TUC Pensions March & Corporate Greed – On Wednesday 30th November 2011 public sector workers across the country held a one-day strike against government plans to cut public service pensions with pickets at thousands of workplaces and rallies and marches in towns and cities across the country as well as a South East TUC organised march in Central London which I photographed. Later in the afternoon I went with Occupy London protesters who occupied the offices of the highest paid CEO in the UK to protest against corporate greed.
TUC Nov 30 March – Lincolns Inn Fields to Westminster
It’s always hard to estimate the numbers on very large marches such as this one but it was very large and when I arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields the large space already seemed pretty crowded an hour before the march was due to start. Many people gave up trying to get in waited to join the march on Kingsway.
At the front of the march were Frances O’Grady, Deputy General Secretary of the TUC, NASUWT president John Rimmer (below) and other trade unionists. Many other groups had come with banners.
There were many placards suggesting ways to avoid the cuts, including by taxing the mega-rich and cutting the pointless and wasteful expenditure on Trident rather than job’s health and education.
Peter Tatchell
Some of the students on the march felt it was going to slow and began to march in front of the main banner.
Police stopped them and held up the whole of the march at Aldwych but then didn’t seem to know what to do. Eventually they just let things go ahead.
I took a lot of pictures of the Education Activist Network who were the liveliest part of the protest but there were plenty of others to photograph too with many interesting hand-made posters.
I stopped for quite a while to photograph marchers as they went past.
and they were still coming in large numbers an hour after the front of the march had passed me.
I was still on the Embankment with marchers when the rally had begun closer to Parliament and people were still rolling in. I think there were probably between 20 and 30,000 taking part, but it was hard to know and I think many who had been on picket lines early in the morning had left before the rally began. I left too to meet with people from Occupy London.
Occupy London Expose Corporate Greed – Piccadilly Circus & Panton House
Occupy London had called people to meet at Piccadilly Circus at 3pm but had not indicated what would be happening next. I arrived to find around a hundred protesters there along with quite a few Greek football supporters and a large number of police standing around watching them.
We stood in the intermittent rain for around half an hour waiting for something to happen. At 3.30pm around 30 people rushed across the road to stand outside a branch of Boots with the ‘Precarious Workers Brigade’ banner, but made no attempt to enter the store which quickly lowered its metal shutters.
Police rushed across the street to surround them, but soon became clear that this had merely been a diversion, as others close to Eros unfolded their long main ‘All Power to the 99%’ banner and rushed down Haymarket with it catching the police by surprise and leaving them behind.
I was running ahead of them, taking pictures over my shoulder and managing to keep ahead, but the police were well behind as we reached Panton St.
Here the protesters set off a bright orange flare, turned down Panton Street and rushed into Panton House. I followed the group with the main banner inside, but stupidly stopped in the foyer to take pictures through the glass frontage of the flares outside.
I was a little behind as the protesters ran up the stairs and rather out of breath after running along the street. By the time I reached the third or fourth landing I had decided to give up and pressed the button for a lift. Police arrived just as the lift came and one officer grabbed me stopping me from getting in.
Police told us all to go downstairs, but around 20 of the protesters and a few press had reached the roof. I made my way down, though it was difficult as more police rushing up pushed those of us going down out of the way.
The police had now surrounded the entrance, preventing any more people entering, but were allowing us to go out. I was pleased to get out because the air inside had been thick with the orange smoke and I had been choking slightly, Smoke flares aren’t intended for indoor use.
A little back on Haymarket by the side of the building protesters outside were taking part in a mike chat group chant to inform passers-by what was going on. From this I learnt that Panton House contains the London offices of the mining company Xstrata, whose CEO Mick Davies they say is the highest paid CEO in the UK, and “is a prime example of the greedy 1% lining their own pockets while denying workers pensions.”
Police began to surround them and I quickly moved away as they kettled the protesters, and also to get a better view of what was happening on the roof. TI had missed seeing the ‘All Power to the 99%’ banner being let down over Haymarket earlier but saw them trying to do so again but being dragged away from the edge. More police vans were now arriving and I decided there would be little else I could see and left.
Free Speech & PFI Debt – Ten years ago on Tuesday 8th October 2013 I photographed two protests in London, the first against a controversial law which prevents some campaigning by organisations in the year before a general election and the second over the effect of huge repayments of PFI debts that are severely affecting the ability to provide proper hospital services – a result of misguided policy decisions by previous governments and poor agreements made by civil servants.
Don’t Gag Free Speech – Parliament Square
Campaigners in Parliament Square opposed the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill which was being debated that day in Parliament in what was somewhere between a staged photo-opportunity and a protest.
The name of the Bill (and the Act which came into force in 2014) is something of a mouthful as it combined three quite different things. Establishing a register of consultant lobbyists seemed long overdue, although it seemed unlikely to reduce the scandalous effect of lobbying by groups such as fossil fuel companies on government policies – and clearly has not as recent decisions on Rosebank and other environmental issues has shown.
