>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists: Six years ago on Friday 26th May 2017 I phototographed a vigil outside the Red Cross HQ, the Fair Funding for All Schools’ ‘School Assembly Day’ in Walthamstow and a protest against the hege toll of deaths due to air pollution and lack of proper cycling infrastructure.

Red Cross act for Palestinian Hunger Strikers – Moorgate

Human rights group Inminds were holding a vigil at UK Mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Moorgate, London, demanding the organisation end its complicity with Israel’s violation of the rights of Palestinian prisoners.

The vigil with flags, banners and some live music came as a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were on the 40th day of a hunger strike and Israel was making preparations to force-feed them.

Inminds also called on the ICRC to restore the twice-monthly family visits and uphold the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of prisoners. They chalked the outline on the pavement of one of the underground cells in which some Palestinian child prisoners have been held for many days in solitary confinement, adding a soft toy to the chalked outline of a child.

Although quite a large proportion of those who saw the vigil read the display and came to sign the petition, the ICRC headquarters building is on a back street and not widely visible.

Red Cross act for Hunger Strikers

E17 Protest Against School Cuts – Walthamstow Town Square

Students, parents and teachers from 17 schools in London E17 marched to a rally in Walthamstow Town Square in protest against the cuts in school funding on Fair Funding for All Schools’ ‘School Assembly Day’.

City areas like Walthamstow will be disproportionately affected by the cuts and schools in the borough will lose over £25m from their annual budgets with the loss of around 672 teachers. On average schools will lose £672 per pupil, with some expecting cuts of over a thousand pounds per pupil.

I left the crowded square as people were listening to a long series of speeches from teachers, parents, educationalists, local politicians and education experts.

E17 Protest Against School Cuts

Cyclists Tory HQ die-in against traffic pollution – Westminster

Stop Killing Cyclists were holding a protest vigil and die in outside the Tory Party HQ a short distance from Parliament against the huge number of avoidable deaths from air pollution and the failure to encourage cycling since the Tories came to power in 2010. They had carried out a similar protest outside the Labour party HQ the previous week over their failure to take action when in power.

Statistics suggest that over the seven years of Tory government around 280,000 people have died prematurely due to the effects of air pollution, largely due to traffic on our streets. The campaigners called for a ban on diesel vehicles in city centres within 5 years, and on all fossil-fuel powered vehicles within 10 years, for all non-zero emission private cars to be banned from cities on days where pollution levels are predicted to rise above EU safety levels, and for regular car-free days in major cities following the example of Paris.

Cyclists particularly suffer from the effects of traffic pollution as they are exercising on city roads, breathing in the dust and fumes. As well as illegally high levels of gaseous pollution from exhausts, including nitrogen oxides, there are also dangerous levels of particulates from tyres and brakes. The carbon emissions from petrol and diesel vehicles also contribute massively to the global rise in temperature.

People also die early from a lack of exercise, and estimates suggest that proper provision for cycling in cities and elsewhere could have cut these deaths by 168,000 over the period of Tory rule. As well as deaths, more people cycling and cleaner air would also greatly reduce the stress on the NHS from respiratory and related illnesses. A report by the Royal College of Physicians in 2016 estimated that currently treatment for transport pollution related conditions costs the NHS £20 billion a year, around a sixth of the total NHS budget.

Many people are put off from cycling as they do not feel safe in the heavy traffic on many city roads and the protest called for an increase in providing safe routes including separate protected cycle routes. The point out that Holland spend £24 per head on cycling, twelve times as much as the UK. The UN has called for an increase to spend 20% of the transport budget by 2025, which would be roughly £3 billion per year.

Spending on cycling infrastructure benefits everyone across the country whether or not they cycle, and would reduce pollution on city streets to greatly improve life for all who live and work here. It would particularly be of benefit for child health, giving them more exercise but also in reducing the dangerous effects of pollution. Children are less tall and pollution levels are higher the closer you are to road level.

Cyclists Tory HQ die-in against pollution

Camberwell & Myatt’s Fields

My walk on Sunday 9th April 1989 continued. The previous post was Hairdressers, Mansions, Baptists, Tiles and Greeks.

