2007 | >Re-PHOTO

Trade Justice Mass Action 2007

Trade Justice Mass Action. Thursday 19th April 2007 saw a mass action by the Trade Justice Movement in London which was a part of a wider global day of action by campaigners across Europe as well as in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific – the ‘APC’ countries.

The protest was particularly about the agreements between the APC countries and the EU, and the unfair trade deals (economic partnership agreements or EPAs) that the EU was negotiating. The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States organisation was founded in 1975 and the 71 countries then involved came to an trade agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC) in Lomé, Togo, the Lomé Convention.

This “provided for most ACP agricultural and mineral exports to enter the EEC free of duty. Preferential access based on a quota system was agreed for products, such as sugar and beef, in competition with EEC agriculture” from the 71 countries in the ACP and it also provided funds for aid and investment.

The Lomé Convention was twice updated but in 1995 the United States complained to the World Trade Organisation that it was unfair to them and the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in their favour. Many argue that the WTO prioritizes the interests of wealthy nations and multinational companies and undermines national sovereignty, and hinders efforts to address global issues like poverty and climate change.

Negotiations between the European Union and the 78 ACP countries held in Coutonou, Benin in 2000 led to a new agreement, the Cotonou Agreement, signed by all except Cuba, which came into force in 2003 – and was later revised in 2005 and 2010.

According to Wikipedia, “The Cotonou Agreement is aimed at the reduction and eventual eradication of poverty while contributing to sustainable development and to the gradual integration of ACP countries into the world economy. The revised Cotonou Agreement is also concerned with the fight against impunity and promotion of criminal justice through the International Criminal Court.”

The ACP, now renamed the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, came to a new agreement, the Samoa Agreement, to replace this which entered into force provisionally in January 2024 but has proved more controversial, particularly because of its support for gender equality.

The Mass Action in 2007 was organised by the Trade Justice Movement, which included 78 UK-based organisations including aid organisations such as Action Aid, Cafod, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Tearfund, War On Want and the World Development Movement, trade unions, churches, fair trade groups and more.

It began with a rally in Belgrave Square, a square containing many empbassies. The rally was outside the German (and Austrian) embassies, with speakers from a number of the groups including Frances O’Grady from the Trade Union Congress, Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth and speakers from some APC countries.

*Setting off for the Department of Trade and Industry*

At the end of the rally groups left to deliver a letter and a large key to every EU country’s embassy with a letter and a key, demanding that the EU stops negotiating unfair trade deals (economic partnership agreements or EPAs) with developing countries. One group went to the Department of Trade and Industry to deliver to the UK. I could not go with all the groups going to all 27 locations to deliver these, but did manage to take photographs of the groups outside the Finnish, Spanish and Austrian embassies.

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Milad 2007 – Eid Milad-Un-Nabi

Milad 2007 – Eid Milad-Un-Nabi: On Saturday 14th April 2007 I was invited to the Eid Milad-Un-Nabi Procession and Community Day in Tooting in the south of London.

Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, also known as Mawlid, is observed on the 12th day of the third month of the Islamic calendar, Rabi’ al-Awwal. It commemorates the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. The name means “the first Spring” and it is a bank holiday in parts of India and there are processions in Lahore and elsewhere in Pakistan where it is a national holiday as in almost all Islamic countries. The day is celebrated by both Sunni and Shia Muslims. Some local Muslim Saints also have Mawlid celebrations on their birth dates in some Muslim countries.

In 2025, Mawlid is the Islamic Day from sunset to sunset on Thu, 4 Sept 2025 – Fri, 5 Sept 2025. Here is the post I made in 2007 on My London Diary with normal capitalisation and minor corrections.

April seems to be a very religious month for me. On Saturday 15th I went to the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday organised by the Sunni Muslim Association in Tooting which included a Juloos or procession from Tooting Bec Common through Tooting to the Leisure Centre in Garratt Lane.

Eid Milad-un-Nabi, or simply Milad, is an all-day community event and one that doesn’t tolerate “political banners or activists“. It was one of the friendliest events I’ve photographed, and as well as several hundred Muslims, their were also honoured guests including the Mayor of Wandsworth, various representatives of the police, of the fire service, a chaplain, someone from the local council of churches, the local conservative candidate and others.

It was a hot day, and walking in the sun made it feel hotter. I was glad to arrive at the leisure centre and take off my shoes, and relax on the mat in the hall. It was just a little dark for taking pictures (and I was still having to use an old flash unit while I wait for the new one to be returned from servicing) and both the whirling dervishes and the Islamic Martial Arts display presented a challenge, although the speakers were not too difficult.

