Some of my favourite pictures from those I made in January 2025:
Tommorow some of my pictures from February.
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NHS campaigners came to Downing Street on Friday 23rd December 2016, the day that contracts were signed for 44 areas covering the whole of England to implement the government’s ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans’ (STP).
Including many health professionals the campaigners saw these plans as the last nail in the coffin of the NHS, effectively handing over the NHS to private companies without any public engagement of consultation, ending a public service whose vision which has long been the envy of the world, signing the NHS over for private profit.
A series of speeches was interrupted every 15 minutes by three long and loud ‘howls of protest‘, timed to coincide with three social media ‘Thunderclaps’ across Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr by several hundreds unable to be there in person.
Among speakers were Paula Peters of DPAC, Ealing Councillor Aysha Raza, trainee nurse Anthony Johnson of the Bursary or Bust campaign, trainee mental health nurse Gina, a patient and campaigner and retired Paediatrician Tony O’Sullivan, Co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public.
At the end of the rally, a small group of those present, led by DPAC and a banner listing of few of those who had died because of government cuts marched down Whitehall holding up traffic for a final howl outside Parliament and a speech there by Paula Peters.
As they came to the end of Parliament Street police came to harass them, threatening them with arrest if they did not get onto the pavement. Like many such police interventions this only prolonged the traffic holdup as the protesters were about to cross the road to the wide pavement outside Parliament but were delayed by police arguing with them.
Sustainability and transformation plans were fortunately short-lived and soon morphed into ‘sustainability and transformation partnerships‘ which by 2018 were becoming known as ‘integrated care systems‘, and then were expected to evolve into ‘accountable care systems‘. It all reflected an increasing half-baked emphasis on managers and management changes which damaged the ability of the NHS to actually treat patients.
Many feel that government policies – under both Tories and Labour – have been designed to wreck the NHS so it can be replaced by an insurance-based system – with great profits for the mainly US-based healthcare companies who make large financial contributions to leading politicians and in which many also have a direct financial interest.
More pictures at Howls of protest for death of the NHS.
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Venezuela & Grenfell: A small protest outside J P Morgan subsidiary Euroclear in the City of London called on the company to return over $1 billion of Venezuelan government funds sent to buy medicines and food for Venezuela. Later I joined the large silent march from Kensington Town Hall 18 months after the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower.
Euroclear, City of London
The USA began its sanctions against Venezuela in 2005 a few years after Hugo Chávez became president in 1999. He brought in a programme of reforms to improve access to food, housing, healthcare and education and to support socialist government across Latin America and against US influence in what that country considered as its ‘backyard’.
This programme led to economic difficulties but greatly reduced inequality in the country, with many of the middle classes badly hit. The USA imposed further sanctions after Nicolás Maduro became president, partly because of the suppression of human and civil rights, but also for its claims that the regime supported revolutionary movements elsewhere in Latin American and allegations about its role in narcotics trading. Many believe that it was the nationalisation of the oil industry was the most important reason behind the US actions.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but currently earns very little from oil exports, particularly since President Trump imposed sanctions in 2017 and 2019. In the past the US was a major customer, but now because of sanctions its main sales are to China, India and Cuba. In 2025 Trump imposed a 25% tariff on all goods imported into the US from any country that imports Venezuelan oil, either directly or indirectly.
Now it seems increasingly likely that the US will openly back a coup in Venezuela, and as the recent seizure of an oil tanker makes clear, the main reason behind this is those oil reserves.
Back in 2018, Euroclear, a J P Morgan Subsidiary, was refusing to release %1 billion of Venezuelan government money that had been sent to buy medicines and food for Venezuela. They had taken the money despite US sanctions but were refusing to release it. The US then was pushing for humanitarian intervention in Venezuela but refusing allowing the money to be used to provide food and medicines. What they wanted was a change to a regime favourable to the USA.
Hand Back Venezuela’s stolen money
Survivors and campaigners, many of whom lost family and friends at Grenfell, took part in a silent walk marking 18 months since the disaster.
They hold Kensington and Chelsea Council responsible both for the tragedy and for failing to deal effectively with its aftermath, with many survivors still not properly rehoused. They want justice and those responsible brought to trial, for the community concerns to be met and changes made to ensure safety for all.
