Youth Strike for Climate: London, Friday 24 May 2019
As we are expecting record May temperatures in the next few days and a summer with more deaths than ever from excessive heat, it is abundantly clear that the response of governments and politicians around the world to the climate crisis has for many years been woefully inadequate – and continues to be so.
Of course many of us have been pointing this out for many years, stressing the need for drastic changes to move away from the use of fossil fuels. As well as a huge shift to renewable energy this would also have needed dramatic changes in lifestyle in the industrialised countries and a move away from the politics and economics of greed and inequality.
Back in 2019 many young people saw we were heading towards catastrophe and failing globally to take effective steps to ameliorate the unavoidable crisis. They face a future world where temperatures will be generally several – perhaps five – degrees higher and our current global weather systems will be replaced by more extremes, with even more common fires and floods.
The younger you are now, the worse the problems will get in your lifetime, so it is hardly surprising that the young are more concented, and that many thousands around the world took part in a global climate strike against the lack of action by governments worldwide to combat the climate crisis in London in May 2019.
It was a protest with a great deal of energy, with a large crowd of mainly school students meeting in Parliament Square before marching past several ministries and staging a sit-down outside the Ministry of Education demanding that climate change becomes a vital aspect of the curriculum.
A crowded sit-down on the street at the Education Ministry
Clearly many school art departments were already getting involved, with protesters carrying an unusually numerous wide range of placards, for once hugely outnumbering those mass-produced by the Socialist Workers Party.
A brief protest at Downing St
From there they marched back up Whitehall past Downing Street to hold a rally in front of Nelson’s Column, then returning to protest at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and finally going back to Parliament Square.
By then I think some police tempers were getting a little frayed and some students were manhandled rather aggressively off the road – and at least one minor was arrested.
I’d got tired with some often rather fast marching and the protest was still continuing when I decided it was time to go home.
Waiters Day, Monsanto, White Pride & The Line: Saturday 23rd May 2015 was a busy day, beginning with Unite Hotel Worker, moving on to the global March Against Monsanto, then an extreme right White Pride protest and finally going to the opening of the world-class sculpture walk roughly along the Greenwich Meridian, The Line.
Waiters Day call for fair contracts and union rights
Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane
Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union President Ian Hodson
The Hotel Workers branch of Unite protested outside the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, the birthplace of Zero Hours Contracts, on National Waiters Day, calling for an end to poor conditions, poverty wages, zero hours contracts and management stealing of tips.
Some of the protesters wore masks and placards with names of leading company bosses using zero hours contracts and exploiting workers and took part in a short ‘waiters race’ along the pavement in front of the hotel. The race was of course fixed
Back in 1979 waiters at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane were sacked when they tried to organise a trade union branch there. The case eventually went to court where it was decided their sacking was legal. It was this case, O’Kelly v Trusthouse Forte plc, that opened to door to Zero Hours Contracts in the UK. Previously employment law had been based on “mutuality of obligation” with employers obliged to offer hours of work, and employees to work those hours.
Until 2012 less than 1% of employees were on zero hours contracts, but their use then rocketed, and by 2015 had increased to 2.5%. By 2021, roughly half of the organisations in hospitality and entertainment were using them.
National Waiters Day seems to have been invented in the USA in the early years of this century and is generally observed on May 21st. A UK Waiters Day was begun by restaurant manager Fred Sirieix in 2013 and is on October 20th.
In London the annual Global March Against Monsanto by over 3.5 million people across 600 cities was marked by a small static protest opposite Downing St.
Monsanto and other companies which profit from GMOs claim they are playing an important part in feeding the world, but are actually attempting to monopolise food production for their own profit, patenting existing species, trying to prevent farmers from saving and using their own seed, encouraging the use of highly toxic chemicals and practices that degrade the soil.
As the protesters say, we need to plant our own seed, to grow local and to eat sustainable food, and to do so in our own ways in countries across the world.
The end of the banner reading Töten für Wotan (Kill for Wotan) was rolled up as I moved to photograph it
A group of around 30 ultra-right neo-Nazi protesters at the US Embassy remembered David Eden Lane, a convicted criminal and author of the ‘14 words’ statement used by extreme right groups about securing a future for white children. A small group of anti-fascists had come to oppose them.
