Movement for Justice | >Re-PHOTO

Justice for Rashan Charles & The Met

Justice for Rashan Charles: On Saturday 29th July 2017 I photographed a protest outside Stoke Newington Police Station over the death of Rashan Charles, who had died after being handcuffed by two police and held on the floor of a shop on Kingsland Road in Dalston in the early morning of Saturday 22nd July.

The pictures on this post come from that protest, which was attended by members of his his family as well of those of Edson da Costa who died after being arrested in Beckton the previous month.

An inquest into the death of Charles returned a verdict of that a package he had swallowed when being chased into the shop by an officer had blocked his airway causing the death. But it also found that the officers had failed to call for an ambulance when they should, but more controversially argued that this would not have saved his life.

The inquest into Da Costa’s death revealed a number of errors by police but the jury was told by the coroner that “there is no legal or factual basis for reaching a factual conclusion which is critical of the police” and reached a verdict of death by misadventure primarily due to his swallowing a plastic bag of illegal drugs.

In March 2023, Baroness Louise Casey who had been charged with investigating the Metropolitan Police following the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, issued her official report with the conclusions that they were guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia.

It came as no surprise to those of us who had read the many under-reported stories over the years of people – black and white, men and women – who had been picked on and brutally treated and some killed by police over the years on social media and in minority publications. Nor those of us who had attended protests against their behaviour or watched them in action at times against protesters.

Our mass media have always ignored many of these cases and underplayed others, almost always taking the side of the police and acting more as a PR agency for them, always keen to spread the rumours, lies and misleading press statements the police rush out to excuse their mistakes and misbehaviour.

We saw this at its most blatant over Hillsborough, again with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the killing of Ian Tomlinson while trying to walk back to his hostel through a protest at the Bank of England.

We’ve also seen the deliberate actions by the police to pervert the course of justice in high profile cases including the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence, where they investigated his family and friends while treating one of his killers as a witness. Daniel Morgan’s family have just received an apology and compensation over their failure to properly investigate his axing to death in a Sydenham pub car park in 1987 – a panel concluded that the Met’s “first objective was to protect itself” against the allegations of corruption against some of its officers.

Many other campaigners have exposed deliberate obstruction by police to inquiries into deaths, particularly those in police custody, such as Sean Rigg, which I’ve written about here before.

In the last few days, 25 years after his racist murder in Kingston, Lakhvinder Ricky Reel was awarded an honorary degree by Brunel University, part of a long campaign to get justice by his mother Sukhdev Reel.

*Sukhdev Reel at Downing Street in 2000*

Ricky and his friends had been victims of a racial attack in the town centre and six days later his body was recovered from the Thames. His family had been urging the police to search the river since he disappeared – and his body was found after only 7 minutes of searching. The Met refused to treat his death as a racist attack and made many failures in their investigation, devoting more resources to spying on his family by the undercover Special Demonstration Squad for their campaigning.

Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14

Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14: This protest on Saturday 21st July 2018 was the 14th organised by Movement for Justice outside the immigration prison at Yarl’s Wood and I think their last there. I missed the first so this was my 13th visit to this remote location, cyling uphill the five or six miles north from Bedford station. I had previously photographed a number of protests organised by MfJ outside the two immigration prisons (officially called detention centres to make it sound nicer) on the north of Heathrow airport, Harmondsworth and Colnbrook, a rather easier journey.

Unlike these two prisons which housed men, Yarl’s Wood was mainly used to hold women, though there were also a few families there. The protests there had attracted more campaigners because of this, with women being seen more widely as victims than male asylum seekers. And many of those who were locked up inside were women who had been raped as well as beaten and otherwise subjected to traumatic events before fleeing their countries.

Many of the women – as too the men elsewhere – were kept locked up for many months and some for years in indefinite detention while the Home Office refused to believe their stories or to properly investigate their cases, often demanding paperwork it would be impossible for them to provide. The remoteness of the centre and only limited access to internet and telephones makes it difficult for the women to progress their cases.

Many of these are people with desperate needs for counselling and help, but instead as various investigations, official as well as undercover journalism – had shown are held under appalling conditions in this and other centres run by private companies such as SERCO, with detainees refused their human and civil rights, assaulted, sexually harassed and assaulted, denied proper medical treatment, poorly fed and forced to work for £1 an hour on menial tasks.

The protests here are greeted by the women, giving them the assurance that they have not been forgotten and that there are those outside who support them. Those able to get to the windows facing the hill on which the protesters stood so they could be seen over the tall prison fence – the lower 10ft solid steel and above that another ten foot of dense metal mesh – shouted greetings, waved and held up messages.

