Friday 21st April 2023 is the start of ‘The Big One‘, a four day action ending on Monday 24th April organised by Extinction Rebellion when people from a huge range of groups and movements, not just XR, will gather throughout Westminster and at the Houses of Parliament.
Emma Thompson at XR’ Sea of Protest, 19 Apr 2019
XR say “The climate, nature and humanity face disaster. We know it’s time to act. Do you trust politicians to do the right thing for us? For the planet? Join 100,000 people holding them to account.“
More than 200 organisations are supporting the action, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and PCS, although when I checked with a week to go only around 26,000 people had actually registered to come. I imagine many like me are loath to sign up publicly to protest, or just lazy or haven’t got around to it.
The events are planned by XR to be family friendly, accessible and welcoming, creative and engaging “with People’s Pickets outside government departments and a diverse programme of speakers, performers and workshops, awash with colour and culture. There will be art and music, talks from experts, places to listen and engage, and activities for the kids.”
I hope to be there and recording the events, though these days I’d having to take things a little easier than I used to and may need to rest, perhaps on the Sunday when The Big One’s Running Out of Time! coexists with the London Marathon. But please come if and when you can to join in. More at the Extinction Rebellion web site.
Four Years ago, Extinction Rebellion was coming to the end of a week of protests that shut down much of London, having occupied Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus, Mable Arch and other key sites on Monday 25th. I’d photographed a number of their actions and you can read about them and see pictures on My London Diary.
On Friday 19th April 2019 the ‘Sea of Protest’ was still occupying and blocking Oxford Circus with a large pink yacht named for the Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres assassinated in 2016. As a part of activities planned to show ‘Love For The Earth’ on the 5th day of the occupation there, actress Dame Emma Thompson arrived from New York to speak.
Parts of the press and media with interests in fossil fuels and giving support to climate deniers criticised here for flying here to speak. But though we need to drastically cut our dependence on aviation, this isn’t about ending journeys like these for which there is no real alternative, but for making huge cuts in the total numbers of flights. We need to end the subsidies to aviation and levy taxes on flying – a system with per person annual carbon allowances and heavy penalties for exceeding these would be more fair.
Police stood and watched the crowd as Thompson spoke, but a few minutes later after I had left the area for a short break, police surrounded the pink yacht and put a ring of officers around Oxford Circus.
Slowly police persuaded protesters to leave by threatening them with arrest and cutting off those who were locked on around the bottom of the yacht. There were a number of arrests of those who had refused to leave. XR organisers persuaded people not to physically oppose the police action as this went against the non-violent principles of Extinction Rebellion.
XR’s policy of non-violence and encouraging as many people as possible to get arrested has led to criticism from many more militant groups, and puts a great stress on those who give legal assistance, including Green and Black Cross, “an independent grassroots project set up in the spirit of mutual aid to support social and environmental struggles within the UK”.
Sunday December 14th 2008 was a cold and cloudy but bright winter day as I made my way from Waterloo Station to Columbia Market, stopping to take a few pictures of the young men jumping around the street structures by the Waterloo roundabout before catching a bus to Bethnal Green to photograph in Columbia Market.
The market was busy with people buying Christmas trees, decorations and flowers, but I hadn’t really come with the right camera to work unobtrusively, but was using the DSLR-size Nikon D300 with the rather bulky original DX Nikkor 18-200mm zoom, a versatile combination but not the best for this kind of work. I wandered around taking a few pictures before leaving to walk to Brick Lane.
I was early for the protest which was to take place there, and took some pictures, mainly of graffiti while I was waiting. As I noted, “Somehow the people seem less interesting than in the old days, less eccentric and dodgy characters, and,except on the very fringes, the market seems rather more commercial in character.”
But the market was also useful for me, as I was getting a little cold, and when I put my hand in my coat pocket found my woolly hat was no longer there. ” A couple of stalls along I found a new one for a quid, with a label calling it a fashion hat and a £9.99 price tag. And there were fancy chocolates like the ones I couldn’t bring myself to pay the ridiculous prices in Waitrose going for around a quarter of the cost… ” But there wasn’t room for anything else in my camera bag.
Solidarity with Whitechapel Anarchists! – Brick Lane, 14th December 2008
The previous week members of Whitechapel Anarchist Group were harassed by police while distributing their newsletter at the top of Brick Lane and had called for support this week to carry out their entirely legal activities here.
This week a largish contingent of police had come along to watch, obviously expecting trouble, but at first they mainly stood on the opposite side of the road, observing and photographing the protesters. When one protester stood in front of an officer taking pictures he was hauled off a short distance down the road and questioned before being marched away to a waiting police van. I photographed this, taking care to keep at a distance where I was clearly not obstructing the police. Apparently they decided to arrest him for swearing when he was being questioned, although this Is clearly not an offence.
The police spent rather a lot of time photographing and videoing me during the event, in a way that was obviously meant to harass me, as well as similarly harassing the protesters. This happens regularly at protests, and the police have at times admitted keeping a photographic database in which they can look up people and see which demonstrations they have attended. Though as I noted, all those I go to are recorded in My London Diary.
