Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Duck Race, Climate, Zimbabwe & Clean Air

Saturday 21st September 2019 was an even more varied day than usual for me in London. I began by travelling to Bow Creek for a duck race, moved to Trafalgar Square for a climate protest, then visted the weekly Zimbabwe vigil before going to Catford for a march against air pollution.

Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane & Cody Dock Duck Race

Duck Race, Climate, Zimbabwe & Clean Air

It was a fine day and still warm for the time of year as I walked from Bromley-by-Bow District Line the short distance to Tweletrees Crescent and Bow Creek.

I’d decided to come to see the Duck Race along Bow Creek being organised by the people at Cody Dock, but had arrived early to give myself time to revisit the gas works memorial site nearby.

Bow Creek is the tidal section of London’s second river, the River Lea, and the duck race was a part of the ‘Lighting Up the Lea’ festival for ‘Totally Thames 2019’. It was meant to start at 11.00 but this was delayed as the people in canoes who were to shepherd the ducks were a few minutes late in arriving.

It was close to low tide, and there was little water in the creek when the ducks were dropped from the bridge, and a westerly breeze soon blew the ducks onto the mud on the east side of the creek.

Cody Dock’s Simon Myers had beached his kayak on the gravel bank a hundred yards or so downstream and strode through the shallow stream and mud to rescue the ducks and through them back into the middle of the stream. But the breeze soon returned them to the mud and he had to get them again.

I decided I had to move on to complete my walk and get back to central London for my next event and walked on towards Cody Dock, past several small groups of people waiting to see their ducks. At Cody Dock there were a small line of catchers waiting hopefully in the stream, but they were in for a rather long wait.

I’d hoped to be able to continue my walk by the riverside to Canning Town, but this further section of the Bow Creek path has yet to be opened, and after taking a few pictures at Cody Dock I made my way to Star Lane DLR station.

Cody Dock Duck Race
Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane

XR Youth International – Trafalgar Square

Members of Extinction Rebellion Youth International came to Trafalgar Square and held a brief protest for the UN Climate conference.

This was a rather more low-key event than I had expected and the group was ignored by heritage wardens as they sat in a circle in the centre of the square with posters while one member at the centre read the letter they are sending to the UN calling for real urgent action to avert the impending climate catastrophe.

XR Youth International

Zimbabwe protests continue – Strand

The weekly Zimbabwe Vigil every Saturday at the side of the embassy at 429 Strand began on 12th October 2002. I’ve joined it and photographed occasionally over the years, but mainly for special occasions. It’s hard to say something new about an event which happens every week.

Mugabe had been forced to resign in 2017 died earlier in the month and had died two weeks before my visit, but the vigils continue and little has changed in Zimbabwe. His successor Emmerson Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s right-hand man for 40 years, and is accused of the genocide of over 20,000 Ndebeles in the 1980s. Although he promised reform he has delivered state terrorism and protesters have been killed, beaten, tortured and raped by the security forces.

Zimbabwe protests continue

Clean Air for Catford Children

The South Circular Road brings large volumes of traffic through Catford, often pumping out fumes at standstill during peak hours. Particles from brakes, tyres and the road add significantly to the pollution – and won’t be reduced as we switch towards electric cars.

Although a major traffic route, the South Circular has always been more an idea than a planned route, going along many fairly narrow roads lined with houses which were never designed for the traffic. Fortunately major schemes which would have laid waste large areas of highly populated parts of South London have never come to fruition – the obvious environmental devastation of roads like the Westway having put paid to urban motorway schemes.

The answer has to be policies at both national and local level which reduce vehicle use and promote greener alternative transport including walking and cycling as well as public transport use. But although Lewisham Council are not responsible for the South Circular Road, remedial actions such as planting screens of trees and hedges can reduce local pollution levels, particularly the levels of harmful particulates.

I met local residents at the Corbett Library on Torridon Road in Catford, built with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1907. It is now a Community Library run by volunteers and is on the Corbett Estate, 3,000 houses around Hither Green developed by Glasgow-born Archibald Corbett from 1896 to 1911.

They were busy finishing placards and posters for the march, which soon set off, marching up on the pavement to the South Circular at Brownhill Road, on their way to a rally at the council offices in Lewisham. Traffic on the South Circular made it a little difficult for me to take photographs as it was seldom possible to stand on the road. I left them before the rally to travel home.

Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a nine-year-old girl who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham died from asthma in 2013. Following a 2020 inquest ruling she was the first first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as the cause of her death on her death certificate.

Clean Air for Catford Children

Global Climate Strike & Puma Boycott

I spend most of my time on Friday 20th September covering the Earth Day Global Climate Strike inspired by Greta Thunberg which brought huge numbers of schoolchildren along with teachers, parents and other older supporters to a rally filling Millbank. Others were starting later from various parts of London to join in and I made short visits to both the Elephant and Castle and Windrush Square in Brixton to photograph them there, returning to Whitehall to photograph a large crowd who were continuing the protests there. Finally I went to Carnaby Street where the Islamic human rights group Inminds were protest outside the Puma store calling for a boycott of Puma products.

Global Climate Strike Rally – Millbank, London

I began taking pictures of people going to the rally when I entered Parliament Square. Many schools had brought large groups of pupils to take part in the protest, and had obviously spent some time preparing hand-painted placards and banners. Greta Thunberg’s example has led to a great awareness among many young people of the existential threat posed by global warming, as too have the television programmes by the ageing David Attenborough, and they showed themselves to be convinced of the need for urgent action.

Unfortunately politicians and companies – particularly those with interests in fossil fuels – have been rather less convinced, and although we have seen plenty of words and promises, real actions have so far failed to come anywhere close to meeting the desperate need. Our new UK government under Liz Truss has started by going backwards on the issue, issuing licences for fracking, and almost certainly in the first few days following the Queen’s funeral will be bringing forward other measures which will make climate disaster even more inevitable.

