Peckham & Stockwell Protests – on Saturday 21st January 2017 I spent the day in South London, photographing protests in Peckham and Stockwell.
Peckham welcomes march against deportations
Immigration raids in south London had target long-established African, Asian and Caribbean communities, dividing families, deporting people who have built lives in the UK with parents, partners and children here. Protesters compared the deportation flights which followed with slave ships, with deportees shackled with a guard on each side in a cruel and divisive act of racist discrimination.
The Home Office had carried out many of these forced deportations unlawfully, and the High Court had decided that their use of the ‘detained fast track’ procedure from 2005-2014 was unlawful and went beyond their legal powers. Had we as individuals had acted illegally for so long and so persistently there would be little doubt that we would now be in prison.
But the government gets away scot-free. The 10,000 or so asylum seekers deported under the old system could in theory ask for the decision made on their cases to be set aside and lodge a new appeal, although very few are likely to be in a position to do so.
The protest was organised by Movement for Justice, but supported by many other groups including including SOAS Detainee Support (SDS), Anti Raids Network, Zimbabwe Human Rights Organization Mazimbabweans, Jewdas, BLMUK, London Mexico Solidarity, Fight Racism – Fight Imperialism (FRFI), Sisters Uncut – South East London and Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.
After a short rally the protests marched down Rye Lane, the main shopping street in Peckham, attracting a great deal of support from shoppers on the crowded street.
Some went into shops and handed out leaflets there and on the street. They held a short rally at the south end of the street before returning for another in the square by Peckham Library.
Another protest march was taking place in Peckham during the afternoon. Oh! Mother, A Christian organisation based in South London which campaigns for change in communities was protesting to put an end to gun and knife crime.
Their march followed the stabbing to death in Peckham on 30th December 2016 of 24 year old Ernest Kalawa. Among the marchers were members of the dead man’s family, some of whom wore t-shirts commemorating him.
March against closing community centres – Stockwell
Members of Lambeth Labour were meeting in Stockwell to march to Stockwell Community Centre, one of two local community centres in Stockwell and Kennington Park which are run by Hyde Housing Association which were threatened with closure.
Lambeth Council is spending £50 million on a new town hall and had pledged £20 million to support the vanity Garden Bridge project, but the Labour-run council had made drastic cuts in community services, including library closures and selling off council estates to developers but has refused to support these community centres.
Lambeth Labour Council is one of a number of London Labour councils dominated by right-wing members who appear to have lost any sense that councils exist for the benefit of their residents rather than of the councillors.
Lambeth appear to follow in the footsteps of neighbouring Southwark, here journalist Anna Minton found that “20 per cent of Southwark’s 63 councillors work as lobbyists” for developers in the planning industry and that a significant number of Councillors and Council officers are making use of a ‘well-oiled revolving door’ to the industry.
Paris August 1973: We all start in photography some time, and although I’d owned a camera of sorts for some years my real start in photography came in August 1973 in Paris.
My interest in photography had begun when I was very young, looking at the pages of Picture Post from my toddler years. We were too poor to actually buy the magazine but got old copies given to us by friends and neighbours and even before I could read – self-taught when I was 4 – we played with these, looking at the pictures, drawing over them and doubtless tearing them up. Later we were give a large stack of old National Geographic Magazines on the death of a wealthier distant relative, and on wet days when we couldn’t go out and play on the streets we would leaf through these laying on the floor.
When around 8 or 9 I had got my first camera given to me by my brother Jim, the eldest of us four children and then over twice my age. He had worked briefly for Ranks who then handled Pentax cameras and had taken up photography slightly as a hobby though on a very amateur level. The only pictures I remember him taking were some posed portraits of members of the family and family groups. His interests were largely technical and they included some pictures taken with flashbulbs including one of the family (except him) seated around the breakfast table.
The camera he gave me was not of course a Pentax but a plastic Kodak Brownie 127 and it was loaded with film. I carefully made my 8 exposures and then opened the camera back and was disappointed to find there were no pictures on the film. I never used the camera again!
Later at the age of around eleven I graduated from the Junior to the Adult public library and on my regular weekly visits there would spend some time leafing through the pages of Amateur Photographer, with a growing interest in the pictures of often scantily clad women – and even the occasional very cautiously posed nude.
When I was around 14 I would walk several times a week past a pawnbrokers and jewellers near my home. In Tracz’s window was a shiny 35mm camera which looked just like those in AP, a Halina 35X made in Hong Kong. I lusted after that camera, but the price tag on it was over 150 times my then weekly pocket money income.
For over a year I saved very penny, including the odd half-crown gifts at Christmas and my birthday, wearing the shop window thin as I rubbed my nose on it every time I went past, hoping it had not been sold. Finally I had a heavy cardboard box full of small change to take to the shop. But when I counted it out on the counter I found it was 5d short and broke down in tears. For probably the only time in his life as a shop-keeper, Mr Tracz relented and made a sale for less than the advertised price.
I had a camera, but it was only a couple of years later that I could afford to buy and film and pay for it to be processed. I think it will have been Ilford FP3 and I posted it to the cheapest service in the AP small ads – I think developing and en-prints cost me just under a pound. As well as a couple of family portraits made in my back garden I got on my bike and photographed some of the ancient oak trees in Richmond Park and another landscape there. The results were not too encouraging, partly because of the poor quality of the printing.
