News of the World & Police Forest Gate Raid: On Sunday 11th June 2006 a protest took place outside the News International printing works in Wapping a week after its staff had tricked migrants in East London by making fake job promises and then transporting them by bus to an immigration detention centre. This was one of many outrages by the newspaper, which was finally forced to close in 2011 by the many revelations about its involvement in illegal phone hacking.
Later in the day there was a larger protest at New Scotland Yard against a massive police raid by 250 police on a home in Forest Gate in which one of two men arrested was shot and wounded by police. Police also forcefully raided a neighbouring house, and the whole local area was shut down for several days. Police were acting on a rumour that this was a terrorist bomb factory but no chemical materials were found and the two men were released seven days later without charge.
Here is what I wrote back in 2006 about these with some pictures from the protests.
No Borders Protest at Wapping
News of the World, Wapping
Demonstrators outside the gate to Fortress Wapping
Last Sunday the ‘News Of The World’ bragged about how a team of its staff had made fake offers of work to migrants, picking on the weakest and most exploited people living here with us. They had then picked them up in a bus and taken them without their consent to the Colnbrook Detention Centre, where they were handed over to immigration officers and detained.
I hope their actions will be condemned by my union (the NUJ) as a disgrace to journalism, and endangering relations between genuine reporters and migrants. Such deception should not be tolerated by anyone, and the would seem to amount to kidnapping.
All of us should be appalled that this was allowed to happen – and that apparently the authorities connived in it rather than turning the buses away as they should have done.
Colnbrook detainees made their feelings about the person who organised the scam clear “You are a gutless, incompetent, bully” and pointed out that it was such “unfair ill-informed reporting” that was responsible for the adoption of inhuman policies that led to migrants not claiming asylum and hiding from the authorities, which left them open to exploitation by unscrupulous employers, with long hours, low pay and poor and dangerous working conditions.
‘Intelligence or Negligence – That is the Question!’ read some of the placards
A crowd of several hundred demonstrators, mainly Muslim, gathered outside New Scotland Yard on Sunday afternoon, 11th June 2006, to voice their disquiet at the June 2nd police raid in Forest Gate.
George Galloway speaks to reporters
Speakers from across the Muslim community as well as Respect MP George Galloway and Lindsey German of ‘Stop The War’ expressed their misgivings at the heavy-handed approach of the police and the targeting of Muslims. There were calls for the resignation of the Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Ian Blair. Many also called for Tony Blair to go.
Certainly there should be some rapid re-thinking of how (and why) any further such raids are carried out. I’d always assumed that when the police kicked down my front door at 4 am they would at least shout out something like ‘Police – get on the floor’ as they stormed in rather than leave me to think they were an armed criminal gang. And while I might expect them to restrain me, shooting me or and kicking me in the head without very good reason surely should result in a criminal conviction?
A rather grudging apology dragged out over a week after the event isn’t good enough. Of course there are enquiries going on, but the police have to show some sensitivity. [Later the officers concerned were cleared of any “criminal or disciplinary offence“.]
Several speakers made the point that ‘police intelligence’ was in almost all respects woefully lacking. All of us are put at danger – as last year’s London bombings showed – because police waste time and resources on false rumours such as those behind this raid. One speaker went through a long, long list of such happenings around the country, including some the police still persist in believing despite having cases thrown out by the courts.
The event attracted major media attention; it was hard to get an accurate estimate of the number of demonstrators because there were so many reporters and photographers etc present. Along with a core of 250, representing the number of police involved in the raid, there were probably a hundred or more others.
Wikipedia states: “The Metropolitan Police revealed under freedom of information legislation that what was known as Operation Volga had cost £2,211,600, including £864,300 on overtime payments for the dozens of police officers involved, £90,000 on hotel bills, and £120,000 for repairs to the damage caused to the houses by the police.”
Less than 95 theses: In June 2005 I was in Poland for the first FotoArtFestival in Bielsko-Biala where I had been invited to show my work and also to give a couple of talks. While I was there I photographed Poland’s only statue of Martin Luther, and this inspired me to write my ‘Less than 95 theses‘ on photography with which I began one of my talks.
Martin Luther, Bielsko-Biala
The pictures here all come from my few days in Bielsko-Biala and will include some of the other photographers who were there. You can read a little more about the festival in the previous post – and in online my FotoArtFestival Diary from 2005.
Madames et Messieurs
English owes its prominence not only to US (and earlier UK) global economic and political domination, but to its flexibility and adaptability, which we systematically abuse.