One of the right-wing protesters makes a Nazi salute for my camera
Lane was a co-foounder of ‘The Order‘ a rabidly antisemitic group which bombed theatres and synagogues and he was convicted as the getaway driver after they murdered liberal Jewish Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in 1984 when he was the second on their long death list. The group also carried out violent robberies to finance their activities. He died in prison in 2007.
His 14 words, a close quotation from Mein Kampf, is often referred to in extreme right circles as ’14/88′, where 88 stands for the repeated 8th letter of the alphabet, HH, shorthand for ‘Heil Hitler’.
Peter Rushton of the England First Party waits to speak
Inside jail, Lane, a former Ku Klux Klan and the ‘White Christian Separatist’ group ‘Aryan Nation’ member, was one of the founders of a new pagan religion, ‘Wotanism‘, named after the Germanic god Odin, also know as Wotan, which serves as an acronym for ‘Will Of The Aryan Nation’.
It was good to get away to something much more pleasant, the official opening of the world-class sculpture walk, ‘The Line‘ with works by distinguished sculptors going north from Greenwich across the Thames and on to the Olympic Park.
I’d visited the festivities at Cody Dock in the morning when few people were around to photograph the site and walk a short stretch of the trail.
One piece I found particularly interesting was DNA SL90 (2003) made by Abigail Fallis from 22 shopping trolleys for a supermarket chain to mark the 50th anniversary of Crick & Watson’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. It’s location on the edge of Bow Creek next to a major distribution centre, seemed particularly appropriate, and it is an impressive piece.
A Cody Dock volunteer snips the ribbon and ‘The Line’ is open
I returned from central London just in time for the opening ceremony when a fair sized crowd had gathered.
Since 2015 new stairs down from the bridge at have removed the awkward detour alongside the busy Blackwall Tunnel Approach, but I think we are still waiting for the opening of the riverside path along Bow Creek south of Cody Dock.
6 Music, EDL & Democracy: On Saturday 22 May 2010 I began work outside the BBC with people protesting over the threatened closure of two popular radio networks, 6 Music and the Asian Network. I then covered a march through London by the far-right English Defence League. During the day I walked several times through Parliament Square and took a few pictures of the ‘Democracy Camp’ still there along with the longstanding Peace Camp.
Save BBC 6Music & Asian Network
Broadcasting House
Newspaper reports that the BBC might be planning to axe the digital music channel 6 Music stirred a huge campaign by supporters to save the radio station with #SaveBBC6Music trending on Twitter and a Facebook Group with nearly 180,000 members.
Radio 6 had been launched by the BBC in 2002 as a digital alternative music station and played a wide range of music including many genres largely marginalised by the more mainstream Radio 1 and Radio 2 – Wikipedia lists its output “pop, rock, dance, electronic, indie, hip-hop, R&B, punk, funk, grime, metal, soul, ska, house, reggae, jazz, blues, world, techno, experimental and many others“.
Liz Kershaw
Around five months later “the BBC Trust announced that it was not convinced by the BBC Executive’s plans and that the station would not be closed.”
Radio 6 fairy buns
The very public campaign to save the station led to a significant growth in listeners and this continued, and by 2014 it was attracting more listeners than Radio 3.
The Asian Network which had begun on BBC local radio beofre being launched in 1989, and had later gone nationwide were also under threat. The BBC Trust also rejected plans to close the network but did cut its budget by 50%.
The march through London to pay respect to the war dead at the Cenotaph and then hold a short rally at the Duke of York Steps was officially organised by ‘British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists’, but was largely if not entirely attended by those who had taken part in previous EDL marches, with many carrying EDL banners.
Unlike previous EDL marchers this was a peaceful march and there were few if any counter-demonstrations. The few hundred marchers included quite a few families and many carried St George flags.
Most here happy to be photographed when I met them outside a pub at the start of the march, many playing up for the cameras. And stewards quickly led away one man who seemed about to attack a press photographer.