The speeches, in English, stressed the peaceful aspects of Islam (and declared suicide bombing and violent demonstrations over the cartoons of the prophet as un-Islamic.) Perhaps the longest speech was by Lord Sheikh, a Conservative life peer since 2006, chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum and also chairman of the Conservative Ethnic Diversity Council, who has had an extremely successful career in insurance since coming here from Uganda.

I left shortly after, and decided not to wait to pay homage to the Holy Relic Of The Prophet (peace be upon him) as I wasn’t sure if I was in a suitable state of purity and cleanliness. Probably not. But it had been a very positive and enjoyable day.

More pictures on My London Diary.

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Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: Bicentenary – 2007

Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: Bicentenary: On Sunday 25th March 2007 I was in Brixton and Clapham where commemorations were taking place on the 200th anniversary of the bill to abolish the Atlantic slave trade being given royal assent by King George III on 25 March 1807. It was a great step forward but despite this bill, slavery “remained legal in most of the British Empire until the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.”

The previous day I had photographed the “Anglican Church’s walk of witness to mark the abolition. The Church Of England has much to repent, with many of those who profited greatly from the ships that transported some 12 million African people over the years being pillars of the church and supporting it financially.“

As I continued on My London Dairy:

“When Christopher Codrington died in 1710 he left his Barbados plantations to its missionary society, who at least at first continued his regime of forced hard labour, punishment with the lash, iron collar and straight-jacket, and, at least for some years to brand its enslaved Africans across their chest with the word “society”. Even though the church claimed to have made various improvements in conditions, 4 of every 10 Africans bought by the society still died in their first 3 years there in 1740. Despite the efforts of abolitionists, slavery continued until made illegal by the 1833 act, which provided the church with a very large financial reward in compensation.”

This procession had been accompanied from its opening service in Whitehall Place by a small group who had walked from Hull, the birthplace of William Wilberforce who had led the fight for the abolition in Parliament. They had taken turns to march in a yoke and chains and ended their walk in Victoria Gardens at the Buxton Memorial Fountain erected in 1865 to mark the ending of slavery in the British Empire in 1834.

After photographing a ceremony on Lambeth Bridge acknowledging the 2704 ships that left the port of London to carry enslaved Africans the march then continued in a silent remembrance of those who died in the ocean crossings to Kennington Park. I left them to photograph a second march coming to join them from Holy Trinity, Clapham.

On Sunday 25th I began at Windrush Square in Brixton where another commemorative event was taking place, organised by the Brixton Society. After drumming, gospel music and speeches about the abolition people planted bulbs in the grass and there were prayers, The event then moved on to celebrating the contribution of those of black Afro-Caribbean origin to life and culture in Britain now with a number of speeches and then more gospel singing.

After a lunchtime walk by the Thames I went to Clapham, the spiritual and physical home of the abolition movement, where the London Borough of Lambeth had organised a commemorative walk.

This started at Holy Trinity Church, where the Clapham Sect at the centre of the movement, including William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, John and Henry Thornton, John Venn, Zachary Macaulay and others had worshipped. But as tour guide Steve Martin pointed out Clapham was also home to many who had made fortunes from the trade and opposed the abolition, with both sides worshipping in the same parish church.

*One of the three groups of walkers at the probable site of the African Academy*

You can read much more about these events on My London Diary, and I won’t copy it all here, but here are my two opening paragraphs:

There is no escaping that all of us who live in Britain – whatever the colour of our skin or our personal history – are now benefiting from the proceeds of the trafficking of African people and their forced labour in our colonies over around four centuries. Fortunes made from slavery helped to build many of the institutions from which we still benefit, including many of our great galleries and museums. Slavery founded many of our banks and breweries and other great industries, and made Britain a wealthy nation.

But it is also true that the same wealthy elite that treated Africans so callously exploited the poor in Britain. My ancestors were thrown off their land and probably some were imprisoned for their religious beliefs by these same elites. Almost certainly some of my forebears were a part of the movement that campaigned against slavery and called for and end to the trade in human beings, although equally certainly they had little or no political power at the time, and probably no vote.

Much more on My London Diary

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Spring Time for Druids – 2007

Spring Time for Druids: in 2007 the Spring Equinox was on 21 March, though I think in most years it is a few hours earlier on the 20th. Yesterday, in 2025 it apparently came at 9.01am, though for me it had come around ten days earlier when a patch of my garden was deep in flowering crocuses (or crocus or croci.) And for weather forecasters Spring starts on March 1st.

Later in the day The Druid Order will have come out at 12 noon yesterday at Tower Hill Terrace, but I didn’t feel moved to go to join them. I photographed their ceremonies on several years, both there and at the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, and also published some more detailed reports (having done some research in the Mount Haemus lectures and other sources) with some of my pictures of later events.

The pictures here are from March 21st 2007, the first time I had attended a Druid ceremony and I then knew very little about them, and my comments on My London Diary perhaps reflect this. But the pictures I made were rather similar to those I made in later years and as with some other events I no longer feel I have anything new to say and no longer go.

