End Iraq Invasion: Saturday 12 April 2003 saw another protest (there had been one a week earlier) against the invasion of Iraq which had begun on 20th March 2003 with US troops supported by those from the UK, Australia and a few from Poland.
Before the invasion UN weapons inspectors had reported that they had found no evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq. But US and British politicians still insisted Iraq had these, but had just hidden them well. We now know that there were none. It was an invasion and war fought on known lies.
Almost certainly both the US and UK authorities at the time of invasion knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq, but the US had been planning and working up to the invasion for several years and were not going to let the facts get in the way of their war. The US had also carried out a long campaign to link Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks although there was no evidence for this and later “assertions of operational links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have largely been discredited by the intelligence community.”
Bruce Kent
The British public were also clear we should not go to war, with the largest protest ever in London in February 2023 demanding we not not invade Iraq. This had followed a unprecedented long campaign across the country with many local groups out on the streets in protest.
Regime Change Begins At Home – a call to get rid of warmonger Tony Blair
There were similar protests in other countries, with the largest of all in Rome where over three million took to the streets – roughly twice as many as in London.
This was a protest with flowers for the dead
Many of our allies also came out against the invasion – including France, Germany, Canada and New Zealand, but Prime Minister Tony Blair was determined to support the invasion – using misleading claims and lies to persuade MPs to back it – including that infamous ‘dodgy dossier’.
The insurgency continued after the US pulled out of Iraq in 2011, eventually resulting in the rise of ISIS. Various studies and experts conclude that the invasion and occupation resulted in a huge rise in Islamic terrorism and the global Juhadist movement.
In 2004 “UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the invasion illegal under international law, as a breach of the UN Charter.” It was an event that showed the US’s contempt for a rules-based international order or at least their assertion that the rules did not apply to them, operating under the simpler principle that US might is US right.
Stop the War – Troops Out: The protest organised by Stop the War, CND and British Muslim Initiative on Saturday 15th March, 2008 was an impressive one, with around 50,000 marchers calling for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, no attack on Iran and a free Palestine, as well as many other groups drawing attention to other issues around the world including the genocide in Somalia.
Tony Benn
It began with a rally in Trafalgar Square where speakers included Tony Benn and Bruce Kent and then took a roundabout route across Westminster Bridge and then back over the Thames on Lambeth Bridge and up Millbank to Parliament Square. Those at the rear of the march were still passing the corner of the square when those at the front arrived back there.
It was an event that included many issues still relevant now, particularly over Iran and Palestine, but also on direct action, with a reminder of the then upcoming trial of the Raytheon 9, anti-war activists who had entered the Raytheon factory in Derry in August 2006 after learning that Raytheon missiles were being used by Israel in their 2006 invasion of Lebanon.
Occupying the offices for eight hours before they were arrested they destroyed computers and documents, and six were tried for criminal damage and affray in May 2008. One man was found guilty of stealing two computer disks but they were all acquitted on all other charges.
The police took a great deal of interest in the protest, with FIT teams who photograph protesters (and journalists, particularly photographers) took an unusual interest in anarchist protesters from Class War, the Anarchist Federation and FITwatch who use their banner to try to prevent the police taking photographs and video.
I missed seeing four of the FITwatch protesters arrested, apparently for intimidating the police. As I commented, “Since a couple of weeks ago one of their photographers and his minder had been seen taking flight and seeking refuge up the steps of the National Gallery when pursued by a polite and always well behaved woman with a shopping trolley and free cakes – much to the amusement of other police present – intimidating the FIT doesn’t seem too difficult.“
But this – like the many large pro-Palestine protests since ‘September 7th’ – was an entirely peaceful protest, calling for peace in many areas around the world and for an end to UK involvement in wars and oppression.
It was a lively protest, with samba band, sound systes, street theatre and dancing. People laid flowers at Nelson Mandela’s statue and Brian Haw – still permanently camped in Parliament Square despite the attempts to remove him by passing SOCPA – joined the protest.
