march | >Re-PHOTO

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace – 2009

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace: On Sunday 18th October 2009 I went to Dalston to support a Hackney education charity whose students have been harassed when making films in public places and then joined a small march in the UK which was part of a worldwide humanist movement for peace.

Ridley Road Market: Worldbytes Defends Right to Film

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace - 2009 — *Halal butcher in Ridley Road market, Dalston*

Worldwrite is a Hackney-based education charity founded in 1994 which gives young people free film and media training supporting them to produce alternative programmes for broadcast on WORLDbytes, the charity’s online alternative Citizen TV channel Worldbytes.org. You can read more about them on the web site where you can also see a very wide range of their videos, though I couldn’t find anything now on this 2009 event.

In 2009 their teams were “finding it increasingly difficult to film in public places in Hackney: security guards, community wardens and self-appointed ‘jobsworths’ are refusing us ‘permission’ to film on many of our streets.”

As they stated, “There is in fact NO LAW against filming or taking photographs in public places and permission or a licence is NOT required for gathering news for news programmes in public spaces.“

They had called for photographers and film-makers to go along and take pictures in support of their protest and I went to do so at Ridley Road Market in Dalston, where Worldbytes crews had been told they can’t film there, not by the stall holders or other market users, but by employees of Hackney Council.

I went there to support them and the right to photograph in public places, but also because I wanted to photograph the market. I had previously taken a few pictures there but only as I was passing and had not seriously photographed the market.

After talking to the Worldwite protesters I set about walking up and down the market taking photographs of the buildings and people, particularly some of the stallholders. As well as my post on My London Diary, I wrote about the event at greater length here on >Re:PHOTO a few days later. Here’s a short section of text from that article:

“I took some general views without asking anyone for permission, but as usual, where I wanted to take pictures including stallholders or other people I asked if I might. Not because I need to, but out of politeness, and I shrugged my shoulders and moved on if they refused. Of course at times I photograph people who don’t want to be photographed, but this wasn’t appropriate here.”

“As I was using flash most of the time, it was clear that I was taking pictures and some people asked me to photograph them who I might otherwise have walked by. At one place I did stop to argue after having been refused – and eventually managed to get permission to take a picture; at another I got profuse apologies from an employee who was obviously sorry that the stall owner had decided not to cooperate with Worldbytes.“

“The council employees didn’t turn up to stop filming while I was there; probably Sunday is their day off. But it’s very hard to understand why Hackney Council should allow or instruct their employees in this way. They should know the law after all.”

My use of flash – generally as a fairly weak fill-in – was deliberate to make sure that people knew I was taking photographs, though in some cases it helped with the pictures. After I’d spent around twenty minutes obviously taking pictures I was interviewed by the Worldbytes crew, though I rather hoped they would cut that from their video of the day.

My London Diary : Ridley Rd Market: Worldbytes Film Protest

Re:PHOTO: Worldbytes Defend the Freedom to Film

World March For Peace and Nonviolence

The World March For Peace and Nonviolence had begun in New Zealand on the 140th anniversary of Ghandi’s birth, October 2, 2009. It involved events around the world which ended at Punta de Vacas in the Andes Mountains in Argentina on January 2, 2010, where Silo (Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos) the founder of the Humanist Movement launched a new campaign for global nuclear disarmament in September 2006.

Volunteers from a base team of around a hundred went from New Zealand to Japan, Korea, Moscow, Rome, New York, and Costa Rica, attending events organised along the way to Argentina.

In London the march began with a vigil close to the Northwood Permanent Joint Forces / NATO Headquarters in Middlesex on Saturday morning, with speeches by World March UK co-ordinator Jon Swinden, Sonia Azad of Children Against War and organiser Daniel Viesnik, who also read out a message of support from John McDonnell MP.

Only around 50 people walked the whole way, but there were others around the world also marching. On the second day in London they began at Brent Town Hall in Wembley Park and I met them as they arrived at Marble Arch. They stopped for lunch at Speaker’s Corner where they then took part in the interactive play ‘Let The Artists Die’ on themes of peace, non-violence and the power of the imagination. It was written and directed by Charlie Wiseman who was also one of the three main actors.

They walked past the front of the US Embassy to the memorial to the British victims of 9/11 in Grosvenor Square, where it stopped to pay its respects. In Mayfair it was almost halted when a taxi driver deliberately drove into one of the marchers, but they continued to Trafalgar Square.

‘Heritage wardens’ stopped the march as it came down the steps in Trafalgar Square, telling them they could not walk through the square as they had not applied for permission.

After resting for a few minutes on the steps the march went around the side of the square and down Whitehall past “the Old War Office, and then the statues of famous generals outside the “Defence Ministry” (governments were more straightforward with language in the past)” and “the fortified gates of Downing Street and on to Parliament Square, where the march stopped at the permanent peace protest by Brian Haw there since 2 June 200l with the help of his supporters.”

