June, 2025 | >Re-PHOTO

Nicaragua, Votes For Women, Al Quds Day – 2018

Nicaragua, Votes For Women, Al Quds Day: Sunday 10th June 2018 my work began in Trafalgar Square where Nicaraguans called for an end to the current government violence in their country. I then photographed a march commemorating the extension of the UK vote to include many but not all adult women a hundred years earlier. Then I went to the Saudi Embassy where there were two groups facing each other, kept well separate by police. It was Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day and supporters of the oppressed people of Palestine had come to protest there, with a counter-protest by Zionists.

End government killings in Nicaragua – Trafalgar Square

Nicaragua, Votes For Women, Al Quds Day - 2018

Nicaraguans came to call for an end to the violent attacks by police on protests in Nicaragua where they have killed over 100 protesters, injured over 600, and others have been unjustly detained, tortured and some raped.

The government atrocities have been condemned by he CIDH (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) and Amnesty International and this was one of protests across Europe in solidarity, demanding the resignation of president Daniel Ortega and his wife and and vice-president Rosario Murillo and free and fair elections.

More pictures on My London Diary at End government killings in Nicaragua.

100 years of Votes for Women

Women wore purple, white and green head scarves to make up three strands of a huge procession in the suffragette colours through London marking 100 years since many British women gained the right to vote.

The 1918 act gave the vote to the first time to all men over 21 and to men like my father over 18 serving in the armed forces, but did not bring in universal suffrage for women. Women had to be over 30 and meet a property requirement. It was another ten years before all women over 21 – including my mother who was by then 23 – could vote.

My mother made no secret of her support for the Conservative party, displaying their poster in our front window at every election. My father, who kept quiet about his politics to avoid conflict at home, went into the polling station every time to cancel out her vote with one for Labour.

I left the march as the end of it passed Piccadilly Circus on its way to Westminster.

Many more pictures at 100 years of Votes for Women.

Zionists protest against Al Quds Day – Saudi embassy, Mayfair

As well as the official Zionist protest kept behind barriers by police around a hundred yards away from the pro-Palestine Al Quds day event there were also a number of extreme right football thugs roaming the area, together with some well-known Zionists. Some of these managed to come close to the Al Quds day event and shout at it and at times there was some forceful policing as the thugs were moved away.

The official Zionist Federation protest kept behind the barriers, shouting at the Palestinian supporters, most of whom simply ignored them though a handful faced them at a distance and shouted back. There seemed to be rather fewer of the Zionists than in earlier years and there were almost certainly more Jewish protesters in the Al Quds day event which was supported by several groups and numerous individuals from the Jewish left as well as the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta, who always attract a great deal of venomous anti-Semitic shouting from the Zionists.

There had been considerable pressure on the UK government to ban the display of the Hezbollah flag, which was then still legal here, as the same flag was used by both the military wing, banned in 2008 and the political wing of the party which at the time had two ministers in the Lebanese government. Despite this the UK government banned the group as a whole in 2019, making the display of this flag from then on a criminal offence.

More pictures at Zionists protest against AlQuds Day.

Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day – Saudi embassy, Mayfair

*Protesters hold the largest Palestinian flag ever made, 70m long to symbolise the 70 years since the Nakba*

The much larger crowd who had come to the protest organised by the Justice for Palestine Committee and supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission and a wide range of pro-Palestinian organisations was squashed into a small area in front of the Saudi Embassy.

There was a large police presence in the area that kept them well apart from the counter-protest by the Zionist Federation and stopped the football hooligans from attacking this peaceful protest.

Al Quds Day was established by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 and is celebrated in many countries particularly across the Arab world. There have been events like this one in London for over 30 years.

The protest this year was a gesture of defiance to the demonisation campaign and the ongoing murders by Israeli troops of innocent Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip commemorating 70 years since Israel was formed on expropriated Palestinian land.

More on My London Diary at Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day.

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Intellectual Property, Naked Cyclists – 2012

Intellectual Property, Naked Cyclists: On Saturday 9th June 2012 after a rally against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement outside Europe House in Smith Square I went to Hyde Park Corner where cyclists were preparing for the London World Naked Bike Ride, an environmental protest against a society based on oil and the domination by cars.

Rally Against ACTA

Intellectual Property, Naked Cyclists - 2012

Current debates on intellectual property in 2025 are mainly concerned with protecting the rights of individual creators from being used without permission or compensation by companies developing AI which could then use the data taken to create new works which would mimic their work, essentially producing counterfeit works.

Back in 2012 the protests were against ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement put together in secret talks between the USA, Europe, Japan and some other major governments to protect the copyrights, trademarks and patents held by major multinational companies.

