Tag: Hertford St

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou’s 2019

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou’s: The protests I photographed on Wednesday 2nd October 2019 were conveniently close to each other in London’s Mayfair. I went to photograph a candlelit vigil for Saudi journalist Jamal Khasnhoggi at the Saudi Embassy (and also found a counter-protest) and then joined the IWGB protesting at exclusive Mayfair club LouLou’s a few yards away.

Justice For Jamal Khashoggi

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Representatives of English PEN, Writers at Risk, Reporters Without Borders and PEN International had come to hold a candlelit vigil outside the Saudi Embassy on Curzon Street on the first anniversary of the horrific murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist for Middle East Eye and The Washington Post, and a general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel.

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he had gone to get papers for his planned marriage. Inside the consulate he was met by a team of possibly eight men sent by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to assassinate him. He was strangled and then his body was cut into pieces using a bone saw so it could easily be removed from the building and disposed off.

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Turkish intelligence bugs in the building recorded both the planning of the murder and its execution. MbS denied any knowledge of the plans prior to the murder, but few if any believe it could have happened without his authorisation.

Opposite the silent vigil was a noisy protest with music and speeches funded by the Saudi Embassy with banners and expensively produced placards as well as large LED illuminated screens in support of the Crown Prince.

They denied MbS had any involvement in the killing and held huge pictures of him as well as others lauding his achievements in giving aid to Yemen, supporting charitable foundations and fighting Islamic radicalism and extremism. The didn’t mention the war in Yemen, his support for Wahhabism, the ridiculous kidnapping of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri (intended to weaken him, the country united behind him and MbS was forced to release him), and certainly not the barbaric torture, murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi.

One placard stated ‘SAUDI CROWN PRINCE WORKING TO BUILD A MODERN NATION AND MAKE HIS PEOPLE MORE CIVILISED. Barbaric practices like torturing and sawing up your opponents hardly seems a way to make his people more civilised. MbS now to many means Master butcher Salman.

Justice For Jamal Khashoggi
Saudis support killer Prince MBS

IWGB at Mayfair club Loulou’s

I joined the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB) Cleaners and Facilities Branch who had come to protest at exclusive Mayfair private club LouLou’s for kitchen porters to be paid a living wage, be treated with dignity and respect and given decent terms and conditions including proper sick pay, holidays and pension contributions.

Police and security men had closed off the section of street with the entrance to the club and the protesters were harassed by police and pushed roughly by security staff employed by the club during the protest.

Few of the wealthy customers being escorted into the club took the leaflets the protesters were offering or seemed to have any sympathy with the exploited workers at the club.

After protesting for some time on Trebeck Street at one end of the blocked section of Shepherd’s Market they marched noisly around the block to the other end in Hertford Street and continued the noisy protest there.

In December 2019 LouLou’s made an offer to the IWGB including paying its kitchen porters the London Living Wage from January 2020, 5 days sick pay, and regular quarterly consultations with the union on terms and conditions. Although it didn’t meet all of the unions demands further planned strikes were called off.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at IWGB at Mayfair club Loulou’s.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

May and Mayfair 1987

The Fountains, Hyde Park, Westminster, 1987 87-5g-41-positive_2400

I’ve tried on several occasions to photograph the Italian Fountains in Kensington Gardens, an ornamental garden said to have been a gift from Prince Albert to Queen Victoria in around 1860, designed by James Pennethorne and incorporating ideas from their holiday home at Osborne House on The Isle of Wight. There are five main designs on the urns there, including the ram’s heads you see a few times in this picture, a swan’s breast, woman’s head, dolphin and oval. Taken in May when I think the trees in the background are at their best, some in leaf and others still showing their structure. The garden has been renovated since I made this picture.

Connaught Place, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987 87-5g-61-positive_2400

There seems to be a gate to the pavement of Connaught Place in Bayswater, probably to keep out the riff-raff like you and me, and I clearly chose to photograph through it as a frame to the formal architecture of the line of grand porches beyond. Although there are extremely expensive properties in a prestigious address, I find them rather dull, these heavy porches uneasy add-ons to the bland five-storey plain brick behind – which I chose not to include in my picture. But despite the porches, these are really the back doors of these building.

Bayswater Rd, Bayswater, Westminster, 1987 87-5g-63-positive_2400

The houses may have their doors in Connaught Place but the clearly face to Hyde Park, where the row has these magnificent balconies. I also photographed them in landscape format, but need to replace that image on Flickr as I find the negative moved at left to give a double image when I was making the digital camera ‘scan’, probably because the negative holder was not fully closed.

87-5h-24-positive_2400

Shepherd Market in Mayfair describes itself as “a charming small square and piazza with a variety of boutique shops, restaurants and impressive Victorian pubs” and ” A hidden gem known for its wonderful relaxed village-like atmosphere.” It gets its name from Edward Shepherd who developed the area in 1735-46 on open ground where the annual May Fair had been held. Wikipedia comments “It was associated with upmarket prostitutes from its building up until at least the 1980s” and they were still in business when I made these pictures in the area. In 1987 it still retained something of the shabby charm from its really run-down times when it was popular with artists and writers 60 years earlier. The area is something of a maze of streets and alleys and I no longer recall exactly where this picture was taken.

Shepherd Market, Mayfair, Westminster, 1987 87-5i-35-positive_2400

You can still find Da Corradi’s Italian Restaurant and Ye Grapes in Shepherd Market though I think both have changed somewhat are there are now more tables in the narrow street.

Hertford St, Mayfair, Westminster, 1987 87-5h-64-positive_2400

Hertford St runs from Park Lane to Shepherd Market and then takes a turn north to Curzon St. This building is still there on the corner with Shepherd St and I think is a part of an expensive and exclusive private member’s club outside which I’ve recently photographed protests calling for kitchen staff to get a living wage and better conditions of service. The club is on five floors and includes a nightclub, four restaurants, four bars, a private dining room, cigar shop, a courtyard and a roof terrace and has a dress code which prohibits ‘sportswear of any kind’, t-shirts, shorts, sandals and dirty trainers. Personally having watched the kind of people who go into it I’m pleased not to be a member.

Hertford St, Mayfair, Westminster, 1987 87-5h-35-positive_2400

Towering above the western end of Hertford St is the ugly bulk of the London Hilton in Park Lane, the first Hilton to open in the UK in 1963. 331 Feet tall it overlooks Mayfair, Hyde Park and, more controversially at the time of building, Buckingham Palace and its gardens. The hotel is on 28 floors and has 453 rooms and according to Wikipedia is now the 84th equal tallest building in London, though around twenty still under construction will soon edge it out of the top 100, though I think it will remain one of the tallest in the West End – only Centre Point and the Millbank Tower are taller.