Tin Pan Alley & Our Lady of Mount Carmel: Sunday 16th July 2006 I went to the Tin Pan Alley Festival in Denmark Street, a short street off the Charing Cross Road, for many years the centre of the UK popular music industry, but now sadly declined. There are still some shops selling instruments, but the music publishers, newspapers and most recording studios have disappeared, and much redevelopment has taken place, including behind some of the seventeenth century and later facades.
It was a crowded and very noisy event and I found little to photograph, soon leaving for Clerkenwell to photograph the annual Italian festival there.
The 2026 Procession in Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel takes place this Sunday, July 19, 2026 at 3:30 but the street festival there begins around noon and continues long after the procession. It’s an event I’ve photographed many years since I first knew about it in the 1990s, but this year I think it will be far to hot for me to travel and work there.
Here as usual is what I wrote back in 2006 with normal capitalisation and spelling corrections, along with a few of my favourite images and links to the many others still on My London Diary.
Tin Pan Alley Festival
Denmark Street
Crowding around the stage in ‘Tin Pan Alley’
Not a lot to say about the Tin Pan Alley Festival in Denmark Street. It was noisy, fun if you like that kind of thing (but 15 minutes was long enough for me) and for a good cause.
A game of football around the corner
Denmark Street is perhaps more interesting on other days, I must take my “famous” (allegedly ex-beatle) guitar in for repair sometime.
Ladies on one of the stalls at the Sagra in Warner StAnd men. More on My London Diary
The Italian Church festival is one of the great events of the London calendar, which fortunately hasn’t yet been noticed by too many non-Italians.
First communicant poses with her motherStatues and banners are carried in the processionA group of women leave the church to take part in the procession
The Procession In Honour Of Our Lady Of Mount Carmel Attracts several thousands. Good food, good wine and Italian beer along with other things for sale, colourful statues, and a cast list that included Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus, the Four Evangelists and many more, all parading through the streets around St Peter’s Church in Clerkenwell.
First communicantsPadre Carmelo di Giovanni, parish priest from 1991 to 2014Jesus carries a heavy wooden crossThere were three baskets each with a pair of doves who were reluctant to flyAnother Jesus led the first communicants
At the end of the procession is Our Lady Of Mount Carmel and the priests; as they join it, doves are released and the crowd of parishioners joins in a solemn procession of witness around the streets.
The clergy with a visiting dignitary
There are very many pictures from the event beginning here on My London Diary and spread over around a dozen pages, beginning with a number from the Sagra, the street festival in the street below the church. This continues with music and dancing ofter the procession (as well as eating and drinking) but in 2006 I needed to leave rather than continue photographing.
Spice, Rain, Turkey & Cyprus: Sunday 15 July 2007 was another varied day for me in London, both for events and weather. I went to Hackney for Hackney Spice, but got bored and went to the South Bank where there was a tremendous thunderstorm. When the rain eased off I photographed some of the performers in a Turkish festival in Bernie Spain Gardens before crossing the river to the Embankment to photograph a protest by Greek Cypriots over the Turkish occupation of North Cyprus.
Hackney Spice
Hackney Town Hall
I think these dancers came from South London, but some other performers were local.
Hackney Spice was an event outside the town hall in Hackney, next to the Hackney Empire. Perhaps I was there too early, but it appeared to be getting off to a rather slow start, and I soon lost interest and caught a bus.
As I arrived at Coin Street, there were a few drops of rain, and apart from eating and drinking (high-priced cheap beer) not a lot was happening. I walked around and then took a walk along the embankment, sheltering under a tree as the rain came on a little harder.
Then came the thunderstorm, with perhaps the most tremendous downpour I’ve ever seen, pouring down through the leaves as if I was in the open. Even my umbrella didn’t really keep me dry, although it offered some protection. As the rain came, the view disappeared, first the distant view along the river, then the bridge, then I could no longer see the river itself, and trees only perhaps 25 metres away merged into whiteness.
There wasn’t a great deal to photograph, and I was more concerned about keeping my cameras dry – fortunately the raincoat built into my Lowe-pro camera bag was reasonably effective. As the storm eased slightly and visibility returned, still holding up my umbrella, I took a few pictures, but it was still raining too hard to move much.
Then the storm was over, and there were belly dancers on the stage. I don’t think I appreciate the finer points of this art (and appreciate quantity rather more than quality – after all you can only shake what you have), but I took a few pictures but rather more of the folk dancers that followed, their dances clearly linked to village life and agriculture.
