Wimbledon, Pensions & Hammersmith: On Saturday 19th June 2004 I paid a short visit to Wimbledon Village Fair before photographing a TUC protest calling for changes in pension law and better pensions in Westminster and then going for a short riverside walk in Hammersmith. There are more pictures from the protest on My London Diary, I’ll include the short text I wrote at the time about the day as well as some from the captions I wrote in 2004.
Wimbledon Village Fair
Home of tennis and the Wombles, Wimbledon always strikes me as an alien implant in London by some civilisation with a time machine, a sense of humour and a very fat wallet. I dropped in to the Village Fair just to see it still existed.
Pay Up For Pensions – Trade Union Congress March and Rally
Half an hour later I was back in the real world. Where companies make off with the pension funds leaving people who have paid in to schemes for years with no pensions. where other creditors come before pension holders when companies go bust.
Where millions of lower paid workers now have no employment pension rights at all. Where women have always been treated unfairly in many respects. Where government has worsened conditions for civil servants, teachers and others. As TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber says “Those who used to have good pensions now have poor pensions. Those who used to have poor pensions, now have no pension.”
Around 5-10,000 people marched down from Temple towards the Houses of ParliamentMarchers included many workers who have already lost their pensions when their companies foldedBanners on the march included many union branches including those for civil servantsPeople of all ages took part; not only the old are affected by pensions.Marchers included pensioners who had served in WW2Women have never been treated fairly over pensions by employers or stateThe pink pensions pig caught between Big Ben and Parliamentary OfficesWorkers from Samuel Jones lost their pensions when the company was taken over‘Protect the Pension Promise’, ‘NO to work ’till you drop”. The labour movement looks to the government to act on pensionsPensioners want a better deal, and the unfairness of pension theft is widely recognised
Unfortunately the New Labour Government wasn’t listening and the “the great British pension theft” begun by Margaret Thatcher and taken over by Gordon Brown continued, while ineffectual legislation introduced after the scandal when Robert Maxwell stole £460 million from the Mirror pensioners continued to allow companies to steal pensions from their workers. Despite pension protection schemes, workers can still lose when companies are taken over or fail.
River Thames at Hammersmith – Furnival Sculling Club
On the way home I went for a walk by the river in Hammersmith, another area of London strongly associated with William Morris. The Funivall Sculling Club here was established in 1896 as the Hammersmith Sculling Club For Girls – the world’s first women’s rowing club – by Dr Frederick Furnivall; it went unisex in 1901. Furnival had earlier championed rowing for working men. He served as the model for Ratty, the water rat in ‘Wind In The Willows’, as well as being involved with the preparation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Hammersmith Mall – The second building is the Furnival Sculling ClubWeeds and pollution in the ThamesPlastic bottles and other rubbish collected up by this landing stage near Hammersmith Bridge
The former BBC Riverside Studios – part converted to offices which were advertised by the banner at roof level. It was imaginatively redeveloped in 2014-6 to provide better public facilities, a riverside walkway and 165 flats.
Poplar, Bow, Leyton, North Woolwich & Silvertown: These pictures come from a number of visits to areas of London working on several different projects and are my final selection of colour panoramas made in 1995. There are a few more colour images, including some panoramas I made in 1995 in the images in the Flickr album as well as many I have not digitised; some very similar to those online, others that I now find of less interest. Some of these were taken as a part of my project on the Greenwich Meridian in London – you can see a set of 16 images from this on the urban landscape web site.
Bow Locks, River Lea, Bow Creek, Bow, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-752
Bow Locks separate the tidal River Lea from the Lea Navigation and the Limehouse Cut which offers an alternative route to the Thames to avoid the winding and dangerous Bow Creek. First built in 1850 they were remodelled in 1930. At the highest Spring tides water from Bow Creek would overtop the locks and raise the level of the canals here – the locks were modified in 2000 to stop this and avoid the silting it caused.