Translation is a valiant attempt at the often impossible. Language operates at various sublevels of denotation and connotation, through allusion. It depends on shared experiences and understandings that are often very different.
Fortunately, communication happens, and it often happens most strongly across the crevasses between our languages as we struggle for understanding. We understand not from the smooth inter-meshing of gears than transmits the everyday niceties, but from the strands that stick in our teeth or the grit that lodges and may grow into a pearl. Or simply give us sore feet.
Yesterday I met an Angel
Yesterday I met an angel. Two angels to be precise, not on the head of a pin, but in Bielsko. Around 8 foot tall, dressed in white and the regulation pair of wings each, and she gave me a photograph and a feathered flower.
Inez and Andrzej Baturo at the opening ceremony at the Bielskie Centrum Kultury
But Bielsko is the city of angels, because I met another one on Thursday evening. Inez, I appreciate from the depths of my heart all you have done for the festival. To borrow the words of one of my great musical heroes, “We love you madly.“
[I think the official Polish translation for that last paragraph was something like ‘Peter thanks Inez for all her work on the festival.”]
This Morning, Luther
This morning I went in search of Poland’s only statue of Martin Luther, in a small clump of trees in Plac Lutra.
This address begins for real with me nailing a few of my photographic theses to the door – fortunately rather fewer than his 95 – and saying ‘Here I stand, I can do no other‘ – at least until I’ve had a few more beers – ‘God help me, Amen.’
Less than 95 theses
Gunars Binde from Latvia
First, with apologies to Gunars Binde, a lovely man with fantastical pictures to match who told us we shouldn’t write about pictures. Bullshit! But then I would say that wouldn’t I (MRDA as we say in some English circles – ‘Mandy Rice-Davies applies.’)
Good writing about photography is as rare as hen’s teeth. The problem with most writing about photography is that it is not writing about photography, refusing to confront either process or product.
Good writing is a difficult feat and I stand with awe, marvelling at the skills of people such as John Szarkowski and Robert Adams. Just occasionally – and it’s most gratifying – I receive an email from a photographer that tells me I’ve made them realise new things about their work.
Antanas Sutkus, Ami Vitale and Stefan Bremer
Its no coincidence that the Szarkowski and Adams are both photographers as well as writers. I’ve always considered that the people who know most about our medium are the people who do it. Those who have written most cogently have all had at least a reasonable proficiency at it and a firm grounding in its traditions.
Of course there are also plenty of good photographers who have not been able to articulate in any way about the medium, and some who have talked nonsense. But in so far as photography has attracted serious criticism rather than critical indifference, there are many to whom my response is simply that they have not paid their dues.
Fears: Fear of Truth – Pilar Albajar from Spain
Visual language, some say, is universal. More bullshit. No two of us looking at a picture see the same picture. Yes, there will be some common perceptions that arise from our shared cultural and sub-cultural soup, but the way that we interpret the visual is critically dependent on our culture, our history.
For a trivial example, a triangle in England is simply a triangle, while in Poland it can signify and classify a toilet. Symbols such as the cross and swastika can also differ radically in meaning, for example between Hindu, Christian and Muslim.
Bullshit 3 is truth, or at least the idea that photojournalists and documentary photographers are on a mission to uncover it. Point of view is fundamental to photography. Literally and metaphorically.
Bevis Fusha photographs me
Watching people photograph the proceedings earlier, photographers on the unfamiliar end of the lens, Bevis Fusha commented that digital cameras made it hard to tell amateur from professional, we all use the same equipment now.
But it isn’t the camera that matters. Working professionally (whether as amateur or pro) come down to point of view. Deciding what you want to say (metaphor) and getting in the right place to do it (literal.) Then of course there is knowing how to hold the camera – and a little luck.
Shadi Ghadirian talks about the problems of being a photographer in Iran
Some months ago in one of those phone interviews where they work through a standard list of questions, a journo from and amateur photo mag came to “What is your favourite photo accessory?” I don’t think my answer, “Ten thousand miles of shoe leather” made it to print.
Another on my camera I didn’t take
Truth is seldom simple. Facts look different depending where you come from. Photographers lack – and really need to lack – the Divine guidance needed for certainty. At best we have a personal integrity, an open mind and an honest vision. And make pictures that reflect the complexities of the real world. Photography is an iceberg. Nine-tenths is underwater, hidden from view. Occasionally parts of that great mass break away and float to the surface – as when the work of Mike Disfarmer was published by Julia Scully and others.
