>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Cows, Cindy, Fonthill and Finsbury Park – 1989

*Milking, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-63*

Cows, Cindy, Fonthill and Finsbury Park: I couldn’t resist posting another of those sgraffito panels from the former Friern Manor Dairy Farm on Stroud Green Rd, though I suspect even when these were made the conditions for both cows and milkmaids were very different from those enjoyed in the stalls behing the facade.

Modern dairy practice is of course also very different as you can see in Andrea Arnold’s 2021 cinéma vérité-style film ‘Cow‘, not made as vegan propaganda but giving a very direct view of how we use animals to produce food for the masses. Watching it didn’t convert me to the vegan cause but I do think we need to have and enforce much stricter standards of animal welfare – though those in the UK are already firmer than in most countries. I already pay more for milk and would happily pay even more.

*Cindy Trading Company, Hanley Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington,1989 89-9f-66*

The Old Diary is on the corner of Hanley Road and I walked down here just a short distance and photographed this shopfront which appeared to be of a former travel agency, possibly the ‘Flight Line Cruise’ whose phone number is written large. The Cindy Trading Company whose name is on the door was later listed as a hardware store selling a range of DIY and home improvement items at 186 Stroud Green Road, a short distance away – and is now a dissolved company.

At right is an advertisement for Metposts and I may have been attracted by this as I had recently put in a fence on one side of my garden at home using these. It wasn’t quite as easy as the advert suggests and by the time I’d finished and put down the sledgehammer I’d decided digging and concrete might have been easier.

*Shop, Fonthill Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-45*

I’m unsure what route I took from Hanley Road to Fonthill Road, possibly going down Regina Road or Evershot Road. I took a couple of pictures – neither digitised – of an interesting yard with two rather strange bell towers in the background, nothing like anything that I can now see in satellite images of the area, possibly a long-demolished public building,

Fortunately the location of this picture is confirmed by the reflection of the street sign for Fonthill Road. Also reflected is a sign for John Rowan Bookmaker, the company which developed the well-known Rowans Tenpin Bowl opposite Finsbury Park Station on Stround Green Road in what had previouly been a tram shed, cinema and Bingo hall.

By 1989 this end of Fonthill Road was already beginning to become one of London’s major fashion centres – and a few pictures I’ve not yet digitised reflect this. A few from 1989 in colour start here.

My walk on 24th September was coming to an end, and I took just one more picture of a shopfront on Seven Sister Road before catching the Victoria Line on my way home. But I was back in Finsbury Park a week later and I’ll include a couple of pictures from the actual park, Finsbury Park to end this post.

*Free Nelson Mandela, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-31*

Nelson Mandela was released unconditionally from Victor Verster Prison on 11th February 1990 following years of campaigning for his release. Most of the other graffiti on this wall is unintelligible black scribble at least to me, but I can also make out in white ‘PARANOID EYES’ -presumably from the song on Pink Floyd’s 1983 album The Final Cut.

*New River, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9f-21*

The New River was dug in 1613 to supply fresh drinking water to London from Chadwell and Amwell Springs near Ware in Hertfordshire.

Finsbury Park is around three miles from Finsbury which is on the northern edge of the City of London. People in Finsbury in 1841 signed a petition calling for a park that the people living in poverty in the area could make use of, and this was one of four sites that were considered.

This was around the last remains of the old Hornsey Wood, and by around 1800 had been developed with tea rooms and later a pub, as well as an artificial boating lake using water pumped up from the New River, and it was a popular place for shooting and archery “and probably cock fighting and other blood sports.”

There was some local opposition to sharing the area with the poor of Finsbury but the plans for what was originally to be called Albert Park (after Queen Victoria’s husband) went ahead, and the renamed Finsbury Park was approved by an Act of Parliament in 1857, though only completed and opened by 1869.

*New River, Finsbury Park, Manor House, Haringey, 1989 89-10a-02*

Lack of finance meant the park had deteriorate significantly by the 1980s, and the situation – like much in London – was greatly worsened when the Greater London Council was terminated with extreme malice by Thatcher in 1986. Haringey Council became responsible for the park “but without sufficient funding or a statutory obligation for the park’s upkeep.”

More recently £5 million Lottery Funding has enabled significant renovation of the park and its facilities. I last went to the park in March 2023 for the planting of a tree in memory of peace campaigner Bruce Kent by local MP Jeremy Corbyn and Kent’s wife Valerie. Both Kent and Corbyn were members of the Friends of Finsbury Park, with Corbyn now being a patron.

Adidas, Wallenberg, Iraq – 2012

Adidas, Wallenberg, Iraq – Three very different events on Saturday 4th August 2012. You may remember that we had the Olympics in London in 2012 and War on Want held an Olympic-themed protest against the official Olympic sportswear partner. People celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the great heroes of the last century and on the nearest Saturday to August 8th which Iraq celebrates as end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 there was an Iraq festival on the South Bank.

