After taking a near-identical image of Electric Avenue to that I posted earlier I moved on to Coldharbour Lane. Rather to my surprise this row of shops is still there, close to the corner with Electric Lane on the south side of the road.
Clifton Mansions, 22 flats at 429 Coldharbour Lane were built set back from the road in 1896 to house workers at the nearby Brixton Theatre, now the Ritzy Cinema and are still reached by a archway between shops at 427 and 431.
They attracted a wide range of squatters in the 1990s, including the Pogues and Jeremy Dellar. The flats were refurbished in 2012. Flats there can now be rented for around £2,500 a month.
Matlock House looks in rather better condition now and the blocked doorway covered with fly-posting has now been restored. I think the date on the tile above that doorway is 1892. These properties were refurbished in 2015-6 after some 75 squatters living in Rushcroft Road were forcefully evicted in July 2013. You can read about the eviction and see photographs on Brixton Buzz.
Lambeth Council had owned the flats since around 1975 when they had bought them for the constuction of the Innner London Motorway Box, plans for which fortunately were abandoned, as it would have been disastrous for Brixton. Like Clifton Mansions these flats had been built to house artists and technicians from Brixton’s theatre and music halls. The council abandoned the flats and left them to rot, with squatters moving in.
One resident was able to claim “ownership in the House of Lords under the so-called ‘twelve year rule.’ Five Law Lords threw up their hands in exasperation, took a flat away from Lambeth Council and gave it to him, gratis, after more than a decade of Council mismanagement, incompetence, irresponsibility and neglect.”
The squatters formed a neighbourhood association to defend the flats against sale by the council to property developers in 2002. But slowly, despite great public support for the residents the council pressed ahead, destroying a successful community and hugely accelerating the gentrification of Brixton. Flats here are now for sale at around £750,000.
Home in 1989 by Continental Foods, this Grade II listed building at 411-417 Coldharbour Lane, was built around 1914 to the designs of of T R Somerford as one of the chain of Temperance Billiard Halls. The company targeted south London in particular because many new pubs were built here around the end of the 19th century.
Since I made the photograph, there have been some changes with the ground floor now divided into a number of shops, including a community police station. Lambeth Council granted planning permission for it to be turned into a hotel in the 1990s, and the rest of the building around 2005 became a hostel with the name London Hotel, but has since been refurbished as flats named Billiard Lodge.
This row of shops with housing above is between Kellett Road and Saltoun Road on Atlantic Road and includes the Frontline Off Licence. The area around the north end of Railton Road which continues Atlantic Road south of here gained that name after the 1981 clashes with police which became known as the Brixton Uprising or Brixton Riots started here.
Rudra (Rudy) Narayan (1938 – 28 1998) was a barrister and civil rights activist who migrated to Britain in the 1953 from Guyana, spending seven years in the British Army before studying at Lincoln’s Inn to become a barrister.
A blue plaque now marks the building at 413 Brixton Road where he had a law practice from 1987-94. Erected by the Nubian Jak Community Trust and the Society of Black Lawyers it remembers him as ‘BARRISTER, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTION, COMMUNITY CHAMPION AND “VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS’. A heavy drinker who was thrown out of chambers for assaulting his head of chambers, he died of cirrhosis of the liver in Kings College Hospital in 1998 following a lengthy battle with alcoholism.
In 1989 Narayan who had been a Labour councillor and once been selected as Labour candidate for Birmingham Handsworth, but then deselected for allegedly anti-Semitic remarks in his books stood as a candidate in the Vauxhall by-election arguing that a largely black area should have a black MP. His campaign failed to attract much support and Labour’s Kate Hoey was elected.
The plaque is above the San Marino coffee shop on the corner with Brixton Station Road. From there I returned to the area around Ferndale Road where a further post will continue this walk.
DSEi Arms Fair Protest Festival: Saturday 9th September 2017 was a busy day for protests at the two road entrances to the ExCeL centre where preparations were being made for the worlds’s largest arms fair, DSEI, the Defence & Security Equipment International, backed by the UK government where arms companies and arms dealers sell weapons to countries around the world including many repressive regimes.
DSEI Festival Morning at the East Gate
Several hundred people had turned up in the morning for a festival day at the East gate for a programme of speakers, workshops, spoken word, choirs and groups.
People crowded onto the road when lorries arrived to enter with equipment for the show, but police moved them to the side to allow the lorries to continue into the Excel Centre.
By lunchtime things at the West gate seemed to be fairly quiet and a ‘critical mass’ group of cyclists were on their way to the East gate and I decided to take the DLR and meet them there.