But the restrictions on the campaigning activities by charities and other “third party organisations” in the year before a general election was extremely controversial. So controversial that it was opposed by an incredibly wide range of voluntary organisations, “including Action for Blind People, Action for Children, the British Heart Foundation, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Countryside Alliance, Guide Dogs, Islamic Relief UK, Hope not Hate, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, the Royal British Legion, the RSPB and the Salvation Army.” All saw that their legitimate activities in pursuing their charitable and other aims could be limited by the new legislation at least one year in four.
The third section of the bill would effect the ability of trade unions to play a full role in informing and advising members in ways that might influence how they should vote.
Many saw the bill as an attack on free speech and something that could be used to silence critics of the government in the run-up to general elections, while failing to address the problems of lobbying by vested interests which could continue so long as the lobbyists were registered.
Rather than the mouthful of its full name, the Bill was widely referred to as the “lobbying bill”, or by its many critics as the “gagging bill” and this was reflected in some of those protesting having tape across their mouths, as well as in posters and placards. Although the bill became law it has perhaps had less effect than many of the campaigners feared, probably because of its lack of clarity. But it remains in law as a failure to deal with lobbying and a threat to free speech.
Scrap Royal London NHS PFI Debt – Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel
The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was a disastrous system which enabled essential government expenditure to be taken off the books. Essentially it involved in disguising borrowing by the government to build schools and hospitals etc by getting money from the private sector for these works and then paying these back over long periods of time.
But rather than the government paying back the loans for new hospitals, these would be paid back by the NHS through the various health trusts. It made no real sense, but made the figures for government borrowing look better.
Things were made worse, firstly by the private sector negotiators of the agreements running rings around those from the public sector inexperienced in such things meaning the contracts are far too favourable to them. Then we had the financial crash and the Tory-imposed austerity. Health trusts found themselves in an impossible situation, which required some radical government action. Even the Tories were eventually forced to do something, and in 2020, over £13 billion of NHS debt was scrapped; this good news came together with a wider package of NHS reforms in part intended to allow them to cope with Covid, and I’m unclear of what the overall effect will be in the longer term.
The Barts Health Trust which covers much of East London, including Barts, The Royal London, Newham General, Whipps Cross and London Chest Hospital, as well as many smaller community facilities has been particularly badly hit, with PFI payments of £129m a year to a private consortium who financed the new (and much needed) Royal London Hospital.
Barts Health Trust needs to cut £78m from the services it provides and planned to do so by downgrading the posts of many of its staff, paying them less for doing the same work, or rather doing more work, as there will be increasing staff shortages with vacancies being deliberately left unfilled. In any case new staff will be unwilling to come and work for a trust that wants to pay them less than their experience and qualifications merit.
Barts were also proposing to close departments such as A&E at Whipps Cross or Newham and for the population of East London things are made worse by proposed closures in neighbouring health trusts.
The rally began on a narrow pavement on the busy Whitechapel Road outside the hospital but after police told the organisers it was too dangerous moved onto the access road in front of the new PFI financed hospital where they had previously been denied permission to protest.
Although the hospital has a new building, financial problems have prevented them from making use of the top two floors – and for two days recently had been unable to admit any new patients as no beds were available.
Lewisham, Secular Europe & Malta Day – Saturday 14th September 2013 was a very mixed day for me, beginning with a victory celebration by hospital campaigners in Lewisham, then moving to Westminster for a protest celebrating secularism in Whitehall before finally photographing a highly religious Malta Day celebration at Westminster Cathedral.
Lewisham Hospital Victory Parade
Lewisham Hospital is a highly successful and well run hospital serving a large area of South London, and when the government planned to close large areas of its services there was a huge public outcry, with large marches to keep it open, as closure would have severely damaged the health service in the area.
The planned closure was not in response to any failure by Lewisham; it’s sole purpose was to allow the NHS to continue to make massive PFI repayments due from the building of other London hospitals through contracts that were badly negotiated when interest rates were high and have already delivered huge profits to the lenders.
As well as a hugely successful public campaign, both Lewisham Council and the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign went separately to the High Court for Judicial Review of the decision by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, and both were successful.
The immediate response of the Health Secretary was to announce he would appeal the two decisions, and the campaign had launched a petition calling on him to accept the defeat gracefully and not waste any further time or taxpayers money over the appeal. Given the clear judgement of the court any appeal seemed unlikely to succeed.
The government also intend to change the law to make it much more difficult for people to contest their decisions in the courts after being defeated on this and other cases where they have failed to give proper consideration to policies. But having a government which seems to think ‘sod the law, we’re going to do as we like‘ doesn’t seem at all healthy for democracy.
The Victory Parade was rather smaller than the earlier protests which had brought thousands out onto the streets of Lewisham, with perhaps a little fewer than five hundred people, though more turned up to take part in the celebration event at the end of the parade in Ladywell Fields. But perhaps marching now seemed less important, and the poor weather will have put some off.
