My 2024 in Photographs: The fourth and final part of my selection of images from 2024.
You can double-click on any of the images to see them larger and you can see many more pictures from these and other events in 2024 and earlier years in my albums on Facebook.
Santas, Sardines & Earth Strike: On Saturday 14th December 2019 the Santas were on BMX bikes raising money for charity, Italians were supporting a spontaneous Italian anti-fascist movement and Earth Strike, a small group of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialists against environmental destruction held their first protest in Brixton.
If you are in London today look out for the 10th BMX Life’s Santa Cruise riding around the capital in a charity ride raising money for the Evelina Children’s Heart Organisation, ECHO. There is a link for donations on the page linked.
The ride begins as it did five years ago in the graffiti tunnel under Waterloo Station and 10.30am and the dress code is Santa, Elf, Snowman,Christmas Tree or Reindeer.
So far by these rides and a number of raffles BMX Life have raised over £180,000 for ECHO and they hope that this year’s ride will be bigger than ever. When I took these pictures in 2019 there were around 700 riders.
From Leake St they moved off to Forum Magnum Square where some santas demonstrated their riding skills before the group left to ride around London.
More pictures on My London Diary at Santas BMX Life Charity Ride
The Sardines movement was a grass roots political movement which began in Italy in November 2019 after a flash mob in Bologna opposing right-wing leader Matteo Salvini packed the main square in Bologna “like sardines”.
People were appalled at the rise of Salvini because of his anti-immigrant policies, hate speech and Euroscepticism and the movement prompted other ‘sardine’ protests across Italy and by Italians elsewhere, with demonstrations, flash mobs and online actions.
14th December was declared ‘Global Sardine Day’, with similar rallies across Europe and in the USA as well as in many towns and cities in Italy. All of the speeches while I was at the event were in Italian.
The movement ended with the elections in January 2020 in the Bologna region of northern Italy, which resulted in a resounding victory for the centre-left who almost doubled the vote they had received five years earlier.
More pictures ‘6000 Sardines’ London protest.
The protest by Earth Strike South London began ther protest against environmental destruction with speeches and handing out fliers at a street stall on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Brixton Rd, where members of the Revolutionary Communist Group taking part were also selling their newspaper.
The fliers pointed out that many companies who trade on our high streets are still making a huge contribution to global warming and environmental destruction and they went on to march up Brixton Road stopping for speeches and to protest at some of the major culprits.
They began by going into Barclays Bank who still have huge investments in fossil fuels and are major backers of fracking in the UK. They ignored bank staff who told them they could not protest inside but handed out leaflets and made a speech about the bank’s activities before leaving after a few minutes.
Next stop was H&M where they pointed out he fashion industry is the second largest producer of greenhouse gases, emitting 1.2 billion tons a year and textile manufacture creates 20% of all water pollution. They stood outside and ignored a security man who told them to go away.
A couple of police officers arrived and talked to the protesters who assured them that their protest would be peaceful. The officers then went away.
The protesters moved on to EE where they pointed out mobile phones and other similar electronic produces all need minerals such as Coltan, and the fight for these is behind the horrific wars that have taken place in the Congo region. Mining companies are also huge exploiters of African labour, create large amounts of pollution. lay huge areas to waste and evade taxes on a huge scale.
Further along the road they stopped briefly to point out that Boots avoids paying taxes in the UK, cheats the NHS and sells palm oil products made by clearing forests, destroying ecosystems. They make huge profits from the NHS, and are said to have charged charged them £1500 for pots of cream they sell for £2, as well as selling palm oil products grown on land cleared from ancient forests, disrupting ecosystems and resulting in the loss of species including orangutans.
At Sainsbury’s they reminded customers that it sells many products that harm the environment and lead to global warming, including beef that comes from ranches made by burning the Amazon Forest, destroying ecosystems and displacing indigenous tribes.
They held another protest outside Vodaphone, also a tax avoider and as well reliant on those minerals fuelling wars in central Africa before walking on to Brixton Police station.
Here they held a brief vigil for those killed by police in Brixton, including Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg who was beaten to death inside the police station in 2008.
I left the group here as they were to continue their protest at shops on the opposite side of Brixton Road.
More pictures at Earth Strike South London.
