Make Seats Match Votes – Old Palace Yard, Westminster, London. Saturday 25th July 2015
In our recent UK general election there were a little over 48 million registered voters, although only around 29 million bothered to vote. Of these marginally over a third voted Labour who ended up in a landslide victory with 411 of the 650 Parliamentary seats – around 63% – almost two-thirds of our MPs.
The Tories got 23.7% of the votes – almost a quarter of the votes and gained 121 MPs, around 18.6 % of seats. The Lib-Dems did rather better with their 12.2% of the votes gaining 72 seats, 11% of MPs, but as a whole the smaller parties did extremely badly.
The three main parties together got just under 70% of the votes, leaving 30% to the other candidates. Together these resulted in around 40 MPs, around 6% of the total.
Worst hit by our crazy first past the post electoral system was Reform, who actually polled more votes – 14% – than the Lib Dems, but only 5 seats.
It’s also worth pointing out that Labour’s vote share and total vote of 9,708,716 under Keir Starmer was considerably less than in 2017 when Labour under Jeremy Corbyn got 40% of the votes, a total of 12,877,918 on a higher turnout. Corbyn was not only more popular, but his candidacy increased the interest in politics in the UK.
It’s clear from the figures that Labour did not win the 2024 election, but that the Tories lost it, with Reform splitting the right-wing vote to produce the Labour landslide.
The result was a Labour government which at least seems likely to be far more competent than the Tories who had clearly lost the plot. They seem to have hit the ground running, if not always in the correct direction and I’m concerned about their plans for the NHS, housing, poverty, Israel and more.
But we desperately need an electoral system that more clearly reflects the will of the people. There can be arguments about what would be the best way to do that, but I think something using a single transferable vote system – marking candidates in order of preference 1,2,3.. etc, perhaps with a party list for the Upper House (which clearly should no longer be the House of Lords) would be preferable.
I have only ever voted once for a candidate who ever became an MP although I’ve voted in every election since I was old enough to vote in 1966. A year or two before his death in 2017 I met Gerald Kaufmann MP and amused him by telling him he was the only MP I had ever voted for back in 1970 when he was first elected as MP – for Manchester Ardwick.
This year as usual for where I live we got another Tory MP, though he only got 30% of the vote. Labour could have won had they had a good local candidate, and the Lib-Dems and Reform were not that far behind. On any sensible voting system we would now almost certainly not have a Tory MP. Though at least he seems likely to be a rather better constituency MP than our previous absentee member.
My account of the protest on Saturday 25th July 2015 considers the results of the 2015 General Election, “the most disproportionate UK election ever” until 2024 and the pictures demonstrate the problems of photographing the kind of photo-opportunity that looks great to its art director but is highly problematic to us photographers with feet on the ground.
A map of the UK made with coloured balloons to show the constituencies in different colours sounds a good idea, but as I commented, it “would have looked quite impressive from a helicopter, but seen at ground level was rather disappointing.”
Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot: I’m certainly not a supporter of Trump and was shocked by the news of the US Supreme Court vote that granted presidents of the US immunity from prosecution for actions taken in their presidential role. But the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday 6th July 2016 was a reminder that in this country the same applies although our processes are more convoluted, lengthy and opaque.
In short, our establishment protects its own. And as Corbyn found out, demonises and discredits any who threaten it, even at times as in the case of weapons expert David Kelly most probably “eliminating” them.
Parts of the report were read out at the protest. It confirmed that the decision to go to war had been taken many months in advance between Bush and Blair, and revealed some new areas along with those already known where Blair had deliberately misled both Parliament and public.
Part of this was of course the ‘dodgy dossier’ or rather dossiers, the first issued in September 2002 as a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, to which Blair added the sensational (and nonsensical) claim that led the Sun to headline “Brits 45mins from doom” to unverified (and later found untrue) claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear weapons programme.
The second ‘dodgy dosser’, issued in February 2003, which repeated the claims about WMDs was found to “been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a thesis produced by a student at California State University.” It included some of the typographical errors from these, but some phrases had been altered “to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings“, later referred to as “sexing up” the report. A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry found that the report had not been checked by ministers and “had only been reviewed by a group of civil servants operating under Alastair Campbell.”
BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan revealed that his “report which claimed that the September Dossier had been deliberately exaggerated” was based on an interview with David Kelly, although Kelly himself, as the 2011 BBC report Dr David Kelly: Controversial death examined states “gave evidence to MPs’ committees in which he said he did not believe he was the main source of the story”. Two days later he was dead.
The protest on 6th July 2016 took place in the street by the side of the QEII Centre on the morning the Chilcot report was being published there. It began with a naming of a few of the dead, with people coming up to read 5 names of UK forces and 5 of Iraqi civilians who died because of the war. It was only a token gesture, as over a million Iraqis are generally acknowledged to have lost their lives. This was followed by a number of speeches – there are pictures of the speakers on My London Diary.
Police were unusually uncooperative with the protest, insisting on keeping the minor road by the side of the QE2 where the protest was being held open to traffic in both directions, although there was very little actual traffic and it would have caused hardly any disruption to close it. It was hard not to assume they had come under political pressure to harass the event.
The protesters demanded that Blair be brought to trial as a war criminal. Of course Blair has been tried for nothing. Despite having been found to have lied to Parliament he is still treated by the media as a respected politician. Lying to Parliament is surprisingly not a criminal offence – and in response to a 2021 petition with over 100,000 signatures the government said it had no plans to make it one. Almost certainly because too many politicians would be found guilty.
Against Worldwide Government Corruption – Saturday 1st March 2014, ten years ago, saw a small but lively protest “organised, attended and led by people who are appalled at the present state of the UK and the world, and who are convinced that a better world is possible if we got rid of the greedy and corrupt who currently are in change – the party politicians and their governments, the bankers and the corporations, the warmongers and the spies.“
Of course the world is dominated by the rich and powerful and the organisations they have set up and the laws they have established to maintain there domination, though these at least in some places also offer some protection for the poor and powerless. But I don’t really believe that protests like this offer any real hope of changing the situation.
But they perhaps do show us that another world is possible one with “justice and a fairer society, one that doesn’t oppress the poor and disabled, that doesn’t spy on everyone and doesn’t use the media and the whole cultural apparatus as a way of keeping blind to what is really happening.“
It’s the kind of spirit that led to the emergence of the Labour Party and inspired many of its leaders even into my youth – and was in part rekindled by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, propelled into the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015 by huge support from the ordinary membership. But Labour had long lost its way, its organisation and many MPs sponsored and supported by companies and wealthy individuals inherently opposed to its ideals and dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo.
The protest was a wide-ranging one, and on My London Diary I quoted at some length from the speech before the march by one of the organisers, Mitch Antony of Aspire Worldwide (Accountable System Project for International Redevelopment and Evolution.) At the end of it he gave a long list of things the march was against:
We march against Global Government Corruption We march against ideological austerity We march against privatisation for profit We march against the bedroom tax We march against bankers bonuses We march against the corrupt MPs We march against state spying on the people We march against state controlled media We march against government misrepresentation We march against warmongering We march against global tyranny We march against state sponsored terrorism We march against the military industrial complex We march against the militarisation of the police We march against the suppression of alternative energies
The march got off to a poor start, as the advertised meeting point in Trafalgar Square was closed to the public that day, being got ready for a commercial event the following day. Not everybody who came found the new location – and there were aggrieved posts on Facebook from some who failed, though I think they cannot have tried very hard.
Police often find reasons to delay the start of marches, but these protesters were definitely not taking advice from them and set off on the dot at 2pm to march west to the Ecuadorian Embassy where Julian Assange was still confined despite being given political asylum.
On the way the several hundred marchers caused no problems and aroused some interest among those on the streets, mainly tourists. A misguided attempt by officers to stop the march on Piccadilly led to a sit down and was soon abandoned.
When they came to Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge some joined in the protest against the store by the Campaign Against the Fur Trade for a few minutes, and a crowd gathered around the main door shouting at this company that still deals in fur and fur-trimmed garments.
But soon people moved on to the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange was still trapped. Police filled the steps to the building, guarding the door and stopping anyone from entering.
There were far too many people to fit inside the small penned area for protesters on the pavement opposite the Embassy. The protest here in support of of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers and over the continued refusal to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador, continued for around an hour. Many of the protesters then saw the refusal as a personal vendetta against him by then home secretary Theresa May, but it is driven by a continual British failure to stand up to the USA.