Still in 2025, after an expensive and lengthy public inquiry, little has changed and there has still been no justice.
I commented back in 2018, that it seemed surprising that “the campaign has not been more forceful. Obviously those for those most closely affected by the terrible fire, trauma makes a more purposeful serious of actions difficult or impossible, but the wider community seem also to have been affected. It was unfortunate that some people set up a rival organisation to United for Grenfell which has gained much of the publicity but has failed to make any real gains and has perhaps served to de-radicalise despite its left-wing connections.“
I’ve written more about Grenfell in a recent post, noting the difference between the official response between here and the recent fire in Hong Kong, where there were arrests in the days following the fire – but we are still waiting for any here.
Many more pictures at Grenfell silent walk – 18 months on.
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Global Climate Change March: On Saturday 8th December 2007 around 6,000 people came to march through London in an attempt to shake the government out of its complacency and get the real change in direction needed to avoid catastrophe. It was by then totally clear that our world was heading to disaster.
Eighteen years later we are still on course for human extinction, and for taking many other species with us. Although most governments have by now taken some measures to curb emissions together these have only resulted in a slight reduction of our rate of self-destruction. Tinkering at the margins is not going to save us and there will be no magic scientific solution, we need a dramatic system change.
The main driver of our impending disaster can be stated in one word: GROWTH. The incessant demand for more, more, more – when what we really should be valuing is better.
We have a government that is committed to growth – and introducing climate killing policies such as Heathrow expansion. Protests such this in 2007 and many others managed to stop the third runway then but now it and other disastrous projects are back.
Of course it isn’t just our current government, but the whole political and economic system which calls for growth – and is dominated by the rich and powerful people and corporations who control the laws, the media and more. They aren’t our laws and our media but their laws and their media – and they lead to the obscenity of billionaires and to poverty in rich countries and across the world.
Below is my fairly lengthy account of the march in 2007 from My London Diary, where there are many more pictures of the event than the few here.
The global climate change march on Saturday 8 December was intended to send a message to government that they need to produce an effective Climate Change bill and put themselves wholeheartedly behind saving the planet rather than backing projects such as the Heathrow expansion that will further increase the chaos.
The march went to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, because America is still refusing to ratify the Kyoto treaty and still sabotaging any progress on getting effective measures to cut carbon and energy use.
Cyclists were also out in force on a tour of central London before the march, visiting a picket at Tesco Metro in Lower Regent Street, where leaflets were handed to customers asking them to shop elsewhere so long as Tesco continues to promote bio-fuels.
It was a lousy day, with strong winds and intermittent heavy showers, but that didn’t stop more than 6000 marchers turning out for the event, many in fancy dress as santas, polar bears, reindeer, elves, penguins and more to highlight the problem of melting polar icecaps. At the front of the march was the ‘Statue of Taking Liberties’ with the Kyoto treaty, followed by the Earth in its greenhouse as in the Campaign against Climate Change logo. And Lucy, our favourite mermaid was there to remind us of the perils of rising sea levels.
It was hardly surprising to see such a great number of protesters and placards opposed to the expansion of Heathrow and the building of a third runway across the villages of Sipson and Harmondsworth. There also appeared to be an increasing realisation that to combat climate chaos we need to put into place changes in lifestyle and politics, with some protesters calling for an end to livestock farming – one of the main contributors to carbon emissions – and others for a revolution.
I tried hard to represent all the different groups on the march, but doubtless I will have missed some. One of the santas carried two placards, the more appropriate of which said “Santa says stop Global Warming. Its getting too wet and windy for Rudolph“; it was certainly too wet and windy for marchers and photographers, but we stuck it out
Many more pictures at Global Climate Change March.
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Gate Gourmet & a Bike Ride: On Sunday December 4th 2005 I got on my bike and rode the roughly 1l miles to Southall, where I locked up my bike (not the Brompton, but an old CinellI racer I’d got many years ago for my 13th birthday) and photographed a protest by workers sacked from their jobs at Heathrow airport catering firm Gate Gourmet.
There is an excellent article on the Striking Women website which gives the background to the dispute and explains why 56 women workers of South Asian origin felt betrayed by the agreement reached by the TGWU over the dispute and refused the compensation offered of between £5000 and £8000 – and refused to leave quietly – though most of the workers took the money rather than fight for justice.
