Rain on Pride Parade: Times have changed since 2014 when I made a large set of pictures at the start of London’s annual Gay Pride on Saturday 28 June. Back in 2014 I was able to walk around freely and meet and photograph those taking part before the parade started. The colour pictures here are all from that event, where there were some short but heavy showers as people gathered.
I don’t think I had actually bothered to apply for accreditation, though I did on some previous years, as I didn’t intend to photograph the actual parade. But in 2017 security around the event was stepped up and it became necessary for everyone to have applied for permission to take part to get near.
I’d first photographed Pride in 1993 and it was then a very different event. Pride was then a protest and a defiant gesture, while now it has become a corporate-dominated gay parade.
I was pleased when some of these photographs were shown as a part of the exhibition Queer is Here at the Museum of London in 2006 and a larger set at at ‘Changing the World’, a Gay and Lesbian History and Archives Conference at London Metropolitan Archives in 2005.
Those pictures were in black and white, though I think I may also have taken some in colour, yet to be re-discovered in my archives, and they covered the 10 years from 1993-2002. You can view a set on-line, though there are hundreds more in my files. These include a small number from Pride 1998, which according to Wikipedia didn’t happen.
In 2017 I had decided to photograph the Migrants Rights and Anti-Racist Bloc who had joined the official parade in 2016. But in 2017 they were refused entry and instead – as I put it – “reclaimed Pride as protest, gate-crashing the route at Oxford Circus and marching in front of the official parade along the route lined by cheering crowds.”
This should have been the big story about that day’s Pride, but hardly made the news, and I think was totally ignored by the BBC – and doesn’t even get a mention in the Wikipedia article.
After this I decided not to cover Pride in 2018, going instead to photograph a march against the closure of acute facilities at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals in south London while it was happening. The following Saturday I went the following week to photograph the third Croydon Pride Procession, a much smaller and friendlier event.
In 2019 I went to Regent’s Park where people were preparing to join on the end of the huge Pride Parade as a Queer Liberation March in protest against the increasing corporate nature of Pride.
They included some LGBT groups unable to afford the fees to take part in the official parade, but mostly people were there because they felt it vital to get back closer to the origins of Pride, which began with the Stonewall riots 50 years ago led by trans women of colour.
I had to leave well before they set off to join the parade. The did eventually manage to do so, but had to force their way past the Pride stewards. The police had initially tried to stop them but then decided they had to be allowed to march.
Pride was cancelled in both 2020 and 2021. On July 1st 2022 I photographed the Gay Liberation Front UK commemorating their first London Gay Pride March 50 years ago marching through London on exactly the same hour and date. London Pride 2022 took place the following day but I went elsewhere.
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.
Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia: In 2000 the UN June General Assembly declared that June 20th every year is World Refugee Day on which, as the UNHCR web site puts it, ‘the world celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict or persecution. The 2023 theme of World Refugee Day is “hope away from home.”’
Back in 2010 it was celebrated with parades including one in London. Also on Sunday 20th June there was a rally by One Law For All calling for an end to Sharia and other religious laws, opposed by a small group of Islamic extremists, who were opposed by Islamophobic EDL supporters, in turn opposed by largely Asian East Londoners.
Umbrella Parade for Refugees – Whitehall to Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park.
The London Umbrella Parade for refugees was organised by a partnership of groups including Amnesty International, British Red Cross, Oxfam, Refugee Action and Student Action for Refugees working with ECRE, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The umbrella was “a symbol of care and shelter, representing our proud tradition of offering safety to those in need of international protection,” a tradition that was then clearly under threat from the UK Borders Agency, with forced deportation flights in which refugees are returned to an uncertain future in Iraq, with beatings on the flight and on arrival.
Since then we have seen successive Home Secretaries racheting up increasingly racist anti-refugee policies, now clearly and deliberately flouting international laws. The UK once had proud tradition and well-deserved reputation for upholding human rights, playing a leading role in establishing these human rights laws it is now breaking.