National Federation of Cypriots – Turks out of Cyprus
March & Rally, Westminster
But I’d really come to photograph something connected with a rather different Turkish activity, the continued occupation of part of Cyprus by the Turkish army. I grew up hearing about the war in Cyprus, older brothers of friends were there fighting as a part of their compulsory national military service, and Don McCullin took some of his first and most striking images of war.
The front of the march – the red area is the Northern Cyprus, occupied by Turks
War and partition left both Greek and Turkish Cypriots with justifiable grievances – there were atrocities on both sides, and time seems to have done little to heal. While I sympathise with the Greeks who still mourn their lost sons, often disappeared without trace, I also find it hard to understand why the EU went ahead with recognition of Cyprus after the Greek Cypriots voted down the UN attempts to reunite the country. Greek and Turkish Cypriots live together with few problems in London – and it is surely time they did so in Cyprus too.
The National Federation of Cypriots march and rally called for Turkish troops and settlers who have come since the Turkish occupation in 1974 to leave Cyprus.
I’d expected the march to start late, and was surprised to see it had already begun as I came across Hungerford Bridge. It was a larger event than the similar rally I’d photographed a couple of years previously and attracted more photographers.
The organisers for some reason didn’t want photographers to cover the rally, moving us out of the area in front of the platform. It seems odd to say the least to organise a public event and then not provide proper facilities for press coverage.
Streatham & Newham Carnivals: On Saturday 14 July 2007 I photographed carnivals in two areas of London, Streatham in south London and Newham in East London.
Although we had a long carnival tradition in England, and one that was much revived after the Second World War, many of those traditional carnivals had by around 2000 died out. But new carnival traditions, particularly from the Caribbean have come to take their place. Unlike the traditional events many of these received considerable funding from local authorities and organisations such as the Arts Council. While I was pleased to see this, I think we lost something by failing to support our own traditional and often rather zany activities.
The two events were rather different. This was only the second Streatham Carnival and seemed to be supported by small local groups and individuals. It was specifically a children’s parade, mainly with primary age children and their parents. The Newham event is a much larger council organised and sponsored event and includes many community organisations and schools and is in part a PR event for Newham’s Mayor.
The Streatham procession was mainly on the pavements of one of London’s busier roads, while in Newham to procession took place in a park and along less busy urban roads. The Streatham parade had a spontaneous feel while in Newham you were aware of the weeks or months of planning by the various organisations.
Here I’ll post a few pictures from each of them – with links to more pictures on My London Diary – and the short texts I wrote in 2007.
Streatham Carnival Parade
Streatham High Road
The procession walked along the pavement on both sides of the High Road.
Saturday 14th July I photographed a small carnival procession in Streatham High Road, making its way down the pavement on the edge of the busy street, part of the Streatham Festival.
There were lots of kids having fun in Newham’s carnival
Newham Carnival was a much larger affair, with quite a few local schools taking part along with other community groups. The carnival had a largely West Indian feel, although there were some Indian dancers. Of course those taking part reflected the multiracial nature of Newham, with over 60% of residents from ethnic groups other than White English, but I would have liked to see more diversity reflected. We even have an English Carnival tradition – and no reason why this, along with Irish and other ethnic traditions shouldn’t be more evident in events such as this
Indian dancers were at the front of the processionThe Mayor dances with the procession
Against Factory Farming: On 13 July 2002 UK vegan charity Viva! (founded in 1994 as Vegetarians’ International Voice for Animals) had organised a march and rally in London and I went to photograph it using both black and white and colour negative film.
I think it works better in black and white
Viva describes itself as “the UK’s leading vegan campaigning charity, specialising in undercover investigations and high-profile animal campaigns” so perhaps I should not have been surprised to find that this turned out to be more of a protest against all ways we make use of animals rather than just opposing factory farming and the cruelty involved.
I am not a vegan, nor a vegetarian, though I eat a good deal of vegetarian food and rather less meat then the average UK resident, though probably more fish than most and certainly my share of diary. But I’d like to see it all produced without cruelty and know that not all of it is.
Relatives of mine were sheep farmers and I know they looked after their animals well. They loved animals and they represented a large investment both financially and in long hours of care, particularly in the lambing season. They really did look after their animals, including the few cows they kept and gees and chickens as well. And at times they had to protect them against other animals – nature is certainly not vegan and I’ve seen the total bloodshed when a fox gets into a chicken run.
