Category: Political Issues

One of the downsides of living out on the edge of the city is that it can be hard to travel home very late at night. My last train leaves shortly before midnight on a Saturday and it’s then seven hours until the next. The hourly all-night bus service which used to serve us now drops me around 4 miles away.

So I tend not to photograph things that happen very late at night, and missed the Circle Line tube party on 31 May to mark Boris’s alcohol ban starting the next day.

I’m not a fan of the ban, though I would like the Underground to be safer for both passengers and staff. The ban will inconvenience tourists and others who occasionally like a cool beer as an antidote to the often stifling heat on the tube as they go from one of London’s attractions to another, or who like to relax a little on the way home from work, while I suspect that travel police will continue to largely turn a blind eye at large drunken groups of football supports and others who can be a real nuisance, whether or not they are actually drinking on the train. There are simply not enough police around to control them and adding an extra area of friction between them and the police is hardly likely to improve matters or manners.

I was reminded about the ban yesterday, as I was at last getting some of my pictures from another Tube party earlier this year ready to go into the stock libraries, something that tends to get on top of me (adding the captions, keywords and so on is a really tedious chore.)

Unless you are a New Zealander you will probably not know about the Treaty of Waitangi, a rather curious agreement signed by some Maori chiefs and British representatives in 1840. We used it to legitimise a takeover of the country, although in more recent years the Maoris have found it a way to claim some limited and belated reparation, and Waitangi Day is now celebrated as the New Zealand national Day.

The main celebration in London over the past few years had been the Circle Line Pub Crawl, starting early at a pub near Paddington and leaving the train at every station along the line for another beer or two, arriving at Westminster and Parliament Square around tea-time (though little tea is in evidence.) There the square is packed with a heaving mass of Kiwis, some of whom strip to the waist and perform a noisy Haka before making for the station and the next stop and pub, although relatively few make it to the official end of the party at Temple station, having mostly by then dispersed to other pubs around Whitehall and Strand.

Despite approaching 10,000 distinctly unsober participants, it all seemed very good-natured, and although a slight inconvenience to some travellers (who might be advised to change to the District line services serving the same stations but totally ignored by the party-goers) does little or no harm while giving a little free entertainment to Londoners. Much of the inconvenience seems to be caused by official over-reaction including the temporary closing of some stations and stopping (or non-stopping) of some Circle line services, when a more intelligent response would be to put on extra trains and work the participants through the system as rapidly as possible. “We’ve got a crowd on the platform, so lets stop the trains and close the station” really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

It’s an event that already waves a digit to numerous by-laws, including those on drinking in public places such as Parliament Square, and I wonder if Boris’s tube ban will have any impact on it, other than perhaps to add brown paper bags to the already quite impressive dress code.

By the time you read this, you should be able to buy some of the pictures through Alamy, as well of course as directly from me – and there is a wider range of pictures on My London Diary which takes you through the day telling the whole story of the event as I saw it.

Brighton residents who had marched against the war in Iraq formed ‘Smash EDO‘ in 2004 when they learnt that a factory in their city, EDO (since taken over by ITT and now known as EDO/ITT) was responsible for making guidance systems and other components that made the bombing of Iraq possible. They began a continuing series of regular demonstrations against the company that was profiting from killing people there.

As well as regular weekly ‘noise’ demonstrations, they have organised other events and meetings around the country, and made a film, ‘On The Verge’ about the campaign. They successfully fought an injunction by EDO that would have prevented demonstrations and got the local council to pass a motion upholding their right to peaceful and lawful protest following some very questionable police activity and arrests during demonstrations.

Around 600 marchers walked and danced along the main road towards EDO

On Wednesday I went to Brighton to photograph the ‘Carnival Against the Arms Trade‘ which Smash EDO had organised. It started as a lively fun event, but got a little out of hand when police tried to stop the marchers before they had reached the EDO factory.

The marchers pushed over the police barriers and past the police who made only token attempts to stop them at that point. At two other points in the remaining two hundred yards or so the police again made a rather half-hearted line across the road, delaying the march slightly until people again pushed through to the factory gates.

Although there had been a little pushing and shoving, and police had certainly extended and used their batons, I only saw banners rather the demonstrators being hit and in general tempers had remained fairly cool and behaviour relatively restrained, rather as if in a slightly unruly rugby scrum, although with rather more shouting. There were a lot of police, but most were just standing and watching their colleagues getting pushed back

Eventually around 300 of the marchers reached the gates (others had waited further down the hill or gone home), which were protected by a triple line of police, with more in reserve. I went back and up the hill to get an overall view and discussed the situation with some of the others around.

It looked like stalemate – but how wrong could I be!

The general opinion was that little further was likely to happen. The factory was surrounded by a high and secure fence and there were more than enough police to hold the demonstrators at bay, with now quite a few taking a rest further down the hill.

So I thought I’d more or less done all I could and walked down the hill to catch a bus. Maybe get home and file some pictures…

But apparently as soon as my back was turned, someone mysteriously opened a gate and demonstrators rushed in, soon followed by police. A few windows were broken and there was considerable violence, with police using batons and pepper spray as well as bringing in police dogs. It seems just a matter of good fortune that nobody appears to have been seriously injured.

Ten people were arrested, mainly for minor offences, though they were all held for 30 hours before being released on police bail without charges being laid, to return to the custody centre in early August. While they were being held, police raided a number of their homes and seized several computers, mobile phones and clothes.

You can see more of my view of the events on My London Dairy, and reports mainly about what happened after I left the scene early on Indymedia. I should have stayed until things were more obviously over, but it was a nice day and I had other things I wanted to do!

Brian Haw started his one man protest in Parliament Square on 2 June, 2001. Despite police harassment and vigilante attacks (ignored or even encouraged by police) not to mention an Act of Parliament designed to get rid of him, he is still there seven years later.

I can’t remember when I first saw him there, or when I first photographed him, but I have many pictures from over the years. You can of course read more about him and the Parliament Square Peace Campaign on the Parliament Square web site.

I was among those who went along on Sunday afternoon to mark the occasion, joining him and his regular supporters in the square. Brian himself was marking it by fasting and praying until Monday 2nd.

You can see a few more pictures on My London Diary. It was a dull, drab day with not a lot happening – as must have so often have been the case over the 2561 (and counting) days that Brian has been there.

This was at the 5th anniversary in 2006:

And one from the 6th anniversary:

Over the years Brian has seen and taken part in many of the political protests in Parliament Square and around:

With peace protesters at the Cenotaph in 2004. Brian holds a placard “War Kills the Innocent” in front of Cenotaph in Whitehall, where the Code Pink wreath reads, “How Many Will Die in Iraq Today?”.

My favourite picture of him was taken during the rally against the replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles in March 2007.

Brian’s T-shirt in this picture carries the message “Find Your Courage; Share Your Vision; Change Your World” which seems so appropriate. It – and the quote – was produced by US disablement activist Dan Wilkins, who was delighted to see Brian wearing it when I sent him a copy of the picture.

I took this picture with one hand on the camera, the other holding a large sheet just like those in the picture, taking part with around 2600 others in the large human ‘NO’ that was being recorded live on BBC News TV when I made this picture. I checked to make sure that my own ‘NO’ was the correct way up, but not everyone was so careful, not that you could have seen in the view from the cherry-picker or helicopter.

It was an event at which most of the protesters were local people, many who will lose homes if the runway goes ahead. Of course they will get compensation, but the terms are often far from fair financially. Some have long links with the area, many with parents or spouses and other relatives buried in the Cherry Lane Cemetery, opened in 1936, which may be covered by a spur road to the airport if plans go ahead.

Activists on the march from Hatton Cross to Sipson

The march and rally attracted support from MPs of all parties with constituencies under the flightpath. Surprisingly one of the closest boroughs to Heathrow, Spelthorne (until 1995 boundary changes it included the site of Terminal 5) where I live supports the development – along with its MP. This will probably change once the plans for the fourth Runway through its centre are leaked!

MPs Justine Greening (Con, Putney), John McDonnell (Lab, Hayes & Harlington), and Susan Kramer (LibDem, Richmond Park) at the front of the march in Sipson
I’ve written about the proposed development and Saturday’s demonstration on My London Diary as usual.

Today I photographed a demonstration against the continuing expansion of London Heathrow, certainly one of the worst located airports in the developed world.

I grew up under its flightpath. In my back garden in Hounslow I would imagine myself reaching up and touching the planes as they passed overhead. It wouldn’t have needed very long arms. I dreamed (or nightmared) of them passing over in flames (though sometime it was true) and jumping across the sky as flaming fragments.

Heathrow was established by deception – as a miltary airstrip for which there was no military purpose. It has grown by lies. The third terminal was all the airport would ever want, but as soon as planning permission was obtained, in went the application for a fourth. Of course that would be enough. But somehow we have a fifth, and the sixth will soon be with us unless we stop the madness.

The quiet Middlesex villages I cycled through as a child – and by the time I was ten I was roaming through them all on my bicycle and further afield – are either already gone or under threat. Longford, Sipson, Harlington, Harmondsworth and more.

Harmondsworth, 2003

Look at the placard at the right of the picture. Here is a detail from another frame that states clearly what the BAA, responsible for Heathrow, promised about the possibility of a third runway there:

Rule out third runway say BAA

I hope today’s demonstration – in which over 3000 people gave a resounding ‘No’ to the idea of a third runway will cause even our un-green government to think again. It has been clear to anyone who took a careful and balanced view that Heathrow was in the wrong place since the 1950s – if not before. Government after government has refused to grasp the nettle and start to develop another London airport on a more suitable site. We now have a different situation, with increasing oil prices as we go past ‘peak oil’ as well as an much greater appreciation of the catastrophe approaching through climate change. From every point of view – even a strict economic one that ignores environmental issues – Heathrow needs to shrink rather than expand.

I’ll post some of my own pictures of today’s demonstration shortly. For the moment you can see a few my pictures from the march from Sipson to Harmondsworth in June 2003, and you can also see the BBC’s video coverage of the event, in which I appear rather too prominently, immediately after the huge ‘NO’, taken from a cherry picker, as a photographer in a blue check shirt, first walking towards the camera and then walking back into the frame to take another picture.

The genocide in Darfur has being going on for so long that it seldom makes the news, which is perhaps why none of the newspapers could be bothered to send anyone to cover the demonstration in London calling for ‘Justice for Darfur’ and for those accused of war crimes there to be sent for trial at the International Criminal Court.

Although over 50 people haven been listed for investigation, so far as I am aware only two arrest warrants have been issued. Ahmad Haroun is a minister in the Sudanese government, and rather than send him for trial, the government response has been to promote him. Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb was actually being held by the police in Sudan on other charges when the warrant was issued, but they have since released him without charge.

As I said to one of those on the demonstration and march, it is hard to see why an event like this isn’t news when celebrities only need to sneeze to make the front page. As so often to find out what is really going on you have to look on the Internet rather than rely on what the commercial press thinks we want to know – or wants to tell us. I’m a great supporter of press freedom, but at the moment most of the press is hardly worth fighting for, and we often have to rely on non-commercial news media such as Indymedia for news.

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary

Sunday I was a demonstrator with a camera rather than a reporter, going with a coachload of others from a church a few miles away to Birmingham. Ten years ago I’d made a similar journey to form a human chain around the conference centre where heads of government from around the world were meeting; I think the 70,000 of us were the first major demonstration at a G8 meeting, and we put Debt Relief very firmly on the political agenda.

Methodists from Worcester caught in the chains of debt, Birmingham, 2008

Digital showed its strength again, when we went into the rally in the same conference centre that the G8 had used. The lighting in the hall wasn’t bright, but I was still able to take some nice sharp images with the 20mm from my seat, although it was a pity that the 18-200mm VR lens had jammed the previous day. The picture below, taken without VR, was at 1/125th on a Sigma 55-200mm lens at 200mm (300mm equiv) full aperture, ISO 1600, and is sharp and relatively noise-free.

Ann Pettifor (Advocacy International and Operation Noah, previously of Jubilee 2000)

It was a long day – but interesting, although the final demonstration proved a bit of a challenge – a human pie chart to illustrate that 20% of debt has been dropped but 80% still remains. Here’s my best effort.

It’s hard not to sympathise with the cleaners when you compare the rates they get paid for cleaning the London offices of some of the richest companies in the world with the ridiculous amounts paid to some of those who work there. They certainly deserve enough to live on – and the current minimum wage isn’t enough to survive on in London. Their demand is for a living wage – currently set at £7.20 an hour – as well as some basic rights as workers.

Their campaign aims to shame the companies by making a fuss, with demonstrations that are highly visible and audible. It was one event where I was glad I had a set of ear plugs in my pocket as they blew their whistles pretty mightily. The red t-shirts and flags make them stand out, particularly in the financial area where dull suits abound.

I’d like my pictures to be as powerful as possible, but it was hard to produce anything really dramatic – and even harder to get anyone interested in publishing them. More pictures and more about the campaign on My London Diary.