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Just Shares, Riverside & No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop 2008

Just Shares, Riverside & No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop: Friday 2nd May 2008 was the day the results came out for the election for London Mayor and it turned out to be a sad day for London. Earlier I’d covered a protest calling on the City of London to move away from its unjust economic prcarices and then gone to an exhibition and walked along the riverside while I waited for the mayoral declaration, though it came after I had given up and left for home

Just Shares Take On The Bank – Royal Exchange, Bank

‘Just Share’, “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice” and to “address the widening gap between rich and poor in the global economy” based at St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside had organised a protest in the heart of the City, in front of the Royal Exchange and at the side of the Bank of England.

I don’t think anyone at the Bank was listening to Ann Pettifor, Guardian economist Larry Elliott or the others as they spoke on the steps of the Royal Exchange, or took seriously the seminar later by Pettifor in one of Hawksmoor’s finest churches, St Mary Woolnoth, where former slave captain John Newton, writer of ‘Amazing Grace‘, preached his last 28 years.

She argued that current global debt-based financial systems are unsustainable and that structural change is necessary which gives proper regard to actual production, and the rediscovery of the insights of earlier Christian (and of course Muslim) traditions.

more pictures

London Riverside – South Bank and Southwark

After visiting an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank next to Waterloo Bridge I walked slowly along the riverside and took a few pictures.

I was on my way to London’s City Hall, then close to Tower Bridge, owned by the government of Kuwait. In 2021 City Hall moved to a GLA-owned property in Newham, some miles to the east. The results of the London Mayoral Election were expected to be announced there in the early evening.

A few more pictures.

No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop -City Hall, Southwark

I sat on a wall close to City Hall reading John Updike’s novel ‘Terrorist’ which is perhaps why I attracted quite so much attention from a Metropolitan police FIT team (Forward Intelligence Team) photographer who took a number of photographs of me sitting there. I don’t object to being photographed, but was a little surprised when later I put in a Freedom of Information request to find the Met claimed they had no pictures of me, despite having photographed me working at many protests.

Protesters from various anarchist groups including Class War had come to City Hall to wait for the new London Mayor to be announced, though they were clear that they were against all the candidates – who they described as the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist and the Cop (there were six others also standing including Green Party candidate Sian Berry who got more votes than “the fascist” BNP candidate.

The protesters were allowed to protest in front of City Hall for around 35 minutes until Fitwatch went into action to frustrate the FIT teams (who could really use a little more intelligence) enclosing one of them in their banner.

Police called up their waiting reinforcements and the TSG arrived four minutles later and began to push the demonstrators, along with some bystanders, mainly tourists, towards the waiting pen which had been set up a short distance away.

One French woman was bemused. “But why are they just letting themselves be pushed” she asked me as I took photographs. “Because this is England and not France” I replied.

I watched as police told a man leaning peacefully on the river wall watching that he had to move as he was “obstructing the highway“. Clearly he wasn’t (though the police were) and he refused to move. They dragged him from the wall, claimed he was struggling (visibly he wasn’t), handcuffed him and led him away to one of the over 40 police vans parked nearby.

I showed my press card and for once was allowed through the police line obstructing the riverside path and made my way to a public balcony overlooking the area. “Cannier protesters had moved away faster, and were able to display their banner” for a couple of minutes but as I arrived they saw the police coming after them and made a run for a nearby pub.

“The police obviously couldn’t be bothered to chase them, and contented themselves with moving the innocent public away from the balcony, and after a short time, also moving the press.” I joined the protesters in the pub for a drink before leaving for home.

By the time I arrived home Boris Johnson (the Toff) had been announced as the winner and London suffered from a dysfunctional mayor for the next 8 years as he was again elected in 2012. Later those the police had penned were allowed to go home.

Many more pictures.

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No to Heathrow Expansion – 2016

No to Heathrow Expansion: When Zac Goldsmith was elected as MP for the Richmond Park constituency in 2010 he had promised he would resign if the government support a third runway at Heathrow. And when they did so in October 2016 he kept his word, forcing a by-election in which he stood as an independent candidate. The election took place on December 1st 2016, a couple of weeks after this rally.

