human rights | >Re-PHOTO

Gender-based Violence, Arming Israel, Trans Pride, Anti Racism

Protests in London three years ago today on Saturday 14th September 2019 all with some connection to human rights violations.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa – Trafalgar Square

People, mainly women and including many South Africans, dressed in black to protest in Trafalgar Square following the rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana and many other women in South Africa.

Protests were taking place across South Africa calling for the government to declare a state of emergency over gender based violence, and to protest against gender-based violence across the world.

After speeches and silences on the North Terrace they moved to light candles for the victims at the entrance to South Africa House.

Criminal Abuse of Women in South Africa

HSBC Stop Arming Israel – Oxford St

Protesters led by Young London Palestine Solidarity Campaign took part in a National Day of Action outside the Oxford St branch of the HSBC Bank calling on it to stop its support of military and technology companies that sell weapons and equipment to Israel to be used against Palestinians. The bank had closed for the protest.

Although HSBC had divested from Israel’s largest private weapons company, it still owned shares in Caterpillar whose bulldozers are used to destroy Palestinian homes and construct illegal apartheid settlements, BAE Systems whose fighter jets attack Gaza and Raytheon which suppliers the ‘bunker buster’ bombs used to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Stop Arming Israel HSBC Protest

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

People met at Hyde Park Corner for this first march in the city to celebrate trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals and to protest against the continuing discrimination here and around the world against them.

As well as many from the trans+ community there were family, friends and other supporters taking part in an event which aimed to increase the visibility of trans+ people.

Recent years have seen an increasing transphobia in the British media with considerably publicity being given to the views of anti-trans activists. There has been an increase in attacks attacks on trans people on the streets, hate speech by trans-exclusionary feminists, and by right-wing national and state governments around the world.

Too often trans+ people around the world are subject to human rights abuses. They have always been an integral part of the gay community and at the forefront of the fight for gay rights – from the Stonewall rebellion on.

There were a few short speeches before the march set off, going along Piccadilly to a rally in Soho Square. I marched with them as far as Green Park where I caught the Underground for a protest in Brixton.

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

Brixton Anti-Racist March

Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group were protesting in Brixton against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants, calling for freedom of movement, the closure of immigration detention prisons, and an end to Brexit which they see being used to whip up immigrant-bashing and nationalism by Boris Johnson.

The event began in Windrush Square, where one of the speakers was Eulalee Pennant, a Jamaican great-grandmother who has been fighting the Home Office for 16 years against deportation. Here uncle was one of the Windrush generation, her grandfather had served in the UK armed forces for his working life, and her cousins, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandson were British. She had worked and paid tax here for many years but was detained days before her 60th birthday and locked up in Yarls Wood, where she contracted a serious stomach infection. She was still vomiting blood when the Home Office tried to put her on a deportation flight.

Eulalee had tried to regularise her and her son’s immigration status with the Home Office in 2003, and among the documents she sent was her passport. The Home Office kept claiming they did not have it, and it was only in court 15 years later they finally admitted they had failed to send in back. Her son spent five years fighting his case to stay in the UK but was deported to Jamaica in 2008, and was murdered there the following June. Her fight against deportation has cost many thousands in legal fees and she has been unable to work since 2003.

There had been relatively few at the gathering in Windrush Square but there was a larger audience when the group marched to Brixton Market to continue the protest there and Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie also came to speak about his LDNlovesEU campaign.

The group then set off to march noisily around central Brixton, returning to Windrush Square for some final speeches.

Brixton anti-racist march

No More Benefit Deaths – 2016

No More Benefit Deaths – 2016 The action on Wednesday 7th September 2016 began with a huge banner being displayed over the river wall on the Albert Embankment so it could be seen clearly be any MPs and others on the river terrace outside the houses of Parliament with the message ‘NO MORE BENEFIT DEATHS #DPAC’

The date was the opening day for the Paralympics in Rio, and protesters held a rally outside Downing Street to call on Theresa May to pay attention to human rights and to make public the findings of the UN investigation into the UK for violations of Deaf and Disabled people’s rights, to scrap the Work Capability Assessment and commit to preventing future benefit-related deaths.

From Downing Street they marched behind a coffin towards Parliament Square.

But on reaching Bridge Street they surprised police by turning on to Westminster Bridge

where they blocked the road on both carriageways with banners, a floral sign and the coffin.

The giant banner that had previously been displayed on the embankment was now stretched across the road.

Protesters sat in wheelchairs or stood holding posters and banners and there were some speeches about why the protest was taking place.

Police at first asked them politely to leave, then began to threaten protesters and journalists covering the event with arrest if they remained on the highway.

Most of those in wheelchairs refused to move. One carer who was looking after a disabled person was arrested and taken to a police van.

I think those arrested were later released without charge – arrest was being used in an abuse of process to harass protesters

Many of DPAC’s disabled protesters refused to move and a few remained blocking the roadway almost two hours after the protest began.

Eventually Paula Peters decided that the protest had gone on for long enough and triumphantly called a halt to the protest.

