No Borders and the West End: On Saturday 10th February 2007 I went to photograph a protest against our racist, cruel and arbitrary detention of immigrants and asylum seekers at the neighbouring Colnbrook and Harmondsworth detention centres on the Colnbrook By-Pass immediately north of Heathrow Airport – now known as Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre. Like the first protest I covered there in April 2006 it was organised by No Borders, though several later events there were and at Yarls Wood were by Movement for Justice who were taking part in this protest with a Fight Racism! Fight Imprerialism! banner and others.
Harmondsworth (or rather Longford where both centres are located) was only a few miles bike ride from home, and after around an hour I jumped back on my bike, cycled home and took the train into London where I had arranged to meet a friend, I think probably to hand over some material.
We took a wander around Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and other parts of central London before saying goodbye and my making my way to Waterloo Station, photographing a few things on the way.
Here with the usual corrections is what I wrote about the day in 2007 on My London Diary and a few of the pictures with links more.
No Borders Demo at London Detention Centres
Colnbrook & Harmondsworth
Rhythms of Resistance players outside the detention centres – Harmondsworth centre in background.
I arrived at the detention centres at Harmondsworth (Colnbrook and Harmondsworth are separated only by a narrow private road) just as the people who had come by coach from London marched onto the roadway leading to the two sites, with banners and the street band of Rhythms Of Resistance.
Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism’
We had come to give support to migrants and refugees, and to demand the closure of detention centres, a stop to deportations and and end to immigration controls.
Since I was last here the windows of the two detention centres seem to have been blocked off, giving them a more sinister appearance, but although those imprisoned within the blocks were not allowed to see us, I imagine they could hear the noise that was being made.
Hands off Kurdish Asylum Seekers Now
I left after around an hour, when a few people were still arriving. As well as the crowd in the road, there were also a number of people lined up along the main road in front of the two ‘prisons’.
The Campaign For The Defence Of Africans Returned To Zimbabwe make the point Zimbabwe is not a safe place
There didn’t seem to be a huge police presence, although probably there were rather more on hand not far away. I left to meet a friend I’d arranged to see in the centre of London.
There wasn’t a great deal special happening as I walked through the streets of the West End of London. At Piccadilly Circus we bumped into some people with placards, but they were just celebrating someones birthday.
It was as boring as it looks
In Trafalgar Square we found the Biblical Gospel Mission preaching and handing out free bibles, though I told them I had several already at home.
One of several sculptures and statues I photographed
Margaretta D’Arcy, Education & African Refugees: On Wednesday 22nd January I photographed a protest at the Irish Embassy demanding the release of anti-war activist Margaretta D’Arcy before going to a peaceful march by London Universitry students for democratic, public education free from exploitation and police violence. Finally I went to a protest close to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington in solidarity with African asylum seekers in Israel who are protesting their against arbitrary arrests, imprisonment and inhumane treatment.
Release Margaretta D’Arcy Now!
Irish Embassy
Selma James calls for the release of Margaretta D’Arcy
Margaretta D’Arcy (1934 – 2025) was an prominent Irish actress, writer, playwright and anti-war activist and a veteran of the Women’s Peace Camp at the US airbase on Greenham Common, where she had been a powerful member of the group at the ‘Yellow Gate’; protests by the Peace Camp eventually led to a legal challenge and the closure of the US Base with its cruise missiles.
Earlier in 1961 D’Arcy had joined the anti-nuclear Committee of 100 and in 1981 had been imprisoned for the first time after defacing a display at the Ulster Museum. Active in many campaigns in Ireland including the Shell to Sea campaign against the Corrib gas project and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, she was arrested in October 2012 for lying down on the runway at Shannon in a peaceful direct action by members of Galway Alliance Against War against the use since 2001 of Shannon by Galway Alliance Against War in violation of Irish neutrality.
D’Arcy received a suspended sentence but after she had been arrested again on the runway at Shannon in September 2013 and she refused to sign a bond to keep out of restricted areas at Shannon the suspended 12-week sentence was reactivated. After serving nine and a half weeks of this she was released from Dublin prison in March 2014. She continued her activism until a few days before her death in 2025.
