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March for a People’s Olympics – 2012

March for a People’s Olympics: Twelve years ago on Saturday 28th June 2012 the London Olympics was in full swing and London was suffering from huge restrictions on the activities of ordinary Londoners.

Although the modern Olympic movement was started in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin with high aims it has changed over the years to something very different. He intended them to help build a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sport and stated “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

Instead what we now have is a fiercely nationalistic event, with countries devoting huge resources into training a small elite of athletes and expenisve and highly detailed scientific research to find legal ways to enhance their performances – as well as at least in some countries to find ways to circumvent the tests designed to prevent the use of illegal drugs.

The games have also seen a corporate takeover to provide some of the huge sums needed to stage such events, although taxpayers have also suffered. London 2012 cost £8.77 billion, around three and a half times its original budget, around two thirds from general taxation, a quarter from the National Lottery and the remainder from the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency.

The money for the games in London meant there was less to spend in other areas or the country, and even diverted money from grass roots sport. And huge amounts were spent on infrastructure designed for the needs of a few weeks in 2012 rather than the best interests of the future for the Olympic area.

London in 2012 saw a huge military presence, in part aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist attacks and draconian policing largely aimed at the protection of the brands of the various sponsors.

The ‘Whose Games? Whose City?’ protest had at first been totally banned by the authorities as its start point was only just over 2km from the Olympic stadium. Transport for London had refused permission for them to march along roads which had been designated as emergency backup Games routes. Eventually the march organisers came to an agreement with the police that should an emergency arise the marchers would simply go on to the pavement – something that regularly happens with marches when ambulances and other emergency vehicles are allowed to pass.

The endpoint of the march, Wennington Green, was also around 2km as the crow flies from the stadium, and Tower Hamlets Council, owners of Wennington Green attempted to ban speeches or other events there.

Marchers were also threatened with arrest should they display placards, hold banners or even wear t-shirts with political slogans. But on the day there were no arrests although police did at one point stop and search a man who had cut a piece of police tape. He was released after a large and noisy crowd of marchers gathered around and demanded his release.

The attempts by the authorities to stop the march taking place had led to a great deal of media publicity and press and TV from around the world came to cover the start in Mile End Park.

The march organisers, the Counter Olympics Network (CON) pointed out strongly that this was not an anti-Olympics march, but one that protested at the way what should be a sporting event of noble origins has been taken over by corporate interests.

They pointed out that the games sponsors included “serial polluters, companies which seriously damage the environment and which wreck or take lives, Coca Cola, Rio Tinto, BP, Dow Chemical” as well as stating “G4S, Cisco, and Atos deny people their human rights in a variety of situations while Macdonalds helps to fuel the obesity epidemic. London2012 provides benefits at taxpayers’ expense while receiving little in return.”

They also pointed out the many broken promises and pointed out the doubts about the legacy of the games for East London in particular: “the lack of benefits for local people and businesses, the fantastic expansion of security into our daily lives, the deployment of missiles and large numbers of troops, the unwarranted seizure of public land at Wanstead Flats, Leyton Marsh and Greenwich Park.“

As the march went past the former match factory soldiers on top of the flats watched the marchers who chanted
“Hey Ho, Sebastian Coe
Get your missiles out of Bow“

Another popular chant also mentioned Coe:
“Seb Coe, Get Out, we know what you’re all about!
Missiles, job losses, Olympics for the bosses!”

Chris Nineham of the Stop The Olympic Missiles Campaign was one of the first speakers at the final rally. He pointed out that the London Olympics had already set a number of records, including the largest ever number of arrests on the first day – including 182 cyclists taking part in a ‘Critical Mass’ ride the previous day – the highest ticket prices, the most intensive application of branding rules and the highest level of militarisation of any Olympic games, with far more being spent on security that even in China.

There were, he said, more troops in London than at any time since World War 2, and more than at any time in Afghanistan, and that it was our presence there which made us a terrorist target, calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops.

Much more about the protest and many more pictures at March for a People’s Olympics.

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Rev Billy, Chelsea Manning & Global Racism – 2013

Rev Billy, Chelsea Manning & Global Racism – On Saturday 27th July 2013 I followed the amazing Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir into a branch of HSBC to protest over their support for fossil fuels, went to a vigil supporting whistleblower Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and then a march and rally against Global Racism and Injustice

Rev Billy at HSBC Victoria,

If you’ve not come across Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, a radical performance community based in New York City led by Billy Talen you have missed something. They perform guerrilla theatre actions which amuse and entertain while also highlighting the serious problems the world is facing and calling for action.

