Posts Tagged ‘rally’

Make Poverty History – 2005

Monday, February 3rd, 2025

Make Poverty History: Twenty years ago on February 3rd 2005 I was one of the 20,000 or so people who packed Trafalgar Square on a Thursday lunchtime to see and hear Nelson Mandela speak in the first major real event in the UK’s ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign.

Make Poverty History - 2005

Make Poverty History was a coalition of charities, religious groups, trade unions, campaigning groups and celebrities which had come together here and in a dozen other countries around the world to promote trade justice, to cancel the debts that were crippling poorer countries and to press for more aid and for this to be better targeted at improving the lives of people in the recipient countries.

Make Poverty History - 2005

The campaign in the UK had officially been launched on TV on New Year’s Day on the same day that Britain took over the Presidency of the G8 – and in July was to host a G8 summit that was supposed to be largely about poverty in Africa, but this rally was the first major national event.

Make Poverty History - 2005

I’d severely misjudged the numbers that would turn up for the rally, arriving only minutes before it was due to start and was unable to make my way through a densely packed crowd to anywhere near where the the speakers – including Mandela would be speaking.

Make Poverty History - 2005

This was an occasion when a long and heavy fast telephoto lens would have come in handy, but I’ve never owned one of these, preferring whenever possible to work at close range. But the relatively small zoom lens I had with a focal length of 200mm and a maximum aperture of only f5.6 did just about allow me to take some recognisable images of what was happening on the stage in the distance.

It helped that Nikon was still sticking to its conviction that its DX format, a sensor half the size of a 35mm frame was all that was needed for digital photography, giving the lens on my D70 the equivalent view of a 300mm on full-frame.

he ‘pills’ are a petition calling for urgent action on aids, to get 3 miilion people on treatment by 2005.

But I was please to have been able to capture some of the event – such as the handshake between Mandela and Bob Geldoff and children coming to meet Mandela, even if someone’s head got in my way a little of the time and those 6Mp images could perhaps have been just a little sharper.

Mosquito nets can help stamp out malaria in Africa

Later I was able to return to focal lengths more in my comfort zone, with a fisheye to show the crowds and more normal wide-angle views of people in the crowds.

The only way to be photographed with Nelson Mandela at the Rally

The ‘Make Poverty History’ movement lasted in the UK until 31st Januarly 2006, though relations between some of the 540 groups involved were very difficult. Oxfam in particular was seen as far to keep to follow a ‘New Labour’ line and some other major NGOs were also often felt to be insufficiently radical. Even though these groups dominated the campaign the TV adverts which had been aired at the start were soon banned by Ofcom as they were deemed to be “‘wholly or mainly political’ in nature, since they aimed to ‘achieve important changes'” – surely the whole point of the campaign.

Clearly the campaign had begun to disturb the rich and powerful who were feeling their privilege and profits from impoverishing the poor might be at risk. But although the campaign raised awareness of the problems its actual achievements were rather limited.

Bust of Nelson Mandela, sculpted by Ian Walters, commisioned by the GLC to mark the 70th anniversary of the African National Congress in 1982, and unveiled by Oliver Tambo in 1985. It records Mandela’s imprisonment in 1962, with added inscriptions marking his release in 1990, the Nobel Peace prize in 1993 and his inauguration as the first president of a free South Afrrica in 1994.

You can read more about the event and seem many more pictures on My London Diary


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On the IWGB ‘3 Cosas’ Battle Bus – 2014

Tuesday, January 28th, 2025

On the IWGB ‘3 Cosas’ Battle Bus: On Tuesday 18th January 2014 I got up uncharacteristically early and joined a packed rush hour train into London, something I usually like to avoid. The bus to Russell Square was also slow, held up in busy traffic, but even so I joined the morning picket at the east gate to the entrance to the Senate House car park before 9am and was taking pictures.

On the IWGB '3 Cosas' Battle Bus - 2014
On the picket line at Senate House: Daniel Cooper, Vice-President, ULU, IWGB Branch Secretary, Jason Moyer-Lee and Branch Chair, Henry Lopez.

It was a bright winter morning, but not much above freezing and not the kind of day anyone sensible would go on an open-top bus ride around London, and though I’d layered up well for the event it was still chilling.

On the IWGB '3 Cosas' Battle Bus - 2014

But those on the picket line on the second day of the 3 day strike by the IWGB for union recognition and better conditions had already been there since 5am, beginning while I was still sleeping in a warm bed and were still in good spirits. Cleaners, maintenance and security staff who work in the University of London were joined by student leaders and students from the University. Of course many of the workers would normally have been at work in the early hours.

On the IWGB '3 Cosas' Battle Bus - 2014

Although these workers work at the university and carry out work essential for the running of the university, the university does not employ them. Most low paid workers – cleaners, maintenance and security staff, catering workers and others – at the University of London are no longer directly employed by the University, but work in the University on contracts from contractors.

On the IWGB '3 Cosas' Battle Bus - 2014

Outsourcing these workers enables the University to evade its responsibilities towards this essential part of their workforce who suffer from poorer conditions and pay and aggressive management from the contractors that any responsible employer would be ashamed to implement. Most were only getting the legal minimum in terms of pay, pensions, sick pay and holidays, well inferior to comparable fellow workers directly employed by the University.

On the IWGB '3 Cosas' Battle Bus - 2014

In the past these precarious employees had belonged, if at all, to traditional unions such as Unison, who had taken their fees but done nothing to improve their conditions, often seeming to them to only be concerned in keeping the differential between those on the lowest pay and higher paid staff.

On the IWGB '3 Cosas' Battle Bus - 2014

It was only when these workers, many of them Spanish-speaking, joined the newly formed grass roots union, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, that they were able to achieve some gains thanks to noisy public protests and strong negotiating by the union which by 2013 had won them the London Living Wage, considerably more than the national minimum wage. They achieved this despite both the University of London and the employers refusing to recognise the IWGB, continuing to recognise the more compliant Unison to which few if any of these workers belonged.

In 2013, having won the London Living Wage and started the now famous 3 Cosas or “three things” campaign for sick pay, holiday pay and pensions, as well as continuing to press for union recognition.

Daniel Cooper & Alberto Durango

This 3-day strike, following another strike the previous November, was the latest action in this campaign. Union recognition was particularly important for those working at the Garden Halls of residence in Bloomsbury which the university was intending to close in the coming Summer. The IWGB was demanding these workers be given priority for vacancies that arise elsewhere in the university, with preference being given to those with the longer periods of service, but the employers were refusing any cooperation.

Waiting for us in the driveway was an open-top bus, and after I had been there around an hour most of the strikers and supporters boarded this ‘battle bus’ to go on a protest tour of various sites in London, with just a small picket remaining. I had been invited to go with them on top of the bus to take photographs.

“The sun shone on the workers as the bus drove away, followed by a group of student supporters on bicycles. I was on the upper deck taking photographs as the workers waved their red IWGB flags, chanted and listened to IWGB Branch Secretary Jason Moyer-Lee, Branch Chair Henry Lopez, President of the Independent Workers of Great Britain Alberto Durango, Branch Vice-Chair and leading member of the 3 Cosas Campaign Sonia Chura and University of London Union Vice-President Daniel Cooper as they used a powerful public address system to address the public and workers about the fight for union recognition for the IWGB and comparable conditions of service with directly employed University of London workers for outsourced workers at the university.

In between the various speeches and chants, including some in both Spanish and translated into English, there was loud music to draw attention and also to keep the strikers happy.”

The first stop was in Cartwright Gardens outside the University’s Garden Halls of residence where there were several speeches from the top of the bus. Somehow we went on to drive past the Unison headquarters on Euston Road in both directions, to booing from many of the workers, and on the second pass an IWGB flag was caught in the branches of a tree and left flying in front of the Unison building.

The route had been planned to stop outside the offices of The Guardian, but it, like most London buses, was running late due to traffic congestion, and it continued on to go very noisily through Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall, before a complete circuit of Parliament Square before stopping to let us get off outside the Supreme Court.

There was then a rally on the pavement in front of Parliament, with short speeches by Labour MPs John McDonnell, Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn who had come out to join us.

We marched to the Embankment and boarded the bus again for a short journey, leaving the bus just around the corner from the Royal Opera House, where everyone kept quiet as we approached the building and then rushed in. The IWGB had been campaigning there for some time for the London Living Wage.

This is another workplace where the management had refused to recognise and have talks with the IWGB, preferring to recognise Unison. The IWGB were confronted there by the Unison Health & Safety rep who told them the management had now agreed to pay cleaners the Living Wage but hadn’t yet told them. Doubtless this was another victory for the protests by the IWGB, though of course he refused to acknowledge this.

We piled back onto the bus and went to the offices of the new employer of the outsourced workers, Cofely GDF-Suez, who had taken over from Balfour Beatty Workplace in December. Police were there and the front and back gates were both locked. The workers held a brief rally outside the gate in Torrens Place.

I was invited to go back on the bus to a late lunch with the workers at the Elephant & Castle – but it was already after 2pm and I didn’t relish the thought of another long bus ride. So I said goodbye and began my journey home to work on and file some of the many pictures I had taken over the day.

You can read more about this in posts on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures.
‘3 Cosas’ Strike Picket
3 Cosas’ Strike Picket and Battle Bus
IWGB at Parliament
IWGB in Royal Opera House
IWGB at Cofely GDF-Suez


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Political Policing & Shocking Lies

Thursday, January 23rd, 2025

Political Policing & Shocking Lies: Last Saturday, 19th January 2025 I was witness to a shameful display of aggressive and politically motivated policing in the centre of London.

Political Policing & Shocking Lies

Politics had come into the event days earlier when police had banned the National Protest for Palestine from gathering at the BBC to march to Whitehall on the less than flimsy pretext that there is a synagogue around three hundred yards away.

Political Policing & Shocking Lies

The synagogue in question is down a side street and in the opposite direction that the march would travel, and none of the previous over 20 national marches for Palestine has involved any violence or intimidation of Jews.

