Posts Tagged ‘ASH’

Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike – 2017

Monday, September 23rd, 2024

Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike: On Saturday 23rd September 2017 hundreds marched from a rally in North London against the council’s plans to make a huge transfer of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease, which would result in the demolition of thousands of council homes, replacing them largely by private housing. I left the march close to its end taking the tube to Brixton where strikers at the were marking a year of action with a rally.


Haringey Against Council Housing Sell-Off

Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike

People had come to a rally and march against Haringey Council’s ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’, HDV, which proposed a £2 billion giveaway of council housing and assets to a private corporation run by Australian multinational Lendlease.

Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike

This would result in the speedy demolition of over 1,300 council homes on the Northumberland Park estate, followed by similar loss of social housing across the whole of the borough.

Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike

Similar ‘regeneration’ schemes in other boroughs such as Southwark, Lambeth and Barnet had resulted in the loss of truly affordable housing, with the result of social cleansing with many of the poorer residents of the redeveloped estates being forced to move out of these boroughs to areas with cheaper private housing on the outskirts of London and beyond.

Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike

London’s housing crisis has been made much worse by the activities of wealthy foreign investors buying the new properties and keeping them empty or only occasionally used as their values rise. Among the groups on the march were those such as Class War and Focus E15 who have down much to bring this to public attention.

In London it is mainly Labour Councils who are in charge and responsible for the social cleansing of the poor and the loss of social housing that is taking place on a huge scale.

Along with speakers from estates across London where similar schemes are already taking place there were those from Grenfell Tower where cost cutting and ignoring building safety and residents’ complaints by private sector companies including the TMO set up by the council created the disaster just waiting to happen.

On My London Diary I quoted part of a speech by then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn a few days later at the Labour Party conference which condemned current practice on estate ‘regeneration’ and housing of which the HDV is the prime example.

The disdain for the powerless and the poor has made our society more brutal and less caring. Now that degraded regime has a tragic monument: the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower, a horrifying fire in which dozens perished. An entirely avoidable human disaster, one which is an indictment not just of decades of failed housing policies and privatisation and the yawning inequality in one of the wealthiest boroughs and cities in the world, it is also a damning indictment of a whole outlook which values council tax refunds for the wealthy above decent provision for all and which has contempt for working class communities.”

You can hear the speech in full on the article by Architects For Social Housing on the conference, where they give their comments and more detail on the section I quoted above:

Indeed it has. And high in the list of that brutality is the estate regeneration programme that threatens, is currently being implemented against, or which has already privatised, demolished or socially cleansed 237 London housing estates, 195 of them in boroughs run by Labour councils, which vie with each other for the title of ‘least caring’, and among which the councils of Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Haringey could give the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council a lesson in disdain, privatisation, failed housing policies and the inequality they produce. But it’s good to hear Corbyn discard the Tories’ contemptuous terminology of ‘hardworking families’ and ‘ordinary people’ and finally – if belatedly – refer to the ‘working class’.

They go on to comment less favourably on Corbyn who they say had ignored “the estate regeneration programme that is at the heart of London’s transformation into a Dubai-on-Thames for the world’s dirty money” and so had failed to perceive that “every estate undergoing demolition and redevelopment could produce a similar testimony of inept and incompetent local authorities, bad political decisions and a failed and broken system of democratic accountability.”

The grass roots revolt against the HDV plans resulted in a political change and the scrapping of the plans. But the Labour Party has also changed radically, and those very people responsible for those ‘least caring’ local authorities in London and across the country are now in government.

More pictures at Haringey against council housing sell-off.


One year of Ritzy strike – Brixton

A quite different vehicle was the star of the show in Brixton, where BECTU strikers at the Ritzy Cinema were celebrating a year of strike action with a rally supported by other trade unionists, including the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and other union branches.

The strikers continued to demand the London Living Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay, for managers, supervisors, chefs and technical staff to be properly valued for their work, and for the four sacked union reps to be reinstated.

After speeches in English and Spanish, came the surprise. The vehicle in Brixton was the newly acquired ‘Precarious Workers Mobile’, a bright yellow Reliant Robin, equipped with a powerful amplifier and loudspeaker, and after more speeches this led the protesters in a slow march around central Brixton.

Various actions at the Ritzy had started three years before this, when workers called for a boycott of the cinema. In 2019, after an industrial tribunal had won some of their claims BECTU suspended the boycott and the Living Staff Living Wage campaign although still continuing to fight for equal pay and against other dismissals.

More pictures at One year of Ritzy strike.


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Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings

Tuesday, July 9th, 2024

Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings; Saturday 9th July 2016 began for me in Waterloo, where right wing Labour party members were attending a conference. Then I travelled to Hackney for a Sisters Uncut protest over domestic violence and housing, back to Downing Street for a rally against the scapegoating of immigrants and went briefly to a Brexit debate in Green Park and then south of the river again to a protest against police murders in the UK and US.


Garden Bridge protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St

Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings

Lambeth Council were supporting the ‘Garden Bridge‘, a private green space to bridge the River Thames close to Waterloo Bridge, an expensive vanity project with a costing over £200 million with little public gain.

Lambeth residents came to protest as Lambeth councillors and council leader Liz Peck were attending the Labour Party ‘Progress’ movement ‘Governing for Britain’ conference.

Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings

The Garden Bridge project was finally abandoned in August 2017, by which time it had cost £53m, including £43m of public money.

Garden Bridge ‘Progress’ protest


Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St

Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings

Also protesting outside the Progress conference were housing protesters against the demolition of council estates and their replacement by luxury flats under ‘regeneration’ schemes by London Labour councils including Southwark, Newham and Lambeth.

Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings

The protesters were from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Focus E15 ‘Homes for All’ campaign and Architects for Social Housing who had been involved in various campaigns to stop the demolition of social housing in these boroughs.

They say that New Labour policies, now accelerated by the Tory Housing and Planning Act, makes London too expensive for ordinary workers leading to social cleansing, while making excessive profits for developers, including housing associations and estate agents Savills.

Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference


East End Sisters Uncut on Domestic Violence – Hackney Town Hall

Sisters Uncut came to Hackney Town Hall to demand the council abolish all plans to demolish council homes, refuse to implement the Housing Act and invest money into council housing and refuges for victims of domestic violence.

They quoted a Women’s Aid report for 2013-5 which found that over 60% of applications to women’s refuges in Hackney are refused as no room is available.

East End Sisters Uncut-Domestic Violence


Europe, Free Movement and Migrants – Downing St

The Brexit vote had been followed by a rise in the scapegoating of immigrants and Islamophobia, and ‘Another Europe Is Possible’ organised a rally at Downing Street to keep Britain open to migrants, and for policies and media which recognise the positive contribution that migration makes to the UK.

Speakers came from a wide range of groups including Movement for Justice, Left Unity, Friends of the Earth, Newham Monitoring Project, Stand Up To Racism and Syrian activists.

Many from the rally were going to the Brexit picnic and discussion in Green Park afterwards, and I did too.

Europe, Free Movement and Migrants


Green Park Brexit Picnic

Most of those who came to the picnic felt cheated by a vote that was based on lies and false promises, but they came wanting to find ways to make it into something positive for the country.

There were also some who had come to counter the protest with their own picnic for democracy organised by Spiked magazine, and when the people from the Downing Street rally arrived with their placards some of them came over to pick an argument.

Things got a little heated when a woman from the ‘Spiked’ group accused those holding the placards of being unwashed, and there was some vigorous speaking in response. But people from both sides stepped in to cool things down.

Green Park Brexit Picnic


Brixton stands with Black victims

Local black organisers in Brixton called a rally and march in memory of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and to show solidarity with those murdered by police brutality, both in the US and here in the UK.

Alton Sterling was murdered by police officers on July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot at close range after police had pinned him to the ground where he was selling CDs outside a grocery store. In May 2017 the US Justice department announced there was insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges against the officers concerned – despite the many videos of the incident and other sources.

Philando Castile was fatally shot at close range after has car was stopped by police in he Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. There was video of the incident and the officer was charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. A jury acquitted him of all charges in June 2017.

There were many speeches both about these and other US cases and those in the UK, where Sean Rigg, Wayne Douglas and Ricky Bishop died after being held in nearby Brixton Police Station. One of the organisers spoke wearing a t-shirt listing just a few of those who have been killed by police in the UK. An annual protest is held every year in Whitehall against the many custody deaths in the UK, and in 2015 while this was taking place police took advantage of this to strip the tree in front of the police station of its deaths in custody memorials

Some time after I left the protesters marched around Brixton, bringing traffic to a halt for several hours.

Brixton stands with Black victims


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Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens – 2016

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens: On Saturday 18th June 2016 I went to three events all with a connection with housing. First was a protest against the 2016 Housing and Planning Act passed the previous month, after which I briefly visited students celebrating a victory at UCL before going to South London for an Open Gardens event at an estate which Lambeth Council want to demolish.


Axe the Housing Act March – Hyde Park Corner

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens

Protesters marched from Hyde Park Corner to Parliament against the Housing and Planning Act which tenant and housing groups, councils, academics, trade unions and communities say will deepen the current housing crisis, removing security from many tenants and will result in the demolition and selling off of almost all social housing.

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens

The Act extends the ‘Right to Buy’ to housing association tenants and allows councils to sell vacant ‘higher value’ vacant council homes to fund this.

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens

It brings in mandatory rent increases for households in social housing with a combined family income of ore than £40,000 in London and £31,000 elsewhere with their rents increasing over time to market rents. Amendments made this slightly fairer by limiting the income considered to the taxable income of two main household earners and excluding most of those receiving benefits from the calculations.

Housing Act, Student rents & Open Gardens

The Act removes security of tenure for most council tenants. New tenants will only get fixed term tenancies generally from 2-5 years, with some longer tenancies agreed for those with a disability or children living at home until they reach the age of 19 following pressure from the House of Lords.

The Act reflects and emphasises the Tory view that social housing should be a very limited resource only supporting the the very poorest in society, second-class citizens, with the landlords and house builders being able to make profits from the rest of us. But housing campaigners generally see it as by far the most cost-effective way to provide for one of our basic human needs and also argue that it can provide an income for local councils to support other vital services.

The protesters urged councils to refuse to implement the Act and call on people to stand together to boycott the pay-to-stay tax, resist evictions and block regeneration and estate demolitions.

Among the speakers before the march began was Richard Livingstone, a councillor from the London Borough of Southwark, Cabinet Member for Adult Care and Financial Inclusion and formerly responsible for housing in the borough.

Southwark is a borough with an appalling record on housing and estate demolition and many at the protest were appalled at his presence calling Southwark’s demolition of the Heygate and Aylesbury a shameful example of exactly the kind of social cleansing this protest was against.

Many feel that many Labour councillors and officers are now careerists, driven by political or financial advancement rather than caring for the people in their borough. A number have earned themselves highly paid jobs with developers and other companies in the housing sector.

I left as the march moved off towards Parliament and made my way to UCL.

More at Axe the Housing Act March.


UCL Rent Strike Victory

It was good for once to be able to celebrate a victory, after after the Complaints Panel at UCL decided that the residents of Campbell House West will be compensated in full for the final term last year – up to £1,368 per student.

They determined that UCL Management “Not only demonstrated a lack of empathy towards students’ circumstances and an understanding or appreciation of what would be an acceptable student experience, but was disingenuous to the students concerned.”

So the mass protest that had been planned, an Open Day Manifestation, turned into a celebration of their victory, and also to show their determination to continue their campaign to cut student rents.

I left after a brief visit, missing the lively victory march around the West End with flares and the helium-filled balloons I had watched them preparing.

UCL Rent Strike Victory


Central Hill Open Gardens Estates – Upper Norwood

Lambeth’s Central Hill Estate is a popular and well-planned estate of considerable architectural interest in good condition under threat of demolition by Lambeth Council. Like some other estates it has been refused listing probably on political grounds. The properties, completed in 1974, were well built and are generally in good condition though suffering like most council estates from a lack of proper maintenance and in need of relatively minor refurbishment.

