Posts Tagged ‘hunger strike’

Blizzard, Education and Hunger Strike – 2018

Wednesday, February 28th, 2024

Blizzard, Education and Hunger Strike – London hasn’t had a great deal of snow for some years, but when I got off the bus on Wednesday 28th February 2018 close to London University I found myself walking into a blizzard. There was a couple of inches of snow underfoot and the biting wind was driving dense snowflakes into my face making it both difficult to walk and hard to see where I was going.

Blizzard, Education and Hunger Strike

I slipped a few times and almost fell as I walked through Byng Place, only just managing to stop myself and my camera bag falling into the snow, and for the first 15 or 20 minutes after I reached the meeting point for the march it was difficult to take pictures, with snowflakes landing on the lens surface as soon as I took away the cloth I had stuffed against it inside the lens hood and raised the camera to my eye.

Blizzard, Education and Hunger Strike

Most of the pictures from the start of the protest were ruined by snow on the lens making some areas soft and diffuse. It might sometimes have been an arty effect but wasn’t what I wanted. Fortunately after a while the snow died down and I was able to work more normally, though the occasional flake kept coming and there were a few thick flurries later on the march.

Blizzard, Education and Hunger Strike

HE and FE march for pensions and jobs

Blizzard, Education and Hunger Strike

The UCU was on the fifth day of a strike to try and get the universities to talk with them about pay and pensions. On this march to a rally in Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament, they were joined by staff from London FE colleges on the first day of a two-day strike over pay and conditions. And plenty of their students had come along to show their support.

Although students are now paying high fees for their university courses, the pay of university teachers has not benefited from this, and has not kept up with inflation. Much more teaching at universities is also being done by graduate students and others on part-time or often zero hours contracts.

What particularly inflamed the situation was the intention of the universities to end the long-established pension scheme, replacing it with one that would greatly reduce pensions, and their refusal to discuss this with their union, the UCU.

The 5 day strike was supported overwhelmingly by UCU members and had shut down 61 UK universities, despite draconian threats by the management at some of them such as Royal Holloway (RHUL). Pickets had stood in the freezing weather and few people had crossed the picket line.

The move away from the pension scheme was largely driven by a small number of universities, particularly the Oxbridge colleges. Many of these are extremely wealthy, some owning huge areas of land including large parts of London and having vast reserves, not least in their wine cellars. A number of college principals had given their support to the union.

The dispute between the employers and the UCU continued for five years and was only ended in October 2023 when the employer body UUK made an offer of full restoration. This came after 69 days of strikes by the UCU and was a historic victory for UCU members and reversed further cuts made in 2022.

University teachers continue to fight for better pay, more appropriate workloads and job security. FE teachers, marching because of the loss of 15,000 jobs in the sector particularly as adult education has been savaged by austerity, and whose wages had been cut by 21% since 2009, continue to be treated unfairly.

I went into the rally in Central Hall largely to try to get warm after the freezing march, and was fortunate to arrive early enough to get inside – many of the marchers were left outside the the cold where the speakers went outside to speak after making their contributions in the hall.

The event was running late because of the larger than expected number of people on the march, and by the time the main speakers, John McDonnell and Frances O’Grady had performed I’d missed the time for another event I’d planned to cover, the handing in of some NHS petitions at the Department of Health. I But I was pleased to be able to stay longer in the warm.

HE & FE rally for pensions and jobs
HE and FE march for pensions and jobs


Solidarity with Yarl’s Wood hunger strikers – Home Office

I left the Methodist Central Hall and walked down to the Home Office where an emergency protest was taking place to support the hunger strike and refusal to work by the 120 women and a few men in immigration detention at Yarl’s Wood.

They had begun their action a week earlier to demand the Home Office respect the European Convention of Human Rights and end the separation of families, end indefinite detention with a 28 day maximum detention period, end charter flights which deport people without notice, and end the re-detention of those released from detention.

Their statement also called for an amnesty for those who have been in the UK for more than ten years and for the Home Office to stop deporting people before cases and appeals have been completed, as well as making full disclosure of all evidence to immigration tribunals.

They called for those in detention centres to be treated with dignity and respect and be given proper health care and an end to the detention of highly vulnerable people. They also want an end to employment in detention centres at ‘prison wages’ of £1 an hour.

Among the groups supporting the protest were the Movement for Justice, All African Women’s Group, Queer Strike and No Borders. Some of those taking part in the protest had previously served time in detention centres and knew first hand about the shameful way the UK treats them and some spoke at the event and several of those taking part in the hunger strike were able to speak to the protest from inside Yarls Wood by mobile phone.

Solidarity with Yarl’s Wood hunger strikers


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Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists

Friday, May 26th, 2023

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists: Six years ago on Friday 26th May 2017 I phototographed a vigil outside the Red Cross HQ, the Fair Funding for All Schools’ ‘School Assembly Day’ in Walthamstow and a protest against the hege toll of deaths due to air pollution and lack of proper cycling infrastructure.


