Candlelit vigil for Justice for Ricky Reel – New Scotland Yard, Tue 21 Oct 2014
On Tuesday 21st October 2014, eight years ago, I photographed the vigil 17 years after the body of 20-year-old Ricky Reel, an Asian student was found in the River Thames, seven days after he went missing following a racist attack in Kingston upon Thames.
Sukhdev Reel
In 2014 evidence became public that the police had failed to take his disappearance seriously and rather than investingating and pursuing his attackers had spent time and resources on undercover agents investigating Ricky Reel’s family. Even after his body was found they failed to treat him as the victim of a racist attack.
Even now, 25 yearsafter Ricky Reel’s death, the Metropolitan Police are in denial over the incident, and in the last few weeks have issued a statement that the family was not spied on, despite the family, their MP and a public inquiry having been shown the evidence. In 2014 there were 77,000 signatures calling on then Met Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe to formally apologise and for a robust independent and transparent Public Inquiry into police spying on family campaigns. It didn’t happen.
Suresh Grover of the Southall Monitoring Group
I first met and photographed Ricky’s mother at the front of a protest at Downing St, fighting for justice back in 1997, and she continues her fight. Recently her book ‘Ricky Reel: Silence Is Not An Option‘ was published and she appeared on BBC News with Tish Reel to continue to seek justice.
The Police Complaints Authority investigated the case in 1998 and reported that weaknesses in the police organisation had led the investigating officers to neglect the case. But their report remains unpublished, although MP John McDonnell used parliamentary privilege to reveal its findings in the House of Commons soon after its completion – and you can read these in the Daily Mirror which also gives more details of the failures.
John McDonnell was one of the speakers at the 2014 vigil, along with others including Sukhdev Reel, Stafford Scott of Tottenham Rights, Suresh Grover of The Monitoring Group, Helen Steel, an activist who was deceived into a two-year relationship by an undercover police officer, a speaker from the Newham Monitoring Project, and Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations.
You can hear more about the case in a YouTube video, Silence is not an option which includes contributions from Sukhdev Reel, John McDonnell, Suresh Grover and others. The recently appointed Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has stated he wants to deal with racism and eliminate it from the force, and how he deals with this case will be an important indicator of whether this is just an empty promise.
Democracy Camp Fenced Out – Parliament Square, Tue 21 Oct 2014
Earlier in the day I’d called into Parliament Square where I found the Democracy campers had been removed from the central grass area which was now surrounded by fencing. A few people were still being arrested for being on the grass, but I could only photograph them through the fence.
Earlier, police had taken away the blue tarpaulins that protesters had been using to sit or lie on the wet grass, leading to the Democracy Camp gaining the name ‘Tarpaulin Revolution’ – #tarpaulinrevolution.
One enterprising protester had gone up to join Chuchill on his plinth shortly before I arrived, with a banner which read: ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Confiscated – #tarpaulinrevolution Parliament Square’. Rather to my surprise he was still up there when I returned briefly after attending the vigil for Ricky Reel.
Staines march for flood victim Zane – Staines, Spelthorne. Tue 21 Oct 2014
Before coming to London I had photographed a protest in Staines on what would have been Zane Gbangbola’s eighth birthday. The protesters demanded that Spelthorne Council test the landfill site next to his home which they believe generated the hydrogen cyanide gas that killed Zane when it was flooded earlier in the year.
The protesters marched the few hundred yards from Staines Leisure Centre to the Spelthorne Council officers to hand in a 38 Degrees petition. Council officers came to take the petition and express sympathy with Zane’s parents, both of who were also affected by the gas, his father being left a paraplegic.
So far investigations have failed to provide a conclusive answer for the cause of Zane’s death, with the pathologist later blaming carbon monoxide from a petrol-driven pump used to clear floodwater from the house. But his parents say it was never used inside the house. Surrey Police are reported to have submitted information regarding the faulty pump and the hire company which supplied it to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Wednesday 20th October 2020 was a rather different day for me. I started photographing speakers at an indoor rally, something I rarely do, went off to meet with my MP in a pub, then photographed a march against cuts in welfare and the loss of public sector jobs, ending the day at the opening of a show featuring myself and two other photographers, one of whom, Paul Baldesare took two of the pictures in that section of today’s post.
Jesse Jackson & Christian Aid Lobby – Westminster, Wednesday 20 October 2010
I was one of the 2,500 or so Christian Aid supporters who came to Westminster to lobby their MPs on 20.10.2010, asking them to press for transparency and fairness in the global tax system and for action on climate change.
The day started with a rally in the Methodist palace of Westminster Central Hall, opposite Westminster Abbey, the hall where the inaugural meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place in January 1946. The Methodists had then moved out for a few months to allow this to take place, and special seating, translation booths installed, along with extra lighting to allow the event to be photographed and televised. But I think that lighting must have been removed as it was pretty dim inside for me to photograph the speakers. But I and a small group from my constituency were fortunate to be inside as there wasn’t enough room for all who came.
