Goodbye and Good Riddance – March 2023: Continuing from yesterday’s post some more pictures from 2013, from my albums on Facebook from March 2003.
More pictures from these and other protests in March 2023 in my Facebook Albums.
Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos
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On 11th March 2011 Japan suffered its most powerful recorded earthquake. The Fukushima power plants fusion reactors were immediately shut down and diesel generators started to pump the coolant needed to keep the reactors safe.
But the earthquake generated a tsunami, with giant 45ft waves which swept over the sea walls of the power plant, flooding and disabling the emergency generators. As Wikipedia states “The resultant loss of reactor core cooling led to three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions, and the release of radioactive contamination in Units 1, 2 and 3 between 12 and 15 March.“
Around 110,000 people were evacuated from a 12 mile exclusion zone around the plant because of airborne radioactive contamination, with many losing their livelihoods as well as their homes. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) who owned the site are still carrying out necessary cleanup of the site and removal of the radioactive fuel debris is expected to take until around 2040 or 2050.
A TEPCO report in 2000 had recommended improved safety measures against seawater flooding, designed to stop tsunami waves greater than those that caused the 2011 disaster, but these and several other warnings were dismissed by the company as unrealistic. Earlier scientist had expressed concerns about the dangers of building nuclear power plants in Japan because of the earthquake problems.
Japanese expatriates in London began a series of weekly protests against nuclear power at the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly and also protested outside the TEPCO offices in Berkeley Square. The protest on Saturday 9th March was was organised by ‘Japanese Against Nuclear UK’ together with ‘Kick Nuclear’ and CND.
I went to photograph the protesters as they met up for the march at Hyde Park Corner. They intended to make brief protests at several locations including the Japanese embassy, the EDF office and Downing St before ending with a rally and final protest opposite Parliament in Old Palace Yard.
Many of them had come with sunflowers, a symbol of renewable clean energy, particularly solar energy. There were several banners with the smiley sun symbol and the message ‘Nuclear Power? No Thanks’ and a group of people encased in fluorescent yellow barrels with a radioactive danger symbol and labelled ‘Radioactive Waste.’
Some of the Japanese protesters had brought Japanese masks used to hide faces at protests in Japan against Fukushima, although many preferred to have sunflowers painted on their faces.
Among those who had come to protest were some who had come on a coach from Somerset, where they were opposing plans by EDF to build a new power station at Hinkley Point. The plans for the first new nuclear reactor in Britain for over 30 years were approved by the EDF board and the UK government in 2016. The first reactor arrived there last month though the project is several years behind time and is now expected by EDF to be completed in 2028.
Although some environmentalists have backed nuclear as a necessary part of our energy supply if we are to cut carbon emissions, it seems likely that increases in the efficiency and the continuing drop in costs of renewable alternatives will make the new power station a huge white elephant, producing electricity at a much higher cost guaranteed by the UK government to the developers.
More on My London Diary at Fukushima 2nd Anniversary.
I left the protesters as the march was about to start to go to the Million Women Rise march which was taking place at the same time. You can see more about that at Million Women Rise.
International Women’s Day Marches. Wikipedia has a good article on the origins of this “global holiday celebrated annually on March 8 to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women” which focuses attention on such issues as “as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.“
So I won’t go into any great detail here. The earliest manifestation was a Woman’s Day organised by the Socialist Party of America in New York City on 28th February 1909, and the idea was taken up the following year by the International Socialist Women’s Conference. When women got the vote in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8th became a national holiday and the date became established in socialist movements and countries worldwide, being taken up by feminists in the 1960s. International Women’s Day was celebrated by the UN in 1975 and adopted by them in 1977.
Since around 2000 IWD has been ” criticized as heavily diluted and commercialized, particularly in the West, where it is sponsored by major corporations and used to promote general and vague notions of equality, rather than radical social reforms” and in 2009 was hi-jacked by a British PR firm, but other groups have continued a more radical observance of the day and attempted to reclaim it, and it has been largely those that I’ve photographed over the years.
Until 2002 I’d been teaching most years on March 8th and hadn’t been able to photograph daytime IWD events, so I think that year was the first time I did so. Since then I’ve photographed them most years, and here I’ll post a few pictures from some of them, with links.
I only wrote a short text – so here it is:
the 8 march is a world woman’s day and was celebrated by some as a global women’s strike. the march in london stopped outside key sites including the war office and world bank for speeches.
There are 4 pages of pictures, each with a handful of images beginning here
but the links are carefully hidden among the images (I got better at web design later.)
I think this was the first time I photographed Selma James, a leading anti-sexist and anti-racist campaigner and the originator in 1972 of Wages for Housework, “a demand and a political perspective that redefined the working class“. I was pleased to supply a picture for the cover of her recent book ‘Our Time Is Now‘, and recommend it to you.
Text and link to more pictures
More on My London Diary
For various reasons I didn’t photograph IWD events in 2005, 2006 or 2007.
2010 I photographed two events.
There are some links to later International Women’s Day events in a post I wrote here a year ago.
March 8th is celebrated in many countries around the world as International Women’s Day and is a national holiday in over 25, particularly across the former USSR, as it has its early roots in a 1909 National Woman’s Day organised in New York by the Socialist Party of America and was then taken up by socialist women in Europe, where there were widespread International Women’s Day protests on March 19, 2011.