And like all of these marches it also included many Jewish marchers including the Neturei Karta ultra-orthodox anti-Zionists.
Arbaeen in London: On Sunday 2nd March 2008 I again photographed the Arbaeen Procession by Shia Muslims in London. It was one of various religious events on the streets of London that interested me – along with other processions and events by other major religions – Christians, Sikhs, Hindus etc in public on the streets of London, many of which you can find recorded on My London Diary.
These pictures were a part of my celebration of the multicultural nature of London which has turned what was the rather drab post-war austerity of my youth into a much more vibrant place to live and work. Immigration has enriched our nation culturally and in so many other ways, though it has also produced a racist backlash that has poisoned much of our politics.
Arbaeen is a major event for Shia Muslims around the world, coming at the end of the annual 40 days of mourning for the massacre of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Imam Hussain, together with 72 companions at Karbala. Millions take part in the pilgrimage in Karbala, Iraq which was banned by Saddam Hussein but revived after his downfall.
Shia Muslims regard the Karbala massacre as “the greatest sacrifice make by mankind, for humanity” and the “ultimate standoff between ‘good and evil’“. Hussain had refused to pledge allegiance to the ruler – “Death in honour is preferable to life in humiliation” – and his small band of followers fought to the death against an army of 40,000.
After the slaughter of the men, their women and children were taken captive and paraded through towns and cities on a 750 mile journey to Damascus, along with the decapitated heads of the martyrs, impaled on spears.
As a part of the procession in London there are reenactments of some of the events, prayers of mourning, and expression of grief in various ways including the beating of breasts.
Several thousand Muslims come from across the country to take part in this annual event, organised by the Hussaini Islamic Trust UK, which is the largest Arbaeen procession in Europe.
Hands off Iraqi Oil Piratical Action Tour: Many thought that the driving force behind the US invasion of Iraq, shamefully assisted by the UK and a few others, was oil. It was clear that there were no real ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and by 2008 it had become clear that the only rational basis “was a desire to open up the Iraqi economy to economic exploitation by the multinationals, with oil as the chief goal.”
As I wrote in 2008, “Few liked Saddam, but the oil giants had a particular reason to get rid of him. As long as he was dictator, oil would remain a public sector industry in Iraq. Now Shell, BP and other majors in the oil business are pressing for the spoils of victory, production sharing agreements that will give them effective control over Iraqi oil for the next 25 years…. Under the occupation laws are being imposed, regulations changed and institutions set up to ensure that US and multinational companies can profit from and dominate the Iraqi economy.”
The Hands off Iraqi Oil Piratical Action Tour of London was a part of an international campaign in solidarity with the Iraqi people against the corporate theft of Iraq’s oil, and it was also rather a fun piece of street theatre with pirate costumes and a samba band, pointing out various London-based companies that were involved in the theft of Iraqi oil.
I met the protesters as they were getting ready for the tour and walked with them down Oxford Street to the New Bond Street to a mock battle outside the offices of Erinys International Limited, a private military security company with a reputation for using excessive force which provides security services in Iraq as well as training Iraq’s Oil Protection force.
A short walk took us to BP in St James’s Square. “Former BP CEOs worked as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and their advice was (what a surprise) to let companies like BP come in a make vast profits. They helped to draft the Iraqi hydrocarbon laws and have plans for giant oil fields. “
We stopped briefly outside the National Portrait Gallery – earlier in the day there had been a brief protest inside there as their major wards are sponsored by BP.
Around the corner in Duncannon Street they protested at the offices of the International Tax and Investment Centre, paid by the big oil companies to lobby for a free-market approach which would let them dominate Iraqi oil.
There were two venues the protesters ran out to time to visit: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office employed former oil executives as advisers on economic policy to work on the new Iraqi laws in support of BP and Shell and Development Program Worldwide Ltd (previously Windrush Communications) promotes private enterprises in areas such as conflict zones where there are few controls over their activities and no effective government to represent the public interest.
We crossed the river over the Jubilee footbridge to the Shell Centre and a slightly longer rally. Shell has played a leading role in the re-purposing of the Iraqi oil industry from a state asset to a multinational profit opportunity and have plans for three major oil fields there.
Bring All the Troops Home NOW: CND and Stop The War had called for a march to Parliament on 8th October 2007 to arrive when Gordon Brown was making his statement to Parliament on Iraq where British troops were still present having taken part in the US-led invasion in 2003.
They wanted to march to make clear that all UK troops should come back here now. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 had led to the fall of Saddam Hussein but had been made without any real thought for the future of Iraq – except for the profits which US companies hoped to make. Saddam’s civil and military administration which had united the country were simply removed rather than being put to use to keep the country running and chaos reigned. Iraq didn’t need foreign armies but needed real support to set up a new civil society and that had not been forthcoming.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Gordon Brown tried to ban the protest, using “Sessional Orders” to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for him to prevent the march under section 52 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. But CND and Stop The War made clear it would go ahead despite this.
On the morning of the march Prime Minister Gordon Brown – probably reacting both to huge public pressure and legal advice – lifted the ban, thus avoiding a huge burden on both police and courts. They might otherwise have ended with thousands of arrests – and cases which the courts would probably throw out.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Around ten years later the powers that the Brown government had attempted to use were officially recognised to no longer have any legal effect – something I suspect had been part of legal advice given to Brown in 2007.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Last Saturday, October 4th 2025, I again watched a protest by Defend Our Juries in defiance of the government’s proscription of Palestine Action under terrorist laws, with police arresting almost 500 people for sitting holding a piece of cardboard with a message supporting the banned group. Many of those arrested seemed to be elderly and some also disabled, though there were also younger people.
The protestersy presented no danger to public order – other than challenging the legally doubtful ban on the group who few outside the government and those making arms for sale to Israel who had been heavily lobbying for a ban – believe could be described as terrorists. And this is something to be shortly tested in the courts. And the arrests made the police look unfeeling and stooges of the government rather than a force acting with the consent of the people.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Perhaps our current Labour government should have learnt from the example of George Brown in 2007. Supposedly we are a nation where the police operate by consent – which was clearly not the case here – and the police should have made this clear to the government and simply ignored this and earlier protests by ‘Defend Our Juries’. Which would of course have made the action – with people coming on purpose to be arrested and waiting patiently for hours for it to happen – totally ineffectual. And we do after all we have many laws which people – especially motorists – break every day and the police ignore.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Defend Our Juries also protests against the practice by some judges in some courts to prevent those charged from making a defence of their actions and instructing juries that they cannot use their consciences in coming to decisions – both vital protections essential to a fair legal system. Actions introduced into our legal system because successive governments have been angered by the decisions reached by juries in some cases. But it should not be the job of our legal system to serve the government but to serve the people and these developments endanger the whole basis of trial by jury which protects us and our democracy.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Here’s what I wrote in 2007 about the march and rally on 8th October 2007. All the pictures in this post come the event and there are many more on My London Diary.