Since then we have seen the continued persecution of Assange by successive Tory governments and his arrest and incarceration in the maximum security Belmarsh prison after a changed Ecuadorian government withdrew its protection. Attempts to extradite him to the US where he could be executed or given a 170 year prison sentence are continuing, and it seems likely he will die in prison either here or in the US for publishing material that made clear to the world the war crimes being committed by the US.
At the end of their protest in front of the Ecuadorian Embassy (it occupies only a few rooms on an upper floor of the building) marchers were leaving to go back to Westminster for another rally in Parliament Square, but I’d had enough and took the tube to make my way home.
Hate Crime & Brexit: I tend to think of Brexit as a hate crime, inflicted on the British nation by millionaires out to make a quick buck (or rather a few million) like Mogg, but this title refers to two quite different protests on Saturday 2nd July 2016, both Brexit related.
Love Islington – NO to Hate Crime – Highbury Fields
This protest in Islington was called by Islington Labour Party in reaction to the increase in hate crime against racial, faith and other minorities following the Brexit vote.
Speakers at the event included local MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry, London Assembly members Jennette Arnold and Caroline Russell, faith leaders, including a gay Catholic priest, a leader of the Somali community, Richard Reiser of DPAC, the leader of Islington council and councillors.
They came to declare that Islington was proud to be a diverse, tolerant and cohesive community with good relations between all who live there, regardless of race, faith, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity, and to urge everyone to stand up against hate crimes and report any incidents to the police.
For once one of my pictures was picked up by some of the national press, not to talk about the event or the problem of hate crimes and the role of the Brexit referendum in encouraging some very nasty characters out from under their stones, but to make snooty remarks about the jacket which Jeremy Corbyn was wearing. The obviously saw it as another Michael Foot donkey jacket moment.
Foot of course did not wear a donkey jacket at the Cenotaph in November 1981. He wore a short, blue-green Jaeger overcoat bought by his wife at Harrods so he would look smart, and on which the Queen Mother complimented him on. But the press was out to get him and the lie, invented by a right-wing Labour MP, stuck.
I had taken the pictures of Corbyn while wearing a jacket very similar to his, appropriate for the weather that rather cool July morning. Mine certainly didn’t come from a charity shop, and I’ve no idea whether his did but if so he was fortunate to find it and made a very sensible decision to purchase it.
More than 50,000 people marched through London to a rally in Parliament Square to show their love for the EU and in protest against the lies and deception from both sides of the EU referendum campaign.
Many feel that the result did not truly reflect the will of the people and that the majority was too small to be a mandate for such a drastic change.
David Cameron had been so convinced that the result would be to remain in Europe that he had failed to act rationally. It was a decision that has dramatically changed our nation and one that in any sensible system should have required a truly decisive majority, rather than just creeping past halfway at 51.8%.
I was raised in a church where all decisions were made by consensus, with discussions continuing until all were willing to agree, often requiring considerable concessions on all sides. It was sometimes a rather slow process.
Since I’ve belonged to other organisations where constitutional changes required a two-thirds majority. Perhaps this is a little too high, but the Brexit vote was hardly a mandate with only 37.4% of those registered to vote backing it.
We’ve now begun to see what Brexit means in practice, with many of the problems dismissed as false by Brexit campaigners becoming evident, while few if any of the advantages they trumpeted have appeared. Last month an opinion poll showed that 55% now think Brexit a mistake while only 32% think it was a good decision, and their number continues to fall. But there doesn’t seem any easy way out of this mess, though perhaps a new government that understands how to negotiate would one day help ease some of the worst effects.
The march was a huge one. I had arrived at Hyde Park Corner just as it was starting and it was over 90 minutes later that I left the end of the march as its end was getting close to Green Park station less than half a mile away. I took the Jubilee Line the single stop from there to Westminster and only arrived in time for the last few minutes of the rally which had begun and only heard the two final speakers, David Lammy MP and Bob Geldorf speaking to a packed Parliament Square. Marchers were still arriving there after the rally had finished but I went home.
Thousands rally to Keep Corbyn: Parliament Square, London, Monday 27 June 2016
Jeremy Corbyn remains in the news today, although the BBC in its wide coverage of the festival has ignored the dropping of the official screening of ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie’ at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. It was cancelled after various groups, mainly of people who had not seen the film, claimed it was anti-Semitic, a claim vehemently denied by the maker, Platform Films.
