August, 2026 | >Re-PHOTO

Foil Vedanta & Black Lives Matter – 2016

Foil Vedanta & Black Lives Matter: On Friday 5th August 2016 I photographed Foil Vedanta protesting outside the AGM of mining giant Vedanta Resources in the City and later went to Whitechapel where Black Lives Matter UK were a rally as a part of a “national shutdown”, the first major Black Lives Matter events in the UK.

Black Lives Matter had begun in the US in 2013, founded by three Black women, and grew around the Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Of course it came from a broader history of civil rights movements and struggles, both in the USA and here in the UK.

Foil Vedanta at mining giant’s AGM

Ironmonger Hall, Aldersgate

Foil Vedanta & Black Lives Matter - 2016 — *City of London Police stop Samarendra Das and the Vedanta Monster at the entrance to the Ironmongers Hall*

Foil Vedanta staged a noisy and colourful protest outside the Ironmonger Hall in the City of London where Vedanta, then still listed in London were holding their AGM.

This protest was in support of the fight by communities around the world where the mining company and its subsidiaries had polluted rivers, displaced communities, killed workers in accidents and destroyed the environment, as well as defrauding governments by tax evasion.

The mining giant was 69% owned by billionaire chairman Anil Agarwal and his family, but when listed on the London Stock Exchange had to hold an annual meeting for shareholders. Some of those protesting had become shareholders so they could attend these meetings and ask questions about the company activities.

The protesters came with many placards about the company’s crimes and with statements from some of those who had suffered from them, and lobbied shareholders as they arrived for the meeting. A team from Vedanta carrying documents for the meeting got a very noisy reception, but police escorted Mr Agarwal to the meeting by a side entrance, though the protesters spotted him and shouted loudly.

The campaigners had come with a large inflatable ‘Vedanta Monster’, its various heads representing Vedanta companies – and with a resemblance to Anil Agarwal

When fully inflated the Vedanta Monster made a dash for the entrance but was stopped by police. It was too large to enter the hall, but did for some time block the doorway.

Police escorted shareholders past the monster and tried to get those holding it to move away – and eventually they withdrew a few yards.

It was soon time for Samarendra Das and other protesting shareholders to go into the AGM while the noisy protest continued outside.

Some shareholders who left the meeting early were escorted by politc past the noisy protest where protesters were still shouting and drumming

Many more pictures at Foil Vedanta at mining giant’s AGM.

Black Lives Matter London

Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel

BLMUK, Black Lives Matter UK, had called for a national day of action on August 5th to commemorate the many UK victims of state violence, including Mark Duggan, Sarah Reed, Mzee Mohammed, Jermaine Baker, Sean Rigg, Leon Patterson, Kingsley Burrell and over 1500 others, disproportionately black, since 1990. The day of action was five years and a day after the police killing of Mark Duggan.

*Marcia Rigg, whose brother Sean Rigg was killed by police in Brixton in 2008, raises her fist in salute*

*Stephanie Lightfoot-Bennett whose twin brother Leon Patterson was battered to death by police in a Stockport cell in 1992*

*A relative of Sheku Bayoh, killed by police in Scotland in 2015*

The London event took place in Altab Ali Park, renamed in 1998 in memory of Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi Sylheti clothing worker who had been murdered in May 1978 in Adler Street which runs along the east side of the park. He was killed by three teenage boys in one of the many racist attacks taking place in the area then.

BLMUK had recently come together as a community movement of activists from across the UK who believed deeply that #BlackLivesMatter but are not affiliated with any political party. They called for justice and an end to racialised sexism, classism and homophobia and a new politics based on community defence and resilience.

The rally ended with meetings by those present in four large groups to discuss future community organisation in North, South, East and West London, and I then went home.

*The East London meeting begins in one corner of the park*

More on My London Diary at Black Lives Matter London.

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No Glory No More War – 2014

No Glory No More War: Monday 4th August was the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War – and campaigners marked the anniversary with a ‘No Glory – No More War‘ event in Parliament Square.

