in the country under the Equality Act. Rather than accept this, the government, under pressure from Hindu ad Sikh higher caste groups and individuals, decided to delay implementation by setting up a two year period of consultation with these groups, angering both the Dalits and others opposed to discrimination.

Almost all those on the march were Ravidassia, with just a few Sikhs and others also supporting the demand for speedy implementation of the law. A little under a thousand were standing in the rain when I arrived, many under umbrellas, some listening to speeches and others just standing around waiting for the march to begin, out of earshot of the speakers.

Umbrellas can be a problem, particularly for colour photography. While black umbrellas simply cause shadows, sometimes rather deep, coloured umbrellas can give some very strong colour casts from the light coming through them onto the faces beneath. One solution is to use flash, but unless you are also under the umbrella this can give reflections from rain drops in the air. Instead I relied on being able to use Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush to adjust ‘temperature’ and ‘tint’ on faces where necessary. You can see a blue patch I left on the forehead of the woman in the image below.

I noticed two young women carrying red boxes, which I guessed contained the petition the march was to present at Downing St, and went over to photograph them and ask about the protest. They took me to photograph the march organiser, and later at the end of the protest I photographed them on their way into Downing St with the petition.

Although it was still raining when the march started, it soon eased off, and I was able to photograph the march as it went down Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner in the dry. Park Lane has many trees along the Hyde Park side, and the lighting varies considerably. Usually I hand around in the lighter areas taking pictures, then after a while hurry on to the next area with decent lighting.

At Hyde Park Corner I decided I’d been on my feet for long enough (walking is fine, but photography usually involves too much standing around, which is bad for more legs) and I took the tube for a couple of stops, meeting up with the protesters as they came along Pall Mall towards Whitehall. I’d not made a note of the exact route and had spent a little time waiting at Piccadilly Circus before I realised they were not taking a rout passed there.

Opposite Downing St there was a rally on the pavement, with a number of speakers, few of whom I recognised. It’s sometimes a problem in captioning, but if I don’t recognise a speaker or remember having heard the name before it probably is not going to be of great interest to likely clients.

Although it was fairly noisy in the crowd and with the speakers using megaphones I was still listening for other things happening, and something made me move out of the crowd to the side of the road. There I found the event organiser and a few others having an argument with a police officer, who was trying to stop them going across the road to present the petition. Finally he realised that they were telling him that they had arranged to do so with the authorities and agreed to let them do so.

I was pleased with the pictures I’d taken. It was a cause I could wholeheartedly support, and the people were all very warm and friendly and keen to have their pictures taken. You can see more of them at Make Caste Discrimination Illegal Now.
Continue reading End UK Caste Discrimination

I woke up this morning to hear a couple of interesting snips of R4 Today, amused when their reporter, busily chatting with home base, rather spectacularly missed culture secretary Maria Miller’s announcement of that the 2017 UK City of Culture was to be Hull, coming to her speech just after the announcement as she congratulated the other short-listed cities on the strong cases they had presented which were not as convincing as that of the chosen city.

A few minutes later – or was it earlier? – the programme had a discussion on time travel, with a learned US professor telling us that Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity had stated that travel into the future was possible, and that had been experimentally proven, and that while his General Theory indicated the possibility of travel into the past, so far this had not been achieved.

I had to disagree, having published on the matter in the 1980s, when I wrote about the experience of my first visit to Hull. I can’t remember the exact words (and am too lazy to look them up since they come from a pre computer age and are hidden in stacks of paper), but it went something like this:

I boarded my train in Manchester in 1965 and emerged an hour and a half later in the 1950s at Hull Paragon.

I didn’t mean it unkindly, but Hull was definitively in a different time zone, and in many ways that endeared the city to me. I kept on going back, and a few years later married into it; we continued to make frequent visits for the next thirty-five years, though never stayed for more than a couple of weeks at a time.

Hull then was in many ways a ‘city of culture’ back then. My parents-in-law to be had met both playing violins in the same orchestra, and there was a fine old ‘New Theatre’ with a wide range of performances (music, opera, ballet, drama, pantomime…) as well as a fine municipal art gallery, the Ferens. Ordinary people still went to concerts, plays and exhibitions as well as themselves taking part in thriving amateur performances. Larkin was by far from being the only poet, and in the Hull Daily Mail the city had one of the better provincial newspapers, if I did spend most of my time reading it laughing at the almost pocket-money house prices in the ads.

