My 2024 in Photographs: The fourth and final part of my selection of images from 2024.
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.
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.
Part 3 follows tomorrow. You can see many more pictures from these and other events in my albums on Facebook.
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King’s Cross, Excel and a Musical Protest: Like other posts in the early years of My London Diary the text and pictures from Saturday 26th November 2005 are rather hidden away and it isn’t always easy to connect pictures with text. And it had seemed at the time a good idea to write the texts all in lower case, which makes them rather difficult to read, so I now like to resurrect some of them occasionally in a more accessible manner, linking back to the original pages for more pictures than in these posts on >Re:PHOTO.
As I walked up the escalator (yes, I was late again) at King’s Cross I remembered the interviews with those who had been caught there in the terrible fire, thinking how hard it would be to find the way out in smoke-filled darkness. Parts of the station still look a terrible mess, though that’s not unusual in our underground system.
Up at ground level was a joint trades union demonstration in memory of the fire, and to defend the safety rules which are currently under attack by management wanting to save costs. Kings Cross – Never Again! was address by a number of speakers including Mick Connolly, John Mcdonnell MP Jeremy Corbyn MP, Keith Norman (ASLEF), Matt Wrack (FBU), and Bob Crow (RMT), all worried by the threat to the public and those who work on the Underground or in rescue services.
Proper safety procedures are particularly vital when as well as accidental disasters such as the King’s Cross fire, the safety of the system is also threatened by deliberate terrorist attacks.
I’d hoped the event would end in time for me to get to a lecture at the ICA, but it was too late. I went that way just the same, getting off the tube at Charing Cross and walking down Whitehall to Westminster station for the Jubilee Line, past the Cenotaph, surrounded now by a low fence. It was still covered by the wreaths of poppies from earlier in the month, now partly covered by the falling leaves from the many London plane trees, another and in some ways more touching symbol of loss.
More pictures from Kings Cross – never again!
It was an afternoon of low winter sun, and stormy showers, with impressive clouds in the wide open skies over the expanse of the Royal Docks, and some peculiar colours. The demonstration I’d gone to see was nowhere to be found when I arrived, and I wandered the dock estate marvelling in the views.
In particular the high-level bridge over the dock is one of new London’s more spectacular sights, and a fine viewing platform. Unlike the last time I visited, the lifts were working too. A small group of people with musical instruments began to gather on the top, but they turned out only to be a band coming for a photo session.
More pictures from Excel and Victoria Dock.
I’d more or less given up and decided to go home at that point when in the distance I heard the brassy notes of the Red Flag, and made my way towards them. By the time I’d arrived at the entrance to the Excel Centre, they were into the Internationale, complete with new words for the occasion (except that no-one was singing them, and I didn’t fancy a solo role):
We are told that profit from the arms fair will
trickle down all over town,
But it’s killing our sisters and our brothers,
it’s their blood that is trickling down.
All people now rally!
No arms fair any place!
The Intenationale unites the human race!
Next came the Cutty Wren, a song from the Peasant’s Revolt, which took my mind back to Fobbing where I’d been ten days earlier.
The Excel centre has hosted several arms fairs which have attracted a number of protests from local groups. One of the local papers, the Newham Recorder, found in a poll that 79% of local residents oppose them, and London Mayor Ken Livingstone has also voiced his opposition. Further arms fairs are already booked for 2007, 2009 and 2011 and the musical protest was one of a number of actions attempting to get the Excel centre to cancel these future events.
More pictures at East London Against the Arms Trade.
And I returned in those later years to photograph many protests agains the arms fairs – and you can find pictures of them on various September pages on My London Dairy.
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DPAC Court Vigil, a Poet Arrested, Musical Poor Doors & More: Wednesday 22nd October 2014, ten years ago today was a busy day for me. You can read my full accounts of the various events I photographed on the links to My London Diary, along with many more pictures, but here I’ve only space for a short outline. Below is my day more or less in order.
