Re-photo

In the past I’ve bought HP printers. Both inkjet and laser printers for the college at which I taught, and we still have an HP Laserjet 1100 attached to my wife’s computer, still going strong after around 18 years, though now always with cheap compatible toners. I won’t buy HP – and their toners cost 5 times as much.

I probably first bought HP printers after seeing them on the HP stand at BETT, which used to be known as the British Educational Training and Technology Show but is now billed as the “World’s Leading EdTech Event” and likes to hide the British bit of its name. Back when I first went it was at the Barbican, then moved to Olympia, where I took my first ever pictures with a digital camera on one of the stands (and wasn’t too excited by the quality) and is now held every January at the Excel Centre on London’s Royal Victoria Docks.

People do come from all around the world to the show now – not that there is really any need to, but it’s a good excuse to get out of school for a few days and get a trip to London and your hotel paid for by your employer, though for me it was only a day off and the train fare. You can pick up a few ideas at the various sessions and stands of all the leading companies, and I certainly saved my employers money by getting some good deals on gear, but that was before the days there was so much on line that big shows like this with all the travel etc are really just a perk for those who get to dine out on them. How much longer we can waste all the carbon involved?

But now I certainly wouldn’t buy from HP, as I’ve read all the information from Inminds at this and other protests, and know the vital role that HP play in supporting the often illegal and inhumane persecution of Palestinians by the Israeli state and its military. Inminds launched its campaign to boycott HP in September 2014 and I’ve covered a number of their protests at various venues since then. You can read why they boycott HP on their web site, which also has some of their pictures from the protests and graphics which show some of the posters too small to read in my pictures.

I didn’t stay too long at the protest – the courtyard in front of the exhibition centre is a cold and windswept place. It’s also one of London’s many (and increasing) privately owned public spaces, and although the centre’s management don’t try to prevent the protest, they do try to marginalise them. Throughout the time I was there the police were constantly coming to the protest organisers and trying to move them further away or restrict their activities, though their requests were not always complied with.

Quite a few of those going into the show came to read the posters and others came across when they came out from the exhibition for a cigarette break. There were a couple of people who reacted adversely – one complained bitterly and loudly that they were not protesting about the mistreatment of Armenians, and was told if he felt strongly about the issue he should organise a protest. Police eventually led him away and talked to him and he went on into the exhibition.

Another man threw a hefty show catalogue at the protesters, fortunately missing them and complained that they were anti-semitic. They told him that they had no issues with Jews – and several of the protesters were Jewish, handed his catalogue back and told him to behave himself, and again police came and told him to keep the peace.

But there were more who came to praise the protesters and thank them, taking photographs on their phone and tweeting about the protest, including one woman who then went along the line of protesters, hugging and kissing each in turn.

More pictures: Ban HP from BETT show

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Until recently, my main contact with King’s University in the Strand in London has been waiting for buses outside it, most usually for the short journey to Waterloo or Westminster. A lot of buses stop there, though as often in London you can wait a little while before the one you need comes along. And while you do, there are giant portraits along the frontage of Kings (aka KCL) of some of the alumni listing their achievements.

And it is an impressive pantheon. King’s began in 1829 when King George IV and the Duke of Wellington got together to found it, and not surprisingly it got a royal charter that same year. In 1836 it got together with University College London (which predated it by 3 years) to found London University. In more recent years it has added to the names it can proudly display by a number of mergers, taking in among others Queen Elizabeth College (formerly its Ladies Department), Chelsea College of Science and Technology, the Institute of Psychiatry, the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals and the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery.

Something it can’t be so proud of is the way it has treated its cleaners. So ashamed that it actually has employed another company to do its dirty work, outsourcing the cleaning to Servest.

Cleaners at King’s are paid less than the London Living Wage and are overworked, often expected to do the work of colleagues who are sick or on holiday in addition to their own. They have conditions of employment significantly worse than King’s would dream of giving staff directly employed by them, getting only statutory sick pay and other benefits and are subjected to arbitrary disciplinary measures. They work in King’s to keep King’s clean – but King’s denies any responsibility for them.

Perhaps surprisingly, the cleaners are members of one of our major trade unions Unison. And much less surprising was that in the ballot they voted 98% in favour of taking strike action. And this rather dull day I was photographing their lunchtime rally on the second day of their strike. They had been picketing there since the early morning, but were still in great spirits, blowing horns, speaking, shouting and dancing, supported by some King’s students and staff, and Unison members from other branches, as well as some cleaners from elsewhere in other unions including the UVW. There does seem to be an increasing feeling that low paid workers need to work together to get a wage they can live on and for cleaners to no longer be treated like the dirt they clean.

King’s College cleaners strike
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A week after their march in Brixton, Movement for Justice returned to South London for another march against deportation, this time in Peckham, another area where immigration raids have met with anger from the local population.

The protesters are calling on the governments of Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Pakistan and Afghanistan to end their collusion with the racist UK government. They say that immigration raids and mass deportation charter flights are targeting long-established African, Asian and Caribbean communities, dividing families, deporting people who have built lives in the UK with parents, partners and children here.

One of several stops for short speeches to let everyone know why they are protesting

They compare these flights to the ships used in the slave trade, calling them modern slave ships, with deportees shackled with a guard on each side in a cruel and divisive act of racist discrimination.

High Court decisions have ruled that the Home Office has exceeded its legal powers in its deportation of people between 2005 and 2015 with over 10,000 asylum seekers having been illegally deported from the UK in that period. But those who oversaw these illegal acts – including Theresa May have gone unpunished.

Among those supporting the march were SOAS Detainee Support (SDS), Anti Raids Network, Zimbabwe Human Rights Organization Mazimbabweans, Jewdas, BLMUK, London Mexico Solidarity, Sisters Uncut South East London and Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.

More at Peckham march against deportations.

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