MfJ | >Re-PHOTO

Close Down Yarl’s Wood -2015

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.”

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UN Anti-Racism Day & IDS Gone – 2016

UN Anti-Racism Day & IDS Gone: Saturday 19th March 2016 was UN Anti-Racism Day and was celebrated with a Refugees Welcome march and rally, and by Australians and others protesting at the Australian High Commission in London to condemn the Australian government’s treatment of refugees. Later in Parliament Square I joined disabled people and friends celebrating the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith whose policies had caused them so much suffering and harm.

Stand Up to Racism – Refugees Welcome March

BBC to Piccadilly Circus

Thousands met outside the BBC for a national demonstration called by Stand Up to Racism against racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and fascism and to make the point that refugees are welcome here.

They had started at the BBC pointing out that it should have a much more positive attitude to refugees. It gives much air time to the views of racists and extreme right groups and personalities and fails to adequately represent the view of the majority of the British population shown in protests such as this.

The BBC often minimises the positive contributions of migrants and refugees to the British economy and keeping vital services such as the NHS running and fails to criticise the increasingly racist government policies.

As well as a large ‘Black Lives Matter’ bloc led by Lee Jasper and Zita Holbourne, there were also groups working with refugees trapped in the camps in Calais and Dunkirk by the failure of our government to set up legal routes for refugees, demanding our government take a much more positive and humanitarian approach to refugees. Apart from a small concession for children, forced on them by Lord Dubs with massive public support, which was very grudgingly administered and prematurely ended, successive governments have responded with increasingly draconian measures.

What I wrote in 2016 is now even more apposite: “Of course there are racists and bigots who oppose Britain taking in any refugees, and those who would want to abandon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Britain played a major role in drawing up in 1947-8. Winston Churchill – who many on the far right look on as a symbol of all things British – proposed a European Charter of Human Rights in 1947 and we were the first country to ratify it in 1951.”

A very small group of members of the far-right group ‘Britain First’ in their para-military uniforms stood guarded by several times as many police on the steps around Eros as the march past, shouting their hate and insults and making derisory and threatening gestures. Most of the marchers simply ignored them, but a few rushed towards them but were held back by police.

Stand Up to Racism – Refugees Welcome march

Refugees Welcome Rally

Trafalgar Square

*Marcia Rigg whose brother Sean Rigg was killed by Brixton police in 2008,*

A long list of speakers came to the microphone in Trafalgar Square and I photographed most although I left before the end of the rally.

There are pictures of the following as well as Marcia Rigg on My London Diary:

Vanessa Redgrave;
Sabby Dhalu of Stand up to Racism;
Maz Saleem, daughter of Mohammed Saleem killed in a racist attack;
Stephanie Lightfoot, Bennett Co-Chair, United Friends and Families;
Dave Ward CWU General Secretary;
Sally Hunt UCU General Secretary;
Christine Blower NUT General Secretary;
Gary Younge Journalist;
Gloria Mills, Chair of the TUC Race Relations Committee;
Marilyn Reed, the mother of Sarah Reed who died in Holloway Prison;
Lee Jasper, Movement Against Xenophobia and BARAC;
Jeremy Hardy, Comedian;
Diane Abbott MP;
Michael Rosen Children’s novelist and poet;
Claude Moraes MEP;
Jean Lambert MEP;
Amna, a refugee from Mosul, Iraq;
Talha Ahmad National Council member,Muslim Council of Britain

Refugees Welcome Rally

Australians Protest on UN Anti-Racism Day

Australia House

Australians were protesting at home & at embassies around the world against their country’s racist immigration policy.

Many who try to claim asylum in Australia are locked up and detained indefinitely in contradiction to international law on remote Pacific Islands including Manus and Nauru in detention camps run by Serco and will never be allowed to resettle in Australia.

Detainees in these camps have been sexually abused, denied proper health treatment, and in at least one case, that of a young man called Reza Berati, beaten to death by the prison guards.

Serco also run detention centres such as Yarl’s Wood in the UK, where detainees have also been mistreated, sexually abused and denied proper health treatment. The Australian protesters were joined by members of Movement for Justice, which has held many protests at UK detention centres including Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth.

