north Woolwich

Posts Tagged ‘north Woolwich’

Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou’s

Tuesday, August 1st, 2023

Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou’s: Thursday 1st August 2019 was a long and busy day for me with an Afrikan Emancipation Day protest, finishing a walk in North Woolwich I’d begun six months earlier and photographing an evening protest outside the exclusive Mayfair club LouLou’s.

Afrikans demand reparations – Brixton, London.

Afrikans demand Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou's

People of African origin met in Windrush Square in the morning to demand an end of the Maangamizi, the continuing genocide and ecocide of African peoples and Africa on Afrikan Emancipation Day.

After speeches & libations they marched from Brixton to Westminster with a petition calling for an end to acts of violence by Britain, the misuse of taxes and the stolen legacy plundered from Afrika under the British Empire and European Imperialism and demanding reparations.

The protest was supported by Extinction Rebellion XR Connecting Communities who marched in an Ubuntu Non-Afrikan Allies bloc.

I left the march as it went past Brixton Police Station on its way to protest outside the Houses of Parliament so I could have some lunch before going to take pictures elsewhere.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Afrikans demand reparations.

DLR – Bank to North Woolwich

I’d taken the tube back into central London to have a quick lunch before taking the DLR from Bank to London City to King George V Dock station for the final section of the walk I had begun in February but had run out of time to finish because I’d had to take a roundabout route to get there as the direct DLR services were suspended following an accident.

This time the trains were running properly. They start from Bank and so come into the station empty and I was able to chose my seat and for once I found myself sitting next to a clean window on my way to North Woolwich and took a number of pictures.

Later on my way back to Canary Wharf from King George V I was less lucky and the windows were rather grimy, but I still made a few images.

More at DLR – Bank to London City Airport.

North Woolwich, Royal Docks & the Thames

*The footpath goes across these gates of the entrance lock to Albert Dock Basin*

I took a few pictures as I walked from the elevated King George V station at North Woolwich to the King George V Dock entrance and joined the path by the river.

The lock here is huge, 243.8m long and 30.48m wide. I’d first photographed the area back in the 1980s as a part of a wider project on the Docklands following their closure, both in colour but mainly in black and white – in the album 1984 London Photographs. Although the docks themselves remain, much around them has changed, although there are still some derelict areas.

The riverside path here is part of the Capital Ring, and continues north and over lock at the Albert Dock entrance to the curiously desolate Armada Green Recreation Area.

Here the path ends, with beyond it the former site of the Beckton Gas Works, used as a location for at least 17 films and TV series since its closure, though best known as a stand-in for Vietnam in the 1987 Full Metal Jacket. Past that is the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, set up in 1864 as part of Joseph Bazalgette’s scheme to treat London’s sewage and still receiving it from all of London north of the Thames.

I had to turn inland, through more recent development and the refurbished Gallions Hotel around Alber Dock Basin. I went briefly under the new bridge to see again the East London University student residences, then went back and across it, taking more pictures from the bridge and the road on my way back to King George V station.

Many more pictures at North Woolwich Royal Docks & Thames.

LouLou’s stop exploiting your workers – Mayfair

Finally I joined the IWGB Cleaners and Facilities Branch outside the exclusive Mayfair private club LouLou’s where they were picketing and protesting for kitchen porters to be paid a living wage, be treated with dignity, respect and given decent terms and conditions including proper sick pay, holidays and pension contributions. Recently outsourced to ACT, porters want to be returned to direct employment.

Among those supporting them were Class War, and in the picture above Ian Bone confronts a police office asking why they protect and support the rich. Needless to say the officer had no answer to the question. In general the protesters were reasonably behaved and acting within the law, but police and security hired by the club worked together to try and prevent their protest being effective.

There were angry scenes as staff escorted wealthy clients of the £1800 a year club past the picket, particularly when some roughly pushed the protesters. Police repeatedly warned the protesters but not the security men or customers who had assaulted them. The security also tried to prevent the picket from handing their flier to the customers.

As at previous protests outside of the club, none of the security staff were wearing the visible SIA door supervisor licences required under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, but the police refused to take any action over this.

More pictures at LouLou’s stop exploiting your workers.

Tags:Afrikan Emancipation Day, Albert Dock, Albert Dock Basin, Bow Creek, British Empire, Brixton, Class War, Cleaners and Facilities, DLR, door staff, ecocide, exclusive club, genocide, holidays, Ian Bone, imperialism, IWGB, King George V, Kitchen Porters, libations, living wage, lock, London, London Photos, Loulou's, Maangammizi, Mayfair, north Woolwich, pensions, peter Marshall, police, police protect the rich, Poplar, protest, reparations, River Thames, Royal Docks, security, SIA licences, sick pay, speeches, stolen legacy, Tate & Lyle, Thames, Windrush Square
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Outsourcing, North Woolwich & Class War v. Rees-Mogg

Saturday, February 26th, 2022

Outsourcing, North Woolwich & Class War v. Rees-Mogg. Three years ago on Tuesday 26th February I spent the morning photographing several protests against outsourcing, had a rather late pub lunch, then went to North Woolwich for a short walk before rushing back to meet Class War who were protesting outside a Palladium show by Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Rally for an end to Outsourcing

A legal challenge was taking place at the High Court on this day to extend the employment rights of the 3.3 million workers whose jobs are outsourced from the companies where they work to contracting companies which then sell them back to their place of employment at cut rates.

