Chelsea Manning, Kurdistan & Syria – Three protests in London on Saturday 17th December 2016.
Vigil on Chelsea Manning’s 29th birthday – Trafalgar Square
A silent vigil on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square marked the 29th birthday of trans-gender whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, jailed for 35 years in 2013, whose courageous leaks revealed war crimes by US, UK and other governments.
A Queer Strike protester and veteran peace activist Bruce Kent
Working for the US Army as a specialist intelligence analyst as Bradley Manning she released almost 750,000 documents to Wikileaks in 2010 showing the US, UK and other governments’ war crimes and corruption in Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Israel & the Palestinian Authority, Peru, Venezuela and elsewhere. Some were classified and many others were highly sensitive and incriminating. In 2013 she was sentenced to 35 years and held in the maximum security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
The London vigil was a part of an international day of action for her release. Since she came out as a trans woman in 2013 she had been repeatedly harassed by the military in prison and twice in 2016 had attempted suicide. Protesters around the world called on President Obama to release her on the basis of the prison time she had already served before he left office. The following month he commuted her sentence to around seven years and she was released from jail. She spent a further year in 2019-2020 after she refused to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Kurds, many wearing or waving the flag of Free Kurdistan called on the civilised world to recognise the sacrifices made by the Peshmerga in fighting for freedom and against Islamic extremism in Iraq and Syria.
The Peshmerga is the army of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, first formed in the18th century as border guards but more recently fighting for Kurdish autonomy, although it also includes Assyrian and Yazidi units. Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous region of Iraq, and under the Iraqi constitution the Pershmerga is responsible for the security of the region.
They played a key role in US missions against al-Qaeda after 9/11and were with other Kurdish forces now fighting against ISIS with some support from the USA. But the USA was refusing to directly supply any weapons except through the Iraqi government who were failing to pass any on the the Pershmerga as they feared they would be used to promote an independent Kurdistan. And in London people seemd to be clearly calling for a free Kurdistan.
The result of this failure to pass on weapons is that the force is poorly armed, mainly using Soviet-era weapons they captured in earlier Iraq uprisings and now weapons captured from ISIS in 2014. This protest called for greater support to provide them with modern weapons and other support they lack including ammunition, ambulances and military communications equipment.
Doctors & Nurses Die-in for Syria – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
A short walk away in front of the Houses of Parliament Healthcare workers held a die-in at Parliament in solidarity with the Syrian people.
They called for an end to the bombing of civilians, hospitals and schools by the Assad regime and for the UK government to put pressure on the Syrian government to allow the delivery of aid. They urged the UK to make airdrops of aid, provide safe passage to all those trapped and grant asylum to refugees.
The protest was organised by Medact’s Arms and Militarisation (MAM) group along with Syria solidarity activist groups and individuals including the Syrian British Medical Society.
Peter Tatchell holds a poster
Between 2014 and 2021 when the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme closed, the UK accepted around 20,000 Syrian refugees. When adjusted to reflect the population size of European countries this puts the UK well down among European countries. For the total number of resettled refugees from 2008-20021 the UK comes fifth behind Germany, Sweden, Norway and France but adjusted for population size we are in 10th position.
But along with the USA, Britain failed to take any effective action in support of the Syrian revolution and the crimes against the people committed by the Assad regime, and were severely outplayed by Russia who backed Assad.
March for Peace and Liberty – 2005 Eighteen years ago on Saturday 24th September around 50,000 of us were marching through London for peace and calling for the withdrawal of forces from Iraq.
The protest, called by Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) coincided with an even larger protest in Washington close to the White House.
Organisers of the Washington protest claimed that around 300,000 took part, while US police said the half that number was “as good a guess as any.” Police estimates of the London march were, as usual more political than based on any reality, and their figure of 10,000 was laughably low.
I had developed my own simple methods to assess numbers. For smaller protests I’d simply stop at a suitable point and count those passing. When numbers got a little larger I’d count in groups of roughly ten, larger still groups of hundreds. Though sometimes that hundred might only have been 80 or sometimes 125 the overall figure was probably within around ten percent of the actual total.
But with really large protests such as this, well over the police figure of 10,000, any form of counting is too time-consuming and tedious. I’d often still try to get a rough figure by counting for a minute where I was taking photographs a few times as the protest went part, and then make a rough estimate using the time the whole protest took to pass me. Typically the answer this gave me was around half the number claimed by the march organisers and anything around four to ten times the figure release by the police and often quoted by news media.
