>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Solidarity With Gaza, Save Lewisham Hospital – 2012

Solidarity With Gaza, Save Lewisham Hospital – On Saturday morning, 24th November 2012 I joined marchers against the then recent Israeli attacks on Gaza and the continuing blockade which makes normal life there impossible. Although still a clearly disproportionate response, the death toll in 2012 was minuscule compared to the current ongoing destruction. In the afternoon I went to Lewisham for a march against proposals to close A&E and maternity services, and possibly also the the children’s wards, critical care unit and emergency surgery by the Trust Special Administrator Matthew Kershaw.

Solidarity With Gaza, End the Seige Now – Downing St

Despite persistent rain, several thousands turned up to protest at Downing Street before marching towards the Israeli Embassy following the start ten days earlier of ‘Operation Pillar of Defense‘ by the the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

In the eight days before a ceasefire, Wikipedia states “the IDF claimed to have struck more than 1,500 sites in the Gaza Strip, including rocket launchpads, weapon depots, government facilities, and apartment blocks” with the UNHCR reporting “174 were killed and hundreds were wounded. Many families were displaced.”

There were also deaths and casualties among Israelis, but on a much smaller scale, with 6 Israelis being killed and 240 injured by rockets fired from Gaza.

As in this year, “Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other Western countries expressed support for what they considered Israel’s right to defend itself” , or condemned the Hamas attacks, while some other countries condemned the Israel attacks. Human Rights Watch said both sites committed war crimes.

As in 2023, many of hose killed in Gaza in 2012 where children, and at the front of the march, ahead of the main banner were a group of children, each carrying a placard hanging around their neck with the names and ages of some of the dead children.

And as in the recent marches I’ve photographed, both the National Marches calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and those in Camden and Lewisham, among those taking part there were many individual Jews and Jewish groups including Jews Against the Siege of Gaza, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and a group of Jewish Socialists.

Before the march began 163 while balloons printed with the Palestinian flag – one for each of the Palestinians then known to have been killed – were released. The march then moved up Whitehall and I went with it as far as Trafalgar Square where I took pictures for the next 15 minutes or so as the crowd moved past before catching a train from Charing Cross to Lewisham.

More at Solidarity With Gaza, End the Seige Now

Save A&E at Lewisham Hospital – Lewisham

Thousands of protesters – perhaps as many as 15,000 – formed a human chain to hold hands around Lewisham hospital after a march from the centre of Lewisham to oppose plans to close its A&E department to pay debts from mismanagement at other hospitals in south London, which have huge PFI debts.

The march had seemed rather smaller than expected when I arrived at the start close to Lewisham station, but the numbers grew greatly as we got closer to the hospital and Ladywell Fields, with the road still packed with people coming to join this as the human chain began to form.

At Ladywell Fields the march divided into two, with hospital workers making their way to the front of the hospital in an anti-clockwise direction and the others going clockwise to meet them. Soon people were filling the whole thre-quarters of a mile ring around the hospital and holding hands in a human chain. The organisers had asked people to go in single file, but there were far too many in most places for this and in some areas the pavements were filled ten deep.

Traffic around the hospital was brought to a stop with people still flooding in on the High Street and Ladywell Road and nothing was moving on the roads by the time I left and caught a train home, except for ambulances which police and stewards were ensuring could still reach the hospital, clearing a route through the crowds.

Lewisham Hospital is well run and well used by people in the area around, and has played no part in the financial problems faced by the South London Hospitals Trust, which were largely caused by disastrous private finance schemes entered into to build the trust’s hospitals in Orpington and Woolwich. The planned closures would drastically cut health services in the area and almost certainly lead to many deaths as well as huge inconvenience for millions and are driven entirely by the financial gain in selling off 60% of the site.

But even this makes little sense as the expected £17 million this would raise would be only a minor one-off contribution towards the over £60 million the Trust has to find each year for its PFI debts which were then expected to total around £1,200 million before they were paid off.

The problem of PFI debt is not of course limited to this trust. Government figures in 2018 were that the total value of PFI investments in the NHS was then £12.8 billion – and that by the time these were paid off the NHS will have paid over £80 billion for them – more than six times as much. The figures have worsened since then as many contracts include inflation-based cost increases – leading to an extra £264 million in payments in the past 2 years. Some trusts now have to spend 10-13% of their total income on their PFI debts, and these payments cannot be cut and are prioritised. over other expenditure such as than on staff costs and drugs.

Lewisham Hospital’s campaign against the cuts was successful. They were ruled unlawful by the High Court and eventually dropped by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt after he lost an appeal.

More at Save A&E at Lewisham Hospital.

Hong Kong, Fur, Brixton & Carnaby – 2019

Hong Kong, Fur, Brixton & Carnaby – There were five events listed in my diary for Saturday 23rd November 2019, but I only photographed two of them, the Stand With Hong Kong march and rally and the annual March Against Fur, though I missed the others. But I did take a couple of short walks. I can’t remember now why I went to Brixton, but my trip to Carnaby Street was to see a small exhibition in a shop I had three pictures in.

Stand With Hong Kong – Westminster

Sadly the idea that the British Government could in 2019 have any real influence on China over the breaches of Sino-British Joint Declaration agreed in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher was in power was always an illusion.

