>Re-PHOTO

It was a day of strong emotions in Westminster, with rival rallies. Having been attacked by right-wing protesters at the previous ‘Free Tommy’ rally in Whitehall I had decided to leave the reporting of the far right protest at Downing St to my less recognisable colleagues. Although I’ve covered many events on the right, and tried to do so without distortion – and been commended by some on the right for my objective reporting – I’ve also been featured in photographs and named on right-wing hate web sites, with their suggestions that photographers like me are an enemy that should be roughed up or worse.

So I began taking pictures at the Stand Up To Racism and Unite Against Fascism rally in Old Palace Yard opposite the House of Lords, where speakers included a number of trade unionists – such as the PCS speaker above –  as well as Green Party MEP for London  Jean Lambert  and Weyman Bennett from Stand Up to Racism. I arrived after the event started, having rushed there from Croydon Pride, so I may have missed some, but I was suprised not to see or hear any Labour MPs.

The plan had been for those at the rally to march behind a lorry carrying their sound system to Parliament St and continue the rally closer to the extreme right protest, with police keeping a couple of hundred yards between the two events. But police refused to allow the lorry to move from where it was parked on Abingdon St. There was a bitter argument between the organisers and police who gave no coherent reason for the decision, which appeared to many to be politically motivated, but eventually the march which had been kept waiting for a long time proceeded without the powerful sound system.

Where Bridge Street runs in to Parliament Square, the Stand Up to Racism march was greeted  by a large group of anti-fascists who had met south of the river and come across Westminster Bridge, and a number of smoke flares were set off. Also on the corner were some small groups of right-wingers who were abusing the anti-fascists, with police trying to keep the two groups apart.

The Stand Up to Racism march continued up Parliament St to the police barrier across the bottom of Whitehall and held a further rally there, although without the lorry they could only use a smaller amplification system, and the speeches were inaudible for much of the crowd.

After having taken a few pictures of the speakers and the front of the crowd where they could be heard, I wandered back down towards Parliament Square, where the anti-fascist crowd was forming a barrier across the end of Parliament St, with police present in front of them.

There was a further police line across Bridge St, and beyond it I could see a larger group of right-wing football fans, being stopped by police from moving towards Parliament Square. There were a few of them roaming around the square, with police talking to them and trying to persuade them to leave. One of those, in front of Parliament was wearing a lurid t-shirt showing a young woman posing provocatively with various tattoos including a red rose and across her stomach below her half-exposed breasts in flowing script was ‘England’.

See more at:

Against Tommy Robinson & Trump
Whitehall rally against extreme-right
Anti-Fascists & Police harassed by hooligans

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Croydon, 2001

I have mixed feelings about Croydon, another place in London where I have shown work in group shows in the past, and which I have photographed, particularly for its tram system, taken in 2001. You can see my pictures along ‘Line 1’ in Croydon Tramlink. It was an unusual project for me in that the pictures on-line were taken on 6×7 rather than 35mm film; as well as these medium format images I also worked with a panoramic camera as you can see above, though I’ve yet to get around to adding these pictures to the web site as promised.

I still visit Croydon reasonably frequently, either to visit or meet friends, and for the occasional protest, particularly those about immigration issues at Lunar House. But on Saturday 14th July I was there for ‘Croydon Pride’, photographing the procession through the centre of the town to the third annual Croydon Pridefest in Wandle Park, sponsored by Croydon Council and said to be the second largest Pride Festival in the capital. I’d given the main London Pride a miss this year, but thought it would be good to cover a much smaller and less corporate event.

It was a much smaller and more intimate event than London Pride, and I enjoyed meeting some of those taking part and photographing them. There had been fears that anti-trans activists would try to disrupt the event, but fortunately they did not materialise, and the march was a show of support for trans people, with a large banner for TransPALS, (Trans People Across London South) and others carrying flgs and placards in support.

I was sorry to have to leave the march soon after the start to make my way back to central London from East Croydon station, but other things were happening there I didn’t want to miss.

More pictures at Croydon Pride Procession

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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While the University of London holds events in favour of women’s rights in its #LeadingWomen season which aims ‘to break down the barriers women still face in education and the workplace today’, it is still denying decent terms & conditions to migrant and BAME women who work there, by using outsourcing companies which offer minimal rights, often with bullying management and zero hours contracts.

The IWGB union which represents low paid workers in the University’s central administration decided to hold a protest on the night one of these events was taking place, and contacted the two women who had agreed to speak, explaining the situation to them. Ayesha Hazarika and Catherine Mayer cancelled their appearances at the #leadingwomen event and instead came to speak at the protest. The university had to call off its event.

