EU | >Re-PHOTO

Trade Justice Mass Action 2007

Trade Justice Mass Action. Thursday 19th April 2007 saw a mass action by the Trade Justice Movement in London which was a part of a wider global day of action by campaigners across Europe as well as in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific – the ‘APC’ countries.

The protest was particularly about the agreements between the APC countries and the EU, and the unfair trade deals (economic partnership agreements or EPAs) that the EU was negotiating. The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States organisation was founded in 1975 and the 71 countries then involved came to an trade agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC) in Lomé, Togo, the Lomé Convention.

This “provided for most ACP agricultural and mineral exports to enter the EEC free of duty. Preferential access based on a quota system was agreed for products, such as sugar and beef, in competition with EEC agriculture” from the 71 countries in the ACP and it also provided funds for aid and investment.

The Lomé Convention was twice updated but in 1995 the United States complained to the World Trade Organisation that it was unfair to them and the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in their favour. Many argue that the WTO prioritizes the interests of wealthy nations and multinational companies and undermines national sovereignty, and hinders efforts to address global issues like poverty and climate change.

Negotiations between the European Union and the 78 ACP countries held in Coutonou, Benin in 2000 led to a new agreement, the Cotonou Agreement, signed by all except Cuba, which came into force in 2003 – and was later revised in 2005 and 2010.

According to Wikipedia, “The Cotonou Agreement is aimed at the reduction and eventual eradication of poverty while contributing to sustainable development and to the gradual integration of ACP countries into the world economy. The revised Cotonou Agreement is also concerned with the fight against impunity and promotion of criminal justice through the International Criminal Court.”

The ACP, now renamed the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, came to a new agreement, the Samoa Agreement, to replace this which entered into force provisionally in January 2024 but has proved more controversial, particularly because of its support for gender equality.

The Mass Action in 2007 was organised by the Trade Justice Movement, which included 78 UK-based organisations including aid organisations such as Action Aid, Cafod, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Tearfund, War On Want and the World Development Movement, trade unions, churches, fair trade groups and more.

It began with a rally in Belgrave Square, a square containing many empbassies. The rally was outside the German (and Austrian) embassies, with speakers from a number of the groups including Frances O’Grady from the Trade Union Congress, Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth and speakers from some APC countries.

*Setting off for the Department of Trade and Industry*

At the end of the rally groups left to deliver a letter and a large key to every EU country’s embassy with a letter and a key, demanding that the EU stops negotiating unfair trade deals (economic partnership agreements or EPAs) with developing countries. One group went to the Department of Trade and Industry to deliver to the UK. I could not go with all the groups going to all 27 locations to deliver these, but did manage to take photographs of the groups outside the Finnish, Spanish and Austrian embassies.

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London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Goodbye & Good Riddance – September 2003

Goodbye & Good Riddance – September 2003: Of course there were times in 2023 that I remember warmly, and the first week of September when I was with a group of friends in a holiday let in Barmouth was full of them, though getting there and back was harder going with a rail strike and several long rail replacement bus journeys. But even those long bus journeys had their compensations, with some splendid views and clean windows through which I photographed some of them.

The holiday had been a very welcome break, and we were very fortunate with the weather, but too soon we had to return home – starting with two bus journeys to Machynlleth and then on to Shrewsbury and I returned to photographing protests the following day.

**March To Rejoin The EU**, London. 23 Sep 2023.
Thousands march in National Rejoin March from Hyde Park calling for an end to Brexit and to restore freedom of movement and reverse the attacks on living standards, public services and workers rights Brexit has caused. The march was followed by a rally in Parliament Square.
Peter Marshall

**World Wide Rally for Freedom**. London, 23 Sept 2023.
More than a thousand people marched from Hyde Park in the World Wide Rally For Freedom of speech, movement, assembly, health and choice.The march included many anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and others but was dominated by those condemning London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion to include all of London. They called for mass non-compliance with this and other tyrannical government control.
Peter Marshall

The Rally For Freedom was in opposition to the various government bills and acts which have seriously restricted our freedom – such as those aimed at preventing protests and severely restricting the right to strike. But we urgently need to take action against climate change “FOR THE SAKE OF ALL OUR CHILDREN” and the vaccinations have certainly saved many, many more lives than few deaths they have caused. Any responsible mayor of London would be taking similar action to improve London’s air quality, and while there may be details in Khan’s approach which could have been better, he has proved a considerably better mayor for London than his predecessor, and deserves to beat the Tory candidate in the 2024 election.