Wikileaks had released the secrets of these talks, deliberately set up in private to exclude the views of civil society and developing countries. They proposed putting draconian powers in the hands of major corporations without the need for allegations of abuse to be properly tested.

Now in 2025 the government is attempting to put into law an act which would legitimise the production of ‘fakes’ by the major AI companies, though the fight against this is being carried on largely in the House of Lords rather than on the streets or on the web. As usual laws are largely about protecting and advancing the interests of the rich and powerful – whose donations and lobbying keep our legislators on side.

As well as preventing much sharing of material on the web – some legitimately – ACTA would also disrupt much-needed generic medicines to majority world countries, where indiscriminate raids had already disrupted some legitimate supplies. And many musicians and other content creators feared it would be used by the major corporations to prevent or inhibit their ability to profit through distributing their own work via the Internet.

On 4th July 2012, 478 MEPs in the European Parliament voted against ACTA, 39 in favour, and 165 abstained, meaning the agreement did not enter into force in the EU.

More about the protest and about ACTA, along with more pictures on My London Diary at Rally Against ACTA.

Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil

Around a thousand cyclists in various states of undress, some wearing nothing but shoes, took part in the World Naked Bike Ride, an annual environmental protest touring central London, much to the astonishment of many tourists. Shoes are required, but otherwise the dress code is “as bare as you dare.”

*People gathered at Hyde Park Corner for the start of the ride*

Public nudity is not illegal in Britain and the ride seems to cause a great deal of hilarity from some onlookers but little or no offence. Most of those on the pavements were tourists and eagerly taking photographs of the event.

Although there had been many earlier naked bike rides organised as naturist or political demonstrations, the first World Naked Bike Rides were organised in 2004 and now take place in many cities around the world. The rides are a protest against dependence on oil and other forms of non-renewable energy and “expose the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians” in modern cities.

In 2012 there did seem to be a rather clearer environmental message than in some other years, and my pictures here – and in the many more on My London Diary concentrate on this rather than the nudity, and on the many with body paint, sometimes solely for decoration but often expressing an environmental message, contributing to the purpose of the ride to “deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world.”

Back in 2012 there were similar rides in 20 countries around the world ands well as others in Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Glasgow, Manchester, Portsmouth, Southampton and York.

After photographing the riders on the grass at Hyde Park corner I set off with them on foot, rather dangerously as other traffic was still driving around the busy roundabout and along Piccadilly. But I soon got out of breath and had to rest.

Later I took the tube to Westminster and met the cyclists again coming down Whitehall, going with them across Westminster Bridge. I left them to go to Waterloo Station on their way to the City and then back trough Holborn to Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park Corner.

Many more photographs at Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil.

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Lord Maruga, Portugal Day & Khalistan – 2008

Lord Maruga, Portugal Day & Khalistan: My day on Sunday 8th June 2008 very much reflected the multicultural nature of London, beginning with a Hindu Festival in Thornton Heath, moving on to a Catholic Mass celebrating Portugal Day in Kennington and finally a march by Sikhs remembering the 1984 massacre and calling for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan.

Lord Muruga in Thornton Heath

Hindu God Lord Muruga is particularly popular with the Tamils of southeast India (Tamil Nadu), Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and several hundred from the Sivaskanthagiri Murugan Temple in Thornton Heath celebrated him by pulling a chariot carrying his representation through the local streets.

The procession was led by musicians, and by women carrying pots of burning embers on their heads and in their arms. As the chariot made its way along the street, people brought offerings of good to be blessed, and these were returned to them flaming.

Lord Muruga is the son of Agni, the fire god. He also carries a spear and a staff with a picture of a cockerel, and rides on a peacock. He is noted for the help that he gives for devotees who are in distress and the procession in particular visits those who cannot come to the temple because of their poor health or other disabilities

The flames are from camphor, widely used in Indian rituals and thought to eliminate negative energies. This waxy white solid burns with a relatively cool flame and emit little smoke.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Lord Muruga in Thornton Heath.

Portugal Day in Kennington Park

Also known as Camões Day, Portugal’s National Day marks the anniversary of the death of its greatest poet and writer, Luís de Camões, on 10 June, 1580. He died in the year that Portugal became part of Spain, and the date of his death (the day of his birth around 1624 is not recorded) was celebrated as a national day after Portugal regained independence in 1640.

His great epic poem ‘The Lusaids’ centres on Vasco da Gama’s voyage to discover a sea route to India which was the foundation of the colonial explorations that brought the country great wealth and it made him a symbol of the nation.