It’s a little difficult to find the text I wrote about the protest on My London Diary in 2005 as there are no headings in the text column on the September page, with headings and images in a separate unlinked column to the right – later I improved the site design to unite text and pictures and provided a list of links to stories which remains at the top of the monthly pages. Back in 2005 you simply had to scroll down a long page, and while the headings and text were simple to find, many viewers never managed to find the of text, which ends with a little art criticism. So here it is, with a few minor corrections:
“What a fine mess you’ve got us into” is probably the conclusion of most of the British people about Blair’s decision to join in with Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003. Quite how many of them turned up on the 24th to march for a British pull-out is a matter of contention. Both police and organisers estimates – ten and a hundred thousand respectively – seem to me extremely unlikely.
So I was there with probably between twenty-five and fifty thousand people, walking across Parliament Square in front of the Houses of Parliament, despite it being a Saturday afternoon, with no business taking place inside, the ban on the use of amplification within a kilometre of parliament was still in force, so the event was a little quieter than usual. Some did choose to defy the ban and the police appeared not to notice.
Gate Gourmet supply in-flight meals for British Airways. It used to be a part of the company, but was separated out, then sold to American management. Rather like what is starting to happen in our National Health Service, and of course British Airways was also originally owned by the nation.
The company takes advantage of a largely Asian labour force living around the edge of the airport, paying them relatively low wages. The new management decided to cut labour costs even more by bringing in casual labour to do much of the work (while apparently employing more managers!) and when the employees held a meeting to protest, they were sacked.
Pressure from both BA and the union (TGWU) led to the company offering to take back some of the sacked workers, but not all, and the strike continues. Some of the strikers came to take part in the rally, to publicise their case as well as call for a withdrawal from Iraq.
Most of the usual people were there at the march, and I took their pictures again – and some are on the site. When the march started I hung around in Parliament Square to watch it go past before walking rather faster than the marchers up Whitehall.
By the time I’d reached Trafalgar Square and waited again for the end of the march to pass, my knee [I’d injured it earlier in the month] was beginning to ache and I didn’t feel up to walking to Hyde Park. I sat down and ate my sandwiches contemplating the new sculpture on the ‘fourth plinth’, ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ by Marc Quinn. This 15ft white marble shows Lapper, an artist born without arms, sitting naked and eight months pregnant, and will stay on the plinth until April 2007.
It is a striking piece of work and was obviously attracting a great deal of attention from the tourists in the square. I took my time sitting and looking at it while I was eating, and then walking round it from all sides (slightly impeded by the preparations for a juvenile TV show to be broadcast from the square the following day.) Lapper herself works with photographs of her body, and this statue is perhaps too like her black and white photographs, with a rather unpleasant surface, sometimes more soap than marble. I found myself thinking thank goodness for the pigeons who were perching on it and doubtless adding their contributions to it.
Its position up there on a plinth is not ideal. This is work that would be best seen from roughly the same level as its base. The other plinths in the square are occupied by men on horses, which raise their figures more suitably above the plinths. Perhaps when it leaves the square a more suitable display place can be found, but its present placing is a great for catalysing debate about disability. Of course another disabled figure dominates the square; Nelson has his back to her and does not need to call upon his blind eye not to see her.
Israel, Egypt, ISIS, Sewol & Marikana: The Marikana massacre when 34 striking mine workers were shot dead in South Africa took place on 16th August 2012, so today the 11th anniversary will be marked in London by a commemoration beginning at 16.00 outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square. You can read more about the massacre and these commemoration in my post last year, London Solidarity with Marikana Miners.
But the Marikana commemoration was not the only event on that day, and here are also some of the other things I photographed.
Boycott Israel – Boycott M&S – Brixton
Protesters outside M&S in the centre of Brixton argued that the store legitimises the illegal occupation of Palestine and supports Zionist racism and brutality by selling Israeli goods and called for a boycott in solidarity with the people of Gaza. I made a brief visit as the RCG picket was beginning and then took the tube to Bond Street.
R4BIA remembers Egyptian massacres – South St, Mayfair
Marchers met at the Egyptian Embassy to march to Downing St on the anniversary of the massacres by Egyptian forces at Rabaa and Nahda squares on 14th August 2013 in which over 2600 were killed, 4000 injured and many arrested.
The Rabaa hand sign with four fingers extended and the thumb pressed into the palm was adopted in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters following the overthrow of President Morsi by a military coup. After his election Morsi had given himself unlimited powers to make laws and moved the country towards an Islamist state, eventually leading to mass protests which led the army to move on 3 July 2013, deposing him and suspending the new constitution. Pro-Morsi demonstrations were brutally dispersed with Human Rights Watch documenting over 900 deaths.
The Kurdish People’s Assembly and others met in front of the BBC to march against the attacks on Kurds, Shia, Sufi, Christian and Yezidi communities in Iraq, calling on the UK government for greater action including pressure on Turkey and Qatar to end support for jihadism.