I took some of my earliest photographs in the old town at night, and a few years later found a subject in the widespread changes that were occurring across the city as the Council finished off much of what the Luftwaffe had left with large-scale redevelopment. The ‘Cod Wars’ killed the fishing, and much of the industry was dying, a process greatly accelerated under Thatcher. Barbara Castle gave the city a bridge across the Humber a few miles upstream as an election bribe, but by the time it arrived there seemed little reason to use it, and in 1976 it was made largely redundant with the eventual opening of the M62 to North Cave.

One of the many things I loved about Hull was its openness to the arts – it seemed to have few of the cliques which make – for example – London so unwelcoming to the outsider. I walked into the Ferens Gallery to make an appointment to show someone my work and ten minutes later was talking with the curator. Before long I was offered my first major show (and still my largest), on the top floor of the gallery in 1983, with around 140 prints. Most of them are in my book ‘Still Occupied: A View of Hull‘ (see below), though this also contains some later work and only contains black and white images – the show had around 20 colour images as well.

I continued to photograph Hull on later visits, though these have been much less frequent and shorter in recent years, as our relatives and friends have died. Hull has continued to change, although not always for the better in my view. But some of what I seemed almost alone in admiring back in the 70s has survived and is now promoted with leaflets, interpretation boards and ‘heritage’ signage. There are some splendid new features such as the River Hull Flood Barrier (they forgot to bring it into action at the first high tides after it was finished) and ‘The Deep’, as well as a rather disastrous marina, some rather dreary new housing and some disappointing shopping areas. Hull also got a ‘Fish Trail‘ and a ‘Larkin Trail‘ (I spent some happy times in the later years staying in a fine large ‘Arts and Crafts’ house owned by an old friend a few yards from where he lived.)

The arts as usual have played a part in the regeneration of the city, although not one always understood by the locals. I think I may well have stolen this story from someone, but I remember being in a bar down an alley just off the High St in the Old Town with my brother-in-law, close to the premises of Hull Time Based Arts in the mid 80s, hearing one of the regulars saying he didn’t get what they were doing. “Call themselves ‘Timebase Darts?  I’ve never seen a one of them with a set of arrers!”

There are a few more of my pictures of Hull on the Urban Landscapes web site, and many more in my rather expensive book from Blurb, Still Occupied: A View of Hull 1977-85. Customers at UK addresses only can order direct from me rather more cheaply  for £30 including delivery. But everyone can access the full preview of the book on Blurb for free – click on the full-page button at the bottom of the preview to see the images properly. And you can still download a reasonably priced pdf from the Blurb page.

This was one of the first books I made on Blurb, using their Booksmart software, which mean the layout is not quite up to my later standards. Perhaps I will bring out a second edition for Hull’s year as UK City of Culture, or another book including colour and later work.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : 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’ve had the privilege of meeting with the Rev Billy and his associates in The Church of Stop Shopping during I think four events in London, and have been impressed both by their performances and in particular his anti-consumerism preaching. If you’ve not come across him before you can read more about him on My London Diary, and in particular on the two more extended performances I’ve photographed,  Rev Billy’s Tate BP Exorcism in 2011:

The Reverend Billy & the Church of Earthalujah preached a sermon loud and clear in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern today, an act of exorcism urging an end to extraction of oil for the Tar Sands and of arts sponsorship by BP which gives a company engaged in this most polluting activity a false green image.

and Rev Billy at HSBC in July this year inside the branch of the bank just opposite Victoria Station in London:

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir creatively invaded the HSBC branch at Victoria to perform a “radicalized midsummer cloud forest dream” against the support given to fossil fuels and climate chaos by the banks and the City of London.

Last month they gave a similar performance of this ‘extinction sermon’ in the ‘”wealth management bank” of JP Morgan Chase at 56th and 6th in Manhattan. The dancing, singing toads offered bank workers and customers information sheets about the impact of Chase investments on the environment.’ The petition page continues:

Reverend Billy Talen and the music director of the Stop Shopping Choir, Nehemiah Luckett, were arrested minutes later on a subway platform. The two were charged with riot in the second degree, menacing in the third degree, unlawful assembly, and two counts of disorderly conduct. The DA’s office requested one year in prison for “this criminal stunt.“

The defence argues that the 15 minute performance was an ‘expressive political activity’ covered by the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution which guarantees freedom os speech.  Their act was based on research by BankTrack.Org of the Netherlands and the UK World Development Movement which shows that “Chase Bank is a top financier of extractive fossil projects, responsible for more CO2 emissions release than any other institution, with the possible exception of the Chinese Communist Party.”

