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Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar – 2013

Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar: On Tuesday 15 October 2013 people were quick to react to to a BBC London investigation broadcast the previous night showing that letting agents in London were prepared to break equality laws and discriminate against African-Caribbean people on behalf of landlords.

Among the letting agents who were shown to be operating a colour bar were two on the Willesden High Road in Brent, and Brent Housing Action organised a protest against National Estate Agents and A to Z Property Services who had been named by the BBC. Supporting Brent Housing Action were Unite Community, Brent Renters Campaign, Housing 4 All (the Counihan Family Campaign), Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, and Cllr Margaret McLennan, Brent Council’s lead member for housing. Several other Brent councillors also joined the protest along with two workers from another letting agency in Willesden Green.

The BBC investigation had put a flat in Notting Hill on the market with a number of agents and had then sent closely matched Black and White investigators to ask for a viewing of the property.

At National Estates, the Black applicant was told the flat had already been let, while the White man was given an appointment to view.

A to Z Property told the Black investigator they would ring back – but never did, while offering the White investigator a viewing. It seems clear that both agents were operating an illegal colour bar.

It was well known that many letting agents were acting illegally. The the BBC report quoted a Runnymede Trust survey “29% of black people seeking private housing had experienced discrimination – compared to 1% of white respondents.” It also stated that “36 people told the Property Ombudsman they were the victim of racial discrimination in the past three years, not one single complaint was upheld” and only two of the allegations were fully investigated.

It seemed to many a return to the disgusting practices of the 1950s and 60s, made illegal under the 1968 Race Relations Act, and now against the Equality Act 2010. The protesters called for prosecutions and an end to all illegal discrimination by housing agents.

Both of the named agencies were closed and shuttered for the day. After speeches and protesting outside National Estate Agents, the group of around 30 protesters marched the half mile along Willesden High Rd to A to Z Properties, where a further protest with a few short speeches was held.

Brent is one of London’s more multicultural boroughs, and one with a proud record of community activities celebrating this. Brent councillors and Brent Housing Action promised to take further action to stamp out the housing colour bar to “make sure these practices – and the racism underpinning them – can finally be consigned to history.”

The National Estates Agent shop is now a nail bar, but A to Z Property Services is still at the same address on High Road Willesden.

Unfortunately such discrimination is still common in letting agencies. Shelter and others including the UK Government give advice on what to do if you feel you have been discriminated against, but I think there has been little real action to stop it happening, although the law has been strengthened to prevent discrimination against Of course what we really need is far more council housing to provide homes for all at a fair cost, but while we still have a high-priced private housing market – often taking half of tenant’s wages for substandard accommodation and paying huge subsidies to private landlords – at least that market should operate within the law.

More here about the ‘Counihan Family Campaign‘ and there are more pictures from the protest at Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar.

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Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam – 2012

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam: A protest close to Google’s offices on Sunday 14th October 2012 called on them to withdraw a short anti-Islamic video and other Islamophobic material from their YouTube channel.

The video, variously titled but mainly known as Innocence of Muslims was first uploaded to YouTube in July 2012 in an English language version but was the dubbed in Arabic in early September that year.

Wikipedia quotes a Vanity Fair review of the video: “Exceptionally amateurish, with disjointed dialogue, jumpy editing, and performances that would have looked melodramatic even in a silent movie, the clip is clearly designed to offend Muslims, portraying Mohammed as a bloodthirsty murderer, Lothario and pedophile with omnidirectional sexual appetites.“

The videos were apparently trailers for a full length film called ‘Desert Warrior’ which had been filmed as being about life in Egypt 2,000 years by US non-profit Media for Christ, but in post-production was altered by directory Nakoula Basseley Nakoula , working under the pseudonym Sam Bacile, to be crudely and explicitly anti-Islamic, much to the disgust of at least some of its actors. It isn’t clear if the full film was ever completed, although an early version was apparently screened once in California to an audience of ten people.

Its director was arrested in late September in Los Angeles under various charges related to the making of the film and his use of the alias “Sam Bacile”, and later sentenced to a year in prison and 4 years of parole.

The videos on YouTube led to protests around the world, including in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Europe, some violent with “over 50 deaths, including 23 in Pakistan.” The protest in London was a peaceful one, organised by the Muslim Action Forum who called on YouTube to remove the video and for the the UK Government and other organisations to endorse a ‘Declaration of Global Civility.’

*Soon more men arrived and the protest spilled out across the whole road*

The UK government Commission for Countering Extremism in 2024 commissioned an independent report into Blasphemy Extremism in the UK, which incorrectly states that the The Muslim Action Forum “first emerged in 2015 when it organised a large protest outside of Downing Street to express anger over plans by Charlie Hebdo to republish its 2012 cartoons of Mohammed.”

