Posts Tagged ‘FIT’

World Justice And A Black Friday

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023

World Justice And A Black Friday: Friday 2nd May 2008 was unusual for me as my work began with and event by Just Share in front of the Bank of England when my wife and I appeared together in public, a rather rare event as she seldom comes to London. But later it was a very dark day for London as the results of the Mayoral Election were announced, the begining of 8 years of rule by a dangerously incomptent, unreliable and untrustworthy man who went on to become prime minister and make a real mess of the country too. In between the two events I had time to visit an exhibition and take a little walk along the riverside.


Just Shares Take On The Bank – Royal Exchange, Bank, London

World Justice And A Black Friday

‘Just Share’, based at St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside, describes itself as “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice” and to “address the widening gap between rich and poor in the global economy.”

World Justice And A Black Friday

They had organised the event on the steps of the Royal Exchange in front of the Bank of England, with stalls from several groups involved in the trade justice movement including Operation Noah (a Christian-based charity campaigning about the environment) and Muslim Aid, before speeches by Ann Pettifor of Advocacy International and Operation Noah, previously Jubilee 2000, and The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott.

World Justice And A Black Friday

Following this we walked the short distance to St Mary Woolnoth – one of Hawksmoor’s finest buildings, and where former slave captain John Newton, who wrote ‘Amazing Grace’, preached his last 28 years – a few yards away.

World Justice And A Black Friday

Here there was a seminar where Pettifor expanded her argument about the false basis of our current economic system, which is the subject of her book ‘The Coming First World Debt Crisis‘ arguing that the current global debt-based financial systems are unsustainable and that a structural change is necessary to give proper regard to actual production, and the rediscovery of the insights of earlier Christian (and of course Muslim) traditions.

There wasn’t a huge attendance at the event, and probably a majority of those present were wearing dog collars. I didn’t find it easy to make interesting pictures though I did photograph most of the speakers. And I suspect it fell on very closed ears in financial circles where people were and are personally doing very well from our failed system.

More pictures at Just Shares Take On The Bank.


London Riverside – South Bank and Southwark

It was some time before the result of the London Mayoral elections was to be announced in the early evening, and I made my way to the Hayward Gallery to see an exhibition there before taking a leisurely walk along the South Bank to City Hall. I think there may well have been time for a little food and liquid refreshment too.

On Bankside I made this picture of Cardinal Cap Alley and the house that Christopher Wren didn’t live in. You can see some more pictures from the walk, including at the Hayward Gallery, a distant view of Tate Modern’s chimney, St Pauls Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge and Fishmonger’s Hall at London Riverside.


No to the Crook, the Toff, the Fascist or Cop – City Hall, Southwark

Like other photographers attending protests in London I had become used to being routinely photographed by police photography teams, the so-called Forward Intelligence Teams, FIT. But sitting reading on the steps in Potters Fields on this occasion waiting for things to start I attracted more than the usual attention, perhaps because the book I was reading had the title ‘Terrorist’. As I point out in My London Diary, this is not a training manual, but a novel by one of America’s leading novelists, John Updike.

I was filmed for over a minute and a number of still photographs were taken. Some months later I made a freedom of information request asking what pictures the police held of me, giving this as one of the dates on which I had been photographed. I paid my money, waited and eventually got the response – that they had no pictures of me.

I was there to take pictures as several anarchist groups had come to protest at the result, saying ‘No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop’, declaring none of the four candidates suitable to be Mayor. Personally I felt they were being a little unfair to previous mayor Ken Livingstone who while he had his faults had largely done his best for London and certainly now seems a shining beacon of honesty compared to most of the leading Tories – including Starmer – we have seen since.

Things outside City Hall remained pretty calm until Fitwatch got fed up with being photographed and began to try to frustrate the FIT teams by surrounding one of them with their banners. The police called up reinforcements and the Territorial Support Group (TSG) arrived and began pushing everyone around, including the protesters, press and bystanders, most of whom were tourists, in the direction of a penned area a short distance away. As I reported, ‘One French woman was bemused. “But why are they just letting themselves be pushed” she asked me as I took photographs. “Because this is England and not France” I replied.’