They met in front of the BBC to emphasise the lack of proper reporting of what is happening in Iraq and as one poster said, ‘Your silence is Killing people‘. The BBC has failed to report on the support that Turkey with its increasingly Islamic regime has given to the Islamic State jihadist forces. ISIS relies on oil exports smuggled through Turkey to support its existence and murdering attacks.
Our government keeps quiet about Turkey and refuses to condemn its activities as Turkey is a key member of NATO, and as in so many areas, the BBC toes the government line. While it employs many fine journalists they are constrained by their editors and managers up to the highest level and not allowed to report impartially, particularly on the UK domestic channels. Sometimes the World Service does rather better.
Koreans call for special Sewol Ferry Act – Trafalgar Square
Koreans had been holding regular silent vigils in Trafalgar Square since the Sewol ferry disaster in April that year when schoolchildren on board were told to ‘Stay Put’ below decks and drowned.
The protest on 16th August was part of global day of support for the Sewol Tragedy Victims’ Family Committee petition, already signed by around 4 million, for a special bill to investigate the deaths of 304 people, mainly high school students in the ferry disaster.
Among those taking part was mime protester Charlie X, who came with a poster of the constitution of the Republic of South African and stood holding this and with a miner’s lamp in front of the locked gates of the embassy.
Wednesday 19th February 2014 saw me travelling around London for protests calling for the release of political prisoners in Iraq, Ireland and Egypt before a protest at Atos’s offices led by DPAC.
Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar – Elvaston Place
The vigil outside the Iraqi consulate in Kensington was a small one, with only four people taking part while I was there, though a few more were expected later.
Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen held and tortured in Iraq by US and Iraqis since his arrest in 2004, was then held in Abu Ghraib. Arrested by US soldiers while on a business trip he was held by the US in Iraq and tortured but never charged. Later in 2010 he was sentenced to 15 years in jail after a trial where he was unable to defend or even properly identify himself as the US had refused to hand him back his passport. When they left Iraq and handed him over to the Iraqis, who tortured him more.
His treatment has been described by former Attorney General of the United States Ramsey Clark as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.
I had previously met Omar’s wife and daughter – who has never seen her father – on some of their series of protests outside the US Embassy. So far as I am aware he is now still in prison in Iraq.
My next stop was at the Irish Embassy, a short walk from Hyde Park Corner. It was the third picket there to demand the immediate release of Margaretta D’Arcy, imprisoned for protesting against illegal US flights from Shannon Airport, and now in Mountjoy Women’s Prison, Dublin.
D’Arcy, a long-term peace campaigner, member of the Committee of 100 and Greenham Common veteran and writer, actress, playwright and film director, was then 79 and suffering from cancer and arthritis. Two years earlier she had been arrested and imprisoned for lying down on the runway at Shannon in a peaceful direct action by members of Galway Alliance Against War. They were protesting the violation of Irish neutrality by US military flights using the airport.
She was again imprisoned in 2014 after she refused to sign a bond not to trespass again on the airport property in further protests against the US flights. She was released on 22nd March, but later imprisoned again and released in July 2014.
A few minutes walk took me into Mayfair and to a protest organised by my own union, the National Union of Journalists, calling for press freedom in Egypt and the release of all jailed journalists, including the four Al Jazeera journalists.
One of these had been in prison for 6 months, but the other three were arrested on 29th December 2013 and were among 20 journalists charged at the end of January with a string of offences including being a “member of a terrorist organization, disturbing public peace, instilling terror, harming the general interests of the country, possessing broadcast equipment without permit, possessing and disseminating images contrary to the truth.“
The NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn took a letter up the steps to the main door of the embassy for a photograph but then had to walk to a less impressive neighbouring door to actually deliver it.
This was one of a number of protests organised by journalists in cities around the world. Some of those present had their mouths gagged with tape. The journalists were only finally released in 2015. Wikipedia has more on the case.
Reporters Without Borders now report “Egypt is one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists. The hopes for freedom that sprang from the 2011 revolution now seem distant.” They say that 24 journalists are currently held there in jail.
Finally I made my way to Triton Square, just north of the Euston Road, close to Warren Street station.
Dennis Skinner MP speaking
A day of action there at the London HQ of Triton was a part of a day of action with protests at each of the 144 ATOS assessment centres around the country. The protesters called for the company to lose its contracts to carry out the tests and to be prosecuted for the way they had been handled, and for the resignation of the minister concerned, Iain Duncan Smith.
Among the many groups supporting the nationwide day of action were Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Black Triangle, Atos Miracles, the Green Party, NUS, Occupy New Network, PCS and Unite.
The tests, based on tick boxes on a computer form had been widely discredited with a report commissioned by the government pointing out serious flaws. They fail to take account of the complex and differing natures of illnesses and their individual effects and are particularly poor with the assessment of mental illness.