The performance in London was one of many at various JP Morgan Chase and HSBC banks in 2012 and 2013 which had begun in New York, a “radicalized midsummer cloud forest dream” against the support given to fossil fuels and climate chaos by the banks and the City of London.

Golden Toads had become extinct in their home in Costa Rica, one of many species that have already become extinct because of climate change. The message of the performance “was a simple one. Fossil Fuels are killing life on this planet. Already many species have suffered extinction, and the continuing huge investment in fossil fuel use backed by the banks and the stock exchange is driving climate change, threatening us all with extinction.“

As I wrote “London’s banks and the London Stock Exchange are playing a key role in the destruction of life on the planet, with over £900 billion of Fossil fuel shares on the London Stock Exchange – a quarter of the value of all the holdings and representing fossil fuel reserves of over 200 time the UK’s annual carbon emissions. Burning of all these reserves would create catastrophe. Between 2010-2012 … the top five UK banks raised £170 billion for fossil fuel companies, and the largest of these was the HSBC.”

On My London Diary you can read how I met the group as they trained for the performance opposite New Scotland Yard and then more about the performance which as well as the Golden Toads people also played moneys, eagles and jaguars and were joined by a gorilla. with the Rev Billy preaching about the need for the banks to repent and change their ways as the animals dropped dead on the branch floor.

One member of the team was there to reassure the bank staff and customers that there was no threat to them or property and that the performers would leave as soon as the event finished. And they did, leaving behind only some leaflets and small pools for water on the floor from the large ice eggs the Golden Toads had brought with them to help cool the planet down.

After leaving the bank the performance carried on for a few minutes on the wide pavement outside. A couple of police officers arrived and went inside the Bank to talk with the staff, and by the time they came out the Rev Billy and others were leaving to celebrate a successful action at a café and bar in Victoria station.

More at Rev Billy at HSBC.

Free Bradley Manning Vigil – St Martin’s, Trafalgar Square

People were begining to arrive to take part in a silent vigil on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square as a part of the international day of action by the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Bradley – now Chelsea – Manning’s court-martial for passing classified documents to Wikileaks had begun over a month earlier and an inevitable ‘guilty’ verdict was expected shortly.

The documents had exposed a great deal of illegal and immoral actions by the US and other governments and Manning had been celebrated in countries across the world and awarded the Sean MacBride Peace Prize.

On July 30th 2013 Manning was sentenced to 35 years in the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, but in 2017 her sentence was commuted by President Obama to seven years and she was released. In 2019 she was again imprisoned for a year for contempt of court after refusing to testify at a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Free Bradley Manning Vigil

Against Global Racism and Injustice – US Embassy to Whitehall

Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) UK organised a march and rally against Global Racism and Injustice in solidarity with families of Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence, Azelle Rodney, Jimmy Mubenga and many others to highlight the reality of racism and seek justice, both in the UK and US.

The event began with a rally outside the US Embassy, then still in Grosvenor Square, led by Zita Holbourne and Lee Jasper, founders and national co-chairs of BARAC, an anti-austerity, anti-racist campaigning organisation, with various other activists and poets speaking.

The event was supported by a wide range of anti-racist groups including Operation Black Vote, the National Black Students Campaign, Global Afrikan Congress, PCS, RMT Black Members, Counterfire, UAF, Love Music Hate Racism, Lambeth TUC, Lambeth People’s Assembly.

The protest was in part because of the global outcry over the acquittal in Florida of the murderer of Trayvon Martin under the Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. But it was a protest against global racism and injustice, with a particular emphasis on several well-known cases in this country.

One was the attempt by the Metropolitan Police to smear both the Lawrence family and its supporters through a covert police surveillance unit while failing to properly investigate the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Lee Jasper stated “We march for Jimmy Mubenga, Mark Duggan, Kingsley Burrell, Smiley Culture and Azelle Rodney. We march for justice and equality in the 50th anniversary year of Dr Martin Luther King’s 1968 March on Washington. The truth is that his dream is a threadbare vision here in the UK where racism is on the rise amplified by austerity.”