At the front of the parade was a Lewisham Council dustcart with large posters on it and following it were marchers with a small street band. Among those marching were two nurses wearing their uniforms from the Olympic opening ceremony, some ‘Olympic’ drummers and others in medical uniforms.
Around a hundred people had marched from Temple to a rally opposite Downing Street for the 6th annual Secular Europe Campaign protest celebrating secularism and demanding an end to religious discrimination and indoctrination.
As well as the protest in London there was also a similar protest taking place in Krakow, Poland, a country where politics are still very much dominated by the Catholic Church.
Things are rather different in the UK, but we still have the anomaly of 26 Church of England bishops sitting in the House of Lords, reflected in some of the campaigners wearing paper versions of a Bishop’s mitre with the number 26 on the front.
We obviously need reform of the House of Lords, but the bishops seem to me a minor issue and are among the more sensible and progressive members of the house. There are still 92 hereditary peers, as well as many more wholly undeserved political appointees, particularly those given a seat as thanks for their political and other services to retiring Prime Ministers. The recent list by Boris Johnson included some that clearly bring our politics into disrepute, and if the list by Liz Truss is approved following her disastrous fifty days in office, our politics will clearly have become a farce.
The campaigners also called for an end to religious indoctrination in schools, though I was pleased to hear one speaker make clear that not all church or religious schools were guilty of this, with many providing a good education that encouraged their pupils to think for themselves.
Others complained about the lack of secular speakers on Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’, and though I think the selection has widened a little in recent years there is certainly still room for a wider choice of viewpoints. And they still have some who make me cringe every time they appear.
Some of the other things that concern the secular movement are religious discrimination against women and gays, abuse of children by the clergy, the teaching of creationism in schools, the anti-abortion lobby and misinformation about contraception and AIDs, religious male circumcision and female genital mutilation, false accusations about witchcraft, Sharia law, forced marriages and the right to die with dignity. And of course many of these concerns are shared with many religious people.
Finally I walked to Westminster Cathedral where a Mass was taking place for Malta Day, attended by the Lord Mayor of Westminster, Councillor Sarah Richardson, taking pictures as people came out from the church for the procession which was to follow.
Malta Day, actually 8th September, is a public holiday in Malta, the Feast of Our Lady Of Victories or Victory Day. Celebrations in villages there mark the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorated in statues of ‘il-Bambina’, one of which was carried in the procession.
The day also celebrates the Victory of the Knights of St John of Malta against the Turks in 1565, a victory over the French in 1800 and the surrender of Italy, then occupying Malta, in 1943.
Fire-crackers were set off in the plaza and a band played before the procession finally set off down Victoria Street.
As well as the statue of ‘il-Bambina’, there were also seeral large and colourful banners, men in the robes of the Knights of Malta, and girls in huge black hooded cloaks (Faldetta or Ghonella), which seemed a little sinister to me. For various personal reasons although I’ve never been there I’ve long regarded Malta as an epitome of religious intolerance.
NHS Birthday Celebrations: Today the National Health Service marks its 75th Anniversary, founded thanks to the efforts of the Labour Party and in particular Aneurin Bevan, following on from the 1942 report by Liberal economist William Beveridge which had proposed wide-reaching social reforms to tackle the “five giants” of “Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness” (Idleness meaning of course unemployment.) The pictures in this post come from the 65th anniversary ten years ago today, Friday 5th July 2013.
Beveridge was opposed to means-tested benefits which he stated were unfair on the poor, and although the wartime coalition government set up committees to look at how his reforms could be put into practice they were from the onset opposed by many Conservatives and some on the Labour right.
But Labour stood in the 1945 elections promising to put the proposals into effect, and after their victory passed the National Insurance Act 1946, the National Assistance Act 1948, and the National Health Service Act 1946 and other Acts to do so, founding the UK’s modern welfare state.
Bevan was the wizard who integrated the multifarious per-existing medical services into the single functioning state body of the National Health Service, though he had to make many compromises to do so, working against considerable opposition both political from the Tories and from the medical bodies which were dominated by old men, many with fixed ideas.
The 75 years since then have seen many changes in the NHS, not all for the good, with both Conservative and Labour governments determined both to penny-pinch and bring in private enterprise to profit in various ways from our health service. The last 13 years have been particularly tough for the NHS, with disastrous reforms brought in and cuts which have made it impossible for NHS workers to provide the services and care they desperately want to do.
Covid of course didn’t help – and the failure to provide proper protective equipment, with too many contracts going to cronies who didn’t deliver – and fraudsters – was a real disaster, killing far too many health and other key workers. Despite a magnificent effort by health workers too many died, and the only reward for the huge efforts made by the NHS was claps.
Currently we have a government which refuses to talk sensibly with workers across the health centre, instead simply saying that the below inflation rises it is offering – essentially wage cuts – are fair. It obviously hopes that by provoking strikes and getting its friends in our billionaire owned right-wing press to condemn the strikers for the cancellations, increase in waiting lists and possible deaths it will get the public on its side against the NHS.
Instead we need policies which will engage with the problems the NHS faces after years of underfunding, overwork and shortages. The recently announced workforce plan at least is a plan to do something, though it seems unlikely to prove workable. The shortage of doctors, nurses and other medical staff has been clear almost since the start of the NHS, and certainly critical for many years.
We need to both increase the number of training places and tackle some of the other causes. Private hospitals rely on publicly funded doctors and nurses – and should at least have to pay the training costs for those they employ – although personally I’d prefer to see them being brought into public ownership. As well as poaching staff they also cherry-pick offering care for simpler cases but largely passing back more critical care to the NHS.
There needs to be an end to the expensive and somewhat unreliable use of agency staff, at least by the NHS setting up its own temporary staffing organisation and also by ending payments for work at above normal rates. The NHS also needs to become a much friendlier employer in terms of flexibility of shifts etc.
And of course we need to remove the caps on training for doctors, nurses and other staff, and to provide proper bursaries to cover both fees and maintenance for these vital workers. The proposed ‘apprenticeship’ scheme for doctors seems unworkable as such, but all medical course are already in some part apprenticeships, including some on the job training. Finding the additional mentors needed for more work-based schemes seems an example of cloud-cuckoo land thinking, and the setting up of a two-class system of doctors seems highly undesirable.
Importantly too we need to drastically reduce the bureaucratic workload of all doctors and health staff at all levels. Theoretically the increased use of IT could play a role in this – although the NHS has been disastrously shafted by its IT providers in the past, promising much but delivering mainly greater complexity. So far bringing in IT has increased the amount and time spent in form-filling at the expense of treating patients, partly because the various levels of administration up to the government has seized the opportunity for the greater demands it makes possible.
I was born before the NHS and looking at it in recent years I’ve sometimes wondered if my own death will be due to its stuttering demise. I hope not. But the NHS is certainly not safe in the hands of the Tories, and little that we have so far seen about Labour’s plans give me confidence it will be safe in theirs.
The two events I photographed on the NHS’s 65th Birthday were all concerned with its problems and doubts about its future, The GMB trade union came to Parliament with 3 vintage ambulances saying the NHS Is At Risk, campaigners at Lewisham Hospital celebrated hoping and fighting to keep their busy, successful and much needed hospital open and stop it being sacrificed to meet the disastrous PFI debts of a neighbouring hospital. I’d taken my bike to ride to Lewisham, and made a leisurely ride through Deptford on my way back to Westminster.
At the Ministry of Health, then still on Whitehall, Dr Clive Peedell was about to begin his 65 mile ultra-marathon run to David Cameron’s Witney constituency where he was to ceremonially bury the NHS coffin and launch the National Health Action Party plan by doctors and health professionals to revive the NHS. Their 10-point plan included “policies to restore the duty of the Secretary of State to provide comprehensive NHS care, and return the NHS as the preferred provider of services.”
More about the events on the 65th Birthday of the NHS – from which all the pictures in the post come – are on My London Diary.
NHS – Free, For All, Forever?. Five years ago on Saturday 30th June thousands marched through London to celebrate 70 years of the National Health Service, which began on 5th July 1948. In a few days we will celebrate the 75 anniversary. The pictures here are from that march.
A few days ago the Kings Fund published their report comparing the NHS to health care systems of other countries. It made depressing reading, but its findings were already well-known – and the result of government policies over the years.
Conservatives were opposed to the setting up of the NHS and voted against it on numerous occasions when Aneurin Bevan was campaigning for its setting up and taking the bill through parliament. Bevan established the three basic ideas, that it should benefit everyone, that healthcare would be free and that care would be provided on the basis of need rather than ability to pay.
Many doctors and dentists were opposed to the new system, which they saw as a threat to their lucrative private practices and this led to a number of compromises which have had serious consequences over the years.
Dentistry has never really been made properly a part of our health care system and now large areas of the country have few if any dentists who will take on NHS patients. Private medicine has continued and grown parasitically on the NHS – who train those working in it, while it now gets paid by the NHS to provide many of the simpler aspects of treatment while leaving the heavy lifting to our public service.
Both Conservative and Labour governments since its formation have made changes which have diluted Bevan’s principles. Contracting out of various services began under the Tories, sometimes resulting in disastrous lowering of standards. Proper cleaning services etc are essential in hospitals.
New Labour brought in Private Finance Initiative projects (they borrowed the idea from the Tories) which have led to huge ongoing debts for some NHS trusts – and closures of some vitally needed hospital departments to meet these.
Since the Coalition and then the Tories came back into power there has been a huge increase in the creeping privatisation of the NHS, with Andrew Lansley’s 2012 Health and Social Care Act forcing the NHS into a market-based model based on competitive tendering, which even his successor as Health Minister, Jeremy Hunt has described parts of as ‘frankly, completely ridiculous’. So much so that even the Tories have no had to row back a little.
The King’s Fund report makes clear that “The UK has below-average health spending per person compared to peer countries” and it “lags behind other countries in its capital investment, and has substantially fewer key physical resources than many of its peers, including CT and MRI scanners and hospital beds.”
Successive governments have prevented the training in the UK from expanding the numbers of university places for medical training, and a few years ago the Tories removed the bursaries available for nurses. Since the start of the NHS this had been a failure, and as the report states there are now “strikingly low levels of key clinical staff, including doctors and nurses” and the NHS is “heavily reliant on foreign-trained staff.” Only in recent days have we seen an effort by government to put forward plans to address the issue – and almost certainly one that is inadequate.
There is also the question of pay, brought to the fore in recent months by strikes by nurses and doctors. The government’s response has mainly been to refuse to enter into meaningful talks and mutter about the impossible demands being made.
Of course nobody expects junior doctors to get a 35% rise, but all that it would take to resolve the dispute is a much lower figure, combined with a commitment to make a small above inflation increase in a number of following years to reduce the gap that has opened up.
You can read more about the march and rally and some of the issues in my post on My London Diary from June 2018, which also includes some information about the interests or many MPs and peers in private healthcare and connections to those wanting to see the NHS abolished. It may be ‘OUR NHS’ but many of those who have power to determine its future want it to belong to them.
Save Lewisham Hospital March & Rally – Saturday 26 January 2013
On Saturday 26th January 2013 an estimated 25,000 people marched through Lewisham to save their hospital from closure and to protect the NHS, showing south London united against the closure on pure financial grounds of its highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments.
Now the whole NHS is facing a crisis, and a similar united response across the country is needed to save it. It becomes clearer and clearer that this crisis has been deliberately engineered in order to destroy our health service and hand it over to private providers, particularly the US health giants.
Two years ago, US health insurance giant Centene Corporation took over 49 NHS GP surgeries and practices. Now as Jeremy Corbyn posted a couple of days ago on Facebook, “US health insurance giant, Centene, is the single largest provider of NHS primary care in England. Privatisation is the cause of — not the solution to — the NHS crisis. Stop wasting money on private contracts and start investing in a fully-public NHS instead.“
Unfortunately both Tory and Labour parties have taken part in the move towards privatisation of the NHS, though Tories have been more open in their support of such changes as suggesting the introduction of charges to see a doctor. But both parties have introduced changes which have brought private companies into providing NHS services, have taken large donations from private health companies, and have leading members who profit from them.
It was under Labour that the NHS took on poorly thought out Private Finance Initiative contracts that have landed many local health trusts with huge debt repayments, many of which extend to the middle of the century, and it was these which led to the crisis in Lewisham.
The PFI contracts were negotiated by civil servants and were and are a bonanza for private companies. Under them we pay totally ridiculous charges for simple jobs – such as Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust paying £8,450 to install a dishwasher because they are locked into maintenance contracts. Changing a light bulb can cost a couple of hundred pounds.
Lewisham Hospital wasn’t directly affected by PFI, but it was in 2009 put into the South London Hospitals Trust, which had two hospitals at Orpington and Woolwich whose PFI contracts saddled the trust with debts of over £60 million a year until 2032.
Lewisham Hospital was successful both medically and financially, but Health Secretary Andrew Lansley appointed a special administrator to the trust with a remit to drastically cut the trusts costs. And Matthew Kershaw decided to do so by closing the highly successful and much needed A&E and maternity departments at Lewisham.
It was a decision that made no sense. There wasn’t the spare capacity at other hospitals to cope with those no longer able to get treatment at Lewisham – the system was actually working in the other direction, with these other hospitals having to send patients to Lewisham.
Financially it made no sense – the patients would still require treatment and this would cost more elsewhere. The small annual savings the closure would give would be more than offset by increases in costs elsewhere – though some of these might be in other trusts.
The proposal generated an incredible amount of local opposition, with the campaign to save the hospital supported by all local MPs and policitician both in the area and across south London. Community groups and organisations all came together to save the hospital – Millwall football club even changed their weekend fixture to Friday night so the team and supporters could join the march.
As I wrote back in 2013, “The fight to save Lewisham Hospital isn’t just a local issue, but very much a national one, with the provision of medical services that form the bedrock of the NHS under attack. If the government can close down services at Lewisham, no other successful hospital in the UK is safe in their hands.”
Nurses and ambulance workers are now striking not just for a better deal for themselves, but for the future of the NHS, which the Tories have deliberately run down with drastic underfunding and a deliberate failure to train and recruit staff. Perhaps their most obvious action was the removal of the bursary for nurse training, but as well there has been the continuing decrease in real salaries with below inflation wage rises over the years. Together with the failure to keep European staff in this country after Brexit and the impact of Covid the results have been disastrous – except for those private companies providing agency nurses and doctors, often at horrific cost to the NHS.
If the NHS is to be saved it will need the kind of public mobilisation that saved Lewisham Hospital, with the people as a whole getting behind the nurses and doctors and others who are fighting to save it. We need to fight the policies and greed of the Tories and of Labour and of the billionaire press to preserve the NHS as a national service free at the point of use and organised for the national good rather than for profit.
London, UK. 15th Dec 2022. Around a thousand people, including nurses and supporters came to a lunchtime protest outside St Thomas’s Hospital on the approach to Westminster Bridge
I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for around half an hour wondering what I should write about for Christmas Eve. I tried looking back at what I’d done in previous years – all in the blog archive on the right of this page which goes back to 2006 (though I didn’t post anything on December 24th until the following year) but all that did was depress me as so many of my earlier posts seemed rather more interesting and better written than more recent entries, and much wider in scope.
London, UK. 15th Dec 2022.
This year seems likely to be a very quiet Christmas for me, and the reason is largely Covid and other infections. Although Christmas and Boxing Day will be much the same both my sons have cancelled planned visits home with their families because of the huge prevalence of disease at the moment and the risks they might cause both to vulnerable adults like us (I’m an ancient diabetic) and their families.
London, UK. 15th Dec 2022.
Of course I’ve had all the Covid jabs – I think four so far – and the flu vaccination and it’s perhaps why I seem at the moment to be doing better than some of my mainly rather younger friends. Last Wednesday four of us cancelled a final get-together before Christmas for a meal together as one had Covid and another was in bed with another virus.
London, UK. 15th Dec 2022.
But I do feel very depressed and angry. Mainly at the terrible mess our government have made of the country particularly in the last year, but also over the longer term. Truss’s nightmare government which resulted in the waste of many billions in a few days, Sunak as Chancellor and now PM and the longer term disastrous effects of Brexit and austerity. And longer term still the truly crazy privatisation of key industries such as gas, water, electricity, railways and the creeping back-door privatisation of the NHS with ‘reforms’ which have been largely about opening it to private profit.
London, UK. 20 Dec 2022.
Things do now seem to be coming to a head, with workers seeing wages clearly leaving them unable to cope with increases in prices of energy and food, as well as rises in rents and mortgages, and strikes across the public sector as well in the privatised postal service. Even some of the right-wing press have begun to desert the Tories for their incompetence – as Labour has moved and is beginning to look like a more economically competent right-wing party. And even the BBC has begun to pick up some of the more blatant lies made by ministers about the nurses.
London, UK. 20 Dec 2022.
One thing I’ve not posted much if at all about this year is my continuing photography on the streets of London, largely covering protests. I don’t do as much as I did in earlier years, but I’ve still been going out and working a few days each month since the lock-down ended. And although I’ve not been keeping My London Diary up to date, as well as filing the pictures to Alamy I’ve also been putting them in albums on Facebook.
London, UK. 20 Dec 2022.
The cold spell made it difficult for me to get out earlier in the month and rail strikes have made it impossible for me to get to some other events. But both days when the nurses were striking I went to photograph them, on the first strike day outside St Thomas’s Hospital and the second a rally at University College London Hospital followed by a march. The pictures with this post are from these two events. You can view more from both days by following the links in the previous sentence and see these pictures larger by right-clicking and choosing to open them in a new tab.
Key Workers were protesting in London on Wednesday 2nd December 2015, but their protests were ignored by government and then Tory Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Since then we have seen that the warnings of the protesters were real and the consequences of Tory policies have led to disaster. It’s a failure of our system of government that allows dogmatism and class interests to pursue such irresponsible policies at both local and national level, and one hugely facilitated by a media largely controlled by a handful of billionaires.
Firefighters say cuts endanger London – City Hall, Wednesday 2nd December 2015
Firefighters and supporters protested at City Hall against plans to get rid of 13 fire engines and slash 184 firefighters in the London Fire Brigade. These came on top of previous cuts and station closures which have already led to increases in the time taken for firefighters to arrive at fires which have lead to people who would otherwise have been rescued dying in fires.
The People of Shoreditch Say… Bozo Don’t take or Fire Engine Away! – Bozo the Clown of County Hall’
Trade unionists and others came to support the firefighters and some spoke at the rally along with speakers from the FBU. It took only a little persuasion to get George Galloway to speak. Members of the London Assembly had put forward an alternative plan to make savings and avoid the loss of the fire engines but these were dismissed by London Mayor Boris Johnson.
George Galloway came to show support
One of the consequences of the cuts to London’s fire services came sadly and disastrously with the loss of 72 lives at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. We found then that London simply didn’t have a single fire engine capable of dealing with a fire in the upper floors of the building. Fortunately Surrey, although it has far fewer high rise buildings had kept one which could be called in to help, or the death toll would have been even higher.
Save NHS Student Bursaries – Dept of Health, Whitehall, Wednesday 2nd December 2015
George Osborne had decided to scrap NHS student bursaries from 2017. Nurses and other healthcare students have to spend around 50% or their time working in hospitals for the NHS during training and so are largely unable to take on part-time work as many other students do. They only payment they get for this work is through the bursaries.
It seems totally unfair to ask them to take out student loans and work for the NHS for nothing as well. And since many of the jobs they go into are not particularly well-paid, it makes little financial sense as many would probably never fully repay their loans.
Always plenty of money for our arms manufacturers
But what nurses said it would do was to lead to a reduction of students applying for healthcare courses, particularly the many single mothers and more matures students who are enabled to take the courses by the bursaries. And to take this action at a time when there was a critical shortage of medical staff was sheer lunacy.
Of course they were right. The situation in the NHS is even worse now partly due to this axing of bursaries. Of course there are other factors too – including a racist immigration policy which has been made much worse with Brexit. And the continually increasing privatisation taking place.
The NHS has so far suffered various areas of breakdown caused of exacerbated by various government policies – including some under New Labour who promoted disastrous PFI schemes that have brought some hospital trusts to financial ruin. Covid was another savage test and things look set to get far worse in the coming winter months. And given the years of below inflation pay offers its hardly suprising that nurses are now about to strike.
The problems with scrapping the student bursary were so intense that the government was forced to set up a new bursary scheme in 2020. But while the previous scheme had a maximum of £16,454 a year, with a minimum of £10,000, the new scheme was considerably less generous, at a standard £5000, with additions for shortage areas and childcare giving a maximum of £8000.
Saturday October 18th 2014 saw a huge march organised by the TUC calling for a pay rise for workers as Britain is recovering from the financial crash and bosses were getting big increases in earnings and bonuses but the workers were still suffering.
On my way there I called in to Parliament Square where Occupy Democracy who I had been with the previous evening were still attempting to take over the area – and I went back again after the TUC march.
Then for something completely different I went to Westminster Cathedral to photograph the start of the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament from there to Southwark Cathedral.
Finally there was a Poor Doors Saturday Night Special at One Commercial St, Aldgate, where Class War’s ranks were augmented by activists who had been attending the Anarchist Book Fair earlier in the day.
Democracy Camp takes the Square – Parliament Square
I had come the previous evening with Occupy Democracy for a rally in Parliament Square where they hoped to set up camp, but police and heritage wardens had kept them off the grass, and they were still on the paved areas when I visited them on Saturday morning, with a large police presence still managing to prevent them setting up camp.
Many had left the square to take part in the TUC march, and like me returned after the marchers had gone on their way to Hyde Park. Others arrived too, including a group from UK Uncut who walked in with a sound system. There were tense moments as police and Westminster Council officials tried to take this from them, but eventually they were allowed to leave with their equipment with the warning that they had to take it away from Parliament Square or it would be taken from them.
Shortly after more people arrived including those who had been carrying two large wood and fabric towers, one with the words POWER and OCCUPY and the other the word DEMOCRACY. Together with other protesters they ran onto the grass square and raised the towers, with police unable to stop them. Others followed them onto the grass and began a rally, with speakers including Labour MP John McDonnell, Occupy’s George Barda, environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy and Russell Brand.
Police reinforcements began to muster around the square and it seemed a battle was inevitable. But suddenly the police disappeared, probably realising that the presence of Brand in particular would would have generated massive and largely negative media coverage. Much better to come back late at night and do it after the mass media had left (which they did.)
Over 80,000 marchers had come to call for workers to share in the economic recovery where company chief executives now earn 175 times the average worker, and nurses, teachers and others in the public and private sector are £50 a week worse off than in 2007.
I don’t often bother to photograph ‘press calls’ but I arrived just in time for this one well before the march started, with Frances O’Grady in a bright red dress in front of the main banner with people holding up the figures 1, 7 and 5. And I stayed in front of the march to photograph the leaders holding the banner until it set off.
I stopped a few yards along the route where the light was better and photographed group after group of marchers, including many from the NHS and other public service unions whose members have been particularly badly treated by the government’s pay freezes.
Pat Arrowsmith
Towards the back of the march were many more radical groups, including those I’ve photographed often at other protests, with many familiar faces. In particular I was pleased to have a short talk with veteran peace protester Pat Arrowsmith of CND who I’d several times walked beside on the way to Aldermaston.
As the end of the march went past me I left to cover other events. There would be long speeches at the rally in Hyde Park!
Procession of the Blessed Sacrament – Westminster Cathedral to Southwark
I waited outside Westminster Cathedral for people to emerge after the blessing of the sacrament as no photography was allowed inside.
