Posts Tagged ‘EMA’

Students Against Cuts And Fees – 2010

Saturday, December 9th, 2023

Students Against Cuts And Fees – Thursday 9th December was a day of confusion on the streets of London with confusing and inconsistent policing and thousands of angry students.

Students Against Cuts And Fees

Parliament was debating a three-fold increase in university tuition fees and students filled the main streets of Whitehall in a noisy and at times indisciplined protest. Police actions stirred up antagonism, and there were a number of charges in which protesters and press suffered minor injuries as riot police used their batons and police horses also made a short charge into the crowd.

Students Against Cuts And Fees

Some of the other press photographers covering the event were clearly targeted by individual ‘rogue’ police officers who deliberately smashed their equipment, apparently fearing their pictures might show them engaging in brutal attacks on some of the protesters. Fortunately I was a few hundred yards away covering the official rally on the Embankment when the worst violence flared up around Parliament.

Students Against Cuts And Fees

Although the students were rightly angry at the increase in fees, the removal of the education maintenance allowance and swingeing cuts in some courses, particularly in the arts and humanities which are to lose 80% of their funding, the overall mood of the protest was good-natured if exuberant.

Students Against Cuts And Fees

Later in the day when a few fireworks were thrown into the police lines in front of the Houses of Parliament the crowd dancing in front of the police turned towards those who had thrown them and chanted against them, using the sound system to tell them that the police were only doing their job and that police too were suffering from the government cuts.

On My London Diary you can read my fairly lengthy account of the march as I saw it, including my impression that “that both police and some of the protesters were clearly guilty of over-reacting“. I won’t repeat most of that here, but one paragraph of my own experiences close to Parliament stands out:

I spent a few minutes trying to take pictures and getting very squashed before deciding I needed to push my way out for my own safety, both from the police and from being crushed in the crowd. A few minutes earlier I had been in the front line and being crushed by the crowd against the barriers in front of the riot police, and I and the others around me were repeatedly threatened by riot police shaking batons at us and telling us they would attack us if we didn’t move back – which was simply not possible – we were totally unable to move due to the pressure of the crowd.

Students Against Cuts – Day 3

I made my way down to the area of the Embankment were the end of march rally was supposed to take place, but few people had arrived there and it had not started. After much angry shouting at the organisers to stop playing music and start the speeches it did begin with speeches from union leaders – including Brendan Barber and Bob Crow, who got a big welcome – and politicians.

But the rally was then interrupted by someone shouting that police had attacked the demonstrators in Parliament Square, charging with police horses, and I joined a number of others in trying to make my way there. Most were stopped by police at Bridge Street, but some of us with press cards were allowed through, while the others formed another protest on Westminster Bridge.

Things were very confused in Parliament Square, but many protesters were still kettled there, keeping themselves warm by dancing, some around small fires of burning placards. And a plastic security hut was set on fire. Many by now were wanting to go home, but all the exits were blocked by police.

Police told some they could leave by going up Parliament Street and Whitehall, and I went with them, only to find the way blocked by a line of police with riot shields who were not at all interested in my press card (one TV camera crew did manage to push their way past.) Behind them were a line of police horses, and we were all pushed back towards Parliament Square.

I tried to go from Parliament Street back to Parliament Square, but a line of riot police refused to let me through, telling me to go to see their boss when I showed my press card. I did and listened to him arguing with a group of students that they were not being detained although they were not being allowed to leave. It make absolutely no sense, and is something the police often say which undermines the relationship between people and police that is essential for the cooperation that the police need to do their job. This event was clearly a huge own goal for policing.

I didn’t bother to stop and argue as I saw that a few yards to the right, in an area presumably under the control of another officer, people were walking freely through – so I joined them and made my way back to Parliament Square, turning into Bridge Street. Another police line was stopping the protesters exiting but let me through without problems when I showed my press card and told them I was on my way home.

