Anti-Fur, Karma & Knightsbridge. Saturday 1st December 2007 I came to London mainly to photograph the National Anti-fur march, but arrived rather early and took a walk around Knightsbridge and Hyde Park and after the march went on to see what was happening in Oxford Street and Regent Street where there was a traffic-free day to promote what the Church of Stop Shopping labels the Shopocalypse and stoke global warming. But I was warmed just a little by free hugs from Danny’s Karma Army.
National Anti-fur March – Belgrave Square – Harrods, Knightsbridge
Although farming of animals for fur was banned in this country in 2003, both fur farming and extensive trapping of wild animals for fur still take place in other countries.
Many of the countries where fur farming still takes place allow far more cruel practices than those that led to the ban here on the grounds of animal cruelty. Animals are reared in extremely crowded conditions and killed inhumanely – and on some farms skinned while still alive.
Trapping of animals for their fur also involves cruel practices, with wild animals caught in steel jawed traps, often only found and clubbed or suffocated after several days of agonising pain. Still in use in the USA and Canada, leg-hold traps were banned in the UK in the 1950s.
Yet despite this it remains legal to import most furs into the UK, although imports of seal, cat and dog fur are banned. But the UK still imports £55 million worth of fur a year, and estimated 95% of which comes from fur farms. The government abandoned promises to bring in legislation though they have now stated a willingness to support a private members bill on the matter should one be promoted. It seems unlikely that this will happen before the coming election.
Public opinion is very much against the use of animal fur, with opinion polls showing over 90% would like to see a ban. And most consumers now think that fur on garments is synthetic, but many of the big names in fashion and fashion stores are still designing with and selling animal fur. Their wealthy clients, including many overseas customers perhaps still see expensive animal furs as something to desire rather than as it should be, a badge of shame.
The marchers gathered in Belgrave Square and then marched past many of the shops which in 2007 were still selling garments using animal furs, which then included most of the famous names including Gucci, Versace, Fendi, Amani, Dolce and Gabana. Various stores, including Escada, Joseph and Burberry are also targets for the campaign, but the loudest condemnation was reserved for Harrods, the only department store in the UK still selling fur – and still selling animal fur in 2023.
Protests like this one and the continuing pressure from organisations such as PETA have led to many of thes brands end the use of animal furs. A post on Panaprium lists some who no longer do so: “Versace, Furla, Armani, Calvin Klein, Gucci, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Shrimps, and Vivienne Westwood” and also high street brands “Topshop, Zara, Gap, French Connection, AllSaints, Hobbs, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser, Ted Baker, H&M and Whistles“.
But there is still more to do. The Panaprium post by Alex Assoune is headed 28 Shameless Fashion Brands Still Using Fur in 2023 and lists them, as well as stating “There are too many fashion brands that use animal fur to list them all. It’s shockingly disgusting that clothing brands still engage in such barbaric practices for vanity and profits.”
I’d often walked past St Paul’s Church in Wilton Place, a nineteenth century Gothic building (erected in 1840, but much altered 50 years later) but had never before been inside. I’d arrived in Belgrave Square rather a long time before the anti-fur march was ready to start and as the church as open took the opportunity to go inside.
The building is worth a visit, not least for the interesting sepia tile pictures by Daniel Bell dating from 1869-79.
I crossed to Hyde Park, where there was an extensive funfair for the Christmas season and I wandered through it taking a few pictures before hurrying back to the march, stopping to take a couple of pictures of the French Embassy.
Danny’s Karma Army – Taking Kindness Very Seriously – Regent St / Oxford St
Back in 2001, Scottish comedian and presenter Danny Wallace put an advert in a free newspaper call on people to ‘Join Me’ inviting people to join him in carrying out a random act of kindness for a stranger every Friday. To his surprise thousands did and in 2003 he wrote the book ‘Join Me’ about how he he “accidentally started a ‘cult‘” .