DPAC block bridge over benefit deaths
‘No More Benefit Deaths’ rally
Giant Banner ‘No More Benefit Deaths

Thousands March for Animal Rights – London.

Thousands March for Animal Rights – thousands of vegans marched through London from Westminster to Hyde Park on Saturday 25th August 2018 in the Official Animal Rights March founded by animal rights organisation Surge, calling for an end to animal oppression and urging everyone to stop eating animals and using dairy products.

Vegans say that animal lives matter as much as ours and call for an end to speciesism, and the misuse of animals for food, clothing and sport. There does however seem to be rather less concern about aspects such as the breeding of dogs and other animals as pets. And while horse racing attracts some attention, the last protest that I photographed against that most cruel of all races, the Grand National, attracted only a handful of protesters compared to the thousands on this march.

Specieism – the idea that animal lives matter as much as human lives – isn’t something I can agree with. I firmly believe there is something special about the human species which has come about through evolution and in particular the development of language. While other species can communicate with each other and some develop very intricate systems of cooperation and civilisation, humanity has developed these to a very different level.

It’s that level indeed that makes veganism possible. The lion needs to hunt and eat, killing other species cruelly in order to survive. Nature truly is famously ‘red in tooth and claw’ at virtually every level, and predation is a vital aspect of all ecosystems.

Of course I’m against cruel treatment of animals, whether it is in farming practices, the transport of live animals, fur farming etc. I’ve never eaten foie gras and will never do so, but I still happily consume cows milk knowing that cows have been bred that now produce many times the amount their young offspring need and would experience considerable pain if not milked. And I’ll happily pay the extra for free range eggs while opposing the terrible treatment of chickens kept in horrifically overcrowded chicken houses. Modern farming practises have generally prioritised cutting costs over being kind to animals and while injections and vetinary treatment may have cut disease it has been in the interests of productivity rather than a more overall view of animal welfare.

There are good environmental reasons for eating less meat, though less so for grass-fed livestock and also for reducing the scale of consumption of diary products. It’s welcome that some people decide not to eat these things, but a wholesale adoption of veganism would be highly damaging to ecosystems around the world and change the nature of our countryside. Just imagine a farmyard without animals – and think seriously about the future of soil without farmyard manure.

Those fluffy animals on the posters at many vegan protests are not wild animals but domesticated animals, which only exist as they do because they have been bred to live with humans and to provide us with food. I would be sad to see them disappear, but there would be no reason for there to be any cows, sheep, geese, pigs, chickens etc in our farms and fields if we ceased to eat them (though I wouldn’t miss turkeys at all.) And certainly I’d not want to see more petting zoos. But I would like to see more truly wild animals in our countryside – including wild ponies rather than horses being kept and ridden for pleasure. And keeping animals as pets does seem to me to be abuse of a kind too – and sometimes by kindness.

There are animals that I happily kill, such as the slugs that eat my vegetable crops and the ticks that hop a ride to suck my blood. Others that I’d support the culling of – including deer and the grey squirrels that are destroying young oak trees and other young vegetation (and we are slowly finding that plants have feelings too) though I can see no justification for the killing of badgers. Then there are smaller animals that I kill accidentally by walking along paths or through forests.

I’m an insulin user, and it has kept me alive and reasonably healthy for around the last 20 years. Reasearch on insulin began in the 1880s, though it was only in the 1920s that the first human patients were injected with it. That research was only possible through experiments using animals, mainly dogs. Until 1982 when the first biosynthetic human insulin became available all commercial production of insulin depended the use of cattle and pigs. Much more recently a plant source has been found. Using animals in medical research in this and many other cases has saved millions of lives but of course it should be subject to proper controls and certainly not used for trivial and routine tests.

In the past I have marched with animal rights activists, supporting many of their protests against animal cruelty. And my diet now contains far less meat than it once did. But it would be good to see more of those who come out to march for animal rights also coming out to march for human rights. still suffering much abuse here and elsewhere around the world. We are a species too and even though we now don’t eat each other, people are being killed, tortured, sexually assaulted, imprisoned without trial, sentenced for their political views variously abused and denied their human rights and the necessities of life.

More at Thousands March for Animal Rights.

Families Separated, Gaza, Ghouta and Sri Lanka

Families Separated, Gaza, Ghouta and Sri Lanka – On Saturday 23rd August 2014 I photographed four protests in Westminster, one against an aspect of our racist immigration policies, the second against the UK selling arms to Israel which have been used in attacks on Gaza (along with a counter demonstration), the anniversary of chemical attacks by the Syrian regime and a protest calling for UK support against the continuing genocide of the Tamil nation.

Divided Families protest over cruelty – Downing St

The cruel and unfair immigration rules set up by the Home Office under Theresa May mean that anyone earning less than £18,600 was unable to bring a non-EU spouse into the country (Brexit means that similar rules now apply to most EU countries.)

This income requirement discriminates against women, the retired and disabled young and many minority ethnic people who have on average lower incomes than the general population. For couples with children, the income limit is even higher, and to secure visas for a spouse and two children you would need an income of £24,800.

