Central Middlesex | >Re-PHOTO

Ealing Hospital, Free Shawki Omar, Hizb ut-Tahrir – 2013

Ealing Hospital, Free Shawki Omar, Hizb ut-Tahrir: On Saturday 27th April 2013 I made my way to Southall Park for the rally at the start of a march to save A&E departments at hospitals in West London, then went into central London. Outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square I met and photographed the wife and daughter of Shawki Ahmed Omar, arrested in Iraq in 2004 and still held and tortured there. Finally I attended a rally and march up Brick Lane by the now banned Islamic political party Hizb ut-Tahrir calling for he replacement of the Awami League government of Bangladesh by an Islamic caliphate.

Save Ealing Hospital & the NHS

Southall Park, Southall

A&E departments at Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex and Ealing Hospitals were under threat of closure in a move that would greatly reduce cover for around two million people in West London, leaving three large London Boroughs without a major hospital.

Local councils were firmly opposed to the closures along with the whole community. Public transport in the area is relatively poor (as I found getting to Southall) and roads are often extremely congested so the closures would lead to dangerous delays for those needing urgent treatment.

Ealing Hospital, Free Shawki Omar, Hizb ut-Tahrir - 2013

Among speakers at the rally were Councillor Julian Bell, the Leader of Ealing Council, other local councillors who have led the opposition to the cuts and the two local MPs, John McDonnell from Hillingdon and Virendra Sharma, MP for Ealing Southall, as well as representatives from some of the many faith groups in the area.

The proposals were widely seen as part of a move towards increased privatisation of the NHS as well as wanting to sell off much hospital owned land for housing and other development.

Largely as a result of the huge local opposition, the closure plans were reduced, but Central Middlesex Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital both closed in September 2014.

Save Ealing Hospital & the NHS

Lonely Vigil at US Embassy

Grosvenor Square

I called in briefly at the US Embassy to talk with Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, wife of Shawki Ahmed Omar, and their 7 year old daughter who were on one of their repeated protests calling for his release.

They stood quietly in front of the embassy with posters showing his injuries from US torture in Iraq after his arrest in 2004. Omar, born in Kuwait has dual Jordanian/US nationality. Despite legal attempts in the USA to free him, when the USA left Iraq they handed him over to the Iraq authorities.

Omar began a hunger strike in Al Karkh prison on February 4th 2013, protesting the ill treatment and torture of himself and fellow detainees. You can read more about him in my post on My London Diary.

Lonely Vigil at US Embassy

Hizb ut-Tahrir protest Bangladeshi Regime

Altab Ali Park and Brick Lane

Islamic political party Hizb ut-Tahrir (banned in the UK in 2024) held a rally and march in Whitechapel, an area of London with a large Bangladeshi community against the government led by Sheik Hassina in Bangladesh.

The reject all current governments of Muslim nations and call for their replacement by an but were also protesting against anti-Muslim measures Sheik Hasina has introduced in Bangladesh and the return of Rohinga Muslim refugees to Burma where they are discriminated against and persecuted.

They also protested against the corruption in Bangladesh which was responsibel for the deaths and injury of workers when the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed three days earlier. The search for survivors was continuing when this protest was held, only ending on 13th May, when the confirmed death toll was 1,134 and around 2,500 injured had been rescued.

There were around a hundred Muslim men at the protest, and around half that number of women in a separate group a few yards away. Only men spoke at the rally, though some of the women did hold placards. After the rally the protesters marched up Osborne Street and Brick Lane past the mosque where I left them.

Hizb ut-Tahrir had been banned in Bangladesh in 2011, alleged to have been involved in a failed coup attempt. When New Labour were in power, Tory leader David Cameron urged them to ban the UK group, but a review then and in the early days of his coalition government concluded that they were a non-violent group with insufficient evidence to justify a ban, and that “a ban may do more harm than good and could have serious implications for freedom of speech and assembly in the UK.”

