Emily Thornberry | >Re-PHOTO

Legal Aid Funeral & Daddy’s Pig – 2013

Legal Aid Funeral & Daddy’s Pig: On Wednesday 22nd May 2013 lawyers held a mock funeral and rally against government proposals for further changes to legal aid proposed by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling. Legal aid had already been greatly restricted by the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 which had come into effect earlier in the year. I rushed away at the end of the rally to join Artist taxi-driver Mark McGowan who was pushing his Daddy’s Pig from Downing Street three miles to the Bank of England.

Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Legal Aid Funeral & Daddy's Pig - 2013 — *The coffin of Legal Aid*

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling having made huge cuts in legal aid was now proposing to end the right of legal aid clients to chose their solicitor with the work going to the lowest bidder in ‘price competitive tendering’, PCT. This would be open to “to large non-legal companies, including Eddie Stobart and Tesco, and remove the ability of those in need of legal aid to chose appropriate specialists in the legal area involved.”

The short funeral procession to Parliament Square by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association was led by a marching jazz band, followed by robed and wigged figures carrying the coffin of Legal Aid and a woman dressed as the Scales of Justice.

As well as lawyers others joined the protest including Women from Winvisible, Women Against Rape, Defend The Right To Protest, Liberty and more. The proposed changes would particularly effect women involved in domestic violence and rape cases, and immigrants fighting for asylum.

There were many excellent speakers and on My London Diary I gave a partial list on My London Diary:

Labour MPs Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn and his fellow Islington MP Emily Thornberry, Natalie Bennett of the Green Party and senior figures involved with the law from both Tories and Lib-Dems. There were those who had been involved with legal aid over cases of injustice, including Gerry Conlan, one of the Guildford 4, a member of the family of Jean Charles De Menzes, Susan Matthews, mother of Alfie Meadows and Breda Power, the daughter of Billy Power, one of the Birmingham 6. Solicitors who spoke included Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Repreive, and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, and notable among the QCs, Helena Kennedy. There were many memorable quotes (almost all of which I’ve forgotten) with Gerry Conlan making clear “Back in the 1970s they sent innocent people to jail by the van load. But if these cuts go through they’ll be sending them in by the Eddie Stobart truckload“.

The rally ended with “a summary by leading barrister John Cooper QC after which the whole assembly delivered its verdict on Grayling, guilty as charged.”

The plans for PCT were dropped in September 2013 but didn’t go away entirely with new plans to introduce it in 2016, and it took a High Court ruling in 2018 to quash proposals to use PCT for Housing Possession Court Duty schemes.

Legal aid remains unfairly restricted and in only the very wealthy and those of the very poor who are able to access legal aid are almost “equal under the law”, with the great majority of us being able to afford it. And of course the wealthy are able to use much greater legal resources than legal aid will ever provide.

True equality under the law would only become possible if we made a huge systemic change to essentially nationalise our whole justice system, making it entirely a public service.

More on My London Dairy at Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid.

Daddy’s Pig heads for the Trough – Downing St to Bank

Artist taxi-driver Mark McGowan pushed his Daddy’s Pig, accompanied by another protester pushing a fire engine, the three miles from Downing St to the Bank of England, hoping to present it to the governor for services to austerity and the criminal activities of the City of London.

McGowan had a small group of supporters with him as he undertook the second stage of his gruelling journey on hands and knees, pushing the pig on its plastic roller skate.

A few days earlier, he had pushed the pig from from Kings College hospital in Camberwell where he is receiving cancer treatment to Downing street as a protest against the privatisation of the NHS which is being driven by the bankers and private equity firms.

I walked with him and his pig on part of the second half of his painful slow route, joining him at the Royal Courts of Justice and leaving him and his colleague with the fire engine as they rested briefly before reaching Ludgate Circus. Even with knee pads and gloves the going was tough and Mark was struggling to meet his appointment with a banker at 3pm.

Daddy’s Pig heads for the Trough

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Sudan and Brunei Gay Sex – 2019

Sudan and Brunei Gay Sex: I began work on Saturday 6th April 2019 at the Sudanese Embassy and then left for the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair where protesters had come after the Sultan of Brunei had announced death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, adultery and blasphemy.

