Archive for May, 2012

Public Sector Protest

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

© 2012, Peter Marshall

The trouble with photographing pickets at strikes is that they tend to happen rather early in the day and often leave once other workers have arrived and either gone to work or refused to cross the picket line.  Of course I could get up early, and occasionally I do, though I don’t like it. But pickets sometimes happen at silly times like 6.30am, and for me that would mean probably mean leaving home more than an hour earlier, and some days I’m hardly in bed by then, and I feel too old to work without sleep. Early morning travel is also rather expensive, and unless I’m actually commissioned I seldom do anything in central London much before 10.30, so I was pleased to find when I arrived at Tate Britain around that time on the morning of the one day strike against pensions and service cuts by public sector workers that there was still a picket outside the building and I could take some pictures.

Perhaps the best was the image above, where I carefully lined up the placard in front of the Tate’s portico (and the wording TATE at top right) and the poster for its current Picasso show. There was too a certain artistic quality about the placard, and I rather liked its text, ‘Oi Posh Boys Nah!’

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Later, when I walked past the Houses of Parliament around midday I was suprised to find another picket I could photograph, though I didn’t stay long as I was late for a march which was starting around a quarter of a mile away on the other side of Westminster Bridge.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

I met the march just a few yards after its start, marching over the bridge towards Parliament. It’s always a little frustrating when people march across the bridge towards parliament because it’s very difficult to think of a way that works to take a picture with the very recognisable buildings in the background. The building just visible in the above image is actually relevant, since it’s a part of St Thomas’ Hospital – but it is neither memorable nor recognisable.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Taken with the 10.5mm semi-fisheye and converted.

Of course, once the marched moved past Big Ben along Bridge St, it was easy to include Big Ben behind the protest, and there was the usual scrum of photographers competing to do so. The 10.5mm semi-fisheye does give a little advantage in terms of being able to do so from a closer viewpoint, but you have to work very close to the march, which isn’t popular with other photographers as you tend get in their way. I usually work from the side of the march most of the time to avoid this.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

But this time, I think the best images I made were with a rather longer lens,  using the 28-105mm at roughly a standard lens setting (35mm on the D300.)

© 2012, Peter Marshall

I was using the same lens for the final set of pictures that I made of the march, looking down from on top of a wall a few feet above street level as the march came to its destination, Methodist Central Hall. The image above, centred around a placard reading ‘Corporate Greed Does Not Make A Democracy’ was, rather to my surprise, chosen by Demotix for their front page.

More at: Public Sector Pensions Strike and March

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Plod On the March

Monday, May 21st, 2012

© 2012, Peter Marshall

There is somehow something inherently slightly funny about the police protesting, but their march ten days ago wasn’t the easiest thing to photograph. There really was very little about the police themselves that made the kind of visual hook that we need to work on as photographers. Very few placards, and they were rather lacking in interest. People dressed in ordinary and generally rather dull clothes, walking without animation, rather like fans leaving a match where their team has suffered a humiliating defeat. The big visual idea that the Police Federation had come up with was black caps, 16,0000 of them, and it wasn’t one that I really found inspiring, try as I did.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

There were a few who had made more of an effort with t-shirts showing on the front the police warrant badge with the message ‘Her Majesty Gave Me This’ and on their back a knife and blood ‘May and Winsor gave me this’ but photographing the front and back of a t-shirt proved a little tricky (at least if like me you don’t set things up) and I didn’t quite manage it.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

So like many other photographers on the day I was pleased to see some real protesters who livened things up a bit, including a group from Occupy London, who joined in the march, though not entirely welcomed.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Their demands for the police had some overlap with those of the bulk of marchers, and certainly both are opposed to the privatisation of the police forces, but Occupy want the police to be more accountable and more concerned with justice. Our police have the job of enforcing a system of law in which the concept of property is paramount, and work for an administration that sometimes seems to care little about justice, and be more concerned with sweeping things under the extensive carpets of the Crown Prosecution Service and the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

One thing that many of us watching the police march were joking about was the number of marchers; police estimates being often on the ludicrously low side. The first number I was given by someone from the Police Federation was 10,0000, but later this went up to 20,000 and later still to 30,000. There were nothing like any of these numbers when I arrived at Millbank where the march gathered at the appointed time, but certainly they were belivable when marchers were still filing rather dumbly past me over an hour after the leading banner and I decided it was time to go home.

