Nakba, NHS, Guantánamo, Sri Lanka: On Saturday 18th May 2013 I began work outside Parliament at a protest against Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, then went across the Thames to the Festival Hall for the start of a march to defend the NHS before going the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square for a ‘murder scene’ in solidarity with hunger strikers at Guantánamo. There I also photographed a woman protesting for the release of her husband arrested 9 years ago by US forces in Iraq. Finally I met a march by several thousands of Tamils calling for and end to the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. You will find much more detail (and many more pictures) on each of these protests at links below to My London Diary.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when Israel was created, Palestinians call for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
Several hundred people came to the protest, including a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism, as well as many of Jewish or Palestinian origin. As well as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign the protest was also supported by many other groups – a long list on My London Diary – and speeches were continuing when I left for another event.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
Thousands had gathered by the Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, including many groups opposed to hospital closures around London, trade unionists and others concerned the the government is ending the NHS.
An unprecedented coalition of Londoners, including medical staff, trade unions, health campaigners, patients and others have been alarmed at what they see as an attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
You can read more about the crisis in the NHS in 2013 in the post on My London Diary, but of course this has continued and is still making the news. Despite their protestations it seems clear that the Tories are trying hard to run down the NHS so that the population lose its trust and love for our universal free public – and would allow them to eventually replace it with US-style insurance based healthcare which would greatly increase costs and generate huge profits for private health companies.
I went with the march across Waterloo Bridge and down Strand to Charing Cross, leaving it as it was waiting to enter Whitehall for a rally there.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
As I arrived there were 8 black-hooded ‘prisoners’ in orange suits lying on the pavement, the number of prisoners who have died there in suspicious circumstances who had previously taken part in sustained hunger strikes. At least seven of them had the cause of death reported as ‘suicide’.
Other protesters drew lines around the bodies on the ground and surrounded the area with ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Enter‘ incident tape. The bodies then stood up and there was a short enactment of forced feeding by a man wearing an Obama mask.
Others held placards and posters, some including quotations from Thomas Jefferson and other historic and prominent Americans, and there were speeches about the events in Guantanamo, where British resident Shaker Aamer was still held despite having been cleared for release. You can read more, including a statement by one of the organisers, on My London Diary.
As I left some of the poems written in Guantánamo by Shaker Aamer were being read.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Also protesting outside the embassy as she has for a number of weekends was Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when held by them, and his now being tortured by the Iraqis. He is also on hunger strike. His young daughter Zeinab came and spoke briefly to the Guantanamo protesters, telling them that she wanted her daddy to be released.
Later she was joined by a small group of Muslim men and boys who stood with her.
It was a busy day for protests at at the US Embassy were a small group of supporters of Syrian President Assad, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) who had come to protest against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
Finally I rushed away to join thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK who were marching through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre. Many were dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka and some wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Tamils are disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place and is still continuing in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax. I noted on My London Diary that I could see no other non-Tamil photographers covering the event.
On My London Diary you can read a statement by the British Tamil Forum who had organised the march. I left as the rally in Waterloo Place was about to start, partly because I was tired but also because I thought few of the speeches would be in English.
Whittington, Syria and St Patrick – Saturday 16th March 2013 saw me travelling around London to cover three events, starting at a march against hospital cuts, then a march supporting the Syrian revoltuion on its second anniversary and finally an Irish parade on the day before St Patrick’s Day.
Whittington Hospital March Against Cuts – Highbury & Islington
Dick Whittington, more formally Sir Richard Whittington (c1354 – 1423) was four times Lord Mayor of London and did a lot for the medieval city, including financing drainage systems in its poorer areas and setting up a hospital ward for unmarried mothers and leaving his considerable fortune to set up a charity which still 600 years later helps those in need.
He made his fortune as a mercer, importing luxury fabrics such as silk and velvet and exporting English woollen cloth and later as a money lender to wealthy noblemen and kings. It isn’t clear if he ever had a cat, but the legend about him fleeing London with one and turning back when he heard Bow Bells from Highgate Hill first made it to print in 1612.