*Escort Parts Centre, Camberwell Station Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-4i-43*

Camberwell Station Road runs south from Camberwell New Road alongside the railway line, and along its west side are a number of small businesses in the railway arches, almost all garages of some kind.

The Escort Parts Centre was on the corner with Camberwell New Road and remained in business here until around 2010. The premises are now covered with graffiti and look derelict. The number 344 does not appear to be for either street and I think is some numbering for the arches in the viaduct.

*Sacred Heart of Jesus, RC Church, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-4i-32*

The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart is in Knatchbull Road, just past the railway bridge and is on a dramatic scale, towering above the railway viaduct.

The Grade II listing text states it was built in 1952-8 from designs by D Plaskett Marshall in a moderne style, reminiscent of the inter-war churches of Cachemaille-Day. According to Wikipedia, “Nugent Francis Cachemaille-Day (1896–1976), often referred to as NF Cachemaille-Day, was an English architect who designed some of the most “revolutionary” 20th-century churches in the country.“

Again according to Wikipedia he designed his first church in Northenden in 1936-7 and by 1963 had been responsible for at least 61, many Grade II listed. Because of its location it is difficult to get a picture of this one which provides a good overall impression.

*Tyre Fitting Bay, Camberwell Station Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-36*

This was little further down Camberwell Station Rd which hasn’t had a passenger station since 1916 , though if you go down far enough you can still see the former station building, now occupied by a motorbike repair shop.

Camberwell station opened in 1862 on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway’s line into Blackfriars from Herne Hill. After the closure for passengers it remained in use for goods until 1964. The goods yard is now a housing estate.

Various schemes this century have looked at the reopening of the station but all so far have been abandoned.

Houses, Myatts Fields area, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-25 — *Houses, 22-24, Flodden Rd, Myatts Fields, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-25*

I walked back up to Camberwell New Road and took three pictures of terraces there ( not on-line) before going down County Grove. These houses are 22 and 24 Flodden Road. On my map the Southwark-Lambeth boundary runs down the middle of the road, making these in Lambeth.

The Survey of London states that this area was bought from Sir Edward Knatchbull in 1770 by Hughes Minet, the grandson of a French Hugenot refugee, but it was only after the railway was opened in 1863 that it was developed to meet the demand this generated for small suburban houses. Builders obtained leases from the Minet family who were public-spririted landlords and provided a church and the Minet library and also closely controlled the building ensuring a mix of house sizes. In 1889 William Minet gave the 14.5 acres to the London County Council for a permanent open space, Myatt’s fields.

Houses, Myatts Fields area, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-11 — *Upstall St, Myatts Fields, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-11*

The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association spent around £10,000 to lay it out as a park to the designs of Fanny Wilkinson, a suffragette and one of the first women to be a professional landscape designer. The new park was named for Joseph Myatt, a well-known market gardener who produced a number of then famous strawberry varieties including Eliza, British Queen and Deptford Vine at his nursery in Deptford. His son James Myatt brought the business to the fields here.

Joseph also experimented with various varieties of rhubarb, hoping that he could get people to eat this together with strawberries, but this proved rather less successful, though rhubarb did become popular later.

Lambeth Council became the freeholder of the Minet estate in 1968.

*Paulet Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-12*

Lambeth Council redeveloped a large stretch along the west side of Paulet Road in the early 1970s. Although the long terrace blocks of the Paulet Road Estate are in a modern style they have a similar scale to the Victorian terraces opposite and were built using yellow stock bricks and slates like them. But they still look like monolithic slabs rather than the repeating units of the earlier houses.

*Paulet Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-13*

The side and rear of one of the blocks on the Paulet Road Estate. I think that these stairs lead up to the front doors of the upper level flats. These buildings are some of relatively few modern buildings in the Minet Conservation Area designated in 1980.

*Provision Shop, Lilford Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-15*

The south end of Paulet Road ends at Lilford Road and I turned east along it, going under the railway again. I think this shop just a little to the east of the railway bridge was at No 106 and has been converted into a private residence and is no longer recognisable. There are many fewer small corner shops now.

