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TUC ‘March For The Alternative – 2011

TUC ‘March For The Alternative – On 26th March 2011 between a quarter and half a million people marched through London against planned public spending cuts by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the largest demonstration since the 2003 protest against the plan to invade Iraq.

The TUC argued that what the country needed was not austerity but policies that would grow the economy, and that we should raise income from those more able to pay rather than by measures that had the greatest impact on the poorest in society.

It was the largest march and rally organised by the trade union movement since the Second World War, and like other major trade union marches was perhaps largely worthy but not exciting – and like others it achieved nothing. The cuts went ahead and we all suffered – except of course the wealthy – who continued to grow richer and richer, helped by government bail-outs and the deliberate failures to tackle tax evasion, stop tax avoidance loopholes and raise taxes on those with excessive wealth.

The cuts particularly hit the public services, including teachers, nurses and other medical professionals – and eventually helped drive these areas into the critical conditions that they are now in. They resulted in financial problems and excessive workloads and also meant that those of us who rely on public provision for health and education often failing to get proper treatment. The gap between those who could afford private services and those who relied on the state provision increased.

Particularly hard hit by the cuts were the disabled and for them the situation continues to worsen with our now Labour government announcing huge cuts which will leave many considerably worse off – and greatly reduce their ability to lead normal lives and contribute to society.

As well as the TUC, other groups contributed to the march, announcing various feeder marches and other activities, many of which added a little life and colour to the day’s events. They also resulted in over 200 arrests and a number of injuries.

Too much was happening on the day for me to rehash it all here, but you can read my seven posts on my London Diary for my account of events. I started with the feeder marches from South London, disowned by the TUC. The ‘Armed Wing of the TUC’ brought its street theatre Trojan Horse, Spitfire, Tank and armed Lollipop Ladies produced by Camberwell art students to Camberwell Green where they marched to Kennington where the South London Feeeder March was gathering for a rally before the march in Kennington Park – the site of the final “monster meeting” of the Chartists on 10th April 1848 from where they marched to Parliament to deliver their final petition.

I left there to take the tube to Trafalgar Square where I found that the main march had started early and was well on its way to Hyde Park and I stayed around there for over an hour as marchers filed past, including photographing the Morris Liberation Front, an idea of Henry Flitton specially for the TUC demonstration, with music, provided by a couple of mandolins playing the Clash’s ‘I fought the Law’ and the Smith’s ‘Panic.

Later in the day Trafalgar Square was the site of bitter fighting as police made a largely unprovoked attack on a partying crowd, but when I was there things were peaceful.

I left the square to follow several hundred anarchists, dressed in black and mainly wearing face masks making their way up past the National Portrait Gallery, many waving red and black flags. I went with them through the back streets to Piccadilly Circus and then up Regent Street where they turned off into Mayfair and were held off by police when they attacked a RBS branch – one of the main banks to receive a huge government handout.

At Oxford Circus they attacked Topshop, then owned by the prominent tax avoider Sir Philip Green. As I went to take photographs of police arresting one of the protesters and holding him on the ground I was “hit full on the chest by a paint-bomb possibly aimed at the police, although many of the protesters also have an irrational fear of photographers. My cameras were still working and I continued to photograph, but I had also become a subject for the other photographers.”

It wasn’t painful, but it was very messy and bright yellow. I scraped and washed the worst off in a nearby public toilet for around 20 minutes, then went out to take more photographs, joining UK Uncut supporters who had come to hold peaceful protests at tax dodging shops and banks around Oxford St and to party at Oxford Circus.

Eventually I followed them down to Piccadilly Circus where 4 hours after the start of the official march people were still filing past. I stopped there and photographed until the end of the march passed, rather than going with UK Uncut into Fortnum and Mason. Inside the story they sat down and occupied the store peacefully. if noisily calling on them to pay their taxes. After an hour or more a senior police officer told them they were free to leave, promising they could make their way home “without obstruction”. 138 were arrested as they left the store, charged with ‘aggravated trespass’. Most of the cases were latter dropped but at least 10 were found guilty, given a six-month conditional discharge and a £1,000 fine.

Even after the official end of the march there were various other groups following the march route – including a group of Libyans with green flags, marching in support of Colonel Gaddaffi. I walked back to Trafalgar Square where there were still plenty of people around but everything was pretty quiet, so I got on the tube to come home and try to wash more of the paint off.

I think it was later when police made a charge to try and clear Trafalgar Square than almost all the arrests on the actual march took place – according to Google “Further clashes were reported later in Trafalgar Square. 201 people were arrested, and 66 were injured, including 31 police officers.” Had the police simply gone away people would have eventually dispersed and there would have been no trouble.