Red Cross act for Palestinian Hunger Strikers – Moorgate

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists

Human rights group Inminds were holding a vigil at UK Mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Moorgate, London, demanding the organisation end its complicity with Israel’s violation of the rights of Palestinian prisoners.

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists

The vigil with flags, banners and some live music came as a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were on the 40th day of a hunger strike and Israel was making preparations to force-feed them.

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists

Inminds also called on the ICRC to restore the twice-monthly family visits and uphold the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of prisoners. They chalked the outline on the pavement of one of the underground cells in which some Palestinian child prisoners have been held for many days in solitary confinement, adding a soft toy to the chalked outline of a child.

Red Cross, School Cuts and Dead Cyclists

Although quite a large proportion of those who saw the vigil read the display and came to sign the petition, the ICRC headquarters building is on a back street and not widely visible.

Red Cross act for Hunger Strikers


E17 Protest Against School Cuts – Walthamstow Town Square

Students, parents and teachers from 17 schools in London E17 marched to a rally in Walthamstow Town Square in protest against the cuts in school funding on Fair Funding for All Schools’ ‘School Assembly Day’.

City areas like Walthamstow will be disproportionately affected by the cuts and schools in the borough will lose over £25m from their annual budgets with the loss of around 672 teachers. On average schools will lose £672 per pupil, with some expecting cuts of over a thousand pounds per pupil.

I left the crowded square as people were listening to a long series of speeches from teachers, parents, educationalists, local politicians and education experts.

E17 Protest Against School Cuts


Cyclists Tory HQ die-in against traffic pollution – Westminster

Stop Killing Cyclists were holding a protest vigil and die in outside the Tory Party HQ a short distance from Parliament against the huge number of avoidable deaths from air pollution and the failure to encourage cycling since the Tories came to power in 2010. They had carried out a similar protest outside the Labour party HQ the previous week over their failure to take action when in power.

Statistics suggest that over the seven years of Tory government around 280,000 people have died prematurely due to the effects of air pollution, largely due to traffic on our streets. The campaigners called for a ban on diesel vehicles in city centres within 5 years, and on all fossil-fuel powered vehicles within 10 years, for all non-zero emission private cars to be banned from cities on days where pollution levels are predicted to rise above EU safety levels, and for regular car-free days in major cities following the example of Paris.

Cyclists particularly suffer from the effects of traffic pollution as they are exercising on city roads, breathing in the dust and fumes. As well as illegally high levels of gaseous pollution from exhausts, including nitrogen oxides, there are also dangerous levels of particulates from tyres and brakes. The carbon emissions from petrol and diesel vehicles also contribute massively to the global rise in temperature.

People also die early from a lack of exercise, and estimates suggest that proper provision for cycling in cities and elsewhere could have cut these deaths by 168,000 over the period of Tory rule. As well as deaths, more people cycling and cleaner air would also greatly reduce the stress on the NHS from respiratory and related illnesses. A report by the Royal College of Physicians in 2016 estimated that currently treatment for transport pollution related conditions costs the NHS £20 billion a year, around a sixth of the total NHS budget.

Many people are put off from cycling as they do not feel safe in the heavy traffic on many city roads and the protest called for an increase in providing safe routes including separate protected cycle routes. The point out that Holland spend £24 per head on cycling, twelve times as much as the UK. The UN has called for an increase to spend 20% of the transport budget by 2025, which would be roughly £3 billion per year.

Spending on cycling infrastructure benefits everyone across the country whether or not they cycle, and would reduce pollution on city streets to greatly improve life for all who live and work here. It would particularly be of benefit for child health, giving them more exercise but also in reducing the dangerous effects of pollution. Children are less tall and pollution levels are higher the closer you are to road level.

Cyclists Tory HQ die-in against pollution


Protest against fast track deportations

Friday, May 5th, 2023

Protest against fast track deportations: On 5th May 2014, the early May bank holiday, protesters went to Harmondsworth Immigration Detention Centre close to Heathrow in solidarity with the prisoners inside who had gone on mass hunger strike against the unfair ‘fast track’ system which denies many a proper hearing. The were also protesting against other problems in the private-run prison.

Protest against fast track deportations

The hunger strike by over 300 men held at the centre was sparked off by the failure of the only fax machine at the centre, an essential service for those trying to prepare their case to gain asylum in the UK.

Protest against fast track deportations

The strike was suspended over the weekend after Home Office officials met delegates from the hunger strikers and promised to give answers to their demands on Tuesday, 6 May.

