>Re-PHOTO

June 14th is now an important date in British history. The day of the great fire. On a smaller scale that the Great Fire of London, though killing perhaps a dozen times as many people. And a public spectacle that shocked us all with an immediacy that the earlier event lacked, shown live on TV. Though the TV pictures showed nothing of the true horror of people being burnt alive inside their homes.

Several of my friends had connections with Grenfell Tower. It was where one had lived for several years when he first came to London, and I think one of my Facebook Friends – who I didn’t know personally – was a resident and a victim.

When I woke to the news at 7 am I thought briefly about whether I should go there. It was obviously a huge news story, but it would be a couple of hours before I could be there, and I was sure there would be many others covering it. And it isn’t the kind of news I feel particularly well equipped to cover, either in terms of lenses or personality and I don’t have the kind of direct links for getting the story out that you need for a major incident. The kind of story of it I would be interested in too would require a long-term commitment, making contacts, getting to know people in the community and going day after day, and I wasn’t ready to give that. I thought that going there I would just be in the way, and stayed home.

Some of my photographer friends were there even while I was still in bed, woken by calls to cover the event or ealy risers who switched on the radio, heard the news, picked up their cameras and jumped on their bikes. Had I been younger and closer I might have done the same. Others I know rushed there as volunteers to see what they could do to help, and some remained going there day after day – and I followed their reports on Facebook.

It was three days after the event that I first walked close enough to see the blackened tower, going to pay my respects at the shrine outside Notting Hill Methodist. The media were still there behind the police tape sealing off a large area around but I didn’t really feel one of them, I was there as a human being, not a journalist, though I did take a few pictures and sent some to my agency who I knew wanted them.

The evening before my visit I’d photographed a protest about Grenfell, beginning at the Home Office, after which most of those present marched to Downing St. There were speeches from a man who was announced as a local councillor but I think was just a local resident who seemed obviously still in shock, describing how he had seen people buring in their homes and jumping to their death, holding a square of the flammable panels which had spread the flames rapidly up the building (we learnt later it was not intended for use on high buildings and had been installed without the proper fire gaps.)

And Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, spoke about how cuts had inhibited the ability of firefighters to deal with events such as this, and that the system of fire inspection had been deliberately made less rigorous to allow councils such as the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to save money on making necessary modifications. Again later we heard the TMO they set up to administer their council properties had deliberately employed an inspector who would not insist on proper measures as a way of cutting their costs.

And on the Saturday when I returned from visiting Grenfell, I found Class War holding a brief protest at Downing St.

A day or two ago, an official inquiry – not the Grenfell inquiry – came out with an interim report about fire safety, having taken evidence from over 300 interested people and bodies – and is continuing its work. But many see such official inquiries as a way of putting off action and of sweeping issues under the carpet.

If you want to know the truth about the fire and its causes, read The Truth about Grenfell Tower: A Report by Architects for Social Housing, (PDF available here: The Truth about Grenfell Tower) which was published 5 weeks after the fire (it does start with one small error – the fire began in the early morning of 14th June and so was actually on a Wednesday.)  It is a remarkable report and although not definitive (and there are some pertinent comments at the end by Robert Singer) it does I think make the major issues clear.  And if a small – if expert – group like ASH can produce this in a few weeks, surely we should have a full official report – and proceedings beginning in the courts – over six months after the tragedy.

‘Never Again’.

But it will happen again unless we bring back proper fire safety inspections and provide
safe housing for those who live in social housing and if the government continue to make
profit take priority over the safety of people.

Grenfell
Justice for Grenfell Downing St protest
Justice for Grenfell Ministry protest

Continue reading Grenfell

In June I photographed three events connected to the housing crisis in London, and in particular to the loss of social housing as London councils, mainly Labour dominated, rush to realise the asset value of the sites that council estates are built on.

Many London council estates are built in places that have good transport links to the City and West End where some are fortunate to have well-paid jobs and want somewhere convenient to live and can afford to pay the ridiculously high London market rates – well beyond the means of the average worker and of key public sector workers including teachers, social workers, police etc. Many Londoners are forced to live on the outskirts and travel in to work, often with long journey times.