*Labour Shadow Business minister Laura Pidcock*

The contractors do this by cutting wages, trimming things such as pensions, maternity pay and holiday pay to the bare legal minimum, increasing workload and reducing hours of work and often bullying managers. Outsourced workers generally have little job security and are often denied necessary safety equipment and not given proper safety training.

Workers, mainly migrants who work for the Ministry of Justice, Dept for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the University of London were taking part in a one day strike in a coordinated action by the UVW and IWGB trade unions and the BEIS PCS branch to demand an end to outsourcing and the insecurity, discrimination and low pay it causes. They had started their march at 8.00am at the University of London and after a rally outside the High Court had marched to Parliament Square where I met them at 11am.

Rally for an end to Outsourcing

Outsourced Workers protest at BEIS

From Parliament Square the marchers went on to hold a further rally outside the Dept for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in Victoria St. Those striking at the BEIS included catering and security staff who are members of the PCS and are demanding the London Living Wage as well as end to outsourcing and the insecurity, discrimination and low pay it causes.

The PCS strikers led a lively rally with plenty of singing, dancing and shouting of slogans expressing their demands, which was followed by several speeches, including from Labour MP Chris Williamson, who brought messages of support from Labour shadow cabinet members and promises that a Labour government would end outsourcing.

Outsourced Workers protest at BEIS

Outsourced Workers at Justice ministry

The marchers continued the short walk to the Ministry of Justice in Petty France, where low paid workers belonging to the United Voices of the World union at the Ministry of Justice have been campaigning for some time to get the London Living wage, but the Justice Minister has refused to talk with them. Many wore t-shirts calling it the Ministry of Injustice.

During the rally outside the building some of the UVW workers who had already been on strike for 24 hours went back into the ministry to resume work, to cheers and hugs from those on the street outside. The rally ended with music and dancing on the pavement, and I left for a rather late pub lunch in Holborn.

Outsourced Workers at Justice ministry

I’d been intending to walk a short section of the Capital Ring, mainly beside the River Thames, for some months as it had been quite a few years since I’d last been there and wanted to see how it had changed. I had an afternoon with nothing else I needed to photograph and although the sunny weather with clear blue skies was not ideal it seemed a good opportunity.

Panoramic photographs almost always have large expanses of sky, and on days like this it tends lack interest, as well as often giving unnatural looking variations in tone when getting closer to the sun. Getting to North Woolwich should have been simple and reasonably fast, but unfortunately there was trouble on the DLR and I had to make a less direct route, so had to rather rush on the walk and leave it half-finished. It was a few months later before I found time to go back and complete it.

North Woolwich

Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show

I find it hard to understand why anyone should want to come and listen to Jacob Rees-Mogg, let alone pay £38 for a ticket to do so at the London Palladium.

So too did Class War, and with Jane Nicholl dressed as a nun, Mother Hysteria, and Adam Clifford as Jacob Rees Mogg they loudly asked why people had come to listen to him “spout homophobic, transphobic, racist, pro-hunting, misogynist, classist, privileged” nonsense.

Their show on the street outside was almost certainly a better show than anything that would take place later inside the venue, and all for free. Police spent a considerable amount of public money on harassing them, and provided their own rather hilarious input by searching Mother Hysteria and threatening to arrest her for carrying offensive weapons after some novelty stink bombs were found in her handbag. When I left the officer who had stopped and searched her had already spent 20 minutes trying to write her notice of stop and search, probably at a loss trying to find some way to put it that doesn’t make it sound incredibly stupid.

Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show

Tags:BEIS, Class War, classist, Dept for Business, discrimination, Energy & Industrial Strategy, freak show, holidays, homophobic, insecurity, IWGB, London, London Photos, low pay, march, maternity leave, maternity pay, Ministry of Justice, misogynist, Mother Hysteria, nonsense, north Woolwich, one day strike, outsourcing, Palladium, panoramas, PCS, pensions, peter Marshall, police, privileged, pro-hunting, protest, racist, Rees-Mogg, River Thames, Royal Docks, sick pay, trade unions, transphobic, University of London, UVW
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Stratford, Woolwich & Chelsea

Monday, January 10th, 2022

Stratford, Woolwich & Chelsea
Perhaps the only thing these three parts of London really have in common was that I photographed in them in the last few days of July 1988. The first two were on a family visit to the railway museum then at North Woolwich station, largely for the benefit on my two sons, then aged 12 and 9, and both with a real interest in railways and had decide on this as a birthday outing for the elder. I think we probably had a few of their friends with us, some in the second picture below.

Stratford Station, Stratford, Newham, 1988 88-7m-34-positive_2400 — *Stratford Station, Stratford, Newham, 1988 88-7m-34*

North London Line, Stratford Station, Stratford, Newham, 1988 88-7m-35-positive_2400 — *North London Line, Stratford Station, Stratford, Newham, 1988 88-7m-35*

And once we were in North Woolwich it would have been a shame to miss the free ride across the River Thames on the Woolwich Ferry. One of their favourite books when younger had been Alfie and the Ferryboat, by Charles Keeping, published in 1968 Keeping, born close the the Thames in Lambeth tells the story of a small boy from Woolwich crossing the river on the ferryboat to ‘the other side of the world’ in search of his old sailor friend Bunty and his dog.

Woolwich Ferry, North Woolwich, Newham, 1988 88-7m-24-positive_2400 — *Woolwich Ferry, North Woolwich, Newham, 1988 88-7m-24*

Keeping was a superb and innovative illustrator and the book is perhaps his best work. Copies of it are now hard to find and rather expensive.

Woolwich, Greenwich, 1988 88-7m-12-positive_2400 — *Woolwich, Greenwich, 1988 88-7m-12*

The ferry that Alfie took was one of the same that we took, which were introduced in 1963 – the John Burns, Ernest Bevin and James Newman, double-ended ships with powerful diesel engines which were replaced in 2018 after 55 years on the run.

I only made twelve black and white pictures on this trip, along with three in colour, probably too occupied with herding 12 year-old boys than photography, and getting them all back to a birthday tea on the other side of London.

Moorings, River Thames,Cheyne Walk, Worlds End, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7m-14-positive_2400 — *Moorings, River Thames, Cheyne Walk, Worlds End, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7m-14*

Days are long in July, and four days later I began taking pictures on Battersea Brdige and then a short walk in Chelsea.

Crosby Hall, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-02-positive_2400 — *Crosby Hall, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-02*

Probably I had looked at pictures I had taken earlier in the year and decided there were some I would like to retake, or perhaps found some things I had missed. I spent a lot of time on researching the areas I was photographing, which was much harder before the days of the world wide web – and many of the books I had to rely on were years out of date, often pre-war or even older.

Sir Hans Sloane, memorial, Chelsea Old Church, Cheyne Walk , Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-62-positive_2400 — *Sir Hans Sloane, memorial, Chelsea Old Church, Cheyne Walk , Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-62*

I think I may not have got a picture – or not one I liked of this memorial to Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), an Anglo-Irish doctor and collector who travelled widely to France and the Caribbean, where he supposedly invented drinking chocolate as well as giving a harrowing account of the sadistic punishments inflicted on slaves and married the wealthy widow of one of the larger slave owners.

Her money from slavery and his income from a doctor and investments in property and slave trading companies enabled him to build up a collection of 71,000 items which he left to the British Nation. These provided the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum.

Christchurch St, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-55-positive_2400 — *Christchurch St, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-55*

But after taking around thirty pictures the next (not on-line) shows a view from the back of two women on a station escalator, with the next frame on the Commercial Road in Limehouse. I think I will have taken the Underground from Sloane Square to Tower Hill and walked to Tower Gateway for the DLR which had opened in 1987 to Limehouse. But pictures from my longer walk from there will be in a further post.

Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the rest of the album.

Tags:Alfie and the Ferryboat, Battersea Bridge, British Library, British Museum, Charles Keeping, Chelsea, Crosby Hall, drinking chocolate, huge profits, London, London Photos, Natural History Museum, North London Line, north Woolwich, peter Marshall, punishements, sadistic tortures, Sir Hans Sloane, slavery, Stratford, Stratford station, train, Woolwich, Woolwich ferry
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Two years ago – 26 Feb 2019

Friday, February 26th, 2021

Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show

Two years ago today Class War protested outside the London Palladium against Jacob Rees-Mogg, who they accused of spouting “homophobic, transphobic, racist, pro-hunting, misogynist, classist, privileged” nonsense. Rees-Mogg had booked London’s best known venue to preach more of this to his fans, who had paid £38 for a ticket to this freak show.

I met up with Class War at a pub a short walk from the Palladium and found a small group there with Jane Nicholl dressed as a nun, Mother Hysteria, and Adam Clifford as Jacob Rees Mogg and there was time for them to take a selfie and everyone to finish their drinks before the small group moved off to the entrance to the Palladium where a few more of there supporters were waiting and long queues were waiting to enter for the performance inside.

As well as the fans there were of course a large group of security men and police in attendance (all probably thanking Class War for the overtime.) And when Class War held up posters and banners the waiting crowd had their hopes for what they had paid to come and see confirmed. One or two did come across to insult the protesters, and a few others passing by came to share their similar views of Mogg with Class War.

Police did their best to render the protest less effective and moved the group to the opposite side of the pedestrianised street and issued various warnings to harass them. Eventually they stopped and searched Jane Nicholl, threatening her with arrest as they found stink bombs in her handbag which they claimed were offensive weapons. I stood for almost 20 minutes watching the officer writing out “her notice of stop and search, perhaps because he is at a loss trying to find some way that doesn’t make the police action sound stupid” before deciding I had to go home and file my pictures.