March & Rally for Palestine: I find it interesting to look back at the march and rally in support of Palestine which took place in London on Saturday 13th April 2002 for several reasons.
The march was organised by the Muslim Association of Britain and came after the start of the large scale Israeli Operation Defensive Shield in towns and villages across the West Bank and battles against Palestinians in Jenin and Nablus in early April.
Operation Defensive Shield was aimed at at halting Palestinian suicide bombings against civilians in Israel which were taking place during the Second Intifada.
Around 30,000 people, mainly Muslims, had gathered at Hyde Park to march to the rally at Trafalgar Square (police estimates of the number at 10-15,000 were clearly too small.) According to CNN “they clambered on to Nelson’s Column chanting slogans before burning and tearing Israeli flags.”
Well, a few of them did burn flags, though not in my sight, but rather more joined in the chanting of ‘”Down with Israel,” “Down, down U.S.A.” and “Jihad!” or holy war.’ Later in their article CNN do quote a MAB spokesman telling them that jihad “means ‘struggle', it does not mean war“.
They also quote the MAB spokesman telling them that the youth “tend to get a bit excited just as a large crowd does at a football match” and making clear that the MAB “do not believe in the burning of any flag.”
I think you can see from my pictures that this protest had a very different atmosphere from the current protests calling for a ceasefire and the end of the massacres of the Palestinian people. The current protests involve the whole range of the British population – including many Jews – and are largely about ending the senseless wholesale killing and destruction while many in 2002 were clearly showing support for the activities of Palestinian militants including suicide bombers. There are a number of posters and placards in my pictures which would now result in arrests.
Tony Benn was one of the speakers at the rally and is of course no longer with us, but Jeremy Corbyn still speaks at today’s protests. CNN quotes him in 2002 as saying:
“This is a demonstration by thousands of British people, Muslim and non-Muslim, demanding peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state and withdrawal by Israeli forces. And the message to Tony Blair is now clear, he must stop speaking on behalf of George Bush and instead on behalf of peace and justice in the Middle East.”
Replace Blair by Sunak, Bush by Biden and it still makes sense.
This was also I think the first time I had posted colour pictures of a protest on My London Diary. Back in March 2002 I was still working with film, both black and white and colour negative.
Of course film does not come with EXIF data, but I think the colour pictures were probably made using a Konica Hexar F, with various Leica M fitting lenses, with those in the crowd using a 15mm Voigtlander. They were scanned with the first film scanner I bought, a Canoscan which had just come out in 2002, and neither hardware or software were really up to the job. The final picture is not one I posted in 2002, and I have improved the scan made then a little in Photoshop.
CND Aldermaston March – On Easter Monday 12th April 2004 I walked from Reading to Aldermaston in a protest against the next generation of nuclear weapons organised by CND, the Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp and Slough4Peace. Since the original march in 1958 the dangers of nuclear weapons have proliferated and we have seen many more years of lies and deception dressed up as security and national interest.
I hadn’t marched all the way from London though I had gone to the Trafalgar Square ‘No New Nukes’ Rally before the march on Friday 9th April and had walked with them tas far as Kensington. I had other business on the Saturday, but on Sunday 11th I cycled to meet the march at Maidenhead and walked the next four miles with them to their lunch stop at Knowl Hill before walking back to Maidenhead to pick up my bike and cycle home.
Pat Arrowsmith
I was up early on Easter Monday to catch a train to Reading with my wife and elder son where we joined the marchers who had spent the night in Reading as they were about to set off.
I’d spent the previous 3 days walking around ten miles a day carrying a heavy camera bag, and the weight of a Nikon with a solid lens round my neck was getting to be too much for me. I felt I couldn’t do another day with at least 12 miles carrying this load. So unusually my only photographic equipment for the day was a tiny Canon Digital Ixus 400, a 4Mp camera weighing around 230 grams.
