Arms Trade Die-In at Parliament: On Thursday 12th September 2013 Campaign Against Arms Trade brought their protests against the DSEi arms fair then taking place in East London to Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.
Their protest and die-in opposite Parliament was much more visible than those out in the fairly deserted streets of East London where the arms fair takes place at the ExCel Centre on the north side of the Royal Victoria Dock.
There the protest is directed against those taking part in the arms fair, both the exhibitors who are coming to sell their deadly weapons and those arriving to view and buy them.
They came to Westminster as MPs were arriving to take part in a debate on the role of United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI), including its controversial Defence & Security Organisation (DSO), the government’s arms sales promotion unit.
The DSO sends out official invitations to the arms fair to 67 countries including many of the worlds most repressive regimes. Those on the invitation list included Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Libya, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Arms sold at the arms fair in East London would inevitably fuel the civil war taking place in Syria and other armed conflicts around the world. The was in Yemen began the year following this arms fair, and Saudi Arabia has used weapons bought in East London in its fight against the Houthis there.
Also taking part in the protest were a number of campaigners from Bahrain where weapons sold at DSEi in Newham have been used to repress internal dissent.
Among the MPs who visited the highly visual protest was Jeremy Corbyn who stopped to speak briefly on his way to take part in the Parliamentary debate. He praised the protesters for their protests today and for their continuing events to stop the DSEi arms fair.
Trump Not Welcome in UK: There were huge protests against the July 2018 visit by US Presdent Trump to the UK, said to be a ‘working visit’ and he was kept well away from most of them, but some protesters made their way to still protest outside the official reception at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire and when he took tea with the Queen in Windsor. But apparently he did find the time to tell Prime Minister Theresa May she was making a mess of Brexit.
I photographed the following two protests on Thursday 12th July 2018, the day he arrived in the UK, but there was much more to come the following day.
Climate activists marked Trump’s visit to the UK by dropping a giant banner 100 meters long on the river wall of the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament. The banner carried the message ‘TRUMP: CLIMATE GENOCIDE’ in fluorescent orange letters around 15ft high.
This wall directly faces the terrace where MPs and their guests could clearly see and read the message across the river a little over 250 yards wide at this point. Having photogrphed them bringing the huge banner to the scene and beginning to hang it over the wall I rushed up onto Westminster Bridge photograph it from there.
Trump derided and ignored the clear science on climate change, supporting his fossil fuel supporters and donors in their bid to destroy human life on earth for the sake of their short-term profits. Every year now the effects of these policies in destabilising global climate become clear. US policies – not just under Trump but certainly since their refusal to get behind the 1997 Kyoto Protocol if not before, have played a major role in our current dire situation. Trump worsened this, and his actions and failures have condemned billions to death and are a major crime against humanity.
Trump’s jet landed at Stanstead Airport and a helicopter was flying from there to the US Ambassador’s residence, Winfield House in a large private estate at the northwest corner of Regent’s Park before taking him on to dinner with Theresa May at Blenheim Palace.
Hundreds of campaigners with drums, whistles, megaphones, pots and pans, recordings of the cries of migrant children and some very loud shouting had come to the nearest public part of Regent’s Park to show their feelings about him and the visit. Among them were a number of Armericans living in Britain as well as various groups on the UK left.
A 10ft wire fence separated the protesters from the large lawn and there was a high police presence at the protest. It was watched from behind the fence by a small group of police some yards away, and doubtless rather more police and others were behind them screened by the bushes and trees closer to the house.
Almost certainly the protest organisers would have wanted to protest closer to the house on the Outer Circle, from where the house is visible, though largely screened by trees. But Regent’s Park is a Royal Park, owned by the Crown Estate and they and the police will have made clear a protest there would not be tolerated. As the Royal Parks state “the location of the demonstration will be agreed through discussion between the Park Manager, the police, the organisers, and other relevant authorities.”
Although the protest was some distance from the lawn where his helicopter was taking off and landing, the noise it was making would have been audible from there and the house. Some of the protesters were intending to remain making a noise all night, but I went home soon after his helicopter landed the first time.
But, as I wrote then, “it seems likely that Trump will have been aware of them as he flew in and out and before reaching the presumably well double or triple-glazed security of Winfield House. Though he will probably have convinced himself they were welcoming him and dismissed the TV and newspaper coverage as ‘Fake News!’“
People’s Assembly, Class War, Anonymous, ENA & Dykes: Saturday 22nd Jone 2013, ten years ago today, was a rather odd day for me. It began with an event I didn’t go to and instead photographed groups outside, was followed by an meeting to which I had been invited by the extreme right English National Alliance who needed a police escort to lay flowers at the Cenotaph and ended with a Dyke March.
