Violence Against Women, Charlie X & MI6 – Friday 14th February 2014 was the second One Billion Rising event with an event in Trafalgar Square. I walked away down Whitehall to photograph Charlie X protesting over climate chaos and then went to MI6 at Vauxhall Cross for a protest on the 12 anniversary of the illegal transfer of Shaker Aamer from torture at a US airbase in Afghanistan to Guantanamo before returning home.
One Billion Rising – End Violence Against Women – Trafalgar Square
UK group for human rights for Latin American women
People had come to strike, dance and rise in defiance against the injustices suffered by women at the second One Billion Rising event, begun as a call to action against the UN figure that 1 in 3 women in the world will be beaten or raped.
Raga Woods and a supporter of the 50:50 campaign for equal representation in parliament
This was an initiative by playwright and activist Eve Ensler (known for her play The Vagina Monologues), and her organisation V-Day, and the first event in 2013 had involved over 10,000 events worldwide. In 2014 things were happening in 168 countries.
The Home Office say there are an average of 85,000 women raped each year in England and Wales, along with 400,000 sexually assaulted and that 1 in 5 women experience some form of sexual violence in their adult life.
“The event started with a brief photo-op which was just lots of people posing behind a banner. I almost missed it, but I wouldn’t have really missed much. I didn’t recognise many of them, though they may well have been celebreties.
One I did know was Bianca Jagger, who I’ve photographed on various occasions. But you many well spot others you know.”
Afterwards there was some dancing on the stage and I photographed some of those who had come to the event. I left before the speeches.
At the gates to Downing Street I met Charlie Chaplin mime Charlie X holding the head of PM David Cameron protesting against climate chaos and in solidarity with those who are flooded out and with those fighting fracking around the UK. His message was ‘Frack This for a Larf!
It was as his e-mail earlier had indicated, “crap weather“, cold and wet with the latest in a series of storms hitting London, and that this was the perfect context for a protest drawing attention to a protest over climate chaos and in solidarity with those people being flooded out across the country.
I had come up to London not knowing if my home would be flooded by the time I returned. Parts of the streets outside had been under a few inches of dirty water as I walked to the station and the ditch at the back of our garden had overflowed a couple of hundred yards downstream.
The local drains were all flooded and we were having to go to friends in the next street to wash etc – or rely on public services further afield. I was pleased to find the situation no worse when I finally arrived home but it was another week before Thames Water managed to get our sewage flowing again.
‘Justice Demands the Truth’ Vigil – MI6, Vauxhall Cross
“On the 12th anniversary of Shaker Aamer’s illegal rendition to Guantanamo, a protest called on MI6 to tell the truth and stop working to stop him being returned to his family in London, and handed in a Valentine card to MI6 head Sir John Sawer.”
It was on St Valentine’s Day 2002 that Shaker Aamer “was illegally and forcibly transferred from Bagram Airbase, where he had been tortured as MI6 agents looked on and helped with his interrogation to Guantanamo, where his imprisonment without trial and with frequent and regular ill-treatment and torture continues to this day.”
Aamer’s home and family were a short distance away in Battersea but he had been captured by bandits when working for a charity in Afghanistan and sold the the US authorities there.
On the same day in 2002, his youngest son was born in London, a son living with his family in Battersea who has never seen his father. In 2014 Aamer was still being held in chains in solitary confinement and his health was in danger after a lengthy hunger strike.
The US could find no evidence of his involvement in terrorism and he was cleared for release in 2007 – but they wanted to send him back to Saudi Arabia where he would have conceniently disappeared without trace.
Aamer had married a British woman and been granted residency to live in the UK and was applying for citizenship before his capture. His supporters were convinced that he was only still being held in prison “because of various lies told by British security agencies MI5 and MI6 to our government, which Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary from 2001-6 and later Secretary of State for Justice apparently believed.”
Those lies were told because both US and UK intellegence agencies would be highly embarassed by the evidence he would give about his continued torture in Guantanamo and his torture at Bagram.
Security at the MI6 building refused to accept the Valentines card they tried to present, but eventually they pushed it through a gap in the gate. But Shaker was only finally released and able to return to the UK on 30th October 2015.
Santas, Sardines & Earth Strike: On Saturday 14th December 2019 the Santas were on BMX bikes raising money for charity, Italians were supporting a spontaneous Italian anti-fascist movement and Earth Strike, a small group of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialists against environmental destruction held their first protest in Brixton.
Santas BMX Life Charity Ride
If you are in London today look out for the 10th BMX Life’s Santa Cruise riding around the capital in a charity ride raising money for the Evelina Children’s Heart Organisation, ECHO. There is a link for donations on the page linked.
One rider had ignored the dress code, though he was wearing a Christmas jumper
The ride begins as it did five years ago in the graffiti tunnel under Waterloo Station and 10.30am and the dress code is Santa, Elf, Snowman,Christmas Tree or Reindeer.