Council housing generally pays for itself with rents half or often considerably less than market rents, providing housing that those on average or lower incomes can afford. But when council estates are demolished, their replacements involve little if any truly low cost housing, and often only a token amount of ‘affordable’ housing, which at up to 80% of market cost is usually well beyond most people. Often existing tenants are made promises of rehousing, but end up paying twice as much rent as before and with a less secure tenancy and usually in a far less convenient area. Those who have bought their properties find the compensation they get is only around half the cost of inferior properties built on the site of their former homes, and are forced to move, often to the edges of London and beyond.

Councils team up with private developers or with housing associations which are now little different to private developers, with the result that huge publically owned estates and properties become privately owned. It’s a bonanza for the shareholders, but a tragedy for the residents, and often fails to deliver for the councils, though a few councillors and council officers seem to end up with lucrative jobs in the private housing sector. Calling it ‘Regeneration’ is a con, though the policy comes from New Labour but its application is part of a long history of corruption in local politics by politicians of all parties.

The first two protests were outside the Berkelely Square London Real Estate Forum, an annual event involving council, architects and developers all after a piece of the lucrative cake from the private development of what is currently public housing, transforming what are now homes for the low paid into homes for the wealthy and investments often kept empty for overseas investors relying on the increase in prices on the London housing market.

Some of the estates that have been demolished or that councils intend to flatten are of genuine architectural merit, and many more are communities that have developed to give a decent life to those who live there and want to remain. Often they have suffered from a lack of maintenance over the years and need some bringing up to current standards for example of insulation, but most older properties were built to higher standards of space and basic construction than currently apply.
The Heygate estate deservedly won an architectural medal and its basic concepts were sound and despite a long attempt by Southwark to demonise it, using it to house problem residents and employing a PR firm to do it down, remained popular with many residents and was developing into a maturity. The council actually gave it away, making a loss on the deal which has converted it into the private Elephant Park. And rather than learning from their mistakes they are currently repeating them on the nearby Aylesbury Estate and others in the pipeline.

Another fine estate under threat, this time from Lambeth Council, is Central Hill and I was pleased to be able to be there when former Lambeth Council leader Ted Knight came to speak about the vision that led to its building, that nothing was too good for the working class. Now Lambeth want the working class to be forced out of the area. Our current listing process, run by Historic England, has shown itself to be averse to listing large projects of considerable architectural merit such as this, or the Robin Hood estate in Poplar, in favour of quirky oddities with some popular appeal (such as Philip Larkin’s former flat in Hull) which involve little or no financial considerations.

Stop demolishing council estates
London Co-operative Housing Group report
Ted Knight speaks for Central Hill

Continue reading Save Council Housing

But she didn’t go. Not yet. Despite losing her absolute majority in the General Election, the Tories were still the majority party. None of the other parties was keen to form a coalition to support her, but despite the need for austerity she was able to put together a large enough bribe to gain the support of the DUP, the so-called Democratic Unionist Party, founded and dominated for 37 years by the Rev Ian Paisley. It is a right-wing party, opposed to anything that threatens ‘Protestant’ domination of Ulster or in any way advances the rights of nationalists or human rights generally in Northern Ireland, and according to Wikipedia, it:

“was involved in setting up the paramilitary movements Third Force and Ulster Resistance.

It is right-wing and socially conservative, being anti-abortion and opposing same-sex marriage.”

It’s social policies are dominated by the bigotry of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, another Paisley creation, with just 15,000 members, mainly in Northern Ireland.  Its continuing opposition to social reforms have meant that there is very much a different law applicable in Northern Ireland to that in the rest of the UK, and make it hard for many of us to understand any real object to different laws relating to the movement of goods – as customs boundary at the Irish Sea.

