protest | >Re-PHOTO

No Sweat, Street Photos, Holocuast Memorial Day

Saturday 27th January 2007 was a rather unusual day for me. Of course one of the joys of working as a photographer is that most days are different, but perhaps this was more varied than most, though I only had three sets of pictures to put on line

No Sweat Protests Burberry Factory Closure – Regent St

No Sweat, Street Photos, Holocuast Memorial Day

I’ve never owned or worn any clothing made by Burberry, but they are very much a traditional British brand, producing and selling clothing that seems rooted in the British countryside and images of farming, hunting shooting and fishing. But I’ve always been a town or city dweller.

Until 2007 their clothing was proudly Made in Britain, and for years had come from a factory in Treorchy in the Rhonda where the factory had started in 1940 and employed large numbers of local skilled workers. The factory was set up when Alfred Pollikoff received funding in 1937 from Lord Nuffield to bring new industries to distressed areas of the country and began production in 1939 producing clothes for all kinds of workers and military uniforms for the Second World War.

The Pollikoff factory was bought by Great Universal Stores in 1948 and was taken over by Burberry, also a part of GUS, in 1989 when they changed its name, although many locally continued to refer to it as Pollikoff’s.

They became one of the largest employers in the Rhonda, at its peak employing around a thousand workers, though by 2006 increased mechanisation had reduced that to around 300. It was a great shock to the workers and the local economy when Burberry in September 2006 announced they were closing the factory at the end of March 2007 and moving production to China.

The Treorchy factory was efficient with high productivity and profitable. But UK labour costs meant that production was more expensive than overseas. According to the GMB union it cost around £11 to produce a polo shirt in Wales, but with cheap labour only around £4 in China. Burberry sold these shirts for around £60 in shops such as that on Regent St.

The Treorchy workers began an huge campaign to keep the factory open, gaining support from many in parliament and such unlikely figures as the owner of Harrods, along with stars including Sir Tom Jones, Michael Sheen, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church and Ben Elton.

*Local MP for Rhonnda, Chris Bryant (brown jacket) with Treorchy workers*

A group of workers had come to London to pursue their fight and to demonstrate outside the Bond St and Regent St Burberry stores on January 27th. And a team from ‘No Sweat’, “an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers, worldwide”, dressed as removal men arrived to support them, attempting to wrap the shops and workers in brown paper and ship them, second class, to China.

No Sweat’s protest was an amusing act of street theatre and one which helped an otherwise rather vanilla protest gain publicity in the media, always hard for protests to achieve unless they involve celebrities or violent illegal acts. Generally our media are very much on the side of the bosses (like the billionaires who own most of the papers) and the status quo, and the vast majority of protests are simply ignored by them, as “not news”.

Burberry workers destroy a Burberry polo shirt made in Treorchy

Burberry still makes some clothing in Britain (and elsewhere in Europe), and in 2015 enraged some who had fought to keep Treorchy open by announcing plans for an new factory in Leeds, though this was to replace two existing Yorkshire factories.

A number of small businesses were set up after the closure on the factory site, including the Treorchy Sewing Enterprise Ltd, set up by former Burberry employees.

West End Walk – Bond Street, Piccadilly, Leicester Square

I’ve never really thought that ‘street photography’ was a useful definition of an area of photography, and certainly never thought of myself as a street photographer, though the huge majority of my work has been made on the streets.

And while there are some ‘street photographers’ whose work I admire, there does seem to me to be a huge amount of totally vacuous and pointless work that is produced under this label. It too often seems to be an excuse for having nothing to say.

*Fortnum and Mason’s clock from 1964 is surely the most hideous in London.*

So while the little performance in the tree at the side of the National Gallery may be ‘street photography’ the rest of my pictures on this little walk are more concerned with architectural detail and illustrate the profligacy which was (and is still) enabled by our exploitation of the British Empire. They pictures on this walk also say something about taste and attitudes to women, both in previous eras and of course my own.

Holocaust Memorial Day – Soviet War Memorial & Peace Garden, Lambeth

I was unable to be at the wreath-laying ceremony to mark Holocaust Memorial Day at the Soviet War Memorial in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park as I was taking pictures on Regent St. But I did go there later in the day.

The memorial is dedicated to all of the 27 million Soviet civilians and military personnel who died for Allied victory in World War II and off course the Soviet Union played a vital role in the defeat of the Nazis, but the Russian record of persecution of the Jews both before and after the revolution is horrific. The Russian Orthodox Church for centuries led opposition to Jews who were not permitted to go ‘beyond the pale’ into Russia unless they converted. The first recorded pogrom was in Odessa (now in Ukraine) in 1821 and there were widespread pogroms in the Russian empire later in the century which led to many fleeing to Britain and the USA. Tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in the civil war following the 1917 revolution. Antisemitism continues to be rife in Russia after the Soviet era.

