May Queens in April: Most years on April 28th I’ve photographed events around one the the more important but largely overlooked by media occasions of the year – International Workers Memorial Day – which remembers those who have died in the workplace, with the slogan ‘Remember the dead – fight for the living‘. You can read a number of accounts of some of these events on My London Diary – such as this one from 2013.
But some years – and this year, 2025 is another – I have other commitments on April 28th and have not been able to cover International Workers Memorial Day. In 2007 I was working hard on a project on London’s May Queens for a museum exhibition (unfortunately cancelled at the final stage due to financial constraints) and needed to be in south-east London to work on that. My day on Saturday 28 April began in Chislehurst and then moved on to Bromley where a number of local May Queens were crowned.
After the exhibition was cancelled I put together some of the pictures from these events in a book, London’s May Queens, still available. It’s perhaps important to say that these events are not beauty competitions but activities to raise the confidence and abilities of the girls who take part, including in public speaking and performance and that the various roles in the local groups and the London May Queen group to which they can move on are assigned solely on their length of membership. It still follows the structures and texts from its founding years.
All of the rather detailed text from the second edition of the book both about the history of May Queens, this and other May Queen events around London and around half of its pictures can be viewed in the book preview on-line. Here is the text about the book on Blurb:
2012 saw the crowning of the London’s 100th May Queen. The first Merrie England and London May Queen festival was held in 1913 and it has continued every year since, still on the same lines. In the 1920s and 30s it was a major event, covered by cinema newsreels and competitions in daily newspapers, but now it is known to few outside the over 20 local realms that take part in the annual event. The 72 pictures in this work give a unique insight into this community event.
Here with the usual corrections are the two posts I wrote in 2007 on My London Diary. The pictures here are all from that day and you can see more at the links below each post.
Chislehurst May Queen Society – Fund-Raising Pub Crawl
Chislehurst isn’t far from the central London but is surrounded by woods and commons and feels very different to Hither Green a couple of stations closer to the centre. Even as a suburb it feels very rural, with what looks like a large village pond and village green.
Chislehurst is one of the ‘realms’ in the London May Queen Festival, but is finding it hard to keep going and attract new young girls to carry on the tradition (see London May Queen 2005 and Chislehurst May Queen 2006) for more pictures of them.
So getting publicity in the local area is very important. They need people to notice them and the May Queen Festival, and to bring their daughters and grand-daughters along to take part in the fun. Obviously the girls who do take part are enjoying it, but it is also a commitment and takes hard work to practice the maypole dances and so on.
To get some publicity the week before the May Queen Festival they organised a sponsored fancy-dress pub crawl. I met up with them at The Lounge, a fairly newly refurbished bar at the top of the hill to the north of the town centre, with an interesting decor.
From there we went down into the centre of Chislehurst, letting people know about the May Queen and collecting money both on the street and in the pubs we visited.
I was sorry to have to leave after the third pub, when perhaps things were beginning to warm up a little, but it was fun, and I hope will help to raise the profile of the May Queen group in the area. more pictures
London May Queen: Bromley May Queens
I’d promised this year’s London May Queen, Erin, that I would try to photograph her, and unfortunately I had to be elsewhere for her actual crowning at Hayes in May. So Bromley seemed a good place to catch up with her and take some pictures, as there she would be appearing with five local may queens from groups around the area – Bromley Common, Shortlands, Hayes, Hayes Common and Hayes Village.
Erin, the 2007 London May Queen, is easy to recognise in my pictures as she is carrying a frame with pink roses and white flowers that says ‘I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley‘, as well as a sash saying ‘London May Queen‘.
Unfortunately we got on the wrong bus to get to Bromley and enjoyed a long tour of most of the outer reaches of south-east London before finally arriving there. It didn’t help that the address I had for the start was rather vague, but finally we met up with the procession almost exactly where we had got off the bus 15 minutes of wandering earlier, and walked with the procession through the centre of the town to the gardens.
