Ford | >Re-PHOTO

Visteon, City & Fashion Victims – 2009

Visteon, City & Fashion Victims: On Saturday 4th April 2009 I went to protest in support of the Visteon factory occupation in Enfield, came back the the City but missed a protest over the police murder of newsvendor Ian Tomlinson and then photographed a fashion show protest on Oxford Street against the slave-like labour of workers in Bangladesh producing cheap clothes for Primark.

Solidarity at Visteon Enfield

I wrote a few days ago about the Visteon pensions scandal where former Ford workers who were transferred to parts manufacturer Visteon, ‘An Enterprise of Ford Motor Company‘, in 2000 had lost up to half of their pensions when Visteon went into administration on 31st March 2009 when administrators KPMG immediately closed the company down.

Together with workers at the Visteon Belfast site, the workers at Visteon Enfield had occupied their factories and were refusing to leave until Visteon and Ford made good on the firm promises made in 2000 they had that they would receive the same pensions and redundancy arrangements they had enjoyed previously.

Workers in Belfast had occupied their factory immediately after a 5 minute meeting had told them they had lost their jobs and that they had an hour to take any personal possessions and leave work immediately – without pay. Enfield workers occupied their factory the following day.

KPMG’s response was to go to the courts and secure a court order for repossession, while Ford simply denied all responsibility in the matter (though five years later were eventually forced by Unite to pay some compensation.)

I went to the factory at Ponders End, Enfield along with several hundred other trade unionists and others for a rally outside the plant to show our support for their case. A number of those who spoke at the rally had organised collections for the occupiers in their workplaces, reporting unanimous support for the dismissed workers, and others had also brought practical support – sleeping bags, food and money – to enable the occupation to continue.

More at Solidarity at Visteon Enfield

City Walk – Bank and Bishopsgate.

I was later than I had hoped by the time my train from Ponders End reached Liverpool Street and had missed the rally at Bank in memory of the news vendor Ian Tomlinson who died of a heart attack minutes after being attacked and violently pushed to the ground in an unprovoked attack by a riot policeman, dieing from a heart attack minutes after. The murder had been captured on video by an onlooker and The Guardian had published the video – still on their web site.

After the rally the protesters had marched away – and I could see and hear a police helicopter following them on the way towards Bethnal Green. I didn’t have time to try and catch up with them, but wandered through some of the streets in the City, including some that Tomlinson had wandered through as he tried to make his way home through the area where police were kettling and attacking the April 1st Financial Fools Day G20Meltdown protesters. On 4th April those streets were empty.

More pictures at City Walk.

Primark – Fashion on the Cheap from Sweatshops

War on Want and No Sweat were drawing attention to Primark profiting from selling clothes made by sweated labour in Bangladesh with a ‘fashion show’ outside the company’s flagship Oxford Street store.

Models used the pavement as a catwalk, walking in chains “to symbolise the slave labour conditions of the Bangladeshi workers who make the cut-price fashions on sale at Primark. Workers who make the clothes earn as little as 7p an hour and work up to 80 hours a week.”

The Primark store opened here in 2007 and flourished as the recession made people turn to cheaper suppliers with their profits in the year to September 2008 up by up by 17% at £233 million.

Notices in the store windows claimed they “care about the conditions of the workers who make their clothes, but the reports by War on Want tells a very different story. These clothes are only cheap because those who make them get poverty pay, work long hours and get sacked if they try to organise or ask for improvements in their dangerous and unhealthy working conditions.”

Although the links on the My London Diary post are now out of date, War on Want are still campaigning for garment workers around the world including in Bangladesh, as are No Sweat.

In 2009 I commented:

Primark and others could still have a moral and reasonably profitable business if they restrained their greed and ensured that the workers who make their clothes worked in reasonable conditions and got a living wage – which in Bangladesh is only around £45 a month. But that is over three times what workers making clothes for Primark are currently paid.