Brian Haw’s t-shirt summed up the disaster: “Iraq 2,000,000 dead 4,000,000 fled genocide theft torture cholera starvation” though there were a number of other crimes to mention, in particular the poisoning of so much the area for generations to come through the dumping there of so much of our nuclear waste in the form of ‘depleted uranium’ weapons.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
I was surprised at the level of support for Monday’s demonstration, a day when many of the supporters of the campaign would have been at work, and I had expected hundreds rather than the three thousand or so who actually turned up. The government’s clumsy ban on the event, using 1839 legislation passed against the Chartists, drummed up support, and to such an extent that on the morning of the rally they had to climb down and allow the march and the lobby of parliament to proceed.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Later in the day, the success of the demonstration even became rather an embarrassment for Stop The War, who when I left around 4.30pm, two hours after the start of the march, were trying to help police in clearing the large crowd who were still blocking Parliament Street, Parliament Square and St Margaret St, urging them to move along to College Green. Later in the day a small group of protestors took down the barriers on the grassed area of parliament square, piling them up.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
But the real embarrassment was for Gordon Brown, forced to climb down and allow democratic protest. Unfortunately he didn’t do the decent and sensible thing (and surely now inescapably the logical thing in the interests of both Iraq and Britain) and announce a speedy withdrawal of troops to be replaced by a real programme of support for the Iraqi people.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
Although doubtless pressure from the police at the highest level was obviously vital in the decision to allow the march to go ahead, there were clearly a few officers in charge on the ground who weren’t happy.
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
As we went down Whitehall, they obstructed photographers trying to photograph the event quite unnecessarily – so obviously so that some of the officers actually carrying out the orders were apologising to me as they did so. And later in the day a few tempers flared and there were a few fairly random assaults on demonstrators.
It did seem an unnecessarily provocative move to bring back Inspector Terry, apparently the man responsible for much of the harassment of Brian Haw and the officer in charge at the 2006 ‘Sack Parliament’ demo last year (photographer Marc Vallée who was injured is now taking legal action against the Met, with the support of the NUJ.)
(C)2006,Peter Marshall
British troops remained in Iraq in a combat role until 2009, with smaller numbers there mainly involved in training until the final withdrawal in 2011. You can read more about my NUJ colleague Marc Vallée being thrown to the ground by police and his eventually reaching a settlement on the EPUK web site.
Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq: On Sunday 6th October 2013 I photographed a protest against the Daily Mail, Kurds marching calling for their leader to be released from Turkish jail, protests for and against the removal of President Morsi of Egypt and a protest calling for the release of hostages in Iraq.
Daily Mail You Told All the Lies – Kensington
The Daily Mail has a long history of publishing lies against the BBC, NHS, public sector workers, trade unionists, socialists, women, Muslims, travellers and others, but the protest came after people were outraged by their smears and distortion in an entirely unfair attack of Ralph Milliband.
Their campaign against the father of Ed Milliband was intended to discredit the then Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition and many felt the Daily Mail had gone over the line of what is acceptable in British politics with their headline ‘MAN WHO HATED BRITAIN’, based on an out of context adolescent observation. Of course things in our press have worsened since then, particularly in the orchestrated attacks on Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of anti-semitism.
Ralph Milliband had fled Belgium with his working class Polish Jewish family in 1940 aged 16 when Germany invaded the country and went on to serve in the Royal Navy during the war. He settled in London after the war and became a British subject in 1948. As a sociologist he became one of the most respected academics of the post-war period, respected by people across the political spectrum.
The Daily Mail had supported the Blackshirts and Hitler in the 1930s and continued after the war to express hate for most of those institutions that have truly made Britain great – like the welfare state, the NHS and the BBC and the public sector generally. And more recently it had backed French fascist Marine Le Pen.
The protest was organised by The People’s Assembly, a nationwide group set up in opposition to the current government’s austerity programme and to defend the provision of education, health and welfare from general taxation and available to all. Several hundred came to the show they were proud of Britain and its welfare state and there was a great deal of chanting against the Daily Mail and and some songs before two people delivered boxes of a petition to their offices and the speeches began.
The speeches agains the Daily Mail were continuing as I rushed away to Wood Green in North London where Kurds were marching on the 15th anniversary of the kidnappping of their national leader Abdullah Ocalan by Turkey in 1998.
Since then Ocalan has been held, mainly in solitary confinement, in a Turkish prison.
I left the march as it went past Wood Green Station on its way to the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey to make my way to Mayfair and the Egyptian Embassy
Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood – Egyptian Embassy
Opposite the Embassy in South Street were a group of protesters supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and opposing what the military coup which had recently removed the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi the suppression of protests in Egypt against this.
