Women and children were marched into captivity from Karbala
London Arbaeen Procession: On Sunday 7th February 2010 around five thousand Shia Muslims met at Marble Arch for the 29th annual Arbaeen procession in London.
There were three large Shabbih, gold and silver replicas of the shrines of Karbala
The procession celebrates the sacrifice made by the grandson of Mohammed, Imam Husain, who was killed with his family and companions at Kerbala in 61 AH (680 CE.)
Hussain ibn Ali is regarded as “a 7th century revolutionary leader who sacrificed his life for social justice“. He refused to accept the rule of Yazid, “a corrupt ruler who was violating the basic rights and dignity of the people.”
Zuljana – representing the horse of Imam Husain
Husain and his family and supporters were surrounded by an army of the tyrant but refused to surrender, choosing to fight to the death for their beliefs rather than to compromise. Their stand is seen by Shia Muslims as symbol of freedom and dignity, and an aspiration to people and nations to strive for freedom, justice and equality.
Many Sunni Muslims also mourn for Imam Husain and regard the actions by Yazid’s men as unacceptable in Islam, but the events are not an important part of their observances. A small minority apparently still revere Yazid and suppot his actions.
Many of the banners and placards carried in the event call for and end to crimes against humanity – and in particular for various attacks on Shia Muslims around the world.
The London procession organised by the Hussaini Islamic Trust UK since 1982 is the oldest and largest in Europe. It takes place on the Sunday following the end of 40 days of mourning the martyrdom of Husain.
Men beat their breasts in mourning on Park Lane
I photographed the procession every year from 2007 to 2007-2012 and there are other accounts and pictures from these years on My London Diary.
Pauline Campbell Protests At Holloway: On Wednesday 16 January 2008, Pauline Campbell was one of a small group of campaigners at the entrance to Holloway Prison following the death of 24-year-old woman Jaime Pearce in the prison the previous month. She was the eighth woman to die in prison in 2025. Only 4 months later in May 2008 I was stunned by the news that Pauline herself had been found dead on her daughter’s grave.
I wrote a lengthy piece about her and her campaigning at the time of the protest at Holloway which I’ll reproduce here, together with a few of the pictures. I had some problems taking pictures, both because of being obstructed and pushed by police and also technical issues with my Nikon flash.
Protest Against Deaths in Prison
Holloway Prison, London. Wednesday 16 January
Police converge on Pauline Campbell as she tries to show her poster to an approaching prison van.
Jamie Pearce* died in Holloway Prison on 10 December 2007, aged only 24. She was the eighth woman to die in jail in 2007. Eventually there will be an inquest which may provide information about how and why she died. Prisons have a duty to take care of everyone entrusted to them, and any death represents a failure. Marie Cox, aged 34, had also died in Holloway just a few months earlier on 30 June 2007. “To lose both” in such a short time – to borrow a phrase from Mr Wilde, “looks like carelessness.”
A small group of demonstrators gathered at the entrance to Holloway on the afternoon of Wednesday 16 January to display banners and lay flowers in memory of Jamie Pearce, although very little seems to be known about this young woman. [more about her in the written evidence from INQUEST to the Justice Committee.]
Two of those present were mothers whose children had died in jail, the organiser of the protest, Pauline Campbell, and Gwen Calvert, whose son Paul died on remand in Pentonville in 2004. The jury at his inquest gave a damning verdict against the prison, finding “systematic failures, incomplete paperwork, lack of communication, disablement of cell bells, breach of security…”
Sarah Campbell was only 18 when she died in Styal prison in 2003, her death recorded by the prison authorities as “self-inflicted.” Two years later the inquest found that her death was caused by antidepressant prescription drug poisoning and said that there was a “failure in the duty of care” and that “avoidable delays” in summoning an ambulance contributed to her death.
I first met Pauline Campbell when she spoke powerfully about her daughter’s death at the United Families and Friends protest against deaths in custody in Trafalgar Square in October 2003. During the afternoon at Holloway she quoted to me something I had written in October 2006, and which I had actually forgotten. “One small piece of positive news came from Pauline Campbell, whose daughter Sarah Campbell died in Styal prison in 2003. She said ‘After nearly four years of my struggle for justice – in a highly unusual move, the Home Office have finally admitted responsibility for the death of my daughter Sarah Campbell, including liability for breach of Sarah’s human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. Don’t give up the fight.”