Primark’s profits continue to rise, and although it claims it has “improved working conditions and implemented ethical initiatives, reports and investigations suggest that worker exploitation in its supply chain, including issues like low wages and unsafe working conditions, unfortunately still persists” according to Google’s Generative AI.

More at Primark – Fashion from Sweatshops.

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Pension Justice, Ethiopian Tyrant & Rioters United – 2010

Pension Justice, Ethiopian Tyrant & Rioters United: Three very different protests on Wednesday 31st March 2010.

Ford/Visteon Workers March For Pension Justice

Pension Justice, Ethiopian Tyrant & Rioters United - 2010

Former Ford workers who had been transferred to parts manufactuer Visteon, ‘An Enterprise of Ford Motor Company‘, in 2000 and had lost up to half of their pensions when Visteon went into administration and its UK plants were closed in 2009 marched through London from the Unite offices in Holborn to a rally outside Parliament.

Many who came had worked at Swansea and there were others from the Belfast plant as well as from the North London factory in Enfield where I had gone in April 2009 to photograph the factory occupation and its end following a court order.

The occupation by the workers had failed in their efforts to keep the factory open and prevent administrators KPMG from gutting the factory and selling its high-tech machinery to China. But the fight to get back their stolen pensions continued,

*A speaker holds up the Ford & Visteon rule books – identical except for the covers*

When the workers were transferred from Ford to Visteon they were given a ‘cast-iron’ guarantee by Ford and Visteon that their working conditions and pensions would be protected – and the only change in the book governing these was in the colour and logo of the cover – from blue to tangerine.

But when Visteon went into administration the factories and the 3,000 employees lost their jobs, adminstrators KPMG had no interest in the workers and Ford reneged on their promises. The former employees had to rely on the much less generous terms of the government Pensions Protection Fund. Their union, Unite, supported them in the long fight for justice that ensued – including this rally – as did others from the trade union movement and a long list of MPs. They demanded Ford meet its pension obligations of £350 millions to its former employees.

The fight by Unite continued and even got some support from the coalition governments Minister for Pensions Steve Webb (Lib-Dem). It took until April 2014 before Ford eventually came to a settlement with Unite covering around 1,200 ex-Ford workers. Even PM David Cameron praised “all those who played a role” in the fight.

Much more about the event and more pictures on My London Diary
Ford/Visteon March For Pension Justice

Ethiopians Protest Bloodthirsty Tyrant

Ethiopians protested opposite Downing Street where Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was co-chairing the UN climate finance group.

He was the leader of the coalition of rebel groups, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which it took power in 1991, and has been Prime Minister since 1995, imposing what has become a one-party state, with many opposition politicians being imprisoned and press freedom being highly restricted with leading journalists being jailed for criticising Zenawi.

*Somalis came to demonstrate with the Ethiopians against the “Butcher of the Horn of Africa.”*

Human rights violations and corruption are rife in Ethiopia, and food aid, education and jobs all depend on membership of the ruling party. His opponents regard Zenawi as a bloodthirsty tyrant and call for him to be brought to trial at the ICC at The Hague on charges of genocide.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) have accused his regime of war crimes in the Somali regions of Ethiopia and against the Anauk communities in Gambella in 2003-4. Despite this, the Ethiopian government was the largest recipient of UK budget support in Africa, and the protesters called on the government to think again and withdraw support from the regime.

Ethiopians Protest Bloodthirsty Tyrant

Rioters United! 20 Years Since the Poll Tax Riots

‘Rioters Re-United!’ returned to Trafalgar Square on the 20th anniversary of the Poll Tax Riots saying it was the London mob who brought Thatcher down and announcing an Anti-Election campaign to keep the mob in business and pronounce sentence on politicians.

Chris Knight, one of the leading figures behind last year’s April 1 demonstrations at Bank announced that the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse who led the marches there would this year on May Day be dragging our political leaders (in effigy at least) from their various HQs to stand trial at a people’s assembly in Parliament Square. Since the event is called ‘Carnival of Death’ I think we can take it that the sentence has already been passed, and as Knight reminded us, the only good politician, the only honest politician is a dead politician.

