Tag: Big Ben

Students March Against Huge Fee Rise

Thursday 9th December 2010 was the day of a third student protest against the three-fold increase in university tuition fees which was being debated in Parliament that day, and the scenes in the area around were probably the most confusing of any I’ve seen in London.

My account of my day on My London Diary runs to around 1,700 words, and I’ll attempt not to repeat myself here, while giving a rather shorter account. The march started outside the University of London Union in Malet St, with a crowd of perhaps 10-20,000 including many sixth-formers who would be hit by the £9,000 a year fees when they went to university as well as current students and supporters.

There was a good atmosphere as the crowd listened to speeches there from trade unionists, John McDonnell MP and two sixthformers from schools that were being occupied in protest who got the largest cheers. As usual with student protests there was plenty to photograph.

The march began well though progress was rather slow, and several hundred students decided to walk in front of the main banner and for some reason police tried to stop them. They thought they were about to be kettled and rushed off towards Covent Garden. The official march continued without obstruction along the agreed route along the Strand. It wasn’t at all clear what the police had intended, and this was something that set the scene for the day.

Many more protesters joined the march at Trafalgar Square, and rather than proceed down Whitehall, police and march organisers had agreed on a route though Admiralty Arch and down Horseguards Road, and then left into Parliament Square. The march was then meant to continue down Bridge Street to an official rally on the Embankment, but most marchers had a different idea and wanted to stay in Parliament Square, the obvious place for the protest to continue.

It’s hard to understand why either police or march organisers had thought people would march on rather than stay outside Parliament – and probably many on the march had simply assumed it would end there. And soon police were actually preventing any who wanted to go on by blocking all the exits from Parliament Square except that into Whitehall (which they later decided to block.)

I managed to move around thanks to my press card, but even with this I was often refused access through police lines even in calm areas, and had to move along and find other officers in the line who would let me through, or take a longer walk around to get to where I wanted. The police didn’t appear to know what they were supposed to be doing and at one point I was being crushed by the crowd against the barriers in front of the riot police who were threatening us with batons unless we moved back – which was impossible because of the crush. Several press colleagues did get injured.

Late in the day students who wanted to leave were told by officers they could do so by going up Whitehall – only to be stopped by other police who were closing the street off. We were pushed back into Parliament Square by riot police and police horses. Police told protesters they were not being detained although they were not being allowed to leave, a kind of police logic most of us find infuriating.

Kettling like this is used by police as a kind of minor but arbitrary punishment, and as in this case it often leads to violent incidents and arrests which are then used to retrospectively justify police actions. After I had managed to get through one of the police lines and catch a bus away from the area I heard that Police had pushed a large group into a very confined space on Westminster Bridge with a total disregard for their safety, with some needing medical treatment for crushing. As I pointed out “there could easily have been more serious or fatal injuries and people pushed into the freezing river below.”

Of course protests like this need to be policed to avoid serious disorder. But the confused and sometimes unnecessarily violent way it was done on this occasion seemed to create most of the problems of the day.

As well as a long account of my day there are many more pictures on My London Diary in Students Against Cuts – Day 3.

Pimlico to Parliament 1987

Churchill, statue, Big Ben, Westminster, 1987 87-8m-01-positive_2400

I had my doubts about including this picture in my London album, not because of my opinions about Churchill, but because it is very much a cliché. But at least I think it is a fairly well done version, and the two men with the motorbike add just a little interest.

Churchill was a great leader in wartime, not least because his first action as Prime Minister was to invite Attlee, Sinclair and Chamberlain – the leaders of the Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties – to serve in a Coalition Government. I was too young to vote in the 1945 election (just over two months old) but clearly the nation wanted a change and saw that his strengths were no longer relevant to its future. His return to power in 1951 was something of a disaster for the country, made more clear by his protégé and successor Eden.

Nine Elms Cold Store, RIver Thames, Nine Elms, Vauxhall, Pimlico, Westminster, 198787-9a-12-positive_2400

All of these buildings at Nine Elms, seen from across the River Thames, have now been demolished. None was I suppose a great loss, but together I think they made an interesting ensemble. The cold store, brutally functional but with the elegant spiral staircase at its centre, presumably a fire exit, the curving horizontal of 95 Wandsworth Rd, for long occupied by Cap Gemini, demolished in 2018 and I think the site now owned by a Chinese property developer, and the two tower blocks at the right have also gone.

Riverside flats, Pimlico, Westminster, 1987 87-9a-15-positive_2400

Taken on the riverside path opened up in front of Crown Reach in Pimlico and now a part of the Thames Path. This view of the building looks to me like an Escher drawing, but for real, and I liked the contrast in shape and style with the rounded and decorated riverside lamp post.

Locking Piece, Henry Moore, sculpture, Riverside Walk Gardens, Millbank, Westminster 87-9a-22-positive_2400

Another picture of Henry Moore’s Locking Piece in the Riverside Walk Gardens on Millbank, again with the River Thames, Vauxhall Bridge, Nine Elms Cold Store and Market Towers in the distance. A figure walking past gives some sense of the scale of the piece, and the view is tightly cropped (I think the negative probably just contains the right edge of the plinth at its extreme edge.) I deliberately stood where a small area of sky was visible through the centre of the sculpture.

Millbank Tower, Millbank, Westminster, 1987 87-9a-42-positive_2400

Another example of very deliberate framing at the left and top edges of this view of the buildings around the base of the Millbank Tower.

Millbank Tower, Millbank, Westminster, 1987 87-9a-46-positive_2400

I wasn’t able to quite do the same when I made another exposure including the whole of the tower, but I think it makes effective use of the curvature of the building.

Thorney St, Westminster, 1987 87-9a-56-positive_2400

I think this picture in Thorney St shows the rear of the rather oddly shaped Millbank Tower building, but I think the concrete spiral ramp has been replaced by a garden.

John Islip St, Westminster, 1987 87-9a-54-positive_2400

And my final picture, taken in John Islip St, is something of a mystery to me, because of the reflections in the large polished stone triangular section fins on its surface. I found two of these fairly close together and the reflections make it almost impossible (at least for me) to see this building as it actually was rather than some optical illusion. If I start at the bottom of the frame where there is less reflection I can force myself to see it as it was.

Abell House and its neighbour Cleland House were I think built as government offices by TP Bennet around 1930, and were over-clad in 1985 using matching dark brown marbleised granite cladding, with a highly polished surface. I’m not sure which of the two is in this picture. Both were demolished around 2011-2 and replaced by taller residential towers with the same names, completed in 2016. The replacements look over-fussy to me, but would be rather easier to photograph.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.