London Pride & Climate Change Rally; My working day on Saturday 30th June 2007 began at a rather damp Baker Street where people were meeting for the London Pride Parade and I was able to wander freely and take photographs. I left before the parade moved off and went to Parliament Square where a rally reminded Gordon Brown – then prime minister for 3 days – that climate change remains the major challenge facing the world – and the new government.
London Pride Parade – Baker Street
There seemed to be only two things that distinguished the 2007 Pride from the previous year’s event. One was the weather and so many of the pictures are of people holding umbrellas.
The second was a large group in the self-styled ‘Bird Parade‘, the ‘Bird Club‘ with their messages including ‘Aren’t Birds Brilliant‘ and ‘Femme Invisibility – So last Year‘.
There were quite a few overhanging shop fronts and other places that people could shelter under but taking pictures mainly involved me staind in the rain and getting rather wet.
I’m not afraid of rain but cameras and lenses need to kept dry. I really needed an assistant with an umbrella but I was working on my own. Its difficult to hold an umbrella and a camera and while I’ve tried various special plastic camera protectors none really solve the problem.
The cameras I use are reasonably water resistant and given he occasional wipe with a cloth and keeping them under my jacket when not in use are fine. But lenses need to have a glass front element to let the light in, and this acts as a powerful magnet for raindrops. Long lenses can have lens hoods which protect them, but when like me you work with wide and ultra-wide lenses they are totally ineffectual, except for allowing me to walk around with a chamois leather balled up into them. But of course I have to hold this clear to frame, focus and take the image, and those raindrops too often manage to sneak their way in that second or so.
I’ve shared too often my thoughts on the presence of corporates and military groups in Pride to bother to say more.
But at least there were some, like Peter Tatchell determined to retain it as a protest, with his wedding cake placard and poster ‘END THE BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE’.
It was still raining for the rally in Parliament Square and my favourite mermaid seemed to be in her natural habitat unless I carefully kept wiping the lens front.
But there was some shelter under the trees and rather fewer people had managed to attend the protest called at short notice by the Campaign Against Climate Change.
Under Blair’s government UK carbon emissions had risen by 2%, but it was now clear to scientists around the world that we needed to drastically cut them. Blair had resigned as New Labour leader on 24 June 2007 and Gordon Brown had become Prime Minister only three days before this protest on 27 June 2007.
Back in 2007 it was clear that climate change remained the major challenge facing the world – and the new government. But in 2008 we had the financial crash and Gordon Brown was diverted into saving the bankers and successive governments since have failed to make the kind of radical changes that are needed to save the planet.
In 2007 I wrote “if you ain’t got a planet, you ain’t in business is the simple message, though some of the speakers had some rather more complex graphs and charts. Blair and Brown were only there in effigy, but we did have a rather more convincing mermaid to warn about the dangers of rising sea levels.” Of course sea levels are only one aspect of the problem with our increasing climate instability and other effects of global heating. The need to take action is even more important for our next government – and for all governments around the world.
Israel Celebrates 60 Years: The first liberation movement I was aware of in my toddler years led to independence for Israel in 1948 and like much of the British left I was for some years a supporter of Israel.
To be fair our media hadn’t really told us much about what had actually happened in the country, concentrating on the Stern Gangs attacks on British personnel before independence, and we were almost unaware of the Palestinians and the effect of the formation of Israel on them.
The UN had adopted a ‘Plan of Partition with Economic Union‘ for Palestine as General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) in 1947, but the Arabs generally rejected this as being pro-Zionist, giving too much land to the much smaller Jewish population as well as violating the UN’s own principles of national self-determination. Jews in Palestine generally welcomed it but the Zionist leaders saw it as “a stepping stone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.“
A civil war broke out in Palestine after the adoption of the UN mandate and was largely ignored by the British who got on busily preparing for their withdrawal (also contained in the resolution) in May 1948. On 14th May 1948 “the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”
Arab armies marched in starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War but were repulsed by the Israel Defense Forces which expanded the borders of Israel beyond those of the UN Plan. And there was further territorial expansion in other wars, particulalry the 1967 Six Day War,
There were extensive celebrations for the 60th Anniversary in Israel from the beginning of May 2008 as well as in other Western cities, with events continuing for some months – such as this London march on June 29th.
As the marchers came into Trafalgar Square they passed people from Israeli Jewish organisation Zochrot founded in 2002 to promote awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, including the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. They held a banner ‘Remembrance – Zochrot‘ and others stood in silence with placards with names of some of the over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed in the 1947-8 catastrophe.
While I watched, several people left the parade and went across to harangue them and wave Israeli flags in their faces.
There were more protesters that police had moved into a pen by the side of South Africa House. They had come to point out that for Palestinians the sixty years had meant an increasing loss of their land through both military actions and settlements, as well as a loss in liberty.
Later I saw police moving away a group who had lowered a banner reading “60 YEARS OF ETHIC CLEANSING IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE” over the high wall on the side of the square. They were rapidly surrounded by Jewish security guards, who called the police who told them that unless they moved to the pen on the other side of the road – where their banner could not be seen from the square – they would be arrested. And they moved.
Later other people with Israeli flags came to argue and insult the protesters here and several groups were moved away by police. At one point I moved towards one of my colleagues as one of these men appeared to be about to physically assault him. He then accused the photographer of being a paedophile on the ridiculous basis that some of the other troublemakers in the group were his teenage sons. Eventually police took over and politely asked us to move away while they sorted things out.
As my final paragraph in 2008 I wrote “Of course I met many nice people who were having a good day out, but it is the others who stick in the mind. But I also hope that after 60 years the state of Israel will soon be ready for peace and justice for the Palestinians.” Unfortunatley there is far too little evidence of this among their political leaders 16 years later.
A Walk in London 20 Years Ago; On June 28th 2004 I had an important meeting at one on London’s major cultural institutions. It was a fine day, so I took an early train and then wandered towards the meeting taking pictures.
My walk began at London Bridge Station and I walked towards the River Thames through ‘More London’ a large area to the south-west of Tower Bridge owned and redeveloped by the Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund’s St Martins Property Group with buildings designed by Foster and Partners architects.
In 2004 this was a recent development and in 2007 it was one of six on the shortlist for the Carbuncle Cup architecture prize, an annual competition by Building Design for “the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months“. But it, two other new London developments as well as a Holiday Inn in Aberdeenshire and a high-rise residential tower in Birmingham all lost out to student accomodatiion for Leicester University.
I walked across Tower Bridge and continued into the East End, taking another picture of the Grade II* listed Wilton’s Music Hall entrance in Grace’s Row. In 2004 this was beginning to once again produce a varied range of shows and was internally considerably restored from 2012-5, though I think the doorway still looks much the same.
The music hall was largely destroyed by fire in 1877, but rebuilt and opened as a Methodist mission, The Mahogany Bar. This was an important resource for the local community until it closed in 1956. The building was saved from demolition by a determined campaign supported by Sir John Betjeman, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and others and in 1971 was given Grade II* listing and bought by the GLC.
In Dock St, Wapping I photographed the window of a fish and chip shop, The Codfather. I think this is now an estate agents, although there are many other Codfathers around the country.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish inventor, thinker, scientist and mystic lived in this area – then Prince’s Square – and was buried in the churchyard of the Swedish Church here. He had stayed in London for 4 years as a young man and returned here aged 57 where he had a vision of meeting the Lord who appointed him to write to reveal the spiritual meaning of the Bible. He abandoned his other work and over the next ten years wrote his 8 volumes of Arcana Cœlestia.
From 1747 until his death he spent his time in Stockholm, the Netherlands and London, publishing this and another 14 spiritual works in the latter two to avoid censorship by the Swedish Empire. He returned for the last time to London in the Summer of 1771 and suffered a stroke in December. In February 1772 he wrote asking John Wesley to visit him, and when Wesley replied he could not do so for six months he told him that would be too late as he was going to die on March 29th. And he did.
New Road took me north.
Tower House at 81 Fieldgate Street was a superior doss house which provided those staying there with decency and privacy. Jack London stayed there soon after its opening, in 1902 when researching his ‘People of the Abyss‘ and Maxim Litvinov and Joseph Stalin spent some time there when attendeing The London Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party – but Stalin soon moved out into private lodgings at 77 Jubilee Road.