London Galvanizers, Leven Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 95p4-743
The Poplar Gas Coompany built a local gas works here in the 1820s at the request of the Poplar Vestry after ratepayers lobbied them to provide gas street lighting. The site was cleared in 2011 and I was commissioned to photograph the removal of toxic earth from the site using barges on Bow Creek. Something around an eigth of the material was removed in this way, tides making the removal of more difficult. The original gasholders had to be built to special safety standards because of their proximity to the West India Dock wall. The last of the gasholders was removed in 2017.
London Galvanizers had modernised their galvanizing plant here in 1983-5 and were one of the most important jobbing galvanizers in London and the Home Counties.
This street corner is close to the Meridian and I had stood here for some time outside the Chinese restaurant which was having some joinery work done. I liked the contrast between its orange paint and the blue on the opposite corner and the warm brown of the Birkbeck Tavern at right. I think I had made at least one exposure when a young girl in a red coat on roller skates came to see what I was doing – and I made this exposure as a red car come around, filling an otherwise rather empty grey space.
The Meridian also passes through this cemetery and I chose a viewpoint which included the cemetery chapel with a fine group of monuments in the foreground, I think all for people of Italian origin.
Stratford Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford, Newham,1995, 95p4-963
I’m unsure what this railway building to the east of the station was, perhaps a 1930s signal box. Parts of this area have now been redeveloped, and this has been behind fences for more than ten years and could stil be there, as least in part.
King George V Dock, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-171
Finally four pictures from a walk along Woolwich Manor Way, this taken looking westwards along the south side of the King George V Dock. You can see the bridge over the dock entrance at right and the City Airport terminal and Canary Wharf at the end of the dock.
Royal Albert Dock Basin, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-161
At left is the old swing bridge that took the road over the dock entrance from the basin. To its right is the elevated DLR and the pumping station at the centre of the Gallions roundabout. Further on only two buildings were standing along the side of the Basin, the Gallions Hotel and the Royal Docks Pumping Station.
Containers, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-162
Land to the south of the Royal Albert Dock Basin just east of Woolwich Manor Way.
King George V Lock, Woolwich Manor Way, North Woolwich, Newham, 1995, 95p9-153
This swing bridge across the dock entrance is still there.
Royal Victoria Dock, Silvertown, Newham, 1995, 95p11-262
This was taken from Silvertown Way, looking across the Royal Victoria Dock. There are still cranes along the dockside here but the foreground now has flats. The Millenium Mills are still there, but there is nothing in the picture where the Excel Centre now stands and none of the other new developments on the north side of the dock. The council flats at the right have been demolished.
You can see these and some other colour pictures I took in 1995 at 1995 London Colour.
Chariot Festival & Vigil for Custody Deaths: On Sunday 17th June 2012 I photographed the Rathayatra Chariots Festival in Hyde Park, leaving as it set off to go to Brixton. Families of men killed in police custody were holding Fathers Day vigils outside police stations and at Brixton, the family of Ricky Bishop was joined by the sisters of Sean Rigg, whose inquest 4 years after his death there had just started and was in the news.
Hare Krishna Chariot Festival – Hyde Park
Effigy of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) the founder of ISKCON (Hare Krishna)
The annual Rathayatra Chariots Festival is now one of the largest and most colourful religious processions in London with more than a thousand devotees pulling the three giant chariots through the streets from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ and dancing.
The ceremony which began at the Jagannatha temple in Puri, Orissa on the Indian east coast at least a thousand years ago celebrates the time when Krishna grew up on earth; when he became a great lord he moved away from his childhood friends who were cowherds and they came with a cart and tried to kidnap him and take him back to their village.
Jagannath means ‘Master of the Universe’ and his name and the chariots in the festival give us the word “juggernaut”.
The first Rathayatra festival in the west was in San Francisco in 1967 and two years later it was begun in London by disciples from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (better known as the Hare Krishna.)
Krishna, his sister Subhadra and elder brother Balarama each have a chariot and an effigy of the founder of ISKCON, C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) is also carried on one of the chariots in the festival.
Fathers Day Vigil for Custody Deaths – Brixton Police Station
At the vigil outside Brixton Police Station the family of Ricky Bishop was joined by the sisters of Sean Rigg; both were young men in their twenties died after being taken into the police station, Bishop in 2001 and Rigg in 2008.