Political Policing & Shocking Lies
Anti-Zionist ulltra-orthodox Neturei Karta Jews

Police harass a group of holocaust survivors and families, telling them they must move further up Whitehall.

Many Jews have taken part in all of these marches and other protests against the killing in Gaza and the continuing repression in the occupied West Bank, calling for freedom for Palestinians. And all of the marches since the Hamas attack on Israel have called for the release of the hostages held in Gaza as well as for a solution to bring peace and justice to Palestine.

To meet the police objections the march organisers had offered to march in the opposite direction, meaning they would arrive at the BBC several hours after any of those attending the synagogue would have left. Police rejected this offer and instead proposed that the march would start in Russell Square. Since the march was in large part a protest against the biased coverage of events by the BBC.

In their thoroughly researched report published in March 2004, the Centre for Media Monitoring clearly showed the extent of pro-Israel bias in BBC reporting, for example in giving considerable publicity to unverified statements by Israeli official sources, many of which have later been found to be false, as well as deliberately calling into question statements from Palestinian sources.

The report is a long and careful study and should at least have meant considerable changes in the way that the BBC covers events if it values its claim to be impartial, but any changes have been minor. The organisation continues to heap doubt on the claims over the number of deaths of Palestinians despite these largely being confirmed as accurate by UN and other observers – and a recent peer-reviewed statistical analysis in The Lancet suggesting that the actual number of deaths are 40% higher than the official Gaza health ministry figures.

Peter Tatchell calls for the release of all Palestine political prisoners.

When their reasonable suggestion was turned down by the police, the march organisers announced they would instead hold a rally in Whitehall. Clearly the police were not happy at this but it would have been difficult for them to raise any legally sustainable reason to ban it.

So the rally went ahead, and I went to photograph it. Entering Whitehall I was stopped for a short time as policed parked a van to make access more difficult but managed to walk past. Others coming to the protest were actually stopped by police and had to walk around to enter Whitehall by side streets.

BBC Complicity’ is Orwellian.

Inside Whitehall there seemed to be a number of lines of police giving contradictory orders to people to move up or down the street. I watched with incredulity as a group of officers came to tell a small group of Jewish holocuast survivors and sons and duaghters of survivors they could not stand at the side of the road in front of the stage but had to move further away up Whitehall.

Then I hear shouting from a crowd by the side of the stage. A particularly aggesive squad of police was forcing them to move and had arrested one woman who had not obeyed there orders, thowing her to the ground. The protesters were shouting ‘Let Her Go, Let Her Go‘ but they didn’t, simply facing the crowd aggressively and promising further arrests. A second slightly less aggressive squad was similarly forcing people along past the other side of the compound around the stage.

There seemed no point to either of these squads other than to stage a little police aggession. A few minutes later they left the area and people were free to wander into the areas they had cleared – and a group set up a large display with children’s clothing hung on washing lines.

At the end of the rally the speakers including one of the holocaust survivors, MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn and representatives of other groups involved in the protest came to stand on the stage holding bunches of flowers for two minutes of silence.

It was then announced that this small group of delegates would attempt to march to lay flowers at the BBC, but if stopped by police they would lay down the flowers where they were stopped in front of the police line and accuse them of being complicit in the lies told by the BBC and our government in support of the genocide taking place in Gaza.

The protesters in the huge crowd in Whitehall were asked to move to the side to make way for this group, and people did until they had almost reached Trafalgar Square. Here police stopped them and they waited patiently to see if they would be allowed through.

But thousands of protesters had moved up Whitehall with them, and those of us at the front were in danger of being crushed, slowly being pushed forwards by the crowd behind, but held back by police. The police withdrew and I managed to find some space inside the box of stewards where they had been in front of the marchers. Then in the only sensible action by police I saw that day, some officers returned to force a path and urge the marchers to go through into Trafalgar Square, and I went with them.

Marchers stop in front of the line of police and wait

I was rather shaken after being crushed and after taking a final picture of the march moving freely on towards Pall Mall I turned and walked slowly away towards Charing Cross station. Later I heard that the small delegation of marchers had decided to lay their flowers in Trafalgar Square when a snatch squad of ten police approached the head steward Chris Nineham and brutally threw him to the ground and arrested him. Their violence was totally unnecessary.

Police make way and tell the marchers to go through

Nineham was held for around 20 hours before being arrested on police bail which prevents him from taking part in any protest. His was one of 77 arrests made, many after the end of the protest when police kettled those still in Trafalgar Square. So far at least 13 have been charged, including Nineham and Ben Jamal, head of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnel have been interviewed under criminal caution.

and they march into Trafalgar Square unhindered.

Police were very quick to publish the lie that the marchers forced their way through the police line, and it was quickly picked up and amplified by the media despite video and eye-witnesses showing that they were urged and escorted though by officers.

Police told many other lies on the day, acted throughout aggressively and were clearly under pressure from members of the government and some Jewish leaders to do so. Many British Jews support Palestine and there were hundreds if not thousands of them taking part in the protest, far outnumbering a small group that came to oppose it.