In the next ten years I probably took another ten films, I think only one black and white, the rest holiday pictures and a girlfriend sitting in a cherry tree (we’d broken up before I got the slides back.) A pound or so sounds cheap, but back then I was living on around £300 a year and after rent, food and bus fares there was nothing to spare on taking photographs.
I’d also managed to drop the Halina in a lake on my first visit to Paris, taking the woman later my wife rowing at Versailles. The boatman had later managed to find it and fish it out with his boathook and I think was rather disappointed when all he received for his efforts was profuse thanks rather than a large tip. The slides from the film in it had a strange colouration and the camera was never quite the same again, giving random shutter speeds at all settings but seldom fast enough to prevent camera shake. Later I gave it to my brother-in-law who continued to use it for some years despite this.
In 1971 I took short courses on photography, film and media studies as a part of a graduate teaching course and also met the first real photographer I had known who was taking the same course. So when I started earning money from teaching I was able to buy a new camera and also the gear – developing tank, trays, enlarger – to enable me to develop and print my own films, taping black plastic sheeting over the kitchen window to do so.
I was lucky in that my local library had several books from the original Ansel Adams Basic Photo Series, particularly volume 3 ‘The Print‘ first published in 1968. Although my earlier course had taught me the very basics, I really learnt how to print from Ansel. And although I’m not the greatest fan of his images, he was certainly a very fine printmaker.
Of course I still couldn’t afford a Leica – or even a Pentax. But there were cheap Russian cameras available, both rangefinders and SLRs. I tried several but settled on a Zenit B, a heavily built SLR, buying it with the more expensive Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens. Mine was the later version with and M42 screw mount.
By 1983 I had added both a Jupiter-9 85mm f2 and a Mir 37mm f2.8 to my camera bag, as well as buying a modern relatively compact Olympus-35SP 35mm camera which had auto-exposure and 42mm f1.7 lens.
So I had the equipment to become a photographer but didn’t really know then what I wanted to use it for. My first real photographic project was taking pictures of Paris in 1973. Many of these pictures were made with the Zenith, but I found the Olympus easier to use when photographing people.
Although neither of us were still students we still were able as recent ex-students to stay at a cheap student hostel in a palatial town house in the centre of Paris, and as teachers our union cards got free entry to the museums in the city. So we were able to spend time cheaply in Paris, a city small enough for those fit and young to cover on foot, including most of the many promenades in an old French Green Michelin guide during a stay of several weeks.
We picnicked in the local parks, ate cheap meals in the hostel including as much bread and jam as we could manage at breakfast, bought cheap wine and I took photographs. After dark we struggled back up several flights of grand stairs to our room and collapsed exhausted on the bed, the room barely lit by the dimmest light bulb I have ever seen.
Eventually we had to return home and recover in time to start a new term of teaching. Over the next few weeks I developed the films and made prints, sending a batch of 10x8s to one of the better photographic magazines and receiving more or less by return a letter from the editor informing me they were to be published as a portfolio, praising my vision (and also complaining slightly that some were not quite sharp!)
I think most of the pictures here were in the few pages of that portfolio, but 50 years on I can’t find a copy or the letter from the editor though I’m sure I will have kept both somewhere. It was the first serious publication of my work, but I find I’ve not included it on my CV.
Back in 2009 I put a larger selection of images, 35 in all, from that trip on-line at Paris 73 where you can still view them. I’ll probably put some larger images online as a Flickr album shortly.
Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists: Three events I photographed on Saturday 19th January 2019.
Bread & Roses is again relevant now in January 2024, with the release of a new version of the song a few days ago by the ‘Orchestra of Cardboard‘, part of the amazing ‘Every street a POWER STATION campaign‘, a project of Walthamstow’s community interest company Optimistic Foundation CIC set up by artist and filmmaker Hilary Powell and filmmaker and musician Dan Edelstyn. The recording is a part of their fundraising campaign and your can read, see and hear more about it and their other campaigns which are already having an effect in the area on their crowdfunder page.
But back to January 2019, five years ago today.
Women’s Bread & Roses protest
Inspired by the Bread & Roses protests which revolutionised workers’ rights for women in 1912, Women’s March London marched from the BBC to a rally in Trafalgar Square against economic oppression, violence against women, gender pay gap, racism, fascism, institutional sexual harassment and hostile environment in the UK, and called for a government dedicated to equality and working for all of us rather than the few.
The London march was part of an international day with women marching in many countries around the world, particularly in cities across the USA.
At the start of the march was opposite the BBC on the steps of Langham Place a few of the women organising the event were being directed and filmed by a BBC film crew. Supposedly this was a documentary but it seemed to be more a scripted drama closely controlled by the director and with the women involved holding orange folders from which they read.
But there were a rather larger group of women (and just a few men with them) standing around outside the BBC building and largely ignoring the filming that was taking place. Many had made placards especially for the event, with some using words from the poem ‘Bread and Roses‘ written by James Oppenheim and published at the end of 1911. The phrase ‘Bread and Roses’ came from a speech the previous year by Helen Todd, speaking about the need for laws to regulate wages, working hours and conditions.
A few days later a strike was started by textile workers, largely immigrants, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The strike was organised by the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, led largely by women and they took up Oppenheims poem and sang it at their meetings and marches, as well as apparently marching with a banner ‘We want Bread, and Roses too!’ during their three-month strike.
Eventually, when the BBC had finished making their movie the women gathered for a march and I walked with them to Trafalgar Square.