Many of those found ‘fit to work’ have been obviously completely unable to do so – with over ten thousand in the last year for which figures were released dying within six weeks. The government reaction to the adverse publicity after these figures for 2011 were released was simply to stop issuing figures for later years. These numbers include some who committed suicide after being unfairly assessed by Atos.
The Atos administered tests take no account of proper medical evidence. The protesters call for the assessments to be made by qualified medical doctors, ideally by “the GP who regularly sees and treats the sick or disabled individual in question” who they say “is the only person able to decide if an individual is fit for work.”
At the end of the long protest, those remaining moved to the wider square in view of the Euston Road and released yellow balloons in memory of those who have taken their lives because of ATOS unfairly refused them support as Paula Peters of DPAC read a poem about the deaths.
Much more about the protest at Atos National Day of Action on My London Diary – and, as always, more pictures.
Last Saturday, 8th October 2022, I photographed a protest in London against the imprisonment and possible extradition of Julian Assange, currrently held in the UK’s maximum security jail at Belmarsh.
Assange’s “crime” was to publish documents about US war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and elswhere, making documents downloaded by Chelsea Manning, making them available after suitable redaction to protect the individuals concerned to the world’s press and to the public on WikiLeaks. Wikipedia has a good and fairly detailed entry on him which most of the details here come from.
If extradited to the US he would be put on trial in a area where the jury would be composed of people from an area with strong connections to the US security services who will already have pre-judged him as guilty. His sentence is likely to amount to 175 years in a US maximum security jail, probably in isolation and never to be freed.
In 2010 Sweden issued an extradition warrant for him on allegations of sexual misconduct, which were widely seen as a pretext to enable him to be extradited from Sweden to face criminal charges in the USA. When in 2012 he lost his fight against extradition to Sweden he jumped bail to take refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he lived in highly restricted accomodation until 2019.
A new government in Ecuador decided to end his asylum in the embassy and invited police in to arrest him in April 2019; he was then sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail. The Swedish sexual charges against him were dropped later in the year, but the USA immediately began proceedings to extradite him to face trial under the US 1917 Espionage Act.
The decision to use this Act has been widely criticised in the press and elsewhere as being an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees press freedom. And if Assange is guilty then it seems clear that the editors of the newspapers that published the revelations he made in publising the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs and other material could also be prosecuted. Even my publishing the link to the video could be a crime.
Assange’s sentence was completed in September 2019, but he was kept in jail because of the US extradition claim. He had been visited earlier by Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, who, as quoted on Wikipedia found “in addition to physical ailments, Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”
After a protracted hearing including much medical evidence, a judge on 4 January 2021 ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the USA on grounds of mental health and the suicide risk in a US prison cell. The USA appealed the decision, and Assange remained in jail. The High Court rejected much of the medical evidence, believed the US lies of fair treatment made and found in favour of the USA on 10 December 2021.
In April his extradition was formally approved in court and referred to Home Secretary Priti Patel, who approved it in June. But the legal battle continues with a new appeal. Essentially Assange has now been locked up for 10 years. Wikileaks has continued his work in releasing information in his absence. The continuing persecution by both the UK and USA for revealing their war crimes seems spiteful and malicious.
On Saturday 8th October I photographed a protest in London by around 10,000 people who formed a human chain calling for Assange to be freed and not to be extradited around the Houses of Parliament, crossing the river on Westminster Bridge and returning across Lambeth Bridge, a distance of a little over two kilometres.
It’s difficult to know how many took part, but there seemed to be enough people to join hands, with quite a few to spare in some parts where people were shoulder to shoulder and some to spare. The organisers had thought they would need around 5,000 so I think it was probably rather more than that; estimates I’ve seen range from 3,000 to 12,000. But as well as those present in person, many unable to get to Londonwere represented by yellow sashes with their names on them.
When I arrived people were tying these to the railings around the Houses of Parliament, but police came to remove them, handing them back to the protesters. They said nothing was allowed to be fixed to the railings. Many of the protesters held or wore the sashes for the protest, and although I don’t often take part in the protests I’m photographing, most of these pictures were taken by me with a sash reading ‘#Free Assange Monique Dits Belgium‘ around my neck.
At around 1.30, rather later than planned people were told to link hands and they chanted ‘Free Assange’ and other slogans for a few minutes. I’d chosen to be on Lambeth Bridge for this as I could then take photographs with the Houses of Parliament seen across the Thames in the backgound.
After taking some there I made my way along the rest of the chain back to Parliament, on my way passing John McDonnell being interviewed by a videographer. Normally I would have stopped to talk to him, but by now I was rather tired, still suffering a little from my booster jab the previous day and I carried on, past a small crowd of people with video and still cameras three or four deep around Jeremy Corbyn. But I’d decided he wasn’t really the story and carried on. I’ve photographed him enough times over the many years I’ve known him.
