Heathrow – No Third Runway: On Saturday 31st May 2008 I joined around 4000 people marching from Hatton Cross to the village of Sipson, doomed if Heathrow was to be allowed to go ahead with its plans for a ‘third runway’.
This was a protest I had a more personal interest in than most. I grew up under the Heathrow flight path, about two and a half miles from touchdown, and have lived in the area most of my life. I now live about the same distance from the edge of the airport but fortunately no longer on the flightpath, with just the occasional aircraft making the steep turn needed to fly over our house.
My post about the protest written in 2008 began with this paragraph: “It is now obvious to everyone with their head out of the sand is that London Heathrow is in the wrong place. It always was, since its creation by subterfuge and lies during the last years of the war, but no government since has had the nerve to challenge the powerful aviation lobby.”
In 2010 the newly formed Coalition government did cancel the plans as a part of the deal the Tories reached with the Lib-Dems. But then the government set up the Davies Commission, chaired by Howard Davies who was at the time employed by one of the principal owners of Heathrow, GIC Private Limited. Though he resigned when he was appointed it came as no surprise when his final report recommended the building of a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow.
The government, now solely Conservative, approved these proposals in 2016 but London councils and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan applied for judicial review and the Court of Appeal ruled that the decision was unlawful as it did not take into account the government’s commitments to combat climate change under the Paris Agreement. Heathrow appealed and in 2020 the UK Supreme Court lifted the ban.
Since then nothing has happened, partly because of lack of finance and arguments about who would fund some of the huge infrastructure costs involved in the proposals outside the airport boundary. The economic costs of the dislocation during the long development would also be considerable. Covid led to a huge decrease in passenger numbers and although these have picked up, finding the investment needed to finance the project probably remains impossible.
You can read more detail on Wikipedia about the supporters of expansion and also those opposed to it.
Although the project was always clearly an environmental disaster, clearly the government and Supreme Court decisions reflected the lack of importance at the time given to our increasing climate chaos. Recent weather in the UK and around the world are now beginning to change this and a new government is going to have to do more than pay lip-service and will no longer be able to push things into the distant future. So I think it very unlikely we will ever see another runway being built at Heathrow.
You can read a lengthy account of the protest on 31st May 2008 on My London Diary, when I mention that when I was taking pictures like the one at the top of the post as a few under 3000 of us made a giant human ‘NO’ on the grass of the recreation ground I was taking pictures with one hand and holding up my ‘No’ towards the cameras on the cherry-picker behind my back with the other.
Peckham, Choudary, Vedanta & Gove: Ten years ago Friday 30th May 2014 saw me rushing around London to cover four events, my day starting outside the job centre in Peckham and ending with being escorted out of the Department for Education in Westminster.
Peckham Jobcentre Penalises Jobseekers
People had come to protest outside Peckham Jobcentre because it removes benefits from claimants at twice the rate of other London job centres and they demanded to know why this was.
People are sanctioned for many reasons, often for things outside their control such as missing interviews where letters have either not been sent or not been received due to postal delays, or arriving late when trains or buses have been cancelled. Some were also being sanctioned for refusing to work without pay un unfair ‘workfare’ schemes.
Sanctioning leaves many job seekers destitute, without any source of income, often for three months, sometimes longer, removing the ‘safety net’ the welfare state is supposed to provide. There have long been sanctions on benefits, but the major changes introduced by the Coalition Government’s Welfare Reform Act 2012 have hugely increased their use, often for trivial reasons.
The new sanctions regime is yet another example of the failure by the Tories (and in this case the Lib-Dems too) to understand how people outside of the middle and upper classes get by; what it is like to live on benefits or low incomes with no resources to fall back on. And it shows that they just don’t care.
The protest was organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group though others came to support it. Speakers used a megaphone to tell people why they were protesting and people handed out leaflets to those entering and leaving the job centre as well as those walking past. They also gave out an information leaflet about UK Borders Agency raids.
I left Peckham to go to the London Mosque in Regents Park where Anjem Choudary and his followers were protesting on the road outside as the crowds left after Friday prayers.