Protest against fast track deportations

Detained Fast Track (DFT) was first introduced by New Labour, but its use had expanded under the coalition government. As I noted, it “is inherently unfair, giving asylum seekers little or no time to prepare their cases and has resulted in many unfair decisions. It disadvantages those in most need of asylum who are unlikely to have prepared essential documents in advance and to be in a condition to represent themselves effectively. And as they are held in detention it is very difficult or impossible for them to prepare a case, particularly when communication with the outside world is limited and difficult.

Protest against fast track deportations

As well as being unfair, DFT is also expensive, thought to at least double the costs to the country for every asylum seeker held in detention, though the government does not release the exact figures. But despite the cost, the quality of accommodation and services in the detention centres is extremely poor. Many of those held have medical problems, often linked to the reasons why they fled their countries and there has been a desperate lack of proper healthcare at this and other immigration detention centres.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that many in the Home Office – including those in charge – have lost any feeling of compassion for the desperate people who seek asylum, seeing them as a threat to our country, best locked away and as far as possible out of mind. In my post on the protest I mentioned the case reported by HM Inspectorate of Prisons of an 84 year old man suffering from dementia who died after being held for almost 3 weeks without and proper medical attention before being taken to hospital in handcuffs.

Hard too not to see the incompetence often displayed as deliberate, as in the case of those held sometimes for over a year after having agreed to voluntary repatriation or those transferred to here for interviews in London and then abandoned here rather than being returned to other detention centres to continue to consult with their lawyers and have family visits.

We could vaguely see a lot of hands and very dim faces in the windows. As well as the grid of the fence there is a layer of dirty glass and another of plexiglass between them and us

Difficult to understand the lack of legal help and advice at this and other centres enabling the detainees to prepare their cases, and the many holdups that they encounter in doing this – even when the fax machine is working.

Probably the main changes that have taken place at Harmondsworth since this protest nine years ago is that the prison, together with its neighbour Colnbrook are under a new private management and that security and police presence has been considerably tightened. In 2014 the protesters were able to walk down the private road leading to a BT site between the two prisons and continue around the outside of the 20ft high prison fence. Since then protests have been restricted to the front of the building, out of sight of the prisoners. Back in 2014 the police told them that so longs as they behaved sensibly and caused no trouble they would be allowed to protest – and they were.

Later in 2014 the High Court ruled that the Detained Fast Track procedure was was unlawful, though the Home Office appealed and eventually only minor changes have been made. The process is clearly in breach of international law, as is the wholesale detention of asylum seekers.

As recently as 2018 the UK again committed to a declaration that it would “ensure that any detention in the context of international migration follows due process, is non-arbitrary, is based on law, necessity, proportionality and individual assessments.” Current and proposed UK policies break every aspect of this commitment and other aspects of international law, much of which was driven by the UK and to which successive governments have at least paid lip-service. Our current government has declared it will ignore those aspects it finds inconvenient.

More on the protest at Support Harmondsworth Mass Hunger Strike.


Brexit, Fridays For Future & Turkey

Wednesday, March 29th, 2023

I’d not been well for a few days in March 2019 and was still feeling rather weak and tired on Friday 29th March, but decided to go up to London and cover some events happening in and around Parliament Square. But I found I wasn’t really well enough, and had to leave and come home much earlier than I had intended, before things were expected to get rather livelier later in the day when extreme right protesters were expected to march join those already in the square.


Brexiteers protest Betrayal – Parliament Square

Brexit, Fridays For Future & Turkey
‘Clean out the Augean Stables’ was doubtless the kind of snappy slogan that would appeal to Rees-Mogg

Friday 29th March had been the original deadline for the UK to leave the EU established when Theresa May triggered Article 50 and this was approved by the House of Commons, officially notifying the European Council of its intention to leave.

Brexit, Fridays For Future & Turkey

But things had not gone to plan, Parliament had dithered and there had been no real attempt to make the necessary negotiations for our departure – and indeed these have only really been completed with the Windsor Framework more or less agreed a month ago. Boris Johnson won an election on his promise of an ‘oven-ready agreement’ but this turned out as might have been expected to be half-baked.

Brexit, Fridays For Future & Turkey

Even with the agreement over the Irish border – if it proves workable, much still need to be agreed to really sort out our relationship with the EU and get things back to normal, though even that will be rather unsatisfactory compared with EU membership.

Brexiteers came to Parliament Square to protest against this failure to leave by the deadline, holding posters and banners. Later a ‘Leave Means Leave’ march arrived with two Orange marching bands.

There was a lot of noisy shouting and some MPs who walked through the crowd were subjected to angry abuse, while a few who were ardent supporters of Brexit stopped riedly to talk with the protesters.

There were also a few Remain supporters, and while I was present they were largely ignored by the Brexiteers and the atmosphere remained generally calm. Among them was #EUsupergirl Madeleina Kay dressed as Britannia.

But after a couple of hours I was feeling very out of breath and weak and decided I was in no state to continue working, particularly as things were expected to get rather more heated as the extreme right Tommy Robinson and the Democratic Football Lads Alliance were expected to arrive shortly.

Brexiteers protest Betrayal


Fridays for Future climate protest – Parliament Square

Although the Brexiteers were the largest and noisiest group in Parliament Square, others were also protesting and I photographed them too.

The school strike for climate was one of many weekly #FridaysForFuture events taking place in many cities and towns across the world. These protests were inspired by the action of 15-year old Greta Thunberg who instead of going back to school at the end of the Summer break in August broke the law by protesting outside the Swedish Parliament.

Fridays for Future climate protest


Kurds support hunger strikers – Houses of Parliament

On the pavement in front of Parliament as I was getting ready to leave I photographed a group of Kurds who were protesting in solidarity with hunger strikers in Turkey, some of whom had been on hunger strike since November.

The strikes began on November 7th and were against the imprisonment of members of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) and the Free Women’s Congress, as well as many journalists, socialists and LGBTI+ campaigners. A number of Kurds in the UK have also gone on hunger strike in sympathy, including two of those taking part in this protest.

Leading the hunger strike in Turkey was HDP MP Leyla Güven, on indefinite hunger strike for over 110 days, vowing to continue until death unless the isolation of Kurdish Leader Abudullah Ocalan in prison was ended – and called an end to her hunger strike in May when this happened, having kept alive by consuming only Vitamin B and salty and sugary liquids.

The UK government continues to support Turkey as a fellow member of NATO despite the continuing human rights abuses there. Ocalan and many other Kurds remain in jail and many Kurds have been killed.

Kurds support hunger strikers


Arctic 30, Gurkhas, Zombies & John Lewis

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022

Another busy day for me in London on Saturday 2nd November 2013, though I spent quite a lot of it in a pub with zombies who were putting on a rather late Halloween appearance. But there were more serious things as well.


Free Kieron & Arctic 30 – Russian Embassy, Notting Hill. Sat 2 Nov 2013

Family, friends & supporters of freelance videojournalist Kieron Bryan, one of the 30 arrested on Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise, held a silent vigil at the Russian Embassy, delivering a petition signed by over 1000 journalists calling for his release.

There was intense media interest in the event, with several TV crews, radio journalists and photographers, perhaps because the imprisonment of a journalist is a threat to all journalists around the world. Unusually the Russian embassy had agreed to meet Kieron’s brother and take the petition, and although no photography is permitted in the private street in which it (and the Israeli embassy) are situated I was able to photograph him standing in the gate to the street holding it.

The Arctic 30 had sailed to the Russian Arctic on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in September 2013 to protest peacefully against Gazprom’s plans to start oil production in the Arctic. The ship was seized and they were kept in custody for two months before being released on bail in November – after the Netherlands had filed a case at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea which led to an order for the crew and Dutch-registered vessel to be released while the case was being considered. Although Russia ignored this ruling they did release the journalists, activists and crew, and six months later, the ship. Probably protests such as this helped to persuade them to do so.

The Dutch government filed complaints at the European Court against the unlawful detention of the Dutch-registered ship and the protesters also took a case claiming that hey had been detained unlawfully and their right to freedom of expression had been breached.

Free Kieron & Arctic 30


Gurkha Veterans Hunger Strike for Justice – Downing St, Sat 2 Nov 2013

Gurkha wives and widows support the campaign for justice

Although high-profile earlier campaigns supported by Joanna Lumley and others in the broadcast media have led to increased support for former Gurkha soldiers, elderly Gurkha veterans did not benefit from these and most live here in extreme poverty.

After submitting their petition to Prime Minister David Cameron and the Nepalese Prime Minister in April and getting no satisfactory result and they had “with a heavy heart” begun a series of hunger strikes. These had begun in late October with a “13 days relay hunger strike in the name of the 13 Ghurka VCs” which was in progress when I took these pictures, demanding equal pensions, compensation, a preserved pension for those made redundant, the right of settlement in the UK for their adult children and free medical treatment in Nepal.

Five days later some began a hunger strike until death, and after two weeks the government offered talks and this was halted.

Gurkha Veterans Hunger Strike


LoNdOn ZoMbIE WaLk VII – Soho, Sat 2 Nov 2013

I met with around a hundred zombies in Waxy O’Connor’s pub on Rupert St, where they were drinking for a couple of hours occasionally emerging into the dim daylight of Wardour St for a fag break.

Around 4pm as dusk was falling the multitude of undead staggered up the stairs to begin their crawl around Londinium in search of brains and booze. I left them to it.

Among those on Gerrard Street were a group of Zombie Police whose warrant cards carried the message ‘A pint of Cider and Black Please’.

Announced as the seventh consecutive year for this event, it followed on from some earlier ‘Crawls of the Dead’ which began in 2004.

