Howl for the NHS

I saw the best minds of my generation howling in protest for the NHS, though fortunately they had not been destroyed by madness but were just howling mad at our governments plans to dismantle and privatise our National Health Service. The privateer’s latest ploy is the ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans‘ (STPs) which were due to be signed off that day in all 44 areas of the country.

According to some of the placards, STP stands for ‘Slash Trash and Plunder‘ and many see it as a continuation of plans to move our NHS away from the public sector and into the hands of healthcare companies.

In 2005 Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was one of the authors of a Conservative Party policy pamphlet that called for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance market system delivered by the private sector and in 2014 was one of 70 Conservative and Lib-Dem MPs listed by the Daily Mirror as having links with healthcare companies.

Many of those at the protest were health workers, and others were those who rely heavily on its service; all support the three basic priciples laid down by Aneurin Bevan back in 1948:

  • 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

Nye Bevan was very much in evidence at the protest, his face on posters and t-shirts with his message “The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.” Though he expressed similar feelings, apparently Bevan never actually said this, but it was said by his character in a TV play.

But one thing he did say:

“The eyes of the world are turning to Great Britain. We now have the moral leadership of the world, and before many years are over we shall have people coming here as to a modern Mecca, learning from us in the twentieth century as they learned from us in the seventeenth century.”

Instead what we see is Tory politicians and theorists going to the USA and getting ideas from a medical system that is at least three times as expensive and totally fails to provide for the need of the large numbers of the less wealthy to bring back here and destroy a system that still in many respects is the envy of the world. It makes sense only to those crazy for greed.

More about Howls of protest for death of the NHS on My London Diary.
Continue reading Howl for the NHS

M4-15

People often say things about it being a nice day to take photographs when its bright and sunny with a clear blue sky, but such days, welcome though they are for other reasons, especially in winter, are ones that photographers dread, with sun from a low angle, deep shadows and ridiculous contrast.

And December 22nd was one of those days, and I left home knowing things were likely to be tricky as I walked to the station. The trial of the Rising Up “M4-15” who had blocked the motorway spur into the airport in a protest against Heathrow expansion was taking place at Ealing Magistrates Court, and a protest in solidarity was starting there rather early in the morning.

I seldom do early mornings. For me its one of the perks of being my own boss and doing what I like to have a reasonably leisured start to the day, and in any case catching an early train doubles the fares. I decided arriving a little after 10am would be plenty early enough, and although the protest had been going for a while I hadn’t missed anything of importance. Many of those coming to the event had made a similar assumption too.

While there were a few things to photograph, the event only really got going later, and like almost everything to do with courts there was a lot of waiting around. And waiting around.


John Stewart’s head could have done with a little less exposure

You can see my problems with the light in a few pictures. Some of them could have been solved by using fill-flash, but others it would have created worse problems, so although I’d had the flash in my bag I hadn’t used it. There are some situations where the flash creates a very different atmosphere and this event, largely very informal, was one of them.

I like to keep things technically as simple as possible when I’m taking pictures, and the Exif data on every picture I took reads Mode: P, Meter: Matrix, No Flash, Auto WB. It’s mainly amateurs who express surprise that I usually work using Program mode, but it works and the dial under my thumb lets me chose a faster speed or a slower one for a wider aperture should I think it necessary. 99% of the time it gives the result I want without my having to pause and think about it.

Nikon’s matrix metering is pretty good too, though I usually have a third of a stop underexposure set to keep a little more of the highlights, I should probably have made that two or even three thirds for the high contrast light, as just occasionally I lost important highlights. Shadows don’t matter much as there is always more you can dig out from the RAW file in Lightroom.

I do sometimes use spot metering (or at least what Nikon call spot.) Back in the days of film I used it most of the time, both the spot metering of the Olympus OM system (surely the OM4 remains the best camera of all time for exposure metering) and also a handheld spot meter, because you needed to be precise, especially with transparency film, and even with black and white I enjoyed placing the key value on the Zone where I wanted it. But spot metering requires you think about it, and when you forget to change back to matrix produces some very uneven results, as I’ve too often proved.

