Following a number of incidents which had led to growing tension between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 17th July 2014 which continued until 5th August, with a ceasefire being announced on 26th August.
During the weeks of the attack over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, around 70% of them civilians, and over 10,000 seriously injured. 67 Israeli soldiers and 5 civilians were killed and 730 Israelis injured. Terrible as those numbers were, they seem small when compared with the current genocide taking place in Gaza.
Israel also systematically destroyed many homes. Wikipedia states “The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing.”
On 26th July thousands of people had arrived for a rally on Kensington High Street, as close as protests were allowed to the Israeli Embassy. Police tried hard to keep traffic flowing on what is one of the main routes out of London to the West, but soon the number of people made this impossible.
I’d arrived early and was able to get to the stage where there were to be a few speeches before the march moved off. From this platform I could see the road packed with people looking both west and east.
I listened to some of the speeches and photographed a few of the speakers, including Labour veteran Walter Wolfgang and Owen Jones before making my way with some difficulty to front of the crowd around a hundred yards east down the packed road where the main banners were ready for the start of the march.
Fortunately I was able to join with a group of those who had been around the stage, including some of the speakers, who were going through the crowd which was extremely tightly packed all across the road. By the time I arrived the area in front of the march had been cleared and I was only able to take pictures of the front of the march by leaning over the arms of the stewards as the march started.
Behind the front of the march I was able to go into the march and take some pictures as I walked back in the opposite direction towards the tube station.
Among the banners on the marchwas one carried by the Turkey Youth Union: ‘TURKISH GOVERNMENT SUPPLIES JET FUEL TO ISRAEL – ERDOGAN RESIGN’. Much of that oil was coming from ISIS, who were largely financed by their oil sales smuggled through Turkey with the help of leading members of the Turkish government.
The march paused for a short while opposite Downing St, but stewards again made taking photographs difficult, although the marchers – including Jeremy Corbyn – were rather more cooperative.
When the front of the march reached Parliament Square one of the stewards who recognised me actually invited me into the area in front of the march to take pictures, and I was able to photograph the marchers with ‘Big Ben’ in the background – always a good clue that this was taking place in London.
I then photographed the long rally, taking pictures of most of a very long list of speakers including Michael Rosen. I photographed over 15 of them and you can see some of the pictures and a long list of names on My London Diary.
But as usual I was rather more interested in the people and took many pictures of the crowd and people in it, as well as others in the square including the anti-Zionist Jews who walk down from North London to protest at most events in support of Palestine.
End Gaza Killing Now: Ten years ago today on Saturday 19th July thousands were marching through London towards the Israeli Embassy demanding an immediate end to the invasion and the crippling siege of Gaza and peace with freedom for Palestine.
Of course the situation is much worse in Gaza now where the whole population is under threat from Israeli bombs and increasingly without access to clean water, food and medical treatment. Every day brings news of a new massacre – last Saturday more than 90 Palestinians were killed and 300 injured in a tent camp at al-Mawasi – an area in Gaza that Israel had designated as safe.
Last week 10 independent UN experts issued a statement accusing Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza. They said this “is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.” And the global monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) recently stated that more than a fifth of the population of Gaza are facing the most severe, or “catastrophic”, level of food insecurity, in danger of starvation despite a small increase in humanitarian aid.
Wikipedia states “As of 12 July 2024, over 39,000 people (38,345 Palestinian and 1,478 Israeli) have been reported as killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 108 journalists (103 Palestinian, 2 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA.
The vast majority of those deaths have been in Gaza. And these figures do not include “those who have died from ‘preventable disease, malnutrition and other consequences of the war'”. As the Wikipedia article points out, research in 2008 suggested “that that total deaths caused by major conflicts were then a minimum average of five times the count of direct deaths.”
The 2014 Gaza War was one of the more deadly of the many previous conflicts between Israel and Palestinians since the formation of Israel in 1948. Wikipedia reported that “between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed …and between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled).