Close to the Soviet War Memorial is the Holocaust memorial tree, planted in 2002 by the then Mayor of Southwark where wreaths are also laid at this annual ceremony.

The park surrounds the Imperial War Museum, which houses a moving exhibition on the holocaust, but I didn’t visit it on this day. Instead I went past to the Tibetan Peace Garden in the park, opened in Summer 1999 by the Dalai Lama. It seemed an appropriate place to sit and reflect for a while, which I did, as well as taking some pictures.

You can read more about these events by scrolling down the January 2007 page where there are links to more pictures

Save the NHS – Lewisham 2013

Save Lewisham Hospital March & Rally – Saturday 26 January 2013

On Saturday 26th January 2013 an estimated 25,000 people marched through Lewisham to save their hospital from closure and to protect the NHS, showing south London united against the closure on pure financial grounds of its highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments.

Now the whole NHS is facing a crisis, and a similar united response across the country is needed to save it. It becomes clearer and clearer that this crisis has been deliberately engineered in order to destroy our health service and hand it over to private providers, particularly the US health giants.

Two years ago, US health insurance giant Centene Corporation took over 49 NHS GP surgeries and practices. Now as Jeremy Corbyn posted a couple of days ago on Facebook, “US health insurance giant, Centene, is the single largest provider of NHS primary care in England. Privatisation is the cause of — not the solution to — the NHS crisis. Stop wasting money on private contracts and start investing in a fully-public NHS instead.“

Unfortunately both Tory and Labour parties have taken part in the move towards privatisation of the NHS, though Tories have been more open in their support of such changes as suggesting the introduction of charges to see a doctor. But both parties have introduced changes which have brought private companies into providing NHS services, have taken large donations from private health companies, and have leading members who profit from them.

It was under Labour that the NHS took on poorly thought out Private Finance Initiative contracts that have landed many local health trusts with huge debt repayments, many of which extend to the middle of the century, and it was these which led to the crisis in Lewisham.

The PFI contracts were negotiated by civil servants and were and are a bonanza for private companies. Under them we pay totally ridiculous charges for simple jobs – such as Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust paying £8,450 to install a dishwasher because they are locked into maintenance contracts. Changing a light bulb can cost a couple of hundred pounds.

Lewisham Hospital wasn’t directly affected by PFI, but it was in 2009 put into the South London Hospitals Trust, which had two hospitals at Orpington and Woolwich whose PFI contracts saddled the trust with debts of over £60 million a year until 2032.

Lewisham Hospital was successful both medically and financially, but Health Secretary Andrew Lansley appointed a special administrator to the trust with a remit to drastically cut the trusts costs. And Matthew Kershaw decided to do so by closing the highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments at Lewisham.

It was a decision that made no sense. There wasn’t the spare capacity at other hospitals to cope with those no longer able to get treatment at Lewisham – the system was actually working in the other direction, with these other hospitals having to send patients to Lewisham.

Financially it made no sense – the patients would still require treatment and this would cost more elsewhere. The small annual savings the closure would give would be more than offset by increases in costs elsewhere – though some of these might be in other trusts.

The proposal generated an incredible amount of local opposition, with the campaign to save the hospital supported by all local MPs and policitician both in the area and across south London. Community groups and organisations all came together to save the hospital – Millwall football club even changed their weekend fixture to Friday night so the team and supporters could join the march.

As I wrote back in 2013, “The fight to save Lewisham Hospital isn’t just a local issue, but very much a national one, with the provision of medical services that form the bedrock of the NHS under attack. If the government can close down services at Lewisham, no other successful hospital in the UK is safe in their hands.”

Nurses and ambulance workers are now striking not just for a better deal for themselves, but for the future of the NHS, which the Tories have deliberately run down with drastic underfunding and a deliberate failure to train and recruit staff. Perhaps their most obvious action was the removal of the bursary for nurse training, but as well there has been the continuing decrease in real salaries with below inflation wage rises over the years. Together with the failure to keep European staff in this country after Brexit and the impact of Covid the results have been disastrous – except for those private companies providing agency nurses and doctors, often at horrific cost to the NHS.

If the NHS is to be saved it will need the kind of public mobilisation that saved Lewisham Hospital, with the people as a whole getting behind the nurses and doctors and others who are fighting to save it. We need to fight the policies and greed of the Tories and of Labour and of the billionaire press to preserve the NHS as a national service free at the point of use and organised for the national good rather than for profit.

More pictures at Save Lewisham Hospital

IWGB Protests University Outsourcing – 2018

On Thursday 25th January 2018 I went out to photograph one protest in the evening and found myself getting transported to another by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain.