Fascist dictator Salazar who ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968 made the day a celebration of a fictional Portuguese ‘race’, but it is now simply a day for celebration by Portuguese communities around the world – and London has the largest Portuguese community outside Portugal, centred in Stockwell close to Kennington Park. The celebrations in the park includes entertainments and considerable eating and drinking after the initial open-air Catholic Mass I photographed.

Portugal Day in Kennington Park

Sikh Remembrance March and Freedom Rally

Sikhs remember the massacres at Amritsar by the Indian Army and the mob killings encouraged by the Indian government following the assassination of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

Sikh interests were ignored by an ignorant and incompetent British administration led by the Viceroy and Governor-General of India Lord Mountbatten who were responsible for the partition of India in 1947.

This annual rally and march in London calls for the establishment of an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan in the Punjab and possibly incorporating some nearby areas of India and Pakistan.

Some Sikhs had been calling for an independent state since the 1930s and the movement continued to grow after partition with various militant Sikh groups including Babbar Khalsa, proscribed in the UK. Violent repression by Indian police led to a decline in the 1990s, but repression continues against Sikhs and in particular against those campaigning for separation and has increased in recent years. This makes it very difficult to determine how much popular support there is for the Khalistan movement in the area.

Data in the UK suggests that only a small fraction of British Sikhs support the establishment of Khalistan. In 2018, India asked UK to ban Sikh Federation (UK) who organise these events for its anti-India, pro-Khalistan activities, including proscribing the organisation but this has not happened.

More at Sikh Remembrance March and Freedom Rally.

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Limehouse Cut – 1990

The final post on walk in Limehouse on Sunday 6th January 1990 continued. The previous post from this walk is West India Dock Road & Limehouse Cut – 1990. As usual you can click on the images here to view larger versions on my Flickr pages.

*Limehouse Cut, Railway viaduct, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1c-12*

Looking south towards the blockage across the canal through the bridge which carries the DLR over Limehouse Cut. At the right are the temporary buildings for the construction work on the Limehouse Link tunnel. The Limehouse Cut turns around to the right past the blockage to join Limehouse Dock and I think the industrial buildings you can see are in Brightlingsea Street.

*Flood Barrier, Limehouse Cut, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1c-15*

I walked along the towpath to Commercial Road carried over the canal by Britannia Bridge, named for the Britannia Tavern which stood here until 1911, when it was probably removed to allow the bridge to be widened for traffic and also to allow for a towpath under the bridge.

At spring tides when the water rose to its highest it would overtop the old Bow Locks, with water flowing into both the Cut and the lower stretch of the Lea Navigation. This created a problem, particularly when the Cut was connected to the Limehouse Dock. In this picture you see the vertical guillotine gate which was fitted here after the Cut was taken over by British Waterways in 1948 enabling the canal to be isolated from the dock. It was removed soon after I made this picture.

You can also see the 1923 Empire Memorial Sailors’ Hostel on the corner of Commercial Road and Salmon Lane, built as a memorial to all the seamen who had lost their lives in the First World War. Later used as a hostel for the homeless and to house immigrants it had by 1990 been converted into luxury flats.

*H W Bush, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1c-16*

*Island Row, Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1f-66*

*Limehouse Basin, Northey St, Narrow St, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90-1f-65*

Taken from near to the end of Island Row. But my walk was coming to an end. I made only one more black and white picture, not yet digitised, of the Regents Canal Lock from Commercial Road on my way to Limehouse station.

But I had also carried a second camera body loaded with colour negative film and I made the occasional colour picture during the walk. Here are four of them:

*Stepney Transforming Station, Brightlingsea Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90c01-01-73*

*Poplar Fish Bar, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90c01-01-62*

Everite Autos, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90c01-01-64 — *Everite Autos Mill Place, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90c01-01-64*

*Café, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1990, 90c01-01-52*

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London Walking Weekend – 2009

London Walking Weekend: Most weekends since the 1980s I’ve spent at least one day walking around London, often on my own but more recently mainly with others carrying banners and placards. But Saturday 6th June 2009 was a little different as it was designated as the Walking Weekend of the Story of London Festival, and I went to a couple of free events put on by the Heritage of London Trust and Pevsner Architectural Guides in east London, as well as doing a little on my own.

On Saturday morning I took a guided tour of St Mary Magdalene’s Church in East Ham led by Tara Draper-Stumm for the Heritage of London Trust, a charity which does a great deal of work in restoring buildings and sites in danger across the capital.

It was a great guided tour of one of London’s most interesting churches, Grade 1 listed and “claimed to be the oldest parish church still in weekly use in Greater London“, large parts dating from the first half of the 12th century but of course greatly added to, altered and restored over the centuries, most recently in 1965-6.

