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Students March for Free Education – 2015

Students March for Free Education. On Wednesday 4th November 2015 students, led by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) marched through central London against the abolition of maintenance grants calling for free education without fees and huge student debts and an end to turning higher education into a market system impoverishing staff and students.

Back in the distant past when I was a student, UK students paid no tuition fees at UK universities and I got a grant of around £300 a year which was then just about enough to pay my living expenses, at least for the three terms I was away from each year, paid by my local authority.

Because my family income was low, I got a full grant, while some of my friends from wealthier families got lower grants and had to rely on their parents to give them a ‘parental contribution’ – and not all did, though some others were more than generous.

More recently, my two sons also benefited from maintenance grants and no fees, my younger son just squeezing into the final year before student fees came in. By then my salary as a teacher – our sole household income at the time – meant we were assessed to make a small parental contribution to his maintenance.

Since then things have got a lot tougher for students, with loans for both tuition fees and their living expenses. New Labour brought in tuition fees in 1998, means-tested at £1000 per year, then tightened the screw in 2004 when they tripled to £3000 and poorer families now had to pay the full amount.

In 2012 the Tory-led coalition tripled the fee yet again, setting a maximum of £9000 – and I think all universities charged more or less that maximum. Currently they are frozen after being rasied to £9250 in 2017, but are expected to rise with inflation from 2025 if no further changes are made. For a few years in opposition Labour promised to remove tuition fees, but that promise seems to have been quickly forgotten after Starmer became leader.

It was Thatcher who first introduced student loans for maintenance but these were in addition to maintenance grants for those who did not get full grants. It was again New Labour in 1998 that abolished maintenance grants for all but the poorest students – and these went in 2016.

Student loans have operated under several systems since 1990, with the first major change taking place in 1998 and the next in 2012, when the first Income-Contingent Repayment Plan 1 was introduced. Students this year are on the 5th version of this, with a new version for those starting in 2023.

Martin Lewis summarises the 1923 changes in a clear graphic. Students who started in 2023 pay 9% of their income when they earn over £25,000 a year and keep paying for 40 years after they left university. Inflation-linked interest is added to the amount on loan, typically now around £60,000 for a three-year course.

Most students now also have to supplement their income with part time jobs, as estimates for the income needed to take a full part in three years of university life together with tuition fees come to more than £80,000. It’s a far cry from back when I was at university when students taking paid work during term-time was frowned upon or prohibited by the university authorities.

The 2015 protest formed up at Malet Street outside what had until 2013 been the University of London Union where there were speeched, then marched to Parliament Square . From there it went on the Home Office and Dept of Business, Innovation & Skills and became more chaotic, with a black bloc of students took over and police rather fragmented the march.

You can read about it and see many more pictures – and also of the celebration going on in Parliament Square following the release of the last British resident, Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo on My London Diary.

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business
Students at Home Office and BIS
‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration

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Bash The Rich & Diwali – 2007

Bash The Rich & Diwali: On Saturday 3rd November 2007 I photographed Class War attempting to march to David Cameron’s house in Notting Hill before going to Alperton for the Brent Diwali Parade. Here I’ll use – with some slight changes and some comments – what I wrote in 2007 about these events on My London Diary.

Bash The Rich – Class War – Notting Hill

Bash The Rich & Diwali - 2007 — *Fitwatch get between the police FIT team photographer and the event*

‘Bash the Rich‘ is probably still a popular slogan [and the title of a highly readable memoir by Ian Bone, subtitled ‘The true-life confessions of an anarchist’ still available], but the anarchist demonstration in Notting Hill which marched to Tory leader David Cameron’s house on Saturday attracted only around a hundred supporters (I think quite a few decided they would rather stay in the pub.)

The were watched, harassed and escorted by a similar number of police, with the inevitable police photographer to goad FitWatch into action.

The police did allow the march to take place, if with a number of fits and starts, holding it for no apparent reason at various places, and it went along Oxford Gardens until it reached the junction with Wallingford Avenue, apparently withing shouting distance of Cameron’s home, although the Tory leader was sensibly miles away for the weekend.

There were a number of minor clashes between demonstrators and police, with three arrests being made, although I understand all were later released without charge.

Some of the friction was caused by a little over-keen encouragement of the marchers to move when the police wanted them to move – and I too was pushed on numerous occasions, and stopped from leaving the march for some time after I went inside the cordon.

Some of the police were also treated to considerable abuse, but most retained their good humour – as did most of the marchers.