More at Against Global Racism and Injustice.

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End Gaza Killing Now – 2014

End Gaza Killing Now: Ten years ago today on Saturday 19th July thousands were marching through London towards the Israeli Embassy demanding an immediate end to the invasion and the crippling siege of Gaza and peace with freedom for Palestine.

Of course the situation is much worse in Gaza now where the whole population is under threat from Israeli bombs and increasingly without access to clean water, food and medical treatment. Every day brings news of a new massacre – last Saturday more than 90 Palestinians were killed and 300 injured in a tent camp at al-Mawasi – an area in Gaza that Israel had designated as safe.

Last week 10 independent UN experts issued a statement accusing Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza. They said this “is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.” And the global monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) recently stated that more than a fifth of the population of Gaza are facing the most severe, or “catastrophic”, level of food insecurity, in danger of starvation despite a small increase in humanitarian aid.

Wikipedia states “As of 12 July 2024, over 39,000 people (38,345 Palestinian and 1,478 Israeli) have been reported as killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 108 journalists (103 Palestinian, 2 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA.

The vast majority of those deaths have been in Gaza. And these figures do not include “those who have died from ‘preventable disease, malnutrition and other consequences of the war'”. As the Wikipedia article points out, research in 2008 suggested “that that total deaths caused by major conflicts were then a minimum average of five times the count of direct deaths.”

The 2014 Gaza War was one of the more deadly of the many previous conflicts between Israel and Palestinians since the formation of Israel in 1948. Wikipedia reported that “between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed …and between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled).

What is now taking place is genocide on an industrial scale, and it is being carried out with support and weapons from both the USA and the UK. Although our politicians have called for a ceasefire they have not taken any of the kind of actions that might persuade Israel to stop the killing, and have continued to supply weapons.

There has to be some way to allow peace in the area between Israel and Palestine – and it cannot be through wars. Oslo seemed to show a possible way forward, but Israel decided not to take it, refusing to make concessions that the Palestinians could accept. Recognition around the world of the Palestinian state now by over 75% of UN member states might be a first step on the road to peace, and the UK should do so without delay.

Before the march in 2014 there were speeches in Whitehall. I photographed the marchers as they went up Whitehall, stopping at Trafalgar Square until the end of the march had reached there around 45 minutes after it began. I took the tube to Hyde Park Corner only to find the front of the march had already gone past, so I rushed back down to get the tube to Kensington High Street, close to the final destination a short distance from the Israeli Embassy which is a short distance down a private road.

Several thousand marchers had beaten me there and the street soon became very crowded as more arrived. Eventually it became too crowded to move and take pictures and I retreated into a small area reserved for the press close to the speakers. Among a long list perhaps the most moving was a young Palestinian woman who told us something of what had happened to her own family who were given 90 seconds warning before their home in Gaza was destroyed.

The protest had remained entirely peaceful, but as it ended and we left to go home, there was a minor incident where some police officers appeared to be making trouble, intervening in a heavy-handed fashion in a minor argument between a protester and a shop-worker who had shouted in support of the Israeli attack.

More on My London Diary, including the names and photographs of many of the speakers and rather more of the protesters:
Police & Gaza Protesters
End Gaza Killing Now

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Streatham, Spain and Guantanamo – 2006

Streatham, Spain and Guantanamo: Three events in London on Saturday 15th July 2006, a festival, a commemoration and a protest.

Streatham Festival Children’s Parade – Streatham

Streatham Festival held it’s first ever Children’s Parade, children working with artists from Arts Community Exchange and Kids’ City to create sculptures, banners and puppets for all to see.

The parade was led by drummers Ancestral Hands and a cycling stilt-walker brought up the rear as it went along Streatham High Road to St Leonard’s Church.

One of my pictures from this parade was used in the remarkable The Streatham Sketchbook by Jiro Osuga and Mireille Galinou with photography by Torla Evans which was published in 2017 by Your London Publishing. Still available, this was described by Graham Gower of The Streatham Society as “superb and one the best books to be published on Streatham as a place – if not the best.”

more pictures

International Brigade Commemoration – Jubilee Gardens, Waterloo

I’ve attended and photographed a number of the annual commemorations of those who went to fight the fascists in Spain in 1936-9, but this 2006 event was the most memorable. Here’s what I wrote about it in 2006.