Had the authors looked at My London Diary they would have known it was organising protests in 2012, and that it was founded following a meeting of “over 100 leading Muslim Scholars, Spiritual leaders and representatives of major Muslim organisations” in Birmingham in September 2012.

*I had first thought there were no women at the protest, but then saw this block beyond where the men were saying prayers*

In my post on My London Diary I made my own comments about the MAF and their Declaration of Global Civility, in particular noting “What many might feel is missing from the declaration is the lack of any reference or acknowledgement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 and is the foundation of our ideas of what a civilised society should be.”

I also commented that “global civility should include rather more tolerance for the expression of views which are abhorrent to you, and should certainly preclude the kind of violent responses that this film has aroused in some Muslim countries.” And I commented on the way that women were marginalised in the protest, kept at some distance from the speakers and the men, with no women speakers.

You can read my lengthy account of the protest and seem many more pictures I took at the event on My London Diary: End the Vilification of Islam.

The previous weekend I had photographed another peaceful London protest against these films: Muslims against Anti-Muslim Film.

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Stop the War March – 2001

Stop the War March: The Stop the War march in London on Saturday 13th October 2001 was the first protest where I put more than a handful of pictures on My London Diary. They were all black and white, although I took pictures in colour as well I didn’t at the time have any way to produce good quality digital images from the negatives.

I printed some of the black and white images in the darkrom and took 10x8s to a picture library and a few have been published in print since then, but the colour negatives simply went into my files, though I usually made contact sheets or, if the film was trade processed, got enprints.

The black and white pictures I put on My London Diary at the time were usually scanned from prints made in the darkroom, scanned using a black and white flatbed scanner. It was only later that I got a decent film scanner and a colour flatbed. The main commercial demand for work was still black and white – though I made many colour prints in my darkroom. And because most people then still accessed the internet through slow dial-up connections, I posted images on line at small sizes and greatly compressed – these image files are only 20-40 Kb each, while now I might post files 50 times larger.

A little over a year after taking these pictures I got my first digital camera capable of professional work, though I’d been playing with consumer digitals for several years. The move to being completely digital took me a few years, mainly because I had specialised film cameras that could let me work in ways that were not then possible with digital.

I didn’t in 2001 write anything directly about these pictures, or about the protest which was against invading Iraq, one of a whole series by Stop the War I photographed. The only major London protest against the Iraq invasion I missed was the huge one in February 2023, when I had only come out of hospital the day before and was still too weak to work.

But the US decision to invade Iraq – already actually made when this protest took place although the invasion only took place in March 2003 – was a response to the September 2001 attacks by Al Queda when two planes were flown into and destroyed the Twin Towers in New York.

I was in 2001 working for a New York based web site, though writing my content here in England. I was also teaching part-time and had ended a lesson and was getting ready to leave for home when a distressed colleague in tears called me into her office and we watched together as the attack unfolded on the news on her PC. She had lived and worked in New York not far from where it was taking place.

Just over a month later, with these pictures I posted some of my thoughts. I had earlier written about the photographs of the events in a feature which had attracted over a million views on-line overnight. The pictures and videos taken by people as they fled down the stairways or watched in shock from outside had a raw power that was often enhanced by their flaws. Anyway, here is what I wrote in 2011, which I think is still relevant.

September 11 actually had a serious impact on my work. Most of the people who read my features are in the USA and I had to think carefully about what to do. I was asked to write a piece about the photography of the event and spent a long time looking at the pictures and writing.

Justice is perhaps the most important of concepts to get to grips with. I have a firm belief that in a just society things like the WTC horror would not happen. I’m not a pacifist – I think there are times when non-violence is an effective tactic and other occasions where it just will not work. However I think that there were many more avenues to be explored before anyone could be justified in starting a military attack. Not only is the actual attack likely to be counter-productive, but it will result in the USA and its allies taking their eyes off the real ball.

And that is not in Afghanistan but in the Middle East, in Jerusalem and in Gaza.

More pictures from the 2001 protest begin here on My London Diary.

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Mother Earth, Greenpeace & Agrofuels – 2009

Mother Earth, Greenpeace & Agrofuels: On Monday 12th October 2009 I came to London for a protest over the threat of agrofuels both to the native Latin American people and to the planet. Later there was a protest against the UK subsidising power stations that use agrofuels and research into agrofuels for aviation which would enable that industry to continue to hugely pollute. Going home from Westminster I photographed protesters who were still on the roofs of the Houses of Parliament protesting against the failure to act on climate change.

London Mobilisation for Mother Earth

Embassies of Colombia, Peru & Spain

Mother Earth, Greenpeace & Agrofuels - 2009 — *At the start of the protest opposite the Colombian embassy in Kensington*

The Global Mobilisation for Mother Earth, an international day in support of the struggles of Latin American native people and to protest against the increasing threat of agrofuels, was called by the Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indigenas on the day celebrated as a public holiday in the USA as Columbus Day, though it has other names in some South American Countries. It marks the day Columbus landed on Abya Yala (the Americas) in 1492.