It was a fight that took Pauline to many protests around the country on behalf of other women who have died in prison and numerous arrests, with recognition by the 2005 Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize for her campaigning. She also became a trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform. After one of her 14 arrests she was brought to a criminal trial in September 2007 and acquitted when the judge threw the case out of court.
Pauline Campbell shows pictures from Indymedia of her being assaulted by police in 2007 at Holloway.
Since Sarah Campbell’s death in 2003, forty women prisoners have died. We’ve suffered for many years under successive governments who have courted tabloid approval for being ‘tough’ by criminalising and banging up many more women and men with little regard for worsening conditions in prisons. Positive ideas and programmes have largely been sidelined, and the incredible number of prisoners with mental health problems largely brushed under the carpet. It’s a system that is failing, one one whose failings actually greatly compounds the problem by increasing re-conviction rates.
This time she was pushed with considerable force and and ended on the ground. I was also being jostled by police
An inspector and seven police officers lined the roadway leading into Holloway, restricting it to a small area of pavement – and then periodically complained that the pavement was being obstructed. They did allow an adjoining area of pavement normally open to the public but apparently on prison property to be used briefly for photographs, but then made their own job considerably harder by insisting that the demonstrator and press moved back onto the relatively narrow pavement.
At intervals through the long afternoon, SERCO vans came to bring more prisoners to jail. As they did so, Pauline Campbell rushed forward with her double-sided placard demanding ‘HOLLOWAY PRISON LONDON JAMIE PEARCE, 24 Died 10 DEC 2007 WHY?’ and the line of police stopped her.
The first time this happened she was pushed very forcefully by the Inspector, sending her flying to the ground. It looked for a moment as if we were going to see a repeat of the disgraceful treatment given to her at the p;revious year’s demonstration here (I wasn’t present, but I have watched the video and seen the photos) but the police appeared to have rethought their approach, keeping hold of her and preventing her going through the police line rather than pushing her away.
The atmosphere during the demonstration was quite unlike any other I’ve been to; in many ways it was more like some soirée with Pauline Campbell as an attentive host, talking to people, introducing everyone to the others present and keeping track notes of everyone’s details in her notebook. The police too came in for a great deal of her attention, although some seemed rather resistant to her attempts to educate them. Some at least resented being taken away from other duties to police this event.
Gwen Calvert and Pauline Campbell together
But at least some of the blame for what is happening must fall on police and prison staff who run the business and are in a position to observe its many failings first hand. It’s hard to see why prison governors, chief constables, leaders of the various professional associations for prison workers and police aren’t far more active in campaigning for reform – and it would be good to see some of them standing beside Pauline Campbell.
* Later Pauline found that the prison had not even got her name right on the death certificate and that she was JAIME Pearce. What does it say for ‘prison care’ if they do not even care enough to enter prisoners names correctly?
Custody Deaths, Gurkhas & John Lewis: On Saturday 26th October I went to the annual procession to Downing Street by the United Families and Friends Campaign in memory of all those who have died in the custody of police or prison officers, in immigration detention or psychiatric hospitals. Sitting opposite Downing Street were Gurkhas on hunger strike demanding justice. I rushed away to join the IWGB protesting inside John Lewis’s flagship store in Oxford St demanding that the workers that clean John Lewis stores be paid a living wage and share in the benefits and profits enjoyed by other workers in the stores.
United Families & Friends Remember the Killed
Whitehall
Many from the families of people who have died in police custody, prisons, immigration detention or psychiatric hospitals had gathered in Trafalgar Square along with supporters for the annual procession calling for justice.
Although there have been several thousand who have died in the last twenty or thirty years, some clearly killed by police and others in highly suspicious circumstances, inquests and other investigations have failed to provide any justice. Instead there has been a long history of lies, failures to properly investigate, cover-ups, and perjury.
Marcia Rigg and Carole Duggan
On My London Diary I quoted the description by the UFFC:
The United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) is a coalition of families and friends of those that have died in the custody of police and prison officers as well as those who are killed in immigration detention and secure psychiatric hospitals. It includes the families of Roger Sylvester, Leon Patterson, Rocky Bennett, Alton Manning, Christopher Alder, Brian Douglas, Joy Gardner, Aseta Simms, Ricky Bishop, Paul Jemmott, Harry Stanley, Glenn Howard, Mikey Powell, Jason McPherson, Lloyd Butler, Azelle Rodney, Sean Rigg, Habib Ullah, Olaseni Lewis, David Emmanuel (aka Smiley Culture), Kingsley Burrell, Demetre Fraser, Mark Duggan and Anthony Grainger to name but a few. Together we have built a network for collective action to end deaths in custody.
