Hares boys | >Re-PHOTO

London University & Israeli Prisons – 2014

London University & Israeli Prisons: On Friday 28th February 2014 I went with students as they hunted in and around Senate House for a meeting of University of London Vice Chancellors to protest against the attacks on students and the idea of a university as these managers have called in police onto the campus rather than engage with students and staff.

From there I went to a protest outside the London offices of security firm G4S who supply services to Israels notorious prisons where many Palestinians have been tortured and prisoners including many children are kept under inhumane conditions.

Students tell Vice Chancellor to Resign

Senate House

London University & Israeli Prisons - 2014

Students and many academic staff have been appalled by the actions of London University (UoL) managers under Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Adrian Smith who have called in police to subdue student protests, and were calling on him to resign.

This has led to mass arrests, injuries and blood on the streets. The UoL was shutting down its student union, exploiting and intimidating low-paid staff, leading the lobby for a huge fees increase fees and attempting to prevent protests, taking out an injunction against any student occupation of the University.

One student earlier in the week had been convicted of criminal damage for chalking “sick pay, holiday, pensions now” on a foundation stone at a protest in support of low paid staff last July. She was was ordered to pay £200 towards prosecution costs and £810 to cover the cost of repairs to the stone – almost certainly the most expensive wipe with a damp cloth in history. Fortunately a video of her arrest made clear that police were lying when they accused her of assaulting an officer when she was arrested.

The protesters met outside the University of London Union (ULU) and then walked towards Senate House, where security guards locked the gates to the area under the building in front of the entrance.

After a short and noisy protest there, they decided to walk to the pavement outside the south side of Senate House as they thought the meeting would be taking place in one of the rooms there. After another short protest there they walked back to the east side of Senate House where again the gates were locked.

A few students were inside the building and they managed to unlock one of the side doors into the building and I went inside with some of the students.

We wandered around the corridors without finding the Vice Chancellors, although the building was in use for various other meetings and events. Eventually the protesters came to the balconies above the Crush Hall where some other conference delegates were taking lunch and explained to them from above why they were taking action.

Security were standing in front of the Vice Chancellor’s Office, possibly the most likely location for the Vice Chancellors to be meeting. One of the security men assured them it wasn’t there and they did not try to push past.

They went down the the lobby in front of the main entrance and managed to hold the gates open as security officers tried to close them so more of the protesters could come inside, managing to push their way back into the building for another tour. But again they could not find the meeting.

Some students climbed through a window to a balcony at first floor level around the side of the building; I didn’t go with them but made my way out of the building. The main entrance was closed and anyone wanted to leave had to make a long detour through a basement corridor to neighbouring Stewart House.

Students were still walking along the balcony when I arrived at street level outside, and were walking back into the building through an open window that I was told led into one of the Vice Chancellor’s rooms.

It seemed unlikely I would be able to get inside the building to take more pictures and I left to photograph another event.

More about the protest and many more pictures on My London Diary: Students tell Vice Chancellor to Resign.

G4S & Israeli Prison Torture

Victoria St

It was International Israeli Apartheid Week and Inminds Human Rights Group were protesting outside the offices of G4S, the worlds largest security firm, complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and gross human rights abuses, including torture of men, women and children.

One of their banners gave details of the tiny cells in which child prisoners are held, about 2 metres by 1 metre, with a just a mattress and behind a low concrete wall a hole in the ground toilet. There are no windows, and food is delivered through a flap in the door. The light is kept on 24 hours a day and the walls have sharp protrusions to prevent them being leaned on.

Children as young as 12 have been kept in solitary confinement in these cells for up to 65 days, being taken out only to be interrogated while shackled hand and foot for up to 6 hours at a time. Some complain of having been sexually assaulted.