It generally did a very good job, though the 2272 x 1704 pixel files were a little smaller than usual, and it only gave jpeg files rather than the RAW I normally used allowing much less post-processing. Despite having a sensor less than a tenth the area of my Nikon DX camera it was hard to tell a difference in the quality of the result. Of course I was taking pictures in good daylight – and under more taxing conditions the Nikon raw files would have been streets ahead. All of the pictures in this post were made with the Canon Ixus.
The main limitation of the Ixus was its sometimes very slow focus. The pause between pressing the shutter button and the camera actually taking a picture could sometimes be very long. Sometimes so long that I’d actually put the camera down before the exposure, and as well as the pictures it made I also returned home with quite a few pictures of random patches of road and grass from Berkshire.
But we walked all the way, with a stop at AWE Burghfield, the UK’s nuclear bomb factory and then on the Aldermaston, where we also walked halfway around the perimeter fence before getting a lift to the station.
End Immigration Detention – Harmondsworth: Saturday 11th April 2015 saw what I think was the largest protest to date outside the Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre on the Bath Road immediately north of Heathrow airport.
Various organisations had held protests here over the years, but these had grown since Movement for Justice began organising them, bringing a large group of current and former asylum seekers out from London on the tube to Terminal 5 and then on the short bus ride to the prison. They included some who had come from other cities in the country – and even from Glasgow. Other groups at the protest included No Borders, Southall Black Sisters and Shoreditch Sisters W I.
There are two detention prisons on the site, both surrounded by 20ft high fences with a private road to a BT site running between them. Called Harmondsworth and Colnbrook, they were in 2015 both run by Mitie’s ‘care+custody’ division, and the overall name for the centre had changed to Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre, which made clear that the government intention was to deport people rather than operate a fair asylum system.
The Home Office has long proved itself to be both incompetent and racist, and huge backlogs have built up over the processing of asylum claims. They seem to start from the position that all asylum claims are unfounded and those making them are liars, often despite the evidence. Claims that should be processed in days take months or years – during which time people may be kept in detention centres like these generally quite unnecessarily. We should imprison criminals, not asylum seekers.
As I commented in 2015:
“these are prisons, with those inside being unable to leave; they have a few privileges denied those in normal jails, including the use of mobile phones, but some disadvantages, including that they are all on indefinite sentences at the whim of government and subject to a constant threat they will be forcibly bundled onto a plane and taken back to the country from which they have fled, often at fear of their lives. These prisons are also run by staff who often lack the basic training, supervision and accountability of normal jails.”
The majority of those who claim asylum are eventually granted leave to remain in the UK as their claims are well-founded. Some have been deported before they are given time to prove their cases to the Home Office’s satisfaction under “fast track” procedures that have been ruled illegal.
Our laws prevent them from working and contributing to our economy and society, and almost all are keen to do so and have skills which are in short supply. We need a system that gives people the medical treatment they need and gets them back into normal work and life as quickly as possible. Instead far too many are simply parked in prisons like these without proper medical care and largely isolated from those who could help them. Its both inhumane and economically unsound.
Although police and a large team of security guards stopped the protesters from going down the road toward the prison blocks, forcing them into a pen in front of the administration building at the front of the site, the loud protest could be heard throughout the site. Some of the prisoners were able to use their mobile phones to welcome the protesters and let them known about the poor conditions inside, and their calls were relayed over the public address system the protesters had brought.
Most of those who spoke at the protest had themselves been held inside these or other detention centres often for long periods after escaping from beatings, rape and torture in their home countries, and several spoke about their experiences in the system here. Some said they had been treated as troublemakers because they stood up for their rights – and that inmates who failed to do so, whatever the strength of their cases, were likely to face deportation.
I was tired after a couple of hours of the noisy protest, with chanting, singing and dancing – though mainly I had just been taking photographs, and left to catch a bus home. I could hear the protest continuing from the bus stop several hundred yards away, and when the bus came – ten minutes late – saw the protesters making their way out of the site to a public footpath which runs along the side of the Colnbrook site to continue their protest closer to those prison blocks.
Vaisakhi, Uganda & Freedom Umbrella: On Saturday 9th April 2011 After visiting Woolwich to photograph the Vaisakhi celebrations I came back into central London to photograph Ugandans and Kurds protesting for freedom and democracy.
Vaisakhi Celebrations in Woolwich
For some years I had been documenting religious festivals in and around London and had photographed a number of Sikh Gurdwaras at their Vaisakhi festivals.
On Saturday 9th April 2011 I went to the Ramgarhia Association Gurdwara in Mason’s Hill Woolwich. The Ramgarhia are a Sikh community who originally came from the close to Amritsar in the Punjab and traditionally they were carpenters, blacksmiths and other artisan workers but were renowned for their military prowess and the victories of the armies.
When I turned up I was warmly welcomed and taken to the Langar hall where I enjoyed some of the free vegetarian food on offer to all, prepared and served by members of the congregation who volunteer their services as a part of their religious practice and was able to talk with people there and wander around taking photographs.
The Gurdwara was established in 1970 in an existing landmark building, the Victorian Freemasons Hall, just over the Woolwich border in Plumstead on a street which was then called Mount Pleasant.
The Freemason’s Hall was where the Royal Arsenal Football Club held its annual meetings and dinners, and on 16th May 1891 that the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Arsenal Football Club (earlier known as Dial Square) the committee announced it had decided two weeks earlier to turn professional and had thus resigned from the amateur Kent and London Associations.
In 1913, the club moved across the river to a new stadium at Highbury, where it continued to play until 2006, when it moved the short distance to its new Emirates stadium. Apparently it is doing quite well at the moment.
The Vaisakhi festival, which takes place on April 14 each year marks the formation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, in 1699. You can read more about this and the Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan procession which is lead by five Khalsa – baptised Sikhs – dressed in saffron robes and turbans and carrying swords in the account I wrote on My London Diary, Vaisakhi Celebrations in Woolwich, as well as in the posts on other Vaisakhi processions on that site.
On My London Diary I wrote in more detail about the origins of Vaisakhi and the 10th Sikh Guru who gave Sikhism its modern form with its symbols and the eternal guru, the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy religious scripture being reverently carried out to the procession in th picture above.
Unfortunately the start of the procession was delayed and although I had photographed the preparations for it I had to run to catch a train before the actual start of the colourful procession, with its joyful singing of Sikh hymns, martial arts demonstrations and Dhol drumming through the town, expected to take several hours.
Ugandans had come to protest outside Uganda House in Trafalgar Square, calling for new free and fair elections after the rigged Parliamentary and Presidential elections in February.
The election on 18 Feb had resulted in the re-election of the sitting president Yoweri Museveni, in power for 25 years, apparently getting 68% of the vote.
But the EU Election Observation Mission which had been in Uganda for the vote reported the election, with a turnout of only 59% had been “marred by avoidable administrative and logistical failures which led to an unacceptable number of Ugandan citizens being disenfranchised” and that Museveni had used his presidential power to “compromise severely the level playing filed between the competing candidates and political parties.”
As well as the state owned Uganda Broadcasting Corporation giving much more coverage to the ruling NRM party, there had been extenisve human rights abuses with the police failing to take action against groups attacking opposition political meetings, intimidation and assaults on journalists and the cancellation of broadcasts.
Freedom Umbrella Kurds March Through London – Old Marylebone Rd – Downing St
Freedom Umbrella (Chatri Azadi), a coalition of British-based Kurdish organisations and supporters, had organised a demonstration in front of the offices of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Old Marylebone Road followed by a march to a rally opposite Downing St.
They called for support of the people’s uprising for freedom and social justice in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan which had begun on 17th February but had hardly been noticed by UK media.
Two Kurdish militia groups dominate Iraqi Kurdistan and remain in power. On 19th April their security forces began a more organised violent crackdown on the protests which brought them to an end.
