Posts Tagged ‘London’

Badgers, Yarls Wood & Ukraine – 2014

Wednesday, March 13th, 2024

Badgers, Yarls Wood & Ukraine – Three protests in Westminster on Thursday 13 March 2014.


Badger Army Says End Culls – Old Palace Yard

Badgers, Yarls Wood & Ukraine

Bovine TB is a great problem for dairy farmers and the great majority of them are convinced that badgers play an important role in spreading it, although scientists estimate that around 94% of all infections are spread from cow to cow. A major part of the problem is that the test used for the disease in cows fails to detect a large proportion – perhaps a third – of infected cows.

Badgers, Yarls Wood & Ukraine
Bill Oddie

Around 20,000 cows are slaughtered each year because they are found to be infected and compensating the farmers costs us over £100 million a year. The Badger Trust argues in a report based on scientific evidence that a more effective approach than culling would be to focus on “cattle, cattle testing and vaccination and enhanced cattle biosecurity (including cattle movement).”

Badgers, Yarls Wood & Ukraine

There is no scientific consensus that the killing of 260,000 badgers since 2013 has had any effect on the spread of the disease. DEFRA continues to support badger culling but Labour in 2023 pledged to end it if elected – though they have already drawn back from most of their pledges.

Badgers, Yarls Wood & Ukraine

The cull has provoked strong emotions on both sides and this protest on a day when MPs were discussing the cull reflected that. You can read more about it and see more pictures on My London Diary at Badger Army Says End Culls.


End Persecution & Sexual Abuse at Yarl’s Wood – Home Office, Marsham St

A short walk away outside our “dysfunctional” and Home Office – then under Theresa May and her racist “hostile environment” policy – a protest called for an end to the psychological, sexual, physical and legal abuse of women asylum seekers and immigrants held at Yarl’s Wood and for the detention centre to be closed down.

Many women have made complaints of sexual abuse by male prison staff at the centre, and one who was awarded compensation was was horrified to learn that the man who abused her was still working there, free to commit further offences.

The protest took place following reports of the disappearance of a detainee called Saba from Pakistan, who women in Yarl’s Wood believe had committed suicide there. It was supported by the Movement for Justice, Southall Black Sisters and the All African Women’s Group, and protesters included women who had been held in the detention centre while their asylum claims were being considered.

In my account on My London Diary I give more details about her and also of the cases of a political refugee from Mali who had been illegally deported back there in the previous month, and a Kurdish trade union activist also illegally deported by the Home Office and then in hiding in Turkey where she had attempted suicide.

There had been many other reports of violence against women the centre, and the protest organisers stated:

Yarl’s Wood women are fighting back against attempts to deport them or their sisters to persecution and death and exposing sexual abuse by male staff. The frightened response of the Home Office and its agents is to increase the repression in Yarl’s Wood, breaching even the present, inadequate legal rights of detainees and creating an environment that can drive women to suicide.”

The protest called for a public inquiry into abuses at Yarl’s Wood and for it to be shut down.

End Sexual Abuse at Yarl’s Wood


Ukraine Vigil – Downing St

Finally I went to Downing Street where on the pavement opposite Ukrainians had set up a permanent vigil, hoping to get the UK Government to stand up against Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea.

There wasn’t a great deal happening during my brief visit, and I was correct to think that the UK government would take anything but half-hearted action. To do more might hurt the City’s financial interests – and those of some leading Tory MPs and their family businesses. The failure of the west to end its aggressive Cold War attitudes to Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was bound to have highly poisonous repercussions. We should have welcomed the country into our sphere and dismissed the NATO hawks.

A few more pictures at Ukraine Vigil.


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Children’s Blood and Women Rise – 2019

Saturday, March 9th, 2024

Children’s Blood and Women Rise – On Saturday 9th March 2019 Extinction Rebellion covered the road at Downing St with fake blood in a protest calling for a future for children and women marched through the West End in an annual protest against male violence.


Blood of Our Children – XR – Downing St

Children's Blood and Women Rise

Two processions converged from both directions on Whitehall outside Downing Street, each led by children carrying posters with the message ‘Our Future, Our Blood’ along with a person ringing a bell.

Children's Blood and Women Rise

The children were followed by people in single file carrying buckets of fake blood prepared to be arrested to draw attention to the need for urgent action to avoid the otherwise inevitable extinction of human life on Earth. They were followed by a crowd of other Extinction Rebellion supporters.

In front of Downing Street those carrying buckets formed a large half circle and when the bells stopped ringing came forward in three waves to pour the blood onto the roadway, retuning to sit down and await arrest.

