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Fossil Fools Day – 2008

Fossil Fools Day: Tuesday 1st April was Fossil Fools Day, a day of protests around the world over our increasing use of fossil fuels, despite the effect they are having on global climate.

The ‘greenhouse effect‘ of various gases in the atmosphere had first been described in 1824, although the actual term only dates from 1901. But already in 1856 American scientist and women’s rights campaigner Eunice Newton Foote had shown that carbon dioxide was very effective in trapping the sun’s energy and warming the atmosphere.

Almost all polyatomic gases are ‘greenhouse gases’ with some such as methane much more effective than carbon dioxide. But its great importance is because of the huge amounts of it formed when carbon-containing fuels are used. And burning wood, coal and oil and their use in powering machines of all types and electricity production became the basis of the industrial revolution and our whole civilisation from around the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Wood is not of course a fossil fuel, and in pre-industrial times the carbon dioxide produced by burning it was more or less in balance with the amount that was removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis producing new plants, trees and other organisms. CO2 levels remained roughly constant during human history at around 280ppm until they began to rise more and more rapidly after 1850, and increasingly rapidly since then. They are now around 430ppm and rising steeply.

The full effects of the current levels only become apparent over a period of around 50 years, though we are already seeing some of them already, particularly in the global South – though we too are beginning to see the effects on our climate, not just in terms of temperature but even more as instability.

For well over fifty years it has been obvious that we need to take urgent action to stop burning fossil fuels, but that urgency has not led to any really significant action. Talk, investment in renewable energy – but fossil fuel use, even of coal, is still increasing. If life on this planet is to have a future we need to see a rapid drop in the consumption of coal, oil and gas – and also aathe development of ways to use renewable energy to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, as well as increasing natural ways such as planting more trees.

And there is another reason to end the use of oil for fuel, as I first mentioned in the 1970s. These finite resources are of much greater use as a chemical feedstock for producing other essential materials of our modern life, including plastics.

Everything at the moment is still going in the wrong direction – and the huge energy requirements of AI are making things worse.

Fossil Fools Day: No New Coal

Parliament Square

The focus of the protest by students from ‘People and Planet’ and other climate activists were the plans by E.ON to build a new new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.

The protesters brought three large white ‘cooling towers’ and many had cutout masks of Gordon Brown’s face as they shouted out advice to him over the ridiculous Draft Climate Change Bill which would have resulted in an increase in carbon emissions.

*The launch of ‘ev-eon Unnaturally Carbonated Water’*

They were joined by a group with the spoof launch of ‘ev-eon Unnaturally Carbonated Water’ a new carbon capture technology to be used at E.ON’s Kingsnorth Power Station.

“‘Ev-eon’ uses the CO2 from coal burning to carbonate water which you then swallow. And if you can swallow the governments coal-fired policy you can swallow anything. And of course with Ev-eon, should you burp, breathe or otherwise release that CO2 you’ve swallowed, global warming is all your fault – and not E.ON’s.”

As a result of this and other environmental protests and criticism by a wide range of organisations E.ON eventually dropped the plans.

More on My London Diary at Fossil Fools Day: No New Coal.

Fossil Fools Day: Opencast Coal

Albany Courtyard, Piccadilly

Campaign against Climate Change protest at the offices of Argent Group PLC in Piccadilly over the UK’s largest opencast coal mine, Ffos-y-Fran in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, run by Miller-Argent.

*The manager of Albany talks with the demontrators, taking some information for Argent*

As well as the at least 30 million tons of CO2 of carbon dioxide from the coal the mine was expected to produce over the next 15 years, this mine was also only 36 metres from the nearest houses – compared to the Scottish Safety standards of 500 metres. The Welsh Office delayed the implementation of a Welsh safety standard to enable the mine to go ahead.

Locally it produced years of misery and health hazards through air-borne dust, diesel fumes and noise to the 70,000 or so people who live in Merthyr. A Health Impact Study commissioned by the authorities was so damning they refused to accept it.

The initial scheme for the mine had been approved by the Welsh Assembly in 2005 despite huge local objections and residents took it to the High Court which quashed it – but this was reversed on appeal in 2006.

The mine licence expired in 2022 and an appeal for an extension was refused with the mine shutting down in November 2023.

London protest Welsh Opencast Coal

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Jobs Justice Climate – 2009

Put People First: Jobs Justice Climate

Embankment to Hyde Park

World leaders were to hold the G20 London Summit at the Excel Centre in Docklands beginning on April 1st (a date some thought highly appropriate), with the stated themes “Stability, Growth, Jobs“, and chaired by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Countries and organisations taking part, included Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey and the USA, as well as the European Union and organisations including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the World Trade Organisations.

