Bubbles, Hula Hoops, Hugs & Venus: The 8th Reclaim Love Valentine Party on Saturday 12th February 2011 was a little different from usual, but like the others called for universal love and peace and opposed the incredible commercialisation of St Valentines Day.
This year 2026, there are plans for another Reclaim Love:- “You are invited to join us on Saturday February 14th (St. V. Day!) at 2:30pm for a 3:33pm LOVE CIRCLE by Eros in London’s Piccadilly Circus. YES! It’s back! RECLAIM LOVE!…”
I hope it goes well – and hope to be there.
Before the 2011 party I had photographed a celebration of the success of the Egyptian Revolution in removing President Mubarek. Unfortunately things have not gone well for Egypt in the years since that euphoric moment.
Reclaim Love Pavement Party
Piccadilly Circus & Green Park
Reclaim love presents an alternative to the commercial messages about Valentines day on the hoardings in Piccadilly Circus, watched by Eros and a helicopter far above.Rhythms of Resistance play at Piccadilly Circus
This was the 8th Annual Reclaim Love Pavement Party, organised by Venus “to celebrate the Greatest thing on Earth and the Greatest thing we have inside…Yes, Love!!!” It almost didn’t happen, but Irish poet and love activist Venus CuMara had been persuaded by many who had come to previous events to arrange another despite feeling she needed to rest. But her incredible energy and spirit shows in the many pictures I made of her at the event.
Free Reclaim Love T-shirts from Ethical ThreadsVenus arrives, having prepared the tree circle for our visit
But Piccadilly Circus where the event was normally held was being reorganised and although the persuasive charms of Venus managed to get the workmen to tidy up the area to make it possible to meet there, holding the great circle which is the climax of the event was impossible.
At times the air was pretty full of bubbles
Instead Venus led the group to a circle of 13 tall plane trees in Green Park for the event, where carefully avoiding the daffodils in the grass the circle was formed.
Venus says it’s time to go to a very special place
As well as this giant circle in London there were others forming to chant the same mantra “May All The Beings In All The Worlds Be Happy And At Peace” for around five minutes at the same time, 3.30pm UTC.
In 2010 there had been 7 circles in Ireland, 6 others in England, in Scotland, Wales, Pakistan, 2 in India, 4 in Spain, 2 in Italy, 3 in Germany, Austria, Iceland, France, Brazil, Argentina, 2 in New Zealand, 5 in the USA, Canada and Australia. And in 2011 for the first time there was to be one in Egypt.
After this as people began to party and dance in the centre of the tree circle – carefully avoiding the growing daffodils – two vans full of police drove up. Venus rushed to talk to them and explain what was happening and was told the the event was contravening a number of the bylaws of the Royal Parks, and it did not have the permissions needed.
Eventually Venus managed to convince the police the event was harmless and promised we would all leave the park by 4pm, and the police went away. I heard the officer who had been talking with Venus say to his colleagues: “I really thought I was in a parallel universe there” and indeed he had been.
And we did all leave, returning to continue to party around ‘Eros’ (Yes pedants, I know!). I was sorry to leave after after around half an hour, but the party apparently went on until late.
You can read a much fuller account of the event I wrote in 2011 on My London Diary, where of course there are many more pictures.
Dance Against Cuts & Solidarity With the Thessalonaki 4: Two protests on Friday 14th January 2011 had little in common except that both were in part against the violence, lies and deception of the authorities, both here in the UK and in Greece.
Dance Against The Deficit Lies
Royal Exchange, Bank
Campaigners against the savage cuts in arts and community funding by the Tory-led coalition government in the UK came to perform outside the Royal Exchange and Bank of England in a way deliberately planned to avoid confrontation with police, limiting their protest to exactly and hour and making it “playful with purpose, (so) that any aggression whatsoever (police kettles or the tiny few protesters who throw stuff) will simply look preposterous.”
The location was one “with resonances for many protesters, where some of the worst excesses of police violence and over-reaction took place at the protests against the G20, and close to where Ian Tomlinson was attacked by a police officer and died.”
At the centre of the City of London it was also appropriate for cuts that reflected the huge rescue package given to bail out the banks after their irresponsible behaviour, and to protest about their continuing excessive salaries and indecent bonuses.
It was a relatively small protest, with almost as many spectators and photographers as the hundred or so taking part, and enlivened by performances and dance rather than angry chanting. And the police for once simply stood back and watched.