End Outsourcing at University of London – Senate House

Striking security officers and receptionists from the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain picketed Senate House and were joined by supporters for a noisy rally at the gates. Cleaners, receptionists, security officers, porters and post room staff are all demanding that the university ends discriminatory employment practices and makes them all direct employees.

Outsourcing is a way for organisations like the University of London to get essential jobs done on the cheap by people working under terms and conditions that would be a blot on their reputations as responsible employers. They contract out the people who work in their business to contracting companies who employ them under far worse pensions, holiday entitlements, sickness entitlements, and maternity and paternity leave than in-house employees.

Those working at the UoL say they are often bullied and overworked and sometimes paid several months late. Many are also on zero hours contracts, which fail to offer them consistent work, and have no guarantee that they will get any work, and and can be used to further bully or punish workers, often those who are active in the unions. Following earlier protests the University is considering bringing some of the workers in-house, but they and their union, the IWGB, were insisting that all should be put onto the university payroll. The savings from outsourcing are often illusory and organisations always get better service through direct employment.

The workers had been on strike all day and had been picketing and in the early evening were joined by a large and noisy crowd of supporters, including IWGB member from other workplaces and students, including a samba band who considerably livened up the protest.

After the band had played for some time there were speeches from some leading members of the union including IWGB President Henry Chango Lopez and others who came to give support including United Voices of the World General Secretary Petros Elia. He was able to give news of another campaigning success, where after a noisy protest outside its offices by the UVW in the previous month another company had agreed to pay cleaners the London Living Wage.

*United Voices of the World General Secretary Petros Elia*

As the protest drew to an end IWGB General Secretary Jason Moyer-Lee announced that a double-decker coach had arrived and would take IWGB members and any more they could fit in to a surprise protest at another secret London location. Although I was rather cold, tired and hungry it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.

More at End Outsourcing at University of London.

Cleaners rush into Royal College of Music – Royal College of Music

We crowded into the bus which drove off into the London rush hour, and it was soon clear we were going west. We passed the Royal Albert Hall and then turned off into a side street a short way from our destination, which turned out to be the Royal College of Music.

People got off and unloaded the union flags, banners and drums quietly. Then two people went a little ahead of the rest of us to hold open the doors of the RCM ready for the rest of the crowd to rush into the foyer for a surprise protest.

Cleaners there had recently been taken over as the RCM had agreed a new contract with a different company, Tenon FM. They had decided to unilaterally cut hours in half and change shift times, telling the cleaners they must work at times most already have other cleaning jobs, and they are now threatened with dismissal for refusing to accept the new hours.

Both Tenon and the RCM were refusing to hold any discussions over the changes with the IWGB, who had because of this launched a collective grievance and balloted the cleaners for strike action; the union was also considering a legal challenge under law governing the transfer of undertakings.

Inside the foyer the protesters waved IWGB union flags and placards, banged drums and shouted slogans but were careful to avoid any damage. THe RCM called the police who arrived after 12 minutes and ordered the protesters to leave. They did so and continued the protest on the pavement outside. It was a dark street and the blue flashing lights of the police cars made photography challenging.

I continued to photograph for a few minutes and then decided I had taken enough pictures and little else was likely to happen. I was already very late for dinner and had a longer than expected journey home.

More pictures at Cleaners rush into Royal College of Music.

Stop Trident & Occupy Democracy

On Saturday 24th January 2015, eight years ago, I photographed three protests against the replacement of our so-called independent nuclear deterrent, Trident with new nuclear submarines and missiles and Occupy Democracy asserting the right to protest and challenging the attempt by then London Mayor Boris Johnson to prevent protests in Parliament Square.

Christian CND against Trident Replacement – St Martins-in-the-Fields to Whitehall

I began work at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square with a Christian CND service. Thet held a long piece of the seven mile knitted pink peace scarf which had been joined together the previous August between the UK atomic bomb factories at Burghfield and Aldermaston on Nagasaki Day in a protest against the senseless waste of £100bn in replacing Trident missiles, which would clearly breach the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

CND has since revised the figure of the costs of this senseless programme, which was stated by the defence minister in the parliamentary debates and in the November 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review to be £31 billion. This turned out to be simply the estimate for the four new submarines. Using government figures CND later calculated the total cost to be £205 billion, well over a year’s total spending on the NHS. And of course like all defence programmes it will end up costing considerably more. Of course cost is not the main reason why people oppose nuclear weapons but this is an entirely senseless waste of resources that should be put to better use.

After their brief service they walked with the part so the scarf to the main CND protest against Trident replacement outside the Defence Ministry.

Christian CND against Trident Replacement

Wrap Up Trident’ surrounds Defence Ministry – Whitehall

Several thousand CND supporters met at the Defence Ministry before surrounding the block with a knitted peace scarf and then moving off for a rally opposite the Houses of Parliament calling for the scrapping of the UK’s Trident missiles.

