Class War Women in Red One Commercial St, Aldgate, Wed 12 Nov 2014
A week earlier on 5th November 2014, police had arrested Jane Nicholl for setting fire to an effigy of Boris Johnson as a part of Class War’s ‘Poor Doors’ weekly protest against separate entrances for wealthy and social housing residents in the block at 1 Commercial St in Aldgate.
The bail conditions imposed by police prevented her from taking place in further protests outside the block in Aldgate, a clear attack on her right to protest. Jane had been wearing a red coat when she was arrested, and a number of women wore red for the protest a week later in solidarity.
Police had earlier complained about Class War’s posters earlier in the year for the general election, which had featured large portraits of the party leaders with Class War’s verdict – the same on each of them – overprinted large, the word ‘WANKER’. At least one person displaying them during the election had been threatend with arrest and forced to take them out of his house windows and in May police had objected to and seized a banner featuring all four leaders with a similar message.
Eventually the police were told they had to hand the banner back as its display was not an offence. But they were unwilling to do so, claiming it had been lost – though more probably they had destroyed it rather than having to lose face handing it back.
So the banner was not present at this protest, though later Class War made an updated version to use. But Ian Bone had brought along a pile of the posters, mainly of Tory Prime Minister David Cameron but with a few of other party leaders and handed them out.
Ian told us that this was an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of ‘Cameron wanker posters’ ever displayed at a protest. I’m not sure how many there were on display, but I think it was certainly a record number, but the chances of it being recorded in that rather conservative publication were as I wrote, “rather sub-zero.”
Police presence this week was low-key with just half a dozen officers standing beside the ‘rich door’ and along the front of the building and watching. The protest was noisy, with speeches, a samba band and dancing, but was entirely peaceful with no attempt to enter the building.
On Wednesday 5th November 2014 I photographed a protest by pro-Palestinian campaigners against Hewlett-Packard before going on to the weekly ‘Poor Doors’ protest by Class War in Aldgate, which had a special ‘Bonfire Night’ theme.
Boycott Hewlett-Packard – Sustainable Brands – Lancaster London Hotel, Wed 5 Nov 2014
Hewlett-Packard were the sponsors of a ‘Sustainable Brands’ conference at the Lancaster London Hotel close to Lancaster Gate Underground station and were claiming to create “a better future for everyone.”
Campaigners for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails came to protest outside the hotel becuase HP runs the Israeli prison system as well as providing IT support for the Israeli forces which recently killed many Palestinians including 521 Palestinian children in their recent attack on Gaza.
As well as adults many young Palestinian boys are locked up for long periods in Israeli jails, often kept in solitary confinement in small cells and tortured. Palestinians are often imprisoned in ‘administrative confinement’ without any proper charges or trial, released at the end of a year in jail and immediately re-arrested.
The protesters stood on the pavement outside the hotel handing out leaflets to people entering or leaving the hotel or walking past on the street. There were also several speeches about HP’s deep involvement in Israeli war crimes and persecution of Palestinians, and people were urged to boycott the company’s products and services.
Poor Doors Guy Fawkes burn Boris One Commercial St, Aldgate, Wed 5 Nov 2014
I met some of Class War in a nearby pub before the protest where they showed me a Boris Johnson stick puppet with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a large amount of cash fanned out in the other, as well as their guy BJ dressed in a suit and tie with a Boris mask and a mop for fairly realistic hair.
We walked with the short distance along Aldgate High Street to the tall block of flats at One Commercial Street with its separate door for the social housing tenants in the building with a drunkenly staggering BJ helped to hold Class War’s Women’s Death Brigade banner for a few yards. He was then carried the rest of the distance with orange smoke billowing from a flare in his top pocket.
There was more orange smoke as he stood on the pavement in front of the posh foyer to the private flats, with Class War holding banners around and a line of eight police officers guarding the entrance.
The protest began with speeches and sparklers and suddenly Boris began to go up in flames, thanks to a carefully applied sparkler, providing some welcome warmth on the cold night, burning fiercely for a few minutes before collapsing to a small burning heap on the wide pavement.