My father was 14 when the ‘Great War’ began and had just left school. Soon after was working in a factory making munitions close to Kew Bridge. Although his only formal qualification was his school leaving certificate he worked in the drawing office rather than on the shop floor – though the only work he ever mentioned doing there was sharpening pencils. Years of working with his father in their car-building workshop as a carpenter and wheelwright had made him a dab hand with a chisel.

After some months he was out of a job, and fed up and decided – as he put it – “he might as well join the army” before he was conscripted. He went to join up and had a medical where the officer examining found he was severely deaf in one ear – and told him he could be excused military service. “Do you want to go?” he was asked and he said he did. “Good man!” he was told and signed up to the army.

Then came military training, which he didn’t much like after which he was sent to barracks. At some point when he was ordered to do some particularly time-wasting job he told the officer concerned what he thought of it and was put on a charge. Fortunately his senior officer was a sensible man, and after telling Dad he could be shot for disobeying an order told him not to be stupid again and sent him back to his unit.

Dad’s skills were not being used in the Army and he requested a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps as a mechanic. He went first to France and later to Germany, helping to repair the planes when they came back damaged. The airfields were well behind the front line and relatively safe. On April 1, 2018 the RFC became the RAF but I doubt if it made a lot of difference on the ground. And he was on the ground, and would never say if he ever went up in the air during his service.

After the end of the war Dad was one of the last of his unit to be demobbed, ending up as stores quartermaster, only coming home in 1919, bringing with him some odd iron German coins and fond memories of fraternising with the German people. He had not seen the true horror of the war, though many he knew and served with had died. And of his five sisters, only two ever found men to marry.

At the event there were much more dramatic stories of the war and the truth about it, with a number of well-known speakers including historians and others. Among them was Neil Faulkner, author of the pamphlet No Glory, which gives a real history of WW1.

Far from being the “war to end all wars” and a “victory for democracy“, it was a military disaster and a human catastrophe, “driven by big powers’ competition for influence around the globe, and caused a degree of suffering all too clear in the statistical record of 16 million people dead and 20 million wounded.“

*WW1 Veteran Harry Patch told Tony Blair ‘War is Nothing Better than legalised Mass Murder’*

I concluded my account: “While we remember the bravery and sacrifice of those who took part, we should also be aware of the pointlessness of the war and make use of its anniversary to promote peace and international cooperation.”

Many more pictures on My London Diary at No Glory No More War.

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Police Prevent Peaceful Protest – 2026

Police Prevent Peaceful Protest: On Thursday 30the July 2026 Defend Our Juries had arranged a static peaceful protest on the wide pavement in front of Westminster Magistrates Court on Marylebone Road. It was to begin at noon with an hour of speeches, music and poetry.

I arrived at the starting time to find several surrounding roads full of police vans and squads of police standing waiting while others were in the crowd making arrests.

There was a large crowd present, perhaps around a thousand demonstrating against the government ban on Palestine Action. They included many who had been arrested at previous events for holding signs in support of Palestine Action.

Over 1500 of these arrestees had earlier received letters from the court stating that their cases would be dealt with on this day – but most at least had been told they need not attend. Clearly magistrates cannot hear that many cases in a day and the intention had been to simply rubber-stamp the great majority without allowing those arrested to make any defence.

Defend Our Juries had in fact been told that because of administrative problems, the ‘non-hearing‘ of these cases would not be going ahead on this day. But they had decided to go ahead with the protest and after the hour of entertainment had invited all those charged – if they wanted – to come up the the small platform they were bringing and make a further statement of their support for Palestine Action and their intention to encourage others also support the banned group.

Most of those previously arrested had been charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, but by making the intended statement would also be in breach of Sections 11 and 12 which carry more serious penalties – and would lead to a jury trial. Defend Our Juries were clearly intending to ramp up their challenge to the authorities in what they called a ‘Graduation Day’ ceremony.