We need animals in various ways, and many of them only exist because they are still farmed – and their species only developed as they are now because they were domesticated and farmed. They only live their lives because we are going to eat them or drink their milk (and they now produce many times the amount their own calves could drink) or eat their eggs. They need us to survive as a species even though we slaughter them.
I think being vegan is a good thing and probably reduces your footprint on earth particularly in terms of carbon dioxide production. But if everyone became vegan it would be a disaster, particularly for those animals we farm and love.
I didn’t write much about the protest in 2002 – here it is on full (but appropriately capitalised.)
“Cruelty in farming is something we can all oppose, even if we are not veggies. Although the Viva! event was meant to unite different groups, there was too much fanaticism around for that to really work. Few of the speakers seemed to be trying to approach the issues rationally, and they were simply whipping up the converted.”
But I did publish quite a few pictures on My London Diary (and some elsewhere.) Along with a page of half a dozen black and white images I also posted a page with 25 large colour thumbnails, each linked to a larger image. Click on any one of these and their are arrows above the image to go back and forward in a slide show of the 25 images.
Looking through Windows – Leyton & Leytonstone: After photographing Claremont Road where the M11 protesters had covered many of the houses with some splendid art work I wandered off into the area around, eventually making my way from Leyton into Leytonstone. Many of the pictures I made on this walk were taken through the windows of shops that attracted my interest.
None of these pictures were taken from inside the premises, all looking in through their windows. To avoid unwanted reflections I held the lens against the glass and tried to shield the area around the lens. This wasn’t always entirely successful and some images have light areas in some corners. And of course occasionally I decided to include reflections in the pictures.
With a 50mm lens I could use a flexible rubber lenshood to seal around the lens and the window, but the lens mount on this created its own vignetting on wide-angle lenses. Much more recently a larger and much floppier version of this device which fits around a lens barrel has been marketed which I would have found very useful. So of course I bought one, but I can’t remember ever having used it – I just don’t take these kind of pictures any more.
Chinese, Fish & Chips, Leyton, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-903-65
This walk, like most of my walks, was on a Sunday morning when few people were about, and I was seldom interrupted or asked what I was doing. I carried a cloth in my camera bag as I sometimes cleaned a small patch of window to get a clear view. I don’t think these pictures were unduly obtrusive as I was only recording the public face of these premises which was open to everyone walking past.
Most of these pictures were taken using an Olympus 35mm shift lens which enabled me to move the frame up,m down, left and right a little to frame precisely. For some I used wider lenses, both a 28mm and also an ultrawide 21mm f3.5. Though an excellent and very small and light lens this does show more vignetting in the corners than the less wide lenses which I haven’t always entirely corrected.
Shooting through glass does introduce another optical element which can change the colour of the images, sometimes making the negatives difficult to colour balance. With the ultra-wide light from the corners takes a significantly longer path through the window glass which can give some colour casts towards the edges of the pictures.
Hyams Gymnasium, 857, High Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-903-42
I published a couple of black and white images of the gymnasium taken at the same time a couple of years ago, including one of this side wall in Gainsborough Road. Hyam’s was apparently a well-known sporting institution in the area, but as I commented then, is “now in very different use.
This is now The Walnut Tree, a Wetherspoon pub, and as often it has some history of the area it its web page, but this does not mention Hyams Gym. The figures on the building’s side have gone and its groundfloor windows have been bricked up but the rows of 8 or 9 upper floor gym windows remain.“
Hairdressers, High Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-903-43
Using very wide-angle lenses which produce “normal” rectilinear results means that light going to the edges of the frame from the lens have a longer route and thus diverge more, distorting objects close to the edges of the picture. You can see this in the picture at extreme right of this picture.
Chinese Takeaway, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-903-44
Similarly the two blue and white plates are actually circular and facing the shop window, but that at the left is noticeably oval in this picture.
Chinese Takeaway, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1994, 94-903-31
There did seem to be rather a lot of Chinese food available in the area in 1994. When I grew up in the 1960s Chinese food was a rarity except in areas such as Limehouse and Soho. There isn’t a particularly high Chinese origin population in the area – around 1% of the population, one of the lowest among London Boroughs and a third of that Tower Hamlets and Westminster.