People were standing well back and there was clearly no danger, though a police officer did walk in to remove a bottle that had been placed close to the flames, presumably thinking it might explode due to the heat.
As the flames began to die down, Class War moved in and began to dance with their banners around the flames, and the samba band began to play.
There were more speeches and chants and eventually a fire engine, called by the police, drew up. At first the firefighters looked at the small fire, laughed and walked away. But police insisted they deal with the fire. It took one bucket of water.
The firefighters walked away and police moved to surround Jane Nicholl and arrest her for having set light to the guy with her sparkler.
Protesters surrounded the police shouting for them to release her, but eventually they managed to take her and put her in the back of a van, which was surrounded by people and unable to move for several minutes until more police arrived, the blue flashing lights of their vehicles making photography difficult.
Police grabbed another of the protesters who had I think been more vocal than most, handcuffed him and led him away to another van; this seemed a fairly random arrest and I think he was released without charge, as often happens after arrests at protests, with police misusing their power of arrest as a short period of administrative detention. People now were just standing around with a large crowd of police and it seemed clear the protest was over for the night and I left for home.
The police persisted with the prosecution of Jane Nicholl, and the case dragged on for six months before the case came to court. In court the CPS barrister had to ask for the charge to be altered as he conceded it was not an offence to burn an effigy of Boris Johnson and after the police CCTV had been shown tried to change the charge again. Defence barrister Ian Brownhill pointed out it was unfair for the prosecution to keep changing the goalposts and that the police watching the the fire were grinning and did not seem endangered as the prosecution alleged. The judge refused a further change of the charge and the prosecution dropped the case.
This was one of several expensive and time-consuming failed prosecutions of Class War protesters, which make it clear that police are misusing the law in order to intimidate and try to stop lawful protest – and that they are aided in this by the Crown Prosecution Service, almost certainly as a result of political pressure from some members of the government.
Saturday October 18th 2014 saw a huge march organised by the TUC calling for a pay rise for workers as Britain is recovering from the financial crash and bosses were getting big increases in earnings and bonuses but the workers were still suffering.
On my way there I called in to Parliament Square where Occupy Democracy who I had been with the previous evening were still attempting to take over the area – and I went back again after the TUC march.
Then for something completely different I went to Westminster Cathedral to photograph the start of the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament from there to Southwark Cathedral.
Finally there was a Poor Doors Saturday Night Special at One Commercial St, Aldgate, where Class War’s ranks were augmented by activists who had been attending the Anarchist Book Fair earlier in the day.
Democracy Camp takes the Square – Parliament Square
I had come the previous evening with Occupy Democracy for a rally in Parliament Square where they hoped to set up camp, but police and heritage wardens had kept them off the grass, and they were still on the paved areas when I visited them on Saturday morning, with a large police presence still managing to prevent them setting up camp.
Many had left the square to take part in the TUC march, and like me returned after the marchers had gone on their way to Hyde Park. Others arrived too, including a group from UK Uncut who walked in with a sound system. There were tense moments as police and Westminster Council officials tried to take this from them, but eventually they were allowed to leave with their equipment with the warning that they had to take it away from Parliament Square or it would be taken from them.
Shortly after more people arrived including those who had been carrying two large wood and fabric towers, one with the words POWER and OCCUPY and the other the word DEMOCRACY. Together with other protesters they ran onto the grass square and raised the towers, with police unable to stop them. Others followed them onto the grass and began a rally, with speakers including Labour MP John McDonnell, Occupy’s George Barda, environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy and Russell Brand.
Police reinforcements began to muster around the square and it seemed a battle was inevitable. But suddenly the police disappeared, probably realising that the presence of Brand in particular would would have generated massive and largely negative media coverage. Much better to come back late at night and do it after the mass media had left (which they did.)
Over 80,000 marchers had come to call for workers to share in the economic recovery where company chief executives now earn 175 times the average worker, and nurses, teachers and others in the public and private sector are £50 a week worse off than in 2007.
