London | >Re-PHOTO

An East London Ride – 2010

It’s perhaps misleading to call this a ride, since I spent most of the day on Wednesday 3rd February 2010 actually off my bike, parking it neatly to take photographs. Although a bicycle has been my main personal transport now for over 70 years (when I’m not using public transport or walking) I’m not really a cyclist. Or at least just a pragmatic cyclist, using a bike just to get from A to B (and on this day to C,D and most of the letters of the alphabet.)

An East London Ride - 2010 — *Memorial to firewatchers of Stepney Gas Works*

And just very occasionally for a bit of exercise. I have used exercise bikes and always thought why bother when you could use the real thing, though I suppose when its pouring with rain or below zero there might be some point in them. And though one wouldn’t help me to take photographs I would be less likely to be killed by careless or dangerous drivers.

Back at the end of 2002 I bought myself a Brompton folding bike, and a year or three later when I was undergoing a Q & A interview for an amateur photography magazine it became my answer to ‘What is your most useful photographic accessory’. It had replaced the answer to a similar question from another such magazine which was ‘a good pair of shoes’.

*Eternal flame, West Ham Memorial Gardens*

Once you have practised a few times the Brompton folds (and unfolds) in a few seconds into a fairly compact package, which has the advantage you can take it at any time onto our trains and underground system. It’s too heavy for me to comfortably carry any distance, but I added the tiny wheels which mean you can pull it rather like a suitcase, only actually lifting it when necessary. And I bought the bag which fits on in front of the handlebars which was about the right size for my camera gear and essentials like a bottle of water or a flask of coffee and sandwiches.

I can’t know remember exactly how I got to the start of my ride, though I think I probably rode from Waterloo to Fenchurch Street for a train to Limehouse station, crossing the Thames on Southwark Bridge. But from there on the pictures make my route fairly clear.

I cycled roughly along the Regents Canal up to the former Stepney Gas Works site north of Ben Johnson Road. There had been a fight to save more elements of the former gas works including gas holders which were some of the oldest surviving in the world; although some were said by English Heritage to be of national importance an attempt to get one of them listed failed. Eventually the area was redeveloped by Bellway Homes with only token ‘public art’ residues of the works.

From there I headed east to the bridge at Twelvetrees Crescent across Bow Creek and the Lea Navigation to visit another gas works site, the West Ham Memorial Gardens where war memorials, a permanent flame and a statue of Sir Corbett Woodhall are in a small wooded area close to the remarkable group of gas holders for the former Bromley-by-Bow Gas Works.

From there I went down to the recently opened path beside Bow Creek, part of a planned riverside walk which had been landed with the ridiculous name of The Fatwalk. As I commented then, most of the walk, meant to lead from Three Mills all the way to the Thames was still closed (and is still closed 13 years later) and by the time they were open the “nincompoop who thought that ‘The Fatwalk’ was a good name for this route will probably have retired or died or moved to another job for which he (or she) is equally incapable and common sense will prevail as we walk or cycle along the Bow Creek Trail.”

The walk still only goes as far south as Cody Dock, now a thriving community resource and hub with events and exhibitions and worth a visit, but in 2010 still undeveloped. The silly name has gone and this path is now also a part of London’s sculpture trail, The Line, making its way from the Greenwich Peninsula to Stratford.

At the end of the Fatwalk, I had to turn around and go back to the Twelvetrees Crescent bridge, where I once again photographed the locks from the Lea Navigation to Bow Creek. Now there are new steps leading down from this bridge to the towpath, but then I had to go across and join the fast-moving traffic on the Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach to make my way to Three Mills.

Three Mills is home to one of Newhams only four Grade I listed buildings and the House Mill, a tide mill, was built in 1776, though there had been tide mills here at least since the Domesday book.

The film studios here were converted from a gin factory where Chaim Weizmann developed a new biochemical process to produce acetone needed for explosive production in the First World War – which led to the Balfour Declaration and later to Weizmann becoming the first president of Israel.

Past the studios I visited the new lock on the Prescott Channel, opened in 2009. Supposedly this was to be used by barges to carry away waste and bring in material for the development of the Olympic site instead of lorries, but was in practice only used for photo-opportunities. The Prescott Channel was built in the 1930s, part of a large flood relief programme, that was also largely to provide jobs at the height of the depression.

Finally I cycled up to the Olympic site, a building site with little or no public access, but parts of the ‘Greenway’ – the path on the Northern Sewage Outfall – were still open and gave extensive views. The reason I was in London on this particular day, when the weather wasn’t at its best was to be interviewed and filmed by a group of students at the View tube on the Greenway. I can’t remember ever seeing the video. After the interview I made my way to Stratford to fold the Brompton and start my journey home on the Jubilee Line.

Bow Creek – right click to open at a viewable size in a new tab

As well as taking single images I also produced a number of panoramas, taking a series of pictures from the same position to be stitched together. These include some 360 degree views, produced by software from 6 or 8 individual images. The pictures were taken on a Nikon D700 and are each 12Mp, but the combined files are huge. It isn’t easy to display these on the web, and they fit even less well on this blog. I’ll post one here on a rather smaller scale and invite you to double click on it to see it larger, though still much reduced. You can find more online here.

Olympic Site Revisited
Three Mills
Bow and The Fatwalk

Chase Farm & Barbican Cleaners

Ten years ago on Saturday 2nd February 2013 I went to Enfield to photograph a march against the planned closure of A&E and maternity services at Chase Farm Hospital there. I left the march to travel into central London for a protest by cleaners outside the Barbican Centre.