So far by these rides and a number of raffles BMX Life have raised over £180,000 for ECHO and they hope that this year’s ride will be bigger than ever. When I took these pictures in 2019 there were around 700 riders.
From Leake St they moved off to Forum Magnum Square where some santas demonstrated their riding skills before the group left to ride around London.
‘6000 Sardines’ London protest – Parliament Square
The Sardines movement was a grass roots political movement which began in Italy in November 2019 after a flash mob in Bologna opposing right-wing leader Matteo Salvini packed the main square in Bologna “like sardines”.
People were appalled at the rise of Salvini because of his anti-immigrant policies, hate speech and Euroscepticism and the movement prompted other ‘sardine’ protests across Italy and by Italians elsewhere, with demonstrations, flash mobs and online actions.
14th December was declared ‘Global Sardine Day’, with similar rallies across Europe and in the USA as well as in many towns and cities in Italy. All of the speeches while I was at the event were in Italian.
The movement ended with the elections in January 2020 in the Bologna region of northern Italy, which resulted in a resounding victory for the centre-left who almost doubled the vote they had received five years earlier.
The protest by Earth Strike South London began ther protest against environmental destruction with speeches and handing out fliers at a street stall on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Brixton Rd, where members of the Revolutionary Communist Group taking part were also selling their newspaper.
The fliers pointed out that many companies who trade on our high streets are still making a huge contribution to global warming and environmental destruction and they went on to march up Brixton Road stopping for speeches and to protest at some of the major culprits.
They began by going into Barclays Bank who still have huge investments in fossil fuels and are major backers of fracking in the UK. They ignored bank staff who told them they could not protest inside but handed out leaflets and made a speech about the bank’s activities before leaving after a few minutes.
Next stop was H&M where they pointed out he fashion industry is the second largest producer of greenhouse gases, emitting 1.2 billion tons a year and textile manufacture creates 20% of all water pollution. They stood outside and ignored a security man who told them to go away.
A couple of police officers arrived and talked to the protesters who assured them that their protest would be peaceful. The officers then went away.
The protesters moved on to EE where they pointed out mobile phones and other similar electronic produces all need minerals such as Coltan, and the fight for these is behind the horrific wars that have taken place in the Congo region. Mining companies are also huge exploiters of African labour, create large amounts of pollution. lay huge areas to waste and evade taxes on a huge scale.
Further along the road they stopped briefly to point out that Boots avoids paying taxes in the UK, cheats the NHS and sells palm oil products made by clearing forests, destroying ecosystems. They make huge profits from the NHS, and are said to have charged charged them £1500 for pots of cream they sell for £2, as well as selling palm oil products grown on land cleared from ancient forests, disrupting ecosystems and resulting in the loss of species including orangutans.
At Sainsbury’s they reminded customers that it sells many products that harm the environment and lead to global warming, including beef that comes from ranches made by burning the Amazon Forest, destroying ecosystems and displacing indigenous tribes.
They held another protest outside Vodaphone, also a tax avoider and as well reliant on those minerals fuelling wars in central Africa before walking on to Brixton Police station.
Here they held a brief vigil for those killed by police in Brixton, including Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg who was beaten to death inside the police station in 2008.
I left the group here as they were to continue their protest at shops on the opposite side of Brixton Road.
Adidas, West Papua, Egypt & Climate Crisis were all subjects of protests in London on December 1st 2022
Adidas ‘Pay Your Workers’ – Oxford St
The PT Kizone factory in Indonesia had made sportswear for Adidas, Nike and Dallas Cowboys for many years, its employlees often working for as little as $0.60 an hour. In January 2011 its owner fled the country and the factory closed in April 2011.
The 2,800 workers were left without jobs and by law were entitled to severance pay – a total of around US$2.8 million. Nike and Dallas Cowboys agreed to pay their share but Adidas were refusing to pay the $1.8 million they owed.
This led to a worldwide campaign to get them to pay up and on 1st December 2012 there were protests outside Adidas stores across the UK including this one on Oxford Street. Around a doozen people turned up, some wearing masks of Justin Bieber, the ‘global style icon’ for their NEO label.
They pointed out that Adidas had paid $157m to sponsor the Olympics but were refusing to pay around one hundredth of that amount to the destitute workers who had created their profits.
Pressure was growing on Adidas and in April 2013 they came to an agreement with those representing the former PT Kisone workers to pay compensation and in return the workers agreed to drop a legal case they were taking in the USA.
Free West Papua – Indonesian Embassy, Grosvenor Square
December 1st is West Papua Independence Day, marking the day in 1961 when Netherlands New Guinea was granted its freedom by the Dutch, but that freedom did not last long.
The USA, driven by cold war fears that Indonesia might move towards the Soviet bloc decided in 1962 to set up a process that passed the area over to Indonesian control with a rigged election confirming this in 1969. Only a carefully selected group of 1,025 people out of the population of 800,000 were allowed to vote as representatives in a vote carried out by a show of hands and they were “coerced into voting against independence with threats of violence against their persons and their families.”