My day in London on Saturday 11th October 2008 – 14 years ago
100 Days to stop Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab! Shell Centre
The ‘Hands of Iraqi Oil’ coalition including Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and supported by the Stop the War Coalition protested at the Shell Centre against plans to had over most of Iraq’s oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.
From 1961 on the Iraqi government took increasing control of the oil industry in Iraq, finally nationalising it it 1970. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq it provided 95% of the government’s revenues.
Any lingering doubts about the true reason behind the US-led invasion were dispelled by the grab for the country’s key national resource, a move strongly supported by expert consultants supplied by the UK and US who previously worked at a high level for companies like Shell and BP who drafted the bill for the giveaway which is opposed by Iraqi trade unions and oil experts.
The protest took place at the start of the final 100 days of George W Bush’s administration and began at Shell’s UK headquarters on the South Bank before the samba band, ‘oil workers’ and other demonstrators with a huge and grotesque US Vice President Dick Chaney set off to make their way to BP’s HQ in St James’s Square and on to the US Embassy. But I needed to go to another protest.
Freedom not Fear 2008 – New Scotland Yard, Victoria St
Freedom not fear 2008 events were taking place in over 20 countries to demonstrate against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organisations.
In the UK the main event was at New Scotland Yard in London, opposed to the restriction of the right to demonstrate under SOCPA, the intimidatory use of photography by police FIT squads, the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.
Although police handed out notifications under the SOCPA legislation warning them that protesting in the zone around Westminster they were in was illegal, neither the police nor the demonstrators seemed to be taking this very seriously in the 45 minutes or so I was there or when I briefly returned an hour later.
Rosary Crusade of Reparation – Westminster Cathedral
Half a mile or so up the road people were gathering outside the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation, one of the larger walks of public witness by Catholics in London.
The Rosary campaign was begun in Austria in 1947 by Franciscan Fr Petrus Pavlicek who prayed for his country to be freed from its communist occupiers and it attracted half a million supporters. The first annual parade with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima wasin 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12. This feast celebrated the defeat in 1683 of Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.
The London procession takes place on the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the final appearance of Our Lady at Fatima in October 1917, close to the end of the First World War. Those present saw the sun dancing around in the sky, and she promised peace and an end to war if men showed contrition for their sins and changed their lives.
This was the 25th annual procession in London, starting from Westminster Cathedral and making its way to a service at Brompton Oratory. The statue of Our Lady of Fatima was carried by the Catholic Police Guild and two thousand or more Catholics walked behind saying Rosary and singing hymns devoted to Mary.
This year’s procession had as its special theme atonement for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill then passing through Parliament.
I left the procession as it started off and walked back past New Scotland Yard to Parliament Square, where several protests were taking place. Tamils were calling for an end to genocide in Sri Lanka and for an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of Sri Lanka.
In the centre of the square was a small protest by London Against Detention demanding an end to the detention of asylum seekers and the closure of immigration detention centres.
And Ben and Ben of ‘Still Human Still Here” were approaching the end of their two week protest in Parliament Square over the scandalous treatment of asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country. They spent two weeks in a tent in the square living on the emergency rations that the Red Cross will supply to these inhumanely treated asylum seekers.
Brian Haw was then still in the square, then in his seventh year of long-term protest. As usual I went to talk to him, and was there when a man came up to laugh at him and insult him. He smelt strongly of alcohol, was talking nonsense and acting unpredictably. One of Brian’s supporters stood between him and Brian who was filming him. I put down my bag as I took photographs in case I needed to step in and help, but fortunately he eventually moved away.
Danny was lying on the grass and called out to me as I walked past after talking to Brian. He told me he had been on hunger strike for two weeks demanding a proper investigation into his case. He claims to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother but I found it hard to make much sense of his allegations.
While I had been talking to Danny I’d seen a group of people on the street opposite carrying placards go up Parliament Street and I’d later caught up with them at the top of Whitehall. I found they were Obama supporters hoping to find and persuade Americans here to register and vote in the election.
On Tuesday 13th September 2011, protesters against the worlds largest arms fair being held at the Exel Centre in East London brought their protests to some of the companies selling arms and to key sites including Parliament Square and th National Gallery which was hosting a dinner for the arms traders and their customers, including representatives of many of the most repressive regimes around the world.
Arms Fair Protest At Parliament, Old Palace Yard, Westminster
A queue with loaded baskets waits to pay at the arms fair supermarket opposite Parliament
Around 250 people came to protest against the DSEI arms fair which was opening that day in East London. Many were people who had been protesting at the site of the fair during the previous week. The fair is the largest in the world, a private event supported by the UK government, and despite government denials, many deals are made there for illegal arms and arms are sold to some of the worlds most repressive regimes who use them against their own civilians.