I left the marchers there but they continued on to end at the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park.

More pictures at World March For Peace and Nonviolence.

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Teachers March against Government Plans – 2013

Westminster

Teachers March against Government Plans: Teachers found Education Minister Michael Gove’s plans for education hard to believe and impossible to swallow and came out in force in a march to a rally in Westminster to protect education on Thursday 17th October 2013. The march brought traffic in Central London to a halt for some hours and was almost a mile long as it moved from Malet Street to Marsham Street past the Education Ministry in Great Smith Street.

Gove wanted to totally deregulate teachers’ pay and conditions, which would allow all schools to set their own pay levels, working hours and holiday dates. Getting rid of the national agreements would lead to chaos and at school level, waste much time and effort in bureaucracy. Even schools which are ‘academies’ and are not required to follow the statutory guidelines have mostly chosen to do so, and the guidlines still apply to those staff working in academies who are subject to TUPE protections.

National pay negotiations lead are fairer and prevent much pointless competition between schools to attract the best teachers and avoid contention between management and staff.

Both the NUT and the NASUWT unions supported a day of strike and this rally and march by striking teachers from London and the South and some London boroughs reported over 40% of schools completely closed, with less than 10% able to work normally.

I taught full-time in education for thirty years, almost ten years in a large comprehensive and later in a sixth form and community college before taking early retirement to concentrate on being a photographer and writing about photography rather than teaching it (and other subjects.) Few outside the profession realise how stressful it can be – or the long hours involved. Most only think of the long holidays and the early end of most school days.

The teachers wanted Gove to carry out the long overdue valuation of the Teachers’ Pension scheme and to withdraw the threat to make teachers work until they are 68, and his proposals for Performance Related Pay.

I met the front of the march as it came down Whitehall and past Downing Street where it got very noisy with teachers shouting, with many were clearly very angry with the government’s proposals which they feel wreck our education system.

I kept at the front of the march to photograph it in Parliament Square where it passed Big Ben at noon before going on to the Department for Education, there were far too many on the march to get inside the hall for the rally and those not in the front section stopped here to make their vews clear.

They condemned Gove for not listening to teachers or educationalists and ignoring any opinion or research that doesn’t support his own views – or gets in the way of his plans to monetise and privatise our state education system.

But although the marchers were united and noisy in their opposition to Gove, angry and disgusted with his intentions, it remained an peaceful protest. Many of them had come withy their children – whose schools were shut for the day.

I had other things to do and had to walk to my next destination, as the bus services were completely disrupted with many roads jammed with traffic. At Aldwych I did get on a bus, but got off it five minutes later as it had only moved a few feet. An hour later when I was on my way home traffic on Kingsway was still moving at less than walking speed in both directions.

More on My London Diary at Teachers March against Government Plans.

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Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell – 2014

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell: On Thursday October 16th 2014 I went with housing campaigners on a march to Southwark Council Offices. They claimed that the council leader and other councillors and officers have accepted gifts and jobs from developers and were selling off council estates at knockdown prices. I had some time free after that and took a short walk along the Thames making some panoramas before rushing to the National Gallery where the Art Not Oil coalition were protesting outside a gala evening for special guests including unethical sponsors such as Shell.

CPOs for Southwark Councillors

Elephant to Southwark Council Offices

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell

Housing campaigners from Southwark were joined by members of the Focus E15 Mums ‘Housing for All’ campaign at the base of the Strata Tower at Elephant and Castle, a tower nicknamed ‘The Razor’ for its three entirely decorative ‘greenwash’ rooftop wind turbines – which cannot be used as they generate unacceptable vibration for the upper floor flats.

Facing them was One The Elephant, then under construction, a 44 storey block of luxury flats with no social housing, being sold abroad, with ‘studio flats’ starting at around £320,000 or 640,000 Singapore dollars.

They marched to protest briefly at the Elephant Park Sales Office on the Walworth Rd before walking on through the Heygate council estate where over 1200 homes were demolished and the site sold to developers for a knock-down cost – apparently less than the costs of ‘decanting’ the tenants and far below its proper valuation. Despite this leaseholders were only given compensation of around half the true market value of property in the area, forcing them to move out into the suburbs to buy property in far less convenient areas giving them long and expensive work journeys.

The replacement by Elephant Park means a loss of over a thousand social housing units, with a small number of so-called affordable units at 80% of market rates, still well above what most Londoners can actually afford. The new flats were being sold to overseas buyers in Singapore and elsewhere as second homes, investment properties, homes for wealthy overseas students studying here, buy-to-let etc.

