Posts Tagged ‘bedroom tax’

Death Penalty, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight

Thursday, April 6th, 2023

Death Penality, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight: Ten years ago on Saturday 6th April 2013 I photographed a Sikh vigil against the death penalty in India, a protest against the unfair ‘Bedroom Tax’ and benefit caps and demanding more social housing, Iranians calling for an enquiry into Iraqi attacks on Camp Liberty and finally a pillow fight.


Vaisakhi “Save a Live” Vigil – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Death Penalty, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight

Thousands of protesters, mainly Sikh men, women and children came to Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament to back the Kesri Lehar vigil against the death penalty in India.

Death Penalty, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight

The Kesri Lehar or ‘I Pledge Orange’ campaign, takes its name from the colour which stands for sacrifice in the Indian flag and is also the colour of the Sikh flag and the dress worn by baptised Sikhs which makes Vaisakhi such a colourful festival. It began as on-line campaign by US-based Sikhs for Justice. Most of those attending the protest wore orange turbans or scarves to show their support for the campaign.

Death Penalty, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight

There were then around 480 prisoners in Indian jails sentenced to death, and protesters feared that some were about to be hanged. These included Balwant Singh Rajoana, sentenced in 2007 for his part in a suicide bomb attack which had killed a former Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh and 17 others in 1995. He remains in jail in 2023.

Death Penality, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight

A large group from Derby had come in support of Professor Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who has been on death row in India for 18 years, for his alleged involvement in a car bomb in Delhi. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2014.

Sikhs were poorly treated when India and Pakistan were granted independence in 1947, with their homeland area being split across the border and most of those in jail are activists for an independent Sikh state of Khalistan. The India government has carried out a determined policy to stamp out Sikh separatists and Beant Singh who was assassinated is held by Siks to have been responsible for the extra-judicial killing of over 25,000 Sikh civilians during his period of office.

More at Vaisakhi “Save a Live” Vigil.


No to Bedroom Tax & Benefit Caps – Downing St

Death Penalty, Social Housing, Iraqi Killing and a Pillow Fight

The Counihan-Sanchez Family Housing Campaign from Kilburn organised a protest opposite Downing St against the unfair Bedroom tax and benefit caps which are effecting so many people and called for the GLA and London councils to build more social housing.

They and others spoke at the campaign about the problems in getting councils to provide proper housing, and the failures of our benefits system which leave many destitute and some desperate enough to kill themselves.

As I commented, “The huge housing problems in London come from the failure over the past thirty years to provide social housing for the many low paid workers that support the city and keep it running, with a housing benefit system that has simply acted as a subsidy for private landlords and driven up rents. The cap on benefit will do nothing to solve the problem, but just make life difficult or impossible for the poorest in our society. We need more social housing and an end to poverty pay and of course more jobs.

Ten years on things are certainly no better. Further changes in benefits including the move to Universal Credit have increased problems for many, local authority budgets have been further cut and the cost of living crisis has hit many more people. We do have more food banks, but many of these are finding it hard to cope with demand.

More at No to Bedroom Tax & Benefit Caps.


PMOI Protest Iraqi killings – Downing St

Also protesting at Downing Street were the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI). They called for an enquiry into the Iraqi attacks on Camp Liberty in February and previous attacks which have killed and injured many of them.

The PMOI, also known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) was founded in 1965 and took part in the 1979 Iranian revolution which deposed the Shah. Soon after they were in armed struggle with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and had to take refuge in neighbouring Iraq, where Saddam Hussein gave it refuge.

During the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq they agreed a ceasefire with the US and gave up their arms – which included 19 Chieftain tanks – and became the majority in the Iranian parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), with its base in Paris.

In Iraq the roughly 5000 MEK fighters were confined in the refugee Camp Ashraf, guarded by the US military and declared by the US as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The camp was transferred to Iraqi control at the start of 2009, and in 2012 those remaining were transferred to the former US military base Camp Liberty in Bagdhad, renamed Camp Hurriya.

