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.
Fracking, Congo & Caste: On Saturday 19th October 2013 I began work at a protest calling on the former boss of BP to resign from the House of Lords because of his vested interest in fracking, then photographed a protest against the atrocities being committed in the battles for mineral wealth in the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda before covering a march bringing a petition to Downing Street against the continuing delays in making caste discrimination illegal in the UK.
Global Frackdown: Lord Browne resign! Mayfair
Campaigners went to the offices of private equity firm Riverstone Holdings to call on its managing director Lord Brown of Madingley, a former boss of BP, to resign his seat in the House of Lords because of his vested interests in fracking.
John Browne joined BP in 1966 and worked his way up the company to become CEO in 1995. Knighted in 1998, he joined the House of Lords as Baron Browne of Madingley. in 2001 while still being BP CEO. In 2007 he resigned from BP when accused of perjury in atempting to stop newspapers publishing details of a former homosexual relationship and of alleged misuse of company funds.
In his time at BP he was responsible for a ruthless programme of cost-cutting that many feel compromised safety and contributed to the 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion and in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
In 2013, Browne was Managing Director and Managing Partner (Europe) of Riverstone Holdings LLC, and more significantly for today’s protest the chairman of Britain’s only shale gas driller Cuadrilla Resources.
The protest outside Riverstone was a part of a day of a ‘Global Frackdown’ with protests against fracking in 26 countries and in other cities in the UK.
Friends of the Earth activists met on Oxford Street and walked to the office in Burlington Gardens, where after a brief speech about Lord Browne’s involvement in fracking people were invited to write messages and put them in a small brown rubbish bin which would be left at the offices for him.
People wrote messages and posed with them calling for an end to fracking at Balombe and elsewhere in the UK as well as showing support for the Elsipogtog First Nation who had a few days earlier been attacked by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with live ammunition and tear gas while protesting against fracking in New Brunswick, Canada.
Fortunately police in London merely came to ask the protesters what they intended to do before saying ‘Fine, no problem’ though they did later ask them to ensure there was a free path along the pavement and remind them and photographers of the danger from the slow moving traffic.
The activists point out that fracking contaminates huge volumes of water with sand and toxic chemicals and also that any fossil fuel production should be avoided as using fossil fuels increases the climate crisis.
Don’t Be Blind to DR Congo Murders – Piccadilly Circus
Continuing battles over the mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda have led to the murder of more than 8 million people and over 500,000 men, women and children have been raped by the various armies funded by various European and African multinational companies.
Gold, diamonds, coltan, tungsten, tin and other ores should make these countries rich, but have led to huge devastation. Coltan, containing both niobium and tantalum is vital for the mobile phones, computers, missiles and other modern technology on which we rely. The fight for it has been the main incentive behind the genocidal wars that have waged in the area.
Despite various protests over the years by Congolese in London there has been little publicity to the atrocities and no action by our government. The ‘Don’t be Blind This Time’ campaigners came to Piccadilly Circus to raise public awareness, some posing in blindfolds and others handing out a thousand free flowers, with the message that that we need to demand justice and an end to the impunity and cover up around this conflict.
The wars continue in 2024 and have recently intensified. China now also being increasing involved as US companies have since 2013 sold their mines to Chinese companies who now own most of the mines in the DRC.
I don’t remember seeing any mention of this protest in the media, and we see few reports of the terrible situation continuing in the area. British editors seldom seem to regard this or conflicts in other areas of Africa such as Sudan as news.
Make Caste Discrimination Illegal Now – Hyde Park to Whitehall
Negative discrimination on the basis of caste, long a traditional part of Indian society, was banned by law there in 1948 and is a part of the 1950 constitution, though it still continues. In the UK The Equality Act 2010 passed under New Labour in 2010 gave our government the power to make caste discrimination illegal but they lost the election before doing so.