The Whittington Stone was placed at the foot of Highgate Hill in 1821, though earlier it had been the base of a cross there; it only gained a cat on top in 1964. But Whittington’s name is remembered in a number of pubs across the country, including The Whittington & Cat on Highgate Hill, which closed in 2014. Islington Council and local residents fought to keep it, and prevented its demolition in 2012 by declaring it to be an asset of community value, but it became a flooring shop.
More importantly Whittington’s name became that of the major hospital formed when earlier hospitals on three nearby sites were amalgamated when the National Health Service was formed in 1948.
Three years before this march, huge local oppositin had forced the cancellation of plans to end Accident and Emergency, Paediatrics, Maternity and Intensive Care at the Whittington Hospital, but now it was threatened again by a new hospital trust with plans to reduce maternity services, close wards, provide fewer beds for the elderly, cut 570 jobs privatise some services and sell off around a third of the site, closing all onsite accommodation for nursing staff.
I met several thousand protesters close to Highbury & Islington Station where they were preparing to march to a rally outside the hospital. Among those marching were local MPs, Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, Bruce Kent and various celebrity supporters of the campaign, as well as the truly remarkable Hetty Bower, born in 1905, who became a pacifist at the time of the ‘Great War’, and took part in the 1926 General Strike.
You can read more about the event and see my pictures of many of the marchers on My London Diary. I left the march shortly after it started to go to my next event. Whittington Hospital March Against Cuts.
Syria – Two Years Fight for Freedom
I arrived outside the Syrian Embassy in Belgrave Square while the rally before the march was taking place with members of the Syrian Community in Britain speaking.
Most of the speeches and chanting were not in English, and the Free Syria campaign appears to have little support from the British left who might have been expected to support their freedom fight. There were a few protests at the start, but often confused and mainly opposing any involvement in Syria by British forces.
The Syrian revolution against the Assad regime had also received little actual support from the UK Government and US support seemed halfhearted. When Assad began using chemical weapons against the Syrian rebel held areas there was strong condemnation but no action and any threats soon melted away once Russia became involved in supporting Assad.
One of the placards carried by marchers included a question which now seems particularly relevant in view of what has been happening in Gaza: ‘Hey World, How Many Kids Should Be Killed Before You Do Something?’
I walked with the marchers on their way to Downing Street as far as the Hyde Park underpass where it looked impressive as it made its way under the Hyde Park underpass, fairly densely packed and with flags waving it spread wide across the road, stretching back into Wilton Place over 200 yards away. Then left for Willesden Green.
For several years I had enjoyed the Brent St Patrick’s Day parade, sometimes going together with friends including John Benton-Harris who had photographed St Patrick’s Day here and across the USA as well as in Ireland over many years. The parade in Brent, usually on the day itself, had always seemed rather more authentically Irish than the larger London parade held on the nearest Sunday since Ken Livingstone introduced it in 2002 and I made some pictures.
Brent Council had a fine record of supporting cultural events celebrating its various communities including the Irish, but with government cuts since 2010 no longer had the funds to do so.
This year too, the main London event was taking place the following day, St Patrick’s Day itself, so the Brent event was on the day before. So the crowds were rather thinner than in previous years, and the poor weather may have put some off too.
Fuel Poverty, NHS Staffing, Zero Hours – Three protests in London on Tuesday 26th November 2013 about issues that are still very much with us – and which have got worse since ten years ago today.
Justice Not Jumpers at NPower HQ – City
Ten years ago fuel poverty activists were protesting that profiteering by the major energy providers was leading to many people having to chose between eating and keeping warm, causing many unnecessary deaths. They protested to draw attention to the scandal of energy companies making huge profits and avoiding taxes while many died because of their greed.
The protest came on the day that figures were announced for ‘excess winter deaths’, of which at least 30% are due to cold homes. The previous year the figure had been around 24,000 but that announced on the day of the protest came as a shock, having increased by around a third to 31,000.
The protest in London was one of several around the country including at British Gas’s new Oxford HQ, as well as in Lewes and Bristol. NPower had been chosen for the London protest for its poor record of customer complaints and for having made larger price rises in that year than the other Big Six companies – 9.3% electricity and 11.1% gas.