Crowds got so packed that I had to give up trying to walk up Millbank to the lorry on which the speakers, bands and others were to perform both live and on large screens, and I had to divert through the side streets to approach it from behind.

I spent some time photographing those at the front of the protest, then decided to move back through the crowd taking pictures. It was slow going both because I stopped to take pictures, but also because I needed to keep asking people to let me squeeze past them, but eventually I got back to Old Palace Yard and Parliament Square where movement was now easy, though there were still groups of protesters.

Global Climate Strike Rally

Elephant & Brixton Global Climate Strike

I took the tube from Westminster Station, changing at Embankment to the Bakerloo Line which took me to the Elephant and Castle. Outside the University of the Arts was a poster display and people were gathering to march to join the protests. I photographed a small march setting off to join with workers at Southwark Council’s offices in Tooley St, but left them after a few hundred yards to go back to the Northern Line, changing at Stockwell to get to Brixton.

Teachers and parents had come with children from Lambeth schools for a rally in Brixton Square which was still in progress as I arrived.

There was an impressive speech from a young protester and support from a local MP before the rally ended and many of those present got ready to take the tube to join in the protest outside Parliament.

Elephant & Brixton Global Climate Strike

Global Climate Strike Protest continues – Whitehall

I hurried to the tube ahead of the children and arrived in Westminster where people were sitting on the road and blocking Whitehall, with police trying to persuade them to move.

I saw one man being arrested and led away towards a waiting police van, and the road was almost cleared when a large crowd of school students came from Parliament Square to march up Whitehall blocking it again.

Police tried to stop them and they turned down Horseguards Ave, then up Whitehall Court and into Whitehall Place where they were finally stopped at the junction with Northumberland Avenue and sat down on the road.

There were a few sort speeches and a lot of chanting slogans as police attempted to get them to move. I couldn’t understand why the police were bothering as they were on a road that has very little traffic and were causing no problem in sitting there.

Eventually they did decide to do as the police said and got up and moved – back to sit down and block Whitehall again. Eventually they stood up and began to march towards Parliament Square, nicely in time for me to cover a different protest in Carnaby Street.

Global Climate Strike Protest continues

Carnaby St Puma Boycott

Whenever tourists come up to me in London and ask me (as sometimes happens) the way to Carnaby Street I’m always tempted to say “You just go back 50 years“, but I’m actually more helpful. But it always surprises me that this rather ordinary street of mainly small shops still attracts tourists so long after it was the touted as the epi-centre of ‘Swinging London’. It still puts on something of an effort, but I find it rather sad. Somehow not the same if you are not wearing flares.

Puma is the third largest sportswear manufacturer in the world, coming from a company founded in Bavaria in 1924 by two brothers. Both brothers were members of the Nazi party during the war and after bitter arguments split up in 1948 to form Adidas and Puma, two companies engaged in bitter rivalry. Adidas is now the second largest sports manufacturer in the world.

The Israel Football Association began life in 1928 as the Palestine Football Association, changing its name following the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. It only represents Israeli clubs and there is a separate Palestinian Football Association covering the West Bank. But the IFA includes six clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Adidas sponsored the IFA until 2018, when under pressure from Palestinian sports clubs and the international BDS movement they ended their sponsorship. Rivals Puma then took it up, becoming their only international sponsorship and over 200 Palestinian athletes and sports clubs have called for a Puma boycott.

Inminds Islamic human rights group organises protests in London at companies and events which support the Israeli regime and call for the release of Palestinian prisoners. At a previous protest outside Puma the protesters were violently attacked by some members of a small group of Zionists, but there was no sign of any counter-protest while I was present.

Carnaby St Puma Boycott

Housing For All – Focus E15

On Saturday 19th September 2015, two years after the start of the Focus E14 and a year since their successful occupation of empty flats on Stratford’s Carpenters Estate gained national headlines about both their own treatment by Newham Council and the problems faced by others around the country in finding homes, Focus E15 organised a march, rally and party.

In a ‘long read’ published in The Guardian at the end of June 2022, Oliver Wainwright writes about the particular problems that Newham and the other ‘Olympic boroughs’ are facing and how these have been worsened since the Olympics came to the area. His ‘A massive betrayal’: how London’s Olympic legacy was sold out details how the many promises made before and after London’s winning bid have failed to materialise.

As Wainwright states, in the area “there are almost 75,000 households on the waiting list for council housing, many living in desperate poverty. Thousands of former residents have also been rehoused outside the area since the Olympics took place.

Wainwright quotes the former directory of the agency which bought up land for the Olympic site and evicted local businesses as saying “There is no pretence any more that the legacy is trying to get a positive outcome for East Enders .. It is driven by a total market ideology, dressed up in some good aspirational talk, with a few baubles thrown out to keep local people happy, while mostly catering for the rich. It is a massive failure at every level“

Although Wainwright points out the naivety of London Mayor Ken Livingstone in his ruthless support for the bid – which he saw as the only way to get the billions needed to develop the area – he makes clear who the real villain was, Livingstone’s successor Boris Johnson.

Many pointed out the problems over the years the bid was being made, and locals and others actively campaigned against the Olympic bid, over the removal of many successful businesses from the area, the demolition of a fine cooperative housing estate, the removal of allotments and the cycle circui, the loss of green space. People warned that the Olympic priorities would result in a development very different to that serving the needs of the area. And it has.