Choudary had come to call for the release of militant Islamist Omar Bakri Muhammad, held in Lebanon for his support of extremist fighters Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL.) Few in the crowds stopped to listen to him and many crossed the street to avoid him. A few came to argue with him.
Omar Bakri Muhammad claimed asylum in the UK in 1986 and came to Finsbury Park Mosque, where he built up Hizb ut-Tahrir and was one of the founders of Al Muhajiroun, banned in the UK after alleged involvement in the 2005 London bombings. He left the UK for Lebanon and was told by the Home Office he could not return here.
In 2010 he was sentenced in Lebanon to life with hard labour for acts of terrorism, but was released on bail after some retracted their testimony against him. He was arrested again in May 2014 for alleged involvement in attacks carried out by militant Sunnis in Lebanon for his support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who he had called to bring their fight to Lebanon.
This was a segregated protest, with around 30 women covered from head to foot in black in a separate group holding up posters and joining in the chanting of slogans.
African protesters were outside Vedanta’s Mayfair offices for an Afrikan Liberation Day protest over the London listed company owned by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal which has cheated both Zambia over copper and Liberia over iron ore deals.
Agarwal appears in a video where he ridicules the Zambian government over the small sum he paid to buy the Konkola Copper Mines and boasting that they made him more than US$500 million every year in profit. Other sources show he avoids paying tax on these huge profits. Vedanta were also taken to court in Zambia over massive pollution of the Kafue River and a large fine was imposed, although apparently it had not been paid.
The Liberian government sold the Western Cluster iron ore deposits cheaply to a small company Elenilto in 2009. They immediately sold 51% to Vedanta, transferring the rest in a few months.
People were slow to arrive for the protest and I had to leave before it really got going.
Gove “Read-In” protest in Department for Education
I met a ‘class’ of protesters outside the Department for Education in Great Smith Street, Westminster and walked with them into the foyer where they sat down for an ‘English lesson’ in protest against Michael Gove’s political interference in the curriculum side-lining modern US books, promoting education for the needs of business rather than people.
We had not been stopped when entering although the protesters expected to be ejected as soon as they began making speeches and displayed their banner.
Unfortunately I was asked to leave before this happened as the department were unhappy with the press taking pictures in a public building where there were surely no security implications – though perhaps a high risk – if not a certainty – of the minister and the government being embarrassed.
Although they were insistent that I leave the security staff were unusually polite and rather apologetic and I got a strong impression that they were not happy at being told to keep the press out. I had already taken a number of pictures and took a few more on my way out.
The DfE had issued a statement denying that Gove had anything to do with the decision to narrow the curriculum and promote a more narrowly nationalist agenda for education – one that will sideline not only modern US literature, but also the great wealth of writers from the Commonwealth who have enriched English literature.
They stated the change was a result of consultation with all interested parties, while teachers, examiners, education and literary professionals have launched a mass campaign against what is clearly a ministerial diktat, political interference in education. For them, the DfE statement was simply an uninspired work of fiction.
Holy Trinity, Pigs & Brewery: At the end of my walk in East Hull I spent a little time wandering around the Old Town and came back to the centre the following day before catching the train home.
Holy Trinity, South Church Side, Hull, 1989 89-8p-42
Grade I listed Holy Trinity (since 2017 Hull Minster) is a remarkable survival despite some later architectural vandalism large parts of its original building from 1285 to 1420 remain. It is said to be the largest parish church in England with a floor area of 20,056 square ft and has some of the finest medieval brick-work in the country. Wikpedia lists its vicars from Robert de Marton in 1326; Arthur Robinson was Vicar here when the infant William Wilberforce, Hull’s most famous son, was baptised here in 1759.
Surprisingly it escaped serious damage in the Second World War when much of central Hull was destroyed by bombing. This side of the church now looks rather different with recent building work although the church ant gates posts remain.
Posterngate, Hull, 1989 89-8p-43
These Grade II listed buildings date from 1868 and 1874, designed by the architect to Trinity House William Foale in a Gothic Revival stye were the Department of Transport Marine Office in Hull.
A gated alley between the two blocks leads to Zebedee’s yard and has a label (not visible in my picture) SPACE FOR OFFICIAL CAR’. There is now a first floor bridge across the alley connecting the two buildings.
