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Anti-Fascists Oppose the Far Right – 1 Feb 2025

Anti-Fascists Oppose the Far Right: Last Saturday, 1st February 2025, I photographed one of two marches taking place in London, kept well separate by a large force of police who had restricted the protests to widely separated routes though ending close to each other.

Supporters of “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley Lennon) currently in jail after pleading guilty to contempt of court had called a protest to demand his release, in a march they described as ‘Unite The Kingdom’ and ‘Stop the Isolation’. Robinson is apparently in solitary confinement in HMP Woodhill for his own safety, and has refused to remove the video he was sentenced for sharing which is pinned to the top of his ‘X’ account. They began their march at Waterloo Station, marching across Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square.

In response Stand Up to Racism had called a counter-demonstration to oppose this march and more generally the rise of the far-right in Britain. This met in St James’s Street just off Piccadilly and marched to a rally in Whitehall.

According to press reports both marches were of a similar size, perhaps between five and ten thousand marchers, though some at the extreme right event claimed a hundred thousand had marched.

During the Covid lockdown there were no protests for me to photograph and I began to post here on >Re:PHOTO much more frequently about my older work, both protests I had covered in earlier years and also my walks in and around London photographing buildings and urban landscape in the previous century.

So for some months there was nothing for me to add to my posts in My London Diary web site. Which was just as well as I was getting uncomfortably close to the limit of the number of files and folders I could host on the web space I have – which hosts this blog and a number of other small web sites. That limit is 262,144 and currently My London Diary has 194,257 Files and 2,938 Folders, with >Re:PHOTO taking up most of the rest. So even when I was able to cover protests again I had to change my ways, posting the images in Facebook albums with just a link and one or two pictures on my own web space. Finally I gave up new postings on My London Diary in January 2022, though the site remains in place and I think is an important archive.

Time moves on and although I’m still photographing protests I am attending rather fewer than in earlier years and taking things easier. While ten years ago I might sometimes work on my feet for five or six hours, now after around three I’m often feeling too tired to continue, pack up and go home. And while back then I might go our five days a week, now its generally one or two, mainly on Saturdays. And while in past years I would certainly have tried to cover both marches, this year I chose just one, the counter-protest by Stand Up To Racism.

Over the years I have covered quite a few extreme right events, but I decided to leave this one to younger photographers. At many previous events I’ve been threatened, pointed out as someone who should be attacked, spat at and more, despite trying to cover them and report them fairly even though I disagree with their views. People have tried to stop me photographing and have tried to grab my equipment and police haven’t always been ready to help.

At the Stand Up To Racism event there was a far more positive atmosphere. Generally people were happy, sometimes even eager, to be photographed and I was able to walk freely through a packed crowd before the march began making pictures, as well as inside the march itself.

Of course the people at the protest were angry at the way the country (and the world) seems to be drifting towards the right, with more draconian legislation restricting our right to protest, long sentences for peaceful protesters and the kind of political policing we have seen over demonstrations calling for an end to the killing in Palestine. And some at least would be ready to fight the fascists on the streets as people did in the 1930s at Cable Street and elsewhere – and Jewish groups did after the end of the war.

*Anti-fascists from the IWW – Industrial Workers of the World were being watched closely by a squad of police*

But while being determined to stop the drift to the right in Britain – which appears to have been accelerated by the coming to power of Labour with a large majority – this was a march of the reasonable, the kind of people who will look at evidence rather than believe the lies and manipulations of the right wing media, people who embody the kind of values which I feel are important and which gave Britain hope after defeating the Nazis and led to the setting up of the welfare state, with the NHS and an Education Act that tried to provide a free and fair education. The kind of British values which I think the majority of us still believe in although they have been seriously eroded by successive governments for the benefit of that small minority – the 1% in what is becoming an increasingly unequal society.

*Police arrest a man after several flares were set off.*

My pictures tell something of the story of the march. It was entirely peaceful. I missed seeing the handful of the extreme right who had come to try to disrupt it and were arrested for breaching the restrictions that police had laid down. I saw only one person arrested, for setting off a smoke flare. I saw the smoke from several flares around a hundred yards away and rushed towards it, but the crowd of marchers across the whole of Piccadilly made this difficult and by the time I arrived a young man was being held by police surrounded by a crowd yelling for them to release him.

*NEU marchers. Many trade unions supported the march*

I stayed with the march until the end of it went into Whitehall where there was to be a longer rally than that before the start. Suddenly I felt rather tired it decided it was time to go home.

There are two albums on Facebook with my pictures from the Stand Up to Racism march:
Stop The Far Right National Anti-Racist Protest. London
More from the Stop The Far Right National Anti-Racist Protest

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Save Brixton Arches: 3rd Anniversary – 2018

Save Brixton Arches: 3rd Anniversary Action. On Sunday 4th February 2018 campaigners marked the third anniversary of the announcement by Network Rail of their plans to redevelop the Brixton Arches with a rally and a three minute silence.

Railway Arches are an incredibly important part of our towns and cities. When the railways were being built in the 19th century putting the lines on viaducts was a cheaper option for the railway developers than laying tracks at ground level, so we got long viaducts coming into the centre of London and elsewhere.

These arches became both an important feature of the city landscape but also a dynamic boost to the economy, providing low-cost premises for small businesses to start and grow until they needed to move out to larger premises and new generations of businesses would take over these spaces. In particular they provided premises for various car repair companies and in more recent years small breweries. And in Brixton in particular a large range of low-cost shops.

