Posts Tagged ‘murder’

Marine A, Mandela, CPS Failures, Cops off Campus – 2013

Friday, December 6th, 2024

Marine A, Mandela, CPS Failures, Cops off Campus: On Friday 6th Decemeber 2013 some very varied events were taking place in Central London. Here they are in the order I photographed them.


EDL Protest Supports Marine A – Downing St

Marine A, Mandela, CPS Failures, Cops off Campus - 2013

The EDL had called for a major protest at Downing Street on the day that ‘Marine A’, Sergeant Alexander Blackman, was to be sentenced, but only around 50 supporters were there when I arrived.

Blackman was being tried for the murder of a wounded Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan in contravention of the Armed Forces Act 2006, and became the “first British soldier to be convicted of a battlefield murder whilst serving abroad since the Second World War.

Marine A, Mandela, CPS Failures, Cops off Campus - 2013

I commented “I doubt if there are many serving soldiers who would wish to see the Geneva conventions disregarded, and wonder what support if any this protest would have from serving soldiers, many of whom have condemned strongly the cold-blooded killing of a prisoner by Marine A and called for an appropriate sentence.

However many did feel when later that day he was sentenced to “life imprisonment with a minimum term of ten years and dismissed with disgrace from the Royal Marines” he had been treated harshly, and in 2014 the sentence was reduced to eight years, then after a public campaign overturned on appeal and reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Given the time he had served he was released in April 2017.

EDL Protest Supports Marine A


Tributes to Mandela – Parliament Square & South Africa House

Marine A, Mandela, CPS Failures, Cops off Campus - 2013

Nelson Mandela, the “Father of the Nation” who had become the first president of a new post-apartheid South Africa from 1994-1999, having previously spent 27 years in prison before his release in 1990, had died the previous day, 5th December 2013.

Marine A, Mandela, CPS Failures, Cops off Campus - 2013

People brought flowers to the Nelson Mandela statue in Parliament Square and to South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, where a long queue waited patiently for several hours to sign a book of remembrance in the High Commission.

Tributes to Mandela


Bereaved protest at CPS Failure – Southwark Bridge

Marcia Rigg holds a picture of Mandela as she addresses the protest against the PCS

Since 1990 there had been 1433 deaths of people in custody, many under highly suspicious circumstances and not a single conviction of any police, prison officers or security guards who have either failed in their duty of care or more actively caused their deaths.

Relatives and friends of those who dies had come to protest outside Rose Court, the home of the Crown Prosecution Service. The last successful prosecution brought against a police officer was for involvement in a black death in custody was in 1972, after the death of David Oluwale in 1969. Police officers have been prosecuted for several other black deaths in custody – Joy Gardner, Christopher Alder and Mikey Powell – but none was successful.

The standard response from the CPS – led by Keir Starmer from 2008-2013 – is that there is ‘not enough evidence to prosecute’, largely because the cases have not been properly investigated. Often the police involved are simply not questioned, and in some other cases they simply refuse to answer questions.

Bereaved protest at CPS Failures


‘Cops Off Campus’ Protest Police Brutality – Bloomsbury

Following protests by students and others against student fees and cuts, the closure of the student union and calling for acceptable pay and conditions for low paid largely migrant cleaners, catering staff, security staff and others, the University management had tried to ban protests on campus and had brought in numbers of police to enforce that ban.

This protest was called after the previous day police had brutally assaulted a group of students who had briefly occupied a part of Senate House, arresting a number of students including the Editor of the student newspaper and a legal observer.

The organisers had intended this to be an entirely peaceful march around the various s sites of the university in the area to the west and north of Russell Square, but it was clear that the police had other ideas. There seemed to be police vans down every side-street in the area as students assembled on the pavement outside the University of London Union in Malet St.

There were a few short speeches before the march set off to walk around the block but were stopped by a line of police across the street, with those who tried to walk through it thrown roughly backwards.

They turned around only to find police blocking both the other end of the street and a side street leading to Gower Street and their only way open was to go onto the campus, walking past SOAS and out onto Thornhaugh Street. There they turned up into Woburn Square and then turned to make their way into UCL, only to find the gates from Torrington Place were locked and guarded by security.

They then turned into Gower Street where they saw another group of police rushing towards them and they then rushed through the gates into the Main Quad. Here there was a lot of discussion about what to do next and they eventually decided to take a back street route to Torrington Square, and set off at a rapid pace. I took a more direct route to meet them there. But by now it was dark and I was tired of walking around London and decided to go home.

The police operation seemed to me “an incredible and pointless waste of public money, and it resulted in more inconvenience to the public than if the event had not been policed at all.” Perhaps more importantly this kind of policing alienates a large proportion of young people, acting strongly to destroy the ‘policing by consent’ which has always been the the basis of our police system.

More at ‘Cops Off Campus’ Protest Police Brutality.


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Fracking, Congo & Caste 2013

Saturday, October 19th, 2024

Fracking, Congo & Caste: On Saturday 19th October 2013 I began work at a protest calling on the former boss of BP to resign from the House of Lords because of his vested interest in fracking, then photographed a protest against the atrocities being committed in the battles for mineral wealth in the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda before covering a march bringing a petition to Downing Street against the continuing delays in making caste discrimination illegal in the UK.


