Close Slaughterhouses & Naked Bike Ride: I had mixed feelings about both of the protests I photographed on Saturday June 8th 2019. I began with the vegans whose ‘Close all Slaughterhouses’ march was calling for an end to the breeding, fishing and slaughter of animals and then covered the 2019 Naked Bike Ride.
Close all Slaughterhouses – London
It was a slightly uneasy gathering in Leicester Square for me as I felt rather out of place among a crowd of vegans. I’m against cruelty to animals and certainly oppose cruel farming practices, but I still eat some meat and rather more diary products as a part of a varied diet, and I think my shoes may have been leather and my belt certainly was. My lunch in my bag certainly contained both cheese and ham sandwiches and I’d buttered the bread, so I couldn’t eat it while covering the event.
Of course veganism makes a contribution towards reducing our carbon footprint, as vegetable production generally produces much lower amounts of greenhouse gases, although I think there are some exceptions to this. But I think if everyone became a vegan it would have some very undesirable consequences, not least in almost entirely removing currently farmed animals from our landscape. We might be left with just a few cows, pigs and sheep etc in rare-breed petting zoos.
I’d like to see an end to some agricultural practices which have been adopted to produce meat, and I now quite happily pay extra for free-range eggs and grass-fed beef. But some of the slogans on the banners and placards at this protest are I think over-emotional and misleading. Meat is not murder, we don’t steal milk from cows and animals are not “just like us” though they obviously share many characteristics. As I wrote “the human species is very clearly different in some respects.“
Nature may sometimes be fluffy and adorable, but it is also often “red in tooth and claw”, often killing most cruelly. Many animals are carnivorous, others like us omnivores.
I’d had enough of the vegans after listening to some of the speeches at their rally in Soho Square and walked away – I was in any case getting rather hungry and found a corner away from them to eat my non-vegan lunch.
I’ve never been quite sure that the World Naked Bike Ride is really a protest. As I wrote in 2019 “It’s more a fun ride for people who want to ride around London with no or very few clothes on”, though clearly some of them do want to protest over various issues, including the safety of cyclists on the road, reducing oil dependence and saving the planet.
Nudity doesn’t worry me, though as a photographer I spend some time trying to take pictures which show the event without producing images which might offend the more prudish of editors and publications, which is not easy. I wouldn’t take part myself in the WNBR, but largely because our climate is seldom really suitable for being without clothes; of course not everyone on the ride was entirely naked, but I do feel the cold. So were I to decide to join the ride it would be ‘as naked as you can stand’ rather than ‘as bare as you dare’.
Like most of those watching from the pavements I find the ride both entertaining and interesting showing the incredible variation of the human form rather more emphatically than any normal street crowd.
But overall the ride is in some ways lacking in diversity, with relatively little representation of London’s ethnic communities and this year their seemed an even greater than previous gender imbalance, with perhaps 10 or 20 men for every woman. This isn’t truly represented in my pictures partly because of my greater interest in them, but also because a greater proportion of them have slogans or body paint.
I’d arrived late and didn’t take many pictures before the ride moved off – there are a few more on My London Diary. I didn’t bother to follow them or try to meet them later on their route but went to a nearby pub for a drink with a friend before making my way home.
The Racist UK Immigration System: The Home Office a couple of years ago commissioned a report following the huge publicity over the Windrush scandal after government ministers had been forced to agree to educate all Home Office employees about our colonial history and the experiences faced by black people coming to the UK.
The report, “The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal“, by a well-known historian the Home Office refuses to name, details how the whole history of post-war British immigration legislation since the Second World War was “designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK“, reflecting the “racist ideology of the British Empire.”
For over a year politicians and others have been calling for the report to be published but the Home Office has refused. Last month it was leaked in full to The Guardian, but is still not available to the public, despite having been paid for by our taxes. Many requests for its publication from MPs including the home affairs select committee and campaigners over the past year had been turned down and a freedom of information request about it was refused.
The protest began on Bath Road in front of the Immigration Removal Centres
Some speculate that the true reason for it being kept secret was because it was in direct contradiction to last years report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which had ludicrously concluded there was “no evidence to suggest that Britain was an institutionally racist place.“
Others suggest the refusal to publish was that it would bring new highly discriminatory policies being introduced – such as the attacks on cross-channel migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda – liable to greater opposition as a development of an already clearly racist immigration system.
Colnbrook on the left, Harmondsworth at right
Back in June 2014, when the Movement for Freedom organised a protest on June 7th outside the adjoining Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres on the northern boundary of London Heathrow, the thrust of the protest was against the the unjust ‘Fast Track System’ and mistreatment of detainees by private security firms inside these immigration prisons.
John McDonnell speaks outside the detention centres on Bath Road
Local MP John McDonnell who came to speak told the protest that when he first became MP for the area in 1997 the immigration detention centre was only a small building housing a dozen or so detainees rather than the two large blocks the protesters were in front of. The protesters argue that immigration detention is almost entirely unnecessary, existing only to deter immigration and harass and punish those who come here to seek asylum.