The protest at the Irish Embassy in London took place a week after D’Arcy was arrested to serve her suspended sentence, and around 50 people had come with banners and posters for a protest outside the Irish Embassy in London and to deliver a petition calling for her immediate release.
On My London Diary I list some of the many groups who supported the protest and most of those who spoke.
The protest by London University students took place following a number of incidents in London and elsewhere the previous term when university management had called police onto the campus or gone to the courts to prevent or oppose student protests or to harass students. This had led in December 2013 to a Cops Off Campus National Student Protest.
A student speaks about police violence, and in particular violence directed at the black community including the killing of Mark Duggan
The protest began outside the University of London Union which the university is closing down with a speech by ULU President Michael Chessum and also by representatives of the lecturers who were taking action that week and the cleaners, maintenance and security staff who were about to hold a 3-day strike in their ‘3 Cosas’ campaign for sick pay, holidays and pensions, as well as for recognition for their union, the ndependent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB). Another student spoke about police violence, in particular against the black community.
A few from the black bloc enter Woburn House, home to theUniversity & Colleges Employers Association but it was only a token gesture
The marchers then went on a tour of key university sites including Senate House and the University & Colleges Employers Association in Tavistock Square where there was a brief token occupation of the lobby before going on to protest outside Holborn Police Station. Here as well as protesting against police violence they also protested the police execution of Mark Duggan.
They continued down Kingsway to Aldwych and the Strand, ending the march with a short rally outside the Royal Courts of Justice. The police had kept at a discreet distance while the students were in the university area but both the police station and the law courts were guarded by a line of police.
At the end of the rally Alfie Meadows suggested people might like to go on to a protest at the Royal Opera House, where the cleaners are also going on strike the next month for a living wage and proper conditions of work. About half the students then marched off with him, but I needed to leave for another event.
Tens of thousands of African asylum seekers had been protesting in Israel since the start of the year holding mass rallies against their treatment by the Israeli authorities.
Protesters stand on the pavement in front of the private road in which the Israeli embassy is located
In December new laws in Israel had meant entering the country without proper papers could be held for up to a year without trial, and those already in the country could be held in indefinite detention. The detention facility in the Negev desert, like many other Israeli prisons, is run by the private security company G4S.
There were around 50,000 refugees currently living in Israel, most who had fled brutal conflicts in Sudan and Eritrea, with only a few hundred of their applications had been processed. Most keep alive by working illegally, exploited and in fear of arrest.
Recently a strike by those working as cleaners, cooks, dishwashers and other low paid workers had brought many restaurants, hotels and businesses to a standstill. They held a rally with over 20,000 in Rabin Square in the centre of Tel Aviv with banners saying ‘We are refugees, not criminals’ and demanding their rights.
The London protest was one of many around the world following a call by the African Asylum Seekers Community in Israel for international solidarity. It isn’t possible to protest outside the Israeli Embassy in London which is down a well-guarded private street, but the protesters gathered on the pavement in front of the entrance to this street, refusing police attempts to move them further away.
Anti-fascist Solidarity Against Golden Dawn: Saturday 19th January 2013 was an international day of action against the fascist Golden Dawn Party in Greece, and around 500 people had come to the Greek Embassy in Holland Park in solidarity with the demonstration against the party in Athens.
Police keep anti-fascists away from a small pro-Golden Dawn counter-protest
Golden Dawn, now described in Wikipedia as “a far-right neo-Nazi ultranationalist criminal organisation and former political party” had its origins in 1980 but only became prominent following the 2008 Greek debt crisis which resulted from the global financial crash and crippling austerity measures imposed on Greece by the EU and IMF.
Tony Benn speaking
The founder of the group, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, who called himself ‘Fuhrer’, is an ardent support of Adolf Hitler and a holocaust denier, and the group adopted similar symbolism, slogans, salutes and policies to the Nazis. They wanted to return Greece to a military dictatorship such as that which had ruled the country from 1967-74.