Children's Blood and Women Rise

Police watched carefully but took no action. There were a number of short speeches from young people, including some very impressive 10 and 11 year-olds, before I left, as well as by students and grandparents, but no arrests.

More pictures at Blood of Our Children – XR.


Million Women March against male violence – Oxford St

I left early to rush to Oxford Street for the annual all-women Million Women March by several thousand women, girls and children against male violence and arrived a little before the march was due to start from a street at the side of Selfridges.

The theme of the 2019 march was ‘Never Forgotten’ and it remembered the more than a hundred women killed by men each year in the UK, mainly by partners or ex-partners.

As in other years there was a strong representation by women from our diverse ethnic communities, concerned about male violence both here and in their countries of origin.

In the UK 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence at some point in their lives and one incident is reported to police every minute.

Many more pictures on My London Diary Million Women March against male violence.


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March 8th – Women Strike And Protest

Friday, March 8th, 2024

March 8th – Women Strike And Protest. In 2021 on International Women’s Day I published a long post, 8 March: International Women’s Day with some images from my coverage of the day from 2002 until 2020, and in 2022 I posted International Women’s Day Marches with a little history and more of my pictures from previous years.

This year I look back seven years to Thursday 8th March 2017 when I covered a number of events on International Women’s Day.


From Russia With Love – Parliament Square

March 8th – Women Strike And Protest

When I arrived to photograph a couple of protests about to take place in Parliament Square I found around a dozen young Russian men in white caps andjackers with a strange heart-based logo clutching large bunches of red roses being briefed before they went around the square stopping women an handing them roses.

March 8th – Women Strike And Protest

Apparently this was a stunt for Rusian TV by the ‘Make Her Smile Movement’ and was taking place in various capitals around the world. Some women refused the flowers, but most took them and seemed pleased if rather confused by the gesture.

More pictures at From Russia With Love


International Women’s Strike – Parliament Square

March 8th – Women Strike And Protest

Global Women’s Strike had come to the square to celebrate the resistance of women worldwide and hold a protest in solidarity with the International Women’s Strike taking place in 46 countries.

March 8th – Women Strike And Protest

They held a rally opposite Parliament as the Budget was being delivered inside, with speakers from a number of groups supporting women including the victims of domestic violence, the disabled and the victims of family courts.

Among the speakers were women from the Scottish Kinship Care Project, Dr Philippa Whitford SNP MP for Central Ayrshire, Denise McKenna, co-founder of Mental Health Resistance Network and Paula Peters of DPAC. Police initially tried to prevent the speakers using a microphone but were persuaded to let them go ahead.

The event ended with a short play by the All African Women’s Group about sexism and racism of the immigration system by the Borders Agency courts and in immigrations detention centres such as Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre.

More pictures at International Women’s Strike.


WASPI at Parliament – Old Palace Yard

A few yards away in Old Palace Yard Women Against State Pension Inequality – WASPI – were holding a rally against the changes in the state pension scheme which are unfair to women born in the 1950s.

The 1995 Pensions Act included plans to increase the pension age for women to 65 but it was only 14 years later that letters were sent to many women born in 1951-3 Their situation was worsened by the accelerated raising of women’s pension age under the 2011 Pension Act, also made without properly informing those affected, with the age for both men and women increasing to 66 by 2020. Many got as little as one year’s warning of the up to a six-year increase to their State Pension age and it was not possible for them to make alternative plans. For men and women born in 1959 the state pension age is now 66 years.

The women affected are still awaiting the result of an independent investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman which was started in 2019.

More pictures at WASPI at Parliament.


Vigil for Thai Farmers – St Martin-in-the-Fields

Global Women’s Strike went on to hold a silent vigil on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields in solidarity with the farmers of Thailand. Many of them are women in the Southern Peasant Federation of Thailand and the vigil was also in support of others all around the world risking their lives to defend land and water from corporate land grabs.

More pictures at Vigil for Thai Farmers.


Death By A Thousand Cuts – Downing Street

Fourth Wave London Feminist Activists held a protest at Downing St on International Women’s Day, drawing attention to the impact that cuts have had on women.

The unjust, ideologically-driven cuts to public services are disproportionately felt by women. Their protest contrasted to the more highly publicised corporate events on the day which are given a high degree of coverage in the media and concentrate on getting more women in boardrooms and other highly paid jobs. Though important issues, these are clearly irrelevant to the huge majority of women who have to deal with the realities of low pay, expensive housing, and caring for children and other family members.

More pictures Death By A Thousand Cuts.


International Women’s Strike Flash Mob – St Pancras International

Finally I went to St Pancras International station where London Polish Feminists were joined by Global Women’s Strike in a flash mob celebrating the struggles of women around the world .