A group held the front of the scarf outside the Ministry of Defence building in Horseguards Avenue and then led off down Whitehall, left into Bridge St and left again up the Embankment and back to the MOD. While the leaders set off with the scarf at a cracking pace, gaps soon developed further back as those adding lengths from the many rolls of scarf were unable to keep up. So while there was far more scarf than needed to wrap the whole block – and it went back and forth on the river side of the ministry – it may never have entirely joined up completely.

When the leading group arrived back at the MOD there where certainly people spread out along the whole of the course holding parts of the knitting, and most seemed at a loss of what they were supposed to do next. Eventually the message came for them to walk on and take their pieces of knitting back to the MOD.

Here the knitted and crocheted lengths of scarf were rolled up. Rather than being wasted most of it was later turned into blankets for refugees, with just a few of the more interesting lengths being retained for further protests and displays.

The CND supporters then marched the short distance down Whitehall and Parliament Street and on to Old Palace Yard where they were to hold a rally.

Many more pictures at ‘Wrap Up Trident’ surrounds Defence Ministry.

CND Scrap Trident rally at Parliament – Old Palace Yard,

Among the speakers were at the rally were Lindsay German,

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MEP Julie Ward, Shahrar Ali, the Deputy Leader of the Green Party,

Kate Hudson and

Bruce Kent of CND,

Rebecca Johnson, an internationally-recognized expert on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,

Heather Wakefield of UNISON, the Rt Revd Alan Williams, Bishop of Brentwood, Khalil Charles from the Muslim Association of Britain, Ben Griffin, of Veterans for Peace,

and Angie Zetter, who thought up the idea of the peace scarf.

The rally ended with a new song composed for the occasion by Leon Rosselson. There are more pictures including all the speakers and those in the crowds at the rally at CND Scrap Trident rally at Parliament.

Occupy defy GLA ban on Democracy – Parliament Square

As people streamed away from the CND Trident protest, several hundred supporters of Occupy Democracy most of whom had been at the CND protest walked on to the grass of Parliament Square to hold discussions on foreign relations and war as the GLA private security guards (Heritage wardens) and police watched.

This was one of a series of monthly events in which Occupy are asserting the right to protest and challenging the attempt by London Mayor Boris Johnson to prevent protests in Parliament Square.

Police and the Mayor’s ‘Heritage Wardens’ watched the protest. I followed the wardens as they went across to the police and asked them to take action to stop the protest. Police lacked the officers needed to take effective action and if they had tried to do so many more of those leaving the CND protest would have joined those on the square. They told the wardens that the protesters would eventually leave of their own accord, which apparently they did a few hours later.

More pictures at Occupy defy GLA ban on Democracy.

March against police racism 2000

One of the earliest protests I put on My London Diary was a march in Wood Green to Tottenham Police Station organised by Movement For Justice on 22nd January 2000, and two years ago I posted come of the black and white images from this on this site in a post Marching For Justice.

At the time as well as working on black and white film I was also taking pictures with a consumer digital camera, the Fuji 2.2 Mp MX-2700. It had a fixed 35mm equivalent lens and was probably the best consumer digital of the time, though obviously rather limited.

The protest was organised by the Movement for Justice and the Lindo Campaign. Delroy Lindo started a campaign ofter his friend Winston Silcott was wrongly imprisoned for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots. The Winston Silcott Defence Campaign played an important part getting Silcott acquitted and released. Silcott had been convicted with two other men despite not being anywhere near where the murder took place.

Two police officers were later tried for fabricating evidence but were acquitted, despite the evidence against them. They had picked on Silcott because of his record and fabricated confessions by the three men.

Silcott was chosen because of his record and because the police could find no evidence over the murder of one of their officers. Six years earlier he had been acquitted in another murder trial and sentenced to six months after a nightclub brawl. When Blakelock was savagely killed he was on bail on another murder charge, for which he spent 18 years in jail after the jury did not believe that he had killed a night club bouncer in self-defence.

Later Silcott, much to the obvious disgust of the BBC and many politicians was awarded £17,000 compensation for wrongful conviction and a further £50,000 in an out-of-court settlement of his civil case for malicious prosecution.

Lindo and his wife were harassed by police after they began to campaign over the imprisonment of Silcott and other cases including the killing of Roger Sylvester and the harassment of Duwayne Brooks, a friend of Stephen Lawrence who had been with him when he was murdered in 1993. Instead of treating him as a witness, they treated him as a suspect and he suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

Police arrested Brooks after he took part in an anti-racist march against the British National Party following the murder. and he was charged but the judge dismissed the case. Later he sued the Met Police and was awarded £100,000 compensation. The treatment of Brooks and the parents and other friends of Stephen Lawrence played an important role in the Macpherson report that concluded the Metropolitan Police Force was “institutionally racist“.

