picnic | >Re-PHOTO

Pedal Power Bike Rush: On Monday 1st June 2009 I put my Brompton on the train and came to London to photograph Climate Rush’s mass bicycle ride demanding the the UK government take effective action to counter climate change and global warning. As we have been feeling in recent days, neither our government or most others around the would has done anything like enough despite the great majority of scientific advice and the many protests such as this. You can read a longer account of this protest together with many more pictures on My London Diary at Pedal Power Bike Rush.

Pedal Power Bike Rush

Westminster

Climate Rush was a direct action group led and inspired by women, modelled on the Suffragette Movement of a hundred years previously and had first emerged in a rush to Parliament on the 100th anniversary of the 1908 ‘Suffragette Rush’ when 40 women were arrested as they attempted to rush into The Houses of Parliament.

Then, as for this pedal power protest their key demands were an end to fossil fuel use and for the government to make policies in line with climate science and research.

*Hare Krisha came with food and a sound system*

Earlier in the day I had not been with them as they protested outside a conference at Chatham House in St James’s Square ‘Coal: An answer to our energy security’, attempting to block the entrance with a sculpture made of bikes and a banner ‘NO NEW COAL – CLIMATE RUSH’ demanding that no new coal-fired power stations be built – and existing ones shut down. (It was October 2024 before this finally happened, years too late.) Five of the protesters had been arrested.

I joined around 300 Climate Rush cyclists and a tandem-hauled sound system outside the conference venue and after around an hour of further protest there, with a short speech by Climate Rush founder Tamsin Osman we set off on a ride, pausing briefly outside BP’s headquarters where she spoke briefly about their huge contribution to global warming and related crimes.

Other climate criminals the ride halted at for protests and where people came to talk about their activities including the British Airports Authority at Victoria and the the government’s clumsily-named Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), responsible for promoting much of its anti-environment climate warming activity.

Helpfully these were marked out by rows of police standing outside, and police pedal cyclists riding with the Climate Rush were also helpful in stopping traffic at various points to facilitate the ride.

*More information about Climate Criminals 0utside the RBS in Lower Regent St*

Many riders wore white dresses and hats evoking the Suffragette era with red sashes with messages including ‘CLIMATE CODE RED’, ‘DEEDS NOT WORDS’, ‘NO AIRPORT EXPANSION’, ‘ACTION ON COAL NOW!, ‘TRAINS NOT PLANES’ and ‘PEDAL POWER.’

*At the Dept for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform*

The riders also slowed down to hand out copies of a newspaper ‘HERE COMES THE SUN’, with information about climate change and what people can do as well as celebrity exclusives from Quentin Tarantino, Paris Hilton, Colin Firth, Vivienne Westwood, Daisy Lowe, Stephen Hawking, Giles Deacon, Gavin Turk, Katherine Hamnett and Queens of Noize, quotations from Gandhi, Einstein and more.

At the end of the ride, the cyclists went around Parliament Square and then onto Westminster Bridge where they brought out a very long banner with the text ‘Remember Remember the 5th of December’ – the date of the next National Climate Demonstration – and hung it over the side of the bridge before settling down to have a picnic. This was continuing when I left for home.

More at Pedal Power Bike Rush.

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People’s Assembly, Class War, Anonymous, ENA & Dykes: Saturday 22nd Jone 2013, ten years ago today, was a rather odd day for me. It began with an event I didn’t go to and instead photographed groups outside, was followed by an meeting to which I had been invited by the extreme right English National Alliance who needed a police escort to lay flowers at the Cenotaph and ended with a Dyke March.

People’s Assembly – Methodist Central Hall, Westminster

I had decided not to attend the People’s Assembly being held in Methodist Central Hall. It was a large event but was being managed so that any criticisms of the Labour Party and trade unions were banned from the main event, with people including Ken Loach being relegated to a hall down the road.

Others had expressed the opinion that this event was intended to “disperse some of the head of steam that had built up among the rank and file” for more direct action against the government. It reminded me of events following the huge ‘Stop the War’ protest in Feb 2003, at which Tony Benn and others had called for decisive action, but Stop the War had failed to do more than call instead for just another protest a while after Blair had declared war. It was hardly surprising that this was much smaller than the previous event and had absolutely no effect.