It was a shame that the police had apparently insisted that the procession rush through the town centre. It was led by the band of T S Endeavour, playing ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ (and other popular tunes) and I’m sure they could have marched at half the pace without causing great traffic chaos – much of the centre is in any case pedestrianised.
Some of the younger girls taking part really had to run to keep up through the town centre. Events such as this enliven towns (and Bromley could do with an awful lot of enlivening, being total shopping hell) adding colour and individuality, and it seems far more important to celebrate them to the maximum than worry excessively about traffic flow.
At the gardens things were more relaxed, and the London May Queen was able to crown those of the other queens who had not already been crowned at their own local ceremonies, and there were many pictures taken by me and the mothers and fathers.
Again it’s a shame that Bromley doesn’t have a maypole and there wasn’t any singing or dancing or acting. But it was a nice summery afternoon and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Trade Justice Not Free Trade Overnight Vigil – 2005: Twenty years ago on the night of 15th April 2005 and the following morning I was one of around 25,000 people protesting in Westminster for Trade Justice rather than Free Trade. The week of action was a part of the Make Poverty History campaign and it was a long cold night for me.
Mass Vigil on Whitehall, 4-4.30 am
Trump has put world trade very much into the headlines in recent weeks with his assault on free trade, raising tariffs to silly levels and creating chaos in international trading systems that were largely set up to favour the United States and to a lesser extent the industrial west through organisations including the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) at the cost of the poorer countries of the world.
Don’t Chicken out on Trade Justice
The Trade Justice Movement calls for policies “designed to deliver a sustainable economic system that tackles poverty and protects the environment.” It calls on the UK Government to:
“Ensure trade rules allow governments, particularly in poor countries, to choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment; Prevent trade rules that allow big businesses to profit at the expense of people and the environment; Ensure decisions about trade rules are made transparently and democratically.”
Trade justice, not free trade placards held high as the procession passed the Houses of Parliament. The time, according to Big Ben, 6.40 am.
Free Trade which simply relies on market forces ignores human rights, environmental considerations and democratic decision-making and leads to exploitation, environmental degradation and inequality – we need a more just system.
Opposite Downing St in Whitehall at 11pm
Here with some of the pictures (and the usual minor corrections) is what I wrote about the overnight vigil in which a surprisingly large number of people – probably around 25,000 took part, overwhelming the expectations of the organisers.
Wake Up to Trade Justice – Westminster
15-16 April, 2005
The UK climax of the global Week of Action on Trade Justice was an overnight vigil in Westminster on Friday-Saturday 15-16th April. Along with many thousands of others I travelled to the opening event at Westminster Abbey, only to find it was already full. Fortunately we were able to hear the relay sitting in the seats marked ‘Members of Parliament’ in St Margaret’s Church next to the abbey, but there were many more people in Parliament Square and around the area.
At 11pm we moved off into whitehall, where it soon became obvious there were far too many to fit behind the crush barriers and we took over the road, leaving just a single lane for northbound traffic. People lit their candles and made a fair bit of noise, before leaving either for home or to try to attend one of the various events that had been organised through the night. I went to the Vue cinema in Leicester Square to see a preview of ‘The Fever’ starring Vanessa Redgrave (she had talked earlier in Westminster Abbey.)
When that finished I’d hoped to do something else, but all the venues were full, with long queues, so I went for a walk by the Thames. The organisers had expected a couple of thousand people, hoped and planned for five thousand but altogether estimate that some twentyfive thousand turned up for all or part of the event.
From 4am to 4.30am we crushed into Whitehall again for a mass vigil opposite Downing St. Millions of people around the world suffer from unjust trade, and this was chosen as the time when the largest number of them are awake. I was rather less so, but still managed to blow my whistle and take a few pictures, though I messed things up rather more than usual.
