Intifada, Yemen & Vivisection: On Saturday 24 September 2011 I began work outside the M&S flagship store on Oxford Street where Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! were holding a special picket on the 11th anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! is the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Group, RCG, a British anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninist communist political organisation actively campaigning since the late 1970s, opposing racism and supporting campaigns for self-determination around the world, including against Apartheid South Africa, Ireland and the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
The RCG should have been in the news this week when one of their members, Sarah Cottle, was unanimously acquitted by the jury after a second trial on spurious Terrorism Act charges for her defence of the right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves. But you won’t have heard about it on the BBC.
From Oxford Street I went to Downing Street where people from the UK Yemeni community were holding a silent protest against the killings of peaceful protesters in Sanaa by troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Later I joined the National Anti-Vivisection Alliance (NAVA) who were marching from Temple Place to Downing Street to deliver a letter and hold a rally calling for an end to the use of live animals in laboratory experiments.
Although NAVA was only founded in 2010, its roots lie over a century earlier with outrage and political controversy in the early years of the twentieth century which led to riots, particularly around the statue of a cruelly and illegally dissected ‘brown dog’. A replica of this statue is now in Battersea Park, and some NAVA members had met there before the march. I made a detour on my way home after the march to take a few pictures of the statue.
Intifada 11 Years Protest at M&S
Oxford St
The Second or ‘Al-Aqsa Intifada’ started shortly after the failure of the Camp David Middle East Peace Summit between US President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat in July 2000.
A visit by Likud party candidate for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, also the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque in September 2000 triggered days of riots and clashed between Palestinians and Israeli police and in the next five days, 5 Israelis and 47 Palestinians were killed and 1885 Palestinians wounded.
Sporadic outbreaks of violence and many suicide bombings continued until Sharon and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who had been elected promising peaceful negotiation and non-violence against Israel, met at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005 and agreed on various measures to de-escalate the violence. By then Wikipedia states around 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis had been killed along with 64 foreign nationals.
The RCG and others had begun a regular Thursday night picket outside M&S shortly after the start of the Second Intifada, with occasional protests on Saturdays. They state that M&S has the strongest and most long-standing support for Zionism of any British retail company, supporting Israel with £240 million of trade each year, including products from the illegal settlements.
More details and pictures on My London Diary: Intifada 11 Years Protest at M&S.
Silent Vigil For Yemen At Downing St
Protests against the regime of President Saleh had been taking place since January, when thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital Sanaa and other cities in southern Yemen.
In March, government forces opened fire on the protesters killing 52, and the president declared a state of emergency. Military actions followed with Saleh being injured and leaving the country for surgery.
Ahead of Saleh’s return to the country in September the army began violent attacks on peaceful democracy protesters camped out it the capital with a series of attacks usingt automatic weapons, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades, said to have led to more than 100 deaths.
By late 2014 the situation had worsened, leading to the civil war which is still continuing.
Silent Vigil For Yemen At Downing St.
Enough Is Enough – Abolish Vivisection
Embankment and Battersea Park
Supporters of the National Anti-Vivisection Alliance visited the statue of the Brown Dog, commemorating the start of the campaign against vivisection in 1900, and then marched through London to take a letter to Downing St calling for an end to animal experiments.
Many on the march wore purple clothing and carried purple flags, the colour of the anti-vivisectionists. They marched in silence behind a banner with the simple message ABOLISH VIVISECTION.
NAVA carry out peaceful demonstrations backed by investigations in a law abiding campaign “backed by scientists, doctors, lawyers, journalists and members of the public across Britain” to bring an end to the use of animals in research.
On My London Diary you can read more about the suffering of animals and the case of the Brown Dog which led to the erection of sculpture to the tortured animal in Battersea which became a centre for riots and fighting between medical students and anti-vivisectionists.
The statue and the ornate fountain on which the original statue stood needed a 24 hour police guard and eventually in 1910 council workers came at night guarded by 120 police to demolish it. The bronze dog was melted down.
A new statue of the brown dog, commissioned by anti-vivisection groups, was erected in Battersea Park in 1985.
Enough Is Enough – Abolish Vivisection
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