Asylum seekers wave from behind the 20ft fence, razor wire and window bars
The fast track system was set up with the deliberate aim of deporting people before they had time to put together the evidence that would enable them to properly present their case to remain. You don’t get a certificate given to you for being tortured or raped but our system treats all of them as guilty, trying to evade our immigration laws and rather than the Home Office having to prove their stories are fabricated calls on them to provide proof of threats, torture, rape and other events that forced them to flee. Legal challenges including that by Detention Action in 2015 found “rules setting the tight timescales for asylum-seekers to make appeals were unlawful and ‘ultra vires’ and that the strict time limits in and of themselves were ‘structurally unfair’.”
Although the legal judgements led to the suspension of DFT, the deportations of asylum seekers to Rwanda currently about to take place clearly represent a ratcheting up of this punitive approach and seem likely also to be successfully challenged in the courts – thought not before hundreds or thousands have been wrongfully deported.
The detention centres were built on a site which has a private road leading to a BT site at the rear. After the speeches on the public highway in front of the site, the marchers walked down this road, making a lot of noise chanting and shouting as well as with whistles and other noise-makers. Detainees came to the windows and waved thanking the protesters for their support, and some were able to communicate using mobile phones.
Mobile phone messages from inside were broadcast to protesters using a megaphone
The two detention prisons are both surrounded by 20 foot high fences, the lower half solid metal sheets and the upper half with a dense solid wire mesh, which makes photographing the windows difficult. But we could clearly see the detainees and they could seem the long banner with the message ‘Stop Racism – End Fast Track – End Detention’ which was held up, and we could make out some of the messages they had written calling for freedom.
We were able to walk completely around the Harmondsworth building (but not the higher security Colnbrook one) and when I left the march organisers were planning to return their route in the opposite direction as they had so many phone calls from those inside, but I had to leave.
Diane Abbott published an opinion piece in The Guardian on the leaked report at the end of May this year, “The truth is out: Britain’s immigration system is racist, and always has been. Now let’s fix it“. Unfortunately I think our current government is unlikely to have any interest at all in doing so. She ends her piece: “The system is calibrated for racism. It always was. We know it, and now we know that, behind closed doors, Priti Patel’s Home Office knows it. The dirty secret is no longer secret.”
Liquor, Motors, Furniture, Packing & Timber My previous post on this walk in in Deptford on October 1988, More From Deptford, ended at Tooheys Liquor Barn on Evelyn Road, where this section starts.
Toohey’s Brewery was founded by two brothers, John Thomas Toohey,born in COunty Tipperary whose family emigrated to Melbourne in 1841, and his younger Australian-born brother Matthew. They ran pubs in Melbourne and then moved to Sydney where they set up their brewery in 1869, brewing Tooheys Black Old Ale. The company went public in 1902 and began brewing lager in 1930, though normally it comes in rather smaller bottles than this one. After various mergers and takeovers the company is now owned by Japanese brewer Kirin. Evelyn St. Wines of which this was a part was on this site until around 2015.
City Motor Auctions, Evelyn St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10h-64
City Motor Auctions Ltd was just to the east of the Liquor Barn on Evelyn St and car auctions, latterly under the name Docklands City Car Auctions continued here until around 2014. Like the Liquor Barn it became a part of the large development site
Bucks were still here at Bridge Wharf immediately to the west of the former Surrey Canal until around 2012 and their site was then briefly taken over by the car auctions, with Bucks returning briefly when those moved to Charlton at the start of 2015. The site was derelict by the end of 2015 and demolition was complete by 2017.
I was unsure if the circular bricked area with a post at its centre was a relic of the former wharf or simply a sculpture recalling the past. I couldn’t see any particular purpose in it, so it was probably art!
Evelyn St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10h-53
Ocean wharf was at the south-west corner of the bridge built to take Evelyn Street over the Surrey Canal. Parker Packing Co Ltd were presumably the Parker whose corner was a few yards away on the opposite side of Evelyn St on its corner with Dragoon Road. The sign at an angle points to Neptune Wharf and a sign for a company dealing in polythene sheeting, polythene & paper sacks and other items, while a larger sign behind the branches is completely blank.
The view from Blackhorse Bridge looking towards the southwest where once the Surrey Canal ran, with timber sheds along its east bank. Timber would have been a major part of the canal traffic, as the Surrey Docks were largely used for timber imports and had large timber ponds. By 2008 the timber sheds had been replaced but otherwise the view was much the same, but in 2016 the empty space was filled by a large Shurgard self-storage shed.
All the buildings along Grinstead Road have been demolished and replaced by residential properties. This was the only building I found of interest in the long stretch facing Deptford Park. The park was opened to the public in 1897 and probably Grinstead Road dates from then or shortly afterwards. I can find no explanation for the street name.
Another view of its distinctive doorway. I can find nothing out about this property and there are few if any clues although it interested me enough to take nine frames concentrating on the doorway. The logo above the door is I think made of the letters J & J and this house was around halfway down the street, a short distance past the former galvanised iron and zinc Ida works, at the back of Neptune Wharf. It probably dates from the early 20th century.
HP in Israel, Nurses bursaries, Hungary, Congo & Syria – five protests that I photographed on Saturday 4th June 2016.
Boycott HP against Israeli apartheid – PC World, Tottenham Court Road
A protest outside PC World on Tottenham Court Rd was one of around 20 actions around the UK held to raise awareness of Hewlett Packard’s heavy involvement the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people and encourage a boycott of HP.
HP provides the biometric system used for ID cards used to control movement of Palestinians inside Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territory, technology for the Israeli military and supporting the illegal settlements.
