march | >Re-PHOTO

Council Housing Crisis & Cinema Strike

Five years ago on Saturday 23rd September 2017 I photographed a lively march in North London against council plans for a huge giveaway of council housing to developers before rushing down to Brixton in South London where low paid workers at the Ritzy cinema had been on strike for a year.

Haringey against council housing sell-off

When Labour came to power in 1997, Tony Blair made his first speech as prime minister in the centre of London’s Aylesbury Estate, declaring that “the poorest people in our country have been forgotten by government” and promising that housing would be at the centre of his government’s programme.

But their policy of estate regeneration has proved a disaster, leading to the demolition of social housing and its replacement by housing for the rich and overseas investors, along with small amounts of highly unaffordable ‘affordable housing’ and a largely token amount of homes at social rents.

As an article in the Financial Times by Anna Minton in January 2022 pointed out, Labour’s continuing support for Thatcher’s ‘Right-to-Buy’ and for ‘buy-to-let mortgages’ together with the pegging of housing benefit to market levels encouraged an enormous growth of buy to let properties from previously council flats and houses. In 2019 a Greater London Authority report found that 42 per cent of homes sold under Right to Buy were now privately let, with average rents in London of £1752 in the private sector compared to social rents of £421 a month.

As Minton also points out, under New Labour there were only 7,870 new council homes built during their 13 years in office, a miniscule number compared to Thatcher’s period as Conservative prime ministers when the lowest annual number was 17,710 homes.

Under New Labour the average was 562 per year compared to 41,343 under Thatcher – though numbers dropped steeply during her tenure. Housing Associations have provided some social housing, but have become increasingly more commercial in their operations.

Labour’s housing policies were disastrous and largely continue, with Labour councils in London continuing to collude with developers to demolish council-owned homes. A prime example of this was the proposed ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’, HDV, under which Haringey Council was making a huge transfer of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease.

The protest in Haringey was a lively one involving many local residents as well as other housing activists from across London. The council’s deal would have led to the destruction of many of the council’s estates over a 15 year period, and led to a revolt at local elections which replaced many of those backing the scheme by more left-wing Labour members supported by Momentum.

Under new management, the council has produced an updated version of its redevelopment plans, although some activists see these as still representing a give-away to developers. But there does seem a greater emphasis on collaboration with the local community over redevelopment schemes and on providing a greater element of social housing.

Local government is still subject to restrictions imposed by national policies, and in particular policies that encourage rising house prices, rents and subsidise private landlords, while still making it hard for councils to build new council properties.

I left the march close to its end at Finsbury Park to catch the tube down to Brixton.

Haringey against council housing sell-off

One year of Ritzy strike – Brixton

Strikers at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton were celebrating a year of strike action with a rally supported by other trade unionists, including the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and other union branches.

The BECTU strikers were demanding the London Living Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay and for managers, supervisors, chefs and technical staff to be properly valued for their work. The also demand that four sacked union reps are reinstated.

BECTU had been in dispute with the Ritzy since 2014, and had called for a boycott of the cinema, which was only finally called off in 2019. The Ritzy is one of a network of cinemas operated by Picturehouse Cinemas Ltd and owned by Cineworld, the world’s second largest cinema chain, based in London and operating in 10 countries including the USA.

The Ritzy was closed for the rally, After a number of speeches there was a surprise with the arrival to cheers of a newly acquired ‘Precarious Workers Mobile’ bright yellow Reliant Robin, equipped with a powerful amplifier and loudspeaker. After more speeches this led the protesters in a slow march around central Brixton.

One year of Ritzy strike

Druids, Paddington & Women March For Syria

On Sunday 22nd September 2013 Druids carried out their annual Autumn Equinox (Alban Elued) ceremony on Primrose Hill at noon and later in the day women from the radical fundamentalist Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain marched from Paddington Green in protest against the chemical attacks and massacres of women and children by the Assad regime in Syria. Between the two events I spent some time taking pictures around the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal.

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox – Primrose Hill

Every year for a little over 100 years the Druid Order have celebrated the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, a site of historical significance in the history of Druidism and the re-invention of a Druidic tradition. Here on the Autumn Equinox in 1716 John Toland made a call for a meeting of Druids a year and a day later at the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden, and on Midsummer’s day 1792 Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826) held the first meeting of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, the precursor of the modern Eisteddfod.

Morganwg was the bardic name of Edward Williams and his work “was a prime force behind the cultural revival that saw the birth of modern Wales” according to the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies whose web site describes him as “a profoundly complicated character: a struggling provincial poet in London, a manipulator and victim of the world of literary patronage, a radical, a medievalist, a forger of pasts, an opium eater and a forceful and opinionated critic.”