Those actually at Glastonbury, despite the ban, have been able to see the film and make up their own minds as it has been screened on several stages there despite the main ban. Many also have attended screenings at venues around the country, although it has not made it to cinemas in this country. You can see a trailer here – and this makes it very clear why those now in control of the Labour Party are trying to stop it being widely seen.
Platform Films are asking for people who can arrange screenings in their local area and it has been screened in many halls around the country – though pressure from Labour and some Jewish groups has apparently led to some of these also being cancelled. Platform obviously needs to recoup some at least of its expenses in making the film by sales. Once it has done so I think the film will probably be made available widely on DVD and probably on-line free to view to reach a wider audience.
The film which explores widely the forces behind the downfall of Corbyn is narrated by Alexei Sayle and includes a contribution by film-maker Ken Loach. Its producer, Norman Thomas issued a press statement last Friday in which he says that the Glastonbury ban has backfired “wonderfully”, giving a great publicity boost:
“The Glastonbury ban will mean many more people will now be able to see the film. They will be able to see the truth of the film, as opposed to the ridiculous claims made about it. It is NOT a conspiracy film. And it is in no way antisemitic. It simply tries to tell the story of the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn which hasn’t been told.”
It was at a music festival in Tranmere in May 2017 that the crowd first began the chant ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ to the tune of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, but it was at Glastonbury later that year when hundreds of thousands took up the refrain that it became iconic.
The previous year, 2016, thi protest took place against a coup by Labour MPs against their leader, happpening despite the fact that the latest opinion poll had shown that under his leadership the party had caught up with the Tories. And despite the huge support Corbyn had from the majority of party members who had given him a huge mandate in the leadership election. And that party membership had almost doubled under his leadership.
More than ten thousand grass-roots Labour supporters came to Parliament Square to support Corbyn in a rally organised by Momentum as Labour MPs were revolting against him. Three days earlier MPs Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey had tabled a motion of no confidence in him as Labour leader. The previous day, Hilary Benn had been sacked from the Shadow Cabinet after it emerged he had been organising a mass resignation of Shadow Cabinet members – and 23 of 31 others had walked out.
Corbyn was the final speaker at the rally, promising he would not resign if he lost the motion of no confidence – as he did the following day. He made clear that he would stand again if MPs forced a leadership election, and that party rules clearly state as the incumbent he would not need to collect nominations to be on the ballot.
And later in the year, there was a leadership election. Corbyn was proved right about the rules despite attempts to prevent him from being on the ballot, but the National Executive Committee limited the membership vote to those who had been members for over six months and decided that “registered supporters” could only vote if they paid a £25 fee. They were almost certainly shocked that over 180,000 did – mainly Corbyn supporters.
The election took place in September that year, with Corbyn winning decisively with almost 62% of the vote – a small increase over his initial leadership contest.
The message to the right of the party was clear. If they wanted to defeat Corbyn they had to fight even dirtier – and ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie’ exposes some of the ways they did so.
Grenfell and the Tory/DUP Alliance. Two things at the top of the news on Saturday 17th June 2017, the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower three days earlier and the agreement still being negotiated for the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party to go into coalition with the Conservative Party after the 2017 General Election had resulted in a hung Parliament.
Grenfell
I’d woken on the 14th June 2017 to the terrible news of the fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, hearing with shock, anger and grief the terrible stories of those trapped and burnt to death in the upper floors of the building. Anger because from the outset it was clear that cuts in the London Fire Brigade made under Boris Johnson and the decisions made by governments , Greater London and the local council had made this and other buildings a fire trap.
I live a little over an hour’s journey from Grenfell, and knew that the area would already be swamped by the media so made the decision to keep away in the days that followed, though I spent some time in research on the web into the causes, particularly reading earlier blogs from some local residents which confirmed my immediate anger.
On 17th September I visited the area which I knew slightly before, waling with many others, some carrying flowers on our way to pay respect to the dead, to say a few prayers and to cry a few tears. I wasn’t going as a photographer but as a fellow human being, but I was carrying my camera bag as I was on my way to photograph other events, and I did take just a few pictures.