Adidas Stop Your Olympic Exploitation – Oxford St

War on Want came to Adidas in Oxford Street at the peak of the London Olympics to highlight their claims that workers making clothes for the official sportswear partner of London 2012 get poverty wages are not allowed to form unions and have little or no job security.

They say thousands of workers making closing for Adidas in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and China are not paid enough to cover basic essentials like housing, food, education and health care. Wages are so low that workers often need to work far longer hours than are legal – up to 90 hour weeks and are told if they try to organise trade unions to defend their rights, they face harassment or they will be fired.

Because of the pressures of the Olympics, Oxford Street was being policed by Scottish officers who objected to the protest involving games including badminton and a hurdles race on the grounds that people walking past might be injured by the players.

War on Want protesters moved a few yards onto a side street to continue their protest, but then came back onto Oxford Street to continue the hurdles races, with two runners making their way over the hurdles of ‘POVERTY WAGES’, ‘UNION BUSTING’ and ’90 HOUR WEEK’. The police let them play for a few minutes before telling them they had to stop as Adidas had complained – and they owned the area pavement in front of the store.

A woman from Adidas’s PR agency came to talk to me as I was beginning to take photographs and later sent me a detailed statement in which they denied War on Want’s claims but only provided any evidence based on activities in Bangladesh rather than the countries War on Want was protesting about. War on Want also published a press release giving detailed evidence on which their protest was based.

The protest was still continuing when I had to leave well over an hour after it began, with people still handing out leaflets including a freepost postcard to Herbert Hainer, the CEO of Adidas, care of War on Want, calling for Adidas to end the exploitation of workers.

More pictures at Adidas Stop Your Olympic Exploitation.

Raoul Wallenberg 100th Anniversary – Great Cumberland Place

People around the world were celebrating Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who working in Budapest during the Second World War saved over 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps by issuing them with ‘protective passports’ identifying their bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation.

Although these had no legal status, they looked impressive and, sometimes with the aid of a little bribery, saved the bearers from deportation.

Wallenberg was born in Sweden on 4th August 1912 and was detained by Russian Security Services SMERSH during the siege of Budapest as a suspected spy on 17 January 1945 and taken to Moscow where he was most probably executed in the Lubyanka prison in 1947.

The London ceremony took place around the monument to him in Great Cumberland Place, outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in 1997. The statue by sculptor Philip Jackson, shows shows Wallenberg standing in front a a large wall made of stacks of the passports with his name inscribed high on it.

There were readings of Psalms, an address by Rector Michael Persson from the Swedish Church in London about Wallenberg, whose actions followed the Lutheran ideal of living, a calling to be yourself and to do good for other people. Wreaths were laid and there were a number of speeches with the event ending with a choir from the Swedish church singing.

Raoul Wallenberg 100th Anniversary

Iraq Day Festival, Queen’s Walk, South Bank

The festival had been “organized to celebrate the games with a hint of Iraq flavor” by the Iraqi Culture Centre in London and sponsored by Bayt Al Hekima- Baghdad in conjunction with Local Leader London 2012 program.

There was Iraqi music, art and food, although since it was taking place in Ramadan many of the Iraqis at the festival were fasting and unable to eat during the event.

*These Kurdish musicians were told they had to leave and another group of Iraqi musicians replaced them*

Although there was much of interest things didn’t go smoothly, either with the weather where there were some heavy showers or between the organisers and some of the performers.

One woman angrily stormed off the platform, furious at what she felt was cultural discrimination against the Kurds. And after I had been asked to photograph a fashion show that was to start in two minutes there was a loud and bitter argument between its director and the organisers, and an hour later when I went home it had yet to start.

More pictures Iraq Day Festival

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No New Coal Rally and March – Rochester, Kent 2008

No New Coal Rally and March: On Sunday 3rd August I took a train to Rochester in Kent to photograph a rally in the town of Rochester from which people were marching to the Climate Camp was at Kingsnorth on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent where E.ON were intending to build the country’s first new coal-fired power station in 30 years.

I wasn’t able to attend the Climate Camp itself as I was leaving for Glasgow early the following morning so I left the marchers on their way to the site, seven miles away.

There was a large police presence at the rally and for the march, and later at Kingsnorth a number of protesters were arrested, with others assaulted by police who carried out a repressive action against the campers.

Press who had gone to cover the event were stopped and searchers, some multiple times and were subjected to both obvious and secret filming, as well as being pushed and shoved by police who demanded unnecessary personal information. Months later Kent Police admitted they had been wrong to film journalists, but claimed it was hard to tell them from the protesters – despite the fact that they all wore or showed the police-recognised UK Press Cards.