From there they walked through some of Southwark’s 1930’s and postwar council estates, now seen as prime targets for demolition of social housing. Its replacement with higher density high price ‘luxury’ flats would generate huge profits for the developers (and lucrative rewards for councillors and council officers.)

The march carried on to a similar area of council properties around Long Lane and Tennis Street where again similar changes – gentrification labelled as regeneration – seem likely, before going through Guy’s Hospital and London Bridge Station to Tooley St and the Southwark Council Offices.

There they held a short rally after which security stopped them entering to hand in letters for Southwark Council Leader Peter John and two other councillors containing ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders‘ for their homes, but after much argument and the presence of police Liliana Dmitrovic of the ‘People’s Republic of Southwark’ and another protester were allowed in. As Southwark residents they argues they had a right to enter the council offices.

They went to reception and asked to see the three councillors and were told to take a seat and wait. They sat there for some time but eventually Stephen Douglas from Southwark Council came to tell them that all three named on the letters were in meetings and unavailable, but promised he would personally deliver the letters. They handed them in to him and left.

More on My London Diary at CPOs for Southwark Councillors.

Bermondsey Thames Panoramas

City Hall to Angel Wharf

I crosssed the road from the council offices and went through the gardens by City Hall to walk by the Thames, going briefly down Horselydown steps just downriver from Tower Bridge onto the foreshore.

I came back up to Shad Thames, a painful pastiche of its former industrial past. Quickly I made my way to the riverside path and walked on, stopping as usual at the footbridge across St Saviour’s Dock to take more pictures.

I walked on in some interesting lighting and got very involved in taking pictures, rather losing track of time. At West Lane I realised I was in danger of arriving late at Trafalgar Square and ran down to the bus stop on Jamaica Road.

Many more pictures – not all panoramic – at Bermondsey Thames Panoramas.

Art Not Oil – Rembrandt Against Shell

National Gallery

The Art Not Oil coalition had earlier gate-crashed the press launch of the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery in a protest against oil company sponsorship of the arts and the privatisation of gallery staffing.

*Protesters with banners in front of the Sainsbury wing*

I arrived in time to meet them on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields just before they marched the few yards to the National Gallery where a gala evening was being held for special guests – including from the sponsors – and highly ranked staff.

They turned down a protest pen the police had set up some distance from the entrance the guests would be using where their protest would not be noticed (what the police call ‘facilitating’ but campaigners know is minimising) and instead protested close to the entrance. Here there were some speeches and a repeat performance of their earlier performance which included a short playlet as well as some specially written songs.

Some of those who appeared at the press launch were professional actors now on stage elsewhere and so there were some changes in the cast. But it was still a very professional performance.

Here is the Art Not Oil statement:

The presence of unethical sponsors like Shell and the contracting of external security firms shows the growing influence the private sector is having over our arts and culture. With its meagre contribution to the gallery, Shell is buying social legitimacy for its dodgy deeds worldwide, including:
- its failure to clean up its multiple spills in the Niger Delta
- its reckless plans to drill in the Arctic for yet more oil
- its tar sands projects in Canada that are undermining Indigenous people's      rights

More at Art Not Oil Rembrandt Against Shell.

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Mare De Gras & Choose Life – 2004

Mare De Gras & Choose Life: On Sunday 10 October 2004 I photographed two very different events on the Streets of London, a carnival in Hackney and and ant-abortion march. Perhaps the only thing they had in common was that both were misnamed.

Hackney Mare de Gras

Dalston, Hackney

Mare de Gras – Fat Tuesday – is a season celebrated in New Orleans as carnival season, from 12th Night at the end of Christmas on January 6 to Fat Tuesday itself, Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. In England our celebrations are rather shorter and involve pancakes and pancake races.

But in Hackney it was the name adopted for the carnival which began there when some residents decided it would be a good thing for them to have a carnival like Notting Hill, and since the main street is Mare Street it seemed a good name, even though it took place in September.

It wasn’t the first carnival in Hackney – there is a tradition of English carnivals dating back mainly to the late 19th century, held in many towns and villages across the country, though most have now died out. Two of my friends got Arts Council money to document some of them – and I showed work from Notting Hill with them in a show, English Carnival, in 2008. Others are still going strong particularly in the West Country. Hackney had its carnivals way back around the 1900s but I don’t think they lasted too long.

Those traditional carnivals had one thing in common – “they received no core public funding. Many were almost entirely organised by volunteers; most also raised money for charities.”

For the show I wrote: “Carnival in England has been enlivened over the last forty or so years by the Caribbean influence, and West-Indian style carnivals have received considerable funding and become a popular celebration of our multi-cultural society within the larger metropolitan areas of the country, joined in recent years by Latin American, Asian and Central European communities.”

