My May Day started as usual with the march from Clerkenwell Green, dominated visually by members of the Turkish and Kurdish communities and with the usual mix of trade unionists and left-wing groups, perhaps even more international in nature than in previous years.
The march to Trafalgar Square was made a little livelier than usual by the presence of Class War and other anarchist and anti-capitalist protesters, some of whom took over the whole of the road rather than keep to one carriageway. Police tried hard to control them and made at least one arrest, which led to some scuffles.
One issue that dominated the rally in Trafalgar Square was the strike against privatisation at the National Gallery which overlooks the square, and in particular the victimisation by the management of Candy Udwin, the PCS rep there.
Later in the afternoon anti-capitalist protesters met up at Tower Hill, and led by lass War and their Lucy Parsons banner went on to block Tower Bridge this afternoon and blocked traffic, calling for social housing rather than social cleansing for Londoners and an end to cuts in foundation courses and other aspects of education. It was a lively event, and I left them when they marched off along Tooley St past London Bridge to protest in Westminster.
I walked back across Tower Bridge and on to Aldgate where Class War were organising their ‘Reclaim the Beats’ “epic street party” outside the tower block where they had held around 30 weekly ‘Poor Doors’ protests against the separate entrance down a side alley for the social housing tenants in the block.
A huge cheer went up as they unfurled a new banner showing leading politicians with the message “All Fucking Wankers”, a replacement for that seized by police at an earlier protest. Although it had later been judged to be an acceptable political comment, the police contrived to lose it rather than face the indignity of returning it to Class War.
A few minutes later a mobile sound system in the form of a small house on wheels with ‘Affordable Housing’ across its roof and the party really kicked off. After a few minutes people moved out to block the main road and then to march off to protest at Tower Bridge and in Bermondsey. I was too tired to go with them and instead went down the stairs into Aldgate East tube.
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.
Two names dominated the 2014 May Day march and rally in London: Bob Crow and Tony Benn. I’d photographed both at the event in previous years, though Benn, often the main speaker, had been too ill to speak in 2013. He died on 14th March, aged 88.
Bob Crow’s death, three days before Benn, from a heart attack was more of a shock, as he was only 52 and seemed at the height of his powers, certainly one of the most effective and most loved union leaders around, respected too by most of the bosses he negotiated with. His union, the RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) turned out in force to remember him and Benn.
On My London Diary I wrote:
“As I walked towards it, from several hundred yards away it was clear that this year’s march was going to be larger than usual. Although I arrived before the time for meeting and over an hour before the march was due to start I could already see a forest of flags and banners. In previous years the march has been dominated by those communities in London from countries where May Day is celebrated on a huge scale, particularly London’s Turkish and Kurdish peoples. While UK unions such as the RMT had been present, their numbers have been rather smaller. But today the RMT was out in force to honour its leader, Bob Crow, who died on March 11th. There were RMT banners from around the country and I lost count of how many, and hundreds if not thousands of flags and placards.”
All the usual groups were there too, making this the largest May Day March in London at least since I had been attending them.
Len McCluskey, Frances O’Grady and Jeremy Corbyn were among those holding the main banner as it arrived in Trafalgar Square, and I photographed them and others speaking at the event.
Despite the rain, a large crowd remained in the square to listen to the speeches.
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.
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Another London May Day March and rally – and I went into some details on My London Dairy:
The march, organised by The London May Day Organising Committee, was supported by the Greater London and South East TUC ( GLATUC & S&ERTUC), UNITE London & Eastern Region, CWU London Region, PCS London & South East Region, ASLEF, RMT, TSSA, MU London, FBU London & Southern Regions, GMB London & Southern Regions, UNISON Greater London Region, NPC, GLPA and other Pensioners’ organisations and organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, Nigerian migrant workers & communities plus many other trade union & community organisations.
As in previous years the rally, although it had some rousing speeches from some leading figures on the left, including Len McCluskey, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, didn’t really reflect the diversity of the march – which was emphasised by the many young protesters who had climbed up onto the plinth and continued their protest there.
There were relatively few anti-capitalist and anarchist groups present this year, and I wasn’t aware of any separate events organised by them, so it was perhaps a rather less interesting May Day than some.
It was a large march and rally, though not massive, and it brought much of central London to a standstill for an hour or two, with strikes on the day at closing some government offices. But as usual,, although many newspapers and broadcasters reported May Day events around the world, and some of the odder events in towns and villages in the UK, there appeared to be a total media blackout on what was happening in London.
As so often, if you want to know what is happening you can’t rely on the mainstream media to tell you. Reports on Facebook and elsewhere by independent media organisations as well as some foreign-based news sources had reports on London’s May Day – and of course my own pictures and short description were online within a few hours of my arriving home, and shortly after on Facebook, with a larger selection of images appearing a few days later on My London Diary.