It was the fifth of the Rowton Houses to be built in London as “poor men’s hotels” and opened in 1902. It was the first to be lit by electricity. George Orwell described it as the ‘best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms’, though he found some of its rules irksome, particularly that you could not enter your room before 7pm.
Renamed Tower House in 1961 it was acquired by the GLC for Tower Hamlets Council in 1983. Various schemes to adapt in fell though and it was still derelict in 2004. A private developer converted it into luxury flats in 2005-8.
The time for my meeting was approaching and I was having to hurry back into the City, and took only a few more pictures though rather more than I put online back in 2004. This view is of the Alban Highwalk leading off south from Alban Gate, and the tower of St Alban Wood Street as well as the City of London Police building clearly visible.
I think my meeting went well, but a couple of years later I had a great disappointment when the project was cancelled at the last minute.
Stratford, Shoreditch & Racist Immigration Laws: On Saturdy 27th June 2009 I took a few pictures from a high viewpoint arooss Stratford , then photographed graffiti in the streets of Shoreditch before going to a protest against the UK’s racist immigration laws a Communications House, close to the Old Street roundabout.
Olympic Update II – Stratford, London.
There is a little of a mystery for me over these pictures as I don’t state the location I took them from, simply state I was in Stratford for a meeting on Saturday and took the opportunity to take a few pictures of the Olympic site from a high viewpoint.
I no longer have my 2009 diaries and cannot remember any such meeting which from the views I think must have been on one of the upper floors on top of the shopping centre. I possibly made my way onto the roof area after the meeting.
The lighting and weather were not at their best but they do show some of the buildings on the Olympic site as well as Westfield under construction and Stratford Station.
My train to Liverpool Street arrived in time to allow me to make a leisurely and rather indirect walk to Old Street for the protest there.
Back in the early 1980a, Shoreditch was a run-down area of warehouses and small workshops which were closing down and being taken over by artists for cheap studios, including some who were forced to move out of Butler’s Wharf which in the 70’s had become the largest artists’ colony in England. Over half moved out following the firein late 1979, but the 60 remaining were all given notice to quit in January 1980. Some formed a new community in the Chisenhale centre in Tower Hamlets, but quite a few found cheap premises in Shoreditch.
The artists preserved much of the area’s properties and made it a much more attractive place to live. For most of them this meant the rents grew rapidly to far more than they could afford and they had to move to more outlying areas. But Shoreditch had become a trendy place with clubs and nightlife and the new graffiti – much inspired by New York street art began to cover almost every available wall.
Support Migrants – Fight Racist Immigration Laws – Old St
The Campaign Against Immigration Controls had organised the protest outside the Immigration Reporting Centre Communications House where many refugees are processed before they were taken to detention centres and deportation.
After the SOAS management and employers ISS had colluded with the Home Office over a dawn raid on their cleaning workers on 12 June 2009 in reprisal for their successful campaign for a living wage and trade union recognition, it was here that the SOAS 9 were brought before their deportation.
The first speaker at the protest was Laureine Tcuapo who had fled to Britain to escape repeated rape and abuse from a relative in the Cameroon police force. On Friday 12 June at 7am, immigration police kicked down the door of her Newcastle house and took her and her two young children forcibly to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Prison, intending to deport here to Cameroon. Action by Tyneside Community Action for Refugees and No Borders North East managed to prevent her deportation and get her release from Yarls Wood on 25th June but she is still under threat of deportation.
The protest also supported the continuing hunger strikers in Yarls Wood over the inhumane conditions there. In a press release from TCAR Tcuapo stated “Families were separated; people were being beaten up by guards. It just felt to all the asylum seekers that we were less than animals… I still think about my time in Yarlswood. It was very traumatising. I can’t even imagine how things are at the moment for people inside. They’re counting on us because inside, they have no rights.“
We also heard directly from some women in Yarls Wood who were able to use mobile phones to speak at the protest. Much of what is still happening at places such as Yarls Wood has been condemned by official inspections and is clearly against the laws of this country as well as EU Human Rights legislation and attention needs to be drawn to it. Our treatment of migrants, especially asylum seekers offends against justice and humanity.