I’d dressed up in warm clothes (the forecast had told me 4 degrees at 6 am), but even so, sitting on a bench in Parliament Square after this was a mistake. I fell asleep and was woken up shivering at around half-past five by a smell of burning. Someone sleeping on the ground nearby had set some of their clothing on fire with their candle. Fortunately it was quickly extinguished, with a bottle of Lucozade serving as a fire extinguisher.
Soon after the dawn procession began to assemble and I managed to drag myself up to photograph it.
People were remarkably wide-awake and cheerful as the ten thousand or so who had stayed the night over made a short walk through Westminster as the sun rose over the buildings. By half past seven it was all over, and I walked back to Waterloo Station taking a few more pictures in the morning light.
Ellen MacArthur, Brian Haw & Ashura. On 20th February 2005 I froze on the riverside in Bermondsey waiting for Ellen MacArthur’s catamaran to come up-river to Tower Bridge after her 71 day voyage had made her the fastest solo sailor to sail around the world. Five years later “she set up the Foundation in her name to accelerate the transition to a circular economy“. I didn’t get any very good pictures as I was far to far away as she raised here arm to acknowledge the crowd that had gathered to welcome her – I needed a much longer telephoto than I’ve ever had.
Afterwards I took a little walk around the Bermondsey riverside before making my way back to Parliament Square where I took a pictures of the display there by Brian Haw’s Peace Campaign, now joined by promotional flags for the 2012 Olympic bid. There was more of this in Trafalgar Square too, where I dropped in briefly to see some of our pictures and warm up.
Finally at Marble Arch I photographed the start of the Ashura procession by Shi’ite Muslims. I didn’t stay too long as I was still cold and I was keen to get home and warm.
Here – with the usual minor corrections – is the piece I wrote in 2005 to go with the pictures on My London Diary:
Sunday was another bitter day, and I froze on Butlers Wharf waiting to see Ellen MacArthur aboard her catamaran as it was driven up to Tower Bridge and back from Greenwich, disappointingly not a sail in sight.
Ellen MacArthur is just visible, arm upraised in the centre of the picture
The crowds were not huge, but respectable, but like me, few could be bothered to go to Greenwich. The various press boats buzzing round the catamaran added a little interest, but made me glad I wasn’t on one.
I was more interested in taking some pictures along the riverside, then took the tube to Westminster to call in on Brian Haw, still in Parliament Square since 1st June 2001, with the government now cooking up a personal law against him.
The signs on the square are no augmented by a line of mute London 2012 flags, and along in Trafalgar Square (on my route to the National Gallery) was a giant tent and Olympian figure. Nobody can accuse London 2012 of not spending money on promoting their cause. more pictures
Shi’ite Muslims in London were celebrating the stand of the grandson of the Prophet, Imam Hussain, who died a glorious martyr along with his small band of supporters at Karbala in Iraq, choosing death rather than dishonour, in the year 680. Ashura represents a key point of difference between Sunni and Shi’a traditions and Saddam Hussein rigidly prevented its observance in Iraq during his years in power.
March & Rally Against Custody Deaths: The march in London on Saturday 26th October 2024 by the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) was the 25th annual remembrance of the thousands who have died after being arrested by police or held in prisons, secure mental health and immigration detention in suspicious circumstances.
The exact number of these deaths is not known, but is clearly very much larger than any official statistics. At some earlier of these events people have carried a list with well over 2000 names from the last 40 or so years.
Just a few of these cases have become well-known, both through continuing protests by the families and friends of those who have been killed and in a few cases also through inquests and prosecutions. But prosecutions have been rare and convictions non-existent even where the evidence has seemed clear.
Marcia Rigg holds Keir Starmer’s 1988 booklet ‘The right to life’.
Most have involved physically fit young men, usually in their 20s, who have been arrested by police. People from all communities but with young black men being over-represented, but there are also those of Asian heritage, white British and all others, women, older people. Almost all from the poorer parts of our society.
