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Tories Out March – 2017

Tories Out March: Around 20,000 met outside the BBC in Portland Place on Saturday 1st July 2017 to march to Parliament Square demanding an end to the Tory government under Theresa May.

Most were supporters of the Labour Party and in particular of the then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who had narrowly failed to win the recent general election, defeated not by the Tories but by sabotage within the party by the Labour right who controlled much of the party mechanism.

The Labour right had been shocked and appalled by Corbyn’s victory in the leadership contest and had done everything they could since then to get rid of him, with orchestrated cabinet resignations and the stoking up of false antisemitism claims combined with behind the scenes actions to ensure the failure of his attempts to improve the way the party tried to deal with such allegations.

We had seen on television the relief felt by some of them as the results came out when after it had begun to look as if Labour had a chance of victory it became clear that the Tories would hang on to a small majority. The last thing they had wanted had been for Corbyn to have won.

Theresa May had scraped in but had then had to bribe the DUP, a deeply bigoted party with links to Loyalist terrorists to give her a working majority.

Her austerity policies had been largely rejected by the electorate and the recent Grenfell Tower disaster had underlined the toxic effects of Tory failure and privatisation of building regulations and inspection and a total lack of concern for the lives of ordinary people.

*A woman poses as Theresa May with a poster ‘We cut 10,000 fire fighter jobs because your lives are worthless’*

The protesters – and much of the nation – knew that the Tories had proved themselves unfit to govern. The marchers and the people wanted a decent health service, education system, housing, jobs and better living standards for all.

But not all were happy with Labour policies either, although the great majority of them joined in with the sycophantic chanting in support of Corbyn. But there were significant groups who were also protesting against the housing polices being pursued by Labour-dominated local authorities, particularly in London Boroughs including Labour Southwark, Lambeth, Haringey and Newham.

Huge areas of council housing had been demolished or were under threat of demolition largely for the benefit of developers, selling off publicly owned land for the profit of the developers and disregarding the needs of the residents and of the huge numbers on council housing lists.

*Class War protest the devastation of the estates where the poor live*

One example was “the Heygate at Elephant & Castle, a well-designed estate deliberately run down by the council over at least a decade, but still in remarkably good condition. It cost Southwark Council over £51m to empty the estate of tenants and leaseholders, and in 2007 had valued the site at £150m, yet they sold it for a third of its market value to developers Lendlease for £50m.”

The estate had been home to over a thousand council tenants and another 189 leaseholders. Around 500 tenants were promised they would be able to return to to homes on the new estate – but there were just 82 social rented homes. The leaseholders were given compensation of around a third of the price of comparable homes in the new Elephant Park – and most had to move miles away to find property they could afford.

In 2017 Haringey was making plans to demolish around 5,000 council homes, roughly a third of its entire stock under what was known as the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) with developers Lendlease. Plans here prompted a revolt in the local area led by Labour members in the pro-Corbyn Momentum group who gained control of the council in 2018 and scrapped the HDV.

*A giant-headed Theresa May outside Downing St*

Among those leading protests against Labour’s Housing Policy was Class War who have been active in many of the protests over housing. I photographed them having a little fun with the march stewards, but unfortunately missed the scene at the rally in Parliament Square when Lisa Mckenzie confronted both Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn asking them the simple question ‘When are you going to stop Labour councils socially cleansing people out of London?’.

*Class War lift up their banner in front of a police officer videoing protesters*

Both men ignored her, walking past without pausing to answer and “the small Class War group was surrounded by Labour Party supporters holding up placards to hide them and idiotically chanting ‘Oh, Je-re-my Cor-byn! Oh, Je-re-my Cor-byn!’. But eight years later, now in power led by Starmer and Angela Rayner, Labour seems determined to make much the same mistakes in its housing policy.

More at Tories Out March.

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Legal Aid Funeral & Daddy’s Pig – 2013

Legal Aid Funeral & Daddy’s Pig: On Wednesday 22nd May 2013 lawyers held a mock funeral and rally against government proposals for further changes to legal aid proposed by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling. Legal aid had already been greatly restricted by the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 which had come into effect earlier in the year. I rushed away at the end of the rally to join Artist taxi-driver Mark McGowan who was pushing his Daddy’s Pig from Downing Street three miles to the Bank of England.

Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Legal Aid Funeral & Daddy's Pig - 2013 — *The coffin of Legal Aid*

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling having made huge cuts in legal aid was now proposing to end the right of legal aid clients to chose their solicitor with the work going to the lowest bidder in ‘price competitive tendering’, PCT. This would be open to “to large non-legal companies, including Eddie Stobart and Tesco, and remove the ability of those in need of legal aid to chose appropriate specialists in the legal area involved.”

The short funeral procession to Parliament Square by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association was led by a marching jazz band, followed by robed and wigged figures carrying the coffin of Legal Aid and a woman dressed as the Scales of Justice.

As well as lawyers others joined the protest including Women from Winvisible, Women Against Rape, Defend The Right To Protest, Liberty and more. The proposed changes would particularly effect women involved in domestic violence and rape cases, and immigrants fighting for asylum.

There were many excellent speakers and on My London Diary I gave a partial list on My London Diary:

Labour MPs Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn and his fellow Islington MP Emily Thornberry, Natalie Bennett of the Green Party and senior figures involved with the law from both Tories and Lib-Dems. There were those who had been involved with legal aid over cases of injustice, including Gerry Conlan, one of the Guildford 4, a member of the family of Jean Charles De Menzes, Susan Matthews, mother of Alfie Meadows and Breda Power, the daughter of Billy Power, one of the Birmingham 6. Solicitors who spoke included Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Repreive, and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, and notable among the QCs, Helena Kennedy. There were many memorable quotes (almost all of which I’ve forgotten) with Gerry Conlan making clear “Back in the 1970s they sent innocent people to jail by the van load. But if these cuts go through they’ll be sending them in by the Eddie Stobart truckload“.

The rally ended with “a summary by leading barrister John Cooper QC after which the whole assembly delivered its verdict on Grayling, guilty as charged.”

The plans for PCT were dropped in September 2013 but didn’t go away entirely with new plans to introduce it in 2016, and it took a High Court ruling in 2018 to quash proposals to use PCT for Housing Possession Court Duty schemes.

Legal aid remains unfairly restricted and in only the very wealthy and those of the very poor who are able to access legal aid are almost “equal under the law”, with the great majority of us being able to afford it. And of course the wealthy are able to use much greater legal resources than legal aid will ever provide.

True equality under the law would only become possible if we made a huge systemic change to essentially nationalise our whole justice system, making it entirely a public service.

More on My London Dairy at Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid.

Daddy’s Pig heads for the Trough – Downing St to Bank

Artist taxi-driver Mark McGowan pushed his Daddy’s Pig, accompanied by another protester pushing a fire engine, the three miles from Downing St to the Bank of England, hoping to present it to the governor for services to austerity and the criminal activities of the City of London.

McGowan had a small group of supporters with him as he undertook the second stage of his gruelling journey on hands and knees, pushing the pig on its plastic roller skate.

A few days earlier, he had pushed the pig from from Kings College hospital in Camberwell where he is receiving cancer treatment to Downing street as a protest against the privatisation of the NHS which is being driven by the bankers and private equity firms.

I walked with him and his pig on part of the second half of his painful slow route, joining him at the Royal Courts of Justice and leaving him and his colleague with the fire engine as they rested briefly before reaching Ludgate Circus. Even with knee pads and gloves the going was tough and Mark was struggling to meet his appointment with a banker at 3pm.

Daddy’s Pig heads for the Trough

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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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Aldermaston 2008

Aldermaston 2008: Searching for what to write today I came to my post about my journey to Aldermaston, where the huge 750 acre Atomic Weapons Establishment is the UK’s main site for nuclear weapons research, design and manufacture. It was to here that people marched from London over 4 days at Easter1958 in a pivotal event in the anti-nuclear movement organized by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and supported by the newly formed Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) – which took over the organisation of further marches.

The CND leaflet in 1958 gave the reason for marching:

“MARCH TO ALDERMASTON
WHY?
BECAUSE we must show our opposition to the Testing, Storing and Manufacture of the H-Bomb in Britain.
If we make no protest now we have given our consent to its use.
“All who are opposed on any ground to Nuclear Weapons, whether possessed by the British, American or Russian Governments, are welcome.”