People’s Assembly – Methodist Central Hall, Westminster
I had decided not to attend the People’s Assembly being held in Methodist Central Hall. It was a large event but was being managed so that any criticisms of the Labour Party and trade unions were banned from the main event, with people including Ken Loach being relegated to a hall down the road.
Others had expressed the opinion that this event was intended to “disperse some of the head of steam that had built up among the rank and file” for more direct action against the government. It reminded me of events following the huge ‘Stop the War’ protest in Feb 2003, at which Tony Benn and others had called for decisive action, but Stop the War had failed to do more than call instead for just another protest a while after Blair had declared war. It was hardly surprising that this was much smaller than the previous event and had absolutely no effect.
I commented in 2013:
It was a feeling reinforced by the statement ‘We will work together with leading experts and campaigners both here and abroad, and friendly think tanks, to develop rapidly key policies and an alternative programme for a new anti-austerity government‘, which seemed to make it clear that after the assembly it was the long grass for any ideas, and an end to any action.
And there seems to have been nothing that has happened as a result of this event; for a few years Corbyn gave the Labour Party some hope, but he was stopped from winning a general election by the right in the party. Nothing in Labour policies now suggests they would offer any real alternative should the Tories lose the next election. Or that they can win if the Conservatives don’t defeat themselves.
One of several groups protesting outside was Class War. Ian Bone had called for “a f**king big mob outside” (my asterisks) the People’s Assembly, but as I wrote, only around enough for a football team turned up for their alternative event, though there were several other groups around also opposed to the “pointless jamboree” taking place inside the hall.
So although there were a series of speeches by Bone and others, all amusing and in parts thought-provoking and certainly more interesting than most inside the hall, these were largely made to a mainly empty street.
Outside The People’s Assembly – Anonymous Occupy the Grass
A small group of ‘Anonymous’ and Occupy London supporters handed out leaflets, offered free hugs, and had a picnic outside the People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
Police kept a close eye on them but didn’t interfere with them.
The English National Alliance is one of a number of small ‘patriotic’ groups on the extreme right who I’ve photographed over the years, with some members who have also been involved in other similar groups. Their leader is a former BNP member who was expelled from the EDL in 2011 apparently for extremist statements.
Although I’ve made no secret of my disagreements with their views, I’ve always tried to present them clearly and accurately as a journalist, as with other groups I’ve photographed. I’ve felt it was my job, and one that informs the wider public who I think can be trusted to see them for what they are.
Many in these groups complain about the unfair press they receive, and they had a particular gripe that some pictures of people at protests who were just waving being captioned as making Nazi salutes. It certainly has happened, but as they agreed there are also some people at protests by extreme-right groups who will make Nazi salutes.
The ENA had decided to march to the Cenotaph to lay flowers on the way to taking a statement of their views in to Downing Street and I had been invited to join them at the pub where they were meeting for the march. I was surprised how few of them had come, as was the event organiser, and there were a number of phone calls made to try to get more to turn up, but eventually they decided to march.
I was surprised when the small march and its police escort turned down in front of the hall where the People’s Assembly was taking place and small groups of left-wingers were still protesting outside. I’m not sure whether the marchers or police had decided to take this route, but the response was entirely predictable.
Some of the marchers shouted “No Surrender” and they were almost immediately surrounded by people shouting back at them “Fascist scum!”, “Racists!” and there were some minor scuffles. Police managed to push a way through for them and made one arrest before the ENA march, now accompanied by a few counter-protesters was able to continue towards the Cenotaph and Downing St.
By now it was time for me to be at another event, and said goodbye to the ENA and left, with a copy of the long statement they were about to take in addressed to David Cameron from the “Patriots of England who are supporters of every street activist and political party in the United Kingdom.”
Well, no. The last half mile had been clear about that. But you can read my précis of their statement with a number of quotes along with more about the march on My London Diary at ENA Meet Left Opposition.
Dykes March – Berkeley Square to Soho
The Dyke March the previous year in London had been the first such event for many years, and this year’s event was on a rather smaller scale, but there were still around 300 who turned out to march.
The event began with a rally with speakers who included Roz Kaveney, (above), writer, critic, poet and deputy editor of the trans digital magazine META who read one of her poems and long-standing LGBT activist and historian Sue Sanders who tested the crowd on their knowledge of lesbian icons including suffragette composer Dame Ethyl Smyth. I think I recognised more of them than most of the crowd.
The route the march took was based in part on that taken – though in the opposite direction and ending in Hyde park by the 1908 Votes For Women March.
