April 15th was one of those evenings where a lot was going on in London. Events do often seem to cluster and there are often several days with nothing I feel worth going to photograph and then everything happens at once. Usually its on a Saturday, understandably because most people who go to protests do actually work during the week, or have lectures to give or attend Mondays to Fridays. But this week it was Wednesday. I don’t think there was anything special about this Wednesday, though it was three weeks and a day before the general election.
I don’t know why Docs Not Cops chose this particular day to set up a border post outside the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel against the plans by the Tories to make doctors and medical services check up on the immigration status of patients. It came at fairly short notice after some details of the plans were announced to charge some migrants for GP and emergency treatment from the 6th April under the Immigration Act 2014.
It was a relatively small event and was aimed at informing those entering and leaving the hospital, both patients and medical staff, and a number did stop to find out more about the plans. You can see some more pictures at Checkpoint Care – Docs Not Cops. Most medical staff certainly seem to resent the idea that they – like landlords – should be doing the job of border control, rather than treating those who need treatment.
Earlier in the day I’d decided against covering a couple of protests. One, over the sacking of an RMT cleaner for her trade union activities was a little early for me to get there, and would have meant me paying the excessive fares for rush hour travel. It’s something I’ll only do for very special events, or when (as rarely happens) I’m commissioned to cover an event and can get my travel expenses paid. I’d like to cover such things, but with the current low fees for the few pictures that are used it just is not feasible.
There was a second event a little later that I could also have gone to photograph. The day had been designated a global day of action in solidarity with the fast food workers’ strike movement in the US, and Fast Food Rights was organising protests at McDonald’s in cities and towns across Britain, with Unite organising a protest at Marble Arch. Had there been nothing else on later in the day I would probably have gone to photograph this (and perhaps the RMT protest as well, as the two events might just make the extra cost worthwhile.)
But I decided against doing so on this day, as I would then have had nothing to do for around four or five hours in the middle of the day. I could have filled in time – perhaps going to an exhibition or two, perhaps sitting in a pub… Back in my younger days I would have gone and done some ‘personal’ work, but now that would tire me out too much. Working what amounts to a ‘split shift’ like this is now a problem for me, as I live just a little too far out of London to sensibly go home and travel back later.
Baker’s Union leader Ian Hodson at McDonalds demands union rights and an end to zero hours contracts
But fortunately there was another Fast Food Rights protest in the early evening at McDonald’s on Whitehall that would fit in nicely between ‘Docs not Cops’ and a later event. So I decided to cover this rather than the morning protest.
It wasn’t an easy event to cover, because the pavement outside is narrow, and police were continually asking photographers and protesters to move on and keep the pavement clear. They should really have closed the inside lane of Whitehall to traffic with a few cones to make it possible for the protest and the normal heavy pedestrian traffic to keep moving – and make it safer for us all, as well as easier for photographers. But the Met Police almost always seem to make keeping traffic moving their number one priority, only closing or part closing roads when it becomes impossible to keep them open. See more at Fast Food Rights at McDonald’s.
This protest turned out to be a case of two birds with one stone, with striking workers from the National Gallery and in particular their victimised union rep Candy Udwin coming to speak.
On the way from Whitechapel to Whitehall I’d taken the tube (well at least the Underground – it was the District Line which pedants will insist is not a tube) to Embankment and walked up Northumberland Avenue past the Nigerian embassy, coming across a group of Nigerians, mainly women, protesting on the anniversary of the kidnapping of the over 200 Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram. Bring Back Our Girls was their message to the new Nigerian government.
I wasn’t surprised to come across another protest I hadn’t known about. Probably more often than not on days I walk around the centre of London I’ll come across a protest by chance – and if it seems interesting will photograph it. There are a few, particularly by fundamentalist Christians, some anti-abortionist as well as by individuals who seem rather unbalanced that I’ll just take a look and walk by.
The main event I had actually come up to London to photograph was No More Deaths on our Streets, a protest by people and groups worried by the growing number of homeless people living on the streets of the UK, the removal of welfare support and increasing official persecution. When I was young it was rare to see anyone in London sleeping rough, and I first saw street begging on a visit to Paris in my twenties. It became a growing problem here later, and has increased markedly in the last couple of years.
While many individuals and charities give help to people on the streets, the official response seems to be getting harsher and harsher. By laws to make feeding the homeless an offence, police being sent in to take sleeping bags, cardboard and possessions away from rough sleepers. Measures to move them out of various areas (for example at the time of the Olympics in 2012.)
Homelessness has become more of a problem recently mainly because of the increasing lack of affordable housing in London, and because of the cuts made as government cuts the funding to local councils. London is fast becoming a city for the rich, where those at the bottom are not welcome to live, however necessary they remain to keep the city working.
A static protest opposite Downing St became (as planned) a march around Westminster. After it had gone in a large an seemingly aimless circle, I left it and went home, too tired to continue.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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