This was one of the estates under threat of demolition by Government Housing policies, council regeneration programmes and property developers which were welcoming visitors to open day events as a part of the Open Garden Estates initiative by Architects for Social Housing, ASH.

There was a display of the alternative plans for the estate by ASH showing how the council’s aims of increasing the capacity of the estate could be achieved without any demolition and at a much lower financial and environmental cost.

Lambeth Council had refused to make any serious consideration of these plans, almost certainly because although the cost would be much less, they would not provide the profits to the developers from the high market value sales of new properties and market rents, and the costs of the ASH scheme to the council would be greater.

One of the visitors to the open day was Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood Helen Hayes, who stormed out after being questioned why she was attending when she had given her backing to Labour councillors behind the plans to demolish the estate.

Also at the open day were various food, book and other stalls, a music performance, film show (I watched a film about how Southwark Counci had mistreated the residents of Myatts Fields) and a Marxist puppet show as well as estate tours. I’d visited the estate several times in the past and had photographed parts of it in the 1990s as well as more recently in February 2016 when I wrote more about it and Lambeth’s plans to demolish.

Although New Labour’s ‘Regeneration’ policy possibly had good intentions, its results have often been disastrous, and Labour really needs to rethink its whole approach to council-owned housing.

As I wrote in 2016: “‘Regeneration’ has resulted in huge transfers of public assets into private hands, in a wholesale loss of social housing, and in social cleansing, with people being forced outwards from London, unable to afford either the laughably named ‘affordable’ properties or those at market rates. It has meant the dispersal of functioning communities, in widespread and arguably fraudulent under-compensation of leaseholders, and in a great deal of sub-standard buildings, often to lower specifications of space and worse design than those they replace.

More people were arriving at the event when I left to go home and I was sorry to have to miss some of the activities planned for later in the day.

The estate is still standing and the fight to save it continues. In March 2024 Lambeth Council set up a contract with consultants to reappraise the plans for estate ‘regeneration’ at Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill and Fenwick. Perhaps it will come up with some more sensible proposals …

More at Central Hill Open Gardens Estates.


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Grenfell – 7 Years On

Friday, June 14th, 2024

Grenfell – 7 Years On: Seven years after the terrible fire that killed 72 people in Grenfell Tower and left many others traumatised we still have no justice. None of those whose deliberate actions and failures that set up this firetrap and made a disaster virtually inevitable has yet to be brought to court.

Grenfell - 7 Years On
Pictures here are from the first anniversary of the fire on Thursday 14th June 2018. You can see my account of this and more pictures on My London Diary.

Grenfell - 7 Years On

The inquiry dragged on and although it has ended taking evidence its final report has been delayed and delayed. Initially due in late 2023 it is now expected to be released in Autumn 2024, although that may well be delayed yet again.

Grenfell - 7 Years On

When it does come it will almost certainly be too little as well as far too late. Grenfell was a crime and the major criminals were obvious from the start. The inquiry – as it was always meant too – has tied the hands of the police in pursuing the criminals and bringing them to justice. It seems doubtful there will be many if any prosecutions and if they take place they are likely to be only for minor offences.

Grenfell - 7 Years On

I don’t think anything much of significance has emerged from the years of the inquiry that was not already evident in early reports on the fire – such as that published by Architects for Social Housing in July 2017, although we have some more detail. But the inquiry has mainly served as an opportunity for some involved to take part in buck-passing and blame others or to claim ignorance of the obvious.

And of course to generate considerable incomes for the lawyers, who have had a field day thanks to the excessive adversarial nature of the inquiry. The delays in publishing the report are all down to the inquiry having to consult with those who are named in it. We urgently need a streamlined process for such inquiries – and this should almost certainly involve prosecutions of the more obvious criminals before the inquiry begins.

But although the grass has grown longer, Grenfell Tower is still there as a reminder of the terrible events which began which shortly before 1am on Tuesday, 14 June 2017. Although by the first anniversary in 2018, from which the pictures here come, its scarred and blackened bulk had been hidden by white sheetong. But at the top was a grey panel with a large green Grenfell heart and the message ‘Grenfell – Forever In Our Hearts‘.

As I wrote in 2018, “Some felt it should have been left standing uncovered – particularly as the disaster was caused by covering up the building to make it look nicer for the academy at its base. Without that covering the fire would have been a minor incident with no loss of life.”

I continued “The academy in front of the tower was also built without proper regard for access for fire engines to fight the fire when it happened. To make things worse, Boris Johnson had cut the fire service drastically and they no longer had the equipment to fight the fire in the upper stories – it had to come from Surrey – and successive governments had removed regulations and cut safety inspections (they called it ‘red tape) which would have prevented the inferno.”

Here are the details from the Grenfell United web site of the 7th Anniversary Silent Walk:

Join us at the Silent Walk on 14 June 2024 to mark 7 years since the Grenfell Tower Fire. We will gather at the Nottinghill Methodist Church from 6pm and the walk will begin at 6:30pm. There will be speeches and a call to justice at the end.

Please walk in silence with us to show those responsible we are not going anywhere until we see justice.

Grenfell United

You can see more from the first anniversary walk in 2018 at Massive Silent Walk for Grenfell Anniversary Among those taking part were both then Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.


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LSE Resist – Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners

Friday, September 29th, 2023

LSE Resist – Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners: in September 2016 then LSE research fellow Lisa McKenzie and a couple of students organised a series of discussions, films, lectures and exhibitions in the 3 day campus-wide 3-day free ‘Resist: Festival of Ideas and Actions’. The festival explored how political resistance is understood within academic research, the arts, grassroots activism campaigns, student debate and mainstream politics.

LSE Resist - Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners

As a part of this festival LSE cleaners began a campaign for parity of treatment with other workers at the LSE. I had contributed some protest pictures to be used in publicity for the festival and attended some of the events on 28-29th September 2016.

LSE Resist - Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners

The success of this festival was perhaps one of the reasons why Dr McKenzie was not given a further contract at the LSE. She has since worked at Middlesex University, Durham University and the University of Bedfordshire and is Board Chair of the Working Class Collective.


