global warming | >Re-PHOTO

Windrush & Climate – 2018

Windrush & Climate – On Saturday 8th September 2018 after photographing a protest against the continuing hounding of Windrush generation migrants to the UK in Brixton I went to a Climate Change protest outside Tate Modern.

Justice for Windrush descendants – Brixton

A rally and march hosted by Movement for Justice called for the Windrush scheme to be widened to include all families and descendants of the Windrush Generation and for an end to the racist hostile environment for all immigrants.

The Windrush scandal first came to public attention in 2017 and 2018 when we heard that hundreds of migrants including those who had been urged to come and help Britain rebuild after the Second World War and who were then given the right to live and work in this country permanently where being hounded by the Home Office and some had already been deported.

Much of the information came from the work of Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman publishing the experiences of these people. The Home Office in 2012 under Theresa May had introduced a ‘Hostile Environment’ law which required people to produce at least one official document from every year they had lived in the UK to prove they had the right to stay here.

Many were of course unable to do this, and the Home Office itself had destroyed many of the official records which would have proved their case. Many were declared to be ‘undocumented migrants’ (or as the politicians and press racistly and inaccurately labelled them, ‘illegal immigrants’.

They “began to lose their access to housing, healthcare, bank accounts and driving licenses. Many were placed in immigration detention, prevented from travelling abroad and threatened with forcible removal, while others were deported to countries they hadn’t seen since they were children.“

The government promised to correct the matter and in May 2018 the then Home Secretary Saji Javid set up a ‘Windrush Lessons Learned Review’ under Wendy Williams. When published in 2020 it showed that the Windrush scandal was the deliberate and inevitable result of Tory government policies.

Home Secretary Priti Patel then said she accepted the reports recommendations but in 2023 Suella Braverman decided to ditch three of of them. In June 2024 the High Court ruled that her actions in abandoning the promise to establish a migrants’ commssioner and to increase the powers of the independent chief examiner of borders and immigration was unlawful.

The scandal continues, and the replacement by 2025 of physical residence permits by digital e-visas for the roughly half a million non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK seems almost certain to generate a similar scandal.

After a rally in Windrush Square which included Eulalee, a Jamaican grandmother who has been fighting for 17 years to stay in the UK with her Windrush generation husband, daughter and grandchildren as well as others affected by the scandal there was a march around the centre of Brixton, with several stops for short speeches in the more crowded parts.

*Eulalee and Michael Groce on the march*

Also on the march was Michael Groce, poet, community worker and Green Party candidate as councillor in Brixton, holds a poster ‘Yes, It’s Racist’. The 1985 Brixton riots began after police shot and seriously wounded his mother, putting her in hospital for a year. Later they paid her over £500,000 in damages without admitting any liability.

On the railway bridge across Brixton Road was the graffitied message ‘CLAPHAM THAT WAY YOU 2D FLAT WHITE TEPID COLONIALIST WANKER”, with Brixton gentrification now taking away much of the unique character of the area where many who arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948 settled after having been initially housed in a giant wartime underground shelter on Clapham Common.

After marching around the centre of Brixton spreading their message with megaphones and posters the campaigners returned for a further rally in Windrush Square.

More at Justice for Windrush descendants.

Worldwide Rise For Climate – Tate Modern

Climate Reality, a global and diverse group of activists, community leaders, organisers, scientists, storytellers and others united to act over global warming was supported by the UK Campaign Against Climate Change, Fossil Free UK and the Green Party in one of thousands of rallies around the world demanding urgent action by government leaders to leaders commit to a fossil free world that works for all of us.

They called for people to take personal actions to reduce their own contribution to climate change but more importantly to join together to press for action at local, national and international level.

In particular they called for the government to end its support for fracking and for local authorities to divest from fracking and fossil fuels.