I’m pleased to have recorded at least some of that opposition in My London Diary over the years. I’d come to know the area over a number of visits since the 1980s and knew some of those involved in the protests which I photographed throughout the period, as well as continuing my photographic documentation of the area, much of which was published in my 2010 book ‘Before the Olympics‘, where I wrote ‘Stratford Marsh was one of the areas I found most interesting from the start; then a curious mixture of wilderness and industry … What was once an exciting and varied area with a great range of wildlife is now sterilized and under concrete.

The 2008 financial crisis meant the government had to pick up many of the bills, and large parts became publicly owned. Wainwright points out that the sale of the athlete’s village for around half what it cost to build meant a £275m loss to the taxpayer, who had funded the social aspects including a “school and health facilities, while the private sector kept the more profitable parts of the scheme – the shopping mall, the offices and the luxury flats.”

Newham’s Mayor until 2018, Robin Wales, encouraged the development of high-priced flats as attracting a wealthier demographic to the borough, and at the same time presided over a policy of ‘displacement and relocation of low-income households, as far afield as Stoke-on-Trent’. The Focus E15 mothers he tried to disperse away from London named it clearly – ‘Social Cleansing’.

The huge redevelopment in the area since 2012 has resulted in only 110 genuinely affordable homes. Newham currently has over 27000 applicants on the Housing Register and some 4500 families in temporary accommodation. Newham began emptying one notable large estate in central Stratford, the 1967 Carpenters estate of 710 homes in 2004 and by 2012 more than half of the homes were empty. The residents had wanted the estate refurbished, but Newham hoped to sell it off. When protests led to UCL withdrawing plans for a new campus, they looked for a developer, but those plans were dropped in 2018 and a new start made.

*Bridge House – LB Newham’s Housing Office*

There is much more in Wainwright’s article than I’ve mentioned, along with some of my own thoughts here, particularly about the huge failures of Boris Johnson and the failure to provide the kind of overall planning that could have occurred had the area been developed as a new town with the legacy corporation reinvesting “profits back into the future of the place, as happened in the postwar New Towns and places like Milton Keynes.” But instead it has been a commercial operation and one that has turned into a financial disaster for the taxpayer, rich pickings for developers and a social and environmental mess.

Wainwright describes the outcome in his final paragraph as “a nice park dotted with impressive sports venues and high-end homes, with some cultural attractions on the way.” I have to disagree, particularly about the park. It’s a park that is still scarred by the Olympics with large arid areas which I think will leave much of it forever beyond redemption, though there are some nicer parts. But I can only echo his next sentence: “But the poorest and most vulnerable, in what remain London’s most deprived boroughs, have lost out.“

The Focus E15 march began with a rally in Stratford Park. It was supported by people from a huge list of organisations I list on My London Diary. They they then marched around Stratford town centre, past the bus station, the station and the Theatre then back down the Broadway, stopping briefly outside Foxtons, where Class War staged a brief protest inside the estate agents offices.

They then moved on to the LB Newham’s Housing Office at Bridge House for another protest. Finally the marched on to the Carpenters Estate to hold a rally in front of the flats they had occupied for two weeks in 2014. Their occupation had led to these flats being re-occupied along with a few other of the roughly 400 empty properties on the estate.

If you’ve not yet read ‘A massive betrayal’: how London’s Olympic legacy was sold out please do. You can read more of what I wrote back in 2015 and see many more pictures on My London Diary:
Focus E15: Rally before March
Focus E15: ‘March Against Evictions’
Class War Occupy Stratford Foxtons
Focus E15: Anniversary of Carpenters Occupation

Gender-based Violence, Arming Israel, Trans Pride, Anti Racism

Protests in London three years ago today on Saturday 14th September 2019 all with some connection to human rights violations.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa – Trafalgar Square

People, mainly women and including many South Africans, dressed in black to protest in Trafalgar Square following the rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana and many other women in South Africa.

Protests were taking place across South Africa calling for the government to declare a state of emergency over gender based violence, and to protest against gender-based violence across the world.

After speeches and silences on the North Terrace they moved to light candles for the victims at the entrance to South Africa House.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa

HSBC Stop Arming Israel – Oxford St

Protesters led by Young London Palestine Solidarity Campaign took part in a National Day of Action outside the Oxford St branch of the HSBC Bank calling on it to stop its support of military and technology companies that sell weapons and equipment to Israel to be used against Palestinians. The bank had closed for the protest.

Although HSBC had divested from Israel’s largest private weapons company, it still owned shares in Caterpillar whose bulldozers are used to destroy Palestinian homes and construct illegal apartheid settlements, BAE Systems whose fighter jets attack Gaza and Raytheon which suppliers the ‘bunker buster’ bombs used to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Stop Arming Israel HSBC Protest

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

People met at Hyde Park Corner for this first march in the city to celebrate trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals and to protest against the continuing discrimination here and around the world against them.

As well as many from the trans+ community there were family, friends and other supporters taking part in an event which aimed to increase the visibility of trans+ people.

Recent years have seen an increasing transphobia in the British media with considerably publicity being given to the views of anti-trans activists. There has been an increase in attacks attacks on trans people on the streets, hate speech by trans-exclusionary feminists, and by right-wing national and state governments around the world.

Too often trans+ people around the world are subject to human rights abuses. They have always been an integral part of the gay community and at the forefront of the fight for gay rights – from the Stonewall rebellion on.

There were a few short speeches before the march set off, going along Piccadilly to a rally in Soho Square. I marched with them as far as Green Park where I caught the Underground for a protest in Brixton.

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

Brixton Anti-Racist March

Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group were protesting in Brixton against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants, calling for freedom of movement, the closure of immigration detention prisons, and an end to Brexit which they see being used to whip up immigrant-bashing and nationalism by Boris Johnson.

