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Global Human Rights Torch Relay – 2007

Global Human Rights Torch Relay: Thursday 25th October 2007 I photographed this rally in Trafalgar Square and the torchlit march which followed to a protest at the Chinese Embassy.

The 2008 Summer Olympics was to be held in Beijing, China from 8th to 24th August 2008 and the official Summer Olympics Torch Relay – which had been a feature of the Olympics since the 1936 Berlin games – was announced in April 2007, though it was to take place from March 24 until August 8, 2008. This travelled the world in a very roundabout 129-day route from Athens to Beijing and was met with protests in many cities including San Francisco, London and Paris.

The Coalition to Investigate Persecution of the Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) organised a series of torch relays in cities around the world beginning in April 2007 to raise awareness about human rights violations, particularly in China and countries surrounding area and in particular the persecution of crimes including torture and the harvesting of human organs of Falun Gong practitioners.

The policing of the event and the intervention of Westminster Council officials showed that there was huge political pressure in London against protests against China and against the Olympics as London was preparing for the 2012 Olympics here. We saw it again when the official torch relay came to London in April 2008.

Here I’ll post – with minor corrections – my account of the event from 2007 with a few of the pictures – many more on My London Diary.

Global Human Rights Torch Relay – 2007

Trafalgar Square to Chinese Embassy

Thursday was a miserable day, with persistent drizzle or light rain, and Trafalgar Square was clogged up with some computer games fair, so that there was little space left for the Global Human Rights Torch Relay on the North Terrace. Organised by the ‘Coalition To Investigate The Persecution Of The Falun Gong‘ this also highlighted other human rights abuses in China, as well as some in countries within the Chinese sphere of influence, notably Burma (Myanmar.)

This relay had started in Athens in August, with events in several European countries, and it is going on to Australia and North and South America before ending in Asia next year.

The relay points out that the these human rights abuses are at odds with the ideals of the Olympic Movement and calls for the Beijing Games to be moved to one of the previous Olympic venues unless there are dramatic improvements in human rights in China. Among the speakers were a couple of Lords and several ex-Olympic competitors.

Westminster Council officials arrived after an hour or so and tried to stop the event, which thanks to the gaming festival, was indeed blocking the pavement. They made the protestors form a narrow line against the back wall. Then they and the police ruled out the use of the sound system, declaring it was a hazard in the wet conditions. Speakers had to make use of a battery operated megaphone.

Despite this harassment, the protest continued, with a ‘Greek Goddess’ bringing the flame to light the torches of figures representing England, Scotland , Wales and Ireland, and perhaps a couple of hundred marched through the West End to the Chinese Embassy for a candle-lit protest.

Here photographers met with deliberate antagonism from the police. Officers are standing in a line around 2 metres into the road in front of the protest. The area between the police and the demonstration is completely clear, absolutely safe, and it is where we need to be to take pictures or film the protest. Much to our disgust, we are ordered out when we attempt to get on with our work.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at global human rights torch relay.

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March Against Cuts & Bloomsbury Festival – 2010

March Against Cuts & Bloomsbury Festival: On Saturday 23rd October 2010 striking London firefighters led a march with other trade unionists against government cuts on spending on public services announced a few days earlier. After photographing the march I walked around Bloomsbury where Bloomsbury Festival was taking place over a week or so.

Trade Union March Against Cuts

Euston Rd to Bedford Square

March Against Cuts & Bloomsbury Festival - 2010

London’s firefighters were taking part in an 8-hour strike from 10am, called after the London Fire Brigade had in August begun firing 5,600 of them to bully them into agreeing a new contract. 79% of firefighters had voted in a ballot over strike action with 79% supporting the strike.

The Fire Brigade Union had been negotiating with the LFB over a new contract, but say that the Conservative chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority had pushed the LFB to adopt a more aggressive stance, firing the workers and then offering re-employment on a less favourable contract imposed without negotiation. Birmingham City Council were also attempting this for their 26,000 workers and Sheffield had also sent similar letters to their employees.

Many of us were astonished that any reputable employer could even consider this ‘fire and rehire’ approach, and doubted its legality. Surely every worker treated in this way must have a cast-iron case for unfair dismissal – or certainly should have. Though as usual the main thrust of our laws is to protect the interests of the rich and powerful against the rest of us, so perhaps they could get away with it despite the clear injustice.

If they could do it for firefighters, councils and other employers could do it for other workers and many other trade unionists had come out in support of the FBU, with the London march being called by the RMT, FBU, NUT, PCS and the National Shop Stewards Network.

The cuts announced by Chancellor George Osborne in the previous Wednesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review had been anticipated but still shocked. We – the country’s workers – were being made to pay for the greed of the wealthy bankers who had caused the crisis but were being given handouts. The London march and rally was just one of others across the country including in Cardiff, Manchester, Bristol, Lincoln and Wigan.

