>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Spring Time for Druids – 2007

Spring Time for Druids: in 2007 the Spring Equinox was on 21 March, though I think in most years it is a few hours earlier on the 20th. Yesterday, in 2025 it apparently came at 9.01am, though for me it had come around ten days earlier when a patch of my garden was deep in flowering crocuses (or crocus or croci.) And for weather forecasters Spring starts on March 1st.

Later in the day The Druid Order will have come out at 12 noon yesterday at Tower Hill Terrace, but I didn’t feel moved to go to join them. I photographed their ceremonies on several years, both there and at the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, and also published some more detailed reports (having done some research in the Mount Haemus lectures and other sources) with some of my pictures of later events.

The pictures here are from March 21st 2007, the first time I had attended a Druid ceremony and I then knew very little about them, and my comments on My London Diary perhaps reflect this. But the pictures I made were rather similar to those I made in later years and as with some other events I no longer feel I have anything new to say and no longer go.

I think druids might say their ceremonies were timeless, and certainly The Druid Order still use the order of service which they invented and printed aproaching a hundred years ago and I think the banners they carry and the other items used have a similar inter-war history. But I understand they only began this anunual event at Tower Hill in 1956.

We have very little real evidence of the druids of the distant past in our country, though I think their ceremonies may well have involved rather more bloodthirsty sacrifices than the current rather anodyne public festivities.

But here are some of my thoughts from this first encounter back in 2007:

It was in some ways impressive, with their white robes, but rather to staid and measured for my taste. Celebrations need to be done with much more joy. This had more the feeling of a funeral – despite the white dress.

There was an air of dusty scholarship, of dull Victorian scribes trying to major on gravitas in the Order of Service, and a sermon of mumbled though possibly worthy boredom. Hard to imagine William Blake as chief druid of this tribe, I’m sure they must have done things differently in his days.

I’m not sure how far back these celebrations go at Tower Hill. Modern Druidry revived in the eighteenth century, partly as archaeologists re-discovered sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury and asked themselves what went on there. What relationship the rites they came up with bear to those of pre-Christian times is impossible to know (though one suspects rather little.)

My pictures on My London Diary (link at bottom of this post) are in the order they were taken and together with the captions give a fairly detailed account of the event, although I think I did it a little better in some later years.

William Blake was among a long list named in the ceremony as a former druid. According to the article A Note on William Blake and the Druids of Primrose Hill there is no evidence for the claims that William Blake was a druid or chief druid, although he may have known some who did take part the annual rituals on the hill which were begun by some Welsh Bards in 1792 claiming that their Bardic traditions “had preserved the true esoteric lore of the Druids.”

*Back inside the church hall, where I left them and went in search of a cup of tea.*

In fact Blake commented negatively on Druids in his writing and images, particularly objecting “to reported Druid practices of ritual human sacrifice, and forced submission to priestly rites and rituals.“

More pictures and captions from the 2007 The Druid Order: Spring Equinox on My London Diary

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Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night – 2010

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night: Saturday 20th March 2010 was an unusual day for me, including protests in two parts of London I seldom visit, Hatton and Hampstead. It was also the start of a campaign on Oxford Street to get the London Living Wage for shop workers and there was a march to Downing Street against education cuts.

BA Cabin Crew at Heathrow – Hatton

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010

BA cabin crew on the first day of their 2-day strike at Heathrow held a rally outside Bedfont Football Club a short distance from Hatton Cross, where several hundred strikers came to listen to speakers, including Len McCluskey, Unite assistant general secretary, and show their determination to fight management plans to downgrade their conditions and make BA into a cut-price airline. Others kept up their pickets at gates around the airport.

BA management under CEO Willie Walsh had refused to come to an agreement with the union, BASSA, and had threatened any workers who spoke at the meeting or appeared in media interviews with dismissal. So none of the strikers spoke at the meeting, but there was thunderous applause when speakers including local MP John McDonnell criticised BA management.

I photographed the picket at Hatton Cross on my way to catch the Piccadilly line into central London.

More at BA Cabin Crew at Heathrow.

March Against Education Cuts

A couple of thousand teachers and students met outside Kings College in Strand to call for the reversal of planned education cuts which they say abandon a generation of students and will damage our economic recovery.

