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Cluster Bombs, Acton, Spain & Kilburn – 2004

Cluster Bombs, Acton, Spain & Kilburn: On Saturday 17th July 2004 I did rather a lot of travelling around London, beginning in Trafalgar Square with a shoe pyramid against cluster bombs, then going to Acton to look at a project London Arts Café had helped with (I think I was its treasurer at the time) which took me rather longer than expected so I didn’t stay long to make sure I was back on the South Bank for the Spanish Civil War commemoration. Then out to Kilburn for a festival in Grange Park.

But I took few photographs except at the Spanish Civil War event, which was attended by at least nine of those who had gone to Spain as well as many from the families of those no longer living.

The rich and wealthy elites outside Spain feared the rebellion against the church, landowners and bosses by the peasants and working classes supporting the elected Spanish government against the fascist armies might give their those they were exploiting ideas,, Workers and intellectuals here and elsewhere saw clearly what was happening and many “went because their open eyes could see no other way.” Over 30,000 volunteers went to fight in the International Brigades, including more than 2,500 from Britain, although our government tried to prevent them. Probably around five thousand of the volunteers died in Spain and many, many more were injured.

Here is what I wrote on My London Diary back then, with the usual corrections and a few pictures, with links to rather more still on My London Diary.

Handicap International

Pyramid of Shoes, Trafalgar Square

Cluster Bombs, Acton, Spain & Kilburn - 2004

Saturday saw a repeat of last year’s shoe pyramid in Trafalgar Square, Handicap International campaigning against the use of cluster bombs, weapons that largely maim innocent women and children, which governments, including our own, are continuing to insist to use. So our taxes are now still killing and disabling innocent kids in Iraq from the invasion last year.

A few more pictures

Public Art in Acton

In Acton it was carnival day, but I didn’t have time to watch. I did manage to go and see the screen which Mohamed (Mamily) Sheibani has designed to screen off the waste area at the rear of the Oaks Shopping Centre in Churchfield Road. This was a project carried out by Acton Action with the help of Acton Arts And Media, the London Arts Café, the Churchfield Road Community Association and the shopping centre. Not a big thing, but the kind of small local project that makes an impact – we just need a few thousand more like it in London.

A few more pictures

Spanish Civil War International Brigades Memorial Event

Jubilee Gardens, Waterloo,

The Spanish Civil War started in 1936, and while governments including ours made the wrong decisions [in part] based on incorrect intelligence, as over Iraq. The rights and wrongs of the matter were clear to most of those who took an interest, especially on the left.

2,600 British men had the courage to go and join the International Brigade in the fight against fascism, and today we were again paying tribute to them. There are still a few living, and those who turned up were remarkably fit and alert considering their age.

Veteran Jack Jones chaired the event, and Ana Perez from the Madrid Amigos spoke movingly.

*Moe Fishman in front of the memorial text*
YET FREEDOM! YET THY BANNER
TORN, BUT FLYING, STREAMS
LIKE THE THUNDER-STORM
AGAINST THE WIND

Veteran Moe Fishman from Manhattan, still a peace activist, brought greetings from the peace movement in America and praise for the strength of the British people in demonstrating against the invasion of Iraq – a movement now carried from the streets to the ballot box.

*Jack Jones and the memorial: “TTHEY WENT BECAUSE THEIR OPEN EYES COULD SEE NO OTHER WAY”*

More pictures

Kilburn Festival

Grange Park, Kilburn

*Kilburn State – now a bingo hall. Kilburn High Rd*

Kilburn High Road is one of the more interesting high streets of London. Too poor to have been swamped by the chains, it retains its own character and wide range of shops of various types. Perhaps more a place to look and stroll (as I did) rather than photograph.

*The Kilburn Mural project is to provide a mural at the tube station*

They were having a festival in grange park, which included some of the artists who are to create a mural by the tube station demonstrating their skills and giving the local people a chance to influence the mural design.

A few more pictures.