At the rally in a corner of Bedford Square there were calls for a much more positive approach from the TUC, and a demand that they bring forword the national demonstration which was planned for Spring 2011 but the TUC kept to its planned date of March 26th.

Some of those taking part in the march and rally went on to a TUC organised rally against the cuts in the nearby TUC HQ Congress House, organised by the South-East Region TUC, but I left to take a walk around the Bloomsbury Festival.

More pictures at Trade Union March Against Cuts.

Bloomsbury Festival

*Modern cloth strips at the Foundling Museum, where ‘Threads of Feeling’ was showing.*

The annual Bloomsbury Festival began in 2006, but this was the first year I had noticed it, and although there had been some events earlier in the week that sounded interesting I hadn’t had time to attend them.

*Paper birds in Russell Square where the main stage and stalls were*

On Saturday there were free events taking place across the area, in museums and galleries, parks and gardens, as well as various dance and film performances, exhibitions, walks and tours and workshops. I walked through the area, visiting most of the squares and parks in which there were artworks as well as some of the museums and exhibitions.

But much of what interested me on my walk were things I saw or found in the area itself, with some of the ‘found art‘ rather more interesting than the actual festival pieces. I was pleased to be able to go into the the charming private garden in Malet St – and the trees, leaves and the grass roller excited me considerably more than the work of photographic art strapped to a couple of trees.

It was good to go into the Foundling Museum for my first visit there, both to see its permanent exhibition with its incredibly moving special display the pieces of 18th century cloth, textile tokens left by mothers with the babies taken to the Foundling Hospital in the hope they could later be identified and reclaimed, along with a show Threads of Feeling, based on this.

More pictures at Bloomsbury Festival.

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Hardest Hit, Biofuels, Tibet and OccupyLSX – 2011

Hardest Hit, Biofuels, Tibet and OccupyLSX: Saturday 22 October 2011 began for me with a protest at City Hall (still then in Southwark close to Tower Bridge) Next in Whitehall I photographed a protest against the pollution, environmental damage and human rights abuses of burning forests produce energy. Also on Whitehall I met Tibetans and supporters marching from the Chines Embassy to Downing Street demanding an end to China’s increasing repression in Tibet. Finally I went to St Paul’s Churchyard for a brief visit to Occupy London a week after their camp there had begun.

Hardest Hit Protest At City Hall

City Hall, More London

Hardest Hit, Biofuels, Tibet and OccupyLSX

The Hardest Hit campaign, organised jointly by the Disability Benefits Consortium and the UK Disabled People’s Council were holding a rally outside City Hall as a part of protests in cities and towns across the country calling on the government to stop the cuts in benefits and services and changes in the assessment of disabilities which have hugely affected their lives.

Of course the Mayor of London was not responsible for the cuts, and I assume this was just a convenient location he had made available for the protest. Of course many services provided by local government had been cut as a result of the government funding cuts. And as usual the government claimed to be concerned with the plight of the disabled and to be trying to help them while at the same time making cuts that really hurt them.

The protest took place in the Scoop, an outdoor sunken amphitheatre next to City Hall, part of the More London development, an events space which can seat around a thousand and it looked a little empty though there were many disabled protesters, some with carers and supporters.

More at Hardest Hit Protest At City Hall.

Environmentalists Protest Against Biofuels

DECC, Whitehall Place

*Protesters against Barton Renewable Energy in Davyhulme, Manchester*

People had come from across the country to protest at continued government support for biofuel energy production despite it now being clear that this is contibuting to climate change, causes deforestation and the loss of valuable forest land, results in a loss of food production and threatens human rights in many areas.

Biofuels were once seen as a green alternative which would help us reduce global warming, but it is now clear that are worse polluters than coal or oil. Despite this, they still receive huge payouts from funding meant to encourage renewable energy sources. The huge wood-burning plant at Drax in Yorkshire in 2024 received £869 million in public subsidies – over £2 million a day for polluting the planet.

At last in February 2025 the UK government has announced a cut in the subsidies for Drax, and the winding down of using imported wood pellets for energy generation. But even when this comes into force in 2027 Drax will still be getting £1.2 million a day. Drax will cut its power production to around half its current level and further reductions are expected from then.

More at Environmentalists Protest Against Biofuels.

Tibetans March Against Chinese Repression

Whitehall

Several hundred Tibetans and supporters marched from the Chinese Embassy to Downing Street in a protest over China’s increasing repression in Tibet, where in March 2011 eight young monks and a nun had set themselves on fire in desperate protests. Five had died.

Protests around the world like this one aimed to get the international community to end their silence over the Chinese abuses of human and civil rights in Tibet. It was supported by the Tibet Society, Free Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet, Tibetan Youth UK and the Tibetan Community in Britain.

The held a rally opposite Downing Street and delivered a letter to the Prime Minister calling for the UK Government to take action.

There was to be a world-wide day of action on Wednesday 2 Novemeber, the to call for action from international governments the day before world leaders meet in Nice, France for the G20 Summit.

