Cuban 5, Knives & Peace Strike: Saturday 7th June 2008 I photographed a protest following the dismissal of an appeal in Miami by five Cuban men held in the USA since 1998, a Seventh Day Adventist Church march against knife crime and a rally by the Peace Strike camped in Parliament Square.
Release the Cuban 5
Trafalgar Square
The Cuban 5 were Cuban intelligence officers who came to Miami to spy and infiltrate on the Cuban exile community after terrorist bombings by Cuban exiles had taken place in Havana, organised with the support of the CIA.
The five men were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami and given lengthy jail sentences. International concerns about their lack of a fair trial led an Atlanta Court of Appeals hearing which overturned their convictions in 2005, but this decision was soon overturned by the full court, who re-instated the original convictions.
In the week before this protest an appeal court in Miami upheld the convictions and the life sentence against Gerardo Hernandez and that of 15 years against Rene Gonzalez, but referred Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez for re-sentencing in Miami.
Rock Around the Blockade had protested at the US Embassy the previous Thursday as a part of an international day of protest and were in Trafalgar Square on Saturday to raise awareness and collect signatures for a petition calling for the release of the men.
Rene Gonzales was eventually allowed to return to Cuba for his father’s funeral in 2013 having served 13 years of his sentence and Fernando Gonzalez was released in February 2014. The three remaining prisoners were released later that year in a prisoner swap.
Adventist Youth March against Knives, Guns & Violence
Trafalgar Square- Kennington Park
Pathfinders – an Adventist youth group – wait for the march to start
Seventh Day Adventist Church organisations had organised a youth rally in Trafalgar Square before marching to Kennington Park to make young people realise the dangers they face if they carry a knife.
Many feel that they need a knife to defend themselves if they are attacked by someone with a knife, but we know that meeting aggression with aggression carries a high risk.
Carrying a gun can get you a five years, use it and you could get a life sentence
I wrote: “Communities need to police themselves more effectively and to cooperate with the police when they cannot deal with situations without them. The problem is one that needs both strong community organisations and sensitive policing. I hope that Boris will be encouraging and putting resources into community organisation in the inner city and not just stepping up policing.”
The Peace Strike had joined the peace protesters already in Parliament Square in Brian Haw’s Peace Campaign there since 2001.
Maria Gallastegui had set up Peace Strike to call on people to take effective action for peace by striking, withdrawing their labour if only for short periods. The campaign against the invasion of Iraq had shown the marches, even huge marches, did not stop the war.
At the marches before the invasion began, speakers including Tony Benn had called for people to strike if the war went ahead, but when it happened Stop The War had simply decided to call yet another march.
Peace Strike aimed to build actions not just in the UK but globally which will demonstrate that people are willing to strike for peace and the future of humanity. In June 2008 an attack on Iran was a major threat, with the US building up forces.
As well as speeches we all enjoyed the playing and singing of singer/songwriter Harry Loco who had come from Holland, and as well as his own songs he gave a fine performance of a Dylan number.
NHS Privatisation, Iran & the Bologna 12: On Wednesday 8th February 2012 I photographed a mock trial of Health Minister Andrew Lansley against his disastrous Health and Social Care Bill, visited the two peace camps then in Parliament Square and finally went to the Italian Embassy for a protest calling for the release of the Bologna 12, accused of terrorism through their membership of communist organisations, much like those who support Palestine Action in the UK now.
Stop NHS Privatisation – Kill Lansley’s Bill
Old Palace Yard, Westminster
Pensioners in the protest outside Parliament
The protest, organised by Hackney Keep Our NHS Public, drew campaigners from across the country for speeches and a mock trial of Health Minister Andrew Lansley as his bill was entering into its report stage. Among those taking part – if briefly – was shadow health minister Diane Abbott MP.
Diane Abbott was the only MP I saw at the protest
Lansley’s proposals were a clear step towards the privatisation of the NHS, still a continuing process under Labour’s Wes Streeting, despite many of the changes brought in by Lansley having been later abandoned after, according to the Darzi report commissioned by Streeting it “imprisoned more than a million NHS staff in a broken system for the best part of a decade.”