I didn’t go on that march as my parents thought I was too young, but both my older brothers marched. 50 years later at Easter 2008 I decided to take part in CND’s 50th anniversary event.

I had decided not to march but to cycle at least part of the way from London to Aldermaston with Bikes Not Bombs, but for various reasons (sloth, other events, lousy weather and a dislike of early rising) it didn’t happen, although I did manage to photograph the riders on Oxford Street, where they were going in exactly the wrong direction.

In the end I did ride from Reading to Aldermaston (and back) on Monday, but started an hour or two later than the organised ride, taking a more direct route at a faster pace and arriving before them. Here I’ll copy what I wrote on My London Diary in 2008 with a couple of minor corrections and post a few of the pictures with a link to many more on My London Diary.

Aldermaston – 50 years

Monday 24 March, 2008

Monday I got up too late to join the Bikes Not Bombs cyclists on their way from Reading, where I arrived by train. The train that goes from Staines to Reading is so so slow I’m convinced there is still a man with a red flag walking in front of it much of the way, and the 20 or so miles took almost an hour.

I took exactly the same route from Reading that I’d walked with Pat Arrowsmith and the other Aldermaston marchers in the 2004 march. Although a cool day, it was a pleasant morning for riding and I was quite enjoying it until a stretch of road called ‘Hermit’s Hill’ reminded me how out of practice I was at cycling. I can’t remember when I last had to push my bike up a hill, although in 2002 when my arteries were almost fully clogged with cholesterol I did once have to stop and rest in Normandy. Fortunately it turned out to be the only significant hill on the route.

I went first to the main gate and joined the other photographers who were there, and took a few pictures of people arriving, including the 30 or so cyclists who I had beaten there. I walked down with some of the other photographers to the Falcon gate, but not a lot was happening there.

Later I took a ride around perimeter, or at least the part of it which is on roads – the northern side is simply a footpath, and it was rather muddy and full of demonstrators, so I didn’t try to ride along it. I caught up with the cyclists again at the Boiler House gate where I stopped to take some pictures, as quite a lot seemed to be happening there.

They left before I had taken all the pictures that I wanted, and got a few minutes start on me, before I pedalled off in pursuit. The road leads down and through the actual village of Aldermaston (rich home counties, rather too tidy), but what goes down has to come up, and I found myself struggling uphill again through the queue of traffic held up by the ‘bikes not bombs’ group and their police escort of two cars and several motorbikes.

The Construction gate at the top of the hill had a Welsh socialist choir, and I took a few pictures before I saw the cyclists coming up again – they had stopped to regroup a little down the road. Further along the fence, near the Home Office Gate was another largish group of people and a veteran from 1958 was talking.

The incredible Rinky-Dink mobile cycle-powered sound system was also there – another reminder of 2004 when it accompanied us as we marched down the lanes to the base.

People were now beginning to link hands around the base, although the organisers had talked about one person every 5 metres. Most of it seemed to be surrounded considerably more densely than this, although there were some gaps.

Back at the main gate there was an opportunity to photograph some of the speakers who were touring the event, although I didn’t actually hear them speak. They included two labour MPs, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, Green MEP Caroline Lucas, veteran Labour Party member Walter Wolfgang and several guests from Japan, one of whom was a survivor from Hiroshima.

*Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline Lucas, Walter Wolfgang, John McDonnell and others*

After that people started to go home, and after a short but rather heavy shower I decided it was time to get on my bike too.

Many more pictures from the event at Aldermaston – 50 years, and I also took a few on my ride back to Reading Station.

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UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March – 2010

UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March: There is a long history of protests where anti-fascists come to oppose marches and rallies by extreme right groups in London, including of course the Battle of Cable Street, but I think we have had more of them in recent years, if not on that same scale.

But looking back on my coverage of this event of Friday 5th March 2010 what we have seen different is the policing of such confrontations. The more recent such events have seen huge mobilisations of police to keep the two groups apart, with extensive use of double barriers with a large ‘sterile’ no go area between them, and often some fairly aggressive policing and arrests to achieve this.

Attending more recent events journalists and photographers have had to choose which side of the event to be at, with often rather long detours being needed to go between the two – and having a Press Card is seldom of any use.