I think druids might say their ceremonies were timeless, and certainly The Druid Order still use the order of service which they invented and printed aproaching a hundred years ago and I think the banners they carry and the other items used have a similar inter-war history. But I understand they only began this anunual event at Tower Hill in 1956.

We have very little real evidence of the druids of the distant past in our country, though I think their ceremonies may well have involved rather more bloodthirsty sacrifices than the current rather anodyne public festivities.

But here are some of my thoughts from this first encounter back in 2007:

It was in some ways impressive, with their white robes, but rather to staid and measured for my taste. Celebrations need to be done with much more joy. This had more the feeling of a funeral – despite the white dress.

There was an air of dusty scholarship, of dull Victorian scribes trying to major on gravitas in the Order of Service, and a sermon of mumbled though possibly worthy boredom. Hard to imagine William Blake as chief druid of this tribe, I’m sure they must have done things differently in his days.

I’m not sure how far back these celebrations go at Tower Hill. Modern Druidry revived in the eighteenth century, partly as archaeologists re-discovered sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury and asked themselves what went on there. What relationship the rites they came up with bear to those of pre-Christian times is impossible to know (though one suspects rather little.)

My pictures on My London Diary (link at bottom of this post) are in the order they were taken and together with the captions give a fairly detailed account of the event, although I think I did it a little better in some later years.

William Blake was among a long list named in the ceremony as a former druid. According to the article A Note on William Blake and the Druids of Primrose Hill there is no evidence for the claims that William Blake was a druid or chief druid, although he may have known some who did take part the annual rituals on the hill which were begun by some Welsh Bards in 1792 claiming that their Bardic traditions “had preserved the true esoteric lore of the Druids.”

*Back inside the church hall, where I left them and went in search of a cup of tea.*

In fact Blake commented negatively on Druids in his writing and images, particularly objecting “to reported Druid practices of ritual human sacrifice, and forced submission to priestly rites and rituals.“

More pictures and captions from the 2007 The Druid Order: Spring Equinox on My London Diary

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No Trident Lobby & Rally 2007

No Trident Lobby & Rally: On March 14th 2007 the House of Commons were debating the principle to replace the existing UK nuclear weapons and begin a process to design, build and commission submarines to replace the existing Vanguard-class submarines carrying Trident nuclear missiles with updated systems over the coming 17 years. The New Labour government, led by PM Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett were supported by the Conservatives and one DUP member and won the final division by 408 votes to 160.

Voting against were many Labour MPs and almost all the Liberal Democrats, SNP and other minority parties, although there were a few absentees.

Around Parliament Square there was a day of protest by Greenpeace and others with the main CND rally called for 5pm and continuing into the evening. Here is the account I wrote of the day for My London Diary – with the usual minor corrections and a few of the pictures I posted – more are still on My London Diary

No Trident Lobby & Rally – Parliament Square, London

I missed Bianca and Annie and the others, but I didn’t miss them as there was plenty else going on. As I walked over Westminster bridge there was the banner flying on the crane in front of the houses of parliament, and there were quite a few people stopping to look at it.

Later, Greenpeace activists got on their bikes and cycled across Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square, where they were stopped by police and threatened with arrest unless they left the roadway and moved onto the square. After a while they all did, many cycling away after a few minutes to cycle around London before joining the ‘fish on a bicycle‘ critical mass that arrived back at the square a few hours later, and got the same ‘off your bike‘ treatment from the police.

*Cyclists are ordered off the road and onto the pavement of Parliament Square under threat of arrest*

The square started to fill up rather more from around 5pm when a silent protest attended by a couple of hundred took place in the far corner of the square. By the time the speeches started at 6.15 there was a respectable crowd, perhaps around 500, but people were still arriving and with the addition of the cyclists there were perhaps closer to a thousand present.

A brief attempt by Greenpeace to protest on the pavement in front of the Houses Of Parliament took the police by surprise, but the group were soon escorted back across the road.

*Greenpeace demonstrators on the pavement outside Parliament*

*Veteran peace campaigner Pat Arrowsmith was among those in the crowd*

Throughout the day there had been plenty of signs of the personal vendetta between some Met officers and the regular protesters in the square. Two hapless officers appear to have been deployed just to stand in front of one fluorescent pink placard, and there were some incidents of minor harassment. The injunction thrown out by the judge at Southwark Court recently showed how the police are wasting our money in this respect.

*Brian Haw: Find Your Courage; Share Your Vision; Change Your World. (T-shirt from Dan Wilkins, The Nth Degree.)*

Apparently the latest approach to try and remove the protesters from the square comes from London Mayor Ken Livingstone who is worried about the grass being damaged by the tents there. As I remarked when this was mentioned, “grass regenerates, dead children don’t.” Perhaps we should start a ‘Brian [Haw] For Mayor‘ campaign.

