Grow Heathrow’s 5th Birthday: Saturday 28th February 2015 was the fifth anniversary of the occupation by local people and campaigners opposed to the building of a third runway at Heathrow of a derelict Berkeley Nursery site in the village of Sipson, one of the local vill,ages that would be lost to airport expansion.
The site, which was only finally evicted in 2021, though half of it was lost two years earlier, had four main aims. It was a symbolic resistance to economic, ecological and democratic crises, developed community and resource autonomy, developed a model for future non-hierarchical, consensus-based communities and aimed to root the grassroots radical values of the Third Runway resistance in the Heathrow villages.
A kitchen in a former greenhouseand a workshop area.
It played an important role in the continuing fight against building a third runway and was an important community resource in the area, as well as inspiring others around the world to see that it was possible to live in different ways. As a National Geographic article stated in 2018 “Grow Heathrow has taken great efforts to open its doors to local villagers, politicians, students, and anyone interested in learning about alternative ways of living.”
John McDonnell and David GraeberEwa Jasiewiczspeaking, Tristram Stuart listening andeating
I still miss Grow Heathrow and the people and ideas I met there, still occasionally think about getting on my bike and cycling there. I’ll probably take a ride some time through Sipson and on to Harmondsworth in a month or two when the weather is warmer, but of course the community garden is no longer there.
To celebrate its fifth birthday Grow Heathrow held a special day with workshops, guided tours of the site, music, workshops and a party. I’d visited the site a few times previously and it was interesting to see how it had developed, but I was particularly interested in some of the workshops.
Some songsA song about the Battle for Heathrow – Locals fought against Terminal 4, were promised it would the last, then against T5, were promised there would be no more expansion, then defeated the third runway.
In 2015 I wrote about local MP John McDonnell praising them their activities and contribution to the fight by locals against the third runway, and noted that this is “a battle which it looks as if it may need to be taken up by direct action again.” And now we are back at it again eleven years later.
A speech from local resident and supporter of Grow Heathrow, TracyJudges at work on the cake competitionand then we all tuck in.
It was inspiring to listen to Tristram Stuart, one of the pioneers of the radical food movement, and to activist Ewa Jasiewicz who I had photographed on many previous occasions, but it was a presentation by the much missed David Graeber that made the greatest impression on me. He “took us through some ideas about democracy and how we need to find new ways to eliminate unnecessary control, with examples from the Spanish civil war and the current revolution in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), where the constitution is based on the ideas of the late Murray Bookchin.“
And then it was time for the party. I’ve written much more on My London Diary and of course there are many more pictures from my afternoon at the site.
Save the Whittington Hospital: On Saturday 27th February 2010 I joined around two thousand people at Highbury Corner to march the two miles to the Whittington Hospital in a protest against planned cuts in A& E and other services at the hospital under a rationalisation plan initiated by Lord Darzi, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Department of Health from 2007 to 2009. In 2008 he led a review of the NHS titled High Quality Care for All.
The proposals for North London arose out of this review and led to plans to would see A&E services downgraded at the Whittington and Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield as well as at either Barnet or North Middlesex Hospitals. He argued that by concentrating emergency services in a few highly-equipped hospitals with specialist facilities a better service can be provided. But the changes were also motivated by the forecast of a large forecast future NHS North London deficit of around £860 million in five years time.
As speakers at the rally pointed out, these changes would lead to much longer journeys for patients through the congested streets of north London in emergencies, which would cost lives. The Whittington, close to the major junction at Archway and with good transport connections is a good place for a hospital and its part or eventual full closure would release a highly desirable and lucrative location for developers.
Frank Dobson holds the Whittington cat – which has a few bandages & sticking plasters
Among the marchers were several local MPs for the area served by the hospital, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there.
Frank Dobson who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council. A number of celebrities with links to the hospital also supported the protests against its closure.
It was doubtless the celebrity support that gained the battle to save the Whittington much greater publicity across the media than most protests, though as usual the BBC did its best to minimise the protest, its web site “being deliberately misleading when it states that “hundreds of protesters” gathered for the march“.
I’d actually stopped and counted the marchers as the walked past me and although my count might have been a few tens out, there were just under 2,000 when it left Highbury Corner. More joined it on the march and others went directly to the rally at the Whittington where the organisers estimated 5,000 attended, though my guess was a little fewer.