Global Frackdown: Lord Browne resign! Mayfair

Fracking, Congo & Caste

Campaigners went to the offices of private equity firm Riverstone Holdings to call on its managing director Lord Brown of Madingley, a former boss of BP, to resign his seat in the House of Lords because of his vested interests in fracking.

Fracking, Congo & Caste

John Browne joined BP in 1966 and worked his way up the company to become CEO in 1995. Knighted in 1998, he joined the House of Lords as Baron Browne of Madingley. in 2001 while still being BP CEO. In 2007 he resigned from BP when accused of perjury in atempting to stop newspapers publishing details of a former homosexual relationship and of alleged misuse of company funds.

Fracking, Congo & Caste

In his time at BP he was responsible for a ruthless programme of cost-cutting that many feel compromised safety and contributed to the 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion and in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Fracking, Congo & Caste

In 2013, Browne was Managing Director and Managing Partner (Europe) of Riverstone Holdings LLC, and more significantly for today’s protest the chairman of Britain’s only shale gas driller Cuadrilla Resources.

The protest outside Riverstone was a part of a day of a ‘Global Frackdown’ with protests against fracking in 26 countries and in other cities in the UK.

Friends of the Earth activists met on Oxford Street and walked to the office in Burlington Gardens, where after a brief speech about Lord Browne’s involvement in fracking people were invited to write messages and put them in a small brown rubbish bin which would be left at the offices for him.

People wrote messages and posed with them calling for an end to fracking at Balombe and elsewhere in the UK as well as showing support for the Elsipogtog First Nation who had a few days earlier been attacked by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with live ammunition and tear gas while protesting against fracking in New Brunswick, Canada.

Fortunately police in London merely came to ask the protesters what they intended to do before saying ‘Fine, no problem’ though they did later ask them to ensure there was a free path along the pavement and remind them and photographers of the danger from the slow moving traffic.

The activists point out that fracking contaminates huge volumes of water with sand and toxic chemicals and also that any fossil fuel production should be avoided as using fossil fuels increases the climate crisis.

Global Frackdown: Lord Browne resign!


Don’t Be Blind to DR Congo Murders – Piccadilly Circus

Continuing battles over the mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda have led to the murder of more than 8 million people and over 500,000 men, women and children have been raped by the various armies funded by various European and African multinational companies.

Gold, diamonds, coltan, tungsten, tin and other ores should make these countries rich, but have led to huge devastation. Coltan, containing both niobium and tantalum is vital for the mobile phones, computers, missiles and other modern technology on which we rely. The fight for it has been the main incentive behind the genocidal wars that have waged in the area.

Despite various protests over the years by Congolese in London there has been little publicity to the atrocities and no action by our government. The ‘Don’t be Blind This Time’ campaigners came to Piccadilly Circus to raise public awareness, some posing in blindfolds and others handing out a thousand free flowers, with the message that that we need to demand justice and an end to the impunity and cover up around this conflict.

The wars continue in 2024 and have recently intensified. China now also being increasing involved as US companies have since 2013 sold their mines to Chinese companies who now own most of the mines in the DRC.

I don’t remember seeing any mention of this protest in the media, and we see few reports of the terrible situation continuing in the area. British editors seldom seem to regard this or conflicts in other areas of Africa such as Sudan as news.

Don’t Be Blind to DR Congo Murders


Make Caste Discrimination Illegal Now – Hyde Park to Whitehall

Negative discrimination on the basis of caste, long a traditional part of Indian society, was banned by law there in 1948 and is a part of the 1950 constitution, though it still continues. In the UK The Equality Act 2010 passed under New Labour in 2010 gave our government the power to make caste discrimination illegal but they lost the election before doing so.

The incoming coalition government was reluctant to action, but pressure continued and in 2013 the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 mandated this to be done; instead the government set up a two year consultation, apparently as a result of lobbying by the Alliance of Hindu Organisations, (AHO) a body set up to oppose what they call “the threat posed by this proposed amendment to the Equality Act 2010.”

The consultation appears also to be only with established groups dominated by upper caste interests, and its length entirely unnecessary. It isn’t clear why a simple elimination of a clearly discriminatory practice should be regarded as a threat.

A report on the consultation was finally published in 2018. In it the government rejected the idea of a law against caste discrimination and instead concluded:

Having given careful and detailed consideration to the findings of the consultation, Government believes that the best way to provide the necessary protection against unlawful discrimination because of caste is by relying on emerging case-law as developed by courts and tribunals. In particular, we feel this is the more proportionate approach given the extremely low numbers of cases involved and the clearly controversial nature of introducing “caste”, as a self-standing element, into British domestic law.

They also state that any law would “as divisive as legislating for “class” to become a protected characteristic would be across British society more widely.” I don’t think this comparison has any merit. Not to act seems to me to be accepting a foreign practice, illegal in its country of origin, into British society, and the low number of cases they comment on surely means that case-law will only emerge at a snail’s pace. Our new Labour government should follow the example begun by New Labour in 2010 and make caste discrimination illegal in the UK.

Make Caste Discrimination Illegal Now


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Master Butcher Salman & LouLou’s 2019

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou’s: The protests I photographed on Wednesday 2nd October 2019 were conveniently close to each other in London’s Mayfair. I went to photograph a candlelit vigil for Saudi journalist Jamal Khasnhoggi at the Saudi Embassy (and also found a counter-protest) and then joined the IWGB protesting at exclusive Mayfair club LouLou’s a few yards away.