The revival of carnival in Hackney is thought to have started as the Street Carnival Theatre in De Beauvoir, organised by Centerprise, in 1973. Later came a new Hackney Carnival – Mare De Gras – bringing together many of the carnival groups that had their roots in Caribbean culture and had begun in the 1970s, 80s and 90s taking part in the Notting Hill Carnival.

In 2004, Mare De Gras in late September was cancelled after 16-year old A level student Robert Levy was killed on Mare Street, stabbed after he had tried to keep the peace in a fight between boys close to his home, and the event was rearranged for the 10th October.

Hackney Carnival continued in later years, though the name Mare De Gras was dropped soon after 2005. In 2024 there was a parade, but for 2025 there were only a number of activities and no real carnival.

More pictures from Mare De Gras.

Choose Life March

Westminster to Lambeth

I left the carnival in Hackney soon after the parade began to photograph a much more somber event, the Chose Life March opposing abortion. Again its name seems misleading to me – opposition to abortion is not about choosing life, and as I commented in 2004, “the misuse of language in using slogans such as ‘Choose Life’ disturbs me greatly, as an attempt to preempt rational thought.“

*One of the few parts of the march that did not seem lacking in life*

I also wrote “Nature is profligate, full of false starts, and life cannot sensibly be considered to begin at conception” which I suspect is a quote but cannot find the source.

Many other Christians and other religions do not accept the Catholic teaching on abortion but take more sensible and more scientifically bases views. But “this doesn’t mean we should take abortion lightly or allow scientists to play as they like with human genetic material. ” And of course our laws do have important safeguards on abortion and the use of human material in research.

More pictures, including a couple of Brian Haw and one of the River Thames as the march passed them on My London Diary.

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Bring All the Troops Home NOW – 2007

Bring All the Troops Home NOW: CND and Stop The War had called for a march to Parliament on 8th October 2007 to arrive when Gordon Brown was making his statement to Parliament on Iraq where British troops were still present having taken part in the US-led invasion in 2003.

They wanted to march to make clear that all UK troops should come back here now. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 had led to the fall of Saddam Hussein but had been made without any real thought for the future of Iraq – except for the profits which US companies hoped to make. Saddam’s civil and military administration which had united the country were simply removed rather than being put to use to keep the country running and chaos reigned. Iraq didn’t need foreign armies but needed real support to set up a new civil society and that had not been forthcoming.

Gordon Brown tried to ban the protest, using “Sessional Orders” to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for him to prevent the march under section 52 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. But CND and Stop The War made clear it would go ahead despite this.

On the morning of the march Prime Minister Gordon Brown – probably reacting both to huge public pressure and legal advice – lifted the ban, thus avoiding a huge burden on both police and courts. They might otherwise have ended with thousands of arrests – and cases which the courts would probably throw out.

Around ten years later the powers that the Brown government had attempted to use were officially recognised to no longer have any legal effect – something I suspect had been part of legal advice given to Brown in 2007.

Last Saturday, October 4th 2025, I again watched a protest by Defend Our Juries in defiance of the government’s proscription of Palestine Action under terrorist laws, with police arresting almost 500 people for sitting holding a piece of cardboard with a message supporting the banned group. Many of those arrested seemed to be elderly and some also disabled, though there were also younger people.

The protestersy presented no danger to public order – other than challenging the legally doubtful ban on the group who few outside the government and those making arms for sale to Israel who had been heavily lobbying for a ban – believe could be described as terrorists. And this is something to be shortly tested in the courts. And the arrests made the police look unfeeling and stooges of the government rather than a force acting with the consent of the people.

Perhaps our current Labour government should have learnt from the example of George Brown in 2007. Supposedly we are a nation where the police operate by consent – which was clearly not the case here – and the police should have made this clear to the government and simply ignored this and earlier protests by ‘Defend Our Juries’. Which would of course have made the action – with people coming on purpose to be arrested and waiting patiently for hours for it to happen – totally ineffectual. And we do after all we have many laws which people – especially motorists – break every day and the police ignore.

Defend Our Juries also protests against the practice by some judges in some courts to prevent those charged from making a defence of their actions and instructing juries that they cannot use their consciences in coming to decisions – both vital protections essential to a fair legal system. Actions introduced into our legal system because successive governments have been angered by the decisions reached by juries in some cases. But it should not be the job of our legal system to serve the government but to serve the people and these developments endanger the whole basis of trial by jury which protects us and our democracy.

Here’s what I wrote in 2007 about the march and rally on 8th October 2007. All the pictures in this post come the event and there are many more on My London Diary.

Brian Haw’s t-shirt summed up the disaster: “Iraq 2,000,000 dead 4,000,000 fled genocide theft torture cholera starvation” though there were a number of other crimes to mention, in particular the poisoning of so much the area for generations to come through the dumping there of so much of our nuclear waste in the form of ‘depleted uranium’ weapons.