Fees for applications are also expensive – from £1048 to £1538 per person and applicants may also need to pay a healthcare premium of from £1560 to £3120 for adults and around three-quarters of this for each child. For applications made in the UK there is an extra £800 if you want a faster decision. And applicants also need to supply a great deal of documentation.

The policy, which also includes tougher English Language tests, a proof of greater attachment to the UK than of any other country and extending the probationary period from two to five years, is in direct contradiction of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which states:

‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.’
Universal Declaration on Human Rights

People at the protests included many whose families were divided as they were unable to meet the income levels, as well as a number of parents and friends of divided families.

Many carried placards with images of the divided families, along with captions such as ‘I WANT MY DADDY TO CUDDLE ME NOT SKYPE ME’. I felt deeply for those caught by what seem to be vindictive, unnecessary and totally insupportable polices. It was impossible not to agree with the placards with messages such as ‘WHY IS LOVE DIVIDED BY LAW? THERESA MAY HAS NO HEART!!! THE LAW NEEDS TO CHANGE….’

Divided Families protest over cruelty

Gaza Protest – Stop Arming Israel – Downing St

A large rally at Downing St called on the UK to stop selling arms to Israel, and for an end to Israeli war crimes. Among the protesters were many Jews from various Jewish groups, including the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta who had walked down from north London to support the protest.

Israel had carried out air strikes on Gaza in July 2014 following a number of incidents including the shooting by the IDF of two Palestinian teenagers and the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. There were other incidents including house demolitions and the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian youth. Hamas replied to air strikes with rocket fire on Israel.

The Israeli invasion of Gaza began in earnest on 20th July and the ground war was still continuing though on a lesser scale when this protest took place, with a ceasefire being agreed and coming into effect on 26th August.

There are more details about the invasion in the Wikipedia Timeline, which states “2,256 Palestinians and 85 Israelis died, while 17,125 Palestinians, and 2,639 Israelis suffered injuries.”

At the protest there was a row of black boxes representing coffins and the names of children killed, and some people carried ‘bloodstained’ bundles representing dead children

Three people came to wave Israeli flags across the road and were led away for safety by police.

Earlier one of the Palestinian protesters had tried to seize one of the flags and was dragged away by police. At the end of the rally opposite Downing St some of the protesters marched around London and I went with them as far as Trafalgar Square where I had another event to cover.

More pictures: Gaza Protest – Stop Arming Israel

Syria Chemical Massacre Anniversary – Trafalgar Square

A rally marked a year after the Ghouta massacre of 21/08/2013 when Assad regime forces outraged the world by using Sarin gas, killing 1,477 residents including over 400 children in this Damascus suburb. The world failed to act against Assad.

One man was wearing wolf head with bloody hands and placard ‘I AM CHEMICAL BASHAR AL ASSAD AND ONE YEAR ON I AM STILL GASSING SYRIAN CHILDREN. THANK YOU FOR UN VETO’

After an hour-long rally in Trafalgar Square the protesters, who were mainly Syrians, marched along the pavements to Richmond Terrace, opposite Downing St, where they laid flowers in memory of the dead.

More pictures: Syria Chemical Massacre Anniversary

Tamils protest Sri Lankan rapes & killing – Downing St

Also present when I returned to Downing St were Tamils protesting over the continuing genocide of the Tamil nation, calling for a UN investigation and referendum on Tamil Eelam.

Placards called for an end to the use of rape to destroy their nation and sexual violence against children.

More pictures: Tamils protest Sri Lankan rapes & killing

XR, Hong Kong, Animal Rights & London – 2019

XR, Hong Kong, Animal Rights & London – 2019 Three years ago today, on Saturday 17th August I made a few journeys around London to photograph protests in Greenwich by Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rights marchers in central London as well as protests supporting Hong Kong’s Freedom marches and Chinese students opposed to them in Westminster.

Royal College and Thames with sailing barge from Greenwich Park, Greenwich. 1982 31p-44: barge, college, palace, river, Thames

My day taking pictures ended in Greenwich Park, where I made the picture at the top of this post, a view looking down the Queen’s House and the Old Royal Naval College and on towards Canary Wharf. I’d made a photograph from a very similar position in 1992 and the pair make an interesting comparison.

XR Rebel Rising March to the Common – Greenwich

Supporters of South East London Extinction Rebellion met beside the Cutty Sark in Greenwich to march to a two-day festival on Blackheath Common, calling for urgent action on Global climate change.

Blackheath Common has a long history of involvement in protest. It was here that around 100,000 anti-poll tax rebels gathered under Wat Tyler in 1381, and in 1450 that Jack Cade’s 20,000 Kent and Essex yeomen camped in their revolt against Henry VI’s tax hikes. Neither of these events ended well, nor did the several thousand Cornishmen killed and buried on the common after they rose up against taxes levied to fight the Scots 1497. The Chartists who met here also largely failed, but the Suffragettes did better.

Ten years earlier, I’d come with Climate Camp to swoop to a secret destination which turned out to be Blackheath Common, and photographed the camp being setup and spent another day there as a part of the Climate Camp documentation team. But that too had failed to spur the UK into any really effective action, though perhaps more lip-service.