Many had come with posters and placards, but organisers CAAT (Campaign Against Arms Trade) came with fake arms to set up a supermarket where people could queue to buy riot gas, guided missiles, ammunition and other essentiaql supplies to keep their population down.
Bruce Kent with Riot Gas
People held up letters spelling out ‘THIS IS NOT OK’ and then other posters and banners.
There were some songs, and anti-drone protesters staged a die-in as targets.
The country’s only Green MP (and one of the most sensible in the House of Commons) came to speak.
Dr Zig’s ‘Bubbles Not Bombs’ -Thames Embankment, Tate Modern.
‘Kids need human rights NOT cluster bombs’
Those remarkable bubbers from Dr Zigs in Wales and made their “seriously HUGE bubbles” on the riverside walk outside Tate Modern, shouting “Bubbles not Bombs” as a child-friendly protest against the DSEi Arms Fair.
They say the DSEI fair is “where bad people the world over can come and buy the latest in guns, drones, warships etc.” and call for it to stop.
I just had time between protests to pop up to St John’s Wood and the Queens’s Terrace Café, where my show ‘Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood’ had been hung at the weekend when I had been too busy to be there. Jiro Osuga who had done the design and decoration and owner Mireille Galinou whose idea it had been had done a great job and it was ready for the opening.
Down the Drones Arms Fair Protest – Tower 42, Old Broad St
General Atomics ,makers of Predator and Reaper drones had their London office in Tower 42, still better known to many of us as the Nat West Tower, on Old Broad St Although there are wide areas of empty pavement most is land owned by Tower 42 and City police harassed protesters by ensuring they keep to the small area of public highway and then clearing them from most of it as they were then causing an obstruction.
There seemed to me to be no good reason why the police shold enforce the civil property rights of the estate owner which would not be harmed by a small incursion, nor harass the protesters on the public highway when others could easily walk by – as many always do – on the private land.
The protesters managed to chalk slogans and body outlines on the pavement, displayed banners, sang and handed out leaflets to passers by about the dangers of militarism but were not allowed to lie down on their target and invite passers by to ‘zap’ them with a Playstation controller in their game of ‘Remote Control Killer Robots’.
The US was then using around 48 Predator and Reaper drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the UK around 10 MQ-9 Reapers in Afghanistan, all controlled by pilots in an airforce base in Nevada. Various documents released by whistleblowers show that drone strike often take place on the basis of very limited and often unreliable evidence often killing innocent victims and any males in these countries who appear to be of military age and likely to be targets.
Using drones turns warfare for those ‘piloting’ them from a centre perhaps several thousands of miles from the battlefield into something very much like a computer game, removing any normal human inhibitions about the indiscriminate killing of others.
In the final few minutes police allowed three protesters to lie down on the pavement for a few seconds to enable photographers to take pictures.
I’m not sure if there were any police for the protest outside BAE Systems in Carlton House Terrace which was the final advertised protest of the day. Perhaps the police were acting on advice from one of their plain clothes operatives who had told them there would be no trouble at this event.
BAE Systems is Britain’s largest manufacturing companies, formed in 1999 by the merger of British Aerospace with parts of Marconi Electronics and traces its history back to 1560 and the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey, over the years having incorporated many of the famous names in UK industry, particular those involved in aviation and arms manufacture. It also has a US subsidiary, BAE Systems, Inc. The company was a nationalised industry from 1977 to 1981, with the UK government in 1985 selling its remaining shares except for one very special £1 share which it can use to prevent it becoming foreign-owned.
The company has been involved in a number of trade scandals, particularly over its deals with Saudi Arabia. Most recently in 2006 the Serious Fraud Office was forced by the Labour government to drop enquiries into bribery over an arms deal by BAE Systems with Saudi Arabia after a Saudi royal prince threatened cancellation of the order in 2006. The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) obtained a High Court decision that this government action breached the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, but the government appealed and the law lords decided that national security should be an overriding principle and overturned the decision. So bribery, as well presumably as any other crime, is OK when it is in the national security interest.
The government’s decision to cancel the investigation was seen by most as an admission of BAE’s guilt in the matter, and they have also been under investigation for bribery in Chile, Romania, South Africa, Tanzania, the Czech Republic and Qatar and possibly elsewhere.
BAE systems are one of the world’s largest arms companies, producing fighter aircraft, warships, missiles and tanks along with other weapons. They are also one of the companies that will profit hugely from the replacement of Trident nuclear missiles, a high-spending and potentially dangerous project with no military significance.
After some short speeches about BAE, almost all of those present laid flat on the pavement for a die-in before getting up and leaving. Although this was the last advertised protest for the day, a message bad been passed around that there would be an action at the National Gallery, which was hosting a dinner for those attending the DSEi arms fair.