There had been many attacks by Iraqis on these camps, with deaths, injuries and arrests. In the most recent on 9th Febuary 2013, Iraqi mortars and rockets killed at least seven MEK members. The MEK has appealed to the UN Secretary General and the US for help and was at Downing Street to ask the UK government for support.

PMOI Protest Iraqi killings


Feathers Fly in Trafalgar Square – Trafalgar Square

This had been designated World Pillow Fight day by the urban playground movement and this pillow fight was one of around 90 such events in cities around the world.

The urban playground movement aims to make cities into more public and social spaces by encouraging unique happenings like this pillow fight. It aims to help people move away from “passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television” and to consciously reject “the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space.” They hope this will result in “a global community of participants, not consumers.

Despite once company bringing a team of young women and handing out prominently branded free pillows, this remained large an unbranded event, and hundreds turned up with their own pillows and cushions to take part.

An earlier pillow fight had been planned for Hyde Park, but relatively few people had turned up and park police were able to prevent it taking place. But the numbers here – over 500 – made it impossible to stop. As well as the participants there were rather more who simply stood and watched. Which went against the spirit of the event, meant to be something to take part in rather than a spectacle.

It started on time and a great deal of fun was certainly being had, with some at least of those taking part adhering to the ‘rule’ not to attack photographers. At first the air was clear, but then pillows began to break up and more and more feathers filled the air. After half an hour there was a brief break and then the fight recommenced, but I left for a nearby pub where the air was clearer.

Feathers Fly in Trafalgar Square


Against Worldwide Government Corruption – 2014

Wednesday, March 1st, 2023

Against Worldwide Government Corruption
Anon and Mitch Antony at the Ecuadorian Embassy

The march from Trafalgar Square to the Ecuadorian Embassy on Saturday March 1st 2014 wasn’t a huge event, although its aims were all-embracing. Those attending were appalled at the state of the UK and the world and believed that a better world is possible if only we could get rid of the greedy and corrupt who currently are in change – the party politicians and their governments, the bankers and the corporations, the warmongers and the spies.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

If only. While I share many of their views and aspirations, those in charge are in charge because they have the power, the money, the control of the media, the armies and more and are not about to give them up willingly.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

Politically the only real challenge to them has come from people like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Saunders and the establishment made mincemeat of them with no-holds barred dirty tricks, false claims, lies and misrepresentation. And even if Corbyn had been elected – despite many in his party conspiring against him to throw the 2017 election it was a close-run thing and a united party would have won easily – he would have found it impossible to implement many of his policies.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

Those coming for this protest want things that many want – and which would – like Corbyn – have wide popular support. As I wrote “they want justice and a fairer society, one that doesn’t oppress the poor and disabled, that doesn’t spy on everyone and doesn’t use the media and the whole cultural apparatus as a way of keeping blind to what is really happening.

On My London Diary I unusually report quite a large chunk of a speech at the event by one of the organisers, Mitch Antony of Aspire Worldwide, which I seldom do. Usually I’m too busy taking photographs to pay a great deal of attention to the speeches at events, and at most just jot down in longhand a few significant phrases, never having managed to learn shorthand. I did use to carry a small voice recorder, and nowadays could do it on my phone, but listening and transcribing often hard to hear speeches is too time-consuming.

The ‘Mike-Check’ of many Occupy-inspired protests where short phrases are repeated by the crowd, often as an alternative where amplification is either not available or prohibited – as in much of the area around Parliament – does make it easier to follow and report, as does the repetition in Antony’s speech, which concluded with the series of statements below.