Roger Sylvester lived in Tottenham and worked for a drop-in mental health centre. He had suffered some mental health problems himself some years earlier and in January 1999 was detained outside of his home, under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. Eight police officers restrained him “for his own safety” and took him to St Ann’s Hospital were he was further restrained, going limp after 20 minutes. An inquest jury found his death was caused by being restrained for too long in the wrong position, without sufficient medical attention, but their verdict was overturned and a judge replaced it with an open verdict.

Recent event have shown that the force remained a safe space for racists, misogynists and rapists, although of course many police officers are trying hard to do an honest and necessary job. It remains to be seen if the current head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Mark Rowley, will be any more successful than his predecessors in turning the force around.

Back on the original post about the event there are six pictures, four in black and white and two colour. I took many more in black and white but very few have been digitised.

Free British Residents from Guantanamo – 2006

Protest march to US Embassy, Saturday Jan 21st 2006

Seventeen years ago now seems like another age. And my post on this protest on My London Diary looks rather different to those on more recent events in various ways. Not least in that you will need to scroll down the page to find the both the story and the pictures.

2006 was perhaps when ‘My London Diary’ began to seriously post about protests in London, though there are some from previous years since 1999 on-line. Although I’d switched to digital at the end of 2002 I was working for a few years with both digital and film, partly because for a while didn’t have good wide-angle lenses for my Nikon digital camera. But although I’d had a D100 and then a D70, neither was really as good a camera to work with as my film cameras, with rather dim, small viewfinder images.

The D200 which I bought as soon as it came out at the end of 2005 improved that significantly, and by the start of 2006 I had lenses that could cover the range in DX format from 12mm to 125mm (equivalent to 18-187mm) as well as a fisheye. Although the D100 had been usable, this was the first digital camera I owned that felt a good camera to use.

So far I’ve only published two books of my protest pictures, one with the title ‘2006: My London Diary‘ which includes single pictures from many of the protests I covered in that year, and the second, a cheaper magazine with my pictures of the Class War ‘Poor Doors’ protests in 2014-5.

Back in 2006 there were still an number of men with British resident status still held in Guantanamo, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohammed, Shaker Aamer, Jamal Kiyemba, Bisher Al-Rawi, Jamal El Banna, Ahmed Errachidi, Ahmed Ben Bacha and Abdulnour Sameur, most with British wives and families, men who had worked here and paid their taxes to this country.

*Yvonne Ridley, Ashfaq Ahmad and Amani Deghayes*

All were being treated inhumanely, with those on hunger strike – including Omar Deghayes – being force fed in a particularly painful manner using nasal tubes. A previous assault by prison guards using pepper spray had resulted in Omar losing the sight of one eye.

Members of the families of these men took part in the march and they were represented by people dressed in some chained together. The march began close to Methodist Central Hall, where the inaugural meeting of the UN had taken place, and there British ex-Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg and others including Bruce Kent and Vanessa Redgrave spoke about the shame the British nation feel at our nation’s collusion in this US war-crime.

The march paused for a protest in front of Downing Street and then moved on down Whitheall, making its way to the USA embassy in Grosvenor Square.

There were more speeches to the large crowd taking part in the protest in front of the US embassy, including by the father of one of the detainees and Labour Pary stalwart Walter Wolfgang.

More pictures on My London Dairy begin here. You can read my text from 2006 some way down the January 2006 page.

Smash EDO Protest Moulsecoomb Arms Factory – 2010

Protests had begun against a small EDO-MBM factory at Moulsecoomb on the outskirts of Brighton in 2003 after the press had revealed that it was making parts for a guided bomb that was being used in the invasion of Iraq.

In April 2005, EDO attempted to get a wide-ranging injunction to prevent protests at the site, including stepping onto the road outside the factory, playing music and taking photographs. This was the start of a lengthy legal action in which the UK Attorney-General became involved, as the defendants had submitted a detailed dossier on war crimes involving air strikes on civilian areas and infrastructure and were arguing that the invasion was an illegal war of aggression in breach of the UN Charter.

The Wikipedia article states “The court found that if there was an imminent war crime that the protesters believed on reasonable grounds, was about to take place, in which EDO were complicit, then preventative direct action could lawfully be taken against the company without waiting for the authorities of the state to intervene. This ruling effectively allowed proportionate direct action against companies by protesters, if the threat of the crime was imminent and specific.”

Some of the defendants signed an out of court settlement with EDO in April 2005 after it was put forward by Keir Starmer and they were then told legal aid would be withdrawn unless they agreed. They then intervened with a suggestion which was them he would withdraw their legal aid and they signed “undertakings not to do certain things that they had never done and had no intention of doing” with EDO agreeing to pay their costs, as well as their own, and the injunction against those not in court was lifted.