No UK newspapers, TV or Radio media had even sent reporters to this protest. The only other photographer taking pictures at the event had been commissioned by a Sydney newspaper.

Australians protest on UN Anti-Racism day

DPAC’s ‘IDS Resignation Party’

Parliament Square

IDS, Iain Duncan Smith, was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016 and responsible for brutal cuts in welfare polices in those years.

In particular he decided to save money by making it harder for sick and disabled people to claim benefits, introducing new eligibility tests and benefit sanctions, incentivising DWP staff to strip claimants of their benefits often for trivial reasons or for matters beyond their control such as the late arrival of official letters or cancellation of buses and trains making them arrive late for appointments.

In 2015 the statistics showed that 2,380 people died in a 3-year period shortly after a work capability assessment declared them fit for work.

The poorly thought out nature of the introduction of Universal Credit also brought suffering to many, left for weeks without financial support. He introduced disastrous schemes to force the disabled into work and cut the support which had enabled some disabled people to work.

His period as a minister had combined a total lack of empathy with a peculiar incompetence and the National Audit Office accused the DWP of ‘”weak management, ineffective control and poor governance” and of wasting £34 million on inadequate computer systems.’

So naturally DPAC were pleased to see him go, and celebrated at this party – though with Prosecco rather than the Champagne some media reports stated. And perhaps their celebrations were a little muted by the knowledge that his successor Stephen Crabb had shown himself to be equally bigoted and lacking compassion and understanding of the needs of the poor and disabled.

Strangely, despite his long record of cutting disablity benefits, IDS’s stated reason for his resignation was that he was unable to accept the government’s planned cuts to disability benefits, later describing the policies he had spent six years putting into effect of “balancing the books on the backs of the poor and vulnerable” as divisive and “deeply unfair“.

DPAC’s ‘IDS Resignation Party’

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Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 12 – 2017

Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 12: On Saturday 18th November 2017 I put my folding bike on three trains to take me to Bedford Station and rode the five or so miles to the closed main gates of Twinwoods Business Park on a former wartime aerodrome. Mostly it was an easy ride, but the last half-mile or so was up a rather steep hill and I was well out of breath by the time I arrived to meet the crowd of protesters already there but waiting for more coaches to arrive.

It was I think my 11th visit to photograph the protests organised by Movement for Justice at Yarls Wood Immigration Centre on the other side of the business park a little over a mile away which we could reach by a public footpath.

The numbers at the protest were down on the previous protest as the preparations for the event had been disrupted by a controversy about Movement for Justice, with one formerly very active member leaving feeling very angry about the group’s treatment of her. Although I sympathised with her I felt that much of what she claimed to reveal about the group was already well known and that she and her supporters were using her personal issue in a way that damaged the campaign to close Yarl’s Wood and other immigration prisons.

As I wrote in 2017:
“MfJ has never made any secret of its political background (you can read about it on Wikipedia), and has done far more than any other group to raise the issue of immigration detention, organising major protests at Harmondsworth, the Home Office and Yarl’s Wood and working practically with many former asylum seekers to stop deportations. And while much of the organisation of protests has clearly been carried out by a small and devoted core group, the activity and enthusiasm of those former asylum seekers is vital. MfJ would be impotent without their support, which it would not have unless it commanded their respect.”

The protesters held a noisy rally on the grassy area at the side of the road, with much chanting of slogans, practising them for when they would be outside the prison. They had brought large clear posters and banners that the women inside would latter be able to see, as well as a sound system and a ladder.

When all had arrived we set off marching a few hundred metres down the road to the start of the footpath, with me pushing my bike and stopping occasionally to take pictures. When we got closer to the site, one of the campaigners kindly offered to push my bike so I could take pictures of the marchers more easily.

We went through a gate into a field next to the detention centre where the protesters began to make a great deal of noise, particularly by kicking and banging on the lower solid metal section of the 20ft fence imprisoning the site.

The field slopes up steeply from the fence and others stood on the flat area at the top where they could see through the grid on the top 10 feet of the fence – and be seen by the women inside who were able to get to the upper floor windows. Some of the protesters had brought flowers and stood on the ladder to poke them into the grid.