More on the 2023 protests I photographed in later posts.

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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.

Hate Crime & Brexit

Hate Crime & Brexit: I tend to think of Brexit as a hate crime, inflicted on the British nation by millionaires out to make a quick buck (or rather a few million) like Mogg, but this title refers to two quite different protests on Saturday 2nd July 2016, both Brexit related.

Love Islington – NO to Hate Crime – Highbury Fields

This protest in Islington was called by Islington Labour Party in reaction to the increase in hate crime against racial, faith and other minorities following the Brexit vote.

Speakers at the event included local MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry, London Assembly members Jennette Arnold and Caroline Russell, faith leaders, including a gay Catholic priest, a leader of the Somali community, Richard Reiser of DPAC, the leader of Islington council and councillors.

They came to declare that Islington was proud to be a diverse, tolerant and cohesive community with good relations between all who live there, regardless of race, faith, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity, and to urge everyone to stand up against hate crimes and report any incidents to the police.

For once one of my pictures was picked up by some of the national press, not to talk about the event or the problem of hate crimes and the role of the Brexit referendum in encouraging some very nasty characters out from under their stones, but to make snooty remarks about the jacket which Jeremy Corbyn was wearing. The obviously saw it as another Michael Foot donkey jacket moment.

Foot of course did not wear a donkey jacket at the Cenotaph in November 1981. He wore a short, blue-green Jaeger overcoat bought by his wife at Harrods so he would look smart, and on which the Queen Mother complimented him on. But the press was out to get him and the lie, invented by a right-wing Labour MP, stuck.

I had taken the pictures of Corbyn while wearing a jacket very similar to his, appropriate for the weather that rather cool July morning. Mine certainly didn’t come from a charity shop, and I’ve no idea whether his did but if so he was fortunate to find it and made a very sensible decision to purchase it.

Pictures of the other speakers and more at Love Islington – NO to Hate Crime.

March & Rally For Europe against Brexit

More than 50,000 people marched through London to a rally in Parliament Square to show their love for the EU and in protest against the lies and deception from both sides of the EU referendum campaign.

Many feel that the result did not truly reflect the will of the people and that the majority was too small to be a mandate for such a drastic change.

David Cameron had been so convinced that the result would be to remain in Europe that he had failed to act rationally. It was a decision that has dramatically changed our nation and one that in any sensible system should have required a truly decisive majority, rather than just creeping past halfway at 51.8%.

I was raised in a church where all decisions were made by consensus, with discussions continuing until all were willing to agree, often requiring considerable concessions on all sides. It was sometimes a rather slow process.

Since I’ve belonged to other organisations where constitutional changes required a two-thirds majority. Perhaps this is a little too high, but the Brexit vote was hardly a mandate with only 37.4% of those registered to vote backing it.

We’ve now begun to see what Brexit means in practice, with many of the problems dismissed as false by Brexit campaigners becoming evident, while few if any of the advantages they trumpeted have appeared. Last month an opinion poll showed that 55% now think Brexit a mistake while only 32% think it was a good decision, and their number continues to fall. But there doesn’t seem any easy way out of this mess, though perhaps a new government that understands how to negotiate would one day help ease some of the worst effects.

The march was a huge one. I had arrived at Hyde Park Corner just as it was starting and it was over 90 minutes later that I left the end of the march as its end was getting close to Green Park station less than half a mile away. I took the Jubilee Line the single stop from there to Westminster and only arrived in time for the last few minutes of the rally which had begun and only heard the two final speakers, David Lammy MP and Bob Geldorf speaking to a packed Parliament Square. Marchers were still arriving there after the rally had finished but I went home.

Mand more pictures on My London Diary:
March For Europe against Brexit
Rally For Europe against Brexit

Brexit Day – 31 January 2020

The UK finally left the on 31st January 2020. The wrong decision taken for the wrong reasons and one which we will continue to suffer from for many more years.

But having thrown out the baby the government are still busily throwing out the bath water. Three years on their are just some small signs that our government is beginning to realise this and finally get down to some serious dialogue with the EU over at least some of the problems it has caused rather than make threats and silly demands. Though any progress is still likely to be blocked by the Tory far right, at least until the next General Election.

But on that day, three years ago, there were groups in Westminster both celebrating and regretting Brexit, and I spent some time photographing both of them.

