London Palestine Action

Close Down Yarl’s Wood: On Saturday 8th August I went with around a thousand protesters to Yarl’s Wood Immigration prison, in the middle of the countryside around 5 miles north of Bedford.

There were coaches from around the country but I travelled by train to Bedford, where organisers Movement of Justice had arranged for a bus to pick up epole from the station. The prison is on a wartime aerodrome at the top of a hill and a relatively remote location.

Even after the coaches had dropped us off at the front of the estate, there was then a walk of a little over a mile along the road and then along a public bridleway to the field sloping up from the 20 ft prison fence on the north side. There is a road for official visitors leading to the other side of the site.

I had missed an earlier protest which I had been invited to cover as I thought I was ill-equipped and other photographers would have more suitable gear than me. Most of my work is made with wide-angle lenses and to photograph though the mesh top half of the 20 foot fence the women at the windows inside was a challenge for me.

But this time I borrowed a 300mm Nikon lens from a friend and used it with my Nikon D700 in DX mode, which made it equioalvent to a 450mm lens, and it did a reasonable job, though ideally I would have had something even longer and faster. Most of the pictures taken with it are cropped.

Most of the pictures were made with a wideangle Nikon 16-35mm zoom, but a few with my usual longest lens, a Nikon 18-105mm, and even fewer with a Nikon fisheye. As well as the D700 I was also using a D810 at the event.

On My London Diary I list around 25 groups supporting the protest – and probably missed quite a few more. There is a very widespread feeling of disgust and shame at the way this country treats asylum seekers in a racist system that detains so many for long periods without trial, locking them away in detention centres such as these run for profit by private companies where they are always mistreated and often subjected to real abuse and sexual harassment.

Yarls Wood was then used to hold women asylum seekers, though there were also some families held there. When we arrived and they could hear the shouts and some could see us through the upper windows there “was a rapturous welcome from the women inside the prison, who came to the windows, shouting and waving and holding up signs. Protests like this really give the prisoners hope, and show them they have support and are not forgotten. Together, inside and out people chanted slogans ‘Shut Down Yarls Wood’, ‘Detention Centres, Shut them Down’ and more.”

The solid metal lower half of the 20 ft fence makes a loud noise when hit or kicked and the protesters made the most of this, with others writing slogans on them – though these were not visible to the women inside.

Although the detainees are prisoners they are treated differently to those in normal jails and have to be allowed some contact with the outside world to organise their cases – including mobile phones. They held up signs with their phone numbers so that we could see them – and then ring them up so that they could speak to the public address system the protesters had brought.

Many of those outside who spoke during the protest had spent some time in this or other detention prisons, and some were speaking to friends still inside. Detention is open-ended with people having no idea of when they would be released – or, if their applications failed, deported. One detainee was only released one day before having spent three years here.

There are many more pictures on My London Diary. Here’s how I ended my piece: “Too soon we had to leave. And they had to stay. As I walked away to catch the coach back to Bedford station I felt ashamed at the way that my country treats asylum seekers. They deserve support and humanity and get treated worse than criminals.”

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Free Palestine Coalition Demand A Ceasefire Now: Last Saturday, 6th January 2024, like many others I was watching on Twitter/X for the announcement by the Free Palestine Coalition of the starting point for their Gaza protest at 10am.

It was with some surprise that I read it was to be at the drinking fountain in St James’ Park, one of London’s Royal Parks, a feudal remnant with bylaws against almost everything, but at least it was easy to get to, and I had plenty of time to make it by the starting time of noon, and arrived around a quarter of an hour early.

The protest was organised and backed by Black Lives Matter UK, NMEE, Sisters Uncut, East and South East Asian Sisters, Copwatch Network, Health Workers For a Free Palestine, Queers For Palestine, London Campaign Against Police & State Violence, Palestinian Youth Movement and London Palestine Action.

It made three clear demands; a full unconditional ceasefire NOW, the UK to stop arming Israel and an end to the Israeli Occupation of Gaza and Palestine. It had clearly been planned as a peaceful protest, although one that would cause some disruption to traffic in central London as many other events including other protests do.

There was only a small group there when I arrived, but numbers grew rapidly by the time the rally began and continued to grow for some time, perhaps increasing to a couple of thousand by the end of the event. Shortly after the rally began police approached the speaker and told her that she could not use a megaphone as it was against the Park bylaws. After a short delay she continued without it, though now the crowd was so large many could not hear. A few minutes later a public address system arrived and the speakers began to use this. After another warning by police they wheeled this out onto the pavement of Birdcage Walk.

*A doctor speaks about the terrible conditions in Gaza’s hospitals, most bombed out of existence.*

Here the speakers continued, with a particularly moving account by a doctor from Health Workers For a Free Palestine about the horrific conditions faced by her colleagues working in Gaza, where almost all hospitals have been bombed by Israeli forces and only three remain able to continue, facing terrible shortages which have meant amputations with no anaesthetics available and a total lack of medicines, clean dressings and antiseptics taking medical conditions back into the dark ages.

After the rally had continued for some minutes, a squad of police rushed in and seized the PA system from the pavement, forcefully pushing all those close out of their way. I was thrown aside and kicked in the shin hard enough to cause some bleeding and although not seriously injured certainly suffering from shock. I’m unsure about what happened for the next few minutes and it was almost ten minutes before I’d recovered enough to photograph seriously again.

The police appeared to have been deliberately trying to provoke the protesters and had a very large presence for what was expected to be a relatively small protest. Eventually the organisers called on the protesters who had been shouting angrily at the police for some minutes to move off and the march slowly made its way towards Westminster Bridge.

As the front of the march came to Bridge Street at the side of the Houses of Parliament there was a halt for photographs and when the march moved off a line of police across the road tried to stop them. But there were far too few officers to form a proper cordon, and I and around a couple of hundred protesters moved past and onto the start of Westminster Bridge before reinforcements arrived.

There were more police on the bridge and a line of police vans behind them, as well as more on the Embankment. Had the protesters been allowed to march onto the bridge and protest there the bridge would have been closed until the protest ended, but traffic could have continued to flow on both the Embankment and Bridge Street, which were still blocked when I left later. Protests continued on Westminster Bridge, though most of the protesters were still held on Bridge Street behind a police line. Around half an hour later police did decide to allow them to join the others, probably to make it easier for them to kettle the protest in one block rather than two.

On the bridge there were some noisy protests which forced police liaison officers to withdraw from the crowd. Some of them complained to the event stewards about the leaflets which were being distributed to the many tourist also being blocked by the police from leaving towards Parliament Square, suggesting that those distributing them might be committing an offence. I read one carefully and could find nothing anti-Semitic, nothing which I had not heard or read in the mainstream press despite their failures in reporting.

At one point people let off smoke flares in the red, green and white of the Palestinian flag. Later there was a period of silence for the victims in Palestine and those in Israel, and many sat or lay down on the roadway. A group in front of the police cordon wore masks showing Rishi Sunak, wearing tops with the messages ‘STOP ARMING ISRAEL’ ‘CEASEFIRE NOW!’holding up their hands red with fake blood which dripped down their arms.

I left as the police allowed the protesters to all join together, kettling both groups. I was tired and still a little shaken from the earlier assault by police and needed to sit down and rest on a seat on the Embankment. Eating my sandwiches for a late lunch and drinking some water helped too.

As I walked back to Waterloo the blue lights were still flashing on Westminster Bridge, and an hour later at 3.32 the Met posted “All protesters have now left the area around Westminster Bridge. Officers remain on-duty in central London and are ready to respond to any further demonstrations.” I felt their response to this one had been negative in the extreme and had made the situation worse than if they had stayed away completely. Their presence was a huge waste of public money and London really does not need police who behave as they did at this event.

The police had arrested a number of people on Westminster Bridge but later Black Lives Matter UK, one of the organisers, made the following post: “All arrestees have been released with no further action. Thanks to all who have supported the protests and taken time out to care for all those made vulnerable by the police.“

More pictures in my Facebook album Free Palestine Coalition Demand A Ceasefire Now!

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

Tag: London Palestine Action

Close Down Yarl’s Wood -2015

Free Palestine Coalition Demand A Ceasefire Now