Technically, digital cameras are almost certainly more clever than I am and, so long as you keep the highlights, allow you to play almost infinitely back on the PC with print exposure and contrast. I’m happy to put the camera on P and do that stuff while I concentrate on content and framing. As I’ve often joked, ‘P’ stands for Professional.

Eventually the 14 defendants had to go into court and those of us who didn’t want to go in with them were left standing outside. I don’t like having to hand all my camera gear over so I stayed out. And waited.

Not for all that long, as courts break early for lunch, and the defendants came out and some spoke. They were in good spirits as they felt things had gone well for those who had pleaded guilty but whose solicitor had been allowed to make clear that they were “but only guilty of standing up to climate injustice”.

I’d been hanging around long enough and left when they went back into court and only heard the verdict and sentences later in the day. The 12 who pleaded guilty were all given ‘conditional discharges’, and had to pay £20 victim surcharge and £85 prosecution costs. The cases of the two who had pleaded ‘not guilty’ were adjourned. The Daily Mail clearly didn’t like the verdict, but would probably not have been satisfied with anything less than them being hung, drawn and quartered.

See more at Heathrow “M4-15″protesters at court

Continue reading M4-15

Another Saturday

It was getting close to Christmas and I’d been expecting people to be too busy getting ready for the festival to be out protesting, but there were still protests happening in London.

It was apparently Chelsea Manning’s 29th birthday and she was still in jail serving a 35 year sentence for espionage, theft and other offences. She had twice attempted suicide in the previous six months, the second time in November while in solitary confinement as a sentence for the first attempt.

Both a formal petition and one with over 100,000 signatures had been made earlier in the month to President Obama for clemency, asking him to reduce her sentence to time already served. Most commentators thought it unlikely to happen, although the protesters were hopeful – and a month later Obama did commute all but 4 months of her remaining sentence, saying it had been ‘very disproportionate’. President Trump said that she was an ungrateful traitor and should never have been released, but despite this, she was set free in May 2017.

This was a static and more or less silent protest on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields – all that is allowed there – and I was pleased to be able to produce quite a variety of images – and of course to have another opportunity to photograph Bruce Kent.

Vigil on Chelsea Manning’s 29th birthday

Kurds can always be relied on to be colorful, and I have a great deal of sympathy for them, particularly in Turkey where they have long been oppressed by the Turkish government. But this was a protest by Iraqi Kurds who have enjoyed some autonomy in Iraq since 1970 and more so in recent years, in support of the Peshmerga (or Peshmarga), the military force of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraqi Kurdistan, established in 1992 with the protection of a US no-fly zone after the first Gulf War.

The Peshmerga stood their ground when ISIS invaded Iraq, while the Iraqi army fled and were the most effective fighting force in the area. But ISIS captured a great deal of up to date US equipment left behind by the Iraqis and are better equipped than the Pershmerga, who need more support – and this protest was calling on the UK government for help.

The UK and other western nations have been reluctant to give much help to the Peshmerga, and the scarf worn by the woman on the right , with its map of Kurdistan explains why, including as it does a healthy chunk of the territory of one of our allies, Turkey, as well as parts of Iraq, Iran and Syria (and I think some of Armenia), all of the territory where Kurds are in a majority.  Having the Kurds fight and help defeat Da’esh is a good thing, but Kurdish nationalism and the establishment of a Kurdish state, which the protest was also for,  would not suit the UK or USA, or for that matter, Russia. It might not even suit the Kurds, as the constitution of Kurdish Syria (Rojava) currently a de-facto autonomous region thanks to the civil war, while inspired by the Turkish Kurd leader ‘Apo’ (Abdullah Öcalan) from his Turkish jail is a rather different politics to that of the Iraqi Kurds.

Kurds protest for a Free Kurdistan

Syria was the subject of a very different protest a few hundred yards away in Old Palace Yard, where healthcare workers, including some who had volunteered in Syria,  held a die-in at Parliament in solidarity with the Syrian people, calling for an end to the bombing by Russia and Assad of hospitals and for the UK government to pressure the Assad regime to allow the delivery of medicines and other aid.

Since the protesters were on the circle in the pavement I thought it would be good to photograph them from directly above. Unfortunately I hadn’t brought my helicopter with me, not even a drone or a monopod, and the best I could do was to stand on the edge of the circle and stretch up my right arm forward and up as high as possible, holding the camera with the 10.5mm fisheye on it. I couldn’t see the viewfinder or the screen on the back of the camera, so had to do my best and then bring the camera down and look to see how I’d done. It took only one frame to decide it looked better without the camera strap in it, but quite a few to get the framing right.

There was still one problem. Because I hadn’t had the camera above the centre of the circle it was definitely not a circle in the image. So I’m afraid I cheated, turning what had been a 1.5:1 image into the 1.31:1  image you see here and making that circle look much rounder.

Doctors & Nurses Die-in for Syria

Continue reading Another Saturday

Students rent protest

Students have more or less always protested, though they sometimes seem rather passive to those of us who were students in the sixties. We protested about various things but in particular about education and the universities, where we sat in various offices and liberated documents about the connections between the universities and the military-industrial complex and called for a revolution and an end to an education system that was geared to supporting the status quo rather than questioning it.

We got a few concessions but really achieved little, though perhaps universities did start to take the teaching of undergraduates a little more seriously and a few more radical courses emerged, though it was more a matter of fashion rather than a change of direction.

But what we have seen since then is an increasing corporatisation of the universities and the professionalisation of management, with students less and less seen as an important part of a collegiate body and more as units to be processed and cash sources to be milked.

It’s a process which has been given a huge boost with the removal of grants and the introduction of student loans and huge course fees for students.

Of course it isn’t just the universities that see students as sources of profit, but also the private companies – in which many in Parliament, particularly on the Tory side have an interest. Student loans have an interest rate which is set to rise to more than 24 times the official Bank of England base rate next month, and student loan debt is now more than £100 billion and fast growing. It is already around one and a half times the total UK credit card debt. The student loans company was set up as a government owned non-profit company, but student debt is now being sold off to private companies.

Another huge earner from students is the provision of student housing, and many of the cranes now visible in London are building high-rise towers for students – or at least for wealthy students, as the rents in many of them are equal or greater than the maximum student loans.

Students used to live either in university halls of residence, in digs with local landladies providing bed and breakfast (and sometimes an evening meal) or in private flats, usually owned by small landlords. Now universities see halls of residence as businesses to make money rather than as a service to its members, and providing student flats has become a huge and highly profitable big business, attracting capital from overseas – such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.

University College London, normally now only known by its initials UCL, has a number of halls of residence, and last year over a thousand students staged a rent strike. Some were striking because of the appalling conditions of their rooms, but others simply because the rents were too high, and the strike was a success, winning over £1.5m in concessions.

But students say the rents are still too high, say many students have to have two or three part-time jobs to study and live in London. They asked for a 10% cut in rents and were protesting after UCL management refused their demand.

The protest started in the main quad at UCL with its steps and classical architecture, and after a few short speeches took a tour inside the main buildings, passing perhaps its most famous resident, its “spiritual founder”, Jeremy Bentham, (1748-1832), certainly now its oldest member at 268, still sitting in his cupboard.

Fortunately the students knew the way as we made our way along corridors and down stairs eventually to emerge into a courtyard and walk around the streets back to the main quad for some more speeches …

and of course some smoke flares. I made a lot of pictures (and you can see quite a few of them on My London Diary) but wasn’t entirely happy. Smoke is rather unpredictable and it’s difficult to know the best distance; getting in too close can simply mean your whole view becoming a coloured  mist.

UCL Students protest rents and marketisation
Continue reading Students rent protest

UN Human Rights DAY (and Christmas)

Christmas was approaching fast but protests were still coming at a furious pace, and on December 10th I was kept busy, though I did spend a little time with the Santas at what has now become an annual Santacon, a rather alcohol-fuelled mass invasion of the streets by hundreds or probably thousands of Santas of both sexes along with elves and a few reindeer. It’s an event that has become rather toned-down over the years under considerable pressure from the police who don’t approve of a little merry mayhem on the streets.

But there were also more serious events taking place. My day began in Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament where protesters were forming a human chain against the danger to human rights posed by leaving Europe. December 10th is UN Human Rights Day and protesters in various cities were holding similar protests against the threat of Brexit under our right-wing Tory government to workers rights to paid holidays, maternity leave and fair treatment at work, to the right of free movement around Europe to live in the EU and for EU citizens to live here and to disability rights and the right to freedom from discrimination.

Along the road in Parliament Square on my way to the tube I met a couple of people in elaborate if not entirely convincing rhinoceros costumes. The fact they only had two legs and particularly the bright blue shoes one of them wore were something of a give-away. They were being photographed to ‘Save the Rhino’ but I didn’t have time to stop and talk and only took a couple of pictures.

The tube took me to Oxford Circus. I could have taken a bus, but traffic holdups in London make the tube a much better way to get around in Central London, even though I had to walk up from Oxford Circus to Broadcasting House, where another UN Human Rights Day protest was taking place, against the failure of the BBC to report on people wrongly held in prison around the world, including Irish Republican prisoners held in Northern Ireland, Mumia Abu Jamal on Death Row in USA, Palestinians held in Israeli jails, victims of Erdogan’s purge in Turkey and more.

My next stop was Mornington Crescent, a station that always gives something of a sense of achievement, and today my day was feeling a little like playing that popular game. As I came out of the station I could see in the distance the rather fat red line of the North London Santacon approaching in the distance from Camden Town and rushed to join them. I followed them into a small park where they stood around and then began a little jousting.

Then it was back to Mornington Crescent for a trip down the Northern Line to Charing Cross and the short walk down Whitehall, where several more human rights protests were taking place opposite Downing St.

Probably few in the UK know where Balochistan us, let along about the human rights abuses taking place. I only know because I’ve photographed several earlier protests about the situation there. It’s another of the legacies of our Empire and the disastrous partition of the Indian sub-continent when we decided we had to get out in 1947. Balochistan, on the Pakistan-Iran border became a part of Pakistan, retaining some autonomy, but was absorbed fully in 1948 – since when Balochs claim they and their culture have been brutally repressed both in Pakistan and in Iran. They claim over 25,000 Balochs have disappeared – abducted, tortured and killed by Pakistan police and security forces, and their bodies abandoned in desert areas.

Next to them the Guantanamo Justice Campaign was holding a Human Rights Day protest calling for an end to torture, the closure of Guantanamo and an end to British complicity in torture. Obama failed to meet his promise to end the illegal camp and Trump seems likely to worsen the situation for those still held there. It’s a depressing prospect for those concerned about freedom and human rights.

Finally, as I was getting ready to leave for home, a small group of women from WAVE (Women’s Action against Violent Extremism) came along the street from where they had been protesting in Parliament Square, and stopped to hold a protest opposite Downing St. They called for help for the Yazidi women who were targeted and captured by ISIS (Da’esh) in Iraq. Their protest was a part of 16 days of action begun by UN goodwill ambassador Nadia Murad Basee Taha who escaped from ISIS in 2014.

Save Yazidi women and girls
Human Rights Day call close Guantanamo
Balochs UN Human Rights Day protest
London Santacon 2016
BBC censors prison struggles
Save the Rhino
Silent Chain for Europe

Continue reading UN Human Rights DAY (and Christmas)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Cleaners were again on the street protesting, this time at King’s College, another of the leading colleges of London University, although as usual the problem arises because instead of King’s College employing cleaners they outsource the cleaning to a contractor, Servest. King’s doubtless feel they have to treat all employees with dignity and respect and give them decent condition of work and terms of service, but cleaning contractors seem generally happy to treat their workers with contempt, employing poor managers without proper supervision, and giving their workers low pay and unreasonable workloads and cutting things like pensions, sick pay and holidays to the minimum they can.

Cleaners at Kings belong to one of our major trade unions, Unison, and the union and Servest have been in talks at ACA, but haven’t manage to resolve the issues and Servest’s response had been to write to all of the cleaners wanting them thatthey intend to ‘restructure’ the workforce and that all of their jobs are at risk.

The warning letter came just a few weeks before Christmas, a time when family budgets are always under extreme stress, just about the worst Christmas present the workers could imagine. They felt that Servest, like Dr Suess’s Grinch, was trying to steal Christmas – and their jobs – away from them.

It seemed to be a pretty inept piece of management by Servest, with the union members about to vote on strike action, almost guaranteeing that there would be close to 100% support for this in the ballot – and it was no surprise to find 98% of them backing strike action. They also received great support from students and staff, with more than 50 academics at King’s signing a letter in support of their dispute, protesting at how the cleaners were being treated.

Although the pavement in front of Kings is wider than most, it got pretty crowded, making it a little hard to work as a photographer, and my wide angle lens was essential much of the time.

But it’s important to try an vary the views, and I tried hard to also use a longer lens, concentrating on individuals or small groups with the 28-200mm in DX mode. At the 28mm end this gives an effective 42mm, more or less a standard lens for full frame. The 50mm we usually consider as the standard is actually just a little on the long side, simply because in the early years of 35mm cameras it was a little easier to make lenses of that focal length rather than the image diagonal of 43mm (and the image diagonal is more generally the normal ‘standard’ focal length.)

It was a fairly dull winter’s day and the tall buildings around cut down the light; although it was lunchtime I found myself increasing the ISO to 1600 once the rally really got going. Although Unison is a rather more traditional British union the cleaners and their supporters soon increased the tempo and noise to match that of the grass roots unions such as the United Voices of the World, several of whose members (and the UVW General Secretary) had come to show their solidarity.

And in typical UVW style they made a rush into the foyer of King’s, confronting the security staff inside who were keeping an eye on the protest. But Unison’s organiser stopped his members from following their example.

I’m glad I stayed on until the official rally had ended, although I’d been thinking of leaving along with a couple of colleagues. But the cleaners and some of the students and other supporters remained, and there was loud music and dancing, and more space to work – and the Grinch appeared.

More pictures: King’s College cleaners Servest protest
Continue reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Hull Photos: 28/7/17-3/8/17

A few from Goole as well as some from Hull. Comments welcome on any of these pictures.

28th July 2017

Taken from the swing bridge between Bridge Rd and South Bridge Rd at the entrance to West Dock. Shed 23 has since been demolished. Around the corner is Stanhope Dock, built in 1891 as the ‘New Extension Dock’. The dock had a crane capable of lifting railway wagons and emptying them into the hold of a ship before placing them back on the rails. Now the track ends at Bridge St, and West Dock is the only dock served by rail. At left is the bridge pit.

Berthed in Stanhope Dock is Jurgen, a 444 ton coaster built in Hamburg in 1956 and originally named Heinrich Knuppel; it then became Heinrich Raap in 1966 before being renamed Jurgen in 1966. It had capsized and been written off in 1971 while loading timber in Finland, but was salvaged and back in service the following year for a company registered in Limassol, Cyrpus. Its troubles did not end there and on 5th March 1986 half way between Boston and Antwerp it was in collision with a Yugoslav bulk carrier, MV Kotor in the North Sea around 40 miles off Walcheren Island at the mouth of the Scheldt Estuary. It sank and is still on the sea bottom in around 40 metres of water.


36h51: Shed 23, West Dock Entrance, Goole Docks, 1983 – Goole

29th July 2017

I think this door and windows were facing Bridge St on the west end of Shed 23 which was on the north side of the entrance to West Dock. The reflection in the window shows several cranes and stacks of timber, presumably across the road along the North side of West Dock.


36h52: Detail, Shed 23, West Dock Entrance, Goole Docks, 1983 – Goole

30th July 2017

There is still a ‘Shed 20’ on the south side of West Dock, but it looks nothing like this. Along with most of the other sheds around the docks these old wooden structures have been replaced by more modern sheds. There are now two sheds here, Shed 20 and Shed 21, and I think this view was probably taken from Lower Bridge St and from the same position would now show Shed 21.

In the foreground are two conveyors, presumably used of the bulk handling of solids such as sand or gravel, and behind them a lorry load shrouded in a tarpaulin stencilled ‘Wrights Transport Goole’. Fred Wright started the business in Selby in 1938 and ran it with his brother Charles. It remained a family business, and Graham Wright took over in the 1960s, moving to Goole in 1978, and his two sons worked in the business, which was sold up in 2004 when Graham Wright retired. The auction raised £600,000.


36h64: Shed 20, West Dock from Bridge St, Goole, 1983 – Goole

31st July 2017

A crane holds 4 sacks in mid-air over the hold of the Jurgen berthed in Stanhope DOck in front of Shed 25 while behind 2 men stand waiting on the platform of a lorry. They and the crane-driver are slowly loading or unloading the vessel, and it looks as if the job could take several days. It’s easy to see why containerisation rapidly swept away the old-fashioned ways of handling goods like this – and the modernisation of the docks has meant that the dockside sheds have also gone. The space where Shed 23 was is now empty, while a blander modern structure has replace Shed 25.

The Parish Church of St John the Evangelist is still there – and the very visible lightning conductor going up its spire to the cross on top may well have helped.

Shed 25 replaced the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway “Ghent and Antwerp Shed” and Bergline began working from it in 1972, providing regular freight services to Sweden etc. The company appears now to have disappeared.


36h66: West Dock Entrance, Stanhope Dock, Shed 23 and Shed 25 from West Dock Bridge, 1983 – Goole

1st August 2017

I think I felt that the tilted camera was somehow appropriate for the dilapidated state of the pier when I took this picture.  Or perhaps it was just grabbed rapidly as the seagulls flew off as I approached.

Rather than repairing the pier, a a layer of some kind of board had been nailed over part of it and a fence put up to stop people falling down the gaps outside. It perhaps reflected a general attitude of neglect and half-hearted attention to the heritage of the city.


36i11: Seagulls at Hull Pier, 1983 – Old Town

2nd August 2017

Shifting mud in the River Humber makes navigation tricky and shops require pilots to make a safe passage up the river.  The earliest UK laws about pilots date from around 1200 and members of Hull Trinity House, founded in 1369 were pilots, although it was not until 1512 that they formally undertook to act as pilots to bring ships into Hull.  The Humber Pilot Act of 1800 gave Trinity House the authority to appoint pilots and 30 men working from 6 pilot boats were licenced.

From 1812 to 1998 the Humber pilots worked from a fine purpose-built office at 50 Queen St, but were evicted when this was turned into flats in 1998. In 2001, the independent Humber Pilots went on strike against plans by Associated British Ports (the private company who took over when British Transport Docks Board was privatised in 1982/3) who had decided to train and employ their own pilots. All 150 independent pilots had their licences revoked in 2002 ending 490 years of independent pilotage on the Humber.


36i22:  Pilot boat Camilla waiting at Nelson St, 1983 – Old Town

3rd August 2017

This view of the pilot boat was taken from the Horse Wash at Nelson St. The ‘Oss Wash’ is a wide fairly gently slope down to the river inset into the river wall here where tradesmen would bring their horses to wash them down, presumably drawing water from the Humber using buckets on a rope or even taking them down into the river to wash and then walk back up the wide slope.  I think old photographs show some railings coming out at intervals from the river wall around half way across the wide slope to divide it into a number of stalls, but these had gone.

All ships greater than 60 metres in length are required to take on a pilot to ensure safe passage up the Humber estuary unless the master or first mate is a Pilotage Exemption Certificate Holder. This service, provided from 1512 to 2002 by independent Humber Pilots is now provided by the privatised Associated British Ports. Very Large Ships need two pilots

Fees depend on tonnage, and as an example, for a vessel of up to 300 tons there is a charge for pilotage from Hull to Goole of £267.39 and also a boarding/landing fee of £104.47. Larger vessels pay more.


36i21:  Humber pilot boat Camilla waits off Hull Pier, 1983 – Old Town

You can see the new pictures added each day at Hull Photos, and I post them with the short comments above on Facebook.
Comments and corrections to captions are welcome here or on Facebook.
Continue reading Hull Photos: 28/7/17-3/8/17

Yarls Wood 10


Detainees inside who could get to the windows welcomed the protest

Nothing expresses the racist and and oppressive state of our country more obviously than our immigration detention centres and the whole state apparatus for harassing asylum seekers and refugees. People fleeing violence and persecution, often rape and attacks flee to the UK and are greeting with a Home Office wall of disbelief. While in our legal system you are innocent until proved guilty, for migrants the system works in reverse; the Home Office assumes that they are liars and cheats unless they can produce evidence to prove their claims – and evidence is often impossible to provide.


Detainees in Yarl’s wood are subjected to rape, sexual abus and mental torture

Routinely gay asylum seekers are told they are not gay – and sent back to countries where they will face danger and violence because they are gay, Some have to go into hiding, others commit suicide rather than return or after they arrive home.

Others who came here when young or even may have been born here are told they have no right to be in this country – and are sent to countries they may never have been in and where they have no families or friends, removing them and splitting up families living in the uk.

Increasingly under Theresa May and now Amber Rudd as Home Secretary it has become simply a numbers game, trying in any way possible to cut down the number of migrants without regard to personal circumstances or hardship, using mass deportation charter flights to send people to Nigeria and elsewhere, including many whose asylum claims are still being processed.


People climb up to show placards and balloons and speak to the detainees

Our immigration prisons are now officially called ‘removal centres’, although many who are held in them will have a legitimate right to remain here. The name change reflects the aim to remove them – whether or not they will be able to prove a right to remain, as many still do.


Refugees to the UK are refused their rights in centres such as Yarl’s Wood

The protest on December 3rd was the 10th at this remote centre in Bedfordshire organised by Movement for Justice, and I think the ninth I’ve attended to photograph. It’s a journey of several hours, made easier on the protest days by a coach provided by MfJ from Bedford Station. Most of those held are effectively cut off from their friends and fellow migrants by the length of the journey and its cost – as most migrants live in urban centres and are poor if not destitute. MfJ also organise coaches from London, Birmingham and further afield for the protests and make it possible for refugees and others short of funds to make the journey. Otherwise it means an expensive train journey to Bedford followed by an over five mile taxi ride from the station.

I don’t cover events like this for the money – and seldom make enough to cover my costs from them – but because I think it important to record what is happening in our society and to make people aware of the issues and I want to do what I can to make that happen. I think the same is true for many of the other photographers there taking pictures.


Movement for Justice has led the fight to end immigration detention

Many of those who spoke – and could be heard by those inside the prison – were people who had spent time inside Yarl’s Wood or other detention centres. And a few inside were able to speak from inside using mobile phones – one of the few privileges detainees have over those in our normal prisons. These are prisons in all but name, but with the difference that none of those held knows what will happen to them. Some have been held for weeks, others for years, and many find themselves being taken from them and put on a flight home. Now these are mainly special chartered flights after passengers on regular flights objected to the forcible restraint of detainees on them, at times refusing to let the flights take off, clearly recognising the inhumanity involved.

These detention centres are also a threat hanging over refugees and asylum seekers living in our communities, who have to attend regularly to reporting centres. Every time they go it for these routine appointments they know they may be leaving in transport direct to Yarl’s Wood or another removal centre – sometimes returning from where they have previously been released. Inside these centres, run by private firms such as Serco, they are routinely refused their rights, bullied and poorly treated. Some have died because they have been refused medical treatment, others have been sexually abused.

These centres are a national disgrace, and a quite unnecessary punishment for those who have committed no crime and pose no threat to our society. They make it harder for the claims of those inside to be furthered and justice to be obtained. Any humane government would close them down and offer real help and support to asylum seekers in their place.

I took a great many pictures of the protest, and you can see a selection of them on My London Diary, as well as read a short account of the day in Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 10.
Continue reading Yarls Wood 10

Cleaners & Students united

One chant common on marches and at protests – both in Spanish and in English is ‘El pueblo unido jamás será vencido‘ – or for us monoglots, ‘The people united will never be defeated’. It began life three months before Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, a part of the left-wing New Chilean Song movement with music by Sergio Ortega and was unfortunately followed by the huge setback of the overthrow and assasination of Salvador Allende, though of course the people continued their struggle. In 1975 it was the basis for a piano piece of the same name with 36 variations by modern US composer Frederic Rzewski.


LSE cleaner Mildred

Cleaners & Students united (along with a few members of staff) and with the backing of the cleaners union the United Voices of the World and a few of their friends to secure dignity of treatment and equality of working conditions for the cleaning staff at the LSE. I’d been present when the campaign was launched at the end of September 2016, and again at their protest in October, and was pleased to be back with them again at the start of December. And even more pleased when after around 9 months of campaigning they finally achieved a successful conclusion to their fight.


LSE Anthropology Professor David Graeber with sacked cleaner Alba


Students, some carrying mops, in a corridor of LSE’s Old Building

The campaigners met in Houghton St, and then defied security and marched through the corridors of the Old Building to Portugal St. As well as protesting on behlaf of the cleaners, this was also at statement by the students that this was their university. As marchers on the streets shout ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ they shouted ‘Whose University? Our University!’. It was a reminder how far institutions like the LSE have been been taken over by managements who seem to regard students as inconvenient but necessary clients who provide the institution with income rather than as members of a collegiate body.


Protesters in Portugal St

Once outside the building the protest continued, and finally marched down Kingsway to the corner with Aldwych, where at 1 Kingsway are the offices of the Estates Division from which Noonan, the outsourced company which employs the cleaners, operate on the campus. The loud protest there made their campaign very visible to the many members of the public on the busy street.


Outside 1 Kingsway

I took many pictures and put rather a lot of them on-line, probably too many, but it was a lively protest and I found it almost impossible to take bad pictures! You might like to look at them with ‘Quilapayún 1973 – El pueblo unido jamás será vencido‘ as a sound track. The protest at the LSE was considerably smaller but had something of the same spirit.

Justice for LSE Cleaners
Continue reading Cleaners & Students united

Class War

I always like photographing protests by Class War. Although they are a small group (though sometimes quite large numbers join with them them) their protests are often very effective in raising issues, and are often unpredictable. The protests are always interesting, both because many of them have interesting views which they share freely and often amusingly, but also because of a sense of theatre.

Generally too there is some visual interest which a photographer can work with, with some excellent banners and posters. And they believe in having fun with their serious politics.

Their confrontational style also tends to make for good pictures, though at Croydon Box Park this was somewhat mollified by the owner coming down and having a serious talk with them, agreeing with much of what they were saying about the gentrification of Croydon and inviting them to come and have a talk later. Though there was more of a confrontation later when they spotted the BBC developers’ apologist Mark Eaton making his way into a meeting.

The heavy showers also dampened the atmosphere a little, sending us all into a nearby bus shelter. Later the large banner with its quotation from US anarchist Lucy Parsons showed its worth as those holding it carried it held over their heads to keep off some driving rain.

I had my own small confrontation too. As I note in the caption for the picture above, “The only possible response when someone says ‘You can’t photograph me’ is to photograph them.”

A week later I met up with Class War again, this time protesting against architect Patrik Schumaker of Zaha Hadid Architects, who had talked at a conference in Berlin about getting rid of social housing and public space in cities. The posters from Class War carried what was apparently a quotation from his presentation, “We must destroy Affordable Housing and remove the unproductive from the capital to make way for my people who generate value”

It was a chilling sentence, with clear similarities to the thinking and actions of the Nazis, and brought condemnation from a wide range of those concerned with human rights and equality, and housing campaigners in particular.

Schumaker’s views were not shared by all architects, and Class War received a message of support from one of those working under Schumaker. Not surprisingly their attempts to make contact with him through the entry phone at the gate and an invitation to come out and discuss the issue were met with no success.  There were extra security guards at the entrances, and even Lisa McKenzie couldn’t charm her way in.

Joining Class War in the protest were others from the London Anarchist Federation and the Revolutionary Communist Group, who also favour a similar kind of direct action and often cooperate at protests.

More text and pictures:

Class War Croydon ‘Snouts in the trough’
Class War protest ‘Fascist Architect’

Continue reading Class War