I commented in 2013:

It was a feeling reinforced by the statement ‘We will work together with leading experts and campaigners both here and abroad, and friendly think tanks, to develop rapidly key policies and an alternative programme for a new anti-austerity government‘, which seemed to make it clear that after the assembly it was the long grass for any ideas, and an end to any action.
My London Diary

And there seems to have been nothing that has happened as a result of this event; for a few years Corbyn gave the Labour Party some hope, but he was stopped from winning a general election by the right in the party. Nothing in Labour policies now suggests they would offer any real alternative should the Tories lose the next election. Or that they can win if the Conservatives don’t defeat themselves.

More at People’s Assembly.

Outside The People’s Assembly – Class War

One of several groups protesting outside was Class War. Ian Bone had called for “a f**king big mob outside” (my asterisks) the People’s Assembly, but as I wrote, only around enough for a football team turned up for their alternative event, though there were several other groups around also opposed to the “pointless jamboree” taking place inside the hall.

So although there were a series of speeches by Bone and others, all amusing and in parts thought-provoking and certainly more interesting than most inside the hall, these were largely made to a mainly empty street.

Action Not Talk?

Outside The People’s Assembly – Anonymous Occupy the Grass

A small group of ‘Anonymous’ and Occupy London supporters handed out leaflets, offered free hugs, and had a picnic outside the People’s Assembly Against Austerity.

Police kept a close eye on them but didn’t interfere with them.

Anonymous Occupy the Grass

ENA Meet Left Opposition – Westminster

The English National Alliance is one of a number of small ‘patriotic’ groups on the extreme right who I’ve photographed over the years, with some members who have also been involved in other similar groups. Their leader is a former BNP member who was expelled from the EDL in 2011 apparently for extremist statements.

Although I’ve made no secret of my disagreements with their views, I’ve always tried to present them clearly and accurately as a journalist, as with other groups I’ve photographed. I’ve felt it was my job, and one that informs the wider public who I think can be trusted to see them for what they are.

Many in these groups complain about the unfair press they receive, and they had a particular gripe that some pictures of people at protests who were just waving being captioned as making Nazi salutes. It certainly has happened, but as they agreed there are also some people at protests by extreme-right groups who will make Nazi salutes.

The ENA had decided to march to the Cenotaph to lay flowers on the way to taking a statement of their views in to Downing Street and I had been invited to join them at the pub where they were meeting for the march. I was surprised how few of them had come, as was the event organiser, and there were a number of phone calls made to try to get more to turn up, but eventually they decided to march.

I was surprised when the small march and its police escort turned down in front of the hall where the People’s Assembly was taking place and small groups of left-wingers were still protesting outside. I’m not sure whether the marchers or police had decided to take this route, but the response was entirely predictable.

Some of the marchers shouted “No Surrender” and they were almost immediately surrounded by people shouting back at them “Fascist scum!”, “Racists!” and there were some minor scuffles. Police managed to push a way through for them and made one arrest before the ENA march, now accompanied by a few counter-protesters was able to continue towards the Cenotaph and Downing St.

By now it was time for me to be at another event, and said goodbye to the ENA and left, with a copy of the long statement they were about to take in addressed to David Cameron from the “Patriots of England who are supporters of every street activist and political party in the United Kingdom.”

Well, no. The last half mile had been clear about that. But you can read my précis of their statement with a number of quotes along with more about the march on My London Diary at ENA Meet Left Opposition.

Dykes March – Berkeley Square to Soho

The Dyke March the previous year in London had been the first such event for many years, and this year’s event was on a rather smaller scale, but there were still around 300 who turned out to march.

The event began with a rally with speakers who included Roz Kaveney, (above), writer, critic, poet and deputy editor of the trans digital magazine META who read one of her poems and long-standing LGBT activist and historian Sue Sanders who tested the crowd on their knowledge of lesbian icons including suffragette composer Dame Ethyl Smyth. I think I recognised more of them than most of the crowd.

The route the march took was based in part on that taken – though in the opposite direction and ending in Hyde park by the 1908 Votes For Women March.

The march was to end with a rally in Soho Square, but I left it to go home from Piccadilly Circus.

Many more pictures at Dykes March.

Tag: picnic

Pedal Power Bike Rush – 2009