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Italian Festival & Ritzy Strike – 2014

Italian Festival & Ritzy Strike: On Sunday 20th July 2014 I spent several hours at the Italian festival in Clerkenwell and photographed the procession around the local streets before rushing off to Brixton where striking cinema workers were holding a protest in front of the Ritzy cinema.

Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel – St Peter’s Church, Clerkenwell

I think I first photographed the procession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1992 – you can see pictures from then and the following year in one of my Flickr albums, Procession in Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

In 1883 when the event began it was the first Roman Catholic event on English streets for 349 years and required special permission from Queen Victoria, but since then – with a few interruptions for war etc – has taken place every year on the third Sunday in July.

Since then I’ve frequently gone back to the event and taken more photographs, though in more resent years it has become more of a social event for me, meeting up with photographer friends – including one with Italian heritage – and sharing plastic cups of cheap Italian wine.

As well as the procession I’ve always photographed the people at these events and Sunday 20th Jul 2014 was no exception. As well as watching the procession many from the Italian community come from across this country to meet with old friends at the event and enjoy the food, wine, music and dancing in the Sagra in Warner Street.

This year (2025) it is also on 20th July and if you are in London and reading this on the day I post it, if you can get to St Peter;s Church in Clerkenwell (a short walk from Farringdon Station) by 3.30pm you can see what is I think London’s largest annual and certainly most colourful Christian processions.

It is still in my diary, but probably I won’t make it this year, partly because of being tired from photographing another protest calling for an end to the genocide taking place yesterday. But also because last time I went the wine had gone up in price and down in quality. More seriously because I’ve photographed it so many times it is hard to find anything new and not just repeat myself.

The event in 2014 was, as I noted, the first I’ve attended when there were no white doves released. So, although the other pictures are all from 2014, here is one from the last time I went to the festival in 2019. Pigeons are unpredictable and often look rather strange in flight and I was pleased to get one frame with them all visible.

London, UK. 20th July 2019. Three white doves are released from a basket in the historic procession in London’s Clerkenwell from St Peter’s Italian Church.

I usually stayed for an hour or two photographing the people celebrating, but in 2014 I rushed off after the procession to photograph another event.

Much more on My London Diary Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Ritzy workers strike for Living Wage – Windrush Square, Brixton,

Despite some torrential rain “the Ritzy workers, some soaked to the skin, kept standing behind their long banner across the whole wide frontage of the cinema. Some had umbrellas, others did not, but it was the kind of rain that made umbrellas next to useless.”

*I sheltered under the tree and my umbrella but still got wet.*

For once I had my own umbrella up, holding it while taking pictures but still “enough came through to soak my clothes and my feet were squelching in my shoes.“

The Ritzy is the busiest and most successful art-house cinema in the the UK but was still paying its workers at only 82% of the London Living Wage – not enough to live on in London. Backed by their union, BECTU, they went on strike after negotiations with employers Cineworld failed. The workers say ‘Living Staff – Living Wage.

More at Ritzy workers strike for Living Wage.

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A Short Walk in Tottenham

A Short Walk in Tottenham: My next London walk came on Friday October 27th 1989 when I rushed to jump on a train after finishing a morning of teaching and then took the Victoria Line to Tottenham Hale, arriving around 2pm. I’d managed to arrange my teaching timetable by including an evening class so that I finished on Fridays at noon but this was the last time it would be worth travelling to London to take photographs before the clocks went back to GMT at the weekend.

*The Hale, Tottenham Hale, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-42*

The first two pictures I made were both of this scene, a strangely blank building with signs on it which informed it it was the home of ‘Garbi Ltd‘ and ‘Short Stories of London‘, both manufacturers of men’s wear. Perhaps ‘Short Stories of London’ might be a good title for a book of my pictures one day.

Despite considerably redevelopment in the area I think this building is still there at No 33, thought with a rebuilt frontage and still in the clothing trade though now wholesale and retail sales, open to the public. It became Soniez House and more recently since around 2011 Morelli with two large ground floor windows and a wide glass door, but retaining the first floor windows in my picture.

I think the traffic flow in this area has altered and there are no longer the traffic signs I made use of – although the tree which it amused me to use with them as a framing device is I think still in place.