You can read more about Rev Billy and the collective at The Church of Stop Shopping web site. The case against Rev Billy raises important questions about the right to protest and freedom of speech and seems to be a clear attempt by the establishment and Chase Bank to curb these.

If you care about these issues please sign the petition to District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in support of the Revs Billy and Nehemiah by the Friends of the Church of Stop Shopping.  It will be presented at court on Dec 9th.

Continue reading Support Rev Billy

The flags were blowing wildly in the wind as the group marched down Willesden High Rd

When I heard and saw BBC London’s ‘Inside Out London‘ investigation into letting agents I thought of the 1950s and 60s, when signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” became common on London lodging houses, and we had a ‘race riot’ in Notting Hill.  The Race Relations Act 1965 outlawed discrimination on the “grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins” in public places, and he Race Relations Act 1968 extended that to housing, employment and public services.

But the programme clearly showed that letting agents – at the request of a person wanting to let a Notting Hill flat – were prepared to make sure that they were prepared not to show that vacancy to a black enquirer, even though they knew this would be illegal. Even though some of those concerned were themselves from minority communities, they were prepared to discriminate rather than risk losing the business.

The two agents who featured prominently in the feature were both on Willesden High Rd, about half a mile from each other. I didn’t expect the protest, organised for the day following the protest to be huge, but I felt it was an important issue and decided to cover it.

My journey to Willesden, never particularly straightforward, was made more difficult by a derailment in the early morning when a container came loose and brought down the overhead power lines and gantries supporting them at Camden Town. Although it had occurred at 3am, the on-line information still had trains running normally when I left home considerably later, and it was only as the train from Richmond approached Willesden Junction that we were told it would go no further. We all had to get off, and found the staff on the platform there knew little more than us. After a few minutes we were told there would be a train running as far as Gospel Oak, more than far enough for me, as I only wanted the next stop, Kensal Rise, but when it would come was still a mystery.

I was still standing wondering whether to leave the station and take a bus when it did come in, and fortunately I arrived at Kensal Rise only around 15 minutes after I had expected. I ran for a bus, but just missed it. But on main routes in London it’s seldom too long before the next one.

In the event I arrived only a few minutes after the protest was meant to start, and before many of the protesters. Its a small but sometimes tricky problem to know what the times for protests mean, but normally I try to arrive at least a few minutes early, and just occasionally that’s too late, while other protests are considerably more laid back and don’t really get going for half an hour or more after the given time.  A few I’ve waited half an hour or so, then left, assuming nothing was going to take place, only to read a report of them on Facebook the following day.

Among the protesters in a slightly larger group than I expected were several people I knew from previous events, including Isabel Counihan whose family campaign to get Brent council to rehouse them has attracted considerable attention. Their campaign soon widened to support others with having problems around social housing, including that of one man who committed suicide following loss of benefits through DWP incompetence and notice of eviction by the housing association who have plans to redevelop the property.

Also present at the protest were councillors and others from Brent Council, against which the Counihan family had been fighting – and whose housing department had caused their problems through initial poor advice and later what seems to be confusion and sheer malice.

A little coolness between the two parties might have been expected, but one man took it further, speaking rudely to Isabel and then standing in front of her banner in an attempt to prevent the press photographing it.  I’d already done so, and made sure it was reasonably prominent in my coverage of the event, when perhaps otherwise it might not have been used.

I’d already talked to her and she had told me than that they were in the process of getting a new banner for their ‘Housing For All’ campaign, and later after the unpleasant scene she decided to roll her banner up, and instead carried one end of the Brent Housing Action banner on the march.

The protest was on a narrow pavement next to a bus stop on a busy road outside National Estate Agents. Fortunately the 16mm was just about wide enough to get the whole of the shop front and protest in without standing in the traffic, but a local press photographer perhaps didn’t have or didn’t want to use anything so wide, and organised people into standing on the edge of the pavement, going out in the road to take pictures. Personally I preferred to keep safe.

I’m not a fan of estate agents, who seem to me to take rather too much and do rather too little for the money. But at this protest some of them went up a little in my estimation as a couple walked out from another nearby agency, Harts, and joined the protest.

After a while and some chanting outside National Estate Agents, which was closed and shuttered, perhaps because it was Eid ul-Adha rather than for the protest, they decided to march along the road to the second letting agent, A to Z Property Services, where the protest continued, as you can see in Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar.