Earlier, some had taken a walk around the area following Tom Vague‘s truly fascinating ‘Bash the Rich Class War Radical History Tour of Notting Hill‘ which had been published online by Indymedia UK as the souvenir programme for the event.

[Tom Vague is “writer and editor of the post-punk fanzine Vague as well as numerous publications on situationists, psychogeography and West London radical history.” Among these is ‘LondonPsychogeography – Rachman Riots and Rillington Place‘, described “almost as the autobiography of Nothing Hill with him as the inspired mouthpiece, his own biography mixed with that of the subject. He is the place.”

Somewhere I still have my copy of the programme, but it is still online if you sign up for 30 days free to ‘Your Media Publisher’publisher Yumpu where a number of Indymedia ePapers including this can be downloaded. It is no longer available in the Indymedia UK archive.

I left before a final rally at the end of the march to go to Alperton. ]

More pictures at Bash the Rich.

Brent Diwali Parade – Alperton

Diwali. the festival of lights, is one of the main events in the Hindu calendar and thousands of people come to watch and take part in the parade and festivities in Brent.

I arrived in time to watch some of the preparations and stayed for the start of the parade,

But then went home to watch the fireworks rather than waiting to see those in Barham Park.

[Brent is the UK’s most diverse borough by country of birth, with just over half of its residents born abroad, including many in India and other Asian countries, the Caribbean, Africa, Ireland and Eastern European countries. Until cuts in local government funding by the Tory-led government after 2010 the council funded a number of festivals including Diwali to bring communities together.

In the 2011 census almost 18% of the population of Brent identified themselves as Hindu, but many from the other communites came to join in and watch the Diwali events.]

More pictures at Brent Diwali Parade

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March & Rally Against Custody Deaths – 2024

March & Rally Against Custody Deaths: The march in London on Saturday 26th October 2024 by the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) was the 25th annual remembrance of the thousands who have died after being arrested by police or held in prisons, secure mental health and immigration detention in suspicious circumstances.

The exact number of these deaths is not known, but is clearly very much larger than any official statistics. At some earlier of these events people have carried a list with well over 2000 names from the last 40 or so years.

Just a few of these cases have become well-known, both through continuing protests by the families and friends of those who have been killed and in a few cases also through inquests and prosecutions. But prosecutions have been rare and convictions non-existent even where the evidence has seemed clear.

Most have involved physically fit young men, usually in their 20s, who have been arrested by police. People from all communities but with young black men being over-represented, but there are also those of Asian heritage, white British and all others, women, older people. Almost all from the poorer parts of our society.

Attempts by the families to get information about the deaths have often been obstructed by police and official investigations into what happened have often been at best cursory, often more concerned with covering up than investigating. Despite the huge number of deaths there have been no convictions, no cases where families have felt they have received justice. And one of the most common chants is ‘No Justice, No Peace!’

Few of these cases receive more than a short paragraph in a local newspaper, and where they do get more coverage it is largely due to the persistence of the families in finding the evidence, campaigning and presentations to inquests – often deliberately delayed for many years by the authorities.

One of these is of course the case of Sean Rigg, killed by Brixton Police in 2008. At his inquest four years later, despite several police officers committing perjury, the jury concluded the police “more than minimally” contributed to his death – and were highly critical of the restraint that killed him. Eventually one officer was charged with perjury but acquitted by the jury despite the evidence. His family, particularly his sister Marcia Rigg, continue to fight for justice.

This annual march and rally has usually been completely ignored by the mainstream press – though journalists including myself have covered it. This year there was rather more interest than usual following the ‘not-guilty’ verdict on the police officer who shot Chris Kaba in the head at close range.

On Saturday The Guardian misreported this event in a single sentence in an article on page 6 about Robinson’s arrest: “the United Families and Friends Campaign is planning a protest in Trafalgar Square against the acquittal this week of the firearms officer who shot Chris Kaba dead.”

The UFFC wasn’t. It had planned its usual annual commemoration and protest over the many thousands of custody deaths, though supporters of Chris Kaba’s family took part in it, and one of them spoke breifly at the start and at the rally in Whitehall where there were also a number of speakers from other family campaigns.

Trafalgar Square – or rather its southern edge – was only the start of the march, which was to a rally in Whitehall. Normally this would have taken place at the entrance to Downing Street, but this year there was a police barricade some distance before this, and instead the rally took place in front of the Cabinet Office.

The interest aroused by the Kaba shooting did make for a larger protest than in previous years and it was augmented too by some people who had arrived early for the Stand Up to Racism rally. Several thousand filled out across the street to listen to the families speaking.