My walk will continue in a later post. The first part my walk on Sunday 9th April 1989 is at Peckham and East Dulwich 1989.

National Day of Action against Universal Credit 2018

Thursday 24th May 2018 was the Unite National Day of Action against Universal Credit and I photographed two of the events in London for this, a protest by a group of campaigners from Camden Unite Community at Tate Modern and a rally outside Parliament which was followed by a march to protest outside the Department of Work and Pensions. The pictures come from these events.

Back in 2010 when the idea of Universal Credit was announced by Iain Duncan Smith it was true that the UK’s benefits system was something of a muddle, and the aim of producing a simpler system which brought six existing benefits together was probably laudable. But its implementation has been a disaster for many.

Those six benefits had each been introduced to deal with particular needs, and though not perfect they more or less worked. Trying to fit everything into a single system has proved to be far more difficult, and many of the decisions made about how the system might work failed to take into account the circumstances in which those on low incomes actually live and the lack of supporting resources the wealthier take for granted, such as friends and family with money and bank accounts with savings.

When announced, Iain Duncan Smith promised it would make the social security system fairer to claimants and taxpayers, but as it came into being it became clear that the main objective was to cut the cost to taxpayers and to provide what is effectively a handout to companies and organisations which employ workers on low rates of pay.

The plans for introducing UC hugely underestimated the complexities of the system, particularly as it applies to the the most precarious of workers, many of whom are now employed on zero hours contracts with no guaranteed weekly hours of work. There were huge problems with computer systems partly because of the complexity but also because of a failure to understand the problems and to properly specify what was needed.

The real motivation behind UC was made clear in 2015 when George Osborne announced a future £3.2 billion a year cut to the overall Universal Credit budget, reducing work allowances and reducing and limiting the per-child element of support. These cuts were later partly reversed by Philip Hammond.

The transition from the legacy benefits to UC has been extremely hard for many, particularly as some have had a period of up to 13 weeks before receiving their first payment under UC. Food banks have been put under great strain because of this and benefit sanctions. 60% of tenants put onto UC have been forced into arrears on their rents and many have faced eviction.Some have become desperate enough to take their own lives.

Wikipedia quotes a report that in 2018 a million working “homeowners now getting tax credits will have less with the new system and lose on average £43 a week. 600,000 working single parents will lose on average £16 per week and roughly 750,000 households on disability benefits will lose on average £75 per week. Nearly 2 in 5 households receiving benefits will be on average worse off by £52 per week.”

Universal Credit has become a mess and various small changes the successive governments have been forced into making have hardly improved it. There are some measures which could be taken to improve the situation. Large increases in the minimum wage with the aim of moving to a situation where those in work would be adequately paid and not need UC would help. Changes in employment law including the replacement of zero hours contracts by a fair flexible contract system would also make a contribution. But almost certainly the best solution would be to move to a universal basic wage.

Thursday 24th May was the Unite National Day of Action against Universal Credit and I photographed two of the events in London for this, a protest by a group of campaigners from Camden Unite Community at Tate Modern and a rally outside Parliament which was followed by a march to protest outside the Department of Work and Pensions.

More details on the protests on Thursday 24th May 2018 by campaigners at Tate Modern, the rally outside Parliament and march to protest outside the DWP on My London Diary.

Universal Credit rally & march
Universal Credit protest at Tate Modern

Jobs, Services & Education, Police Violence & More

Jobs, Services & Education, Police Violence & More: My work on Saturday May 23rd 2009 began with a march in North London before coming down to a couple of protests at Downing Street and then a march from Trafalgar Square to New Scotland Yard against police violence.

March to Defend Jobs, Services and Education – Highbury Fields to Archway

Around 1500 jobs had been lost recently in North London, including around 550 mainly support workers from London Metropolitan University, 500 civil servants from Archway tower and more at City University, where adult education is under threat.

Trade unionists from the Islington National Union of Teachers, the Public & Commercial Services Union, London Metropolitan University Unison and the University and College Union and other local groups including GiK-DER Refugee Workers Cultural Association were marching from Highbury Fields to a rally at Archway in protest against these job cuts.