The companies defend the price rises, spreading the lie that ‘green taxes’ were to blame, though these are a relatively minor factor in costs. The real problem is that privatisation means that large amounts are taken from our bills to pay to shareholders on top of the increasing costs of dirty fossil fuels.
NPower takes 5p in every pound we pay as profit and welcomes increasing costs as this adds to their profits which rose by over a third to £413 million in the previous winter when its price hikes pushed an estimate 300,000 more people into fuel poverty. Despite its huge profits the company had managed to avoid paying any corporation tax for the past three years.
Protesters met at Bank for a funeral procession around the City streets to the NPower offices in Throgmorton St with a coffin being carried by pallbears with masks including those of Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborn and wearing jumpers with the logos of the major energy companies.
At the NPower offices they lowered the coffin in front of the row of police protecting the building and a rally took place on the street. One of the first speakers was Andy Greene of Disabled People Against Cuts, who spoke of the effects the energy price rises were having, causing great hardship to many disabled people. Testimonies were then read from many individuals how they had to choose between heating and eating; many were already cold and dreading the coming winter.
4:1 legal minimum NHS staffing – Dept of Health, Whitehall
Nurses began the 4:1 campaign to draw attention to the crisis of staffing in the NHS where there were then over 20,000 nursing vacancies and to the Department of Health’s decision to downgrade 100 A&E departments, effectively closing them. They called for a mandatory staffing level of one nurse for every 4 patients in the NHS.
The campaign stated “The public have had enough of overworked staff, unprecedented avoidable death rates and negative press about the NHS. The public and nurses alike know the value of the NHS, and want to see it perform to its best, providing the dignified care patients deserve.“
They were joined in the protest outside the Ministry of Health, then in Richmond House in Whitehall, by other groups concerned about the future of the NHS, including those pointing out the threat to the NHS of the EU-US Trade Treaty, which would open up the whole of the NHS to privatisation.
They were joined by campaigners against the planned closure of many A&E units across the country and by those fighting to save hospitals including at Lewisham and King George V in Redbridge, as well as those with more general concerns about the future of the NHS.
Cultural Workers against Zero Hours – Millennium Bridge
PCS members from national cultural institutions in London staged a protest at Tate Modern and on the Millennium Bridge against zero hour contracts which gave them no guaranteed weekly hours or income, while stopping them taking on other work.
The number of workers on zero hours contracts more than doubled from around 250,000 in 2012 to around 600,000 in 2013, and since then has continued to increase to around 1.18 million in 2023, over 3% of the total workforce. Although legal in the UK, zero hours contracts are inherently unfair on workers and an exploitation of labour. Labour had pledged to outlaw them, but if they get into government with Starmer as leader we are unlikely to get fairer labour laws.
Employers use zero-hour contracts to cut wages, avoid holiday pay, pensions, and ensure the maximum flexibility and profit for themselves. Many on zero hours contracts in 2013 were also prevented from taking on other part-time work, as they were often obliged to be available for work at the whim of the employer.
The law was changed in 2015 to make contracts which stopped workers from having other part-time jobs. But although in theory workers are not obliged to accept any work offered, in practice should they refuse hours offered for any reason they know that they will be treated less favourably by the employer in the future, often severely discriminated against.
Zero hours contracts were initially designed for use in very limited and specific circumstances where there use might be justified but are now a widespread form of exploitation. The PCS (and other trade unions) “believe that guaranteed hours, a living wage, holiday and sick pay, respect for employment rights, and dignity and respect at work should be fundamental entitlements for all workers.”
Hospitals, Muslims and Housing: On Saturday 6th of October 2012 I went to Shepherds Bush for a march against hospital closure, then on to Westminster for a protest against Muslim gangs and a much larger protest by Muslims against an anti-Muslim film, finally to Kilburn for a rally calling for Brent council to rehouse a homeless family.
Save Our Hospitals – Shepherds Bush
Residents of West London who were furious at proposals to close Accident and Emergency services at four of the nine hospitals in their area met at Shepherds Bush to march though Hammersmith and past Charing Cross Hospital on the Fulham Palace Road to a rally at Lillie Road recreation ground.
Under the proposals, Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith would lose nine of the 11 major types of service currently provided on-site, including the A&E, becoming a ‘local hospital’, while Hammersmith Hospital would be only a specialist unit.
A&E would only remain at Chelsea and Westminster, St Mary’s Paddington, Northwick Park, West Middlesex and Hillingdon, all five involving slow journeys over congested roads from much of the area.
As well as this march there had also been earlier marches against the plans in Harlesden and in Southall and Action. As a result of the huge public campaign then Health Minister Jeremy Hunt reprieved the A&E services at Charing Cross and Ealing, but closures went ahead at Hammersmith and Central Middlesex.
A small group met at Downing St to protest against grooming and abuse of young girls by Muslim gangs, and the failure of police to properly investigate them; it was led by the extreme-right racist group Britain First.
The protest has been backed by other extreme-right groups including the English Defence League and among those taking part was Paul Pitt (Paul Prodromou) then the chairman of the South East Alliance after having been thrown out of the EDL for his association with openly racist organisations including the National Front and BNP.
In 2012 there had been high-profile cases in areas such as Rochdale which have high Parkistani populations, and the media coverage of these had produced a distorted impression that grooming gangs were largely Muslim men.
A Home Office investigation on grooming hangs published in 2020 concluded there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders, stating “Research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white“.
The small group of protesters marched to Parliament Square where they tried with little success to burn an Islamic flag, ending up by hitting it with a shoe instead.
I left them as they returned to Downing Street and went to join a much larger Muslim protest in Old Palace Yard.
Muslims against Anti-Muslim Film – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
Thousands of Muslims packed Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament in a peaceful protest against an made in the USA. They called for laws to protect religious figures.
The film was a short video by Egyptian-born Mark Basseley Youssef (aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) which has prompted violent anti-American protests in various Muslim countries. Youssef was then in jail in Los Angeles as he made the film in breach of a probation order banning him from using aliases following a conviction for a bank fraud in 2010. He was later sentenced to one year in prison and four years of supervised release. He had falsely claimed the video had been funded by $5 million collected from 100 Jewish donors, and that he himself was an Israeli Jew.
In the hour I was there only one of the speeches was in English, but many of the placards were, and ‘Stop Hurting Muslims’, ‘Freedom of Speech is Not Freedom to Abuse’, ‘The Prophet is Dearer to us than our lives’, ‘Stop Islamophobia’ were clear.
As with many Muslim events this was segregated, with women being relegated to a small area in the background where they could see little of what was happening, although they could hear the speeches. All the speakers while I was there were men.
I took the Underground from Westminster to Kilburn where people were meeting for a march and rally demanding that Brent council rehouse the Counihan family.
Anthony Counihan with a young son.
Back in 2007 the family had moved from council property in Kilburn to Galway to look after Anthony Counihan’s sick father. Council officials had failed to advise him he could sublet the tenancy and instead he signed away the lease.
They returned to Brent so Anthony could take up his job as a London bus driver again when his father died. Anthony inherited 9.5 acres of land in Galway with a shack on it which brings in £18 a week in rent and when he reported this to the council they responded with an eviction order and a demand for repayment of £70,000 of housing benefit.
One council official advised the family to move back to Ireland, at the same time advising Anthony to hang on to his job as a bus driver out of the Cricklewood depot as jobs were hard to find, suggesting he should commute from Galway!
You can read more about this case in the post on My London Diary, where I comment that it “has revealed an astonishing level of both incompetence and lack of humanity among both officers and councillors in Brent Council, and some have made highly misleading or factually incorrect comments in public.“
Isabel Counihan Sanchez
The campaigners accuse the council of “behaving vindictively, dishonestly, and punitively towards local residents” and around a hundred came to the rally in Kilburn before marching around South Kilburn to a rally in the South Kilburn Estate, which was addressed by Isabel Counihan-Sanchez with one of her daughters and speakers representing various groups supporting the family, including trade unionists, local residents and representatives of various groups including the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group.