Pigs, Hull, 1989 89-8p-44
Somewhere in Hull I walked past these pig carcases hanging from hooks and took a picture. I think there are four of them. It was rather a gruesome sight, but has not yet put me off eating bacon.
Hull Brewery, Silvester St, Hull, 1989 89-8p-45
I think it was probably on the following day that I returned to the centre of Hull and photographed the Anchor Brewery Brewery on Silvester Street. I was standing close to Kingston House not far from the west end of the street. The former Hull Brewery site is Grade II listed and was largely built around 1867 to the designs of W Sissons. The extensive buildings were being converted to flats and offices as The Maltings when I made this picture.
Hull Brewery began in Dagger Lane in the Old Town as the John Ward Brewery in 1765 and in 1865 Ward’s grandson Robert Ward Gleadow joined with W T Dibb to form Gleadow Dibb & Co. They moved to the new brewery site in 1868, and in 1887 having taken over several other Hull brewers became The Hull Brewery Co. Ltd.
In 1972 having over the years taken over 13 smaller brewers and a bottlers in Hull, Cottingham, Beverley and elsewhere they were themselves taken over by Northern Dairies and became North Country Breweries. This was bought in 1985 by the Mansfield Brewery who closed down brewing in Hull.
New Garden St, Hull, 1989 89-8p-31
New Garden Street runs from Sylvester Street and along the back of properties on George Street to Grimston Street. On George Street was one of Hull’s most famous stores, Carmichaels, now the Carmichael Hotel. The sign on the buildings at left is for Carmichael’s Goods Entrance.
Carmichaels was set up in 1902 as a small shop but was enlarged in 1914 and later extended to the premises now on George Street. It became Hull’s poshest (and priciest) store, sometimes called the ‘Harrods of the North’, paticularly known for the glass, china and jewelry it sold as well as its posh cafe. Apparently the family sold it to Woolworths in 1963, but was bought by its manager in 1989 who wanted to restore its high quality status, but it closed in 1991.
People who worked there say that behind the posh side that the public saw the place was something of a shambles. The actor Ian Carmichael was the son of one of the three brothers who founded the shop.
After this I returned to Holy Trinity to visit its interior, taking a couple of images I’ve not put online before taking the train back to London.
Chelsea Flower Show: I have never had any desire to go to the Chelsea Flower Show and still have never been, but in 2005 I was persuaded by friends to go with them to photograph people on the streets taking flowers home at the end of the show. I’d previously largely and deliberately avoided this and other events that were part of London’s Social Season and I’ve not been since.
I hadn’t known that this happened, but here is what I wrote back in 2005 (with the usual minor corrections):
“Chelsea Flower Show is the biggest event of the gardening season, and the crowds are huge. This year an extra day was added to cut down on the jams, though i don’t know how effective it was. Unless you are a gardening photographer, the most interesting part of the whole event is the end, when many of the plants on show are sold off and proudly carried home by their purchasers. As you can see from the pictures, they carry them along the streets to the bus stop or car park or coach, providing a rather unusual spectacle.”
Looking through the work now, here are some of the pictures that caught my eye.
More from East Hull: The final episode of my walk around East Hull in October 1989.
The Fish House, Holderness Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8p-65
The Fish House I think sold decorative tropical fish to swim in your aquarium but I was mildly amused by the small house on the pavement in front of their sign. Certainly it was unsuitable for fish, but I couldn’t decide what it was for, perhaps a kennel for a Chihuahua. And further up on the house is a picture of dog of some sort.
Putting “the fish house holderness road hull” into Google brings up, apart from this picture, a large number of fish and chip shops and restaurants mainly around Hull. But I think the fish here would have generally been rather insubstantial as well as expensive to eat.
Bush are still there on the corner of Durham Street, though its frontage now looks rather different with a front extension across the whole of it. Though I’m sure this gives a better working space it has lost the character of the ground floor with its fort as the left, angular bay windows and glasses sign.
Another view of Bush Opticians. The Bush family have been prominent opticians in Hull for many years, with Herman Bush being one of Hull’s first opticians in the mid-19th century.
