London events I covered that day and some of what I wrote about them on My London Diary. More at the links below.
A protest in Trafalgar Square calls for an end of the violence by the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua, where since the 19th of April police have killed over 100 protesters and a injured over 600, and there have been many unjustly detained, tortured and raped.
Women wore purple, white and green head scarves to make up three strands of a huge procession in the suffragette colours through London marking 100 years since many British women gained the right to vote.
The 1918 act gave the vote to the first time to all men over 21 and to men like my father over 18 serving in the armed forces, but did not bring in universal suffrage for women. Women had to be over 30 and meet a property requirement. It was another ten years before all women over 21 – including my mother who was by then 23 – could vote.
A large crowd squashed into the street in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy for a rally in support of the oppressed people of Palestine and others around the world.
The event, organised by the Justice for Palestine Committee, is supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission and a wide range of pro-Palestinian organisations, and was opposed by the Zionist Federation and some right wing hooligans, who were stopped from attacking the peaceful event by a large police presence in the area.
Celebrated in many countries, Al Quds Day, established by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, has been marked in London for over 30 years.
This year’s event was a gesture of defiance to the demonisation campaign and the ongoing murders by Israeli troops of innocent Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip commemorating 70 years since Israel was formed on expropriated Palestinian land.
Police had set up barriers to keep the official Zionist protest around a hundred yards down the road from the Al Quds day event, while others who were football thugs roamed the streets
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.
We don’t actually have a housing shortage in the UK. There are more than enough homes to go round. What we have is mainly a failure to get homeless people into empty homes. A failure to provide homes that people can afford.
Of course there will always be a few empty homes, as people move or die and it takes a little time to sell the empty properties. But the latest official figures for homes that have been empty for more than six months in England is 268,385 – and the figures are growing. According to Crisis, “more than 200,000 families and individuals in England alone will be … finding themselves sleeping on the streets, hunkered down in sheds and garages, stuck in unsuitable accommodation or sofa surfing.”
Covid will make homelessness worse, with huge numbers of people now threatened by eviction as they have been unable to keep up with rent payments. There were various extensions to a ban on bailiff-enforced evictions, but this ban came to an end in England on 31 May – but continues until 30 June 2021 in Wales and 30 September 2021 in Scotland.
As well as making people homeless, evictions also increase the number of empty properties, and those who are evicted are unlikely to be able to afford new tenancies.
There are various reasons why properties remain empty. They may simply be in places where people don’t want to live, and while there is huge pressure on housing in some areas – and we have seen house prices leap up 10% in a month – there are others where houses are difficult to sell – and even some new build houses remain empty for long periods.
Covid has meant that many holiday lets – conventional and Airbnbs – have stayed empty, and demand may be slow to pick up. People with two homes, one close to their place of work, may now have decided they can work from their more distant home and abandon the other. But even when taking these factors into account there seems to be an underlying rise in empty homes.
But housing in England has become a dysfunctional system, and we need changes so that people who need homes can afford them. To put it simply we need some way to provide more social housing. And the best way to provide these is for councils to be given the resources to build this – and to take some of those empty properties into public ownership – including some of those sold off on the cheap under ‘right to buy’, many of which are now ‘buy to let’ properties from which people are facing eviction.
Newham Council, under the then Mayor Robin Wales, began emptying people from the Carpenters Estate in the early 2000s. Many perfectly good properties on the estate have remained empty for years as the council has looked for ways to sell off the area close to the Olympic site, despite the huge waiting list for housing in Newham.
Focus E15 Mums, young mothers facing eviction from a hostel in Stratford, were offered private rented properties hundreds of miles away with little or no security of tenure and relatively high rents. It’s difficult for one person to stand up to the council, but they decided – with support from others – to join together and fight, with remarkable success – which gained them national recognition. And they continue to campaign for others facing housing problems.
Seven years ago on Monday 9th June 2014 they came to the Carpenters Estate to expose the failure of Newham Council pasting up posters on deliberately emptied quality social housing vacant for around ten years on what had been one of Newham’s most popular council estate and called for it to be used to house homeless families.
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.
Every year around the 8th June, Sikhs march in London to remember the 1984 destruction at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The Soviet government forged documents in 1982 to show that Sikh militants were getting CIA support for their plans to establish an independent Sikh state of Khalistan in the Punjab and these were taken seriously by Indian intelligence services and prime minister Indira Gandhi, who on June 1st 1984 sent in the Indian Army in Operation Blue Star, attacking scores of Sikh temples across the Punjab.
On 3rd June Indian forces surrounded the Golden Temple in Amritsar where many of the militants who were well armed had taken refuge, along with thousands of pilgrims who were there for the anniversary of the death of the fifth guru, Arjan Dev Ji. The siege lasted several days and many were killed, mostly pilgrims who had been allowed by the army to enter on the 3rd June but not allowed to leave later that day. As they secured the Temple, the army carried out many executions of those they detained and fired on men and women as they were trying to follow army orders to leave.
Acoording to Rajiv Gandhi, around 700 Indian Army soldiers were killed in the attack, although the official figure was 83. There are also huge discrepancies between the official figures of those who died inside the Temple, with an official figure of 554 casualties and independent estimates of 18-20,000.
Many Sikhs resigned from official positions and soldiers left the Indian Army after this assault on their religion, and five months later Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in an act of revenge. This in turn led to anti-Sikh riots in which thousands of Sikhs were killed.
Many Sikhs still continue to call for an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan, combining parts of the Punjab in both India and Pakistan that were severed at partition in 1947 when the whole area was divided between the two and Sikhs, along with other minorities were sidelined. Both political and military activities continue as does their repression by the Indian government, with many Sikhs held in Indian prisons, some under threat of hanging.
Feelings still run very high, and in 2013 four Sikhs were found guilty of attacking one of the generals who led the attack on the Temple, long retired and on holiday in London with his wife. Police have often taken a very keen interest in the annual march and prevented people from carrying some placards and posters which support the proscribed organisation Babbar Khalsa. The pictures here are from the march on Sunday 8th June 2014, which I left as the last of the protesters went down Park Lane on their way to a rally in Trafalgar Square
Also taking place on Sunday 8th June 2014 was a protest against the the 1,212 death sentences imposed on Islamists in Egypt, which was taking place as the new Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was sworn in. These included 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood sentenced in 2014 following an attack on a police station in 2013.
There was a mock trial. People wearing numbers to represent the prisoners made the Islamist R4BIA (Rabia) sign and the event ended with a die-in in front of Marble Arch.
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.
Detainees seen through the wire fence, Harmondsworth Detention Centre, Sat 7 Jun 2014
Recently the Home Office under Priti Patel got its knuckles rapped in court, when the High Court ruled it broke the law by housing cross-channel migrants in the run-down Napier barracks in Folkestone, Kent. Public Health England had earlier warned that the barracks were unsuitable for accommodation for asylum seekers during the Covid pandemic, and with 380 detained in poorly sectioned off rooms of 12-14 with shared bathrooms and toilets the spread of infection was clearly inevitable, with around 200 people catching Covid-19.
The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 requires the Home Office to provide “support” for asylum seekers who are unable to support themselves, including if needed accommodation, but this must be adequate for their needs. Clearly in this case they were not, and the situation was worsened by employing a private contractor to run the barracks, who in turn outsourced much of the work required.
John McDonnell MP speaking
Many of those sent to the barracks were clearly unsuitable to be housed there because of pre-existing mental health issues arising from trafficking and/or torture before their arrival in the UK – and the Home Office’s own assessment criteria should have prevented them being sent to the barracks.
The whole judgement is complex and lengthy but reading the evidence it examines leaves the impression of a total lack of concern for human rights and common humanity in the operation of our asylum system, and one which is evident across the whole range of how we deal with migrants and asylum. In 2020 over 23,000 people were held in detention centres in the UK, around a third held for more than a month; but it is indefinite detention with no limit to the time they may be held and for some their stay has lasted around three years. Over half of those detained have claimed asylum.
