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London World Naked Bike Ride 2025

London World Naked Bike Ride

Last Saturday I photographed a couple of protests, went to a disappointing photographic exhibition, took a snap of the Red Arrows and found myself with time to spare to go and photograph the 2025 London World Naked Bike Ride at its start and then later on my way to my last protest of the day.

The first year I photographed this event was in 2006 and I came back to it in almost every year until 2014, then again rather briefly in 2019. Here I’ll post some of what I wrote about it on that first occasion and then my comments on returning to photograph it in 2019, and end with my thoughts about the 2025 ride. All the pictures in this post are from Saturday 14th June 2025.

Unfortunately Facebook’s “community standards” prevent me from publishing an album of my pictures there, but you can find a selection of images on my Alamy portfolio pages. Though you may have to search or browse a few pages to find them after I upload more work.

2006

People in over 50 cities around the world were taking place in the World Naked Bike Ride as a protest against oil dependency and car culture. In London. over 600 cyclists, along with a few rollerskaters, rollerbladers and others took part.

As a change, I congratulate the Met police for allowing the event (unlike the Brighton cops.) Police cyclists – looking rather over-dressed in their usual uniform – led the event in its ride around some of the busiest streets in central London, and kept riders safe from traffic. Most of them seemed to be amused by the event.

So too were the crowds in central London. Many obviously found it hard to believe the evidence of their eyes, but all I saw seemed amused and none offended. Riders handed out a leaflet explaining the purpose of the event and advising “if you don’t wish to see nudity, please avert your gaze – we’ll soon be out of sight,” but I didn’t see anyone following this advice. Indeed it looked like the event should attract even more tourists to the city.

I don’t have a great problem with nudity. I was brought up told we were created in the image of our maker, so feel it would be blasphemous to object about the display of the naked body, although generally we may find it more prudent to keep it covered, especially in our climate. As my pictures show, not all those taking part rode entirely naked: the invitation was to ride “as bare as you dare!”

Photographing an event like this could be awkward, but I recognised many of those taking part and they knew me. There were a few conditions, but only one person out of the several hundred made it clear she didn’t want me to take a picture, and of course I didn’t.

It was an afternoon when it was more comfortable to be without clothes than in them (so long as you had plenty of sun-screen) and it certainly made an interesting spectacle. I had chosen not to ride a bike, and just pretended to be one as I ran up Piccadilly fully dressed with the mass of cyclists. By the time we got to the top of Haymarket I was pretty much whacked, and continued by tube to Waterloo to meet the ride as it came up York Road and get a different viewpoint.

2019

I’ve never been too impressed by the protest side of this. It’s more a fun ride for people who want to ride around London with no or very few clothes on. For those of us watching on the streets it is certainly unusual and entertaining, and I think very few could be seriously upset by it. The normal response seems to be a lot of pointing and laughing.

Perhaps if it were more of a protest there would be more women taking part. This year the imbalance seemed even greater than previously, with perhaps 10 or 20 men for every one woman, though I didn’t try to make an accurate count. My pictures do tend to concentrate more on the women than the men for various reasons. To state the obvious, these pictures involve nudity. Please do not click on the link if you may be offended or if you are in a place where others may be offended.

2025

This year there were even fewer women on the ride which now seems to be dominated by male nudists, with some coming from the continent to take part. It has become an event very much more about “body positivity” than a protest about car culture and cycle safety. And it illustrated the huge anatomical variation of male members of our species.

A mere handful rode with political messages written on their bodies and even fewer with flags or posters on their bikes. There was little of the creative face and body paint and fancy dress which had enlivened earlier years. It’s an event that has lost much of its interest for me and is far more drab than my pictures, which concentrate on the things that still interest me. Perhaps this is an event which has outlived its times.

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Wimbledon, Pensions & Hammersmith – 2004

Wimbledon, Pensions & Hammersmith: On Saturday 19th June 2004 I paid a short visit to Wimbledon Village Fair before photographing a TUC protest calling for changes in pension law and better pensions in Westminster and then going for a short riverside walk in Hammersmith. There are more pictures from the protest on My London Diary, I’ll include the short text I wrote at the time about the day as well as some from the captions I wrote in 2004.

Wimbledon Village Fair

Wimbledon, Pensions & Hammersmith - 2004

Home of tennis and the Wombles, Wimbledon always strikes me as an alien implant in London by some civilisation with a time machine, a sense of humour and a very fat wallet. I dropped in to the Village Fair just to see it still existed.

Pay Up For Pensions – Trade Union Congress March and Rally

Half an hour later I was back in the real world. Where companies make off with the pension funds leaving people who have paid in to schemes for years with no pensions. where other creditors come before pension holders when companies go bust.

Where millions of lower paid workers now have no employment pension rights at all. Where women have always been treated unfairly in many respects. Where government has worsened conditions for civil servants, teachers and others. As TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber says “Those who used to have good pensions now have poor pensions. Those who used to have poor pensions, now have no pension.”