E.ON’s proposals to build a new and highly polluting power station at Kingsnorth had gone largely unnoticed in the media until the Climate Camp brought the issue to national attention. The over-reaction by the police helped to raise its profile, as did the trail of the Kingsnorth Six, activists arrested for causing an alleged £30,000 damage to one of the chimneys of the existing coal-fired in October 2007 and charged with criminal damage.

The activists claimed they had “lawful excuse” for their actions in that they carried it out to help prevent the much greater damage that a new coal-fired power station would cause by accelerating climate change.

Their trial heard evident from five defence witnesses, one of them Professor James Hansen, a former climate change adviser to the US White House, who stated that the social cost of emitting a tonne of CO2 was around £50. He estimated that a new coal-fired power station would cause around £1 million worth of damage per day it ran.

In truth the activists had not actually damaged the chimney significantly, but had simply painted the word ‘Gordon‘ on it, but they were acquitted in September 2008 because the jury found the damage they did to the smokestack was outweighed by the harm done to the planet by emissions from the power station.

E.ON was forced to abandon its plans largely because of the substantial public protests and criticism much of it arising from the publicity given to the Climate Camp and the trial.

The UK establishment were appalled by the verdict, and we have recently seen part of their reaction to this in the recent trial of Just Stop Oil activists who were judged to have committed contempt of court for attempting to introduce similar issues in their defence and then given draconian sentences for their peaceful protest. The law is meant to protect the interests of the rich and powerful not the planet.

You can read more about the rally in Rochester and the march towards Kingsnorth on My London Diary. One Climate Camp Caravan had started from Heathrow a week ago and another, the Stop Incineration Climate Camp Caravan had been travelling from Brighton, both demonstrating at various related sites along their routes and they met on Sunday morning in the middle of Rochester for a ‘No New Coal’ Rally attended by around 300 people.

After the rally the protesters set off to march to Kingsnorth and I went with them across the Medway and up the long hill in Strood before leaving them and returning to Strood station.

More at No New Coal Rally an d March.

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An English Carnival – Hayling Island 2008

An English Carnival – Hayling Island: Back in the 1930s and 1950s every town or even village of a reasonable size would have an annual carnival where the inhabitants dressed up to take part in a carnival parade with groups competing with each other to create the best float. And there would be a carnival queen and a fancy dress competition, baby show, dog show and a good deal of largely harmless fun.

I think it was the growth of television that really killed most of these off. Rather than going out and making their own fun people entertained themselves by sitting in front of the box and watching others doing things. Organising carnivals involved a lot of work and fewer and fewer people came to join the carnival committee who did most of it. Our local carnival ended I think in the 1980s, though there is still one in a nearby town.

Carnivals also involved adults and children working together, something that became rather more problematic with media campaigns on “stranger danger” (family, relatives and friends are more often the problem.) Photographing children also became more difficult – and events involving them were one of the few things where I made sure always to wear my press card visibly to reassure people.

I think it was the disappearing of English carnivals that led to the Arts Council to give a grant to a couple of my friends to record those still taking place. And occasionally I would be persuaded to join one or both of them to go along with them.

Hayling Island on August 2nd 2008 was one of these occasions – and I’d also been there in 2001 and 2005.

Hayling Island is an island close to Porsmouth on the South Coast and has a road bridge from the mainland – there used also to be a railway but Beeching cut this in 1963 and the rail bridge was demolished three years later.

In the mid-20th century Hayling Island was a popular holiday resort for Londoners – part of part of ‘London-by-the-sea’ – and its population doubled in the summer months. Rather fewer go there now, but it remains a seaside resort.

In 2008 Hayling Island Carnival still had all the things an English Carnival should have – and you can see some in my pictures. But a few years later the carnival seems to have come to an end because of a shortage of volunteers.

Later in 2008 together with friends we held the show ‘English Carnival’ during the East London Photo Festival in a gallery in Shoreditch. Although the show is long closed you can still see all the work online.

Although many traditional English Carnivals have disappeared, new carnivals have come to take their place, and I’ve photographed a number of these. While the other photographers had pictures from traditional English carnivals, my contribution to that show was a set of 20 black and white pictures NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL 1990-2001

More on My London Diary from Hayling Island Carnival 2008.

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Manchester Short Break – 2018

Manchester Short Break: We arrived in Manchester on Wednesday August 1st 2018 for a short break. Manchester was the city where I had met Linda and where we had spent the first penniless two years of our married life, and most of our honeymoon – apart from a day trip to the Lake District – but had only paid a few brief visits together since we left in 1970.

A ten minute walk from Manchester Piccadilly took us to our hotel. It was cheap and basic but had a good view from our sixth floor room overlooking the Ashton Canal – with the short New Islington Branch going under the bridge in the centre of the picture.

We dropped our bags and went out for a long walk around the hotel and into the centre of the city. Ours was a modern building but many of the old mills had been converted into hotels.