Stewards also quickly dealt with a man who began an offensive chant about Allah, telling him the EDL was against such racist sentiments and also that the police had told them they would stop the march taking place if there were such racist chants.
There were loud chants against Sharia Law but also against ‘Muslim bombers’ a phrase that stigmatises all Muslims for the actions of a a few extremists which are not supported by the mass of the Muslim community.
The march set off noisily, but as it turned into Whitehall and approached the Cenotaph it became a silent tribute to British troops, which was followed by applause, with the chanting resuming as they came past Downing St, marching on through Trafalgar Square to Waterloo Place for the rally.
This man had been cautioned by police for wearing this ‘England Till I Die’ t-shirt on the street
On My London Diary I write more about the march and about some of the marchers I photographed who told me about police harassment and being refused entry to pubs for wearing England shirts. Most who spoke to me were also insistent that they were not racists and they were happy for Muslims to live here so long as they respected British traditions and fitted in with our way of life.
At the rally I was threatened by a few of the protesters who decided to try to prevent press photographers from working. I complained to a couple of the stewards, and one of them accompanied me as I took a few more pictures before leaving.
I walked through Parliament Square several times over the day and took a few pictures.
There wasn’t a great deal happening, but the Democracy Camp which had set up there on May Day was still there three weeks later, despite the huffing and puffing from Boris Johnson and others.
Although they claimed their action was supporting the long-term protest by Brian Haw and supporters who were under constant threat by the police and others, the Parliament Square Peace Campaign suspected the Democracy Camp of being promoted by the police.
Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid: On Wednesday 22nd May 2013 the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association organised a protest with a mock funeral, rally and mock trial outside Parliament against government plans to severely restrict legal aid.
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) had already cut huge areas out of legal aid, including many family, employment, housing and debt problems. This was a cost-saving exercise which greatly reduced access to justice for the great majority of people.
The Scales of Justice
The government were now proposing to end the right of legal aid clients to chose their solicitor with the work going to the cheapest bid under ‘price-competitive tendering’. As well as bankrupting many smaller law first this would open up “provision of legal aid to large non-legal companies, including Eddie Stobart and Tesco, and remove the ability of those in need of legal aid to chose appropriate specialists in the legal area involved.”
The event began with a parade by a marching jazz band leading a coffin with the meassage ‘RIP LEGAL AID’ carried by black-clad pallbearers wearing legal wigs, with the Scales of Justice in attendance.
‘A New Scale of Justice Mr Grayling?’ – Tesco and Eddie Stobart
Then came the speeches – very many of them, but at least there was a time-keeper ensuring they kept to a 5 minute limit – and some were quite amusing.
Among the speakers were politicians including Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn, and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, senior legal figures and some who had benefited from legal aid, including Gerry Conlan, one of the Guildford 40, a member of the family of Jean Charles De Menezes, Susan Matthews, mother of Alfie Meadows and Breda Power, the daughter of Billy Power, one of the Birmingham 6.
Others included Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, Blur drummer Dave Rowntree (a qualified solicitor) and QC Helena Kennedy. There are pictures of most of the speakers on My London Diary
After all the speeches there was a summing up by leading barrister John Cooper QC after which the whole assembly delivered its verdict on Grayling, ‘guilty as charged’.
Christian Aid Sponsored Walk – London Churches: Soon after we moved to our present address in 1974, Linda took over as Christian Aid organiser for the area, only retiring from this in recent months. Over the years she has gone on a number of sponsored walks for them and some related organisations as well as organising some in our area.
I’ve often walked with her on these, as well as sometimes sponsoring her, largely to keep her company, but sometimes to make sure she didn’t get lost despite the clear maps given to walkers and the large numbers of people following the walks. But also because the routes took you to and past some interesting places and sometimes into churches or areas of them seldom open to the public.
Although I have had a great interest in architecture I’ve never had a great interest in photographing church interiors, partly because they have been so much photographed by others, and the photographs I made on these walks were very much pictures on my days off. Often I carried very little equipment, though Sunday 20 May, 2007 was something of an exception as together with my Nikon D200 I had Nikon wide and telephoto zooms and a fisheye.