The workers and their shop stewards received little support from the official trade union movement in their fight for justice and the TGWU hardship fund ended its support in January 2006, and the TGWU (by then part of UNITE) cease all support in 2009. Around a dozen of the workers – mainly those who were for various reasons not at work when Gate Gourmet locked the workers out – eventually won claims for unfair dismissal.
The dispute made very clear the extent to which union powers had been emasculated by a succession of Acts passed under Thatcher – the Employment Act 1980, Employment Act 1982, Trade Union Act 1984, Trade Union Art 1990, Employment Act 1988, Employment Act 1990. John Major continued with the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 and then Blair and New Labour took over the job.
But even given all this, the TGWU ended up caving in to the employers and giving them everything they wanted in the settlement it made.
Below (with minor corrections) is the post I wrote back in 2005.
Southall, December 4, 2005
Gate Gourmet was split off from British Airways in 1997 to cut costs by out-sourcing their catering. It was sold to US company Texas Pacific in 2002, and they also decided to cut costs. This seems to have meant increasing workload, bringing in more managers (why?) and replacing skilled and experienced staff by unskilled workers. They went into a dispute with the TGWU (Heathrow’s major union) over layoffs and worsening conditions, then on 10 August 2005, took on 120 temporary workers.
Their aim was to provoke an unofficial walkout, which would allow them to sack the workers. The workers held a union meeting in the canteen and were told by management that if they were not back at work in 3 minutes they were all sacked. It is claimed that management had locked the doors just to make sure they didn’t return. The workers were then forcibly evicted from the premises by the private security guards the management just happened to have standing around waiting.
Britain’s anti-union laws (thanks to Mrs Thatcher) stack the odds against workers, allowing unscrupulous management to get away with most things short of murder if they put their minds to it.
The TGWU were hamstrung by a High Court injunction, which prevented them from doing much to help the workers. The only thing that helped them was illegal action by their former colleagues at BA, said to have cost that company £40 million. So eventually BA forced Gate Gourmet to come to some kind of compromise with the TGWU, but this has failed to satisfy most of the workers, who wanted their jobs back and decent working conditions. So, although all the papers reported it as over, the action still continues. When my wife flew BA from Heathrow a few days ago, she got a voucher to get sandwiches in the departure lounge rather than in-flight catering.
This is a dispute that highlights the need for proper trade union laws that give workers and unions a fair deal. It shows how union weakness has allowed the Labour Party to renege on the promises it made in opposition and to turn its back on its traditions of fair play. BA has also emerged as pretty short-sighted in its decision to out-source its catering, much as we have found out-sourcing to be a mistake over key services in hospitals and schools.
More pictures on My London Diary
December 4, 2005
After the protest I was relieved to find my bike still in one piece where I had locked it and rode home. On my way to Southall I had time to spare and stopped to take a few pictures -and just a few more on my way home. Here is what I wrote in 2005.
I took my usual route to Southall on a push-bike – it takes me around 45 minutes if I don’t stop. but I nearly always do stop at least once to take some pictures. So here are a few pictures from around Heathrow, including a farm. Heathrow swallowed up some of the most productive arable land in the country including a number of fine orchards, but there are still a few farmed areas around its edges – cutting down the dangers of a crash, although some of the most used approaches come in low over many homes.
It was never a suitable site for a major airport, but the chances of any government biting the bullet and closing it down seem low. We should have been running it down for years, but instead have built 2 new terminals (both of which the airport authority said they would never need) and further disastrous development looks likely.
A few more pictures on My London Diary.
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Twenty years ago on Saturday 3 December 2005 the Campaign Against Climate Change organised a march calling for urgent action over climate change. Among groups supporting the march were the Green Party, Friends of the Earth and socialist organisations.
But in 2005 there was no interest from the major charities and mainstream organisations that have since supported some major London marches pointing out the dangers of climate change and global extinction, like most governments they had yet to wake up to the very real dangers facing the future of human life on our planet.