A powerful public address system meant those inside could hear the speeches, some by former inmates of Yarl’s Wood and other detention centres, and some by those inside, relayed by mobile phone to the amplifier, as well as by some leading MfJ members.

Most of those inside will eventually be released, the majority getting leave to stay in this country. Some are taken to be deported with the MfJ and other organisations then working desperately and often successfully to stop their deportation flights back to terror and violence in their home countries.

This was by far the smallest of all the protests at Yarl’s Wood organised by the MfJ, following complaints made against the organisation by a former member who appears to have been treated badly by them. But however justified her personal complaint, her comments revealed little or nothing about the nature of the group which was not already on Wikipedia or otherwise common knowledge. But the dispute led to many other groups ending their support for protests organised by the MfJ, some organising their own protests but with very limited success.

*Mabel had been held in Yarl’s Wood for a day or two less than 3 years*

Other groups were and are working – as MfJ still is – to support detainees. The MfJ has played a major role in protests against our racist immigration detention system and in actions to prevent deportations. It still seems to be supported by many former detainees who have always played a leading role in the protests both at Yarl’s Wood and at Harmondsworth.

The Home Office finally decided it was too easy for protests to be organised outside Yarl’s Wood and moved the women – many of whom were released at the start of the Covid epidemic – up to an even more remote location in the north-east, with Yarl’s Wood being used to house those who had crossed the Channel in small boats.

The Illegal Immigration Act finally passed a few days ago intends to deport almost all migrants and asylum seekers (other than those coming under special schemes for Ukraine, Hong Kong etc) to Rwanda without any consideration of their asylum claims. Efforts to persuade the government to set up safe routes for those claiming asylum were rejected by the government in the latest ratcheting up of its racist policies, justified by them through the doublespeak of “compassion” while showing not the faintest scintilla of any real compassion.

More on My London Diary at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14.

Shut down Yarl’s Wood Immigration Prison – 2017

On Saturday 13th May 2017 I put my Brompton folding bike on the train and made my way to Bedford Station via St Pancras. I was on my way the the 11th protest outside the immigration detention centre at Yarl’s Wood in the campaign led by Movement for Justice to shut down this and other immigration prisons.

This was the first time I’d taken a bike to get to Yarl’s Wood, although I’d been to most of the previous protests they had organised there. Before I’d ridden from the station on a coach organised by the event organisers which hadn’t always been ideal, meaning I sometimes arrived late – especially once when the driver got lost – and had to leave when the coach was leaving, sometimes before the end of the protest and sometimes when I would have liked to leave earlier. On the bike I was free to arrive when I wanted and leave when I liked.

Yarl’s Wood is sited in an area remote for the southern parts of England, on the site of a former wartime airfield, probably chosen as somewhere people could be locked away out of sight and out of mind, on the hills around 5 miles north of Bedford. Motorists would take the A6 to Milton Ernest, the closest village, and then a mile or more uphill to the meeting point outside the Twinwoods Business Park. But I took a slightly more sensible cycle route, mainly along side roads or cycle paths, with just a short section beside the A6 into the village.

Most of the route was uphill, climbing slowly towards the hills, then wasting the energy I’d expended in climbing with short downhill sections. But the final section from Milton Ernest was uphill all the way, long and steep, though I didn’t need to worry about traffic on it as the police had helpfully closed the road.

My Brompton has a 3-speed hub gear and isn’t really good on hills, with the lowest of the three still being rather high when things get steep, but I managed to struggle up without having to get off and walk, though I was tired and seriously panting by the time I reached the top.

There I locked the bike to a fence and joined the thousand or so protesters who had travelled from around the country in a long line of coaches parked along the road. There were speeches and chanting for some time as we waited for others to arrive.

The gates of the business centre were locked and protesters are prevented from taking the shortest route to the prison (there is also a more direct private road from the south closed to the public.) But a public footpath runs beside the 20ft fence around it. To reach it the campaigners first march a few hundred yards along the road, then turn down one footpath to reach a bridleway before going a few hundred yards along this to the path leading to the prison.

Its not a great distance, a little over three-quarters of a mile, but much of the way is on paths often muddy and full of puddles, and the Brompton is not happy off-road. I ended up pushing it much of the time, occasionally carrying it along with my camera bag, though some of the protesters did give me a hand so I could take some photographs.

Outside the prison the protesters marched into a field on the north side where a small hill rises to give a limited view over the solid lower half of the 20 foot metal prison fence. Their shouts and noise were greeted by those inside the centre who had managed to get to the windows on that side.

The prison windows have very limited opening, but enough for some of the women inside to get their arms through and wave, often holding items of clothing, or sheets of A4 paper with messages calling for freedom and for justice. Our view of them from the hill was only through the wire mesh of the upper 10 feet of the 20 foot fence which made taking pictures difficult.

