Brent council | >Re-PHOTO

Bash The Rich & Diwali: On Saturday 3rd November 2007 I photographed Class War attempting to march to David Cameron’s house in Notting Hill before going to Alperton for the Brent Diwali Parade. Here I’ll use – with some slight changes and some comments – what I wrote in 2007 about these events on My London Diary.

Bash The Rich – Class War – Notting Hill

Bash The Rich & Diwali - 2007 — *Fitwatch get between the police FIT team photographer and the event*

‘Bash the Rich‘ is probably still a popular slogan [and the title of a highly readable memoir by Ian Bone, subtitled ‘The true-life confessions of an anarchist’ still available], but the anarchist demonstration in Notting Hill which marched to Tory leader David Cameron’s house on Saturday attracted only around a hundred supporters (I think quite a few decided they would rather stay in the pub.)

The were watched, harassed and escorted by a similar number of police, with the inevitable police photographer to goad FitWatch into action.

The police did allow the march to take place, if with a number of fits and starts, holding it for no apparent reason at various places, and it went along Oxford Gardens until it reached the junction with Wallingford Avenue, apparently withing shouting distance of Cameron’s home, although the Tory leader was sensibly miles away for the weekend.

There were a number of minor clashes between demonstrators and police, with three arrests being made, although I understand all were later released without charge.

Some of the friction was caused by a little over-keen encouragement of the marchers to move when the police wanted them to move – and I too was pushed on numerous occasions, and stopped from leaving the march for some time after I went inside the cordon.

Some of the police were also treated to considerable abuse, but most retained their good humour – as did most of the marchers.

Earlier, some had taken a walk around the area following Tom Vague‘s truly fascinating ‘Bash the Rich Class War Radical History Tour of Notting Hill‘ which had been published online by Indymedia UK as the souvenir programme for the event.

[Tom Vague is “writer and editor of the post-punk fanzine Vague as well as numerous publications on situationists, psychogeography and West London radical history.” Among these is ‘LondonPsychogeography – Rachman Riots and Rillington Place‘, described “almost as the autobiography of Nothing Hill with him as the inspired mouthpiece, his own biography mixed with that of the subject. He is the place.”

Somewhere I still have my copy of the programme, but it is still online if you sign up for 30 days free to ‘Your Media Publisher’publisher Yumpu where a number of Indymedia ePapers including this can be downloaded. It is no longer available in the Indymedia UK archive.

I left before a final rally at the end of the march to go to Alperton. ]

More pictures at Bash the Rich.

Brent Diwali Parade – Alperton

Diwali. the festival of lights, is one of the main events in the Hindu calendar and thousands of people come to watch and take part in the parade and festivities in Brent.

I arrived in time to watch some of the preparations and stayed for the start of the parade,

But then went home to watch the fireworks rather than waiting to see those in Barham Park.

[Brent is the UK’s most diverse borough by country of birth, with just over half of its residents born abroad, including many in India and other Asian countries, the Caribbean, Africa, Ireland and Eastern European countries. Until cuts in local government funding by the Tory-led government after 2010 the council funded a number of festivals including Diwali to bring communities together.

In the 2011 census almost 18% of the population of Brent identified themselves as Hindu, but many from the other communites came to join in and watch the Diwali events.]

More pictures at Brent Diwali Parade

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Hospitals, Muslims and Housing: On Saturday 6th of October 2012 I went to Shepherds Bush for a march against hospital closure, then on to Westminster for a protest against Muslim gangs and a much larger protest by Muslims against an anti-Muslim film, finally to Kilburn for a rally calling for Brent council to rehouse a homeless family.

Save Our Hospitals – Shepherds Bush

Residents of West London who were furious at proposals to close Accident and Emergency services at four of the nine hospitals in their area met at Shepherds Bush to march though Hammersmith and past Charing Cross Hospital on the Fulham Palace Road to a rally at Lillie Road recreation ground.

Under the proposals, Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith would lose nine of the 11 major types of service currently provided on-site, including the A&E, becoming a ‘local hospital’, while Hammersmith Hospital would be only a specialist unit.

A&E would only remain at Chelsea and Westminster, St Mary’s Paddington, Northwick Park, West Middlesex and Hillingdon, all five involving slow journeys over congested roads from much of the area.

