Brixton Market | >Re-PHOTO

Trans Pride & Anti-Racist March in Brixton – 2019

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.

More pictures at London’s First Trans+ Pride March.

Brixton anti-racist 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.

More pictures on My London Diary at Brixton anti-racist march.

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Brixton Feb 1987

Shops, Electric Ave, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-46-positive_2400 — Shops, Electric Ave, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

I visited Brixton fairly often in the 1980s and 1990s as it was one of the places you could buy cheap photographic paper, often outdated or cut up from larger sheets and re-packaged and sold by A.W.Young Photographic in Altantic Rd. Mostly I used this to make contact sheets of my black and white films, though at various times I also made small, often postcard-size enlargements of the more promising negatives as ‘file prints’, from which I would then make a choice to make as exhibition quality prints, usually on considerably more expensive papers.

Sanders, Jeweller, Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-44-positive_2400 — Sanders, Jeweller, Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

Cheap papers weren’t always poor quality. When Agfa stopped importing Portriga Rapid to the UK, remaining stocks went to the bargain dealers, and a similar situation happened with some papers from Kodak and Ilford, and some of my best prints were made on these.

Effra Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-36-positive_2400 — Effra Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

I’d begun attending events and workshops at the Photo Co-op in Battersea more or less as soon as it opened its Webb’s Road premises in 1984. It was an easy journey for me, just a short walk from Clapham Junction, and although I was pleased they got more funding in 1991, the move to Brixton as Photofusion almost doubled my journey time. But it did mean more frequent trips to Brixton in the 1990s, particularly as I began to put black and white photographs into the Photofusion Picture Library.

Mural, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-35-positive_2400 — Mural, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

More recently most of my visits to Brixton have been to photograph protest marches and rallies; at Brixton Police station, Lambeth Town Hall, in Windrush Square and around the area. Brixton has changed and lost a little of its character to gentrification, but remains a vibrant area.

Brixton Village, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-34-positive_2400 — Brixton Village, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

Tate Library, Brixton Oval, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-26-positive_2400 — Tate Library, Brixton Oval, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

Mural, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987 87-2o-15-positive_2400 — Mural, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1987

The pictures here were I think all taken on the same day, most likely before a visit to pick up some photo paper, and you can see a few more from that visit to Brixton in the Flickr album ‘1987 London Photos‘ . I also took around a dozen colour images, and some of these are in the album TQ31 London Cross-section

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.

Brixton march against government racism

Brixton in south London has a special place in the history of our country, as it was in this area that the first wave of post-war Black migrants found homes and jobs, with those who had arrived on the Empire Windrush being given temporary accomodation a short distance away in an underground bunker on Clapham Common.

Brixton had the nearest government Labour Exchange where they went in search of jobs, and many found them in local businesses and found cheap lodgings in the area, and in time brought their families to the area. Soon this working class area of London was developing the more vibrant and colourful culture that now, together with its location close to central London and good transport links makes it a prime target for gentrification.

Brixton has also been a flashpoint for social unrest, with riots (or uprisings) in 1981, 1985 and 1991 after heavy-handed and racist policing as well as in the London riots of 2011. The 1981 riots came at a time of high unemployment, particularly among the local African-Caribbean community who felt under attack by excessive policing and also by lurid press stereotyping of them, their culture and the area.

I began going to Brixton regularly in 1991, when a photography collective I had links with moved from near Clapham Junction in Battersea to the heart of the area on the edge of Brixton market and reconstituted itself as Photofusion. For years I went to most of their exhibition openings as well as visiting to take prints in to their picture library, which was then an important source for images of British social life. Photofusion is now in new premises but just a short distance away, though I think all the people I knew there are gone and it’s a year or two since I last visited the gallery.

But I have continued going to Brixton, mainly to photograph protests and events, particularly at Windrush Square, outside Lambeth Town Hall and at Brixton Police Station. And on September 14th I found myself again in Brixton, beginning at Windrush Square. This is a rather bleak and windswept area in front of the Ritzy Cinema, the Tate Library and the Black Cultural Archives, with a busy road along its west edge, ‘landscaped‘ a few years back by Lambeth Council apparently with the aim of making it a less attractive place for people to gather.

Here’s what I wrote about the protest on My London Diary:

Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group protest in Brixton against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants, calling 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.

After speeches in Windrush Square they moved to Brixton Market where wide support was shown by the public for speeches. Before they left Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie spoke about his LDNlovesEU campaign. They then marched up to Atlantic Road and back along the main street, Brixton Road for a final short rally in Windrush Square.

More pictures at Brixton anti-racist march.

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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