Westminster Abbey has been home to some pretty bizarre events over the last thousand years or so since the site first became home to a small monastery on Thorney Island around 960 AD, and another will be taking place this weekend.
Possibly the most obscene and blasphemous service there took place on Friday 3rd May 2019, when a service was held there celebrating Britain’s weapons of mass destruction, giving thanks for 50 years of continuous nuclear threat by British submarines armed with nuclear missiles.
As protesters across the road pointed out, Britain was currently wasting £205 billion on the replacement of Trident, around a quarter of a year’s total government spending on a weapons system which can never be used as it would be totally catastrophic for the world.
The established church has of course a long record of taking the wrong side in history, supporting the rich and powerful, something Christianity inherited from older religions, which throughout history have been ways to subjugate the common people and keep them docile.
This weekend we see this again in action, with a ceremony taking place in which people around the country are to be invited to swear an oath of allegiance, though I think many will be swearing other things about this. It follows in a tradition established in 1066 when our Norman conquerors celebrated their victory with the first coronation there.
Reading the Bible and in particular the New Testament, supposedly the basis of Christianity, we find a very different religion, one in which swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and the love of power is seen as a sin. Certainly not one as the protesters pointed out one that would be thanksgiving for nuclear weapons.
CND and Christian CND protested opposite Westminster Abbey against the blasphemous and morally repugnant thanksgiving service celebrating Britain’s nuclear weapons. It was a much more Christian event than that taking place across the road, though the Christians there were joined by others including Buddhists.
Those present took part in a die-in after which there was a rally, but I left to go home, stopping briefly on my way to photograph a small group of Fridays For Future climate protesters in Parliament Square.
Scrap the ICP Contract, Keep the NHS Public – Westminster, Fri 26 Oct 2018
Later on Friday 26th October 2018 Eleanor Smith’s private members bill calling for the scrapping of plans for Integrated Care Providers which break up the NHS into smaller business units which can be competed for by private sector organisations was due for its second reading.
Eleanor Smith MP
ICPs were planned by NHS England whose CEO Simon Stevens was previously a senior executive of the giant US healthcare and health insurance company United Health Group, to be a way for the backdoor privatisation of our National Health Service.
The rally outside parliament had already begun when I arrived. It’s expensive for me to use the trains in the rush hour and in any case I don’t like getting up early now, but I had run much of the way from Waterloo and only missed the first few minutes. Speakers at a rally by Keep Our NHS public, Health Campaigns Together and We Own It included Eleanor Smith MP and Green Party Health spokesperson Larry Sanders (Bernie’s older brother) as well as other health campaigners.
The petition from ‘We Own It’ with 31,870 signatures to scrap the ICP contract
At the end of the rally campaigners marched to deliver a petition to the Dept of Health, which had recently moved to offices on Victoria Street. It isn’t easy to spot and the march at first went past it before I and others realised, and had to turn around and go back to it. There was only a very small notice outside and it was only by looking through the large glass windows that it was clear that this was the building.
There was then a short protest on the pavement outside before a small group went inside to hand over the box containing the petition which had over 31,000 signatures.
As we walked in a security man told us that we were not allowed to enter the building and could not take photographs. The campaigners told him he could not be serious and ignored him as they handed the petition over at the desk.
There was then a final speech on the pavement outside by Tony O’Sullivan of Keep Our NHS Public and the event ended with a group photograph in front of the Ministry offices. As expected the private members bill failed to get a second reading and the privatisation of the NHS continues.
Support self-employed parental leave – Old Palace Yard, Fri 26 Oct 2018
I returned to Old Palace Yard outside Parliament where a photocall was taking place for the second reading of another private member’s bill. Tracy Brabin MP’s #SelfieLeave bill was listed, which would give self-employed parents access to shared parental leave and pay.
Tracy Brabin had appeared in several soap operas including Coronation Street, EastEnders, Casualty and Emmerdale before becoming MP forBatley and Spen from 2016 to 2021. In May 2021 she became the first elected Mayor of West Yorkshire. Her bill was supported by members of Equity, UK Music, the Music Producers Guild and the Musicians Union. Currently women are forced to be the main carer, regardless of circumstances and fathers are denied any paid leave to look after their children, reinforcing outdated stereotypes and causing stress for thousands of families.
Although there would be no additional cost to the exchequer as the existing entitlement to Maternity Allowance for self-employed women would simply be shared with a partner, this bill too failed to get its second reading. I did my best, but I think the pictures are generally rather uninteresting and demonstrate why I don’t usually bother with such photocalls.
Fridays for Future – act on climate change – Parliament Square, Fri 26 Oct 2018
Elsie Luna who produces The Politics Podcast for Young People in the UK
In August 2018 Greta Thunberg instead of going back to school at the end of the Summer break protested outside the Swedish Parliament, breaking the law to start the School Strike For Climate.
This was the first protest in London hosted by Extinction Rebellion as a part of a #FridaysForFuture movement taking place in many cities and towns across the world inspired by her example. The group announced weekly protests would take place here in London.
Elise Luna with a message for Angela Merkel – Watch out – I see your dirty coal
They began the protest where I met them in front of the statue of Millicent Fawcett at the back of the square, but were soon told by the GLA heritage wardens they were not allowed to protest there and moved to the pavement at the front of Parliament Square which is not covered by the GLA bylaws.
Among the protesters was Elsie Luna who produces the remarkable ‘The Politics Podcast for Young People in the UK’. Few had come today, but it was the first protest and the organisers hope it will grow week by week.
Two years ago school students and supporters were in Parliament Square campaigning at the end of a week of Global Climate actions and the start of a worldwide General Strike for climate justice and against extinction.
We had another Global Climate Strike last Friday (24th Sept 2021) though I was unable to photograph it for pressing family reasons, but although we now hear much more about the terrifying consequences of carbon emissions increasing global temperatures and have begun to feel them, there has been relatively little action. The UK government has learnt to talk a little of the talk, but is still pressing ahead with highly environmentally destructive plans – supporting new oil, gas and coal fields, subsidising destructive wood-burning and backing projects such as HS2 and Heathrow expansion.
It is hardly a good record for a government that is urging others do more, whether by the Prime Minister speaking at the UN or other diplomatic meetings leading up to COP26 in Glasgow. “Do as I say not as I do” is seldom a productive approach. Like other such meetings it seems almost certain to end with too little and too late.
The schoolkids get it – they’ve heard and understood the message from Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. The scientists get it and have published reports which make it clear. Even some politicians across the parties get it, but not those in ministerial offices and Downing St. The real problem is that any effective policies would threaten the status quo which they have been put in charge to protect. They want business as usual, which is exactly what has got us in this mess.
I haven’t entirely abandoned hope, though it is getting very thin, rather like the hope of a revolution or a second coming, which is now about what would be needed to avert disaster. Things are certain to get very much worse than at present, perhaps enough to force our leaders to see sense before it is entirely too late, though I think it unlikely I will live long enough to see it.
Environmental lawyer Farhana Yamin, arrested for protesting against Shell with Extinction Rebellion
It wasn’t just the schoolkids who were on the streets in 2019. Later in the day I went with some of them to Trafalgar Square where artists, designers, musicians, cultural workers and others were talking about their own creative individual and collective responses to the climate emergency in a ‘Climate Rally for the Imagination.’
Although many of these were inspiring I left feeling depressed as it all seemed so divorced from our mainstream culture, which is dominated by the billionaire owned press and major TV stations which largely take their lead from those same publications. It would take a major miracle for Murdoch to convert from protecting his profits to protecting the earth, but that’s the kind of change we need for survival.
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.
The young get it, and inspired by the actions of Greta Thunberg as well as the words of David Attenborough and the overwhemlming conclusions of scientists, school students around the world are coming out on the streets to demand yhat governments take the necessary action to decrease carbon dioxide emissions and act in accordance with the Paris Agreement and the IPCC report, though many recognise that even these are insufficient to deal with the problems we face.
Fridays for Future London started out as a small group, but now together with Youth Climate Strike and other groups there has been an impressive turnout for protests taking place during a Friday in school terms. Some came with parents or grandparents and there were a few other older protesters, but the great majority were with others from their schools and school classes.
Notable by their almost complete absence were the mass-produced placards of so many protests, produced by left groups such as the Socialist Workers Party or Socialist Party. Clearly the climate catastrophe is now a major inspiration for the work of school art departments as well as many obviously home produced posters and placards.
The protesters are deadly serious about the existential crisis they face, with messages on some posters addressed to the older generations who run our country like ‘YOU will die from old age – WE will die from Climate Change’ but there are many more humorous though also deadly serious.
If the world was run by the youth it would have a future. But unfortunately it is largely run by the old and extremely rich. Billionaires who largely can’t see beyond their immediate short-term interests and are doing very well from business as usual. They’ll be OK in the short-term when the sea-level rises or we get more and more storms and floods, when millions (or even billions) die in the majority world and thousands in countries like ours.
Of course in the longer term even the filthy rich will suffer. They are huge hoggers of resources, particularly those made by the poor who mine the metals, grow the crops etc. The world doesn’t need the rich, but the rich do need the rest of the world to support them.
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.
There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media. And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.
I had three events listed in my diary for 29th March, but for some reason, although I took the train to London, I only photographed one of them. Perhaps it was the weather, or just that I got tired and went home. But I think it was more likely that I just thought I’d done enough for the day before the last two things started.
I had after all already photographed three protests, if not the three I had come up to London for. One I hadn’t bothered to put in my diary was a regular thing, a Fridays for Future climate protest inspired by 15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg. I photographed the first of these last October, and although there have been some big Friday school students protests since, the regular events have not really grown.
I was probably feeling pretty fed up. Although the Brexit protest hadn’t been anything like as huge as the organisers appear to have expected, I do find most Brexiteers rather depressing. Of course people voted to leave for a whole number of reasons, some of which make at least some sense, the kind of people who come to protest appear largely delusional and racist, convinced that Brexit will restore the British Empire and put foreigners, particularly black foreigners, back into their place both literally and metaphorically.
Migration to this country over my lifetime (and I was born some time before the Empire Windrush berthed at Tilbury) has revitalised our culture, giving us greater variety, most obviously in our diet, but across the whole spectrum. And it wasn’t migrants that took our jobs, but migrants who provided the workforce needed for a post-war recovery, to keep essential services like the NHS and transport running. It wasn’t migrants or Europe that took away large sections of manufacturing industry but overseas competition and government stupidity.
And again it was Thatcher whose policies greatly reduced the supply of low cost social housing, with ‘right to buy’ removing homes from councils that were largely after a few years recycled into the hands of people wealthy enough to profit from a disastrous rise in ‘buy to let.’
The last of the three events came as a surprise, when some of the Kurds I had photographed a few weeks earlier supporting Kurdish hunger strikers turned up to protest again outside parliament. The hunger strike by HDP MP Leyla Güven began in early November; kept alive by sugary and salty drinks and vitamin B she was then on her 142 day of protest – eventually ended on 16 May after the authorities ended the isolation of Abudullah Ocalan in prison.
There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media. And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.
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.