Golden Dawn seized on the existing racism and Islamophobia against immigrants and refugees by forming attack squads against them in the parts of Athens where they had most support, their actions covered by the support of the police who also launched their own operation conducting large numbers of strip searches and detentions – much like the current ICE in the USA.
Weyman Bennett, UAF
In the Greek May and June 2012 elections Golden Dawn had got 6.9% of the vote and 18 MPs, with similar results in the 2015 elections. But by 2019 their vote had fallen below the 3% needed for them to have any representation in parliament, largely due to resistance by the working class through strikes and demonstrations and with the rise of the left-wing Syriza party.
Jeremy Corbyn MP
In 2020 Michaloliakos and other prominent part members were found guilty of murder, attempted murder, and violent attacks on immigrants and left-wing political opponents and were sent to prison.
The London protest was organised by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and “similar solidarity protests were taking place around the world, including in New York, Sydney, Barcelona, Lyons, Toronto, Dublin, Vienna, Moscow, Canberra, Warsaw, Chicago, Copenhagen, Montreal, Bilbao, Milan, Finland, Slovenia, Derry, Cork, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds and Bristol.”
Tony Benn & Gerry Gable
There were speeches at the protest by some leading members of the British left, including Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn, as well as those from various Greek organisations, and I list some of the speakers in My London Diary. Among the speakers was Gerry Gable, the editor of Searchlight, long a powerful force against racist and fascist groups, who died recently.
Police stop protesters going down the street to confront the small group of Golden Dawn supporters
Elizabeth Mantzari of Solidarity with the Greek resistance “had just begun to speak hen there was an uproar down the road, as some of the crowd rushed to protest against a small group of right-wing supporters of Golden Dawn.”
British Friends Of Golden Dawn
Police quickly formed a line to stop others following them, and then began moving the anti-fascists back behind it away from the 15 ‘British Friends Of Golden Dawn’, some of whom I recognised from former EDL protests. I tried to talk to some of them but was insulted and accused of working for Searchlight – which unfortunately I had never done.
Anarchist solidarity with the squats banner in front of the Greek Embassy
The rally opposite the Greek Embassy continued, though I had missed some of the speeches. Clearly as I ended my account, “The protest was a success for the UAF, and yet another humiliation for the extreme right.”
Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq: On Sunday 6th October 2013 I photographed a protest against the Daily Mail, Kurds marching calling for their leader to be released from Turkish jail, protests for and against the removal of President Morsi of Egypt and a protest calling for the release of hostages in Iraq.
Daily Mail You Told All the Lies – Kensington
The Daily Mail has a long history of publishing lies against the BBC, NHS, public sector workers, trade unionists, socialists, women, Muslims, travellers and others, but the protest came after people were outraged by their smears and distortion in an entirely unfair attack of Ralph Milliband.
Their campaign against the father of Ed Milliband was intended to discredit the then Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition and many felt the Daily Mail had gone over the line of what is acceptable in British politics with their headline ‘MAN WHO HATED BRITAIN’, based on an out of context adolescent observation. Of course things in our press have worsened since then, particularly in the orchestrated attacks on Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of anti-semitism.
Ralph Milliband had fled Belgium with his working class Polish Jewish family in 1940 aged 16 when Germany invaded the country and went on to serve in the Royal Navy during the war. He settled in London after the war and became a British subject in 1948. As a sociologist he became one of the most respected academics of the post-war period, respected by people across the political spectrum.
The Daily Mail had supported the Blackshirts and Hitler in the 1930s and continued after the war to express hate for most of those institutions that have truly made Britain great – like the welfare state, the NHS and the BBC and the public sector generally. And more recently it had backed French fascist Marine Le Pen.
The protest was organised by The People’s Assembly, a nationwide group set up in opposition to the current government’s austerity programme and to defend the provision of education, health and welfare from general taxation and available to all. Several hundred came to the show they were proud of Britain and its welfare state and there was a great deal of chanting against the Daily Mail and and some songs before two people delivered boxes of a petition to their offices and the speeches began.
