The Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ – Millbank, London. Sunday 11 April 2010
Kiss-In – Tamsin Omond and Peter Tatchell
In 2010 as a General Election was approaching, Tamsin Omond had begun the ‘To the Commons‘ campaign which made this statement:
“The Commons is you and me. It’s the kid on the skateboard, the woman struggling with her shopping, and the guy who serves us coffee in the morning. The Commons is about having our say and getting our voices heard. It’s about looking out for each other, our neighbourhoods, and our environment. Yes we’re a political party but we’re not about politics. We’re about people.”
The message on the web ended “Vote for Tamsin Omond for Hampstead and Kilburn” where she was standing as a candidate. It wasn’t a hugely succesful campaign, and she ended up with only 123 votes, against 17, 332 for Labour’s Glenda Jackson in what was one of the closest races in 2010, with the Tory only 42 votes behind and the Lib Dems a close third. We have an electoral system and a media that is incredibly stacked against candidates from outside the major parties, who only win in exceptional circumstances – such as electing Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London, or if Corbyn was to leave Labour to stand in his constituency at the next election.
As a part of her campaign, Omond had organised the ‘Big Gay Flashmob’, advertising the event on Facebook and getting Peter Tatchell of Outrage! (and later of the the Peter Tatchell Foundation) to work with her to publicise it. Over 1500 had signed up to attend the event and a fairly large proportion of them turned up on the day.
In the morning Omond and Tatchell had gone to a meeting with George Osborne, who had been shadow chancellor and was the Conservative Campaign manager. The Tory party has a long record of homophobia and of voting against gay rights, and many Tory MPs voted against the full repeal in 2003 of Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 infamous ‘Section 28’ which banned local authorities from “promoting homosexuality.”
Sister Angel Popstitute, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence from the London House of Common Sluts
Recently too, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling had suggested that Bed and Breakfast owners should be able to refuse gay couples, and there was still a very strong and vocal anti-gay element in the Tory party despite there being many gay members and gay Tory MPs. The great majority of the roughly 50 who voted against civil partnerships in 2004 were Tory MPs and party leader David Cameron was against the possibility of gay marriage.
So the flash mob was scheduled to take place outside Tory Party HQ, then on Millbank in the Millbank Tower. There were speeches, much loud chanting and a number of kiss-ins which everyone seemed to enjoy.
Back on Saturday 22nd March 2008 I had a rather varied day in London, meeting protesters cycling to Aldermaston on my way to photograph a march for freedom in Tibet, then going to a protest against the deportation of a gay man to Iran and finally to a pillow fight.
Bikes Not Bombs: London – Aldermaston
I was on foot and had just come out of Oxford Circus station when I saw the CND Bikes Not Bombs group of cyclists who had begun their ride in Trafalgar Square earlier and were on their way to ride to Aldermaston. Though when I took a few photographs as you can see from the bus they were cycling in exactly the wrong direction, east towards Ilford. Of course they weren’t lost, just trying to attract some attention to the protest, riding with a sound system along London’s busiest shopping street.
I’d thought briefly about taking part myself in the event, as I’d used a bike to get around since I was six, having graduated then from a first a pedal car and then a tricycle. I did own a car briefly when I was around 21, but soon realised it was impractical in cities, expensive, polluting and environmentally unsound and never made the same mistake again.
But for the reasons I listed on My London Diary – sloth, other events, lousy weather and a dislike of early rising – I didn’t join this official ride, though I did cycle on my own from Reading to Aldermaston and back on the following Monday to join the protesters there.
I was on my way to Park Crescent, a short walk north of the Chinese Embassy where Tibetans and supporters of freedom in Tibet were meeting to march through London on the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.
Tibet came under effective control of the Chinese government in 1951, when an agreement had been come to the status of Tibet within the recently established People’s Republic of China. In 1949 Tibetan protesters feared the Chinese were about to arrest the 14th Dalai Lama. Protests were at first peaceful but were brutally repressed by the People’s Liberation Army and there was heavy fighting which also involved Tibetan separatists who had been carrying out guerrilla warfare against Chinese forces.
