Posts Tagged ‘Barbican Centre’

Chase Farm & Barbican Cleaners

Thursday, February 2nd, 2023

Ten years ago on Saturday 2nd February 2013 I went to Enfield to photograph a march against the planned closure of A&E and maternity services at Chase Farm Hospital there. I left the march to travel into central London for a protest by cleaners outside the Barbican Centre.


Save Chase Farm Hospital – Enfield

Chase Farm & Barbican Cleaners

The march in Enfield took place a week after a massive march in South London against the closures at Lewisham hospital, but the march in Enfield was a rather smaller affair, with just a few hundred taking part.

Chase Farm & Barbican Cleaners

Tory politicians including David Cameron, Andrew Lansley and Nick de Bois, by the time of this march Prime Minister, Health Secretary and local MP respectively, had visited the hospital in 2007 and pledged support for stopping closure of A&E and maternity services at Chase Farm.

Chase Farm & Barbican Cleaners

Their promises turned out to be worthless once the Tory party had come to government and de Bois elected, plans for the closures were approved by Andrew Lansley in September 2011 and were due to come into force in November 2013.

But the local fight against closure had continued, now led by the North East London Council of Action, with daily pickets outside the hospital where the units are due to close this November. The march was also supported by the Save Chase Farm campaign and the London Fire Brigade Union as well as Unison and there were people with a banner from another North London hospital, the Whittington Hospital at Archway, where vigorous local protest stopped closures of A&E and maternity a few years ago, but where the management is again proposing cuts.

The hospital was then run by the Barnet and Chase Farm NHS Hospital Trust which included Barnet and North Middlesex hospitals who intended to spend £35million to expand A&E and maternity services at Barnet to replace those at Chase Farm and to make a £80million refurbishment of the 1970s Tower Block at the North Middlesex.

Around two hundred people gathered at the war memorial on Chase Green where there were some folk songs before the march set off to Enfield town centre, where many local shoppers showed their support.

The march then continued on its way to the hospital, with some of those taking part chanting ‘Occupy Now’. I had to leave them before they reached the hospital as I had promised to go to the Barbican, but later heard that a small group had occupied a part of one building and were evicted around 10pm that evening.

Despite the protests and an unsuccessful legal bid by Enfield Council to postpone the changes the Maternity Unit closed on 20th November 2013 and the Accident and Emergency Department on 9th December 2013. The closure remained controversial and although a Healthwatch Enfield report found no evidence that the closure of A&E had an adverse effect on Enfield residents ability to access emergency services, it was unconvincing, partly because of the failure of the three hospitals to provide adequate data.

More pictures Save Chase Farm Hospital.


Cleaners Protest at Barbican, Barbican Arts Centre – City of London

The Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) which represented the Barbican cleaners had declared an official dispute at the Barbican Centre in November 2012 and this was the latest in a series of protests.

The cleaners were protesting for the London Living Wage and also against unfair treatment and a union ban by cleaning contractor MITIE.

Although the City of London Corporation which owns the Barbican Centre has come out in support of the London Living Wage and pays all its workers at or above this, it is happy to outsource the cleaning to MITIE, a large and highly profitable company paying its CEO over a million pounds a year but with the cleaners on only £6.90 an hour, around one fifth less than the then London Living Wage of £8.55.

MITIE responded to the union claims with a letter to employees including “IWGB representatives will not be permitted access to any MITIE site, including the Tower of London, Barbican etc. to support the IWGB members who are employed by MITIE. We appreciate that many sites, where our employees undertake work for our clients, are open to public access, but no member of IWGB should discuss union business with any MITIE employee during their working hours or on premises within which they are employed.

Despite this a spokesman for the City of London Corporation who are the owners of the Barbican denied in a post of Facebook that there is any ban on the union at the centre.

The protest took place outside the main entrance to the Barbican Arts Centre, with the protesters careful to leave room for people wanting to enter or leave the building. As well as making a loud noise with drumming, air horns and whistles they also shouted slogans, both in English and in Spanish, the first language of many of the cleaners.

There were also speeched, and one of the Barbican cleaners spoke about the low wages and poor working conditions, and the feeling by cleaners that they are treated like dirt rather than given the respect due to any person. He told how his pregnant wife had been forced to work with chemicals that were known to be dangerous for pregnant women, risking a miscarriage, despite her complaints. MITIE had failed to discipline the manager responsible in any way. Fortunately despite the exposure, his wife had given birth to a healthy child.

The protest was still continuing as I left for home and I could still hear the noise they were making – though faintly – as I reached Moorgate station, almost a quarter of a mile away despite the tall buildings lining the streets. It was a peaceful protest but one determined to be noticed and to make its complaints heard, something which the government has now made illegal.

Cleaners Protest at Barbican.


Palestine, NHS & Cleaners in the Barbican

Monday, October 17th, 2022

I photographed three quite different protests in London on Saturday 17th October 2015


End the killing in Palestine – Israeli Embassy

Palestine, NHS & Cleaners in the Barbican

October 2015 saw the start of a wave of uncoordinated knife attacks on Jews in Jerusalem, mainly be individuals acting alone, probably enraged by increasing restrictions on Palestinian access to the holy area called by Muslims al-Haram al-Sharif and by Jews the Temple Mount, while at the same time Jewish activists were given greater access.

An Israeli intelligence service report blamed the Palestinian “feelings of national, economic and personal deprivation” while others suggested that Palestinians were responding to what seemed to them and human rights organisations as summary executions being carried out by Israeli forces against Palestinians involved in incidents.

According to Wikipedia, in October 2015 Israeli security forces killed 51 Palestinians in the West Bank and 18 in the Gaza strip. While the killing of Israelis makes the BBC news headlines, the deaths of Palestinians at the hand of Israeli security forces, illegal settlers and other Jewish extremists is seldom mentioned.

