Class War Election Manifesto Launch at Buckingham Palace: On Wednesday 29th April 2015 I went with Class War to Buckingham Palace for the launch of their manifesto for the 2015 General Election.
Although as good anarchists Class War are not in favour of our flawed electoral system they had decided the election campaign would be a good opportunity to generate some interest in working class attitudes and issues, get some publicity – and have a little fun.
Ian Bone of Class War arrives at Buckingham Palace for the manifesto launch
So they had registered as a political party and invited their friends to stand for seats. There were quite a few volunteers but finding the funding for the deposits they knew they would lose and getting the required number of nominations in the constituencies whittled the numbers down in the end to seven candidates for the roughly 650 seats.
Class War’s Westminster candidate Adam Clifford is greeted on arrival
Three of these were in the Greater London Area and I was able to cover all three in the constituencies where they were standing, John Bigger in South Croydon, Lisa McKenzie in Chingford, and on this occasion Adam Clifford who was standing in Westminster.
and shows off his lace-fringed knickers.
The campaign that attracted most media attention was that of Lisa McKenzie because was standing against former leader of the Tory party and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith.
Class War supporters pose in front of the palace gates with their Lucy Parsons banner
Adam Clifford was standing in Westminster and there were 31 of his potential voters registered in Buckingham Palace so he had come to the gates of the Palace to demand his democratic right as a candidate to canvass their votes, but was not allowed to enter.
Adam Clifford speaks in front of the gates
But the event was also the launch of the Class War Party’s campaign, with a simple five point manifesto which had largely been drawn up as I walked with them from the White Hart to one of their many ‘Poor Doors’ protests at One Commercial Street – all of 110 metres away. It was simple and to the point.
Double Dole,
Double Pension,
Double Other Benefits,
50% Mansion Tax,
Abolish the Monarchy,
Abolish all Public Schools
As well as myself, BBC News were there to record the manifesto launch, though I don’t know if it ever made the airwaves.
However the electorate was not ready for the radical proposals of Class War and at the election their seven candidates recorded only a total of 526 votes.
Ian Bone speaks
But since one of the key anarchist policies has long been ‘Don’t Vote – It only encourages them‘ they could claim that the 97,870 spoilt votes and the roughly 35% of registered voters who didn’t bother actually put those who shared their views in a majority. Though most of us might see it as a near victory – the Conservatives actually got slighly more votes than this – for apathy rather than anarchy.
And Class War decides its time to leave before the police become too interested.
LSE Decorated Against Inequality & Corruption: On Tuesday 25th April 2017 students and workers in the ‘Life Not Money’ campaign took part in “a colourful nonviolent direct action calling on the LSE to change from what they say is thirty years of growing neglect, cruelty and outright corporate greed towards workers and staff at the school to something beautiful and life affirming.”
The main organiser of the protest was Roger Hallam, currently serving time in jail for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for organising protests to block the M25 motorway in 2022, sentenced to five years, but marginally reduced on appeal to 4 years. At the time of the protest he was a Ph.D student at nearby King’s College London, “researching how to achieve social change through civil disobedience and radical movements.” I knew him from photographing him carrying out practical work on the subject on a number of occasions, mainly against air pollution from London’s traffic.
Hallam, centre with protests putting ‘£50 notes’ on the wall watched at left by the LSE security manager
At this protest, Hallam was one of a number of people who decorated the wall of the LSE Garrick Building with water-soluble chalk including the slogan ‘CUT DIRECTORS PAY BOOST WORKERS PAY WE ALL KNOWN IT MAKES SENSE’. They also blu-tacked some small posters resembling £50 notes to the wall.
The group then sat around in a small circle on the pavement in front of their work holding a party, talking and joking and eating sandwiches. Four of them had decided they would wait and hope that they were arrested to show up the LSE and its failure to live up to its stated aims.
They pointed out to the police that they had caused no real damage and offered to remove the markings with the damp sponges that they had brought with them for the purpose, but the LSE security manager refused to let them touch the wall.
Police then handcuffed the four and took them away one by one. They offered no resistance, but Hallam went limp and police had to drag him away. I don’t think any of my pictures from the protest were used by the mainstream press at the time, but one of my pictures of the arrest did appear in quite a few newspapers at the time of his trial for the M25 incident and at his earlier trial after he was found with a toy drone without batteries close to Heathrow – in breach of bail conditions.