From most places we could only see the two upper floors of the building, but at the very highest point the upper part of some ground floor windows was also visible. These rooms are used to house families being detained and although Yarl’s Wood was mainly used to detain women there were a few men here as well.

Most of the protesters stood up on the hill holding banners and placards but others were at the bottom, some banging or kicking the metal fence which resonates to make a terrific racket. Others wrote slogans on the fence, though these were only visible to us outside. People climbed up on ladders or other people’s shoulders or used long poles to hold banners, posters and placards in front of the upper mesh where the detainees could see them.

Movement for Justice had brought a public address system and there were speeches, mainly from former detainees, including several women who had been held at Yarl’s Wood. One who spoke was Mabel Gawanas who had been recently released a after a few days short of 3 years inside. A few detainees were also able to speak from inside over mobile phones, amplified by the PA system.

The protests at Yarl’s Wood have been important in gaining publicity for the terrible way in which the UK treats asylum seekers, particularly women who are locked up in this ‘racist, sexist hell-hole’ which has been exposed by various reports. They have an enormous morale-boosting affect on the prisoners who feel isolated and forgotten inside.

But the government’s response has been to re-purpose Yarl’s Wood as a short-term holding facility for men arriving in the UK by boat in December 2021 and to set up a new immigration detention centre for women in an even more remote location in County Durham, where it is much harder for the women to organise and argue their cases. Almost certainly a part of this decision was to try to avoid further protests such as this one.

More recently the Home Office has started indefinitely detaining women at Yarl’s Wood again, although the numbers are much smaller. No official announcement was made of this reversion.

Much more at Shut down Yarl’s Wood Prison on My London Diary.

April 28th 2015 IWMD

April 28th 2015 IWMD; April 28th every year is International Workers Memorial Day, and last year here on >Re:PHOTO I wrote about this, beginning with a quote from the TUC web site:

Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don’t die of mystery ailments, or in tragic “accidents”. They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn’t that important a priority. International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD) 28 April commemorates those workers.
TUC – International Workers’ Memorial Day

I wrote more about it and illustrated the post with pictures taken mainly at previous years on Tower Hill. You can still read it at International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD).

This year there are events planned in Stratford, Barking and Walthamstow marking the event, as well as others around the country, and many workplaces will be holding a minute’s silence at 12 noon.

On Tuesday 28th April 2015 two of the three events I covered were related to IWMD, but I also went to Holloway Prison with protesters demanding the release of an immigration detainee being held there.

Qatar Slave Labour deaths – World Cup 2022 – Qatari Embassy, Mayfair

My working day began with trade unionists outside the Qatari embassy in Mayfair, where they attempted to deliver a letter on International Workers Memorial Day protesting the slaughter of migrant slave labour workers on World Cup building sites. At current death rates, over 4,000 migrant workers will die by 2022.

According to a Guardian report, on average one Nepalase worker there dies very two days, and including the deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers the death rate is most likely more than one every day. At least 964 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh died working in Qatar in 2012 and 2013.

Work had still to begin on eleven of the 12 stadiums needed for the 2022 World Cup and there are likely to be many more dying due to the appalling exploitation and abuse of these migrant workers.

The International Labour Organization had urged Qatar to “ensure without delay, access to justice for migrant workers, so that they can effectively assert their rights […] strengthening the complaints system and the labour inspection system”.

According to Amnesty many of the migrant workers have there passports confiscated when they arrive for work in Qatar and are forced to work long hours for very low pay day after day with no rest and are often physically and sexually abused.

Police moved the protesters away from the embassy to the other side of the road but allowed a small deputation to approch the doorway with a letter. A police officer went inside the embassy to ask if someone would come to the door to accept this from Gail Cartmail, Assistant General Secretary of Unite the Union. After a lengthy wait, a man came to the door and refused, and the protesters then left it on the doorstep.

In 2021 The Guardian revealed that “More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago“. A few days football came at a very bloody price.

Qatar Slave Labour deaths – World Cup 2022

Holloway protest for Yarl’s Wood protester Anna – Holloway Prison

From Mayfair I travelled to a very different area of London for a protest outside Holloway Prison, a Victorian prison in one of the poorer areas of North London which had housed only women prisoners since 1902 and was closed a year after this protest.

Anna, a detainee in Yarls Wood immigration detention prison, had been one of a group of women defending another detainee, a torture victim, who was about to be deported. Thirty guards rushed into the room and brutally assaulted them all, taking them to solitary confinement in the ‘Kingfisher’ isolation unit at Yarl’s Wood. Both Anna and another woman, Lillija, were threatened with prison, but only Anna was transferred to Holloway prison and was being held there although she was had not been charged with any offence.