The incoming coalition government was reluctant to action, but pressure continued and in 2013 the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 mandated this to be done; instead the government set up a two year consultation, apparently as a result of lobbying by the Alliance of Hindu Organisations, (AHO) a body set up to oppose what they call “the threat posed by this proposed amendment to the Equality Act 2010.”
The consultation appears also to be only with established groups dominated by upper caste interests, and its length entirely unnecessary. It isn’t clear why a simple elimination of a clearly discriminatory practice should be regarded as a threat.
A report on the consultation was finally published in 2018. In it the government rejected the idea of a law against caste discrimination and instead concluded:
Having given careful and detailed consideration to the findings of the consultation, Government believes that the best way to provide the necessary protection against unlawful discrimination because of caste is by relying on emerging case-law as developed by courts and tribunals. In particular, we feel this is the more proportionate approach given the extremely low numbers of cases involved and the clearly controversial nature of introducing “caste”, as a self-standing element, into British domestic law.
They also state that any law would “as divisive as legislating for “class” to become a protected characteristic would be across British society more widely.” I don’t think this comparison has any merit. Not to act seems to me to be accepting a foreign practice, illegal in its country of origin, into British society, and the low number of cases they comment on surely means that case-law will only emerge at a snail’s pace. Our new Labour government should follow the example begun by New Labour in 2010 and make caste discrimination illegal in the UK.
Saffron Revolution & Slave Trade Abolition: On Saturday 6th October 2007 I photographed a protest against the brutal repression of the Saffron Revolution protest in Myanmar (Burma) and a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade,
Global Day of Action for Burma – Westminster
There was considerable support in the UK and UK media for the Burmese people who were taking part in non-violent protests against the military dictatorship there after it decided to remove subsidies on fuel, exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis in the country.
The protests were led by thousands of along with students and political activists and were often referred to as the Saffron Revolution.
The protests had begun in August 2007 and in late September after protests involving many thousands in various cities the government began a huge crackdown using military force to stop the protests and imposing curfews and prohibiting gatherings of more than five people.
Monasteries were raided, thousands of arrests were made and some protesters were killed. Wikipedia gives a great deal of detail, and on 1st October it was reported that around 4,000 monks were being detained at a disused race course, disrobed and shackled.
The official death toll over the period of the protests was 13, but the independent media organisation Democratic Voice of Burma based outside the country produced a list of 138 names of those killed.
The march began at Tate Britain on Millbank, proceeded over Lambeth Bridge and then returned to Westminster over Westminster Bridge. Many of the roughly 10,000 marchers wore red headbands and a small group of monks were allowed to tie strips of cloth onto the gates of Downing Street before the march continued to a rally in Trafalgar Square, where I left them.
In 1787, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp and ten other anti-slavery campaigners founded The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Nine of the twelve founders were Quakers, including the wealthy banker Samuel Hoare Jr which prevented their having much involvement in parliament.
Perhaps because of this the society became the first modern campaigning movement, working to educate the British public about the cruel abuses of the slave trade through publication of books, prints, posters and pamplets, organising lecture tours, including that by former slave and author Olaudah Equiano and by boycotting of goods produced by slaves.
The Quakers had organised petitions against slavery and presented these regularly to Parliament, and in 1787 William Wilberforce, MP for Hull was persuaded to join the movement, presenting the first Bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 which was heavily defeated.
Further Bills followed on an almost annual basis, and finally in 1807 the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed, with a majority of 283 votes to 16 on its second reading in the House of Commons. A similar act was passed by the USA in the same year taking effect at the start of 1808.
Despite this it took another thirty years for slavery in the British Empire (except those parts ruled by the East India Company) to be abolished in 1838. And when this was done the freed slaves received no compensation but massive amounts were paid to the former slave owners, a total of around £20 million, around 40% of the national budget and allowing for inflation around £2, 800 million today. Fact checking by USA Today confirms that the UK Government only just finished paying its debts to the slave owners in 2015.