IN 2010 I wrote “Competition between the political parties to be even tougher on immigration and appease the right-wing press have serious eroded the chances of refugees and asylum seekers receiving humane treatment and proper consideration in the UK.” Things have travelled much further only this inhumane path since then.
I walked with the campaigners from the Defence Ministry in Horseguards Avenue down Whitehall, past the Houses of Parliament and across Westminster Bridge. The march ended with a picnic in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park outside the Imperial War Museum. The start and finishing places were chosen appropriately as most refugees and asylum seekers are a result of war.
One Law for All campaigns against Sharia and religious arbitration in the UK, Iran and across the globe. They say these religious laws are discriminatory against and promote violence against women and have no place in the 21st century.
They want to end “religious laws and theocracy and promote secularism and the separation of religion from the state, education, law and public policy as a minimum precondition for the respect of human, women and LGBT rights.”
They have have campaigned for an end to Islamic regimes in Iran and Afghanistan, and have recently been involved in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in London and elsewhere, promoting the Woman, Life, Freedom Charter.
Their rally opposite Downing St on 20th June 2010 came on the anniversary of the the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, and after the rally the several hundred taking part marched to the Iranian Embassy in Kensington.
A short distance away were a group of mainly young Muslim men dressed in black and holding posters and flags. The called themselves ‘Muslims Against the Crusades’ or ‘Muslims Against Crusaders’ widely thought to be a reincarnation of the banned ‘Islam4UK’ (itself a relaunch of the banned Al-Muhajiroun.) One of their banners proclaimed ‘Sharia Will Dominate The World’.
In my 2010 account I quote from Maryam Namazie of One Law for all, writing on the Iran Solidarity blog:
“The battle against Sharia law is a battle against Islamism not Muslims, immigrants and people living under Sharia law here or elsewhere. So it is very apt for the Islamists to hold a counter-demonstration against our rally. This is where the real battleground lies. Anyone wanting to defend universal rights, secularism and a life worthy of the 21st century must join us now in order to push back the Islamists as well as fringe far Right groups like the English Defence League and the British National Party that aims to scapegoat and blame many of our citizens for Islamism.”
During the rally police escorted a small group of EDL supporters along Whitehall to opposite the Muslim protesters where they shouted insults and threat at both them and the photographers who went to take their pictures. After a few minutes they were led away to a penned protest area further south of the One Law For All rally.
A second much larger group were then brought down Whitehall, much more carefully surrounded by police, making them hard to photograph. Some carried Unite Against Fascism placards and most of the several hundred were young British Asians. Earlier the UAF and United East End had marched frpm Stepney Green to a rally at Whitechapel against the EDL and this group had marched to confront them in Westminster. But by the time they arrived the One Law for All rally had ended and the Muslims Against the Crusades had left.
After some minutes photographing the young Asians, including one man being rather forcefully arrested, mainly having to work over the heads or between their police escorts, I rushed after the One Law For All marchers to take more pictures.
I didn’t make it to the Iranian embassy. By the time the march was passing Victoria Station I decided I was tired and had taken enough pictures and got on a train to begin my journey home.
Turkey & Free Assange: Ten years ago today on Sunday 16th June 2013 I covered two protests in London around countries and issues still in the news now. The first was demanding an end to human rights abuses in Turkey and for Erdogan to go – and he has recently won another term in office and his authoritarian regime continues. It was also the first anniversary of Julian Assange taking refuge in the Eduadorian Embassy and Assange is still confined, now in Belmarsh prison, still likely to be extradited to spend the rest of his life in US prisons for publishing details of US war crimes.
Turks continue fight – Turkish Embassy to Downing St
Around a thousand British Turks met opposite the London Embassy and marched to a rally opposite Downing St. Their march was in solidarity with mass rallies in Turkey a day before a general strike there called by the country’s largest union representing public sector workers as a response to the brutality used in clearing Gezi Park.