What had detained me so long was not the police, but other groups of protesters. A group with the ‘Defend the Right to Protest’ banner stood shouting about the many unexplained and often hardly investigated deaths at the hands of the police, in few if any of which has justice been seen to be done, and was faced by a row of a dozen or more on-duty uniformed police staring at them. If there were there to protect anyone they would have had their backs to these protesters.

But more interesting to me were the Space Hijackers, who, as at the previous police march in January 2008, were there with their ‘professional protest stall’, giving advice to the police on how to make effective placards and suggesting a few useful chants. Unlike in 2008, when many of the marchers were visibly angered by their presence and suggestions for placards (such as ‘No Justice No Peace We Are the Police‘ and ‘Without Us, Democracy Would Triumph‘) many of those marching past seemed to be visibly amused.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Not so the uniformed officers who stood in front of the stall glaring at them, and the Space Hijackers were threatened with arrest for displaying a placard with the acronym ‘ACAB‘ on it. As a kid in the 50s I learnt the traditional English song (I’ll sing you a song and it won’t take long…) and the abbreviation was in common use in the miner’s strike and as a prison tattoo long before it became a minor punk hit in the 80s. I’m told it can also mean All Cats Are Beautiful and Always Carry A Bible.

My London Diary: Police March Against Cuts and Winsor

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Energy Bash

Saturday, May 19th, 2012

My big problem in covering the ‘Big Six Energy Bash‘ protest outside the UK Climate Summit on 3 May was too many unsharp pictures – mainly a bad case of camera shake. You can see it in this picture:

© 2012, Peter Marshall

but in many images it was much worse, making them unusable.  The picture above was taken at 1/30 f4 with a 16mm lens, and some of the lack of sharpness may be due to subject movement, but most of the ruined images were at faster speeds – 1/50 or 1/60 – and with the 16mm I would normally expect most of them to have been sharp.

Of course in retrospect I should have increased the ISO above the ISO1250 I was working at, but that had served perfectly well for pictures earlier in the event – even when I was photographing people on the move. I just had not realised how dim the light was in the street in front of the hotel where the picture above was taken.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

A little movement blur – as on the figure in white at the left above – I always thinks adds a little life to images like this, taken a little earlier around the adjoining side of the hotel.

I think the real difference was not in the light but in what had happened to me. Shortly after taking the second picture I was knocked to the ground as people surged back when police rushed into the crowd of protesters, and just a minute or two before taking the top image I’d been hit full on by a protester bodily thrown in my direction by a police officer, again getting knocked to the ground.

Fortunately I wasn’t injured – just the odd bruise – and nor was my equipment, but I was quite shaken, and I picked myself up, said “Don’t worry, not your fault” to the protester who had landed on me and was apologising profusely and kept on working. Although I felt fine, judging by both the blurred pictures and the number of colleagues who came to ask me if I was ok, I was obviously not quite. The adrenaline rush was keeping me at it when really I should have gone and sat down somewhere quiet for a few minutes to recover. And perhaps have had a cup of tea.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

I did get some pictures that were reasonably sharp, although my personal favourite isn’t quite as sharp as I would wish.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Even with a 16mm there are limits to depth of field when working wide open (1/80 f4) and the woman at the front is very close to me, and was walking past, so may show some subject movement.  I did a little local brushing to sharpen her eyes (increasing sharpness and clarity) and also increased both contrast and exposure a little.

Other pictures were mainly in better light and I had fewer problems, though getting quite the picture you want in fairly fluid circumstances isn’t easy.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

It was a protest with dinosaurs and I did my best to capture some of the rather surreal possibilities. You can see more of the pictures I took in UK Energy Summit – Big 6 Bash on My London Diary.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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The Right To Photograph

Friday, May 18th, 2012

Don’t let them stop you taking photographs on the Glasgow subway is the headline on a fine piece by John Perivolaris in today’s Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ section, provoked by the news published in the Amateur Photographer that ” the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport announces plans to ban all photography on the Glasgow subway except that for which written permission has been obtained.”

The AP quotes the authority as stating that all photography is banned unless

a passenger has the written permission of SPT in relation to the activity.

The passenger must be carrying the permission, show it to an officer on request, and comply with any conditions of that permission.