Stephanie Lightfoot-Bennet, twin sister of Leon Patterson killed in a Stockport police cell in 1992
Among those holding the main banner as the march went at a funereal pace down Whitehall were Stephanie Lightfoot-Bennet, twin sister of Leon Patterson, murdered by Manchester police in 1992, Marcia Rigg, one of the sisters of Sean Rigg, killed by police in Brixton in 2008 and Carole Duggan, the aunt of Mark Duggan whose shooting by police sparked riots in August 2011.
Thomas Orchard’s sister speaks, on left Marcia Rigg, at right Ajibola Lewis and Carole Duggan
At the rally opposite Downing Street many family members spoke in turn in a shameful exposition of injustice perpetrated by police, prison officers and mental health workers. You can read more and see most of them in the captions and pictures on My London Dairy at United Families & Friends Remember Killed.
Gurkhas Hunger Strike for Justice
Downing St
Gurkhas were sitting opposite Downing Stree on a serial hunger strike after failing to receive any action from Prime Minister David Cameron to their petition calling for fair treatment for elderly Gurkha veterans who are living in extreme poverty.
On 24th October 2013 they had begun a programme of nonviolent resistance (Satyagraha) with hunger strikes, at first with a “13 days relay hunger strike in the name of the 13 Ghurka VCs followed by a fast-unto-death.“
I met the cleaners and their supporters in the café on the top floor of John Lewis’s flagship store on Oxford Street for a protest by their union, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB.)
Organiser Alberto Durango and IWGB Secretary Chris Ford lead the protesters
All the other people who work for John Lewis in their stores are directly employed by the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) and are ‘partners’ in the business with good conditions of service and decent pay, including an annual share in the company’s profits, which can amount to as much as an extra two months pay.
But JLP outsources the cleaning of its stores to a sub-contractor, who were paying them ‘poverty wages’, only around 80% of the London Living Wage, and employ them under far worse conditions of sickness, holidays and pensions than JLP staff.
By hiving off the cleaners to another company, JLP can still claim it is a ‘different sort of company’ with a strong ethical basis, but leave its cleaners – a vital part of its workforce – in poverty with minimal conditions of service.
They stop and let everyone know why they were protesting. The security staff watch but don’t interfere
In 2013, the cleaning contractor was a part of the Compass Group which had recently declared pre-tax profits for the year of £575 million. And JLP had made £50 million profit from its department stores. Despite their huge profits both were happy to shaft the cleaners.
A short rally inside the main entrance to the store
The cleaners were demanding to become employed by JLP, the owners of their workplace, and also to be paid the London Living Wage. JLP told them that this was not appropriate.
Raph Ashley, a JLP ‘partner’ sacked for supported the cleaners
Among those taking part in the protest were members of the RMT and PCS trade unions and former John Lewis ‘partner’ Raph Ashley, who like many other partners had supported the cleaners’ claim. He was sacked after he gave a newspaper interview raising concerns about the ethnic diversity at John Lewis and was told that ‘partners’ discussing pay and urging them to join a trade union was a disciplinary offence. The protest also demanded justice for Raph.
A manager asks the protesters to leave – and they slowly went out
In the café the protesters got out banners, flags, flyers, drums, horns, whistles and a megaphone and walked noisily around the fifth floor before going down the escalator. At each floor they had to walk around to reach the down escalator, and stopped on the way to explain to the shoppers why they were protesting. Many customers took their leaflets and expressed their support for the cleaners, with some applauding the protest.
They continued down to the basement and then came back up to the ground floor where they held a short rally just inside the main entrance with short speeches from RMT Assistant General Secretary Steve Hedley, IWGB Secretary Chris Ford and Chris Baugh, Assistant General Secretary of PCS.
The protest continues on Oxford Street in front of the store
By then the police had arrived and they told the JLP managers to o ask the protesters to leave the store, and they did so, continuing their protest on the crowded street outside for another half hour.