President Erdogan and his ironically named Justice and Development Party AKP had brutally repressed earlier peaceful protests in Turkey in Gezi Park, Taksim Square and elsewhere in the country. Some of the protesters wore badges of protesters shot by police in demonstrations.
This was a very patriotic protest, many carrying Turkish flags and singing Turkish songs. The modern Turkish state was established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s as a secular and democratic state and many Turks feet the AKP governments under Erdogan sine 2002 have seriously eroded these principles.
Since 2002 they have imposed their conservative Islamic views on the country and have built an extra 17,000 mosques. Authoritarian measure have restricted the sale of alohol and shows of public affection.
The government had enacted strict control over Turkish media and imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the world. Opponents of the government are accused of treason and imprisoned without evidence, while court hearings can take years. Many had been held without charge for 5 years or more.
It remains impossible to have fair elections in Turkey as the government exercises almost complete control of the media. In May 2023 Erdogan was re-elected president with 52% of the vote against 48% for his opponent although there had been hopes he might lose.
Waiting for Assange – Ecuadorian embassy, Knightsbridge
Sunday 16th June 2013 marked exactly a year since Julian Assange had been given asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy and I joined a crowd of supporters waiting for him to appear on the balcony and calling from release of all whistle-blowers.
The UK government had refused to allow him passage to Ecuador and instead had spent over £3m of taxpayers cash over a constant police presence outside the embassy, which occupies only a few rooms in the building.
The event was organised by Veterans for Peace UK, and they linked Assange with others ‘facing persecution for exposing the true nature of war and the state‘, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. Supporters view Assange, Manning and Snowden as heroes who should be released rather than prosecuted.
The decision of Sweden to pursue the extradition of Assange on charges related to his sexual activities appears to have been politically motivated to make it easier for him to be transferred to the USA.
Among those at the protest were women from Women Against Rape who made clear they were against his extradition, accusing politicians of using “once again women’s fury & frustration at the prevalence of rape & other violences” to advance their own purposes.
The protest continued with a protest on the pavement outside the embassy holding up signs with the message ‘F R E E A S S A N G E’. They went back acrooss to the pavement opposite after a few minutes when politely asked to do so by police. A number of South Americans entertained with songs, but there was no sign of Assange.
It had been suggested when I arrived that he would come out at around 5pm, but at that time the embassy told press he was sleeping and they hoped he would come out at 6pm. I decided there was little point in my waiting and left.
Following a change in government in Ecuador police were invited inside to arrest Assange in April 2019. Since then he has been kept, much of the time in isolation, in the high security Belmarsh prison in Thamesmead. After a number of legal cases and appeals, ten days ago on 6th June 2023 he lost his appeal against extradition.
Carnival of Dirt: People from more than 30 activist groups from London and around the world met on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday 15th June 2012 for the Carnival of Dirt, a funeral procession for the many killed by mining and extraction companies, powerful financial organisations whose crimes are legitimised by the City of London.
‘POVERTY IS FILTHY’
Although little mining now goes on in the UK, London remains the mining capital of the world with many of the largest and most powerful mining and extraction companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and trading on the London Metal Exchange. The Carnival of Dirt named some of them as major criminals, including Xstrata, Glencore International, Rio Tinto, Vedanta, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, BP and Shell.
Many activists around the world have been murdered for standing up against the interests of these companies, whose greed has led to crimes against humanity on a huge scale around the world. As I wrote in 2012, “They lie behind the millions who have died in wars in the Congo and elsewhere, behind the torture and rapes and other human rights abuses that are used to drive people off their land, behind the huge areas of land poisoned by toxic wastes, forests and whole mountains destroyed, ecocide on a truly massive scale.”
Many of these crimes have been well-documented but these companies are still supported by our pension schemes and protected by our government, as well as being allowed to get away with avoiding or evading millions or billions of pounds in UK taxes.