We could see – if not clearly – the women inside who had come to greet the protesters, holding up messages: ‘SOS Plz’, ‘5 Months In No End in sight‘, ‘We Need Freedom‘, ‘We just no visa not criminal‘, ‘Release Us’. The windows can only be opened a few inches but some managed to hold out their messages. The photographs using a very long lens show them more clearly than we could see them.

The prison guards had put on a fashion show in another block of the centre to try to entice the women away from the windows, and guards were harassing them and telling them to leave the rooms facing the protest, event trying to pull them away, but they still manage to stay there to greet the protest. But some of the windows were pretty crowded.

Some held up mobile phone numbers in large print – the detainees are allowed phones to contact their lawyers and others over their immigration cases – and we were able to hear their voices which were relayed to the PA system. We could also hear them shouting, though it was hard to make out what they were saying.

Speakers standing on a ladder could see and be heard by the women inside, and most of those who spoke were former detainees at Yarl’s Wood or other detention centres. Mabel Gawanas who was held inside there for a day under 3 years was able to speak to her friends still inside.

*Between speeches there was more noise, and the samba band played.*

Also speaking was a woman released only a few days earlier who thanked MfJ and greeted her friends still inside.

I commented “‘China’ , ‘China’, ‘Release Us’, ‘We Need Freedom’ , ‘5 Months In No End In Sight’ , ‘Release’. None of these people should be locked up. There is no good reason to lock any of them up. Some need help and protection. All need to be treated as human beings, not pawns in a numbers game to satisfy the racist right.”

Other former detainees spoke, including some others recently release and this man who had been held in three different detention centres.

And on the hill people held their banners and the protest continued.

It was mid-November and the light was beginning to fall and the protest was to end shortly. I was getting cold and decided I had to leave, and pushed my bike back to the road for the ride back to Bedford station. Fortunately apart from one short steep hill it was mainly downhill.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 12.

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People’s Vote March, Iranians & Veterans – 2018

People’s Vote March, Iranians & Veterans: On Saturday 20th October 2018 I photographed a huge march – newspapers said an estimated 670,000 people – marched in London demanding the Theresa May hold a new referendum now that there was new evidence and people were clearer what Brexit would mean – and how they had been criminally misled into voting leave. Of course the BBC report lost a zero in the numbers taking part. During the march I also took time to photograph a protest by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, now exiled in Albania, against the Iranian regime, and Veterans United Against Suicide calling for more help for service men after they return home from wars.

People’s Vote March

Hyde Park Corner to Parliament Square

The 2016 referendum over leaving Europe was won by a relatively small majority – 52% to 48% – following a highly misleading ‘Leave’ campaign – remember that bus – but there was much more, hugely funded by people who would make large personal financial gains.

Nine years on from the vote, the Office for Budget Responsibility judges that “Both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU.” Last year a report by Cambridge Econometrics estimated that by then Brexit had cost the UK £140 billion and that would rised to £311 billion by the mid 2030s.

By 2018 it was already clear that Brexit would be a disaster, and it was a disaster that had been caused by David Cameron’s promise as Prime Minister that the result would be binding. It was seen by many as a crazy promise at the time – and we have been proved right. Britain has often prided itself on not having a written constitution – but if we had one it would almost certainly have saved us – as it would surely have required a more significant majority for any major constitutional change such as this.

It isn’t of course sure that a second referendum would have produced a different result – the same dark forces that swung the first would have gone into overdrive, with an added level of opposition to the ‘people’s decision‘ being disregarded, and with the help of the billionaire media might even have led to a second vote to leave.

From the start at Hyde Park Corner the protest looked huge, with people spreading far up Park Lane and across into Hyde Park.

When the march was due to start one group, Movement for Justice was on the road in front of the official banners, along with more than a thousand other protesters and protesting noisily while refusing pleas from the stewards to get behind the main banner.

Although MfJ were protesting about Brexit, they made the point that this was racist and called for an end to the scapegoating of immigrants and an end to the hostile environment which is ripping families apart.

They demanded an amnesty for all people already present in the country and to an extension of freedom of movement in Europe to include the Commonwealth.