The arches used to belong to the railway companies, and on privatisation passed to Network Rail. But around a dozen years ago Network Rail saw the potential of selling them off to the private sector. The arches were a relatively small earner for them, bringing in a little over £80 million a year in rents.

They offered 150 year leases to the private sector, at first without any consultation with the businesses and communities served by them, something the sale for £1.46 billion was criticised for in a 2019 report from the National Audit Office. Network Rail retained the freehold so they can continue to have access to the arches if they need. The rents for the arches were expected to increase by 54% over the next 3 or 4 years, making them too expensive for many tenants.

Also in 2019, the House of Commons public accounts committee criticised both Network Rail and the Dept of Transport for the sale which means “future tenants have fewer rights – and existing tenants no longer have an option to extend their leases.”

Committee Chair Meg Hillier is quoted in The Guardian as saying “Ultimately, government took a short-term decision to sell a profitable asset to plug a funding gap. We remain unconvinced that the sale represents the best value for the public and the public-sector finances in the long term.“

Brixton has been particularly hard hit by Network Rail’s plans to make more cash from the arches as those along Atlantic Road and Brixton Station Road were an important shopping area in the centre of the town – often described as the ‘heart of Brixton‘.

Network Rail ganged up with Lambeth Council to tear this heart out from the town by refurbishing thes arches which would enable them to “triple the rents, insert shiny new businesses and provide Brixton with even more over-priced bars and restaurants than the town’s citizens can shake a stick at.”

*Spoken Word artist Potent Whisper – hear his #OurBrixton*

The Council ignored a long campaign to keep the arches, and failed to do anything to protect the interests of the tenants or of nearby market traders who feel they will be adversely effected while the refurbishment is taking place – and with possible dangers to the general public from potentially dangerous airborne particles during the removal of asbestos.

The work was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2016, but was only started the day after this protest in February 2018. The Save Brixton Arches campaign were calling for it to be abandoned as the plans for the work fail to include proper fire safety precautions and will severely restrict access by emergency services to local businesses and the railway and station.

*Protesters form a human chain in front of the arches*

They also called for an investigation into local Labour MP Helen Hayes. Until shortly before she was elected in 2015 she had been a senior partner in the firm Allies & Morrison which had made the recommendation for the ‘improvement’ of the arches in 2013, though she has denied any personal involvement. A&M have been involved in many contentious ‘regeneration’ schemes with developers and councils across London which opponents describe as social cleansing.

*The boards behind used to be thriving businesses – forced out*

Network Rail sold its arches to ‘The Arch Company’. 50% owned by US-based private equity firm Blackstone and TT Group, one of the UK’s largest, privately owned property investment firms who since then as well as raising rents have refurbished 1,400 arches. They have also made some efforts to reduce the impacts of the rent rises and negotiated a tenant charter. Blackstone are now said to be ‘on track’ to buy out TT and take full control of the arches.

More about the protest and many more pictures at Save Brixton Arches: 3rd Anniversary Action.

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Make Poverty History – 2005

Make Poverty History: Twenty years ago on February 3rd 2005 I was one of the 20,000 or so people who packed Trafalgar Square on a Thursday lunchtime to see and hear Nelson Mandela speak in the first major real event in the UK’s ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign.

Make Poverty History was a coalition of charities, religious groups, trade unions, campaigning groups and celebrities which had come together here and in a dozen other countries around the world to promote trade justice, to cancel the debts that were crippling poorer countries and to press for more aid and for this to be better targeted at improving the lives of people in the recipient countries.

The campaign in the UK had officially been launched on TV on New Year’s Day on the same day that Britain took over the Presidency of the G8 – and in July was to host a G8 summit that was supposed to be largely about poverty in Africa, but this rally was the first major national event.

I’d severely misjudged the numbers that would turn up for the rally, arriving only minutes before it was due to start and was unable to make my way through a densely packed crowd to anywhere near where the the speakers – including Mandela would be speaking.

This was an occasion when a long and heavy fast telephoto lens would have come in handy, but I’ve never owned one of these, preferring whenever possible to work at close range. But the relatively small zoom lens I had with a focal length of 200mm and a maximum aperture of only f5.6 did just about allow me to take some recognisable images of what was happening on the stage in the distance.

It helped that Nikon was still sticking to its conviction that its DX format, a sensor half the size of a 35mm frame was all that was needed for digital photography, giving the lens on my D70 the equivalent view of a 300mm on full-frame.

*he ‘pills’ are a petition calling for urgent action on aids, to get 3 miilion people on treatment by 2005.*

But I was please to have been able to capture some of the event – such as the handshake between Mandela and Bob Geldoff and children coming to meet Mandela, even if someone’s head got in my way a little of the time and those 6Mp images could perhaps have been just a little sharper.

*Mosquito nets can help stamp out malaria in Africa*

Later I was able to return to focal lengths more in my comfort zone, with a fisheye to show the crowds and more normal wide-angle views of people in the crowds.