The ‘Put People First’ march was the first of several major demonstrations aimed at influencing the meeting and was backed by a very wide range of over 150 organisations, both from this country and abroad.

As well as trade unions, charities, and pressure groups there were also many other less organised groups and individuals.

Those marching were calling for a new approach to social justice for the world as a whole, and for urgency in action by world leaders not just to find a solution for the current financial problems, but to tackle the even deeper problems of global inequality and of climate crisis.

But the G20 went ahead very much to prop up the banks and financial institutions that had caused the financial crisis, though agreeing on the need for greater regulation, making none of the wider changes that this and other protests demanded. If anything it worsened those deeper problems.

Unsurprisingly it was a very large march with probably several times the official police estimate of 35,000 taking party.

Most police attention was on a relatively small ‘autonomous’ block of around 800 people in the middle of the march which had a strong police escorted. They objected to the police behaviour, particularly very obtrusive photography by FIT teams and some sat down in the road blocking the march behind them for around half an hour.

Police had bullied the front of the march to set off at a cracking pace, hard for photographers to keep up with and the march soon spread out over much of the route.

I wanted to photograph as many of the marchers as I could, walking slowly and letting them go past me as they walked along the Embankment, up Bridge Street and Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. Then I rushed to get to the rally in time.

On My London Diary you can read more about the rally, and see pictures of many of the speakers. This protest was “a well ordered event with at times a carnival atmosphere, which made some of the police prognostications look rather silly.“

*Politicicans and Businessmen are not ignorant – they are intelligent and corrupt. They break our legs and expect us to say thankyou when they offer us crutches*

One of my fellow NUJ members filming the ‘autonomous’ block rally was stopped and searched, and he and others reported a mysterious ‘man in black’ rushing into this alternative rally and emptying half a dozen small tightly wrapped packages from a black bin bag at the bottom of the stepladder from which people were speaking before exiting rapidly stage left.

Someone kicked one of these packages open and found it contained a catapult, and all the packages were quickly kicked away under a fence into an area under maintenance behind the speakers. Around 20 minutes later, a policeman entered that area and collected the packages; the anarchists saw what was happening and rapidly dispersed.

As I ended my post on My London Diary: “Earlier in the week a police spokesman had given a widely broadcast media interview in which he predicted that there would be violence – and that some protesters would use catapults. It seems as if someone was determined to make this loony-sounding prophecy come true.”

More at Put People First: Jobs Justice Climate.

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Bring All the Troops Home NOW – 2007

Bring All the Troops Home NOW: CND and Stop The War had called for a march to Parliament on 8th October 2007 to arrive when Gordon Brown was making his statement to Parliament on Iraq where British troops were still present having taken part in the US-led invasion in 2003.

They wanted to march to make clear that all UK troops should come back here now. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 had led to the fall of Saddam Hussein but had been made without any real thought for the future of Iraq – except for the profits which US companies hoped to make. Saddam’s civil and military administration which had united the country were simply removed rather than being put to use to keep the country running and chaos reigned. Iraq didn’t need foreign armies but needed real support to set up a new civil society and that had not been forthcoming.

Gordon Brown tried to ban the protest, using “Sessional Orders” to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for him to prevent the march under section 52 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. But CND and Stop The War made clear it would go ahead despite this.

On the morning of the march Prime Minister Gordon Brown – probably reacting both to huge public pressure and legal advice – lifted the ban, thus avoiding a huge burden on both police and courts. They might otherwise have ended with thousands of arrests – and cases which the courts would probably throw out.

Around ten years later the powers that the Brown government had attempted to use were officially recognised to no longer have any legal effect – something I suspect had been part of legal advice given to Brown in 2007.

Last Saturday, October 4th 2025, I again watched a protest by Defend Our Juries in defiance of the government’s proscription of Palestine Action under terrorist laws, with police arresting almost 500 people for sitting holding a piece of cardboard with a message supporting the banned group. Many of those arrested seemed to be elderly and some also disabled, though there were also younger people.

The protestersy presented no danger to public order – other than challenging the legally doubtful ban on the group who few outside the government and those making arms for sale to Israel who had been heavily lobbying for a ban – believe could be described as terrorists. And this is something to be shortly tested in the courts. And the arrests made the police look unfeeling and stooges of the government rather than a force acting with the consent of the people.

Perhaps our current Labour government should have learnt from the example of George Brown in 2007. Supposedly we are a nation where the police operate by consent – which was clearly not the case here – and the police should have made this clear to the government and simply ignored this and earlier protests by ‘Defend Our Juries’. Which would of course have made the action – with people coming on purpose to be arrested and waiting patiently for hours for it to happen – totally ineffectual. And we do after all we have many laws which people – especially motorists – break every day and the police ignore.