The case against three defendants who were conducting their own defence continued as they refused to sign these undertakings. In March 2006 a judge agreed with them that EDO had failed to make the preparations for a speedy trial as ordered by the court, and the company dropped the case rather than face further proceedings for abuse of process, paying the full costs of all those involved. The whole legal business is thought to have cost EDO between £1-1.5m, more than a years annual profit for the Brighton factory.

In 2009 weapons supplied by EDO were being used in the Israeli attacks on Gaza and a small group of activists decommissioned’ the factory to prevent exports to Israel. Again EDO went to court and they were again unsuccessful with the court finding all of those charged not guilty.

On Monday 18th January 2010, the first anniversary of the end of the Israeli war against Gaza, I went to photography Smash EDO activists in Brighton who were protesting against arms manufacturer EDO MBM/ITT who made some of the weapons that killed 1417 Palestinians, mainly the elderly, women and children, during the three-week assault.

Despite earlier rulings that such protests were legal, the police had come determined to stop this one taking place, responding to the protesters who they probably outnumbered with an impressive display of force and violence as they attempted to make their way to protest at the factory.

I went with the protesters as they tried to go around the police lines through the woods and along a footpath and was able to photograph some of the confrontations. You can see more of what happened on that day in the pictures and the captions in my post on My London Diary.

What I don’t mention there is that like many of the protesters I was also assaulted several times by some of the officers while taking pictures, and at one point only just managed to stop myself going over a roughly 50ft drop when pushed violently by one of them. Other officers helped me up and to move away from the edge, but it was at times a scary event to cover. I was bruised and shaken as well as tired and left Brighton while the police were still harassing the protesters who had marched back towards the centre of the town.

Protests continue at EDO’s factory, now led by Brighton Against the Arms Trade, after the Moulsecoomb factory was found in 2019 to have produced arms used in a Saudi ‘attack that violated international law’ against a civilian target in Yemen and to be involved in helping Turkey to get around US attempts to prevent the proliferation of drone warfare.

Refugees, Animal Cruelty, Syria and International Times

Saturday 16th January 2016 was a busy day for me, ending rather unusually with taking some photographs at a party which I also put on-line.

St Pancras Die-In for Calais refugees

Refugees, Animal Cruelty, Syria and International Times

Saturday 16th January 2016 was an International Day of Action in solidarity with refugees and there were protests in Calais and Dunkirk as well as in many cities. The protests were held at short notice against the clearing the Calais refugee ‘Jungle’ and urged the UK government to give refugees at Calais safe passage into the UK to claim asylum.

Many of those in the camps have family and friends in the UK, which has failed to take a fair share of the migrants. Protesters included people from the London2Calais convoy as well as a Christian contingent with some bible-based placards.

After a brief speech on the wide pavement in front of Kings Cross station the protesters walked to the main entrance of St Pancras International where a large group of police prevented them from entering and they held a short rally.

The protesters then marched off down to Euston Road accompanied by a large group of police. While some continued to march along Euston Road many caught the police unaware by rushing down the steps into the underground entrance and along past the ticket offices before being stopped by more police at the underground entrance to the long shopping mall in St Pancras Station.

They held a protest there with several speakers calling for refugees at Calais and Dunkirk, who include many unaccompanied minors and others with relatives living in the UK, to be allowed to enter the UK and make asylum claims. Actup London then staged a die-in with others sitting down to join them for around ten minutes, ending with a final speech.

Apparently a few protesters had managed to get in and protest with fake body bags at the Eurostar entrance. The protesters had been careful throughout to leave a path for people catching trains to enter the station, but some had been held up by police who mistook them for protesters.

More at St Pancras Die-In for Calais refugees.

March against Taiji Dolphin Slaughter – Regent St

I was late and missed the start of the march against the annual inhumane slaughter of dolphins and small whales at Taiji in Japan. They had met in Cavendish Square but were marching down Regent St when I caught up with them on their way to the Japanese Embassy.

Although there were several hundred taking part, the marchers kept to the pavement rather than take to the road, which seemed rather strange and perhaps reduces their impact, though it did mean that shoppers who often appear to be sleepwalking did have to move out of the way.

Dominic Dyer of the Born Free Foundation, Care for the Wild and CEO of The Badger Trust led the march down the street. As usual many of the marchers had made their own posters and placards and some carried dolphins. This year many of the placards called for a boycott of the Tokyo Olympics for the shame that this inhumane slaughter brings to Japan.

I walked with the marchers taking pictures as far as Oxford Circus, waiting until all of them had passed on their way down Piccadilly to the Japanese Embassy and then left.

More pictures at March against Taiji Dolphin Slaughter.