Brexiteers celebrate leaving the EU – Parliament Square

I arrived in Parliament Square long before the more official celebrations were due to begin, but it was already beginning to fill up with Brexiteers, many with Union Flags, celebrating.

Some had placards and posters repeating the idle hopes on which much of the Leave campaign had encouraged – and lied about. By now perhaps some at least will be realising that much of what they had been promised was illusory. It’s really hard to find anything positive that has come out of Brexit which has left a huge trail of broken promises.

Of course the people who made most of these never believed them. They supported leaving because it would enrich them greatly and never mind the nation. Some made huge profits, others were more concerned about protecting their obscene wealth from an EU that was beginning to tighten restrictions on offshore funds and other scams.

But the in main, most just came with union flags and posters about being ‘free’, ironic when we now have a government that has done more to restrict our freedoms than any other in our history, and is still hell-bent on removing much of the protections on our liberty which came from not just the EU, but also from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which our government in 1948 played a central role in establishing.

The UK parliaments The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic British law. In its new bill, the UK will join with Russia and Greece (when under military dictatorship), as the only countries to have abandoned the ECHR.

There were just a few of the more lunatic fringe present and I largely managed to avoid them. I left a couple of hours before the square really became crowded – the official celebrations were timed for much later in the day.

Brexiteers celebrate leaving the EU

British National (Overseas) Passport Holders – Old Palace Yard

There were more union flags a few yards away in Old Palace Yard, but this turned out not to have any direct connection with Brexit. Holders of British National (Overseas) Passports from Hong Kong were calling for the UK government to identify BNO holders as British Nationals and grant their children British Nationality.

BNO passports were a device invented in the talks between China and the UK over the future of Hong Kong, and give no right of abode in the UK and the special status is not passed onto children. Only those who could provide evidence of not being of Chinese origin qualified for them. These were sham passports, a compromise driven by both British institutional racism refusing to give full British citizenship to the Chinese and Chinese nationalism wanting to keep Chinese as citizens of China.

Further repression in Hong Kong led exactly a year later to the UK Government setting up an immigration route on 31 January 2021, providing British National (Overseas) passport holders from Hong Kong and their eligible dependants with the opportunity to come to the UK to live, study and work, on a pathway to citizenship. The government stated that this reflected the UK’s historic and moral commitment to those people of Hong Kong who chose to retain their ties to the UK by taking these passports.

British National (Overseas) Passports

Extremist Brexiteers Behaving Badly – Whitehall

Supporters of staying in the European Union had come to Downing Street for procession to the European Commission at Europe House in Smith Square to say goodbye. Extreme right wing Brexiteers came there to abuse and attack them, with police trying hard to keep the two groups apart.

A few tried to talk reasonably with the EU supporters, but most were there just to shout insults and gloat that we were leaving, calling them traitors and telling them they were not British, bad losers and more.

Police eventually moved them away to the centre of Whitehall facing the pro-EU group. There, surrounded by photographers they tried to set fire to EU flags. This proved difficult as the flags were nylon which doesn’t burn well and had to be assisted, mainly by a flammable aerosol spray.

Extremist Brexiteers Behaving Badly

À bientôt EU, see you soon

Finally the procession of EU supporters set off on their march from Downing Street to the European Commission at Europe House in Smith Square.

They went to “bid a fond farewell to our much loved friends in the EU, hoping that we will be united again one day soon“. As the organisers wrote, for many this “may be a sad day but let’s celebrate the 47 years we were in the EU and all we contributed and the positive influence it has on our country.”

The march had been organised to take place much earlier in the day than the official Brexit celebrations in an attempt to avoid any confrontation, but as well as the few extremists who came along to cause trouble at Downing Street there there were continued jeers from Brexiteers as they made their way down Whitehall and through Parliament Square.

At Europe House staff came out to greet them and were handed flowers as they bid goodbye, celebrating 47 years of cooperation and hoping that we will be reunited with Europe before too long. As they said outside Europe House, they are no longer remainers but rejoiners.

I finished my report: “I went home. I’d had enough of Brexit. We will have to live with its consequences for some years and I’m not looking forward to it. Times are likely to be tough for the poor, the disabled, the sick and for workers generally, including most of those who voted for it and were celebrating in Parliament Square. The wealthy will of course gain – not least by avoiding the clamp down on tax evasion which the EU is now beginning.”