More pictures Tibetans March Against Chinese Repression.

OccupyLSX Continues At St Paul’s

St Paul’s Cathedral

A week earlier on 15th October 2011 I had been at the protest when around 2000 Occupy protesters had tried to protest outside the Stock Exchange but were prevented by police. They had returned to the steps of St Paul’s and held a general meeting. Police kettled the protesters (and me) there, but I left when a group of them forced their way through the police line. Those that were still kettled decided to stay and occupy the area after police told them they should leave. A week later they were still there and I went back to see what was happening.

There was a full program of events for the day, and a general meeting was taking place with Selma James speaking.

*A mother and daughter concerned about privatisation of the NHS at OccupyLSX*

As I said “the organisation of the camp is impressive, although clearly there are some people around who don’t respect the camp’s ‘no alcohol’ rule. But like the previous camps in central London, the camp attracts a number of the rough sleepers and odd characters who normally wander the streets of our city. It’s a useful service for people who are normally neglected, but does bring some problems.”

More at OccupyLSX Continues At St Paul’s.

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People’s Vote March, Iranians & Veterans – 2018

People’s Vote March, Iranians & Veterans: On Saturday 20th October 2018 I photographed a huge march – newspapers said an estimated 670,000 people – marched in London demanding the Theresa May hold a new referendum now that there was new evidence and people were clearer what Brexit would mean – and how they had been criminally misled into voting leave. Of course the BBC report lost a zero in the numbers taking part. During the march I also took time to photograph a protest by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, now exiled in Albania, against the Iranian regime, and Veterans United Against Suicide calling for more help for service men after they return home from wars.

People’s Vote March

Hyde Park Corner to Parliament Square

The 2016 referendum over leaving Europe was won by a relatively small majority – 52% to 48% – following a highly misleading ‘Leave’ campaign – remember that bus – but there was much more, hugely funded by people who would make large personal financial gains.

Nine years on from the vote, the Office for Budget Responsibility judges that “Both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU.” Last year a report by Cambridge Econometrics estimated that by then Brexit had cost the UK £140 billion and that would rised to £311 billion by the mid 2030s.

By 2018 it was already clear that Brexit would be a disaster, and it was a disaster that had been caused by David Cameron’s promise as Prime Minister that the result would be binding. It was seen by many as a crazy promise at the time – and we have been proved right. Britain has often prided itself on not having a written constitution – but if we had one it would almost certainly have saved us – as it would surely have required a more significant majority for any major constitutional change such as this.

It isn’t of course sure that a second referendum would have produced a different result – the same dark forces that swung the first would have gone into overdrive, with an added level of opposition to the ‘people’s decision‘ being disregarded, and with the help of the billionaire media might even have led to a second vote to leave.

From the start at Hyde Park Corner the protest looked huge, with people spreading far up Park Lane and across into Hyde Park.

When the march was due to start one group, Movement for Justice was on the road in front of the official banners, along with more than a thousand other protesters and protesting noisily while refusing pleas from the stewards to get behind the main banner.

Although MfJ were protesting about Brexit, they made the point that this was racist and called for an end to the scapegoating of immigrants and an end to the hostile environment which is ripping families apart.

They demanded an amnesty for all people already present in the country and to an extension of freedom of movement in Europe to include the Commonwealth.

The march was delayed for some minutes until they had all moved off to march in front of the main march and after a good gap had opened up the main march began.

After photographing thousands of marchers coming out from Park Lane I left them and took the tube to Westminster meet the marchers at Parliament Square.

Thousands had come directly to the rally rather than march and Whitehall and Parliament Square were already fairly full before the main body of the march arrived. I made my way up Whitehall past Downing Street, but the whole area was jammed with people as I got close to Trafalgar Square.

The top of Whitehall was jammed with people and the last 100 yards took me 15 minutes to get to where people were partying in the roads on the edge of Trafalgar Square.

The press of people had brought the march to a halt, with people still packed along much of its route. Later I heard from people who had only got part way along Piccadilly that many marchers had ended there and crowded into Green Park.

I had taken so many pictures that I decided to divide my report on My London Diary inato three parts:
People’s Vote March – Start
MfJ at People’s Vote March
People’s Vote March – End

People’s Mujahedin of Iran

Downing St

On the paved area opposite Downing Street I found the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) protesting against the repressive regime in Iran, with gibbets and three women held in a prison cell illustrating their reign of terror and calling for an end to executions – something in which the Iranian regime leads the world.

The PMOI, exiled from Iran and then to Albania, leads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), based in France which calls for a modern legal system, gender equality and political and social rights in Iran.

The PMOI appears to have little or no support in Iran but receives some support from US agencies and politicians as the preferred future government for the country. Both the USA and Saudi Arabia are said to provide financial support.

As a lengthy article on Wikipedia relates, there are many allegations about human rights abuses against its own members and its fraudulent money laundering and other financial arrangements.

People’s Mujahedin of Iran

Veterans United Against Suicide

Ministry of Defence

A few yards off from the march route outside the Ministry of Defence, Veterans United Against Suicide were holding a rally calling for more to be done to help service men and veterans in the fight against their developing PTSD and eventually committing suicide.

At least 47 current forces personnel and veterans have committed suicide this year, though the actual figure is thought to be considerably higher.

This was clearly a right wing protest and I did not feel welcome. As I wrote “The lorry being used as a platform also displayed a large banner supporting the soldier discharged for standing with Tommy Robinson in a photo used to publicise his extreme right-wing views. While I was listening a speaker was condemning a major forces charity, accusing it of fraud and failure to act over the mental health problems of serving and former members of the armed forces.“

Veterans United Against Suicide.

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Freedom to Film & World March for Peace – 2009

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace: On Sunday 18th October 2009 I went to Dalston to support a Hackney education charity whose students have been harassed when making films in public places and then joined a small march in the UK which was part of a worldwide humanist movement for peace.

Ridley Road Market: Worldbytes Defends Right to Film

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace - 2009 — *Halal butcher in Ridley Road market, Dalston*

Worldwrite is a Hackney-based education charity founded in 1994 which gives young people free film and media training supporting them to produce alternative programmes for broadcast on WORLDbytes, the charity’s online alternative Citizen TV channel Worldbytes.org. You can read more about them on the web site where you can also see a very wide range of their videos, though I couldn’t find anything now on this 2009 event.

In 2009 their teams were “finding it increasingly difficult to film in public places in Hackney: security guards, community wardens and self-appointed ‘jobsworths’ are refusing us ‘permission’ to film on many of our streets.”

As they stated, “There is in fact NO LAW against filming or taking photographs in public places and permission or a licence is NOT required for gathering news for news programmes in public spaces.“

They had called for photographers and film-makers to go along and take pictures in support of their protest and I went to do so at Ridley Road Market in Dalston, where Worldbytes crews had been told they can’t film there, not by the stall holders or other market users, but by employees of Hackney Council.

I went there to support them and the right to photograph in public places, but also because I wanted to photograph the market. I had previously taken a few pictures there but only as I was passing and had not seriously photographed the market.

After talking to the Worldwite protesters I set about walking up and down the market taking photographs of the buildings and people, particularly some of the stallholders. As well as my post on My London Diary, I wrote about the event at greater length here on >Re:PHOTO a few days later. Here’s a short section of text from that article:

“I took some general views without asking anyone for permission, but as usual, where I wanted to take pictures including stallholders or other people I asked if I might. Not because I need to, but out of politeness, and I shrugged my shoulders and moved on if they refused. Of course at times I photograph people who don’t want to be photographed, but this wasn’t appropriate here.”

“As I was using flash most of the time, it was clear that I was taking pictures and some people asked me to photograph them who I might otherwise have walked by. At one place I did stop to argue after having been refused – and eventually managed to get permission to take a picture; at another I got profuse apologies from an employee who was obviously sorry that the stall owner had decided not to cooperate with Worldbytes.“

“The council employees didn’t turn up to stop filming while I was there; probably Sunday is their day off. But it’s very hard to understand why Hackney Council should allow or instruct their employees in this way. They should know the law after all.”

My use of flash – generally as a fairly weak fill-in – was deliberate to make sure that people knew I was taking photographs, though in some cases it helped with the pictures. After I’d spent around twenty minutes obviously taking pictures I was interviewed by the Worldbytes crew, though I rather hoped they would cut that from their video of the day.

My London Diary : Ridley Rd Market: Worldbytes Film Protest

Re:PHOTO: Worldbytes Defend the Freedom to Film

World March For Peace and Nonviolence

The World March For Peace and Nonviolence had begun in New Zealand on the 140th anniversary of Ghandi’s birth, October 2, 2009. It involved events around the world which ended at Punta de Vacas in the Andes Mountains in Argentina on January 2, 2010, where Silo (Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos) the founder of the Humanist Movement launched a new campaign for global nuclear disarmament in September 2006.

Volunteers from a base team of around a hundred went from New Zealand to Japan, Korea, Moscow, Rome, New York, and Costa Rica, attending events organised along the way to Argentina.

In London the march began with a vigil close to the Northwood Permanent Joint Forces / NATO Headquarters in Middlesex on Saturday morning, with speeches by World March UK co-ordinator Jon Swinden, Sonia Azad of Children Against War and organiser Daniel Viesnik, who also read out a message of support from John McDonnell MP.

Only around 50 people walked the whole way, but there were others around the world also marching. On the second day in London they began at Brent Town Hall in Wembley Park and I met them as they arrived at Marble Arch. They stopped for lunch at Speaker’s Corner where they then took part in the interactive play ‘Let The Artists Die’ on themes of peace, non-violence and the power of the imagination. It was written and directed by Charlie Wiseman who was also one of the three main actors.

