Good Friday 2010 in London – This year Easter Day is celebrated on April 17th by Western Christianity, though as usual a week later by Eastern churches. But it is a ‘moveable feast’ and is on the first Sunday after the first ‘ecclesiastical full moon’ (don’t ask) on or following 21st March, which means it will always be somewhere between March 22nd and April 25th. In 2010, Easter Day was April 4th, so April 2nd 2010 was Good Friday. I photographed two public events for it in London.
Crucifixion on Victoria St, Westminster
I photographed ‘The Crucifixion on Victoria Street’ on Good Friday for a number of years, though decided to stop doing so more recently, largely because of how I felt the behaviour of other photographers. When I first photographed the event there were relatively few of us taking pictures and we did so with some discretion, respecting the religious nature of the event. But over the years the number of photographers has increased greatly and it became more of a media circus, with a few really interfering with the proper nature of the event.
The event brings together clergy and congregations from a number of churches on and around Victoria Street, which includes the Westminster Abbey, the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathredral and Methodist Central Hall as well as other churches, church schools and projects in the area. They process along Victoria Street behind a man carrying a large wooden cross – in 2010 carried by men from the Passage, a project for homeless people close the the Cathedral – and stop for short services in front of the three main churches.
The main service was outside the entrance to Westminster Cathedral where there were hymns, bible readings, a meditation, prayers and a reflection on peace to honour the innocent victims of our times by The Most Reverend Vincent Nicholls, the third Archbishop of Westminster I’ve photographed on these steps.
I left the procession as it made its way towards Westminster Abbey where there was to be a final service.
This was the first Passion Play to be performed in the square since 1965, and was a highly professional performance by a group based on the Wintershall estate near Godalming that have been putting on similar but larger and longer ‘Life of Christ’ plays there for a number of years.
The play related key events leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, folowing the stories in the four gospels with both narration and the voices of the main characters coming to the crowd over loudspeakers around the square. It was a colourful and at times exciting rendition of what was for some of us a familiar story, but for some present was novel.
Photographing the live performance had to be from the sidelines, but I was able to do so fairly well, though mainly from longer distances than I like to work from. It was an interesting presentation of a difficult story to stage.
The pictures on My London Diary show the story in sequence and I think capture all the key moments.
Life or at least writing this blog was rather easier in those pre-Covid days. Then I was still getting out and visiting places and covering events, meeting people and going to exhibitions, and there was usually something obvious for me to write about. Now I’m largely living in front of a screen, simply taking the occasional walk or bike ride for exercise and watching and listening aghast as Britain slides increasingly into a country ruled by greed and moving into fascism. Certainly dispiriting times.
So I’ve been looking back, publishing on Flickr the work I made back in the 70s and 80s (and soon the 90s) much of which has never been seen before, and also in writing in posts like this about things that I covered on this day a two, three or twenty years ago. And that’s a problem too. Today I had the choice between 2008, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018 (and possibly more) in all of which I was taking pictures of events on London’s streets on March 21st. Should I go for racism, anti-racism, tax-dodging and fair treatment for low paid workers in 2015 or against deportations, knife crime and Lambeth Council closing community centres in 2017? Should I choose on issues or on my opinions of how good my pictures were?
In the end I chose 2008 for today, largely because its different to most of the other days I’ve written about recently. It perhaps is time for a short rest from me banging on about corrupt Labour councils, though in the 2017 piece I wrote on closing community centres there I did have a nice quote from Anna Minton who found that “20 per cent of Southwark’s 63 councillors work as lobbyists” for developers in the planning industry and that a significant number of Councillors and Council officers are making use of a ‘well-oiled revolving door’ to the industry.
But March 21st 2008 was for me a day about religion in London, with three religious festivals coming together, Christians celebrating Good Friday, the Jewish festival of Purim and Hare Krishna celebrating Gaura Purnima. Although these happen around the same time of the year they seldom all fall on the same day. For 2021, Gaura Purnima is on the 28th March, Purim was on 25-6 February and Good Friday comes on April 2nd.