The organisers pointed out that Britain is still revered for around the world, and that it brings in money to the country. “Cuts to the arts are idiotic and short sighted.” They questioned why the levy on banks was “being reduced, and why the government is not imposing measures such as the Tobin or Robin Hood tax on financial transactions that would not only being in much-needed income to reduce the deficit but would provide a beneficial stability by dampening speculation.”
Back in June 2003, a number of protesters were arrested in a violent police attack on an anti-capitalist protest against an EU summit in Thessaloniki, Greece. They included the English anarchist, Simon Chapman, a supporter of various anarchist groups including Class War.
Seven of them, including Chapman, had later gone on hunger strike against their arrests and were finally released at the end of November 2023, following a huge solidarity campaign across Europe. Among those calling for their release were 28 EU MPs and Amnesty International. All charges against the prisoners were dropped and Simon came home to England.
Photographic and film evidence proved beyond and doubt that Chapman had been framed, charged with having three black bags containing Molotoff cocktails and dangerous weapons (a hammer and a pickaxe handle.) Photographs showed that when arrested he was carrying a blue bag, and a film clearly showed Greek police planting these black bags on him after his arrest.
But despite this the Greek state was not prepared to drop the cases, and after “repeated appeals from the Greek state prosecutor the charges against four of the original seven were re-instated.” And despite the evidence in 2008 all of these four were found guilty.
“Under the threat of a European Police Warrant … Simon was forced to return to Thessaloniki in 2010 to appeal the conviction.” But this time the evidence resulted in all the major charges being thrown out, with all four instead being found guilty of a “minor defiance of authority” to justify the time they had previously spent in jail. And Chapman came back to England and Class War.
But the Greek experience had scarred Chapman and he never really recovered from being arrested and his treatment in prison, and the health effects of the lengthy hunger strike, dying at only 40 in 2017.
Class War with their banner in memory of Simon Chapman – May 1 2017
Class War came to the May Day march that year at Clerkenwell Green with a new banner in his memory, and also copies of a new Class War newspaper to sell. When the march set off for Trafalgar Square they “marched only the few yards back to the pub, where I joined them later” to celebrate Simon’s life.
Hardest Hit, Biofuels, Tibet and OccupyLSX: Saturday 22 October 2011 began for me with a protest at City Hall (still then in Southwark close to Tower Bridge) Next in Whitehall I photographed a protest against the pollution, environmental damage and human rights abuses of burning forests produce energy. Also on Whitehall I met Tibetans and supporters marching from the Chines Embassy to Downing Street demanding an end to China’s increasing repression in Tibet. Finally I went to St Paul’s Churchyard for a brief visit to Occupy London a week after their camp there had begun.
Hardest Hit Protest At City Hall
City Hall, More London
The Hardest Hit campaign, organised jointly by the Disability Benefits Consortium and the UK Disabled People’s Council were holding a rally outside City Hall as a part of protests in cities and towns across the country calling on the government to stop the cuts in benefits and services and changes in the assessment of disabilities which have hugely affected their lives.
Of course the Mayor of London was not responsible for the cuts, and I assume this was just a convenient location he had made available for the protest. Of course many services provided by local government had been cut as a result of the government funding cuts. And as usual the government claimed to be concerned with the plight of the disabled and to be trying to help them while at the same time making cuts that really hurt them.
The protest took place in the Scoop, an outdoor sunken amphitheatre next to City Hall, part of the More London development, an events space which can seat around a thousand and it looked a little empty though there were many disabled protesters, some with carers and supporters.
Protesters against Barton Renewable Energy in Davyhulme, Manchester
People had come from across the country to protest at continued government support for biofuel energy production despite it now being clear that this is contibuting to climate change, causes deforestation and the loss of valuable forest land, results in a loss of food production and threatens human rights in many areas.
Biofuels were once seen as a green alternative which would help us reduce global warming, but it is now clear that are worse polluters than coal or oil. Despite this, they still receive huge payouts from funding meant to encourage renewable energy sources. The huge wood-burning plant at Drax in Yorkshire in 2024 received £869 million in public subsidies – over £2 million a day for polluting the planet.
At last in February 2025 the UK government has announced a cut in the subsidies for Drax, and the winding down of using imported wood pellets for energy generation. But even when this comes into force in 2027 Drax will still be getting £1.2 million a day. Drax will cut its power production to around half its current level and further reductions are expected from then.
Tibetans shout their message to Downing St, across Whitehall
Several hundred Tibetans and supporters marched from the Chinese Embassy to Downing Street in a protest over China’s increasing repression in Tibet, where in March 2011 eight young monks and a nun had set themselves on fire in desperate protests. Five had died.