Before I arrived police had already seized the platform and the public address system as well as several protesters – including one who who had been testing the sound system. Perhaps they will now argue that ‘1.2.3.4 …testing‘ is now a terrorist chant.

The Court of Appeal had surprised many by overruling the High Court’s decision that the ban was unlawful. It was was pushed through Parliament by combining them with a genuinely terrorist organisation, and would probably have met with considerable opposition otherwise. As the protest was taking place on Thursday the Supreme Court announced it would hear a further appeal in September which could quash the ban. Andy Burnham could end this nonsense now.

More of my pictures in the Facebook album Defend Our Juries Graduation Day.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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A Day In Manchester – 2018

A Day In Manchester: Manchester isn’t everyone’s idea of a holiday destination, but it is a place with many largely happy memories for my wife and myself. We met there and lived there on the upper floor of a small house in a working-class area for the first two years of our marriage. Since then we had passed through it a few times but had hardly been back for almost 50 years when we decided to book a hotel and revisit the city in for a few days in August 2018,

All of these pictures were taken on one day – Thursday 2nd August 2018 – and show a little of what we found – and you can see many more pictures from the day and a couple of others we were there on My London Diary. As you can see it was a very full day.

Manchester: City Centre

New Islington, Whitworth St, Castlefield

After breakfast we walked into the City Centre aiming to view the memorial to Alan Turing and then go on to the the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology. Our route took us past Piccadilly Village, Manchester’s tallest building Beetham Tower and a number of interesting late Victorian buildings.

This memorial to Alan Turing is in Sackville park, Fairfield St, close to where I worked for several years. He committed suicide in 1954 with an apple containing cyanide after being hounded for being gay. His work in Cambridge and later from 1948 to his death at Manchester University made him recognised as the father of modern computing and artificial intelligence.

Manchester is still full of interesting older buildings. Medlock Mill was built in 1801 as a cotton warehouse. From 1982-2011 it housed Percy Brothers – The Hotspur Press

The Great Northern Warehouse connected the railway, roads and the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal which ran underneath it.

But there is also a great deal of modern architecture, including Manchester’s tallest building, Beetham Tower.

More examples in the pictures on My London Diary at Manchester: City Centre – Thursday.

Manchester: Science & Industry Museum

Liverpool Rd

Manchester Liverpool Road station opened as the terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in September 1830 and it only finally closed in 1975, although passenger services had ended in 1844 with the opening of Manchester Victoria station. It was still connected to the main line until 2015, and a few heritage services ran into it until then.

After it was sold by British Rail the station and its goods yard were used for a short time by Granada Television, who filmed some scenes of Coronation Street there, but in 1978 it became a museum. It is now part of the Science Museum, with the space to display some of the exhibits which could not be shown in its old building in South Kensington, and is a model of what a science museum should be.

We had come to see a special exhibition of the world’s first stored program computer, ‘Baby’, built at Manchester University, which ran its first program on 21 June 1948. We did finally see it, but only after we had walked past the area it was in and explored much of the rest of the museum – which was photographically more interesting. But we had to leave before we had time to really go around the museum – to which we returned later.

More at Science & Industry Museum.

To Stockport & Bramhall Hall

Bramhall Hall

We had only intended a short visit to the museum as we had planned to visit Bramhall Hall, a fine old building now owned by Stockport Council. Somehow we had spent years in Manchester seeing buses going past with the destination Bramhall but had never gone there to visit it.

I’m not a huge fan of visiting stately homes though I’ve been to plenty, but this one turned out to be rather more interesting than most and I recommended a visit if you’ve never been. But we made a bit of a mess of the bus trip – the buses were then sorely in need of a Greater Manchester mayor to lick them into shape.

Many more pictures at To Stockport & Bramhall Hall.

Manchester: Canal walk

We returned to Manchester and our hotel for a short rest and then went out for another walk by some of the canals, hoping to find a pub where we could have an evening meal.