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.
The 2012 march lived up to its billing in bringing together “trade unionists, workers from the many international communities in London, pensioners, anti-globalisation organisations, students, political bodies and many others ” to march through London, and was perhaps even more varied than in previous years.
There were the usual large groups of Turkish and Kurdish socialists and others from around the world, and on My London Diary I wrote:
Among the various key issues for workers raised by this year’s march were the attacks on pensions and other cuts, the closure of one third of Remploy factories with the loss of jobs by more than 1500 disabled people, and the workfare scheme which is being used to compel the unemployed to give free labour to companies or lose their job-seekers allowance, leading to less paid jobs being available.
At the back of the march were several hundred autonomous bloc protesters who stopped to protest on the Strand outside some of the shops using free labour or avoiding paying taxes, including branches of McDonalds, Greggs, Topshop and Pizza Hut. They had been accompanies and harassed on the march by a large group of police, and when they stopped to protest there were minor scuffles and several arrests. Occupy protesters put up several tents when the marchers reached Trafalgar Square, and were forced by police to remove them.
Samantha Rigg speaks about the killing by police of her brother Sean
Outside the IPCC offices on the Strand, Campaign 4 Justice and Merlin Emmanuel, Smiley Culture’s nephew had organised a rally against the corruption of the IPCC which was set up to replace the previous corrupt Police Complaints Authority. The IPCC is dominated by former police officers and they called for a citizen-led body that has proper powers and true independence from the police.
After the rally in Trafalgar Square, London Solidarity Federations and Occupy London led a crowd of several hundred to protest outside various branches of shops which were taking part in Workfare schemes. I joined them on Oxford St, where there were a series of minor skirmishes with police who tried to prevent them entering the shops. The protesters finally returned to Charing Cross police station and the Strand, and suddenly the police went off shift and disappeared.
The protesters held a discussion, undecided about how to proceed without their opposition, and some, led by Occupy London, decided to head for the City with the ‘Reclaim May Day‘ maypole, stopping on the way for a very short protest at the Royal Courts of Justice.
A van of City of London Police came to take a brief look at them before driving away, and they made their way to the Stock Exchange unescorted. After posing for pictures they then occupied the entrance to the closed Stock Exchange and were soon joined by a handful of police officers.
People were beginning to party in the square and it looked as if little was likely to happen, so I left for home. Eventually the protest here ended around 11pm.
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.
May Day 2011 was a Sunday which helped swell the numbers gathering at Clerkenwell Green, though perhaps the trade union groups were rather less numerous than usual. But of course the usual communist and socialist groups were there, and the CPGB-ML with their large image of Stalin and a banner with a quote from him with letters picked out in yellow to spell ‘resist’ along with the word revolution.
A new group in this year’s march was ‘Justice for Domestic Workers‘ (J4DW), a self-help group for migrant domestic workers and part of the hotel, restaurant and catering branch of the Unite the union. They were using the event to launch a new petition urging the UK government to change its position and endorse the 2011 ILO convention on Domestic Workers. The UK joined the ILO in 1919, but since the Tories came to power in 2010 have only ratified conventions on Maritime Labour and Fishing.
There was a large group from the Latin American Workers’ Association, calling for justice for refugees and asylum seekers, with the message ‘No-One Is Illegal’ carried by two of their younger supporters.
As in previous years there was a very strong representation of nationalist communist groups from London’s Turkish, Kurdish and Cypriot communities as well as a large group of Sri Lankan Tamils calling for the war criminals from Sri Lanka to be taken to the International Criminal Court and asking why the UN and NATO had not intervened when their community in Sri Lanka was facing massacre.
I followed the march a short distance, stopping to photograph until the end of the march had gone passed me, then decided to go home rather than continue to the rally in Trafalgar Square.
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.
Perhaps because in 2010 May Day was a Saturday and an election was coming up in five days time there were more things than usual happening as well as the usual Trade Union & Socialist May Day March from Clerkenwell Green. This had its usual mix of communist and socialist groups from London’s various communities along with trade unions, campaign groups and others but with a strong anarchist bloc, including the Black Horse of Anarchy and an executioner.
Among the trade union groups were the National Union of Sex Workers.
While the official TUC rally took place in Trafalgar Square I joined the May Day ElectionCarnival in Parliament Square. There the Black Horse of Anarchy which had marched from Clerkenwell with an effigy of Nick Griffin was joined by the three other Horses of the Apocalypse which had made shorter journeys from the Westminster campaign headquarters of the three political parties, bringing with them effigies of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.
There was an extremely crowded and rather confused series of executions with plenty of gore, not easy to photograph, though I took rather a lot of pictures.