Many of those who came to the carnival were dressed in black, and the funeral procession had a New Orleans style theme. The cortège “included a large snake, a turtle and a tortoise, a reminder of XStrata’s criminal diversion of the McArthur River, destroying the ecosystem and despoiling the sacred sites of Australian aborigines.”
There were a number of coffins to represent the dead, naming some of the companies involved with messages such as ‘Glencore Values – Toxic Assets, Toxic Environments‘. Another read ‘XStrata – X-Rated on Human Rights‘ and pointed out the CEO Mick Davis “Gets £30 million to stay in job while 2 Dead 80 Injured protesting at Tintaya mine in Chile.’
The more than 18,000 child miners in the Phillipines were represented by a small coffin. One read ‘10 Million Dead Through Conflict in 16 years equals a 9/11 every 2 days‘. Red drops for blood ran down the side of a black coffin with the messages ‘Resist Corporate Terrorism’ and ‘London Metal Exchange – Setting the Global Standard in Bloodshed‘ . Another coffin testified to the genocide in West Papua where Indonesian troops have torched villages.
Some of the protesters walked with photographs of a few of the better-known activists murdered for standing up to corporate terrorism, and a leaflet named some – “Valmore Locarno, Fr Fausto Tentorio, Victor Orcasita, Alexandro Chacon, Fr Reinel Restropo, Dr Gerry Ortega, Armin Marin, Dr Leonard Co, Elizer Billanes, Jorge Eliecer, Floribert Chebeya, Raghunath Jhodia, Abhilash Jhodia, Damodar Jhodia, Petrus Ayamiseba.” Other placards showed unnamed and horribly mutilated victims.
After brief speeches the procession moved off from St Paul’s towards the Stock Exchange behind the marching band, but they were blocked by barriers and private security staff at Temple Bar, preventing them going into the now privatised Paternoster Square. After a short protest there it moved off, walking along public streets to the north entrance of the Stock Exchange on Newgate Street.
The entrance was blocked by a line of police but the protesters stopped from a short rally, listening to a speech by Benny Wenda who managed to escape to the UK after being arrested, imprisoned and tortured by Indonesian troops. There were heavy showers and we all got rather wet, though some protesters were fortunate to be carrying black umbrellas with slogans on them; the slogans ran in the rain but the umbrellas kept those underneath rather drier.
From there the cortège moved on to protest in front of the Bank of England, where there were several speeches from researchers and activists. From there we moved to a final rally at the London Metal Exchange, where we heard a longer exposition of the various trading activities which cause a great deal of death and unnatural disaster across the globe.
The came a reading of the names of some of the prominent murdered activists, each name being followed by the protesters shouting ‘Present’ or the Spanish ‘Presente’ to show they were still a part of the living, in the hearts and minds of those mourning them. At the end of the list there was a two-minute silence in the memory of them and the millions of others killed for the profits of the mining companies. After throwing ashes at the building the procession continued to its finish at Altab Ali park.
By this time I was very wet, and so were my cameras and lenses, with condensation steaming up on inner glass surfaces. Many of the later images were taken with a wideangle fisheye, a single focal length lens that was more resistant than the two zooms I use for most of my work. I was tired and needed to get somewhere to dry out, so while many were planning to go on to further protests in Green Park and on the Embankment it was time for me to go home.
G8 Protest Day 2 – 2013: What a difference a day makes. The previous day police had raided the squat where many of the Stop G8 protesters had been staying, tazering many of those inside, injuring a man who was trying to climb down a ladder from a roof area, and finding little evidence of intended wrong-doing. They had done their utmost to prevent peaceful protest, searching hundreds on the streets and making 30 arrests, many following incidents where police had rushed in and forcefully grabbed protesters.
The police actions had made the news headlines, not always in favour of the police actions. Many of those reporters who had been on the streets and seen what was happening shared some of my opinions over their heavy-handed and anti-democratic behaviour and some of this got through past the usual editorial pro-police line.