They walked past the front of the US Embassy to the memorial to the British victims of 9/11 in Grosvenor Square, where it stopped to pay its respects. In Mayfair it was almost halted when a taxi driver deliberately drove into one of the marchers, but they continued to Trafalgar Square.

‘Heritage wardens’ stopped the march as it came down the steps in Trafalgar Square, telling them they could not walk through the square as they had not applied for permission.

After resting for a few minutes on the steps the march went around the side of the square and down Whitehall past “the Old War Office, and then the statues of famous generals outside the “Defence Ministry” (governments were more straightforward with language in the past)” and “the fortified gates of Downing Street and on to Parliament Square, where the march stopped at the permanent peace protest by Brian Haw there since 2 June 200l with the help of his supporters.”

I left the marchers there but they continued on to end at the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park.

More pictures at World March For Peace and Nonviolence.

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Teachers March against Government Plans – 2013

Westminster

Teachers March against Government Plans: Teachers found Education Minister Michael Gove’s plans for education hard to believe and impossible to swallow and came out in force in a march to a rally in Westminster to protect education on Thursday 17th October 2013. The march brought traffic in Central London to a halt for some hours and was almost a mile long as it moved from Malet Street to Marsham Street past the Education Ministry in Great Smith Street.

Gove wanted to totally deregulate teachers’ pay and conditions, which would allow all schools to set their own pay levels, working hours and holiday dates. Getting rid of the national agreements would lead to chaos and at school level, waste much time and effort in bureaucracy. Even schools which are ‘academies’ and are not required to follow the statutory guidelines have mostly chosen to do so, and the guidlines still apply to those staff working in academies who are subject to TUPE protections.

National pay negotiations lead are fairer and prevent much pointless competition between schools to attract the best teachers and avoid contention between management and staff.

Both the NUT and the NASUWT unions supported a day of strike and this rally and march by striking teachers from London and the South and some London boroughs reported over 40% of schools completely closed, with less than 10% able to work normally.

I taught full-time in education for thirty years, almost ten years in a large comprehensive and later in a sixth form and community college before taking early retirement to concentrate on being a photographer and writing about photography rather than teaching it (and other subjects.) Few outside the profession realise how stressful it can be – or the long hours involved. Most only think of the long holidays and the early end of most school days.

The teachers wanted Gove to carry out the long overdue valuation of the Teachers’ Pension scheme and to withdraw the threat to make teachers work until they are 68, and his proposals for Performance Related Pay.

I met the front of the march as it came down Whitehall and past Downing Street where it got very noisy with teachers shouting, with many were clearly very angry with the government’s proposals which they feel wreck our education system.

I kept at the front of the march to photograph it in Parliament Square where it passed Big Ben at noon before going on to the Department for Education, there were far too many on the march to get inside the hall for the rally and those not in the front section stopped here to make their vews clear.

They condemned Gove for not listening to teachers or educationalists and ignoring any opinion or research that doesn’t support his own views – or gets in the way of his plans to monetise and privatise our state education system.

But although the marchers were united and noisy in their opposition to Gove, angry and disgusted with his intentions, it remained an peaceful protest. Many of them had come withy their children – whose schools were shut for the day.

I had other things to do and had to walk to my next destination, as the bus services were completely disrupted with many roads jammed with traffic. At Aldwych I did get on a bus, but got off it five minutes later as it had only moved a few feet. An hour later when I was on my way home traffic on Kingsway was still moving at less than walking speed in both directions.

More on My London Diary at Teachers March against Government Plans.

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Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell – 2014

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell: On Thursday October 16th 2014 I went with housing campaigners on a march to Southwark Council Offices. They claimed that the council leader and other councillors and officers have accepted gifts and jobs from developers and were selling off council estates at knockdown prices. I had some time free after that and took a short walk along the Thames making some panoramas before rushing to the National Gallery where the Art Not Oil coalition were protesting outside a gala evening for special guests including unethical sponsors such as Shell.

CPOs for Southwark Councillors

Elephant to Southwark Council Offices

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell

Housing campaigners from Southwark were joined by members of the Focus E15 Mums ‘Housing for All’ campaign at the base of the Strata Tower at Elephant and Castle, a tower nicknamed ‘The Razor’ for its three entirely decorative ‘greenwash’ rooftop wind turbines – which cannot be used as they generate unacceptable vibration for the upper floor flats.

Facing them was One The Elephant, then under construction, a 44 storey block of luxury flats with no social housing, being sold abroad, with ‘studio flats’ starting at around £320,000 or 640,000 Singapore dollars.

They marched to protest briefly at the Elephant Park Sales Office on the Walworth Rd before walking on through the Heygate council estate where over 1200 homes were demolished and the site sold to developers for a knock-down cost – apparently less than the costs of ‘decanting’ the tenants and far below its proper valuation. Despite this leaseholders were only given compensation of around half the true market value of property in the area, forcing them to move out into the suburbs to buy property in far less convenient areas giving them long and expensive work journeys.