But I didn’t take any pictures, so nothing to post here from this tour. Back in the 1990s when I was a regular contributor to our National Building Record I often found myself waiting in the library there for my appointment and would pull a box file for an area of London from their shelves – to find it almost entirely full of photographs of old churches, many taken by their vicars back in the day when many were gentlemen of leisure with the money to take up photography. It rather put me off photographing them and on this morning I decided to simply experience the event, listen and look. But there is a fine illustrated tour of the church online.

From there I had some time to spare before the afternoon walk and went to visit the huge building site on Stratford Marsh for the London Olympics, by then sealed off by miles of blue fence. It was something of a rush to take pictures to later make into panoramas as well as some other pictures before getting back on the DLR from Pudding Mill Station to Poplar.

*Footbridge at Poplar Station – a similar panoramic image I took on this footbridge a years earlier was used wrapped around two sides of a 12 inch record, ‘Limehouse Link’* *and less impressively on the CD.*

There I met someone whose name had been familiar for many years but I’d not met, Bridget Cherry, a leading architectural hisotrian whose name appears on the essential works for anyone with an interest in the subject, The Buildings of England, begun by Nikolaus Pevsner in 1951. She worked on many volumes, some with him, as well as becoming General Editor.

*1930s streamlined moderne concrete at Constant House, refurbished and fitted with entrance doors*

These books remain essential guides to anyone with an interest in architecture in England, and I walked most of the ‘perambulations’ in London from them, although my interests were rather wider than the buildings contained in them and my walks also took me to many other places. You can read more about this walk on My London Diary. Here I’ll include just a few of the pictures I took with captions and some brief comments.

*The 1930s pub ‘The Resolute’ , named for HMS Resolute, one of the ships sent in 1850 and 1852 to search for Sir John Franklin, lost in the N W Passage*

*Some gardening going on with residents growing salad crops*

Robin Hood Gardens, designed in the late 1960s by Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972, gained international recognition for its Brutalist architecture and was the highpoint of the walk. Its two long blocks enclosed a large garden area which was suprisingly quiet despite the site being alongside of one of London’s busiest roads. Neglected for years by Tower Hamlets council it was used to house many ‘problem’ tenants but by 2009 had largely recovered and become well regarded by those who lived there.

But the local authority had already decided to demolish it as a part of a ‘regeneration’ scheme. Attempts to list it scandalously failed – despite its international architectural significance – probably to protect the profits of the developers and demolition began in 2017 but was only finally completed in March 2015. Listing of large council estates became largely impossible under New Labour and expensive, highly profitable and environmentally disastrous schemes regeration schemes providing expensive but largely poorer quality buildings with little social housing have since obliterated estates – including some fine architecture – which could have been refurbished to modern standards at a fraction of the cost.

*St Matthias Old Church built 1652-4 but exterior reworked in 19th centry and monument to Captain Samuel Jones*

You can see many more of the buildings on the Poplar trail on My London Diary at Bridget Cherry – Poplar Trail.

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London Gardens, Green Lifestyle & Carnival de Cuba – 2005

London Gardens, Green Lifestyle & Carnival de Cuba: I had an interesting time twenty years ago on the weekend of 4-5th June 2005 in London. After a visit to some fantastic private gardens on the Saturday, on Sunday I went to a Green Lifestyle festival in Greenwich then photographed a Cuban carnival procession at Coin Street.

Here I’ll edit slightly the text I wrote back in 2005 and integrate it with some of the pictures I made, with links to the rest of those I put at the time on My London Diary. And end with a brief comment.

London Gardens – North London, Notting Hill and Chelsea

London Arts Café, now sadly long defunct, was an organisation which promoted urban art and examined its contribution to urban life. Its annual programme often included some interesting visits, sometimes taking us to places we never knew existed. On Saturday June 4th 2005 we were privileged to be able to visit three very different private gardens, each it it’s own way extraordinary. They are all among those featured in the 2000 book by George Carter, The New London Garden, (ISBN 1-840000-347-2) where you can find more details about them and view some splendid photographs by Marianne Majerus.

*Judy Wiseman’s sculpture garden in Gospel Oak*

We met George in the Notting Hill garden and he talked to us about his work and the importance of the garden in urban space, and we were also fortunate to meet the garden owners who also told us about their own gardens.

A grotto in Notting Hill

In North London, we visited a garden filled with sculptures of various types by designer and sculptor Judy Wiseman, making the most of the various locations. Most were casts of bodies or parts of bodies. This garden, I think alone among the three we visited, is open to the public to visit on one day most years as a part of the charity Open Gardens scheme.