Bolivians protest against Morales – Trafalgar Square
A small group of Bolivians had come to protest following a decision in December by the Electoral Commission that President Evo Morales could stand for a fourth term in office in the October 2019 elections which were starting with primaries at the end of January 2019. But I was not convinced that this was truly a protest about democracy rather than simply against his socialist policies.
Morales, Bolivia’s first president to come from the indigenous population was first elected in 2005. He supported the 2009 constitution which allowed only two consecutive terms in office but was able to stand for a third term as his first term had been before the limit was imposed. In 2016 tried to increase the limit to three terms by a referendum which was narrowly defeated. But after this the courts ruled that the limitation infringed the human rights of citizens, allowing him to stand for a further term.
Morales won the October 2019 but their were widespread protests alleging electoral fraud, although later investigations suggested he had indeed gained the 10% lead required for a first-round victory. But the protests grew and he was endangered by armed groups; eventually he resigned on 10th November 2019, fleeing to Mexico where he was granted political asylum. Allegations made against him of sedition and terrorism were later found to be politically motivated and in 2020 a Bolivian court found his rights had been violated and judicial procedures breached.
His successful policies which reduced poverty and illiteracy and combated the influence of the USA and multinational companies made him very unpopular among the middle class and particularly the groups accustomed to running the country. Many in the USA encouraged and financed the opposition to him as he was widely seen to have shown a successful alternative to the growth of international capitalism.
Solidarity with Russian anti-fascists – Whitechapel
Finally I went east to the Cable Street Mural where anarchists and anti-fascists were meeting l to oppose racism, xenophobia, fascism and the upsurge of far-right populism and to show solidarity with Russian anti-fascists who have been arrested, framed and tortured in a brutal wave of repression.
Russian and Ukranian comrades spoke at the rally. telling us of the persecution taking place. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested six in Penza in 2017, charging them with belonging to a non-existent organisation, ‘The Network’. Beatings and torture before their trial were used to make them give false confessions.
Two others were arrested in 2018 in St Petersburg and charged with belonging to the same fictional network and again tortured into making confessions and further similar arrests have followed. A total of 11 where then in prison for belonging to’The Network’, facing 5 to 25 years in jail.
The date for the protest was chosen as the anniversary of the brutal murder of two Russian anti-fascists, journalist Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, by fascists in broad daylight on the streets of Moscow on January 19th 2009. Russian anarchists and anti-fascists hold events to remember them on this day every year.
There was then a march to a further rally in Altab Ali Park, named for the 24-year-old clothing worker murdered in a nearby street on 4 May 1978.
Massive London Protest Over Gaza Genocide: Last Saturday I photographed the march in London when over 200,000 marched from Bank calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Among those on the march, Little Amal, a 12ft giant puppet of a Syrian child refugee stood out. As usual there was a strong Jewish representation both on the main march and on a separate feeder march for families and children I photographed as they set off from outside Kings College on Strand.
This was the seventh large protest in London and reflects the feelings of a large majority of the British public but unfortunately this and other huge protests around the world, including in the USA, seem unlikely to have any effect on our or the US governments polices. They will continue to give support to Israel while making weak statements about the need to reduce the killing which Israel will continue to ignore while denying the effects of its actions and blaming Hamas for the death and destruction they are causing.
The front of the march waiting to start.
The march took place on the 99th day of the Israeli attack on Gaza which has so far killed over 23,000 people, mainly civilians including more than 10,000 children, with many bodies still under the rubble. The bombing and shelling has made humanitarian aid and medical treatment impossible and widespread deaths from disease and starvation now seem inevitable.
Doctors Against Genocide.
Israeli forces have attacked hospitals, schools, refugee camps and have killed many doctors and arrested others. Only one hospital remains operating in the whole of Gaza and there are desperate shortages of medicines with many amputations having to be carried out without anaesthetics. Few of the 60,000 severely injured so far by the Israeli attacks have been able to get proper treatment.
A few of the Palestinian press who have been killed by Israel
Gaza’s journalists appear to have been especially targeted and more have now been killed by the IDF than journalists were killed in the whole six years of the Second World War.
A man holds a bloodstained bundle representing a dead child
As well as calling for a ceasefire, protesters also demand a just solution with freedom for Palestine, an end to the military occupation of the country and an end to Israeli apartheid.
‘Free Palestine Hands Off Yemen‘
Two events in the previous week added to the demands of protesters. Some had placards praising the Houthi forces in Yemen for their attacks on ships in the Red Sea and their were chants such as “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around” following the US and UK air attacks. The Houthi are now in control of much of Yemen following the October 2022 ceasefire and peace talks led by the UN began it December 2023, but they continue to be referred to in UK media as rebels or terrorists.
Last week South Africa stated the case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. It got rather less attention in the UK media than the response the following day by Israel, which appeared largely a continued recital of the widely condemned attacks of October 7th and the long-discredited assertion that their actions in Gaza are self-defence. Israel also denied having bombed any hospitals and claimed they were facilitating humanitarian aid, lying in the face of mountains of evidence the world has read.
A woman holds a placard ‘Well Done South Africa’.
Many on the protest praised South Africa for taking Israel to court. The moral case seems clearly proven, but I suspect the case may be lost on some legal technicality. ICJ verdicts are in any case not binding and I think the majority of the world has already reached their conclusion.