The Dalai Lama fled the country and set up an independent Tibetan government in India, where he still lives – and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The Tibetan uprising had begun on 10th March 1959 and this day is celebrated each year as Tibetan Uprising Day and Women’s Uprising Day. Since 2009, following protests on 10th March 2008 in Lhasa, the Chinese-controlled authority in Tibet have celebrated the day they fully regained control, 28th March as the national anniversary of Serfs Emancipation Day.
The Tibetan Independence Movement who organise annual protests calling for freedom for Tibet was originally funded and trained by the CIA, but this was withdrawn following Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. And the Dalai Lama who had originally backed it, and who appears as a large photograph carried reverently in the marches, also withdrew support for the independence movement in the 1970s.
It is clear from reports by Amnesty International and others is that there are considerable human rights abuses in Tibet. The 2021 US State Department report listing includes “unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment by the government; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners; politically motivated reprisals against individuals located outside the country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom including site blocking; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions on religious freedom….”
But of course human rights are not always respected in this country, and we currently have a government which is proposing to withdraw from some international human rights conventions and proposing racist anti-immigrant policies which are deliberately in breach of them.
Back in 2008, the Labour government was also riding roughshod over the human rights of some immigrants, setting up a system of large-scale detention of asylum seekers and treating individuals unfairly in a bid to outflank the Tories on cutting immigration through blatantly right-wing policies.
Mehdi Kazemi had come to the UK to study after having been involved in a consensual homosexual relationship in Iran. After his boyfriend was executed for this he became a wanted man in Iran and he went to the Netherlands to apply for political asylum.
This was refused as he had come from the UK and so was not allowed under the 2003 Dublin Agreement. The Uk had refused him permission to stay in Britain and were proposing to deport him to Iran where he would be tried and executed.
His case was just one of many where the Home Office were failing to recognise the need for refugees to claim asylum on the grounds of persecution because of their sexual orientation, and for failing to have accurate and up-to-date information on homophobic persecution in countries to which LGBT asylum seekers might be deported.
Support for Kazemi at this protest and by a number of MPs, MEPs and human rights activists did eventually result in the Home Office agreeing to review his case and he was given leave to remain here in May 2008.
My day ended in very much lighter mood with a pillow fight in Leicester Square, one of many organised in capitals around the world due to kick off at 15.03PM.
I commented: “Of course its a trivial, silly event, but the idea and the kind of organisation involved I think represents something new and exciting, a kind of ‘Demo 2.0’ which we will surely see more of in the future.”
Perhaps this hasn’t had as much impact here in the UK as I had hoped, but I think may have been more important elsewhere in the world. To some extent it has been outgrown as Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps have become more important and even protests organised months and years in advance make use of them.
But it was interesting if rather tricky to photograph, and I got stuck in without a pillow and at some danger to my health, main not “from impact but suffocation when some pillows split open to fill the air with clouds of feathers and feather-dust. At times I wished I was wearing a mask to protect my lungs; keeping my mouth firmly closed and breathing though my nose only stopped the larger particles.“
And I also found the the autofocus on my DSLR was too efficient at focusing on feathers in the air, and until I turned it off and went manual many of my pictures failed to be sharp for the people and pillows behind the screen of feathers.
Later as the pixel count on DSLRs increased and full-frame cameras appeared I found it very useful to work in many situations using just the central ‘DX’ half-frame area of the viewfinder – which would have been very useful to let me see the people and pillows coming for me, but on this occasion I found “chaos really rules taking pictures becomes a press and hope situation. I think some of them do give an idea of what it was like to be there.
The Climate Revolution is an organisation set up by the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022) at the London Paralympics closing ceremony in 2012 and she spent the last years of her life campaigning to halt climate change, stop war and defend human rights and protesting against capitalism. Her work is now continued by the not-for-profit organisation she set up, the Vivienne Foundation.
I’m not a follower of fashion, as those who know me will have noticed. But Westwood’s activism reached a rather different and wider audience than the more usual campaigning groups, gaining publicity across the whole world of fashion and at times attracting the kind of mass media attention that follows celebrities, rather than issues, now attract.
Protests taking place in the UK seldom seem to be news – last Wednesday striking workers brought much of London to a standstill and possibly 100,000 people marched through the streets and protested in various places but when I came home and searched on the BBC news site in the early evening there was not a mention of it, though there may have been a little coverage later.