Inside the pub the lighting was low and I needed to use flash. While the Nikon flash gun I was using in the hot-shoe of my camera is generally a great performer I had some problems. While it is OK with the camera in landscape mode, turning the setup through 90 degrees for portrait format images isn’t really very successful. And I also found myself unable to use the usually magical i-TTL mode, not because of some zombie spells, but as later searches through the fat manual at home revealed it is incompatible with the camera mode I had set for the dark interior. I think the camera and flash manual have a total of well over 500 pages – these things are just too complicated for mortals.

LoNdOn ZoMbIE WaLk VII


City Link & Cleaners at John Lewis – Oxford St, Sat 2 Nov 2013

As the final zombies staggered out of the pub to crawl Soho I rushed away to Oxford Street where cleaners were holding a protest outside the flagship John Lewis Store, and were today joined by City Link workers who deliver goods for the company.

City Link was sold off earlier in the year to Jon Moulton’s private equity group ‘Better Capital’ and face pay cuts, enforced overtime, loss of bonus scheme and other changes. They were protesting with John Lewis’s cleaners who are fighting to get a living wage and better working conditions. Unlike other staff in the store who are directly employed by the company as ‘partners’ and share in the profits through a bonus scheme, cleaners are outsourced to a cleaning company and paid less than a pittance, with unsocial hours and poor conditions of service. John Lewis management wash their hands and say it it nothing to do with them.

City Link & Cleaners at John Lewis


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

Monday, October 10th, 2022

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


Turkey and Voting Systems

Monday, July 25th, 2022

Turkey and Voting Systems – Saturday 25th July 2015, seven years ago today,wasn’t a particularly busy day for me in London, and I covered only three protests. What caught my attention, because of our current political situation was a protest following the May 2015 election over the unfairness of our current voting system. The other two were about repression in another country which has featured greatly in the news recently particularly over the export of grain from the Ukraine, our NATO ally Turkey.


Free Steve Kaczynski from Turkish Jail – Kingsway

Turkey and Voting Systems

Steve Kaczynski, born in Scotland was at one time employed by the BBC World Service as an expert on Turkey. He was arrested in April 2015 during a raid on a left-wing Turkish cultural centre on suspicion of being a British spy and was still in jail without charge, now on hunger strike.

Turkey and Voting Systems

Kaczynski was at the centre to show international solidarity against fascism when it was raided by Turkish police following a hostage incident in a courthouse where a state prosecutor and the two gunmen holding him captive were killed, but there is no evidence that he was in any way involved with the incident.

Turkey and Voting Systems

The Turkish media has made much of rumours leaked by the government that he was a British or German spy, but those who know him find this impossible to believe. His arrest appears to be part of a systematic programme by the AKP Turkish government to intimidate any political opposition.

The protest outside the building housing the Counsellor’s Office for Culture & Information of the Turkish Embassy on Kingsway, close to Holborn Station, included some from the British left as well as the Turkish Popular Front in the UK. Those who knew him described him as a kind and gentle man who abhors violence and has long campaigned for human rights and political freedom. The protesters handed out leaflets to people passing by and made a lot of noise singing and chanting, but the office was closed on a Saturday morning and it was unlikely that there was anyone in there to hear them.

Steve Kaczynski was finally released three months later, after surviving a 61 day hunger strike.

Free Steve Kaczynski from Turkish Jail


Make seats match votes – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Great Britain in balloons, viewed from the north-west tip of the Scottish mainland

The May 2015 General Election resulted in the Conservative Party who got only 36.8% of the votes, just a little over a third, being returned with an overall majority, though only a small one.

A lone Green balloon on the south coast – and not enough room to put in the London area


Our first past the post constituency-based electoral system brings in huge differences based on both which party you vote for and the area in which you live. There was a Tory MP elected for every 34, 241 Tory voters, a Labour MP for every 40,290 Labour voters, but a Lib-Dem for every 301,990 Lib-Demo Voters and only 1 UKIP and one Green MP despite their parties getting 3,881,099 and 1,157,630 votes respectively. Two small parties with significant votes got no MPs at all.

A petition had been started before the election by Owen Winter, the independent member of the youth parliament for Cornwall, got over 200,000 signatures in a week or two and their were other similar well-supported petitions on other sites calling for voting reform and a system of proportional representation that would result in a government that reflected how people voted – signed in total by more than half a million people.

The protest included a map of the UK made by balloons of different colours for the various parties holding seats in the UK, which doubtless made sense for anyone sitting in a helicopter above the event but was pretty well impossible to see and photograph clearly at ground level.

After a short introduction, people went through the ‘map’ with pins popping balloons for the constituencies where no candidate got over 50% of the votes. Again this was hard to make visual sense out of at ground level.