Since 1962 a movement for independence has continued, with peaceful protests outside the country and guerilla warfare guerrilla warfare against the Indonesian administration. The Free West Papua organisation is based in the UK and led by Benny Wenda, a tribal chief who escaped from an Indonesian prison and came to the UK. His wife, Maria Wenda and their children were present at today’s protest, along with other supporters of their struggle for freedom.
Morsi’s Dictatorial Decree – Egyptian Embassy, South St, Mayfair
Over 50 protesters shouted noisily outside the Egyptian embassy condemning the decree by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi calling him a dictator. The decree gave him sweeping powers and made him immune from legal challenges until a new parliament was elected, and had led to violent protests in Egypt.
On the Global Day of Action on Climate Change, activists laid a pipeline from the US to Canadian embassies before marching to Parliament to erect a giant mock fracking rig with the message ‘No Fracking in the UK’.
The event began with a rally outside the US Embassy, then still in Grosvenor Square, chosen because the fossil fuel lobby in the USA, including the Koch Brothers has made the USA the main barrier to any effective world action over the climate crisis.
They then laid a pipeline from the US embassy to the Canadian Canadian High Commission at the opposite end of Grosvenor Square in protest against the Canadian exploitation of incredibly damaging high carbon tar sands.
Then the march set off on its way to parliament and a further rally in Old Palace Yard.
I arrived there in time to photograph the protesters raising a mock fracking rig and listen to speeches by Eve Macnamara from Ribble Estuary against Fracking, John McDonnell MP and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett.
Windrush & Climate – On Saturday 8th September 2018 after photographing a protest against the continuing hounding of Windrush generation migrants to the UK in Brixton I went to a Climate Change protest outside Tate Modern.
Justice for Windrush descendants – Brixton
A rally and march hosted by Movement for Justice called for the Windrush scheme to be widened to include all families and descendants of the Windrush Generation and for an end to the racist hostile environment for all immigrants.
The Windrush scandal first came to public attention in 2017 and 2018 when we heard that hundreds of migrants including those who had been urged to come and help Britain rebuild after the Second World War and who were then given the right to live and work in this country permanently where being hounded by the Home Office and some had already been deported.
Much of the information came from the work of Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman publishing the experiences of these people. The Home Office in 2012 under Theresa May had introduced a ‘Hostile Environment’ law which required people to produce at least one official document from every year they had lived in the UK to prove they had the right to stay here.
Many were of course unable to do this, and the Home Office itself had destroyed many of the official records which would have proved their case. Many were declared to be ‘undocumented migrants’ (or as the politicians and press racistly and inaccurately labelled them, ‘illegal immigrants’.
They “began to lose their access to housing, healthcare, bank accounts and driving licenses. Many were placed in immigration detention, prevented from travelling abroad and threatened with forcible removal, while others were deported to countries they hadn’t seen since they were children.“
The government promised to correct the matter and in May 2018 the then Home Secretary Saji Javid set up a ‘Windrush Lessons Learned Review’ under Wendy Williams. When published in 2020 it showed that the Windrush scandal was the deliberate and inevitable result of Tory government policies.
Home Secretary Priti Patel then said she accepted the reports recommendations but in 2023 Suella Braverman decided to ditch three of of them. In June 2024 the High Court ruled that her actions in abandoning the promise to establish a migrants’ commssioner and to increase the powers of the independent chief examiner of borders and immigration was unlawful.
The scandal continues, and the replacement by 2025 of physical residence permits by digital e-visas for the roughly half a million non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK seems almost certain to generate a similar scandal.
After a rally in Windrush Square which included Eulalee, a Jamaican grandmother who has been fighting for 17 years to stay in the UK with her Windrush generation husband, daughter and grandchildren as well as others affected by the scandal there was a march around the centre of Brixton, with several stops for short speeches in the more crowded parts.
Eulalee and Michael Groce on the march
Also on the march was Michael Groce, poet, community worker and Green Party candidate as councillor in Brixton, holds a poster ‘Yes, It’s Racist’. The 1985 Brixton riots began after police shot and seriously wounded his mother, putting her in hospital for a year. Later they paid her over £500,000 in damages without admitting any liability.
On the railway bridge across Brixton Road was the graffitied message ‘CLAPHAM THAT WAY YOU 2D FLAT WHITE TEPID COLONIALIST WANKER”, with Brixton gentrification now taking away much of the unique character of the area where many who arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948 settled after having been initially housed in a giant wartime underground shelter on Clapham Common.
After marching around the centre of Brixton spreading their message with megaphones and posters the campaigners returned for a further rally in Windrush Square.
Climate Reality, a global and diverse group of activists, community leaders, organisers, scientists, storytellers and others united to act over global warming was supported by the UK Campaign Against Climate Change, Fossil Free UK and the Green Party in one of thousands of rallies around the world demanding urgent action by government leaders to leaders commit to a fossil free world that works for all of us.