À bientôt EU, see you soon

Slavery, Meditation, Stolen Goods & Santas

Saturday 8th December 2018 was another busy day for me in London.

Protest Slavery in Libya – Saturday 8th December 2018

Slavery, Meditation, Stolen Goods & Santas

Campaigners held a short rally outside Europe House in Smith Square protesting over the lack of action by the EU over African migrants and refugees being sold or held against their will in Libya by terrorists and jihadists which the EU funds.

They then marched to protest at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, saying the UK had failed to do anything to help because the victims were African, then stopped briefly at Downing St on their way to the Libyan Embassy.

I left them as the went past Trafalgar Square for my next event.
Protest Slavery in Libya

Dharma meditation for climate – Trafalgar Square, Saturday 8th December 2018

In Trafalgar Square members of the Dharma Action Network were meditating and handing out flyers calling for people and governments to take effective actions to combat climate change. They urged people to move their money out of banks which invest in fossil fuels, get informed by reading the IPCC report on global warming and join them and other groups including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or take action with Extinction Rebellion.

Dharma meditation for climate

British Museum Stolen Goods Tour – British Museum, Saturday 8th December 2018

News in the past weeks that the Horniman Museum is returning the Benin Bronzes and other items in its collection to Nigeria is a sign of the changing attitudes to museums holding on to looted objects. The museum handed over total of 72 bronzes and other objects to Nigeria. But the British Museum is full of thousands of questionably acquired objects, including over 900 from Benin.

BP or Not BP, a group opposed to the polluting oil company ‘greenwashing’ its dirty fossil fuel business by sponsoring artistic activities including major exhibitions in the British Museum had organised a tour of some of the more important stolen cultural artifacts in their collection, beginning with the Gweagal shield, stolen by Captain Cook when his men had first landed in Australia.

When they landed they were greeted by the indigenous inhabitants carrying spears and wooden shields; the sailors opened fire with muskets, with one musket ball going through the shield and wounding Cooman. The people dropped their weapons and fled, carrying the wounded man.

This shield is now on display in the British Museum and spears and other items are also in their collection, with some in other museums. This was the second time I had photographed Indigenous Australian campaigner Rodney Kelly, a 6th generation direct descendant of Cooman, standing in front of the glass-fronted cabinet containing the shield and talking about its history. His talks with the museum authorities have so far failed to get the property returned.

There was a packed audience listening to Kelly playing his didgeridoo and then telling the story of the shield and telling of the failure of the British Museum authorities to take seriously the oral tradition of his people as it could not be confirmed by written records. The Museum has gone to desperate lengths, including getting their own experts to cast doubt on the stories which the museum had previously featured about these objects.

From there we moved on, guided by BP or not BP campaigners some dressed as ‘burglars’ in striped black and white tops and carrying a sack for swag.

Another in a smart suit with a BP logo explained why BP gave the museum a relatively small amount in sponsorship which gave them huge rewards in making them seem a responsible company despite their reprehensible activities in countries around the world, despoiling resources, polluting the environment and severely aggravating global warming by encouraging fossil fuel use.

Outside the entrance to the BP-sponsored Assyrian show an Iraqi woman talked about BP’s role in her country and the looting which followed the invasion of Iraq including some of cultural artifacts which formed a part of this show.

By a large stone figure from Easter Island a speaker from Pacific Island arts group the Interisland Collective talked about the treatment by museums of Maori and Pacific Islands cultural items and read a statement from the Rapa Nui Pioneers on Easter Island calling for the return of this stolen Moai Head.

The final location for the tour was in the large room containing the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles, where BP or not NBP’s Danny Chivers revealed his partly Greek ancestry and talked about his visit to the Parthenon and the museum there which has been built to exhibit its missing sculptures.

It seems inevitable that eventually the British Museum and other museums will have to return these objects, and to replace at least some of them by facsimiles would enable the museum to continue its educational function while restoring vital cultural objects to their proper homes.

More at British Museum Stolen Goods Tour.

London flooded with Santas – Covent Garden, Saturday 8th December 2018

Christmas was coming and so was Santacon, a huge annual charity event and excuse for a highly alcohol-fuelled stagger and dance through the streets of central London dresses as santas, elves and reindeer.

The event had started at various locations and large crowds were now converging on Trafalgar Square spreading glad tidings as darkness fell, some following hand-pulled sound systems and dancing on the streets, though many groups were diverted into pubs and food shops on the way.