Festival of Resistance – DSEI West Gate
I arrived at the West gate just as police were leading away Chaplin look-alike mime protester Charlie X who had locked himself to a lorry. He told me had made the mistake of having the keys with him in a pocket which made their job a little easier.
A supporter handed him a flower and police gave him back his walking stick before leading him away under arrest to a police van.
Although I kept well out of the way of the police while taking these pictures, some of them don’t appreciate being photographed and I got pushed out of the way – but not before I had taken a series of pictures.
The critical mass cyclists were standing on the roundabout at the entrance to the site and police noticed that one of them had his bike lock around his neck. They talked with him and he told them he needed to lock his bike if he left it anywhere to prevent it being stolen. Probably all the cyclists had locks with them for the same reason, but police decided to arrest him for carrying a lock. Almost certainly this was the stupidest arrest of the day.
Other people held posters against the arms fair, danced to music and a choir sang. I decided to return to the East gate.
DSEI East Gate blocked
Back at the East Gate I found the road blocked by a lock-in, with two people joined through a pipe which the police were struggling to remove. The couple were surrounded by a large group of police blocking my view but I managed to take a few pictures between their legs.
Other protesters sat on the blocked road as police hammered into the concrete around the linked arms of the locked pair, slowly and patiently removing it to avoid injuries.
A group of Quakers led a religious service on the blocked road. Mounted police arrived to help with clearing the road and people were told they would be arrested if they didn’t move. There were several arrests with people led away to waiting police vans a short distance away, as well as the two who had locked themselves together who police eventually separated.
The lorry waiting behind the lock-on still could not move as a man was lying underneath its wheels. Police tried to handcuff him but took some time to manage to get his hands together.
Eventually he was carried away. The performances on the roadside continued with a crowd listening to poetry from Janine Booth, but others moved onto the road to block lorries. People danced on the other carriageway and the Strawberry Thieves choir sang though without their normal conductor who had already been arrested.
Police cleared most of the road, but there was still a ring of people with a placard ‘STOP SELLING ARMS TO SAUDI ARABIA’ and a guitar. They linked arms to make it difficult for police to remove them and were still there half an hour later when I had to leave. At the DLR station I could hear the sound of a musical protest on the walkway by East London Against Arms Fairs and went briefly to take a few pictures before my train arrived.
Workfare, Methodists & Grow Heathrow: Saturday 8th September 2012 was another day of travelling around London, with protests against forced unpaid work for benefit claimants in Camden and Brixton, Ghanaian Methodists celebrating at Victoria and then an open day at Grow Heathrow in Sipson from where a couple of buses took me home.
Day of Action Against Workfare – Camden & Brixton
Boycott Workfare held a UK day of action targeted against charities and shops that take part in the government scheme of forced unpaid work which treats the unemployed as criminals. They also celebrated companies and charities that have withdrawn from the scheme.
Although the scheme is described as voluntary those who refuse to take part or or whose participation is judged unsatisfactory face the loss of some or all of their benefits. Under harsh government targets the number of claimants being sanctioned had increased threefold over two years and in 2012 there were over half a million under sanctions. It’s work for nothing or lose your benefits.
As Boycott Workfare pointed out, the four week Mandatory Work Activity scheme is the equivalent of a medium level community service order – such as might be given to someone found guilty of assault or drunken driving. And while the longest community service order a judge can give is for 300 hours, under some workfare schemes claimants are being forced to work without pay for 780 hours.
Many claimants unable to find paid work do find useful unpaid community activities they can volunteer for – and then are forced to give these up by workfare schemes.
These schemes are supposed to provide work experience than can then lead to actual jobs, but many companies in the schemes use them simply as a source of free labour – which then then be replaced by new free workers when they come to and end of their period. Often there is no possibility of people on the schemes moving into paid work.
Among well known shops and charities making use of this unpaid labour in 2012 were Boots, Argos, Scope, Cancer Research UK, Poundland and British Heart Foundation, and the protests took place in front of a number of their shops. In Brixton protesters handed out leaflets inside Poundland.
Protests against workfare had already had some effect with groups including Burger King, Oxfam, Waterstones, Shelter, 99p Stores, Pizza Hut and Sainsbury’s pulling out from the scheme.
Ghanaian Methodists Celebrate 10 Years – Westminster Cathedral
Celebrations of 10 years of the Ghanaian Methodist Fellowship UK and its 16 churches were to end in a thanksgiving service the following day. On Saturday the met at Westminster Catholic Cathedral and then danced away down Victoria Street towards Methodist Central Hall.
Methodism in the UK tends to be worthy and rather rather less exuberant, though with loud singing of hymns and much drinking of tea. There was a very different atmosphere at these dancing celebrations.