As I commented “no party leader will actually be hanged, and the police should not make the mistake they made last year at Bank of confusing the rhetoric with reality, which led to their ridiculous over-reaction, with squads of riot police psyched up to batter largely innocent and joyful protesters – and the death of a bystander. “

A PSCO was called on by the Heritage Wardens to tell the 30 or so former rioters that they were not allowed to hold protests or other events in Trafalgar Square without permission. Of course they simply laughed at him, and continued even after a dozen police officers he had phoned for support arrived and stood around watching. “Fortunately they had enough sense not to try and stop the commemoration, which ended after around 30 minutes when the organisers decided it was time to go down the pub.”

Of course politics and parliament carried on regardless. The turnout at our general elections is low, with the Institute for Public Policy Research finding that only 52% of the UK adult population bothered to vote in 2024, considerably less than the official turnout of 60% which only counts those who have registered as voters. Starmer was brought to power in a landslide by roughly a third of a half of us – if the PPR is correct, around 17%. The real winners in the 2024 vote were those who didn’t bother at 48%,

*The lion thinks about May Day. Parliament still to do.*

The Tories had brought in the voter ID law in the hope that this would result in more Labour voters being unable to register their votes. It probably did – but this was not enough to save them after their obvious and dramatic failures in government under May, Johnson, the brief but disatrous Truss and Sunak. Labour have failed to repeal this law, and are currently emulating the Tories in losing support. If they continue their current policies it seems likely that even fewer will bother to vote at the next general election – and the next election will see the landslide continue to put Labour on the sidelines with the Tories.

Rioters United! celebrate Poll Tax Riots

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EDL Saved by Police in Slough – 2014

EDL Saved by Police in Slough: Ten years ago today around two hundred EDL supporters had come from around the country to march to a rally in the centre of Slough on Saturday 1st February 2014, sparked by plans to convert a failed social club on the outskirts of Slough to be used as a mosque and Islamic centre.

Their protest was opposed by a much larger counter-protests by black clad anti-fascist groups, the UAF and trade unionists, a large group of local mainly Asian youths and other local residents. Police had to clear a route for the EDL march with charges by police horses and with riot police with raised batons, and also protect them from having to run for their lives from angry counter-protesters to allow their rally to proceed. A large police presence seperated them from a rally by the UAF and trade unionists a short distance away.

Langley Village Club on Cheviot Road, Langley ceased trading in 2013 and was bought by Dawat-e-Islami who gained planning permission to convert it into an Islamic community and teaching centre and place of worship, Faizon-E-Madina.

Langley is on the eastern outskirts of Slough just north of the M4 and A4 and the small medieval village became a major manufacturing ventre, at first for building the Hawker Hurricane and other fighters during and after the war including the Hawker Hunter. When Hawker Siddeley left in 1959 the entire site was taken over by the Ford Motor Company who had been making parts for commercial vehicles there since 1949. The club was a part of the large estates that grew up here in the 1960s and 70s to house the workers in these and other factories around Slough and at Heathrow.

Some local residents had objected to the change of use, in particular fearing it might generate large volumes of traffic, although it is a relatively small building and the planning permission imposed a limit of 300 people at events there. The area now has a fairly high number of Muslims living within walking distance of the centre and the charity argued that the 35 parking places on site were sufficient, though the planning committee was not convinced.

The opposition to the plans by the EDL were not largely about parking but Islamophobia. EDL leaflets talked about “the disturbing proliferation of poorly regulated mosques” and linked the protest with its actions to highlight the activities of “vile grooming gangs“; they alleged that residents living around other mosques have been “driven to anger, tears and despair” because of the mosques, and suggested that the centre will “antagonise, perhaps even terrorise, local residents.”

They also claimed that Dawat-e-Islami “overtly supported the assassination of Pakistani politician Salmaan Taseer by Mumtaz Qadri, a member of the organisation who disagreed with Taseer’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.”