When disabled people won a court case over withdrawal of the Independent Living Fund the government simply put back the closure of the fund. Today’s protest by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) supported a second case against the closure. Speakers at the vigil included three MPs, John McDonnell, Andy Slaughter and Jeremy Corbyn, as well as many from various disability groups.
At the end of the protest, DPAC carried out their usual direct action, blocking Strand outside the court with their wheelchairs.
More at DPAC High Court Vigil for ILF.
Protesters were continuing their regular vigils opposite Parliament for Shaker Aamer, imprisoned and tortured for over 12 years and cleared for release in 2007. They believe he was still being held because his testimony would embarrass MI6 as well as the US.
End UK shame over Shaker Aamer.
I took the tube from Westminster to Canary Wharf to visit the Bridges exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands, later returning to Westminster. I paused in Westminster Station to take some panoramic images of the interior, designed as Piranesian, though sometimes I get more of the feeling of Escher as you seem to walk endlessly up escalators and around the interior.
I found the show a little disappointing, but took advantage of my visit there to take a few more panoramic images.
A few more pictures,
I made a couple of visits to the Democracy Camp in Parliament Square both before and after going to Canary Wharf. Although the camp had been ejected from the main grass area workshops and rallies were still taking place throughout the day, and Danny, the ‘Plinth Guy‘ was still up there with Churchill since the previous day – and there were cheers when he completed 24 hours.
Earlier someone had been arrested for throwing him a bottle of water, and when performance poet and activist Martin Powell arrived with a plastic tub of food he was warned he would be arrested if he tried to give it to Danny.
He replied it could not possibly be a crime to feed a hungry person and threw it extremely accurately over police heads and into Danny’s waiting hands. Arrested and marched away he loudly recited his poem ‘The Missing Peace’.
Danny was still in place when I returned at 5pm but the police had called in their climbing team. I listened while its leader talked with him, and Danny told him he would not resist arrest if they came to take him down peacefully. But I had to leave before they started to do so.
Democracy Camp – Poet Arrested
This was Class War’s 14th weekly protest at the ‘rich door’ of Redrow’s One Commercial St flats and it was a lively affair with the banners dancing to the music of Rhythms of Resistance, a poetic performance and some rousing speeches against social apartheid.
There ws strong police presence but there was no trouble, with a carnival atmosphere and banners dancing up and down the wide pavement in front of the rich door. Most of the police appeared to be enjoying the event too.
As usual after an hour of protesting people dispersed and I went into Aldgate East station to begin my journey home.
More at Musical Poor Doors.
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Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike: On Saturday 23rd September 2017 hundreds marched from a rally in North London against the council’s plans to make a huge transfer of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease, which would result in the demolition of thousands of council homes, replacing them largely by private housing. I left the march close to its end taking the tube to Brixton where strikers at the were marking a year of action with a rally.
People had come to a rally and march against Haringey Council’s ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’, HDV, which proposed a £2 billion giveaway of council housing and assets to a private corporation run by Australian multinational Lendlease.
This would result in the speedy demolition of over 1,300 council homes on the Northumberland Park estate, followed by similar loss of social housing across the whole of the borough.
Similar ‘regeneration’ schemes in other boroughs such as Southwark, Lambeth and Barnet had resulted in the loss of truly affordable housing, with the result of social cleansing with many of the poorer residents of the redeveloped estates being forced to move out of these boroughs to areas with cheaper private housing on the outskirts of London and beyond.
London’s housing crisis has been made much worse by the activities of wealthy foreign investors buying the new properties and keeping them empty or only occasionally used as their values rise. Among the groups on the march were those such as Class War and Focus E15 who have down much to bring this to public attention.
In London it is mainly Labour Councils who are in charge and responsible for the social cleansing of the poor and the loss of social housing that is taking place on a huge scale.
Along with speakers from estates across London where similar schemes are already taking place there were those from Grenfell Tower where cost cutting and ignoring building safety and residents’ complaints by private sector companies including the TMO set up by the council created the disaster just waiting to happen.
On My London Diary I quoted part of a speech by then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn a few days later at the Labour Party conference which condemned current practice on estate ‘regeneration’ and housing of which the HDV is the prime example.
