The strike and protests organised by the United Voices of the World union against anti-union cleaning contractor Thames Cleaning who employed the cleaners at the 100 Wood St offices in the City of London, managed by CBRE and mainly let to Schroders and J P Morgan is a good example of one of the things the current Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is aiming to prevent.
The UVW use loud rallies and protests outside workplaces (and sometimes in their foyers) to shame employers who are exploiting low paid workers, many migrants, into talking to the union. These workers, often employed by small and intensely anti-union companies, are often on minimum legal rates of pay, well below the London Living Wage and usually on the statutory minimum (and minimal) conditions of service – and sometimes even have problems getting these.
Outsourcing of low paid work such as cleaning is widespread, and contractors get the contracts by cutting costs – such as wages and conditions of service – and also by using bullying management to over-work their employees. Often too they cut costs by ignoring safety issues and failing to supply protective clothing and other essential safety material.
The UVW strike at Wood St was the longest industrial dispute in the history of the City of London, and it continued after Thames Cleaning had agreed to pay the London Living Wage for some days until they also agreed to re-instate the two workers who had been sacked. These pictures come from a rally on day 22 of the 58 day strike.
The strike was only successful because of the continuing pressure provided by loud protests such as this one, which made the companies working in the offices very aware of what was happening and made them and the building owners put pressure on the contracting company to meet the union and agree to their demands. Protests such as these, by the UVW and other grass-roots unions including CAIWU, the IWGB and a few branches of major unions have been successful in getting many of London’s lowest paid workers a living wage.
The PCSC bill, if it becomes law, will make these activities illegal. Already under existing laws, the company was able to take legal action to try and get an injunction to stop the strike. Although this failed it did get strict conditions put on the UVW’s actions at Wood St, and landed the union with crippling legal costs. Fortunately many supporters came forward with donations.
I came to take pictures on a number of occasions during the strike, which you can find on My London Diary. These pictures are all from Day 22: UVW Wood St Strike continues.
Broad Sanctuary, Westminster Abbey. 28th June 2014
The Independent Living Fund, ILF, was introduced in 1988 to provide financial support to disabled people with high support needs, including those with severe learning difficulties, cerebral palsy, and a variety of other conditions.
Around 18,000 people relied on the ILF, mainly using the average of £300 a week it provided to employ personal assistants or carers to enable them to live independently, enabling some to work and pursue careers. It was administered independently from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who provided the funding.
The ILF scheme was closed to new applicants in 2010 and the responsibility for providing support in England was passed to local authorities with the ILF ending on 30th June 2015.
There were various problems with the ILF, with regional variations, but the primary reason behind the changes was probably to cut costs. Although the government promised to provide funding to the local authorities for a transitional period, this was around 13% less than under the ILF, and the money, given to cash-strapped authorities already subject to swingeing cuts was not ring-fenced, and so likely to be appropriated for other purposes.
Local authorities were also not given any clear instructions or advice on how to proceed and there were great variations between local authorities in the support that was provided. A survey a year after the end of the scheme showed extreme differences, with some authorities providing similar levels of support to the ILF, but others operating at much reduced levels, creating the real hardship that protests such as this on Saturday 28th June 2014 campaigned against. The loss of ILF was indeed a disaster for many disabled people.
DPAC and others involved in the protest had managed to keep the details hidden from the police, perhaps because it is more difficult for able-bodied police working as undercover officers to infiltrate disabled groups. UK Uncut has provided a diversion with a protest outside Boots on Victoria St when DPAC and Occupy London supporters moved on to the green area in front of Westminster Abbey.
The protesters had hoped for some support from Westminster Abbey authorities as many Christians had called the government’s actions immoral. But they had picked the wrong place, and the Dean of Westminster refused even to talk to the protesters, calling on the police to get rid of them. Labour MP John McDonnell tried without success to phone the Dean who refused to take his call or to phone back.
The weather too was against the protesters, with rain falling steadily, and for once a police officer showed some quick thinking, moving to stand in the middle of the main tent the protesters were attempting to erect, without which there was simply not enough shelter for a lengthy occupation.
