Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: Bicentenary: On Sunday 25th March 2007 I was in Brixton and Clapham where commemorations were taking place on the 200th anniversary of the bill to abolish the Atlantic slave trade being given royal assent by King George III on 25 March 1807. It was a great step forward but despite this bill, slavery “remained legal in most of the British Empire until the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.”
The previous day I had photographed the “Anglican Church’s walk of witness to mark the abolition. The Church Of England has much to repent, with many of those who profited greatly from the ships that transported some 12 million African people over the years being pillars of the church and supporting it financially.“
As I continued on My London Dairy:
“When Christopher Codrington died in 1710 he left his Barbados plantations to its missionary society, who at least at first continued his regime of forced hard labour, punishment with the lash, iron collar and straight-jacket, and, at least for some years to brand its enslaved Africans across their chest with the word “society”. Even though the church claimed to have made various improvements in conditions, 4 of every 10 Africans bought by the society still died in their first 3 years there in 1740. Despite the efforts of abolitionists, slavery continued until made illegal by the 1833 act, which provided the church with a very large financial reward in compensation.”
This procession had been accompanied from its opening service in Whitehall Place by a small group who had walked from Hull, the birthplace of William Wilberforce who had led the fight for the abolition in Parliament. They had taken turns to march in a yoke and chains and ended their walk in Victoria Gardens at the Buxton Memorial Fountain erected in 1865 to mark the ending of slavery in the British Empire in 1834.
Drexel Gomez, the Archbishop of the West Indies, symbolically removes the yoke
After photographing a ceremony on Lambeth Bridge acknowledging the 2704 ships that left the port of London to carry enslaved Africans the march then continued in a silent remembrance of those who died in the ocean crossings to Kennington Park. I left them to photograph a second march coming to join them from Holy Trinity, Clapham.
The walk from Holy Trinity Clapham was just coming into Stockwell when I joined it.
On Sunday 25th I began at Windrush Square in Brixton where another commemorative event was taking place, organised by the Brixton Society. After drumming, gospel music and speeches about the abolition people planted bulbs in the grass and there were prayers, The event then moved on to celebrating the contribution of those of black Afro-Caribbean origin to life and culture in Britain now with a number of speeches and then more gospel singing.
Planting bulbs
After a lunchtime walk by the Thames I went to Clapham, the spiritual and physical home of the abolition movement, where the London Borough of Lambeth had organised a commemorative walk.
Holy Trinity, Clapham, the home of the Clapham Sect which was the centre of the abolition movement.
This started at Holy Trinity Church, where the Clapham Sect at the centre of the movement, including William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, John and Henry Thornton, John Venn, Zachary Macaulay and others had worshipped. But as tour guide Steve Martin pointed out Clapham was also home to many who had made fortunes from the trade and opposed the abolition, with both sides worshipping in the same parish church.
One of the three groups of walkers at the probable site of the African Academy
You can read much more about these events on My London Diary, and I won’t copy it all here, but here are my two opening paragraphs:
There is no escaping that all of us who live in Britain – whatever the colour of our skin or our personal history – are now benefiting from the proceeds of the trafficking of African people and their forced labour in our colonies over around four centuries. Fortunes made from slavery helped to build many of the institutions from which we still benefit, including many of our great galleries and museums. Slavery founded many of our banks and breweries and other great industries, and made Britain a wealthy nation.
But it is also true that the same wealthy elite that treated Africans so callously exploited the poor in Britain. My ancestors were thrown off their land and probably some were imprisoned for their religious beliefs by these same elites. Almost certainly some of my forebears were a part of the movement that campaigned against slavery and called for and end to the trade in human beings, although equally certainly they had little or no political power at the time, and probably no vote.
Lambeth Protests Massive Council Cuts: it was already half an hour after sunset when I joined several hundred Lambeth residents who had turned up outside Lambeth Town Hall where later that evening on Wednesday 23rd Feb 2011 councillors were set to approve drastic cuts to council services. I took a few pictures without flash but soon realised I would need to use flash for the rest of the event.