Police too had failed to find any evidence that this would have been anything but a peaceful protest without their provocations, and perhaps the media were rather disappointed to realise that senior officers had before the event been lying to them, spreading unsupported rumours. And although some of the officers on the ground had clearly been enjoying being given the licence to have a go at the protesters, I think there were plenty who had been rather embarrassed.
Whatever the reasons, the police acted very differently when the Stop G8 protests continued on their second day, touring the offices of arms company and holding peaceful protests against them.
A group of protesters were dressed in black robes with ghost or skull masks and carrying mock scythes as well as a black banner with the message ‘Think we’re SCARY? You’ll find ‘ARMS DEALERS INSIDE‘. Others had changed into white plastic overalls suitable for what they said was a ‘weapons inspection.’
Others carried banners about arms companies including BAE where this tour began and Brighton-based EDO or to the continuing Campaign Against the Arms Trade protests over the huge DSEi arms fair held in London’s Docklands. BAE with offices in Carlton Gardens is the third largest arms company in the world and notable for several corruption cases – and they have been fined £48.7m by the US government for braking their military export laws.
Outside BAE and at each of further stops there were short speeches with details about the immoral (and sometimes illegal) activities of the company. After a little street theatre the protesters moved on peacefully. Occasionally where they were blocking roads the police came and politely asked them to let cars through, and the protesters obliged. They also at times tried to protect the protesters from traffic, but otherwise stood back and watched. Quite a few of the press who had turned up at the start soon left, seeing the event was proceeding peacefully.
The next stop was the offices of Thales, the world’s 11 largest arms company with a wide range of surveillance equipment, drones, armoured vehicles, missiles and more. From there they returned to Lockheed Martin where police had harassed them the previous day. On the other side of Piccadilly Circus in a street close to Leicester Square they protested outside the offices of Northrop Grumman UK, one of the world’s largest defence contractors and the largest builder of naval vessels.
A short distance further on at Strand they protested briefly at the officers of missile developer MBDA and then went to protest outside Charing Cross Police station where those arrested for protesting the previous day had been taken. The final stop on the tour was in Chandos Place, at the offices of QinetiQ, a major defence contractor which manufactures drones and armed robots used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I left to go home. As I noted, “As yesterday, the intention of those taking part (or at least the vast majority) had been to have a visible and audible but peaceful protest which was a clear statement of their views, and today the police had not interfered with this.” But I don’t think this protest made the news.
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.
Nicaragua, Votes for Women & Al Quds – Events in London on Sunday 10th June 2018
End Government Killings in Nicaragua – Trafalgar Square
Nicaraguans protested in Trafalgar Square against the violence in their country where since the 19th of April police had killed over 100 protesters and a injured more than 600, and many have been unjustly detained, tortured and raped.
President Daniel Ortega first came to power during the Nicaraguan Revolution as a leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front which ousted the US-supported Samoza dictatorship, becoming leader of the ruling junta which replaced them in 1984 and getting a large majority in the country’s first free and fair presidential election in 1985. His government then implemented a number of leftist policies despite widespread campaigns against him by the US who supported rebel forces and imposed a full trade embargo on the country, even mining its ports.
Massive US interference in the 1990 Nicaraguan general election led to his surprise defeat and he also stood and lost in 2001, but was returned to power following the 2006 elections, though on a much lower vote than in 1985 against a very split opposition.
Since coming to power in 2007, Ortega has abandoned most of his leftist principles, becoming increasingly dictatorial and alienating many of his earlier supporters. Popular protests which began in 2018 against his social security reforms which increased taxes and reduced benefits were violently repressed and further measures have included closing down newspapers, universities and NGOs. Leaders of the political opposition including some former colleagues were jailed for the 2021 election.
This repression has led to many fleeing the country, particularly to neighbouring Costa Rica where over 30,000 Nicaraguans have claimed asylum. Ortega remains in power, with his wife Rosario Murillo as Vice President since 2017.
