>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Slavery, Aninal Cruelty & Turkey Attacks Rojova – 2018

Slavery, Aninal Cruelty & Turkey Attacks Rojova: Protests in London on Saturday 27th January 2018 against migrants being sold as slaves in Libya, the continuing cruel trapping of animals to use in clothing sold by Canada Goose and the attacks by the Turkish army on Kurdish areas of North Syria.

End UAE support for slavery in Libya – UAE Embassy

Slavery, Aninal Cruelty & Turkey Attacks Rojova - 2018

African Lives Matter and the International Campaign to Boycott UAE protest at the UAE Embassy in London against the funding by the the United Arab Emirates of armed Groups in Libya which imprison, torture and kill African migrants and sell them as slaves.

The protest also called for an end of the human trafficking of African migrants to and from Dubai and for help to be given for slavery victims in Dubai to return to their families in Africa.

This turned out to be a fairly small protest, although the police had obviously planned for something much larger and I had expected more after earlier protests over the issue.

End UAE support for slavery in Libya

Canada Goose protests continue – Regent St

Protesters were again outside the Canada Goose flagship store in Regent St asking shoppers to boycott the store because of the horrific cruelty involved in trapping dogs for fur and raising birds for down used in the company’s clothing.

The company had obtained an injunction to try to prevent protests, but this had been amended in the previous month to allow more protesters and to enable them to use loud hailers between 2pm and 8pm. They were now carrying out weekly protests on Saturdays as well as occasional protests during the week.

Finally in 2022 Canada Goose announced it would stop purchasing new fur from trappers and transition to using reclaimed fur, though it seems unclear whether they have achieved their goal. The company is apparently still selling garments made with its large stocks of trapped fur and continuing to use feathers from geese and ducks which campaigners allege are plucked from live birds.

Canada Goose protests continue

Defend Afrin, stop Turkish Attack – BBC to Downing St

Several thousand people, mainly Kurds, marched through London from outside the BBC to a rally opposite Downing St, calling for an end to the attacks by Turkish forces on the Afrin Canton of Northern Syria, now a part of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) or Rojava, a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria.

Many see Rojava with a constitution based on a democratic socialism which treats all ethnic groups as equal and women as equal to men as a model for a future federal Syria, although it seems unlikely to find favour with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

Turkey is the second largest military force in NATO, second only to the USA and appeared to be using its position in NATO and the threat of closer relationships with Russia to eliminate the Kurds on its borders, who it alleges are a part of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish nationalist organisation regarded by Turkey and its allies as a terrorist organisation which was proscribed by the UK in 2001.

Kurds are around 15-20% if the population of Turkey, its largest ethnic minority and were violently suppressed following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, with a number of massacres and a continuing attempt to erase their language and culture. Even the words “Kurds” or “Kurdistan” were banned and in 1980 their languages were banned, with those found using them arrested and imprisoned. It remains illegal to teach using Kurdish in schools in Turkey.

Kurdish forces,aided by US air support played a major role in the defeat of ISIS in Syria. Eventually the Turkish attacks on Afrin were halted after the Kurds in Rojava reached an agreement with the Syrian army to aid them in the defence of Syria. Further Turkish encroachment into Syria was prevented by the setting up of the Second Northern Syria Buffer Zone, part of the Sochi Agreement, in 2019.

Turkey encouraged ISIS in Syria as a part of their attempts to remove Kurdish influence in the areas close to their borders. Sales of oil smuggled through Turkey with the connivance of leading figures in the Turkish government provided most of the funding for ISIS.

The marchers met at the BBC who they say has failed to report over many years on Turkish atrocities and their genocidal attacks on the Kurds before marching to Downing Street.

Police apparently seized a number of PKK flags before the start of the march, though I did still spot one when the marchers reached Downing St. Kurds largely view the PKK as a nationalist rather than terrorist organisation and there were many flags with the image of the PKK’s long imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan. His nickname ‘Apo’ means uncle in Kurdish. It was his reading and thinking during long years of solitary confinement that led to the new thinking in the constitution of Rojava.

I listened to a few of the speeches at Downing Street before leaving for home and you can see many more pictures of the march and some of the speakers on My London Diary.

Defend Afrin, stop Turkish Attack

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Students, World Service, Kashmir & Dr Sen – 2011

Students, World Service, Kashmir & Dr Sen – 2011: On Wednesday 26th January 2011 the Education Activist Network had called for students to come to a protest in Trafalgar Square against education cuts. But it wasn’t clear what they intended to do and few had bothered to come. In the end most of them decided to go to join the NUJ protest against cuts in the BBC World Service at Bush House which I had also been intending to go to. And since it was India’s Republic Day there were also a couple of protests outside the Indian High Commission a few yards down the road from there.

Student Day of Action – Trafalgar Square

The event organisers, the Education Activist Network who describe themselves as “group of educationalists, lecturers, and students who campaign against cuts in adult, further and higher education” had called on students to walk out of their schools and colleges and come to a protest in Trafalgar Square, but there appeared to have been little planning about what would then happen.