And I wrote that evening (I’ve corrected a couple of typos):
We don’t need an inquiry to tell us what happened – the various defects that came together are only too obvious, as a number of fire safety experts are concerned. Someone authorised the use of cheap cladding that contained flammable foam, someone let that cladding be applied without fire breaks to save money, Someone approved those unsafe gas lines, someone employed a consultant so the building didn’t get proper fire inspections and so on. Over the years people at Kensington & Chelsea Council (and the TMO they set up) turned an inherently safe building into a firetrap waiting to happen, because to them it was a place where people they didn’t see as people, just numbers who were a burden on the housing department.
Of course it wasn’t just the RBK&C. There were the various government ministers and others responsible for setting standards that let inherently unsafe materials pass – which when tested after Grenfell have given a 100% failure rate. The ministers who dismantled and privatised safety inspections, relaxed and got rid of safety regulations, failed to implement the lessons learnt from earlier fires and so on, most but not all of them under the previous Tory government. And all those pressure groups and ‘think tanks’ pushing the ideas of deregulation, of removing what they called ‘red tape’, the protections that would have saved the lives of those who died.
The victims of Grenfell – certainly a case of mass corporate manslaughter if not murder – deserve justice. They died because they were poor and in council housing and those in authority and the greedy super-rich didn’t think they deserved proper care and decent standards. They deserve justice – and that means fines and imprisonment for those responsible as well as changes in the way that we run things.
Six years on, with a huge and ponderous inquiry having made a fortune for the many lawyers, we have still to see justice. Just another example of our legal and judicial systems swinging into action to push Grenfell into the long grass and to protect the rich and guilty.
Class War protest Grenfell Murders – Downing St
Later that day I was with Class War at Downing Street where they had come to call for revenge over the Grenfell fire and action by the people rather than waiting for a whitewashing public inquiry to report.
Class War say Grenfell is an open declaration of class war by the wealthy elite against the working class, and they have a personal interest in the matter. Grenfell was where Ian Bone first lived when he moved to London and it was there that the first issues of the Class War magazine were written. He and others in the group still knew people who lived there.
This was only a small protest, with people taking it in turns to stand in front of the gates to Downing St holding their banner with a quotation from the US activist, labour organiser, radical socialist and anarchist Lucy Parsons (ca 1853-1942), who fought against racism and for the rights of workers and for freedom of speech from her early years until her death, “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live.“
The poster held up by Ian Bone stated “GRENFELL – WE AIN’T GONNA WAIT TWO YEARS FOR A PUBLIC INQUIRY TO COME UP WITH ANSWERS – WE’RE GONNA GET SOME NOW”. Most of the answers were published a month later in a lengthy report by Architects for Social Housing, but Class War seriously under-estimated the obfuscating power of the establishment. Its now SIX years with no justice.
We need fast-track inquiries with minimal legal involvement, perhaps only allowing those who are a part of the inquiry team rather than any representing parties under investigation.
No Tory DUP Coalition of Chaos – Downing St
The 2017 General election had been a close-run thing, and only a concerted effort by Labour officials and right wing MPs had prevented a Labour victory, though the huge extent of their machinations against Corbyn only emerged much later in an unpublished but widely available internal report. But as the results came in you could hear the relief of some leading Labour MPs when their candidates lost in some clearly winnable marginal constituencies.
The result was a hung Parliament with no party having an overall majority. Over the previous parliaments the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party had generally operated an informal agreement to vote with the Tories, but now they were able to demand concessions to enter into a formal coalition. Negotiations had begun which were finally agreed on 26 June 2017.
Protesters pointed out the DUP was a party intrinsically linked with Protestant terrorist groups and dominated by a homophobic church which represents a tiny minority of the Northern Irish population.
Speakers included Northern Irish women campaigning for abortion and other women’s rights enjoyed by women in the UK. DPAC spoke about the Tory assault on the disabled, and there were various others.
Among those who spoke were three Labour MPs, Marsha De Cordova who gained Battersea from the Conservatives, Rupa Huq who greatly increased her tiny majority and Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner.
There were also those present who had come to protest about the complicity of Theresa May and unseated Tory MP Gavin Barwell in the Grenfell outrage; Barwell had ignored a fire report made in 2013. Political artist Kaya Mar came with a painting of Theresa May playing the violin with one red-heeled shoe on a coffin labelled Grenfell.