The sign jutting out from the shop has the date 1865, and there have been branches run by members of the family around Hull and in surrounding areas where five generations of the Bush family have been testing eyes and making spectacles in Hull. Though one of the Bush opticians websites states that, it seems now to be at least six generations, as the obituary of the most controversial of the fifth generation, the late Sydney Bush, includes a quote by his son who worked with him for over 30 years.
Country Butcher, Clip Joint, Newbridge Trophy Centre, 142-6, New Bridge Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8p-51
Hairdressers seem often to have punning titles like The Clip Joint, though the scissors taking the lower part of the T was a nice touch. The years have been tough for small shops, particularly those a little off the main streets, and The Country Butcher with its curiously altered bay windows is now residential.
The hairdresser went though several name changes and has now become a shop selling “Eco-friendly, Handmade Products” and the Newbridge Trophy Centre at 142 has become a pizza place.
Mo’s Cafe, Great Union St, East Hull, 1989 89-8p-54
Mo’s Cafe in this picture was at the north end of Great Union St, at the rear of the Waterloo Hotel on the corner of Clarence Street. The buildings behind and at left were a part of the Rank Hovis mill site at Drypool Bridge and were demolished with the mill in 2015 for a hotel that was never built.
The sign on the window says Mo’s Cafe has moved to 18 Hedon Road, 2 minutes walk away.
River Hull, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8p-56
My walk in East Hull was at an end and I took a final picture before going to the Old Town as a walked across Drypool Bridge. The wharf at left is part of the Rank Hovis Mill. There were still a few vessels moored in the River Hull in what was Hull’s first harbour, with some fine warehouses on the right bank converted to flats.
The next post from Hull will be the last of my pictures there in October 1989 – and after that I will return to posting more pictures of London.
UK Uncut Great British Street Party: Waterloo, Barnes & Putney
In 2012 public services were being destroyed by cuts made by the coalition government with the Liberal Democrats having gone into the coalition government with the Tories after the indecisive 2010 election. UK Uncut decided to hold street parties in protest on 26th May 2012 and to call for a better and different future..
In the 2010 election the Tories had won 306 seats and Labour 258, but with 57 seats the Liberal Democrats could have formed a coalition with either party to form a government. Although a coalition with Labour would only have included 315 MPs, less than half the total of 650, the differing positions of the 28 MPs outside of the main parties would have made this a working majority.
Perhaps because they lied to him more effectively, Nick Clegg chose to form a coalition with the Tories. Probably the most important thing he hoped to gain from this was electoral reform – and the United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum resulted in a resounding defeat for the alternative vote system – a modified form of ‘First Past The Post’. What Clegg didn’t get was what he wanted, a referendum on proportional representation.
With an general election coming up on July 4th again under FPTP we can again see the urgent need for electoral reform. With FPTP we are more than likely simply to see Tweedledee replaced by Tweedledum rather than the more vital changes we need to deal with the urgent changes we need, particularly to deal effectively with the climate challenge, but also to move towards a more equal and united society.
But for now at least we are stuck with FPTP. Possibly the rise of the Reform Party will present a real challenge to our current two party monopoly, and though I’m very much not a supporter of their policies this fragmentation would certainly improve matters. Just a shame that no similarly positive split on fundamental issues has occurred within the Labour Party which has managed to successfully marginalise its right wing – or expel them – without a similarly important alternative party emerging. Perhaps because of a much deeper loyalty on the left to the Labour movement.
Wherever we live I think the best response to the continuing use of FPTP is to vote anti-Tory – that is for the candidate with the greatest chance of defeating the Tory candidate rather than for any particular party. The best result I think we can hope for in July is one that requires a coalition of several parties to govern. Politics would then have to move into an area of cooperation and consultation rather than the adversarial nonsense which now dominates our politics.
Clegg sold the country down the river for false gold, and joined the Tories in implementing a vicious series of cuts to public benefits from central government in almost every aspect of our lives.
UK Uncut stated:
"The government is slashing our public services and making the most marginalised people in our society pay for an economic crisis they did nothing to cause. It doesn’t have to be this way. In 1948 the UK’s national debt was far larger than it is today, but instead of cutting services and hitting the poorest hardest the NHS and the Welfare State were born.