As usual a small delegation from the event were to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister at Downing Street, though in some years they have been refused entry by the police. They too were prevented by the police barricade, but later I heard that police had helped them deliver it. But as well as the letter, the envelope contained a copy of the 1998 booklet by Keir Starmer, ‘The Right To Life’ in which he had written “When citizens die at the hands of the police, or make serious allegation of torture in police custody, the reaction of the state raises very serious questions about the protection of human rights.”

*Justice for Chris Kaba campaigners and Qian Zheng, partner of late Benjamin Zephaniah raise fists,*

You can listen to one of the speeches from the rally, by Temi Mwale, founder of the 4Front Project, in which she quotes from that booklet in a video on the Real Media site.

The letter which was delivered to Keir Starmer also contains that quote from the his booklet, before some details of some cases and a listing of the five demands of the UFFC campaign:

As bereaved families, we demand:

An end to all killings at the hands of the state.
An end to all racist police practice and an end to fatal use of force.
A radical reduction in the use of prisons. People are unnecessarily dying, as prisons
do not address underlying causes of social harm.
The individuals and state bodies responsible for deaths are pro-accountability for
their wrong-doings, and an end to all cover ups.
Legal Aid is made available to all families, automatically.

More pictures from the 2024 UFFC Annual March & Rally Against Custody Deaths

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March Against Far Right Hate, London, 26 Oct 2024

March Against Far Right Hate: Last Saturday, 26th October 2024 I joined thousands of others marching ine London in response to a far-right march called by ‘Tommy Robinson’ under the title ‘Unite the Kingdom’.

Police had imposed conditions on both marches, ensuring that they kept a long way apart and there was very little trouble, with only four arrests at the Robinson march and two at the Stand Up to Racism event.

Organisers of the counter-protest say that 20,000 came to march and the Robinson march was reported to be a little smaller. But certainly the large turnout for the Stand Up to Racism event showed that the kingdom was not united behind the far-right racists.

One person significantly not present at the racist march was the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, generally known as ‘Tommy Robinson’, who was remanded in custody the previous day to attend Woolwich crown court on Monday for his alleged breach of a 2021 high court order barring him from repeating libellous allegations against a Syrian refugee. He was also separately charged for a mobile phone offence under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Police restricted Stand Up to Racism for meeting on Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus, while Robinson’s protest had to muster at Victoria around a mile and a quarter to the south though rather more on the ground.

The far right were marching to a rally in Parliament Square, while Stand Up to Racism’s rally was at the north end of Whitehall, with around 400 metres of blocked off road between the two.

I spent around 45 minutes photographing at Piccadilly Circus before walking down to Trafalgar Square for another event, catching up with the march later on Cockspur Street roughly halfway on its short march to the rally.

As the band of logos along the bottom of the main banner indicate the the Stand Up to Racism protest was supported by a huge range of organisation is including almost every trade union as well as groups who work with refugees and asylum seekers and there were many trade union banners carried on the march.

As well as the mass-produced placards from the organisers, many on the march had come with their own, and my photographs include some of those I fondud more interesting.

Some of the banners including those from the Latin-American and Jewish Bloc also indicated their support for Palestine, and there were quite a few others on the march with Palestinian flags. Tommy Robinson has also made clear his support for the genocidal actions of the Israeli State as a part of his anti-Muslim stance.

I stayed in Trafalgar Square as the march went by, mainly to see all of the marchers, or at least a good proportion of them in the crowds going past so I could pick out those who seemed more interesting to photograph, either from the side or by rushing into the crowd. But also because this seemed the most likely place where some might try to divert from the approved route and try to reach the racist rally.

And at the very end of the march a large group behind a black banner ‘NO TO TOMMY ROBINSON – NO TO FASCISM’ paused and then made what seemed to be a rather half-hearted attempt to do just that, but were easily held by a thin line of police at the entrance to The Mall. Only a small group at the centre of the banner seemed to be making any real effort to push through the police and those at the end where I was standing just stood holding the banner – and the crowd behind was standing watching and not joining in.

A stand-off ensued, but after some minutes a small police snatch squad came and pushed one of the protesters past or rather through where I was standing, pushing me forcefully to the side. I managed to recover and take a few pictures as he was thrown to the ground and handcuffed. But I don’t know why they had decided to arrest this man.

I took a few pictures after this, but decided not to go through the packed crowds towards the stage and photograph the rally now taking place but took the tube from Charing Cross to begin my journey home.

These pictures are some of those I filed with Alamy and you can see my set of over 40 pictures their or at Stand Up To Racism March Against Far Right Hate on Facebook.