They called for people to take personal actions to reduce their own contribution to climate change but more importantly to join together to press for action at local, national and international level.
In particular they called for the government to end its support for fracking and for local authorities to divest from fracking and fossil fuels.
Brexit, Inclusion London & Fracking: Protests in Westminster I photographed on Monday 5th September 2016 were for and against Brexit, Disabled People Against Cuts who had been lobbying at Parliament over the Inclusion London report and a vigil by pagans against fracking.
Rival Brexit protests at Parliament
Parliament was debating a petition on the EU referendum signed by over 4 million people calling for a second referendum as there had only been a 52% vote in favour of leaving Europe, with 48% voting against. They argued that this was far too close for such a major constitutional change and at least a 60% vote should have been required for the referedum to be decisive.
Spiked magazine had organsed a protest by pro-Brexit campaigners in Old Palace Yard and they shouted loudly for Theresa May to ‘Invoke Article 50 Now!
A small group who wanted us to stay in Europe had come to Parliament Square where they held flags and banners.
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) had come to Parliament to lobby MPs and to present the Inclusion London report which had highlighted the disastrous effects of cutting care and support funding for personal assistance by the closure of the Independent Living Fund in 2015.
After the lobby they posed on the pavement outside Parliament for photographs and then on the road opposite.
before marching to Downing St.
In front of Downing Street the march came to a halt on the roadway.
Police directed traffic around them as they held a ‘Pop-Up Street theatre‘ performance there.
There were short speeches, poetry and songs from some of the DPAC members, showcasing the creativity of disabled people and the contribution they can make to society with proper support.
Others talked about their physical and mental health problems and the difficulties that they had suffered because of the closure of the Independent Living Fund.
DPAC were supported by other groups and individuals including Winvisible.
The protest was part of a series of protests at the same time as the Rio Paralympics, and a large banner read ‘Rights Not Games’.
On the other side of Whitehall opposite Downing Street pagans were staging a 24 hour vigil against fracking.
Pagans believe that nature is sacred and find spiritual meanings in natural cycles of birth, growth and death and Druidic and other rituals are linked to the seasons. Humans, animals, trees, plants and all of the earth are part of nature, and fracking disrupts the natural order.
A banner with a tree had the message ‘Druids against Fracking – One (heart) for Mother Earth‘ while another had more esoteric symbols with the message ‘We are Nature protecting ourselves‘. One of the Druids was wearing a t-shirt with the sigil ‘The Warriors Call‘, a magic symbol widely adopted as an anti-fracking device.
British Gas & Independent Living: Two protests on Monday 12th May 2014 in Westminster. the first about fuel poverty and climate change and the second over plans to end the Independent Living Fund which enabled many disabled people to continue to work and have an independent life.
Bin British Gas – QEII Centre, Westminster
British Gas were holding their AGM in the QEII centre and a protest outside demanded they stop profiteering from high energy prices and end support for fracking.
The protest was called by Fuel Poverty Action who say there were over 10,000 extra deaths last winter because people were unable to heat their homes, while Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, made £2.5 billion in 2013. While they raised gas prices by 10.4% and electricity by 8.4%.
They also called for government and energy companies to end support for fracking which as well as threatening water supplies in the UK would also lead to more climate-wrecking carbon dioxide emissions.
The campaigners called for greater investment in renewable energy, which in the long term will result in cheaper energy and will help us tackle climate change. But this isn’t popular with the big six energy companies (and the government which is led by their lobbyists) as it enables greater local generation and control of energy, threatening their monopoly of energy production and profits.
At the protest were representatives from fuel poverty, pensioner, climate, housing groups and renewable energy co-operatives. After a number of speeches including from Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, Paula Peters of Disabled People Against Cuts, people came together too tear up British Gas energy bills.
A giant bill was torn up and Lambeth pensioner, Ellen Lebethe, brought out a poster-size Fuel Poverty Action ‘Energy Bill of Rights.’
We all have the right to affordable energy to meet our basic needs.
We all have the right to energy that does not harm us, the environment, or the climate.
We all have the right to energy that does not threaten health, safety, water, air, or the local environment of a community.
We all have the right to a fair energy pricing that does not penalise those who use less.
We all have the right not to be cut off from energy supply.
We all have the right not to be forced to have a prepayment meter.
We all have the right to energy that is owned by us and run in our interests.
Inside the Centrica AGM, a member of Reclaim Shakespeare Company had stood up holding a can of beans and a skull to read a version of Hamlet’s iconic monologue, entitled “To Heat or Eat, that is the question”, and this was read out at the protest. Shortly after the actor came out from the building to tell us about what had happened inside.
The protest ended with people planting 100 small windmills made from folded British Gas bills in the grass outside the QEII centre.
Save Independent Living Fund – Dept of Work & Pensions
The Independent Living Fund (ILF) was set up in 1988 under the Thatcher government to provided financial support to some of the most severely disabled people in the UK. Its main use was to enable them to have carers and personal assistants so they could live in their communities and for many to continue in useful employment.
The ILF was administered by a separately funded body and was highly cost-effective, providing support at much lower costs than residential care as well as enabling those receiving support to live independent lives Around 18,000 people were being assisted by the fund in 2014.
When the government announced it was scrapping the scheme in England in 2010 it was met with protests by disabled people and in 2013 was taken to court. The government won the case that its decision was lawful, but lost in the Court of Appeal.
A revised proposal was then made by the government to announce once again in March 2014 that ILF would close. A fresh legal challenge failed in December 2014 and the scheme ended in June 2015, with responsibility for supporting disabled people being passed to local authorities who were given funding roughly 12% less than the ILF – and which was not ring-fenced.
Police tried to persuade the protesters to keep to a small area well to one side of the Dept of Work & Pensions but they refused and protested in a larger space in front of the two main doors, which were both locked for the event.
At the centre of the protest was a small cage, with the message ‘NO ILF – NO LIFE‘ across its top, and below the barred window ‘Without Support We Become Prisoners In Our Own Homes – Save the Independent Living Fund’. Squeezed into this was Paula Peters of DPAC, Disabled People Against Cuts, the group who had organised the protest.
A number of people told their ‘ILF stories‘ of how the fund had helped them and how they feared its closure would seriously limit their lives. DPAC tried to deliver a letter to Minister for the Disabled Mike Penning but were refused entry to the building and no one from the department was prepared to come and receive it.
One of the protesters who had travelled from Newcastle phoned her MP from here wheelchair outside the DWP, and Mary Glindon, the Labour MP for North Tyneside came down to support the protest. She failed to get DWP security to let the protesters deliver their letter but offered to deliver it for them. She was let in through a side entrance to do so then came out and spoke briefly giving her support to the protest.
Time to Act on Climate Change – it was indeed time to act on climate change when over 20,000 of us marched through the streets on Saturday 7th March 2015, but though almost all the scientists and others who had studied their reports were convinced the nine years since then have been largely wasted years.
Tina-Louise Rothery from ‘Frack Free Nanashire’ and others from Lancashire sitting down on the Strand
There have been some minor changes both in the UK and across the world, but nothing like enough to reverse the growing climate chaos – and our current government seems determined to stay on course for extinction, giving approval to new fossil fuel schemes.
Not that the current opposition, who may well become our government at the next general election seem any better. Instead of taking a firm line to oppose these climate-wrecking schemes and promising to reverse the decisions when they come to power they have said they will allow them to proceed. They have promised not to approve more, but then they have already abandoned most of the promises they had made earlier, including those related to climate change.
In 2021 Labour announced a £28 billion annual green spending plan creating new jobs in battery manufacturing, hydrogen power, offshore wind, tree planting, flood defences and home insulation in the first term when they came to power. They abandoned this pledge in Feb 2024, cutting by half or more its green investment plan.
Back in 2015 the climate march and rally demanded real action without delay with a total divestment from fossil fuels, an end to fracking and damaging bio-fuel projects and for a 100% renewable energy future which would create a million new jobs. The Labour policy would have been a watered down version of this, coming ten years at least too late, but now hardly coming at all.
The organisers of the march through London had refused to pay for any policing of the event, saying it was not needed and it proceeded peacefully largely in their absence. There were large groups of police protecting some businesses, particularly the Strand McDonalds, where some marchers stopped to protest.
A large group of the marchers, including a block from Frack Free Lancashire led by the Nanas, then sat down on the road and halted the march for around 15 minutes before getting up and continuing.
A black block of several hundred behind a banner ‘TIME TO ACT ON CAPITALISM’ made a lot of noise going down Whitehall, and then rushed off down King Charles Street rather than continue to the rally. I went with them for a few yards and then decided to go back and join the many thousands on the main march which ended with a rally on College Green, close to the Houses of Parliament.
Here is the list I gave of the speakers in the account I wrote in 2015, and there are pictures of most of them on My London Diary:
Among the speakers were John Sauven of Greenpeace UK, Kat Hobbs from CAAT, Bert Wander of Avaaz, Pete the Temp, Fatima-Zahara Ibrahim of the Youth Climate Coalition, Pete Deane from Biofuelwatch, Guy Shrubsole from Friends of the Earth, FBU leader Matt Wrack, Rumana Hashem an evironmental activist from Bangladesh, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Tina-Louise Rothery who spoke toegther with a Frack Free Lancashire crowd, Dennis Fernando, UAF, Chris Baugh, PCS, John McDonnell, MP, and comedian Francesca Martinez. A woman from Paris (whose name I missed) invited us all to go there to protest at the climate talks there this December, and a 12 year-old read an excellent speech she had prepared.
There was then a performance by a large choir, Voices United, and the event concluded with John Stewart of HACAN who came on stage together with some polar bears from a protest earlier in the day at Heathrow who received prolonged applause.
At the end of the rally we were invited to take part in two other protests continuing the day’s theme and I went with ‘Art Not Oil’ proceeding with their Viking longship to protest on the steps of Tate Britain against the gallery accepting sponsorship to greenwash climate wrecker BP. Partly I chose this rather than the planned direct actions around Parliament as I thought it would get less press coverage, but it was also on my way to Vauxhall station where I could catch a train home.
Global Frackdown TTIP & Kobane: On Saturday October 11th 2014 I photographed a protest against HSBC supporting fracking in the UK, against the secret TTIP US/EU trade deal and finally a rally in support of the Kurdish fight against ISIS in Kobane and against Turkish support for the ISIS militants.
Global Frackdown at HSBC
As a part of a ‘Global Frackdown’ by communities around the world against this environmentally destructive industry which leaves a legacy of water contamination, air pollution and health problems, activists took a mock ‘fracking rig’ to two branches of HSBC in central London. UK anti-fracking campaigners were joined by some from Algeria and Romania.
The HSBC bank provides banking services for Cuadrilla the oil and gas exploration and production company developing fracking in the UK and also funds fracking around the world. In Algeria, they are helping to bring this water intensive process to the Sahara and in the US, they underwrite the BG Group responsible for fracking in large parts of the country.
As well as the particular problems caused by fracking produces a dirty fossil fuel whose use deepens the climate crisis. But it was largely the earthquakes caused by Cuadrilla’s exploratory drilling that led to a moratorium on it in 2019 in England & Wales. The ban was briefly lifted by Liz Truss in her short but disastrous time as prime minister, but reinstated by Rishi Sunak.
I met with the campaigners in Golden Square in Soho, where they were being closely watched and probably outnumbered by obviously nervous police who tried with no success to find out what they planned to do. After a while a group dressed in orange ‘Frack Off London’ hi-viz suits picked up some long black poles they had brought with them and marched towards Regent Street, with others carrying a banner and joining the procession.
They marched along Regent Street forming a quite impressive small crowd and stepped to erect the poles into their mock fracking rig in front of the HSBC branch, where they held a rally. Supporting the protest were Climate Revolution and Romanian anti-fracking activists who had brought their own drilling rig for some street theatre.
After some speeches the campaigners set off marching again, down Regent Street and past Piccadilly Circus on their way to the Strand branch of HSBC where they erected their rig again.
Here there were more speeches and some from the Romanian group put on a short piece of street theatre, fortunately in English, involving a greedy banker, corrupt politicians and people protesting.
The the protest marched off and down Whitehall to Parliament Square for a final short rally and some photographs.
Protesters against the TTIP, a EU-US Trade Deal being negotiated at highly secretive talks would let corporations sue governments, lock in privatisation of our schools and NHS, undermine protection for privacy, workers and the environment and allow fracking and other harmful activities.
Although the talks were secret, some details had emerged and they were extremely worrying. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would get the EU to remove the barriers which stopped US agricultural products produced under less hygienic conditions with lower animal welfare standards such as chlorine-washed chickens and beef pumped with high levels of growth hormones as well as GM crops being imported.
EU governments which took actions on environmental grounds could find themselves in industrial kangaroo courts which could impose huge fines if their laws caused US and other companies to lose potential profits from exporting their polluting goods.
The protesters had brought with them a very long two part banner reading ‘HANDS OFF DEMOCRACY’ which was really too long for Parliament Square – and certainly too long for most photographers. A third part of it read ‘#no TTIP’, and I could only just fit thatin as well using a fisheye lens.
After the rally in the square, the protesters marched on to Westminster Bridge and carried out a ‘Banner Drop’ holding all three parts of the message. I’d run down the busy embankment to where it was possible to get a decent picture of the whole thing, but just as I began taking pictures it was moved, probably at the phoned request of the rather lazier official photographer for the group who was much closer to the bridge. And shortly after I’d started taking pictures at the second position it was on the move again.
Support the Defenders of Kobane – Parliament Square
In Parliament Square I also photographed a rally with thousands, mainly of Kurdish or Turkish origin who had stopped for a rally on a march around London supporting the Kurdish fight against ISIS in Kobane, calling for support for the Kurdish fighters and condemning Turkish support for ISIS.
Kobane is a city in Syria and was surrounded by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in September 2014, forcing most of its inhabitants to flee to Turkey. Bloody battles by Kurdish forces with some help from US air strikes recaptured the city and the surrounding area, and they quickly drove back a later attack by ISIL in June 2015.
Kobane was at the time part of the de facto autonomous region of Syria, Rojava, a remarkable Kurdish democracy with a constitution giving equality to men, women and all ethnic and religious groups. But in October 2019 the city was threatened by an invasion by Turkey and accepted the entry of the Syrian government forces and Russian Military Police into the city, although it still then apparently remained under the de facto control of Rojava.