The people have spoken’ – but not quite clearly enough

So far the ‘support agreement’ between the Tories and the DUP has held, though it appears to have needed some further bribery to get the recent agreement with the EU to enable the talks with them to move on to the next stage, and it seems likely that as talks develop further it may be impossible to keep the DUP on side. And since the coalition between the Tories and Lib-Dems from 2010-2015 led to the near demise of the Lib Dems and has made coalition a poisonous concept in UK politics it seems more than likely we will have a further election well before 2022.

But back in early June, immediately after the election it seemed unlikely that May could hang on, and protesters were out on the streets  with the message ‘May Must Go.’  I went to Downing St on the morning after the results and photographed protesters there and outside the temporary media village on College Green.

The following day was a Saturday and there was a May Has To Go Party/Protest #notourgovernment in Parliament Square, celebrating Jeremy Corbyn’s performance in bringing Labour close to victory, despite the opposition to him within his own party. The result showed clearly that he was electable even if not this time, destroying the arguments of his right-wing critics, though some continue to mutter and plot.

At the end of the rally, most of those present marched to Downing St and protested there for a while, before marching off. But there was no plan, and nobody knew where to go, and at Trafalgar Square they simply turned around and marched back to Parliament Square where I left them.

Protests follow Hung Parliament Vote
May has to go rally!
May has to go march!

Continue reading May Has to Go…

As regular readers will know, I seldom travel outside London simply to photograph events, the main exception recently being a number of visits to Yarl’s Wood for the protests their about immigration detention. But when Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) announced they were going to protest at Maidenhead, I added that to my diary.

‘Please Sir, I want some more’ and a lunchbox – May was promising to replace free school lunches with a 7p breakfast

Maidenhead is the constituency of Prime Minister Theresa May, and the General Election she had called was only a few days away. The disabled have suffered most from the Tory cuts since 2010; DPAC say Tory polices are heartless and are starving, isolating and ultimately killing the disabled and that they regard them as unproductive members of society, a sentiment recently stated rather clearly by the Chancellor, Philip Hammond. They also point out that a UN investigation has found the UK guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s human rights – though of course that verdict was rejected by the Conservative government.

Maidenhead is also not very far from where I live, a part of the true blue London fringe of wealth tax avoidance and complacency (though my particular area is rather more down-market, but electorally swamped by its neighbours.) I could have gone there by bicycle, mostly a pleasant ride of around 13 miles along towpath and various tracks with just a little on main roads, or slightly faster by keeping to the roads, and it was a nice day. But it was rather hot and I was feeling lazy and decided to take the bus – or rather two buses – which was only a little slower.

Buses still exist but are neither frequent nor very liable in these outer areas, and the service to Maidenhead from Windsor was roughly hourly in the main part of the day. And should there be problems I could always return – if rather slowly and expensively by train. By three trains (and a short walk between stations!) Most of those taking part in the protest had a much shorter journey than me with a fast and direct service from London Paddington, and they met up with local protesters to march from the station.

The bus journey to Maidenhead proved a little more difficult that expected, when my bus arrived at a different stop to that shown on-line, I think thanks to a one-way system, and a quick look on my phone showed I needed to be a quarter of a mile away in two minutes. I made it, somewhat out of breath, and the second bus was seven minutes late in arriving. Things came more or less to time on the way home, and the schedule meant I had 19 minutes to make the change – and from the same stop. All would have been fine had I not reached into my pocket for my phone when I arrived home and found it missing – I must have left it on the second bus.

I was able to confirm this, tracking its progress on my computer as it slowly made its way back to the depot at Slough, with nobody answering my calls. But the software enabled me to put a message on to it with my phone number, and I was relieved an hour or so later to get a call from the driver to tell me he had found it and it would be in the depot at Slough where I could collect it the next working day – Monday.

This time I did get on my bike, though it was a rather cooler and windy day with the odd spot of rain in the air, and was pleased to get to Slough rather faster than the bus would have taken me (it does go a rather longer way round) and relieved to get my phone back in one piece.

There were no problems in photographing the protest, though it was rather less lively than some by DPAC, and there were relatively few Maidenhead residents in the pedestrian area outside the shopping centre where the police suggested was the best place to protest (and I think they were probably right.) After the protest they marched back to the station where they had met, and a couple of photographers who had travelled by train from London left. I stayed on because I was sure something would happen.

Most of the police had left too, and the protesters then turned around and as I expected, blocked the road at a busy junction close to the station. The police were soon back and trying to persuade them to leave, with rather less patience than the Met usually show.

Police were a little mystified when one of the protesters identified himself as identified himself as General William Taggart of the NCA and claimed the law gave the military privilege a right to block roads in times of national emergencies such as these, but they shortly decided to argue with DPAC’s Paula Peters instead, threatening her with arrest unless she got off the road. Slowly the protesters moved off the road having blocked it for around 15 minutes, and the last were just leaving as I walked away to try to find the bus stop for my bus that was due shortly. Fortunately it was a few minutes late as the stop was not quite where Google marked it and not in the street it was named after.

Theresa May of course won comfortably in her constituency, though her share of the vote was down very slightly at 64.8%; the Labour vote was up 7.5% but still under 20% and even the Lib Dems gained slightly to get 11.2%. The remaining ten candidates shared a little over 4%.

DPAC Trash The Tories in Maidenhead
Continue reading DPAC at Maidenhead

I don’t usually work on Bank Holidays. Actually now they don’t have a great deal of significance for me, working as a freelance, they are just another day. I don’t drive so I’m not going to spend hours sitting in a traffic jam to some popular destination. Sometimes its a day or a weekend where we go away and stay with family who have an extra day off work, or we go out for a longish walk. But generally for us it’s a day just like any other.

This year, in our rather silly late May Bank Holiday (a kind of fixed Whitsun) there was a protest to tell the Prime Minister that the public are against having a vote in Parliament on the fox hunting bill. It’s a cruel and barbaric practice, chasing a terrified animal across country and often ending with it being torn apart by dogs. Something there should be no place for – like bear-baiting and dog fighting. Something that still goes on despite the act, and the efforts of hunt sabs – and often with police turning the other way so they can’t see either the illegal hunting or the violence against the sabs.

It has never been an effective way of controlling the numbers of foxes – and of course always depended on foxes being kept alive to hunt. Foxes can be a problem, as the bloody mess of chickens in one of my friends coops a few years back made only too obvious. But where necessary they can be killed humanely without making it a so-called sport.

I wouldn’t join the sabs because although I’m against it, there are many other things I feel more strongly about, but I rather admire them for standing up for their principles, despite the abuse and violence they are often met with. If we had a local hunt I’d probably go along and take pictures of that and try to expose what they are subjected to.

Despite a little celebrity support (and the little celebrity in this case was Bill Oddy) it was a protest that got relatively little coverage in the media, partly because the organisers determination to keep it well-behaved and entirely legal made it a little boring and predictable. The police were obviously expecting something rather more interesting and came in force, including some sniffer dogs, though I did wonder if they got extra overtime pay for working on a Bank Holiday.

And of course hunting is very much a class issue, more so now than ever. Keeping a horse is an expensive business, and packs of hounds even more so, though it does provide a small amount of employment in the countryside. So it wasn’t surprising to find Class War on the march, but like me they soon lost interest in the speeches opposite Downing St and went to the pub.

Class War were not standing any candidates in the General Election a couple of weeks later, but the Animal Welfare Party were, in Theresa May’s Maidenhead constituency. And although their banner read ‘Maidenhead Says No to Fox Hunting’, Andrew Knight got only 282 votes, around a third of that of the Green Party and UKIP and was rather comprehensively eclipsed by May’s 37,718 – though perhaps they contributed to this being down by 1.1%.

And the Animal Welfare Party did get rather more votes than Lord Buckethead, Grant Smith, Howling ‘Laud’ Hope of the Monster Raving Loony Party, the Christian Peoples Alliance candidate Edmonds Victor, The Just Political Party’s Julian Reid and Yemi Hailemariam and Bobby Smith!

Keep the Fox Hunting Ban

Continue reading Fox Sake May