More pictures at National Rally For Palestine.


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Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon – 2015

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon: I did a lot of travelling around London ten years ago on Thursday 22nd January 2015 by public transport and on foot. First I made the journey by rail, underground and DLR to the Excel Centre for a picket calling on HP to stop supporting Israeli prisons and military, then walked to the Lower Lea Crossing to photograph building work on City Island and on to the DLR at East India station to go to Canning Town From there the underground took me to Green Park and the Ritz where I met a small group from Class War on a visit to ‘Rich London’.

I had to leave them on Bond Street to make my way- tube, a short walk between stations in West Hampstead and rail to Hendon with another short walk to meet West Hendon Estate where residents were just coming out from a meeting to march from the estate to a rally outside Hendon Town Hall and I walked the just over a mile with them. But after around 20 minutes of the rally I felt very tired and had to leave for home – another short walk and an hour and a half of travel.


Stop Arming Israel picket HP at BETT

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Protesters had come to picket the Excel Centre where Hewlett Packard’s Vice-President for Worldwide Education, Gus Schmedien, was speaking at the BETT education technology show, to ask ‘What about the Palestinian Children You’re Helping Kill?’ They had set up a highly educational display close to the entrance and also gave some speeches and handed out fliers.

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

HP supply equipment and services which keep both the Israeli prison system and the Israeli military running and so support the killing, torture and other illegal activities of the Israeli regime.

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Many of the teachers and others going into BETT stopped to take leaflets and talk with the protesters, some taking photographs of themselves or colleagues in front of the protest.

More pictures at Stop Arming Israel picket HP at BETT


City Island – Lower Lea Crossing

Israel, City Island, Mayfair & West Hendon - 2015

Building work both on the former Pura Foods site on Bow Creek, now renamed City Island and on the Limmo Peninsula site on the eastern bank of Bow Creek was now going ahead.

City Island isn’t an island but in the downstream loop of the s-shaped bend of Bow Creek south of the East India Dock Road and is surrounded on three sides by the tidal river.

Building on City Island was abandoned after the site had been cleared and a single building erected when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and it was now shooting up fast. The elevated Lower Lea Crossing

More pictures City Island – Lower Lea Crossing


Class War visit ‘Rich London’ – The Ritz and Old Bond St

Ritz security were very polite to Class War and watched the protest outside the hotel

I met with a small group from Class War outside the Ritz where they were holding their banner with its quotation from US Anarchist Lucy Parsons (1851-1942), “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live“.

From there they took the banner to stand in front of some shops on Piccadilly and then onto Old Bond Street, pausing outside De Beers and then into the Royal Arcade.

It seemed a fairly aimless wander, Stan took a seat with Churchill (who is wearing a Class War ‘Spot the Tory’ sticker.)

I left them holding up the banner outside Sothebys to go to Bond St and make my way to West Hendon.

More pictures. Class War visit ‘Rich London’.


West Hendon march for Social Housing – Hendon

Residents on the West Hendon estate overlooking the Welsh Harp reservoir were fighting the the redevelopment of their estate for sale to the rich. Its waterside location makes it a very desirable location for developers and estate agents.

The residents were campaigning for all who live on the estate to be rehoused in the area and I arrived at the end of a meeting in the community centre with speakers from other housing campaigns including Focus E15 from Stratford.

I took pictures of them posing outside the community centre then went inside where free hot soup was very welcome before we went outside for a march around the estate. A banner was dropped from one of the balconies with the message ‘Public Housing Not Private Profit’.

Part of the area to be built on was York Memorial Park, a green open common designated as “a War Memorial in perpetuity” to the 75 people killed and 145 severely injured by a bomb dropped here on 13th February 1941. Over 366 houses were destroyed and a further 400 damaged by the blast, with 1500 people made homeless.

You can read more about this on ‘Broken Barnet‘ which relates how the promises that this would be preserved “were quietly buried by Barnet Tories, once they had made a deal, in secret, with Barratt London” and that at the Housing Inquiry they even denied the existence of the park – where there is now a 29 storey tower block of luxury flats.

We stopped here for a short memorial service to a Hendon war hero, Dorothy Lawrence, the only female Sapper of WW1, serving in the Royal Engineers, 51st Division 179th Tunnelling Company, BEF. You can read more about her and her unfortunate life after this in my post from 2015.

Then we marched for a mile or so in the dark to Hendon Town hall where the third day of the Housing Inquiry had just finished ned for a rally with a number of speeches from people from West Hendon and other campaigners, including Jasmine Stone from Focus E15. Some who spoke had been at the enquiry and were able to tell the crowd what had happened so far. But I was too tired to stay to the end of the rally.

More at West Hendon march for Social Housing.


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No to Heathrow Expansion – 2016

Tuesday, November 19th, 2024

No to Heathrow Expansion: When Zac Goldsmith was elected as MP for the Richmond Park constituency in 2010 he had promised he would resign if the government support a third runway at Heathrow. And when they did so in October 2016 he kept his word, forcing a by-election in which he stood as an independent candidate. The election took place on December 1st 2016, a couple of weeks after this rally.