In Notting Hill, the garden was more practical in some ways, with a large expanse of lawn, but in one corner was a dark area of trees and bushes with a fantastic grotto.

Most fabulous of all was the rooftop garden in Chelsea, stretched along the rooftops at the back of four houses, all former studios of well-known artists. One of the highlights for me was a scale model of a glasshouse built by Decimus Burton, used to create a miniature world with plants and figures.

After spending some time admiring this garden, we were also shown the art gallery in one of the houses, with an incredible collection of pictures, including works by Picasso, Braque, Courbet, Moholy-Nagy and many other famous names, including some fine work from the 1950s. There were also some fine rooms in the house, including a modern kitchen and some fine period pieces.

more pictures

London Green Lifestyle Show – Greenwich Park

*Solar Panels and The Queen’s House, Greenwich, London, June 5, 2005*

The group that had organised Kingston Green Fair had been asked to organise the London Green Lifestyle show in Greenwich Park, held on World Environment Day, June 5, 2005 as a part of London’s contribution to a more sustainable lifestyle. Unfortunately the events were spread over far too wide an area of the park to really be successful.

As always, there was rather a lot of missing the obvious in the approach to a better environment. So there was little about the need to drastically cut down air travel, and relatively little about cutting down car use. Casual visitors could certainly have gone away with the idea that if we all recycled our rubbish and perhaps switched to a green power supplier, everything was set for a rosy future.

I first spoke in public about the need for effective action to save the world in 1970. I had sold the last car I owned in 1966, using a bicycle wherever practicable since then, very occasionally using taxis and hiring a car for a few holidays. We’ve lived a relatively low-impact lifestyle, perhaps except for my addiction to cameras and computers! I changed jobs so I could cycle to work (and now work mainly online to avoid travel.) Others I’ve known have done more, moving to become largely self-sufficient.

At the moment the government is playing lip-service to the need for urgent action on the environment, but falling short of taking or even discussing any effective actions, to do things like actually cutting the use of fossil fuels, or reducing the number of car and air miles we travel. [Little has really changed in challenging the centrality of the car in our culture since – and electric cars are little better for the climate.] I’m increasingly gloomy about the future, though the world will probably stay in reasonable shape for the rest of my lifetime.

We need to think far more seriously about quality of life, rather than concentrating on things that are easy to measure like gross national product. much of it is truly gross, and there are better ways to organise our lives around the things that really matter.

more pictures

Carnival de Cuba – Coin St Festival, Bernie Spain Gardens

Carnival de Cuba was taking place the same day at Coin Street (perhaps the one successful development in london since the war.) I got there in time for the procession, and clearly everyone was having a great deal of fun.

There was really far more to photograph and though I spent less time there than at Greenwich there are several times as many pictures from the carnival on My London Diary.

Afterword

The visits to the gardens in these pictures was for me a rather unsettling window on the private realms of the over-privileged in our society who inhabit a very different world to the rest of us. Though there are far worse ways many of them chose to spend their phenomenal and largely unearned wealth it would be good to see the tremendous creative talent shown here put into work that could be appreciated by a much greater public in public spaces.

But perhaps like the private collections of Sir John Soane we can now see in Lincoln’s Inn Fields or those stolen from the Tradescant family by Elias Ashmole at least some of these may eventually become publicly accessble assets.

Later I photographed more private gardens of the wealthy in a collaborative project with the short-lived Queen’s Terrace Café, shown there in 2011 as ‘The Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood’ and with the book with Mireille Galinou of the same name still available from Blurb, where you can view the preview which contains many of the pictures.

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Peckham Fight the Developers – May 2025

Peckham Fight the Developers: Last Saturday, 31st May 2025 I went to a protest in Peckham against the proposals for the redevelopment of the Aylesham Centre in the heart of Peckham by developers Berkeley Homes.

Their proposals shocked local residents in various ways. They include a 20 storey tower over 250 ft tall, and while the site would included 877 new homes, only 77 of those would be ‘affordable‘. Only a quarter of the number required in the new London Plan which calls for 50% – and for these to be ‘genuinely affordable‘, something that there is no clarity that any of those meagre 77 would be. The plans also include a supermarket and car park, some space that could be used to provide various services or offices as well as shops and a “Drinking Establishment”.

Because of the widespread opposition, apparently including all three local councillors as well as various local community groups which have come together in the umbrella group of housing campaigns and activists from across Southwark – SHAPE – Southwark Housing And Planning Emergency – it seems likely that Southwark Council will reject the application. In which case Berkeley are almost certain to appeal.