Defend Our Juries also protests against the practice by some judges in some courts to prevent those charged from making a defence of their actions and instructing juries that they cannot use their consciences in coming to decisions – both vital protections essential to a fair legal system. Actions introduced into our legal system because successive governments have been angered by the decisions reached by juries in some cases. But it should not be the job of our legal system to serve the government but to serve the people and these developments endanger the whole basis of trial by jury which protects us and our democracy.

Here’s what I wrote in 2007 about the march and rally on 8th October 2007. All the pictures in this post come the event and there are many more on My London Diary.

Brian Haw’s t-shirt summed up the disaster: “Iraq 2,000,000 dead 4,000,000 fled genocide theft torture cholera starvation” though there were a number of other crimes to mention, in particular the poisoning of so much the area for generations to come through the dumping there of so much of our nuclear waste in the form of ‘depleted uranium’ weapons.

I was surprised at the level of support for Monday’s demonstration, a day when many of the supporters of the campaign would have been at work, and I had expected hundreds rather than the three thousand or so who actually turned up. The government’s clumsy ban on the event, using 1839 legislation passed against the Chartists, drummed up support, and to such an extent that on the morning of the rally they had to climb down and allow the march and the lobby of parliament to proceed.

Later in the day, the success of the demonstration even became rather an embarrassment for Stop The War, who when I left around 4.30pm, two hours after the start of the march, were trying to help police in clearing the large crowd who were still blocking Parliament Street, Parliament Square and St Margaret St, urging them to move along to College Green. Later in the day a small group of protestors took down the barriers on the grassed area of parliament square, piling them up.

But the real embarrassment was for Gordon Brown, forced to climb down and allow democratic protest. Unfortunately he didn’t do the decent and sensible thing (and surely now inescapably the logical thing in the interests of both Iraq and Britain) and announce a speedy withdrawal of troops to be replaced by a real programme of support for the Iraqi people.

Although doubtless pressure from the police at the highest level was obviously vital in the decision to allow the march to go ahead, there were clearly a few officers in charge on the ground who weren’t happy.

As we went down Whitehall, they obstructed photographers trying to photograph the event quite unnecessarily – so obviously so that some of the officers actually carrying out the orders were apologising to me as they did so. And later in the day a few tempers flared and there were a few fairly random assaults on demonstrators.

It did seem an unnecessarily provocative move to bring back Inspector Terry, apparently the man responsible for much of the harassment of Brian Haw and the officer in charge at the 2006 ‘Sack Parliament’ demo last year (photographer Marc Vallée who was injured is now taking legal action against the Met, with the support of the NUJ.)

British troops remained in Iraq in a combat role until 2009, with smaller numbers there mainly involved in training until the final withdrawal in 2011. You can read more about my NUJ colleague Marc Vallée being thrown to the ground by police and his eventually reaching a settlement on the EPUK web site.

Many more pictures from the march and rally on My London Diary at
Bring All the Troops Home NOW.

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Heathrow, Gaza & the Tamils – 2009

Heathrow, Gaza & the Tamils: On Saturday 17th January 2009 I took a bus to Heathrow for a flash mob against a third runway, then the tube into Westminster for a protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza in Trafalgar Square which ended with a march to protest at Downing Street, where Tamils were protesting against the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka.

No Third Runway Decision Day Flashmob – Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport

Earlier in the week the Labour government under Gordon Brown had announced they were to press ahead with airport expansion and build a third runway at Heathrow despite the environmental consequences. Several hundred people turned up at Terminal 5 for a ‘flashmob’ protest at 12 noon.

“Attracting most press attention were four brave young ladies who had saved the ten quid for a red ‘STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION’ t-shirt and instead opted for red body paint with a black message across their midriffs, ‘Simply No Slaughter‘ and a pair of strategically placed gold sticking plasters proclaiming ‘art‘ and ‘port‘ (port was indeed on the left.)”

Many local residents were there, some with their children, along with John Stewart of HACAN (Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise) the organisers of the event, and local MP John McDonnell who was being congratulated for his seizing the mace in the House of Commons when the announcement was made.

The demonstrators chanted, thrown red balloons in the air, red tennis balls at an ‘Aunt Sally’ of Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon and conga’ed around the area while a large squad of photographers photographed and videoed.

The campaigners were surrounded in a loose ring by police and airport security who made no attempt to stop them, though police had made some searches before the event began. Some of them were clearly amused by the event as were a few passengers making their way through the departure area.

