asylum seekers | >Re-PHOTO

MfJ At Yarls Wood Again

Saturday 3rd December 2016 saw the 10th protest organised by Movement for Justice at Yarl’s Wood, the immigration prison on an isolated wartime RAF base around five miles north of Bedford. Around 2000 protesters made there way there to call for the closure of Yarl’s Wood and all immigration detention centres.

Because of heavy security inside the prison there were fewer women to greet them at the windows than on previous protests, but those who were able to make it greeted them enthusiastically, shouting and waving from the prison block behind the high fence, hindered by windows that open only a small crack.

Several of those held inside were also able to speak to the protesters using their mobile phones, which detainees are allowed to have as they are essential in communicating with their lawyers. Conditions in immigration detention are different from those in our normal jails, but those held are still prisoners. And unlike most in normal jails, they are held in indefinite detention, never knowing when they will be released, with no limit on how long they can be held. One woman who spoke to us from inside had been held without any charge or trial for over two years.

Those imprisoned at Yarls Wood are almost entirely women, with just a few family groups also being held there. The women who spoke, along with other former inmates who were taking part in the protest outside told grim and shameful stories of their detention. They told of assaults and abuse by Serco security guards who today had locked many in other wings to stop them seeing the protest and threatened those who greeted the protesters.

*70% of Women in Detention are Survivors of Sexual Violence*

One of the many complaints by those who are locked up in this and other immigration detention centres has been over the lack of proper access to medical treatment and it was worrying to hear from inside that there were now cases of TB in Yarl’s Wood. There have been some cases of death in detention when the staff have refused to take detainees health complaints seriously and have only called for medical assistance too late.

The complaints about abuse by security guards have been confirmed in reports in the mass media, including testimony and recordings made by an investigative reporter who worked as a security guard for several months there, revealing a horrific story of abuse.

Yarl’s Wood was temporarily closed down at the start of Covid with women being released or moved elsewhere. Most of the women who are held there are eventually released, most granted asylum or leave to remain. Some are simply released and disappear into the community and a few are actually deported.

It is a wasteful system in every way, particularly wasteful for the women who are confined there, often in great need of proper medical treatment and care for the trauma they escaped from with threats, beatings and rapes in their own country. But also wasteful for the taxpayer, both in paying the private companies that run these prisons and also in losing the positive contribution these women could be making if they were allowed freedom and able to work – and pay taxes rather than be a burden on them.

Yarl’s Wood is now being used to house some of those who have made the dangerous journey across the English Channel in small boats. A new asylum detention centre for women has been opened up in an even more isolated location, a former youth prison in County Durham, removing them even further from their legal advice and from protesters.

The protesters stood on a small rise in the field outside where they could see the upper two floors of the prison over the tall metal fence through the 10 feet of open metal grid above the 10 feet of solid metal panels. Photographing through the metal grid was possible but not easy. Some protesters went up to the fence and banged noisily on the panels, while others held posters on tall poles or climbed ladders against the fence so that those on the ground floor could see their banners, and there were also a number of flares let off to give large clouds of coloured smoke.

My MfJ organised coach back to Bedford Station was leaving shortly before the protest ended, and as I boarded it, half a mile away as the crow flies though nearer a mile along the public footpath and road, I could still clearly hear the noise of the protest. Those women locked away from the block facing the protesters will certainly have been able to hear it too. It had been a powerful protest but at the end I felt an intense sense of shame for the way this country treats asylum seekers and our clearly racist immigration system.

Much more at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 10 on My London Diary.

Armistice Day Events & Canada Geese Protest, 2017

Silent Remembrance Peace Vigil – Trafalgar Square, Sat 11 Nov 2017

I came up the steps from the Underground into Trafalgar Square just as the clocks struck 11am on Saturday 11th of November 2017, exactly 99 years to the minute after the end of fighting following the signing earlier in the morning of the Armistice in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne. Though actually an hour late, since it was 11.00 am Paris time, an hour ahead of GMT.

A revolt by sailors in the German Navy, beginning in Wilhelmshaven on 29-30th October 2018 had lead widespread actions across Germany with the proclamation of a Republic which forced the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm and made the end of the war inevitable – it had largely been a family quarrel between the ruling royals.

As I came up into the square a whistle marked the start of the two-minute silence, and at least one bus swerved to the side of the road and stopped, though much of the traffic continued around it. A few people in the square stood to attention, but many of the tourists continued as normal. And I stood for a few seconds then kept on walking to photograph a small group of Quakers on the North Terrace wearing white poppies and beginning a 45 minute silent remembrance peace vigil outside the National Gallery.

White poppies were first made in 1933 by the Co-operative Women’s Guild to hold on to the key message of remembrance, ‘never again’. The First World War, known at the time as The Great War, had been called “the war to end all wars” but by 1933 many were beginning to think that another world war was coming.

The white poppy remembers all victims or war, both civilians and military, and of all nationalities and has become more important as our official armistice events have over the past years become more and more militaristic celebrations. Sales of white poppies have increased greatly in recent years, with demand outstripping supply.