Women marched through London in three strands wearing head scarves in one of the purple, white and green suffragette colours to celebrate a hundred years since the 1918 act gave wealthier older women the vote.
The 1918 Act brought the vote to all men over 21, as well as those like my father over18 serving in the armed forces, but women had to be both over 30 and meet a property requirement. It was another ten years before my mother and other women could vote on the same terms as men with the Representation of the People Act 1928.
Under the 1918 Act, “Women over 30 years old received the vote, but only if they were registered property occupiers (or married to a registered property occupier) of land or premises with a rateable value greater than £5 or of a dwelling-house and not subject to any legal incapacity, or were graduates voting in a university constituency.”
Around 8.4 million women in the UK got the vote in 1918, but there were still around 5 million of women over 21 without a vote – and there were still around 7% of the population, mainly male middle-class university graduates who had an extra vote either in university constituencies or in the constituency where they owned business premises.
Sadly when my mother did get the vote she used it to support the Conservative Party, displaying their poster in our front window at every election. My father, who kept quiet about his politics to avoid conflict at home, went into the polling station every time to cancel out her vote with one for Labour.
A large crowd squashed into barriers on the street in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy for a rally in support of the oppressed people of Palestine and others around the world.
The event, organised by the Justice for Palestine Committee, was supported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission and a wide range of pro-Palestinian organisations, and opposed by the Zionist Federation and some right wing hooligans, who were stopped from attacking the peaceful event by a large police presence in the area.
The official Zionist Federation protest which was perhaps a little smaller than in some previous years kept behind the barriers provided for them a short distance from the Palestinian protest, and the two groups shouted insults at each other.
There were also a number of well-known Zionist protesters along with some right-wing football supporters active in the EDL and other racist organisations wandering the streets of Mayfair. Police made an effort to keep them away from the Palestine protest, and at one point this involved some fairly forceful policing as the thugs were taken away. Not all of the right-wing are thugs, and later when I went home I was pleased to meet a man who knew me and walked with me to make sure I didn’t get troubled by any of the others still around.
As a colleague remarked to me, there may well have been more Jews taking part in the pro-Palestine rally than opposing it, as the Al Quds day event was supported by several groups and numerous individuals from the Jewish left as well as the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta, who as always attracted a great deal of venomous anti-Semitic shouting from the Zionists.
Celebrated in many countries, Al Quds Day, established by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, has been marked in London for over 30 years.
This year’s event was a gesture of defiance to the demonisation campaign and the ongoing murders by Israeli troops of innocent Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip commemorating 70 years since Israel was formed on expropriated Palestinian land.
Five years ago today on Saturday 3rd June 2018 I photographed two events in London, beginning with a protest opposite Downing Street by campaigners against gun and knife crime and moving on to an annual march remembering the 1984 Indian Army attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar where thousands of Sikhs were massacred, and the Indian government encouraged mob killings of Sikhs across the country following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards later in the year.
Anti-Knife UK protest – Downing St
The event was organised by Anti-Knife UK, founded by Danny O’Brien in 2008 which monitors knife crime incidents from across the UK on a daily basis. 2008 had been a particularly bad year for the murder of teenagers on London’s streets, with 29 deaths, and thought the numbers had gone down until 2012 when there were 9 such deaths by 2017 they back up to 27.
All of these deaths are tragedies for the teenagers and their families, and the numbers of crimes involving knives across England and Wales is huge – now over 45,000, though many of those are for possession of knives – and the total number of deaths is the year ending march 2022 was 261.
Many of those at the protest were bereaved family members and their supporters and were wearing t-shirts or holding placards with photographs of the knife victims and pairs of empty shoes as well as banners.
Speakers called for measures to tackle the problem including tougher sentences, tagging of all knives, knife arches in night clubs, equal rights for victims and families, a review of the laws governing self-defence and reasonable force and work in schools and communities.