Other ‘Leading Women’ who spoke at the meeting included Mildred Simpson, who led the succesful LSE campaign by the United Voices of the World union to be brought in-house, and Newham Cllr Belgica Guania, the first Ecuadorian councillor in the UK.

The university fails to recognise the IWGB which a majority of the low-paid workers belong to, but has been forced to respond to their demands by a series of high-profile protests and strikes. It has now agreed in principle to bring these employees, currently employed by cost-cutting cleaning contracting firms back into direct employment by the university, but is refusing to engage with them on when and how this might happen.

The dispute is not only about conditions of service – sick pay, holiday pay, pensions, maternity pay – but also about having a management which respects the dignity of the workers and is also concerned with getting a good quality of service rather than cutting corners and overworking staff to cut costs. Often workers have to accept bullying and unsafe working practices and a failure to provide proper equipment by contractors to keep their jobs.

UoL #LeadingWomen protest hypocrisy

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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It was a week of protests against Trump, certainly making very clear the point that Trump is not welcome here. And of course he isn’t – there must be very few outside a few Conservative MPs who really think it was a good idea to invite him, and their number must have dwindled at seeing the farce of a visit that public opinion forced on the government.

Trump’s only contact with London was to walk a few yards to and from a helicopter to the house of the US Ambassador where he spent a night in the large estate in Regent’s Park, surrounded by a huge security operation behind a tall fence. I suspect police had advised that it would not be possible to ensure he would be able to travel on London’s roads to either Buckingham Palace or the US Embassy at Nine Elms. It had been thought that the visit had been arranged for the President to officially open the embassy, but he described it as as ‘lousy’ and ‘horrible’, and refused to go there.

The week started with a protest there, organised by Momentum Wandsworth. Sensibly the protest was held on the main road in front of the entrance to the embassy garden, where workers in the embassy come out on foot, and also the protest could be seen by those going along the fairly busy road.

The embassy is built on a site with a radical tradition, as one of the protesters reminded us, wearing a suffragette sash in memory of one of the leading suffragettes, Charlotte Despard who lived and worked there.

There was a large and noisy protest in Regent’s Park when his helicopter arrived, and the protesters intended to keep up the noise all night until he flew off to a military base to be safe from protesters. Being Trump he will have boasted they were there to welcome him as he walked from the helicopter to the house, where I suspect effective double glazing will have kept out the sound. We did see the helicopter fly in, but the landing site was out of view.

Later that evening, protesters dropped a giant banner with the message ‘TRUMP: CLIMATE GENOCIDE’ over the river wall opposite the Houses of Parliament. The protesters say that by wilfully ignoring the clear science on climate change he is threatening the existence of human life on earth. It seemed a very good and clear reason to protest against him.

I didn’t get to Chequers or Windsor Castle, but there were protests at both. In London on Friday there were several protests, two on a large scale. The first, organised by women and supported by a wide range of women’s groups, highlighted his misogyny, but also protested more generally with what was described as as a day of joy, love, solidarity and resistance celebrating the diverse communities which make up our great city of London, standing together for Justice, Equality and Peace. It was against Trump and others whose agendas driven by desire for profit, greed, power & domination are ‘wreaking havoc – fuelling conflict; displacing vast numbers from their homes; waging war on our rights; destroying our planet.’

This march with tens of thousands was still making its way through London’s streets when a second and much larger march, estimated at a quarter of a million people, organised by ‘Together Against Trump’ began, on its way to a rally in Traflagar Square, though by the time I arrived there, the square was already full to capacity. Owen Jones had begun the Stop Trump Coalition in February with grassroots campaigners, trade unions, NGOs and politicians and others, including SWP members, had formed ‘Stand Up to Trump’, which also took part in the march.

I walked through Soho, which had people on almost every street with posters and placards, most intending to join one or other of the two big marches. There was a TV crew touring the area with two actors impersonating Trump and First Lady Melania, though not particularly well, but I had come for the marathon ‘Revolution Day’ street protest party against Trump’s visit organised by Soho Radio, which was meant to start at mid-day and continue at least until midnight. It wasn’t really happening on my first visit, so I returned later to take more pictures, and then again after photographing the main march, by which time things had really got going, though I think it would have got even more interesting in another hour or two, by which time I was having dinner elsewhere.