Save Chase Farm Hospital – Enfield

The march in Enfield took place a week after a massive march in South London against the closures at Lewisham hospital, but the march in Enfield was a rather smaller affair, with just a few hundred taking part.

Tory politicians including David Cameron, Andrew Lansley and Nick de Bois, by the time of this march Prime Minister, Health Secretary and local MP respectively, had visited the hospital in 2007 and pledged support for stopping closure of A&E and maternity services at Chase Farm.

Their promises turned out to be worthless once the Tory party had come to government and de Bois elected, plans for the closures were approved by Andrew Lansley in September 2011 and were due to come into force in November 2013.

But the local fight against closure had continued, now led by the North East London Council of Action, with daily pickets outside the hospital where the units are due to close this November. The march was also supported by the Save Chase Farm campaign and the London Fire Brigade Union as well as Unison and there were people with a banner from another North London hospital, the Whittington Hospital at Archway, where vigorous local protest stopped closures of A&E and maternity a few years ago, but where the management is again proposing cuts.

The hospital was then run by the Barnet and Chase Farm NHS Hospital Trust which included Barnet and North Middlesex hospitals who intended to spend £35million to expand A&E and maternity services at Barnet to replace those at Chase Farm and to make a £80million refurbishment of the 1970s Tower Block at the North Middlesex.

Around two hundred people gathered at the war memorial on Chase Green where there were some folk songs before the march set off to Enfield town centre, where many local shoppers showed their support.

The march then continued on its way to the hospital, with some of those taking part chanting ‘Occupy Now’. I had to leave them before they reached the hospital as I had promised to go to the Barbican, but later heard that a small group had occupied a part of one building and were evicted around 10pm that evening.

Despite the protests and an unsuccessful legal bid by Enfield Council to postpone the changes the Maternity Unit closed on 20th November 2013 and the Accident and Emergency Department on 9th December 2013. The closure remained controversial and although a Healthwatch Enfield report found no evidence that the closure of A&E had an adverse effect on Enfield residents ability to access emergency services, it was unconvincing, partly because of the failure of the three hospitals to provide adequate data.

More pictures Save Chase Farm Hospital.

Cleaners Protest at Barbican, Barbican Arts Centre – City of London

The Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) which represented the Barbican cleaners had declared an official dispute at the Barbican Centre in November 2012 and this was the latest in a series of protests.

The cleaners were protesting for the London Living Wage and also against unfair treatment and a union ban by cleaning contractor MITIE.

Although the City of London Corporation which owns the Barbican Centre has come out in support of the London Living Wage and pays all its workers at or above this, it is happy to outsource the cleaning to MITIE, a large and highly profitable company paying its CEO over a million pounds a year but with the cleaners on only £6.90 an hour, around one fifth less than the then London Living Wage of £8.55.

MITIE responded to the union claims with a letter to employees including “IWGB representatives will not be permitted access to any MITIE site, including the Tower of London, Barbican etc. to support the IWGB members who are employed by MITIE. We appreciate that many sites, where our employees undertake work for our clients, are open to public access, but no member of IWGB should discuss union business with any MITIE employee during their working hours or on premises within which they are employed.“

Despite this a spokesman for the City of London Corporation who are the owners of the Barbican denied in a post of Facebook that there is any ban on the union at the centre.

The protest took place outside the main entrance to the Barbican Arts Centre, with the protesters careful to leave room for people wanting to enter or leave the building. As well as making a loud noise with drumming, air horns and whistles they also shouted slogans, both in English and in Spanish, the first language of many of the cleaners.

There were also speeched, and one of the Barbican cleaners spoke about the low wages and poor working conditions, and the feeling by cleaners that they are treated like dirt rather than given the respect due to any person. He told how his pregnant wife had been forced to work with chemicals that were known to be dangerous for pregnant women, risking a miscarriage, despite her complaints. MITIE had failed to discipline the manager responsible in any way. Fortunately despite the exposure, his wife had given birth to a healthy child.

The protest was still continuing as I left for home and I could still hear the noise they were making – though faintly – as I reached Moorgate station, almost a quarter of a mile away despite the tall buildings lining the streets. It was a peaceful protest but one determined to be noticed and to make its complaints heard, something which the government has now made illegal.

Cleaners Protest at Barbican.

Palestine, Nine Elms and London – Feb 1st 2020

Three years ago on Saturday 1st February 2020 I went to London to photograph a protest against Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ plans which, according to the BBC, “gives Mr Netanyahu all he wants – and offers Palestinians very little; a sort-of state that will be truncated, without proper sovereignty, surrounded by Israel’s territory and threaded between Jewish settlements.” When that finished I took a short walk along the Thames Path towards Battersea Power station before catching a bus back to Vauxhall for the train home.

Later in February I did quite a lot of walking and riding in buses and trains around London, and as in quite a few other months, gathered together some of the pictures I took on these journeys together with a link from the bottom of the page on My London Diary for the month.

Palestinians against Trump’s Deal – US Embassy, Nine Elms

Palestine, Nine Elms and London - Feb 1st 2020

Supporters of Palestine came to the US Embassy in Nine Elms in protest against Trump’s so-called peace plan, which they say aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause and minimise sovereignty for the Palestinian people across Palestine, marginalising them in isolated ghettos in a rigid implementation of the current apartheid regime.