The speeches agains the Daily Mail were continuing as I rushed away to Wood Green in North London where Kurds were marching on the 15th anniversary of the kidnappping of their national leader Abdullah Ocalan by Turkey in 1998.
Since then Ocalan has been held, mainly in solitary confinement, in a Turkish prison.
I left the march as it went past Wood Green Station on its way to the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey to make my way to Mayfair and the Egyptian Embassy
Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood – Egyptian Embassy
Opposite the Embassy in South Street were a group of protesters supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and opposing what the military coup which had recently removed the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi the suppression of protests in Egypt against this.
Many carried placards showing the R4BIA four finger and thumb on palm sign to show support, begun after a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo was violently attacked by the military in August 2013 – Rabaa is ‘four’ or ‘fourth’ in Arabic.
A short distance away a smaller group of Egyptians protested, many carrying pictures of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces who had led the coup and the massacres of protesters – a total of around 3,000 were killed and almost 19,000 arrested, They supported the removla of Morsi, who after a narrow win in the 2012 election had granted himself unlimited powers and issued an Islamist-backed draft constitution.
Sisi installed himself as leader and became president after elections in 2014, remaining in power as a dictator since then (including two further elections in which other candidates were barred from running or boycotted the election due to repression – said to be even worse than under Mubarak who had been forced to step down by the popular revolution in 2011.
PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq – Trafalgar Square
Finally in Trafalgar Square I photographed an elaborate display by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the PMOI (aka MEK and MKO) which since 1986 had been exiled in Iraq (and is now in Albania.)
Photographs of the 52 killed by Iraqi forces on 1st September
After the 2003 Iraq invasion the MEK came to a ceasefire agreement with the USA, giving up their weapons – which included 19 British-made Chieftain tanks. When the USA left Iraq they were left at the mercy of the Iraqi authorities and have been subjected to a long history of attacks on their refugee camp.
Seven hostages are sill held in Baghdad
The latest of these, ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Mailki, was at Camp Ashraf on September 1, 2013 and killed 52 with 7 hostages taken and held in the Baghdad Green Zone. In response hunger strikes started at Camp Ashraf and in Geneva, Berlin, Ottawa, Melbourne as well as London where they set up a camp in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
A line of hunger strikers, on the 36 day of their strike, was seated at the front of the audience at today’s rally, holding roses and taking an active part in the event, raising their fists and shouting.
The rally called for immediate release of the seven prisoners, and for UN forces to be stationed permanently at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty to provide the protection the PMOI, who the UN granted asylum status.
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.
Against the Invasion of Iraq: The US and its allies had begun the invasion of Iraq on 20th March 2003, with Britain taking part despite the huge opposition of the British people. President Bush had decided months earlier that the invasion would take place and the US had manufactured fake information that Iraq had failed to abandon its weapons of mass destruction.
UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair had added his own lies to this to persuade the British parliament, presenting the “dodgy dossier” together with highly misleading statements. Although 84 Labour MPs voted against (along with almost all of the Liberal Democrats and most of the smaller parties) and there were 94 mainly Labour abstentions the Labour Government won the vote easily with the support of the Conservative Party. For many of us it seemed a vote which demonstrated a complete failure of our parliamentary democracy, MPs following the party line and voting for war in clear disregard of the evidence.
And the BBC and mass media had failed to properly investigate and challenge the official position, with the BBC moving into an establishment role in supporting the war.
On Saturday 5th April Stop the War, CND and others organised another protest against the war and I walked with the protesters from outside Broadcasting House in Portland Place to a rally close to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square and later posted the following piece (corrected as usual) on My London Diary with some of my pictures.
April started with the country at war, invading Iraq together with the USA.
On Saturday 5th I went to a march to protest against this and to call for proper reporting of the events in the media, especially the BBC.
I walked to the march past the houses of parliament and a small group of protesters in whitehall who were pointing out the number of Iraqi civilians already killed by the allied forces.
The main thrust of the demonstration now was that the civilian population of Iraq should be respected. The use of weapons such as depleted uranium shells and cluster bombs will mean the deaths continue for generations after the end of the fighting.