Worldwide Rise For Climate

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Climate Camp at Blackheath 2009

Climate Camp at Blackheath – Wednesday 26th August 2009

On Wednesday 26 August 2009 I joined Climate Campers who were meeting at several locations around London to go to an as yet unspecified location for that year’s Climate Camp.

I’d chosen to go with the Blue Group who were meeting at Stockwell Underground Station in south London, chosen as one of the starting points because of the events of 22 July 2005.

As I wrote back then, on “the escalator at Stockwell station it’s hard not to shiver at the memory of those videos showing Jean Charles de Menezes strolling down to catch his last train, and police coming though the gates in pursuit. There is a memorial to him outside the station, including a great deal of information about the event and the misinformation and covering up by police.“

Arriving there I found around 80 Climate Campers and half a dozen police being filmed and photographed by around 30 media and nothing very much happening. It was like that for the next couple of hours, during which we all went to a local park to have our sandwiches and some played games.

Eventually around 2pm we were called back to the station where we followed the leader who had a blue flag onto a train and off at Bank, where all trooped to the DLR, alighting at Greenwich. From here we trudged up the hill to Blackheath Common. Police were keeping a low profile, watching from a distance.

When we arrived the site on the common was still being secured and some people were hard at work erecting fences and vital resources – such as toilets. Legal observers were holding a meeting, but others were just making use of some comfortable furniture on the site or listening to singers.

I tried to photograph as many of these activities as I could.

In earlier years I’d had problems with Climate Camp and in particular their media policy. As I wrote “Press photographers visiting the site will be required to sign a media policy that most of us would find unacceptable and to be accompanied while on the site by a minder. (It can’t of course apply to the police photographers in their helicopter or cherry picker.) The policy appears to be driven by a few individuals with paranoid ideas about privacy and a totally irrational fear of being photographed. It really does not steal your soul!“

On the Wednesday the camp was still being set up and everyone had unfettered access. But this year in any case I’d actually been invited to take part as part of the media team for the camp – and on my later visit was provided with a sash to identify me as such – though I did still come across a little of that paranoia even when wearing it.

But there were also so many people I knew and others who recognised me from from other events that I felt very much at home walking around the site. The main problem I had was trying to keep moving rather than being drawn into lengthy conversations.

There was a meeting to welcome us all to the Climate Camp, after which the preparations for the camp continued, with water supplies being laid on, even baths plumbed in, various larger tents being erected as well as a large banner CAPITALISM IS CRISIS.

I had other things to do on the Friday and Saturday, but was able to return for a day at the camp on the Saturday, to make a record of the camp’s activities and of the campers at work and play, as well as some of the visitors who came to see what was happening. You can see my accounts and pictures from both days on My London Diary.

More on My London Diary:
Climate Camp: Blue Group Swoop
Climate Camp: Setup
Climate Camp: Saturday

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

The Future For Aviation – 2014

The Future For Aviation: The protest at London City Airport on Monday 21st July 2014 by ‘The Future‘, a campaigning group set up to fight climate change and ecological devastation by non-violent protest along with some local residents addressed specific issues related to that airport, but also wider questions about the future of aviation, both still very much with us. A decision is expected shortly by our new Labour government on further expansion plans for the airport following a public inquiry which closed in February.

The group used a painted circle around one eye as a symbol that the people are watching those in power, calling on politicians and others to take action rather than let themselves be bought by corporate interests. And they stated “we will judge them if they choose the toxicity of London City Airport over the health of local people and of London.”

Ten years later, ‘The Future’ are forgotten, and while there has been nothing like enough action the growing signs of the coming catastrophe are just perhaps beginning to get some movement, though still too little and too late.

It should now be clear to every thinking person that we have to find ways to reverse the growth in the aviation industry. To end airport expansion and increasing numbers of flights. Not ideas like changing to bio-fuels or specious calculations over planting trees to compensate for the CO2 generated by flights, nor on the pipe-dream of electric aircraft but quite simply reducing the number of flights.

Quite how this can be done is a matter for discussion, but some measures, such as removing the subsidies for aviation and banning incentive schemes with air miles and discounts could be simply implemented.