“The disdain for the powerless and the poor has made our society more brutal and less caring. Now that degraded regime has a tragic monument: the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower, a horrifying fire in which dozens perished. An entirely avoidable human disaster, one which is an indictment not just of decades of failed housing policies and privatisation and the yawning inequality in one of the wealthiest boroughs and cities in the world, it is also a damning indictment of a whole outlook which values council tax refunds for the wealthy above decent provision for all and which has contempt for working class communities.”
You can hear the speech in full on the article by Architects For Social Housing on the conference, where they give their comments and more detail on the section I quoted above:
“Indeed it has. And high in the list of that brutality is the estate regeneration programme that threatens, is currently being implemented against, or which has already privatised, demolished or socially cleansed 237 London housing estates, 195 of them in boroughs run by Labour councils, which vie with each other for the title of ‘least caring’, and among which the councils of Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Haringey could give the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council a lesson in disdain, privatisation, failed housing policies and the inequality they produce. But it’s good to hear Corbyn discard the Tories’ contemptuous terminology of ‘hardworking families’ and ‘ordinary people’ and finally – if belatedly – refer to the ‘working class’.“
They go on to comment less favourably on Corbyn who they say had ignored “the estate regeneration programme that is at the heart of London’s transformation into a Dubai-on-Thames for the world’s dirty money” and so had failed to perceive that “every estate undergoing demolition and redevelopment could produce a similar testimony of inept and incompetent local authorities, bad political decisions and a failed and broken system of democratic accountability.”
The grass roots revolt against the HDV plans resulted in a political change and the scrapping of the plans. But the Labour Party has also changed radically, and those very people responsible for those ‘least caring’ local authorities in London and across the country are now in government.
More pictures at Haringey against council housing sell-off.
A quite different vehicle was the star of the show in Brixton, where BECTU strikers at the Ritzy Cinema were celebrating a year of strike action with a rally supported by other trade unionists, including the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and other union branches.
The strikers continued to demand the London Living Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay, for managers, supervisors, chefs and technical staff to be properly valued for their work, and for the four sacked union reps to be reinstated.
After speeches in English and Spanish, came the surprise. The vehicle in Brixton was the newly acquired ‘Precarious Workers Mobile’, a bright yellow Reliant Robin, equipped with a powerful amplifier and loudspeaker, and after more speeches this led the protesters in a slow march around central Brixton.
Various actions at the Ritzy had started three years before this, when workers called for a boycott of the cinema. In 2019, after an industrial tribunal had won some of their claims BECTU suspended the boycott and the Living Staff Living Wage campaign although still continuing to fight for equal pay and against other dismissals.
More pictures at One year of Ritzy strike.
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Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered: Ten years ago today on Wednesday 6th August 2014 I was in Tavistock Square for a ceremony close to the Hiroshima Cherry Tree on the 69th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb remembering the victims past and present of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
I hope to be there again today, as I have been in most recent years. The roughly hour-long ceremony organised by London CND begins at noon and follows more or less the same pattern each year. Everyone is welcome to attend and if you missed it this year you can put a reminder in your diary for next. And if you are not in London, there are other events in other towns and cities across the world – and some also in other parts of London.
The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of a new age where the USA showed it had the power to unleash unprecedented levels of death and destruction. Some other nations were quick to develop their own atomic weapons, including our own and of course the USSR, and all developed bombs of much greater power than the two which devastated the Japanese cities.
Currently nine countries have nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. When the USSR was split up, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine transferred the nuclear weapons on their territory to Russia, but apart from this only one country, South Africa has actually given them up.
Wikipedia quotes the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as estimating in 2023 that the nuclear weapons states held a total of 12,119 total nuclear warheads. Far more than would be needed to destroy the planet, or at least human life on it.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was adopted by the UN in 2017 and came into force in 2021. By January 2024 of the 197 states recognised by the UN, 97 countries had signed the treaty although 27 had still to ratify their signatures. None of the states which hold nuclear weapons have signed.