NHS students and supporters marched from St Thomas’s Hospital to the Department of Health in Whitehall along a route over Waterloo Bridge where there was a brief sit-down, and along the Strand to Charing Cross, where they were joined by disabled protesters who went with them to a rally in front of the Dept of Health at Richmond House on Whitehall.
Cecilia Anim, Royal College of Nursing President
Student bursaries are essential for nursing students as they have to spend 50% of their course working in the NHS and unlike other students are unable to work part-time to support themselves. Their work as students is important in keeping the NHS running and the bursaries also allow mature entrants to the profession to train.
Our current nursing shortage is in part due to the ridiculous decision by Jeremy Hunt who ignored the nursing unions and almost everyone else in making the cut. He claimed that removing the bursary would mean that there would be up to 10,000 more training places. In fact the number accepting places on nursing courses in 2018 dropped to its lowest level for five years, 8% less than when bursaries were available. The maintenance grant was reinstated in 2020, leading to an increase in student numbers, particularly in those over 30, where the increase was around 40%.
Hungarian nationalists marched to Downing St calling for the restoration of the pre-1920 borders of Hungary, including the Székely Land in Romania.
The right-wing Jobbik party or Movement for a Better Hungary has grown considerably in support and in 2018 became the second largest party in the National Assembly and is often accused of seeking the restoration of the borders before the 1920 Trianon Treaty. Around a quarter of ethnic Hungarians live outside of Hungary and many suffer discrimination because of their culture and language. But according to Wikipedia, “Jobbik has never suggested changing borders by force, and believes that the ultimate solution is territorial and cultural autonomy within a European Union framework of minority rights.“
The Patrice Lumumba Coalition protested opposite Downing St after the massacre last month of 120 people in Beni, North Kivu, Congo. They say that since 2014, 1000 people have been horrifically murdered in the region, despite the presence of a UN army and the Congolese armed forces.
They blame the massacres in Congo which have resulted in over 10 million being killed on the US-backed overthrow of the Mobutu regime and the support by the US, UK, Belgium and Canada of President Museveni in Uganda and President Kagame in Rwanda, whose proxy armies and militia groups attack the Congolese. This war is driven by multinational corporations to provide the mineral reserves of the Congo, gold, oil, tin and particularly coltan, essential for the production of smart phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets.
The UK backs the genocide with around £500m a year in support of Congo’s President Kabila, and £90m to prop up the Rwandan regime. They want those responsible for backing the genocide – including Tony Blair and the Clintons as well as African leaders to be brought to justice.
Syrians demand break the siege of Alwaer – Downing St
Syrians at Downing St called on the UK and international community to take urgent action to end the siege of Alwaer and 50 other besieged towns in Syria. People are without electricity, drinking water, food, fuel, and medical care and are at risk of dying from malnutrition
Alwaer, a town of more than 100,000 people, has been under siege by Syrian government forces for over 3 years and many have been killed and others are suffering disease. Assad’s forces are carrying out a systematic and deliberate policy of starvation of civilians, a war crime in grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Democracy, Black Cabs, Murad & Zionists – My agenda for Wednesday 2nd June 2010 was a busy one, with protests about democracy in Parliament Square, London’s Black Taxis at Aldwych, a picket at BP’s St James’s Square HQ, trade unionists protesting at the Turkish Embassy and Zionists supporting the Israeli attack and killings on the Gaza aid flotilla.
Democracy Village Protest – Parliament Square
People had been camping in the Democracy Village in Parliament Square for just over a month and a few of them had come across the road with banners to protest. They held up banners, including a large one saying ‘We Respect The Soldiers We Do Not Support The War‘ and another ‘We Demand Peace In Afghanistan and No More War‘ and several made speeches with a megaphone. Another very artistically written notice on a large square of cloth on the pavement read ‘With Each Conscious Breath May You Know How Loved You Are in All Ways. You Are Divine. Let Your Light Shine’.
Brian Haw – Summons Marks 9 Years in Parliament Square
I went back to the other side of the road to talk with Brian Haw and Barbara Tucker who I had come to visit on the 9th anniversary of the start of Brian’s protest vigil opposite the Houses of Parliament in Parliament Square. A week ago they had been arrested and held for 30 hours on the day of the state opening of Parliament before the court released them on bail.
The arrest had come after Brian objected to police searching his tent in the early morning without a warrant – the 13th or 14th illegal search they have made, all part of a continual campaign of harassment. As we were talking we became aware of three police a few yards away standing and watching us. They then came over and served Barbara Ticker with a summons for using a megaphone in Parliament Square.
Brian and Barbara asked why she was being singled out for attention as there were at that time others In the Democracy Village actually using a megaphone and she was not at the time doing so. The officers made no attempt to answer this question.
I don’t use taxis in London – or at least very seldom. I can only remember two occasions in the last thirty or so years, both when others insisted I go with them. It’s a wasteful, outdated and overpriced system which is responsible for much of the congestion in London, both by cabs carrying only small numbers of people compared to other public transport and also by ‘cruising for hire’ with no passengers on board.
My account on My London Diary gives some of their grievances, some of which I have some sympathy with, and I agree the police should be enforcing the law (rather than harassing protesters) but the whole system needs to be updated, taking into account the general availability of smart-phones and improvements in satellite navigation systems which increasingly make the ‘knowledge’ redundant and can provide real-time congestion information.