Both women had been involved in a Channel 4 News exposure of the abuses of women by guards in Yarls Wood which had led to one guard being suspended.

Many of those at the emergency protest organised by Movement for Justice demanding Anna’s release had served time in Yarls Wood or other immigration prisons.

When a group of three prison employees came out to argue with the protesters that their protest simply upset women being held inside the jail they told them from their first hand experience how greatly they had welcomed knowing that there were people outside the prison who were aware of them and wanting to help.

Free Yarl’s Wood Anna from Holloway

Hotel Workers Rise Up on Workers Memorial Day

Finally I came back to central London and the Hilton London Metropole hotel on the Edgware Road in Bayswater and in another protest for International Workers’ Memorial Day against the exploitation of workers, mainly migrants organised by the Unite Hotel Workers branch. Workers at luxury hotels in portering and household services are employed by agencies on minimum wage, zero hours contracts and denied basic rights.

Several workers including former room attendant Barbara Pokryszka spoke at the protest, complaining of heavy workloads and abusive treatment by management, who fail to treat them as human beings, saying “We Are Not Machines”. As in other areas of work outsourcing to contractors who pay minimum wage and impose abysmal conditions is at the root of the abuse.

Luxury hotels have a world-wide reputation to maintain and this would be damaged if they were found to be treating staff on their payroll in such a disgusting way. A night’s stay for two in a room costs over £200 and housekeeping worker would usually have to clean between 12 and 20 rooms in an 8 hour shift. The worker’s pay for cleaning – before deductions would be around £85 while the hotel guests would be paying over £3000 for their stay. Hotels could surely pay more to their essential workers.

Hotel Workers – Workers Memorial Day

Peckham Pride

Earlier this week I took a walk with a couple of friends in Peckham, one of my favourite parts of south London, and currently on this site I’ve been making a number of illustrated posts about walks I made there back in 1989, the latest, a couple od days ago being Bird in Bush, Wood Dene, Asylum and a School. But I’ve also photographed other events in Peckham, including the first Peckham Pride, seven years ago on Saturday 20th February 2016.

Peckham Pride

LGSMigrants and Movement for Justice organised the event to put the politics of resistance which has for many years been sidelined by the growing commercialisation of Pride marches and events back into Pride.

Peckham’s FIRST EVER Pride march is for everyone with and without citizenship, papers or no papers. We REFUSE to accept stigma or discrimination over the colour of our passports, the colour of our skin, our gender, our sexuality or our ability.

They had chosen to come to Peckham for this event as the area had become a major target for anti-immigration raids, racist go-home vans, and street harassment by the Home Office.

The are has a large Nigerian and Ghanaian community which makes it a convenient target for racist raids leading to brutal deportations on cattle-like charter flights to Nigeria and Ghana. But its residents have also made it a focus of growing popular resistance on the streets to these illegal and immoral activities.

Several hundred supporters of the event met on the square by Peckham Library – now threatened along with the Peckham Arch by Southwark Council who are eager to build on much of the area – and perhaps to end the community events which gather there, sometimes critical of council activities.

At a rally there were speeches calling for refugees to be welcomed in Britain and to find here a safe haven where they can enjoy freedom, oppourtunity and education. Instead they are faced with a government which is increasingly making the country a hostile environment both for them and for the majority of citizens. The speakers emphasized the need to organise and act together to oppose and defeat these polices.

From the arch on Peckham High Street Peckham Pride marched down the major shopping street of Rye Lane, attracting attention and some encouraging gestures and comments with some loud chanting and a samba band.

They stopped again a little past Rye Lane station where there were more speeches, including by another former Yarl’s Wood detainee who told how they had organised and held together to stop a fellow detainee being forcibly deported. A local shopkeeper came to talk about the Border Force raids, including one on his premises and the community opposition close to them, and there was a powerful speech from a local resident about the need to organise resistance and oppose these raids.

Local resistance is both effective and appropriate, as the Home Office employees who carry them out are generally acting in abuse of the law. I had to leave before the end of the march and missed the performances which were to follow it at the Bussey Centre at the centre of Peckham.

Peckham Pride

March against police racism 2000

One of the earliest protests I put on My London Diary was a march in Wood Green to Tottenham Police Station organised by Movement For Justice on 22nd January 2000, and two years ago I posted come of the black and white images from this on this site in a post Marching For Justice.

At the time as well as working on black and white film I was also taking pictures with a consumer digital camera, the Fuji 2.2 Mp MX-2700. It had a fixed 35mm equivalent lens and was probably the best consumer digital of the time, though obviously rather limited.