The Campaign Against Climate Change was one of the first organisations in the UK to serilsly begin organising against global warming – and I remember photographing them back in 2002 pushing an attractive ‘Tiger’ on a bed from the Esso headquarters in Leatherhead to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, Westminster. US President George W Bush had put the interests of climate-denying US Oil and fossil fuel companies, notably Esso, above the survival of our species with with his rejection of the Kyoto protocol, agreed in 1997 but only due to come into force in 2005.
Back in 2005, we needed governments to act with urgency, but they failed us and the world. One of those failing then was Tony Blair, whose New Labour government had also betrayed us over the invasion of Iraq as well as over climate change. And now in 2025 we have another Labour government, now under Keir Starmer, pressing ahead with new climate-destroying road schemes, oil exploration and extra runways rather than facing up to the need to change our assumptions and way of life in ways that would reduce CO2 emissions and slow global warming.
Saturday 3rd December 2005 was an international day of climate protest but the march to the US Embassy in London achieved little media coverage – the billionaires who own and control most of our media have little interest in the subject (and probably large financial interests in fossil fuels and other drivers of climate change.) Even the BBC had been a hive of complacency, and have given a totally unwarranted level of coverage to those who continue to refuse the overwhelming scientific evidence. Though now they are perhaps beginning to realise that you cannot have ‘balance’ over scientific fact.
Here – with minor corrections – is what I wrote about the march back in 2005 – and a few of the pictures I took at the event – you can see more on My London Diary at the link at the bottom of this page.
Kyoto was the first attempt to at least recognise the problem was global and take some concerted action, even if less than half-hearted. Thanks to George Bush and the oil companies he represents, the ineffectual has been made even more so.
Problems related to growth and pollution are inextricably linked with industry and trade. It is hard to see any possibility of their solution without the imposition of tariffs on the exports of countries that continue to pollute – such as the USA. It’s equally hard to envisage this happening while the USA is so dominant in the world bodies and conferences that set the rules on trade.
There were around 10,000 of us on the streets of London on Saturday, and many more around the world in demonstrations elsewhere, all part of the International Day of Climate Protest, the march in London organised, as previous climate marches and protests, by the UK Campaign Against Climate Change.
Here in London the climate smiled on us for an hour or so, then the rain came as the march entered Parliament Square. It was pouring rain rather than the police that persuaded the students who sat down in front of the Houses of Parliament that it was a good idea to get up and move on.
My camera also began to suffer, and I needed to move inside to dry it out. My injured knee was beginning to hurt too, so I decided it was time to take a rest and go home.
More pictures begin here on My London Diary.
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Another Don’t Bomb Syria Protest: On the evening of Tuesday 1st December 2015 a protest by Stop The War again called on MPs not to back David Cameron’s motion to bomb Syria.
There was a large crowd in Parliament Square who listened to speeches by a wide range from the British left including Andrew Murray, Lindsay German, Salma Yaqoob of Stop the War, Kate Hudson of CND, SNP MPs Philippa Whitford and Tommy Sheppard, Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Richard Burgon and Imran Hussain, Weyman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism, Momentum organiser Adam Klug, George Galloway.
I photographed all of these speakers and you can see several pictures of most of them on My London Diary.
But as in the previous Stop The War protest, there were “no speeches by Syrians or Kurds, and no real attempt to take their views into account. And while the speakers all condemned the UK plans to bomb in Syria, there was no condemnation of the Russian bombing of the Syrian opposition, perhaps a greater threat to the Syrian people than Daesh, and certainly than the handful of UK planes.“
Present in the crowd were a number of supporters of President Assad, with flags of his regime, though most of those present were opposed to the Assad regime and Daesh as well as to bombing by the UK.
As I commented, “It’s rather unfortunate that the only organisation promoting large-scale protests against the bombing is Stop the War rather than one clearly supporting the aspirations of the Syrian people for freedom.”
Hours after this protest, Stop the War issued an article ‘For the avoidance of doubt‘ by John Rees which began by stating “The STWC has never supported the Assad regime.” I commented: “Well, it’s good to make that clear, because there have been many protests by Stop the War which Assad supporters have attended and appeared to be welcome, and by refusing to let Syrians opposed to the regime speak at this and other protests STW have certainly given that impression.”