The sky turned black but the storm held off for the heads of class traitors to be exhibited on poles
and the Space Hijackers to finally arrive with their ‘Spoil Your Vote Campaign Bus‘, which had been touring London. Their message was clear:
“If voting actually changed anything they would ban it. Did you get to vote on the Iraq war? Did you get to vote about regulations on banking? Did you get to vote on MP’s expenses? Is this a democracy or a bad joke?
Why play by the rules in this farce of an election?
Every spoilt ballot gets counted and shown to the candidates in that constituency, so why not reject the lot of them and tell them what you think with your ballot paper?”
Rhythms of Resistance had made their way from Parliament Square to the Leake Street graffiti tunnel, where the Rave Against The Machine continued in the dry as the storm broke overhead.
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.
Continuing my short series of posts about previous May Day celebrations in London that I photographed.
I photographed them after they had photographed me
As usual the London May Day committee had organised a march from Clerkenwell Square and my day started with police photographing me as I arrived to photograph the event. As I commented:
It’s hard to see any real point in this other than a kind of mild intimidation of journalists and difficult not to regard it as an attack on free speech and the freedom of the press. Definitely a distortion of the role of the police in a free society, it is also one that distracts them from the vital tasks they have at the present time.
Numbers on the march were lower than in previous years, perhaps because it was also a day when elections were taking place in London, and the weather probably didn’t help. But there were those with trade union banners, including the sacked Gate Gourmet workers. As usual there were large groups of marchers from the Turkish and Kurdish communities, and I particularly liked the picture at the top of this post, but there are many more of them on My London Diary.
Many accounts of May Day write about its origins with the The Second International calling for a commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs as an international workers day, but seldom mention its special significance for the Turkish groups:
For Turkish groups, the day also commemorates the 1977 Taksim Square massacre, when around 40 people in a crowd of around half a million celebrating May Day were killed and around 200 injured by firing from the Hotel International. None of those responsible has been brought to justice but both Turkish secret police and CIA have been implicated. At least at the moment our own police are only using cameras.
As the marchers left Clerkenwell on their way to Trafalgar Square I made my way to one of my least favourite areas of London, Mayfair, where the Space Hijackers had announced a celebration, a recreation of the Mayfayres which gave the area its name and were banned in 1708 because of their boisterous disorder.
Camilla and Boris took turns in the stocks
They had made their plans after Police Commander Bob Broadhurst had attempted to justify the very different policing of pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese protesters during the Olympic Torch debacle in London by claiming the pro-China group were not restricted because they were celebrating rather than protesting. As I commented in 2008 on My London Diary:
As their various events over the years have shown, the Space Hijackers do a rather ace job of celebrating, although they haven’t always had the same cooperation from the police as those upholding human rights abuse by China – or even football supporters. For this year’s May Fayre, police even supplied a comprehensive photographic service, although the price (I believe £10) of obtaining your pictures from them by a Freedom of Information request seems rather high, especially considering the poor quality of results I’ve seen. As I think my pictures demonstrate, it’s often better to use a wide-angle rather than the extreme telephoto “peeping toms” favoured by police photographers.
They were also seen searching a few people, possibly to enforce the fancy dress code, but otherwise just seemed to be standing around the area – particularly across the access roads – and carrying out a useful role in preventing traffic from disrupting the festivities while letting those on foot walk in and out as they wished.
It was a fun event, and even some of the police appeared to enjoy it (and the overtime they were getting for watching what was an entirely peaceful and well-organised event – even if they maypole dancing could have done with more practice) though as in the morning we were all getting extensively and obtrusively photographed. I’ve often wondered what they do with all these images, but they are rather secretive and embarrassed about them. Despite having photographed me many times on numerous occasions, on the only time I bothered to make a Freedom of Information request and paid my £10 they were unable to find a single picture.
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.
Another year, another May Day. 2009 was just a little different with more happening at Clerkenwell Green than usual, though some things remained the same. Although in my very early years Stalin was known through our press as ‘Uncle Joe’ and it was certainly the case that it was the Russian Army that played the major role in the defeat of Hitler, it does seem to me somehow obscene to be continuing a cult of his personality with what we now know about him.
As always the Turkish and Kurdish community were out in force – here the KGÖ (Komünist Gençlik Örgütü), the youth wing of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party (Turkey) MLKP.
Unusually there was a maypole, brought and erected by Chris Knight and others from G20 Meltdown, and a few people tried to dance around it.
There were the usual collection of trade union banners, with pride of place going to a couple carried by Ford workers following the Visteon dispute, as well as various other left-wing groups from the UK and abroad.
As in previous years the rally at Trafalgar Square failed to acknowledge the predominant presence of various minority communities on the march and was dominated by speakers from the large unions and Labour party. The star of the event was undoubtedly Tony Benn. At his left a Tamil holds a placard with a picture of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who was killed in an ambush by Sri Lankan government forces only a few days later on May 18.