Justice For Jamal Khashoggi

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Representatives of English PEN, Writers at Risk, Reporters Without Borders and PEN International had come to hold a candlelit vigil outside the Saudi Embassy on Curzon Street on the first anniversary of the horrific murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist for Middle East Eye and The Washington Post, and a general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel.

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he had gone to get papers for his planned marriage. Inside the consulate he was met by a team of possibly eight men sent by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to assassinate him. He was strangled and then his body was cut into pieces using a bone saw so it could easily be removed from the building and disposed off.

Master Butcher Salman & LouLou's

Turkish intelligence bugs in the building recorded both the planning of the murder and its execution. MbS denied any knowledge of the plans prior to the murder, but few if any believe it could have happened without his authorisation.

Opposite the silent vigil was a noisy protest with music and speeches funded by the Saudi Embassy with banners and expensively produced placards as well as large LED illuminated screens in support of the Crown Prince.

They denied MbS had any involvement in the killing and held huge pictures of him as well as others lauding his achievements in giving aid to Yemen, supporting charitable foundations and fighting Islamic radicalism and extremism. The didn’t mention the war in Yemen, his support for Wahhabism, the ridiculous kidnapping of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri (intended to weaken him, the country united behind him and MbS was forced to release him), and certainly not the barbaric torture, murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi.

One placard stated ‘SAUDI CROWN PRINCE WORKING TO BUILD A MODERN NATION AND MAKE HIS PEOPLE MORE CIVILISED. Barbaric practices like torturing and sawing up your opponents hardly seems a way to make his people more civilised. MbS now to many means Master butcher Salman.

Justice For Jamal Khashoggi
Saudis support killer Prince MBS


IWGB at Mayfair club Loulou’s

I joined the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB) Cleaners and Facilities Branch who had come to protest at exclusive Mayfair private club LouLou’s for kitchen porters to be paid a living wage, be treated with dignity and respect and given decent terms and conditions including proper sick pay, holidays and pension contributions.

Police and security men had closed off the section of street with the entrance to the club and the protesters were harassed by police and pushed roughly by security staff employed by the club during the protest.

Few of the wealthy customers being escorted into the club took the leaflets the protesters were offering or seemed to have any sympathy with the exploited workers at the club.

After protesting for some time on Trebeck Street at one end of the blocked section of Shepherd’s Market they marched noisly around the block to the other end in Hertford Street and continued the noisy protest there.

In December 2019 LouLou’s made an offer to the IWGB including paying its kitchen porters the London Living Wage from January 2020, 5 days sick pay, and regular quarterly consultations with the union on terms and conditions. Although it didn’t meet all of the unions demands further planned strikes were called off.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at IWGB at Mayfair club Loulou’s.


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Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur 2008

Saturday, May 25th, 2024

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur: On Sunday morning 25th May 2008 I made my way to Red Lion Square in Holborn to photograph the Pagain Pride public procession. Later I went to Downing Street were protesters were meeting to march to a rally at the Sudanese Embassy calling for Sudanese war criminals to be brought to justice.


Pagan Pride – Beltane Bash – Red Lion Square/Russell Square

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur

Pagans – or rather neo-Pagans had come to Conway Hall in the corner of Red Lion Square for a day of celebration of the ancient Spring festival of Beltane, celebrating coming out of winter and the springing of the world into growth.

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur

As well as their private celebrations inside the hall they were also taking part in a public procession, Pagan Pride, which goes the short distance to the fountain in Russell Square for a joyful celebration before returning to Conway Hall.

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur

Nature and the cyclical nature of the seasons plays a central part in pagan beliefs and Godesses and Gods linked with nature play an important role in their ceremonies.

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur

As I commented in 2008 nature appeared “not to be too kind to them as the rain bucketed down as the participants were supposed to gather, with only a few braver members (and some with umbrellas) coming out of the hall, but fortunately for them and the photographers it soon eased off, finally almost stopping as the parade got under way.”

That circular fountain in the garden of Russell Square “could have been designed with them in mind, with a strongly phallic character in the water jets, which in normal use rise and fall, but were left to flow at full strength for most of the ceremony.” In 2008 it was open for everyone to play in but on more recent visits I have noticed it is now surrounded by a fence.

At first the group danced around the fountain in rings with hands joined, but then many of them started to run through the centre, many getting soaked.”

Even the drummers, who at first stood on the edge providing a rhythm for the dance, eventually ran though the jets, and finally the Green Man also did so.

By the time the parade left the square for its return to Conway Hall I’d had enough, and my feet and legs were soaked.

I left with a friend to go and have a cup of tea before going to Whitehall for a very different event.

More pictures at Pagan Pride – Beltane Bash.


Justice for Darfur – London Protest; Whitehall – Sudanese Embassy

Around 200 people, mainly from the Sudan, had gathered opposite Downing Street for a noisy protest before marching to a rally at the Sudanese Embassy opposite St James’s Palace in London.

The Justice for Darfur campaign was supported by around 30 organisations including the Aegis Trust, an international organization working to prevent genocide, Amnesty International and Darfur Union UK, who organised this event together with Aegis Students.