It had become clear by 2015 “that while our government has fulminated against ISIS/Daesh it has also been complicit in support for them through its support of Saudi Arabia which provides support for their Wahabi ideology and more materially, for Turkey which is deeply involved in their oil exports, refining much of their output as well as providing pipelines and ports, and Israel which is the major customer for the smuggled oil.”
The bombing which later took place was largely ineffectual, hypocritical and immoral. While inflicting “little damage on Assad’s military inflicting real damage on the economic and military capability of Daesh” it was as predicted “catastrophic in effect on the civilians” that were bombed either deliberately or by accident.
After the speeches, the protesters marched first to the Tory HQ and then to Labour to deliver letters before returning to Parliament Square where the official protest ended.
Many stayed on in the square and there were minor incidents with police making a few who had climbed onto the plinth of Churchill’s statue come down and stopping some from using a megaphone. But after a few minutes I decided it was time to go home.
More about the protest and many more pictures at Don’t Bomb Syria.
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Six days earlier a march against the Browne Review of Higher Education Funding, which had advocated an increase in tuition fees, allowing them to rise to £9000 a year, as well as the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMA) for 16-18 year old and other changes including closing many arts and humanities courses had led to an angry confrontation between students and police when police decided to halt and kettle the march in Whitehall.
I had been there and reported at some length on the events, including the smashing of a worn-out police van which seemed to have been deliberately left by the police “as a plaything for the protesters” and charges in which some “police made pretty liberal use of their batons and a couple clearly went a little berserk“, and protesters were in danger of being crushed, screaming that they couldn’t breathe.
It hadn’t been like those protests I had taken part in during the late 60’s and most of those taking part “were probably well-behaved students on their first demonstration” who when more militant students breached the police lines “just stood around wondering what to do rather than following them.”
I concluded:
“It had been a pretty confused situation, and it seemed to me that neither police nor students came out of it with much credit. The police tactics seemed designed to create public disorder by kettling and a small minority of the students rose to the bait. Although most of the students were out for a peaceful march and rally and to exercise their democratic right to protest, the police seemed to have little interest in upholding that right.”
The following Tuesday around 5000 students came back to Trafalgar Square for what was meant to be a peaceful march at 1pm along the same route down Whitehall to a rally in Parliament Square – which had been agreed in advance with police. I think both sides wanted to avoid a replay of the previous week.
But shortly after noon, more radical students, including a group of younger students who would lose the EMA took to the plinth under Nelson’s column and called for the crowd to go down Whitehall and demonstrate at Downing Street; several hundreds followed them.
There were only a few police at the top of Whitehall and clearly they stood no change of stopping them, but their attempts to do so heightened the tension and when police formed a tighter line further down Whitehall the protesters began shouting that they were being kettled.
They turned around and went under Admiralty Arch and on to the Mall before continuing down Horse Guards Road. Police followed them, walking beside them as they crossed into Storey’s Gate, then turned into Parliament Square.
By now this group of protesters – perhaps by then a thousand or two were obsessed with the idea that they were being kettled – and certainly there were a large number of police in Parliament Square, particularly behind barriers set up in front of Parliament and at some of the exits from the square.
The protesters turned around and walked and ran, beginning a “long rather rapid walk around London“, rather painful for me as I was still suffering from a foot injury, “taking in Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus and Oxford Street and turning down Kingsway at Holborn and then walking into the City of London along Fleet St” with a couple of hundred police walking along the side of the march.
Most of the Met police stopped at the City of London boundary as the march continued “past St Pauls, the Stock Exchange, on up some of the narrow winding streets around St Bartholomews Hospital (it rather looked as if they were trying to kettle themselves there) to Smithfield Market before going back along Holborn Viaduct where I eventually left them to catch a bus and make my way back to see what was happening in Trafalgar Square.” The City of London Police had seemed to ignore the march and there was little or no trouble on their patch.
In Trafalgar Square there were still some of the original demonstrators but things were pretty quiet. There were police at the exits but people could walk past in both directions; “the protest was being isolated and watched rather than being kettled.”
Some of those I had been marching around London with made their way back into the square and there were a few short speeches before one of the official organisers announced that the demonstration was over and police would be happy for people to leave in small groups towards Charing Cross Station.