The march was to end with a rally in Soho Square, but I left it to go home from Piccadilly Circus.
J11 Carnival against Capitalism: Ten years ago on 11th June 2013 we saw one of the worst examples to date of police opposing the right to protest in London. The day had been billed by protesters as a Carnival Against Capitalism and was intended in the week before the G8 talks to point out that “London is the heart of capitalism, and to expose the offices of companies they think are brutal and polluting or exploitative, financiers who are holding the world to ransom, the embassies of tyrants and the playgrounds of the mega-rich.“
The organisers had said it would be “an open, inclusive, and lively event” and it would certainly have been noisy and high-spirited, theatrical in some ways but unlikely to cause a great deal of damage.
The police, almost certainly under political pressure had decided to treat it as a major insurgency, leaking invented scare stories to the media and getting a Section 60 order for the whole of the cities of London and Westminster which gave them the power to stop or search anyone on the streets without the need to show any suspicion. These orders are only meant to be put in place for a clearly defined area over a specific time when a senior officer believes there is a possibility of serious violence, or weapons being carried, and this seemed to be a considerable and probably illegal overkill.
This was not a huge protest, probably expected to involve less than a thousand protesters. Quite a few had gathered the previous day at a large squatted former police station in Beak St. Police invented a story that those inside had paint bombs and intended to cause criminal damage and used this to get a search warrant, entering the building early on the day of the protest.
Police turned up intending to arrest all those inside, and came with a couple of double decker buses to take them away.They sealed off a long stretch of the street and held the people inside, preventing them from joining the start of the protest, but the search found nothing.
Along with the rest of the press covering the story I was kept out, and could only see a little of what was happening from a distance, photographing with a very long lens. The police were blocking an number of side streets too and I had to make a lengthy detour to get to the other end of the block where the view was little if any better.
Police were stopping people on the streets and searching them, particularly anyone dressed in black or otherwise looking as if they might be a protester. Most were searched and released but there were a number hand-cuffed and led away. The only arrest where could find the reason was when a woman was arrested and put in a police van on Regent St for having a small marker pen in her handbag.
The protest from Piccadilly Circus began much later than intended. Around a couple of hundred people had eventually made it there, including a samba band, and left for their intended tour of the offices of some of the most powerful and greedy companies, “oil and mining giants, arms dealers, vulture funds, companies that launder blood money, invest in war and speculate on food supplies, and the offices, embassies of tyrants.”
Police kept stopping the protesters and when they did there were some short speeches and the samba band played. Police occasionally rushed in and grabbed a protester, and there were some scuffles as people tried to protect their friends. Police vans blocked some of the major roads in the area, turning what would have been relatively minor traffic stoppages into long major disruptions.
The tour stopped outside the Lower Regent Street offices of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin for speeches against its activities – including making Trident missiles, after which the samba band began to play. One of the police ‘Liaison Officers’ came and told the band that they needed a licence from Westminster Council to play music in the street and would be committing an offence if they continued to play. He was greeted by shouts of derision from the crowd, but the band were clearly worried and held a consultation before deciding to continue on to protest outside BP around the corner in St James’s Square.
Westminster licences buskers not music on the streets. Many processions and protests take place with marching bands – including military events, the Salvation Army, Orange Lodges and many other protests. This warning was clearly another attempt by the police to harass the protest by applying laws inappropriately.
The protest moved on to the offices of BP in St James’s Square, where after a few minutes I left them, I’d been on my feet too long. The protesters still had a number of calls to make and doubtless the police would keep up their harassment.
The Stop G8 protesters had despite the police carried out at least in part their intention to “party in the streets, point out the hiding places of power, and take back the heart of our city for a day.” The police had wasted huge amounts of public money, provoked some minor disorder, disrupted traffic for much of the day in a large area of London and shown themselves happy to lie and act outside the law to support the interests of the rich and powerful.
Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil: I thought people might like some more naked cyclists so here are some pictures from the 2012 ride, eleven years ago today on 9th June 2012. Men were in a fairly large majority in the thousand or so riders taking part and photographically they represent rather more of a challenge, at least to make pictures that editors think suitable for family viewing. So I’ve chosen pictures of men, though there is a woman in one of them.
The only country from where I’ve had any negative feedback about my pictures of naked cyclists is the USA, where I’ve had emails from teachers and librarians requesting that I remove these pictures from My London Diary as they say they make the site unsuitable for young people.
I find this difficult to understand but reply politely refusing to do so. Their complaints seem to come from some kind of warped religious objection and I like to remind them “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” and to somehow find that image offensive seems to me to be blasphemy.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the ride is not the nudity in itself but the variety of the human form it illustrates compared to the photographs of naked or near-naked people we usually find in newspapers or on our screens.