The campaign began when the Sudanese government refused to had over two men to the International Criminal Court. Sudan’s former Minister of the Interior Ahmad Haroun and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb were wanted on 51 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from persecution, rapes and murder of civilians in four West Darfur villages.

Haroun had even been promoted to be responsible for humanitarian affairs, and Kushayb, who had been in jail facing other charges when the ICC warrants were issued has been released.

In 2005 the UN Commission of Inquiry into war crimes listed 52 people for investigation and placards named some of these calling for them to be brought to justice. They included Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir, Saleh Gosh, head of Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Service, Minister of the Federation Government Nafi Ali Nafi and former Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman.

Earlier that month there had been fresh reports of beatings, detentions and shooting of Darfuri civilians in Khartoum and Omdurman but little had appeared in the UK mainstream press and they had sent no photographers or reporters to the event. It was one of those protests that later one photographer told me his editor dismisses as “tribal matters“.

More pictures at Justice for Darfur.


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Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism – 2019

Saturday, April 27th, 2024

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism – On Saturday 27th April 2019 I joined with several thousand others to march through Southall, a town ten miles west of Central London callling for unity against racism. The date marked 40 years after the racist murder of New Zealand born East London teacher Blair Peach on St George’s Day, April 23rd 1979, 40 years before.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

Peach had come to Southall with many others to protest against a National Front rally being held at Southall Town Hall, the venue chosen deliberately to inflame racial tensions in the area which had become the centre of a large Punjabi community, attracted by work in local factories and nearby Heathrow airport. Well over half of Southall’s roughly 70,000 inhabitants were of Asian origin and two thirds of the children were non-white.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

I’d grown up in the local area though we didn’t go to Southall much as the bus route there was probably the least reliable in London, though I occasionally cycled there to watch the steam trains thundering through on the Great Western main line. My older sister taught at a school in the area and we had seen the population change over the years; our Irish neighbours were replaced by Indians and we got on well with both. The new immigrants to the area were hard working, revitalised many local businesses and generally improved the area, making it a more interesting and exciting place to live.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

I wasn’t there in 1979 when Blair Peach was murdered, but the accounts published of the event were horrific, with several thousand police apparently running amok trying to disperse the protesters who fought back. Members of the specialist Special Patrol Group were reported by eye-witnesses as hitting everybody down Beachcroft Avenue where Peach and his companions had gone thinking wrongly it would enable them to leave the area. Wikipedia has a long article, The Death of Blair Peach.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

Peach was badly injured by a severe blow to the head, almost certainly by an officer using wielding “not a police truncheon, but a “rubber ‘cosh’ or hosepipe filled with lead shot, or some like weapon“, and died a few hours later in hospital. Police in the squad which killed him made great attempts to avoid detection, one shaving off his moustache and another refusing to take part in identity parades; some uniforms were dry-cleaned before being offered for inspection and others withheld, and various attempts were made by police to obstruct justice and prevent the subsequent inquest establishing the truth.

Peach’s was not the only racist murder in Southall. Three years earlier Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an 18-year old Sikh student had been murdered by racist skinheads in June 1976 shortly after he left the Dominion Cinema, and the marchers gathered in a parking area close to there. His family had requested that the event begin with a karate display there, after which the march set off, halting for a minute’s silence on the street outside the cinema where Chaggar was murdered.

From there we marched to the Ramgarhia Sabha Gurdwara in Oswald Road which Chaggar and his family attended and prayers were said outside before the march moved on.

As we walked along the Broadway, red and white roses were handed out to the marchers, and the march turned off down Beechcroft Road to the corner of Orchard Ave, where they were laid at the spot where Blair Peach was murdered by an officer of the police Special Patrol Group.

The march moved on to Southall Town Hall on the corner of High Street and Lady Margaret Road. Blue plaques were put up here in 2019 honouring the deaths of Blair Peach and Gurdip Singh Chaggar, with a third in tribute to Southall’s prominent reggae band, Misty ‘n Roots. These plaques were stolen in June 2020, but were replaced the following year.

Speakers at the rally there included a number of people who had been there when the police rioted 40 years ago, as well as John McDonnell MP, Pragna Patel who was inspired by the event to form Southall Black Sisters, trade unionists, Anti Nazi league founder Paul Holborow, and local councillor Jaskiran Chohan. Notable by his absence was the local Labour MP.

You can seem many more pictures from the march and of the rally on My London Diary at Southall rally for unity against racism.


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No To Arms Fair At Twickenham

Saturday, January 27th, 2024

No To Arms Fair At Twickenham: This Monday, 22nd January 2024, Richmond & Kingston Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised their third annual protest at Twickenham Rugby Stadium which was hosting the International Armoured Vehicles Fair for the third year in a row from 22-25th January. The arms fair claims to be the largest of its type in the world, attracting around a thousand delegates from over 40 nations,

I came to the bus stop outside Twickenham Station to find several people clearly on their way to the stadium, and found more on the bus when it arrived – the bus more or less emptied when we arrived at the stop in front of the stadium. We walked across the road and joined a hundred or so who had already come to protest.

I had to leave after around an hour for a meeting, and people were still arriving to the protest which had another couple of hours to run. This was a considerably larger protest than in the two previous years having become more important because many of the companies selling weapons inside are suppliers of weapons which are being used now to kill Palestinians in Gaza.

