Posts Tagged ‘McDonald's’

Fast Food, Scientology & Reclaim Love

Wednesday, February 15th, 2023

London Saturday 15th February 2014


Hungry for Justice For Fast Food Workers – Oxford St

Fast Food, Scientology & Reclaim Love

The Fast Food Rights Campaign to support and unionise workers in fast food outlets was launched by a national day of action, with a ‘Hungry For Justice’ protest on Oxford Street led by John McDonnell MP and Ian Hodson of the Bakers Food Allied Workers Union BFAWU.

Fast Food, Scientology & Reclaim Love

The UK campaign followed on from strikes in around a hundred cities across the USA by food workers at the end of 2013, showing that it was possible to organise and unionise workers in an industry where it had been said to be impossible.

Fast Food, Scientology & Reclaim Love

The BFAWU in the UK had led the fight against zero hours contracts, wining an important victory against Hovis in Wigan. Companies such as McDonalds are notable for their anti-union policies and generally rates of pay in fast food outlets are abysmal and working conditions often extremely poor.

Fast Food, Scientology & Reclaim Love

The fast food chains in this country had sales of £6.9billion in 2012 and were making huge profits at the expense of their employees. In the UK the average wage of food workers in 2014 was only £5 an hour, below the minimum legal wage for adult workers – with many employees being below the age of 21.

In the USA over half the workers in the food industry rely on benefits to top up their incomes, and the situation in the UK is no better. Governments effectively subsidise these low-pay employers.

The campaign and this protest in the UK was supported by the BFAWU, Unite the Resistance, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Youth Fight for Jobs, the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) and other campaigning organisations.

I met the protesters outside a Burger King on the Tottenham Court Road where the protest began. As well as protesting outside, people went inside to hand out fliers to the customers and to the staff urging them to join the BWAFU.

The protest then moved on to two branches of McDonald’s on Oxford Street, where security staff prevented the protesters entering, although at the first one man was allowed to go in and give leaflets to the staff. There were were protests and speeches on the pavement outside the shops.

The protesters did walk in to two branches of Costa Coffee, behaving politely and handing out the leaflets, and after a brief discussion leaving quietly when asked to do so.

More at Hungry for Justice For Fast Food Workers.


Anons 6th Anniversary at Scientology – Tottenham Court Road

Few turned up for the 6th anniversary of the Anonymous protest against Scientology against the threat to freedom of speech on the internet from personal and often underhand attacks on critics under Scientology’s so-called ‘fair game’ policy.

That protest in 2008, outside the Church of Scientology’s English HQ in Queen Victoria Street and their recruiting centre on the Tottenham Court Rd had been both the first UK protest to be organised solely over the web and the first time that the now-familiar ‘V for Vendetta’ Guy Fawkes masks, worn to hide identities because of the often savage recriminations against critics of the cult, had been used at a protest in the UK.

Perhaps the real reason for the low turnout was simply that there now appears to be very little interest in the cult which had been so widely exposed both in events such as that 2008 protest and in the media. It was now attracting very few new recruits and perhaps seemed hardly worth protesting about.

Anons 6th Anniversary at Scientology


Reclaim Love Valentine Party – Piccadilly Circus

This was the 12th Reclaim Love Valentine Party at Piccadilly Circus, an event begun in 2003 by Venus CuMara.

This year it had been others who had attended previous events who decided at the last minute to organise the event as Venus had been away from the country. Rather to our surprise she returned and attended, playing her usual role in organising the circle at the centre of the event.

I’ve written about these events recently so won’t write anything new, but here is part of what I posted in 2014 on My London Diary:

“The idea behind the free party on the street was to celebrate love between people as the most important force in the world, and to do so in a way that counteracted the tremendous commercialisation of love in the annual media shopping promotion frenzy that now surrounds St Valentine’s Day. It was to be a free event, people making and having fun, sharing love, taking place in a public area in the centre of London’s West End shops and under the vast neon advertisements of Picadilly Circus.

