Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon – 2015

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon: I did a lot of travelling around London ten years ago on Thursday 22nd January 2015 by public transport and on foot. First I made the journey by rail, underground and DLR to the Excel Centre for a picket calling on HP to stop supporting Israeli prisons and military, then walked to the Lower Lea Crossing to photograph building work on City Island and on to the DLR at East India station to go to Canning Town From there the underground took me to Green Park and the Ritz where I met a small group from Class War on a visit to ‘Rich London’.

I had to leave them on Bond Street to make my way- tube, a short walk between stations in West Hampstead and rail to Hendon with another short walk to meet West Hendon Estate where residents were just coming out from a meeting to march from the estate to a rally outside Hendon Town Hall and I walked the just over a mile with them. But after around 20 minutes of the rally I felt very tired and had to leave for home – another short walk and an hour and a half of travel.


Stop Arming Israel picket HP at BETT

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Protesters had come to picket the Excel Centre where Hewlett Packard’s Vice-President for Worldwide Education, Gus Schmedien, was speaking at the BETT education technology show, to ask ‘What about the Palestinian Children You’re Helping Kill?’ They had set up a highly educational display close to the entrance and also gave some speeches and handed out fliers.

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

HP supply equipment and services which keep both the Israeli prison system and the Israeli military running and so support the killing, torture and other illegal activities of the Israeli regime.

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Many of the teachers and others going into BETT stopped to take leaflets and talk with the protesters, some taking photographs of themselves or colleagues in front of the protest.

More pictures at Stop Arming Israel picket HP at BETT


City Island – Lower Lea Crossing

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Building work both on the former Pura Foods site on Bow Creek, now renamed City Island and on the Limmo Peninsula site on the eastern bank of Bow Creek was now going ahead.

City Island isn’t an island but in the downstream loop of the s-shaped bend of Bow Creek south of the East India Dock Road and is surrounded on three sides by the tidal river.

Building on City Island was abandoned after the site had been cleared and a single building erected when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and it was now shooting up fast. The elevated Lower Lea Crossing

More pictures City Island – Lower Lea Crossing


Class War visit ‘Rich London’ – The Ritz and Old Bond St

Ritz security were very polite to Class War and watched the protest outside the hotel

I met with a small group from Class War outside the Ritz where they were holding their banner with its quotation from US Anarchist Lucy Parsons (1851-1942), “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live“.

From there they took the banner to stand in front of some shops on Piccadilly and then onto Old Bond Street, pausing outside De Beers and then into the Royal Arcade.

It seemed a fairly aimless wander, Stan took a seat with Churchill (who is wearing a Class War ‘Spot the Tory’ sticker.)

I left them holding up the banner outside Sothebys to go to Bond St and make my way to West Hendon.

More pictures. Class War visit ‘Rich London’.


West Hendon march for Social Housing – Hendon

Residents on the West Hendon estate overlooking the Welsh Harp reservoir were fighting the the redevelopment of their estate for sale to the rich. Its waterside location makes it a very desirable location for developers and estate agents.

The residents were campaigning for all who live on the estate to be rehoused in the area and I arrived at the end of a meeting in the community centre with speakers from other housing campaigns including Focus E15 from Stratford.

I took pictures of them posing outside the community centre then went inside where free hot soup was very welcome before we went outside for a march around the estate. A banner was dropped from one of the balconies with the message ‘Public Housing Not Private Profit’.

Part of the area to be built on was York Memorial Park, a green open common designated as “a War Memorial in perpetuity” to the 75 people killed and 145 severely injured by a bomb dropped here on 13th February 1941. Over 366 houses were destroyed and a further 400 damaged by the blast, with 1500 people made homeless.

You can read more about this on ‘Broken Barnet‘ which relates how the promises that this would be preserved “were quietly buried by Barnet Tories, once they had made a deal, in secret, with Barratt London” and that at the Housing Inquiry they even denied the existence of the park – where there is now a 29 storey tower block of luxury flats.

We stopped here for a short memorial service to a Hendon war hero, Dorothy Lawrence, the only female Sapper of WW1, serving in the Royal Engineers, 51st Division 179th Tunnelling Company, BEF. You can read more about her and her unfortunate life after this in my post from 2015.

Then we marched for a mile or so in the dark to Hendon Town hall where the third day of the Housing Inquiry had just finished ned for a rally with a number of speeches from people from West Hendon and other campaigners, including Jasmine Stone from Focus E15. Some who spoke had been at the enquiry and were able to tell the crowd what had happened so far. But I was too tired to stay to the end of the rally.

More at West Hendon march for Social Housing.


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Iran, Palestine, Hong Kong, UK Strikers & City Views

Solidarity protests on Friday 10th October 2014 and some extreme wide angle views in the City of London.


Solidarity for Care UK Strikers – Care UK, Southwark

Iran, Palestine, Hong Kong, UK Strikers & City Views
Protesters outside the offices in Great Guildford St

The protest by members from the National Shops Stewards Network, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and Southwark Unison was one of many around the country in a nation-wide day of solidarity with Doncaster Care UK workers who had been on strike for 81 days after huge cuts in pay and services were made by a private equity company who have taken over this part of the NHS.

Iran, Palestine, Hong Kong, UK Strikers & City Views

Care UK is now owned by Bridgepoint, which also owns businesses including Fat Face and Pret a Manger. The workers are on strike not just over cuts in their own wages, but also against the changes in how Care UK is allowed to operate by the new bosses. What was formerly a values-based health service able to address the needs of those with learning disorders in their own community has been radically altered to providing minimum standards of service at the lowest possible cost to get the greatest profits for Bridgepoint, and for the company they will be sold on to once the private equity company has slimmed services and pay to the bone.

Solidarity for Care UK Strikers


Free Ghoncheh Ghavami – SOAS action

Iran, Palestine, Hong Kong, UK Strikers & City Views

The current unrest in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the morality police’ for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, so that some of her hair was visible is unprecedented, but women there have been oppressed by religious police since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

An Iranian woman who cannot go back to Iran

In 2014 former SOAS Law student Ghoncheh Ghavami was arrested and detained with other women for going to try to watch a volleyball match in Tehran. At the time of the protest outside SOAS University of London she had been held for 104 days and had been on hunger strike for 10 days. The protesters included a number of Iranian students one of whom told the protest she could not return to Iran as the TV coverage of a volleyball game in Rome had shown her reacting to a score.

The rally was supported by staff and the SOAS staff unions UCU and Unison, as well as by the SOAS Student Union, and some students took part in a day’s hunger strike in solidarity and there was a candlelight vigil. Ghavami was released on bail on 23 November 2014 and later sentenced to a year in jail and a two-year travel ban for “propaganda against the regime”.

Free Ghoncheh Ghavami – SOAS action


City Panoramas

I had an hour or two to spare before the next protest I was to cover and spent some of this walking around the city and making some extreme wide-angle photographs.

Although these pictures have a normal aspect ratio, they have a horizontal angle of view of over 145 degrees and a vertical angle of around 90 degrees, only possible by using a lens which does not give the more normal ‘rectilinear’ perspective but represents the scene with some curvature.

City Panoramas


Palestine protest at Hewlett Packard – Wood St

The Palestinian Prisoners Campaign continued their campaign against Hewlett-Packard, which boasts of ‘a massive presence’ in Israel and are the IT backbone for the Israeli war machine with a picket outside their London offices.

Police watched the protest across the street from HP’s offices carefully and umbrellas in the colours of the Palestinian flag and large banners made the protest very visible. Speeches and posters taped on the pavement gave details of HP’s involvement in the oppression and imprisonment of Palestinians which were also stated on the leaflets the protesters handed out.

Palestine protest at Hewlett Packard


Solidarity with the Umbrella Revolution – Chinese Embassy

Umbrellas were also on display at the protest around the doorway of the Chinese Embassy on Portland Place organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts in solidarity with the ‘umbrella revolution’ of the students and workers of Hong Kong in their fight for democracy.

Most of the umbrellas were on posters and placards, though some protesters carried small yellow paper umbrellas and there were just a few full-size ones too.

Police tried to move the protesters to the other side of the road, but they refused to move. They called for the immediate release of all the arrested, an end to the suppression of peaceful assembly, replacing the “fake universal suffrage” formula with the genuine political reform workers have been demanding, and the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun Ying.

Solidarity with the Umbrella Revolution


A Busy 10th October – 2014

Solidarity for Care UK Strikers

NSSN, TUSC and Southwark Unison protested at the Care UK offices in Southwark during the nation-wide day of solidarity with Doncaster Care UK workers who had been on strike for 81 days after huge cuts in pay and services by a private equity company taking over a part of the NHS, part of the continuing largely hidden privatisation of our NHS.

This protest was one of many around the country outside offices of Care UK and Bridgepoint, the private equity firm that owns Care UK, as well as at shops including branches of Fat Face and Pret a Manger also owned by Bridgepoint. As I wrote:

Their strike is not just about their own cuts in wages, but a stand against the principles involved and the whole idea of a values-based health service. The workers at Care UK are no longer able to proudly address the needs of those with learning disorders in their own community, but are simply required to meet minimum needs at the lowest possible cost – and the greatest profit to Bridgepoint and the company to which they will be sold on once the private equity company has slimmed services and pay to the bone.

Solidarity for Care UK Strikers

Free Ghoncheh Ghavami – SOAS action

Protesters at outside SOAS called for the release of former SOAS Law student Ghoncheh Ghavami, held in prison for 104 days and on hunger strike for 10 days after being detained in Iran with other women after she went to watch a volleyball match. Among those who spoke at the protest was Ghavami’s brother.

According to Wikipedia, “Ghavami was released on bail on 23 November 2014. She was sentenced to a one-year jail term and a two-year travel ban.”

Free Ghoncheh Ghavami – SOAS action

City Panoramas

I had a little time to spare between events and took a short walk in the City, including along one of the remaining areas of ‘highwalk’ at the southwest of the Barbican site, part of the post-war plan to segregate pedestrians from traffic.

The Museum of London had decorated the wall at left with characters related to an exhibition about Sherlock Holmes.

This large building site was on what used to be St Alphage Highwalk. The ambitious post-war plans to separate pedestrians from traffic in the City were never really practical on a large scale and large sections such as this have been demolished, although there are still some highwalks including throughout the large Barbican estate.

City Panoramas

Palestine protest at Hewlett Packard

The Palestinian Prisoners Campaign continued their campaign against Hewlett-Packard, which boasts of ‘a massive presence’ in Israel and are the IT backbone for the Israeli war machine with a picket outside their London offices in Wood St in the City.

Palestine protest at Hewlett Packard

Solidarity with the Umbrella Revolution

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts organised a protest at the Chinese Embassy in solidarity with the ‘umbrella revolution’ of the students and workers of Hong Kong in their fight for democracy. Many of the protesters carried umbrellas and others had small yellow paper umbrellas as well as their posters and placards.

Solidarity with the Umbrella Revolution