The event began in Windrush Square, where one of the speakers was Eulalee Pennant, a Jamaican great-grandmother who has been fighting the Home Office for 16 years against deportation. Here uncle was one of the Windrush generation, her grandfather had served in the UK armed forces for his working life, and her cousins, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandson were British. She had worked and paid tax here for many years but was detained days before her 60th birthday and locked up in Yarls Wood, where she contracted a serious stomach infection. She was still vomiting blood when the Home Office tried to put her on a deportation flight.

Eulalee had tried to regularise her and her son’s immigration status with the Home Office in 2003, and among the documents she sent was her passport. The Home Office kept claiming they did not have it, and it was only in court 15 years later they finally admitted they had failed to send in back. Her son spent five years fighting his case to stay in the UK but was deported to Jamaica in 2008, and was murdered there the following June. Her fight against deportation has cost many thousands in legal fees and she has been unable to work since 2003.

There had been relatively few at the gathering in Windrush Square but there was a larger audience when the group marched to Brixton Market to continue the protest there and Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie also came to speak about his LDNlovesEU campaign.

The group then set off to march noisily around central Brixton, returning to Windrush Square for some final speeches.

Brixton anti-racist march

Arms Fair Protests Come To Central London

On Tuesday 13th September 2011, protesters against the worlds largest arms fair being held at the Exel Centre in East London brought their protests to some of the companies selling arms and to key sites including Parliament Square and th National Gallery which was hosting a dinner for the arms traders and their customers, including representatives of many of the most repressive regimes around the world.

Arms Fair Protest At Parliament, Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Arms Fair Protests Come To Central London — *A queue with loaded baskets waits to pay at the arms fair supermarket opposite Parliament*

Around 250 people came to protest against the DSEI arms fair which was opening that day in East London. Many were people who had been protesting at the site of the fair during the previous week. The fair is the largest in the world, a private event supported by the UK government, and despite government denials, many deals are made there for illegal arms and arms are sold to some of the worlds most repressive regimes who use them against their own civilians.

Many had come with posters and placards, but organisers CAAT (Campaign Against Arms Trade) came with fake arms to set up a supermarket where people could queue to buy riot gas, guided missiles, ammunition and other essentiaql supplies to keep their population down.

Arms Fair Protests Come To Central London - Bruce Kent — *Bruce Kent with Riot Gas*

People held up letters spelling out ‘THIS IS NOT OK’ and then other posters and banners.

There were some songs, and anti-drone protesters staged a die-in as targets.

The country’s only Green MP (and one of the most sensible in the House of Commons) came to speak.

Dr Zig’s ‘Bubbles Not Bombs’ -Thames Embankment, Tate Modern.

*‘Kids need human rights NOT cluster bombs’*

Those remarkable bubbers from Dr Zigs in Wales and made their “seriously HUGE bubbles” on the riverside walk outside Tate Modern, shouting “Bubbles not Bombs” as a child-friendly protest against the DSEi Arms Fair.

They say the DSEI fair is “where bad people the world over can come and buy the latest in guns, drones, warships etc.” and call for it to stop.

Dr Zig’s ‘Bubbles Not Bombs’ Protest

Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood

I just had time between protests to pop up to St John’s Wood and the Queens’s Terrace Café, where my show ‘Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood’ had been hung at the weekend when I had been too busy to be there. Jiro Osuga who had done the design and decoration and owner Mireille Galinou whose idea it had been had done a great job and it was ready for the opening.

Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood

Down the Drones Arms Fair Protest – Tower 42, Old Broad St

General Atomics ,makers of Predator and Reaper drones had their London office in Tower 42, still better known to many of us as the Nat West Tower, on Old Broad St Although there are wide areas of empty pavement most is land owned by Tower 42 and City police harassed protesters by ensuring they keep to the small area of public highway and then clearing them from most of it as they were then causing an obstruction.

There seemed to me to be no good reason why the police shold enforce the civil property rights of the estate owner which would not be harmed by a small incursion, nor harass the protesters on the public highway when others could easily walk by – as many always do – on the private land.

The protesters managed to chalk slogans and body outlines on the pavement, displayed banners, sang and handed out leaflets to passers by about the dangers of militarism but were not allowed to lie down on their target and invite passers by to ‘zap’ them with a Playstation controller in their game of ‘Remote Control Killer Robots’.

The US was then using around 48 Predator and Reaper drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the UK around 10 MQ-9 Reapers in Afghanistan, all controlled by pilots in an airforce base in Nevada. Various documents released by whistleblowers show that drone strike often take place on the basis of very limited and often unreliable evidence often killing innocent victims and any males in these countries who appear to be of military age and likely to be targets.

Using drones turns warfare for those ‘piloting’ them from a centre perhaps several thousands of miles from the battlefield into something very much like a computer game, removing any normal human inhibitions about the indiscriminate killing of others.

In the final few minutes police allowed three protesters to lie down on the pavement for a few seconds to enable photographers to take pictures.

Down the Drones City Arms Fair Protest

DSEi Protest at BAE Systems

I’m not sure if there were any police for the protest outside BAE Systems in Carlton House Terrace which was the final advertised protest of the day. Perhaps the police were acting on advice from one of their plain clothes operatives who had told them there would be no trouble at this event.

BAE Systems is Britain’s largest manufacturing companies, formed in 1999 by the merger of British Aerospace with parts of Marconi Electronics and traces its history back to 1560 and the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey, over the years having incorporated many of the famous names in UK industry, particular those involved in aviation and arms manufacture. It also has a US subsidiary, BAE Systems, Inc. The company was a nationalised industry from 1977 to 1981, with the UK government in 1985 selling its remaining shares except for one very special £1 share which it can use to prevent it becoming foreign-owned.