Working Class debate at LSE Resist – Wednesday 28th September 2016

LSE Resist - Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners

There was a lively open debate around ideas of the working class at lunchtime on the steps in front of the LSE building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields led by LSE Professor of Anthropology David Graeber and Martin Wright of Class War with contributions from others including LSE research fellow Lisa McKenzie and Class War’s Ian Bone.

LSE Resist - Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners

I arrived late, partly because the LSE then was a huge building site and the Facebook invitation to the event had included a map incorrectly suggesting it was taking place in Houghton Street, so unfortunately missed the some of the opening remarks by Graeber.

He was followed by Whitechapel anarchist Martin Wright, a working-class activist from East London who told us he was proud of his record of not working. He now regularly broadcasts his pithy comments on current affairs on the ‘Red and Black’ channel on You Tube.

Ian Bone, the founder of Class War, once described by the gutter press as the ‘The Most Dangerous Man in Britain‘ gave a typically witty and thought-provoking contribution.

And of course Lisa McKenzie spoke at some length and depth, and there was a great deal of discussion among the main speakers, with contributions from many of those sitting around on the steps, mainly LSE students. I took a great many pictures some of which you can see on My London Diary, but think I managed to keep my mouth shut and listen rather than speak.

More pictures at Working Class debate at LSE Resist.


Simon Elmer of ASH indicts LSE

The following day I was back on the same steps to hear Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing (ASH) give a lengthy and detailed indictment, ‘The Intellectual Bloodstain’ on a report by a group of LSE academics on Kidbrooke Village, a development by Berkeley Homes and Southern Housing, on the site of a council estate which was demolished between 2009 and 2012.

The Ferrier Estate had been built for the Greater London Council in 1968-72 on the site of a former RAF base. The first section had five 12 storey towers and three years later a second section six more were added. The estate had around 1,900 flats.

When the GLC was abolished in 1986 for having opposed the Thatcher government it was a sad day for London in general, with the capital being left without its essential city-wide authority, something it has not yet recovered from despite the setting up of the GLA in 2000. But for the Ferrier estate in was even worse news as the estate was transferred to the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

Greenwich made Ferrier a sink estate and failed to maintain the estate properly; its population were markedly multi-ethnic, including many refugees while most of the rest of the borough’s estates were predominantly white.

You can read Elmer’s talk in full on the ASH web site and it makes interesting reading. Perhaps the key fact is that the estate still had 1732 flats which were housing council tenants at social rents, but in the replacement Kidbrooke Village although there will be 4,763 new apartments, only 159 will be at social rent. Some of the others will be ‘affordable’, meaning at up to 80% of market rent, but that means completely unaffordable to those who previously lived there – or to almost all of the 15,000 on the council’s housing waiting list.

As a former member of Greenwich Council was quoted by Elmer as stating, ‘Ten years ago residents on the Ferrier Estate were told that they would have the right to come back. What Greenwich Council didn’t mention is that they would need to win the Lottery to do so.

Elmer uses the case of Ferrier to ague about a key tropes behind the LSE produced report, the idea of ‘urban villages’ and also points out some of the omissions and inaccuracies of the report as well as attacking their use of inadequate and often misleading concepts such as ‘human scale‘, ‘unique identity‘, ‘social interaction‘ (which means going to shop at Sainsbury’s), ‘locally driven‘, ‘mixed communities‘ and more as well as pointing out some simple lies lifted directly from the developers’s marketing book.

His report points out “the white elephant standing in the middle of the living room of every one of these luxury apartments – that is, their complete failure to meet the housing needs of the local community” and went on to look more widely at housing issues in the UK before concluding his talk by convening a People’s Court for the indictment of the LSE Four, listing four charges and calling for their suitable punishment “in the name of Architects for Social Housing and on behalf of the former residents of the Ferrier Estate.” I think they were unanimously found guilty.

At the end of the meeting Petros Elia, General Secretary of the United Voices of the World trade union spoke briefly about the failure of LSE management to protect the interests of the LSE cleaners in outsourcing them to a cleaning contractor with no insistence on decent working conditions and conditions of service and inviting all present to a meeting later that do to discuss further action.

More pictures at Simon Elmer of ASH indicts LSE.


LSE Cleaners Campaign Launch

Later on Thursday I went to the meeting where cleaners at the LSE began their campaign for parity of treatment with other workers at the university.

The cleaners, employed by Noonan on a LSE contract, are paid the London Living Wage, but have only the statutory minimum holidays, sick pay and pension contributions, while workers directly employed by the LSE have more generous terms. They also complain they have lost rest facilities, are not allowed in the canteen with other workers, exposed to dangerous chemicals, not allowed to use lifts to move heavy equipment between floors and are generally treated like dirt.

We were all shocked when one of the cleaners stood up and told how she had been sacked by Noonan after 12 years of service at the LSE. The UVW will fight her unfair dismissal as well as pursuing their other claims.

Others attending the meeting included most of the students from a new graduate course at the LSE on issues of equality, something the LSE has a long history of campaigning for outside of the institution but seemed rather blind to on its own campus. Support for the cleaners was expressed by the LSE Students Union General Secretary and by several LSE staff members, and Sandy Nicoll from SOAS Unison told the meeting about their 10 year fight to bring cleaners there in-house.

Several of the cleaners spoke in Spanish, and their comments were translated for the benefit of the non-Spanish speaking in the audience,

There were suggestions for further actions to improve conditions and fight the unfair redundancy, and I was to photograph some of these in the months that followed, eventually leading the them being taken back in-house as LSE employees in 2017.

More pictures at LSE Cleaners campaign launch.


Housing Crimes Exposed

Wednesday, June 14th, 2023

Housing Crimes Exposed: On the 14th June every year now our thoughts turn to Grenfell and the terrible fire there in 201. I wrote about this here a year ago in Remember Grenfell – Demand Justice.

We still haven’t seen justice, and the delays in investigation caused by the inquiry increasingly make it seem that once again our legal and judicial system have successfully kicked justice into the long grass. There are people who should have been in jail and organisations which should have been facing huge fines within a few months of the tragic but predicted event. The fire wasn’t an accident but the result of crimes.