Others did rather better, but it needs something else for a protest to be news for our media. It can be that it happens abroad and particularly if it is against some regime unpopular with our (and the US) government. But it can also be if it is violent or particularly quirky or involves a major celebrity such as Dame Vivienne Westwood – and those protests she organised and her designs were always rather quirky too.
Although Westwood very much did her own thing, she was also great at cooperating with other groups working in the same area – such as the anti-fracking ‘Nanas from Nanashire’ who came down to London for this protest.
The protest was arranged to take place outside the Shale Gas Forum, where the CEOs of IGas, Cuadrilla and various government officials were plotting new ways to bring fracking to the UK, and to change our to allow this to happen. In particular they want to stop people being able to prevent dangerous mining beneath their properties which could cause dangerous and damaging subsidence. Their proposals would allowed companies to proceed without proper concern for safety and environmental consequences and give them some indemnity against damages and government would promise to pay a high price for the gas.
The Forum had been scheduled to take place at an expensive hotel in Belgravia, but after arrangements had been made for protest carnival to take place outside, it was moved to a ‘secret’ location elsewhere in London. Climate Revolution obviously had friends in high places who leaked the details to them.
It was Budget Day, but rather than going to take pictures around Westminster I decided it was more important to cover the protest against fracking. I met Westwood and her supporters, mainly fashion students, outside the Royal College of Arts Battersea location just south of Battersea Bridge and marched with them to the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in Cadogan Place which had been the original venue for the frackers.
We knew the event had been relocated and their was some confusion at the end of the march as to whether it should entrain immediately at Knightsbridge station or go to the hotel. Eventually this was resolved and there was a rally outside the hotel with speakers including Vivienne Westwood and Vanessa Vine of BIFF (Britain & Ireland Frack Free).
The new location was still a secret as we followed the Rhythms of Resistance samba band to Knightsbridge station, where more protesters were waiting and took the underground to Old Street.
People were slow to arrive at Old Street, with some stopping off to buy coffee or sandwiches and others getting lost on the way, but eventually we were on the march again, on our way to the rear gates of the Territorial Army Centre on Bunhill Row, guarded by a few police.
Outside the event, people danced to Rhythms of Resistance, and there were speeches by Vivienne Westwood, Tina Louise from Residents Action on Fylde Fracking, Vanessa Vine, Frack Free Bristol, and others, some of whom had also spoken at Knightsbridge.
Some of us then walked through Bunhill Fields cemetery to City Road to protest on the other side of the military centre, and later most of the other protesters followed for a further rally at the main gates.
The protest was beginning to wind down and people were leaving and I left too, going to cover a protest by The African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group and Peter Tatchell Foundation held a noisy protest at Uganda House calling for the repeal of Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws.
And from there I went on to Downing St, where the People’s Assembly were holding their Budget Day Protest before finally I could go home.
PETA World Vegan Day Naked Protest – Trafalgar Square, Sat 1 Nov 2014
Wikipedia tells me that World Vegan Day is an annual event celebrated by vegans around the world every 1 November and was established in 1994 to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the UK Vegan Society and the coining of the terms “vegan” and “veganism”. The exact date of the founding wasn’t known and Nov 1st was chosen for its association with “Samhain/Halloween and the Day of the Dead”. November 1st has also been All Saints Day since AD 835.
I’m not a vegan. But I have no problems with eating vegan food or vegetarian food, but often prefer meat or fish in my meals. But clearly reducing the amount of meat that is eaten by people around the world would be a useful contribution to reducing carbon emissions, although some vegetable production does involve a considerable carbon footprint, as well as environmental problems.
I welcome that many people now choose not to eat animals and avoid animal products, whatever their reasons, but also think there are good reasons to keep farming animals though there are plenty of farming practices I think should be banned. But keeping livestock is very much a traditional part of life in this country, one that has produced the landscape we enjoy and the animals we like to see in it. It can be done in an ethical and humane manner, though this means paying a price that allows farmers to do so.
So although I was happy to photograph PETA’s World Vegan Day protest in Trafalgar Square when activists wearing little clothing and smeared with fake blood lay on a large tarpaulin, I was not in sympathy with some of the views expressed by PETA. But the posters held by those taking part in the protest (I think less than half the advertised 255, the number of animals killed for food in the UK every second) simply noted the “1 billion animals killed for flesh each year” and encouraged people to “Choose Life: Chose Vegan“.