Police search a woman – I think just someone passing by the protest
Some time later I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Metropolitan Police to try and find out what photographs and videos they had in their files showing me, giving a list of some of the occasions where I knew they had taken pictures. The response denied they had any pictures of me.
As my account ended, “Clearly their activities around Brick Lane today were a waste of public money, and worse than that. They don’t make us any safer and were not combating any real threat to public order. If they have an agenda it seems purely political.”
Solidarity with Revolt in Greece – Dalston, 4th December 2008
I arrived outside Dalston Kingsland station at 2.30pm to find a group of around 50 protesters waiting on the pavement outside station for a protest march in solidarity with protests by Greek anarchists following the killing of a 15 year old youth by the Athens police.
The police had come in force to the starting point of a march which would have walked peacefully along the streets to the peace mural on Dalston Lane for a rally with some speeches and some noisy chanting. It would only have caused a few minutes stoppage to traffic as they had marched the short distance along the road.
At the end of the rally the couple of hundred who had turned up would probably have dispersed to their homes and local pubs and the event would have ended with no trouble. But police decided to provoke a confrontation by taking action against people wearing scarves across their faces – part of the anarchist ‘uniform’.
Another protester is arrested and searched
But this makes it hard for the police to take photographs for the database that they usually deny they have. Section 60(4A) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Act gives the police powers to require the removal of face coverings that an officer is satisfied is worn wholly or mainly to conceal identity, provided that an officer of or above the rank of inspector has given an authorisation for such action within a given area for a period of up to 24 hours.
So either they were acting illegally or clearly they had decided in advance to obtain this authorisation and were determined to make use of it. Obviously this was going to cause trouble. They began by approaching one of a men beside a banner with the message ’15 YEAR OLD SHOT DEAD BY GREEK COPS PIGS KILLERS’ and told him to remove his mask. An argument ensued and eventually, still wearing his mask he was led away.
Police then grabbed another protester who was alleged to have punched a policeman, ppushing him to the pavement and searching him. Other people protested at the violence being used and I think at least one of these was also arrested. Others held up a banner with what seemed now to be a rather appropriate slogan for London as well as Greece, ‘TERRORISM IS THE POLICE IN OUR STREETS’.
A police officer who apparently failed to photograph me :-)
More masked protesters were grabbed by police, though I’m not sure how many were actually arrested. Police began to form a cordon around the protesters in front of the station and photographers were made to go outside this – and there were quite a few protesters now on the opposite side of the street – being photographed and videoed by police.
Arresting for arguing his legal rights
Police vans were then moved up between the photographers and the main part of the protect, conveniently hiding most of what was taking place from the press. But we saw a protester who tried to argue his legal rights with police being handcuffed – in a rather panotmime fashion in my series of pictures. Those protesters who were not yet held inside the police cordon then surged out onto the main road – a red route – and blocked traffic entirely until police – at least one officer using his baton – pushed them back.
By this time, many of the black-clad and masked anarchists who were not inside the police kettle had moved away leaving mainly Greek supporters of the protest on the opposite side of the road.
It seemed clear that the police had come to the event determined to turn it into a show of force between police and protesters – and that the police had won. But in doing so they had spent a small fortune in public money and caused an hour and a half of disruption to normal life and to traffic on one of North London’s main arteries. And what may I thought may have been meant as “some kind of political charade organised to increase public support for increasing surveillance and repressive legislation” had in fact rather suggested the truth of the largest banner at the protest’s opening statement ‘THE STATE IS THE ONLY TERRORIST’.
The world’s largest arms fair currently takes place in London every two years, at the Excel Centre, a large exhibition centre in Custom House, East Ham in the London Borough of Newham. Organised by Clarion Events, the Defence and Security Equipment International show is “fully endorsed” by the UK Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Trade, but condemned by London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan and most Londoners and opposed by a week of protests organised by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and supported by many other groups.
Sadiq Khan has failed to stop the arms fair taking place, lacking the powers to do so despite his repugnance. Amnesty International criticise it for selling weapons of torture and those that have been shown to have been used against civilians, and CAAT point out that it is attended by official military and security delegations from countries which are noted abusers of human rights, including those on the UK’s official list of countries subject to arms embargo.
Of course with the UK the high profits to be made on arms sales often trumps such listings; Action on Armed Violence points out that “five of the UK’s human rights priority countries feature on the DIT’s ‘key markets’ directory for potential arms sales (Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia)” and that “UK export licences for small arms and ammunition have been approved to 31 destinations on the embargoed and restricted list” betwwen 2015 and 2020.
In September 2017 I photographed protests outside the DSEI arms fair on four days in the week before the fair as well as a related event elsewhere and a wreath-laying ceremony on the opening day. There are fuller accounts on My London Dairy – links at the end of this post.
No Faith in War DSEI Arms Fair protest – ExCeL Centre, London. Tue 5 Sept 2017
The second day of protests against the world’s largest arms fair held in London’s docklands was ‘No Faith In War’, a series of events organised by various faith groups.