*H A Howard & Sons Ltd – Gileric Gowns – Ducie St*

The walk was fine, but we didn’t like the look (or perhaps it was the menu) of the first pub we tried; the second bar looked interesting but then we found it didn’t serve real meals; another pub looked promising, offering ‘home cooking’ but when I went in to ask I was told they only served food at lunchtimes.

Eventually we gave up and made for one of central Manchester’s Wetherspoons on Deansgate. It’s in a splendid former cinema, worth a visit to view its interior, and the food, if not exciting is dependable and certainly cheap.

After relaxing with food and drink we enjoyed a leisurely walk – more canals – and made our way back to the hotel.

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Rastafari, Vedanta & De Beers – 2014

Rastafari, Vedanta & De Beers: Pictures from protests I covered on Friday 1st August 2014.

August 1st is Emancipation Day, celebrating the effective date of the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1834, and 2014 also marked the centenary of the foundation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) by Marcus Garvey and Amy Ashwood Garvey in Jamaica in 1914.

In Brixton I photographed a rally by Rastafaris preparing to march to Parliament to demand reparations for the slave trade. I left to go to Lincoln Inn’s Fields to a protest outside the AGM of mining group Vedanta, responsible for killings and environmental destruction in various countries around the world.

Finally in Piccadilly campaigners were outside De Beers asking people to boycott diamonds cut and polished in Israel which fund war crimes against Palestinians.

Rastafari Demand Reparations For Slave Trade

Windrush Square, Brixton

On the centenary of the foundation by Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Rastafaris met at Brixton to march to Parliament demanding reparations for the descendants of those taken from Africa by the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Demands for international reparations have been increasingly made in recent years, some for huge sums. As I wrote:

“In 2004, a group of Jamaican Rastafari movement groups argued that European countries, particularly Britain, should pay £72.5 billion to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa, but the British government rejected their claim. Other claims have been lodged in 2007 by Guyana, in 2011 by Antigua and Barbuda.”

No government has yet agreed to any financial reparations to the descendants of slaves or the countries affected. The British Government at the time of abolition paid out huge sums over many years to the owners of slaves – equivalent to 40% of the national budget – and this payment was only completed in 2015. Among those who have received payments were powerful British families, including current business and political elites in the United Kingdom.

The event go off to a slow start with drumming and dances and then some speeches. It was still continuing when I left to go elsewhere and I missed the march which only began an hour and a half later.

More on My London Diary at Rastafari demand reparations for slave trade.

Vedanta Told ‘End Your Killing’

Lincoln Inn’s Fields

The protest on the opposite side of the road from the Vedanta AGM was organised by Foil Vedanta who say:

“Vedanta Resources is a FTSE 250 British-Indian mining company guilty of thousands of deaths, environmental devastation, anti union action, corruption and disdain for life on earth. They have become one of the most hated and contentious companies in the world.”

A number of the protesters had bought shares in the company so that they could go into the AGM and ask questions while others continued the protest outside.

As well as protesting Foil Vedanta have also carried out a great deal of research into the activities of Vedanta and is subsidiary companies. These include Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) in Zambia which has poisoned thousands of people causing ongoing birth deformities in major pollution spills in 2006 and 2010. They had claimed to be unable to pay their fines or their tax bill while actually making around around $500 million/year.

Protests against Vedanta here where the company is listed and on a much larger scale in India and elsewhere where they operate have so far stopped Vedanta from destroying the Niyamgiri mountain in Odisha, sacred to the indigenous Dongria Kondh. The protests in London led the company to decide to de-list in 2018. They have also attempted unsuccessfully to de-list from Indian stock exchanges.

More at Vedanta told ‘end your killing’.

Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds

De Beers, Piccadilly

*Protesters lined the front of the shop both here in Piccadilly and around the corner in Old Bond Street*

Protesters at De Beers in Piccadilly asked people to boycott diamonds cut and polished in Israel which contribute around a billion dollars every year to the Israeli military and security industries and fund Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

More pictures at Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds.

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