Barclays & Solidarity with Gaza: On Saturday 19th May 2018 I photographed a monthly vigil calling on Barclays Bank to end its funding for climate chaos and then went on to another branch of Barclays on Tottenham Court Road for the start of a rolling pictures against businesses along Oxford Street against other businesses which are major supporters of the Israeli state.
Barclays Stop Funding Climate Chaos
Piccadilly Circus
I met the Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement (DANCE) in Golden Square Soho and walked with them as they processed to the Piccadilly Circus branch of Barclays Bank in a monthly vigil to call on the bank to Stop Funding Climate Chaos.
Three of the group then sat down to meditate in the centre of the floor of the bank with their placards, and another from the group told bank staff what they were intending to do, while others meditated on the pavement outside the bank and some of the group handed out leaflets.
The called on Barclays to ‘Listen to the Earth!’ and stop investing huge amounts – $12billion in the previous 3 years – into coal, oil and gas exploration which will lead to global warming, melting ice caps, bleaching coral reefs, causing forest fires and more intense storms.
They also pointed out the human rights abuses connected with their investments in Colombian coal mines and more and urged Barclays to switch their investments into renewables.
I left DANCE protesting at the Piccadilly Barclays and went to Tottenham Court Road, where the Revolutionary Communist Group had set up a street stall outside the Barclays close to Oxford Street.
‘Boycott Israel’ poster showing Ahed Tamimi slapping an Israeli soldier
A few days earlier the world had been shocked by the news of Israeli army snipers shooting unarmed protesters in Gaza, killing 58 and seriously wtargetounding over 2700.
Most were several hundred yards from the separation wall, posing no threat to Israel and many were shot in the back or legs as they ran away. Among those deliberately targeted by the snipers were medics treating the wounded and clearly identified journalists wearing distinctive blue press vests.
The snipers were thought to have been using special ammunition made in the UK which expands inside the body to cause greater damage.
After a short protest outside Barclays with a speech explaining how it supports the Israeli government and handing out leaflets, the group moved on to make similar short protests outside other major supporters of the Israeli state on Oxford St including Carphone Warehouse, Boots, ZARA and H&M, calling for shoppers to boycott them and to take part in the global BDS campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Grenfell Protest Calls for Justice: On Monday 14th May 2018 Parliament were debating a petition with over 150,00 signatures calling for a panel of decision making experts to sit alongside Sir Martin Moore-Bick in the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry.
A woman who worked in the Grenfell nursery and her mother with placards
PM Theresa May had 3 days earlier announced there would be two experts appointed for the second stage of the inquiry, but the Grenfell community wanted experts to be included in the first part and were questioning who the experts would be and how they were to be chosen.
‘When One Neglects Towers, One Will in the End Neglect People’
The protesters also wanted a promise that the recommendations of the inquiry would be accepted and implemented in full and that those responsible for creating the terrible fire risk to be brought to justice.
Unfortunately the inquiry had been set up to enable the guilty to evade justice. Despite the mass of clear evidence against those responsible it enabled the police to state they had to let it run its course before they could examine its evidence and decide if there should be prosecutions. And the inquiry had no power to start criminal proceeding and would not investigate the very issues of a “social, economic and political nature” that were central to why it happened.
Clarrie Mendy of Humanity For Grenfell, whose cousin Mary Mendy and her daughter Khadija Saye died in the fire,
As well as the Tories wanting to protect their own, particularly in the Kensington and Chelsea Council, Labour, including then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn colluded in this deliberate pushing of Grenfell into the long grass, although he also called for further efforts to establish a process to investigate those “broader failings” which Sir Martin Moore-Bick was determined to avoid.
Despite this, as well as many speakers from local Grenfell organisations, there wer also prominent Labour Party speakers at the event – Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor Richard Burgon, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbot and then Labour MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coad.
The Revolutionary Communist Group have supported the campaign to get the truth about Grenfell
SNP MP Joanna Cherry also spoke, but the event organisers refused to let a more radical speaker from the Revolutionary Communist Group go to the microphone. But the RCG, who had been active in organising protests over Grenfell as well as taking part in the monthly silent walks, had as usual brought their own public address system for their speaker.