Protests around the world like this one aimed to get the international community to end their silence over the Chinese abuses of human and civil rights in Tibet. It was supported by the Tibet Society, Free Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet, Tibetan Youth UK and the Tibetan Community in Britain.
The held a rally opposite Downing Street and delivered a letter to the Prime Minister calling for the UK Government to take action.
There was to be a world-wide day of action on Wednesday 2 Novemeber, the to call for action from international governments the day before world leaders meet in Nice, France for the G20 Summit.
A week earlier on 15th October 2011 I had been at the protest when around 2000 Occupy protesters had tried to protest outside the Stock Exchange but were prevented by police. They had returned to the steps of St Paul’s and held a general meeting. Police kettled the protesters (and me) there, but I left when a group of them forced their way through the police line. Those that were still kettled decided to stay and occupy the area after police told them they should leave. A week later they were still there and I went back to see what was happening.
There was a full program of events for the day, and a general meeting was taking place with Selma James speaking.
A mother and daughter concerned about privatisation of the NHS at OccupyLSX
As I said “the organisation of the camp is impressive, although clearly there are some people around who don’t respect the camp’s ‘no alcohol’ rule. But like the previous camps in central London, the camp attracts a number of the rough sleepers and odd characters who normally wander the streets of our city. It’s a useful service for people who are normally neglected, but does bring some problems.”
Battle of Cable St: On Sunday 2 October 2011 well over a thousand trade unionists and anti-fascists celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when Mosley’s fascists were prevented from marching into London’s largely Jewish East End.
Max Levitas leads the march
Since 2011 we have seen other celebrations of this famous event and the people of the East End have also come together to stop other racist organisations marching into the East End, notably the EDL.
Some people came dressed for the 1930s
In 1936 Oswald Mosley led the ‘British Union of Fascists’, an organisation modelled on Mussolilni’s Italian fascist paramilitary groups on a march designed to intimidate the large Jewish community in the East End.
Although various groups tried to get the march banned the Home Secretary sided with the fascists insisting their democratic right to march had to be upheld by the police. The fascists were also supported by the right wing press, particularly the Daily Mail, while more liberal newspapers urged people to stay away from the counter demonstration.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews had condemned the march as anti-Semitic, and they had advised people to stay away from the march as did the Labour Party. The opposition to Mosley was led by local members of the Communist Party of Great Britain including Phil Piratin who nine ears later became Communist MP for Mile End. They eventually persuaded the party to back the counter-demonstration.
Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people turned out to stop the fascists. Many were Jewish, and many were members or supporters of the Communist Party but the call brought out many others from the East End, including “Irish Catholics, Jews, Orthodox Jews, dockers and Somali seamen” in a huge mobilisation across the community.
There are three routes leading into the East End from the City of London where Mosely and people gathered at key points on them, particularly at Aldgate, where most of the fighting between police and protesters took place, particularly around Gardiner’s Corner – where a ten years ago Class War carried out their long series of Poor Doors protests against social apartheid in housing.
Police decided to try and force a way through at Cable Street a little to the south and tried to force a way through the crowds and remove the barricades they had set up.
Frances O’Grady, TUC Deputy Gen Sec
According to Wikipedia, police managed to take and dismantle the first barrier but the anti-fascists set up another a few yards down the road.
“The police attempts to take and remove the barricades were resisted in hand-to-hand fighting and also by missiles, including rubbish, rotten vegetables and the contents of chamber pots thrown at the police by women in houses along the street … children’s marbles were also used to counter charges by mounted police.”
Eventually the police gave up and told Mosley to march with his followers back to the West End, where they held a rally in Hyde Park rather than those they had intended in Limehouse, Bow, Bethnal Green and Hoxton.
Seventy five years after the battle the crowd was rather smaller, but the well over a thousand who met at Aldgate included several veterans of the 1936 battle, among them 96 year old Max Levitas who led the march and spoke at the rally. He was also there and spoke at the 80th anniversary event in 2016.
The oldest person on the march was 106 year old lifelong political activist and suffragette Hetty Bower who had also been at the 1936 demonstration and was later one of the founder members of CND. I photographed her on several occasions at CND and other protests, the last at the Hiroshima Day commemoration in 2013 where she spoke briefly, a few months before her death.