Richmond & Kingston Palestine Solidarity Campaign is an active local group campaigning for the rights of Palestinians, justice and freedom against Israeli occupation and apartheid. Their numbers at this protest were swelled by others who had come from other areas of London to tell the Rugby Football Union to stop hosting arms fairs. As well as the International Armoured Vehicles Fair this week they are also hosting the International Military Helicopter conference from 27th to 29th February 2024.

Many of the posters and placards at the protest called for an end to the Israeli genocide taking place in Gaza now, and there were others more specific to Twickenham, calling for fair play and an end to the promotion of killing by the Rugby authorities.

At the centre of the protest was a large poster with the heading ‘MERCHANTS OF DEATH’ naming companies taking part in the arms fair, including BAE Systems, Elbit Systems and Thales, with cartoons of arms dealers making vast profits from war. Most of the companies involved supply Israel with armoured vehicles and other weapons used in its devastating assault on Gaza and used to repress, terrorise, abduct and kill civilians and children in Palestine as well as in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere around the world. And as some posters and speakers reminded us, Israeli arms manufacturers proudly boast ‘OUR WEAPONS ARE FIELD-TESTED’ – on Palestinians in the killing fields of Gaza and the West Bank.

Standing around the poster were members of Richmond & Kingston PSC, holding up their hands in white gloves stained with fake blood, with one holding a Palestinian flag. Others held posters and banners, ‘CEASEFIRE NOW’, ‘WAR KILLS PEOPLE & PLANET’, ‘STOP BOMBING CHLDREN’

Shortly before I had to leave a group arrived carrying cloth bundles stained with red dye, representing the children killed by the Israeli attacks. A report by Save The Children from Ramallah on 11th January began with the following:

More than 10,000 children have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in Gaza in nearly 100 days of violence, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, with thousands more missing, presumed buried under rubble, Save the Children said.

Save The Children

By now the number will be many more. As one poster stated: ‘TWICKENHAM DON’T SIDE WITH GENOCIDE’.

More pictures

Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists – 2019

Friday, January 19th, 2024

Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists: Three events I photographed on Saturday 19th January 2019.

Bread & Roses is again relevant now in January 2024, with the release of a new version of the song a few days ago by the ‘Orchestra of Cardboard‘, part of the amazing ‘Every street a POWER STATION campaign‘, a project of Walthamstow’s community interest company Optimistic Foundation CIC set up by artist and filmmaker Hilary Powell and filmmaker and musician Dan Edelstyn. The recording is a part of their fundraising campaign and your can read, see and hear more about it and their other campaigns which are already having an effect in the area on their crowdfunder page.

But back to January 2019, five years ago today.


Women’s Bread & Roses protest

Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists - 2019

Inspired by the Bread & Roses protests which revolutionised workers’ rights for women in 1912, Women’s March London marched from the BBC to a rally in Trafalgar Square against economic oppression, violence against women, gender pay gap, racism, fascism, institutional sexual harassment and hostile environment in the UK, and called for a government dedicated to equality and working for all of us rather than the few.

Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists - 2019

The London march was part of an international day with women marching in many countries around the world, particularly in cities across the USA.

Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists - 2019

At the start of the march was opposite the BBC on the steps of Langham Place a few of the women organising the event were being directed and filmed by a BBC film crew. Supposedly this was a documentary but it seemed to be more a scripted drama closely controlled by the director and with the women involved holding orange folders from which they read.

Bread & Roses, Morales & Russian anti-fascists - 2019

But there were a rather larger group of women (and just a few men with them) standing around outside the BBC building and largely ignoring the filming that was taking place. Many had made placards especially for the event, with some using words from the poem ‘Bread and Roses‘ written by James Oppenheim and published at the end of 1911. The phrase ‘Bread and Roses’ came from a speech the previous year by Helen Todd, speaking about the need for laws to regulate wages, working hours and conditions.

A few days later a strike was started by textile workers, largely immigrants, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The strike was organised by the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, led largely by women and they took up Oppenheims poem and sang it at their meetings and marches, as well as apparently marching with a banner ‘We want Bread, and Roses too!’ during their three-month strike.

Eventually, when the BBC had finished making their movie the women gathered for a march and I walked with them to Trafalgar Square.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Women’s Bread & Roses protest.


Bolivians protest against Morales – Trafalgar Square

A small group of Bolivians had come to protest following a decision in December by the Electoral Commission that President Evo Morales could stand for a fourth term in office in the October 2019 elections which were starting with primaries at the end of January 2019. But I was not convinced that this was truly a protest about democracy rather than simply against his socialist policies.

Morales, Bolivia’s first president to come from the indigenous population was first elected in 2005. He supported the 2009 constitution which allowed only two consecutive terms in office but was able to stand for a third term as his first term had been before the limit was imposed. In 2016 tried to increase the limit to three terms by a referendum which was narrowly defeated. But after this the courts ruled that the limitation infringed the human rights of citizens, allowing him to stand for a further term.

Morales won the October 2019 but their were widespread protests alleging electoral fraud, although later investigations suggested he had indeed gained the 10% lead required for a first-round victory. But the protests grew and he was endangered by armed groups; eventually he resigned on 10th November 2019, fleeing to Mexico where he was granted political asylum. Allegations made against him of sedition and terrorism were later found to be politically motivated and in 2020 a Bolivian court found his rights had been violated and judicial procedures breached.

