Although the title of this post is ‘More St John’s Wood’, my walks were not constrained by local authority boundaries but often by more important physical restraints, here the main west coast railway line from Euston, and I walked beyond the St John’s Wood boundary a little into South Hampstead or Swiss Cottage.
I can find out little about Hillgrove Estate designed by Peacock, Hodges and Robertson for the LCC around 1960 and inherited by Camden following the local government reorganisation in that decade. This piece of sculpture is not on the list of public art in Camden and unfortunately I failed to record any details of it when I made this picture in 1988 if any were available then. Perhaps someone seeing this will be able to give details in a comment.
7, Boundary Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7g-65
This stucco detached villa dating from the 1840s is only Grade II listed for its ‘group value’, one of quite a number of similar properties in the area, though distinguished for me by its two substantial eagles on top of very substantial gate posts. The house next door, shown in the next few pictures, was much more remarkable.
Boundary Road, as its name suggests, marks a boundary, now between the City of Westminster – which includes St John’s Wood – and the London Borough of Camden, with this and other properties on its south side being in St John’s Wood. It was once a farm track on the boundary between two estates.
Alhambra Cottage, Boundary Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7g-66
Alhambra Cottage is at 9 Boundary Rd certainly one of the most remarkable houses in London, a Grade II listed detached villa in a very detailed Islamic style and I made a number of photographs from the road outside. Later in 2011it was one of the buildings whose garden I photographed for the ‘Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood‘ project initiated by Mireille Galinou of the Queens Terrace Café and shown there in November 2011.
Alhambra Cottage, Boundary Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7g-53
Another view of Alhambra Cottage.
Alhambra Cottage, Boundary Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7g-54
I’m surprised not to find more information about this cottage online. Possibly the interest in the Alhambra may have been stimulated by the writing of American author Washington Irving who visited the Alhambra in 1828 and published his Tales of the Alhambra in 1832 and the lithographs of John Frederick Lewis, who became known as ‘Spanish’ Lewis published three years later.
At this time of year perhaps I should also mention that it was Irving who first put Santa (or rather St. Nicholas) flying over the rooftops at Christmas.
Loudon Rd area, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7g-42
This Grade II listed semi-detached house dates from the 1840s, but was altered in the mid-19th century. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle‘ and this seemed to epitomise the proverb, with its castellated tower and sturdy gate. All that was lacking was a drawbridge.
Carlton Hill area, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7g-44
And finally before I left the area, another house with a tower, somewhere on my wandering between the junction of Abbey Road and Blenheim Rd and FInchley Rd. I took a few more pictures on my way south through St John’s Wood, but none are online.
Click on any of the images above to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the album.
Since their birth as the Reclaim Shakespeare Company in 2012, BP Or Not BP? have carried out an incredible range of high-profile theatrical interventions which have received widepread media coverage against the abuse of our major cultural institutions by BP. One of the world’s major fossil fuel companies, BP uses its support of the arts to give it a respectable and worthy veneer while continuing to play its part in fuelling global warming and preventing real action against climate change.
Some of these events have involved wide public participation, and have had considerable advance publicity andI’ve photographed a number of those that have taken place in London, but others have needed to be kept secret in advance, with only the players and a small number of trusted photographers and videographers being involved.
BP sponsored an exhibition on Mexico – the site of BP’s 2020 Deepwater Horizon disaster
On 20th December 2015, I was pleased to be asked to photograph a performance of a play depicting ‘BP executives’ giving a farewell party to departing Museum director ‘Neil MacGregor’ inside the British Museum’s Great Court as visitors and security stood and watched. The pictures here are a small reflection of those I took on that occasion.
Sunken Cities – BP activities are causing sea level rise
You can read my account of the event at End BP’s British Museum Greenwash, along with a more detailed account of the proceedings including the full written script by BP or Not BP? on their web site. Although as I wrote, the actual performance contained considerable improvised embellishment.
In my account of the event, I included these paragraphs about the reasons behind the protest:
BP makes a relatively small contribution to the museums budget, a fraction of a percent, for which they get an engraved message on the wall of the rotunda in the Great Court and their logo prominently on the publicity for the museum’s major exhibitions, including Vikings, Ming, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, the Mexican Day of the Dead and Sunken Cities, the last two perhaps particularly unfortunate as BP has been given the largest corporate criminal fine in history of $18.7 billion for the underwater Deepwater Horizon oil spill which caused huge pollution of the ocean around the coast of Mexico.