Advance to Mayfair – London Real Estate Forum – Berkeley Square, Mayfair

There are other crimes around housing in the UK, and in particular around social housing, and people were protesting about these before Grenfell. On Thursday 16th June 2016 I photographed one of these protests, and two days later a second also in Mayfair, an appropriate location as these are crimes of the rich against the poor, coming from the Thatcher crusade to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor, rewarding the wealthy and retreating from the welfare state which had supported the poor.

Housing Crimes Exposed

Housing was one of the main areas of policy, along with privatisation which sold off key services and industries to private investors – and for which we are now seeing the results in high energy prices, sewage in rivers, high cost transport and huge subsidies to shareholders, with much of the costs of our NHS now going to supporting healthcare companies and their owners.

In housing Thatcher decided we should be a nation of home owners. Until then many of the working class had either been council tenants or were aspiring to be so while living in often poor and cramped accommodation provided by private landlords. Thatcher changed that, partly be selling off council properties to tenants at knock-down prices, but also by making it difficult or impossible for local authorities to build new council properties or properly maintain existing ones. It was a very popular policy with those who got their properties on the cheap, though many found they couldn’t afford to keep them and before long they were bough up as ‘buy to let’ properties by those rich enough to get mortgages and bank loans.

Housing Crimes Exposed

Under New Labour, the Labour Party took up many of the worst of Thatcher’s policies, and the ‘regeneration’ schemes Labour councils came up increasingly amounted in a huge loss of social housing, replacing huge estates with largely homes for private sale with some as largely unaffordable “affordable housing” and shared ownership. More and more of the housing associations, many of which had taken over social housing estates from hard-pressed local councils began to look more and more like commercial property owners.

In 2021 government funding to housing associations to build affordable housing was reduced by 60% and funding for new social rented housing was stopped altogether. Since then they have built many houses for sale and rent at market levels, partly to provide cash for some social housing.

London’s councils, largely Labour run, have been among the worst offenders. As I wrote in 2016:

Under the guise of New Labour regeneration, Southwark spent large amounts of council money in demonising the Heygate Estate, employing PR consultants to invent surveys, deliberately moving in problem tenants, running the estate down both physically and through the media to justify its demolition. A highly awarded scheme with its trees coming to maturity, and popular with many residents despite the lack of necessary maintenance was emptied over a period of years and finally destroyed. It took years to get some residents to move, as few were offered suitable alternative accommodation and the compensation on offer to leaseholders was derisory.

But this scheme turned into “something of a financial disaster for Southwark council (though doubtless not for some councillors) and certainly for the people of Southwark, as the Heygate, built with around 1700 social housing units has been replaced by Elephant Park, with less than a hundred, along with a large number of high price apartments which very few locals can afford.”

Undeterred, Southwark proceeded to apply similar methods to other estates, notably the neighbouring Aylesbury Estate, “converting public assets into private profit, with yet more Southwark residents being forced to move out to cheaper areas on the outskirts of London or beyond, in what housing activists describe as social cleansing, driving ordinary Londoners out of the capital.

Similar polices were being applied under Mayor Robin Wales in Newham. They began emptying out the Carpenters Estate, a well-liked and successful estate close to the great transport links of Stratford station, in 2004. Many of the homes on the estate have been empty since then despite huge housing problems in the borough. A scheme to sell the estate for a new campus for UCL was defeated by protests both by local residents, led by Focus E15 and by students and staff at UCL.

Focus E15, a group of young mothers faced with eviction from their Stratford hostel when Newham announced they would no longer pay the housing association which ran it, engaged in a successful campaign against the council’s plans to relocate them separately to private rented accommodation in distant parts of the country, and brought housing problems in Newham and elsewhere onto the national agenda.

Focus E15 were among other groups, including Class War, the Revolutionary Communist Group and protesters from the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark who came to Berkeley Square to protest outside the London Real Estate Forum. Many Labour councils – including Southwark and Newham – were at the event, conspiring with estate agents and property developers to sell public land and transform estates which now house those on low incomes into homes for the wealthy. Councils now “appear to regard the estates they own as liabilities rather than seeing them as providing vital homes meeting the needs of the people who elect them. “

A few of those entering or leaving the event stopped to engage with the protesters, mostly trying to justify their activities. One man photographed the protest and engaged in homophobic abuse, but police who had been trying to move the protesters refused to take action.

You can read about the protest on My London Diary at Advance to Mayfair.


Municipal Journal Awards – Hilton Hotel, Mayfair

Two days later on Thursday 16th June 2016 I joined many of the same protesters and others outside the Hilton Hotel with Architects 4 Social Housing protesting noisily outside the Municipal Journal Local Authority Awards at the Hilton Hotel castigating the nomination of Southwark and Newham for awards.

They complained that Southwark was nominated for ‘Best London Council’ despite having demolished 7,639 units of social housing, sold off public land to developers, and evicted people unlawfully and accused Newham of social cleansing, rehousing people in distant parts of the country while council properties remain empty, and of causing mental health problems through evictions, homelessness and failure to maintain properties.

These were awards not for housing the workers in their areas, many of whom are on pay close or at the minimum legal levels. Not even for key workers such as teachers and nurses, few of whom can now afford properties in the areas close to where they work, but to attract high paid workers and provide profits for overseas investors, many of whom leave the properties empty all or most of the year, watching their profits grow as London’s high property prices increase.

They are awards too for contributing to the huge profits for the developers who are now building a new London, providing poorly built properties, often to lower standards of space than those they replace, and with design lives sometimes expiring much earlier. And because we have not seen the changes in building regulations and safety standards that Grenfell exposed as necessary, some at least may be the Grenfells of the future.

More about the protest and many more pictures at Municipal Journal Awards.


LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa

Wednesday, March 15th, 2023

LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa

LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa: On Wednesday 15th March 2017, students and supporters joined cleaners on the picket line at the London School of Economics for a lunchtime rally on the first day of the 2 day strike by members of United Voices of the World union.

LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa

Cleaners at the LSE have felt let down by management at least since January 2012 when the contractor who the LSE had outsourced them to cut their hours and was bullying them into signing new contracts.

LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa

As I wrote back then, “Outsourcing – as doubtless research by the LSE will have shown – almost invariably leads to lower wages and poorer working conditions for the staff involved. And although the cuts and alleged bullying is being carried out by Resource Group, the responsibility for it must lie with the LSE who are responsible for the contract with them.”

David Graeber (right) at the protest

In September 2016 the cleaners with the United Voices of the World trade union launched a new campaign for parity of treatment with other workers at the university with a meeting which was a part of the LSE’s 3-day ‘Resist’ Festival organised by LSE research fellow Lisa McKenzie which had featured talks and debates often critical of the LSE, with contributions by LSE Professor of Anthropology David Graeber and Martin Wright of Class War and in particular a damning indictment by Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing (ASH) of a report by a group of LSE academics on the redevelopment of the Ferrier Estate, deliberately run-down, demonised and emptied by Greenwich Council from 1999 onwards, as Kidbrooke Village.

LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa
Protesters walk into the estates office foyer

The protest on 15th March 2017 began with a rally on the LSE campus demanding equal sick pay, holidays and pensions etc to similar workers directly employed by the LSE and an end to bullying and discrimination by their employer Noonan.

LSE Cleaners Protest, Police Arrest Lisa

Grim Chip of Poetry on the Picket Line performed and there were several speeches by UVW members including LSE cleaner Mildred Simpson.

Dvid Graeber and Petros Eila

The protesters then marched the short distance across Kingsway to the LSE Estates Division where cleaning contractors Noonan have their LSE office. They walked in and occupied the foyer there for over and hour, only leaving after being promised that Allan Blair LSE Director of Facilities Management would talk with the cleaners union the United Voices of the World.

As they left the foyer, police jostled some of them before assaulting and arresting LSE academic Lisa McKenzie, charging her with assault and then bundling her into a waiting police van.

Apparently the receptionist at the estates office had complained that she had been assaulted by McKenzie as the four people holding the UVW banner pushed past her on their way into the office. I had been following close behind them and neither I nor the other protesters had seen any evidence of assault.

None of the other three holding the banner were arrested and it seemed fairly clear that the arrest was not for any offence. Perhaps the police were still aggrieved after a case against her when she was wrongly charged for three offences at a protest in Febnuary 2015 was thrown out of court. That had taken place at the time she was standing in the General Election against Iain Duncan Smith and was an arrest that appeared clearly politically motivated.

But on this occasion it could well have been that the LSE management had pointed her out as a trouble-maker. McKenzie, a working class academic and author of a highly acclaimed study of class and culture on the Nottingham estate where she lived for more than 20 years has been the a subject of constant criticism from others both inside the LSE and in the wider academic community, and when her contract there came to an end it was not renewed.

The protesters were left angry and confused. Why was Lisa being picked on? The protesters felt it must be politically motivated and it was difficult to see any other reason. I think she was later released without charge, possibly because there was CCTV evidence that showed there was no case to answer.

More on My London Diary:
Police arrest Lisa again
LSE cleaners strike and protest


LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

Saturday, February 25th, 2023

Saturday 25th February saw me travelling around London to photograph unrelated protests in Dalston, Leicester Square, Brixton and Westminster.


Shut race-hate LD50 gallery – Dalston

LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

People protested outside the small LD50 gallery in Dalston just off the Kingsland Road which they say has promoted fascists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, racists and Islamophobes in one of London’s more diverse areas.

LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

The gallery gets its name from the does of any substance which kills 50% of those taking it, and the protesters said it “has been responsible for one of the most extensive neo-Nazi cultural programmes to appear in London in the last decade.”

LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

One man, “dc miller“, came to argue that it was a matter of free speech and the right to freely discuss ideas, even repulsive ones, should be defended. He got considerable verbal abuse from the protesters and eventually police came and advised him firmly to leave, and later wrote a number of articles about the gallery and the protest.

LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

The protest didn’t immediately close down LD50 despite the claims of the protesters and a couple of months later it put on a show of defiance called ‘Corporeality’, though it is now permanently closed.

Perhaps an article in the Baffler by Megan Nolan, Useful Idiots of the Art World best expresses the position in this quote:

LD50 is a real place, in a real neighborhood, filled with people who are directly threatened by the vile speech of the very real racists who were invited into it. Repeatedly, the defense mounted by the gallery has been that it was attempting to have an open discussion about reactionary ideologies. The implication is that LD50 were engaging in some sort of completely neutral anthropological consideration of current events, rather than extending a fawning welcome to alt-right lynchpins.

More pictures at Shut race-hate LD50 gallery


Picturehouse recognition & living wage – Leicester Square

I rushed down to Leicester Square where workers from four Picturehouse cinemas at Brixton, Hackney, Wood Green and Picturehouse Central were holding a rally outside the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square to campaign for recognition of their union BECTU and to be paid the London Living Wage.

The Empire was recenetly acquired by Cineworld the owners of Picturehouse who have refused to recognise trade unions, but instead set up a company run staff forum.

They are not paying staff in London a living wage and offer poor conditions of service despite making large profits from cinema-goers paying £13 or more to see a film in central London. I’d arrived late and had to leave before the speeches to get the tube to Brixton.

More pictures Picturehouse recognition & living wage


Stop Unfair Eviction by Guinness – Brixton

The Guinness Trust was set up in 1890 by Sir Edward Cecil Guinness, then head of the family brewing business, to provide better housing for working class Londoners. One of the estates they built was the Loughborough Park Estate in Brixton.

Betiel Mahari had lived on that estate and moved into a new Guinness Trust flat, but the rent on this was more than doubled, increasing from £109 to £256 a week, although some of her neighbours are paying around a weekly rent of £100 less.

Beti has problems paying the new rent and because she works on a zero hours contract here housing benefit claim is constantly being reassessed leading to delays and errors in payment, leaving her in arrears. Guinness are not taking her to court to evict her and her two young sons. Supporters of the ‘Save Beti Campaign’ including Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Architects for Social Housing were campaigning outside Brixton Station collecting signatures for a petition to oppose the eviction of Beti and other tenants threatened by estate demolition.

I had time in Brixton to take a little walk around, particularly going to look at the railway arches where many long-standing local businesses are being evicted, though some are still trading.