The London protest was organised by the Coordinadora Latino-Americana which unites a number of Latin American solidarity groups in support of peoples along the Andes in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru who were marching against the European Union’s Free Trade agreements with Latin American countries. These will allow multinational companies to exploit resources on favourable terms, with deals by Colombia and Peru that will destroy the ancestral territorial rights of indigenous peoples. Former EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and his replacement Cathy Ashton, had played a leading role in these agreements.

The UK government was diverting large amounts of funding meant for renewable energy projects to the use of agrofuels which worsen global warming and threaten food security around the world.

Large areas of land in Latin America and elsewhere in the global South is being taken over by multinationals for agrofuel production, displacing the inhabitants, and introducing monoculture that destroys biodiversity and rapidly exhausts the soil. Large areas of irreplaceable ancient forests are also being felled mainly to grow these crops, but also as timber and to burn in power stations.

After a protest with speeches relevant to Colombia outside their embassy and the delivery of a letter there, the protesters walked on the the Peruvian Embassy, where we listened to a clear exposition of the link between opposition to agro-fuels and the indigenous struggles in Peru by eco-socialist Derek Wall of Green Left. Another letter was handed on and we moved on to the Spanish Embassy for a further protest. I left them there to go to the protest at the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

More pictures

Agrofuels Don’t ROC(K)

Whitehall

Around a hundred protesters turned up for a demonstration at the DECC in London calling for an end to government subsidies for agrofuels because of their serious harm to communities and ecosystems and contribution to climate change.

The UK Government is diverting renewable energy subsidies (Renewable Obligations Certificates – ROCs) to subsidise power stations that use ‘agrofuels’. Fuel produced from palm oil was getting twice the subsidy that wind power would get to produce the same amount of energy. The hugely polluting wood-burning power station at Drax in Yorkshire was getting huge subsidies for its climate-wrecking activities.

Agrofuels were once seen as part of the solution to our environmental crisis, but we now know that they cause serious harm to the climate, wreck communities whose land is taken for their growth, destroy biodiversity, replace complex natural ecosystems by agrochemical based monoculture, and by replacing food crops, cause starvation.

Agrofuels allow industrial companies to continue ‘business as usual‘ and export their environmental problems to the non-industrial south, buying up land and creating ‘biofuel refugees‘ of indigenous peoples. A UN source has described this as a ‘crime against humanity.’

One of the speakers was John Stewart, who warned that the air transport industry sees agrofuels as their salvation, allowing them to continue offering cheap flights and increasing air traffic, while pretending to be green.

*The Latin American ‘Mobilisation for Mother Earth’ arrives to join the protest*

The protesters here were later joined by those who had been on the Mobilisation for Mother Earth protest against the the destructive alliance between multinational corporations and local elites in South America, particularly in mining and agrofuel production, and a speaker talked of their struggle for a dignified future for their children and their communities.

More pictures

Greenpeace Parliament Roof Protest Ends

Houses of Parliament

I stopped on my way home as I walked past the Houses of Parliament amd took a couple of pictures. Around 20 Greenpeace protesters who had been on the roof since the previous evening were still there, although they came down shortly afterwards and were arrested.

They held bright yellow banners with the message ‘CHANGE THE POLITICS SAVE THE CLIMATE’ and called on the UK Government to take effective measures to combat climate change, including stopping airport expansion, a refocus of taxes on pollution, fair financing to help pay for low carbon.

Greenpeace say we have to change to green policies rather than simply mouth green rhetoric and listed 12 policies to save the climate and our planet and end the locking of the UK into high carbon lifestyles. They said “The International Energy Agency and leading economists agree that failure to act now will lead to economic as well as environmental disaster” and this is now increasingly becoming obvious.

Although the protest gained considerable media attention, almost all of this in the major news media was about the breach in security on the Parliamentary Estate and not about the much more vital issues raised by the protesters.

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Hampstead, Old And Modern – 1990

Continuing my walk in Hampstead on Sunday 9th April 1990. The previous post was More Hampstead – 1990 and ended at The Mount.

*Holly Mount, Holly Hill, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-63*

Hampstead is a hilly part of North London and Hollybush Steps up beside the house at the start of The Mount lead to another street with ‘mount’ in is name, Holly Mount which leads on to Holly Hill.

My picture is from the corner where Holly Mount meets Holly Hill, looking back down Holly Mount and on the left is the Holly Bush pub, with beyond that Hollybush House, with Hollybush Steps just out of sight around the corner. There is an awful lot of ‘Holly’ in that last sentence and this area of hillside was in earlier times covered with holly bushes.