Heathrow and London City Airport also pose other problems, generating pollution and noise pollution both from their flight and from the traffic and congestion they generate in urban areas of our heavily polluted city.

The history of London City Airport is a case-study in how the aviation industry has operated by deception. When set up it was to be a low traffic site providing limited services between European capitals for business travellers from the nearby Canary Wharf and the City of London using small, quiet aircraft specially built for short take-off and landing.

Even so the Greater London Council opposed its setting up in the former Royal Docks in Newham, surrounded by densely populated areas but were overruled by central government.

Those initial promises have been long been superseded and by 2014 passenger numbers were 25 times as great with the airport no a a major commercial airport, its runway extended to allow use by larger and far more noisy aircraft, including some scheduled trans-Atlantic flights. From a handful of flights a day there were by then around 15 per hour in its allowed operation times. And more new housing in the surrounding areas had made the airport’s site even less tenable.

The airport was then about to make a planning application for further expansion. Then London Mayor Boris Johnson directed Newham Council to turn this down, but in 2016 transport secretary Chris Grayling and communities secretary Sajid Javid overrode the decision and gave the £344 million scheme the go-ahead.

In 2023, Newham Council again turned down further expansion plans but the airport again appealed. A public inquiry took place in December 2023 to February 2024, and a decision was expected by 23rd July 2024. But the general election means that the decision will now be made by our new Labour government. It will be a key indicator in demonstrating if our new government is really serious in its announced intentions to combat climate change and pollution.

More about the protest at ‘The Future’ at London City Airport.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Axe the Draxosaurus – 2016

Axe the Draxosaurus – On Wedesday 20th April 2016 environmental activists protested outside the AGM of Drax Plc at Grocer’s Hall next to the Bank of England in the heart of the City of London. Drax power station near Selby in Yorkshire used to be the UK’s biggest coal-fired power station, but since 2012 has become the world’s biggest wood-burning plant, and the company Drax Plc has become the second largest producer of wood pellets in the world

Drax power station now emits more CO2 than any other plant in the UK, and it does so with the aid of a huge subsidy from our UK electricity bills, almost £1 billion in 2021.

It get subsidised by the UK Government as part of the plan to decarbonise electricity generation despite the evidence from scientists around the world that the burning of forest wood for energy increases carbon emissions and is incompatible with the attempt to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

The subsidies that Drax receives increase our electricity bills and should be going to expand truly renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and solar energy. Instead they are paying Drax to pollute and pay out large dividends to their shareholders.

Sourcing the wood to burn at Drax – and for them to sell to other wood-burning plants is also a social and environmental disaster. Much of the wood comes from Drax’s pellet mills using large mmonoculture pine plantations in Southeastern USA, large sterile forest areas with little or no wildlife which have been expanded greatly in area, in part by the total clearance of areas of ancient forest.

Also in the USA, Drax buys pellets from Enviva, the world’s largest pellet producer which has come under criticism for its clearcut felling of US coastal hardwood forests.

Drax has also been criticised by environmentalists for its clear cutting of ancient forests in Canada, and its Portuguese supplier of pellets has been found to have sourced trees from nature reserves. And logging for wood pellets for Drax is also destroying ancient forests in Estonia and Latvia.

The amount of wood burned at Drax is huge – 6.4 million tonnes in 2022 – and will have involved the cutting down of twice that mass of trees. It is more than the entire UK wood production – but only supplies less than one hundredth of our energy needs.

Drax is now attempting to claim further subsidies for its BECCS (Bioenergy With Carbon Capture And Storage) project which seems very unlikely to be able to capture any significant amount of its huge annual CO2 output. It would obviously be far better simply to stop burning wood and turn to truly renewable power sources.

The protest in 2016 was organised by Biofuelwatch on whose web site you can find more a detailed briefing about Drax and why it is vital to end the subsidies for its polluting and environmentally destructive activities.