Beattie Orwell, 94, was another of the veterans of 1936
You can read more about the Cable Street 75 event on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures. Battle of Cable St – 75 Years
Give Our Kids A Future – Dalston to Tottenham. A week after the police killing of Mark Duggan and the disturbances which followed in Tottenham, across London and in other towns and cities, community groups in North London came together on Saturday 13th August 2011 with around 1500 people marching from Dalston to Tottenham Town Hall pleading “Give Our Kids a Future.”
The march starts from Gillet Square
These disturbances were seen by many without surprise as tensions were rising in the more deprived areas of London and across the country as a result of the cuts to youth services and other support begun under New Labour and continued more savagely by the Coalition government.
Local Authorites were being starved of resources and had little choice but to make cuts where they could, cuts which disproportionately affected young people, the elderly and the disabled who rely more on their services. In particular many youth clbbs and other facilities had been closed.
Young people had also been hit by the announcement that the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) which enabled many in lower icnome homes to continue their eduction was to end this summer. Many school students had been radicalised and had taken part in sometimes disorderly student protests, joining in the protests over university fee rises and other changes in education.
On these protests they had seen and suffered from heavy-handed policing with kettling, excessive use of batons and charges into crowds by police horses. And on the streets where they lived many had experienced police harassment, with racially discriminatory stop and searches and being moved away from areas where they met with friends.
People in these areas were becoming more aware of unexplained deaths in police custody, with anger and resentment “multiplied by the lies told by police to the press, and the various cover-ups and white-washing by the IPCC, CPS and other authorities that have been used to prevent bringing those responsible to justice. “
Some saw the shooting of Mark Duggan as an execution by police, and the undisguised glee of some of our right-wing media at his death, having taken the police lies and convicted him, clearly raised tempers. It was the total failure of Tottenham police to engage with the family members and others who held a peaceful vigil last Saturday and the police attack and beating of 15 year old girl that sparked the outbreak of rage that spread rapidly.
The march was not organised to condone any illegal behaviour but was an attempt by a long list of local organisations with the support of some wider political groups (a long list on My London Diary) “to bring all sections of local communities together to promote unity and to urge for positive action working together to find solutions to some of the long-standing problems of the area which made it fertile ground for the disturbances.“
Some of the many Kurds on the march
“They want an end to the cuts in public services and for investment to be made into regeneration of the communities, with housing, jobs, education and leisure facilities and a restoration of all the youth services that have been cut”.
“More specifically about the riots they want a community led regeneration of the damaged areas and support for those affected, including the immediate rehousing of those made homeless and grants for small businesses.”
“But perhaps the most important of their demands was one for a cultural change, moving away from the demonisation of youth and the unemployed towards a culture of valuing all people.”
Their leaflet ended with the statement:
“Let’s work together for a decent society, based not on greed, inequality and poor conditions, but on justice, freedom, sharing and cooperation.“
Against Clerical Fascism & Women For Choice: On Saturday 9th July 2011 I photographed a protest against the imposition of religious laws outside a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference in East London and then a larger protest at Westminster against amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill which would severely damage the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act.
Protest At Hizb ut-Tahrir Conference – Whitechapel
Hizb ut-Tahrir were proscribed in the UK as a terrorist organisation in January 2024 after a protest following the Hamas attack on Israel at which they called on Muslim armies to attack Israel. I had photographed various protests by them for around 20 years and had found them to be a deeply worrying organisation both in their views and in the way their events were run and was surprised that they had been allowed to continue their activities so long. They appeared to many to have some kind of special secret licence from our security organisations for their extremism.
Hizb ut-Tahrir were holding their International Khilafah conference at the former Wickham’s department store in Whitechapel and a small group of protesters including Peter Tatchell had come to protest outside.
On My London Diary I quoted Tatchell’s statement about the group:
“Hizb ut Tahrir opposes democracy and wants to establish a religious dictatorship where non-Muslims and women are denied equal human rights. The group has a long history of anti-Semitism, homophobia and bigotry towards Hindu people. It is also guilty of extreme intolerance towards Muslims who do not share its harsh, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.”
There were separate entrances to the venue for men and women and photographers who attempted to photograph the women in front of their entrance were approached by security and told they must not photograph the women – and shortly after “a group of around a dozen Hizb ut-Tahrir security men and male stewards came and stood around the women to make further photography difficult.”
I’d earlier photographed a poster advertising the event on a cabinet in the pavement outside, and was photographing Peter Tatchell holding a placard reading ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir = clerical fascism No to Hizb / EDL /BNP‘ when one of the security men came and ripped the poster from the cabinet.