Of those detained in 2019, just over a third were deported, some illegally. A small number – just over 300 in the year ending 2019 – received compensation, averaging £26,000, after proving their detention was illegal. (figures from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-detention-in-the-uk/ The Migration Observatory.)
On Saturday 7th June 2014 I went to the neighbouring detention centres (a polite name for these immigration prisons) of Harmondsworth and Colnbrook, just across the A4 Bath Road north of Heathrow Airport, along with campaigners organised by Movement for Justice, who had come to protest with prisoners inside the immigration prison against the unjust ‘Fast Track System’ and mistreatment of detainees by private security firms.
The were joined outside the prisons by local MP John McDonnell who has a long record of supporting asylum seekers, who told us that when he first became MP for the area in 1997 the immigration detention centre was only a small building housing a dozen or so detainees. Now these two large blocks house several thousands – and their are other large immigration prisons across the country.
After the rally on the pavement outside, the protesters – who included many former detainees – marched onto the site and began to make a circuit on the roadway which goes around the Harmondsworth centre, most of which is enclosed behind tall fences. The stopped at places on the way where they knew that those inside the prison would be able to see and hear them, making a lot of noise chanting and shouting as well as with whistles and other noise-makers.
Detainees are allowed to have mobile phones and the protesters were able to contact a number of those inside, some of whom were able to speak by holding the phone they were calling to a microphone of the protesters’ megaphone. Many inside feel they are forgotten and all had complaints about the way they were treated by the detention centre staff and the poor conditions.
At later events here that I photographed, police prevented the protesters marching around the 20ft fences that surround it, limiting them to an area in front of the administration block. Clearly the tall fences mean there was no security risk, but the sight and sound of the protest was important in raising the morale of those held in the centres – and something those private contractors running the jails wished to avoid in future.
I first visited Swanscombe back in 1985, when I was photographing along the south bank of the River Thames and Lower Thameside. Until the 1840s this area of North Kent had been relatively remove and rural, with riverside marshes largely untouched and valuable agricultural land on the higher areas growing food for the capital.
Portland Cement was patented by by Joseph Aspdin in 1824 and the later developed by his sone William, but the modern version of it was developed at Swanscombe by Isaac Charles Johnson, then manager of John Bazeley White’s cement plant. Johnson soon after left J B Whites to set up his own cement plants, including those nearby at Geenhithe and Cliffe, and Frindsbury on the Medway. In 1911 C Johnson & Co became a part of the Blue Circle Group.
The building of London’s sewers led both to a large demand for cement and also led the Metropolitan Board of Works to provide a specification for their needs which became the standard for Portland Cement. Portland Cement is the cement used in almost all concrete, mortar, stucco and grouting.
From around 1900 virtually all cement has been made in large rotary kilns, with flames heating limestone or chalk with clay-containing minerals at around 1500-1600 degrees Celsius. Water and carbon dioxide are driven off as the minerals combine to give silicates (mainly (tricalcium silicate, dicalcium silicate, tricalcium aluminate and tetracalcium aluminoferrite). Around 10% of world CO2 production which fuels climate change is due to cement manufacture, and smaller amounts of other polluting materials are also released in the process – hence the high chimneys of cement works. The small lumps of ‘cement clinker’ that emerge at the lower end of the kiln are then ground to a fine powder, often with added gypsum (calcium sulphate) or limestone to give cement.
Cement can cause burns and it readily absorbs water, hardening to form solid hydrated material and firmly embedding the sand or aggregate it is mixed with for most uses. Over many thousands of years the River Thames in this area had cut its course up to the chalk of the North Downs, and since the 1840s much of that chalk has been quarried, leaving deep pits with often fairly narrow strips left for roads through the area and housing. One of those deep pits now holds the Bluewater shopping centre at Greenhithe and others are filled with various industrial properties or housing. The industry over around 150 years completely transformed the landscape. But by the time I first came to photograph it, this post-industrial landscape was rapidly being reclaimed by nature.