The protesters, most of whom also wanted now only to go home peacefully were less fortunate and were detained for another four or more hours, and there were violent incidents and arrests. “Police at one point apparently pushed a large group into a very confined space on Westminster Bridge with a total disregard for their safety; some had to behave medical treatment for crushing, and there could easily have been more serious or fatal injuries and people pushed into the freezing river below.”

My conclusion to my article on the day was “It was a day of confusion, with protesters and police both failing to understand what was happening, and an official student leadership that fails to understand the mood and anger of the students and others – and although the RMT and Bill Crow had offered support, the TUC has curiously failed to take action, putting off its march against the cuts until March.“

More on My London Diary at Students Against Cuts – Day 3.

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Sparks And Students – 2011

Thursday, November 9th, 2023

Sparks And Students – On Wednesday 9th November there were protests by electricians in Southwark and police shut down most of central London to harass students as they marched to the Moorgate building of London Metropolitan University.

Sparks At The Shard – London Bridge

Sparks And Students

Around a thousand electricians – ‘sparks ‘ – marched to a protest rally at the building site for the Shard in a protest led by Unite against plans by 7 major employers to tear up national agreements and impose worse conditions and pay cuts of at least 26 %.

Sparks And Students

In 1968 major employers and the trade union had come together to set up the Electrotechnical Joint Industry Board (JIB) to set standards for the electrical industry and to provide a means of resolving the frequent disputes which were then taking place by bringing together both sides in committees with equal representation. JIB has also developed to set the standards for employment, welfare, grading and apprentice training in the electrical contracting industry.

Sparks And Students

In May 2011 seven major companies – Bailey Building Services, Balfour Beatty, Tommy Clarke, Crown House Technologies, Gratte Brothers, SES and SPIE Matthew Hall – announced that they would withdraw from the JIB pay and conditions deal and impose their own agreement known as BESNA (Building and Engineering Services National Agreement) which would enable them to replace skilled workers by those on lower grades.

Sparks And Students

Unite targeted Balfour Beatty for action as the largest company and ring-leader in the employers group and at the rally Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey announced that the union had given notice today of a strike ballot for its members employed by them. The Shard was one of Balfour Beatty’s major projects at the time, along with Crossrail.

Several hundred of the electricians had earlier held a protest in Bishopsgate and visited the Occupy London site at St Paul’s Cathedral before marching to the rally at the Shard. Police had tried to stop them at various points on their march and they arrived with a large police escort.

Before the official rally started there were speeches by rank and file trade unionist. They were followed by several Unite speakers with a final address by McClusky. Around 600 of the sparks then marched off to support the students who were protesting in London but police closed both London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge and stopped them.

Following this and further actions by rank and file electricians Balfour Beatty, the largest of the firms in Febraury 2012 announced it was going into further talks with Unite on updating the JIB agreements and this was the end for BESNA.

More pictures on My London Diary at Sparks At The Shard.

Students March Against Cuts & Fees – Bloomsbury to Moorgate

Despite police attempts to provoke them, more than 5000 student protesters marched largely peacefully against fees increases and cuts in services. Most kept to the agreed route, from London University in Bloomsbury to London Metropolitan University in Moorgate, which was lined by thousands of police.

Students are angry about the high fees and the cuts in education – particularly the loss of the Educational Maintenace Allowances and various cuts in service, but in the early stages of the march the protesters were in a relaxed and positive mood, many talking to and joking with the police who were accompanying them.

After the police failure to stop some student fees protesters who had stormed the Tory HQ at Millbank in 2010, the police this year were determined to control events. To do so they closed all major roads in central London for hours before the march began, making it hard for many to get to the protest. There were no buses and I had to walk two miles from London Bridge and so arrived after the march started.

I could hardly see the marchers as they came down towards me on Shaftesbury Avenue, with a line of mounted police in front, followed by several lines of police on foot. Behind them were march stewards and then the main banner, behind which was a vast crowd of students and supporters carrying placards.