The protest was multi-racial and multi-ethnic and one Muslim woman held a poster stating ‘Hizb-ut-Tahrir does not represent Muslims.’ And, as I reported, ‘A Muslim man in his thirties walking past asked me what was happening and when I told him, described Hizb ut-Tahrir as “absolute nutters.“‘
Pro-Choice Rally at Parliament – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
The crowd, mainly women, applaud one of the speakers at the rally
Many different groups had come to the rally to oppose the “attempts by right-wing Christians and some Conservatives to turn back the clock towards the position before the 1967 Act, where many women had dangerous illegal back-street abortions, often with disastrous effects on their health. “
That Act, legalising abortion, had “led to one of the greatest single improvements in health for women of the last century.” But the amendments proposed by Nadine Dorries and others to the Health and Social Care Bill being debated in parliament in 2011 would have imposed “a further delay on abortions and would open the door to counselling provided by unregulated and unlicensed organisations including those opposed to abortions on religious grounds, and would remove the current obligations to provide medically sound and unbiased information.”
Under the coalition government a new advisory group on abortion had been set up which excluded ‘the Pregnancy Advisory Service but includes Life, an anti-abortion group which preaches abstinence and, according to its web site, “is opposed to abortion on principle in all circumstances.’
The government was also under strong “pressure from anti-abortion groups to lower the time limit for abortions from the current 24th week of gestation” despite clear medical advice against this from The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
On My London Diary you can also see many of the speakers at the event, including “including those wanting an extension of abortion rights to women in Northern Ireland, along with Labour MP and women’s rights campaigner Diane Abbott, columnist Penny Laurie (Penny Red), Green Party London Assembly member Jenny Jones, and doctor and former Liberal Democrat science spokesman and MP Evan Harris” – who was the only man who spoke while I was at the rally.
Free Syria & Keep the NHS Public: On Tuesday May 17th 2011 I photographed two protests, a march against the continuing privatisation of parts of our NHS and the Health & Social Care Bill then going through parliament, and a protest at Downing Street calling for the government to support the revolution against the Assad regime in Syria and work to end the bloodshed taking place there.
Fourteen years later the NHS is still under threat with more and more of its services being taken over by private healthcare companies, and although some changes have been made to the disastrous ‘reforms’ introduced under Andrew Lansley but implemented by Jeremy Hunt who later called the fragmentation that it caused ‘frankly, completely ridiculous’ and tried hard to ignore much of it.
What Hunt thought was the only successful part of the Act was that it established the independence of NHS England from the government. On 13th March 2025 the Labour government announced they were scropping NHS England, putting the NHS firmly under the control of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, two men who one of my Facebook friends posted should not be in charge of a first aid kit let alone the NHS. If only, many of us think, had Leanne Mohamad got another 529 votes in Ilforn North in 2024 and she had become the MP for Ilford North rather than Streeting. It was perhaps the greatest disappointment of that General Election.
History of massacres by the Assad family – 17,000 missing people in Syria since 1982.
Both Britain and the USA failed to support the Arab Spring in Syria with much more than weak words and when Russian put the forces behind Assad his survival was ensured until finally ousted by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and others after 13 years of brutal civil war in December 2024.
Protesters with a Kurdish flag
The US gave some support to the Kurds to enable them to defeat ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) despite the support ISIS received from our NATO ally Turkey. But by 2024 lamost half a million Syrians had been killed and around 6.7 million refugees had fled Syria with another 5 million internally displaced. And Turkey had taken advantage of the situation to invade and occupy some largely Kurdish areas.
In deference to Turkey, the UK government proscribed the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistani (PKK) or Kurdish Workers Party in 2001, later adding a whole list of other names it used, KADEK, Kongra Gele Kurdistan, Teyre Azadiye Kurdistan (TAK) and Hezen Parastina Gel (HPG). For some years the PKK had moved from fighting for an independent state of Kurdistan to calling for greater autonomy and civil rights for Kurds in Turkey and a few days ago at a PKK conference it announced it was to disband and disarm.
Keep The NHS Public – UCH Euston Road to Whitehall
Over a thousand people, including many medical professionals and medical students, marched through London to show their opposition to government reforms which threatens jobs and many feel would destroy the NHS.
After a rally at University College Hospital on Euston Road the march, the second large march in London aimed at saving the NHS and killing Andrew Lansley’s Health & Social Care Bill, set off for Westminster.
There was a brief ‘die-in’ at Cambridge Circus and a small ‘sit-in’ outside Downing Street before the marchers held a final rally in front of the Department of Health at Richmond House before dispersing.