*We need Trident “like a fish needs a bicycle”*

Several Labour MPs came out from the house to address the meeting, along with many activists. Bruce Kent started his speech by thanking Brian Haw for allowing the demo to use his back garden, and Brian later came from his protest at the front of the square to address the meeting.

This time the government got its vote, but there will be later occasions to oppose Trident, as well as the continuing actions at Faslane which those at the demo were urged to take part in.

Trident replacement is still continuing in 2025, with the government being committed to the building of four replacement submarines by the early 2030s and an extension to the life of the Trident missiles potentially to the early 2060s as well as work taking place now to produce replacement nuclear warheads in the 2030s. It is an important support to the UK arms industry but of little or no military consequence with its obscene cost threatening our ability to defend the country by conventional means and it remains – like all nuclear weapons – a definite threat to the peace and future of the world.

Many more pictures on My London Diary beginning here.

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Bow Back Rivers, Plaistow & Upton Park – 2007

Bow Back Rivers, Plaistow & Upton Park: March 8th is of course International Women’s Day, and most years I’ve found events related to that to photograph, though often the main events take place not on the day itself but on the closest Saturday. In 2007 March 8th was a Thursday and I did something completely different, taking a stroll around the various rivers and channels to the south and west of the Olympic site.

Many of the paths and roads I walked were soon to be closed for various works connected with the Olympics, including the building of a new lock. This was much heralded as being a part of making London 2012 green, with boasts that it would lead to a huge reduction in lorries taking spoil from the site out and bringing materials in to the area by barge. In fact I think it was only ever used for a few photo opportunities and the piece I wrote for My London Diary perhaps suggested the real driver behind its construction.

Another unnecessary aspect of the Olympic development was putting the power lines between Hackney and East Ham underground, perhaps also more driven by the desire by developers of the area, now with its many new tall blocks flats more attractive and profitable.

There was also a very half-hearted attempt to use the rivers and navigation as a means of access to the games, with a river-boat service. It was said to be a part of opening up the area as a major leisure attraction, but didn’t ever work and was soon abandoned.

After walking around the area I walked east along the Greenway – the elevated walkway over the Northern Outfall Sewer – to Upton Park, also affected by the Olympics, with West Ham abandoning their Boleyn ground and moving to the Olympic Stadium after the games. Close to their ground is Queen’s Market, which Newham Council had being trying to demolish and redevelop since 2004. It is still currently under threat as it doesn’t fit with their dreams of gentrification but remains as an important community resource.

*Channelsea Rvier and the island, with Abbey Creek to left*

My post on My London Diary contains a lot of background but doesn’t really describe the walk I made – the pictures tell that story, along with their captions. It is rather more fanciful than most of my posts. As usual I’ve tidied it up slightly, changing to normal capitalisation and making a few minor amendments.

Bow Back Rivers – Prescott Lock Site

*The tide flowing out fast from the Prescott Channel, officially opened in 1935*

If you are a water molecule starting in the River Lea at Leagrave on the outskirts of Luton, your route to its mouth on the Thames can be rather convoluted – even assuming you don’t get diverted on the way for drinking by Londoners. Below Hertford the river runs in concert with the Lee Navigation, part river, part canal, and examining a map you would soon be confused.

A *memorial on Three Mills Green marked the heroism of distillery workers who died trying to rescue a workmate in 1901. The sculpture ‘Helping Hands’ by Alec Peevers replaced an earlier large cross*

Since work by the Lee Conservancy Board and the West Ham Corporation started in 1931 and officially opened in 1935, the major flow of water in the southern area has been along the Flood Relief Channel (built in the 1970s following the 1947 floods) and the River Lea to Hackney Wick, and then along the Waterworks River, into the Three Mills Wall River and down the newly built Prescott Channel onward to Bow Creek and finally the Thames.

*James Dane established Dane & Co. making news, letterpress and lithographic inks in Sugar House Lane in 1853. Recently much production had moved to Stalybridge.*

All of these streams have been fully tidal since the Prescott Sluice was removed in the late 1950s (at the same time as most of the Channelsea River was culverted and filled in). Also tidal are the vestigial sections of the Channelsea River and Abbey Creek to the south of Stratford. So in your molecular progress, you might well spend some days being flushed north by tidal inflow from the Thames and then flowing south as the tide falls.

Flushed with you, at least on around 50 stormy days a year, might be some considerable sewage overflow from Abbey Mills sewage pumping station into Abbey Creek, lending its sweet smell to the banks of these streams in the Olympic area. Largely to avoid the delicate athletes (and spectators) being thus nasally assaulted a new lock and sluice is to be built on the Prescott Channel.