The company has been involved in a number of trade scandals, particularly over its deals with Saudi Arabia. Most recently in 2006 the Serious Fraud Office was forced by the Labour government to drop enquiries into bribery over an arms deal by BAE Systems with Saudi Arabia after a Saudi royal prince threatened cancellation of the order in 2006. The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) obtained a High Court decision that this government action breached the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, but the government appealed and the law lords decided that national security should be an overriding principle and overturned the decision. So bribery, as well presumably as any other crime, is OK when it is in the national security interest.

The government’s decision to cancel the investigation was seen by most as an admission of BAE’s guilt in the matter, and they have also been under investigation for bribery in Chile, Romania, South Africa, Tanzania, the Czech Republic and Qatar and possibly elsewhere.

BAE systems are one of the world’s largest arms companies, producing fighter aircraft, warships, missiles and tanks along with other weapons. They are also one of the companies that will profit hugely from the replacement of Trident nuclear missiles, a high-spending and potentially dangerous project with no military significance.

After some short speeches about BAE, almost all of those present laid flat on the pavement for a die-in before getting up and leaving. Although this was the last advertised protest for the day, a message bad been passed around that there would be an action at the National Gallery, which was hosting a dinner for those attending the DSEi arms fair.

DSEi Protest at BAE Systems

Arms Fair Fracas At National Gallery

After a day of peaceful demonstrations against the DSEi Arms Fair in London, a fracas developed as police attempted to clear the National Gallery steps while a peaceful protest continued below in the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square. Well over a hundred protesters had come to the National Gallery as it was closing to protest at a dinner being given there for those attending the DSEi arms fair, including representatives of many of the most repressive regimes around the world.

The protesters attempted to enter the Gallery as it was closing but were ushered out by security staff, and then began a peaceful protest on the steps of the gallery. Gallery staff asked protesters to leave the steps but some decided to stay and display banners there, while others continued to protest peacefully on the North Terrace in front of the gallery, displaying banners and holding a ‘die-in.

Eventually police got most of them moving slowly down the steps, though a few were still refusing to move. There was quite a lot of joking between some of the police and protesters and the atmosphere was generally friendly, although the protesters were not being very cooperative. Suddenly one of the protesters was seized and roughly carried away by police towards a nearby van. He did not appear to be formally arrested, and police would give no reason for his detention either to press, legal observers or protesters.

This changed the mood completely. Police reinforcements arrived and were able to force the protesters from the steps. There were a few incidents of what seemed thuggish violence towards both men and women. Some were arrested and dragged off to waiting vans; it was hard to be sure but their offence appeared to have been arguing and trying to protect themselves against police violence.

Meanwhile the protest continued peacefully on the North Terrace with a die-in and speakers explaining to the crowd that had gathered that the protest was calling for an end to UK arms sales to authoritarian regimes including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both responsible for the ruthless suppression of people in the ‘Arab Spring’ as well as countries involved in major armed conflicts and human rights abuses. I think many were shocked to learn that the UK was playing such a major part in this killing of people around the world – not something our media often dwell on.

Arms Fair Fracas At National Gallery

Class War Visit The Rees-Moggs – 2018

On Tuesday 11th September 2018 I accompanied Class War as they enacted a short theatrical protest outside the Westminster home of Jacob Rees-Mogg. I think it rather amused Rees-Mogg, who deliberately brought out his family and nurse to take part in it, later milking the event for every last ounce of publicity he could. I was impressed by his performance.

Class War had come to call for the release of Rees-Mogg’s nanny, Veronica Cook, who they say ceased to exist as an independent human 50 years ago and has been subsumed into the Mogg family as if she was being confined in the tower of a gothic mansion.

The playlet involved only six protesters, with Ian Bone as himself wearing a cloth cap, former Class War Westminster candidate Adam Clifford as an impressive Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jane Nicholl as a more fetching Nanny Crook and a giant penis, though this had problems in getting inflated and missed much of the action.

I’d met Class War in a nearby pub, where the performers put on their costumes and then walked along the street to the Mogg house. The performance had been advertised in advance, and family and security were waiting when they arrived and police had a short converstation with Class War who assured them that this would be an entirely peaceful event and there was no intention to cause any damage.

Jacob Rees-Mogg then strode out to meet the protesters, who were not really ready, just finishing unrolling their banner. A loud discussion started, with him being questioned about his nanny and how much she was paid but with him simply welcoming the protesters and refusing to answer. And in the background behind me the woman wearing the inflatable giant penis costume was struggling to get it erected.

After a minute or two, Rees-Mogg was joined by his wife and eldest son, and shortly after the whole family was there with Nanny Crook carrying the baby which she handed to his father. The two elder boys in particular were clearly very interested in what was going on, and at no point in the event did they seem particularly upset in any way.

Ian Bone continued to loudly question Mr Rees-Mogg about the pay and conditions of Nanny Crook, repeating his questions as he failed to answer. After some time he invited Nanny Crook to speak and she told the protesters that she was very happy with the arrangements, though she did not answer about what these were.

They made Nanny an offer of escape, telling her she is paid at below the minimum wage, calling Rees-Mogg a “Slave Owner – The Leopold of the Mendips” and also suggested that she joined a trade union, offering her membership of the UVW. She only smiled, and her employer made clear that she had no interest in the offer of trade union membership.

*When nanny pulled down the blind the oldest son went upstairs to watch*

At one point Bone turned towards the elder of the boys watching the performance, telling him loudly that a lot of people didn’t like his daddy and giving some reasons for this at some length. One of the protesters captured this on a video which was posted on social media and led to a national outcry from press and TV channels.

*While another squeezed in front of the blind*

One other journalist had arrived to photograph the event alongside me, and he rushed off to file his pictures which were widely used. I accompanied Class War back to the pub and only filed work later. One picture editor of a major national newspaper later told me he had failed to find my pictures as he searched for “Mogg” but I had used the keyword “Rees-Mogg” among those on my pictures.