I didn’t find it an easy protest to photograph, which I think shows in the results. Lots of taxis are frankly rather boring, and not that unusual in London, where I commented that “While standing at a bus stop a couple of weeks ago I counted over 30 empty taxis going past before my bus arrived, and I couldn’t help but think we could have a better public transport system without taxis.”
BP Picket for Colombian Oil Workers – St James’s Square
BP have a long-running dispute with the workers on the Cusiana oilfield in the Casanare department of Colombia, and its one where they are playing dirty, with union members accusing BP of carrying out a campaign of misinformation about what is happening in the plant, and in particular of falsely claiming the support of government officials for their lies about the action.
More or less as this picket was taking place, armed commandos from the Colombian army leapt over a security grid at the plant and attacked the workers who were carrying out a peaceful occupation of the Cusiana CPF (Central Processing Facility) in Tauramena.
Previously BP had come to an out of court settlement on a UK High Court challenge over the pipeline from this oilfield to the coast, when farmers alleged that BP benefited from the actions of Colombian paramilitary forces who harassed and intimidated them in their protection of the pipeline. During the preparation of the case, of the lawyers for the farmers discovered she was on a death list and fled the country; she was granted political asylum in the UK.
The protest was organised by the Colombia Solidarity Campaign and was supported by the ICEM, the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker’s Unions, based in Switzerland which represents more than 20 million workers around the world, uniting trade unions in its sector around the world.
Protest for Murad Akincilar Turkish Embassy, Belgrave Square
Trade unionist Murad Akincilar was arrested on a spurious charge of belonging to a terrorist organisation while on an extended holiday in Turkey last September and was in prison in Istanbul. His treatment in prison has resulted in serious eye damage and partial blindness. He was known personally to some of the protesters as he studied for a Masters Degree at the LSE, but since 2001 he has lived in Switzerland and worked for Swiss trade union Unia which was leading the campaign for his release.
The protest opposite the Turkish Embassy was organised by Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Gik-der, an organisation founded in north London in 1991 by migrants fleeing political and racial persecution in their home countries of Turkey and Kurdistan.
Zionist Federation Support Israeli Atrocity – Israeli Embassy, Kensington
The Zionist Federation together with members of the English Defence League demonstrated opposite the Israeli embassy in support of the Israeli Defence Force killings in the attack on the Gaza aid flotilla.
A smaller group of pro-Palestinian protesters had come to oppose them, although both the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War Coalition had decided not to support the counter-demonstration to avoid conflict.
Although official Zionist sources had expressed some regret at the violence and loss of life, the mood of the supporters here appeared to be one of a gloating triumphalism that seemed entirely inappropriate to the situation. I was “sickened when at one point a large group of the demonstrators began chanting ‘dead Palestinian scum’ ” and appalled to find this was “a demonstration jointly with the Zionist Federation and the English Defence League, some of whose members many of us have seen and heard chanting racist slogans on our streets. It seems unbelievable that a Jewish organisation should align itself – even if unofficially – with people like this.”
Attempts to justify the summary execution of one of the victims by shots to the head at close range by the existence of so-called weapons on the ships seemed insulting – almost all those shown in the photographs are “exactly the kind of tools that would be expected to be found on any ship in its galley and for general maintenance, as well as items being taken for building work in Gaza. The possible exceptions are a few canisters of pepper spray, some catapults and what looks like some kind of ceremonial knife.”
I’m very much in favour of peace in Palestine and Israel, but like many I feel “the actions of the state of Israel in their attacks on Gaza, their disruption of everyday life for the Palestinians and the blockade is making the possibility of peace much more distant… Like other conflicts, resolution depends on winning hearts and minds and this can’t be done with tanks and bulldozers.”
Police had to step in at the end of the protest when four press photographers were surrounded and chased by a an angry group of threatening Zionist demonstrators but all I suffered were a few threats and hostile gestures.
Deptford High St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10g-51
13 Deptford High Street is distinguished by the impressive pillars of its entrance and a fine rounded frontage. Whoever it was built for was obviously wealthy and perhaps a shipowner or merchant for goods landed locally either on Deptford Creek or on the Thames, perhaps tea from China. Tea was taxed heavily – 119% – until 1784 and this led to considerable smuggling but parliament reduced to tax then to 12.5% making tea available to a wider range of the population and ending the illegality. Though the East India Company retained its monopoly until 1834.
The house, built on what was then Butt Lane is locally listed is thought to have been built in the early 18th century but its rounded front was probably added around a hundred or so years later.
Deptford High St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10g-52
The ‘A One CAFE’ at 18 Deptford High St looked as if it was no longer in business, though its door still is decorated with ice-cream cones. The doorway leading to the upper residential floors has the message ‘Gays Rule’ and is I think boarded up. This building is still there, its ground floor now a Vets, its brickwork plastered over and generally looking in rather better repair.
Unfortunately this picture is slightly out of focus (though the grain is sharp) and I cannot make out some of the finer detail of the building.
Deptford High St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10g-56
I took only a couple of pictures as I walked up Deptford High Street to its north end and its junction with Evelyn Road/Creek Road, which still looks much the same as in my picture except that all the shops have changed hands at least once.