Fewer than a hundred had turned up and there were a couple of literature stalls collecting petition signatures and selling the Socialist Worker etc there appeared to be just one man with a megaphone. Several others came up and made short speeches against the cuts and a Heritage Warden and myself took some photographs but nobody knew what to do next.

A few people stood around holding Socialist Worker placards with the message F**K FEES – Save EMA – Free Education and others. After some discussion most decided to march to Aldwych where the NUJ were holding a protest I had planned to photograph against cuts in the BBC World Service’.

Student Day of Action

Save the BBC World Service – Bush House, Aldwych

Bush House was built overlooking Kingsway as a major new trade centre for American industrialist Irving T. Bush, who approved its designs in 1919 but this imposing Portland Stone Grade II listed “most expensive building in the world” was only finally completed in 1935. A few years later in 1941 it became used by the BBC and became the headquarters of the BBC World Service. The BBC’s lease expired around a year after this protest and they did not renew it, with the building being taken over in 2015 by King’s College.

The BBC World Service has a well-deserved reputation as the best in the world and is an important part of the UK’s ‘soft power’. NUT General Secretary jeremy Dear who spoke at the protest put it well: “The diversity of staff and their presence in so many key locations around the world contributes to making the BBC World Service the leading voice in international broadcasting. At its best the World Service can challenge corruption, expose human rights abuses and promote democratic values. By cutting the service the government will cut British influence in the rest of the world, and cuts will also be deeply damaging for objective quality news services around the globe.“

Government cuts in the grant from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office for the World Service announced in October 2010 and the transfer of the service in 2014 completely to the license fees led the BBC in January 2011 to announce swingeing cuts, axing Portuguese for Africa, Caribbean English, Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian services, the end of all shortwave radio services and more. These cuts were estimated by the BBC to result in a loss of more than 30 million listeners across the world, including in India, China and Russia.

The cuts were also expected to result in 480 BBC employees losing their jobs in 2011 and a further 170 by the time the service became entirely licence fee funded in 2014. Many of the NUJ members taking part in the protest would be among those made redundant.

Save the BBC World Service.

Free Kashmir & Khalistan – Indian High Commission, Aldwych

Kashmiris and Sikhs held a protest together outside the Indian High Commision on Republic Day, the 61st anniversary of the Indian Constitution, calling for the freedom that their nations have been denied by Indian military repression.

Kashmir was an ancient kingdom, becoming a Muslim monarchy in 1439, later a part of the Sikh empire but again becoming a monarchy under British guidance in the 19th century. But Kashmir – as well as the Sikhs – were unfairly mistreated in the negotiations for Indian independence and the 1947 partition.

Although Kashmir has am 80% Muslim population its then Maharajah ceded the kingdom to India as a way to protect his privilege and rule against an invasion by Pakistan. In return Kashmir was granted some limited autonomy by the Indian Constitution (revoked in 2019.)

Kashmiris campaigning for freedom from Indian rule have been savagely repressed and the country has a huge occupying force of Indian troops and police, with widespread human rights abuses, many continuing to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered.

Both India and Pakistan have been found by UN bodies and other investigations to be guilty of widespread human rights abuses in the areas of Kashmir they administer. The UN in 1948 called for the people of Kashmir to be allowed to determine their future by a free and fair vote, but this has never been possible due to the opposition of both India and Pakistan. A small part of the country is also occupied by China, doubtless also abusing human rights.

Protesting with the Kashmiris were Sikhs, also neglected at Partition which divided the Punjab between India and Pakistan. Widespread agitation for their own independent state of Khalistan was accelerated by the 1984 attack by the Indian Army on the Golden temple at Amritsar, and the widespread anti-Sikh riots and killing which after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards which followed. As in Kashmir, Sikhs in India have suffered widespread and continuing human rights abuses.

Free Kashmir & Khalistan

Release Binayak Sen Now – Indian High Commission

Dr Binayak Sen is a highly regarded Indian doctor, internationally recognised for his work with indigenous and marginalised people with a lifetime of service of the rural poor.

He helped establish a hospital serving poor mine workers in Chhattisgarh and founded a health and human rights organisation that supports community health workers in 20 villages, and was an officer of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Dr Sen criticised the state Government’s atrocities against indigenous people who were fighting the handover of their lands for mining, and their establishment of an armed militia, the Salwa Judum, to fight against the Naxalite (Maoist) rebels in the area.

In 2007 he was arrested and charged with having links with the Naxalities and was held in prison until granted bail two years later in May 2009. But in December 2010, Dr Sen was found guilty of sedition and conspiracy and sentenced to life imprisonment. At the time of the protest his appeal was continuing. He was granted bail in April 2011 and the case against him has not been pursued.

Release Binayak Sen Now

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Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square: On Wednesday 25th January 2012 I went up to London in the middle of the afternoon and continued to take photographs at various places and events for several hours.