We march against Global Government Corruption
We march against ideological austerity
We march against privatisation for profit
We march against the bedroom tax
We march against bankers bonuses
We march against the corrupt MPs
We march against state spying on the people
We march against state controlled media
We march against government misrepresentation
We march against warmongering
We march against global tyranny
We march against state sponsored terrorism
We march against the military industrial complex
We march against the militarisation of the police
We march against the suppression of alternative energies

Unfortunately since 2014, we’ve seen almost all of these things on the increase, and Julian Assange, then inside the Ecuadorian Embassy is still imprisoned, now in our maximum security jail, Belmarsh, awaiting the Home Secretary’s decision on whether to extradite him to the USA where he faces a 175 year sentence for the ‘crime’ of publishing the truth about war crimes, corruption and climate policy.

Trafalgar Square, once a public square, has increasingly beeen hired out for commercial events, and was being got ready for one the following day, which meant that the advertised meeting point for this march was unavailable, but there was room just across the road in the island at the top of Whitehall. Some trying to attend gave up looking for it, but others persisted and slowly the numbers grew – and after some speeches set off.

It was a very visual event, with many interesting characters taking part, some well-known to me from earlier protests. Its route took it down Pall Mall and on to Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge where for a short while they joined a protest outside the store by the Campaign Against the Fur Trade.

At the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange was holed up in a small flat (the embassy itself is only a few rooms in a larger building) there were too many for the small pen opposite, but they refused in any case to keep to this, soon swarming across the road. The march had attracted an over-large police presence, and this was perhaps the only place some of them were needed to occupy the steps in front of the crowd.

The protest continued here for around an hour in support of of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers and over the continued refusal to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador, something that seems to be an personal vendetta by Home Secretary Theresa May. Policing this has been an expensive business and by the end of 2013 had cost the UK taxpayer around £5.3 million. Perhaps May should have been made to pay.

The protesters hadn’t finished and were marching back to Parliament Square for yet another rally, but I needed to leave and file my report and pictures from the protest – and to get some dinner.

Much more on My London Diary at Against Worldwide Government Corruption.


Disabled Protest at BBC in London

Friday, September 2nd, 2022
Disabled Protest at BBC in London
“Hands OFf” protester Andy Greene tells BBC secuirty

Disabled Protest at BBC in London: On Monday 2nd September 2013 I went with disablement protesters, some in wheelchairs, who were protesting at Broadcasting House in London at the BBC’s failure to report truthfully the effects of government cuts, particularly on the disabled. They blocked the main BBC entrance for an hour, with some locking themselves to the doors.

Disabled Protest at BBC in London
DPAC activists meet in McDonalds near the BBC

The BBC eventually called the police, who arrived not long before the protest was to end, and when they told the police this, the police stood back and watched until they did pack up and leave. Of course the protest was only a minor inconvenience to the BBC as there are alternative entrances which people were able to use.

They join hands before going to the BBC

At one point a BBC TV cameraman turned up who had been asked to film the protesters. I joked with them that perhaps he would be able to sell his footage to ITV news as it was most unlikely that it would be shown by the BBC. And I was correct in that there was no mention of the protest at all on BBC news programmes. Perhaps a few years later the footage might appear in some feature about disabled people.

The protesters took turns in speaking out about the failure of the BBC to report the real hardship caused by ATOS assessments and the withdrawal of benefits, benefit cuts and caps and the bedroom tax. All were fed up with the BBC repeating the lies and half-truths of government and asked why the real problems and numerous deaths from the austerity programme and the protests over these were not being properly reported.

Outside the main BBC entrance

The situation was critical for many poor and disabled people, with over 500,000 having to resort to food banks set up by churches and charities to fend off starvation. The protesters chanted ‘BBC, Tell the Truth’ and requested someone from the BBC to come and discuss the issue with them – but no one would.

They made clear they were not asking for special treatment for the disabled, but for full, accurate and impartial reporting – something the BBC once had a reputation for, but sadly no more.

They were joined by chance by activist comedian Mark Thomas who had been inside the BBC when they arrived. Some had recently met him during his ‘Mass Miracle’ performance outs Atos’s Edinburgh office which had been a part of the previous months Edinburgh fringe. He was persuaded to speak briefly and gave his support to the protest, praising the protesters for coming to make their views known to the BBC.