Given the Labour Party’s new policies on planning it seems unfortunately likely that in the case of an appeal Levelling Up Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner is likely to wave their proposals through despite their obvious failings and disatrous effect on Peckham.

Peckham Fight the Developers - May 2025 Anna Minton — *Peckham, London, UK. 31 May 2005. Journalist and author Anna Minton*

One of the speakers at the event was authour and Guardian journalist Anna Minton, invited to speak after her article last week, A new kind of gentrification is spreading through London – and emptying out schools which had the subhead “Thanks to ‘placemaking’, thriving communities are hollowing out, to be replaced by luxury apartments and expensive restaurants.”

Much of her article looked at the consequences of the demolition and replacement of another area of Southwark, the Heygate Estate at Elephant and Castle. This large council estate was replaced by developers Landlease with ‘Elephant Park’ with many flats being sold off-plan to international investors. Lendlease made big profits but Southwark council actually lost both a hugely valueable asset in land as well as actual money in the process.

The new site had more homes than the old, with around 2,000 largely still council-owned flats and houses being replaced by 2,704 of which only 82 are social housing. There 25% were ‘affordable’ but at up to 80% of market rent unaffordable to most locals including the previous residents of the area – and only a small fraction of the site being ‘affordable’. Replacing family homes by luxury flats has led to a large drop in births in the area, forcing the closure of the local primary school at the end of the current term. It was an exercise in ‘ethnic cleansing’ with most forced out of the Heygate having to move long distances further from the centre of London to find properties they could afford.

Minton comments “The positive rhetoric and branding of placemaking is that it transforms run-down areas into vibrant and economically successful parts of the city. The reality is that it creates sterile places, emptied of so many of the essential aspects of urban life, except the expensive activities.”

*Peckham, London, UK. 31 May 2005. Outside the Aylesham Centre*

Rye Lane on which the Aylesham Centre stands was described in 1934 as “the Oxford Street of South London” with no rival outside of Central London. At the north end of this “Golden Mile of shops” was a whole block containing the department store Jones & Higgins of which only a small part containing its clock tower remain – and under risk.

Jones & Higgins closed in 1980 and in 1985 most of it was demolished to build the Aylesham Centre. Most of the other fine shops of the past have left, but their buildings mainly survive in new uses, and the street is now remarkably vibrant largely with small shops serving the area’s multicultural community. Rye Lane remains one of London’s busiest shopping streets and I always enjoy walking along it. Off to the side are several small street markets and the amazing Copeland Park and its former cricket bat factory the Bussey Building, now a cultural centre, along with Peckham Levels, a transformed multi-storey car park, though its Derek Jarman memorial garden was in a poor state when I last visited a few years back.

The Aylesham centre is perhaps now the low point on the street and its demolition would certainly be no loss, but it would be terrible for it to be replaced by yet another sterile ‘white Elephant‘. It is a site that could offer much to the local community, including making a significant inroad into the roughly 12,000 families on the local council’s housing waiting list.

More pictures from the rally and march in my Facebook album People vs The Developers – Peckham takeover – and if you don’t have a Facebook account (still free) you can view some of them on my Alamy portofolio page.

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Knife Crime & Sikh Genocide – 2018

Knife Crime & Sikh Genocide: On Saturday 3rd Jun 2018 Anti-Knife UK protested opposite Downing Street calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to take action against knife crime in the UK. From there I went to Hyde Park where several thousand Sikhs were meeting to march through London to Trafalgar Square in memory of the 1984 Indian Army attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar and the mob killings of Sikhs later in the year encouraged by the Indian government following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

Anti-Knife UK protest – Downing St

Anti-Knife UK had been founded by Danny O’Brien in 2008 to monitor knife crime incidents from across the UK on a daily basis and to campaign for legislation and other actions to reduce them. He announced at the protest that he was stepping down from active leadership because of the strains it had put on his mental health leaving the campaign to be carried forward by others.

Anti-Knife UK had organised this protest by community groups and campaigners from various groups across the country to urge Theresa May to take action against this growing problem. Many at the protest were family and friends of those, mainly young men, who had been killed in knife crimes and wore t-shirts with pictures of the victims.

As well as placards and banners some had brought pairs of empty shoes to remember those killed.

Speakers at the rally called for government support for measures to tackle the problem including tougher sentences, tagging of all knives, knife arches in night clubs, equal rights for victims and families, and a review of the laws governing self-defence and reasonable force as well as more work in schools and communities.

More pictures at Anti-Knife UK protest.