On My London Diary you can read more about the two deaths and the steps police have taken to stop the truth about their deaths emerging with lies and failures to investigate. The inquiry by the IPCC wailed to question the officers concerned until 8 month after Sean Rigg’s death and the inquest was delayed for four years, beginning a few days before this protest. It was only because of the huge battles by his family that many of the facts emerged. A report into the IPCC investigation in 2013 had concluded they had committed a series of major blunders.
Two months after this vigil, Wikipedia states ‘the inquest jury returned a narrative verdict which concluded that the police had used “unsuitable and unnecessary force” on Rigg, that officers failed to uphold his basic rights and that the failings of the police “more than minimally” contributed to his death.’
Other vigils were taking place on the same day at Birmingham West Midlands Police HQ and in High Wycombe for Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah, in Manchester for Anthony Grainger, Slough for Philmore Mills and at New Scotland Yard for Azelle Rodney.
North Woolwich Photos: My account of my day on Friday 16 June 2006 is rather short – and manages to include a mis-spelling: “I took a trip to North Woolich and made some pictures there.” And the 45 pictures I posted had only the additional heading “North Woolwich, Thames, Royal Docks & Silvertown” but no captions. I think they deserve more, so I’ll correct that for a few of them in this post.
Woolwich Ferry, North Woolwich, 2006
The ferry is the James Newman, built in 1963 and named after a prominent local figure who was Mayor of Woolwich in 1923–25 and was taken out of service in 2018. But I hadn’t arrived on the ferry but had put my folding bike onto a Silverlink service on the North London Line which then ran from Richmond to North Woolwich Station (the section from Stratford to North Woolwich close at the end of 2006.)
The building in the background of the second image is North Woolwich Station, though it had by that date been abandoned by trains which stopped being used as a station in 1979, replaced by a considerably less grand and basic structure on its south side. For some years it was a museum and this fine 1854 building is now home to the New Covenant Church. My picture is taken from the riverside path.
Old Bargehouse Draw Dock and Causeway
Next came three pictures showing the reverside flats just past the Old Bargehouse Draw Dock and Causeway at the end of Bargehouse Road. Until the Woolwich Free Ferry was introduced in 1889 this was where ferries ran across the river to Woolwich. On this occasion I’d cycled past the remains of the Free Ferry without taking any pictures, probably because I had photographed them on several occasions before. You can see the other two pictures of the flats on My London Diary.
I took a few pictures looking across the River Thames most of which I didn’t post on My London Diary and then this one after I’d crossed the lock gates of the King George V Dock entrance and had come to the lock entrance to the Royal Albert Dock Basin. The building here has since been replaced by the flats of Lockside Way.
The riverside path – part of the Capital Way – continues north to an abrupt end close to Atlantis Avenue and this view from its end shows the remains of the jetty which brought coal to the Beckton Gas Works. I retraced my path, taking more pictures – some concrete pipe sections, a disused lock gate and a lorry park on My London Diary and then made my way to Woolwich Manor Way.
Royal Albert Dock
Here I could photograph across the dock. At the left are new flats built between the dock and University Way and in the foreground are two yellow towers carrying approach lights for the runway of London City Airport.
A plane takes off from London City Airport
The haze that you see in this picture, taken with a 300mm (equivalent) lens is a little more obvious than in the other pictures thanks to air pollution, which the airport contributes to.
I made some more photographs in North Woolwich – tthere was a Football World Cup taking place in Germany – England were eventually knocked out by Portugal in the quarter-finals.
London City Airport DLR station had opened in December 2005 and I was able to take photographs from there both of the Airport Terminal and of Tate & Lyle’s sugar refinery.
Thame Barrier Park
I took more pictures in Silvertown and Canning Town, some of which you can see on My London Diary, before making my way back to Central London. There I took some more pictures around Brick Lane, some of which I put on My London Diary in a seperate post. It had been a good day for me.
The ‘Carnival of Dirt‘ united activist groups from the UK and around the world in a funeral procession for the many killed by mining and extraction companies, powerful financial organisations whose crimes are legitimized by the City of London.