Back home I spent hours trying to scrub out yellow paint, but the rather expensive jacket I was wearing was only ever really fit to wear for gardening. The also expensive jumper underneath still has some small traces of yellow 14 years and many washes later, though I do sometimes still wear it around the house. Until my Nikon D700 came to the end of its life, beyond economic repair, a few years later I would still come across the occasional speck of yellow paint.

Much more about the day and many more pictures in the following posts on My London Diary

26March: Armed Wing of the TUC
26March: South London Feeder March
26March: TUC March – Midday
26March: Dancing in Trafalgar Square
26March: Black Bloc Goes To Oxford St
26March: UK Uncut Party & Protest
26March: The End of the TUC March

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Stand Up to Racism & Kites Not Drones – 2014

Stand Up to Racism & Kites Not Drones: On Saturday 22 March 2014, the day following UN Anti-Racism Day (chosen to remember the 69 people killed by police in the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa on 21 March 1960), the TUC and Unite Against Fascism organised a march and rally as a part of a European day of action against racism.

Thousands – perhaps as many as 20,000 – turned up to march the short distance from Old Palace Yard opposite parliament to a long rally in Trafalgar Square – on My London Diary I list 19 speakers, though I think there were a few more on the day, but I didn’t stop to listen to all of them, going instead to Hyde Park where a smaller protest by peace activists tried without much success to fly kites in in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan.

Stand Up to Racism – Westminster

This protest stood out for the wide range of people and organisations who had come to join it, “many of whom are sickened by the anti-immigrant policies of successive governments and opposition parties who have long been engaged in trying to outdo each other in the ‘toughness’ of their immigration policies, and have recently moved even further to the right in an effort to neutralise the political threat of UKIP and Nigel Farage.”

And since 2014 the main parties have kept moving to the right. We continue to see this scapegoating of immigrants in the policies both of the current government and its recent Tory predecessors, particularly in the campaigns and legislation against those who cross the channel in small boats, but also in restrictions on those who claim asylum here and the harassment being suffered by many who have made their lives here and contributed to our society but are now threatened by deportation, dragging them away from families and friends. Still we have not set up safe routes for asylum seekers to come to Britain, still we have not offered amnesties to those who have worked here and made useful and essential contribution here for years.

I photographed many of the marchers in Parliament Square, where the march had been planned to start close to the statue of Nelson Mandela who had celebrated “the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and equal opportunities” as the aim of the fight for freedom and equality in South Africa.

*A man taking part in unusual dress for a protest*

Some posed in front on the grass with ‘Big Ben’ in the background, a name I like to use as it annoys pedants, but is what everyone except them still calls the clock tower which Wikipedia describes as “one of the most prominent symbols of the United Kingdom and parliamentary democracy.”

Among those taking part were people from our Roma and Muslim communities who bear no responsibilities for our country’s current problems and suffer more than most from them while at the same time being blamed by the racist right for them.

“In particular we have seen many promoting fear and hate of Muslims associating the whole community with the acts of a tiny few. Islamophobia is rife and has led to more attacks on the Muslim population, including murder and violent attacks on mosques. “

More from 2014 on My London Diary at Stand Up to Racism.

Kites Not Drones Solidarity with Afghanistan – Hyde Park

This protest by peace activists was part of a weekend of solidarity with the Afghan people who traditionally celebrate their New Year (Now Ruz) on the Spring Equinox by flying kites. (Until 1752 the New Year began at around the same time in Britain and its colonies on Lady Day March 25th.)

*Peace activist Maya Evans ties up the Drones on Trial banner ‘EVERY AFGHAN HAS A NAME, WAR IS NOT A VIDEO GAME’*

In 2014 I quoted the organisers statement:

‘Kite flying has become synonymous with Afghanistan as a well loved pursuit which was banned under the Taliban, now Afghans are more used to the presence of UK armed and surveillance drones flying overhead.’

‘We are encouraging peace groups, Afghans in the UK and the Muslim community to fly kites in solidarity with Afghans who now have to live under the mental pressure and physical destruction which British drones (currently operated from RAF Waddington, Lincoln) now reap upon Afghanistan.’

None of those taking part appeared to have had any previous experience in actually flying kites, and although the photographers present helped, the gusty conditions only allowed some short and erratic flights, with one kite getting stuck up a tree. For once a police officer was sympathetic, and having come across to tell the protesters that flying kites was not allowed in this or the other Royal Parks told them that so long as they stayed in this empty area of the park and were not a nuisance to others he would not stop them.