So forget the Queen’s Jubilee and join the only London street party worth going to this summer – UK Uncut’s Great London Street Party. Let’s celebrate the services that are being destroyed, take the fight to the streets and party for our future, a different future, a better future, that we can build together."
The London event was one of several street parties organised in towns and cities across the UK. In London 4 blocks, one highlighting the welfare cuts, another the NHS, a third the disproportionate effects the cuts were having on women and the last mourning the effects they are having on democracy itself, met and finally entrained at Waterloo Station, travelling either to Putney or Barnes.
The destination was kept secret, and after we left the trains we followed bloc leaders with coloured umbrellas, only finding when we were almost there that the party was to take place in the short Putney street where Nick Clegg has his London home. They were on holiday elsewhere.
Police tried to stop the protesters at various points, including on the final street, but eventually had to let the party go ahead. People taking part seemed to be careful not to cause any damage, though some were pushed into hedges by police. But the protesters kept up the party atmosphere despite considerable provocation.
Later I heard that when the party ended at 6pm and people were making their way peacefully to Putney station they were attacked by a group of police, who were perhaps frustrated by not being allowed to attack the party earlier in the day when the press was present in large numbers reporting on the event.
Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur: On Sunday morning 25th May 2008 I made my way to Red Lion Square in Holborn to photograph the Pagain Pride public procession. Later I went to Downing Street were protesters were meeting to march to a rally at the Sudanese Embassy calling for Sudanese war criminals to be brought to justice.
Pagan Pride – Beltane Bash – Red Lion Square/Russell Square
Pagans – or rather neo-Pagans had come to Conway Hall in the corner of Red Lion Square for a day of celebration of the ancient Spring festival of Beltane, celebrating coming out of winter and the springing of the world into growth.
As well as their private celebrations inside the hall they were also taking part in a public procession, Pagan Pride, which goes the short distance to the fountain in Russell Square for a joyful celebration before returning to Conway Hall.
Nature and the cyclical nature of the seasons plays a central part in pagan beliefs and Godesses and Gods linked with nature play an important role in their ceremonies.
As I commented in 2008 nature appeared “not to be too kind to them as the rain bucketed down as the participants were supposed to gather, with only a few braver members (and some with umbrellas) coming out of the hall, but fortunately for them and the photographers it soon eased off, finally almost stopping as the parade got under way.”
That circular fountain in the garden of Russell Square “could have been designed with them in mind, with a strongly phallic character in the water jets, which in normal use rise and fall, but were left to flow at full strength for most of the ceremony.” In 2008 it was open for everyone to play in but on more recent visits I have noticed it is now surrounded by a fence.
“At first the group danced around the fountain in rings with hands joined, but then many of them started to run through the centre, many getting soaked.”
“Even the drummers, who at first stood on the edge providing a rhythm for the dance, eventually ran though the jets, and finally the Green Man also did so.“
By the time the parade left the square for its return to Conway Hall I’d had enough, and my feet and legs were soaked.
I left with a friend to go and have a cup of tea before going to Whitehall for a very different event.
Justice for Darfur – London Protest; Whitehall – Sudanese Embassy
Around 200 people, mainly from the Sudan, had gathered opposite Downing Street for a noisy protest before marching to a rally at the Sudanese Embassy opposite St James’s Palace in London.
The Justice for Darfur campaign was supported by around 30 organisations including the Aegis Trust, an international organization working to prevent genocide, Amnesty International and Darfur Union UK, who organised this event together with Aegis Students.
The campaign began when the Sudanese government refused to had over two men to the International Criminal Court. Sudan’s former Minister of the Interior Ahmad Haroun and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb were wanted on 51 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from persecution, rapes and murder of civilians in four West Darfur villages.
Haroun had even been promoted to be responsible for humanitarian affairs, and Kushayb, who had been in jail facing other charges when the ICC warrants were issued has been released.
In 2005 the UN Commission of Inquiry into war crimes listed 52 people for investigation and placards named some of these calling for them to be brought to justice. They included Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir, Saleh Gosh, head of Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Service, Minister of the Federation Government Nafi Ali Nafi and former Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman.