Parliament Square Peace Camp

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

I began with a brief visit to the Peace Camp – as I often had over the years – but found that Barbara Tucker was busy tidying up in anticipation of yet another police raid in their long campaign of harassment of her and here supporters and on this occasion didn’t have time to talk. So I just took a couple of pictures and then walked up to Trafalgar Square. On May 10th 2012 the protest had been 4000 Days in Parliament Square but was evicted shortly after.

Congolese Keep Up Protests – Trafalgar Square

In Trafalgar Square I found a small group of Congolese protesters in a pen on the pavement outside South Africa House, calling on South Africa to put pressure on the Congo regime. They called on South Africa to free political prisoners and recognise opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba as the duly elected President of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 2011 elections were widely regarded as having been fixed and it is unclear whether he or the incumbent Joseph Kabila whose election was confirmed by the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo actually got more votes.

The protesters told me that more people were expected to arrive for the protest soon and I promised to return. But I got a little held up elsewhere and by the time I returned everyone had left.

Peace For Iran – No To War – Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Whitehall

I walked back along Whitehall to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in King Charles St where a small group were protesting against going to war with Iran, calling for peace.

I waited with the protesters who told me they expected more to arrive, but had to leave after around 20 minutes. I think few were coming as a large protest was to happen a few days later (you can see my report and pictures on this at No War Against Iran & Syria)

Egyptians Protest Against SCAF – Egyptian Embassy

I had to leave to go to the main event I had come into London to report, the protest by Egyptians on the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. Egypt was then suffering under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and they called for the revolution to continue and an end to military rule.

This was an energetic and protest by over a hundred Egyptians in solidarity with the estimated 300,000 who had marched to Tahrir Square earlier in the day.

A few from the British left had come to give their support, including Chris Nuneham of Stop the War who was one of those who spoke.

The speakers urged solidarity with the Egyptian people and also with the other revolutions of the Arab Spring, and called for an end to the Western attempts to enforce an agenda on the Arab nations.

They voiced their opposition to the increasingly likely military action against Iran, and called on those present to join the No War Against Iran & Syria protest at the US Embassy on the following Saturday.

Many more pictures from the Egyptian Embassy protest on My London Diary.

Westminster Bikers First Olympic Jubilee Demo Ride – Trafalgar Square

I returned to Trafalgar Square for a protest by motorbike riders, incensed by the so-called experimental parking charges for powered two wheelers.

‘No To the Bike Parking Tax’ see the parking charges introduced by Westminster Council as a simple money-making racket and have been making regular Wednesday protests against it as well as lobbying and making a legal challenge.

The daily fee for parking in a solo motorcycle bay is now only £1, and bikers can move from bay to bay.

More pictures

Around Trafalgar Square

After the bikers rode away I took a few pictures in Trafalgar Square under its dramatic red lighting then walked away. There had been a traffic accident on Northumberland Avenue which seemed to have involved two bikers and a cyclist and the police were now in attendance. I took a single frame as I approached but I didn’t investigate this further, walking down Whitehall.

Opposite Downing St a small protest was taking place calling for Freedom for Syria from the Assad regime, but nothing much was happening there and after making a couple of pictures I moved on, now in a hurry to get home and have something to eat.

You can read and see more pictures of these events on the January 2012 page of My London Diary

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Atos Protest & Camden Town 2011

Atos Protest & Camden Town: – Monday 24 January 2011

Disability benefits are now under attack by our Labour government, who have insisted they will implement the Tory plans to cut the amount paid in incapacity benefits by £3 billion by 2028. And the House of Lords economic affairs committee a few days ago published a report calling for a fundamental review of the benefits system to tackle the rising social and fiscal costs of disability benefits.

Also last week the High Court ruled that the previous government’s consultation on changing incapacity benefits was unlawful as “it presented the changes as a way of supporting disabled people into work but failed to make clear that 424,000 vulnerable claimants would see their benefits cut by £416 a month.”

When the Tory coalition government came into power in 2010 it picked on the disabled who it thought would be an easy target for the cuts it was making to support the bankers. Protests such as this on Monday January 24th 2001 showed how wrong they were, with determined opposition to the unfairness of their cost-cutting reforms from disabled groups including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the Black Triangle Campaign.

One part of the campaign by successive governments has been to give huge publicity and priority to benefit fraud, which according to the national Audit Office only amounts to 0.6% of the DWP budget and is a “drop in the ocean compared to the losses by tax evasion by the super-rich and the amounts lost by them and major corporations exploiting tax loopholes.“

*Police try rather ineffectually to stop protesters heading for the Atos offices*

In 2011 a major source of unfairness in the system was the attempts to cut costs by the use of computer-based ability to work assessments carried out for the DWP by European IT company Atos. The interviews were administered by ‘healthcare professionals’, often poorly trained and lacking the qualifications and experience to assess many types of disability, particularly mental illness. Almost 70% of those assessed were moved onto the lower benefit rates of the Job Seekers Allowance with some being refused any benefits at all.

An independent review for the DWP made fundamental criticisms of the assessments, and around 40% of those who appealed the decisions eventually had their benefits restored to previous levels – but only after months of hardship, and often just in time for their next review when their benefits would again be axed. Part of the problem was the pressure applied on the assessors to meet targets in cutting benefits by the company so they could justify their costs to the DWP.

And there were plenty of true horror stories. People assessed fit for work who died within days of the assessments, those who committed suicide and some who starved to death. Benefit cuts really do kill.

Atos went on to gain other contracts from the DWP until September 2024 when the contract for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and work capability assessment (WCA) were given to Serco. The DWP had acknowledged there were flaw in the Atos assessments but few believe that Serco will be any fairer.

Monday January 24th was a a National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts, with actions around the country, including protests in Leeds, Birmingham, Burnley, Hastings, Crawley, Chesterfield, Livingston, near Edinburgh (Atos’s Scotland HQ) and Glasgow. I began by photographing a local protest at Archway in North London before going on to a protest outside the London HQ of Atos Origin in Triton Square close to the Euston Road.

On My London Diary back in 2011 I wrote much more about the Atos tests and also about the details of the two protests. The protest in Triton Square was heavily policed but the organisers and those taking part, including Disabled People Against Cuts, WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities) and London Coalition Against Poverty were intent on this being a peaceful protest.

Police have problems in dealing with disabled protesters. Many want to treat them carefully and their officers certainly realise that images of them being roughly handled would be terrible PR. But they were annoyed that the protesters decided to protest close to the actual Atos offices rather than in a pen they had set up a short distance away. And when one elderly man walked through the spread out police line he was roughly pushed to the ground and dragged away, though later he was allowed to rejoin the other hundred or so protesters.

The police then brought more barriers and erected them around the protesters, telling them they could only exit the fenced area when they were dispersing at the end of the protest. There seemed to be no real justification for this and they seemed simply to be a simply a matter of pique that the protesters had not followed their instructions.

More at Atos Tests Unfair to Disabled.

Camden Market – Camden High St/Chalk Farm Rd

I had plenty of time to get from Archway to Triton Square and got off the bus in Camden Town for a walk and to make use of one of London’s rapidly disappearing public toilets in the middle of the busy road junction there (but I think closed a few years ago.)

I’d photographed around Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road quite often in the 1990s, often on my way home from taking pictures elsewhere in North London, and walking from Camden Town station to Chalk Farm. Then the lemon sorbets from Marine Ices were the best in London if not the world. But that’s gone too now, and in January 2011 it wasn’t the weather for it.

Back in the 1990s the streets would have been pretty empty except at weekends, but by 2011 there were plenty of tourists wandering around even on a cold Monday in January, though business was fairly slack. But mainly I pointed my camera up to the decorations above the shops

More pictures: Camden Market.

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Political Policing & Shocking Lies

Political Policing & Shocking Lies: Last Saturday, 19th January 2025 I was witness to a shameful display of aggressive and politically motivated policing in the centre of London.

Politics had come into the event days earlier when police had banned the National Protest for Palestine from gathering at the BBC to march to Whitehall on the less than flimsy pretext that there is a synagogue around three hundred yards away.

The synagogue in question is down a side street and in the opposite direction that the march would travel, and none of the previous over 20 national marches for Palestine has involved any violence or intimidation of Jews.

*Police harass a group of holocaust survivors and families, telling them they must move further up Whitehall.*

Many Jews have taken part in all of these marches and other protests against the killing in Gaza and the continuing repression in the occupied West Bank, calling for freedom for Palestinians. And all of the marches since the Hamas attack on Israel have called for the release of the hostages held in Gaza as well as for a solution to bring peace and justice to Palestine.

To meet the police objections the march organisers had offered to march in the opposite direction, meaning they would arrive at the BBC several hours after any of those attending the synagogue would have left. Police rejected this offer and instead proposed that the march would start in Russell Square. Since the march was in large part a protest against the biased coverage of events by the BBC.

In their thoroughly researched report published in March 2004, the Centre for Media Monitoring clearly showed the extent of pro-Israel bias in BBC reporting, for example in giving considerable publicity to unverified statements by Israeli official sources, many of which have later been found to be false, as well as deliberately calling into question statements from Palestinian sources.

The report is a long and careful study and should at least have meant considerable changes in the way that the BBC covers events if it values its claim to be impartial, but any changes have been minor. The organisation continues to heap doubt on the claims over the number of deaths of Palestinians despite these largely being confirmed as accurate by UN and other observers – and a recent peer-reviewed statistical analysis in The Lancet suggesting that the actual number of deaths are 40% higher than the official Gaza health ministry figures.

*Peter Tatchell calls for the release of all Palestine political prisoners.*

When their reasonable suggestion was turned down by the police, the march organisers announced they would instead hold a rally in Whitehall. Clearly the police were not happy at this but it would have been difficult for them to raise any legally sustainable reason to ban it.

So the rally went ahead, and I went to photograph it. Entering Whitehall I was stopped for a short time as policed parked a van to make access more difficult but managed to walk past. Others coming to the protest were actually stopped by police and had to walk around to enter Whitehall by side streets.