The protest was supported by a wide range of organisations including the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB), the Palestinian Community Association in London, the General Union for Palestinian Students/British Branch, The Palestinian Youth Foundation in Britain “Olive” and Stop the war and supported by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Friends of Al-Aqsa (FoA) and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).

There were quite a few protesters of Palestinian heritage living in the UK, as well as many supporters from the wider British left at the protest.

A handful of some of the usual anti-Palestinian Zionists came to oppose the protest, shouting at the protesters. Police moved in to protect them when the protesters began shouting back and kept the two groups apart. There were also Jews present protesting on behalf of Palestine.

Among the protesters was one dressed as Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman,holding a bone saw, like that used to dismember Saudi dissident and journalist for The Washington Post Jamal Kashoggi by the team he sent to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on 2 October 2018. He posed with a man in a Trump mask who was handing him fistfuls of dollars to support the plan. There was also a giant inflatable of the Saudi prince, with large black horns.

There were a number of speeches supporting the Palestinian cause as well as a great deal of chanting against the Trump plan, which had no chance of being implemented but was largely a propaganda exercise to enhance Trump’s support among the Jewish population of the USA.

More pictures at Palestinians against Trump’s Deal.

Nine Elms

Nine Elms is one of the largest developments in Europe. The bank of the River Thames here was once crammed with wharves and full of varied industrial sites, but by the 1970s these had either closed or were about to close. At the end of the protest I took another short walk around the area.

In this area much of the land was taken up by railway yards and depots, but the area closer to the River Thames also had a jam factory and some paint and engineering works. and at the Vauxhall end, a giant cold store.

In 1971 the New Covent Garden Market began to move here from central London on Land that had formerly been a railway goods depots and an engine shed, and two markets, one for flowers and the larger for fruit and vegetables, south of the railway, opened for business in 1974. Both markets have been redeveloped since and are planned to move out to a site in Dagenham in the next few years.

The largest area north of the railway was occupied by Battersea Power Station, a relatively late-comer to the area. It occupied a site which had previously been a waterworks, taking water from the Thames. At its south end was a large Great Western Railway Goods Depot, and to the east a gas works. Another gas works occupied the site roughly where the US Embassy now stands.

In the nineteen-seventies there were a few new blocks of riverside flats but development of the area only really got into gear in this century and is still continuing. The power station, which finally closed in 1983 and lay derelict for some years, particularly after its roof was removed by an early development which failed, was only finally re-opened as an up-market shopping centretourist attraction with luxury flats at the end of 2022.

More pictures Nine Elms

London Images – February 2020

Most of these pictures come from several bus journeys from or to the station, from Waterloo Bridge, in Holborn and some in the City of London. Also a few from closer to my home in Staines and Laleham.

Some of you may like to try to identify these locations before you go to look at more in London Images on My London Diary, where captions reveal them.

Brexit Day – 31 January 2020

The UK finally left the on 31st January 2020. The wrong decision taken for the wrong reasons and one which we will continue to suffer from for many more years.

But having thrown out the baby the government are still busily throwing out the bath water. Three years on their are just some small signs that our government is beginning to realise this and finally get down to some serious dialogue with the EU over at least some of the problems it has caused rather than make threats and silly demands. Though any progress is still likely to be blocked by the Tory far right, at least until the next General Election.

But on that day, three years ago, there were groups in Westminster both celebrating and regretting Brexit, and I spent some time photographing both of them.

Brexiteers celebrate leaving the EU – Parliament Square

I arrived in Parliament Square long before the more official celebrations were due to begin, but it was already beginning to fill up with Brexiteers, many with Union Flags, celebrating.

Some had placards and posters repeating the idle hopes on which much of the Leave campaign had encouraged – and lied about. By now perhaps some at least will be realising that much of what they had been promised was illusory. It’s really hard to find anything positive that has come out of Brexit which has left a huge trail of broken promises.

Of course the people who made most of these never believed them. They supported leaving because it would enrich them greatly and never mind the nation. Some made huge profits, others were more concerned about protecting their obscene wealth from an EU that was beginning to tighten restrictions on offshore funds and other scams.

But the in main, most just came with union flags and posters about being ‘free’, ironic when we now have a government that has done more to restrict our freedoms than any other in our history, and is still hell-bent on removing much of the protections on our liberty which came from not just the EU, but also from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which our government in 1948 played a central role in establishing.

The UK parliaments The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic British law. In its new bill, the UK will join with Russia and Greece (when under military dictatorship), as the only countries to have abandoned the ECHR.

There were just a few of the more lunatic fringe present and I largely managed to avoid them. I left a couple of hours before the square really became crowded – the official celebrations were timed for much later in the day.

Brexiteers celebrate leaving the EU

British National (Overseas) Passport Holders – Old Palace Yard

There were more union flags a few yards away in Old Palace Yard, but this turned out not to have any direct connection with Brexit. Holders of British National (Overseas) Passports from Hong Kong were calling for the UK government to identify BNO holders as British Nationals and grant their children British Nationality.

BNO passports were a device invented in the talks between China and the UK over the future of Hong Kong, and give no right of abode in the UK and the special status is not passed onto children. Only those who could provide evidence of not being of Chinese origin qualified for them. These were sham passports, a compromise driven by both British institutional racism refusing to give full British citizenship to the Chinese and Chinese nationalism wanting to keep Chinese as citizens of China.