The Slave Trade Abolition Walk organised by Yaa Asantewaa & Carnival Village was only one of a number of events commemorating the abolition of the slave trade taking place in 2007, but was I think the most colourful. Yaa Asantewaa was named after the famous Queen Mother of Ejisu in the Ashanti Empire who led the Ashanti Kings in the War of the Golden Stool against British colonial rule in 1900 and was exiled to the Seychelles where she died in 1921.
Among the costumes was one winner from Notting Hill, and a rather fine ‘Empire Windrush’ depicting the ship which brought the first large contingent of migrant workers from the Caribbean to England in 1948. They had been recruited to fill the gap in UK workers needed to restore the British economy after the war and came to a country where they met much racist discrimination, which more recently became government policy under the Windrush scandal, still continuing.
As of course is slavery. ‘Modern slavery’ is no less slavery than the slavery that was at the core of the British Empire and which provided the wealth that once made Britain ‘Great’.
Trinity House & High Street. On Monday 21st August 1989 I took a bus to Queen’s Gardens and then walked down Prince’s Dock Street and on to the High Street at the heart of the Old Town.
Hull Trinity House, Princes Dock Street, Hull, 1989 89-8n-56
This massive archway on Princes Dock Street led through to Trinity House Navigation School and other buildings of Hull’s Trinity House. The date 1842 above the entrance is for this building, erected a few years after Princes Dock was opened as Junction Dock in 1829 – and before it was renamed in honour of Prince Albert for the royal visit of 1854. Junction Dock joined the Old Dock (Queen’s Dock) to Humber Dock creating a string of docks joining the River Hull to the River Humber and making an island of the Old Town.
Hull’s Trinity House is of course far older, established in 1369 as the Guild of the Holy Trinity by Alderman Robert Marshall (I’m sure no relation of mine) and around 50 others as a sort of ‘Friendly Society’ for parishioners of Holy Trinity Church. It was only in 1457 when Edward IV granted it the right to charge duties for loading and unloading goods at Hull to fund an almshouse for seafarers that it got a maritime connection, and it acquired its premises from Carmelite friars, though the current Trinity House Lane building is a 1753 rebuild.
Later monarchs gave it the right to settle nautical disputes, to charge import taxes to maintain the harbour, set buoys and licence pilots for the Humber. In 1785 it set up a school which taught boys in reading, writing, accountancy, religion and navigation for three years before they began their apprenticeship. The school is now an academy and has moved to another site, and the archway now leads to a car park and events area which has been named Zebedee’s Yard after Zebedee Scaping (1803-1909) who served as Headmaster for 55 years.
Doorway, Old Town, Hull, 1989 89-8n-41
You can still see this doorway at 39, High Street, though it is currently not numbered, just to the north of the entrance to Bishop Lane Staith. The area below the semicircular window at top right has been opened up as a larger window, though the sill in my picture suggests it was earlier bricked up.
Transport Museum, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-44
The Transport Museum was set up by Thomas Sheppard and opened in 1925 as the Museum of Commerce and Transport and housed in the former Corn Exchange on High Street and had a very extensive display showing the evolution of transport and Hull’s principle industries, along with ten veteran cars bought from a private museum and horse-drawn vehicles from East Yorkshire.
Like much of Hull it suffered extensive wartime damage – Hull was the most severely damaged British city or town during the Second World War, with 95 percent of houses damaged and almost half of the population made homeless. But news reports except on rare occasions were only allowed to refer to it as a “north-east coast town” and even now many histories of the war ignore the incredible damage to the city.
The museum reopened in 1957 as the Transport and Archaeology Museum. But in 2002 the transport collection moved to the new Streetlife Museum and this building became the Hull and East Riding Museum
Wilberforce House, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-46
Thomas Sheppard became the first curator of the Hull Municipal Museum in 1901 and achieved a massive increase in its visitor numbers by refurbishing the display and making entry free. Sheppard went on to set up half a dozen other Hull museums, the first of which in 1906 was Wilberforce House, opened as a museum in 1906, dedicated to the slave trade and the work of abolitionists and a memorial to Hull’s best-known citizen, William Wilberforce MP.