Lambeth is a large borough in south London with over 300,000 residents, roughly a third of whom were born outside the UK. It includes some wealthy areas but also had eight areas among the 10% most deprived in the country.
One of the few taken by avaialable light
Lambeth Council has been under majority Labour control since 2006 and in the 2010 elections Labour won around 70% of the council seats. One of the councillors who spoke at the protest to loud applause was Kingsley Adams, now a former Labour party councillor after being thrown out of the party for opposing the cuts and is now an Independent Labour councillor.
And after I switched to flash
The council argues that the cuts are an ideological policy forced on them by the Tory-led Coalition Government rather than a real need to make savings, but the protesters from Lambeth Save Our Services say that they are imposing them with a much greater enthusiasm and severity than is necessary. As one banner read, “Labour Cuts in Lambeth? Thatcher would be proud!”
Speakers pointed out that there were many ways that the council could have made the necessary savings without cutting services, including bringing some private services back under council control and ending the expensive use of consultants and high levels of expenses paid to councillors.
They point out that the chief executive’s salary alone at £270,000, which seems quite excessive and is one of the highest in the country is enough to keep a library running, and compared this to the Prime Minister’s salary of £142,500.
The council had large reserves some of which they suggested could be used to keep services running while the council made more sensible plans for long-term savings. The also said that large savings could be made by paying back the council’s pension deficit over a longer period.
The cuts are indeed draconian, expected to result in one quarter of the total staff – around 1000 council workers – losing their jobs. Among those to be lost completely are park rangers and school crossing patrols, many regeneration schemes and cultural events, and the noise nuisance service.
There will be massive cuts in services for children and young people, adult social care and the upkeep of estates – where rents will be raised. Discretionary travel passes for adults with mental health problems will go.
Levels of street cleaning, and the maintenance of roads, cemeteries and parks will be cut. There will be massive cuts in education, including the merging of Lambeth College with Lewisham College. Three of the borough’s four public toilets will close, and drastic cuts in libraries will probably mean at least four closing.
I left as some of those at the protest were going into the council offices to make their case, shortly before the council meeting was scheduled to start, though there were still several hundred on the pavement outside.
Later I heard that the protesters had occupied the meeting room for a couple of hours. But the council simply held the meeting in another room and approved the plans for cuts of £79 million without them being able to make their case.
Save Brixton Arches: 3rd Anniversary Action. On Sunday 4th February 2018 campaigners marked the third anniversary of the announcement by Network Rail of their plans to redevelop the Brixton Arches with a rally and a three minute silence.
Railway Arches are an incredibly important part of our towns and cities. When the railways were being built in the 19th century putting the lines on viaducts was a cheaper option for the railway developers than laying tracks at ground level, so we got long viaducts coming into the centre of London and elsewhere.
Andrew Cooper’s banner for the event and his sculpture of the 4-headed monster that is Lambeth Labour Council
These arches became both an important feature of the city landscape but also a dynamic boost to the economy, providing low-cost premises for small businesses to start and grow until they needed to move out to larger premises and new generations of businesses would take over these spaces. In particular they provided premises for various car repair companies and in more recent years small breweries. And in Brixton in particular a large range of low-cost shops.
The arches used to belong to the railway companies, and on privatisation passed to Network Rail. But around a dozen years ago Network Rail saw the potential of selling them off to the private sector. The arches were a relatively small earner for them, bringing in a little over £80 million a year in rents.
They offered 150 year leases to the private sector, at first without any consultation with the businesses and communities served by them, something the sale for £1.46 billion was criticised for in a 2019 report from the National Audit Office. Network Rail retained the freehold so they can continue to have access to the arches if they need. The rents for the arches were expected to increase by 54% over the next 3 or 4 years, making them too expensive for many tenants.
Also in 2019, the House of Commons public accounts committee criticised both Network Rail and the Dept of Transport for the sale which means “future tenants have fewer rights – and existing tenants no longer have an option to extend their leases.”
Committee Chair Meg Hillier is quoted in The Guardian as saying “Ultimately, government took a short-term decision to sell a profitable asset to plug a funding gap. We remain unconvinced that the sale represents the best value for the public and the public-sector finances in the long term.“
Brixton has been particularly hard hit by Network Rail’s plans to make more cash from the arches as those along Atlantic Road and Brixton Station Road were an important shopping area in the centre of the town – often described as the ‘heart of Brixton‘.
Network Rail ganged up with Lambeth Council to tear this heart out from the town by refurbishing thes arches which would enable them to “triple the rents, insert shiny new businesses and provide Brixton with even more over-priced bars and restaurants than the town’s citizens can shake a stick at.”
Spoken Word artist Potent Whisper – hear his #OurBrixton
The Council ignored a long campaign to keep the arches, and failed to do anything to protect the interests of the tenants or of nearby market traders who feel they will be adversely effected while the refurbishment is taking place – and with possible dangers to the general public from potentially dangerous airborne particles during the removal of asbestos.
The work was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2016, but was only started the day after this protest in February 2018. The Save Brixton Arches campaign were calling for it to be abandoned as the plans for the work fail to include proper fire safety precautions and will severely restrict access by emergency services to local businesses and the railway and station.
Protesters form a human chain in front of the arches
They also called for an investigation into local Labour MP Helen Hayes. Until shortly before she was elected in 2015 she had been a senior partner in the firm Allies & Morrison which had made the recommendation for the ‘improvement’ of the arches in 2013, though she has denied any personal involvement. A&M have been involved in many contentious ‘regeneration’ schemes with developers and councils across London which opponents describe as social cleansing.
The boards behind used to be thriving businesses – forced out
Network Rail sold its arches to ‘The Arch Company’. 50% owned by US-based private equity firm Blackstone and TT Group, one of the UK’s largest, privately owned property investment firms who since then as well as raising rents have refurbished 1,400 arches. They have also made some efforts to reduce the impacts of the rent rises and negotiated a tenant charter. Blackstone are now said to be ‘on track’ to buy out TT and take full control of the arches.
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.
Santas BMX Life Charity Ride
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.
One rider had ignored the dress code, though he was wearing a Christmas jumper
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.
‘6000 Sardines’ London protest – Parliament Square
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.
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.
Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike: On Saturday 23rd September 2017 hundreds marched from a rally in North London against the council’s plans to make a huge transfer of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease, which would result in the demolition of thousands of council homes, replacing them largely by private housing. I left the march close to its end taking the tube to Brixton where strikers at the were marking a year of action with a rally.
Haringey Against Council Housing Sell-Off
People had come to a rally and march against Haringey Council’s ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’, HDV, which proposed a £2 billion giveaway of council housing and assets to a private corporation run by Australian multinational Lendlease.
This would result in the speedy demolition of over 1,300 council homes on the Northumberland Park estate, followed by similar loss of social housing across the whole of the borough.
Similar ‘regeneration’ schemes in other boroughs such as Southwark, Lambeth and Barnet had resulted in the loss of truly affordable housing, with the result of social cleansing with many of the poorer residents of the redeveloped estates being forced to move out of these boroughs to areas with cheaper private housing on the outskirts of London and beyond.
London’s housing crisis has been made much worse by the activities of wealthy foreign investors buying the new properties and keeping them empty or only occasionally used as their values rise. Among the groups on the march were those such as Class War and Focus E15 who have down much to bring this to public attention.
In London it is mainly Labour Councils who are in charge and responsible for the social cleansing of the poor and the loss of social housing that is taking place on a huge scale.
Along with speakers from estates across London where similar schemes are already taking place there were those from Grenfell Tower where cost cutting and ignoring building safety and residents’ complaints by private sector companies including the TMO set up by the council created the disaster just waiting to happen.
On My London Diary I quoted part of a speech by then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn a few days later at the Labour Party conference which condemned current practice on estate ‘regeneration’ and housing of which the HDV is the prime example.
“The disdain for the powerless and the poor has made our society more brutal and less caring. Now that degraded regime has a tragic monument: the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower, a horrifying fire in which dozens perished. An entirely avoidable human disaster, one which is an indictment not just of decades of failed housing policies and privatisation and the yawning inequality in one of the wealthiest boroughs and cities in the world, it is also a damning indictment of a whole outlook which values council tax refunds for the wealthy above decent provision for all and which has contempt for working class communities.”
“Indeed it has. And high in the list of that brutality is the estate regeneration programme that threatens, is currently being implemented against, or which has already privatised, demolished or socially cleansed 237 London housing estates, 195 of them in boroughs run by Labour councils, which vie with each other for the title of ‘least caring’, and among which the councils of Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Haringey could give the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council a lesson in disdain, privatisation, failed housing policies and the inequality they produce. But it’s good to hear Corbyn discard the Tories’ contemptuous terminology of ‘hardworking families’ and ‘ordinary people’ and finally – if belatedly – refer to the ‘working class’.“
They go on to comment less favourably on Corbyn who they say had ignored “the estate regeneration programme that is at the heart of London’s transformation into a Dubai-on-Thames for the world’s dirty money” and so had failed to perceive that “every estate undergoing demolition and redevelopment could produce a similar testimony of inept and incompetent local authorities, bad political decisions and a failed and broken system of democratic accountability.”
The grass roots revolt against the HDV plans resulted in a political change and the scrapping of the plans. But the Labour Party has also changed radically, and those very people responsible for those ‘least caring’ local authorities in London and across the country are now in government.
A quite different vehicle was the star of the show in Brixton, where BECTU strikers at the Ritzy Cinema were celebrating a year of strike action with a rally supported by other trade unionists, including the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and other union branches.
The strikers continued to demand the London Living Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay, for managers, supervisors, chefs and technical staff to be properly valued for their work, and for the four sacked union reps to be reinstated.
After speeches in English and Spanish, came the surprise. The vehicle in Brixton was the newly acquired ‘Precarious Workers Mobile’, a bright yellow Reliant Robin, equipped with a powerful amplifier and loudspeaker, and after more speeches this led the protesters in a slow march around central Brixton.
Various actions at the Ritzy had started three years before this, when workers called for a boycott of the cinema. In 2019, after an industrial tribunal had won some of their claims BECTU suspended the boycott and the Living Staff Living Wage campaign although still continuing to fight for equal pay and against other dismissals.
Trans Pride & Anti-Racist March in Brixton: Five years ago today on Saturday 14th September I photographed the start of London’s first Trans+ Pride march before taking the tube to Brixton for an anti-racist march and rally.
London’s First Trans+ Pride March
Hundreds met at Hyde Park Corner to march along Oxford Street to Soho Square in London’s first Trans+ Pride March, was both a celebration and protest for trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals and their family, friends and allies.
They marched to increase the visibility of the trans+ community and to protest against the continuing discrimination in the UK and around the world against trans people.
Many carried placards and posters with messages such as ‘Trans Rights Matter‘ and ‘Trans Rights Are Human Rights’.
There has been increasing transphobia in British media, with trans people being attacked on the streets, and this has continued to grow since 2019.
The charity Stop Hate UK reports that in “2020/2021, 2,630 Hate Crimes against transgender people were recorded by the Police, an increase of 16% from the previous year” though they say the actual number of incidents is much greater as 88% of transgender victims of serious incidents did not report them.
Incidents reported to Stop Hate UK were of “verbal abuse, threatening behaviour, harassment and anti-social behaviour, such as having derogatory terms shouted at them, having invasive or inappropriate questions asked of them or facing harassment from neighbours, co-workers or strangers. “
In 2018 Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists had disrupted the Pride March in London with an anti-Trans protest and there were fears they might try to disrupt this march. There were many feminists supporting trans rights on this march.
I took the tube from Green Park to Brixton where Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group were protesting against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants.
They called for freedom of movement, the closure of immigration detention prisons, and an end to Brexit which is being used to whip up immigrant-bashing and nationalism to establish a Trump-style regime in Britain under Boris Johnson.
I missed the start of the rally in Windrush Square, but heard several of the speakers including Eulalee who has been fighting the Home Office for 16 years to remain in the UK with her family and was wearing a ‘More Blacks! More Dogs! More Irish‘ t-shirt.
People picked up their posters and marched the short distance to busy Brixton Market.
Here they stopped for more speeches, with many shoppers stopping briefly to listen and taking the fliers that were being handed out.
The protest seems to get a very positive reception in the market.
Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie joined the protest to speak about his ‘LDNlovesEU‘ campaign calling for an end to Brexit.
After his speech the protesters picked up their posters and moved on along Electric Avenue,
and turned into Atlantic Road,
They then marched down Brixton Road back to Windrush Square where the protest ended with some brief speeches and photographs.
Windrush & Climate – On Saturday 8th September 2018 after photographing a protest against the continuing hounding of Windrush generation migrants to the UK in Brixton I went to a Climate Change protest outside Tate Modern.
Justice for Windrush descendants – Brixton
A rally and march hosted by Movement for Justice called for the Windrush scheme to be widened to include all families and descendants of the Windrush Generation and for an end to the racist hostile environment for all immigrants.
The Windrush scandal first came to public attention in 2017 and 2018 when we heard that hundreds of migrants including those who had been urged to come and help Britain rebuild after the Second World War and who were then given the right to live and work in this country permanently where being hounded by the Home Office and some had already been deported.
Much of the information came from the work of Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman publishing the experiences of these people. The Home Office in 2012 under Theresa May had introduced a ‘Hostile Environment’ law which required people to produce at least one official document from every year they had lived in the UK to prove they had the right to stay here.
Many were of course unable to do this, and the Home Office itself had destroyed many of the official records which would have proved their case. Many were declared to be ‘undocumented migrants’ (or as the politicians and press racistly and inaccurately labelled them, ‘illegal immigrants’.
They “began to lose their access to housing, healthcare, bank accounts and driving licenses. Many were placed in immigration detention, prevented from travelling abroad and threatened with forcible removal, while others were deported to countries they hadn’t seen since they were children.“
The government promised to correct the matter and in May 2018 the then Home Secretary Saji Javid set up a ‘Windrush Lessons Learned Review’ under Wendy Williams. When published in 2020 it showed that the Windrush scandal was the deliberate and inevitable result of Tory government policies.
Home Secretary Priti Patel then said she accepted the reports recommendations but in 2023 Suella Braverman decided to ditch three of of them. In June 2024 the High Court ruled that her actions in abandoning the promise to establish a migrants’ commssioner and to increase the powers of the independent chief examiner of borders and immigration was unlawful.
The scandal continues, and the replacement by 2025 of physical residence permits by digital e-visas for the roughly half a million non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK seems almost certain to generate a similar scandal.
After a rally in Windrush Square which included Eulalee, a Jamaican grandmother who has been fighting for 17 years to stay in the UK with her Windrush generation husband, daughter and grandchildren as well as others affected by the scandal there was a march around the centre of Brixton, with several stops for short speeches in the more crowded parts.
Eulalee and Michael Groce on the march
Also on the march was Michael Groce, poet, community worker and Green Party candidate as councillor in Brixton, holds a poster ‘Yes, It’s Racist’. The 1985 Brixton riots began after police shot and seriously wounded his mother, putting her in hospital for a year. Later they paid her over £500,000 in damages without admitting any liability.
On the railway bridge across Brixton Road was the graffitied message ‘CLAPHAM THAT WAY YOU 2D FLAT WHITE TEPID COLONIALIST WANKER”, with Brixton gentrification now taking away much of the unique character of the area where many who arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948 settled after having been initially housed in a giant wartime underground shelter on Clapham Common.
After marching around the centre of Brixton spreading their message with megaphones and posters the campaigners returned for a further rally in Windrush Square.
Climate Reality, a global and diverse group of activists, community leaders, organisers, scientists, storytellers and others united to act over global warming was supported by the UK Campaign Against Climate Change, Fossil Free UK and the Green Party in one of thousands of rallies around the world demanding urgent action by government leaders to leaders commit to a fossil free world that works for all of us.
They called for people to take personal actions to reduce their own contribution to climate change but more importantly to join together to press for action at local, national and international level.
In particular they called for the government to end its support for fracking and for local authorities to divest from fracking and fossil fuels.
Sean Rigg Memorial – 4 Years – Brixton Tuesday 21st August 2012
There is a lengthy piece on Wikipedia about the death of Sean Rigg whic states that his “case became a cause célèbre for civil rights and justice campaigners in the United Kingdom, who called for “improvement and change on a national level” regarding deaths in police custody and the police treatment of suspects with mental health issues.”
It goes into some detail of the circumstances of his death and the various enquiries that followed but fails to properly represent the huge effort investigating and campaigning by his family, particularly by his sister Marcia Rigg, which brought to light the many lies and failures of the police.
In 2023, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) made an unprecedented apology in a letter to Marcia Rigg which you can read in full with her response on the Inquest site.
The Inquest post also has a clear brief summary of Sean’s arrest and the detention that killed him ad the failures of the IPCC investigation, along with a comment by Inquet’s director Deborah Coles, as well as the background to the case.
Mona Donle, Sean Rigg’s mother and his sisters Marcia and Samantha lead the march
I’ve written on a number of occasions about the case – and of other suspicious deaths in police custody, including others involving Brixton Police Station, in particular the death of Ricky Bishop in 2001. Here I’ll simply write about the events in Brixton on the evening of Tuesday 21st August 2012.
Fortunately I did not want a seat in the Assembly Hall inside Lambeth Town Hall as every one was filled for the memorial event four years to the day after his death. By the time this was over people were standing around the side of the hall and others waiting outside for the vigil.
Around 200 people lined up behind Mona Donle, Sean Rigg’s mother and his sisters Marcia and Samantha to march with the Sean Rigg banner to the memorial tree outside Brixton Police Station. Some held placards and carried flowers with his sisters carrying a framed portrait of Sean.
People laid flowers and lit candles at the memorial tree and put up Sean’s portrait and there were some speeches.
Mona Donle, a Brixton resident described a disturbing incident the previous Sunday in Windrush Square when three police officers violently assaulted a man who was clearly disturbed and acting unpredictably: “One officer choked him by holding his forearm across the man’s throat. Then another officer stamped on him. The foot was on his face and then the man passed out – we kept telling them to call an ambulance.”
As I noted, “The police account reads differently, making no mention of the violence and suggesting that the ambulance arrived ‘approximately’ five minutes after the arrest.” An eye witness told me it was around 20 minutes before the ambulance came and that the man had only just come round.
Sean’s mother spoke briefly and then Mona Donle went in to take in a formal complaint about the incident she had seen. At first I watched them from the doorway but when others piled in I joined them.
It was very crowded inside the police station lobby. The complaint was handed in, and a signed and dated copy was returned to the complainant.
But they demanded to hear from a senior officer about what had happened, and after a few minutes Superintendent David McLaren came out, gave a short statement and tried to answer some of the questions, though clearly no-one was satisfied with his answers. The lobby was very crowded and getting hot and it was soon time for me to leave.
It didn’t seem likely that there would be much more happening. One of two people had tried to stir up a little trouble but the Rigg family had made it clear that they wanted this to be an occasion where respect was show for Sean and with others had helped to quieten things down.
Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings; Saturday 9th July 2016 began for me in Waterloo, where right wing Labour party members were attending a conference. Then I travelled to Hackney for a Sisters Uncut protest over domestic violence and housing, back to Downing Street for a rally against the scapegoating of immigrants and went briefly to a Brexit debate in Green Park and then south of the river again to a protest against police murders in the UK and US.
Garden Bridge protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St
Lambeth Council were supporting the ‘Garden Bridge‘, a private green space to bridge the River Thames close to Waterloo Bridge, an expensive vanity project with a costing over £200 million with little public gain.
Lambeth residents came to protest as Lambeth councillors and council leader Liz Peck were attending the Labour Party ‘Progress’ movement ‘Governing for Britain’ conference.
The Garden Bridge project was finally abandoned in August 2017, by which time it had cost £53m, including £43m of public money.
Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St
Also protesting outside the Progress conference were housing protesters against the demolition of council estates and their replacement by luxury flats under ‘regeneration’ schemes by London Labour councils including Southwark, Newham and Lambeth.
The protesters were from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Focus E15 ‘Homes for All’ campaign and Architects for Social Housing who had been involved in various campaigns to stop the demolition of social housing in these boroughs.
They say that New Labour policies, now accelerated by the Tory Housing and Planning Act, makes London too expensive for ordinary workers leading to social cleansing, while making excessive profits for developers, including housing associations and estate agents Savills.
East End Sisters Uncut on Domestic Violence – Hackney Town Hall
Sisters Uncut came to Hackney Town Hall to demand the council abolish all plans to demolish council homes, refuse to implement the Housing Act and invest money into council housing and refuges for victims of domestic violence.
They quoted a Women’s Aid report for 2013-5 which found that over 60% of applications to women’s refuges in Hackney are refused as no room is available.
The Brexit vote had been followed by a rise in the scapegoating of immigrants and Islamophobia, and ‘Another Europe Is Possible’ organised a rally at Downing Street to keep Britain open to migrants, and for policies and media which recognise the positive contribution that migration makes to the UK.
Speakers came from a wide range of groups including Movement for Justice, Left Unity, Friends of the Earth, Newham Monitoring Project, Stand Up To Racism and Syrian activists.
Many from the rally were going to the Brexit picnic and discussion in Green Park afterwards, and I did too.
Most of those who came to the picnic felt cheated by a vote that was based on lies and false promises, but they came wanting to find ways to make it into something positive for the country.
There were also some who had come to counter the protest with their own picnic for democracy organised by Spiked magazine, and when the people from the Downing Street rally arrived with their placards some of them came over to pick an argument.
Things got a little heated when a woman from the ‘Spiked’ group accused those holding the placards of being unwashed, and there was some vigorous speaking in response. But people from both sides stepped in to cool things down.
Local black organisers in Brixton called a rally and march in memory of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and to show solidarity with those murdered by police brutality, both in the US and here in the UK.
Alton Sterling was murdered by police officers on July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot at close range after police had pinned him to the ground where he was selling CDs outside a grocery store. In May 2017 the US Justice department announced there was insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges against the officers concerned – despite the many videos of the incident and other sources.
Philando Castile was fatally shot at close range after has car was stopped by police in he Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. There was video of the incident and the officer was charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. A jury acquitted him of all charges in June 2017.
There were many speeches both about these and other US cases and those in the UK, where Sean Rigg, Wayne Douglas and Ricky Bishop died after being held in nearby Brixton Police Station. One of the organisers spoke wearing a t-shirt listing just a few of those who have been killed by police in the UK. An annual protest is held every year in Whitehall against the many custody deaths in the UK, and in 2015 while this was taking place police took advantage of this to strip the tree in front of the police station of its deaths in custody memorials
Some time after I left the protesters marched around Brixton, bringing traffic to a halt for several hours.
Baltimore to Brixton – Black Lives Matter! The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was first used on Twitter on 12th July 2013 but only became common in 2014 after the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice in 2014, reaching a peak when it was announced nobody wold be prosecuted over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. According to a list published by Twitter on the tenth anniversary of the platform in 2016 #BlackLivesMatter was the third most used hashtag in those ten years, beaten by #Ferguson at number one and #LoveWins, celebrating the US Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.
Of course the UK has its own cases of people, especially but not only black who have been killed by police and otherwise in custody and an annual march takes place in Whitehall on the last Saturday of October by the United Families and Friends Campaign to remembers them, with a list of over 2000 names being carried to a rally at Downing Street.
The United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) describes itself as “a coalition of families and friends of those that have died in the custody of police and prison officers as well as those who are killed in immigration detention and secure psychiatric hospitals. It includes the families of Roger Sylvester, Leon Patterson, Rocky Bennett, Alton Manning, Christopher Alder, Brian Douglas, Joy Gardner, Aseta Simms, Ricky Bishop, Paul Jemmott, Harry Stanley, Glenn Howard, Mikey Powell, Jason McPherson, Lloyd Butler, Azelle Rodney, Sean Rigg, Habib Ullah, Olaseni Lewis, David Emmanuel (aka Smiley Culture), Kingsley Burrell, Demetre Fraser, Mark Duggan and Anthony Grainger to name but a few. Together we have built a network for collective action to end deaths in custody.”
And we have a long history of racist prosecutions, most notably perhaps the trial of the Mangrove Nine in 1970. The defendants, most of whom defended themselves, were finally all acquitted on the main charge of incitement to riot with four receiving suspended sentences for less serious offences. But the judge made clear in his comments that the authorities and in particular the Metropolitan Police had been racist in their actions and in bringing the prosecution.
Since then there have been other high profile cases which have demonstrated the institutional racism of the police force – notably over their investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the police murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. In 2023 the report by Baroness Casey was only the latest to castigate them as racist, sexist and homophobic.
Activists in the UK have also responded to the police murders in USA, and on Sunday 3rd May 2015 following the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and police attacks on his funeral which led to massive protest in the USA, they protested in Brixton in solidarity and pointed out similar problems in Brixton and the UK.
It wasn’t a huge protest but was supported by a wide range of groups from Brixton and across London, including London Black Revs, Class War, the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, Reclaim Brixton, Women of Colour and the All-African Women’s Group from the Global Women’s Strike, Brixton Latin American Community, Mexica Movement London Chapter, Our Brixton, Latin Brixton, Justice for Christopher Alder, BirminghamStrong, Justice 4 ALL, The Brick Lane Debates, Occupy UAL, RCG, Revolutionary Communist Group, Occupy London, Rojava Solidarity Working Group, Algeria Solidarity Campaign, Environmental Justice North Africa and Justice4Paps.
On My London Diary I give some brief facts about the killing of 25-year-old African American Freddie Gray and the attack on his funeral by police which provoked riots. You can read a much more detailed account on Wikipedia.
The march began by going through the large barrier bloc of Southwyck House, built in the 1970s as a shield for the urban motorway, plans for which were dropped after the devastation it would cause became obvious after the Westway section was built in North Kensington, stopping for a brief protest there before it continued to a housing occupation against Guinness Trust opposite the Loughborough Park Estate. It then through the centre of Brixton to a rally in Windrush Square.
People then marched along Brixton Road past the Underground Station to Brixton Police Station and on to the Loughborough Estate to a community centre on Somerleyton Road.
I’d walked far enough and left the march there, walking back along Atlantic Road where I photographed some of the murals against the eviction of local shopkeepers from the railway arches before taking the tube to Westminster to go to visit the Occupy ‘Festival of Democracy‘ in Parliament Square, then in Day 3.