I was surprised at the level of support for Monday’s demonstration, a day when many of the supporters of the campaign would have been at work, and I had expected hundreds rather than the three thousand or so who actually turned up. The government’s clumsy ban on the event, using 1839 legislation passed against the Chartists, drummed up support, and to such an extent that on the morning of the rally they had to climb down and allow the march and the lobby of parliament to proceed.

Later in the day, the success of the demonstration even became rather an embarrassment for Stop The War, who when I left around 4.30pm, two hours after the start of the march, were trying to help police in clearing the large crowd who were still blocking Parliament Street, Parliament Square and St Margaret St, urging them to move along to College Green. Later in the day a small group of protestors took down the barriers on the grassed area of parliament square, piling them up.

But the real embarrassment was for Gordon Brown, forced to climb down and allow democratic protest. Unfortunately he didn’t do the decent and sensible thing (and surely now inescapably the logical thing in the interests of both Iraq and Britain) and announce a speedy withdrawal of troops to be replaced by a real programme of support for the Iraqi people.

Although doubtless pressure from the police at the highest level was obviously vital in the decision to allow the march to go ahead, there were clearly a few officers in charge on the ground who weren’t happy.

As we went down Whitehall, they obstructed photographers trying to photograph the event quite unnecessarily – so obviously so that some of the officers actually carrying out the orders were apologising to me as they did so. And later in the day a few tempers flared and there were a few fairly random assaults on demonstrators.

It did seem an unnecessarily provocative move to bring back Inspector Terry, apparently the man responsible for much of the harassment of Brian Haw and the officer in charge at the 2006 ‘Sack Parliament’ demo last year (photographer Marc Vallée who was injured is now taking legal action against the Met, with the support of the NUJ.)

British troops remained in Iraq in a combat role until 2009, with smaller numbers there mainly involved in training until the final withdrawal in 2011. You can read more about my NUJ colleague Marc Vallée being thrown to the ground by police and his eventually reaching a settlement on the EPUK web site.

Many more pictures from the march and rally on My London Diary at
Bring All the Troops Home NOW.

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Al-Quds Day 2007

Al-Quds Day 2007: On October 7th, the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel I find myself thinking about the long fight by Palestinians since so many were displaced and dispossessed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the many thousands who since then have been killed by Israeli attacks.

And of course for those Israelis who have been killed – though in much smaller numbers – by suicide bombers, by rockets and during the October 2023 incursion or among the hostages, and including those Israelis killed by Israeli forces.

What we have seen since however is not a war, not self-defence but genocide, the bombing and deliberate starvation of the entire population of Gaza. It comes on top of years of siege with restrictions on essential supplies and of the bulldozing of people’s homes as well as the establishment of more and more illegal settlements across occupied Palestine.

And our country remains complicit, still supplying arms to enable the genocide despite government statements to the contrary, still labelling protests calling for peace as ‘hate marches‘ and still making false allegations about antisemitism while failing to deal with the real anti-Semites who plan and carry out attacks such at that we all condemn in Manchester.

Thinking about what to post here for today, I came across the Al Quds Day march which took place in London on Sunday October 7, 2007. It was I think only the second time I’d photographed the annual event and I didn’t write a great deal about it then.

I did mention that this event was begun in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeni declared the last Friday in Ramadan as Al Quds Day, (al-Quds being the Arabic name of Jerusalem), an annual anti-Zionist day of protest. In the UK the march has generally taken place on the following Sunday and is a demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people, largely by Muslims though also by anti-Zionist Jews and some of the UK left (many of whom are also Jewish.)

In 2007 a mixture of groups came to demonstrate against the march, largely because of its links with Iran both from its founding and also as it was organised by the Iranian Human Rights Commision (Inminds) which is alleged to receive funding from the Iranian government. Unlike later years I saw no counter-protests by Zionist groups or individuals.

Back then many of the march carried flags of the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah which emerged there after the Israeli invasion in 1982 and has strong ties with Iran. As well as running schools and hospitals and other social services it has also taken part militarily in opposing the various attacks by Israel on Lebanon.

Many Hezbollah leaders have been assassinated by Israel, some in what many describe as terrorist attacks. Until 2019 when its political wing was also proscribed the showing of the Hezbollah flag remained legal though contested in the UK.

As in earlier years the march ended with a rally in Trafalgar Square, though after 2008 the GLA refused to allow them to use the square, citing insurance problems.

