Jobs, Services, Education, Yemen, Rev Billy, Police Violence: Saturday 23 May 2009 was another busy day for protests in London. I began with the March to Defend Jobs, Services and Education in North London, moved to Whitehall for a protest by Southern Yemenis calling for independence and met the The Reverend Billy and his ‘Life After Shopping’ Gospel choir for a performance in front of the gates of Downing St. Later I met the Rev again on a march against police violence prompted by the killing of Ian Tomlinson by a police officer at he G20 protest at the start of the month.
March to Defend Jobs, Services and Education – Highbury Fields to Archway
The march by around 500 workers in Islington from Highbury Fields to Archway followed the loss of 1500 jobs in the area, including 550 mainly support workers from London Metropolitan University, 500 civil servants from Archway tower and more at City University, where adult education is under threat.
It was supported by many local groups including the Islington National Union of Teachers, the Public & Commercial Services Union, London Metropolitan University Unison and the University and College Union. Among the speakers at the Archway rally were local MP Jeremy Corbyn and local trade union leaders.
Education in the area has been particularly important in giving people who have missed out in various ways in their schooling a chance to gain qualifications, and the cuts threaten the future of many of these courses as well as the support such as nurseries which enable many mature students to continue education. Islington has the highest population density of any local authority in England and Wales and a third of its residents live in poverty – well above the London average.
Southern Yemenis Demonstrate For a Separate State – Downing St, Whitehall
Southern Yemenis from the Southern Democratic Assembly (TAJ), based in London came to protest following protests in Aden the previous week on the 15th anniversary of the attempt by Southern Yemen to break away from the North which began the 1994 Civil War, a short but brutal conflict which ended in July 1994 with defeat for the South.
Southern Yemen, until 1967 the British protectorate of Aden, was granted independence and in 1969 became the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. Although a decision to unite with North Yemen – the Yemen Arab Republic – was made in principle in 1972 this only happened in 1990 when the Republic of Yemen was formed. South Yemen contains most of the reserves of oil and other resources and TAJ accuse the government of grabbing land and property and of human rights abuses.
Since 2004 the rise of the Houthis has dominated politics and armed conflict in Yemen with a full-scale civil war between them and a Saudi-led coalition backed by the US and the west since 2015.
The Reverend Billy and his ‘Life After Shopping’ Gospel choir from New York were busy in London today on their 2009 UK Shopocalypse Tour.
Police obviously had no idea of how to handle the Reverend and his green-robed choir when the came and gave a brief performance on the pavement in front of the tall gates with their armed guards.
As I wrote, ‘The Church of Life After Shopping believes that we need to “back away from the product” and resist the way that advertising and the media persuade us to live only thorough consuming corporate products, and get down to experiencing life directly. We can live more by consuming less – and at the same time help save the planet and put an end to climate change, which is a result of our excessive consumption. ‘
Consumerism is at the root of our government’s economic programme with its emphasis on growth but this comes at the expense of both personal fulfilment and the future of the planet, driving catastrophic climate change as we pursue this false God.
“As Billy says, following the G20 summit and the pathetic waste and greed shown in the continuing parliamentary allowances scandal, our government and MPs are clearly in need of the Life After Shopping Gospel.
National Demonstration against Police Violence Trafalgar Square to New Scotland Yard
The United Campaign Against Police Violence was set up after the G20 protest at Bank in London where Ian Tomlinson died following an assault by a police officer as he tried to make his way home from work through the area where the demonstration was taking place.
Who Killed Ian Tomlinson? And Sean Rigg?
Thee organisers included trade unionists and activists who had organised the G20 protest and campaigners against police violence, particularly those involved with the United Families and Friends Campaign by friends and the families of people who have died in police custody. Among those taking part were the families of two men who died in Brixton Police Station, Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg.
In all these killings the police reaction to the deaths was to issue a number of highly misleading statements and to try to protect its officers by failing to make proper and timely investigations. This march attracted far more police attention and resources than any of these deaths where families have had to fight to get any information from police.
Leading the start of the march was a coffin and the red ‘Horse of the Apocalypse’ one of the four which headed the G20 protests – and gave the clear message at that protest that the intention was street theatre rather than the kind of insurrection that the police anticipated and then went on to themselves create.
Sean Rigg’s two sisters were on the march and making their views felt, and the Rev Billy came with his giant non-powered megaphone.
At Scotland Yard the mood became more solemn for a period of silence for those who had died and people linked hands to surround New Scotland Yard in a symbolic “kettle”.