In April 2010 after huge local opposition, Labour health minister Andy Burnham had cancelled planned cuts at Whittington Hospital at Archway in North London, along with other planned cuts at North Middlesex and Barnet Hospitals. Shadow health minister Andrew Lansley praised his decision to call “for a stop to the flawed plans by NHS London to shut down local hospital“.
A quick consultation with the public
In July 2024 another Labour health Secretary, Wes Streeting, commissioned Lord Darzi to carry out an independent investigation into the NHS in England, which was published without any public consultation in September 2024. I imagine we will soon be fighting to stop more hospital closures.
Outsourcing, North Woolwich & Rees-Mogg Freakshow: Tuesday 26th February 2019 was a long day for me, beginning with a day of action over the outsourcing of workers on the day of a High Court challenge to extend the legal rights of the 3.3 million outsourced workers. In the afternoon I went to complete a walk I’d begun several months earlier in North Woolwich, returning to cover a protest by Class War outside a performance by Jacob Rees-Mogg at the London Palladium.
Rally for an end to Outsourcing – Parliament Square
The day of action by outsourced workers had actually begun several hours earlier at 8.00am at the University of London from where they had marched to protest outside the High Court before I met them for a rally against outsourcing in Parliament Square.
The day was a part of a coordinated strike action by outsourced workers, mainly migrants, working at the Ministry of Justice, Dept for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the University of London, organised by the grass roots unions United Voices of the World (UVW), the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB) with the BEIS PCS branch .
The unions argued that outsourced workers should be able to collectively bargain with the management of their actual workplace as well as the outsourced employer and that not being allowed to do so was in breach of article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. You can read more about the case which the High Court dismissed in an insightful article by Tom Long for Personnel Today.
Had the legal challenge been successful it would have greatly extended the legal rights of the UK’s 3.3 million outsourced workers and have led to a great improvement in their working lives.
Labour Shadow Business minister Laura Pidcock – she lost her seat in 2019
Several Labour MPs came to speak at the rally and support the demand to end outsourcing which creates insecurity, discrimination and low pay.
After the rally the the protesters marched around Parliament Square and then along Victoria Street to protest outside the Dept for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
Strikers at BEIS included catering and security staff who are members of the PCS and are demanding the London Living Wage as well as end to outsourcing.
Chris Williamson MP
Among the speakers at the rally here was then Labour MP for Derby North Chris Williamson who was under investigation for his comments about the party’s response to allegations of antisemitism in the party – and was eventually barred from standing for Labour in the 2019 election.
The protesters marched on to the Justice Ministry in Petty France.
Low paid workers belonging to the United Voices of the World union at the Ministry of Justice have been campaigning for some time to get the London Living wage, but the Justice Minister has been unwilling to talk with them. They call it the Ministry of Injustice.
They are also calling for an end to outsourcing and the insecurity, discrimination and low pay it causes. A number of trade unionists came to speak in support of outlawing outsourcing and to support the strikers in their claims.
This was a loud and boisterous protest with drumming, music and dancing on the pavement and street outside the ministry.
During the protest some of those who had already been on strike for 24 hours went back into the ministry to resume work, to cheers and hugs from those outside.
My attempt to go for a walk along the Capital Ring in North Woolwich was made difficult by the DLR having a temporary shut-down and I arrived an hour later than intended and was unable to finish the walk – I came back several months later to do so.
It wasn’t ideal weather particularly for the panoramas I was trying to make with a clear blue sky. And finally I failed to put all the pictures I had intended onto the web page – including these two
Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show – London Palladium
Class War protest outside the London Palladium as fans who had paid £38 for a ticket entered to listen to Jacob Rees-Mogg.
With Jane Nicholl dressed as a nun, Mother Hysteria, and Adam Clifford as Jacob Rees Mogg they loudly asked why people had come to listen to him “spout homophobic, transphobic, racist, pro-hunting, misogynist, classist, privileged” nonsense.
It was certainly a better show than anything that would take place later inside the venue, and all for free. You can read an excellent account of it on Inside Croydon.
Later Police searched Jane Nicholl and threatened to arrest her for carrying offensive weapons after it emerged she had brought some novelty stink bombs to the protest. Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show
Muslims Unite Against Samarra Bombing: Following the bomb attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samara, Iraq there were several days of sectarian violence between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims despite attempts by religious leaders there to calm the situation. The structure of the 10th century mosque was badly damaged and although the bombing caused no direct casualties there were many deaths in the few days that followed.