I had a particular interest in the shop interiors in recording how they reflected the varied ethnicities of their owners, often with very different decoration and layout etc to traditional English small shops. It was one of many different changes I had observed over the years.
Big Brew, Childrens’ Carnival & London Bridge: On Saturday July 11th 2009 I’d been commissioned to photograph a bishop at fair trade events in Finchley, then rushed to Newham for a children’s carnival procession. Gettingg back to London Bridge for its 800th birthday celebration was made difficult by the planned closure of both District and Jubilee lines and I only made it minutes before the event ended.
Big Brew
Finchley and Edgware
The Diocese of London had organised a day of ‘Big Brew’ events at Anglican churches across Greater London promoting fairly traded goods, particularly tea and coffee. Fair Trade is a movement and system that ensures the farmers and other workers get a fair return for their work, safe working conditions and ensures that money from their products gets invested into their local communities for healthcare, education and other development opportunities. Both I and my wife had been active supporters of the movement since our student days, long before the Fairtrade certification mark was first introduced in 1988.
I had been persuaded to photograph two events organised by the parish churches in Finchley and Edgware which the Bishop of Edmonton, the Right Revd Peter Wheatley, a strong supporter of the fair trade movement would be attending.
St Mary’s Finchley had tables and chairs on the pavement with tea, coffee and a large assortment of delicious looking cakes. As well as the bishop, Barnet Mayor Councillor Brian Coleman and the leader of the opposition were there too.
But for me the main attraction were the waitresses in caps and aprons and the ‘Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’ performed by children from the Church’s drama group.
Things were a little quieter at St Margaret’s Edgware, where I went on with the Bishop. We met the local MP Gareth Thomas and were offered the chance of ringing the church bells. Or at least they posed for a photograph pretending to ring them. It was very dark and needed a tricky bit of flash.
Newham Carnival seemed rather smaller than when I photographed it in 2007, but it was still a lively procession, with lots of kids having fun. The Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, came and joined in, though I found his performance rather embarrassing.
I suppose its a point in his favour that he doesn’t mind making a fool of himself
Keir Hardie was the country’s first Labour MP, elected in West Ham South in 1892. The County Borough of West Ham, now a part of Newham, elected England’s first Labour-controlled council in 1898. And in 2009 every one of its 60 councillors was Labour. Robin Wales became council leader in 1995 and became its elected mayor in 2002. In 2018 he was de-selected as Labour’s mayoral candidate following a bitter dispute inside Newham Labour party and is now a leading member of Reform UK.
Wales seemed very much to regard Newham as a personal fiefdom and used events such as this very much as PR opportunities.
In the Wikipedia article you can read a little – in a very bland fashion about some of the controversies of his reign as local dictator. Under his leadership Newham gained large amounts of high cost private developments but failed to deal with the incredible housing problem in the area – telling people if they couldn’t afford to live in Newham they should move. As his critics said, we want social housing not social cleansing.
I walked some way with the carnival procession, but then took a bus, which was held up even more than usual by the traffic congestion the procession created. Normally I would have taken the District line, but this was closed for engineering work. And at Canning Town, rather than the Jubilee line (also closed) I had to use the much slower Docklands Light Railway, so I arrived rather late for my next event.
One of a number of guild displays on the modern London Bridge, 30 metres upstream from the old bridge
The Romans had built bridges across the Thames but these wooden structures did not survive. As I wrote (with minor corrections) in 2009:
“It was Peter de Colechurch who decided a stone bridge would be a better bet well over a thousand years after the first bridge, and started building one in 1176. It was a lengthy job, and was only finished 33 years later, and it was also very expensive.
To get back the cost houses were built on the bridge (as well as a chapel in the middle) and it soon became a thriving medieval shopping centre. There was actually very little space left for traffic to get across it, traffic moving in both directions on a 12 foot wide roadway (and in 1722 we got our first Highway Code, with the Lord Mayor laying down that carts coming from Southwark should stick to the west side, and those going south from the City drive on the east.)
This was part of the roadway across the 1209 London Bridge
You can get a good idea of its width from going to the church of St Magnus the Martyr, as its entrance porch is the only remaining part of the bridge, and if the church is open you can go inside and view (sometimes through a rather thick haze of incense) a large model of the whole bridge.