Nothing had really changed when they were banned in January 2024 following a protest against Egypt and Israel following Israel’s attack on Gaza, except for a failing Tory government venting hate on anyone seeming to support the Palestinian cause. Something that was continued by Labour in banning Palestine action.

More on My London Diary at Hizb ut-Tahrir protest Bangladeshi Regime.

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Save Hospitals & Secular Europe – 2012

Save Hospitals & Secular Europe: On Saturday 15th September 2012 almost two thousand people marched from Southall to meet others at a rally in Ealing to save Accident & Emergency Services at their local hospitals. Later I photographed humanists, atheists and others marching in Westminster.

Thousands March to Save Hospitals – Southall

A large crowd had come to Southall Park for the start of a march against the the closure of A&E and other departments at Ealing, Central Middlesex, Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals. Another march was going from Acton to the rally in Ealing.

A few days ago Keir Starmer talked about the crisis facing the NHS, and how it will take perhaps eight years to put it on a firmer footing for the future. He and Health Secretary Wes Streeting blamed its current parlous position on the reforms criticised by Lord Darzi as “disastrous” introduced by the coalition government in 2012 and the lack of investment in infrastructure under the Tory-led years of cuts since 2010.

Of course both these things are true, but not the whole picture and they say little that was not said by those working in the NHS and almost every commentator at the time about Andrew Lansley’s controversial Health and Social Care Act which came into force under his successor Jeremy Hunt, as well as lack of proper funding.

But they also leave out the disastrous effects of the many PFI schemes introduced under New Labour which landed the NHS with huge debts and continue to impose severe costs on many hospitals with excessive maintenance and other charges. PFI did provide much needed new hospitals, but did so at the expense of the NHS, transferring the costs away to make government finance look better; avoiding short-term public financing but creating much higher long-term costs.

New Labour also accelerated the privatisation of NHS services, which has of course increased greatly since the Tories came to power. Both parties became enamoured of a move away from the original NHS model to an insurance based system modelled on US Healthcare, a system that leaves many poorer US citizens with inadequate access to healthcare and is responsible for around 62% of the two million annual bankruptcies in the USA when for various reasons people’s insurance does not cover their treatment costs.

We in the UK spend almost a fifth less on health than the EU average, and only around a third of the per person spending in the USA – according to a 2010 article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine comparing the two systems.

We all now have complaints about the level of service provided currently by our overloaded and cash-strapped NHS. Waiting times are sometimes ridiculously long and appointments hard to get. We need a better NHS, and to pay more for a better NHS, one that is better integrated rather than divided by Lansley’s competitive marketing-based model. But I have little confidence that our current government will make the right changes for either the NHS staff or the people.

We also need much better industrial relations, and the efforts by the new Labour government to sort out the disputes with healthcare workers deliberately engineered by the Tories which led to the strikes are encouraging. But many more changes to improve staff morale and retention are necessary. To remove the reliance on agency staff there needs to be an improvement in the treatment of NHS employed staff – and a number of simple measures including the removal of staff parking charges would help. And of course we also need to train more healthcare staff at all levels and in all specialities.

The rally on 15th September 2012 was supported by local councils and local MPs and there were many speakers with years of experience in the NHS who gave short speeches about the effects the closures would have – and the inevitable deaths that would result, particularly from the longer journey times through often highly congested streets to the remaining A&E services. Fortunately most of the politicians were told they would have to wait for the rally at the end of the march to speak. So I missed them as I walked a few hundred yards with the marchers along the main road towards Ealing and the rally, but then left them and walked to the station to take a train into central London.

More about the rally and march on My London Diary at Thousands March to Save Hospitals.

March & Rally for a Secular Europe – Westminster

Around 250 humanists, atheists and others marched from Storey’s Gate, next to Methodist Central Hall and across the road from Westminster Abbey, both in their different ways reminders of the links between the state and states and religion. And I presume the rally venue in Temple Place was chosen for the same reason.