I don’t often bother to photograph ‘press calls’ but I arrived just in time for this one well before the march started, with Frances O’Grady in a bright red dress in front of the main banner with people holding up the figures 1, 7 and 5. And I stayed in front of the march to photograph the leaders holding the banner until it set off.
I stopped a few yards along the route where the light was better and photographed group after group of marchers, including many from the NHS and other public service unions whose members have been particularly badly treated by the government’s pay freezes.
Pat Arrowsmith
Towards the back of the march were many more radical groups, including those I’ve photographed often at other protests, with many familiar faces. In particular I was pleased to have a short talk with veteran peace protester Pat Arrowsmith of CND who I’d several times walked beside on the way to Aldermaston.
As the end of the march went past me I left to cover other events. There would be long speeches at the rally in Hyde Park!
Procession of the Blessed Sacrament – Westminster Cathedral to Southwark
I waited outside Westminster Cathedral for people to emerge after the blessing of the sacrament as no photography was allowed inside.
The procession was led by a group mainly in white tops, some carrying lighted altar candles and a man with a crucifix on a stick and I photographed them as they waited for the procession to form up behind them. The wind soon extinguished their candles.
Some way back in the procession were more people wearing clerical dress with one in more ornate robes carrying the Blessed Sacrament, holding it in his cape and another holding an offi-white umbrella over him and the sacrament.
Two African women in ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ dresses carried a banner with an unlikely looking Jesus, but most of those that followed were in more normal dress. Some seemed rather unhappy or suspicious about being photographed.
I went with the procession to Lambeth Bridge and then returned to Parliament Square and the Democracy Camp.
Poor Doors Saturday Night Special – One Commercial St, Aldgate
Protesters lit by the headlights of the cars they were blocking
Class War who had been holding regular weekly protests for several months against the separate doors for rich and poor residents at One Commercial St, Aldgate, had called a special protest as the Anarchist Book Fair had been taking place earlier just a short distance away.
Quite a few of those who had travelled to London for the Book Fair came down to take part in the protest. It made my photography a little more difficult as the pavement was rather crowded, and there were many taking part who didn’t know me – and some anarchists are keen not to be photographed.
It was good to see a few new banners – including one from the Durham Miners Association – and the protest was enlivened with samba from Rhythms of Revolution and some songs from Cosmo, who got a Class War sticker added to the others on his guitar, as well as some rousing speeches.
There were rather more police around, including a group of seven guarding the poor door, probably becuase residents from the rich side of the building were having to use this as the protest blocked the rich door. There were enough police there as well to stop the protesters getting into the building when they made a brief rush at one point.
The protest ended with everyone surging onto the busy Whitechapel High St and blocking it for around ten minutes – unfortunately as my flash unit decided to go into erratic mode. Fortunately the headlights of the cars stopped by the protest provided some lighting when the flash failed to do so.
Isle of Dogs and Class War: The weather was fine on Wednesday September 3rd 2014, with some nice clouds which made it a good day for some more panoramic photographs, and I went up earlier in the day to continue my pictures around the Isle of Dogs before covering an evening protest by Class War in Aldgate.
Isle of Dogs – Island Gardens to South Quay
Back in the 1980s I set out to photographed extensively in London’s docklands, part of a wider project on the de-industrialisation of the city, partly a response to changes in technology and globalisation, but greatly accelerated by the Thatcher government which saw great opportunities for their supporters profiting by a switch from manufacturing to service industries.
The government policies perhaps made some sense at the time – and certainly made some large profits for the friends and supporters of the Tories, but in many ways we are paying for them now, particularly for their ‘selling off the family silver’ by privatising utilities and other publicly owned activities.
In the docks the main changes were due to containerisation and other efficient ways of handling cargo. Much larger vessels came into service and the long journey up the River Thames to London’s Docks was difficult or impossible, as well as adding significantly to turn-around times. Only Tilbury, miles closer to the sea remained viable.
The changes to Docklands could have been managed for the benefit of the existing populations to the area, with development being carefully planned and managed locally. Instead we got the London Docklands Development Corporation which overrode local interests to benefit those of corporations but did produced a more rapid development than would otherwise have taken place. But it was a huge give-away to private developers, resulting in dramatic changes, and one that the area will continue to suffer from for generations.