The Tory-DUP agreement has had serious long-term consequences, in particular over Brexit, where it prevented a sensible agreement being reached. Johnson went ahead ignoring the problems and we are still suffering from this. Neither his or May’s agreement were supported by the DUP, but the coalition agreement had greatly increased the importance of their party’s views.
Boris J is not our Prime Minister – That title expressed the feelings of many of us when I wrote it on Wednesday 24th July 2019, the day 3 years ago that he assumed office. He had then been elected by the votes of 92,153 Conservative Party members in the leadership election, around twice the number received by Jeremy Hunt. Unfortunately 3 years later he is still our prime minister, if now only hanging on until a successor is elected.
Later after the 2019 election where the Tories won a ‘landslide’ victory with an 80 seat majority after receiving 43.6% of the votes, the party could claim a mandate for its policies. But although many supported his policy of ‘Getting Brexit Done’ (and Starmer had possibly deliberately pushed the Labour Party under Corbyn into a popular defeat by persuading the Labour Party to back his ideas of another referendum) very few actually voted for Boris Johnson – his 52.6% majority in Uxbridge took only 25,321 votes.
We have a crazy and undemocratic electoral system which suits the wealthy minority who remain very much in control of things and even though had Corbyn formed a government would have prevented many of his policies from becoming law.
The Forde report – finally published on the hottest day ever in the country when wild fires were sweeping London and the Tory prime-ministerial contest was in full swing to ensure it got little if any mention in the news – shows clearly how many of the officers and right-wing MPs made sure we failed to get a Labour government. You will need to download it and read its 138 pages if you wish to know what it says rather than the spin that some will put on it.
If anyone tries to tell you that there were faults on both sides or that it isn’t a damning condemnation of the Labour Party and how it machinated to ensure Corbyn’s defeat they are simply lying to protect themselves and their political future. The Forde report does its best to suggest there were two sides, but lacks credibility in this aspect by failing to note the crucial difference. One side largely kept to the rules and had a democratic mandate from hundreds of thousands – the great majority of party members, while the other was acting in its own self-interest often outside the rules and against the will, traditions and historical mission of the party.
The Forde report does not tell the whole story, and goes out of its way to try and be balanced over a situation which was very much out of kilter. It really needs to be read alongside the controversial leaked report into anti-semitism written to be submitted tot he EHRC which led to it being set up – and which led to Martin Forde QC being subjected to various and continuing legal threats from the moment he was appointed. Much that should have been in Forde’s report is simply not there. But although that document was widely distributed via social media, for legal reasons it will be difficult to find a copy now if you did not download it at the time. And for legal reasons I can’t make it available here though it can still be found and downloaded from abroad over a VPN.
John McDonnell tweeted after the report was published: “Shockingly Forde report findings confirm what was suspected. That party officials secretly diverted election funds in 2017, prevented supporters of Jeremy Corbyn from having a vote in the leadership election & used discriminatory abuse. To move on lessons need to be learnt.” And the report certainly does confirm those allegations.
Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary implicated her as a spy when she was held on a family visit
Others find sections of the report which they can use to yet again attack Corbyn for anti-semitism – even in some cases quoting paragraphs which are clearly in his favour to do so. There are certainly groups that are still determined to have his scalp, whatever the evidence.
Unfortunately the nightmare will continue even when Boris is replaced
Back in 2019 there had been protests outside Downing Street during the day and in the evening a large crowd mainly of young people gathered for a protest party in Russell Square, where speakers included Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell who made a strong plea for a General Election.
Earlier at Downing St
I decided to leave before the crowd set off for Downing St to join protesters there. I’d called at Downing St on my way to Russell Square and there were only a few present then, but apparently numbers had swelled considerably by the time the marchers arrived and I missed rather a lot of the action. But I was tired and wanted to go home and get on with processing the pictures I’d already taken.
Class War wrap a march steward in their banner at the start of the march
Tories Out March – 1st July 2017: Five years ago, shortly after the Labour right working inside the party had managed to prevent a Corbyn victory by sabotaging the campaign for the 2017 General Election, the People’s Assembly Against Austerity organised a march through London calling for Theresa May and the Conservatives to go.
Of course they didn’t go, and later when Boris Johnson called an election over Brexit, he gained a landslide victory, rather than the close call in 2017 which left Theresa May having to bribe the Northern Irish DUP, a deeply bigoted party with links to Loyalist terrorists to support her.