The bombing was probably carried out by a cell of Al-Qaeda in Iraq although they did not admit responsibility. The US, then occupying Iraq, played down the aftermath of the bombingm claiming the death toll was around 300, but later reports suggest around ten times that number died.
The march was led by children with placards “Sunni & Shia United!!!” , “Have You No Mercy”…
The al-Askari mosque bombing was the start of the First Iraqi Civil War and the mosque was again damaged by a bomb the following year.
A simple equation: Osama + Bush = Al-Qaida
Here is the account of the march and rally in London on Saturday 25 February, 2006 I wrote for My London Diary at the time – will the usual corrections and some of the many pictures I posted.
Muslims beating their breasts on the march,
Muslims Unite Against the Samarra Bombing
British Muslims Stand United Against Terrorism. On the march in Park Lane
Around ten thousand British Shia and Sunni Muslims marched together through London on Saturday 25th in an unusual gesture of solidarity following the bombing of the mosque at Sammara in Iraq, one of the holiest of Muslim shrines, containing the tombs of the 8th and 9th grandsons of Muhammed.
The march was led by women and children, with the men following behind. They carried placards and chanted calling for an end to violence, denouncing the Wahhabis and Al-Qaeda. Many also carried the Iraqi flag in its pan-arab colours of black, white, red, and green.
Starting from Hyde Park, the march went down Park Lane and Piccadilly to end in a rally in Trafalgar Square. Both the plinth and the square below were crowded with demonstrators.
Demonstrators at Trafalgar Square
Despite the seriousness of the outrage at Samarra, the people on the march were peaceful and good-natured, protesting against violence and against the Muslim fundamentalism that aims to create a “Taliban-like extremist state in Iraq.“
Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq: On Saturday 24th February 2007 I photographed the march and rally organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative to call for British troops to be brought back from Iraq and for an end to the deployment of Trident nuclear missiles and their proposed expensive replacement.
The marchers met in Hyde Park around Speakers’ Corner and marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square.
I wrote a slightly long text to go with the pictures which I’ll repeat in a more normal form below with normal capitalisation. It includes an explanation of how I arrived at an rough estimate for the numbers taking part for this and other protests – often very significantly greater than that then given by the police to the press and usually rather less than that of the organisers.
Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – Stop the War/CND/BMI Demo
I’ve for many years been opposed to the so-called independent British nuclear weapons. Even at the height of the Cold War they were never credible as an independent deterrent. If they have ever had any justification it was that they made the USA feel less guilty, although American guilt at its huge nuclear arsenal and at being the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons has always been an incredibly stunted growth.
I was also firmly against the invasion of Iraq. It was always clear to those who didn’t want to be deluded that the so-called ‘intelligence’ on weapons of mass destruction was laughable.
A cheaper alternative to Trident, and at least as effective. The bicycle & trailer costs rather less than a nuclear sub too.
Blair was either a liar or a fool as he misled a minority of the British people and a majority of their MPs. Or most probably both. (Saddam may also have been deluded and certainly was an evil dictator, but we had long failed those who tried to oppose him.) The invasion was criminal, but the lack of planning for the occupation that inevitably followed even more so.
Tony Benn
So Saturday’s march, organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative against both of these had my whole-hearted support (although i would have photographed it anyway.)
George Galloway beseiged by the Press
It is hard to be sure of numbers on events such as this, but the police estimate is laughable (the first figure they gave to the press, of 4000, was totally ludicrous.)
Blair and Bush on the march
It took around 90 minutes for the march to pass me in Park Lane, and although there were a few short gaps, there were plenty of times when the wide street was too crowded to really take pictures. My estimate of the average number of people passing me per minute is 200-600, giving a total of 18,000-50,000 marchers from Hyde Park.
A reminder of Guantanamo Bay
You can add to these figures perhaps another 10-20% who for various reasons go direct to the rally or join the march closer to Trafalgar Square, giving a total that could be between 20,000 and 60,000.
After photographing the marchers, I took the tube to get to the rally in time to hear some of the speeches (marchers were still arriving almost up to the end of the rally.) As I arrived, there were many people already leaving, and the square was filled, with people spilling out at both the northeast and northwest corners.
