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Turkish Spring, Badgers & BNP – 2013

Turkish Spring, Badgers & BNP: My day was particularly full on Saturday 1st June 2013 as I attended a memorial service for a close friend held at Southwark Cathedral in the early afternoon as well as as the protests in this post.

London Supports Turkish Spring – Marble Arch

Turkish Spring, Badgers & BNP - 2013 — *Supporters of Turkish football team Garsi support the Gezi protests*

I began at 11am at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, next to Marble Arch, where Turks were massing to march to the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square in solidarity with the ‘Turkish Spring’ protests against the Erdogan regime in Istanbul’s Gezi Park and across Turkey.

It was a high-octane event with a great deal of high-spirited chanting and more and more people were arriving for the march.

I had to leave as the event was getting underway, with most of the protesters sitting on the ground to listen to speeches. Later I heard that around 4,000 had marched to protest at the embassy,

More about the protest and more pictures on My London Diary at London Supports Turkish Spring.

Cull Politicians, Not Badgers – Westminster

This was the day on which it became legal to cull badgers in two pilot areas and over a thousand, many dressed in black and white and with badger masks or face paint met at Tate Britain on Millbank for a rally and march to Parliament against the cull.

Campaigners argue that the cull is not supported by most scientific evidence and that it will result in many badgers suffering cruel lingering deaths after being wounded by largely untrained marksmen.

*Among the speakers was Queen Guitarist Brian May, a leading campaigner for badgers*

I had to leave before they marched to go to Southwark Cathedral for the memorial service, but when I returned after attending this I met some of protesters who were still in Parliament Square, where they danced on the road in front of Parliament until they were cleared by police.

More about the cull and the protest – and many more pictures at Cull Politicians, Not Badgers.

BNP Stopped From Exploiting Woolwich Killing – Old Palace Yard

*Nick Griffin answers questions from the press under a placard ‘Hate Preachers Out’ and fails to appreciate the irony*

Fortunately police had stopped the BNP from holding a mass protest in Woolwich capitalising on the killing there of soldier Lee Rigby and had also banned their proposed march from Woolwich to Lewisham on grounds of public safety. Both would have been inflammatory and Lee Rigby’s father had also made clear that he and his family did not want his son’s death to be used to stir up hatred against Muslims.

Instead Nick Griffin and a small group of BNP supporters had come to Old Palace Yard intending to march from there to the Cenotaph to lay wreaths in Rigby’s memory, but their gesture to exploit the killing was opposed by a thousands of anti-fascists. It was a confrontation that stirred up memories from the anti-fascist mobilisation at Cable Street against Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts, and as on that occasion the police attempted to force a way through for the fascists, arresting large numbers of protesters, but eventually the BNP had to abandon the attempt to march.

*Across the heads of police they could see the counter-protest – and could clearly hear the chanting*

There were only a small group of supporters with Griffin, who blamed the low attendance on police turning back his supporters and making Westminster a “a virtual exclusion zone”. But I’d walked there with no problems from Westminster Station; there were large numbers of police and parked police vans as well as thousands of protesters, but I was not challenged or stopped.

Griffin and his group waited for around for several hours while police attempted to clear the route for him, arresting and driving away two double-deck buses full of protesters, but there were still enough to block the route. Eventually they walked in the opposite direction to their coaches.

BNP Exploiting Woolwich Killing Stopped

Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying – Parliament Square,

*Anonymous were there along with Antifa, trade unionists and the UAF to oppose the BNP hate*

I walked back from Old Palace Yard where Nick Griffin was being photographed and questioned by the press the short distance to Parliament Square where I saw a steady stream of protesters being arrested and taken onto two double-deck buses.

I photographed a number of those arrested, mainly walking calmly with police who were rather more violent with some others, and saw them threatening legal observers, then walked through the lines of police to the protesters who were still blocking the route. I imagine few of those arrested were charged with any offence, but probably detained for a dozen or more hours before being released – probably in the middle of the night. It’s a short period of arbitrary punishment that avoids the police having to do much paperwork.