Wilberforce House, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-31
William Wilberforce was born in this house on the High Street in 1759. The house is one of the oldest in Hull, built in 1660 but extended by the Wilberforce family in the 1730s and 1760s. In 1784 part of the premises became the the Wilberforce, Smith & Co Bank.
Wilberforce sold the house in 1830. After Hull Council brought in a rate to fund the preservation of historic buildings in 1891, a campaign began for the council to buy the house which they did in 1903, opening it as a public museum in 1906.
Wilberforce House, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-32
The display that many in Hull had grown up with was updated in 1983 to the dismay of many residents who felt it lacked the detail and impact of the original and that it represented a move towards entertainment rather than enlightenment.
The displays were again altered in 2006-7 with improvements to access and reopened in 2007, which was the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain.
House, 23-4, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-33
These houses dating from around 1760 and restored after wartime bombing according to the Grade II listing text were incorporated into the Wilberforce museum in 1956.
House, 23-4, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-34
Here you see the view south down High Street from the houses, past Wilberforce House
From High Street I walked on to Drypool Bridge where the next post in this series will begin.
Saturday 8th December 2018 was another busy day for me in London.
Protest Slavery in Libya – Saturday 8th December 2018
Campaigners held a short rally outside Europe House in Smith Square protesting over the lack of action by the EU over African migrants and refugees being sold or held against their will in Libya by terrorists and jihadists which the EU funds.
They then marched to protest at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, saying the UK had failed to do anything to help because the victims were African, then stopped briefly at Downing St on their way to the Libyan Embassy.
Dharma meditation for climate – Trafalgar Square, Saturday 8th December 2018
In Trafalgar Square members of the Dharma Action Network were meditating and handing out flyers calling for people and governments to take effective actions to combat climate change. They urged people to 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 or take action with Extinction Rebellion.
British Museum Stolen Goods Tour – British Museum, Saturday 8th December 2018
News in the past weeks that the Horniman Museum is returning the Benin Bronzes and other items in its collection to Nigeria is a sign of the changing attitudes to museums holding on to looted objects. The museum handed over total of 72 bronzes and other objects to Nigeria. But the British Museum is full of thousands of questionably acquired objects, including over 900 from Benin.
BP or Not BP, a group opposed to the polluting oil company ‘greenwashing’ its dirty fossil fuel business by sponsoring artistic activities including major exhibitions in the British Museum had organised a tour of some of the more important stolen cultural artifacts in their collection, beginning with the Gweagal shield, stolen by Captain Cook when his men had first landed in Australia.
When they landed they were greeted by the indigenous inhabitants carrying spears and wooden shields; the sailors opened fire with muskets, with one musket ball going through the shield and wounding Cooman. The people dropped their weapons and fled, carrying the wounded man.
This shield is now on display in the British Museum and spears and other items are also in their collection, with some in other museums. This was the second time I had photographed Indigenous Australian campaigner Rodney Kelly, a 6th generation direct descendant of Cooman, standing in front of the glass-fronted cabinet containing the shield and talking about its history. His talks with the museum authorities have so far failed to get the property returned.
There was a packed audience listening to Kelly playing his didgeridoo and then telling the story of the shield and telling of the failure of the British Museum authorities to take seriously the oral tradition of his people as it could not be confirmed by written records. The Museum has gone to desperate lengths, including getting their own experts to cast doubt on the stories which the museum had previously featured about these objects.
From there we moved on, guided by BP or not BP campaigners some dressed as ‘burglars’ in striped black and white tops and carrying a sack for swag.
Another in a smart suit with a BP logo explained why BP gave the museum a relatively small amount in sponsorship which gave them huge rewards in making them seem a responsible company despite their reprehensible activities in countries around the world, despoiling resources, polluting the environment and severely aggravating global warming by encouraging fossil fuel use.