A journey to the end of the Piccadilly line and a short bus ride took me to Sipson where over two years ago Transition Heathrow moved onto the local eyesore and dumping ground of the former Berkeley Nursery site. This was an open day for their Grow Heathrow project.
People had moved onto the site to fight against plans for a third runway at Heathrow, but realised the potential of the site to create a productive alternative off-grid home that would become a creative hub for the area.
They started by clearing the rubbish and getting the local council to take away around 30 tons of it, but much of the material on site was a valuable resource that with a great deal of ingenuity they recycled for there own uses. Many built there own small temporary houses in the wilder areas of the site, though some were still then living in tents. And patched up part-ruined greenhouses and a couple of cabins on the site became communal spaces including a comfortable sitting area, a library and a vistor’s room.
Their activities gained a great deal of support from the local residents and when the site owners gained permission to evict them they were granted leave to appeal on human rights grounds with the judge describing the site as as “much loved and well used” by the local community. The site was open to them and other visitors weekdays from 10am – 6pm and on Sunday afternoons.
There are regular events every week open to anyone, including bicycle workshops, art workshops and gardening, and some of the results were impressive. Were it just a little closer to my home I’d be tempted to come here more often, but although it might be a pleasant place in Summer I think I would miss the comforts of my own home rather too much in winter. The wood-burning shower did look rather draughty even if the water was very hot.
Among firm supporters of Grow Heathrow was local MP John McDonnell who stated “This inspirational project has not only dramatically improved this derelict site but it has lifted the morale of the whole local community in the campaign against the third runway and in planning a sustainable future for our area. We cannot lose this initiativeand I will do all I can to enable it to continue.”
And continue it did for some years, surviving a number of legal challenges. Half of the site was reclaimed by bailiffs in 2019, but the final eviction only came in March 2021.
EDL Stopped, Musicians at Arms Fair, Silvertown: On Saturday 7th September 2013 after photographing the EDL attempting to march into Tower Hamlets and the people coming out to stop them I went on to the Excel Centre in Newham where East London Against Arms Fairs were holding a Musical Protest against next weeks DSEi arms fair. And on my way home I took more pictures.
EDL Try To March Into Tower Hamlets
Whitechapel says ‘Take Your HATE Elsewhere’
I started the day in Bermondsey were around a thousand EDL supporters were gathering for a march across Tower Bridge to Aldgate High St.
Police had laid down very strict conditions for the march, specifying the exact route and timings and more, which where specified on A4 sheets they handed out to protesters and were also broadcast every few minutes from a loudspeaker van where the marchers were gathering.
There was a very strong police presence on the streets with police on all sides around the marchers and some mingling with them. The EDL were also on their best behaviour, with many posing for photographs. A couple who arrived in pig’s head masks were forced by police to remove them and hand them over.
There was still a great deal of racism and hate in the comments that were being made and when the march got under way the majority took up the usual Islamophobic chants including “Allah, Allah, who the f**k is Allah“.
There were a small number of anti-fascist protesters in the area, and police tried to keep them well away from the march, although EDL stewards who led away one man with a bleeding face from the crowd alleged he had been hit by a bottle thrown from across the road.
As the march set off, police moved photographers well away, and police handlers with dogs walked in advance of the marchers. Later I was able to get a little closer.
After crossing Tower Bridge I saw red smoke in the distance coming from the ground in front of a row of police vans in Mansell St and rushed there to find a group of around 50 anti-fascist protesters, mainly dressed in black, with red and black flags and a few with Unite Against Fascism placards.
The EDL march stopped for a couple of minutes opposite them and the two sides shouted insults at each other with the police keeping them well apart before the march moved on to Aldgate High Street without further incident. I later heard that the anti-fascists here had been kettled for some hours before many of them were arrested.
I photographed Tommy Robinson addressing the rally, then made my way to where a counter-protest was being held by the community of Tower Hamlets, united in opposing the EDL. I had to go through several lines of police, showing my Press Card. A few officers refused to let me through, but I was able to walk along the line and make my way through.
As I commented, “It was a remarkable change in atmosphere from the feeling of hate and Islamophobia that filled the air with gestures and chanting from the EDL to the incredible unity and warmth of the several thousands largely from the local community who had come out to oppose them and make a statement based around love and shared experience of living in Tower Hamlets with people of different backgrounds and religion.”
There was clearly a determination in Whitechapel, as there was in the 1930s at the Battle of Cable Street which had taken place not far away of a community that had decided that ‘They shall not pass’. And although most had come to protest peacefully, had the police not kept the two sides well apart, the EDL would have been heavily outnumbered by local youths angry at their presence.