Earlier when I arrived at the LSE I met Lisa McKenzie who took me to the shop to show me the t-shirt with LSE written in currency symbols, pound, dollar and Euro, £$€.
This was said by the protesters to show the true face of LSE management – an institution which values money above all else and students soon fixed posters and flowers to the shop window. After this protest the t-shirt was removed from display at the shop and is no longer on sale.
This, they said was an example of the ‘Student-Led teaching‘ the LSE prides itself on, condemning the LSE’s attitude to its key low paid workers. The also said that the cleaning contractor Noonan was an exemplar of spectacularly bad management, alleging among other things that “Women have to sleep with management to get extra hours…”
The protest was in support of the campaign launched in September 2016 by the United Voices of the World during the LSE’s 3-day ‘Resist’ Festival organised by McKenzie to bring the outsourced cleaning workers back into direct employment by the LSE.
I left shortly after the arrest, but returned 3 days later to view the alleged criminal damage, finding no trace of it but several security men guarding the wall.
LSE Cleaners Protest, Lisa Arrested: Wednesday 15th March 2017 was the first day of a two-day strike by cleaners at the LSE in support of their campaign demanding equal sick pay, holidays and pensions etc to similar workers directly employed by the LSE and an end to bullying and discrimination by their employer Noonan.
LSE Cleaner Mildred Simpson
I had photographed the start of their campaign at a meeting led by their union, the United Voices of the World, as a part of the LSE’s 3-day ‘Resist’ Festival on 29th September 2016 and a number of protests at the LSE since then.
On 15th March the cleaners had a picket line since the early morning – cleaners start work while most of us are still in bed – and I joined them for a lunchtime rally. Their campaign had a great deal of support from students at the LSE and had a large banner ‘L$E: The London School of Exploitation‘.
Grim Chip recited several of his short poems
Others who had come to support the cleaners included Grim Chip of Poets on the Picket Line and LSE academics Lisa McKenzie and David Graeber and a few from Class War. But there were passionate and effective speeches from a number of the cleaners, including Mildred Simpson, one of the LSE cleaners and others in the UVW.
Alba, right, a LSE cleaner unfairly dismissed in September 2016
At the end of the rally, the protesters marched through the campus and across Kingsway to the building which houses the LSE Estates Office where a large group walked into the foyer demanding to see the Estates Manager. Some were carrying mops and buckets to show their support for the cleaners.
Security came to talk with the protesters, though the protesters were making too much noise to hear them and the protest continued with a short speech from UVW General Secretary Petros Elia to explain when the foyer was being occupied.
Eventually the protesters sat down and waited, still making a lot of noise . People working in the building were still able to leave or enter the building unhindered walking past the protest – but would hear and read why the noisy protest was taking place.
Eventually police arrived and talked with the building security and some of the protesters who soon began dancing in the foyer to music on the public address system the UVW had brought.
More police arrived and decided to stop people entering or leaving the offices. They talked with UVW General Secretary Petros Elia who told them it was a peaceful protest and they would leave after they had made their point to the LSE facilities manager – if the police could persuade him to talk to them.
Eventually this talk did take place, though some way back from the foyer where we could only see them from a distance. The talk went on for around five minutes, and Petros then returned smiling to tell the protesters that the LSE who had until now been refusing to talk to the cleaners had agreed to a meeting.
The protesters then walked out to join those who had been continuing to protest on the pavement outside, and they prepared to end the protest.
But unexpectedly police moved in and surrounded Lisa McKenzie telling her she was under arrest.
They pushed her roughly to the wall of the building and handcuffed her pushing away excessively roughly those who tried to stop the arrest and taking her to a waiting police van.
Apparently Lisa was being charged with assault on the receptionist when the protesters entered the building. I was close behind and neither I nor the other protesters saw any evidence of assault by her as she entered the offices holding one end of the banner with others.
Everyone was shocked, both by the arrest and by the police violence. The fact that none of the others holding the banner were arrested strongly suggested that her arrest was politically motivated, probably due to pressure from the LSE for her support for the cleaners – she had organised the ‘Resist’ Festival where the cleaners campaign had been launched.
Lisa had previously been the subject of a clearly political arrest when she was wrongly charged with three offences at a protest in February 2015 while she was standing in the General Election against Iain Duncan Smith. Perhaps the police were still feeling aggrieved after failing signally to achieve a conviction. This time they were not stupid enough to take her to court.