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Defend Our Juries – 24 Oct 2024

Defend Our Juries Free Political Prisoners: A week ago I went to photograph an unusual protest which took the form of an exhibition, the Free Political Prisoners Exhibition.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10169134705895467&type=3

The protest was organised by Defend Our Juries, a group set up following recent trials in which juries have been prevented from hearing the defences of those on trial and have been directed by judges that they cannot follow their consciences in coming to their verdict.

Here is a part of what was on the leaflet that they handed out during the exhibition. You can find more about the campaign on their web site.

Why do juries need defending

Juries put the moral sense of ordinary people into the heart of the criminal justice system. In recent years, juries have repeatedly acquitted those taking nonviolent direct action to advance climate, racial, and animal justice. These verdicts are deeply embarassing to the goverment and the arms and oil industries, industry lobbyists such as Lord Walney have promoted extraordinary measures to try and stop them.

People on trial have been banned from using the words ‘climate change’ or ‘fuel poverty’ in court and have even been jailed just for defying that ban,

Usual legal defences have been removed by seemingly biased jusges. People have been arrested and prosecuted for displaying the centuries-old principle of jury equite – juries can find a person on trial not guilty as a matter of conscience, regardless of what the judge directs.

They had come to the Justice Ministry to protest outside the office of Attorney General Richard Hermer KC to ask him to agree to Chris Packham’s and Dale Vince’s request for an open and transparent public meeting to discuss the measures necessary to restore the fundamental rights to protest and fair trial essential to a functioning democracy, as called for by the United Nations.

As well as some of the UK’s current political prisons including those from Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action currently serving long prison sentences for non-violent direct action the posters in the show featured many other political prisoner from around the world and throughout history such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Martin Luther King Jr “peaceful change-makers [who] should be celebrated as essential to upholding democracy.”

Reverend Billy of the NY Church of Earthalujah sits with pictures of political prisoners.

Among those taking part in the protest were William Talen, better known as the Reverend Billy, and members of his Stop Shopping Choir from New York, currently on a UK tour who I was pleased to meet again having photographed him at various protests in London in earlier years.

More pictures on Facebook

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A Short Walk in Tottenham

A Short Walk in Tottenham: My next London walk came on Friday October 27th 1989 when I rushed to jump on a train after finishing a morning of teaching and then took the Victoria Line to Tottenham Hale, arriving around 2pm. I’d managed to arrange my teaching timetable by including an evening class so that I finished on Fridays at noon but this was the last time it would be worth travelling to London to take photographs before the clocks went back to GMT at the weekend.

*The Hale, Tottenham Hale, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-42*

The first two pictures I made were both of this scene, a strangely blank building with signs on it which informed it it was the home of ‘Garbi Ltd‘ and ‘Short Stories of London‘, both manufacturers of men’s wear. Perhaps ‘Short Stories of London’ might be a good title for a book of my pictures one day.

Despite considerably redevelopment in the area I think this building is still there at No 33, thought with a rebuilt frontage and still in the clothing trade though now wholesale and retail sales, open to the public. It became Soniez House and more recently since around 2011 Morelli with two large ground floor windows and a wide glass door, but retaining the first floor windows in my picture.

I think the traffic flow in this area has altered and there are no longer the traffic signs I made use of – although the tree which it amused me to use with them as a framing device is I think still in place.

*Mountford House, Tottenham Green East, Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-43*

I walked west from The Hale to Tottenham Green East, just off the High Road, opposite the Council Offices. Mountford House, a late 18th or early 19th century Grade II listed pair of houses, was then in use as offices for Haringey Health Authority, but is now private flats on the road at the edge of the small open space.

*Mountford House, Tottenham Green East, Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-45*

This is a later extension to Mountford House and it doesn’t appear to be included in the rather strange listing text which calls this “Pair of houses in north east part of Prince of Wales’s General Hospital grounds.” Whatever its date I think it was nicely done an complements the simpler porch to the northern of the two houses.

*Main Entrance, Prince of Wales Hospital, Tottenham Green East, Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-44*

And this is that Prince of Wales Hospital, then surrounded by a solid fence over which I could see some broken windows and its Fleur-de-Lys symbol with the motto ‘Ich Dien’ around the crown, the Prince of Wales’s badge and coat of arms. The motto, ‘I serve’, was perhaps more suitable for a hospital than for many of the Princes, who got up to some very odd things.