*Marchers included many workers who have already lost their pensions when their companies folded*

*Banners on the march included many union branches including those for civil servants*

*People of all ages took part; not only the old are affected by pensions.*

*Marchers included pensioners who had served in WW2*

*Women have never been treated fairly over pensions by employers or state*

*The pink pensions pig caught between Big Ben and Parliamentary Offices*

*Workers from Samuel Jones lost their pensions when the company was taken over*

*‘Protect the Pension Promise’, ‘NO to work ’till you drop”. The labour movement looks to the government to act on pensions*

*Pensioners want a better deal, and the unfairness of pension theft is widely recognise*d

Unfortunately the New Labour Government wasn’t listening and the “the great British pension theft” begun by Margaret Thatcher and taken over by Gordon Brown continued, while ineffectual legislation introduced after the scandal when Robert Maxwell stole £460 million from the Mirror pensioners continued to allow companies to steal pensions from their workers. Despite pension protection schemes, workers can still lose when companies are taken over or fail.

More pictures on My London Diary.

Hammersmith

On the way home I went for a walk by the river in Hammersmith, another area of London strongly associated with William Morris. The Funivall Sculling Club here was established in 1896 as the Hammersmith Sculling Club For Girls – the world’s first women’s rowing club – by Dr Frederick Furnivall; it went unisex in 1901. Furnival had earlier championed rowing for working men. He served as the model for Ratty, the water rat in ‘Wind In The Willows’, as well as being involved with the preparation of the Oxford English Dictionary.

*Hammersmith Mall* – The second building is the Furnival Sculling Club

*Plastic bottles and other rubbish collected up by this landing stage near Hammersmith Bridge*

The former BBC Riverside Studios – part converted to offices which were advertised by the banner at roof level. It was imaginatively redeveloped in 2014-6 to provide better public facilities, a riverside walkway and 165 flats.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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IWW Demand ‘Reinstate Alberto’, Occupy & London, 2012

IWW Demand ‘Reinstate Alberto’, Occupy & London: On Friday 10th February 2012 I came to London to photograph a rush hour protest calling for the reinstatement of an office cleaner sacked for his union activities. I came early to wander a little from Waterloo and pay a visit to Occupy London on the way there, and also took a few pictures on my way home after the protest.

IWW Cleaners Demand ‘Reinstate Alberto’ – Heron Tower, Bishopsgate

IWW Demand 'Reinstate Alberto', Occupy & London, 2012

Cleaners were protesting outside the 230 metre tall Heron Tower (now Salesforce Tower) at 110 Bishopsgate, completed in 2007 when it then was the tallest building in the City of London.

Alberto Durango
IWW Demand 'Reinstate Alberto', Occupy & London, 2012 — *Alberto Durango speaks outside Heron Tower*

The protest called for the reinstatement of IWW Branch Secretary Alberto Durango who had been sacked, victimised for his trade union activities, after the cleaning contract for the building had been taken over by a new contractor, Incentive FM Group Ltd.

Alberto who worked as a cleaner in the Heron Tower had become well known for his campaigning activities in and around the City of London, which have helped to secure better working conditions and the London Living Wage for many of the cleaners who work in London’s prestigious offices. He was then the Industrial Workers of the World Cleaners and Allied Trades Branch Secretary and in 2011 had won the fight for workers at Heron Tower to be paid the London Living Wage and an agreement with the then employer that there would be no redundancies there with any staff reductions needed being made by transfers to alternative posts.

Under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) the new employer should have continued to recognise this agreement. Instead they refused to do so and picked on Alberto, making him redundant.

The same management also controlled Exchange Tower where the IWW were carrying out a campaign to get cleaners the London Living Wage and where they have taken a very aggressive stance against the union, threatening the union members. The protesters connected Alberto’s sacking with his role there as union Branch Secretary.

This was a very loud protest with speakers using a powerful megaphone and drummers from Rhythms of Resistance adding their loud beats as office workers from Heron Tower and the many other offices in the area were making their way home in the evening rush hour.

The pavement outside the area owned by Heron Tower on Bishopsgate is relatively narrow and police rightly insisted that there needed to be a clear route along it for workers to get past without having to step into the busy road. So my 15mm fisheye lens was extremely useful, though it does make the area look much more spacious than it was.

In February the protest began a quarter of an hour after sunset, and light was fading fast. Although the City streets are generally well light both from street lighting and by the light from the huge areas of glass on the front of modern buildings I used added lighting for many of the pictures, either with a hand held LED light or flash on camera. But neither light source can cover the 180 degree diagonal view of the fisheye and those pictures rely on available light only. Its f2.8 maximum aperture helped – and it was a stop faster than the wide-angle zoom used for almost all the other images. In some at least of the pictures I think the fish-eye effect works well too.

More at IWW Cleaners Demand Reinstate Alberto.

Occupy London & Other Pictures – St Paul’s Cathedral

Although there were still plenty of tents in St Paul’s Churchyard as I walked through they were all tightly closed and the occupiers were still out protesting the music anti-piracy proposals at the British Music House in Soho.

I was a disappointed at not meeting any of them, although I hadn’t arranged to do so and it did allow me to take a few pictures of the site without any distractions, though by the time I’d wandered there taking a few pictures on the way including from the Millenium footbridge I was in a hurry to get to the Heron Tower.

After the protest at the Heron Tower I took a bus back to Westminster and made a few pictures in the subway leading from the station to the Houses of Parliament and under the Emabankment towards the Thames before walking across the bridge and to Waterloo Station.

More pictures Occupy London Still At St Pauls.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Stop the Massacre in Gaza – 2014

Stop the Massacre in Gaza – Sat 26 Jul 2014.