Mining companies have exploited mineral resources in countries around the world, mainly in the majority countries to feed the industrial development of countries such as ours, and have done so with little or no regard for the environment or the people who work in their mines or live in the areas around, creating large amounts of pollution and destroying vital habitats and traditional ways of life, driven by producing minerals at the lowest possible cost.
Many of those companies are based in London, in part because of our imperial past and are listed on the London Stock Exchange and trade on the London Metal Exchange. They are propped up by our pension funds and protected by our government and even allowed to get away with evading millions (if not billions) of UK taxes – as well as often evading taxes in the countries where they mine. Among the major criminals named were Xstrata, Glencore International, Rio Tinto, Vedanta, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, BP and Shell.
Turtle & Dugong – Xstrata has destroyed their homeland in the Macarthur River
The carnival procession began at St Pauls and stopped at the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England and the London Metal Exchange for speeches about the various crimes, before going to stop for lunch at Altab Ali Park.
There had been several heavy showers and by lunchtime my zoom lenses were all steamed up internally – zooming draws in damp air which condenses on the glass – and I only had a 16mm fisheye giving totally clear images. I needed to dry the others out and decided I had taken enough pictures and it was time for me to go home – although the carnival was going to continue to the West End and end with a ‘Reclaim the Streets’ style party starting on the Embankment at 6pm.
I described the event at length in 2012 and here I’ll quote some of it, but you can still read it all at Carnival of Dirt on My London Diary.
The funeral cortege that gathered at St Pauls included a large snake, a turtle and a tortoise, a reminder of XStrata’s criminal diversion of the McArthur River, destroying the ecosystem and despoiling the sacred sites of Australian aborigines.
There were coffins representing the dead and naming many of the companies involved one said ‘Glencore Values – Toxic Assets, Toxic Environments‘, another ‘XStrata – X-Rated on Human Rights‘ and pointed out the CEO Mick Davis “Gets £30 million to stay in job while 2 Dead 80 Injured protesting at Tintaya mine in Chile.’
A small coffin represent the over 18,000 child miners in the Phillipines, while another read ‘10 Million Dead Through Conflict in 16 years equals a 9/11 every 2 days‘. A black coffin carried on the side the message ‘Resist Corporate Terrorism‘ and on the top the message ‘London Metal Exchange – Setting the Global Standard in Bloodshed‘ with red drops bleeding from it. Another testified to the genocide in West Papua where Indonesian troops have torched villages.
Many carried placards with photographs of a few of the better-known activists who have been murdered for standing up to corporate terrorism, and marchers distributed a leaflet naming 15 of them – Valmore Locarno, Fr Fausto Tentorio, Victor Orcasita, Alexandro Chacon, Fr Reinel Restropo, Dr Gerry Ortega, Armin Marin, Dr Leonard Co, Elizer Billanes, Jorge Eliecer, Floribert Chebeya, Raghunath Jhodia, Abhilash Jhodia, Damodar Jhodia, Petrus Ayamiseba. Others carried photographs of unnamed and horribly mutilated victims.
Grenfell 8 Years On – 14th June 2025: Usually I write about events in the past, but today I’m thinking about something that will take place this evening in Notting Hill on the eight anniversary of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. I’ll put the invitation to join this evening’s silent walk by Grenfell United at the end of this post.
2018
Eight years have passed, a long and detailed inquiry has taken place, but still we have seen no justice. Before long the tower will be taken down and the government will be hoping that we will all forget the terrible crimes that led to the fire.
2018
The essential details were largely known well before the inquiry began, within a month or two of the fire. More would have come out in court had prosecutions begun then. Instead we have had 8 years with little or no action, and certainly no justice.
2018
Eight days after the fire, Architects for Social Housing held an open meeting with residents, housing campaigners, journalists, lawyers, academics, engineers and architects about it, and the following month produced a report, THE TRUTH ABOUT GRENFELL TOWER.
2018
I went to many of the silent walks that have taken place to remember Grenfell – the images here are from the first anniversary on 14th June 2018, when around 10,000 people took part. I’l post the link to this event and to that in 2019 at the bottom of the post. As well as many more pictures these also contain more of my comments on the fire and its aftermath. And you can find more events I covered related to the fire by a search for ‘Grenfell’ on My London Diary.