Attempts by the families to get information about the deaths have often been obstructed by police and official investigations into what happened have often been at best cursory, often more concerned with covering up than investigating. Despite the huge number of deaths there have been no convictions, no cases where families have felt they have received justice. And one of the most common chants is ‘No Justice, No Peace!’
Few of these cases receive more than a short paragraph in a local newspaper, and where they do get more coverage it is largely due to the persistence of the families in finding the evidence, campaigning and presentations to inquests – often deliberately delayed for many years by the authorities.
One of these is of course the case of Sean Rigg, killed by Brixton Police in 2008. At his inquest four years later, despite several police officers committing perjury, the jury concluded the police “more than minimally” contributed to his death – and were highly critical of the restraint that killed him. Eventually one officer was charged with perjury but acquitted by the jury despite the evidence. His family, particularly his sister Marcia Rigg, continue to fight for justice.
This annual march and rally has usually been completely ignored by the mainstream press – though journalists including myself have covered it. This year there was rather more interest than usual following the ‘not-guilty’ verdict on the police officer who shot Chris Kaba in the head at close range.
On Saturday The Guardian misreported this event in a single sentence in an article on page 6 about Robinson’s arrest: “the United Families and Friends Campaign is planning a protest in Trafalgar Square against the acquittal this week of the firearms officer who shot Chris Kaba dead.”
Justice for Chris Kaba campaigner.
The UFFC wasn’t. It had planned its usual annual commemoration and protest over the many thousands of custody deaths, though supporters of Chris Kaba’s family took part in it, and one of them spoke breifly at the start and at the rally in Whitehall where there were also a number of speakers from other family campaigns.
Trafalgar Square – or rather its southern edge – was only the start of the march, which was to a rally in Whitehall. Normally this would have taken place at the entrance to Downing Street, but this year there was a police barricade some distance before this, and instead the rally took place in front of the Cabinet Office.
The interest aroused by the Kaba shooting did make for a larger protest than in previous years and it was augmented too by some people who had arrived early for the Stand Up to Racism rally. Several thousand filled out across the street to listen to the families speaking.
As usual a small delegation from the event were to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister at Downing Street, though in some years they have been refused entry by the police. They too were prevented by the police barricade, but later I heard that police had helped them deliver it. But as well as the letter, the envelope contained a copy of the 1998 booklet by Keir Starmer, ‘The Right To Life’ in which he had written “When citizens die at the hands of the police, or make serious allegation of torture in police custody, the reaction of the state raises very serious questions about the protection of human rights.”
Justice for Chris Kaba campaigners and Qian Zheng, partner of late Benjamin Zephaniah raise fists,
You can listen to one of the speeches from the rally, by Temi Mwale, founder of the 4Front Project, in which she quotes from that booklet in a video on the Real Media site.
October Plenty & Martyrdom of Ali: On Sunday 23rd October 2005 I photographed two very different cultural events in London, October Plenty, a theatrical harvest festival event on Bankside and in the afternoon a Shia Muslim annual mourning event in London to mark the Martydom of Ali, the cousin of the prophet Muhammad. Again I’ll share the text and pictures from My London Diary, with a few corrections to case, spelling etc.
October Plenty: The Lions Part – Globe Theatre & Bankside
The Lions Part is a group of actors who came together in the Original Shakespeare Company but now pursue independent professional careers in theatre and TV etc , but work together on various projects including three regular celebrations on Bankside in co-operation with the Globe Theatre.
One of these is October Plenty, loosely based on traditional English harvest festivities and particularly celebrating the apple and grain harvest.
Characters in the procession include the Green Man (or Berry Man), the Hobby Horse and a large Corn Queen stuffed with fruit and veg. Not to mention a violin-playing Dancing Bear and other musicians and more characters who take part in several plays and performances in various locations.
The day started in front of the Globe Theatre with the bear, then the procession came and led us into the Globe Theatre, where they gave a short performance before we went through the streets to Borough Market where further plays and games were scheduled. I decided it was time for lunch and left at this point.
Hub-e-Ali organise an annual mourning program in London to mark the Martydom of Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and the first person to embrace Islam, who was martyred in 660CE in Kufa, Iraq.
Ali was struck by a poisoned sword while leading dawn prayers in the mosque, and died two days later. The event and its consequences continue to divide Muslims down to the present day.
Many (and not only Muslims) have regarded Ali as the model of a just Islamic ruler, working to establish peace, justice and morality.
The procession both marks the killing of Ali and also looks forward to the day when a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad will return to be the saviour of the world.
It also celebrates the duty of the followers of Islam to speak out against oppression and immorality, and to live pious lives in solidarity with the oppressed.
To show their sorrow, those taking part in the mourning parade (Jaloos) recite eulogies about Ali and beat their breasts (Seena Zani.) A coffin (Taboot) is carried as a part of the procession, along with symbolic flags. There is also a long session of recitations before the parade.
Climate Rush Protest Heathrow: On 4th September 2009 I joined Climate Rush at Sipson, one of the villages immediately north of Heathrow under threat from the plans to build a third runway.
Their 3 day stay here was their first stop on a one month tour of South West England and they were staying at the Sipson ‘Airplot’, bought by Greenpeace in what was planned to be the centre of the new runway. The legal owners of the plot were now “Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace UK.”
Greenpeace had invited others to sign up to become ‘beneficial owners’ of small 1 metre square plots within the site and I was among the many who did so. They had hoped this would make it harder for the developers as they thought we would all need to be served with legal notices for the development to go ahead.
I’d long been opposed to the expansion of Heathrow. It remains clear that this is an airport that was set up in the wrong place, to close to London in a fairly densely populated area and with flight paths over the centre of London. And with the increasing threat of climate change and global extinction one of the last things we should be doing is increasing the carbon emissions and pollution from aviation; instead we should be looking at ways to cut down both the number of flights and the pollution from traffic and congestion in the area surrounding the airport.
I’ve lived most of my life close to Heathrow. As I wrote on My London Diary:
“I grew up under the main flight path in use for landing a couple of miles from touchdown. Although I was a plane spotter at an early age, all of us living there felt the disruption it caused in our lives, even back in the 1950s.
My teachers often had to stop and wait in mid-sentence for a plane to go over. We could often smell the fuel, and see and feel the oily grime although I don’t think the term “pollution” had then really entered normal vocabulary.
At a deeper level, I still sometimes have nightmares about planes going over in flames (as they sometimes did) and crashes, although since Terminal 4 blocked one of the existing runways (Heathrow was built with six though only two are now used) thankfully planes no longer shake my present house as they come in low on landing or take off. “
I wrote more about this back in 2009, as well as the continuing history of lies and deceit by which the airport was established and has since grown and grown. And also about the area as it was before the airport, rich agricultural land with market gardens and orchards. Of course I didn’t know it myself but my father did and cycled through it.
In the 1950s on my own bikes I cycled through the villages which would be destroyed by a third runway, particularly Harmondsworth which has retained much of its original charm, with a village green with a pub and church and, a few yards away, one of the finest medieval tithe barns (2 pictures at bottom of this page.) There is much more to read on My London Diary.
Climate Rush had organised a procession from the Sipson Airplot, led by local residents from NoTRAG, though most were at work today – more were expected later in the day and at the ‘Celebration of Community Resistance’ at Sipson the following day. “Suffragettes (including a ‘token’ male) wearing ‘Deeds Not Words ‘ and ‘Climate Rush’ red sashes carried three banners, Justice, Equity and Truth; Equity traveled on a horse-drawn cart along with a violinist. “
The banners read: JUSTICE: Rich Countries must recognise historic responsibility for climate change. EQUITY: Emission quotas must be per capita; the rich have no more right to pollute than the poor. TRUTH: Emission caps must be set in line with the latest climate science.
The procession went down the Heathrow and along the Northern Perimeter Road beside the perimeter fence, where we were joined by a police car, which stopped traffic for us before retuning to the Airplot.
There it was time to rest, and to eat some of the apples from the side of the plot. “A couple of the suffragettes climbed a tree to pick some more, but they turned out to be cookers. The kettle had been hanging over the embers of a wood fire and a few more sticks soon brought it to the boil for tea.”
I’d come to Sipson on the bike which I had ridden through there fifty years earlier – a present on my thirteenth birthday – and had got a puncture just a few hundred yards short of my destination.
“I sat down to mend my puncture. Unfortunately I its a while since I checked the repair kit in my pannier, and having found two largish holes found I didn’t have a large enough patch to cover the two of them and the rubber solution had dried up. It was time for me to walk the six miles home.”
Wimbledon Chariot Festival: On Wednesday 18th August 2010 I went to Wimbledon to photograph one of London’s more colourful annual festivals, the procession by the Tamil community from the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple around their local streets.
The temple was opened here in Effra Road, in a building that had been built as a mission hall by Trinity Presbyterian Church, a ‘Scottish Church’ founded in Wimbledon in 1883.
In 1887 they had set up a mission Sunday School in South Wimbledon and numbers grew so they built St Cuthbert’s Hall on Effra Street in the mid 1890s. Around 194 this became St Cuthbert’s District Church. On my 2010 post I wrongly called it Anglican rather than Presbyterian.
The Church was still a party of Trinity when falling membership led to the decision in 1956 to sell the building to the Sir Cyril Black Trust, who renamed it Churchill Hall. Black, who died in 1991, was MP for Wimbledon from 1950 to his retirement 1970 and was a strict Baptist, known for his far right views and opposition to liberal reforms, but strongly supportive to the local community and a founder of the Wimbledon Community Association.
The hall in 1981 became the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple and its church hall the Sai Mandir prayer hall.
As I noted in 2010, “As well as traditional temple activities for its Tamil community, the temple has a “more holistic approach to providing for the spiritual, moral and emotional needs of our devotees” with various talks, classes and health seminars. Together with the Sai Mandir it also takes part in a wide range of community projects in the London Borough of Merton and more widely, including meals on wheels, food for the homeless, and conservation work as well as welcoming local children, students, teachers and others to come and learn about Hinduism. In recent years it has also worked to support Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.“
On My London Diary as well as the many pictures there is quite a long introduction about the event which involved a procession around the area with statues of three of the Temple deities, two on chariots and one on a palanquin.
The chariots are pulled by crowds of worshippers, there are musicians, women with bowls of flaming camphor and huge numbers of coconuts, many of which were flung onto rocks in large wooden boxes and shatter, while others ricochet dangerously. All of us were soon covered in coconut milk.
Men stripped to the waist roll along the street holding coconuts in front of them. People present baskets of fruit and coconuts to the Temple priest on the chariot to be blessed and the priest distributes flower petals and other gifts.
It took a couple of hours for the procession to travel what would have been at most a ten minute walk, after which celebrations were to continue inside the Temple
I and my colleague who was also photographing the event were made very welcome at the festival and invited to continue inside and eat a meal, but we had to leave. I’ve not returned as I felt my coverage in 2010 had probably covered the event sufficiently and I would only been repeating myself. This year, 2024, the festival was on Sunday 11 Aug 2024.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel: I think it was in 1992 that I first photographed the Procession in Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel which has taken place at St Peter’s Italian Church in Clerkenwell since 1883. You can find around 50 of my photographs from that year in my Flickr album 1992 London Photos which you can access by clicking on this, the first picture in the set:
1992
I went back the following year, and I think the pictures from 1993 are generally better.
1993
And I’ve been there most years since when I’ve been in London at the right time in July, though I’m not sure if I will go this year, when The liturgical feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated on 16th July and the procession takes place on a Sunday close to that – the 2024 Procession is on the afternoon of Sunday 21st July.