Following a number of incidents which had led to growing tension between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 17th July 2014 which continued until 5th August, with a ceasefire being announced on 26th August.

During the weeks of the attack over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, around 70% of them civilians, and over 10,000 seriously injured. 67 Israeli soldiers and 5 civilians were killed and 730 Israelis injured. Terrible as those numbers were, they seem small when compared with the current genocide taking place in Gaza.

Israel also systematically destroyed many homes. Wikipedia states “The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing.”

On 26th July thousands of people had arrived for a rally on Kensington High Street, as close as protests were allowed to the Israeli Embassy. Police tried hard to keep traffic flowing on what is one of the main routes out of London to the West, but soon the number of people made this impossible.

I’d arrived early and was able to get to the stage where there were to be a few speeches before the march moved off. From this platform I could see the road packed with people looking both west and east.

I listened to some of the speeches and photographed a few of the speakers, including Labour veteran Walter Wolfgang and Owen Jones before making my way with some difficulty to front of the crowd around a hundred yards east down the packed road where the main banners were ready for the start of the march.

Fortunately I was able to join with a group of those who had been around the stage, including some of the speakers, who were going through the crowd which was extremely tightly packed all across the road. By the time I arrived the area in front of the march had been cleared and I was only able to take pictures of the front of the march by leaning over the arms of the stewards as the march started.

Behind the front of the march I was able to go into the march and take some pictures as I walked back in the opposite direction towards the tube station.

Among the banners on the marchwas one carried by the Turkey Youth Union: ‘TURKISH GOVERNMENT SUPPLIES JET FUEL TO ISRAEL – ERDOGAN RESIGN’. Much of that oil was coming from ISIS, who were largely financed by their oil sales smuggled through Turkey with the help of leading members of the Turkish government.

I’d left the march to photograph an unconnected event taking place at Downing St, and walked up from there to meet the Gaza marchers as they turned into Whitehall.

The march paused for a short while opposite Downing St, but stewards again made taking photographs difficult, although the marchers – including Jeremy Corbyn – were rather more cooperative.

When the front of the march reached Parliament Square one of the stewards who recognised me actually invited me into the area in front of the march to take pictures, and I was able to photograph the marchers with ‘Big Ben’ in the background – always a good clue that this was taking place in London.

I then photographed the long rally, taking pictures of most of a very long list of speakers including Michael Rosen. I photographed over 15 of them and you can see some of the pictures and a long list of names on My London Diary.

But as usual I was rather more interested in the people and took many pictures of the crowd and people in it, as well as others in the square including the anti-Zionist Jews who walk down from North London to protest at most events in support of Palestine.

Much more and many more pictures on My London Diary:
Stop the Massacre in Gaza Rally
End Gaza Invasion March to Parliament
Israeli Embassy rally – End Gaza Invasion

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Climate Emergency Rally & Wave – 2009

Climate Emergency Rally & Wave – Saturday 5th December 2009 was probably the day of possibly the largest protest then in the UK over the impending disaster of climate change. Over a hundred organisations had come together in the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition representing a combined membership of around 11 million “from the Women’s Institute and RSPB to Christian Aid and Unison.”

This is the group which now calls itself less contentiously The Climate Coalition and organises a ‘Great Big Green Week‘ which slipped by last June without me noticing it (and I belong to several of the organisations it includes.) It’s good that a wider group is concerned about climate change, but the action over the ever increasing crisis has passed on to others such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

The next Great Big Green Week is 8th – 16th June 2024 and it would be good to see some real action, stopping down polluters, mass protests, creating news headlines every day. With now a combined supporter base of 20 million and with sister organisations in Wales, Scotland and Ireland they should be able to achieve a major impact.

The Campaign Against Climate Change had organised an annual Climate match at the time of the UN Climate talks every year since 2005 and although it was good to see a wider participation despite that huge potential and massive publicity the march was perhaps only a little more than five times the size of previous years. And the 2009 event, entitled ‘The Wave’ did seem more a stunt for the media than an informed political event. As I commented, “Surely with the backing of 11 million the coalition should be making demands, not just waving, and it’s perhaps hard to see the significance of blue hands and faces in a demonstration about global warming.” Red would perhaps have been a more appropriate colour choice than the coolest of colours.

Campaign Against Climate Change began the event with a rally at Hyde Park with speakers giving a clear political message, which I summarised in my account on My London Diary:

They stress we really need to take emergency action in the UK now, starting with the declaration of a Climate Emergency. Immediate actions should include a 10% cut in carbon dioxide by the end of 2010, a million new green jobs by the end of 2010, a ban on domestic flights, the scrapping of the roads program and a 55 mph speed limit, and an end to the use of agrofuels.
My London Diary

But the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition had absented themselves from this and met instead in Grosvenor Square, joining with those from the rally to march to surround the Houses of Parliament in ‘The Wave.’ And on a Saturday of course there were not even any MPs there to wave at – and only a few had come to take part in the protest.

More interesting things were happening on the fringes of the main event, and in some of the groups on the march, and I covered as much as I could of this, though I did miss the Climate Camp protesters who took over Trafalgar Square, who I visited briefly a couple of days later.

Rather separate from the main march was an ironic protest by around 50 people dressed as city traders representing the World Association of Carbon Traders.