The current 5-year sponsorship deal between BP and the British Museum ends shortly and the museum and its new director will soon have to decide whether to renew its with the oil giant. While a good deal for BP, the amount concerned is a relatively small contribution to the museum’s budget, and thanks to the activities of BP or Not BP and other climate activists results in a great deal of bad publicity for the museum; hopefully they will look for less toxic sponsors.
After the performance inside the museu, there was another on the steps outside
Unfortnately the British Museum hasn’t ended its deal but renewed it and is still taking dirty oil money from BP. In November 2021 over 90 leading members of the archaeology and museum community sent an open letter to the Museum trustees calling on them to end BP sponsorship which they describe as “a strategy of reputational management. BP is taking advantage of the British Museum’s status as a highly respected institution, and of the public’s love of museums and heritage, to associate its brand with values of high culture, art, education, sophistication, reason, and knowledge. These values have powerful significance and appeal within our society and, crucially, among our political and civic decision-makers.”
BP or not BP? might put it more succintly: “‘greenwashing’ their very dirty, oily, reputation”.
On December 19th 2018, tempers were still running high over Brexit, and I had been photographing extreme Brexiteers shouting at and threatening Steven Bray and other pro-Europeans as they continued their daily vigil outside parliament.
The protests across lunchtime seemed to be drawing to a close when I noticed the small group of extremists interviewing a bizarrely-dressed blogger outside the public entrance to the Houses of Parliament and went across to take some pictures.
Then they saw Anna Soubry, then the Conservative MP for Broxtowe, on the west edge of Nottingham and a vocal pro-European walking past and confronted her. She stopped to talk and argue with them, and they angrily shouted at her. She called to a police officer nearby for support, but he simply told the protesters to stop and ignored them when they failed to do so. Eventually after a minute or so she managed to turn away and walk past more police into Parliament, and officers then prevented the Brexiteers from following her.
I filed the pictures rather more rapidly than usual to meet deadlines as I realised that I was the only photographer present (though at least one of the extremists was filming the confrontation) and was pleased to see a few of them in the papers later. Though had I been with a more active agency I would have made much more from the set.
Extremist Brexiteers at parliament
Here are a couple of the pictures from a few minutes earlier outside the gates of Parliament.
Police were holding them back as they tried to stop cars leaving through the gates.
Extreme Brexiteers clash with SODEM
Earlier the group of extremist Brexiteers had been harassing Steven Bray and the supporters of SODEM, (Stand of Defiance European Movement) the group he founded in 2017 and which was holding daily vigils whenever Parliament was in session.
They accused Bray of being a drunk and asked “Who funds Drunk Steve”, a question that was rather redundant as two large banners were covered with logos of a wide range of organisations supporting SODEM’s daily pickets. There was a lot of shouting, threats and aggressive gestures, but no actual violence with police trying with little success to separate the two groups.
I’d photographed both groups on previous occasions, and had given up on going specially to photograph them, but was still taking pictures when I had gone up to cover other events – as on this Wednesday. SODEM were always pleased to be photographed, but their opposition at times objected to my presence.
MP welcomes Delhi to London driver
Another event that happened while I was there was the arrival of The Turban Traveller, a Sikh with a film crew from Creative Concept Films in Delhi who arrived in London today after driving overland from Delhi and was greeted by Virendra Sharma, Labour MP for Ealing Southall.
Cuts kill disabled people say protesters
But I had come to Parliament to photograph disability groups DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) and MHRN (Mental Health Resistance Network) who together with WOW campaign were protesting against the cumulative impact of the cuts on the lives of disabled people.
The War on Welfare campaign attracted over 200,000 signatures to its petitions against welfare cuts, and the protest was in support of a debate due later in the day on the cumulative impact of the cuts on the lives of disabled people.
Among those who came to speak with the protesters was Virendra Sharma MP, who had come out to meet the Sikh overland traveller and although showing an interest seemed to be unaware of the problems the cuts had caused the disabled, Laura Pidcock (then MP for North West Durham) and Lib-Dem peer Lord Roberts of Llandudno. Both the latter seemed very concerned about the terrible effect the various cuts falling particularly on the disabled.