Its instructive to think what a history or overview of photography written in the 1920s or 1930s might have looked like. We can be fairly sure that some of those who would have featured most prominently, for example, William Mortensen, author of Pictorial Lighting, 1932, Projection Control, 1934, Monster & Madonnas: A Book of Methods, 1936, The Command to Look, 1937, The Model, 1937 and more, are among those now largely relegated to footnotes, while the photographer many of us would regard as the most important of the early years of the century, Eugene Atget, would not have got a mention.
There are many photographers who are not particularly well-known whose work is of interest, and often of rather more interest than some of those who have made the history books. Fame is about being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.
Ami Vitale
Photography is not an American medium, nor does it belong to Dusseldorf. Much of the most interesting things that are happening in photography now take place away from these centres. Despite the efforts of historians and authors – such as Naomi Rosenblum – we still have a very long way to go in discovering twentieth century photography outside of the United States of America. (I wonder how much space Polish photography gets in her latest ‘World History’, being promoted during this festival.)
I’m ashamed to have written virtually nothing on Polish photography to date. However In my features on the web site ‘About Photography’ [1999 until 2007 when I was sacked for writing about photography] I try to show a world view of photography, for example with the series of features on photography in Central and South America. Along with the work of many others these have helped shine a little light on photography in this vibrant and active region.
Eikoh Hosoe
In a very real sense there is no such thing as ‘a photographer’. We don’t exist in isolation. Our often fragile and fraught egos (often seen as evidence of artistic temperament) belie what we all know, that we are a part of a community. Our ideas, our pictures, build on the shoulders of others. Becoming a photographer is very much about connecting with this community. My talk is a very personal one, about some of the people – famous and relatively unknown – who have been important in my life and my photography.
This event in Bielsko-Biala is a powerful manifestation of that community, and one that has transcended our different nationalities, languages and status. The friendship, the fellowship I’ve felt here has moved me to the very bowels of my heart. But this is a community which I think is now under threat in two respects.
Photography for the media is becoming more and more a corporate business rather than an artistic endeavour. Mega-image corporations aim to monopolise image supply, cutting supermarket-style deals with photographers and image buyers, dragging down prices below that needed to sustain an individual approach.
In the fine art world, artists become increasing synthetic, predicated by the demands of the market (for example for limited editions in our essentially infinitely replicable medium.)
I am very much a grass roots person, a believer in participation as the basis of building better lives and a better society. What really matters is the ordinary and the vernacular, although when we examine them closely we find that they are very particular. We can perhaps learn far more about the real history of photography by looking at those who have not made the history books.
FotoArtFestival Diary: Back in June 2005 I was at the first FotoArtFestival taking place in Bielsko-Biala, Poland. This was an international festival with exhibitions featuring one photographer from each of 25 countries, including some of my post-industrial urban images from London. But the pictures in this post are some of the colour pictures I made during my visit to Poland on a compact digital camera.
I was also there to give a couple of talks. As well a presentation on my own work I also talked about the work of other photographers from the UK, including Raymond Moore, Tony Ray-Jones and some personal friends including the London-resident American John Benton-Harris, Paul Baldesare, Derek Ridgers and Mike Seaborne.
I hadn’t really anticipated the problem of translation, and although both festival organiser Inez and another translator did their best to translate my talks into Polish, it meant that the talks took more than twice as long with me having to wait between paragraphs for them to repeat my sentences in Polish.
The on-screen presentations which accompanied my talks consisted almost entirely of pictures. When I went back two years later I had prepared a presentation with key phrases and captions along with the pictures and a much shorter text for the translators. But for this occasion I had to edit my presentations on the hoof, leaving out or précising some whole sections to keep within the time allowed. But you can download the full versions (without images) online.
My talks, given in English but translated into Polish, must have gone down well, as I was invited back to speak again at the second FotoArtFestival. And John Benton-Harris was invited to show work at that, while the gallery in nearby Krakov (whose director was in my audience and who I had a long conversation with) put on a show of the work of Tony Ray-Jones.
After I returned home I published my FotoArtFestival Diary which is still on-line, with many of the pictures I took during my stay. I had a fantastic time there and it was particularly great to meet many other photographers there, including some of those whose work was also on show.
Here is an extract from that diary with more about the festival and the start of my ‘Thoughts from Bielsko‘ I wrote while there.