The situation by 2019 was clearly critical and Extinction Rebellion were calling on our and other governments to take the urgent actions needed to avoid the extinction of species including our own, and also for local councils to do everything within their powers.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay with the marchers all the way to the festival ground as the march started late, waiting for the samba band to arrive. I had to leave them halfway up the hill and rush back down to the station for a train to central London.

XR Rebel Rising March to the Common

Stand with Hong Kong & opposition – Trafalgar Square

My train took me into Charing Cross and I rushed the short distance to Trafalgar Square where I found a rather confusing situation. It took me a few moments to realise that the first group of Chinese protesters I met were supporters of the Chinese government, but the number of Chinese flags they were waving was an undeniable clue.

There are many Chinese students studying at UK universities, providing a very useful source of finance to these institutions. Most of that money comes from the Chinese government or from families that are very wealthy from their Chinese businesses which depend on that government, and as they intend to return to China have no choice but to come and be seen showing their support for China.

I spent a few minutes photographing their protests, then moved on a few yards to a protest with a very different colour, dominated by yellow posters, banners and umbrellas of the Hong Kong Freedom Movement.

Eventually they set off to march down Whitehall, stopping to protest opposite Downing
St. The Chinese students followed them, but police largely kept the two groups on opposite sides of the road, with the Chinese supporters shouting to try and drown out the speakers opposite.

After a rally at Downing St the Hong Kong freedom protesters moved off towards a final rally in Parliament Square – followed too by some of the Chinese who continued to shout and mock them. But I left to go elsewhere.

Stand with Hong Kong & opposition

Official Animal Rights March 2019

I’d missed the start of the vegan Animal Rights march in Hyde Park, but met them and took some pictures as they came to Trafalgar Square, where they halted, blocking all the roads leading in and out of the square.

This march was organised by the vegan activist collective Surge and non-violent civil disobedience movement Animal Rebellion, who say animal lives matter as much as ours and call for an end to speciesism, and the misuse of animals for food, clothing and sport.

Some of the marchers wore t-shirts with the number 269, the number of a calf on an Israeli diary farm whose number Israeli animal rights activists branded themselves with in a 2012 protest after which 269life became a worldwide movement.

Official Animal Rights March 2019

Charing Cross to Greenwich & Back

For once my trains to Blackheath and back from Greenwich after photographing the central London protests both had reasonably clean windows, and I took a number of photographs on the outward and return journeys. Also in this section I included the picture from Greenwich Park at the top of this post, along with a couple of others from much the same position.

Charing Cross to Greenwich

XR Rebel Rising Royal Observatory Die-In – Greenwich

From Blackheath Station I rushed to the Rebel Rising festival on Blackheath Common, arriving just in time for the start of a march from the festival to protest at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park.

The march proceeded behind a black banner with the text asking the question ARE WE THE LAST GENERATION? Unfortunately at least for the younger members of the marchers, some of whom were in push-chairs the answer could well be YES.

At the Royal Observatory there was a die-in on the area in front of the gates, the site chosen to symbolise we have zero time left and that we need to act now on climate change. Some taking part had clock faces drawn on their faces and the protest was just a few yards to the east of the markers for the Greenwich meridian, zero longitude.

Many of the tourists passing the protest including those going in and out of the Royal Observatory stopped at least for a few moments on the crowded paths to watch and listen, and many expressed their support for the need to take urgent actions to avoid global climate catastrophe.

Rebel Rising Royal Observatory Die-In

Close Down Yarl’s Wood – August 2015

Close Down Yarl’s Wood – Yarl’s Wood Immigration prison, near Bedford

Saturday 8th August 2015 saw a large protest outside the immigration jail at Yarl’s Wood where asylum seekers are locked up indefinitely by our racist immigration system without trial, a prison run for profit by a private company where detainees are subjected to abuse and sexual harassment.

Yarl’s Wood was used to detain women, many of whom had fled abuse and violence in their own countries only to arrive in this country and be locked up and further abused here. The detention centre is in a remote location in a business park on a former wartime airfield around five miles from Bedford.

The protest was one of a long series organised by Movement for Justice, but was supported by a large number of other groups, particularly many women’s groups including Sisters Uncut. In my post on My London Diary I listed 25 of them, but there were others too. This was only the second protest they had organised at Yarls Wood, but it came after a series I’d photographed at the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres.

MfJ is a small Trotskyist group which has been one of the most active UK groups organising against racism and for civil rights in the UK since it was formed by students in North London in 1995. This protest came a couple of years before a bitter dispute led many other groups to end cooperation with them, but MfJ continue their active role, in particular in opposition to deportation charter flights and the shameful Rwanda plan.

The main entrance to the detention centre is on a private road which is gated some distance from the centre. The coaches bringing people from across the country, and me and others from Bedford Station were parked in a long line at the side of a public road around a mile to the north, close to the locked entrance to the business park. The protest began on an area of grass here as we waited for everyone to arrive, and there were speeches and much chanting and dancing.