Outside the entrance to the BP-sponsored Assyrian show an Iraqi woman talked about BP’s role in her country and the looting which followed the invasion of Iraq including some of cultural artifacts which formed a part of this show.
By a large stone figure from Easter Island a speaker from Pacific Island arts group the Interisland Collective talked about the treatment by museums of Maori and Pacific Islands cultural items and read a statement from the Rapa Nui Pioneers on Easter Island calling for the return of this stolen Moai Head.
The final location for the tour was in the large room containing the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles, where BP or not NBP’s Danny Chivers revealed his partly Greek ancestry and talked about his visit to the Parthenon and the museum there which has been built to exhibit its missing sculptures.
It seems inevitable that eventually the British Museum and other museums will have to return these objects, and to replace at least some of them by facsimiles would enable the museum to continue its educational function while restoring vital cultural objects to their proper homes.
London flooded with Santas – Covent Garden, Saturday 8th December 2018
Christmas was coming and so was Santacon, a huge annual charity event and excuse for a highly alcohol-fuelled stagger and dance through the streets of central London dresses as santas, elves and reindeer.
The event had started at various locations and large crowds were now converging on 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.
I had fun dancing along with some of them and taking photographs close to the British Museum and then going through Covent Garden, but by the time I reached Trafalgar Square decided I’d photographed my fill of santas and took a bus to Waterloo.
Reparations for Slavery, Vedanta & Blood Diamonds – the three protests I photographed in London on Friday 1st August 2014 were all related to world trade – the Atlantic Slave Trade and current devastation caused by mining industry and the diamond trade that funds Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
Rastafari demand reparations for slave trade – Windrush Square, Brixton
On August 1st 1834 the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act came into force, ending slavery across the British Empire. But although the slave owners received compensation of £20 millions the freed slaves got none. They were not even freed, but converted to ‘apprentices’ who were expected to continue to work without wages for up to six years until 1838 and were unable to own land.
The payment to the former slave owners was huge – around 40% of the National Budget of the UK, and the Treasury who took out a loan to enable them to pay it. British tax payers – including many descendants of former slaves – were still paying off the debt until 2015, as a rapidly deleted tweet from the UK Treasury confirmed in February 2018.
The Act abolishing slavery was designed largely to ensure that Britain’s hugely profitable sugar industry based on slavery continued after emancipation, and Britain also continued to import cotton grown by slavery in the southern states of the USA as well as sugar from slave plantations in Brazil and Cuba.
August 1st became widely celebrated as ‘Emancipation Day’ and it was the date chosen by Marcus Garvey to found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914, and for a meeting six years later in Madison Square Gardens in New York attended by 25,000 of UNIA’s claimed membership of 4 million.
Demands for reparations to be made to the descendants of slaves have so far been met by only token measures, such as the renaming of streets and buildings and official apologies, with some legislation requiring companies to provide information about their involvement in the trade and insurance of slaves.
But since the 1990s there has been a growing movement demanding financial reparations both for slavery, particularly following the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations convened by the Organisation of African Unity and the Nigerian government and held in Abuja, Nigeria in 1993.
In the UK the movement was led by Bernie Grant, MP for Tottenham until his death in 2000. Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006 expressed “deep sorrow” for Britain’s role in the slave trade, saying it been “profoundly shameful”, though as Wikipedia notes this was criticised as lacking any measures of reparation. A further public apology for London’s role in the slave trade came from then London Mayor Ken Livingstone during the commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the passage of the 1807 Slave Trade Act.
A case was for compensation was brought against Lloyds of London in 2004, but failed. The same year a Jamaican Rastafari call for European countries, particularly the UK to support the resettlement of 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa in a scheme costed at £72.5 billion was rejected. Other claims have been lodged by in 2007 by Guyana, in 2011 by Antigua and Barbuda and Barbados.