No 227 was in very poor condition and there was considerable building work there a few years ago but the general appearance is much the same, though it has long lost the shopfront and signage. This Grade II listed house, shop and bakehouse was built in 1791 for Thomas Palmer and improved in the early 19th century, although the ‘RCHME DEPTFORD HOUSES: 1650 to 1800’ survey in 1997-8 suggested it was “perhaps a single late-17th-century house with the front house added c. 1700, extensively rebuilt 1791-2” and says it “has its origins in the period 1654-1692 during which John Evelyn developed a corner of his Sayes Court estate corresponding to Nos 217-227 with a block of nine buildings set back from the road.” It does go on to say the house “was all but wholly rebuilt for Palmer in 1791-2” and remained a bakers until the 1990s.
The Tideway Clothing Stores is now an off-licence and supermart. The Courage Pub at right was torn down illegally without permission in 2019; it had been there at least since the 1820’s and though it looks as if it was still open, closed as a pub around the time I made this picture. The building became offices for a firm of solicitors, and the ground floor was used for art classes. The Deptford Dame published a report of the proposals for its reconstruction in 2021.
Panda, Car Hire, Watergate St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10g-41
Watergate Street is essentially the continuation of Deptford High Street to the north, leading to the River Thames. At the extreme left of this picture you can see a pillar of another Deptford pub, the Harp of Erin at 2 – 4 New King Street on the corner between this and Watergate Street. The pub which went under a variety of names over the years as Round the Bend, Nobody’s Inn, Looney Tunes, closed as simply The Harp in 2014.
Panda Car Hire and taxi service to Airports, Theatres, Stations was next to the pub on Watergate St and had this rather odd imitation half-timbering which attracted my attention. Panda Cars seemed a strange business name, usually used to refer to small police cars driven by police officers which were often painted black and white. The building is still there, and in the same business as Water Gate Cars but has now a rather plainer frontage.
I walked west along Evelyn Street. Parker’s Corner was around half a mile away, just before what is clearly a bridge although the Surrey Canal which used to go under it has long been filled in. I’d photographed this corner three years previously and wrote this about it: “Parkers Corner was next to the former Surrey Canal Blackhorse bridge in Evelyn Street on the corner of Dragoon Road.
Parker’s Timber were based at a wharf on the canal on the northeast of the bridge. The company moved to Belvedere, Kent in the 1960s. Although I was a great fan of Bird, someone else had beaten me to paint Charlie on the wall. ” In this frmae you can still see ‘Charlie’ though a little faded. The sign at top left is for Victoria Wharf, the site behind the wall, and lists some of the businesses there. The modern building behind, Parker House at 144 Evelyn Road, was demolished in 2015
Law Bros, Grove St, Deptford, Lewisham, 1988 88-10g-21
The Victoria Wharf site stretched along Dragoon St from Evelyn Street to Grove Street where Law Bros had this building. Rather oddly a sign at right told me the Bros were Stewart & Alice and their business appear to be in Calor Gas according the the five signs in the picture. At left were signs for two other businesses on the wharf and above the doorway was another for Andrews.
I wondered what this building had been built as; it was marked as ‘Chapel’ on old large-scale OS maps on Grove St beside the wharf entrance. A very bad photograph in the Deptford Archives enabled me to identify it as Victoria Hall Methodist Church, opened in 1857 and demolished in 2015 as a part of the Timberyard development.
Oxestalls Road was created around 1966 when there was considerable redevelopment in the area with the creation of the Pepys estate, and it goes across the former route of the Surrey Canal at an elevated level. This view is looking roughly east and you can see the chimneys and roof of The Victoria pub on Grove Street above the sheds to the left of the picture along with a chimney which I think is at Deptford Power Station.
Tooheys Liquor Barn on Evelyn Street with the trailer of a lorry carrying a Holsten Pils waggon, probably designed to be horse-drawn. It appears to be part of the Evelyn Cash & Carry shed. In the background is Eddystone Tower on Oxestalls Road, 26 floors and 257ft high, part of the GLC Pepys Estate built in 1962.
My walk around Deptford will continue in a later post.
No Third Runway – 31 May 2008 – several thousand campaigners against the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport marched from Hatton Cross through part of the airport to the village of Sipson which will be obliterated if the third runway is built.
I’m not sure whether it was on this occasion or another similar event where I was approached and asked if I would like to be the official photographer at height on a cherry-picker taking the photograph of thousands below me on the ground in a giant ‘NO’ each holding up the message ‘NO’ but having no head at all for heights I was very pleased to be taking part in the event with both feet firmly on the ground. I was holding up my poster with its ‘NO’ in one hand and my camera in the other when I made this picture.
I don’t think I’ve ever had much of a head for heights. Perhaps it was my early experiences when my father was sometimes left with the baby and had to take to to work with him – even when he was up fixing roofs. I have some vague but vivid memories of being up on the roof of a house, perhaps our own, under the Heathrow flightpath with aircraft – propellor rather than jet in those days – passing low overhead. But things have worsened in more recent years as my balance has worsened, and now even low walls are a step too high.