Finally the protest began its march, setting off around 300 metres along the road to a bridleway which eventually after around a mile of walking led to a hilly field beside the 20ft high fence around the prison. The lower 10ft of this is solid metal sheeting, but the upper 10ft a sturdy metal gauze, and from the hill we could see women at many of the windows waving to greet the protesters. Those held inside feel isolated and forgotten, though there are a few prison visitors and they are allowed some phone contact with solicitors and others to pursue their asylum cases.

Protesters made a great noise, kicking and banging on the metal sheeting of the fence as well as shouting, and had brought a sound system so that they could speak to the women outside. They were also able to make phone contact with some of them and amplify their voices too.

The windows of the centre only open a couple of inches, but some were able to squeeze their arms through the gap and wave cloths or articles of clothing, while others held up messages to the glass. One carefully drawn one read ‘We Want Freedom – No Human Is Illegal – Close Yarls Wood’ while another simply read ‘Help’. Others wrote their mobile numbers large enough to be read by the protesters to contact them.

A group of people wearing face masks began to write slogans on the fence, and soon a long length of it was covered with them ‘No Borders’, ‘No One is Illegal’ ‘#SetHerFree’, ‘Shut it Down’, ‘Gaza 2 Yarls Wood Destroy Apartheid Walls’, ‘Racist Walls’ and more.

The speakers on the hill facing the prison included several who had been held inside Yarls Wood and could see women inside they knew, and others who had been in other detention centres. Most people who are held in this way are finally released and allowed to stay in the UK – sometimes after several years of imprisonment – and their seems no justification for locking them up in this way.

Here’s the final paragraph I wrote back in 2015:

Too soon we had to leave. And they had to stay. As I walked away to catch the coach back to Bedford station I felt ashamed at the way that my country treats asylum seekers. They deserve support and humanity and get treated worse than criminals.

More on My London Diary: Close Down Yarl’s Wood

Nurses, Coal, Art, Biafrans & Sunflowers

Nurses, Coal, Art, Biafrans & Sunflowers – Saturday May 30th 2015 was another varied day of events and protests across London.

Filipino Nurses tell Daily Mail to apologise – Kensington.

I began the day travelling to High Street Kensington, just a short walk from the offices of the Daily Mail. It has the largest circulation of any UK newspaper but is also the UK’s least reliable source of information. Recently The Factual analysed 1,000 articles from each of 245 major news sources from around the world although mainly from the USA and including international news organisations such as Reuters and AP. The Mail came out with the third lowest score of any with a Factual Grade of 39.7% compared to the average of 61.9%. In a table listing all the results, even The Sun does a little better, as do the Daily Express and RT News, though all of these are way below average while The Guardian was above average along with the BBC, though neither among the top scorers.

We don’t have a free press in this country, we have a press largely controlled by a small number of billionaires who, as these figures show, use it largely as a source of disinformation and the promotion of their prejudices – including homophobia, racism and misogyny. Articles are more generally written as click-bait rather than with any desire to inform or educate, and it was hardly surprising when in 2016 it was sanctioned by the International Press Standards Organisation for violating professional norms for accuracy and in 2017 Wikipedia editors decided it was a “generally unreliable” source.

I was there for the start of a long protest by Filipino health workers outside the Daily Mail over its reporting of the Victoriano Chua case which insulted Filipino NHS workers as a whole despite the vital contribution they make to the NHS. The demanded the Daily Mail apologise for its racist comments and to recognise the contribution that they make, keeping our NHS afloat. As someone who a dozen years earlier had been looked after in intensive care by a Filipino nurse I feel very grateful to them, though angry at the UK government for not training enough nurses and doctors – and in particular for removing the training bursary for nurses which has now made the situation much worse. But I did feel they were asking the leopard to change its spots.

Filipino Nurses tell Daily Mail apologise

Walking the Coal Line – Peckham

I left the Filipinos as their protest was still building up and journeyed across London to Peckham Rye where we were invited to take a tour of the proposed Peckham Coal Line elevated linear urban park between Peckham Rye and Queens Road Peckham stations as a distant part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival events – something vaguely related to the annual flower show.

The Coal Line was frankly hugely over-hyped, particularly in comparing it to New York’s ‘High Line’, and the walk was largely close to but not on the actual proposed line. The former coal sidings on the viaduct which inspired the project are next to a working rail line and could only be seen looking down from neighbouring buildings.

As I commented: “The walk is essentially an urban linear park that would make a useful short cut for some local walkers and cyclists, and could also be a part of a longer leisure walk from Brixton to the Thames. I hope it comes into existence, as the cost would be relatively low and it would be a useful addition to the area.“

But I still enjoyed an interesting walk, visiting both the Bussey Building in the former industrial estate Copeland Park south of the line and the multi-storey car park to the north which now houses a cafe, a local radio performance space and another rooftop bar next to the Derek Jarman memorial garden and has good views of Peckham and central London. And having followed the official route to Queens Road Peckham I walked back a different way vaguely along the Coal Line at ground level, finally travelling more closely along it in an Overground train that took me to Canada Water and the Jubilee Line to Waterloo.