In 2010 police did keep the two groups apart, but only on opposite pavements of the road in front of the Houses of Parliament, and as my photographs show, I was able to move fairly freely from side to side.

Unite Against Fascism had tried to block the road a couple of hours before the EDL march after holding their rally in Old Palace Yard on the north side, but were then forced across the road onto the opposite pavement by police. I wasn’t there to see this but was told by others that there had been a few arrests when people had refused to move.

I had walked away down Millbank where the EDL were to hold a rally before marching to Parliament. I was early and nobody was there but as I had expected there were several hundred at a packed pub a couple of hundred yards further on with many standing on the pavement outside.

Most were in in a good mood and happy to talk to me and other journalists about why they were protesting – and you can read more about this on My London Dairy. I think I represented them fairly in my article, though as always they felt strongly that they did not get fair treatment in the press. I felt that the coverage was generally fairly accurate, the problem was more with the views and actions of some EDL members rather than the reporting.

As I noted in my account: “Later during the actual march I did get sworn at, threatened and given the finger, but only by a small minority of marchers, and a young female Asian journalist seemed to attract considerably more aggravation than me. There was also a considerable amount of clearly anti-Muslim shouting and singing, and the placards and slogans that attack the building of mosques seem to threaten all Muslims rather than just the extremists. The atmosphere was unpleasant, and really gave the lie to the earlier denials of racism.”

I went along with them to the rally outside Tate Britain, but the start was delayed and they went back to the pub. When it did finally start the main speaker was the Sikh Amit Singh (Guramit Singh Kalirai), and his speech seemed to me at times to be clearly racist in its attacks on Muslims. Police took no action over this or his other speeches, but three years later he was jailed for taking part in a violent attempted armed robbery.

From there the EDL were escorted by police as they marched to Parliament and taken into a pen on the north side of the road opposite the UAF. As I commented, “The first thing that many of the EDL did on arriving in the pen was to urinate against the wall of Westminster Abbey” but mostly they shouted often racist abuse at the UAF who responded with calling them racists and fascists.

The EDL made great play of denying they were racists and showing off their few Black and Asian members to the press. But there was a hugely visible difference between their largely white male crowd and those across the road which reflected the multiracial nature of London – and where women were in a majority.

After around an hour of shouting across the road the UAF crowd began slowly to drift away. Police kept the EDL in their pen but did escort a few to Westminster Station.

I decided it was time to leave. As I commented I hadn’t enjoyed spending much of the afternoon in the company of the EDL “hearing their racism and right wing simplicities. It was an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon, but I think its important to show these events and these people honestly.”

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary at UAF Oppose EDL Westminster March.

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Save the Whittington Hospital – 2010

Save the Whittington Hospital: On Saturday 27th February 2010 I joined around two thousand people at Highbury Corner to march the two miles to the Whittington Hospital in a protest against planned cuts in A& E and other services at the hospital under a rationalisation plan initiated by Lord Darzi, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Department of Health from 2007 to 2009. In 2008 he led a review of the NHS titled High Quality Care for All.

The proposals for North London arose out of this review and led to plans to would see A&E services downgraded at the Whittington and Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield as well as at either Barnet or North Middlesex Hospitals. He argued that by concentrating emergency services in a few highly-equipped hospitals with specialist facilities a better service can be provided. But the changes were also motivated by the forecast of a large forecast future NHS North London deficit of around £860 million in five years time.

As speakers at the rally pointed out, these changes would lead to much longer journeys for patients through the congested streets of north London in emergencies, which would cost lives. The Whittington, close to the major junction at Archway and with good transport connections is a good place for a hospital and its part or eventual full closure would release a highly desirable and lucrative location for developers.

Among the marchers were several local MPs for the area served by the hospital, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there.

Frank Dobson who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council. A number of celebrities with links to the hospital also supported the protests against its closure.

It was doubtless the celebrity support that gained the battle to save the Whittington much greater publicity across the media than most protests, though as usual the BBC did its best to minimise the protest, its web site “being deliberately misleading when it states that “hundreds of protesters” gathered for the march“.

I’d actually stopped and counted the marchers as the walked past me and although my count might have been a few tens out, there were just under 2,000 when it left Highbury Corner. More joined it on the march and others went directly to the rally at the Whittington where the organisers estimated 5,000 attended, though my guess was a little fewer.