Lord Darzi’s report concluded that “The Health and Social Care Act of 2012 was a calamity without international precedent – it proved disastrous. The result of the disruption was a permanent loss of capability from the NHS“. As Streeting commented it ” led to the longest waiting times, lowest patient satisfaction, and most expensive NHS in history”, but that hasn’t stopped Streeting pursuing his own policies to further prepare the NHS and the country for its privatisation. Of course Lansley was awarded a life peerage in 2015 for his services to capitalism.
At the centre of the protest was the mock trial of Lansley with a judge with an impressive white wig and witnesses for the prosecution who spoke about their own experiences as patients and workers in the NHS.
Most still see the NHS, along with the other welfare state reforms of the period, as the greatest British achievements of the last century and for all its problems it still provides quality healthcare at a fraction of the cost of the US system which Lansley and his colleagues appeared to take as a model
Most importantly, provides services to the whole population including those who would be unable to pay expensive medical insurance. Over 60% of the two million personal bankruptcies filed each year in the US are a result of medical debt.
I don’t think there was much if any defence for Lansley, and the guilty verdict was inevitable. After the trial and a few stops a small group took the protest around Parliament Square, walking onto the various pedestrian crossings and facing the traffic holding up placards and the letters ‘S’, ‘T’, ‘O’ and ‘P’, usually but not quite always in that order and with a bed pan in the middle.
It was a cold day and I had to keep moving, walking around Parliament Square and stopping to talk with peace protesters still then protesting 24/7 in the square. Police and new laws against protest had resulted in the removal of all tents and in restricting the protests to the pavement facing Parliament, but the protests were continuing.
Brian Haw who began his Peace Campaign on 2 June 2001 had left the square on 1 January 2011 for treatment in Berlin for lung cancer, dying there on 18 June 2011. Since he left his campaign had been continued by his supporters, led by Babs Tucker, who had protested for some years with Haw. They on Day 3903 of the protest, continuing in the brutal winter weather despite police having taken away all tents, chairs and other items three weeks earlier.
Maria Gallastegui’s tent and one box remaining in the square
Maria Gallastegui, for some years a regular supporter of Brian Haw, had broken with him and begun her separate Peace Strike in the square several years earlier. She had cooperated with the police in various ways – such as covering her displays for the 2011 royal wedding – and had been granted a temporary injunction restraining police actions agaist her; police had left her tent and her large ‘peace’ box – modelled on the old police boxes – on the square until her case was heard.
Haw’s Peace Camp had been subject to lying and of devious and underhand actions throughout the ten and a half years of their presence in the square, and they told me the police had intentionally delayed their legal action so they could take away their property before the claim came to court.
I went with the three people from the Peace Strike to the weekly protest with others opposite the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in King Charles Street to remind Foreign Secretary William Hague of their opposition to war in Iran. Their protest was continuing when I needed to leave to go to the Italian Embassy.
The trial which was starting in Bologna that day of the twelve was being made under section 270bis of the Penal code introduced by the Fascist regime under Mussolini. They were brought as a part of a long campaign by Public Prosecutor Paolo Giovagnoli for the Authorities of the Papal Republic, aimed against freedom of expression and organisation of the left in Italy.
The twelve were accused of “subversive association for purposes of terrorism” for their membership of communist organisations and if they were convicted, similar prosecutions would be brought against those belonging to other groups outside the official left, including anarchists, Maoists and the Occupy movement.
It was a small token protest, with representative from groups including ‘Democracy and Class War’, ‘Socialist Fight’ and ‘Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group’ and began outside the impressive door in my picture in Grosvenor Square.
But after 20 minutes police came and very helpfully told them that they were in the wrong place. This was the back door of the embassy and they should be in Kings Yard at the front door. A man came out from the embassy and confirmed this and we all walked round to the gates outside the yard, while I went inside with two people who handed in a letter.
An Icy Day in Westminster, Drums for Sudan: Saturday 10th January 2010 was an icy day in Westminster with snow still lying on grassy areas and though it was bright with a little wintry sun there was a chill north-east wind and the temperature stayed around zero. But despite the weather there were a number of protests taking place and I had wrapped up well to cover them. Though the rather thin gloves I needed to let me operate my cameras failed to keep my hands warm, though I could keep them gloved in my pockets when not taking pictures.