Supporters outside Methodist Central Hall
There were speakers from this country and abroad, but the star of the event was undoubtedly the Rev Jesse Jackson, a noted US civil rights and political activist, president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.
After the rally and a hurried lunch a small group of us from his Spelthorne constituency met with our then recently elected MP, Kwasi Kwarteng, who suggested we find a place in the St Stephen’s Tavern to talk rather than have to go through the tedious business of queueing to go through security to meet inside the parlimentary offices. Although he was still relatively unknown it was rather easy to find him, as there are relatively few extremely tall black male MPs. Though rather more share his educational background of prep school and Eton.
Since then his rise to fame has been rapid, though after his recent sacking after only 38 days as Chancellor of the Exchequer, perhaps that should be notoriety. He has only visited his constituency on fairly rare occasions and I’ve yet to meet him again, though have seen him from a distance outside parliament.
He listened – or at least stayed fairly quiet – while my wife and others talked about the campaign for tax justice and the need for reforms to stop the various forms of tax dodging by major companies robs poor countries of more than $160bn a year, while climate change and the natural disasters it is bringing have a vastly greater impact on the poorer countries who are most vulnerable, despite their much lower per capita carbon footprints. They suffer from the results of our high dependence on fossil fuels.
But his response to the lobbying was perhaps best described as ‘mansplaining’; we were not at the time aware of his work as a consultant for the Odey Asset Management hedge fund or the recent allegations by Private Eye that he has continued to receive undeclared contributions from them. Certainly his activities as Chancellor have resulted in them and other hedge funds who bet against the pound making millions.
March Against Spending Cuts – Malet St & Lincolns Inn Fields, Wed 20 Oct 2010
This was the day that the government announced the results of their comprenhensive spending review (CSR) which involved considerable cuts in welfare benefits and the loss of many public sector jobs as services are cut. The deficit left by the outgoing New Labour government had given the Tories in the Con-Dem coalition a perfect excuse to slash the public sector and privatise services in a way they would never have dared before.
More than a million public sector jobs were expected to be lost, with some being replaced by private sector workers on lower wages, fewer benefits, lower standards of delivery and safety and higher workloads. There will be more cases of people suffering as private companies expand into healthcare, putting profits before the needs of people, and similar changes in other areas.
The Coalition of Resistance who called the protest say the £83 billion to be cut from public services will plunge the economy into a slump. Rather than cutting jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, and public services that will hit the poor ten times harder than the rich, they urge the government to cut bank profits and bonuses, tax the rich and big business. Rather than contract out the NHS, they should axe Trident and withdraw from Afghanistan.
I had to leave before the rally at the end of the march at Downing Street to prepare for the opening of an exhibition I had organised in Hoxton.
Paris • New York • London Opening – Shoreditch Gallery, Hoxton Market. Wed 20 Oct 2010
Paris, 1988
Together with two photographer friends I had put on the show Paris • New York • London at the Shoreditch Gallery which was attached to a cafe in Hoxton Market, a small street just off Great Eastern Street, close to Hoxton Square. Rather confusingly this is not where the actual Hoxton Market is now held which is in Hoxton St.
The show was a part of the East London Photomonth annual photography festival, and over the month it was on attracted a decent number of visitors and comments. My section was Paris, and I’d ordered a decent number of copies of my book, Photo Paris, still available at Blurb, most of which sold at the show. Unfortunately I think it now costs around twice as much as I was able to sell it for then.
Paul Baldesare’s pictures of London and pictures taken by John Benton-Harris in New York completed the show and you can still see the work online on a small web site I wrote for the event. Thanks to Paul for some pictures taken at the opening where I was too busy talking to use a camera.
October 19th seems to be a good day for protests, and looking at My London Diary before I began writing this post I found something in most years I could chose to write about. It could be the last day of a trip to Paris, calling on Lord Browne, the chair of fracking company Cuadrilla to ‘Frack Off’, a protest against atrocities in Congo, Uganda and Rwanda as battles continue for their mineral wealth, a call to make caste discrimination illegal in the UK, AxeDrax protesting against generating electricity from biomass and coal, a student rent strike and so many more.
In the end it was a fairly random decision to pick Friday October 19th 2018, perhaps because it my day then began with someone I photographed a couple of days ago at Westminster, Neil Godwin.
BEIS refuse International Rescue climate help: Dept Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Friday 19th October 2018
‘Commander Neil Godwin Tracy’ of International Rescue came from Tracy Island carrying his ship Thunderbird 2 to the Dept for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in London to offer his organisation’s assistance to produce policies which which recognise the desperate need to cut carbon emissions to avoid disastrous global warming and climate change by banning all fracking.
London, UK. 12 Oct 2022. Charlie-X who protests in Chaplinesque mime was with Steve Bray’s group of pro-Europe protesters on the refuge facing the Houses of Parliament in a protest against the Tory government and its energy policies which will result in average energy bills of around £3,000 this year. Peter Marshall/Alamy Live News
Last week I photographed Neil as his alter ego, Charlie-X, holding up a picture of the Tory Party as a steak with maggots crawling out of it on a crossing refuge close to the Houses of Parliament.