According to the Lost Hospitals of London, the hospital had started in 1867 as the Evangelical Protestant Deaconesses’ Institution and Training Hospital in a converted cottage and moved into a house on this site in 1861. It got a new building in 1881 and was extended in 1887, becoming Tottenham Hospital in 1899 and after another extension the Prince of Wales General Hospital in 1907. It closed in 1983 and was converted to flats in 1993 as Deaconess Court.

*Tottenham High Cross, High Rd, Tottenham, Haringey 1989 89-10i-31*

This brick cross erected around 1600 replaced a wooden cross first recorded in 1409. In 1809 the plain brick cross was covered in stucco and the Gothic style ornamentation in my picture. The Grade II listed cross is still present but has been moved a little to fit in with new road layout since I photographed it.

Behind it is the fine Estate Office of George Ellis on the corner of Rawlinson Terrace, sadly rather defaced around ten years ago. The terrace itself with its crenellated parapet replaced ‘Turner’s House’ lived in by a vet called Turner with his brother, a farrier in the yard next door. When a horse ridden by a ‘gentleman from Stamford Hill‘ slipped and broke its leg outside the vet set it and the horse’s owner was so impressed he gave the horse to the vet on condition that he did not part with it. And he didn’t, even after its death, when he “fixed the skeleton by means of iron supports, and placed it over the farrier’s shop, where it served the purpose of an advertisement for the veterinary surgeon as well as for the farrier.”

The house was demolished and replaced by Rawlinson Terrace in 1881, named after Emma Rawlinson, the wife of the builder James Stringfellow. The horse’s skeleton was then for some years displayed on top of an undertakers on the opposite side of the road.

*Ritzy, Venue, High Rd, Tottenham, Haringey 1989 89-10i-22*

Built as a roller skating rink designed by architect Ewen S. Barr in 1910, it included an electric theatre, but the roller skating craze slumped quickly and the whole building opened as the Canadian Rink Cinema in 1911. It was converted into a dance hall, the Tottenham Palais, and later when owned by Mecca Dancing Ltd, The Tottenham Royal.

When I took this picture it was the Ritzy, ‘A Perfect Place for a Great Night Out’, but it had a whole string of names including the Mayfair Suite, the Aztec Temple, Club U N, and the Zone before being demolished around 2004.

*The Old Well, Philip Lane, High Rd, Tottenham, Haringey 1989 89-10i-24*

The Lord of the Manor who lived in Bruce Castle had this well dug in 1791 and it was used by locals until 1883 when it was found to be polluted, which was rather a shame as they had added the current structure over it only seven years earlier. It was restored in 1953 to commemorate the coronation of Elizabeth II.

Behind the well the High Cross Infants School, later called Holy Trinity School, dates from 1847, one of the schools linked to the National Society for Promoting Religious Education established to provide a Church of England elementary education for poor children who paid two pence a week (later raised to three) ‘School Pence’ to attend. Condemned in 1924 it survived to be Grade II listed in 1974 and so remains there to this day.

Time was getting on and I walked the short distance down the High Road to Seven Sisters Underground Station to start my journey and get home in time for dinner.

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Press Inquiry & Cold Homes Kill – 2012

Press Inquiry & Cold Homes Kill: On Thursday 29th November 2012 people protested outside the QEII centre as part 1 of the Leveson inquiry into the general culture and ethics of the British media was being published. Later there was a protest outside the Treasury and Parliament against government cuts in benefits and services that were leading to 24,000 extra winter deaths.

Leveson Comes Out

The Leveson inquiry had been set up in 2011 following the News International phone hacking scandal and after a long series of public hearings came to the obvious conclusion the existing Press Complaints Commission was a total failure – and praised Private Eye for refusing to join it. A subscription to that magazine and the many articles it had published over the years could have saved the £5.4 million that Leveson cost.

Leveson was not of course set up to address the overriding problem of the UK media which is the narrow range of its ownership. As the Media Reform Coalition argued “we couldn’t just rely on better press regulation to improve standards are newspapers – we also had to challenge the disproportionate power these corporations held because they so much of our news media.”

The MRC stated in 2023 “Just three companies—DMG Media, News UK and Reach—dominate 90% of the national newspaper market” and go on to show similar resticted ownership of local newspapers and online news platforms.

The news which almost all of us are allowed to hear is controlled by a very few companies and their billionaire owners such as Rupert Murdoch, and Avaaz had brought to the protest large puppet heads of Murdoch and a gagged Prime Minster Cameron with placards ‘End the Murdoch Mafia‘ with a flaming dustbin into which Murdoch lowered the Leveson report.