The City gents including a few ‘gentesses’ and rather more bad false moustaches along with some power-dressed business women marched under the banner ‘Carbon Trading: The Final Solution‘ in a rather nasty yellow, perhaps meant to be gold, though it seemed more mustard to me.

The WACT logo – ‘CO2$’ and placards including ‘Trust Me, I’m a Banker, Capitalise On The Climate’, ‘In Markets We Trust’, ‘One Solution. Trade Pollution’, ‘Greed is Green’, ‘Carbon Trader = Eco Crusader.’ and ‘Cash In On Climate Change’, as well as the ‘Permits to Pollute’ they were handing out made their ironic intention clear, though some tourists on the pavements seemed very confused.

I recognised them despite their disguises as the Space Hijackers whose activities over the years had given a new creative face to protest; here they gave a welcome touch of ironic humour and substance to what was perhaps otherwise a rather bland if colourful event that often seemed more like a PR media stunt than a political demonstration.

Their message was of course a serious one. Carbon trading is at best an irrelevance in environmental terms, allowing ‘business as usual’ and with fat profits for some. But worse, as with all markets, it is a mechanism for allowing the wealthy to increase their domination at the expense of the poor.

Other groups also came with a serious political message, if sometimes also expressed rather rudely. For a short distance the main march was led by a black banner with the message ‘POLARIARIAT! UP YER BUM, COP 15!’ and a picture of a Polar Bear, threatened as arctic ice sheets melt and disintegrate. Stewards from the march soon came and argued with them to leave and after police intervention they moved a long way back in the march joining a few other like-minded groups. The quote from the 1987 film ‘Wish You Were Here‘ clearly didn’t fit the smooth PR presentation of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition.

Finally it was 3pm and time to wave and I was with protesters in front of Big Ben to register the time.

Some people stayed on and continued to protest in Parliament Square for another hour or so. Among them were Climate Rush whose banners were calling for Equity “EMISSION QUOTAS MUST BE PER CAPITA. THE RICH HAVE NO MORE RIGHT TO POLLUTE THAN THE POOR”. As I commented this is something that the rich – and in particular the USA – don’t accept and which was likely to prevent any real progress in the talks at Copenhagen.

I took a great many pictures over the day, and put rather too many of them on My London Diary, along with rather more accounts than usual, including some things I’ve not mentioned here. The links are roughly in the order of events:
Climate Emergency Bike Ride
Climate Emergency Rally
The Wave – Before the March
Anticapitalist Block
World Association of Carbon Traders
Marching to the Wave
The Wave
COP Out Camp Out

Climate, Malala, TUC, Workfare & Tax Cheats

Climate, Malala, TUC, Workfare & Tax Cheats: Saturday 20th October 2012was a busy day for protests in London with a huge TUC march against austerity with various groups on its fringes and other smaller protests around.

Against Austerity For Climate Justice! – St Paul’s Cathedral

The climate block of the TUC ‘A Future That Works’ march held a rally on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral before marching to join the main TUC march.

The block was joined people from Occupy London and UK Uncut who made up a ‘No cuts, no tax-dodging’ block.

The main banner called for a ‘Massive Shift’ to invest in jobs and renewable energy and there were other banners, flags and placards with the Uncut logo calling for an end to tax evasion and tax avoidance.

I left them as they began to make their way to join the main TUC march, hurrying to Downing Street for an unconnected protest.

More pictures: Against Austerity For Climate Justice!

Edequal Stands with Malala – Downing St

Members of the Edequal Foundation, an educational charity founded by Shahzad Ali and based in north London which supports teachers and students demonstrated in a show of support for Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban because of her campaigning for education for women.

She began her campaign in 2009 by writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC about life under Taliban control and was later filmed by the New York Times. She became well-known for these and other interviews and in 2011 was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and was nominated by Rev Desmond Tutu for the International Children’s Peace Prize.

Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban while returning by bus from an exam on 9th October 2012 and this made her the centre of international attention and support. After treatment in Pakistan she was transferred to hospital in Birmingham and after recovering settled there continuing her campaigning. She has since received other awards, becoming the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 when she was 17.

Edequal Stands with Malala

A Future That Works TUC March – Westminster

The TUC march for ‘A Future That Works’ against austerity was impressively large with a reported 150,000 people taking part.

I’d gone to photograph the marchers going past Parliament and up Whitehall to Traflagar Square and Piccadilly Circus. I’d begun taking pictures about half an hour after the front of the march had passed, and two hours later people were still passing me in a dense mass, waving flags and carrying banners.

Most had come with trade union groups and there were many fine union banners, but there were also others taking part. Police generally stood well back and the march with just a few trade union stewards proceeded peacefully along the route.

Quite a few stopped for some minutes outside Downing Street to shout noisily in the direction of No 10, though I think Prime Minister David Cameron was miles away. Certainly the march had no effect on his policies.

There were a few police here and at other key points, but one group on the march got special attention, with a line of officers in blue caps walking in line on each side of around 200 black-clad anarchists. Earlier I had seen one small group of anarchists being chased by a police FIT team who called in other police to surround them while they attempted to take their photographs.

Many more pictures at A Future That Works TUC March.

Against Workfare and Tax Cheats – Oxford St

Boycott Workfare were “a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare.” They say that “Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage.”

Their campaign was supported by a wide range of organisations including a number of trade union branches and several hundred people turned up on Oxford Street for their protest, including a number dressed in black and masked with scarves or wearing ‘Anonymous’ masks.