The cuts in education threaten courses and also the provisions including nurseries that enable many mature students who missed out on education to study and get qualifications later in life.

Speakers at the rally after the march included those from the UCU, CWU, London Metropolitan University, PCS, Islington Trades Council and local Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.

More at March to Defend Jobs, Services & Education.

Southern Yemenis Demonstrate For a Separate State – Downing St

The state of Yemen has a long and complex history dating back to ancient times which is dealt with at some length on Wikipedia.

In the 19th century Britain attacked and occupied Aden and the surrounding region with the rest of the country being under the Ottoman Empire. In the 1960s a civil war in the north and a revolt against British rule in the south led to the foundation of two independent states, the Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the People’s Democractic Republic of Yemen in the south, who went to war with each other in 1972. After a ceasefire brokered by the Arab League and a further civil war the two countries were merged in 1990.

This London protest followed protests in Aden a week earlier on the 15th anniversary of an unsuccessful attempt by the southern Yemen leader Ali Salem al-Beidh to end the union with the north, which led to the 1994 civil war, lost by the South.

The protest was organised by Southern Yemenis from the Southern Democratic Assembly (TAJ), based in London who want an end to the union and accuse the Yemeni government of grabbing land and property and human rights abuses. They called for an end to the union with the north.

More at Southern Yemenis Demonstrate.

Rev Billy Performs at Downing St – Downing St

The Reverend Billy and his ‘Life After Shopping’ Gospel choir from New York were in London on their 2009 UK Shopocalypse Tour and gave a brief performance in front of the gates of Downing St.

Police were not impressed and obviously had no idea of who the Reverend was as in response to his questions the officer concerned was diagnosed by Billy as having a “shopping problem.”

The Church of Life After Shopping believes that we need to “back away from the product” and resist the way that advertising and the media persuade us to live only thorough consuming corporate products, and get down to experiencing life directly.

Excessive consumption is clearly at the root of climate change and the demand for incessant economic growth is clearly a long term impossibility in a finite planet. We need to be planning for a fairer sharing of resources between rich and majority worlds and an economy based on sustainability rather than growth – which will clearly mean lower levels of wasteful consumption and a concentration on necessities rather than luxuries.

As Billy made clear, following the G20 summit and the pathetic waste and greed shown in the continuing parliamentary allowances scandal, our government and MPs are clearly in need of the Life After Shopping Gospel.

Rev Billy Performs at Downing St

National Demonstration against Police Violence – Trafalgar Square to New Scotland Yard.

The United Campaign Against Police Violence was set up following the G20 demonstration in London when Ian Tomlinson, a man not taking part in the demonstration, was assaulted by police and died. Many protesters and some press were also attacked by police during the protest.

It brought together trade unionists and activists involved in organising the G20 Meltdown demonstration as well as campaigners against deaths in police custody particularly those in the United Families & Friends Campaign, UFFC, including the families of two men who died in Brixton Police Station, Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg.

The protest was led by a coffin with a brass plate “FOR ALL OUR LOVED ONES WHO DIED IN POLICE CUSTODY”, and included a giant red figure representing one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – who led the four marches that converged on the Bank of England in the G20 demonstration. Prominent in the march and rally were Professor Chris Knight and Sean Rigg’s two sisters, Marcia and Samantha and the Rev Billy added his voice through a giant megaphone.

At the rally outside New Scotland Yard on Victoria Street there were speeches and a minute of silence for those who had died before the release of black balloons to represent the dead.

The police had until almost the end of the event acted on their best behaviour, arranging for the safe movement of the protest and joking with press and talking calmly with the protesters. The protesters were clearly angry about police violence but the protest was restrained and orderly

But as the rally was about to draw to a close in front of the police headquarters a police van drove up and a woman officer interrupted proceedings to read a statement telling everyone their presence was illegal. It seemed inexplicable other than as a deliberate attempt to try to provoke a violent reaction from the peaceful crowd, but the organisers managed to quieten things down and the rally continued.

More at Demonstration against Police Violence.