2018
Grenfell United
Please join us at the Silent Walk for the 8th Anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June.
8 years on. No arrests. No justice. The tower is a stark reminder of what happened that night but the government has decided it’s time to bring it down.
Walk with us to show them you still stand united with the Grenfell Community. They want the tower out of sight. But we won’t stop until the criminals are brought to justice.
The Grenfell Silent Walk to remember the 72 people who died at Grenfell, to honour their memory and demand justice starts at 6pm at Notting Hill Methodist Church. Please wear green in solidarity.
Carnival, Racist Deportations & more Naked Cyclists: I began work on Saturday 13 June 2009 photographing a carnival procession in Carshalton in the south of London, travelled to Islington in north London for a protest against Britain’s racist and inhuman immigration policies and finally covered the uncovered cyclists taking part in the 2009 London World Naked Bike Ride, photographing the preparations in Hyde Park ad the start of the ride there and then on the ride at Waterloo and in the West End.
Carshalton Carnival Procession – St Helier – Carshalton
Sutton’s May Queen 2009 came to look at my cameras
My account of this event on My London Diary begins with a slightly unkind description “of the St Helier estate, a huge sprawling area built by the LCC 1930 to a kind of debased Garden City plan almost entirely without the charm of those earlier developments on what had previously mainly been the lavender fields of Mitcham.”
The procession began next to the “St Helier Hospital [built] in the modern style of the 30s, facing the imaginatively named St Helier Open Space” outside the Sutton Arena leisure centre and as usual I found the more interesting pictures were those I took there rather than on long procession to Carshalton where it was to end at a fair in Carshalton Park.
I’d come to the carnival largely because I was then working on a project on London’s May Queens, with several groups of them from across south London taking part in the procession, along with various other local organisations. And a Dalek and others in fancy dress.
The Rotary had brought their Father Christmas coming out unseasonably from the chimney of a small four-wheeled house towed behind a car at the rear of the procession. He’d been there too when I photographed the carnival previously in 2004.
It was a long an hot trek to Carshalton from St Helier, and the procession paused at Carshalton College for a break. I’d walked enough and made my way to the station missing the rest of the event and the funfair in Carshalton Park.
Speak out against Racism and Deportations – Angel, Islington
Britain’s major political parties at the prompting of our mainstream press have long promoted myths about migrants and asylum seekers, the more rabid of our tabloids in particular promoting the views of clearly racist columnists who publish stories about them getting homes and huge benefits, depriving the working class of housing, pushing down wages, taking “our jobs“, making it impossible to see doctors and more.
Nothing could of course be further from the truth. It’s the greed of the wealthy and government policies that have led to these problems – and without the migrants we would be in a considerably worse position. It’s something that is glaringly obvious when we need to make use of the NHS which would have collapsed entirely without them, but also in other areas. Demonising migrants is a deliberate policy divert public attention and anger away from the real problem of our class-based society. Divide and rule by our rulers,
Most of those who settle here from abroad want nothing more than to work and contribute to our society, though we make it hard for many of them to do so. They want a better life, particularly for their children and often work long hours for it. Migrant workers who clean offices are often more qualified than those who work in them – but their qualifications are not recognised here, and asylum seekers are unable to work except in the illegal economy.
Some facts:
Over a quarter of NHS doctors were born abroad (and others are the sons and daughters of migrants);
Immigrants are 60% less likely to claim benefits than people born in Britain;
Studies sho immigration has no significant effect on overall employment, or on unemployment of those born in Britain.
This campaigning protest in a busy shopping area outside one of London’s busier Underground Stations was organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group and was also part of a campaign by the Suarez family to prevent the deportation of John Freddy Suarez Santander, a 21 year-old father with a 3 year-old son. He came here from Colombia when he was six and grew up here. As a teenager he committed an offence and served 7 months in a young offenders institution.