*Finally the giant penis joins the other protesters*

I’d also filed a report of the event, but that was never even quoted, and I was never contacted by the media for my comments, nor I think was the other journalist. Our accounts would have totally contradicted the headlines used about Class War “ambushing” the family, which was simply a media smear.

As I comment on My London Diary:

“Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family were willing participants in what happened in front of their home. Their children did not seem upset, more fascinated with what was happening – and after they had been taken inside and the protest continued had to be dragged away from the windows. One made his way upstairs to continue to watch without being prevented from doing so. Almost all of the media commentary was a deliberate total misrepresentation of what had taken place.”

*Class War watch their video in the pub before they upload it*

Both Rees-Mogg and Class War revelled in the publicity they got from the event, with Ian Bone being labelled by one opinated right-wing radio show host as “foul-mouthed” for telling the interviewer he was talking “bollocks” when he raved and blustered at the remarkably level-headed, clear and accurate acount Bone gave of the event. I felt he should have added the word ‘absoute’ in front of it but otherwise it was hard to fault.

More at Class War visit the Rees-Moggs.

Dale Farm March Against Eviction – 2011

I had been following the events around Dale Farm with interest, but had decided that travelling to the site where some colleagues in the NUJ had been covering events for some time was too difficult and time-consuming. What was happening there was already getting considerable media coverage and I could add little to it and my time and very limited resources would be better spent on less high profile events.

So I’d not been to Dale Farm, and didn’t go to the eviction which finally took place on 19th October, but my interest in what was taking place there did prompt me to go down to a protest march from Wickford Station to the Dale Farm site on Saturday 10th September 2011.

My earliest involvement with travellers had been in the 1960s, when a group who had been evicted from other sites in the city encamped for some time on land close to and owned by the university. Along with many other students I went to the site and met many of the residents as well as attempting to stop the university from evicting them.

*There was a short service before the march*

Travellers move around during much of the year but during winter want to settle in a fixed site. Local authorities have the powers to provide sits but not a duty to do so. In January 2011 according to the twice-annual government surveys there were roughly 18,000 traveller caravans with almost 7,000 on authorised public sites and a further 8,000 on authorised private sties, with around 2,500 on unauthorised sites.

*Euro MP Richard Howitt talking to Dale Farm residents on the march*

In 2021 research showed long waiting lists for pitches on public sites, with almost 1700 on the list but only 59 permanent and 42 transit pitches available nationwide. And many of those available had be labelled as “not fit to use” and “in a terrible state” by locals, with 20 having no electricity available. Travellers call for an end to the increasing harassment of those on unauthorised land and a statutory duty on authorities to meet the need to provide sites – and police also see this as the solution to unauthorised encampments.

*Dale Farm children outside the gates of Cray’s Hill Primary School*

Wikipedia states that Travellers first settled around Dale Farm in the 1960s on Green Belt land that was in use as an unauthorised scrap yard. Eventually following legal battles with Basildon Council some on a part of the site were granted limited permission to remain on a small area of the site, Oak Farm, and are still there. Travellers bought the land from the scrap dealer who had been bankrupted by costs for breaching Green Belt provision in 2002 and the site began to grow, becoming the largest Traveller site in Europe.

*Police escort the march closely as it nears Dale Farm*

The council, who had used part of the site as a dumping ground for tarmac and rubble from roadworks refused to give any further permissions on the grounds it was Green Belt, and legal battles continued. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott became involved in 2003 with an order intended to give the Travellers and Basildon Council two years to come to an agreement, but they made no progress. Legal battles continued, with the residents winning their case in the High Court in 2008 only to see this reversed by the court of appeal in 2010.

*Anti-eviciton activists on the gates to Dale Farm*

The Wikipedia article gives considerable details on the legal battles and the process of eviction, carried out with considerable force by bailiffs and police, providing those press who had been barricaded inside the site with residents for some days with some dramatic images. Many of the travellers had left not long after this march several weeks before the eviction to avoid the violence, camping illegally elsewhere.

Years later the rubble of the former illegal settlement created by the eviction remained on the site in what the Daily Mail described as “polluted wasteland blighted by rubbish and the decaying remains” despite Basildon Council’s claim at the time of the eviction it would return the site to Green Belt. It is so bad that many Travellers in the adjoining legal site Oak Farm now want to leave the area.

*Secretary of the Roma Federation Grattan Puxon*

The march on Saturday 10th September took place while Travellers were still living on the site and hoping still to be able to stay there. My report in My London Diary gives a long account of the event and picture captions add to this.

As I noted in it, the only slight unpleasantness came not from the Travellers but one of their supporters who tried to stop the press coming on to the site. After around ten minutes one of the women leading the Travellers insisted we should be allowed in to report the rally.

Basildon Council had throughout seemed determined not to accept solutions to the battle proposed by others, including the Homes and Communities Agency who had put forward an alternative site, and it was hard not to see their attitude to the Travellers as fundamentally driven by racism. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had a week or so before the march called on the Council to find a peaceful and appropriate solution and suspend the “immature and unwise” eviction, saying it would “disproportionately affect the lives of the Gypsy and Traveller families, particularly women, children and older people“.

March Supports Dale Farm Against Evictions

Stop The Arms Fair – 2017

The world’s largest arms fair currently takes place in London every two years, at the Excel Centre, a large exhibition centre in Custom House, East Ham in the London Borough of Newham. Organised by Clarion Events, the Defence and Security Equipment International show is “fully endorsed” by the UK Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Trade, but condemned by London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan and most Londoners and opposed by a week of protests organised by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and supported by many other groups.