Security at the entrance to BEIS prevented Commander Tracy from entering the building in 2018, and making his offer to the minister concerned. Police weren’t happy about his pasting a poster to the wall either, but he managed on his second attempt to paste one up for long enough for me to take a few pictures. We would all be in a better place had his magnanimous offer been taken up, and it seems to me four years later that our government (if we still have one by the time this post appears) is sadly in need of International Rescue to drag it out of the chasm of its own making.
Olympic Park walk – Stratford to Hackney Wick, Friday 19th October 2018
I’d been invited to photograph Commander Tracy at lunchtime and after this had a free afternoon before an early evening protest I wanted to attend. I decided to make another visit to what had before its Olympic destruction been one of my favourite areas of London and see how the new Olympic park was developing, and took the Central Line to Stratford Station.
I walked through Stratford Westfield which my caption described as “21st century version of Hell” and is a place where security take a dim view of photography and emerged into a new landscape from where a bridge took me towards the park.
Parts of the park are beginning to look quite attractive with water and trees, but much is still irredeemably arid, with extensive gravelled walkways with views of dull built boxes in the middle distance. You can see a little of these in my pictures though I tried hard to make the sow’s ear look at least mildly attractive.
But it came as something of a relief to walk across the new footbridge over the Lea Navigation and into Hackney Wick. The buildings here aren’t great architecture but at least they are more varied and most now visually relieved by graffiti – as the strapline across the top of a former pub reads ‘MEANWHILE IN EAST LONDON LUNACTICS DECORATE A BUILDING’ and there had been no shortage of lunatics, some more skilled than others.
The Olympic Nazis had cleaned much of Hackney Wick’s finer decoration and it was good to see and photograph this resurgence. I walked across the footbridge to Fish Island, where there were also new buildings, but much of the older remaining, then on and across the long bridge over the A12 East Cross Route (a part of London’s ruinous motorways built before the overall scheme was abandoned) to Old Ford Road and a bus stop. For once the bus windows were clean and I took a few more pictures as it went along Roman Road.
Mail group end your transphobic hate – Daily Mail, Kensington, London. Fri 19 Oct 2018
Thousands had complained about articles in the free daily newspaper The Metro which had published articles demonising trans people, particularly trans women and had carried an advertising campaign for a transphbic group who call themselves ‘Fair Play for Women’.
The protest was organised by Sister Not Cister UK. Protesters say that these attacks on the trans community will hurt the most marginalised – trans women, working class trans people and trans people of colour – who are also the most likely to be in need of the services that such hateful campaigners seek to deny them.
Jane Nicholl of Class War
More people were arriving to join the protest as I left, but I felt I had taken enough pictures which gave an clear idea of the event, and was feeling rather tired and hungry. Living as I do on the edge of London meant it would take me an hour or more to get home, with two journeys on the Underground and then then a train.
Saturday October 18th 2014 saw a huge march organised by the TUC calling for a pay rise for workers as Britain is recovering from the financial crash and bosses were getting big increases in earnings and bonuses but the workers were still suffering.
On my way there I called in to Parliament Square where Occupy Democracy who I had been with the previous evening were still attempting to take over the area – and I went back again after the TUC march.
Then for something completely different I went to Westminster Cathedral to photograph the start of the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament from there to Southwark Cathedral.
Finally there was a Poor Doors Saturday Night Special at One Commercial St, Aldgate, where Class War’s ranks were augmented by activists who had been attending the Anarchist Book Fair earlier in the day.
Democracy Camp takes the Square – Parliament Square
I had come the previous evening with Occupy Democracy for a rally in Parliament Square where they hoped to set up camp, but police and heritage wardens had kept them off the grass, and they were still on the paved areas when I visited them on Saturday morning, with a large police presence still managing to prevent them setting up camp.
Many had left the square to take part in the TUC march, and like me returned after the marchers had gone on their way to Hyde Park. Others arrived too, including a group from UK Uncut who walked in with a sound system. There were tense moments as police and Westminster Council officials tried to take this from them, but eventually they were allowed to leave with their equipment with the warning that they had to take it away from Parliament Square or it would be taken from them.
Shortly after more people arrived including those who had been carrying two large wood and fabric towers, one with the words POWER and OCCUPY and the other the word DEMOCRACY. Together with other protesters they ran onto the grass square and raised the towers, with police unable to stop them. Others followed them onto the grass and began a rally, with speakers including Labour MP John McDonnell, Occupy’s George Barda, environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy and Russell Brand.
Police reinforcements began to muster around the square and it seemed a battle was inevitable. But suddenly the police disappeared, probably realising that the presence of Brand in particular would would have generated massive and largely negative media coverage. Much better to come back late at night and do it after the mass media had left (which they did.)
Over 80,000 marchers had come to call for workers to share in the economic recovery where company chief executives now earn 175 times the average worker, and nurses, teachers and others in the public and private sector are £50 a week worse off than in 2007.
I don’t often bother to photograph ‘press calls’ but I arrived just in time for this one well before the march started, with Frances O’Grady in a bright red dress in front of the main banner with people holding up the figures 1, 7 and 5. And I stayed in front of the march to photograph the leaders holding the banner until it set off.
I stopped a few yards along the route where the light was better and photographed group after group of marchers, including many from the NHS and other public service unions whose members have been particularly badly treated by the government’s pay freezes.
Pat Arrowsmith
Towards the back of the march were many more radical groups, including those I’ve photographed often at other protests, with many familiar faces. In particular I was pleased to have a short talk with veteran peace protester Pat Arrowsmith of CND who I’d several times walked beside on the way to Aldermaston.
As the end of the march went past me I left to cover other events. There would be long speeches at the rally in Hyde Park!
Procession of the Blessed Sacrament – Westminster Cathedral to Southwark
I waited outside Westminster Cathedral for people to emerge after the blessing of the sacrament as no photography was allowed inside.
The procession was led by a group mainly in white tops, some carrying lighted altar candles and a man with a crucifix on a stick and I photographed them as they waited for the procession to form up behind them. The wind soon extinguished their candles.
Some way back in the procession were more people wearing clerical dress with one in more ornate robes carrying the Blessed Sacrament, holding it in his cape and another holding an offi-white umbrella over him and the sacrament.
Two African women in ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ dresses carried a banner with an unlikely looking Jesus, but most of those that followed were in more normal dress. Some seemed rather unhappy or suspicious about being photographed.
I went with the procession to Lambeth Bridge and then returned to Parliament Square and the Democracy Camp.
Poor Doors Saturday Night Special – One Commercial St, Aldgate
Protesters lit by the headlights of the cars they were blocking
Class War who had been holding regular weekly protests for several months against the separate doors for rich and poor residents at One Commercial St, Aldgate, had called a special protest as the Anarchist Book Fair had been taking place earlier just a short distance away.
Quite a few of those who had travelled to London for the Book Fair came down to take part in the protest. It made my photography a little more difficult as the pavement was rather crowded, and there were many taking part who didn’t know me – and some anarchists are keen not to be photographed.
It was good to see a few new banners – including one from the Durham Miners Association – and the protest was enlivened with samba from Rhythms of Revolution and some songs from Cosmo, who got a Class War sticker added to the others on his guitar, as well as some rousing speeches.
There were rather more police around, including a group of seven guarding the poor door, probably becuase residents from the rich side of the building were having to use this as the protest blocked the rich door. There were enough police there as well to stop the protesters getting into the building when they made a brief rush at one point.
The protest ended with everyone surging onto the busy Whitechapel High St and blocking it for around ten minutes – unfortunately as my flash unit decided to go into erratic mode. Fortunately the headlights of the cars stopped by the protest provided some lighting when the flash failed to do so.
I photographed three quite different protests in London on Saturday 17th October 2015
End the killing in Palestine – Israeli Embassy
October 2015 saw the start of a wave of uncoordinated knife attacks on Jews in Jerusalem, mainly be individuals acting alone, probably enraged by increasing restrictions on Palestinian access to the holy area called by Muslims al-Haram al-Sharif and by Jews the Temple Mount, while at the same time Jewish activists were given greater access.
An Israeli intelligence service report blamed the Palestinian “feelings of national, economic and personal deprivation” while others suggested that Palestinians were responding to what seemed to them and human rights organisations as summary executions being carried out by Israeli forces against Palestinians involved in incidents.
According to Wikipedia, in October 2015 Israeli security forces killed 51 Palestinians in the West Bank and 18 in the Gaza strip. While the killing of Israelis makes the BBC news headlines, the deaths of Palestinians at the hand of Israeli security forces, illegal settlers and other Jewish extremists is seldom mentioned.
Junior Doctors protest to save the NHS – Waterloo Place & Whitehall
Junior doctors met for a rally in Waterloo Place to protest the changes to NHS contracts that will mean working more unsocial hours at standard rates, remove safeguards that stop hospitals overworking doctors, and penalise those volunteer for charities, have families or carry out research.
The new contracts are aimed at making the NHS more profitable for private companies to take over NHS activities and many mainly Tory MPs have interests in private healtcare companies. But overwhelming doctors who work in the NHS want to see it kept as a serrvice dedicated to the public good rather than working to make profits for shareholders at the expense of both healthcare workers and the treatment given to patients.
A banner covered in names of doctors who were on duty so couldn’t attend
After a number of speeches in Waterloo Place, thousands of junior doctors and their supporters marched to sit down briefly outside Downing St before continuing to a final rally in Parliament Square.
Graffiti artist Stik (Centre) stands under two of the placards he designed against privatisation of the NHS
I met the cleaners outside the main entrance to the Barbican in Silk Street, where thee United Voices of the World held a noisy rally with a few speeches. They were here after the Barbican management had ignored requests to talk with the UVW union over failing to pay the living wage until 6 months late, contractual sick pay, and cleaners were being victimised for their for trade union activities. They were also protesting the use of unpaid ‘Workfare’ in the centre.