After a day of peaceful demonstrations against the DSEi Arms Fair in London, a fracas developed as police attempted to clear the National Gallery steps while a peaceful protest continued below in the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square. Well over a hundred protesters had come to the National Gallery as it was closing to protest at a dinner being given there for those attending the DSEi arms fair, including representatives of many of the most repressive regimes around the world.
The protesters attempted to enter the Gallery as it was closing but were ushered out by security staff, and then began a peaceful protest on the steps of the gallery. Gallery staff asked protesters to leave the steps but some decided to stay and display banners there, while others continued to protest peacefully on the North Terrace in front of the gallery, displaying banners and holding a ‘die-in.
Eventually police got most of them moving slowly down the steps, though a few were still refusing to move. There was quite a lot of joking between some of the police and protesters and the atmosphere was generally friendly, although the protesters were not being very cooperative. Suddenly one of the protesters was seized and roughly carried away by police towards a nearby van. He did not appear to be formally arrested, and police would give no reason for his detention either to press, legal observers or protesters.
This changed the mood completely. Police reinforcements arrived and were able to force the protesters from the steps. There were a few incidents of what seemed thuggish violence towards both men and women. Some were arrested and dragged off to waiting vans; it was hard to be sure but their offence appeared to have been arguing and trying to protect themselves against police violence.
Meanwhile the protest continued peacefully on the North Terrace with a die-in and speakers explaining to the crowd that had gathered that the protest was calling for an end to UK arms sales to authoritarian regimes including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both responsible for the ruthless suppression of people in the ‘Arab Spring’ as well as countries involved in major armed conflicts and human rights abuses. I think many were shocked to learn that the UK was playing such a major part in this killing of people around the world – not something our media often dwell on.
NakNakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils – Saturday 18th May 2013 was another busy day for protests in London and I covered a number of demonstrations.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when the state of Israel was created, Palestinians and their supporters protested outside parliament calling for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
There had been protests in Jerusalem earlier in the week on Nabka Day against the continuing sanctions against Palestinians that have crowded them into an ever-decreasing area of land, diminishing almost daily as new Israeli settlements are created and new restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinians. Many of those protesting in London from Jewish or Palestinian backgrounds and as usual these included a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who had walked down from North London; they see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
On the opposite side of the River Thames thousands were gathering by the Royal Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, alarmed at the attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
Nine years later we are seeing the effect of these policies with ambulance services unable to cope with demand, lengthy delays in treating people in A&E, delays in diagnosing cancers leading to increased deaths and more. And although it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic like Covid, and exercises had shown what needed to be done to prepare for this, the NHS had not been given the resources to prepare for this, leading to much higher death rates than some comparable countries.
Part of the problems of the NHS come from disastrous PFI agreements pushed through under the Labour government, landing NHS trusts with huge debts that will continue for many years. This forced NHS trusts into disastrous hospital closure plans, some of which were defeated by huge public campaigns. Many of those marching were those involved in these campaigns at Lewisham, Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex, Whittington and other hospitals around London.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Other protesters outside the US Embassy included Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when they held him and was now being tortured by the Iraqis and also was on hunger strike. She has protested with her daughter Zeinab outside the US Embassy for a number of weekends and on this occasion was joined by a small group of Muslims who had come to protest against Guantanamo, appalled by the actions of the US waging a war against Islam and Muslims.
Shawki Ahmed Omar is still held in Iraq; before he died in 2021 former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded a video calling for his release which was posted to YouTube in with the comment by another US lawyer “This case is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.”
A few yards away, kept separate by police, a group of supporters of the Syrian regime, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was also holding a protest in favour of the Assad regime and against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
I met thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK as they marched through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre, many dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. Many wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Although it was a large protest, with perhaps around 5,000 marchers I think it received absolutely no coverage in UK media, and I seemed to be the only non-Tamil photographer present. Tamils were rightly disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax.
The march had started from Hyde Park, and I caught up with it on Piccadilly and went with it taking photographs to Waterloo Place where there was to be a rally. But it had been a long day for me and I left just before this started.
Stop The War – 2nd March 2002. Along with many thousands of others I went to Hyde Park to join the march from there to a rally in Trafalgar Square against any British involvement in the invasion of Iraq by the USA that seemed to be increasingly inevitable.
It certainly wasn’t the first march against the Iraq War I had photographed, and not the first protest against it I had taken part in. As well as those that I photographed there were also local protests close to where I live where we stood with placards and a banner on the busy road bridge across the River Thames at rush hours each Friday.
Tony Benn
Almost a year later came the largest protest the UK has ever seen – and I was unable to take part or photograph, having only been discharged from hospital the previous day. The operation had gone well, but I’d collapsed the following night thanks to a problem with a drug which had taken my blood pressure dangerously low, and when I came out several days later I was still weak and shaking. I was devastated to miss the protest, left alone at home while the others went, but walking more than a few yards was still a problem.