I’d left the EDL rally before Tommy Robinson was arrested for incitement, apparently for suggesting that people break some of the restrictions that police had imposed on the EDL march and rally. The police presence had prevented any large outbreaks of public disorder and although the EDL were up in arms over the arrest of their leader had protected them from a severe beating.
Musical Protest against Arms Fair – Excel Centre, Custom House
I didn’t stay long in Whitechapel but took the tube and bus to Custom House where on the walkway leading the the ExCel Centre East London Against Arms Fairs (ELAAF) were holding a Musical Protest against next weeks DSEi arms fair with a big band and singers and others handing out leaflets opposing the event.
THe DSEi arms fair, held every other year at the ExCel Centre in London Docklands attracts buyers from all over the world, including those from many countries with oppressive regimes. It’s a showcase for the weapons they need to continue to oppress their populations and to wage war on their neighbouring states and others.
There were more and larger protests in the following week against the arms fair.
Although the DLR wasn’t running on the branch leading to Custom House, there were trains running on the branch through Silvertown and I walked to there across Victoria Dock on the high-level bridge, taking a few photographs.
The gates to the London Pleasure Gardens which had closed recently only a few weeks after its opening were locked but I was able to take pictures through the gates. I walked on to the elevated Pontoon Dock DLR station and made some panoramas from there before catching a train.
For once the DLR train had a very clean window and I took advantage of this to take some more pictures on the way to Canning Town where I changed to the Jubilee line.
Possibly before going to Stockwell Green, perhaps even at some point on my previous walk I made some more pictures around the centre of Brixton. Unfortunately film doesn’t come with meta-data and my memory is not as reliable as EXIF data, but these pictures were certainly made around the end of May or beginning of June 1989 and so I’ll share them here.
240-250 Ferndale Rd on the corner with Stockwell Ave, just a few yards back from Brixton Road was built in 1905-6 as an annexe of Bon Marche department store, later becoming Post Office with council offices on the upper floor. You can see a post office sign at the left of my picture. A photograph in the Lambeth Archives taken around 1975 show it as offices for Christian Aid and it was later home to the Refugee Council. The ground floor more recently became Canova Hall, a restaurant and the building was revived as The Department Store, “to create a series of collaborative workspaces supported by an evolving hub of creative, retail and community uses“.
This estate was complete in 1929 for the London County Council as Ferndale Court to house police officers in the City of London Police, but converted into council flats managed by Lambeth Council in 1979 when one of the blocks was demolished to leave a public open space. They were designed by Sidney Perks, who was surveyor to the City of London from 1908 before being appointed as its architect in 1928.
Adjoining the site to the east was the City of London Police Sports Club ground, now the Ferndale Community Sports Centre.
Acre Lane Mouldings Ltd, Acre Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-52
A board illustrates the range of skirting architraves and cornices the company could supply, ‘Quality Mouldings for That Finishing Touch!‘.
Acrelane Timber Ltd is still at this site in Brixton and can perhaps still supply some similar items. A previous frame, not yet digitised shows a little of the frontage offering heating and plumbing supplies.
In my father’s workshop, a very large shed with store rooms and work benches at the back of his family house in Hounslow, long sold off and demolished, I was intrigued as a child by many of the old tools used around the start of the 20th century which included a range of moulding planes used to produce shaped mouldings such as this, used in his father’s cart building business. Back when my elderly aunts moved out around 1970 there was little interest in things like this and I imagine they ended up in landfill, though I’ve since viewed far less impressive ranges in museums.
Lambeth Town Hall, Acre Lane, Brixton Hill, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-54
I turned back along Acre Lane to the junction with Brixton Road where I photographed the grandiose Lambeth Town Hall, complete with a banner advertising an event about child benefit taking place on June 2nd, as well as a sign about going to Lambeth Debtline for debt advice.
Grade II listed Lambeth Town Hall was built in 1905-8, designed by Septimus Warwick and H Austen Hall in what is described as a modified Baroque style, and was further raised and extended 1935-8. I think the clock tower looks like some strange parody, an ornament which doesn’t really belong but has somehow thrust itself up through the ceiling of the main building and flowered extravagantly, reminding me of an amaryllis.
This area was a pleasant garden before being destroyed by Lambeth Council to produce a windswept waste to discourage local people gathering here. It hasn’t really worked, just become less comfortable with oddly placed fixed chairs and the wind certainly rushes through the renamed Windrush Square. I think I might have come here in 1989 to sit and eat my sandwich lunch.
Henry Tate was born in 1819 in Lancashire, the son of a Unitarian minister, and set up a successful grocery business with six shops in the Liverpool area before going into partnership with sugar refiner John Wright there in 1859. When this partnership came to an end he founded Henry Tate & Sons with his sons Alfred and Edwin.
