Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023: Apart from a protest by Just Stop Oil against the way their protests are being policed and non-violent protesters being given lengthy prison sentences because of political pressure by our government which has continued to move away from our ideas of liberal democracy towards a police state, all but one of the other events I photographed were about the continuing genocide of the people of Gaza. More and more civilians – men, women and especially children – were being killed every day, more forced to move out of their homes with nowhere safe to go, and an increasing humanitarian crisis – with many workers for relief agencies also being killed by Israeli forces.
The situation in Brixton was rather confused and I got different stories from different people. The police too were arguing with each other for much of the time before a Senior Commander arrived, stopped another officer who had been trying to calm the situation and brought in reinforcements. There were at least two arrests, one for carrying a placard which I think compared in some way the actions of Israel in Gaza with those of the Nazis and the second for damaging a police vehicle.
It was almost the end of the year. Christmas too was overshadowed by the news of new killings and increasing suffering in Gaza. Christmas festivities were cancelled in Bethlehem, and the Nativity scene at the The Evangelical Lutheran Church there showed the newborn Jesus wrapped in a kaffiyeh an a heap of rubble to show solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Like many others I greeted the passing of 2023 at the end of New Year’s Eve with thanks that 2023 was over and the hope that 2024 would see a better year for us all. But perhaps that hope was realistically only a glimmer.
Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023: My work in November was largely on protests over the continued genocide in Gaza where Israeli attacks were killing thousands of civilians including large numbers of children as they attempted to exterminate Hamas.
The killing continues and currently in January 2024 Wikipedia states “Over 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands more are considered missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.” Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been displaced and there is a severe humanitarian crisis with a shortage of food, medicines and safe water, with most of Gaza’s hospitals no longer able to operate. It now seems certain that many Gazans will die from famine and disease. The Israeli attack has quite unequivocally become a deliberate genocide.
Protests around the world have called for a ceasefire, and this is supported by the majority of countries in the world at the UN, but the killing continues with support for the Israeli offensive from the USA and UK and a few other countries.
While both Israel and the Palestinian resistance have committed war crimes, Israel is doing so on a huge industrial scale. Refugee camps and Hospitals have been deliberately targeted and many hospital staff are among the thousands of Palestinians detained in Israel. More journalists have already been killed in Gaza than the total number killed in six years of the Second World War and Israel has prevented the world’s press from reporting from Gaza and the parts of Israel which came under attack by Hamas and the other Palestinian groups.
It was getting dark as I took pictures of the Egyptian Embassy and I was tired and feeling chilled by the speeches. I think I first photographed Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain around 20 years ago and have never felt welcome as I took pictures. But I also remember that I didn’t take them seriously when years ago they talked about ‘Muslim Armies’ – and then we saw the rise of ISIS and I realised how wrong I had been.
The final part of my looking back on 2023 will be online tomorrow.
Whitechapel & Illegal Dates; On Saturday 27th September 2014 I went to Whitechapel early to photograph campaigners who were to protest against Sainsbury’s who were selling dates and other goods from illegal Israeli settlements, in defiance of international law. Around two years earlier I had made a panoramic image of part of the new Royal London Hospital which interested me but I felt was not quite what I wanted.
Going back to re-take photographs is often disappointing, with key features having changed, but I think this time I did at least come up with an improvement. This was a more complex panorama than most of those I now make, and needed me to stitch together three separate exposures. It would perhaps be a little better with some slight cropping on the botton edge.
The Royal London Hospital has much great problems, all arising from the poor PFI deal that was used to finance its construction. All PFI schemes have turned out to be a mistake, but this was worse than most and I think has left the hospital group in financial trouble while providing excessive profits to the investors, with payments continuing for many, many years. The contract means they can charge silly prices for necessary services,
After several attempts at producing the picture I wanted I went for a short stroll around the area making a few more panoramic images before it was time to join th protest.
Sainsbury’s told Stop Selling Illegal Goods – Whitechapel High St
Campaigners from the Tower Hamlets & Jenin Friendship Association held a protest on the high Street close to Sainsbury’s, calling on the store to end selling dates and other goods from illegal Israeli settlements, in defiance of international law.
The protes was part of the international BDS campaign calling for a Boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from Israeli firms and sanctions against Israel until it ends the persecution of Palestinians and comes into line with international law and UN resolutions.
Similar protests earlier outside Co-op stores had led to the company in 2013 stating they would ‘no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements’.
The BDS campaign was given added impetus early in 2014 by the disproportionate use of force against the people of Gaza. During the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza over 2,100 Palestinians were killed, roughly 1500 of them civilians, among them over 500 children. 66 Israeli soldiers died, along with 5 Israeli civilians (including one child.) Over 500,000 people – roughly 30% of the population of the Gaza strip were displaced from their homes, and over 17,000 homes made uninhabitable, with over twice that number suffering less severe damage.
The raids also destoryed much of Gaza’s industry, including factories making biscuits, ice cream factory, plastics, sponges, cardboard boxes and plastic bags as well as the main electricity plant. Two sewage pumping stations were damaged, as were the main offices of the largest diary product importer and distributor.
The protesters had several tables on the pavement outside the library on Whitechapel High St ,one selling Palestinian olive oil, almonds and a range of decorated purses etc. Some handed out leaflets and a postcard ‘Sainsbury’s: Taste the Indifference’, while others held banners or collecting signatures for petitions. At intervals people made short speeches about the Palestinian situation and the campaign to get Sainsbury’s to stop selling illegal Israeli goods.
After an hour or so on the busy street, some of the protesters decided it was time to visit Sainsbury’s, just a couple of hundred yards away down a side-street. They folded up their banners and walked down to the store, where Sainsbury’s were ready and waiting for them with extra security on duty, and they were stopped in the very spacious lobby area in front to the store.
Here they opened up their banners and protested for a little over 10 minutes. There were a few moments of some tension, when store employees or security tried to grab one of the banners, but the whole protest and Sainsbury’s response was pretty civilised.
After 12 minutes, a man in casual dress arrived, and after asking the store manager to request the protesters to leave came across and talked with the the protesters, showing them his poolice warrant card and apologising that the police station didn’t have anyone in uniform available to send at the moment.
Having made their point by their protest, they decided to go quietly and a little exultantly back to the High Street, where others had been continuing the protest. Shortly after I decided it was time for me to leave.
Sainsbury’s appears still to refuse to follow its own ethical guidelines and still apparently sells some products from the occupied West Bank and to deal with suppliers who source goods from there, although probably rather less than in 2014. They have claimed not to source goods from the occupied territories but do still deal with wholesalers who deliberately mislable such produce.
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.
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.
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.
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.“
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.
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.