I have mixed feelings about the BBC which still does produce some fine programmes but also I think has failed in many ways. Although they are supposedly independent they are very much an establishment mouthpiece and they very much work from the point of view of the wealthier parts of our class-ridden society.

BBC Security failed to persuade them to move

Journalist Emily Maitlis has recently spoken out about the ‘Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC’ and their misguided approach to impartiality which led, for example, to climate deniers being given equal prominence to the huge body of scientific evidence over the extreme dangers of climate change.

Protesters took turns to speak about the effect of the cuts

Maitlis is clearly an accomplished journalist and presenter with a long and successful career. But she was in a very well paid post at the BBC, is married to an investment manager and lives and works in a very different world to the great majority of the British people. At least she was one of relatively few in such positions who was educated at a state school (though certainly not a bog-standard one) before going to Cambridge.

Eventually police arrived – and protesters told them they would leave shortly

But for years it has been clear that we can not rely on the BBC for a comprehensive view of events in the UK and around the world. If you want to be well-informed about what is happening and why you need to look and listen to other sources – including the BBC’s own World Service, and other UK and foreign news services (which often have a very different bias), as well as alternative UK media such as Double Down News, Novara Media and The Canary.

But the BBC has increasingly come under threats from governments who control its purse-strings – if at a slight distance. I don’t pay a licence fee because I don’t view TV but do listen to BBC radio for an hour or two most days, though usually with half and ear while doing other things. The BBC is still much better in many ways than the commercial alternatives and in a different league to those in some other countries – such as the USA.

More pictures at DPAC at BBC – Tell The Truth.


UK Uncut Party against Freud

Tuesday, April 13th, 2021

Protesters meet at Kings Cross Station

Not Sigmund, but his great-grandson, a millionaire merchant banker responsible for government welfare reforms. The ideas behind many of the changes in the benefits systems which are having such disastrous effects on the lives of many and particularly those with disabilities, impoverishing many, driving some to suicide and driving the enormous growth in the need for food banks come largely from the work of one man, David Freud, now Lord Freud. A modern-day Scrooge promoting Victorian ideas, the man who launched a thousand foodbanks. Rather more, over 2000 by 2021.

They came with a notice of eviction for Lord Freud

Freud went into journalism after his PPE degree at Oxford, working for 8 years at the Financial Times before becoming a merchant banker. It was Tony Blair who, impressed by his work raising finance for Eurotunnel and EuroDisney brought him into politics in 2006, asking him to produced a report on the UK’s welfare-to-work system. His 2007 report called for the involvement of private companies paid by results to get people, particularly single parents and those suffering from long-term illness and disabilities back into work and for a single benefit to replace the various benefits for working age people, combining Housing Benefit, Job Seekers allowance etc.

UK Uncut had brought a removal van and cardboard boxes, but…

His ideas were taken up enthusiastically by New Labour and incorporated into a White Paper in 2008, by which time Freud was an adviser to Gordon Brown’s government, but in 2009 he became a member of the Conservative Party, who made him a Lord and a shadow minister under David Cameron, becoming in the 2010 Coalition government Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Police prevented the protesters reaching the house

There he began a programme against people on incapacity benefits, lone parents and the self-employed whose earnings were low, who he said were enjoying a lifestyle of living off benefits. After the 2015 election he was promoted to Minister of State at the DWP and given the job of expanding the Universal Credit scheme, retiring at the end of 2016.

Listening to songs and speeches on the road outside the house

On Saturday 13th April 2013 I went with UK Uncut supporters who travelled from Kings Cross to hold a lively but peaceful protest in the road outside Lord Freud’s home in Darmouth Park, Highgate against the bedroom tax, another of his ideas to disadvantage the poor. At the same time protesters from DPAC (Disabled Persons Against Cuts) visited the home of Ian Duncan Smith and delivered an eviction notice there.