What is now taking place is genocide on an industrial scale, and it is being carried out with support and weapons from both the USA and the UK. Although our politicians have called for a ceasefire they have not taken any of the kind of actions that might persuade Israel to stop the killing, and have continued to supply weapons.
There has to be some way to allow peace in the area between Israel and Palestine – and it cannot be through wars. Oslo seemed to show a possible way forward, but Israel decided not to take it, refusing to make concessions that the Palestinians could accept. Recognition around the world of the Palestinian state now by over 75% of UN member states might be a first step on the road to peace, and the UK should do so without delay.
Before the march in 2014 there were speeches in Whitehall. I photographed the marchers as they went up Whitehall, stopping at Trafalgar Square until the end of the march had reached there around 45 minutes after it began. I took the tube to Hyde Park Corner only to find the front of the march had already gone past, so I rushed back down to get the tube to Kensington High Street, close to the final destination a short distance from the Israeli Embassy which is a short distance down a private road.
Several thousand marchers had beaten me there and the street soon became very crowded as more arrived. Eventually it became too crowded to move and take pictures and I retreated into a small area reserved for the press close to the speakers. Among a long list perhaps the most moving was a young Palestinian woman who told us something of what had happened to her own family who were given 90 seconds warning before their home in Gaza was destroyed.
The protest had remained entirely peaceful, but as it ended and we left to go home, there was a minor incident where some police officers appeared to be making trouble, intervening in a heavy-handed fashion in a minor argument between a protester and a shop-worker who had shouted in support of the Israeli attack.
Fire Service Cuts Cost Lives: On Thursday 18th July 2013 I photographed a march and rally by the Fire Brigades Union in London against cuts proposed by then London Mayor Boris Johnson. He had in 2010 repeatedly denied that he would make any cuts to London’s fire services, but the cuts which this protest was against led to the closure of ten fire stations in Greater London and the loss of over 550 firefighters in the force.
There was also a loss of the number of fire engines, at first of 14, but followed later by another 13, a cut of around 15%. Unsurprisingly the response times to fires across the capital increased. The first fire engine should arrive within six minutes of a fire being reported, and in late 2014 the figures showed that this was exceeded in around a third of London’s wards. Although the average increase in response times was only 12 seconds, in the worst case it went up by two minutes and 48 seconds.
Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union
Fast response to fires is essential in saving lives and cutting damage to properties, and although fortunately few lives are lost to fire in London thanks to our firefighters it seems that there was at least one fatality in the following year which was widely attributed to a slower response time. As I wrote in 2013, “7 out of 10 Londoners think that the Mayor’s proposed cuts will put public safety at risk, and the remaining 3 are just not thinking.”
In our great 2017 tragedy at Grenfell Tower, the fire service responded promptly, but it took over half an hour for a turntable ladder to arrive, and at the time the LFB only had ladders that reached under half way up that building. They called in a taller ladder from Surrey which took several hours to arrive. The LFB finally got its first 64m turntable ladder, the tallest in the UK, in 2021.
A Scottish band from Hull sponsored by the FBU and a photo of Boris
Appropriately the march began at The Monument, a 202ft column topped by a bright brass ball of fire erected shortly after the 1666 Great Fire of London as a permanent memorial to the event.
Fire-fighters, many in uniform, and supporters gathered in the area around, along with a fire engine and a small marching band with bagpipes sponsored by an FBU branch. London’s own firefighters were supported by some for other brigades, including at least a couple from the New York Fire Department as well as retired fire-fighters and anti-cuts protesters.
When the march which went across London Bridge to the London Fire Brigade HQ in Southwark for a rally outside where the cuts were being decided at a Fire Authority meeting I had gone up on top of the fire engine.
What I hadn’t realised was that I would be unable to get down until the end of the march, and although it gave me a good viewpoint it was in some ways a limiting one. I always like to take most of my pictures close to people using wide-angle lenses and during the march was unable to do so. And when the marchers sat down briefly to block London Bridge I could only watch from a distance.
