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Democracy, Greece & Pakistan – 2015

Democracy, Greece & Pakistan: Events I covered on Sunday 15th February 2015.

Occupy Democracy Return

Parliament Square

I hadn’t been at Parliament Square the previous evening when Occupy Democracy had returned to take up residence and hold a protest and workshops there, but had heard about the arrests. Police following instructions from Boris Johnson’s Greater London Authority private security wardens arrested five of the protesters including Donnachadh McCarthy, along with the white cardboard coffin he was holding with the message ‘UK Democracy R.I.P. Killed by Corporate Billionaires‘ which was returned in a rather damaged condition.

On Sunday morning my first call was to the square where Occupy Democracy talks and workshops were continuing on the pavement area around Churchill’s statue.

While I was there George Barda spoke introducing the ‘Love Activists’ and Danny talked about their plans for future activities.

Another event in the square was led by Frances Scott of the 50:50 Parliament campaign to get equal numbers of men and women in Parliament, arguing that this would lead to much better government.

Although I agree there should be better representation of women, I feel that it’s more important that we have politicians who better represent the needs of the people and the country. More Thatchers, Trusses and Badenochs would hardly be an advance on Kinnochs, Blairs and Mandelsons. We need a far more radical system change.

I left to cover the other events, but returned on my way home in the afternoon when the workshops were continuing. Police and GLA security watched but did not interfere. As I commented, “They prefer to take action when fewer press are around and it is dark.”

More at Occupy Democracy return.

Let Greece Breathe!

Trafalgar Square

A large crowd had come to the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square for a rally to celebrate the victory of the anti-austerity Syriza party in the Greek General Election in January and to support them in resisting the imposed austerity programme.

Greek voters had decisively rejected the the EU’s austerity plans, largely pushed by Germany and backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) but the new government was having to revise its plans, facing stiff opposition and was having to compromise on many of its promises.

Speakers at the rally, including Jeremy Corby, Owen Jones, CWU’s Billy Hayes, Paul Mackney, Green Party’s Romayne Phoenix and John Sinha from Occupy Democracy, praised the Greek struggle against austerity, but their pleas for the country to be let to breathe fell on deaf ears in Germany and the financial institutions.

Many in Syriza felt betrayed by its actions and some left the party, but in a snap election in September 2015 the party polled well enough to remain as the leading party in the coalition. They did badly in the 2019 election, becoming a part of the opposition.

More pictures at Let Greece Breathe!

Deport Altaf Hussain

Downing St

Pakistanis from Imran Khan’s PTI party called on the UK government to arrest and deport Altaf Hussain, the founder of the rival rival MQM party who fled to the UK in 1991 following an attack on his life in advance of a police crackdown of his party and was granted asylum here in 1992.

The protesters say Hussain and his party have an armed mafia wing in Karachi which indulges in extortion, blackmail and murder and were behind the Baldia Town factory fire in which at least 258 workers died, the Karachi Massacre of May 2007, as well as the murder of PTI leader Zahra Shahid in her driveway in Karachi in 2013 and many other crimes.

Since 2015 he has been a wanted man in Pakistan on charges of ‘murder, targeted killing, treason, inciting violence and hate speech‘. In the UK he was tried in 2022 charged with ‘promoting terrorism and unrest through hate speech in Pakistan‘ but was acquitted.

More at Deport Altaf Hussain.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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12 Days of Christmas – January

Some of my favourite pictures from those I made in January 2025:

12 Days of Christmas, TRUMP CLIMATE CATATROSPHE, Imperialism, Hands of COngo, — London, UK. 11 Jan 2025. TRUMP CLIMATE CATATROSPHE. US Embassy protest called by Campaign against Climate Change rejects Trumps climate denial and demands urgent action as world reaches 1.5 degree man-made temperature rise and climate disasters occur around the world. Trump has said he will pull the US out of the Paris agreement and his example will embolden climate deniers around the world, threatening homes, livelihoods and lives of billions, particularly in the poorest countries which have done least to cause our climate chaos. Peter Marshall

12 Days of Christmas, — London, UK. 18 Jan 2025. After police had banned their march from the BBC on spurious political grounds the march organisers decided to hold a rally in Whitehall. Speakers and marchers welcomed the current ceasefire agreement but continued to call for a permanent end to the genocide, an end to arms sales to Israel, for the release of all hostages and prisoners, for urgent humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and for peace with justice for Palestinians. Over a thousand police surrounded and harassed the protesters to prevent them marching. Peter Marshall

12 Days of Christmas, Police harass holocaust survivors in Whitehall — London, UK. 18 Jan 2025. Police harass a group of holocaust survivors and familes, making the move further up Whitehall. After police had banned their march from the BBC on spurious political grounds the march organisers decided to hold a rally in Whitehall. Speakers and marchers welcomed the current ceasefire agreement but continued to call for a permanent end to the genocide, an end to arms sales to Israel, for the release of all hostages and prisoners, for urgent humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and for peace with justice for Palestinians. Over a thousand police surrounded and harassed the protesters to prevent them marching. Peter Marshall

12 Days of Christmas, Police take protesters carrying bunches of flowere through line and then arrest them — London, UK. 18 Jan 2025. After police had banned their march from the BBC on spurious political grounds the march organisers decided to hold a rally in Whitehall. Speakers and marchers welcomed the current ceasefire agreement but continued to call for a permanent end to the genocide, an end to arms sales to Israel, for the release of all hostages and prisoners, for urgent humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and for peace with justice for Palestinians. Over a thousand police surrounded and harassed the protesters to prevent them marching but sherperded the front few rows through the of marchers through the police line into Trafalgar Square, where they were arrested.