Police had insisted that they march on the pavement, but the numbers and the banners made this impossible and after a hundred yards or so they moved onto the street. At Downing Street they filled both carriageways for several minutes with a short token sit-down before police and stewards persuaded everyone to move to one side of the road, but the crowd was still a little large for the space available and there seemed to be a few dangerous incidents – including a rather uncontrolled police horse – but fortunately no injuries as police appeared keen to get a lane of traffic moving past without due regard for public safety.

As speakers at the rally said, Labour had come into power on the mantra ‘Education, Education, Education‘ but 12 years later were proposing the largest cuts in education funding for a generation or more, estimated to lead to the loss of more than 20,000 jobs in Further Education, Higher Education and Adult Education. They will disproportionately affect the poorer and more disadvantaged in our society, in particular immigrants and young people who are unemployed or lacking in qualifications.

As Jenny Sutton, branch secretary of the UCU at the College of North East London pointed out the proposed cuts of £1.1 billion on education contrasted with the £21 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the £500 billion given to the banks, one of which, the 84% publicly owned RBS is now paying out £1.3 billion in bonuses.

In protest Sutton was standing against the then Education Minister David Lammy in the May 2010 election. Lammy kept his seat and she lost her deposit, but the election put a Tory-led coalition into power. Education suffered even worse in the following years.

March Against Education Cuts

London Living Wage Launch in Oxford St

The London Living Wage campaign began in 2001 and has had the support of all London mayors since. Calculated annually by the Greater London Authority it takes into account the higher living costs in London, and Living Wage employers also have to provide fair employment conditions including holiday and sick pay and allowing employees to belong to a trade union.

Although some of London’s larger employers have adopted the London Living Wage, the retail sector, one of the most profitable areas of business in London, still had many of many of its workers struggling on wages below this level.

London Citizens, a grassroots charity working for social, economic and environmental justice , has led the campaign for a London Living Wage, and held a training session for its members before coming to Oxford Circus. Here they took advantage of the recently introduced diagonal crossing system to cross and recross several times with their banners before going off in smaller groups to continue the campaign inside the larger stores on Oxford Street.

They intended to give letters to all the general managers of shops on the street inviting them to meet with London Citizens to discuss the Living Wage.

London Living Wage – Oxford St

Light Up the Night in Hampstead

‘The Commons‘ candidate for the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency Tamsin Omond had organised a ‘Light Up The Night‘ candlelit march to show community solidarity against violent crime and make the streets safe for women at night.

Around 30 people, mainly women, turned up outside the Hollybush pub in Hampstead for the march, where there was a short speech by Sam Roddick, noted for her campaigning on issues related to human rights, feminism, pornography and for taking Fair Trade into hitherto unexplored areas through Coco De Mer, her Covent Garden ‘erotic emporium.

It was a wet and windy night and it was hard to to keep the candles alight as the marchers made their way down the hill from Hampstead and the streets were emptier than usual.

‘The Commons’ campaign hoped to reach people who are fed up with politicians and appeal to ordinary people, many of whom, like Roddick have never bothered with voting because they felt it made no difference. But it made little progress. The election was closely fought with Labour’s Glenda Jackson gaining a narrow victory by 42 votes over the Tory candidate, but Omond was over 17,000 votes behind both of them with only 123 votes and the turnout was low.

More at Light Up the Night in Hampstead.

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Bring the Troops Home – 2005

Bring the Troops Home: On Saturday 19th March 2005 I photographed the Stop the War march on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. From Hyde Park it went past the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square on to a rally in Trafalgar Square. I published text and pictures on My London Diary.

This is another slightly hard to find post from the early years of My London Diary before I redesigned the site with links to every post on top of each monthly page and discovered the Shift key. Then I felt it was somehow cool not to capitalise, but I now regard as an unfortunate affection – like those photographers who think turning their digital colour images to black and white somehow makes them more authentic.

Back in 2005 I was very critical of Stop The War – and I still feel they lost the initiative after the huge February 2003 protest against the invasion of Iraq and that a more radical approach could have prevented Blair taking Britain into the war beside the USA.

That protest and the many before and after showed our nation united in a way no other campaign has succeeded in doing, with protests in almost every town and village in the country. Even in Surrey where driver after driver hooted support as we stood at the side of our local bridge with posters during Friday evening rush hours.