In 2014 the Chinese government had said it regarded the agreement had already met its objectives following the handover in 1997 and they regarded it as now having no legal effect. The British government disagree but have no possibility of doing anything to change Chinese minds or actions.

So while I had great sympathy with people of Hong Kong who had been protesting there as well as their supporters in foreign countries including UK, it was clear that these protests would not change policies in Hong Kong.

Finally the British government had to admit this and it led to the setting up of the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa scheme in 2021, which allowed Hong Kong British National (Overseas) citizens (BNOs) and their close family members to move the the UK for five years after which they can apply for leave to remain and, after a further year for British citizenship.

Perhaps protests such as these did influence the government in how the scheme was set up, with a fairly generous interpretation of the rules governing family members, although the route to becoming a British citizen seems unnecessarily long and complicated.

BNO status was set up by an Act of Parliament following the 1984 declaration for Hong Kong residents who wished to retain a connection with the UK after the handover to China and had to be claimed before that too place in 1997. About a third of Hong Kong residents had BNO status and the scheme would also allow a similar number of their families to get visas.

Although the total number of people eligible to come to the UK was thought to be over 5 million, the number expected to take up the offer was expected to be around 320,000 and so far is only roughly half this. Although much cheaper than other visa schemes it remains quite expensive as a health charge is also applied and for a family with one child the total costs over the period to obtain British citizenship is around £20,000.

Stand With Hong Kong

March Against Fur 2019

After a rally in Leicester Square the march set off through central London.

The march went along the pavement along Charing Cross Road, which was extremely crowded.

Though it spilled out onto the road.

Although the main focus of the many posters was against fur and the ending of the fur trade, the main banner called for an end to all forms of animal oppression and many on the march were vegans.

I left the march as it turned down Shaftesbury Avenue for a tour of the West End and stores selling fur products, calling for an end not just to using fur in clothing but against all exploitation of animals of all species, whether for meat, dairy, wool, leather or other products.

More pictures at March Against Fur 2019

Brixton & Carnaby Street

First Child by Raymond Watson, a memorial to 116 children murdered by the Afrikaner police force in Soweto in 1976 was the first public sculpture by a Black artist in the UK, commissioned in 1998 by the 198 Gallery.

Bon Marché, Britains first purpose built department store, was opened in 1877. Its founder went bankrupt but the store continued in business with various owners until 1975. Since then it has been refurbished with almost all ground floor detail lost.

I paid a brief visit to Carnaby Street where 3 of my pictures were in the window of a shop called Size? in a temporary display celebrating the apparently iconic Nike Air Max 90 introduced in 1990. I took the three rather maroon images in this picture of the window and the one at the right, taken at Notting Hill Carnival in 1990 shows a man in rather long shorts wearing those trainers. There were ten panels in the display, the other nine using later pictures taken by other photographers.

Brixton
Carnaby Street Show

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice – 2014

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice – on Saturday 22nd November 2014 I photographed protests about democracy and justice in the UK, the brutal persecution of Christians in Pakistan and Class War protesting outside the homes of millionaire objectors to a proposed mansion tax. My day’s work ended in Brixton with an annual march remembering young men killed in Brixton Police Station.

Occupy Democracy at Supreme Court – Parliament Square

Activists from Occupy Democracy had spent the night on the wide pavement in front of the Supreme Court on the west side of Parliament Square and were getting ready to hold two days of workshops there.

The Supreme Court is housed in the ornamented former Middlesex Guildhall facing the Houses of Parliament across the square and does not sit at weekends, perhaps why the police had not tried hard to remove the protesters.

Parliament Square itself was still fenced off and guarded, with police fearing that Occupy protesters might come and set up up a tented camp there. One of the banners the protesters had brought read ‘WE ARE THE GHOST OF BRIAN HAW’, the peace protester who had defied legal and illegal attempts to remove him from his camp facing Parliament for many years.

A small group of protesters was sheltering from the rain in the doorway of the Supreme Court and I went to say ‘Hello’ and take a few pictures.

Others were holding posters and banners and waiting for others to come an join them for the workshops. I couldn’t stay but hoped to come back later, but ran out of time to do so.

Occupy Democracy at Supreme Court

Justice for Shahzad & Shama – Downing St

Shahzad Masih and Shama Bibi were Pakistani Christians who had been trapped into bond labour at a brick kiln in a Muslim village 35 miles south-west of Lahore. Shahad was involved in a dispute with the kiln owner and landlord as he wanted to pay off his debts and leave and the landlord’s accountant is alleged to have raped Shama.

Shama had cleared out and burnt some items belonging to her father after his death on 30th October 2014. These included some black magic amulets and written charms. The ashes were seen by a Muslim worker and he accused her of burning the Koran.

A large mob came from surrounding villages and attacked the couple, stripped them and tied them to a tractor, beating them as they were taken to the kiln, where petrol was poured over their bodies; accounts differ as to whether both were still alive when they were then thrown into the furnace while there six year old child watched. Armed police stood by but refused to interfere in their murders.