Fathers 4 Justice was a group begun in 2001 by marketing consultant Matt O’Connor to “champion the causes of equal parenting, family law reform, and equal contact for divorced parents with children.” The pictures here come from their protest in London’s West End on 18th December 2004
Between 2002 and 2008 members carried out a number of high-profile stunts which hit national headlines to promote their cause, the first of which saw a small group led by O’Connor storming the Lord Chancellor’s Office dressed as Father Christmas in December 2002. They went on to climb cranes and buildings including Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace dressed as superheroes, to carry out a ‘citizens arrest’ on the Minister for Children, throw bags of purple flour at Tony Blair in the House of Commons during Prime Ministers Questions and more.
Although protests continued after 2008, there was a split in the group with O’Connor officially closing the group and others setting up New Fathers For Justice. And although both groups continued to carry out publicity stunts, these have gained less and less publicity.
The activities of these groups perhaps have had some effect, with increasing attention being turned on the activities of our secretive Family Courts, and some small and continuing moves toward transparency.
However the 2014 Children and Families Bill which it was hoped would improve the situation was watered down by a Lord’s amendment removing a legal presumption of automatic shared contact still failed to prevent obstructive parents who had been granted custody of childen preventing children from any meaningful relationship with absent parents.
Although they were called Fathers 4 Justice, there are also mothers who were separated unjustly from contact with their children. But overwhelming custody of children in the Family Courts goes to the mothers, some of whom make it impossible for fathers to have the access to their children which the court has specified, but fails to enforce.
The protest on 18th December 2004 involved several hundred men, women and children dressed in santa gear (and a couple of individualists, including a young spiderman), a band, and a large and unwieldy balloon and hundreds of smaller ones parading peacefully around the West End. Their placards read ‘Put the Father Back Into Xmas’.
In 2005 I photographed two further protests by the group. In October Wakey Wakey Mr Blair, a ‘pyjama protest’ with those taking part asked to wear their jim jams, slippers and dressing gown, bring their hot water bottles, teddy bears and even their beds calling for overnight stays for children with their dads after separation and then in December 2005 24 Days of Christmas Chaos, when again Santas came to London to protest, this time at the Church of England Offices, Department of Education & Skills and Downing St on their way to the Royal Courts of Justice.
Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-14
More from St John’s Wood – and this next photograph is of the entrance to a large detached house at 38 Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood, where a blue plaque informs us that ‘THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 1825-1895 Biologist Lived Here’.
Huxley was born into a middle-class family in Ealing, but when the school at which his father taught mathematics closed the family were plunged into poverty, and he had to leave school aged 10, only two years after his education had begun. But he determined to teach himself, and did so with great effect, becoming one of the most knowledgeable men in Britain over a very wide range of subjects, and probably the leading specialist in comparative anatomy of his era.
But he is now best-known for his defence of Charles Darwin whose theory of evolution published in On the Origin of Species aroused considerable controversy, particular from religious figures, and Huxley’s defence of Darwin in an 1860 Oxford public debate with Bishop “Soapy Sam” Samuel Wilberforce (one of William’s sons) led to him being nicknamed after his death as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’.
The door to the street from the covered path to the front door was open, allowing me to stand outside and take this picture showing the path and canopy as well as the mosaic on the flooring.
Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-15
I moved back a few feet and a smidgeon to my left to take another picture of the house, which gives a better idea of the covered path to the street and also shows the plaque for Huxley.
In 1988 this was the Marlborough Family Service of the Bloomsbury Health Authority, a pioneering institution for child-protection cases, school-based interventions and family therapy, founded here by Dr Joshua Bierer in 1946 as the Marlborough Day Hospital, the first social psychotherapy centre in the world. It seems to have been closed and sold off around 2018.
Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7f-63
The door to the front garden at 59 Marlborough Place was shut, so I couldn’t see inside, but the gateposts has two rather grand eagles still present. This property, built in around 1840 was extensively refurbished in 2013 and you can see a large set of pictures on the web. It sold in 2016 for £14,900,000.
The Grade II listing has a very lengthy text and describes it as “good example of the early mid-C19 semi-detached villas erected on the Eyre Estate, are of special architectural interest on account of their early semi-detached format and their architectural form and detailing expressed on their front elevations.”
The listing text also mentions that between around 1950 and 1990 it was divided into four flats, one of which was for some time the home of composer Benjamin Britten.
Abbey Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7f-23
This Grade II listed Tudor Gothic detached house at 48 Abbey Road dates from around 1840.
Carlton Hill area , St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7f-31
The doorway of another house in a similar stye in the area, possibly in Carlton Hill.
New London Synagogue, Abbey Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7f-22
Just around the corner in Abbey Road is the New London Synagogue.
This was the site of the first Jewish community to be established in 1876 by the new United Synagogue which had been formed in 1870; the permanent building for St. John’s Wood (United) Synagogue, now Grade II listed, was opened in 1882. Its architect Hyman Henry Collins, the City of London District Surveyor, designed eight synagogues in London, but all but this have been demolished.
St John’s Wood gained large Jewish population when people moved out of the East End in the 1930s and 1950s, but in 1964 the congregation had closed and the building was being sold off for demolition. It was saved when followers of Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs who had been refused employment in the United Synagogue’s New West End Synagogue due to allegations of heresy secretly formed a shell company to buy it. They set up a new congregation with him as rabbi, the first in what became known as the Masorti movement in the UK.
Abercorn Place, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-41
Long ago St John’s Wood was a real wood, part of the Forest of Middlesex, and was the property of the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem who were based in Clerkenwell. Pregiously it had belonged to the Catholic Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (better know as the Templars) who were suppressed in 1312. Henry VIII grabbed the land in 1539 when he dissolved the monasteries during the Reformation, but Charles II gave it to one of his mates in settlement of a debt of £1300, and eventually most of it was sold to a city wine merchant, Henry Samuel Eyre in 1733, and much of the area remains the Eyre Estate. Other parts belong to Harrow School.
Development on the Eyre estate began in 1809 The area was developed as an area for the growing upper middle class, with many detached and semi-detached villas with large gardens, the first garden suburb anywhere in the world. Some later were replaced by blocks of flats and terraces of housing, but the area remains one of the most expensive around London. It’s not an area where I often felt at home.
In 2011 I was able to go behind some of the high walls and photograph the ‘Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood‘ in a project initiated by Mireille Galinou of the Queens Terrace Café and shown there in November 2011, but there were still many impenetrable behind high walls, some protected by security guards with suspicious bulges in their clothing. But in 1988 I kept to the streets.
These flats are at the west end of Abercorn Place at its corner with Maida Vale at the rear of Wellesley Court, architect Frank Scarlett, built in 1938. Perhaps surprisingly the St John’s Wood Conservation Area is carefully drawn to exclude this set of expensive private flats.
Nugent Terrace, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-43
There are still shops in Nugent Terrace, but I think this rather high-class cobblers is long gone. I was amused at how the figurines chosen matched the area.
Hill Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-46
This remarkable mansion block, Mortimer Court, on the corner of Hill Road and Abbey Road is certainly not typical of the area, and I have to apologise that my picture fails to record the full horror of its architecture, best appreciated from the opposite side of Abbey Road. It can be seen on the web sites of many of London’s estate agents.
Onslow Ford, memorial, sculpture, Andrea Carlo Lucchesi, Abbey Rd, Grove End Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-35
English sculptor Edward Onslow Ford RA (1852—1901) was one of the leaders of the British New Sculpture movement of the 1880s, becoming famous for portrait busts and roundels of many leading figures including Ruskin, Millais, Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer. A number of his statues including that of Rowland Hill remain on public display.
He produced a long series of “bronze statuettes of adolescent girls in poses loosely derived from mythology or allegorical themes” some of which were also sold widely in smaller scale copies for Victorian homes, though they might not be appreciated now. The monument in St John’s Wood, close to his home was sculpted by his former studio assistant Andrea Carlo Lucchesi and based on one of Ford’s sculptures.
It is probably a punishable offence to go to Abbey Road and not take a photo of the now famous studios, though I resisted any urge to photograph the famous pedestrian crossing nearby.
The Baptist Church on Abbey Road was founded in 1863 by a Mr Stott, a preacher from Hyde Park, who engaged leading church architects Habershon & Pite to build this Grade II listed structure in a ‘Free Byzantine’ style.
