autonomous bloc | >Re-PHOTO

Workers, May Day March & Police Party: May 1st is of course May Day, International Workers’ Day, and I will be at Clerkenwell for the annual May Day march in London, and perhaps some other events to celebrate the day. For Catholics it is also dedicated to Saint Joseph the Worker, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus and approopriately in 2006 my day started outside Westminster Cathedral with the launch of the London Citizens Workers’ Association. Here is what I posted back on May Day in 2006 – with the usual corrections and links to more pictures on My London Diary.

London Citizens Workers’ Association – Westminster Cathedral

May 1st saw the launch of the London Citizens Workers’ Association, a new organisation to support low-wage and migrant workers across London, backed by faith organisations, trade unions and social justice organisations. May 1 is the feast of St Joseph the Worker and the event began with a procession into the cathedral and a ‘Mass For Workers’, but I didn’t bother to get up in time for that.

After the mass was a ‘Living Wage rally’ outside the cathedral, with speakers including Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor (then leader of the Catholic Church in England & Wales), Sir Iqbal Sacranie (Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain), and Jack Dromey (General Secretary of the TGWU) along with representatives of other unions and faiths, and of the new association.

The association aims to fight a campaign for a living wage for low paid workers as well as training them to organise and campaign and providing free advice on rights at work and legal support. Workers in low paid jobs often also lack decent working conditions and there was in 2006 little trade union representation*. It will also provide english classes.

Several large employers who have already taken steps to improve conditions were awarded ‘Living Wage Employers awards’ at the rally, but I didn’t wait around for this.
more pictures

[* Since 2006 we have seen the rise of several grass roots trade unions taking a strong stance for the rights of low paid workers, particularly migrant workers, including the United Voices of the World and the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain.]

London May Day March – Clerkenwell

Around half of London’s tube network seemed to be down for planned engineering works, and getting around was a bit like playing Mornington Crescent to some very special rules. But the Victoria Line and Thameslink got me to Farringdon well before the start of the annual May Day parade.

This seemed larger than in previous years, with a few more trade unions there, with particularly strong support from the RMT, but many others also took part, including my own – the NUJ (and there were many of us members covering the event as well.)

As usual, the most colourful aspect of the march was provided by the various Turkish communist parties, with strong youth wings. MKLP (and its KGO youth), the DHKC, the TIKB, the TKP/ML and probably more. There were some powerful reminders of the repression in Turkey in the portraits of some of those who have died in terrorist actions or death fasts.

Movements in a number of other countries were also represented, including Iraq, Iran Greece and Sri Lanka as well as the Kurds. Also taking part was the African Liberation Support Campaign Network.

Gate Gourmet strikers marching behind their banner chanted “Tony Woodley – out out!” denouncing the attempts of the TGWU to force them to sign the compromise agreement which waives their rights to further work or legal redress. Others demanded that Remploy factories be kept open. There were protests over the Dexion and Samuel Jones pension outrages, and other causes.

More or less bringing up the rear of the march were around 500-1000 in the Autonomous Bloc, an anti-capitalist grouping marching against ‘precarity’, the working environment of late capitalism.

Increasingly there is a polarisation of the employment market in our service-based economies, characterised at one end by poor conditions, lack of job security, temporary employment, use of migrant labour at one extreme, and at the other by increasing encroachment of work into the private lives of more highly paid employees, making them into company property in exchange for their security.

In contrast to the relatively low-profile police presence for the rest of the event, this bloc was flanked on both sides by a line of uniformed police. Many of the marchers in this section wore scarves covering the lower half of their faces, and some carried anarchist flags. Leading the block were a number of bicycles, and a pedal powered sound system.

The march continued on its way to Trafalgar Square, where people stood around mainly looking pretty bored. I didn’t catch much of the speeches but if what I heard was typical I could understand why.

more pictures

Autonomous Bloc in Trafalgar Square

When the Autonomous Bloc arrived at the square, the police barred their entry on the grounds of public order and seized the sound system. More than half those marching left at this point, with the police making little attempt to stop individuals who wandered into the square.

The rest of the bloc stayed on the road, with a few short speeches over a loud hailer, then moved up the side of the square towards the national gallery, where there was another short meeting. This was interrupted by the news that the police tactical support group was on its way, and they soon surrounded the relatively small group who had decided to stay.

I walked through the police line at this point, and they seemed to be making little attempt to stop anyone leaving, or at least didn’t detain them for more than a few minutes.

Pictures from the autonomous bloc on the main march here, but there are more pictures from Trafalgar Square here.

Space Hijackers Police Victory Party – Bank

While the marchers were walking to Trafalgar Square, I took what was left of the tube to Bank and the ‘Police Victory Party‘ organised on their behalf by the Space Hijackers.

There I watched Tony Blair and some rather more attractive than usual police (and with pink fluffy hand-cuffs) being watched by some other police. A couple of the latter walked away when asked if they would mind being photographed, but some others seemed to be rather amused by the proceedings.