The march started opposite the BBC building in Portland Place and went to Grosvenor Square, close to the US Embassy. There were perhaps five thousand marchers, and several hundred police surrounding them most of the time. As the speakers pointed out, it was difficult not to see the war as a US takeover of the country when plans were already in place for Americans to run the country after the war.
The killing of Iraqis must stop, and rapid progress should be made to hand control of the country back to its people.
Peter Tatchell
Iraq has still not recovered from the disastrous effects of the invasion and in particular from the failure of the USA to think beyond getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime. In doing so they also demolished the civil state and the internal security of the country turning it into a lawless state.
It is now clear that there were no “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and that the whole invasion was justified on what were known at the time to be lies.
The USA established a provisional authority led by US diplomat Paul Bremner which made the ridiculous decision to disband the Iraqi Army and exclude all members of Saddam’s Ba’ath party from government in Iraq rather than taking these over and using them to build a new Iraq.
Adrian Mitchell
As well as leaving the country at the mercy of a wide range of militia units this also disqualified the entire civil service at all levels from taking part in the rebuilding of the the country – including all government officials for whom party membership was simply a condition of service, even the 40,000 teachers.
Lindsay German
As Wikipedia states, in 2023, “Corruption remains endemic throughout all levels of governance while US-endorsed sectarian political system has driven increased levels of violent terrorism and sectarian conflicts within Iraq.” And although accurate estimates are difficult, probably by now over a million Iraqis have died because of the invasion and the insurgencies that followed. Around 2.4 million Iraqis have left the country as refugees and well over a million remain internally displaced inside the Iraq.
As we are now seeing under Trump, a total irresponsibility and ignorance seems to be at the heart of US foreign policy. Trump has just made this more open and obvious.
There are just a few more pictures with the original article, particularly of the speakers at the event.
Palestine & Syria: On Saturday 13th January 2018 I photographed a protest at the London US Embassy in Grosvenor Square against the continuing imprisonment of children in Palestine and another opposite the Russian Consulate over their continuing support for the Assad regime in Syria including the bombing of civilians.
Free Ahed Tamimi & All Child Prisoners
Teenager Ahed Tamimi was in prison in Israel for slapping an Israeli soldier who came into her family’s garden shortly after she had learnt that a relative had been shot by Israeli forces.
Her detention made the news and prompted this protest, but she was only one of the thousands of Palestinian children have been detained by Israel since 2000 in a systematic policy which the UN has said includes abuse and ill-treatment. Many Palestinian children have been kept for many days in solitary confinement in small underground cells in Israeli jails.
Israel is an apartheid state, with very different laws and police treatment for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who are subject to Israeli military law and dealt with in military courts which offer little or no chance of justice. Many are held without any real trials in ‘administrative detention‘ which can be essentially indefinite, with prisoners being released at the end of one sentence and immediately re-arrested for another period of detention.
A number of those taking part were relatives or friends of Tamimi’s family, including her father’s cousin Nana Hourriyah, or of other prisoners in Israeli jails. One man who spoke had recently spent 3 months in Palestine and had stayed with the family of another child prisoner. He had then been deported for taking part in a peaceful protest.
During the hour I stayed at the protest a single Zionist protester in a pen at the end of the street waved an Israeli flag, shouting insults at the protesters and accusing them of supporting Hamas, which they firmly denied.
Protesters lined the street opposite the Russian Consulate calling for an end to the massacres taking place in Syria. Protests are not allowed in the private road a few yards away outside the Embassy.
Russia and Assad’s forces were bombing civilians in Idlib, Hama and Eastern Ghouta, specifically targeting medical workers and facilities, with 8 hospitals in Idlib bombed since the start of December.
Many of those still living in Idlib had fled there from other towns and cities previously bombed by Assad and his Russian allies who were attempting to complete the destruction of all groups opposed to the Assad regime and bomb or starve to death the civilian population in areas held by opposition forces.
Only now after the fall of the Assad regime has the full scale of their human rights abuses become widely known with over 150,000 people thought to have been tortured and killed in his infamous prisons. As many as 620,000 were killed in the 14 years of civil war – around 1 in 35 of its prewar population, with around half these being civilians.