Just Shares, Riverside & No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop: Friday 2nd May 2008 was the day the results came out for the election for London Mayor and it turned out to be a sad day for London. Earlier I’d covered a protest calling on the City of London to move away from its unjust economic prcarices and then gone to an exhibition and walked along the riverside while I waited for the mayoral declaration, though it came after I had given up and left for home
Just Shares Take On The Bank – Royal Exchange, Bank
Other speakers listen as Ann Pettifor speaksat Royal Exchange. Larry Elliott at right.
‘Just Share’, “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice” and to “address the widening gap between rich and poor in the global economy” based at St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside had organised a protest in the heart of the City, in front of the Royal Exchange and at the side of the Bank of England.
I don’t think anyone at the Bank was listening to Ann Pettifor, Guardian economist Larry Elliott or the others as they spoke on the steps of the Royal Exchange, or took seriously the seminar later by Pettifor in one of Hawksmoor’s finest churches, St Mary Woolnoth, where former slave captain John Newton, writer of ‘Amazing Grace‘, preached his last 28 years.
She argued that current global debt-based financial systems are unsustainable and that structural change is necessary which gives proper regard to actual production, and the rediscovery of the insights of earlier Christian (and of course Muslim) traditions.
After visiting an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank next to Waterloo Bridge I walked slowly along the riverside and took a few pictures.
I was on my way to London’s City Hall, then close to Tower Bridge, owned by the government of Kuwait. In 2021 City Hall moved to a GLA-owned property in Newham, some miles to the east. The results of the London Mayoral Election were expected to be announced there in the early evening.
No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop -City Hall, Southwark
I sat on a wall close to City Hall reading John Updike’s novel ‘Terrorist’ which is perhaps why I attracted quite so much attention from a Metropolitan police FIT team (Forward Intelligence Team) photographer who took a number of photographs of me sitting there. I don’t object to being photographed, but was a little surprised when later I put in a Freedom of Information request to find the Met claimed they had no pictures of me, despite having photographed me working at many protests.
Protesters from various anarchist groups including Class War had come to City Hall to wait for the new London Mayor to be announced, though they were clear that they were against all the candidates – who they described as the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist and the Cop (there were six others also standing including Green Party candidate Sian Berry who got more votes than “the fascist” BNP candidate.
The protesters were allowed to protest in front of City Hall for around 35 minutes until Fitwatch went into action to frustrate the FIT teams (who could really use a little more intelligence) enclosing one of them in their banner.
Police called up their waiting reinforcements and the TSG arrived four minutles later and began to push the demonstrators, along with some bystanders, mainly tourists, towards the waiting pen which had been set up a short distance away.
One French woman was bemused. “But why are they just letting themselves be pushed” she asked me as I took photographs. “Because this is England and not France” I replied.
I watched as police told a man leaning peacefully on the river wall watching that he had to move as he was “obstructing the highway“. Clearly he wasn’t (though the police were) and he refused to move. They dragged him from the wall, claimed he was struggling (visibly he wasn’t), handcuffed him and led him away to one of the over 40 police vans parked nearby.
I showed my press card and for once was allowed through the police line obstructing the riverside path and made my way to a public balcony overlooking the area. “Cannier protesters had moved away faster, and were able to display their banner” for a couple of minutes but as I arrived they saw the police coming after them and made a run for a nearby pub.
“The police obviously couldn’t be bothered to chase them, and contented themselves with moving the innocent public away from the balcony, and after a short time, also moving the press.” I joined the protesters in the pub for a drink before leaving for home.
By the time I arrived home Boris Johnson (the Toff) had been announced as the winner and London suffered from a dysfunctional mayor for the next 8 years as he was again elected in 2012. Later those the police had penned were allowed to go home.
Epiphany Rising Against King: On Monday 7 January 1660 (1661 by our modern calendar – New Year back then was the 25th March) Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary “This morning, news was brought to me to my bedside, that there had been a great stir in the City this night by the Fanatiques, who had been up and killed six or seven men, but all are fled. My Lord Mayor and the whole City had been in arms, above 40,000.”
The Fanatiques – a term used to describe the Fifth Monarches (and other nonconformists) believed that the killing of King Charles in 1649 had brought to an end of the last of the four kingdoms mentions in the biblical Book of Daniel – considered as the end of the Empire of Rome (before that had come Babylon, Persia and the Greeks – though there were many other interpretations) and that the time was near for the second coming and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Their uprising was against the re-establishment of monarchy in 1660.
Led by preacher and cooper Thomas Venner they marched from a religious meeting in Swan Alley to take forcibly the keys to St Pauls Cathedral which they then occupied for some hours. Here the band of around 50 men defeated a much larger body of troops sent to capture them, but then failed to decide what to do next, and went out into the woods at Kenwood north of London. Three days later on 9th January they came back to the City and first forced the soldiers sent to stop them to retreat but were finally defeated by a much larger body of soldiers. Twenty-six of them were killed and twenty soldiers also died.
Venner and around 50 others were arrested and tried. Venner was hanged, drawn and quartered on 19 January 1661. His head and those of 12 others were then displayed on London Bridge.
Pepys has a longer entry in his diary for the 9th January about the insurrection – and on seeing everyone else carrying arms he went back home “and got my sword and pistol, which, however, I had no powder to charge” but after taking a walk into the city he “went home and sat, it being office day, till noon.” Later he was persuaded to go out, but then went home and played his lute then went to bed “there being strict guards all night in the City, though most of the enemies, they say, are killed or taken.”
In January 2013, Ian Bone and Class War collaborated with film-maker Suzy Gillett to film a re-enactment of the events of 1661, including a number of speeches and performances about the original events before setting off behind a banner made for the occasion led by a young woman playing the role of Baptist visionary prophet Anna Trapnel, a Fifth Monarchist best known for her 1653 tract ‘The cry of a stone” which recorded her speaking in a trance in Whitehall at great length, in particular berating Oliver Cromwell who many felt was by then setting up a new monarchy. In it she said “the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus is at hand, all the Monarchies of this world are going down the hill: Now is a time that thine should look off from the fethings, and lift up their head, for their Redemption draws near.”
You can read an account of what happened in 2013 on My London Diary at Epiphany Rising Against King or another account by another of those taking part, Paul Brad, also illustrated by my photographs.
Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 10 – Yarl’s Wood, near Bedford
Shut Down Yarl’s Wood: On Saturday 3rd December almost 2000 protesters came to the isolated site on a former RAF base around 5 miles north of Bedford to take part in the 10th protest there organised by Movement for Justice calling for the closure of Yarl’s Wood and all immigration detention centres.
I’d taken three trains to get to Bedford Station where MfJ had arranged a coach for the journey on to the industrial estate on which the detention centre is hidden away. When we arrived the country back road was lined with coaches which had brought others from London and cities around the country.
But after a short rally there while we waited for others to arrive there was still over a mile along a public footpath to reach the field where the protest took place. This slopes up steeply a few feet from the 20 foot high metal prison fence, enabling protesters at the top of the slope th see the two upper floors of the detention centre – and for women at the windows in this to see them. Fortunately it had been relatively dry in the weeks before the event and for once the ground was not muddy and slippery.
Many other groups had come to join MfJ in the protest, including large numbers of students. MfJ had come mainly with migrants, many of whom had spent time in this and other immigration prisons, where this country locks up asylum seekers while slowly and inefficiently the Home Office deals with their cases.
Yarl’s Wood was mainly used for women, though there were a few families also locked up there. Many had fled violence, often sexual violence in their home countries and were then locked away here after arrival.
And they have no way to know when they might be released and are always under threat of being forcibly deported at short notice. One woman had then been held for over two years and was only released a day under three years. Most serve long indeterminate sentences in this and other immigration jails. They feel they are locked away, forgotten – and protests like this remind them that there are those outside who know and care about them.
The isolation means it is difficult for them to pursue their cases and to get the often ridiculous amounts of evidence the Home Office demands. But as they cannot leave the prisons they are allowed to have mobile phones and these enabled a few of the women inside to communicate with the protesters – and for their voices to be heard over the public address system brought by the campaigners.
All the women “speaking from inside thanked the protesters for coming and showing they had not been forgotten. They told of assaults and abuse by Serco security guards who today had locked many in other wings to stop them seeing the protest and threatened those who greeted the protesters and revealed there were cases of TB in the prison.”
Many of the protesters “who spoke at the protest had previously been held inside this and other immigration prisons, and encouraged those inside to keep fighting for justice.”
“As well as standing on the hill so that those on the upper floors allowed near the windows could see them and the banners and placards they held, others kicked and banged on the fence to make a noise that could be heard all over the jail – and indeed from the main raid half a mile away as I walked back to board my coach.“
Immigration detention continues to be used on an industrial scale in the UK, with 19,335 people entering detention in the year ending September 2024. Numbers decreased during Covid but have gone up to previous levels since. The UK is the only European country with no time limit on how long refugees can be held, and numbers held will be increased by the Illegal Immigration Act passed by the Tories in 2023 and the amendments made by Labour rapidly after they came to power in 2024.