This mistreatment is continued until they confess to such crimes of throwing stones at Israeli army vehicles – for which they can be sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Placards showed the five Hares boys, and leaflets were handed out telling their story. After Israelis from an illegal settlement complained that stones had been thrown at them when they stopped their car to change a tyre, 50 children from Hares were arrested by Israeli soldiers with attack dogs, and 19 of them taken to the G4S secured children’s dungeons at Al Jalame, locked in solitary for up to 2 weeks.

There they were violently tortured and threats made against female members of their families to force confessions from them. Five of the boys were then each charged with 25 counts of attempted murder, despite the occupants of the car being unharmed. At the time of the protest their trial by military court had been postponed month by month, probably because of a lack of any evidence.

In January 2016 the five Hares boys were each sentenced to 15 years in prison following a plea deal “that involved ‘fines’ of NIS 30,000 (appr. €7,100 or $7,750) per boy to be paid to the settler driver as ‘compensation’” Otherwise they would have received longer sentences despite the only evidence against them being their ‘confessions’ extracted under extreme torture.

More at G4S & Israeli Prison Torture.

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Housing, Low Pay, Arms Sales, A Political Arrest & More

Too much was happening on Thursday 2nd April 2015 to fit it all into a headline, with protests against evictions, jailed Palestinian children, arms companies, sacking of trade unionists at hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives, a politically motivated arrest and a failed visit to a squat in a prominent London building.

Sweets Way at Annington Homes – James St,

Housing, Low Pay, Arms Sales, A Political Arrest

I began work at a lunchtime protest outside the offices of Annington Homes, the tax-dodging equity investor owned company which owns the Sweets Way estate in north London, calling for an end to evictions and the right to return for all decanted residents.

It was a small but lively protest and attracted considerable attention and support on a street busy with office workers taking their lunch break.

Despite the efforts of the campaigners this small former Ministry of Defence estate of 142 social homes was finally forcibly evicted by evicted by dozens of High Court bailiffs and 7 vans of Met police on 23-24th September. Annington planned to replace these with around 170 homes for private sale at up to £700,000, along with just 59 so-called ‘affordable’ homes at £560,000. Nothing on the new estate was to provide social housing and this was clearly an exercise in social cleansing for profit.

Sweets Way at Annington Homes

Admiralty Arch Occupied by A.N.A.L. – The Mall

Admiralty Arch, the landmark Grade I listed building providing an impressive entrance to the Mall from Trafalagar Square was commissioned by King Edward VII to commemorate Queen Victoria’s death, designed by Sir Aston Webb and completed in 1912. Initially a residence for the First Sea Lord and offices for the Admiralty it was later more general government offices. The government sold it off in 2012 to be developed as a hotel.

Activists from the Autonymous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians had entered the building through the roof at night and were occupying it. I photographed the various notices and banners on the outside of the building and some activities of security and occupiers outside, and talked to a couple of the them. I and a couple of other journalists were offered entry if we brought tobacco or alcohol but felt it wise to refuse and left. I think the squatters were evicted within 24 hours.

Admiralty Arch Occupied by A.N.A.L.

Free the Palestinian Children – G4S, Victoria St

G4S provides security services for Israeli jails in which Palestinian children are held, some as young as 12 years old. The most common charge is throwing stones. Typically there have been 500-700 of them a year in the Israeli military detention system with between 120 and 450 held at any one time. In 2014 Israel held 1266 Palestinian children for interrogation; campaigners say 75% of them are physically tortured and many sexually abused.

One of the protesters who spoke about G4S involvement in the imprisoning and torture of Palestinian children also spoke about her mistreatment by Israeli Security, who forced her to remove her clothes and stand naked to be inspected in public because she was going to visit Palestinians in jail

Free the Palestinian Children

Stations of the Cross Pilgrimage – Westminster

Thursday 2nd April 2015 was Maundy Thursday and Catholic Workers were taking part in a walk around the “geography of suffering” in London halting outside the offices of companies in the arms trade for prayers against the arms trade, war, torture, nuclear weapons, international debt, homelessness, immigration policy and climate change. The ‘Stations of the Cross’ was a day early as this usually takes place on Good Friday.