The march was delayed for some minutes until they had all moved off to march in front of the main march and after a good gap had opened up the main march began.

After photographing thousands of marchers coming out from Park Lane I left them and took the tube to Westminster meet the marchers at Parliament Square.

Thousands had come directly to the rally rather than march and Whitehall and Parliament Square were already fairly full before the main body of the march arrived. I made my way up Whitehall past Downing Street, but the whole area was jammed with people as I got close to Trafalgar Square.

The top of Whitehall was jammed with people and the last 100 yards took me 15 minutes to get to where people were partying in the roads on the edge of Trafalgar Square.

The press of people had brought the march to a halt, with people still packed along much of its route. Later I heard from people who had only got part way along Piccadilly that many marchers had ended there and crowded into Green Park.

I had taken so many pictures that I decided to divide my report on My London Diary inato three parts:
People’s Vote March – Start
MfJ at People’s Vote March
People’s Vote March – End

People’s Mujahedin of Iran

Downing St

On the paved area opposite Downing Street I found the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) protesting against the repressive regime in Iran, with gibbets and three women held in a prison cell illustrating their reign of terror and calling for an end to executions – something in which the Iranian regime leads the world.

The PMOI, exiled from Iran and then to Albania, leads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), based in France which calls for a modern legal system, gender equality and political and social rights in Iran.

The PMOI appears to have little or no support in Iran but receives some support from US agencies and politicians as the preferred future government for the country. Both the USA and Saudi Arabia are said to provide financial support.

As a lengthy article on Wikipedia relates, there are many allegations about human rights abuses against its own members and its fraudulent money laundering and other financial arrangements.

People’s Mujahedin of Iran

Veterans United Against Suicide

Ministry of Defence

A few yards off from the march route outside the Ministry of Defence, Veterans United Against Suicide were holding a rally calling for more to be done to help service men and veterans in the fight against their developing PTSD and eventually committing suicide.

At least 47 current forces personnel and veterans have committed suicide this year, though the actual figure is thought to be considerably higher.

This was clearly a right wing protest and I did not feel welcome. As I wrote “The lorry being used as a platform also displayed a large banner supporting the soldier discharged for standing with Tommy Robinson in a photo used to publicise his extreme right-wing views. While I was listening a speaker was condemning a major forces charity, accusing it of fraud and failure to act over the mental health problems of serving and former members of the armed forces.“

Veterans United Against Suicide.

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Black Lives Matter London – 2016

Black Lives Matter London: Although there is a long history of Black struggles against racism in Britain the Black Lives Matter movement with its hashtag #BlackLivesMatter only really became established here in 2016, three years after it was first formed in the US in 2013.

This protest, on Friday 5th August 2016, five years and a day after the killing of Mark Duggan by police in 2011, along with those at Heathrow and in Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham were part of a ‘National Shutdown‘ which marked the emergence of Black Lives Matter UK.

The rally took place in Altab Ali Park on Whitechapel Road. Altab Ali, a Bangladeshi textile worker was stabbed to death in a racist attack by three teenagers in the adjoining street on 4th May 1978. In 1998 the park, formerly St Mary’s Park, was renamed in his memory.

"The event was called by BLMUK, a community movement of activists from across the UK who believe deeply that #BlackLivesMatter but are not affiliated with any political party. They called for justice and an end to racialised sexism, classism and homophobia and a new politics based on community defence and resilience."

Among those taking part in the rally were activists from Stand Up to Racism, from families of Sheik Bayou and Sean Rigg who had been killed by the police as well as Stephanie Lightfoot-Bennett whose twin brother Leon Patterson was battered to death by police in a Stockport cell in 1992, Movement for Justice and Sisters Uncut.

There were speeches from the various groups including BLMUK and from NUS President Malia Bouattia before the rally split into large groups from North, South, East and West London to discuss further actions.

Sisters Uncut set up flowers and candles in Altab Ali Park in East London to commemorate the many UK victims of state violence, including Duggan, Sarah Reed, Mzee Mohammed, Jermaine Baker, Sean Rigg, Leon Patterson, Kingsley Burrell and over 1500 others, disproportionately black, since 1990.