Later I read in the local paper that one of the agencies was disputing the version of events put out by the BBC. It was perhaps hardly surprising news, though having watched the programme I thought a statement more along the lines of “Its a fair cop, Guv” might have been more appropriate
Continue reading No Colour Bar

I don’t spend a lot of time in Soho, though it’s one of London’s more interesting areas, with an atmosphere of its own. As the Soho Society, formed in 1972 when the whole area was in danger from comprehensive redevelopment states, it is “a remarkable square mile with a remarkable history.”  Thanks largely to their efforts, Soho was made a Conservation Area, and although continually under threat, much has survived.

Soho 2003

Much of its character comes from the many small businesses there covering a huge range of goods and services, both for the trade and the general public. Unlike most of the rest of London (and other cities and towns) it has largely resisted the chains and franchises, although there are a few, mainly on the major roads that cut through or surround the area. Tourists flock to Chinatown – and so do London’s Chinese population, but it’s also a great place to buy Italian groceries (and perhaps the best sandwiches in London.) And so much more.

Soho has also a reputation for sex, and as well as various clubs and bars catering for various tastes, there are still open doors on some streets sometimes with a red light and a small card, ‘Model upstairs’. ( I assume this doesn’t refer to, say a model train, but can provide no  first-hand information.)  Years ago while walking through the area it was common for young (and not so young) ladies to come up to you, perhaps to ask if you had a light for their cigarette, or simply to ask “Looking for a good time, Dearie?” but now such business is apparently more often conducted by phone.  ‘Working Girls’ as they are now styled can work much more safely from a flat, with added protection from the presence of a ‘maid’, often an older woman who has retired from the ‘game’. Or so I’m told. Personally it isn’t a trade I’ve ever thought to patronise, and I have some sympathy with campaigners who want to make paying for sex by men (or women) an offence.

Prostitution is not illegal, but pimping and brothels are, and more than one sex worker in a flat or house makes that into a brothel.  The image above isn’t a great picture, but one that (literally) spells out rather clearly the problem. Women turn to prostitution as a way to make a living, often in desperate circumstances where they have few alternatives. It is a traditional occupation and fits in to Soho with few problems where it is a business run by the women involved. Police crackdowns on legally working prostitutes are largely prompted by those who wish to empty properties and redevelop the area.

Of course police should have a role in the matter. There is exploitation, women who are trafficked and many truly terrible things happening in the sex industry in Soho as elsewhere in London, and the police should be cracking down on it, getting evidence, arresting those responsible, taking them to court and getting convictions. But unfortunately we see very little of this. Instead they pick on the easy meat, where they can get results without having to have any evidence or take anything to court.

Police sent a threatening letter to Soho Estates, the landlord of a block in Romilly St, threatening them with prosecution for allowing their property to be used as brothels. Soho Estates then pressured the lease-holder to evict the women, who were apparently all working singly and thus legally in self-contained flats.  And they were evicted. The police can chalk up a success, and the developers, here and elsewhere, have empty buildings they can attempt to redevelop. There are still some on Westminster council who would like to see Soho disappear (and are perhaps rubbing their hands at the thought of the profits they could make from it.)

It was a popular protest with the press, with women (many if not most not themselves prostitutes but supporters of their case) wearing masks adding to the attraction.  It was also unusual, in that the boss of Soho Estates, John James (the son-in-law of the late Paul Raymond) came out with a colleague to try and justify his actions, saying the police had left him with no alternative. He was allowed to have his say, but it wasn’t an argument that cut ice with those protesting, who suggested he should have called the police bluff, as they had no evidence in support of their case.

The protesters gave a much warmer welcome to a woman from the Soho Society, who came to give her support for them. Many of the women involved have families in the area and are respected as residents, carrying on one of its traditional trades, in a way that causes little if any nuisance to others who live around.  Women who work in flats contribute to the local economy and are a part of what gives Soho its unique character; taking prostitution off the streets improves the area and is ten times safer for the sex workers.

More about the event and more pictures at Police & Developers Evict Soho Working Girls.

Continue reading A Morning in Soho

Royal London is in a right Royal mess. Not unfortunately the Royal family, an institution I would only be too pleased to see go bust, unlikely for various reasons though that is, but the Royal London Hospital, which managed quite well for the 250 years before it became Royal, but is now in trouble.