Of course such a bye-law is impossible to enforce now that almost everyone has a camera phone, but that isn’t really the point. Perivolaris writes about some of the classics of photography such as Walker Evans’s pictures on the New York subway with a hidden camera later published as ‘Many Are Called’.

I’ve taken the occasional image on the London Underground over the years, working discretely to avoid disturbing the people I was photographing. I hope I do so with a proper respect for the people I am photographing, but if we hope to record something meaningful about the human condition most of the time we need to work without permission.

But the only permission that we ever may need is not that of the company the runs the subway – essentially an extension of the street – but of the individuals we are photographing. There are times when I ask permission and when I feel it would be impolite not to do so (and I think many photographers, including some very well known photographers in works that have made their reputations have been inexcusable impolite.) I feel I need to ask not when I am taking someone’s picture, but when to do so I need to intrude on their personal space, whether or not they would notice it.

I don’t often travel on the Glasgow subway, but when I do so I’ll feel honour bound to break their bye law and take pictures. I hope all other photographers – and indeed anyone who has a camera on their phone or otherwise – will join me.

Back in the 1990s my friend Paul Baldesare carried out a couple of project on the tube you can see online. In Zone 1 he worked in colour, and previously in Down The Tube he used black and white. Both projects are also available as Blurb books.

© 1991, Peter Marshall

I saw Paul’s work and decided he had done such a good job I wouldn’t try to emulate him, but he did inspire me to photograph on buses for a transport project which included both our work, along with several other photographers, shown at the Museum of London.

© 1992, Peter Marshall

Some of the people I photographed did notice they were being photographed, although most remained unaware, even when I was making no attempt to hide what I was doing. I didn’t use a hidden camera or anything special, although sometimes, as obviously in the lower image I worked with the camera – a small and quiet model –  held on my lap.

As I’ve written before, only one person I photographed on the buses complained. He was sitting opposite me wearing sandals, shorts and a very large snake, and was on his way to Covent Garden where he expected tourists to pay him to take photographs of their partners with his snake. His objection was I think because he was off-duty and I wasn’t paying. When he objected I didn’t really get a chance to argue with him, as two elderly ladies butted in and told him in no uncertain terms that if he got on buses dressed like that he should expect to have his picture taken!

Book Sale

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

Blurb books are very nice, but because of the way they are produced ‘on demand’ they are expensive. I want to make my books easier for people to buy, and one way is for me to order in quantity, and then pass on the savings from that to others.

So I now have a small stock of all of my books, and can supply them to UK addresses only at a significant saving over the Blurb prices. UK only as a part of that saving comes from the price including a lower delivery charge using UK postal services rather than the courier delivery used by Blurb.

© 2009 Peter Marshall

Blurb’s prices seem to go up every time I check them out, and currently a book such as my London’s May Queens costs around £35 including delivery. Direct from me I can supply it for £25 including delivery – though prices may have to rise when my current stocks are sold. But here is my full price list at the moment (16.05.2012) and details of how to order. I’ll try and keep the list up to date on one of my web pages here.

Book Sales: Blurb books by Peter Marshall

Most Blurb books by Peter Marshall are available from him to UK Addresses ONLY at or below the Blurb price but with free delivery (Blurb delivery charges on small orders are ridiculous.) You can find details of all the books in my Blurb bookstore. And if you request it, I’ll sign the books too.

Making an order for books

Please email to be sent the further details needed to place an order, which can then be made either by post including a cheque or by email and bank transfer. Prices will change as Blurb prices change and will be confirmed when you email.

Currently available (all softcover only – click on titles for Blurb book details):

London’s May Queens £25.00

2006: My London Diary £25.00

Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood £25.00

In Search Of Atget: Paris 1984 £25.00

Still Occupied: A View of Hull 1977-85 £30.00

Photo Paris: 1988 £25.00

Before the Olympics: The Lea Valley 1981-2010 £25.00

1989: 20 photographs £17.50

Hardcover versions of some books are available from Blurb, and there is an e-book (iPadf/iPhone) version of London’s May Queens only available from Blurb for £2.49

4000 Days Today

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

© 2004 Peter Marshall

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Brian Haw‘s protest in Parliament Square, though certainly he had been there some time before I first got to know him, longer still when I took the first pictures of him that I posted on My London Diary in 2004, when he had been protesting for almost three years. (I may have photographed him earlier on film – but very few of my film images have made the web.)