*The only way to be photographed with Nelson Mandela at the Rally*

The ‘Make Poverty History’ movement lasted in the UK until 31st Januarly 2006, though relations between some of the 540 groups involved were very difficult. Oxfam in particular was seen as far to keep to follow a ‘New Labour’ line and some other major NGOs were also often felt to be insufficiently radical. Even though these groups dominated the campaign the TV adverts which had been aired at the start were soon banned by Ofcom as they were deemed to be “‘wholly or mainly political’ in nature, since they aimed to ‘achieve important changes'” – surely the whole point of the campaign.

Clearly the campaign had begun to disturb the rich and powerful who were feeling their privilege and profits from impoverishing the poor might be at risk. But although the campaign raised awareness of the problems its actual achievements were rather limited.

Bust of Nelson Mandela, sculpted by Ian Walters, commisioned by the GLC to mark the 70th anniversary of the African National Congress in 1982, and unveiled by Oliver Tambo in 1985. It records Mandela’s imprisonment in 1962, with added inscriptions marking his release in 1990, the Nobel Peace prize in 1993 and his inauguration as the first president of a free South Afrrica in 1994.

You can read more about the event and seem many more pictures on My London Diary

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Housing and Planning Bill March – 2016

Housing and Planning Bill March: On Saturday 30th January 2016 housing activists including some local councillors and housing activist groups mainly from South London including Class War marched from the Imperial War Museum to Downing St in a protest organised by Lambeth Housing Activists against the Housing and Planning Bill.

They say the bill will have a particularly large impact in London and greatly worsen the already acute housing crisis here.

Speeches at the rally before the march in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park at the side of the Imperial War Museum by Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett and an number of housing activists including Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing were warmly applauded.

But there was one exception; when Southwark Council Cabinet Member for Housing Richard Livingstone the atmosphere changed, with boos and loud heckling from several people in the crowd including Elmer.

The arguments continued in the crowd after Livingstone had left the platform with Elmer pointing out the scandal over the demolition of the Heygate Estate and now the Aylesbury estate, where thousands of council homes have been demolished and few of the promises made by Southwark Council have been kept.

Financially and morally Heygate was a scandal, with the council making derisory offers of compensation to leaseholders, far less than the value of comparable properties in the area and a huge loss of social housing, while getting rid of a huge public asset at a fraction of its true value. And since it was something the council seemed determined to repeat, and it is not surprising that feelings ran high.

Rather to the surprise of many the march set off walking in the opposite direction to its final destination of Downing Street, and it soon became clear that we were on a tour of Lambeth rather than taking a direct route.

“Class War decided to liven things up a little, first by dancing along the street singing the ‘Lambeth Walk’ and then by rushing across the pavement towards a large estate agency.

Police formed a line to stop them entering and they stood outside for some minutes with their banners – the field of crosses with the message ‘We have found new homes of for the rich’ and the Lucy Parsons banner with its quotation “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live” before rejoining the march.”

For much of the march Lisa Mackenzie who had stood at Class War’s candidate in the 2015 General Election against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford stood in front of the banners waving a plastic trident with a small banner ‘This Bill is the end of Council Housing’ with its second message an image of David Cameron and the alternative text ‘Bell End’. At times she donned a face mask of Smith.

Eventually the march reached Downing Street where police tried to direct them to the opposite side of Whitehall, but the marchers walked past them and crossed back to protest outside the gates, blocking traffic on Whitehall.

Here there were several groups listening to speakers and a samba band playing. Eventually police persuaded most of them to leave the road and I left for home.

More pictures at Housing and Planning Bill March.

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On the IWGB ‘3 Cosas’ Battle Bus – 2014

On the IWGB ‘3 Cosas’ Battle Bus: On Tuesday 18th January 2014 I got up uncharacteristically early and joined a packed rush hour train into London, something I usually like to avoid. The bus to Russell Square was also slow, held up in busy traffic, but even so I joined the morning picket at the east gate to the entrance to the Senate House car park before 9am and was taking pictures.

It was a bright winter morning, but not much above freezing and not the kind of day anyone sensible would go on an open-top bus ride around London, and though I’d layered up well for the event it was still chilling.

But those on the picket line on the second day of the 3 day strike by the IWGB for union recognition and better conditions had already been there since 5am, beginning while I was still sleeping in a warm bed and were still in good spirits. Cleaners, maintenance and security staff who work in the University of London were joined by student leaders and students from the University. Of course many of the workers would normally have been at work in the early hours.

Although these workers work at the university and carry out work essential for the running of the university, the university does not employ them. Most low paid workers – cleaners, maintenance and security staff, catering workers and others – at the University of London are no longer directly employed by the University, but work in the University on contracts from contractors.

Outsourcing these workers enables the University to evade its responsibilities towards this essential part of their workforce who suffer from poorer conditions and pay and aggressive management from the contractors that any responsible employer would be ashamed to implement. Most were only getting the legal minimum in terms of pay, pensions, sick pay and holidays, well inferior to comparable fellow workers directly employed by the University.

In the past these precarious employees had belonged, if at all, to traditional unions such as Unison, who had taken their fees but done nothing to improve their conditions, often seeming to them to only be concerned in keeping the differential between those on the lowest pay and higher paid staff.

It was only when these workers, many of them Spanish-speaking, joined the newly formed grass roots union, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, that they were able to achieve some gains thanks to noisy public protests and strong negotiating by the union which by 2013 had won them the London Living Wage, considerably more than the national minimum wage. They achieved this despite both the University of London and the employers refusing to recognise the IWGB, continuing to recognise the more compliant Unison to which few if any of these workers belonged.