They marched to protest at shops and businesses in the area which are taking part in workfare schemes which many of those unemployed had to work without pay or lose their benefits. Many of the shops closed as the protest went part and the protesters briefly occupied others.

Although this had been planned as a ‘a fun and family-friendly action’ and was led by a samba band, while it started peacefully a number of scuffles broke out when police tried to stop or arrest those taking part, and by the time it ended many on both sides were clearly angry.

There was a nasty moment after the protesters had crowded inside a hotel which uses people on workfare on Great Marlborough Street. They made some noise but there was no damage and they would almost certainly have moved on after a few minutes as there were other places to visit. Police entered and tried to forcibly push the protesters out, while police outside were preventing them from leaving. I fortunately avoided injury when pushed down the stairs by police.

From there they returned to Oxford Street and tried to rush into a number of shops known to be using workfare and some also known to be avoiding payment of huge amounts of UK tax. Some got their shutters down and police managed to get to others and block the entrance before the protesters arrived – doing the protesters job for them in closing the shop.

The Salvation Army, one of a number of charities involved in the scheme got a kid glove treatment – with just two protesters standing in the doorway and making short speeches before the protest moved on.

At Marble Arch the protester turned around to march back up towards Oxford Circus, and police tried to put a cordon across the street to stop them. But the gaps between officers were too large and most protesters simply walked through the gaps when officers grabbed one of two of them. Some of the police clearly lost their tempers and many protesters were shouting at them to calm down.

One officer who had tackled a protester was apparently injured and a group of police grabbed a protester and pushed him roughly down on the pavement in front of a shop. As I reported:

While several police forcefully pushed him to the ground, others stood around them. They seemed to see their main purpose as preventing photographers and others from seeing what was happening, with one woman officer in particular following my every move to block my view, while I could hear the protester on the ground shouting that he was not resisting and asking why they kept on hurting him. From the brief glimpses I got as police attempted to prevent me seeing what was happening they appeared to be using entirely unnecessary force.

The protest was continuing but I’d seen enough and taken as many pictures as I could over the day and it was time to go home.

More at Against Workfare and Tax Cheats.

NHS, Shaker, Drax, Gurkhas, Herbalists & Bikes

Wednesday 24th April 2013 was a busy day for protests in Westminster. And there was one in the City.

Protest the Privatisation of NHS – Old Palace Yard

NHS, Shaker, Drax, Gurkhas, Herbalists & Bikes

The House of Lords was debating NHS regulations which imposed full competitive tendering on the NHS, a key part in the escalating backdoor privatisation of the NHS.

Unite had set up a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ game show hosted by people wearing ‘David Cameron’ and ‘Jeremy Hunt’ masks and listing the likely costs of various procedures due to the tendering system. They feared “that the coalition’s NHS policies, including a multi billion pound funding squeeze coupled with a massive reorganisation, will destroy the 65 year old health service, paving the way for a new marketised system where paying up to £10,000 for maternity costs or £13,450 for a new hip is the norm.”

Unite said that already more than £20 billion of health costs go to private companies, who take their decisions on the basis of profit rather than the interests of patients. The Lords were debating a motion for the annulment of the regulations on the grounds that Parliament had been assured “that NHS commissioners would be free to commission services in the way they consider in the best interests of NHS patients“.

Protest the Privatisation of NHS

Bring Shaker Aamer Home – Parliament Square

Following a petition with 117,387 signatures to bring Shaker Aamer home from Guantanamo, a debate had been held that morning by MPs in Westminster Hall, where most of the 17 MPs who spoke called for his release, including Shaker’s own MP, the Conservative MP for Battersea, Jane Ellison, who also came out to speak with the protesters.

Unfortunately such debates, although they do increase pressure on the government to take action have no actual consequences. But perhaps it did help to persuade the government that it had to ignore the embarrassment of British agents at being complicit in his torture by the US and make clear to the US government he should at last be released after being held for 12 years, long after he had been cleared of any involvement in terrorism. As I noted, “The facts about torture are now largely public and totally indefensible and it is time for justice to be done.”

Bring Shaker Aamer Home

Drax Biomass Threat to our Planet – Princes St, CityDrax AGM, wpp

*Green Party leader Natalie Bennett speaking at the protest*

I had to take the tube to the City to attend a protest outside Gocer’s Hall where the AGM of Drax, the huge coal-burning power station near Selby in Yorkshire was being held. Drax was planning to convert half its capacity to bio-mass and become the largest biomass-burning power station in the world, using 1.5 times the total UK wood production per year.

The wood pellets would come mainly from devastating clear-cutting of highly diverse forests in North America, and although re-grown will eventually remove the same amount of carbon this will take a hundred years or more – during which time the carbon Drax emits – roughly 50% greater than burning coal – will be contributing to disastrous global warming.

Drax already has a disastrous impact in South America were land is being grabbed from traditional communities for open cast coal mining, usually with complete disregard for their human and civil rights, cleared of its biodiverse forests and diverted from food production – often in places where food is desperately needed. Conversion to wood-burning at Drax will result in even more environmental and social destruction.

The incentive to change to wood-burning is that under current government policies Drax will receive huge government subsidies from funds intended to promote renewable energy, diverting funds from schemes for energy production and conservation that actually will help to combat climate change.