I went to meet a large crowd of Sikhs at a rally in Hyde Park before the march, sitting on the grass. It was 24 degrees in London, and without any shade I was far too hot. Few of the speeches were in English, but many of the placards were and others graphically made their message clear.
Sikhs were badly treated by the British at the time of partition which divided the country up between the Hindus and Muslims, with millions of people having to flee across the borders of the new states and millions were terribly killed in doing so. Sikhs had called for an independent Sikh state in the Punjab, but most were simply lumped in, along with Buddhists and Jains with Hindu dominated India, although large numbers also remained in the part of the Punjab which had been designated as Muslum Pakistan.
Although there were large numbers of Sikhs across the Punjab before partition were still a minority population and they were not united in their demands for an independent state of Khalistan. Althugh they would probably have been better joining Pakistan, their cultural ties to Hinduism as well as a history of persecution by Muslims led them to instead unite with India. Many Sikh leaders had been involved with the Indian Congress Party which had made them promises about their position in India where the are less than 1% of the population but these were never kept.
The idea of a separate Khalistan became talked about more widely particularly in the diaspora in the 1970s, with the movement in Punjab led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale advocating an autonomous state within India. The movement had become increasingly militant with a number of armed supporters, setting up in 1982 what Wikipedia describes as ‘what amounted to a “parallel government” in Punjab‘.
In June 1984, the Indian Army launched Operation Blue Star to remove Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, killing Bhindranwale and large number of his supporters as well as many civilians as the temple was packed with pilgrims. The figures for deaths are disputed but probably between 5-7,000, with around 700 of the Indian army also dying.
In 2018 I commented “Since this 1984 Sikh genocide there has been a continuing program of police arrests, torture and killing of Sikh males in the Punjab and crippling economic and social policies. Sikhs demand independence from India and a Sikh state, Khalistan.”
After the rally the march set off, led by Sikh standard bearers and five Khalsa representing the Five Blessed Ones or Panj Pyare holding swords and walking barefoot in their orange robes and followed by several thousand Sikhs with flags, placards and banners. I talked with them past Marble Arch and down to Hyde Park Corner where I left them going down Piccadilly towards another rally at the end of the march in Trafalgar Square.
Turkish Spring, Badgers and BNP: Ten Years ago on Saturday 1st June 2013 Turks in London were celebrating the start of the Turkish Spring, but now they are mourning last Sundays’ election results with the Islamist dictator winning another term in office. Badger culling was just beginning and there is still no sign it will actually end and over 210,000 badgers have now been killed to little effect – and Defra is still failing to introduce more effective methods to control bovine TB. Anti-fascists managed to prevent the BNP laying a wreath to exploit the killing of Lee Rigby – but despite the family’s clearly stated wishes and MoD condemnation – racists including a leading Tory MP are still using the murder to whip up hatred.
London Supports Turkish Spring – Marble Arch
A large crowd, mainly Turks and Kurds from North London, met in Hyde Park close to Marble Arch for a march in support of the popular protests that had erupted over the previous few days over Gezi Park.
At first there had been small protests against the loss of one of Istanbul’s few remaining green spaces for a shopping mall. But brutal police repression, with tear gas and water cannon used indiscriminately on people in the area angered many and the protests grew, becoming protests calling for an end of the authoritarian Erdogan regime.
Many Turks were then disturbed at Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), abandoning the secular state established as the basis for modern Turkey in the 1920s by Kemal Atatürk towards a conservative authoritarian Islamic dictatorship.
This process has continued, and Turkey has also been involved in the supporting of wider Islamic movements in the Middle East, particularly ISIS, as well as supporting Russia in its intervention in crushing the anti-Assad revolt in Syria. Last week’s election came as a huge blow to democracy in Turkey.