Turkey has supported the Islamic state militants, hoping that they will defeat the Kurds, many of whom live in Turkey and have been struggling for many years for greater autonomy. Turkey have provided routes for smuggling oil to provide finance for ISIS, and have for some years been fighting with Islamic militants against Kurdish forces in Syria.
Many speakers at the rally in Parliament Square called for the lifting by the UK of the ban on the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, whose leader Abdullah Öcalan has been held in jail in Turkey since 1999. In recent years Öcalan has been attempting to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict, declaring a ceasefire at the Kurdish New Year in March 2013. There were many speakers from the mainstream UK community, including a number of trade unionists, London Green MEP Jean Lambert, and human rights lawyer Margaret Owen.
As the protesters marched away from Parliament Square there was a confrontation with police after they had tried to search some of the protesters and make an arrest. There was a lot of pushing and shoving and the marchers who had already left the square sat down on the street in Whitehall. They were still sitting there half an hour later, with negotiations between the police and protesters apparently continuing. Later one of the three men arrested was released and the protest came to and end.
Sunday 30th March 2014 I was in Westminster for three very different protests, opposite Parliament in Old Palace Yard, on to Downing Street and finally to Soho and Piccadilly Circus. Only the first was related to it being Mother’s Day.
Mothers Against Fracking – Old Palace Yard
As I pointed out in My London Diary, “fracking is something the world cannot afford. Increasingly we are aware that we need to move away from fossil fuels and the carbon emissions they cause to avoid further dangerous climate change, and fracking has an even higher carbon footprint than normal natural gas. Increasingly we need to keep carbon – and in particular difficult carbon sources such as this and tar sands – in the ground if we hope to save the planet and its population.”
Mothers Against Fracking had brought together a number of campaigners from around the country for a Mother’s Day rally opposite the Houses of Parliament, particularly from the various camps and protests where drilling had begun. It is an issue that brings together local residents and environmental campaigners and as I commented was “causing mayhem even in the Tory heartlands such as Balcombe in deepest Surrey. “
I listed and photographed many of those who came and spoke, “including Vanessa Vine of BIFF (Britain & Ireland Frack Free), Tina Louise Rothery of RAFF (Residents Action on Fylde Fracking), Louise Somerville Williams (Frack Free Somerset), Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, Eve McNamara of REAF (Ribble Estuary Against Fracking), Julie Wassmer (East Kent Against Fracking). Dr Becky Martin (Mothers Against Fracking) and Tammy Samede from the Barton Moss Camp in Salford.”
But this relatively small protest attracted rather more interest than most from the press, bringing some photographers I’ve never seen at a protest before because of the presence of Bianca Jagger, who took a leading part in the event as my pictures show, and gave an excellent well-prepared and written speech.
As I also pointed out, her speech “lacked the kind of intense personal involvement of many of the others” who spoke. And I wrote “I admire Bianca for her support of this and other campaigns but wish the media would show more interest in causes rather than personalities.”
The Sindhi are an ancient culture with their own Sindh language and Sindh is now the third largest province in Pakistan. Many Sindh who were Hindu went over the border to India at partition, while other largely Urdu speaking migrants moved into Sindh, on the Arabian Sea between India and the Indus River. The province contains much of Pakistan’s industry and its largest city and former capital, Karachi.
Until 1988 the area was normally referred to in English simply as Sind. When General Charles Napier conquered it for the British Empire in 1843 he famously sent the Latin one-word telegram “Peccavi” (I have sinned) to the Governor General.
The World Sindhi Congress is a human rights organisation for Sindhi people based in Canada, the UK and the USA which organizes cultural events, rallies, seminars, protests and conferences around the world.
They had come to Downing St to protest against the extra-judicial killings of Sindhi human rights activists by the Pakistani security agencies and called on the UK to press the Pakistani government to stop these violations.
The protest followed the assassination in Sindh of two Sindhi political activists, Maqsood Ahmed Querishi and Salman Wadho, one of the latest in a series of atrocities against Sindhi nationalists allegedly carried out by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. The killing on 21 March was followed by protests and riots in Sindh and the closure of shops, markets and several universities in many cities and a strike on the following day.
Qureshi was the leader of Sindhi separatist movement Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) and was involved in organising a ‘Freedom March’ to be held the Sunday after he was killed (which was Pakistan Freedom Day) in Karachi to inform the international community of the continuing violation of the human and civil rights of the Sindhi people.
Sindh separatists point out that the province has not been given the autonomy it was promised and that despite generating 70% of the country’s revenue and providing 60% of it natural resources it recives only around an eighth of national expenditure. But Wikipedia suggests there is relatively little popular support for separation from Pakistan.
The event at Piccadilly Circus was something of a hybrid one, part protest and part film set for the latest music video by singer songwriter The Soho Hobo (Tim Arnold.) As I wrote:
This was the only protest I’ve ever attended that came with a clapper board, with its title ‘Picadilly Trot – Soho Hobo’ (sic) and where those taking part had to go back and dance across Piccadilly Circus for another take, and then doing it again without the musicians. I assume they’ll manage to spell the name right on the final edit and I hope it gets the protest more publicity, but I don’t think its a good way to run a protest and I wasn’t amused at having to stay out of shot while taking pictures.