You can read a fuller account of the protest and see many more pictures on My London Diary at Keep The NHS Public.
Syrians Ask For Support at Downing St
Syrians supporting the ‘People’s Revolution’ in their country called for support from the British people and government to support their demands for reform and to stop the bloodshed in Syria.
A large group of Syrians including Kurds from Northern Syria called for support from David Cameron and the British people for the Syrian people.
Since demonstrations for political and economic freedom and an end to the tyranny and bloodshed of the Assad regime started in Syria on March 15th 2011, more than 800 innocent protesters have been killed, over 2000 injured and many more detained.
Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad was president of Syria from 1971 until he died in 2000, and was responsible for many deaths and disappearances, including a massacre of 40,000 people at Hama in 1982. His son Bashar Al-Assad, nicknamed as ‘The Butcher’ continued the “arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, rape, and mass surveillance.”
TUC ‘March For The Alternative – On 26th March 2011 between a quarter and half a million people marched through London against planned public spending cuts by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the largest demonstration since the 2003 protest against the plan to invade Iraq.
The TUC argued that what the country needed was not austerity but policies that would grow the economy, and that we should raise income from those more able to pay rather than by measures that had the greatest impact on the poorest in society.
It was the largest march and rally organised by the trade union movement since the Second World War, and like other major trade union marches was perhaps largely worthy but not exciting – and like others it achieved nothing. The cuts went ahead and we all suffered – except of course the wealthy – who continued to grow richer and richer, helped by government bail-outs and the deliberate failures to tackle tax evasion, stop tax avoidance loopholes and raise taxes on those with excessive wealth.
The cuts particularly hit the public services, including teachers, nurses and other medical professionals – and eventually helped drive these areas into the critical conditions that they are now in. They resulted in financial problems and excessive workloads and also meant that those of us who rely on public provision for health and education often failing to get proper treatment. The gap between those who could afford private services and those who relied on the state provision increased.
Particularly hard hit by the cuts were the disabled and for them the situation continues to worsen with our now Labour government announcing huge cuts which will leave many considerably worse off – and greatly reduce their ability to lead normal lives and contribute to society.
As well as the TUC, other groups contributed to the march, announcing various feeder marches and other activities, many of which added a little life and colour to the day’s events. They also resulted in over 200 arrests and a number of injuries.
Too much was happening on the day for me to rehash it all here, but you can read my seven posts on my London Diary for my account of events. I started with the feeder marches from South London, disowned by the TUC. The ‘Armed Wing of the TUC’ brought its street theatre Trojan Horse, Spitfire, Tank and armed Lollipop Ladies produced by Camberwell art students to Camberwell Green where they marched to Kennington where the South London Feeeder March was gathering for a rally before the march in Kennington Park – the site of the final “monster meeting” of the Chartists on 10th April 1848 from where they marched to Parliament to deliver their final petition.
I left there to take the tube to Trafalgar Square where I found that the main march had started early and was well on its way to Hyde Park and I stayed around there for over an hour as marchers filed past, including photographing the Morris Liberation Front, an idea of Henry Flitton specially for the TUC demonstration, with music, provided by a couple of mandolins playing the Clash’s ‘I fought the Law’ and the Smith’s ‘Panic.
Later in the day Trafalgar Square was the site of bitter fighting as police made a largely unprovoked attack on a partying crowd, but when I was there things were peaceful.
I left the square to follow several hundred anarchists, dressed in black and mainly wearing face masks making their way up past the National Portrait Gallery, many waving red and black flags. I went with them through the back streets to Piccadilly Circus and then up Regent Street where they turned off into Mayfair and were held off by police when they attacked a RBS branch – one of the main banks to receive a huge government handout.
At Oxford Circus they attacked Topshop, then owned by the prominent tax avoider Sir Philip Green. As I went to take photographs of police arresting one of the protesters and holding him on the ground I was “hit full on the chest by a paint-bomb possibly aimed at the police, although many of the protesters also have an irrational fear of photographers. My cameras were still working and I continued to photograph, but I had also become a subject for the other photographers.”
It wasn’t painful, but it was very messy and bright yellow. I scraped and washed the worst off in a nearby public toilet for around 20 minutes, then went out to take more photographs, joining UK Uncut supporters who had come to hold peaceful protests at tax dodging shops and banks around Oxford St and to party at Oxford Circus.