It remains to be seen whether the promises that the back rivers will actually carry the suggested 170,000 lorry loads in and out of the Olympic site will be met [of course it wasn’t], but it would certainly seem to be a useful development for the area longer term, opening up more of these waterways for leisure and possible commercial use. Currently there is a navigable loop on the Bow Back Rivers from the Lea Navigation, using St Thomas’s Creek, City Mill River and the Old River Lea, although this may well be restricted for the Olympics. [It was, for many years.]

*The Long Wall path took me back to where I had begun taking pictures on the Greenway*

The footpaths crossing the Prescott Channel bridge will be closed mid-March [2007] for around 18 months to allow the lock to be rebuilt, so I thought it a good time to take some pictures before the work begins.

Also in some of the pictures are a number of the sites which have been the subject of compulsory purchase to put the power lines between Hackney and East Ham underground for the Olympics. There are two lines, one going just north of the Greenway and curving down south through the Channelsea River.

More pictures beginning on the March 2007 My London Diary page

Plaistow and Upton Park

In October 2006 I photographed a march asking Newham Council to keep Queen’s Market in Upton Park. Although it is an exceedingly ugly ensemble, not helped by poor maintainence and an utterly depressing choice of colours, it is still a great local resource. The market is perhaps the most ethically diverse in London, and many rely on it as a great source of cheap fresh foods and other goods. As well as the market stalls there are many small shops around the side of the market.

[There was] then an online petition at the government web site urging the prime minister to “to ensure that strategic street markets such as queen’s market, upton park are given proper protection against the combined threat of negligent local authorities and predatory property developers. as part of this we seek an open and transparent consultation process.”

We go down to our local market a couple of times most weeks. The fruit and veg is much cheaper than in the supermarket, and it is fresh and not wrapped in 7 layers of plastic. We’d hate to see it go, and can see why the people who shop at don’t want their market replaced with yet another supermarket, and less small shops and stalls.

But Queen’s Market could do with doing up, perhaps replacing the roof, new stalls, a rethinking of some of the central space in the development which is a kind of wasteland where guys sit with cans to make it a more pleasant and family-friendly space. It could be a real centre for Upton Park, perhaps with more shops, cafés with outdoor seating and some kind of performance area and perhaps a playground. I’d get rid of the pub too, or at least give it a complete makeover.

March 2007 My London Diary page

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Keep our NHS Public – 2007

Keep our NHS Public: Saturday 3rd March 2007 saw protests around the country against the increasing privatisation of the National Health Service and I managed to cover several of these events in London, a march in Camberwell followed by a march from Whitechapel to Hackney Town Hall where they joined others who had marched in Hackney. After finishing my coverage of these events I photographed the Hare Krishna in Soho and then went to the Photographers Gallery.

Here I’ll publish what I wrote back then on My London Diary with the usual corrections to spelling and capitalisation. Reading what I wrote below again now I think I was far too generous to New Labour. Although some MPs may have been well-intentioned I think the policies were largely driven by those with personal financial interests in private healthcare and other sectors that would profit from them. The NHS (and us) are still suffering from their actions and I have little confidence in the changes the current Labour government is now making.

Keep our NHS Public – Saturday 3rd March 2007

Although health workers and other trade unionists had called for a national demonstration in London, the union bosses declined to organise one, perhaps not wanting to embarrass an already beleaguered Labour government. What took place instead was a whole series of local demonstrations – including at least 7 in the Greater London area – across the whole country.

The overall effect was perhaps to make it more impressive, and certainly it seemed to get more coverage in the media that might otherwise have been expected, although there were few reporters and no TV crews at the three events I photographed (for some reason they preferred Sheffield.)

Largely well-intentioned attempts to improve the health service have failed to deliver as they should, with many services being cut. Part of this has been caused by a dogmatic insistence on making use of private finance with results that range from fiasco to farce, inevitably accompanied by long-term financial loss.

A second disastrous dogma has led to bringing in private enterprise to do the simple work at artificially inflated prices (they even get paid for work they are not doing) which has the secondary result of making the NHS services appear more expensive, as they are left to deal with the trickier cases.

*Kate Hooey holds the main banner with others on the Camberwell march*

Further blows to our national health service have been through the predictably disastrous IT projects; as well as going millions over budget, these have largely failed to deliver. Add the proliferation of management and expensive consultants, along with crazed assumptions in negotiating doctors’ pay leading to an unbelievably generous offer, and it it hardly surprising that the whole system is in financial chaos.

The government clearly lacks a real commitment to the kind of National Health Service many of us grew up with, run for the benefit of the people rather than to make money for healthcare corporations. The health service certainly needed a shake-up to reduce bureaucracy and eliminate wasteful practices, but instead new layers of both have and are being added.