Last year after a short, inept and very partial failed “consultation” with Grenfell survivors and bereaved families, then Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced that Grenfell Tower would be “brought to the ground” and a memorial set up in its place.
Then Labour MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coadwho lost the seat in 2019
Also taking place outside the Houses of Parliament on Monday 14th May 2018 was a protest by the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party UK calling for the release of their party leader, Begum Khaleda Zia, jailed in February for five years for embezzlement of international funds donated to Zia Orphanage Trust.
Her arrest and conviction was widely seen as a political attack by her rival Sheikh Hasina Wazed, leader of the Awami League; the two women dominated politics in Bangladesh for many years. Khaleda Zia died in December 2025 a month after Sheik Hasina who had been forced to resign in 2024 was sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment. More about this protest at BNP say release Khaleda Zia.
Class War’s Lambeth Walk & More London: On Saturday 24th February 2018 Class War celebrated their win in the High Court against the Qatari royal family over their right to protest outside the Shard, where ten £50 million apartments remain empty. I took the opportunity to take a few pictures around the 13 acres of London around the then City Hall, now private land owned by the State of Kuwait, the inappropriately named More London.
Class War’s Lambeth Walk for housing
Southwark
Class War and friends met at Potters Fields next to City Hall and facing Tower Bridge, for a protest celebrating their court victory and a part of their ongoing campaign for more social housing to meet the needs of the people of London.
Ian Bone, Class War
London councils have huge waiting lists for homes, private rents are hugely expensive and house prices out of the reach of those even in many professional jobs let alone most working people.
Martin Wright
But increasingly London councils – particularly in boroughs including Southwark, Lambeth and Newham but across the city are carrying out schemes with private devlopers to demolish council estates – such as the Heygate and Aylesbury estates in Southwark and replace these with expensive private developments with token amounts of affordable properties – which at up to 80% of market cost – are not affordable to the mass of London’s population.
Many properties on these new developments are sold across the world to private investors, many even before they are built, advertised and strongly promoted particularly in the Far East. The rapid increases in London property prices makes them a highly profitable investment. Many of these investment properties are left empty, or perhaps visited for a few weeks a year.
London desperately needs more housing, but not empty boxes. As the speakers at the rally in front of City Hall pointed out, what it needs is social housing that Londoners can afford.
The campaigners called for the thousands of empty buildings in London – and across the country – including those empty £50 million flats in the Shard – to be taken over and used to house the homeless.
’10 Floats at £50 Million each sit empty in The Shard. 26,000 flats over £1 Million each about to be built in London … while thousands are sleeping on the streets – NO MORE HOMES FOR THE RICH – Class War’
Class War had brought their ‘Lucy Parsons’ banner with the message from the famous American anarchist “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live“, but they were instead calling for them to be used to house the poor. Among those who joined them were the the RCG – Revolutionary Communist Group – with their banner banner with its message ‘HOUSING IS A RIGHT – NOT A PRIVILEGE‘.
Among the speakers was Whitechapel anarchist Martin Wright who pointed out that the coming cold snap next week will probably be “another Grenfell“, likely to kill at least 80 people of the thousands who are sleeping on the streets.
The protesters had intended to dance the Lambeth Walk from the rally at City Hall to another at the Shard, led by ukuleles, but only one ukulele player turned up and so they simply marched with banners.
Because of the cold, the rally opposite the Shard was a short one and ended with Class War amusing themselves by mounting a mock charge on the offices of Murdoch’s News UK, publishers of The Times and The Sun, pulling up sharply just in front of the row of security staff on its steps.
Property developers named the large area once occupied by warehouses and wharves a few yards upstream from Tower Bridge on the Southwark bank of the river ‘More London‘ although the site is owned by Kuwait and the public is allowed to use it, but under some restrictions they set down – as our royals do for London’s Royal Parks.
The Shard from More London
Their large real estate interests in London are run by the English sounding St Martins Property Group – it was founded in 1924 as the St Martins-Le-Grand Property Company Limited but is now wholly owned by the Kuwait sovereign wealth fund, Future Generations Fund.
