genetically modified crops

*March Against Monsanto in Parliament Square*

The March Against Monsanto on Saturday 25 May 2013 attracted rather more attention than in some years partly because Bianca Jagger was to speak.

It had been intended to hold a static rally on the pavement in front of Parliament Square which is controlled by Westminster Council, but there were more people than could fit on this.

*One of many pictaures of Bianca Jagger*

The protest began to spill over on to the grass of the square where the authorities are particularly sensitive about protests after it was occupied by the Democracy Village peace camp in 2010.

Police suggested to the organisers that they move to Old Palace Yard, where there is more space for the rally, and they did so.

The London rally was one of many taking place around the world as an annual global ‘March Against Monsanto’.

Bianca Jagger has a long history of working for human rights and environmental causes – receiving for the latter the Green Globe Award from the Rainbow Alliance in 1997, and the United Nations Earth Day Award in 1994. Among over events I photographed her at several protests against mining company Vedanta.

*Monsanto GMOs Destroy Agricultural Diversity*

She was followed by a number of other speakers stressing the danger of GM foods and biofuels and calling for some more organised action against them.

Hare Krishna had come and were providing free food for all who wanted it – but as usual I had brought my own sandwiches – always safer for a long-term diabetic. At the end of the rally their bike-hauled band with drum kit, amps and speakers arrived.

The event had been planned as a static rally, but soon the band was leading most of those present in a march around Parliament Square and up Whitehall where they stopped for a brief protest at the gates of Downing Street.

The march continued up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square where I left them – the band was returning to its base in Soho.

On My London Diary there is a very brief account of the problems of GMO foods and the particular dangers posed by Monsanto and their relationship with the US Food and Drugs Administration, as well as many more pictures: March Against Monsanto.

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25 Years Ago – April 1999. When I began posting on my web site My London Diary I decided that the posts would begin from the start of 1999, and there are still image files I created in January of that year on line, though I think they probably only went live on the web a few months later.

In those early days of the site there was very little writing on it (and relatively few pictures) with most pictures just posted with minimal captions if any.

A single text on the introductory page for the year 1999 explained my rather diffuse intentions for the site as follows (I’ve updated the layout and capitalisation.)

What is My London Diary? A record of my day to day wanderings in and around London, camera in hand and some of my comments which may be related to these – or not

Things I’ve found and perhaps things people tell me. If I really knew what this site was I wouldn’t bother to write it. It’s London, it’s part of my life, but mainly pictures, arranged day by day, ordered by month and year.
My London Diary 1999

In the years following My London Diary expanded considerably, gradually adding more text about the events I was covering but retaining the same basic structure. Had I begun it a few years later it would have used a blogging platform – such as WordPress on which this blog runs, but in 1999 blogging was still in its infancy and My London Diary was handcoded html – with help from Dreamweaver and more recently BlueGriffon, now sadly no longer.

My London Diary continued until Covid brought much of my new photography to a standstill and stuttered briefly back to life after we came out of purdah. But by then my priorities had changed, and although I am still taking some new photographs and covering rather more carefully selected events my emphasis has switched to bringing to light the many thousands of largely unseen pictures taken on film in my archives, particularly through posting on Flickr. Since March 2020 I’ve uploaded around 32,000 pictures and have had over 12 million views there, mainly of pictures I made between 1975 and 1994. The images are at higher resolution than those on my various web sites.

*121 Street Party, Railton Rd, Brixton. 10th April 1999 121 was a squatted self-managed anarchist social centre on Railton Road in Brixton from 1981 until 1999.*

Since I moved to digital photography My London Diary has put much of my work online, though more recent work goes into Facebook albums (and much onto Alamy.) My London Diary remains online as a low resolution archive of my work.