Found in the Thames
That bridge – with pretty well constant repairs and several major disasters – lasted until 1831 when a new bridge designed by John Rennie opened for business, around 100 ft upstream… The current bridge opened in 1971″
Housing Activists Focus E15 get their name from a hostel for young single mothers in Stratford, in the London postcode area E15. In September 2013 they were given notice of eviction from the hostel by by East Thames Housing Association after Newham Labour Council cut the funding. They were told they would have to move to private rented accommodation scattered around distant low-rent areas of the country if they wanted to be rehoused.
Focus E15 protesters set up on Barking Rd, outside Newham Town Hall, with posters on its fence about Newham Mayor Robin Wales.
Instead they decided to stick together and fight to remain in London where they had families, friends and support networks. Their campaign, supported by friends and family members as well as some members of the Revolutionary Communist Group, involving various direct actions including a party in the housing association offices, large marches, an occupation of Newham Council’s housing office, and of long-term empty council flats on a Stratford estate gained a great deal of local and national publicity. I was pleased to have photographed some of these events and you can find more about them on My London Dairy.
Jasmin Stone holds up a RCG poster – ‘Newham residents suffer £50million cuts. Robin Wales gets £100,000 + £80,000 expenses’
It was a successful campaign, but the group did not stop there, but widened into a much wider ‘Housing For All’ campaign, linking with other housing activists around the country and pushing housing for ordinary people higher up the national agenda.
Focus E15 move towards the former police station
They continue to fight Newham Council to meet their obligations towards local people, still in 2026 going to oppose evictions in the area, still accompanying people to support them at the housing office and still holding a weekly Saturday protest and advice stall on the pavement in the centre of Stratford on Stratford Broadway and an open meeting every Saturday afternoon in a former corner shop, Sylvia’s Corner.
Some of the protesters had used ladders to climb onto the balconies and hang banners
Their campaign brought them into conflict with Newham’s then Mayor, the abrasive Robin Wales, which at times became highly personal, with the mayor attacking them when they protested against him and his policies. The council’s actions against the group included the ludicrous ‘arrest’ of a table at their stall, arrests of Jasmin Stone, physical assaults and various attempts at intimidation.
The protest took place on the second day of the annual Newham Show, a PR exercise for the Mayor. For the previous two years the group had been physically prevented from handing out leaflets at the show, so in 2016 they set up a stall on the main Barking Road a short distance from the show to hand out their housing information leaflets to the crowds making their way to it.
The Grade II listed former East Ham police station on the corner of High Street South, opposite Newham Town Hall had closed two years earlier and was then empty. [The Met sold it in 2018 for £3.4million.] After a few speeches and handing out leaflets for around an hour on Barking Road, the protesters picked everything up and walked the few yards to the police station where some had already used a ladder to climb onto the two balconies and hang banners.
A protester holds a ‘Robin Wales’ selfie-stick
The protest continued there, with more speeches. One woman on her way to the show stopped and spoke on the open mike and demonstrated how she thought people should kick Mayor Wales out of Newham – and in 2018, at least partly as a result of demonstrations like these, the Labour Party managed to do so, despite what had seemed his iron hold on the party machine.
Other housing activists came to speak and the rally continued. A police car stopped and the officers came to talk with the protesters. They claimed to be worried that the balconies could be dangerous – but they look pretty solid and sound to me and the protesters and the rally continued.
Cyprus Property, a Windmill and a Regatta: On Sunday July 9th 2006, after photographing a protest over property disputes in Cyprus I went to the Brixton Windmill Festival and then on to Kingston Regatta and walked to Hampton Court. I wrote at some length on My London Diary and you can read it below with more normal capitalisation and the odd other correction.
Cyprus Property March
Park Lane
Turkish and Greek Cypriots lived together on Cyprus for many years.Three years after the island became independent in 1960, fighting started and the Turkish Cypriots were thrown out of their official positions. There were many killed in the fighting in the following years, and in 1974 both Greek and Turkish troops became involved.
Since then the island has been effectively divided into two, with the Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus. Many Turkish and Greek Cypriots had to leave their homes and move to the other side of the de facto border, taking over properties vacated by those moving in the opposite direction.
Recently the situation has become more complex, with Cyprus being admitted to the EU in 2004, despite its split status. The UN had set up a re-unification plan that was approved by the Turkish population, but rejected by the Greeks. Entry to the EU has however meant that Greek property claims are now being taken up in Southern Cyprus and can then be enforced in other EU countries, including the UK.