People hold up posters showing Nazi Germany and Palestine with a poster saying ‘Signs Like These Have Been Criinalised by the Met Police
There were apparently 1,700 police on duty for the protests and a handful of people were arrested for carrying placards or handing out leaflets which the police decided were possibly “showing support for a proscribed organisation which is an offence under the Terrorism Act.” The flyer, published by the Met, stated their “unconditional and wholehearted support and solidarity for the Palestinian struggle, which is once more breaking out into armed resistance” but made no explicit mention of Hamas. Other groups in the Palestinian struggle are not proscribed in the UK.
With so many taking part, the march ended with rallies in both of London’s major central squares, Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square, though I only got to the first of these. I was quite tired having walked from London Bridge station to Bank and then along with the march going back and forth taking pictures and decided to get a train from Charing Cross rather than go on to Parliament Square.
Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction: Ten years ago today, on Friday 17th January 2014 I went to Stratford to photograph and support mothers threatened with eviction from their hostel.
Focus E15 Mothers Party Against Eviction – East Thames Housing, Stratford
The eviction threat came when Newham Council withdrew funding from the Focus E15 Foyer run by East Thames Housing Association. Rather than accept the evictions and be rehoused by the council in private rented flats in far-flung areas of the UK – including Wales and Liverpool, the women in the hostel decided to join together and fight.
They fought to be rehoused near to friends, families and support including nurseries close to their local area to avoid distress and dislocation for themselves and their children – and eventually they won.
The fight by Focus E15 brought national publicity to the scandals around local authority housing, and was a inspiration to others around the country. They continue their fight with their ‘Housing For All‘ campaign and remain an active campaign against evictions in Newham, including a weekly street stall every Saturday on Stratford Broadway.
Their campaign against Newham Council and its right-wing Labour Mayor Robin Wales who seemed to regard the London borough as a personal fiefdom led to some devious and at times illegal attempts to silence them and was almost certainly a factor in fomenting the revolt by Labour Party members that eventually led to him being deposed. Though his replacement as Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, is perhaps only a slight improvement.
All local authorities have suffered under cuts by central government, and in particular attacks on social housing provision, begun under Thatcher and continued by all governments since. The cuts made by the Tory-led coalition following on from the financial crash of 2008 tightened the screw on them still further.
Newham under Robin Wales appears to have decided that they needed to attract a wealthier population to the area and get rid of some of their existing population and had decided in the early 2000s to sell off a well-located and popular council estate close to the centre of Stratford to whoever they could. They began the process of ‘decanting’ people from the Carpenters estate around 2004, with many properties being left empty for years despite having – together with Lambeth – the largest housing waiting lists in Greater London – around 3.5 times the average among London authorities.
One of the Focus E15 slogans was ‘Repopulate the Carpenters Estate’ and it was in part due to their actions, alongside those of other campaigners, that the estate was not sold off and demolished. The estate is now being regenerated by the council although Focus E15 find much to criticise in the council’s plans.
The Focus E15 had begun in September 2013 and the action ten years ago was one of their earliest. I met with them and supporters, including those from the Revolutionary Communist Group, on a street corner near the offices of East Thames and walked with them into the large foyer, where they posed for a photograph for one of the local newspapers.
Then some of the mothers and children moved into the show flat at the front of the offices, with others remaining on the street outside with banners and placards, handing out leaflets to people walking by and using a megaphone to explain why the mothers were protesting.
The member of East Thames staff who had been dealing with the mothers came to talk with them. He assured them that they would be allowed to remain until satisfactory accommodation had been found for them.
The mothers pointed out that East Thames had large numbers of homes available, including many on the former Olympic site in Stratford, but were told that East Thames could not allocate affordable properties directly, but had to work with Newham council.
He seemed genuinely suprised to hear from the mothers that Newham had made offers involving rehousing away from London, in Hastings, Birmingham and elsewhere, away from friends, families, colleges, nurseries and support networks, and stated that East Thames intended to see them rehoused in London.
Later the Group Chief Executive of East Thames, June Barnes arrived and talked with the mothers telling them the same. East Thames seemed clear that the real problem was with Newham Council and not with them, though the campaigners were not really convinced.
Some Madness and Houses in Clapham: On the 29th July 1989 my walk began in Clapham and I found this sign on The Pavement. I could make very little of it then and still can’t now.
Notice, The Pavement, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-43
At the top of the painting on the wall is a geometric device surround by a circle with a square inside divided into four quarters and various triangles inside and on its two vertical edges. Four arrows from the circle have a 90 degree left turn and point anticlockwise and to the letters ‘PH.’, ‘MAY’, ‘MARY’ and ‘C.R.’. Underneath I can just make out the scrawled word ‘MADONNA’, though I think think this has been overwritten at the start to read ‘CRAP’ and there are some other letters and numbers including a ‘6’.
Below this, boldly painted in the same script as the words around the device are a series of words or rather letters in which there are some actual words and some plausible inventions. The whole is a mystery though I rather suspect one that many have involved copious amounts of illegal substances. There was some colour in this notice which you can see in the different shades of grey, and a few sections were in red, particularly the only lower case line just above the bottom, ‘dunhillthwaiton’ while the bottom line, ‘HYPOSTASISTA’ was in green.
I think this was a part of the block called The Polygon which was demolished in the early 2000s. But it is difficult to understand street names in this area of Clapham, and this writing on the wall is impossible.
I wrote about Rectory Gardens at more length in the post about an earlier visit there in May 1989. Built in the 1870s as philanthropic housing for low paid workers after being damaged in the war they were squatted in the late 1960s and 70s and a unique artistic community grew up there. Lambeth Council bought the area and intended to develop it in 1970, but there was strong local opposition both from residents and others in the local area.