FotoArtFestival
The festival set out to invite the best photographers in various fields from around the world, and included some well-known names – such as Eikoh Hosoe, Ami Vitale, Boris Mikhajlov and Malick Sidibe, as well as many rising stars and a few of those no longer with us, Mario Giacomelli, Inge Morath and Robert Diament.
The 26 major shows represented work from 25 countries – just one photographer from each, with a group show of older Polish photo-reportage. It was truly an effort to be international, although concentrating on European countries, including Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the Ukraine and of course the UK, as well Iran, Japan, Mali, South Africa and the USA. France and Switzerland were also represented, with a representative from Magnum and a presentation on the work of Werner Bischof.
Thoughts from Bielsko
Gatwick and Hell
I hate travelling, especially travelling by air. Endless waiting in arid lounges, surrounded by retail irrelevance, shops of pointless and unwanted items.
It’s an enforced spell of purgatory, with what must be the most infuriating announcements ever devised to punish the lost souls, “Please enjoy the facilities in the lounge” in an irritatingly banal false female voice. You realise Douglas Adams travelled this way.
Eventually we are allowed to go through the departure gate, for yet another spell of waiting until we can clamber into a bus to be driven across the apron to the waiting jet.
After take-off I try to see where we are heading. The first place I can definitely place is Canvey island on the Thames estuary where I was taking pictures a couple of months back.
Two hours later we are bumping down through the clouds and into Krakow airport. Fortunately this is so small it takes a relatively short time to collect my case and go through to meet the driver who is to drive me and another festival visitor, Marta Daho of Magnum, to Bielsko-Biala.
Life Imitates Art
Life imitates Art,
Art Imitates Nature.
Nature abhors a vacuum,
Hoovers suck.
Life? Well, sometimes it happens.
Always it happens, magic or shit.
Bielsko was brimming with magic.
I Translate
I translate
It rans late
And everything did run late, due to the tremendous enthusiasm of the audience to the presentations by all the photographers who had come to talk about their work. In a later post here I’ll post part of an introduction to my talk which I wrote in my hotel room in Bielsko-Biala, as well as some more pictures including some of the other photographers taking part in the festival. And I even did a little translating although the remnants of my ‘O Level’ French wasn’t really up to it.
Gravesend and Northfleet, Kent: Twenty years ago on Thursday 8th June 2006 I took my folding bike by train to Gravesend and spent an afternoon cycling through the area on the Kent bank of the River Thames, long home to the cement industry – the manufacture of ‘Portland Cement’ began here in 1834.
Looking across the cement works at Northfleet to Tilbury docks
I’d long had an interest in the area, both for its industrial history and for its sometimes spectacular landscapes created by this. I was first inspired when I borrowed an old book from my local library, Donald Maxwell’s ‘A Pilgrimage of the Thames‘, published in 1932. His accounts and sketches, some first published earlier in the Church Times present an interesting and romantic view of places and people along the river beginning at Gravesend and ending at Oxford.
Maxwell (1877-1936) reports a Thames pilot telling him as he sketched on a jetty, “The principal products of Gravesend are paper, cement and smoke – especially smoke.”
Later, writing about Northfleet he muses prophetically “One day, when the cement industry has left this valley, and centres of population have shifted, this district will be called the Switzerland of England, and weekend châlets, each with its aeroplane-landing on the cliff, will look down once again upon green shores and tree-embowered banks.”
Henley’s Cable Works Offices
It hasn’t happened quite like that, though the cement industry has gone and there are some luxury riverside flats and the new town of Ebbsfleet developing around a new station on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (which Eurostar trains whizz through non-stop at around the same speed as aircraft when Maxwell wrote.)
A footbridge over a chalk ravine left by quarrying
Of course Maxwell’s book was not my only source for information about the area. Particularly useful was the 1971 geography text ‘Lower Thameside‘ by Roy Millward & Adrian Robinson with its chapter ‘The Cement Industry of Lower Thameside‘ which gave some rather more precise information and a suggested itinerary which informed my first actual visits to the area in the 1980s.
A few years after I took these pictures in 2006 the vast cement works at Northfleet had gone.
The photographs on My London Diary are not captioned (and I wrote nothing about them) but a they are in order of my ride beginning in Gravesend and moving west, with views across the Thames to Tilbury. From Rosherville I moved on to Northfleet (where Gravesend & Northfleet FC is now Ebbsfleet United) and then on to take the train home from Swanscombe.