The account on My London Diary – Heathrow – Make a Noise – No Third Runway – makes my views on Heathrow clear, beginning with the paragraph “It is now obvious to everyone with their head out of the sand is that London Heathrow is in the wrong place. It always was, since its creation by subterfuge and lies during the last years of the war, but no government since has had the nerve to challenge the powerful aviation lobby.“
MPs Justine Greening (Con, Putney), John McDonnell (Lab, Hayes & Harlington), and Susan Kramer (LibDem, Richmond Park)
It was a view backed by the politicians of all parties who came to speak at the rally, though Labour – then in government – were only (if ably) represented by local MP for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell. And although the Deputy Mayor of London was there, Mayor Boris Johnson who had promised to come had decided instead to fly off for a holiday in Turkey – just as he has done on various occasions as Prime Minister. The Archbishop of Canterbury had also been expected, but was at the last minute unable to make it and sent an envoy with his message.
Most of those marching were local residents, particularly from Sipson and Harmondsworth which would be destroyed by the development, but also from the other areas under the flightpath, which includes a great swathe of West London. Given the nature of the protest and those taking part the level of police interest in it seemed excessive, and it was noticeable that they seemed to be particularly interested in photographing and filming the photographers who were covering the protest – I several times found myself staring into the lens of the police team.
I don’t know why the police do this, nor what happens to the photographs and videos. On the only occasion I’ve bothered to send a Freedom of Information request requesting details of the photographs they have of me from a number of events where they had quite clearly taken them I received a reply stating that there were no images on record… We are not being told the truth.
One of very few flights on the northern runway as the march went past
Notably missing from the event were any representatives of Spelthorne Council, my local council and the only council in the area not to oppose the expansion. The Conservative MP for Spelthorne, David Wilsher also supported airport expansion against the then party line and “also denies that climate change is caused by human activities and some constituents expect him to announce his membership of the flat earth society any day soon. Best known for his introduction of the anti-gay ‘Section 28’ amendment in 1988 he replaced for the 2010 election by Kwasi Kwarteng after being implicated in an expenses scandal involving the payment of £105,00 of parliamentary expenses to a company set up with his partner to run his office. The inquiry into his expenses was suspended because of his poor health.
John Stewart of HACAN and Geraldine Nicholson of NOTRAG perform a duet: NO THIRD RUNWAY
You can read a full account of the march and rally with a large number of pictures on My London Diary: Heathrow – No Third Runway
Nurses, Coal, Art, Biafrans & Sunflowers – Saturday May 30th 2015 was another varied day of events and protests across London.
Filipino Nurses tell Daily Mail to apologise – Kensington.
I began the day travelling to High Street Kensington, just a short walk from the offices of the Daily Mail. It has the largest circulation of any UK newspaper but is also the UK’s least reliable source of information. Recently The Factual analysed 1,000 articles from each of 245 major news sources from around the world although mainly from the USA and including international news organisations such as Reuters and AP. The Mail came out with the third lowest score of any with a Factual Grade of 39.7% compared to the average of 61.9%. In a table listing all the results, even The Sun does a little better, as do the Daily Express and RT News, though all of these are way below average while The Guardian was above average along with the BBC, though neither among the top scorers.
We don’t have a free press in this country, we have a press largely controlled by a small number of billionaires who, as these figures show, use it largely as a source of disinformation and the promotion of their prejudices – including homophobia, racism and misogyny. Articles are more generally written as click-bait rather than with any desire to inform or educate, and it was hardly surprising when in 2016 it was sanctioned by the International Press Standards Organisation for violating professional norms for accuracy and in 2017 Wikipedia editors decided it was a “generally unreliable” source.
I was there for the start of a long protest by Filipino health workers outside the Daily Mail over its reporting of the Victoriano Chua case which insulted Filipino NHS workers as a whole despite the vital contribution they make to the NHS. The demanded the Daily Mail apologise for its racist comments and to recognise the contribution that they make, keeping our NHS afloat. As someone who a dozen years earlier had been looked after in intensive care by a Filipino nurse I feel very grateful to them, though angry at the UK government for not training enough nurses and doctors – and in particular for removing the training bursary for nurses which has now made the situation much worse. But I did feel they were asking the leopard to change its spots.
I left the Filipinos as their protest was still building up and journeyed across London to Peckham Rye where we were invited to take a tour of the proposed Peckham Coal Line elevated linear urban park between Peckham Rye and Queens Road Peckham stations as a distant part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival events – something vaguely related to the annual flower show.
The Coal Line was frankly hugely over-hyped, particularly in comparing it to New York’s ‘High Line’, and the walk was largely close to but not on the actual proposed line. The former coal sidings on the viaduct which inspired the project are next to a working rail line and could only be seen looking down from neighbouring buildings.
As I commented: “The walk is essentially an urban linear park that would make a useful short cut for some local walkers and cyclists, and could also be a part of a longer leisure walk from Brixton to the Thames. I hope it comes into existence, as the cost would be relatively low and it would be a useful addition to the area.“
But I still enjoyed an interesting walk, visiting both the Bussey Building in the former industrial estate Copeland Park south of the line and the multi-storey car park to the north which now houses a cafe, a local radio performance space and another rooftop bar next to the Derek Jarman memorial garden and has good views of Peckham and central London. And having followed the official route to Queens Road Peckham I walked back a different way vaguely along the Coal Line at ground level, finally travelling more closely along it in an Overground train that took me to Canada Water and the Jubilee Line to Waterloo.