The replacement by Elephant Park means a loss of over a thousand social housing units, with a small number of so-called affordable units at 80% of market rates, still well above what most Londoners can actually afford. The new flats were being sold to overseas buyers in Singapore and elsewhere as second homes, investment properties, homes for wealthy overseas students studying here, buy-to-let etc.

From there they walked through some of Southwark’s 1930’s and postwar council estates, now seen as prime targets for demolition of social housing. Its replacement with higher density high price ‘luxury’ flats would generate huge profits for the developers (and lucrative rewards for councillors and council officers.)

The march carried on to a similar area of council properties around Long Lane and Tennis Street where again similar changes – gentrification labelled as regeneration – seem likely, before going through Guy’s Hospital and London Bridge Station to Tooley St and the Southwark Council Offices.

There they held a short rally after which security stopped them entering to hand in letters for Southwark Council Leader Peter John and two other councillors containing ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders‘ for their homes, but after much argument and the presence of police Liliana Dmitrovic of the ‘People’s Republic of Southwark’ and another protester were allowed in. As Southwark residents they argues they had a right to enter the council offices.

They went to reception and asked to see the three councillors and were told to take a seat and wait. They sat there for some time but eventually Stephen Douglas from Southwark Council came to tell them that all three named on the letters were in meetings and unavailable, but promised he would personally deliver the letters. They handed them in to him and left.

More on My London Diary at CPOs for Southwark Councillors.

Bermondsey Thames Panoramas

City Hall to Angel Wharf

I crosssed the road from the council offices and went through the gardens by City Hall to walk by the Thames, going briefly down Horselydown steps just downriver from Tower Bridge onto the foreshore.

I came back up to Shad Thames, a painful pastiche of its former industrial past. Quickly I made my way to the riverside path and walked on, stopping as usual at the footbridge across St Saviour’s Dock to take more pictures.

I walked on in some interesting lighting and got very involved in taking pictures, rather losing track of time. At West Lane I realised I was in danger of arriving late at Trafalgar Square and ran down to the bus stop on Jamaica Road.

Many more pictures – not all panoramic – at Bermondsey Thames Panoramas.

Art Not Oil – Rembrandt Against Shell

National Gallery

The Art Not Oil coalition had earlier gate-crashed the press launch of the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery in a protest against oil company sponsorship of the arts and the privatisation of gallery staffing.

*Protesters with banners in front of the Sainsbury wing*

I arrived in time to meet them on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields just before they marched the few yards to the National Gallery where a gala evening was being held for special guests – including from the sponsors – and highly ranked staff.

They turned down a protest pen the police had set up some distance from the entrance the guests would be using where their protest would not be noticed (what the police call ‘facilitating’ but campaigners know is minimising) and instead protested close to the entrance. Here there were some speeches and a repeat performance of their earlier performance which included a short playlet as well as some specially written songs.

Some of those who appeared at the press launch were professional actors now on stage elsewhere and so there were some changes in the cast. But it was still a very professional performance.

Here is the Art Not Oil statement:

The presence of unethical sponsors like Shell and the contracting of external security firms shows the growing influence the private sector is having over our arts and culture. With its meagre contribution to the gallery, Shell is buying social legitimacy for its dodgy deeds worldwide, including:
- its failure to clean up its multiple spills in the Niger Delta
- its reckless plans to drill in the Arctic for yet more oil
- its tar sands projects in Canada that are undermining Indigenous people's      rights

More at Art Not Oil Rembrandt Against Shell.

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Mare De Gras & Choose Life – 2004

Mare De Gras & Choose Life: On Sunday 10 October 2004 I photographed two very different events on the Streets of London, a carnival in Hackney and and ant-abortion march. Perhaps the only thing they had in common was that both were misnamed.

Hackney Mare de Gras

Dalston, Hackney

Mare de Gras – Fat Tuesday – is a season celebrated in New Orleans as carnival season, from 12th Night at the end of Christmas on January 6 to Fat Tuesday itself, Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. In England our celebrations are rather shorter and involve pancakes and pancake races.

But in Hackney it was the name adopted for the carnival which began there when some residents decided it would be a good thing for them to have a carnival like Notting Hill, and since the main street is Mare Street it seemed a good name, even though it took place in September.

It wasn’t the first carnival in Hackney – there is a tradition of English carnivals dating back mainly to the late 19th century, held in many towns and villages across the country, though most have now died out. Two of my friends got Arts Council money to document some of them – and I showed work from Notting Hill with them in a show, English Carnival, in 2008. Others are still going strong particularly in the West Country. Hackney had its carnivals way back around the 1900s but I don’t think they lasted too long.