In Tavistock Square there were songs, speeches, prayers and performances introduced by Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn and messages from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were read.
As well as remembering the many victims of the bombs we also were reminded of peace campaigner Hetty Bower, who became a pacifist during the First World War and attended many of these ceremonies and other peace events and had died earlier this year.
The event closed with two minutes of silence for the victims of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all victims of war, during which people came up to lay flowers and wreaths at the foot of the Hiroshima cherry tree.
You can read more about the event – and see more pictures on My London Diary at Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered.
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Cows, Cindy, Fonthill and Finsbury Park: I couldn’t resist posting another of those sgraffito panels from the former Friern Manor Dairy Farm on Stroud Green Rd, though I suspect even when these were made the conditions for both cows and milkmaids were very different from those enjoyed in the stalls behing the facade.
Modern dairy practice is of course also very different as you can see in Andrea Arnold’s 2021 cinéma vérité-style film ‘Cow‘, not made as vegan propaganda but giving a very direct view of how we use animals to produce food for the masses. Watching it didn’t convert me to the vegan cause but I do think we need to have and enforce much stricter standards of animal welfare – though those in the UK are already firmer than in most countries. I already pay more for milk and would happily pay even more.
The Old Diary is on the corner of Hanley Road and I walked down here just a short distance and photographed this shopfront which appeared to be of a former travel agency, possibly the ‘Flight Line Cruise’ whose phone number is written large. The Cindy Trading Company whose name is on the door was later listed as a hardware store selling a range of DIY and home improvement items at 186 Stroud Green Road, a short distance away – and is now a dissolved company.
At right is an advertisement for Metposts and I may have been attracted by this as I had recently put in a fence on one side of my garden at home using these. It wasn’t quite as easy as the advert suggests and by the time I’d finished and put down the sledgehammer I’d decided digging and concrete might have been easier.
I’m unsure what route I took from Hanley Road to Fonthill Road, possibly going down Regina Road or Evershot Road. I took a couple of pictures – neither digitised – of an interesting yard with two rather strange bell towers in the background, nothing like anything that I can now see in satellite images of the area, possibly a long-demolished public building,
Fortunately the location of this picture is confirmed by the reflection of the street sign for Fonthill Road. Also reflected is a sign for John Rowan Bookmaker, the company which developed the well-known Rowans Tenpin Bowl opposite Finsbury Park Station on Stround Green Road in what had previouly been a tram shed, cinema and Bingo hall.
By 1989 this end of Fonthill Road was already beginning to become one of London’s major fashion centres – and a few pictures I’ve not yet digitised reflect this. A few from 1989 in colour start here.
My walk on 24th September was coming to an end, and I took just one more picture of a shopfront on Seven Sister Road before catching the Victoria Line on my way home. But I was back in Finsbury Park a week later and I’ll include a couple of pictures from the actual park, Finsbury Park to end this post.
Nelson Mandela was released unconditionally from Victor Verster Prison on 11th February 1990 following years of campaigning for his release. Most of the other graffiti on this wall is unintelligible black scribble at least to me, but I can also make out in white ‘PARANOID EYES’ -presumably from the song on Pink Floyd’s 1983 album The Final Cut.
The New River was dug in 1613 to supply fresh drinking water to London from Chadwell and Amwell Springs near Ware in Hertfordshire.
Finsbury Park is around three miles from Finsbury which is on the northern edge of the City of London. People in Finsbury in 1841 signed a petition calling for a park that the people living in poverty in the area could make use of, and this was one of four sites that were considered.
This was around the last remains of the old Hornsey Wood, and by around 1800 had been developed with tea rooms and later a pub, as well as an artificial boating lake using water pumped up from the New River, and it was a popular place for shooting and archery “and probably cock fighting and other blood sports.”
There was some local opposition to sharing the area with the poor of Finsbury but the plans for what was originally to be called Albert Park (after Queen Victoria’s husband) went ahead, and the renamed Finsbury Park was approved by an Act of Parliament in 1857, though only completed and opened by 1869.