More than 14 million – almost two thirds of the Syrian population – were forced to leave their homes in the civil war. Half remained elsewhere in Syria, around 5.5 million in surrounding countries. Around a fifth of the countries pre-war population made their way to Europe, with the majority of these going to Germany. The UK set up a scheme to take Syrians but the numbers here remain relatively small at around 40,000.
Slavery, Climate, Stolen Goods & Santas: on Saturday 8th December 2018 I began with a march against African migrants being enslaved in Libya, photographed Buddhists meditating against climate change, went to the British Museum for a call to them to return indigenous Australian cultural objects and finally met hundreds of people in Santa costumes in Covent Garden.
Protest Slavery in Libya
There had been large protests a year earlier about slave auctions in Libya where many African migrants trying to reach Europe are captured by bandits, terrorists and jihadists – often funded by the EU and other outside countries – and sold as slaves.
The replacement of Gadaffi and his replacement by Western-backed puppets was a part of a continuing neo-colonialist attempt to control Africa’s natural resources which has led to the instability and mass migration from African countries to the south. Libya had begun a process of de-Africanisation and elimination of Black Libyans and the slave auctions are a simple extension of this policy.
Like many other issues, this had simply dropped out of the news despite the UK and other countries failing to take any action, perhaps why this protest was only by a small group. They met for a short rally outside the EU offices Europe House as the deals and actions of the EU to prevent migrants reaching Europe means many more of them are detained in Libya.
They then marched to protest outside the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, saying the UK had failed to do anything to help because the victims were African, then stopped briefly at the gates to Downing Street before marching on to the Libyan Embassy. I left them at Trafalgar Square
A small group from the Dharma Action Network meditated in Trafalgar Square as a call for people to take action, suggesting people move their money out of banks which invest in fossil fuels, get informed by reading the IPCC report on global warming and join them and other groups including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and take direct action with Extinction Rebellion.
I joined Indigenous Australian campaigner Rodney Kelly and others on the tour organised by BP or not BP? in the Kings Library of the British Museum in front of the glass case displaying the Gweagal shield stolen from his ancestor by Captain Cook at Botany Bay. Kelly is a 6th generation direct descendant of Cooman, whose Gweagal shield was taken when Captain Cook’s men on first landing in Australia opened fire with muskets, and the shield has a small hole caused by a musket round.
BP or not BP? activists came dressed as burglars in striped jumpers and black masks with sacks for swag.
Another, dressed as a ‘BP Executive’ explained how their sponsorship of art including exhibitions at the British Museum helps to clean up their reputation, tarnished by oil spills, the exploitation of oil fields around the globe with its associated environmental damage, the sale of climate change producing fossil fuels and more. It all looks much better with the nice glossy image of exhibitions such as those at the museum.
They then introduce Kelly who began (and ended) his talk by playing his didgeridoo, and then talked about how the British Museum had dismissed his earlier attempts to return the shield and other items, and had refused to take seriously the oral tradition of his people as it could not be confirmed by written records.
After retelling the story of how it was stolen and how the museum came to acquire it, he told the crowd now packing the room how the shield which few people stop to look at in the museum would reinvigorate the traditions of his people back in Australia and would be both the centrepiece of a museum of indigenous Australia and revive a great interest in traditional crafts.
The crowd then moved on to sit on the floor in front of the then current BP-sponsored Assyrian exhibition, where an Iraqi woman spoke, telling us that objects looted from Iraq during the invasion in 2003 and bought by the British Museum were on show which clearly should be returned to Iraq. Looting of cultural artifacts was considered respectable and normal back in the days of the British Empire (or at least by the British) but is no longer acceptable.
We moved on to a room devoted to objects taken from Polynesia where we heard about looted objects from the region and a statement from the Rapa Nui Pioneers on Easter Island calling for the return of their stolen Moai Head.
