Tag: black

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out! 2016

Five years ago the People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism organised a march through London as a response to the referendum campaign conducted by many Brexit campaigners on an anti-immigration platform which had provoked an upsurge in racism and hate attacks on Black and particularly Muslim people online and on the streets of Britain.

The marchers met outside the BBC, as I wrote ” in the forlorn hope that they might for once cover a protest in Britain properly” but of course they ignored the thousands on their doorstep. Probably they were too busy giving Nigel Farage a quite disproportionate amount of publicity and air-time, along with the Labour plotters against Jeremy Corbyn – who sent a message of support to the marchers and like them showing solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers.

This banner and the placards for me summed up the message of the march, a demand for ‘Hope Not Hate’ and for people of all backgrounds to join hands in love and respect and say ‘No Racism’. We’ve recently seen a huge backlash against racist remarks against footballers in the English team showing that people across the country oppose racism, whether from the far right or Tory ministers and MPs who denigrate footballers who ‘Take the Knee’.

Later I managed to get to Parliament Square for the rally at the end of the march with speakers from many organisations, including an asylum seeker as well as politicians and activists. It was a sunny day and there was a warm and pleasant atmosphere in the large crowd listening and applauding the speakers.

I’d waited on Regent St as the march set off for some time until the last of the several thousand marchers had passed me, then hurried off to the HQ Offices of CBRE in Henrietta Place, where cleaners from the strike at 100 Wood St, managed by CBRE, had broken away from the march to stage a flash mob, along with supporters including United Voices of the World General Secretary Petros Elia and Bakers Union (BFAWU) National President Ian Hodson.

I’d arrived too late to go with them into the foyer, whose large glass doors were firmly locked when I arrived, but after a few minutes photographing through glass the doors were opened I was able to take a few more pictures as they got ready to leave. They went on to rejoin the march, but I went off to look for the English Defence League whose protest had been called to oppose that by the People’s Assembly.

I don’t like photographing extreme right-wing groups such as the EDL. It gives them publicity, which they don’t deserve as it exaggerates their importance. Generally their protests are small and their extremism represents a very small fringe of our society, though racist attitudes unfortunately are much more widespread. But rather more directly they are generally not nice people to be near. They shout and scream messages of hate, often in vile language, and routinely threaten me as I take photographs. I’ve been spat at and even, fortunately not often, grabbed, pushed and punched.

While with most protests I can move freely through the event, at these I need to keep a safe distance away. I’m usually glad that police are present, and without them I would be assaulted and my equipment smashed, but police sometimes make any photography virtually impossible. While I’d managed to cover the march I could only see brief glimpses of the rally which followed through several lines of police with several hundred of them surrounding perhaps a hundred protesters. I gave up then and took the tube to cover the anti-racist rally.

EDL march and rally
Cleaners Flash Mob at CBRE London HQ
End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out!

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.

Shutdown Knife Crime

Operation Shutdown is a campaign to end the deaths from knife and gun crime on our streets, which have been rising over the last few years. Most of those in the campaign are people who have suffered the pain of losing a relative – brother, son, nephew, uncle – or friend to knife crime.

The great majority of the victims are young men, in their teens or twenties, and although many are black what they virtually all have in common is that they come from working class families mainly living in deprived areas.

Almost certainly the biggest driver behind the increase in deaths has been austerity, with the huge cuts this has forced councils to make in youth services and other vital support for families. Some of the violence on the streets is certainly gang-related, often concerned with drugs, but those killed are often people on the periphery or innocent bystanders.

It would be impossible not to empathise with the suffering of mothers, fathers and other relatives as they talk about their loss, but I don’t always feel that some of the measures they suggest would do anything to curb the growth of knife crime. I have very little faith in their idea that the government’s emergency committee COBRA considering the problem would have any real impact, and it could well worsen the situation.

Of course there are things that they call for that would help. Restoring the cuts in vital community services is an obvious need, and reversing the cuts in police numbers could help too, though perhaps only if this led to more sensitive and informed community policing.

We need also to look at ways to reduce the power and influence of gangs, which would almost certainly include an evidence-led reform of our laws about drugs, something which succesive governments have resisted.

After a rally opposive Downing St, Operation Shutdown marched to Westminster Bridge, where they presented wreaths to a police officer and hold a silence in memory of PC Keith Palmer, killed outside Parliament by terrorists before going on to block the bridge and hold a further rally.

More at Knife crime Operation Shutdown

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.

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