Most of the Druidic traditions we now have come from forged manuscripts he produced in particular the “Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain” (“The Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain”.) It was only in the twentieth century that the extent of his imaginative forgeries became clear. But although his work came almost entirely from his own extremely fertile imagination it had a dramatic effect in creating a new view of the Welsh nation.

The Druid Order made its first recorded appearance at the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in 2021, though its founder, the remarkable George Watson MacGregor Reid, a trade union and Labour party activist with a great interest in oriental mysticism was probably there 3 years earlier. In 2014 he returned for the Solstice describing himself as a High Priest and “the direct successor of the Chief Druids who have been” and dressed in a very similar manner to that still adopted by The Druid Order.

I’ve photographed the Equinox ceremonies of the Druid Order, Spring at Tower Hill and Autumn on Primrose Hill on several occasions and have been impressed by the solemnity and spirituality of those taking part. Whatever its origins, it is a movement which respects the Earth and is peace loving and free-thinking with the apparent aim of developing themselves through being rather than through intellectual learning.

My account on My London Diary gives quite a detailed description of the event both in pictures and text so I won’t repeat that here.

Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox

Paddington Basin – Paddington

The main line of the Grand Union Canal enters the River Thames at Brentford, from where it was possible for goods to travel along the river to London, but a direct canal route was obviously desirable and only two years after the Act of Parliament for the main route to Brentford was passed a further Act to allow the construction of a canal joining the this to a canal basin at Paddington, then on the western edge of London. This opened in 1801.

Unusually there are no locks on the 22km of the Paddington Arm – and you can travel a total of around 43 lock-free miles along the pound made up by it the Grand Union and Regents canal.

The area around the final length of the Paddington Arm from Little Venice to Paddington Basin has been the site of huge redevelopments in the past thirty or so years. A few older canalside buildings remain. Much of the land and paths open to the public in the area are on private land.

Paddington Basin

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria – Paddington Green

Over a thousand woman gathered on Paddington Green for a march to the Syrian Embassy to show solidarity with women and children in Syria and to condemn the chemical attacks and massacres being carried out by the Assad regime.

Hizb ut-Tahrir oppose Western military intervention in Syria but call for the replacement of the current corrupt rulers in Islamic states by a Khilifah (caliphate), a state that will truly implement Islamic values and end the corruption and oppression of the current states. They call for Muslims to rise up and get rid of corruption, and in particular of “the criminal regime of the butcher Bashar Al Assad” in Syria, and for “Muslim armies to mobilise and replace the rule of the dictator with the rule of Allah.“

At the front of the march children carried a small coffin and other children and women carried bundles representing dead children. There were a few young boys taking part, but I saw few men – just one small group with a banner and a heavy public address system – and the event was clearly led by the women, almost all of whom were wearing headscarves, with very few in niqabs or burqas which covered the whole face.

At most other Hizb ut-Tahrir protests I’ve photographed there have been clearly separate groups of men and women, and I’ve sometimes had problems with male stewards for photographing the women, though not from the women themselves. At this event most seemed keen to be photographed to help get their message across. I left the march which was going to the Syrian Embassy in Belgrave Square at Edgware Road.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria

Duck Race, Climate, Zimbabwe & Clean Air

Saturday 21st September 2019 was an even more varied day than usual for me in London. I began by travelling to Bow Creek for a duck race, moved to Trafalgar Square for a climate protest, then visted the weekly Zimbabwe vigil before going to Catford for a march against air pollution.

Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane & Cody Dock Duck Race

Duck Race, Climate, Zimbabwe & Clean Air

It was a fine day and still warm for the time of year as I walked from Bromley-by-Bow District Line the short distance to Tweletrees Crescent and Bow Creek.

I’d decided to come to see the Duck Race along Bow Creek being organised by the people at Cody Dock, but had arrived early to give myself time to revisit the gas works memorial site nearby.

Bow Creek is the tidal section of London’s second river, the River Lea, and the duck race was a part of the ‘Lighting Up the Lea’ festival for ‘Totally Thames 2019’. It was meant to start at 11.00 but this was delayed as the people in canoes who were to shepherd the ducks were a few minutes late in arriving.

It was close to low tide, and there was little water in the creek when the ducks were dropped from the bridge, and a westerly breeze soon blew the ducks onto the mud on the east side of the creek.

Cody Dock’s Simon Myers had beached his kayak on the gravel bank a hundred yards or so downstream and strode through the shallow stream and mud to rescue the ducks and through them back into the middle of the stream. But the breeze soon returned them to the mud and he had to get them again.

I decided I had to move on to complete my walk and get back to central London for my next event and walked on towards Cody Dock, past several small groups of people waiting to see their ducks. At Cody Dock there were a small line of catchers waiting hopefully in the stream, but they were in for a rather long wait.

I’d hoped to be able to continue my walk by the riverside to Canning Town, but this further section of the Bow Creek path has yet to be opened, and after taking a few pictures at Cody Dock I made my way to Star Lane DLR station.