More at Kites Not Drones Solidarity with Afghanistan.

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Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran – 2005

Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran: Saturday March 18th 2006 I went to the large protest on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, photographing as the march gathered in Parliament Square and then as the march went along Victoria Street on its rather indirect route to a rally in Trafalgar Square. As often with large marches, by the time the end of the march had passed me I was too late for it to be worth going on to the rally.

Here – with the usual tidying of capitalisation and a few minor clarifications is the post I made on My London Diary at the time. Of course things have become much worse in various ways but particularly so far as civil liberties in the UK are concerned, the situation in Iraq has been dire and there remains a real threat of military action against Iran, an odious regime but whose people would still suffer greatly from any any invasion.

As always there are many more pictures on My London Diary.

Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran

The Troops Home From Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran march on the 18th was another large event organised by Stop The War, part of an international protest in cities around Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Asia and Africa – a total of around a couple of hundred places. In London there were roughly 20,000 who walked out of Parliament Square past where I was taking pictures, although many like me will not have made it to Trafalgar Square, and others will have joined in later on the route.

The event marked three years since the invasion of Iraq on 20 march 2003. At the front of the march were Theatre Of War representing both Tony Blair and George Bush along with two police and two judges holding placards declaring the two leaders guilty.

*Put your head in a sack, Guantanamo style…*

Behind them were the march leaders, including representatives of families of soldiers killed in Iraq. They had a long, long yellow ribbon with the names – no ranks – of soldiers who have died so far in this illegal war and occupation. Of course many more Iraqis killed – more than 100,000 have died so far.

The invasion, doubtful on legal grounds, was justified on the basis of false information, including information that was known to be incorrect when it was presented to parliament and the people.

Already it has led to deaths in Britain; only a small handful of people (that’s Tony Blair and some of his cabinet) doubt that the London bombings would not have happened if Britain had not joined in the invasion plans. Actually it is hard to believe even they doubt it, but rather they just can’t bring themselves to admit it.

*A protester from Glasgow is warned for using a megaphone in Parliament Square*

We’ve also seen the passage of draconian measures that attack civil liberties in this country (and attempts still being made to get more.) Muslims in particular have been targeted, with a rise in Islamophobia.

*At last the march moved off, with stewards pushing photographers away from the front*

The expenditure in Iraq has been vast. If you want to know why there isn’t the money to raise pensions (and a week of pension protests was ending today with a conference in London) there is a simple 4 letter answer. IRAQ.

Another four letter country, Iran, is currently under threat. Perhaps most chilling are the denials from Blair and Straw, who state that invasion is not on the table. For too many of us that just seems to make it more likely.

Many more pictures on My London Diary

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LSE Cleaners Protest, Lisa Arrested – 2017

LSE Cleaners Protest, Lisa Arrested: Wednesday 15th March 2017 was the first day of a two-day strike by cleaners at the LSE in support of their campaign demanding equal sick pay, holidays and pensions etc to similar workers directly employed by the LSE and an end to bullying and discrimination by their employer Noonan.

I had photographed the start of their campaign at a meeting led by their union, the United Voices of the World, as a part of the LSE’s 3-day ‘Resist’ Festival on 29th September 2016 and a number of protests at the LSE since then.

On 15th March the cleaners had a picket line since the early morning – cleaners start work while most of us are still in bed – and I joined them for a lunchtime rally. Their campaign had a great deal of support from students at the LSE and had a large banner ‘L$E: The London School of Exploitation‘.

Others who had come to support the cleaners included Grim Chip of Poets on the Picket Line and LSE academics Lisa McKenzie and David Graeber and a few from Class War. But there were passionate and effective speeches from a number of the cleaners, including Mildred Simpson, one of the LSE cleaners and others in the UVW.

At the end of the rally, the protesters marched through the campus and across Kingsway to the building which houses the LSE Estates Office where a large group walked into the foyer demanding to see the Estates Manager. Some were carrying mops and buckets to show their support for the cleaners.

Security came to talk with the protesters, though the protesters were making too much noise to hear them and the protest continued with a short speech from UVW General Secretary Petros Elia to explain when the foyer was being occupied.

Eventually the protesters sat down and waited, still making a lot of noise . People working in the building were still able to leave or enter the building unhindered walking past the protest – but would hear and read why the noisy protest was taking place.

Eventually police arrived and talked with the building security and some of the protesters who soon began dancing in the foyer to music on the public address system the UVW had brought.