Wearing black and red clothing, after practising their routine with umbrellas with messages on them and a large banner at the entrance to St Pancras International they went down to the main concourse to perform it there.

Police came to see what was happening and made sure they did not block the concourse but remained friendly, and the waiting passengers applauded and took photographs.

More at International Women’s Strike Flash Mob.


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Time to Act on Climate Change – 2015

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

Time to Act on Climate Change – it was indeed time to act on climate change when over 20,000 of us marched through the streets on Saturday 7th March 2015, but though almost all the scientists and others who had studied their reports were convinced the nine years since then have been largely wasted years.

Time to Act on Climate Change
Tina-Louise Rothery from ‘Frack Free Nanashire’ and others from Lancashire sitting down on the Strand

There have been some minor changes both in the UK and across the world, but nothing like enough to reverse the growing climate chaos – and our current government seems determined to stay on course for extinction, giving approval to new fossil fuel schemes.

Time to Act on Climate Change

Not that the current opposition, who may well become our government at the next general election seem any better. Instead of taking a firm line to oppose these climate-wrecking schemes and promising to reverse the decisions when they come to power they have said they will allow them to proceed. They have promised not to approve more, but then they have already abandoned most of the promises they had made earlier, including those related to climate change.

Time to Act on Climate Change

In 2021 Labour announced a £28 billion annual green spending plan creating new jobs in battery manufacturing, hydrogen power, offshore wind, tree planting, flood defences and home insulation in the first term when they came to power. They abandoned this pledge in Feb 2024, cutting by half or more its green investment plan.

Time to Act on Climate Change

Back in 2015 the climate march and rally demanded real action without delay with a total divestment from fossil fuels, an end to fracking and damaging bio-fuel projects and for a 100% renewable energy future which would create a million new jobs. The Labour policy would have been a watered down version of this, coming ten years at least too late, but now hardly coming at all.

The organisers of the march through London had refused to pay for any policing of the event, saying it was not needed and it proceeded peacefully largely in their absence. There were large groups of police protecting some businesses, particularly the Strand McDonalds, where some marchers stopped to protest.

A large group of the marchers, including a block from Frack Free Lancashire led by the Nanas, then sat down on the road and halted the march for around 15 minutes before getting up and continuing.

A black block of several hundred behind a banner ‘TIME TO ACT ON CAPITALISM’ made a lot of noise going down Whitehall, and then rushed off down King Charles Street rather than continue to the rally. I went with them for a few yards and then decided to go back and join the many thousands on the main march which ended with a rally on College Green, close to the Houses of Parliament.

Here is the list I gave of the speakers in the account I wrote in 2015, and there are pictures of most of them on My London Diary:

Among the speakers were John Sauven of Greenpeace UK, Kat Hobbs from CAAT, Bert Wander of Avaaz, Pete the Temp, Fatima-Zahara Ibrahim of the Youth Climate Coalition, Pete Deane from Biofuelwatch, Guy Shrubsole from Friends of the Earth, FBU leader Matt Wrack, Rumana Hashem an evironmental activist from Bangladesh, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Tina-Louise Rothery who spoke toegther with a Frack Free Lancashire crowd, Dennis Fernando, UAF, Chris Baugh, PCS, John McDonnell, MP, and comedian Francesca Martinez. A woman from Paris (whose name I missed) invited us all to go there to protest at the climate talks there this December, and a 12 year-old read an excellent speech she had prepared.

There was then a performance by a large choir, Voices United, and the event concluded with John Stewart of HACAN who came on stage together with some polar bears from a protest earlier in the day at Heathrow who received prolonged applause.

Time to Act on Climate Change

At the end of the rally we were invited to take part in two other protests continuing the day’s theme and I went with ‘Art Not Oil’ proceeding with their Viking longship to protest on the steps of Tate Britain against the gallery accepting sponsorship to greenwash climate wrecker BP. Partly I chose this rather than the planned direct actions around Parliament as I thought it would get less press coverage, but it was also on my way to Vauxhall station where I could catch a train home.

Viking longship invades Tate steps
Climate Change Rally
Time to Act on Climate Change


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Elsynge, Services Rendered, Pistons & Faces

Wednesday, March 6th, 2024

Elsynge, Services Rendered, Pistons & Faces completes my walk on Friday 4th August 1989 in Battersea. continuing from the previous post, Charterhouse, A Diary, School, Church & Houses. This walk began with Council flats, Piles of Bricks, A House Hospital and Brasserie.