Sadiq Khan has failed to stop the arms fair taking place, lacking the powers to do so despite his repugnance. Amnesty International criticise it for selling weapons of torture and those that have been shown to have been used against civilians, and CAAT point out that it is attended by official military and security delegations from countries which are noted abusers of human rights, including those on the UK’s official list of countries subject to arms embargo.

Of course with the UK the high profits to be made on arms sales often trumps such listings; Action on Armed Violence points out that “five of the UK’s human rights priority countries feature on the DIT’s ‘key markets’ directory for potential arms sales (Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia)” and that “UK export licences for small arms and ammunition have been approved to 31 destinations on the embargoed and restricted list” betwwen 2015 and 2020.

In September 2017 I photographed protests outside the DSEI arms fair on four days in the week before the fair as well as a related event elsewhere and a wreath-laying ceremony on the opening day. There are fuller accounts on My London Dairy – links at the end of this post.

No Faith in War DSEI Arms Fair protest – ExCeL Centre, London. Tue 5 Sept 2017

The second day of protests against the world’s largest arms fair held in London’s docklands was ‘No Faith In War’, a series of events organised by various faith groups.

Quakers held a meeting by the side of the approach road to the East Gate of Excel, and some sat on the road to block it. Eventually police lifted this woman carefully and carried herto the side of the road. Some who persisted in blocking the road were arrested and taken to police vans.

Four people abseiled from a roadway bridge to block the road. It took police a long time to find a safe way to remove them.

People held a mass on the roadway – police waited until they finished then made them leave.

At the west gate people walked very slowly in front of the lorries. Eventually police pushed them off the road. Some were arrested. Others had come to support them and sing hymns and religious songs. There were various other activities at both gates.

Protesters block DSEI arms fair entrances – Wed 6 Sep 2017

Stop the Arms fair protesters carried out a series of lengthy lock-ons on the roads at both East and West gates blocking access to London’s ExCeL centre where preparations are being made for the worlds’s largest arms fair.

Police teams took quite a long time to carefully separate the people who were locked together to block the roads. There was also some street theatre from various groups. One pair of protesters managed to lock themselves on the roadway inside the centre gates – but police would not let journalists get closer to photograph them.

I went back to the East gate to find another pair locked on there. The protesters managed to block both entrances for several hours – and there were quite a few arrests.

Protest picnic & checkpoint at DSEI, London. Thu 7 Sep 2017

Veterans for Peace came to set up a banned weapons checkpoint. Police waved lorries on past their checkpoint, encouraging one lorry to drive through the protest at a highly dangerous speed, and removed protesters from the road with threats of arrest.

At lunchtime North London Food Not Bombs moved onto the road and blocked it to serve protesters with an excellent road-block picnic. After 15 minutes police moved in to clear the road, threatening the diners with arrest.

DSEI Festival Morning at the East Gate – Sat 9 Sep 2017

Several hundred people listened to a programme of speakers, workshops, spoken word, choirs and groups and stopped lorries bringing arms by walking in front of them until pushed aside by police.

Festival of Resistance – DSEI West Gate – Sat 9 Sep 2017

Things were a little livlier at the West gate, where cyclists in a ‘Critical Mass’ were arriving and Charlie X, a Chaplin clone who protests in mime had just been freed from the lorry he had locked on to but had been arrested and was being led away by a dozen police. They also arrested one of the cyclists for having a bike lock around his neck. He had it to lock the wheels to his bike if he had to leave it anywhere. If carrying a lock or chain for your bike was an offence, every cyclist in London would face arrest.

DSEI East Gate blocked – Sat 9 Sep 2017

I took the DLR back to the East gate, arriving to find the road blocked by a lock-on, with two people joined through a pipe which the police were struggling to remove. Finally they did and arrested to two involved. People were blocking the road and holding a religious service, but police forced them off the road – with at least one more arrest of a woman who refused to move.

While the police were removing the two locked on, a man had locked himself to the lorry – and he too was removed and arrested. Other people came onto the road to block lorries and there were poetry and musical performances. Then a group of seven people joined arms in a circle on the road and refused to move. They were still there when I had to leave, stopping off briefly at the DLR entrance to the Excel Centre to photograph a musical protest there.

#Arming The World -Woolwich Arsenal, London. Tue 12 Sep 2017

Ice & Fire theatre and Teatro Vivo with designer Takis, gave their first performance of #Arming The World, a satircial weapons catwalk show spreading information about Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) at Woolwich Arsenal with actors dressed as arms dealers, a Paveway IV Missile, a Eurofighter Typhoon and CS Gas.

Wreath for victims of the arms trade – Royal Victoria Dock, Tue 12 Sep 2017

East London Against Arms Fairs (ELAAF) held a procession carrying a white wreath with the message ‘Remember Victims of the Arms Trade’ around the Royal Victoria Dock on the day the DSEI Arms Fair opened, launching the wreath onto the water opposite the ExCeL centre.

More on all these events on My London Diary:
Wreath for victims of the arms trade
#Arming The World
DSEI East Gate blocked
Festival of Resistance – DSEI West Gate
DSEI Festival Morning at the East Gate
Protest picnic & checkpoint at DSEI
Protesters block DSEI arms fair entrances
No Faith in War DSEI Arms Fair protest

No More Benefit Deaths – 2016

No More Benefit Deaths – 2016 The action on Wednesday 7th September 2016 began with a huge banner being displayed over the river wall on the Albert Embankment so it could be seen clearly be any MPs and others on the river terrace outside the houses of Parliament with the message ‘NO MORE BENEFIT DEATHS #DPAC’

The date was the opening day for the Paralympics in Rio, and protesters held a rally outside Downing Street to call on Theresa May to pay attention to human rights and to make public the findings of the UN investigation into the UK for violations of Deaf and Disabled people’s rights, to scrap the Work Capability Assessment and commit to preventing future benefit-related deaths.