I had fun dancing along with some of them and taking photographs close to the British Museum and then going through Covent Garden, but by the time I reached Trafalgar Square decided I’d photographed my fill of santas and took a bus to Waterloo.

More santas at London flooded with Santas.

Brexit – One Year On

A year ago there were people celebrating that we were about to leave Europe. Some of them are probably still celebrating now, though we’ve yet to see any of the many advantages that were promised, and have had to come to grips with a few of the downsides.

People had come from across Britain to celebrate

Of course the virus has rather taken our minds off Europe, and while the date of 31st January 2020 had political significance, the transition period and apparently endless bickering over a trade agreement meant that effectively we only left on Christmas Eve – and with an agreement that, thanks to the ridiculous negotiating strategy of our government who seemed to expect that Europe would somehow cave in if we kept shouting at them in English that we would leave without a deal, was considerably less favourable than was on offer earlier in the process.

It’s been a year in which the sheer incompetence and greed of the Conservatives in handling the virus emergency – and in particular the handing out of contracts to their unsuitable and unqualified friends and donors and a dogmatic attitude towards local government and their efforts over previous years to move the NHS towards privatisation has led to many tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. In particular the near-total failure of a national system of tracking and tracing and a poorly implemented phone-based system seemed deliberately designed to increase transmission, perhaps in line with the government’s initial espousal of developing herd based immunity. This would have required a very high percentage of the population to have become infected, and given what was known at the time about the likely death rate, would have resulted in around 400,000 early deaths. Some in government apparently saw that as a bonus, as these would largely have been among the elderly and unproductive, hugely reducing the payments of pensions and other benefits and, post-covid, the costs of what remained of the NHS.

EU Supergirl’ Madeleina Kay – Forever Europe

But back on 31st January a year ago, Covid was not much on our minds (I began to get warnings I should isolate though contacts with those scientists advising the authorities a couple of weeks later – and it took another month after that for the government to react.) But Europe very much was, and as well as those celebrating there were others mourning our loss and celebrating “the 47 years we were in the EU and all we contributed and the positive influence it has on our country.”

The deliberately met several hours before the pro-Brexit celebrations were due to start avoid any clashes as they marched from Downing St to the offices of the European Commission in Smith Square, but despite this triumphant extreme-right Brexiteers came to Downing St to shout insults, calling the EU supporters traitors and telling them they were not British, bad losers and more. After police had managed to separate the more aggressive of them moving them to the centre of Whitehall they then attempted to burn an EU flag. The flag refused to burn, though it melted a little in the parts that were heated and the flames came almost entirely from an aerosol spray and some paper fliers.

Marchers celebrate our 47 years as part of Europe

The march went ahead, with just a few jeers as it passed through Parliament Square. At Europe House the European Commission staff came out to welcome them and were given flowers and there was a short speech expressing thanks for what the EU has done for our country and hoping that one day we will rejoin Europe.

European Commission staff meet the march outside Europe House

I went home then not wanting to join in the celebrations that were shortly to take place in Parliament Square. As I wrote at the time:

I’d had enough of Brexit. We will have to live with its consequences for some years and I’m not looking forward to it. Times are likely to be tough for the poor, the disabled, the sick and for workers generally,
including most of those who voted for it and were celebrating in Parliament Square. The wealthy will of course gain – not least by avoiding the clamp down on tax evasion which the EU is now beginning.
My London Diary, Jan 31 2020

À bientôt EU, see you soon
Extremist Brexiteers Behaving Badly
Brexiteers celebrate leaving the EU

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.

Trafalgar Square protests

Back on Saturday 12th October there were two protests taking place in Trafalgar Square and it was raining. One was by trade unionists supporting Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikers, and there was a powerful speech from Ian Hodson, National President of the Baker’s Union BFAWU. His union is one of the older and smaller unions in the TUC, founded in 1847 in Manchester though it has changed its name a couple of times.

The BFAWU is a union that still fights actively for its members and isn’t afraid to take on large organisations, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC in its campaign to unionise and improve pay and conditions for fast food workers.

The rain came on rather more heavily, and I kept my cameras in my camera bag or under my coat, and took rather fewer pictures than I would otherwise. Working in wet conditions is still rather a pain, even though some cameras and some lenses are ‘weatherproof’ this doesn’t really keep them going in the rain.

The 3million organisation representing the three million EU citizens who were living in the UK had come prepared, wearing blue and yellow plastic rain capes with a sticker on them also in the colours of the EU flag and the message ‘I am not a bargaining chip’.

They had come to protest at the broken promise made by the Vote Leave campaign, which had clearly stated that EU Citizens currently living in the UK would “automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK” in the event of Brexit. Instead we have a complex scheme of applications, with many who have applied for leave to remain having their applications rejected. Some who have lived here for over 50 years, and have children who are UK citizens may face deportation.

Together they tore up copies of the promise, though the light had dropped and the pictures I took on a longer lens were rather blurred by their motion – I hadn’t got my camera set to a high enough ISO.

I still can’t decide which is the best way to work with my digital cameras when lighting conditions are likely to change. The different cameras I use – and on this occasion it was an Olympus OMD M5 II and a Fuji XT-1 – have slightly differing implementation of auto-ISO, which would seem to be a good answer, but in practice can mean that you are too often working at full aperture.

Probably the answer is to work in manual mode, setting both aperture and shutter speed when using auto-ISO, but it is then very easy to find that either you have reached your maximum ISO set and the camera then underexposes everything, or, even worse, you are at the minimum ISO in your range and all your images are overexposed with burnt out highlights.

Brexit

I suppose I should say something about Brexit. It’s a topic I’ve tried hard to avoid since the referendum. It’s a disaster we’ll just have to live with, at least until the nation comes to its senses and demands we rejoin Europe. Or perhaps that the whole world situation changes in ways that make the whole debate irrelevant.

Not that I’m a big fan of the European institutions, but we have gained enormously from our membership of the EU in so many ways, while managing to negotiate extremely favourable terms – which we won’t be able to regain when we re-apply. And the EU will have changed in many different ways during our absence without us having been able to have our say.

According to the Free-Find search on My London Diary there are 31 references to Brexit on the site, between June 2016 and Jan 2020. It probably isn’t entirely accurate and may ‘double count’ some occurrences, but it gives a fairly good idea of how much I’ve photographed related stories. The pictures here are a fairly random selection of the many I’ve taken in that three and a half years.

I did cover the large anti-Brexit protests that took place in London, but many times as I’ve wandered through Westminster to other events I’ve come across Steven Bray and his SODEM protests, just occasionally stopping to take photographs.

Rather less frequently I’ve met Brexiteers, and taken photographs. At times they have been rowdy and obnoxious and I occasionally felt personally threatened. I also photographed them behaving in extremely threatening ways towards Bray and also to Anna Soubry – which resulted in probably the only sales to newspapers of my Brexit-related pictures.

Brexit of course was not really about Brexit. For many of those who voted leave it was a protest vote about feeling neglected by government and powerless. Fears about immigration obviously played a part – though more so in areas with relatively few immigrants than in cosmopolitan London. A feeling that those in Westminster didn’t understand what was happening outside and didn’t much care – which remains undoubtedly true. A disillusion with the state of politics, enlarged by the war on Iraq and the 2008 crash. For those who drove the leave campaign a desire to keep their tax havens and weaken human rights and laws which protect workers and thus restrict profits.

Since it’s largely this latter group who will be leading our negotiations with Europe and with the rest of the world I think we who aren’t in the top percent or so of the most wealthy are in for a pretty raw deal over the next few years. I’m fortunate enough, though certainly not rich to be reasonably financially insulated against their worst, but I fear for the poor, the disabled, the sick, the homeless, refugees, asylum seekers…

Of course leaving is now a done deal, and there is little that can be done other than hope that our negotiations are carried on rather more sensibly than seems likely. The arguments over Brexit have been a tremendous distraction over the past three years from so many other important issues which perhaps can now be fought.

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.

Remainers march

Back in July there still was hope that we might be able to avoid the huge mistake of Brexit, and thousands came to march in support of staying in Europe. And while the recent election makes it almost certain we will leave – and leave on terms that will be very damaging to the country, I still suspect that in a few years time we will be begging Europe to let us back in, or at least to come to some much closer arrangement than is likely to result from negotiations by the current government.

Like the referendum, the election campaign was marked by an enormous amount of misinformation and lies, mainly from the Conservative Party; First Draft checked out the ads from both parties on Facebook from Dec1 to Dec 4, and, according to Full Fact, ” found that a majority of the Conservative ads during this period included or linked to claims that Full Fact has questioned“. First Draft give a figure: ” 88% (5,952) of the most widely promoted ads featured claims about the NHS, income tax cuts, and the Labour Party which had already been labelled misleading by Full Fact.