In 2013, having won the London Living Wage and started the now famous 3 Cosas or “three things” campaign for sick pay, holiday pay and pensions, as well as continuing to press for union recognition.

This 3-day strike, following another strike the previous November, was the latest action in this campaign. Union recognition was particularly important for those working at the Garden Halls of residence in Bloomsbury which the university was intending to close in the coming Summer. The IWGB was demanding these workers be given priority for vacancies that arise elsewhere in the university, with preference being given to those with the longer periods of service, but the employers were refusing any cooperation.

Waiting for us in the driveway was an open-top bus, and after I had been there around an hour most of the strikers and supporters boarded this ‘battle bus’ to go on a protest tour of various sites in London, with just a small picket remaining. I had been invited to go with them on top of the bus to take photographs.

“The sun shone on the workers as the bus drove away, followed by a group of student supporters on bicycles. I was on the upper deck taking photographs as the workers waved their red IWGB flags, chanted and listened to IWGB Branch Secretary Jason Moyer-Lee, Branch Chair Henry Lopez, President of the Independent Workers of Great Britain Alberto Durango, Branch Vice-Chair and leading member of the 3 Cosas Campaign Sonia Chura and University of London Union Vice-President Daniel Cooper as they used a powerful public address system to address the public and workers about the fight for union recognition for the IWGB and comparable conditions of service with directly employed University of London workers for outsourced workers at the university.

In between the various speeches and chants, including some in both Spanish and translated into English, there was loud music to draw attention and also to keep the strikers happy.”

The first stop was in Cartwright Gardens outside the University’s Garden Halls of residence where there were several speeches from the top of the bus. Somehow we went on to drive past the Unison headquarters on Euston Road in both directions, to booing from many of the workers, and on the second pass an IWGB flag was caught in the branches of a tree and left flying in front of the Unison building.

The route had been planned to stop outside the offices of The Guardian, but it, like most London buses, was running late due to traffic congestion, and it continued on to go very noisily through Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall, before a complete circuit of Parliament Square before stopping to let us get off outside the Supreme Court.

There was then a rally on the pavement in front of Parliament, with short speeches by Labour MPs John McDonnell, Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn who had come out to join us.

We marched to the Embankment and boarded the bus again for a short journey, leaving the bus just around the corner from the Royal Opera House, where everyone kept quiet as we approached the building and then rushed in. The IWGB had been campaigning there for some time for the London Living Wage.

This is another workplace where the management had refused to recognise and have talks with the IWGB, preferring to recognise Unison. The IWGB were confronted there by the Unison Health & Safety rep who told them the management had now agreed to pay cleaners the Living Wage but hadn’t yet told them. Doubtless this was another victory for the protests by the IWGB, though of course he refused to acknowledge this.

We piled back onto the bus and went to the offices of the new employer of the outsourced workers, Cofely GDF-Suez, who had taken over from Balfour Beatty Workplace in December. Police were there and the front and back gates were both locked. The workers held a brief rally outside the gate in Torrens Place.

I was invited to go back on the bus to a late lunch with the workers at the Elephant & Castle – but it was already after 2pm and I didn’t relish the thought of another long bus ride. So I said goodbye and began my journey home to work on and file some of the many pictures I had taken over the day.

You can read more about this in posts on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures.
‘3 Cosas’ Strike Picket
‘3 Cosas’ Strike Picket and Battle Bus
IWGB at Parliament
IWGB in Royal Opera House
IWGB at Cofely GDF-Suez

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Slavery, Aninal Cruelty & Turkey Attacks Rojova – 2018

Slavery, Aninal Cruelty & Turkey Attacks Rojova: Protests in London on Saturday 27th January 2018 against migrants being sold as slaves in Libya, the continuing cruel trapping of animals to use in clothing sold by Canada Goose and the attacks by the Turkish army on Kurdish areas of North Syria.

End UAE support for slavery in Libya – UAE Embassy

Slavery, Aninal Cruelty & Turkey Attacks Rojova - 2018

African Lives Matter and the International Campaign to Boycott UAE protest at the UAE Embassy in London against the funding by the the United Arab Emirates of armed Groups in Libya which imprison, torture and kill African migrants and sell them as slaves.

The protest also called for an end of the human trafficking of African migrants to and from Dubai and for help to be given for slavery victims in Dubai to return to their families in Africa.

This turned out to be a fairly small protest, although the police had obviously planned for something much larger and I had expected more after earlier protests over the issue.

End UAE support for slavery in Libya

Canada Goose protests continue – Regent St

Protesters were again outside the Canada Goose flagship store in Regent St asking shoppers to boycott the store because of the horrific cruelty involved in trapping dogs for fur and raising birds for down used in the company’s clothing.

The company had obtained an injunction to try to prevent protests, but this had been amended in the previous month to allow more protesters and to enable them to use loud hailers between 2pm and 8pm. They were now carrying out weekly protests on Saturdays as well as occasional protests during the week.

Finally in 2022 Canada Goose announced it would stop purchasing new fur from trappers and transition to using reclaimed fur, though it seems unclear whether they have achieved their goal. The company is apparently still selling garments made with its large stocks of trapped fur and continuing to use feathers from geese and ducks which campaigners allege are plucked from live birds.