Drax Bioma s s Threat to our Planet

Gurkhas Call for equal treatment – Old Palace Yard

I returned to Westminster, where Several hundred Gurkha pensioners and supporters were holding a rally on the 198th anniversary of the first recruitment of Gurkhas into the British Army to deliver a petition to David Cameron asking for equal treatment to other British Army ex-soldiers.

British Army Gurkhas who retired before 1997 were granted the right to settle in the UK in 2009, but their pension remains only a fifth of that of other British soldiers, and is impossible to live on in the UK, being based on the cost of living in Nepal.

Gurkhas Call for equal treatment

UK herbalists Want Regulations – Old Palace Yard

Also in Old Palace Yard were UK herbalists, both traditional and Chinese, protesting against the failure of the government to bring in the statutory regulations they had promised to do by 2012.

Under EU regulations from 2004, traditional remedies then in use could continue to be provided until 2011, but after that had to be covered by national policies to regulate their safety and effectiveness. Although the government had promised to set this up, it has so far failed to do so, and they are now unable to prescribe many commonly used and effective common herbal remedies.

UK herbalists Want Regulations

Get Britain Cycling Report Launch – Parliament Square

Finally, in Parliament Square, Christ Boardman, a gold medal cylist in the Barcelona Olympics posed with MPs from the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group to launch their report ‘Get Britain Cycling.’

This calls for more to be spent on supporting cycling and that it should be considered in all planning decisions. They want more segregated cycle lanes and for the 30mp urban speed limit to by reduced to 20mph. Children should be taught to ride a bike at school and the government should produce and annually report on a cross-departmental Cycling Action Plan. Cycling has enormous advantages both individually and for us all in better health and reducing pollution with reduced health spending.

Get Britain Cycling Report Launch

Bike Theft, Tributes, Housing Benefit, Fascists & UAF

Saturday 1st April 2017 turned out to be a busy day in London, though the buses in my picture on Westminster Bridge were not then going anywhere – and the driver of the No 12 at the front of this row was taking a rest from his seat. Various protests and the police had brought traffic to a stop. As in many other months you can see more of my pictures taken as I travelled around in a London Images section.

Motorcycle Theft Protest Ride – Westminster

I’d vaguely wondered about paying another visit to the Ace Café on the North Circular Road at Stonebridge, but not riding a bike I would have felt something of an outsider, and the journey back to central London by the Bakerloo line wold have taken me around 40 minutes and I would have missed other things that were happening.

Organised gangs are still making rich pickings around the whole of London – and one of my neighbour’s had his bike targeted a few months ago, but the two men cutting through a substantial lock were spotted from the house opposite, and ran away when they were challenged halfway through.

In 2017 there were reported thefts in London of 8,131 motorbikes, 4,121 moped and 3,218 scooters, a total of almost 15,500 thefts. That amounts to one for every 7.5 powered bikes registered in the city. Motorcyclists came with a petition to the Mayor of London and the Home Secretary to give the police greater resources to tackle this crime, and for them to give it higher priority, for more ground anchors in bike parking bays and for tougher sentencing of offenders.

Motorcycle Theft Protest Ride

Flowers for London Victims – Westminster

Ten Days after the Westminster terror attack by a deranged driver, people were still stopping to look and and photograph the flowers for the victims, around the lamp standards on Waterloo Bridge, along the whole of the front of Parliament Square and in front of New Scotland Yard in its new building on the Victoria Embankment, where an eternal flame also remembers all police who have died while doing their duty.

There was a long strip of tributes along the front of Parliament Square opposite were PC Keith Palmer was killed to him and the others who died.

More pictures Flowers for London Victims.

Youth protest over housing benefits loss – Parliament Square

A grass roots group of young people, ‘#1821Resist’, were in Parliament Square to protest against the scrapping of housing benefit for young people which coming into force on this day.

They say that under Tory rule since 2010 homelessness has doubled and that this change will continue to leave vulnerable people without homes, making it almost impossible for them to get into work or education.

Youth protest over housing benefits loss

Iraqis protest US killing in Mosul – Downing St

Iraqis, mainly women dressed in black, were protesting opposite Downing St against the killing of civilians by US and Iraqi forces during the assault on Mosul. Attacks on the city, then held by the Islamic State (ISIL) begun in October 2016 and continuing until ISIL were defeated there in July 2017. According to Wikipedia (and the BBC) “The battle was the world’s single largest military operation since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was considered the toughest urban battle since World War II.”

The women said that hundreds have been killed by US air strikes after being told to stay in Mosul; people were stopped from leaving were then bombed. The protest was organised by a group of Iraqi women, one of whom told me a nine-year old relative in Mosul had died earlier today. The photographs they held up showed some of the results of the US bombing.

Iraqis protest US killing in Mosul

Britain First & EDL exploit London attack – Westminster

Extremist right-wing groups including Britain First and the EDL (English Defence League) were quick to exploit the London terror attack to fuel their anti-Muslim and anti-migrant racist propaganda, both organising marches. Police had imposed restrictions on both marches confining them to particular short routes to rally points on the Emabankment. London Antifascists and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) who had come to opposed them were only allowed to hold a static protest.

I was able to photograph Britain First at their designated meeting point in the taxi area outside Charing Cross station where their leader Paul Golding arrived with a van full of flags and handed them out, while his deputy Jayda Fransen was busy talking to the media.