But apparently the area was until the mid-nineteenth century known as Cloth Hill as its abundant springs made it a good place for washing clothes including laundries serving the Royal Household in Whitehall. Perhaps they hung their washing to dry on the holly bushes. But when the area was further developed and gentrified in the early Victorian era they chose to remember the holly rather than dirty washing. Ian Visits web site has a detailed illustrated article on the alley and Holly Mount.

The Grade II listed Holly Bush pub is a fine pub I’ve visited on several occasions. It was built in the 1790s as a stable block for the home and studio of portrait painter George Romney, but in 1807 was converted to provide catering for Hampstead Assembly Rooms. By around the middle of the nineteenth century it had begun to be used as a pub, but was apparently not fully licenced until 1928. In 2010 it was bought by Fullers and is a pub whose restaurant and drink prices reflect its situation in one of the most affluent areas of London.

*Mount Vernon, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-65*

Slopes lead up from Holly Hill to yet another mount in Hampstead, Mount Vernon, which gets its name from Major General Charles Vernon MP (1791-1810) who owned land here. The blue plaque is for Sir Henry Dale (1875–1968), a pharmacologist and physiologist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Loewi for his work on acetylcholine as agent in the chemical transmission of nerve pulses.

At the end of the street is another blue plaque on the corner with Holly Walk, to the rather more famous Robert Louis Stevenson.

St Mary's, RC, Church, Holly Walk, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-53 — *St Mary’s, RC, Church, Holly Walk, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-53*

The church was first established here by a French Catholic priest Abbé Jean-Jacques Morel (1766–1852) who fled here from the French Revolution but it only had a church building here from 1816 and even then it looked nothing like this.

London had had a week of huge anti-Catholic riots in 1780, the Gordon Riots, and after a week of widespread destruction the army were brought in and around 500 rioters were killed and many injured and arrested. In 1816 anti-Catholic feeling was still running high and at first the church was built to look like another Georgian house.

By the 1850s feelings had quietened and the law had changed to allow Catholic churches to ring bells and William Wardell designed this facade with its bell tower, statue of the Virgin and Child and a massive doorway. Abbé Jean-Jacques Morel died in 1852, the year it was finished.

*Sun House, Frognal Way, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-21*

Various streets in the area share the name Frognal – and rather to my surprise simply because they were developed where a lot of frogs lived and croaked. Much of the area is private streets where Google Streetview does not go.

Sun House at 9 Frognal Way is Grade II* listed, as “a pioneer work of the Modern Movement in the UK“, designed by Maxwell Fry and built in 1935-6. “Fry was a founder member of the MARS Group which did much to forward the cause of the new architecture.”

It is a difficult house to photograph from the street as it it largely hidden behind trees and now also I think behind tall gates.

*House, Frognal, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-25*

66 Frognall is another Grade II* listed modern house, designed by Colin Lucas with
Amyas Connell and Basil Ward in 1937-8, on the corner with Frognal Way.

*House, Frognal, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4g-11*

Another photograph of the Grade II* listed 66 Frognal showing the entrance at its north end.

I’d had enough of Hampstead and had other places to go – I had taken many more pictures than I’ve so far put on line, and perhaps some time I’ll go back and scan more. But Hampstead still seems to me a place of its own, not really a part of the real London I know.

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Arrival, Business, Alfredo’s and Paradise – 1992

Arrival, Business, Alfredo’s and Paradise: More colour pictures from my walk in Islington which although are in my January 1993 folder I now find were actually taken in mid-December 1992, but were only processed in the following month. The previous post which was from the beginning of my walk was wrongly titled Islington in Colour – January 1993.

It seemed more about departure than arrival for this closed shop, which was at 130 New North Road on the corner with Poole St. At left you can see the fairly distinctive bridge over the Regent’s Canal still there though this shop and the other buildings between it and the canal was replaced not long after with a large block whose ground floor is occupied by a Co-op food store.

My guess was that Arrival had been a café. I liked the faded canopies with a sun motive and the columns supported on square blocks, I think painted on or tiled over the brickwork as well as the graffiti tags and fly posting for the Dalston Lane Car Boot and Brixton Academy. The disused shop had been firmly sealed against squatters.

Business Design Centre, Upper St, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-32 — *Business Design Centre, Upper St, Islington, 1992, 93c01-01-32*

The Business Design Centre opened in October 1986, built in the Grade II listed Royal Agricultural Hall built in 1861-2 to the design by Frederick Peck for agricultural shows and continued in use for these until 1938, also hosting other events such as the he Royal Tournament and the first Crufts dog show.

During the Second World War it was taken over by the military and after the Mount Pleasant sorting office was devastated by bombing became a Royal Mail parcels depot. After they moved out the large site remained empty until bought and converted by Sam Morris to an exhibition venue, conference centre, showrooms and offices as the Business Design Centre which opened in October 1986.