The protest was organised by the Movement for Justice and the Lindo Campaign. Delroy Lindo started a campaign ofter his friend Winston Silcott was wrongly imprisoned for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots. The Winston Silcott Defence Campaign played an important part getting Silcott acquitted and released. Silcott had been convicted with two other men despite not being anywhere near where the murder took place.

Two police officers were later tried for fabricating evidence but were acquitted, despite the evidence against them. They had picked on Silcott because of his record and fabricated confessions by the three men.

Silcott was chosen because of his record and because the police could find no evidence over the murder of one of their officers. Six years earlier he had been acquitted in another murder trial and sentenced to six months after a nightclub brawl. When Blakelock was savagely killed he was on bail on another murder charge, for which he spent 18 years in jail after the jury did not believe that he had killed a night club bouncer in self-defence.

Later Silcott, much to the obvious disgust of the BBC and many politicians was awarded £17,000 compensation for wrongful conviction and a further £50,000 in an out-of-court settlement of his civil case for malicious prosecution.

Lindo and his wife were harassed by police after they began to campaign over the imprisonment of Silcott and other cases including the killing of Roger Sylvester and the harassment of Duwayne Brooks, a friend of Stephen Lawrence who had been with him when he was murdered in 1993. Instead of treating him as a witness, they treated him as a suspect and he suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

Police arrested Brooks after he took part in an anti-racist march against the British National Party following the murder. and he was charged but the judge dismissed the case. Later he sued the Met Police and was awarded £100,000 compensation. The treatment of Brooks and the parents and other friends of Stephen Lawrence played an important role in the Macpherson report that concluded the Metropolitan Police Force was “institutionally racist“.

Roger Sylvester lived in Tottenham and worked for a drop-in mental health centre. He had suffered some mental health problems himself some years earlier and in January 1999 was detained outside of his home, under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. Eight police officers restrained him “for his own safety” and took him to St Ann’s Hospital were he was further restrained, going limp after 20 minutes. An inquest jury found his death was caused by being restrained for too long in the wrong position, without sufficient medical attention, but their verdict was overturned and a judge replaced it with an open verdict.

Recent event have shown that the force remained a safe space for racists, misogynists and rapists, although of course many police officers are trying hard to do an honest and necessary job. It remains to be seen if the current head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Mark Rowley, will be any more successful than his predecessors in turning the force around.

Back on the original post about the event there are six pictures, four in black and white and two colour. I took many more in black and white but very few have been digitised.

Shaker Aamer, Ricky Bishop and Pakistan Drones

On Saturday 23rd November 2013 I photographed three protests in London.

Free Shaker Aamer March – Northcote Rd, Battersea

The march and rally in Battersea began close to the family home of Shaker Aamer, a British resident charity worker kidnapped in Afghanistan and sold to US troops. There was no evidence against him and he was first cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007, but was still there and still being routinely tortured in 2013.

It was convenient for me, being just a short walk from Clapham Junction station, but too far from central London for most of the photographers who cover protests who largely stick to Zone 1 of the London Underground, so I felt my coverage of the event was particularly important in recording the event.

Aamer had gone from London with his family in June 2001 to work for a charity in Kabul. Four months later when Kabul was bombed he took his family out from the city for safety. Local bandits then seized a money making opportunity, kidnapping him and selling him to US forces on November 24, 2001.

He was then tortured by the US in Bagram and Kandahar, at times in the presence of British intelligence agents, before being illegally rendered to Guantanamo Bay in February 2002. Abuse and torture continued daily there and much of the time he was being kept in solitary confinement, subjected to particularly extreme treatment for continuing to protest his innocence and acting as a spokesperson for other prisoners, demanding his and their rights.

In 2013 despite never having been charged with any offence and twice being cleared for release Aamer remained a prisoner, the last British resident there. Many think he was still being held as the testimony he would give about his torture would be highly embarrassing to both US and UK intelligence agencies, and that the British government had been halfhearted in their public demands for his release, and in private urging the US to keep him locked away.

The campaign by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign with years of protests outside Parliament and elsewhere had attracted considerable public support, including from his local Conservative MP and other MPs from all parties. There was a short rally outside the Baptist Church on Northcote Road before the marchers, many in orange Guantanamo-style jump suits and some with shackles and black hoods, began the short march through the busy shopping streets close to Clapham Junction to hold a longer rally at Battersea Arts Centre. I said goodbye and left them going up Lavender Hill to catch a train to my next event.

More at Free Shaker Aamer March in Battersea.

Remember Ricky Bishop – Jail his Killers -Brixton Police Station

Twelve years earlier on November 22, 2001, young black man Ricky Bishop was in a car being driven by a white friend in Brixton. Police stopped the car under suspicion as part of their area-wide anti-drug ‘Operation Clean Sweep’, searched Bishop on the spot and found nothing, but still handcuffed the two men and took them to Brixton Police Station. The white driver was not searched and was released without charge.