Further repression in Hong Kong led exactly a year later to the UK Government setting up an immigration route on 31 January 2021, providing British National (Overseas) passport holders from Hong Kong and their eligible dependants with the opportunity to come to the UK to live, study and work, on a pathway to citizenship. The government stated that this reflected the UK’s historic and moral commitment to those people of Hong Kong who chose to retain their ties to the UK by taking these passports.

British National (Overseas) Passports

Extremist Brexiteers Behaving Badly – Whitehall

Supporters of staying in the European Union had come to Downing Street for procession to the European Commission at Europe House in Smith Square to say goodbye. Extreme right wing Brexiteers came there to abuse and attack them, with police trying hard to keep the two groups apart.

A few tried to talk reasonably with the EU supporters, but most were there just to shout insults and gloat that we were leaving, calling them traitors and telling them they were not British, bad losers and more.

Police eventually moved them away to the centre of Whitehall facing the pro-EU group. There, surrounded by photographers they tried to set fire to EU flags. This proved difficult as the flags were nylon which doesn’t burn well and had to be assisted, mainly by a flammable aerosol spray.

Extremist Brexiteers Behaving Badly

À bientôt EU, see you soon

Finally the procession of EU supporters set off on their march from Downing Street to the European Commission at Europe House in Smith Square.

They went to “bid a fond farewell to our much loved friends in the EU, hoping that we will be united again one day soon“. As the organisers wrote, for many this “may be a sad day but let’s celebrate the 47 years we were in the EU and all we contributed and the positive influence it has on our country.”

The march had been organised to take place much earlier in the day than the official Brexit celebrations in an attempt to avoid any confrontation, but as well as the few extremists who came along to cause trouble at Downing Street there there were continued jeers from Brexiteers as they made their way down Whitehall and through Parliament Square.

At Europe House staff came out to greet them and were handed flowers as they bid goodbye, celebrating 47 years of cooperation and hoping that we will be reunited with Europe before too long. As they said outside Europe House, they are no longer remainers but rejoiners.

I finished my report: “I went home. I’d had enough of Brexit. We will have to live with its consequences for some years and I’m not looking forward to it. Times are likely to be tough for the poor, the disabled, the sick and for workers generally, including most of those who voted for it and were celebrating in Parliament Square. The wealthy will of course gain – not least by avoiding the clamp down on tax evasion which the EU is now beginning.”

À bientôt EU, see you soon

Shia Muslims Arbaeen Procession London

From My London Diary for 30th January 2011, with minor amendments. You can see many more pictures with the original post.

Several thousand Shia Muslims came to Marble Arch on 30th January 2011 for the 30th annual Arbaeen (Chelum) procession in London, commemorating the sacrifice made by the grandson of Mohammed, Imam Husain, killed with his family and companions at Kerbala in 680AD. Arbaeen takes place 40 days after Ashura, the day commemorating the martyrdom and marks the end of the traditional 40 days of mourning. After prayers and recitations they paraded along Park Lane in a ceremony of mourning.

Imam Husain is seen by Shia Muslims as making a great stand against the oppression of a tyrant and representing the forces of good against evil. Husain and his small group of supporters were hugely outnumbered but chose to fight to the death for their beliefs rather than to compromise. Their stand is a symbol of freedom and dignity, and an aspiration to people and nations to strive for freedom, justice and equality.

Arbaeen is also said to commemorate the return of the wives and families of those killed – who were marched away as captives to Damascus after the massacre – to Kerbala to mourn the dead after their release around a year later.

Millions now attend the annual Arbaeen event in Kerbala (though it was banned while Saddam Hussein was in power) and the London event attracts Muslims from all over the UK, although numbers this year seemed rather fewer than in some previous years.

The Hussaini Islamic Trust UK first organised this annual procession since 1982, making it the oldest Arbaeen/Chelum Procession of Imam Husain in the west. It was the first annual Muslim procession in Central London and is still one of the larger annual Muslim processions in the UK. It is held on the Sunday closest to Arbaeen.

The procession includes several large replicas of the shrines of Karbala; known as Shabbih, these gold and silver models are over 10 feet high and the largest in Europe. There was also a decorated and blood-stained white horse or Zuljana representing the horse of Imam Husain, a cradle remembering his 6 month old child Hazrat Ali Asghar who was also murdered and a coffin.

The day started at Marble Arch with prayers and recitation which were followed by speeches in English, Arabic and Urdu before the procession set off. I missed some of this as I was busy covering another event, but returned shortly after the procession set off down Park Lane.

Groups among the men chanted and all those marching beat their chests as a token of mourning, most in a symbolic rather than very physical manner, but as the procession made its way down the road some were soon stripped to the waist and beating themselves vigorously, producing red marks and some drawing blood.

The women marched in a tightly packed separate group at the rear of the march, held back by a number of women stewards and pushing the cradle and one of the Shabbih. Like the men they chanted and made gestures of mourning. Although they were almost all dressed in black, many of them were carrying standards and flags, and some had some brightly coloured embroidery and headscarves.

After the march there are light refreshments provided, but I left before that, catching a bus along Park Lane. The procession only occupies one of the three lanes of each of the dual carriageways and traffic keeps flowing throughout, although with some slight delays.

More pictures from this event in 2011at Shia Muslims 30th Arbaeen Procession. I photographed this procession in other years from 2007 to 2012 and you can find pictures from these by entering Arbaeen in the search box on My London Diary.

As I mention in the account above, I left the march to photograph another protest, in Oxford St, a short walk away from Marble Arch. Around 50 UK Uncut activists dressed as doctors and nurses a staged a peaceful protest in Boots in Oxford St against their avoidance of UK tax, closing the store. You can read about it in UK Uncut Protest Boots Tax Scam.