Tate introduced new more efficient refining techniques for the production of white sugar, and his business expanded and in 1878 he opened a large refinery at Silvertown still producing sugar now.
Tate was an employer who took care of his workers and supported many educational projects including free libraries in Streatham, Balham, South Lambeth and Brixton as well as hospitals. After he had built and opened a gallery on Millbank and presented his art collection to the nation he was told Queen Victoria would be offended if yet again he refused a title, and he became a baronet in 1898, a year before his death.
The business was merged with that of Abram Lyle & Sons in 1921, probably causing Tate to turn in his grave, as he had despised Lyle, not least for the way he treated his workers.
Reliance Arcade, Electric Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-41
The Art Deco Reliance arcade was built into an exiting Georgian house and other buildings between Brixton Road and Electric Lane in 1923-5, its Egyptian style terracotta inspired by the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Home to around 30 businesses it was since 2014 this Grade II listed arcade was on English Heritage’s at risk list but was renovated in 2019-20. There are some good pictures from this time by Mike Urban on Brixton Buzz from before and close to the end of the renovation.
My account of this walk will continue in a later post.
No Faith In Arms: On Tuesday 5th September 2017 various faith groups came to London’s Docklands for a faith-based day of protest against the Defence and Security Equipment International (Dsei) Arms fair, the largest arms fair in the world, held every two years at the Excel Centre on the north bank of the Royal Victoria Dock in Newham.
Before I arrived some protesters had locked themselves together on the approach road to the East gate of the site stopping deliveries for setting up the event for some time.
People of various faiths were sitting beside the road and a number of Quakers held a meeting on the grass verge. A number of them went and sat down in the road to stop deliveries. Police talked with them for some time, urging them to move before carrying them away and depositing them on the grass.
A few were arrested and led away to waiting police vans but the protest continued with more moving out to block the road.
Then four protesters descended on ropes from a bridge over the approach road a few hundred yards to the north, dangling in mid-air, with each pair holding a banner between them and blocking the road for around an hour and a half before police managed to remove them. Others stood in a circle and held a mass on the blocked road closer to the Excel Centre.
There are just two gates to the Excel centre site almost a mile apart, and at the other, the West Gate I found a small group of protesters walking very slowly in front of lorries coming into the centre and being moved away by police. One woman who kept going back onto the road was eventually arrested.
I returned to the East Gate, where a small group of Buddhists was sitting and praying by the side of the road. An Anglican group arrived to sing peace songs and some protesters had brought small black coffins with photographs of some of the children killed in war taped to the top which were arranged along the side of the road.
The protests continued for a number of days and I returned several times to photograph them as you can see at the links listed below. I also covered protests against the arms fair in other years, at least since 2007.
Protests are taking place now over the 2023 Dsei Arms fair, again being held in Newham and you can find details at the Stop The Arms Fair web site. The include a vigil by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign today, 5th September 2013, and other events at the site and elsewhere until the arms fair ends on Friday 15th September.
DPAC take Pants to IDS: Wednesday 4th September 2013 was the last day of a week of action by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) against the attacks by the coalition Tory government on the poor and disabled. I photographed protests outside the Dept of Health, Dept of Energy and Climate Change and the Dept of Education in the morning, and then a combined ‘Pants to IDS’ demonstration at the Dept for Work & Pensions in the afternoon. Between the these I also covered a rally in Parliament Square by UK Dalits protesting the failure of the government to outlaw caste discrimination in the UK; government policies on this issue seem to be dictated by their high-caste Hindu donors.
DPAC Picket Ministries
DPAC was formed by disabled to give a voice to disabled people who are so often patronised and marginalised, despite many being highly intelligent and articulate and obviously being able to speak from experience. As users of services they know better than the highly paid consultants and cronies that governments seem to prefer to rely on to give the answers they want.
At the Ministry of Health in Whitehall around 50 disablement activists held a protest “to defend our NHS and demand our right to levels of social care support enabling choice, control, dignity and independence.” There were banners, posters, placards, speeches and songs, including ‘Citizen Smart’ (Alan Smart) and Adeola Johnson, who sang her ‘General Strike’
The protest there was continuing when I went on to the Department of Energy and Climate Change and joined those “angry about the numbers of disabled people living in fuel poverty while the energy companies rake in ever growing profits” to hear more speeches and songs.
There were people holding a banner across the door which appeared to be blocked. Again I left before the end, catching a bus to the next of the four initial venues.
The mood at the Dept of Education was angrier, with a group crowding around the single doorway shouting and arguing with a man refusing them entry. They kept asking for either someone from the department to come out and discuss their protest against government attacks on inclusive education and a return to segregation or for a delegation to be allowed in to deliver their manifesto.