Cody Dock Duck Race
Bromley-by-Bow to Star Lane

XR Youth International – Trafalgar Square

Members of Extinction Rebellion Youth International came to Trafalgar Square and held a brief protest for the UN Climate conference.

This was a rather more low-key event than I had expected and the group was ignored by heritage wardens as they sat in a circle in the centre of the square with posters while one member at the centre read the letter they are sending to the UN calling for real urgent action to avert the impending climate catastrophe.

XR Youth International

Zimbabwe protests continue – Strand

The weekly Zimbabwe Vigil every Saturday at the side of the embassy at 429 Strand began on 12th October 2002. I’ve joined it and photographed occasionally over the years, but mainly for special occasions. It’s hard to say something new about an event which happens every week.

Mugabe had been forced to resign in 2017 died earlier in the month and had died two weeks before my visit, but the vigils continue and little has changed in Zimbabwe. His successor Emmerson Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s right-hand man for 40 years, and is accused of the genocide of over 20,000 Ndebeles in the 1980s. Although he promised reform he has delivered state terrorism and protesters have been killed, beaten, tortured and raped by the security forces.

Zimbabwe protests continue

Clean Air for Catford Children

The South Circular Road brings large volumes of traffic through Catford, often pumping out fumes at standstill during peak hours. Particles from brakes, tyres and the road add significantly to the pollution – and won’t be reduced as we switch towards electric cars.

Although a major traffic route, the South Circular has always been more an idea than a planned route, going along many fairly narrow roads lined with houses which were never designed for the traffic. Fortunately major schemes which would have laid waste large areas of highly populated parts of South London have never come to fruition – the obvious environmental devastation of roads like the Westway having put paid to urban motorway schemes.

The answer has to be policies at both national and local level which reduce vehicle use and promote greener alternative transport including walking and cycling as well as public transport use. But although Lewisham Council are not responsible for the South Circular Road, remedial actions such as planting screens of trees and hedges can reduce local pollution levels, particularly the levels of harmful particulates.

I met local residents at the Corbett Library on Torridon Road in Catford, built with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1907. It is now a Community Library run by volunteers and is on the Corbett Estate, 3,000 houses around Hither Green developed by Glasgow-born Archibald Corbett from 1896 to 1911.

They were busy finishing placards and posters for the march, which soon set off, marching up on the pavement to the South Circular at Brownhill Road, on their way to a rally at the council offices in Lewisham. Traffic on the South Circular made it a little difficult for me to take photographs as it was seldom possible to stand on the road. I left them before the rally to travel home.

Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a nine-year-old girl who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham died from asthma in 2013. Following a 2020 inquest ruling she was the first first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as the cause of her death on her death certificate.

Clean Air for Catford Children

Global Climate Strike & Puma Boycott

I spend most of my time on Friday 20th September covering the Earth Day Global Climate Strike inspired by Greta Thunberg which brought huge numbers of schoolchildren along with teachers, parents and other older supporters to a rally filling Millbank. Others were starting later from various parts of London to join in and I made short visits to both the Elephant and Castle and Windrush Square in Brixton to photograph them there, returning to Whitehall to photograph a large crowd who were continuing the protests there. Finally I went to Carnaby Street where the Islamic human rights group Inminds were protest outside the Puma store calling for a boycott of Puma products.

Global Climate Strike Rally – Millbank, London

I began taking pictures of people going to the rally when I entered Parliament Square. Many schools had brought large groups of pupils to take part in the protest, and had obviously spent some time preparing hand-painted placards and banners. Greta Thunberg’s example has led to a great awareness among many young people of the existential threat posed by global warming, as too have the television programmes by the ageing David Attenborough, and they showed themselves to be convinced of the need for urgent action.

Unfortunately politicians and companies – particularly those with interests in fossil fuels – have been rather less convinced, and although we have seen plenty of words and promises, real actions have so far failed to come anywhere close to meeting the desperate need. Our new UK government under Liz Truss has started by going backwards on the issue, issuing licences for fracking, and almost certainly in the first few days following the Queen’s funeral will be bringing forward other measures which will make climate disaster even more inevitable.

Crowds got so packed that I had to give up trying to walk up Millbank to the lorry on which the speakers, bands and others were to perform both live and on large screens, and I had to divert through the side streets to approach it from behind.

I spent some time photographing those at the front of the protest, then decided to move back through the crowd taking pictures. It was slow going both because I stopped to take pictures, but also because I needed to keep asking people to let me squeeze past them, but eventually I got back to Old Palace Yard and Parliament Square where movement was now easy, though there were still groups of protesters.