One such case concerns the Orams, an English couple who bought land and built a villa on it in Northern Cyprus. They bought the land from a Turkish Cypriot who had received it in exchange for property he had to leave in southern Cyprus in 1974. The land had belonged to a Greek Cypriot who took the matter to a court in southern Cyprus recently, obtaining an order against them that they should demolish the house and pay damages (which the Orams are appealing against.) Although the judgement cannot be enforced in northern Cyprus, as this is still under Turkish control, the lawyers are trying to enforce it in the UK courts against the UK assets of the Orams.
Settlement of the property issues requires Greek and Turkish Cypriots to come together produce a plan for peace in the divided country. It would then be possible for a suitable property commission – such as that already set up under the advice of the EU in northern Cyprus – to work through all the cases.
The marchers were asking for the support of the British government in refusing to accept the decision of the Cyprus court on ‘public policy’ grounds, and to make further attempts to establish a proper peace plan that would allow proper resolution of property and other disputes in the island.
[Following a series cases with appeals to the the High Court, the European Court of Justice, and back to the UK Appeal Court, the Orams lost their case and apparently abandoned their property in Cyprus in 2010. Property issues in Cyprus remain in a mess but are reported to be moving very slowly towards an amnesty in 2026.]
The Brixton Windmill Festival wasn’t music at the well-known pub, but at the real windmill 50 yards further on, built by a Mr Ashby many years ago to take advantage of its hilltop site to get the energy to grind his corn.
A local choir sang with spirit performing Amazing Grace as a tribute to those killed and injured on in the London Bombings of 7 July 2005
When I first visited around 30 years ago it had been recently restored by the GLC and I climbed up the rather rickety ladder holding the small occupant of the pushchair I had taken with me for a view of the surroundings. Since then it has been vandalised and partly restored, and though it’s still an impressive site, you are only allowed upstairs on very special occasions (and probably after signing a a form in triplicate saying you take your life entirely into your own hands.)
But it is still a useful site, a green patch in which to sit or stroll, some swings for kids, a cup of tea, and a reminder of past ages. There was some music at the festival, a group of local singers while I was there, as well as stalls from a number of local organisations, including the local history society, the credit union and also the police and others. I hope a few more people came after I left.
It was a pleasant afternoon for a walk by the Thames, and although the shopping streets of the town were hot and bothered as usual, once out on the bridge it was a different world. the river itself was rather busier than usual, with over half its width buoyed off for the regatta, with pairs and trios of boats being stroked lustily downstream chased by umpires in powered catamarans.
I walked past the regatta enclosure and stood a few minutes watching by the bank before continuing along the riverside path. The start and marshalling area were a little more interesting as the officials tried to sort out the various teams, heats and finals. There were quite a few grammar, not to mention Eton and a few other posh schools, but not a single comprehensive or secondary mod while I was in earshot.
Island home
It turned out to be a rather longer walk to Hampton Court than I’d imagined (for once I’d not bothered with a map) and I was tired [and late] when I got to the river exit from the flower show.
There were a few people carrying rather straggly looking plants and a couple of photographers already lying in wait to photograph them, but I couldn’t really work up a great deal of interest. so I walked on and caught the bus home.
[I’d been keen to go to Kingston as I was hoping to get more local pictures for the show ‘Another London’ with Mike Seaborne and Paul Baldesare which was to be in Kingston Museum at the start of 2007. You can still see all the pictures by all three of us on-line at the Another London web site, including one from the Regatta.]
Tour de France, More Cyclists & Flowers: On Sunday 8th July 2007 I began work in Woolwich where briefly cyclists flashed past me in the Tour de France, a few minutes from the start in Greenwich. From there I went to Hyde Park for another cycling event before meeting a friend to go to Hampton Court to photograph people leaving the flower show there.
Tour de Woolwich
Tour de France, Woolwich
After a time trial around London on Saturday, which I missed because I was at college, the Tour de France started for real at Greenwich on Sunday morning, after the cyclists had warmed up a little with a ride from central London.
I decided I’d like to see the real race, and chose Woolwich, just a few miles from the start as offering some decent viewpoints and also the background of the Thames for at least some of my pictures. [Though not those of the Tour itself.]
I arrived an hour or so before the riders, and found there were already people by the roadside sitting and waiting, building up to a fair crowd by the time the race reached us around 8 minutes after the start.
From the time I first saw the riders in the distance to when the last rider passed was 28 seconds, so I didn’t get a great deal of time to take pictures, although I soon ran out of space in the 21 raw shot buffer and had then to wait a second or so between shots.