Vegans ‘Awakening Compassion’ – Piccadilly Circus

Around the statue of Erost were a group of Vegans from ‘Awakening Compassion’, standing and holding posters with large photographs of animals we farm for food – chickens, cows, sheep, goats, pigs- with messages such as ‘I am an animal – Someone not something – I want to stay alive.

Although I’m opposed to the cruel treatment of animals, the animals in these pictures owe their existence to the farmers who over millennia have bred them and now raise them. If we gave up eating meat and dairy products our countryside would be a very different place. We should be eating less meat for various reasons, and I do often have meals without it and pay more for meat and eggs produced with less cruelty, but farm animals form a vital part of the ecosystem and I’d hate to lose them.

Vegans ‘Awakening Compassion’

Drop Food Not Bombs on Syria – Trafalgar Square

The message of the Syrians who had come to protest in Trafalgar Square was clear – Drop Food Not Bombs on Syria. Instead of spending billions on bombs and weapons they want the money to be spent on humanitarian aid for those under siege across Syria, including those in Madaya and the Yarmouk refugee camp.

Many wore or held the Free Syria flag with its green, black and white strips and three red stars, and various posters which made clear they condemnation of ISS, the Russian bombings and the Assad regime.

One poster read ‘Syrians started the Revolution – Assad started the war’ while others made clear what they were calling for; ‘Drop the Food, Not Bombs’ and ‘Medaya is Crying While the World is Denying’

More pictures: Drop Food Not Bombs on Syria

International Times new ‘Issue Zero’ – Mayfair Rooms, Fleet St

*Hot from the press – but long sold out*

Notorious London underground paper International Times, first published in 1966 and closed down in 1973 (with several re-incarnations and a web site since 2009) started again for its 50th anniversary with a launch party for the 36 page ‘Issue Zero’.

Among those writing for the new issue were stalwarts from its early days, including Heathcote Williams, and the issue was edited by Heathcote Ruthven with subediting by Emily McCarthy, Heather Williams, David Graeber and Heathcote Williams, design by Darren Cullen and art by Nick Victor and Claire Palmer.

More about the issue and more pictures at International Times new ‘Issue Zero’.

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

Two protests in London on Saturday 15th January 2011.

UK Uncut Protest VAT Rise at Vodaphone – Oxford St, 15 Jan 2011

A couple of days ago in 2023 the Commons Public Accounts Committee reported that £42bn is outstanding in tax debt, with HMRC failing to collect around 5% of tax owing each year. Committee chair Meg Hiller commented “The eye-watering £42bn now owed to HMRC in unpaid taxes would have filled a lot of this year’s infamous public spending black hole.” The report states that for every £1 the HMRC spends on compliance it recovers £18 in unpaid tax, and the MPs say it simply isn’t trying hard enough.

In addition, they point to the pathetic effort our tax authorities are making to recover the £4.5 billion lost by fraud over Covid support schemes, only even “trying to recover less than a quarter of estimated losses in schemes such as furlough.“

Back in 2011, anti-cuts activists UK Uncut were campaigning to force the government to clamp down on tax avoidance rather than cut public services and increase the tax burden on the poor. This protest took place following a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20% and a couple a weeks before the UK deadline for tax returns by the self-employed of January 31st.

They said then that rich individuals and companies such as Vodafone, Philip Green, HSBC, Grolsch, HMV, Boots, Barclays, KPMG and others employ armies of lawyers and accountants to exploit legal loopholes and dodge around £25 billions in tax while the rest of us on PAYE or ordinary people sending in self-assessment tax forms pay the full amount.

Little has changed since then – except the amounts involved will have increased, but nothing has been done to move to a fairer approach to taxation which would eliminate the legal dodges and loopholes and insist that tax is paid on money earned in the UK rather than being squirrelled away in overseas tax havens. It should be a general principle that any scheme to deliberately avoid tax is illegal.

Many believe the main impetus for the Brexit campaign was the intention announced by Europe to clamp down on tax avoidance, which would have cost the wealthy backers of Vote Leave millions by cutting down their dodgy dealings.

UK Uncut held a rally on the pavement on Oxford Street outside Vodaphone, one of the companies that manage to pay little or no UK tax. Large numbers of shoppers walked by, some stopping briefly to listen and applauding the protest.

Speakers pointed out the regressive nature of VAT, applying to all purchases of goods (except those exempt from VAT) by everyone regardless of their incomes. Income tax should be fairer, as it is related to income and the ability to pay – and it would be fairer if the loopholes allowing tax avoidance were closed.

One speaker made the point that multinational companies not only use tricky accounting to avoid UK tax but also by shifting profits to tax havens they deny desperately needed funds to the poorer countries of the world.