Global Climate Strike Rally

Elephant & Brixton Global Climate Strike

I took the tube from Westminster Station, changing at Embankment to the Bakerloo Line which took me to the Elephant and Castle. Outside the University of the Arts was a poster display and people were gathering to march to join the protests. I photographed a small march setting off to join with workers at Southwark Council’s offices in Tooley St, but left them after a few hundred yards to go back to the Northern Line, changing at Stockwell to get to Brixton.

Teachers and parents had come with children from Lambeth schools for a rally in Brixton Square which was still in progress as I arrived.

There was an impressive speech from a young protester and support from a local MP before the rally ended and many of those present got ready to take the tube to join in the protest outside Parliament.

Elephant & Brixton Global Climate Strike

Global Climate Strike Protest continues – Whitehall

I hurried to the tube ahead of the children and arrived in Westminster where people were sitting on the road and blocking Whitehall, with police trying to persuade them to move.

I saw one man being arrested and led away towards a waiting police van, and the road was almost cleared when a large crowd of school students came from Parliament Square to march up Whitehall blocking it again.

Police tried to stop them and they turned down Horseguards Ave, then up Whitehall Court and into Whitehall Place where they were finally stopped at the junction with Northumberland Avenue and sat down on the road.

There were a few sort speeches and a lot of chanting slogans as police attempted to get them to move. I couldn’t understand why the police were bothering as they were on a road that has very little traffic and were causing no problem in sitting there.

Eventually they did decide to do as the police said and got up and moved – back to sit down and block Whitehall again. Eventually they stood up and began to march towards Parliament Square, nicely in time for me to cover a different protest in Carnaby Street.

Global Climate Strike Protest continues

Carnaby St Puma Boycott

Whenever tourists come up to me in London and ask me (as sometimes happens) the way to Carnaby Street I’m always tempted to say “You just go back 50 years“, but I’m actually more helpful. But it always surprises me that this rather ordinary street of mainly small shops still attracts tourists so long after it was the touted as the epi-centre of ‘Swinging London’. It still puts on something of an effort, but I find it rather sad. Somehow not the same if you are not wearing flares.

Puma is the third largest sportswear manufacturer in the world, coming from a company founded in Bavaria in 1924 by two brothers. Both brothers were members of the Nazi party during the war and after bitter arguments split up in 1948 to form Adidas and Puma, two companies engaged in bitter rivalry. Adidas is now the second largest sports manufacturer in the world.

The Israel Football Association began life in 1928 as the Palestine Football Association, changing its name following the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. It only represents Israeli clubs and there is a separate Palestinian Football Association covering the West Bank. But the IFA includes six clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Adidas sponsored the IFA until 2018, when under pressure from Palestinian sports clubs and the international BDS movement they ended their sponsorship. Rivals Puma then took it up, becoming their only international sponsorship and over 200 Palestinian athletes and sports clubs have called for a Puma boycott.

Inminds Islamic human rights group organises protests in London at companies and events which support the Israeli regime and call for the release of Palestinian prisoners. At a previous protest outside Puma the protesters were violently attacked by some members of a small group of Zionists, but there was no sign of any counter-protest while I was present.

Carnaby St Puma Boycott

Gender-based Violence, Arming Israel, Trans Pride, Anti Racism

Protests in London three years ago today on Saturday 14th September 2019 all with some connection to human rights violations.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa – Trafalgar Square

People, mainly women and including many South Africans, dressed in black to protest in Trafalgar Square following the rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana and many other women in South Africa.

Protests were taking place across South Africa calling for the government to declare a state of emergency over gender based violence, and to protest against gender-based violence across the world.

After speeches and silences on the North Terrace they moved to light candles for the victims at the entrance to South Africa House.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa

HSBC Stop Arming Israel – Oxford St

Protesters led by Young London Palestine Solidarity Campaign took part in a National Day of Action outside the Oxford St branch of the HSBC Bank calling on it to stop its support of military and technology companies that sell weapons and equipment to Israel to be used against Palestinians. The bank had closed for the protest.

Although HSBC had divested from Israel’s largest private weapons company, it still owned shares in Caterpillar whose bulldozers are used to destroy Palestinian homes and construct illegal apartheid settlements, BAE Systems whose fighter jets attack Gaza and Raytheon which suppliers the ‘bunker buster’ bombs used to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Stop Arming Israel HSBC Protest

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

People met at Hyde Park Corner for this first march in the city to celebrate trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals and to protest against the continuing discrimination here and around the world against them.

As well as many from the trans+ community there were family, friends and other supporters taking part in an event which aimed to increase the visibility of trans+ people.

Recent years have seen an increasing transphobia in the British media with considerably publicity being given to the views of anti-trans activists. There has been an increase in attacks attacks on trans people on the streets, hate speech by trans-exclusionary feminists, and by right-wing national and state governments around the world.

Too often trans+ people around the world are subject to human rights abuses. They have always been an integral part of the gay community and at the forefront of the fight for gay rights – from the Stonewall rebellion on.