The Clapham Society wanted them to be kept as a group and run by a housing association but eventually Lambeth Council evicted the residents and in 2016 sold them off to a developer to build expensive luxury properties in “a triangular mews-style development“.
Porch, 39, Turret Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-32
I walked up Rectory Grove to Turret Grove, developed on the site of the Elzabethan manor house, Clapham Manor, demolished in 1837. Some of the houses in it date from 1844-5 and are in the Rectory Grove Conservation Area which notes their “attractive trellis style porches“.
Doorways, Clapham Common Northside area, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-35
I made my way through the backstreets towards Clapham Common. One of the streets I walked down was Macaulay Road and this has some impressive doorways and I think this pair were probably on this road.
Zachary Macaulay, born in Scotland had emigrated to Jamaica in 1784 when he was 16 and worked as an assistant manager on a sugar plantation, returning to London five years later. In 1790 he visited Sierra Leone, set up as a home for emancipated slaves many of whom had fought for Britain in the American War of Independence, returning in 1792 and becoming its Governor from 1794-9. He became one of the leading members of the Clapham Sect working for the abolition of slavery, able to provide William Wilberforce with first-hand information and statistics.
In 1799 he came back to Clapham with 25 children from Sierra Leone and set up a the School of Africans to train them with skills to support the development of their country when they returned. Unfortunately “one by one they succumbed to the cold“, though in fact what killed most of them was measles and only six survived.
Further down the street was once the site of the Ross Optical Works which made cameras, lenses and projectors which moved here in 1891 and expanded greatly in 1916 when their work was considered essential to the war effort. At its peak the company employed 1200 people. Ross Ensign was said to be the premier optical company in the United Kingdom, but was unable to compete with foreign competition and closed in 1975.
Clapham Common Northside, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-23
I think I probably photographed this house on the corner of Clapham Common Northside and The Chase mainly because it was so different from the rest of the properties, terraces and blocks along there. A large house, but only two storeys and with an attractive upper floor window, but largely hidden behind its rampant bushes and trees in its front garden.
On its side in The Chase are three plaques commemorating street parties for the Queen’s Birthday, a royal wedding and the Golden Jubilee in recent years.
Red Army & Chinese Torture Victims – 2005: Events in London on 15th January 2005 connected with China and Russia.
Falun Gong Demonstrate – Chinese Torturers. Westminster – Portland Place
Back in 2005 I wrote “to me, Falun Gong seems a harmless form of meditation exercises, available to anyone without charge and following the admirable principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, but the Chinese government seem to regard it as the most dangerous form of terrorism.”
Now I’m less positive although still shocked by the accounts of “physical tortures, including beatings, electric shocks, immersion, chaining for hours and days and the infamous ‘tiger bench’ are used together with psychological attacks including humiliation and sleep deprivation by the Chinese government to suppress the practice.”
According to Wikipedia, while Falun Gong is a new religion based on Buddhism, its founder in the early 1990s Li Hongzhi gave it some highly reactionary characteristics, such as the rejection of modern scientific ideas including evolution and medicines, racism, and opposition to homosexuality and feminism. More recently it has promoted conspiracy theories including QAnon and anti-vaccination misinformation and supported Trump and extreme-right movements in Europe.
The Wikipedia article also carries an account of a 2018 report that “highlights Falun Gong’s extensive internet presence, and how editors who have to date contributed to English Wikipedia entries associated with Falun Gong to the point where ‘Falun Gong followers and/or sympathizers de facto control the relevant pages on Wikipedia‘”. Perhaps Wikipedia has now managed at least to some extent to prevent this, but although a number of academics have criticised Falun Gong as a cult, this word and the criticisms appear nowhere in the article.
Li Hongzhi now lives with hundreds of supporters close to a 427 acre compound in New York State, Dragon Springs which is the training ground for its Shen Yen performers. The organisation describes itself as “the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company” and whose performances around the world provides significant funding for Falun Gong including a press group The Epoch Times and a PR firm.
Falun Gong has also received considerable funding from the US government particular for the development of free software intended to circumvent Chinese government internet censorship. Their activities have certainly been incorporated in the US’s fight to retain dominance over China.
Red Square, SW1- Russian Winter Festival – Trafalgar Square
Red square, SW1 was a Russian winter festival celebrating the Russian Old New Year, January 1st according to the Julian Calendar used in Russia until the Revolution and still by the Russian Orthodox Church – which falls on 14th January for the rest of us.
This was a spectacular event, run in cooperation with Moscow city government and many Russian businesses trading in the UK, and I only photographed it for the first few hours, missing the big celebrations, the rock concert, the ice skating at Somerset House and more. As well as the audience at the event it was also going out to 20 million listeners on Russian radio, as well as to anyone who could put up with an inane presenter from some UK radio station.
Both London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Moscow’s Mayor opened the show, though I decided to take a rest at that point from taking pictures and instead try “a fine but overpriced Baltika beer, imported from St Petersburg – at a sensible price i could develop a taste for it.” But I could still hear the speeches and learn that Ken’s father had taken part in the Baltic convoys in WW2.
But for me the cultural highpoint was the performance of the Alexandrov Red Army Choir, founded in 1928 to glorify the revolution by the composer of the Soviet national anthem. Though I found little to photograph during the performance I was able to take quite a few pictures of the men later and of a Irish woman who had attended a red army choir performance in Dublin in the 1950s as a schoolgirl,and had brought a record of them from 1956 for them to sign.