Among their rules are bans on photography and protests. But with thousands or tourists walking its open pathways the photography ban is seldom enforced, though should you look too commercial you are likely to be approached by security personnel who will tell you to stop.
And while they have prevented some protests from taking place and have imposed restrictions on others, protests such as the one on this day by Class War have continued.
At least Tower Bridge is still owned by the City of London
City Hall, in More London was leased from the Kuwaitis from 2002-2021 as the former home of London government, County Hall at Westminster, had been stolen from it by the Thatcher government back in the ’80s. I wrote that I found it shameful that London did not own its own seat of government, and at least the move to The Crystal in the Royal Docks has put that right, unsuitably remote though it is.
But in 2018 I commented “Also shameful that many if not most of the government buildings in Whitehall now have overseas owners, some of them by UK tax dodgers in overseas tax havens. ‘Taking our country back’ from the EU will certainly have little effect at restoring Britain to British ownership.”
12 Days of Christmas -some of my favourite pictures from those I made in August 2025.
London, UK. 2 Aug 2025. We Are Alll Migrants. Rival groups of protesters kept apart by police at the Thistle City Barbican Hotel, Finsbury. Some locals say asylum seekers there had caused a plague of crime and antisocial behaviour and right wing groups held a protest there, opposed by Stand Up To Racism and groups who say racism and Islamophobia are being used to scapegoat refugees and migrants and fascists are not welcome here. A large block of anarchists arrived, ignored police and stood between the two other groups. Peter MarshallLondon, UK. 2 Aug 2025. Louise Raw holds a long list of far right convicted sex offenders. Rival groups of protesters kept apart by police at the Thistle City Barbican Hotel, Finsbury. Some locals say asylum seekers there had caused a plague of crime and antisocial behaviour and right wing groups held a protest there, opposed by Stand Up To Racism and groups who say racism and Islamophobia are being used to scapegoat refugees and migrants and fascists are not welcome here.. Peter MarshallLondon, UK. 6 Aug 2025. Councillor Eddie Hanson, Mayor of Camden lays a wreath at the new Cherry Tree which had just been planted. Ceremonies around the world mark the 80th anniversary of the devastating US exploding the world’s first nuclear bomb at Hiroshima, instantly killing thousands of innocent civilians with many more dying in the days, months and years from radiation. A new cherry tree was planted in Tavistock Square where speakers, artists and singers led reflections calling for no more nuclear war. Peter MarshallLondon, UK. 9 Aug 2025. Police arrest an old woman at the protest supporting Palestine after the march through London protesting against Israel starving the people of Gaza to death. They seemed to object to a leaflet she was handing out. They called on the UK government to stop arming Israel and to end their complicity with genocide and join the international community in opposing Israel’s actions. Peter Marshall/Alamy Live NewsLondon, UK. 9 Aug 2025. Police arrest and carry a protester away. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand or morecampaigners defied the law and sat to Parliament Square with the message “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” despite warnings they might be arrested under the Terrorism Act. The protest came after Amnesty and international scholars and others had joined many others in calling for the ban to be lifted and permission had been give for a legal action against the ban to go ahead. Police carried away many of them to waiting police vans. Peter Marshall.London, UK. 9 Aug 2025. Members of the United Voices of the World at the Canary Wharf Radisson Blu hotel and the Draughts board game bar both on strike held joint protests at Canary Wharf and here outside the bar in the Leake St graffiti tunnel. The housekeepers are fighting brutal cuts to hours and demanding 40-hour contracts, fair workloads, and the London Living Wage and bar staff are protesting against zero-hour contracts, unpaid training and unsafe working conditions. Peter Marshall.London, UK. 23 Aug 2025. At Starbucks. The Revolutionary Communist Group protest at UK businesses on and around Oxford St which support and profit from the ethnic cleansing, starvation, and genocide of the Palestinian people. Israel’s colonial regime provides high profits, and speeches at each stop detailed evidence against the company. The protest demanded severing all ties with Israel and comprehensive sanctions and claimed the UK government is committed to crushing the Palestine solidarity through state repression and media lies. Peter Marshall.London, UK. Journalists and media workers at Downing Street honour the courageous reporting of the journalists of Gaza who are being deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza for telling the world the truth of the genocide. The names of over 240 who are confirmed killed since 7 October 2023 were read out after speeches from Al Jazeera journalist Wael Dadouh, Ahmed Anaouq of We Are Not Numbers and Sangita Myska. Peter Marshall.
