What you see here is just the second page of a selection of my work in 2024. Not particularly my “best pictures” but all I think pictures that worked well and told the story I was trying to tell. Despite getting out rather less often than in some previous years, particularly pre-Covid, I think it has been quite a good year for my photography even though I’m getting older, lacking stamina and generally taking things much easier.
Most of my pictures have been from protests over the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza but other campaigns have continued, and I’ve been able to photograph some of their action. You can see more pictures from all the events I’ve photographed in around 70 albums from 2024 on Facebook – together with a few from my summer holiday in Wales. They are here in roughly the order they were taken – those from January and February are in the previous post.
London, UK. 9 Mar 2024. A huge peaceful march to the US Embassy demands a full ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli genocide. The IDF has now killed over 30,000 people, mainly women and children, continue to ignore the ICJ ruling to avoid genocide and preparing a brutal assault on Rafah. Israel continues to stop the humanitarian aid and medical supplies needed to avoid mass deaths from disease and starvation and spread lies about UNRWA whose funding is essential. Protesters demand a political solution.London, UK. 16 March 2024. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell among those holding the main banner.. People march from the UN Anti-Racism Day rally at the Home Office to Downing St against the increasing far-right anti-immigrant, antisemitic, racist and xenophobic rhetoric and polices of the government. Jeremy Corbyn joined the march at Parliament Square as the march turned along the Embankment to march to the north end of Whitehall and down it to the House Against Hate rally at Downing St.London, UK. 16 March 2024. People danced to music from a lorry in the middle of Whitehall opposite Downing St where there were also speeches against the increasing tide of hate speech being stirred up by leading members of the Tory party including Sunak, Gove, Braverman and others. Their talk of “mob rule”, “hate speech” and “extremists” is attacking our right to protest and free speech and moving the country towards an extremist right-wing police state. London, UK. 16 March 2024. Syrians protest at Downing St on the 13th Anniversary of the Syrian Revolution. More than half of Syria’s population have been displaced with millions fleeing the country as the Asdsad regime has committed unspeakable atrocities against the people of Syria, who rose up peacefully for democracy, reforms, and accountability. They called on everyone to remember those many Syrians who have been killed and to continue to support the demands for democracy, reforms and accountability. London, UK. 13 April 2024. A man with a Netanyahu mask and red hands holds a bloody doll. Thousands march through London to a rally in Parliament Square in a day of action across the country to demand an immediate ceasefire, that Britain stops selling arms to Israel and calling for a free Palestine. Israel is using British weapons, surveillance technology and military equipment in the attacks which have killed over 32,000 in Gaza since October 7th. A small Zionist counter-protest shouted at them at Aldwych.London, UK. 20 April 2024. Witnesses call for the man to be released as they say the police officer was accidentally hit.A funeral procession in Ilford carries small coffins mourning the death of over 34,000 Palestinians, more than 13,000 children, with over 8,000 missing probably buried under rubble in Gaza. It ended with a rally outside Barclays Bank which campaigners say funds Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians. London, UK. 20 April 2024. Piers Corbyn hands out leaflets for his London Mayoral campaign. People march to a rally in the centre of Lewisham to demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to UK arms sales to Israel. This was one of many local actions around the country. London, UK. 27 April 2024. Latin Americans stand with Palestine. Many thousands march peacefully through London from Parliament Square to Hyde Park in another huge protest demanding an immediate permanent ceasefire and an end to British arms sales to Israel, calling for a free Palestine. Many carried posters identifying themselves as Jewish. Israel is using British weapons, surveillance technology and military equipment in the attacks which have devastated Gaza and killed over 34,000, including more than 14,500 children.London, UK. 27 April 2024. Many thousands march peacefully through London from Parliament Square to Hyde Park in another huge protest demanding an immediate permanent ceasefire and an end to British arms sales to Israel, calling for a free Palestine. Many carried posters identifying themselves as Jewish. Israel is using British weapons, surveillance technology and military equipment in the attacks which have devastated Gaza and killed over 34,000, including more than 14,500 children since October 7th. London, UK. 1 May 2024. Several thousands met at Clerkenwell Green on May Day for the International Workers Day March to Trafalgar Square. Those taking part included many from London’s various ethnic communities – Turkish, Kurdish, Latin American, Phillipine, West Indian, Indian, Sri Lankan, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian and more as well as many from UK trade unions, communist and anarchist groups. Many showed their support for Palestine and other international issues. London, UK. 11 May 2024. London CND supporters protest at the US Embassy in Nine Elms as part of a national day of action against US nuclear weapons coming to Britain which would make us a target for nuclear attacks. Many sat well back under trees in the shade to listen to speakers and singers.London, UK. 18 May 2024. People pose with giant keys. Many thousands march through London on the 76th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians by Israel. Marchers demanded an end to the current genocide, an end to arms sales to Israel and the apartheid regime and for the opening of crossings for urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza. Many carried large keys symbolising the right for Palestinians to return to their homes.London, UK. 25 May. Poppies labelled with the names of children killed. People meet in Peckham to march to a rally in Camberwell as part of a weekend of local protests across the country calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza and UK arms sales to Israel which make our government complicit in Israel’s war crimes. They demand a huge increase in humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza to avoid famine, and call for an end to Israeli apartheid, and freedom and justice for Palestine.