On My London Diary you can see over a hundred pictures I made on the walk, some of very well known and much photographed parts of the City of London, others less so. There are captions identifying most on those pages, but here I’ll post them without them – and just a couple of clues to the more difficult.
The plaque marks where Dositey Obradovich, first Serbian Minister of Education lived in London in 1784The bird a pelican, though to me it looked like a swan.
If you can name all these I’ve posted above, you must surely be a certified London Green Badge Guide – and I think anything over half shows a fairly intimate knowledge of the City. I think all the answers are in my post on My London Diary at Christian Aid walk – London churches.
And finally, one I can’t remember where I found it – perhaps someone can tell me in a comment.
Barclays & Solidarity with Gaza: On Saturday 19th May 2018 I photographed a monthly vigil calling on Barclays Bank to end its funding for climate chaos and then went on to another branch of Barclays on Tottenham Court Road for the start of a rolling pictures against businesses along Oxford Street against other businesses which are major supporters of the Israeli state.
Barclays Stop Funding Climate Chaos
Piccadilly Circus
I met the Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement (DANCE) in Golden Square Soho and walked with them as they processed to the Piccadilly Circus branch of Barclays Bank in a monthly vigil to call on the bank to Stop Funding Climate Chaos.
Three of the group then sat down to meditate in the centre of the floor of the bank with their placards, and another from the group told bank staff what they were intending to do, while others meditated on the pavement outside the bank and some of the group handed out leaflets.
The called on Barclays to ‘Listen to the Earth!’ and stop investing huge amounts – $12billion in the previous 3 years – into coal, oil and gas exploration which will lead to global warming, melting ice caps, bleaching coral reefs, causing forest fires and more intense storms.
They also pointed out the human rights abuses connected with their investments in Colombian coal mines and more and urged Barclays to switch their investments into renewables.
I left DANCE protesting at the Piccadilly Barclays and went to Tottenham Court Road, where the Revolutionary Communist Group had set up a street stall outside the Barclays close to Oxford Street.
‘Boycott Israel’ poster showing Ahed Tamimi slapping an Israeli soldier
A few days earlier the world had been shocked by the news of Israeli army snipers shooting unarmed protesters in Gaza, killing 58 and seriously wtargetounding over 2700.
Most were several hundred yards from the separation wall, posing no threat to Israel and many were shot in the back or legs as they ran away. Among those deliberately targeted by the snipers were medics treating the wounded and clearly identified journalists wearing distinctive blue press vests.
The snipers were thought to have been using special ammunition made in the UK which expands inside the body to cause greater damage.
After a short protest outside Barclays with a speech explaining how it supports the Israeli government and handing out leaflets, the group moved on to make similar short protests outside other major supporters of the Israeli state on Oxford St including Carphone Warehouse, Boots, ZARA and H&M, calling for shoppers to boycott them and to take part in the global BDS campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
The Cray Riverway is a 10 mile long path which follow the River Cray from Foots Cray Meadows to the junction with the the River Darent and along side this to the River Thames and then into Erith. Back in 1994 I walked along most or all of it, paying several visits to the area as I was a photographer rather than a walker and liked to wander rather than stride out.
River Cray, Barnes Cray, Bexley, 1994, 94-904-53
I think I took two different swing-lens cameras on these walks, both a Japanese and a Russian model which produces very similar results in terms of angle of view (just a little over a third of the entire view around me) and quality. I used both on a sturdy Manfrotto tripod, mainly working from my eye level, and using a nine-inch carpenters’ spirit level to try to level the camera both from side to side and front to back as I found the built-in levelling insufficiently accurate (and I didn’t always get it quite right even with the larger level.)
River Cray, Barnes Cray, Bexley, 1994, 94-904-41
In 1994 I was processing my own colour negative film and I think at times the negatives suffered a little either from my inaccuracies or from chemical issues, and I find it hard to get the colour of some images exactly as I would like them. The rest of these pictures are from Flickr, but one I’ve worked on the one above again since I uploaded it there.