London, UK. 29 Jan 2025. Bus Drivers marched from Victoria to Parliament accompanied by Caroline Russell, AM.. They call for proper rest breaks to avoid fatigue that leads to mistakes – in the last 10 years 80 people have died in collisions involving buses. They demand clean, serviced toilet and rest facilities on all bus routes and for proper heating and air conditioning in cabs. Peter Marshall/Alamy Live News

London, UK. 29 Jan 2025. Members of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a civil, volunteer-based organisation focused on the safe return of all Israeli citizens held hostage by the terrorist organization Hamas, stood in silence facing Downing Street holding up photographs of those still held in Gaza. There message was simple ‘Bring them home now – by any means necessary’. Peter Marshall

London, UK. 29 Jan 2025. Teachers from non-academy sixth form colleges on strike against a two-tier pay system which would mean them getting paid 2% less than colleagues in academies came to a National Education Union rally at parliament against this obvious injustice, demanding equal pay. Sicth form colleges receive 22% less funding than secondary schools. Two further strike days are planned next month. *Peter Marshall*

London, UK 30 Jan 2025. A large crowd at the law courts in Strand support 16 climate activists – JSO16 – appealing their jail sentences for standing up for our planet’s future. Judges prevented juries from hearing the reasons they acted. At first people stood on the pavement with placards but soon hundreds marched in carrying posters with captions and large pictures of political prisoners and sat down blocking the road as an exhibition. Police warned them they might be arrested. Peter Marshall

London, UK 30 Jan 2025. People remember the 53rd anniversary of Bloody Sunday when British soldiers opened fire on a peaceful protest march in Derry against internment without trial, killing 26 unarmed civilians. The vigil in Parliament Square organised by the Terence MacSwiney Committee called for justice. Speakers including several MPs linked the killing with other conflicts caused by British imperialism including the current genocide in Palestine, expressing support for the Palestinian people. Peter Marshall

Tommorow some of my pictures from February.

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London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Journey to Justice – Drop the Debt 2008

Sunday 18th May 2008, 15 years ago today, was an unusual day for me in two ways. Firstly that I went to Birmingham rather than London, but mainly that I went not primarily as a photographer, but as one of thousands of protesters, though that did not stop me taking photographs as you can see.

Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence are arousing considerable debate among photographers, partly about redundancy with AI generated imagery already replacing photographers in some areas of marketing and advertising work, but more importantly about authenticity now that you can generate seemingly photographic images of anything whether it actually happened or not.

Of course it has always been possible to make photographs which are misleading and dishonest, either at the point of exposure or later in the darkroom or more recently and trivially easy on a computer. There have been many historical examples and more recent controversies about faking or altering photographs, especially in some photojournalistic environments.

Of course in some areas of photography clearly anything goes. We don’t expect a work of art to be a literal interpretation, but when we come to news or photojournalism we expect things to be true to the event or occasion. And the only guarantee of that is the integrity of the reporter.

Of course as I wrote at the start of my piece on ‘Journey to Justice – Drop the Debt’, “You can’t take photographs without a point of view. Literally and metaphorically so – the rationale for making the picture determines the technical aspects of actually making the exposure. Where you stand isn’t just a matter of where you put your feet.”

I hope that my photographs make my position clear, as do the texts that I write to go with them, though on My London Diary and here I express my opinions as well as stating what appear to me to be the facts which accompany my images sent to the agencies I’ve worked with. I also don’t have to stick within the character limits they impose, typically limiting me to around a 100 words or less. Enough for the who, what, where and when but seldom much about the why, seldom enabling any real analysis of the events.

As my vintage website shows I’d been in Birmingham in May 1998 with some 70,000 others, forming a human chain around the centre of Birmingham, UK where the leaders of the eight richest nations in the G8 were holding a conference.

We were then part of a campaign by Jubilee 2000 to persuade the G8 countries to ‘break the chain of debt‘. Third-world countries were given massive loans in the 1970’s and are now crippled by the repayments, which now mean that a massive amount of money comes from the poor to the rich in repayments.

The noise we made back then made the world leaders come out from their conference room and listen, but then they went back inside and continued with business as usual. As I wrote in 2008, “Our actions in May 1998 had set the ball rolling, but as yet it has only gone one fifth of the way, and 80% of debts remain. All governments, including our own, have been guilty of making many promises that they have not kept on debt relief and aid.“

Things overall have changed little since then, although some countries in the global south have become rather more desperate and more vocal particularly as the effects of climate change increasingly hit them.

I wrote at some length about the day and the protest on My London Diary in 2008 and I won’t repeat that here, but hope some at least will click the link to read it.

At the end of that piece I wrote about the problem for those who didn’t have a long ladder in photographing what was an attempt to form and photograph the world’s largest human pie chart. I can’t find the official photograph on the web and I think it may have been little if any better than mine.

2008 Journey to Justice – Drop the Debt
1998 Jubilee 2000 – Birmingham