I’m still sorry I had to miss that big one in 2003, which came just the day after I was discharged from hospital following a minor heart operation and I could only walk a few yards. My family went leaving me at home. But I did cover all of the other main protests in London against the invasion and they are recorded in My London Diary.

In my 2005 post I was also very critical of Stop the War’s attitude to photographers, which has mellowed slightly over the years. It can still be difficult to photograph the front of their marches though the stewards are generally much more friendly.

But for all their faults, Stop the War and other organisations they work with have kept up protests over many issues, particularly in recent times over the genocide taking place in Gaza. And have been doing so in defiance of Tory and Labour governments, laws restricting our right to protest and clearly political policing.

Bring the Troops Home – Stop the War March and Rally

I remember standing in Trafalgar Square listening to Tony Benn and Tariq Ali urging us all to take immediate and radical action should our troops invade Iraq. At the time a majority of the British people was clearly against the war, and we should have taken to the streets to stop it. Instead Stop the War organised marches and peaceful demonstrations the government could easily ignore. And they did.

So the latest in the series of anti-war demos was a sad case of déjà-vu from the blinkered dinosaur. Not least because again Tariq Ali (and doubtless Tony Benn) again urged radical action and again we cheered.

Tariq Ali has the perfect anarchist hair-style, and it’s hard to get a bad picture of him. Nenn wasn’t looking at his best, but there were plenty of others to photograph, including those who had made their stand as soldiers (and a diplomat.) And some very bubbly school students.

Stop the War are also tough on the press, or at least tough on photographers. Most demonstrations welcome publicity, but they train stewards to get in the way. One colleague was physically prevented from taking pictures at one point in the march, I was obstructed and threatened quite unnecessarily by a couple of stewards, and all of us were generally ordered around and hassled.

More pictures of the march and rally on My London Diary.

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Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran – 2005

Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran: Saturday March 18th 2006 I went to the large protest on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, photographing as the march gathered in Parliament Square and then as the march went along Victoria Street on its rather indirect route to a rally in Trafalgar Square. As often with large marches, by the time the end of the march had passed me I was too late for it to be worth going on to the rally.

Here – with the usual tidying of capitalisation and a few minor clarifications is the post I made on My London Diary at the time. Of course things have become much worse in various ways but particularly so far as civil liberties in the UK are concerned, the situation in Iraq has been dire and there remains a real threat of military action against Iran, an odious regime but whose people would still suffer greatly from any any invasion.

As always there are many more pictures on My London Diary.

Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran

The Troops Home From Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran march on the 18th was another large event organised by Stop The War, part of an international protest in cities around Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Asia and Africa – a total of around a couple of hundred places. In London there were roughly 20,000 who walked out of Parliament Square past where I was taking pictures, although many like me will not have made it to Trafalgar Square, and others will have joined in later on the route.

The event marked three years since the invasion of Iraq on 20 march 2003. At the front of the march were Theatre Of War representing both Tony Blair and George Bush along with two police and two judges holding placards declaring the two leaders guilty.

*Put your head in a sack, Guantanamo style…*

Behind them were the march leaders, including representatives of families of soldiers killed in Iraq. They had a long, long yellow ribbon with the names – no ranks – of soldiers who have died so far in this illegal war and occupation. Of course many more Iraqis killed – more than 100,000 have died so far.

The invasion, doubtful on legal grounds, was justified on the basis of false information, including information that was known to be incorrect when it was presented to parliament and the people.

Already it has led to deaths in Britain; only a small handful of people (that’s Tony Blair and some of his cabinet) doubt that the London bombings would not have happened if Britain had not joined in the invasion plans. Actually it is hard to believe even they doubt it, but rather they just can’t bring themselves to admit it.

*A protester from Glasgow is warned for using a megaphone in Parliament Square*

We’ve also seen the passage of draconian measures that attack civil liberties in this country (and attempts still being made to get more.) Muslims in particular have been targeted, with a rise in Islamophobia.

*At last the march moved off, with stewards pushing photographers away from the front*

The expenditure in Iraq has been vast. If you want to know why there isn’t the money to raise pensions (and a week of pension protests was ending today with a conference in London) there is a simple 4 letter answer. IRAQ.

