Blood Diamonds & Junior Doctors: Two unrelated protests I photographed on Saturday 6th February 2016. On the Saturday before St Valentines Day campaigners picketed diamond dealers in Mayfair urging people not to buy engagement rings from companies whose profits support war criminals in Gaza, while in Waterloo Place and Whitehall Junior Doctors (now called Resident Doctors) and other healthcare professionals protested against new contracts being imposed on them by disastrous Tory health minister Jeremy Hunt.
Valentines Israeli Blood Diamonds protest
Old Bond St
Campaigners from Inminds Human Rights Group stood with banners handing out leaflets outside diamond dealers who sell jewellery made with diamonds from Israel’s Steinmetz Diamonds Group. They explained to people that the profits from this support the Israeli Army’s Givati Brigade accused of war crimes in Gaza including the massacre of 29 members of the Samouni family in 2009.
Among the shops targeted while I was there were De Beers and Tiffanys and the protest was timed for the Saturday before St Valentines Day to urge people not to buy their engagement rings from these companies.
The protesters point out that although “no diamonds mined in Israel … it is a major centre for cutting and polishing of raw diamonds which is Israel’s largest manufacturing export. The industry’s sales of around $10bn a year contributes around $1 billion a year to Israeli military and security industries.”
More pictures at Valentines Israeli Blood Diamonds protest
Junior Doctors Rally & March
Waterloo Place & Downing St
Junior Doctors (no Resident Doctors) were supported by consultants, GPs, nurses and other medical staff in a protest against new contracts which were expected to be imposed by Helath Minister Jeremy Hunt the following Thursday.
They and other medical staff say the contracts are designed to destroy the NHS and make it unsafe for patients and are part of an attack on the NHS to move towards a privatised medical system. Many leading MPs in both Conservative and Labour governments receive large donations from companies involved and some have financial interests in these companies.
According to the Good Law Project in April 2025, our current health secretary Wes Street “has been raking in support at a rate of almost £10,000 a month” and “more than 60% of the donations accepted by Streeting since he entered parliament in 2015 were from companies and individuals with links to private health.”
Medical staff and researchers spoke at the rally pointing out how Hunt had been misleading the media and public about the need for changes in the contract, carefully selecting evidence that supports his case while ignoring the much wider evidence against it. As they made clear, NHS doctors already work 24/7 and there were over 500 blue placards naming those unable to be at the rally because they were at work – as well as around 200 named on red placards who had left to work overseas – which had their names with the message ‘You’ve driven me out Jeremy… Stop bleeding the NHS dry’.
Ten years on, now under Labour, the NHS continues to be run down so that it will lose public support and so can be replaced with a privatised healthcare system.
Among those speaking in support of the doctors were Vanessa Redgrave and Dame Vivienne Westood (and her son Ben) and we were entertained by several spirited performances by the National Health Singers.
As the rally was coming to a close, and people were preparing to march, several thousand surgical masks were handed out for people to write messages on to wear when at Downing St.
The marchers filled Whitehall in front of Downing Street and sat down on the roadway. Most were wearing these masks with comments on them. Four junior doctors went in to deliver a message but those inside No 10 refused to accept anything.
The new contract was only one of the ways the government was attacking the NHS: “new income rules for immigrant workers are likely to lead to up to 30,000 nurses being deported, and the cutting of bursaries for nurses and now proposed for all other medical courses will have disastrous effects. Add to this the effects of PFI which is bankrupting hospitals leading to privatisations and its hard not to see the end of the NHS as we have known it as inevitable.”
As I commented in 2016, “It’s almost certainly too late to save the NHS in its current incarnation. The only solution is the kind of radical change that happened before under Nye Bevan and others to create a new NHS. But for that we would need a new revitalised Labour party in power – or a people’s revolution.”
Now we see that Labour is dying – and Mandelson yet another nail in its coffin. Our only hope is perhaps the Green Party – or if Your Party (UK) can finally manage to get its act together and become ‘our party’. But as I finished my 2016 post, “Don’t hold your breath – and don’t get old or ill.”
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