In April 2010 after huge local opposition, Labour health minister Andy Burnham had cancelled planned cuts at Whittington Hospital at Archway in North London, along with other planned cuts at North Middlesex and Barnet Hospitals. Shadow health minister Andrew Lansley praised his decision to call “for a stop to the flawed plans by NHS London to shut down local hospital“.

In July 2024 another Labour health Secretary, Wes Streeting, commissioned Lord Darzi to carry out an independent investigation into the NHS in England, which was published without any public consultation in September 2024. I imagine we will soon be fighting to stop more hospital closures.

More at Save the Whittington.

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Guantanamo, National Gallery, Elephant, Aylesbury & Lisa – 2015

Guantanamo, National Gallery, Elephant, Aylesbury & Lisa; Ten years ago Thursday 5th February 2015 was a long and interesting day for me, with a couple of protests, a short walk around London, an estate occupation and a memorable book launch.

Close Guantanamo – 8 Years of protest – US Embassy

Guantanamo, National Gallery, Elephant, Aylesbury & Lisa - 2015

A small group from the London Guantánamo Campaign was celebrating 8 years of holding monthly protests at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Among those protesting were four people who had been taking part in the protests there for 8 years.

Close Guantanamo – 8 Years of protest

No Privatisation At National Gallery – Trafalgar Square and DCMS, Whitehall

The National Gallery had told 400 of its 600 staff who are responsible for the security of the paintings and the public, provide information about the collection, organise school bookings and look after the millions of visitors each year that they are no longer to be employed by the gallery and will instead become employes of a private company.

A private company had already taken over “temporarily” to run services in a third of the gallery.

Workers at the gallery had staged a 5 day strike against the privatisation and were incensed when Candy Udwin, one of the senior PCS union reps and a member of the team taking part in negotiations with management at ACAS, was suspended, accused of breaching commercial confidentiality, and they demanded her re-instatement.

The National Gallery was then the only major museum or gallery in London still not paying the London Living Wage. Staff were already living on poverty pay and the privatisation would threaten pay and worsen the conditions – sick pay, holiday pay, pensions, hours of work etc – of these loyal and knowledgeable staff.

When nobody came to the door as they tried to deliver their 40,000 signature petition against privatisation a group went into the Sainsbury Wing to tray and deliver it. Security tried to get them to leave. Nobody from the gallery would come down to recieve the petition and eventually the strikers handed it over to the Head of Security who promised to deliver it to management personally.

The strikers and their supporters then marched through Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to the Dept of Culture, Media and Sport, then in Parliament Street, where the minister concerned had agreed to receive a copy of the petition and three of them were allowed to take it in. Here there was a short rally with speakers including Jeremy Corbyn MP.

No Privatisation At National Gallery

Around the Elephant – Elephant & Castle

I made a few pictures as I walked from the Bakerloo Line station at Elephant & Castle to the Aylesbury Estate and afterwards on my way back to the station. The shopping centre has now been demolished and new buildings have sprung up on its site,

This strange building is an electricity substation which is still there, although there is no longer a roundabout around it. It was built as a memorial to Michael Faraday, ‘The Father of Electricity’ who was born a few hundred yards away in 1791.

More pictures at Around the Elephant.

Aylesbury Estate Occupation – Walworth

*Chartridge occupied since the previous Saturday in a protest for housing in London*

Southwark Council’s Aylesbury Estate was one of the UK’s largest council estates, built between 1963 and 1977 with over 2,700 homes. Lack of proper maintenance by the council and its use by them as a sink estate had led to it getting a reputation for crime, exaggerated by its use in filming TV crime series and films there not least because of its convenient location.

*Access to the occupied block – I didn’t attempt it*

It was on the Aylesbury Estate that Tony Blair got in on the act making his first speech as Prime Minister promising to fix estates like this and improve conditions for the urban poor through regeneration of council estates.