The white poppy challenges war and militarism and any attempt to glorify or celebrate war, and shows a committment to peace and nonviolent solutions to conflict. This year writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah appears in a popular https://youtu.be/jtjCGCxT_PU video where he explains why he wears a white poppy and urges others to do the same to remember all victims of war and to work towards a world where there is no war.

Silent Remembrance Peace Vigil

Close Canada Goose for animal cruelty – Regent St, Sat 11 Nov 2017

*Fur is Worn By Beautiful Animals and Ugly People!*

Several hundred campaigners marched from a nearby square to protest outside the newly opened flagship Regent Street Canada Goose store where the protest continued for most of the day. Police struggled to clear a path through the protesters for customers to enter and leave.

Canada Goose was selling coats with fur trims using trapped wild coyotes, which may suffer for days in cruel traps, facing blood loss, dehydration, frostbite, gangrene and attacks by predators, some even trying to chew off their own trapped limbs to escape before a trapper returns to strangle, stamp or bludgeon them to death.

The down in their jackets is from ducks and geese that have their throats slit and are dumped into scalding hot water for feather removal while often still alive and feeling pain to make the down-filled jackets.

The London protests followed years of protests in New York and Toronto and continued weekly and at times more frequently. The shop gained an interim injunction restricting the activities outside the Regent St shop at the end of November 2017, but this was discharged in 2019 and their request to make it final refused, with the High Court saying the right to protest is an important legal right.

In June 2021 Canada Goose announced it would stop buying fur by the end of that year and no longer make products using real fur no later than the end of 2022. The protests backed by Peta for 15 years had eventually led to success, although the company denied that they had any part in its decision. The campaign to stop them using geese and duck feathers continues.

Close Canada Goose for animal cruelty

Remember Refugees on Armistice Day – Whitehall, Sat 11 Nov 2017

Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants hosted a a commemoration ceremony to lay a life-ring wreath in memory of the people who have died fleeing their war-torn countries to seek refuge over the past year.

The event began at the Ministry of Defence. Many feel that the official celebration of Remembrance Day has gradually become more militaristic and a celebration of our victories rather than remembering the deaths of many in all the wars that our country has played a part in.

Among those taking part were a number of refugees as well as some activists who had supported them in the camps at Calais and on Greek Islands.

After speeches on the steps of the Ministry of Defence people held up posters with the details known about some of the migrants who have died trying to cross to the UK, but for many the posters read ‘Name Unknown’ – all we know is their date of death.

Then people processed holding wreaths of orange poppies and burning candles to the Cenotaph where they laid these to remember those who died seeking sanctuary. There were 17 small wreaths, the average number of people who have died so far trying to migrate each day in 2017.

Remember Refugees on Armistice Day

Orange Lodges Remembrance Day parade – Whitehall, Sat 11 Nov 2017

As I was at the Cenotaph I heard the sound of a flute band and drums as the London City District No 63 and the Houses of Parliament Lodge marched up Parliament St with visiting loyalists on their annual Remembrance Day parade in central London.

I photographed them marching and laying wreaths, but didn’t go with them as they went to lay further wreaths at the Duke of York Column in honour of Prince Frederick, Duke of York, the second eldest son of King George III and a Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Institution of England and then to St James’ Square for the end of their parade, where they were to lay a wreath at the memorial to WPC Yvonne Fletcher. Although I had no problems in Whitehall on this occasion I have been attacked at some other Orange events in London.

Orange Lodges Remembrance Day parade

Iraq Oil Grab, Freedom, Rosary Crusade & More

My day in London on Saturday 11th October 2008 – 14 years ago

100 Days to stop Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab! Shell Centre

Iraq Oil Grab, Freedom, Rosary Crusade & More

The ‘Hands of Iraqi Oil’ coalition including Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and supported by the Stop the War Coalition protested at the Shell Centre against plans to had over most of Iraq’s oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.

From 1961 on the Iraqi government took increasing control of the oil industry in Iraq, finally nationalising it it 1970. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq it provided 95% of the government’s revenues.

Any lingering doubts about the true reason behind the US-led invasion were dispelled by the grab for the country’s key national resource, a move strongly supported by expert consultants supplied by the UK and US who previously worked at a high level for companies like Shell and BP who drafted the bill for the giveaway which is opposed by Iraqi trade unions and oil experts.

The protest took place at the start of the final 100 days of George W Bush’s administration and began at Shell’s UK headquarters on the South Bank before the samba band, ‘oil workers’ and other demonstrators with a huge and grotesque US Vice President Dick Chaney set off to make their way to BP’s HQ in St James’s Square and on to the US Embassy. But I needed to go to another protest.

Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab

Freedom not Fear 2008 – New Scotland Yard, Victoria St

Freedom not fear 2008 events were taking place in over 20 countries to demonstrate against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organisations.

In the UK the main event was at New Scotland Yard in London, opposed to the restriction of the right to demonstrate under SOCPA, the intimidatory use of photography by police FIT squads, the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.