His successful policies which reduced poverty and illiteracy and combated the influence of the USA and multinational companies made him very unpopular among the middle class and particularly the groups accustomed to running the country. Many in the USA encouraged and financed the opposition to him as he was widely seen to have shown a successful alternative to the growth of international capitalism.

Bolivians protest against Morales


Solidarity with Russian anti-fascists – Whitechapel

Finally I went east to the Cable Street Mural where anarchists and anti-fascists were meeting l to oppose racism, xenophobia, fascism and the upsurge of far-right populism and to show solidarity with Russian anti-fascists who have been arrested, framed and tortured in a brutal wave of repression.

Russian and Ukranian comrades spoke at the rally. telling us of the persecution taking place. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested six in Penza in 2017, charging them with belonging to a non-existent organisation, ‘The Network’. Beatings and torture before their trial were used to make them give false confessions.

Two others were arrested in 2018 in St Petersburg and charged with belonging to the same fictional network and again tortured into making confessions and further similar arrests have followed. A total of 11 where then in prison for belonging to’The Network’, facing 5 to 25 years in jail.

The date for the protest was chosen as the anniversary of the brutal murder of two Russian anti-fascists, journalist Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, by fascists in broad daylight on the streets of Moscow on January 19th 2009. Russian anarchists and anti-fascists hold events to remember them on this day every year.

There was then a march to a further rally in Altab Ali Park, named for the 24-year-old clothing worker murdered in a nearby street on 4 May 1978.

More pictures at Solidarity with Russian anti-fascists.


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Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023 – November

Sunday, January 7th, 2024

Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023: My work in November was largely on protests over the continued genocide in Gaza where Israeli attacks were killing thousands of civilians including large numbers of children as they attempted to exterminate Hamas.

The killing continues and currently in January 2024 Wikipedia states “Over 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands more are considered missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.” Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been displaced and there is a severe humanitarian crisis with a shortage of food, medicines and safe water, with most of Gaza’s hospitals no longer able to operate. It now seems certain that many Gazans will die from famine and disease. The Israeli attack has quite unequivocally become a deliberate genocide.

Protests around the world have called for a ceasefire, and this is supported by the majority of countries in the world at the UN, but the killing continues with support for the Israeli offensive from the USA and UK and a few other countries.

While both Israel and the Palestinian resistance have committed war crimes, Israel is doing so on a huge industrial scale. Refugee camps and Hospitals have been deliberately targeted and many hospital staff are among the thousands of Palestinians detained in Israel. More journalists have already been killed in Gaza than the total number killed in six years of the Second World War and Israel has prevented the world’s press from reporting from Gaza and the parts of Israel which came under attack by Hamas and the other Palestinian groups.

Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023 - November
Lewisham March – National Day of Action For Palestine, London. 4 Nov 23.
Several thousands march from a rally at Lewisham Council Offices in Catford to a rally in the centre of Lewisham in one of many local protests around the UK in solidarity with Palestine calling for an immediate ceasefire and against the government support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Later many went on to the central rally for a Gaza ceasefire in Trafalgar Square.
Peter Marshall
Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023 - November
Huge Trafalgar Square Rally for Gaza Ceasefire. London, 4 Nov 23.
Many thousands packed Trafalgar Square and the surrounding streets for the largest rally there in living memory in solidarity with Palestine and against our government’s disgraceful support for Israel’s assault. The rally came after local protests around London and across the country observing a silence for those in Palestine and Israel already killed and calling for an immediate ceasefire with negations to free the hostages and towards a peace settlement in the area.
Peter Marshall
Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023 - November
Armistice Day March Calls for Ceasefire In Palestine. London. 11 Nov 2023.
Hundreds of thousands march peacefully from Hyde Park to the US Embassy at Nine Elms on Armistice Day calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East, where thousands of innocent civilians including many children have died both in the Hamas-led attack on Israel and in hugely punitive air attacks which have devastated large areas of Gaza.
Peter Marshall
Goodbye & Good Riddance 2023 - November
Ceasefire Now in Gaza March Against Starmer. Camden, London. 18 Nov 23.
Around two thousand fill the pavements at Chalk Farm station and march in solidarity to Camden Town and on to a rally outside the office of MPs Keir Starmer and Tulip Siddiq. Marchers expressed shock at killings of innocent civilians including children, doctors and patients, called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and were angry that Starmer had whipped Labour into voting against this.
Peter Marshall
People vs Oil PROTEST March, Just Stop Oil. London. 18 Nov 23. An officer puts handcuffs on one of a group who held up traffic to allow the march to pass safely. A crowd of supporters of Just Stop Oil of all ages marched from beside the London Eye through Southwark in protest against the failures of the government who are imprisoning peaceful protesters, licensing 100 new oil projects and ripping up any prospect of reaching net zero and endangering the future of human life on our planet.
Peter Marshall
Gaza Ceasefire Now March in Lewisham. London. 18 Nov 23. Several thousands march from Lewisham Islamic Centre to a rally outside Glass Mills Leisure Centre in one of many local protests around the UK in solidarity with Palestine calling for an immediate ceasefire and condemning MPs including local MP Vicky Foxcroft who voted this week against a ceasefire. There was angry disbelief when police arrested a young woman for a placard she was carrying.
Peter Marshall
Make Amazon Pay Black Friday Protest. London. 24 Nov 2023.
A protest at Amazon’s HQ in London joined groups across the world in the Make Amazon Pay coalition striking, protesting, picketing, boycotting, and fighting for the rights of Amazon workers around the world against abuse and exploitation. Amazon dodge taxes, deny union recognition, refuses to pay fair wages and fails to ensure safe working conditions and their activities are wrecking the climate, threatening the future of human life on earth.
Peter Marshall
Ceasefire for Gaza Now – National Protest. London. 25 Nov 2023.
Two police officers walk in the protest. Hundreds of thousands marched again through London to call for ceasefire in the war on Gaza where millions of civilians still face attacks by Israeli forces. The current pause and hostage exchanges are welcome but do little to address the urgent humanitarian crisis and the killing is set to resume. The marchers call for a permanent ceasefire and for a political solution to bring peace and justice to Palestine under international law.
Peter Marshall
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain Call for Muslim Armies. London, 25 Nov 2023.
A large crowd of followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, men and women in separate groups, listened to speakers in front of the Egyptian Embassy calling for Muslims to rescue of Palestine from 75 years of occupation, brutal oppression, sieges, kidnapping and murder. They call on Muslims in armies in the region to join together to restore a just caliphate where people from all faiths can live together across the Middle East.
Peter Marshall

It was getting dark as I took pictures of the Egyptian Embassy and I was tired and feeling chilled by the speeches. I think I first photographed Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain around 20 years ago and have never felt welcome as I took pictures. But I also remember that I didn’t take them seriously when years ago they talked about ‘Muslim Armies’ – and then we saw the rise of ISIS and I realised how wrong I had been.

The final part of my looking back on 2023 will be online tomorrow.


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Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice – 2014

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice – on Saturday 22nd November 2014 I photographed protests about democracy and justice in the UK, the brutal persecution of Christians in Pakistan and Class War protesting outside the homes of millionaire objectors to a proposed mansion tax. My day’s work ended in Brixton with an annual march remembering young men killed in Brixton Police Station.


Occupy Democracy at Supreme Court – Parliament Square

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice - 2014

Activists from Occupy Democracy had spent the night on the wide pavement in front of the Supreme Court on the west side of Parliament Square and were getting ready to hold two days of workshops there.

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice - 2014

The Supreme Court is housed in the ornamented former Middlesex Guildhall facing the Houses of Parliament across the square and does not sit at weekends, perhaps why the police had not tried hard to remove the protesters.

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice - 2014

Parliament Square itself was still fenced off and guarded, with police fearing that Occupy protesters might come and set up up a tented camp there. One of the banners the protesters had brought read ‘WE ARE THE GHOST OF BRIAN HAW’, the peace protester who had defied legal and illegal attempts to remove him from his camp facing Parliament for many years.

Democracy, Mansion Tax & Justice - 2014

A small group of protesters was sheltering from the rain in the doorway of the Supreme Court and I went to say ‘Hello’ and take a few pictures.

Others were holding posters and banners and waiting for others to come an join them for the workshops. I couldn’t stay but hoped to come back later, but ran out of time to do so.

Occupy Democracy at Supreme Court


Justice for Shahzad & Shama – Downing St

Shahzad Masih and Shama Bibi were Pakistani Christians who had been trapped into bond labour at a brick kiln in a Muslim village 35 miles south-west of Lahore. Shahad was involved in a dispute with the kiln owner and landlord as he wanted to pay off his debts and leave and the landlord’s accountant is alleged to have raped Shama.

Shama had cleared out and burnt some items belonging to her father after his death on 30th October 2014. These included some black magic amulets and written charms. The ashes were seen by a Muslim worker and he accused her of burning the Koran.

A large mob came from surrounding villages and attacked the couple, stripped them and tied them to a tractor, beating them as they were taken to the kiln, where petrol was poured over their bodies; accounts differ as to whether both were still alive when they were then thrown into the furnace while there six year old child watched. Armed police stood by but refused to interfere in their murders.

The police and authorities appear to have tried to cover up the case and buried the remains of the bodies in secret to avoid their families arranging a funeral. But the news leaked out and the federal government had appointed a minister to co-ordinate the case. At Downing Street there were prayers and speeches calling for justice including from an Elim Pentecostal minister and singer Si Genaro.

Justice for Shahzad & Shama


Class War Griff Rhys Jones Mansion Tax – Fitzroy Square

Earlier in the month, Class War had announced they would stand a number of candidates in the forthcoming 2015 General Election and had put together a manifesto largely as they walked the short distance from the pub to a Poor Doors protest.

Marina Pepper rang the bell at Griff Rhys Jones’ house

Class War did not expect to win any seats – or even save their deposits, but “to launch a furious and coordinated political offensive against the ruling class with the opportunity an election gives us to talk politics to our class.” And they intended to “make ourselves central to the campaign in a funny, rumbustious combative and imaginative way.”

One of the key pledges in their manifesto was for a 50% mansion tax, and it was also a policy on a rather less punitive scale for the then Labour party (no longer in existence.) And several well-known and filthy rich people had voiced their objections including Griff Rhys Jones who said he would leave the country if Labour levied a mansion tax.

On Saturday 22nd November a small group from Class War, including two of their election candidates Marina Pepper went to protest at the £7 million home of Griff Rhys Jones in Fitzroy Square, telling him to “f**k off now“, offering to pay the fare.