Down the centre of the Swanscombe peninsula is the footpath, Pilgrims Road, leading down towards where a ferry once brought pilgrims on their way to Canterbury from a ferry across the River Thames from close by St Clement’s Church, still there beside the detergent works at South Stifford. Later clay was brought across the river from Essex to wharves for making cement, as well as coal, probably coming by coaster from the north-east to fuel the kilns. Ropeways or conveyor belts will have linked the wharves to the cement plant.
In 2012 I heard of the plans to transform part at least of the area yet again, into the Paramount London theme park, a leisure attraction along the lines of Thorpe Park, which would destroy the area as I knew it. Although I decided to come and photograph the area again before that happened it took me three years to return and do it, cycling around the area on a Brompton, (though occasionally I had to leave it a explore on foot.) Five years on, the plans are still plans and I hope to go back again next month.
With a few exceptions, the pictures here are wide-angle panoramics, with a horizontal angle of view of around 145 degrees and a vertical angle of view of roughly 90 degrees which results in a ‘normal’ aspect ratio of 1.5 : 1 – I usually took these intending to crop to a 1.9:1 ration but have left them uncropped. A few are taken with more normal wide-angle lenses.
On My London Diary you can see more of these pictures, and also read more about the area and my day there in 2015. The images display a little larger on that site.
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.
Thursday 5th June 2014 was the day of the AGM of G4S, a company deeply involved in the privatisation of prisons, policing, education and other public services and in human rights abuses both in the UK and in Palestine where it helps to run the Israeli prison system. So unsurprisingly a number of groups had come to protest outside the Excel Centre at Royal Victoria Dock in Newham where the AGM was taking place, and there were also a number of people who had bought shares so they had a right to attend the AGM and also to ask questions, challenging the company’s human rights record.
Among the various groups who had come to protest were the Boycott Israel Network, Boycott Workfare, Campaign to Close Campsfield, Corporate Watch, Friends of Al Aqsa, Inminds.com, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Right to Remain, War on Want, Right to Remain and Global Women’s Strike, though as the protest was on a working day, the numbers representing each group were fairly low.
The protesters sang and handed out leaflets to shareholders attending the meeting, giving details of some of the human rights abuses that G4S has been responsible for or is complicit in. There were also apparently some nasty scenes when shareholders were ejected forcibly from the AGM for insisting on asking awkward questions, but the press was not allowed to photograph inside the venue.
I joined a march in Tower Hamlets, which includes some of the most deprived areas of England, where medical staff and supporters had organised a ‘Nye Bevan’ march to ‘Keep Our NHS Public’, walking around the health practices in the borough. Medical practices were able to give a good level of service in deprived areas by the MPIG, the Minimum practice income guarantee, which was introduced for this purpose in 2004 following negotiations between the government and the BMA to recognise the higher health needs of both some inner city and rural areas. In 2014 the Coalition Government announced this was to be scrapped, with one seventh of it removed each year until 2021.
Many leading politicians (and their family members) have financial interests in healthcare companies, and NHS campaigners see the loss of MPIG as a part of the continuing privatisation by stealth of the NHS. Many GP practices are now run by large healthcare services, who lower costs by providing reduced services and diverting money which should be used for serving the needs of patients into providing profits for shareholders.
As the marchers arrived at each medical practice they were met by health workers and patients who came out to support them. Among those at the health centre on the Whitechapel Road was veteran anti-fascist and former Communist councillor Max Levitas, who had celebrated his 99th birthday 4 days earlier. I left before the march finished and the rally to go to the Colombian embassy.