I met the protesters as the march neared Trafalgar Square and photographed their rally opposite Downing Street.
Zuma, Boat Dwellers, Syria & Latin Village: Saturday 8th April 2017 was another varied day for me in London with protests against South African President Zuma, the Canal & River Trust, chemical warfare in Syra and against the planned demolition of the largest Latin American community market in England.
Zuma Must Go – Trafalgar Square
South Africans living in the UK had come to protest outside the South African High Commission after President Zuma sacked the Finance Minister and his deputy.
They accuse Zuma and the African National Congress government of wrecking the South African economy and say that “Zuma must fall”.
Police had set barriers outside the High Commission for the protest and the protesters were so densely packed into the area that it was very difficult to move around an take photographs.
It was a colourful protest and certainly demonstrated the anger of those taking part but the ANC would still remain the leading party and if Zuma resigned he would be replaced by another ANC leader.
Zuma did finally go, replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa in 2018 because of the increasing allegations of corruption and cronyism and in 2021 was given a 15 month contempt of court sentence for refusing to testify. Ramaphosa is also a controversial figure with various allegations of corruption, and as as London Platinum non-executive director urged the police to take the action which lead to the police massacre at Marikana on August 16, 2012 which lead to the deaths of 44 miners and over 70 more with serious injuries.
The elections next month, May 2024 are expected to be the first since the end of apartheid in 1994 in which the ANC will not gain over 50% of the vote and the country may get a coalition government. Zuma who has now joined the opposition Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has been banned from standing in the election but has appealed the ban.
Boat dwellers held a rally in Embankment Gardens before marching to Downing St and DEFRA to demand the Canal & River Trust (CRT) stops evicting or threatening to evict boat dwellers without permanent moorings.
The say the British Waterways Act 1995 includes the right to live on a boat without a permanent mooring and that the CRT is acting illegally in evicting or threatening to evict boat dwellers.
Although boats can be required to move after 14 days at a mooring, the law requires at least 28 days notice and does not lay down restrictions on the distance boats have to move or that they should be making a “progressive journey.”
Some of the speakers at the rally had horror stories about boats being seized and other illegal activities by the trust, a charity set up in 2012 to look after the canals and navigable rivers.
Boat dwellers also oppose the plans being made for chargeable bookable moorings and want the trust to maintain the canals properly. The rally was still continuing when I needed to leave.
March Against Chemical Warfare in Syria – Marble Arch
RefugEase and Syria Solidarity Campaign had organised this march calling on the UK Government to protect civilians in Syria.
President Assad’s forces used Sarin nerve agent three years earlier at Ghouta, and a few days before the protest there had been another attack using Sarin at Khan Sheikhoon near Idlib on April 4th.
The West’s response to the Syrian Revolution has been confusing and largely ineffectual. The US and Turkey encouraged and aided the setting up of an Islamic state and allowed it to export oil to finance its operations – and later the US gave air support to the Kurds to defeat ISIS. And although there were strong words over the use of chemical weapons at Ghouta, there was no real action. Nor has their been any opposition to the invasion and occupation of large parts of Syria by Turkish forces.
The march to Downing St began at Marble Arch and I walked with it down Oxford Street as far as Oxford Circus Station where I caught the Victoria Line to Seven Sisters.
The indoor market next to Seven Sisters station in South Tottenham had been reinvigorated in recent years by the local Latin American community and had become the largest Latin American community market in England.
Part of the site at Ward’s Corner has been derelict for some years and the local authority, Haringey Council, wants to demolish the who block together with property developers which would convert it to expensive flats and chain stores, profiting investors at the expense of the community.
In 2008 the community gained the support of London Mayor Boris Johnson who wrote to the council asking them to review the scheme. But the council were determined to go ahead along with property developer Grainger PLC and issued a compulsory purchase order in 2016 which was finally approved by the secretary of state for housing, communities, and local government James Brokenshire in 2019.
The community in the area had been fighting since 2002 to save the Latin Village from this social cleansing and gentrification and on Saturday 8th April 2017 held a festival there. The speeches and performances paused for everyone to join hands in a human chain around a quarter of a mile long around the whole block.
In 2020 Transport for London who had taken over the management of the indoor market closed it down. But in 2021 Grainger PLC withdrew from the plans for the site. You can read more about the Wards Corner Community Plan online. The Community Benefit Society was launched in 2022 and planned to reopen the site in 2024.
Sudan and Brunei Gay Sex: I began work on Saturday 6th April 2019 at the Sudanese Embassy and then left for the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair where protesters had come after the Sultan of Brunei had announced death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, adultery and blasphemy.
Sudanese for Freedom, Peace and Justice – Sudan Embassy
War is raging again now in Sudan between between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Back in 2019 people were protesting against the extreme violence in Sudan against peaceful protests calling for for an end to the violent and corrupt Sudanese regime and for president Omar al-Bashir to ‘Just Fall’ and stand trial by the ICC for genocide in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and South Blue Nile.
People in Sudan had been protesting for 17 weeks and over 70 protesters had been killed and thousands injured.
Five days later, Omar al-Bashir was deposed by the Sudanese Armed Forces and in May 2019 was charged al-Bashir with “inciting and participating in” the killing of protesters. Later other charges were brought, including of corruption and money laundering. Other trials followed and he has been accused of genocide. The prison in which he was being held has been overrun by the current fighting between forces led by the generals who deposed him and he is currently held in a military hospital in Khartoum.
I left the protesters still in and around the protest pen outside the embassy opposite St James Palace in Cleveland Row and rushed the three quarters of a mile or so to the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, where I knew the protest had already begun.
Brunei Sultan gay sex stoning protest – Dorchester Hotel
A large crowd had gathered on the streets in front of the Dorchester Hotel behind barriers that kept them out of the area directly in front of the entrance.
There were a number of speeches including those by Labour Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Emily Thornberry MP and activist Peter Tatchell condemining the announcement by the Sultan of Brunei of death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, adultery and blasphemy.
It was a colourful protest with many from the gay community with some interesting posters and placards. Police continually harassed protesters to keep the roads open, although there were really too many people to make this sensible.
After an hour or so, Class War decided to move from behind the barriers and pushed some aside to protest directly in front of the hotel doors. They were followed by many of the other protesters and a noisy protest continued there.
CND Easter Monday Protest: On Easter Monday 2013 CND organised a large protest at the UK’s nuclear weapons establishment at Aldermaston, 12 miles to the west of Reading.
As this year, Easter Monday was also April Fool’s Day, and on Monday 1st April 2013 this was the Nuclear Fool’s Day – Scrap Trident rally. But Aldermaston is a huge site and the protesters were spread between the half dozen gates around its 5 mile fenced perimeter, with speakers travelling between the gates in a number of cars and lorries.
Pat Arrowsmith
I’d put my bike on the train to Reading, then cycled from there to the event. I found it quite a tiring ride with some long uphill sections against a prevailing westerly wind, and was rather tired by the time I arrived.
Natalie Bennett, then Leader of the Green Party
Every time I’ve been to Aldermaston I’ve always felt a slight tension in the air.I don’t really believe the air there is any more radioactive than around my home on the edge of London, and it’s certainly otherwise less pollution laden. And although it’s possible that many of the pictures I take are going to contravene our draconian Official Secrets Act 1911 (now replaced by the National Security Act 2023) I know that it is remotely unlikely I will have any problems reporting the event.
But having the bike with me enabled me to ride around to each of the gates in turn and take pictures of what was happening at them, as well as some people stretched out along the fences away from the gates. By the start of the protest at noon there were groups of between 50 and several hundred at each of half a dozen gates around the over 5 miles of the site perimeter, with others walking around the path around the site, attaching messages and banners to its tall security fence.