Eventually I followed them down to Piccadilly Circus where 4 hours after the start of the official march people were still filing past. I stopped there and photographed until the end of the march passed, rather than going with UK Uncut into Fortnum and Mason. Inside the story they sat down and occupied the store peacefully. if noisily calling on them to pay their taxes. After an hour or more a senior police officer told them they were free to leave, promising they could make their way home “without obstruction”. 138 were arrested as they left the store, charged with ‘aggravated trespass’. Most of the cases were latter dropped but at least 10 were found guilty, given a six-month conditional discharge and a £1,000 fine.
Even after the official end of the march there were various other groups following the march route – including a group of Libyans with green flags, marching in support of Colonel Gaddaffi. I walked back to Trafalgar Square where there were still plenty of people around but everything was pretty quiet, so I got on the tube to come home and try to wash more of the paint off.
I think it was later when police made a charge to try and clear Trafalgar Square than almost all the arrests on the actual march took place – according to Google “Further clashes were reported later in Trafalgar Square. 201 people were arrested, and 66 were injured, including 31 police officers.” Had the police simply gone away people would have eventually dispersed and there would have been no trouble.
Others also got hit by paintballs
Back home I spent hours trying to scrub out yellow paint, but the rather expensive jacket I was wearing was only ever really fit to wear for gardening. The also expensive jumper underneath still has some small traces of yellow 14 years and many washes later, though I do sometimes still wear it around the house. Until my Nikon D700 came to the end of its life, beyond economic repair, a few years later I would still come across the occasional speck of yellow paint.
Much more about the day and many more pictures in the following posts on My London Diary
Atos Protest & Camden Town: – Monday 24 January 2011
Disability benefits are now under attack by our Labour government, who have insisted they will implement the Tory plans to cut the amount paid in incapacity benefits by £3 billion by 2028. And the House of Lords economic affairs committee a few days ago published a report calling for a fundamental review of the benefits system to tackle the rising social and fiscal costs of disability benefits.
Picket at the Archway Job Centre Plus Atos test centre
Also last week the High Court ruled that the previous government’s consultation on changing incapacity benefits was unlawful as “it presented the changes as a way of supporting disabled people into work but failed to make clear that 424,000 vulnerable claimants would see their benefits cut by £416 a month.”
When the Tory coalition government came into power in 2010 it picked on the disabled who it thought would be an easy target for the cuts it was making to support the bankers. Protests such as this on Monday January 24th 2001 showed how wrong they were, with determined opposition to the unfairness of their cost-cutting reforms from disabled groups including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the Black Triangle Campaign.
Protesters meet up in Triton Square
One part of the campaign by successive governments has been to give huge publicity and priority to benefit fraud, which according to the national Audit Office only amounts to 0.6% of the DWP budget and is a “drop in the ocean compared to the losses by tax evasion by the super-rich and the amounts lost by them and major corporations exploiting tax loopholes.“
Police try rather ineffectually to stop protesters heading for the Atos offices
In 2011 a major source of unfairness in the system was the attempts to cut costs by the use of computer-based ability to work assessments carried out for the DWP by European IT company Atos. The interviews were administered by ‘healthcare professionals’, often poorly trained and lacking the qualifications and experience to assess many types of disability, particularly mental illness. Almost 70% of those assessed were moved onto the lower benefit rates of the Job Seekers Allowance with some being refused any benefits at all.
An independent review for the DWP made fundamental criticisms of the assessments, and around 40% of those who appealed the decisions eventually had their benefits restored to previous levels – but only after months of hardship, and often just in time for their next review when their benefits would again be axed. Part of the problem was the pressure applied on the assessors to meet targets in cutting benefits by the company so they could justify their costs to the DWP.
And there were plenty of true horror stories. People assessed fit for work who died within days of the assessments, those who committed suicide and some who starved to death. Benefit cuts really do kill.
Atos went on to gain other contracts from the DWP until September 2024 when the contract for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and work capability assessment (WCA) were given to Serco. The DWP had acknowledged there were flaw in the Atos assessments but few believe that Serco will be any fairer.
Monday January 24th was a a National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts, with actions around the country, including protests in Leeds, Birmingham, Burnley, Hastings, Crawley, Chesterfield, Livingston, near Edinburgh (Atos’s Scotland HQ) and Glasgow. I began by photographing a local protest at Archway in North London before going on to a protest outside the London HQ of Atos Origin in Triton Square close to the Euston Road.
On My London Diary back in 2011 I wrote much more about the Atos tests and also about the details of the two protests. The protest in Triton Square was heavily policed but the organisers and those taking part, including Disabled People Against Cuts, WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities) and London Coalition Against Poverty were intent on this being a peaceful protest.
Police have problems in dealing with disabled protesters. Many want to treat them carefully and their officers certainly realise that images of them being roughly handled would be terrible PR. But they were annoyed that the protesters decided to protest close to the actual Atos offices rather than in a pen they had set up a short distance away. And when one elderly man walked through the spread out police line he was roughly pushed to the ground and dragged away, though later he was allowed to rejoin the other hundred or so protesters.
The police then brought more barriers and erected them around the protesters, telling them they could only exit the fenced area when they were dispersing at the end of the protest. There seemed to be no real justification for this and they seemed simply to be a simply a matter of pique that the protesters had not followed their instructions.
I had plenty of time to get from Archway to Triton Square and got off the bus in Camden Town for a walk and to make use of one of London’s rapidly disappearing public toilets in the middle of the busy road junction there (but I think closed a few years ago.)
I’d photographed around Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road quite often in the 1990s, often on my way home from taking pictures elsewhere in North London, and walking from Camden Town station to Chalk Farm. Then the lemon sorbets from Marine Ices were the best in London if not the world. But that’s gone too now, and in January 2011 it wasn’t the weather for it.
Back in the 1990s the streets would have been pretty empty except at weekends, but by 2011 there were plenty of tourists wandering around even on a cold Monday in January, though business was fairly slack. But mainly I pointed my camera up to the decorations above the shops
Westhumble & Ranmore Common, Surrey – 30th December 2011
The Pilgrims Way – and lower down the valley the railway from Guildford to Dorking
On Friday we went for another walk on the North Downs in Surrey, in a popular area for walking. In Summer it can get rather crowded with walkers but on a rather dull and damp winter’s day, even though many would have been still away from work over their Christmas break, relatively few were out walking the downs.
Leladene and blue plaque to Fanny Burney
The second picture I made on the walk was this one of Leladene with its blue plaque to Fanny Burney. Leladene, later renamed to Camilla Lacey was for some years the home of Burney (1752 – 1840) who came to live there after her marriage to one of the exiles from the French revolution who had made Mickleham their home, General Alexandre d’Arblay. As well as being one of the most notable authors of her age she was also for four years ‘keeper of the robes’ to Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III.
Norbury Park Saw Mill
In 2010 I wrote a brief description of the walk, although I seem to have missed out a line or so when I copied it to My London Diary so I’ve needed to do a little rewriting to make sense of one part of it. So I’ll rewrite it a little rather than simply copying here.
The weather wasn’t great and days are so short at this time of year, so we decided not to go to far for a walk, and did a roughly ten-mile circuit from Box Hill & Westhumble station.
Roaringhouse Farm
It was dry when we started, with some very muddy paths, though parts of the path were sheltered by the trees as we went along through Druids Grove.
Thatched bridge at Polesden Lacy
Many of the old yews (some perhaps 2000 years old) have now been blown down in gales but there are still quite a few on each side of the path. From there we walked past the Albury Park sawmills and on through Polesden Lacy, passing under it’s thatched bridge.
The Causeway, Polesden Lacy
The steep track down from where we crossed from the North Downs Way to the Pilgrim’s Way a couple of hundred feet lower down the slope was a greasy mud slide, but we picked up some hefty sticks to help us keep upright, and from then on the way was easy going, with just a short uphill scramble to join the North Downs Way to take us back to Westhumble.
Hogden Lane
The light, never good, was fading as we walked above the Denbies vineyard and it was getting dark by the time we reached the station around 4.15pm.
I first got to know this area a little as a boy in the 1950s. I had got my first two-wheeler bike to replace an earlier tricycle on my sixth birthday and by the time I was 9 or 10 was going out for longish rides on a slightly larger replacement, sometimes with one or two friends, but for longer rides mainly on my own.
Denbies vineyard
One of those rides I made quite a few times took me across the River Thames at Hampton Court then on south through the ‘Scilly Isles’ roundabout and on to Leatherhead and the the A24 to Box Hill, around 20 miles each way.
My routes were carefully planned with the help of the “One Ihch” Ordnance Survey map. Generally I looked for the shortest way even when it meant cycling along busy major roads like the A3 though the final stretch along the A24 Mickleham bypass built in 1937-8 to Box Hill was on one of the few roads in the UK with a separate cycle path.
Box Hill and Westhumble station – and a long wait for the train with no seats in the dry on the up platform. It had been a good walk, though the views would have been better in clearer weather.