No to Heathrow Expansion - 2016

As a part of his campaigning against Heathrow Expansion – and his election campaign around this issue, he called a public meeting on Richmond Green on Saturday 19th November 2016.

No to Heathrow Expansion - 2016
Zac Goldsmith

Many groups campaigning against airport expansion came to support, including Richmond Heathrow Campaign, Teddington Action Group, SHE (Stop Heathrow Expansion), Residents Against Aircraft Noise(RAAN), Chiswick Against the Third Runway and others campaigning against the noise, pollution and catastrophic climate change the third runway and expansion of aviation would cause.

No to Heathrow Expansion - 2016

But also at the meeting where Green Party and Lib-Dem supporters. All major candidates in the by-election were strongly opposed to Heathrow so although many admired Goldsmith for keeping his promise Heathrow was not really at issue in the election. The Green Party, strong in the area, did not put up a candidate as the local party instead voted to support the Lib-Dem candidate Sarah Olney, who beat Goldsmith by 1872 votes. Her major campaign issue was opposition to Brexit, which Goldsmith supported.

No to Heathrow Expansion - 2016

The Conservative Party had also not put up a candidate, feeling correctly that to do so would result in a large split in the Tory vote, leading both to to a humiliating defeat for any official Tory candidate as well as giving the seat to the Lib-Dems. Although Goldsmith was standing as an independent, many leading Tories backed him.

John Stewart of HACAN

A few of Goldsmith’s supporters objected to me taking pictures, insisting it was a private meeting, which was of course total nonsense – it had been called as a public meeting and was taking place in a very public place. One man followed me around trying to get me to stop. Perhaps they realised that although the rally showed considerable opposition to Heathrow there was little if any support for their candidate.

I left after most of the campaigners had spoken and before various local government representatives spoke. All but one of the local authorities in the area are against the third runway. You can read more about the rally and the speakers in my account – with many more pictures on My London Diary.

Climate Crisis rally against Airport Expansion – Heathrow

Harmondsworth resident Neil Keveren of Stop Heathrow Expansion speaks again at Heathrow

I left before the end of the rally on Richmond Green to get to a protest taking place at Heathrow by public transport.

Activists from Rising Up were blocking the Heathrow spur from the M4 and local campaigners were holding a family-friendly demonstration in support on the Bath Road overlooking the airport.

Campaigners met at the Three Magpies on a part of Bath Road which would disappear under the Third runway and I had time for a quick pint and a few words with the barmaid who I knew from previous Heathrow campaigns before we walked the short distance to the Bath Road bridge over the airport spur from the M4

Police would not allow me through to photograph the road block, which I could just see in the distance with police vehicles surrounding the activists who were blocking the road into the airport – too far away to photograph with any lens I own – and we could hear their sirens.

There was a large police presence at the rally on the pavement of Bath Road which organisers had made clear would be entirely peaceful and legal. This seemed a considerable waste of police resources, and more like an attempt to intimidate the protesters rather than as police usually claim is their role – to facilitate the protest and ensure safety.

Most of the speakers at the rally were those I had already heard on Richmond Green earlier in the day, although there were none of the Conservative Goldsmith supporters who were presumably still busy campaigning in Richmond. But there were also others, including from Grow Heathrow who were still in occupation of a derelict local nursery, from Occupy and environmental campaigner Donnachadh McCarthy.

George Barda

Speakers argued that expansion at Heathrow would mean the UK breaking its own laws on reducing carbon emissions, and undermine the Paris agreements. The new runway would devastate local communities with many families losing their homes bring chaos to transport already highly stressed in a wide area around. It would increase the dangerous levels of air pollution both from the flights as well as the traffic increase in a wide area, as well as noise pollution across much of London under the flight paths.

Donnachadh McCarthy

They pointed out that as well as the actual runway the development would need a huge spending on infrastructure in the area with important roads having to be re-routed – and that Heathrow was expecting the taxpayer to pick up almost all the bill, which Transport for London predict would be around £18 billion. And the actual cost of all such large projects always turns out much higher than projected.

Local resident Christine Taylor of Stop Heathrow Expansion

As I wrote then, “We need to totally rethink the aviation industry and evaluate the contribution it makes to our economy, and to remove its privileged status and subsidies which currently allow it to expand and pollute for the benefit of its shareholders and the convenience of rich frequent flyers. The industry greatly inflates the contribution it makes to the economy while refusing to acknowledge the many problems it creates.

But even more importantly as I also pointed out, “We don’t just need to stop airport expansion, but to reassess much of they way we live. We need System Change if we are to avoid the disastrous effects of Climate Change.”

Eight years later there has been no start on expanding Heathrow, but there is very little evidence that this reassessment is taking place, and the election of Trump for a second term makes it even less likely that the world can avoid an unthinkable disaster. Perhaps the only question now is when rather than whether it will happen.