The march continued but with sporadic stoppages by the police for no apparent reason. But after it had come up Strand to Aldwych a snatch squad of police ran into the centre of the march, grabbed several of the many black-clad protesters, and dragged them across to the side of the road. Many around them, including me, were roughly pushed aside and I received a painful kick in my leg from one officer.

The crowd were angered and gathered around the police for some time but were persuaded by stewards to move on. People were further angered when they heard that the group of 600 electricians had been prevented from coming to join them, and the crowd took up the chant “Free the sparks!” But most then continued along the agreed route up Fetter Lane.

Police then decided to try and stop the march in what I commented “seemed like an act of complete folly“. Slowly the marchers pushed the police back from the confines of the street to the open area of Holborn Circus. Here “proceedings reached a state of comic chaos, with senior officers shouting orders to small strings of police to stop the protesters; while they were grappling with the few within reach the rest of us simply walked through the huge gaps between these lines.” Holborn Circus was really a circus.

A large group of students then ran past the police horses on Holborn Viaduct where they had withdrawn from Holborn Circus after several riders had lost control of their horses and I ran with them. Police managed to stop the rest of the marchers on Holborn Viaduct and after a short wait people decided to continue along the agreed route to Morgate without them.

I went on to talk with the people at Occupy Finsbury Circus who were worried by the huge police presence and felt they might be evicted. I thought it unlikely as with 5000 student marchers around it would be likely to spark a riot. I left and walked across the City where major roads were still closed to traffic and remained so for some hours. Later I watched videos showing students being kettled at Moorgate and individuals being attacked by snatch squads of plain clothes police who had posed as protesters after I had left.

More at Students March Against Cuts & Fees.

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UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

Sunday, January 15th, 2023

Two protests in London on Saturday 15th January 2011.

UK Uncut Protest VAT Rise at Vodaphone – Oxford St, 15 Jan 2011

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

A couple of days ago in 2023 the Commons Public Accounts Committee reported that £42bn is outstanding in tax debt, with HMRC failing to collect around 5% of tax owing each year. Committee chair Meg Hiller commented “The eye-watering £42bn now owed to HMRC in unpaid taxes would have filled a lot of this year’s infamous public spending black hole.” The report states that for every £1 the HMRC spends on compliance it recovers £18 in unpaid tax, and the MPs say it simply isn’t trying hard enough.

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

In addition, they point to the pathetic effort our tax authorities are making to recover the £4.5 billion lost by fraud over Covid support schemes, only even “trying to recover less than a quarter of estimated losses in schemes such as furlough.“

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

Back in 2011, anti-cuts activists UK Uncut were campaigning to force the government to clamp down on tax avoidance rather than cut public services and increase the tax burden on the poor. This protest took place following a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20% and a couple a weeks before the UK deadline for tax returns by the self-employed of January 31st.

They said then that rich individuals and companies such as Vodafone, Philip Green, HSBC, Grolsch, HMV, Boots, Barclays, KPMG and others employ armies of lawyers and accountants to exploit legal loopholes and dodge around £25 billions in tax while the rest of us on PAYE or ordinary people sending in self-assessment tax forms pay the full amount.

Little has changed since then – except the amounts involved will have increased, but nothing has been done to move to a fairer approach to taxation which would eliminate the legal dodges and loopholes and insist that tax is paid on money earned in the UK rather than being squirrelled away in overseas tax havens. It should be a general principle that any scheme to deliberately avoid tax is illegal.

Many believe the main impetus for the Brexit campaign was the intention announced by Europe to clamp down on tax avoidance, which would have cost the wealthy backers of Vote Leave millions by cutting down their dodgy dealings.

UK Uncut held a rally on the pavement on Oxford Street outside Vodaphone, one of the companies that manage to pay little or no UK tax. Large numbers of shoppers walked by, some stopping briefly to listen and applauding the protest.