You can find information on the Axe Drax page about the trial of the #DRAX2 arrested after paint was sprayed on the government department supporting the subisdies to Drax – it begins at Southwark Crown Court on April 22nd 2024. And on August 8-13th 2024 Reclaim the Power is holding a mass protest camp for climate justice “targeting Drax – the biggest emitter in the UK, the world’s biggest burner of trees and a key driver of environmental racism.”

Drax AGM Biomass opposition

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

International Rebellion – Shut Down London 2019

International Rebellion – Shut Down London: Monday 15th April 2019 was the start of Extinction Rebellion’s International Rebellion which lasted for 11 days. They had said they intended to keep the roads closed until the government took necessary action on the global climate and ecological emergency. They said the government must tell people the truth about the disaster we are facing, halt biodiversity loss, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and set up and be led by a Citizen’s Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

Of course the government did nothing of the sort, but simply issued a number of intentionally misleading statements claiming they were world leaders in combating climate change and waited for the protesters to go home.

It’s not quite true they did nothing. They put increasing pressure on the Met Police to do something effective against the protesters, and later introduced some draconian laws that could be used against future protests like this.

Five years later every week brings more evidence that climate change is really happening and our government still fails to take this seriously, issuing licences for further fossil fuel exploration. What we need is urgency but what we see is complacency.

XR’s ‘International Rebellion’, with actions around the world as well as in London was just one of a whole long series of protests, international conferences, scientific papers and more over many years that have warned that the world is heading for catastrophe. Svante Arrhenius first warned that the increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would lead to global temperature increase back in 1896.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, when I first became interested (and spoke publicly though very few were listening) our main emphasis was on resource limitations and population growth. It was by then very clear that anyone who thought we could continue our exponential economic growth on a finite planet had to be an economist and not anyone living in the real world.

But both our major political parties (and most of the minor ones) are still committed to growth while paying lip-service to ‘net zero’. And that growth will be dirty growth, continuing to exploit our oil and gas resources as well as clear cutting forests elsewhere in the world to burn their wood.

I think it is more a failure of our political system, very much a top-down system designed to protect the interests of the wealthy, than of individual politicians. XR’s call for a Citizen’s Assembly on climate and ecological justice is an important one which would work from the bottom up and produce policies which were based on the interests of all of us – which is why it will almost certainly never be implemented.

While they went home after 11 days having failed to change government policies, these protests were impressive and did I think have some effect in changing public opinion, awakening more to the desperate situation we are now in. Even some of those working for the media if not their proprietors.

XR’s call to rebellion stated “Our leaders have failed us. It’s time to rebel – and have a damn good time doing it.” And for those eleven days they put on an impressive festival, but it was only a start of what need to happen.

Over those eleven days I went to XR’s events in London on several days, taking many pictures and writing about what I saw of this impressive protest. The pictures here all come from the first day, Monday 15th April 2019 and here are links to all my posts from that day – not all XR.

Extinction Rebellion Garden Bridge
Extinction Rebellion Sea at Oxford Circus
Anti-capitalist environmental action
Extinction Rebellion Marble Arch
Extinction Rebellion Funeral Procession
Extinction Rebellion at Shell
Save Lambeth Children’s Centres

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Children’s Blood and Women Rise – 2019

Children’s Blood and Women Rise – On Saturday 9th March 2019 Extinction Rebellion covered the road at Downing St with fake blood in a protest calling for a future for children and women marched through the West End in an annual protest against male violence.

Blood of Our Children – XR – Downing St

Two processions converged from both directions on Whitehall outside Downing Street, each led by children carrying posters with the message ‘Our Future, Our Blood’ along with a person ringing a bell.

The children were followed by people in single file carrying buckets of fake blood prepared to be arrested to draw attention to the need for urgent action to avoid the otherwise inevitable extinction of human life on Earth. They were followed by a crowd of other Extinction Rebellion supporters.