*Outside the Maudsley Hospital – reading the letter which a delegation then delivered*

I started off in Camberwell, and had time for a short walk before the speeches and march began. It wasn’t a huge event, but there was strong support from those in the service, from patients and from pensioners, as well as local MP Kate Hooey. From Camberwell Green the march went down to the Maudsley Hosptial where a letter was handed in and I got on a bus and left for Bethnal Green and Hackney.

Going up the Cambridge Heath Road in the centre of Bethnal Green, I saw the march from the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel to Hackney in the distance. Unfortunately the bus was held up in the traffic behind it, taking almost five minutes to reach the next stop before the driver would open the doors and let me off. Some things were a lot easier with the Routemasters.

This was a smaller march than that from Camberwell, and after a few minutes I felt I’d photographed all I could, so I ran ahead and caught a bus for the centre of Hackney, arriving there just a couple of minutes before the Hackney march, which had come from Homerton Hospital, had returned to the town hall. I photographed them arriving and then the rally that ensued.

The Hackney march was a little larger, perhaps around two hundred, and there were quite a few speakers, including local councillors and representatives from the various organisations that had helped to organise the march.

A big cheer went up as the march from Whitechapel arrived, swelling the numbers in the square at the town hall.

Among the better known speakers taking part were George Galloway, whose speech lived up to his usual high standards of wit and common sense. Lindsay German, a hackney resident well known for her work for ‘Stop The War’ also spoke with feeling on the issues of health and the NHS. Several of the other speakers were old enough to have known the problems before the health service was set up.

As the meeting began to wind down, I caught a bus to Bethnal Green and then the tube to Tottenham Court Road. Just to the north of Soho Square I got to the Hare Krishna Temple just as the annual Gaura Purnima [Golden Full Moon] procession was arriving back from its tour around the area.

*Churchill and an entrance to a stairway with a red light*

From there I went to the Photographers’ Gallery to have a good look at this year’s photography prize contestants. I hope the prize goes to one of the two photographers on the shortlist, Philippe Chance or Anders Petersen. [Neither won.] Walking through Soho and Westminster I took a few more pictures.

More pictures on My London Diary.

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Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – 2007

Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq: On Saturday 24th February 2007 I photographed the march and rally organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative to call for British troops to be brought back from Iraq and for an end to the deployment of Trident nuclear missiles and their proposed expensive replacement.

The marchers met in Hyde Park around Speakers’ Corner and marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square.

I wrote a slightly long text to go with the pictures which I’ll repeat in a more normal form below with normal capitalisation. It includes an explanation of how I arrived at an rough estimate for the numbers taking part for this and other protests – often very significantly greater than that then given by the police to the press and usually rather less than that of the organisers.

Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – Stop the War/CND/BMI Demo

I’ve for many years been opposed to the so-called independent British nuclear weapons. Even at the height of the Cold War they were never credible as an independent deterrent. If they have ever had any justification it was that they made the USA feel less guilty, although American guilt at its huge nuclear arsenal and at being the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons has always been an incredibly stunted growth.

I was also firmly against the invasion of Iraq. It was always clear to those who didn’t want to be deluded that the so-called ‘intelligence’ on weapons of mass destruction was laughable.

*A cheaper alternative to Trident, and at least as effective. The bicycle & trailer costs rather less than a nuclear sub too.*

Blair was either a liar or a fool as he misled a minority of the British people and a majority of their MPs. Or most probably both. (Saddam may also have been deluded and certainly was an evil dictator, but we had long failed those who tried to oppose him.) The invasion was criminal, but the lack of planning for the occupation that inevitably followed even more so.

So Saturday’s march, organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative against both of these had my whole-hearted support (although i would have photographed it anyway.)

It is hard to be sure of numbers on events such as this, but the police estimate is laughable (the first figure they gave to the press, of 4000, was totally ludicrous.)

It took around 90 minutes for the march to pass me in Park Lane, and although there were a few short gaps, there were plenty of times when the wide street was too crowded to really take pictures. My estimate of the average number of people passing me per minute is 200-600, giving a total of 18,000-50,000 marchers from Hyde Park.

You can add to these figures perhaps another 10-20% who for various reasons go direct to the rally or join the march closer to Trafalgar Square, giving a total that could be between 20,000 and 60,000.

After photographing the marchers, I took the tube to get to the rally in time to hear some of the speeches (marchers were still arriving almost up to the end of the rally.) As I arrived, there were many people already leaving, and the square was filled, with people spilling out at both the northeast and northwest corners.

*So where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? In the American arsenals of course.*

I wasn’t there in time to hear Ken Livingstone, MPs John Mcdonnell and John Trickett, MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jill Evans, playwright David Edgar, Paul Mackney of the University & College Union or some of the other speakers, but I did hear the co-chair of the US ‘United For Peace And Justice’ Judith Leblanc, Lindsey German, George Galloway, and Augusto Montiel, a Venezuelan MP, as well as several Muslim speakers, trade unionists and singers including Julie Felix. I didn’t catch all of their names.