The industry response to Leveson was to establish in place of the Press Complaints Commission the almost equally toothless Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) which my union, the NUJ labelled a “pointless so-called regulator” and the Hacked Off campaign described as a sham “owned and controlled by the very newspapers it is supposed to regulate” which does nothing to stop them.

The Press Recognition Panel (PRP) was set up by Royal Charter in 2014 with the duty to establish whether any press regulator met the standards set by Leveson. IPSO declined to apply for recognition but an independent body IMPRESS founded in 2016 has gained recognition.

IMPRESS thas been rejected by all the major national papers and most regional and local papers but now regulates “more than 100 publishers, publishing over 200 publications across the UK.” Most of these are small and local independent print or on-line publishers including many on the left. Among them are Novara Media, Skwawkbox and The Canary.

As well as failing to legislate on setting up the independent regulatory body which Leveson concluded was needed, the Tories later quietly shelved the second part of the inquiry into extent of unlawful or improper conduct within news organisations and the extent of police complicity. It was a clear demonstration of the power held by Mudoch over our government.

Leveson Comes Out

Cold Homes Kill Treasury Protest

Over 50 people turned up outside Parliament and the Treasury to protest against the cuts made by George Osborne and the government’s energy policies which are leading to 24,000 extra winter deaths.

The protest on the day that Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, was introduing the Energy Bill to Parliament was organised by Fuel Poverty Action along with Disabled People Against Cuts and the Greater London Pensioners’ Association.

Other organisations taking part include Single Mothers’ Self-Defence, Southwark Pensioners’ Action Group and WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities).

Many came with plastic silver reflective coated ‘space blankets’ to wear, and there were three ‘tombstones’ with the messages ‘George Osborne Your Cuts KILL’, ‘Gas Power = Killer Bills’ and ‘24,000 Winter Deaths – Big Six Profits up 700%’.

As speakers at the open mike in front of the Treasury on Horse Guards Road said, many were now having to choose between keeping warm and eating – heat or food – and could not afford to do both adequately. Food banks were now common but often unable to keep up with demand, and libraries where many went to keep warm were being closed.

Hypothermia, even among children, was on the increase, had doubled among pensioners and many disabled people had special needs for heating – and some were suffering from having their benefits removed by unfair Atos work capability tests – often to have them eventually restored on appeal, but with no or inadequate means for months before this happened.

Police tried to keep them off the steps of the Treasury but they declined to move and eventually police came and pushed them down, sometimes with rather more than necessary force, but the rally continued on the pavement. Among the speakers was Green Party leader Natalie Bennett.

There were some further confrontations with police as the protesters moved around the area and protested on the pavement in front of parliament, where there was some hilarity as police came to tell them there has to move as “a Royal movement” was about to take place (they didn’t) and the protest ended with photographs on the grass of Parliament Square with the House of Commons and Big Ben as background.

More pictures on My London Diary at Cold Homes Kill Treasury Protest.

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Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass – 2014

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass: Ten years ago on Tuesday 28th October 2014 I photographed protests calling for fairer fares on our railways, an end to the Turkish backed Islamic state invasion of Kobane in Kurdish Syria and finally calling on the Green Investment Bank to end funding for hugely climate wrecking investments in using biomass for power generation.

Fair Fares Petition – Westminster

The Campaign for Better Transport, including their director Stephen Joseph OBE protested at the Dept of Transport before walking to Portcullis Hous to hand a petition with over 4000 signatures to Rail Minister Claire Perry MP calling on the recent increase in Northern Rail evening peak rail fares to be scrapped. My own rail fares also increased by around a third if I need to return from London between 4pm and 7pm, though the evening peak only really begins around 5pm.

We have the most expensive rail travel in the world, largely thanks to privatisation, as well as lower levels of service than many companies, and a hugely complex system of ticketing which often results in passengers paying more than necessary.

Labours Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill should eventually bring in a simpler more uniform structure for the railways and we can hope that it might make fares simpler to understand – and perhaps even less costly. Currently it is often cheaper to travel by less green modes of transport, even by air.

We also need to move away from the companies which lease trains and pay out huge dividends to their shareholders to a more sensible system in which the railways actually own trains and ensure that they provide more carriages on services which are now heavily overcrowded – which seem to include almost all CrossCountry trains. Their franchise ends in October 2027.

Fair Fares Petition

Kobane – Unite against Isis Drawing – Trafalgar Square

Kurds stood around a giant chalk drawing on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square including the Statue of Liberty and the message ‘KOBANE Unite against ISIS‘ hold small posters “support progressive and left forces against ISIS” and “Support Kobani Struggle“.