More pictures at End the killing in Palestine


Junior Doctors protest to save the NHS – Waterloo Place & Whitehall

Palestine, NHS & Cleaners in the Barbican

Junior doctors met for a rally in Waterloo Place to protest the changes to NHS contracts that will mean working more unsocial hours at standard rates, remove safeguards that stop hospitals overworking doctors, and penalise those volunteer for charities, have families or carry out research.

The new contracts are aimed at making the NHS more profitable for private companies to take over NHS activities and many mainly Tory MPs have interests in private healtcare companies. But overwhelming doctors who work in the NHS want to see it kept as a serrvice dedicated to the public good rather than working to make profits for shareholders at the expense of both healthcare workers and the treatment given to patients.

A banner covered in names of doctors who were on duty so couldn’t attend


After a number of speeches in Waterloo Place, thousands of junior doctors and their supporters marched to sit down briefly outside Downing St before continuing to a final rally in Parliament Square.

Graffiti artist Stik (Centre) stands under two of the placards he designed against privatisation of the NHS

More pictures at Junior Doctors protest to save the NHS.


Cleaners protest in Barbican – Barbican Centre

Palestine, NHS & Cleaners in the Barbican

I met the cleaners outside the main entrance to the Barbican in Silk Street, where thee United Voices of the World held a noisy rally with a few speeches. They were here after the Barbican management had ignored requests to talk with the UVW union over failing to pay the living wage until 6 months late, contractual sick pay, and cleaners were being victimised for their for trade union activities. They were also protesting the use of unpaid ‘Workfare’ in the centre.

After a while a small group from the UVW , led by UVW General Secretary Petros Elia, ran inside past security staff and made their way to the middle of the arts centre to protest there. The Barbican was holding an event called ‘Battle of Ideas’ which had a large banner ‘Free Speech Allowed’ but Barbican security were not happy with free speech from Petros, despite which he was able to finish the protest, receiving a round of applause from Barbican customers.

Soon police arrived and there was a fairly friendly discuss in which the UVW agreed to leave the building in a few minutes without any trouble. They did so, and continued the protest outside the entrance in Silk Street. I took a few photographs and then left for home as it had been a long day and I wanted to get back and have my dinner.

Cleaners protest in Barbican


End Indefinite Detention, Don’t Sack Cleaners

Saturday, May 7th, 2022

End Indefinite Detention, Don’t Sack Cleaners – two protests I photographed on Saturday 7th May 2016, one on the edge of London and the other in the centre.


Detention Centres Shut Them Down – Harmondsworth, Saturday 7th May 2016

Mostly protests begin later than expected and I was surprised when I arrived at Europe’s largest detention centre complex at Heathrow, two Category B prisons, Colnbrook & Harmondsworth, managed by private security company MITIE to find that the action organised by the Anti Raids Network as a part of a day of action at all UK detention centres had already begun.

Most of the protesters had come out to the protest on the west edge of Greater London from the centre and had apparently got there earlier than they expected and had immediately rushed past the few security guards onto the private roadway between the two prisons to communicate with the detainees who had gathered around the windows of the two blocks behind their 20 ft high fences. I’d photographed earlier protests here where the protesters had walked noisily around the Harmondsworth block (strangely on the Colnbrook side of the complex) on the rough track around the fence, but the centre was now under new management and MITIE were determined to keep them further away.

As I arrived and talked with the small group who had remained at the entrance those inside appeared at the far end of the road, being slowly moved out by the police reinforcements who had arrived shortly before me, and I followed protesters down the road to join them.

As well as making a lot of noise with pots and pans, megaphones and kicking the solid metal bottom of the fence, the protesters also held up a large banner with a phone number so that the detainees could contact them and tell them what was happening inside. At first the police made slow progress in moving them along, but soon another police van arrived with more officers and they were able to move them quickly to the front of the complex.

After regrouping there, most decided to walk along to the public footpath that runs along the east edge of the centre. Although bushes and small trees in front of the fence made the centre almost invisible, it was easy to hear the detainees shouting from inside and for them to hear the protest. Soon phone contact was made with some of them and they were able to speak over a megaphone. As I wrote back in 2016:

“Bashir from Lebanon told us he had been held in detention for 18 months and that his wife and children need his help, but he is stuck inside, unable to see them or do anything. Indefinite detention such as this seems a clear breach of so many of the human rights that everyone in the UK should be entitled to under our Human Rights Act 1998. Treating people like our system does is simply shameful.”

Detention Centres Shut Them Down – where there is more about the protest.

Cleaners invade Barbican Centre – Barbican, London, Saturday 7th May 2016

I left to make my way to central London where Cleaners union United Voices of the World were holding a flashmob at the Barbican Centre after cleaning contractor Servest proposed making many of the cleaners redundant or severely cutting their hours and pay. As well as the UVW, the action was supported by activists from the Bakers Union, Class War, SOAS Unison, Unite Hotel workers branch and IWGB Couriers branch.

I met the cleaners close to Moorgate Station and walked with them towards the Barbican, where they burst into a run as they turned a corner and rushed into the main entrance, past a couple of security guards who had no chance of stopping the unexpected arrival. They made there way to the middle of the arts centre, to protest noisily outside the hall where customers were entering a sold-out concert of music by Yann Tiersen.

After a few minutes police arrived and told the protesters they must leave or be arrested, and after some argument they slowly and noisily made their way back towards the main entrance, with police continuing to harass them.

They continued to protest on the street outside the main entrance, and the protest was still continuing there when I left for home.

More on My London Diary at Cleaners invade Barbican Centre.