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
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.
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.
They knocked at the door but management did not answer
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.
Candy Udwin
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.
Jeremy Corbyn joins the marchers
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.
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.
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.
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.
Class War Protest ‘Fascist Architect’: At lunchtime on Wednesday 30th November 2016 a small group of anarchists and communists protested outside Zaha Hadid Architects in Clerkenwell against their director Patrik Schumaker.
Ian Bone of Class War
The protest came after Schumaker had given a lecture in Berlin on the London Housing Crisis in which he had apparently said “We must destroy affordable housing and remove the unproductive from the capital to make way for my people who generate value.”
A Class War poster for the event put this quotation above pictures of Schumacher and Nazi architect Albert Speer with the question “Who said this?”.
Other posters were headed with the slogan “ARBEIT MACH FREI” much used by the Nazi party and best known for its use above the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps and included pictures of the architect with minor variations on the quote.
Class war had also brought their banner with and image of US Anarchist Lucy Parsons (1853-1942) who voiced a rather different view on architecture, “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live“. Ian Bone condemned Scuumaker’s suggestion that London should become a private enclave for the ultra-rich, with the rest of us forced out.
Other groups taking part in the protest included the Revolutionary Communist Group who labelled Schumaker as an enemy of the working class and called for social housing not social cleansing’ and two people from the London Anarchist Federation had come with their banner ‘Make London the Rebel City’.
There were a number of short speeches which among other things pointed out the “class-based absurdity of his neo-conservative proposals which would produce a London which was simply a playground for the ultra-wealthy, but would socially cleanse it of all the workers essential to its running.”
Schumaker’s Berlin lecture had been greeting with boos from the audience and had been widely disowned by architects and politicians including in an open letter from Zaha Hadid Architects.
Class War had also received a letter from one of the workers at Zaha Hadid Architects, where many are said to hate their boss. The letter suggested that Class War should protest outside his £2m home close to Highbury & Islington and gave the address, but they had decided instead to protest outside the practice.
They surrounded the entrance with “CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER’ tape, and both Ian Bone and Lisa McKenzie tried to get an appointment to see Patrik Schumaker without success. According to his e-mails he was away in the Far East.
After an hour of peacefully making their point the protesters left, and I went with some of them to the nearby Betsey Trotwood before leaving for home.
LSE Resist – Working Class, Kidbrooke & Cleaners: in September 2016 then LSE research fellow Lisa McKenzie and a couple of students organised a series of discussions, films, lectures and exhibitions in the 3 day campus-wide 3-day free ‘Resist: Festival of Ideas and Actions’. The festival explored how political resistance is understood within academic research, the arts, grassroots activism campaigns, student debate and mainstream politics.
As a part of this festival LSE cleaners began a campaign for parity of treatment with other workers at the LSE. I had contributed some protest pictures to be used in publicity for the festival and attended some of the events on 28-29th September 2016.
The success of this festival was perhaps one of the reasons why Dr McKenzie was not given a further contract at the LSE. She has since worked at Middlesex University, Durham University and the University of Bedfordshire and is Board Chair of the Working Class Collective.
Working Class debate at LSE Resist – Wednesday 28th September 2016
There was a lively open debate around ideas of the working class at lunchtime on the steps in front of the LSE building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields led by LSE Professor of Anthropology David Graeber and Martin Wright of Class War with contributions from others including LSE research fellow Lisa McKenzie and Class War’s Ian Bone.
I arrived late, partly because the LSE then was a huge building site and the Facebook invitation to the event had included a map incorrectly suggesting it was taking place in Houghton Street, so unfortunately missed the some of the opening remarks by Graeber.
He was followed by Whitechapel anarchist Martin Wright, a working-class activist from East London who told us he was proud of his record of not working. He now regularly broadcasts his pithy comments on current affairs on the ‘Red and Black’ channel on You Tube.
Ian Bone, the founder of Class War, once described by the gutter press as the ‘The Most Dangerous Man in Britain‘ gave a typically witty and thought-provoking contribution.
And of course Lisa McKenzie spoke at some length and depth, and there was a great deal of discussion among the main speakers, with contributions from many of those sitting around on the steps, mainly LSE students. I took a great many pictures some of which you can see on My London Diary, but think I managed to keep my mouth shut and listen rather than speak.