Another four letter country, Iran, is currently under threat. Perhaps most chilling are the denials from Blair and Straw, who state that invasion is not on the table. For too many of us that just seems to make it more likely.

Many more pictures on My London Diary

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St Patrick’s Day – 2008

St Patrick’s Day – 2008: A parade in Willesden on Monday March 17th 2008 celebrated St Patrick’s Day. I came to it from a protest by the all-Irish environmental and social justice movement Gluaiseacht against the Corrib Gas Project in Mayo outside the Shell Centre, and had to rush away for a protest by Tibetans at the Chinese Embassy.

Brent St Patrick’s Day Parade – Willesden Green

Brent is one of London’s more diverse boroughs and has a large population of Irish and Anglo-Irish residents, particularly in what was sometimes called “County Kilburn“. As a borough it promoted various events to celebrate and unite its different communities, and among them I think was the only London borough to have its own St Patrick’s Day Parade.

Or it did until government cuts in funding to local authorities which hit particularly hard on boroughs like Brent meant it could no longer afford to support these community events.

London does now celebrate St Patrick’s Day with a march and event in Trafalgar Square on the nearest Sunday to the day itself, and I photographed the first of these, promoted by then London Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2002, though I only put a few black and white images on to My London Diary.

But the parade in Brent, though often involving some of the same people and floats was always a more interesting and intimate event, with the large local element giving it greater authenticity and I was sorry to see it go.

Local people came to view the parade, some waiting patiently on the pavement, others spilling out of packed bars drinks in hand as it arrived.

Local schools got involved, with children of all ethnicities becoming involved – and their families coming to watch.

I went to where the march was to start, at an Islamic Centre close to Willesden Green Underground Station, where the streets were most crowded and followed the procession as it made its way to the library in High Road Willesden where there were various musical performances and a bit of a funfair.

St Patrick was there of course, with the Mayor of Brent and others leading the parade. People walked with flags of the Irish counties (or at least the 26 of the 32 that are in the Republic of Ireland.)

I had to rush away shortly after the parade began to cover another protest.

More pictures at Brent St Patrick’s Day Parade.

Irish Protest Brings Pipeline to Shell – Waterloo

All-Irish environmental and social justice movement Gluaiseacht were in London for the weekend, and on St Patrick’s Day itself gathered outside the Shell HQ at Waterloo, bringing with them a very large pipeline.

The protest was over the Corrib Gas Project in Mayo in the north-west of Ireland, which the Irish Government has given at a knock-down price to Shell, Statoil and Marathon. It’s a project estimated to be worth over 50 billion Euros, but the Irish people will hardly benefit from the profits – and Shell gets the largest share.

Even worse the people in Mayo will suffer from the pollution around an inland refinery and a high pressure pipeline that will endanger local communities. Protests in Ireland have led to innocent people being jailed.

More text and many more pictures at Protest Brings Pipeline to Shell.

Tibet Vigil at Chinese Embassy – Portland Place

According to the Chinese Authorities, they “exercised restraint” in dealing with the Lhasa protests, using only non-lethal weapons and only killing 13 innocent civilians. Monday afternoon’s demonstration in Portland Place opposite the Chinese Embassy was timed to coincide with the midnight deadline in Lhasa for protesters to surrender.

After protesting for around an hour on the opposite side of the wide dual carriageway, one man jumped over the barriers and rushed across towards the embassy door waving a Tibetan flag. Others followed and police were unable to stop them.

The stewards from the protest tried to get them to make back and were eventually able to persuade them with some gentle pushing to make back to the central island in the road where the protest continued, with some of the protesters sitting down.

Eventually police reinforcements arrived and after failing to persuade them them to move an officer read out something over a loudspeaker. The protest was too noisy for me to hear it, but I think it was a warning that the protesters would be arrested if they didn’t go back to the pavement. The stewards then persuaded everyone to move back to the pavement to continue their vigil, and I went home.

Tibet Vigil at Chinese Embassy

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Dartford 1995 Again – Panoramas

Dartford 1995 Again – Panoramas: Part 9 of my occasional series on colour pictures I made in 1995.

*Victoria Industrial Park, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-252*

I enjoyed another walk in Dartford on Sunday May 7th 1995, beginning by taking black and white pictures of buildings around the centre before walking out to the northwest along Victoria Road.