What seemed to me lacking – apart from the other 499,000 or so who had signed the petitions – was any clear suggest of how a fairer voting system might work, though on My London Diary I put forward one suggestion which might work as well as retaining some of the advantages of the present system. But almost any system of PR would give us a fairer result than the current one, popular with the Conservatives and Labour as it entrenches their unfair advantage. Although the SNP also benefit from the current system they support electoral reform.

Make seats match votes


Kurds blame Turks for Suruc massacre – Downing St

32 Young activists were massacred by ISIS at Suruc on their way with toys, books and other materials to build a playground, library and other projects in Kobani (or Kobane). Kurds and supporters protested at Downing St, blaming our NATO ally Turkey for supporting ISIS.

People hold pictures of some of those killed by ISIS

Kobani is a Kurdish-majority city in northern Syria, close to the Syria–Turkey border, which became a part of Rojava, the autonomous area in the north of Syria under Kurdish control as a consequence of the Syrian Civil War. It was beseiged by ISIS from September 2014 to January 2015, and the defeat of ISIS in the area by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, backed by US air support was a key turning point in the war against Islamic State.

Turkey has carried out a campaign of repression against the Kurds in Turkey who in return have been trying, sometimes by military means, to free themselves from Turkish domination which treats them as inferior citizens, outlawing their language and culture, and kidnapped and still holds their leader, Abdullah Ocalan. More recently Turkey has invaded parts of Rojava, and the Kobani area accepted the Syrian Army and their Russian support into the area in an attempt to protect it from Turkish invasion.

Turkey allows ISIS to operate on and across their border, as well as assisting them in the smuggling out of oil and other goods through Turkey vital in their economic support. They have also allowed recruits and supplies to reach them through Turkey. They appear to hope that ISIS will solve the Kurdish problem for them by defeating the Kurds in Iraq ad Syria.

After many speeches, including one by Edmonton MP Kate Osamor who has many Kurds in her constituency, they marched off towards the BBC which they say ignores attacks on Kurds and routinely sides, like the British Government with the Turkish government against them.

Kurds blame Turks for Suruc massacre


Windrush, Missile Defence and Rathayatra – 2008

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022

Windrush, Missile Defence and Rathayatra – 2008 On Sunday 22 June 2008 I photographed two events celebrating anniversaries in London as well as a protest supporting Czech hunger strikers who – like 70% of the Czech people – were opposing the building of an American radar base near Prague – part of the US Missile Defence system.


Empire Windrush – 60th Anniversary – Clapham Common

Sixty years previously, on June 22, 1948, the SS Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, bringing 492 Caribbeans – many of who had served in the British armed forces during the war – from Jamaica to start a new life in England. They had paid £28 10s (£28.50) for the passage and were the first large group of settlers from the Empire to come to live in the ‘Mother Country’.

The events celebrating this in 2008 now seem very low key and that at the bandstand close to the Clapham South deep level shelter on the edge of Clapham Common where many of them were given temporary housing was one of several organised by Christian Aid, together with the Windrush Trust and Churches Together in South London.

Next year will be the 75th anniversary and it will be interesting to see how this is celebrated. The years since 2008 have been marked by revelations about the terrible treatment by our government of the Windrush generation and their families, suffering from the hostile environment, deportations and racism promoted by the Home Office. Whatever celebrations there are will I think be rather more political, and probably better attended.

In 2008 the event celebrated the great contribution made by the Caribbean community to life in this country, and were reminded of the contribution of Clapham to the fight against slavery, but began with relatively little about the racist treatment they had received here, and which was about to be ratcheted up officially when the Tories came to power.

This changed towards the end of the event when Mark Sturge, former director of African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, talked about the contribution black majority churches had made in the UK. He reminded us that Black immigrants were faced with discrimination at almost every turn, with notices “No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs” and other insults. Many came from religious backgrounds and turned to the largely white churches, and also found they were seldom welcome there. They became the pioneers of black-led churches, which provided an important support, not just religion, but also in education and other areas of life, helping them to face up to and fight against discrimination.

We had also got a taste of how it had been when Jacqueline Walker, who arrived in Britain as a young child a few years later in 1959, gave us an insight into what arriving in the country felt like, with readings from her book ‘Pilgrim State’.

Empire Windrush – 60th Anniversary


40th Rathayatra Chariot Festival in London – Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square

Two men carry Jagannatha from the car to the chariot.

The day was also the 40th annual Rathayatra Chariots Festival in London, which saw Krishna in the form of Jagannatha, his half-sister Subhadra, and Balarama her brother carried on huge chariots pulled through the streets of London by Hare Krishna devotees.

The effigy of the founder of ISKCON, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is lifted onto one of the chariots.

You can see more pictures from another year in other posts on My London Diary and here in the recent post Ten Years Ago – Chariots & Custody Deaths.