© 2004 Peter Marshall

At first I’d thought of him more as some kind of eccentric rather than a serious protester, and couldn’t really see a way to make a story about him, except when he took part in other protests that were happening in Parliament Square.

© 2005 Peter Marshall

What changed all that was the attempt by the Blair government to pass an Act of Parliament which was in part obviously solely aimed at his protest. SOCPA was a very large hammer to crack a rather small embarrasment to the government, and turned out to have been poorly drafted and to miss the intended target altogether.

© 2005 Peter Marshall

Over the years I talked to Brian many times, often calling in as I was passing, occasionally taking photographs of him or his display. My favourite image was during another protest, with him wearing a t-shirt designed by disablement activist Dan Wilkins, a picture that both men appreciated.

© 2007, Peter Marshall

I was in the square for the parties celebrating his five years there, then his six… On one occasion when police dragged him away and pushed him into the back of a van, one of quite a few times he was arrested and kept in a cell overnight.

© 2009, Peter Marshall

I watched as Brian’s health deteriorated, and was saddened by his death, but of course his protest has continued, with Barbara Tucker leading a small team of supporters. The harassment which has always been present from police (no doubt pressured by their political masters) has stepped up recently. Under the repressive Police Reform And Social Responsibility Act 2011 (PASRA) the tents belonging to the Parliament Square Peace Campaign were removed in January, and Barbara Tucker was arrested at 3 am on 17 Jan. She was released around 5.30pm that day and returned to Parliament Square to join those who had continued the protest in her absence.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

Pressure is increasing on the campaign. On the morning of 10 May police came first thing and spent 90 minutes “searching” the few square meters of their display in the early morning. Three days later, at 2.30am on Sunday 13 May, police and Westminster Council came and took away Barbara Tucker’s two blankets, despite there being no legal basis for their action. The law forbids any “structure designed solely or mainly to sleep in” but blankets are not a structure.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

You can see the few pictures that I took on my visit last Thursday in the post 4000 Days in Parliament Square on My London Diary.  You can also use the ‘Search’ facility on the site to find more of my pictures of Brian Haw, Barbara Tucker and the Parliament Square police campaign.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

More On May Day

Monday, May 14th, 2012

Between the official London May Day march and photographing some of the Occupy London protesters at last managing to occupy their original target, the London Stock Exchange (although only on a token basis – and there are now more pictures on My London Diary) I photographed two very different protests.

I knew that the protests against workfare – unpaid labour that unemployed people are pressured to carry out at least sometimes under threat of losing their benefits – which had begun earlier in the day and had been continued by some of the marchers supporting UK Uncut and the autonomous bloc during the May Day march were expected to continue after then end of the march. I’d been given a hint that one group might target the company who run the scheme whose offices are in deepest Soho, around 15 minutes walk from Trafalgar Square. I left the rally in Trafalgar Square to check, but nothing was happening in the area – and I suspect the protesters were unable to find the place and turned elsewhere, or had simply changed their mind. It isn’t unusual for protests not to happen, sometimes even when they have been quite widely advertised, though I was sure that workfare protests were going to happen elsewhere later.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Placards, coffin and Merlin Emmanuel who was one of the organisers

From checking on this I caught a bus to Holborn, where I knew that there was going to be a protest against the so-called ‘Independent Police Complaints Commission’ or IPCC.  Set up in 2004 to replace a discredited body that was widely seen as simply there to deflect public anger without and prevent any real investigation or redress against the police, this replacement body has turned out to be equally lacking in independence or powers. Recently even its boss has admitted it needs reform, when it was not even able to question the 38 officers involved in the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, whose killing by police sparked off last Summer’s disturbances.

Although in general the British police forces are among the best in the world, they have problems, and have unfortunately failed to deal with them. We can all name high-profile cases where the police have failed, have been shown to be racist, have used inappropriate levels of force, often with fatal consequences, have issued statements known to be false to the press, have lied in court evidence and more and of course there are many more cases that have not received attention in the media. We know that in general police look after their own, and there are few effective investigations of police corruption or abuses, and that prosecutions of police are extremely rare. Cases tend too be neglected, drawn out to excessive length and pushed under legal carpets on into the long grass. And the IPCC, staffed with a high proportion of former police has turned out to be some of the longer grass.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
The Scots also have a system to not investigate complaints such as
those involving the abuse of Hollie Greig in Aberdeen

Photographically the main difficulty in covering the event was that little interesting was happening. There were a few posters, placards and banners, and a black coffin with the message RIP IPCC, but it didn’t add up to a great deal to make pictures with. It was just a very static event with people, including a number who were videoing the event well back from the speakers , making it difficult to take pictures without getting in their way.

