Cops Off Campus National Student Protest – Ten years ago today on Wednesday 11th December 2013 I was at the University of London for a large national student protest over the use of police against student protests on campus at several universities around the country.
At Sussex University the management had called the police onto the campus or gone to the courts to prevent or oppose student protests or harass students. A number of students had been arrested.
In London police had been called to protests over the closing down by management of the University of London Union and the 3 Cosas campaign supported by students for a living wage and decent conditions of employment – sick pay, holiday pay and pensions – for the low paid workers on campus. The cleaners union, the IWGB, had come to support the students at this protest.
The previous week in London there had been a large police presence harassing and arresting students at an emergency protest over police brutality in their eviction of students from the Senate House that Wednesday, with a total of over 40 arrests on that day and the following day.
When I had arrived for that protest, there were police vans parked in all the side streets around and later the police made several failed attempts to kettle the large group of students at the protest despite it being intended as an entirely peaceful and orderly march around some of the various sites of the university in the area.
The police actions on that occasion seemed totally unnecessary and it was hard not to see them as a deliberate attempt to provoke a violent response, but the students kept their heads, moved rapidly and outwitted them. My account of the protest at ‘Cops Off Campus’ Protest Police Brutality‘ ended with the sentence: “It did seem an incredible and pointless waste of public money, and it resulted in more inconvenience to the public than if the event had not been policed at all.”
I don’t for a moment imagine the police had been influenced by my account, though I do know from occasional comments made to me by officers at various protests that some of them at least followed me. I’m sure that they had come to the same obvious conclusion independently, and for the protest on 11th December there was not an officer in sight in the whole area.
There were speeched outside the University of London Union before the march moved off, at its front a ‘Book Bloc’ carrying large backed polystyrene foam shields with book titles, including George Orwell’s ‘1984’, particularly appropriate as the Senate House is said to have inspired Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’, and alongside it were Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Mary Woolstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’, E P Thompson’s ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ and other classics.
When the march came to the gates to Senate House from Russell Square they found that these gates, normally open, had been locked and chained to prevent them entering, despite most of those present being members of the university. They are stout metal gates but the chains could not for long resist the bodies pushing against them and they gave way and the crowd surged into the car park.
After a few minutes the marchers made their way back to Russell Square and continued to march around the area, eventually coming to a halt outside SOAS, where the samba band was playing and they sat down, stood around or danced.
Later some went on to protest outside the law courts where the inquest on Mark Duggan, shot by police in 2011, was ending and then to Whitehall, but I left as I was getting tired and needed to file my pictures.
Hong Kong, Fur, Brixton & Carnaby – There were five events listed in my diary for Saturday 23rd November 2019, but I only photographed two of them, the Stand With Hong Kong march and rally and the annual March Against Fur, though I missed the others. But I did take a couple of short walks. I can’t remember now why I went to Brixton, but my trip to Carnaby Street was to see a small exhibition in a shop I had three pictures in.
Stand With Hong Kong – Westminster
Sadly the idea that the British Government could in 2019 have any real influence on China over the breaches of Sino-British Joint Declaration agreed in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher was in power was always an illusion.
In 2014 the Chinese government had said it regarded the agreement had already met its objectives following the handover in 1997 and they regarded it as now having no legal effect. The British government disagree but have no possibility of doing anything to change Chinese minds or actions.
So while I had great sympathy with people of Hong Kong who had been protesting there as well as their supporters in foreign countries including UK, it was clear that these protests would not change policies in Hong Kong.
Finally the British government had to admit this and it led to the setting up of the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa scheme in 2021, which allowed Hong Kong British National (Overseas) citizens (BNOs) and their close family members to move the the UK for five years after which they can apply for leave to remain and, after a further year for British citizenship.
Perhaps protests such as these did influence the government in how the scheme was set up, with a fairly generous interpretation of the rules governing family members, although the route to becoming a British citizen seems unnecessarily long and complicated.
BNO status was set up by an Act of Parliament following the 1984 declaration for Hong Kong residents who wished to retain a connection with the UK after the handover to China and had to be claimed before that too place in 1997. About a third of Hong Kong residents had BNO status and the scheme would also allow a similar number of their families to get visas.
Although the total number of people eligible to come to the UK was thought to be over 5 million, the number expected to take up the offer was expected to be around 320,000 and so far is only roughly half this. Although much cheaper than other visa schemes it remains quite expensive as a health charge is also applied and for a family with one child the total costs over the period to obtain British citizenship is around £20,000.
After a rally in Leicester Square the march set off through central London.
The march went along the pavement along Charing Cross Road, which was extremely crowded.
Though it spilled out onto the road.
Although the main focus of the many posters was against fur and the ending of the fur trade, the main banner called for an end to all forms of animal oppression and many on the march were vegans.
I left the march as it turned down Shaftesbury Avenue for a tour of the West End and stores selling fur products, calling for an end not just to using fur in clothing but against all exploitation of animals of all species, whether for meat, dairy, wool, leather or other products.
First Child by Raymond Watson, a memorial to 116 children murdered by the Afrikaner police force in Soweto in 1976 was the first public sculpture by a Black artist in the UK, commissioned in 1998 by the 198 Gallery.
Bon Marché, Britains first purpose built department store, was opened in 1877. Its founder went bankrupt but the store continued in business with various owners until 1975. Since then it has been refurbished with almost all ground floor detail lost.
I paid a brief visit to Carnaby Street where 3 of my pictures were in the window of a shop called Size? in a temporary display celebrating the apparently iconic Nike Air Max 90 introduced in 1990. I took the three rather maroon images in this picture of the window and the one at the right, taken at Notting Hill Carnival in 1990 shows a man in rather long shorts wearing those trainers. There were ten panels in the display, the other nine using later pictures taken by other photographers.