Those traditional carnivals had one thing in common – “they received no core public funding. Many were almost entirely organised by volunteers; most also raised money for charities.”

For the show I wrote: “Carnival in England has been enlivened over the last forty or so years by the Caribbean influence, and West-Indian style carnivals have received considerable funding and become a popular celebration of our multi-cultural society within the larger metropolitan areas of the country, joined in recent years by Latin American, Asian and Central European communities.”

The revival of carnival in Hackney is thought to have started as the Street Carnival Theatre in De Beauvoir, organised by Centerprise, in 1973. Later came a new Hackney Carnival – Mare De Gras – bringing together many of the carnival groups that had their roots in Caribbean culture and had begun in the 1970s, 80s and 90s taking part in the Notting Hill Carnival.

In 2004, Mare De Gras in late September was cancelled after 16-year old A level student Robert Levy was killed on Mare Street, stabbed after he had tried to keep the peace in a fight between boys close to his home, and the event was rearranged for the 10th October.

Hackney Carnival continued in later years, though the name Mare De Gras was dropped soon after 2005. In 2024 there was a parade, but for 2025 there were only a number of activities and no real carnival.

More pictures from Mare De Gras.

Choose Life March

Westminster to Lambeth

I left the carnival in Hackney soon after the parade began to photograph a much more somber event, the Chose Life March opposing abortion. Again its name seems misleading to me – opposition to abortion is not about choosing life, and as I commented in 2004, “the misuse of language in using slogans such as ‘Choose Life’ disturbs me greatly, as an attempt to preempt rational thought.“

*One of the few parts of the march that did not seem lacking in life*

I also wrote “Nature is profligate, full of false starts, and life cannot sensibly be considered to begin at conception” which I suspect is a quote but cannot find the source.

Many other Christians and other religions do not accept the Catholic teaching on abortion but take more sensible and more scientifically bases views. But “this doesn’t mean we should take abortion lightly or allow scientists to play as they like with human genetic material. ” And of course our laws do have important safeguards on abortion and the use of human material in research.

More pictures, including a couple of Brian Haw and one of the River Thames as the march passed them on My London Diary.

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Bring All the Troops Home NOW – 2007

Bring All the Troops Home NOW: CND and Stop The War had called for a march to Parliament on 8th October 2007 to arrive when Gordon Brown was making his statement to Parliament on Iraq where British troops were still present having taken part in the US-led invasion in 2003.

They wanted to march to make clear that all UK troops should come back here now. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 had led to the fall of Saddam Hussein but had been made without any real thought for the future of Iraq – except for the profits which US companies hoped to make. Saddam’s civil and military administration which had united the country were simply removed rather than being put to use to keep the country running and chaos reigned. Iraq didn’t need foreign armies but needed real support to set up a new civil society and that had not been forthcoming.

Gordon Brown tried to ban the protest, using “Sessional Orders” to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for him to prevent the march under section 52 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. But CND and Stop The War made clear it would go ahead despite this.

On the morning of the march Prime Minister Gordon Brown – probably reacting both to huge public pressure and legal advice – lifted the ban, thus avoiding a huge burden on both police and courts. They might otherwise have ended with thousands of arrests – and cases which the courts would probably throw out.

Around ten years later the powers that the Brown government had attempted to use were officially recognised to no longer have any legal effect – something I suspect had been part of legal advice given to Brown in 2007.

Last Saturday, October 4th 2025, I again watched a protest by Defend Our Juries in defiance of the government’s proscription of Palestine Action under terrorist laws, with police arresting almost 500 people for sitting holding a piece of cardboard with a message supporting the banned group. Many of those arrested seemed to be elderly and some also disabled, though there were also younger people.

The protestersy presented no danger to public order – other than challenging the legally doubtful ban on the group who few outside the government and those making arms for sale to Israel who had been heavily lobbying for a ban – believe could be described as terrorists. And this is something to be shortly tested in the courts. And the arrests made the police look unfeeling and stooges of the government rather than a force acting with the consent of the people.

Perhaps our current Labour government should have learnt from the example of George Brown in 2007. Supposedly we are a nation where the police operate by consent – which was clearly not the case here – and the police should have made this clear to the government and simply ignored this and earlier protests by ‘Defend Our Juries’. Which would of course have made the action – with people coming on purpose to be arrested and waiting patiently for hours for it to happen – totally ineffectual. And we do after all we have many laws which people – especially motorists – break every day and the police ignore.

Defend Our Juries also protests against the practice by some judges in some courts to prevent those charged from making a defence of their actions and instructing juries that they cannot use their consciences in coming to decisions – both vital protections essential to a fair legal system. Actions introduced into our legal system because successive governments have been angered by the decisions reached by juries in some cases. But it should not be the job of our legal system to serve the government but to serve the people and these developments endanger the whole basis of trial by jury which protects us and our democracy.

Here’s what I wrote in 2007 about the march and rally on 8th October 2007. All the pictures in this post come the event and there are many more on My London Diary.