Among the companies whose offices they prayed outside were arms company Qinetiq in Buckingham Gate, where a security man came out and told them they could not protest there. They told him they were on the public highway and if they wanted to protest they could do so. But they had come to pray not to protest and continued, leaving as they finished their service.

Among other companies I photographed them outside were Rolls-Royce, another weapons manufacturer, where the pilgrimage ended. I had only joined them part way through the event, when the came past the protest at G4S.

Stations of the Cross Pilgrimage

Shame on Sheraton – Hotel Workers – Mayfair

Workers at Sheraton hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives have been sacked for trade union organising and members of the fast-growing Unite Hotel Workers Branch protested in solidarity with them outside Sheraton’s two Mayfair hotels.

Hotel workers are one of the most marginalised groups of workers in the UK, and many are exploited because their English is poor or non-existent. Here in the UK they can also get sacked for joining a union but despite this, the Hotel Workers branch is the fastest growing branch of Unite because of its determined support for the workers.

I met and photographed their protest outside Le Meridien on Piccadilly for around half an hour before walking down with the to the Park Lane Hotel where I had to leave them to go to Aldgate.

Shame on Sheraton – Hotel Workers

Chingford candidate arrested at Poor Doors – One Commercial St, Aldgate

Police clearly had it in for Lisa McKenzie and during this weekly Poor Doors protest outside One Commercial St a woman officer came up to her a and told her she was being arrested, accused of criminal damage. The officer said she had stuck a Class War sticker on the glass next to the rich door two weeks earlier on March 19th. A snatch squad surrounded her, and despite opposition from the protesters she was led away and put in a waiting police van to be taken to Bethnal Green police station.

While many people had stuck posters and stickers onto the glass windows at almost every Poor Doors protest, this was the first arrest. It’s doubtful whether this is an offence, and it is certainly not criminal damage, as glass is not damaged, with posters and any glue residue being easily removed leaving the surface in as new condition.

I had photographed Lisa and others at the Rich Door fairly extensively on March 19th and was ready to testify that she had not herself stuck anything on the glass – though when her case eventually came to court it was thrown out before I was called.

Lisa was certainly a very vocal protester (as usual) but it’s hard to avoid thinking what picked her out was political pressure because of her candidature for Class War against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford in the forthcoming general election.

Before her arrest the protest had been hampered by barriers for work on the wide pavement outside the Rich Door of the building, and the protest had started on the opposite side of the main road.

Two incidents caused some hilarity, one where a police officer came to deal with a yellow smoke flare that had been thrown into the road, first seeming to kick it, then picking it up and carrying it away down the alley towards the poor door. It had burnt out by the time he reached this, but as I commented “Everyone else may throw their rubbish here but I was surprised the police thought it a good idea.”

The second was when Lisa pointed out that one of the two women officers standing behind the banner she was holding had taken part in plain clothes in a previous ‘poor doors’ protest, and Ian Bone offered her the megaphone to speak – but this was immediately followed by another woman officer coming to arrest Lisa.

There were some angry scenes as she was driven away, and police refused to talk with the protesters. The protest continued with several speeches before people went home.

Much more at Chingford candidate arrested at Poor Doors.

Immigration, Lions, Low Pay & Child Prisoners

Immigration, Lions, Low Pay & Child Prisoners. I started my day on Friday 13th March 2015 in Feltham in outer London, outside an Immigration Tribunal before going in to cover three further protests in central London.

Let Ife Stay in the UK! York House Immigration Tribunal, Feltham

Immigration has been very much in the news lately, with the UK government introducing new legislation to attempt to evade its responsibilities under international obligations over the treatment of refugees, demonising those who have genuine asylum claims as “illegal” and refusing them the opportunity to make claims.