Several hundred people attended the annual commemoration at the International Brigade Memorial in Jubilee Gardens London Organised by the International Brigade Memorial Trust on Saturday 15 July.

Between 1936 and 1939 over 35,000 men and women, from more than 50 countries, volunteered for the Republican forces. Of the 2,300 who came from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, over 500 were killed.

Volunteers came largely from working class areas across the country. most were members of communist organisations or otherwise active in the trade unions and other socialist bodies, and their average age was 29.

Seventy years later there are relatively few still alive and active enough to attend the commemoration, but it was good to see seven there. They were Jack Jones who chaired the event, Sam Lesser who spoke and read, as well as Bob Doyle, Paddy Cochrane, Lou Kenton, Jack Edwards and a surprisingly spry Penny Feiwel. As usual there was a reading of the names of those known to have died since the previous year’s meeting.

Rodney Bickerstaff’s address raised the problem of keeping alive the memory of those who responded to the call to help the Spanish republic, but attendances at this annual event seem to have increased over recent years.

There was certainly more media interest than on previous occasions, in part because of the attendance of the Spanish Ambassador and his wife, reflecting the increasing interest from Spain; he also gave a brief speech. As was pointed out, it would have been nice to have a representative of the UK government also present.

As usual, the event concluded with the singing of the ‘Internationale’.
More pictures on My London Diary

Shut Guantanamo now!

The National Guantanamo Coalition had called for a national demonstration in London to protest the deaths of three Guantanamo detainees earlier in the month.

A group of protesters, mainly from the ‘Save Omar Deghayes’ campaign, but also representing other organisations, walked across London from Marble Arch to the new Home Office building in Marsham Street to hand in the petition calling for an independent enquiry into the three recent deaths at Guantanamo. The petition also calls for the immediate sending of all detainees to countries where their basic human rights would not be abused, an immediate closure of Guantanamo and other prisons where those held were denied proper legal process and for proper access to detainees by family and medical personnel.

It was a long, hot and dusty trek across London, particularly tricky for those with pushchairs as we navigated the Hyde Park subways, and we were all glad to arrive (thanks to helpful directions from the police) at the Home Office. The front of the building was like an oasis, shade, green grass, water and trees.

The police did make us get off the grass and also made some effort to stop the display of placards and banners, but most of these remained visible. They had also attracted some attention from the crowds around Buckingham Palace as we passed by.
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PIP, NHS, Trident & Cleaners – 2016

PIP, NHS, Trident & Cleaners: Wednesday 13th July 2016 was a busy day for me, covering two protests in the ‘#PIPFightback’ National Day of Action against the Personal Independence Payments, a rally in favour of a parliamentary bill to stop the ongoing privatisation of the NHS, a party against plans to spend huge amounts on new nuclear weapons and ending with a rally supporting cleaners in the longest running industrial dispute in the history of the City of London.

PIP Fightback – Vauxhall & Westminster

On this day there were around 20 actions by disabled protesters and their supporters as a ‘#PIPFightback’ National Day of Action against PIP, the Personal Independence Payments which have been a totally inadequate replacement for the Disabled Living Allowance which had previously provided support to enable disabled people to work and live on more even terms with the rest of the community.

I began at the Vauxhall PIP Consultation Centre in Vauxhall where ATOS carry out sham Personal Independence Payments ‘assessments’ on behalf of the DWP. These are carried out without without proper consideration of medical evidence and with ATOS haing a financial incentive to fail claimants.

Many genuine claimants have lost essential benefits for months before these are restored by tribunals on appeal. The temporary loss of finance has resulted in some being taken into hospitals and some commiting suicide.

Other claimants lose benefits as job centres ‘sanction’ them, often for trivial or unfair reasons such as arriving late for interviews due to bus or train delays – or because they have not received a letter about the appointment.

Among those taking part in this protest was Gill Thompson, whose brother David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier died in July 2013 after his benefits were ‘sanctioned’. He was left starving without money for food or electricity to keep the fridge containing his insulin running. She carried a banner with the names and a few pictures of around 100 claimants known to have died because of sanctions. This appears to be a relatively small fraction of the total which runs into thousands.

Later I joined a larger protest with members of the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN), Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Winvisible (Women with Invisible and Visible Disabilities) and others in Westminster outside the Victoria Street offices of Capita who also carry out these shoddy assessments.