Quakers held a meeting by the side of the approach road to the East Gate of Excel, and some sat on the road to block it. Eventually police lifted this woman carefully and carried herto the side of the road. Some who persisted in blocking the road were arrested and taken to police vans.
Four people abseiled from a roadway bridge to block the road. It took police a long time to find a safe way to remove them.
People held a mass on the roadway – police waited until they finished then made them leave.
At the west gate people walked very slowly in front of the lorries. Eventually police pushed them off the road. Some were arrested. Others had come to support them and sing hymns and religious songs. There were various other activities at both gates.
Stop the Arms fair protesters carried out a series of lengthy lock-ons on the roads at both East and West gates blocking access to London’s ExCeL centre where preparations are being made for the worlds’s largest arms fair.
Police teams took quite a long time to carefully separate the people who were locked together to block the roads. There was also some street theatre from various groups. One pair of protesters managed to lock themselves on the roadway inside the centre gates – but police would not let journalists get closer to photograph them.
I went back to the East gate to find another pair locked on there. The protesters managed to block both entrances for several hours – and there were quite a few arrests.
Veterans for Peace came to set up a banned weapons checkpoint. Police waved lorries on past their checkpoint, encouraging one lorry to drive through the protest at a highly dangerous speed, and removed protesters from the road with threats of arrest.
At lunchtime North London Food Not Bombs moved onto the road and blocked it to serve protesters with an excellent road-block picnic. After 15 minutes police moved in to clear the road, threatening the diners with arrest.
DSEI Festival Morning at the East Gate – Sat 9 Sep 2017
Several hundred people listened to a programme of speakers, workshops, spoken word, choirs and groups and stopped lorries bringing arms by walking in front of them until pushed aside by police.
Festival of Resistance – DSEI West Gate – Sat 9 Sep 2017
Things were a little livlier at the West gate, where cyclists in a ‘Critical Mass’ were arriving and Charlie X, a Chaplin clone who protests in mime had just been freed from the lorry he had locked on to but had been arrested and was being led away by a dozen police. They also arrested one of the cyclists for having a bike lock around his neck. He had it to lock the wheels to his bike if he had to leave it anywhere. If carrying a lock or chain for your bike was an offence, every cyclist in London would face arrest.
DSEI East Gate blocked – Sat 9 Sep 2017
I took the DLR back to the East gate, arriving to find the road blocked by a lock-on, with two people joined through a pipe which the police were struggling to remove. Finally they did and arrested to two involved. People were blocking the road and holding a religious service, but police forced them off the road – with at least one more arrest of a woman who refused to move.
While the police were removing the two locked on, a man had locked himself to the lorry – and he too was removed and arrested. Other people came onto the road to block lorries and there were poetry and musical performances. Then a group of seven people joined arms in a circle on the road and refused to move. They were still there when I had to leave, stopping off briefly at the DLR entrance to the Excel Centre to photograph a musical protest there.
#Arming The World -Woolwich Arsenal, London. Tue 12 Sep 2017
Ice & Fire theatre and Teatro Vivo with designer Takis, gave their first performance of #Arming The World, a satircial weapons catwalk show spreading information about Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) at Woolwich Arsenal with actors dressed as arms dealers, a Paveway IV Missile, a Eurofighter Typhoon and CS Gas.
Wreath for victims of the arms trade – Royal Victoria Dock, Tue 12 Sep 2017
East London Against Arms Fairs (ELAAF) held a procession carrying a white wreath with the message ‘Remember Victims of the Arms Trade’ around the Royal Victoria Dock on the day the DSEI Arms Fair opened, launching the wreath onto the water opposite the ExCeL centre.
On 30th August 2014 I went to Kilburn and Cricklewood, where the far-rightSouth East Alliance had annnounced they would protest at some empty offices they claimed were used as a recruiting centre by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is a Sunni Islamist religious, political, and social movement largely based in Egypt whose candidate Mohamed Morsi was became the first to be elected as Egypt’s president in 2012, but was deposed by the military after massive popular protests a year later. The MB was then declared a terrorist group and Morsi was tried and sentenced to death. He was retried after that trial was overturned and died during his second trial, possibly due to being denied medical care.
A few other countries also declared the MB a terrorist group, but it had few members in the UK, though some of its supporters set up a ‘global information centre’ here in 1999 which I think operated from this small first floor ‘World Media Offices’ in Cricklewood. In 2014 Prime Minister David Cameron set up an investigation into its alleged terrorist activities, and the office closed down, moving its activities to Austria. The investigation reported that the MB had not been linked to terrorist related activity against the UK and had condemned the activities of Al-Qaeda in the UK.
My bus to Cricklewood took me along the route of the march planned by the South East Alliance (S.E.A.) from Kilburn Underground Station, and I saw a number of police vans and motorbikes waiting for the event to start. There were a group of around 50 people and quite a few banners for groups in North West London United ready to oppose the S.E.A. march and tell them that fascists and racists were not welcome. I made a few pictures before taking the bus back to Kilburn station.
