International Pillow Fight Day

World Health, Syria & a Pillow Fight: Saturday 7th April 2012 was World Health Day and health campaigners protester against the increasing privatisation of the NHS. It was also International Pillow Fight Day which was celebrated by hundreds in Trafalgar Square. Between these I photographed Free Syria supporters calling for the UK government to do more over the atrocities by the Assad regime against their relatives still in Syria.

World Health Day: Lansley’s Bill

Dept of Health, Whitehall

World Health, Syria & a Pillow Fight - 2012 — *Lansley’s Bill – Lansley lies to the media in the play performed outside the Dept of Health*

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was now law, having gained royal assent on March 27th 2012. Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley had pushed through the most extensive reorganisation of the structure of the NHS despite the united opposition of the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners and many campaigning groups.

The Act led to a greater marketisation of the NHS with an greatly increased role for private companies who mainly ‘cherry picked’ the simpler and so more readily profitable areas of service, and its structural reforms were damaging, with new complex systems of governance and accountability, while removing the system leadership needed to cope with major changes. And it didn’t give any more choice to the public – unless they went private.

Lansley’s Act failed, largely because it tried to introduce a system based on competition into a an NHS where care and cooperation was the bedrock, but it did succeed in diverting much needed funds to the private sector. By 2019 the policy of competition was effectively abandoned. Labour in 2024 commissioned a report led by Lord Darzi which called it a “broken system” and conclude it “was a calamity without international precedent – it proved disastrous. The result of the disruption was a permanent loss of capability from the NHS“.

Nurse Gail Lee began the protest by explaining that the Act was designed to lead eventually to the NHS being converted to an insurance-based healthcare system that will provide high-cost medical services for those who can afford it while retaining only a basic provision for others. So far this has not happened but there are still politicians – Labour as well as Conservatives – who are urging this.

After her short talk there was a performance of the play ‘Lansley’s Bill’ by Mike Hart, based on the facts of the planning by McKinzey Consulting and the Tories which led to the Lansley Bill, a bundle of Tory lies which opens up healthcare to the market under the misleading mantras of ‘choice’ and ‘efficiency’.

Based around the problems of a cleaner who needs the help of the new version of the NHS but is told to wait, and wait – until she dies, it makes the point that “you have a choice. You can fight for the NHS, become rich, or you can make sure you are never ill. The least worst case is to get out there and fight.”

World Health Day: Lansley’s Bill

Syrians Continue Protest Against Assad

Downing St

Free Syria Supporters protested aaginst the continuing killing, torture, imprisonment and abductions of their relatives by the Assad regime, calling on the UK government to take greater action

Some held up placards ‘For My Sister’, ‘For My Mum’ and for some at least of those wearing gags with the words ‘Freedom’ or ‘Tortured’ it was there own family who was tortured or missing or held in jail. Their protest over human rights violation was personal.

Some held family snapshots, blown up to A4, and others were taped to the railings along with lists of names, and roses dedicated to the missing and dead.

Many also called for the release of human rights activist Noura Aljizawi, who had led protests against the Asad regime, worked in hospitals to support women and children and written for the Syrian underground newspaper Hurriyat. Arrested on 28th March she was tortured and denied access to family and lawyer; an international campaign led by Reporters without Borders eventually led to her release and she fled to Turkey, continuing her campaign against the Assad government, finally relocating to Canada.

My final paragraph on the protest on My London Diary:
“On a pillar behind and on the leaflets handed out were the grim statistics. 12,460 Syrians killed since March 2011; 65,000 innocent Syrians are missing; 882 children and babies murdered, 773 women slaughtered; 212,000 men women and children are detained; 30,627 refugees fled in fear of their lives. And the numbers are still rising.”

Many more pictures at Syrians Continue Protest Against Assad.

International Pillow Fight Day

Trafalgar Square

*Feathers soon began to fly in the square*

It was International Pillow Fight Day with fights arranged in 111 cities around the world in an event promoted by the urban playground movement.

*A whistle signalled the start of the fight*

As well as London there were fights in cities from Amsterdam to Zürich, with the majority being in the USA, but they were also in virtually every European country, as well as in Canada, Greenland, Turkey, Bahrain, South America, Cape Town, Australia, Hong Kong and China.

The organisers had set out a list of nine rules, some of which were adhered too, but others were clearly ignored – such as “6) NO FEATHERS, let’s not make a mess”.

Another that was often ignored was “4) Do not swing at anyone without a pillow or holding a camera”, though some did apologise after hitting me.

As I commented, it “was half an hour of glorious chaos as people of all ages – though mainly in their teens and twenties – rushed around attacking anyone with a pillow.”