Although police handed out notifications under the SOCPA legislation warning them that protesting in the zone around Westminster they were in was illegal, neither the police nor the demonstrators seemed to be taking this very seriously in the 45 minutes or so I was there or when I briefly returned an hour later.

Freedom not Fear 2008

Rosary Crusade of Reparation – Westminster Cathedral

Half a mile or so up the road people were gathering outside the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation, one of the larger walks of public witness by Catholics in London.

The Rosary campaign was begun in Austria in 1947 by Franciscan Fr Petrus Pavlicek who prayed for his country to be freed from its communist occupiers and it attracted half a million supporters. The first annual parade with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima wasin 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12. This feast celebrated the defeat in 1683 of Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.

The London procession takes place on the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the final appearance of Our Lady at Fatima in October 1917, close to the end of the First World War. Those present saw the sun dancing around in the sky, and she promised peace and an end to war if men showed contrition for their sins and changed their lives.

This was the 25th annual procession in London, starting from Westminster Cathedral and making its way to a service at Brompton Oratory. The statue of Our Lady of Fatima was carried by the Catholic Police Guild and two thousand or more Catholics walked behind saying Rosary and singing hymns devoted to Mary.

This year’s procession had as its special theme atonement for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill then passing through Parliament.

Rosary Crusade of Reparation

Parliament Square

I left the procession as it started off and walked back past New Scotland Yard to Parliament Square, where several protests were taking place. Tamils were calling for an end to genocide in Sri Lanka and for an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of Sri Lanka.

In the centre of the square was a small protest by London Against Detention demanding an end to the detention of asylum seekers and the closure of immigration detention centres.

And Ben and Ben of ‘Still Human Still Here” were approaching the end of their two week protest in Parliament Square over the scandalous treatment of asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country. They spent two weeks in a tent in the square living on the emergency rations that the Red Cross will supply to these inhumanely treated asylum seekers.

Brian Haw was then still in the square, then in his seventh year of long-term protest. As usual I went to talk to him, and was there when a man came up to laugh at him and insult him. He smelt strongly of alcohol, was talking nonsense and acting unpredictably. One of Brian’s supporters stood between him and Brian who was filming him. I put down my bag as I took photographs in case I needed to step in and help, but fortunately he eventually moved away.

Danny was lying on the grass and called out to me as I walked past after talking to Brian. He told me he had been on hunger strike for two weeks demanding a proper investigation into his case. He claims to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother but I found it hard to make much sense of his allegations.

While I had been talking to Danny I’d seen a group of people on the street opposite carrying placards go up Parliament Street and I’d later caught up with them at the top of Whitehall. I found they were Obama supporters hoping to find and persuade Americans here to register and vote in the election.

Parliament Square

Close Down Yarl’s Wood – August 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out!

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out! The main event I covered on Saturday 16th July was a march and rally organised by the the People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism as an emergency demonstration after the Brexit referendum result a few weeks earlier. But I also photographed three other events, two on the edges of this and the first totally unrelated.

Falun Dafa march against Chinese repression – Regent St

I hadn’t been aware that practitioners of Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), an advanced Buddhist practice of moral rectitude, meditation and exercise founded by Mr Li Hongzhi in 1992, were to be marching through London to protest the continuing torture and repression they have experience in China since 1999, and simply came across them as I walked up Regent Street towards the BBC where the People’s Assembly march was gathering.

I think I had first photographed Falun Gong when they took part in the Westminster New http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2004/01/jan.htm Year’s Day Parade back in 2004 but I had taken pictures of them quite a few times since then, both at major events and the regular protests that they hold. They have maintained a small permanent 24 hour protest opposite the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place for many years.

In China, Falun Dafa have been subjected to forced labour, psychiatric abuse, torture and even execution to supply human organs for Chinese transplant operations since they were targeted in an antireligious campaign by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999. In earlier years the party had encouraged the movement and the spiritual practices from which Falung Dafa emerged as an extremist form. While Falun Dafa is a cult with some beliefs that endanger its adherents and many would find abhorrent this in no way justifies their criminal persecution in China.

Falun Dafa march against Chinese repression

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out! – BBC, Regent St

The People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism march had chosen to start outside the BBC, as I wrote “in the forlorn hope that they might for once cover a protest in Britain properly. Many marching and at the rally showed great support for Jeremy Corbyn as our next prime minister – and the only hope of a future for the Labour Party.” Unfortunately that was not to be – and we are suffering now.

Many of those urging the public to vote to leave Europe in the months leading up to the referendum had represented this as a way we could control immigration to this country, and had deliberately stirred up racist fears. The result had been an increase in racist and other hate attacks, particularly directed against refugees and asylum seekers. Many were on the march to support the human and civil rights and show solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers against the upsurge in racism and hate attacks.

The Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policy, first announced in 2012 by then Home Secretary Theresa May was cited, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Office_hostile_environment_policy Wikipedia, “as one of the harshest immigration policies in the history of the United Kingdom, and has been widely criticised as inhumane, ineffective, and unlawful” with the UN Human Rights Council finding it fostered xenophobia and the Equality and Human Rights Commission finding it broke equalities law – and of course it led to the Windrush scandal.