Cable Car, Victoria Dock, Olympic Site & Torture: I was coming to London to photograph the ‘Say No to Torture‘ protest on the evening of Wednesday 26th June, but as it was a nice day and I came up a few hours earlier to take a ride on London’s cable car and then to take a few pictures around Victoria Dock and Silvertown before making quick visit to the Greenway to see what progress was being made in opening up the former Olympic site.
Emirates ‘Airline’ – Arab Dangleway – North Greenwich – Victoria Dock.
Now known officially since 2022 as the IFS Cloud Cable Car, the dangleway was never a viable transport system, with longer journey time and costing more than alternative routes on almost every conceivable journey.
It doesn’t quite connect up with the rest of Transport for London’s system, the south terminal being a short and slightly confusing walk from North Greenwich Jubilee and bus station, and another fairly short walk on the North bank to Royal Victoria DLR. Completed in June 2012 its cost of £60m made it the most expensive cable car system ever built.
As I noted “it should be promoted as one of London’s cheaper and more interesting tourist attractions” giving great views along the River Thames, although the journey is a relatively short on at 7-10 minutes. with London in the distance, Canary Wharf and the Olympic site a little closer and Bow Creek, Silvertown and the Dome both nearly underneath.
To my surprise, 11 years later the service is still running and TfL say that with the sponsorship deals it actually makes a profit.
I think the more interesting parts of the Thames shoreline here are not yet publicly accessible, but you can – at least most of the time – walk along by Royal Victoria Dock and across the high level bridge for some more interesting views. The area and bridge get closed off when they are flogging illegal arms at the Excel Centre fairs (if you represent a despotic government you’ll have a ticket to that anyway.)
Most of the pictures here were taken from that high level walkway across the dock, but I think I walked on to the stations on the DLR line to Woolwich (then only to North Woolwich) which are elevated and also give some interesting views.
I took the DLR to Canning Town, changed to the JUbilee to Stratford then back to the DLR for the short ride to Puddling Mill Lane, and walked up onto the Greenway, where I’d photogaphed many times in the past.
Progress in releasing the Olympic site to the public appeared to be very slow and there sre still routes closed off in 2024.
It was the ‘International Day in Support of Victims of Torture‘, the anniversary of the UN Convention Against Torture on 26 June 1987, and the London Guantanamo Campaign had organised a protest in Trafalgar Square.
The London Guantanamo Campaign had been active in calling for the closure of Guantanamo and other torture prisons including Bagram in Afghanistan since 2006. In particular the protest was to draw attention to Shaker Aamer, one of the 166 prisoners still held in Guantanamo. A London resident he was captured by bandits in Afghanistan where he was working for a medical charity and sold to the American forces, who tortured him – with the cooperation of the British Secret Service in Bagram, before illegally rendering him to Guantanamo where he continues to be tortured despite having been cleared for release.
In 2013 he was in very poor health having been – along with the majority of the other prisoners there – on hunger strike for 141 days. It was not until 30 October 2015 that he was finally released to the UK.
The US response to the hunger strike had been regular beatings, keeping those taking part in solitary confinement in bare cells and to use forcible feeding, strapping them into a special chair and forcing a feeding tube up a nostril and down into their stomach. The procedure is extremely painful and both this and the sensory deprivation of solitary confinement in bare cells also constitute torture under the UN definitions.
Many of those taking part wore orange Guanatanamo-style jump suits and black hoods and they held up banners an placards saying ‘No To Torture‘ in 30 languages. Some of those taking part were regular protesters with the ‘Save Shaker Aamer Campaign‘ which has been holding daily lunchtime vigils opposite the House of Commons to put pressure on the UK government to release him. Many think his continued imprisonment is because his testimony would embarrass both the UK and US security services who were clearly involved in his torture.
Others were also protesting against torture, with Balochs in Pakistan being subject to arrests and other human rights violations including torture by the Pakistan authorities for campaigning for independence. The protesters held pictures of a number of Baloch activists who have simply disappeared, believed to be held or possibly killed by Pakistani forces.