Chis Knight spoke with Sean Rigg’s sisters on each side of him. A police officer stands impassive as people prepared to release black balloons in memory of the dead.
The mood was somber, solemn as we remembered those who have died. Suddenly the whole mood changes as an officer reads out a warning from her chief over the loudspeakers interrupting the ceremony.
For a few moments an angry crowd looks likely to attack the van – and it did seem an incredibly provocative action in what to this point had been a well ordered and restrained – although angry – demonstration against police violence.
Fortunately the moment passes and the release of balloons continues. It’s impossible to understand why police took this action at this time – unless they really wanted to provoke a riot. I can find no other explanation and it remains another of the many actions that has resulted in a loss of public confidence in the police as we drift relentlessly towards a police state.
Ian Tomlinson Killing & Sri Lanka Genocide: On Saturday 11th April 2009 people marched from Bethnal Green Police Station to the spot were news vendor died after an unprovoked attack by police officer Simon Harwood. I also photographed a much larger march by Tamils against the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka.
March in Memory of Ian Tomlinson – Bethnal Green Police Station & Bank
G20 Meltdown, the organisers of the protest at Bank on April 1st 2009 where police officer Simon Harwood attacked Ian Tomlinson leading to his death, had organised a memorial march from Bethnal Green Police Station to the place where he died a few yards away from the attack.
Police discuss the march with Chris Knight
Tomlinson was not involved in the protest, but simply trying to make his way home after having been working, selling newspapers in the City. The protest would probably have been over by the time he was killed, but police had turned what had been intended as a carnival party into something far more sinister, kettling and then attacking many demonstrators and killing Tomlinson. There were numerous injuries and one photographer had his teeth knocked out, but I had seen the kettle coming and had left the area to cover another event.
At the Tomlinson family’s request, the march was peaceful, silent and respectful. Before it started his stepson Paul King spoke briefly, describing the family’s trauma from the tragic death of his step-father, a “much-loved and warm-hearted man,” and pain at seeing the video of the assault, and he hoped that the investigation would be full and that “action will be taken against any police officer who contributed to Ian’s death through his conduct.”
Paul King
As usual the investigation was carried out by the IPCC and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge Harwood. After an inquest verdict of unlawful killing the CPS had to change their mind and charged him with manslaughter.
The sisters of Sean Rigg, murdered by police at Brixton the previous August were on the march
The jury was unable to hear evidence about his behaviour in previous incidents and was seriously misled both by some of Harwood’s own evidence and the evidence given by the first pathologist who had examined the body, Dr Freddy Patel. He had destroyed some vital evidence, puring away body fluids and had a long record of botched postmortems, having previously been suspended twice and finally was struck off the medical register in 2012.
After Harwood’s acquittal he was dismissed from the police. Tomlinson’s family took civil proceedings and in 2013, “the Metropolitan Police Service paid Tomlinson’s family an undisclosed sum and acknowledged that Harwood’s actions had caused Tomlinson’s death.
I left the march before it arrived at Bank, but returned the following day to photograph the flowers that had been left in Royal Exchange Buildings where the assault had taken place and a vigil was being held by Chris Knight, one of the G20 Meltdown organisers and a few others.
Tamils March – Stop Sri-Lanka Genocide – Temple to Hyde Park
A huge crowd had assembled on the Embankment at Temple, perhaps as many as 200,000, a very high proportion of Tamils in the UK who are thought to number around 300,000, around two thirds of them of Sri Lankan origin. It was a crowd with very few white faces.
Despite the size of the protest there appeared to be very little UK media interest and I saw no photographers or TV crews from major UK media covering the march to Hyde Park. Where there are usually a crowd of photographers in front at the start of large marches in London, for this one there was just me and three other freelances, none of whom get regular work for the mass media.
By April 2009 the civil war in Sri Lanka was clearly coming to an end, with the Tamil Tigers having been pushed back into a very small area. They had been defeated at a major battle at Aanandapuram on 5th April and the final assault by the government forces came at the end of the month with Sri Lanka declaring victory on May 16th.
Many of those taking part in the march were clearly supporting the “the LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. A few carried actual tigers, fortunately only large toys, but many more wore the colours or carried flags or portraits of the founder and leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Pirapaharan.“
The LTTE was proscribed in 2000 and they were clearly committing an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 by supporting the group or wearing clothing which arouses the “reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.” But clearly the Tamils were not intending to cause any serious trouble and police sensibly made no attempt to arrest them all. Only three arrests were reported.
The Tamils had lost in Sri Lanka and many both civilians and combatants were killed during the civil war – possibly almost 150,000 in the last 8 months of the civil war. Around 300,000 were transferred into special closed camps, described by many as concentration camps – they were slowly released and the camps were closed by the end of September 2012.
Muslims Unite Against Samarra Bombing: Following the bomb attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samara, Iraq there were several days of sectarian violence between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims despite attempts by religious leaders there to calm the situation. The structure of the 10th century mosque was badly damaged and although the bombing caused no direct casualties there were many deaths in the few days that followed.
The bombing was probably carried out by a cell of Al-Qaeda in Iraq although they did not admit responsibility. The US, then occupying Iraq, played down the aftermath of the bombingm claiming the death toll was around 300, but later reports suggest around ten times that number died.
The march was led by children with placards “Sunni & Shia United!!!” , “Have You No Mercy”…
The al-Askari mosque bombing was the start of the First Iraqi Civil War and the mosque was again damaged by a bomb the following year.
A simple equation: Osama + Bush = Al-Qaida
Here is the account of the march and rally in London on Saturday 25 February, 2006 I wrote for My London Diary at the time – will the usual corrections and some of the many pictures I posted.
Muslims beating their breasts on the march,
Muslims Unite Against the Samarra Bombing
British Muslims Stand United Against Terrorism. On the march in Park Lane
Around ten thousand British Shia and Sunni Muslims marched together through London on Saturday 25th in an unusual gesture of solidarity following the bombing of the mosque at Sammara in Iraq, one of the holiest of Muslim shrines, containing the tombs of the 8th and 9th grandsons of Muhammed.
The march was led by women and children, with the men following behind. They carried placards and chanted calling for an end to violence, denouncing the Wahhabis and Al-Qaeda. Many also carried the Iraqi flag in its pan-arab colours of black, white, red, and green.
Starting from Hyde Park, the march went down Park Lane and Piccadilly to end in a rally in Trafalgar Square. Both the plinth and the square below were crowded with demonstrators.
Demonstrators at Trafalgar Square
Despite the seriousness of the outrage at Samarra, the people on the march were peaceful and good-natured, protesting against violence and against the Muslim fundamentalism that aims to create a “Taliban-like extremist state in Iraq.“
Heathrow, Gaza & the Tamils: On Saturday 17th January 2009 I took a bus to Heathrow for a flash mob against a third runway, then the tube into Westminster for a protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza in Trafalgar Square which ended with a march to protest at Downing Street, where Tamils were protesting against the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka.
No Third Runway Decision Day Flashmob – Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport
Earlier in the week the Labour government under Gordon Brown had announced they were to press ahead with airport expansion and build a third runway at Heathrow despite the environmental consequences. Several hundred people turned up at Terminal 5 for a ‘flashmob’ protest at 12 noon.
“Attracting most press attention were four brave young ladies who had saved the ten quid for a red ‘STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION’ t-shirt and instead opted for red body paint with a black message across their midriffs, ‘Simply No Slaughter‘ and a pair of strategically placed gold sticking plasters proclaiming ‘art‘ and ‘port‘ (port was indeed on the left.)”
Local MP John McDonnell looks a little embarassed
Many local residents were there, some with their children, along with John Stewart of HACAN (Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise) the organisers of the event, and local MP John McDonnell who was being congratulated for his seizing the mace in the House of Commons when the announcement was made.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown had approved the airport expansion
The demonstrators chanted, thrown red balloons in the air, red tennis balls at an ‘Aunt Sally’ of Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon and conga’ed around the area while a large squad of photographers photographed and videoed.
The campaigners were surrounded in a loose ring by police and airport security who made no attempt to stop them, though police had made some searches before the event began. Some of them were clearly amused by the event as were a few passengers making their way through the departure area.
John Stewart of HACAN thanks everyone for coming
After almost three-quarters of an hour of protest John Stewart thanked everyone for coming and repeated the determination of all those involved to keep up the fight to ensure that, despite the decision, the runway will never be built. So far it has been prevented, though it seems likely that despite the increasingly obvious and critical environmental crisis our current Labour government will resurrect this enviornmental catastrophe, though it remains doubtful if the private finance required can be found.
A cheer for John McDonnell
And there was a cheer for John McDonnell’s action in Parliament and a final chance to pelt the Transport Secretary before we all left for buses or tube.