*Mountford House, Tottenham Green East, Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-43*

I walked west from The Hale to Tottenham Green East, just off the High Road, opposite the Council Offices. Mountford House, a late 18th or early 19th century Grade II listed pair of houses, was then in use as offices for Haringey Health Authority, but is now private flats on the road at the edge of the small open space.

*Mountford House, Tottenham Green East, Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-45*

This is a later extension to Mountford House and it doesn’t appear to be included in the rather strange listing text which calls this “Pair of houses in north east part of Prince of Wales’s General Hospital grounds.” Whatever its date I think it was nicely done an complements the simpler porch to the northern of the two houses.

*Main Entrance, Prince of Wales Hospital, Tottenham Green East, Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10i-44*

And this is that Prince of Wales Hospital, then surrounded by a solid fence over which I could see some broken windows and its Fleur-de-Lys symbol with the motto ‘Ich Dien’ around the crown, the Prince of Wales’s badge and coat of arms. The motto, ‘I serve’, was perhaps more suitable for a hospital than for many of the Princes, who got up to some very odd things.

According to the Lost Hospitals of London, the hospital had started in 1867 as the Evangelical Protestant Deaconesses’ Institution and Training Hospital in a converted cottage and moved into a house on this site in 1861. It got a new building in 1881 and was extended in 1887, becoming Tottenham Hospital in 1899 and after another extension the Prince of Wales General Hospital in 1907. It closed in 1983 and was converted to flats in 1993 as Deaconess Court.

*Tottenham High Cross, High Rd, Tottenham, Haringey 1989 89-10i-31*

This brick cross erected around 1600 replaced a wooden cross first recorded in 1409. In 1809 the plain brick cross was covered in stucco and the Gothic style ornamentation in my picture. The Grade II listed cross is still present but has been moved a little to fit in with new road layout since I photographed it.

Behind it is the fine Estate Office of George Ellis on the corner of Rawlinson Terrace, sadly rather defaced around ten years ago. The terrace itself with its crenellated parapet replaced ‘Turner’s House’ lived in by a vet called Turner with his brother, a farrier in the yard next door. When a horse ridden by a ‘gentleman from Stamford Hill‘ slipped and broke its leg outside the vet set it and the horse’s owner was so impressed he gave the horse to the vet on condition that he did not part with it. And he didn’t, even after its death, when he “fixed the skeleton by means of iron supports, and placed it over the farrier’s shop, where it served the purpose of an advertisement for the veterinary surgeon as well as for the farrier.”

The house was demolished and replaced by Rawlinson Terrace in 1881, named after Emma Rawlinson, the wife of the builder James Stringfellow. The horse’s skeleton was then for some years displayed on top of an undertakers on the opposite side of the road.

*Ritzy, Venue, High Rd, Tottenham, Haringey 1989 89-10i-22*

Built as a roller skating rink designed by architect Ewen S. Barr in 1910, it included an electric theatre, but the roller skating craze slumped quickly and the whole building opened as the Canadian Rink Cinema in 1911. It was converted into a dance hall, the Tottenham Palais, and later when owned by Mecca Dancing Ltd, The Tottenham Royal.

When I took this picture it was the Ritzy, ‘A Perfect Place for a Great Night Out’, but it had a whole string of names including the Mayfair Suite, the Aztec Temple, Club U N, and the Zone before being demolished around 2004.

*The Old Well, Philip Lane, High Rd, Tottenham, Haringey 1989 89-10i-24*

The Lord of the Manor who lived in Bruce Castle had this well dug in 1791 and it was used by locals until 1883 when it was found to be polluted, which was rather a shame as they had added the current structure over it only seven years earlier. It was restored in 1953 to commemorate the coronation of Elizabeth II.

Behind the well the High Cross Infants School, later called Holy Trinity School, dates from 1847, one of the schools linked to the National Society for Promoting Religious Education established to provide a Church of England elementary education for poor children who paid two pence a week (later raised to three) ‘School Pence’ to attend. Condemned in 1924 it survived to be Grade II listed in 1974 and so remains there to this day.

Time was getting on and I walked the short distance down the High Road to Seven Sisters Underground Station to start my journey and get home in time for dinner.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

Saturday 25th February saw me travelling around London to photograph unrelated protests in Dalston, Leicester Square, Brixton and Westminster.