Many of my pictures from the 1980s in colour as well as black and white are now available on Flickr in a https://www.flickr.com/photos/petermarshall/albums number of albums and there are also a number of books available on Blurb (in print and as PDF) with the Isle of Dogs being included in City to Blackwall ISBN: 978-1-909363-09-0 which has a working preview.
My walk in 2014 began at Island Gardens DLR station, where I had finished a previous walk, and I continued along the riverside path to the Blackwall Entrance, across to Poplar Dock and Blackwall Basin, down Prestons Rd and Manchester Road to East Ferry Road, and then up and around a little on my way to South Quay Station.
In 2014 I was mainly making digital panoramic photographs, with a horizontal angle of view of around 145 degrees – much greater than can be achieved with a normal rectilinear perspective. These pictures use a projection which keeps vertical edges straight and also gives a straight horizon line (so long as the camera is kept level) but other lines and objects away from the centre of the image curve. Similar projections were used by artists such as Canaletto. These images here have a aspect ratio of 1.9 to 1.
There are two posts on My London Diary with many more panoramas and a few ‘normal’ views from this walk: Isle of Dogs Isle of Dogs Panoramas
Class War ‘Poor Doors’ picket Week 6 – Aldgate
I got back a few minutes early to where Class War were to stage their sixth weekly protest against the separate doors for the wealthy residents and social housing tenants in the block ‘One Commerical St’. The entrance for the rich is on Whitechapel High St next to Aldgate East station while the poor door is down an alley on the west side of the building.
Unlike in previous weeks there were police already there and waiting for the protesters, a sign that the police were taking a firmer stance against the protests here. Almost certainly they were responding to pressure from the owners of the building, and their activities against the protesters were to heighten further in later weeks.
When the protesters arrived, officers immediately came and talked to them, making it clear that they were not to block the doorway for people entering or leaving the building.
More police arrived, outnumbering the small group of little more than a dozen protesters who had come to hand out leaflets to people on the street outside. Many passing expressed surprise that this kind of segregation of rich and poor was allowed to happen in London and showed support for the protest.
It was perhaps the smallest of the series of thirty or so ‘Poor Doors’ protests outside this building. There were quite a few arguments with police officers but no arrests on this occasion.
May Day – International Workers Day – May 1st was chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day in 1889 by the Second International socialists and communists, and adopted by anarchists, labor activists, and leftists in general around the world, to commemorate the 1886 Chicago Haymarket affair and the struggle for an eight-hour working day. It continues to be celebrated in many countries around the world.
Although I tested negative for Covid on Wednesday I’m still short of breath and short of energy, with still a little of a cough and have been strongly advised to take things easy for the next week or two. So I’m not sure if I’ll be out celebrating May Day today, much as I yearn to be.
Before 2000 I was usually unable to celebrate May Day properly as May 1st was usually a normal working day and I went out around 8am and arrived home from work around 5.30pm, usually with more to do at home after an evening meal. Not much time to celebrate International Workers Day!
Of course, May Day sometimes fell at the weekend, so I would have been free to take part in events that were taking place, but even in 1999 when it was a Saturday I think I had other things on.
There were of course May Day related events that I went to most years, but usually these were on the Saturday or Sunday before the early May bank holiday Monday which was introduced by a Labour government in 1978, when they lacked the nerve to make May Day itself a public holiday. We still have that bank holiday despite plans made by Conservative governments under both John Major and David Cameron to replace it by a Trafalgar Day holiday in late October.
By 2003 I was getting rather blasé about the London May Day march, writing “May Day Has perhaps settled into a rather predictable event now. The socialist left – and what is left seems to be a few unions and a number of ethnic communist party groups – march from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar square, while anti-capitalist protesters do not a lot around town“, but that didn’t stop me going again to photograph it that year or in 2004, 2005, 2006, and every year until 2019. Covid put an end to the sequence in 2020, but I came out of seclusion for May Day 2021, though perhaps I’ll miss it again today.
And I will miss it. Miss the sense of solidarity on the streets. And most of my life I’ve been feeling a loss of what might have been had we ever had a socialist government since my first few years growing up in a welfare state. Tory governments largely did what was expected of them but the various Labour administrations largely failed the people. Perhaps the final straw came in 2017, when people inside Labour actively worked against a Labour election victory.
The pictures here come from some of the other May Day events I’ve photographed in the last 20 years or so. You can find other May Day pictures on My London Diary simply by choosing a year at the top of the page and then the month of May at the left of the year page.
2015 March for Homes – Shoreditch to City Hall. A year before the march Against the Housing and Planning Bill featured in yesterday’s post there was another march about housing at the end of January, the March For Homes.
Outside Shoreditch Church
The event called by Defend Council Housing, South London People’s Assembly and Unite Housing Workers Branch involved two separate marches, one coming from Shoreditch in north-east London and the other from the Elephant & Castle in south London converging on London’s City Hall close to Tower Bridge for a final rally.
Max Levitas, a 100 year old communist veteran of Cable St
I couldn’t be in two places at once and chose to go to Shoreditch, partly because I knew people from several groups I had photographed at a number of housing struggles would be marching from there. The event was certainly enlivened by the arrival of activists who had marched from Bethnal Green, including supporters of Class War, Focus E15 and other groups.
Many couldn’t get into the churchyard
The Shoreditch Rally was held in a crowded area in Shoreditch churchyard at the front of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, the ancient parish church of Shoreditch, and I took the opportunity to go inside and have a look at the church before the rally. The list of speakers there showed the wide range of community support for fairer housing policies, including more social housing desperately needed in London and included Jasmine Stone of Focus E15, Lindsey Garratt from New Era, Paul Turp, vicar of St Leonards, Nick from Action East End, Paul Heron of the Haldane Society of Socialist Laywyers, Max Levitas, a 100 year old communist veteran of Cable St, a speaker from the ‘Fred and John Towers’ in Leytonstone and Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman.
Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman
Tower Hamlets benefits from having been formed from some of the London Metropolitan Boroughs with the best records of social housing – such as Poplar, where in the 1920s councillors went to jail to retain more money for one of London’s poorest areas. Unfortunately Rahman, the borough’s first directly elected mayor was removed from office in April 2015 after he was found personally guilty of electoral fraud in his 2014 re-election. Many of the other charges made against him in the media were dismissed by police after investigation.
It was raining slightly as over a thousand marchers set off for City Hall behind the March For Homes banner.
As the march came to the junction with Aldgate High St, Class War split off for a short protest at One Commercial St, where they had held a lengthy series of weekly ‘Poor Doors’ protests against separate entrances for residents owning or leasing at market rates and the smaller section of social housing tenants who had to enter through a door down a side alley. Class War had suspended their 20 weeks of protest for talks with a new owner of the building a month or so earlier, but these had broken down without a satisfactory resolution and the protests there restarted the following week.
As the march approached the Tower of London it was met and joined by Russell Brand riding a bicycle,
and on Tower Bridge, Class War came up to lead the march.
I rushed ahead to meet the South London march as it turned into Tooley Street for the last few yards of its march.
The rally in front of City Hall was large, cold and wet. By now the rain was making it difficult to take photographs, with drops falling on the front of my lenses as I tried to take pictures, and my lenses beginning to steam up inside. But I persisted and did the best I could, though the rain-bedraggled speakers in particular were not looking their best.
The rally was still continuing when some of the activists, including Class War and the street band Rhythms of Revolution decided they needed to do something a little more than standing in the rain listening to speeches. They moved onto Tooley Street and blocked the road. More police arrived and blocked the road even more effectively as the activists moved eastwards to protest at One Tower Bridge, a new development mainly for the over-rich next to Tower Bridge and then left for a long walk to the occupied Aylesbury Estate. But I decided it was time to go home.
The Independent Living Fund enabled many disabled people to continue to live with dignity and to work making a positive contribution to society and the government decision to close it led to many protests and to legal actions to try and stop it under the Equality Act.
