environmental disaster

Rainham to Harold Wood – 2004

Rainham to Harold Wood: On Friday 8 October 2004 I put my Brompton folding bicycle on the train from Staines to Waterloo and then made my way to Rainham, the furthest station east my Travelcard would take me. I can’t now remember if I rode across the city to Fenchurch Street Station or took the slower but lazier route on the Jubilee Line to West Ham to transfer to the C2C train.

This was a ride inspired by Iain Sinclair’s book ‘London Orbital’, published in 2002, based on his walks around the M25. I’d been given the hardback as a Christmas present from my wife to add to his other works on our groaning bookshelves. In 2003 it came out as a paperback and secondhand copies of both this and the hardback are readily available online.

Of course, just as Sinclair couldn’t actually walk along the motorway, neither could I ride along it, but plotted a route that more or less followed it, crossing a couple of times from one side to another.

Sinclair’s book is still an interesting read – and having taken it down from the shelf I’ll probably read it again – or perhaps watch the film. It’s a book full of interesting stories, including of the gestation of London Heathrow where he writes about the way that the war cabinet were deceived into using emergency wartime powers “to establish, by a network of dubious commercial deals, a major airport that was only 15 miles from the centre of London.” A deception that we still suffer from and which our politicians now seem determined to expand despite its disastrous environmental consequences.

Sinclair’s walk passed within five minutes walk of where I live and contains some interesting insights on many places familiar from my own forty years of walking around London within the M25 which form the basis of most of the roughly 45,000 images in my Flickr albums. In 2025 The Observer included London Orbital as one of the best 25 books of the first 25 years of this century.

London Orbital is also a 2002 “visionary film” directed by Christopher Petit and Iain Sinclair, according to IMDb starring another of my favourite London writers, J G Ballard, who lived a couple of miles away from me in Shepperton. The full video has been removed from Vimeo due to copyright issues but you can still view the trailer and apparently can buy or rent the film

I didn’t write much about the ride back in 2004, though the ten pictures on My London Diary have captions. Here is the complete main text:

Earlier in the month I’d taken the Brompton for a ride along the eastern edge of London from Rainham to Harold Wood, most of the time close to the M25. its very rural most of the way, quite unlike Staines which somehow got left out of London. My ride even included the only part of Greater London outside the M25, North Ockenden.

*Gravestone of Geraldine Elizabeth Batt, “Our Lady” to London Thieves, and who was buried at North Ockenden in 1931, and her sister Margaret.*

In 2004 I could find nothing about Geraldine Elizabeth Batt, but since then much more information has been posted online, in the reports of the Thurrock Local History Society, where on 5 May 2026 Phil Lobley gave a talk on her and other members of her family. Although it gives information on Geraldine and Margaret (and this an other talks are recorded on the page in fascinating detail), he concluded that nothing has been found as to why this inscription was used, but suggested it might be a reference to the help gave to the poor and criminal classes in her work with the mission of St. John the Evangelist in Red Lion Square in Holborn where she lived for many years and ran a Boy’s Club. Another sister married into a family connected with North Ockenden and that family was probably responsible for her burial there and for this memorial.

You can still see the small number of pictures I originally posted on My London Diary at Rainham to Harold Wood. Most on this post are pictures not included there.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Axe the Draxosaurus – 2016

Axe the Draxosaurus – On Wedesday 20th April 2016 environmental activists protested outside the AGM of Drax Plc at Grocer’s Hall next to the Bank of England in the heart of the City of London. Drax power station near Selby in Yorkshire used to be the UK’s biggest coal-fired power station, but since 2012 has become the world’s biggest wood-burning plant, and the company Drax Plc has become the second largest producer of wood pellets in the world

Drax power station now emits more CO2 than any other plant in the UK, and it does so with the aid of a huge subsidy from our UK electricity bills, almost £1 billion in 2021.

It get subsidised by the UK Government as part of the plan to decarbonise electricity generation despite the evidence from scientists around the world that the burning of forest wood for energy increases carbon emissions and is incompatible with the attempt to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

The subsidies that Drax receives increase our electricity bills and should be going to expand truly renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and solar energy. Instead they are paying Drax to pollute and pay out large dividends to their shareholders.

Sourcing the wood to burn at Drax – and for them to sell to other wood-burning plants is also a social and environmental disaster. Much of the wood comes from Drax’s pellet mills using large mmonoculture pine plantations in Southeastern USA, large sterile forest areas with little or no wildlife which have been expanded greatly in area, in part by the total clearance of areas of ancient forest.

