Category: Political Issues

Perhaps the saddest thing for me in the whole of the Mayor’s Thames Festival (and there were also a few delights)  last weekend was this structure in Jubilee Gardens, used for a performance by Urban Freeflow, a professional group of ‘freerunners‘.

I first came across this urban sport a few yards away, with groups of young men developing their skills on the buildings of the Shell Centre and the South Bank complex.  It’s a sport that was started in France, in the Paris suburb of Lisses by David Belle and given the name ‘parkour‘, and most of those involved in it seem very much against the kind of competitive aspect that is being brought into it with sponsorship by Barclaycard.

Parkours on the Shell Centre, May 2004

There are some spectacular parkour videos on YouTube, many of which feature short sequences from the South Bank, but one I can’t resist sharing with you, although perhaps not the most spectacular is Parkour Generations‘s  City Gents, which gives a rather different perspective on the journey to work!

On his blog, ‘traceur’ Ben Nuttall, a student from Sheffield writes: “I’m totally against competition in parkour, it’s completely wrong in the philosophy of the discipline which is about self-improvement, continual progression at a naturally-defined pace, and the achievement of being better than we were yesterday rather than being better than Fred is today. Competition only causes people to find the need to show off, perform stylish flashy moves, and attempt things they are not physically or mentally prepared for and trained for. Competition is about winning and being better than someone else, which is not why we do parkour, and if it is, then what we are doing is certainly not parkour.”

It isn’t an activity I’ve taken a great personal interest in, having absolutely no head for heights – I often find myself shaking too much to take pictures when standing on even very low fences and walls to get a better viewpoint – but the event in Jubilee Gardens seemed to sum up  something about the way that commercial interests increasingly appropriate aspects of our lives in pursuit of profit.

I’d like to make it clear this isn’t a specifically anti-Boris rant. I’ve enough against him for throwing away public money by cancelling the cheap oil contract with Chavez and back-pedalling on congestion charges while pushing up fares – policies which put public transport in the capital at risk.  Thames Day after all was one of Ken’s ideas and I felt much the same about similar events – including many of those in Trafalgar Square – organised during Ken’s time in office, as well as some of those organised by London Boroughs of various political hue.

I didn’t stay to watch the performance, though I’m sure it delighted the crowds. I’ve seen plenty of circus acts and there was one around the corner, as I walked across the Jubilee bridge. On the other side I came across another symbol of our declining nation, newly installed turnstiles at the public toilets on the Embankment. For the moment at least, those in Trafalgar Square remain free – as too is our fine National Gallery there. It’s a great collection and I should visit it more often.

Around thirty demonstrators held a lunchtime vigil outside the London Home Office on Thursday 11 Sept, 2008 to oppose the unfair detention and forced removal of Kurdish Iraqi asylum seekers from the UK, which has resulted in an unknown number of deaths.

Some Kurds have accepted voluntary return to Iraq, often forced on them because they are prevented from working in this country and have to rely on charity of friends and a few small groups supporting them.

One of those who eventually signed to go back was Kalir Salih Abdullah, a former fighter of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who claimed asylum in Britain in 2000, having fled leaving his family of six in Kurdistan.  He spent five years pursuing his claim for asylum without success, before desperate circumstances here led him to sign voluntary return papers, and he was returned at the end of March 2005.

In Feb 2006 he was kidnapped outside his home, apparently by the PUK, and his family have since been unable to find out what has happened to him. His teenage daughter, traumatised by his disappearance, committed suicide.

The protest at the Home Office included members of the families of two men who died this August. The UK tried to send the dying Mohammad Hussain back to Iraq after 8 years here this May,  but his lawyer made a successful challenge to the order, and he died here on 3 August.

Hussein Ali  was forcibly returned to Kurdistan on 7 August this year. Three days later he committed suicide.

Since 2005, this country has forcibly returned around 500 Iraqi asylum seekers to Kurdistan, claiming despite considerable evidence to the contrary that this was a safe area to which people could be returned without risk. Little information is available about what has happened to most of them – and once they have left Britain there is little evidence that our government gives a damn. Even worse, in July this year they started deporting Iraqi asylum seekers to Baghdad. Of course there are people inside the government and the Home Office who want to treat asylum seekers in a humane fashion, but they are fighting – and largely losing – against policies designed to appease the tabloid press. Two people from the Home Office did come out to accept a letter to Jackie Smith and a folder of evidence.

As I went to take photographs, one of the two police officers came to ask who I was saying “We have to know who is coming to these things.” Well, “NO” I thought, “you have no need to know and no right to know as this is a perfectly legal activity” but handed him my press card and watched as he examined it and wrote down the details in his notebook.  It’s easier not to make a fuss – and I know were I to do so I could be asked to give my name and address – and it would be and offence not to comply – and possibly subjected to a “stop and search.”

I think there is also a perhaps more important point. By paying so much attention to trivial things like people photographing protests such as this, the system gets jammed up with irrelevant data, making it much less likely that important things will be spotted.

 

Next to us on the pavement, under the feet of the demonstrators is a piece of public art in which people are invited (it is continuing for 25 years from its start in 2006) to write a short statement about what being British means to them. Most of the statements seemed to be about the freedoms that we enjoy – to travel, to work etc.  I’m tempted to send in as my contributionto this work: “Because I am British I keep having to show my ID to the police and am likely to be stopped and searched without good reason while doing my job.” But that might just be seen as critical of the Home Office – one of the things that is explicitly disallowed for this art work.

More information on the Coalition Against Deportations to Iraq web site at  and more of my pictures from the event on My London Diary.

As billions around the world were being fed images of the Olympic Flag passing from the Mayor of Beijing to our local glove muppet (it’s just so embarrassing to be emborised) in another important ceremony more or less totally unobserved by the commercial media, the Olympic baton of protest was passed from the Free Tibet movement to the Free Hackney campaign.

To mark the transfer, rather than eight minutes of puke-inducing performance that made me sad to be English, the Free Hackney campaign brought their ‘tank’ to the ‘street party’ in Hoxton St that celebrated our considerably more sensible approach to the 1948 event.  Perhaps because of the lack of money it was probably the last Olympics to have any real connection with the spirit of the modern Olympic movement, celebrated in the words of its founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin: “L’important n’est pas de gagner, mais de participer.” Tell anyone remotely connected with Team Britain or the rest of our sports industry that what is important isn’t winning but taking part and they will look on you as a lunatic.

The ‘tank’ – some kind of small and lightly armoured personnel carrier – was manned and womanned by some familiar faces from earlier ‘Space Hijackers‘ events, including a tank commander I last saw in charge of a rather larger ‘tank’ being auctioned at (or rather just outside) thanks to over-keen co-operation between police and the arms traffickers, at the  the East London Arms Fair at Canning Town’s EXCEL centre.

The vehicle carried several ‘Free Hackney‘ flags which have a familiar yellow, blue and red sun motif, as well as a considerably more meaningful adaptation of the Olympic logo.

As ‘Free Hackney’ point out, London 2012 presents  a great opportunity for property developers to rip us off and make obscene profits building luxury flats in the area, while at the same time restricting public access, closing down the existing free facilities and demolishing social housing and local businesses.

Next to the tank the ‘austerity Olympics’ were taking place on a small section of Hoxton St, with events such as a slow walking race creating considerable hilarity. Unfortunately the event in 2012 promises to be rather more painful.

(Based on a story posted by me to Indymedia on 24 Aug.)

The one bright spot in the otherwise intensely puerile 8 minutes of the London presentation for the Olympic closing ceremony was the appearance of a Brompton.

Hackney Handover- Brompton at extreme right.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that this quirky and clever British invention – and probably now the only vehicle of any kind designed and manufactured in England – should be made the official vehicle of London 2012. Because that might suggest that these would at have some pretension to being a green Olympics, an impression the organisers have so far gone to some lengths to avoid by removing the Manor Gardens ‘Olympic’ allotments from the site.

The Brompton became quickly one of my favourite photographic accessories when I bought one at the end of 2002. You can take it on trains, on the underground, get off, unfold it in 15 seconds and ride it away. The front bag is a good place to carry cameras, and you can stop anywhere to take pictures, unlike a car where by the time you have found a place to park you may face a long walk to the location – or have missed the chance of a picture.

It’s also handy when parked against a fence or wall, adding up to a couple of feet to your height to see over obstacles – one foot on the saddle and one on the handlebars for maximum lift, enabling you to climb up easily on walls and look over fences. It’s almost like having a short step-ladder with you.

If necessary you can walk with it, and it carries your kit like a trolley. You can climb up footbridges with it on your shoulder, set it down and ride away and it can also take you reasonable distances at a decent speed. It’s not a good off-road choice, but on a decent surface can travel at a good pace, and I’ve often covered 20 or 30 miles, occasionally more.

But its real forte is rush-hour traffic, when I’ve made journeys across London in minutes that would have taken at least twice as long in car or taxi or by underground. With a Brompton, London seems much smaller – even if, like me, you usually stop at red traffic lights and keep to the correct direction on one-way streets – and its short wheelbase makes weaving in and out of cars held up in traffic easy.

It’s only real down-side is that it’s a powerful magnet for thieves, with a high second-hand value getting quick sales at on-line auction sites and on dodgy market stalls.  Forget D-locks, heavy chains, it’s never safe to leave it locked- you just have to take it everywhere with you, which can occasionally be a problem even though it folds pretty small.

Prison Justice Day, August 10, started in Canada in the 1970s.  On August 10, 1974, Eddie Nalon bled to death in solitary confinement, and on that day a year later prisoner in the jail held a one-day hunger strike and a memorial service – and were themselves put in solitary for doing so. By August 10, 1976, there were two deaths being remembered by the prisoners, and thousands of prisoners in jails across Canada took part in a hunger strike, with Prison Justice Day Committees in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia organising events in the outside community.

In 1983, prisoners in France joined in, calling for the day to be an international event and by the mid 1990s those in Germany, England and the US were also involved. You can read the details of the history on the Prison Justice web site.

In this country, one of the best known campaigners for justice in our prisons was Pauline Campbell. After the death of her daughter in Styal Prison in 2003, she put all her considerable energy and organisational skills into a constant campaign against deaths in prison. I first met her later that year in Trafalgar Square at the annual United Friends and Family Campaign Remembrance demonstration, where her story moved me to tears.

Pauline Campbell speaking  in 2003

I photographed her on several occasions after that and got to know her rather better this January at a protest outside Holloway jail in London, in memory of Jaime Pearce, a 24 year old who died there the previous month, aged 24, the eighth woman to die in jail in 2007. From then on – like many journalists – I received regular emails from her about her protests, as well as frequent personal messages about my own work.

Pauline Campbell assaulted by a police officer outside Holloway, Jan 2008

Like others who knew her I was deeply shocked (but not surprised) at the news of her suicide at her daughter’s graveside in May this year. So I was sorry to miss the demonstration for Prisoner Justice Day organised by the group No More Prison outside HMP Styal on August 10 to show solidarity with women in prison and pay tribute to Pauline Campbell, who we remember as a fearless campaigner and a remarkable person.