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London Saturday 16th July 2005

London Saturday 16th July 2005: Another long series of posts from a day in London 20 years ago which I think is worth rescuing from the depths of My London Diary. Here, with the usual corrections and links to the many pictures on My London Diary is my day.

SWFest 05 – Pimlico

Back in London [from a visit to East Yorkshire], Saturday 16 July was a busy day. I started in Pimlico, with the ‘SWFest 05’ parade and festival In St Georges Square. It was a local event, with plenty of local people enjoying themselves.

more pictures

International Brigade Commemoration – Jubilee Gardens, South Bank

Getting from there to Jubilee Gardens for the annual commemoration of the International Brigade who fought fascism in Spain was made tricky with the obvious bus route being held up by a parade. I got a little exercise jogging there, but it was really too hot.

The weather was indeed rather Spanish, hot and breezeless, with a clear blue sky. There was no shade around the memorial to those 2,100 who fought 67 or more years ago for freedom. Many died in Spain, and there are now relatively few still living, though some were there, now in their 80s and 90s, and some clearly still going strong.

Sam Russell spoke movingly of the events in Spain and Jack Jones chaired the meeting. It fell to him to read out the names of the comrades who had died since last year’s event. Several came in their red berets, and with their badges

John Pilger had been invited to speak about the meaning of the Brigaders’ heroism today. [His account of the event and his speech I linked to on Truthout is no longer available, but is many other articles are worth reading, including Chomsky’s Remembering Fascism: Learning From the Past which begins with a mention of Spain.]

The commemoration ended with singing:
“So comrades, come rally and the last fight let us face – The Internationale unites the human race.”
Unfortunately there still seems to be an ever longer road before that happens.

more pictures

National Front demonstrate – Victoria

*A demonstrator hides face behind a union flag*

Fascism is still with us, and showed its face – if largely shamefacedly – in London later that afternoon, when around 50-60 National Front supporters gathered to march. It wasn’t quite clear what message they wanted to put across, there were few banners and less articulacy in a flood of union jacks.

Most of the marchers were men. I talked to quite a few, asking permission to take some of the pictures. No-one refused, some said yes, then turned away or moved behind their flags. At one point I was threatened with violence, but the guy’s mates came and pulled him away. One of the women demonstrators had a bunch of flowers. I asked her about them and was told the march would leave these at the Book of Condolence for the London Bombings.

The police let them walk to the corner of Victoria Street, where they could be seen by the public walking by. Many of those passing were clearly hostile to the Front, most showing it by their expressions, a few shouting at them.

I took a few more pictures and then left. Another photographer there was commissioned to cover the march, but I was free to do something more pleasant on this fine summer’s day. I went and sat in the park and ate my sandwiches and had a drink.

more pictures

Turkish Festival, Coin St – Bernie Spain Gardens

Meanwhile, at Bernie Spain Gardens, another of the programme of Coin Street events celebrating London’s diversity was taking place. I arrived just as a procession of Turkish singers and musicians was making its way to perform on the south bank walkway there.

Later I went to hear one of Turkey’s leading singers perform on the main stage, and she was followed in the limelight by a belly dancer. I’ve photographed several belly dancers over the years, and this one had rather less belly than some, but that made the performance none the less compelling. I can’t claim to understand the finer points of the genre, but it still has a certain attraction. It isn’t just me being mesmerised by the mobility of a female body, although that certainly doesn’t detract.

more pictures

Divided Cyprus – Greek Cypriots protest in Trafalgar Square

Dragging myself away from Turks and Turkish London and a rather pleasant Turkish beer – on sale here at over 5 times its price in Turkey – I walked past the skateboarders and over the bridge towards Trafalgar Square. Supposedly there was to be a march of Greek Cypriots protesting against the ‘foreign’ Turkish occupation of the north-east third of Cyprus, continuing since the 1974 invasion.

The march didn’t seem to be happening, but there was a rally in Trafalgar Square, and I photographed a number of people holding photographs of some of the 1476 people – soldiers and civilians – still missing since 1974.

Despite these outstanding problems, Greek and Turkish Cypriots live together peacefully in London, particularly along Green Lanes [in Harringay in North London.] The Cypriots (especially now Cyprus is in the European Union) claim to “long for a viable and durable settlement that would enable Greek and Turkish Cypriots to live amicably as they have for centuries in the past“.

more pictures

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World Pride & Spanish Civil War

World Pride & Spanish Civil War. On Saturday 7th July 2012 there were two events taking place at the same time and I was determined to cover both. Fortunately having begun at the start of the WorldPride procession in Marylebone I was able to jump onto the Bakerloo Line to Waterloo and photograph the annual International Brigades Commemoration at Jubilee Gardens before returning on the same line to Charing Cross to photograph the end of the march.

WorldPride London – Portman St & Westminster

Pride almost didn’t happen in 2012 as the organisers were met shortly before the event to provide financial assurances to the GLA, Met Police, Westminster Council, London Fire Brigade and Transport for London, which they were unable to do. Quite why London Mayor Boris Johnson decided to try to stop Pride in this way is not at all clear.

*Two marchers in a group who had been at the first Gay Pride in 1972*

So rather than the planned event they decided to stage a ‘peaceful protest’ march or ‘procession’ specified as a democratic right under the Public Order Act 1986. This meant there were none of the corporate floats that have in recent years come to dominate the event, although company staff still marched in their company outfits.

Gay Pride had in recent years lost much of its political edge, becoming a carnival of different lifestyles and a commercially sponsored jamboree, with large and expensive floats. Without these, although the corporates were still present, everyone was on the street together and the whole event seemed more intimate.

WorldPride 2012 was again a protest – as it used to be, though in a very different situation from when it began when for many that took part it was where they ‘came out’, taking the significant step in affirming themselves as gay and standing together against the prejudices of a society which was only just beginning to accept that being gay was not a perversion.

Of course there are still some communities in the UK where being gay remains unacceptable, and as campaigner Peter Tatchell reminded us, there are still some countries where people are being killed because they are gay.

There were a number of heavy showers while people were arriving for the event, and many put off arriving as late as possible. Although at first it looked as if the event might be a washout, by the time I was making my way towards Baker Street station the street was tightly packed making my progress slow.

When I returned to photograph marchers at the end of the event in Whitehall and Pall Mall I had missed the front of the march, but there were still many arriving hours after the procession had begun.

Sacrifice For Spain Remembered – International Brigade Memorial

*David Loman unveils the new plaque in Jubilee Gardens*

The annual International Brigades Commemoration has been on the same day as Pride in several years, and recording both has often been a problem. I was particularly keen to be there this year as it could well be the last to be attended by any of those who volunteered to go to Spain.

The war in Spain began in 1936, 76 years earlier. A new plaque was being unveiled in Jubilee Gardens by David Loman who was an 18 year old Jewish lad, David Soloman, from the East End when he went to fight in Spain in 1936, changing his name to Loman (also know as Lomon) because it was illegal. He was captured by Italian soldiers in 1938, surviving some months in a prison camp before being repatriated. He served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War and like other surviving members of the International Brigades he was awarded Spanish nationality in 2007 for his services to the Spanish nation and presented with a Spanish passport in 2011.

Now 94, and looking very sprightly Loman is one of only three remaining British veterans – the others being Lou Kenton then 103 and Stanley Hilton. Both Loman and Kenton died during before the commemoration in 2013. Hilton, who was living in Australia, died in 2016 aged 98.

*David Loman holds the flag he was presented*

There were many family members of those who fought in Spain at the commemoration, and there were a number of speeches and performances by folk musician Ewan McLennan, performance poet Francesca Beard, singer-songwriter Paco Marin and folk duo Na-Mara, but Loman was definitely the star of the occasion.

More at Sacrifice For Spain Remembered.