The police and authorities appear to have tried to cover up the case and buried the remains of the bodies in secret to avoid their families arranging a funeral. But the news leaked out and the federal government had appointed a minister to co-ordinate the case. At Downing Street there were prayers and speeches calling for justice including from an Elim Pentecostal minister and singer Si Genaro.

Justice for Shahzad & Shama

Class War Griff Rhys Jones Mansion Tax – Fitzroy Square

Earlier in the month, Class War had announced they would stand a number of candidates in the forthcoming 2015 General Election and had put together a manifesto largely as they walked the short distance from the pub to a Poor Doors protest.

*Marina Pepper rang the bell at Griff Rhys Jones’ house*

Class War did not expect to win any seats – or even save their deposits, but “to launch a furious and coordinated political offensive against the ruling class with the opportunity an election gives us to talk politics to our class.” And they intended to “make ourselves central to the campaign in a funny, rumbustious combative and imaginative way.”

One of the key pledges in their manifesto was for a 50% mansion tax, and it was also a policy on a rather less punitive scale for the then Labour party (no longer in existence.) And several well-known and filthy rich people had voiced their objections including Griff Rhys Jones who said he would leave the country if Labour levied a mansion tax.

On Saturday 22nd November a small group from Class War, including two of their election candidates Marina Pepper went to protest at the £7 million home of Griff Rhys Jones in Fitzroy Square, telling him to “f**k off now“, offering to pay the fare.

Class War rang on the bell though nobody came to answer it, although there were signs of movement inside. They put hazard tape around the area outside the house before going for a walk around the square, pausing for another brief protest outside the home of Guy Ritchie, another millionaire objector to a mansion tax.

Continuing around the square, next to the house where both George Bernard Shaw and later Virginia Woolf both lived, they came across the Magistrates Association – who got another sticker, as did the locked gates into the private garden in the centre of the square.

Having gone around the square they arrived back outside Griff Rhys Jones’s house where they stopped for a group photograph and a few more minutes of protest before leaving for a nearby pub. I would have liked to join them but had to rush to another event.

Class War Griff Rhys Jones Mansion Tax

Still No Justice for Ricky Bishop – Brixton

Ricky Bishop, a fit young black man, died from unexplained injuries hours after being taken to Brixton Police Station on 22 Nov 2001. Family and supporters call it a modern day lynching and march annually to remember him and call for justice.

Ricky Bishop was a fit young black man when taken into Brixton Police Station on 22 Nov 2001, but hours later he died from unexplained injuries. His family and supporters call his death a modern day lynching and march annually to remember him and call for justice.

People met in Windrush Square and marched slowly to the police station, calling out the names of the officers they accuse of murdering him, to hold a memorial event around the tree outside which has been adopted as a remembrance tree for Ricky Bishop and the others killed there by police.

Among the speakers was Marcia Rigg who spoke forcefully of the long battle to get any proper investigation into the death in he police station of her brother Sean Rigg in August 2008. While she was speaking there were shouts from officers inside the police station accusing her and the family of lying about the police.

I felt shocked and disgusted that police still feel the killing people as they did Sean Rigg is defensible and go to great lengths to prevent proper investigation, giving police almost total immunity from the consequences of their actions.

Although many of the over 3,000 custody deaths between 1969 and 2011 may not have been the result of deliberate actions or failures, there has not been a single officer successfully prosecuted, despite considerable evidence of wrongdoing. Instead we have seen repeated instances of failures to properly investigate and interview officers, collusion to give false statements, unnecessary holding up of cases, disallowing of evidence, misleading of juries and other means, including failures of both the Crown Prosecution Service and the so-called Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Many more pictures of the march and memorial on My London Diary at Still No Justice for Ricky Bishop.

Dalston Doorcases to Marie Lloyd

Dalston Doorcases to Marie Lloyd – On Thursday 27th July 1989 I took the North London Line to Dalston Kingsland and crossed the road into Ridley Market and walked along Colvestone Crescent and on to Montague Rd. I can’t now remember what had brought me to North London for this brief interruption to my series of walks south of the river.

*Doorway, Montague Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-61*

Here there are four houses on both sides of the street with similar doorways to the pair in my photograph with these odd decorative figures supporting the lintel. Those further down the street have simpler largely geometrical designs.

I was unsure what to call these muscular male figures, hand on hips staring down at the ground with what appear to be victory wreaths of laurel leaves around their heads and a pair of rather fishy looking tails. A long and detailed study published by the Hackney Society, The Victorian Villas of Hackney by Michael Hunter tells me they are mermen, and provides other examples of ‘bizarre doorcases’ in the Victorian villas of the 1850s and 1860s in Dalston. These date from 1861-6.

*Shopfront, Cecilia Road, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-63*

There are several houses close to Dalston Lane at the south end of Cecilia Road that have converted shopfronts with consoles matching that at the top right of this shop and this was one of these.

Although the advertising for the News of the World and Silk Cut suggests this was once a newsagent and tobacconist, it looks as if it was by 1989 a junk shop.

*Eagle Shipping Services, 168, Dalston Lane, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-65*

This building on the corner of Stanford Mews is still there and has kept its decorative iron balcony railing though not the Eagle Shipping Services advertising and graphics. Its upper floor is now simply painted white while the ground floor has been converted into a ‘rustic health food cafe & shop‘, Healthy Stuff.