Others spoke about the effects of the government cuts on education, with rising university fees and the removal of the maintenance allowance that had enabled many poorer students to remain in sixth-forms. At one point people held up books as a reminder of the cuts in library services being forced on local authorities by the government.

A member of the PCS spoke of his concern that the government was actually cutting down on the staff who combat tax evasion as well as relaxing the rules on tax avoidance rather than trying to collect more from the rich.

Prime Minister David Cameron had called for a ‘Big Society’ with charities and community organisations playing a larger role – presumably to replace the public services which were disappearing under his austerity programme. But many of these organisations were also under pressure as hard-pressed local authorities were having to slash funding grants.

More at UK Uncut Protest VAT Rise at Vodaphone.

Pillow Fight Against Solum at Walthamstow, 15 Jan 2011

Ealier I had photographed Walthamstow residents staging a pillow fight in protest against plans for inappropriate high rise development on Walthamstow Central Station car park which were tocome to the council planning committee meeting the following Thursday.

Solum Regeneration had plans to build a 14 storey hotel and 8 storey blocks of flats there, towering over the surrounding area of largely late-Victorian low rise development.

The scheme had been condemned the previous year by CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment set up in 1999 to provide impartial advice to the government “on architecture, urban design and public space“, and the developers had made minor changes which made it even less acceptable to the local objectors.

Solum Regeneration was set up by Network Rail and Kier Property to redevelop land around railway stations, including Walthamstow Central. One of their other plans was for a huge redevelopment at Twickenham station, now completed after some years of considerable inconvenience to station users. Richmond Council had initially turned down this scheme.

Despite the pillow fight and the other activities of local campaigners, the Walthamstow scheme also got the go-ahead, with building work beginning in 2012. Other high rise schemes have also been approved in the surrounding area, the character of which has changed considerably.

Pillow Fight Against Solum Walthamstow

Blessing The River Thames

Blessing the Thames London Bridge, Sunday 11th January, 2009

Fr Philip Warner was impressed by the annual Blessing of the Waters ceremony he saw in the Orthodox churches of Serbia. When he became the priest at St Magnus the Martyr at the City end of the old London Bridge he decided to begin an annual ceremony to bless the River Thames.

His parish and that of Southwark Cathedral meet at the centre of the current London Bridge, and in 2004 processions from both churches met there on the Sunday closest to Epiphany (January 6th) for a short service.

Prayers were said for all those who work on the river and in particular for those killed close to this point in the 1989 sinking of the Marchioness. Incense was swung around liberally, but dispersed by the breeze. The river was then blessed by throwing in a large wooden cross. Water was then sprinkled over those taking part in the ceremony before all those present were invited to process to one of the churches for a lunch.

I photographed this event in 2007 and 2008 as well as 2009, though it was only in 2008 that I was able to stay for the lunch, that year at St Magnus. By the third of these years the event had grown, with too many photographers, mainly amateurs, coming along and getting both in my way and in the way of those celebrating. I felt I had already taken enough pictures by then and crossed it off my list of annual events to cover.

*The bishop prepares to throw the cross in the river*

When I first began photographing events in London, both protests and cultural events, there were few photographers at most of them except the large national marches. At many smaller events I would find myself the only person with a camera, and of course everything was still on film. But in the last 15 or so years things have changed.

Back then even when there were more of us taking pictures we were all photographers and at least doing so in a professional way. We tried to respect the others and so far as possible keep out of each others way, though of course that wasn’t always possible. Sometimes there were arguments between those of us who liked to work close to our subjects with wide-angle lenses and those who carried giant, heavy, usually white, telephoto zooms and always wanted to use them from a distance. But generally we worked together.

*And everyone (except me) goes back to Southwark Cathedral for lunch*

Then came cheap digital cameras and camera phones. Everyone now has something that can take picture, and can readily share them on social media. And there has been huge movement from taking still images to recording video. Video leads to a different attitude, with many becoming unaware of anything outside the screen of their phone around them. At any event now I can be sure that at least one person will walk in front of my lens talking into their phone totally oblivious of my presence and blocking my view.

Of course I don’t claim any special right to take pictures, and others have the same rights as me. But unless we respect the rights of others it becomes difficult and frustrating to work; we have to work together.

More pictures from 2009 Blessing the Thames.

Protests on January 11th

In 2009 I was sorry not to have time to stay for the lunch at Southwark Cathedral, particularly as two of my friends were present, one a frequent worshipper there. But there were a couple of protests to photograph. The first was a march by Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain against the Israeli attacks on Gaza, aimed at Arab dictators who collude with Israeli terrorism and going to Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi Embassies.

More at Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain Gaza march.

And it was the 11th of January, and the anniversary of the setting up of the US torture camp at Guantanamo in 2004 was marked by a late afternoon protest at the US Embassy, still then in Grosvenor Square.

More at Guantanámo – 7 Years