Mainly off the film cameras but very much on mine were protesters with placards from the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) and Queer Strike calling for an end to the raids on flats used by women sex-workers. The protesters are there at the back at some scenes in the finished video, but I doubt if anyone watching could get any idea of who they were or what they were protesting about.
The previous October I photographed a protest outside the Soho Estates offices in Greek Street after a number of women were evicted from their flats in Romilly St. Because these flats are self-contained and housed only a single sex-worker they were not legally brothels, but police and Westminster Council threatened to prosecute the landlord who refused to stand up for his tenants and simply evicted them.
The women involved say that the flats provided a much safer environment and they are much less safe if forced to work on the streets.
Campaigners say that the evictions are a part of a wider threat to the unique character of Soho, which has long been reputed for its cosmopolitan nature and various and often risqué entertainments of various kinds. The ECP say “if sex workers are forced out it will lead the way for other small and unique businesses and bars to be drowned out by major construction, chain stores and corporations.”
The police (and Westminster Council) are widely seen as being agents of the property developers who want to make billions from knocking down Soho and redeveloping parts of it as hotels and luxury flats, destroying the unique atmosphere of the area.
The Climate Revolution is an organisation set up by the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022) at the London Paralympics closing ceremony in 2012 and she spent the last years of her life campaigning to halt climate change, stop war and defend human rights and protesting against capitalism. Her work is now continued by the not-for-profit organisation she set up, the Vivienne Foundation.
I’m not a follower of fashion, as those who know me will have noticed. But Westwood’s activism reached a rather different and wider audience than the more usual campaigning groups, gaining publicity across the whole world of fashion and at times attracting the kind of mass media attention that follows celebrities, rather than issues, now attract.
Protests taking place in the UK seldom seem to be news – last Wednesday striking workers brought much of London to a standstill and possibly 100,000 people marched through the streets and protested in various places but when I came home and searched on the BBC news site in the early evening there was not a mention of it, though there may have been a little coverage later.
Others did rather better, but it needs something else for a protest to be news for our media. It can be that it happens abroad and particularly if it is against some regime unpopular with our (and the US) government. But it can also be if it is violent or particularly quirky or involves a major celebrity such as Dame Vivienne Westwood – and those protests she organised and her designs were always rather quirky too.
Although Westwood very much did her own thing, she was also great at cooperating with other groups working in the same area – such as the anti-fracking ‘Nanas from Nanashire’ who came down to London for this protest.
The protest was arranged to take place outside the Shale Gas Forum, where the CEOs of IGas, Cuadrilla and various government officials were plotting new ways to bring fracking to the UK, and to change our to allow this to happen. In particular they want to stop people being able to prevent dangerous mining beneath their properties which could cause dangerous and damaging subsidence. Their proposals would allowed companies to proceed without proper concern for safety and environmental consequences and give them some indemnity against damages and government would promise to pay a high price for the gas.
The Forum had been scheduled to take place at an expensive hotel in Belgravia, but after arrangements had been made for protest carnival to take place outside, it was moved to a ‘secret’ location elsewhere in London. Climate Revolution obviously had friends in high places who leaked the details to them.
It was Budget Day, but rather than going to take pictures around Westminster I decided it was more important to cover the protest against fracking. I met Westwood and her supporters, mainly fashion students, outside the Royal College of Arts Battersea location just south of Battersea Bridge and marched with them to the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in Cadogan Place which had been the original venue for the frackers.
We knew the event had been relocated and their was some confusion at the end of the march as to whether it should entrain immediately at Knightsbridge station or go to the hotel. Eventually this was resolved and there was a rally outside the hotel with speakers including Vivienne Westwood and Vanessa Vine of BIFF (Britain & Ireland Frack Free).
The new location was still a secret as we followed the Rhythms of Resistance samba band to Knightsbridge station, where more protesters were waiting and took the underground to Old Street.
People were slow to arrive at Old Street, with some stopping off to buy coffee or sandwiches and others getting lost on the way, but eventually we were on the march again, on our way to the rear gates of the Territorial Army Centre on Bunhill Row, guarded by a few police.
Outside the event, people danced to Rhythms of Resistance, and there were speeches by Vivienne Westwood, Tina Louise from Residents Action on Fylde Fracking, Vanessa Vine, Frack Free Bristol, and others, some of whom had also spoken at Knightsbridge.
Some of us then walked through Bunhill Fields cemetery to City Road to protest on the other side of the military centre, and later most of the other protesters followed for a further rally at the main gates.
The protest was beginning to wind down and people were leaving and I left too, going to cover a protest by The African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group and Peter Tatchell Foundation held a noisy protest at Uganda House calling for the repeal of Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws.
And from there I went on to Downing St, where the People’s Assembly were holding their Budget Day Protest before finally I could go home.