Many more photographs of both the marchers and the rally and those who came to protest against the march on My London Diary at Al Qud’s Day March And Protest

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Make Them Pay March, London – 2025

Make Them Pay March: Thousands came to the ‘Make Them Pay’ march from the BBC to Parliament Square in London on Saturday 20th September 2025, part of a global week of action on climate justice backed by an alliance of trade unions and campaigning organisations representing millions of workers, citizens and communities across Britain. They say ‘Billionaires have broken Britain – Make THEM pay to fix it‘ and demand the government tax the super-rich, protect workers rather than billionaires and make polluters pay.

The march assembled in nine blocks, in anticipation of this being an extremely large protest given the number of organisations supporting it, but many of these were hard to spot on the march, though they may have been more obvious at the rally that followed.

After a couple of hours photographing before the start and on the first mile or so of the march I was getting rather tired, but also finding that I was beginning to photograph exactly the same people and groups.

It was time for me to take a rest and eat my sandwiches before going to photograph a protest over job losses for cleaners working for University College on the campus and at halls of residence.

Here I’ll try to post a picture from each bloc as well as the list of the organisations involved – although there were many groups I could not identify on the march – and I apologise in advance for any pictures I have featured in the wrong blocs.

Bloc A: Parents, families and kids

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Create a better future.

Parents for Future, Mothers Rise Up and Mothers’ Manifesto.

Bloc B: Economic and social justice

Action Aid UK, Another Europe is Possible, Compass, Debt Justice, DPAC, Equal Right, Equality Trust, Fuel Poverty Action, Greens Organise, Green Party of England and Wales, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, It’s Just Economics, Just Treatment, MenaFem Movement, New Economics Foundation, Patriotic Millionaires UK, Peace & Justice Project, Positive Money, Tax Justice UK, 350.org.

Bloc C: Palestine solidarity

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Ecocide in Gaza.

No named group took part, but there were a few Palestinian flags and a few individuals reminding us of the vast ecocide being inflicted on Gaza

Bloc D: Migrant and racial justice

Black Liberation Alliance, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants,
Migrants Organise, No Borders in Climate Justice.

Bloc E: Workers and trade unions

Bakers’ Union, Equity, Fire Brigades Union, Greener Jobs Alliance, National Education Union.

Bloc F: Billionaires out of fashion

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Billionaires out of fashion.

Labour Behind the Label, No Sweat .

Bloc G: Faith groups

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. No More Fossil Fuels.

CAFOD, Christian Climate Action, Christian Aid, Church Action on Poverty, Faith for the Climate, Muslim Aid, Muslim Charities Forum, Quakers in Britain.

Bloc H: Restore nature

River Action, Take Back Water, Zero Hour. I can’t find a picture featuring these groups, but there were Extinction Rebellion supporters with a large fish.

Bloc J: Climate justice.

London, UK. 20 Sept 2025. Cut the ties to fossil fuels.

Anticapitalist Resistance, Campaign Against Climate Change, Climate Resistance, Debt for Climate, Ecojustice Ireland, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth EWNI, Global Justice Now, Global Witness, Greater Manchester Climate Justice Coalition, Green Economy Coalition, Greenpeace, Heat Strike, London Mining Network, Make Polluters Pay, Oxfam, People & Planet, Possible, Stop Rosebank, Tipping Point, Working Class Climate Alliance, War on Want, Yorkshire and Humber Climate Justice Coalition.

Many more pictures in my Facebook album Make Them Pay March including some that didn’t seem to fit in any of the blocs.

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Anti-War March in London – September 28th 2003

Anti-War March in London: In the face of protests across the country and the world – “between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war” the USA together with the UK, Australia and Poland began the invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003.

In the UK we had our largest ever anti-war protest on 15th February, with estimates of between 750,000 and 2,000,000 people taking part in a march and rally. I wasn’t there as I had come out of hospital the previous day and was still too weak to walk more than a few steps, so was left at home when my wife and elder son went out to protest. It was the only major London protest against the war I didn’t photograph.

Protests in London continued, with people angered that their voices had not been heard, and particularly as we learnt more about the lies and deceit that Tony Blair had marshaled to get the decision to go to war past Parliament and in particular about the two ‘Dodgy Dossiers’ which Alistair Campbell had “sexed up”, the later one plagiarised from an article by a research associate at a US institute and the earlier making false claims about “weapons of mass destruction.” No WMDs were found in Iraq.

The earlier dossier had made the false claim that some of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons were deployable within 45 minutes, a claim that according to BBC journalist Andres Gilligan was added at the insistence of Andrew Campbell. Gilligan claimed that his source for that was an off-the-record talk with weapons expert David Kelly. Although the Hutton Inquiry concluded Kelly had killed himself following the investigations into this exposé some still suspect our security services took a hand in his death.