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City Cleaners Strike, Cyclists mourned – A rally on Wood Street on Friday 10th June 2016 marked the third day of what became the longest strike ever in the City of London, and later at City Hall a vigil remembered 11 road users killed on London streets since the mayoral election last month, including three cyclists.
Cleaners belonging to the United Voices of the World union employed by anti-union cleaning contractor Thames Cleaning to clean the 100 Wood St offices managed by CBRE held a rally at the end of their picket on the third day of their strike.
The offices there are mainly used by Schroders and J P Morgan, both large and highly profitable companies, but the cleaners are on poverty wages and several union members had been sacked and others served with notice by Thames Cleaning for organising the workers to demand a living wage.
Rather than talk with the UVW, Thames’s response to the strike threat had been to spend over £20,000 in the High Court trying to get an injunction to prohibit the strikes and protests. Although the court would not stop them, they issued an injunction which set down strict conditions for the picket and protest and this left the UVW with crippling legal costs.
The UVW is a small grass roots union supported only by dues from its members and unlike the large established trade unions has little or no money to run its activities which include educational workshops as well as supporting its members in the workplace and at employment tribunals. Those who perform duties for it are paid the London Living Wage for the time spent and there are no highly paid union officials. The union had to issue an emergency appeal for cash – and received support from people and union branches across the trade union movement.
One aspect of the injunction was that any protest connected with the strike had to keep at least 10 metres from the doorway of the offices. Of course picketing is covered by strict trade union laws and a lengthy code of practice that requires it to be as reasonably close as possible to the entrance and exit, and limits it to six or less clearly identified pickets with a supervisor (and possibly also a union organiser) behaving in a peaceful manner.
The protest took place over a carefully measured 10 metres away on the opposite side of the street after a picket which had begun in the early morning when the cleaners would normally have arrived for work. The strike continued for 58 days before the UVW was able to announce that a satisfactory agreement had been reached with the employer and all further action was ended.
There are four posts about the Wood Street Strike on My London Diary for June (and more in later months) :
UVW Cleaners on Strike in City
Day 3 UVW Wood St Cleaners Strike
UVW Wood St Strike Day 10
UVW Wood St Strike continues
Although London had an impressive purpose-built County Hall on the south bank just downstream of Westminster Bridge, this was sold off when Margaret Thatcher vindictively disbanded the Greater London Council, leaving London rudderless for 14 critical years. After the Greater London Authority was created in 2000, it was without a proper home for two years before leasing and moving into a purpose-built oddly spherical building by Norman Foster in the misleadingly named ‘More London’ currently owned by the Kuwait sovereign wealth fund who disguise themselves as St Martins Property Investments Limited.
Many saw the move to the new building as a failure of purpose by the Labour government in noy re-acquiring County Hall for the new London-wide authority – but then Labour under Blair continued most of Thatcher’s policies rather than move away from her individualist greed-based approach towards one getting back to the social welfare which had been at the heart of post-war Labour.
London’s City Hall moved in 2022 to Kamal Chunchie Way, Newham, E16 into the former ‘The Crystal’ exhibition centre beside the northern end of London’s ‘Dangleway’ cable car, though this is expected to close fairly soon as no replacement sponsor has come up to keep it running.
Sadiq Khan had retaken London as a Labour Mayor on May 5th 2016, with a decisive win over Conservative Zac Goldsmith and the Green candidate Siân Berry trailing badly in third place. Since then, 11 people had died on the streets of London, roughly around the average for that period in Greater London (in 2019, the total for the year was 125.)
Protests are – at least theoretically – not usually allowed in ‘More London’, but this one was hosted by Green Party London wide Assembly Member Caroline Russell, a member of the GLA Transport Committee and organised by London Women on Bikes (LWOB), #LondonBusWatch, Westminster Living Streets and BMX Life. Of the 11 who died, 3 were cyclists and the others were on foot.
Most road deaths are not ‘accidents’ but “happen because road users make mistakes, often made harder to avoid because of poor vehicle or road design. Many of them result from a lack of proper facilities for pedestrians and cyclists in a road system which prioritises getting motorised vehicles from A to B as fast as possible rather than safety. Some are caused by the failure of police to enforce road traffic law – for example on advanced stop lines at traffic lights.”
One of the cyclists killed was BMX rider Dan ‘Cash’ Stephenson, hit by a bus on the Strand during a BMX Life charity ride and many other BMX riders had come to the vigil, wearing tartan ribbons in his memory as he always rode in tartan. There were a number of speeches and then the names of those killed were read, followed by an eleven minutes of silence when those at the vigil were invited to stand in silence or to lie down, with or without bikes, in a silent ‘die-in’.
As the vigil came to an end and people were beginning to leave we were all called back for a highly emotional moment when Dan ‘Cash’ Stephenson’s daughter spoke through tears about her father.
Housing activists Focus E15 had been an irritant to Newham Council and its mayor Robin Wales ever since the group of young mothers fought the threat to close their hostel and scatter them across the country away from family and friends. Their high profile campaign with direct actions gained national coverage and admiration and after their succesful fight they continued as a ‘Housing For All’ campaign giving support to others with housing problems, particularly in their London borough of Newham.
Every Saturday the group hold a street stall on Stratford Broadway on a wide area of pavement outside Wilko every Saturday for over 2 years offering advice to those with housing problems and drawing attention to the failure of Newham Council to sensibly address the acute housing problem in the borough.
In 2015 there were around 5,000 people living in temporary accommodation despite 400 homes in good condition empty on the Carpenters Estate close to the centre of Stratford which the council began clearing around ten years previously in the hope of selling the site for development. They continue to oppose the council policy of attempting to force those needing housing out of London and into private rented property in towns and cities across the country- Hastings, Birmingham, Manchester etc – and even in Wales, socially cleansing the borough which now has large new developments of expensive high rise flats.
A week earlier, Newham Council’s Law Enforcement officer came with police to continue their harassment of the street stall, telling them they were not allowed to protest and threatening to seize their stall, sound system, banners and other gear. Focus E15 resisted but police seized the table and threw it into the back of their van. A few days later, the council having realised the seizure was illegal wrote to the campaign asking them to reclaim their table. Focus E15 asked for it to be delivered back to where it had been taken, and had already organised this ‘Free The Table’ rally with people coming to defend the right to protest. That table didn’t arrive but others had come with them for a ‘tablegate’ protest.
Back in Westminster, the Campaign Against Climate Change was protesting against the inadequacy of the COP21 Paris deal, which sets the target temperature rise too high and has no way to enforce the measures needed by carrying a ‘red line’ banner across Westminster Bridge.
The protest with a 300 metre length of red cloth and the short rally beforehand emphasized that “the world needs to take urgent action to keep fossil fuels – including shale oil, with fracking now shown to be as dirty as coal – in the ground, or at least only to be extracted as chemical feedstock rather than fuel, and an increased urgency in the transition to renewable energy. While a few years ago that might have seemed expensive and not feasible, the economics of energy generation have changed rapidly with green energy rapidly becoming the cheaper source. But huge vested interests still lie behind the dirty fuel lobby.”
Climate Activists Red Line protest
As darkness fell, refugees, solidarity campaigners and Syrian activists at a Downing St vigil demanded justice for refugees, opening of EU borders to those fleeing war and terrorism and a much more generous response from the UK government. Six years later many of us remain ashamed and disgusted at the miserable response of the Tory government to refugees from Syria and more recently from Afghanistan. The UK has been so much less generous than many other countries and is increasingly adopting a more hostile attitude to asylum seekers, particularly now those attempting to cross the English Channel.
A strong wind made it difficult to keep the candles for this vigil alight, and though eventually this was solved by using plastic cups as wind shields it made the candles less photogenic.
Christmas Solidarity Vigil for Refugees
Santas in London
While I was photographing the climate protest on Westminster Bridge, a large group of Santas on BMX bikes rode across and I rushed to photograph them. Later I found this was an annual BMX Life Christmas ‘Santa Cruise’ in aid of ECHO, a small charity helping kids with heart conditions.
Later as I walked through Trafalgar Square on my way to catch a bus I came across more Santas, coming to the end of the their ‘Santacon’ which I described a few posts back as a “day-long alcohol-fuelled crawl through London”. I’d been too busy to bother with going to photograph the event earlier in the day, but spent a few minutes taking pictures before seeing my bus approach and running to the stop.
BMX riders gathered in Leake At under Waterloo Station in the graffiti-covered tunnel to wait for the start of Santa Cruise 6, a charity ride by santas on BMX bikes raising money for a Children’s Heart Hospital by BMX Life, now in its sixth year.
With best wishes for Christmas and the coming year.