Inside Whitehall there seemed to be a number of lines of police giving contradictory orders to people to move up or down the street. I watched with incredulity as a group of officers came to tell a small group of Jewish holocuast survivors and sons and duaghters of survivors they could not stand at the side of the road in front of the stage but had to move further away up Whitehall.

Then I hear shouting from a crowd by the side of the stage. A particularly aggesive squad of police was forcing them to move and had arrested one woman who had not obeyed there orders, thowing her to the ground. The protesters were shouting ‘Let Her Go, Let Her Go‘ but they didn’t, simply facing the crowd aggressively and promising further arrests. A second slightly less aggressive squad was similarly forcing people along past the other side of the compound around the stage.

There seemed no point to either of these squads other than to stage a little police aggession. A few minutes later they left the area and people were free to wander into the areas they had cleared – and a group set up a large display with children’s clothing hung on washing lines.

At the end of the rally the speakers including one of the holocaust survivors, MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn and representatives of other groups involved in the protest came to stand on the stage holding bunches of flowers for two minutes of silence.

It was then announced that this small group of delegates would attempt to march to lay flowers at the BBC, but if stopped by police they would lay down the flowers where they were stopped in front of the police line and accuse them of being complicit in the lies told by the BBC and our government in support of the genocide taking place in Gaza.

The protesters in the huge crowd in Whitehall were asked to move to the side to make way for this group, and people did until they had almost reached Trafalgar Square. Here police stopped them and they waited patiently to see if they would be allowed through.

But thousands of protesters had moved up Whitehall with them, and those of us at the front were in danger of being crushed, slowly being pushed forwards by the crowd behind, but held back by police. The police withdrew and I managed to find some space inside the box of stewards where they had been in front of the marchers. Then in the only sensible action by police I saw that day, some officers returned to force a path and urge the marchers to go through into Trafalgar Square, and I went with them.

*Marchers stop in front of the line of police and wait*

I was rather shaken after being crushed and after taking a final picture of the march moving freely on towards Pall Mall I turned and walked slowly away towards Charing Cross station. Later I heard that the small delegation of marchers had decided to lay their flowers in Trafalgar Square when a snatch squad of ten police approached the head steward Chris Nineham and brutally threw him to the ground and arrested him. Their violence was totally unnecessary.

*Police make way and tell the marchers to go through*

Nineham was held for around 20 hours before being arrested on police bail which prevents him from taking part in any protest. His was one of 77 arrests made, many after the end of the protest when police kettled those still in Trafalgar Square. So far at least 13 have been charged, including Nineham and Ben Jamal, head of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnel have been interviewed under criminal caution.

*and they march into Trafalgar Square unhindered.*

Police were very quick to publish the lie that the marchers forced their way through the police line, and it was quickly picked up and amplified by the media despite video and eye-witnesses showing that they were urged and escorted though by officers.

Police told many other lies on the day, acted throughout aggressively and were clearly under pressure from members of the government and some Jewish leaders to do so. Many British Jews support Palestine and there were hundreds if not thousands of them taking part in the protest, far outnumbering a small group that came to oppose it.

More pictures at National Rally For Palestine.

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Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon – 2015

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon: I did a lot of travelling around London ten years ago on Thursday 22nd January 2015 by public transport and on foot. First I made the journey by rail, underground and DLR to the Excel Centre for a picket calling on HP to stop supporting Israeli prisons and military, then walked to the Lower Lea Crossing to photograph building work on City Island and on to the DLR at East India station to go to Canning Town From there the underground took me to Green Park and the Ritz where I met a small group from Class War on a visit to ‘Rich London’.

I had to leave them on Bond Street to make my way- tube, a short walk between stations in West Hampstead and rail to Hendon with another short walk to meet West Hendon Estate where residents were just coming out from a meeting to march from the estate to a rally outside Hendon Town Hall and I walked the just over a mile with them. But after around 20 minutes of the rally I felt very tired and had to leave for home – another short walk and an hour and a half of travel.

Stop Arming Israel picket HP at BETT

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Protesters had come to picket the Excel Centre where Hewlett Packard’s Vice-President for Worldwide Education, Gus Schmedien, was speaking at the BETT education technology show, to ask ‘What about the Palestinian Children You’re Helping Kill?’ They had set up a highly educational display close to the entrance and also gave some speeches and handed out fliers.

HP supply equipment and services which keep both the Israeli prison system and the Israeli military running and so support the killing, torture and other illegal activities of the Israeli regime.

Many of the teachers and others going into BETT stopped to take leaflets and talk with the protesters, some taking photographs of themselves or colleagues in front of the protest.

More pictures at Stop Arming Israel picket HP at BETT‘

City Island – Lower Lea Crossing

Building work both on the former Pura Foods site on Bow Creek, now renamed City Island and on the Limmo Peninsula site on the eastern bank of Bow Creek was now going ahead.

City Island isn’t an island but in the downstream loop of the s-shaped bend of Bow Creek south of the East India Dock Road and is surrounded on three sides by the tidal river.