For me the most moving speech was from Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq. Together with others from ‘military families against the war’ she is camping out over the weekend opposite Downing Street.

Six of her colleagues stood with her as a group while she addressed the crowd, lending their support. She was simple, direct, emotional.

The final speaker (I think) was Jeremy Corbyn, MP, and it started to rain again as he began speaking, so I headed for the Underground and home.

Many – too many – more pictures on My London Diary.

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Overground, Olympics and a Christmas Card – 2007

Overground, Olympics and a Christmas Card: Like most of my posts on My London Diary before a redesign of the site in 2008, my contributions for Thursday 13th December 2007 are a little difficult to read and navigate, with the text separated from the pictures. But at least by then I had discovered the capital letters when I was writing about my activities. So I’ll repost them again after the introduction here.

On 13th December 2007 I began with a morning protest by the RMT union over the privatisation of the East London Line, previously run by London Transport. They wanted the line to remain run, like the Underground run by a publicly owned body – the Underground is run by London Underground Limited (LUL), a statutory corporation wholly owned by Transport for London (TfL).

Although TfL is still responsible for the Overground it is was until recently run by Arriva Rail London which was owned by the German national rail company Deutsche Bahn from 2010 until June 2024. It was then sold to I Squared Capital, a US-based private equity firm with global investments mainly in infrastructure. The Elizabeth line is run by a subsidiary of MTR Corporation, largely owned by the Hong Kong government.

Both Overground and the Elizabeth line have been considerable improvements to transport across London, but we can still question whether it makes sense to have so much of our infrastructure run by foreign companies – and so much land and buildings becoming owned by overseas investors.

The RMT protest ended shortly before noon and in the afternoon I walked from Stratford High Street to Hackney Wick past the Olympic area around Stratford Marsh.

RMT Protests East London Line Privatisation – City Hall, Southwark

Overground, Olympics and a Christmas Card

Improving our transport system in London should be good news, although the closure of the East London Line for almost three years from 22 Dec seems excessive (and of course the Shoreditch end has already been closed for some time.

Looked at on the map, the new overground routes, from Dalston (and later, Highbury and Islington) down to Crystal Palace and West Croydon (and perhaps eventually also to Clapham Junction) seem mainly a matter of connecting together existing routes, and adding a couple of new stations at Hoxton and Haggerston.

But what upsets the unions – and almost three-quarters of Londoners – is that when the line reopens after great public expense, it will have been privatised, paying profits to eight different companies for various aspects of its running – including some involved in the Metronet failure.

Part of those profits will come from paying staff less – and worse working conditions. The unions are also worried about possible safety problems as the signalling on the route will be shared between London Underground and Network Rail systems.

A hundred or so demonstrators from the RMT union, Respect and others marched around City Hall several times, led by a coffin for the line carried by ‘undertakers’ to represent the private contractors and a tuneful 3 piece jazz band, before a short rally.

And although there are various replacement bus services during the years of closure, these leave a gap at the most essential part of the current route – across the Thames between Wapping and Rotherhithe. It is apparently beyond the wit of Transport for London to find buses that can use the Rotherhithe tunnel – or even provide a ferry service (the ferry downriver at Canary Wharf takes 3 minutes, but costs £1.90 if you have a travel card or over £500 for an annual season.)

Unless you bring your own canoe, the quickest alternative is probably to swim, though swallowing the water might be fatal. On the tube it takes one minute; the alternatives the TfL web site suggests on a weekday are mainly around an hour. Surely not acceptable.

More pictures at RMT Protests East London Line Privatisation

Stratford Marsh – Hackney Wick (2012 Olympic Site)

*My shadow falls on one of the few remaining buildings on Marshgate Lane*

The ‘Greenway’ path on the top of London’s Northern Outfall Sewer reopened recently after a temporary closure during the nearby demolition works, and as it was a fine day I took a walk along it from Stratford to Hackney Wick.

Almost all of the buildings on the Olympic site have gone, with just occasional bits of wall or outbuildings left, and there are some pretty huge piles of earth or whatever. Gone too are most of the many trees, particularly the willows by Marshgate Lane and all the wild areas – as well as the tyre mountains and other car parts.

*Northern Outfall carrying London’s sewage over the Lea Navigation*

The light under the Northern outfall where it crosses the navigation was interesting, low sun bouncing up from the water and giving the structure a golden glow.

I went on over the lock at Old Ford to ‘Fish Island’ and then through the red circle footbridge to Hackney Wick, taking a few pictures from the station footbridge while waiting for the train back to Stratford. The line also gives some views of the vast building site.