I’d also not realised how much vibration there would be on the top of the fire engine, where we were in a fairly small enclosure made with scaffolding tubing on its top. I found myself having to hang on tightly in some of the bumpier parts of the roads, while trying to take pictures largely one-handed.
It was a rather uncomfortable and just a little scary experience, but it did take me close to some of those who had come to first and second floor windows to applaud the protest as it went past. But I was very pleased when we came to a stop at the Fire Brigade HQ and I could get back to ground.
You can read more about the rally at the end of the march and a long list of the speakers on My London Diary and there are photographs of most or all of them as well as many more from the event.
Against Austerity, Cleaners Flash Mob, EDL & Falun Dafa: The main event on Saturday 16th July 2016 was a well-attended march and rally against austerity and racism following the Brexit referendum, but on the way there I came across a Falun Dafa march, and while people were marching manged to cover a ‘Flash Mob’ by cleaners and a small protest by the far-right EDL.
End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out!
The People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism had organised an emergency demonstration following the Brexit referendum against austerity and racism and calling for the Tories to be defeated at a General Election.
The protest assembled outside the BBC in the hope that they might for once notice and report on a large protest in London, but as usual they ignored it. It also showed huge popular support for then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn – who only failed to defeat Theresa May the following year because of sabotage by Labour party officials and the right wing of the party.
Immigration had been a major issue in the Brexit referendum, exploited by the Leave campaign and this had resulted in an upsurge in racism and hate attacks. Brexit did result in lowering migration from the EU and since 2017 the number of those born in the EU living in Britain has slowly but slightly declined. But this has been more than matched by an increase of around a million in those born in non-EU countries.
Of course we need these people who fill many useful jobs here and pay taxes. We also need those who work in the shadow economy, estimated in total to be around 10% of the total economy. Although this is often said to be important in attracting undocumented migrants to the UK, our shadow economy is significantly smaller than the average for developed nations, and at a level around half that of Italy, Greece and Spain and a little below Germany and France according to free-market ‘think tank’ the Institute for Economic Affairs.
The UK had been one of the leaders in the establishment of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) adopted by the Council of Europe, signed in 1950 which came into force in 1953, with a court to enforce it. Many felt that the Tory government’s proposal in 2022 to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it by a Bill of Rights was reprehensible. Liz Truss’s one good thing was to stop its progress and in June 2023 Rishi Sunak’s Justice Secretary Alex Chalk confirmed it had been dropped.
As the end of the march left down Regent Street I rushed off to photograph a breakaway group from the march who had left to take part in a flash mob. Following that I trotted along Oxford Street to Park Lane where I photographed a short march by a few EDL supporters before rushing to the tube to make my way to the People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racist rally in Parliament Square.
The Fire Brigades Union had brought their fire engine to the square to provide a platform for the speakers at the rally chaired by rally chaired by Romayne Phoenix of the People’s Assembly and Sabby Dhalu from Stand Up to Racism.
Islington councillor Michelline Safi Ngongo brought a message of support from Jeremy Corbyn. Other speakers included Green Party London Assembly member Caroline Russell, Weyman Bennett from Stand Up to Racism, Lindsey German of Stop the War, Sam Fairbairn the National Secretary of the People’s Assembly, Zita Holbourne of BARAC and PCS, Rob Williams of the NSSN, NUS Vice President (Further Education) Shakira Martin and Antonia Bright from Movement for Justice who brought an asylum seeker with her to speak.
Falun Dafa march against Chinese repression – Regent St
Practitioners of Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), an advanced Buddhist practice of moral rectitude, meditation and exercise founded by Mr Li Hongzhi in 1992, marched through London to protest the continuing torture and repression they have experience in China since 1999.
When the People’s Assembly / Stand Up To Racism march set off, a small group of striking cleaners from 100 Wood St and supporters left to stage a flash mob protest at the nearby HQ Offices of CBRE in Henrietta Place. The United Voices of the World strike at Wood St for the living wage and reinstatement of sacked workers was then in its 38th day.