More about the two protests with more pictures on My London Diary:
Climate Crisis rally against Airport Expansion
Rally against Heathrow Expansion


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March & Rally Against Custody Deaths – 2024

Saturday, November 2nd, 2024

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.

UFFC March & Rally Against Custody Deaths - 2024

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.

UFFC March & Rally Against Custody Deaths - 2024
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.

UFFC March & Rally Against Custody Deaths - 2024

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!’

UFFC March & Rally Against Custody Deaths - 2024

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.

The letter which was delivered to Keir Starmer also contains that quote from the his booklet, before some details of some cases and a listing of the five demands of the UFFC campaign:

As bereaved families, we demand:

  1. An end to all killings at the hands of the state.
    An end to all racist police practice and an end to fatal use of force.
  2. A radical reduction in the use of prisons. People are unnecessarily dying, as prisons
    do not address underlying causes of social harm.
  3. The individuals and state bodies responsible for deaths are pro-accountability for
    their wrong-doings, and an end to all cover ups.
  4. Legal Aid is made available to all families, automatically.

More pictures from the 2024 UFFC Annual March & Rally Against Custody Deaths


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Jesse Jackson, Cuts & Paris • New York • London Opening 2010

Sunday, October 20th, 2024

Jesse Jackson, Cuts & Paris • New York • London Opening: Wednesday 20th October 2010 was an unusual day for me. I don’t often photograph conferences, but I started at one where Jesse Jackson was speaking and then went to lobby my MP over tax justice. Kwasi Kwarteng was seldom seen in the constituency but later became notorious when he helped Liz Truss crash the economy. From there I used to cover people marching to Downing Street against the government spending cuts before leaving to go to the Shoreditch Gallery for the opening of a show by three photographers I had organised, ‘Paris – New York – London’ (I was Paris.)


Jesse Jackson & Christian Aid Lobby – Westminster

Jesse Jackson, Cuts & Paris • New York • London Opening 2010

2,500 Christian Aid supporters including my wife had come to Westminster to lobby their MPs on 20.10.2010, asking them to press for transparency and fairness in the global tax system and for action on climate change.

Jesse Jackson, Cuts & Paris • New York • London Opening 2010

According to campaigners for tax justice various forms of tax dodging by multinational companies was then robbing the global South of more than $160 billion a year. And our high dependence of fossil fuels had led to a climate crisis which impacts these countries far more severely despite their much lower per capita carbon footprints.

Jesse Jackson, Cuts & Paris • New York • London Opening 2010

The rally took place in the vast Methodist Central Hall, opposite Westminster Abbey, and as we were reminded where the United Nations started. There was a huge ovation for US Civil Rights leader, activist and politician Jesse Jackson, a protégée of Martin Luther King president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

But there were also other distinguished speakers including the then new director of Christian Aid, Loretta Minghella, Suzanne Matale from Zambia and secretary of state for international development and MP for Sutton Coldfield, Rt. Hon Andrew Mitchell MP.

Jesse Jackson, Cuts & Paris • New York • London Opening 2010

After the rally we met our local MP Kwasi Kwarteng and went with him into a pub opposite Parliament where he he listened to us and basically told us we didn’t understand global finance and climate change, before going outside to pose with for photographs.

Outside there was some street theatre by younger Christian Aid supporters as people queued to meet there MPs and I made a few pictures before rushing away to find people marching to protest against government cuts.

Jesse Jackson & Christian Aid Lobby


March Against Spending Cuts – Malet St & Lincolns Inn Fields

Earlier in the day the government had announced there would be considerable cuts in welfare benefits and the loss of many public sector jobs as services are cut following their comprehensive spending review.

The deficit left by New Labour had given the Tories in the Con-Dem coalition a perfect excuse to slash the public sector and privatise services in a way they would never have dared before. £83 billion to be cut from public services, in a move that the Coalition of Resistance pointed out will mean many workers with less to spend and cause a slump in the economy.

But as I commented “Big business must be rubbing its hands with glee at the thought of the profits it will be able to make in the health service, from so-called ‘free schools’ and elsewhere.”

But for the rest of us the prospect was bleak. More than a million jobs lost – and some would be replaced in the private sector with lower wages, fewer benefits, lower standards of delivery and safety and higher workloads. Profit will come before anything else in the kind of “efficiency” we’ve seen in hospital cleaning – where I found used needles and dressings under my hospital bed as cleaners were not allowed the time to do the job properly.

I went to photograph students setting off from outside the student union in Malet Street for the march to Downing Street, then went to Lincoln’s Inn Fields where trade unionists and more students gathering and there were speeches from an open top bus before they too set off.

But I went in the opposite direction to my opening at the Shoreditch Gallery.

March Against Spending Cuts

Paris • New York • London Opening – Shoreditch Gallery, Hoxton Market

Me at the opening where I gave a speech – photograph © Paul Baldesare, 2010

This show contained work by John Benton-Harris from New York, Paul Baldesare from London and myself from Paris and can still be seen online.