I was unsure whether I wanted to go inside the area or not when I arrived, and soon police were surrounding the fairly low wall stopping people from climbing over. But I was able to take pictures from outside and move around freely – and to go home when I decided there seemed to be little point in staying.
It’s probably never a good idea to say “I told you so”, but it was clear to many of us that that after Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of the Labour Party he represented the party’s only hope of winning a general election in the foreseeable future – and probably within my own lifetime.
And although he lost the 2017 election, it proved the case. It was an election the Labour Party could and should have won. They would have won had not many officials and MPs been actively sabotaging the campaign, diverting resources away from marginal constituencies and failing to give the party their full support. Some even went as far as seeming to celebrate the loss.
Ever since Corbyn won the leadership in September 2015 many officers and MPs had been fighting against him, some openly. Things came to a head in 2016 after the EU referendum when he was accused of only giving lukewarm support to the Remain campaign, though he had certainly spoken against leaving the EU at numerous large rallies. The issue was picked up as a pretext for a coup attempt that had long been in planning.
This began on 25th June when Hilary Benn contacted other shadow cabinet ministers telling them he had lost confidence in Corbyn and was sacked. On 26th June 11 other members of the shadow cabinet resigned with another eight leaving the following day.
The emergency protest on the day the coup attempt began was small, but two days later more than ten thousand grass-roots Labour supporters filled Parliament Square in a rally organised by Momentum to vigorously oppose the coup. All except the top picture come from the rally on 17th June.
Angela Rayner and Richard Burgon both came to support Corbyn
Corbyn was able to form a new if rather smaller shadow cabinet with a number of joint portfolios, including 13 new members. But on the 28th June the 229 MPs in the Parliamentary Labour Party passed a motion of no confidence in him by 172 votes to 40.
It was hard to find anyone to stand against Corbyn, but finally on 11 July Angela Eagle launched a leadership challenge and was followed by Owen Smith. Opponents of Corbyn tried to get him left off the ballot, but a secret ballot of the Labour National Executive Committee confirmed by a small majority that the incumbent leader should automatically be listed, in line with party rules, and their decision was later confirmed by the High Court. Eagle dropped out as Smith got more nominations, though neither was particularly popular.
In the leadership ballot that followed, Corbyn confirmed his popularity. He was supported by 285 Constituency Labour Parties, with only 53 CLPs supporting Smith, and ended up with 61.8% of the vote to Smith’s 38.2%.
Jeremy Corbyn smiles after speaking at the rall
It should have been a clear message to MPs and party officials to get behind Corbyn and stop undermining his leadership. A united Labour Party could have fought the prejudices of our predominantly right-wing media including a BBC increasingly dominated by right-wing commentators and editors. Their continued opposition to him and some popular manifesto commitments threw away the chance of winning the next election – whenever it was called. Though it was only the weak and disunited state of Labour that convinced Theresa May to gamble on 2017; but even then had the party got fully behind the campaign we would have been saved the shameful Tory governments that have followed since then.
I first photographed London’s annual Pride in 1993, when it was a much smaller and more political event than it has become. Back then it was still a protest an since then it has become a parade, dominated by large corporate floats, from various large companies, armed forces and police.
Of course there is still some of the old spirit, with many groups from the gay community and even some protesters still taking part, but largely hidden at the back of the very long line-up.
The Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride march to the official Pride London procession organised by Movement for Justice and joined by others, including London in Solidarity with Istanbul LGBTI Pride and Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants brought back some of the original spirit.
It gathered on Oxford St and then went on to join the main march, along with others behind the corporate floats.
The following year Pride organisers reacted by closing the march to only those who had officially applied to march and had official armbands – and refused entry to the Migrants Rights and Anti-Racist Bloc who then sat down in front of the march before police decided they could march along the route before the main procession.
This year Pride in London has been postponed until 11 September, but Peter Tatchell this May called for an alternative LGBT+ rights march to take place in June, He stated:
“For too long we have been conned by vested interests into believing that it is hugely expensive to hold a Pride march. It is not costly at all if we run the no-frills march that I am proposing.
“It would mirror the informality and spontaneity of the first Pride march in 1972, which I and 40 others helped organise. All we need to do is publicise it and people will turn up.