Less than a hundred EDL supporters had turned up at Marble Arch to march a few yards down Park Lane and then into Hyde Park for a rally. A few anti-fascists who had turned up to oppose them had mainly left to join the People’s Assembly-Stand Up to Racism march by the time I arrived.
Streatham, Spain and Guantanamo: Three events in London on Saturday 15th July 2006, a festival, a commemoration and a protest.
Streatham Festival Children’s Parade – Streatham
Streatham Festival held it’s first ever Children’s Parade, children working with artists from Arts Community Exchange and Kids’ City to create sculptures, banners and puppets for all to see.
The parade was led by drummers Ancestral Hands and a cycling stilt-walker brought up the rear as it went along Streatham High Road to St Leonard’s Church.
One of my pictures from this parade was used in the remarkable The Streatham Sketchbook by Jiro Osuga and Mireille Galinou with photography by Torla Evans which was published in 2017 by Your London Publishing. Still available, this was described by Graham Gower of The Streatham Society as “superb and one the best books to be published on Streatham as a place – if not the best.”
International Brigade Commemoration – Jubilee Gardens, Waterloo
I’ve attended and photographed a number of the annual commemorations of those who went to fight the fascists in Spain in 1936-9, but this 2006 event was the most memorable. Here’s what I wrote about it in 2006.
Jack Jones
Several hundred people attended the annual commemoration at the International Brigade Memorial in Jubilee Gardens London Organised by the International Brigade Memorial Trust on Saturday 15 July.
Bob Doyle
Between 1936 and 1939 over 35,000 men and women, from more than 50 countries, volunteered for the Republican forces. Of the 2,300 who came from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, over 500 were killed.
Sam Lesser
Volunteers came largely from working class areas across the country. most were members of communist organisations or otherwise active in the trade unions and other socialist bodies, and their average age was 29.
Jack Edwards
Seventy years later there are relatively few still alive and active enough to attend the commemoration, but it was good to see seven there. They were Jack Jones who chaired the event, Sam Lesser who spoke and read, as well as Bob Doyle, Paddy Cochrane, Lou Kenton, Jack Edwards and a surprisingly spry Penny Feiwel. As usual there was a reading of the names of those known to have died since the previous year’s meeting.
Penny Feiwel
Rodney Bickerstaff’s address raised the problem of keeping alive the memory of those who responded to the call to help the Spanish republic, but attendances at this annual event seem to have increased over recent years.
Lou Kenton
There was certainly more media interest than on previous occasions, in part because of the attendance of the Spanish Ambassador and his wife, reflecting the increasing interest from Spain; he also gave a brief speech. As was pointed out, it would have been nice to have a representative of the UK government also present.
Paddy Cochrane
As usual, the event concluded with the singing of the ‘Internationale’.
The National Guantanamo Coalition had called for a national demonstration in London to protest the deaths of three Guantanamo detainees earlier in the month.
A group of protesters, mainly from the ‘Save Omar Deghayes’ campaign, but also representing other organisations, walked across London from Marble Arch to the new Home Office building in Marsham Street to hand in the petition calling for an independent enquiry into the three recent deaths at Guantanamo. The petition also calls for the immediate sending of all detainees to countries where their basic human rights would not be abused, an immediate closure of Guantanamo and other prisons where those held were denied proper legal process and for proper access to detainees by family and medical personnel.
It was a long, hot and dusty trek across London, particularly tricky for those with pushchairs as we navigated the Hyde Park subways, and we were all glad to arrive (thanks to helpful directions from the police) at the Home Office. The front of the building was like an oasis, shade, green grass, water and trees.
The police did make us get off the grass and also made some effort to stop the display of placards and banners, but most of these remained visible. They had also attracted some attention from the crowds around Buckingham Palace as we passed by.