After I left three people were allowed to take the manifesto in, and were told that they might be allowed back to discuss it later in the week. There was so a protest at the Dept of Transport but I was too late by the time I arrived there.
The pavement outside the Dept of Work and Pensions was rather crowded with roughly a hundred protesters along with reporters and around 35 assorted wheelchairs and mobility vehicles.
They listened intently to speeches by Sean McGovern, co-chair of the TUC’s disabled workers’ committee, John McArdle of the Black Triangle Campaign (named after the symbol the Nazi’s forced those they considered “asocial” or “workshy” to wear) and Richard Reiser, co ordinator for UK Disability History Month, along with several from DPAC members.
There were performances by Heydon Prowse as a man in a white suit and with a three piece gospel choir performing a piece about Atos miracles which certify the dead and dying as ‘fit for work’.
A deputation let to deliver a copy of the UK Disabled People’s Manifesto: Reclaiming Our Futures which was to be launched at a meeting in the House of Commons later in the day to Downing St. Research shows that “disabled people are being disproportionately impacted by the cuts with those with the most complex levels of support need being hit by austerity nineteen times harder than the average person.”
The manifesto was produced by disabled people and their organisations and sets out the key principles, demands and commitments that are important to deaf and disabled people. MPs were reminded that “With around 1 in 5 of the population being disabled and many more affected by disability as family, friends and carers or simply as citizens who care about social justice, policy and pledges on disability will be a key concern of many voters as we approach the next election.”
As the deputation left, Andy Greene of DPAC opened the large bag he had been carrying around all day. He reminded us that Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) had his problems too (earlier McArdle had described him less sympathetically as “the psychopath that is the minister in this office“.)
One of IDS’s problems had been over housing, but had been solved when his daddy-in-law had given him the mansion where DPAC activists had visited him for a protest on his very nice lawn, and another was apparently with some very personal items.
Back in 2003, one of his senior aides gave evidence to a House of Commons Committee that he had claimed expenses from the taxpayer for – among other items – his underwear. So here in the bag were lots of pants for IDS, and we were invited to personalise them with a message saying what we thought of his policies, after which they could be pegged up on a washing line between the lamp posts outside the ministry. None of the comments were positive but there were just a few that were fit to photograph and print.
End UK Caste Discrimination Now – Parliament Square
Between the DPAC protests I also photographed a protest by some of the estimated 200-400,000 lower caste Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) living in the UK. Although the House of Lords had twice voted for caste discrimination to be included in equalities law, and section 9 of the Equality Act 2010 requires the Government to introduce secondary legislation to include it under race, the government continues to cave in to high-cast Hindu objections to doing so. Although illegal in India, it is still widespread there, and many in the UK have also suffer abuse because of their caste. But wealthy Hindus are large donors to the Conservative Party (and probably now to Starmer’s Labour.)
Putin Hands Off Queers & Syria – 2013 On Tuesday 3rd September 2013, ten years ago I photographed two different protests in Central London, beginning at Downing St against Russian homophobia and going on the the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square for a rather mixed protest over Syria.
Love Russia, Hate Homophobia – Downing St
Several hundred had come to Downing St two days before David Cameron was to attend a G20 Summit in St Petersburg hosted by Putin, urging our Prime Minister to press him to repeal the Russian anti-gay law and prosecute violent homophobes.
The organisers had asked people to wear red, and many did though others came in more colourful attire and several were in drag. The protesters including a large African LGBT contingent and Peter Tatchell.
The protest which was a part of a world-wide day of action against Russian homophobia :
The organisers had listed eight themes for the action including some related to the forthcoming 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics:
David Cameron: What are you doing about the anti-gay law in Russia? We want answers. Tell Putin to drop the law.
Russia: End the anti-gay law & homophobic violence
Solidarity with Russian LGBT & human rights defenders
Defend freedom of expression & human rights for all Russians
Oppose the Putin regime’s escalating authoritarianism
IOC must protect LGBT athletes and spectators, and ensure freedom of expression
Sochi corporate sponsors must condemn homophobic legislation & violence
The IOC must insist that Russia lifts its ban on a LGBT Pride House at Sochi
Several hundred people, including many Syrians living in the UK, came to the US Embassy for a protest rally called by Stop The War to keep up the pressure on President Obama not to bomb Syria.
Among the Syrians present were groups supporting both the revolution in Syria, particularly Kurds who have long suffered discrimination and repression in the country and supporters of the Assad regime who made the ridiculous claim that there had been no discrimination in Syria.