It’s London’s most colourful Christian procession and the celebrations around it have an Italian liveliness – and most years I’ve gone together with a fellow photographer of Italian origin and we have enjoyed a few glasses of cheap Italian wine together. But we are getting older and the wine is getting more expensive…
And while its still a fine event to attend, in recent years it has perhaps lost a little, and like most events become a little more formalised and a little less spontaneous, harder to take the kind of informal images I like and which I hope reflect more the atmosphere of the event.
All of the colour pictures here are from Sunday 12th July 2009 which I think was for me a fairly typical year, with one exception. At the centre of the event for me photographically has been the release of doves, usually by three of the clergy. The doves fly unpredictably and extremely rapidly when released, and capturing them in flight is a challenge. In 2009 I got lucky.
Back in 2009 I was working with a Nikon D700 and made this picture with the focal length set to 24mm. That camera could take pictures at 5 frames per second, though I probably relied on pressing the button at the right time. Fortunately I’d decided to set a small aperture, f16, to try to keep clergy, background and doves in focus, although working at ISO400 this meant a slightly slow shutter speed, 1/250s.
Nikon’s autofocus kept up with the pigeon as it flew directly towards me, and its feathers and claws are the sharpest part of the image, with the background remaining only slightly out of focus thanks to the small aperture. The wingspan of a pigeon is around 30 inches and a little elementary maths tells me the bird must have been just over 2 feet from the camera. I certainly felt the breeze as it passed inches over my hair.
You can read more about the 2009 event, including the lively Italian festival – the Sagra – with various stalls food, drink, dancing and more in a street below the church, as well as the procession itself with its various floats and walking groups including the first communicants and others who carry the statues of saints on My London Diary.
The clergy join the procession in front of the last float, which carries the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and a large crowd of parishioners follows after it as it goes around the local area before returning to the church.
Vaisakhi, Uganda & Freedom Umbrella: On Saturday 9th April 2011 After visiting Woolwich to photograph the Vaisakhi celebrations I came back into central London to photograph Ugandans and Kurds protesting for freedom and democracy.
Vaisakhi Celebrations in Woolwich
For some years I had been documenting religious festivals in and around London and had photographed a number of Sikh Gurdwaras at their Vaisakhi festivals.
On Saturday 9th April 2011 I went to the Ramgarhia Association Gurdwara in Mason’s Hill Woolwich. The Ramgarhia are a Sikh community who originally came from the close to Amritsar in the Punjab and traditionally they were carpenters, blacksmiths and other artisan workers but were renowned for their military prowess and the victories of the armies.
When I turned up I was warmly welcomed and taken to the Langar hall where I enjoyed some of the free vegetarian food on offer to all, prepared and served by members of the congregation who volunteer their services as a part of their religious practice and was able to talk with people there and wander around taking photographs.
The Gurdwara was established in 1970 in an existing landmark building, the Victorian Freemasons Hall, just over the Woolwich border in Plumstead on a street which was then called Mount Pleasant.
The Freemason’s Hall was where the Royal Arsenal Football Club held its annual meetings and dinners, and on 16th May 1891 that the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Arsenal Football Club (earlier known as Dial Square) the committee announced it had decided two weeks earlier to turn professional and had thus resigned from the amateur Kent and London Associations.
In 1913, the club moved across the river to a new stadium at Highbury, where it continued to play until 2006, when it moved the short distance to its new Emirates stadium. Apparently it is doing quite well at the moment.
The Vaisakhi festival, which takes place on April 14 each year marks the formation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, in 1699. You can read more about this and the Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan procession which is lead by five Khalsa – baptised Sikhs – dressed in saffron robes and turbans and carrying swords in the account I wrote on My London Diary, Vaisakhi Celebrations in Woolwich, as well as in the posts on other Vaisakhi processions on that site.
On My London Diary I wrote in more detail about the origins of Vaisakhi and the 10th Sikh Guru who gave Sikhism its modern form with its symbols and the eternal guru, the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy religious scripture being reverently carried out to the procession in th picture above.