“Pride in London has become depoliticised. This Pride can change that. As well as being a joyful celebration, it should also profile LGBT+ human rights issues, such as the government stalling on a conversion therapy ban, blocking reform of the Gender Recognition Act and failing to end the detention of LGBT+ asylum seekers.
“It’s time to get back to the original roots of Pride, with everyone encouraged to bring a placard highlighting the LGBT+ issues that concern them. Let’s make this an event where our on-going demands for LGBT+ rights can be seen and heard.
So far as I’m aware it has not been possible to organise an event like this for June 2010, although the London Trans Pride is still billed to take place on June 26, beginning at 2pm at Hyde Park. Perhaps next year it will be possible to organise such a “no frills” march with “no floats, no stage and no speakers at the end. Totally open, egalitarian and grassroots.” which “would reclaim Pride for the community.”
Five years ago on the day after the Brexit vote, Friday 24 Jun 2016, socialists and anarchists marched in London in support of migrant rights and against racism and against the attacks and scapegoating of immigrants not only by right wing extremists but by mainstream parties and media over many years. The pictures in this post are from that march. The most recent of these attacks has come from a Tory peer who has proved herself a serial failure over the years and seems likely to be rewarded for this by being put in charge of the NHS.
One of the most disturbing trends during the last eleven years of Coalition and Tory governments has been the increasing politicisation of public appointments, with jobs in charge of public bodies increasingly being awarded to people on the basis of their political views rather than any relevant experience or competence.
Of course there are many other things to be worried about, not least the many dodgy contracts awarded to family, friends and party donors, particularly those lucrative Covid-related contracts. One major benefactor has been Conservative peer Baroness Dido Harding, married to the Tory MP and United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion at the Cabinet Office since 2017. No, you really couldn’t make it up.
In 2015, when Harding was the much criticised CEO of TalkTalk, following a cyber-attack in which the personal and banking details of up to four million customers, many not encrypted, were though to have been stolen, Marketing Magazine ran a story under the headline “TalkTalk boss Dido Harding’s utter ignorance is a lesson to us all”. The Information Commissioner agreed, though the fine of £400,000 seems far too low for a company which she said failed “to implement the most basic cyber security measures.” Harding, who had been made a Tory Life Peer the previous year, stood down from TalkTalk in 2017 to concentrate on her public activities, following the party line on all her Lords votes and joining the board of the Jockey Club.
Her appointment as Chair of NHS Improvement in 2017 was a clearly political one, and Harding rejected the recommendation of Parliament’s Health Select Committee that she should resign as a Conservative peer and become a cross-bencher.
Her appointment to run the track, trace and test programme in 2020 (later misleadingly named NHS Test and Trace) was highly controversial. It had little or no connection with the NHS, simply outsourcing work to private contractors including Serco, Mitie, G4S, Boots and Sodexo and paying several thousand consultants from Deloitte and elsewhere on average £1,100 a day each.
Harding is now expected to be appointed as Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) and has pledged to make the NHS less reliant on foreign doctors and nurses. At the moment about 1 in 7 NHS staff are not British, including many Indian, Filipino and Irish. There are many others too who while themselves British are the sons and daughters of migrants to this country, some of whom came here as health workers.
We currently have over 40,000 nursing vacancies and are heavily reliant on the contribution of foreign healthcare professionals who have made great sacrifices during the Covid pandemic. They already suffer from having to pay an immigration health surcharge fee of £470 per person per year for themselves and their families.
Nursing Notes quotes Andrew Johnson of the grassroots campaign Nurses United UK as saying:
“Dido Harding remains as incompetent as ever as she panders to her political party.”
“The UK has always benefitted from international staff. Whether it was Indian, Pakistani or Caribbean nurses like my grandma in the 50s and 60s, or our colleagues from Europe and the Philippines in more recent times, we needed them to keep our loved ones safe.”
“The NHS would not exist without international staff and if Dido wants to grow homegrown staff, we would need greater investment in our schools, a living bursary, a substantial restorative pay rise and an end to the privatisation she has been a part of.”