There were speeches on the pavement there before the protesters moved onto the busy road blocking traffic in both directions, though they quickly moved aside to let a ambulance through.

After a few minutes Paula Peters of DPAC announced it was time to move on and the protesters marched along the road past the Met Police HQ at New Scotland Yard and on the the DWP offices at Caxton House.

Here they blocked the road for some more speeches before moving on to Parliament where there was another short rally on the road before they moved on to the media village on College Green where politicians were being interviewed on TV over the appointment of a new Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Police blocked them from going onto the Green, but soon some went past them and refused police requests to move; eventually they were allowed to stand on a path in the middle of the area. Although all the TV crews present could see and hear the protest, only one or two bothered to come across and find out what was happening – and I think these were from foreign news agencies.

Disabled PIP Fightback blocks Westminster
PIP Fightback at Vauxhall

NHS Bill protest at Parliament

Protesters from various campaigns to save the NHS held a protest in support as Labour MP for Wirral West Margaret Greenwood presented a ‘Ten Minute Rule Bill’ with cross-party support to stop the privatisation of the NHS and return it to its founding principles. Labour Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott came out to speak in support at the protest.

More pictures: NHS Bill protest at Parliament

Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party – Parliament Sq

CND members were lobbying MPs at Parliament against plans to replace Trident at a cost of at least £205 billion.

And on the square facing the Houses of Parliament was a ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’, as well as Christians with placards stating the opposition by churches of the different denominations to the replacement.

Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party

Solidarity for Wood St cleaners – City of London

The strike by cleaners at the 100 Wood St offices managed by CBRE was now the longest running industrial dispute in the history of the City of London.

The cleaners belong to the United Voices of the World union and are employed by anti-union cleaning contractor Thames Cleaning.

Unite the Resistance, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Class War and others had come to support the United Voices of the World. After a rally opposite the Wood Street offices, then marched around the block and then went on hold a rally blocking the street outside the CBRE offices at St Martin’s Court.

Solidarity for Wood St cleaners

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Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot 2016

Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot: I’m certainly not a supporter of Trump and was shocked by the news of the US Supreme Court vote that granted presidents of the US immunity from prosecution for actions taken in their presidential role. But the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday 6th July 2016 was a reminder that in this country the same applies although our processes are more convoluted, lengthy and opaque.

In short, our establishment protects its own. And as Corbyn found out, demonises and discredits any who threaten it, even at times as in the case of weapons expert David Kelly most probably “eliminating” them.

Parts of the report were read out at the protest. It confirmed that the decision to go to war had been taken many months in advance between Bush and Blair, and revealed some new areas along with those already known where Blair had deliberately misled both Parliament and public.

Part of this was of course the ‘dodgy dossier’ or rather dossiers, the first issued in September 2002 as a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, to which Blair added the sensational (and nonsensical) claim that led the Sun to headline “Brits 45mins from doom” to unverified (and later found untrue) claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear weapons programme.

The second ‘dodgy dosser’, issued in February 2003, which repeated the claims about WMDs was found to “been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a thesis produced by a student at California State University.” It included some of the typographical errors from these, but some phrases had been altered “to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings“, later referred to as “sexing up” the report. A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry found that the report had not been checked by ministers and “had only been reviewed by a group of civil servants operating under Alastair Campbell.”

BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan revealed that his “report which claimed that the September Dossier had been deliberately exaggerated” was based on an interview with David Kelly, although Kelly himself, as the 2011 BBC report Dr David Kelly: Controversial death examined states “gave evidence to MPs’ committees in which he said he did not believe he was the main source of the story”. Two days later he was dead.

The protest on 6th July 2016 took place in the street by the side of the QEII Centre on the morning the Chilcot report was being published there. It began with a naming of a few of the dead, with people coming up to read 5 names of UK forces and 5 of Iraqi civilians who died because of the war. It was only a token gesture, as over a million Iraqis are generally acknowledged to have lost their lives. This was followed by a number of speeches – there are pictures of the speakers on My London Diary.

Police were unusually uncooperative with the protest, insisting on keeping the minor road by the side of the QE2 where the protest was being held open to traffic in both directions, although there was very little actual traffic and it would have caused hardly any disruption to close it. It was hard not to assume they had come under political pressure to harass the event.