*Jas. Elves, marble mason, Carrara House, 164, Dalston Lane, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-66*

James Elves was a marble mason and called his premises at 164 Dalston Lane Carrara House, after the area in Italy famous for its marble. Born in Shoreditch he lived and worked here with his family from around 1900 at least until 1930.

The house is still there and also its porch, but the tiles – presumably marble – of the front path have been replaced with duller slabs.

*Houses, 112-4, Greenwood Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-53*

A few yards south of Dalston Lane, these houses in Greenwood Road were looking a little the worse for wear in 1989 but are considerably smarter now. With three stories and a basement these houses are now largely converted into four flats.

*Doorways, 96-98, Graham Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-42*

I continued south to Graham Road where I found more of Hackney’s remarkable doorcases. The left hand door is 98B as I think there will he a separate door in the area below to the basement flat.

Michael Hunter has a picture of a similar pair a few doors down where he states that the Roman standards are based on pattern books of classical architecture, “but the extraordinary swags of solidified shells over the doors of… Graham Road defy analysis.“

The unfortunate door at right has since been replaced, but with another design that while preferable is still not in keeping with the building.

*Doorways, 96-98, Graham Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-45*

A closer view of one of the swags showing more clearly the shells and at the centre a lion’s head.

*Marie Lloyd, plaque, 55, Graham Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-46*

Finally for today, a rather simpler doorway in Graham Road with the GLC plaque recording that Marie Lloyd, Music Hall Artiste lived here. The dates are those of her life, 1870-1922.

Born in Hoxton in 1870 as Matilda Wood, she made her first appearances on stage when she was 14, taking the stage name Marie Lloyd the following year. So many of the old music hall songs we now know were made famous by here, not least for her remarkable use of nuance and double-entendre as well as displaying her undergarments in a way that respectable Victorians found deplorable but music hall audiences loved.

She moved into this house after her marriage in 1887 – but the marriage was not happy for long. After a disastrous bust-up she moved out from Graham Road in 1894.

As she sang ‘A little of what you fancy, does you good‘ but in her life she certainly became ‘one of the Ruins That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit‘ and at her funeral, thousands took the advice of ‘My Old Man‘ and followed the van to her burial from Woodstock Road in Golders Green to Hampstead Cemetery. Train journeys recently have often left me wondering ‘Oh Mr. Porter, what shall I do?

Stop Bush National Demonstration – 2003

Stop Bush National Demonstration – It seems so long ago; on Thursday 20th November 2003, 20 years ago today, I photographed the protest against then US President George Bush in London.

The protest came just 8 months after the US under Bush had led the invasion of Iraq, aided by Tony Blair who had lied to Parliament and presented a fake dossier to take Britain to war as well.

The US had claimed their action was necessary to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free Iraqi people”. It wasn’t long before it became clear that those who had always said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were proved correct, and although Saddam was killed the invasion encouraged support for terrorists across much of the world, and rather than becoming free the people of Iraq were subjected to still continuing years of misery.

A 2023 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute comments that the invasion “ushered in years of chaos and civil war, as a variety of armed groups vied for power and territory and targeted coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Army. A period of relative calm in the early 2010s was broken by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied large parts of the country from 2014 until it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the support of a US-led international coalition in 2017.”

It goes on to say that the country is now in 2023 at its most stable since the invasion, but “Armed violence persists in different forms, but it is sporadic, fragmented and localized. However, the country remains fragile and divided, and its people face an array of deepening challenges that the state is struggling to address.“

Twenty years ago I was just beginning to work using a digital camera. The Nikon D100 was one of the first affordable generation of digital SLRs, released in the USA at around the same time as the Canon EOS D60, both with a price tag of just under $2000, though I forget what I paid for it here in the UK.

It was still a rather primitive beast, with a 6Mp sensor roughly half the size of a 35mm film frame in what Nikon dubbed DX format. It’s viewfinder was small and dim, making working with it rather more difficult than the film cameras – both SLR and rangefinder – that I had been using.

And having spent so much on a camera, I also had to buy a lens. I’d long been using Olympus SLRs along with Leica and other cameras with the Leica-M mount and had a full range of lenses for these, but nothing with a Nikon mount. So along with the camera I’d bought what was the cheapest zoom in their range, a 24-85mm with a maximum aperture of around f3.5. On the D100 that worked as a 36-127mm equivalent.

It was a useful lens, and a very decent performer, but still rather limiting, with no real wide-angle capability. So alongside the D100 I would also be working most of the time with two other cameras, one loaded with colour negative film and the other black and white.

But there was a huge advantage with digital, in that I could send off files to an agency within hours of taking them, while with the black and white it was probably a day or two before I made prints to take or send. Publishing too had largely moved to colour and colour images were now wanted rather than black and white.

Although I developed and at least contact printed the films I took then, I think I’ve made very few if any prints from this or other events at the time. And any I have made since will have been printed digitally from scans of the negatives.