The record cover had a picture of the choir and some of those who had sung on it were still with the choir 49 years later. A younger member of the choir brought some of them across, including the fantastic bass soloist who treated us to a little of his voice and signed the cover – using the Stabilo ‘Write-4-all’ pen I carried to do so on the glossy cover when an ordinary pen failed.
And in 2005 I concluded:
Oh yes, there was fake snow on the lions, some very weird folk dancing involving things that looked rather like dustbin lids wielded by fur-coated women with a lot of heavy breathing rather than singing, Russian dolls, food and more.
What I failed to record was that in the crush to see the Red Army Choir I had forgotten to zip up my camera bag and later found that the cheap telephoto zoom was missing from it. I wasn’t too bothered, as I had already realised it had been a mistake to buy it as it was rather a poor performer and I rather welcomed the need to replace it with something better.
I wrote rather more and there are more pictures, particularly of the choir on My London Diary
Battersea was one of the most progressive areas of the country in the late nineteenth century and in 1886 Battersea Vestry came to the decision that the parish should itself erect working class dwelling on the site of the Latchmere allotments, themselves enclosed from Latchmere common in 1832 to provide allotments for the poor.
But, as the Survey of London which recounts the development of the area in some depth states, the Local Government Board told them that they did not have the power to build houses. The Vestry put forward a bill in parliament to enable them to go ahead but it met wide opposition and had to be withdrawn.
Things began to move again in 1898 when Fred Knee, a member of the UK’s first organised socialist party, the Social Democratic Federation and of the Co-operative Society, moved to Battersea and founded the Workmen’s Housing Council to campaign for better housing for workers to be built by public authorities on a non-profit basis. He tried to get the London County Council involved as they had the powers to build homes. But this shortly became unnecessary as the 1899 London Government Act replaced the Vestry with the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea which under the 1900 Housing Act was able to apply for the power to build housing itself. Knee continued to play an important role in the development by the council.
In 1901 Battersea Council set up a competition for plans asking for designs for five house and flat types, and prizes were eventually awarded to five of the 58 entries, and work began by Borough Surveyor, J. T. Pilditch and his architectural assistant William Eaton on finalising the designs and estate plan.
The Survey of London states that the final plans included “eight five-room houses, 69 houses with a three-room flat on each floor, 73 houses with a four-room flat on each floor and six odd houses of four or five rooms“. The competition-winning designs were simplified with their more picturesque features “expunged in the interests of economy” which perhaps makes them more aesthetically pleasing to modern eyes.
Where expense was not spared was in the internal facilities for the new tenants, with electric lighting (and slot meters), unusual at the time and “patent combined kitchen range, boiler and bath … fitted in all the houses at the high cost of £18 10s apiece.”
Battersea is cut through by the railway lines from two of London’s major termini, Waterloo and Victoria with junctions, goods yards, engineering works and a number of branches creating an incredible maze of tracks, viaducts, and bridges, now only slightly simplified.
Culvert Road predates the Shaftestbury Estate and was important as an entrance to Poupart’s market garden on which that estate was built. It originally had a level crossing over the railway line here – four tracks leading from Clapham Junction and from the rail bridge over the Thames at Battersea to Wandsworth Road – but this was closed and a narrow footbridge reached by slopes on each side provided in 1880. This footbridge provided may vantage point for this picture.
Culvert Road continues to the north in a tunnel out of picture to the left under around 13 more tracks leading to Victoria or Waterloo. Over the railway viaduct you can see the blocks of the Doddington Estate.
The history of the Shaftesbury Park Estate, developed by the the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwelling Company between between 1873 and 1877 was roughly based on workers cities (cités ouvrières) built earlier in France.
Its development was overshadowed by one of the era’s largest scandals which resulted in the entire board of directors being replaced in 1877 and its secretary/manager William Swindlehurst and chairman Baxter being jailed for conspiracy and fraud, and another director fleeing the country. You can read more of the details on the Survey of London.
When the disgraced board of the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwelling Company was replaced in 1877 their architect, the self-taught Robert Austin was sacked. His more conventionally qualified assistant was also dismissed the following year to save money. But the work of the pair has stood the test of time with a remarkable overall unity about the estate, planned on a grid system, enlivened with some minor and varied decorative features.
Despite its board’s fraud, the estate was generally well-built and houses provided with good ventilation and an improved system of drainage, though this was a cause of arguments with the local authority which favoured traditional methods. There were also various community buildings, but the estate is best-known for not including a single pub, influenced by the temperance movement of the times. William Austin, usually thought of as the founder of the company, was a poor and illiterate navvy before taking ‘the pledge’ and becoming a successful drainage contractor and builder. He set up the company as largely a business enterprise, aimed at making an annual profit of 6% rather than for any great philanthropic intent. He was voted off the board before the scandal with The Survey of London quoting him as later explaining ‘I was too honest for them’.
Houses, Broughton St, Park Town, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7n-52
Broughton Street runs from the end of Eversleigh St east parallel to the railway lines before turning to cross Queenstown Rd and ending on Silverthorne Road. I think I was probably standing on the end of Eversleigh Street to photograph this long terrace on the north side which according to the Survey of London were built by partners Robert Lacy and James Flexman shortly after an agreement they made in 1867.