I took pictures of the people preparing to march and walked with it a short distance down Regent Street before leaving to cover two other events before returning to the rally at the end of the march.

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out!

Cleaners Flash Mob at CBRE London HQ – Marylebone

One of the groups taking part in the march were United Voices of the World supporters including some of those taking part in the long strike – then on its 38th day – at 100 Wood Street in the City of London.

They had told me they were going to leave the march for a short ‘flash mob’ at the headquarters of the CBRE who run 100 Wood Street which was around a quarter of a mile from the march route.

I’d stayed behind for a few minutes photographing the marchers before I left to run after them. When I arrived they had already gone into t he office foyer and were protesting inside, but the doors had been locked. I took a few pictures through the large glass doors but was then able to get inside for a minute or two as some started to leave. After taking a few pictures of the group in front of the offices I ran off to find a small protest by the EDL which had been organised to oppose the day’s big march with a rally in Hyde Park.

Cleaners Flash Mob at CBRE London HQ

EDL march and rally – Hyde Park

Few EDL members had turned up for the event, well under a hundred, but they were easy to find as there were several times as many police who had turned up to prevent any trouble between them and anti-fascists and were marching as a loose cordon around them down Park Lane.

A few anti-fascist had come to oppose them, but most had left to join the main march after seeing how few of the EDL had turned up. Police escorted the EDL into the park, where they had set up a pen for their protest, but they refused to march into it. After some heated arguments with police the the EDL stewards calmed down the others and they agreed to hold their rally in front of the pen instead of in it.

There was a small incident when a woman walked past on the opposite side of the protest to me and shouted ‘Black Lives Matter’; stewards rushed towards her and manhandled her rather roughly away while a large group of police stood by watching but failed to intervene.

EDL march and rally

Peoples Assembly/Stand Up to Racism rally – Parliament Square

I took the tube to Westminster and joined the crowd relaxing after the march in a sunny Parliament Square. Whereas the Hyde Park rally had been full of bitterness and hate, here the mood was much warmer and positive, though there was considerable anger expressed against government policies by the many speakers.

*Zita Holbourne of BARAC and PCS holds up her ‘We Stand with Jeremy Corbyn’ poster*

But while I’d been kept out out the small crowd in Hyde Park by police and stewards, here I was free to walk around and people were happy to be photographed. It was a totally different atmosphere.

I didn’t photograph every speaker, but you can see I think thirteen of them in my pictures from the event, as well as many pictures of the others standing or sitting on the grass to listen to them. Perhaps the most interesting was an asylum seeker, brought to the microphone by Antonia Bright from Movement for Justice, who spoke briefly about her experiences in our racist asylum system.

Peoples Assembly/Stand Up to Racism rally

Surround Harmondsworth – End Immigration Detention

Surround Harmondsworth – End Immigration Detention – Saturday 11th July 2015

*On Bath Road immediatly north of Heathrow Airport*

As a boy I spent much of my leisure time cycling around south-west Middlesex, either on my own or with a couple of friends exploring both the quiet lanes and busy roads such as the A4 Bath Road, then heavy with traffic, most of which now prefers the M4 a mile or so to the north here.

As we came to Longford we came to the Peggy Bedford, a pub at the junction where the Colnbrook Bypass, which had been opened in 1929 to take traffic away from the narrow streets of quiet villages of Longford and Colnbrook. The streets were still fairly narrow back in the 1950s (and remain so) but the quiet was then regularly replaced as planes taking off or landing at Heathrow, a stone’s throw away, thundered overhead. And what had been annoying but bearable in the age of propeller-driven aircraft soon became deafening as these were replaced by jets.

The Peggy Bedford was a typical fake-tudor building of 1930, complete with mock half-timbering and exaggerated chimneys, but the name (and licence) had a long history, dating back to a tavern around half a mile west in Longford, The Kings Head Inn. This was the first of a long string of coaching inns through Longford and Colnbrook where coaches out of London picked up their second change of horses, having made their first change in one of the hundred inns of Hounslow High Street.

*Walking to a pen outside the Harmondsworth prison administration block*

In 1782 Peggy Bedford was one of six children born to the licensee of the inn, and later she owned and ran it from 1807 until her death in 1859. All the locals came to call the pub by her name, and it became known as the Peggy Bedford, though officially still the Kings Head. When the bypass was built, the brewers realised it would bypass the pub, closed it and built a new pub at the junction and were persuaded by its patrons to officially name it so. For a while in the ’30s it was a popular roadhouse for some of London’s idle young smart set, who would drive out and race along the bypass. And when it was pulled down – to some local disgust – in 1995 the name was given to the McDonalds which replaced it.