But most people decided to stay on and there were a few scuffles with police, with other students “linking arms in front of the police to protect them and stop any violence.”
It was snowing and beginning to get dark and it seemed to me that little further was happening so I walked out of the square and went home. It had been a confusing and tiring day for me. Later I heard that small group who had remained in Trafalgar Square had been kettled and some had been arrested.
More at Students Fees Protest – Day 2.
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Leveson & Cold Homes: On Thursday 29th November press and protesters were outside the QEII centre waiting for the publication of the Leveson inquiry report, and were joined briefly by people who had been protesting outside the treasury over George Osborne’s cuts and energy policies and later moved to protest outside parliament where Energy Secretary, Ed Davey was to introduce the Energy Bill.
QEII Centre
Lord Justice Leveson had been appointed in 2011 to lead an inquiry into the culture, practices, and ethics of the British press after the News of the World had been found to have illegally hacked into the phones of celebrities, politicians, royals and others since the 1990s.
Of course the News of the World which had been closed down by Murdoch’s News International in 2011 over this was not the only newspaper to have used illegal hacking. As well as other papers in the Murdoch Press it was said to be fairly widespread across the tabloid papers.
The Leveson Inquiry was to be in two parts and the report on Part 1 was due to be released on 29th November 2012. Part 2 which was to examine the extent of phone hacking in News International and other media as well as the complicity of the police in receiving bribes and other ways was shelved in 2015 and then scrapped in 2018.
Leveson found that the Press Complaints Commission was toothless and ineffective and recommended that a new voluntary independent body be set up. There are now two press regulators; Impress, which largely follows Leveson’s proposals and IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation which as its name says remains independent, and which more publications have signed up to, while others, including The Guardian belong to neither.
This was a small but visually interesting protest, and ss I wrote in 2012:
Avaaz had brought large puppet heads of Murdoch and a gagged Cameron with placards ‘End the Murdoch Mafia’ and a flaming dustbin into which Murdoch lowered the Leveson report.
Political artist Kaya Mar had brought one of his paintings with the judge and a cart-load of people, though I couldn’t recognise them all.
And a protester from Kick Nuclear was walking up and down with his dog which was wearing a poster about Fukushima warning of the dangers of nuclear power.
More pictures at Leveson Comes Out.
Westminster
Fuel Poverty Action along with others including Disabled People Against Cuts, the Greater London Pensioners’ Association, Single Mothers’ Self-Defence, Southwark Pensioners’ Action Group and WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities) had come to protest against the cuts to come from George Osborne’s energy bill which they say will cause 24,000 extra winter deaths.
The protest which began outside the Treasury and then moved on pausing briefly at the Leveson protest outside the QEII centre to Parliament Square in front of the House of Commons where Secretary, Ed Davey, was to introduce the Energy Bill later that day.
“The protesters had brought plastic silver reflective coated ‘space blankets’ to wear and had three ‘tombstones’ with the messages ‘George Osborne Your Cuts KILL’, ‘Gas Power = Killer Bills’ and ‘24,000 Winter Deaths – Big Six Profits up 700%’.”
They say that already because of the government cuts many people were going hungry, with food banks being set up and kept busy even in the more prosperous areas of the country, and now with winter coming many have to chose between ‘eating or heating’.
Cuts will mean more people suffering from “hypothermia, and the disabled in particular are hard hit, both because of the ruthless removal of benefits by poorly designed tests adminstered by poorly qualified testers with targets to meet and also because they often have special needs for heating.”
The protesters ignored police requests to leave the steps up to the Treasury and police then pushed them down, “usually with minimum force, but just occasionally rather more than necessary, but both protesters and police generally remained calm.” The rally continued on the pavement with speakers including Green Party leader Natalie Bennett.
After this the group of 50 or so protesters moved to the pavement in front of the Houses of Parliament, pausing briefly on the way for photographs in front of those waiting for the Leveson report.
Police again tried to get them to move on when they stopped in front of the Houses of Parliament, at first telling them they had to move as “a Royal movement” was about to take place, an announcement that cause much hilarity and comment but no movement. A little later they were told they could stay, but decided instead to cross onto the grass in Parliament Square for some final photographs.
More pictures at Cold Homes Kill Treasury Protest.