After a while a small group from the UVW , led by UVW General Secretary Petros Elia, ran inside past security staff and made their way to the middle of the arts centre to protest there. The Barbican was holding an event called ‘Battle of Ideas’ which had a large banner ‘Free Speech Allowed’ but Barbican security were not happy with free speech from Petros, despite which he was able to finish the protest, receiving a round of applause from Barbican customers.
Soon police arrived and there was a fairly friendly discuss in which the UVW agreed to leave the building in a few minutes without any trouble. They did so, and continued the protest outside the entrance in Silk Street. I took a few photographs and then left for home as it had been a long day and I wanted to get back and have my dinner.
After a week of protests which brought much of central London traffic to a standstill in October 2019, the Metropolitan Police, egged on by Tory politicians, announced a ban on any Extinction Rebellion protests anywhere in Greater London under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. This draconian measure across the whole of London meant that any two or more people coming together anywhere across London to protest over the climate crisis would form an illegal assembly and would be subject to arrest.
XR continued to protest and also began legal action challenging the ban which was later ruled illegal; the police probably knew that this was the case, but also knew they could put it into effect and use it until the court came to its decision in a cynical but rather typical misuse of their powers.
XR did continue their planned ‘No Food No Future’ protest on Tuesday 15th, immediately after the illegal ban was announced, and there were a few arrests, and the police began clearing the XR camp at Vauxhall. At short notice the Green Party organised a protest in Trafalgar Square against the ban where speakers included Labour MP David Drew, Green Party co-leader Sian Berry, peace activist Angie Zelter and Extinction Rebellion’s Rupert Read as well as three British Green MEPs and an Irish and German MEP.
A couple of hundred XR protesters also came to the square and took part in this protest, clearly in breach of the Section 14 Order, but while police watched and photographed the event they made no arrests. But XR’s big emergency protest against the ban came following day,
XR defies protest ban – Trafalgar Square, Wednesday 16th Oct 2019
Police came and warned some of those sitting in the square before the start of the event that they were committing an offence and might be arrested, but I saw no actual arrests, though police did come and take away a tent from one man as carrying camping equipment is banned in Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square under laws made against Brian Haw’s protest and the Occupy Movement.
There were speeches, speeches and more speeches to a crowded audience in Trafalgar Square, with speakers including XR members, prominent environmentalists, politicians and a former police Chief Superintendent and Green Party MEP Ellie Chowns who had been arrested defending the right to peaceful public protest in Trafalgar Square the previous day.
The XR ‘Red Brigade’ made a spectacular entrance during the speeches, making their way slowly up through the crowd to stand at the top of the steps where they remained for some time responding to the occasion.
In his speech George Monbiot expressed his resolve to get arrested when the protest and XR General Meeting which was to follow it ended. He invited others to join him then and walk into the road in Whitehall and sit down.
Monbiot carried out this intention and was arrested by police along with a number of others including the Green Party Mayor of Woodbridge Eamonn O’Nolan who had worn his Mayoral robes for the event.
XR demands Murdoch tell the truth – London Bridge Wednesday 16th Oct 2019
The same evening Extinction Rebellion continued with their planned vigil at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp HQ at London Bridge demanding that his papers tell the truth about the climate crisis.
Much to their surprise this XR protest turned out to be legal as the blanket ban imposed by the Metropolitan Police on protests by XR across London only applies to public places and not to the private area here in front of the offices.
They came to protest here as the Murdoch press has a particularly bad record of climate denial and the support generally of fossil fuel interests.
Speakers called on the press to end its support of fossil fuel extraction, climate deniers and unnecessary consumerism and instead actively promote lifestyle changes to combat the climate emergency.
From John Ruskin Street I walked back to Camberwell Road and turned south to walk the short distance to the next turning on the west side, Grosvenor Terrace
Clubland, designed by Sir Edward Maufe was opened in 1939 as “the most celebrated and controversial venture in church youth work of the 20th Century“, launched by the Reverend James Butterworth (1897-1977) as ‘a house for friendship for boys and girls outside any church’. The old Wesleyan Methodist Church on the site whose small congregation mainly drove in from the suburbs was pulled down and replaced by this ‘Temple of Youth’. After bombing in the war, the building was rebuilt and reopened by the Queen Mother in 1964. It now has the message ‘METHODIST CHURCH’ above the door as well as the CLUBLAND’ sign.
Although the Clubland entrance remains the same, there is now a new Methodist Church here and this part of with its mission statement ‘CLUBLAND – LOYALTY & SERVICE’ as well as the dove dive-bombing the illuminated METHODIST CHURCH sign have gone. The boards showing the activities offered by the church include the Freddie Mills Club and Wesley Guild as well as services and youth club meetings. Both the sign in Japanese and the Bethel Apostolic Church and Calvary Healing Temple reflect the multicultural nature of the area.