Business Design Centre, Upper St, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-34 — *Business Design Centre, Upper St, Islington, 1992, 93c01-01-34*

I imagine that this sculpture showing two Sumo wrestlers holding up a shipping container was there in conjunction with an event taking place in the Business Design Centre and I have no idea how long it remained in place. Unfortunately none of the handful of frames I made in black and white and colour include enough of the board with text about the event.

The shipping container appears to be an actual used container, with clear signs of wear – and if it was a standard 20ft container will have weighed around 2,300kg – quite a weight for two wrestlers.

Alfredo’s is still there, though no longer a snack bar but a café and restaurant renamed Alfredo’s 1920. I photographed it again in 1986 and here is what I wrote when I posted this on Facebook:

“Established 1920 and with a fine frontage. Details of this still remain in its current use by bistro Meat People, although the central Alfredo’s Snack Bar is long gone and the panel it was on is now plain and rectangular and there is no drop shadow on the plain name MEAT PEOPLE. But at the top of the white vertical panel it now states ‘FORMERLY ALFREDO’S’ and at it’s base ‘ESTABLISHED 1920’ and has some of the same text as before, with the rest altered to reflect the current usage.”

Essex Rd, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-25 — *Essex Rd, Islington, 1993, 92c01-01-25*

I’m unsure as to how I would categorise the shop with this window display, but I think it was probably run by an ex-boxer. I can’t read the small print under the photograph at top left but I think it is the American boxer Jack Dempsey, (1895 – 1983), “nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and was world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926.” He was best known for the two controversial fights he had with Gene Turney in 1926 and 1927, both of which he lost.

In the window along with the boxing pictures are WD-40, furniture and leather creams, brushes, a hammer, jugs, superglue, a rabbit and more.

Harley Davidson Power, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-11 — *Harley Davidson Power, Islington, 1992, 93c01-01-11*

I now have no idea where this angry looking snake with the white strip with the messages ‘Harley Davidson’ and ‘Power’ was, or why, though perhaps it was a motorcycle dealer.

Sunflower on Wall, Islington, 1993, 93c01-02-72 — *Sunflower on Wall, Islington, 1992, 93c01-02-72*

For something very different I photographed this painted sunflower next to a door on the wall, presumable leading to two flats, though the number on it, ‘1 B C’ is rather odd. From the parking notice it would seem to be on a fairly busy road. There are two blind windows, probably from when the building was converted to flats.

The picture is very noisy, and although the plant has a shadow, this is painted and the plant pot floats oddly in space. I think the noise is because I under-exposed the negative, though it may also reflect a processing fault. It was taken on a dull December day and perhaps this particular corner was duller than most.

This building is still there but now residential and the metal shutter had been replaced by what looks like wood. The building is in the gap between two semi-detached houses on the street.

Angel's Paradise, Islington, 1993, 93c01-02-76 — *Angel’s Paradise, Islington, 1992, 93c01-02-76*

The rather strange colours in this picture are perhaps appropriate, though I think due to a processing fault. There was a legendary night club on Parkfield Street which was demolished in the late 1990s for the Angel Central shopping complex, but I’m unsure whether this was that venue or another perhaps earlier location – or a completely different Paradise. I’ve been unable to find other pictures which clearly show the Paradise club.

Here is my quick attempt to improve the colour – after having cropped the image to remove a damaged area at left.

More from December 1992 in Islington to come.

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Ganesh Chaturthi Festival Southall – 2005

Ganesh Chaturthi Festival: On Sunday 9th October 2005 I got on my bike and rode to Southall to photograph a Hindu festival which was apparently being celebrated for the first time in England. This was one of many community and religious festivals which I photographed in the first ten or so years of this century – the previous day I had photographed the Catholic Rosary Crusade of Reparation in Westminster and there are pictures of this also on the October 2005 page of My London Diary. At the start of the same month I’d gone to Southall before for a guided tour of the splendid Sikh Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara which opened in 2003.

I was born and grew up in Middlesex, just a few miles from Southall and when young would sometimes cycle there to the footbridge over the Great Western Railway close to the station where steam trains would hurtle past.

In 1950 a local factory owner brought workers from India, and soon others began to follow them, finding jobs at Heathrow Airport, London Transport and other organisations some recruiting in India. Over my growing years the population of the town and of Hounslow where I was living just to the south became increasingly of Indian origin – and I grew to love the smell and taste of curry.

Now in the 2020s around 70% of the population define themselves as Asian, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other areas, though many of them have been born here. Over the years I’ve visited it for various events and enjoyed the vibrancy of its streets and Indian food at some of its cheaper cafés with Indian friends.

But some of the events I’ve gone there to photograph have been reminders of the racial tensions there in the 1970s, and in particular of the murders of Sikh teenager Gurdip Singh Chagga by racists in 1976 and anti-racist activist Blair Peach, murdered by police while protesting against the National Front in 1979.