Walking the Coal Line

UK Uncut Art Protest – Westminster Bridge

UK Uncut met outside Waterloo station for their mystery protest taking direct action at an undisclosed location. Police liaison officers tried to find out where they were going and what they intended to do, but nobody was talking to them. Finally they set off and marched the short distance to Westminster Bridge where they spread a large piece of cloth on the roadway and painted a banner telling Parliament that collecting dodged taxes would bring in more than cutting public services.

They lifted up the banner and then ‘dropped’ it over the side of the bridge. It was a long run to take a picture of it hanging from the bridge, and I’m not sure worth the effort. It would have been better to have lowered it on the downstream side so as to get the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Another group of protesters in Parliament Square were protesting against the plans to get rid of the Human Rights Act, and some of the UK Uncut people had joined them before the end of the ‘Art’ protest. In May 2022 the government announced it was getting rid of the act and replacing it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’ which will allow the police to “perform freer functions“, Leading charities concerned with human rights have condemned the changes as affecting “the ability of individuals to hold the government and public bodies to account by bringing cases when their human rights have been breached.” They state “The Human Rights Act has greatly benefited a vast number of people from across society, improving their health and wellbeing; ensuring their dignity, autonomy, privacy, and family life; and overall improving their quality of life.” Many see the changes as yet another move towards fascism and a police state.

UK Uncut Art Protest

Biafrans demand independence – Trafalgar Square.

Biafra came from the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people, which lasted from the 10th century to 1911 and was one of Africa’s great civilisations before the European colonisation.

Biafra was incorporated into Southern Nigeria by the colonialists in the 1884 Berlin Conference and then became part of the united Nigeria in 1914. Biafrans declared independence from Nigeria in 1967, but lost the long and bloody civil war that followed, with many Biafran civilians dying of starvation.

Biafrans demand independence

Mass rally Supports National Gallery strikers – Trafalgar Square

After a large rally in Trafalgar Square, National Gallery staff striking against privatisation marched towards the Sainsbury Wing, holding a sit down and short rally outside after police blocked the doors to the gallery. The gallery doors were then locked.

Candy Udwin, a PCS rep at the National Gallery had been sacked for her trade union activities in connection with the plans to privatise gallery staff and the opposition to it by staff. Exhibitions in the Sainsbury wing have already been guarded by privatised staff, and the security there is also run by the private company. After 100 days of strike action the dispute was finally resolived in early October 2015 after the appointment of a new gallery director with terms and conditions of service protected and Udwin returning to work.

Mass rally Supports National Gallery strikers

Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop

Holloway, Nakba, Refugees & Topshop – Six years ago, the 14th May 2016 was also a Saturday, and like today there was a protests for Nakba Day, the ‘day of the catastrophe’, remembering the 80% of Palestinians forced to leave their homes between December 1947 and January 1949, but also several others on the streets of London which I covered.

Reclaim Holloway – Holloway Road

Local MP and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke outside London Met on Holloway Rd at the start of the march by Islington Hands Off Our Public Services, Islington Kill the Housing Bill and the Reclaim Justice Network to HMP Holloway demanding that when the prison is closed the site remains in public hands, and that the government replace the prison with council housing and the vital community services needed to prevent people being caught up in a damaging criminal justice system.

A group of around a hundred then marched from there to Holloway Prison, apparently already largely emptied of prisoners, and held a long rally there with speeches by local councillors, trade unionists and campaigning groups. Islington Council would like to see the prison site and adjoining housing estate then owned by HM Prisons used for social housing rather than publicly owned land being sold for private development.

The Ministry of Justice sold the site to housing association Peabody for £81.5m in 2019 and their plans include 985 homes and offices, with 60% of so-called affordable housing as well as a women’s building with rehabilitation facilities reflecting the site’s history. The development stalled in February 2022 with Peabody saying they were unable to afford the money needed to fit out the women’s centre.

Reclaim Holloway

68th Anniversary Nabka Day – Oxford Street

Protesters made their way along Oxford St from their regular Saturday picket outside Marks & Spencers, handing out leaflets and stopping outside various shops supporting the Israeli state for speeches against the continuing oppression of the Palestinian people and attempts to criminalise and censor the anti-Zionist boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Nabka Day, the ‘day of the catastrophe’ remembering the 80% of Palestinians forced out of their homes between December 1947 and January 1949 is commemorated annually on May 15th, but the protest was a day earlier when Oxford Street would be busier. The Palestinians were later prevented by Israeli law from returning to their homes or reclaiming their properties, with many still living in refugee camps.

The protesters included a number of Jews who are opposed to the continuing oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli government. A small group of counter protesters shouted insults and displayed Israeli flags, accusing the protesters of anti-Semitism but the protest was clearly directed against unfair and illegal policies pursued by the Israeli government rather than being anti-Semitic. The counter-protesters tried unsuccessfully to provoke confrontation, standing in front of the marchers and police had at times to move them away.

68th Anniversary Nabka Day

Vegan Earthlings masked video protest – Trafalgar Square

Vegans wearing white masks stood in a large circle in Trafalgar Square holding laptops and tablets showing a film about the mistreatment of animals in food production, bullfighting, etc. The protest was organised by London Vegan Actions and posters urged people to stop eating meat to save the environment and end animal cruelty.