I tried hard to find pictures that reflected the purpose of the ride, a protest against dependence on oil and other forms of non-renewable energy and a culture based on cars and to “expose the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians” in modern cities. Some of the riders did so with a considerable sense of humour.
And some good drawing skills.
Careful timing and cropping sometimes makes the pictures more acceptable to a wider range of publications. And a bus with the message ‘Get Your Socks Off’ seemed rather appropriate though few in the frame were wearing them.
Another bus had three men in dark glasses who unlike all those watching the event from the pavements seemed to view it rather sternly. This is an event that causes a tremendous amount of hilarity on the streets as it goes past, but they are clearly not amused.
And finally, close to the former City Hall I photographed The Vitruvian Man.
There is a description of the ride and many more photographs – including some that would apparently shock some people at Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil.
Too much was happening on Thursday 2nd April 2015 to fit it all into a headline, with protests against evictions, jailed Palestinian children, arms companies, sacking of trade unionists at hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives, a politically motivated arrest and a failed visit to a squat in a prominent London building.
Sweets Way at Annington Homes – James St,
I began work at a lunchtime protest outside the offices of Annington Homes, the tax-dodging equity investor owned company which owns the Sweets Way estate in north London, calling for an end to evictions and the right to return for all decanted residents.
It was a small but lively protest and attracted considerable attention and support on a street busy with office workers taking their lunch break.
Despite the efforts of the campaigners this small former Ministry of Defence estate of 142 social homes was finally forcibly evicted by evicted by dozens of High Court bailiffs and 7 vans of Met police on 23-24th September. Annington planned to replace these with around 170 homes for private sale at up to £700,000, along with just 59 so-called ‘affordable’ homes at £560,000. Nothing on the new estate was to provide social housing and this was clearly an exercise in social cleansing for profit.
Admiralty Arch, the landmark Grade I listed building providing an impressive entrance to the Mall from Trafalagar Square was commissioned by King Edward VII to commemorate Queen Victoria’s death, designed by Sir Aston Webb and completed in 1912. Initially a residence for the First Sea Lord and offices for the Admiralty it was later more general government offices. The government sold it off in 2012 to be developed as a hotel.
Activists from the Autonymous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians had entered the building through the roof at night and were occupying it. I photographed the various notices and banners on the outside of the building and some activities of security and occupiers outside, and talked to a couple of the them. I and a couple of other journalists were offered entry if we brought tobacco or alcohol but felt it wise to refuse and left. I think the squatters were evicted within 24 hours.
G4S provides security services for Israeli jails in which Palestinian children are held, some as young as 12 years old. The most common charge is throwing stones. Typically there have been 500-700 of them a year in the Israeli military detention system with between 120 and 450 held at any one time. In 2014 Israel held 1266 Palestinian children for interrogation; campaigners say 75% of them are physically tortured and many sexually abused.
One of the protesters who spoke about G4S involvement in the imprisoning and torture of Palestinian children also spoke about her mistreatment by Israeli Security, who forced her to remove her clothes and stand naked to be inspected in public because she was going to visit Palestinians in jail
Thursday 2nd April 2015 was Maundy Thursday and Catholic Workers were taking part in a walk around the “geography of suffering” in London halting outside the offices of companies in the arms trade for prayers against the arms trade, war, torture, nuclear weapons, international debt, homelessness, immigration policy and climate change. The ‘Stations of the Cross’ was a day early as this usually takes place on Good Friday.
Among the companies whose offices they prayed outside were arms company Qinetiq in Buckingham Gate, where a security man came out and told them they could not protest there. They told him they were on the public highway and if they wanted to protest they could do so. But they had come to pray not to protest and continued, leaving as they finished their service.
Among other companies I photographed them outside were Rolls-Royce, another weapons manufacturer, where the pilgrimage ended. I had only joined them part way through the event, when the came past the protest at G4S.
Workers at Sheraton hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives have been sacked for trade union organising and members of the fast-growing Unite Hotel Workers Branch protested in solidarity with them outside Sheraton’s two Mayfair hotels.
Hotel workers are one of the most marginalised groups of workers in the UK, and many are exploited because their English is poor or non-existent. Here in the UK they can also get sacked for joining a union but despite this, the Hotel Workers branch is the fastest growing branch of Unite because of its determined support for the workers.
I met and photographed their protest outside Le Meridien on Piccadilly for around half an hour before walking down with the to the Park Lane Hotel where I had to leave them to go to Aldgate.