Also in the USA, Drax buys pellets from Enviva, the world’s largest pellet producer which has come under criticism for its clearcut felling of US coastal hardwood forests.

Drax has also been criticised by environmentalists for its clear cutting of ancient forests in Canada, and its Portuguese supplier of pellets has been found to have sourced trees from nature reserves. And logging for wood pellets for Drax is also destroying ancient forests in Estonia and Latvia.

The amount of wood burned at Drax is huge – 6.4 million tonnes in 2022 – and will have involved the cutting down of twice that mass of trees. It is more than the entire UK wood production – but only supplies less than one hundredth of our energy needs.

Drax is now attempting to claim further subsidies for its BECCS (Bioenergy With Carbon Capture And Storage) project which seems very unlikely to be able to capture any significant amount of its huge annual CO2 output. It would obviously be far better simply to stop burning wood and turn to truly renewable power sources.

The protest in 2016 was organised by Biofuelwatch on whose web site you can find more a detailed briefing about Drax and why it is vital to end the subsidies for its polluting and environmentally destructive activities.

You can find information on the Axe Drax page about the trial of the #DRAX2 arrested after paint was sprayed on the government department supporting the subisdies to Drax – it begins at Southwark Crown Court on April 22nd 2024. And on August 8-13th 2024 Reclaim the Power is holding a mass protest camp for climate justice “targeting Drax – the biggest emitter in the UK, the world’s biggest burner of trees and a key driver of environmental racism.”

Drax AGM Biomass opposition

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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‘Toxic Tour’ Shames Mining Companies – 2017

‘Toxic Tour’ Shames Mining Companies – On Tuesday 2th November 2017, the London Mining Network, War on Want and The Gaia Foundation and community leaders from Uganda, the Philippines and Colombia visited a series of mining companies and financiers of mining.

Although we no longer have an Empire, London remains the heart of the neo-colonial mining industry across the world, with many mining companies listed here. It also plays a key role in the financing of mining companies working across the world. In part this is a hangover from our colonial heritage but is now mainly because of the ease of laundering dirty money through hedge funds and other businesses via the City of London.

The protest was timed to coincide with the London Mines and Money Conference, where around 2,000 mining company representatives, investors and financiers were celebrating their destructive and exploitative activities around the world.

The ‘Toxic Tour’ began in Stratton Street, close to Green Park station in Mayfair outside the offices of Harwood Capital LLP who own 9% of Bluebird Merchant Ventures who have plans for a huge open-pit Batangas Gold Project on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. We heard from Clemente Bautista Jr, national coordinator of Kalikasan People’s Network, how this would be an environmental disaster, with wastes from the mine destroying much marine life in the Verde Island Passage which has the highest concentration of shorefish in the world.

A short distance further into Mayfair the protest stopped outside the London offices of Vedanta, where Miriam Rose of Foil Vedanta spoke on Vedanta’s terrible record of environmental destruction, pollution and death in India and Africa, and of their illegal attempts to get mining permission. In Zambia, where their copper mine polluted the country’s major river, Foil Vedanta had exposed their illegal avoidance of tax.

A few yards away we halted outside the offices of Glencore UK, the world’s largest mining company by revenue. Adam Lee of the IndustriALL Global Union which with its affiliates represents over 50 million workers around the world told us of trade union told us how this Anglo–Swiss multinational which is listed on the London stock exchange exploits its workers. Security stopped the protesters when they tried to enter the the foyer of the offices.

Paulson Europe LLP in Jermyn St was the next stop, as they are a major investor in AngloGold Ashanti. Colombian activist Camila Méndez talked there about the huge environmental damage caused by their La Colosa gold mine in Cajamarca.

Protesters were stopped in the doorway as they tried to walk into the foyer of Rio Tinto Zinc on the corner of St James’s Square. After a couple of short speeches while they blocked the doorway there was a longer talk on the pavement outside. A long-term researcher into their activities told the group that he was more hopeful about the future activities of RTZ than other mining companies as they seemed to be attempting to develop in less environmentally damaging ways. He said this was because they had been one of the first mining companies to attract major protests.

Finally the protest moved out of Mayfair to Carlton House Terrace on the north side of The Mall and the offices of Anglo American plc, where security locked the doors as we approached for a protest in the street outside. I think this was the final stop on the tour, although there were many more companies it could have visited, particularly around the City, but it was getting dark and time for me to go home.