This reliance on the DUP has eventually led to the current problem over the Irish Sea border arrangements which Boris Johnson persuaded the EU to adopt as a vital part of his Brexit deal, and which the government is now pushing through a bill to enable us to renege on.
And the Johnson administration has continued and worsened the Tory policies which in 2017 should have resulted in a Labour victory. In my account of the protest march 5 years ago today I wrote
“The election showed a rejection of … austerity policies and the Grenfell Tower disaster underlined the toxic effects of Tory failure and privatisation of building regulations and inspection and a total lack of concern for the lives of ordinary people. The protesters, many of whom chanted their support of Jeremy Corbyn, say the Tories have proved themselves unfit to govern. They demand a decent health service, education system, housing, jobs and living standards for all.”
Rev Paul Nicolson from Taxpayers Against Poverty rings his bell
The full facts of the sabotage of the Labour election campaign from inside the party had not then come to light – and we are still waiting for the Forde inquiry into the leaked report which exposed the racism, hyper-factionalism and electoral sabotage by party officials as well as the misguided attempts of the Corbyn leadership such as the expulsion of Jackie Walker and the resignations of Chris Williamson and Ken Livingstone.
But although this was largely a march of Labour supporters there were still a number of groups on the march who were critical of Labour’s policies and the practices of London Labour councils, particularly on housing, where councils are “demolishing council estates and colluding with huge property developers to replace them with expensive and largely private housing. It is a massive land grab, giving away public land often at far below market value and pricing the former residents out of London in what they call ‘regeneration’ but is quite clearly a process of social and ethnic cleansing.”
It is also a process that has resulted in considerable personal financial advantage for some of those who have led it, with councillors and officers either leaving to work for the developers or in organisations set up by councils to manage their estates. Setting up organisations such as the TMO responsible for the unsafe condition of Grenfell Tower has enabled these bodies to hide information about such activites as using consultants to advise them on circumventing adequate fire inspections outside of the purview of Freedom of Information requests.
Most obvious among these groups was Class War, alway ready to make their views known and to challenge authority. At the start of the march close to the BBC they had a little run-in with the march stewards, which resulted in them briefly wrapping their banner around one of him – though of course they soon released him. Later at the rally in Parliament Square I unfortunately missed a confrontation in which Lisa McKenzie stood in front of both Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and loudly asked them the simple question ‘When are you going to stop Labour councils socially cleansing people out of London?’. Both men simply ignored her and walked away.
Much more about the event and many more pictures at Tories Out March.
Saturday 12th September 2015 was both the day that the Labour Leadership election results were being announced and also of a large demonstration with over 50,000 people of all ages from across the UK marching through London to show their support for refugees facing death and hardship and their disgust at the lack of compassion and inadequate response of the British government.
People celebrate Corbyn’s landslide victory
It had been clear from the start of the leadership election that Labour MPs were completely out of touch with the mood of the party and of the country after five years of cuts made by the coalition government. A number of those who had given Corbyn the nomination needed for him to stand in the election had only done so with the expectation that it would lead to a humiliating defeat for him and the left, and even those who truly supported him had done so with no hope of victory. Corbyn himself had almost certainly not expected to do well, and had probably only allowed his arm to be twisted to stand after being told it was his turn to do so.
When opinion polls indicated Corbyn was the front runner, many Labour MPs panicked, with leading New Labour figures including Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Miliband all over the media saying his election would be a disaster, making the party unelectable. It was the beginning of a long campaign against him both in public and with many dirty tricks in private that resulted in Labour losing the 2017 and 2019 elections. The result of the leadership election, with a resounding 59.5% for Corbyn, three times that of his nearest rival seemed definitive proof they were wrong (and was confirmed by an increased vote of 61.8% in the 2016 leadership challenge) but the plots and back-stabbing continued to ensure defeat in the 2017 general election. But it was a close thing and Starmer and his Brexit policies were needed to make sure Labour lost dramatically in 2019 and could begin the process of purging the party of socialists.
People in Park Lane for the Refugees Are Welcome march
When Corbyn’s vote was announced I was with a crowd of a couple of hundred Corbyn supporters in Hyde Park, with around as many media people, including many TV crews. I’d taken a position before the announcement sitting on the grass with many of them behind me, but both the supporters and the media went wild, photographers and TV crews knocking me flying as I tried to get up and join the rush to get closer to where the champagne corks were popping. All the usual niceties of media scrums went tothe wind and my gear was scattered. I still managed to get a few pictures.