More police arrived and decided to stop people entering or leaving the offices. They talked with UVW General Secretary Petros Elia who told them it was a peaceful protest and they would leave after they had made their point to the LSE facilities manager – if the police could persuade him to talk to them.

Eventually this talk did take place, though some way back from the foyer where we could only see them from a distance. The talk went on for around five minutes, and Petros then returned smiling to tell the protesters that the LSE who had until now been refusing to talk to the cleaners had agreed to a meeting.

The protesters then walked out to join those who had been continuing to protest on the pavement outside, and they prepared to end the protest.

But unexpectedly police moved in and surrounded Lisa McKenzie telling her she was under arrest.

They pushed her roughly to the wall of the building and handcuffed her pushing away excessively roughly those who tried to stop the arrest and taking her to a waiting police van.

Apparently Lisa was being charged with assault on the receptionist when the protesters entered the building. I was close behind and neither I nor the other protesters saw any evidence of assault by her as she entered the offices holding one end of the banner with others.

Everyone was shocked, both by the arrest and by the police violence. The fact that none of the others holding the banner were arrested strongly suggested that her arrest was politically motivated, probably due to pressure from the LSE for her support for the cleaners – she had organised the ‘Resist’ Festival where the cleaners campaign had been launched.

Lisa had previously been the subject of a clearly political arrest when she was wrongly charged with three offences at a protest in February 2015 while she was standing in the General Election against Iain Duncan Smith. Perhaps the police were still feeling aggrieved after failing signally to achieve a conviction. This time they were not stupid enough to take her to court.

Much more from Wednesday 15th March 2017 on My London Diary:
LSE cleaners strike and protest
Police arrest Lisa again

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No Trident Lobby & Rally 2007

No Trident Lobby & Rally: On March 14th 2007 the House of Commons were debating the principle to replace the existing UK nuclear weapons and begin a process to design, build and commission submarines to replace the existing Vanguard-class submarines carrying Trident nuclear missiles with updated systems over the coming 17 years. The New Labour government, led by PM Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett were supported by the Conservatives and one DUP member and won the final division by 408 votes to 160.

Voting against were many Labour MPs and almost all the Liberal Democrats, SNP and other minority parties, although there were a few absentees.

Around Parliament Square there was a day of protest by Greenpeace and others with the main CND rally called for 5pm and continuing into the evening. Here is the account I wrote of the day for My London Diary – with the usual minor corrections and a few of the pictures I posted – more are still on My London Diary

No Trident Lobby & Rally – Parliament Square, London

I missed Bianca and Annie and the others, but I didn’t miss them as there was plenty else going on. As I walked over Westminster bridge there was the banner flying on the crane in front of the houses of parliament, and there were quite a few people stopping to look at it.

Later, Greenpeace activists got on their bikes and cycled across Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square, where they were stopped by police and threatened with arrest unless they left the roadway and moved onto the square. After a while they all did, many cycling away after a few minutes to cycle around London before joining the ‘fish on a bicycle‘ critical mass that arrived back at the square a few hours later, and got the same ‘off your bike‘ treatment from the police.

*Cyclists are ordered off the road and onto the pavement of Parliament Square under threat of arrest*

The square started to fill up rather more from around 5pm when a silent protest attended by a couple of hundred took place in the far corner of the square. By the time the speeches started at 6.15 there was a respectable crowd, perhaps around 500, but people were still arriving and with the addition of the cyclists there were perhaps closer to a thousand present.

A brief attempt by Greenpeace to protest on the pavement in front of the Houses Of Parliament took the police by surprise, but the group were soon escorted back across the road.

*Greenpeace demonstrators on the pavement outside Parliament*

*Veteran peace campaigner Pat Arrowsmith was among those in the crowd*

Throughout the day there had been plenty of signs of the personal vendetta between some Met officers and the regular protesters in the square. Two hapless officers appear to have been deployed just to stand in front of one fluorescent pink placard, and there were some incidents of minor harassment. The injunction thrown out by the judge at Southwark Court recently showed how the police are wasting our money in this respect.

*Brian Haw: Find Your Courage; Share Your Vision; Change Your World. (T-shirt from Dan Wilkins, The Nth Degree.)*

Apparently the latest approach to try and remove the protesters from the square comes from London Mayor Ken Livingstone who is worried about the grass being damaged by the tents there. As I remarked when this was mentioned, “grass regenerates, dead children don’t.” Perhaps we should start a ‘Brian [Haw] For Mayor‘ campaign.