The following day I was back on the same steps to hear Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing (ASH) give a lengthy and detailed indictment, ‘The Intellectual Bloodstain’ on a report by a group of LSE academics on Kidbrooke Village, a development by Berkeley Homes and Southern Housing, on the site of a council estate which was demolished between 2009 and 2012.
The Ferrier Estate had been built for the Greater London Council in 1968-72 on the site of a former RAF base. The first section had five 12 storey towers and three years later a second section six more were added. The estate had around 1,900 flats.
When the GLC was abolished in 1986 for having opposed the Thatcher government it was a sad day for London in general, with the capital being left without its essential city-wide authority, something it has not yet recovered from despite the setting up of the GLA in 2000. But for the Ferrier estate in was even worse news as the estate was transferred to the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
Greenwich made Ferrier a sink estate and failed to maintain the estate properly; its population were markedly multi-ethnic, including many refugees while most of the rest of the borough’s estates were predominantly white.
You can read Elmer’s talk in full on the ASH web site and it makes interesting reading. Perhaps the key fact is that the estate still had 1732 flats which were housing council tenants at social rents, but in the replacement Kidbrooke Village although there will be 4,763 new apartments, only 159 will be at social rent. Some of the others will be ‘affordable’, meaning at up to 80% of market rent, but that means completely unaffordable to those who previously lived there – or to almost all of the 15,000 on the council’s housing waiting list.
As a former member of Greenwich Council was quoted by Elmer as stating, ‘Ten years ago residents on the Ferrier Estate were told that they would have the right to come back. What Greenwich Council didn’t mention is that they would need to win the Lottery to do so.’
Elmer uses the case of Ferrier to ague about a key tropes behind the LSE produced report, the idea of ‘urban villages’ and also points out some of the omissions and inaccuracies of the report as well as attacking their use of inadequate and often misleading concepts such as ‘human scale‘, ‘unique identity‘, ‘social interaction‘ (which means going to shop at Sainsbury’s), ‘locally driven‘, ‘mixed communities‘ and more as well as pointing out some simple lies lifted directly from the developers’s marketing book.
His report points out “the white elephant standing in the middle of the living room of every one of these luxury apartments – that is, their complete failure to meet the housing needs of the local community” and went on to look more widely at housing issues in the UK before concluding his talk by convening a People’s Court for the indictment of the LSE Four, listing four charges and calling for their suitable punishment “in the name of Architects for Social Housing and on behalf of the former residents of the Ferrier Estate.” I think they were unanimously found guilty.
At the end of the meeting Petros Elia, General Secretary of the United Voices of the World trade union spoke briefly about the failure of LSE management to protect the interests of the LSE cleaners in outsourcing them to a cleaning contractor with no insistence on decent working conditions and conditions of service and inviting all present to a meeting later that do to discuss further action.
Later on Thursday I went to the meeting where cleaners at the LSE began their campaign for parity of treatment with other workers at the university.
The cleaners, employed by Noonan on a LSE contract, are paid the London Living Wage, but have only the statutory minimum holidays, sick pay and pension contributions, while workers directly employed by the LSE have more generous terms. They also complain they have lost rest facilities, are not allowed in the canteen with other workers, exposed to dangerous chemicals, not allowed to use lifts to move heavy equipment between floors and are generally treated like dirt.
We were all shocked when one of the cleaners stood up and told how she had been sacked by Noonan after 12 years of service at the LSE. The UVW will fight her unfair dismissal as well as pursuing their other claims.
Others attending the meeting included most of the students from a new graduate course at the LSE on issues of equality, something the LSE has a long history of campaigning for outside of the institution but seemed rather blind to on its own campus. Support for the cleaners was expressed by the LSE Students Union General Secretary and by several LSE staff members, and Sandy Nicoll from SOAS Unison told the meeting about their 10 year fight to bring cleaners there in-house.
Several of the cleaners spoke in Spanish, and their comments were translated for the benefit of the non-Spanish speaking in the audience,
There were suggestions for further actions to improve conditions and fight the unfair redundancy, and I was to photograph some of these in the months that followed, eventually leading the them being taken back in-house as LSE employees in 2017.
Too much was happening on Thursday 2nd April 2015 to fit it all into a headline, with protests against evictions, jailed Palestinian children, arms companies, sacking of trade unionists at hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives, a politically motivated arrest and a failed visit to a squat in a prominent London building.
Sweets Way at Annington Homes – James St,
I began work at a lunchtime protest outside the offices of Annington Homes, the tax-dodging equity investor owned company which owns the Sweets Way estate in north London, calling for an end to evictions and the right to return for all decanted residents.
It was a small but lively protest and attracted considerable attention and support on a street busy with office workers taking their lunch break.
Despite the efforts of the campaigners this small former Ministry of Defence estate of 142 social homes was finally forcibly evicted by evicted by dozens of High Court bailiffs and 7 vans of Met police on 23-24th September. Annington planned to replace these with around 170 homes for private sale at up to £700,000, along with just 59 so-called ‘affordable’ homes at £560,000. Nothing on the new estate was to provide social housing and this was clearly an exercise in social cleansing for profit.
Admiralty Arch, the landmark Grade I listed building providing an impressive entrance to the Mall from Trafalagar Square was commissioned by King Edward VII to commemorate Queen Victoria’s death, designed by Sir Aston Webb and completed in 1912. Initially a residence for the First Sea Lord and offices for the Admiralty it was later more general government offices. The government sold it off in 2012 to be developed as a hotel.
Activists from the Autonymous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians had entered the building through the roof at night and were occupying it. I photographed the various notices and banners on the outside of the building and some activities of security and occupiers outside, and talked to a couple of the them. I and a couple of other journalists were offered entry if we brought tobacco or alcohol but felt it wise to refuse and left. I think the squatters were evicted within 24 hours.
G4S provides security services for Israeli jails in which Palestinian children are held, some as young as 12 years old. The most common charge is throwing stones. Typically there have been 500-700 of them a year in the Israeli military detention system with between 120 and 450 held at any one time. In 2014 Israel held 1266 Palestinian children for interrogation; campaigners say 75% of them are physically tortured and many sexually abused.
One of the protesters who spoke about G4S involvement in the imprisoning and torture of Palestinian children also spoke about her mistreatment by Israeli Security, who forced her to remove her clothes and stand naked to be inspected in public because she was going to visit Palestinians in jail
Thursday 2nd April 2015 was Maundy Thursday and Catholic Workers were taking part in a walk around the “geography of suffering” in London halting outside the offices of companies in the arms trade for prayers against the arms trade, war, torture, nuclear weapons, international debt, homelessness, immigration policy and climate change. The ‘Stations of the Cross’ was a day early as this usually takes place on Good Friday.
Among the companies whose offices they prayed outside were arms company Qinetiq in Buckingham Gate, where a security man came out and told them they could not protest there. They told him they were on the public highway and if they wanted to protest they could do so. But they had come to pray not to protest and continued, leaving as they finished their service.
Among other companies I photographed them outside were Rolls-Royce, another weapons manufacturer, where the pilgrimage ended. I had only joined them part way through the event, when the came past the protest at G4S.
Workers at Sheraton hotels in Ethiopia and the Maldives have been sacked for trade union organising and members of the fast-growing Unite Hotel Workers Branch protested in solidarity with them outside Sheraton’s two Mayfair hotels.
Hotel workers are one of the most marginalised groups of workers in the UK, and many are exploited because their English is poor or non-existent. Here in the UK they can also get sacked for joining a union but despite this, the Hotel Workers branch is the fastest growing branch of Unite because of its determined support for the workers.
I met and photographed their protest outside Le Meridien on Piccadilly for around half an hour before walking down with the to the Park Lane Hotel where I had to leave them to go to Aldgate.
Chingford candidate arrested at Poor Doors – One Commercial St, Aldgate
Police clearly had it in for Lisa McKenzie and during this weekly Poor Doors protest outside One Commercial St a woman officer came up to her a and told her she was being arrested, accused of criminal damage. The officer said she had stuck a Class War sticker on the glass next to the rich door two weeks earlier on March 19th. A snatch squad surrounded her, and despite opposition from the protesters she was led away and put in a waiting police van to be taken to Bethnal Green police station.
While many people had stuck posters and stickers onto the glass windows at almost every Poor Doors protest, this was the first arrest. It’s doubtful whether this is an offence, and it is certainly not criminal damage, as glass is not damaged, with posters and any glue residue being easily removed leaving the surface in as new condition.
I had photographed Lisa and others at the Rich Door fairly extensively on March 19th and was ready to testify that she had not herself stuck anything on the glass – though when her case eventually came to court it was thrown out before I was called.
Lisa was certainly a very vocal protester (as usual) but it’s hard to avoid thinking what picked her out was political pressure because of her candidature for Class War against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford in the forthcoming general election.
Before her arrest the protest had been hampered by barriers for work on the wide pavement outside the Rich Door of the building, and the protest had started on the opposite side of the main road.
Two incidents caused some hilarity, one where a police officer came to deal with a yellow smoke flare that had been thrown into the road, first seeming to kick it, then picking it up and carrying it away down the alley towards the poor door. It had burnt out by the time he reached this, but as I commented “Everyone else may throw their rubbish here but I was surprised the police thought it a good idea.”
The second was when Lisa pointed out that one of the two women officers standing behind the banner she was holding had taken part in plain clothes in a previous ‘poor doors’ protest, and Ian Bone offered her the megaphone to speak – but this was immediately followed by another woman officer coming to arrest Lisa.
There were some angry scenes as she was driven away, and police refused to talk with the protesters. The protest continued with several speeches before people went home.
On Saturday 3rd Novemeber I got to London earlier than anticipate and had time for a little walk before photographing the first protest I had come to cover, over the cuts to public libraries. Later I went to photograph another protest about the plans to demolish many London council estates under so-called ‘regeneration’ plans which involve demolition and rebuilding by developers with little social housing.
Euston to Kings Cross Coal Drops – Sat 3 Nov 2018
Problems on my railway journeys into London are rather common, often involving considerable delays. Last weekend a replacement bus for part of the way meant that my usually slow journey scheduled to take 35 minutes to travel 20 miles instead took an hour and a half. But on Saturday 23rd November 2018, there was something of a miracle. When I arrived at the station a train which should have arrived half an hour earlier was just pulling in and an announcement told me it would be running non-stop to Waterloo.
Where possible I like to arrive at events perhaps 10 or 15 minutes before the advertised start time make sure I don’t miss anything. Travelling across London is often a little unpredictable, with odd holdups so I usually allow plenty of time. I’d arrived at my station a few minutes early, and with the non-stop service got me to Waterloo around 25 minutes before I expected. The normal timetable schedule gives a 5 or 10 minutes slack to make it less likely that train operating company has to pay fines for late running, and without stops the journey is significantly faster. Together with an Underground train that came as I walked onto the platform I arrived at Euston with around three quarters of an hour to spare.
This gave me time for a walk to the newly opened retail development in the former King’s Cross coal drops. I’d photographed the disused coal drops many years earlier, taking pictures of the demolished bridges across the Regents Canal and the still standing drops on the north side where coal brought from the North in railway goods waggons was transferred into carts for delivery across London. At first the waggons were lifted and tipped, later waggons had opening doors in their bottoms to dischage directly in the waiting carts and lorries.
My walk also took me through Somers Town, which has some of inner London’s more interesting social housing and past the new Francis Crick Institute before reaching the canal and a new walkway to Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square, and gave some views of the gasholders relocated across the canal from Kings Cross, some of which are now filled with flats. I made my way back with just enough time to visit the toilets in St Pancras Station before going to the meeting point for the Library protest at the rear of the British Library in Midland Road.
Save Our Libraries march – British Library, Sat 3 Nov 2018
The march and rally against cuts in library services, which are a vital part of our cultural services, especially for working class schoolchildren and young people was organised by Unison and supported by PCS and Unite, but they seem to have done very little publicity and the numbers were far fewer than expected.
Unfortunately the march clashed with another event I wanted to cover and I had to leave a few minutes before it was due to start. Perhaps more joined the protest for the rally at the end of the march outside Parliament.
No Demolitions Without Permission – City Hall, London. Sat 3 Nov 2018
‘Axe the Housing Act’ had called a protest to demand an end to the demolition of council estates unless these were approved by a ballot of all residents, and for public land to be used to build more council homes rather than being turned over to developers to make huge profits from high-priced flats.
Most of those who came were from London council estates under threat of demolition by Labour London councils and speaker after speaker from estate after estate got up and spoke about the lies, evasions and often illegal activities of London Labour councils bent on demolishing their council estates.