You can read an account of the protest in The Guardian, Anti-war protesters vent their frustration, which notes that this was “Britain’s fifth anti-war protest in a year snaked from Hyde Park through the centre of London and filled Trafalgar Square with anti-Blair placards. It was the first national rally since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in Iraq and the tone had changed since 1.5 million marched to prevent war in February.” It gives the police estimate of the numbers taking part at 20,000 and Stop the War’s figure of 100,000 – the actual figure was probably about halfway between the two.

I didn’t write much at the time – and didn’t post many of the pictures I took, and a few of those here are published for the first time. Here is my 2003 piece – with a link to the orginal.

The Anti-War March on 27 September was another big event, though not on the massive scale of February’s event.

It took about an hour and a half to pass me on Park Lane. The numbers reported by the police and BBC both seemed derisory. Perhaps they were closer to the numbers that ended up in Trafalgar Square, but there were far more on the march itself.

Estimating numbers is hard once the numbers get too high to really count – perhaps a few thousand. The Countryside Alliance had the right idea on this, with their arch on Whitehall although I never see one of their car stickers with 400 thousand and something on without thinking ‘and I was 3 of them.’

More pictures at http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2003/09/sep27-01.htm

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Muslim Veils, Illegal Goods, Murders, Union Busting and London – 2010

Muslim Veils, Illegal Goods, Murders, Union Busting and London: Saturday 25th September 2010 was a day for several fairly small protests around London, involving me in quite a lot of travelling around. As well as photographing Muslim women protesting against a French ban on Islamic face veils, a protest and counter-protest at a shop selling products from an illegal Israeli settlement, families of murder victimes calling for tougher sentences and a protest against a company employing cleaners for their union-busting activities I also took quite a few pictures as I rode buses and walked around between these events.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Women Protest French Veil Ban

French Embassy, Knightsbridge

Muslim Veils, Illegal Goods, Murders, Union Busting and London - 2010

I’ve often commented on how women were normally sidelined – literally – at protests by the now banned Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain but at this protest outside the French Embassy they were very much at the front, with around 80 women, many with children, and only a handful of men – who did seem to be organising the event.

They were to protest against a law passed by the French Senate on September 14th to prohibit all full-face coverings in public places, clearly aimed at Muslim women who wear the niqab or burkha.

Such garments were then rarely worn in France, certainly outside of Paris and some Mediterranean coastal cities, and of France’s 2-3 million Muslim women the ban is thought likely to only effect around two thousand of them.

Very few of the women at the protest wore veil, most simply covering their hair. The protest in a wealthy area of London close to Harrods was passed by quite a few women who were veiled, but who all seemed to ignore the protest.

I wrote:’ Speakers at the event castigated the French government for taking a measure which they felt limited the freedom of women to make decisions on what they wear while at the same time ignoring issues that degrade and oppress women – such as domestic violence, and “the objectification and sexualisation of women’s bodies in pornography, lap-dancing clubs, advertising, and the entertainment industry, all permitted under the premise of freedom of expression and driven by the pursuit of profit in Western societies.”‘

More at Hizb ut-Tahrir Protest French Veil Ban.

Protest Against Illegal Israeli Goods

Ahava, Monmouth St, Covent Garden

This was one of a series of fortnightly demonstrations outside the Covent Garden Ahava shop which sells products manufactured in an illegal Israel settlement on occupied Palestinian land. These protests were a part of an international ‘Stolen Beauty’ campaign organised by ‘Code Pink’, a women-initiated grass-roots peace and social justice movement which began when American women came together to oppose the invasion of Iraq.

As usual there was a smaller counter-demonstration by a few EDL supporters and a handful of Zionists, handing out leaflets which described the call for a boycott as “bigoted, complicitly and politically antisemitic“.

The protesters say Israel in in breach of international law and Ahava “has openly flouted tax requirements by exploiting the EU-Israel trade agreement and violates UK DEFRA guidelines in respect of proper labelling.” I read the leaflets they handed out and the web sites calling for the boycott and could find no evidence of anti-Semitism. Many calling for a boycott of Israeli goods are Jewish and I reflected that when I began taking photographs in London no Jewish shop would have opened on a Saturday.

More at Protest Against Illegal Israeli Goods.

Families of Murder Victims Call For Justice

Embankment

‘Families Fighting For Justice’, including many families of murder victims, marched through London on Saturday calling for tougher sentences for murder – with life sentences meaning life imprisonment.

The group was formed in Liverpool by Jean Taylor whose sister, son and daughter were all murder victims. She set up a petition which said “Life should mean life, for first degree murder, also tougher sentences for manslaughter” and in 2008 recruited families of other murder victims to join her and march with it to Downing Street.

You can read some of the horrendous stories on the groups web site, and some I was told at the protest were truly heartbreaking and showed why many ordinary people have lost faith in our justice system – and I highlight one of them on My London Diary.