As a part of his campaigning against Heathrow Expansion – and his election campaign around this issue, he called a public meeting on Richmond Green on Saturday 19th November 2016.

Many groups campaigning against airport expansion came to support, including Richmond Heathrow Campaign, Teddington Action Group, SHE (Stop Heathrow Expansion), Residents Against Aircraft Noise(RAAN), Chiswick Against the Third Runway and others campaigning against the noise, pollution and catastrophic climate change the third runway and expansion of aviation would cause.

But also at the meeting where Green Party and Lib-Dem supporters. All major candidates in the by-election were strongly opposed to Heathrow so although many admired Goldsmith for keeping his promise Heathrow was not really at issue in the election. The Green Party, strong in the area, did not put up a candidate as the local party instead voted to support the Lib-Dem candidate Sarah Olney, who beat Goldsmith by 1872 votes. Her major campaign issue was opposition to Brexit, which Goldsmith supported.

The Conservative Party had also not put up a candidate, feeling correctly that to do so would result in a large split in the Tory vote, leading both to to a humiliating defeat for any official Tory candidate as well as giving the seat to the Lib-Dems. Although Goldsmith was standing as an independent, many leading Tories backed him.

A few of Goldsmith’s supporters objected to me taking pictures, insisting it was a private meeting, which was of course total nonsense – it had been called as a public meeting and was taking place in a very public place. One man followed me around trying to get me to stop. Perhaps they realised that although the rally showed considerable opposition to Heathrow there was little if any support for their candidate.

I left after most of the campaigners had spoken and before various local government representatives spoke. All but one of the local authorities in the area are against the third runway. You can read more about the rally and the speakers in my account – with many more pictures on My London Diary.

Climate Crisis rally against Airport Expansion – Heathrow

*Harmondsworth resident Neil Keveren of Stop Heathrow Expansion speaks again at Heathrow*

I left before the end of the rally on Richmond Green to get to a protest taking place at Heathrow by public transport.

Activists from Rising Up were blocking the Heathrow spur from the M4 and local campaigners were holding a family-friendly demonstration in support on the Bath Road overlooking the airport.

Campaigners met at the Three Magpies on a part of Bath Road which would disappear under the Third runway and I had time for a quick pint and a few words with the barmaid who I knew from previous Heathrow campaigns before we walked the short distance to the Bath Road bridge over the airport spur from the M4

Police would not allow me through to photograph the road block, which I could just see in the distance with police vehicles surrounding the activists who were blocking the road into the airport – too far away to photograph with any lens I own – and we could hear their sirens.

There was a large police presence at the rally on the pavement of Bath Road which organisers had made clear would be entirely peaceful and legal. This seemed a considerable waste of police resources, and more like an attempt to intimidate the protesters rather than as police usually claim is their role – to facilitate the protest and ensure safety.

Most of the speakers at the rally were those I had already heard on Richmond Green earlier in the day, although there were none of the Conservative Goldsmith supporters who were presumably still busy campaigning in Richmond. But there were also others, including from Grow Heathrow who were still in occupation of a derelict local nursery, from Occupy and environmental campaigner Donnachadh McCarthy.

Speakers argued that expansion at Heathrow would mean the UK breaking its own laws on reducing carbon emissions, and undermine the Paris agreements. The new runway would devastate local communities with many families losing their homes bring chaos to transport already highly stressed in a wide area around. It would increase the dangerous levels of air pollution both from the flights as well as the traffic increase in a wide area, as well as noise pollution across much of London under the flight paths.

They pointed out that as well as the actual runway the development would need a huge spending on infrastructure in the area with important roads having to be re-routed – and that Heathrow was expecting the taxpayer to pick up almost all the bill, which Transport for London predict would be around £18 billion. And the actual cost of all such large projects always turns out much higher than projected.