What interest there was came mainly from the speakers, and some of these were rather undemonstrative, even while some of what they had to say was a powerful indictment of the police and the IPCC. It wasn’t easy to find different angles, and this wasn’t helped by a strong low sun. Things got a little more interesting for me later because of some of the people involved.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Marcia and Samantha, sisters of Sean Rigg, killed in Brixton Police Station in August 2008
© 2012, Peter Marshall

I’ve photographed Marcia and Samantha Rigg on various occasions over the years since their brother Sean was killed shortly after being taken in to Brixton Police station  in August 2008. As well as campaigning for a proper investigation of his death they have also become leading campaigners for the proper investigation of all deaths in custody and for effective control of police behaviour. Although they were limited in what they could say because of the forthcoming inquest, they gave damning testimony on the total failure and inadequacy of the IPCC.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Although occasionally the sun went behind a cloud, using flash fill helped improve the lighting in the other images I took of them.  But working from the side the lighting with the sun shining almost directly into my lens was considerably more dramatic.  The kind of result shown here needed considerable work in Lightroom to burn down the sunlit areas as well as adding brightness and contrast to the shadows.

From here I got a bus back to Oxford St with a colleague. Getting on buses on days where extensive protests are taking place is often a mistake, as the traffic can get very badly held up, partly by protesters but often mainly by police blocking off much larger areas than the protest. We got stuck in Oxford St and could tell that something was happening when the police helicopter that we had seen from our seat at the front of the top deck was hovering was more or less directly above us. I spotted a crowd and police a couple of hundred yards away and we rushed downstairs. The traffic was completely at a standstill but the bus was between stops and at first the driver refused to open the doors to let us off, but my colleague and the other passengers persuaded him and we rushed to join the protesters running along Oxford St.

The light was tricky here too, shining low directly behind the protesters.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

That’s my hand at top left – without using it to supplement the ineffectual lens hood the image would have been a mass of flare – you can see a nice ‘rainbow’ effect at bottom right. I could crop it out, but that would lose some of the figure in blue below, which I think would be a shame. Most people don’t realise it is my hand, which after all was there anyway, so why should I remove it?

© 2012, Peter Marshall

A little later, in the Charing Cross Rd there was some nice rim lighting – and again fill flash was essential. One big advantage of modern flashes and cameras is that flash can be used at fast shutter speeds – 1/320th in this case.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

By the time we got to McDonalds on The Strand there was more strong side-lighting which made my picture of a man with a megaphone outside the store more effective – and this time I managed without flash fill, but with quite a lot of work in Lightroom.

You can now see my work from the whole of May Day on My London Diary:

London May Day March
Abolish The Corrupt IPCC
May Day Workfare Protest
Stock Exchange Occupied

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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May Day – See Red

Friday, May 11th, 2012

Red isn’t my favourite colour in photography, although it’s sometimes been said that every good picture needs a little bit of it. Nonsense of course, but while a little bit of red is fine, it’s very easy to have too much of it, and neither film nor digital is all that good in coping with large amounts of bright colour in that area of the spectrum. Which can cause something of a problem on May Day.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

With red road,  red bus and red buildings as well as the clothing and banners there isn’t really a great deal that isn’t red in this picture, and getting a truly believable skin tone on the face was something of a challenge with all the reflected red light.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Most of the brighter red areas of these pictures needed some burning in to get some tonality, and the red tends to make other colours – such as the yellows in the above picture – look too wishy-washy and they have to have some attention too.  I think I’ve perhaps overdone it on the flag at the bottom left in the picture above, but it certainly needed some darkening.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

All the big heads made me want to do something with them, and I was attracted by the solidity and the expression of the man in the foreground, and though it might not show his best side I didn’t feel it was too unkind. But one face that truly makes me feel uneasy is the huge portrait of Stalin. Although he was ‘Uncle Joe’ to the press in the days of my childhood, and a vital figure in winning the war against fascism, it’s hard to understand why there are people still prepared to carry his banner or wear his t-shirt.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

London’s May Day celebrations bring together “trade unionists, workers from the many international communities in London, pensioners, anti-globalisation organisations, students, political bodies and many others in a show of working class unity” and it’s a shame that May Day isn’t a bank holiday so that more people can take part.  This year’s May Bank Holiday came almost a week later.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Jim Connell’s word’s, written at the time of the dock strike in 1889 are stirring and for an hour or so a year in London the red flag is flying over at least a small part of the capital. Here is his second verse (in web colour scarlet #FF2400) for any of you who have forgotten it.