Initially known as ‘Join Me’ this movement became known as Danny’s Karma Army, and on December 1st 2007, some of them were out on Regent Street which together with Oxford Street was enjoying a traffic-free day for shoppers.
As I wrote in 2007:
There were a few street performers and musicians, but generally it seemed a recipe for incredible levels of boredom and immoderate spending, with one credit card company offering special prizes to big spenders.
The only relief from this was offered by members of Danny’s Karma Army who were offering free sweets and free hugs – and I took advantage of both as well as some pictures.
They do “random nice things for strangers on Fridays” but were putting in a bit of overtime on a Saturday. As well as rather silly and pointless things, some also apparently do rather more useful things like becoming first-aiders and supporting charities with money or time. So although personally I’d run a mile from a cult leader like Danny, good luck to them. And thanks for the sweets and hugs.
You can hear more about Danny Wallace in a podcast interview with James O’Brien and hear Wallace now every week when “The Great Leader and his I.B.S (Important Broadcast Squad) assemble every Sunday morning from 11am – 1pm!” on an Apple Podcast Radio X, also available live on DAB.
Animal Rights & McStrike: After photographing the start of the 2017 Official Animal Rights March on Saturday 2nd September 2017 I took the tube to East Finchley for a rally outside the UK Headquarters of McDonald’s.
Vegans call for Animal Rights – Hyde Park
Several thousand vegans met to march from Hyde Park through London demanding an end to all animal oppression in the 2017 Official Animal Rights March, supported by The Save Movement and HeartCure Collective.
Many carried posters or placards calling for an end to regarding animals as food or sources of wool and fur, and there were some dressed as animals.
In nature there are predators and prey and a complex interdependence between species. We are in some ways at the top of this pyramid in which some animals eat other animals as well as some eating plants, and our species has evolved as omnivores. We’ve developed some rather complex and industrial ways of doing this through agriculture and food processing, but essentially we are no different from lions eating goats though we have a rather greater choice of food. Are those lions being speciesist?
Unless we ate their meat, drank there milk, ate their eggs or fried their bacon, farm animals would not exist. There might I suppose be a few wild boars and deer roaming our countryside and certainly rather more rabbits but it would be a very different landscape and populated by very different animals to those that now adorn the vegan posters. Everyone going vegan would destroy all reason for their existence.
I’m certainly against cruel practices in farming and don’t condone the inhuman practices in some modern farming. I gladly pay the extra for eggs and meat that has been produced without cruelty, though it’s not always possible.
I can see no justification for fur farming, as there are good alternatives to the uses of fur and nobody needs a mink coat, and the trapping of animals for their skins seems barbaric. But while I’m against the use of animals for testing cosmetic products etc, I find it impossible to object to some use of animals in some medical research, though perhaps this could be ended as better methods are developed. There are strict rules governing it, though they could be tightened, but I wouldn’t be alive but for drugs whose development critically involved some use of animals.
For environmental reasons it is a good thing to eat less meat and I’m happy that many of us have reduced our reliance on meat and that some have decided to cut it out of their diets, and that others have gone further and vegans. Even more doing so would be a good thing, but everyone becoming vegan would be a disaster.
But meat is certainly not murder, though slaughter should certainly be as humane as possible – and it certainly isn’t always so. And milking cows certainly isn’t stealing their milk when they have been bred to produce many times the volume that their calves could possibly consume. Not milking them would certainly be cruelty.
Animals are not ‘Just Like Us’, though of course we have much in common. Animals interact in rather different ways to us (and to other animal species) it infantilises and confuses to refer to them in terms we use for our human relationships and culture. Human rights are different and more important than animal rights and I often found myself wishing that we could have as many people as active in protests over these as over animal rights.
I left the animal rights marchers as they passed Green Park station and took the tube to East Finchley. The rally there was in support of McDonald’s workers who are holding the first UK strike against the company on Monday, US Labor Day, calling for an end to zero hours contracts, £10 an hour and union recognition.