Labour put out far fewer FB ads during this time and for technical reasons the first report by Full Fact missed any misleading claims in them; later they updated the figure to say that of their 104 ads during the same period only 6.7% contained or linked to misleading data.

The Brexit referendum was similarly marked by deliberate misleading by the ‘Leave’ campaign, including the figure on the side of their bus. But perhaps even more importantly we were told that leaving Europe would be a simple process, and the public were given the impression that once they had voted it would all be over within a few months.

But the politicians are only a part of the story, and the huge misinformation campaign of both referendum and election is largely driven by the media, both newspapers and broadcasting. The Sun has previously boasted of having determined the results of UK elections, and certainly it and the other newspapers, mainly owned by a handful of billionaires, have played a vital role. Most of the broadcast media, with the exception of the BBC are also similarly controlled.

The BBC is a special case, and has long been under attack by both the left and right in politics for failing to be impartial. Unfortunately this doesn’t imply that it is getting the balance right, as the two sides attack it for very different reasons. Many Tories have long wanted to close it down largely because it is a public service and as such not making money for them and their friends, but at the same time have been very effective in getting members of a highly conservative establishment into positions of power within it. Labour have seen in taking up the anti-Labour views of the press and collaborating with the opposition to Jeremy Corbyn, conspiring with some Labour MPs opposed to him and even inventing fake news to discredit him and the party.

What we are left in now is a real mess. A country which would now almost certainly vote to remain being taken out of the EU, on the basis of a promise made by a former Prime Minister over a non-binding referendum. A referendum result that had it been binding would almost certainly have been challenged and rendered invalid in the courts. Scotland looking increasingly likely to break away and rejoin the EU after we have left. A border in the Irish Sea that makes the reunification of Ireland seem much closer (perhaps the only positive outcome of the whole sad business.) And a country that is going to become much poorer and more unequal. But most important of all will be the failure to take action over the climate crisis.

No to Boris, Yes to Europe

Brexit moan

I don’t like to mention Brexit. It’s a subject about which more nonsense has been talked over the past few years than any other, both before and after the referendum, which of course should never have been held.

But if you argue that one referendum is democracy in action and should be respected, it seems illogical to suggest that we should not have another one now that we have a far better idea of what leaving Europe will mean. I don’t know of course what result a new referendum would give, whether it would again generate the kind of lies and disgust with politics that drove the previous vote just over the halfway mark.

Most of the organisations I’ve belonged to have had clear rules about amendments to their constution, generally requiring a fairly high quorum and a 60% or even two-thirds majority or a majority of those entitled to vote rather than simply more votes than the other side. There were no such safeguards for the Brexit vote, which constitutionally was only advisory (although Cameron had said he would respect the decision, thinking it was certain to be to remain in Europe.)

Probably by now enough of the elderly leave voters will by now have died and new young Europe supporters will have got the vote, and together with those who have changed their minds would change the result.

*Europe supporter* *Madeleina Kay came dressed as Brittania with a quote from Oscar Wilde ‘We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’*

It now looks increasingly likely that we will leave Europe in an extremely messy way, with Boris, Farage and the DUP shouting insults at the Europeans in what they will call attempts at negotiation. We will see a hard border in Ireland, a loss in our living standards, chlorinated chickens and yet more privatision of the NHS. We’ll have a general election leading to an even more hung Parliament, probably leading to a right-wing coalition. The only consoling feature of the disatrous election results will be most of the right-wing Labour MPs who have spent almost all of their time over the past few years undermining Corbyn and their party losing their seats.

And then, perhaps in the election after next, perhaps a new revitalised socialist Labour party led by one of those now a shadow minister under Corbyn, probably a woman, will run on the platform of taking us back into Europe, win with a thumping majority and go back to Europe cap in hand. We won’t get as good a deal as we have at the moment, but they will be happy to have us back again!

Of course this isn’t an entirely serious political prediction, though I think it has more chance of coming to pass than most that we hear in the mass media, and certainly better than anything Laura K has so far come up with. Take it more as a rather dark and slightly humourous reflection on what seems an entirely desperate situation the country has got itself into.

And you can see more pictures of disgruntled Brexiteers at Brexiteers protest Betrayal.

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