Two years after he had served his sentence, the New Labour government passed a law to deport all immigrants with a criminal record, and an order was made for him to be sent back to Colombia, where he has no remaining relatives. His case in 2009 was still being considered at the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR generally asserts that juvenile offences should not be seen as a part of a criminal record, but the Home Office decided the month before this protest to deport him anyway, and this was only stopped by his family going to the airport.
I’ve written rather often about this event, intended as a protest against the domination of our lives by ‘car culture’ which has resulted in our towns and cities and transport networks being designed around the priorities of motorists and road transport rather than us as pedestrians and cyclists – and to serve the interests of the companies that make cars and lorries. And it has resulted in illegal levels of pollution causing massive health problems.
Although it’s certainly an eye-catching event, it isn’t always very clear why it is taking place to those standing on the pavements, gazint at it in amazement, laughing and recording it on their phones. It’s probably good for our tourist industry, though I rather think London has too many tourists anyway, particularly as I struggle to walk over Westminster Bridge.
Heres one paragraph of what I wrote in 2009 – you can read the rest on My London Diary.
Some riders did have slogans on their bodies, mainly about oil and traffic, and some bikes carried A4 posters reading REAL RIGHTS FOR BIKE and CELEBRATE BODY FREEDOM or had flags stating ‘CURB CAR CULTURE’ which made clear the purpose of the event to the careful onlooker, but for most people it seemed simply a spectacle of naked or near-naked bodies. Though of course also a rare treat for any bicycle spotters among them.
I didn’t censor the pictures I put on line from the event though I’ve carefully selected those in this post. I think that there is nothing offensive about the naked human body but I included the following statement with the link to more pictures I posted then and which you can still see online.
Warning: these pictures show men and women with no clothes on. Do not click this link to more pictures if pictures of the naked human body may offend you.
Police Close Down Runnymede Magna Carta Festival: A couple of weeks ago I got on my e-bike and tried to cycle from Egham up Coopers Hill Lane which goes steeply up the wooded hill above the Thames flood plain at Runnemede. It wasn’t a great success as although the motor could cope with the gradient with a little more than usual help from my pedalling, the surface of the lane – here just a footpath was far too uneven and broken and I kept having to stop to prevent myself coming off the bike, eventually having to give up and get off and walk, pushing the bike for the final hundred yards or so.
Police turned away people coming to the Festival For Democracy issuing exclusion orders.
Close to the top I reached the metalled section of the lane and cycled on, past the fence I had gone through a gap in in ten years ago on my way to visit the Runnymede Eco Village and past the road leading to the expensive private estate that now occupies the site. On Friday 12th June 2015 I had cycled up the same route by pedal power alone, locked up my bike and walked to the Eco Village.
There I was warmly greeted and shown around the site, as you can read on My London Diary. The residents were busy getting ready for the Magna Carta weekend four day free ‘Festival For Democracy’ which was due to start the following day, celebrating both the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta in the nearby meadows 800 years earlier and the third anniversary of the setting up of the village.
Erecting the main stage on the festival field
Although I’d not lived there I found it – as I commented in 2015- “seemed a great place to live so long as you were able to put up with a slightly spartan lifestyle. At my age I feel a need for hot and cold running water and a more pampered existence, but at least in summer a more open existence in the woods has its attractions.” It was a community that felt truly positive.
The community aim to respect the forest and live with it rather than destroy it
During my time there that day it became increasingly obvious that the authorities had decided that the free festival was not going to take place, although it was an entirely legal event and would have caused no distress to local residents with whom the villagers have good relations, and some at least were looking forward to the event.
The electronic music stage for the festival
Orders had clearly come down, possibly from royalty itself via our government that the festival must be stopped by any means whatever the law. And police had come telling lies that they about a cock and bull story of a ‘rave’ that was going to take place on a neighbouring football field that they had come to ‘protect’ the village from.
The invented story of an illegal rave was used by police and Surrey County Council to justify an order under Section 63 of the The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which allows police power to restrict access, remove people and issue exclusion orders, and they used this to stop and turn away those coming to the ‘Festival For Democracy’.