Shut race-hate LD50 gallery – Dalston

LD50, Picturehouse, Guinness, Khojaly & Dubs Now

People protested outside the small LD50 gallery in Dalston just off the Kingsland Road which they say has promoted fascists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, racists and Islamophobes in one of London’s more diverse areas.

The gallery gets its name from the does of any substance which kills 50% of those taking it, and the protesters said it “has been responsible for one of the most extensive neo-Nazi cultural programmes to appear in London in the last decade.”

One man, “dc miller“, came to argue that it was a matter of free speech and the right to freely discuss ideas, even repulsive ones, should be defended. He got considerable verbal abuse from the protesters and eventually police came and advised him firmly to leave, and later wrote a number of articles about the gallery and the protest.

The protest didn’t immediately close down LD50 despite the claims of the protesters and a couple of months later it put on a show of defiance called ‘Corporeality’, though it is now permanently closed.

Perhaps an article in the Baffler by Megan Nolan, Useful Idiots of the Art World best expresses the position in this quote:

LD50 is a real place, in a real neighborhood, filled with people who are directly threatened by the vile speech of the very real racists who were invited into it. Repeatedly, the defense mounted by the gallery has been that it was attempting to have an open discussion about reactionary ideologies. The implication is that LD50 were engaging in some sort of completely neutral anthropological consideration of current events, rather than extending a fawning welcome to alt-right lynchpins.

More pictures at Shut race-hate LD50 gallery

Picturehouse recognition & living wage – Leicester Square

I rushed down to Leicester Square where workers from four Picturehouse cinemas at Brixton, Hackney, Wood Green and Picturehouse Central were holding a rally outside the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square to campaign for recognition of their union BECTU and to be paid the London Living Wage.

The Empire was recenetly acquired by Cineworld the owners of Picturehouse who have refused to recognise trade unions, but instead set up a company run staff forum.

They are not paying staff in London a living wage and offer poor conditions of service despite making large profits from cinema-goers paying £13 or more to see a film in central London. I’d arrived late and had to leave before the speeches to get the tube to Brixton.

More pictures Picturehouse recognition & living wage

Stop Unfair Eviction by Guinness – Brixton

The Guinness Trust was set up in 1890 by Sir Edward Cecil Guinness, then head of the family brewing business, to provide better housing for working class Londoners. One of the estates they built was the Loughborough Park Estate in Brixton.

Betiel Mahari had lived on that estate and moved into a new Guinness Trust flat, but the rent on this was more than doubled, increasing from £109 to £256 a week, although some of her neighbours are paying around a weekly rent of £100 less.

Beti has problems paying the new rent and because she works on a zero hours contract here housing benefit claim is constantly being reassessed leading to delays and errors in payment, leaving her in arrears. Guinness are not taking her to court to evict her and her two young sons. Supporters of the ‘Save Beti Campaign’ including Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Architects for Social Housing were campaigning outside Brixton Station collecting signatures for a petition to oppose the eviction of Beti and other tenants threatened by estate demolition.

I had time in Brixton to take a little walk around, particularly going to look at the railway arches where many long-standing local businesses are being evicted, though some are still trading.

More at Stop Unfair Eviction by Guinness.

25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre – Westminster,

Back in Westminster the Justice for Khojaly Campaign were marching, calling for justice 25 years after the Khojaly Massacre in Azerbaijan where on the night of 25-26 February 1992, Armenian forces brutally killed 613 civilians, including 106 women and 83 children.

The call for an official apology from the Armenian govenment with full reparations and those responsible for this war crime to be brought to justice. The massacre was the larges in the war that folloed the secession of the majority Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh region to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which ended in 1994 with an uneasy truce.

More at 25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre.

Dubs Now – let the children in – Downing St

My final event of the day was at Downing Street, where Help4Refugee Children was calling on the Government to honour its promise to let unaccompanied Syrian children into the UK after it reneged on its pledge earlier this month.

*Theresa May’s high heels tread on a child*

When Parliament had passed the Dubs amendment it had been very clear that this should happen and the government’s shameful and heartless decision overturned this, leaving many vulnerable young children forced to continue living in intolerable conditions. Many local councils say that they had made offers to take the children but these have been ignored by government.

Dubs Now – let the children in.