It was now time to visit the huge room containing the Parthenon Marbles, which Elgin claimed to have taken them with the permission of the Ottoman Empire, then rulers of Greece, but this now seems unlikely – and the marbles in any case surely belonged to the Greeks rather than thier occupiers.
Here one of the BP or Not BP? burglars, Danny Chivers, revealed himself to be part-Greek and talked about a recent visit to the Acropolis Museum, close to the Parthenon, where a room containing the marbles that Elgin left in Athens are displayed, complete with gaps in the appropriate places for those currently on display in the British Museum.
It seems clear that they should be returned to Athens, and it would now be possible – if expensive – to make a set of visually identical replicas to continue to display here. Perhaps in return for sending them back, the BM could receive replicas of those that remained in Athens – and so both cities could have a full set.
Finally I met Santacon in Covent Garden, with crowds of people dressed in Santa costumes, together with the odd elf and reindeer making their way to Trafalgar Square, spreading glad tidings as darkness fell, some following hand-pulled sound systems and dancing on the streets, though many groups were diverted into pubs and food shops on the way. This year the charity event was supporting ‘Christmas for Kids’ as well as having a great deal of fun.
Corbyn Victory & Refugees Welcome: Saturday 12th September 2015 was a day of hope when Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership election with a landslide victory, getting more than three times the vote of his nearest rival, Andy Burnham. Several hundred Corbyn supporters met at Speakers’ Corner before the Refugees Welcome march to listen to the results of the Labour Leadership election.
Victory Party for Jeremy Corbyn – Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park,
Tension built as the Deputy Leader results came and then erupted with Jeremy Corbyn’s first round victory.
Corbyn had only been able to stand in the election because some Labour MPs who did not support him were prepared to nominate him so that the Labour left would have a candidate in the ballot and not feel it was rigged against them. They thought he would only get a miserably low percentage of the votes.
According to Wikipedia, the release of opinion polls before the election which showed Corbyn in the lead prompted “high-profile interventions by a number of prominent Labour figures including Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, David Miliband, and Alastair Campbell, among others” who felt Labour with Corbyn as leader would be unelectable.
These interventions almost certainly increased support for Corbyn, and although these and other Labour figures such as Peter Mandelson, along with most of the media and press did their best to try to get rid of Corbyn, including various plots and mass resignations from the Shadow Cabinet, he remained popular in the country.
The 2017 election turned out to be a much closer contest than most had imagined, and it was only due to deliberate sabotage by Labour party officials that Corbyn lost. A leaked report in 2020 which demonstrated this led to the setting up of the Forde report into Labour party factionalism which although it called the earlier report “factional” confirmed many of its suspicions and conclusions – as well as criticising both sides in the party – remained secret until July 2022.
What shocked many of us was the evident relief shown by some leading members of the party as the 2017 election results were coming out that their party had lost. And the witch-hunt against the left in the party continues unabated.
On the 12th September 12th 2015 there was much more media interest in the few hundred celebrating Corbyn’s victory than in the huge Refugees Welcome march which followed, and in the media scrum I got knocked flying and my equipment scattered, but managed to gather it up and continue work.
From Speakers Corner I joined the huge crowd – at least 50,000 – filling Park Lane as far as I could see. This national march was a response to the many reports of refugees fleeing war and persecution, with people wanting to show their support for refugees facing death and hardship and their disgust at the lack of compassion and inadequate response of the British government.
On My London Diary is a list and photographs of some of the speakers before the march set off. I photographed the front of the march as it set up at the southern end of Park Lane and went with it for the first couple of hundred yards into Piccadilly, where I stopped to photograph the rest of the march as it came past.
The marchers were fairly densely packed and spread across the whole of the roadway (and sometimes on to the pavement too) and it took exactly an hour to go past me.
There were many at the protest who were not the usual protesters, people who said this was the first protest they had ever attended, as well as those that I knew from previous protests, and there were many interesting placards and banners to photograph – and many more pictures on My London Diary.
As the end of the march passed me I rushed into Green Park Station and took the tube to Westminster, arriving on Whitehall as it went very noisily past Downing Street.
I ran back to Parliament Square, and this soon filled up with people and banners. I sat down on the wall close to the Churchill statue, realising I was rather tired and hungry.