When we chose to take the bypass – a rather smoother and faster ride for us too – we soon passed on the north side of the Bath Road a government site – The Road Research Laboratory. A monument on Moor Lane at the north of this large site now records “Tests conducted by the Road Research Laboratory against model dams built on this site during 1940 – 42 assisted Barnes Wallis in his development of the bouncing bomb (Upkeep), used by No. 617 Squadron Royal Air Force to breach the Ruhr Dams 16/17 May 1943.” But the main business of the RRL was to find ways to make roads faster and safer for cars and lorries – if rather less safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

The RRL moved out to Crowthorne in the late 1960s and the part of this site closest to Bath Road is now the site of two of the UK’s heinous immigration prisons, Harmonsdsworth and Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centres (now collectively called Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre.) An area behind them is in use by BT.

It was outside the detention centres on the Bath Road that I met with a large group of people who had come from London by underground to Heathrow terminal 5 and then a local bus to protest against the unfair treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, including some still being held under the Fast-Track system then recently found unlawful by the High Court.

*People spoke about their experiences of being detained*

The recent change of name of these prisons from ‘detention centres’ to ‘immigration removal centres’ makes clear that the government’s intention is not to properly investigate asylum claims but to simply deport those making them as fast as they can. Although the ‘fast track’ system, designed to make it impossible for people to properly fight their case to stay has now been declared illegal, those held in the centre are still under threat of being bundled onto a plane without a proper chance to present their case.

This protest at Europe’s largest detention centre complex was the eighth organised there by the Movement for Justice, who have also organised protests at other immigration prisons including Yarls Wood. MfJ have also worked with many detainees whilst they are inside the centres, providing assistance and preventing many cases of premature deportation. Thanks largely to the efforts of them and other bodies which also work with detainees many have eventually been released and allowed to remain in the UK, and most of those taking part in the protest were former detainees.

*Along a public footpath beside the prison fence*

Security had been stepped up greatly at the Heathrow centre since some previous protests and police and security staff confined the protesters to an area in front of the administration block, well away from where detainees are held. But the protest made a lot of noise, shouting and dancing with megaphones and a small public address system, and phone calls with the detainees confirmed they could be clearly heard inside.

*which leads to a field beside the prison fence*.

Detainees are not held under the same conditions as prisoners in jail, though the Colnbrook centre is built and largely run on prison lines. But while trying to argue their cases the detainees need mobile phones to try to contact their legal advisers and MFJ were able to contact some of them and amplify their messages to the protest.

After a lengthy protest in front of the Harmondsworth administration building the protesters moved off and walked down a public footpath that runs beside the 20ft fence on the east of the Colnbrook blocks. Here they were much closer to the people inside but the tall fence, a hedge and some trees prevented us from seeing them at the windows. But again they could be contacted by phone and told those outside about the poor conditions and treatment they were experiencing and gave profuse thanks to the people outside who had come to visit them.

*They could hear people shouting from inside as well as by phone*

Finally the protesters decided it was time to begin their hour and a half journey back into central London and I said goodbye to start my shorter journey home.

More on My London Diary: Surround Harmondsworth.

Tottenham, Kilburn and Ponders End

Tottenham, Kilburn and Ponders End – I travelled to Tottenham and Kilburn to photograph protests but fortunately the people from Ponders End had come to protest at Westminster. All three protests I photographed on Saturday 29th March 2014 were about the inhumane policies of the Tory Government.

Mothers march for justice – Tottenham

Rev Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty, an indefatigable lifelong campaigner on behalf of the poor died in 2020, aged 87. His first job after National Service in the Army had been with the family firm selling champagne around London, but after a dozen years until he discovered a vocation to become a worker-priest and was ordained as a deacon in 1967 and then a priest in 1968. Around 1981 he became a parish priest in Turville, the location chosen for The Vicar of Dibley, making his priority the support of the poor in a area of extremes of wealth.

He resurrected the practice, now common of being a McKenzie Friend, which allowed him to stand with and represent those brought to court over debts, particularly those unable to pay the Poll Tax. His revelations on the activities of bailiffs enforcing debts lead to a Code of Practice which, at least when enforced, gives some protection to the vulnerable, and it was his initiative in commissioning the Family Budget Unit to investigate the actual costs of living that led the the UK and London Living Wage being established.

Tottenham, Kilburn and Ponders End — *Spiderman led the march*

His work in later years was largely about housing and homelessness, and I met and photographed him on many protests. He set up the charity Zacchaeus 2000 (Z2K) but then resigned as its chair so he could campaign politically through Taxpayers Against Poverty.

The march in Tottenham on 29th March 2014 organised by the Rev Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty demanded living incomes and decent truly affordable homes and rejected the unfair Tory bedroom tax, the housing benefit cap, unfair taxes, which were the cause of hunger and cold homes. He spoke before the march and walked on it with a placard hanging from a string around his neck: ‘We march for Freedom from Hunger, Cold, Outrageous Rents – Fight for a Living Wage’.

The march was smaller than hoped, several hundred rather than the hoped for ‘1000 Mothers March for Justice’, though more were expected to turn up at Tottenham Green East for the rally at its end, unfortunately after I had left. Those on the march included representatives from many local groups as well as others around London, and they carried an impressive number of banners.

