imperialism | >Re-PHOTO

Stop the War March – 2001

Stop the War March: The Stop the War march in London on Saturday 13th October 2001 was the first protest where I put more than a handful of pictures on My London Diary. They were all black and white, although I took pictures in colour as well I didn’t at the time have any way to produce good quality digital images from the negatives.

I printed some of the black and white images in the darkrom and took 10x8s to a picture library and a few have been published in print since then, but the colour negatives simply went into my files, though I usually made contact sheets or, if the film was trade processed, got enprints.

The black and white pictures I put on My London Diary at the time were usually scanned from prints made in the darkroom, scanned using a black and white flatbed scanner. It was only later that I got a decent film scanner and a colour flatbed. The main commercial demand for work was still black and white – though I made many colour prints in my darkroom. And because most people then still accessed the internet through slow dial-up connections, I posted images on line at small sizes and greatly compressed – these image files are only 20-40 Kb each, while now I might post files 50 times larger.

A little over a year after taking these pictures I got my first digital camera capable of professional work, though I’d been playing with consumer digitals for several years. The move to being completely digital took me a few years, mainly because I had specialised film cameras that could let me work in ways that were not then possible with digital.

I didn’t in 2001 write anything directly about these pictures, or about the protest which was against invading Iraq, one of a whole series by Stop the War I photographed. The only major London protest against the Iraq invasion I missed was the huge one in February 2023, when I had only come out of hospital the day before and was still too weak to work.

But the US decision to invade Iraq – already actually made when this protest took place although the invasion only took place in March 2003 – was a response to the September 2001 attacks by Al Queda when two planes were flown into and destroyed the Twin Towers in New York.

I was in 2001 working for a New York based web site, though writing my content here in England. I was also teaching part-time and had ended a lesson and was getting ready to leave for home when a distressed colleague in tears called me into her office and we watched together as the attack unfolded on the news on her PC. She had lived and worked in New York not far from where it was taking place.

Just over a month later, with these pictures I posted some of my thoughts. I had earlier written about the photographs of the events in a feature which had attracted over a million views on-line overnight. The pictures and videos taken by people as they fled down the stairways or watched in shock from outside had a raw power that was often enhanced by their flaws. Anyway, here is what I wrote in 2011, which I think is still relevant.

September 11 actually had a serious impact on my work. Most of the people who read my features are in the USA and I had to think carefully about what to do. I was asked to write a piece about the photography of the event and spent a long time looking at the pictures and writing.

Justice is perhaps the most important of concepts to get to grips with. I have a firm belief that in a just society things like the WTC horror would not happen. I’m not a pacifist – I think there are times when non-violence is an effective tactic and other occasions where it just will not work. However I think that there were many more avenues to be explored before anyone could be justified in starting a military attack. Not only is the actual attack likely to be counter-productive, but it will result in the USA and its allies taking their eyes off the real ball.

And that is not in Afghanistan but in the Middle East, in Jerusalem and in Gaza.

More pictures from the 2001 protest begin here on My London Diary.

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Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou’s

Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou’s: Thursday 1st August 2019 was a long and busy day for me with an Afrikan Emancipation Day protest, finishing a walk in North Woolwich I’d begun six months earlier and photographing an evening protest outside the exclusive Mayfair club LouLou’s.

Afrikans demand reparations – Brixton, London.

Afrikans demand Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou's

People of African origin met in Windrush Square in the morning to demand an end of the Maangamizi, the continuing genocide and ecocide of African peoples and Africa on Afrikan Emancipation Day.

After speeches & libations they marched from Brixton to Westminster with a petition calling for an end to acts of violence by Britain, the misuse of taxes and the stolen legacy plundered from Afrika under the British Empire and European Imperialism and demanding reparations.

The protest was supported by Extinction Rebellion XR Connecting Communities who marched in an Ubuntu Non-Afrikan Allies bloc.

I left the march as it went past Brixton Police Station on its way to protest outside the Houses of Parliament so I could have some lunch before going to take pictures elsewhere.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Afrikans demand reparations.