Digital gave an immediacy, but there were still problems with handling the files. Software to process the RAW images that were needed to get the most out of the digital files was still rather primitive by current standards, and most of the images I processed back then have a slightly muddy look. Nikon’s colour rendering was I think more to my taste than Canon, but still not up to that from film, though now we get far more accurate colour from digital. When Adobe introduced Lightroom in 2007 it was a little of a step backwards, but since then it has improved dramatically.

Those early sensors also were not too great with high contrast subjects and for some years I worked much of the time with fill-in flash on sunny days. Fortunately this was something that digital camera and modern flash systems made a simple routine.

On My London Diary I was still experimenting in how to present digital work on the web, and the thumbnail pages I created here were not the best of ideas. But the 80 images presented there – around a third of the exposures I made – perhaps give a good idea of how I worked. Clicking on any of them gives a page with slightly larger views of several of them.

Occupy & Women’s Equality – 2011

Occupy & Women’s Equality – On Saturday 19 November 2011 Occupy London was in full swing in St Paul’s Churchyard and elsewhere and the Fawcett Society were protesting against government cuts that were reversing the movement to greater equality for women.

Don’t Turn The Clock Back – Temple to Westminster

The Fawcett Society were angered by government’s cuts which they said were putting the clock back on the advances which women have made towards equality since the 1950s, and had organised a march in protest with a 1950s theme.

Many of the marchers, mainly women, had come dressed in 1950s styles “ranging from the most elegant of Paris fashion of the day to aprons, hairnets and curlers. Others carried brushes or brooms, wooden spoons or other kitchen implements as symbols of what they felt was the only role our government can envisage for women, the ‘good little wife’.”

Many women had been particularly angered by the sexist and patronising putdown in parliament made by then Prime Minister David Cameron, a man who a few days ago made a surprising return to a leading role in UK politics. Probably insulated as he has been from normal life by an education at Eton and Oxford and wealth he thought little about his sexist and patronising put-down ‘Calm Down Dear!’ to Labour’s Angela Eagle in the House of Commons, but it enraged at least half the nation.

On the march people chanted ‘Calm Down Dear!’ followed by the deafening response ‘No We Won’t!‘ The marchers also had some caustic comments directed at the press (though not us journalists covering the march) for their “belittlling labelling of some groups of women in public life – such as ‘Blair’s Babes‘ – as well as the general predominance of semi-pornographic imagery and demeaning attitudes to women.”

But it was the cuts that really were the focus of the march, particularly the cuts in public services. A majority of those who will lose their jobs are women, employed in the NHS and elsewhere. And women depend more on the various services that will be cut, and will also have disproportionally to provide unpaid services such as care to make up for those cut. Finally the cuts in pensions will also have a larger effect on women who were already seeing a raise in their pension age.

The Fawcett Society was founded in 1866 to campaign peacefully for votes for women and remains a powerful campaigning organisation for equal rights. It had called on a wide range of speakers for its rally including journalist Tanya Gold, Estelle Hart, NUS Women’s Officer, comedians Kate Smurthwaite and Josie Lond, Heather Wakefield of Unison, Vivienne Hayes from the Women’s Resource Centre, Chitra Nagarajan of Southall Black sisters. Aisha Mirza from UK Uncut and a spokesperson for the Turkish and Kurdish Refugee Women’s group.

More at Don’t Turn The Clock Back.

At Occupy London

I’d visited Occupy in St Paul’s Churchyard briefly before going to photograph the Fawcett Society march and returned later in the day to visit the ‘Bank of Ideas’ in Sun Street and Occupy Finsbury Circus before returning to St Pauls to hear a range of speakers on other campaigns both in London and around the world, including news of the Occupy movement from the USA and Bristol, where the occupation seems not to have attracted the opposition shown by the City authorities and sections of the church in London.

*A meeting in progress in the Bank of Ideas*

The Bank of Ideas was an empty former UBS bank building in Sun Street that was occupied and used for a wide range of meetings and discussions.

*People listen to a wide range of speakers on the steps of St Pauls*

Later a group who had taken part in the non-Stop Picket of South Africa House started by the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group on 19 April 1986 shared some of their songs and their experience.

They had defied defied the attempts of British police, the British government and the South African embassy to remove them for almost 4 years until Mandela was released in 1990. There had been around a thousand arrests, but 96% of the cases brought to court were dismissed. Before this they had organised a number of shorter non-stop protests outside the embassy, the first of which in 1981 lasted 86 days and resulted in South African political prisoners including David Kitson being moved to better conditions.

The official Anti-Apartheid Movement opposed their actions and expelled them from the movement, warned trade union and local anti-apartheid groups not to have anything to do with them and asked Westminster Council to remove them. It wanted to avoid any confrontation with the British Government and opposed the City of London group’s support for other African liberation movements as well as the African National Congress.

Cleaners protests, UK father in Israeli Jail – 2016

Cleaners protests, UK father in Israeli Jail – On Friday 18th November 2016 I went with members of the Independent Workers Union CAIWU to protests at three companies over their treatment of cleaners before a protest over the abduction by Israel, torture amd imprisonment of a British national father of five.

Cleaners In Lloyds Against Racist Sacking

CAIWU, the Cleaners & Allied Independent Workers Union is an independent grass roots workers union helping to improve the lives of cleaners across the UK. Many of the workers who clean the offices of London’s many prestigious offices are employed by cleaning companies who pay minimum wage and treat their workers abdominally with bullying and arbitrary management and lousy conditions of service, often failing to provide safe working conditions.