This block of over 20 virtually identical houses (that nearest the camera has a carriage entrance, as No 1 still does) is followed past a narrow entrance road leading to a tunnel to the London Stone Business Estate between railway lines by another long block much the same. The houses here along this side of the road are numbered consecutively from 1-52.
The houses in these terraces are quite substantial, three floors each with two main rooms and rather than their front doors opening directly onto the pavement all except the two end houses have vestigial front gardens.
Shops, 56-64, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-56
I walked down Prairie Street to Queenstown Road taking a couple of pictures there before turning down Lavender Hill where I made another three, only this one on-line. I’d photographed this row of shops earlier but took this second picture showing the multiplicity of signs – a cinema poster with dinosaurs, Ice Cream, the two posts with signs for the off licence and vegetarian food. the shop fronts and a large JEANS up one of the curved ends of the houses. The area in front of the shops looks very different now.
This was the end of my walk on Friday 28th July but I returned to Clapham the following day to take more pictures – in a later post.
Shops, 56-64, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-22
The six houses between Woodmere Grove and Shirley Grove at 56-66 on the north side of Lavender Hill were built at a slight angle to the road. Each of them also has a rounded corner at the south-east, making them look from the east side as a series of round towers, some strange castle beside the road. Unlike the other terraces on the road this makes them stand out as individual buildings, though shop extensions on the ground floor present a straight line on the pavement.
These houses were built as a part of Seymour Terrace in around 1870 as private houses with basements on a part of an estate bought by Clapham surgeon and GP Henry Meredith Townsend who lived nearby on Clapham Rise. The ground floor was converted into shops in 1882. The Survey of London which gives more detail describes them as “a minor masterpiece of street architecture.“
Queen’s Road Stores, Hartington Terrace, Stanley Grove, Queenstown Rd, Clapham, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-24
Hartington Terrace on Queenstown Road is still there though the shopfronts have changed a little over the years they are still basically the same. No 43 on the corner has lost those ‘decorative’ blinds and looks very much more sober, not welling bathroom fittings rather than wine. This whole area of Battersea, Park Town, was the heart of a single farm, Longhedge Farm, which began to be developed after the opening of Battersea Park in 1858. Its long and complex story is told in great detail in the link cited.
Developments at the southern end included some large villas close to Clapham Common, and the developers of the northern part under Philip William Flower (1810–72) originally hoped to make this a middle-class area with its location between Clapham and Chelsea but later had to lower their expectations largely because of railway expansion in the area and develop it as homes for working-class artisans.
An Act of Parliament in 1863 allowed the laying out of Queens Road (known since 1939 as Queenstown Road) and building on the estate continued over the next 30 or so years. One of the two major builders was Walter Peacock who began Hartington Terrace (named by Cyril Flower, (1843–1907), Philip’s eldest son and first Lord Battersea) in 1885. No 43 was built as a pub and there was a parade of 7 shops with stabling and workshops behind. A few more shops were added to the north in 1888 by another builder.
Stanley Grove at left was an earlier development with houses built by a number of builders in 1867-8.
Life Tabernacle, United Pentecostal Church, 32, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-26
The church is still there, set back from Battersea Park Road, but the temporary looking building occupying most of the picture has been replaced by a rather nondescript block with a large ground floor betting shop.
The land for the church building was, according to the Survey of London, acquired in 1868 “from the Crown’s Battersea Park purchase, to be used ‘as a branch from Mr Spurgeon’s tabernacle’. ” One of the leading Baptist figures of the age, Spurgeon was for 38 years pastor of the New Park Street Chapel (later the Metropolitan Tabernacle) at the Elephant & Castle. He was a powerful preacher and prolific writer and supporter of many practical schemes to improve the lot of the urban poor as well as missions such as this to convert them to his Calvinistic Christianity.
The first building erected was this, built as a lecture hall seating almost 500 by Lambeth builder and architect William Higgs, and it was 25 years later that a chapel was added to Battersea Tabernacle. This occupied the space between the hall and Battersea Park Road and was demolished probably in the 1970s having been damaged by wartime bombing. The hall was purchased for £25,000 by members of Calvary Temple in Camberwell and became Life Tabernacle.
Decoration, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth 1989 89-7m-13
Somewhere on the stretch of Battersea Park Road between Propert’s blacking factory at 142 (photograph not on-line) and the villas at 445-7 I made this picture of terracotta decoration in panels on a building, but I can no longer find it. Unfortunately although my note says Battersea Park Road it does not give a street number. From the picture I think it must had been only a few courses above street level.
The central panel seems more generic, with a vessel with appears to have a fruit tree growing out of it, perhaps with apples, but the two roundels at the sides are perhaps more interesting. I think they probably represent some trade or other, but can’t decide which. Perhaps someone reading this can solve the mystery and make a comment.
This remarkable pair of villas, now apparently a hotel, were built in the 1850s and the architect is thought to have been Charles Lee. The two are Grade II listed. The gable has a distinctive scalloped bargeboard or decoration and this continues for a short length along each side of the house to a low wall bearing an urn.
Café Window, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-15
This café on Battersea Park Road, I think in the parade between Stanmer St and Balfern Street, seems a suitable place to pause my walk which will continue in later posts. Although it looks as if it was taken from inside I think it was probably closed and I was standing in a recessed doorway.
Protest Under Threat – On Saturday 12th January 2008 I photographed six protests in London, and two of them were against the increased restrictions on public protest introduced by SOCPA, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which considerably increased the powers of arrest of police, criminalised trespass at designated ‘Protected Sites’ which included nuclear sites and a long list of royal, parliamentary, and government sites.