We walked past the main entrance to what had been the University of Manchester Institute of Technology where I often shared a large goods lift with the Principal, Lord Bowden on my way into work. A year or so earlier he had been Harold Wilson’s Minister for Education and Science and this was then very much part of the ‘white heat of technology‘.

After a year of work in a lab there I then moved to the brand new Chemistry tower a short distance away, a hazardous move carrying fragile glass equipment – much of which I had spent months building myself – and highly toxic chemicals. It was a health and safety nightmare, but we survived.

We walked on to take a look in a couple of places at the River Medlock. and on Oxford Road I photographed the splendid Refuge Assurance Building, 1891 by Alfred Waterhouse, extended in 1910 and 1912 by his son Paul Waterhouse, and further extended in 1930s.

Since 1987 it has been a hotel and was renamed ‘The Principal Manchester’ in November 2016.

Further down Oxford Road we came to the main university buildings, soot-blackened when I studied there but now cleaned up. I preferred them blackened with soot, particularly main building and Holy Name; Victorian Gothic really needs to be subdued not to be far too fussy. I wrote “It looks too toytown for my taste now, the soot stains gave it gravitas.“

My first year physics lessons were deadly boring and were conducted in a laboratory; the end of the bench where I sat was a small plaque with the message ‘Rutherford first split the atom here‘. An article in The Guardian in 2008 revealed that I and other students and staff were being exposed to radioactive materials left over from the work by his groups and later researchers in the building until the Physics department left it in 1970. But most of the contamination – including significant amounts of polonium – the material used to kill Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko – probably dated from the early years as before the death of the discoverer of polonium Marie Curie in 1934 were not fully appreciated. Her notebooks “in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, are still so radioactive that it is not considered safe to handle them.” I suspect the bench at which I sat and made notes will also have been highly radioactive.

At least two Manchester University lecturers who worked in these rooms after they were taken over by the psychology department are presumed to have died because of the radiation. The building has now been decontaminated and is in use as university offices. I don’t know what happened to that small I think brass plaque when the Physics department moved out – I suspect it may have been lost – and it may also have been dangerously radioactive. But a safe blue plaque was put on the outside of the building in 1986 and states “Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937) Nobel Laureate led this laboratory 1907 – 1919 herein discovered the nuclear atom, split the atom, and initiated the field of nuclear physics” and in 2016 the university renamed the building the Rutherford Building.

We walked a little through the campus to see the Arts Faculty Building where Linda studied and briefly taught in 1971-2 and then continued down Oxford Road to take a brief look at the outside of our first home in a upper floor flat on a side-street off Platt Lane – the house had a new doorm but otherwise was much the same. If it is still flats I suspect the rent may be a little more than the £2 18s 6d a week we paid. The alley at the back of the houses, always clean and tidy when we lived there, was now overgrown.

We wandered a bit around Rusholme and then went further south on Wilmslow Rd, as far as Owens Park where Linda spent three years and I lived for one on the 10th floor of the tower in a room with great views over the city, often obscured by smoke. Security around the site, parts of which were being redeveloped meant I could only view it over the wall, and we walked back up the road to the “Curry Mile” where we had one of the most disappointing Indian meals ever – which made me quite ill the following day.

You can see more pictures from this walk on My London Diary – and also pictures from the next few days when we visited some of the more interesting parts in and around the city.
Manchester Visit
   Ancoats – Saturday
   Central Manchester – Friday
   St Johns Quarter
   Oxford Road to Castlefields
   Mersey Walk &, Fletcher Moss
   Manchester to Didsbury
   Manchester: Canal walk
   To Stockport & Bramhall Hall
   Science & Industry Museum
   Manchester: City Centre – Thursday
   Manchester: Oxford Road
   Manchester: City Centre – Wednesday

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Crouch Hill & Stroud Green – 1989

Crouch Hill & Stroud Green: My walk on Sunday 24th Sepember 1989 continued after I took a train from Blackhorse Road to Crouch Hill. Then the Gospel Oak to Barking line – apparently called by some the Goblin line was one of the least reliable in the country – perhaps it should have been called the Gremlin line. But for once a train came – and on a Sunday too!

The line is now part of the London Overground with a much improved service and in February this year was renamed the Suffragette line. It now also runs beyond Barking to Barking Riverside, though as yet there seems little reason to ever go there.

*Marion Gray, Antiques, 33 Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-21*

Almost immediately out of the station was the fine house, on the end of a rather less grand terrace on the west side of Crouch Hill. The station was opened in 1867/8 as a part of the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway and this accelerated development in the area.

This house was sold in 2017 having long been converted into a ground floor nursery with three flats above. Last year it was covered in scaffolding, presumably for a major refurbishment.

*Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-22*

These shops are on the east side of Crouch Hill, immediately north of Japan Crescent and south of the railway. They still look much the same although the shops have changed and become considerably less useful.