I began by walking from Waterloo across Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square where there were a few tents of the Brian Haw’s Peace Camp, continuing since June 2001, but the protesters were sensibly keeping inside.
Next to them were the banners and box of the Peace Strike, then drawing attention to the killing of Tamils in Sri Lanka and calling for a boycott of Sri Lankan made garments and holidays in the country.
I didn’t disturb the protesters sheltering inside their tents but “walked up Whitehall past the government offices and the gathering demonstration over Sudan.” On my way I took a few pictures including of the 1861 former Colonial office – now the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices – “an imposing reminder of the Victorian era when Britain ruled much of the world (and then and later produced much of the mess it is now in.)”
Thick ice covered the fountains in the square, with lumps of ice broken from the edges and thrown across now covering it. But despite the cold there were at least two groups of protesters on the North Terrace.
One was a regular Quaker vigil for peace in the Middle East which I didn’t photograph on this occasion. But I did take some pictures of the Iran Solidarity group who have organised daily acts of solidarity in Trafalgar Square and in other cities since Monday July 27 2009 over the killing of Iranian student Neda Agha-Soltan at a protest in Tehran, Iran on June 20, 2010.
I was in a hurry to get back to the Drums for the start of the Sudan protest opposite Downing Street. This was the start of a year of the global Sudan365 campaign by a coalition of groups including the Aegis Trust, Amnesty International, Arab Coalition for Darfur, Darfur Consortium, FIDH, Human Rights Watch, Refugees International and the Save Darfur Coalition leading up to the 2011 Sudanese referendum in January 2011.
Around 200 people, mainly Sudanese, including a large contingent from Coventry, had turned up for a couple of hours of noisy drumming and some speeches, including one by Sudanese Archbishop Daniel Deng who was in London for meetings with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Archbishop Rowan William on the following Monday.
The protesters called for peace, human rights and development for all in all regions of Sudan, with safety and security for all, as well as protection for Darfur and women’s rights. They supported the 2011 peace agreement which had called for a referendum over independence to be held in Southern Sudan in January 2011, and demanded free and fair elections in the country.
“The Sudan365 campaign’s ‘Drum for Peace’ has attracted support from some of the most famous drummers from around the world, including Phil Selway of Radiohead, Stewart Copeland of The Police and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, who are taking part in a film in which the drum beat for peace, starting in Sudan is passed to drummers around the world, including in Brazil, Mexico, US (New York and San Francisco), UK, France, Spain, Senegal, South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, Mali, UAE, Japan, Russia and Australia.”
The 2011 referendum had over a 97.5% turnout by registered voters and over 98% of these voted in favour of independence. South Sudan became an independent state on 9 July 2011, but this was followed by seven years of civil war in 2013-20. The peace agreement called for elections in 2023, but these have been twice postponed and are due to take place in December 2026. Fighting broke out again in 2025.
Antifa Remember Carlos, TOTAL, Musharraf & More: I spent Saturday November 24th 2007 travelling around London to photograph protests. On the South Bank, anarchists were remembering Carlos Presente killed by fascists in Madrid earlier in the month, protests were taking place at TOTAL garages across the country for their support for the repressive Burmese regime – and I went to several of those in London. Pakistanis protested at Downing Street against President Musharraf and there were a number of protests in Parliament Square. Below are a few of the pictures and the text I wrote in 2007, with links to more images.
Antifa Remember Carlos Presente
Jubilee Gardens
A comrade speaks at the memorial rally
Carlos Presente was only 16, but was already active in opposing fascism in his native Spain. Along with other antifascists, he had stood on the street to defend one of Madrid’s multiracial working class areas when Nazis held an demonstration against immigrants.
After the demonstration on 11th November, 2007, Carlos and a comrade were attacked and stabbed while waiting on an underground platform by one of the fascists who had been demonstrating. The hunting knife went through his heart and he bled to death.
The Anarchist Federation – IFA and Antifa Britain held a short memorial rally to honour Carlos. Fittingly it was at the memorial for those who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s in London’s Jubilee Gardens.