McDonald’s workers complain about bad management and bullying at work and the strikers report threats and insults by managers. There was a table with chairs in front of the McDonald’s building calling for them to come and sit down and negotiate with the BFAWU, but McDonald’s refuse to have any dealings with trade unions
Ian Hodson and Joe Carolan from Unite New Zealand
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) President Ian Hodson led the rally at which organisers from the New Zealand Unite union as well as strikers and other supporters spoke in solidarity. New Zealand Unite fought a successful campaign which ended all zero hours contracts and forced McDonald’s to recognise the union and pay higher wages and the BFAWU is determined to do the same.
Back when we lived in caves and hunted animals for food it made sense to use their skins and fur for clothing. Even before the wide availability of synthetic materials in the second half of the last century fur there were still some functional reasons for using fur. And though it is possible to imagine that fur animals could be farmed without excessive cruelty, it seems very doubtful if this has ever actually taken place. The idea of ‘ethically sourced fur’ seems a nonsense – you can read how fur is acutally produced in one of mny articles on the PETA web-site, Inside the Fur Industry: Factory Farms.
But fur was a luxury item, one that signified wealth and privilege. A mink coat was something for women to aspire to, something that advertised their success in the world, though for those of us in the poorer areas it was often regarded as being all “fur coat and no knickers” marking out its showy and seemingly elegant wearer as vulgar and sexually immoral.
Our dressing-up box as kids – all from jumble sales – included a moth-eaten red fox scarf complete with head and tail. It smelt strongly, though perhaps not of fox. But the fox trims on my mothers’ coats owed their life to crude petroleum rather than any any living animal.
I’m not a fan of foxes. I’ve seen what they do in a chicken run, and it isn’t pretty. Last year I left a recently bough expensive pair of boots outside our back door overnight and one of our local foxes came and took a bite out of them – and they leave foul-smelling excrement on our yard to attract the unwary shoe. Of course I’m against hunting, but would certainly support measures that cut there populations perhaps by eliminating the waste food that has powered their growth thanks to fast-food outlets and fining those urban dwellers who leave out food for them.
But we don’t need fur for clothing. And I’m shocked to find real fur coats and scarves still being sold in shops and on-line. I’d even be in favour of banning the sale of ‘vintage fur’ as this perpetuates the idea of fur as a luxury that sustains the cruelty to animals of producing new fur. And I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘ethically sourced fur’ which shops including Harrods continue to push.
As the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade pointed out in 2018: “Harrods is one of only two department stores in the UK which continues to sell real fur, even though the production of fur is illegal in the UK.” Hopes in 2010 that a change in ownership might change the policy were optimistic – and you can still buy fur there – should you want a gilet “crafted from mink fur – a delicate yet warming material that exudes undeniable glamour” it could be yours for just £8,910.
CAFT in 2018 wrote “The last survey at Harrods revealed a wide range of real fur garments on sale on display throughout the store, and included items made from beaver, chinchilla, red fox, arctic fox, mink, musquash, rabbit, wolf, coyote and squirrel.” They organise regular protests there and at other shops selling real fur products.
I found it hard not to admire the determination of the protesters and the inventive nature of many of their posters, placards, costumes and props, all of which made it easy to take interesting photographs – though there were a few activists who were not keen to be photographed. But I couldn’t help wishing that they could transfer some of their creative anger to protests over the way humans are being treated around the world and support these as well.
Bon Marché, the first purpose-built department store in the UK closed in 1975
I can’t remember why I went to Brixton on Saturday morning two years ago, though there must have been some reason. My events diary has nothing relevant in it and neither the text or pictures in My London diary contain any clues as to why I should have decided to take a walk up Brixton Road. I suspect I may have had a tip-off about something which was supposed to be taking place outside Brixton Police Station which turned out to be inaccurate.