From Downing Street they marched behind a coffin towards Parliament Square.

But on reaching Bridge Street they surprised police by turning on to Westminster Bridge

where they blocked the road on both carriageways with banners, a floral sign and the coffin.

The giant banner that had previously been displayed on the embankment was now stretched across the road.

Protesters sat in wheelchairs or stood holding posters and banners and there were some speeches about why the protest was taking place.

Police at first asked them politely to leave, then began to threaten protesters and journalists covering the event with arrest if they remained on the highway.

Most of those in wheelchairs refused to move. One carer who was looking after a disabled person was arrested and taken to a police van.

I think those arrested were later released without charge – arrest was being used in an abuse of process to harass protesters

Many of DPAC’s disabled protesters refused to move and a few remained blocking the roadway almost two hours after the protest began.

Eventually Paula Peters decided that the protest had gone on for long enough and triumphantly called a halt to the protest.

DPAC block bridge over benefit deaths
‘No More Benefit Deaths’ rally
Giant Banner ‘No More Benefit Deaths

People’s March For The NHS And More – 2014

On Saturday 6th September I was in London mainly to cover the final stage of the People’s March for the NHS which had begun in mid August in Jarrow, but also photographed Mourning Mothers of Iran, people on a Rolling Picket against Israeli violence and a protest against children being taken for families by social workers and family courts.

People’s March from Jarrow for NHS

When the NHS was founded back in 1948 it was an integral part of the welfare state, a social welfare policy to provide free and universal benefits. It was opposed at its start by the Conservative Party, and met with opposition from some doctors and other medical professionals worried that it would cut their earnings from private practice.

Particularly because of the opposition from doctors, the initial scheme had to be fairly drastically changed, with compromises being made by Minister for Health Aneurin Bevan. And dentistry was never really properly and fully brought withing the system.

Since 1948 much has changed. We’ve seen a huge growth in private hospitals, partly driven by many employers providing private healthcare schemes as a perk for their better paid employees, but also by public funding being used to pay for NHS services provided by the private sector.

We’ve also seen the introduction of charges for NHS prescriptions and more recently the NHS has decided on a fairly wide range of common conditions for which it will no longer provide treatment or prescriptions, sending people to the chemist for both advice and over the counter medicines.

There have been huge advances in medical science too, and more of us are living to a greater age than ever before, making more demands on the NHS. Our NHS is costing more, though still the total spending on health in the UK is significantly less than in many other countries as an OECD chart on Wikipedia shows – less than Japan, Ireland, Australia, France, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Switzerland – and well under half of that in the USA.

Yet for some years many leading Conservatives have advocated the UK moving to a system based on the US model. It would not make our health any better, but would make it much more expensive. And lead to huge profits for healthcare companies – many of them US-based – which are already beginning to take large bites of our own NHS spending. Involving private companies in providing NHS services has not generally led to better services – and in some cases has certainly made them worse, unsurprisingly as it diverts money to shareholders rather than using it for patients. Some services have become more difficult to access.

GP surgeries have always been private businesses, but when these were run by the doctors they provided more personal services than those run by some private companies where patients are unlikely to see a ‘family doctor’ and far more likely to see a locum – if they can still get an appointment. The NHS also spends over £6bn a year on agency and bank staff which would be unnecessary if we were training enough staff.

The need to put services out to tender is time-consuming and wastes NHS resources, one of several things which has produced a top-heavy management. And accepting low tenders often leads to poorly performing services such as cleaning, as I found when I was in my local hospital and found staff simply were not allowed time to do the job properly.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was the most extensive reorganisation of the NHS to that date and Lansley has been widely seen as getting things wrong, and it replaced the duty on the NHS to provide services with one to promote them, with delivery possibly by others, opening up the entire health service to privatisation.

I walked with the marchers from a rally in Red Lion Square to Trafalgar Square where there was a final rally with speakers including Shadow Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham and London Mayor Sadiq Kahn. In 1936 the Jarrow Crusade marchers in 1936 – who were shunned by the Labour Party but captured the hears of the British population – had been given a pound, along with a train ticket back to Jarrow, but failed to get any significant action from the government and Jarrow was left without jobs. Those marchers who had walked the whole 300 miles from Jarrow were presented with medals incorporating a pound coin.

People’s March from Jarrow for NHS

Mourning Mothers of Iran – Trafalgar Square

On the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square I found a group of mainly Iranian women standing in a silent vigil to support the Mourning Mothers of Iran.

Now renamed The Mothers of Laleh Park, these are women who hold vigils in the park in the centre of Tehran after their children were killed or imprisoned following a crackdown on members of the opposition after the 2009 Iranian election, and call for the release of political prisoners. Many of the women in Iran have been arrested for protesting and for talking to foreign journalists.

Mourning Mothers of Iran

Rolling Picket against Israeli violence – Downing St

At Downing Street I photographed a group protesting against Israeli violence towards Palestinians and clalling for a boycott of Israeli good.

After a brief protest at Downing St they marched up Whitehall and protested outside McDonalds before going for another short protest outside the Tesco facing Trafalgar Square. Police intervened to move them away when they tried to block the doorway there. I left them on their way to make further protests outside shops supporting Israel on their way to Tony Blair’s house off the Edgware Rd.

Rolling Picket against Israeli violence

Stolen Children of the UK – Parliament Square

This group say that many children in the UK are removed from families by social workers and family courts for no good reason. They allege that there is systematic, systemic institutional abuse of around a thousand children a month being removed in this way and then abused by paedophile rings. Although there may be children wrongly taken from families there appears to be no firm evidence for such abuse.

These conspiracy theories are a world-wide phenomenon and in 2017 became the core belief of QAnon, the US extreme right wing conspiracy theory political movement.

Stolen Children of the UK