Chingford candidate arrested at Poor Doors – One Commercial St, Aldgate
Police clearly had it in for Lisa McKenzie and during this weekly Poor Doors protest outside One Commercial St a woman officer came up to her a and told her she was being arrested, accused of criminal damage. The officer said she had stuck a Class War sticker on the glass next to the rich door two weeks earlier on March 19th. A snatch squad surrounded her, and despite opposition from the protesters she was led away and put in a waiting police van to be taken to Bethnal Green police station.
While many people had stuck posters and stickers onto the glass windows at almost every Poor Doors protest, this was the first arrest. It’s doubtful whether this is an offence, and it is certainly not criminal damage, as glass is not damaged, with posters and any glue residue being easily removed leaving the surface in as new condition.
I had photographed Lisa and others at the Rich Door fairly extensively on March 19th and was ready to testify that she had not herself stuck anything on the glass – though when her case eventually came to court it was thrown out before I was called.
Lisa was certainly a very vocal protester (as usual) but it’s hard to avoid thinking what picked her out was political pressure because of her candidature for Class War against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford in the forthcoming general election.
Before her arrest the protest had been hampered by barriers for work on the wide pavement outside the Rich Door of the building, and the protest had started on the opposite side of the main road.
Two incidents caused some hilarity, one where a police officer came to deal with a yellow smoke flare that had been thrown into the road, first seeming to kick it, then picking it up and carrying it away down the alley towards the poor door. It had burnt out by the time he reached this, but as I commented “Everyone else may throw their rubbish here but I was surprised the police thought it a good idea.”
The second was when Lisa pointed out that one of the two women officers standing behind the banner she was holding had taken part in plain clothes in a previous ‘poor doors’ protest, and Ian Bone offered her the megaphone to speak – but this was immediately followed by another woman officer coming to arrest Lisa.
There were some angry scenes as she was driven away, and police refused to talk with the protesters. The protest continued with several speeches before people went home.
Saturday 1st April 2017 turned out to be a busy day in London, though the buses in my picture on Westminster Bridge were not then going anywhere – and the driver of the No 12 at the front of this row was taking a rest from his seat. Various protests and the police had brought traffic to a stop. As in many other months you can see more of my pictures taken as I travelled around in a London Images section.
Motorcycle Theft Protest Ride – Westminster
I’d vaguely wondered about paying another visit to the Ace Café on the North Circular Road at Stonebridge, but not riding a bike I would have felt something of an outsider, and the journey back to central London by the Bakerloo line wold have taken me around 40 minutes and I would have missed other things that were happening.
Organised gangs are still making rich pickings around the whole of London – and one of my neighbour’s had his bike targeted a few months ago, but the two men cutting through a substantial lock were spotted from the house opposite, and ran away when they were challenged halfway through.
In 2017 there were reported thefts in London of 8,131 motorbikes, 4,121 moped and 3,218 scooters, a total of almost 15,500 thefts. That amounts to one for every 7.5 powered bikes registered in the city. Motorcyclists came with a petition to the Mayor of London and the Home Secretary to give the police greater resources to tackle this crime, and for them to give it higher priority, for more ground anchors in bike parking bays and for tougher sentencing of offenders.
Ten Days after the Westminster terror attack by a deranged driver, people were still stopping to look and and photograph the flowers for the victims, around the lamp standards on Waterloo Bridge, along the whole of the front of Parliament Square and in front of New Scotland Yard in its new building on the Victoria Embankment, where an eternal flame also remembers all police who have died while doing their duty.
There was a long strip of tributes along the front of Parliament Square opposite were PC Keith Palmer was killed to him and the others who died.
Youth protest over housing benefits loss – Parliament Square
A grass roots group of young people, ‘#1821Resist’, were in Parliament Square to protest against the scrapping of housing benefit for young people which coming into force on this day.
They say that under Tory rule since 2010 homelessness has doubled and that this change will continue to leave vulnerable people without homes, making it almost impossible for them to get into work or education.
Iraqis, mainly women dressed in black, were protesting opposite Downing St against the killing of civilians by US and Iraqi forces during the assault on Mosul. Attacks on the city, then held by the Islamic State (ISIL) begun in October 2016 and continuing until ISIL were defeated there in July 2017. According to Wikipedia (and the BBC) “The battle was the world’s single largest military operation since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was considered the toughest urban battle since World War II.”
The women said that hundreds have been killed by US air strikes after being told to stay in Mosul; people were stopped from leaving were then bombed. The protest was organised by a group of Iraqi women, one of whom told me a nine-year old relative in Mosul had died earlier today. The photographs they held up showed some of the results of the US bombing.