Earlier that month there had been fresh reports of beatings, detentions and shooting of Darfuri civilians in Khartoum and Omdurman but little had appeared in the UK mainstream press and they had sent no photographers or reporters to the event. It was one of those protests that later one photographer told me his editor dismisses as “tribal matters“.
UEFA gets a Red Card for Israel – On Friday 24th May 2013 UK campaigners met those who had arrived by Eurostar at St Pancras to march to the Mayfair hotel where UEFA was holding its annual congress. They demanded it to kick out Israel and protested against the UEFA under-21 men’s football final being held in Israel in June 2013.
The event was organised by the London-based Red Card Israeli Racism Campaign founded by members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of al-Aqsa and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods and followed protests at UEFA’s Swiss offices following a letter signed by 52 leading players deploring Israel ’s attacks on Gaza.
Previously the Red Card campaign had led protests over the detention of Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak detained without charge in 2009 while travelling from Gaza to a new club on the West Bank. He lost almost half his body mass in a 3 month hunger strike and was only finally released in July 2012 after appeals from the international professional footballers association FIFPro, Eric Cantona, Frédéric Kanouté and the presidents of EUFA and FIFA, as well as others from outside football.
Israel’s participation in international football has long been controversial, and in 1974 they were expelled from the Asian Football Confederation of which they had been a founder member when several nations refused to play against them. They became a full member of UEFA in 1994. In February 2024 UEFA turned down demands from 12 Middle East Nations to suspend Israel from international competitions.
International football is clearly a political football. And Israel’s team have clearly demonstrated their intention to use it as such when captain Eli Dasa held up a small sports shoe of a missing child hostage and talked about it ahead of a Euro 2024 qualifier against Switzerland.
The Palestinian Football Association called in April on FIFA/UEFA to suspend Israel from international competition and are asking other FAs to join them. FIFA is carrying out a legal assessment before it makes a decision on whether to agree to Palestine’s call to suspend the Israeli federation over the war in Gaza was repeated a few days ago at FIFA’s congress in Bangkok.
PFA president Jibril Rajoub was quoted by the BBC as saying “How much more must the Palestine football family suffer for FIFA to act with the same severity and urgency as it did in other cases?” and others have also accused FIFA and UEFA of double standards.
As a petition by some football fans calling on the English FA to support the suspension of Israel states: “It took FIFA/UEFA less than one week to ban Russia from international competition following the invasion of Ukraine. Apartheid South Africa was suspended from FIFA for ten years before being expelled in 1976 and was only permitted to re-join in 1992 as the apartheid regime was dismantling. In that same year, the Yugoslavia national team was suspended by FIFA from international competition as a part of UN-led sanctions against the former state during the Balkans war.“
Palestinian footballer and former hunger striker Mahmoud Sarsak
You can read an account of the May 2013 march and the static protest outside the hotel in Park Lane on My London Diary with many more pictures. One of the speakers at this was former hunger striker Mahmoud Sarsak and he received a huge welcome and “the couple of hundred people present really sounded like a rather larger football crowd.”
Also on Friday 24th May 2013 I photographed a protest by Sikhs at the Indian High Commission against the intended hanging of Professor Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who had then served 18 years on death row following his conviction for involvement in a car bomb in Delhi. His conviction was based on a confession based on torture in police custody. The Indian Supreme Court commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in March 2014. More on My London Dairy at Don’t hang Prof Bhullar!.
Obama, UoL, Ethiopia, Israel & Ukraine – Another disparate set of protests ten years ago on Friday 23rd May 2014 had me rushing around London to document them.
Obama keep your promises – Trafalgar Square
My working day began in Trafalgar Square where the London Guantánamo Campaign and others had come as a part of an international day of action coordinated by the US organisation Witness Against Torture, with protests in 40 cities in three continents calling on President Obama to make good the promise he had again made a year earlier to close Guantánamo.
The campaigners many dressed in black hoods and orange jumpsuits stood in a long line on the North Terrace holding posters. Some had brought a giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer, a London resident, still there, held without charge for 12 years despite having twice been cleared for release.