There were a few short speeches before the march set off, going along Piccadilly to a rally in Soho Square. I marched with them as far as Green Park where I caught the Underground for a protest in Brixton.

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

Brixton Anti-Racist March

Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group were protesting in Brixton against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants, calling for freedom of movement, the closure of immigration detention prisons, and an end to Brexit which they see being used to whip up immigrant-bashing and nationalism by Boris Johnson.

The event began in Windrush Square, where one of the speakers was Eulalee Pennant, a Jamaican great-grandmother who has been fighting the Home Office for 16 years against deportation. Here uncle was one of the Windrush generation, her grandfather had served in the UK armed forces for his working life, and her cousins, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandson were British. She had worked and paid tax here for many years but was detained days before her 60th birthday and locked up in Yarls Wood, where she contracted a serious stomach infection. She was still vomiting blood when the Home Office tried to put her on a deportation flight.

Eulalee had tried to regularise her and her son’s immigration status with the Home Office in 2003, and among the documents she sent was her passport. The Home Office kept claiming they did not have it, and it was only in court 15 years later they finally admitted they had failed to send in back. Her son spent five years fighting his case to stay in the UK but was deported to Jamaica in 2008, and was murdered there the following June. Her fight against deportation has cost many thousands in legal fees and she has been unable to work since 2003.

There had been relatively few at the gathering in Windrush Square but there was a larger audience when the group marched to Brixton Market to continue the protest there and Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie also came to speak about his LDNlovesEU campaign.

The group then set off to march noisily around central Brixton, returning to Windrush Square for some final speeches.

Brixton anti-racist march

Corbyn Wins & Refugees Welcome

Saturday 12th September was an incredible day for British politics, as the result of the Labour leadership election was announced. Jeremy Corbyn had won what had seemed only a short time before an impossible victory, and one the could have been the start of a campaign which would have made great changes in British politics.

Instead it led to years of unrest in the Labour Party, with the right fighting against their own party leader who was enjoying huge popular support, both inside the party giving new hope to party members but also promoting policies that while enraging the establishment enjoyed a great deal of popular support in the country.

Of course they didn’t suit the powerful oligarchs who have actually run the UK for the last roughly 400 years and their representative who own and run almost all of our media went into full attack mode against Corbyn with lies and exaggerations and words taken out of context.

Had Corbyn been supported by the MPs and others in his party he might have weathered the storm and the result of the next general election could have been different. Of course Theresa May would not then have called an early general election in 2017 as she would have had far less chance of winning – and would not have had the support of Labour to do so.

*People repose their rejoicing for the cameras who missed the real thing*

But instead Labour MPs and party officers set out on a campaign of dirty tricks and lies against Corbyn, including a carefully choreographed series of resignations from his shadow cabinet which severely weakened but failed to remove him. Labour threw away the 2017 election becase money was diverted from key marginals into safe seats, but in the end it was still a close thing – and you could see the relief on some Labour MPs faces after the result that they had lost became clear.

Parts of the anti-Corbyn campaign became clear in the leaked private report from the party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which was leaked shortly after Kier Starmer became leader. In particular this made clear the role of senior party officers trying to prevent Corbyn’s election as party leader and then their sabotaging his efforts to deal with antisemitism so as to continue attacks against him on this issue. Having read all 860 pages, which include 10,000 emails, thousands of messages from party’s internal messaging service, and 400,000 words from two WhatsApp groups used by senior party staff, while it may be selective and possibly inaccurate in some areas, its overall conclusions were unassailable. As the final publication of the Forde Report, though trying desperately to make it more palatable and removing much for legal reasons also makes clear on a detailed reading.

But in 2015 it was clear that the public wanted change and saw Corbyn as the man to deliver it. But most Labour MPs were unable to drag themselves out of their own old right-wing ways. It was a disaster for the nation and I think also the party, which show little sign of having learnt its lesson.

But had Corbyn won I think he would have disappointed many of his supporters by diluting policies under pressure from those rich and powerful oligarchs and revolts by Labour MPs who server their interests. And if he had tried to push them through and looked as if he would succeed we might have seen the democratic surface stretched to breaking point and a military government take over. This was the start of a was that Corbyn was destined to lose, and had his own party not stopped him others would have done so with all means necessary.

Victory Party for Jeremy Corbyn

Rally Says Refugees Welcome Here

A short distance away from the Corbyn Victory party people were crowding into Park Lane for the Refugees Welcome Here national march against the many reports of refugees fleeing war and persecution, suffering or dying because of the paltry response by ours and other Governments.

The UK has been particularly poor in in its response to the crisis, making it almost impossible for asylum seekers to arrive legally in the UK – and locking up many who do get here indefinitely in our immigration detention centres. Its policy appears to be based on the same racist principles as Theresa May’s ‘hostile’ environment and playing to the racist views of the Tory right.