I left the rally before the end, when protesters blocked Whitechapel Road outside the park and some went on to block other roads in East London

More pictures on My London Diary at Black Lives Matter London.

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Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14 – 2018

Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14 – Yarl’s Wood immigration prison, near Bedford

The protest outside Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre on Saturday 14th July 2018 was the fourteenth on the remote site built on a wartime air base organised by Movement for Justice, although I had been covering protests in and around London calling for the closure of this and the other immigrant prisons for over 10 years.

I’d been at most of the previous thirteen at the site, although I had missed the first, largely because of transport problems – living outside London it wasn’t practical for me to travel on one of the coaches organised from London. In July 2018 I came with my bike on the train to Bedford and then cycled the 5 hilly miles to the event.

This protest was the smallest of them all I had attended there, with only a little over a hundred protesters. Many of those present had themselves been held for some time in this or other detention centres.

Yarl’s Wood was being used to hold women and a few families, and previous protests had been widely supported by other groups including many feminist groups, who on this occasion stayed away. Later some other groups organised protests but on a smaller scale than the previous protests.

*and through a gate into the field next to the detention centre*

A woman who had been part of Movement for Justice and active in earlier protests here had left the group, complaining bitterly about the way the group had treated her. She had received widespread support including from some other former members leading to many boycotting this protest. I knew both her and others in MfJ and commented: “However justified her personal complaint, it revealed little if anything about the group that was not already public knowledge, and MfJ has played a major role in protests against our racist immigration detention system, and still seems to be supported by the former detainees.”

You can read about that public knowlege of MfJ on Wikipedia and on the complaints on the “Speak The Plain Truth” blog. I was saddened by the dispute but more so at the effect it had in weakening this and related campaigns – and I had never had any illusions about the nature of the organisation which I had first met in the 1990s.

*A woman looks out at the protesters who were obviously welcomed*

The protest followed the usual pattern, meeting on the public highway and, after a rally there marching a mile or so along a public footpath to a field next to the prison and overlooking a part of the site across a 20 foot high metal fence.

*Others hold messages in the windows which only open a narrow slit*

The lower 10ft of the fence is solid metal sheeting but the upper 10ft is a thick metal gauze (out of focus in the picture above.) Standing back on a slope I could see women held inside greeting the protesters. Guards inside had apparently tried to keep them away from the windows – even enticing them to another part of the building with offers of free ice-cream!

They could hear the protest and know that there were people outside who supported them, and some inside were able to speak to us over a mobile phone link. Some of those who spoke outside were able to greet friends still inside – some are held for long periods, with one released a day under three years.

*Mabel had spent 3 years inside and knew many of those still held there*

Most asylum seekers are genuine and are eventually released, but the Home Office has long appeared to have a policy of putting as many hurdles as possible in their way, often demanding records that are impossible for the detainees to provide – a similar tactic to that used in the Windrush scandal. Many were deported under illegal “fast-track” procedures – and MfJ has also managed to take legal action along with others to stop some individuals being deported.

*Between speeches many banged on the fence to make a great deal of noise*

Most of our legal system is based on the principle that people are innocent until they are tried and proven guilty. But our asylum system works in the opposite way, assuming claims are fraudulent and demanding that asylum seekers prove they are genuine.

It was hot in the sun and I got tired. The protest was still continuing as I got on my bike to ride back to Bedford station.

More pictures from Saturday 14th July 2018 at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14.

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Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 10 – 2016

Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 10 – Yarl’s Wood, near Bedford

Shut Down Yarl’s Wood: On Saturday 3rd December almost 2000 protesters came to the isolated site on a former RAF base around 5 miles north of Bedford to take part in the 10th protest there organised by Movement for Justice calling for the closure of Yarl’s Wood and all immigration detention centres.

I’d taken three trains to get to Bedford Station where MfJ had arranged a coach for the journey on to the industrial estate on which the detention centre is hidden away. When we arrived the country back road was lined with coaches which had brought others from London and cities around the country.