Addicted To Jesus – Arthur Avenue, Bronx NYC – 14th March 2009 © John Benton-Harris

John Benton Harris (1929-2023), one of the finest photographers to come out of New York, settled in London in 1965 but continued also to photograph his native city and elsewhere. He was long a personal friend and I worked with him on a number of his projects including his Café Royal Zines and his unpublished book on the English.

Window dresser, Oxford Circus, London © Paul Baldesare, 2010

Paul Baldesare, another friend of mine with whom I’ve often shown pictures and a former student of John Benton-Harris showed work from one of his many projects on London, He is probably best known for his pictures on the tube.

And I was showing a selection of images made in Paris in 1988 from a book I had also then recently published on Blurb.


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Trade Justice At Brighton 2004

Thursday, September 26th, 2024

Trade Justice At Brighton: Twenty years ago on Sunday 26th September 2004 I spent the day in Brighton, not with my bucket and spade on the beach but with my Nikon D100 camera, and both a wide-angle and telephoto zoom lenses.

Trade Justice At Brighton 2004

I was there with around 6000 other people at an event organised by the Trade Justice Movement going to lobby at the Labour Party conference – who at that time were in government with Tony Blair as prime minister.

Trade Justice At Brighton 2004

According to its web site, “The Trade Justice Movement is a UK coalition of nearly sixty civil society organisations, with millions of individual members, calling for trade rules that work for people and planet.

Trade Justice At Brighton 2004
Caroline Lucas, Green Party, MP for Brighton Pavillion 2010-2024

They want not free trade but fair trade “with the rules weighted to ensure sustainable outcomes for ordinary people and the environment. We believe that everyone has the right to feed their families, make a decent living and protect their environment. But the rich and powerful are pursuing trade policies that put profits before the needs of people and planet.”

Trade Justice At Brighton 2004

And of course the rich and powerful are still in charge, still driving headlong towards global catastrophe while concentrating on amassing global power and vast fortunes, amounts far beyond what anyone can actually spend or benefit from. Certainly the world does not need – and cannot afford – billionaires.

We need a fairer system to share the world’s resources, and fair trade has a large part to play in this. Back in 2004 the Trade Justice Movement tried to get our government to change its policies but with little effect – and it is still trying to do so.

On the web site they list that they are calling on the UK government to:

  • Ensure that trade rules allow governments, particularly in poor countries, can choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment;
  • Ensure that trade rules do not allow big business to profit at the expense of people and the environment.
  • Ensure that decisions about trade rules are made in a way that is fully transparent and democratic.

My description of the day in Brighton in 2004 was that it began with a rally on the promenade and “continued with a march along the seafront to the centre where the Labour party annual conference was in session. With around 6000 on the march, it straddled about a quarter-mile of seafront.

Outside the conference centre there was a two-minute silence before a further several minutes of deafening cacophony from whistles, banging on drums and saucepans and anything else that could make a noise.”

Then ballot papers calling for trade justice were collected in and put into large ballot boxes along the seafront. Many people had brought cards completed by friends and a good start was made towards collecting the million signatures aimed at.

On My London Diary I divided the pictures into four groups, General, Speakers, Performers and pictures from the March. This now seems rather confusing, but this was a time when few of those accessing the site were then on broadband. So there were pages of large postage-stamp sized thumbnails which would load reasonably rapidly, with the instruction “Click on any image to load these; they will be slow to download unless you are on broadband.

The links on the September My London Diary page still go to the pages of thumbnails, but you can go directly to the larger images now on the links below.

General
Speakers
Performers
March & Ballot


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No More Benefit Deaths – 2016

Saturday, September 7th, 2024

No More Benefit Deaths: On Wednesday 7th September 2016, the day of the opening ceremony for the Rio Paralympics, disablement campaigners demanded human rights for all disabled people and an end to the disastrous sanctions regime which has led to many deaths.

No More Benefit Deaths

They called on Prime Minister Theresa May, newly appointed in July 2016 to make public the findings of the UN investigation into the UK for violations of Deaf and Disabled people’s rights, to scrap the Work Capability Assessment and commit to preventing future benefit-related deaths.

No More Benefit Deaths

The UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities published its report in November 2016. It stated that the UK had committed “grave or systematic” violations of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in June 2017 the committee clarified the reasons behind their conclusions.

No More Benefit Deaths

They stated that the breaches of the rights to independent living, work and employment and adequate standard of living under the convention were mainly caused by the policices introduced by Tory ministers at the DWP between 2010 and 2015. Some were grave violations, some systematic and others both grave and systematic.

No More Benefit Deaths

The UN inquiry had been prompted by the research and lobbying of Disabled People Against Cuts, and the Disability News Service article included this quote from DPAC co-founder Linda Burnip who:

“pointed to actions such as cuts to social care, the impact of the work capability assessment – which has been linked by public health experts from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford to hundreds of suicides between 2010 and 2013 – the hugely damaging introduction of personal independence payment and consequent cuts to support, the increased use of sanctions and the resulting deaths of benefit claimants, and the introduction of the bedroom tax.”

As Burnip stated, the government’s actions were “based on a deliberate intention to cause harm without any regard to the horrendous consequences for disabled people.”