More at Stop Unfair Eviction by Guinness.


25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre – Westminster,

Back in Westminster the Justice for Khojaly Campaign were marching, calling for justice 25 years after the Khojaly Massacre in Azerbaijan where on the night of 25-26 February 1992, Armenian forces brutally killed 613 civilians, including 106 women and 83 children.

The call for an official apology from the Armenian govenment with full reparations and those responsible for this war crime to be brought to justice. The massacre was the larges in the war that folloed the secession of the majority Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh region to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which ended in 1994 with an uneasy truce.

More at 25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre.


Dubs Now – let the children in – Downing St

My final event of the day was at Downing Street, where Help4Refugee Children was calling on the Government to honour its promise to let unaccompanied Syrian children into the UK after it reneged on its pledge earlier this month.

Theresa May’s high heels tread on a child

When Parliament had passed the Dubs amendment it had been very clear that this should happen and the government’s shameful and heartless decision overturned this, leaving many vulnerable young children forced to continue living in intolerable conditions. Many local councils say that they had made offers to take the children but these have been ignored by government.

Dubs Now – let the children in.


Cleaners, Bow Creek and Stirling Prize

Thursday, October 6th, 2022

Thursday 6th October 2016 was another of those varied days I love. I began with a lunchtime protest against victimisation and nepotism by cleaners, then went for a walk by Bow Creek before finally photographing a protest outside RIBA where the annual Stirling Prize presentation was taking place.


Cleaners demand ‘End Nepotism’ – 155 Moorgate

The Independent Workers Union CAIWU occupied the lobby of Mace’s headquarters building in Moorgate at lunchtime protesting noisily against cleaning contractor Dall Cleaning Services. I met the cleaners and supporters outside Moorgate station where they got out posters and a banner before marching quietly to pay an unannounced visit to Mace’s headquarters building where they walked into the lobby and started making a lot of noise.

They called for the reinstatement of two cleaners who they say were dismissed illegally without proper notice or other procedures being followed. They say that the cleaners have been dismissed simply to give jobs to members of the family of a Dall Cleaning Services supervisor.

After around 15 minutes a police officer arrived, but it was too noisy to hear what he was saying and the protest continued. He stood a little to the side and called for reinforcements, and as these arrived the protesters walked out to join those who had stayed outside and the protest continued on the pavement for another 20 minutes.

Police came to tell the protesters they were making a lot of noise, and were told that was the idea – they came here to do so and shame Mace and Dall Cleaning Services.

Eventually another officer who had been present at several previous CAIWU protests arrived and was told they would soon be stopping.

And after a couple more minutes, Alberto ended the protest with the usual warning “We’ll be back – and that’s a fact”.

More at Cleaners demand ‘End Nepotism’.


Limehouse, Bow Creek & Silvertown, London

I had the afternoon to fill before the next protest and it was a fine day so I decided it was time to take another trip to Bow Creek. I took the DLR from Bank to West India Dock to start my walk, and took the opportunity and a fairly clean train window to take a few pictures on my way there.

City Island is not quite an island

I walked over the Lower Lea Crossing, which provided a view of work which was now rapidly going ahead on ‘City Island’, where a loop in Bow Creek goes around what was previously the site of Pura Foods. This development had stalled with the financial crash in 2008 but was now in full swing.

From there I walked on along the elevated Silvertown Way, giving views of the surrounding area, before taking the DLR back to Canning Town, again taking advantage of a fairly clean train window on the ride.

Rather to my surprise, at Canning Town I found that the exist to the riverside walk was finally open. I think the walk here beside Bow Creek was constructed in the 1990s and I’d been waiting for around 20 years for this exit from the station to open and give access to it. I didn’t have as much time left as I would have liked but did make a few pictures.

For years there have been plans to create a walk from the path beside the Lea Navigation at Bromley-by-Bow to the Thames at Trinity Buoy Wharf, and the section as far as Cody Dock had opened a few years earlier – with the ridiculous name of ‘The Fatwalk’. It hasn’t really got any further yet, though at least it has been renamed as the ‘Leaway’.

More pictures – both panoramic and otherwise at Limehouse, Bow Creek & Silvertown.


ASH protest Stirling Prize – RIBA, Portland Place

Many of the protesters wore masks showing RIBA President Elect Ben Derbyshire

Architects for Social Housing (ASH) led a protest outside the Stirling Prize awards ceremony pointing out that one of the short-listed projects, Trafalgar Place, was built on the demolished Heygate Estate, which was ‘stolen from the people’ with hundreds of social housing tenants and leaseholders being evicted and the site sold at one tenth of its value to the developers.

 ‘Architecture is Always Political!’, a quote from Richard Rogers

Together with other housing protesters than held their own awards ceremony on the pavement in front of the RIBA building, awarding the ‘O J Simpson Award for getting away with murder’ to drMM Architects for this project, the first phase of Lendlease’s £1.5 billion Elephant & Castle redevelopment. This will replace 1214 social housing homes with few or no affordable homes.

There were no other contestants for the Ben Derbyshire Foot In Mouth Award than RIBA President Elect Ben Derbyshire but there was a vote to select which of five of his totally ridiculous statements by him about social housing should be the winner.

Among those at the protest were residents opposing the demolition of the Aylesbury estate, close to the Heygate, where Southwark Council are also demolishing social housing properties rather than carry out relatively low cost Aylesbury estate,that was voted for by the residents and could continue the useful life of these properties for many years.

Simon Elmer of ASH holds up the award for the ‘O J Simpson Award for getting away with murder’ awarded to drMM Architects and developers Lend Lease for Trafalgar Place

Estate demolition has a huge social and environmental cost and schemes like these in the borough of Southwark result in huge losses of social housing. But they provide expensive properties often sold largely to investors who will never live in them and large profits to the developers. Councils hope to share in these profits, but on the Heygate made huge losses, though some individuals involved have gained highly lucrative jobs.

More at ASH protest Stirling Prize.