I was attracted by the decorated brickwork, obscured on the leftmost building by some unfortunate cladding, and the curved brick partitions between the houses about the shop fronts.

At extreme right is the pub sign for Marler’s bar, opened in 1983 in a former post office. It’s a pub which has gone through a whole pile of names apprently including Hopsmiths, Noble, Big Fat Sofa, Flag, Racecourse, Tap and Spile and Brave Sir Robin. Andrew Marler was a partner of Tim Martin of Wethersppons, but the history of their collaboration appears to be dulled by alcohol and variously recorded.

Fytos Fashion at 34, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-23 was one of the 20 images that was a part of my web site and book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, and above is the page from that.

*Alley, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-24*

I can tell you little more about EKASA ENTERPRISE WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTOR other than the list printed here – CONFECTIONERY TOBACCO STATIONERY DRINKS GREETING CARDS MEDICINE E.T.C.

They shared the alley, reached through a carriage entrance between shops at 17 Crouch Hill, with Albert E Chapman Ltd, whose sign including also Stretchwall U K Ltd was there until at least 2011.

*Bowler Products Ltd, 14-16, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-25*

I hoped that Bowler products Ltd made either cricket balls or hats but they were Importers and Wholesale Distributors of a whole range of goods listed on their shop front but neither of these.

*Old Style Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-12*

According to the Hornsey Historical Society this Grade II listed building “with its seven sgraffito panels, was built specially for the Friern Manor Dairy Farm Company on the site at the rear of Hanley Road, where the company rented cowsheds and stables.” There had been a dairy here “from the middle of the 19th century, first by Davis & Co. and then by George Taylor” but this building dates from around 1889-95. The company began earlier and an inscription states ESTABLISHED AD. 1836 The artist of the seven panels and architect are unknown, though the bricks came from Tommy Lawrence of Bracknell.

The buildings were let in the 1920s to United Dairies who used them until 1968. After this they eventually in 1997 they were carefully restored to become The Old Diary pub. This closed in 2020 but was reopened in 2022.

Present Day Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-26 — *Present Day Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989*

I photographed all seven panels, and you can find some more pictures of them on Flickr, but here I’ll just share the two, one showing ‘Old Style Delivery‘ by two milkmaids with a yoke across their shoulders carrying pails, and this one, ‘Present Day Delivery‘ with the milkman driving a horse and cart carrying large churns.

Even as far back as I can remember in the immediate post-war years our milk was delivered using an electric milk float, at first I think a trailer with the milkman walking in front with a handle to control the power and steering and later with him sitting in a cab. But I do remember a visit to the outskirts of a small town in Germany back in the 1970s where the milk cart was horse-drawn and the milkman measured out the milk using litre or half-litre jugs into the containers brought out by the hausfraus.

We still now in our suburban area get our milk delivered in bottles by a milk operative in the middle of the night driving a now silent electric vehicle.

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones – 2011

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones: Today Anjem Choudary is due to be sentenced after having been found guilty of directing and encouraging support for the terrorist organisation al-Muhajiroun banned in the UK in 2005. Choudary whose home is in Ilford could face a life sentence.

The prosecution came about after a joint investigation by MI5, Scotland Yard, the New York Police Department, and Canadian police collecting evidence. His home had been bugged and online events were monitored. Police had been conducting separate investigations into his activities in the UK, US and Canada and came together leading to his trial at Woolwich Crown Court where he and a follower were found guilty last week.

Choudary had been a student of Omar Bakri Muhammad and had helped form the Islamist al-Muhajiroun organisation in Britain in 1996. This was proscribed in the UK in 2005 following the London Bombings, but Choudary carried on his activities under groups with various other names, including Al Ghurabaa, proscribed in 2006, and Islam4UK, banned in 2010.

These groups carried out a number of controversial protests to gain wide media coverage, and the East London protest by Muslims Against Crusades on Saturday 30th July 2011 by around 70 men was outnumbered by the press covering it – including me.

This was one of quite a few events where I photographed Choudary, and it appeared to many of us that Choudary, if not actually encouraged by MI5 was certainly being allowed to continue his activities as a way the authorities could keep tag on Islamist activities in the UK.

I heard Choudary speaking in public and was sceptical about the claims he made about ‘Muslim Armies’ but a couple of years later ISIS made them reality. And in June 2014 or shortly after, “Choudary pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s “caliphate,” and its “caliph” (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) “‘via Skype, text and phone’ during dinner at a restaurant in London.”

This was a step too far for the British state and in August 2015 he was charged under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for inviting support of a proscribed organisation and finally convicted in July 2016. He was sentenced to 5 years six months in prison.

He left prison in October 2018, but there were many conditions attached to his release and it was only in October 2021 that he was fully able to resume his campaigning online. The current conviction relates to his actions since then.