1000 Dead and Nothing Said – End the Slaughter of Gaza – Trafalgar Square
A man burns an Israeli flag in at the rally in Trafalgar Square
I was a little late arriving at the rally in Trafalgar Square but got there just in time to hear Tony Benn being announced and getting a huge greeting. As I commented he was “One of the greatest political figures of the last 50 years, [and} it’s a national tragedy that while he has so often been right on major issues, governments have seldom if ever followed his lead.”
An 11 year old Palestinian girl, now living in Manchester speaks
The square was fairly full with perhaps 5-10,000 protesters though there had been a much larger national protest in London a week earlier against the attacks on Gaza in previous weeks that had killed over a thousand Palestinians including more than 300 children.
Palestinian singer Reem Kelani spoke before singing a traditional song
After some more speeches a group of children all dressed in white robes marked with bloody red handprints who had been standing on the plinth came down and went with a deputation to take a letter from the rally to Downing St, calling for an immediate ceasefire and reparations for the war damage inflicted by the Israeli attacks.
I went with them down Whitehall to Downing St, where police led them into a pen close to the gates.
While Diane Abbott, MP, PSC General Secretary Betty Hunter and Lindsay German of Stop the War with others took the letter into Downing St, the children posed for pictures, at first while standing and then lying on the ground as if the innocent victims of an Israeli attack.
But unlike those 300 childen in Gaza, these children were just playing dead.
A few hours after this protest Israel announced a ceasefire on its own terms. The end of the killing was welcome, but there was no justice for Palestine.
Several hundred Tamils were densely packed into a pen opposite opposite Downing Street to draw attention to the continuing attacks on Tamil civilians, schools, hospitals and churches by the Sri Lankan Army and Air Force and to call for an independent Tamil state, Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka.
Tamils accuse the Sri Lankan government of genocide, and claim that in the past month alone over 300,000 Tamils have been forced to move out of their homes by the bombardment.
The decades long civil war which ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers had attracted relatively little attention in the mainstream media, but the assasination of leading Sri Lankan opposition newspaper editor Lasantha Wickramatunga on his way to work a week earlier and the publication of the obituary he had written for himself, And then they came for me, was the subject of a two page article in The Guardian on the day of this protest.
Dangleway Revisited, Tamils Protest Killings: On Tuesday 23rd July 2013 I revisited the Museum of Docklands and then took the DLR to Royal Victoria for another ride on the Arab Emirates cableway in a detour on my way into central London to photograph a rally by Tamils at Downing Street.
Another Dangleway Ride – Royal Victoria Dock to North Greenwich
It was only a few weeks since my first ride on London’s cable car across the River Thames, but I was in docklands for a second visit to the ‘Estuary’ show at the Museum of Docklands. As one of those featured in the show I had been at the opening, but that was more about meeting people than seeing the work, though I had taken a short look at it all.
The dangleway is fairly pointless in terms of transport, but is one of London’s cheaper tourist attractions, and though short it joins two areas of some interest. I suppose the views might not be to everyone’s interest, though I found them fascinating, and its certainly the cheapest way to do a little aerial photography.
Tamils have long been the subject of discrimination in Sri Lanka, and the Civil War there from 1983 to 2009 against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam resulted in around 100,000 Tamil civilain deaths, as well as around 50,000 fighters on each side. The figures are unclear as the Sri Lankan government has always refused independent, international investigation to ascertain the full impact of the war.
According to Wikipedia, “Since the end of the civil war, the Sri Lankan state has been subject to much global criticism for violating human rights as a result of committing war crimes through bombing civilian targets, usage of heavy weaponry, the abduction and massacres of Sri Lankan Tamils and sexual violence.”
The Tamil Tigers also became notorious for attacks on civilians, suicide bombings. assassinations and the use of child soldiers. The final stages of the war in 2006-9 were particularly bloody, and ended in a total defeat of the LTTE.
The British Tamil Forum at had come to Downing St on the 30th anniversary of the 1983 Black July when 3000 Tamils died in riots across Sri Lanka in an anti-Tamil pogrom orchestrated by the government.
This was not the first anti-Tamil pogrom, but its unprecedented frenzy of violence was a turning point after which Tamils knew they could never be safe in a state dominated by the Sinhalese.
In the four years since the Mullivaikkal Massacre of 2009 Tamils claim that an estimated 147,000 Tamils are either dead or missing, and they see the only solution as the formation of an independent Tamil state – ‘Tamil Eelam.’
The protest called on the UK to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM 2013) in November 2013 hosted by Sri Lanka. They see this as legitimising a state which has been severley criticised by the UN and human rights organisation for the atrocities it has been committing.