The station had been closed in anticipation of trouble there, but there are two stations on other lines a short walk away. Eventually 4 people arrived with a megaphone and flags, including Paul Pitt, leader of the S. E. A. and former Essex organiser for the English Defence League, who apparently expelled him two years earlier which led to him forming the S. E. A.
It was a rather embarassing situation with so few people present, and Pitt recognised me from previous exteme-right events I had photographed – which had led to threats against me in person and on-line. Although my photographs tried to show these events objectively, that was perhaps the problem so far as they were concerned. But there were plenty of police around.
Eventually the march set off, with the three men leading it and a woman walking more slowly with the aid of a stick completing the group some yards behind.
At Cricklewood the anti-fascists were waiting, with a line of police across the road to keep the two groups apart. Police were also surrounding and protecting a handful of S. E. A. supporters who had come directly to the end of the protest, and there were a few scuffles and arrests as anti-fascists tried to reach them.
Police stopped Paul Pitts small group of marchers and held them on a corner a short distance away. For a while it seemed he was being arrested, but then more officers arrived and he was told his protest would be facilitated.
I returned to the other small S. E. A. group surrounded by police. While some of them were busy photographing police and myself and other photographers and trying to stop us taking pictures others were holding up banners and posters and demanding we photograph them.
In front of the former office the anti-fascist protesters were continuing with speeches and shouting against the S. E. A. and I saw police make at least one more arrest, though it was unclear why. I think they may have objected at some of the language used.
Then I saw some flags approaching along a side road, still several hundred yards away and rushed down to meet them. Another group of S. E. A. supporters was arriving, perhaps bringing the total number to around 50. Police arrived there just before me and stopped them.
As I took photographs these protesters at first began to hold flags in front of my lens then used the long canes holding the flags as weapons, trying to poke the photographers in their eyes. Eventually police escorted them to join the other S.E.A. protesters where they continued to try to attack photographers with their flag sticks.
Police eventually did react to the violent attacks with flags – by forcing photographers to move further away. By this time I was fed up with being insulted and attacked – and in any case people on both sides were drifting away and nothing much more seemed likely to happen. The road had now been reopened and I saw a bus coming and made for the nearest stop to make my way home.
Class War, Edna, Police And Protesters – I had a long and busy day in Westminster on Wednesday 27th May 2015. It was the day of the Queen’s speech to parliament, reading out the intentions of the government’s coming session, and people and groups had come to the area to make their feelings about this clear.
I usually avoid any occasions involving royalty who I think reflect the worst aspects of our class-based society. We got it right in 1649, when Charles I was found guilty of attempting to “uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people” and although the ‘Commonwealth’ wasn’t a great deal of fun the restoration of the monarchy was a a national tragedy even more retrograde than Brexit.
I don’t want to photograph crowds of sycophantic flag wavers – including many tourists, nor the royals themselves, who many feel are an inbred group of parasites who rose to wealth and power through the theiving, skullduggery and aggression of their ancestors, maintaining their position through a biased military, political and legal system. Certainly we would be a better and healthier nation without them and the class system they help perpetuate.
Royal occasions also bring out the very worst in our police, and this was clearly on show in their actions against Class War and some others who had come to protest at the event. Rather than upholding the law they were making it up on the spot to avoid any possible embarrassment to the Queen, forcing people to move and making arrests without any lawful basis.
Class War had come with their controversial banner showing the political leaders and I managed to get a few images of them was they held it up for a few seconds on the Queen’s route well before she was due to arrive. But they were immediately forced to take it down and told they would be arrested if they continued to protest, with the threat that the banner would be taken from them.
It was a copy of the one that police had seized at a ‘Poor Doors’ protest a couple of months earlier and held in Bethnal Green police station (where they lost it rather than hand it back when they had to admit they had no legal basis to have taken it.) Banners aren’t cheap and Class War funds are limited to a few individuals digging in their pockets, so they rolled it up and moved away.
Police then arrested two men, one holding a video camera, and another holding under his arm a small poster with a message about austerity being stupid. As my caption states “They tell the police correctly that they have committed no offence, but the police decide to arrest them anyway. Just in case.” They were released without charge a couple of hours later.
As a large group of police were following and harassing them, Class War and friends decided to leave for a nearby pub. I followed them, along with a large squad of police, and talked with them as they stood outside quietly having a drink. On the other side of the road were around 50 police standing around watching them, including a squad of TSG, looking menacing for over an hour. I was later told police kept following some of Class War for the next six hours. It all seemed a huge waste of public money.
I’d stayed with Class War so long because it looked likely that the police were going to take action, perhaps make more arrests although no offence was being committed, but also to let the crowds and policing around the Queen’s route disperse, and then made my way up Parliament Street to Whitehall where Compassion in Care were campaigning for ‘Edna’s Law’ which would make it an offence not to act on the genuine concerns of a whistleblower and protect those revealing scandals in social care and other sectors.
This would replace the Public Interest Disclosure Act which has failed to protect the public, the victims or the whistle-blowers. Compassion in Care say that the reccomendations of the then recent Francis review “will do nothing to protect whistle-blowers or encourage anyone else to raise concerns. This is because his recommendations rely on employers and regulators – which include the very same people who have “got away with” cover-ups, ignoring concerns, and victimising whistle-blowers for many years.”