Before the march began there were a long list of speeches, though many of the crowd would have been too far away to hear them, even with the powerful amplication systems in place. You can see pictures of many of them as well as people in the crowd on My London Diary

Rally Says Refugees Welcome Here

Refugees are welcome here march

Eventually the march set of, with over 50,000 having come from across the UK to show their support for refugees facing death and hardship and their disgust at the lack of compassion and inadequate response of the British government.

I started at the front of the march, then worked slowly with stream after stream of marchers on Piccadilly, eventually giving up at Green Park station, though there there were still marchers coming on as far as I could seen down the road. But I took the tube to Westminster to try and catch the head of the march as it arrived at Parliament Square.

Refugees are welcome here march

Refugees Welcome march reaches Parliament

People were exultant as they reached Parliament Square at the end of the march.

Alhough there was still a ring of stewards protecting the front of the march some were friendly and allowed me to go through and photograph the people as they arrived in front of the Houses of Parliament. Many had marched in the white ‘I’m a Refugee’ t-shirts.

People were still flooding in to Parliament Square which was begining to look full, but by now I was feeling very tired, and despite the promise that Jeremy Corbyn would be among the speakers I decided it was time to have a very late lunch and go home. Others could listen to the speeches and photograph the rally which was now taking place.

Refugees Welcome march reaches Parliament

Dale Farm March Against Eviction – 2011

I had been following the events around Dale Farm with interest, but had decided that travelling to the site where some colleagues in the NUJ had been covering events for some time was too difficult and time-consuming. What was happening there was already getting considerable media coverage and I could add little to it and my time and very limited resources would be better spent on less high profile events.

So I’d not been to Dale Farm, and didn’t go to the eviction which finally took place on 19th October, but my interest in what was taking place there did prompt me to go down to a protest march from Wickford Station to the Dale Farm site on Saturday 10th September 2011.

My earliest involvement with travellers had been in the 1960s, when a group who had been evicted from other sites in the city encamped for some time on land close to and owned by the university. Along with many other students I went to the site and met many of the residents as well as attempting to stop the university from evicting them.

*There was a short service before the march*

Travellers move around during much of the year but during winter want to settle in a fixed site. Local authorities have the powers to provide sits but not a duty to do so. In January 2011 according to the twice-annual government surveys there were roughly 18,000 traveller caravans with almost 7,000 on authorised public sites and a further 8,000 on authorised private sties, with around 2,500 on unauthorised sites.

*Euro MP Richard Howitt talking to Dale Farm residents on the march*

In 2021 research showed long waiting lists for pitches on public sites, with almost 1700 on the list but only 59 permanent and 42 transit pitches available nationwide. And many of those available had be labelled as “not fit to use” and “in a terrible state” by locals, with 20 having no electricity available. Travellers call for an end to the increasing harassment of those on unauthorised land and a statutory duty on authorities to meet the need to provide sites – and police also see this as the solution to unauthorised encampments.

*Dale Farm children outside the gates of Cray’s Hill Primary School*

Wikipedia states that Travellers first settled around Dale Farm in the 1960s on Green Belt land that was in use as an unauthorised scrap yard. Eventually following legal battles with Basildon Council some on a part of the site were granted limited permission to remain on a small area of the site, Oak Farm, and are still there. Travellers bought the land from the scrap dealer who had been bankrupted by costs for breaching Green Belt provision in 2002 and the site began to grow, becoming the largest Traveller site in Europe.

*Police escort the march closely as it nears Dale Farm*

The council, who had used part of the site as a dumping ground for tarmac and rubble from roadworks refused to give any further permissions on the grounds it was Green Belt, and legal battles continued. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott became involved in 2003 with an order intended to give the Travellers and Basildon Council two years to come to an agreement, but they made no progress. Legal battles continued, with the residents winning their case in the High Court in 2008 only to see this reversed by the court of appeal in 2010.

*Anti-eviciton activists on the gates to Dale Farm*

The Wikipedia article gives considerable details on the legal battles and the process of eviction, carried out with considerable force by bailiffs and police, providing those press who had been barricaded inside the site with residents for some days with some dramatic images. Many of the travellers had left not long after this march several weeks before the eviction to avoid the violence, camping illegally elsewhere.

Years later the rubble of the former illegal settlement created by the eviction remained on the site in what the Daily Mail described as “polluted wasteland blighted by rubbish and the decaying remains” despite Basildon Council’s claim at the time of the eviction it would return the site to Green Belt. It is so bad that many Travellers in the adjoining legal site Oak Farm now want to leave the area.

*Secretary of the Roma Federation Grattan Puxon*

The march on Saturday 10th September took place while Travellers were still living on the site and hoping still to be able to stay there. My report in My London Diary gives a long account of the event and picture captions add to this.