My London Diary has a long account of the march march from Leyton to Walthamstow calling for Sharia Zones by ‘Muslims Against Crusades’, calling for the setting up of Sharia Controlled Zones in the UK which ‘Islamic rules’ would be enforced by Muslims, along with many photographs.

Although the organisers had told the press there would be a thousand marchers, there were well under a hundred. And although the leaflet handed out by the marchers claimed support from a wide range of organisation, as I explained it was in fact “only supported by a very small circle of him and his fellow extremists.” Very few of the Muslims on the streets it went through showed support and rather more made clear that they were opposed.

My report also has some coverage of several small counter-demonstrations by the English Nationalist Alliance and other right-wing groups, some of which were stopped by police. As the march arrived for the final rally there were some offensive shouts by some ENA supporters but their protest was otherwise peaceful.

During the final rally there were some minor scuffles in a large crowd of Muslim youths as some objected to the speeches by Muslims Against Crusades, but police moved in quickly. Some photographers close to the scene had their cameras grabbed or were pushed as they tried to photograph what was happening, but I was some distance away.

Of course there were no Sharia Controlled Zones in London, just a few notices like these put up by this small group which had no effect. But my picture was widely pirated on at least 86 web sites around the world, used by right-wing extremists to spread the myth that such things existed. DCMA requests got some of them taken down, but they just appeared elsewhere.

Much more about the march at Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones.

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A Damp Sunday in Hull – 2018

A Damp Sunday in Hull: My poston My London Diary for Sunday 29th July 2018 begins with the question “What do you do on a wet Sunday morning in Hull?” and goes on to answer it, and a second post shows how we spent a slightly less damp afternoon in the city. The pictures here with one exception are from that day.

Hull, thanks to the remarkable generosity of Thomas Robinson Ferens, (1847 – 1930), a Methodist, “industrialist and philanthropist, for whom ‘Reckitt’s Blue made Ferens’ gold'”. He lived simply and gave this wealth almost entirely “to worthy causes. In 1920 he was earning £50,000 a year and giving away £47,000 of that, and still teaching Sunday School every week.” Thanks to him Hull has a university with the motto “Lampada Ferens” (carrying the light of learning) and more to the point for wet Sunday mornings, one of the finest municipal galleries in the country, though I had plenty of time for breakfast before it opened at 11 am.

I didn’t photograph the fine exhibition then showing in the gallery of the work of Käthe Kollwitz or any of the other work on display, but went on to meet my wife in Hull Minster where there was an exhibition by the Mission to Seamen and the statue shown above of Lil Bilocca made from issues of the Hull Daily Mail by Gail Hurst. Bilocca was the leader of Hull’s Headscarf Revolutionaries, the Hessle Road Women’s Committee who took direct actioin after three Hull trawlers, St Romanus, Kingston Peridot and Ross Cleveland, sank with the loss of 58 lives in freezing North Atlantic seas around Iceland in January and February 1968.

They fought the trawler owners – and at times the fishermens’ union – to get better safety measures and went to Downing St and persuaded Harold Wilson and his Labour government to review the industry and bring in safety measures which saved thousands of lives. For which she was blacklisted and subjected to a campaign of abuse and hate until her early death in 1988, but is now widely recognised as a hero for her campaign.

The rain had eased off after lunch as we walked along Spring Bank and through Hull General Cemetery on Spring Bank West to Chants on a combined nostalgia trip and on the Larkin trail.

One of the surprises on Spring Bank was the return of Shakespeare, a TV repair shop which I had photographed in the 1980s but more recently had become a Portuguese grocers and, more recently a multicultural food shop. Though it was only the former shop sign and was soon to be covered by a new once for the food store.

And in the cemetery which has been cleared a little – it now has friends, whearas before the council were more its enemies – I was pleased to again find the Monument to Cholera Victims. The 1849 outbreak in Hull killed 1,860 – one in 43 of the city’s inhabitants.

A short detour took us past Linda’s former home and through the Northern Cemetery to visit her family grave and then it was on to Newland Park, a wandering street in which Philip Larking lived in two houses. The entrance to the street has a plaque on the Larkin trail, and the second house he owned there has a plaque and a large toad.

Newland Park is Hull’s most expensive roads, close to the University, and as well as Larkin was also home as another plaque records for 9 years of De Eva Crane in whose house her the International Bee Research Association was formed.

Architecturally of more interest is West Garth, a large ‘Arts & Crafts’ house designed by John Malcolm Dossor (1872-1940) who later became Lord Mayor of Hull. It has a ‘butterfly’ design, with wings at 45 degrees leading off from the central panelled entrance hall. The ground floor room closest to camera was the billiard room, with a full-size table and a bar.