At the Colombian embassy protesters were condemning the vast La Colosa & Santurbán gold mines which endanger water sources in the high mountain regions and could wreck their fragile ecosystems. The London protests on UN World Environment Day and follow protests and carnivals by thousands of people in Ibague, the closest city to the mines as well as in other cities in Colombia. In Bucaramanga the whole city turned out in protests to stop the Santurbán gold mine owned by Canadian company Greystar Resources, and in 2019 there was a protest by 50,000 against the United Arab Emirates backed Soto Norte gold project which would be the largest underground gold mine in Colombia. Gold mining would releases large quantities of cyanide and arsenic into the water supplies of several million people.
The posters were in Spanish as they were aimed at the embassy staff. The Colombian Embassy is a relatively small section of a building just to the rear of Harrods, which also houses the Ecuadorian Embassy, where while this protest was taking place Julian Assange was still in political asylum in their small part of the building, and regular protests were still taking place calling for his release. Unfortunately he was instead handed over to the UK police and now seems likely to die as a political prisoner either in the UK or, if extradited, in the USA.
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 Tropical Palace Theatre in Chamberlayne Road, close to the junction with Kilburn Lane was in the 1980s a major reggae venue. It had begun as The Acme Picture Theatre in October 1913, but with a change of management became Kings Picture Palace three months later. In 1931 a new company greatly enlarged and remodelled the building in an Art Deco style with architects John Stanley Beard and A. Douglas Clare and decorative work by by W.R. Bennett to seat 1600 – over 5 times its original capacity – with the old theatre forming the foyer of the renamed ‘New Palace Theatre’, and the rear of the building stretched to Kilburn Lane. Taken over by ABC in 1935 it became simply the Palace Theatre, and in 1970 it became the ABC and was converted into a bingo hall in 1974, but closed soon after to become a nightclub. It was completely demolished and replaced by housing shortly after I made this picture. The building on the left has also been replaced, but Chamberlayne Mansions at right are still there
The distinctive frontages of the shops at the extreme right of this picture enable me to positively identify this washing machine advert as being on the side of the shop on the corner of Felixstowe Rd and Harrow Road in College Park at the west of Kensal Green, close to St Mary’s Cemetery.
Kensal Green Cemetery Works, 758 Harrow Rd, Brent, 1988
Kensal Green Cemetery, which is immediately to the east of St Mary’s Cemetery is rather better known and is worth visiting for some of its fine Victorian monuments. There are plenty to choose from, with over 65,000 burials there since the cemetery was opened in 1833 by the The General Cemetery Company, who were inspired by Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery. The Grade I listed cemetery is still in use and well worth a visit and there are often guided tours – and on another occasion I visited the catacombs
Gate, Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Rd, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988
Three London Boroughs meet around here, and Kensal Green Cemetery and its gates are in Kensington & Chelsea, while the opposite side of the road is in Brent, and the neighbouring Roman Catholic St Mary’s is in Hammersmith & Fulham. Kensal Green. Kensal Green was the first of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ private cemeteries around the city’s then outskirts and was, as Wikipedia points out, ‘immortalised in the lines of G. K. Chesterton’s poem “The Rolling English Road” from his book The Flying Inn: “For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.” ‘Paradise by way of Kensal Green’ is now the name of a pub on Kilburn Lane.
J S Farley, Kensal Green Cemetery Works, 758 Harrow Rd, Brent, 1988
I don’t know what proportion of the monuments in Kensal Green Cemetery were produced in these works opposite the entrance gates, and set up in the same year, but they works now been demolished and replaced. There is still another monumental masons just a short walk away.
Waldo Rd, College Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988
Further west along the Harrow Rd just before Scrubs Lane was a small industrial area in Waldo Rd and Trenmar Gardens. Rather to my surprise this small industrial building and its similar neighbour at Waldo Works have survived, though I think some of the area behind is now housing.
Trenmar Gardens, Waldo Rd, College Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988
The large garage at the left of the picture has been demolished and replaced by housing.
Trenmar Gardens, College Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988
Trenmar Gardens, College Park, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988
All of these pictures (and a few more) are from my Flickr album 1988 London Photos and were taken in March 1988. Clicking on any of the images will open a larger version in the album from where you can browse forwards or backward in the album.