The protesters demanded that Blair be brought to trial as a war criminal. Of course Blair has been tried for nothing. Despite having been found to have lied to Parliament he is still treated by the media as a respected politician. Lying to Parliament is surprisingly not a criminal offence – and in response to a 2021 petition with over 100,000 signatures the government said it had no plans to make it one. Almost certainly because too many politicians would be found guilty.

More about the protest and many more pictures on My London Diary: Blair lied, Millions Died – Chilcot.

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DPAC 4th July Tea Party 2014

DPAC 4th July Tea Party: One of the many strange questions that Americans ask on Quora (a web site I occasionally waste some time on and usually regret) is why we British don’t celebrate the 4th of July. It’s actually a rather better question than most – perhaps we should celebrate when we got rid of a nation that can produce Trump and Biden, one of whom still seems likely to be the next president when clearly neither is suitable.

Of course, here in the UK we have our own contest today between Sunak and Starmer, neither of whom in my estimation fit to govern, and, as in the USA elected by an archaic system designed to frustrate rather than provide democracy. If you were unfortunate not to have heard the late David Graeber speaking in person about US Democracy (and haven’t read his book on the subject) you can hear him talking on video (and read a transcript) on The Lost Byway, the site on which more usually John Rogers publishes the videos of his remarkably upbeat walks around London.

Of course I don’t believe that there are Americans dumb enough to write most of the stupid questions that are posted on Quora, which must surely employ a whole squad of AI-driven bots to generate and post them.

Should we need an excuse for a party in the first half of July we would of course do better to wait 10 days and celebrate with the French (also this year embroiled in election madness.) That would almost certainly be far more fun and a good excuse to drink wine, though I might draw the line at accordions. Its 58 years since I found myself in the square in front of the Mairie in a small French municipality a few mile south of Paris and I haven’t forgotten it.

But I have photographed at protests over the years which have deliberately been timed for various reasons for US Independence Day as well as rather more that totally ignored any significance the day might have.

On Friday 4th of July 2014 Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) celebrated Independent Living Day with an Independent Living Tea Party at the Dept of Work & Pensions, calling for a stop to the removal of the Independent Living Fund which provides funding, education and transport that enables disabled people to live in the community.

The chose American Independence Day stating “The famous Boston teaparty led to a revolution against the British government let’s see where our teaparty leads….”

It wasn’t a huge protest but “Fifteen or so people in wheelchairs along with around as many walking but with other disabilities along with carers and supporters filled the pavement in front of the DWP in Caxton St, and at times made a considerable noise. As well as their voices and a megaphone, some had brought whistles and other musical instruments (and some less musical) to liven up the event. For those with hearing difficulties there was a BSL signer.“

The future looked desperate for the almost 18,000 who then received support through the fund, and they were engaged in a long fight to try to prevent it being closed. In 2013 the government had lost a court case over its closure, but four months later the government had decided to go ahead and close it anyway in 2015. A fresh legal challenge failed.

Responsibility for supporting disabled people being passed to local authorities who were given funding roughly 12% less than the ILF – and this was not ring-fenced. DPAC said that given councils were having already to make massive cuts it seems unlikely that all of this will make its way to the disabled and that councils will largely be unable to find the staff to properly implement fair schemes. They point out that the ILF is a well organised and cost-effective scheme and any replacement is almost certain to be less efficient and to severely impacting the quality of life of severely disabled people.

DPAC fear that many currently usefully employed disabled people will have to give up work and will no longer be able to live independently but will have to go into residential care – at much greater cost.

Protests that are well-behaved and follow the rules seldom get coverage in the media – as last weekends massive Restore Nature Now showed – 60,000 people supported by a huge range of groups marching through London was not ‘news’ for BBC Radio 4, and there has been a huge news blackout on all the many peaceful marches calling for a ceasefire in Palestine.

So DPAC always like to end their events with a little disruptive action, usually in the form of a road block, although despite this their protests are still ignored by the mass media. Around half of those taking part decided to take part and blocked busy Victoria St by stopping their wheelchairs and holding banners on the pedestrian crossing.

Police arrived a few minutes later and tried to persuade them to move, getting a little firmer and eventually threatening protesters with the possibility of arrest for obstructing the highway.

“Before long there were around four times as many police as protesters and when it began to look as if the police might carry out their threat of arrest, the protesters who had been receiving a great deal of support from tourists and others – even including some in the traffic being held up or diverted away down Great Smith St – decided it was time to end the protest and wheeled their chairs away.”

Despite this action I don’t think the event received any publicity outside some specialist print and online media. There were a couple of celebrity weddings, another getting sentenced for indecently assaulting girls, a hurricane in the US, an underpass collapse in Brazil – and some celebrations in the USA and many other stories.

More at Independent Living Tea party.

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Climate Rush Palm Oil Gala 2009

Climate Rush Palm Oil Gala: On Wednesday 1st July 2009 Climate Rush protested outside the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square where industries deforesting tropical forests to grow biofuel crops including palm oil were holding a Gala Dinner and Dance.

Palm oil production is causing a particular problems in Indonesia, where indigenous people have seen their traditional lands taken over by companies for palm oil production under unfair laws.

The forests were their land and the living and many who have been moved off have been left in marginal land often without clean water supplies and the promises made by the palm oil companies to the people have not been kept, and the regulations which offer them some very limited protection have not been enforced by the authorities, with many sufferting violent attacks by armed security forces and police.

Palm oil plantations disrupt natural drainage and bring problems of pollution and flooding. Destruction of their habitats eliminates most of the wildlife and species including the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger are under threat.

A detailed report, ‘Losing Ground’ for Friends of the Earth looked in particular at the human rights issues and concluded that “The EU target to increase agrofuel use is misguided, risking environmental damage and human rights abuses on an even bigger scale.“

Climate Rush’s flyer for the event stated “90% of orangutans have disappeared since the Suffragettes first appeared 100 years ago.“

They began their protest with a picnic in the park of Grosvenor Square opposite the hotel entrance, and people got ready for the protest.

When their Jazz Band began to play, people moved out onto the street and blocked it dancing outside the hotel. They rejected police requests to move into the pen which police told them was created “for your safety“.

The police concentrated their actions waiting for the expected “rush” to the hotel, protecting the hotel with a small line of officers.

After around half an hour of dancing on the street the “rush” came, though I think it was really only ever a token attempt to enter the building. Most of the police seemed fairly relaxe or even amused by it, but there were a few who reacted rather violently and a couple of protesters were rather roughly thrown to the ground when a small group of police charged into them.

After this, the protesters moved back and sat down on the road in front of the doorway for a while.

Eventually they decided to get up and briefly danced a conga, before deciding to go back into the park to continue their picnic, and I felt it was time to go home for my own dinner.

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Israel Celebrates 60 Years – 2008

Israel Celebrates 60 Years: The first liberation movement I was aware of in my toddler years led to independence for Israel in 1948 and like much of the British left I was for some years a supporter of Israel.

To be fair our media hadn’t really told us much about what had actually happened in the country, concentrating on the Stern Gangs attacks on British personnel before independence, and we were almost unaware of the Palestinians and the effect of the formation of Israel on them.

The UN had adopted a ‘Plan of Partition with Economic Union‘ for Palestine as General Assembly
Resolution 181 (II) in 1947, but the Arabs generally rejected this as being pro-Zionist, giving too much land to the much smaller Jewish population as well as violating the UN’s own principles of national self-determination. Jews in Palestine generally welcomed it but the Zionist leaders saw it as “a stepping stone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.“

A civil war broke out in Palestine after the adoption of the UN mandate and was largely ignored by the British who got on busily preparing for their withdrawal (also contained in the resolution) in May 1948. On 14th May 1948 “the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”

Arab armies marched in starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War but were repulsed by the Israel Defense Forces which expanded the borders of Israel beyond those of the UN Plan. And there was further territorial expansion in other wars, particulalry the 1967 Six Day War,

There were extensive celebrations for the 60th Anniversary in Israel from the beginning of May 2008 as well as in other Western cities, with events continuing for some months – such as this London march on June 29th.

As the marchers came into Trafalgar Square they passed people from Israeli Jewish organisation Zochrot founded in 2002 to promote awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, including the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. They held a banner ‘Remembrance – Zochrot‘ and others stood in silence with placards with names of some of the over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed in the 1947-8 catastrophe.

While I watched, several people left the parade and went across to harangue them and wave Israeli flags in their faces.

There were more protesters that police had moved into a pen by the side of South Africa House. They had come to point out that for Palestinians the sixty years had meant an increasing loss of their land through both military actions and settlements, as well as a loss in liberty.