The day on Wednesday 7th September 2016 began with a huge banner with the message ‘NO MORE BENEFITS DEATHS #DPAC” being displayed on the wall of the River Thames facing the riverside terrace of the Houses of Parliament.

After photographing this I hurried to Downing Street were there was a rally in on the opposite side of the street with speakers from DPAC, Winvisible, the Scottish Black Triangle Campaign and others including John Clark from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty who shared news of similar problems facing disabled people in Canada.

Gill Thompson spoke about her brother David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier died after his benefit was cut as he could not afford food or electricity to keep his insulin cool was there with a banner covered with the names and some photographs of around a hundred of the many who had died because of the DWP’s sanctions, cuts and scapegoating.

The protesters then lifted up the black coffin with white wreaths they had brought and began a march towards the Houses of Parliament.

As they came to Bridge Street the marchers took the police by surprise by turning towards the bridge. The giant banner which had earlier been displayed facing Parliament was now stretched across the road, blocking the bridge in both directions.

After several minutes police began trying to get people to move off the road warning them they are committing an offence and may be arrested. I was also threatened with arrest, despite showing my Press card. One carer who refused to move away from the wheelchair user he was looking after was arrested and taken to a police van.

Most of those in wheelchairs and mobility scooters refused to move or did so only after a long series of threats by police, who eventually managed to clear one carraigeway to allow traffic to move out of Westminster. But a group remained blocking traffic in the other direction until after almost two hours Paula Peters triumphantly announced the protest was ending and everyone left.

The new Labour government dropped key disablity rights pledges made by the party for its election manifesto, and since becoming the government has sidelined disabled people in its first King’s Speech. It seems unlikely that there will be any significant improvement for disabled people under Starmer, and further cuts now seem to be coming.

Many more pictures on My London Diary:
Giant Banner ‘No More Benefit Deaths
‘No More Benefit Deaths’ rally
DPAC block bridge over benefit deaths


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Stop the Massacre in Gaza – 2014

Friday, July 26th, 2024

Stop the Massacre in Gaza – Sat 26 Jul 2014.

Following a number of incidents which had led to growing tension between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 17th July 2014 which continued until 5th August, with a ceasefire being announced on 26th August.

Stop the Massacre in Gaza

During the weeks of the attack over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, around 70% of them civilians, and over 10,000 seriously injured. 67 Israeli soldiers and 5 civilians were killed and 730 Israelis injured. Terrible as those numbers were, they seem small when compared with the current genocide taking place in Gaza.

Stop the Massacre in Gaza

Israel also systematically destroyed many homes. Wikipedia states “The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing.”

Stop the Massacre in Gaza

On 26th July thousands of people had arrived for a rally on Kensington High Street, as close as protests were allowed to the Israeli Embassy. Police tried hard to keep traffic flowing on what is one of the main routes out of London to the West, but soon the number of people made this impossible.

Stop the Massacre in Gaza

I’d arrived early and was able to get to the stage where there were to be a few speeches before the march moved off. From this platform I could see the road packed with people looking both west and east.

I listened to some of the speeches and photographed a few of the speakers, including Labour veteran Walter Wolfgang and Owen Jones before making my way with some difficulty to front of the crowd around a hundred yards east down the packed road where the main banners were ready for the start of the march.

Fortunately I was able to join with a group of those who had been around the stage, including some of the speakers, who were going through the crowd which was extremely tightly packed all across the road. By the time I arrived the area in front of the march had been cleared and I was only able to take pictures of the front of the march by leaning over the arms of the stewards as the march started.

Behind the front of the march I was able to go into the march and take some pictures as I walked back in the opposite direction towards the tube station.

Among the banners on the marchwas one carried by the Turkey Youth Union: ‘TURKISH GOVERNMENT SUPPLIES JET FUEL TO ISRAEL – ERDOGAN RESIGN’. Much of that oil was coming from ISIS, who were largely financed by their oil sales smuggled through Turkey with the help of leading members of the Turkish government.

I’d left the march to photograph an unconnected event taking place at Downing St, and walked up from there to meet the Gaza marchers as they turned into Whitehall.

The march paused for a short while opposite Downing St, but stewards again made taking photographs difficult, although the marchers – including Jeremy Corbyn – were rather more cooperative.

When the front of the march reached Parliament Square one of the stewards who recognised me actually invited me into the area in front of the march to take pictures, and I was able to photograph the marchers with ‘Big Ben’ in the background – always a good clue that this was taking place in London.

I then photographed the long rally, taking pictures of most of a very long list of speakers including Michael Rosen. I photographed over 15 of them and you can see some of the pictures and a long list of names on My London Diary.

But as usual I was rather more interested in the people and took many pictures of the crowd and people in it, as well as others in the square including the anti-Zionist Jews who walk down from North London to protest at most events in support of Palestine.

Much more and many more pictures on My London Diary:
Stop the Massacre in Gaza Rally
End Gaza Invasion March to Parliament
Israeli Embassy rally – End Gaza Invasion


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