*We need Trident “like a fish needs a bicycle”*

Several Labour MPs came out from the house to address the meeting, along with many activists. Bruce Kent started his speech by thanking Brian Haw for allowing the demo to use his back garden, and Brian later came from his protest at the front of the square to address the meeting.

This time the government got its vote, but there will be later occasions to oppose Trident, as well as the continuing actions at Faslane which those at the demo were urged to take part in.

Trident replacement is still continuing in 2025, with the government being committed to the building of four replacement submarines by the early 2030s and an extension to the life of the Trident missiles potentially to the early 2060s as well as work taking place now to produce replacement nuclear warheads in the 2030s. It is an important support to the UK arms industry but of little or no military consequence with its obscene cost threatening our ability to defend the country by conventional means and it remains – like all nuclear weapons – a definite threat to the peace and future of the world.

Many more pictures on My London Diary beginning here.

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Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine – 2015

Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine: Ten years ago on Friday 13th March 2015 I photographed four very different protests in London, beginning outside an immigration tribunal in Feltham, going from there to Trafalgar Square where people where protesting against ‘canned hunting’ of lions, on to Kensington Gore where cleaners were demanding a living wage at the Royal College of Art and finally to the offices of G4S on Victoria St, Westminster for a protest against the imprisonment and torture of four young Palestinian boys by Israel.

Let Ife Stay in the UK! – York House Immigration Tribunal, Feltham

Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine - 2015

York House where the Immigration Tribunal is based is on an industrial estate halfway between Feltham and Heathrow on the western fringes of London and protesters had not found it easy to get there. I arrived a little late and other protesters only arrived shortly before I left, with others still on their way.

The protest had been held up at the start when security at the tribunal had told the protesters they were not allowed to protest outside the offices, and had called the police. But the police had come and confirmed that not only they had the right to protest there but also that people could take photographs outside the tribunal – though of course cameras and recording equipment were not allowed inside the tribunal.

The protesters had come to demand that 2-year-old Ife, who had Down’s syndrome, and her mother should be allowed to stay at their Peckham home where she can receive essential healthcare and support and not be deported to Nigeria. They intended to stay until after the end of the tribunal hearing later in the day.

The protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Group had brought with them posters covered with the sheets of a local petition to keep Ife here with nearly a thousand signatures, as well was posters denouncing the UK’s racist immigration laws and also calling for justice for Jimmy Mubenga, killed by racist G4S deportation officers during his forced deportation flight from Britain.

Let Ife Stay in the UK!

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting – Trafalgar Square

Several hundred gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest against ‘canned hunting’, where lions are bred and raised tame on farms in South Africa for rich visitors to pet, to ‘walk with lions’ and to shoot as trophy heads.

The protesters say this degrades a noble animals and threatens wild lions, which are captured for farm breeding to improve the quality of the stock.

Only very young cubs are safe to pet and young female lions are often killed once they become too large to pet as there is much less demand for female lions as hunting trophies.

After speeches and photographs on the North Terrace I was invited to go with one of the protesters to South Africa House where he stood in the entrance with a placard and poster until security told us to leave.

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art – Kensington Gore

I met with protesters from the IWGB (Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain) at the Royal College of Art where they had come at lunchtime to demand that cleaners be immediately paid the London Living Wage. Previous pressure from the IWGB had led to the RCA saying it would pay the living wage from September 2015, but the cleaners needed it now, not in sixth months time.

After a noisy protest outside the college entrance in a mews just off the main road where they were joined by around 50 students in support the marched onto Kensington Gore for a more public protest on the east side of the college facing the Royal Albert Hall.

Here there were speeches and chanting and a great deal of noise from the drums and vuvuzelas before the protesters went back to continue their protest at the college entrance.

From here they moved further down the mews and to an almost enclosed yard at the rear of the college next to a dining area keeping up a barrage of noise. After keeping up their loud protest for around an hour they finished with a warning to RCA management that they would be back and keep up the protests until their demands were met.

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S – Victoria St

British multinational private security company G4S plays a key role in running jails in Israel where thousands of Palestinians are held.

Among the prisoners being held and tortured were 5 young boys from Hares in the northern West Bank of Palestine, and the Islamic Inminds Human Rights Group were protesting outside the G4S offices on Victoria St demanding their immediate release.

The boys were arrested after an Israeli illegal settler crashed into the back of an Israeli truck and they were alleged to have caused the collision by throwing stones.

That had happened two years earlier and the boys had now been held without trial for two years for the alleged crime – for which there appeared to be no evidence.

One of the five, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh Suleiman, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to 15 years in prison on the basis of a statement obtained by torture that he was not allowed to read before being forced to sign.