US Embassy protest says NO to Trump
Noise protest against Trump
‘Trump: Climate Genocide’ Giant banner
‘Bring The Noise’ Women march against Trump
Massive protest against Trump’s Visit
Soho parties to protest Trump’s visit
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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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The protest march reaches the St Helier open space in front of the hospital

I don’t often go to Sutton, a town in South London, part of Surrey that was absorbed into Greater London in the local government reforms of 1965.  It really isn’t a place there is much to go there for, unless you need to shop, and there are plenty of other places for that.  I did spend a little time in the area in 1997  when I was photographing London and its buildings, though I think I found relatively little to interest me in Sutton itself. Since then then only time I can remember returning is when with seven friends we put on a photography show in the library there in 2007.

One of the campaigns that I’ve come across regularly taking part in various protests about the NHS, against cuts in services, creeping privatisation and hospital closures has been KOSSH, a slightly sinister sounding name standing for ‘Keep our St Helier Hospital ‘, and when I got an email telling me about their planned march celebrating the 70th anniversary of the NHS and against the plans of the Epsom and St Helier trust to close A&E, Maternity, Paediatrics, Emergency Medicine and Surgery, Intensive Care, Coronary Care and the Cancer Centre at one or both hospitals and sell off the sites, I was interested to join them and photograph the event.

Of course, as so often it wasn’t the only event I would like to have covered. Also taking place in Central London was the annual Pride march, which I’ve photographed most years since the early 1990s, as well as several other local events. But Pride isn’t what it was, and the march in particular has become such a corporate event that I’ve rather lost interest in photographing it. Last year’s event had been enlivened by the Anti-Racist & Migrant Rights Pride march, which had managed to take pride of place at the front of the main event (though only because they were not allowed to join the main march) but there appeared to be nothing like that planned this year, though later I heard that a group of anti-trans feminists had put in an appearance.

So my plan for the day had been to go to Sutton and photograph the march, then go into Soho and photograph on the streets there after the official march. But it was a very hot day, and by the time I had marched all the way to St Helier Hospital and photographed the short rally there,  I was exhausted, and caught the two trains to take me home for a cool drink and a rest.

St Helier Hospital (the site includes the Queen Mary children’s hospital) is one of the few buildings in the area that had attracted my attention back in the 1997, on high ground a mile or two north of the centre of Sutton, in one of the largest council-built estates in London. The St Helier Estate was a ‘garden city’ cottage  overspill estate built by the London County Council between 1928 and 1936 outside of London,  and with over 9000 homes was the largest such development by the LCC other than Becontree, and the hospital there, in a modern style, was opened in 1938.

Closing either of the hospitals would lead to longer emergency journeys in what is often a very congested part of London.  The full range of services would only be available at St Georges in Tooting. Back in 2003 I sat in an ambulance for around an hour stuck in traffic on my way there – until one of the medics accompanying me suggested I might have an emergency – and even then with blue lights flashing our progress was slow. The proposed cuts would reduce services at a time when needs are increasing and are proposed only to save money to meet government cuts which call for huge savings by the trust.

The die-in at the end of the march wasn’t huge, and quite a few of those who started the march, including several in poor health, didn’t manage to complete it in the summer heat, though I’m sure none actually died. But it made the point that hospital closures will lead to people dying, particularly those needing emergency treatment.

More at NHS at 70 – Save St Helier Hospital

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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I was born before the start of the NHS but it has been there for almost all of my life, there when I’ve needed it. Some of my earliest memories are of going to the clinic where my mother was given free orange juice, which I loved, though I remember it as being rather viscous and sweet compared to the orange juice I now drink every morning at breakfast. And they also gave her cod liver oil, which was rather difficult to get me to take, though I’m now sure it did me good.

Of course the NHS wasn’t then welcomed by everyone, and was brought in against considerable opposition, both from doctors and from inside the Conservative Party. And it has never been perfect; in particular dentistry has never really been properly brought within the ambit of a health service to meet the three core needs set out by Aneurin Bevan:

• that it meet the needs of everyone
• that it be free at the point of delivery
• that it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay

and there were years when I couldn’t afford NHS treatment that have left a legacy in my current lack of real bite (though I get by.)

But even with this, we have moved far beyond the days of my parents, when the extraction of all of a person’s teeth and their replacement by a “full set” was a popular (and quite expensive) coming of age or wedding present. They woke every morning to see their teeth grinning at them on the bedside table in a glass tooth-mug, soaking in some tooth wash and part of the routine of rising was to put their teeth in.