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Walthamstow Housing Action & Class War at the Ripper Museum: On Saturday 21st November 2015 I spent an hour covering a lunchtime rally and march about the housing problems in the London Borough of Waltham Forest before rushing to Whitechapel where Class War were holding another of their protests outside the sensational tourist attraction celebrating the horrific acts of ‘Jack the Ripper’.
Leyton & Walthamstow
People met in Abbots Park Leyton for a rally organised by Waltham Forest Housing Action before they marched to a longer rally in the centre of Walthamstow. over the severe housing problems faced by those living in the borough of Waltham Forest.
The council has a housing waiting list of over 20,000 families, and although there is considerable home building taking place in the borough only 400 of 12,000 homes planned in Walthamstow in the next 5 years are for low earners.
As in most of London’s boroughs, mainly held by Labour councils, the ‘regeneration’ schemes begun under New Labour has led to the loss of social housing, pricing most local people in the many lower paid and middle-income jobs which are essential for the city to run. Regeneration has led to social cleansing with poorer residents being forced out to areas further from the centre.
The campaigners called for an end to housing evictions in the area – then taking place at twice the average rate for London, and the capping of private rents which are on average much higher than the maximum set by housing benefit, as well as a huge increase in social housing.
Housing benefit acts as a huge public subsidy for landlords, passing money to them. The public and those who live in rented accommodation would be much better served by money being spent of building social housing which would give a return to local councils from the rents.
Private rents allow landlords to get housing benefit and the excess rent paid by the tenants to pay off the loans they take out so they can buy property and get the benefit of increasing their capital – at our and the tenant’s expense.
Rising rents have increasingly made it impossible for many key workers – teachers, firefighters and others – to afford to live in the boroughs they serve.
Although Press TV covered the event there was (as usual) no interest shown by mainstream UK media
Among the trade unions supporting the march were the National Union of Teachers and the Fire Brigades Union – who provided their fire engine as a platform for speakers and to lead the march.
Local politicians also came for the event along with Green Party Deputy Leader Dr Shahrar Ali. Among local groups with banners were residents of Residents of Fred Wigg and John Walsh towers on the edge of Wanstead Flats in Leytonstone., where the 234 social housing units are to be replaced by only 160 and new private flats were to be sold to raise £30 million.
I left as the march was on its way to Walthamstow to go to Whitechapel.
More on My London Diary at Homes for All against social cleansing.
Cable St, Whitechapel
I met Class War as they arrived outside the Jack the Ripper tourist attraction in Cable St with their ‘Womens Death Brigade‘ banner for another in their series of protests against the ‘museum’ which celebrates the brutal and macabre killings of working class women in Whitechapel in 1888.
The murderer was an insane serial killer who ripped open the bodies of his victims, removing the uterus and heart and a whole industry has arisen over trying to establish his identity, spurred on by the particularly gory details of his crimes.
Although the police at the time were unable to solve the case, they appear to have given up after Montague Druitt drowned himself in the Thames shortly after the final one of these murders. But those aiming to profit from the whole series of articles, books and films have done their best to build up doubt and uncertainty, putting forward others, often very unlikely such as painter Walter Sickert, as the criminal.
The protest was noisy but peaceful with many of those taking part wearing masks of the shop’s owner – who had lied about the site becoming a museum to celebrate women’s history to gain support and planning permission.
It was enlivened by the arrival of activist singer/guitarist Cosmo who performed three appropriate songs which raised everyone’s spirits, and even the police obviously enjoyed the protest.
Shop owner Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe had left a shop worker and his partner Julian Pino inside the ‘museum’ to face the protesters and their was one spot of farce when a police officer went inside to tell him to stop continually phoning ‘999’ as the police were already there.
A man claiming to be a local resident and seemed to be a friend of the ‘museum’ came to complain to Class War against them protesting against a business that was bringing investment to an area that was so obviously in need of it. He was told that this kind of investmentglorified violence against women and was clearly detrimental to the area and offensive to many – including the living descendants of the victims.
It was hard to avoid the conclusion that his intervention had been prompted and possibly funded by the owner of this tacky tourist attraction, which noticeably attracted no customers while the protest was taking place.
More on My London Diary at Class War at the Ripper ‘Museum’.
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