I’ve got a little behind putting my work on My London Diary and today it was work that I took on 1st September in Walthamstow. Although it was a good day for Walthamstow, it wasn’t one of my best occasions. I really didn’t feel at my best and at the critical moment went the wrong way and found myself in the wrong place. And I let myself get upset by being sworn at, threatened and generally harassed.
Things started well enough, at the rally before the march by ‘We Are Waltham Forest’, a group of local people and organisations put together to oppose a march and rally by the English Defence League into their community supposedly to ‘take back their streets’ in Walthamstow. Walthamstow is a place with a strong identity and radical tradition, where one of the great English socialists lived – and it’s William Morris Gallery has just had something of a facelift, and it is now one of London’s more mixed multicultural communities – as the image above perhaps shows.
The audience too included people from all communities, and the event was next door to perhaps London’s largest street market and a short walk along this would also show people from many diverse backgrounds getting on with each other.
It was an impressive march, and people in the shops and houses along the route came out to watch and greet it, obviously giving it wholehearted support. I’m not sure what the police expected to happen – they were present in large numbers – but it seemed unlikely to me that they would have been able to stop it reaching its destination had they tried.
In fact it stopped itself, on the junction with Forest Road, along which the EDL were expecting to march to the civic centre for a rally, with large numbers of people sitting down on the road. Others just stood around, and a few danced to a samba band. Walthamstow was clearly not about to be moved.
I walked down to where the EDL where expected to arrive, although they had been held up when RMT members had refused to let them on the train they had intended to take.
As usual, the EDL were mainly not happy to be photographed, and I was sworn at, threatened and the target of various gestures as I took pictures – as you can see on My London Diary. It was just as well that there was a tight line of police surrounding them, although at one point a man did push through to put his hand across the front of my lens before police pushed him back. But working with a wide-angle – the 16-35mm -between the closely packed police wasn’t easy.
I think this woman was trying to hold her hand up between my camera and her face rather than give a salute, but I’m not sure. There were some rather strange things in the march – for example one man carrying a a Serbia Montenegro flag (perhaps a fan of war criminal Slobodan Miloevic?) and another wearing a military cap was carrying a copy of an English translation and interpretation of the Koran. But at times the 18-105mm (27-157mm equiv) DX lens wasn’t long enough for what I wanted, and I wasn’t particularly happy with what I had managed.
In contrast to the other march, few people came out onto the streets as it passed, and those who did either made clear their opposition – and got a great deal of abuse in return – or turned their backs on it. If they were in Muslim dress or black they got abuse anyway. The EDL claim not to be racist, but clearly there were many among the couple of hundred on the march who were not toeing that party line.
I only saw one person show support, an old man who came out of his house and raised his hands in support – at which the marchers went wild, shouting, whistling and raising their arms in return with gestures of approval.
As the march approached the blocked junction it was clear that the police were going to divert them down a side street. There were a few hundred counter-demonstrators on the road, but I thought that they would actually try to stop the march a little further on where it would have to cross the Chingford Road to get to the Council offices, and went a little ahead. By the time I realised that things were happening on the corner I had missed much of it, and the police were blocking the way. I guess I was trying to be too clever and so missed the obvious.
EDL supporter argues with police
I think the police had also probably prevented the protesters from going up the Chingford Rd from the junction they had blocked, as there were only a few protesters as the EDL escorted by a large police presence, made their way across without incident.
Outside the civic centre there was a small group of EDL, including both ‘Tommy Robinson’ and Kevin Carroll who was speaking. A few yards back, police were holding a large crowd of angry counter-demonstrators from ‘We Are Waltham Forest.’ Although their counter-protest had set out to be peaceful, things were now getting rather heated, and plastic bottles and parts of placards were beginning to be thrown towards Carroll at the microphone. When a half-brick came over I decided that it was no longer healthy to be standing in the middle. I was tired and a bit fed up at having missed the main action so far.
The main group of the EDL were being kettled where I had parted company with them in a side street a few hundred yards away, and it was fairly clear it would not have been safe to let them approach. Attacking the police, as many of the EDL had earlier, had clearly not been a smart move, particularly as they were already clearly seen as troublemakers by wanting to march into the area. I didn’t think the police were likely to allow them continue, and decided the event was more or less over and it was time for me to go home.
I don’t think there would have been much more to photograph, although the police did rather rub the EDL’s noses in it, making their failure rather more of a humiliation than it would otherwise have been. But the people of Walthamstow had made it very clear that the EDL were not welcome on their streets.
I had taken a number of decent pictures – as you can see in Waltham Forest Defeats the EDL on My London Diary – but I hadn’t been feeling too well and I hadn’t really had a good day.
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