Maimuna Jawo a refugee from Gambia
Most of those celebrating Corbyn’s victory were like me also waiting for the start of the Refugees Welcome Here march protesting against the government’s failure to respond to the huge numbers of refugees seeking asylum in Europe, risking their lives to travel across the Mediterreanean and other dangerous routes to reach safety from civil wars and persecution. Countries on the front lines of these escape routes are flooded with more refugees than they can cope with, and while some other European countries have taken large numbers of refugees the UK has resisted doing so. Many want to come here as they speak English or have relatives or friends already in this country.
Speaker after speaker on a stage in Park Lane gave damning condemnation of the UK government to act humanely and to meet its international obligations. On My London Diary I list most of those I heard: Jean Lambert, MEP; Claude Moraes; Sabby Dhalu; Zita Holborne of BARAC; Maurice Wren from the Refugee Council; Kevin Courtney, NUT; Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP; Antonia Bright of Movement for Justice, Maimuna Jawo, Women for Refugee Women; Zrinka Bralo, Citizens UK; and Sam Fairbairn of People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
Park Lane was packed with people along its length and I walked though to the head of the march at its southern end and went with it for the first couple of hundred yards into Piccadilly, where I stopped to photograph the rest of the march as it came past. Fairly densely packed and spreading across the whole of the roadway (and sometimes on to the pavement) it took exactly an hour to go past me.
I took the tube from Green Park to Westminster and arrived just in time to meet the head of the march as it got to Downing St, going with it from there the short distance to its end in Parliament Square, which soon filled up. I photographed more marchers arriving and coming down Whitehall and Parliament Street and then realised I was rather tired and hungry. I sat down on a wall and had a late sandwich lunch before deciding I’d heard enoough speeches and taking the train home.
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.
It was the so-called Democratic Unionist Party, the DUP, a deeply bigoted party with links to Loyalist terrorists, that saved Theresa May’s bacon after the 2017 election, bribed to give their support after an election result which showed a rejection of the toxic austerity policies of the Coalition and Tory governments.
And in response, Boris Johnson agreed a Brexit deal which put a border in the Irish Sea which the DUP are now up in arms about. Probably the EU will agree to some relaxation of the rules – and exporters will eventually get used to making the changes in the ‘paperwork’ (surely mainly now digital) which will be required and the Tory government may eventually realise that they need to respect and implement treaties that they sign up to. But it seems inevitable that the sea border will remain, and probably eventually lead on to a united Ireland.
A Grenfell resident holds up some of the flammable cladding
Grenfell had also recently underlined the toxic effects of Tory failure and privatisation of building regulations and inspection and a total lack of concern for the lives of ordinary people.
A huge number of groups came together for the Tories Out march, organised by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, with around 20,000 gathering outside the BBC (who if they deigned to mention the event in any of their extremely lengthy news broadcasts will probably have called it ‘several hundreds’) to march to a Parliament Square rally calling on the Tory Government to go, saying they had proved themselves unfit to govern, and demanding a decent health service, education system, housing, jobs and living standards for all.
Had the DUP not sold themselves to the Tories, another election seemed inevitable, and perhaps having seen the closeness of the result, at least some of those Labour MPs an officials who had been actively campaigning against their leader might have decided to change sides, backing Labour and the popular policies which had led the Party to its highest vote share since 2001 (40%) and got behind a leader they had previously discarded as ‘unelectable’ to get back into power.
There was certainly huge support for Corbyn on the march, much expressed through that rather inane singing (which I suspect he finds embarrassing.) But there were a significant number who also showed their anger at the housing policies of London Labour boroughs who are demolishing council estates and colluding with huge property developers to replace them with expensive and largely private housing.
Lisa from Class War greets Victor from the United Voices of the World
One of those groups was Class War, and later at the rally, unfortunately after I had left, Lisa Mckenzie confronted both Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, asking the simple question ‘When are you going to stop Labour councils socially cleansing people out of London?’. Both men simply ignored her and walked away, though Corbyn did look a little shame-faced. His eccentric brother, Piers Corbyn, has long campaigned on the issue, and I suspect Jeremy, like others on the Labour left, would like a change in policy.