Four unrelated events kept me busy on Friday 6th December 2013.
EDL Protest Supports Marine A – Downing St, Friday 6th December 2013
In November 2014, a court martial found Marine A, Sergeant Alexander Blackman guilty of murder for his killing of a wounded Taliban insurgent in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. On the day his sentence was due to be announced the extreme right-wing EDL called a protest opposite Downing St, calling for a minimal sentence, arguing that he acted under extreme pressure and that his victim was a terrorist.
Although the EDL had predicted 500 would come, only fewer than 50 were there when I came to take photographs, and there were no placards and little to tell people why they were there, just the usual EDL flags, some with the message ‘No Surrender’, though quite a few of those taking part were wearing ‘I support Marine S’ t-shirts. Among the flags was one for the ‘Taliban Hunting Club’, with a skull with red eyes inside a gunsight and crossed guns, which seemed in particularly poor taste for this event.
The Geneva convention which Blackman said at the time of the killing he had just broken is an important protection for serving soldiers and many of them had strongly condemned the cold-blooded killing of a prisoner by Marine A and called for an appropriate sentence.
Later in the day Blackman was given a life sentence with a minimum of 10 years. Later this was reduced to 8 years, and after an appeal in 2017 the murder verdict was reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility with a prison sentence of 7 years, though his dismissal with disgrace from the Marines remained in place. There had been a large public campaign calling for his release or a more lenient sentence and a general feeling that his initial trial had been unfair, with his commanding officer not being allowed to give evidence and a generally poor performance by his defence team. He was released from prison the following month having served sufficient time.
Tributes to Mandela – London, Friday 6th December 2013
Nelson Mandela died in Johannesburg on the previous day, Thursday 5th December, and people brought flowers to the Nelson Mandela statue in Parliament Square.
There were more flowers at South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, where a long queue waited patiently for several hours to sign a book of remembrance in the High Commission.
Bereaved protest at CPS Failure – Southwark Bridge, Friday 6th December 2013
Families whose loved ones have died in custody held a protest outside the offices of the Crown Prosecution Service in Rose Court at their failure to successfully prosecute police officers and others over these deaths. Since 1990 there have been 1433 deaths and not a single conviction.
The last successful prosecution brought against a police officer was for involvement in a black death in custody was in 1972, after the death of David Oluwale in 1969. Police officers have been prosecuted for several other black deaths in custody – Joy Gardner, Christopher Alder and Mikey Powell – but none of these cases was successful.
The standard response given by the CPS for not bringing prosecutions is that there is ‘not enough evidence to prosecute’. The reason is often that police hide or destroy evidence and fail to carry out any proper investigation of these cases from the start, failing to treat them as a crime but more as something to be covered up. Often the officers responsible for the deaths are are simply not questioned, and in some cases they refuse to answer questions. CCTV evidence is often not available with equipment problems being cited, and officers have often falsified their evidence to protect themselves or their colleagues.
Among those who spoke was Marcia Rigg, whose brother Sean Rigg was murdered in Brixton Police Station in 2008. She began her speech with a tribute to Mandela. An inquest the previous year had concluded that the police had used “unsuitable and unnecessary force” on Rigg, that officers failed to uphold his basic rights and that the failings of the police “more than minimally” contributed to his death.
In March 2013 three police officers were arrested who had clearly committed perjury at the inquest but the CPS decided not to charge them. Later after a review forced by the family one was charged but despite the evidence was unanimously acquitted by the jury in 2016.
‘Cops Off Campus’ Protest Police Brutality – Bloomsbury, Friday 6th December 2013
London University management was trying to ban all protests on the campus and had called in police the previous day when students had occupied part of the Senate House. Police appear to have used excessive force in removing the students and on Friday 6th a large group of students had come out to protest against them and the University calling police onto the campus.
The previous day’s protest had been over the privatisation of student fees, but there were other issues, including the university’s intention to close down the student union, seen as a part of their aim to end all protests. Students have also been taking the side of low paid staff who work in the universityy, particularly the cleaners, security and catering staff and supporting their campaigns for a living wage, proper sick pay, holidays and pensions which they are denied as their work is outsourced. It was largely protests over this that had led the university management to try and ban all protests.
Today’s student protest was intended to be an entirely peaceful and orderly march around some of the various sites of the university in the area to the west and north of Russell Square, but the police had come apparently determined to stop them, with police vans down every side street.
There were a few short speeches outside the University of London Union and then the students marched to the locked gates of Senate House and shouted slogans. When they attempted to move off to march around the block their path was blocked by police, with a few students who tried to go past being thrown roughly backwards. The students wanted to keep the protest peaceful – there were many more than enough of them to have pushed their way through had they wished to.
Behind them at the other end of Malet Street was another line of police, with more blocking the only side-turning away from the campus. The only route free was onto the campus and the walked past SIAS and out onto Thornhaugh St, where they turned left to Woburn Square and on to Torrington Place. Here they found the gate to UCL was locked and guarded by security. They turned into Gower Street, saw more police coming up behind them and rushed into UCL. After a short time there they decided to make their way by the back streets to Torrington Square and the student union. I’d had enough walking and took a more direct route, meeting them as they arrived back. It was getting rather dark and I’d done enough walking and I then left to catch a bus on my way home.
I could see no reason for the way that the police had reacted to a peaceful march around the University; it seemed to be simply trying to show the students who was boss by preventing what appeared to be a peaceful protest, and a reaction which created considerably more disruption in the area than the protest itself as well as representing a terrible waste of public funds. But I’m sure some of the police were grateful for some extra overtime with Christmas coming up.