In Jiro World

Jiro Osuga
Departures
Flowers Gallery
82 Kingsland Rd, London E2 8DP
19 May – 1 July 2023

Last Thursday I was delighted to attend the opening of the latest show by Jiro Osuga, Departures at the Flowers Gallery in Hoxton, London.

I’ve known Jiro for many years and have long admired his work in previous shows at Flowers, including in 2009 when I wrote here about his transformation of their Mayfair gallery into Café Jiro, (more pictures on My London Diary) later shown in the real Queen’s Terrace Café run for a few years by london and art historian Mirelle Galinou.

The work from ‘Café Jiro’ also featured in ‘Pub Jiro‘, his takeover aided by Mireille of the upper floor of the Horse & Groom in Streatham, part of the 2017 Streatham Festival and celebrating the publication of her The Streatham Sketchbook.

Jiro has also been a great help in the hanging of several of exhibitions I’ve worked on over the years, I think the first of which was Cities of Walls, Cities of People in 2001, which I curated for now long missed London Arts Café.

I don’t often review art shows, though I used to write much more about photography exhibitions, and I won’t say a great deal about this one, which I think is Jiro Osuga’s most ambitious and impressive to date, transforming the large space of the Kingsland Road gallery into an airport departure lounge, covering the walls with giant paintings which, according to the gallery cover more than 160 square metres.

The gallery web site shows the works but to really appreciate them you have to go there and stand in the space, where they are far more vibrant and enveloping. Or perhaps you really need to sit and contemplate them, enjoying the wealth of objects and characters from painting, film and real life they include. As the gallery states, the paintings creat “an unfolding state for individual and often unexpected narratives to occur“. There is an immense wit and imagination in this and other work by Jiro.

Actual airport departure lounges are some kind of hell of consumerism, to be avoided at all costs (and part of an industry that is costing the earth.) But don’t miss spending some time with this work, on show until 1st July 2023.

There are more pictures from the opening in my album Jiro Osuga – Departures Opening. I haven’t named those shown in the pictures, though some may tag themselves, but you may recognise two fine photographers as well as others among them.

Die-In At The Elephant

Die-In At The Elephant: In the early evening of Wednesday 21st May 2014, several hundred cyclists came to the Elephant and Castle, one of South London’s major transport junctions, following the death 8 days earlier there of a cyclist, 47 year-old Abdelkhars Lahyani, killed when he was run over by a heavy goods vehicle. The HGV driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by careless driving.

Road design in London and elsewhere in the UK has always been about design for the movement of cars and lorries, with little regard given to the safe movement of cyclists and pedestrians, and campaigner Donnachadh McCarthy described this death as “a designed-in killing” rather than an accident.

The traffic system at the Elephant & Castle, one of south London’s busiest and more complex junctions, had been redesigned a few years ago at a cost of £3 million, but the changes made had not made proper provision for cyclists.

The junction is in the London Borough of Southwark, and their transport plan had argued against safe routes which would segregate cyclists from traffic. It stated that including them in traffic is useful to slow traffic flows; it may, but at the expense of regarding them as expendable, using vulnerable and unprotected human beings as some kind of traffic bollards.

The protesters marked out in chalk a “bypass lane” across the wide area of pavement close to the Strata Building at the junction with Newington Butts where the killing had taken place which would provide a segregated safe route for cyclists.

This chalked lane was soon filled with chalked messages about cycle safety and the protesters laid down their bikes on both sides of it before staging a die-in, leaving the lane with its chalking as a ‘sacred space’ in memory of the killed cyclist.

Afterwards there was a rally where the names of the 14 cyclists killed in London in 2013 and the six so far in 2014, after which poems by Seamus Heaney written about his feelings when his younger brother was killed in a road accident. Another speech was read out, written by a cyclist still in hospital with serious injuries after having been driven over by an HGV on a City road on the same day as Lahyani, and there were other speakers.