Respectable and prestigious companies who would never employ people on such terms nevertheless contract out their cleaning to companies who do so on their behalf. Many cleaners who tried joining our major unions found that these were more concerned with taking their union dues than fighting for their rights and set up several grass roots unions to represent them more actively in the workplace.

CAIWU is one of these and has had considerable success in getting workers a living wage and improving their conditions, as well as defending them against discrimination.

Following the sacking of two members who cleaned Lloyd’s but were employed by Principle Cleaning Services, a company which Lloyd’s outsources its cleaning to, members of CAIWU went with posters, vuvuzelas and a powerful megaphone to protest noisily inside the foyer of the Lloyd’s building at lunchtime.

Two black workers were disciplined and dismissed from the site by Principle Cleaning Services following a window cleaning accident. CAIWU say that white workers involved in a similar accident were left off without even a warning and that this is a clear case of racist discrimination. They also say that another African worker, a CAIWU member, was also recently dismissed for trivial reasons because of his trade union activities.

After a brief protest inside the building in which a security guard began to assault some of them and then dived to the floor claiming falsely he had been hit they left and continued their noisy protest outside.

More at Cleaners in Lloyds against racist sacking

Cleaners at Mace protest Dall nepotism

Next the CAIWU group made its way to Mace in Moorgate, where they again rushed into the lobby for a protest against the cleaning contractor there, Dall Cleaning Services.

Here they complained about nepotism with a cleaning supervisor roster made up of five members of the same family. The also say that after Dall had promised cleaners the London Living Wage they promptly reduced the working conditions and also dismissed two cleaners without notice or proper procedures. They had come to demand the reinstatement of the two workers dismissed and also proper conditions of service and working conditions.

Again after a brief protest inside the lobby they left and continued the protest outside for a few minutes before catching a bus to Holborn.

More at Cleaners at Mace protest Dall nepotism.

Cleaners at Claranet for Living Wage – Holborn

Again at Claranet’s offices CAIWU briefly occupied the lobby for a brief protest leaving when security began pushing them around to continue their protest on the pavement outside.

The cleaners here are employed by NJC under a contract by Claranet, and both NJC and Claranet have ignored the union’s attempts to negotiate for the London Living Wage and have confirmed they have no intention of considering to pay this.

The union has called on Claranet which claims to be an ethical company to insist the cleaners are paid the London Living wage now.

More at Cleaners at Claranet for Living Wage.

Release British father from Israeli Jail – G4S HQ, Westminster

*Protesters pose for a selfie with Laila Sharary, wife of the British father held by the Israeli military*

Human rights group Inminds were protesting outside the headquarters of British security company G4S over the abduction by Israel and subsequent torture of British national and father of five, Fayez Sharary.

The protest took place at G4S because the company trains Israel’s police forces and was at the time responsible for the security of Israel’s prison. Protests like this and pressure by the BDS movement led to G4S ending its contracts with the prisons in December 2016 and in June 2023 the world’s largest private security company Allied Universal, which owns G4S, announce it was selling all its remaining business in apartheid Israel.

*An image projected on the neighbouring building shows Fayez Sharary with his daughter*

Sharary had gone to the West Bank for a family visit and was arrested by Israeli forces when leaving on 15th September and tortured for 3 weeks by Israeli secret police Shin Bet to force a confession.

Laila Sharary and their 3 year old daughter were also arrested but released after 5 hours

At a military trail an Israeli judge declared this confession worthless and pointed out that several of the charges against him were for activities which were not illegal, ordering his release. But he was instead held in a G4S secured prison and a few days later the military returned him to court and got the judge’s order set aside.

Torture is not a crime in Israel and the insist the UN Conventions Against Torture which they have signed do not apply to Palestinians. The UN treatment centre for victims of torture in the occupied Palestine territories treated 845 Palestinians in 2014, including 317 women and 135 children.

Sharary is a British citizen who has lived in this country for over 23 years but he has received no support from the British Embassy and had no legal support at either of his military trials.

More at Release British father from Israeli Jail.

Our Flag & Olympic Site 2007

Our Flag & Olympic Site – On Saturday 17th November 2007 I had a more varied day than usual, beginning with a march my football supporters, then a walk around the outside of the then fenced off Olympic site followed by an Olympic-related symposium. I can’t remember anything about the symposium, though I think it was almost certainly critical of what was being done to London, its future being sacrificed to a highly commercial sports festival.

March For Our Flag – Westminster

A few months earlier in February 2007 I’d photographed and written about a ‘March for Our Flag’ organised by football supporters, particularly Tottenham fans. The main group backing that – and the repeat march this month through Westminster – was the United British Alliance. There was a suggestion that, although a patriotic event, it was at least trying to detach itself from the racism of the far right.

The UBA web site described itself as “a multi-ethnic, multi-faith organisation with a passionate interest in reclaiming our once proud nation from the grip of international terror and political correctness gone-mad,with a view to re-installing some pride in our communities and way of life.”