And protesters also drew attention to the US treatment of award-winning British poet and translator Talha Ahsan who suffers from Aspergers syndrome. He was extradited from the UK and was currently awaiting trial in solitary confinement in a high-security state prison in Connecticut because of alleged association with an Islamic web site and publishing house said to have links with terrorism. He was eventually released after 8 years following a plea bargain in December 2013 when time already served in the UK and US prisons was ‘time already served.’
Pride and Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride: Saturday 25th June was I think the last time that Pride was an open event where people who wanted to take part in Pride as a protest could just turn up and join in.
When I first photographed Pride in 1993 it was much smaller and very definitely a protest. Over the years it has become a parade with many corporate groups taking part and dominating the event attracting huge audiences to watch it on the route through the West End.
And now to be in the parade you need a wristband, free for LGBT+ Community Groups but cotsing between £7.50 and £35 for others – and the media centre is insistent we call it Pride in London rather than ‘London Pride’ or ‘gay pride’, hashtag #PrideInLondon.
I can’t remember if I had bothered to get official accreditation for the event in 2016, I certainly did some years and suspect by 2016 it was needed to be able to walk around and take photographs as people were preparing for the parade. And they wanted to be photographed.
In my pictures I concentrated on those who I felt were continuing the tradition of Pride as a protest, including many I had photographed at other protests. But there were others I couldn’t ignore.
I left the official area where the parade was setting up with its corporate floats and walked down Oxford Street to where people were meeting for a Migrant Rights and Anti-Racist Pride march to join the main parade.
Movement for Justice who had organised this were joined by other protesters including London in Solidarity with Istanbul LGBTI Pride protesting the banning of Istanbul Pride, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants and other protesters who feel the official event has been taken over by corporate sponsors such as Barclays and BAE systems and is a parade rather than a protest, no longer representing its roots.
They marched up Oxford Street and Regent Street past the front of the main parade and went to its rear where they joined other protest groups relegated to the extreme end of the Pride parade. They tried to do this again the following year but were prevented by Pride stewards and ended up maching ahead of the main procession past cheering crowds along the main route.
The Day After The Brexit Vote – Defend All migrants. On Friday 24th June 2016 almost half the nation woke up to hear with shock and some measure of disbelief to hear the news that a small majority had voted in favour of leaving Europe.
In any sensible democracy the result of 52% to 48% in an advisory referendum would not have been sufficient to cause such a major constitutional change, but Prime Minister David Cameron had stupidly promised to abide by the result and so we were now en route to Brexit.
Cameron had been confident that he would win the referendum with a vote to remain but he had severely underestimated the depths of lying and misrepresentation that the Leave campaign would sink to, with some of the leading figures likely to make huge personal profits from the break.
Brexit of course needn’t have been the major disaster it has been. We could have retained a much closer relationship with Europe, our largest trading partner. It needed the total incompetence of Boris Johnson to get us the worst of all deals, not least because he and his negotiators simply did not understand what negotiation meant, with the politicians largely restricting themselves to making clearly impossible demands and then blaming Europe.
I don’t expect we will return to Europe during my lifetime, but I hope the next government will make some sensible moves to restore our relationships, although rather avoiding the subject in the current election campaign. But surely we cannot continue being unable to staff our care and medical sectors and with crops rotting unpicked on the fields. And we do need at least some of those plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen.
The Leave campaign reached new lows with things like that £350 million on the side of a bus, which everyone who made the slightest investigation knew was a lie. But the media spread it around with some suggesting it was perhaps not correct, while all should have been deriding it as nonsense. And it was a figure that stuck in many peoples’ minds.
Immigration was an issue that both sides failed on – and at times Remain seemed determined to try and outflank Leave on the right suggesting racist policies. Migrants were attacked and scapegoated not only by both Remain and Leave campaigns but by all our mainstream parties and media over more than 20 years, stoking up hatred by insisting immigrants are a “problem”.
Migration has been and will remain vital to the growth of our economy, as well as enriching our cultural life. Walk through our high streets or page through the TV schedules and cross out the immigrants and the descendants of post-war immigration and what you would be left would be limited and rather boring.
Senior Conservatives are even proposing that we should leave the European Convention on Human Rights so they can deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, and although Labour has said it will end this policy it has not yet put forward plans for safe routes for asylum seekers.