The EDL were supposed to be meeting in Trafalgar Square, but were actually gathering in their usual pub, Lord Moon of the Mall, close to the top of Whitehall. Police were busily and rather forcefully keeping back a crowd of antifascists against the shops on the opposite side of the road, injuring a few of them in the crush. Police behind them were shouting at them to go forward, but police in front were preventing them from doing so.

I photographed the EDL on the pavement in front of the Lord Moon of the Mall over the shoulders of a line of police protecting them, but left as police pushed them back inside the pub and returned to Britain First at Charing Cross station where they were getting ready to march.

There were few people on the street as they marched down to the Embankment for a rally, but a couple of women shouted at them calling them racists. Police stopped the marchers from moving towards them, but they had to refuse a Britain First fake-news team who tried to stop them for an interview.

I listened to the rally for a few minutes then tried to go back up Northumberland Avenue to photograph the EDL march, but it was hard to see for police surrounding it. The police quickly went to grab one woman who started to shout at this march.

But the police relaxed their cordon when the marchers reached their rally pen on the Embankment and I was able to walk past them and began to take pictures.

But after a couple of minutes one of the stewards saw me and objected to me being their and called on the police to remove me, after which I had to photograph over the shoulders of the police. One of the officers came to tell me off for having been in with the marchers, but I simply told her I had every right to be there. Shortly after I decided to leave as I had taken enough pictures, and I decided to go to photograph the counter-protesters.

More at Britain First & EDL exploit London attack.

UAF protest extreme right marches

Police had decided that the UAF could only hold a static protest on the Embankment rather than their intended and already advertised march to there from South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, despite ‘facilitating’ the two extreme-right marches. The UAF had turned up at South Africa House on the morning and police had slowly with unnecessary force pushed them down the march route as I’d witnessed earlier in the day.

From the EDL rally I could see and just hear the Unite Against Fascism rally taking place perhaps a hundred yards away down the Embankment, shouting ‘Fascist Scum off our streets’ and other slogans. From the speeches I had heard at the two right-wing rallies both groups were clearly racist and Islamophobic and among the marchers I recognised many faces from clearly fascist organisations I had photographed in the past.

I could see and hear that there were speeches at the UAF rally but not make out what was being said from the distance and over the noise. I tried to walk down towards the UAF but police would not let me take the short direct route despite my showing my press card.

I had to walk back and out onto Whitehall and then around to get to be back of the UAF rally, and by the time I got there many of the counter-protesters had left for home and the speeches had ended, though there were still rather more around than at the two right-wing rallies combined.

UAF protest extreme right marches

Students March against Fees and Cuts – 2012

*A student displays the #DEMO2012 t-shirt*

One of the main issues that led to a huge slump in votes for the Liberal Democrats in the 2015 General Election was their support as a part of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government for increasing student fees. In 2010, there were 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, but their number fell to 8 in 2015, and has only recovered slightly in the two following elections, with currently 11 MPs. Of course the drop is exaggerated by our first past the post electoral system which is grossly unfair to minority parties, but it still reflects an enormous drop in public confidence in the party.

Students March against Fees and Cuts - 2012

Before the 2010 election, the Lib-Dems had been seen as a moderate centrist party opposed to both Tories and Labour, but their actions in the coalition shifted perceptions; in many eyes they became seen as simply a rather lightweight branch of the Conservative Party and certainly no longer a credible opposition.

It was the Labour Party who had introduced student tuition fees under Blair’s New Labour government in 1998, setting them at £1,000 a year. New Labour again raised them in 2006 to £3,000. But in 2012 the Tory Lib-Dem coalition tripled them again, to £9,000 – so totalling £27,000 for a normal 3 year course. The fees were stated to be a maximum, but it was soon what almost all universities were charging.

After World War 2, most local authorities had provided maintenance grants for students, enough to cover their living costs for the roughly 30 weeks a year of most courses. The 1962 Education Act made this a legal obligation; the grants were means-tested with a minimum of around a third of the full grant, with wealthier parents being expected but not obliged to make up the difference. But all of us from poorer families got the full grant.

When the Tories under Mrs Thatcher replaced these grants with student loans in 1980 there was an immediate fall in university applications – the 1981 figures showed a drop of 57% from 1979. The loan system was a boon to students from wealthy homes, taking the obligation from their parents for supporting them – and at the start the terms of the loans made it an advantage for rich students who had no need for them to take them out. Since then the terms of the student loans have worsened considerably.

Many have since found that with rising costs the maintenance loan available isn’t enough to pay for their accommodation and food and some need to take out more expensive loans than the student loan to keep alive during their course. I’ve seen too the long queues for the free food offered by Hare Krishna in Bloomsbury at lunchtimes, and students have also had to go to food banks and other places offering support.

Many students now work during term-time, some putting in long hours in bars and other part-time work which must affect their studies. When I was a student, taking paid work could have led to me being thrown off my course, although of course I did work during vacations, and needed to, as these were not covered by the grant.

Higher education students are not the only ones who were suffering from the cuts made by the Coalition government. Younger students, 16-18 year olds still in schools, sixth form colleges and FE, were angry at the loss of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) of up to £30 per week, which many needed to pay their fares to college and to buy midday meals while studying.