On the route the march stopped outside the flat which had been the home of Nygel Firminger. Harassed by Kilburn jobcentre after had various problems at work, including 3 months for which he did not get paid and a work head injury he was evicted from the flat without his medicines. Later in the day he got back into the where he was later found dead.
Saving the Whittington A huge campaign in 2010 led to Andy Burnham, then Health Secretary stopping the Whittington hospital board’s plans to close its maternity and A&E Departments. A major event in this campaign was the march I photographed on Saturday 27 February 2010 from Highbury Corner to a rally at the hospital at Archway.
Later in 2013 when the board announced plans for more cuts another successful campaign stopped these, and in 2016 there was yet another campaign over redevelopment plans in concert with a private contractor.
Many people tell me that protest never works and that campaigners are simply wasting their time, but in 2022 the hospital announced a £100 million refurbishment of Whittington Hospital’s maternity and neonatal facilities, which still deliver over 3,600 babies a year, and the A&E department is still open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I counted almost 2000 people walking past me a short distance from the start on the two mile march to the hospital, and more arrived for the rally, swelling the numbers to around 3-5,000. Or as the BBC at the time called it, in their usual way of minimising protests, ‘hundreds’ of protesters. But at least, unlike most protests, they did report on it.
Among the marchers and speakers where almost every local politician, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and then Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there. Frank Dobson MP who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council.
The proposals for the cuts and downgarding of A&E had come from a rationalisation programme initiated by Lord Darzi, a surgeon and national adviser in surgery to the Department of Health and a Labour Peer from 2007 until he resigned the whip in 2019. His report suggested moving much care from hospitals to GP-led polyclinics and to greater centralisation of trauma, stork and heart attack services to centralised specialist services.
Frank Dobson
Polyclinics remain rare, but although the greater specialisation of acute services made clinical (and financial) sense it failed to take into account the problems of London’s congested streets which would have led to long delays in treatment for many patients. Those inevitable delays would have meant deaths. And the selection of Whittington for closure neglected its good road and public transport connections which make it an ideal location for emergency cases as well as other patients and visitors.
Why Whittington was chosen as suitable for closure probably came down to two factors. One was certainly the age of the buildings, but perhaps more important was that the same factors of location and transport links made it an exceptionally valuable site for property developers. Had the cuts gone ahead in 2010, the rest of the hospital would probably by now also had been closed, with the site developed, including some of those old buildings converted into luxury flats.
Many more pictures from the march and rally at Save the Whittington on My London Diary.
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.
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.
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.
NakNakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils – Saturday 18th May 2013 was another busy day for protests in London and I covered a number of demonstrations.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when the state of Israel was created, Palestinians and their supporters protested outside parliament calling for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
There had been protests in Jerusalem earlier in the week on Nabka Day against the continuing sanctions against Palestinians that have crowded them into an ever-decreasing area of land, diminishing almost daily as new Israeli settlements are created and new restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinians. Many of those protesting in London from Jewish or Palestinian backgrounds and as usual these included a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who had walked down from North London; they see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
On the opposite side of the River Thames thousands were gathering by the Royal Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, alarmed at the attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
Nine years later we are seeing the effect of these policies with ambulance services unable to cope with demand, lengthy delays in treating people in A&E, delays in diagnosing cancers leading to increased deaths and more. And although it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic like Covid, and exercises had shown what needed to be done to prepare for this, the NHS had not been given the resources to prepare for this, leading to much higher death rates than some comparable countries.
Part of the problems of the NHS come from disastrous PFI agreements pushed through under the Labour government, landing NHS trusts with huge debts that will continue for many years. This forced NHS trusts into disastrous hospital closure plans, some of which were defeated by huge public campaigns. Many of those marching were those involved in these campaigns at Lewisham, Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex, Whittington and other hospitals around London.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Other protesters outside the US Embassy included Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when they held him and was now being tortured by the Iraqis and also was on hunger strike. She has protested with her daughter Zeinab outside the US Embassy for a number of weekends and on this occasion was joined by a small group of Muslims who had come to protest against Guantanamo, appalled by the actions of the US waging a war against Islam and Muslims.