Cuban 5, Knives & Peace Strike: Saturday 7th June 2008 I photographed a protest following the dismissal of an appeal in Miami by five Cuban men held in the USA since 1998, a Seventh Day Adventist Church march against knife crime and a rally by the Peace Strike camped in Parliament Square.
Release the Cuban 5
Trafalgar Square
The Cuban 5 were Cuban intelligence officers who came to Miami to spy and infiltrate on the Cuban exile community after terrorist bombings by Cuban exiles had taken place in Havana, organised with the support of the CIA.
The five men were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami and given lengthy jail sentences. International concerns about their lack of a fair trial led an Atlanta Court of Appeals hearing which overturned their convictions in 2005, but this decision was soon overturned by the full court, who re-instated the original convictions.
In the week before this protest an appeal court in Miami upheld the convictions and the life sentence against Gerardo Hernandez and that of 15 years against Rene Gonzalez, but referred Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez for re-sentencing in Miami.
Rock Around the Blockade had protested at the US Embassy the previous Thursday as a part of an international day of protest and were in Trafalgar Square on Saturday to raise awareness and collect signatures for a petition calling for the release of the men.
Rene Gonzales was eventually allowed to return to Cuba for his father’s funeral in 2013 having served 13 years of his sentence and Fernando Gonzalez was released in February 2014. The three remaining prisoners were released later that year in a prisoner swap.
Adventist Youth March against Knives, Guns & Violence
Trafalgar Square- Kennington Park
Pathfinders – an Adventist youth group – wait for the march to start
Seventh Day Adventist Church organisations had organised a youth rally in Trafalgar Square before marching to Kennington Park to make young people realise the dangers they face if they carry a knife.
Many feel that they need a knife to defend themselves if they are attacked by someone with a knife, but we know that meeting aggression with aggression carries a high risk.
Carrying a gun can get you a five years, use it and you could get a life sentence
I wrote: “Communities need to police themselves more effectively and to cooperate with the police when they cannot deal with situations without them. The problem is one that needs both strong community organisations and sensitive policing. I hope that Boris will be encouraging and putting resources into community organisation in the inner city and not just stepping up policing.”
The Peace Strike had joined the peace protesters already in Parliament Square in Brian Haw’s Peace Campaign there since 2001.
Maria Gallastegui had set up Peace Strike to call on people to take effective action for peace by striking, withdrawing their labour if only for short periods. The campaign against the invasion of Iraq had shown the marches, even huge marches, did not stop the war.
At the marches before the invasion began, speakers including Tony Benn had called for people to strike if the war went ahead, but when it happened Stop The War had simply decided to call yet another march.
Peace Strike aimed to build actions not just in the UK but globally which will demonstrate that people are willing to strike for peace and the future of humanity. In June 2008 an attack on Iran was a major threat, with the US building up forces.
As well as speeches we all enjoyed the playing and singing of singer/songwriter Harry Loco who had come from Holland, and as well as his own songs he gave a fine performance of a Dylan number.
Leyton and a Puzzle: Pictures from walks around parts of Leyton in August or September 1994 and a puzzle from south of the river.
New Spitalfields Market, Sherin Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-53
Traffic congestion, lack of space and outdated buildings led the City of London Corporation to relocate its wholesale fruit and vegetable market out of Spitalfields to a purpose-built 31 acre site in Leyton which opened in 1991.
Stratford Market, which had been founded in 1879 by the Great Eastern Railway as a competitor to Spitalfields also moved to the new site. According to Wikipedia, New Spitalfields Market “is Europe’s leading horticultural market specialising in exotic fruit and vegetables – and the largest revenue earning wholesale market in the UK.”
New Spitalfields Market, Sherin Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-43
There were plans for this, Billingsgate Fish Market (in the West India Docks) and Smithfield Market to move to a new consolidated site in Dagenham Dock and planning permission was given in 2021, but in November 2024 the City decided this was no longer economically viable. New Spitalfields will remain in use while there are now plans to relocate the two other markets to Albert Island at the east end of the Royal Docks.
Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-45
The market is on the east side of Hackney Marshes a short distance from the River Lea and I walked east along Ruckholt Road into Leyton. I think this building was probably in a side turning just off this road and I think has probably been demolished. But I was only interested in the colours an shapes.