At the party there was street theatre, games, a quiz and speeches about the bedroom tax and other measures against those on low incomes and benefits that Freud was bringing in. The bedroom tax hits particular groups such as foster carers, disabled people and single parents many of whom will be unable to meet the extra rent and will face eviction, including many now in homes with special adaptions for their disabilities. In social housing there simply are not the smaller properties available that the act is designed to force people to move into.

People are also hard hit – particularly in London where rents are high – by the strict limit of the benefits cap. Other measures, including cuts in legal aid and council tax benefits and the end to disability living allowances will also cause real distress, and those benefits that remain are getting a real terms cut by below-inflation increases. Among those speaking at the event were Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and journalist Owen Jones.

Who wants to evict a Millionaire?


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Deaths, Bedroom Tax & Feathers

Tuesday, April 6th, 2021

After a day resting and recovering from our 3 day walk along the Thames Path in 2013 I was ready to go up to London again on Saturday 6th April.

Sikhs had come to London at Vaisahki for a protest against the “ongoing and, disturbing atrocities that are being committed in the Republic of India, that, infringe the basic human rights of the minority communities, which includes but is not limited to the Sikhs, Christians, Muslims and Dalits (India’s untouchables).

In particular the Kesri Lehar (I Pledge Orange) campaign was protesting against the death penalty in India, with over 470 prisoners in Indian prisons on death row, though actual executions are rare. The House of Commons shortly before this protest had debated and agreed a backbench motion welcoming the Kesri Lehar petition and calling on India to abolish the death penalty.

One of those on death was Balwant Singh Rajoana, sentenced for his part in a suicide bomb attack which killed a former Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh and 17 others in 1995. Sikhs say that Beant Singh was responsible for the extra-judicial killing of over 25,000 Sikh civilians in a brutal attempt to eliminate Sikhs calling for an independent state.

Balwant Singh Rajoana was sentenced to death in 2007 and was due to be hanged in 2012, but execution was stayed after some Sikh organisation appealed for clemency. But in 2013 there were renewed demands for his execution. This did not happen and in 2019 his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Campaigners also called for the release of Professor Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who has been on death row in India for 18 years, for his alleged involvement in a car bomb in Delhi in 1993. They say there is no evidence to connect him with the attack. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in March 2014.

A rather smaller protest at Downing St had been organised by the Counihan-Sanchez Family Housing Campaign from Kilburn against the unfair Bedroom tax and benefit caps which are effecting so many people and called for the GLA to build more social housing. The family’s own problems with Brent Council have made them very aware of the huge problems faced by many others across London and elsewhere and how cuts and sanctions have had a cruel impact on so many.

Also at Downing St, members and supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) were calling for the UK government to support an enquiry into Iraqi attacks on Camp Liberty in Baghdad where its members are held. They had been given refuge in Iraq by Saddam Hussein and gave up their arms when the US invaded Iraq in return for US protection. But the US hand over control of their camps to Iraq in 2009 and there have been a series of attacks on them by Iraqi security forces sympathetic to Iran, with over over 50 being killed, more than a thousand injured and many arrests.

Later in 2013 the United States organised a move of the roughly 3,000 members of the group to a new base in Albania, providing a $20 million donation to the UN refugee agency to resettle them. The USA has continued to support them as a government-in-exile for Iran and they are also apparently supported by them in covert operations continuing in Iran against the current Islamic regime. There are groups of the PMOI and supporting organisations in a number of European Countries and the UK as well as in the United States, though they are generally thought now to have little support in Iran.

It was good to leave what had been rather intense protests and go on to something in a much lighter mood in Trafalgar Square. I think the first International Pillow Fight Day was in March 2008, when I photographed it in Leicester Square. In 2013 the event, organised by the urban playground movement, was taking place in 90 cities across 30 countries.

The aim of the event is to get people away from “passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television” and to consciously reject “the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space.” The organisers hope this will result in “a global community of participants, not consumers.

The authorities frown on it, possibly as a subversive activity but perhaps because it makes something of a mess, as pillows inevitably break and feathers fly, leaving the ground covered with them after the event. Or perhaps they are just killjoys. Royal Parks police had prevented a fight in Hyde Park earlier in the day but the Heritage Wardens were overwhelmed by the numbers who had come to Trafalgar Square and were unable to stop. A small group of Westminster Council workers were standing on one edge ready to clean up afterwards.

The feathers and dust do make these events something of a health hazard, and it would have made sense to wear a face mask – but back in 2013 these were only seen on Japanese tourists. Probably a once a year exposure to dust and feathers isn’t a huge risk, but this year they did rather get down my throat and I withdrew once the air was thick with them, deciding I’d taken enough pictures.

Feathers Fly in Trafalgar Square
PMOI Protest Iraqi killings
No to Bedroom Tax & Benefit Caps
Vaisakhi “Save a Live” Vigil

Hunger, Housing and Injustice

Monday, March 29th, 2021

My work on Saturday 29th March 2019 began in north London at Bruce Castle Park in Tottenham, where the indefatigable Rev Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty had organised a march demanding living incomes and decent truly affordable homes, calling for an end to the bedroom tax, the housing benefit cap, unfair taxes, hunger and cold homes.

The Reverend Paul Nicolson who died peacefully on Thursday 5th March 2020 aged 87 had long campaigned on these issues, and had commissioned the work on poverty that helped groups such as London Citizens and Unison to persuade the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone to introduce the London Living Wage.

His Christian principles led Nicolson to found the Zacchaeus Trust, an anti-poverty charity providing frontline services on Social Security benefits, housing and homelessness as well as the campaigning organisation TAP, and he supported and spoke at many protests calling for justice for disabled and others on low wages and often inadequate benefits.

I left the march as it passed Tottenham Police Station on its way to a rally at Tottenham Green to make my way to Kilburn, where the Counihan Battlebus Housing For All campaign, along with the TUSC Against Cuts and Unite Community were holding a protest in Kilburn Square over child hunger and housing problems, calling for rents to be capped and for everyone to have a home.

Children played a large part in the protest and were having fun, but also making a serious point, with placards “Going to school hungry is not fair!” As I pointed out in my rather long article on the protest:

Children going to school hungry is a direct result of government policy and its inhumane (they call it ‘tough’ to make it sound positive) sanctions policy. What we need is not this kind of vindictive approach but more jobs and an end to poverty wages. And it would be far more productive to attack the huge sums involved in tax evasion and tightening up the rules on tax avoidance than the relatively small amounts of benefit fraud or the largely mythical workshy.

The journey from Kilburn to Parliament Square was fortunately a simple one on the tube and I arrived as students and staff from Oasis Academy Hadley came from Enfield to protest against the planned deportation of one of their students, 19-year-old Yashika Bageerathi. She had come to the UK with her family in 2011 to escape a dangerous situation in Mauritius and was in the final year of her A level course, in which she was expected to get high grades.

The Home Office decided that since she was 19 she could be deported without her family, and had already detained her in Yarl’s Wood ten days earlier. Two deportation attempts failed when both British Airways and Air Mauritius refused to fly her to Mauritius, possibly because of the huge public campaign to allow her to stay and complete her exams.

It was impossible to see why Home Office minister Theresa May was so keen on this deportation – other than wanting to seem to have a tough policy on immigration, and as I wrote, morally their position seemed indefensible. But deport her they finally did.

Despite spells in Yarl’s Wood which disrupted here education and the deportation which took place six weeks before her A Level exams, she was able to take the exams and passed with straight A grades. She then issued a statement thanking everyone – both in the UK and on her return in Mauritius for their support, and clearly stating “I have no desire for a life in the public eye any longer” and that she wished to begin a new chapter in her life.

More at:
Fellow Students Fight for Yashika
Kilburn Uniform Day
Mothers march for justice