Mothers march for justice

Kilburn Uniform Day – Kilburn Square

A few miles to the west, the Counihan Battlebus Housing For All campaign, along with the TUSC Against Cuts and Unite Community was holding a two hour protest in Kilburn Square on the main Kilburn High Road over child hunger and housing problems, calling for rents to be capped and for everyone to have a home.

In 2010 food banks were rare things in the UK, used over the year by around 60,000 people. After ten years of Tory policies this had increased to around 2.5 million, around 40 times as many. Much of that increase is a direct result of government policies, including its inhuman sanctions policy against benefit claimants, as well as of poverty wages and unfair employment practices such as zero hours contracts.

Moving people onto Universal Credit resulted in many being without resources for five weeks, sometimes considerably longer. As I wrote “Our government appear to be completely out of touch with how many people in the country live. They simply cannot comprehend what it means to be without money, or without friends or family you can rely on for a few thousand when you have a problem. Many people on low income simply don’t have any such resources – all they have is debts and bills to pay.”

Things have got worse since 2014, and soaring energy prices along with the additional National Insurance payments coming in next month will again put more families into desperate levels of poverty – and increase those evicted as they cannot pay the rent. It isn’t that the country doesn’t have the money – we are still one of the richest countries in the world – but that increasingly the already wealthy are getting richer while the poor sink into more desperate poverty.

And it’s successive governments – including New Labour – that are to blame, with a failure to build sensible amounts of social housing, the encouragement of high cost private housing and buy to rent. The wealthy have got tax breaks while many working full-time have been finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. And tax avoidance has reached huge levels thanks to a failure to plug silly loopholes and face up to the problems caused by off-shoring. We should have a zero-avoidance policy not one that encourages it.

Kilburn Uniform Day

Fellow Students Fight for Yashika – Parliament Square

The final event I photographed was a lively protest by fellow students and supporters at Parliament urged then Home Secretary Theresa May to abandon the planned deportation of 19 year old model A-level student Yashika Bageerathi to Mauritius due to take place on Mothers Day.

She came here with her family who claimed asylum after physical abuse from a relative in Mauritius in 2012, but the claim was rejected and the whole family are under threat of eviction – and as she is now 19 they decided to deport her alone weeks before she was due to take her A levels in Ponders End.

We continue to see “a ‘tougher than you’ shift to the right over immigration played out by both government and opposition over the past years, each trying to outdo each other … So we get foolish and desperate measures like the immigration vans, and raids at tube stations and other public places by the Border Force based unlawfully on racial profiling.”

Migrants, including many who are here without legal right to remain, play an important part in keeping London running despite government attempts to identify and remove them. Estimates in 2014 were that there were around half a million in the city and without them, “London would grind to a halt. They do mainly the low paid dirty jobs no one else would want for pay that isn’t enough to live properly on in London – often at below the minimum wage because of their immigration status.”

The protests and a petition with over 170,000 signatures failed to have any effect on the heartless Home Office and Yashika was deported. But good news came later. Perhaps because of the huge publicity around her case she was welcomed and supported back in Mauritius and was able to take her exams there. Despite her studies having been interrupted by spells in Yarl’s Wood immigration prison she was able to gain her A levels and go on to university – and keep out of the media limelight.

Fellow Students Fight for Yashika

Yarls Wood – Shut It Down

Yarls Wood – Shut It Down – Saturday 24th March 2018 saw another protest outside Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, calling for all immigration detention centres to be closed down.

It was the 13th protest there organised by Movement for Justice, but on this occasion other groups including Sisters Uncut had also organised separately to come to the event and hold their own slightly distanced protest, following serious allegations about the way MfJ worked and had behaved, particularly to one woman who had been one of their high-profile members, but also a number of others including some of the migrants they had supported.

I had been shocked to hear of the allegations, but not particularly surprised. I admired both the work MfJ had done over the years in leading the protests against our racist immigration system and the contribution of the woman activist concerned who I had met and photographed at a number of protests.

But I had been long aware that MfJ was led by Trotskyists, members of the Revolutionary International League, including several white activists, having been set up by them in London in the 1990s to confront racism and fascism. So I knew that like all such groups knew they would enforce disciplines to back the party line at least on its inner members, so the revelations came as no surprise to me.

Of course I don’t condone these actions, though I was in no position to judge on the truth of some of the allegations, but it seemed to me the most important things was that protests against our racist immigration system should continue and should be effective. For some years MfJ had been the main group taking effective action against immigration deportation flights and immigration prisons. I was pleased that the controversy actually seemed to have prompted other groups to organise and protest on this occasion and for later events.

The protest followed much the same pattern as the others I’ve attended at Yarl’s Wood, except that the protesters spread out a little more along the slope and the fence with some wishing to distance themselves from MfJ and their PA system. And, at least while I was there, all of those who spoke over this to the protesters and the women inside were former asylum seekers who had themselves been detained, many inside Yarl’s Wood. And inside Yarls Wood there seemed to be more women able to come to the windows and join in the protest.