40th Rathayatra Chariot Festival in London


No to US Missile Defence – Support Czech Hunger Strike – Downing St

Although I condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine both in 2014 when the war there began and its escalation since February, activities by the West including the setting up of an American radar base near Prague as a part of the US Missile Defence system do provide some explanation for the Russian fears that have led to the current terrible situation.

70% of the Czech people apparently were against the building of the radar base, and some had gone on a hunger strike against it. CND held a rally and all-day fast on Whitehall opposite Downing Street to show their support. They included well-known peace campaigners such as CND chair Kate Hudson and veteran protester Pat Arrowsmith.

No to US Missile Defence


Gitmo, London Uni, Ethiopia, Israel & Ukraine Miners

Monday, May 23rd, 2022

Gitmo, London Uni, Ethiopia, Israel & Ukraine Miners – Protests in London on Friday 23rd May 2014 included those against the continuing illegal detentions in Guantánamo, redundancies for support workers at London University, killing and human rights abuses in Ethiopia and those supporting hunger strikes in Israeli jails and strikes by miners in Ukraine.


Obama keep your promises – Trafalgar Square

A year after President Obama again pledged to close Guantánamo, activists in black hoods and orange jumpsuits in London and 40 other cities reminded him of yet another broken promise and called for the urgent release of Londoner Shaker Aamer – prisoner 239. The protest in London was part of an international day of action coordinated by the US organisation Witness Against Torture.

In the year since Obama made the promise only 12 prisoners have been released and 154 remain, subjected to appalling conditions, beatings and daily abuse of their human rights. Former London resident Shaker Aamer’s family in Battersea include a son born a few months after his capture by bandits in Afghanistan. He was one of the first transferred to Guantanamo and has been there over 12 years, despite having been cleared more than once for release.

More at Obama keep your promises.


Defend UoL Garden Halls workers – Senate House, University of London

The IWGB trade union protested at Senate House, the headquarters building of the University of London demanding proper consultation and negotiation over the redundancies of 80 workers at the University of London’s Garden Halls in Bloomsbury.

Those under threat of losing their jobs include porters, cleaners and security guards and include many of those who are active in the continuing struggle for proper sick pay, holidays and pensions in the ‘3 Cosas’ campaign at London University.

Although most of the workers are members of the independent union, the Independent Workers of Great Britain, both the University and its contracted employer Cofely refuse to talk with the IWGB and recognise instead more compliant traditional unions with few if any members among the workers. The IWGB states “many of these workers have been at the University of London for decades” and “the University bears responsibility for the treatment of these workers, regardless of the fact that their roles are contracted to private companies.”

The lunchtime protest was a noisy one with with workers using a megaphone, drums, whistles and shouting to make their demands heard. They intend to come back every Friday until the end of term or until management engages in meaningful talks over the issues.

More at Defend UoL Garden Halls workers.


Oromo and Ogaden against Ethiopian killings – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Oromo and Ogaden National Liberation Front supporters had come to protest opposite Parliament over the Ethiopian government’s killing of Oromo university students peacefully protesting the grabbing of Oromo land and calling for the release of political prisoners.

There are around 30 million Oromo living in Ethopia and adjoining areas of Somalia and they are the Largest ethnic group in the country; their language is Africa’s third most widely spoken. There were a number of democratic kingdoms in the area before they were conquered in the late nineteenth century by Abyssinian emperor Menlik II, aided by the European colonial powers and their modern weapons. Around half the Oromo are said to have been killed in these wars and since then successive regimes have made determined attempts to destroy Oromo identity – its language, culture, customs and traditions.

This oppression continues, now with the help of the US government who since 9/ll have worked with the Ethopian government as part of their worlwide fight against “terrorism”, according tto BBC Newsnight and and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism “using billions of dollars of development aid as a tool for political oppression” with programmes of deliberate starvation of communities, and “of mass detentions, (and) the widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings.

More at Oromo and Ogaden against Ethiopian killings.


Support Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails – G4S HQ, Victoria St

Protesters outside the London HQ of security firm G4S supported the mass hunger strike by Palestinians demanding an end to Israels’s illegal policy of rolling Administrative Detention which can jail them for years without charge or trial in prisons which G4S secures.

The hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners had begun a month earlier with 134 detainees taking part. Israel uses administrative detention to imprison Palestinians indefinitely without charge or trial, using rolling detention orders of 1-6 months which are renewable indefinitely in defiance of international law.

The detention orders are based on “secret evidence” which neither those detained or their lawyers have any right to see, and in the years up to 2014 there had been around 2000 made each year. Those given them include 9 Palestinian MPs. Often when released from one order detainees are immediately re-arrested on another.

Those taking part in hunger strikes included 34 years old Ayman Al-Tabeesh who has spent over 10 years in Israeli prisons. He began his second hunger strike in February 2014 and 70 days later had lost over 25kg; at the time of this protest he had been advised after 85 days that he was at grave risk of a heart attack. His brother had sent a message of support to the protesters for their earlier protest in support of the hunger strikers stating “We need you to tell the international community of Israel’s criminal brutality against our prisoners, the violation of their rights. The occupations illegal never ending administrative detention orders is nothing less than a slow death for Palestinian prisoners.”