There are good reasons for the UK to train more doctors, nurses and other medical specialists. We are a wealthy nation and as well as caring for the health of our own population should be sending trained staff to other countries around the world, particularly those less able to train them. But as well as sending people abroad there is also much to be gained from having migrants coming to work here and foreign medical staff should be welcomed, not denigrated.
I hope to be there and taking photographs, though I’ve been a little unwell for the last few weeks and may still have to take things easy – which isn’t how I take pictures.
The pictures with this post are from The People’s Assembly national march 7 years ago on Saturday 21 June 2014, when tens of thousands marched from a rally at the BBC to another in Parliament Square. Speakers then included John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Dianne Abbot, Carolyn Lucas, Len McCluskey, Matt Wrack and other leading figures – and you can find pictures of almost all of them on My London Diary – though I couldn’t be bothered to wait for Russell Brand who came an hour late.
The event was planned to take place after the lifting of Covid restrictions which has has now been postponed. But protests are still legal, protected by Human Rights legislation which overrules Covid restrictions, though they must observe social distancing. So put on a mask and come and make your views clear.
This is what the People’s Assembly says about what is happening now:
This government has made it clear it wants working people to pay for the coronavirus crisis. Its pitiful offer to the nurses, the public sector pay freeze, lack of sick pay, while contracts are granted to their friends and cronies tells you that. Meanwhile there are further subsidies to companies while we are facing mass unemployment levels when furlough ends. Employers are going on the offensive, especially with notorious fire and rehire policies -but there has been widespread opposition to this including strike action.
There is visceral anger over the multitude of government failures during the pandemic, with one of the highest Covid death rates in the world. This government has failed us and this will be our first opportunity to take to the streets in opposition.
The Tories are also attempting to use the cover of the pandemic to sneak through the draconian ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill’. Due to reach its final reading in June this bill is an affront to democracy, an assault on our rights to protest and an attempt to silence dissent & opposition to the government. The Tories want to take away our rights to demonstrate for our rights! We cannot let that happen.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Anyone who writes about “the Deep State” will surely be accused of being a conspiracy theorist, but if you start with Wikipedia’s description of “a type of governance made up of potentially secret and unauthorised networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals” it seems clear to me that many aspects of British life can only be understood in such terms. Of course I don’t mean illuminati or freemasons (though they may play some part); the networks and forces in this country are largely those often thought of as public servants, including the police, the civil service, the security services, along with the royal family, press and media barons and other major capitalists – and the City of London.
Many of their activities are also very public, though the agendas behind them usually carefully hidden. Some are authorised – such as the City of London Remembrancer, a lobbyist representing the City’s interests inside parliament and employing six lawyers to help influence government and members of parliament. Others brag openly about some of their acheivements – as in the 1992 General Election headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It“.
Several official documents have made me think about the deep state in recent days. Perhaps most obviously is the report into the investigation of the 1987 axe murder of Daniel Morgan in the car park of the Golden Lion in Sydenham. I’ve not read the long report, but have been interested in the media coverage of it, which has centred on the accusation of “a form of institutional corruption” by the Metropolitan Police. It’s perhaps a new label for it, but it describes a culture of deliberate lying and misleading the public, feeding false information to the press, and protecting the team which has been so obvious in so many cases, notably that of a totally innocent Brazilian electrician who walked into a tube station and boarded a train on his way to work.
If you’ve relied on the mainstream press you are likely to have little idea of why Daniel Morgan was killed, and certainly know little or nothing of the involvement of the state, the press and others in the cover-up that followed. You can find out more by watching the DoubleDown News Video by Peter Jukes, ‘EXPOSED: Daniel Morgan Murder links Corrupt Cops & Murdoch Empire to the Heart of Government‘. It doesn’t give all the answers – and almost certainly the vital evidence related to the murder itself has long been destroyed – but it does make convincing links and raise much wider questions than the mainstream media.
A second fairly recent publication is into the Manchester Arena bombing, and as with most such reports it tells us what was already clear within days of the event about the failures of police and security – thanks to some good investigative journalism.
According to Wikipedia, Salman Abedi was born in Manchester to Libyan-born refugees given asylum here, as his father had been a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a Salafi jihadist organisation proscribed by the United Nations. Salman Abedi returned to Libya with his father to fight to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and when the war ended following the death of Gaddafi, he returned to the UK while his parents remained in Libya. He returned to Libya with his brother Hashem in 2014, again fighting for an Islamist group. The two brothers were rescued from Tripoli and returned to the UK along with other British citizens when the Libyan Civil War erupted.
Various reports about the danger posed by Salman had been made to the authorities, but these appear to have been ignored. Possibly this was because of his earlier activities in 2011 and 2014 which seem likely to have been facilitated by our security services, perhaps as some have alleged, with government backing, particularly in the war against Gadaffi.
Finally I’d like to mention the failure after 4 years to take any effective action over the guilty parties behind the Grenfell Tower, some of whom are said to have spent millions on lawyers to help them evade justice. Slowly, tediously slowly we are hearing damning testimonies from a few of those responsible as Phase II of the inquiry continues, now in Week 41, with some of the Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation giving evidence this week.
The pictures with this post come from the ‘Day of Rage’ march for Grenfell which took place seven days after the fire on 21st June 2017. The media had a field day over the title, with a fantasy extravaganza imagining violent insurrection, although it was organised by a group with a long history of peaceful protests, mainly over the UK’s iniquitous and illegal treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. And I think as usual police fed them some lurid lies.
At the time it was already clear that the fire was a result of the systemic failure to care about the provision of safe social housing; it wasn’t then clear exactly how many had been killed, as there were a number of Grenfell residents who were not recorded on any official lists.
The march was entirely peaceful – as journalists who knew anything about it had been sure it would be. It did briefly block traffic in Whitehall outside Downing St and went on to do the same for a short while in Parliament Square. I don’t think there were any reports of the actual event in mainstream media.
Four years later, the prospect of any prosecutions over the crimes that led to the fire still seems remote. But four years ago we knew who should be in the dock, and I wrote this comment back then:
People want answers, while Theresa May seems to be trying to focus just on one small technical matter of the nature of the cladding. But it is obvious that the cladding would burn and would spread fire – and for that reason there were regulations about where it could be used and how it had to be applied to be safe. But these regulations were not enforced. When they should have been tightened they were not. Inspections were privatised and there was no strict quality control. RKBC paid for a consultant to help them avoid proper fire inspections. Government ministers cut essential safety regulations as a matter of policty calling them ‘red tape’ , and failed to implement the recomendations made after earlier fires.. Structural modifications were approved for Grenfell that cut the number of exits from two to one. Gas supplies were improperly fitted to save costs. Fire doors were apparently removed, plastics which produce toxic cyanide fumes on burning are permitted…. No sprinkler systems, no water available to fight fires in the top floors and so on. Many of the faults that were a port of the disaster at Grenfell are common to many other high rise buildings, particularly those which are a part of our social housing stock.
Islam is now the UK’s second largest religion, with 2018 Office of National Statistics figures for Great Britain of 3,372,966, around 5.2% of the population, still considerably lower than the 36 million who declared themselves Christian in the 2011 census.
Along with the rise in numbers we have also seen a dramatic rise in Islamophobia, partly driven by the exploitation of the fear and hate against the terrorism of small groups of extremists here as well as in the US and France, and more recently by the rise of ISIS in Syria – where many of those who fought against and defeated ISIS there were also Muslims.
The ‘Prevent’ strategy introduced by the Labour Government after the London bombings as an aspect of counter-terrorism was essentially aimed at de-radicalising young Muslims through community-based programmes. It stigmatised the entire Muslim community – and did so at a time when extreme right-wing organisations were growing strongly and provoking racial tensions, and removed any real attention from their illegal behaviour – and the terrorist threat they posed.
The coalition government changed ‘Prevent’ radically. No longer was it concerned with attempts to promote integration though community programmes but shifted to a police-led system to indentify individuals who might be vulnerable to ‘radicalisation’ and to provide intervention packages for them. Unfortunately there seem to be no reliable indicators of such vulnerability.
The 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) made it a legal duty for “teachers, doctors, social workers and others to monitor and report people they consider vulnerable to extremism, embedding discrimination in public services.” As https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/fundamental/prevent/ Liberty point out, “The definition of extremism under Prevent is so wide that thousands of people are being swept up by it – including children engaging in innocuous conduct, people protesting climate change, and a nurse who began wearing a hijab.” They say the Prevent duty must be scrapped.
One Law for All, a campaigning organisation against religious based laws and in defence of equality and secularism, and in particular calling on the UK government to put an end to all Sharia courts and religious tribunals, and had organised a rally opposite Downing St om Sunday 20th June 2010.
Although the Church of England’s courts are now restricted to matters inside the church, courts based on Islamic Sharia Law and Jewish Beth Din courts still have official recognition as arbitration tribunals, particularly related to marriage. The Jewish courts work under the principle that “the law of the land is the law”, giving precedence to English law, but this is not always the case with Sharia courts.
A small group of Muslims dressed in black with a very powerful public address system had come to oppose the One Law for All protest. The claimed to be ‘Muslims Against the Crusades’ or ‘Muslims Against Crusaders’, a group widely thought to be a reincarnation of the banned ‘Islam4UK’ (itself a relaunch of the banned Al-Muhajiroun.)
Maryam Namazie of One Law for All made clear they were not anti-Muslim:
“The battle against Sharia law is a battle against Islamism not Muslims, immigrants and people living under Sharia law here or elsewhere. So it is very apt for the Islamists to hold a counter-demonstration against our rally. This is where the real battleground lies. Anyone wanting to defend universal rights, secularism and a life worthy of the 21st century must join us now in order to push back the Islamists as well as fringe far Right groups like the English Defence League and the British National Party that aims to scapegoat and blame many of our citizens for Islamism.”
And around 20 members of that fringe right-wing group the EDL were there to protest against the Muslims.
After a while police took them to one side and searched them, threatening me with arrest when I went to take pictures, before leading them away.
Half an hour later several hundred young British Asians arrived from a rally in Whitechapel against the EDL – but they were too late to confront them as the EDL had already been removed by police.
Soon the One Law for All rally ended and they marched off towards the Iranian Embassy in Kensington. I walked with them to Victoria and then went home.
Tower Hamlets council were pleased to apporpve a planning application in 2014 to convert an empty Victorian building in Cable St into a ‘Museum of Women’s History’, particularly since Whitechapel’s Women’s Library had closed the previous year. Owner Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe’s application featured pictures of suffragettes and trade union campaigners and promised the museum would be “the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history” and “recognise and celebrate the women of the East End who have shaped history, telling the story of how they have been instrumental in changing society. It will analyse the social, political and domestic experience from the Victorian period to the present day.” (Quoted in Wikipedia.)
On the basis of these promises the architects were persuaded to carry out the work for a lower than normal fee, and various others provided consultancy services at no cost. All, including the council, where shocked and felt duped when the covers were removed from the site in 2015 to reveal instead a ‘Jack the Ripper’ museum glorifying the unknown murderer of a number of working class women in the East End in 1888.
There were various protests organised outside the museum including some backed by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, who found his council unable to take any real action over the deception, various women’s groups and Class War. Finally the local council did refuse retrospective planning permission for the shop front and ordered changes to the shop’s signage and the removal of a metal roller shutter installed after a window was broken during protests in 2015. The shop owner appealed against the decision and lost. The projecting sign was removed at some time in 2017-8 but I think the shop has failed to comply with some other aspects.
On Sunday 19 June 2016 Class War and supporters including London Fourth Wave Feminists in cat masks, protested outside with toy plastic hammers offering to take down the shutter which had been declared illegal.
Police guarded the shop and prevented the protesters going inside but seemed generally fairly relaxed about the protest, with at least one making clear his distaste for the tacky tourist attraction they were having to protect. At one point they and the protesters were engulfed in red smoke after a couple of black-clad men arrived to join the protest, quickly fading away as the smoke cleared, with the protest then continuing in good spirits.
The good news is that the shop was put up for sale in April 2021 and is expected to close and take on some new use once sold. I’m not aware of any plans for its use and it will quite likely end up as some kind of offices, but it would be rather more satisfactory if it were bought and actually opened as a ‘Museum of Women’s History’. As I write it appears to still be unsold.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
One of the original tenants comes to talk with me She tells me she dreads having to move
I began work on Sunday 18th June 2017 on the Central Hill Estate at the south-east tip of Lambeth, built on a hill with splendid views towards central London. Across the road (also Central Hill) at the top is Norwood in LB Croydon, a few yards down from the estate takes you in to the LB of Southwark, while 5 minutes walk east brings you to Crystal Palace in the LB of Bromley.