Lack of finance meant the park had deteriorate significantly by the 1980s, and the situation – like much in London – was greatly worsened when the Greater London Council was terminated with extreme malice by Thatcher in 1986. Haringey Council became responsible for the park “but without sufficient funding or a statutory obligation for the park’s upkeep.”
More recently £5 million Lottery Funding has enabled significant renovation of the park and its facilities. I last went to the park in March 2023 for the planting of a tree in memory of peace campaigner Bruce Kent by local MP Jeremy Corbyn and Kent’s wife Valerie. Both Kent and Corbyn were members of the Friends of Finsbury Park, with Corbyn now being a patron.
More from my October walk later.
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Following a number of incidents which had led to growing tension between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 17th July 2014 which continued until 5th August, with a ceasefire being announced on 26th August.
During the weeks of the attack over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, around 70% of them civilians, and over 10,000 seriously injured. 67 Israeli soldiers and 5 civilians were killed and 730 Israelis injured. Terrible as those numbers were, they seem small when compared with the current genocide taking place in Gaza.
Israel also systematically destroyed many homes. Wikipedia states “The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing.”
On 26th July thousands of people had arrived for a rally on Kensington High Street, as close as protests were allowed to the Israeli Embassy. Police tried hard to keep traffic flowing on what is one of the main routes out of London to the West, but soon the number of people made this impossible.
I’d arrived early and was able to get to the stage where there were to be a few speeches before the march moved off. From this platform I could see the road packed with people looking both west and east.
I listened to some of the speeches and photographed a few of the speakers, including Labour veteran Walter Wolfgang and Owen Jones before making my way with some difficulty to front of the crowd around a hundred yards east down the packed road where the main banners were ready for the start of the march.
Fortunately I was able to join with a group of those who had been around the stage, including some of the speakers, who were going through the crowd which was extremely tightly packed all across the road. By the time I arrived the area in front of the march had been cleared and I was only able to take pictures of the front of the march by leaning over the arms of the stewards as the march started.
Behind the front of the march I was able to go into the march and take some pictures as I walked back in the opposite direction towards the tube station.
Among the banners on the marchwas one carried by the Turkey Youth Union: ‘TURKISH GOVERNMENT SUPPLIES JET FUEL TO ISRAEL – ERDOGAN RESIGN’. Much of that oil was coming from ISIS, who were largely financed by their oil sales smuggled through Turkey with the help of leading members of the Turkish government.
I’d left the march to photograph an unconnected event taking place at Downing St, and walked up from there to meet the Gaza marchers as they turned into Whitehall.
The march paused for a short while opposite Downing St, but stewards again made taking photographs difficult, although the marchers – including Jeremy Corbyn – were rather more cooperative.
When the front of the march reached Parliament Square one of the stewards who recognised me actually invited me into the area in front of the march to take pictures, and I was able to photograph the marchers with ‘Big Ben’ in the background – always a good clue that this was taking place in London.
I then photographed the long rally, taking pictures of most of a very long list of speakers including Michael Rosen. I photographed over 15 of them and you can see some of the pictures and a long list of names on My London Diary.
But as usual I was rather more interested in the people and took many pictures of the crowd and people in it, as well as others in the square including the anti-Zionist Jews who walk down from North London to protest at most events in support of Palestine.
Much more and many more pictures on My London Diary:
Stop the Massacre in Gaza Rally
End Gaza Invasion March to Parliament
Israeli Embassy rally – End Gaza Invasion
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Against Austerity, Cleaners Flash Mob, EDL & Falun Dafa: The main event on Saturday 16th July 2016 was a well-attended march and rally against austerity and racism following the Brexit referendum, but on the way there I came across a Falun Dafa march, and while people were marching manged to cover a ‘Flash Mob’ by cleaners and a small protest by the far-right EDL.
The People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism had organised an emergency demonstration following the Brexit referendum against austerity and racism and calling for the Tories to be defeated at a General Election.
The protest assembled outside the BBC in the hope that they might for once notice and report on a large protest in London, but as usual they ignored it. It also showed huge popular support for then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn – who only failed to defeat Theresa May the following year because of sabotage by Labour party officials and the right wing of the party.
Immigration had been a major issue in the Brexit referendum, exploited by the Leave campaign and this had resulted in an upsurge in racism and hate attacks. Brexit did result in lowering migration from the EU and since 2017 the number of those born in the EU living in Britain has slowly but slightly declined. But this has been more than matched by an increase of around a million in those born in non-EU countries.
Of course we need these people who fill many useful jobs here and pay taxes. We also need those who work in the shadow economy, estimated in total to be around 10% of the total economy. Although this is often said to be important in attracting undocumented migrants to the UK, our shadow economy is significantly smaller than the average for developed nations, and at a level around half that of Italy, Greece and Spain and a little below Germany and France according to free-market ‘think tank’ the Institute for Economic Affairs.
The UK had been one of the leaders in the establishment of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) adopted by the Council of Europe, signed in 1950 which came into force in 1953, with a court to enforce it. Many felt that the Tory government’s proposal in 2022 to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it by a Bill of Rights was reprehensible. Liz Truss’s one good thing was to stop its progress and in June 2023 Rishi Sunak’s Justice Secretary Alex Chalk confirmed it had been dropped.
As the end of the march left down Regent Street I rushed off to photograph a breakaway group from the march who had left to take part in a flash mob. Following that I trotted along Oxford Street to Park Lane where I photographed a short march by a few EDL supporters before rushing to the tube to make my way to the People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racist rally in Parliament Square.
The Fire Brigades Union had brought their fire engine to the square to provide a platform for the speakers at the rally chaired by rally chaired by Romayne Phoenix of the People’s Assembly and Sabby Dhalu from Stand Up to Racism.
Islington councillor Michelline Safi Ngongo brought a message of support from Jeremy Corbyn. Other speakers included Green Party London Assembly member Caroline Russell, Weyman Bennett from Stand Up to Racism, Lindsey German of Stop the War, Sam Fairbairn the National Secretary of the People’s Assembly, Zita Holbourne of BARAC and PCS, Rob Williams of the NSSN, NUS Vice President (Further Education) Shakira Martin and Antonia Bright from Movement for Justice who brought an asylum seeker with her to speak.
More on My London Diary:
Peoples Assembly/Stand Up to Racism rally
End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out
Practitioners of Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), an advanced Buddhist practice of moral rectitude, meditation and exercise founded by Mr Li Hongzhi in 1992, marched through London to protest the continuing torture and repression they have experience in China since 1999.
More at Falun Dafa march against Chinese repression
When the People’s Assembly / Stand Up To Racism march set off, a small group of striking cleaners from 100 Wood St and supporters left to stage a flash mob protest at the nearby HQ Offices of CBRE in Henrietta Place. The United Voices of the World strike at Wood St for the living wage and reinstatement of sacked workers was then in its 38th day.
More at Cleaners Flash Mob at CBRE London HQ
Less than a hundred EDL supporters had turned up at Marble Arch to march a few yards down Park Lane and then into Hyde Park for a rally. A few anti-fascists who had turned up to oppose them had mainly left to join the People’s Assembly-Stand Up to Racism march by the time I arrived.
More at EDL march and rally
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Magna Carta, Cleaners & Detention: 15th June is Magna Carta day and Monday 15th June 2015 marked 800 years since King John was forced by the barons to sign the great charter at Runnymede. Most years the date is mainly marked by a local fair on the closest Saturday in Egham High Street the nearest town to Runnymede, but in 2015 there were various more national celebrations.
Unless you were a king, archhishop or baron in 1215, Magna Carta was of little relevance to you. Contrary to popular opinion it gave no rights or protection to the common people and, as Wikipedia tells us had little immediate effect in any case, as “Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons’ War.”
Back in June 2012 I had sat around in a circle with the Diggers, then camped at Runnymede, on the grass next to the US Bar Association’s Magna Carta Memorial, where we had listened to a history lecturer from nearby Royal Holloway University about the charter and the lesser-known but more relevant to the common man ‘Charter of the Forest’ which came shortly after. It was at this meeting that plans were made to celebrate the event in 2015 with a people’s free festival in the woods on the hillside above Runnymede.
