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Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury – 2009

Climate Rush Green Fayre in Aylesbury: I’d met with Climate Rush at the start of their tour of South West England at Sipson, near Heathrow and had photographed both their procession to Heathrow and the Celebration of Community Resistance they held there on the Sipson Airplot. On Wednesday 9th September 2009 I went to Aylesbury, the furthest north of their horse-drawn tour, where they were holding a Green Fayre in the centre of the town.

Although it was September, the day was one of the best afternoons of the summer and there were people sitting outside cafés around the square and walking to the shops in this pedestrianised area.

Along with the Climate Rush the Green Euro-MP Caroline Lucas had come to speak at the event, along with celebrity cookery writer and TV performer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I’d photographed Caroline at quite a few events, but this was the first time I’d met Hugh, and have to admit I’ve never watched him on screen, having no interest in cookery programmes.

At the start of the event Tamsin Omond and some of the other Rushers made a tour of the nearby shopping streets with their ‘EQUITY’ banner to try to drum up trade. An actual drum would have helped, or event a megaphone, but Tamsin had a surprisingly loud voice, announcing the opportunity to meet both the TV Cook and one of their Euro MPs.

They went through the busy market square – Aylesbury was a market town in Saxon times – and back to Kingsbury, a triangular open space to the north of the Market Square surrounded by shops and pubs where the Green Fayre was being held. It was I think only my second visit to the town which now has a population of around 65,000.

During the afternoon quite a few people did stop to talk with Hugh and tell him how much they enjoyed his programme. Others just edged towards him, stopping a few yards away phone in hand to take a photo.

There were a few short speeches and people talked with the Rushers and some wrote notes about climate change and other environmental issues, posting these in a box to be sent to the local MP. A few children came to draw pictures.

*The Aylesbury Museum provided some free pears and Aylesbury plums*

Aylesbury Museum had come to join in the event with a stall, and brought apples and rare Aylesbury plums to give away – and these were delicious. Other gardeners also brought fruit and vegetables from their gardens and we all enjoyed eating some of these.

*The screen was a bit blocked and gave an interestingly ‘distressed’ image*

A water feature in the centre of the square came in useful for the screen-printing demonstration, printing a Climate Rush image onto t-shirts and washing the screen afterwards.

And on a hot afternoon a pint of real ale from one of the pubs was very welcome. It was a long, hot afternoon and I was sorry to have to leave.

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Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words 2008

Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words: In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and other women who believed that more direct action was needed to get votes for women founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto ‘Deeds not words‘.

In September 1908 together with Christabel Pankhurst and Flora Drummond, Emmeline Pankhurst issued a leaflet with the message:

Men and Women,
Help the Suffragettes to Rush the House of Commons,
on
Tuesday Evening, October 13th, at 7.30.

The three women were charged for this with inciting the public to undertake an illegal act. After speaking at a public meeting on 11th October they were instructed to attend Bow Street police station but defied this and a second request to report to police. They were arrested at 6pm on the 13th and so were unable to attend the Suffragette Rush they had called.

But despite this, 60,000 people came to Parliament Square and some attempts were made to rush through the 5,000 police cordon but failed. “Thirty-seven arrests were made, ten people were taken to hospital and seven police officers were placed on the sick list as a result of their injuries.”

One woman, MP Keir Hardie’s secretary, was working inside the building and ran into the chamber where MPs were debating, shouting ‘leave off discussing the children’s question and give votes to women first’ before being forcibly evicted.

The three leaders were tried and fined for conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace and sent to Holloway when they refused to pay their fines.

On 13th October 2008, the 100th anniversary of this Suffragette Rush, as I wrote, ‘women concerned with the lack of political action to tackle climate change organised and led a rally in Parliament Square, again calling for “men and women alike” to stand together.’

They were making three key demands – “no airport expansion“, “no new coal-fired power stations” and “The creation of policy in line with the most recent climate science and research.”