The whole system of UK immigration is immoral and expensive, the result of successive governments shifting further to the right and appeasing the racist elements in the UK press. It has a corrosive effect on the mental health of those detained, in part because they are denied adequate health care.
Students march for free education: Several thousand students marched from Malet Street to Parliament on Wednesday 15th November 2017 calling for an end to all tuition fees, for living grants for all and an end to all government cuts.
Around 60% of 18 year-olds now continue their education in either universities or FE colleges, with just under 40% at university – though rather more women than men. This figure has increased massively since the 1960s when only around 4% of us went to university.
But back then we paid no fees and there were means-tested maintenance grants which gave those of us whose parents were on low incomes enough to live on during term-time though parents who could afford it were expected to make a contribution.
Many of us needed to find jobs in the long Summer Vacation or over Christmas when many students were needed by the Post Office to deal with the huge volume of Christmas cards, but universities generally prohibited working in term-time – and those students that needed to because their parents didn’t cough up with their contribution had to keep their work a secret.
My full grant was I think £300 a year which had to cover rent, meals, travel, books etc over the 30 weeks at university – equivalent, allowing for inflation to around £5,300 now, though I think it would be impossible to survive on that now. The maximum student loan for living expenses for 2024/5 for those living apart from their parents is now £10,227 – or £13,348 for those in London.
Students now also have to pay tuition fees for which they can also get loans up to the full amount – currently £9,250 but with a recently announced increase to £9,535 for the 2025-26 academic year.
So for a normal 3 year degree course those taking out the full loans possible will end up owing around £60,000. I ended my course with a degree and around £7 in the bank.
Of course student loans are not like other loans, and students only start repayment when there income exceeds a certain threshold – currently around £25,000, though this depends on when students took out their loan. And after 30 or 40 years (again depending on this) any remaining loan is wiped out. But still the amounts are daunting.
Because these are loans, the government is still essentially paying out the cost of tuition and maintenance for current students. But they hope eventually to get some of the money back – again the forecast of how depends on the scheme in place when students took out their loan.
I’ve been unable to find a figure for the amount of repayment the student loans company is currently receiving, but I think it is fairly low compared with the amount they are giving out in new loans. The total debt owed is expected to rise to around £25 billion.
With this background its perhaps not surprising that students now – and in 2017 when I took the pictures here that students are angry about the cost of their education and that several thousands took part in the student march organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts despite it not being supported by the National Union of Students.
But this was not their only concern. They also marched to condemn the increasing marketisation of the education system that is resulting in cuts across university campuses and a dramatic reduction in further education provision across the country. They also say that the Teaching Excellence Framework which was supposed to ‘drive up standards in teaching’ has instead intensified the exploitation and casualisation of university staff as a part of the marketisation agenda.
Climate Camp at Blackheath – Wednesday 26th August 2009
On Wednesday 26 August 2009 I joined Climate Campers who were meeting at several locations around London to go to an as yet unspecified location for that year’s Climate Camp.
I’d chosen to go with the Blue Group who were meeting at Stockwell Underground Station in south London, chosen as one of the starting points because of the events of 22 July 2005.
As I wrote back then, on “the escalator at Stockwell station it’s hard not to shiver at the memory of those videos showing Jean Charles de Menezes strolling down to catch his last train, and police coming though the gates in pursuit. There is a memorial to him outside the station, including a great deal of information about the event and the misinformation and covering up by police.“
Arriving there I found around 80 Climate Campers and half a dozen police being filmed and photographed by around 30 media and nothing very much happening. It was like that for the next couple of hours, during which we all went to a local park to have our sandwiches and some played games.
Eventually around 2pm we were called back to the station where we followed the leader who had a blue flag onto a train and off at Bank, where all trooped to the DLR, alighting at Greenwich. From here we trudged up the hill to Blackheath Common. Police were keeping a low profile, watching from a distance.
When we arrived the site on the common was still being secured and some people were hard at work erecting fences and vital resources – such as toilets. Legal observers were holding a meeting, but others were just making use of some comfortable furniture on the site or listening to singers.
I tried to photograph as many of these activities as I could.