The 2013 protest was high-spirited and noisy, with many young men including Turkish football supporters. Many of London’s Turkish and Kurdish community are people who had to flee Turkey for political reasons and their sons and daughters. Kurds in particular have long been subjected to huge discrimination and oppression with the Turkish government attempting to eliminate their culture.
I had to leave before the march to the Turkish Embassy were around four thousand protested in support of the ‘Turkish Spring’.
I joined a large crowd at a rally in front of Tate Modern for the National March Against the Badger Cull, where the speakers included Queen Guitarist Brian May.
Many at the protest had come up to London from country areas, particularly from the pilot areas in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset where culling was to start later in the year. Many more licences were issued in later years and culling is continuing. Detailed statistical analysis suggests in some areas culling has led to a slight decease in bovine TB but overall it has had no real effect as badgers are only responsible for a small amount of the transmission, with 94% of infection being passed from cow to cow.
Defra’s support for culling and their reluctance to bring in more accurate cattle testing, controls on the movement of cattle, vaccination, proper slurry management and other effective measures seems largely to be driven by lobbying from farmers who want to avoid more controls on their activities.
After the rally there was a short march to Parliament where some of those taking part danced on the street, with many then going on to join the protest taking place opposing the racist British National Party.
Anonymous were there along with Antifa, trade unionists and the UAF to oppose the BNP hate
On May 22nd 2013, off-duty Fusilier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered on a Woolwich street, run over then stabbed by two Muslim men who tried to decapitate him. The killing was universally condemned, including by Britain’s Muslim community, and I had two days ago photographed a march and rally in East London by Muslims to show solidarity and sympathy with the family of Lee Rigby and to denounce his brutal killing, describing it as against all the tenets of Islam.
Nick Griffin answers questions under a placard ‘Hate Preachers Out’ and fails to appreciate the irony
The BNP had wanted to organise a mass protest in Woolwich to exploit the killing, making use of his senseless slaughter there to gain support for their anti-Muslim rhetoric, but police had banned their plans for a march as it would have endangered public safety, enraging many in the local area. Lee Rigby’s father had made clear that he and his family did not want his son’s death to be used to stir up hatred.
Instead, BNP leader Nick Griffin had planned to march to the Cenotaph and lay a wreath there, and had come with a small group of supporters to Old Palace Yard to start the march. It was only a very small group, even for the BNP, with perhaps as I wrote suggesting “it was something that even the ultra-right membership of the BNP could not stomach”.
Griffin himself blamed the low turnout on the police turning many of his followers away, stating that the whole area around Westminster was “a virtual exclusion zone“. I’d just walked there seeing no unusual police activity, and certainly large numbers who had come to oppose his wreath laying found no problems in getting in to do so.
Police arrest an anti-fascist
It would have been possible for anyone – BNP member or not – to go to the Cenotaph on any of the days following the brutal murder and even on this morning to lay a wreath, though not today a well-known racist face like Griffin himself. But Grffin’s intentions were not about expressing sympathy. He wanted a triumphal march with flags flying to gain support for his Islamophobic hate, and given the opposition this never seemed likely to happen.
Police tried hard to clear a way for the BNP to march, but anti-fascists held their ground and refused to move. Police told them they were acting illegally and would be arrested if they did not move – and I saw a couple of double-decker buses being filled with arrested protesters and driven away, but there were simply too many for police to arrest them all.
The protest brought back memories of Cable Street, though few if any there were old enough to have actually been there back in 1936, though rather more had been at the http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2006/10/oct.htm 70th anniversary. But as then the slogan was ‘They shall not pass’, and on this occasion there were not enough police to force a way through. After the two buses of arrested protesters had been driven away police tactics changed and they simply maintained a standoff keeping the opposing groups apart.
Police told the BNP that they expected the anti-fascists to go home and they expected be able to clear the route by half past four, but they stayed on. It was the BNP who gave up, turning around and walking back to waiting coaches and leaving. When the anti-fascists were told the BNP had gone, they marched to Old Palace Yard for a brief rally to celebrate the victory.