As I noted in it, the only slight unpleasantness came not from the Travellers but one of their supporters who tried to stop the press coming on to the site. After around ten minutes one of the women leading the Travellers insisted we should be allowed in to report the rally.

Basildon Council had throughout seemed determined not to accept solutions to the battle proposed by others, including the Homes and Communities Agency who had put forward an alternative site, and it was hard not to see their attitude to the Travellers as fundamentally driven by racism. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had a week or so before the march called on the Council to find a peaceful and appropriate solution and suspend the “immature and unwise” eviction, saying it would “disproportionately affect the lives of the Gypsy and Traveller families, particularly women, children and older people“.

March Supports Dale Farm Against Evictions

No More Benefit Deaths – 2016

No More Benefit Deaths – 2016 The action on Wednesday 7th September 2016 began with a huge banner being displayed over the river wall on the Albert Embankment so it could be seen clearly be any MPs and others on the river terrace outside the houses of Parliament with the message ‘NO MORE BENEFIT DEATHS #DPAC’

The date was the opening day for the Paralympics in Rio, and protesters held a rally outside Downing Street to call on Theresa May to pay attention to human rights and to make public the findings of the UN investigation into the UK for violations of Deaf and Disabled people’s rights, to scrap the Work Capability Assessment and commit to preventing future benefit-related deaths.

From Downing Street they marched behind a coffin towards Parliament Square.

But on reaching Bridge Street they surprised police by turning on to Westminster Bridge

where they blocked the road on both carriageways with banners, a floral sign and the coffin.

The giant banner that had previously been displayed on the embankment was now stretched across the road.

Protesters sat in wheelchairs or stood holding posters and banners and there were some speeches about why the protest was taking place.

Police at first asked them politely to leave, then began to threaten protesters and journalists covering the event with arrest if they remained on the highway.

Most of those in wheelchairs refused to move. One carer who was looking after a disabled person was arrested and taken to a police van.

I think those arrested were later released without charge – arrest was being used in an abuse of process to harass protesters

Many of DPAC’s disabled protesters refused to move and a few remained blocking the roadway almost two hours after the protest began.

Eventually Paula Peters decided that the protest had gone on for long enough and triumphantly called a halt to the protest.

DPAC block bridge over benefit deaths
‘No More Benefit Deaths’ rally
Giant Banner ‘No More Benefit Deaths

People’s March For The NHS And More – 2014

On Saturday 6th September I was in London mainly to cover the final stage of the People’s March for the NHS which had begun in mid August in Jarrow, but also photographed Mourning Mothers of Iran, people on a Rolling Picket against Israeli violence and a protest against children being taken for families by social workers and family courts.

People’s March from Jarrow for NHS

When the NHS was founded back in 1948 it was an integral part of the welfare state, a social welfare policy to provide free and universal benefits. It was opposed at its start by the Conservative Party, and met with opposition from some doctors and other medical professionals worried that it would cut their earnings from private practice.

Particularly because of the opposition from doctors, the initial scheme had to be fairly drastically changed, with compromises being made by Minister for Health Aneurin Bevan. And dentistry was never really properly and fully brought withing the system.

Since 1948 much has changed. We’ve seen a huge growth in private hospitals, partly driven by many employers providing private healthcare schemes as a perk for their better paid employees, but also by public funding being used to pay for NHS services provided by the private sector.

We’ve also seen the introduction of charges for NHS prescriptions and more recently the NHS has decided on a fairly wide range of common conditions for which it will no longer provide treatment or prescriptions, sending people to the chemist for both advice and over the counter medicines.

There have been huge advances in medical science too, and more of us are living to a greater age than ever before, making more demands on the NHS. Our NHS is costing more, though still the total spending on health in the UK is significantly less than in many other countries as an OECD chart on Wikipedia shows – less than Japan, Ireland, Australia, France, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Switzerland – and well under half of that in the USA.

Yet for some years many leading Conservatives have advocated the UK moving to a system based on the US model. It would not make our health any better, but would make it much more expensive. And lead to huge profits for healthcare companies – many of them US-based – which are already beginning to take large bites of our own NHS spending. Involving private companies in providing NHS services has not generally led to better services – and in some cases has certainly made them worse, unsurprisingly as it diverts money to shareholders rather than using it for patients. Some services have become more difficult to access.

GP surgeries have always been private businesses, but when these were run by the doctors they provided more personal services than those run by some private companies where patients are unlikely to see a ‘family doctor’ and far more likely to see a locum – if they can still get an appointment. The NHS also spends over £6bn a year on agency and bank staff which would be unnecessary if we were training enough staff.