In 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published its opinion on his case. They called his detention ‘discriminatory’ and ‘arbitrary’ and called for his immediate release by Israel. Israel ignores most if not all UN opinions.

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S

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UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March – 2010

UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March: There is a long history of protests where anti-fascists come to oppose marches and rallies by extreme right groups in London, including of course the Battle of Cable Street, but I think we have had more of them in recent years, if not on that same scale.

But looking back on my coverage of this event of Friday 5th March 2010 what we have seen different is the policing of such confrontations. The more recent such events have seen huge mobilisations of police to keep the two groups apart, with extensive use of double barriers with a large ‘sterile’ no go area between them, and often some fairly aggressive policing and arrests to achieve this.

Attending more recent events journalists and photographers have had to choose which side of the event to be at, with often rather long detours being needed to go between the two – and having a Press Card is seldom of any use.

In 2010 police did keep the two groups apart, but only on opposite pavements of the road in front of the Houses of Parliament, and as my photographs show, I was able to move fairly freely from side to side.

Unite Against Fascism had tried to block the road a couple of hours before the EDL march after holding their rally in Old Palace Yard on the north side, but were then forced across the road onto the opposite pavement by police. I wasn’t there to see this but was told by others that there had been a few arrests when people had refused to move.

I had walked away down Millbank where the EDL were to hold a rally before marching to Parliament. I was early and nobody was there but as I had expected there were several hundred at a packed pub a couple of hundred yards further on with many standing on the pavement outside.

Most were in in a good mood and happy to talk to me and other journalists about why they were protesting – and you can read more about this on My London Dairy. I think I represented them fairly in my article, though as always they felt strongly that they did not get fair treatment in the press. I felt that the coverage was generally fairly accurate, the problem was more with the views and actions of some EDL members rather than the reporting.

As I noted in my account: “Later during the actual march I did get sworn at, threatened and given the finger, but only by a small minority of marchers, and a young female Asian journalist seemed to attract considerably more aggravation than me. There was also a considerable amount of clearly anti-Muslim shouting and singing, and the placards and slogans that attack the building of mosques seem to threaten all Muslims rather than just the extremists. The atmosphere was unpleasant, and really gave the lie to the earlier denials of racism.”

I went along with them to the rally outside Tate Britain, but the start was delayed and they went back to the pub. When it did finally start the main speaker was the Sikh Amit Singh (Guramit Singh Kalirai), and his speech seemed to me at times to be clearly racist in its attacks on Muslims. Police took no action over this or his other speeches, but three years later he was jailed for taking part in a violent attempted armed robbery.

From there the EDL were escorted by police as they marched to Parliament and taken into a pen on the north side of the road opposite the UAF. As I commented, “The first thing that many of the EDL did on arriving in the pen was to urinate against the wall of Westminster Abbey” but mostly they shouted often racist abuse at the UAF who responded with calling them racists and fascists.

The EDL made great play of denying they were racists and showing off their few Black and Asian members to the press. But there was a hugely visible difference between their largely white male crowd and those across the road which reflected the multiracial nature of London – and where women were in a majority.

After around an hour of shouting across the road the UAF crowd began slowly to drift away. Police kept the EDL in their pen but did escort a few to Westminster Station.

I decided it was time to leave. As I commented I hadn’t enjoyed spending much of the afternoon in the company of the EDL “hearing their racism and right wing simplicities. It was an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon, but I think its important to show these events and these people honestly.”

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary at UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March.

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King’s College Divest Oil & Gas Now! Strand, London – 2017

King’s College Divest Oil & Gas Now: On Thursday 9th February a colourful protest on the pavement in front of the college’s main buildings on London’s Strand called for the college to disinvest from fossil fuels.

The world desperately needs to move away from burning coal, oil and gas for energy production and transport, as has been clear for at least the last 30 years and recent temperature rise and increasing incidence of disruptive fires, floods and other extreme weather events make impossible to ignore.

Yet governments around the world largely continue to ignore this, or make attempts which are far too little and far too late, with the recently elected demented US president even determined to increase his countries emissions, led by the lobbying of the US industry only interested in its own short-term profits.

Let the world burn seems to be the message from the “ultra-wealthy stakeholders” while they plan their doomsday bunkers in the USA, Alaska or the Antarctic complete with military security forces to keep out the raiders and angry mobs.

Yet the UK financial sector still enables to extraction of more fossil fuels which endanger the future of our civilisation and human life on the planet. Banks still bankroll them, insurance companies still insure their climate destroying activities and many respectable organisations still invest in them, including pension funds, though increasingly investors are divesting.

And one that has now divested is King’s College, who state: “In 2017, King’s committed to full divestment from all fossil fuels by the end of 2022. We achieved this target in early 2021. King’s also does not invest in tobacco and armaments. In 2023, we reached the target to invest 40% of our endowment in investments with socially responsible benefits two years early.“

Although I suspect King’s would say that this protest had no effect on their decision, I’m sure that this campaign and this very public protest was a major factor in moving them in this direction.

And it was successful because it was noisy, public and colourful, employing the kinds of methods that led the Tories to bring in new laws restricting our rights to protest and giving the police new powers to try to prevent effective protest. We still have the right to protest but are now expected to do so discretely.

The one arrest of those taking part in the Stand Up to Racism protest a few days ago on February 1st was of one of those who lit a smoke flare, and similar arrests have been made at other recent protests. Setting off of fireworks on our streets has been illegal since 1875, but only recently have police begun to enforce this against the use of distress flares in protests.

People have been arrested for sticking things on walls and windows, even though they can be readily removed without damage.

In this protest police attempted to take the names and addresses of those who had made small blobs of colour using washable paint on a concrete pillar. This was done as a gesture of solidarity with PhD student Roger Hallam, one of the leading campaigners aat King’s who was suspended by the college for writing “Divest From Oil and Gas Now. Out of Time!” in washable paint at an earlier protest. Like the blobs this had washed off easily without trace, as was other painting I photographed him doing and being arrested for in the ‘Life Not Money’ protest at nearby LSE a couple of months later

*Roger Hallam is arrested at Life Not Money protest at LSE, April 25th 2017*

Roger Hallam, one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, is now serving five years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy for organising protests to block the M25, a draconian sentence for a peaceful campaigner. Sixteen Just Stop Oil protesters were given jail sentences last year for peacefully protesting in response to the climate crisis and at their trials were prevented from defending themselves by explaining their motives to the jury. Others are being held on remand for long periods. We now have political policing, political trials and political prisoners in the UK.

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Anti-Fascists Oppose the Far Right – 1 Feb 2025

Anti-Fascists Oppose the Far Right: Last Saturday, 1st February 2025, I photographed one of two marches taking place in London, kept well separate by a large force of police who had restricted the protests to widely separated routes though ending close to each other.

Supporters of “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley Lennon) currently in jail after pleading guilty to contempt of court had called a protest to demand his release, in a march they described as ‘Unite The Kingdom’ and ‘Stop the Isolation’. Robinson is apparently in solitary confinement in HMP Woodhill for his own safety, and has refused to remove the video he was sentenced for sharing which is pinned to the top of his ‘X’ account. They began their march at Waterloo Station, marching across Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square.

In response Stand Up to Racism had called a counter-demonstration to oppose this march and more generally the rise of the far-right in Britain. This met in St James’s Street just off Piccadilly and marched to a rally in Whitehall.

According to press reports both marches were of a similar size, perhaps between five and ten thousand marchers, though some at the extreme right event claimed a hundred thousand had marched.

During the Covid lockdown there were no protests for me to photograph and I began to post here on >Re:PHOTO much more frequently about my older work, both protests I had covered in earlier years and also my walks in and around London photographing buildings and urban landscape in the previous century.

So for some months there was nothing for me to add to my posts in My London Diary web site. Which was just as well as I was getting uncomfortably close to the limit of the number of files and folders I could host on the web space I have – which hosts this blog and a number of other small web sites. That limit is 262,144 and currently My London Diary has 194,257 Files and 2,938 Folders, with >Re:PHOTO taking up most of the rest. So even when I was able to cover protests again I had to change my ways, posting the images in Facebook albums with just a link and one or two pictures on my own web space. Finally I gave up new postings on My London Diary in January 2022, though the site remains in place and I think is an important archive.

Time moves on and although I’m still photographing protests I am attending rather fewer than in earlier years and taking things easier. While ten years ago I might sometimes work on my feet for five or six hours, now after around three I’m often feeling too tired to continue, pack up and go home. And while back then I might go our five days a week, now its generally one or two, mainly on Saturdays. And while in past years I would certainly have tried to cover both marches, this year I chose just one, the counter-protest by Stand Up To Racism.

Over the years I have covered quite a few extreme right events, but I decided to leave this one to younger photographers. At many previous events I’ve been threatened, pointed out as someone who should be attacked, spat at and more, despite trying to cover them and report them fairly even though I disagree with their views. People have tried to stop me photographing and have tried to grab my equipment and police haven’t always been ready to help.

At the Stand Up To Racism event there was a far more positive atmosphere. Generally people were happy, sometimes even eager, to be photographed and I was able to walk freely through a packed crowd before the march began making pictures, as well as inside the march itself.

Of course the people at the protest were angry at the way the country (and the world) seems to be drifting towards the right, with more draconian legislation restricting our right to protest, long sentences for peaceful protesters and the kind of political policing we have seen over demonstrations calling for an end to the killing in Palestine. And some at least would be ready to fight the fascists on the streets as people did in the 1930s at Cable Street and elsewhere – and Jewish groups did after the end of the war.

*Anti-fascists from the IWW – Industrial Workers of the World were being watched closely by a squad of police*

But while being determined to stop the drift to the right in Britain – which appears to have been accelerated by the coming to power of Labour with a large majority – this was a march of the reasonable, the kind of people who will look at evidence rather than believe the lies and manipulations of the right wing media, people who embody the kind of values which I feel are important and which gave Britain hope after defeating the Nazis and led to the setting up of the welfare state, with the NHS and an Education Act that tried to provide a free and fair education. The kind of British values which I think the majority of us still believe in although they have been seriously eroded by successive governments for the benefit of that small minority – the 1% in what is becoming an increasingly unequal society.

*Police arrest a man after several flares were set off.*

My pictures tell something of the story of the march. It was entirely peaceful. I missed seeing the handful of the extreme right who had come to try to disrupt it and were arrested for breaching the restrictions that police had laid down. I saw only one person arrested, for setting off a smoke flare. I saw the smoke from several flares around a hundred yards away and rushed towards it, but the crowd of marchers across the whole of Piccadilly made this difficult and by the time I arrived a young man was being held by police surrounded by a crowd yelling for them to release him.

*NEU marchers. Many trade unions supported the march*

I stayed with the march until the end of it went into Whitehall where there was to be a longer rally than that before the start. Suddenly I felt rather tired it decided it was time to go home.

There are two albums on Facebook with my pictures from the Stand Up to Racism march:
Stop The Far Right National Anti-Racist Protest. London
More from the Stop The Far Right National Anti-Racist Protest

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Housing and Planning Bill March – 2016

Housing and Planning Bill March: On Saturday 30th January 2016 housing activists including some local councillors and housing activist groups mainly from South London including Class War marched from the Imperial War Museum to Downing St in a protest organised by Lambeth Housing Activists against the Housing and Planning Bill.

They say the bill will have a particularly large impact in London and greatly worsen the already acute housing crisis here.

Speeches at the rally before the march in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park at the side of the Imperial War Museum by Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett and an number of housing activists including Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing were warmly applauded.

But there was one exception; when Southwark Council Cabinet Member for Housing Richard Livingstone the atmosphere changed, with boos and loud heckling from several people in the crowd including Elmer.

The arguments continued in the crowd after Livingstone had left the platform with Elmer pointing out the scandal over the demolition of the Heygate Estate and now the Aylesbury estate, where thousands of council homes have been demolished and few of the promises made by Southwark Council have been kept.

Financially and morally Heygate was a scandal, with the council making derisory offers of compensation to leaseholders, far less than the value of comparable properties in the area and a huge loss of social housing, while getting rid of a huge public asset at a fraction of its true value. And since it was something the council seemed determined to repeat, and it is not surprising that feelings ran high.

Rather to the surprise of many the march set off walking in the opposite direction to its final destination of Downing Street, and it soon became clear that we were on a tour of Lambeth rather than taking a direct route.

“Class War decided to liven things up a little, first by dancing along the street singing the ‘Lambeth Walk’ and then by rushing across the pavement towards a large estate agency.

Police formed a line to stop them entering and they stood outside for some minutes with their banners – the field of crosses with the message ‘We have found new homes of for the rich’ and the Lucy Parsons banner with its quotation “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live” before rejoining the march.”

For much of the march Lisa Mackenzie who had stood at Class War’s candidate in the 2015 General Election against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford stood in front of the banners waving a plastic trident with a small banner ‘This Bill is the end of Council Housing’ with its second message an image of David Cameron and the alternative text ‘Bell End’. At times she donned a face mask of Smith.

Eventually the march reached Downing Street where police tried to direct them to the opposite side of Whitehall, but the marchers walked past them and crossed back to protest outside the gates, blocking traffic on Whitehall.

Here there were several groups listening to speakers and a samba band playing. Eventually police persuaded most of them to leave the road and I left for home.

More pictures at Housing and Planning Bill March.

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