The protest on 24th June by anarchists and socialists against racism and fascist violence had been some planned weeks in advance, called by Movement for Justice, rs21, London Antifascists and Jewdas, and supported by other groups including Brick Lane Debates, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), Right to Remain, Radical Assembly, Clapton Ultras, the Antiuniversity, English collective of prostitutes, sex workers open university, lesbians and gays support the migrants, Razem Londyn, London Anarchist Federation, Kent anti-racist network, dywizjon 161, colectivo anticapitalista Londres and Plan C London as well as others who brought banners and many individuals.
A camera team of three working for a right-wing US website arrived and tried to provoke groups in the crowd with silly questions and appearing to gloat over the Brexit decision. Eventually police stepped in to calm things and made sure the group left.
After a number of speeches the protesters set off to march on a roundabout route through the east of the city on their way to protest outside News International in Southwark. But I think they veered off course whenever it looked likely that the large police presence might try to kettle them. Eventually I got fed up with walking and went home.
More on the protest with many more pictures on My London Diary: Defend All Migrants.
Pensions, Cuts, Murdoch & Cafe Jiro: Thursday 23rd June 2011 – Trade unionists march against public sector pension cuts, a protest against Murdoch being allowed to take over BSkyB and one of my favourite artists turns a St John’s Wood gallery into his café.
20,000 March for Pensions & Against Cuts
Public Service unions had organised a march against pension cuts and itt was joined by many thousands of union members as well as many others protesting against cuts in public services made by the Tory coalition government.
There was a large crowd waiting when I arrived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields over an hour before the march was due to begin and more were arriving as it left a little early as the organisers and police worried about overcrowding in London’s largest square – around 28,000 square metres.
Sally Hunt, UCU, Mary Bousted ATL, Christine Blower NUT, Mark Serwotka PCS & John McDonnell MP,
Before we left there had been speeches by several union leaders and the march was led to Parliament by Christine Blower NUT, Mark Serwotka PCS and Mary Bousted ATL along with MP John McDonnell.
The Hutton review had clearly shown that the government was lying when it said that public service pensions were not affordable. This report had said it expected “benefit payments to fall gradually to around 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2059-60, after peaking at 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010-11.”
There seemed to be a huge number of police on the street for a peaceful march, particularly one that was mainly composed of teachers and civil servants with only a token presence from militant students and anarchists.
Police had earlier been busy in Lincoln’s Inn Fields where they appeared to be conducting stop and searches on any young male demonstrators in black clothing.
Things did get just a little agitated when for some reason police decided to stop the march on Strand for around 20 minutes and it got very noisy on Whitehall as it passed Downing St.
I stood outside Westminster Central Hall for around an hour as more and more marchers arrived from the main march I had been on and a number of others from various parts of London. Police and march stewards there objected to Charlie Veitch and other ‘Love Police’ haranguing the crowd in his usual deadpan fashion upholding his right to freedom of expression and they moved away.
Westminster Central Hall is a large venue but far too small for the numbers at the event and there was a large overflow rally in Tothill Street at the side of the church. A group of 20 or 30 black-clad protesters there were told by police they must remove their hoods and dark glasses and there were some arguments. I heard later in the day there were a few scuffles with them and police in Whitehall and they were kettled for a few hours in Trafalgar Square.
Save UK Democracy From Murdoch – Dept Culture, Media & Sport
Outside the Department of Culture, Media and Sport was a protest organised by on-line global campaign network Avaaz and my union the NUJ against the decision by Jeremy Hunt to let Rupert Murdoch to take over BSkyB.
This was an emergency protest organised within minutes of the news breaking early that morning, and the email calling it went out when many were already on their way to work or to attend the pensions protest, so numbers were small.
Obviously some planning had taken place earlier and there was a tall stilt walker with a large but rather inappropriately avuncular head of Rupert Murdoch, surely one of the ugliest figures in world media and pursuing a clear aim of world domination, toying with two large string puppets representing David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt.
But most of the posters were clearly last minute, with laser-printed sheets being glued onto generic NUJ placards. NUJ members were “appalled – like most of the thinking population – by the thought of the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster falling into Murdoch’s hands, and the threat that this poses for in particular for news coverage, but also for a diverse and broadly based media culture. “
“They want the government to act in the public interest rather than as puppets for Murdoch’s interest and don’t want Sky News to become another Fox News.”
Café Jiro 2011 – Queen’s Terrace Café, St John’s Wood
In the evening I was at The Queen’s Terrace Café, which had opened in April 2011. This was no ordinary café, but a cultural café, run by Mireille Galinou, who for some years had run a charity called the London Arts Café, which never quite managed to open a café but did organise a dozen or so exhibitions and numerous other art events in London.
London Arts Café and The Queen’s Terrace Café are no longer with us, but you can still read online about many of the the activities the London Arts Café organised during its existence from 1996-2007. For some of this time I was Treasurer of the organisation and also wrote the web site.
One of the most enjoyable art shows I went to in 2009 was Café Jiro, an installation in the Flowers Gallery in Cork St, London by a friend of mine, the Japanese artist Jiro Osuga who grow up in north London. The 2011 was a smaller and more intimate version of that show, with one of the large wall-size panels from the Flowers show, along with a number of other works specially produced for this space – including three in the smallest room.
The small gallery was packed for the opening – and for me a great opportunity to meet some old friends, and it was good to see Jiro’s work in a real café environment. You can read more about the show on a 2011 post in >Re:PHOTO.
More from my walk on Sunday September 3rd 1989 which had begun in Stratford, from which some images appeared in my web site and self-published book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, still available. For those images which were in the book I’ll show the book pages here.
Posters, High Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9a-44Plough & Harrow, pub, 419, High Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9a-45
London City Mission, Ferndale Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9a-46
The Victoria County History records an incredible number of missions in Leytonstone mostly formed in the late nineteenth century when this area must have seemed particularly Godless. This mission in Ferndale Road began about 1895 “when the five children of Henry Borton, a builders’ merchant at Wanstead, began holding evangelistic services in the Assembly Rooms. In 1901 their father built for them the present hall in Ferndale Road, designed in brick and stone with baroque features by T. & W. Stone. “
In 1948 the last of these children working there invited the London City Mission to take charge of the building and it became their central Hall. Google Street view shows it in 2008 as Christ Apostolic Church but by 2018 it had become Gospel Generation, “A Church Like No Other“.
Hyams Gymnasium, 857 High Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9a-32
I can find little or nothing on-line about Hyams Gynasioum other than my pictures, but the building is still there this side on Gainsborough Road with its entrance on High Rd, but in very different use.
This is now The Walnut Tree, a Wetherspoon pub, and as often it has some history of the area it its web page, but this does not mention Hyams Gym. The figures on the building’s side have gone and its groundfloor windows have been bricked up but the rows of 8 or 9 upper floor gym windows remain.
Leytonstone House has lost its Virginia creeper but otherwise looks much the same, though I think its surroundsings are now different.
Wikipedia states “Leytonstone House, built 1800 and Grade II-listed, was the home of Sir Edward Buxton, MP and conservationist, who with his brother played a big part in preserving Epping, Hainault and Hatfield forests. It housed Bethnal Green School for the juvenile poor from 1868 to 1936.”
Leyton Flats in Snaresbrook is not a tower block but a green space that is part of Epping Forest, largely open grass land but some woodland and two large ponds, Hollow Pond and Eagle Pond which is one of the oldest in the forest and swarms with swans, probably because many injured swans nursed to health by swan resuce organisations on the Thames have been released here. But people are more likely to be imprisoned as the Flats is also home to Snaresbrook Crown Court.
The house in the distance here is at 85, 85a and 87 Whipps Cross Rd, on the corner of Chadwick Road. Locally listed, The Gables was built in 1895 and was part of the Wallwood Park estate which was once the home of the Governor of the Bank of England William Cotton who died in 1845.
Men are fishing in the Hollow Pond on Leyton Flats, close to the Whipps Cross roundabout and Whipps Cross Hospital. The pond, the result of gravel workings, is also a boating lake. Water from the ponds may eventually find its way into the River Roding, but they have never as has been claimed fed the ornamental lakes of Wanstead Park.
Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation: Saturday 21st June, 2006. A Love Music Hate Racism/Unite Against Fascism march, a visit to the replacement allotments for the Manor Gardening Society and a curiously legal protest against deporting refugees to Iraq.