I was made to feel very welcome at the 2004 event and I think I was the only photographer taking pictures, with not even the local newspaper in attendance. I turned down the invitation to travel on the lorry to the Thames at Putney with the group as I needed to cycle home.

Here is what I wrote about the event back in 2004:

“Another celebration the following day was also dedicated to world peace, as the Ganesh Chaturthi Festival was celebrated in this country for the first time. The tradition of this Ganapati festival dates back to 1895 in Maharashtra, India. It aims to raise awareness of Hindu culture in Britain and “to bring people from different faiths and walks of like together in order to promote peace and harmony in a multicultural society.”

“Statues of Lord Ganesh specially brought from India were transported through the centre of Southall, from the Vishwa Hindu Temple to the site of the oldest Hindu temple* in Britain, Ram Mandir in King Street and back.

“Later the statues were to be taken to the Thames and ritually immersed in the water at Putney, close to the starting point of the Boat Race. Unfortunately i had to miss this part of the event.”

* Shree Ram Mandir, Southall began in 1965 but I think the Slough temple may have started a couple of years earlier.

There are many more pictures from the event which was also attended by the local MP, the Mayor and a few people from local churches, beginning here on My London Diary.

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Rainham to Harold Wood – 2004

Rainham to Harold Wood: On Friday 8 October 2004 I put my Brompton folding bicycle on the train from Staines to Waterloo and then made my way to Rainham, the furthest station east my Travelcard would take me. I can’t now remember if I rode across the city to Fenchurch Street Station or took the slower but lazier route on the Jubilee Line to West Ham to transfer to the C2C train.

This was a ride inspired by Iain Sinclair’s book ‘London Orbital’, published in 2002, based on his walks around the M25. I’d been given the hardback as a Christmas present from my wife to add to his other works on our groaning bookshelves. In 2003 it came out as a paperback and secondhand copies of both this and the hardback are readily available online.

Of course, just as Sinclair couldn’t actually walk along the motorway, neither could I ride along it, but plotted a route that more or less followed it, crossing a couple of times from one side to another.

Sinclair’s book is still an interesting read – and having taken it down from the shelf I’ll probably read it again – or perhaps watch the film. It’s a book full of interesting stories, including of the gestation of London Heathrow where he writes about the way that the war cabinet were deceived into using emergency wartime powers “to establish, by a network of dubious commercial deals, a major airport that was only 15 miles from the centre of London.” A deception that we still suffer from and which our politicians now seem determined to expand despite its disastrous environmental consequences.

Sinclair’s walk passed within five minutes walk of where I live and contains some interesting insights on many places familiar from my own forty years of walking around London within the M25 which form the basis of most of the roughly 45,000 images in my Flickr albums. In 2025 The Observer included London Orbital as one of the best 25 books of the first 25 years of this century.

London Orbital is also a 2002 “visionary film” directed by Christopher Petit and Iain Sinclair, according to IMDb starring another of my favourite London writers, J G Ballard, who lived a couple of miles away from me in Shepperton. The full video has been removed from Vimeo due to copyright issues but you can still view the trailer and apparently can buy or rent the film

I didn’t write much about the ride back in 2004, though the ten pictures on My London Diary have captions. Here is the complete main text:

Earlier in the month I’d taken the Brompton for a ride along the eastern edge of London from Rainham to Harold Wood, most of the time close to the M25. its very rural most of the way, quite unlike Staines which somehow got left out of London. My ride even included the only part of Greater London outside the M25, North Ockenden.

*Gravestone of Geraldine Elizabeth Batt, “Our Lady” to London Thieves, and who was buried at North Ockenden in 1931, and her sister Margaret.*

In 2004 I could find nothing about Geraldine Elizabeth Batt, but since then much more information has been posted online, in the reports of the Thurrock Local History Society, where on 5 May 2026 Phil Lobley gave a talk on her and other members of her family. Although it gives information on Geraldine and Margaret (and this an other talks are recorded on the page in fascinating detail), he concluded that nothing has been found as to why this inscription was used, but suggested it might be a reference to the help gave to the poor and criminal classes in her work with the mission of St. John the Evangelist in Red Lion Square in Holborn where she lived for many years and ran a Boy’s Club. Another sister married into a family connected with North Ockenden and that family was probably responsible for her burial there and for this memorial.

You can still see the small number of pictures I originally posted on My London Diary at Rainham to Harold Wood. Most on this post are pictures not included there.

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Elephants, Football Lads & Stand Up To Racism – 2017

Elephants, Football Lads & Stand Up To Racism: On Saturday 7th October 2017 I went to Parliament Square where people were holding a silent vigil against the ivory trade and then to Park Lane to photograph a rally and march by the Football Lads Alliance and Veterans Against Terrorism following terrorist attacks in the UK and Europe. Stand Up To Racism had organised a rally in Whitehall when their march was passing, calling on everyone including the Football Lads, to stand together against racism and Islamophobia.