Against acid attacks on Iranian women – Trafalgar Square, Sat 1 Nov 2014
I think I had actually come to Trafalgar Square for this protest, organised by the 8th March Women’s Organisation (Iran – Afghanistan).
They were in the square protesting at the horrific attacks on women who go onto the streets of Iran not wearing a veil. Gangs encouraged by the Iranian regime have thrown acid in the faces of many women, causing intense pain and burning, leaving them scarred and blinded. As the protest also pointed out as well as the forced wearing of the veil, women in Iran have no right to divorce, can still be stoned to death for adultery and can be victims of so-called ‘honour killings’.
Revolution Banner Drop – Waterloo Bridge and Trafalgar Square, Sat 1 Nov 2014
‘Anonymous’ protesters in Guy Fawkes masks held up a large banner with the message ‘REVOLUTION’ on Waterloo Bridge to publicise their November 5th ‘March Against Government Corruption’ in London. I photographed it from Westminster Bridge, but the banner really wasn’t quite large enough to really stand out against the background of the City.
Later they took the banner to Trafalgar Square where a rally in support of Kobane was taking place (see pictures below) and it was rather more impressive there.
Global Solidarity With Kobane – Trafalgar Square, Sat 1 Nov 2014
November 1st was also World Kobane Day, and thousands were in Trafalgar Square supporting the defenders of Kobane against ISIS and fighting for the remarkable democratic revolution of Rojava, calling for aid for the Kurdish fighters and refugees, legitimisation of the PKK and the release of Ocalan. The protest was part of a Global day of solidarity with the YPG (People’s Defense Units) and the women of the YPJ fighting against ISIS.
The protest was organised by the Kurdish People’s Assembly and Peace in Kurdistan Campaign in cooperation with Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), Roj Women Assembly and Free Youth Movement and community organisations, and was also supported by some left and human rights groups, but failed to attract some of the larger groups on the left.
Among the speakers were human rights lawyer Margaret Owen OBE, an adviser to Kurdish human rights groups in London, Jean Lambert, Green Party MEP for London, Mark Thomas, Peter Tatchell and Father Joe Ryan, a Catholic priest from Haringey as well as those from various Kurdish groups.
Many speakers criticised Turkey for supporting ISIS and allowing the smuggling of oil and other goods through Turkey which finance ISIS. They also supported the the model constitution adopted in Rojava, the de facto autonomous Kurdish majority region in northern and north-eastern Syria as an important democratic development, for its pluralism, democratic participation and protection of fundamental human rights and liberties.
Turkey and Voting Systems – Saturday 25th July 2015, seven years ago today,wasn’t a particularly busy day for me in London, and I covered only three protests. What caught my attention, because of our current political situation was a protest following the May 2015 election over the unfairness of our current voting system. The other two were about repression in another country which has featured greatly in the news recently particularly over the export of grain from the Ukraine, our NATO ally Turkey.
Free Steve Kaczynski from Turkish Jail – Kingsway
Steve Kaczynski, born in Scotland was at one time employed by the BBC World Service as an expert on Turkey. He was arrested in April 2015 during a raid on a left-wing Turkish cultural centre on suspicion of being a British spy and was still in jail without charge, now on hunger strike.
Kaczynski was at the centre to show international solidarity against fascism when it was raided by Turkish police following a hostage incident in a courthouse where a state prosecutor and the two gunmen holding him captive were killed, but there is no evidence that he was in any way involved with the incident.
The Turkish media has made much of rumours leaked by the government that he was a British or German spy, but those who know him find this impossible to believe. His arrest appears to be part of a systematic programme by the AKP Turkish government to intimidate any political opposition.
The protest outside the building housing the Counsellor’s Office for Culture & Information of the Turkish Embassy on Kingsway, close to Holborn Station, included some from the British left as well as the Turkish Popular Front in the UK. Those who knew him described him as a kind and gentle man who abhors violence and has long campaigned for human rights and political freedom. The protesters handed out leaflets to people passing by and made a lot of noise singing and chanting, but the office was closed on a Saturday morning and it was unlikely that there was anyone in there to hear them.
Steve Kaczynski was finally released three months later, after surviving a 61 day hunger strike.