So far the repeated demands by Heathrow to expand have been resisted, but only by continued protests and helped by financial problems. But expansion remained Tory policy and having ruled it out set up a biased inquiry to reinstate it. The new Labour government has already shown support for expansion at London City Airport and seems likely to support new proposals at Heathrow.

Although the last coal-fired power station closed a few weeks ago, we now have an even more polluting and environmentally damaging wood-fired power station at Drax, which ridiculously receives green subsidies which in 2020 amounted to £832 million as well as “exemptions for taxes on carbon emissions, estimated at savings of £358 million“.

And although successive governments had paid lip-service to “the most recent climate science and research“, their actions and actual policies continue to show any of the urgency that this requires.

On 13th October 2008, the event began with a rally in Parliament Square with rather fewer attending than in 1908, around a thousand including many wearing white and dressing in the styles of a century earlier.

As the final speech by Green Party MEP and leader Caroline Lucas ended, “most of the crowd, led by Tamsin Omond and friends, walked and ran across the road towards the main door into Parliament, chanting the Suffragette slogan ‘Deeds Not Words’. Police “made only a token attempt to stop them on their way, falling back to protect the door itself with several lines of police, and preventing any protesters entering the building.“

“There was a long melee outside the door, with police picking up demonstrators and throwing them back. I saw no violence by demonstrators towards the police.” Eventually the whole area in front of the door was crowded with protesters and police held them to a standstill.

By the time I left around half an hour later a few people were also beginning to drift away. “Later I heard that around half a dozen people had been arrested, including Tamsin Omond, who was in breach of her bail conditions following the ‘Plane Stupid’ roof-top protest at the Houses of Parliament in February.”

You can read more about the protest in my account on My London Diary, which also has many more pictures: Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words.

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Extinction Rebellion Funeral, Iran Protest – 2018

Saturday 24th November 2018 was the second day of action in London by Extinction Rebellion calling for urgent action over the climate crisis which threatens the future of life on Earth. After photographing their protest I walked through Trafalgar Square where Iranian activists were calling for the release of political prisoners in Iran.

Extinction Rebellion Parliament Square

Extinction Rebellion campaigners gathered in Parliament Square and set up road blocks to prevent traffic moving on the roads leading into the square.

Police tried to move the protesters who were blocking the road, but they refused to move and some had ‘locked on’ to make their removal more difficult and time-consuming.

On the grass in the middle of the square a rally began with the mass reading of XR’s Declaration of Rebellion, which was followed by a number of speeches and musical and poetry performances related to the forthcoming environmental collapse.

Many had come with flowers for a funeral and eventually grave-diggers began to dig a hole in the centre of the crowd for the coffin. They carefully cut the turf and set it aside in squares to avoid damage before beginning to dig down into the hardened earth.

Then the police pushed their way in from one corner of the square through the crowd who had linked arms to stop them approaching. They trampled the area, destroying the carefully piled up turf and pushing the protesters back. The crowd remained non-violent but tried to hold their ground, standing and facing the police who pushed them roughly and shouted in their faces.

Soon the police were in the centre of the large crowd, standing on the area where XR had begun to dig the grave.

Pall bearers arrived in the corner of the square carrying a black coffin with the text ‘OUR FUTURE’ on its side and lilies on top. Police stopped this and were again soon surrounded by a large crowd of XR supporters as well as photographers and legal observers.

Eventually the XR organisers decided it was time to abandon plans for the burial in Parliament Square and began a funeral procession.

Extinction Rebellion Parliament Square

Extinction Rebellion Funeral Procession – Whitehall & The Mall

Campaigners formed up behind the behind the coffin, with its message ‘OUR FUTURE’ for a funeral procession, led by drummers and a trumpeter.

The procession made its way slowly up Parliament Street to Whitehall coming to a halt at Downing Street where there was a silent sit in for several minutes.

After the main body of campaigner moved off, some stayed behind and lay on the roadway to form the XR symbol for a few minutes before getting up to rejoin the procession.