In the police station Bishop was taken into a small room and attacked by officers, though there was no CCTV evidence available of what went on. He went in a healthy 25-year-old fitness trainer. The beating caused him to have a heart attack, but the officers simply held him to the ground and only later called for a paramedic. Drugs were pushed into his mouth and stories invented to justify the arrest and assault. He was probably dead before an ambulance arrived and took him, still in handcuffs, to A&E at King College Hospital, standing around his dead body and making jokes. By the time his mother was informed of his detention he was dead.

Police issued a misleading press report and covered up what had happened, hiding evidence both immediately and at the inquest, where the jury were not allowed to come to a verdict that would assign any blame to the police. The Bishop family have accused 12 officers of murder, and their names were chanted at the protest around the ‘Remembrance Tree’ in front of the police station, each followed by a loud shout of ‘Murderer!’.

The arrest and subsequent treatment of the two men clearly reflected the racist nature of policing in Brixton, and the events following the death showed the failure of any real accountability of the police, with a criminal justice system that is complicit in letting police in this and many, many other cases literally get away with murder. Ricky Bishop’s death is one of several high-profile cases to have involved Brixton police over the years, in particular the death here of Sean Rigg in similar circumstances in August 2008.

There have been many marches and rallies in Brixton over these deaths in police custody, often at the tree in front of the police station, called the Remembrance Tree or the Lynching Tree by campaigners. There has been no sign that the police have taken real action to root out the systemic racism in the Metropolitan Police (and other forces.) The only action the police have taken is to remove all posters, candles, flowers and other signs of remembrance from the tree outside Brixton Police Station.

Remember Ricky Bishop – Jail his Killers

End Drone Attacks in Pakistan – Downing St to US Embassy

I arrived by Tube from Brixton too late for the start of the march by the PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice party) from Downing Street to the US Embassy, then still in Grosvenor Square, but caught up with it as it went along Pall Mall, a few hundred yards from the start.

Around 500 supporters of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and a few from Stop The War and anti-drone groups were marching in protest against US drone strikes in Pakistan which have killed many innocent men, women and children.

It was I think the first march which the PTI had organised in London, and this showed, with the march sticking to the pavement and stopping at crossing lights.

London’s pavements are too busy for marches of this size and the march was soon broken up into a number of small groups by the lights, as those at the front carried on regardless of what was happening behind them. Some were carrying coffins, others posters and flags.

From Hyde Park Corner they went up Park Lane, which although always busy with traffic has wide pavements with few people on foot, and the march gathered together again, to make the final part of its journey to the embassy, walking past a camp with hunger strikers from the People’s Mojahedin of Iran to hold a rally in front of the embassy.

It was a noisy rally and the amplification for the speakers was not really enough for an outdoors event of this size. I listened to a couple of speeches then left for home.

End Drone Attacks in Pakistan.

Xenophobia, UKBA Raids & City Climate Criminals

Movement Against Xenophobia – Old Palace Yard, Westminster. Tue 22 Oct 2013

The Movement Against Xenophobia (MAX) was a new campaign aimed at countering the vicious anti-immigrant discourse of mainstream politics in the UK. The rally outside parliament was in protest against the Immigration Bill 2013 which was debated later in the day.

Speakers attacked the Bill, which removed the great majority of the grounds on which foreign nationals can lodge appeals against deportation, puts a requirement on banks and landlords to check immigration status of those setting up accounts or becoming tenants, increases the fines for employers who hire anyone without the right to work here, and includes new powers to check driving licence applicants are in the country legally. The bill also imposes a levy on temporary migrants to allow them access to free NHS care.

They also opposed the existing draconian restrictions on bringing spouses to this country that are splitting many families, with a minimum income level required that half the population cannot meet, causing real hardship and heartache for many.

Governments have competed with oppositions over the years to convince the right wing press that their party has a tougher line against immigrants, with the racist vans and e-mails sent by the then Home Secretary Theresa May being an clear example of how low our politicians will sink.

Report after report has shown that migrants make a substantial positive contribution to the economy, enrich Britain’s culture and improve the standard of its public services. MAX demanded that politicians and the media end the use of language that incites racism and xenophobia and for the political parties to reject the ‘numbers game’ politics of immigration and replace it with a fair system built on human rights and the needs of the UK.

MAX was a coalition of existing groups who have come together to challenge anti-immigrant discourse, such as the continual use of the term ‘illegal immigrant’. As they point out, no one is illegal, and these are more correctly people who do not have the legal right to live here – they are undocumented migrants. MAX and its supporters want to live in a civilised society where people, irrespective of background, are valued and treated with respect.