Shawki Ahmed Omar is still held in Iraq; before he died in 2021 former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded a video calling for his release which was posted to YouTube in with the comment by another US lawyer “This case is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.”
A few yards away, kept separate by police, a group of supporters of the Syrian regime, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was also holding a protest in favour of the Assad regime and against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
I met thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK as they marched through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre, many dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. Many wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Although it was a large protest, with perhaps around 5,000 marchers I think it received absolutely no coverage in UK media, and I seemed to be the only non-Tamil photographer present. Tamils were rightly disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax.
The march had started from Hyde Park, and I caught up with it on Piccadilly and went with it taking photographs to Waterloo Place where there was to be a rally. But it had been a long day for me and I left just before this started.
A Threatened Hospital, Riverside Walk, Syria & Mali – pictures from nine years ago on February 15th 2013.
Fight to Save Lewisham Hospital Continues
My work began at a lunchtime rally opposite Lewisham Hospital where the whole local community is fighting to save their hospital with both a legal challenge and further mass demonstrations including a ‘Born in Lewisham Hospital’ protest a few weeks later. Parts of the hospital across the main road are in the picture.
People were appalled by then Health Minister Jeremy Hunt’s decision to accept the proposals for closure, and to ignore the mass protests by local residents. Not only are the proposals medically unsound and will lead to patient deaths, but they also represent short-term thinking that will result in a huge waste of public funds.
Lewisham was a sucessful and financially sound hospital and had received sensible public investment to provide up to date services, and the services to be cut will have to be set up again at other hospitals. Closing Lewisham would not only incur high costs, but would waste the previous investment in its facilities.
Closure was only considered because of huge debts inherited when it was merged into a group which had earlier made a disastrous PFI (private finance initiative) agreement to build a new hospital a few miles away. Both the hospital group and Jeremy Hunt had been shown to be telling lies about the scope and cost of the replacement A&E and maternity facilities which would be needed if Lewisham were closed.
The well-attended protest was organised by the Save the Lewisham Hospital campaign which was raising funds for a legal challenge as well as a new poster and leaflet campaign and the forthcoming mass demonstration. But this was not just a campaign for Lewisham, but one that is vital for the whole of the NHS. Behind the speakers was a banner for the South-East London ‘Save Our Local NHS Hospitals’ campaign quoting Nye Bevan: ‘The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.‘ They certainly had the faith in Lewisham.
I had some time to spare between protests and it was a nice day, around 10 degrees warmer than we’d been having and sunny, so I decided to take a bus to North Greenwich and walk along the Thames Path, having heard that parts of it had re-opened. The weather changed a little and there were some dramatic skies.
There is still a section of the walk that is closed, a giant building site where Delta Wharf once was up to Drawdock Road, but on each side of this the walk is open. although the council sign on the footpath leading from Tunnel Avenue still indicates it is closed. At the river the path north is blocked, but you can walk south to Greenwich.
A panorama – the same path in opposite directions at both sides
At first the walk goes alongside a giant manmade landscape of sand and gravel, like some alien planet – and behind the conical hills the Dome and the gas holder, with occasional lighting towers and cranes add to the scene. Most of this is behind tall fences, but fortunately these have gaps between the posts allowing you to see and photograph. Years ago the path here went through a working container dock, the Victoria Deep Water Terminal, with yellow lines marking the route, though occasionally it was blocked by crane operations, and we waited rather than have heavy containers overhead. There are a couple of my pictures of this and others from the riverside path in the 1980s on my London’s Industrial Heritage site.
Beyond there the riverside path seems rather empty, with many structures having dissappeared, including the huge concrete silo I photographed. But something new has appeared, ‘guerilla knitting’ on some of the trees and posts along the path.
It was the 10th anniversary of the march by 2 million against the Iraq war, Stop the War organised a small protest at Downing St calling for a stop to Western intervention in Mali and Syria and against the possible attack on Iran.