Kettles on the fire for tea – and all were offered various infusions
Section 63 is specifically aimed at stopping illegal raves and should only be used to prevent ‘amplified music’ being played during the night, and certainly not for the festivals such as this one – hence the need for the authorities to spread rumours of an illegal rave. As well as being turned away, people were being given exclusion orders banning them from coming within five miles of the village, and several arrests were made for breach of this. The police action seemed a clear abuse of a law intended for quite different purposes, and I will be surprised if any of those arrested ever reach court.
One woman had built her home around a fallen tree
At the time I wrote:
It would indeed seem a travesty if at a time when we are celebrating 800 years of freedom under the law against the arbitrary power of the state achieved at Runnymede, the authorities should abuse the law by using those arbitrary powers to prevent a people’s celebration of freedom.
The festival starts, but police are turning people away.
This wasn’t the only action by which the state tried to stop the festival – and you can read more on My London Diary in Police threaten Runnymede Magna Carta festival which was at the time also posted on the now long defunct Demotix website. They didn’t entirely succeed, but it was on a rather smaller scale with so many being prevented from attending, though others managed to climb over the fences around the area. The account there also has many more pictures of the Eco Village.
Perhaps rather than celebrating Magna Carta we should all now be out on the streets and demanding a new charter for the freedoms we thought had been won 800 years ago.
Since 2015 we have instead seen governments introducing yet more restrictive public order laws and used them to take action against political protests and used to imprison peaceful protesters for long stretches, and Labour has continued these policies .
People’s Assembly against Austerity 2.0: Last Saturday, 7th June 2025 the People’s Assembly had organised what they hoped would be a huge anti-austerity demonstration against Labour’s Austerity 2.0 which seems a return to the policies of the Cameron and other Tory governments, cutting spending on public services while ensuring the rich continue to get richer.
They say:
Austerity is not an inevitability; it is a political choice. By sticking to her arbitrary ‘fiscal rules,’ Rachel Reeves is plunging the country into more crisis. By choosing to spend money on arms rather than public services, social security and our NHS, this government is actively impoverishing us. We say no – and we mean it.
Recent government announcements of a huge increase in defence spending are based on a return to the worst excesses of the Cold War and a false narrative of Russian invasion of all of Europe – something that the criminal and disastrous invasion of Ukraine when what Putin thought would be over in three days has turned into years of attrition, ruining the Russian economy, actually makes less likely.
Arms manufacturers have always played on our fears to boost their profits – and they are the only people who come out of wars as winners – both the Ukrainian people and the Russian people will end up as losers whatever the final outcome in Ukraine. And it was them and the NATO military hawks who kept up the isolation of Russia and the manipulation of politics in Ukraine and elsewhere after the fall of the USSR rather than welcoming Russia into our fold.
Already our government has drastically cut the aid budget, probably the most important expenditure to promote peace across the world, and is also planning huge cuts in benefits in an attack on the most vulnerable in our society.
It has also continued its attacks on migrants with a new Immigration White Paper which will attack our migrant communities and affect millions of migrants, continuing the racist policies of previous governments. We need migrants, particularly as our population is ageing. Those already here are making a positive contribution to our country – and would do more if we introduced safe ways for them to come here, particularly to join relatives already living here, allowed asylum seekers who can to work, recognised their qualification and made it easier for them to become British citizens. We need a positive approach to migrants rather than the increasingly hostile one.
Many on the protest came to protest about the increasing privatisation of the NHS and the failures to adequately resource it, about the cuts in education and about misguided and inadequate housing policies which have led to huge increases in rents – while making landlords wealthy. About the increases in energy prices and in prices generally which are making many poor. About the failure to abolish to two child cap on benefits which has put so many children into poverty.
Kid Starver Out – and a cut up Labour Party card.
We live in a country with massive inequalities and with governments that are inatroducing policies to increase these. The protest called for ‘Welfare not Warfare’, to ‘Tax the Rich’ and ‘Stop the Cuts’.
NEU protesters
We would not need to bring in tax increases to greatly increase the amount of tax the country receives but could bring in billions by simply clamping down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. We should outlaw all those schemes that enable companies and individuals who earn money in the UK from not paying taxes. We need to change the law so HMRC would work to a simple rule – if you earn it here, you pay tax on it here – and enforce it. It would probably bring in at least another £20 billion a year.
Saturday’s protest was not the huge demonstration that the People’s Assembly had hoped for, though it was a respectable size, perhaps 3-5,000 people. The drastic and inaccurate weather forecast may have put some people off, but the many groups who backed the event only came in small numbers. Sometimes only just enough to carry their banner.
Revolutionary Communist Party
By far the largest and loudest bloc on the march was that of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Until 2024 called ‘Socialist Appeal’ it was relaunched under this new name. Back around the 1970s it was the Trotskyist Labour group ‘Militant tendency’, set up around the newspaper ‘Militant’ in 1964 and finally proscribed by the Labour Party in 1982.
Nicaragua, Votes For Women, Al Quds Day: Sunday 10th June 2018 my work began in Trafalgar Square where Nicaraguans called for an end to the current government violence in their country. I then photographed a march commemorating the extension of the UK vote to include many but not all adult women a hundred years earlier. Then I went to the Saudi Embassy where there were two groups facing each other, kept well separate by police. It was Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day and supporters of the oppressed people of Palestine had come to protest there, with a counter-protest by Zionists.
End government killings in Nicaragua – Trafalgar Square
Nicaraguans came to call for an end to the violent attacks by police on protests in Nicaragua where they have killed over 100 protesters, injured over 600, and others have been unjustly detained, tortured and some raped.
The government atrocities have been condemned by he CIDH (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) and Amnesty International and this was one of protests across Europe in solidarity, demanding the resignation of president Daniel Ortega and his wife and and vice-president Rosario Murillo and free and fair elections.
Women wore purple, white and green head scarves to make up three strands of a huge procession in the suffragette colours through London marking 100 years since many British women gained the right to vote.
The 1918 act gave the vote to the first time to all men over 21 and to men like my father over 18 serving in the armed forces, but did not bring in universal suffrage for women. Women had to be over 30 and meet a property requirement. It was another ten years before all women over 21 – including my mother who was by then 23 – could vote.
My mother made no secret of her support for the Conservative party, displaying their poster in our front window at every election. My father, who kept quiet about his politics to avoid conflict at home, went into the polling station every time to cancel out her vote with one for Labour.
I left the march as the end of it passed Piccadilly Circus on its way to Westminster.
Zionists protest against Al Quds Day – Saudi embassy, Mayfair
As well as the official Zionist protest kept behind barriers by police around a hundred yards away from the pro-Palestine Al Quds day event there were also a number of extreme right football thugs roaming the area, together with some well-known Zionists. Some of these managed to come close to the Al Quds day event and shout at it and at times there was some forceful policing as the thugs were moved away.
The official Zionist Federation protest kept behind the barriers, shouting at the Palestinian supporters, most of whom simply ignored them though a handful faced them at a distance and shouted back. There seemed to be rather fewer of the Zionists than in earlier years and there were almost certainly more Jewish protesters in the Al Quds day event which was supported by several groups and numerous individuals from the Jewish left as well as the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta, who always attract a great deal of venomous anti-Semitic shouting from the Zionists.
There had been considerable pressure on the UK government to ban the display of the Hezbollah flag, which was then still legal here, as the same flag was used by both the military wing, banned in 2008 and the political wing of the party which at the time had two ministers in the Lebanese government. Despite this the UK government banned the group as a whole in 2019, making the display of this flag from then on a criminal offence.
Protesters hold the largest Palestinian flag ever made, 70m long to symbolise the 70 years since the Nakba
The much larger crowd who had come to the protest organised by the Justice for Palestine Committee and supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission and a wide range of pro-Palestinian organisations was squashed into a small area in front of the Saudi Embassy.
There was a large police presence in the area that kept them well apart from the counter-protest by the Zionist Federation and stopped the football hooligans from attacking this peaceful protest.
Al Quds Day was established by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 and is celebrated in many countries particularly across the Arab world. There have been events like this one in London for over 30 years.
The protest this year was a gesture of defiance to the demonisation campaign and the ongoing murders by Israeli troops of innocent Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip commemorating 70 years since Israel was formed on expropriated Palestinian land.