People at the protest signed letters and cards calling on HRH The Prince of Wales to uphold the values of the Commonwealth and reconsider his decision to attend CHOGM 2013.
Stop Bush National Demonstration – It seems so long ago; on Thursday 20th November 2003, 20 years ago today, I photographed the protest against then US President George Bush in London.
The protest came just 8 months after the US under Bush had led the invasion of Iraq, aided by Tony Blair who had lied to Parliament and presented a fake dossier to take Britain to war as well.
The US had claimed their action was necessary to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free Iraqi people”. It wasn’t long before it became clear that those who had always said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were proved correct, and although Saddam was killed the invasion encouraged support for terrorists across much of the world, and rather than becoming free the people of Iraq were subjected to still continuing years of misery.
A 2023 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute comments that the invasion “ushered in years of chaos and civil war, as a variety of armed groups vied for power and territory and targeted coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Army. A period of relative calm in the early 2010s was broken by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied large parts of the country from 2014 until it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the support of a US-led international coalition in 2017.”
It goes on to say that the country is now in 2023 at its most stable since the invasion, but “Armed violence persists in different forms, but it is sporadic, fragmented and localized. However, the country remains fragile and divided, and its people face an array of deepening challenges that the state is struggling to address.“
Twenty years ago I was just beginning to work using a digital camera. The Nikon D100 was one of the first affordable generation of digital SLRs, released in the USA at around the same time as the Canon EOS D60, both with a price tag of just under $2000, though I forget what I paid for it here in the UK.
It was still a rather primitive beast, with a 6Mp sensor roughly half the size of a 35mm film frame in what Nikon dubbed DX format. It’s viewfinder was small and dim, making working with it rather more difficult than the film cameras – both SLR and rangefinder – that I had been using.
And having spent so much on a camera, I also had to buy a lens. I’d long been using Olympus SLRs along with Leica and other cameras with the Leica-M mount and had a full range of lenses for these, but nothing with a Nikon mount. So along with the camera I’d bought what was the cheapest zoom in their range, a 24-85mm with a maximum aperture of around f3.5. On the D100 that worked as a 36-127mm equivalent.
It was a useful lens, and a very decent performer, but still rather limiting, with no real wide-angle capability. So alongside the D100 I would also be working most of the time with two other cameras, one loaded with colour negative film and the other black and white.
But there was a huge advantage with digital, in that I could send off files to an agency within hours of taking them, while with the black and white it was probably a day or two before I made prints to take or send. Publishing too had largely moved to colour and colour images were now wanted rather than black and white.
Although I developed and at least contact printed the films I took then, I think I’ve made very few if any prints from this or other events at the time. And any I have made since will have been printed digitally from scans of the negatives.
Digital gave an immediacy, but there were still problems with handling the files. Software to process the RAW images that were needed to get the most out of the digital files was still rather primitive by current standards, and most of the images I processed back then have a slightly muddy look. Nikon’s colour rendering was I think more to my taste than Canon, but still not up to that from film, though now we get far more accurate colour from digital. When Adobe introduced Lightroom in 2007 it was a little of a step backwards, but since then it has improved dramatically.
Those early sensors also were not too great with high contrast subjects and for some years I worked much of the time with fill-in flash on sunny days. Fortunately this was something that digital camera and modern flash systems made a simple routine.
On My London Diary I was still experimenting in how to present digital work on the web, and the thumbnail pages I created here were not the best of ideas. But the 80 images presented there – around a third of the exposures I made – perhaps give a good idea of how I worked. Clicking on any of them gives a page with slightly larger views of several of them.
Nurses, Coal, Art, Biafrans & Sunflowers – Saturday May 30th 2015 was another varied day of events and protests across London.
Filipino Nurses tell Daily Mail to apologise – Kensington.
I began the day travelling to High Street Kensington, just a short walk from the offices of the Daily Mail. It has the largest circulation of any UK newspaper but is also the UK’s least reliable source of information. Recently The Factual analysed 1,000 articles from each of 245 major news sources from around the world although mainly from the USA and including international news organisations such as Reuters and AP. The Mail came out with the third lowest score of any with a Factual Grade of 39.7% compared to the average of 61.9%. In a table listing all the results, even The Sun does a little better, as do the Daily Express and RT News, though all of these are way below average while The Guardian was above average along with the BBC, though neither among the top scorers.