Stop the Fascist BNP – LMHR/UAF – Tooley St – Trafalgar Square
The Love Music Hate Racism/Unite Against Fascism “Stop the Fascist BNP” march turned out to be a little of a damp squib, although a fairly colourful one, as only 2-3,000 people turned up to march from Tooley Street in Bermondsey to Trafalgar Square.
Perhaps Stop the War’s failure to capitalise on the mass following it gained with the largest ever demonstration in the UK in 2003 had discredited the idea of huge marches. Like Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism was seen by many as being largely a front for the Socialist Workers Party. The anti-fascist magazine Searchlight had disaffiliated from them in 2005, arguing for the need for new tactics and in particular to work in communities where the BNP were exploiting real problems rather than just opposing them on the streets and calling them fascists.
A bigger march would have been better, but more importantly for the audience which Love Music Hate Racism was attempting to reach it needed to be much more of a free and fun event.
The band who played at the start of the march were restricted to a single number, when they could well have played much more, and there was hardly any music on the march – I only saw one small marching band. Where were the great sound systems for people to dance behind?
And as I wrote, “I was frankly appalled by the attitudes of the stewards towards photographers, almost as if the event was trying to hide from publicity. I’ve had less hassle when photographing the BNP.”
Manor Gardening Society – New Allotments – Marsh Lane, Leyton
The Manor Gardens Allotments fight to stay in place for the 2012 had failed. The gardens had presented the opportunity for the Olympics to show a real commitment to green ideas – and of course they had zero interest in really doing so. Green publicity stunts and lies yes, but Green actions and real content you had to be joking.
As I wrote “London in 1948 did really put the modern Olympics back on course, and it did so on vision and a shoestring – and even ended up making a profit. 2012 will be different in every respect. A commitment to corporate profit at high cost to the public purse appears to be the only vision on display, and a legacy of debt and environmental disaster seem to be the most likely outcomes.“
All tenants were evicted in late 2007 and the allotments were moved onto some common land in Leyton at a cost of £1.8 million, but the job was done terribly badly. They even took soil from the allotment site, but heat-treated it, killing all the life in it. Healthy soil is full of life – and as well as killing weed the treatment has killed off the microorganisms it needs, as well as larger creatures such as worms.
The soil was dead – and would take years to recover. Over much of the site it had been heavily compacted by heavy machinery working on the road andhad almost zero drainage. Whole areas were waterlogged. The only healthy crops I saw were in grow-bags.
I commented: “Of course it doesn’t look like the old Manor Gardens – more like some kind of prison camp, but I was pleased to see again many of those from the old site, making a good job of getting things growing again. One thing that hadn’t changed was the community spirit and the welcome – and the splendid salad and other food.”
The New Lamas Lands Defence Committee had campaigned against the loss of common land, but were assured it was only temporary – but there is now a permanent site there. In 2016 some of the tenants of the Manor Gardening Society were allowed to return to a small site at Pudding Mill, on the Bridgewater Road in Stratford. Two thirds of this site is now under threat from a development proposed by the London Legacy Development Corporation along its southeast which will put it under permanent shade.
Tent City – Stop Deporting Iraqis – Parliament Square
Voices UK had organised a 24-hour ‘Tent City’ starting at noon on 21 June, Midsummer Day as a deliberately illegal demonstration in Parliament Square, at the centre of the SOCPA restricted zone.
Much to their surprise, 4 days before it began they received an e-mail from a police office with its subject “Tent City Demonstration” and the message “I would like to inform you that an application has been received for this demonstration and it will be duly authorised“.
They had not made an application and could only think that the police had themselves applied rather than have to police an intentionally illiegal protest. Although it was now legal under SOCPA, the protest was still in breach of Westminster City Council by-laws and a couple of their heritage wardens came out to give letters telling them so – apparently accompanied by the police officer who had sent the email.
Fighting is still taking place in Iraq involving various factions as well as the occupying US and UK forces. Many Iraqis will still be at risk of their lives if they are returned.
But for the Home Office – then under Labour Home Secretary John Reid, deportations are largely a matter of numbers, not of people. Things of course got even worse in later years under Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and James Cleverly, but I expect little change whoever wins our current election.