Speakers pointed out the regressive nature of VAT, applying to all purchases of goods (except those exempt from VAT) by everyone regardless of their incomes. Income tax should be fairer, as it is related to income and the ability to pay – and it would be fairer if the loopholes allowing tax avoidance were closed.

One speaker made the point that multinational companies not only use tricky accounting to avoid UK tax but also by shifting profits to tax havens they deny desperately needed funds to the poorer countries of the world.

Others spoke about the effects of the government cuts on education, with rising university fees and the removal of the maintenance allowance that had enabled many poorer students to remain in sixth-forms. At one point people held up books as a reminder of the cuts in library services being forced on local authorities by the government.

A member of the PCS spoke of his concern that the government was actually cutting down on the staff who combat tax evasion as well as relaxing the rules on tax avoidance rather than trying to collect more from the rich.

Prime Minister David Cameron had called for a ‘Big Society’ with charities and community organisations playing a larger role – presumably to replace the public services which were disappearing under his austerity programme. But many of these organisations were also under pressure as hard-pressed local authorities were having to slash funding grants.

More at UK Uncut Protest VAT Rise at Vodaphone.

Pillow Fight Against Solum at Walthamstow, 15 Jan 2011

Ealier I had photographed Walthamstow residents staging a pillow fight in protest against plans for inappropriate high rise development on Walthamstow Central Station car park which were tocome to the council planning committee meeting the following Thursday.

Solum Regeneration had plans to build a 14 storey hotel and 8 storey blocks of flats there, towering over the surrounding area of largely late-Victorian low rise development.

The scheme had been condemned the previous year by CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment set up in 1999 to provide impartial advice to the government “on architecture, urban design and public space“, and the developers had made minor changes which made it even less acceptable to the local objectors.

Solum Regeneration was set up by Network Rail and Kier Property to redevelop land around railway stations, including Walthamstow Central. One of their other plans was for a huge redevelopment at Twickenham station, now completed after some years of considerable inconvenience to station users. Richmond Council had initially turned down this scheme.

Despite the pillow fight and the other activities of local campaigners, the Walthamstow scheme also got the go-ahead, with building work beginning in 2012. Other high rise schemes have also been approved in the surrounding area, the character of which has changed considerably.

Pillow Fight Against Solum Walthamstow

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Students March against Fees and Cuts – 2012

Monday, November 21st, 2022

A student displays the #DEMO2012 t-shirt

One of the main issues that led to a huge slump in votes for the Liberal Democrats in the 2015 General Election was their support as a part of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government for increasing student fees. In 2010, there were 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, but their number fell to 8 in 2015, and has only recovered slightly in the two following elections, with currently 11 MPs. Of course the drop is exaggerated by our first past the post electoral system which is grossly unfair to minority parties, but it still reflects an enormous drop in public confidence in the party.

Students March against Fees and Cuts - 2012

Before the 2010 election, the Lib-Dems had been seen as a moderate centrist party opposed to both Tories and Labour, but their actions in the coalition shifted perceptions; in many eyes they became seen as simply a rather lightweight branch of the Conservative Party and certainly no longer a credible opposition.

Students March against Fees and Cuts - 2012

It was the Labour Party who had introduced student tuition fees under Blair’s New Labour government in 1998, setting them at £1,000 a year. New Labour again raised them in 2006 to £3,000. But in 2012 the Tory Lib-Dem coalition tripled them again, to £9,000 – so totalling £27,000 for a normal 3 year course. The fees were stated to be a maximum, but it was soon what almost all universities were charging.

After World War 2, most local authorities had provided maintenance grants for students, enough to cover their living costs for the roughly 30 weeks a year of most courses. The 1962 Education Act made this a legal obligation; the grants were means-tested with a minimum of around a third of the full grant, with wealthier parents being expected but not obliged to make up the difference. But all of us from poorer families got the full grant.

When the Tories under Mrs Thatcher replaced these grants with student loans in 1980 there was an immediate fall in university applications – the 1981 figures showed a drop of 57% from 1979. The loan system was a boon to students from wealthy homes, taking the obligation from their parents for supporting them – and at the start the terms of the loans made it an advantage for rich students who had no need for them to take them out. Since then the terms of the student loans have worsened considerably.