UK Uncut met outside Waterloo station for their mystery protest taking direct action at an undisclosed location. Police liaison officers tried to find out where they were going and what they intended to do, but nobody was talking to them. Finally they set off and marched the short distance to Westminster Bridge where they spread a large piece of cloth on the roadway and painted a banner telling Parliament that collecting dodged taxes would bring in more than cutting public services.
They lifted up the banner and then ‘dropped’ it over the side of the bridge. It was a long run to take a picture of it hanging from the bridge, and I’m not sure worth the effort. It would have been better to have lowered it on the downstream side so as to get the Houses of Parliament in the background.
Another group of protesters in Parliament Square were protesting against the plans to get rid of the Human Rights Act, and some of the UK Uncut people had joined them before the end of the ‘Art’ protest. In May 2022 the government announced it was getting rid of the act and replacing it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’ which will allow the police to “perform freer functions“, Leading charities concerned with human rights have condemned the changes as affecting “the ability of individuals to hold the government and public bodies to account by bringing cases when their human rights have been breached.” They state “The Human Rights Act has greatly benefited a vast number of people from across society, improving their health and wellbeing; ensuring their dignity, autonomy, privacy, and family life; and overall improving their quality of life.” Many see the changes as yet another move towards fascism and a police state.
Biafra came from the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people, which lasted from the 10th century to 1911 and was one of Africa’s great civilisations before the European colonisation.
Biafra was incorporated into Southern Nigeria by the colonialists in the 1884 Berlin Conference and then became part of the united Nigeria in 1914. Biafrans declared independence from Nigeria in 1967, but lost the long and bloody civil war that followed, with many Biafran civilians dying of starvation.
Mass rally Supports National Gallery strikers – Trafalgar Square
After a large rally in Trafalgar Square, National Gallery staff striking against privatisation marched towards the Sainsbury Wing, holding a sit down and short rally outside after police blocked the doors to the gallery. The gallery doors were then locked.
Candy Udwin, a PCS rep at the National Gallery had been sacked for her trade union activities in connection with the plans to privatise gallery staff and the opposition to it by staff. Exhibitions in the Sainsbury wing have already been guarded by privatised staff, and the security there is also run by the private company. After 100 days of strike action the dispute was finally resolived in early October 2015 after the appointment of a new gallery director with terms and conditions of service protected and Udwin returning to work.
I stopped putting new photographs on my ‘MY LONDON DIARY’ web site at the start of Covid, because there was little of much interest to add. But also for technical reasons, as I was getting rather close to the limit of number of files for the site of 262, 144 which is a restriction imposed by Linux.
Black Livew Matter, Staines, June 2006
I was ill in March 2020, and although my symptoms didn’t match those then listed on the NHS site they did accord with some accounts by confirmed Covid victims. Fortunately they were not too serious, though I felt pretty poor for a week or so, and months later was still having problems going up hills. As a journalist I could have continued working during the lockdown, but since both my age and diabetes both increased my risks and I decided to keep away from London, crowds of any kind and meeting people indoors.
I didn’t just stay indoors, but took advantage during the lockdown to explore the area around where I live, taking bike rides of around 10 miles most mornings at a moderate speed. It was great for the first few months when there was little traffic, and our area was unusually quiet with few drivers on the three motorways and few jets taking off and landing at Heathrow. I spent a lot of time walking and cycling along the course of one of our smaller local rivers, finding places where I could photograph it. And I wore out the chainwheel of my vintage bicycle – for which I’ve only yesterday found a replacement in rather less used condition. And I’ve also put around 20,000 of my older images, mainly of London, onto Flickr.
National Demonstration for Palestine, May 2021
Later came vaccinations, and a few weeks after my second jab decided I could stay home no longer, and I resumed work, though at a limited level on May Day 2021. But I still had not solved the problem about the file limit, so while I continued to upload pictures to the agency, I shared them with friends on Facebook rather than My London Diary.
Hiroshima Day, August 2021
I had another problem too. I had been writing My London Diary on a Windows 7 computer and had now moved to Windows 10. I’d been using the same version of Dreamweaver for around 20 years for writing this and other sites, as it worked for what I needed. But to get a new version for Windows 10 would mean doubling my Adobe subscription – and giving me something far more complex than I need. I hunted for the setup disks thinking I might be able to get the old software working on my new computer, but couldn’t find them – then realised I had installed it from floppy disks which would have been thrown away when I no longer had a drive to read them.
Trans+ Pride March, June 2021
I woke up in the middle of the night a few months ago and realised a part solution to my problems. Which was to make My London Diary a front end for those albums which I had posted on Facebook but which then rapidly disappear into its extensive bowels and are seldom if ever seen again. When I’m writing pieces for >Re:PHOTO I make many searches on Google, and pictures I’ve put on Flickr (with captions and keywords) often turn up, but I don’t recall ever having seen one from FB. But I can find them by scrolling down my many albums and they do have a URL. One advantage is that the images are much larger before, though you will only see this if you right-click on them and open them in a separate tab or downlad them.
Reclaim Pride, July 2021
So far I’ve only put a few month’s work on line, and it still isn’t fully integrated with the rest of My London Diary. Here’s the page for June 2020, and then for when I restarted in May 2021. The free (and open source) web editor BlueGriffon is a little clunky compared to my ancient Dreamweaver and lacks its library elements so I can no longer automatically update elements in a large number of files. I’m also having problems finding the images for some events – and had to make new albums for a few events for a year ago.