So where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? In the American arsenals of course.
I wasn’t there in time to hear Ken Livingstone, MPs John Mcdonnell and John Trickett, MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jill Evans, playwright David Edgar, Paul Mackney of the University & College Union or some of the other speakers, but I did hear the co-chair of the US ‘United For Peace And Justice’ Judith Leblanc, Lindsey German, George Galloway, and Augusto Montiel, a Venezuelan MP, as well as several Muslim speakers, trade unionists and singers including Julie Felix. I didn’t catch all of their names.
Julie Felix
For me the most moving speech was from Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq. Together with others from ‘military families against the war’ she is camping out over the weekend opposite Downing Street.
Six of her colleagues stood with her as a group while she addressed the crowd, lending their support. She was simple, direct, emotional.
The final speaker (I think) was Jeremy Corbyn, MP, and it started to rain again as he began speaking, so I headed for the Underground and home.
Lambeth Protests Massive Council Cuts: it was already half an hour after sunset when I joined several hundred Lambeth residents who had turned up outside Lambeth Town Hall where later that evening on Wednesday 23rd Feb 2011 councillors were set to approve drastic cuts to council services. I took a few pictures without flash but soon realised I would need to use flash for the rest of the event.
Lambeth is a large borough in south London with over 300,000 residents, roughly a third of whom were born outside the UK. It includes some wealthy areas but also had eight areas among the 10% most deprived in the country.
One of the few taken by avaialable light
Lambeth Council has been under majority Labour control since 2006 and in the 2010 elections Labour won around 70% of the council seats. One of the councillors who spoke at the protest to loud applause was Kingsley Adams, now a former Labour party councillor after being thrown out of the party for opposing the cuts and is now an Independent Labour councillor.
And after I switched to flash
The council argues that the cuts are an ideological policy forced on them by the Tory-led Coalition Government rather than a real need to make savings, but the protesters from Lambeth Save Our Services say that they are imposing them with a much greater enthusiasm and severity than is necessary. As one banner read, “Labour Cuts in Lambeth? Thatcher would be proud!”
Speakers pointed out that there were many ways that the council could have made the necessary savings without cutting services, including bringing some private services back under council control and ending the expensive use of consultants and high levels of expenses paid to councillors.
They point out that the chief executive’s salary alone at £270,000, which seems quite excessive and is one of the highest in the country is enough to keep a library running, and compared this to the Prime Minister’s salary of £142,500.
The council had large reserves some of which they suggested could be used to keep services running while the council made more sensible plans for long-term savings. The also said that large savings could be made by paying back the council’s pension deficit over a longer period.
The cuts are indeed draconian, expected to result in one quarter of the total staff – around 1000 council workers – losing their jobs. Among those to be lost completely are park rangers and school crossing patrols, many regeneration schemes and cultural events, and the noise nuisance service.
There will be massive cuts in services for children and young people, adult social care and the upkeep of estates – where rents will be raised. Discretionary travel passes for adults with mental health problems will go.
Levels of street cleaning, and the maintenance of roads, cemeteries and parks will be cut. There will be massive cuts in education, including the merging of Lambeth College with Lewisham College. Three of the borough’s four public toilets will close, and drastic cuts in libraries will probably mean at least four closing.
I left as some of those at the protest were going into the council offices to make their case, shortly before the council meeting was scheduled to start, though there were still several hundred on the pavement outside.
Later I heard that the protesters had occupied the meeting room for a couple of hours. But the council simply held the meeting in another room and approved the plans for cuts of £79 million without them being able to make their case.
Syria and Ukraine Protests Against Putin: On Saturday 22nd February 2014 Syrians and supporters at one of their regular protests opposite the Russian Embassy were joined by hundreds of Ukrainians also protesting against Putin.
Protests had been taking place in Ukraine since the previous November against Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and Russian soldiers in unmarked combat gear were already operating in parts of Ukraine and five days after this protest Russian forces seized control of strategic sites in Crimea. In April 2014 militants backed by Russia took control of some towns in the Donbas region in the east of Ukraine and declared two independent states in the area which were then covertly supported by Russia with soldiers, tanks and artillery.