Although a court ruled that the minister concerned had acted illegally, all it required was that the new minister reconsidered the plans. He did so, and decided to go ahead, though with a three month delay. And a judge ruled in December 2014 that although in axing the ILF he knew that the closure would mean many disabled people would lose their ability to live independently in the community his decision was legal.
The decision to end ILF was clearly wrong, clearly immoral, but so long as the legal niceties were observed the government was able to go ahead with it, and our law gave no protection.
The vigil outside the court while the case was being heard attracted wide support, including from Inclusion London, Norfolk and Suffolk DPAC local DPACs, the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Transport for All, Winvisable, PCS Union, the TUC, and other organisations,and there was even a simultaneous vigil in Toronto, Canada. Three MPs, John McDonnell, Andy Slaughter and Jeremy Corbyn, came to give their support, and there were speeches by campaigners including Paula Peters and Andy Greene, with John Kelly singing.
As expected the vigil ended with a short direct action by DPAC and others, briefly blocking the Strand outside the law courts.
Free Shaker Aamer
This was one of a long series of regular vigils opposite Parliament for Shaker Aamer, an innocent charity worker arrested by bandits and handed over to US forces who have imprisoned and tortured him for over 12 years. He was cleared for release in 2007 but remained in Guantanamo with our government failing to press for his release because his testimony could embarrass MI6 as well as the US.
London Panoramas
I had time before another protest to visit an exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands and on the journey to pause and make some panoramic images.
Probably the most interesting were inside Westminster station, where “the beams and buttresses, designed by Hopkins Architects and completed in 1999 for the opening of the Jubilee Line are also the foundations of the block of parliamentary offices above the station, Portcullis House, and were deliberately Piranesian, though sometimes I get more of the feeling of Escher as you seem to walk endlessly up escalators and around the interior.”
Democracy Camp – Poet Arrested
I returned to Parliament Square where the Democracy Camp was still holding workshops, though police and the GLA ‘heritage wardens’ had fenced off the main grass area.
Danny, one of the protesters had been sitting on the plinth next to the statue of Churchill since the previous afternoon and poet Martin Powell arrived with a pot of food for him, which he tossed up to him, going straight into his hands, despite police warning him he could be arrested.
“How can feeding the hungry be a crime?” he asked and he was arrested and led away in handcuffs around two sides of Parliament Squareperforming his poem ‘The Missing Peace’. I left while Danny was still on the plinth, though later that evening police finally found a ladder and brought him down after over 26 hours.
Musical Poor Doors
It was Class War’s 14th weekly protest at the ‘rich door’ of Redrow’s One Commercial St flats and it was a lively affair, with the banners dancing to the music of Rhythms of Resistance, a poetic performance and some rousing speeches against social apartheid.
There were a lot of police present and some stood in front of the door and ushered a few people in and out but made no attempt to stop the hour long protest, which though noisy remained entirely peaceful. Some of the police clearly enjoyed the music and watching the dancing.
Saturday 18th October 2014 was another long and busy day for me. After briefly looking in at Parliament Square, where a few from Occupy Democracy had defied police to spend the night on the pavement I went to the Embankment where thousands were massing for the TUC ‘Britain Needs a Pay Rise‘ march which was due to begin in a couple of hours time.
I returned to the TUC march a little later for the Press Call, seldom very interesting events to photograph, and then the start of the march where Frances O’Grady was doing her best for the camera.
Things got a little more interesting as the march filed part me, and towards the end of the 80,000 or so I met rather more people I knew, including those with CND, Focus E15, Occupy London, Class War and other radical groups.
An hour and a quarter after the start the people at the back were getting close to the start of the march, and I went back for another look at things in Parliament Square. Not a lot was happening, apart from some illicit sleeping (its a crime there.)
I went on to Westminster Cathedral, arriving in time to meet the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament leaving to walk to St Georges Cathedral in Southwark, and walking with them across Lambeth Bridge, from where I walked back towards Parliament Square.
I arrived back as more people who had been on the TUC march were arriving, including a group from UK Uncut dancing to a music centre on a shopping trolley. Police and a warden from Westminster Council – who are responsible for the pavement opposite the Houses of Parliament came and tried to seize the music centre, but after much argument allowed the to keep it so long as they left the square.