The last image in my previous post was a general view of the north side of Deptford Broadway from close to the corner with Brookmill Road, and I commented on the ‘Antique Warehouse’ built for ‘Montague Burton, The Tailor of Taste’. I walked west along Deptfprd Broadway to take this picture from a closer viewpoint. As well as the antiques, this building was also in use as a Snooker Club, boast 16 full size tables and open 22 hours daily. Over the central door are the names Southampton and Bournemouth.
The name ‘Montague Burton the Tailor of Taste Ltd’ dates from the registration of the limited company in 1917 and was almost certainly originally visible in the large panel on the frontage although I can see no trace of it in my photograph. Burton’s architect Harry Wilson designed a whole range of similar variants of these Art Deco stores for towns and cities across the country in the 1930s, and there is a splendid ‘Spotters Guide‘ online – although it doesn’t mention Deptford. Over the central door are the names Southampton and Bournemouth, and stores often carried a list of a few of the leading branches across the frontage at the top of the ground floor windows. Burtons and Woolworths both built many branches in a Deco style and appear to have copied ideas from each other.
A slightly wonky view of No8 Deptford Broadway taken from the other side of the road. Almost all of these images were made with a 35mm Zuiko shift lens where the optical elements could be pushed both horizontally or vertically to enable me to produce images without converging or diverging verticals and play other small tricks with perspective. I still occasionally find myself trying to push other lenses in the same way and they don’t!
The Zuiko lens was a good example of this type of lens, but not entirely simple to use; it was a “manual lens” and you viewed the subject and made any necessary lens shift with the lens at its widest F2.8 aperture, then pressed a small lever to stop down the lens iris to the smaller aperture needed for the exposure. At full aperture the corners of the image were not sharp, and sometimes I failed to stop down sufficiently (or at all) to bring them into proper focus.
For this image I didn’t quite get the camera back vertical and the verticals in the building diverge, something rather less common in photographs than converging vertical. The shopfront here clearly goes across one building and a part of its neighbour (the rest of which housed the Dover Castle pub) and its missing panel allows us to view the lower part of the first floor window. Both these buildings have now been replace by a rather mediocre modern development
Deptford Seventh Day Adventist Church, New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-10f-12
Continuing west, Deptford Broadway turns into New Cross Road where this charming building was built as a private house, but around 1900 the New Cross Equitable Building Society – which was founded elsewhere in New Cross in 1866 – moved in. It remained here until the Registrar of Friendly Societies closed it down in 1984, for unsafe financial practices involving large borrowings which later became rather normal.
The building then became the Deptford Seventh Day Adventist Church as my photograph shows; in 1991 they bought and moved to rather large premises on the corner of Devonshire Drive and Egerton Drive, the former St Paul’s, built as an Anglican Church in 1865-6 by the prolific church architect S S Teulon which closed in 1978, and was then used by other church groups and scouts until becoming Greenwich Seventh Day Adventist Church. Since 1994 470 New Cross Road has been the Iyengar Yoga Institute
Zion Chapel, New Cross Rd Baptist Church, New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-10f-13
More or less next door at 466 is this short passageway leading to Zion Chapel. Its Grade II listing places it in Brockley (its electoral ward) and dates it 1846. The listing does not mention the gateway and lantern which I think add greatly to its appeal – and which my choice of viewpoint was carefully chosen to include and emphasise.
Seventh Day Adventist, Baptist, Church,New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-10f-15
Another picture shows the Adventist Church, the house flanking the passage to Zion Chapel and its lantern and gateway, with at the left a part of Addey & Stanhope School. Both schools were ancient foundations in Deptford, Stanhope School being founded by the vicar of Deptford, George Stanhope in 1714. Addey School was only founded in 1821, but the money came from the will of John Addey (1550-1606), the Master Shipwright at Deptford Dockyard who left £200 for the poor of Deptford. The two schools were merged in the late 19th century and moved to this location in 1899. It has since expanded considerably.
Fire Brigade Union, 435, New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-10f-01
This house along with the others in the blocks on both sides of Mornington Road now look considerably smarter than in 1988. It appears to have once been some kind of offices of the Fire Brigade Union, FBU, founded in 1918. But it made me feel rather strange…
Two doors down, at 439 was the site of the 1981 New Cross Fire which killed 13 young black people, with one survivor taking his own life 2 years later. The police investigation of the fire which concluded, according to Wikipedia “that there was no evidence of arson and that the fire was believed to be accidental” enraged the black community and lead to a “Black People’s Day of Action” with 20,000 people marching from New Cross to Hyde Park. The Wikipedia article states ‘The New Cross fire, described by Darcus Howe in 2011 as “the blaze we cannot forget”, is significant as a turning point in the relationship between Black Britons, the police and the media, and marks an “intergenerational alliance to expose racism, injustices and the plight of black Britons“.’
New Cross Rd, New Cross,, Lewisham, 1988 88-10g-63
This doorway is still there at 455 New Cross Road, though looking just a little different and now with a metal gate. It seems a particularly elaborate entrance to the flats above the shops, and there was something about the light in the segment window above the door which made me see it as the dome of a head, some great intelligence incorporated into the building. Or perhaps I was hallucinating.