There were several arrests on Whitehall as a few protesters sprayed slogans or wrote on walls of government buildings and a memorial. A few police tried to stop the procession as it turned into The Mall, but soon gave up as people simply walked past them, continuing on its way to Buckingham Palace.

Extinction Rebellion Funeral Procession

Extinction Rebellion Buckingham Palace

The coffin halted in front of the gates of Buckingham Palace, where the bearers lifted it high in the air – but the gates were much higher.

They put it down on the ground and began shouting for climate action.

XR posed for a group photo in front of the palace and then

Gail Bradbrook read out a letter calling on the Queen to get her government to take the urgent action needed to save her country – and the world

before the crowd was led again in reading their Declaration of Rebellion. After this there were a few more speeches and a silence to remember those already killed by global warming, and the species that have become extinct.

During the silence those who had brought flowers, wreaths and other objects then laid them on the coffin in front of the palace gates. After this ceremony there was music and dancing but I was tired and walked back to catch a bus in Trafalgar Square.

Extinction Rebellion Buckingham Palace

Free Political Prisoners in Iran – Trafalgar Square

As I walked across Trafalgar Square to catch a bus in Duncannon Street I met activists from the Worker-Communist Party of Iran – Hekmatist who were protesting in solidarity with the Iranian People’s Struggle and calling for the release of all political prisoners.

Many opposition politicians were arrested earlier in 2018 following widespread protests in cities across Iran, and there have been many executions. The protesters called for all of the political prisoners to be released and the executions to stop, and for there to be properly independent trade unions in Iran.

Global South leads Climate March 2015

*Global Frontlines bloc banner ‘Still fighting CO2onialism – Your Climate Profits Kill’*

Many groups came together for a march through London on 29th November 2015 about the need for action over global warming and climate change on the weekend before the Paris talks. It had been agreed that the march should be led by the Global Frontlines block, as the Global South is already being more affecte by climate change.

But on the day the organisers, representing the large groups including Avaaz, changed their mind. They decided to put the main march banner along with some of those in carnival animal costumes at the front of the march as they felt the Global Frontline was too radical, wanting system change not sops.

The organisers decided to put their main banner and a section of animal costumed carnivalistas in front to hide this more radical group, but not surprisingly the Global Frontlines group were not having this and moved back in front of the carnival. The organisers then sent in the private security guards they had employed to steward the march rather than relying as most other protests do on volunteers, with orders to hold back the more radical block and remove some of the more political placards and coffins that were being carried.

It was hardly surprising that this move was resisted, and the protesters stood their ground, and repelled the security guards. The organisers then called the police to try and enlist their help to move the bloc from the front of the march, but other than passing on the organisers’ request I understand they sensibly refused to try to illegally remove the block. The whole argument was a disgraceful attempt to de-politicise the event and to marginalise those facing the sharp end of climate change, and one which they successfully resisted.

The banner at the front of the Global Frontlines block – and thus march as a whole – read ‘STILL FIGHTING CO2ONIALISM YOUR CLIMATE PROFITS KILL‘ and there were others with anti-colonial messages including ‘Extractivism is Colonialism‘ and other anti-mining sentiments. Apparently what worried the more conservative charities most was the message ‘British Imperialism causes Climate Change‘ as well as two coffins naming companies BP and BHP Billiton.

The organisers held back the rest of the march to leave a longish gap between this group and the rest of the march led by the the ‘The People’s March for Climate & Jobs‘ banner which the organisers had tried to put in the lead, along with its white rabbit and giraffes. But when the Global Frontlines stopped and sat in the road for a protest close the offices of BP in St James Square, many of the more radical groups in the main march streamed past this banner to join the march up again.

It was an unfortunate dispute, and one that for many of us undermined the credentials of some of the more affluent protest groups, who many on the left suspect of being funded by corporations and governments to try to tame the environmental movement rather than effectively oppose climate change. It seems quite clear that without some drastic system change we are doomed to see business as usual taking us to extinction.

More about the march and many more pictures – giraffes and all – on My London Diary:
Global Frontlines lead Climate March
March for Climate Action Starts