They raised other local issues too, including the setting up of a Muslim faith-based school under the Free Schools programme which opened in September 2015 as Eden Girl’s School. Many others -including probably most of those who came to protest against the EDl would agree with there opposition to this, some opposed to all faith-based schools and those who oppose the whole divisive approach of ‘Free Schools’, agreeing as I do with the teacher’s union NUT (now NEU) that “We believe it is wrong that state funding should be given to small groups of individuals to run schools that are unaccountable to their local communities.”

I don’t visit Slough often, although I live only a few miles away – though it takes a while on the bus. I arrived a couple of hours before the EDL rally was due to start and was able to photograph and talk with the EDL about their protest for some time before a few of them objected to my presence.

The pictures on My London Dairy at EDL Saved by Police in Slough and my account there give a very full account of what happened and I won’t repeat it here. Slough is one of the UK’s most ethnically diverse towns and its industries have brought people to it from across the country and around the world since the 1920s. The population of the borough is now over 150,000 and the various communities seem largely to live together with few problems.

According to Wikipedia, “the 2011 census showed that 41.2% of Slough’s population identified as Christian, 23.3% as Muslim, 10.6% as Sikh, 6.2% as Hindu, 0.5% as Buddhist, 0.1% as Jewish, 0.3% as having other religions” and Slough has the highest proportion of Sikh residents of any town in the country and “the highest percentage of Muslim and Hindu residents in the South East region.”

Much more about what happened along with many more pictures at EDL Saved by Police in Slough.

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Loddon & Thames

Loddon & Thames: Eight years ago I published an account of a walk I made with Linda and Sam from Winnersh Triangle to Reading, not by the rather boring direct route of around 4.5 miles but along two of Berskhire’s rivers, the Loddon and the Thames. Here I republish te text in full, though the original is still on My London Diary, which also has many, many more pictures for those who are interested.

Loddon & Thames

Winnersh Triangle to Reading. Mon 27 Jul 2015

*Cows next to a footpath by the River Thames*

Winnersh Triangle sounds like a dangerous place to go, a new halt (hardly a station with a platform only a foot or two wide) on the Waterloo to Reading line that opened in 1986. It’s lightweight wood structure was designed not to put too great a load on the Loddon Viaduct on which it hangs, though there is a ticket office at ground level, closed when we arrived.

Mostly Winnersh Triangle is home to company men and the companies they work for in what the web site describes as “an 85-acre, mature business environment” between the A329M motorway, the rail line and the River Loddon. The web site says it’s a place where “everyday things become exceptional and exceptional things happen every day“, but very little seemed to be happening on the day we went there. It didn’t look like a place where anything of interest ever happened, and its big selling point is that you can be at Heathrow in 30 minutes.

We took a quick look, didn’t like it and headed south under the railway to walk along the Reading Road to Loddon Bridge, joining a footpath that led north beside the River Loddon under the railway and motorway. You’ve probably never heard of the Loddon, but its a sizeable tributary of the Thames, that often gets too sizeable for its banks, flooding nastily. A man in council hi-viz who was checking the river gave us a 20 minute dissertation on this and related matters before we all escaped, though I’d wandered away taking pictures after the first five.

Fortunately the river was fairly low or we might have been paddling or swimming for the next mile or so, before the path veered away and climbed to a road and we found ourselves briefly in suburbia. Then we came across a large BEA twin prop plane, its presence soon explained by a sign ‘The Museum of Berkshire Aviation’. It was closed which saved us from having to decide if we wanted to be enthralled by “Berkshire’s dynamic contribution to aviation history.”