Earlier there had been heated arguments on the march against the participation by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a Sinhalese communist and Marxist–Leninist partywhich is a part of the government oppressing and fighting the Tamils.
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.
Unusually my photographic day began in Whitehall where a small group of what I described as “the more eccentric elements of middle england” had gathered with a horse-drawn hearse and a dragon to take a coffin draped in a St George’s flag to Downing St, celebrating 300 years of union with Scotland by asking for English devolution. On My London Diary I wrote (and all in lower case):
i never did find out what the barnett formula they were against was, but i’m sure that these were people in favour of warm beer, cricket and morris dancing as well as good manners. st george didn’t look like the type to scare dragons (and the dragon wasn’t either scary or easy to photograph.)
but i’ve never really thought of myself as being very english. like most of the english, most of my family came from somewhere else at some time or other. i only knew one of my four grandparents and i’m not convinced she spoke english, but then she didn’t say much either.
apart from my lack of sporting skills i could have qualified for at least two of our national sides (so perhaps after all i could have played cricket for wales.) if i ever think of myself know as having any kind of cultural identity now (and it’s a very un-english thought) it would be as a londoner. maybe
http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2007/05/may.htm
From there I made my way to Clerkenwell for the annual London May Day march, dominated as usual by large groups from London’s ethnic communities.
Also on the march were trade unionists with their banners and campaigning groups such as ‘Stop The War’. Among other groups you can see in my pictures are Chagos Islanders and Gate Gourmet strikers who were protesting at being betrayed by their union, the T&G W U.
The marchers went on as usual to Trafalgar Square where a man stood with a whistle and a sign to welcome them.
I went on to Canary Wharf, where the Space Hijackers, outnumbered around ten to one by police, were holding their ‘Booted and Suited’ party in Reuters Square
And the day ended with a little police sadism:
A police officer applies a dangerous ‘pain compliance’ hold cutting blood supply to the brain of a man who wasn’t resisting arrest, while another officer forces his hand up behind his back. The man was then put in a police van and driven away. He had apparently ignored a police order to move on.
The whole of the Canary Wharf area is one of those increasing parts of the city which are private fiefdoms, with the public only allowed access to serve the needs of capital as workers or consumers. It has its own security service, but on this occasion only their boss, wearing a suit, was in evidence, coming to talk with protesters and police. It dresses its security officers in uniforms which closely resemble those of police officers, in a way that seems to be an offence under the Police Act 1996. Having invited several hundred police officers to the event I imagine they had decided having the security officers there would be too confusing.
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.
Today’s May Day will be very different, with no march in London, no meeting in Trafalgar Square and none of the other activities we have seen in recent years. There will be online events, but it really isn’t the same. And I think I will take few if any pictures.
Until 2000, I was working on May Day most years and missed the May Day celebrations, except, when as in 1999 they fell on a weekend. In 2000 things were a little different, and while doubtless the usual trade union celebrations went on, rather more of us gathered in Parliament Square on May Day, a Monday, for an anti-capitalist protest, indulging in a little guerilla gardening. It wasn’t as the BBC and newspapers recorded a riot, but a good-natured protest with people having fun and a little minor law-breaking and only became nasty when the police charged in after windows were broken at a McDonald’s. I went home as I didn’t want to be kettled.
It was 2003 before I returned to photograph May Day events, and I wrote:
may day has perhaps settled into a rather predictable event now. the socialist left – and what is left seems to be a few unions and a number of ethnic communist party groups – march from clerkenwell to trafalgar square, while anti-capitalist protestors do not a lot around town.
and the few images I put on line reflect this. My coverage the following year, 2004, was a little more upbeat, perhaps because I met up again with the Bristol Radical Cheerleaders who certainly livened things up, but also because I was getting better at using a digital camera. But most of my coverage then was still in black and white and I still haven’t added the pictures I said would follow.
I photographed May Day and the march again in 2005, but the highlight of the day was provided by the Space Hijackers who had challenged our 600 odd MPs to an Anarchist Cricket match to be held in Parliament Square.
I wasn’t surprised when no members of the opposing team actually turned up, but their absence didn’t detract from the event.
2006 was perhaps my busiest May Day ever, beginning with the launch of the London Citizens Workers’ Association at Westminster Cathedral, then photographing the London May Day March, which included a strong autonomous anti-capitalist bloc.
Among the speakers at Trafalgar Square, though not on the main platform was Ian Bone of Class War, once labelled the most dangerous man in England, and even at this event attracting considerable police attention.
I went on from Trafalgar Square to the Bank of England where the Space Hijackers were holding their Police Victory Party. Unlike at their cricket match there was a large attendance by the opposition, though they didn’t really join in the party organised for them.
Long Live May Day!
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.