In 1874 the Abbey Road and St John’s Wood Mutual Benefit Building Society was formed in what was then the Free Church. This later became Abbey Road and St John’s Wood Permanent Building Society and in 1944 joined with The National Building Society to beceome the Abbey National Building Society, which sadly demutualised in 1989 and in 2004 become wholly owned by the Spanish Santander Group.
Abbey Rd, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-25
This adjoining pair of gate-posts is no longer on Abbey Road, and the block of flats at No 20 have had something of a face lift since 1988. But to me they looked so much like an adult and child – and were perhaps a deliberate attempt to outdo the Joneses.
Abercorn Place, St John’s Wood, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-11
This small group of three houses on Abercorn Place at the corner of Violet Hill stood out among the fairly varied architecture of the street for the flower motifs above their first floor windows – a reminder, like the name Violet Hill, that this was the first garden suburb.
The gateposts, one of which is at right of the picture I think used to have a more obvious pattern on them, unfortunately out of focus in my image, which made them appear less crude.
My wanderings around St John’s Wood on a Saturday in July 1988 will continue in a later post. You can click on any of the pictures here to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the album.
If you take the Bakerloo Line to Maida Vale, the station exit is on the corner of Elgin Avenue and Randolph Avenue, and within a few yards of the corner I found a number of scenes that interested me enough to take a picture, including several I’ve not put online, including one of the station itself. It’s a nice Underground station, with the typical maroon tiles of the period and Grade II listed, opened in 2015, designed by Stanley Heap for the London Electric Railway but I think I felt it it would look better in colour, though I don’t think I made a colour image of its exterior.
Instead I crossed the road and walked a few yards north up Randolph Ave for this picture of Burke Electrical Services and the White Rose Laundry, both seemingly in an outhouse on the rear of the rather grandiose buildings of Elgin Avenue. All three shops in this picture are now a Starbucks, and those single-storey blocks now have two additional floors above, rather nicely blending in with the surroundings.
The left hand building of the above picture was a part of the archway leading east from Randolph Road into Elgin Mews North.
Most of the houses in Elgin Mews North seem modern, said to date from around 1984, but the gateway and those on Randolph Avenue are Grade II listed. The mews arch in an Italian Gothic style was built around 1864 but according to the listing text heavily restored and possibly reconstructed behind the facade around 1980.
According to the Victoria County History, Maida Vale gets its name from a victory in the Napoleonic Wars in 1807 when Sir John Stuart defeated the French at Maida in Calabria, and in 1810 a new pub on Edgware Road was named The Hero of Maida in his honour.
George Gutch (1790-1894) architect to the Bishops of London who owned the area made plans on a grand scale including a long avenue Portsdown Road parallel to Edgware Rd crossed by Elgin Road, but these were slow to be put into action, and it was only in the 1860s that the area began to be built up.
By this time the white stucco of earlier developments was being replaced by buildings in brick, often multicoloured which give the area its distinct look. Elgin Road was renamed Elgin Avenue in 1886, but it was only in 1939 that Portsdown Road was renamed to its current Randolph Avenue.
The terrace continues for some length down Randolph Avenue.
Elgin Ave, Maida Vale, Westminster, 198888-7e-52
I walked back to the tube station and Elgin Avenue, where a couple of shopfronts took may attention. The pillar dividing 294 and 296 is spiral, like those Italianate examples in Randolph Avenue.
Elgin Ave, Maida Vale, Westminster, 1988 88-7e-54
And a little further east there was a blind stating ‘312 MEN’ above quite a few images of women which probably amused me slightly.
I walked out of Maida Vale across the Edgware Road and into St John’s Wood – where my next post from 1988 will continue. You can click on any of the images here to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos and browse the album from there.
Today it is four and a half years after the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower which began early in the morning of 14th June 2017, killing 72 people and injuring over 70 others. And many or all of those who escaped will suffer from both physical and mental effects of the night for the rest of their lives, as too will many of the firefighters and other emergency workers.
The pictures here come from the monthly slow and silent walk to demand justice and remembering those killed at Grenfell Tower six months after the fire on Thursday 14th December 2017.
The fire was an event waiting to happen, and warnings of the danger by residents and neighbours had been ignored by the building managers. The reasons the fire spread as it did were almost immediately obvious and rapidly published including the report by Architects For Social Housing, The Truth about Grenfell Tower which came out around five weeks later.