Camberwell Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1c-15
These well-proportioned large Georgian terrace houses are still there on Camberwell Rd, most now divided into a large number of flats. The terrace of 15 houses is on the west side of the road south of Urlwin St opposite the end of Burgess Park. Most are now residential and one has been restored with the ground and basement floors and “a new rear extension to become an enterprise workspace for architecture and planning”.
Range Electrical Supplies, Camberwell Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1c-16
This large property at 86 Camberwell Road is now at least 19 flats. According to the Survey of London, “No. 86 Camberwell Road and the buildings forming the entrance to the yard next to it were erected in 1814–15 (as No. 16 Grosvenor Place) for Messrs. Garland and Fieldwick, masons and builders. The firm continued to occupy the premises until 1869.” A plate shows a 1951 photograph when the buildings were occupied by a number of businesses, including one with ‘Branches Over South London ‘ selling ‘Gold Medal Poultry, Dog, Pigeon & Bird Food’ with the decorated building selling what appears to be ‘Feather Flake Flour’.
Range Electrical Supplies, Camberwell Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1989 89-1d-66
Although these finely decorated buildings are still there on the Camberwell Rd they have been smartened up and altered. The carriage entrance in the central section has disappeared and the smaller window above it replaced and this section of the building made symmetrical. There are also now two windows in the right hand section making this also symmetrical; both windows are new, but a reasonable match with the previous window. A discretely set back floor has been added on the right two-thirds of the building. There is no longer the large sign on the left wall of the front yard of the property which rather attracted me – and the wall has been replaced by a fence. It’s a decent conversion but I preferred the rather more quirky version in my pictures.
Since 2014 the ground floor of 3 Addington Square has been Fowlds Cafe, on the corner of Addington Square and Kitson Road but the upholstery business, a family business since 1926, apparently continues upstairs.
The rather curiously shaped Addington Square was developed between 1810 and 1850, and I think this at 13-16 was probably one of the fairly early groups of houses. The railings in front were only added around 1960 but are also included in the Grade II listing. Possibly they were a replacement for some removed for wartime metal appeal. I think all the houses in the central part of the square are listed.
At the north side of the square was the Camberwell Basin of the Royal Surrey Canal, completed in 1810, and the first houses to be built in the square, now 47 and 48, were for its engineer Nathaniel Simmonds. In 1820 one of south London’s first swimming baths opened beside the canal and a second came later. There were ambitious plans for the canal to continue, at first to Mitcham and further afield, but it never crossed the Camberwell Road. There were wharves for stone on the canal bank, with a small dock.
At the right of the picture where the baths and canal once were is now park. The baths had become very much out of date towards the end of the nineteenth century and had been converted into a laundry, but were demolished by Camberwell Council in 1901 for the site to become a refuse depot. In 1938 this became one of many parks created across the country as a memorial to King George V, and in the 1970s became a part of the Burgess Park. The square was in such a dilapidated state in 1970 that it needed a public campaign to stop the GLC demolishing it to become part of the new park that now surrounds it.
Last Saturday, 8th October 2022, I photographed a protest in London against the imprisonment and possible extradition of Julian Assange, currrently held in the UK’s maximum security jail at Belmarsh.
Assange’s “crime” was to publish documents about US war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and elswhere, making documents downloaded by Chelsea Manning, making them available after suitable redaction to protect the individuals concerned to the world’s press and to the public on WikiLeaks. Wikipedia has a good and fairly detailed entry on him which most of the details here come from.
If extradited to the US he would be put on trial in a area where the jury would be composed of people from an area with strong connections to the US security services who will already have pre-judged him as guilty. His sentence is likely to amount to 175 years in a US maximum security jail, probably in isolation and never to be freed.
In 2010 Sweden issued an extradition warrant for him on allegations of sexual misconduct, which were widely seen as a pretext to enable him to be extradited from Sweden to face criminal charges in the USA. When in 2012 he lost his fight against extradition to Sweden he jumped bail to take refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he lived in highly restricted accomodation until 2019.
A new government in Ecuador decided to end his asylum in the embassy and invited police in to arrest him in April 2019; he was then sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail. The Swedish sexual charges against him were dropped later in the year, but the USA immediately began proceedings to extradite him to face trial under the US 1917 Espionage Act.
The decision to use this Act has been widely criticised in the press and elsewhere as being an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees press freedom. And if Assange is guilty then it seems clear that the editors of the newspapers that published the revelations he made in publising the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs and other material could also be prosecuted. Even my publishing the link to the video could be a crime.
Assange’s sentence was completed in September 2019, but he was kept in jail because of the US extradition claim. He had been visited earlier by Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, who, as quoted on Wikipedia found “in addition to physical ailments, Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”
After a protracted hearing including much medical evidence, a judge on 4 January 2021 ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the USA on grounds of mental health and the suicide risk in a US prison cell. The USA appealed the decision, and Assange remained in jail. The High Court rejected much of the medical evidence, believed the US lies of fair treatment made and found in favour of the USA on 10 December 2021.
