The Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ – Millbank, London. Sunday 11 April 2010
Kiss-In – Tamsin Omond and Peter Tatchell
In 2010 as a General Election was approaching, Tamsin Omond had begun the ‘To the Commons‘ campaign which made this statement:
“The Commons is you and me. It’s the kid on the skateboard, the woman struggling with her shopping, and the guy who serves us coffee in the morning. The Commons is about having our say and getting our voices heard. It’s about looking out for each other, our neighbourhoods, and our environment. Yes we’re a political party but we’re not about politics. We’re about people.”
The message on the web ended “Vote for Tamsin Omond for Hampstead and Kilburn” where she was standing as a candidate. It wasn’t a hugely succesful campaign, and she ended up with only 123 votes, against 17, 332 for Labour’s Glenda Jackson in what was one of the closest races in 2010, with the Tory only 42 votes behind and the Lib Dems a close third. We have an electoral system and a media that is incredibly stacked against candidates from outside the major parties, who only win in exceptional circumstances – such as electing Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London, or if Corbyn was to leave Labour to stand in his constituency at the next election.
As a part of her campaign, Omond had organised the ‘Big Gay Flashmob’, advertising the event on Facebook and getting Peter Tatchell of Outrage! (and later of the the Peter Tatchell Foundation) to work with her to publicise it. Over 1500 had signed up to attend the event and a fairly large proportion of them turned up on the day.
In the morning Omond and Tatchell had gone to a meeting with George Osborne, who had been shadow chancellor and was the Conservative Campaign manager. The Tory party has a long record of homophobia and of voting against gay rights, and many Tory MPs voted against the full repeal in 2003 of Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 infamous ‘Section 28’ which banned local authorities from “promoting homosexuality.”
Sister Angel Popstitute, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence from the London House of Common Sluts
Recently too, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling had suggested that Bed and Breakfast owners should be able to refuse gay couples, and there was still a very strong and vocal anti-gay element in the Tory party despite there being many gay members and gay Tory MPs. The great majority of the roughly 50 who voted against civil partnerships in 2004 were Tory MPs and party leader David Cameron was against the possibility of gay marriage.
So the flash mob was scheduled to take place outside Tory Party HQ, then on Millbank in the Millbank Tower. There were speeches, much loud chanting and a number of kiss-ins which everyone seemed to enjoy.
Back on Saturday 22nd March 2008 I had a rather varied day in London, meeting protesters cycling to Aldermaston on my way to photograph a march for freedom in Tibet, then going to a protest against the deportation of a gay man to Iran and finally to a pillow fight.
Bikes Not Bombs: London – Aldermaston
I was on foot and had just come out of Oxford Circus station when I saw the CND Bikes Not Bombs group of cyclists who had begun their ride in Trafalgar Square earlier and were on their way to ride to Aldermaston. Though when I took a few photographs as you can see from the bus they were cycling in exactly the wrong direction, east towards Ilford. Of course they weren’t lost, just trying to attract some attention to the protest, riding with a sound system along London’s busiest shopping street.
I’d thought briefly about taking part myself in the event, as I’d used a bike to get around since I was six, having graduated then from a first a pedal car and then a tricycle. I did own a car briefly when I was around 21, but soon realised it was impractical in cities, expensive, polluting and environmentally unsound and never made the same mistake again.
But for the reasons I listed on My London Diary – sloth, other events, lousy weather and a dislike of early rising – I didn’t join this official ride, though I did cycle on my own from Reading to Aldermaston and back on the following Monday to join the protesters there.
I was on my way to Park Crescent, a short walk north of the Chinese Embassy where Tibetans and supporters of freedom in Tibet were meeting to march through London on the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.
Tibet came under effective control of the Chinese government in 1951, when an agreement had been come to the status of Tibet within the recently established People’s Republic of China. In 1949 Tibetan protesters feared the Chinese were about to arrest the 14th Dalai Lama. Protests were at first peaceful but were brutally repressed by the People’s Liberation Army and there was heavy fighting which also involved Tibetan separatists who had been carrying out guerrilla warfare against Chinese forces.
The Dalai Lama fled the country and set up an independent Tibetan government in India, where he still lives – and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The Tibetan uprising had begun on 10th March 1959 and this day is celebrated each year as Tibetan Uprising Day and Women’s Uprising Day. Since 2009, following protests on 10th March 2008 in Lhasa, the Chinese-controlled authority in Tibet have celebrated the day they fully regained control, 28th March as the national anniversary of Serfs Emancipation Day.