More pictures at ‘Toxic Tour’ shames mining companies.

Bikes Alive Say Stop Killing Cyclists

On the evening of Monday 9th January 2012 cyclists and pedestrians protested at Kings Cross in the evening rush hour calling for an end to the killing of cyclists on city roads.

Bikes Alive wanted Transport for London to make changes in their policies which are leading to too many cyclists being killed on London’s Streets and were taking more direct but peaceful action to put pressure on them to make cycling in the city safer.

Kings Cross was chosen as one of the most dangerous areas for cyclists with major roads including Euston Road, Pentonville Road, Caledonian Road, Kings Cross Road all meeting in a gyratory system of confusing one-way streets.

In particular they want changes at all major road junctions with longer gaps between different phases that would allow both pedestrians and cyclists to clear junctions before traffic from other directions dashes across, as well as changes that will lead to reductions in private car use in London and an increase in bike use.

*Tamsin and a man with a bike block traffic for the ride to start*

Similar protests in later years have been organised by Stop Killing Cyclists who began with a major ‘die-in’ protest outside TfL’s HQ in November 2013.

I arrived early for the Bikes Alive protest and found a group of friends of cyclist Deep Lee (Min Joo Lee), a 24-year old student who was killed riding her bike there on 3 Oct 2011 came to put fresh flowers on the ‘ghost bike’ which is chained to a lamp post at the centre of the junction.

Others soon began to arrive on bikes and on foot, gathering on the wide pavement in front of Kings Cross Station, including a dozen or so police officers on bikes. As well as Bikes Alive spokesperson Albert Beale who had said that this protest “is the first step in a campaign to stop – by whatever nonviolent means needed – the completely unnecessary level of deaths, injuries and fear inflicted by motorists on the more vulnerable“.

Green Party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones took part, stating “London’s roads must be fixed urgently if we are to make them safe for cyclists and all other road users. This is the Mayor’s responsibility, and I hope that if we make a statement through peaceful, direct action he will start to listen.”

*The protest blocks the box junction and Tamsin leads some chanting*

Also present was Tamsin Omond of Climate Rush, who have organised several cycle protests, including one in July 2011 against London’s terrible air quality with briefly blocked a junction a little to the west of tonight’s protest.

Eventually the protester began to cycle slowly, accompanied by protesters on foot on the roads around the junction, turning up York Way and then returning back down Caledonian Road and returning to Kings Cross where some stopped to block the box junction. When police came and told them they had to move they made a few circuits along a short section of the Euston Road in front of Kings Cross, making a ‘U’ turn at the traffic lights and going back east along the road to go around the one-way system again. By the time they were on their second or third circuit I felt I had seen enough and left.

London’s roads eleven years later remain dangerous for cyclists, and this junction in particular was among the three still named as the most dangerous of 22 that the London Cycling Campaign named in parliament in November 2022 as needing urgent action. There have been some improvements, with new cycle ‘super-highways’ and changes in traffic light phasing, but much more still needs to be done to make the city safer, with huge benefits in public health as many more people who would cycle if they felt safe. Unfortunately some London councils, partly thanks to lobbying from taxi drivers and others, still have virulent anti-cycling policies.

More at Bikes Alive – End Killing Of Cyclists.

Bhopal: Drop Dow From London Olympics

Earlier that day I had photographed another protest, where Farah Edwards, a survivor of the Bhopal Disaster, challenged Lord Coe, and Mayor Boris Johnson, to taste some Bhopal drinking water, bottled as ‘B’eauPal’ mineral water. 200 days before the start of the London Olympics they called for London to drop Dow Chemicals as a major sponsor, as thousand of families in Bhopal are still being poisoned by the Bhopal disaster, when Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals, released a huge dense cloud of lethal gas from their plant on the night of December 2-3, 1984.

*Barry Gardiner MP holds a bottle of contaminated Bhopal water in Trafalgar Square*

Government estimates say more than 3,700 died immediately and since deaths have risen to between 8,000 and 25,000 people. Around 100,000 to 200,000 people are thought to have permanent injuries and the number continues to grow as much of the contamination produced by the disaster has not been cleaned up.

But of course the idea that Lord Coe or Johnson would worry for even a split second about taking dirty money for the Olympic project was ridiculous.

Bhopal: Drop Dow From London Olympics