*Philips Norman, Cash & Carry, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-251*

I went on to photographing in the industrial areas between Burnham Road and the Dartford Creek – the tidal River Darent.

*Burnham Trading Estate, Lawson Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-263*

Here I was able to make my way down to the west bank of the river and make more pictures.

*River Darent, Riverside Wharf, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-121*

At this wharf there had once been a fairly small dock which had been filled in but its gates were still there. I think it had perhaps been a dry dock used for ship repairs,

I think this is a site cleared for the development of a large housing estate, now on Lawson Road and Eleanor Close.

This long, empty road was University Way, a northern by-pass for Dartford, named in hope of a university that never arrived. Bob Dunn had been a Tory junior education minister who had campaigned for this development. MP for Dartford from 1979 to 1997 when he lost his seat to Labour, he died in 2003, only 56, and the road was renamed in his honour.

The bridge that takes Bob Dunn Way across the Darent was not built with navigation in mind, and makes it difficult for boats of any size to proceed up to Dartford. There has been for some years work being carried out to encourage navigation here, but boats have to look carefully at the tide tables to pass under the bridge. The Dartford and Crayford Creek Trust was founded in April 2016 to work to improve the navigation.

*Roundabout, Hythe St, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-363*

I walked back much the same way to this roundabout and went up Hythe Street in the centre of this picture.

*River Darent, Nelsons Row, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-243*

Hythe Street tok me to Nelson’s Row where I was able to cross the River Darent. There is also a public slipway here, cleared in recent years by volunteers.

*Pipe Bridge, Riverside Path, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-232*

A few houses on the opposite bank are in Kenwyn Road. Past them you can see the derelict half lock which keeps some water in upstream when the tide flows out. Volunteer have put in considerable work to improve this lock in recent years and to revive navigation on Dartford Creek. In the distance is the Dartford Paper Mills site – closed in 2009 the site has been redeveloped.

*Half Lock, Riverside Path, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-223*

Boats can navigate through the lock when the tide is high enough for them to get over the cill of the lock which holds back sufficient water for the river to be navigable upstream to the centre of Dartford.

*Dartford Fresh Marshes, Dartford, 1995, 95p5-361*

I turned around here and walked back to Dartford and the station. I’d made an early start to the day on the first train into London and there was still time to stop off on the way home and take a few pictures in Woolwich where I intended to return the following week.

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LSE Cleaners Protest, Lisa Arrested – 2017

LSE Cleaners Protest, Lisa Arrested: Wednesday 15th March 2017 was the first day of a two-day strike by cleaners at the LSE in support of their campaign demanding equal sick pay, holidays and pensions etc to similar workers directly employed by the LSE and an end to bullying and discrimination by their employer Noonan.

I had photographed the start of their campaign at a meeting led by their union, the United Voices of the World, as a part of the LSE’s 3-day ‘Resist’ Festival on 29th September 2016 and a number of protests at the LSE since then.

On 15th March the cleaners had a picket line since the early morning – cleaners start work while most of us are still in bed – and I joined them for a lunchtime rally. Their campaign had a great deal of support from students at the LSE and had a large banner ‘L$E: The London School of Exploitation‘.

Others who had come to support the cleaners included Grim Chip of Poets on the Picket Line and LSE academics Lisa McKenzie and David Graeber and a few from Class War. But there were passionate and effective speeches from a number of the cleaners, including Mildred Simpson, one of the LSE cleaners and others in the UVW.

At the end of the rally, the protesters marched through the campus and across Kingsway to the building which houses the LSE Estates Office where a large group walked into the foyer demanding to see the Estates Manager. Some were carrying mops and buckets to show their support for the cleaners.

Security came to talk with the protesters, though the protesters were making too much noise to hear them and the protest continued with a short speech from UVW General Secretary Petros Elia to explain when the foyer was being occupied.

Eventually the protesters sat down and waited, still making a lot of noise . People working in the building were still able to leave or enter the building unhindered walking past the protest – but would hear and read why the noisy protest was taking place.

Eventually police arrived and talked with the building security and some of the protesters who soon began dancing in the foyer to music on the public address system the UVW had brought.

More police arrived and decided to stop people entering or leaving the offices. They talked with UVW General Secretary Petros Elia who told them it was a peaceful protest and they would leave after they had made their point to the LSE facilities manager – if the police could persuade him to talk to them.

Eventually this talk did take place, though some way back from the foyer where we could only see them from a distance. The talk went on for around five minutes, and Petros then returned smiling to tell the protesters that the LSE who had until now been refusing to talk to the cleaners had agreed to a meeting.

The protesters then walked out to join those who had been continuing to protest on the pavement outside, and they prepared to end the protest.

But unexpectedly police moved in and surrounded Lisa McKenzie telling her she was under arrest.

They pushed her roughly to the wall of the building and handcuffed her pushing away excessively roughly those who tried to stop the arrest and taking her to a waiting police van.

Apparently Lisa was being charged with assault on the receptionist when the protesters entered the building. I was close behind and neither I nor the other protesters saw any evidence of assault by her as she entered the offices holding one end of the banner with others.

Everyone was shocked, both by the arrest and by the police violence. The fact that none of the others holding the banner were arrested strongly suggested that her arrest was politically motivated, probably due to pressure from the LSE for her support for the cleaners – she had organised the ‘Resist’ Festival where the cleaners campaign had been launched.

Lisa had previously been the subject of a clearly political arrest when she was wrongly charged with three offences at a protest in February 2015 while she was standing in the General Election against Iain Duncan Smith. Perhaps the police were still feeling aggrieved after failing signally to achieve a conviction. This time they were not stupid enough to take her to court.

Much more from Wednesday 15th March 2017 on My London Diary:
LSE cleaners strike and protest
Police arrest Lisa again

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No Trident Lobby & Rally 2007

No Trident Lobby & Rally: On March 14th 2007 the House of Commons were debating the principle to replace the existing UK nuclear weapons and begin a process to design, build and commission submarines to replace the existing Vanguard-class submarines carrying Trident nuclear missiles with updated systems over the coming 17 years. The New Labour government, led by PM Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett were supported by the Conservatives and one DUP member and won the final division by 408 votes to 160.

Voting against were many Labour MPs and almost all the Liberal Democrats, SNP and other minority parties, although there were a few absentees.

Around Parliament Square there was a day of protest by Greenpeace and others with the main CND rally called for 5pm and continuing into the evening. Here is the account I wrote of the day for My London Diary – with the usual minor corrections and a few of the pictures I posted – more are still on My London Diary

No Trident Lobby & Rally – Parliament Square, London

I missed Bianca and Annie and the others, but I didn’t miss them as there was plenty else going on. As I walked over Westminster bridge there was the banner flying on the crane in front of the houses of parliament, and there were quite a few people stopping to look at it.

Later, Greenpeace activists got on their bikes and cycled across Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square, where they were stopped by police and threatened with arrest unless they left the roadway and moved onto the square. After a while they all did, many cycling away after a few minutes to cycle around London before joining the ‘fish on a bicycle‘ critical mass that arrived back at the square a few hours later, and got the same ‘off your bike‘ treatment from the police.

*Cyclists are ordered off the road and onto the pavement of Parliament Square under threat of arrest*

The square started to fill up rather more from around 5pm when a silent protest attended by a couple of hundred took place in the far corner of the square. By the time the speeches started at 6.15 there was a respectable crowd, perhaps around 500, but people were still arriving and with the addition of the cyclists there were perhaps closer to a thousand present.

A brief attempt by Greenpeace to protest on the pavement in front of the Houses Of Parliament took the police by surprise, but the group were soon escorted back across the road.

*Greenpeace demonstrators on the pavement outside Parliament*

*Veteran peace campaigner Pat Arrowsmith was among those in the crowd*

Throughout the day there had been plenty of signs of the personal vendetta between some Met officers and the regular protesters in the square. Two hapless officers appear to have been deployed just to stand in front of one fluorescent pink placard, and there were some incidents of minor harassment. The injunction thrown out by the judge at Southwark Court recently showed how the police are wasting our money in this respect.

*Brian Haw: Find Your Courage; Share Your Vision; Change Your World. (T-shirt from Dan Wilkins, The Nth Degree.)*

Apparently the latest approach to try and remove the protesters from the square comes from London Mayor Ken Livingstone who is worried about the grass being damaged by the tents there. As I remarked when this was mentioned, “grass regenerates, dead children don’t.” Perhaps we should start a ‘Brian [Haw] For Mayor‘ campaign.

*We need Trident “like a fish needs a bicycle”*

Several Labour MPs came out from the house to address the meeting, along with many activists. Bruce Kent started his speech by thanking Brian Haw for allowing the demo to use his back garden, and Brian later came from his protest at the front of the square to address the meeting.

This time the government got its vote, but there will be later occasions to oppose Trident, as well as the continuing actions at Faslane which those at the demo were urged to take part in.

Trident replacement is still continuing in 2025, with the government being committed to the building of four replacement submarines by the early 2030s and an extension to the life of the Trident missiles potentially to the early 2060s as well as work taking place now to produce replacement nuclear warheads in the 2030s. It is an important support to the UK arms industry but of little or no military consequence with its obscene cost threatening our ability to defend the country by conventional means and it remains – like all nuclear weapons – a definite threat to the peace and future of the world.

Many more pictures on My London Diary beginning here.

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Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine – 2015

Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine: Ten years ago on Friday 13th March 2015 I photographed four very different protests in London, beginning outside an immigration tribunal in Feltham, going from there to Trafalgar Square where people where protesting against ‘canned hunting’ of lions, on to Kensington Gore where cleaners were demanding a living wage at the Royal College of Art and finally to the offices of G4S on Victoria St, Westminster for a protest against the imprisonment and torture of four young Palestinian boys by Israel.

Let Ife Stay in the UK! – York House Immigration Tribunal, Feltham

Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine - 2015

York House where the Immigration Tribunal is based is on an industrial estate halfway between Feltham and Heathrow on the western fringes of London and protesters had not found it easy to get there. I arrived a little late and other protesters only arrived shortly before I left, with others still on their way.

The protest had been held up at the start when security at the tribunal had told the protesters they were not allowed to protest outside the offices, and had called the police. But the police had come and confirmed that not only they had the right to protest there but also that people could take photographs outside the tribunal – though of course cameras and recording equipment were not allowed inside the tribunal.

The protesters had come to demand that 2-year-old Ife, who had Down’s syndrome, and her mother should be allowed to stay at their Peckham home where she can receive essential healthcare and support and not be deported to Nigeria. They intended to stay until after the end of the tribunal hearing later in the day.

The protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Group had brought with them posters covered with the sheets of a local petition to keep Ife here with nearly a thousand signatures, as well was posters denouncing the UK’s racist immigration laws and also calling for justice for Jimmy Mubenga, killed by racist G4S deportation officers during his forced deportation flight from Britain.

Let Ife Stay in the UK!

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting – Trafalgar Square

Several hundred gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest against ‘canned hunting’, where lions are bred and raised tame on farms in South Africa for rich visitors to pet, to ‘walk with lions’ and to shoot as trophy heads.

The protesters say this degrades a noble animals and threatens wild lions, which are captured for farm breeding to improve the quality of the stock.

Only very young cubs are safe to pet and young female lions are often killed once they become too large to pet as there is much less demand for female lions as hunting trophies.

After speeches and photographs on the North Terrace I was invited to go with one of the protesters to South Africa House where he stood in the entrance with a placard and poster until security told us to leave.

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art – Kensington Gore

I met with protesters from the IWGB (Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain) at the Royal College of Art where they had come at lunchtime to demand that cleaners be immediately paid the London Living Wage. Previous pressure from the IWGB had led to the RCA saying it would pay the living wage from September 2015, but the cleaners needed it now, not in sixth months time.

After a noisy protest outside the college entrance in a mews just off the main road where they were joined by around 50 students in support the marched onto Kensington Gore for a more public protest on the east side of the college facing the Royal Albert Hall.

Here there were speeches and chanting and a great deal of noise from the drums and vuvuzelas before the protesters went back to continue their protest at the college entrance.

From here they moved further down the mews and to an almost enclosed yard at the rear of the college next to a dining area keeping up a barrage of noise. After keeping up their loud protest for around an hour they finished with a warning to RCA management that they would be back and keep up the protests until their demands were met.

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S – Victoria St

British multinational private security company G4S plays a key role in running jails in Israel where thousands of Palestinians are held.

Among the prisoners being held and tortured were 5 young boys from Hares in the northern West Bank of Palestine, and the Islamic Inminds Human Rights Group were protesting outside the G4S offices on Victoria St demanding their immediate release.

The boys were arrested after an Israeli illegal settler crashed into the back of an Israeli truck and they were alleged to have caused the collision by throwing stones.

That had happened two years earlier and the boys had now been held without trial for two years for the alleged crime – for which there appeared to be no evidence.

One of the five, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh Suleiman, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to 15 years in prison on the basis of a statement obtained by torture that he was not allowed to read before being forced to sign.

In 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published its opinion on his case. They called his detention ‘discriminatory’ and ‘arbitrary’ and called for his immediate release by Israel. Israel ignores most if not all UN opinions.

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S

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Poor Little Overlooked Images

I wrote this post some months ago but when I tried to publish it none of the pictures appeared. They seem to be working now, though I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Poor Little Overlooked Images: I’m often asked “Is it worth putting images on Flickr?” My answer is it depends on why you take pictures, what you photograph and what you expect to get out of it.

Ionic Temple, lake and obelisk, Chiswick House Gardens, Chiswick, 1977 10c103_2400 — *Ionic Temple, lake and obelisk, Chiswick House Gardens, Chiswick, 1977 10c103*

To state what I think is obvious, I don’t make a living out of Flickr, though I do get the occasional sale because people have found my pictures through it. It’s actually getting a little embarrassing now, as I shut down my business after Covid and I think I’m going to have to re-open it due to increasing sales.

Cheshire St, Tower Hamlets, 86-4r-23_2400 — *Cheshire St, Tower Hamlets, 86-4r-23*

But what I’ve always wanted to do is to share my images with other people, and Flickr is certainly doing that. When I was writing this some months ago there were over 45,000 views of my pictures on Flickr in a single day, and many days there are over 10,000 views. In total I’ve now had over 15 million views of my pictures there.

Brick Lane, Tower Hamlets 86-4r-11_2400 — *Brick Lane, Tower Hamlets 86-4r-11*

Of course it isn’t the same as a gallery show, but most of those I’ve taken part in over the years have been lucky to get 100 visitors coming to view them in a day. So Flickr can get your work seen, and seen by a very much wider range of people than are interested enough to go into a gallery to see photographs.

*Collegiale Notre-Dame de la Crypte, Cassel, France*

Though I have to say that some of those people see very different things in the pictures than what interested me and what I was trying to say when I made the picture.

I don’t mind this. Sometimes they give me information about the scene which I was totally unaware of – and occasionally it adds something to my appreciation. Often I get comments which are very personal to the viewers who may have lived or worked in somewhere that I photographed and it perhaps adds another layer to my view of the image, as well as being pleasing that they found it of interest.

*Notting Hill Carnival, 1999. Peter Marshall 99-823-11_2400*

But there are some things I don’t like. People who share my images on social media without naming me as the photographer is perhaps the top of the list, and if anyone should dare to colorize one of my black and white images I might to moved to take out a contract on them. So far as I’m aware it hasn’t happened yet.

But while my most viewed images have been seen over 20,000 times (one now 35,699 views) there are also a few which have apparently never been viewed at all.

They aren’t any worse than most of my other pictures – and in any case how would anyone know without viewing them. I think it may actually reflect some small glitches in Flickr’s recording of views, as when I click on them in the Flickr report it actually states “No recent stats available for this photo” and I’m fairly sure some at least will have been seen by some people.

But here, illustrating this post. are some of the fifteen images which had apparently never been seen when I wrote this post a few months ago. And after writing I discovered why – Flickr had changed their privacy settings to private. Not me – all of my images are uploaded as public. Somehow a stray bit or byte in their database had flipped. I’ve just checked again and found a different half-dozen images hidden in the same way.

Flickr has a reasonable search facility (though occasionally it goes haywire) and almost all of my images are keyworded. If you want to know if I have taken a picture of your street or town – or anything else – simply click this link to Flickr and type my name followed by what you want to find in the search box at the top of the page.

So to find if I have photographed Pegasus simply type:

Peter Marshall Pegasus

into the search box – and it should find all seven. Londoners in particular may find it useful to search on the names of London boroughs in this way.

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