A E Cornell, Furniture, 363, High Rd, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-901-46
This shop is now occupied by Woodland Estate Agents who opened here in 2005 and the building looks rather less run-down. Of course I was attracted by the Union Flags in the windows and door as well as the Churchillian poster with its pointing finger, though I’m unclear what we should DESERVE. Perhaps someone will have memories of this shop.
Chinese Takeaway, Fish & Chips, London, 1994, 94-901-32
I think this was also in Leyton as another almost identical image is on the next frame of film to the picture of A E Cornell’s furniture shop. The Chinese Takeaway seems to have been at 17D and had a name ending in GARDEN. But of course my interest was mainly in the peeling mural of two rather strange-looking jockeys and horses on the side of the neighbouring bookies.
Frederick Place, Bloomfield Rd, Woolwich, Greenwich, 1994, 94-901-24
And finally a little puzzle from the same film but taken south of the river on Bloomfield Road in Plumstead. The L and the S are clear and there are hints of two other letters, perhaps an I and a T. There could have been other letters, out of frame to the left. The building has been demolished and replaced by new housing, though some parts of the unusual paving remain. I can’t remember now if I knew what the site was, but have a vague feeling it may have been a garage and there is still a garage at the back of the new houses.
Please comment if you know more about this or any other of the pictures. More colour from 1994 to come.
End Child Detention, Gaza Flotilla Atrocity: I covered two protests on Saturday 5th June 2010, a carnival against the holding of children in immigration detention centres, and rallies and a march following the killing by Israel of on 31st May of peace protesters who were on a flotilla attempting to break the illegal blockade of Gaza, carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials. As last month, the ships were illegally intercepted in international waters, A UNHRC report on the incident concluded Israel acted with “an unacceptable level of brutality“. Nine protesters were killed and 30 seriously injured, with another dying later from his wounds.
Gaza Flotilla Atrocity Protest
Whitehall – Israeli Embassy
Around 20,000 people flooded Whitehall for a rally at Downing Street before marching to protest close to the Israeli Embassy following the murder days earlier of peace protesters by Israeli forces. They called for international action against Israel and an end to the illegal blockade.
The protest called by Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Muslim Initiative, CND, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Viva Palestina and Palestinian Forum of Britain had the official support of the trade union movement.
Tony Benn
There were speeches from politicians, activists and flotilla survivors both in Whitehall and after the march on Kensington High Street – and I name many and posted their pictures on My London Diary.
Although independent media reports had made clear that some of those killed had been shot multiple times in the head at close range in what appeared to be more or less random executions, the BBC had been broadcasting again and again the same lies from the same Israeli apologist defending their killings.
George Galloway
On the evening news they did mention this protest but reported that only 2,000 people took part, when clearly the actual number was at least five or ten times as many. As I commented “This is not an isolated error – there is a consistent policy by the BBC to play down the scale of protest.”
We have seen this playing down of pro-Palestine protests in particular in recent years, as well as a continuing and academically well-documented pro-Israel bias in their overall reporting. At least now there are now some interviewers who do try to question the Israeli spokespeople despite the overall editorial imbalance – but also allow them to keep repeating their lies.
SOAS Detainee Support Group had organised the ‘Release Carnival’ which called for an end to the practice of holding families and children in immigration detention centres.
The Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green had stated “Detention is harmful to children and therefore never likely to be in their best interests” and he argued “that detention of children for immigration control should cease“.
Although the UK Border’s Agency claimed “treating children with care and compassion is a priority for the UK Border Agency. Whenever we take decisions involving children their welfare comes first” the reality was very different, as you can read in many publications including the highly detailed report ‘State Sponsored Cruelty‘.
Detention centres are run by private contractors such as Serco and G4 whose main concern is profit, with little or no proper monitoring. Official inspections as well as many media investigations have made clear the real lack of proper care and maltreatment of detainees.
Old Comrades, Women for Life & Sikhs: Sunday 4th June 2006 was a day for marching and running on the streets of London. In the City, the London Regiments were remembering their fallen comrades, and several thousand women were raising funds for cancer research. In Hyde Park I joined several thousand Sikhs at a rally before they marched in memory of the martyrdom of the Fifth Guru and the Indian genocide of Sikhs, calling for the release of political prisoners and the formation of an independent Sikh state.
I wrote a rather longer piece than usual, ending with a complaint about the police harassment of photographers during the Sikh march. There do seem to be some officers who really have a very negative attitude towards photographers, and at times in particular towards those with UK Press Cards. Though formally these are recognised by all police forces in the UK, that recognition too often means nothing on the street. Below is what I wrote in 2006 – with the usual minor corrections.