In front of Downing Street those carrying buckets formed a large half circle and when the bells stopped ringing came forward in three waves to pour the blood onto the roadway, retuning to sit down and await arrest.

Police watched carefully but took no action. There were a number of short speeches from young people, including some very impressive 10 and 11 year-olds, before I left, as well as by students and grandparents, but no arrests.

More pictures at Blood of Our Children – XR.

Million Women March against male violence – Oxford St

I left early to rush to Oxford Street for the annual all-women Million Women March by several thousand women, girls and children against male violence and arrived a little before the march was due to start from a street at the side of Selfridges.

The theme of the 2019 march was ‘Never Forgotten’ and it remembered the more than a hundred women killed by men each year in the UK, mainly by partners or ex-partners.

As in other years there was a strong representation by women from our diverse ethnic communities, concerned about male violence both here and in their countries of origin.

In the UK 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence at some point in their lives and one incident is reported to police every minute.

Many more pictures on My London Diary Million Women March against male violence.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Time to Act on Climate Change – 2015

Time to Act on Climate Change – it was indeed time to act on climate change when over 20,000 of us marched through the streets on Saturday 7th March 2015, but though almost all the scientists and others who had studied their reports were convinced the nine years since then have been largely wasted years.

There have been some minor changes both in the UK and across the world, but nothing like enough to reverse the growing climate chaos – and our current government seems determined to stay on course for extinction, giving approval to new fossil fuel schemes.

Not that the current opposition, who may well become our government at the next general election seem any better. Instead of taking a firm line to oppose these climate-wrecking schemes and promising to reverse the decisions when they come to power they have said they will allow them to proceed. They have promised not to approve more, but then they have already abandoned most of the promises they had made earlier, including those related to climate change.

In 2021 Labour announced a £28 billion annual green spending plan creating new jobs in battery manufacturing, hydrogen power, offshore wind, tree planting, flood defences and home insulation in the first term when they came to power. They abandoned this pledge in Feb 2024, cutting by half or more its green investment plan.

Back in 2015 the climate march and rally demanded real action without delay with a total divestment from fossil fuels, an end to fracking and damaging bio-fuel projects and for a 100% renewable energy future which would create a million new jobs. The Labour policy would have been a watered down version of this, coming ten years at least too late, but now hardly coming at all.

The organisers of the march through London had refused to pay for any policing of the event, saying it was not needed and it proceeded peacefully largely in their absence. There were large groups of police protecting some businesses, particularly the Strand McDonalds, where some marchers stopped to protest.

A large group of the marchers, including a block from Frack Free Lancashire led by the Nanas, then sat down on the road and halted the march for around 15 minutes before getting up and continuing.

A black block of several hundred behind a banner ‘TIME TO ACT ON CAPITALISM’ made a lot of noise going down Whitehall, and then rushed off down King Charles Street rather than continue to the rally. I went with them for a few yards and then decided to go back and join the many thousands on the main march which ended with a rally on College Green, close to the Houses of Parliament.

Here is the list I gave of the speakers in the account I wrote in 2015, and there are pictures of most of them on My London Diary:

Among the speakers were John Sauven of Greenpeace UK, Kat Hobbs from CAAT, Bert Wander of Avaaz, Pete the Temp, Fatima-Zahara Ibrahim of the Youth Climate Coalition, Pete Deane from Biofuelwatch, Guy Shrubsole from Friends of the Earth, FBU leader Matt Wrack, Rumana Hashem an evironmental activist from Bangladesh, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Tina-Louise Rothery who spoke toegther with a Frack Free Lancashire crowd, Dennis Fernando, UAF, Chris Baugh, PCS, John McDonnell, MP, and comedian Francesca Martinez. A woman from Paris (whose name I missed) invited us all to go there to protest at the climate talks there this December, and a 12 year-old read an excellent speech she had prepared.

There was then a performance by a large choir, Voices United, and the event concluded with John Stewart of HACAN who came on stage together with some polar bears from a protest earlier in the day at Heathrow who received prolonged applause.
Time to Act on Climate Change

At the end of the rally we were invited to take part in two other protests continuing the day’s theme and I went with ‘Art Not Oil’ proceeding with their Viking longship to protest on the steps of Tate Britain against the gallery accepting sponsorship to greenwash climate wrecker BP. Partly I chose this rather than the planned direct actions around Parliament as I thought it would get less press coverage, but it was also on my way to Vauxhall station where I could catch a train home.

Viking longship invades Tate steps
Climate Change Rally
Time to Act on Climate Change

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

End BP’s British Museum Greenwash – 2015

End BP’s British Museum Greenwash – On Sunday 20th December 2015 I went with ‘actor-vists’ from ‘BP or Not BP?’ to photograph the play they were staging uninvited in the British Museum’s Great Court depicting ‘BP executives’ giving a farewell party to departing Museum director ‘Neil MacGregor’.

Climate activists were calling on the British Museum and other art institutions to stop accepting sponsorship from BP and other companies whose activities are accelerating global warming. This protest came just a few days after the Paris climate talks in which some were arrested for protesting inside the Louvre over its sponsorship by major oil companies Total and Eni.

It was a part of a whole series of protests in the UK which eventually led the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries Scotland, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House all to end sponsorship by BP. Their protests continued later in the British Museum, which in June this year (2023) finally appears to have decided to end its agreements with BP after 27 years. The only major cultural institution still partnering with BP is now the Science Museum’s education academy.

BP’s contribution to the Museum’s budget was relatively small, a fraction of a percent, but on my first visit for some years around ten years ago I was surprised and rather shocked by the engraved message on the wall of the rotunda in the Great Court and the many times the BP logo appeared on display texts. It also featured prominently on the publicity for the museum’s major exhibitions, including Vikings, Ming, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, the Mexican Day of the Dead and Sunken Cities, the last two perhaps particularly unfortunate as BP has been given the largest corporate criminal fine in history of $18.7 billion for the underwater Deepwater Horizon oil spill which caused huge pollution of the ocean around the coast of Mexico.

I’d got to know the British Museum quite well in the 1970s when my wife worked for a couple of years in the British Library which was then based there, writing entries for the catalogue and serving readers at the desk there. What had been rather dark lobbies around the central hall had been transformed into a large open area, but also the Museum had become very much a space promoting the “World’s Biggest CORPORATE CRIMINAL.’ The open space did however in December 2015 provide a great theatre for ‘BP or Not BP?’

Around 20 performers had made their way into the museum carrying props and banners in bags, under coats and in pockets, and grouped in the Great Court in front of the Rotunda, close to where the message of thanks to BP is engraved in the wall. I think there was not a great deal of security although the performance had been quite widely advertised probably because many Museum staff are also opposed to or embarrassed by BP sponsorship.

The play then began with the cast, dressed as BP executives, having a party and singing a song about departing director Neil MacGregor giving BP “cheap branding and a social license to operate through all the oil spills” to the tune of Robbie Williams’s ‘Angels’, then leaving the stage to three ‘BP executives’ who were shortly joined by the actor playing Neil MacGregor, who they thanked effusively for his support, listing and commenting about some of their activities including the various exhibitions.

‘MacGregor”s reply to their thanks included various revealing quotes from e-mails he had written to BP staff which had been revealed by Freedom Of Information requests, and he was plied with oily champagne and a cake representing the world until he collapsed drunk. The BP executives then discussed how they would “befriend and bribe” new director, Hartwig Fischer, with “even more lavish dinner parties! … Business meetings! … Opening nights! … VIP Previews! … Exhibitions! … Screenings! … Drinks!” before ending with a toast and singing together to the tune of Auld Lang Syne a song whose chorus was (with some slight variations):

For all the OIL and lies, my dears,
For all the OIL and lies,
We gave a tiny sum of cash
Meanwhile the planet fries.