It isn’t unusual to arrive at the time and place I had been told something would happen to find I am the only person there. It’s rather better for those things with an events page on Facebook which tells you how many people have said they will be going, though these are often wildly inaccurate. After walking up and down the road I left for central London.
Carnaby Street Show
Three of my Notting Hill pictures in a Carnaby St shop window
I’m not quite clear either about my next movements, as I seem to have taken the tube to Charing Cross and looked for another event in Trafalgar Square, where again I clearly didn’t find what I was looking for and only made two pictures. I was on my way to Carnaby Street where I wanted to see how three of my pictures were being used in ‘A retrospective on the musical footprint of an iconic sneaker‘ in a window display and screens inside the shop.
Stand With Hong Kong
After a brief look at the shopfront in Carnaby Street I hurried down to Parliament Square where protesters were gathering for a march to Downing St calling on the Prime Minister to act over China’s breaches of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. They called attention to Hong Kong’s humanitarian crisis, widespread injustices and erosion of autonomy and called for the Hong Kong protesters 5 demands to be met.
Some carried yellow posters stating these demands: complete withdrawal of the Extradition Bill; a retraction of characterising the protests as riots; withdrawal of prosecutions against protesters; an independent investigation into police brutality; the implementation of Dual Universal Suffrage.
Unfortunately even if Boris Johnson could be persuaded to lift a finger it would not attract the slightest notice from the Chinese authorities.
March Against Fur 2019
A short walk took me to Leicester Square, where several hundred were gathering for the annual march against fur, a tour of the West End and stores selling fur products, calling for an end not just to using fur in clothing but against all exploitation of animals of all species, whether for meat, dairy, wool, leather or other products.
Using fur in clothing has a very long history, but it is a practice that should now be in the past. We now have so many alternatives and there is abundant evidence of barbaric cruelty in the trapping and farming of animals for their fur. Most in the fashion industry and most shops have been persuaded by various campaigns over the years to abandon fur, but too many still sell clothes with fur trims or use animal skins or down fillings. There are long-running campaigns against stores such as Canada Goose.
I don’t know how much of our milk and cheese actually comes from industrial dairy farms like that shown in the picture above.
According to the RSPCA only around 8% of UK milk comes from cows “housed all year round regardless of milk yield, time of calving and so on”. The RSPCA has a lengthy document for farmers setting the RSPCA Welfare Standards for Dairy Cattle, and a shorter and less technical The welfare of dairy cows information sheet – February 2017 (PDF 654KB) which very much reflects their concern for animal welfare.
Of course these documents are only advisory and again I’m not sure what proportion of our milk and diary products come from farms which follow them, though I suspect it is fairly high. It is very much in farmer’s interests to look after thier animals, and those farmers that I have know personally are very much concerned and involved with them.
I’d like to see welfare standards such as this being legally enforced rather than simply advisory. But to label the whole dairy industry as ‘Scary Dairy’ seems to me misleading. Some of the claims that Viva! and other vegans make simply make no sense; no cow produces enough calves to need the 14,000 pints of milk the average dairy cow provides each year, and there are certainly no calves starving from lack of milk.
Of course farm animals are slaughtered at some point. It is the nature of the beast; farmers breed them only for economic reasons, not to gratify animal lovers (except for those very few kept as pets. They only exist because they produce food and other animal products that farmers can sell. Of course we should have strict laws that eliminate unnecessary suffering governing how animals are killed and ensure that they are enforced.
I remain irredeemably ‘speciesist’. We are in so many respects different from all other species although of course we have much in common, including a high proportion of our DNA, having evolved over thousands and millions of years from other species (which have also evolved, but differently.)
I did my best to photograph the Viva! protest and to caption the images that I filed to represent their views, reporting as objectively as I could. Mostly I chose to photograph things that I view positively, but while I support better animal welfare I think that the approach taken in this campaign is highly emotional and both dishonest and disingenuous.
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.
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