Canada Goose protests continue

Defend Afrin, stop Turkish Attack – BBC to Downing St

Several thousand people, mainly Kurds, marched through London from outside the BBC to a rally opposite Downing St, calling for an end to the attacks by Turkish forces on the Afrin Canton of Northern Syria, now a part of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) or Rojava, a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria.

Many see Rojava with a constitution based on a democratic socialism which treats all ethnic groups as equal and women as equal to men as a model for a future federal Syria, although it seems unlikely to find favour with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

Turkey is the second largest military force in NATO, second only to the USA and appeared to be using its position in NATO and the threat of closer relationships with Russia to eliminate the Kurds on its borders, who it alleges are a part of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish nationalist organisation regarded by Turkey and its allies as a terrorist organisation which was proscribed by the UK in 2001.

Kurds are around 15-20% if the population of Turkey, its largest ethnic minority and were violently suppressed following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, with a number of massacres and a continuing attempt to erase their language and culture. Even the words “Kurds” or “Kurdistan” were banned and in 1980 their languages were banned, with those found using them arrested and imprisoned. It remains illegal to teach using Kurdish in schools in Turkey.

Kurdish forces,aided by US air support played a major role in the defeat of ISIS in Syria. Eventually the Turkish attacks on Afrin were halted after the Kurds in Rojava reached an agreement with the Syrian army to aid them in the defence of Syria. Further Turkish encroachment into Syria was prevented by the setting up of the Second Northern Syria Buffer Zone, part of the Sochi Agreement, in 2019.

Turkey encouraged ISIS in Syria as a part of their attempts to remove Kurdish influence in the areas close to their borders. Sales of oil smuggled through Turkey with the connivance of leading figures in the Turkish government provided most of the funding for ISIS.

The marchers met at the BBC who they say has failed to report over many years on Turkish atrocities and their genocidal attacks on the Kurds before marching to Downing Street.

Police apparently seized a number of PKK flags before the start of the march, though I did still spot one when the marchers reached Downing St. Kurds largely view the PKK as a nationalist rather than terrorist organisation and there were many flags with the image of the PKK’s long imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan. His nickname ‘Apo’ means uncle in Kurdish. It was his reading and thinking during long years of solitary confinement that led to the new thinking in the constitution of Rojava.

I listened to a few of the speeches at Downing Street before leaving for home and you can see many more pictures of the march and some of the speakers on My London Diary.

Defend Afrin, stop Turkish Attack

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Students, World Service, Kashmir & Dr Sen – 2011

Students, World Service, Kashmir & Dr Sen – 2011: On Wednesday 26th January 2011 the Education Activist Network had called for students to come to a protest in Trafalgar Square against education cuts. But it wasn’t clear what they intended to do and few had bothered to come. In the end most of them decided to go to join the NUJ protest against cuts in the BBC World Service at Bush House which I had also been intending to go to. And since it was India’s Republic Day there were also a couple of protests outside the Indian High Commission a few yards down the road from there.

Student Day of Action – Trafalgar Square

The event organisers, the Education Activist Network who describe themselves as “group of educationalists, lecturers, and students who campaign against cuts in adult, further and higher education” had called on students to walk out of their schools and colleges and come to a protest in Trafalgar Square, but there appeared to have been little planning about what would then happen.

Fewer than a hundred had turned up and there were a couple of literature stalls collecting petition signatures and selling the Socialist Worker etc there appeared to be just one man with a megaphone. Several others came up and made short speeches against the cuts and a Heritage Warden and myself took some photographs but nobody knew what to do next.

A few people stood around holding Socialist Worker placards with the message F**K FEES – Save EMA – Free Education and others. After some discussion most decided to march to Aldwych where the NUJ were holding a protest I had planned to photograph against cuts in the BBC World Service’.

Student Day of Action

Save the BBC World Service – Bush House, Aldwych

Bush House was built overlooking Kingsway as a major new trade centre for American industrialist Irving T. Bush, who approved its designs in 1919 but this imposing Portland Stone Grade II listed “most expensive building in the world” was only finally completed in 1935. A few years later in 1941 it became used by the BBC and became the headquarters of the BBC World Service. The BBC’s lease expired around a year after this protest and they did not renew it, with the building being taken over in 2015 by King’s College.

The BBC World Service has a well-deserved reputation as the best in the world and is an important part of the UK’s ‘soft power’. NUT General Secretary jeremy Dear who spoke at the protest put it well: “The diversity of staff and their presence in so many key locations around the world contributes to making the BBC World Service the leading voice in international broadcasting. At its best the World Service can challenge corruption, expose human rights abuses and promote democratic values. By cutting the service the government will cut British influence in the rest of the world, and cuts will also be deeply damaging for objective quality news services around the globe.“

Government cuts in the grant from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office for the World Service announced in October 2010 and the transfer of the service in 2014 completely to the license fees led the BBC in January 2011 to announce swingeing cuts, axing Portuguese for Africa, Caribbean English, Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian services, the end of all shortwave radio services and more. These cuts were estimated by the BBC to result in a loss of more than 30 million listeners across the world, including in India, China and Russia.

The cuts were also expected to result in 480 BBC employees losing their jobs in 2011 and a further 170 by the time the service became entirely licence fee funded in 2014. Many of the NUJ members taking part in the protest would be among those made redundant.

Save the BBC World Service.