Of course, the police (both lots) were taking lots of pictures of the events too, and I can imagine some of them causing amusement at section house parties.

There was a ‘pin the blame on the anarchist’ game, a pinata (ta for the mini Mars bar) and some dancing before I had to rush off to make the gig at Trafalgar Square. Where the politics were perhaps less serious.

more pictures

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business – Wed 4 Nov 2015

I and many others in my generation and class were the first in their families to gain a university education, enabled to do so by maintenance grants. I got a full grant as my family earnings were under the limit where financial contributions were required. There were then no fees for university courses and I left university penniless (well almost – my total wealth was actually £5 8/6d in the post office bank) but with no debts, taking up a job at a salary more than my father had ever earned.

Fortunate too were my two sons, who both just managed to enter higher education when grants were still available (though I was then earning enough to have to pay a relatively trivial sum to make up their maintenance grants) and there were still no fees for UK students.

Now in 2022, the typical student leaves university in England with a debt of £45,000 and if my wife and I took the same courses as we did in the 1960s our combined debt would be in excess of £100,000. Of course we have had rather a lot of inflation since then, so this would equate to around £5,000. It would have seemed an unimaginable sum to me at the time, and I would certainly have gone out to work rather than continuing my studies.

As well as the fees, the students were also protesting at other changes in particular the way that education has become a market-led system, no longer led by knowledge and curiosity but by returns on investment with many courses in what are seen as unproductive areas being cut and research increasingly limited to topics which can be financially exploited.

Of course universities back in the 60s were not entirely ivory towers. Back in the 1940s they played an important part in the war effort, and one of my lecturers told us how his desk back then was made of planks across between two stacks of high explosive as he studied ways to improve the effectiveness of explosions. My own research, though driven by an unlikely theoretical hypothesis (which it demolished) was funded – as I only found out later – by a notorious US chemical company who had clearly been persuaded by my professor that it could be of considerable use to them (it wasn’t.) But he was a great con-artist.

I have mixed feelings about my university education. I was taught by people who were leading researchers in their fields but in the main had little idea about how to teach, and sometimes made it clear they were not really engaged with the task. Now much teaching seems to be done by graduate students on zero hours contracts who are equally unprepared for the job, though I think may well do it better.

The protest met in Malet St, outside the former University of London Union, shut down by the University management for its political activities – including support of protests by low paid workers who perform essential duties such as cooking, cleaning, portering and security in the university, and replaced by management-run Student Central – and this in turn closed by the university in 2021.

The rally there had a number of speeches by student leaders, staff supporters and others including Shadow Chancellor John McDonald and Antonia Bright of Movement for Justice. As well as the issues of student fees and loans and university issues, they also called for an end to borders and the scapegoating of immigrants.

As the rally ended the march was augmented by around a hundred black clad and masked students in an autonomous bloc at the rear, led by a ‘book bloc’, a line of protesters with large polystyrene padded posters with the names of left wing and anarchist classic books on them or slogans such as ‘Rise, Riot, Revolt.

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business

Students at Home Office and BIS – Westminster, London, Wed 4 Nov 2015

After reaching Parliament Square the student march continued to the Home Office, where I caught up with them after pausing to photograph another event. By the time I got there the air was full of coloured smoke and there were a large number of police around it.

Soon the students marched off, with the black block and its large police escort soon following them on to the Dept of Business, Innovation & Science, now responsible for the universities which are no longer seen by government as a part of education.

The students were standing around in the road in front of the building and I was wandering through the crowd taking pictures when I heard a loud roar and turned around to see the black bloc charging the line of police in an attempt to enter the Deptartment.

The charge lacked conviction with most behind the front couple of rows standing back and watching as the police stopped the charge. Soon more police arrived and the black bloc were pushed forcibly back, with several photographers and bystanders being grabbed by the police.

The protesters tried to move away down Victoria St, but were stopped by more police, who moved in, preventing those who had remained peaceful from moving away. The students were now kettled and I decided I’d had enough and tried to leave the protest, showing my press card. At first police refused to let me through the line, but after a while I found an officer who let me through and walked away down a side road. As I did so heard a lot of noise as the students swept through the police line and ran along the street. But I was tired and went home.

Students at Home Office and BIS

‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration – Parliament Square, London. Wed 4 Nov 2015

Earlier as the student march had moved through Parliament Square I had stopped briefly to talk with campaigners from the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign who had mounted a weekly vigil for his release opposite Parliament every Wednesday when Parliament was sitting.

Today they had come to celebrate the news of his release from Guantanamo and were holding signs saying ‘Welcome Home Shaker AAmer’ and ‘Free At Last’. He had been taken there after torture in Afghanistan, arriving on 14 February 2002 and was released and flown to Britain on 30 October 2015. He continued to be held and regularly tortured there despite the US government having acknowledged it had no evidence against him and clearing him for transfer in 2007.

‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration

Tag: autonomous bloc

Workers, May Day March & Police Party 2006