Many have since found that with rising costs the maintenance loan available isn’t enough to pay for their accommodation and food and some need to take out more expensive loans than the student loan to keep alive during their course. I’ve seen too the long queues for the free food offered by Hare Krishna in Bloomsbury at lunchtimes, and students have also had to go to food banks and other places offering support.

Many students now work during term-time, some putting in long hours in bars and other part-time work which must affect their studies. When I was a student, taking paid work could have led to me being thrown off my course, although of course I did work during vacations, and needed to, as these were not covered by the grant.

Higher education students are not the only ones who were suffering from the cuts made by the Coalition government. Younger students, 16-18 year olds still in schools, sixth form colleges and FE, were angry at the loss of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) of up to £30 per week, which many needed to pay their fares to college and to buy midday meals while studying.

And as I pointed out “Students are also concerned about other cuts being made by the government which will affect them, and also by the increasing efforts to privatise the education system at all levels. There were also many placards pointing out the class-based nature of our education system and our government, with a cabinet stuffed with privately educated millionaires who appear to have little idea of how difficult times are for ordinary people and no real sympathy for them.”

Since the student protests of November and December 2010 the police had become very worried about the possibility of violent scenes – often provoked by police action – at student protests, and were out in force. The march organisers too had agreed a route with the police which would cut down the possibilities, taking the marchers across Westminster Bridge to end with a rally in Kennington Park, well away from any government ministries and Tory and Lib-Dem party headquarters. This was a peaceful protest although the roughly 10,000 attending were clearly very angry and small groups who attempted to break away from the protest in Parliament Square where the march stopped for a photocall and many sat down on the road were fairly soon moved on.

There were still a few sitting on the road or standing around outside parliament when I decided to leave; it was raining slightly and dark clouds suggested a downpour was on the way. I decided nothing more was likely to happen at Westminster and that a rally in pouring rain was unlikely to be of great interest and started on my way home.

More at Students March on Parliament.

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Students Protest Fees & Cuts – 24 Nov 2010

Wednesday, November 24th, 2021

It was a Labour government under Tony Blair that first brought in fees for undergraduate and postgraduate certificate students at universities in September 1998. And it had been a Tory government under Harold Macmillan that had exempted UK resident students from tuition fees and given a right to means-tested maintenance grants back in 1962, though previously local authorities had also paid fees and grants for students from low income families. At the same time maintenance grants were replaced with repayable student loans for all but the poorest students.

When they were brought in, the full fees were £1000 a year, but those with family incomes of less than £23,000 – roughly the average salary then – paid nothing, and only those with over £35,000 paid the full fees. £1000 in 1998 is equivalent to around £1800 now allowing for inflation. The Labour government put up the fees to £3000 in 2004, and set up the Browne review of Higher Education funding in 2009, which published its recommendations after they had lost power, but most of which were implemented by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition.

Browne had argued that there should be no cap on University fees, but the government decided on a cap of £9,000 and Browne also was responsible for recommending a system of student loans, although minor changes were made by the coalition government in its implementation. The Government’s spending review had also called for the Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMA), intoduced nationally under Labour in 2004 to be scrapped. This had given allowances to 16-18 year-olds in full time education from a household with an income of less than £30,810 with the full amount of £30 a week only for those whose household income is less than £20,817. It was these changes being introduced and other cuts in education which led to the student protests in 2010.

There have been further cuts since, as well as changes to make the student loan scheme less fair – and there are further changes planned which seem to make the loans considerably less generous. I was fortunate enough to have had all my undergraduate fees and a full maintenance grant paid by my local authority. My two sons also just scraped in before the 1998 changes at the time I was a teacher and the sole wage earner for the family and I think both got more or less a full maintenance grant.

Many countries still manage to provide free higher education for their own nationals and in some cases for foreign students – including Scotland and most of Europe but also many other countries around the world, and it is a right recognised in a number of international conventions. Since the UK is the sixth richest country in the world, it seems rather surprising that our students have to pay, and pay increasingly. It’s hard not to see it as a deliberate attack by the wealthy on the poor.

One of my most published pictures (at the top of this post) from the student protest on Wednesday 24th November shows a group of schoolgirls holding hands around a vandalised police van to protect it from further damage. Police who had harassed the march from the start and stopped it briefly several times had finally stopped it with a large force of police and a line of vans across the end of Parliament St, but, as I commented “had thoughtfully left an old police van as a plaything for the protesters outside the treasury. Perhaps because the tread on its tyres was so worn it would have been a traffic offence to move it – and it looked very unlikely to pass an MOT.” Press and protesters around it were told by march stewards that “it was obviously a plant” but this “didn’t stop a few masked guys attacking it (and I was threatened with having my camera smashed for photographing them doing so)”.

Many of the students were protesting for the first time, and although some protesters pushed through the police line, few of the others followed them. It was hard to understand the police actions at times.

As I was about to leave, riot police decided to charge towards the people between the pavement barriers and the west side of Whitehall, again with what appeared to be some fairly indiscriminate batoning. I was threatened by police and forced to move away from the wall over which I had been leaning rather than be hit. They stopped their charge a few yards down the street.

I commented:


It had been a pretty confused situation, and it seemed to me that neither police nor students came out of it with much credit. The police tactics seemed designed to create public disorder by kettling and a small minority of the students rose to the bait. Although most of the students were out for a peaceful march and rally and to exercise their democratic right to protest, the police seemed to have little interest in upholding that right.

More about the protest and more pictures on My London Diary Students Protest Fees & Cuts.

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Sparks and Students – 10 Years Ago

Tuesday, November 9th, 2021

Police surround a grass roots rally before the main Union rally by electricians at the Shard


Ten years ago today on 9th November 2011 my work began at The Shard next to London Bridge, where ‘sparks’ (electricians) were protesting over plans by 7 major employers to tear up national agreements and impose worse conditions and pay cuts of at least 26 %.

Electricians listen to Unite union speakers

Before the official rally by the Unite union where speakers included several of the union’s leading officials as well as General Secretary of Unite Len McCluskey there was a separate rally with grass roots speakers. Numbers grew as the official rally began and there were over a thousand when it set off to march to another rally at Blackfriars.

I left the march on Borough High St and headed north over the river to join a large march by student protesters against fees increases and cuts in services. Police had shut down most of central London before this started and there were no buses running and I had to walk around two miles to meet the marchers.

Students were angry about the cuts, particularly about the loss of the Educational Maintenace Allowances but the policing seemed completely excessive. I wrote: “There were perhaps 5000 students, but as the march approached me coming down Shaftesbury Avenue they were largely hidden by the police, with a row of mounted officers leading, followed by several further rows of police in front of the marchers. More police walked along each side of the march, and others stood on the pavement, with lines blocking side roads and others in the doorways of offices, banks and some shops.”

The mood of the marchers seemed to me to be rather cheerful and relaxed, and this was reflected in the humour in many of the posters. Although there were a number of provocative actions by police – including a snatch squad rushing in to grab several marchers – which injured me and some other marchers, as well as various occasions on which they slowed or halted the march, eventually bringing it to a complete stop and ‘kettling’ it in Holborn, which caused it to get a little heated.

Marchers chant “Free the Sparks”

The protesters had been angered to hear that six hundred electricians who had tried to cross the river after their rally in Blackfriars to join the student protest had been stopped at Blackfriars Bridge and London Bridge.

The police seemed to get completely disorganised at this point and I was able to walk past a police line along with several hundred of the protesters while the officers grappled with a few holding them back before more police arrived. After waiting for some time in the hope that others would join them, they continued the march to its intended destination at the Moorgate building of London Metropolitan University where they danced to the sound of a bicycle-hauled sound system while I walked a little further to Finsbury Square where Occupy London had been camping since 21st October.