Free Kashmir & Khalistan – Indian High Commission, Aldwych

Kashmiris and Sikhs held a protest together outside the Indian High Commision on Republic Day, the 61st anniversary of the Indian Constitution, calling for the freedom that their nations have been denied by Indian military repression.

Kashmir was an ancient kingdom, becoming a Muslim monarchy in 1439, later a part of the Sikh empire but again becoming a monarchy under British guidance in the 19th century. But Kashmir – as well as the Sikhs – were unfairly mistreated in the negotiations for Indian independence and the 1947 partition.

Although Kashmir has am 80% Muslim population its then Maharajah ceded the kingdom to India as a way to protect his privilege and rule against an invasion by Pakistan. In return Kashmir was granted some limited autonomy by the Indian Constitution (revoked in 2019.)

Kashmiris campaigning for freedom from Indian rule have been savagely repressed and the country has a huge occupying force of Indian troops and police, with widespread human rights abuses, many continuing to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered.

Both India and Pakistan have been found by UN bodies and other investigations to be guilty of widespread human rights abuses in the areas of Kashmir they administer. The UN in 1948 called for the people of Kashmir to be allowed to determine their future by a free and fair vote, but this has never been possible due to the opposition of both India and Pakistan. A small part of the country is also occupied by China, doubtless also abusing human rights.

Protesting with the Kashmiris were Sikhs, also neglected at Partition which divided the Punjab between India and Pakistan. Widespread agitation for their own independent state of Khalistan was accelerated by the 1984 attack by the Indian Army on the Golden temple at Amritsar, and the widespread anti-Sikh riots and killing which after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards which followed. As in Kashmir, Sikhs in India have suffered widespread and continuing human rights abuses.

Free Kashmir & Khalistan

Release Binayak Sen Now – Indian High Commission

Dr Binayak Sen is a highly regarded Indian doctor, internationally recognised for his work with indigenous and marginalised people with a lifetime of service of the rural poor.

He helped establish a hospital serving poor mine workers in Chhattisgarh and founded a health and human rights organisation that supports community health workers in 20 villages, and was an officer of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Dr Sen criticised the state Government’s atrocities against indigenous people who were fighting the handover of their lands for mining, and their establishment of an armed militia, the Salwa Judum, to fight against the Naxalite (Maoist) rebels in the area.

In 2007 he was arrested and charged with having links with the Naxalities and was held in prison until granted bail two years later in May 2009. But in December 2010, Dr Sen was found guilty of sedition and conspiracy and sentenced to life imprisonment. At the time of the protest his appeal was continuing. He was granted bail in April 2011 and the case against him has not been pursued.

Release Binayak Sen Now

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Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square: On Wednesday 25th January 2012 I went up to London in the middle of the afternoon and continued to take photographs at various places and events for several hours.

Parliament Square Peace Camp

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

I began with a brief visit to the Peace Camp – as I often had over the years – but found that Barbara Tucker was busy tidying up in anticipation of yet another police raid in their long campaign of harassment of her and here supporters and on this occasion didn’t have time to talk. So I just took a couple of pictures and then walked up to Trafalgar Square. On May 10th 2012 the protest had been 4000 Days in Parliament Square but was evicted shortly after.

Congolese Keep Up Protests – Trafalgar Square

In Trafalgar Square I found a small group of Congolese protesters in a pen on the pavement outside South Africa House, calling on South Africa to put pressure on the Congo regime. They called on South Africa to free political prisoners and recognise opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba as the duly elected President of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 2011 elections were widely regarded as having been fixed and it is unclear whether he or the incumbent Joseph Kabila whose election was confirmed by the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo actually got more votes.

The protesters told me that more people were expected to arrive for the protest soon and I promised to return. But I got a little held up elsewhere and by the time I returned everyone had left.

Peace For Iran – No To War – Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Whitehall

I walked back along Whitehall to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in King Charles St where a small group were protesting against going to war with Iran, calling for peace.

I waited with the protesters who told me they expected more to arrive, but had to leave after around 20 minutes. I think few were coming as a large protest was to happen a few days later (you can see my report and pictures on this at No War Against Iran & Syria)

Egyptians Protest Against SCAF – Egyptian Embassy

I had to leave to go to the main event I had come into London to report, the protest by Egyptians on the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. Egypt was then suffering under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and they called for the revolution to continue and an end to military rule.

This was an energetic and protest by over a hundred Egyptians in solidarity with the estimated 300,000 who had marched to Tahrir Square earlier in the day.

A few from the British left had come to give their support, including Chris Nuneham of Stop the War who was one of those who spoke.

The speakers urged solidarity with the Egyptian people and also with the other revolutions of the Arab Spring, and called for an end to the Western attempts to enforce an agenda on the Arab nations.

They voiced their opposition to the increasingly likely military action against Iran, and called on those present to join the No War Against Iran & Syria protest at the US Embassy on the following Saturday.

Many more pictures from the Egyptian Embassy protest on My London Diary.

Westminster Bikers First Olympic Jubilee Demo Ride – Trafalgar Square

I returned to Trafalgar Square for a protest by motorbike riders, incensed by the so-called experimental parking charges for powered two wheelers.

‘No To the Bike Parking Tax’ see the parking charges introduced by Westminster Council as a simple money-making racket and have been making regular Wednesday protests against it as well as lobbying and making a legal challenge.