Part 3 follows tomorrow. You can see many more pictures from these and other events in my albums on Facebook.
King’s Cross, Excel and a Musical Protest: Like other posts in the early years of My London Diary the text and pictures from Saturday 26th November 2005 are rather hidden away and it isn’t always easy to connect pictures with text. And it had seemed at the time a good idea to write the texts all in lower case, which makes them rather difficult to read, so I now like to resurrect some of them occasionally in a more accessible manner, linking back to the original pages for more pictures than in these posts on >Re:PHOTO.
Kings Cross – never again!
Bob Crow (RMT), right, applauds a speaker
As I walked up the escalator (yes, I was late again) at King’s Cross I remembered the interviews with those who had been caught there in the terrible fire, thinking how hard it would be to find the way out in smoke-filled darkness. Parts of the station still look a terrible mess, though that’s not unusual in our underground system.
Up at ground level was a joint trades union demonstration in memory of the fire, and to defend the safety rules which are currently under attack by management wanting to save costs. Kings Cross – Never Again! was address by a number of speakers including Mick Connolly, John Mcdonnell MP Jeremy Corbyn MP, Keith Norman (ASLEF), Matt Wrack (FBU), and Bob Crow (RMT), all worried by the threat to the public and those who work on the Underground or in rescue services.
Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn
Proper safety procedures are particularly vital when as well as accidental disasters such as the King’s Cross fire, the safety of the system is also threatened by deliberate terrorist attacks.
I’d hoped the event would end in time for me to get to a lecture at the ICA, but it was too late. I went that way just the same, getting off the tube at Charing Cross and walking down Whitehall to Westminster station for the Jubilee Line, past the Cenotaph, surrounded now by a low fence. It was still covered by the wreaths of poppies from earlier in the month, now partly covered by the falling leaves from the many London plane trees, another and in some ways more touching symbol of loss.
Victoria Dock, Spillers Millennium Mills and Pontoon Dock, with new Riverside Flats in distance, Silvertown, London.
It was an afternoon of low winter sun, and stormy showers, with impressive clouds in the wide open skies over the expanse of the Royal Docks, and some peculiar colours. The demonstration I’d gone to see was nowhere to be found when I arrived, and I wandered the dock estate marvelling in the views.
In particular the high-level bridge over the dock is one of new London’s more spectacular sights, and a fine viewing platform. Unlike the last time I visited, the lifts were working too. A small group of people with musical instruments began to gather on the top, but they turned out only to be a band coming for a photo session.
Musicians from ‘East London Against the Arms Fair’ treat visitors to the Excel centre to a musical welcome
I’d more or less given up and decided to go home at that point when in the distance I heard the brassy notes of the Red Flag, and made my way towards them. By the time I’d arrived at the entrance to the Excel Centre, they were into the Internationale, complete with new words for the occasion (except that no-one was singing them, and I didn’t fancy a solo role):
We are told that profit from the arms fair will trickle down all over town, But it’s killing our sisters and our brothers, it’s their blood that is trickling down.
All people now rally! No arms fair any place! The Intenationale unites the human race!
Next came the Cutty Wren, a song from the Peasant’s Revolt, which took my mind back to Fobbing where I’d been ten days earlier.
The Excel centre has hosted several arms fairs which have attracted a number of protests from local groups. One of the local papers, the Newham Recorder, found in a poll that 79% of local residents oppose them, and London Mayor Ken Livingstone has also voiced his opposition. Further arms fairs are already booked for 2007, 2009 and 2011 and the musical protest was one of a number of actions attempting to get the Excel centre to cancel these future events.
And I returned in those later years to photograph many protests agains the arms fairs – and you can find pictures of them on various September pages on My London Dairy.
Cinelli, Poppies and Music at Class War Poor Doors. I only photographed one event on Wednesday 17th September 2014, one of the long series of weekly protests by Class War over separate entrances for rich and poor occupants of the large block of flats at One Commercial St on Whitechapel High Street.
Music at Class War Poor Doors – Aldgate
One Commercial St is a 21 storey largely residential block occupying an extensive corner site on Whitechapel High St and Commercial St which includes 207 flats above lower floors of offices, shops and an entrance to Aldgate East Underground Station.