PIP, NHS, Trident & Cleaners: Wednesday 13th July 2016 was a busy day for me, covering two protests in the ‘#PIPFightback’ National Day of Action against the Personal Independence Payments, a rally in favour of a parliamentary bill to stop the ongoing privatisation of the NHS, a party against plans to spend huge amounts on new nuclear weapons and ending with a rally supporting cleaners in the longest running industrial dispute in the history of the City of London.
PIP Fightback – Vauxhall & Westminster
On this day there were around 20 actions by disabled protesters and their supporters as a ‘#PIPFightback’ National Day of Action against PIP, the Personal Independence Payments which have been a totally inadequate replacement for the Disabled Living Allowance which had previously provided support to enable disabled people to work and live on more even terms with the rest of the community.
I began at the Vauxhall PIP Consultation Centre in Vauxhall where ATOS carry out sham Personal Independence Payments ‘assessments’ on behalf of the DWP. These are carried out without without proper consideration of medical evidence and with ATOS haing a financial incentive to fail claimants.
Many genuine claimants have lost essential benefits for months before these are restored by tribunals on appeal. The temporary loss of finance has resulted in some being taken into hospitals and some commiting suicide.
Other claimants lose benefits as job centres ‘sanction’ them, often for trivial or unfair reasons such as arriving late for interviews due to bus or train delays – or because they have not received a letter about the appointment.
Among those taking part in this protest was Gill Thompson, whose brother David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier died in July 2013 after his benefits were ‘sanctioned’. He was left starving without money for food or electricity to keep the fridge containing his insulin running. She carried a banner with the names and a few pictures of around 100 claimants known to have died because of sanctions. This appears to be a relatively small fraction of the total which runs into thousands.
Later I joined a larger protest with members of the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN), Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Winvisible (Women with Invisible and Visible Disabilities) and others in Westminster outside the Victoria Street offices of Capita who also carry out these shoddy assessments.
There were speeches on the pavement there before the protesters moved onto the busy road blocking traffic in both directions, though they quickly moved aside to let a ambulance through.
After a few minutes Paula Peters of DPAC announced it was time to move on and the protesters marched along the road past the Met Police HQ at New Scotland Yard and on the the DWP offices at Caxton House.
Here they blocked the road for some more speeches before moving on to Parliament where there was another short rally on the road before they moved on to the media village on College Green where politicians were being interviewed on TV over the appointment of a new Prime Minister, Theresa May.
Police blocked them from going onto the Green, but soon some went past them and refused police requests to move; eventually they were allowed to stand on a path in the middle of the area. Although all the TV crews present could see and hear the protest, only one or two bothered to come across and find out what was happening – and I think these were from foreign news agencies.
Protesters from various campaigns to save the NHS held a protest in support as Labour MP for Wirral West Margaret Greenwood presented a ‘Ten Minute Rule Bill’ with cross-party support to stop the privatisation of the NHS and return it to its founding principles. Labour Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott came out to speak in support at the protest.
CND members were lobbying MPs at Parliament against plans to replace Trident at a cost of at least £205 billion.
And on the square facing the Houses of Parliament was a ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’, as well as Christians with placards stating the opposition by churches of the different denominations to the replacement.
The strike by cleaners at the 100 Wood St offices managed by CBRE was now the longest running industrial dispute in the history of the City of London.
The cleaners belong to the United Voices of the World union and are employed by anti-union cleaning contractor Thames Cleaning.
Unite the Resistance, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Class War and others had come to support the United Voices of the World. After a rally opposite the Wood Street offices, then marched around the block and then went on hold a rally blocking the street outside the CBRE offices at St Martin’s Court.
Decent Housing & Saving the NHS: Ten years ago today there were protests over two of the major issues which still face our incoming government today, but which I have no faith in them facing or improving.
Focus E15 March for Decent Housing – East Ham
The housing crisis largely stems from successive governments, largely starting with Thatcher prioritising private ownership above all other ways of providing homes for people. Thatcher gave away publicly owned social housing to tenants at knock-down prices and refused to allow councils to try to replace what had been lost.