There were some in wheelchairs who had come to block the fascists – and some were at the front of the protest.

Others were in ‘Anonymous’ masks.

Many linked arms to make it harder for police snatch squads to grab individuals

And there were some of the ‘badgers’ who had stayed on for this protest too.

The stand-off between protesters and police continued – and it was clear that it would not be possible for the police to clear the route without a clearly excessive use of force – and that they were not going to drift away as police had hoped.

There was much celebration When they heard that the BNP had abandoned their march and left the area, and the protesters marched up Parliament St to the Cenotaph, where there was a short speech and people began to leave.

Many marched up to Trafalgar Square but I went back the other way on my way home.

More on My London Diary at Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying.

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UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March – 2010

UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March: There is a long history of protests where anti-fascists come to oppose marches and rallies by extreme right groups in London, including of course the Battle of Cable Street, but I think we have had more of them in recent years, if not on that same scale.

But looking back on my coverage of this event of Friday 5th March 2010 what we have seen different is the policing of such confrontations. The more recent such events have seen huge mobilisations of police to keep the two groups apart, with extensive use of double barriers with a large ‘sterile’ no go area between them, and often some fairly aggressive policing and arrests to achieve this.

Attending more recent events journalists and photographers have had to choose which side of the event to be at, with often rather long detours being needed to go between the two – and having a Press Card is seldom of any use.

In 2010 police did keep the two groups apart, but only on opposite pavements of the road in front of the Houses of Parliament, and as my photographs show, I was able to move fairly freely from side to side.

Unite Against Fascism had tried to block the road a couple of hours before the EDL march after holding their rally in Old Palace Yard on the north side, but were then forced across the road onto the opposite pavement by police. I wasn’t there to see this but was told by others that there had been a few arrests when people had refused to move.

I had walked away down Millbank where the EDL were to hold a rally before marching to Parliament. I was early and nobody was there but as I had expected there were several hundred at a packed pub a couple of hundred yards further on with many standing on the pavement outside.

Most were in in a good mood and happy to talk to me and other journalists about why they were protesting – and you can read more about this on My London Dairy. I think I represented them fairly in my article, though as always they felt strongly that they did not get fair treatment in the press. I felt that the coverage was generally fairly accurate, the problem was more with the views and actions of some EDL members rather than the reporting.

As I noted in my account: “Later during the actual march I did get sworn at, threatened and given the finger, but only by a small minority of marchers, and a young female Asian journalist seemed to attract considerably more aggravation than me. There was also a considerable amount of clearly anti-Muslim shouting and singing, and the placards and slogans that attack the building of mosques seem to threaten all Muslims rather than just the extremists. The atmosphere was unpleasant, and really gave the lie to the earlier denials of racism.”

I went along with them to the rally outside Tate Britain, but the start was delayed and they went back to the pub. When it did finally start the main speaker was the Sikh Amit Singh (Guramit Singh Kalirai), and his speech seemed to me at times to be clearly racist in its attacks on Muslims. Police took no action over this or his other speeches, but three years later he was jailed for taking part in a violent attempted armed robbery.

From there the EDL were escorted by police as they marched to Parliament and taken into a pen on the north side of the road opposite the UAF. As I commented, “The first thing that many of the EDL did on arriving in the pen was to urinate against the wall of Westminster Abbey” but mostly they shouted often racist abuse at the UAF who responded with calling them racists and fascists.

The EDL made great play of denying they were racists and showing off their few Black and Asian members to the press. But there was a hugely visible difference between their largely white male crowd and those across the road which reflected the multiracial nature of London – and where women were in a majority.

After around an hour of shouting across the road the UAF crowd began slowly to drift away. Police kept the EDL in their pen but did escort a few to Westminster Station.

I decided it was time to leave. As I commented I hadn’t enjoyed spending much of the afternoon in the company of the EDL “hearing their racism and right wing simplicities. It was an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon, but I think its important to show these events and these people honestly.”