Footpath, River Cray, Barnes Cray, Bexley, 1994, 94-904-42
I’ve already featured some of these images on earlier posts, but here I’ll include a few different images.
Lambeth College March for Further Education: Lambeth college workers and supporters from around the country marched to a rally in Brixton on Saturday 17th May 2014 against plans to ‘restructure’ the college, selling off most of it Brixton campus to allow a so-called ‘free school’ to be set off, and attacking the pay and conditions of the academic and service staff.
People came from FE colleges across the country to join the Lambeth college marchers
As well as cutting the pay to staff, increasing their working hours and cutting holiday and sickness benefits, the management were also setting out to break the power of both the lecturers union UCU and Unison which represents service workers at the college.
Lambeth College management had recently spent tens of thousands of pounds to get an injunction against the UCU after a 95% vote for a strike in a ballot with a 70% turnout. A re-ballot was expected to result in even greater support for a strike.
Brixton Ritzy Cinema strikers support the march
Unison appeared to be slightly less supportive of its members who had called unanimously for an indefinite strike at meetings, forcing them to have a time-wasting and bureaucratic ballot about whether they wanted a ballot, rather than an immediate strike ballot.
The planned Trinity free school was not needed in Brixton which according to the council already had a variety of good schools with space and although the proposal was for a “non-selective school with a Catholic ethos“, was not supported by the Catholic diocese who feel it would have a negative impact on existing Catholic secondaries in the area. It appeared to be aiming to promote right-wing and anti-science views on evolution.
The UCU recognised that the dispute at Lambeth was not just a local issue but one of national significance; if Lambeth could get away with doing this, other colleges would follow their lead. Representatives from colleges across London and the Midlands and further had come with banners to support the protest.
The march went past Stockwell station where Jean Charles de Menezes was murdered by policw in 2005And past the tree of remembrance at Brixton Police Station for Ricky Bishop, Sean Rigg and others killed there
It was also widely seen as an attack on trade unions, and among speakers at the rally in Brixton were Ian Hodson, the general secretary of the Baker’s union BFAWU and Labour MP John McDonnell.
Lambeth College became a part of the London South Bank University Group on 31 January 2019 as part of South Bank Colleges established by LSBU to operate further education provision (16-19 yrs) in the area.
Wikipedia comments: “While the dispute was not fully resolved, it prompted a dialogue about staff concerns and led to investments in the college’s facilities, including a redevelopment of the Brixton campus, the construction of the new Nine Elms campus, and, now, a re-build of the Clapham campus (planning permission granted in February 2024).”
Pratt’s Bottom & Walton on the Hill: On Saturday 16th May 2009 I photographed two May Queen events on the outskirts of London, at Pratt’s Bottom in Kent and Walton on the Hill in Surrey. The two places are around 10 miles apart as the crow flies, and I had gone with a couple of friends, one driving a car, and we managed to make the journey between the two rather more quickly than the roughly two and a half hours it would have taken by public transport.
Pratts Bottom May Queen
Pratts Bottom, Bromley
Chislehurst May Queen group wait for the start of procession at Pratt’s Bottom
Pratts Bottom is just inside the boundary of the London Borough of Bromley, though it seems very much out in the country, and Kent begins just a few yards away. On my first visit there, walking from the station at Knockholt I had wandered along a short stretch of the main road actually in that county. You can see my account and pictures from that 2008 event at Pratts Bottom Village Fete.
Both in 2008 and in 2009 the weather for the Village Fête was pretty dismal, and you can see umbrellas in many of the pictures – with May Queen groups having them in their realm colours.
Pratts Bottom (most locals seemed to spell it without the apostrophe on my map) has its own May Queen group, and the event included other May Queen groups from Green Street Green, Orpington and Pett’s Wood.
Fortunately the rain stopped and the sun came out for the procession up Rushmore Hill to the village green where the fête was taking place. The procession was led by a cadet marching band and Miss Bromley. The band at the front set off at a cracking pace that left some of the younger members of the May Queen realms struggling to keep up – and making life a little difficult for photographers.