Then raise the scarlet standard high
Beneath its fold we’ll live and die
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We’ll keep the red flag flying here

I didn’t hear the words sung in English this May Day, (and its a long time since many in the Labour party sang them with any conviction, and the tune makes most of us think of Christmas trees.) The Internationale which was also getting played certainly has a better tune, but the standard English words are impossible to sing.

Few of the flags and banners in my pictures are scarlet, although I’m not sure that the colours are entirely true to hue, but many seem to be a little bluer shade of red, and, as I’ve deliberately made some darker than they appear to retain some tonality.  In the real world, colours don’t always look the same anyway, and change in different lighting conditions. You can see more of my work from the day on My London Diary in London May Day March.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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April On My London Diary

Friday, May 11th, 2012

My work for April is now all on line on My London Diary, and it was a busy month for me, and rather more varied than most. I was trying to take things a little easier, but things didn’t really work out that way.

Walking the Rip-Off – Heygate & Aylesbury
Support For Palestinian Hunger Strike

Big Ride for Safe Cycling

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Workers Memorial Day
Protest Supports ‘Pussy Riot’
Olympic Course Day 2
Olympic Course Day 1
Climate Rush Spring Clean London’s Air

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Disabled Activists Block Trafalgar Square
Free Syria Embassy Air Strike
EDL and UAF At Home Office
Binfield Walk
Gravesend Vaisakhi
Olympic Site Revisited
Gasworks Dock Revived
Class War Snack Attack
Roma Nation Day Of Resistance

© 2012, Peter Marshall
International Pillow Fight Day
Syrians Continue Protest Against Asad
World Health Day: Lansley’s Bill
Christians Celebrate Good Friday
Twickenham & Richmond

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Southwark’s Shame

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Last June I wrote a post The Scandal of London’s Largest Ghost, accompanying my panoramas of the deserted Heygate estate at the Elephant and Castle, a well-designed 1970s estate with years of useful life remaining – and which a council commissioned survey had concluded was not a ‘failing estate’ but nevertheless they decided to demolish it.  It was a decision based on finance – getting the debt off the council books and making millions for the developers – but the financial crisis has stalled the process. It is shameful that a Labour council should be essentially selling off publicly owned assets for private gain, but even more shameful that when London has its worst housing crisis ever that some 1300 homes in a prime location in the inner city should be left empty since the residents were ‘decanted’ in 2008, four years ago.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Community garden created on the Heygate estate, April 2012

Many of those residents were also shamefully treated. The council had a policy in recent years of using short term contracts for lettings, enabling them to disclaim responsibility for re-housing many of those who lived there; others were given little choice but to move to developments outside the area. Those who had bought the leasehold of their properties were also shabbily treated, often being pressured into accepting a fraction of the true market value of their properties.

In Walking the Rip-Off – Heygate & Aylesbury you can read more about what has happened on the Heygate estate and what is now happening on the nearby and much larger Aylesbury estate with some pictures (including a few panoramas) that I took during a walk around the two estates with some of the very few remaining residents of Heygate and tenants from the Aylesbury estate.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
A garden on the Heygate estate, April 2012

One of great strengths of Heygate is its green spaces, and some of these are now being gardened by remaining residents, former residents and other supporters, and were one of the things I focussed on. It is unfortunate for their cause that a few residents are unhappy about being photographed, although most were  welcoming.

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Taplow on the Aylesbury Estate, April 2012

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Carpenters Estate, April 2012

Of course, Southwark isn’t the only council acting shamefully towards its tenants and those in need of housing. On the Facebook site of CARP! you can read about Newham’s similar treatment of the Carpenters  Estate next to the Olympic site. It’s worth looking at an Open University video which looks at this and the Excalibur Estate in Lewisham which I photographed in the 1990s and in 2010 in Excalibur Estate.

© 2010, Peter Marshall
Excalibur Estate, Catford, 2010

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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