But after a short rally there while we waited for others to arrive there was still over a mile along a public footpath to reach the field where the protest took place. This slopes up steeply a few feet from the 20 foot high metal prison fence, enabling protesters at the top of the slope th see the two upper floors of the detention centre – and for women at the windows in this to see them. Fortunately it had been relatively dry in the weeks before the event and for once the ground was not muddy and slippery.

Many other groups had come to join MfJ in the protest, including large numbers of students. MfJ had come mainly with migrants, many of whom had spent time in this and other immigration prisons, where this country locks up asylum seekers while slowly and inefficiently the Home Office deals with their cases.

Yarl’s Wood was mainly used for women, though there were a few families also locked up there. Many had fled violence, often sexual violence in their home countries and were then locked away here after arrival.

And they have no way to know when they might be released and are always under threat of being forcibly deported at short notice. One woman had then been held for over two years and was only released a day under three years. Most serve long indeterminate sentences in this and other immigration jails. They feel they are locked away, forgotten – and protests like this remind them that there are those outside who know and care about them.

The isolation means it is difficult for them to pursue their cases and to get the often ridiculous amounts of evidence the Home Office demands. But as they cannot leave the prisons they are allowed to have mobile phones and these enabled a few of the women inside to communicate with the protesters – and for their voices to be heard over the public address system brought by the campaigners.

All the women “speaking from inside thanked the protesters for coming and showing they had not been forgotten. They told of assaults and abuse by Serco security guards who today had locked many in other wings to stop them seeing the protest and threatened those who greeted the protesters and revealed there were cases of TB in the prison.”

Many of the protesters “who spoke at the protest had previously been held inside this and other immigration prisons, and encouraged those inside to keep fighting for justice.”

“As well as standing on the hill so that those on the upper floors allowed near the windows could see them and the banners and placards they held, others kicked and banged on the fence to make a noise that could be heard all over the jail – and indeed from the main raid half a mile away as I walked back to board my coach.“

Immigration detention continues to be used on an industrial scale in the UK, with 19,335 people entering detention in the year ending September 2024. Numbers decreased during Covid but have gone up to previous levels since. The UK is the only European country with no time limit on how long refugees can be held, and numbers held will be increased by the Illegal Immigration Act passed by the Tories in 2023 and the amendments made by Labour rapidly after they came to power in 2024.

The whole system of UK immigration is immoral and expensive, the result of successive governments shifting further to the right and appeasing the racist elements in the UK press. It has a corrosive effect on the mental health of those detained, in part because they are denied adequate health care.

More about the protest on December 3rd 2016 at Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 10.

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Students March for Free Education – 2015

Students March for Free Education. On Wednesday 4th November 2015 students, led by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) marched through central London against the abolition of maintenance grants calling for free education without fees and huge student debts and an end to turning higher education into a market system impoverishing staff and students.

Back in the distant past when I was a student, UK students paid no tuition fees at UK universities and I got a grant of around £300 a year which was then just about enough to pay my living expenses, at least for the three terms I was away from each year, paid by my local authority.

Because my family income was low, I got a full grant, while some of my friends from wealthier families got lower grants and had to rely on their parents to give them a ‘parental contribution’ – and not all did, though some others were more than generous.

More recently, my two sons also benefited from maintenance grants and no fees, my younger son just squeezing into the final year before student fees came in. By then my salary as a teacher – our sole household income at the time – meant we were assessed to make a small parental contribution to his maintenance.

Since then things have got a lot tougher for students, with loans for both tuition fees and their living expenses. New Labour brought in tuition fees in 1998, means-tested at £1000 per year, then tightened the screw in 2004 when they tripled to £3000 and poorer families now had to pay the full amount.

In 2012 the Tory-led coalition tripled the fee yet again, setting a maximum of £9000 – and I think all universities charged more or less that maximum. Currently they are frozen after being rasied to £9250 in 2017, but are expected to rise with inflation from 2025 if no further changes are made. For a few years in opposition Labour promised to remove tuition fees, but that promise seems to have been quickly forgotten after Starmer became leader.

It was Thatcher who first introduced student loans for maintenance but these were in addition to maintenance grants for those who did not get full grants. It was again New Labour in 1998 that abolished maintenance grants for all but the poorest students – and these went in 2016.

Student loans have operated under several systems since 1990, with the first major change taking place in 1998 and the next in 2012, when the first Income-Contingent Repayment Plan 1 was introduced. Students this year are on the 5th version of this, with a new version for those starting in 2023.

Martin Lewis summarises the 1923 changes in a clear graphic. Students who started in 2023 pay 9% of their income when they earn over £25,000 a year and keep paying for 40 years after they left university. Inflation-linked interest is added to the amount on loan, typically now around £60,000 for a three-year course.

Most students now also have to supplement their income with part time jobs, as estimates for the income needed to take a full part in three years of university life together with tuition fees come to more than £80,000. It’s a far cry from back when I was at university when students taking paid work during term-time was frowned upon or prohibited by the university authorities.

The 2015 protest formed up at Malet Street outside what had until 2013 been the University of London Union where there were speeched, then marched to Parliament Square . From there it went on the Home Office and Dept of Business, Innovation & Skills and became more chaotic, with a black bloc of students took over and police rather fragmented the march.

You can read about it and see many more pictures – and also of the celebration going on in Parliament Square following the release of the last British resident, Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo on My London Diary.

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business
Students at Home Office and BIS
‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration

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Trans Pride & Anti-Racist March in Brixton – 2019

Trans Pride & Anti-Racist March in Brixton: Five years ago today on Saturday 14th September I photographed the start of London’s first Trans+ Pride march before taking the tube to Brixton for an anti-racist march and rally.

London’s First Trans+ Pride March

Hundreds met at Hyde Park Corner to march along Oxford Street to Soho Square in London’s first Trans+ Pride March, was both a celebration and protest for trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals and their family, friends and allies.

They marched to increase the visibility of the trans+ community and to protest against the continuing discrimination in the UK and around the world against trans people.

Many carried placards and posters with messages such as ‘Trans Rights Matter‘ and ‘Trans Rights Are Human Rights’.

There has been increasing transphobia in British media, with trans people being attacked on the streets, and this has continued to grow since 2019.

The charity Stop Hate UK reports that in “2020/2021, 2,630 Hate Crimes against transgender people were recorded by the Police, an increase of 16% from the previous year” though they say the actual number of incidents is much greater as 88% of transgender victims of serious incidents did not report them.

Incidents reported to Stop Hate UK were of “verbal abuse, threatening behaviour, harassment and anti-social behaviour, such as having derogatory terms shouted at them, having invasive or inappropriate questions asked of them or facing harassment from neighbours, co-workers or strangers. “

In 2018 Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists had disrupted the Pride March in London with an anti-Trans protest and there were fears they might try to disrupt this march. There were many feminists supporting trans rights on this march.

More pictures at London’s First Trans+ Pride March.

Brixton anti-racist march

I took the tube from Green Park to Brixton where Movement for Justice and Lambeth Unison Black Workers’ Group were protesting against the continuing persecution of Windrush family members and other migrants.

They called for freedom of movement, the closure of immigration detention prisons, and an end to Brexit which is being used to whip up immigrant-bashing and nationalism to establish a Trump-style regime in Britain under Boris Johnson.

I missed the start of the rally in Windrush Square, but heard several of the speakers including Eulalee who has been fighting the Home Office for 16 years to remain in the UK with her family and was wearing a ‘More Blacks! More Dogs! More Irish‘ t-shirt.

People picked up their posters and marched the short distance to busy Brixton Market.

Here they stopped for more speeches, with many shoppers stopping briefly to listen and taking the fliers that were being handed out.

The protest seems to get a very positive reception in the market.

Green MEP for London Scott Ainslie joined the protest to speak about his ‘LDNlovesEU‘ campaign calling for an end to Brexit.

After his speech the protesters picked up their posters and moved on along Electric Avenue,

and turned into Atlantic Road,

They then marched down Brixton Road back to Windrush Square where the protest ended with some brief speeches and photographs.

More pictures on My London Diary at Brixton anti-racist march.