SOAS Cleaners and Denmark Street Squat

Two unconnected events on Thursday 29th January 2015.

SOAS Cleaners demand Dignity & Respect – SOAS, London University

SOAS Cleaners and Denmark Street Squat — *‘Justice for Cleaners – Bring us in House – Dignity and Respect’ – Unison Branch Rep Sandy Nicholl*

Cleaners working at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS – held a rally calling for improved conditions of service and an end to being treated as a second-class workforce. Supported by students and staff they continue their campaign to be employed by the University rather than cleaning contractor ISS.

SOAS is a university with an international reputation for its progressive views on political issues around the world and exposing the detrimental effects of neo-liberalism, but its management had failed to acknowledge the beam in its own eye, its disgraceful treatment of cleaners.

Most of those who keep the SOAS building clean and working smoothly are immigrants to the UK, mainly with Spanish as their first language. Instead of putting these people on the SOAS payroll and treating them as employees with similar rights to all the others who work in the same building, SOAS contracts out its cleaners. This denies them care and protection and leaves them open to exploitation and abuse by cut-price cleaning contractors.

Even worse in June 2009, SOAS management collaborated with the Home Office by calling a 6am “emergency meeting” of the cleaners which was in fact an immigration service raid, resulting in the deportation of nine cleaners. The raid came shortly after the SOAS Justice For Workers (J4W) had a successful campaign to achieve union recognition and the London Living Wage and was widely seen as a spiteful retaliation by the SOAS management following this victory.

The immigration raid is remembered at SOAS every year on its anniversary in June. The J4W campaign led by the SOAS Unison Branch continued and on 29th of January their protest for direct employment under the slogan ‘One Workplace, One Workforce’, supported by students, teaching and administrative staff as well as other trade unionists and organisations.

Eleven long years of protest, as well as work to show SOAS the advantages to the organisation of employing the cleaners directly finally resulted in a victory in 2018, when SOAS sent a letter to all staff, unions and support staff stating, ‘Our current staff in central facilities teams will be directly employed by the university. This means that they will be on equal pay and conditions with existing SOAS employees’.

More pictures at SOAS Cleaners demand Dignity & Respect.

‘Tin Pan Alley’ 12 Bar club faces eviction – Denmark St

Denmark Street is a short street linking St Giles High Street with Charing Cross Road, first developed in the late 17th century and named after Prince George of Denmark. When I first went down it in the 1970s it was a one-way back-street with little or no traffic, and both sides were lined with shops, offices and studios connected with the music industry.

*Squatters outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 28th January 2015*

This was Britain’s “Tin Pan Alley” where session musicians and artists gathered, meeting each other and looking for work. The Rolling Stones recorded their first album here and David Bowie recruited his first band in a bar. The Sex Pistols lived in the street and recorded their first demos here – and so much more. It became a huge centre for musical instrument sales; I came here to look in windows full of guitars and saxophones I couldn’t afford and later came her to buy a professional Roland keyboard for my sons.

*Outside the club in Denmark St, 29 January 2015*

But above the mainly early 20th century shop fronts were the houses, some dating from from the original buildings of 1686-9, and others not much later. Eight were Grade II listed, two as early as 1951 and the others in 1974. The street is one of very few, if not the only, one in London with such early facing terraces on both sides.

*In the alley at the side of the club was a free musicians noticeboard*

Listing ensured that the redevelopment of the street as a part of the Crossrail development around Tottenham Court Road would keep the facades, though much behind them is now new, and most of the old businesses have gone – many moving earlier as the music business changed and rents had rocketed. A petition with 10,000 signatures opposed the redevelopment asking for the street to be given full heritage status.

*Redevelopment had already begun behind the bar*

The 12 Bar Club had been running as a small live music venue since 1994 at 26 Denmark Street, in a listed building that began life in 1635 as stables but had in the early 18th century become a terraced house. The club closed in January 2015, and was then squatted by a group of musicians and supported opposed to its loss.

*Everyone on the music scene at some time played at the 12Bar*

I went there on 29th January when the squatters, #Bohemians4Soho had called for a street festival of resistance against their expected eviction the following day, having met and being invited by some of the squatters on the 28th as they demonstrated at the Royal Courst of Justice where a court case over their eviction was taking place.

Shortly before I arrived to take pictures they had been served with an IPO (interim possession order) giving them 24 hours to leave before they were committing a criminal offence. They left as the bailiffs arrived the following lunch time.

*The Ligaments – Nicola ‘Nitro’ Itro, Jake Maxwell & Zel Kaute – had played the last night of the 12Bar and came back to play during the occupation*

The listed building was stabilised, then lifted by crane for redevelopment to take place below it, after which it was lowered back into place. The old 12 Bar club room is now a part of a larger venue at the site.

More pictures: ‘Tin Pan Alley’ 12 Bar club faces eviction.

No Sweat, Street Photos, Holocuast Memorial Day

Saturday 27th January 2007 was a rather unusual day for me. Of course one of the joys of working as a photographer is that most days are different, but perhaps this was more varied than most, though I only had three sets of pictures to put on line

No Sweat Protests Burberry Factory Closure – Regent St

No Sweat, Street Photos, Holocuast Memorial Day

I’ve never owned or worn any clothing made by Burberry, but they are very much a traditional British brand, producing and selling clothing that seems rooted in the British countryside and images of farming, hunting shooting and fishing. But I’ve always been a town or city dweller.