The ISIS forces attacking Kobane, close to the Turkish border in a Kurdish region of Syria were being supported by Turkey as a part of their fight against the Kurds,

The main opposition to ISIS is provided by Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), who were being supported by US air strikes.

Kobane – Unite against Isis Drawing

Biofuel picket Green Investment Bank Birthday – King Edward Street

Protesters from Biofuelwatch and London Biomassive, some dressed as wise owls, picketed the second birthday celebrations of the Green Investment Bank at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London against their funding of environmentally disastrous biomass and incineration projects.

These are more polluting than coal, producing more climate-wrecking carbon dioxide than coal, and protesters urged the GIB to finance “low carbon sustainable solutions” instead of these “high-carbon destructive delusions.”

The protest took place as many city workers were walking past on their way home and many took leaflets and some stopped to talk with the protesters.

There was live music, some short speeches and couple of birthday cakes for the GIB, one edible and the other rather larger with two ‘oil palms’ on top and a banner with the message ‘GIB No Biomass’ strung between them.

Biofuel picket Green Investment Bank Birthday

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Custody Deaths, Kurds, Abortion, Zombies & More – 2007

Custody Deaths, Kurds, Abortion, Zombies & More: Saturday 27 October 2007 was an unusually busy day for me and the lengthy write-up on My London Diary reflects this. The main event as on every last Saturday of October this century was the annual rally by the United Families and Friends of those who have died in custody who meet in Trafalgar Square for a slow march down Whitehall to a rally outside Downing Street – and I hope to post something about yesterday’s event shortly.

But the stories and pictures from 2007 are a little hard to find at the bottom of a long web page, so here I’ll republish the post – with the usual minor corrections and changes with links to the pictures I took.

Then on Saturday, everything was happening. I had to run around to start with to collect my unsold pictures from the City People show at the Juggler in Hoxton. [Although this web site is stilll on line, that organisation is long since gone dissolved the following year.} Fortunately I’d sold one of my four pictures, so that made them easier to carry, but it was a rush to be back in the centre of London.

Pro-referendum on Europe Rally – Yard, Westminster

Custody Deaths, Kurds, Abortion, Zombies & More - 2007

Campaigners were just leaving as I arrived and I more or less missed the demonstrators who wanted a referendum on the changes to the European Union.

A couple more pictures

Protest Against Custody Deaths – Trafalgar Square & Whitehall

Instead I really started at Trafalgar Square, where the annual event remembering those who have died in custody was taking place, organised by the families and friends of those concerned.

Its an occasion that always shocks me by the sheer number of people who have died in such disgraceful or suspicious circumstances, in police cells, in prisons and elsewhere. It’s an event i sometimes find it hard to photograph, both emotionally and physically – thankfully autofocus works even when your eyes are filling with tears.

[I returned to this protest later outside Downing Street – more below]

More pictures

Kurds Demand – Stop Turkey – Trafalgar Square,

While the United Families protest is getting ready, a large crowd of Kurds swarms into Trafalgar Square and holds a short rally, protesting against the Turkish governments approval of incursions into northern Iraq to attack the PKK there. Both the Kurds and the Armenians have suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks (who in turn have been rather screwed by the EU over Cyprus,

It’s a typically exuberant performance, and one that I enjoy photographing, but rather a distraction from the family and friends event.

more pictures

Anti-Abortion (Pro-Life) Rally – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

There seems to be hiatus at this point, so I catch a bus down Whitehall. Walking along to Old Palace Yard I pass a few of the pro-referendum demonstrators, though some others have stayed to join in the anti-abortion protest.

This is rather smaller than I’d expected, perhaps around 500 people, although it is the only event that makes the BBC news bulletins I hear when i get home later in the day.

more pictures

Lloyd George – Parliament Square

I listen a little to the anti-abortion speeches but then go to parliament square to take a look at the new statue of Lloyd George – which fails to impress me. Of course he was long before my time – although I did have a landlady as a student in Manchester who had worked as a secretary for him – but somehow I feel the statue trivialises him, looking rather like an enlarged version of a plastic figure you might find in a box of cornflakes rather than a statue.

Another picture

Peace Train – Parliament Square,

The peace train is beginning to form a protest in Parliament Square and I go along to talk to them and take a few pictures.

more pictures

More from Protest Against Custody Deaths

I rejoin the ‘Families And Friends’ march by now making a considerable protest opposite Downing Street, where a delegation has permission to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister’s residence at no 10.