Government housing policy since have been obsessed with the idea of the “housing ladder“; housing isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about ladders to increase personal wealth but about homes, and the ladder is very definitely that in “Pull up the ladder, Jack! We’re all right” and sod those left at the bottom below.
Private renting has also moved from being a way in which owners of properties derived and income from properties they owned, to a scheme where more and more tenants are paying high rents to buy properties for their landlords. It’s a crazy system and one which should be stopped.
We have also seen a huge growth in properties which are largely built to be bought as investments, particularly by overseas investors, often being left unoccupied for all or most of the time. Clearly this needs to be made economically nonviable, not only because of the effects it has on the shortage of homes, but also because of the way it is seriously distorting the development of our cities.
Second (and multiple) home ownership is also an increasing problem, particularly in the more desirable rural areas of the country and we need to find ways to reduce the impact of this, perhaps through taxation to provide a fund to build social housing in these areas.
But the basic solution to the country’s housing problems is simple. Build more social housing. Any government which comes in without this as the main thurst of their housing policy will fail to improve the housing crisis.
As I wrote ten years ago “We need a government – national and local – determined to act for the benefit of ordinary people, making a real attempt to build much more social housing, removing the huge subsidies currently given to private landlords through housing benefit, legislating to provide fair contracts for private tenants and give them decent security – and criminalising unfair evictions.” We haven’t got one.
You can read more about the march in East Ham organised by Focus E15 Mums to demand secure housing, free from the threats of eviction, soaring private rents, rogue landlords, letting agents illegally discriminating, insecure tenancies and unfair bedroom tax and benefit cap on My London Diary.
The march was supported by housing protest groups from Hackney, Brent and from South London and organisations including BARAC and TUSC. I was surprised to see the popular support it received on the streets with even some motorists stopping their cars to put money in the collection buckets.
Save our Surgeries on NHS 66th Birthday – Whitechapel
The National Health Service began on 5th July 1948 and on its 66th anniversary the Save our Surgeries campaign against health cuts in Tower Hamlets marched to Hackney in a show of opposition to health cuts, surgery closures and NHS privatisation.
The setting up of the NHS was opposed by the Conservatives and they and the doctors and dentists associations forced many compromises which led to it being a less than comprehensive health service, though still a great national achievement and one which for we are justly proud of.
Many doctors made – and some still make – large incomes from private practice and fought to keep these rather than back a universal system wholeheartedly. But in more recent years a huge private medical system has grown up alongside the NHS and more and more people are covered through work schemes providing private medical cover.
This private system has grown parasitically on the state medical system and all governments over the past thirty or more years have found ways to syphon off money to it, by allowing it to tender for various more straightforward aspects of NHS services.
Successive governments have also created huge administrative burdens on the NHS, setting up new levels of administrators which oversee and to some extent override clinical decisions. But financially the most disastrous impact on the NHS comes from the various PFI agreements, largely made under New Labour, which enabled the building of new hospitals without the costs appearing in the government’s debts, but tied the trusts running the hospitals into huge debt repayments and the kind of service contracts that make replacing a light bulb cost £1200.
General practice was set up in 1948 under doctor-owned surgeries but increasingly these are now owned by healthcare companies after New Labour in 2007 allowed larger companies to buy them up. Operose Health, part of US healthcare giant Centene Corporation in 2022 was running 70 practices and a BBC Panorama report showed they were only employing half as many doctors as average practices, while employing six times as many physician associates (who have only 2 years of medical training rather than the 10 for GPs) who were being inadequately supervised.
Unfortunately Labour policy appears to be to increase the reliance – and transfer of funds to the private sector rather than reduce it. You can read more about their position in the 2023 Tribune article Labour’s Love Affair with Private Healthcare by Tom Blackburn, which aslo sets out clearly the financial links of Wes Streeting to private healthcare. And of course he is not the only Labour MP with a financial interest. Labour might sort out a few of the problems but the creeping privatisation seems sure to accelerate.
