council leader | >Re-PHOTO

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell: On Thursday October 16th 2014 I went with housing campaigners on a march to Southwark Council Offices. They claimed that the council leader and other councillors and officers have accepted gifts and jobs from developers and were selling off council estates at knockdown prices. I had some time free after that and took a short walk along the Thames making some panoramas before rushing to the National Gallery where the Art Not Oil coalition were protesting outside a gala evening for special guests including unethical sponsors such as Shell.

CPOs for Southwark Councillors

Elephant to Southwark Council Offices

Southwark Housing, Bermondsey Panoramas & Rembrandt Against Shell

Housing campaigners from Southwark were joined by members of the Focus E15 Mums ‘Housing for All’ campaign at the base of the Strata Tower at Elephant and Castle, a tower nicknamed ‘The Razor’ for its three entirely decorative ‘greenwash’ rooftop wind turbines – which cannot be used as they generate unacceptable vibration for the upper floor flats.

Facing them was One The Elephant, then under construction, a 44 storey block of luxury flats with no social housing, being sold abroad, with ‘studio flats’ starting at around £320,000 or 640,000 Singapore dollars.

They marched to protest briefly at the Elephant Park Sales Office on the Walworth Rd before walking on through the Heygate council estate where over 1200 homes were demolished and the site sold to developers for a knock-down cost – apparently less than the costs of ‘decanting’ the tenants and far below its proper valuation. Despite this leaseholders were only given compensation of around half the true market value of property in the area, forcing them to move out into the suburbs to buy property in far less convenient areas giving them long and expensive work journeys.

The replacement by Elephant Park means a loss of over a thousand social housing units, with a small number of so-called affordable units at 80% of market rates, still well above what most Londoners can actually afford. The new flats were being sold to overseas buyers in Singapore and elsewhere as second homes, investment properties, homes for wealthy overseas students studying here, buy-to-let etc.

From there they walked through some of Southwark’s 1930’s and postwar council estates, now seen as prime targets for demolition of social housing. Its replacement with higher density high price ‘luxury’ flats would generate huge profits for the developers (and lucrative rewards for councillors and council officers.)

The march carried on to a similar area of council properties around Long Lane and Tennis Street where again similar changes – gentrification labelled as regeneration – seem likely, before going through Guy’s Hospital and London Bridge Station to Tooley St and the Southwark Council Offices.

There they held a short rally after which security stopped them entering to hand in letters for Southwark Council Leader Peter John and two other councillors containing ‘People’s Compulsory Purchase Orders‘ for their homes, but after much argument and the presence of police Liliana Dmitrovic of the ‘People’s Republic of Southwark’ and another protester were allowed in. As Southwark residents they argues they had a right to enter the council offices.

They went to reception and asked to see the three councillors and were told to take a seat and wait. They sat there for some time but eventually Stephen Douglas from Southwark Council came to tell them that all three named on the letters were in meetings and unavailable, but promised he would personally deliver the letters. They handed them in to him and left.

More on My London Diary at CPOs for Southwark Councillors.

Bermondsey Thames Panoramas

City Hall to Angel Wharf

I crosssed the road from the council offices and went through the gardens by City Hall to walk by the Thames, going briefly down Horselydown steps just downriver from Tower Bridge onto the foreshore.

I came back up to Shad Thames, a painful pastiche of its former industrial past. Quickly I made my way to the riverside path and walked on, stopping as usual at the footbridge across St Saviour’s Dock to take more pictures.

I walked on in some interesting lighting and got very involved in taking pictures, rather losing track of time. At West Lane I realised I was in danger of arriving late at Trafalgar Square and ran down to the bus stop on Jamaica Road.

Many more pictures – not all panoramic – at Bermondsey Thames Panoramas.

Art Not Oil – Rembrandt Against Shell

National Gallery

The Art Not Oil coalition had earlier gate-crashed the press launch of the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery in a protest against oil company sponsorship of the arts and the privatisation of gallery staffing.

*Protesters with banners in front of the Sainsbury wing*

I arrived in time to meet them on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields just before they marched the few yards to the National Gallery where a gala evening was being held for special guests – including from the sponsors – and highly ranked staff.

They turned down a protest pen the police had set up some distance from the entrance the guests would be using where their protest would not be noticed (what the police call ‘facilitating’ but campaigners know is minimising) and instead protested close to the entrance. Here there were some speeches and a repeat performance of their earlier performance which included a short playlet as well as some specially written songs.

Some of those who appeared at the press launch were professional actors now on stage elsewhere and so there were some changes in the cast. But it was still a very professional performance.

Here is the Art Not Oil statement:

The presence of unethical sponsors like Shell and the contracting of external security firms shows the growing influence the private sector is having over our arts and culture. With its meagre contribution to the gallery, Shell is buying social legitimacy for its dodgy deeds worldwide, including:
- its failure to clean up its multiple spills in the Niger Delta
- its reckless plans to drill in the Arctic for yet more oil
- its tar sands projects in Canada that are undermining Indigenous people's      rights

More at Art Not Oil Rembrandt Against Shell.