*Taken while staying at West Garth in 2008*

At the rear the wings enclosed a loggia, which was south-facing and acted as a sun trap, where we took afternoon tea when staying there – my wife was for some years a frequent visitor and I sometimes accompanied her. The building also had a fine library, and five large bedrooms. When sold for £620,000 on September 1, 2017 it was Hull’s most expensive house sale for the year, considerably more than the second most expensive (also in Newland Park,) which sold for £450,000.

West Garth had been the childhood home of one of our friends and he moved back to Hull in later life, first buying Larkin’s first home in Newland Park (and where I think his lawnmower killed a hedgehog) and later moving back into West Garth, spending his last years trying to restore it to its original state aiming to get it listed, but sadly he died before the work was completed.

Our day ended at another of the locations on the Larkin trail, with dinner at the Royal Station Hotel. Originally built together with the station in an Italian Renaissance style, it opened as the Station Hotel in 1849, gaining the ‘Royal’ after Queen Victoria visited in 1853. We had stayed there on a previous visit to Hull, but on this occasion were at a more modern and cheaper venue a few minutes walk away.

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March for a People’s Olympics – 2012

March for a People’s Olympics: Twelve years ago on Saturday 28th June 2012 the London Olympics was in full swing and London was suffering from huge restrictions on the activities of ordinary Londoners.

Although the modern Olympic movement was started in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin with high aims it has changed over the years to something very different. He intended them to help build a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sport and stated “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

Instead what we now have is a fiercely nationalistic event, with countries devoting huge resources into training a small elite of athletes and expenisve and highly detailed scientific research to find legal ways to enhance their performances – as well as at least in some countries to find ways to circumvent the tests designed to prevent the use of illegal drugs.

The games have also seen a corporate takeover to provide some of the huge sums needed to stage such events, although taxpayers have also suffered. London 2012 cost £8.77 billion, around three and a half times its original budget, around two thirds from general taxation, a quarter from the National Lottery and the remainder from the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency.

The money for the games in London meant there was less to spend in other areas or the country, and even diverted money from grass roots sport. And huge amounts were spent on infrastructure designed for the needs of a few weeks in 2012 rather than the best interests of the future for the Olympic area.

London in 2012 saw a huge military presence, in part aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist attacks and draconian policing largely aimed at the protection of the brands of the various sponsors.

The ‘Whose Games? Whose City?’ protest had at first been totally banned by the authorities as its start point was only just over 2km from the Olympic stadium. Transport for London had refused permission for them to march along roads which had been designated as emergency backup Games routes. Eventually the march organisers came to an agreement with the police that should an emergency arise the marchers would simply go on to the pavement – something that regularly happens with marches when ambulances and other emergency vehicles are allowed to pass.

The endpoint of the march, Wennington Green, was also around 2km as the crow flies from the stadium, and Tower Hamlets Council, owners of Wennington Green attempted to ban speeches or other events there.

Marchers were also threatened with arrest should they display placards, hold banners or even wear t-shirts with political slogans. But on the day there were no arrests although police did at one point stop and search a man who had cut a piece of police tape. He was released after a large and noisy crowd of marchers gathered around and demanded his release.

The attempts by the authorities to stop the march taking place had led to a great deal of media publicity and press and TV from around the world came to cover the start in Mile End Park.

The march organisers, the Counter Olympics Network (CON) pointed out strongly that this was not an anti-Olympics march, but one that protested at the way what should be a sporting event of noble origins has been taken over by corporate interests.

They pointed out that the games sponsors included “serial polluters, companies which seriously damage the environment and which wreck or take lives, Coca Cola, Rio Tinto, BP, Dow Chemical” as well as stating “G4S, Cisco, and Atos deny people their human rights in a variety of situations while Macdonalds helps to fuel the obesity epidemic. London2012 provides benefits at taxpayers’ expense while receiving little in return.”

They also pointed out the many broken promises and pointed out the doubts about the legacy of the games for East London in particular: “the lack of benefits for local people and businesses, the fantastic expansion of security into our daily lives, the deployment of missiles and large numbers of troops, the unwarranted seizure of public land at Wanstead Flats, Leyton Marsh and Greenwich Park.“

As the march went past the former match factory soldiers on top of the flats watched the marchers who chanted
“Hey Ho, Sebastian Coe
Get your missiles out of Bow“

Another popular chant also mentioned Coe:
“Seb Coe, Get Out, we know what you’re all about!
Missiles, job losses, Olympics for the bosses!”

Chris Nineham of the Stop The Olympic Missiles Campaign was one of the first speakers at the final rally. He pointed out that the London Olympics had already set a number of records, including the largest ever number of arrests on the first day – including 182 cyclists taking part in a ‘Critical Mass’ ride the previous day – the highest ticket prices, the most intensive application of branding rules and the highest level of militarisation of any Olympic games, with far more being spent on security that even in China.