Movement Against Xenophobia

Chinatown Says ‘No Entry UKBA’ – Gerrard St, Soho, Tue 22 Oct 2013

In London’s Chinatown, virtually all restaurants and shops closed for two hours for a rally and march against frequent raids being carried out there by the UK Borders Agency who have entered premises and interrogated people inside demanding to see evidence that they have permission to live in the UK.

Many of those questioned are British citizens or have leave to stay, while others are here visiting relatives on valid tourist visas. A small number have been found to be without proper documentation but the raids appear to be carried out in a random fashion on the off-chance that there might be so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ working in the premises – ‘fishing raids’.

These raids had no proper legal status in the UK as we are not required to carry ID and can simply refuse to answer questions and walk away. There was no requirement to give our name or address as a flier that was being handed out advised.

As the start of the two hour protest approached, more and more shops and restaurants turned customers away and put up signs in windows and doorways stating ”No Entry to UKBA fishing raids’ and there was much furious blowing of whistles. A small group protested noisily for a few minutes outside the only business still open on Gerrard Street, but soon moved away to the rally by the Two Lions statue.

Leading members of London’s Chinese community spoke at the rally against the UKBA raids. Some also made clear that there need to be easier ways to bring workers skilled in Chinese cooking to this country if they were to maintain their traditional practices which are vital to keep Chinatown truly Chinese.

After a number of speeches there was then a march around Chinatown before returning to continue the rally, though some workers were leaving to prepare for the reopening of businesses at the end of the two hour closure.

Chinatown Says ‘No Entry UKBA’

Fossil-Free London Lobby Tour – Bank & Stock Exchange, Tue 22 Oct 2013

Climate campaigners from People & Planet and 350.org toured some City sites which lock us into a fossil fuel dependent economy, stopping to make brief speeches and perform poems and songs. They carried balloons to represent carbon dioxide, which had all been intended to be black, but they couldn’t find enough black balloons so had to use some purple ones as well.

Police talked to them at the start of tour, and seemed happy with the tour, though they continued to follow them on the tour, which began in front of the Bank of England (and the Royal Exchange, now just expensive shops.)

From there they walked to the Stock Exchange, stopping first at the entrance on Newgate Street for a short rally before walking around to the main entrance in Paternoster Square.

Here there were more speeches and another song – ‘Buddy Can You Spare a Dime’ – and the balloons were popped as a small group of police and a security officer from the Stock Exchange looked on from a few yards away.

The tour then moved off to visit other ‘carbon criminals’ in the City, but I left them on the corner of Gresham St to go home.

Fossil-Free London Lobby Tour

Gender-based Violence, Arming Israel, Trans Pride, Anti Racism

Protests in London three years ago today on Saturday 14th September 2019 all with some connection to human rights violations.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa – Trafalgar Square

People, mainly women and including many South Africans, dressed in black to protest in Trafalgar Square following the rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana and many other women in South Africa.

Protests were taking place across South Africa calling for the government to declare a state of emergency over gender based violence, and to protest against gender-based violence across the world.

After speeches and silences on the North Terrace they moved to light candles for the victims at the entrance to South Africa House.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa

HSBC Stop Arming Israel – Oxford St

Protesters led by Young London Palestine Solidarity Campaign took part in a National Day of Action outside the Oxford St branch of the HSBC Bank calling on it to stop its support of military and technology companies that sell weapons and equipment to Israel to be used against Palestinians. The bank had closed for the protest.

Although HSBC had divested from Israel’s largest private weapons company, it still owned shares in Caterpillar whose bulldozers are used to destroy Palestinian homes and construct illegal apartheid settlements, BAE Systems whose fighter jets attack Gaza and Raytheon which suppliers the ‘bunker buster’ bombs used to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Stop Arming Israel HSBC Protest

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

People met at Hyde Park Corner for this first march in the city to celebrate trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals and to protest against the continuing discrimination here and around the world against them.

As well as many from the trans+ community there were family, friends and other supporters taking part in an event which aimed to increase the visibility of trans+ people.

Recent years have seen an increasing transphobia in the British media with considerably publicity being given to the views of anti-trans activists. There has been an increase in attacks attacks on trans people on the streets, hate speech by trans-exclusionary feminists, and by right-wing national and state governments around the world.

Too often trans+ people around the world are subject to human rights abuses. They have always been an integral part of the gay community and at the forefront of the fight for gay rights – from the Stonewall rebellion on.

There were a few short speeches before the march set off, going along Piccadilly to a rally in Soho Square. I marched with them as far as Green Park where I caught the Underground for a protest in Brixton.

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

Brixton Anti-Racist March

Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group were protesting in Brixton against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants, calling for freedom of movement, the closure of immigration detention prisons, and an end to Brexit which they see being used to whip up immigrant-bashing and nationalism by Boris Johnson.