The Syrian Revolution against the brutally dictatorial Assad regime had begun in February 2011, part of the wider Arab Spring. By the middle of 2012 it had become a military civil war, with Assad’s forces being supported by Iran and Russia, and supporters of Free Syria were holding regular protests opposite the Russian Embassy across the main road from the private street where the embassy is.
Several hundred Ukrainians had come to call or an end to Russian interference in the Ukraine, for an end to violence, and for Yanukovych to go.
While there they heard and cheered loudkt the latest news from the Parliament in Kiev, that the speaker of the parliament, attorney general and interior minister had been replaces and jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko freed.
After an hour of protest I went with the Ukrainians as they marched east along Holland Park Avenue to the statue of St Volodymyr, ruler of Ukraine 980-1015, erected by Ukrainians in Great Britain in 1988 to celebrate the establishment of Christianity in Ukraine by St Volodymyr in 988.
Here around the base of the statue were hundreds of lighted candles, along with flowers and other tributes to the many pro-opposition protesters who have been killed in Kiev and elsewhere in the Ukraine and more photographs of them were added.
Two Ukrainian Orthodox priests led a service in memory of those who had died in the protests to establish a free and independent Ukraine and people held up Ukrainian flags.
Pancakes in the City: Tuesday 21st February 2012 was Shrove Tuesday – Pancake Day – and there were a number of pancake races taking place around London. I photographed two of these with very different ethos.
At the heart of the City in Guildhall Yard the various City of London Livery companies showed the City at its most competitive in what has now became a tradition of inter-livery pancake races on Shrove Tuesday, organised by the Worshipful Company of Poulters since 2004.
Here there were carefully drawn up rules and practices.
“The Gunmakers start each heat using a miniature cannon (which can make a very loud bang), the Clockmakers hold stopwatches to time the races , the Fruiterers provide lemons, the Cutlers plastic forks, the Glovers white gloves required to be worn by each runner, while the Poulters provide the eggs essential to make the pancakes.”
This is a highly organised event raising funds for the annual Lord Mayor’s charity – in 2012 the Barts and The London Charity, on behalf of the Trauma Unit at The Royal London Hospital.
This was the first year in which women taking part in the Ladies events were allowed to wear trousers – previously they had been required to have skirts reaching below the knee. And there are many other rules including the wearing of special hats for the occasion.
This is the City having fun in their own rather circumscribed and very serious way.
I photographed this event for a number of years, but haven’t done so for a while, partly because it became difficult to work at it without prior accreditation which I couldn’t be bothered with, but mainly because I thought I had got everything I could out of it and I was just repeating myself.
I left before the final races to photograph a very different event taking place in Leadenhall Market, along a much more restricted course and between ad-hoc teams from various businesses in and around the market.
There were far fewer rules, just those needed to outline the races, with teams carrying and tossing the pancakes in this relay event. The narrow space available limited the heats to two teams at a time.
The shoe polishers kept working between races
There were prizes provided by The Lamb Tavern in the market, who also fielded a team along with outers including the cheese shop and the shoe shiners who fought it out in the final.
Or at least they did when after an initial run when the cheese shop team simply walked the course as they preferred the second prize – a bottle of champagne and a £50 bar tab at the Lamb – to the first of a restaurant voucher.
“Some haggling followed and a re-run was demanded – and after the Lamb had agreed both teams would get the bar money there was a close-fought battle for the honour of winning, won narrowly for the second year in the short history of the race by the team from the shoe stall.”
Ellen MacArthur, Brian Haw & Ashura. On 20th February 2005 I froze on the riverside in Bermondsey waiting for Ellen MacArthur’s catamaran to come up-river to Tower Bridge after her 71 day voyage had made her the fastest solo sailor to sail around the world. Five years later “she set up the Foundation in her name to accelerate the transition to a circular economy“. I didn’t get any very good pictures as I was far to far away as she raised here arm to acknowledge the crowd that had gathered to welcome her – I needed a much longer telephoto than I’ve ever had.
Afterwards I took a little walk around the Bermondsey riverside before making my way back to Parliament Square where I took a pictures of the display there by Brian Haw’s Peace Campaign, now joined by promotional flags for the 2012 Olympic bid. There was more of this in Trafalgar Square too, where I dropped in briefly to see some of our pictures and warm up.
Finally at Marble Arch I photographed the start of the Ashura procession by Shi’ite Muslims. I didn’t stay too long as I was still cold and I was keen to get home and warm.