In earlier years I’d had problems with Climate Camp and in particular their media policy. As I wrote “Press photographers visiting the site will be required to sign a media policy that most of us would find unacceptable and to be accompanied while on the site by a minder. (It can’t of course apply to the police photographers in their helicopter or cherry picker.) The policy appears to be driven by a few individuals with paranoid ideas about privacy and a totally irrational fear of being photographed. It really does not steal your soul!“
On the Wednesday the camp was still being set up and everyone had unfettered access. But this year in any case I’d actually been invited to take part as part of the media team for the camp – and on my later visit was provided with a sash to identify me as such – though I did still come across a little of that paranoia even when wearing it.
But there were also so many people I knew and others who recognised me from from other events that I felt very much at home walking around the site. The main problem I had was trying to keep moving rather than being drawn into lengthy conversations.
There was a meeting to welcome us all to the Climate Camp, after which the preparations for the camp continued, with water supplies being laid on, even baths plumbed in, various larger tents being erected as well as a large banner CAPITALISM IS CRISIS.
I had other things to do on the Friday and Saturday, but was able to return for a day at the camp on the Saturday, to make a record of the camp’s activities and of the campers at work and play, as well as some of the visitors who came to see what was happening. You can see my accounts and pictures from both days on My London Diary.
Movement For Justice at Yarls Wood – On Saturday 7th November 2015 Movement for Justice organised a large protest with other groups to show solidarity with the women locked up inside Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre and to demand that all such detention prisons be shut down.
MFJ Meet To March to Yarl’s Wood – Twinwoods Business Park
Yarl’s Wood was built on a former wartime airfield in remote countryside five or six miles from the centre of Bedford, perhaps chosen in part for its remoteness, which makes it difficult for visitors or protesters to get there.
But Movement for Justice – MfJ – and others had organised coaches from around the country, including eight from London as well as one from Bedford Station to bring people with others arriving by car, taxi or bicycle. The road leading to the prison is private, but people were able to meet on a public road around a mile away outside the main entrance to the business park there.
While we were waiting for everyone to arrive there was lively rally with a great deal of dancing, singing and chanting, keeping everyone’s spirits high, and keeping us warm as a chilly wind with occasional spots of rain swept across the open site on top of a high plateau.
Among those at the protest were many immigrants who had themselves been detained at this or other detention centres around the country while waiting for a decision to be taken on their asylum claims. Sometimes this takes several years and those who are taken to prisons such as these are held indefinitely, never knowing if or when they will be released or taken under guard to be forcibly deported.
Many inside have fled their countries after violent attacks including sexual assault and rape and deserve humane treatment not imprisonment. Few if any pose any real threat and could be housed outside, often with friends or relatives in this country. If they were allowed to work many would make a positive contribution. They would also be much more able to contact their solicitors and collect information to support their asylum cases than from inside the detention centres where access is limited.
Instead the Home Office locks them away and sometimes seems to have forgotten them and lost the key. One woman was detained for a couple of days less than three years before being released – after which she returned with the MfJ and spoke at protests which give those still inside some hope and remind them that they have not entirely been forgotten.
As well as MfJ, Sisters Uncut, Lesbians & Gays support the Migrants, All Africans Women’s Groups, Glasgow Unity and others had come to join in the protest. Eventually with around a thousand people gathered it was time to march, though a few coaches had not yet arrived.
We set off on the long walk to the detention centre, with banners and placards, a short distance along the road and then down the public footpath which runs through a couple of fields and across another track, and into a field on the north side of the prison, about a mile from where the campaigners had gathered.
Here there was a fairly steep rise a few feet up a hill from the 20 foot high fence around the detention centre and from the top of this we could see the upper floor windows, some of which had women at them, though only through the dense thick wire grid of the upper half of the fence.
The windows do not have bars, but only open a few inches, but this was enough for the women inside to put their hands through and hold towels and clothing to greet the protesters. Some managed to hold out messages: one read ‘We came to seek Refuge. Not to be locked up’ and another ‘We are from torture. We Need Freedom’.
The lower 10 feet of the fence is made of stout metal panels, and beating or kicking on these makes a very loud noise. Later some protesters brought up rope ladders so they could hold placards and banners on the more open top of the fence so they could be seen by the women inside.
The prisoners are allowed to have phones which they need to contact their solicitors and advisers over their cases and some were able to use these to communicate with the protesters and to have their voices relayed over the PA system the protesters had brought.
There was a heavy rain shower during the protest, and the ground which was already muddy and with large puddles became very treacherous and getting up from the concrete and narrow flat area at the bottom of the fence became difficult. But soon the sun was back out again.
Most of those who spoke at the event were former detainees, some of whom had friends who were still inside the immigration prison.
The protest was still continuing when I had to leave and the low winter sun was beginning to make photography more difficult. It seemed a long and rather lonely journed as I made my way back to the road, boots heavy with mud. But I was free to go, while women who had come to this country seeking asylum from danger and violence in their own countries were still locked up by a hostile and unfeeling government.
Whitechapel & Illegal Dates; On Saturday 27th September 2014 I went to Whitechapel early to photograph campaigners who were to protest against Sainsbury’s who were selling dates and other goods from illegal Israeli settlements, in defiance of international law. Around two years earlier I had made a panoramic image of part of the new Royal London Hospital which interested me but I felt was not quite what I wanted.
Going back to re-take photographs is often disappointing, with key features having changed, but I think this time I did at least come up with an improvement. This was a more complex panorama than most of those I now make, and needed me to stitch together three separate exposures. It would perhaps be a little better with some slight cropping on the botton edge.
The Royal London Hospital has much great problems, all arising from the poor PFI deal that was used to finance its construction. All PFI schemes have turned out to be a mistake, but this was worse than most and I think has left the hospital group in financial trouble while providing excessive profits to the investors, with payments continuing for many, many years. The contract means they can charge silly prices for necessary services,
After several attempts at producing the picture I wanted I went for a short stroll around the area making a few more panoramic images before it was time to join th protest.
Sainsbury’s told Stop Selling Illegal Goods – Whitechapel High St
Campaigners from the Tower Hamlets & Jenin Friendship Association held a protest on the high Street close to Sainsbury’s, calling on the store to end selling dates and other goods from illegal Israeli settlements, in defiance of international law.
The protes was part of the international BDS campaign calling for a Boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from Israeli firms and sanctions against Israel until it ends the persecution of Palestinians and comes into line with international law and UN resolutions.
Similar protests earlier outside Co-op stores had led to the company in 2013 stating they would ‘no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements’.
The BDS campaign was given added impetus early in 2014 by the disproportionate use of force against the people of Gaza. During the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza over 2,100 Palestinians were killed, roughly 1500 of them civilians, among them over 500 children. 66 Israeli soldiers died, along with 5 Israeli civilians (including one child.) Over 500,000 people – roughly 30% of the population of the Gaza strip were displaced from their homes, and over 17,000 homes made uninhabitable, with over twice that number suffering less severe damage.
The raids also destoryed much of Gaza’s industry, including factories making biscuits, ice cream factory, plastics, sponges, cardboard boxes and plastic bags as well as the main electricity plant. Two sewage pumping stations were damaged, as were the main offices of the largest diary product importer and distributor.
The protesters had several tables on the pavement outside the library on Whitechapel High St ,one selling Palestinian olive oil, almonds and a range of decorated purses etc. Some handed out leaflets and a postcard ‘Sainsbury’s: Taste the Indifference’, while others held banners or collecting signatures for petitions. At intervals people made short speeches about the Palestinian situation and the campaign to get Sainsbury’s to stop selling illegal Israeli goods.
After an hour or so on the busy street, some of the protesters decided it was time to visit Sainsbury’s, just a couple of hundred yards away down a side-street. They folded up their banners and walked down to the store, where Sainsbury’s were ready and waiting for them with extra security on duty, and they were stopped in the very spacious lobby area in front to the store.
Here they opened up their banners and protested for a little over 10 minutes. There were a few moments of some tension, when store employees or security tried to grab one of the banners, but the whole protest and Sainsbury’s response was pretty civilised.
After 12 minutes, a man in casual dress arrived, and after asking the store manager to request the protesters to leave came across and talked with the the protesters, showing them his poolice warrant card and apologising that the police station didn’t have anyone in uniform available to send at the moment.
Having made their point by their protest, they decided to go quietly and a little exultantly back to the High Street, where others had been continuing the protest. Shortly after I decided it was time for me to leave.
Sainsbury’s appears still to refuse to follow its own ethical guidelines and still apparently sells some products from the occupied West Bank and to deal with suppliers who source goods from there, although probably rather less than in 2014. They have claimed not to source goods from the occupied territories but do still deal with wholesalers who deliberately mislable such produce.