You can find out more on the museum web site, which includes a picture of a rather dinky little ‘Miles Pusher’, which was “built by F. G. Miles under protest and therefore never flew.” Miles went bust in 1947, and Handley Page took over the designs, accounting for the Handley Page Herald turboprop standing outside. Miles from 1942 had been designing an experimental supersonic jet aircraft to fly at 1000mph, but the Air Ministry in 1946 cancelled this, deciding only to build it as an unmanned rocket-powered scale model which achieved controlled flight at Mach 1.34 – 1020mph. The design of the Miles M52 informed the later English Electric Lightning which I saw at the Farnborough Air Show in the early 1950s and could out-perform anything from that era.

We didn’t hang around, though Sam looked up a few things on his mobile and we photographed the Fairey Gannet out the back before going along the footpath and down to the river to continue our path through rural Berkshire alongside the river to Whistley Mill Lane.

This leads to a ford over the Old River, still a stream of the River Loddon, and unless you are driving a Land Rover or something larger, its probably best to turn around and go back. The level markers were at 2 feet, but fortunately there is a footpath to a footbridge around 60 yards to the south which we crossed, taking us to the Lands End pub, which might have been a good place to lunch, but we had brought sandwiches.

The next mile or so took us through the Charvil, a suburban fringe of Twyford, and with some difficulty across the A4 to Milestone Ave, a narrow lane with some 1930s development on the east side for the first half mile or so. Just before a bridge over one of the minor arms of the Loddon, a footpath leads off to the River Thames. We’ve previously walked along the Thames path on the opposite bank, which we came on to a mile or two later as it crosses the bridge at Sonning.

We took a look inside St Andrew’s Church there (and were given a copy of what must be one of the most lavishly produced church magazines in the country) and briefly explored the grounds before taking the path from the churchyard to rejoin the Thames path, walking along this into Reading for the train home.

Many more pictures from the walk on My London Diary.

Ford/Visteon, Ethiopian Tyrant, Rioters United!

On Wednesday 31st March 2010 I reported on three unrelated protests in London.

Ford/Visteon Workers March For Pension Justice

Ford/Visteon, Ethiopian Tyrant, Rioters United!

In 2000 Ford when split of some of its parts factories to Visteon, a company described as ‘An Enterprise of Ford Motor Company’ and initially with the same shareholders, promising the workers their conditions and pensions would remain exactly the same as they had been with Ford. Ford’s assurances were repeated by Visteon.

But in 2009 Visteon closed down and workers in their factories in Belfast, Enfield, Swansea and Basildon were given just six minutes to leave the sites. In Belfast and Enfield workers refused and occupied the sites for a month, but were let down by their union, Unite who failed to give them support. The occupations eventually forced Visteon/Ford to pay the redundancy pay they were entitled to under their agreements, but pensions were not covered and they only received the lesser amounts covered by Pension Protection Fund compensation.

Since then their fight for the pensions they were promised has continued. I met around 500 former Visteon workers outside the Unite Offices in Theobalds Road, Holborn, where many wore hats and t-shirts with the Ford logo, but with the name replaced by the word ‘Fraud’, which succinctly expressed their view of the company’s action.

I marched with them to Downing Street where they had problems in delivering a letter and petition. As I commented then: “it does now seem unnecessarily complicated and difficult to get access to our elected government, hiding away behind their tall gates and high security. Its both an expression of and doubtless fuels their paranoia over terrorism far in excess of the real threat.”

The marchers then went on to a rally in Parliament Square.

Their fight for a fair deal over their pensions went on for another four years, when eventually as the case was about to go to the High Court, Ford agreed to top up the Pension Protection Fund compensation so that they would receive the full value of benefits accrued when working for Ford. It didn’t cover the nine years they had worked for Visteon, but Unite recommended acceptance as it would settle the claim without the expense (and possible failure) of a court hearing.

Ford/Visteon March For Pension Justice

Ethiopians Protest Bloodthirsty Tyrant – Downing St

Ethiopians came from across the UK to for a day of demonstration opposite Downing St where Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was co-chairing the UN climate finance group. They demanded the UK stop appeasing the Ethiopian dictator, and calling for the release of opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa and other political prisoners in Ethiopia.