Sikhs remember the 1984 genocide

Several thousands of Sikhs sat in front of a stage on a lorry in Hyde Park for a rally addressed by a succession of Sikh leaders calling for and end to the persecution of Sikhs in the Punjab and for freedom in an independent Sikh state of Khalistan. Sikhs got a raw deal at partition in 1947 and promises made to them at the time were never kept.

They remembered the thousands of Sikhs killed in the 1984 Indian Army attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Operation Blue Star, and more murdered later that year after the assassination of Indira Gandhi when the Indian government encouraged mob killings of Sikhs, crimes for which none have been brought to justice.

Since the 1984 Sikh genocide there has been a continuing program of police arrests, torture and killing of Sikh males in the Punjab and crippling economic and social policies. Many Sikhs demand independence from India and a Sikh state of Khalistan.

The militant Sikh group Babbar Khalsa calling for independence had been formed a few years before 1984 and had been active for some years in the Punjab before they gained international notoriety by planting a bomb in an Air India flight to Canada which killed 329 people in 1985. Some at least of the continuing activities of this group are thought to be financed by Pakistan.

Babbar Khalsa are a proscribed group in the UK and in some earlier years I photographed this event some people were arrested for allegedly promoting this organisation. This year I saw none of this, but Babbar is an Indian family name.

*Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was killed in ‘Operation Blue Star’*

Some did carry placards showing Kulwant Singh Babbar, one of the first members and founders of Babbar Khalsa and a supporter of Khalistan movement, killed by Indian army snipers in Operation Blue Star in 1984.

This was a peaceful protest and I was made to feel welcome as I took pictures – and enjoyed some of the free food being handed out to all at the event before the march.

The start of the march was led by groups from Birmingham and when they reached Marble Arch they were unsure which way to proceed. They decided to go back into Hyde Park and get the police to tell them which way to go, and were led back through a gate a short distance down Park Lane and led across to continue,

I left them at Hyde Park Corner on their way down Piccadilly towards a rally in Trafalgar Square.

More pictures on My London Diary at Sikhs remember the 1984 genocide.

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Bonkersfest, Trade Justice & Brian Haw – 2007

Bonkersfest, Trade Justice & Brian Haw: On Saturday 2nd June 2007 I photographed three very different events, a festival to publicise mental health issues, a protest calling on G8 world leaders about to meet in Germany to get on with eliminating poverty and finally a visit to Brian Haw who was celebrating six years of his peace protest in Parliament Square.

Here I’ll copy – with a few corrections and clarifications – what I wrote back in 2007 about these events, along with a few of the pictures and links to the others which I posted then on My London Diary.

Bonkersfest – Camberwell Green

I felt rather sorry for the poor guy who got shut into the bottom of the cannon at Bonkersfest on Camberwell Green for the duration of Joe Brand’s opening speech, then deafened by the cannon going off. All to throw bananas out through the mouth of the giant gun, the first of which came as rather a surprise when it hit me on the head. I ate it later.

Bonkersfest has a more serious purpose, to make problems of mental health more visible and to rehabilitate offensive terms used about those with problems.

Jo Brand was once a psychiatric nurse

more pictures on My London Diary

The World Can’t Wait: Anti-Poverty Protest – Lambeth & Westminster

From Camberwell I caught a couple of buses to take me to Archbishop’s Park in Lambeth, where supporters of the many organisations united in the anti-poverty campaign were meeting to send the message ‘the world can’t wait’ to government leaders about to meet for the G8 talks in Germany.

From the park, supporters made their way down to the banks of the River Thames, stretching along both sides of the river (and in front of the Houses of Parliament themselves) between Westminster and Lambeth bridges, as well as on the bridges. It took rather a long time to assemble everyone for the several minutes of silence, after which there was much blowing of whistles, shouting and honking of horns.

more pictures on My London Diary

Brian Haw: 6 Years in Parliament Square

I strolled down to Parliament Square where a rather longer demonstration was still in progress. Today marked exactly 6 years since Brian Haw began his protest against the killing of children in Iraq (and later about the war more generally.)

Video and photography have been powerful in Brian’s stay in the square, with Rikki filming many of the clashes with police

That’s Six years of shame for Britain for supporting (and taking part in) the killing.
Six years of police harassment.
Six years of pressure by the government, including a whole section of an Act of Parliament designed to stop his and other protests.
Six years of shame for the New Labour government.

Although there were no police around at all during the couple of hours I was in the square, Brian told me that had been there this morning at 4 am, watching and taking no action as a group of hooligans attempted to provoke the Peace Camp protesters into retaliation. Waiting for it, to arrest not the hooligans but the peaceful protesters should they rise to the bait.

more pictures on My London Diary

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Turkish Spring, Badgers & BNP – 2013

Turkish Spring, Badgers & BNP: My day was particularly full on Saturday 1st June 2013 as I attended a memorial service for a close friend held at Southwark Cathedral in the early afternoon as well as as the protests in this post.

London Supports Turkish Spring – Marble Arch

Turkish Spring, Badgers & BNP - 2013 — *Supporters of Turkish football team Garsi support the Gezi protests*

I began at 11am at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, next to Marble Arch, where Turks were massing to march to the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square in solidarity with the ‘Turkish Spring’ protests against the Erdogan regime in Istanbul’s Gezi Park and across Turkey.

It was a high-octane event with a great deal of high-spirited chanting and more and more people were arriving for the march.

I had to leave as the event was getting underway, with most of the protesters sitting on the ground to listen to speeches. Later I heard that around 4,000 had marched to protest at the embassy,

More about the protest and more pictures on My London Diary at London Supports Turkish Spring.

Cull Politicians, Not Badgers – Westminster

This was the day on which it became legal to cull badgers in two pilot areas and over a thousand, many dressed in black and white and with badger masks or face paint met at Tate Britain on Millbank for a rally and march to Parliament against the cull.

Campaigners argue that the cull is not supported by most scientific evidence and that it will result in many badgers suffering cruel lingering deaths after being wounded by largely untrained marksmen.

*Among the speakers was Queen Guitarist Brian May, a leading campaigner for badgers*

I had to leave before they marched to go to Southwark Cathedral for the memorial service, but when I returned after attending this I met some of protesters who were still in Parliament Square, where they danced on the road in front of Parliament until they were cleared by police.

More about the cull and the protest – and many more pictures at Cull Politicians, Not Badgers.

BNP Stopped From Exploiting Woolwich Killing – Old Palace Yard

*Nick Griffin answers questions from the press under a placard ‘Hate Preachers Out’ and fails to appreciate the irony*

Fortunately police had stopped the BNP from holding a mass protest in Woolwich capitalising on the killing there of soldier Lee Rigby and had also banned their proposed march from Woolwich to Lewisham on grounds of public safety. Both would have been inflammatory and Lee Rigby’s father had also made clear that he and his family did not want his son’s death to be used to stir up hatred against Muslims.

Instead Nick Griffin and a small group of BNP supporters had come to Old Palace Yard intending to march from there to the Cenotaph to lay wreaths in Rigby’s memory, but their gesture to exploit the killing was opposed by a thousands of anti-fascists. It was a confrontation that stirred up memories from the anti-fascist mobilisation at Cable Street against Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts, and as on that occasion the police attempted to force a way through for the fascists, arresting large numbers of protesters, but eventually the BNP had to abandon the attempt to march.

*Across the heads of police they could see the counter-protest – and could clearly hear the chanting*

There were only a small group of supporters with Griffin, who blamed the low attendance on police turning back his supporters and making Westminster a “a virtual exclusion zone”. But I’d walked there with no problems from Westminster Station; there were large numbers of police and parked police vans as well as thousands of protesters, but I was not challenged or stopped.

Griffin and his group waited for around for several hours while police attempted to clear the route for him, arresting and driving away two double-deck buses full of protesters, but there were still enough to block the route. Eventually they walked in the opposite direction to their coaches.

BNP Exploiting Woolwich Killing Stopped

Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying – Parliament Square,

*Anonymous were there along with Antifa, trade unionists and the UAF to oppose the BNP hate*

I walked back from Old Palace Yard where Nick Griffin was being photographed and questioned by the press the short distance to Parliament Square where I saw a steady stream of protesters being arrested and taken onto two double-deck buses.

I photographed a number of those arrested, mainly walking calmly with police who were rather more violent with some others, and saw them threatening legal observers, then walked through the lines of police to the protesters who were still blocking the route. I imagine few of those arrested were charged with any offence, but probably detained for a dozen or more hours before being released – probably in the middle of the night. It’s a short period of arbitrary punishment that avoids the police having to do much paperwork.

There were some in wheelchairs who had come to block the fascists – and some were at the front of the protest.

Others were in ‘Anonymous’ masks.

Many linked arms to make it harder for police snatch squads to grab individuals

And there were some of the ‘badgers’ who had stayed on for this protest too.

The stand-off between protesters and police continued – and it was clear that it would not be possible for the police to clear the route without a clearly excessive use of force – and that they were not going to drift away as police had hoped.

There was much celebration When they heard that the BNP had abandoned their march and left the area, and the protesters marched up Parliament St to the Cenotaph, where there was a short speech and people began to leave.

Many marched up to Trafalgar Square but I went back the other way on my way home.

More on My London Diary at Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying.

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