London Old Comrades
Bank of England
Early Sunday the centre of the real City, around the Bank Of England is generally pretty empty, but today things were going on. Immediately north of the bank a small group of ‘old comrades’ from the London Regiments were preparing to march and lay poppy wreaths at the monument to their fallen comrades in front of the Royal Exchange. Some of those I spoke to had fought in the second world war, though there were also some younger people there. It’s a remembrance that has taken place twice a year since 1919.
It was a solemn and ceremonial occasion, impressive and colourful, with a well-disciplined smoothness. The monumental architecture of the Bank made a good setting, although the area on top of Bank Station itself is too fussy and cluttered.
Towards the end of the event, when the numbers had thinned out a bit, London Wall was still fairly full.
As they marched off, I peeled left in search of 750,000 women, or rather that fraction who were taking part in the Central London event. ‘Race For Life’ for Cancer Research UK, is the UK’s largest women-only nationwide fund-raising day. There certainly were a lot of them, [around 10,000], at times packing even the wider streets full from side to side, making it hard to walk along Cornhill.
Women of all ages, shapes, sizes, races and speeds running, walking or limping or wheel-chairing around the 5km course. There were fewer serious runners than I’d expected and less fancy-dress, but the sheer numbers were impressive.
The Sikh Remembrance March and Freedom Rally commemorated the martyrdom of the fifth guru, Sri Guru Arjan Dev Ji 400 years ago, as well as the events of 1984.
Guru Arjan Dev Ji compiled the first version of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, in 1604, writing many of the hymns within it. He was arrested in Lahore in 1606 on the orders of Mogul Emperor Jehangir, tortured for 5 days and martyred on the banks of the River Riva.
Punjabi speakers at the rally in Hyde Park described the events of 1984. The marchers demanded an acknowledgement of the Indian genocide of Sikhs, the release of Sikh political prisoners held in Indian jails, and for the establishment of an independent secular state of Khalistan in the Punjab.
During the annual celebration of the death of Sri Guru Arjan Dev Ji in 1984, Indira Ghandi sent her troops to attack Sikh militants in the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Many innocent pilgrims – men, women and children – were killed in the brutal assault. Thousands more died around the Punjab, particularly in the riots incited by government TV and radio stations after the October assassination of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards.
After the speeches came prayers, and then the march set off for Trafalgar Square and another rally. This was a serious event, with strongly felt grievances, and an impressive display of Sikh tradition and feelings.
The marchers were pleased to find photographers taking an interest in their cause, with many of them encouraging me and thanking me for my presence. Some had heard of this web site [My London Diary] too.
The march sets off in Hyde Park, with five men representing the original Panj Piare (Five Beloved Ones.)
Until we were close to Hyde Park Corner, the police were helpful and in good humour too, but then along came one of the rotten apples, someone who just wanted to push photographers around. He came and told me to get off the road, as I was stopping the demonstration. This was clearly absolute nonsense, and I tried to tell him, but reason held no interest for him.
Police harass a photographer trying to do his job. I and other photographers got the same treatment
Other photographers got harassed too. You can see one of them in my picture. We are accused of holding up the march, generally nonsense as most of us want to capture action in our images, and if people even slow down, will wave them on.
Of course it’s those at the actual front of the march who would have any effect on its progress. Further back where we were working, small gaps develop and are closed up all the time without affecting the overall progress.
I have respect for the police – some at least of their work is essential, but this kind of petty and stupid behaviour simply makes their job harder for no reason.
It also makes the work of photographers impossible. I can’t work unless I can stand in the right place to take pictures, and that is seldom on the sidelines. At the highest level, the police realise this; it’s about time they got some of the little dictators in the middle to put it into practice.
The message of love & peace SILENCED BY TANKS
Of course the policing of many marches is over the top. There were probably ten times the number needed for this event, which was predictably well ordered, good natured and essentially self-policing. Traffic control was really all that was required. Perhaps harassing photographers makes these surplus guys on overtime think they have a purpose.
Twenty minutes later, along with several of the other photographers, I was on my third warning from this guy and he was getting redder and more and more tense. I was interested in how the situation might develop, but I was also tired and it was time for me to go elsewhere.
More Golden Jubilee Celebrations: Monday June 3 2002 was the official Golden Jubilee Bank Holiday, and a number of events were taking place across the nation. And although I wasn’t myself celebrating I felt I should in some way document the events and picked a couple I felt might be of interest.