For some reason the police decide not to allow those with press cards into the street in the normal way. I don’t like going in – the security checks are a nuisance and being restricted to a pen on the other side of the street is normally hopeless. But I think as a matter of principle that access should not be unreasonably prevented – even if personally I don’t want to take advantage of it.

By the time the delegation emerge, the mood is getting rather angry. one young policeman is getting surrounded and insulted and is trying hard to ignore it.A few minutes later a motor-cyclist foolishly stays in the route of the march, and is soon surrounded by angry people. He has to be rescued by his colleagues.

There are police who are racist, who are thugs, who are bullies. Too many who have got away with murder, often thanks to covering up or a lack of diligence in investigation by their colleagues. If it were not so, there would be no demonstrations like this one. But there are also officers who do their best to carry out a difficult and necessary job in a decent, reasonable and even-handed way – even though they may sometimes get disciplined for doing so. Those who bear the brunt of considerable and understandable hate directed against the police at a demo like this are not necessarily the guilty.

more pictures

Crawl of the Dead IV – City and Southwark

It’s time for me to leave and make my way to the City, where this year the zombies are starting their walk at a pub on Ludgate Hill. I go into the pub and talk to some of them and take photographs, and am gratified to find that quite a few have seen my pictures of them from around Oxford Street the previous year.

By the time they emerge from the pub it is getting dark, and my flash by now is refusing to work at all. I have to make do either with available light (and there isn’t a lot) or the pretty useless flash built into my camera, but I still manage to get a few decent pictures, even though some are rather noisier than I’d like.

There are quite a few people around as we go over the Millennium Bridge, and more in front of Tate Modern, where zombies decide to play dead for a while. Then we visit the famous crack in the Turbine Hall, coming out towards the Founder’s Arms, where I made my goodbyes and turned for home.

Many more pictures on My London Diary

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UFFC 21st Remembrance Procession – 2019

UFFC 21st Remembrance Procession: Saturday 26th October 2019 saw the 21st annual remembrance procession by the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC), a coalition of of people killed by police, in prisons, in immigration detention and in secure psychiatric hospitals.

This takes place on the last Saturday of October each year, and people will meet for today’s procession on 26th October 2024 as usual at noon in Trafalgar Square. It will have added resonance for some following the ‘Not Guilty’ verdict earlier in the week for the officer who fired the fatal shot into the head of Chris Kaba two years ago in Streatham.

Each year sees new names added to those who have died in custody under suspicious circumstances – several thousand since 1990. Not one of those responsible have been convicted of murder or manslaughter.

Many of the suspicions may be unfounded, but others are clearly not. Relatively few have ever been properly investigated, and often there has clearly been a deliberate failure to do so on the part of the authorities.

Inquests have often been delayed for years, and evidence simply not recorded. Only the most determined of family campaigners have succeeded in getting at the truth. A few of these cases have become well known – such as those of Sean Rigg, Christopher Alder and Leon Patterson, but none has yet really resulted in justice.

Coroners have sometimes refused to allow proper consideration of the possible responsibility of the police and courts have at times come to conclusions that seem to fly in the face of the evidence. Police officers have on occaison colluded with each other to commit perjury.

The so-called Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) began work in 2003. Wikepedia notes that in 2008 “over a hundred lawyers who specialise in handling police complaints resigned from its advisory body, citing various criticisms of the IPCC including a pattern of favouritism towards the police, indifference and rudeness towards complainants, and complaints being rejected in spite of apparently powerful evidence in their support.”

A Parliamentary Inquiry set up in 2012 described it as having “neither the powers nor the resources that it needs to get to the truth when the integrity of the police is in doubt.“

In 2018 the IPCC was replaced by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). Again Wikipedia quotes from a Parliamentary report published on it in 2002: “There needs to be a change of culture in police forces. It should not be necessary to compel officers to cooperate with investigations. This culture change must be from top to bottom to ensure that complaints are handled quickly and openly, delivering punishment for misconduct where necessary and clearing officers who have not committed an offence.”

Also we have the Crown Prosecution Service, with Keir Starmer at its head from 2008-2013. Together there seems to be clear evidence of a powerful system of injustice which has protected police. And one of the most frequent chants at this and other events has long been ‘NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!’

Many at the protest carry banners, poster and placards with names and pictures of those who have been killed. I’ve written in previous posts about many of them and more details are on various web sites, Facebook and elsewhere. Recently I published a post here Sean Rigg Memorial – 4 Years about a rally in 2012.

More pictures UFFC 21st remembrance procession.

There were other events I photographed on 26th October 2019 – you can find them on My London Diary.

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