Many carried placards showing the R4BIA four finger and thumb on palm sign to show support, begun after a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo was violently attacked by the military in August 2013 – Rabaa is ‘four’ or ‘fourth’ in Arabic.
A short distance away a smaller group of Egyptians protested, many carrying pictures of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces who had led the coup and the massacres of protesters – a total of around 3,000 were killed and almost 19,000 arrested, They supported the removla of Morsi, who after a narrow win in the 2012 election had granted himself unlimited powers and issued an Islamist-backed draft constitution.
Sisi installed himself as leader and became president after elections in 2014, remaining in power as a dictator since then (including two further elections in which other candidates were barred from running or boycotted the election due to repression – said to be even worse than under Mubarak who had been forced to step down by the popular revolution in 2011.
PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq – Trafalgar Square
Finally in Trafalgar Square I photographed an elaborate display by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the PMOI (aka MEK and MKO) which since 1986 had been exiled in Iraq (and is now in Albania.)
Photographs of the 52 killed by Iraqi forces on 1st September
After the 2003 Iraq invasion the MEK came to a ceasefire agreement with the USA, giving up their weapons – which included 19 British-made Chieftain tanks. When the USA left Iraq they were left at the mercy of the Iraqi authorities and have been subjected to a long history of attacks on their refugee camp.
Seven hostages are sill held in Baghdad
The latest of these, ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Mailki, was at Camp Ashraf on September 1, 2013 and killed 52 with 7 hostages taken and held in the Baghdad Green Zone. In response hunger strikes started at Camp Ashraf and in Geneva, Berlin, Ottawa, Melbourne as well as London where they set up a camp in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
A line of hunger strikers, on the 36 day of their strike, was seated at the front of the audience at today’s rally, holding roses and taking an active part in the event, raising their fists and shouting.
The rally called for immediate release of the seven prisoners, and for UN forces to be stationed permanently at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty to provide the protection the PMOI, who the UN granted asylum status.
Anti-War March in London: In the face of protests across the country and the world – “between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war” the USA together with the UK, Australia and Poland began the invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003.
In the UK we had our largest ever anti-war protest on 15th February, with estimates of between 750,000 and 2,000,000 people taking part in a march and rally. I wasn’t there as I had come out of hospital the previous day and was still too weak to walk more than a few steps, so was left at home when my wife and elder son went out to protest. It was the only major London protest against the war I didn’t photograph.
Protests in London continued, with people angered that their voices had not been heard, and particularly as we learnt more about the lies and deceit that Tony Blair had marshaled to get the decision to go to war past Parliament and in particular about the two ‘Dodgy Dossiers’ which Alistair Campbell had “sexed up”, the later one plagiarised from an article by a research associate at a US institute and the earlier making false claims about “weapons of mass destruction.” No WMDs were found in Iraq.
The earlier dossier had made the false claim that some of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons were deployable within 45 minutes, a claim that according to BBC journalist Andres Gilligan was added at the insistence of Andrew Campbell. Gilligan claimed that his source for that was an off-the-record talk with weapons expert David Kelly. Although the Hutton Inquiry concluded Kelly had killed himself following the investigations into this exposé some still suspect our security services took a hand in his death.
You can read an account of the protest in The Guardian, Anti-war protesters vent their frustration, which notes that this was “Britain’s fifth anti-war protest in a year snaked from Hyde Park through the centre of London and filled Trafalgar Square with anti-Blair placards. It was the first national rally since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in Iraq and the tone had changed since 1.5 million marched to prevent war in February.” It gives the police estimate of the numbers taking part at 20,000 and Stop the War’s figure of 100,000 – the actual figure was probably about halfway between the two.
I didn’t write much at the time – and didn’t post many of the pictures I took, and a few of those here are published for the first time. Here is my 2003 piece – with a link to the orginal.