Until 2007 their clothing was proudly Made in Britain, and for years had come from a factory in Treorchy in the Rhonda where the factory had started in 1940 and employed large numbers of local skilled workers. The factory was set up when Alfred Pollikoff received funding in 1937 from Lord Nuffield to bring new industries to distressed areas of the country and began production in 1939 producing clothes for all kinds of workers and military uniforms for the Second World War.

The Pollikoff factory was bought by Great Universal Stores in 1948 and was taken over by Burberry, also a part of GUS, in 1989 when they changed its name, although many locally continued to refer to it as Pollikoff’s.

They became one of the largest employers in the Rhonda, at its peak employing around a thousand workers, though by 2006 increased mechanisation had reduced that to around 300. It was a great shock to the workers and the local economy when Burberry in September 2006 announced they were closing the factory at the end of March 2007 and moving production to China.

The Treorchy factory was efficient with high productivity and profitable. But UK labour costs meant that production was more expensive than overseas. According to the GMB union it cost around £11 to produce a polo shirt in Wales, but with cheap labour only around £4 in China. Burberry sold these shirts for around £60 in shops such as that on Regent St.

The Treorchy workers began an huge campaign to keep the factory open, gaining support from many in parliament and such unlikely figures as the owner of Harrods, along with stars including Sir Tom Jones, Michael Sheen, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church and Ben Elton.

*Local MP for Rhonnda, Chris Bryant (brown jacket) with Treorchy workers*

A group of workers had come to London to pursue their fight and to demonstrate outside the Bond St and Regent St Burberry stores on January 27th. And a team from ‘No Sweat’, “an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers, worldwide”, dressed as removal men arrived to support them, attempting to wrap the shops and workers in brown paper and ship them, second class, to China.

No Sweat’s protest was an amusing act of street theatre and one which helped an otherwise rather vanilla protest gain publicity in the media, always hard for protests to achieve unless they involve celebrities or violent illegal acts. Generally our media are very much on the side of the bosses (like the billionaires who own most of the papers) and the status quo, and the vast majority of protests are simply ignored by them, as “not news”.

Burberry workers destroy a Burberry polo shirt made in Treorchy

Burberry still makes some clothing in Britain (and elsewhere in Europe), and in 2015 enraged some who had fought to keep Treorchy open by announcing plans for an new factory in Leeds, though this was to replace two existing Yorkshire factories.

A number of small businesses were set up after the closure on the factory site, including the Treorchy Sewing Enterprise Ltd, set up by former Burberry employees.

West End Walk – Bond Street, Piccadilly, Leicester Square

I’ve never really thought that ‘street photography’ was a useful definition of an area of photography, and certainly never thought of myself as a street photographer, though the huge majority of my work has been made on the streets.

And while there are some ‘street photographers’ whose work I admire, there does seem to me to be a huge amount of totally vacuous and pointless work that is produced under this label. It too often seems to be an excuse for having nothing to say.

*Fortnum and Mason’s clock from 1964 is surely the most hideous in London.*

So while the little performance in the tree at the side of the National Gallery may be ‘street photography’ the rest of my pictures on this little walk are more concerned with architectural detail and illustrate the profligacy which was (and is still) enabled by our exploitation of the British Empire. They pictures on this walk also say something about taste and attitudes to women, both in previous eras and of course my own.

Holocaust Memorial Day – Soviet War Memorial & Peace Garden, Lambeth

I was unable to be at the wreath-laying ceremony to mark Holocaust Memorial Day at the Soviet War Memorial in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park as I was taking pictures on Regent St. But I did go there later in the day.

The memorial is dedicated to all of the 27 million Soviet civilians and military personnel who died for Allied victory in World War II and off course the Soviet Union played a vital role in the defeat of the Nazis, but the Russian record of persecution of the Jews both before and after the revolution is horrific. The Russian Orthodox Church for centuries led opposition to Jews who were not permitted to go ‘beyond the pale’ into Russia unless they converted. The first recorded pogrom was in Odessa (now in Ukraine) in 1821 and there were widespread pogroms in the Russian empire later in the century which led to many fleeing to Britain and the USA. Tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in the civil war following the 1917 revolution. Antisemitism continues to be rife in Russia after the Soviet era.

Close to the Soviet War Memorial is the Holocaust memorial tree, planted in 2002 by the then Mayor of Southwark where wreaths are also laid at this annual ceremony.

The park surrounds the Imperial War Museum, which houses a moving exhibition on the holocaust, but I didn’t visit it on this day. Instead I went past to the Tibetan Peace Garden in the park, opened in Summer 1999 by the Dalai Lama. It seemed an appropriate place to sit and reflect for a while, which I did, as well as taking some pictures.

You can read more about these events by scrolling down the January 2007 page where there are links to more pictures

Save the NHS – Lewisham 2013

Save Lewisham Hospital March & Rally – Saturday 26 January 2013

On Saturday 26th January 2013 an estimated 25,000 people marched through Lewisham to save their hospital from closure and to protect the NHS, showing south London united against the closure on pure financial grounds of its highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments.

Now the whole NHS is facing a crisis, and a similar united response across the country is needed to save it. It becomes clearer and clearer that this crisis has been deliberately engineered in order to destroy our health service and hand it over to private providers, particularly the US health giants.

Two years ago, US health insurance giant Centene Corporation took over 49 NHS GP surgeries and practices. Now as Jeremy Corbyn posted a couple of days ago on Facebook, “US health insurance giant, Centene, is the single largest provider of NHS primary care in England. Privatisation is the cause of — not the solution to — the NHS crisis. Stop wasting money on private contracts and start investing in a fully-public NHS instead.“

Unfortunately both Tory and Labour parties have taken part in the move towards privatisation of the NHS, though Tories have been more open in their support of such changes as suggesting the introduction of charges to see a doctor. But both parties have introduced changes which have brought private companies into providing NHS services, have taken large donations from private health companies, and have leading members who profit from them.

It was under Labour that the NHS took on poorly thought out Private Finance Initiative contracts that have landed many local health trusts with huge debt repayments, many of which extend to the middle of the century, and it was these which led to the crisis in Lewisham.

The PFI contracts were negotiated by civil servants and were and are a bonanza for private companies. Under them we pay totally ridiculous charges for simple jobs – such as Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust paying £8,450 to install a dishwasher because they are locked into maintenance contracts. Changing a light bulb can cost a couple of hundred pounds.

Lewisham Hospital wasn’t directly affected by PFI, but it was in 2009 put into the South London Hospitals Trust, which had two hospitals at Orpington and Woolwich whose PFI contracts saddled the trust with debts of over £60 million a year until 2032.

Lewisham Hospital was successful both medically and financially, but Health Secretary Andrew Lansley appointed a special administrator to the trust with a remit to drastically cut the trusts costs. And Matthew Kershaw decided to do so by closing the highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments at Lewisham.

It was a decision that made no sense. There wasn’t the spare capacity at other hospitals to cope with those no longer able to get treatment at Lewisham – the system was actually working in the other direction, with these other hospitals having to send patients to Lewisham.

Financially it made no sense – the patients would still require treatment and this would cost more elsewhere. The small annual savings the closure would give would be more than offset by increases in costs elsewhere – though some of these might be in other trusts.

The proposal generated an incredible amount of local opposition, with the campaign to save the hospital supported by all local MPs and policitician both in the area and across south London. Community groups and organisations all came together to save the hospital – Millwall football club even changed their weekend fixture to Friday night so the team and supporters could join the march.

As I wrote back in 2013, “The fight to save Lewisham Hospital isn’t just a local issue, but very much a national one, with the provision of medical services that form the bedrock of the NHS under attack. If the government can close down services at Lewisham, no other successful hospital in the UK is safe in their hands.”

Nurses and ambulance workers are now striking not just for a better deal for themselves, but for the future of the NHS, which the Tories have deliberately run down with drastic underfunding and a deliberate failure to train and recruit staff. Perhaps their most obvious action was the removal of the bursary for nurse training, but as well there has been the continuing decrease in real salaries with below inflation wage rises over the years. Together with the failure to keep European staff in this country after Brexit and the impact of Covid the results have been disastrous – except for those private companies providing agency nurses and doctors, often at horrific cost to the NHS.

If the NHS is to be saved it will need the kind of public mobilisation that saved Lewisham Hospital, with the people as a whole getting behind the nurses and doctors and others who are fighting to save it. We need to fight the policies and greed of the Tories and of Labour and of the billionaire press to preserve the NHS as a national service free at the point of use and organised for the national good rather than for profit.

More pictures at Save Lewisham Hospital

IWGB Protests University Outsourcing – 2018

On Thursday 25th January 2018 I went out to photograph one protest in the evening and found myself getting transported to another by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain.

End Outsourcing at University of London – Senate House

Striking security officers and receptionists from the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain picketed Senate House and were joined by supporters for a noisy rally at the gates. Cleaners, receptionists, security officers, porters and post room staff are all demanding that the university ends discriminatory employment practices and makes them all direct employees.

Outsourcing is a way for organisations like the University of London to get essential jobs done on the cheap by people working under terms and conditions that would be a blot on their reputations as responsible employers. They contract out the people who work in their business to contracting companies who employ them under far worse pensions, holiday entitlements, sickness entitlements, and maternity and paternity leave than in-house employees.

Those working at the UoL say they are often bullied and overworked and sometimes paid several months late. Many are also on zero hours contracts, which fail to offer them consistent work, and have no guarantee that they will get any work, and and can be used to further bully or punish workers, often those who are active in the unions. Following earlier protests the University is considering bringing some of the workers in-house, but they and their union, the IWGB, were insisting that all should be put onto the university payroll. The savings from outsourcing are often illusory and organisations always get better service through direct employment.

The workers had been on strike all day and had been picketing and in the early evening were joined by a large and noisy crowd of supporters, including IWGB member from other workplaces and students, including a samba band who considerably livened up the protest.

After the band had played for some time there were speeches from some leading members of the union including IWGB President Henry Chango Lopez and others who came to give support including United Voices of the World General Secretary Petros Elia. He was able to give news of another campaigning success, where after a noisy protest outside its offices by the UVW in the previous month another company had agreed to pay cleaners the London Living Wage.

*United Voices of the World General Secretary Petros Elia*

As the protest drew to an end IWGB General Secretary Jason Moyer-Lee announced that a double-decker coach had arrived and would take IWGB members and any more they could fit in to a surprise protest at another secret London location. Although I was rather cold, tired and hungry it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.

More at End Outsourcing at University of London.

Cleaners rush into Royal College of Music – Royal College of Music

We crowded into the bus which drove off into the London rush hour, and it was soon clear we were going west. We passed the Royal Albert Hall and then turned off into a side street a short way from our destination, which turned out to be the Royal College of Music.