Later I saw police moving away a group who had lowered a banner reading “60 YEARS OF ETHIC CLEANSING IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE” over the high wall on the side of the square. They were rapidly surrounded by Jewish security guards, who called the police who told them that unless they moved to the pen on the other side of the road – where their banner could not be seen from the square – they would be arrested. And they moved.

Later other people with Israeli flags came to argue and insult the protesters here and several groups were moved away by police. At one point I moved towards one of my colleagues as one of these men appeared to be about to physically assault him. He then accused the photographer of being a paedophile on the ridiculous basis that some of the other troublemakers in the group were his teenage sons. Eventually police took over and politely asked us to move away while they sorted things out.

As my final paragraph in 2008 I wrote “Of course I met many nice people who were having a good day out, but it is the others who stick in the mind. But I also hope that after 60 years the state of Israel will soon be ready for peace and justice for the Palestinians.” Unfortunatley there is far too little evidence of this among their political leaders 16 years later.

60 Years of Israel

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The Day After The Brexit Vote – 2016

The Day After The Brexit Vote – Defend All migrants. On Friday 24th June 2016 almost half the nation woke up to hear with shock and some measure of disbelief to hear the news that a small majority had voted in favour of leaving Europe.

In any sensible democracy the result of 52% to 48% in an advisory referendum would not have been sufficient to cause such a major constitutional change, but Prime Minister David Cameron had stupidly promised to abide by the result and so we were now en route to Brexit.

Cameron had been confident that he would win the referendum with a vote to remain but he had severely underestimated the depths of lying and misrepresentation that the Leave campaign would sink to, with some of the leading figures likely to make huge personal profits from the break.

Brexit of course needn’t have been the major disaster it has been. We could have retained a much closer relationship with Europe, our largest trading partner. It needed the total incompetence of Boris Johnson to get us the worst of all deals, not least because he and his negotiators simply did not understand what negotiation meant, with the politicians largely restricting themselves to making clearly impossible demands and then blaming Europe.

I don’t expect we will return to Europe during my lifetime, but I hope the next government will make some sensible moves to restore our relationships, although rather avoiding the subject in the current election campaign. But surely we cannot continue being unable to staff our care and medical sectors and with crops rotting unpicked on the fields. And we do need at least some of those plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen.

The Leave campaign reached new lows with things like that £350 million on the side of a bus, which everyone who made the slightest investigation knew was a lie. But the media spread it around with some suggesting it was perhaps not correct, while all should have been deriding it as nonsense. And it was a figure that stuck in many peoples’ minds.

Immigration was an issue that both sides failed on – and at times Remain seemed determined to try and outflank Leave on the right suggesting racist policies. Migrants were attacked and scapegoated not only by both Remain and Leave campaigns but by all our mainstream parties and media over more than 20 years, stoking up hatred by insisting immigrants are a “problem”.

Migration has been and will remain vital to the growth of our economy, as well as enriching our cultural life. Walk through our high streets or page through the TV schedules and cross out the immigrants and the descendants of post-war immigration and what you would be left would be limited and rather boring.

Senior Conservatives are even proposing that we should leave the European Convention on Human Rights so they can deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, and although Labour has said it will end this policy it has not yet put forward plans for safe routes for asylum seekers.

The protest on 24th June by anarchists and socialists against racism and fascist violence had been some planned weeks in advance, called by Movement for Justice, rs21, London Antifascists and Jewdas, and supported by other groups including Brick Lane Debates, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), Right to Remain, Radical Assembly, Clapton Ultras, the Antiuniversity, English collective of prostitutes, sex workers open university, lesbians and gays support the migrants, Razem Londyn, London Anarchist Federation, Kent anti-racist network, dywizjon 161, colectivo anticapitalista Londres and Plan C London as well as others who brought banners and many individuals.

A camera team of three working for a right-wing US website arrived and tried to provoke groups in the crowd with silly questions and appearing to gloat over the Brexit decision. Eventually police stepped in to calm things and made sure the group left.

After a number of speeches the protesters set off to march on a roundabout route through the east of the city on their way to protest outside News International in Southwark. But I think they veered off course whenever it looked likely that the large police presence might try to kettle them. Eventually I got fed up with walking and went home.

More on the protest with many more pictures on My London Diary: Defend All Migrants.

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