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.
William Austin’s first job was apparently as a scarecrow at 1d per day, but he left the farm and came to London to find work as a labourer. Although illiterate, unlike most navvies he prospered and became a drainage contractor at a time when London was rapidly expanding, his success probably in no small part due to his espousal of the temperance movement.
First Ave, West Kilburn, Westminster, 1988
There is surprisingly little information about Austin on the web other than that he became a philanthropist and founded the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwellings Company in 1867, and that he left the company in 1870. Almost certainly this lack of information reflects his humble origins.
Harrow Rd, West Kilburn, Westminster, 1988
At first the company built houses in the provinces, but after Austin left turned their attention to London, and between 1872-7 developed the Shaftesbury Park estate in Battersea with around 1,200 working class homes.
Harrow Rd, West Kilburn, Westminster, 1988
Also in 1973 the company bought 80 acres north of the Grand Union Canal and the Harrow Road in what was then a detached part of the parish of Chelsea. The area was developed on a grid pattern with north-south roads called First Avenue, Second etc up to Sixth Avenue and the east-west streets being simply named with the letters of the alphabet, A-P.
Second Ave, West Kilburn, Westminster, 1988
Later these street names were expanded to fuller names starting with these letters, though I have no idea what possessed someone to make D Street into Droop Street, surely one of the more depressing street names in London.
Fourth Ave, West Kilburn, Westminster, 1988
The architect of the estate with its then fashionable gothic touches was self-taught Robert Austin (perhaps a son of the founder?) with later work by Roland Plumbe. There are 53 properties on the estate which are Grade II listed. During the development in 1877 most of the company managers were charged with mismanagement and corruption, the entire board of directors replaced, the manager and chairman of the board jailed and Austin sacked.
Queens Park Hall, Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company, Harrow Rd, Westminster, 1988
The company recovered and finished the job, going on to build other estates around London, including Noel Park in Wood Green and Leigham Court in Streatham. The Queen’s Park estate along with most of their other estates was transferred to the respective local authority in 1966. Most is in Westminster with a smaller part in Brent.
Kilburn Spring Co, Kilburn Lane, Kensal Green, Brent, 1988
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.
Eight years ago I was standing in a crowd of around a thousand Turkish people close to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, where they had gathered to march to the Turkish Embassy to show solidarity with the growing protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park and across Turkey against the Erdogan regime which has been called the ‘Turkish Spring’. It was a vibrant crowd, including a number of groups of football fans. I left as the march was about to start, and heard later than numbers had grown to around 4,000 by the time they reached the Embassy.
I was off to a protest march from Tate Britain to Parliament against the cull of badgers which began in the two pilot areas of Somerset and Gloucestershire on that day. The protesters say that the cull flies in the face of most scientific opinion and that it will involve considerable animal cruelty as those carrying out the shooting are largely untrained and many badgers will be only wounded and will then suffer a lingering death. Among those who travelled to London for the protest were many who will try to physically prevent the cull being carried out.
I also left this protest before it was over, and went to Southwark Cathedral to attend a memorial service for an old friend who died recently. After this I returned to Westminster to photograph Nick Griffin and a small group of BNP protesters who intended to gain publicity by exploiting the killing of Lee Rigby by laying flowers at the Cenotaph. There were several times as many media as BNP around the statue in Old Palace Yard.
The BNP were prevented from reaching the Cenotaph by a large anti-fascist protest. They hung around for well over 3 hours protected by hundreds of police.
The police made several batches of arrests to fill a couple of double-decker buses they had brought along, but then appeared to decide it was impossible to arrest all of the several thousand anti-fascists who had turned up determined to stop the BNP.
When the BNP finally gave up and left, the anti-fascists began to disperse, with some marching up Whitehall and there were a few short speeches. Quite a few people had been let through the lines of the police and protesters to lay wreaths, but the organised exploitation of the Woolwich killing by the BNP had been prevented.