Here I’ll reproduce what I wrote in My London Diary in 2002 with the usual minor corrections, along with some of the pictures I posted back then, though the scans I made are sometimes rather primitive. I’ll also link to more pictures on-line, though there are still many from the day I’ve yet to digitise.
“June 3 I went to see how ordinary people were celebrating – first of all to a council organised even in Ilford, and then to a street party in the heart of the East End. “
Redbridge Jubilee Celebrations
Ilford High Rd, Ilford.#
Redbridge is in some ways one of the bleaker London boroughs, and the event seemed to lack any real centre or real conviction.
Perhaps the brightest point was the rain, which brought out a little of the true british spirit.
Mile End is also bleak when you emerge from the Underground, with too many lanes of road cutting through its centre.
To the north, and running up to the Roman and Vicky Park is one of the remnants of London’s East End, still with many of its Victorian terraces.
The street party was in full swing when I arrived and everyone was out to have a good time.
It was a great event for kids and for grandmas and everyone else, and the bar and the pub were doing good business too.
These were the real East-Enders – with a cast including a real Black Bishop in purple robes, two fancy dress Beefeaters, police who could almost have been from Dock Green (except for the hats), a fire engine and its crew and plenty of characters.
Not a single juggler, mime or performance artist in sight (sometimes I ask myself what did I do to father a unicyclist.) These were people who – like we all used to – could make their own entertainment.
Food, drink, chat, music, a bit of a dance, games for the kids. It was a street rather like the area I grew up in fifty years ago, where everybody knew each other, although now with a rather more multi-ethnic population.
People – apart from the odd shy kid – were happy to have their pictures taken and to talk. One man saw I was photographing the decorations on his house and came over to tell me how his father had decorated it for the Silver Jubilee twenty five years earlier and that he had been determined to do it better.
They hadn’t quite got to a real full-blown knees-up, but it seemed definitely on the cards but it was time for me to go. As I walked away three young women were walking towards the party on the other side of the street, “D’you wanna take our picture“, one shouted, seeing my cameras. “No film left” I replied.
The following day I meant to go out and take more pictures of other Jubilee events, but in the end I couldn’t make it, just feeling it would be too much of an anti-climax.
There are six pages with pictures from the celebrations in Bow. Back in 2002 we were still on dial-up connections and so images were spread out only a few on each page to give sensible loading times. Images were then shared on the web at much lower quality than we would use now. The links to the next page are usually above the final picture and the final page from the event is of black and white images.
Jubilee Celebrations and Kurdish Protest: Celebrations were taking place on Sunday 2nd June 2002 for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee (and they continued the following day which was the Golden Jubilee Bank Holiday, with the Tuesday also being the Spring Bank Holiday – moved into Summer for more celebrations.) My main reason for going into London was to photograph a protest by Kurds but I also tried to photograph some of the celebrations. Quotes below are from what I wrote on My London Diary back in 2002 with some of the pictures and I took.
Sloane Square
Chelsea
“As a convinced republican I wasn’t too excited, but thought I’d go along and have a little look at how others were celebrating. Sloane Square seemed a good place to see how Chelsea was taking it as they were having a fair on Sunday 2nd June.”
At least while I was there the celebrations in Sloane Square were an extremely formal event and rather boring.
Kurds Call For Human Rights in Turkey
Westminster
I am the Kadek – Kurds protest
“I was glad to leave and join the Kurds in their demonstration for human rights. Britain has a lot to answer for, having betrayed them at the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 which divided their country, giving most to Turkey which has since behaved with complete disregard for their human rights.”
The Devil TurkeyKurds protest against banning of their organisations Free Ocalan, Free Kurdistan
“More recently – again to keep the Turks onside – the US put the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on their terrorist list, despite it having abandoned terrorism to try and obtain justice. ” KADEK was the name the PKK changed to in 2002 when it said it was committed to non-violent activities and it was added to the PKK proscription in 2006.
“Turkey has continued a policy of brutal repression – as the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed.”
“Cynical support of US policy by Britain and other countries resulted in the PKK also being listed [in the UK] as a banned terrorist organisation last month. It’s the kind of politics that makes me ashamed to be British and loses our Labour government any respect.”
“After the demo I went on to see how Southwark were celebrating. “
“The answer turned out to be very low key, though as usual there were some interesting food and drink stalls at Borough Market, and a steady stream of people walking along by the river.”