Many marchers left rather than stay and listen to the speeches, though the square was still crowded and I decided I would leave too.
Netanyahu, Immigration & Shaker: On Wednesday 9th September 2015 groups came to Downing Street both to protest against and to support the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu then making an official visit to David Cameron. And in Parliament Square there were protests supporting the parliamentary report on immigration detention which was being debated, as well as a weekly vigil calling for the release of Londoner Shaker Aamer, still then held in Guantanamo.
Netanyahu visit protests – Downing Street.
Over a thousand people had come to Downing Street to protest the official visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they say should be arrested for war crimes in the attack on Gaza in 2014.
There were too many for the small penned area the police had allocated for the protest and many chose instead to stand in the area between the two carriageways, although police tried to clear the area.
A much smaller group who had come to support Israel were in another pen a short distnace down the road. They included supporters with a Union flag with the message UK CHRISTIANS LOVE ISRAEL.
Some of them had come with posters about other issues, including a woman holding a hand-written sign ‘THEY ARE CRUCIFYING CHRISTAINS IN IRAQ!’ But ISIS which has carried out such atrocities were encouraged by both Israel and the CIA and ISIS relies on Israeli money for the oil they smuggle out to Israel.
The pro-Israel supporters complained to police that they were not controlling the pro-Palestinian protesters, and one attempted to stop me photographing him as he did so. But I continued to photograph him.
By this time many from both sides were protesting on the pavement in front of Downing Street, and police had made a number of arrests, mainly of pro-Palestine activists. But others continued to complain to police.
Police managed to clear an area so that cars could still leave and enter Downing Street when the gates were opened, and people from both groups shouted at each other across the narrow divide. More police arrived and were able to keep this area clear.
Many protesters had remained on the far side of the road, and they were joined by anti-Zionist Neturei Karta orthodox Jews who held posters saying ‘State of “Israel” Do NOT Represent World Jewry’
Yet more police arrived and the protests continued with a great deal of noise from both sides. There were more complaints by the Zionists that a few of those at the protests were waving flags in support of the Lebanese Hezbollah. In 2008 the military wing of Hezbollah was proscribed but the parliamentary group which together with its allies had a majority in the Lebanese parliament was not – and both use the same flag.
So it was still legal to use the Hezbollah flag in 2015. But in 2019 Home Secretary Sajid Javid added Hezbollah’s political wing to the list of proscribed terrorist organisations making the flag now illegal to fly in Britain.
One of the pro-Israel protesters was holding a definitely legal Welsh flag, though I could not understand its relevance at this protest. The protest was still continuing very noisily when I left.
The Report of the Inquiry into the Use of Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees & the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration was being debated in Parliament and Movement for Justice came to Parliament Square to support some of its conclusions and demand more radical action on immigration.
One of its key conclusions was that there should be a time limit of 28 days on immigration detention which is currently still indefinite. At least one person has been kept in our immigration prisons for three years (less one day) before being released, and none of those held know when or if they may be released or deported. They constantly face the risk of being forcibly deported to a country where their lives are at risk.
Some of those taking part in the protests had previously been held in detention centres for months or more, while MfJ were still calling for an end to the illegal ‘fast track’ system which is clearly designed to remove migrants and asylum seekers before they have a proper chance to prove their right to be here. They also called for a complete end to detention and immigration raids, the opening of the Calais border and an amnesty for migrants.
The report also called for “a whole-sale shift in approach, away from merely focusing on enforcement and towards quality engagement with individuals at all stages of their immigration process” which has been highly successful in other countries.
Needless to say, the Tory government failed to implement any of the changes suggested, and although Angela Rayner, now Deputy Prime Minister, was the only MP to come out and listen to the protest, there seems little chance of our Labour Government moving away from the current racist policies.
This was the first of a new series of weekly vigils opposite the Houses of Parliament calling for the release of Battersea resident Shaker Aamer, still held, abused and tortured in Guantanamo after more than 13 years despite never facing any charges and having been twice cleared for release.