Silent Vigil for Elephants and Rhinos

Parliament Square

*A campaigner wearing a t-shirt ‘Only a Rhino Needs Its Horn’ holds a mock elephant tusk*

Parliament Square was filled with carefully lined up protesters in t-shirts against the ivory trade, with some holding mock elephant tusks or rhino horns in a half hour long silent vigil. The event was part of the annual Global March for Elephants and Rhinos taking place around the world.

They called on the UK Government to bring in a full ban on ivory trade, saying that sales by antique dealers in Britain plays a major role in keeping ivory markets open and is driving the poaching that threatens elephants and rhinos with extinction.

My London Diary: Silent Vigil for Elephants and Rhinos.

Football Lads Alliance Rally

Park Lane

The protest followed a number of attacks by terrorists across Europe, including the Westminster and London Bridge attacks in London in April and June 2017, and brought around 5,000 from the Football Lads Alliance and Veterans Against Terrorism to a rally and march to lay wreaths at Westminster Bridge.

Many had come with wreaths in their team colours and badges and posed with them before the really began.

Among those at the protest were families of the victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings for which six Irishmen were wrongfully convicted using coerced confessions and fabricated evidence, serving 16 years in prison in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history. Their convictions led to an end to investigations that might had led to the actual killers being found.

*Up the Gas (Bristol Rovers football club)*

*John Meighan, founder of Football Lads Alliance*

The event organisers emphasised that they were exposed to all extremism and racism, but some of the speeches were clearly racist and suggested that many thousands of Muslims in the UK were Islamist extremists and should be locked up, and were met with shouts of approval and much applause.

The event demanded the locking up of all terrorist suspects and the deportation of any of foreign origin. As I commented, “It was hard to avoid the impression that it was a meeting to stir up Islamophobia, and there seemed to be a total lack of sympathy with refugees fleeing their countries to seek asylum here.”

What shocked me most was the response of the crowd when a speaker mentioned Diane Abbott, then Shadow Home Secretary. There was a huge and prolonged outcry with a loud shout from a man behind me that she should be raped that met with approval from at least some of the crowd.

On my way to the rally I had walked past several pubs where supporters of the FLA were drinking, with small crowds of them on the pavement outside. Several people had shouted abuse at me and I recognised others from EDL, Britain First and other extreme right events I’ve photographed.

There were a few more I recognised at the rally and again I got a few hostile comments and I quickly moved away, but most of those at the event were keen to be photographed and get publicity for their event. Fortunately I think most of those in the pubs stayed there to join the march as it went past.

More pictures on My London Diary: Football Lads Alliance Rally.

Football Lads Alliance March

Park Lane to Westminster Bridge

*A Leeds United fan holds up a message ‘Together we are stronger’ on Whitehall*

The Football Lads Alliance and Veterans Against Terrorism marched from Park Lane to Westminster Bridge to lay wreaths where the April terrorist attack had taken place. Among those taking part were groups representing clubs large and small around the country.

*It was impossible to get a view of all of those at the front of the march as people kept walking in front of the photographers*

*The march begins… but I left shortly after and rejoined it at Trafalgar Square*

The organisers had billed it as a silent march, and certainly some marched in silence as it left Park Lane, but it was quite loud by the time it arrived at Trafalgar Square. There it was joined by a group of a couple of hundred Gurkhas, many wearing their medals.

*A large group of Gurkhas joined in front of the march at Trafalgar Square*

The Gurkhas marched in front of the rest for a few yards, but were then soon overtaken by the march organisers including FLA founder John Meighan and Phil Campion former SAS Special Ops from SOFREP (Special Operations Forces Situation Report), a pro-military information site run by veterans, both of whom had made Islamophobic speeches at the Park Lane rally.

Going down Whitehall the march became very noisy, especially as it passed the small group form Stand Up To Racism opposite Downing Street. Police stood on the pavement between them and the marchers as they attempted to hand out leaflets suggesting how people might follow the march slogan ‘Together We Are Stronger‘ in a more inclusive way and to avoid the movement being dominated by the extreme right.

By the time the march arrived at Bridge Street to go onto Westminster Bridge, the numbers seemed to have roughly halved from those who had set out, despite several hundred people having joined it at Trafalgar Square. Some of them had stopped to confront the Stand Up To Racism protesters until police finally persuaded them to move on, but others had stopped off at various pubs.

More pictures: Football Lads Alliance March.

Stand Up To Racism and the FLA

Downing St

*A man rips up one of the leaflets from Stand Up To Racism*

Stand Up To Racism had not tried to organise a large counter-demonstration but instead a small group had come to hold up banners and hand out leaflets to the marchers.