On 1st August 2014, the 100th anniversary of Garvey’s setting up of the UNIA. a large group of mainly people of African and Afro-Caribbean descent gathered in Windrush Square in Brixton for several hours of speeches, celebration, drumming and dancing before they were to march to Parliament to make their demand for reparations. The march has become an annual event in London, but I had to leave shortly before it began.
Vedanta told ‘end your killing’ – Lincoln Inn’s Fields
I joined the protest outside the building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields where the FTSE 250 British-Indian mining company Vedanta Resources was holding its AGM. Here and at other protests in Zambia and Odisha and Delhi in India.
Vedanta is a huge company which protesters say is “guilty of thousands of deaths, environmental devastation, anti union action, corruption and disdain for life on earth. They have become one of the most hated and contentious companies in the world.“
Their activities, particularly their attempt to destroy the sacred Nyamgiri mountain in India for its aluminium ore, have led to protests around the world, and an Indian Supreme Court decision that, at least for the moment have halted the mining there.
Another setback for Vedanta was the research by activist group Foil Vedanta into their subsidiary Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia, accused of poisoning thousands and causing ongoing birth deformities by major pollution spills in 2006 and 2010. The research showed the company which was claiming it was making a loss and so unable to pay its fines and tax bill was actually making around $500 million a year.
Labour MP John McDonnell was among those who had become a shareholder to attend the AGM
Vedanta’s problems being made public resulted in a dramatic crash in its share price and the previous December it dropped out of the FTSE100. Billionaire owner Anil Agarwal responded by buying large numbers of the shares and was now said to own over two thirds of the company. But there were other shareholders going into the AGM, including a few activists who had bought a share to entitle them to attend and ask questions.
The activities of these activists, both inside and outside the AGM every year, were eventually were an important part in the decision four years later by Agarwal to make Vedanta a private company.
Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds – De Beers, Piccadilly
Finally I made my way to Piccadilly where pro-Palestinian campaigners were protesting in front of De Beers jewellery shop, calling on people to boycott diamonds cut and polished in Israel.
Although there are no diamonds mined in Israel, according to Wikipedia, almost a quarter of Israel’s total exports come from the sales of diamonds cut and polished in the country and they account for almost one eighth of the total world production.
Israel claims that all these diamonds are covered by the ‘Kimberley Process’ which aims to prevent diamonds mined in conflict areas and sold to finance war and insurgency coming to the market. But campaigners say that this defines blood diamonds too narrowly, enabling Israel’s diamond-cutting industry to avoid attention, and the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, among others, has called for diamonds processed in Israel to be considered conflict diamonds.”
The largest protest I attended on Saturday 27th January 2018, four years ago was against the Turkish attacks on Afrin in Northern Syria, then a part of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) or Rojava, a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria.
Turkey, a NATO member with probably the largest and best-equipped army and air force in the Middle East was taking on the small and poorly equipped Kurdish forces, and despite a valiant fight the final result was predictable, particularly once Russia, the other major player in the Syrian conflict had given them their blessing.
Turkey has continued its attacks on Northern Syria, but mainly through air strikes, but these are seldom reported in UK media although covered by specialist sources such as ‘Foreign Policy‘, part of the Slate Group.
The US gave some support in other battles fought by the Kurds against Islamic State forces, but this was always limited and mostly ended with the withdrawal of US troops which was announced by Trump in December 2018, and again in October 2019, although around 900 were still there in October 2021. Turkey has been a major source of finance for ISIS, allowing them to profit from smuggling of oil, and backing some groups which were fighting with them.
In recent days there have been short mentions on the BBC about the continuing battles being fought by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed, Kurdish-led militia against Islamic State in Northern Syria. The prisons and refugee camps where former ISIS fighters and supporters are held are largely in Kurdish territory and ISIS are still active and fighting to release people from detention to increase their strength.
As I wrote in 2018, “the constitution of Rojava treats all ethnic groups – which include Arabs, Assyrians, Syrian Turkmen and Yazidis as well as Kurds – equally and liberates women, treating them as equal to men. The constitution is based on a democratic socialism and its autonomy is seen by many as a model for a federal Syria.”