The need to put services out to tender is time-consuming and wastes NHS resources, one of several things which has produced a top-heavy management. And accepting low tenders often leads to poorly performing services such as cleaning, as I found when I was in my local hospital and found staff simply were not allowed time to do the job properly.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was the most extensive reorganisation of the NHS to that date and Lansley has been widely seen as getting things wrong, and it replaced the duty on the NHS to provide services with one to promote them, with delivery possibly by others, opening up the entire health service to privatisation.

I walked with the marchers from a rally in Red Lion Square to Trafalgar Square where there was a final rally with speakers including Shadow Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham and London Mayor Sadiq Kahn. In 1936 the Jarrow Crusade marchers in 1936 – who were shunned by the Labour Party but captured the hears of the British population – had been given a pound, along with a train ticket back to Jarrow, but failed to get any significant action from the government and Jarrow was left without jobs. Those marchers who had walked the whole 300 miles from Jarrow were presented with medals incorporating a pound coin.

People’s March from Jarrow for NHS

Mourning Mothers of Iran – Trafalgar Square

On the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square I found a group of mainly Iranian women standing in a silent vigil to support the Mourning Mothers of Iran.

Now renamed The Mothers of Laleh Park, these are women who hold vigils in the park in the centre of Tehran after their children were killed or imprisoned following a crackdown on members of the opposition after the 2009 Iranian election, and call for the release of political prisoners. Many of the women in Iran have been arrested for protesting and for talking to foreign journalists.

Mourning Mothers of Iran

Rolling Picket against Israeli violence – Downing St

At Downing Street I photographed a group protesting against Israeli violence towards Palestinians and clalling for a boycott of Israeli good.

After a brief protest at Downing St they marched up Whitehall and protested outside McDonalds before going for another short protest outside the Tesco facing Trafalgar Square. Police intervened to move them away when they tried to block the doorway there. I left them on their way to make further protests outside shops supporting Israel on their way to Tony Blair’s house off the Edgware Rd.

Rolling Picket against Israeli violence

Stolen Children of the UK – Parliament Square

This group say that many children in the UK are removed from families by social workers and family courts for no good reason. They allege that there is systematic, systemic institutional abuse of around a thousand children a month being removed in this way and then abused by paedophile rings. Although there may be children wrongly taken from families there appears to be no firm evidence for such abuse.

These conspiracy theories are a world-wide phenomenon and in 2017 became the core belief of QAnon, the US extreme right wing conspiracy theory political movement.

Stolen Children of the UK

Don’t Deport London Met Students – 2012

A protest at the Home Office on Wednesday 5th September 2012 called for international students at London Met University to be allowed to complete their studies and not face deportation after having invested heavily in getting a degree in the UK. Some then marched to Downing St.

The decision to revoke London Met University’s licence to sponsor non-EU students taken on 29 August 2012 taken by the UK Border Agency was an example of petty-minded racism by the Home Office at its worst. It was made after a limited investigation had found that some students studying there had no leave to remain in the UK.

It was a totally disproportionate reaction to the findings, which should have been dealt with on an individual basis and with discussions over the procedures in place at the university tightening them where necessary. But Home Secretary Theresa May had declared a ‘hostile environment’ three months earlier and this was something to show the public that she meant business.

It was a decision which caused unnecessary disruption and costs to the majority of international students who were legitimately pursuing their studies at the university and which seriously damaged the UK’s reputation as a country for students to come from abroad to study.

The licence was reinstated the following April, following further discussions and inspections at London Met, though they were only allowed to admit new students from abroad on a limited scale for the next 12 months. The actions taken by the Home Office could clearly have been taken without penalising students who were studying on courses at the university, and served to emphasise the callous disregard of the revocation.

Universities Minister David Willis had clearly also been embarrassed by the Home Office decision, setting up a task force to provide a clearing house for the displaced London Met students, and two weeks after the revocation the government launched a £2 million fund to “help legitimate students to meet additional costs they may incur by moving to another institution to finish their studies. These include: covering the cost of any fee for a repeat visa application and discretionary payments to cover, for example, lost deposits on accommodation due to having to move somewhere else to study.”

I’m not sure how adequately this fund recompensed students for their extra costs, but clearly they were subjected to considerable disruption in their studies and also in their personal lives, breaking the many relationships they will have had with fellow students and tutors, and being transferred onto courses with different approaches and areas of study. Even courses with the same titles will have significant differences and students may well find they were repeating some studies already made while missing out on others.

The UK Border Agency had long been criticised for its actions and poor service, with an increasing number of complaints to the Parliamentary Ombudsman over asylum, residence status and immigration issue – and in 2009-10 all but 3% were decided in favour of the complainants. In 2013 a report by the Home Affairs Select Committee was so damning about its incompetence that Home Secretary Theresa May was forced to abolish it, replacing the agency by three new organisations, UK Visas and Immigration, Immigration Enforcement and Border Force.

You can read more about the protest and see more pictures on My London Diary:
Don’t Deport London Met Students