Vegan Earthlings masked video protest

Refugees Welcome say protesters – Trafalgar Square

Another small group of protesters stood in front of the National Gallery held posters calling for human rights, fair treatment and support for refugees. Some held a banner with the message ‘free movement for People Not Weapons’.

Refugees Welcome say protesters

Topshop protest after cleaners sacked – Oxford St

Finally I was back on Oxford St where cleaners union United Voices of the World (UVW) was holding one of protests outside Topshop stores around the country following the suspension of two cleaners who protested for a living wage; one has now been sacked. Joining them in the protest were other groups including Class War, cleaners from CAIWU and other trade unionists including Ian Hodson, General Secretary of the BWAFU and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

*Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, MP and Ian Hodson, Baker’s Unions General Secretary outside Topshop*

The Oxford Street Topshop was heavily defended by police, as well as by illegal extra security guards wearing no ID. Several hundred protesters held up banners and placards and with the help of the police blocked the entrance to the shop, though the protesters made no serious attempt to enter the building.

*Jane Nicholl of Class War poses on a BMW as they block Oxford Circus*

After a while some of the protesters, led by the Class War Womens Death Brigade, moved onto the road, blocking it for some minutes as police tried to get them to move. The whole group of protesters then moved to block the Oxford Circus junction for some minutes until a large group of police arrived and fairly gently persuaded them to move.

*UVW’s Petros Elia argues with a police officer outside John Lewis*

They moved off, but rather than going in the direction the police had urged them, marched west along Oxford St to John Lewis, where they protested outside the entrance, where cleaners have a longstanding dispute. The cleaners who work there are outsourced to a cleaning contractor who John Lewis allow to pay low wages, with poor conditions of service and poor management, disclaiming any responsibility for these workers who keep its stores running.

There were some heated exchanges between protesters and police but I saw no arrests and soon the protesters marched away to the Marble Arch Topshop branch to continue their protest.

Topshop protest after cleaners sacked

End Indefinite Detention, Don’t Sack Cleaners

End Indefinite Detention, Don’t Sack Cleaners – two protests I photographed on Saturday 7th May 2016, one on the edge of London and the other in the centre.

Detention Centres Shut Them Down – Harmondsworth, Saturday 7th May 2016

Mostly protests begin later than expected and I was surprised when I arrived at Europe’s largest detention centre complex at Heathrow, two Category B prisons, Colnbrook & Harmondsworth, managed by private security company MITIE to find that the action organised by the Anti Raids Network as a part of a day of action at all UK detention centres had already begun.

Most of the protesters had come out to the protest on the west edge of Greater London from the centre and had apparently got there earlier than they expected and had immediately rushed past the few security guards onto the private roadway between the two prisons to communicate with the detainees who had gathered around the windows of the two blocks behind their 20 ft high fences. I’d photographed earlier protests here where the protesters had walked noisily around the Harmondsworth block (strangely on the Colnbrook side of the complex) on the rough track around the fence, but the centre was now under new management and MITIE were determined to keep them further away.

As I arrived and talked with the small group who had remained at the entrance those inside appeared at the far end of the road, being slowly moved out by the police reinforcements who had arrived shortly before me, and I followed protesters down the road to join them.

As well as making a lot of noise with pots and pans, megaphones and kicking the solid metal bottom of the fence, the protesters also held up a large banner with a phone number so that the detainees could contact them and tell them what was happening inside. At first the police made slow progress in moving them along, but soon another police van arrived with more officers and they were able to move them quickly to the front of the complex.

After regrouping there, most decided to walk along to the public footpath that runs along the east edge of the centre. Although bushes and small trees in front of the fence made the centre almost invisible, it was easy to hear the detainees shouting from inside and for them to hear the protest. Soon phone contact was made with some of them and they were able to speak over a megaphone. As I wrote back in 2016:

“Bashir from Lebanon told us he had been held in detention for 18 months and that his wife and children need his help, but he is stuck inside, unable to see them or do anything. Indefinite detention such as this seems a clear breach of so many of the human rights that everyone in the UK should be entitled to under our Human Rights Act 1998. Treating people like our system does is simply shameful.”
Detention Centres Shut Them Down – where there is more about the protest.

Cleaners invade Barbican Centre – Barbican, London, Saturday 7th May 2016

I left to make my way to central London where Cleaners union United Voices of the World were holding a flashmob at the Barbican Centre after cleaning contractor Servest proposed making many of the cleaners redundant or severely cutting their hours and pay. As well as the UVW, the action was supported by activists from the Bakers Union, Class War, SOAS Unison, Unite Hotel workers branch and IWGB Couriers branch.

I met the cleaners close to Moorgate Station and walked with them towards the Barbican, where they burst into a run as they turned a corner and rushed into the main entrance, past a couple of security guards who had no chance of stopping the unexpected arrival. They made there way to the middle of the arts centre, to protest noisily outside the hall where customers were entering a sold-out concert of music by Yann Tiersen.

After a few minutes police arrived and told the protesters they must leave or be arrested, and after some argument they slowly and noisily made their way back towards the main entrance, with police continuing to harass them.