There were, he said, more troops in London than at any time since World War 2, and more than at any time in Afghanistan, and that it was our presence there which made us a terrorist target, calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops.

Much more about the protest and many more pictures at March for a People’s Olympics.

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Rev Billy, Chelsea Manning & Global Racism – 2013

Rev Billy, Chelsea Manning & Global Racism – On Saturday 27th July 2013 I followed the amazing Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir into a branch of HSBC to protest over their support for fossil fuels, went to a vigil supporting whistleblower Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and then a march and rally against Global Racism and Injustice

Rev Billy at HSBC Victoria,

If you’ve not come across Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, a radical performance community based in New York City led by Billy Talen you have missed something. They perform guerrilla theatre actions which amuse and entertain while also highlighting the serious problems the world is facing and calling for action.

The performance in London was one of many at various JP Morgan Chase and HSBC banks in 2012 and 2013 which had begun in New York, a “radicalized midsummer cloud forest dream” against the support given to fossil fuels and climate chaos by the banks and the City of London.

Golden Toads had become extinct in their home in Costa Rica, one of many species that have already become extinct because of climate change. The message of the performance “was a simple one. Fossil Fuels are killing life on this planet. Already many species have suffered extinction, and the continuing huge investment in fossil fuel use backed by the banks and the stock exchange is driving climate change, threatening us all with extinction.“

As I wrote “London’s banks and the London Stock Exchange are playing a key role in the destruction of life on the planet, with over £900 billion of Fossil fuel shares on the London Stock Exchange – a quarter of the value of all the holdings and representing fossil fuel reserves of over 200 time the UK’s annual carbon emissions. Burning of all these reserves would create catastrophe. Between 2010-2012 … the top five UK banks raised £170 billion for fossil fuel companies, and the largest of these was the HSBC.”

On My London Diary you can read how I met the group as they trained for the performance opposite New Scotland Yard and then more about the performance which as well as the Golden Toads people also played moneys, eagles and jaguars and were joined by a gorilla. with the Rev Billy preaching about the need for the banks to repent and change their ways as the animals dropped dead on the branch floor.

One member of the team was there to reassure the bank staff and customers that there was no threat to them or property and that the performers would leave as soon as the event finished. And they did, leaving behind only some leaflets and small pools for water on the floor from the large ice eggs the Golden Toads had brought with them to help cool the planet down.

After leaving the bank the performance carried on for a few minutes on the wide pavement outside. A couple of police officers arrived and went inside the Bank to talk with the staff, and by the time they came out the Rev Billy and others were leaving to celebrate a successful action at a café and bar in Victoria station.

More at Rev Billy at HSBC.

Free Bradley Manning Vigil – St Martin’s, Trafalgar Square

People were begining to arrive to take part in a silent vigil on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square as a part of the international day of action by the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Bradley – now Chelsea – Manning’s court-martial for passing classified documents to Wikileaks had begun over a month earlier and an inevitable ‘guilty’ verdict was expected shortly.

The documents had exposed a great deal of illegal and immoral actions by the US and other governments and Manning had been celebrated in countries across the world and awarded the Sean MacBride Peace Prize.

On July 30th 2013 Manning was sentenced to 35 years in the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, but in 2017 her sentence was commuted by President Obama to seven years and she was released. In 2019 she was again imprisoned for a year for contempt of court after refusing to testify at a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Free Bradley Manning Vigil

Against Global Racism and Injustice – US Embassy to Whitehall

Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) UK organised a march and rally against Global Racism and Injustice in solidarity with families of Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence, Azelle Rodney, Jimmy Mubenga and many others to highlight the reality of racism and seek justice, both in the UK and US.

The event began with a rally outside the US Embassy, then still in Grosvenor Square, led by Zita Holbourne and Lee Jasper, founders and national co-chairs of BARAC, an anti-austerity, anti-racist campaigning organisation, with various other activists and poets speaking.

The event was supported by a wide range of anti-racist groups including Operation Black Vote, the National Black Students Campaign, Global Afrikan Congress, PCS, RMT Black Members, Counterfire, UAF, Love Music Hate Racism, Lambeth TUC, Lambeth People’s Assembly.

The protest was in part because of the global outcry over the acquittal in Florida of the murderer of Trayvon Martin under the Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. But it was a protest against global racism and injustice, with a particular emphasis on several well-known cases in this country.

One was the attempt by the Metropolitan Police to smear both the Lawrence family and its supporters through a covert police surveillance unit while failing to properly investigate the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Lee Jasper stated “We march for Jimmy Mubenga, Mark Duggan, Kingsley Burrell, Smiley Culture and Azelle Rodney. We march for justice and equality in the 50th anniversary year of Dr Martin Luther King’s 1968 March on Washington. The truth is that his dream is a threadbare vision here in the UK where racism is on the rise amplified by austerity.”

More at Against Global Racism and Injustice.

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