Stanhope House, 13, Elsynge Rd,  Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-56
Stanhope House, 13, Elsynge Rd, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-56

A short distance down Spencer Road I turned right into Elsynge Road, a street full of large mainly semi-detached Victorian houses. It got its current name only in 1937, when Park Road was renamed to distinguish it from other Park Roads in London, including one not far away close to Battersea Park.

Local legend has it that some of the houses in this and Spencer Road were built for the Great Exibition of 1851, but in fact development only began in the area a little later, with the first houses in Spencer Road appearing in 1853-7 and in Park Road in 1856-7. Most were built in the 1860s with a handful of later additions.

The area draft Conservation Appraisal Document notes “Nos.9-11 and 13 are of particular interest, being of three and a half storeys with rustication to the lower storeys, canted bays, and projecting porches supported by Corinthian columns. Dentil cornices and decorative architraves to windows add richness of detail.”

As for the name of the house it could refer to one of the various Earl Stanhopes several of whom were prominent Tory politicians, one of the two English and one Scottish villages of that name, or be simply the family name of the residents.

House, Elsynge Rd,  Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-41
House, Elsynge Rd, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-41

The draft Survey of London tells us that the area was initially called the Clapham Station Estate, named after a short-lived station on the line to the east of the area, not Clapham Junction which was only built in 1863.

Number 33 and 35 are rather plainer houses in the street but still large with a basement and three floors above. 35 is unusual for being one of few detached houses in the street and its current valuation is over £4 million. Both were build by the same builder, Richard Down a joiner from Princes Street, Westminster around 1863.

Pillars, 19, Elsynge Rd,  Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-43
Pillars, 19, Elsynge Rd, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-43

There are six of these large pillars in front of the impressive edifice Elsynge Mansions at 19-23 Elsynge Rd. The Survey of London suggests that this was built as a semi-detached property and converted into flats by the 1890s, a date when the building of mansions was becoming common across London.

Its name will have come from the Tudor Elsynge (or Elsyng) Palace in Enfield which had been used as a hunting lodge by Henry VIII but was part demolished in 1608 and completly not long after; it later became part of the Forty Hall estate. Its exact location had been lost until redicovered from 1960 on by the Enfield Archaeological Society. And clearly it was this name – in some elegant tiling on its front path – which led to the new name for Park Road.

Services Rendered Club (Battersea) Ltd,  4 North Side, Wandsworth Common, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-31
Services Rendered Club (Battersea) Ltd, 4 North Side, Wandsworth Common, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-31

At the west end of Elsynge Road I turned into Marcilly Road, photographing a house there (not yet digitised) and walked down to the South Ciercular Road on the north side of Wandsworth Common. These buildings are still there at 4 North Side and are now home to Bright Horizons Day Nursery and Preschool.

There are still a number of Services Rendered Clubs in the UK and I think most of them were formed in or immediately after the Great War particularly for ex-servicemen who had been honourably discharged after becoming permanently unfit to serve. They were awarded the Silver War Medal, also known as the ‘Services Rendered Badge’, a lapel badge designed to be worn on civilian clothing. During the war this would have protected them from being harassed to serve ‘King and Country’. Most also got a printed King’s Certificate of Discharge.

According to the survey of London this was the coachhouse for Devon Villa, “designed by G.H. Page for G. H. Swonnell, maltster, and built in 1861, probably by George Bass“. The former Servicemen’s Club was converted into the nursery and 7 flats in 2005-6..

Pistons, 99 St John's Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-33
Pistons, 99, St John’s Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-33

I walked up Strathblaine Rd and Sangora Rd but took no more pictures until I turned into St John’s Hill where Pistons, a shop appearing to sell accessories for motorists including numberplates, warning triangles and superglue with a rather phallic sign caught my eye.

The shopfront is still there but for some years this was a furniture shop, ‘inform’ selling Scandinavian designs but the shop here was recently advertised for rent. The advert dated the shop as 1900 but it was built as part of the Strathblaine area development around 1882-6. Never believe what estate agents say.

Terrace, 6-11, Boutflower Road,  Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-34
Terrace, 6-11, Boutflower Road, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-34

I took a short detour down Strath Terrace, across the railway bridge and down Boutflower Road. Henry Boutflower Verdon was the first vicar-designate of St Mark’s, Battersea Rise and was much loved in the area by the time he died at the age of 32 in 1879.

A curate under Canon J. Erskine Clarke, Vicar of St. Mary’s Batersea, Verdon was to become Vicar of St Mark’s which was then being transformed from a tin tabernacle a Victorian Gothic church by William White, now Grade II* listed. The new church was dedicated as a memorial to him and Philip Cazenove, a local benefactor who had paid for the building of the church school.