The daily fee for parking in a solo motorcycle bay is now only £1, and bikers can move from bay to bay.

More pictures

Around Trafalgar Square

After the bikers rode away I took a few pictures in Trafalgar Square under its dramatic red lighting then walked away. There had been a traffic accident on Northumberland Avenue which seemed to have involved two bikers and a cyclist and the police were now in attendance. I took a single frame as I approached but I didn’t investigate this further, walking down Whitehall.

Opposite Downing St a small protest was taking place calling for Freedom for Syria from the Assad regime, but nothing much was happening there and after making a couple of pictures I moved on, now in a hurry to get home and have something to eat.

You can read and see more pictures of these events on the January 2012 page of My London Diary

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Atos Protest & Camden Town 2011

Atos Protest & Camden Town: – Monday 24 January 2011

Disability benefits are now under attack by our Labour government, who have insisted they will implement the Tory plans to cut the amount paid in incapacity benefits by £3 billion by 2028. And the House of Lords economic affairs committee a few days ago published a report calling for a fundamental review of the benefits system to tackle the rising social and fiscal costs of disability benefits.

Also last week the High Court ruled that the previous government’s consultation on changing incapacity benefits was unlawful as “it presented the changes as a way of supporting disabled people into work but failed to make clear that 424,000 vulnerable claimants would see their benefits cut by £416 a month.”

When the Tory coalition government came into power in 2010 it picked on the disabled who it thought would be an easy target for the cuts it was making to support the bankers. Protests such as this on Monday January 24th 2001 showed how wrong they were, with determined opposition to the unfairness of their cost-cutting reforms from disabled groups including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the Black Triangle Campaign.

One part of the campaign by successive governments has been to give huge publicity and priority to benefit fraud, which according to the national Audit Office only amounts to 0.6% of the DWP budget and is a “drop in the ocean compared to the losses by tax evasion by the super-rich and the amounts lost by them and major corporations exploiting tax loopholes.“

*Police try rather ineffectually to stop protesters heading for the Atos offices*

In 2011 a major source of unfairness in the system was the attempts to cut costs by the use of computer-based ability to work assessments carried out for the DWP by European IT company Atos. The interviews were administered by ‘healthcare professionals’, often poorly trained and lacking the qualifications and experience to assess many types of disability, particularly mental illness. Almost 70% of those assessed were moved onto the lower benefit rates of the Job Seekers Allowance with some being refused any benefits at all.

An independent review for the DWP made fundamental criticisms of the assessments, and around 40% of those who appealed the decisions eventually had their benefits restored to previous levels – but only after months of hardship, and often just in time for their next review when their benefits would again be axed. Part of the problem was the pressure applied on the assessors to meet targets in cutting benefits by the company so they could justify their costs to the DWP.

And there were plenty of true horror stories. People assessed fit for work who died within days of the assessments, those who committed suicide and some who starved to death. Benefit cuts really do kill.

Atos went on to gain other contracts from the DWP until September 2024 when the contract for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and work capability assessment (WCA) were given to Serco. The DWP had acknowledged there were flaw in the Atos assessments but few believe that Serco will be any fairer.

Monday January 24th was a a National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts, with actions around the country, including protests in Leeds, Birmingham, Burnley, Hastings, Crawley, Chesterfield, Livingston, near Edinburgh (Atos’s Scotland HQ) and Glasgow. I began by photographing a local protest at Archway in North London before going on to a protest outside the London HQ of Atos Origin in Triton Square close to the Euston Road.

On My London Diary back in 2011 I wrote much more about the Atos tests and also about the details of the two protests. The protest in Triton Square was heavily policed but the organisers and those taking part, including Disabled People Against Cuts, WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities) and London Coalition Against Poverty were intent on this being a peaceful protest.

Police have problems in dealing with disabled protesters. Many want to treat them carefully and their officers certainly realise that images of them being roughly handled would be terrible PR. But they were annoyed that the protesters decided to protest close to the actual Atos offices rather than in a pen they had set up a short distance away. And when one elderly man walked through the spread out police line he was roughly pushed to the ground and dragged away, though later he was allowed to rejoin the other hundred or so protesters.

The police then brought more barriers and erected them around the protesters, telling them they could only exit the fenced area when they were dispersing at the end of the protest. There seemed to be no real justification for this and they seemed simply to be a simply a matter of pique that the protesters had not followed their instructions.

More at Atos Tests Unfair to Disabled.

Camden Market – Camden High St/Chalk Farm Rd

I had plenty of time to get from Archway to Triton Square and got off the bus in Camden Town for a walk and to make use of one of London’s rapidly disappearing public toilets in the middle of the busy road junction there (but I think closed a few years ago.)

I’d photographed around Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road quite often in the 1990s, often on my way home from taking pictures elsewhere in North London, and walking from Camden Town station to Chalk Farm. Then the lemon sorbets from Marine Ices were the best in London if not the world. But that’s gone too now, and in January 2011 it wasn’t the weather for it.

Back in the 1990s the streets would have been pretty empty except at weekends, but by 2011 there were plenty of tourists wandering around even on a cold Monday in January, though business was fairly slack. But mainly I pointed my camera up to the decorations above the shops

More pictures: Camden Market.

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Political Policing & Shocking Lies

Political Policing & Shocking Lies: Last Saturday, 19th January 2025 I was witness to a shameful display of aggressive and politically motivated policing in the centre of London.