Zenawi who became chair of one of the leading military groups fighting in the Ethiopian Civil War was the leader of a coalition that took power in 1991, becoming President then and was Prime Minister from 1995 until is death in 2012. His control of the military made Ethiopia an effective one-party state.

Although the country formally has democratic organisation and elections, elections have been rigged and oppostion politicians jailed, notably the leader of the main opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party, Mideksa (or Midekssa), a former judge. Many other politicians and journalists have also been jailed and in 2007 the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) named the country as “the world’s worst backslider on press freedom over the previous five years.”

Human rights violations and corruption are rife in Ethiopia, and food aid, education and jobs all depend on membership of the ruling party. His opponents regard Zenawi as a bloodthirsty tyrant and call for him to be brought to trial at the ICC at The Hague on charges of genocide. Human Rights Watch (HRW) have accused it of war crimes in the Somali regions of Ethiopia and against the Anauk communities in Gambella in 2003-4. Human rights abuses have continued in Ethiopia since Zenawi’s death.

Ethiopia is one of the larger countries in Africa and has received large amounts of development aid and humanitarian support from the USA and the UK.

Ethiopians Protest Bloodthirsty Tyrant

Rioters United! 20 Years Since the Poll Tax Riots – Trafalgar Square,

The largest protest against Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax was in central London on Saturday 31 March 1990, shortly before the tax was due to come into force. Unfortunately I had missed that event, probably deciding it was best to keep out of trouble. Back in 1990 I was photographing relatively few protests, mainly concentrating on urban landscapes and culture.

Around 30 people turned up for a rally to commemorate the occasion when “the London mob who brought Thatcher down … as well as to promise that the mob were still in business and to pronounce sentence on politicians.”

The ‘Carnival of Death‘ they were promising was not of course a literal death threat, but street theatre in which the effigies of George Brown, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Nick Griffin were to be executed at a May Day Party. As Chris Knight reminded the gathering, “the only good politician, the only honest politician is a dead politician.”

Our police often fail to understand the difference between rhetoric and reality, and protests involving anarchist groups such as Class War are often ridiculously over-policed, sometimes with disastrous consequences, but almost always provoking more violence than they prevent. On April 1st 2009 for the G20 – Financial Fools Day they had turned up with squads of riot police psyched up to batter largely innocent and joyful protesters – and one of the police killed a newspaper seller simply walking home through the area.

So in my account of this event in Trafalgar Square I was at pains to tell them that the ‘Carnival Of Death’ was “called a carnival; if you want to take part, come ready to dance.”

Shortly after people began the commemoration, a PCSO came to tell those taking part they were not allowed to hold protests or other events in Trafalgar Square without permission. When he was laughed at, he brought over a Heritage Warden who told us the Square was the property of the GLA (Greater London Authority), and that permission was needed for events.

“Fine” said those present. “The GLA is a public body; we own it, this is a public place and we give ourselves permission and intend to continue.” As I pointed out in my account, Trafalgar Square is not just a public place, but one that since its building in the 1830s has been a traditional place for demonstrating radical dissent. It was a tradition that those present were determined to continue.

Fortunately the dozen or so police who arrived shortly after the PCSO had phoned to call for reinforcement simply stood and watched and had enough sense not to try and stop the commemoration, which ended after around 30 minutes when the organisers decided it was time to go down the pub.

At the end of the event, copies of an anti-Election manifesto and a suitably defaced poster showing the leaders of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and BNP leaders were distributed by the Whitechapel Anarchist Group. They advised us to “Use your cross wisely”, under a picture of the four leaders in the cross-hairs of a gun sight, and attached to the bottom was a ‘Free Gift’ – a safety match, with the message ” Burn Your Ballot”.

As they wrote: “It’s time to end the unjust, corrupt system of terror and build a fair, equal society that will benefit the majority. We all know voting doesn’t change anything and our collective apathy allows this folly to continue. It’s time for REAL change. It’s time for revolution.”

Rioters United! celebrate Poll Tax Riots