And as I pointed out “Students are also concerned about other cuts being made by the government which will affect them, and also by the increasing efforts to privatise the education system at all levels. There were also many placards pointing out the class-based nature of our education system and our government, with a cabinet stuffed with privately educated millionaires who appear to have little idea of how difficult times are for ordinary people and no real sympathy for them.”

Since the student protests of November and December 2010 the police had become very worried about the possibility of violent scenes – often provoked by police action – at student protests, and were out in force. The march organisers too had agreed a route with the police which would cut down the possibilities, taking the marchers across Westminster Bridge to end with a rally in Kennington Park, well away from any government ministries and Tory and Lib-Dem party headquarters. This was a peaceful protest although the roughly 10,000 attending were clearly very angry and small groups who attempted to break away from the protest in Parliament Square where the march stopped for a photocall and many sat down on the road were fairly soon moved on.

There were still a few sitting on the road or standing around outside parliament when I decided to leave; it was raining slightly and dark clouds suggested a downpour was on the way. I decided nothing more was likely to happen at Westminster and that a rally in pouring rain was unlikely to be of great interest and started on my way home.

More at Students March on Parliament.

Pride, Class War Protest and Paedophiles

Pride, Class War Protest and Paedophiles – Saturday 27th June 2015 in London. And a rather fine stencilled grafitti which I’ve not seen elsewhere – and I suspect was very quickly removed. Banksy couldn’t have done a better job, though I could perhasp have got the bottom of the image in my picture. And I would have preferred a red bus, though at least the blue one means the bus stop stands out better.

Pride Parade – Baker St

Pride in 2015 had a little more political edge than in recent years as this was the 30th anniversary of the support it gave to the miners strike and there were rather more trade union and other groups trying to reclaim the event as the radical festival it was until around the late 1990s.

My photographs from 2015 reflect this, and as usual I paid little attention to the large corporate groups who now provide sponsorship which enables them to dominate the parade and advertise their services to the crowds who line the route.

Despite this, as I wrote in 2015, ” It seems a long way from the event when I first photographed it in the early 90s when Pride was a protest.”

Pride is also a considerably over-photographed event, with people with cameras and yet more with mobile phones swarming over the area before the parade starts. I don’t object to this as photography is very much a democratic medium, but it would be nice if rather more of them were polite enough not to walk in front of me when I’m taking pictures.

I note in one of the captions, “I got the queen to pose for me with a friend. And found I now had collected another ten photographers at my shoulders“. This is one of the few events where I do occasionally ask people to pose. This is something I think has little or no place in photographing protests and documenting events, but at Pride many pose as soon as they see the camera pointed at them, so I feel OK to sometimes ask them to perform a little differently, perhaps with a different background, as in the picture above.

I didn’t stay as long as usual photographing people before the parade began as I wanted to go and meet Class War who were planning a little diversion.

Pride Para d e

Class War protest ‘corporate pinkwashing’ – Piccadilly Circus and Pall Mall

While many criticised the corporate takeover of Pride, and some had tried to oppose it by joining in the march as protesters, Class War had decided it was time for a more direct approach.

I met them outside a pub close to Piccadilly Circus and photographed them as they protested outside Barclay’s Bank at Piccadilly Circus against corporate sponsorship of Pride in London, briefly closing the branch as the parade approached. After this short protest which hardly attracted the attention of the police, they rolled up the banner and ran, following along the route and looking for opportunity to protest at the march itself.

On Pall Mall they found a place where the crowds were thinner and they could take over a section of the barriers along the road for the event. And as the flag bearers at the front of the parade came in sight they pushed those barriers aside and rushed out onto the street with their banner.

I rushed out with them and photographed them as for a minute or so they led the parade until Pride Marshals and police guided them back behind the barriers again.

They continued to protest with megaphone and banner for a few minutes as the parade arrived, but when they saw a squad of officers heading towards them they rolled up the banner and hastened away. I followed some down into the subway where they lost the police, coming out at another subway entrance. They began to discuss further interventions at the event, but I think probably went to a nearby pub after I said goodbye and left. Later I heard police had continued to follow some of the others for half an hour or so, but made no arrests.

Class War protest ‘corporate pinkwashing’

Victims & Survivors call for Justice – Downing St

It’s hard to assess some of the claims made by conspiracy theorists about paedophiles in high places and the activities of the family courts. Clearly the activities of people such as Jimmy Saville and Sir Cyril Richard Smith MBE MStJ DL have provided plenty of fire behind the clouds of smoke and many of those at this protest had very disturbing personal stories to tell.

So while many prominent claims have been found to be false, there also seem to be many cover-ups and failures to properly investigate; all too often the response by the authorities appears to be to close ranks, make false claims against the complainants and deny the realities.

Someone once said that around 30% of conspiracy theories turn out to be true. I’ve no idea whether this figure is accurate, but certainly it reflects the truth that some are. Its just very difficult to decide which.

While we can be confident that there are no chem trails (just atmospheric conditions that make normal combustion products visible), that Magna Carta doesn’t give us much in the way of freedoms now, that 9/11 actually happened and Trump lost the election some others are less certain. And while there are clearly not 76 paedophile MPs, there may well be a handful or so still lurking in the House of Commons, and certainly there have been some very questionable decisions made by family courts – or at least they would be very questionable if we were allowed to know about them.

Victims & Survivors call for Justice