Britain First & EDL exploit London attack – Westminster
Extremist right-wing groups including Britain First and the EDL (English Defence League) were quick to exploit the London terror attack to fuel their anti-Muslim and anti-migrant racist propaganda, both organising marches. Police had imposed restrictions on both marches confining them to particular short routes to rally points on the Emabankment. London Antifascists and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) who had come to opposed them were only allowed to hold a static protest.
I was able to photograph Britain First at their designated meeting point in the taxi area outside Charing Cross station where their leader Paul Golding arrived with a van full of flags and handed them out, while his deputy Jayda Fransen was busy talking to the media.
The EDL were supposed to be meeting in Trafalgar Square, but were actually gathering in their usual pub, Lord Moon of the Mall, close to the top of Whitehall. Police were busily and rather forcefully keeping back a crowd of antifascists against the shops on the opposite side of the road, injuring a few of them in the crush. Police behind them were shouting at them to go forward, but police in front were preventing them from doing so.
I photographed the EDL on the pavement in front of the Lord Moon of the Mall over the shoulders of a line of police protecting them, but left as police pushed them back inside the pub and returned to Britain First at Charing Cross station where they were getting ready to march.
There were few people on the street as they marched down to the Embankment for a rally, but a couple of women shouted at them calling them racists. Police stopped the marchers from moving towards them, but they had to refuse a Britain First fake-news team who tried to stop them for an interview.
I listened to the rally for a few minutes then tried to go back up Northumberland Avenue to photograph the EDL march, but it was hard to see for police surrounding it. The police quickly went to grab one woman who started to shout at this march.
But the police relaxed their cordon when the marchers reached their rally pen on the Embankment and I was able to walk past them and began to take pictures.
But after a couple of minutes one of the stewards saw me and objected to me being their and called on the police to remove me, after which I had to photograph over the shoulders of the police. One of the officers came to tell me off for having been in with the marchers, but I simply told her I had every right to be there. Shortly after I decided to leave as I had taken enough pictures, and I decided to go to photograph the counter-protesters.
Police had decided that the UAF could only hold a static protest on the Embankment rather than their intended and already advertised march to there from South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, despite ‘facilitating’ the two extreme-right marches. The UAF had turned up at South Africa House on the morning and police had slowly with unnecessary force pushed them down the march route as I’d witnessed earlier in the day.
From the EDL rally I could see and just hear the Unite Against Fascism rally taking place perhaps a hundred yards away down the Embankment, shouting ‘Fascist Scum off our streets’ and other slogans. From the speeches I had heard at the two right-wing rallies both groups were clearly racist and Islamophobic and among the marchers I recognised many faces from clearly fascist organisations I had photographed in the past.
I could see and hear that there were speeches at the UAF rally but not make out what was being said from the distance and over the noise. I tried to walk down towards the UAF but police would not let me take the short direct route despite my showing my press card.
I had to walk back and out onto Whitehall and then around to get to be back of the UAF rally, and by the time I got there many of the counter-protesters had left for home and the speeches had ended, though there were still rather more around than at the two right-wing rallies combined.
A few days ago in February 2023 a report came out that the number of rough sleepers in England has increased for the first time since 2017.
The increase is blamed on the cost-of-living crisis making the various causes of homelessness worse, and the government’s ‘Ending rough sleeping for good’ strategy announced last year has so far failed to be any help.
We are still one of the richer countries in the world, and it is a disgrace that so many have no place to go. London’s Mayor is reported as calling it extremely alarming and saying “It is high time ministers got a grip on the escalating food, energy and housing crises and restored the social security safety net which helps stop people becoming trapped in a cycle of homelessness.”
The area with the largest number is of course London, and within London the boroughs of Westminster and Camden at the heart of London top the figures. As well as having the most people sleeping on the streets, these boroughs are also home to many of the wealthiest people in the country (or at least one of their homes) and of the most egregious examples of over-consumption where the wealthy swarm to spend ridiculous amounts on over-priced goods and services.
The increase has also been greatest in the capital, with the figure in Westminster, the home of our government, alone up from 187 in 2021 to 250 in 2022.
London of course has ridiculously high house prices, stoked in part by foreign investors who own properties just to profit from the increases in prices rather than actually live in them. Many too are owned by offshore trusts, still hiding the actual owners, and often empty or underused.
The problem isn’t really house prices, or a lack of homes – we have more than are needed to give everyone a decent home. But inequality, which continues to rise. And at its roots is the greed of the rich, for whom enough is never enough. And there are ten times as many empty houses as there are homeless people.