The Anti-War March on 27 September was another big event, though not on the massive scale of February’s event.
It took about an hour and a half to pass me on Park Lane. The numbers reported by the police and BBC both seemed derisory. Perhaps they were closer to the numbers that ended up in Trafalgar Square, but there were far more on the march itself.
Estimating numbers is hard once the numbers get too high to really count – perhaps a few thousand. The Countryside Alliance had the right idea on this, with their arch on Whitehall although I never see one of their car stickers with 400 thousand and something on without thinking ‘and I was 3 of them.’
Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice: Twenty years ago I published this post on My London Dairy about my day taking pictures, but it isn’t easy to find. So here it is again with the usual minor corrections and a few pictures, with links to the others already on-line.
Muslims United Against Oppression – Marble Arch
Mozzam Begg reads his poem. War on Terror = War on Islam
Saturday 30th April 2005 was a busy day. I started at Marble Arch where a number of Muslim organisations were showing their unity in protesting against the anti-terrorism laws and the way the ‘war on terror‘ was used to detain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Bellmarsh, to carry out increased stop and searches on Muslims in the UK, and threaten them with extradition, and to label the liberation struggles in Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq and Chechnya as terrorism.
The ‘Muslims United Against Oppression’ march and rally was organised by ‘Stop Political Terror’, the ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’, ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain’, ‘Cage Prisoners’, the ‘Islamic Party Of Britain’, ‘Muslim Directory’ and other organisations, and representatives of many of these spoke at Marble Arch. There were also two former Guantanamo detainees who spoke, Martin Mubanga and Mozzam Begg, who read a moving poem.
Ashfaq Ahmad
Ashfaq Ahmad spoke about the detention of his son, Babar Ahmad, who was born and brought up in south London. On December 2nd 2003, anti-terrorist police broke into his house in the early hours, and assaulted him brutally in front of his wife before taking him away. Six days later he was released without charge. He had over 50 injuries to his body, two potentially life-threatening, but despite this the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers involved.
Babar Ahmad was again arrested on 5th August 2004 following an extradition request by the US government. In 2005 he was still in prison awaiting a final verdict on whether he will be sent to the USA, although a fair trial there seems unlikely.* The allegations against him appear to be that he emailed a US sailor on two dates (one was Babar’s wedding day, the other in the middle of his honeymoon on a remote island without internet access), that he had a brochure from the Empire State Building (true, his father had got it on a visit there in 1973) and that he had travelled on a false passport, despite the fact that his real one has the appropriate entry and exit stamps.
Unfortunately our extradition agreement with the USA apparently does not allow Britain to refuse requests on the grounds of evidence.
Having failed to treat Babar with any justice in this country following his arrest – almost certainly a case of mistaken identity that too many would lose face over to readily admit – it now looks as if we will hand him over to our American allies for further mistreatment.
Around 5000 Muslims made there way from Marble Arch and along the Edgeware Road towards Paddington Green Police Station for a further rally.
* Babar Ahmed spent 8 years in a UK prison before eventually being sent the the USA for trial. Although there was huge pressure to try him in the UK the CPS decided there was “insufficient evidence to prosecute” him. In 2009 he was awarded £60,000 compensation for the “serious gratuitous prolonged unjustified violence” and “religious abuse” during his arrest; the four officers who were accused of this and dozens of other assaults on black and Asian men were tried but acquitted in 2011. After his extradition in 2012 he spent two years in solitary confinement in pre-trial detention in a Supermax prison. Eventually he came to a plea bargain which led to his release in July 2015.
RMT march to Renationalise the Railways – Bloomsbury
I made my way to the Charing Cross Road to meet the RMT march against rail privatisation, a two-week, 14-city national mobile demonstration from Glasgow to London to make the case for re-nationalising the rail network.
As someone who travels frequently by rail, I’m fully convinced of the need for some action. On my line to London, services are less frequent and less reliable and slower than when I moved here thirty years ago. The latest trick has been to write yet more ‘spare minutes’ into the timetables so that more trains will arrive on time. Journeys that a few years ago took 28 minutes are now timetabled for 34 minutes. [Now in 2025 this has increased to 37 minutes.]
There certainly seem to be a great problem over signalling on the lines, with trains that should have a clear run on green with miles of clear track in front of them continually finding amber or double amber and occasionally red. Either systems are not working or there are not the signallers to work them.
The whole fare structure is also a nonsense, far too complex for anyone to understand. None of the enquiry services ever seem to be able to tell you anything other than standard fares (if that) and journeys covering more than one operator are a nightmare. Try several online systems and you are likely to get several different answers as to fares and availability. As a first move back to a sensible system why not set up a national fare structure, with train operators paid for running trains from a central body?
It was a good-natured demonstration making a real point, but unfortunately not one any likely government wants to hear.
Finally I went off to Little Venice, where the Inland Waterways Association was having a three day Canalway Cavalcade celebrating the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1805, canals were growing as the main form of inland transport, and it was the year two of the major civil engineering structures of our canals, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and the Blisworth Tunnel were completed.
I’m not a great canal person, though I often cycle along the towpaths. But the first time I ever drove a narrowboat, I found myself in charge of 70 feet of steel hull through the dark narrow length of Blisworth, and later the same year also took the marginally overwide craft across Pontcysyllte, where there was considerable resistance to its movement through the narrow channel. Getting through some of the locks on the way there and back was harder, and we learnt some less conventional locking techniques, opening the upper gates for the water to force the marginally over-wide hull through, scraping its sides past the brickwork.
However I’d not come to see the boats, even though the navy were taking part, with one of our smaller ships, a crew of three and commander from the Royal Naval Reserve.
London Isn’t Venice, Yet! – Mutiny Arts, Little Venice
Mutiny Arts from Brixton were to perform an ecological drama, London Isn’t Venice, Yet!, warning of the dangers of global warming and rising sea levels.
The sea level is rising fast
The play went down well with the audience in the Sheldon Square ampitheatre, part of a new office development in Paddington.
Against the Invasion of Iraq: The US and its allies had begun the invasion of Iraq on 20th March 2003, with Britain taking part despite the huge opposition of the British people. President Bush had decided months earlier that the invasion would take place and the US had manufactured fake information that Iraq had failed to abandon its weapons of mass destruction.
UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair had added his own lies to this to persuade the British parliament, presenting the “dodgy dossier” together with highly misleading statements. Although 84 Labour MPs voted against (along with almost all of the Liberal Democrats and most of the smaller parties) and there were 94 mainly Labour abstentions the Labour Government won the vote easily with the support of the Conservative Party. For many of us it seemed a vote which demonstrated a complete failure of our parliamentary democracy, MPs following the party line and voting for war in clear disregard of the evidence.
And the BBC and mass media had failed to properly investigate and challenge the official position, with the BBC moving into an establishment role in supporting the war.
On Saturday 5th April Stop the War, CND and others organised another protest against the war and I walked with the protesters from outside Broadcasting House in Portland Place to a rally close to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square and later posted the following piece (corrected as usual) on My London Diary with some of my pictures.
April started with the country at war, invading Iraq together with the USA.
On Saturday 5th I went to a march to protest against this and to call for proper reporting of the events in the media, especially the BBC.
I walked to the march past the houses of parliament and a small group of protesters in whitehall who were pointing out the number of Iraqi civilians already killed by the allied forces.
The main thrust of the demonstration now was that the civilian population of Iraq should be respected. The use of weapons such as depleted uranium shells and cluster bombs will mean the deaths continue for generations after the end of the fighting.
The march started opposite the BBC building in Portland Place and went to Grosvenor Square, close to the US Embassy. There were perhaps five thousand marchers, and several hundred police surrounding them most of the time. As the speakers pointed out, it was difficult not to see the war as a US takeover of the country when plans were already in place for Americans to run the country after the war.
The killing of Iraqis must stop, and rapid progress should be made to hand control of the country back to its people.
Peter Tatchell
Iraq has still not recovered from the disastrous effects of the invasion and in particular from the failure of the USA to think beyond getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime. In doing so they also demolished the civil state and the internal security of the country turning it into a lawless state.
It is now clear that there were no “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and that the whole invasion was justified on what were known at the time to be lies.
The USA established a provisional authority led by US diplomat Paul Bremner which made the ridiculous decision to disband the Iraqi Army and exclude all members of Saddam’s Ba’ath party from government in Iraq rather than taking these over and using them to build a new Iraq.
Adrian Mitchell
As well as leaving the country at the mercy of a wide range of militia units this also disqualified the entire civil service at all levels from taking part in the rebuilding of the the country – including all government officials for whom party membership was simply a condition of service, even the 40,000 teachers.
Lindsay German
As Wikipedia states, in 2023, “Corruption remains endemic throughout all levels of governance while US-endorsed sectarian political system has driven increased levels of violent terrorism and sectarian conflicts within Iraq.” And although accurate estimates are difficult, probably by now over a million Iraqis have died because of the invasion and the insurgencies that followed. Around 2.4 million Iraqis have left the country as refugees and well over a million remain internally displaced inside the Iraq.
As we are now seeing under Trump, a total irresponsibility and ignorance seems to be at the heart of US foreign policy. Trump has just made this more open and obvious.
There are just a few more pictures with the original article, particularly of the speakers at the event.
Iraq War & Climate Change: Two separate protests on Saturday 29th March. The invasion of Iraq had begun nine days earlier and there were protests against it around the country including one I covered outside the BBC where a march from North London came to protest against the biased coverage on BBC radio and TV.
Broadcasters were carefully toeing the government line on the war and acting as its mouthpiece. The country was at war and accurate unbiased coverage appeared to be the first casualty.
I didn’t write much about the protest, but the pictures and the posters and placards told the story.
The BBC lost a great deal of credibility over its coverage and I don’t think it has ever recovered from this, And of course it has gone on with biased coverage of other situations including its coverage of the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and of the Israeli government’s actions in Palestine over the years and particularly the genocidal attacks since the October 7th Hamas attack.
After the protest at the BBC I went on to cover an event calling for urgent action on Climate Change. Twenty two years ago there was still time to avoid its worst effects – if the world took urgent action, but instead most governments dragged their feet, driven by fossil fuel interests and making largely token changes if any. In the UK we are still thinking in a way that should be unthinkable about discovering and exploiting new oil resources such as Rosebank and BP has recently moved away from Green energy back to oil. Total madness.
The Kyoto Protocol had been agreed at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 1997 and set targets industrialized countries and the European Union to reduce their emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels during in 2008-2012. Some did, although largely by various ways of fiddling the figures, but the major polluters – India, China and the USA made no attempt to do. The main cause of its failure was that the United States never ratified the agreement.
Kyoto was largely replaced by the 2015 Paris agreement and we are now seeing the results of the failure of this to be properly implemented. But here is what I wrote about the ‘Kyoto march’ organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change on Saturday 29th March.
Marchers had started at the UK Esso HQ in Leatherhead and were marching to a party outside the US Embassy. I joined them at the Imperial War Museum to take photographs.
The march marked the the second anniversary of Bush’s decisive rejection of the Kyoto climate treaty. Esso (ExxonMobil) is a key partner in Bush’s energy policy and its opposition to controls on energy use. The per capita energy use of US citizens is dramatically higher than that of other advanced countries, with no incentives for its reduction and a policy of low tax on fuel that makes the US by far the worst polluter of the planet.