The Assad regimes have made more than 300,000 Kurds stateless, not included in the census, unable to vote, stand for office, gain school certificates or university degrees, or travel outside their own provinces. International organisations have clearly shown that Kurds in Syria are subject to discriminatory policies against their language and dress.
The Stop The War protest was followed by a lengthy protest by the pro-Assad Syrians against US intervention. They vociferously denied that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons in Syria blaming others for their use. Reports by various bodies now show there is no room for any doubt that they were used by government forces.
The failure by Obama and other western countries to take effective action in Syria – such as enforcing a no-fly zone in disputed areas left the door open for Putin to intervene providing direct military support for Assad in 2015. Putin was also able to come to arrangements with Turkey despite them being key members of NATO in the region and enabled them to take military action against the Kurds who were the most efficient force in the fight against ISIS in Syria.
The failures of the USA in Syria was probably also key in giving Putin the confidence to invade the Crimea and parts of Ukraine in 2014 – and then on to the current invasion there. We were also given a powerful reminder of earlier US blunders by the presence outside the US Embassy just along from the protests I was covering of a protest camp already in front of the embassy over the attacks on Camp Ashraf in Iraq on 1 September.
Camp Ashraf in Iraq had been home to the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the main opposition to Islamic rule in Iran, in 1986. Before the US coalition invasion of Iraq, the US had come to an agreement with Iran that they would neutralise the PMOI, and coalition forces attacked the camp. Eventually there was a ceasefire after which the PMOI agreed to give up its tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy artillery and the residents of the camp were given protected status as civilians under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
But after the US left Iraq, the camp came under control of the Iraq government, who attacked it on several occasions. The Iraqi army killed 34 and wounded 318 in a raid in April 2011, and a raid on September 1, 2013 had killed killed 52. The PMOI blamed Iraq for this but others blame Iranian militias directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The PMOI camp was calling for the US for support. The PMOI were focibly moved to another site in Iraq in 2012 and in 2016 the US brokered a deal to relocate them to a site in Albania, giving the UN refugee agency $20million for their resettlement.
Animal Rights & McStrike: After photographing the start of the 2017 Official Animal Rights March on Saturday 2nd September 2017 I took the tube to East Finchley for a rally outside the UK Headquarters of McDonald’s.
Vegans call for Animal Rights – Hyde Park
Several thousand vegans met to march from Hyde Park through London demanding an end to all animal oppression in the 2017 Official Animal Rights March, supported by The Save Movement and HeartCure Collective.
Many carried posters or placards calling for an end to regarding animals as food or sources of wool and fur, and there were some dressed as animals.
In nature there are predators and prey and a complex interdependence between species. We are in some ways at the top of this pyramid in which some animals eat other animals as well as some eating plants, and our species has evolved as omnivores. We’ve developed some rather complex and industrial ways of doing this through agriculture and food processing, but essentially we are no different from lions eating goats though we have a rather greater choice of food. Are those lions being speciesist?
Unless we ate their meat, drank there milk, ate their eggs or fried their bacon, farm animals would not exist. There might I suppose be a few wild boars and deer roaming our countryside and certainly rather more rabbits but it would be a very different landscape and populated by very different animals to those that now adorn the vegan posters. Everyone going vegan would destroy all reason for their existence.
I’m certainly against cruel practices in farming and don’t condone the inhuman practices in some modern farming. I gladly pay the extra for eggs and meat that has been produced without cruelty, though it’s not always possible.
I can see no justification for fur farming, as there are good alternatives to the uses of fur and nobody needs a mink coat, and the trapping of animals for their skins seems barbaric. But while I’m against the use of animals for testing cosmetic products etc, I find it impossible to object to some use of animals in some medical research, though perhaps this could be ended as better methods are developed. There are strict rules governing it, though they could be tightened, but I wouldn’t be alive but for drugs whose development critically involved some use of animals.
For environmental reasons it is a good thing to eat less meat and I’m happy that many of us have reduced our reliance on meat and that some have decided to cut it out of their diets, and that others have gone further and vegans. Even more doing so would be a good thing, but everyone becoming vegan would be a disaster.
But meat is certainly not murder, though slaughter should certainly be as humane as possible – and it certainly isn’t always so. And milking cows certainly isn’t stealing their milk when they have been bred to produce many times the volume that their calves could possibly consume. Not milking them would certainly be cruelty.
Animals are not ‘Just Like Us’, though of course we have much in common. Animals interact in rather different ways to us (and to other animal species) it infantilises and confuses to refer to them in terms we use for our human relationships and culture. Human rights are different and more important than animal rights and I often found myself wishing that we could have as many people as active in protests over these as over animal rights.