The final speech was by Donnachadh McCarthy, who set out very clearly the failures that were leading to the deaths of cyclists, and also thanked the police for their cooperation in the event. At the end of his speech he talked about the great advantages of cycling for personal health and for the environment: “Cycling is a gift: cleaner planet; safer lives.” But only if we make our cities safe to cycle in. As he pointed out as well as the roughly 60 cyclists and 300 pedestrians killed in London traffic accidents since the last election, an estimated 13,000 had died before their time because of traffic pollution.
My London Diary – May 2014

The junction in 2023 remains a dangerous place for cyclists, and no improvements appear to have been made here or elsewhere at the Elephant. It has bicycle symbols painted between the two lanes leading up to and advance waiting box at the traffic lights, though much of the paint had been worn by traffic when I last looked. Past the lights are some more road markings for bikes, but these can only be reached by cycling in the traffic.

More about the protest, speakers etc and many more photographs at Cyclists protest Death at the Elephant

Starving Palestine and a Mad Emitters Tea Party

Starving Palestine and a Mad Emitters Tea Party: London Saturday 20th May 2006

Stop Starving Palestine! – March for Palestine

After Hamas, a Sunni-Islamic militant nationalist political movement won a majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, Israel had imposed an economic blockade and both the US and EU withdrew their support.

This led to more than two-thirds of the people in the country being below the poverty line, lacking basic necessities such as sugar, oil, milk, and even bread is rationed. A ban on the import of vital medicines threatened many lives.

Around 20,000 people came to the Stop Starving Palestine! march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and supported by many other organisations including peace groups, the Muslim Association Of Britain and leading trade unions.

Among the speakers were Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, Baroness Jenny Tonge of the Lib Dems and Manuel Hassassian, the Palestine Liberation Organisation representative to the UK (appointed by the Palestinian President as Ambassador but not recognised by the UK.)

As usual there were many Jewish protesters among the marchers, most noticeable of whom were Neturei Karta orthodox Jews who had walked from Stamford Hill on the Sabbath to attest to their support for Palestinians and their opposition to Zionism.

I left the event as the rally in Trafalgar Square began to go to Grosvenor Square.

More somewhere down the page at My London Diary – May 2006.

Bush in Wonderland, a Mad Emitters Tea Party – US Embassy

Campaign Against Climate Change had organised “bush in wonderland, a mad emitters tea party” held outside the heavily barricaded front of the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. The party was a part of an ongoing series of protests including a weekly climate vigil outside the embassy taking place since the breakdown of The Hague Climate Talks in November 2000.

“There was a picnic table with sandwiches, cakes and tea, music from the eco warriors and guests with some appropriate lyrics, as well as samba from rhythms of resistance, and fancy dress. balloons, banners and a short speech by a White Rabbit called Phil reminded us of the need for protests like these. “

“The USA continues not only to pollute on a massive scale, but increasingly acts to sabotage international efforts to take any effective action on climate change.”

Protests such as this, publications by groups of leading scientists and COP talks after COP talks have done a little to move things on, but the climate situation has worsened and actions taken by governments so far are woefully inadequate.

The USA improved its rhetoric under Obama but didn’t do much and it went backwards under Trump. Biden has also failed to make the real changes needed – and like most politicians is still living in Wonderland rather than the real world.

Politicans are still pursuinging economic polices based on infinite growth under capitalism and we need to move to a new economics which recognises that we live on a planet with finite resources both physical and in the natural world and we need to move to living within sustainable limits.

More somewhere down the page at My London Diary – May 2006.

BP Greenwashing & Benefits Cuts

BP Greenwashing & Benefits Cuts – Thursday 19th May 2016 – Seven years ago today.

Greenpeace ‘Sinking Cities’ banners at BM/BP show – British Museum

There are some protests which are advertised well in advance and other actions which are kept highly secret with only a small group taking part being in the know. And the action on the opening day of the BP sposored exhibition Sinking Cities at the British Museum was definitely one of the latter.

I heard about it only as I was on my way up to London for another event close by, and detoured slightly to cover it. I live on the edge of London, just inside the M25 and can’t usually respond to ‘breaking news’ as it takes me too long to get there.