For years both our major political parties have vied with each other to produce more and more draconian measures to cut the number of migrants coming to the UK. A part of this has been the setting up of more and more Byzantine and understaffed systems to slow down the processing of claims by the Home Office. More and more people are kept in limbo for years before eventually being granted leave to stay in this country.

It’s our system that has led to the huge growth of people smugglers, at first using lorries and more recently concentrating on channel crossings in unsafe and expendable small boats.

The real basis for this trade is that there are no safe routes that most genuine asylum seekers can take to enter this country. Even the few country-specific schemes we have are not working properly. Were we to set up a system that worked fairly and efficiently it would largely put the people smugglers out of business, perhaps cutting the demand for their services by around three-quarters.

Setting up a system that rapidly – perhaps within 28 days – sorted out those with a probable case for asylum from those who were clearly economic migrants would not be difficult, and we could admit those who are likely in the end to be given asylum on a provisional basis, allowing them to work and contribute to our society while their cases were under more detailed scrutiny.

Lineker’s tweet “This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s” was simply stating facts. It certainly is immeasurably cruel, and listening to speeches by Tory MPs and ministers both in Parliament and in media interviews we largely hear a complete lack of compassion from people claiming to be “compassionate“.

Perhaps it might have been politically more acceptable to call it something like Orwellian double-think but government policy often seems to be very accurately following the well-known quote “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” And I probably don’t need to tell you who said that.

Obviously we should not refer to “invasions” or define people’s actions as illegal when their activities are legal under international law, and certainly even people breaking laws are not themselves illegal.

I didn’t know there was an Immigration Tribunal in Feltham before the protest here, rather hidden away on a small industrial estate a mile or two south of Heathrow. And clearly the staff working there didn’t want people to know, and attempted to get police to stop the protest – but were told by police it was legal. It wasn’t a big protest, calling for a 2 year old Ife and her mother and brotheer to be allowed to stay in Peckham where the Ife and continue the medical treatment she needs rather than be deported to Nigeria. You can read more about the protest at Let Ife Stay in the UK!

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting – Trafalgar Square

It took me a little over an hour to travel by bus, train and tube to Trafalgar Square where I joined (a little late) several hundred people who were there to protest against ‘canned hunting’, where lions are bred and raised tame on farms in South Africa for rich visitors to pet, to ‘walk with lions’ and to shoot as trophy heads.

It’s a sordid business, degrading noble animals and threatening wild lions which are captured for farm breeding to improve the quality of the stock. Young females are often killed as soon as they have got too large for the petting zoos, as females are in little demand as hunting trophies.

After some speeches on the North Terrace I was invited to go across with a couple of protesters to South Africa House, where I took a few pictures as they posed in the entrance before security told us to leave.

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art – RCA, Kensington Gore

IWGB members, supported by students, protested noisily at the Royal College of Art against low pay of outsourced workers, demanding they be paid the London Living Wage now, not from September as the college has offered; the workers need it now.

This was a noisy protest with trade union members and students banging on drums, whistling, blowing plastic horns and chanting slogans, mainly “Living Wage Now!” with RCA security and a couple of police looking on.

After protesting at the entrance to the RCA for some time they marched out on to the main road and held a short rally at the end of the college building close to the Albert Hall before going on a further noisy protest at a small enclosed yard next to a college dining area.

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art.

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S – Victoria St

Finally I went to Victoria Street where protesters on the wide pavement outside the G4S offices were calling or the release of 5 young boys from Hares, held and tortured in Israeli jails which G4S helps to run.

They were arrested two years ago after they had been accused of throwing stones at an incident when an illegal settler crashed into the back of a truck. If they are ever tried, like most Palestinians in Israeli courts they are likely to be found guilty – even if there is little or no real evidence and could be sentenced to over 25 years in jail.

The protesters also called for the release of other Palestinian child prisoners, handing out leaflets and displaying banners which detailed some of the cases and the torture of children often tortured and held in isolation in small dark cells in the prisons for which G4S provides support.

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S