Class War rang on the bell though nobody came to answer it, although there were signs of movement inside. They put hazard tape around the area outside the house before going for a walk around the square, pausing for another brief protest outside the home of Guy Ritchie, another millionaire objector to a mansion tax.

Continuing around the square, next to the house where both George Bernard Shaw and later Virginia Woolf both lived, they came across the Magistrates Association – who got another sticker, as did the locked gates into the private garden in the centre of the square.

Having gone around the square they arrived back outside Griff Rhys Jones’s house where they stopped for a group photograph and a few more minutes of protest before leaving for a nearby pub. I would have liked to join them but had to rush to another event.

Class War Griff Rhys Jones Mansion Tax


Still No Justice for Ricky Bishop – Brixton

Ricky Bishop, a fit young black man, died from unexplained injuries hours after being taken to Brixton Police Station on 22 Nov 2001. Family and supporters call it a modern day lynching and march annually to remember him and call for justice.

Ricky Bishop was a fit young black man when taken into Brixton Police Station on 22 Nov 2001, but hours later he died from unexplained injuries. His family and supporters call his death a modern day lynching and march annually to remember him and call for justice.

People met in Windrush Square and marched slowly to the police station, calling out the names of the officers they accuse of murdering him, to hold a memorial event around the tree outside which has been adopted as a remembrance tree for Ricky Bishop and the others killed there by police.

Among the speakers was Marcia Rigg who spoke forcefully of the long battle to get any proper investigation into the death in he police station of her brother Sean Rigg in August 2008. While she was speaking there were shouts from officers inside the police station accusing her and the family of lying about the police.

I felt shocked and disgusted that police still feel the killing people as they did Sean Rigg is defensible and go to great lengths to prevent proper investigation, giving police almost total immunity from the consequences of their actions.

Although many of the over 3,000 custody deaths between 1969 and 2011 may not have been the result of deliberate actions or failures, there has not been a single officer successfully prosecuted, despite considerable evidence of wrongdoing. Instead we have seen repeated instances of failures to properly investigate and interview officers, collusion to give false statements, unnecessary holding up of cases, disallowing of evidence, misleading of juries and other means, including failures of both the Crown Prosecution Service and the so-called Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Many more pictures of the march and memorial on My London Diary at Still No Justice for Ricky Bishop.


Roma, Olympic Park and Mind – 2016

Tuesday, October 31st, 2023

Roma, Olympic Park and Mind: After a morning protest by Roma at the Czech Embassy in Kensington I took a walk around the Olympic Park in Stratford before joining the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) who were holding a Halloween Demo at the national office of Mind.


Roma protest Czech Murder – Czech embassy, Kensington

Roma, Olympic Park and Mind

Ladislav Balaz, Chair of the Roma Labour Group and Europe Roma Network and others had come to hand in a letter calling for the murder of a young Romani man by neo-Nazi skinheads in Žatec to be properly investigated.

Roma, Olympic Park and Mind

The man who had lived in the UK until a year ago was a second cousin of Balaz. He was set upon as he went to buy cigarettes at a pizzeria.

Roma, Olympic Park and Mind

Most cases of murders of Roma in the Czech Republic are dismissed by police as accidents and they have already issued false stories about the victim, claiming he was mentally ill and attacked people. The Roma demand justice and equality for everyone in Czech Republic and the elimination of any double standards of justice. Several of the protesters made speeches in Czech as the letter was presented.

Roma protest Czech Murder


A Walk in the Olympic Park – Stratford

Roma, Olympic Park and Mind

I had several hours between the protest outside the Czech Embassy and a protest in Stratford High Street and decided it was a good occasion to take another walk in the park at Stratford which had been the site of the 2012 London olympic games and to make some more panoramic images.

It was a year since I had been there, and four years since the Olympics and I had hoped to see the park in much better condition than I found it. Considerable progress had been made in the buildings which are shooting up around it and many of the ways into the park are still closed.

I walked around much of the southern area of the park and found it still “largely an arid and alienating space composed mainly of wide empty walkways rather than a park.”

I took rather a lot of pictures, both panoramic and more normal views before it was time to make my way back through the Westfield shopping centre into the centre of Stratford.

Many more pictures at A Walk in the Olympic Park.


Against Mind’s collusion with the DWP – Stratford

Paul Farmer, Mind’s chief executive came out and spoke to the protesters

The Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) came for a Halloween Demo at the national office of mental health charity Mind in Stratford.

They complain that Mind failed to mention the effects of welfare reform, sanctions, or benefit-related deaths in its latest five-year strategy and has dropped its support for the long-running court case aimed at forcing the government to make WCA safer for people with mental health conditions.

Mind’s policy and campaigns manager Tom Pollard had been seconded to work as a senior policy adviser to the DWP and was to start the following day and they demanded the resignation of Mind’s chief executive, Paul Farmer.

Farmer came out to meet the protesters on the pavement and told them that Mind was still working for people with mental health problems and not for the DWP, and that Pollard’s decision had been entirely a personal one in order to gain more insight into the workings of government rather than to assist them in the any discrimination against the disabled.

The protesters were unconvinced and after he had finished speaking several spoke about how local Mind groups were working against the interests of those with mental health problems. They claimed the local managers were often more interested in empire building than in the welfare of benefit claimants.

More pictures at Mind’s collusion with the DWP.