Unfortunately the establishment thought otherwise and in a clear case of ignoring the rights supposedly granted to us in Magna Carta, police swooped on the eco-village where the festival was being prepared three days before, suppressing the event in an unfair, arbitrary and almost certainly illegal manner.
So while I might otherwise have been enjoying myself at the free festival, instead I travelled up to London to photograph several events there mainly connected with Magna Carta Day.
I began outside the Royal Courts of Justice where the Campaign for Truth & Justice was accusing the judiciary of unlawful convictions, false imprisonment, denial of access to court & perverting the course of justice over child abuse, forced adoption and paedophilia.
Above their heads was a banner with its message superimposed on a St George’s flag citing Magna Carta. Some of those taking part had been victims of child abuse, while others claimed to have been treated badly in the family courts where gagging orders had been used to prevent them from talking about their cases or seeking any redress. And we have certainly seen many cases of miscarriages of justice – including the convictions of the Guildford Four (1974), The Birmingham Six (1975), The Maguire Seven (1976) and Judith Ward (1974) as well as many others which have received less publicity.
But as the trial and conviction of Carl Beech for perverting the course of justice and fraud in 2019 made clear, many of the allegations over paedophilia against public figures have been unfounded.
From there I went to Old Palace Yard opposite Parliament, where the right-wing Christians For Justice UK were holding a Magna Carta Day rally against the increasing human rights legislation which right-wing Christians feel maginalises and prevent them expressing their faith.
I reported that I listened to “ two speeches which appalled me, and appeared to have no connection with my idea of freedom, reminding of various short-lived ultra-right political groups such as the Freedom Party, formed in 2000 by ex-BNP members” and concluded “that this was a rally that was protesting the freedom to be a bigot rather than any real idea of religious or other freedom.”
But the day was not simply about Magna Carta. The protest by the PSC trade union outside HM Revenue and Customs in Whitehall was one of protests in over 50 countries on the 25th International Justice Day for Cleaners and Security Guards.
This remembers the day in 1990 when Los Angeles janitors were brutally beaten up by the police during a peaceful demonstration against their contractor trying to get union recognition and better rights. Since 1990 this day has become international, spreading to over 50 countries and with protests -some very small like this – now taking place in over 70 cities around the world.
This was also the International week against detention centres, calling for the closure of all immigration detention centres with protests taking place in eleven cities in the UK, USA, Belgium, Greece and Spain.
The London protest was led by the All African Women’s Group who held a rally in Parliament Square before marching to Downing Street with a report on rape and sexual abuse in Yarl’s Wood.
Among the speakers was whistleblower Noel Finn, a former mental health nurse at Yarl’s Wood who revealed publicly details of the abuse of women there after his complaints through the proper channels at the detention prison were not acted on. A number of members of the All African Women’s Group spoke about their own experiences when held in the detention prison. Others who came to speak in support included MPs Dianne Abbott, Kate Osamor, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell as well as Antonia Bright from Movement for Justice, Peter Tatchell and Selma James.
The protest demonstrated in several respects the increasing limitations on our freedom to protest. Protests are now prohibited on the main grass area of the square and they had to hold the rally on the narrow pavement area, inevitably spilling over onto the roadway because of the large number of people present.
After the rally had been taking place for around 20 minutes a police officer came to try and stop them using a public address system, now illegal in the square without authorisation from the Greater London Authority or Westminster Council. They argued and refused to stop, and with several MPs waiting to speak the officer finally left.
And when the protesters tried to had in a letter at Downing Street it was initially refused. Apparently you now need to give a week’s notice to hand in a letter. After some discussion a police officer agreed to take the report and ensure it was delivered to No 10. I don’t know whether it did eventually get there.
Close Yarls Wood, End Detention!
Cleaners International Justice Day
Voice for Justice UK Magna Carta Protest
Truth & Justice Magna Carta Day Protest
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