Grenfell – 2017 & Hong Kong: On Wednesday 6th December 2017 I photographed two protests outside Kensington Town Hall in both of which people demanded answers from Kensington & Chelsea council about the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower almost six months earlier.
A woman in the crowd listens to speeches at the Justice4Grenfell protest
The protest had been approved earlier at a public meeting and was supported by the Justice4Grenfell campaign and the Revolutionary Communist Group who both came with PA systems.
J4G refused to let the RCG speak at their protest and tried to persuade them to move away, but they refused.
Emma Dent-Coad MP
But they did pause their protest and turn off their sound system for the J4G’s main speakers, MPs Kate Osamor and Emma Dent-Coad.
After that the RCG resumed their protes as J4G appeared to have stopped – but soon they also began again and there were two protests taking place a few yards apart. A small group from J4G came to shout angrily at the RCG, and there were threats of physical violence with one man having to be held back by his friends after he tried to start a fist fight.
Also protesting with the RCG were some from Class War, who stood with posters of disgraced Councillor Rock Feilding-Mellen, who as deputy council leader and cabinet member responsible for housing and for the flammable cladding and other cuts which had created a disaster waiting to happen. Since the fire he had fled the area and hidden away – and under the large image of his face was the single word ‘WHERE?’
I tried hard to photograph both protests, moving between the two groups.
Both shared the same aims, both condemning the failures by the council which had led to a small fire turning rapidly into a major disaster and, after the fire its failure to respond adequately and in a timely way to the needs of the survivors, both calling for criminal charges against those responsible in Kensington and Chelsea council, the TMO and the cladding company and others.
Both calling for a real role for the local community in the official inquiry into the fire which they feel has already disrespected local residents and fear will be a cover up.
Now eight years later the inquiry has told us very little that was not already covered in the report by Architects for Social Housing published 5 weeks after the fire and there have still not been any criminal charges made against those responsible.
Moyra Samuels
There have been some related cases, with people being prosecuted who have fraudulently tried to profit from the disaster – which were discussed in a blog post by Steve Tombs of the OU, The Poor Get Prison… Grenfell as a Site of Crime?, but none for those directly responsible for the tragedy.
Kate Osamor MP
Many will have noticed the enormous contrast between this and the recent fire at the Wang Fuk Court complex in Hong Kong where Reuters report at least 156 people died in a fire rapidly spread by substandard plastic mesh and insulation foam.
The first reports in the UK media over the fire also included that police had already arrested a number of people in connection with the fire. Reuters reported 15 on suspicion of manslaughter as well as another 12 arrests in a corruption investigation.
John Bowden, Congo & Waterloo Carnival: I don’t think I wrote anything on My London Diary about the three events I covered on Friday 13th July other than some captions on the pictures. The case of John Bowden in particular is one that has considerable relevance now in the UK with increasing prison over-crowding and chaos, and the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is ongoing now for over three decades, but there were dramatic developments earlier this year with now some negotiations between the warring parties.
International Day of Solidarity – John Bowden – Parole Board, Westminster
In an interview on Indymedia in 2007 John Bowden stated that he grew up experiencing anti-Irish “racism as well as extreme poverty very early on in life” and committed “serious anti-social acts” including burning “a factory to the ground when I was nine!” which led to him being “systematically brutalised and de-socialised to the extent where I became a complete outsider” by the ‘criminal justice system.
He stated that by his “early twenties I had already spent the bulk of my time locked away in various prison-type institutions and had accumulated a long criminal record, composed mostly of violent offences, which were becoming increasingly more violent.”
In 1980, aged 24, he was arrested along with others for the murder and grisly dismemberment of a man at a party in a flat in Camberwell and given a life sentence. In jail he took part in taking an assistant governor hostage after a prisoner had been murdered in the hospital wing – and this got him another 10 year sentence.
During his time in years of solitary confinement he writes “I actually began to discover my true humanity and experienced a process of deep politicisation which drew me closer to my fellow prisoners and oppressed people everywhere. From a brutalised and anti social criminal I metamorphasised into a totally committed revolutionary.”
In an interview in Novara Media in 2020 he states “I committed and devoted my life not just to the personal struggle against brutality but to a wider struggle against the prison system generally, and spent almost 40 years trying to organise and mobilise prisoners.” The views he expresses on prison in this interview should be taken to heart by those to reforming our criminal justice system to create a system that works with offenders to rehabilitate rather than further damage them and make re-offending virtually inevitable.
Some other protesters asked not to be photographed, and others were still on their way when I left.
You can see and hear Bowden in a series of short videos made for the Prisoner Solidarity Network on YouTube, Tour of the British prison estate.
While the others convicted with him were released over 20 years ago, Bowden was only granted parole in 2020, and only after taking the Parole Board to Judicial Review following their fourth rejection of his release.
It had become clear that his continued imprisonment was not because of any danger to the public “but because I was labelled an ‘anti-authoritarian’ prisoner with links to anarchist and communist groups on the outside, specifically Anarchist Black Cross and the Revolutionary Communist Group.”
No More Deportations to the Congo – Parliament Square
A group of UK residents from the Democratic Republic of Congo had come to demand an end to Britain’s racist laws and to end the harassment and detention of refugees and asylum seekers. They say all deportations to the DRC should stop as the country is unsafe.
The carnival theme was sea creatures, here floating on the waves down Lower Marsh.
The first Waterloo Carnival took place in July 2002 as “a celebration of our community: our unity and diversity, history and future” and is backed by many locally based businesses and organisations including the Old Vic, Christian Aid and the local primary school where the procession formed up.
Local residents pose with some of the marchersFrom Lower Marsh the procession went through a council estateIt ended with a picnic and events on Waterloo Millennium Green.
Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine: Ten years ago on Friday 13th March 2015 I photographed four very different protests in London, beginning outside an immigration tribunal in Feltham, going from there to Trafalgar Square where people where protesting against ‘canned hunting’ of lions, on to Kensington Gore where cleaners were demanding a living wage at the Royal College of Art and finally to the offices of G4S on Victoria St, Westminster for a protest against the imprisonment and torture of four young Palestinian boys by Israel.
Let Ife Stay in the UK! – York House Immigration Tribunal, Feltham
York House where the Immigration Tribunal is based is on an industrial estate halfway between Feltham and Heathrow on the western fringes of London and protesters had not found it easy to get there. I arrived a little late and other protesters only arrived shortly before I left, with others still on their way.
The protest had been held up at the start when security at the tribunal had told the protesters they were not allowed to protest outside the offices, and had called the police. But the police had come and confirmed that not only they had the right to protest there but also that people could take photographs outside the tribunal – though of course cameras and recording equipment were not allowed inside the tribunal.
The protesters had come to demand that 2-year-old Ife, who had Down’s syndrome, and her mother should be allowed to stay at their Peckham home where she can receive essential healthcare and support and not be deported to Nigeria. They intended to stay until after the end of the tribunal hearing later in the day.
The protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Group had brought with them posters covered with the sheets of a local petition to keep Ife here with nearly a thousand signatures, as well was posters denouncing the UK’s racist immigration laws and also calling for justice for Jimmy Mubenga, killed by racist G4S deportation officers during his forced deportation flight from Britain.
Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting – Trafalgar Square
Several hundred gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest against ‘canned hunting’, where lions are bred and raised tame on farms in South Africa for rich visitors to pet, to ‘walk with lions’ and to shoot as trophy heads.
The protesters say this degrades a noble animals and threatens wild lions, which are captured for farm breeding to improve the quality of the stock.
Only very young cubs are safe to pet and young female lions are often killed once they become too large to pet as there is much less demand for female lions as hunting trophies.
After speeches and photographs on the North Terrace I was invited to go with one of the protesters to South Africa House where he stood in the entrance with a placard and poster until security told us to leave.
Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art – Kensington Gore
I met with protesters from the IWGB (Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain) at the Royal College of Art where they had come at lunchtime to demand that cleaners be immediately paid the London Living Wage. Previous pressure from the IWGB had led to the RCA saying it would pay the living wage from September 2015, but the cleaners needed it now, not in sixth months time.
After a noisy protest outside the college entrance in a mews just off the main road where they were joined by around 50 students in support the marched onto Kensington Gore for a more public protest on the east side of the college facing the Royal Albert Hall.
Here there were speeches and chanting and a great deal of noise from the drums and vuvuzelas before the protesters went back to continue their protest at the college entrance.
From here they moved further down the mews and to an almost enclosed yard at the rear of the college next to a dining area keeping up a barrage of noise. After keeping up their loud protest for around an hour they finished with a warning to RCA management that they would be back and keep up the protests until their demands were met.
British multinational private security company G4S plays a key role in running jails in Israel where thousands of Palestinians are held.
Among the prisoners being held and tortured were 5 young boys from Hares in the northern West Bank of Palestine, and the Islamic Inminds Human Rights Group were protesting outside the G4S offices on Victoria St demanding their immediate release.
The boys were arrested after an Israeli illegal settler crashed into the back of an Israeli truck and they were alleged to have caused the collision by throwing stones.
That had happened two years earlier and the boys had now been held without trial for two years for the alleged crime – for which there appeared to be no evidence.
One of the five, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh Suleiman, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to 15 years in prison on the basis of a statement obtained by torture that he was not allowed to read before being forced to sign.
In 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published its opinion on his case. They called his detention ‘discriminatory’ and ‘arbitrary’ and called for his immediate release by Israel. Israel ignores most if not all UN opinions.
Santas, Sardines & Earth Strike: On Saturday 14th December 2019 the Santas were on BMX bikes raising money for charity, Italians were supporting a spontaneous Italian anti-fascist movement and Earth Strike, a small group of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialists against environmental destruction held their first protest in Brixton.
Santas BMX Life Charity Ride
If you are in London today look out for the 10th BMX Life’s Santa Cruise riding around the capital in a charity ride raising money for the Evelina Children’s Heart Organisation, ECHO. There is a link for donations on the page linked.
One rider had ignored the dress code, though he was wearing a Christmas jumper
The ride begins as it did five years ago in the graffiti tunnel under Waterloo Station and 10.30am and the dress code is Santa, Elf, Snowman,Christmas Tree or Reindeer.
So far by these rides and a number of raffles BMX Life have raised over £180,000 for ECHO and they hope that this year’s ride will be bigger than ever. When I took these pictures in 2019 there were around 700 riders.
From Leake St they moved off to Forum Magnum Square where some santas demonstrated their riding skills before the group left to ride around London.
‘6000 Sardines’ London protest – Parliament Square
The Sardines movement was a grass roots political movement which began in Italy in November 2019 after a flash mob in Bologna opposing right-wing leader Matteo Salvini packed the main square in Bologna “like sardines”.
People were appalled at the rise of Salvini because of his anti-immigrant policies, hate speech and Euroscepticism and the movement prompted other ‘sardine’ protests across Italy and by Italians elsewhere, with demonstrations, flash mobs and online actions.
14th December was declared ‘Global Sardine Day’, with similar rallies across Europe and in the USA as well as in many towns and cities in Italy. All of the speeches while I was at the event were in Italian.
The movement ended with the elections in January 2020 in the Bologna region of northern Italy, which resulted in a resounding victory for the centre-left who almost doubled the vote they had received five years earlier.
The protest by Earth Strike South London began ther protest against environmental destruction with speeches and handing out fliers at a street stall on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Brixton Rd, where members of the Revolutionary Communist Group taking part were also selling their newspaper.
The fliers pointed out that many companies who trade on our high streets are still making a huge contribution to global warming and environmental destruction and they went on to march up Brixton Road stopping for speeches and to protest at some of the major culprits.
They began by going into Barclays Bank who still have huge investments in fossil fuels and are major backers of fracking in the UK. They ignored bank staff who told them they could not protest inside but handed out leaflets and made a speech about the bank’s activities before leaving after a few minutes.
Next stop was H&M where they pointed out he fashion industry is the second largest producer of greenhouse gases, emitting 1.2 billion tons a year and textile manufacture creates 20% of all water pollution. They stood outside and ignored a security man who told them to go away.
A couple of police officers arrived and talked to the protesters who assured them that their protest would be peaceful. The officers then went away.
The protesters moved on to EE where they pointed out mobile phones and other similar electronic produces all need minerals such as Coltan, and the fight for these is behind the horrific wars that have taken place in the Congo region. Mining companies are also huge exploiters of African labour, create large amounts of pollution. lay huge areas to waste and evade taxes on a huge scale.
Further along the road they stopped briefly to point out that Boots avoids paying taxes in the UK, cheats the NHS and sells palm oil products made by clearing forests, destroying ecosystems. They make huge profits from the NHS, and are said to have charged charged them £1500 for pots of cream they sell for £2, as well as selling palm oil products grown on land cleared from ancient forests, disrupting ecosystems and resulting in the loss of species including orangutans.
At Sainsbury’s they reminded customers that it sells many products that harm the environment and lead to global warming, including beef that comes from ranches made by burning the Amazon Forest, destroying ecosystems and displacing indigenous tribes.
They held another protest outside Vodaphone, also a tax avoider and as well reliant on those minerals fuelling wars in central Africa before walking on to Brixton Police station.
Here they held a brief vigil for those killed by police in Brixton, including Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg who was beaten to death inside the police station in 2008.
I left the group here as they were to continue their protest at shops on the opposite side of Brixton Road.
Class War Protest ‘Fascist Architect’: At lunchtime on Wednesday 30th November 2016 a small group of anarchists and communists protested outside Zaha Hadid Architects in Clerkenwell against their director Patrik Schumaker.
Ian Bone of Class War
The protest came after Schumaker had given a lecture in Berlin on the London Housing Crisis in which he had apparently said “We must destroy affordable housing and remove the unproductive from the capital to make way for my people who generate value.”
A Class War poster for the event put this quotation above pictures of Schumacher and Nazi architect Albert Speer with the question “Who said this?”.
Other posters were headed with the slogan “ARBEIT MACH FREI” much used by the Nazi party and best known for its use above the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps and included pictures of the architect with minor variations on the quote.
Class war had also brought their banner with and image of US Anarchist Lucy Parsons (1853-1942) who voiced a rather different view on architecture, “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live“. Ian Bone condemned Scuumaker’s suggestion that London should become a private enclave for the ultra-rich, with the rest of us forced out.
Other groups taking part in the protest included the Revolutionary Communist Group who labelled Schumaker as an enemy of the working class and called for social housing not social cleansing’ and two people from the London Anarchist Federation had come with their banner ‘Make London the Rebel City’.
There were a number of short speeches which among other things pointed out the “class-based absurdity of his neo-conservative proposals which would produce a London which was simply a playground for the ultra-wealthy, but would socially cleanse it of all the workers essential to its running.”
Schumaker’s Berlin lecture had been greeting with boos from the audience and had been widely disowned by architects and politicians including in an open letter from Zaha Hadid Architects.
Class War had also received a letter from one of the workers at Zaha Hadid Architects, where many are said to hate their boss. The letter suggested that Class War should protest outside his £2m home close to Highbury & Islington and gave the address, but they had decided instead to protest outside the practice.
They surrounded the entrance with “CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER’ tape, and both Ian Bone and Lisa McKenzie tried to get an appointment to see Patrik Schumaker without success. According to his e-mails he was away in the Far East.
After an hour of peacefully making their point the protesters left, and I went with some of them to the nearby Betsey Trotwood before leaving for home.
Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike: On Saturday 23rd September 2017 hundreds marched from a rally in North London against the council’s plans to make a huge transfer of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease, which would result in the demolition of thousands of council homes, replacing them largely by private housing. I left the march close to its end taking the tube to Brixton where strikers at the were marking a year of action with a rally.
Haringey Against Council Housing Sell-Off
People had come to a rally and march against Haringey Council’s ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’, HDV, which proposed a £2 billion giveaway of council housing and assets to a private corporation run by Australian multinational Lendlease.
This would result in the speedy demolition of over 1,300 council homes on the Northumberland Park estate, followed by similar loss of social housing across the whole of the borough.
Similar ‘regeneration’ schemes in other boroughs such as Southwark, Lambeth and Barnet had resulted in the loss of truly affordable housing, with the result of social cleansing with many of the poorer residents of the redeveloped estates being forced to move out of these boroughs to areas with cheaper private housing on the outskirts of London and beyond.
London’s housing crisis has been made much worse by the activities of wealthy foreign investors buying the new properties and keeping them empty or only occasionally used as their values rise. Among the groups on the march were those such as Class War and Focus E15 who have down much to bring this to public attention.
In London it is mainly Labour Councils who are in charge and responsible for the social cleansing of the poor and the loss of social housing that is taking place on a huge scale.
Along with speakers from estates across London where similar schemes are already taking place there were those from Grenfell Tower where cost cutting and ignoring building safety and residents’ complaints by private sector companies including the TMO set up by the council created the disaster just waiting to happen.
On My London Diary I quoted part of a speech by then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn a few days later at the Labour Party conference which condemned current practice on estate ‘regeneration’ and housing of which the HDV is the prime example.
“The disdain for the powerless and the poor has made our society more brutal and less caring. Now that degraded regime has a tragic monument: the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower, a horrifying fire in which dozens perished. An entirely avoidable human disaster, one which is an indictment not just of decades of failed housing policies and privatisation and the yawning inequality in one of the wealthiest boroughs and cities in the world, it is also a damning indictment of a whole outlook which values council tax refunds for the wealthy above decent provision for all and which has contempt for working class communities.”
“Indeed it has. And high in the list of that brutality is the estate regeneration programme that threatens, is currently being implemented against, or which has already privatised, demolished or socially cleansed 237 London housing estates, 195 of them in boroughs run by Labour councils, which vie with each other for the title of ‘least caring’, and among which the councils of Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Haringey could give the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council a lesson in disdain, privatisation, failed housing policies and the inequality they produce. But it’s good to hear Corbyn discard the Tories’ contemptuous terminology of ‘hardworking families’ and ‘ordinary people’ and finally – if belatedly – refer to the ‘working class’.“
They go on to comment less favourably on Corbyn who they say had ignored “the estate regeneration programme that is at the heart of London’s transformation into a Dubai-on-Thames for the world’s dirty money” and so had failed to perceive that “every estate undergoing demolition and redevelopment could produce a similar testimony of inept and incompetent local authorities, bad political decisions and a failed and broken system of democratic accountability.”
The grass roots revolt against the HDV plans resulted in a political change and the scrapping of the plans. But the Labour Party has also changed radically, and those very people responsible for those ‘least caring’ local authorities in London and across the country are now in government.
A quite different vehicle was the star of the show in Brixton, where BECTU strikers at the Ritzy Cinema were celebrating a year of strike action with a rally supported by other trade unionists, including the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and other union branches.
The strikers continued to demand the London Living Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay, for managers, supervisors, chefs and technical staff to be properly valued for their work, and for the four sacked union reps to be reinstated.
After speeches in English and Spanish, came the surprise. The vehicle in Brixton was the newly acquired ‘Precarious Workers Mobile’, a bright yellow Reliant Robin, equipped with a powerful amplifier and loudspeaker, and after more speeches this led the protesters in a slow march around central Brixton.
Various actions at the Ritzy had started three years before this, when workers called for a boycott of the cinema. In 2019, after an industrial tribunal had won some of their claims BECTU suspended the boycott and the Living Staff Living Wage campaign although still continuing to fight for equal pay and against other dismissals.