Make seats match votes – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
Great Britain in balloons, viewed from the north-west tip of the Scottish mainland
The May 2015 General Election resulted in the Conservative Party who got only 36.8% of the votes, just a little over a third, being returned with an overall majority, though only a small one.
A lone Green balloon on the south coast – and not enough room to put in the London area
Our first past the post constituency-based electoral system brings in huge differences based on both which party you vote for and the area in which you live. There was a Tory MP elected for every 34, 241 Tory voters, a Labour MP for every 40,290 Labour voters, but a Lib-Dem for every 301,990 Lib-Demo Voters and only 1 UKIP and one Green MP despite their parties getting 3,881,099 and 1,157,630 votes respectively. Two small parties with significant votes got no MPs at all.
A petition had been started before the election by Owen Winter, the independent member of the youth parliament for Cornwall, got over 200,000 signatures in a week or two and their were other similar well-supported petitions on other sites calling for voting reform and a system of proportional representation that would result in a government that reflected how people voted – signed in total by more than half a million people.
The protest included a map of the UK made by balloons of different colours for the various parties holding seats in the UK, which doubtless made sense for anyone sitting in a helicopter above the event but was pretty well impossible to see and photograph clearly at ground level.
After a short introduction, people went through the ‘map’ with pins popping balloons for the constituencies where no candidate got over 50% of the votes. Again this was hard to make visual sense out of at ground level.
What seemed to me lacking – apart from the other 499,000 or so who had signed the petitions – was any clear suggest of how a fairer voting system might work, though on My London Diary I put forward one suggestion which might work as well as retaining some of the advantages of the present system. But almost any system of PR would give us a fairer result than the current one, popular with the Conservatives and Labour as it entrenches their unfair advantage. Although the SNP also benefit from the current system they support electoral reform.
32 Young activists were massacred by ISIS at Suruc on their way with toys, books and other materials to build a playground, library and other projects in Kobani (or Kobane). Kurds and supporters protested at Downing St, blaming our NATO ally Turkey for supporting ISIS.
People hold pictures of some of those killed by ISIS
Kobani is a Kurdish-majority city in northern Syria, close to the Syria–Turkey border, which became a part of Rojava, the autonomous area in the north of Syria under Kurdish control as a consequence of the Syrian Civil War. It was beseiged by ISIS from September 2014 to January 2015, and the defeat of ISIS in the area by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, backed by US air support was a key turning point in the war against Islamic State.
Turkey has carried out a campaign of repression against the Kurds in Turkey who in return have been trying, sometimes by military means, to free themselves from Turkish domination which treats them as inferior citizens, outlawing their language and culture, and kidnapped and still holds their leader, Abdullah Ocalan. More recently Turkey has invaded parts of Rojava, and the Kobani area accepted the Syrian Army and their Russian support into the area in an attempt to protect it from Turkish invasion.
Turkey allows ISIS to operate on and across their border, as well as assisting them in the smuggling out of oil and other goods through Turkey vital in their economic support. They have also allowed recruits and supplies to reach them through Turkey. They appear to hope that ISIS will solve the Kurdish problem for them by defeating the Kurds in Iraq ad Syria.
After many speeches, including one by Edmonton MP Kate Osamor who has many Kurds in her constituency, they marched off towards the BBC which they say ignores attacks on Kurds and routinely sides, like the British Government with the Turkish government against them.
Back in 2004 I was still working with the Nikon D100, one of the first really affordable DSLR cameras which I bought when it came out in 2002. It used a 6Mp Sony sensor in what Nikon called DX format – though it could have been called half-frame. For years Nikon insisted we didn’t need larger sensors, and though they were correct, marketing pressure eventually forced them to move to “full-frame” and us zombies followed them.
The D100 was a decent camera, but let down by a rather small and dim viewfinder, and to some extent by the processing software available at the time for its RAW images. If I had the time to go back to the RAW files these images would look sharper and brighter. Here are a few of those I posted on My London Diary from the two events I photographed on 16th May 2004 along with the two sections of text (with some minor corrections.)
The wall must fall. Free Palestine rally, Trafalgar Square
Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, but not to put itself outside international law. We all need peace in the Middle East. Support for Palestine is also support for an Israel that can coexist with the rest of the world, and for the rest of the world.