They had come protest against the privileged status of religion and call for a truly secular society with freedom of religion, conscience and speech with equal rights for all in countries across the world, but particularly in Europe.

They demanded a secular Europe with complete separation between church and state and with no special status on grounds of religion, one law for all without execeptions.

The main banner read ‘For Universal Human Rights‘ and marchers chanted slogans including ‘2,4,6,8, Separate church and state‘ and of course ‘What do we want? A Secular Europe. When do we want it? Now‘, as well as stating that Women’s rights (and Gay Rights, Children’s Rights etc) are Human Rights.

But perhaps the most popular chant was one directed in particular against the Catholic Church, ‘Keep your rosaries Off my ovaries.” And at the rally in Temple Place Sue Cox of Survivors Voice, reminded us not just of sexual abuse of children by priests, but also of the continuing failure of the Catholic Church to deal with this, as well as the sinister power that that church still wields in countries including Italy.

As the march arrived at the rally there the London Humanist Choir performed some Monty Python songs before a number of speeches from Peter Tatchell and others. As he said, many people of faith also support both equality and the separation of religion and state, and that “for every bigot there are also people of faith who are with us.”

More at March & Rally for a Secular Europe.

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Nakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils

NakNakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils – Saturday 18th May 2013 was another busy day for protests in London and I covered a number of demonstrations.

End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when the state of Israel was created, Palestinians and their supporters protested outside parliament calling for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.

There had been protests in Jerusalem earlier in the week on Nabka Day against the continuing sanctions against Palestinians that have crowded them into an ever-decreasing area of land, diminishing almost daily as new Israeli settlements are created and new restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinians. Many of those protesting in London from Jewish or Palestinian backgrounds and as usual these included a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who had walked down from North London; they see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism.

The speeches were continuing when I left to cover another event. More at End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing

London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall

On the opposite side of the River Thames thousands were gathering by the Royal Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, alarmed at the attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.

Nine years later we are seeing the effect of these policies with ambulance services unable to cope with demand, lengthy delays in treating people in A&E, delays in diagnosing cancers leading to increased deaths and more. And although it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic like Covid, and exercises had shown what needed to be done to prepare for this, the NHS had not been given the resources to prepare for this, leading to much higher death rates than some comparable countries.

Part of the problems of the NHS come from disastrous PFI agreements pushed through under the Labour government, landing NHS trusts with huge debts that will continue for many years. This forced NHS trusts into disastrous hospital closure plans, some of which were defeated by huge public campaigns. Many of those marching were those involved in these campaigns at Lewisham, Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex, Whittington and other hospitals around London.

I left the march as it entered Whitehall for a rally there. More at London Marches to Defend NHS.

Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square

London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.

More at Guantánamo Murder Scene.

More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square

Other protesters outside the US Embassy included Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when they held him and was now being tortured by the Iraqis and also was on hunger strike. She has protested with her daughter Zeinab outside the US Embassy for a number of weekends and on this occasion was joined by a small group of Muslims who had come to protest against Guantanamo, appalled by the actions of the US waging a war against Islam and Muslims.

Shawki Ahmed Omar is still held in Iraq; before he died in 2021 former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded a video calling for his release which was posted to YouTube in with the comment by another US lawyer “This case is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.”

A few yards away, kept separate by police, a group of supporters of the Syrian regime, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was also holding a protest in favour of the Assad regime and against western intervention in Syria.

More at More US Embassy Protests.

Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place

I met thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK as they marched through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre, many dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. Many wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.

Although it was a large protest, with perhaps around 5,000 marchers I think it received absolutely no coverage in UK media, and I seemed to be the only non-Tamil photographer present. Tamils were rightly disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax.

The march had started from Hyde Park, and I caught up with it on Piccadilly and went with it taking photographs to Waterloo Place where there was to be a rally. But it had been a long day for me and I left just before this started.

More at Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide.