peace camp | >Re-PHOTO

Scrap Tuition Fees & No More Fallujahs – 2006

Scrap Tuition Fees & No More Fallujahs: On Sunday 29th October 2006 I went to the start of a National Union of Students march against university tuition fees, first introduced by New Labour under Tony Blair in 1998. University education had been free across the UK since 1945, with local authorities meeting the bill rather than students. In 2004, these fees, initially £1,000 a year, were increased to £3,000. In 2025 fees are now £9.535 a year and a major reform is expected later which will probably result in University education becoming even more expensive.

From there I left to cover a demonstration in Parliament Square where people were intending to set up a 24 hour ‘unauthorised’ peace camp protesting about the battles fought largely by US Marines against the Iraqi city of Fallujah in April and November 2004.

In the November battle US troops used white phosphorus, stopped military age males from leaving the city and treated all the inhabitants as combatants. The levelled thousands of buildings, denied Red Crescent access and according to the UN used “hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population“. Their use of depleted uranium shells led after the fighting to a high level of cancer, birth defects and infant mortality in the city.

This protest was illegal under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which had required any demonstration within one kilometre of Parliament Square (excluding those in Trafalgar Square) to give written notice to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police six days in advance.

It was as a way to prevent embarrassment to politicians by seeing or hearing protests taking place, and to remove the permanent Peace Camp by Brian Haw which had been in Parliament Square since 2001, but it failed to do so, though it did lend to increased harassment of him by police and more shadowy figures. In 2011 these sections of the Act were repealed and the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 imposed different and in some ways more draconian restrictions on the right to protest.

Below is the text I wrote about these events in 2006.

NUS – Scrap Tuition Fees March

Malet St

I arrived in Malet Street early for the start of the NUS march against tuition fees, but there were already plenty of students there, including many Scottish students who had come down to show solidarity.

My father had left school at 14, at the end of his elementary education and never managed to complete the part-time studies which he had once dreamt would lead to qualifications. I came from the first generation of my family who could go to university, thanks to the 1944 Education Act that opened up secondary education and also the free tuition and student grants that were available. Without that support I would never have gone to university.

Both my sons were also fortunate to be able to study without having to pay tuition fees, [and to get maintenance grants] and were able to leave university with a degree and no debts.

Things are rather different for most of today’s students, with tuition fees now at £3000 a year, and costs of accommodation increasing all the time.

The NUS is campaigning for free education, but also calling for a cap on fees, as some universities call to be able to raise them without limits. Already the current level of fees seems to have led to a drop in the numbers of students entering universities.

more pictures on My London Diary

No More Fallujahs: Peace Camp

Parliament Square

I left shortly before the march started to get to Parliament Square, where the 24 hour ‘unauthorised’ Peace Camp, ‘No More Fallujahs’, was about to start. Potestors formed a circle and joined Maya Evans and Milan Rai in reading the names of Iraqis who have died as a result of the occupation.

*Milan Ray and Maya Evans read the names; Maya sounds a bell after each name*

A year ago, the two were arrested in Whitehall for a similar reading. In december 2005 Maya was the first person to be convicted for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, and in April 2006, Milan was convicted for organising the demonstration.

Maya is appealing against her conviction and fine, but was risking a prison sentence as arrest for this action would break the terms of her 12-month conditional discharge. Milan has refused to pay the fine of £350 with £150 costs imposed on him, and is also appealing to a higher court.

The demonstrators formed a circle in Parliament Square and began reading the names at one minute intervals, each marked by a bell. Various volunteers joined Maya and Milan in reading names from the list.

The police simply stood and watched for around half and hour, then at 12.30 began to circulate and hand out a notice to everyone that they were a part of an illegal demonstration. Where people refused to take one, they left a copy at their feet.

The officers concerned were extremely patient and polite, and were attended by a police photographer filming everything they did. Rather to my surprise one officer insisted I have a copy, despite my assurances that I was press, so I took it, while being recorded for yet another 15 seconds of so of video by the photographer, pointing out that I always complied with police directions.

It isn’t as if I’m unknown to the police. Earlier in the day in Malet Street, as I walked past two officers, one turned to the other and said “looks who’s here then.” I turned and gave them a smile.

After that, the protestors decided it was time to pitch their tents, and soon the square was covered with small tents, mainly blue. For a while nothing much seemed to be happening, and I went away for an hour or two.

When I returned, the news was that police had taken four people away. they had been approaching individuals involved in the demonstration and asking them to give their name and address.

They were told that they could then later expect a summons for taking part in an illegal demonstration. People were informed that if they did not give their details, they would be taken to the police station and arrested for taking part in the event.

While I was there several other people were questioned and one was taken away when he refused to give his details. Those who gave their names and addresses seemed to be allowed to continue to take part in the demonstration. While I was present, everything was conducted civilly and without any violent handling of those concerned, although I was told there had been a little rough handling of at least one person.

The demonstrators held an open meeting in the centre of the square to discuss what to do in the event of a more concerted approach by the police, while on the corner by Churchill’s statue, Brian Haw was making use of his megaphone to hold his weekly service. Its a sermon I’ve heard many times and I felt it was time to go home.

More pictures on My London Diary.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Bonkersfest, Trade Justice & Brian Haw – 2007

Bonkersfest, Trade Justice & Brian Haw: On Saturday 2nd June 2007 I photographed three very different events, a festival to publicise mental health issues, a protest calling on G8 world leaders about to meet in Germany to get on with eliminating poverty and finally a visit to Brian Haw who was celebrating six years of his peace protest in Parliament Square.

Here I’ll copy – with a few corrections and clarifications – what I wrote back in 2007 about these events, along with a few of the pictures and links to the others which I posted then on My London Diary.

Bonkersfest – Camberwell Green

I felt rather sorry for the poor guy who got shut into the bottom of the cannon at Bonkersfest on Camberwell Green for the duration of Joe Brand’s opening speech, then deafened by the cannon going off. All to throw bananas out through the mouth of the giant gun, the first of which came as rather a surprise when it hit me on the head. I ate it later.

Bonkersfest has a more serious purpose, to make problems of mental health more visible and to rehabilitate offensive terms used about those with problems.

Jo Brand was once a psychiatric nurse

more pictures on My London Diary

The World Can’t Wait: Anti-Poverty Protest – Lambeth & Westminster

From Camberwell I caught a couple of buses to take me to Archbishop’s Park in Lambeth, where supporters of the many organisations united in the anti-poverty campaign were meeting to send the message ‘the world can’t wait’ to government leaders about to meet for the G8 talks in Germany.

From the park, supporters made their way down to the banks of the River Thames, stretching along both sides of the river (and in front of the Houses of Parliament themselves) between Westminster and Lambeth bridges, as well as on the bridges. It took rather a long time to assemble everyone for the several minutes of silence, after which there was much blowing of whistles, shouting and honking of horns.

more pictures on My London Diary

Brian Haw: 6 Years in Parliament Square

I strolled down to Parliament Square where a rather longer demonstration was still in progress. Today marked exactly 6 years since Brian Haw began his protest against the killing of children in Iraq (and later about the war more generally.)

Video and photography have been powerful in Brian’s stay in the square, with Rikki filming many of the clashes with police

That’s Six years of shame for Britain for supporting (and taking part in) the killing.
Six years of police harassment.
Six years of pressure by the government, including a whole section of an Act of Parliament designed to stop his and other protests.
Six years of shame for the New Labour government.

Although there were no police around at all during the couple of hours I was in the square, Brian told me that had been there this morning at 4 am, watching and taking no action as a group of hooligans attempted to provoke the Peace Camp protesters into retaliation. Waiting for it, to arrest not the hooligans but the peaceful protesters should they rise to the bait.

more pictures on My London Diary

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

Election Day 2010

Thursday 6th May was also an election day in 2010 with a UK general election that saw Labour losing over 90 seats to end with 48 fewer MPs than the Conservatives. But back then we still had a Lib-Dem party with 57 MPs who, after five days of horse-trading agreed to form a coalition government with the Tories – a decision that condemned them to oblivion, losing all but 8 seats in the 2015 election.

I spent most of election day – after voting in the early morning – in and around Parliament Square, where there was also considerably politics taking place. Three distinct group were camping in the square.

Brian Haw and the Parliament Square peace campaign had been there for 3260 days since 2nd June 2001 and was still there despite an Act of Parliament designed to remove him, attacks by individuals with connections to the police and security services, illegal police raids, provocations, assaults and arrests by police officers and more.

A year earlier Haw had dissociated his Parliament Square Peace Campaign (PSPC) from the ‘Peace Strike’ protest in the adjoining area of the square led by Maria Gallestegui “by mutual consent”, wanting to end any confusion between the two campaigns. The Peace Strike had not been harassed by police to the same extent and was allowed a greater physical presence in the square, and were regarded by some, probably incorrectly, as being partners with the establishment to discredit the PSPC.

Since May Day the square had also been home to ‘Occupy Democracy’ who saw themselves as supporting the PSPC by their presence. But the PSPC suspected some of them too of being agent provocateurs in police pay to provide a pretext for more draconian police action against them. Certainly some of these more temporary occupiers were breaking the rules against drinking alcohol in Parliament Square, despite the Democracy Camp notices banning this.

In my account I wrote:

“At one point the dispute between the camp and the PSPC deteriorated with a man on the camp’s sound system making what were possibly intended as humorous put-downs of Barbara Tucker who was then attacking the Tory Party for the backing it receives from the oil giants. Clearly some of the campers were distressed by this and he was asked to desist, and some of those present tried to calm the situation.
But generally the camp’s activities were more positive, and while I was there considerable work was taking place making banners and placards, as well as people discussing and dancing.”
Election Day in Parliament Square

Shortly before I left around 6pm, people from Democracy Village walked with placards to College Green where the TV media have their tents and cameras to cover political events and had been conducting interviews about the election. There had been little if any media coverage of Democracy Village or the peace campaigns and they wanted to make a point of this. But most of the media simply ignored the protesters, and eventually police came to talk with them and they returned to Parliament Square.

Protests in the UK are almost never seen by the mass media as news – unless police are injured or property destroyed and they can run negative stories. Occasionally if a celebrity takes part they may get a mention, or some particularly quirky and preferably non-political event captures their whimsy. But political protests are largely only news if they take place overseas against regimes which our government disapproves of.

The government that resulted from the election was led by a party that got just under a third of the votes and once again demonstrated the iniquities of our first past the post electoral system. A year later we had a referendum on an alternative voting system, but this was largely scuppered by Conservative opposition and a lack of real support from Labour.

The 2010 election had left the Tories holding the whip hand in the coalition, and they certainly made use of it, both through imposing drastic and ill-considered cuts on public and in particular local authority expenditure and in attacks on protests such as those in Parliament Square. The current Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill takes these attacks on human and civil rights, the right to protest, migrants and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people to new levels, incompatible with any free society.

Election Day in Parliament Square

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.