Many more pictures at Stratford Marsh – Hackney Wick (Olympic Site).

My London Diary – Christmas Card – Tower Bridge

For once I’ve printed and sent my Christmas cards before the last date for posting, which is a pity, because if I’d waited I think the picture of two Santas at the Christmas Fair next to Tower Bridge [taken while waiting for the RMT protest to begin] would have made a good image. I think it’s the third figure in red at left of picture that really makes it work.

So this picture comes with my Christmas Greetings for all of you who visit the site.

I think I used this picture on my 2008 Christmas Card. I’m still trying to find a suitable picture for 2024.

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Krishna Celebrations & A Police State

Krishna Celebrations & A Police State: On Sunday 19th August 2007 I went to photograph a religious celebration in Southall, around 11 miles from where I live. I don’t drive and it takes well over an hour by public transport but I could then ride there on my bike in perhaps 45 minutes. At the time the Climate Camp was taking place near Heathrow at Harmondsworth, but having read their “media policy” I had decided not to go there, but in the event I got drawn into it a little. Here I’ll re-publish, with some slight corrections what I wrote on My London Diary in 2007 together with pictures from from the day, both in Southall and on my way home along the north of Heathrow.

On Sunday I cycled through the light rain to the Shree Ram Mandir (Temple Of Lord Rama) in King Street, Southall, which was apparently the first Hindu temple established in Britain, although recently rebuilt. They were holding their Janam Ashtami Shobha Yaatra, a procession in honour of the birth anniversary of Krishna which this year is on September 4.

I have to admit to finding the Hindu religion confusing, but processions such as this are lively and colourful events even if their full appreciation may require a rather different mindset to mine.

It is easy to share the feelings of celebration and of community, and to feel the welcome given by so many. I also met for the first time the newly elected MP for Ealing Southall who held the seat for labour in last month’s by-election, Virendra Sharma, taking part in the procession; many were eager to pose for their picture with him.

I took a route back from Southall along the north side of Heathrow, close to the Climate Camp at Harmondsworth. On my way to Southall, along the Great South West Road which runs along the south-east of the airport, I’d been stopped and searched by police at Hatton Cross.

Its a power that police are using more and more – on average around 11,000 a month in London now, and one that makes me feel uneasy. We now seem to be in a kind of police state I’ve certainly never voted for and don’t wish to live in.

I won’t appear in the Met’s figures, despite being searched in London, as the two officers concerned had been drafted in from Surrey for the day. They were polite and we had a pleasant enough conversation, but to me it still seems an unreasonable intrusion.

Under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the police can search anyone in an area designated as likely to be the subject of a terrorist attack – such as airports. they don’t need to have any grounds to suspect you, being there is enough.

Cycling back along the pavement by the Bath Road (a shared path) there were rather more police around, but they were too busy with more likely targets to stop me. As I came along the road I found myself riding along with a woman who was obviously hurrying to get somewhere. We both stopped at the same point, opposite where three activists had scaled the side of a small building with a banner reading “MAKE PLANES HISTORY”.

She jumped over the fence between the two carriageways to approach the protesters, while I stayed on the opposite side from where I had a better view. Later she came back to talk to the TV crew beside me which was talking to one of the protesters – obviously she was proud of her daughter’s action.

And she had every right to be proud. We need action over Heathrow, action to prevent the takeover of even more land for the Third Runway. I’ve long opposed the expansion of Heathrow – and was on the local march against the Third Runway in June 2003. Now there shouldn’t even be a possibility of further expansion, but the government must look at ways of running down the activities at Heathrow, or it will be failing not just West London but the world.

Further along the road I found protesters gathering around the British Airports Authority offices, which were ringed by police. Nothing much seemed to be happening and the media were there in force, so I left the guys to it.

I’d previously been upset by the restrictive media policy adopted by the Climate Camp, which had the effect of preventing sensible photographic coverage of the event. So I was rather less interested than I might otherwise have been in putting myself out to take pictures.

Along the road I met a few groups of demonstrators and did take a few pictures of them, including some on the bridge over the road into the airport, and a couple of the Clown Army being harassed by a police photo team, but my heart still wasn’t really in it.

The British Airways offices had seemed to me a likely place for a confrontation – and obviously the police had thought so too, as teams of black clad figures paced up and down spoiling for a fight, watched over by the guys in uniform and a group of suits. At the top of the mound in front of the offices were a couple of officers on horses.

It was like some painting of the field lining up before a medieval battle, and I wish I’d stopped to take a picture, but they were so obviously looking for trouble I decided I didn’t want the aggravation that this would most likely have caused. For once you will just have to imagine it!

More pictures on My London Diary:
Janam Ashtami Shobha Yaatra
Heathrow Climate Camp Protestors

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