But most controversially it seriously restricted our right to demonstrate within a “designated area” of up to one kilometre from any point in Parliament Square. Although Trafalgar Square was excluded from this, it was a wide area which included areas on the south bank of the river including County Hall, the Jubilee Gardens, St Thomas’ Hospital and the London Eye and extended west on the north bank as far as Tate Britain.
These sections of the act were repealed or rather replaced in 2011 by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which narrowed its scope to prohibiting some activities in Parliament Square, more specifically aimed at protests such as that by Brian Haw.
Hizb ut-Tahrir protest Bush’s Middle East tour – Marble Arch – Saudi Embassy
Other protests on the day included a march by supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain from Marble Arch to the Saudi Embassy in Mayfair to show their opposition to George Bush’s Middle East tour and American policies in the region as well as against the current corrupt ruling elites in the area.
Although I don’t support the ideology of Hizb ut-Tahrir and was certainly worried by their global intentions which we later saw put into practice by Islamic extremists in ISIS in Syria and others elsewhere as well as uneasy about their treatment of the women who were at their protests clearly as second-class citizens (and who I was often requested by stewards not to photograph), this like their other protests was extremely tightly managed by the organisation.
Clearly the protest presented no real threat to public order and it was hard to see why there was such a large police presence, when all that was needed was some traffic control and perhaps a few officers to monitor the speeches for any illegal content – though I don’t think there were any present who could understand those not in English. more pictures
Young Rich Protest Siena Airport Expansion
There were two protests taking place around Trafalgar Square, and one of them I found it a little hard to take seriously. This was what I described as a “small but very select” protest against the expansion of Sienna airport “led by the young grandson of a Lord” by “models and young people from some of the richest families around (the kind of people who own Guinness rather than drink it)” who enjoy their times at nice big villas there and don’t “want all sorts of riff-raff coming in on cheap flights“. Of course we should all be against airport expansion. more pictures
CSG Freedom to Protest Border Post – Trafalgar Square/Whitehall
On the traffic island at the south of Trafalgar Square and the top of Whitehall a group calling themselves the CSG (Citizens Supporting Government – rather than the Met’s TSG, sometimes said to stand for Thugs Supporting Government rather than its official Territorial Support Group) set up a ‘Freedom to Protest Border Point’ again on Saturday on the edge of the SOCPA zone to advise the public about the danger of passing into the an area where freedom is severely restricted. more pictures
Freedom to Protest – outside Downing Street
But the main Freedom To Protest demonstration was taking place at the gates of Downing Street with a couple of hundred protesters. Although police usually try to move protesters away from the gates, things as I arrived seemed fairly relaxed.
But when a number of protesters decided to sit or lie down in the middle of the road this prompted the police to take action. “They grabbed the first couple of guys who went down on the tarmac and handcuffed them as well as seeming to try out a few strange holds.”
And when a dozen or so laid down in a neat line along the carriageway a squad of around 20 officers who had been waiting 50 yards down the road rushed in and began by clearing photographers and others standing on the road back onto the pavement. “Any who showed a reluctance to move were given a hand, sometimes with what seemed like unnecessary force. I was almost knocked flying when they threw one man bodily backwards – and I was in his way, probably rather luckily for him, as otherwise he could well have cracked his head open on the pavement.”
They then carried those sitting or laid on the ground back to the pavement, warning them they would be arrested if they returned to the road. Some who had linked arms were separated with some of the police clearly seeming to be enjoying themselves using pain compliance holds and inflicting unnecessary pain as they twisted arms behind backs and generally pushed the guys around.
Brian Haw – whose continuing peace protest in Parliament Square had been one of the main targets of SOCPA – was there using a small video camera to record the police violence and I photographed him with a nasty trickle of blood running down his left cheek after an officer had forcefully pushed the camera into his face. When he tried to complain to the officers in charge he was ignored and finally told to go to a police station if he wished to complain. Some of the police were rather obviously amused at both his injury and his complaints. more pictures
Kenyans Demand Justice after Election Fraud
Across Whitehall in the designated protest area there were two protests taking place. Kenyans were protesting against election fraud in their country, where the man who had almost certainly lost the vote set up an electoral commission that was certain to declare him as the winner, and he remains President. SOCPA was having an effect on their protest as my picture shows, with a man using a megaphone hidden under brown paper! more pictures
End the Siege on Gaza
Also across Whitehall from Downing Street were a group of protesters calling for an end to the Israeli siege of Gaza which severely limits the supply of essential goods including medicines and for an end to the military occupation of Palestine.
Among the protesters still present when I arrived rather late to photograph it were Jewish activists supporting Palestine and a boycott of Israeli goods, part of the growing campaign for BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. In 2024 the UK government is putting through a Bill to stop “businesses and organisations–including those affiliated with Israel-being targeted through ongoing boycotts by public bodies” because of the increasing success of this campaign. If passed it will stop public bodies, “including universities, local authorities, and government departments, from making investment decisions that align with their human rights responsibilities and obligation.” They will be unable “to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses and international crimes” such as “the Chinese government’s systematic repression of Uyghurs, Israel’s crimes of apartheid or war crimes in Israeli settlements, Saudi Arabia and UAE’s war crimes in Yemen, or the Myanmar junta’s crimes against humanity.“ more pictures