The event began in Windrush Square, where one of the speakers was Eulalee Pennant, a Jamaican great-grandmother who has been fighting the Home Office for 16 years against deportation. Here uncle was one of the Windrush generation, her grandfather had served in the UK armed forces for his working life, and her cousins, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandson were British. She had worked and paid tax here for many years but was detained days before her 60th birthday and locked up in Yarls Wood, where she contracted a serious stomach infection. She was still vomiting blood when the Home Office tried to put her on a deportation flight.

Eulalee had tried to regularise her and her son’s immigration status with the Home Office in 2003, and among the documents she sent was her passport. The Home Office kept claiming they did not have it, and it was only in court 15 years later they finally admitted they had failed to send in back. Her son spent five years fighting his case to stay in the UK but was deported to Jamaica in 2008, and was murdered there the following June. Her fight against deportation has cost many thousands in legal fees and she has been unable to work since 2003.

There had been relatively few at the gathering in Windrush Square but there was a larger audience when the group marched to Brixton Market to continue the protest there and Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie also came to speak about his LDNlovesEU campaign.

The group then set off to march noisily around central Brixton, returning to Windrush Square for some final speeches.

Brixton anti-racist march

Close Down Yarl’s Wood – August 2015

Close Down Yarl’s Wood – Yarl’s Wood Immigration prison, near Bedford

Saturday 8th August 2015 saw a large protest outside the immigration jail at Yarl’s Wood where asylum seekers are locked up indefinitely by our racist immigration system without trial, a prison run for profit by a private company where detainees are subjected to abuse and sexual harassment.

Yarl’s Wood was used to detain women, many of whom had fled abuse and violence in their own countries only to arrive in this country and be locked up and further abused here. The detention centre is in a remote location in a business park on a former wartime airfield around five miles from Bedford.

The protest was one of a long series organised by Movement for Justice, but was supported by a large number of other groups, particularly many women’s groups including Sisters Uncut. In my post on My London Diary I listed 25 of them, but there were others too. This was only the second protest they had organised at Yarls Wood, but it came after a series I’d photographed at the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres.

MfJ is a small Trotskyist group which has been one of the most active UK groups organising against racism and for civil rights in the UK since it was formed by students in North London in 1995. This protest came a couple of years before a bitter dispute led many other groups to end cooperation with them, but MfJ continue their active role, in particular in opposition to deportation charter flights and the shameful Rwanda plan.

The main entrance to the detention centre is on a private road which is gated some distance from the centre. The coaches bringing people from across the country, and me and others from Bedford Station were parked in a long line at the side of a public road around a mile to the north, close to the locked entrance to the business park. The protest began on an area of grass here as we waited for everyone to arrive, and there were speeches and much chanting and dancing.

Finally the protest began its march, setting off around 300 metres along the road to a bridleway which eventually after around a mile of walking led to a hilly field beside the 20ft high fence around the prison. The lower 10ft of this is solid metal sheeting, but the upper 10ft a sturdy metal gauze, and from the hill we could see women at many of the windows waving to greet the protesters. Those held inside feel isolated and forgotten, though there are a few prison visitors and they are allowed some phone contact with solicitors and others to pursue their asylum cases.

Protesters made a great noise, kicking and banging on the metal sheeting of the fence as well as shouting, and had brought a sound system so that they could speak to the women outside. They were also able to make phone contact with some of them and amplify their voices too.

The windows of the centre only open a couple of inches, but some were able to squeeze their arms through the gap and wave cloths or articles of clothing, while others held up messages to the glass. One carefully drawn one read ‘We Want Freedom – No Human Is Illegal – Close Yarls Wood’ while another simply read ‘Help’. Others wrote their mobile numbers large enough to be read by the protesters to contact them.

A group of people wearing face masks began to write slogans on the fence, and soon a long length of it was covered with them ‘No Borders’, ‘No One is Illegal’ ‘#SetHerFree’, ‘Shut it Down’, ‘Gaza 2 Yarls Wood Destroy Apartheid Walls’, ‘Racist Walls’ and more.

The speakers on the hill facing the prison included several who had been held inside Yarls Wood and could see women inside they knew, and others who had been in other detention centres. Most people who are held in this way are finally released and allowed to stay in the UK – sometimes after several years of imprisonment – and their seems no justification for locking them up in this way.

Here’s the final paragraph I wrote back in 2015:

Too soon we had to leave. And they had to stay. As I walked away to catch the coach back to Bedford station I felt ashamed at the way that my country treats asylum seekers. They deserve support and humanity and get treated worse than criminals.

More on My London Diary: Close Down Yarl’s Wood