The Tibetan Independence Movement who organise annual protests calling for freedom for Tibet was originally funded and trained by the CIA, but this was withdrawn following Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. And the Dalai Lama who had originally backed it, and who appears as a large photograph carried reverently in the marches, also withdrew support for the independence movement in the 1970s.
It is clear from reports by Amnesty International and others is that there are considerable human rights abuses in Tibet. The 2021 US State Department report listing includes “unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment by the government; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners; politically motivated reprisals against individuals located outside the country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom including site blocking; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions on religious freedom….”
But of course human rights are not always respected in this country, and we currently have a government which is proposing to withdraw from some international human rights conventions and proposing racist anti-immigrant policies which are deliberately in breach of them.
Back in 2008, the Labour government was also riding roughshod over the human rights of some immigrants, setting up a system of large-scale detention of asylum seekers and treating individuals unfairly in a bid to outflank the Tories on cutting immigration through blatantly right-wing policies.
Mehdi Kazemi had come to the UK to study after having been involved in a consensual homosexual relationship in Iran. After his boyfriend was executed for this he became a wanted man in Iran and he went to the Netherlands to apply for political asylum.
This was refused as he had come from the UK and so was not allowed under the 2003 Dublin Agreement. The Uk had refused him permission to stay in Britain and were proposing to deport him to Iran where he would be tried and executed.
His case was just one of many where the Home Office were failing to recognise the need for refugees to claim asylum on the grounds of persecution because of their sexual orientation, and for failing to have accurate and up-to-date information on homophobic persecution in countries to which LGBT asylum seekers might be deported.
Support for Kazemi at this protest and by a number of MPs, MEPs and human rights activists did eventually result in the Home Office agreeing to review his case and he was given leave to remain here in May 2008.
My day ended in very much lighter mood with a pillow fight in Leicester Square, one of many organised in capitals around the world due to kick off at 15.03PM.
I commented: “Of course its a trivial, silly event, but the idea and the kind of organisation involved I think represents something new and exciting, a kind of ‘Demo 2.0’ which we will surely see more of in the future.”
Perhaps this hasn’t had as much impact here in the UK as I had hoped, but I think may have been more important elsewhere in the world. To some extent it has been outgrown as Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps have become more important and even protests organised months and years in advance make use of them.
But it was interesting if rather tricky to photograph, and I got stuck in without a pillow and at some danger to my health, main not “from impact but suffocation when some pillows split open to fill the air with clouds of feathers and feather-dust. At times I wished I was wearing a mask to protect my lungs; keeping my mouth firmly closed and breathing though my nose only stopped the larger particles.“
And I also found the the autofocus on my DSLR was too efficient at focusing on feathers in the air, and until I turned it off and went manual many of my pictures failed to be sharp for the people and pillows behind the screen of feathers.
Later as the pixel count on DSLRs increased and full-frame cameras appeared I found it very useful to work in many situations using just the central ‘DX’ half-frame area of the viewfinder – which would have been very useful to let me see the people and pillows coming for me, but on this occasion I found “chaos really rules taking pictures becomes a press and hope situation. I think some of them do give an idea of what it was like to be there.
Anti-Racist & Migrant Rights reclaim Pride – 8 July 2017
Anti-Racist & Migrant Rights group unofficially leads Pride 2017
In 2017 the organisers of the official London Pride decided to strictly limit those taking part to groups that had made an official application with those who were approved being issued with armbands for their members to go on the route. In previous years the parade had been open to all, with smaller and more radical groups joining on the end of the march behind the main participants.
For years many in the gay community had protested that, as I reported “Pride over the years has degenerated from the original protest into a corporate glitterfest led by major corporations which use it as ‘pinkwashing’ to enhance their reputation and it includes groups such as the Home Office, arms companies and police whose activities harm gay people in the UK and across the world.”
They set off to join Pride
The new policing of participation seemed to them a further step in the direction of corporate control, making it no longer a community event, but one dominated by commercial interests.
Walking into Oxford Circus
I don’t think those who organised the Migrants Rights and Anti-Racist Bloc had deliberately set out to challenge the policy, more they had simply not anticipated that it would be applied strictly to prevent them joining in at the end of the parade as usual.
Stewards stopped them moving to the back of Pride, so they stayed in front
They met up at the west end of Oxford Street. As well as Movement For Justice, Queers Against Borders, Lesbians & Gays Support The Migrants and No Pride in War there was a strong contingent from London Supports Istanbul Pride. They made the point that being gay is still illegal in many countries, and that the persecution of gays is a major reason for many people coming to the UK to seek asylum.
Police let them march along the main route in front of the rest of Pride
Eventually the group of a few hundred marched off down Oxford Street towards Oxford Circus, where they intended to go up Regent St to join the end of the main parade. Their way onto Oxford Circus was blocked by barriers and police vans, but they simply split up to walk around these, lifting up some of them and grouping up again on Oxford Circus. And of course I went with them.
Here they were directly in front of the head of the main parade, stopping it from starting, and surrounded by large crowds of people who had come to see the procession. They tried to march up past the Pride stewards to the back of the parade but were stopped. There followed some minutes of argument, with the group staying in place in the middle of Oxford Circus and stewards refusing to let them go to join the main event.
And the crowds cheered
Police made some effort to get both sides to come to a compromise or get the Anti-racist and Migrants group to leave the area, but failed. Too many people were watching for them to use force to disperse the group – and there were probably many among the spectators who would have joined in to support them. Eventually police decided the group could march along the route and held up the rest of the parade for around ten minutes before they followed.
The march ends on Whitehall
So rather than being as in previous years at the back of the parade, going along the route hardly being noticed, with many of the spectators having by then drifted away to nearby bars or on their way home, the Migrants Rights and Anti-Racist Bloc lead the procession, marching past cheering crowds (though a few did look rather confused) all the way to Whitehall.
But No Pride in War decide to block the road
While most of the group ended their protest here, No Pride in War protesters proceeded to lie down across the road with their placards, blocking the route of the official procession which had to wait at Trafalgar Square until police finally managed to clear them, threatening them with arrest.
And the official parade has to wait again.
Later that day and on the day afterwards I watched and read the news reports on Pride, some giving it lengthy coverage. But although they had been there with their reporters and cameras, all of the mainstream media had for some reason decided that the very successful – if unintended – gatecrashing of the event by people protesting over Migrant Rights and other issues to wide acclaim by spectators along the route was not news.
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.
Recent events have brought scientists much more into centre stage, and politicians now claim to be “following the science” although this often means simply picking and choosing those bits from the wide range of scientific advice that suits their particular agenda.
Science isn’t monolithic, and its predictions are generally in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. Different disciplines may bring rather different emphases to aspects of complex problems and sometimes we need a wider view than that of a particular specialism – and even some common sense.
It seems clear that at the beginning of the Covid outbreak our government placed to much confidence in the advice of some mathematical modellers and failed to follow that based on medical experience in dealing with earlier pandemics on wearing masks and tightly controlling international travel that kept infection rates near zero in some countries. And that they had dismissed the evidence of earlier exercises in pandemic control and failed to follow the conclusion that we needed stockpiles of protective equipment.
Simple mathematical predictions close to the start of 2020 – like those I made metaphorically on the back of an envelope from then available data – suggested that by leaving the progress of the virus essentially unchecked we might expect around 400,000 deaths. It was perhaps calculations such as these that led to a massive programme of ordering vaccines.
Our various lockdown control measures – too little and too late – and gradual improvements in the care of those infected have so far managed to keep the numbers down to a little under half that initial estimate, though another wave may take us rather closer, particularly if variants prove more resistant to current vaccines.
A couple of days ago I was invited to complete an online opinion survey about the political challenges facing our government. One question asked me to pick one from a list as the major political challenge facing the UK government. I read through the list, which began with something about immigration and was shocked to find after reading the 10 choices I had to pick ‘Other’ and type in ‘Climate Change’.
It was climate change that essentially prompted the protest by scientists on April 22nd 2017 to march through London from the Science Museum to a rally at Parliament. They came to celebrate the vital role that science plays in our lives and to call for an end to the fake news and fake science such as climate denial by politicians such as Trump which will prove disastrous.
The march drew attention to the need for international cooperation to combat the existential challenge of man-made global warming – and warned of the danger to this from Brexit and isolationism around the world.
It was an unusual event in many respects. As I pointed out on My London Diary and elsewhere:
“It was a considerably more nerdy protest than most, and some of the posters and placards were difficult event for someone like me with a couple of science degrees in my past to understand. Many scientists do seem to have a problem in communicating with the rest of us and write slogans like ‘Do I have large P-value? Cos I feel Insignificant’ or ‘dT=α.ln(C1/C0)’.”
As well as covering the march and rally by scientists I also photographed campaigners calling for the reform of our secretive Family courts, Poice and Social Services which cover up their failures and corruption by gagging orders, and a protest outside the Consular department of the Russian Embassy to show solidarity with LGBT people in Chechnya, where over a hundred men suspected of being homosexual have been rounded up an put into camps and tortured, with three thought to have been killed. You can see more about these events and the scientists’ protest on the links below.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