Generally the attacks were random, but there were occasional cries to “attack the panda, or the guy in stripes or spiderman or one of the others in identifiable costumes”.

After around 20 minutes when the air (and my lungs) was full of dust and feathers the council cleaners began to pour buckets of water and sweep the dampened feathers away, but the fighting continued until a whistle blew to end the fight at the end of 30 minutes – with just a few continuing to fight.

Many more pictures at International Pillow Fight Day.

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After a day resting and recovering from our 3 day walk along the Thames Path in 2013 I was ready to go up to London again on Saturday 6th April.

Sikhs had come to London at Vaisahki for a protest against the “ongoing and, disturbing atrocities that are being committed in the Republic of India, that, infringe the basic human rights of the minority communities, which includes but is not limited to the Sikhs, Christians, Muslims and Dalits (India’s untouchables).“

In particular the Kesri Lehar (I Pledge Orange) campaign was protesting against the death penalty in India, with over 470 prisoners in Indian prisons on death row, though actual executions are rare. The House of Commons shortly before this protest had debated and agreed a backbench motion welcoming the Kesri Lehar petition and calling on India to abolish the death penalty.

One of those on death was Balwant Singh Rajoana, sentenced for his part in a suicide bomb attack which killed a former Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh and 17 others in 1995. Sikhs say that Beant Singh was responsible for the extra-judicial killing of over 25,000 Sikh civilians in a brutal attempt to eliminate Sikhs calling for an independent state.

Balwant Singh Rajoana was sentenced to death in 2007 and was due to be hanged in 2012, but execution was stayed after some Sikh organisation appealed for clemency. But in 2013 there were renewed demands for his execution. This did not happen and in 2019 his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Campaigners also called for the release of Professor Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who has been on death row in India for 18 years, for his alleged involvement in a car bomb in Delhi in 1993. They say there is no evidence to connect him with the attack. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in March 2014.

A rather smaller protest at Downing St had been organised by the Counihan-Sanchez Family Housing Campaign from Kilburn against the unfair Bedroom tax and benefit caps which are effecting so many people and called for the GLA to build more social housing. The family’s own problems with Brent Council have made them very aware of the huge problems faced by many others across London and elsewhere and how cuts and sanctions have had a cruel impact on so many.

Also at Downing St, members and supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) were calling for the UK government to support an enquiry into Iraqi attacks on Camp Liberty in Baghdad where its members are held. They had been given refuge in Iraq by Saddam Hussein and gave up their arms when the US invaded Iraq in return for US protection. But the US hand over control of their camps to Iraq in 2009 and there have been a series of attacks on them by Iraqi security forces sympathetic to Iran, with over over 50 being killed, more than a thousand injured and many arrests.

Later in 2013 the United States organised a move of the roughly 3,000 members of the group to a new base in Albania, providing a $20 million donation to the UN refugee agency to resettle them. The USA has continued to support them as a government-in-exile for Iran and they are also apparently supported by them in covert operations continuing in Iran against the current Islamic regime. There are groups of the PMOI and supporting organisations in a number of European Countries and the UK as well as in the United States, though they are generally thought now to have little support in Iran.

It was good to leave what had been rather intense protests and go on to something in a much lighter mood in Trafalgar Square. I think the first International Pillow Fight Day was in March 2008, when I photographed it in Leicester Square. In 2013 the event, organised by the urban playground movement, was taking place in 90 cities across 30 countries.

The aim of the event is to get people away from “passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television” and to consciously reject “the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space.” The organisers hope this will result in “a global community of participants, not consumers.“

The authorities frown on it, possibly as a subversive activity but perhaps because it makes something of a mess, as pillows inevitably break and feathers fly, leaving the ground covered with them after the event. Or perhaps they are just killjoys. Royal Parks police had prevented a fight in Hyde Park earlier in the day but the Heritage Wardens were overwhelmed by the numbers who had come to Trafalgar Square and were unable to stop. A small group of Westminster Council workers were standing on one edge ready to clean up afterwards.

The feathers and dust do make these events something of a health hazard, and it would have made sense to wear a face mask – but back in 2013 these were only seen on Japanese tourists. Probably a once a year exposure to dust and feathers isn’t a huge risk, but this year they did rather get down my throat and I withdrew once the air was thick with them, deciding I’d taken enough pictures.

Feathers Fly in Trafalgar Square
PMOI Protest Iraqi killings
No to Bedroom Tax & Benefit Caps
Vaisakhi “Save a Live” Vigil

Tag: International Pillow Fight Day

Deaths, Bedroom Tax & Feathers