The March With The Homeless on Saturday 3rd March 2018 took place are a recent cold snap had killed a number of rough sleepers on the streets of London. As well as organisations supporting street homeless including #solidaritynotcharity, Streets Kitchen, Homeless Outreach Central, and London: March for the homeless there were also some of those homeless taking part.
I found the police reaction to this protest shocking. They came out onto the streets to try to stop it happening and to force those taking part to return to there static protest opposite Downing Street where it began.
As well as officers on foot there were also two police horses trying to control the protest, but whose riders seemed unable to control, particularly in some of the narrower streets. I often had to rush out of their way and at one point I was crushed against a wall by a clearly out of control horse, but fortunately only slightly bruised.
I think the police saw their role as protecting the property, particularly the properties of those owners who had empty properties which they feared the protesters might attempt to occupy. The intention of the march wasn’t to actually occupy properties, but to create a little minor disruption to traffic and noise that would bring attention to the problem and put pressure on the government and authorities to take some effective action. But I think there was little if any media coverage of the event.
They intended to march to a squat in Great Portland Street that had occupied empty commercial premises and was giving food and shelter to homeless people, getting them off the freezing streets. The police seemed to be trying to keep them out of the West End, where they might disturb more people. I had to leave the march when police had halted them at Piccadilly Circus, but I think eventually they did make it and the squat provided food and overnight shelter for around 30 people on the night of the march.
Saturday 25th February saw me travelling around London to photograph unrelated protests in Dalston, Leicester Square, Brixton and Westminster.
Shut race-hate LD50 gallery – Dalston
People protested outside the small LD50 gallery in Dalston just off the Kingsland Road which they say has promoted fascists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, racists and Islamophobes in one of London’s more diverse areas.
The gallery gets its name from the does of any substance which kills 50% of those taking it, and the protesters said it “has been responsible for one of the most extensive neo-Nazi cultural programmes to appear in London in the last decade.”
One man, “dc miller“, came to argue that it was a matter of free speech and the right to freely discuss ideas, even repulsive ones, should be defended. He got considerable verbal abuse from the protesters and eventually police came and advised him firmly to leave, and later wrote a number of articles about the gallery and the protest.
The protest didn’t immediately close down LD50 despite the claims of the protesters and a couple of months later it put on a show of defiance called ‘Corporeality’, though it is now permanently closed.
Perhaps an article in the Baffler by Megan Nolan, Useful Idiots of the Art World best expresses the position in this quote:
LD50 is a real place, in a real neighborhood, filled with people who are directly threatened by the vile speech of the very real racists who were invited into it. Repeatedly, the defense mounted by the gallery has been that it was attempting to have an open discussion about reactionary ideologies. The implication is that LD50 were engaging in some sort of completely neutral anthropological consideration of current events, rather than extending a fawning welcome to alt-right lynchpins.
Picturehouse recognition & living wage – Leicester Square
I rushed down to Leicester Square where workers from four Picturehouse cinemas at Brixton, Hackney, Wood Green and Picturehouse Central were holding a rally outside the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square to campaign for recognition of their union BECTU and to be paid the London Living Wage.
The Empire was recenetly acquired by Cineworld the owners of Picturehouse who have refused to recognise trade unions, but instead set up a company run staff forum.
They are not paying staff in London a living wage and offer poor conditions of service despite making large profits from cinema-goers paying £13 or more to see a film in central London. I’d arrived late and had to leave before the speeches to get the tube to Brixton.
The Guinness Trust was set up in 1890 by Sir Edward Cecil Guinness, then head of the family brewing business, to provide better housing for working class Londoners. One of the estates they built was the Loughborough Park Estate in Brixton.
Betiel Mahari had lived on that estate and moved into a new Guinness Trust flat, but the rent on this was more than doubled, increasing from £109 to £256 a week, although some of her neighbours are paying around a weekly rent of £100 less.
Beti has problems paying the new rent and because she works on a zero hours contract here housing benefit claim is constantly being reassessed leading to delays and errors in payment, leaving her in arrears. Guinness are not taking her to court to evict her and her two young sons. Supporters of the ‘Save Beti Campaign’ including Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Architects for Social Housing were campaigning outside Brixton Station collecting signatures for a petition to oppose the eviction of Beti and other tenants threatened by estate demolition.
I had time in Brixton to take a little walk around, particularly going to look at the railway arches where many long-standing local businesses are being evicted, though some are still trading.
25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre – Westminster,
Back in Westminster the Justice for Khojaly Campaign were marching, calling for justice 25 years after the Khojaly Massacre in Azerbaijan where on the night of 25-26 February 1992, Armenian forces brutally killed 613 civilians, including 106 women and 83 children.
The call for an official apology from the Armenian govenment with full reparations and those responsible for this war crime to be brought to justice. The massacre was the larges in the war that folloed the secession of the majority Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh region to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which ended in 1994 with an uneasy truce.
My final event of the day was at Downing Street, where Help4Refugee Children was calling on the Government to honour its promise to let unaccompanied Syrian children into the UK after it reneged on its pledge earlier this month.
Theresa May’s high heels tread on a child
When Parliament had passed the Dubs amendment it had been very clear that this should happen and the government’s shameful and heartless decision overturned this, leaving many vulnerable young children forced to continue living in intolerable conditions. Many local councils say that they had made offers to take the children but these have been ignored by government.
Seventeen years ago on Friday December 9th 2005 I sspent the day photographing in London, and posted an account on My London Diary. Like all posts in the first few years of the site the text was entirely lower case, an affection I now regret, and so rather hard to read, and although there were plenty of pictures they weren’t well-connected with the text, a design fault that I only finally corrected in posts from 2007 on. So I thought today I would put things right for that one day. This is the post from 2005 in normal case and with a few typos and other minor corrections, with text and pictures connected and I hope not too many new mistakes.
Fathers4Justice: 24 Days of Christmas Chaos – Westminster, 9 Dec 2006
Santas and Mama Santas protest at Church of England and Dept of Education & Skills, Westminster
I’ve photographed Fathers4justice on several previous occasions. Today they were taking advantage of Christmas and the Father Christmas idea to protest against the Church of England. being on a Friday, there were rather fewer Father and Mother Christmases (and Santa’s Little Helpers were mainly at school, though some of their dads behind the whiskers were pulling a sickie.) It was still an arresting sight to see so many figures dressed in red on the street, including some rather inflated figures in inflatable suits.
After rather a slow start events warmed up a bit outside the offices of the Church of England, and, a few yards down the road, the Department for Education and Skills. Of course our ‘serious crimes’ law now forbids the use of amplified sound in demonstrations in Westminster, so the fathers simply had to shout rather loud. The next place for a stop was of course opposite Downing Street, where there were more shouted comments. I left the march as it turned down Whitehall Place on its way to the law courts in the Strand. more pictures
Free Mehmet Tarhan – Turkish Airlines, Pall Mall, Dec 9, 2005
Outside Turkish Airlines at the bottom of Haymarket there was a picket protesting against Turkish imprisonment of protesters, in particular Mehmet Tarhan, a gay conscientious objector.
Recently, his 4-year sentence for refusing military service was overruled on procedural grounds, and he is to be retried for insistent insubordination with the intent of evading military service.
London Transport – Last day for the Routemaster, 9 Dec 2005
One of the last regular service journeys by a London Routemaster bus
The last proper bus service to use London’s signature Routemaster double-decker buses, route 159, ceased today, with its buses being replaced by more modern designs. I caught one of the last to run to take me down to Westminster, then photographed it. Although the official ‘last bus’ had already run, there were several others following on, with the final pair passing Big Ben 28 minutes after I made my picture.
There will still be a few Routemasters running in London on two special short ‘heritage routes’ both running. [The last of these came to an end in 2021 – and there is now a private company running ‘Route A’ at £5 for a day ticket – not covered by your Oyster or Travelcard.]
More pictures of this and other London Transport related images
Victorian Christmas Market – Chrisp St, Poplar, Dec 9, 2005
Hat Trick – Jim and Bev James Singing Chimney Sweeps
Chrisp street market was part of an early post-war public housing redevelopment, the Lansbury estate, built for the 1951 Festival of Britain. Fifty or so years later it was beginning to show its age and there has been some tidying up and its pedestrian precincts are now rather tidier than a few years ago.
The market is bustling with life, more so than usual when I visited, as there were two days of a special Victorian Christmas event. There were various special stalls in the market, and also entertainers wandering around and performing on a small stage. There were kids from two local schools who had come to perform but unfortunately I had to leave before they had really started.
I’d hoped to return on the Saturday, when things would have been livelier, but in the end I just couldn’t make it.
The Ethiopian Tragedy – Stop UK Support – Marble Arch, Dec 9, 2005
Ethiopians from across Europe protest against Ethiopian concentration camps and ask for end to UK support.
At Marble Arch there was a crowd gathering of Ethiopians from across Europe, come to protest at the British government’s support of the oppressive communist regime in their country.
More than 70,000 people are detained by the regime, being tortured and dying in concentration camps. Britain is spending £30 million of our money to support the regime that is violating human rights there. The protesters want the British public to urge their MPs to support motions on the situation in Ethiopia and demand an end to these crimes.