They continued to protest on the street outside the main entrance, and the protest was still continuing there when I left for home.

More on My London Diary at Cleaners invade Barbican Centre.

Scientists Demand Politicians Listen, Family Justice & Chechnya

Scientists Demand Politicians Listen, Family Justice & Chechnya – Five years ago on Saturday 22nd April 2017, thousands of scientists marched from outside the Science Museum to a rally at Parliament to demand policies based on proven research rather than fake news and fake science. Elsewhere in London people called for urgent reform of our secretive Family Courts and against the torture and killing of gay men in Chechnya.

Scientists march for Science – Kensington

I began my working day on Exhibition Road outsed the Science Museum where a large crowd of people was gathering, many wearing white lab coats, to clebrate the vital role of science in our lives and to demand that the UK and other governments stop listening to fake news and fake science and base policies on proven research.

They saw a particularly dangerous situation in the USA, where President Trump was promoting climate denial and other policies in the face of the well-established science and giant US companies particularly the fossil fuel producers have been spending unimaginable sums over the years to promote biased research and lobby to produce doubt over established facts – just as the tobacco lobby did to undermine the science behind the cancer risks of smoking.

‘The New Greenwashing’, an article just published by Nick Dowson’s article in the May-June 2022 issue of New Internationalist spells out the 6 ‘Tricks’ that Big Oil has used to prevent any meaningful action to make the drastic reductions needed in fossil fuel use and ensure that they continue to make massive profits from oil and gas as we move closer and closer to extinction.

They “Distract, delay and obfuscate” by setting distant targets and coming up with vague ideas like ‘net zero’ when what is needed is an end to fossil fuels, “Sell false solutions” such as carbon credits, carbon offsets, ecosystem services, “Greenwash gas” as being natural and clean, “Peddle futuristic-sounding fictions” particularly around hydrogen use, “Divert subsidies from renewables to unproven technologies” in particular carbon capture and storage and “Individualise, demobilise” making us feel it is our personal responsibility through gadgets such as the carbon footprint calculator invented by BP rather than a problem caused by their activities

Here in the UK Brexit is threatening our international cooperation in science and the BBC uses the excuse of impartiality to give equal billing to accepted and tested science and fake science often presented by non-scientists.

I spent some time watching the march go past, turning into Kensington Road on its way to Parliament Square, wondering what people who saw them going past would make of some of the slogans, such as like ‘Do I have large P-value? Cos I feel Insignificant‘ or ‘dT=α.ln(C1/C0)‘. Many scientists do seem to have a problem in communicating with the rest of us. Fortunately there were others easier to understand.

Scientists march for Science

Scientists Rally for Science -Parliament Square

I rejoined the scientists rather later than hoped after the rally in Parliament Square had begun, missing quite a few of the speeches.

Scientists Rally for Science

Reform Family Courts – Kensington Gardens,

When the scientists marched off from Kensington to Parliament I went in search of another group of protesters who had marched in the opposite direction, from Parliament Square to the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

The had come to protest against the injustices perpetrated by our secret Family Court system and police and social services, and several told horrific real stories of children being taken away from victims of domestic violence, mothers who had reported child abuse by partners or former partners, and other cases of what appeared to be miscarriages of justice. Among those taking part were some unable to speak because they had been gagged by court orders. One woman was being forced to live away from friends, job and family. Another told us how the battle to regain her daughter had taken 7 years and cost her £14,000.

*One of the organisers explains why we cannot mention the name of the woman the protest was organised to support*

The protest had been arranged, along with another taking place in Nottingham to support a woman currently involved in a family court case. But on the afternoon before this protest, a family court judge had ruled her name could not be mentioned. Although everyone at the protest knew it, we had to refer to her only as ‘S’ to avoid committing an offence and the protest had to be renamed as ‘Justice4S’.

Also present was Sir Benjamin Slade, the owner of two castles in Somerset who had hit news headlines earlier in the week by advertising for a young wife to serve his needs. He had fought the case for one of his former workers whose children had been taken away by social services for what appeared to be trivial reasons, getting a friend who was a major newspaper editor to run a campaign which eventually got them returned. He came to the protest together with a young woman whose case he was currently involved in who was being forced against her will to live in Torquay.

Reform Family Courts

LGBT rights abuses in Chechnya – Russian Embassy, Kensington

After rushing back by tube from Kensington Gardens to Westminster for the Scientists Rally, as soon as that ended I was back on the tube to the Consular Section of the Russian Embassy on Bayswater Road where people had brought pink flowers and wrote messages on pink triangles to leave outside the tall gates of the Consular department of the Russian Embassy in a vigil to show solidarity with LGBT people in Chechnya.

The vigil was one of several taking place across the UK after over a hundred men, suspected by the authorities of being homosexual have been rounded up an put into camps and tortured, with three thought to have been killed. Those held include many well-known in the country, including TV personalities and religious figures. An Amnesty petition stated “The Chechen government won’t admit that gay men even exist in Chechnya, let alone that they ordered what the police call ‘preventive mopping up’ of people they deem undesirable”.

LGBT rights abuses in Chechnya