Gates had been allocated to different groups from around the country, and there was also a women’s gate and a faith gate, with Christians, Buddhists and others. Police were standing behind the gates, with a few mixing with the protesters, and others driving around the roads by the site.
Among the speakers I heard were CND Vice-Chairs Jeremy Corbyn MP and Bruce Kent, CND General Secretary Kate Hudson, Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett and South East Green MEP Keith Taylor, Stop the War’s Chris Nineham and CND founding member Pat Arrowsmith and another veteran Walter Wolfgang, as well as US activist Linda Pentz Gunter, the founder of ‘Beyond Nuclear’.
The ‘Allelulia’ is taken from the coffin where it was placed outside the Defence Ministry on Shrove Tuesday
At the ‘Faith Gate’ there was a short ‘Easter Resurrection Hope‘ service in which an ‘Alleluia’ which had been symbolically placed in a coffin at the Ministry of Defence in London on Shrove Tuesday at the beginning of Lent was lifted out and held aloft, with a call for ‘a new heaven and a new earth‘ and the hope that ‘light and love might overcome the shadow of destruction in this place.’ This was followed by some Buddhist prayers, and some statements from other faith groups about peace.
Walter Wolfgang
The event ended with everyone around the site making a loud noise and some had brought various musical instruments while others joined in banging pots and pans, whistling and shouting.
I still had 12 miles to cycle back to Reading Station, but at least this way much of it was downhill and I had the wind behind me.
Israeli Land Day Massacre & Afrin March – On Saturday 31st March 2018 two emergency protests in London condemned the cold-blooded shooting by the Israeli army of peaceful protesters near the separation wall in Gaza the previous day, Palestinian Land Day. The was also a march calling for an end to the invasion of Afrin by Turkey and al Qaeda-affiliated militias intended to destroy this peaceful state and eliminate the majority Kurdish population of the area.
Land Day protest against supporters of Israeli state – Oxford St
Protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Group have held regular protests outside the Marks and Spencer flagship store on Oxford Street for many years. They were met there this morning by others apalled by the news of the 17 unarmed Palestinian civilians shot dead by Israeli snipers.
Those murdered in cold blood were taking part in the first of a weekly series of marches, the ‘Great March of Return‘, beginning on Land Day, the anniversary of protests against the state confiscation of swathes of Palestinian land in Galilee in 1976 until Nakba Day on May 15, the anniversary of the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from their homes and villages in 1948.
The protesters went from M&S to protest outside other stores on Oxford St with business links with apartheid Israel, calling for shoppers to boycott them. While I was with them they also protested outside Selfridges, which sells Israeli wines, Adidas which supports the Israel football team, Boots which sells cosmetics made in Israel and Carphone Warehouse and were continuing along the street when I had to leave.
Turkey’s attack on Afrin in north-west Syria is a clear violation of international law, and air strikes have deliberately targeted civilian areas.
Turkey has NATO’s second largest army and much of its weapons come from European states including the UK which had recently signed a major arms deal. The UK government has expressed support for Turkey, claiming it has a right to defend it borders, but this attack is outside these and Turkey has clearly announce an intention to push far into Syria.
Turkish aims are clearly genocidal with Turkish president Erdogan having stated he intends to invade all the Kurdish areas of Syria and “cleanse” the area of its Kurdish people.
As well as calling for an immediate ceasefire and end to the Turkish invasion of Syrian and UK support for this, they called for an end of UK arms sales to all human rights abusing regimes in the Middle East and for humanitarian relief for Afrin and other areas of Syria and for an investigation into human rights abuses there. They also called on the UK government to demand Turkey return the body of YPJ volunteer Anna Campbell to her family in Sussex.
I joined others close to the Israeli embassy in Kensington for an emergency protest against the shooting of unarmed protesters several hundred yards from the Gaza separation wall by IDF snipers. 17 Civilians were killed and over 750 seriously injured by live fire, with others injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.