“Venus also aimed to send a message of peace and love out across the world – and the London event spawned similar parties at the same time elsewhere across the world – by uniting us all in circles of love at the same time around the world. At 3.30pm everyone here – and at other Reclaim Love parties around the world – joined hands to chant many times ‘May All The Beings In All The Worlds Be Happy & At Peace’.”

I finished my post in 2014 with:

There are really very few such spontaneous events in London like this, and this is unique in central London. I’ve photographed most of these events and I hope that they will continue with others taking over the running in future years.

If you are in London on Saturday afternoon, 18th February 2023, some people plan to be there for a Reclaim Love party. And at 3.33pm to join their hands in a circle to chant.

More pictures at Reclaim Love Valentine Party.


Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths

Friday, April 15th, 2022

Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths – four quite different protests on Wednesday 15th April 2015, seven years ago today.


Checkpoint Care – Docs Not Cops – Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel

Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths

Docs Not Cops set up a mock border checkpoint at the entrance to the Royal London Hospital in a protest against plans to charge migrants for NHS treatment which will force doctors to check on the immigration status of those needing treatment. Hospital security staff came out and forced them to move off hospital owned land and the border, marked by shiny stainless steel posts, shifted a few yards away with the protest continuing there.

Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths

Most of those protesting were medical students or health service employees. The Royal London serves an area with a large immigrant population and health workers, including local GP Dr Anna Livingstone. Many of those entering and leaving the hospital both staff members and patients stopped to express support for the action.

Checkpoint Care – Docs Not Cops


Bring Back Our Girls – Nigerian Embassy, Northumberland Ave

Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths

The monthly protest outside the Nigerian Embassy was very polite and relatively quiet as men and women from the Nigerian Women In Diaspora Leadership Forum held up posters and photographs calling for the return of the over 200 Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram – and they did it on the opposite side of the road from the Embassy rather than the wide pavement immediately in front of it.

Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths

They feel that the Nigerian government has done little to try to get the return of the girls who were abducted a year earlier and hopedd that the new Nigerian government would take a firmer line.

Bring Back Our Girls


Fast Food Rights at McDonald’s – Whitehall

Docs Not Cops, Nigerian Girls, Fast Food Workers & Homeless Deaths

Trade unionists protested outside McDonald’s in Whitehall in solidarity with US fast food workers on strike for higher pay, justice, dignity and respect. They also demanded union rights, a £10 minimum wage and an end to zero hours contracts for workers in UK fast food outlets.

Speakers at the protest included Ian Hodson, National President of the Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) who is one of the leaders of the Fast Food Rights campaign, and victimised National Gallery PCS rep Candy Udwin, one of the leaders of the strikes there against privatisation.

A manager from McDonald’s was clearly angry and came out to talk to police about the protest. They told him that people had a right to protest on the pavement.

Fast Food Rights at McDonald’s


No More Deaths on our Streets – Westminster

People from various groups, including those involved in day to day practical support of the homeless on the streets with food and shelter as well as charities, political groups and housing and homeless activists, squatters and more met at 6pm opposite Downing St to call for an end to homeless people dying on our streets. As one poster stated, ‘I want Change – ‘55% More Rough Sleepers since Cameron Became PM – Austerity is killing people paying debt of the 1%‘ The main banner stated ‘NO MORE DEATHS ON OUR STREETS‘.

Recent years had seen a dramatic rise in the number of homeless people on the streets of London in particular due to the removal of welfare support and increasing official persecution, with government cuts making it harder for local authorities to provide support.

Prominent among the groups taking part were supporters of Class War, including their parliamentary candidate for Westminster in the 2015 elections the following month, Adam Clifford.

After protesting for some time outside Downing St and going on to the road to block traffic, the protest moved on to Parliament Square, marching along the road and blocking traffic there before going into the back streets south of St James’s Park.

Adam Clifford

They seemed to be going around in a circle but finally decided they would head for Buckingham Palace. But by then I was getting tired and decided to go home.


More at:

No More Deaths on our Streets
Fast Food Rights at McDonald’s
Bring Back Our Girls
Checkpoint Care – Docs Not Cops