As Ted Knight, the leader of Lambeth Council from 1978 until disqualified for refusing to cap rates in 1985 and demonised by the press as ‘Red Ted’, told us later in the morning when he came to express his support, the estate was designed and built in 1967-74 when Labour believed that “nothing was too good for the working people” and the estate was built to high specifications and is still in sound condition. Borough Architect Ted Hollamby had earlier brought in Rosemary Stjernstedt from the LCC where she was their first senior woman architect, and she was the team leader, working with structural engineer Ted Happold from Arup & Partners and architect Roger Westman.
The scheme was seen from the start as a living community, and included a burses’s hostel, a day card centre and a doctor’s surgery as well as a small row of shops, a club centre and community hall. It also had a district heating system, though this is no longer in use. The plans made great use of the sloping site and the estate is certainly one of the finest of that era. It has remained a popular estate, with relatively low crime rates, and quite a few of the original residents still live there and wish to stay.
It’s an estate that clearly should be listed, but Historic England decided not to do so in 2016, probably under pressure from politicians, particularly because of the scale of the site and the very attractive possibilities it presents for developers. The Twentieth Century Society were dismayed that their application was dismissed – and you can read their application on-line.
In 2017 Lambeth decided to completely demolish the estate and develop it with an extra 400 homes, roughly doubling the size, most of which will be for private sale. Many residents objected and Architects for Social Housing have developed alternative plans showing how the extra capacity could be achieved at lower cost retaining the existing housing and the main features of the estate.
Nicola Curtis, one of the elected representatives the council refuses to talk with
The council seem to have little concern for the current residents of the estate or their wishes. They have been banned from using the community resource centre on the estate, which was locked. A large mural was painted with council agreement on one of the walls in the estate – but the council then insisted that they remove the name ‘Central Hill’ from it. The council refused to talk with the two representatives of the residents elected to the Resident Engagement Panel. Normal maintenance of the paths and other aspects of the estate appears to have been stopped, and I found examples of very shoddy work by the council on the estate.
I took the train back into central London and to Parliament Square, wherre Veterans for Peace had organised a remembrace of Brian Haw on the 6th anniversary of his death. They held a small banner with the message ‘War is is not the solution to the problems we face in the 21st century’
Brian Haw began his camp here on 2 June 2001, and remained in place despite many attempts, legal and otherwise to remove him for almost 10 years, leaving only when arrested, for court appearances and to speak at protests at Trafalgar Square and Downing St until 1 January 2011 when he left England to receive treatment for his lung cancer in Berlin. He died in Germany in the early hours of 18 June 2011.
His ten years of protest and the frequent and repeated harassment undoubtedly hastened his decline and death. His protest in Parliament square was continued by Barbara Tucker who had joined him in 2005 and had been imprisoned twice for her role in the protest and arrested 48 times. The level of harassment increased and she went on hunger strike on 31st December 2012. Late in January 2013 she was taken into hospital close to death, and was treated for frostbite and exposure. Her protests continued on-line.
It was also the day of the annual Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day march in London, attended by several thousand from all over the country. Led by Imams and Neturei Karta anti-Zionist Jews, it called for ‘Freedom for Palestine’, and for all oppressed people’s across the world, and for a boycott of Israel.
As usual the march met with opposition from a small group of Zionists with Israeli flags and they were better organised than in previous years, with around 20 of them managing to block the route for around a quarter of an hour before police managed to move them on and allow the march to continue, though rather more slowly than usual.
Al Quds Day was inaugurated by Ayatollah Khomeini and some of the groups which support it may still receive support from the Iranian regime. Some of the protesters carried a small flag with both the Palestinian flag and that of Hezbollah and the message ‘Boycott Israel’. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group uses the same flag for both, and the militant wing is a proscribed group in the UK. The flag carried by some on the protest made clear in the small print it was in support of the political party.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