*‘Respect Aylesbury Ballot – Stop the Demolition Now!’ Residents voted overwhelming for refurbishment not redevelopment*

The buildings were actually well-designed and structurally sound on a well-planned estate with plenty of green space, but having been built in the sixties and 70s needed bringing up to date particularly in terms of insulation and double glazing. Southwark Council had also repeatedly failed to carry out necessary maintenance, particularly on the district heating system which they had allowed to become unreliable. But many residents liked living on the estate and when given the choice voted by a large majority for refurbishment rather than redevelopment. I visited several homes on other occasions and was quite envious, and the residents clearly loved living there.

Southwark Council responded by claiming the refurbishment would cost several times more than independent estimates suggested and went ahead with plans to eventually demolish the lot. Given the large number of homes involved the process was expected to last 20 years (later increased to 25 and likely to take even longer.) The first fairly small phase was completed in 2013, and the homes that were occupied in 2015 were in Phase 2.

I wasn’t able to access the flats that were occupied as it would have meant a rather dangerous climb to the first floor which I decided was beyond me, but I did meet some of the occupiers and went with them and some local residents to distribute leaflets about a public meeting to other flats in the estate.

Many residents support the occupiers and knew that they would lose their comfortable homes in a good location when they are finally forced to move. Some will be rehoused by Southwark, though mainly in less convienient locations and smaller properties, but many are on short term tenancies which do not qualify them for rehousing and will have to find private rented accommodation elsewhere. Those who have acquired their flats will only be offered compensation at far less than the cost of any similar accommodation in the area and will have to move much further from the centre of London.

While the volunteers were posting leaflets on one of the upper floors of the largest block on the estate, Wendover, I took some pictures to show the extensive views residents enjoyed. This was hindered by the fact that the windows on the walkways were thick with dust, possibly not cleaned since the block was built and not opening enough to put a camera through. Then fortunately I found a broken window that give me a clear view.

Much more at Aylesbury Estate Occupation.

Getting By – Lisa’s Book Launch – Young Foundation, Bethnal Green

*Ken Loach, Jasmine Stone and Lisa McKenzie, author of ‘Getting By’ talk at the book launch*

Lisa McKenzie’s book ‘Getting By‘ is the result of her years of study from the inside of the working class district of Nottingham where she lived and worked for 22 years, enabling her to view the area from the inside and to gather, appreciate and understand the feelings and motivations of those who live there in a way impossible for others who have researched this and similar areas.

*Jasmine Stone speaks about Focus E15 and Lisa and others hold a Class War banner*

On the post in My London Diary I write much more about the opening – and of course there are many more pictures as well as a little of my personal history.

Getting By – Lisa’s Book Launch.

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On the IWGB ‘3 Cosas’ Battle Bus – 2014

On the IWGB ‘3 Cosas’ Battle Bus: On Tuesday 18th January 2014 I got up uncharacteristically early and joined a packed rush hour train into London, something I usually like to avoid. The bus to Russell Square was also slow, held up in busy traffic, but even so I joined the morning picket at the east gate to the entrance to the Senate House car park before 9am and was taking pictures.

It was a bright winter morning, but not much above freezing and not the kind of day anyone sensible would go on an open-top bus ride around London, and though I’d layered up well for the event it was still chilling.

But those on the picket line on the second day of the 3 day strike by the IWGB for union recognition and better conditions had already been there since 5am, beginning while I was still sleeping in a warm bed and were still in good spirits. Cleaners, maintenance and security staff who work in the University of London were joined by student leaders and students from the University. Of course many of the workers would normally have been at work in the early hours.

Although these workers work at the university and carry out work essential for the running of the university, the university does not employ them. Most low paid workers – cleaners, maintenance and security staff, catering workers and others – at the University of London are no longer directly employed by the University, but work in the University on contracts from contractors.

Outsourcing these workers enables the University to evade its responsibilities towards this essential part of their workforce who suffer from poorer conditions and pay and aggressive management from the contractors that any responsible employer would be ashamed to implement. Most were only getting the legal minimum in terms of pay, pensions, sick pay and holidays, well inferior to comparable fellow workers directly employed by the University.

In the past these precarious employees had belonged, if at all, to traditional unions such as Unison, who had taken their fees but done nothing to improve their conditions, often seeming to them to only be concerned in keeping the differential between those on the lowest pay and higher paid staff.

It was only when these workers, many of them Spanish-speaking, joined the newly formed grass roots union, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, that they were able to achieve some gains thanks to noisy public protests and strong negotiating by the union which by 2013 had won them the London Living Wage, considerably more than the national minimum wage. They achieved this despite both the University of London and the employers refusing to recognise the IWGB, continuing to recognise the more compliant Unison to which few if any of these workers belonged.

In 2013, having won the London Living Wage and started the now famous 3 Cosas or “three things” campaign for sick pay, holiday pay and pensions, as well as continuing to press for union recognition.

This 3-day strike, following another strike the previous November, was the latest action in this campaign. Union recognition was particularly important for those working at the Garden Halls of residence in Bloomsbury which the university was intending to close in the coming Summer. The IWGB was demanding these workers be given priority for vacancies that arise elsewhere in the university, with preference being given to those with the longer periods of service, but the employers were refusing any cooperation.

Waiting for us in the driveway was an open-top bus, and after I had been there around an hour most of the strikers and supporters boarded this ‘battle bus’ to go on a protest tour of various sites in London, with just a small picket remaining. I had been invited to go with them on top of the bus to take photographs.

“The sun shone on the workers as the bus drove away, followed by a group of student supporters on bicycles. I was on the upper deck taking photographs as the workers waved their red IWGB flags, chanted and listened to IWGB Branch Secretary Jason Moyer-Lee, Branch Chair Henry Lopez, President of the Independent Workers of Great Britain Alberto Durango, Branch Vice-Chair and leading member of the 3 Cosas Campaign Sonia Chura and University of London Union Vice-President Daniel Cooper as they used a powerful public address system to address the public and workers about the fight for union recognition for the IWGB and comparable conditions of service with directly employed University of London workers for outsourced workers at the university.

In between the various speeches and chants, including some in both Spanish and translated into English, there was loud music to draw attention and also to keep the strikers happy.”

The first stop was in Cartwright Gardens outside the University’s Garden Halls of residence where there were several speeches from the top of the bus. Somehow we went on to drive past the Unison headquarters on Euston Road in both directions, to booing from many of the workers, and on the second pass an IWGB flag was caught in the branches of a tree and left flying in front of the Unison building.

The route had been planned to stop outside the offices of The Guardian, but it, like most London buses, was running late due to traffic congestion, and it continued on to go very noisily through Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall, before a complete circuit of Parliament Square before stopping to let us get off outside the Supreme Court.

There was then a rally on the pavement in front of Parliament, with short speeches by Labour MPs John McDonnell, Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn who had come out to join us.

We marched to the Embankment and boarded the bus again for a short journey, leaving the bus just around the corner from the Royal Opera House, where everyone kept quiet as we approached the building and then rushed in. The IWGB had been campaigning there for some time for the London Living Wage.

This is another workplace where the management had refused to recognise and have talks with the IWGB, preferring to recognise Unison. The IWGB were confronted there by the Unison Health & Safety rep who told them the management had now agreed to pay cleaners the Living Wage but hadn’t yet told them. Doubtless this was another victory for the protests by the IWGB, though of course he refused to acknowledge this.

We piled back onto the bus and went to the offices of the new employer of the outsourced workers, Cofely GDF-Suez, who had taken over from Balfour Beatty Workplace in December. Police were there and the front and back gates were both locked. The workers held a brief rally outside the gate in Torrens Place.

I was invited to go back on the bus to a late lunch with the workers at the Elephant & Castle – but it was already after 2pm and I didn’t relish the thought of another long bus ride. So I said goodbye and began my journey home to work on and file some of the many pictures I had taken over the day.

You can read more about this in posts on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures.
‘3 Cosas’ Strike Picket
‘3 Cosas’ Strike Picket and Battle Bus
IWGB at Parliament
IWGB in Royal Opera House
IWGB at Cofely GDF-Suez

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My 2024 in Photographs – Part4

My 2024 in Photographs: The fourth and final part of my selection of images from 2024.

London, UK. 26 Oct 2024. As the end of the peaceFul march against extreme right hate came into Trafalgar Square, a group behind a black banner ‘NO TO TOMMY ROBINSON – NO TO FASCISM’ turned off the route towards the Mall and made a halfhearted rush towards a police line, with a small group trying to push their way through – most just stood watching. Police pushed back and the two groups faced each other. A few minutes later one man was pushed out of the crowd and through the line by a small police squad.

London, UK. 26th October 2024. The letter to Starmer. The annual remembrance march by the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) from Trafalgar Square could only go a short distance down Whitehall and held their rally at the Cabinet Office. Speakers from families whose relatives killed by police and in penal, mental health and immigration detention called for justice and proper investigations of the officers.

London, UK. 28 Oct 2024. Men in oilskins carry a pink inflatable dinghy. Extinction Rebellion marches to stages theatrical flooding scenes outside insurers in the city to show how insurers are green-lighting fossil fuel crooks to flood our homes and our lands. They hope to stop insurance for new fossil fuel projects; flooding due to global warming is already common and threatens us all.

London, UK. 30 Oct 2024. Reading The Crimes outside insurers MarshMcLennan. Extinction Rebellion ended their 3 days of protests at Insurance Companies in the City with a Zombie protest, predicting the social collapse with wars, famine and floods that will happen if CO2 levels and the climate chaos they cause continue to increase. They protested with zombie dancing, die-ins and speeches outside some of the worlds major insurance companies based in London urging them not to insure fossil fuel projects.

London, UK. 2 Nov 24. Health Care Workers. After a die-in by some at Downing St, many thousands marched in a massive PSC National Demo to a rally close to the US Embassy in Nine Elms calling for urgent action by the international community to end brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and schools in Gaza and an end the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. All arms supplies to Israel should end, with an immediate permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and negotiations for a two state solution.

London, UK. 2 Nov 24. Jeremy Corbyn. After a die-in by some at Downing St, many thousands marched in a massive PSC National Demo to a rally close to the US Embassy in Nine Elms calling for urgent action by the international community to end brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and schools in Gaza and an end the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. All arms supplies to Israel should end, with an immediate permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and negotiations for a two state solution.

London, UK. 3 Nov 2024. Marches wear blue for water flood the streets from Vauxhall on route to a rally in Parliament Square called by River Action. They demand a review of Ofwat and the Environment Agency, an immediate end to industry polluting our waters for profit and greed – particularly sewage discharges, for laws on water pollution to be enforced and for all industries to invest in better use of water.

London, UK. 30 Nov 2024. As the death toll from Israel’s attacks in Gaza is now over 43,000 and many now face starvation with every hospital having been bombed and with virtually no medical supplies, with the UK is still complicit in the genocide, thousands including many Jews, marched in yet another entirely peaceful mass protest in solidarity. They call for an immediate ceasefire with the release of hostages and prisoners and for negotiations to secure a long-term just peace in the area.

London, UK. 14 Dec 2024. Hundreds of BMX riders dressed as Santa, Elves, Snowmen, Christmas Trees and Reindeer set off from the graffiti tunnel at Leake Street Waterloo for the 10th annual Santa Cruise around central London, a fund raising event for the charity Evelina Children’s Heart Organisation. BMX Life raises money for ECHO through sponsorship on these rides and two major raffles each year and has so far raised over £180,000 for ECHO.

London, UK. 14 Dec 2024. Tenants organised by the London Renters Union march demanding urgent action on city’s spiralling rents, which are tearing London apart – the average rent of £2,172 is now more than the pay of many vital workers such as teaching assistants and care workers, forcing many into cramped temporary accommodation. The scrapping of rent controls in 1988 and the mass sell-of of council homes have prioritised landlord profits and Labour’s current housing plans are based on private developers profits rather than providing social homes.

You can double-click on any of the images to see them larger and you can see many more pictures from these and other events in 2024 and earlier years in my albums on Facebook.

My 2024 in Photographs – Part 2

What you see here is just the second page of a selection of my work in 2024. Not particularly my “best pictures” but all I think pictures that worked well and told the story I was trying to tell. Despite getting out rather less often than in some previous years, particularly pre-Covid, I think it has been quite a good year for my photography even though I’m getting older, lacking stamina and generally taking things much easier.

Most of my pictures have been from protests over the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza but other campaigns have continued, and I’ve been able to photograph some of their action. You can see more pictures from all the events I’ve photographed in around 70 albums from 2024 on Facebook – together with a few from my summer holiday in Wales. They are here in roughly the order they were taken – those from January and February are in the previous post.