Category: Political Issues

Well, not really a fashion show. I haven’t sunk that low yet!

Just War on Want and No Sweat! pointing out to shoppers that chains like Primark rely on workers in chains – or at least on starvation wages working 80 hour weeks – in Bangladesh to sell cheap fashion clothes in Britain.

Primark’s prize Oxford St store opened two years ago when War on Want did its first Fashion Victims report on the shocking conditions for workers at suppliers for it and other high street shops.  Primark’s reply appears to have been to have put a notice in its shop window claiming that it took an ethically responsible attitude towards the working conditions of its suppliers – while continuing to ignore the evidence. War on Want’s new report, Fashion Victims II, shows that conditions have actually worsened since the first report.

More on the protest, more pictures and links to the report on My London Diary.

Incidentally it wasn’t easy to produce a good picture despite some attractive models in chains. This one is I think the best, not only because of the model’s pose, but also because it shows everything – the models, the War on Want poster, the No Sweat! banner and the shop window with the Primark title. And no, it wasn’t posed.  Shot with the 20mm on the D700 (so a real 20mm) and just a little touch of fill from the built-in flash. Perhaps I would have felt happier with something just a smidgen wider and the SB800 I lost earlier in the week. Actually I’d feel a lot happier if I hadn’t lost that flash!

The sign on the Visteon factory at Ponders End still proudly reads “An Enterprise of Ford Motor Company, Limited” but in fact they sold it and the workers out some years ago.  When Visteon was set up, workers were given new contracts, along with promises that they would continue to enjoy the same conditions they had with Ford. Now Visteon has abandoned its UK plants to adminstrators KPMG and those promises appear worthless.  Workers were told in a six minute meeting that they no longer had a job and given an hour to take their personal possessions from their lockers and leave.

Later, on hearing that their fellow workers in Belfast had occupied the factory, they returned, found the back gate open and followed their example. On Saturday I turned up with a couple of hundred others at the factory to offer support in their attempt to get a fair settlement from their former employers, in which they have the backing of their union, Unite.

Many of those who used to work there have given 30 or 40 years of their life to Ford/Visteon, and although of course they have been paid for their labour, it really represents an investment by people that our labour laws don’t properly recognise. I’ve been through “transfer of undertakings” and felt some of the pain and the inadequacy of our laws, though I was fortunate and retained a job, while some colleagues were – and deeply felt – discarded.

More about the occupation and more pictures on My London Diary

April started badly for me.  It was a day with demonstrations all over London and although I went to some and took some pictures, I find them a little disappointing.

Many hands make light work of putting up tents for the Climate Camp

Not that they are particularly bad pictures. Some I would normally have been happy with. But when I look at some of the pictures other people took on the day I can see that I missed most of the action, although by the time I left Bishopsgate it seemed pretty clear to me that the police were spoiling for action.

Police squad attack protester

Really I wasn’t equipped for it. Wednesday was a day when photographers needed hard hats and shin pads to stay with things, as well as a strong bladder and a masochistic streak. The people who got the pictures were with the demonstrators, held for hours by the police, then in the middle when the police horses charged or the riot police moved in, lashing out indiscriminately.

It was a day when I felt sickened when I watched the images and the videos – mainly not yet shown on the mainstream media. Watched the peaceful Climate Camp protesters holding up their hands and chanting “We are not a riot” as the riot police stormed in, batoning everyone on the street. There was a level of unprovoked violence by police unprecedented in this country both on Bishopsgate and around the Bank of England. One man who was there has died.

It should have been headline news on the BBC. There were cameras there and video available, but they had a different agenda, losing most of the respect I still retained for them.  They reported the death as ‘unrelated’ to the events, which appears to be simply untrue.  Some of the newspapers did a little better, but not much, even those who had reporters and photographers there.  It isn’t a great deal of use having a free press if it doesn’t do its job.

I hope there will be a full and wide-ranging enquiry into the aggressive policing, although I don’t have a great deal of confidence – under our current government they seem to be able to act with complete disregard for the rule of law. If there is an enquiry it will almost certainly be a whitewash.

I wasn’t around when things went up. Partly because I went to cover another event – the official ‘Jobs not Bombs’ march through the centre of London organised by Stop the War, CND, BMI and Palestine Solidarity, which, as expected was a worthy if not particularly exciting occasion.

Then somewhere, somehow I lost my SB800 flash. It could have been stolen while I was travelling on the underground – I often forget to close my bag properly, or I may have dropped it climbing up for a better viewpoint, perhaps onto the plinth at Trafalgar Square. All I know is that I put my hand into my bag to put it back on the camera and it wasn’t there.

Otherwise I might have gone back to the City from Trafalgar Square and got a little more of the action, though more likely I would have travelled out to the Excel Centre where the Campaign against Climate Change were demonstrating with their iceberg. But without a flash, an evening demonstration didn’t seem worth going to, and I took an early night instead.

I’ve not been lucky with SB800s, which I think are a great flash unit. This was my third, and the second I’ve lost.  One was stolen from my bag. Another failed after two weeks and it took me three months to get a replacement unit – which then failed within days of the end of its guarantee and is sitting on my desk waiting for me to take it to Nikon for expensive servicing.

The SB800 is the best flash unit I’ve used – when it is working, and when powered by five 2500 millamp hour NiMnH batteries has an extremely fast re-cycle time and keeps working through a day of heavy use – more than 500 flashes. Unfortunately it has now been replaced by the SB900 which seems rather less attractive as well as more expensive.

So I’ve ordered a cheap Nikon i-TTL compatible flash – at around a fifth of the price of the SB800 – and will see how that performs. I must also get round to taking the other SB800 in for service. In the meantime I’m having to work with a Nikon SB80DX which doesn’t combine well with the latest Nikons.

Although Nikon’s flash units are great when they are working, they just don’t seem to have the robust reliability of the old workhorse units like the Vivitars I used to rely on.

I’d gone out to photograph the demonstrations, not police violence.  And so far as that went I suppose I didn’t do badly. You can see the G20 Meltdown with two of the four Horsefolk of the Apocalypse, the start of the Climate Camp on Bishopgate and the Jobs not Bombs march on My London Diary.

I’m not sure that I’ll really be observing the World Wildlife Fund  ‘Earth Hour‘ tomorrow evening, although the only light I’ll need will be that from my computer screen as I frantically process the hundreds if not thousands of image files I will have made earlier in the day. Although since their web page wants you to take pictures and videos or write blog posts and tweet during the hour I guess that’s OK with them.

However I don’t think I’ll bother with that 1 hour movie of me struggling with Lightroom, even though it would have far too much action in it for the late Andy Warhol.

But it was mildly amusing to learn from Iain Dales Diary that perhaps to celebrate the event with the Government’s typical concern for Green issues that while they have asked everyone in Parliament to switch off all non-essential internal lights when they leave for the weekend and that non-essential floodlighting will be extinguished for Earth Hour itself, they also  sent round a e-mail to all staff telling them to ensure that every computer in the place is left switched on for the whole weekend.

T5 Flashmob at Heathrow

It is rather like saying that Climate Change is the most important issue facing us, then announcing that they are going to build another runway at Heathrow.

Don’t Invade Jersey Iraq  read the placards that Mark Thomas had made for his one-hour demo (sorry, this was a ‘media event‘ and not a demonstration and thus needed no SOCPA authorisation) outside the MoD. Demonstrating (or media-eventing) along with him were representatives of Jersey’s teachers, who want a British take-over of this offshore tax haven so they can get the same working conditions as UK teachers including the right to a lunch hour. But the main point of the demonstration was that, thanks to PFI, the Private Finance Initiative that is Gordon Brown’s prime dogma, most of our government buildings (and policies?) are now in the hands of private companies based off-shore in tax havens to avoid UK tax.

Mark with demonstrators and police on the MOD steps

You can read more about the demonstration and the six reasons that Mark gave for we should invade now

and see more pictures on My London Diary.

Ten years ago today the Labour Government made a promise to eradicate child poverty by 2020, and to half it by 2010. The Campaign to End Child Poverty turned up today with a birthday cake to mark the 10 years as well as a small demonstration on Parliament Square with men and women dressed in black with bill boards reminding him of the pledges and the organisations involved in the campaign, and a petition with 5000 signatures.

Urgent government action will be needed to meet the target, and it will need perhaps £3 billion pounds – which would also help to boost the economy by being spent on food, clothing and essential items to bring children out of poverty.

Taking the cake and the petition to Downing St were a small group of 10-year olds from Newham, accompanied by End Child Poverty Director Hilary Fisher, Colette Marshall (no relation) the UK Director of Save the Children and David Bull, the UK Executive Director of UNICEF. I left them in Parliament Square as I was on my way to another event.

A few more pictures on My London Diary

One of the many festivals observed in our richly variety of cultures in London is the Newroz Festival, celebrated in Trafalgar Square this year for the first time – celebrations in previous years have taken place in Finsbury Park, Shoreditch and elsewhere.

Newroz is the Kurdish version of the ancient Iranian New Year holiday, celebrated (as we used to) at the Spring Equinox, and since the 1980s has become widely celebrated as a symbol of Kurdish identity.

Turkey brought in its own official Spring celebration in 2000, Nevruz, in an attempt to replace the celebration of Newroz. It’s now a crime to use the name Newroz or celebrate it there. Newroz celebrations in Turkey, supported by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have at times led to mass arrests and killings, and the same is true in Syria where although in theory it is allowed, in practice the security forces clamp down on it because of its political overtones.

I’ve photographed many events involving Kurds over the years and come to admire their fiery determination and appreciate the dream that unites and energises them as a people. Their immediate goal is the release of the man who has become a symbol of their nation, Abdullah Öcalan (pronounced ‘erdjerlan’), and the dream is of a Kurdish nation, Kurdistan.

London now has a Mayor who has made bumbling idiocy an art form, and one he has used to great political advantage, not least in defeating Ken Livingstone. As we are seeing it’s a smokescreen that hides some policies  which will make London a worse place to live in, particularly for those on low incomes and who rely on public transport.  His gaffe over Newroz is a curious one, and suggests to me some serious confusion at City Hall.

Here is a part of Ken Livingstone‘s message about Newroz in 2006:

‘Newroz is an important opportunity for the size and contribution of the Kurdish community in London to be recognised, and with a celebratory concert in Finsbury Park this weekend, an ideal opportunity for Londoners of all backgrounds to celebrate, explore and educate themselves about London’s Kurdish communities. It is my pleasure to wish you a Happy Newroz.’

And here is some of what Boris Johnson had to say in a press release that doesn’t appear to be on the extremely confused official London government web site:

‘I have the pleasure to announce that a Newroz Festival will take place for the first time in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 14 March. I’m proud so many people of Turkish and Kurdish backgrounds, like my paternal grandfather, have made London their home and have brought the rich history, culture, cuisine and trades of Turkish speaking communities to the capital’

Ilhan Genc, in an open letter to  Boris on KurdishMedia, prints the whole of the message Boris sent to the London Kurdish Community, but with a deliberately unsubtle difference to point out the offence his message caused: ‘the words Turkish and Turkey have been substituted with German and Germany, and the words Kurdish and Newroz substituted with Jewish and Hanukkah.’

This results in Boris’s final paragraph now reading:

‘I am proud to be the Mayor of Londoners from every community and I’m extremely proud of my GERMAN ancestry. HANUKKAH is a wonderful opportunity for strengthening the links that exist between City Hall and everyone marking HANUKKAH.’

Genc ends his letter:

‘I hope I have made my feelings clear, and look forward for an apology from the Mayor.An extremely angered and insulted Kurdish Londoner’

Boris is of course rightly proud of his Turkish great-grandfather Ali Kemal, a liberal Turkish journalist and politician, editor of the anti-Nationalist paper Sabah.  Kemal was sentenced to hang by the Military Governor of Smyrna “In the name of Islam, in the name of the Turkish nation … as a traitor to the country” but was seized and torn to pieces by a mob of women with knives, stones, clubs and cutlasses as he was being taken to the gibbet. As the New York Times commented at the time of his death in Nov 1922, he was known as one of Turkey’s most enlightened and most impartial citizens.

Had Boris been at Newroz, he would clearly have seen that it was Kurdish and not Turkish, viewing the event through a sea of flags with pictures of Abdullah Öcalan, in prison on Imrali Island in Turkey since his kidnapping in Kenya in 1999 and heard the chanting “We are the PKK” and the calls for Öcalan’s release. As the finale of a highly energetic folk dance display on the stage, each of the troupe of young women pulled out a flag with his image and danced around the stage to tumultuous applause.

Many more pictures from this event on My London Diary.

Unusually well-dressed protesters posed outside Prada holding placards denouncing the treatment of the woman workers who make some of the products on sale inside.

After sending an e-mail from the Labour Start web site, I received a reply from  Mulberry, one of the other companies selling products from the Desa factories in Turkey. This claims that Mulberry have investigated the allegations that were made through a number of audits and visits to the site and are confident that the two Desa factories which supply them with goods are working to the high ethical standards that they insist on for all their suppliers – which include respecting the rights of workers to join the union of their choice.

On the specific case of the women who were sacked and whose cases are currently under appeal, it states that Mulberry will insist that Desa follow the court rulings when these are made.

There seems to be a very direct conflict between this message and the information about Desa at Labour Behind the Label, the group behind the demonstration. But obviously the companies that are profiting from selling these highly priced cheaply made goods  and all the people they employ both in Turkey and here have a considerable interst in maintaining the status quo.

But you can read both sides of the story and make up your own mind.  There is more about it and more pictures on My London Diary. I’m sure if you send a message from the Labour start website and you will get the same Mulberry response as I did a day or two later in my e-mail.