I walked on up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square where people were beginning to gather for a National Campaign against Fees and Cuts rally. A group of police were gathered around a man and arresting him, but refusing to answer any questions from a concerned crowd around them as to what was happening. A small crowd followed the police as they took the man to a nearby police van, where a police officer assaulted a young bystander who was then also arrested. Finally as the van drove away, an officer told us that the man was wanted for an earlier offence and the arrest was in no way related to the protest that was gathering. If the police had made this clear from the start all this could have been avoided.
Back in Trafalgar Square a man appeared with a mobile disco and crew and people began to dance. This turned out to be Lee Marshall (aka Disco Boy) who describes himself as an “entertainer prankster DJ host”, and apparently has gained a huge social media following, with his video stunts watched by hundreds of thousands of people and had come to perform in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere in Westminster. He moved off as the rally began.
There was a short rally for the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) with various groups including Class War holding banners on the plinth of Nelson’s column before they set of for the march.
Also in Trafalgar Square were Ahwazi protesters from the Hashem Shabani Action Group whose homeland, which includes most of Iran’s oilfields, was occupied by Iran in 1925. Since then Iran has attempted to suppress their heritage and identity, in part by resettling non-Ahwazi Iranians in the area.
The students and some others at the NCAFC protest then set off to march down Whitehall, where police made an unsuccessful attempt to stop them, at Downing St, arresting several forcefully. There seemed to be little point as police numbers were clearly too few and many protesters were simply walking around them and the barriers as I did.
The Ahwazi protesters had marched with the students and they stopped in Parliament Square for a rally while the rest marched on peacefully around the area for some time stopping to protest outside the Dept of Work & Pensions and the Tory Party HQ before returning to protest noisily in front of Downing Street which was protected by mass ranks of police. They then marched on, I think intending to go towards Buckingham Palace, but I’d had enough walking around.
On the pavement opposite Downing St at the same time as the NCAFC march the People’s Assembly were holding a static ‘End Austerity Now’ protest. I listened to a few of the speeches and photographed them. But it had been a long and rather confusing day and it was time for home.
Scientists Demand Politicians Listen, Family Justice & Chechnya – Five years ago on Saturday 22nd April 2017, thousands of scientists marched from outside the Science Museum to a rally at Parliament to demand policies based on proven research rather than fake news and fake science. Elsewhere in London people called for urgent reform of our secretive Family Courts and against the torture and killing of gay men in Chechnya.
Scientists march for Science – Kensington
I began my working day on Exhibition Road outsed the Science Museum where a large crowd of people was gathering, many wearing white lab coats, to clebrate the vital role of science in our lives and to demand that the UK and other governments stop listening to fake news and fake science and base policies on proven research.
They saw a particularly dangerous situation in the USA, where President Trump was promoting climate denial and other policies in the face of the well-established science and giant US companies particularly the fossil fuel producers have been spending unimaginable sums over the years to promote biased research and lobby to produce doubt over established facts – just as the tobacco lobby did to undermine the science behind the cancer risks of smoking.
‘The New Greenwashing’, an article just published by Nick Dowson’s article in the May-June 2022 issue of New Internationalist spells out the 6 ‘Tricks’ that Big Oil has used to prevent any meaningful action to make the drastic reductions needed in fossil fuel use and ensure that they continue to make massive profits from oil and gas as we move closer and closer to extinction.
They “Distract, delay and obfuscate” by setting distant targets and coming up with vague ideas like ‘net zero’ when what is needed is an end to fossil fuels, “Sell false solutions” such as carbon credits, carbon offsets, ecosystem services, “Greenwash gas” as being natural and clean, “Peddle futuristic-sounding fictions” particularly around hydrogen use, “Divert subsidies from renewables to unproven technologies” in particular carbon capture and storage and “Individualise, demobilise” making us feel it is our personal responsibility through gadgets such as the carbon footprint calculator invented by BP rather than a problem caused by their activities
Here in the UK Brexit is threatening our international cooperation in science and the BBC uses the excuse of impartiality to give equal billing to accepted and tested science and fake science often presented by non-scientists.
I spent some time watching the march go past, turning into Kensington Road on its way to Parliament Square, wondering what people who saw them going past would make of some of the slogans, such as like ‘Do I have large P-value? Cos I feel Insignificant‘ or ‘dT=α.ln(C1/C0)‘. Many scientists do seem to have a problem in communicating with the rest of us. Fortunately there were others easier to understand.
When the scientists marched off from Kensington to Parliament I went in search of another group of protesters who had marched in the opposite direction, from Parliament Square to the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.
The had come to protest against the injustices perpetrated by our secret Family Court system and police and social services, and several told horrific real stories of children being taken away from victims of domestic violence, mothers who had reported child abuse by partners or former partners, and other cases of what appeared to be miscarriages of justice. Among those taking part were some unable to speak because they had been gagged by court orders. One woman was being forced to live away from friends, job and family. Another told us how the battle to regain her daughter had taken 7 years and cost her £14,000.
One of the organisers explains why we cannot mention the name of the woman the protest was organised to support
The protest had been arranged, along with another taking place in Nottingham to support a woman currently involved in a family court case. But on the afternoon before this protest, a family court judge had ruled her name could not be mentioned. Although everyone at the protest knew it, we had to refer to her only as ‘S’ to avoid committing an offence and the protest had to be renamed as ‘Justice4S’.
Also present was Sir Benjamin Slade, the owner of two castles in Somerset who had hit news headlines earlier in the week by advertising for a young wife to serve his needs. He had fought the case for one of his former workers whose children had been taken away by social services for what appeared to be trivial reasons, getting a friend who was a major newspaper editor to run a campaign which eventually got them returned. He came to the protest together with a young woman whose case he was currently involved in who was being forced against her will to live in Torquay.
LGBT rights abuses in Chechnya – Russian Embassy, Kensington
After rushing back by tube from Kensington Gardens to Westminster for the Scientists Rally, as soon as that ended I was back on the tube to the Consular Section of the Russian Embassy on Bayswater Road where people had brought pink flowers and wrote messages on pink triangles to leave outside the tall gates of the Consular department of the Russian Embassy in a vigil to show solidarity with LGBT people in Chechnya.
The vigil was one of several taking place across the UK after over a hundred men, suspected by the authorities of being homosexual have been rounded up an put into camps and tortured, with three thought to have been killed. Those held include many well-known in the country, including TV personalities and religious figures. An Amnesty petition stated “The Chechen government won’t admit that gay men even exist in Chechnya, let alone that they ordered what the police call ‘preventive mopping up’ of people they deem undesirable”.
Tibet, Syrians, Nuclear Melt-Down, Islamophobia & Lions. Saturday 15th March, seven years ago was another typically varied day of protests on the streets of London which I covered.
London March for Freedom for Tibet
Every year Tibetans and supporters in London protest around the anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, ten years after the Chinese invasion of the country. In 1959 the Dalai Lama and 120,000 Tibetans escaped to India and established the Tibetan Government in Exile.
In 2014 they met at Downing St for a march to a rally outside the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place, calling for Tibet to be free and in charge of its own destiny again and for an end to the illegal Chinese occupation. They say China is destroying Tibetan culture, and Tibetans are rapidly becoming a minority in their country as thousands of migrants are brought in. Peaceful protests by Tibetans are met by arrests, torture, death and lies, and China’s economic power means western countries adopt what they have called a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with China, effectively turning a blind eye to the occupation and to human rights abuses in Tibet.
I left the Tibetans shortly after their march went through Trafalgar Square to photograph another protest.
I had met the Syrians before the start of their march close to Hyde Park corner and had left them as they began their march along Piccadilly on the third anniversary of the start of their fight for freedom. I met them again as they came down Whitehall for a rally at Downing St to show their commitment to the cause and their solidarity with fellow Syrians inside and outside Syria.
The marchers from the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the UK Syrian community called for Assad to go and were appealing to the Britain and the international community to help them to get rid of him. Unfortunately although western leaders condemned the actions of the Syrian government they were not prepared to back up their words with action, and it was left to Russia, who backed Assad to determine the future of the country. Few can doubt that the weakness shown by the west over Syria was not a major factor in Putin thinking he could successfully invade Ukraine.
Ukraine is not of course Syria, but it is hard to read the statement made by the Syrians I quoted in my post without seeing some parallels: “Syria, once proud of its contribution to culture, its distinguished history and its beautiful mosques and churches has been overwhelmed with a brutal dictatorship. Syrian homes have turned to rubble, echoing the unheard screams of its inhabitants. The regime has tried to silence the call of freedom by murdering over 150,000, injuring 500,000, imprisoning 250,000, making 1.5 million refugees and caused over 4.5 million internally displaced people within Syria, and recently started using chemical weapons…” Putin in Syria saved a brutal dictatorship, while in Ukraine it seems his aim is to impose a different regime on the country, perhaps less brutal but requiring similar means for it to be imposed.
Earlier I had been at Hyde Park Corner where protesters had gathered on the third anniversary of the nuclear melt-down at Fukushima to march through London, first to the Japanese Embassy and then on to a short stop at Downing St before a rally in Parliament Square.
I photographed them again at Downing St, but had to leave as they marched away to their rally.
The English Volunteer Force is a coalition of various far-right groups and described the protest on Facebook as “highlighting multiple issues from immigration, Islamic hate preachers, sharia law, Sharia zones, Sharia patrol groups, banning the Burhka!, Halal meat, endless applications for more mosques etc.” They insist that they are ‘patriotic’ and are not racist, and claim not to be against Muslims but simply against Muslim extremists, though I found this hard to take seriously.
The march started outside the Lord Moon of the Mall pub close to the Trafalgar Square end of Whitehall where people were just coming out of the pub as I arrived. Police were taking a great deal of trouble to keep anti-fascist who were intent on stopping the march from getting close to it, but were unhelpful when I complained about an assault by one of the protesters who shouted at me and pushed my camera into my face.
A few minutes before the assault I’d mingled with the protesters as they walked down to Downing St, joking with some I knew from earlier right-wing protests I’d covered previously. They seemed pleased that I was covering the event – and although they were clear we differed greatly in our views had personally invited me to some cover some ‘patriotic’ events as they trusted me to report accurately on them.
There were several groups of counter-protesters but generally they were kept apart by police – and by stewards in an official protest area against the EVF opposite Downing St. There were a few arrests both of anti-fascists and of EVF marchers who tried to attack them, and one of the larger groups of anti-fascist was kettled by police on Parliament St.
Finally I walked back up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, where hundreds had come for the Global March for Lions, marching from different starting points to meet and call for a ban on the ‘canned’ hunting of captive lions by wealthy trophy tourists.
Legal but unscrupulous, ‘canned hunting’ is big business in South Africa, with more than 8,000 lions in captivity, bred on lion farms. Rich visitors pay large sums to take part in lion shoots, where the targets are unable to escape, often raised to be tame and used to human presence and drugged to make them easy kills. Over 160 lion killing camps have been set up in South African in the last 15 years.
As I commented: “It is a terrible way to treat a wild and noble animal, but it also greatly threatens the wild lion population. To prevent the inbreeding that is rife in captive lion populations, wild lions continue to be captured, while the growth in the Asian lion bone trade increased poaching.”
Junior Doctors, Ugandan Election, Benefit Sanctions. Three protests I photographed on Wednesday 9th March 2016
David Clapson, one of many victions of inhumane Tory policies
UCH rally for Junior Doctors Strike
Junior doctors were on a one day strike against the imposition of unfair contracts which they say are unsafe and they were joined by other trade unionists on the picket line at University College Hospital on Euston Road.
Later in the morning came the rally opposite the hospital I photographed when other health workers and NHS activists came to support them, and also to oppose the axing for NHS student bursaries and the creeping privatisation of the NHS.
Ugandans protest rigged Presidential Election
Elections had been held in Uganda in February 2016, and international observers reported widespread fraud and irregularities with opposition politicians being arrested, voters intimidated and many polling stations reporting results very different to the actual votes cast.
The protesters called on the UK not to recognise Museveni as the legitimate President of Uganda and for the immediate release of Dr Besigye and other political prisoners, as well as action against those responsible for torture.
The protesters, who included the African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group and Peter Tatchell Foundation were clear that Museveni had lost the election to his challenger Besigye, and having held a high-spirited protest outside the Ugandan High Commission on the corner of Trafalgar Square marched down to deliver a letter to Downing St.
Unite against Benefit Sanctions
Demonstrations were taking place at over 70 job centres across the country against the use of benefit sanctions. Many claimants lose benefits for trivial reasons and for events beyond their control and are left without support. Some are sanctioned for arriving a few minutes late because of traffic congestion or for missing appointments they have not been informed about. I photographed a protest called by Unite Community members outside the ministry responsible for the policy, the DWP in Caxton St, Westminster.
Sanctions mean people lose benefits and are left destitute. Despite government denials at least 95 deaths are known to have resulted from these sanctions and without the efforts of the many food banks the figure would be much higher.
Some campaigners see the use of sanctions as a deliberate and successful attack on the unemployed and disabled by minister Iain Duncan Smith who is responsible for those working for the DWP being given incentives and targets for causing maximum misery and they label him ‘Minister for Euthanasia’.
David Clapson – Sanctioned to Death
Among those at the protest at Caxton House was Gill Thompson, the sister of David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier who died starving and destitute because he was penalised by the Job Centre for missing a meeting. She delivered a petition calling for an inquest into his death and an end to unfair benefit sanctions which leave claimants without support. Over 200,000 people have signed this and a related petition.
EDL Saved by Police in Slough – 1st February 2014.
Berkshire Anti-Fascists were among those trying to stop the EDL marching
I don’t often go to Slough. While I wouldn’t entirely share John Betjeman’s sentiments “Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now” it isn’t one of my favourite places, and although its only a fairly short bike ride or bus journey away, I seldom feel moved to go there.
Back in the 1990s I did go to take pictures, particularly on the trading estate, the largest industrial estate in single private ownership in Europe. I was then working on a project related to Thatcher’s de-industrialisation of the UK, as well as beefing up the almost non-existent selection of industrial buildings in one of our national collections.
And later in the 2000’s I rode there a couple of April Sunday mornings to photograph the annual Sikh Vaisakhi procession from the Gurdwara in the north of the town, always a very enjoyable experience. Most recently I went to reclaim my phone which I’d dropped on a bus journey and was handed in at the bus station after the driver found it at the end of the route. And I’ve been driven through Slough a few times on the way back from walks in Burnham Beeches and other sylvan walks in the countryside on its fringes.
But on February 1st eight years ago I was there for a very different reason. A couple of hundred EDL supporters from around the country had come to march to a rally in the centre of Slough in an anti-Muslim protest over plans for a new mosque and Islamic community centre.