DLR – Bank to North Woolwich

I’d taken the tube back into central London to have a quick lunch before taking the DLR from Bank to London City to King George V Dock station for the final section of the walk I had begun in February but had run out of time to finish because I’d had to take a roundabout route to get there as the direct DLR services were suspended following an accident.

This time the trains were running properly. They start from Bank and so come into the station empty and I was able to chose my seat and for once I found myself sitting next to a clean window on my way to North Woolwich and took a number of pictures.

Later on my way back to Canary Wharf from King George V I was less lucky and the windows were rather grimy, but I still made a few images.

More at DLR – Bank to London City Airport.

North Woolwich, Royal Docks & the Thames

*The footpath goes across these gates of the entrance lock to Albert Dock Basin*

I took a few pictures as I walked from the elevated King George V station at North Woolwich to the King George V Dock entrance and joined the path by the river.

The lock here is huge, 243.8m long and 30.48m wide. I’d first photographed the area back in the 1980s as a part of a wider project on the Docklands following their closure, both in colour but mainly in black and white – in the album 1984 London Photographs. Although the docks themselves remain, much around them has changed, although there are still some derelict areas.

The riverside path here is part of the Capital Ring, and continues north and over lock at the Albert Dock entrance to the curiously desolate Armada Green Recreation Area.

Here the path ends, with beyond it the former site of the Beckton Gas Works, used as a location for at least 17 films and TV series since its closure, though best known as a stand-in for Vietnam in the 1987 Full Metal Jacket. Past that is the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, set up in 1864 as part of Joseph Bazalgette’s scheme to treat London’s sewage and still receiving it from all of London north of the Thames.

I had to turn inland, through more recent development and the refurbished Gallions Hotel around Alber Dock Basin. I went briefly under the new bridge to see again the East London University student residences, then went back and across it, taking more pictures from the bridge and the road on my way back to King George V station.

Many more pictures at North Woolwich Royal Docks & Thames.

LouLou’s stop exploiting your workers – Mayfair

Finally I joined the IWGB Cleaners and Facilities Branch outside the exclusive Mayfair private club LouLou’s where they were picketing and protesting for kitchen porters to be paid a living wage, be treated with dignity, respect and given decent terms and conditions including proper sick pay, holidays and pension contributions. Recently outsourced to ACT, porters want to be returned to direct employment.

Among those supporting them were Class War, and in the picture above Ian Bone confronts a police office asking why they protect and support the rich. Needless to say the officer had no answer to the question. In general the protesters were reasonably behaved and acting within the law, but police and security hired by the club worked together to try and prevent their protest being effective.

There were angry scenes as staff escorted wealthy clients of the £1800 a year club past the picket, particularly when some roughly pushed the protesters. Police repeatedly warned the protesters but not the security men or customers who had assaulted them. The security also tried to prevent the picket from handing their flier to the customers.

As at previous protests outside of the club, none of the security staff were wearing the visible SIA door supervisor licences required under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, but the police refused to take any action over this.

More pictures at LouLou’s stop exploiting your workers.

CND Protest US Star Wars Programme

CND Protest US Star Wars Programme – 20th March 2002, twenty years ago today.

The US under President Bush was in 2002 intent on achieving what it termed ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ and not content with ruling the planet on earth were developing a system to ensure their dominance in space. At the heart of this was their ‘Star Wars’ programme, using lasers to form a protective shield and destroy any incoming missiles before they reached US soil, enabling the US to launch a nuclear attack with impunity, knowing they could survive a retaliatory attack.

It was a weapons system that would have destroyed the idea of nuclear deterrence, the mutual assured destruction (MAD) doctrine of military strategy which had supposedly prevented nuclear war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and put the US in a position to threaten Russia with nuclear attack. The Cold War may have ended with the breakup of the USSR, but it was still the basis for US military strategy – with consequences were are now seeing in Ukraine.

But like most military spending and wars, it was a policy with great prospects for the arms industry, and in particular Lockheed Martin, the US’s large weapons manufacturer, with deep roots in the US administration – including at the time the wife of the US vice-President Dick Cheney, whose wife Lynn just happened to be on their board.