I left the animal rights marchers as they passed Green Park station and took the tube to East Finchley. The rally there was in support of McDonald’s workers who are holding the first UK strike against the company on Monday, US Labor Day, calling for an end to zero hours contracts, £10 an hour and union recognition.
McDonald’s workers complain about bad management and bullying at work and the strikers report threats and insults by managers. There was a table with chairs in front of the McDonald’s building calling for them to come and sit down and negotiate with the BFAWU, but McDonald’s refuse to have any dealings with trade unions
Ian Hodson and Joe Carolan from Unite New Zealand
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) President Ian Hodson led the rally at which organisers from the New Zealand Unite union as well as strikers and other supporters spoke in solidarity. New Zealand Unite fought a successful campaign which ended all zero hours contracts and forced McDonald’s to recognise the union and pay higher wages and the BFAWU is determined to do the same.
Waltham Forest Defeats the EDL: On Saturday 1st September 2012 several thousand people from all Walthamstow’s communities came together as ‘We are Waltham Forest’ to oppose an English Defence League march in Walthamstow.
Wikipedia has an extensive entry on the EDL, describing it as “a far-right, Islamophobic and generally xenophobic organisation“. Founded in 2009 in Luton after a small group of Muslim extremists had protested at a regimental parade of troops returning from Afghanistan, the EDL attracted support from former members of other right wing groups including the BNP and various groups of football hooligans, with ‘Tommy Robinson’ soon emerging as its leader. The EDL was at its height in 2012, but defeats such as that in Walthamstow precipitated its decline, with new extreme right groups emerging.
One Fabric – Our Space is Love
The EDL had picked Walthamstow as a target for their rally because of the large Muslim population in the area which is in one of London’s most diverse multicultural boroughs. Only just over a third of the borough’s residents describe themselves as ‘White British’ and the borough “has the fifth largest Muslim population in England and the third largest in London… after ..neighbouring Newham and Tower Hamlets.”
That mix of communities was reflected in the rally opposing the EDL march, both in the speakers and in the audience, and the ‘We Are Waltham Forest’ campaign was supported by many of Walthamstow’s community and faith organisations, incluing 14 mosques in the borough, bringing together around 4,000 people onto the streets.
After the rally people marched to the main road where the EDL had planned to march to their rally, going past shops and buildings where people came out, many waving and cheering in support. There was some angry chanting and shouting against the EDL, but this was a very friendly rally and march with people from all backgrounds and all ages mixing.
When the reached the road on which the EDL had planned to march, hundreds sat down on the street, blocking it and refusing to move, while others stood back and watched. I left at the point to find the EDL who were marching from a station on the edge of the town centre.
I came upon what looked like a police march, with the EDL surrounded by more officers than there were marchers.
I reported “As I took pictures a number of the EDL shouted abuse; others put their hands over their faces, and one rushed towards me, putting his hand over my lens before police pushed him back. It was hard to get good pictures because there were so many police around the march, though as I continued to receive threats and insults I was pleased that the police were there.”
The were a few residents out on the street, and some had banners against the march. They were greeted with racist abuse, as were others on the pavements who were abused simply because they were Muslim or Black. As I followed the marchers there was only one elderly man who came out of his home to support them.
Clearly it was going to be impossible for the march to continue along its planned route. Police attempted to take them to their rally point through some back streets, where police managed to drag away protesters (and photographers) for the march to continue before it was finally stopped on a road close to the rally point.
I walked on to where a small group of EDL including leaders Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll were setting up for the rally on the pavement behind barriers. Police were keeping the road clear with a large group of counter-protesters on the opposite pavement. An EDL steward stopped me from taking pictures, calling “over a police officer who insisted despite my showing my press card to him that I left the area. I unhitched a barrier and went to the other side.”
Kevin Carroll
The organisers of ‘We Are Waltham Forest’ had asked that the protest remain a peaceful one, but some of the counter-protesters clearly had other ideas and were starting to throw sticks and stones across the road towards those setting up the EDL rally. A small brick landed a few yards from Robinson, and was picked up by him and handed to a police officer as evidence. I moved to one side to avoid being hit if more objects were thrown.
Tommy Robinson
Most of the ‘We Are Waltham Forest’ marchers had now left the area, but there was still a fairly large and angry crowd opposing the EDL. It seemed clear to me that the rally could not go ahead, and after I left police reached the same opinion. The police kept the EDL marchers kettled on the side street for some hours after their leaders had packed up and left. When the Met found that the RMT were unwilling to let the EDL marchers onto trains they arrested most of them and took them in vans to various police stations where they were released in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The EDL had clearly suffered a major defeat and there were posts from many of them on social media of having been made a laughing stock after the event.