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary at UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March.

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EDL Rally Supports Israel – 2010

EDL Rally Supports Israel: In 2010 the English Defence League (EDL) an extreme right-wing organisation founded in June 2009 was reaching the peak of its existence and several hundred came to a protest in Kensington to show their support of Israel.

The EDL’s support of Israel came from the anti-Muslim centre of their activities; the group was founded following their opposition to a protest at a homecoming parade in Luton by a small group of Muslim extremists against a regiment returning from Afghanistan, which was also opposed by Luton’s large Muslim community.

The EDL had invited right-wing US Rabbi Nachum Shifren, part of the ‘Tea Party’ movement from California to speak at the rally outside the Israeli Embassy. As I wrote at the time, “Although the EDL claim to be opposing the rise of fascism in their opposition to Muslim extremists, they have come to a very biased view over Israel and Palestine, and have been very effectively infiltrated by bigoted Zionists.“

The EDL gathered at a pub on Gloucester Road before their march to the Embassy, filling the pavement outside. There were a number of press photographers on the opposite side of the street watching them but I decided to cross the road and talked with and photograph Rabbi Schriffin. None of the other photographers followed me.

For some minutes before the start of the march I was able to talk with him and some of the EDL supporters and some were happy to be photographed, and even complimented me for my accurate reporting on earlier protests – while complaining bitterly about the media coverage they get. As I told them I always try to report objectively, while also making my own difference of opinion clear.

The press they got did reflect the behaviour of at least some of those at their protests, and if the EDL wanted to end the accusations of racism they needed to take more positive action against the kind of behaviour that makes them possible. But many of their members including leading figures had a long history of membership of right-wing racist groups, and it was clear that the claim they made “We do not support racism or intolerance of any kind” was simply window dressing.

The leaflet they handed out described themselves as “the knights of old, defending our great nation for the threat of Militant Islam” and said “All welcome no matter of colour, religion or sex” and there was at least some truth in that shown in the composition of those in the march, with certainly a number of women, some claiming to be gay but, search as I have, not a single black face in my pictures.

For once Unite Against Fascism failed to mobilise much effective opposition to this demonstration – and did not appear to have tried very hard to do so. On their web site I found the statement “UAF does not have a position on the question of Israel and Palestine – our members have many different views on this question. Instead, we unite around our common aim of opposing the rise of fascism.” And as I commented, “Perhaps on this occasion they felt that taking action might offend some of their Jewish supporters.”

Some of those Jewish supporters were there in the rather small crowd opposing the rally, and there was a more direct action by a young man in a black jacket and gloves who came and stood listening for a short while, who took out his water bottle, had a drink and then reached over and poured the rest of it over the amplifier before turning and running down the street.

The sound from the microphone cut immediately, and the people inside the pen burst into angry shouts. It took the police longer to react and by the time they were moving the man had escaped, probably disappearing into High Street Kensington to catch the tube. I’d also been taken by surprise and hadn’t managed to take his photograph. Or perhaps I’d been wondering whether I should…

Eventually the water was tipped out and the amplifier wiped dry and came back into some very crackly life. Police shut the stable door by moving everyone outside the pen away and that and the sound quality made it hard to hear much of Rabbi Shifren’s speech, some minutes of which were in Hebrew. But he made clear his opposition to Sharia Law and Muslim extremists and I think to any aspect of multiculturalism. And I think he also denied the Palestinians any right to exist in the land which had been given to Israel.

*Roberta Moore of EDL’s Jewish Division*

I went home rather than go on with the EDL to Speakers Corner, where they were apparently heavily heckled. Another photographer who was there told me “that a small group of EDL supporters had attacked a Muslim bookstall and the 11-year-old boy who was running it, and then turned on photographers for taking pictures of their actions.” His camera had been smashed into his face by an EDL supporter. Photographs on the web confirmed this story.

On My London Diary I wrote at some length about my own views on the EDL and the event as well as putting far more pictures than usual online which you can view at EDL Rally to Support Israel.