Clearly the BP sponsorship of ‘Sinking Cities’ was going to be controversial as there has been a long campaign, particularly by ‘BP or Not BP’ to get the British Museum to end the deal which has allowed BP to ‘greenwash’ their polluting and climate destroying activities, which have significantly contributed to global warming and so to recent floods in cities across the globe.

Greenpeace had come with very professionally produced large banners for ‘Sinking Cities’, naming some of the places which have been flooded recently by global warming induced climate change and had managed to come inside and hang this down the columns across the front of the museum’s Main entrance. At first glance they really looked as if they were a part of the Museum’s own publicity.

It really was impressive, and the Museum had been caught on the hop, reacting in panic they closed the whole museum for the day, dissapointing many who had come. This seemed unnecessary as the museum could simply have closed this front entrance to deal with the climbers and remove the banners. The climbers on the columns were obviously experienced and operating safely and apparently without damage to the museum structure.

It served as rather a good advertising stunt for the show, but of course was rather embarrassing for the sponsors BP which is why the Museum felt it necessary to remove them. Most other major arts organisations in London including the Tate Museums, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery had dropped BP as a sponsor following pressure by protests such as these and pressure from artists, musicians and staff who work in them.

‘Sinking Cities’ banners at BM/BP show

No More Deaths from Benefit Cuts – Tottenham Court Rd

I had come to London that morning as delegates at the TUC disabled workers conference led by activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) and Winvisible (Women with visible and invisible disabilities) were to hold a lunchtime protest which I had been invited to photograph.

They came out and marched, led by people in wheelchairs from Congress House to Tottenham Court Road calling for an end to government benefit cuts which have led to the deaths of many disabled people – including 2 DPAC members the previous day.

Two long banners gave the message ‘NO MORE DEATHS FROM BENEFIT CUTS’ and on arriving at Tottenham Court Road they held these across the road stopping traffic in both directions.

Another banner was full of the names of some of those known to have died because of sanctions and cuts in benefits, among them David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier who died penniless, alone and starving after being sanctioned. He didn’t even have enough money to keep the refrigerator to store his insulin running.

Another banner asked the question ‘IS THIS HOW 2 TREAT Disabled People?’. The protesters held a short and noisy rally, getting considerably support from many around including many workers also on their lunch breaks. There were a few short speeches before it was time for the protesters to march back for the afternoon session at Congress House, with a police officer arriving just as they were about to leave. As usual he is confused to find that no-one is in charge.

When the Tories got into power, at first in coalition in 2010, they determined they would save money by cutting benefits thinking the disabled would be an easy target. Groups such as DPAC and the others at this event have shown them how wrong they were. These people rely on benefits to live and to have a decent life and have organised and reacted to try to retain them against the government’s attacks.

More at No More Deaths from Benefit Cuts.

Journey to Justice – Drop the Debt 2008

Sunday 18th May 2008, 15 years ago today, was an unusual day for me in two ways. Firstly that I went to Birmingham rather than London, but mainly that I went not primarily as a photographer, but as one of thousands of protesters, though that did not stop me taking photographs as you can see.

Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence are arousing considerable debate among photographers, partly about redundancy with AI generated imagery already replacing photographers in some areas of marketing and advertising work, but more importantly about authenticity now that you can generate seemingly photographic images of anything whether it actually happened or not.

Of course it has always been possible to make photographs which are misleading and dishonest, either at the point of exposure or later in the darkroom or more recently and trivially easy on a computer. There have been many historical examples and more recent controversies about faking or altering photographs, especially in some photojournalistic environments.

Of course in some areas of photography clearly anything goes. We don’t expect a work of art to be a literal interpretation, but when we come to news or photojournalism we expect things to be true to the event or occasion. And the only guarantee of that is the integrity of the reporter.

Of course as I wrote at the start of my piece on ‘Journey to Justice – Drop the Debt’, “You can’t take photographs without a point of view. Literally and metaphorically so – the rationale for making the picture determines the technical aspects of actually making the exposure. Where you stand isn’t just a matter of where you put your feet.”

I hope that my photographs make my position clear, as do the texts that I write to go with them, though on My London Diary and here I express my opinions as well as stating what appear to me to be the facts which accompany my images sent to the agencies I’ve worked with. I also don’t have to stick within the character limits they impose, typically limiting me to around a 100 words or less. Enough for the who, what, where and when but seldom much about the why, seldom enabling any real analysis of the events.

As my vintage website shows I’d been in Birmingham in May 1998 with some 70,000 others, forming a human chain around the centre of Birmingham, UK where the leaders of the eight richest nations in the G8 were holding a conference.

We were then part of a campaign by Jubilee 2000 to persuade the G8 countries to ‘break the chain of debt‘. Third-world countries were given massive loans in the 1970’s and are now crippled by the repayments, which now mean that a massive amount of money comes from the poor to the rich in repayments.

The noise we made back then made the world leaders come out from their conference room and listen, but then they went back inside and continued with business as usual. As I wrote in 2008, “Our actions in May 1998 had set the ball rolling, but as yet it has only gone one fifth of the way, and 80% of debts remain. All governments, including our own, have been guilty of making many promises that they have not kept on debt relief and aid.“

Things overall have changed little since then, although some countries in the global south have become rather more desperate and more vocal particularly as the effects of climate change increasingly hit them.

I wrote at some length about the day and the protest on My London Diary in 2008 and I won’t repeat that here, but hope some at least will click the link to read it.

At the end of that piece I wrote about the problem for those who didn’t have a long ladder in photographing what was an attempt to form and photograph the world’s largest human pie chart. I can’t find the official photograph on the web and I think it may have been little if any better than mine.

2008 Journey to Justice – Drop the Debt
1998 Jubilee 2000 – Birmingham

Christian Aid Circle The City 2009

Christian Aid Circle The City: This week every year is Christian Aid Week, when thousands of people engage in various activities to raise money for the work of this charity in the majority world. These include people trudging the streets of towns and cities delivering and then collecting gift envelopes, tea parties, sponsored walks and many other activities which to raise money.

Christian Aid is a charity embodying Christian principles but its support goes to people and grass roots organisations in many countries in the global south, many not Christian. It states it “exists to create a world where everyone can live a full life, free from poverty” and in 2021-2 helped 1.4 million people through its programmes. It provides humanitarian aid in emergencies but also runs many projects, particularly with women and promoting women’s rights and supporting the poorest and marginalised people.

Their web site lists the 25 countries in which they are currently active, working with local people and partner organisations – Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republisk, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Myanmar (Burma), Nicaragua, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Syria, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Although I think they are a very worthwhile charity I’ve long supported others which work in similar ways but my wife is a local Christian Aid organiser and I’ve supported her in this work – including this year helping with a sponsored walk around the churches in our own area.

For a number of years she took part in an annual sponsored walk around the City of London, Christian Aid’s ‘Circle the City‘ a fund-raising sponsored stroll from church to church to church in the city. And often I went with her to keep her company and make sure she didn’t get lost. Of course I took a camera with me and took a few pictures, mainly of the many Wren churches we visited on the route. But in 2009 I decided to photograph it a little more seriously.

The pictures here are all from the walk on Sunday 17 May, 2009, and this is the post I made on My London Diary about it.

Sunday afternoon I followed a woman with a red balloon on a six mile (10 km) trail around the city, or rather two cities of London and Southwark, which led us to around 30 different ritual locations. We gained access to many of these and in several were offered drinks and food.

It was Christian Aid’s ‘Circle the City’ a fund-raising sponsored stroll from church to church to church… the woman was rather well known to me and all I got to drink was tea, coffee and lemon squash, though the asparagus quiche at All Hallows by the Tower was delicious.

In the course of our walk we got to see – if only rather briefly – the interiors of some of Wren’s finest, and one or two by other architects. And the event at the end of Christian Aid Week had raised a considerable amount for the projects that Christian Aid supports in the majority world.

More pictures from the walk and captions on My London Diary at Circle the City: Christian Aid.

If you don’t get a collector calling this week you can still make a donation to this worthwhile charity online at the Christian Aid web site. And of course donations are welcome at other times too, so if you are reading this later you can still support their work.