Central Hill, Brian Haw & Al Quds

Saturday, June 18th, 2022

Central Hill, Brian Haw & Al Quds. 18th June 2017 was a Sunday, and though I now prefer to observe Sunday as a day of rest, five years ago it was for me another working day. Since the lockdown I get tired much more quickly and I’m cutting down a bit on work. Today I’ll probably go for a walk with my wife after lunch, stopping off on the way home to sit and eat an ice cream before picking more strawberries from the garden and relaxing a little before dinner.

But back in 2017 I was making good use of a Travelcard, going first to the Central Hill Estate which looks down over London close to Crystal Palace then travelling to Westminster to remember Brian Haw before taking the tube up to Oxford Circus and walking to the BBC to join marchers gathering for the annual Al Quds march.


Ted Knight speaks for Central Hill – Central Hill Estate

Central Hill, Brian Haw & Al Quds
A woman comes to talk to me about living on the estate since it was built

I deliberately arrived very early at Central Hill so I could take a walk around and make more pictures of one of London’s finest council estates, but almost missed the start of the talk I had come to hear opposing Lambeth Council’s plans for its demolition as I spent some time talking with a woman who had seen me taking pictures who was still living in the home she had moved into when the estate was built and had raised her family here. She told me how good it had been living here in a fine home that was still in good condition and had never needed any major repairs.

Central Hill, Brian Haw & Al Quds

Ted Knight, former leader of Lambeth Council, had come to speak in support of the campaign to save the Estate, passed for demolition by the council despite the almost unanimous vote of residents for plans to refurbish rather than demolish and the plans by Architects for Social Housing which would achieve the increase in density desired without demolition.

Central Hill, Brian Haw & Al Quds

Knight as council leader earned the name ‘Red Ted’ from the gutter press for standing up to the Tory Government’s rate-capping 1984 Rent Act which severely limited the spending of local councils – which eventually led to him and 31 other councillors being surcharged and banned from political office for five years in 1986. He remained an active trade unionist and in the Labour Party and when he spoke was Branch Chair of the Gypsy Hill ward which includes Central Hill. Although his politics and mine were not entirely the same, I was sad to hear of his death in 2020.

As Knight said, under borough architect Ted Hollamby the estate was planned by Rosemary Stjernstedt as a living community and had remained remarkably successful, with a number of original residents from the 1970s still living there and wanting to continue to do so. At that time Labour believed that nothing was too good for the working people and the estate was built to high specifications and is still in sound condition. A deliberate process of managed neglect – like that which had resulted in the Grenfell Tower disaster had – had been carried out by Lambeth Council to legitimise its demolition.

Lambeth council now refuse to allow the community to use the resource centre

Although the meeting was poorly attended, surveys of estate residents have shown a very high proportion of residents want to remain on the estate and oppose the demolition. The council quotes very different figures and its response to feedback from estate residents has been to remove the estate representatives from the consultative body.

Faults in the paving are marked but left without repair

Lambeth Council has also ridiculously inflated the estimate for the refurbishment of the estate and rejected without proper consideration a carefully planned alternative scheme for a much cheaper limited infill of the site rather than demolition which would involve far, far less disruption to the families who live here and also result in the retention of much-needed social housing. The only real problem with the alternative scheme proposed by Architects for Social Housing is that it would not generate excessive profits for the developers.

Ted Knight speaks for Central Hill


Brian Haw remembered – Parliament Square

This was the sixth anniversary of the death of peace campaigner Brian Haw who had made a ten-year political stand against war in Parliament Square despite considerable harassment by police urged on by politicians, laws introduced against his and other protests, Westminster Council officials and almost certainly MI5 agents.

Brian Haw began his camp here on 2 June 2001, and remained in place despite many attempts, legal and otherwise to remove him for almost 10 years, leaving only when arrested, for court appearances and to speak at protests at Trafalgar Square and Downing St until 1 January 2011 when he left England to receive treatment for his lung cancer in Berlin. He died in Germany in the early hours of 18 June 2011.His ten years of protest and the frequent and repeated harassment undoubtedly hastened his decline and death.

His protest in Parliament square was continued by Barbara Tucker who had joined him in 2005 and had been imprisoned twice for her role in the protest and arrested 48 times. The level of harassment increased and she went on hunger strike on 31st December 2012. Late in January 2013 she was taken into hospital close to death, and was treated for frostbite and exposure. Her protests continued on-line.

Brian Haw remembered


Al Quds march – BBC to US Embassy

Several thousands came from around the country for the annual Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day march in London. Organised by a Quds committee with the Islamic Human Rights Commission it was supported by various groups including the Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Britain and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods. At the front of the march were a group of Imams and Neturei Karta anti-Zionist Jews.

The march called for ‘Freedom for Palestine’ and for all oppressed peoples across the world. It supports of the BDS campaign for a boycott of Israel Israeli goods, divestment from companies supporting Israel and sanctions against the Israeli state. It demands that Israel ends its breaches of international law and its oppression of the Palestinian people in what is an apartheid system, and ends its siege and attacks on Gaza.

Zionists oppose the march with a protest close to the final rally at the US Embassy, but a small militant group carrying Israeli flags attempted to stop the march on its route, calling those taking part supporters of the banned terrorist group Hezbollah.

A number of the marchers were holding Hezbollah flags, which carried a message indicating they were supporting Hezbollah as a political organisation – it is one of two main parties representing Shia Muslims, Lebanon’s largest religious group – as a part of national unity governments in the Lebanese parliament.

Police seemed very reluctant to move the Zionists off the road in front of the march which was held up for some time, with marchers simply waiting for the police to clear them. After some time the the marchers held their planned minute of silence for the Grenfell Tower victims before getting up and telling police that unless the police cleared the road they would simply push them aside and march through.

The Al Quds day march is very much a family event but with the numbers involved the march stewards would clearly have been able to do so and the statement did galvanise the police into action, and the march was able to move on slowly.

The event organisers make it very clear that this is not an anti-Semitic event, and I think one or two placards which might have suggested this were rapidly removed by stewards. In 2019 Home Secretary Sajid Javid decided to proscribe Hezbollah’s political wing as well as the military wing which had been proscribed in 2008, so showing any support for Hezbollah would be an offence carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Al Quds march
Zionists protest Al Quds Day March