People got off and unloaded the union flags, banners and drums quietly. Then two people went a little ahead of the rest of us to hold open the doors of the RCM ready for the rest of the crowd to rush into the foyer for a surprise protest.

Cleaners there had recently been taken over as the RCM had agreed a new contract with a different company, Tenon FM. They had decided to unilaterally cut hours in half and change shift times, telling the cleaners they must work at times most already have other cleaning jobs, and they are now threatened with dismissal for refusing to accept the new hours.

Both Tenon and the RCM were refusing to hold any discussions over the changes with the IWGB, who had because of this launched a collective grievance and balloted the cleaners for strike action; the union was also considering a legal challenge under law governing the transfer of undertakings.

Inside the foyer the protesters waved IWGB union flags and placards, banged drums and shouted slogans but were careful to avoid any damage. THe RCM called the police who arrived after 12 minutes and ordered the protesters to leave. They did so and continued the protest on the pavement outside. It was a dark street and the blue flashing lights of the police cars made photography challenging.

I continued to photograph for a few minutes and then decided I had taken enough pictures and little else was likely to happen. I was already very late for dinner and had a longer than expected journey home.

More pictures at Cleaners rush into Royal College of Music.

Stop Trident & Occupy Democracy

On Saturday 24th January 2015, eight years ago, I photographed three protests against the replacement of our so-called independent nuclear deterrent, Trident with new nuclear submarines and missiles and Occupy Democracy asserting the right to protest and challenging the attempt by then London Mayor Boris Johnson to prevent protests in Parliament Square.

Christian CND against Trident Replacement – St Martins-in-the-Fields to Whitehall

I began work at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square with a Christian CND service. Thet held a long piece of the seven mile knitted pink peace scarf which had been joined together the previous August between the UK atomic bomb factories at Burghfield and Aldermaston on Nagasaki Day in a protest against the senseless waste of £100bn in replacing Trident missiles, which would clearly breach the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

CND has since revised the figure of the costs of this senseless programme, which was stated by the defence minister in the parliamentary debates and in the November 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review to be £31 billion. This turned out to be simply the estimate for the four new submarines. Using government figures CND later calculated the total cost to be £205 billion, well over a year’s total spending on the NHS. And of course like all defence programmes it will end up costing considerably more. Of course cost is not the main reason why people oppose nuclear weapons but this is an entirely senseless waste of resources that should be put to better use.

After their brief service they walked with the part so the scarf to the main CND protest against Trident replacement outside the Defence Ministry.

Christian CND against Trident Replacement

Wrap Up Trident’ surrounds Defence Ministry – Whitehall

Several thousand CND supporters met at the Defence Ministry before surrounding the block with a knitted peace scarf and then moving off for a rally opposite the Houses of Parliament calling for the scrapping of the UK’s Trident missiles.

A group held the front of the scarf outside the Ministry of Defence building in Horseguards Avenue and then led off down Whitehall, left into Bridge St and left again up the Embankment and back to the MOD. While the leaders set off with the scarf at a cracking pace, gaps soon developed further back as those adding lengths from the many rolls of scarf were unable to keep up. So while there was far more scarf than needed to wrap the whole block – and it went back and forth on the river side of the ministry – it may never have entirely joined up completely.

When the leading group arrived back at the MOD there where certainly people spread out along the whole of the course holding parts of the knitting, and most seemed at a loss of what they were supposed to do next. Eventually the message came for them to walk on and take their pieces of knitting back to the MOD.

Here the knitted and crocheted lengths of scarf were rolled up. Rather than being wasted most of it was later turned into blankets for refugees, with just a few of the more interesting lengths being retained for further protests and displays.

The CND supporters then marched the short distance down Whitehall and Parliament Street and on to Old Palace Yard where they were to hold a rally.

Many more pictures at ‘Wrap Up Trident’ surrounds Defence Ministry.

CND Scrap Trident rally at Parliament – Old Palace Yard,

Among the speakers were at the rally were Lindsay German,

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MEP Julie Ward, Shahrar Ali, the Deputy Leader of the Green Party,

Kate Hudson and

Bruce Kent of CND,

Rebecca Johnson, an internationally-recognized expert on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,

Heather Wakefield of UNISON, the Rt Revd Alan Williams, Bishop of Brentwood, Khalil Charles from the Muslim Association of Britain, Ben Griffin, of Veterans for Peace,

and Angie Zetter, who thought up the idea of the peace scarf.

The rally ended with a new song composed for the occasion by Leon Rosselson. There are more pictures including all the speakers and those in the crowds at the rally at CND Scrap Trident rally at Parliament.

Occupy defy GLA ban on Democracy – Parliament Square

As people streamed away from the CND Trident protest, several hundred supporters of Occupy Democracy most of whom had been at the CND protest walked on to the grass of Parliament Square to hold discussions on foreign relations and war as the GLA private security guards (Heritage wardens) and police watched.

This was one of a series of monthly events in which Occupy are asserting the right to protest and challenging the attempt by London Mayor Boris Johnson to prevent protests in Parliament Square.

Police and the Mayor’s ‘Heritage Wardens’ watched the protest. I followed the wardens as they went across to the police and asked them to take action to stop the protest. Police lacked the officers needed to take effective action and if they had tried to do so many more of those leaving the CND protest would have joined those on the square. They told the wardens that the protesters would eventually leave of their own accord, which apparently they did a few hours later.

More pictures at Occupy defy GLA ban on Democracy.