There have of course been many medical advances since July 5th 1948, and treatment under the NHS has improved greatly. When I think of the many treatments I’ve received over the past fifteen years that have kept me alive and more or less fit to work, about the only ones that would have been available back in 1948 were aspirin and the concerned care of doctors and nurses.

There have been some set-backs too. Many were appalled at the introduction of prescription charges by the Conservative government in 1952 (the 1949 Act by a Labour government had made this possible – and led to Bevan’s resignation.) They were free again for three years in the 1960s and are now £8.80 per item, 176 times the 1952 rate, though actually rather greater than this as the initial charge was ‘per form’ and since 1955 it has been ‘per item’. The amount these charges raise is relatively small in terms of the NHS budget, perhaps around £400m, mainly because almost 90% of prescribed items go to those of us who qualify for free prescriptions.

While prescriptions are now free for people living in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, our current government has announced a crackdown on faudulent claims for free prescriptions in England, an expensive sledge-hammer to crack an insignificant nut. Many of those currently accused of having falsely claimed to be eligible are found to actually qualify for exemption, but have simply not applied or not kept their paperwork up to date.

The prescription crack-down is perhaps simply and example of the general Conservative apoplexy at the idea of people getting something for free that they or their friends could be profiting from. More and more aspects of our NHS treatment are now being handed over to private companies to deliver, and the NHS is continually being weakened by this back-door privatisation, sliding slowly into the hands of healthcare businesses. And once this process is more or less complete – unless we get a government that reverses it – those companies will be keen to go further, to move to a US-style insurance-based system with exorbitant medical costs and people being turned away because they have conditions their insurance does not cover or because they have been unable to afford the insurance payments.

And, as I point out on My London Diary, those in government who legislate the future of our NHS have considerable legal and declared financial interests (as well as others with interests that for legal reasons they are not obliged to declare) :

“A report by Social Investigations in 2014 found 65 Conservative peers, 12 Lib-Dem peers, 37 Labour peers and 33 Crossbenchers with interests in private healthcare companies, as well as 63 Tory MPs, 3 Lib-Dems, 14 Labour members and one other. Some held directorships, others were shareholders or had received payments from companies for various services etc.”

Aneurin Bevan never actually said “The NHS will last as long as there’s folk with faith left to fight for it” though he certainly did say that people would have to fight to keep it and its principles alive. At no time in its history has it been so much under threat as now, and this march showed that there were still people prepared to fight for it, though it is hard to be confident that we will win. I’m hopeful that it will see me out, but fearful that its demise might see the death of me.

More text and far too many pictures including those of the speakers and politicians supporting the event at NHS at 70 – Free, for all, forever

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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The trouble with protesting outside the new US Embassy in London is that almost nobody sees the protest. The area around is still something of a building site, and even when the tall blocks of flats around are completed and sold, relatively few of them will be inhabited, with many going as investments to overseas investors, few if any of whom will actually ever live there and many will never even visit.

The path around the embassy leads nowhere; only those going to the embassy on business will use it, and the protest I was going to photograph was timed for after the embassy was closed. The only people who came to see what was happening were the police and security on duty, as well as one embassy employee in a suit who came briefly and took a few photographs.

So my photographs – and those taken by some of the protesters – are the only public face of the protest, and while mine have appeared on Facebook and on my own web site, as well as on the site of the agency I sent them to, they have not yet been sold for any use. Guantanamo is no longer considered news by the media, and there are no longer any detainees with a UK connection that might make them so for the UK press.

It would be slightly more public to hold this and other protests on the main road in front of the embassy, but it is set back well from the road, and some of the connection would be lost. But at least the protest would be seen by those going along the road, which at the rush hour does have a number of pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses and other vehicles passing – rather busier in total than the old venue in Grosvenor Square. Or perhaps there is somewhere ele in London sufficiently connected with the US as to be a suitable site for protest?

So while the protesters put in time to make their way to this rather out of the way place, and I worked hard to exploit the visual possibilities of the situation – in some ways rather more exciting than Grosvenor Square, if nobody actually sees the protest itself or the photographs, our time and effort is rather wasted. Torture continues at Guantanamo and I fear this and similar protests will have little effect in stopping it.

You can see more pictures from the protest at Torture protest at US Embassy and please feel free to share the pictures and this post. The images (except for the top one, which I didn’t send as it wasn’t a part of the protest) are available for editorial use from Alamy though almost impossible to find through their rather opaque search system.

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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.

To order prints or reproduce images

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