*John Stewart of HACAN thanks everyone for coming*

After almost three-quarters of an hour of protest John Stewart thanked everyone for coming and repeated the determination of all those involved to keep up the fight to ensure that, despite the decision, the runway will never be built. So far it has been prevented, though it seems likely that despite the increasingly obvious and critical environmental crisis our current Labour government will resurrect this enviornmental catastrophe, though it remains doubtful if the private finance required can be found.

And there was a cheer for John McDonnell’s action in Parliament and a final chance to pelt the Transport Secretary before we all left for buses or tube.

Many more pictures at No Third Runway Decision Day Flashmob.

1000 Dead and Nothing Said – End the Slaughter of Gaza – Trafalgar Square

*A man burns an Israeli flag in at the rally in Trafalgar Square*

I was a little late arriving at the rally in Trafalgar Square but got there just in time to hear Tony Benn being announced and getting a huge greeting. As I commented he was “One of the greatest political figures of the last 50 years, [and} it’s a national tragedy that while he has so often been right on major issues, governments have seldom if ever followed his lead.”

*An 11 year old Palestinian girl, now living in Manchester speaks*

The square was fairly full with perhaps 5-10,000 protesters though there had been a much larger national protest in London a week earlier against the attacks on Gaza in previous weeks that had killed over a thousand Palestinians including more than 300 children.

*Palestinian singer Reem Kelani spoke before singing a traditional song*

After some more speeches a group of children all dressed in white robes marked with bloody red handprints who had been standing on the plinth came down and went with a deputation to take a letter from the rally to Downing St, calling for an immediate ceasefire and reparations for the war damage inflicted by the Israeli attacks.

I went with them down Whitehall to Downing St, where police led them into a pen close to the gates.

While Diane Abbott, MP, PSC General Secretary Betty Hunter and Lindsay German of Stop the War with others took the letter into Downing St, the children posed for pictures, at first while standing and then lying on the ground as if the innocent victims of an Israeli attack.

But unlike those 300 childen in Gaza, these children were just playing dead.

A few hours after this protest Israel announced a ceasefire on its own terms. The end of the killing was welcome, but there was no justice for Palestine.

Much more and many more pictures at Gaza: 1000 Dead and Nothing Said.

Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Downing St

Several hundred Tamils were densely packed into a pen opposite opposite Downing Street to draw attention to the continuing attacks on Tamil civilians, schools, hospitals and churches by the Sri Lankan Army and Air Force and to call for an independent Tamil state, Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka.

Tamils accuse the Sri Lankan government of genocide, and claim that in the past month alone over 300,000 Tamils have been forced to move out of their homes by the bombardment.

The decades long civil war which ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers had attracted relatively little attention in the mainstream media, but the assasination of leading Sri Lankan opposition newspaper editor Lasantha Wickramatunga on his way to work a week earlier and the publication of the obituary he had written for himself, And then they came for me, was the subject of a two page article in The Guardian on the day of this protest.

Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide

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London Pride & Climate Change Rally – 2007

London Pride & Climate Change Rally; My working day on Saturday 30th June 2007 began at a rather damp Baker Street where people were meeting for the London Pride Parade and I was able to wander freely and take photographs. I left before the parade moved off and went to Parliament Square where a rally reminded Gordon Brown – then prime minister for 3 days – that climate change remains the major challenge facing the world – and the new government.

London Pride Parade – Baker Street

There seemed to be only two things that distinguished the 2007 Pride from the previous year’s event. One was the weather and so many of the pictures are of people holding umbrellas.

The second was a large group in the self-styled ‘Bird Parade‘, the ‘Bird Club‘ with their messages including ‘Aren’t Birds Brilliant‘ and ‘Femme Invisibility – So last Year‘.

There were quite a few overhanging shop fronts and other places that people could shelter under but taking pictures mainly involved me staind in the rain and getting rather wet.

I’m not afraid of rain but cameras and lenses need to kept dry. I really needed an assistant with an umbrella but I was working on my own. Its difficult to hold an umbrella and a camera and while I’ve tried various special plastic camera protectors none really solve the problem.

The cameras I use are reasonably water resistant and given he occasional wipe with a cloth and keeping them under my jacket when not in use are fine. But lenses need to have a glass front element to let the light in, and this acts as a powerful magnet for raindrops. Long lenses can have lens hoods which protect them, but when like me you work with wide and ultra-wide lenses they are totally ineffectual, except for allowing me to walk around with a chamois leather balled up into them. But of course I have to hold this clear to frame, focus and take the image, and those raindrops too often manage to sneak their way in that second or so.

I’ve shared too often my thoughts on the presence of corporates and military groups in Pride to bother to say more.

But at least there were some, like Peter Tatchell determined to retain it as a protest, with his wedding cake placard and poster ‘END THE BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE’.

Many more photographs beginning here

Climate Change Rally – Parliament Square

It was still raining for the rally in Parliament Square and my favourite mermaid seemed to be in her natural habitat unless I carefully kept wiping the lens front.

But there was some shelter under the trees and rather fewer people had managed to attend the protest called at short notice by the Campaign Against Climate Change.

Under Blair’s government UK carbon emissions had risen by 2%, but it was now clear to scientists around the world that we needed to drastically cut them. Blair had resigned as New Labour leader on 24 June 2007 and Gordon Brown had become Prime Minister only three days before this protest on 27 June 2007.

Back in 2007 it was clear that climate change remained the major challenge facing the world – and the new government. But in 2008 we had the financial crash and Gordon Brown was diverted into saving the bankers and successive governments since have failed to make the kind of radical changes that are needed to save the planet.

In 2007 I wrote “if you ain’t got a planet, you ain’t in business is the simple message, though some of the speakers had some rather more complex graphs and charts. Blair and Brown were only there in effigy, but we did have a rather more convincing mermaid to warn about the dangers of rising sea levels.” Of course sea levels are only one aspect of the problem with our increasing climate instability and other effects of global heating. The need to take action is even more important for our next government – and for all governments around the world.

more pictures

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Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice – 2008

Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice – pictures from Ash Wednesday in London on 6th February 2008, with an Ash Wednesday Witness and prayer against War at the Ministry of Defence and a Downing Street protest against a visit by US warmonger and then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A week tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday Wednesday 14th February 2024, Pax Christi together with Christian CND and others will again be meeting at 3.30pm for a similar witness against war.

Ash Wednesday Liturgy of Repentance and Resistance – Ministry of Defence, Whitehall

Pax Christi, Catholic Peace Action and Christian CND began their an annual liturgy of Repentance and Resistance around the Ministry of Defence in protest against the continued reliance on nuclear weapons on Ash Wednesday 1982, 42 years ago, and the 2008 event was their 26th.

Looking back at the pictures I made in 2008 has a particular resonance for me, in that two of those in them are people that I knew who have died in the past couple of years. One was the well-known peace campaigner Bruce Kent who I’d photographed at various events since around 1990 if not earlier and though I didn’t know him well we often exchanged a few words when I took his photograph and had a little joke in recent years. Bruce died in June 2022 and in March 2023 I photographed Jeremy Corbyn planting a memorial tree to him in Finsbury Park.

The other was a family friend who died recently and we were disappointed other appointments meant we were not be able to go to his funeral last week. He also appears in a some of my photographs of this and other peace events, sometimes singing in the Raised Voices choir.

Here is the description of the event I wrote in 2008, although the story is mainly told in the pictures and their captions on My London Diary:

Although the ministry and nearby buildings such as the Old War Office were surrounded by police – rather as if they were expecting a massive attack, the police made no attempt to disperse what was undoubtedly an illegal unauthorised protest under the terms of SOCPA. They did hold a couple of people they caught writing on the walls of the Old War Office, and were at least threatening to charge one of them with causing damage to the building, but otherwise watched benignly, at least until I left to catch my train shortly before the liturgy had finished.

The most moving part of the liturgy was outside the Defence Ministry, where a wooden cross was laid on sackcloth. Ashes were sprinkled on it, and then while those present chanted a ‘litany of the martyrs’, including the names of Franz Jaegerstaetter, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero and Mary Lampard, 21 ‘Theses for today’s church’ by Philip Berrigan were read and then nailed to the cross.

Ash Wednesday Liturgy of Repentance and Resistance

Protest at Condi Rice’s London Visit – Downing St

A couple of hundred ‘Stop the War’ demonstrators were on the pavement facing Downing Street. They had come with a clear message to give Condoleezza Rice, that it was time for the US to get out of other people’s affairs in other countries.

However there was no sign of Condi, who had obviously avoided using the front entrance to miss the protesters, either entering by the back entrance or through another Government building, possibly making use of the extensive network of tunnels underneath Whitehall.

A large crowd of press photographers were also waiting impatiently opposite the front door of Number 10, waiting for her to appear for a press call along with Gordon Brown, but I think they were waiting until after the protesters dispersed.

I could have joined them, but although the press likes to use pictures taken in front of the famous door I find the great majority of them supremely boring. And I don’t carry the long heavy lenses you really need for the situation to take the one in a million images that has some interest. It’s been years since I bothered to go through the security check and into Downing Street.

Welcome for Condi Rice

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