I’d also gone slightly better prepared so far as equipment was concerned, as I now had a 300mm Nikon lens and a camera on which I could use it either in full-frame format or switch to DX, which made it a 450mm equivalent and still get files of sufficient size for publication. Shooting through the wire mesh of the top 10ft of the 20ft fence still made focus hard – and autofocus reliably settled on the mesh rather than the windows behind, so I had to resort to manual focus. But at least the windows didn’t move, which made this fairly easy.

This time too we had a coach driver who knew the way and arrived in plenty of time for me to photograph the events on the road before the march to the prison. But it also meant I had to leave a little before the event had concluded to catch the train back to the station. I think for later protests I brought my folding bike so I could easily (or fairly easily as there is a long climb up from the A6 to Twinwoods and the meeting point) make my own way the five or six miles to and from Bedford station.

The weather was good to us this time, but there had been heavy rain earlier in the week leaving at least one giant puddle we had to walk round on the way to the prison fence, and making the slope on which the protest was taking place rather treacherous.

More pictures from the protest on My London Diary at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood.

UN Anti-Racism Day – London

March 21st was established by the United Nations as a World Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the sixth anniversary of police opening fire and killing 69 peaceful protesters at Sharpeville, South Africa on March 21, 1960. Protests in the UK for UN Anti Racism Day take place close to the date and there will be large national marches today, 19th March in London and Glasgow and tomorrow in Cardiff. Today’s post is about events in London on March 19th 2016.

Stand Up to Racism – Refugees Welcome march

Thousands met at the BBC to march through London to a rally in Trafalgar Square in an event organised by Stand Up to Racism against racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and fascism and to make it clear that refugees are welcome here.

Prominent on the march were Black Lives Matter protesters, wearing red in support of the ‘Justice for Sarah Reed’ campaign, chanting loudly “Say Her Name, Sarah Reed” and “Black Lives Matter”. She had died aged 31 in Holloway prison where she was held waiting for psychiatric reports following an attack on her, possibly an attempted rape, by fellow patient in a psychiatric hospital for which she was arrested and charged with grievious bodily harm with intent.

An inquest decided she had killed herself when her mind was unsound, and that unacceptable delays in medical care contributed to her death. Clearly too the prison staff had failed in their duty of care. Four years earlier she had been falsely arrested for shoplifting and seriously assaulted by the arresting officer who was later convicted and dismissed from the Metropolitan police for the offence.

There were also a number of groups on the march working with refugees trapped in the camps in Calais and Dunkirk, and some of those had lines drawn across their lips to remember some of the refugees on hunger strike there who have sewn up their lips.

Although the deaths of many refugees drowned in crossing the Mediterranean have led to widespread sympathy among the British people, there has been no compassion shown by our government, who have increasingly been driven by racists and bigots who oppose Britain taking in any refugees and want to abandon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the UK helped to draw up in 1947-8.

There were a small number of these bigots, members of the far-right group ‘Britain First’ in their para-military uniforms, who came to shout insults and make offensive gestures at the marchers as they went through Piccadilly Circus. A large ring of police kept them away from the marchers and protected them from any attack by anti-fascists.

Stand Up to Racism – Refugees Welcome march

Refugees Welcome Rally

*Marcia Rigg, whose brother Sean was killed by police in Brixton in 2008*

At the end of the march there was a rally in Trafalgar Square, with a long list of speakers. They included Vanessa Redgrave and Jeremy Hardy, MP Diane Abbott, MEPs Claude Moraes and Jean Lambert, journalist Journalist, writer Michael Rosen, leading trade unionists Dave Ward CWU, Christine Blower NUT, and Sally Hunt UCU, Marilyn Reed the mother of Sarah Reed, Stephanie Lightfoot-Bennett and Marcia Rigg, Maz Saleem daughter of the Mohammed Saleem who was killed in a racist attack, Talha Ahmad of the Muslim Council of Britain and a young refugee from Iraq.

Refugees Welcome Rally

Australians protest on UN Anti-Racism day

Australian human rights protesters were holding protests at embassies around the world, including the Australian High Commission in London to condemn the Australian government’s racist immigration policy and treatment of refugees.

Refugees who try to claim asylum in Australia are locked up and detained indefinitely in contradiction to international law on remote Pacific Islands including Manus and Nauru in detention camps run by Serco and will never be allowed to resettle in Australia. The Australian protesters were joined by some of those from Movement for Justice which has led protests against the UK immigration detention centres, including that at Yarl’s Wood, run like the Australian camps by Serco, where detainees, also held indefinitely, have been sexually abused and denied proper health treatment. At least one prisoner in the Australian camps has been beaten to death by the prison guards.

Australians protest on UN Anti-Racism day

DPAC’s ‘IDS Resignation Party’

Finally on 19th March I went to Parliament Square for another human rights related event, where Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) were celebrating the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, one of the chief architects of the brutal Tory welfare policy that has caused them so much suffering, harm and deaths to disabled people.