*Local resident Christine Taylor of Stop Heathrow Expansion*

As I wrote then, “We need to totally rethink the aviation industry and evaluate the contribution it makes to our economy, and to remove its privileged status and subsidies which currently allow it to expand and pollute for the benefit of its shareholders and the convenience of rich frequent flyers. The industry greatly inflates the contribution it makes to the economy while refusing to acknowledge the many problems it creates.“

But even more importantly as I also pointed out, “We don’t just need to stop airport expansion, but to reassess much of they way we live. We need System Change if we are to avoid the disastrous effects of Climate Change.”

Eight years later there has been no start on expanding Heathrow, but there is very little evidence that this reassessment is taking place, and the election of Trump for a second term makes it even less likely that the world can avoid an unthinkable disaster. Perhaps the only question now is when rather than whether it will happen.

More about the two protests with more pictures on My London Diary:
Climate Crisis rally against Airport Expansion
Rally against Heathrow Expansion

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Ed Davey Privatises the Royal Mail – 2011

Ed Davey Privatises the Royal Mail: 2011 is a year Liberal Leader Ed Davey would like to forget, particularly now that the scandal around the persecution of postmasters wrongly convicted because the Post Office and Fujitsu refused to admit the Horizon software had serious faults, long exposed by Private Eye and Computer Weekly, has now emerged into public view.

In 2011 Lib-Dem MP Edward Davey, MP for Kingston & Surbiton as was heading the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition’s plans to sell off our postal services as Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs. Before becoming an MP he had worked as a management consultant in Sweden, Taiwan, Belgium, South Africa and elsewhere, who specialising in postal services.

His then boss, Business Secretary Vince Cable, was the Lib-Dem MP for the neighbouring constituency of Richmond & Twickenham, so the plans to sell off the publicly owned Royal Mail came from Lib-Dems in this small area of West London.

So Kingston was the obvious place for the national ‘Keep the Post Public’ protest on Saturday 22nd January 2011 and over a thousand came from across the nation for a rally and march there.

Kingston-on-Thames was also relevant for the royal connections incorporate in its name. Kingston is a Royal Borough and the town where many of the earliest Kings of England were crowned, and the march passed within a few yards of the Coronation stone in front of Kingston Guildhall before ending by the River Thames.

And although the Queen herself was unable to come and defend her Royal Mail, a fairly convincing royal look-alike came suitably dressed to give a royal address against selling off her Royal Mail.

Also there to speak were a number of trade union leaders including CWU general secretary Billy Hayes, Dave Ward of the CWU Postal department, Jim Kirwan, CWU London regional secretary, Christine Quigley of London Labour Youth and Christine Blower, the NUT General Secretary. Others speaking included the local Labour candidate and a school student who got huge applause for telling the rally how they had organised and occupied their local school against government cuts and fees increases.

Speakers pointed out that privatisation would result in price rises and the abandonment of the universal service which requires the Royal Mail to deliver and collect to all of the 28 million UK addresses six days a week at the same cost. And we have since seen this happen although not officially; we now get deliveries of mail on perhaps four or five days in a typical week and the collections have become far more erratic.

The cost of a First Class Stamp was then 41p. Presumably as a sweetener for buyers of the privatised company there was already to be a 5p rise in a few months time. If prices had risen simply according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, the stamp should now cost 58p but the actual cost now is over double that at £1.25 – a huge increase. And although using a First Class stamp was supposed to mean next-day delivery, First Class letters now regularly take 2 or 3 days or more to arrive.

There were fears that the privatisation would have negative effects on Post Offices, which had been separated from the Royal Mail delivery service since the 1969 Post Office Act, but there were still strong business connections. So far this has not led to many post office branch closures, although many branches are now part of larger stores such as W H Smith. It remains to be seen what effect the closure of many of this company’s high street outlets as it moves towards a focus on travel will have.

In 2011 I wrote “An ICM poll in 2009 found that 78% of us believed selling Royal Mail would be a bad deal for the taxpayer and 82% thought prices would go up.” And it’s clear that we were right. I (and the coalition government) also thought that “the Royal Mail represents rich pickings for the rich supporters of the government“. Its operating profits since 2013 have been over £400 million in every year except 2020 and in 2022 were £758 million. We are paying through the nose for a reduced service. That’s privatisation for you.

More about the march and pictures of the speakers and marchers on My London Diary at Keep Royal Mail Public.

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