The protest in East London was over changes in the funding of NHS surgeries which have failed to take into account the extra needs of deprived innner-city areas and were expected to lead the closure of some surgeries as well as other NHS cuts, particularly those happening because of the huge PFI debt from the new Royal London Hospital.
There was a brief rally in Altab Ali Park before the march with speeches by local politicians and health campaigners before the crowd of several hundreds set off down the Whitechapel Road on its way to London Fields in Hackney where it was to meet up with other protesters for a larger rally. But I left the march at Whitechapel Station.
London Pride & Climate Change Rally; My working day on Saturday 30th June 2007 began at a rather damp Baker Street where people were meeting for the London Pride Parade and I was able to wander freely and take photographs. I left before the parade moved off and went to Parliament Square where a rally reminded Gordon Brown – then prime minister for 3 days – that climate change remains the major challenge facing the world – and the new government.
London Pride Parade – Baker Street
There seemed to be only two things that distinguished the 2007 Pride from the previous year’s event. One was the weather and so many of the pictures are of people holding umbrellas.
The second was a large group in the self-styled ‘Bird Parade‘, the ‘Bird Club‘ with their messages including ‘Aren’t Birds Brilliant‘ and ‘Femme Invisibility – So last Year‘.
There were quite a few overhanging shop fronts and other places that people could shelter under but taking pictures mainly involved me staind in the rain and getting rather wet.
I’m not afraid of rain but cameras and lenses need to kept dry. I really needed an assistant with an umbrella but I was working on my own. Its difficult to hold an umbrella and a camera and while I’ve tried various special plastic camera protectors none really solve the problem.
The cameras I use are reasonably water resistant and given he occasional wipe with a cloth and keeping them under my jacket when not in use are fine. But lenses need to have a glass front element to let the light in, and this acts as a powerful magnet for raindrops. Long lenses can have lens hoods which protect them, but when like me you work with wide and ultra-wide lenses they are totally ineffectual, except for allowing me to walk around with a chamois leather balled up into them. But of course I have to hold this clear to frame, focus and take the image, and those raindrops too often manage to sneak their way in that second or so.
I’ve shared too often my thoughts on the presence of corporates and military groups in Pride to bother to say more.
But at least there were some, like Peter Tatchell determined to retain it as a protest, with his wedding cake placard and poster ‘END THE BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE’.
It was still raining for the rally in Parliament Square and my favourite mermaid seemed to be in her natural habitat unless I carefully kept wiping the lens front.
But there was some shelter under the trees and rather fewer people had managed to attend the protest called at short notice by the Campaign Against Climate Change.
Under Blair’s government UK carbon emissions had risen by 2%, but it was now clear to scientists around the world that we needed to drastically cut them. Blair had resigned as New Labour leader on 24 June 2007 and Gordon Brown had become Prime Minister only three days before this protest on 27 June 2007.
Back in 2007 it was clear that climate change remained the major challenge facing the world – and the new government. But in 2008 we had the financial crash and Gordon Brown was diverted into saving the bankers and successive governments since have failed to make the kind of radical changes that are needed to save the planet.
In 2007 I wrote “if you ain’t got a planet, you ain’t in business is the simple message, though some of the speakers had some rather more complex graphs and charts. Blair and Brown were only there in effigy, but we did have a rather more convincing mermaid to warn about the dangers of rising sea levels.” Of course sea levels are only one aspect of the problem with our increasing climate instability and other effects of global heating. The need to take action is even more important for our next government – and for all governments around the world.
Israel Celebrates 60 Years: The first liberation movement I was aware of in my toddler years led to independence for Israel in 1948 and like much of the British left I was for some years a supporter of Israel.
To be fair our media hadn’t really told us much about what had actually happened in the country, concentrating on the Stern Gangs attacks on British personnel before independence, and we were almost unaware of the Palestinians and the effect of the formation of Israel on them.