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Whistleblowers, Ticks, FGM & Barnet – four very different events in London on Wednesday 13th May 2015

End Child Abuse, support Whistleblowers – Parliament Square, London

Adult survivors of child abuse and Whistleblowers United called on parliament to end abuse in the care system, to believe and act upon children’s reports of being abused and to end the covering up of abuse by social services and police.

Many of those at the protest had personal stories of the failure of police to take action, and some who had complained about abuse of their children had found themselves under investigation and their complaints had led to their children being taken away or access to them being refused. But though I am sure many of their personal complaints were justified, they were also promoting some of the widespread conspiracy theories and draconian punishments for child abuse which made me uneasy.

End Child Abuse, support Whistleblowers

Lyme Disease – Urgent action needed -Downing St

Campaigners at Downing St highlight the serious dangers of Lyme Disease from tick bites, calling for public education and for the NHS to abandon useless tests and tackle this killing disease seriously with effective tests and treatments.

Lyme disease, or borreliosis, is becomiing increasingly more common and all who walk or work in woods, parks and even gardens are at risk. Spread by bites from infected ticks, it is hard to diagnose and often goes untreated, with few doctors being aware how serious and widespread it is, often leading to partial or complete disablement.

Prompt proper removal greatly reduces the risk of infection, and is best performed with the aid of a small cheap plastic tool (such as the O’Tom Tick Twister) which could be made very readily available for a few pence – although currently they cost from around £2.60 up. It would be useful for these to be included in commercial First Aid kits. If tick removal is carried out improperly, the risk of infection is high.

In August that year I was on holiday with friends in Silverdale, a truly beautiful area of the country but with woods full of ticks. The tick remover was an essential part of our holiday equipment, removing many of them from various parts of our bodies. It was fortunate that I had met the Lyme Disease campaigners earlier in the year.

Lyme Disease – Urgent action needed

Grant FGM campaigner Maimuna Jawo asylum – Home Office

Maimuna Jawo fled The Gambia in her fight against FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), refusing to take over her family’s duty as her village’s ‘cutter’ when her mother died. In the UK she was held in Yarls Wood, and now her asylum claim has been rejected.

Grant FGM campaigner Maimuna Jawo asylum

Sweets Way & West Hendon at Barnet Council – Barnet Town Hall

People facing eviction as Barnet Council hands their estates to property developers brought petitions with over 200,000 signatures to council leader Richard Cornelius (above). There were angry scenes as security restricted access to the town hall meeting which the protesters wanted to attend.

I showed my UK Press Card and security admitted me with the group carrying the petition into the town hall. But when I started to photograph the handover, a council press officer intervened, looked at my press card and told me I could not take any pictures of the handover. Fortunately by the time he told me I had already taken several. He instructed security to take me out of the building.

That proved to be impossible as a large crowd of protesters was attempting to push its way inside. Another photographer who had been allowed to take photographs of the handover stood in the lobby with me, and we both took pictures, despite the security men telling me I was not allowed to do so. A council officer attempted to block my view of what was going on as they stopped people trying to climb through a window, but there seemed to me to be clearly an attempt to block press freedom in recording events in which there was a clear public interest and I continued to work as best I could.

Eventually the security officers were able to help me out through the crush, which had subsided a little. They had behaved reasonably and I think were not happy at having to carry out the orders they had been given by the council officer. Our disagrements were relatively polite, but they made it clear that I would not be allowed back into the town hall as I had taken photographs when instructed not to do so. By the time they could evict me I wanted to be outside to photograph the protest continuing there.

*Protesters are stopped from entering by a window*

Barnet had been a leader in the destruction of themselves as local authorities in the application of austerity and outsourcing of services under their ‘Easy Council’ policy, begun in 2008 but reaching its peak in 2013 with huge contracts to Capita – and on which they ended up spending £217million more than orginally agreed . As Aditya Chakrabortty wrote in The Guardian about Northamptonshire and Barnet “Both true blue Tory; both preaching the need for sound finances while raiding their contingency funds and refusing to raise council taxes; both happy to chuck millions at consultants and build themselves swanky headquarters. And, crucially, both adamant that their council’s future lies in smashing itself up and handing out the shards to big companies to provide the bulk of public services… It was cartoonish, it was reckless, it was grotesque.”

*Finally I am escorted out and can photograph the protesters outside*

And it failed, with the Tories having to admit huge losses and announce that the major contracts would not be renewed when they expired in 2023. And though I was pleased to hear that the recent local elections had resulted in Labour gaining control with 41 seats to the Conservative’s 22, it will give them the problem of picking up the pieces. And London Labour Councils have a notoriously bad record over the demolition of council estates and the treatment of residents and leaseholders.

Sweets Way & West Hendon at Barnet Council