TOTAL disgrace. Free Burma. Protestors stage a ‘die-in’ at Baker St.
The French oil company, TOTAL, is the fourth largest oil company in the world, and the largest supporter of the Burmese military regime. Although the media hardly noticed the country before the recent outrages against monks, it has long been one of the most brutal dictatorships around.
Kilburn
It holds over 1300 political prisoners, many subject to routine torture, makes widespread systematic use of forced labour and uses rape as a deliberate policy against women from some of its ethnic minorities.
Kensal Green
It also has more child soldiers than any other country and spends roughly half the government budget on the military – and much of that budget derives from TOTAL.
Saturday saw demonstrations across the country against TOTAL garages, urging motorists not to support the repression in Burma by buying from TOTAL. There were at least 11 demonstrations in London, and I went to photograph at three of them, in Kilburn, at Kensal Green and [after photographing other protests below in this post] at Baker Street.
It wasn’t surprising, given the widespread nature of the action that numbers at some garages were small. I left Baker St after an hour – half-way through the demonstration, and more people turned up after I’d gone.
I don’t know what fraction of Britain’s Pakistani population supports President Musharraf. Polls earlier in the year in Pakistan showed that almost two thirds of the population thought he should stand down. Of course there are some here who owe their positions to him, and certainly others who support him.
So it was hardly surprising to find a couple of hundred protesters in Whitehall on Saturday afternoon opposite Downing Street following the decision on Friday by a committee of Commonwealth foreign ministers to suspend Pakistan because Musharraf had imposed emergency rule – and then sacked the judges who were about to rule his proposed next term as President unlawful.
Problems with the amplification didn’t prevent the24 hour picket starting
Cold weather is not kind to batteries, and the overnight frost killed those used for the amplification in Parliament Square, so although some supporters had turned up for the ‘Peace Strike’ the planned starting rally couldn’t take place.
Part of Brian Haw’s displayDemonstrators in Parliament Square to mark 500 days in captivity for the two Israeli soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah led Israel to attack Lebanon.
Brian Haw, Syria And EDL Stopped: My working day on Saturday 3rd September 2011 began in Parliament Square, then an extreme right protest in Westminster, Syrians at Downing Street and finally to Whitechapel where several thousand came to stop the EDL entering Tower Hamlets.
Brian Haw Peace Protest Continues
Three days earlier, police had come to Parliament Square and taken away all of the material in the permanent 24/7 peace protest there begun by Brian Haw in 2001 and now continued after his death in June 2001 by Barbara Tucker and other supporters.
Despite the protestation by those carrying on the protest there, the police claimed the material had been abandoned and removed it. The police have for years been under pressure from politicians to end the protest and took advantage of the fact that Barbara Tucker was then being held in Holloway Prison. But a team of others had kept up the protest while she was away and were there when the police came are were still continuing the protest.
This was not the first time that the display here has been stolen by police, the most famous being in May 2006, after which a reconstruction by an artist was controversially put on display at Tate Britain. Since 2006 there had been restrictions on the size of the display allowed there and continuous harassment and arrests of Brian Haw, Barbara Tucker and others involved.
Parliament Square had then been fenced off to the public for some time, with the public denied access to the statues of Churchill, Lloyd George and others, with protests and public limited to the pavements around two sides of the square. But the fencing was useful to display a number of banners. Police did not touch the other peace protest on the pavement by Peace Strike.
Alternative Action brought together “patriot activist groups” from the far-right who had previously taken part in EDL protests. They said they wanted to dissociate themselves from the loutish behaviour, violence and racism of EDL protests and in particular from the inflammatory incursion into Tower Hamlets the EDL were intending later in the day.
Among the groups involved were the English Nationalist Alliance, the British Patriotic Alliance, the Combined Ex Forces, the Ex EDL Association and the National League of Infidels. ‘Tommy Robinson’ had been reported as saying that the EDL would come to disrupt the peaceful march they had organised but this did not happen.
The setting up of Alternative Action reflects various bitter disputes over the leadership and policies of the EDL, in particular over the lack of accountability in the organisation and the behaviour of some of its self-appointed leaders, including Robinson and the ‘Jewish division’ of the EDL.
They had come to march from the Ministry of Justice to Downing Street to hand in a letter calling for one system of law in the UK and an end to Sharia courts. The march was peaceful although there was one minor incident when English Nationalist Alliance leader Bill Baker shouted at Syrian protesters, mistaking them for Islamic extremists, but others soon persuaded him to stop. Later some of those on the march expressed the view that it was inappropriate to allow protests involving foreign flags so close to the Cenotaph with its flags honouring our military dead.
Although well over a hundred had indicated on Facebook that they would march, only around 20 turned up. The march paused at the Cenotaph to lay a wreath and observe a minute’s silence in memory of the soldiers who have given their life for their country before continuing to the gates of Downing Street.
Although they had earlier made arrangements with the Downing St police liaison officer to deliver their letter, police at the gate refused to let them do so and would not take the letter. Other protests have had the same reception, which seems to me to be against the letter and spirit of democracy. The marchers then stopped on the pavement just past Downing Street for a rally and after a few minutes I left.
Around a hundred members of the Syrian Community in London had marched from the Syrian Embassy to hold a noisy protest at Downing St calling for freedom in Syria and an end to oppression, atrocities and humiliation by the Assad regime.
They called on the UK to support further sanctions and bring diplomatic pressure to support the peaceful protests in Syria against the Assad regime which had begun on 15th March 2011 and had met with brutal repression.
Marches has been met with tanks, cities and villages attacked by helicopter gunships, men, women and children tortured and more than 1800 people killed, including many children. Soldiers who refused to open fire on civilians or take part in torture have been themselves killed.
Many of the women taking part wore Muslim headscarves, but there were others who did not, and although most of the drumming, dancing and flag-waving was by the men, this was not a rigidly segregated event although men and women mainly stood it separate groups. The variety of Syrian flags suggested that those taking part included those from various groups opposing the Assad regime.
The protest in Tower Hamlets by residents and their supporters against the plans by the English Defence League to hold a rally somewhere in their borough had started around 11am, but I only arrived later at the time the EDL rally was scheduled to start close to Aldgate East Station.
The street there was empty but blocked by a row of police who refused to let me through despite showing my press card, and I was prevented from going to where the EDL were holding their rally a short distance to the west, just inside the City of London.
Initially the EDL had planned to march through Whitechapel but home secretary Theresa May had banned marches. The EDL then tried to have a static demonstration on a supermarket car park close to the East London Mosque, but the supermarket and other possible sites in the area refused them. Pubs in the area where they intended to meet up for the protest also said they would deny access, and the RMT announced they would close the Underground stations because of the danger to staff.
Police stopped some EDL supporters and turned them back as they tried to enter London. Others got lost wandering around London trying to find pubs that would serve them, and the numbers at the EDL rally were apparently considerably less than the organisers or police had anticipated.
I gave up trying to get to the EDL rally and went instead to the large crowds who had come to Whitechapel High Street and Brick Lane to stop them, and then on to another large crowd who had come to defend the the East London Mosque. The community had clearly united to stop the EDL and there was a huge cheer when it was announced that EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) had been arrested after speaking at the EDL rally, where he had apparently boasted of having broken his bail conditions.
There was more jubilation when the crowd heard that police were moving the EDL away from the rally at Aldgate to Liverpool street and their coaches waiting across the river in Tooley Street.
The protesters began a ‘Victory March’ from the bottom of Brick Lane along Whitechapel High St, led by the Mayor, councillors and others who linked arms across the width of the road.
It stopped at the East London Mosque, but some activists decided to continue and were briefly stopped by police who told them their march was illegal because of the ban in place in Tower Hamlets.
They walked around the police who tried to stop them but a few hundred yards on stewards and some of the protest leaders including Mayor Lutfer Rahmen managed to bring the march to a halt, telling them to enjoy their victory and not continue as arrests now would become the story of the day for the press rather than it being one of a community victory over racism. They calmed down, some took up the offer of a cup of tea back in the Muslim Centre, while others, including myself, went home.
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
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.
Barbara Tucker
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.”
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.
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.