The massacre the previous day had shocked the world and led the UN to call for an independent investigation, which Israel have refused – just as they have refused calls for independent investigation into other massacres. The news had come too late for a large protest to be organised – which followed in April.
Coverage of the event in the UK media on the day had been surprisingly muted, with the BBC giving considerable air-time to Israeli state speakers shamefully claiming the massacre was reasonable and fully justified. The same thing has been happening over events in Gaza in recent months, though I think it has now become very much clearer that they have lost all credibility and even some presenters have sometimes challenged them.
Palestinian Land Day remembers the day in 1976 when unarmed protesters were killed when marches in Arab towns against the confiscation of land were confronted by Israeli army and police. Six unarmed Palestinians were killed around a hundred wounded and hundreds arrested. Most of the information here on Land Day is from Wikipedia.
The numbers involved now seem so small compared to the over 32,000 murdered in Gaza in recent months but it was a significant event as the marches were the first since 1948 in which Palestinians had organised nationally together against Israeli policies with these marches and a national strike.
The protests were against plans to confiscate Arab land and to expand Jewish settlements in Galilee were a part of an increasing seizure of Arab land.
In response to the planned strike and marches there had been a much increased police and military presence in the area, with armoured vehicles and tanks being driven “along the unpaved roads of various villages of the Galilee“. Some of these military convoys were attacked by youths with stones and even, according to Israeli government sources, Molotov cocktails.
The Israeli government had declared the strikes and all demonstrations illegal and some Palestinian leaders had voted against supporting them, but these actions seem only to have hardened the resolve of the Palestinians.
According to the Wikipedia article, quoting an academic source, the events led to “a new sense of national pride, together with anger toward the state and police and sorrow over the dead protesters, developed among the Arab community in Israel.” And in 1988, Land Day was announced as “a Palestinian-Israeli civil national day of commemoration and a day of identification with Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, to be marked by yearly demonstrations and general strikes.“
The Freedom, justice & equality for Palestinians protest in London close to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington on Land Day, 30th March 2019 came a year after the 2018 Land Day Protest in Gaza, also known as The Great March of Return. On that day in Gaza, 30,0000 Palestinians took part in a largely peaceful march some distance from the border fence. But Israeli snipers in safe positions opened fire on those who approached the fence, some to burn tyres or through objects at the fence. 17 Palestinians were killed, including five Hamas members, and more than 1,400 injured.
A small group of Zionists had come to oppose the protest
Smaller marches in Gaza continued at weekly intervals and by Land Day 2019 a total of over 250 mainly unarmed protesters had been killed and thousands injured.
It’s hard to look back on history to Land Day (and beyond) and not see how Zionist right wing policies have failed both Israel and Palestine and are continuing to fall all those in the area. Balfour is often blamed for kicking the situation off, but had his “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” ever been taken seriously we would not be where we are now.
A line of police protects the Zionist pen
The Oslo Accords were another start to a possible peace process, but again firmly opposed by the right-wing Zionist parties – and Israeli prime minister Yitshak Rabin was assassinated for signing them. Leaders opposed to the accords – Ariel Sharon and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power.
This man shouts repeatedly ‘There are no Palestinians in Gaza!’
On Land Day 2019, a group of Zionist extremists had come along to the Palestinian protest to try and shout down those speaking. Police kept them a short distance away and with a relatively powerful public address system their efforts were largely inaudible.
Some of the Palestinians took a large Palestine flag and hid the group behind it until police persuaded them back and other protesters moved in to argue with and shout at them. Police tried to move the Palestinians away with little success while I was present
Taking part in the Palestinian protest were as usual many Jews, including the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta who see Zionism as diametrically opposed to Judiasm.
Rev Paul Nicholson & More: Many of us particularly in London have fond memories of the Rev Paul Nicolson (1932-2020), a redoubtable campaigner for the poorer members of our community. He appears somehow to have passed Wikipedia by but you can read more about his life from many online sources. On Saturday 29th March 2014 I photographed the Thousand Mothers March in Tottenham he and Taxpayers Against Poverty organised demanding demanding living incomes, decent truly affordable homes for all and rejecting the bedroom tax, the housing benefit cap, unfair taxes, hunger and cold homes.
Huff Post tells us Nicolson worked in the champagne trade from 1965 until he made a dramatic career change in 1967 and was ordained by the Church of England as a Minster in Secular Employment. This meant he had to find a job in the real world and he got a job at the ICI HQ in Millbank as a personnel officer. In 1975 he took one of the first Employment Trununals challenging ICIs redundancy procedures and was later involved in supporting other trade unionists elsewhere. In 1979 he ventured into politics becoming an Independent councillor where he then lived in North Herts.
After a long fight against the Poll Tax in 1997 he founded the charity Zacchaeus 2000 Trust (Z2K), based in London, a group who were were deeply concerned about the impact of the Thatcher Government’s ‘poll tax’ – a fixed payment from every adult, regardless of their income or circumstances. Z2K became a registerd charity in 2005 and Nicolson left it in 2012 withdrawing to found Taxpayers Against Poverty (TAP) to avoid the restrictions on political campaigning by charities.
Perhaps his most important action was to commission Minimum Income Standards research from the Family Budget Unity in 1999, which formed the basis of the London Living Wage, with Mayor Ken Livingstone setting up the Greater London Authority Living Wage Unit in 2005.
What would have been an ever greater achievement would have been the adoption by the authorities of the Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing he commissioned by Professor Peter Ambrose in 2005. New Labour read it but did nothing, continuing to concentrate on unaffordable housing. Had Corbyn been allowed to win by the Labour Party in 2017 we would have seen changes in the right direction – but policies like there were why thy fought hard to prevent his election.
Of course I’ve not mentioned the best-known fact about Nicolson. It was while he was living in Turville near High Wycombe that he allowed the BBC to take over his church to film The Vicar of Dibley. Dawn French was playing Grealdine Grainger as the Vicar, but the real vicar was Paul Nicolson, though I think he kept away from the cameras.
He retired and settle in Tottenham, becoming welll known for his campaigning in the area – and for a number of arrests and trials. He had called this march and its demands were neatly summarise on the placard hanging from a string around his neck: ‘We march for Freedom from Hunger, Cold, Outrageous Rents – Fight for a Living Wage’.
You can read a short article on him in the Guardian which contains around 30 of his letters which were published by the newspaper as well as links to many more. He truly was a great campaigner.
I left the march as it passed Tottenham Police Station with Carole Duggan walking in front of a large banner with the face of Mark Duggan, her nephew, murdered by police in Tottenham in 2011.
I was on my way to two further protests that day which you can read about on My London Diary:
At Kilburn Square was a Kilburn Uniform Day protest where the Counihan Battlebus Housing For All campaign, along with the TUSC Against Cuts and TUSC were calling for rents to be capped and for everyone to have a home.
And in Parliament Square, staff and students from Oasis Academy Hadley in Ponders End were protesting against the Home Office plans to deport fellow A-Level Student Yashika Bageerathi to Mauritius. She came here with her mother and two younger siblings in 2012 after physical abuse from a relative and claimed asylum in 2012. The application has been rejected and the whole family are under threat of deportation.
Yashika is now 19 and the Home Office decided they could deport her on her own and she had been in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre since March 19th. She and her fellow students want her to be allowed to stay – at least until she has taken her exams this summer. The #FightForYashica petition had attracted over 171,000 signatures.
Attempts by the Home Office to deport Yashika failed before this protest when pressure from campaigners led to British Airways refusing to take here. Ahe had been booked into an Air mAURITIUS flight for the day following this protest, but an avalanche of tweets led to them refusing to take her.
Finally she was deported on her own in April 2014 and fortunately was helped there to take her A-levels, receiving the grades she needed to go on to university and end her brief period in the public eye.