As I commented in November 2007:

Although individuals may well be sincere in these attempts, it isn’t so easy to shake off this impression. Some of the links on the [UBA] web site are to people and groups who I would consider as having extreme views, and the discussion you can find on football forums and elsewhere seems clearly Islamophobic.

Although there were even fewer supporters this time – well under 200 – there did seem to be a slightly calmer attitude and a slightly wider range of people attending, although still only one or two black faces.

Curiously enough, on the UBA web site galleries, all the marchers have their faces – or at least their eyes – blacked out. The only people not given this treatment are the police escorting the event.

As I’ve often said, the only way to protect our freedom is by being free. That includes standing up for what you believe – and being seen to do so. So I’m totally opposed to this kind of censorship of the news. Freedom of expression is a part of the British heritage of which I’m proud. As too are Morris Dancing, Association and Rugby football along with the many other things, including the way we have successfully integrated elements from other cultures and religions into our way of life over the years – and continue to do so.

My London Diary

My pictures from the 17th November do show one or two families and their children took part and I can see just one darker face among the young men. In view of recent events and the behavior of Suella Braverman my final two sentences are very appropriate and very relevant: “We all need far more positive messages and actions from our politicians to lead us all – including Britain’s muslims to a new and united vision of our society. Islamophobia needs combating, not encouraging.”

More pictures on My London Diary

Stratford – Olympic Edge

I walked out of Stratford Station and across the footbridge leading to the Carpenters Estate and on to Bridgewater Road, a dead end with a bridge across the tidal Waterworks River.

The road to Hackney Wick is firmly closed and so too was the Greenway just a few yards from the entrance on Stratford High Street.

You could walk down it just a few yards, and I took another picture looking back along the Waterworks River towards Bridgewater Road where I had been standing earlier.

I took a few pictures around the edge of the area, then walked back along the High Street towards the centre of Stratford.

The Log Cabin pub had been here at 335-337 High Street, Stratford as a coaching inn since at least the mid-18th century, though it was known as The Yorkshire Gray before being renamed around 1997 when the hiddeous green excresenes were added. The building was Grade II listed in 2003, almost certainly saving it from demolition and is thought to date from around 1740, and though parts were rebuilt in the late nineteenth century much of the interior had survived more or less intact. It closed in 2001 and is now a hotel.

My final picture was at The Working Mens Hall and Club Rooms on Romford Road, founded in 1865 and rebuilt in 1905, with the motto Labor Omnia Vincit (Work Conquers All). Perhaps it was here that the symposium was held, and I have a very vague recollection of a talk by Iain Sinclair, although that could have been on quite a different occasion.

A few more pictures here.

Kick Boris out of Uxbridge – 2019

Kick Boris out of Uxbridge – When Boris Johnson was coming to the end of his wrecking spell as Mayor of London he decided he wanted to confer the same benefit on the country and the first step in that was to become an MP again. So in the 2015 election he was elected as the member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, a safe Tory seat on the edge of West London.

*Anarchists came to join the FCKBoris protest on Saturday 16th November 2019*

He got roughly the same percentage of votes – just over 50% – there in 2017, but the Labour candidate managed to cut his majority considerably, and there were hopes in 2019 that this trend might continue. Unfortunately it didn’t and Johnson increased his percentage of the vote by 1.8% while the Labour vote went down by a little more.

After Johnson’s resignation the by election there in 2023 was a close run thing, with the Tory vote down 7.5% and Labour’s up by 5.6% and the Tory candidate just scraping in with a majority of 495. Most commentators saw the result as being caused by the unpopularity of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ low emission zone extension which was to include the area later in the year overcoming the incredible unpopularity of the Tory government.

But in 2019, many felt Labour had a chance in what had for many years been a safe Tory seat with a solid blue vote of around 50%. And among them were a group who called themselves FCKBoris who came to campaign there against him on Saturday 16th November 2019.

I went there to photograph them and others went to protest with them. Uxbridge is only around 7 miles from where I live, but it isn’t a place I often visit, not least because public transport on the edges of London isn’t too hot. There are no direct links and my fastest route is on a bicycle. But I was feeling lazy and instead took three buses, with waits at each change. Two years later we now have a sightly faster service, at least in theory.

Arriving in Uxbridge I came across a fairly small group of people wearing orange woolly hats and handing out fliers with the message ‘Boris Doesn’t Want You to Vote…’ and telling people who were not registered how to get themselves on the electoral roll.

A few of London’s anarchists had travelled out from London to join them, bringing posters encouraging people not to vote but instead to revolt and some with photographs of the Bullingdon Club and the message ‘FUCK OFF BACK TO ETON’ – Johnson’s old school only a few miles away.

There were just a few other placards and banners, and also an open-top bus wth a large banner with the message #KICKBORISOUT from which a hefty sound system pumped out a rhythm that kept many of the campaigners dancing both on the street and on the top of the bus where I joined them briefly.

But the effectiveness of the bus was greatly reduced by the pedestrianisation of much of the town centre with an impenetrable one-way system and soon a police officer came along to tell the driver very politely that he couldn’t park where he was. And soon the bus and protesters set off slowly to march to Brunel University, accompanied by a handful of police.