One man sitting watching from the river wall refused to move and was told he was obstructing the highway – which he clearly was not. Eventually they arrested him and dragged him away. But otherwise the police were reasonably well-behaved and on showing my press card I was allowed to walk away from the area.

I was keen to do so, not just because I didn’t want to be kettled, but also because I had seen some of the cannier members of Class War moving away and was able to photograph them displaying an Anti-Fascist banner from a balcony overlooking the site for a few minutes until they melted away as officers began moving in our direction, finding refuge in a nearby pub. By the time the police arrived they obviously couldn’t be bothered to chase them, and contented themselves with moving the innocent public away from the balcony, and after a short time, also moving the press. I went and joined Class War in the pub briefly before leaving for home.

More at No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop.


11 October 2008

Monday, October 11th, 2021

It was the start of the final 100 days of the Bush adminstration and the ‘Hands off Iraqi Oil’ coalition whose members included Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and was supported by the Stop the War Coalition and others had come to Shell’s UK headquarters at Waterloo to protest against plans by Britain and the USA for Iraq to hand over most of the country’s oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.

Iraq had nationalised its oil by 1972, and it provided 95% of its government income. Many had seen the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK (along with Australia and Poland) as largely driven by the desire to gain control of Iraq’s huge oil reserves and the US had engaged consultants to help it write a new oil law which it got the Iraqi cabinet to approive in 2007 which would give foreign oil companies – including Shell and BP, long-term contracts within a safe legal framework. But large-scale popular opposition meant the Iraqi parliament failed to approve the new law. But in June 2008, the Iraqi Oil Ministry went ahead with short-term no-bid contracts to the major foreign oil companies – including Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Total and Chevron and later these and other contracts were made more favourable to the oil companies.

After the protest at Shell’s offices the protesters marched to protest outside the BP HQ in St James’s Square and then to the US Embassy, and I left to cover the London Freedom not fear 2008 event outside New Scotland Yard. Similar protests were taking place in over 20 countries to demonstrate against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organizations.

The London event highlighted the restrictions of the right to demonstrate under the Labour government’s The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005, (SOCPA),, the intimidatory use of photography by police Forward Intelligence squads (FIT), the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.

For something completely different I walked a quarter of a mile down Victoria Street to Westminster Cathedral where people were assembling for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation, one of the larger walks of public witness by Catholics in London.

This tradition began in Austria in 1947 with the roasary campaign begun by a priest praying for his country to be freed from the communist occupiers. The first annual parade with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima took place in 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12, which had been established by Pope Innocent XI in 1683 when Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna were defeated by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.

As the procession to a service at Brompton Oratory began I walked back up Victoria St to Parliament Square, where a number of other small protests were in evidence. All over the centre of London there were people giving out leaflets about the growing problems faced by Tamils in Sri Lanka, where they allege a program of ethnic cleansing is being carried out by the government. International media are banned from the Tamil areas of the country and NGOs have been ordered out of some areas, so there are few reports of the war. Worse was to come and in 2009 in the final stages of the war conservative estimates are that 70,000 civilians were killed in the the Mullivaikkal massacre.

Others in the square were protesting against the UK’s scandalous treatment of asylum seekers and calling for the asylum detention centres to be closed down.

Brian Haw was still there, and I wrote:

Facing Parliament, Brian Haw‘s peace protest continues – he has been there for almost 2700 days – over 7 years – and it will soon be his 60th birthday. Brian says that now the police seem to have largely abandoned attempts to get rid of him legally there have been a number of odd attacks against him and others in the square – which the police have ignored. I took some time talking to a man who smelt of alcohol, was talking nonsense and acting unpredictably – and who then went and started to insult Brian. One of the other demonstrators stood between him and Brian who was filming him. I put down my bag as I took photographs in case I needed to step in and help, but fortunately he eventually moved away.

There were others protesting in Parliament Square, including one man who asked me to take his picture. He told me his name was Danny and that he had been there on hunger strike for two weeks, protesting over his failure to get his case investigated. He claimed to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother. I was unable to find any more information about his case.

Finally I saw a group of people walking past holding leafelts with the the word CHANGE on them and rushed after them to find they were Obama supporters hoping to persuade Americans they met to register and vote in the election. It was time for me to go home.

Parliament Square
Rosary Crusade of Reparation
Freedom not Fear 2008
Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab