Posts Tagged ‘OutRage!’

Free Palestine March & Rally 2005

Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

Free Palestine March & Rally – May 21st 2005. George Galloway, then MP for Bethnal Green, was clearly the man of the hour at the rally in Trafalgar Square, fresh back from his hearing in front of a US Senate committee. As I commented in 2005, “the senators were clearly outclassed and outgunned as Galloway gave them a verbal ‘Glasgow kiss.’ It was an impressively sustained performance of concentrated power, a pit-bull seeing off a pack of ineffectual spaniels.”

Free Palestine March & Rally

The crowd gave him “a tumultous ovation when he arrived at the Trafalgar Square rally” at the end of the march, and his speech there did not diappoint them. I commented “he has built up a great rapport with the many muslims now living in this country, not least in his own Bethnal Green constituency, the youths from Bradford were excited when he promised to come and visit their city.” Of course many things have happened since then, but it wasn’t surprising to see him elected for Bradford West at the 2012 by-election or more recently when he won the seat at Rochdale this February.

Free Palestine March & Rally

Galloway was not the only powerful speaker at the rally, with putting in his usual performance as “probably the best living political speaker at least using the english language” and Jeremy Corbyn, still a much underrated speaker, also showing what he could do. And there were others too, including Paul Mackney of the higher education teachers’ union, NATFHE.

Free Palestine March & Rally

The march from Embankment to Trafalgar Square had been reasonably large but not huge, though more had arrived for the rally. Waiting at the side of the march as it reached the square was human rights activist Peter Tatchell with a group from Outrage!

Free Palestine March & Rally

They supported the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice, but demanded an end to the “so-called ‘honour’ killing of Palestinian women, and the arrest, jailing, torture and murder of lesbian and gay Palestinians by factions of the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority.”

Free Palestine March & Rally

At first police stopped the group from getting to the march and handing out leaflets, but after a complaint by Tatchell they were allow to do so. Some march stewards tried to stop people taking the leaflets, but many did so and expressed their support.

You can read more about the event on the second May page on My London Diary under the heading George’s Triumph and the pictures begin at the right of this page.


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The Big Gay Flashmob – 2010

Tuesday, April 11th, 2023

The Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ – Millbank, London. Sunday 11 April 2010

The Big Gay Flashmob
Kiss-In – Tamsin Omond and Peter Tatchell

In 2010 as a General Election was approaching, Tamsin Omond had begun the ‘To the Commons‘ campaign which made this statement:

“The Commons is you and me. It’s the kid on the skateboard, the woman struggling with her shopping, and the guy who serves us coffee in the morning. The Commons is about having our say and getting our voices heard. It’s about looking out for each other, our neighbourhoods, and our environment. Yes we’re a political party but we’re not about politics. We’re about people.”

The Big Gay Flashmob

The message on the web ended “Vote for Tamsin Omond for Hampstead and Kilburn” where she was standing as a candidate. It wasn’t a hugely succesful campaign, and she ended up with only 123 votes, against 17, 332 for Labour’s Glenda Jackson in what was one of the closest races in 2010, with the Tory only 42 votes behind and the Lib Dems a close third. We have an electoral system and a media that is incredibly stacked against candidates from outside the major parties, who only win in exceptional circumstances – such as electing Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London, or if Corbyn was to leave Labour to stand in his constituency at the next election.

The Big Gay Flashmob

As a part of her campaign, Omond had organised the ‘Big Gay Flashmob’, advertising the event on Facebook and getting Peter Tatchell of Outrage! (and later of the the Peter Tatchell Foundation) to work with her to publicise it. Over 1500 had signed up to attend the event and a fairly large proportion of them turned up on the day.

The Big Gay Flashmob

In the morning Omond and Tatchell had gone to a meeting with George Osborne, who had been shadow chancellor and was the Conservative Campaign manager. The Tory party has a long record of homophobia and of voting against gay rights, and many Tory MPs voted against the full repeal in 2003 of Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 infamous ‘Section 28’ which banned local authorities from “promoting homosexuality.”

Sister Angel Popstitute, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence from the London House of Common Sluts

Recently too, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling had suggested that Bed and Breakfast owners should be able to refuse gay couples, and there was still a very strong and vocal anti-gay element in the Tory party despite there being many gay members and gay Tory MPs. The great majority of the roughly 50 who voted against civil partnerships in 2004 were Tory MPs and party leader David Cameron was against the possibility of gay marriage.

So the flash mob was scheduled to take place outside Tory Party HQ, then on Millbank in the Millbank Tower. There were speeches, much loud chanting and a number of kiss-ins which everyone seemed to enjoy.

More pictures at Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ.


London, Saturday 17th September 2011

Friday, September 17th, 2021

Peter Tatchell and Outrage!

I’d gone up to London mainly to cover the march and rally by the Secular Europe Campaign which was calling for an end to religious privileges and for European institutions to remain secular. Its main focus is the Vatican which still has enormous power and privilege – and a three billion Euro tax exemption.

Maryam Namazie holding the ‘One Law For All’ banner

Among the groups on the march was ‘One Law For All’, opposed to all religious laws and in particular to any attempt to impose Sharia law in the UK. It was also supported by humanist and gay rights groups including the British Humanist Association, the Central London Humanist Group, the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, OutRage! and the Rationalist Association.

I left the march to go to Bank, where I had expected to cover a protest, but all I found was the group having a picnic, as well as a long queue of people waiting to take a look at the interior on ‘Open House’ day. So I walked back towards Temple, pausing to take a few pictures on the way – such as the legendary giants Gog and Magog on St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, who strike the hours and quarters using their clubs on the bells. Traditionally they were simply known at the Giants of St Dunstan, and the ‘real’ Gog and Magog are figures in London’s Guildhall, though these are only replacements installed in 1953, made by David Evans to replace those carved in 1709 and destroyed in the Blitz. These ‘Guardians of London’ are honoured every year in the Lord Mayor’s show – and according to an anonymous commentator are “Symbolic of how The City of London is a Sovereign Satanic Masonic Criminal Bankster Headquarters” and it remains a secretive and undemocratic global centre of money laundering, a criminal cartel “officially outside the authority of parliament“.

Among other things I also photographed the ‘Roman Bath‘ in Strand Lane, a slightly embarrassing National Trust property, though now managed by Westminster Council. A cistern built in 1612 that once fed a fountain in the gardens of old Somerset House, its reputation as Roman remain was an imaginative invention to promote visitors to pay to bathe in it in the 1820s. Normally visits are by appointment, but it opens on Open House weekend and the queue was short.

I was on my way to photograph the City of London Campsie Club, a branch of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, who were holding their annual Carson Memorial parade. You can read more about its origins in my post on My London Diary. Unlike the secular rally I had photographed earlier, this was an event at which I was not welcome by a small minority of those taking part.

As I wrote in 2011:

I’ve photographed this and other Orange parades over the years, and many on them have seen my work on the web and appreciated it – and sometimes used my pictures.

But a few of the nastier elements of Northern Ireland remain, and in 2008 and again while photographing this year’s parade I was threatened and pushed away by some of those taking part. It’s a thuggishness that has no place on English streets, and something that the Orange Order should take firm action against. I fully support religious freedom and the freedom to demonstrate on our streets, but there is no place for this kind of conduct. It sullies the memory of one of our great British (and Irish) jurists, and is an insult to the Protestant faith into which I was born and in which I grew up.

I don’t know why my reporting on these events should lead to such animosity from a few of those taking part. I think it has always been accurate and factual and the pictures show a colourful event and a part of the Orange tradition. Perhaps it is because I also photograph other Irish events but I think more likely that they are aware of my pictures of extreme right protests by groups including the EDL where some of them may have also been in attendance.

Apprentice Boys Carson Memorial Parade
London Oddments
March For A Secular Europe


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.