The building, opened in 2014, received strong criticism in architectural circles, and Wikipedia quotes Building Design as commenting on what was developer Redrow’s “first flagship development” with “First flagship development? Please God let it also be their last. No one who can liken this incoherent hulk of ill-fitting glass sheets to a blade of light deserves to build again in such a sensitive location” and it was nominated for the Carbuncle Cup for “the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months“.
But it became controversial for other reasons too. To meet planning regulations the block contains some flats at affordable rents. While those in the main part of the building enter through an impressive foyer with a concierge desk and seating from the High Street adjoining Aldgate East Station, tenants of the affordable section had to go down what was then a dirty and dingy alley at the side of building, Tyne Street, to a door with a card-entry reader leading to a long empty corridor. On 17th September the card reader had been broken for 3 weeks, leaving the building insecure and the building management had failed to repair it.
This difference in treatment for rich and poor was highlighted in an article in The Guardian which commented on the growing trend for London’s new housing developments to include separate entrances like this for the less wealthy, known as “poor doors” and which gave One Commercial Street among the examples.
Many people expressed their distaste at this social segregation, and in New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced he planned to take action to prevent new developments having such separate doors for low-income residents after a single such block was built there. But it was becoming common in London.
Anarchist group Class War decided it was time to take some action, and from July 2014 organised a weekly series of evening protests outside One Commercial Street, continuing (with a few breaks) until the following May. I photographed all but a couple of these, and later published a zine with some of the pictures I made. This is still available, but carriage costs make buying single copies expensive, however there is a good preview online.
Others joined with Class War on various occasions, and on Wednesday 17th September 2014 Reggae band Different Moods from Tottenham came to perform their ‘Poor Doors’ song specially written for the protests.
The protests by Class War did raise the profile of the problem, and resulted in some minor changes – including better lighting and cleaning for the side alley. They probably also embarrassed the owners enough to make them sell the building, though the new owners proved no better and the social segregation remains. And it’s perhaps why the building was later renamed and is now the Relay Building.
On my way to Aldgate I stopped at the Tower of London and made a photograph of the Sea of Poppies, work of art remembering the ‘Great War’, the ceramic poppies, one for each of the British forces killed in the war. I commented that for me “it seems decorative but shallow” and “lacks any real sense of the numbers involved and is far less graphic than the war cemeteries with their seemingly endless rows of crosses.“
Earlier in the day I’d taken a picture showing the terrible state of my old bicycle, no longer ride able. It’s still in my shed, as several attempts to find a replacement chainwheel have failed. You can read more of the story about it at Vintage Cinelli in poor state. Perhaps I should try searching again.
When I was young everything still stopped for two minutes at 11am on Armistice Day although the main remembrance events had been moved to Remembrance Sunday in 1939 so as not to interfere with the war effort. But traffic still pulled into the side of the road here. In France the Armistice de la Première Guerre mondiale is still a national holiday.
Paris lle, 11 Nov 2008
I’m not a pacifist, but I am firmly opposed to most wars, both historic and current. The First World War was clearly a disaster that should not have happened, a family quarrel that should not have resulted in such incredible suffering and loss of life largely with people killing others who they had far more in common with than with those who sent them into battle.
Clearly US war in Vietnam (and earlier the French in Indochina) was wrong as was the invasion of Iraq. And equally clearly we as a nation should not be wasting money on pointless nuclear weapons and selling arms to promote wars around the world such as that in Yemen. And so on.
Remembering Animals Killed in War, Park Lane, 11 Nov 2006
But while it seems clear that America should not have been fighting in Vietnam, it seems clear that the Vietnamese had to fight against them, just as it seems clear that Cubans were justified in fighting against Batista and US imperialism – and the same applies to other struggles against colonialism and for national liberation.
School Students Against the War, Oxford St, 11 Nov 2006
I’ve recently re-read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and although Stalinists contest his view of events it remains powerful both as a personal account of the war in Spain and makes clear the main reasons why the democratically elected government was defeated by the fascists – and Stalinist Russia’s contribution along with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to that defeat, which made a wider war inevitable. If you’ve not read it, this is a book I highly recommend – and there is an excellent article ‘Orwell and the Spanish Revolution‘ by John Newsinger in International Socialism Journal which explains Orwell’s position and deals with some of his detractors.
Staines, Nov 11 2007
I grew up in the years following the Second World War and had my share as a wolf cub and boy scout of standing in short trousers with the bitter November wind blowing up them at Remembrance Sunday parades at local war memorials. Of course we should remember those who died, but not in the kind of militaristic and often jingoistic fashion that most or all such events have in England. The best way to honour their sacrifice is surely to work for peace. In Germany they have a day as a peace celebration.
Families of Servicemen Killed in Iraq, Cenotaph, Whitehall. 11 Nov, 2006
After briefly photographing the event at the Mairie in the 11th arrondissement – I’d rushed out from a café when I saw the event happening – we strolled the short distance to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.