Politics had come into the event days earlier when police had banned the National Protest for Palestine from gathering at the BBC to march to Whitehall on the less than flimsy pretext that there is a synagogue around three hundred yards away.

The synagogue in question is down a side street and in the opposite direction that the march would travel, and none of the previous over 20 national marches for Palestine has involved any violence or intimidation of Jews.

*Police harass a group of holocaust survivors and families, telling them they must move further up Whitehall.*

Many Jews have taken part in all of these marches and other protests against the killing in Gaza and the continuing repression in the occupied West Bank, calling for freedom for Palestinians. And all of the marches since the Hamas attack on Israel have called for the release of the hostages held in Gaza as well as for a solution to bring peace and justice to Palestine.

To meet the police objections the march organisers had offered to march in the opposite direction, meaning they would arrive at the BBC several hours after any of those attending the synagogue would have left. Police rejected this offer and instead proposed that the march would start in Russell Square. Since the march was in large part a protest against the biased coverage of events by the BBC.

In their thoroughly researched report published in March 2004, the Centre for Media Monitoring clearly showed the extent of pro-Israel bias in BBC reporting, for example in giving considerable publicity to unverified statements by Israeli official sources, many of which have later been found to be false, as well as deliberately calling into question statements from Palestinian sources.

The report is a long and careful study and should at least have meant considerable changes in the way that the BBC covers events if it values its claim to be impartial, but any changes have been minor. The organisation continues to heap doubt on the claims over the number of deaths of Palestinians despite these largely being confirmed as accurate by UN and other observers – and a recent peer-reviewed statistical analysis in The Lancet suggesting that the actual number of deaths are 40% higher than the official Gaza health ministry figures.

*Peter Tatchell calls for the release of all Palestine political prisoners.*

When their reasonable suggestion was turned down by the police, the march organisers announced they would instead hold a rally in Whitehall. Clearly the police were not happy at this but it would have been difficult for them to raise any legally sustainable reason to ban it.

So the rally went ahead, and I went to photograph it. Entering Whitehall I was stopped for a short time as policed parked a van to make access more difficult but managed to walk past. Others coming to the protest were actually stopped by police and had to walk around to enter Whitehall by side streets.

Inside Whitehall there seemed to be a number of lines of police giving contradictory orders to people to move up or down the street. I watched with incredulity as a group of officers came to tell a small group of Jewish holocuast survivors and sons and duaghters of survivors they could not stand at the side of the road in front of the stage but had to move further away up Whitehall.

Then I hear shouting from a crowd by the side of the stage. A particularly aggesive squad of police was forcing them to move and had arrested one woman who had not obeyed there orders, thowing her to the ground. The protesters were shouting ‘Let Her Go, Let Her Go‘ but they didn’t, simply facing the crowd aggressively and promising further arrests. A second slightly less aggressive squad was similarly forcing people along past the other side of the compound around the stage.

There seemed no point to either of these squads other than to stage a little police aggession. A few minutes later they left the area and people were free to wander into the areas they had cleared – and a group set up a large display with children’s clothing hung on washing lines.

At the end of the rally the speakers including one of the holocaust survivors, MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn and representatives of other groups involved in the protest came to stand on the stage holding bunches of flowers for two minutes of silence.

It was then announced that this small group of delegates would attempt to march to lay flowers at the BBC, but if stopped by police they would lay down the flowers where they were stopped in front of the police line and accuse them of being complicit in the lies told by the BBC and our government in support of the genocide taking place in Gaza.

The protesters in the huge crowd in Whitehall were asked to move to the side to make way for this group, and people did until they had almost reached Trafalgar Square. Here police stopped them and they waited patiently to see if they would be allowed through.

But thousands of protesters had moved up Whitehall with them, and those of us at the front were in danger of being crushed, slowly being pushed forwards by the crowd behind, but held back by police. The police withdrew and I managed to find some space inside the box of stewards where they had been in front of the marchers. Then in the only sensible action by police I saw that day, some officers returned to force a path and urge the marchers to go through into Trafalgar Square, and I went with them.

*Marchers stop in front of the line of police and wait*

I was rather shaken after being crushed and after taking a final picture of the march moving freely on towards Pall Mall I turned and walked slowly away towards Charing Cross station. Later I heard that the small delegation of marchers had decided to lay their flowers in Trafalgar Square when a snatch squad of ten police approached the head steward Chris Nineham and brutally threw him to the ground and arrested him. Their violence was totally unnecessary.

*Police make way and tell the marchers to go through*

Nineham was held for around 20 hours before being arrested on police bail which prevents him from taking part in any protest. His was one of 77 arrests made, many after the end of the protest when police kettled those still in Trafalgar Square. So far at least 13 have been charged, including Nineham and Ben Jamal, head of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnel have been interviewed under criminal caution.

*and they march into Trafalgar Square unhindered.*

Police were very quick to publish the lie that the marchers forced their way through the police line, and it was quickly picked up and amplified by the media despite video and eye-witnesses showing that they were urged and escorted though by officers.

Police told many other lies on the day, acted throughout aggressively and were clearly under pressure from members of the government and some Jewish leaders to do so. Many British Jews support Palestine and there were hundreds if not thousands of them taking part in the protest, far outnumbering a small group that came to oppose it.

More pictures at National Rally For Palestine.

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