Here – with the usual minor corrections – is the piece I wrote in 2005 to go with the pictures on My London Diary:
Sunday was another bitter day, and I froze on Butlers Wharf waiting to see Ellen MacArthur aboard her catamaran as it was driven up to Tower Bridge and back from Greenwich, disappointingly not a sail in sight.
Ellen MacArthur is just visible, arm upraised in the centre of the picture
The crowds were not huge, but respectable, but like me, few could be bothered to go to Greenwich. The various press boats buzzing round the catamaran added a little interest, but made me glad I wasn’t on one.
I was more interested in taking some pictures along the riverside, then took the tube to Westminster to call in on Brian Haw, still in Parliament Square since 1st June 2001, with the government now cooking up a personal law against him.
The signs on the square are no augmented by a line of mute London 2012 flags, and along in Trafalgar Square (on my route to the National Gallery) was a giant tent and Olympian figure. Nobody can accuse London 2012 of not spending money on promoting their cause. more pictures
Shi’ite Muslims in London were celebrating the stand of the grandson of the Prophet, Imam Hussain, who died a glorious martyr along with his small band of supporters at Karbala in Iraq, choosing death rather than dishonour, in the year 680. Ashura represents a key point of difference between Sunni and Shi’a traditions and Saddam Hussein rigidly prevented its observance in Iraq during his years in power.
Protesting the London Olympics Bid: On Saturday 19th February 2005 I sent for a guided walk around the proposed Olympic site on Stratford Marsh and then joined others in a protest march through the area to Hackney Marshes which would also be affected.
Small industries giving local employment which will disappear
The favourites for the games were Paris, and although public opinion in Britain largely backed the bid, there was rather less support by locals both because of the effects it would have on the area and the high coast which would mean an extra £20 per year on council tax.
One of the larger industrial sites, and a building in use as artists studios
Paris accused London of violating the rules but the decision was was made by a small majority in London’s favour.
Pudding Mill River and Old River Lee
After the success of the bid in July 2005 there were fears around the rest of the country that the extra spending on the games would mean diverting funds for more necessary work away from the rest of the country – which it did.
City Mill River and Warton House, formerly the Yardley perfume company’s Box Factory – preserved
And locally many suffered from the disruption of the works over an extensive area – with local businesses and some residents being forced out of the area.
This bridge had a local message for Seb Coe who heads London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games
Here I’ll reproduce – with appropriate minor corrections – the article I wrote along with some of the pictures I took on the day.
Site Walk, Bow Back Rivers
Saturday 19th February saw me in the Bow Back Rivers again, on another guided walk looking at the areas threatened by the London 2012 Olympic Bid. We walked along The Northern Outfall Sewer from Stratford High Road to Old Ford, then along the Old River Lea and back down the City Mill River.
Traditionally an area for dirty industries on the east of the city, a health and safety hell-hole, now with plenty of derelict land, but still providing local jobs that will all disappear if the bid goes through.
Much of the area will disappear under concrete, almost all redundant after the big event, with plans for its after use unpublished and unfunded.
At the moment it’s a rich wildlife environment, but all that will go, and the tidal Bow Back Rivers are likely to be lost or severely altered.
If the bid goes ahead it will severely distort a regeneration that needs to be based on local needs and priorities, and the trumpeted increased investment will largely create unwanted facilities that will be future millstones.
Hackney marshes. Football pitches will be concreted car parks for the Olympics
Not to mention the disruption over perhaps 15 years as the site is developed and then (if finances materialise) restored for use.
No London 2012 Olympics March
More local businesses that will close on Waterden Rd.
After the walk, we went to join the demonstration and protest march that was forming in Meridian Square outside Stratford Station. It wasn’t a huge event, with just over a hundred marchers, but I was surprised at the positive response from those hurrying by to catch trains or go shopping, many expressing support.
The march, on a bitter, dull afternoon, ended on Hackney Marshes, where considerable local sports facilities are due to be covered by car parks if the bid succeeds, with people playing games and a very spirited sack race.
View from the walkway over Carpenters Lock
I walked back to Stratford, again through the Olympic site, crossing over the Lea at one of the locks and along the side of the Waterworks River, with often dramatic lighting and the occasional light flurry of snow.