And it was perhaps the university and its students which was the main focus of the campaign with the message directed more at them. Although students can register to vote both at home and where they live during the universtiy term, relativley few generally bother to do so. So much of the messages of this protest were aime at them, though there were some posters which might have had a more general appeal, such as one describing Johnson as “UNFAITHFUL, LIAR, SELF-SERVING, WIFE BEATER? DRUNK?” and saying ‘Don’t trust Boris Johnson. Don’t give him your vote‘.

They were joined at Brunel by a few more protesters with posters including one wearing a rainbow flag and carrying a ‘Queers Against Boris’ poster and with FUCK BORIS written on her forehead,

But otherwise once on the campus it seemed pretty deserted and people didn’t know what to do. Finally they formed up again behind the bus which drove off back towards the centre of the town. But I decided I’d walked enough and sat down at a bus stop for a long wait for a bus to Heathrow where I could wait again for a bus home.

Probably the campaign had very little influence on the result of the election on 12th December, where the Tory campaign was almost entirely on their promise to “Get Brexit Done”. Johnson’s majority here was 7,210 and he went on to make the worst of all possible deals we are now suffering from, largely because of a Tory conviction that bluster and intransigence is the best form of negotiation.

More at Kick Boris out of Uxbridge.

Saturday In Paris – 2008

Saturday In Paris. It’s some years since I’ve been to Paris for the large Paris Photo show and the Mois de la Photo, though for a few years I went regularly. Partly I got bored with seeing the same work again and again at many dealers stalls in Paris Photo, and it also seemed increasingly dominated by the kind of large images for corporate walls that had little interest for me (but sold at huge prices per square foot.)

Paris Photo generally occupied me during a couple of days, but most of my time on my visit was spent in visiting the many other exhibitions around the city which was really saturated with photography with a huge fringe of events. One evening I managed to attend five openings, though by the last I think the wine was taking a toll, and to pack in almost 90 shows in a five day visit – and there had been others where a short look had led me to turn away. There has never been anything like this in Britain, perhaps the closest we have ever got to it was in the East London Photomonth.

The more interesting of those shows I went to I reviewed here on >Re:PHOTO and you can still find these reviews in the archives, along with every other post I’ve written on this site. And there are also posts covering many of our walks, along with some like this on My London Diary.

The walks around Paris were sometimes more interesting than the shows. I first came to Paris to visit Linda who was then staying in a student hostel to the south of the city in 1965 and we’ve returned quite a few times since we were married, always taking long walks as well as making the most of our weekly travel tickets (which cost little more than a day’s public transport around London.) Few pages of the Michelin Green Guide have been left unturned over the years.

On Saturday 15th November Linda and I left our cheap hotel close to the Metro at Barbes Roucechoaurt after breakfast and walked to the Rotonde de la Villette. As always I found a few things to photograph. We were on our way to visit shows by Gilles Raynaldy and then on to work by two photographers at a new arts centre in what had previously been the municipal funeral services.

The Metro took us to the centre of Paris for a short non-photographic interlude, including a nostalgic picnic in the Square du Vert Galant on the tip of the Ile de la Cite before another train took us to Galerie Vu and a show by Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjork, who I had met at the FotoArtFestival in Poland in 2005. Sadly he died in 2015.

Then we walked around the Marais, visiting a number of shows their, some rather briefly though others held our attention rather more, including work by Robert McCabe & Aurelia Alcais.

Some of the galleries were perhaps more impressive than the shows in them and this was true of the Galerie Karsten Greve in the rue Debelleyme (it also has galleries in Cologne and St Moritz which perhaps tells you something about who it’s audience is) which was showing work by Italian photographer Mimmo Jodice. I didn’t feel it was worth my writing about.

More to our taste was a show across the road in the Galerie Blue Square with remarkable images from the Global Underground project by artists Valera and Natasha Cherkashin.

Around the rue Vielle du Temple we looked in briefly at a number of shows, several of them aimed at the fetish market but none detained us long. On the rue du Perche we found John Bulmer’s ‘Hard Sixties: L’Angleterre post-industrielle, black and white and colour images from the 1960s in the north of England, mainly around Manchester where we had spent the first few years of our married life (all we could afford as a honeymoon was a day coach trip to the Lake District.)

It was getting dark and we took the Metro back to our hotel to change and then go out to meet Linda’s brother and his wife who live on the outskirts of Paris on the Grands Boulevards. We had planned to enjoy a three course meal at Chartier, but they weren’t feeling well so I was disappointed when we simply went to a creperie.

They left early to go back home and we took another Metro ride to Trocadero and walked down and across the bridge to stand under the Eiffel Tower, admiring its ring of blue stars to mark Sarkozy’s term as President of the European Council.

We then walked around the area, but it was late and the streets were dark and deserted. Eventually we came to a bus stop and after a wait of around 15 minutes a bus arrived and took us to the Place de Clichy.

Here the boulevard at least was still lit up and there were plenty of people as we walked on past Place Blanche and on to Place Pigalle, wandering past or hanging around the various sad-looking neon-covered come-on facades of sex shops and clubs. I took some more pictures, though with the large and obvious Nikon I kept my distance and concentrated on the signs. We walked back around a mile to our hotel and were exhausted after a long day.