Rather than take action against those responsible, a public inquiry was set up, and began three months later. It’s main effect has been to delay justice, and its first sessions and report were largely devoted in trying to shift blame on to London Fire Brigade, whose efforts on the night had showed incredible determination and bravery.
Cuts in the London Fire Service made by Boris Johnson when he was London Mayor had left them both understaffed and under-equipped, while earlier privatisation of some of the fire inspection and certification allowed dangerous conditions of buildings including this to go unchecked. The LFB did not have a suitable fire engine for dealing with the high rise fire, and one had to be brought from Surrey.
Governments of both parties over the years had weakened the regulations and inspections in the name of ‘cutting red tape’, responding to lobbying from the building industry, which allowed both highly flammable cladding to be use, and also for it to be incorrectly installed without essential safety gaps.
With tall blocks that meet proper safety standards a fire like this which began with a faulty refrigerator in a single flat would have been contained within that single flat. Many such fires have taken place and been contained, sometimes with most other residents of the building being completely unaware of them. Had Grenfell not been wrongly fitted with unsuitable cladding this would have been the case here, though there were also other problems particularly with the stairways and dry riser that made escape and fighting the fire much more dangerous.
Had the LFB been aware of the problems they were to face things would have been very different (and they would have called for the building to be shut down and the faults rectified.) But they arrived at the fire ignorant of the many defects, and were met with a situation which was for them unprecedented. With hindsight it is possible to say they could have made a decision to go against all their training on fires in tall blocks and try to evacuate the building earlier, but I think it unfair to blame them for not doing so.
The public inquiry continues, and has shed some more light on the details of the crimes that led to those 72 deaths, but seems mainly to have been taken up by those eager to shift responsibility from their actions to others.
Tonight, 14th December 2021, four and a half years later, another silent walk will take place, gathering at Kensington Town Hall at 6pm to start at 6.30pm. This is the first for 18 months due to Covid. The invitation from Grenfell United states:
“We invite you to join us on our Silent Walk in our campaign for Justice.
To show those responsible we are not going anywhere until we have real Change and Justice. So another Grenfell never happens again.”
Three Xmas Protests – Low wages, Evictions, John Lewis – in Brixton, Mayfair and Oxford St on December 14th 2014.
‘Santa’s Naughty List’ Living Wage
Lambeth Living Wage campaigners, led by an impressive Santa, protested in and outside shops in the centre of Brixton, handing out flyers calling for all workers to be paid a living wage. They urged shop workers to join a union and gave out forms.
While I was with them they visited department store Morleys, Subway and Poundland and they were going on to other stores in Brixton paying poverty wages. The protest was supported by Unite the Resistance, the Socialist Party, Unison (who provided the Santa costume), the Fast Food Rights Hungry for Justice campaign supported by the Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union, BFWAWU, the National Shop Stewards Network and other groups.
Scrooge at Christmas 2014 was US property developers Westbrook Partners who were intending to evict the tenants of the Hackney New Era Estate by Christmas so they can refurbish these low rent social properties and re-let them at market rents at roughly four times the current rents. Class War and friends protested at their Mayfair offices of in solidarity with the tenants.
Class War came with banners and posters and a Christmas Card which they presented to Westbrook with the message ‘Christmas Greetings! – but not for Rich Bastards’ and a pictures of wrapped gifts and the cover image from Ian Bone’s autobiography ‘BASH THE RICH’. It’s an interesting read and might make a friend a good Christmas Present, available from Freedom Press at a special discount.
This was one of a number of protests by the residents, Class War and other housing activists, with a video by Russell Brand going viral and a petition with 350,000 signatures that led to Hackney Council entering into talks with Westbrook and resulted in the estate being sold to the affordable housing group Dolphin Living.
Many shoppers who can afford it go to John Lewis to buy Christmas presents, but members of te IWGB trade union and supporters including some John Lewis customers were there not to buy gifts but calling for the London Living Wage for cleaners there and an end to their treatment as second-class citizens. Many of the Christmas shoppers applauded their noisy protest.
I met the cleaners on the top floor of the store where they had gathered in the restaurant before getting out banners and flags and a megaphone, with IWGB organiser Alberto Durango used to inform customers why they were holding the protest.
The together with a group of John Lewis customers they slowly and loudly made their way around the top floor to the escalator, moving carefully through the gangways to avoid any damage.