But as I also commented “I don’t feel that the ‘Life 4 A Life’ campaign would actually do much if anything to solve the problem“. Murder is never a rational act where murderers weigh up how long a sentence they might get if caught and draconian sentences would have little or no deterrent effect. Things more likely to help include better social services and policing, but we really need “changes that bring back some of our community spirit and give people a greater engagement.” There really is such a thing as society despite Thatcher’s dismissal and we uirgently need more of it.

Much more at Families of Murder Victims Call For Justice.

Protest Over Initial Rentokil Union Busting

Old St

A short protest by around 20 trade unionists outside the Initial Rentokil offices in Brunswick Place near Old Street on Saturday afternoon marked the start of the campaign against the company for its intimidation and bullying of union members who choose to speak out about pay and employment practices and play an active role in the union.

The cleaners employed by the company at the Eurostar terminals at St. Pancras International were RMT members and the dispute between the union and Initial has continued.

The unions alleged that Initial was deliberately employing workers with doubtful immigration status so they can pay minimum wages and provide sub-standard working conditions, often requiring them to work without proper safety equipment or precautions. They allege that workers who question their rights or attempt to organise have been reported to the immigration authorities who have then raided the workplace.

More at Protest over Initial Rentokil Union Busting.

Around London

One bus I didn’t travel on but photographed outside the former Aldwych Piccadilly Line Station.

‘I am Here’, one of London’s largest art installations overlooking the Regent’s Canal at Haggerston with photographs of former residents on empty flats where people are moved out to redevelop the Haggerston estate – with the promise they will be moved back to new social housing on the estate

Missing letters on an advert beside the canal for Ron’s Shellfish on sale every Saturday at Hoxton Market create a puzzle for those walking by, though this and another picture on My London Diary concentrate on the images and miss out the centre of the sign.

Decoration on the Suleymaniye Mosque on Kingsland Road which mainly serves the British Turkish community.

More at Around London.

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Countryside Alliance March – 2002

Countryside Alliance March: I photographed several marches in London by the Countryside Alliance, but the one on Sunday, September 22 2002 was I think the largest with “407,791 protestors eventually sheep-clicker-counted at the finish line.”

The main focus of the “Liberty and Livelihood” march was the opposition to a ban on hunting with dogs proposed by the New Labour Government which became law in 2004. But there were various other issues and grievances of rural communities raised by marchers who felt the “rural way of life was under attack.”

The march had originally been arranged for March, but a foot and mouth outbreak resulted in it having to be delayed. A huge amount of organisation had gone into the event, with special trains from around the country bringing many of the marchers to the capital. And rather than rely on police or media estimates of the numbers taking part they used their experience in counting sheep going though gates to count the numbers taking part.

On My London Diary I wrote only a couple of short paragraphs about the event and posted a handful of black and white images. I don’t think I have put any of the colour work I took on-line, though one or two have been published elsewhere.

The protest and the hunting ban were very much in the news at the time and I felt then it was unnecessary to write anything about them.

Those who came to London for the protest later felt that although they had failed to stop the ban it had been worthwhile. One of the organisers is quoted in the 2022 post Remembering the biggest rural protest the UK has ever seen saying “People understood the injustice of the hunting legislation and also wanted to make a really strong statement that the countryside stood together and you could not just pick off one part of rural Britain and think it was an easy hit.”

I did have relatives who farmed and an uncle who was a water bailiff and I had stayed in rural Wales and helped with harvests in my youth, but have spent my life in cities and suburbs.

I’m also against hunting and some of my ancestors were I think evicted from their holdings in the clearances so people could breed grouse to be shot, so my brief account in 2002 was perhaps rather unkind and of course my pictures showed the people didn’t really all look the same. But photography always dramatises events and makes them look more colourful – there is nothing to photograph in the dull bits. Here is what I wrote:

The Countryside Alliance came to town on 22 Sept. It was a very large but rather dull event. There were a few brave anti-hunt demonstrators, and a balloon from the RSPCA which got attacked a few times – the countryside is not apparently in favour of free speech.

One of a small number of anti-hunt demonstrators who were subjected to considerable abuse. One had her banner torn from her hands. Several attempts were made to cut the cables holding a balloon with an anti-hunting message in Traalgar Square.

When I got fed up with too many people looking exactly the same filing past I went to Tower Bridge, which was having a day as a beach (like ‘Paris Plage’, but that lasted rather longer) and took a few snaps of Ken etc.

I don’t think I have yet digitised any of those images of the Tower Bridge beach or London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone, though perhaps I will one day. There are just a few more pictures from the 2022 march on-line on My London Diary and a larger set in black and white from the 1998 Countryside March begins here on Flickr, and in colour in the mini-site UP FROM THE COUNTRY.

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