Brian Haw’s t-shirt summed up the disaster: “Iraq 2,000,000 dead 4,000,000 fled genocide theft torture cholera starvation” though there were a number of other crimes to mention, in particular the poisoning of so much the area for generations to come through the dumping there of so much of our nuclear waste in the form of ‘depleted uranium’ weapons.

I was surprised at the level of support for Monday’s demonstration, a day when many of the supporters of the campaign would have been at work, and I had expected hundreds rather than the three thousand or so who actually turned up. The government’s clumsy ban on the event, using 1839 legislation passed against the Chartists, drummed up support, and to such an extent that on the morning of the rally they had to climb down and allow the march and the lobby of parliament to proceed.

Later in the day, the success of the demonstration even became rather an embarrassment for Stop The War, who when I left around 4.30pm, two hours after the start of the march, were trying to help police in clearing the large crowd who were still blocking Parliament Street, Parliament Square and St Margaret St, urging them to move along to College Green. Later in the day a small group of protestors took down the barriers on the grassed area of parliament square, piling them up.

But the real embarrassment was for Gordon Brown, forced to climb down and allow democratic protest. Unfortunately he didn’t do the decent and sensible thing (and surely now inescapably the logical thing in the interests of both Iraq and Britain) and announce a speedy withdrawal of troops to be replaced by a real programme of support for the Iraqi people.

Although doubtless pressure from the police at the highest level was obviously vital in the decision to allow the march to go ahead, there were clearly a few officers in charge on the ground who weren’t happy.

As we went down Whitehall, they obstructed photographers trying to photograph the event quite unnecessarily – so obviously so that some of the officers actually carrying out the orders were apologising to me as they did so. And later in the day a few tempers flared and there were a few fairly random assaults on demonstrators.

It did seem an unnecessarily provocative move to bring back Inspector Terry, apparently the man responsible for much of the harassment of Brian Haw and the officer in charge at the 2006 ‘Sack Parliament’ demo last year (photographer Marc Vallée who was injured is now taking legal action against the Met, with the support of the NUJ.)

British troops remained in Iraq in a combat role until 2009, with smaller numbers there mainly involved in training until the final withdrawal in 2011. You can read more about my NUJ colleague Marc Vallée being thrown to the ground by police and his eventually reaching a settlement on the EPUK web site.

Many more pictures from the march and rally on My London Diary at
Bring All the Troops Home NOW.

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Al-Quds Day 2007

Al-Quds Day 2007: On October 7th, the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel I find myself thinking about the long fight by Palestinians since so many were displaced and dispossessed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the many thousands who since then have been killed by Israeli attacks.

And of course for those Israelis who have been killed – though in much smaller numbers – by suicide bombers, by rockets and during the October 2023 incursion or among the hostages, and including those Israelis killed by Israeli forces.

What we have seen since however is not a war, not self-defence but genocide, the bombing and deliberate starvation of the entire population of Gaza. It comes on top of years of siege with restrictions on essential supplies and of the bulldozing of people’s homes as well as the establishment of more and more illegal settlements across occupied Palestine.

And our country remains complicit, still supplying arms to enable the genocide despite government statements to the contrary, still labelling protests calling for peace as ‘hate marches‘ and still making false allegations about antisemitism while failing to deal with the real anti-Semites who plan and carry out attacks such at that we all condemn in Manchester.

Thinking about what to post here for today, I came across the Al Quds Day march which took place in London on Sunday October 7, 2007. It was I think only the second time I’d photographed the annual event and I didn’t write a great deal about it then.

I did mention that this event was begun in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeni declared the last Friday in Ramadan as Al Quds Day, (al-Quds being the Arabic name of Jerusalem), an annual anti-Zionist day of protest. In the UK the march has generally taken place on the following Sunday and is a demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people, largely by Muslims though also by anti-Zionist Jews and some of the UK left (many of whom are also Jewish.)

In 2007 a mixture of groups came to demonstrate against the march, largely because of its links with Iran both from its founding and also as it was organised by the Iranian Human Rights Commision (Inminds) which is alleged to receive funding from the Iranian government. Unlike later years I saw no counter-protests by Zionist groups or individuals.

Back then many of the march carried flags of the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah which emerged there after the Israeli invasion in 1982 and has strong ties with Iran. As well as running schools and hospitals and other social services it has also taken part militarily in opposing the various attacks by Israel on Lebanon.

Many Hezbollah leaders have been assassinated by Israel, some in what many describe as terrorist attacks. Until 2019 when its political wing was also proscribed the showing of the Hezbollah flag remained legal though contested in the UK.

As in earlier years the march ended with a rally in Trafalgar Square, though after 2008 the GLA refused to allow them to use the square, citing insurance problems.

Many more photographs of both the marchers and the rally and those who came to protest against the march on My London Diary at Al Qud’s Day March And Protest

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