As well as this march there had also been earlier marches against the plans in Harlesden and in Southall and Action. As a result of the huge public campaign then Health Minister Jeremy Hunt reprieved the A&E services at Charing Cross and Ealing, but closures went ahead at Hammersmith and Central Middlesex.

Save Our Hospitals – Shepherds Bush.

Britain First – Muslim Grooming – Westminster

A small group met at Downing St to protest against grooming and abuse of young girls by Muslim gangs, and the failure of police to properly investigate them; it was led by the extreme-right racist group Britain First.

The protest has been backed by other extreme-right groups including the English Defence League and among those taking part was Paul Pitt (Paul Prodromou) then the chairman of the South East Alliance after having been thrown out of the EDL for his association with openly racist organisations including the National Front and BNP.

In 2012 there had been high-profile cases in areas such as Rochdale which have high Parkistani populations, and the media coverage of these had produced a distorted impression that grooming gangs were largely Muslim men.

A Home Office investigation on grooming hangs published in 2020 concluded there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders, stating “Research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white“.

The small group of protesters marched to Parliament Square where they tried with little success to burn an Islamic flag, ending up by hitting it with a shoe instead.

I left them as they returned to Downing Street and went to join a much larger Muslim protest in Old Palace Yard.

More pictures at Britain First – Muslim Grooming.

Muslims against Anti-Muslim Film – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Thousands of Muslims packed Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament in a peaceful protest against an made in the USA. They called for laws to protect religious figures.

The film was a short video by Egyptian-born Mark Basseley Youssef (aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) which has prompted violent anti-American protests in various Muslim countries. Youssef was then in jail in Los Angeles as he made the film in breach of a probation order banning him from using aliases following a conviction for a bank fraud in 2010. He was later sentenced to one year in prison and four years of supervised release. He had falsely claimed the video had been funded by $5 million collected from 100 Jewish donors, and that he himself was an Israeli Jew.

In the hour I was there only one of the speeches was in English, but many of the placards were, and ‘Stop Hurting Muslims’, ‘Freedom of Speech is Not Freedom to Abuse’, ‘The Prophet is Dearer to us than our lives’, ‘Stop Islamophobia’ were clear.

As with many Muslim events this was segregated, with women being relegated to a small area in the background where they could see little of what was happening, although they could hear the speeches. All the speakers while I was there were men.

Muslims against Anti-Muslim Film.

Rehouse the Counihans – Kilburn

I took the Underground from Westminster to Kilburn where people were meeting for a march and rally demanding that Brent council rehouse the Counihan family.

Back in 2007 the family had moved from council property in Kilburn to Galway to look after Anthony Counihan’s sick father. Council officials had failed to advise him he could sublet the tenancy and instead he signed away the lease.

They returned to Brent so Anthony could take up his job as a London bus driver again when his father died. Anthony inherited 9.5 acres of land in Galway with a shack on it which brings in £18 a week in rent and when he reported this to the council they responded with an eviction order and a demand for repayment of £70,000 of housing benefit.

One council official advised the family to move back to Ireland, at the same time advising Anthony to hang on to his job as a bus driver out of the Cricklewood depot as jobs were hard to find, suggesting he should commute from Galway!

You can read more about this case in the post on My London Diary, where I comment that it “has revealed an astonishing level of both incompetence and lack of humanity among both officers and councillors in Brent Council, and some have made highly misleading or factually incorrect comments in public.“

The campaigners accuse the council of “behaving vindictively, dishonestly, and punitively towards local residents” and around a hundred came to the rally in Kilburn before marching around South Kilburn to a rally in the South Kilburn Estate, which was addressed by Isabel Counihan-Sanchez with one of her daughters and speakers representing various groups supporting the family, including trade unionists, local residents and representatives of various groups including the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group.

On the route the march stopped outside the flat which had been the home of Nygel Firminger. Harassed by Kilburn jobcentre after had various problems at work, including 3 months for which he did not get paid and a work head injury he was evicted from the flat without his medicines. Later in the day he got back into the where he was later found dead.

More on My London Diary at Rehouse the Counihans.

Tag: Brent council

Bash The Rich & Diwali – 2007