The UN had early seen the dangers of war in space with the 1976 Outer Space Treaty which made it an area solely for peaceful uses. And in November 2001 they passed a new UN resolution ‘Prevention Of An Arms Race In Outer Space’ with only the US, Israel and Micronesia abstaining.

The US began its weaponisation of space by setting up the US Air Force Space Command in 1982. The UK lends a helping hand with allowing both Menwith Hill and Fylingdales to be used as a part of the Star Wars programme. I’ve not been to the various protests at these bases but I did photograph the march from Hyde Park to a rally in Trafalgar Square organised by CND against Star Wars on 30th March 2002, twenty years ago today.

CND were joined by Stop The War protesting against the planned invasion of Iraq, as well as by pro-Palestine protesters following the publication of the Arab peace initiative which had been published two days earlier, but overshadowed by a Palestinian attack on a hotel during a Passover seder the previous day in which 30 Israeli citizens were killed. The initiative was in any case rejected as a “non-starter” by Israel.

Demonstrations back in 2002 still took place largely in black and white – and I was unable at the time to digitise any of the colour film I took. One day I hope to get around to it. Police acted as usual during the march, threatening at times to beat the marchers badly if they got out of hand, and large numbers protected the US embassy in Grosvenor Square to prevent any action there. They issued the usual estimate of numbers present, apparently unable to see half of the crowd.

I only put around a dozen images online – so most of them are here. The link to them is at the bottom of this page, from which you can also view the other events I photographed in March 2002.

Global South leads Climate March 2015

*Global Frontlines bloc banner ‘Still fighting CO2onialism – Your Climate Profits Kill’*

Many groups came together for a march through London on 29th November 2015 about the need for action over global warming and climate change on the weekend before the Paris talks. It had been agreed that the march should be led by the Global Frontlines block, as the Global South is already being more affecte by climate change.

But on the day the organisers, representing the large groups including Avaaz, changed their mind. They decided to put the main march banner along with some of those in carnival animal costumes at the front of the march as they felt the Global Frontline was too radical, wanting system change not sops.

The organisers decided to put their main banner and a section of animal costumed carnivalistas in front to hide this more radical group, but not surprisingly the Global Frontlines group were not having this and moved back in front of the carnival. The organisers then sent in the private security guards they had employed to steward the march rather than relying as most other protests do on volunteers, with orders to hold back the more radical block and remove some of the more political placards and coffins that were being carried.

It was hardly surprising that this move was resisted, and the protesters stood their ground, and repelled the security guards. The organisers then called the police to try and enlist their help to move the bloc from the front of the march, but other than passing on the organisers’ request I understand they sensibly refused to try to illegally remove the block. The whole argument was a disgraceful attempt to de-politicise the event and to marginalise those facing the sharp end of climate change, and one which they successfully resisted.

The banner at the front of the Global Frontlines block – and thus march as a whole – read ‘STILL FIGHTING CO2ONIALISM YOUR CLIMATE PROFITS KILL‘ and there were others with anti-colonial messages including ‘Extractivism is Colonialism‘ and other anti-mining sentiments. Apparently what worried the more conservative charities most was the message ‘British Imperialism causes Climate Change‘ as well as two coffins naming companies BP and BHP Billiton.

The organisers held back the rest of the march to leave a longish gap between this group and the rest of the march led by the the ‘The People’s March for Climate & Jobs‘ banner which the organisers had tried to put in the lead, along with its white rabbit and giraffes. But when the Global Frontlines stopped and sat in the road for a protest close the offices of BP in St James Square, many of the more radical groups in the main march streamed past this banner to join the march up again.

It was an unfortunate dispute, and one that for many of us undermined the credentials of some of the more affluent protest groups, who many on the left suspect of being funded by corporations and governments to try to tame the environmental movement rather than effectively oppose climate change. It seems quite clear that without some drastic system change we are doomed to see business as usual taking us to extinction.

More about the march and many more pictures – giraffes and all – on My London Diary:
Global Frontlines lead Climate March
March for Climate Action Starts