The UN had adopted a ‘Plan of Partition with Economic Union‘ for Palestine as General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) in 1947, but the Arabs generally rejected this as being pro-Zionist, giving too much land to the much smaller Jewish population as well as violating the UN’s own principles of national self-determination. Jews in Palestine generally welcomed it but the Zionist leaders saw it as “a stepping stone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.“
A civil war broke out in Palestine after the adoption of the UN mandate and was largely ignored by the British who got on busily preparing for their withdrawal (also contained in the resolution) in May 1948. On 14th May 1948 “the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”
Arab armies marched in starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War but were repulsed by the Israel Defense Forces which expanded the borders of Israel beyond those of the UN Plan. And there was further territorial expansion in other wars, particulalry the 1967 Six Day War,
There were extensive celebrations for the 60th Anniversary in Israel from the beginning of May 2008 as well as in other Western cities, with events continuing for some months – such as this London march on June 29th.
As the marchers came into Trafalgar Square they passed people from Israeli Jewish organisation Zochrot founded in 2002 to promote awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, including the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. They held a banner ‘Remembrance – Zochrot‘ and others stood in silence with placards with names of some of the over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed in the 1947-8 catastrophe.
While I watched, several people left the parade and went across to harangue them and wave Israeli flags in their faces.
There were more protesters that police had moved into a pen by the side of South Africa House. They had come to point out that for Palestinians the sixty years had meant an increasing loss of their land through both military actions and settlements, as well as a loss in liberty.
Later I saw police moving away a group who had lowered a banner reading “60 YEARS OF ETHIC CLEANSING IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE” over the high wall on the side of the square. They were rapidly surrounded by Jewish security guards, who called the police who told them that unless they moved to the pen on the other side of the road – where their banner could not be seen from the square – they would be arrested. And they moved.
Later other people with Israeli flags came to argue and insult the protesters here and several groups were moved away by police. At one point I moved towards one of my colleagues as one of these men appeared to be about to physically assault him. He then accused the photographer of being a paedophile on the ridiculous basis that some of the other troublemakers in the group were his teenage sons. Eventually police took over and politely asked us to move away while they sorted things out.
As my final paragraph in 2008 I wrote “Of course I met many nice people who were having a good day out, but it is the others who stick in the mind. But I also hope that after 60 years the state of Israel will soon be ready for peace and justice for the Palestinians.” Unfortunatley there is far too little evidence of this among their political leaders 16 years later.
Pride and Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride: Saturday 25th June was I think the last time that Pride was an open event where people who wanted to take part in Pride as a protest could just turn up and join in.
When I first photographed Pride in 1993 it was much smaller and very definitely a protest. Over the years it has become a parade with many corporate groups taking part and dominating the event attracting huge audiences to watch it on the route through the West End.
And now to be in the parade you need a wristband, free for LGBT+ Community Groups but cotsing between £7.50 and £35 for others – and the media centre is insistent we call it Pride in London rather than ‘London Pride’ or ‘gay pride’, hashtag #PrideInLondon.
I can’t remember if I had bothered to get official accreditation for the event in 2016, I certainly did some years and suspect by 2016 it was needed to be able to walk around and take photographs as people were preparing for the parade. And they wanted to be photographed.
In my pictures I concentrated on those who I felt were continuing the tradition of Pride as a protest, including many I had photographed at other protests. But there were others I couldn’t ignore.
I left the official area where the parade was setting up with its corporate floats and walked down Oxford Street to where people were meeting for a Migrant Rights and Anti-Racist Pride march to join the main parade.
Movement for Justice who had organised this were joined by other protesters including London in Solidarity with Istanbul LGBTI Pride protesting the banning of Istanbul Pride, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants and other protesters who feel the official event has been taken over by corporate sponsors such as Barclays and BAE systems and is a parade rather than a protest, no longer representing its roots.
They marched up Oxford Street and Regent Street past the front of the main parade and went to its rear where they joined other protest groups relegated to the extreme end of the Pride parade. They tried to do this again the following year but were prevented by Pride stewards and ended up maching ahead of the main procession past cheering crowds along the main route.