As spokesperson for he London Guantánamo Campaign Aisha Maniar stated: “In over five years as US president, Barack Obama has failed to deliver a change we can believe in on Guantánamo Bay. Twelve years of indefinite detention almost wholly without charge or trial for 154 prisoners has made the world an infinitely more insecure, dangerous, and lawless place… Obama’s words remain purely rhetorical. There is little intention to close Guantánamo Bay and the legal black hole it has created.”
Defend University of London Garden Halls workers – Senate House
At 1pm I was Senate House with members of the Independent Workers of Great Britain, the grass roots trade union to which many low paid workers at the University belong, as well as supporters from the Joint Shop Stewards Network and university students and staff. Both the UoL and the contractors Cofely and Aramark who they have outsourced the workers to refuse to recognise the IWGB, preferring the more compliant traditional unions. But most of the cleaners and others had left these after finding they were unwilling to stand up to the employers on their behalf and joined the IWGB.
London University announced the closure of three of its Central London halls of residence – the Garden Halls – without consultation with the IWGB and intended to make over 80 workers redundant at the end of June.
The IWGB had asked supporters to send letters to London University Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Adrian Smith listing their demands that there should be no compulsory redunddancies and the the length of service of the workers be respected, as well as calling for meaningful consultation withe the IWGB and that workers transferred to other contracts should retain their pay, terms and conditions. They stated “the University bears responsibility for the treatment of these workers, regardless of the fact that their roles are contracted to private companies.”
Around 30 protesters were outside the main entrance to Senate House when I arrived and were drumming a very noisy demonstration while handing out leaflets and displaying banners.
Soon after they were joined by IWGB organiser Alberto Durango they left to walk around the outside of the building. Security had rushed to close the door on Montague Place but when the protesters reached Russell Square the doors to Stewart House, part of the University estate joined to Senate House they found an open door and around half of them walked in to protest noisily inside the building for a few minutes, still beating their drums before finding another exit into the Senate House car park.
Here the protest came to to an end with the IWGB’s usual message, ‘We’ll be back!’. The IWGB was balloting its members for strikes against both Cofely and Aramark.
I rushed to Parliament to meet Ethiopians protesting outside Parliament over the Ethiopian government’s killing of Oromo university students peacefully protesting the grabbing of Oromo land. The protest was coming to an end as I arrived but I was able to quickly take a few pictures
The protest was by supporters of the Oromo and Ogaden National Liberation Fronts founded shortly before the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie. Since then the military government, the Derg regime and the new Ethiopian state has continued the suppression of the Oromo, and initiated mass resettlements from Northern Ethiopia onto Oromo lands and moved millions of Oromo into camps run by the military.
The USA was found by BBC Newsnight and and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism exposed in 2011 to have worked with the the Ethiopian government in an alliance “using billions of dollars of development aid as a tool for political oppression” with programmes of deliberate starvation of communities, and “of mass detentions, (and) the widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings” against what they describe as terrorism.
In early May there had been mass killing by the authourites of Oroam University students and civiliams protesting peacefully against illegal forcible evictions of Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands around Addis Ababa under the governments Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan which will give their land to government supporters or sell it to foreign investors.
Support Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails – G4S Victoria Street
It was a short walk to the London HQ of G4S where campaigners supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission were protesting in solidarity with the mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails demanding an end to Israels’s illegal policy of rolling Administrative Detention which can jail them for years without charge or trial.
The put up a stall and banners on the wide pavement outside the building and spoke to people passing, handing out leaflets. Some stopped to talk and mostly expressed surprise at what was happening in Israel, although one man stopped to argue, telling the protesters that no one was held unjustly in prison in Israel and there was no torture in Israel. He was clearly deluded.
The world’s largest security firm G4S provided security services for Israel’s prisons until December 2016 when pressure from this and many other protests led it to sell is Israeli subsidiary divesting from Israel’s military checkpoints and illegal settlements. After further protests the company to sell its decided to sell its remaining business in apartheid Israel in June 2023.
Finally I joined Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity and IWGB trade unionists who protested outside the registered offices of London mining company Evraz who own mines in the city of Kryviy Rih in south-east Ukraine.
Kryviy Rih is the centre of the largest steel industry in Eastern Europe an has a population of around three-quarters of a million people. Miners there have protested as the unrest and devaluation in Ukraine has caused a rapid rise in the cost of living with a fall in real wages of around 30-50% and a rise of 20% they had been promised in April was not paid. In its place they were given an small “insulting” one-off handout.
The Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine has demanded an immediate doubling of the real wage “in the interests of preserving social peace in this country.” They say the main cause of the economic problems in Ukraine “is the greed of Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who pay a beggar’s wage to workers, send all their profits off-shore and don’t pay taxes in Ukraine. In fact the oligarchs are almost completely exempt from taxes on their profits.” Evraz is owned by Russian Oligarchs Roman Abramov and Alexander Abramovitch who are based in the UK.
The protest took place after the Ukrainian union called upon the British public to picket the offices of EVRAZ plc and the offices of other Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs’ corporations in London and other cities in Europe.
But police attending the protest told the protesters these offices are cimply those of a firm providing accounting, tax, Human Resources and payroll services to various businesses and are not really a part of Evraz. Further protests were planned outside the Chelsea Football ground, also owned by Roman Abramovitch and for an EVRAZ Investor Day the following month which company chair Alexander Abramov is due to attend.
Pictures from the End The Torture – Bring The Troops Home Now protest 20 years ago today on 22nd May 2004.
Back in May 2004 I was still taking pictures using the Nikon D100, the DSLR camera that really first made professional quality digital imaging available outside of highly paid professional photographers. I’d bought this 6.1Mp camera in 2002, but for the first year or more used it in tandem with film cameras, not least because at first I only had one Nikon-fitting lens, a 24-85mm, equivalent on the camera’s DX-format sensor to 36-128mm on full frame.
With film cameras I’d been used to a much wider range of focal lengths, from 15mm to 200mm and while I could do without the longer end, I still needed film for wider images. But by May 2004 I had some new lenses, a Sigma 12-24mm (18-36mm eqiv) and a Nikon telephoto zoom that stretched out to 210mm, equivalent at the long end to 315mm.
Both were fairly large and fairly heavy lenses, but together with the 24-85mm gave me a full range of focal lengths. Though with only a single D100 body I probably spent almost as much time changing lenses as taking pictures. None of them would have impressed the kind of photographers who like to spend their time photographing test charts or pixel peeping, but they were certainly adequate for normal photographic work.
The pictures from the Bring The Troops Home protest on 22nd May 2004 show I was determined to use the entire range of my new lenses, perhaps not always entirely appropriately. I think sometimes I zoomed out too far with the telephoto and occasionally would have been advised to use a rather less wide view with the Sigma. But others work well.
The protest was called at short notice by the Stop the War Coalition, CND and the Muslim Association of Britain to respond to the atrocities being committed in Iraq, following the publication of pictures showing abuse and torture of Iraqis by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Some pictures were first published by CBS in April 2004 but more came out in May.
The march organisers stated “The whole world is horrified at the terrible pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners now emerging. They are the tip of an iceberg of abuse – dozens of civilians have died in custody of British and American troops in occupied Iraq. We are demanding the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and for the Iraqi people to be allowed to govern themselves.”
At the rally there was an impressive array of speakers including Tonny Benn, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Lindsay German, Bruce Kent, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean Lambert and others from peace and Muslim movements and I photographed most of them on the march and as they spoke.
In Trafalgar Square the speakers were as usual on the raised area at the base of the column with a press area in front of that, and we are always looking up at the speakers. The longer lens let me get tightly framed head shots, but a few are perhaps too tight.
As well as speakers there were also theatrical reenactments of prisoner abuse by the ‘Theatre of War’ group with the march pausing briefly at various points for the three military personnel to abuse their roped and hooded victims. The also stood and performed on the plinth at the rally in Trafalgar Square.
Looking back at these pictures now I feel that perhaps because I had that long lens I concentrated more on the celebrities taking part in the event, and rather less than I would now on the bulk of protesters and their placards and banners. But I’m still pleased with a number of the images I made. Some I think could be improved by going back to the RAW files and reprocessing them in our now improved software to give them a little more contrast and clarity.
My London Diary has a little more about the protest and a much larger selection of the images I made at this event beginning some way down the May 2004 page. You can go directly to the pictures at END THE TORTURE – BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