Unfortunately there seems little chance that such a model with be adopted more widely. Turkey continues to attack the Kurdish areas and does so using weapons sold to them as a NATO member by the UK, France and UAE. Turkey claims that the Kurdish forces fighting ISIS are an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, founded in 1978 which began its armed struggle for self-rule for Kurds in Turkey 1984.
PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan has been held in a Turkish jail since 1999 and the organisation has been proscribed in many countries allied to Turkey, including the USA and UK. Several PKK flags were seized by police at the start of the march.
This was not the only protest in London on that day, and I also photographed two other events. African Lives Matter and the International Campaign to Boycott UAE were outside the UAE Embassy in London protesting against the funding by the the United Arab Emirates United of armed Groups in Libya which imprison, torture and kill African migrants and sell them as slaves. On Regent St, the long-running protest outside the Canada Goose flagship store in Regent St was continuing asking shoppers to boycott the store because of the horrific cruelty involved in trapping dogs for fur and raising birds for down used in the company’s clothing.
Stratford, Woolwich & Chelsea Perhaps the only thing these three parts of London really have in common was that I photographed in them in the last few days of July 1988. The first two were on a family visit to the railway museum then at North Woolwich station, largely for the benefit on my two sons, then aged 12 and 9, and both with a real interest in railways and had decide on this as a birthday outing for the elder. I think we probably had a few of their friends with us, some in the second picture below.
North London Line, Stratford Station, Stratford, Newham, 1988 88-7m-35
And once we were in North Woolwich it would have been a shame to miss the free ride across the River Thames on the Woolwich Ferry. One of their favourite books when younger had been Alfie and the Ferryboat, by Charles Keeping, published in 1968 Keeping, born close the the Thames in Lambeth tells the story of a small boy from Woolwich crossing the river on the ferryboat to ‘the other side of the world’ in search of his old sailor friend Bunty and his dog.
Woolwich Ferry, North Woolwich, Newham, 1988 88-7m-24
Keeping was a superb and innovative illustrator and the book is perhaps his best work. Copies of it are now hard to find and rather expensive.
Woolwich, Greenwich, 1988 88-7m-12
The ferry that Alfie took was one of the same that we took, which were introduced in 1963 – the John Burns, Ernest Bevin and James Newman, double-ended ships with powerful diesel engines which were replaced in 2018 after 55 years on the run.
I only made twelve black and white pictures on this trip, along with three in colour, probably too occupied with herding 12 year-old boys than photography, and getting them all back to a birthday tea on the other side of London.
Probably I had looked at pictures I had taken earlier in the year and decided there were some I would like to retake, or perhaps found some things I had missed. I spent a lot of time on researching the areas I was photographing, which was much harder before the days of the world wide web – and many of the books I had to rely on were years out of date, often pre-war or even older.
Sir Hans Sloane, memorial, Chelsea Old Church, Cheyne Walk , Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-62
I think I may not have got a picture – or not one I liked of this memorial to Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), an Anglo-Irish doctor and collector who travelled widely to France and the Caribbean, where he supposedly invented drinking chocolate as well as giving a harrowing account of the sadistic punishments inflicted on slaves and married the wealthy widow of one of the larger slave owners.
Her money from slavery and his income from a doctor and investments in property and slave trading companies enabled him to build up a collection of 71,000 items which he left to the British Nation. These provided the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum.
But after taking around thirty pictures the next (not on-line) shows a view from the back of two women on a station escalator, with the next frame on the Commercial Road in Limehouse. I think I will have taken the Underground from Sloane Square to Tower Hill and walked to Tower Gateway for the DLR which had opened in 1987 to Limehouse. But pictures from my longer walk from there will be in a further post.
Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the rest of the album.
Three years ago December 9th was a Saturday and people were out on the streets in at least three protests which I photographed.
My day’s work began at the Ministry of Defence, where peace campaigners celebrated the award of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, with a die-in on the steps.