The group had been approached by a Museum security officer as they began the performance and had assured him it would be fairly short and they would then leave and I think the museum decided not to call the police. As the play ended they cleaned up the floor and marched out singing, pausing briefly in the foyer and then giving a second performance on the portico outside before we went to a nearby pub where I made a hasty edit and handed over pictures to them.

You can still see a video about the performance on the on the BP or NOT BP? web site, along with several of my pictures. I had taken a large number of pictures and those on My London Diary are largely the out-takes from the large set for the performers.

More pictures at End BP’s British Museum Greenwash.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

Climate Emergency Rally & Wave – 2009

Climate Emergency Rally & Wave – Saturday 5th December 2009 was probably the day of possibly the largest protest then in the UK over the impending disaster of climate change. Over a hundred organisations had come together in the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition representing a combined membership of around 11 million “from the Women’s Institute and RSPB to Christian Aid and Unison.”

This is the group which now calls itself less contentiously The Climate Coalition and organises a ‘Great Big Green Week‘ which slipped by last June without me noticing it (and I belong to several of the organisations it includes.) It’s good that a wider group is concerned about climate change, but the action over the ever increasing crisis has passed on to others such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

The next Great Big Green Week is 8th – 16th June 2024 and it would be good to see some real action, stopping down polluters, mass protests, creating news headlines every day. With now a combined supporter base of 20 million and with sister organisations in Wales, Scotland and Ireland they should be able to achieve a major impact.

The Campaign Against Climate Change had organised an annual Climate match at the time of the UN Climate talks every year since 2005 and although it was good to see a wider participation despite that huge potential and massive publicity the march was perhaps only a little more than five times the size of previous years. And the 2009 event, entitled ‘The Wave’ did seem more a stunt for the media than an informed political event. As I commented, “Surely with the backing of 11 million the coalition should be making demands, not just waving, and it’s perhaps hard to see the significance of blue hands and faces in a demonstration about global warming.” Red would perhaps have been a more appropriate colour choice than the coolest of colours.

Campaign Against Climate Change began the event with a rally at Hyde Park with speakers giving a clear political message, which I summarised in my account on My London Diary:

They stress we really need to take emergency action in the UK now, starting with the declaration of a Climate Emergency. Immediate actions should include a 10% cut in carbon dioxide by the end of 2010, a million new green jobs by the end of 2010, a ban on domestic flights, the scrapping of the roads program and a 55 mph speed limit, and an end to the use of agrofuels.
My London Diary

But the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition had absented themselves from this and met instead in Grosvenor Square, joining with those from the rally to march to surround the Houses of Parliament in ‘The Wave.’ And on a Saturday of course there were not even any MPs there to wave at – and only a few had come to take part in the protest.

More interesting things were happening on the fringes of the main event, and in some of the groups on the march, and I covered as much as I could of this, though I did miss the Climate Camp protesters who took over Trafalgar Square, who I visited briefly a couple of days later.

Rather separate from the main march was an ironic protest by around 50 people dressed as city traders representing the World Association of Carbon Traders.

The City gents including a few ‘gentesses’ and rather more bad false moustaches along with some power-dressed business women marched under the banner ‘Carbon Trading: The Final Solution‘ in a rather nasty yellow, perhaps meant to be gold, though it seemed more mustard to me.

The WACT logo – ‘CO2$’ and placards including ‘Trust Me, I’m a Banker, Capitalise On The Climate’, ‘In Markets We Trust’, ‘One Solution. Trade Pollution’, ‘Greed is Green’, ‘Carbon Trader = Eco Crusader.’ and ‘Cash In On Climate Change’, as well as the ‘Permits to Pollute’ they were handing out made their ironic intention clear, though some tourists on the pavements seemed very confused.