They made their way down floor by floor, pausing on the balconies to display their banners.
John Lewis security staff and managers met the protesters and asked them to stop protesting and leave the store. They continued their way protesting until they reached the ground floor, where police stopped them from leaving. Here the situation became confused, with a great deal of unnecessary pushing by the police which blurred many of the pictures I made. The protesters were trying to get out, store security was pushing them out and the police were pushing them back. Eventually most of the protesters managed to get past the police and the protest continued on the pavement outside. The protest inside the store had been totally non-violent for a little over a quarter of an hour and had the police not decided to push the protesters back they would simply have walked out.
A police officer made an attempt to seize the amplifier the protesters were using, but they held onto it and eventually he gave up. At least one person was arrested and carried out of the store by police, though I think charges were later dropped.
Housing activists Focus E15 had been an irritant to Newham Council and its mayor Robin Wales ever since the group of young mothers fought the threat to close their hostel and scatter them across the country away from family and friends. Their high profile campaign with direct actions gained national coverage and admiration and after their succesful fight they continued as a ‘Housing For All’ campaign giving support to others with housing problems, particularly in their London borough of Newham.
Every Saturday the group hold a street stall on Stratford Broadway on a wide area of pavement outside Wilko every Saturday for over 2 years offering advice to those with housing problems and drawing attention to the failure of Newham Council to sensibly address the acute housing problem in the borough.
In 2015 there were around 5,000 people living in temporary accommodation despite 400 homes in good condition empty on the Carpenters Estate close to the centre of Stratford which the council began clearing around ten years previously in the hope of selling the site for development. They continue to oppose the council policy of attempting to force those needing housing out of London and into private rented property in towns and cities across the country- Hastings, Birmingham, Manchester etc – and even in Wales, socially cleansing the borough which now has large new developments of expensive high rise flats.
A week earlier, Newham Council’s Law Enforcement officer came with police to continue their harassment of the street stall, telling them they were not allowed to protest and threatening to seize their stall, sound system, banners and other gear. Focus E15 resisted but police seized the table and threw it into the back of their van. A few days later, the council having realised the seizure was illegal wrote to the campaign asking them to reclaim their table. Focus E15 asked for it to be delivered back to where it had been taken, and had already organised this ‘Free The Table’ rally with people coming to defend the right to protest. That table didn’t arrive but others had come with them for a ‘tablegate’ protest.
Back in Westminster, the Campaign Against Climate Change was protesting against the inadequacy of the COP21 Paris deal, which sets the target temperature rise too high and has no way to enforce the measures needed by carrying a ‘red line’ banner across Westminster Bridge.
The protest with a 300 metre length of red cloth and the short rally beforehand emphasized that “the world needs to take urgent action to keep fossil fuels – including shale oil, with fracking now shown to be as dirty as coal – in the ground, or at least only to be extracted as chemical feedstock rather than fuel, and an increased urgency in the transition to renewable energy. While a few years ago that might have seemed expensive and not feasible, the economics of energy generation have changed rapidly with green energy rapidly becoming the cheaper source. But huge vested interests still lie behind the dirty fuel lobby.”
As darkness fell, refugees, solidarity campaigners and Syrian activists at a Downing St vigil demanded justice for refugees, opening of EU borders to those fleeing war and terrorism and a much more generous response from the UK government. Six years later many of us remain ashamed and disgusted at the miserable response of the Tory government to refugees from Syria and more recently from Afghanistan. The UK has been so much less generous than many other countries and is increasingly adopting a more hostile attitude to asylum seekers, particularly now those attempting to cross the English Channel.
A strong wind made it difficult to keep the candles for this vigil alight, and though eventually this was solved by using plastic cups as wind shields it made the candles less photogenic.
While I was photographing the climate protest on Westminster Bridge, a large group of Santas on BMX bikes rode across and I rushed to photograph them. Later I found this was an annual BMX Life Christmas ‘Santa Cruise’ in aid of ECHO, a small charity helping kids with heart conditions.
Later as I walked through Trafalgar Square on my way to catch a bus I came across more Santas, coming to the end of the their ‘Santacon’ which I described a few posts back as a “day-long alcohol-fuelled crawl through London”. I’d been too busy to bother with going to photograph the event earlier in the day, but spent a few minutes taking pictures before seeing my bus approach and running to the stop.