The date of March 8th was set in Germany in 1914, and adopted since then in most countries.
It was officially adopted by the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution and spread to other communist countries including China, continuing as a largely communist festival until it was adopted in the late 1960s by feminists campaigning for equal rights and opportunities and an end to violence against women.
In 1975 the UN proclaimed March 8th as the UN Day for women’s rights and world peace, and since then we have seen both left wing protests and more corporate celebrations and events taking place on the day.
Since March 8th is not a holiday in the UK, some Interternational Women’s Day events take place on the nearest weekend rather than on the day itself.
I’ve photographed many of these events over the years, sometimes several on the same day, though I’ve only used a picture from one event in this post.
Recent years have seen an increase – until today – in the size and militancy of the protests on International Women’s Day, particularly with the emergence of the Women’s Strike Assembly which organises against racist agendas and far-right attempts to foment racism, and organises exploited migrant workers in the service industries.
All of the pictures in this post were taken on March 8th and come from a variety of events over the years. All and many more are on ‘My London Diary’.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Workfare is a controversial policy first begun in the UK in the 1990s by the Conservative government of John Major, although it developed from earlier schemes which put active pressure on claimants to seek work. Under various different programmes and names workfare continued under New Labour, but it was under the Tory-led coalition in 2011-2 that it came into widespread use.
Workfare is used to describe schemes where in order to receive unemployment benefit people have to undertake unpaid work, either in the commercial or public sector or for charities. In 2011 the coalition government announced that those who had failed to find jobs after being unemployed for some time would have to work unpaid for 30 hours a week for six months, setting up a number of schemes to this end.
THe proponents of ‘workfare’ say that those forced to take part in these schemes benefit from the experience or working and that it will prepare them for paid work and that the experience will make it easier for them to find employment. They say it isn’t unfair to ask people to do something in exchange for the benefits they receive.
Academic studies by the DWP of international workfare schemes had shown that these claims were unsound. There was little evidence that workfare increased the chances of finding work, and that it might even reduce this, firstly because if people were on workfare they had less time to look for jobs, but also because workfare placements seldom provided the kind of skills and experience that potential employers were looking for.
Trade unions and others point out that every person on workfare actually cuts out a job that would otherwise be carried out by a paid employee – so there are fewer jobs for those seeking employment. Workfare is largely a subsidy to employers, supplying them with free labour – essentially a form of slave labour. Workfare schemes – whether in the private sector or public or charity work – fail to provide any of the employment status and protection that employees or workers receive.
Strong negative reactions to these schemes – such as those demonstrated by the Boycott Welfare protest in Oxford St, London I photographed on Saturday 3rd March 2012 – led to many companies withdrawing from the scheme, and others ending talks with the government about taking part in it. According to Wikipedia, the campaign group ‘Boycott Welfare’ ‘very successful in making companies and charities pull out of “workfare”.’ By August 2016, “more than 50 organisations have ended their involvement in workfare, because of negative publicity.”
But workfare still continues, and as Boycott Welfare write on their web site, “Workfare forms a key tool of ‘compliance’ with the regime of Universal Credit, and is enforced via sanctions.” As well as Universal Credit, workfare also continues under the government’s Sector-Based Work Academies, Work and Health Programme and Youth Obligation schemes.
Also on the same day I photographed other events. Firstly the Million Women Rise March, a women-only march through the centre of London against domestic abuse, rape and commercial sexual exploitation and for the prevention of abuse and support and protection for women. I was shocked to learn from a member of one of the more active women campaigning groups that has been the among the leaders in previous celebrations around International Women’s Day and had taken part in previous years that they had been told they were not welcome on the march, though I think they have taken part in more recent years.
I left that march as it went down Oxford St on its way to a rally at Trafalgar Square and took the tube to St Paul’s where Greeks were protesting in solidarity with students and workers in Greece against the austerity measures being imposed as a part of the Eurozone rescue package for the country. They had planned to protest at the Occupy London camp, but that had been cleared a few days previously, but some of the occupiers had returned to hold a general meeting on the St Paul’s Cathedral steps.
More on these events from Saturday 3rd March on My London Diary:
Greeks Protest At St Paul’s
Million Women Rise March
Boycott Workfare – Oxford St
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
I photographed the first of these all-woman Million Women Rise marches in London in 2008, and have covered the event in most or all years since, always on a Saturday close to International Women’s Day. It’s an event that is supported over a hundred human rights and women’s groups around the country and is “led and organised by a majority of black women” and also includes many from other minority ethnic communities.
It’s an organisation that welcomes support from men in various ways, but on the day of the march asks them to “come and stand on the pavement and cheer us on.” And I do, though most of the time I’m too busy taking pictures to actually cheer.
Their web site has a list of ten demands, beginning with:
To acknowledge the continued discrimination faced by all women, the additional discrimination faced by Black women and women from other minority groups, and reflect this in all public policy in the UK and internationally
Million Women Rise web site- http://www.millionwomenrise.com/demands.html
I took pictures in the side road where the march gathered, where the marchers spill over onto the pavement and I could mix a little with the marchers before the march began, but for the march itself I stayed on the side as requested.
One slightly different aspect of this years march was the Pan Indian Dance Group who danced their way along Oxford St at the rear of the march – and I think went on to dance at the rally in Trafalgar Square, but by then I had left the event.
More pictures: Million Women March against male violence
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All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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