Peter Tatchell protests the persecution of Queers in Palestine
The wall must fall rally in Trafalgar square on 16 May 2006 started with an an ugly scene, when stewards stopped Peter Tatchell and a group from Outrage from being photographed in front of the banners around Nelson’s column.
Neturei Karta orthodox Jews had walked down from Stamford Hill on the Sabbath to oppose Zionism
The rally organisers argued that raising the question of the persecution of gays in Palestine distracted attention from the Palestinian cause. Their childish attempts to distract the attention of photographers by jumping in front of the outrage protesters, holding placards in front of theirs and shouting over them simply increased the force of Tatchell’s arguments.
Fortunately the rally soon got under way, the main speaker was Jamal Jumaa – director of the Stop The Wall campaign in Palestine, although there were many other speakers, including Sophie Hurndall, the brother of Tom the murdered peace activist, Green MEP Caroline Lucas, Afif Safieh, Palestinian general delegate to the UK, George Galloway and more. Too many more for most of us.
War On Want activists came with a wall to dramatize the effect of the wall in Palestine. When the march moved off down Whitehall, the wall walked with them, and it was erected opposite Downing Street. There was a short sit-down on the road before the event dissolved.
Campaign against Climate Change Kyoto March, London
Bristol Radical Cheerleaders in the Kyoto march to the US embassy
I caught up with the Kyoto march, organised by the campaign for climate change, as it reached Berkeley Square on the last quarter-mile of its long trek from the Esso British HQ in Leatherhead. Esso are seen as being one of the main influences behind the refusal by George Bush and the US administration to ratify the Kyoto accord. The campaign has organised a number of marches in London, and this is an annual event.
Among the marchers it was good to find a number dressed ready for the promised ‘dinosaur party’ at the US embassy, as well as the fantastic Rinky Dink cycle-powered sound system. It was also good to meet a couple of the Bristol Radical cheerleaders again, bouncing with energy as ever. A little colour was also added by a small group of of Codepink activists forming a funeral cortege, carrying the globe on their coffin.
The police in Grosvenor square were not helpful, but eventually the speeches got under way in the corner of the square.
Junior Doctors, Ugandan Election, Benefit Sanctions. Three protests I photographed on Wednesday 9th March 2016
David Clapson, one of many victions of inhumane Tory policies
UCH rally for Junior Doctors Strike
Junior doctors were on a one day strike against the imposition of unfair contracts which they say are unsafe and they were joined by other trade unionists on the picket line at University College Hospital on Euston Road.
Later in the morning came the rally opposite the hospital I photographed when other health workers and NHS activists came to support them, and also to oppose the axing for NHS student bursaries and the creeping privatisation of the NHS.
Ugandans protest rigged Presidential Election
Elections had been held in Uganda in February 2016, and international observers reported widespread fraud and irregularities with opposition politicians being arrested, voters intimidated and many polling stations reporting results very different to the actual votes cast.
The protesters called on the UK not to recognise Museveni as the legitimate President of Uganda and for the immediate release of Dr Besigye and other political prisoners, as well as action against those responsible for torture.
The protesters, who included the African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group and Peter Tatchell Foundation were clear that Museveni had lost the election to his challenger Besigye, and having held a high-spirited protest outside the Ugandan High Commission on the corner of Trafalgar Square marched down to deliver a letter to Downing St.
Unite against Benefit Sanctions
Demonstrations were taking place at over 70 job centres across the country against the use of benefit sanctions. Many claimants lose benefits for trivial reasons and for events beyond their control and are left without support. Some are sanctioned for arriving a few minutes late because of traffic congestion or for missing appointments they have not been informed about. I photographed a protest called by Unite Community members outside the ministry responsible for the policy, the DWP in Caxton St, Westminster.
Sanctions mean people lose benefits and are left destitute. Despite government denials at least 95 deaths are known to have resulted from these sanctions and without the efforts of the many food banks the figure would be much higher.
Some campaigners see the use of sanctions as a deliberate and successful attack on the unemployed and disabled by minister Iain Duncan Smith who is responsible for those working for the DWP being given incentives and targets for causing maximum misery and they label him ‘Minister for Euthanasia’.
David Clapson – Sanctioned to Death
Among those at the protest at Caxton House was Gill Thompson, the sister of David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier who died starving and destitute because he was penalised by the Job Centre for missing a meeting. She delivered a petition calling for an inquest into his death and an end to unfair benefit sanctions which leave claimants without support. Over 200,000 people have signed this and a related petition.
Four years ago, on October 14th 2017, I found myself in the unusual position of looking for a Michelin starred restaurant in Mayfair, definitely something well outside of my normal social and financial territory. But I wasn’t looking for somewhere to eat, but to photograph a protest outside calling on the restaurant’s owner and his head chef not to break the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel by participating in Brand Israel culinary event ‘Round Tables’ in Tel Aviv in November 2017.
The protesters say that events like these are part of an Israeli government’s Public Relations efforts to distract from its policies of occupation and apartheid by bringing international prestige to Israel’s culinary scene and that his event is sponsored by Dan Hotels who have a branch built on stolen Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem.
This was a peaceful protest, with Palestinian flags, banners about Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleaning and supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS) and calling for justice for Palestinians. Those protesting included both Palestinians and Jews. A small group of counter-protesters also came, holding an Israeli flag, one of whom came to tell me that everything it stated on the protesters banners were lies. I told him that I had friends in Palestine and know how they were treated both by the Israeli government and by Jewish settlers who came and destroyed their olive trees while Israeli forces stood and watched taking no action against them.
I left to join Class War and London 4th Wave Feminists who were protesting again outside the tacky tourist trap in Cable St which glorifies the exploits of ‘Jack the Ripper‘ and his brutal series of 19th century murders and exhibiting materials relating to the death of working class women who were his victims.
The so-called ‘museum’ only gained planning permission by claiming it would celebrate the history of women in the East End and not their horrific slaughter, and although Tower Hamlets council were unable to withdraw the consent they were now failing to enforce decisions about inappropriate signage and unuathorised metal shutters. Class War came with plastic inflatable hammers to symbolically attacked these.
Police tried hard to get the protesters to move away from the shop with no success, and escorted a few customers past the protesters inside. There were few during the hour or so of the protest, and at least one group went away when they heard what the protesters had to say, while another group who had been inside came out and told them that they thought the “museum” was very disappointing in the way it treated the murders.
I left as the Ripper protest was coming to an end to go to the Zimbabwe Embassy, where every Saturday afternoon the Zimbabwe democracy and human rights vigil takes place. Today was a special day as the first vigil was held on 12th October 2002 and they were celebrating 15 years (780 vigils) having vowed to continue until the human rights abuses of the Mugabe regime are ended and there free and fair elections in the country.
Among those present were several who had been at that first vigil in 2002 including human rights activist Peter Tatchell who had been badly beaten when he attempted a citizen’s arrest on Mugabe in Brussels in 2001, and his is one of the hands holding the knife to cut the cake.
I’d gone up to London mainly to cover the march and rally by the Secular Europe Campaign which was calling for an end to religious privileges and for European institutions to remain secular. Its main focus is the Vatican which still has enormous power and privilege – and a three billion Euro tax exemption.
Maryam Namazie holding the ‘One Law For All’ banner
Among the groups on the march was ‘One Law For All’, opposed to all religious laws and in particular to any attempt to impose Sharia law in the UK. It was also supported by humanist and gay rights groups including the British Humanist Association, the Central London Humanist Group, the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, OutRage! and the Rationalist Association.
I left the march to go to Bank, where I had expected to cover a protest, but all I found was the group having a picnic, as well as a long queue of people waiting to take a look at the interior on ‘Open House’ day. So I walked back towards Temple, pausing to take a few pictures on the way – such as the legendary giants Gog and Magog on St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, who strike the hours and quarters using their clubs on the bells. Traditionally they were simply known at the Giants of St Dunstan, and the ‘real’ Gog and Magog are figures in London’s Guildhall, though these are only replacements installed in 1953, made by David Evans to replace those carved in 1709 and destroyed in the Blitz. These ‘Guardians of London’ are honoured every year in the Lord Mayor’s show – and according to an anonymous commentator are “Symbolic of how The City of London is a Sovereign Satanic Masonic Criminal Bankster Headquarters” and it remains a secretive and undemocratic global centre of money laundering, a criminal cartel “officially outside the authority of parliament“.
Among other things I also photographed the ‘Roman Bath‘ in Strand Lane, a slightly embarrassing National Trust property, though now managed by Westminster Council. A cistern built in 1612 that once fed a fountain in the gardens of old Somerset House, its reputation as Roman remain was an imaginative invention to promote visitors to pay to bathe in it in the 1820s. Normally visits are by appointment, but it opens on Open House weekend and the queue was short.
I was on my way to photograph the City of London Campsie Club, a branch of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, who were holding their annual Carson Memorial parade. You can read more about its origins in my post on My London Diary. Unlike the secular rally I had photographed earlier, this was an event at which I was not welcome by a small minority of those taking part.
As I wrote in 2011:
I’ve photographed this and other Orange parades over the years, and many on them have seen my work on the web and appreciated it – and sometimes used my pictures.
But a few of the nastier elements of Northern Ireland remain, and in 2008 and again while photographing this year’s parade I was threatened and pushed away by some of those taking part. It’s a thuggishness that has no place on English streets, and something that the Orange Order should take firm action against. I fully support religious freedom and the freedom to demonstrate on our streets, but there is no place for this kind of conduct. It sullies the memory of one of our great British (and Irish) jurists, and is an insult to the Protestant faith into which I was born and in which I grew up.
I don’t know why my reporting on these events should lead to such animosity from a few of those taking part. I think it has always been accurate and factual and the pictures show a colourful event and a part of the Orange tradition. Perhaps it is because I also photograph other Irish events but I think more likely that they are aware of my pictures of extreme right protests by groups including the EDL where some of them may have also been in attendance.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
I don’t know who drew the often published cartoon which shows a young boy talking with his father and saying “Dad, I’m considering a career in organised crime” to which his father replies ‘Government or Private Sector”, but it comes to mind when thinking about the secret UK-Iran business meeting which I photographed Ahwazi activists and Peter Tatchell gate-crashing on July 3rd 2015. Though the UK-Iran crimes involve both sectors.
To take pictures I had to rush in with the group of protesters to the National Iranian Oil Company offices in Westminster, which are clearly private property and I Would probably be committing an offence, but I felt there was a clear public interest in covering the protest by the Hashem Shabani Action Group against the exploitation and environmental destruction of their homeland by Iran and the UK and the long history of anti-Arab oppression by the Tehran regime.
Fortunately I was able to enter the building without being personally confronted by the security staff who were busy trying to grab some of the protesters, and along with two other photographers and a couple of videographers was able to run up the six flights of stairs to the floor where the secret meeting was taking place, though I was in a pretty poor state by the time I reached the top landing, worried I might collapse. I was after all probably around 20 years older than most of the others, though only seven older than Peter Tatchell.
I did manage to photograph the peaceful protest inside the meeting, where most of those present were enjoying a buffet lunch, and to take some pictures of the confrontation in the corridor outside, where one youngish man in a blue suit, thought by the protesters to be an Iranian military officer, became rather violent and assaulted another of the photographers. But the corridor was dimly lit and some of my pictures were less than sharp, mainly blurred by moving subjects with the slowish shutter speed I needed.
I may have mentioned in other posts that I very seldom watch TV. I last lived with a TV back in 1968, when I got married and moved into a flat without one, and since then it’s been something I just don’t have time for in my life. Of course I’ve watched TV elsewhere – and can do so now by computer, but its never become a regular habit. One of the consequences of this is that there are many celebrities and public figures that I don’t easily recognise, only hearing them on radio or seeing the occasional picture in the press. So although Lord Lamont or Tory MP Richard Bacon, leader of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Iran, both leading the call for the peaceful and non-violent Hashem Shabani Action Group, (motto ‘Our weapons are pens. Our bullets are words‘), to be banned as a terrorist group were present, I failed to get newsworthy pictures of them.
Having made their point, the protesters decided to leave and I went with them, only to be stopped by police in the foyer of the building. We were prevented from leaving despite showing our press cards, but told we were not under arrest. The photographer who had been assaulted complained to the police, who went upstairs to ask questions, returning after a few minutes to say that the perpetrator probably had diplomatic immunity, and the photographer decided not to press charges.
Eventually after around 45 minutes – during which the building manager brought us fruit juice – press and protesters were allowed to leave and join those outside who had been unable to get past security for more photographs.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