Green Party co-leader and London Assembly’s Housing Committee chair Sian Berry
Instead of looking after their working class populations Labour councils are time and time again forcing through demolition of council estates, enabling developers to make huge profits by building flats for sale largely at market rent, with a small proportion of high rent ‘affordable’ homes and a miserably small number of homes at social rent, promoting schemes which cut by thousands the number of council homes.
Tanya Murat, Chair of Southwark Defend Council Housing
Although a new policy was about to come in to insist their should be residents ballots, London Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan had responded to this by fast-tracking 34 demolition schemes by Labour councils before it was implemented. He allowed some schemes to go forward without a ballot, and had failed to insist that all residents were allowed to take part in such ballots.
Former Lambeth Council leader and veteran Labour politician Ted Knight
Among the groups taking part in the rally were Class War and the Revolutionary Communist Group, both very much involved in campaigns across the capital on housing, and among the most effective at raising the issues involved in London’s housing. For some reason the rally organisers would not allow representatives of either of these to speak at the event, which led to a loud confrontation when Labour supporter Ted Knight came to speak. More below on this.
At the end of the rally people marched around City Hall with their banners.
Class War protest Labour Housing record – City Hall, Sat 3 Nov 2018
Whitechapel anarchist Martin Wright
Although Class War supporters were one of the larger groups taking part in the ‘No Demolitions Without Permission’ rally at City Hall they and others were denied any opportunity to speak as a part of the official rally.
Class War have been the most active group in supporting and raising the profile of campaigns in London against estate demolition mainly by London Labour councils who are responsible for the great bulk of estate sell-offs and demolition involving over 160 council estates – social cleansing on a massive scale. Among those protesting at the rally with Class War was Leigh Miller, recently illegally evicted from Gallions Point Marina under orders from the Labour Mayor of London.
Leigh Miller, recently illegally evicted from Gallions Point Marina and Lisa McKenzie hold the banner high
It was no surprise that when a prominent Labour politician got up to speak, Class War erupted, shouting him down to make clear that it was Labour who was responsible for estate demolitions. It was perhaps unfair on Ted Knight, a former Lambeth Labour leader who together with other councillors defied Thatcher and was surcharged and banned from holding public office for 5 years.
Ted Knight (right) and Martin Wright (left) shout at each other
Knight has supported Central Hill Estate residents in their fight against Lambeth Council’s plans for demolition, singing from much the same hymn sheet as Class War on housing issues. As Lambeth council’s leader he was clear that “Nothing is too good for the working classes” and estates such as Central Hill reflect this. And there was a little of old scores in the verbal attack on him by Whitechapel anarchist Martin Wright.
Finally at the end of the rally, Leigh Miller did get a chance to speak.
As a number of those estate residents allowed to speak at the rally pointed out, homes will only be saved if people become more militant and engage in the kind of direct actions which Class War advocates – and not by rallies like today’s outside a closed City Hall.
Class War stood to one side at the end of the rally when most of the rest taking part marched around the empty offices, they were calling for a rather different revolution.
Class War and others protested on Wednesday 5th August 2015 outside the newly opened Jack The Ripper “museum” in Cable St days after it first opened. Class War had called this protest as soon as the news became public, and others had organised another protest the previous evening which I had been unable to attend. Class War later organised further protests outside the museum which I also photographed.
Unfortunately the Jack the Ripper tourist attraction in Cable Street is still open, pandering to a popular taste, particularly among tourists to the city, for the sensational and to wallow in the grisly details of this brutal and horrific series of murders in London of five working-class women on the streets of Victorian London.
The museum was set up according to its planning application as the “first women’s museum in the UK” which “will recognise and celebrate the women of the East End who have shaped history, telling the story of how they have been instrumental in changing society.” A number of people gave advice or worked for free or at cost because they supported the project on this basis, and felt disgusted at how they were duped.
As I commented in 2015, ‘People who have seen the museum have been revolted at its sensational presentation of violent crimes against women. One of the politer comments was to call it “salacious, misogynist rubbish.“‘
I’ve only seen the shop through the doors and windows, and there does seem to be a lot of merchandise for sale. The on-line reviews of the place are extremely polarised. There are many positive, even fawning examples, though some do seem to follow a very similar pattern.
I think the window had been smashed earlier in the day
Others are damning. One comments “The museum is pretty small. It’s effectively 5 small rooms. You could whizz round it in 10 minutes easily. In no way does it represent good value for money. One of the rooms was pure conjecture too (What Jack the Ripper’s living room might have looked like…!?). It’s rather light on any kind of detail. For people with anything more than a superficial interest in the history etc, this is a waste of your time and money.”
Another states “I have no idea how it got so many positive reviews… It’s £12 per person and we’ve basically seen everything after 10 minutes. There’s nothing in this museum that isn’t already in the Google images.” Others are far more negative about the exploitation of the sadistic murders of women for profit.
So if you are someone who thinks we should celebrate the work of a serial killer who eviscerated five defenceless women – three of them mothers – on the streets of London and feel your holiday would not be complete without wallowing in more of the bloody details you may well enjoy this “museum”, even though it is in the wrong location and has little authentic content.
If you are not sure about the details of the killings and have a strong stomach you can read more, rather too much more, on Wikipedia; it isn’t pleasant reading. For once I’d advise you not to click on the link, or if you do to skip some parts of the entry.
Of course the whole Ripper industry is a tacky area, with many more imaginative and profitable books speculating on the identity of the deranged killer. Although the evidence is only circumstantial the most likely suspect remains Montague Druitt who committed suicide shortly after the last of the five murders, and was one of three named in a letter written five or six years later by a senior police officer who though not involved in the investigation will have had access to the officers and the – now largely destroyed – police records of the case.
Class War wrap a march steward in their banner at the start of the march
Tories Out March – 1st July 2017: Five years ago, shortly after the Labour right working inside the party had managed to prevent a Corbyn victory by sabotaging the campaign for the 2017 General Election, the People’s Assembly Against Austerity organised a march through London calling for Theresa May and the Conservatives to go.
Of course they didn’t go, and later when Boris Johnson called an election over Brexit, he gained a landslide victory, rather than the close call in 2017 which left Theresa May having to bribe the Northern Irish DUP, a deeply bigoted party with links to Loyalist terrorists to support her.
This reliance on the DUP has eventually led to the current problem over the Irish Sea border arrangements which Boris Johnson persuaded the EU to adopt as a vital part of his Brexit deal, and which the government is now pushing through a bill to enable us to renege on.
And the Johnson administration has continued and worsened the Tory policies which in 2017 should have resulted in a Labour victory. In my account of the protest march 5 years ago today I wrote
“The election showed a rejection of … austerity policies and the Grenfell Tower disaster 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. The protesters, many of whom chanted their support of Jeremy Corbyn, say the Tories have proved themselves unfit to govern. They demand a decent health service, education system, housing, jobs and living standards for all.”
Rev Paul Nicolson from Taxpayers Against Poverty rings his bell
The full facts of the sabotage of the Labour election campaign from inside the party had not then come to light – and we are still waiting for the Forde inquiry into the leaked report which exposed the racism, hyper-factionalism and electoral sabotage by party officials as well as the misguided attempts of the Corbyn leadership such as the expulsion of Jackie Walker and the resignations of Chris Williamson and Ken Livingstone.
But although this was largely a march of Labour supporters there were still a number of groups on the march who were critical of Labour’s policies and the practices of London Labour councils, particularly on housing, where councils are “demolishing council estates and colluding with huge property developers to replace them with expensive and largely private housing. It is a massive land grab, giving away public land often at far below market value and pricing the former residents out of London in what they call ‘regeneration’ but is quite clearly a process of social and ethnic cleansing.”
It is also a process that has resulted in considerable personal financial advantage for some of those who have led it, with councillors and officers either leaving to work for the developers or in organisations set up by councils to manage their estates. Setting up organisations such as the TMO responsible for the unsafe condition of Grenfell Tower has enabled these bodies to hide information about such activites as using consultants to advise them on circumventing adequate fire inspections outside of the purview of Freedom of Information requests.
Most obvious among these groups was Class War, alway ready to make their views known and to challenge authority. At the start of the march close to the BBC they had a little run-in with the march stewards, which resulted in them briefly wrapping their banner around one of him – though of course they soon released him. Later at the rally in Parliament Square I unfortunately missed a confrontation in which Lisa McKenzie stood in front of both Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and loudly asked them the simple question ‘When are you going to stop Labour councils socially cleansing people out of London?’. Both men simply ignored her and walked away.
Much more about the event and many more pictures at Tories Out March.