People in Finsbury Square were worried that the the 4000 police officers in London from the march would turn their attention to trying to evict them. I told them it was unlikely they would make an attempt with so many students on the street. Later I saw videos of students being kettled at Moorgate and individuals being attacked by snatch squads of plain clothes police who had posed as protesters but there was no action against Occupy London.

The huge policing of the two marches was clearly a reaction to the criticism of their failures at Millbank and Tottenham, but it came at a considerable cost, bringing movement in much of central London more or less to a halt for most of the day. Much of the City was still closed as I walked along Old Street with traffic outside the area moving at rather less than walking speed. Policing by consent has to involve letting peaceful protest continue and here was clearly an attempt to prevent it.

Students March Against Cuts & Fees
Sparks At The Shard

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Republic Day: 26 January 2011

Tuesday, January 26th, 2021

Republic Day has been celebrated in India on the 26th January since 1950, and marks the day in 1950 when the Constitution of India came into effect. India had gained independence on 15 August 1947, but that left the country as a British dominion, still under British Law and with King George VI as head of state. It took until November 1949 for the new constitution to be agreed, and the January 26 was chosen for its introduction as the Indian National Congress had declared it as Independence Day in 1929.

Along with Independence Day it is a day when there are often protests outside India House in London and on 26th January 2011, ten years ago today, there were at least two taking place. One called for the release of leading paediatrician and public health specialist Binayak Sen, a member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties who has gained international recognition for his work in Chhattisgarh, India, where he “helped establish a hospital serving poor mine workers in the region, founded a health and human rights organization that supports community health workers in 20 villages.”

Dr Sen also criticised the Chhattisgarh state government’s atrocities against indigenous people fighting the handover of their lands for mining and their establishment of an armed militia, the Salwa Judum, to fight against the Naxalite (Maoist) rebels in the area, and was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment by a Chhattisgarh court for sedition and helping the Naxalites. His case and appeal attracted support from around the world including from 22 Nobel laureates who sent a letter to the Indian President and Prime Minister and Chhattisgarh state authorities asking for him to be allowed to travel to the US to receive the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Later in 2011 he was granted bail by the Indian Supreme Court.

Also protesting outside India House were Kashmiris and Sikhs calling for the freedom for their nations which has been denied by Indian military repression. Kashmir is one of the oldest countries in the world, dating back to the Iron Age and became a Muslim monarchy in 1349, was later a part of the Sikh empire but was established later as a kingdom under British guidance. At partition the ruler ceded the country to India against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants for military protection after Pakistan invaded the country, which is now in three parts, under military rule by India, Pakistan and a small part China.

The Indian administered area, known as Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh had limited autonomy which was revoked on 5 August 2019 and has a huge occupying force accused by human rights organisations of imposing strict military law in a systematically brutal fashion, with deaths during interrogation of suspects, detention without trail, censorship, arson, beatings, rape, mass murder, and tortures of all kinds.

It was a busy Wednesday, with other protests taking place, including a student day of action against fees and cuts, including the loss of the Education Maintenance Allowance which has allowed many 16-18 year olds to remain in education. Axed in England it is still available in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Unfortunately although there had been publicity about students walking out of schools and college there was very little information available about the protests they might attend, and only perhaps qa hundred made their way to the rally in Trafalgar Square.

After some speeches there was a discussion about what to do next, and most of those present decided to join the NUJ demonstration outside Bush House against the savage cuts announced by the BBC for the World Service broadcasting, with up to 650 job losses, switching off of radio services and the complete loss of services in 5 languages. This was particularly convenient for me as I was also going to join this protest as a member of the NUJ – and it was just a few yards from India House were I was going to photograph other events.

More at:
Release Binayak Sen Now
Free Kashmir & Khalistan
Save the BBC World Service
Student Day of Action

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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