Tag: anti-war

Bonkersfest, Trade Justice & Brian Haw – 2007

Bonkersfest, Trade Justice & Brian Haw: On Saturday 2nd June 2007 I photographed three very different events, a festival to publicise mental health issues, a protest calling on G8 world leaders about to meet in Germany to get on with eliminating poverty and finally a visit to Brian Haw who was celebrating six years of his peace protest in Parliament Square.

Here I’ll copy – with a few corrections and clarifications – what I wrote back in 2007 about these events, along with a few of the pictures and links to the others which I posted then on My London Diary.

Bonkersfest – Camberwell Green

I felt rather sorry for the poor guy who got shut into the bottom of the cannon at Bonkersfest on Camberwell Green for the duration of Joe Brand’s opening speech, then deafened by the cannon going off. All to throw bananas out through the mouth of the giant gun, the first of which came as rather a surprise when it hit me on the head. I ate it later.

Bonkersfest has a more serious purpose, to make problems of mental health more visible and to rehabilitate offensive terms used about those with problems.

Jo Brand was once a psychiatric nurse

more pictures on My London Diary

The World Can’t Wait: Anti-Poverty Protest – Lambeth & Westminster

From Camberwell I caught a couple of buses to take me to Archbishop’s Park in Lambeth, where supporters of the many organisations united in the anti-poverty campaign were meeting to send the message ‘the world can’t wait’ to government leaders about to meet for the G8 talks in Germany.

From the park, supporters made their way down to the banks of the River Thames, stretching along both sides of the river (and in front of the Houses of Parliament themselves) between Westminster and Lambeth bridges, as well as on the bridges. It took rather a long time to assemble everyone for the several minutes of silence, after which there was much blowing of whistles, shouting and honking of horns.

more pictures on My London Diary

Brian Haw: 6 Years in Parliament Square

I strolled down to Parliament Square where a rather longer demonstration was still in progress. Today marked exactly 6 years since Brian Haw began his protest against the killing of children in Iraq (and later about the war more generally.)

Video and photography have been powerful in Brian’s stay in the square, with Rikki filming many of the clashes with police

That’s Six years of shame for Britain for supporting (and taking part in) the killing.
Six years of police harassment.
Six years of pressure by the government, including a whole section of an Act of Parliament designed to stop his and other protests.
Six years of shame for the New Labour government.

Although there were no police around at all during the couple of hours I was in the square, Brian told me that had been there this morning at 4 am, watching and taking no action as a group of hooligans attempted to provoke the Peace Camp protesters into retaliation. Waiting for it, to arrest not the hooligans but the peaceful protesters should they rise to the bait.

more pictures on My London Diary

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Anti-Christ at the Abbey

I can’t understand how anyone Christian could condone the service at Westminster Abbey to celebrate 50 years of continuous nuclear threat by British submarines armed with nuclear missiles.  It seemed obscene and blasphemous, a total negation of the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels.

I’ve never really been a pacifist, believing that sometimes in extreme circumstances it can be the lesser of evils to pick up weapons and fight. I think I would have been prepared to fight the Nazis in World War II, though the question didn’t arise, as Hitler gave up the struggle a week before I was born. And had I been in South Africa under apartheid I would have found it hard not to support the armed struggle, and if I could have been of any use to have taken a part in it. There are times when its vital to fight for justice.

But fortunately I’ve never been faced with difficult decisions like that, though I did turn down the offer of interesting research on explosives when I graduated. Our country has not been under existential threat since the defeat of Germany in 1945, and the wars in which we have engaged have seldom been just or even in any way sensible, fighting to hang on to our colonies or enlarge our commercial sphere of influence. Chasing weapons of mass destruction we knew did not exist.

Nuclear weapons in particular are pointless – and extremely dangerous. Weapons that would only be used when we were about to be anihilated whether or not we used them, unless they were used by accident – and we now know that such an accident was only averted when one Russian officer had the good sense to disobey his orders.

Nuclear weapons are also very expensive – and the vast sums to be spent on replacing Trident could be spent so much more usefully on so many other things – and end the cuts to vital services.

Rather confusingly there were two protest vigils taking place opposite Westminster Abbey while the service was taking place there, one by CND and the other by Christian CND. Both were on the opposite side of the road to the church, but separated by a few yards. Christian CND I think held a short service and vigil, while the main CND protest culminated in a die-in on the wide pavement – and I think some came from the Christian CND vigil to join them.

Police made it a little difficult to photograph this event, with photographers being moved from the road in front of the protest at various times, and both photographers and protesters were made to come down from a wall at the back of the pavement which gave a better view of the people entering the Abbey for the service. There was higher than usual security as a couple of royas were attending the service, though one CND protester did manage to walk inside the Abbey, though was fairly soon removed and brought back across the road.

More pictures: Die-In against Nuclear Weapons celebration.