Shortly afterwards others arrived, with a group of anarchists running across the grass with black flags, chased by ‘heritage wardens’, then others poured onto the grass with the two towers with the messages ‘Power’ and ‘Democracy’ they had carried on the TUC march. A rally then took place, gathered around these to protect them, with John McDonnell MP as the first speaker, while police lined the edge of the square watching. Then small groups of police began to gather, ready to charge, and police reinforcements arrived; it seemed only a matter of minutes before they tried to clear the area.
But after Russell Brand arrived to speak, the police rapidly melted away and the many vans drove off. I suspect they knew that had they attacked when he was present there would have been massive media coverage and decided it was better to come back at dead of night after most of the press and TV have left – as they did.
I left to go to Aldgate, where Class War were holding a Poor Doors Saturday Night Special against the separate doors for rich and poor residents at One Commercial St, Aldgate, with a larger than usual group who had come from the nearby Anarchist Book Fair. It was a livelier protest than usual with samba from Rhythms of Revolution and some songs from Cosmo up from Wales for the event, as well as a rather larger than usual police presence.
Inevitably at the end of the protest the group decided to move onto the busy Whitechapel High Street and block it, ignoring orders by the police to leave the highway. It’s a fairly dark area of street and my flash unit was having problems, but I managed to make a few pictures, some by the headlights of the blocked cars. After around ten minutes the protesters decided it was time to leave the road and end the protest, and I went home.
A few days ago I had to sit down and write some explanations to a friend who lives on a smallholding in rural France who doesn’t have a computer or internet access. It made me realise how much has changed for most of us since some time in the 1990s, when we all began to be connected by the World Wide Web and browsers such as Mosaic which really made the breakthrough to something like the web we now know and most of us spend large parts of our life in.
“A photographic account of the protests from July 2014 to May 2015 at One Commercial St, Aldgate, London against separate doors for rich and poor residents. The book includes over 200 images from 29 protests. ISBN: 978-1-909363-14-4”
It is still available, and at the very reasonable price of £6.00, though given Blurb’s postage rates it only makes sense to buy it if you get together with a few mates to order several copies.
More recently my wife sent him a copy of a postcard with my picture from 2014, ‘Vigil for Ferguson, US Embassy – No Justice, No Peace’ and he wrote back asking who Ferguson was – and included a couple of questions about the Class War book.
Google of course would have supplied him the answers in the twinkling of a mouse click, and told him Ferguson was a town in Missouri where riots had followed both the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer and the failure to indict the officer for the murder. He could have got the answer even quicker on my own web site, My London Diary, where putting ‘Ferguson’ in the search box at top right on most pages returns links to the Solidarity with Ferguson vigil, Hands Up! Against Racist Police Shootings protest following the shooting and this Candlelit Vigil for Michael Brown following the decision not to charge Darren Wilson with his murder.
His second question was about the Class War banner with its message “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live” Lucy Parsons 1853-1942, and was simply to ask “Who was Lucy Parsons”. Again Wikipedia and other web sites such as the IWW Archive would have given a fast and far more comprehensive answer than the brief reply I wrote.
The final question was one that amused me. “Who, ” he asked, “was that elderly gentleman with a walking stick” and “why was he being arrested and being put into a police van in one of the pictures“. It was of course Ian Bone, and again my web site contains much about him on many occasions, including pictures and an explanation of his arrest on Wednesday 24th September 2014.
When the building manager had held open the ‘Rich Door’ for a resident to go through, the person holding one end of the Lucy Parsons banner had stepped in front of it to prevent him closing it. He made the mistake of walking away to the concierge desk, probably to ask the concierge to call the police, but leaving the door open and unguarded. So Class War walked in unopposed, bringing two banners with them and continued to protest in the the foyer.
Ian Bone talked to the building manager, then held up a couple of framed notices from the desk, and talked about them and the objections to social tenants being made to use a separate door on a dirty alley at the side of the building, before putting them back carefully on the desk next to a vase full of flowers. Others spoke briefly and people loudly shouted slogans.