I recognised them despite their disguises as the Space Hijackers whose activities over the years had given a new creative face to protest; here they gave a welcome touch of ironic humour and substance to what was perhaps otherwise a rather bland if colourful event that often seemed more like a PR media stunt than a political demonstration.

Their message was of course a serious one. Carbon trading is at best an irrelevance in environmental terms, allowing ‘business as usual’ and with fat profits for some. But worse, as with all markets, it is a mechanism for allowing the wealthy to increase their domination at the expense of the poor.

Other groups also came with a serious political message, if sometimes also expressed rather rudely. For a short distance the main march was led by a black banner with the message ‘POLARIARIAT! UP YER BUM, COP 15!’ and a picture of a Polar Bear, threatened as arctic ice sheets melt and disintegrate. Stewards from the march soon came and argued with them to leave and after police intervention they moved a long way back in the march joining a few other like-minded groups. The quote from the 1987 film ‘Wish You Were Here‘ clearly didn’t fit the smooth PR presentation of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition.

Finally it was 3pm and time to wave and I was with protesters in front of Big Ben to register the time.

Some people stayed on and continued to protest in Parliament Square for another hour or so. Among them were Climate Rush whose banners were calling for Equity “EMISSION QUOTAS MUST BE PER CAPITA. THE RICH HAVE NO MORE RIGHT TO POLLUTE THAN THE POOR”. As I commented this is something that the rich – and in particular the USA – don’t accept and which was likely to prevent any real progress in the talks at Copenhagen.

I took a great many pictures over the day, and put rather too many of them on My London Diary, along with rather more accounts than usual, including some things I’ve not mentioned here. The links are roughly in the order of events:
Climate Emergency Bike Ride
Climate Emergency Rally
The Wave – Before the March
Anticapitalist Block
World Association of Carbon Traders
Marching to the Wave
The Wave
COP Out Camp Out

Climate, Pay & Pensions – 2019

Climate, Pay & Pensions – Friday 29th November 2019 was ‘Black Friday’ for some but for others it was ‘Buy Nothing Day’ and Climate Strike students were on the march, while separately University lecturers and others in the UCU along with students and other supporters were marching to Parliament in support of their 8 day strike over pensions, pay and conditions.

Youth Climate Strike March

Over a thousand mainly school students met in Parliament Square to demand the government and other governments world-wide take urgent action to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

They demanded a Green New Deal to save their future and for the school curriculum to make clear the urgent need for changes in attitudes and action.

Of course their protest fell on deaf ears in the Tory government, and although it did seem for some time that the Labour opposition was beginning to think seriously about the environmental crisis, as it seems more likely they might get into power their climate polices for a https://www.labourgnd.uk/gnd-explained Green New Deal are rapidly being abandoned and it now seems they are “unlikely to meet its £28bn green pledge at all.”

Well over a thousand marched up Whitehall and on through Trafalgar Square to Regent Street, intending to go to Oxford Street on ‘Buy Nothing Day’, but police stopped them on Regent Street and diverted them into Mayfair and eventually back to Whitehall and Parliament Square.

Earlier they had been met by a group of XR’s ‘Red Brigade’ mimes who had come to salute the student march.

Many more pictures at Youth Climate Strike March.

UCU March for Planet, Pay and Pensions

The UCU march from London University was on the 4th day of their 8 day strike over pensions, pay and conditions and in solidarity with the Youth Climate Strike also taking place in London the same day.

Some had been on the picket lines since the early morning before the march began in Malet Street.

I saw the march as I came back from Regent Street where I had left the student march as I came on to the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square, and ran down to catch up with the front of the march on Whitehall, close to Downing St.

The march stopped there for some time, lining the road opposite the entrance to Downing St and shouting towards it, before moving on towards Parliament.

As well as their call for proper working conditions and better pay many of the marchers also came calling for changes in what is taught and with posters and placards about climate change. Some had already marched to support the students.

They then marched on to Parliament Square, where I left them as they moved towards a rally.

More pictures UCU March for Planet, Pay and Pensions.