Many on the left feel that the failure of that huge protest to actually prevent the UK taking part in the invasion of Iraq showed a failure in the leadership of Stop The War to make any quick and efffective action to follow it up. Stop The War have also failed to convince the public at large with their more recent campaigns against intervention in Libya and now against the support being given to the Free Syrians and the Mali government. As the upper picture shows there were some supporters of the Assad regime, from a small left group, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), taking part in the protest. Almost certainly the great majority of supporters of Stop The War while against UK military intervention would like to see more support being given in other ways to the Syrian rebels.
Proposals to close Accident and Emergency services at four of the nine hospitals in North West London provoked fury among local residents and opposition from local councils as they would mean slow journeys over heavily congested roads for those living in much of northwest London. The proposals seemed to be motivated simply by cost savings with no regard to the consequences.
This protest was one of a number that I photographed, particularly about the closure of A&E and some other services at both Charing Cross Hospital (which is in Hammersmith) and Ealing Hospital. The previous month I had photographed a http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2012/09/sep.htm#hospitals large march from Southall Park to Ealing Hospital against the closure plan and there was another march to Central Middlesex Hospital taking place that same day.
These large and widespread protests and legal actions taken by the protesters were almost certainly a major factor behind the decision in March 2019 by then Health Secretary Matt Hancock to finally scrap the plans for what was the biggest hospital closure programme in the history of the NHS. The campaigners welcomed the decision but said it should have come much earlier rather than after seven years of the Dept of Health supporting the plans, which would have involved demolishing Charing Cross Hospital and selling off most the site.
I photographed as people gathered for the march in Shepherds Bush but had to leave as the march was setting off for Hammersmith and a rally in Fulham to go to Westminster.
Britain First, a far-right anti-Muslim movement (it describes itself as “a modern, responsible patriotic political movement”) was protesting at Downing St against what they described as ‘Britain’s secret shame – Muslim Grooming’ and were joined on their protest by members of other extremist groups including the English Defence League. After protesting for around an hour at Downing St they marched the short distance to Parliament Square where they tried to burn an Islamic flag. It proved to be rather fire-resistant.
A few yards away, thousand of Muslims packed Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament in a peaceful protest against an Anti-Muslim film made in the USA. They called for laws to protect religious figures.
The film, Innocence of Muslims, a crude video made by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakoula_Basseley_Nakoula Egyptian-born American writer Mark Basseley Youssef had already prompted violent anti-American protests in various Muslim countries. Youssef was then in jail in Los Angeles for violations of a probation order which, among other things included making false statements regarding his role in the film, and his use of the alias “Sam Bacile”. He had a previous conviction for in 1997 for intent to manufacture methamphetamine and was under probation following release in June 2011 from being jailed in 2010 for his part in a bank fraud.
Youssef, under his alias Bacile, falsely claimed that the anti-Islamic film had been funded by $5 million from 100 Jewish donors and that he was an Israeli Jew. An Egyptian court tried him and others in absentia and sentenced them to death for defaming Islam in November 2012. He was released from prison in 2013 to serve the remainder of his sentence in a halfway house in Californinia followed by 4 years of probabation.
Finally I travelled to Kilburn for a march and rally demanding Brent council rehouse the Counihan family from South Kilburn. Two years earlier, Anthony Counihan, a London bus driver inherited a few acres of poor land in Galway on the death of his father. Rented out, it brings an income of £18 a week.
He reported this to Brent Council, who responded with an eviction order and a demand for repayment of £70,000 of housing benefit, later telling him he should move back with his family to Ireland where he was born – while continuing to drive a bus from Cricklewood Depot. His wife Isabel and five children were all born in Brent.
The case was complicated by the fact that the family had moved out of a council property to go back to Ireland for a year to look after his sick father, and had signed away their lease as the council had not told them they could sublet for the year, and by their treatment by the council after their return, when they were unable to find accomodation they could afford on a bus-drivers salary. Brent decided they had made themselves “intentionally homeless” and were refusing their statutory duty to rehouse the family.