And then “there was a crash and the vase of flowers was no longer on the reception desk. Ian Bone had knocked it off with his walking stick, which he had been swinging around rather wildly as he spoke. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or accidental.” Though I was fairly sure it would have been on purpose.
Shortly after, the police arrived, and there was some discussion; I went outside and a few minutes later the protesters followed and the protest continued as usual on the pavement, with more speeches and noise. Eventually the protesters decided it was time to leave and were moving away when a police office approached Ian Bone and told him he was being arrested as the CCTV in the ‘rich door’ foyer showed him breaking the vase. There was considerable argument as he was led away and put in the van, but no attempt at resistance.
Later we heard that Ian Bone had agreed to pay £70 for a replacement vase and the building owners had decided not to press charges. And at the following week’s Poor Doors protest Class War brought along a couple of vases of flowers to play with and to try and get the building manager to take, though as they probably came from a Pound Shop they “they were perhaps a little plastic and tacky looking compared to the one that had been broken the previous week.”
The building manager refused to take the replacements, but later made the mistake of grabbing hold of one which was thrust in his face, “probably by reflex. His face when he found himself holding it was interesting, and he quickly put it down, placing it on the desk in the reception area in the same place as the one knocked off last week, complete with its with a ‘Toffs Out!’ Class War card.” And I was just able to photograph it through the window there on the desk.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
April 2nd in 2015 was Maundy Thursday and a rather busy day for me, though only one of the events was related to Holy Week.
My working day started around noon outside the US Embassy, still then in Grosvenor Square, where the monthly protests by the London Guantánamo Campaign were continuing, handing out leaflets and talking with passers by calling for justice and freedom for the remaining 122 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
From there is was a short walk to a lunchtime protest by residents from Sweets Way in north London outside the offices of the estates owners who I described as “the tax-dodging equity investor owned company” Annington Homes, calling for an end to evictions and the right to return for all decanted residents.
I’d heard that the previous night activists from the Autonymous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians had entered Admiralty Arch through the roof and were occupying the building and went along to investigate, along with a couple of other journalists. We were offered entry if we brought tobacco or alcohol but felt it wise to refuse and left, having taken a few pictures of the banners and notices on the outside of the building.
I hadn’t wanted to spend too much time at the Admiralty Arch as I was on my way to a protest outside the offices of G4S on Victoria St calling for the release of the 300 Palestinian children then held in G4S secured Israeli jails to be released. In 2014 Israel held 1266 Palestinian children for interrogation; 75% of them were physically tortured and many sexually abused. One of the speakers was a woman who was forced to undress and stand naked in public by Israeli security on a visit to Israel to visit Palestinians in jail.
I left the protest to catch up with Catholic Workers on a Holy Week procession around the “geography of suffering” in London, stopping outside the offices of companies in the arms trade for prayers against the arms trade, war, torture, nuclear weapons, international debt, homelessness, immigration policy and climate change.
Next came a visit to the Meridien and Park Lane Hotels on Piccadilly in Mayfair where the Unite Hotel Workers Branch protested in solidarity with fellow workers for Sheraton hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives who have been sacked for union organising.
And finally I made the trip to Aldgate East, where Class War were holding the 26th of their series of weekly protests against ‘Poor Doors’, the separate entrance down a side alley for social housing tenants at One Commercial St.
It had been getting increasingly difficult to keep up photographing these protests without taking the same pictures again and again, but this evening the police made my job easier first by putting on a little light entertainment as an officer tackled a smoke flare thrown onto the highway and later, considerably more seriously sending in a squad to snatch and arrest Lisa McKenzie, who was at the time standing as Class War candidate against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford – see the picture at the top of this post. Fortunately when the case came to court the police had no credible case against her and her barrister was not even required to speak in her defence – or call witnesses (much to my relief as I was one of them) – and the case was dismissed. Clearly the police had been leaned on – perhaps by IDS or his colleague the Home Secretary- to harass Lisa for her impertinent electoral challenge.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