Then the cyclists were gone, followed by car after car with spare bikes and it was time to go elsewhere
[I took a few pictures as I walked from Woolwich Arsenal station to the roadside point I had decided to view the race from, including of people waiting to see the race.
I was working with the Nikon D200, a great camera but with hindsight should have switched from RAW mode to jpeg when I would have been able to take many more frames as the cyclists flashed past. The pictures of the cyclists were made with my zoom telephoto lens at or close to its longest focal length at 200mm.
In retrospect perhaps I should not have pretended to be a sports photographer and gone instead for a single image looking down on whole the event from the hill above.]
Back in Hyde Park, another cycling event, the Peoples’ Village was taking place, with various events on a loop of track around the Serpentine and the southern edge of the park.
The marbles version of the Tour
There were also a number of stalls and a giant screen showing the Tour.
For a fiver, you could have your picture taken with a wax Lance Armstrong
I ate my sandwiches on the grass watching [the screen], though just as I sat down the peleton decided it was time for a ‘natural break’.
From Hyde Park I made my way down Oxford St to meet Paul, and we took the train [from Waterloo, after a pint or two in a pub] to Hampton Court to take some pictures of people leaving the Hampton Court Flower Show, carrying plants of various colours and sizes.
NHS at 70 – Save St Helier Hospital: On Saturday 7th July 2018 I went with campaigners from Keep Our St Helier Hospital on what seemed a long hot march from Sutton to a rally in front of St Helier Hospital.
The Epsom and St Helier Trust planned to close A&E, Maternity, Paediatrics, Emergency Medicine and Surgery, Intensive Care, Coronary Care and the Cancer Centre at one or both Epsom or St Helier Hospital and sell off much of the sites.
The march celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of our National Health Service and marchers signed a giant birthday card at the start of the march in a park in the centre of Sutton and many had had posters and placards for the 70th birthday of the NHS.
But there were also plenty of placards calling for the local hospitals – St Helier, Queen Mary’s and Epsom to remain open and offering a full range of services.
There was a great deal of support shown for the march as it went through the long Sutton High Street, with many shoppers stopping to applaud, and a few joining in the march, at least for a short distance.
The march stopped at several places in the High Street for short speeches about the plans and the need to oppose them.
Many on the street seemed surprised to learn their local hospitals were under threat. The death of so many local newspapers – and few of those left are still truly local, publishing largely material unconnected with their local areas, owned by a couple of large national companies – has led to a real lack of reporting of local issues, and many people are now ill-informed on them.
The march continued through the huge 1930s estates in the area until finally we were in sight of St Helier Hospital.
It was a hot day and there was little shade on the route and although it was only around a two mile walk it felt much more.
As we arrived for a rally on the large grass open space in front of the hospital we were greeted by others who had come there, including the National Health Singers who were waiting to sing for us in front of a tent with the message ‘The Clock Is Ticking For Your Hospital’
There were free buns to celebrate NHS 70 and of course speeches by campaigners and people staged a die-in to represent the deaths that would result from the closure of the hospital,
Closure of vital services here or at Epson would leave around half a million south Londoners with much poorer access to NHS services. As I noted, “People would have to travel longer distances through increasingly congested roads to reach full hospital services at St Georges Tooting and elsewhere, a journey which might take 20 minutes when traffic was light but much longer when roads were congested; even in ambulances there would be more dead on arrival or whose condition had seriously deteriorated.”
The plans are a part of a long-term campaign by successive governments to reduce NHS spending and to hand over much of the NHS to private health providers, which is continuing under the current Labour government, many of whose members receive considerable funding from such companies. In February 2026 the BMJ published an article which included the estimate from the Good Law Foundation that then Health Secreatry Wes Streeting “had accepted a total of £372,000 of donations from donors linked to private health between 2015 and 2025.“
Despite their long campaign, more services are being removed or under threat of removal from both hospitals as a part of a plan to reduce the number of major acute hospitals in the country. In 2020 the trust was still planning to sell off around two thirds of the current St Helier site, including the Queen Marys Childrens Hospital, Furguson House, the Maternity Unit, Womens’ Health, the renal unit, the teaching block and the large car park.
This year the trust was awarded £57m to improve its emergency ward and is to “temporarily relocate the women’s health block at St Helier” but there are fears locally that maternity services will not return to the hospital.