Sudanese for Freedom, Peace and Justice – Sudan Embassy

War is raging again now in Sudan between between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Back in 2019 people were protesting against the extreme violence in Sudan against peaceful protests calling for for an end to the violent and corrupt Sudanese regime and for president Omar al-Bashir to ‘Just Fall’ and stand trial by the ICC for genocide in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and South Blue Nile.

People in Sudan had been protesting for 17 weeks and over 70 protesters had been killed and thousands injured.

Five days later, Omar al-Bashir was deposed by the Sudanese Armed Forces and in May 2019 was charged al-Bashir with “inciting and participating in” the killing of protesters. Later other charges were brought, including of corruption and money laundering. Other trials followed and he has been accused of genocide. The prison in which he was being held has been overrun by the current fighting between forces led by the generals who deposed him and he is currently held in a military hospital in Khartoum.

I left the protesters still in and around the protest pen outside the embassy opposite St James Palace in Cleveland Row and rushed the three quarters of a mile or so to the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, where I knew the protest had already begun.

More pictures at Sudanese for Freedom, Peace and Justice.

Brunei Sultan gay sex stoning protest – Dorchester Hotel

A large crowd had gathered on the streets in front of the Dorchester Hotel behind barriers that kept them out of the area directly in front of the entrance.

There were a number of speeches including those by Labour Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Emily Thornberry MP and activist Peter Tatchell condemining the announcement by the Sultan of Brunei of death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, adultery and blasphemy.

It was a colourful protest with many from the gay community with some interesting posters and placards. Police continually harassed protesters to keep the roads open, although there were really too many people to make this sensible.

After an hour or so, Class War decided to move from behind the barriers and pushed some aside to protest directly in front of the hotel doors. They were followed by many of the other protesters and a noisy protest continued there.

Many more pictures at Brunei Sultan gay sex stoning protest.

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Saving the Whittington

Saving the Whittington
A huge campaign in 2010 led to Andy Burnham, then Health Secretary stopping the Whittington hospital board’s plans to close its maternity and A&E Departments. A major event in this campaign was the march I photographed on Saturday 27 February 2010 from Highbury Corner to a rally at the hospital at Archway.

Later in 2013 when the board announced plans for more cuts another successful campaign stopped these, and in 2016 there was yet another campaign over redevelopment plans in concert with a private contractor.

Many people tell me that protest never works and that campaigners are simply wasting their time, but in 2022 the hospital announced a £100 million refurbishment of Whittington Hospital’s maternity and neonatal facilities, which still deliver over 3,600 babies a year, and the A&E department is still open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I counted almost 2000 people walking past me a short distance from the start on the two mile march to the hospital, and more arrived for the rally, swelling the numbers to around 3-5,000. Or as the BBC at the time called it, in their usual way of minimising protests, ‘hundreds’ of protesters. But at least, unlike most protests, they did report on it.

Among the marchers and speakers where almost every local politician, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and then Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there. Frank Dobson MP who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council.

The proposals for the cuts and downgarding of A&E had come from a rationalisation programme initiated by Lord Darzi, a surgeon and national adviser in surgery to the Department of Health and a Labour Peer from 2007 until he resigned the whip in 2019. His report suggested moving much care from hospitals to GP-led polyclinics and to greater centralisation of trauma, stork and heart attack services to centralised specialist services.

Polyclinics remain rare, but although the greater specialisation of acute services made clinical (and financial) sense it failed to take into account the problems of London’s congested streets which would have led to long delays in treatment for many patients. Those inevitable delays would have meant deaths. And the selection of Whittington for closure neglected its good road and public transport connections which make it an ideal location for emergency cases as well as other patients and visitors.

Why Whittington was chosen as suitable for closure probably came down to two factors. One was certainly the age of the buildings, but perhaps more important was that the same factors of location and transport links made it an exceptionally valuable site for property developers. Had the cuts gone ahead in 2010, the rest of the hospital would probably by now also had been closed, with the site developed, including some of those old buildings converted into luxury flats.

Many more pictures from the march and rally at Save the Whittington on My London Diary.