Boutflower’s name was given to the road when Alfred Heaver developed what he called the St John’s Park estate in 1885–9. Heaver must have had a huge production line making these faces in the picture to be spread liberally across the estate. Probably he made a nice profit selling them to the builders.

It was time to end this walk and make my way to Clapham Junction for the train home. It was August and I was shortly off on my travels to Hull, where my next frame was taken and later on to a week in Scotland. So my next walks were rather different.


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Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll – Class War’s peaceful pub crawl on Saturday 5th March 2016 had been widely advertised arousing considerable paranoia and a fairly large police presence with several businesses deciding to close for all or part of the day. Foxton’s even went so far as to get their offices boarded up, though it was unlikely they would have otherwise had suffered more than a few stickers on their windows.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Notting Hill has played an important part in Class War’s history. It was here, actually in Grenfell Tower, that some early issues of the Class War magazine were put together, and here on 27 August 1983 where the first Class War conference was held, here where Ian Bone in 1988 met Joe Strummer and his enthusiasm led to the ‘Rock Against the Rich’ tour.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

You can view a short RoughlerTV video of Class War’s ‘Bash The Rich‘ protest on 3 November 2007 in Notting Hill and see my pictures of the event on My London Diary. Policing on that occasion was large and heavy-handed while in 2016 they largely remained in the background, at least until the group reached Foxtons.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

I wrote at some length about the pub crawl in 2016, when some from Class War took a walk around some of the key sites in the area, led by Ian Bone, and you can still read Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll on My London Diary, as well as a shorter version with fewer pictures posted here on >Re:PHOTO a couple of years ago. I’ll use different pictures in this post and only give a brief outline of the event.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Some of us met at the start of the walk outside the Ground Floor Bar on the corner of Talbot Road and Portobello Road, where the first Class War conference took place in an upper room in what was then the Colville Hotel. Unfortunately this bar had closed down for good a few days after it had been advertised as the meeting point for the pub stroll, so we had to stand outside to listen to Ian Bone speaking about the event. It reopened some months later as a gin bar.

We crossed the Portobello Road to the next stop, formerly the Warwick Castle pub where ‘Rock Against The Rich‘ was conceived, no longer a proper pub in 2016 but a rather ghastly gastro-bistro, The Castle. It had decided to close for a few hours for “maintenance” and staff inside cast us apprehensive glances as we heard another speech and some adorned the windows with ‘blue plaques’ (blue paper plates) and Class War stickers.

H H Finch’s bar on the Portobello Rd had long closed but had been replaced by Young’s with a tourist pub in 1991. In 2016 it still also had the name Finch’s Dining Rooms on its frontage along with their new name. This venue had stayed open despite the Class War event though I think with some extra bouncers on the door, but we all walked in and enjoyed a few rather pricey beers, with a few others coming to join the group. I think all Class War had done here in the past was drink and talk and drink…

We walked down Portobello to the only remaining real pub on the street, the Earl of Lonsdale, formerly Henekeys. Its Victorian interior had been gutted in the 1960s but was restored after Sam Smiths took the pub over and changed its name.

The beer here was cheaper and better and it was hard to drag ourselves out and rejoin our route, but most of us managed to continue the stroll down to the house where George Orwell lived from 1927 to 1929. Ouside here Lisa McKenzie praised him for his recognition of the war by the elites against the working classes.

Next came Foxton’s boarded up for the occasion, where Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing spoke about the housing crisis and the role of estate agents in gentrification. After he had been speaking for a few minutes a large group of police vans and motorbikes arrived and Class War quickly disappeared into a local pub and the stroll finished.

You can read more about the history of Class War in Ian Bone’s highly entertaining book, Bash the Rich, still widely available.

And there is much more about the 2016 event at Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll.


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Save Our NHS – 4th March 2017

Monday, March 4th, 2024

Save Our NHS – The NHS was under attack by the Conservatives before it was established in 1948 and has come under repeated attacks since by governments of both major parties particularly since the 1990s.

Save Our NHS

Providing universal healthcare costs and the current financial year (2023/24) figure of £160.4 billion is around one seventh of total government spending of around £1,200 billion. So it isn’t surprising that governments should wish to see that the money is being spent wisely. But that isn’t was most changes in government health policy have been about.

Save Our NHS

Even with that large sum, the UK is still getting healthcare on the cheap. According to Statista the spending per person is less than in the US, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Australia, France, Sweden, Luxembourg, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Ireland and Finland and roughly the same as in Iceland and Japan.