We don’t have a free press in this country, we have a press largely controlled by a small number of billionaires who, as these figures show, use it largely as a source of disinformation and the promotion of their prejudices – including homophobia, racism and misogyny. Articles are more generally written as click-bait rather than with any desire to inform or educate, and it was hardly surprising when in 2016 it was sanctioned by the International Press Standards Organisation for violating professional norms for accuracy and in 2017 Wikipedia editors decided it was a “generally unreliable” source.
I was there for the start of a long protest by Filipino health workers outside the Daily Mail over its reporting of the Victoriano Chua case which insulted Filipino NHS workers as a whole despite the vital contribution they make to the NHS. The demanded the Daily Mail apologise for its racist comments and to recognise the contribution that they make, keeping our NHS afloat. As someone who a dozen years earlier had been looked after in intensive care by a Filipino nurse I feel very grateful to them, though angry at the UK government for not training enough nurses and doctors – and in particular for removing the training bursary for nurses which has now made the situation much worse. But I did feel they were asking the leopard to change its spots.
I left the Filipinos as their protest was still building up and journeyed across London to Peckham Rye where we were invited to take a tour of the proposed Peckham Coal Line elevated linear urban park between Peckham Rye and Queens Road Peckham stations as a distant part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival events – something vaguely related to the annual flower show.
The Coal Line was frankly hugely over-hyped, particularly in comparing it to New York’s ‘High Line’, and the walk was largely close to but not on the actual proposed line. The former coal sidings on the viaduct which inspired the project are next to a working rail line and could only be seen looking down from neighbouring buildings.
As I commented: “The walk is essentially an urban linear park that would make a useful short cut for some local walkers and cyclists, and could also be a part of a longer leisure walk from Brixton to the Thames. I hope it comes into existence, as the cost would be relatively low and it would be a useful addition to the area.“
But I still enjoyed an interesting walk, visiting both the Bussey Building in the former industrial estate Copeland Park south of the line and the multi-storey car park to the north which now houses a cafe, a local radio performance space and another rooftop bar next to the Derek Jarman memorial garden and has good views of Peckham and central London. And having followed the official route to Queens Road Peckham I walked back a different way vaguely along the Coal Line at ground level, finally travelling more closely along it in an Overground train that took me to Canada Water and the Jubilee Line to Waterloo.
UK Uncut met outside Waterloo station for their mystery protest taking direct action at an undisclosed location. Police liaison officers tried to find out where they were going and what they intended to do, but nobody was talking to them. Finally they set off and marched the short distance to Westminster Bridge where they spread a large piece of cloth on the roadway and painted a banner telling Parliament that collecting dodged taxes would bring in more than cutting public services.
They lifted up the banner and then ‘dropped’ it over the side of the bridge. It was a long run to take a picture of it hanging from the bridge, and I’m not sure worth the effort. It would have been better to have lowered it on the downstream side so as to get the Houses of Parliament in the background.
Another group of protesters in Parliament Square were protesting against the plans to get rid of the Human Rights Act, and some of the UK Uncut people had joined them before the end of the ‘Art’ protest. In May 2022 the government announced it was getting rid of the act and replacing it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’ which will allow the police to “perform freer functions“, Leading charities concerned with human rights have condemned the changes as affecting “the ability of individuals to hold the government and public bodies to account by bringing cases when their human rights have been breached.” They state “The Human Rights Act has greatly benefited a vast number of people from across society, improving their health and wellbeing; ensuring their dignity, autonomy, privacy, and family life; and overall improving their quality of life.” Many see the changes as yet another move towards fascism and a police state.
Biafra came from the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people, which lasted from the 10th century to 1911 and was one of Africa’s great civilisations before the European colonisation.
Biafra was incorporated into Southern Nigeria by the colonialists in the 1884 Berlin Conference and then became part of the united Nigeria in 1914. Biafrans declared independence from Nigeria in 1967, but lost the long and bloody civil war that followed, with many Biafran civilians dying of starvation.
Mass rally Supports National Gallery strikers – Trafalgar Square
After a large rally in Trafalgar Square, National Gallery staff striking against privatisation marched towards the Sainsbury Wing, holding a sit down and short rally outside after police blocked the doors to the gallery. The gallery doors were then locked.
Candy Udwin, a PCS rep at the National Gallery had been sacked for her trade union activities in connection with the plans to privatise gallery staff and the opposition to it by staff. Exhibitions in the Sainsbury wing have already been guarded by privatised staff, and the security there is also run by the private company. After 100 days of strike action the dispute was finally resolived in early October 2015 after the appointment of a new gallery director with terms and conditions of service protected and Udwin returning to work.
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.”
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.
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.