Building on City Island was abandoned after the site had been cleared and a single building erected when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and it was now shooting up fast. The elevated Lower Lea Crossing

More pictures City Island – Lower Lea Crossing

Class War visit ‘Rich London’ – The Ritz and Old Bond St

*Ritz security were very polite to Class War and watched the protest outside the hotel*

I met with a small group from Class War outside the Ritz where they were holding their banner with its quotation from US Anarchist Lucy Parsons (1851-1942), “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live“.

From there they took the banner to stand in front of some shops on Piccadilly and then onto Old Bond Street, pausing outside De Beers and then into the Royal Arcade.

It seemed a fairly aimless wander, Stan took a seat with Churchill (who is wearing a Class War ‘Spot the Tory’ sticker.)

I left them holding up the banner outside Sothebys to go to Bond St and make my way to West Hendon.

More pictures. Class War visit ‘Rich London’.

West Hendon march for Social Housing – Hendon

Residents on the West Hendon estate overlooking the Welsh Harp reservoir were fighting the the redevelopment of their estate for sale to the rich. Its waterside location makes it a very desirable location for developers and estate agents.

The residents were campaigning for all who live on the estate to be rehoused in the area and I arrived at the end of a meeting in the community centre with speakers from other housing campaigns including Focus E15 from Stratford.

I took pictures of them posing outside the community centre then went inside where free hot soup was very welcome before we went outside for a march around the estate. A banner was dropped from one of the balconies with the message ‘Public Housing Not Private Profit’.

Part of the area to be built on was York Memorial Park, a green open common designated as “a War Memorial in perpetuity” to the 75 people killed and 145 severely injured by a bomb dropped here on 13th February 1941. Over 366 houses were destroyed and a further 400 damaged by the blast, with 1500 people made homeless.

You can read more about this on ‘Broken Barnet‘ which relates how the promises that this would be preserved “were quietly buried by Barnet Tories, once they had made a deal, in secret, with Barratt London” and that at the Housing Inquiry they even denied the existence of the park – where there is now a 29 storey tower block of luxury flats.

We stopped here for a short memorial service to a Hendon war hero, Dorothy Lawrence, the only female Sapper of WW1, serving in the Royal Engineers, 51st Division 179th Tunnelling Company, BEF. You can read more about her and her unfortunate life after this in my post from 2015.

Then we marched for a mile or so in the dark to Hendon Town hall where the third day of the Housing Inquiry had just finished ned for a rally with a number of speeches from people from West Hendon and other campaigners, including Jasmine Stone from Focus E15. Some who spoke had been at the enquiry and were able to tell the crowd what had happened so far. But I was too tired to stay to the end of the rally.

More at West Hendon march for Social Housing.

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More Around the Meridian – 1995 Colour – Part 3

More around the Meridian – It’s seldom possible to actually walk for more than a few yards actually on the Greenwich Meridian in London and while planning my Meridian Walk I often wandered around considerably, having to make detours and also looking for the more interesting routes. So not all these images are exactly on the Meridian, but most were taken within a short distance from it.

*Greenway, Abbey Lane, Abbey Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1995, 95p4-1151*

When I began this project the Meridian was not marked on the Ordnance Survey or Street maps, and one of may first tasks was to get a ruler and pencil it on to them. In 1999 it was added to the OS maps of the area, but does not seem to be on the latest versions. In 1995 there were no smart phones with online maps and GPS which would have made things so much easier.

*Greenway, Abbey Lane, Abbey Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1995, 95p4-1152*

The Greenway was the recently rebranded path above the Northern Outfall Sewer which rans across East London from Hackney Wick to the sewage treatment plant at Beckton, going under the road here close the the bridge over Abbey Creek on the Channelsea River, where Abbey Lane becomes Abbey Road. You can see the bridge at the left of the picture.

*Greenway, Channelsea River, Stratford, Newham, 1995, 95p4-1153*

The Greenway is a great traffic-free cycle route for pedestrians and cyclists, running straight and level and this picture gives some evidence of that.

*Channelsea River, Long Wall, Stratford, Newham, 1995, 95p4-1111*

I’m not sure what this pipe was for, perhaps for taking gas across the river. Not far away on the other side of this tidal creek was one of the largest gas works in London – and you can still see its listed gasholders, though the view is likely to change soon with the site being redeveloped.

But behind me when I made this picture was the Abbey Mills sewage pumping station and on the edge of the creek below were the storm outfalls where sewage would be released after heavy rains. With the changing tides it would flow downstream a little and then could be taken miles upriver along the Prescott channel and the River Lea.

Gasholders, Leven Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-1332 — *Flats, East India Dock Rd, South Bromley, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-1321*

I think the Meridian went through the centre of the taller gas holder at Poplar Gas works.

*Flats, East India Dock Rd, South Bromley, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-1321*

Another view with the gasholders in the background.

*Clove Crescent, East India, DLR, South Bromley, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-1273*

My pencilled line for the Meridian shows it going through both the water in the dock and the brick building at left which was the former Blackwall Power Station in both of these pictures.

*Clove Crescent, East India DLR, South Bromley, Tower Hamlets, 1995, 95p4-1263*

South of the East India Docks the line crosses the River Thames above and between the two bores of the Blackwall Tunnel, closer to the original western tunnel now used by northbound traffic. I couldn’t take photographs in the tunnel – though it was possible for those on foot to take a bus across, but these would have been rather boring in any case.

*Blackwall Tunnel Entrance, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1672*

This picture shows the southern entrance to the tunnel with its 1897 Grade II listed gatehouse by the London County Council’s Superintending Architect Thomas Blashill. In front of it a less ornate red and white striped arch with heigh and weight restriction signs and hangers to hit any overtall vehicles and hopefully prevent damage to the gatehouse.

*Dorringtons, Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1551*

One picture not I think actually on the Meridian but not far from it, taken from the long footbridge over the Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach.

*Riverside Path, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1762*

My path continued south along the riverside path, with the Meridian going into the River Thames on the extreme left of this picture.

*Riverside Path, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1742*

I kept to the land continuing along a path I’ve walked many times and making a few more pictures.

*Riverside Path, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1743*

Like much of London’s riverside almost all of the industry has now gone, but some relics remain, though most of this part of my route is now lined by rather boring flats.

I rejoined the Meridian where it made landfall in Greenwich – where I made some of the pictures at the end of my earlier post.

More colour work from 1995 including some more panoramas in a later post.

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London Walk January 2006

London Walk January 2006: I now have no idea why I spent around two and a half hours wandering around London on the afternoon of 20th January 2006, but the pictures tell the story of my route. These images are a selection from a rather larger number I actually made. [The pictures are larger than they appear in this post and you may download them, but like all pictures on this blog are copyright; they must be attributed if posted on social media and a licence is required for any commercial use.]

I suspect I was going to some evening event and simply took advantage of some fine weather to go up earlier and take some pictures. The first one shows some of the sculptural detail above the outpatients entrance of the former Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women on Waterloo Road the roundabout close to the station, where I will have arrived by train.

I then walked on to Waterloo Bridge, pausing to take a picture of the National Theatre, with the roof of the film museum in the foreground.

There was an exhibition ‘after the wave’ on square pillars in front of the National Theatre which rather seemed to echo the shape of the building.

On Waterloo Bridge I took several pictures looking downstream across the River Thames, this one concentrating on the north bank and St Paul’s Cathedral.

A wider view shows boats moored in the river and the skyline of London, now rather more crowded.

Another with St Paul’s at the left .

On Strand I photographed this lion and two Chinese men relaxing above Twinings, providers of tea to the Queen.

And these fine fish on Lloyds Bank Law Court Branch at 222 Strand, then still open as a bank – it closed in 2017. It had been called the most beautiful bank in the country. The fish are presumably because this Grade II listed building was built in 1882 by Goymour Cuthbert and W Wimble for the Palsgave Restaurant for the Royal Courts of Justice opposite and was only taken over by Lloyds in 1894.

Some fine ironwork and a beehive above the doorway to the bank.

Above the doorway at 193 Fleet Street is this figure of statue of Kaled, the page of Byron’s Count Lara by Giuseppe Grandi, dating from 1872. More about it on Ornamental Passions.

The building was built for pawnbrokers George Attenborough and Son in 1883 and has some fine sculptural detail including these winged lions, on either side of the wrought iron support from which originally the pawnbrokers three balls were hung. The Latin motto underneath is ‘Sub Hoc floresco‘, Under This I flourish.

On each side of the clock of St Dunstan’s in the West on Fleet Street are the two mythical giants, Gog and Magog (Corineus and Gogmagog) described in the biblical book of Revelation as the allies of Satan against God when we come to the end of days, but also the guardians of London – and the City is surely on Satan’s side as the money laundering capital of the world. They strike the chimes for the clock here, said to be the oldest public clock in London.

My walk continued – and I’ll post some more from it at some later date. You can already see some of the pictures on My London Diary.

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Grants Not Debt – 2016

Grants Not Debt Protest Blocks Bridge: The previous week a parliamentary committee had scrapped the means-tested maintenance grants for for students and on Tuesday 19th January 2016 the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) organised a rally and protest to support that day’s Labour party debate against the action and the government’s flagrant denial of democratic process.

Student maintenance grants to cover living costs were brought in in 1962, nicely in time for me to go to university the following year. Before that students from poorer homes had been reliant on awards by their counties, some more generous than others. UK students then paid no fees for their courses, and though New Labour abolished the grants in 1999 they brought them back in 2006 when they brought in higher course fees.

In his 2015 budget, Tory Chancellor George Osborne had announced the intention to abolish grants and replace them with increased maintenance loans.

Grants Not Debt Clive Lewis — *Clive Lewis* MP

But the change was only actually brought in by a committee vote under the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015. The Third Delegated Legislation Committee approved the changes for students beginning their courses in the 2016/17 academic year on Thursday 14 January 2016 by ten votes to eight.

The amount of money students would be eligible to receive would not be changed (it would actually increase by inflation) but it would very nearly double the amount of debt for students from the poorest homes who had qualified for the full grant who would now end a three year course owing around £35,000 extra. Of course these amounts have greatly increased since 2016.

Students living in London – as many of those at this protest were – would in 2025/6 be eligible for a maintenance loan of £13,762 in their first year – and a total well over £40,000 for their 3 year course. With the cost of tuition fees this would bring their total student loan up to around £70,000.

The rally began in Parliament Square and there were a number of speeches including from Labour Shadow Minister in Department of Energy and Climate Change Clive Lewis MP and Shelly Asquith the NUS Vice President (Welfare).

At the end of her speech the students decided it was time to take some action and began to march past the Houses of Parliament onto Westminster Bridge. Some had brought a banner ‘NO GRANTS = NO BRIDGE’.

On the bridge many of them sat down while others remained standing with their banners and traffic was blocked. A police officer tried to persuade Shelly Asquith to get the protesters to move but she ignored him and the protest continued.

Eventually the police managed to clear the north-bound carriage way but the protest continued to block traffic going south.

After an hour or so the protest appeared to be dying down, with some students leaving and although the protest was still continuing I decided to go too.

Many more pictures on My London Diary.

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1995 Colour – Part 2 – Greenwich Meridian

1995 Colour – Greenwich Meridian: The second of a series of posts on my colour work, mainly in London, from 1995, 35 years ago and when I’d been working extensively with colour negative film for ten years, though still continuing to work with black and white.

*Obelisk, Trig Point, Pole Hill, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-841*

In 1992 I began making colour panoramas using a Japanese Widelux F8 swing lens panoramic camera – and later I used a Russian Horizon which gave similar results. Both worked with normal 35mm film but produced negatives that were a little under 60mm wide rather than the 36mm of normal cameras. Both use clockwork to swing the taking lens around a third of a circle exposing the film through a narrow slit behind the lens. The film was held in a curved path – again around a third of a circle – with the lens at the centre of the circle so that the lens to film distance remained constant.

Peacham Hall, King's Head Hill, Woodberry Way, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-411 — *Peacham Hall, King’s Head Hill, Woodberry Way, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-411*

This arrangement avoided the change in distance from the lens to film that gives some stretching of the subject towards the edges of the frame – and begins to become very noticeable in ultra-wide lenses, particularly wider than around 18mm focal length on a 35mm camera.

95p03-552-Edit — *Level Crossing, Highams Park*, *Waltham Forest, 95p03-552*

Using the curved film plane avoids this distortion and enables a much wider field of view, while using a fairly moderate focal length – the Widelux has a 26mm f2.8 lens and gives negatives 24x56mm with a horizontal angle of view of 123 degrees.

*Bridges, North Circular, Hale End Rd, Hale End, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-463*

But there is a downside. Creating the image in this way gives a curvature to objects which is unlike our normal vision which is particularly noticeable on any straight lines, though lines parallel to the axis the lens rotates around remain straight – so if you hold the camera level, verticals will remain straight. But other lines become curved with the effect increasing away from the image centre, giving what is often called a “cigar effect“.

*Raglan Rd, Lea Bridge Rd, Whipps Cross, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p4-373*

This is a constraint which makes composition far more difficult using a swing lens camera, and was not helped by a rather poor viewfinder on the Widelux. Usually for landscape work I tried to visualise the effect of the curvature and chose a suitable camera position, levelled the camera on a heavy Manfrotto tripod using the spirit level on the camera top plate, lining the camera up using two arrows on the top plate to show the extent of the view (more accurately than the viewfinder) and then pressing the cable release to make the picture.

Stratford Bus Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford,, 1995, 95p4-922 — *Stratford Bus Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1995, 95p4-922*

For photographing events and some creative effects this is a camera you can use handheld, but you have to remember that even when using its fastest speed of 1/250 second the camera actually takes quite a lot longer to scan around the curved film.

Crowley's Wharf, River Thames, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-672 — *Crowley’s Wharf, River Thames, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-672*

These pictures are from a project I began in 1995 with the approaching Millennium in mind. It seemed to me to make sense to carry out a project based on the Greenwich Meridian.

*Greenwich Boating Pond, Park Vista, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1431*

So I set about walking the Meridian, photographing it at various points in London and used some of these pictures in an attempt to get public funding for a Meridian Walk with some markers in pavements and a web site and publication. Panoramic images seemed a very appropriate format for illustrating the line.

*Greenwich Meridian, Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1242*

Unfortunately my grant application as usual was unsuccessful, but I did go on to take some more photographs. In 2009 others produced a Greenwich Meridian Long Distance Path covering all of the Meridian in England from Peacehaven to Sand La Mere which of course goes through London and we also have The Line Sculpture Trail. Quite a few more Meridian markers were also added in London since I made this walk.

Many more panoramas from my Meridian project and other colour images from 1995 in the album 1995 London Colour.

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