More at Support Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails.


Solidarity with Ukrainian Miners – Holborn

A protest outside the registered offices of London mining company Evraz, owned by Russian Oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, supported miners in the Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine who had ensured peace and unity at Kryviy Rih and were striking to maintain real wages.

Kryviy Rih is a city in south-east Ukraine, at the centre of the largest steel industry in Eastern Europe with a population of around three-quarters of a million people. Protests there in 2014 demanded “Putin, Get Out!” and supported the Ukrainian government against the Russian separatists in Ukraine, with the Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine organising to defend the protests there.

The miners were striking for a doubling of wages to meet the rapid rise in the cost of living which has meant a 30-505 drop in real wages. They were angered after a 20% increase promised the previous month was not paid. The Miner’s union state “We are deeply convinced that the main cause of the destabilised situation in the country is the greed of Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who pay a beggar’s wage to workers, send all their profits off-shore and don’t pay taxes in Ukraine. In fact the oligarchs are almost completely exempt from taxes on their profits.”

On 11th May 2014 the miners had marched through the streets of Kryvyy Rih to protest at the offices of the mining company EVRAZ and had called for support in London where the company, owned by Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich, along with his business partner Alexander Abramov, is based. The protest in Holborn was one of a number including at the registered office of the company in the City of London, at Chelsea Football Ground and elsewhere. This year, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine the British government accused the company of “providing financial services or making available funds, economic resources, goods or technology that could contribute to destabilising Ukraine” and after sanctions were applied to Abramovich the trading of Evraz shares on the London Stock Exchange was suspended.

In April 2022, Russian forces were around 60km from the city, but the ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih steel plant which had closed down all of its four blast furnaces at the start of the Russian invasion restarted production with one furnace in early April, though hampered by the loss of around 94% of their staff to military duties or by evacuation.

More at Solidarity with Ukrainian Miners.


Nakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils

Wednesday, May 18th, 2022

NakNakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils – Saturday 18th May 2013 was another busy day for protests in London and I covered a number of demonstrations.


End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when the state of Israel was created, Palestinians and their supporters protested outside parliament calling for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.

There had been protests in Jerusalem earlier in the week on Nabka Day against the continuing sanctions against Palestinians that have crowded them into an ever-decreasing area of land, diminishing almost daily as new Israeli settlements are created and new restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinians. Many of those protesting in London from Jewish or Palestinian backgrounds and as usual these included a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who had walked down from North London; they see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism.

The speeches were continuing when I left to cover another event. More at End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing


London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall

On the opposite side of the River Thames thousands were gathering by the Royal Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, alarmed at the attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.

Nine years later we are seeing the effect of these policies with ambulance services unable to cope with demand, lengthy delays in treating people in A&E, delays in diagnosing cancers leading to increased deaths and more. And although it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic like Covid, and exercises had shown what needed to be done to prepare for this, the NHS had not been given the resources to prepare for this, leading to much higher death rates than some comparable countries.

Part of the problems of the NHS come from disastrous PFI agreements pushed through under the Labour government, landing NHS trusts with huge debts that will continue for many years. This forced NHS trusts into disastrous hospital closure plans, some of which were defeated by huge public campaigns. Many of those marching were those involved in these campaigns at Lewisham, Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex, Whittington and other hospitals around London.

I left the march as it entered Whitehall for a rally there. More at London Marches to Defend NHS.


Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square

London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.

More at Guantánamo Murder Scene.


More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square

Other protesters outside the US Embassy included Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when they held him and was now being tortured by the Iraqis and also was on hunger strike. She has protested with her daughter Zeinab outside the US Embassy for a number of weekends and on this occasion was joined by a small group of Muslims who had come to protest against Guantanamo, appalled by the actions of the US waging a war against Islam and Muslims.

Shawki Ahmed Omar is still held in Iraq; before he died in 2021 former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded a video calling for his release which was posted to YouTube in with the comment by another US lawyer “This case is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.”

A few yards away, kept separate by police, a group of supporters of the Syrian regime, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was also holding a protest in favour of the Assad regime and against western intervention in Syria.

More at More US Embassy Protests.


Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place

I met thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK as they marched through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre, many dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. Many wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.

Although it was a large protest, with perhaps around 5,000 marchers I think it received absolutely no coverage in UK media, and I seemed to be the only non-Tamil photographer present. Tamils were rightly disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax.

The march had started from Hyde Park, and I caught up with it on Piccadilly and went with it taking photographs to Waterloo Place where there was to be a rally. But it had been a long day for me and I left just before this started.

More at Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide.