Iraq | >Re-PHOTO

Bring All the Troops Home NOW – 2007

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

Many more pictures from the march and rally on My London Diary at
Bring All the Troops Home NOW.

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Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq – 2013

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.

Daily Mail You Told All the Lies

Freedom for Ocalan & Kurdistan – Wood Green

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

Freedom for Ocalan & Kurdistan

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.

Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood

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.

PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq

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Anti-War March in London – September 28th 2003

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.’

More pictures at http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2003/09/sep27-01.htm

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Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice – 2005

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

Muslims, Our Railways & Little Venice - 2005 — *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 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.

more pictures

* 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.

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Canalways Calvacade – Litttle Venice

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.

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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 play went down well with the audience in the Sheldon Square ampitheatre, part of a new office development in Paddington.

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Against the Invasion of Iraq – April 2003

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Iraq War & Climate Change -2003

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.

More pictures from the Iraq war protest on My London Diary – and on the Kyoto March here.

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Bring the Troops Home – 2005

Bring the Troops Home: On Saturday 19th March 2005 I photographed the Stop the War march on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. From Hyde Park it went past the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square on to a rally in Trafalgar Square. I published text and pictures on My London Diary.

This is another slightly hard to find post from the early years of My London Diary before I redesigned the site with links to every post on top of each monthly page and discovered the Shift key. Then I felt it was somehow cool not to capitalise, but I now regard as an unfortunate affection – like those photographers who think turning their digital colour images to black and white somehow makes them more authentic.

Back in 2005 I was very critical of Stop The War – and I still feel they lost the initiative after the huge February 2003 protest against the invasion of Iraq and that a more radical approach could have prevented Blair taking Britain into the war beside the USA.

That protest and the many before and after showed our nation united in a way no other campaign has succeeded in doing, with protests in almost every town and village in the country. Even in Surrey where driver after driver hooted support as we stood at the side of our local bridge with posters during Friday evening rush hours.

I’m still sorry I had to miss that big one in 2003, which came just the day after I was discharged from hospital following a minor heart operation and I could only walk a few yards. My family went leaving me at home. But I did cover all of the other main protests in London against the invasion and they are recorded in My London Diary.

In my 2005 post I was also very critical of Stop the War’s attitude to photographers, which has mellowed slightly over the years. It can still be difficult to photograph the front of their marches though the stewards are generally much more friendly.

But for all their faults, Stop the War and other organisations they work with have kept up protests over many issues, particularly in recent times over the genocide taking place in Gaza. And have been doing so in defiance of Tory and Labour governments, laws restricting our right to protest and clearly political policing.

Bring the Troops Home – Stop the War March and Rally

I remember standing in Trafalgar Square listening to Tony Benn and Tariq Ali urging us all to take immediate and radical action should our troops invade Iraq. At the time a majority of the British people was clearly against the war, and we should have taken to the streets to stop it. Instead Stop the War organised marches and peaceful demonstrations the government could easily ignore. And they did.

So the latest in the series of anti-war demos was a sad case of déjà-vu from the blinkered dinosaur. Not least because again Tariq Ali (and doubtless Tony Benn) again urged radical action and again we cheered.

Tariq Ali has the perfect anarchist hair-style, and it’s hard to get a bad picture of him. Nenn wasn’t looking at his best, but there were plenty of others to photograph, including those who had made their stand as soldiers (and a diplomat.) And some very bubbly school students.

Stop the War are also tough on the press, or at least tough on photographers. Most demonstrations welcome publicity, but they train stewards to get in the way. One colleague was physically prevented from taking pictures at one point in the march, I was obstructed and threatened quite unnecessarily by a couple of stewards, and all of us were generally ordered around and hassled.

More pictures of the march and rally on My London Diary.

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Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran – 2005

Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran: Saturday March 18th 2006 I went to the large protest on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, photographing as the march gathered in Parliament Square and then as the march went along Victoria Street on its rather indirect route to a rally in Trafalgar Square. As often with large marches, by the time the end of the march had passed me I was too late for it to be worth going on to the rally.

Here – with the usual tidying of capitalisation and a few minor clarifications is the post I made on My London Diary at the time. Of course things have become much worse in various ways but particularly so far as civil liberties in the UK are concerned, the situation in Iraq has been dire and there remains a real threat of military action against Iran, an odious regime but whose people would still suffer greatly from any any invasion.

As always there are many more pictures on My London Diary.

Troops Home from Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran

The Troops Home From Iraq; Don’t Invade Iran march on the 18th was another large event organised by Stop The War, part of an international protest in cities around Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Asia and Africa – a total of around a couple of hundred places. In London there were roughly 20,000 who walked out of Parliament Square past where I was taking pictures, although many like me will not have made it to Trafalgar Square, and others will have joined in later on the route.

The event marked three years since the invasion of Iraq on 20 march 2003. At the front of the march were Theatre Of War representing both Tony Blair and George Bush along with two police and two judges holding placards declaring the two leaders guilty.

*Put your head in a sack, Guantanamo style…*

Behind them were the march leaders, including representatives of families of soldiers killed in Iraq. They had a long, long yellow ribbon with the names – no ranks – of soldiers who have died so far in this illegal war and occupation. Of course many more Iraqis killed – more than 100,000 have died so far.

The invasion, doubtful on legal grounds, was justified on the basis of false information, including information that was known to be incorrect when it was presented to parliament and the people.

Already it has led to deaths in Britain; only a small handful of people (that’s Tony Blair and some of his cabinet) doubt that the London bombings would not have happened if Britain had not joined in the invasion plans. Actually it is hard to believe even they doubt it, but rather they just can’t bring themselves to admit it.

*A protester from Glasgow is warned for using a megaphone in Parliament Square*

We’ve also seen the passage of draconian measures that attack civil liberties in this country (and attempts still being made to get more.) Muslims in particular have been targeted, with a rise in Islamophobia.

*At last the march moved off, with stewards pushing photographers away from the front*

The expenditure in Iraq has been vast. If you want to know why there isn’t the money to raise pensions (and a week of pension protests was ending today with a conference in London) there is a simple 4 letter answer. IRAQ.

Another four letter country, Iran, is currently under threat. Perhaps most chilling are the denials from Blair and Straw, who state that invasion is not on the table. For too many of us that just seems to make it more likely.

Many more pictures on My London Diary

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Muslims Unite Against Samarra Bombing – 2006

Muslims Unite Against Samarra Bombing: Following the bomb attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samara, Iraq there were several days of sectarian violence between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims despite attempts by religious leaders there to calm the situation. The structure of the 10th century mosque was badly damaged and although the bombing caused no direct casualties there were many deaths in the few days that followed.

The bombing was probably carried out by a cell of Al-Qaeda in Iraq although they did not admit responsibility. The US, then occupying Iraq, played down the aftermath of the bombingm claiming the death toll was around 300, but later reports suggest around ten times that number died.

The al-Askari mosque bombing was the start of the First Iraqi Civil War and the mosque was again damaged by a bomb the following year.

Here is the account of the march and rally in London on Saturday 25 February, 2006 I wrote for My London Diary at the time – will the usual corrections and some of the many pictures I posted.

Muslims Unite Against the Samarra Bombing

Around ten thousand British Shia and Sunni Muslims marched together through London on Saturday 25th in an unusual gesture of solidarity following the bombing of the mosque at Sammara in Iraq, one of the holiest of Muslim shrines, containing the tombs of the 8th and 9th grandsons of Muhammed.

The march was led by women and children, with the men following behind. They carried placards and chanted calling for an end to violence, denouncing the Wahhabis and Al-Qaeda. Many also carried the Iraqi flag in its pan-arab colours of black, white, red, and green.

Starting from Hyde Park, the march went down Park Lane and Piccadilly to end in a rally in Trafalgar Square. Both the plinth and the square below were crowded with demonstrators.

Despite the seriousness of the outrage at Samarra, the people on the march were peaceful and good-natured, protesting against violence and against the Muslim fundamentalism that aims to create a “Taliban-like extremist state in Iraq.“

Many more pictures on My London Diary.

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Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – 2007

Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq: On Saturday 24th February 2007 I photographed the march and rally organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative to call for British troops to be brought back from Iraq and for an end to the deployment of Trident nuclear missiles and their proposed expensive replacement.

The marchers met in Hyde Park around Speakers’ Corner and marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square.

I wrote a slightly long text to go with the pictures which I’ll repeat in a more normal form below with normal capitalisation. It includes an explanation of how I arrived at an rough estimate for the numbers taking part for this and other protests – often very significantly greater than that then given by the police to the press and usually rather less than that of the organisers.

Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – Stop the War/CND/BMI Demo

I’ve for many years been opposed to the so-called independent British nuclear weapons. Even at the height of the Cold War they were never credible as an independent deterrent. If they have ever had any justification it was that they made the USA feel less guilty, although American guilt at its huge nuclear arsenal and at being the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons has always been an incredibly stunted growth.

I was also firmly against the invasion of Iraq. It was always clear to those who didn’t want to be deluded that the so-called ‘intelligence’ on weapons of mass destruction was laughable.

*A cheaper alternative to Trident, and at least as effective. The bicycle & trailer costs rather less than a nuclear sub too.*

Blair was either a liar or a fool as he misled a minority of the British people and a majority of their MPs. Or most probably both. (Saddam may also have been deluded and certainly was an evil dictator, but we had long failed those who tried to oppose him.) The invasion was criminal, but the lack of planning for the occupation that inevitably followed even more so.

So Saturday’s march, organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative against both of these had my whole-hearted support (although i would have photographed it anyway.)

It is hard to be sure of numbers on events such as this, but the police estimate is laughable (the first figure they gave to the press, of 4000, was totally ludicrous.)

It took around 90 minutes for the march to pass me in Park Lane, and although there were a few short gaps, there were plenty of times when the wide street was too crowded to really take pictures. My estimate of the average number of people passing me per minute is 200-600, giving a total of 18,000-50,000 marchers from Hyde Park.

You can add to these figures perhaps another 10-20% who for various reasons go direct to the rally or join the march closer to Trafalgar Square, giving a total that could be between 20,000 and 60,000.

After photographing the marchers, I took the tube to get to the rally in time to hear some of the speeches (marchers were still arriving almost up to the end of the rally.) As I arrived, there were many people already leaving, and the square was filled, with people spilling out at both the northeast and northwest corners.

*So where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? In the American arsenals of course.*

I wasn’t there in time to hear Ken Livingstone, MPs John Mcdonnell and John Trickett, MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jill Evans, playwright David Edgar, Paul Mackney of the University & College Union or some of the other speakers, but I did hear the co-chair of the US ‘United For Peace And Justice’ Judith Leblanc, Lindsey German, George Galloway, and Augusto Montiel, a Venezuelan MP, as well as several Muslim speakers, trade unionists and singers including Julie Felix. I didn’t catch all of their names.

For me the most moving speech was from Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq. Together with others from ‘military families against the war’ she is camping out over the weekend opposite Downing Street.

Six of her colleagues stood with her as a group while she addressed the crowd, lending their support. She was simple, direct, emotional.

The final speaker (I think) was Jeremy Corbyn, MP, and it started to rain again as he began speaking, so I headed for the Underground and home.

Many – too many – more pictures on My London Diary.

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