Thr Pratts Bottom May Queen is crowned
On the village green there was a brief ceremony in which the 2009 Pratt’s Bottom May Queen was crowned by the last year’s queen, and Miss Bromley officially opened the fete. Then we walked down to the car to drive to another May Fayre.
This was another event with a May Queen that I had photographed previously – this time in 2007, but not part of the London May Queen events.
The May Pageant here was started (or ‘revived’) forty years ago in 1969 and while many such local carnival events had faded away by the end of the twentieth century this one was still enjoying wide popular support, with crowds on the street.
It’s a community event with the Vicar and her church choir sitting on hay bales in a cart pulled by a tractor, various school and nursery groups, youth groups and more, including a May Queen in a car and her rather mixed entourage in a Young’s brewery dray.
The May Queen in an open carAndher retinue in a brewery drayTeddy Bears Picnic
And as the procession reached the fairground I stopped taking pictures and sat down to have a drink before going home. For some reason I didn’t include the pictures here of the May Queen and her friends in the post on My London Diary but there are many more pictures from the event at Walton on the Hill May Pageant.
Conscientious Objectors, Cannabis Education & Bengali New Year: Three unrelated events on 15th May 2005 in London. May 15th has been observed in Europe as Conscientious Objectors’ Day since 1982 and became International in 1985 when it was adopted by War Resisters’ International. A ceremony is held every year on the day in Tavistock Square at the site of the massive slate Conscientious Objectors’ Commemorative Stone which has the inscriptions:
TO COMMEMORATE MEN & WOMEN
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS TO MILITARY SERVICE
ALL OVER THE WORLD & IN EVERY AGE
TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE
ESTABLISHED AND
ARE MAINTAINING
THE RIGHT TO
REFUSE TO KILL
Their foresight and
courage give us hope
THIS STONE WAS DEDICATED ON 15 MAY 1994
INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS' DAY
I left before the end of the ceremony and hurried to Russell Square for the start of the annual march calling for the legalisation of cannabis, walking with this to Trafalgar Square and then taking the tube to go to Brick Lane for the Bengali New Year Festival. Below is what I wrote in 2005.
The Right to Refuse to Kill – International Conscientious Objectors Day
Tavistock Square
May 15th was International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, and the ‘right to refuse to kill’ group of people from the Peace Pledge Union, Conscience, The Unitarian Peace Fellowship, Christian CND, The Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, Pax Christi, The Women’s International League For Peace And Freedom And Dances Of Universal Peace had organised a ceremony at the Commemorative stone in Tavistock Square. After a brief introduction by Tony Kempster of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, Sue Gilmurray sang her song ‘Heroes’ and then Angela Sinclair who was a conscientious objector in the Second World War told her story and spoke about the right not to take part in war.
After a speaker from Amnesty and another from Conscience, the names of almost seventy conscientious objectors, many of who had died for their beliefs, were read out. The organisers had given out white flowers labelled with their names, and as each name was read, the person holding their flower came and placed it on the stone. After a one minute silence the commemoration continued with another song and then dancing, but I had to leave at this point.
The annual march to demand the legalisation of cannabis had to be postponed and moved to a central London location after Lambeth council had refused to allow it to use Brockwell Park. Probably for this reason, the numbers seemed well down on previous years.
The last year had seen both an increasing recognition of the value of cannabis in relieving pain for some conditions, and also in revealing the mental health problems it causes some users. Despite these, the existing anti-drugs policies are more and more discredited, leading to increasing crime and addiction, and also greatly increasing the probability of cannabis users moving on to more dangerous and addictive drugs.
Cannabis needs to be taken out of the hands of drug dealers, and into some form of legalised supply chain which would cut out the drug dealers, allow better supervision of the product and create a total separation between cannabis and other more dangerous substances.
It would also allow the creation of a tax revenue, some of which could be spent on the rehabilitation of drug users.
I went with the march to Trafalgar Square and stayed to listen to a couple of the speakers, but soon lost interest and got on the District Line to go up to Brick Lane for the Bengali New Year Festival.
When I got there it was just too crowded; after walking around for a few minutes I gave up and came home.