Its old building, dating from the 1750s was updated in the nineteenth century and again at the start of the twentieth, but by the twentyfirst was a mess. When I wandered around its corridors a few years ago, failing to follow the confusing signage, it still seemed a place where Flo Nightingale would have been at home, and sitting in the waiting area in the entrance or standing under the outside portico in recent years was to be in a curious limbo, with patients, some pushing drips on stands, slowly towards the ‘fresh air’ of the Whitechapel Road for a fag.

Royal London Hospital, Stepney Way, Dec 2011

Now its all shiny new and blue, part of one of many Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes which are crippling the NHS. Conceived under John Major, PFI never made sense other than as a trick to make government borrowing look less than it really was. At the start, Labour opposed it, but in government went on to use the scam to a huge extent to provide new schools and hospitals in a number of disastrous schemes. The one including the Royal London was the largest of all in the NHS at £1.1 billion, and Barts Health Trust has to find £129 million this year to pay the private companies involved – an annual amount that will rise to £274 million by 2048.

Royal London Hospital from Cavell St, Dec 2011 Some views from it at Whitechapel – Hospital Views

Unsurprisingly this huge amount means they can’t afford to run health services in the area properly.  They can’t even open the new hospital fully, unable to staff two floors, and are making huge cuts at other hospitals and of community services too.  Hospital staff are suffering, having to try to provide services with a lack of nurses and other support – and of course the people of East London will not get the service they deserve. There are staff cuts, and also downgrading, with staff being paid on lower rates than their training and experience merit. Community Health services are being severely cut and sold off. The only winners are the companies who financed the PFI deals, and whose experienced negotiators often managed to completely outwit the civil servants in setting the terms.

Staff at all the hospitals in the group (and others around the country who are also affected by PFI schemes) are angry at the cuts that are having to be made to pay rich private investors, and are calling for these PFI schemes to be scrapped. The protesters at the Royal London were initially refused permission to protest in front of the hospital, but enough turned up to block the busy pavement opposite Whitechapel Station in the evening rush hour that police moved them there.

I was pleased as a photographer, because the fairly narrow pavement made it difficult to work – the 22mm view above makes it look less crowded than it was, and most of those present are out of picture to the right – and this was also the only position from which the hospital – the blue building in the centre – could be seen.

Though working in the crowd there did provide some good opportunities for pictures. I particularly liked this because of the spread of ages and the contrasting expressions of the man listening to the speeches and the woman carrying the child who is laughing because she has seen me taking her picture. This was the second or third frame, and at first she was looking concerned, but I think this makes a better picture. A little later I took another picture of her and behind her a man with a child on his shoulders in which she again looks serious – you can see it in Scrap Royal London NHS PFI Debt – but I think this is a better picture.

There were also some more active protesters, including this nurse shouting in support of a speaker from the Royal College of Nursing, the largest nurses’ union. Whipp’s Cross, where she works, is another of the Barts Health NHS Trust which is suffering hugely from the Royal London PFI.  I was standing fairly close to her – I couldn’t get any further away in the crowd, and though this is taken with the 28-105mm at 48mm (67mm equiv) it does have just a hint of what is sometimes called wide-angle distortion, which I think makes it a little more dramatic. You can see too the lighting from the low sun,  which also slightly restricted the choice of point of view when working. Here I’ve moved to put it just behind the placard above the woman’s hand – and you can see it has made just a little bite out of the edge of it.

After the police got the protest to move, the speakers were in front of the new hospital buildings, which was better in terms of context, but not necessarily more exciting pictorially, particularly as everything was now in shade. The audience was also more organised, with many behind the large main banner. Of course banners are important, but they do also get rather in the way.

I’d stood for some while trying to photograph again the nurse I’d photographed earlier, who was reacting strongly every time a speaker made a point or called for a response, and was at the front just behind the banner. But when I moved in close she stopped. I tried for a while, then moved a couple of yards back, standing behind a man who was filming in the opposite direction, towards the speaker. As she reacted, I moved in and took pictures including this one above (16mm D700), only to find a woman tugging at my sleeve to try and get me to move.  They now wanted to film in the direction where I was standing.  Well, tough.  I wouldn’t normally deliberately move into someone else’s picture, and hadn’t done so in this case, and I expect a reasonable degree of respect from other photographers and videographers. This was a protest and not a set for TV. Once I’d got the picture I wanted I moved out of the way. They could get their ‘reaction shot’ without me the next time the crowd erupted. But I was shocked by their bad manners.

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