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My 2024 in Photographs: The fourth and final part of my selection of images from 2024.

London, UK. 26 Oct 2024. As the end of the peaceFul march against extreme right hate came into Trafalgar Square, a group behind a black banner ‘NO TO TOMMY ROBINSON – NO TO FASCISM’ turned off the route towards the Mall and made a halfhearted rush towards a police line, with a small group trying to push their way through – most just stood watching. Police pushed back and the two groups faced each other. A few minutes later one man was pushed out of the crowd and through the line by a small police squad.

London, UK. 26th October 2024. The letter to Starmer. The annual remembrance march by the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) from Trafalgar Square could only go a short distance down Whitehall and held their rally at the Cabinet Office. Speakers from families whose relatives killed by police and in penal, mental health and immigration detention called for justice and proper investigations of the officers.

London, UK. 28 Oct 2024. Men in oilskins carry a pink inflatable dinghy. Extinction Rebellion marches to stages theatrical flooding scenes outside insurers in the city to show how insurers are green-lighting fossil fuel crooks to flood our homes and our lands. They hope to stop insurance for new fossil fuel projects; flooding due to global warming is already common and threatens us all.

London, UK. 30 Oct 2024. Reading The Crimes outside insurers MarshMcLennan. Extinction Rebellion ended their 3 days of protests at Insurance Companies in the City with a Zombie protest, predicting the social collapse with wars, famine and floods that will happen if CO2 levels and the climate chaos they cause continue to increase. They protested with zombie dancing, die-ins and speeches outside some of the worlds major insurance companies based in London urging them not to insure fossil fuel projects.

London, UK. 2 Nov 24. Health Care Workers. After a die-in by some at Downing St, many thousands marched in a massive PSC National Demo to a rally close to the US Embassy in Nine Elms calling for urgent action by the international community to end brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and schools in Gaza and an end the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. All arms supplies to Israel should end, with an immediate permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and negotiations for a two state solution.

London, UK. 2 Nov 24. Jeremy Corbyn. After a die-in by some at Downing St, many thousands marched in a massive PSC National Demo to a rally close to the US Embassy in Nine Elms calling for urgent action by the international community to end brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and schools in Gaza and an end the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. All arms supplies to Israel should end, with an immediate permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and negotiations for a two state solution.

London, UK. 3 Nov 2024. Marches wear blue for water flood the streets from Vauxhall on route to a rally in Parliament Square called by River Action. They demand a review of Ofwat and the Environment Agency, an immediate end to industry polluting our waters for profit and greed – particularly sewage discharges, for laws on water pollution to be enforced and for all industries to invest in better use of water.

London, UK. 30 Nov 2024. As the death toll from Israel’s attacks in Gaza is now over 43,000 and many now face starvation with every hospital having been bombed and with virtually no medical supplies, with the UK is still complicit in the genocide, thousands including many Jews, marched in yet another entirely peaceful mass protest in solidarity. They call for an immediate ceasefire with the release of hostages and prisoners and for negotiations to secure a long-term just peace in the area.

London, UK. 14 Dec 2024. Hundreds of BMX riders dressed as Santa, Elves, Snowmen, Christmas Trees and Reindeer set off from the graffiti tunnel at Leake Street Waterloo for the 10th annual Santa Cruise around central London, a fund raising event for the charity Evelina Children’s Heart Organisation. BMX Life raises money for ECHO through sponsorship on these rides and two major raffles each year and has so far raised over £180,000 for ECHO.

London, UK. 14 Dec 2024. Tenants organised by the London Renters Union march demanding urgent action on city’s spiralling rents, which are tearing London apart – the average rent of £2,172 is now more than the pay of many vital workers such as teaching assistants and care workers, forcing many into cramped temporary accommodation. The scrapping of rent controls in 1988 and the mass sell-of of council homes have prioritised landlord profits and Labour’s current housing plans are based on private developers profits rather than providing social homes.

You can double-click on any of the images to see them larger and you can see many more pictures from these and other events in 2024 and earlier years in my albums on Facebook.

Defend Our Juries Free Political Prisoners: A week ago I went to photograph an unusual protest which took the form of an exhibition, the Free Political Prisoners Exhibition.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10169134705895467&type=3

The protest was organised by Defend Our Juries, a group set up following recent trials in which juries have been prevented from hearing the defences of those on trial and have been directed by judges that they cannot follow their consciences in coming to their verdict.

Here is a part of what was on the leaflet that they handed out during the exhibition. You can find more about the campaign on their web site.

Why do juries need defending

Juries put the moral sense of ordinary people into the heart of the criminal justice system. In recent years, juries have repeatedly acquitted those taking nonviolent direct action to advance climate, racial, and animal justice. These verdicts are deeply embarassing to the goverment and the arms and oil industries, industry lobbyists such as Lord Walney have promoted extraordinary measures to try and stop them.

People on trial have been banned from using the words ‘climate change’ or ‘fuel poverty’ in court and have even been jailed just for defying that ban,

Usual legal defences have been removed by seemingly biased jusges. People have been arrested and prosecuted for displaying the centuries-old principle of jury equite – juries can find a person on trial not guilty as a matter of conscience, regardless of what the judge directs.

They had come to the Justice Ministry to protest outside the office of Attorney General Richard Hermer KC to ask him to agree to Chris Packham’s and Dale Vince’s request for an open and transparent public meeting to discuss the measures necessary to restore the fundamental rights to protest and fair trial essential to a functioning democracy, as called for by the United Nations.

As well as some of the UK’s current political prisons including those from Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action currently serving long prison sentences for non-violent direct action the posters in the show featured many other political prisoner from around the world and throughout history such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Martin Luther King Jr “peaceful change-makers [who] should be celebrated as essential to upholding democracy.”

Reverend Billy of the NY Church of Earthalujah sits with pictures of political prisoners.

Among those taking part in the protest were William Talen, better known as the Reverend Billy, and members of his Stop Shopping Choir from New York, currently on a UK tour who I was pleased to meet again having photographed him at various protests in London in earlier years.

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Tag: Attorney General

My 2024 in Photographs – Part4

Defend Our Juries – 24 Oct 2024

Why do juries need defending