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Netanyahu, Immigration & Shaker – 2015

Netanyahu, Immigration & Shaker: On Wednesday 9th September 2015 groups came to Downing Street both to protest against and to support the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu then making an official visit to David Cameron. And in Parliament Square there were protests supporting the parliamentary report on immigration detention which was being debated, as well as a weekly vigil calling for the release of Londoner Shaker Aamer, still then held in Guantanamo.

Netanyahu visit protests – Downing Street.

Over a thousand people had come to Downing Street to protest the official visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they say should be arrested for war crimes in the attack on Gaza in 2014.

There were too many for the small penned area the police had allocated for the protest and many chose instead to stand in the area between the two carriageways, although police tried to clear the area.

A much smaller group who had come to support Israel were in another pen a short distnace down the road. They included supporters with a Union flag with the message UK CHRISTIANS LOVE ISRAEL.

Some of them had come with posters about other issues, including a woman holding a hand-written sign ‘THEY ARE CRUCIFYING CHRISTAINS IN IRAQ!’ But ISIS which has carried out such atrocities were encouraged by both Israel and the CIA and ISIS relies on Israeli money for the oil they smuggle out to Israel.

The pro-Israel supporters complained to police that they were not controlling the pro-Palestinian protesters, and one attempted to stop me photographing him as he did so. But I continued to photograph him.

By this time many from both sides were protesting on the pavement in front of Downing Street, and police had made a number of arrests, mainly of pro-Palestine activists. But others continued to complain to police.

Police managed to clear an area so that cars could still leave and enter Downing Street when the gates were opened, and people from both groups shouted at each other across the narrow divide. More police arrived and were able to keep this area clear.

Many protesters had remained on the far side of the road, and they were joined by anti-Zionist Neturei Karta orthodox Jews who held posters saying ‘State of “Israel” Do NOT Represent World Jewry’

Yet more police arrived and the protests continued with a great deal of noise from both sides. There were more complaints by the Zionists that a few of those at the protests were waving flags in support of the Lebanese Hezbollah. In 2008 the military wing of Hezbollah was proscribed but the parliamentary group which together with its allies had a majority in the Lebanese parliament was not – and both use the same flag.

So it was still legal to use the Hezbollah flag in 2015. But in 2019 Home Secretary Sajid Javid added Hezbollah’s political wing to the list of proscribed terrorist organisations making the flag now illegal to fly in Britain.

One of the pro-Israel protesters was holding a definitely legal Welsh flag, though I could not understand its relevance at this protest. The protest was still continuing very noisily when I left.

More on My London Diary:
Netanyahu visit protest – Free Palestine
Support for Israel & Netanyahu

Fight immigration detention MfJ tells MPs – Parliament Square

The Report of the Inquiry into the Use of Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom
by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees & the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration was being debated in Parliament and Movement for Justice came to Parliament Square to support some of its conclusions and demand more radical action on immigration.

One of its key conclusions was that there should be a time limit of 28 days on immigration detention which is currently still indefinite. At least one person has been kept in our immigration prisons for three years (less one day) before being released, and none of those held know when or if they may be released or deported. They constantly face the risk of being forcibly deported to a country where their lives are at risk.

Some of those taking part in the protests had previously been held in detention centres for months or more, while MfJ were still calling for an end to the illegal ‘fast track’ system which is clearly designed to remove migrants and asylum seekers before they have a proper chance to prove their right to be here. They also called for a complete end to detention and immigration raids, the opening of the Calais border and an amnesty for migrants.

The report also called for “a whole-sale shift in approach, away from merely focusing on enforcement and towards quality engagement with individuals at all stages of their immigration process” which has been highly successful in other countries.

Needless to say, the Tory government failed to implement any of the changes suggested, and although Angela Rayner, now Deputy Prime Minister, was the only MP to come out and listen to the protest, there seems little chance of our Labour Government moving away from the current racist policies.

Fight immigration detention MfJ tells MPs

Shaker Aamer weekly vigils restart – Parliament Square

This was the first of a new series of weekly vigils opposite the Houses of Parliament calling for the release of Battersea resident Shaker Aamer, still held, abused and tortured in Guantanamo after more than 13 years despite never facing any charges and having been twice cleared for release.

Shaker Aamer weekly vigils restart

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