Save Our NHS

It’s perhaps not surprising given this that we often hear reports which compare the results of NHS care critically with those in other countries. But those reports on the BBC and in the papers seldom if ever mention the poorer funding the NHS receives than many of those with better health outcomes.

Save Our NHS

The US spend per person is considerably higher than all other countries and roughly two and a quarter times that in the UK. But many of the NHS reforms made this century have been based on making our health system more like the American model, which would be a disaster. But it would mean a great opportunity for private healthcare companies, particularly some of those US companies, to make huge profits at our expense.

A surprising number of our MPs have had some financial interest in healthcare either through shareholdings or by sponsorships. The Daily Mirror in 2014 published a list of 70 MPs with links to private healthcare firms which included almost every leading Tory and some from other parties. As well as then Prime Minister David Cameron, they included Former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, responsible for the disastrous Health and Social Care Act 2012, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, former Health Minister Simon Burns, the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith, William Hague, Philip Hammond, Sajid Javid, Oliver Letwin, Chancellor George Osborne, Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and many other leading Tories, along with Lib-Dems then in the coalition government Vince Cable, Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes.

It’s these people who have introduced policies which have led to large areas of NHS services being provided by private companies, though still retaining the NHS logo and still providing services free to the public. But generally these are the kind of simple, straightforward services and the more complex areas are still left to the NHS.

There is still huge public support for the NHS, despite its problems some of which have been created possibly deliberately by government reforms to erode that support, though more clearly in a drive to make more of its services available to be taken over by private companies.

On Saturday March 4th 2017, thousands came to Tavistock Square, outside the BMA headquarters to march to Parliament Square in protest against the cuts and privatisation of the NHS which they said was at breaking point.

In particular they were protesting the Sustainability and Transformation Plans for hospital closures and cuts in services which had already caused many premature deaths. Doctors and other healthcare workers clearly saw these as a part of a rapid stealthy privatisation with medical services increasingly being run for private profit rather than public benefit.

In 2017 the STPs mutated into Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and in 2018 these were told to transform themselves into Integrated Care Systems which have now replaced Clinical Commisioning Groups. These plan, buy, and provide health and care services in there areas and are subject to inspection under 70 performance metrics and can be put into ‘special measures’.

According to the Wikipedia article “A report from the Nuffield Trust in December 2021 found that there was very little evidence that integration policies across the UK – including pooling budgets and creating new integrated boards and committees – had dramatically improved patient experience, quality of services or supported the delivery of more care outside of hospitals.” But clearly they had diverted a considerable amount of expertise, time, energy and money away from the real business of the health service – and funding towards private companies.

Estimates for the number on the march varied even more wildly than usual, but it was clearly a large march. My guess was perhaps 30,000 but it could well have been twice that if not the 250,000 the organisers claimed. All the pictures in this post come from the march and the rally before the start, and I was too tired by the time it reached Westminster to photography the rally in Parliament Square.


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Extinction Rebellion Tries to Persuade Insurers

Sunday, March 3rd, 2024

Extinction Rebellion Tries to Persuade Insurers – From 26th February to 3rd March 2024, Extinction Rebellion have been holding an ‘Insurance Week of Action’ with large peaceful protests and some non-violent direct actions directed at the insurance industry, particularly in the City of London,

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. Only Fools Insure Fossil Fuels.

As the XR website put it:

“At the same time as Coal Action Network, Mothers Rise Up, Quakers UK, StopEACOP and Tipping Point, we will be targeting the global insurance industry – the people who could stop the fossil fuel crooks in their tracks overnight if they wanted to. 

Because no insurance = no more drilling for oil and gas.”

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. Front of the march at Lloyds.

The City of London is still the world capital for the global insurance industry, with one company, Lloyds of London insuring 40% of the world’s fossil fuel production and it is also home to many other major global insurers.

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. Insure Our Future – Not Fossil Fuels.

Monday was a training day for XR, with lectures about the lessons which could be learnt from the West Cumbria coal mine campaign and the importance of the insurance industry in maintaining the fossil fuel industry and why it was important to try to convert them away from this and towards supporting a future for human life on our planet. There were also a workshop on non-violent direct action, examining the theories behind it and how to create support systems and keep safe.

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024.

Nothing could be further from the comments made by the Prime Minister and other cabinet members about ‘mobs’. The protests are well organised and take considerable trouble to remain within the increasinly restrictive laws on freedom to protest. In contrast they make our government speakers seem a rabid mob, making hate speeches about hate protests and disruption. XR are trying to save our planet for future human life.

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. A Faceless Financier.

I was unable to go to the events on Monday or Tuesday when as well as some highly targeted actions including small groups of protesters protesting peacfully inside the foyers of some city offices there was a large rally on Tuesday followed by a Community Assembly on the subject “How do we Insure our Future?

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. The march begins.

But last Wednesday I joined the XR supporters in Trinity Square Gardens at 10.30 for the start of the advertised “Insurance Mayhem – Wednesday Showstopper“. Some of them had followed the suggested dress code for the event, “business attire. Black suits with white shirts, preferably!” A group carried special and rather glossy small briefcases and there were banners and a few placards. Some in city dress had come with grey masks and labels as ‘Faceless Financiers’

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. Extinction Rebellion supporters march

Little happened for the first hour or so, though there was a strong police presence in the area, and some officers came to talk with and warn protesters who told them they were not intending to break any laws.Finally at 12.15 the march moved off for a short march through city streets to the streets around the main Lloyds Building on Leadenhall Street and Lime Street. One man was arrested on the march, I think for setting off a smoke flare, which police left smoking on the ground.

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. Extinction Rebellion

Protesters joined hands to surround the Lloyds Building on three sides, some holding banners and flags. They let people in and out of the building and tried to engage them in conversation about the urgent need to end fossil fuels. A few stopped to say they agreed but most simply walked past and there were a few angry remarks. It was lunchtime and quite a few city workers were out on the streets and stopped to watch what was happening and were clearly entertained, taking pictures on their phones of the speakers and the various events.

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. EACOP – the East African Crude Oil Pipeline is an environmental and human rights disaster.

These included protests by ‘workers’ in red boiler suits against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a 900 mile long heated pipeline from Ugandan oil fields to the Indian Ocean in Tanzania which would cause “large scale displacement of communities and wildlife“, threaten water resources and contribution massively to global warming. 24 banks have already distanced themselves from financing the project, with only two remaining involved, and it will certainly not go ahead if insurers can be persuaded not to insure it.

London, UK. 28 Feb 2024. City dressed dancers outside Lloyds.

The ‘Faceless Financiers’ now all had their dull grey masks on and were standing together in a row in front of the building on Lime Street where most of the event was taking place, its closure causing little or no disruption to traffic. In front of them came a large troupe of dancers for their spirited performance and on the other side of the road was a washing line hung with items of children’s clothing letters on the garments spelling out the message ‘THEIR FUTURE’.

The “Insurance Mayhem – Wednesday Showstopper” was still continuing as I left for home. I was back for the next day’s very wet protest which I’ll perhaps write about in a later post.

More pictures of Insurance Mayhem – Wednesday Showstopper.


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Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

Saturday, March 2nd, 2024

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn – Saturday 2nd March 2002 saw a huge protest against Britain becoming involved in the US plans to invade Iraq and depose Sadam Hussein.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

It’s hard to know how many marched that day, though I think there may have been around half a million of us on the streets of London,but it was certainly a very large march though not quite on the scale of that on 16th February 2003. Unfortunately I had to miss that one as I had only come out of hospital the previous day and could only walk a few yards.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

George Galloway, then Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, has come back into the news recently by winning the Rochdale by-election. He along with Tony Benn and others was one of the founders of Stop The War following the US invasion of Afghanisatan and the coalition organised this and other protests against the invasions of Iraq then being prepared by the US Miitary. Galloway was and still is a flamboyant figure and a powerful speaker, though I was rather more attracted to others in the movement such as Tony Benn, who appears in more of my pictures.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

But then as now, I wasn’t at the protest to photograph celebrities, but to tell the story of the event, mainly through photographs of the ordinary people taking part. Of course my pictures concentrate on those who caught my attention, sometimes by their expressions and actions, but more often through their banners and placards which link them to the cause they were marching for.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

Although I’d been photographing protests for some years – occasionally since the 1970s and more intensively since the 1990s, my pictures had simply gone into picture libraries and a few exhibitions and few had been used in the mass media.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

Shortly after Indymedia, a global network of independent news media was set up in 1999 I began publishing work on the UK site – and some of it may be still be available on the now archived site. This was of course entirely non-commercial, and had a very limited readership on the left, among anarchists and the security services.

But I also set up a new web site of my own, My London Diary, which is still available online, though its now several years since I have added new work. Although I have unlimited web space there is a limit to the number of files my web server can handle, and I was very close to this. Covid also played its part in various ways.

In the early years of My London Diary I was still working with film and only had a black and white flatbed scanner. So the pictures for Hands Off Iraq online were all in black and white, though I will also have taken some in colour, but so far I’ve digitised few colour images from these years. The 24 black and white images on My London Diary will have been made from 8×10″ black and white press prints submitted to a picture library and scanned on a flatbed scanner. In 2002 although many magazines were printed in colour the main sales for news images were still black and white, though things were rapidly changing, and I was soon to begin moving to working mainly in digital colour.

Here, with a few corrections is the text I put on line back in 2022 with these pictures:

The Stop the War, Hands off Iraq demonstration on 2 march was a large sign of public opinion. people were still leaving Hyde Park at the start of the march when Trafalgar Square was full to overflowing two and a half hours later.

Police estimates of the number were risible as usual – and can only reflect an attempt to marginalise the significant body of opinion opposed to the war or a complete mathematical inability on behalf of the police.

Tony Benn told me and other photographers it wasn’t worth taking his picture – “it won’t get in the papers unless I go and kick a policeman” but he didn’t and he was quite right.

More pictures on My London Diary


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Against Worldwide Government Corruption – Free Asange – 2014

Friday, March 1st, 2024

Against Worldwide Government Corruption – Saturday 1st March 2014, ten years ago, saw a small but lively protest “organised, attended and led by people who are appalled at the present state of the UK and the world, and who are convinced that a better world is possible if we got rid of the greedy and corrupt who currently are in change – the party politicians and their governments, the bankers and the corporations, the warmongers and the spies.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

Of course the world is dominated by the rich and powerful and the organisations they have set up and the laws they have established to maintain there domination, though these at least in some places also offer some protection for the poor and powerless. But I don’t really believe that protests like this offer any real hope of changing the situation.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

But they perhaps do show us that another world is possible one with “justice and a fairer society, one that doesn’t oppress the poor and disabled, that doesn’t spy on everyone and doesn’t use the media and the whole cultural apparatus as a way of keeping blind to what is really happening.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

It’s the kind of spirit that led to the emergence of the Labour Party and inspired many of its leaders even into my youth – and was in part rekindled by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, propelled into the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015 by huge support from the ordinary membership. But Labour had long lost its way, its organisation and many MPs sponsored and supported by companies and wealthy individuals inherently opposed to its ideals and dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo.

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

The protest was a wide-ranging one, and on My London Diary I quoted at some length from the speech before the march by one of the organisers, Mitch Antony of Aspire Worldwide (Accountable System Project for International Redevelopment and Evolution.)
At the end of it he gave a long list of things the march was against:

We march against Global Government Corruption
We march against ideological austerity
We march against privatisation for profit
We march against the bedroom tax
We march against bankers bonuses
We march against the corrupt MPs
We march against state spying on the people
We march against state controlled media
We march against government misrepresentation
We march against warmongering
We march against global tyranny
We march against state sponsored terrorism
We march against the military industrial complex
We march against the militarisation of the police
We march against the suppression of alternative energies

Against Worldwide Government Corruption

The march got off to a poor start, as the advertised meeting point in Trafalgar Square was closed to the public that day, being got ready for a commercial event the following day. Not everybody who came found the new location – and there were aggrieved posts on Facebook from some who failed, though I think they cannot have tried very hard.

Police often find reasons to delay the start of marches, but these protesters were definitely not taking advice from them and set off on the dot at 2pm to march west to the Ecuadorian Embassy where Julian Assange was still confined despite being given political asylum.

On the way the several hundred marchers caused no problems and aroused some interest among those on the streets, mainly tourists. A misguided attempt by officers to stop the march on Piccadilly led to a sit down and was soon abandoned.

When they came to Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge some joined in the protest against the store by the Campaign Against the Fur Trade for a few minutes, and a crowd gathered around the main door shouting at this company that still deals in fur and fur-trimmed garments.

But soon people moved on to the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange was still trapped. Police filled the steps to the building, guarding the door and stopping anyone from entering.

There were far too many people to fit inside the small penned area for protesters on the pavement opposite the Embassy. The protest here in support of of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers and over the continued refusal to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador, continued for around an hour. Many of the protesters then saw the refusal as a personal vendetta against him by then home secretary Theresa May, but it is driven by a continual British failure to stand up to the USA.

Since then we have seen the continued persecution of Assange by successive Tory governments and his arrest and incarceration in the maximum security Belmarsh prison after a changed Ecuadorian government withdrew its protection. Attempts to extradite him to the US where he could be executed or given a 170 year prison sentence are continuing, and it seems likely he will die in prison either here or in the US for publishing material that made clear to the world the war crimes being committed by the US.

At the end of their protest in front of the Ecuadorian Embassy (it occupies only a few rooms on an upper floor of the building) marchers were leaving to go back to Westminster for another rally in Parliament Square, but I’d had enough and took the tube to make my way home.

More about the protest and many more pictures on My London Diary: Against Worldwide Government Corruption.


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