Large numbers of local people along with a few activists had gathered to opposed them, probably outnumbering them by around 10 to 1. As well as local Asian youths and trade unionists there were black-clad anti-fascists and supporters of Unite Against Fascism. There were two distinct large groups both holding rallies and hoping to prevent the EDL from marching through the centre of the town to hold their rally.
Unusually, as I wrote:
The EDL seemed determined to show they could behave rather better than on many previous occasions, and had banned drinking on the protest. There were plenty of EDL stewards on hand having an occasional word with anyone who seemed to be getting out of hand. A man who started to shout out their well-known chant “Allah is a pedo” was greeted by shouts to stop and quickly grabbed, though later things seemed to get a little out of hand with a large group if not the entire protest joining in with chanting “Allah, Allah, who the f**k is Allah.”
There was also a very large police presence, including a number of mounted police, and they very physically cleared a way for the march, with a number of charges by police horses and some very rough handling. As I wrote: “There were a number of minor injuries caused by police and protesters, and I was hit by a barrier thrown over by EDL supporters as well as a plastic bottle thrown by an Asian youth, as well as getting a few bruises from the pushing, mainly by police.”
The barrier hit me as I was attempting to photograph the EDL rally from outside the barriers and police around it. It hit me on one ankle and was extremely painful, and for a few minutes I could hardly walk. But soon I decided nothing seemed to be broken and managed to hobble around and take just a few more pictures.
Then I decided I’d done enough and needed to rest my ankle. Fortunately I’d come by bus, as cycling home would have been agony, and I was able to leave the town centre and sit on the bus for the longish ride home. Fortunately it isn’t a very long walk from the bus stop.
Freedom is something we almost universally value, but which is often hijacked by various groups, particularly on the extreme right to support particular causes which have little real connection with our undamental rights. Freedom is certainly not the freedom to do what we like regardless of the effect it has on others.
Freedom is not the right to own and carry guns or other weapons. It isn’t the right to spread disease we may have by not taking sensible precautions such as wearing a face mask in crowded places. It isn’t the right to increase the risk of others getting lung cancer or to drive after consuming alcohol or drugs.
Arguably the most important of our freedoms is the right to hold and express political and religious ideas and to express these. But that is not absolute, and rightly there are laws against hate speech and incitement to others to commit criminal actions or threaten the lives of others.
Back in 2005, the Labour government brought in a law to criminalise protest in Parliament Square. It was clearly a law which imposed unnecessary restrictions on our freedom and one which was brought in for a trivial reason, to end the embarrassment to the Labour ministers of one man, Brian Haw, continuing to protest, particularly over Iraq war and its disastrous consequences. That Tony Blair was annoyed by a regular reminder of his lies was not a suitable basis for legislation.
A regular series of harassment by police and others – almost certainly at the urging of the Home Secretary – had failed to shift this persistent protester, and civil servants were ordered to add a section to the bill which became the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 to make his protest illegal. In the event the act failed to apply to his protest and I wondered if this was a little deliberate subversion by at least one of those responsible for its drafting rather than simple incompetence. Because his protest had begun well before the SOCA law came in on 7th April 2005, it was apparently not covered by it. As I commented, “rather a lot of egg on government faces there.” This initial ruling by the High Court of Justice was eventually overturned by the Court of Appeal and these sections of the law were replace by other restictive laws in 2011.
On Sunday 7th August 2005, protesters came to Parliament Square to deliberately disobey the law, and the police came, some rather reluctantly, under orders to arrest them. The protestors argued that protest is a human right and cannot be restricted by law in a free society.
Brian Haw was there, but protesting legally as it appeared that the act didn’t include him. He held up a placard with the words from a speech in Boston by US Scretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a ‘fear society’ has finally won their freedom.” interleaved with his own comments on Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Belmarsh and the Iraq war and more.
The police swooped on a few of those with posters or placards and arrested them, leading them away but their heart was clearly not in it and the great majority of the protesters were untouched, though they were warned that their protest was illegal. As I commented: ” I saw five people arrested for simply peacefully holding banners supporting the right to protest. It happened on the square opposite our Houses of Parliament, and it made me feel ashamed to be British.”
When the protest in Parliament Square ended, protesters were invited to take part in another illegal protest inside the one km restricted zone around Parliament, but on Westminster Bridge. Again taking their lead from Boston, though this time from 1773, and tipping tea into the water, campaigners calling for a low-level tax on foreign currency exchange transactions, as proposed by Nobel prize-winning economist James Tobin in 1978. This would deter speculation on currency movements, giving governments greater control over their fiscal and monetary policies, and reducing the power of speculators to affect the markets.
The connection between the tea bags torn to tip tea into the Thames, produced by large multi-national companies who are among the currency speculators, and the Tobin Tax, seemed a little weak – as doubtless was the brew in the river – though it did all alliterate nicely for the Westminster Tea Party – Time for Tobin Tax.
We are now seeing a law going through Parliament which will even further restrict our right to protest, increasing discriminatory policing, criminalising some traditional ways of life and seriously restricting and controlling protests in a huge shift further towards a police state. Unfortunately a large Conservative majority makes it seem inevitable that our freedoms will be significantly reduced.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