Unfortunately the start of the procession was delayed and although I had photographed the preparations for it I had to run to catch a train before the actual start of the colourful procession, with its joyful singing of Sikh hymns, martial arts demonstrations and Dhol drumming through the town, expected to take several hours.
Ugandans had come to protest outside Uganda House in Trafalgar Square, calling for new free and fair elections after the rigged Parliamentary and Presidential elections in February.
The election on 18 Feb had resulted in the re-election of the sitting president Yoweri Museveni, in power for 25 years, apparently getting 68% of the vote.
But the EU Election Observation Mission which had been in Uganda for the vote reported the election, with a turnout of only 59% had been “marred by avoidable administrative and logistical failures which led to an unacceptable number of Ugandan citizens being disenfranchised” and that Museveni had used his presidential power to “compromise severely the level playing filed between the competing candidates and political parties.”
As well as the state owned Uganda Broadcasting Corporation giving much more coverage to the ruling NRM party, there had been extenisve human rights abuses with the police failing to take action against groups attacking opposition political meetings, intimidation and assaults on journalists and the cancellation of broadcasts.
Freedom Umbrella Kurds March Through London – Old Marylebone Rd – Downing St
Freedom Umbrella (Chatri Azadi), a coalition of British-based Kurdish organisations and supporters, had organised a demonstration in front of the offices of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Old Marylebone Road followed by a march to a rally opposite Downing St.
They called for support of the people’s uprising for freedom and social justice in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan which had begun on 17th February but had hardly been noticed by UK media.
Two Kurdish militia groups dominate Iraqi Kurdistan and remain in power. On 19th April their security forces began a more organised violent crackdown on the protests which brought them to an end.
I met the protesters as the march neared Trafalgar Square and photographed their rally opposite Downing Street.
October Plenty & The Martydom of Ali: In 2005 much of my photography was of cultural and religious events as well as political protests on the streets of London. And on Sunday 23rd October I photographed a harvest festival event on the South Bank before going to Marble Arch to photograph a Muslim procession. The text here is revised from my 2005 accounts on the October 2005 page of My London Diary and some picture captions.
October Plenty: The Lions Part – Globe Theatre & Bankside
The Lions Part Is a group of actors who came together in the Original Shakespeare Company But now pursue independent professional careers in theatre and TV etc. They now work together on various projects including three regular celebrations on Bankside in co-operation with the Globe Theatre.
One of these is October Plenty, loosely based on traditional english harvest festivities and particularly celebrating the apple and grain harvest.
Characters in the procession include the Green Man (or Berry Man), the Hobby Horse and a large Corn Queen stuffed with fruit and veg, not to mention a violin-playing Dancing Bear with other musicians and more characters who take part in several plays and performances in various locations.
The day started in front of the Globe Theatre with the bear, then the procession came and led us into the Globe Theatre, where they gave a short performance before we left to go through the streets to Borough Market where further plays and games were scheduled. I decided it was time for lunch and to go to another event and left at this point.
Hub-E-Ali organise an annual mourning program in London to mark the Martydom Of Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and the first person to embrace Islam, who was martyred in 660CE in Kufa, Iraq.
Ali was struck by a poisoned sword while leading dawn prayers in the mosque, and died two days later. The event and its consequences continue to divide Muslims down to the present day.
Many (and not only Muslims) have regarded Ali as the model of a just Islamic ruler, working to establish peace, justice and morality. The procession both marks the killing of Ali and also looks forward to the day when a descendant of the prophet Muhammad will return to be the saviour of the world.
It also celebrates the duty of the followers of Islam to speak out against oppression and immorality, and to live pious lives in solidarity with the oppressed.
To show their sorrow, those taking part in the mourning parade (Jaloos) recite eulogies about Ali and beat their breasts (Seena Zani.) A ceremonial coffin (Taboot) is carried as a part of the procession, along with symbolic flags. There was also a long session of recitations before the procession.