In April his extradition was formally approved in court and referred to Home Secretary Priti Patel, who approved it in June. But the legal battle continues with a new appeal. Essentially Assange has now been locked up for 10 years. Wikileaks has continued his work in releasing information in his absence. The continuing persecution by both the UK and USA for revealing their war crimes seems spiteful and malicious.
On Saturday 8th October I photographed a protest in London by around 10,000 people who formed a human chain calling for Assange to be freed and not to be extradited around the Houses of Parliament, crossing the river on Westminster Bridge and returning across Lambeth Bridge, a distance of a little over two kilometres.
It’s difficult to know how many took part, but there seemed to be enough people to join hands, with quite a few to spare in some parts where people were shoulder to shoulder and some to spare. The organisers had thought they would need around 5,000 so I think it was probably rather more than that; estimates I’ve seen range from 3,000 to 12,000. But as well as those present in person, many unable to get to Londonwere represented by yellow sashes with their names on them.
When I arrived people were tying these to the railings around the Houses of Parliament, but police came to remove them, handing them back to the protesters. They said nothing was allowed to be fixed to the railings. Many of the protesters held or wore the sashes for the protest, and although I don’t often take part in the protests I’m photographing, most of these pictures were taken by me with a sash reading ‘#Free Assange Monique Dits Belgium‘ around my neck.
At around 1.30, rather later than planned people were told to link hands and they chanted ‘Free Assange’ and other slogans for a few minutes. I’d chosen to be on Lambeth Bridge for this as I could then take photographs with the Houses of Parliament seen across the Thames in the backgound.
After taking some there I made my way along the rest of the chain back to Parliament, on my way passing John McDonnell being interviewed by a videographer. Normally I would have stopped to talk to him, but by now I was rather tired, still suffering a little from my booster jab the previous day and I carried on, past a small crowd of people with video and still cameras three or four deep around Jeremy Corbyn. But I’d decided he wasn’t really the story and carried on. I’ve photographed him enough times over the many years I’ve known him.
I’ve been a cyclist since my sixth birthday, when my parents bought me a second-hand two wheeler to replace the trikes I’d been on since before I could walk. By the end of the day I could ride it, if rather unsteadily, along the pavement of our street.
The bicycle gave kids like me a new freedom, and within a couple of years I was riding miles either on my own or with a couple of mates to play both in local parks and green spaces and further afield. We cycled away from our dusty streets into the countryside, often going along some of the busiest roads in the country, the A30, A4 and A3 out west from our grey suburbs.
We didn’t think much about safety back then, and though traffic was heavy, vehicles were smaller and speeds were lower. Drivers were I think more considerate back then, and almost all will have been cyclists before getting behind the wheel. So I survived, though there were a few close shaves, later mainly thanks to teenage stupidity.
Over seventy years later I still ride a bike, though with rather larger wheels, and usually just to the local shops, but I feel less safe on the roads. I’ve been knocked off it a couple of times in the past twenty years or so, both times by drivers who were extremely apologetic and confessed they hadn’t seen me as they drove out onto a main road or came up behind me on a roundabout. I was lucky and only sustained minor cuts and bruises and the motorists paid for the repairs to my bike.
During the first Covid lockdown the roads were almost empty and I went out each weekday morning for a ten-mile ride to keep fit. But then traffic began to come back and the fumes and too many close passes put me off the roads again.
In the past few years we seem to have come out of the long era where cyclists were almost completely disregarded in terms of traffic planning (and pedestrians too) but still we are largely failing to get the kind of separate provision to make cycling more safe that we see in some European countries.
Some councils are still dementedly anti-cyclist, and too many drivers see cyclists as an impediment to their progress rather than as fellow road-users. Some still accelerate past me then cut in across me to turn left at junctions, some pass where there is clearly not enough room to do so safely and some even shout insults as the drive past.
Cycling is good for individual health and for the health system as a whole, though less than it should be because of the pollution from traffic. By reducing car journeys it is good for the environment too, and good for motorists as people switching to bikes cuts congestion in cities. As a country we should be spending far more to encourage it and make it safer. In particular that means more separate provision – fears over safety when bikes are on busy roads is one of the main things that stops many getting on bike, but also driver education and improvements in vehicle and road design.
Among those at the protest were a number of families whose members had been killed on our roads, including some from Tony Spink’s family. He was killed cycling through Wakefield city centre by a lorry driver who didn’t stop, dragging him under his lorry as he hung onto the windscreen wipers and thumped on the side of the truck. His mangled bike was pulled from the lorry by the driver at a layby and then dumped in bushes miles away. The driver was jailed for two years. This was an extreme case but the sentence seemed risibly short, as are many of the sentences given to drivers who kill both cyclists and pedestrians.
Protests by Stop Killing Cyclists such as this National Funeral for the Unknown Cyclist have publicised the problem and the organisation lobbies for £3 billion a year to be invested in a national protected cycling network and for urgent action to reduce the toxic air pollution from diesel and petrol vehicles which kills tens of thousands of people every year, and disables hundreds of thousands.
Several hundred protesters on bicycles met in Lincolns Inn Fields before riding in a funeral procession behind a horse-drawn hearse to Westminster where instead of following the route the police wanted across Westminster Bridge they turned into Parliament Square and staged a 10 minute die-in before proceeding to a rally in Smith Square.
I left the National Funeral for the Unknown Cyclist as it went on to Smith Square and walked up Parliament Street to a rally opposing the racist, Islamophobic Democratic Football Lads Alliance who were ending their march with a rally at Downing St.
Stand Up To Racism and Unite Against Fascism had organise a rally here, but the DFLA marchers had not arrived at the expected time. Far fewer than expected had turned up for their march, and it had been blocked for some time by more militant anti-fascist protesters on the route.
Some of the DFLA had given up and gone to pubs along the route, but a few had walked across St James’s Park to Parliament Square from where they shouted for a while at the SUTR/UAF protest as police stopped them from getting closer, and after a while persuaded them to move away. The number who finally arrived for their rally was rather small and it didn’t seem worthwhile to take a long walk around the police barricade to try to photograph them.
Instead I went back to Parliament Square where I met Ahwazi protesters marching into the square carrying Ahwaz independence flags. They protested noisily facing the Houses of Parliament calling for Iran to end the repression of their people and to get out of their land.
Al Ahwaz, the oil-rich northern side of the Persian Gulf was under British control until 1925, with the population enjoying considerable autonomy as Arabistan. The emirate was dissolved by the Persian regime following a rebellion in 1924 and the area occupied by Persian troops, and a process of ‘Persianisation’ imposed on the area, attempting to destroy its Arab culture. They renamed the area Khuzestan.
Discrimination against the Ahwazi increased under the Islamic Regime, impoverishing the area which contains much of Iran’s natural resources and there has been widespread civil unrest since 2015, with massive protests in April 2018 on the anniversary of the 2011 Ahwaz Day of Rage, itself an anniversary of the 2005 unrest. In September 2018 militants from the Ahwaz National Resistance attacked an Iranian Revolutionary Guard parade in the city of Ahvaz, killing 25 soldiers and civilians.
Saturday 12th October 2019 was a rainy day in London, but that didn’t stop people coming to take part in Extinction Rebellion’s Strength in Grief procession from Marble Arch to Russell Square, although probably it rather kept the numbers rather lower. I don’t like photographing in the rain, but in London you have to be prepared for it, though I still have problems.
While you can try to keep cameras dry, you can’t take pictures without exposing the front of the lens to the weather. It’s less of a problem if you work with long lenses that have lens hoods that help to keep raindrops off the lens, but if like me you mainly use wide-angles anything that would help much to keep the lens surface dry would be in the picture.
I work clutching a cloth or chamois leather in my hand and try to wipe off any drops immediately before taking each picture, but still a proportion of them are ruined as rain falls before I press the shutter release. But worse still, with humidity high lenses steam up on inner elements and become unusable – zoom lenses more so as zooming draws in or expresses air from the lens. On some occasions I’ve been left only able to use a fixed focal length fisheye, or simply have to go somewhere warm and dry for to restore lenses to use.
Trade Unionists join the Rebellion – Trafalgar Square
Ian Hodson, National President of the Baker’s Union BFAWU
My working day began in Trafalgar Square, where trade unionists were holding a rally to show their solidarity with Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikers. Unlike the government they recognise that the climate and ecological emergency means that the very future of life on this planet is at stake and we need to take radical action without delay to avoid catastrophe.
They joined the huge number of scientists and others in what Liz Truss has now stigmatised as the ‘anti-growth coalition’ of those who haven’t firmly buried their heads in the ground to realise that we need deeds not words urgently. As David Attenborough put it, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planate is either mad, or an economist.” Though a shortsighted economist. Many of those present went on to join XR’s procession later.
Also in Trafalgar Square were protesters from the 3million organisation who had come to express their love for the UK and to remind the Prime Minister of the broken promise made to them on 1 June 2016 when Vote Leave had stated “There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.”
Instead they have had to apply for permission to remain, and many who have applied have not been granted settled status. Recently Government minister Brandon Lewis had stated that they are at risk of deportation.
They had come prepared for the weather with ponchos in the blue and yellow colours of the European flag. They held up copies of Vote Leave’s broken promise and tore it up.
October 12th is the Day of Indigenous Resistance on the anniversary of Colombus’s landing in the Americas. The procession began with a rally at Marble Arch where speakers included those from various indigenous communities and women from the Global Women’s Strike who spoke about the climate crisis which is already killing thousands in the Global South as well as others who spoke on the power of grief.
Eventually the funeral procession set off past Marble Arch and along Oxford St, led by XR’s Red Brigade.
Behind them came skeletons, a jazz funeral band and many people carrying coffins, banners and placards and expressing their profound grief at the extinction of species taking place due to global warming and which threatens the future of human life.
I began at the head of the procession, then stopped on Oxford Street to photograph the rest of the marchers as they came along the street.
By now I was wet, my cameras were getting wet, and I was getting cold and I decided to leave rather than continue with the procession to its final rally in Russell Square.
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