They had been careful not to call the marchers racists, but clearly many of the marchers felt they were being accused of racism and shouted abuse and threats at Stand Up To Racism (and at photographers.) Most from Stand Up To Racism stood well back from the march with banner.

*Stand up to Racism supporters try to had out a flier to the marchers, but are largely met by shouted insults*

“A few from Stand Up to Racism stood between the police lining the kerb were handing out a flier ‘Some questions for the leaders of the FLA’, which asked them to take steps to ensure their movement was not taken over by racists. Although the FLA strongly denies accusations that they are racist and against Muslims in general, there were many former supporters of far-right groups such as the EDL among those marching.”

*Police eject a FLA supporter from the protest by Stand Up to Racism*

A few FLA marchers tried to get into the SUTR protest but were ejected by police, but others were held back by friends.

*A woman shouts at me for taking pictures, accusing me of calling her and the FLA racist*

A crowd of the marchers stopped and continued to abuse the SUTR protesters. Eventually the police brought up reinforcements and pushed them away down the road.

More on My London Diary at Stand Up To Racism and the FLA.

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More Hampstead – 1990

More Hampstead: More from my walk in Hampstead on Sunday 9th April 1990. The previous post was Hampstead Alleys, Hospital, Baths, House, Heath – 1990.

Hampstead wasn’t (and isn’t) an area of London I feel particularly sympathetic or comfortable in and I prefer the less affluent areas of the capital and those with more industry and that are less arty.

I worked hard at taking pictures but somehow find many of them less interesting and looking back at them over 30 years later have digitised a rather smaller proportion. The eight in this post come from around 60 that I took on this section of the walk, almost all carefully composed and correctly exposed. Probably I should go back and digitise more, but I think Hampstead is a part of London that many others have photographed and so my pictures are perhaps less important.

*Houses, Cannon Place, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4e-31*

I walked down from Hampstead Heath and turned into Cannon Place, where Sir Gerakd Du Maurier lived in Cannon Hall from 1916 until his death in 1935, and the childhood home of Daphne du Maurier and her siblings. The last Secretary of the East India Company had bought Rous Hall around 1838 and put a few old naval cannons in its grounds, renaming the house Cannon Hall. I haven’t digitised my picture of the Hall but found these two dogs mguarding the steps of one of the substantial Victorian houses in the neighbourhood.

*Lion House, 19, Well Rd, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4e-22*

Back on Well Road I took this picture of part of the Grade II listed Italianate Gothic Lion House, part of the large detached villa The Logs, built for civil engineer Edward Gotto (1822-1897) who was for several years in charge of North London’s sewers and went on to build sewers around the world. For him muck was obviously brass and this large house was designed by J.S. Nightingale and built by Charles Till in 1861. This section was named Lion House when the property was divided in 1951. Boy George lived in the Logs from the mid 1980s, and he sold his part of the house for £22million in 2022.

*House, Heath St, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4e-12*

This is the doorway of the Grade II listed Friends Meeting House at 120 Heath Street designed by Frederick Rowntree in the Arts and Crafts style, very much under the influence of Voysey and built in 1907. Among its famous visitors was Mahatma Gandhi who spoke here in 1909.

*Elm Row, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4e-16*

I think this is the alley with steps which leads from Elm Row to New End.

*Heath St, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4f-62*

The leaping sculptures here have long gone, and there are fences on top of the wall to give greater privacy to the residents of the property on the east side of the street just north of Elm Row. I think it was here that D H Lawrence and Frieda lived rather miserably after their return from New Mexico in 1923, along with Catherine and Donald Carswell, who was the lawyer who checked his work for possible libel claims.

But I can find nothing more about these sculptures.

*Hampstead Grove, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4f-51*

“The Hampstead Scientific Society observatory is one of the few places left in London that provides regular public viewings of the Moon, planets and other objects of interest in the night sky.” Though skies in London have so much light pollution that the view must be rather dim though being on the edge of the heath must help. It would still be interesting to book a free ticket if I lived closer.

The site is on the top of a Victorian covered reservoir, the Kidderpore Reservoir built in 1867 by the West Middlesex Water Company which still stores around 2.5 million gallons pumped here from water works at Hampton to supply 11,000 homes in the area. Still in use it was re-roofed in 2015 but still has its impressive Victorian architectural brickwork hidden away in the water.

*The Mount, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4f-23*

1 The Mount, on the corner of Hollybush Steps, has lost almost all of its interest since I made this picture in 1990. There is a new brick wall and tall hedging hides the front garden, though I think everything in it has gone, along with the vases on the steps, the lions and even the little roof over the door. It just looks neat and plain now.

*The Mount, Hampstead, Camden, 1990, 90-4f-24*

Most of this had changed by the time there appears to have been major building work on the site around 2019. What had been quirky and interesting is now rather dull. This large 3 bedroom end terrace house sold in 2017 for £2.64million.

Still more from Hampstead to come.

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