Despite the protests – and the clear indications that Tony Blair was lying and the evidence he stressed was fabricated, we went to war with Iraq, and destroyed the country. As with most if not all wars the only people to gain were the arms manufacturers – and the oil giants.
In March 2002, my My London Diary web site was in its early infancy, though I had put up a few pictures from the previous couple of years to fill a few pages. But the Stop The War protest on 2nd March was I think the first story to be covered in any real depth, with a short text and a couple of dozen pictures. I photographed the event on film in black and white and colour, but at the time my scanner could only scan in black and white so there are no colour pictures on line.
Here’s the complete text (apart from some picture captions) and this post is illustrated with a few of the pictures. On the web site these are posted three or four to a page, as internet connections then went at a snail’s pace and pages with more pictures took too long to load.
the Stop the War, Hands off Iraq demonstration on 2 march as a large sign of public opinion. people were still leaving hyde park at the start of the march when trafalgar square was full to overflowing two and a half hours later.
police estimates of the number were risible as usual – and can only reflect an attempt to marginalise the significant body of opinion opposed to the war or a complete mathematical inability on behalf of the police.
tony benn told us it wasn’t worth taking his picture – ‘it won’t get in the papers unless i go and kick a policeman’ but he didn’t and was quite right
It was the start of the final 100 days of the Bush adminstration and the ‘Hands off Iraqi Oil’ coalition whose members included Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and was supported by the Stop the War Coalition and others had come to Shell’s UK headquarters at Waterloo to protest against plans by Britain and the USA for Iraq to hand over most of the country’s oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.
Iraq had nationalised its oil by 1972, and it provided 95% of its government income. Many had seen the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK (along with Australia and Poland) as largely driven by the desire to gain control of Iraq’s huge oil reserves and the US had engaged consultants to help it write a new oil law which it got the Iraqi cabinet to approive in 2007 which would give foreign oil companies – including Shell and BP, long-term contracts within a safe legal framework. But large-scale popular opposition meant the Iraqi parliament failed to approve the new law. But in June 2008, the Iraqi Oil Ministry went ahead with short-term no-bid contracts to the major foreign oil companies – including Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Total and Chevron and later these and other contracts were made more favourable to the oil companies.
After the protest at Shell’s offices the protesters marched to protest outside the BP HQ in St James’s Square and then to the US Embassy, and I left to cover the London Freedom not fear 2008 event outside New Scotland Yard. Similar protests were taking place in over 20 countries to demonstrate against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organizations.
The London event highlighted the restrictions of the right to demonstrate under the Labour government’s The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005, (SOCPA),, the intimidatory use of photography by police Forward Intelligence squads (FIT), the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.
For something completely different I walked a quarter of a mile down Victoria Street to Westminster Cathedral where people were assembling for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation, one of the larger walks of public witness by Catholics in London.
This tradition began in Austria in 1947 with the roasary campaign begun by a priest praying for his country to be freed from the communist occupiers. The first annual parade with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima took place in 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12, which had been established by Pope Innocent XI in 1683 when Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna were defeated by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.
As the procession to a service at Brompton Oratory began I walked back up Victoria St to Parliament Square, where a number of other small protests were in evidence. All over the centre of London there were people giving out leaflets about the growing problems faced by Tamils in Sri Lanka, where they allege a program of ethnic cleansing is being carried out by the government. International media are banned from the Tamil areas of the country and NGOs have been ordered out of some areas, so there are few reports of the war. Worse was to come and in 2009 in the final stages of the war conservative estimates are that 70,000 civilians were killed in the the Mullivaikkal massacre.
Others in the square were protesting against the UK’s scandalous treatment of asylum seekers and calling for the asylum detention centres to be closed down.
Brian Haw was still there, and I wrote:
Facing Parliament, Brian Haw‘s peace protest continues – he has been there for almost 2700 days – over 7 years – and it will soon be his 60th birthday. Brian says that now the police seem to have largely abandoned attempts to get rid of him legally there have been a number of odd attacks against him and others in the square – which the police have ignored. I took some time talking to a man who smelt of alcohol, was talking nonsense and acting unpredictably – and who then went and started to insult Brian. One of the other demonstrators stood between him and Brian who was filming him. I put down my bag as I took photographs in case I needed to step in and help, but fortunately he eventually moved away.
There were others protesting in Parliament Square, including one man who asked me to take his picture. He told me his name was Danny and that he had been there on hunger strike for two weeks, protesting over his failure to get his case investigated. He claimed to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother. I was unable to find any more information about his case.
Finally I saw a group of people walking past holding leafelts with the the word CHANGE on them and rushed after them to find they were Obama supporters hoping to persuade Americans they met to register and vote in the election. It was time for me to go home.