The procession was led by a group mainly in white tops, some carrying lighted altar candles and a man with a crucifix on a stick and I photographed them as they waited for the procession to form up behind them. The wind soon extinguished their candles.
Some way back in the procession were more people wearing clerical dress with one in more ornate robes carrying the Blessed Sacrament, holding it in his cape and another holding an offi-white umbrella over him and the sacrament.
Two African women in ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ dresses carried a banner with an unlikely looking Jesus, but most of those that followed were in more normal dress. Some seemed rather unhappy or suspicious about being photographed.
I went with the procession to Lambeth Bridge and then returned to Parliament Square and the Democracy Camp.
Poor Doors Saturday Night Special – One Commercial St, Aldgate
Protesters lit by the headlights of the cars they were blocking
Class War who had been holding regular weekly protests for several months against the separate doors for rich and poor residents at One Commercial St, Aldgate, had called a special protest as the Anarchist Book Fair had been taking place earlier just a short distance away.
Quite a few of those who had travelled to London for the Book Fair came down to take part in the protest. It made my photography a little more difficult as the pavement was rather crowded, and there were many taking part who didn’t know me – and some anarchists are keen not to be photographed.
It was good to see a few new banners – including one from the Durham Miners Association – and the protest was enlivened with samba from Rhythms of Revolution and some songs from Cosmo, who got a Class War sticker added to the others on his guitar, as well as some rousing speeches.
There were rather more police around, including a group of seven guarding the poor door, probably becuase residents from the rich side of the building were having to use this as the protest blocked the rich door. There were enough police there as well to stop the protesters getting into the building when they made a brief rush at one point.
The protest ended with everyone surging onto the busy Whitechapel High St and blocking it for around ten minutes – unfortunately as my flash unit decided to go into erratic mode. Fortunately the headlights of the cars stopped by the protest provided some lighting when the flash failed to do so.
There is no real connection I’m aware of between doctors and blood diamonds other than the fact I photographed both protests on 6th February 2016 – and I thought it made a nice headline.
Valentines Israeli Blood Diamonds protest
My working day started on Old Bond Street in Mayfair, an area of London I generally try to avoid, packed with businesses which represent the true scum on the capitalist system and their customers largely representing those most successful at exploiting the system and the great majority of the population. While the City of London is still the world capital of dodgy financial management, Mayfair is where much of the more commercial aspects of our current system ply their trade.
There are no diamonds mined in Israel, but diamonds are Israel, largest manufacturing export – then at around $10 billion a year and contributing around $1 billion a year to Israeli military and security industries. In a direct connection the Steinmetz Diamonds Group which supplies companies including De Beers and Tiffany supports the Israeli Givati Brigade through the Steinmetz Foundation. One banner was a message from the Samouni family, 29 of whom were killed by the Givati Brigade in 2008 in cold blood.
A week before St Valentines Day, protesters stood outside diamond sellers including De Beers and Tiffanys with banners urging people not to buy engagement rings these shops that sell rings using diamonds from Israel’s Steinmetz Diamonds Group.
Junior Doctors Rally & March
I left for the short walk to Waterloo Place, where Junior Doctors and supporters were gathering for a rally against against the imposition of new contracts they say will destroy the NHS and make it unsafe for patients. Supporting them were many other medical professionals – consultants, GPs, nurses and others – who all saw the contract as a part of an attack on the NHS to move towards a privatised medical system.
Speaker after speaker – including Dame Vivienne Westwood, her son Ben, and Vanessa Redgrave as well as many medical professionals – stressed how Health Minister Jeremy Hunt Hunt was misleading the media and public about the need for changes in the contract, carefully selecting evidence that supports his case while ignoring the much wider evidence against it.
Dame Vivienne Westwood and Vanessa Redgrave at the rally
Among the many placards were those naming doctors who had already left the NHS to work abroad, with the message ‘You’ve driven me out Jeremy… Stop bleeding the NHS dry’. Others named junior doctors supporting of the protest who were unable to attend the protest because they were working in what is already a 24 hour 7 day profession.
The protesters marched to Downing St where they sat down blocking the road wearing surgical masks while a deputation went into Downing St to deliver a message to the prime minister; they emerged a few minutes later to announce that the people inside No 10 had refused to accept any message from them.
We have seen in the current pandemic how this and other changes made in recent years have put the NHS under severe strain. As I wrote in 2016:
Of course it isn’t just junior doctors; new income rules for immigrant workers are likely to lead to up to 30,000 nurses being deported, and the cutting of bursaries for nurses and now proposed for all other medical courses will have disastrous effects. Add to this the effects of PFI which is bankrupting hospitals leading to privatisations and its hard not to see the end of the NHS as we have known it as inevitable.
It’s almost certainly too late to save the NHS in its current incarnation. The only solution is the kind of radical change that happened before under Nye Bevan and others to create a new NHS. But for that we would need a new revitalised Labour party in power – or a people’s revolution. Don’t hold your breath – and don’t get old or ill.