Though they were pleased that IDS has gone, his policies remained, and his successor, Stephen Crabb, proved top be equally be bigoted and lacking compassion and any understanding of the needs of the poor and disabled.

DPAC’s ‘IDS Resignation Party’

More on all these events on My London Diary:
DPAC’s ‘IDS Resignation Party’
Australians protest on UN Anti-Racism day
Refugees Welcome Rally
Stand Up to Racism – Refugees Welcome march

Shut Down Racist Yarl’s Wood

Shut Down Racist Yarl’s Wood. On Saturday 12th March 2016, six years ago today, I made another visit to the immigration detention centre at Yarl’s Wood where the Movement for Justice (MfJ) had organised another large protest.

The Home Office no longer uses Yarl’s Wood to house large numbers of women asylum seekers, but unfortunately this does not mean their cruel and racist policies have changed. Women were at first moved out because of Covid, but Priti Patel has set up a new immigration prison, Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre, to hold 80 detainees to replace it, with around 88 women being moved and locked up there for Christmas 2021.

The new centre at Hassockfield is on the site of the notorious Medomsley Detention Centre, where over 1,800 young male detainees were abused in the 1960s to 1980s, and is at at Medomsley Edge, 13 miles NW of Durham, 1.7 miles North of Consett. It has been renamed again as Derwentside, to give it a more friendly image, though the river is around a mile away as the crow flies. Almost certainly the Home Office was fed up with the protests organised by MfJ and others at the already rather remote site at Yarl’s Wood, around 5 miles outside Bedford, and thought it a good idea to move it rather further away from London, where there are many former detainees and activists who came to demonstrations.

But of course people came from all over the country – including from Scotland – to Yarl’s Wood, and protests will continue, with an active ‘No to Hassockfield‘ local group at their centre, although it’s too far away for me to photograph them.

*Women have little to protest with and the windows only open an inch or so. They hold messages to the glass and throw out toilet paper*

Hassockfield is so remote that the Home Office was unable to find law firms which would give satisfactory tenders to give legal advice there and abandoned the search – with detainees now only able to get advice by phone. Women for Refugee Women are calling for donations to mount a legal challenge over this lack of support. There is a great deal more information about the cruel and racist treatment of asylum seekers with many telling their own stories on their web site.

*Yarl’s Wood like almost all of the immigration prisons is privately run for the Home Office, with companies cutting costs for profit*

Back on 12th March 2016, my own journey to Yarl’s Wood didn’t go too well, with a train cancellation. But I still got to Bedford Station in a little over two hours and in time for the coach organised by MfJ to the meeting point at Twinwoods Business Park, around a mile walk from the prison. Unfortunately the coach driver didn’t know the way and police had put up large signs stating the road up from the A6 was closed (though in fact they were letting traffic to the protest to go through.) The result was a rather lengthy tour of the Bedfordshire countryside – with another wrong turning, meaning we arrived the best part of an hour late.

Fortunately the event had started with a rally on the road waiting for people from around the country to arrive, and the mile or so walk to the prison was waiting for us and only just about to begin.

Fortunately it was a fine day for the walk, but there had been heavy rain in previous days and some of the footpath and the field beside the prison where the protest took place was full of mud and some puddles, making it hard to move about and keep my balance. As you can see in some pictures close to the fence it was a sticky mess.

The field has a fairly steep slope up from the 20ft prison fence, which does enable protesters to see over the lower 10ft of thick metal sheeting and to glimpse the women waving, shouting and holding posters at the upper floor windows inside.

It is tricky taking pictures through the 10 ft upper section of the fence with its thick wire grid and I don’t have the kind of long and fast lenses for this. I actually declined the invitation from the organisers to photograph the first large MfJ protest here as I knew I didn’t really have the right gear, suggesting they invite a colleague. But for later protests I decided that there were many other pictures I could take and I could at least get some kind of pictures through that fence.

Many of those at the protest were people who had been locked up inside Yarl’s Wood or other detention centres, and almost all of those who spoke had stories to tell about how their mistreatment – having been physically and sexually assaulted, locked in rooms, denied medical assistance, unable to get proper legal advice and more. Most had come to this country fleeing from violence, often from rape and in dire need of care and understanding and instead were locked up, their stories disbelieved and further subjected to hostile and inhuman treatment.

At the end of the protest people let off a number of coloured flares before the long walk back to the coaches. I was rather caught in the mud and unable to get close to where this was happening. On the path and road back to the coach I tried to scrape the worst of the mud from my boots and trousers on the grass and on the kerb of the road, and found some sticks to help, but Bedfordshire mud proved extremely persistent.

We needed to remove our boots before getting on the coach, and fortunately I had a plastic bag to put them in for the journey, getting back into them where we were dropped off at the station. The journey home was slow but uneventful and I was exhausted and needed a good meal and a bath when I arrived – but at least unlike those detainees I was free.

More at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood on My London Diary, where you can also find accounts of other protests at Yarl’s Wood as well as other immigration prisons at Harmondsworth and Colnbrook using the site search.