ICAN was awarded the prize for its role in pushing for a United Nations global nuclear ban treaty which was approved by 122 nations at the UN General Assembly in 2017. In October 2020 Honduras became the 50th country to ratify it and will come into force on 22 January 2021. The UK government refused to take and part in the negotiations and has refused to sign the treaty and the award of the Nobel prize hardly got a mention in the UK media.
None of the main nuclear powers has signed the accord, and the protesters including members of ICAN UK, CND, Medact and WILPF, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, urged the UK to sign up and scrap Trident replacement. Bruce Kent made a presentation of a large cardboard Nobel Prize to ICAN UK, and handed out small ‘Nobels’ (gold-covered chocolate coins) to all who come up for them. After a few speeches there was then a die-in on the steps of the ministry.
A large crowd had gathered in Belgrave Square for the National Anti-Slavery March, organised by African Lives Matter after the news that African migants detained in Libya were being sold as slaves by Arab slave traders.
They marched to Knightsbridge and then along to Hyde Park Corner, going around the roundabout and then back along the other carriageway of Knightsbridge to the Libyan Embassy where there was a lengthy rally, including an African priest leading a libation ceremony in memory of the many Africans who have fought for their people against enslavement and colonialism; people in the crowd shouted out names for him to honour with pouring water onto the ground.
As well as demanding the closure of the Libyan detention centres, action by African governments to rescue people detained in the camps and condemnation of the slave trade and murders of migrants by all African leaders and the UN, calling on Libya to make and enforce laws that prevent these crimes against humanity, many also demanded reparations for the historic slave trade and the continuing despoliation of African resources by imperialist nations including the UK.
I had to leave before the rally ended as I was beginning to shake and feel unwell, weak and dizzy, the signs of an diabetic hypo, and I walked a short distance away to sit down eating one of the snacks I carry to give a rapid boost of my blood sugar. Soon I was feeling well enough to eat my lunch and take the tube to my final event of the day, a vigil outside Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton against the heartless policies of Lambeth Council.
Lambeth are one of the London Labour councils who are pursuing a policy of social cleansing under the guise of regeneration, realising the asset value of council estates by demolition and rebuilding with only small provision of social housing, resulting in many local council tenants and leaseholders being forced to move out of the area.
Lambeth have also made drastic cuts, shutting down community centres, cutting services for the disabled, those with mental health problems, young people and social services generally; although the Council claim these actions have been forced on them by Tory government cuts, the protester point out that Councillors’ expenses and allowances keep on growing and they have spent over £150m on a new Town Hall.
The vigil included a tribute to Cressingham Gardens resident and leading campaigner Ann Plant who died of cancer in December 2016, spending her final months continuing the fight to prevent the demolition of her home and her community by the council.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Time for a little more colour on >Re:PHOTO, and looking back to warmer and sunnier weather at the start of August last year.
The Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March has been an annual event in London http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2014/08/aug.htm#rastafari since 2014, which was the centenary of the foundation by Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica. Garvey had spent the previous two years working as a journalist and studying in London and founded the UNIA as as a means of uniting all of Africa and its diaspora into “one grand racial hierarchy.” The organisers of that first march intended it as a one-off event, but others took over insisting it should be annual. This was the first time I’d managed to cover it since 2014.
Garvey chose the date as 1 August 1834 was Emancipation day, following the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, when slavery was ended in the British Empire. Claims for reparations for descendants of those enslaved by the Atlantic Slave Trade came to the fore in 1999 when the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for a payment of $777 trillion to Africa within 5 years, and in 2004 a case was brought and lost against Lloyds of London and Jamaican Rastafarians made a claim for £72,5bn for Europe to resettle of 500,000 Jamaicans back in Africa which was rejected. Other claims have been lodged on behalf of Guyana, Antigua, Barbuda and Barbados.
I felt a little apprehensive at photographing this event, and just a few people have shown a little hostility towards me, though many more have been welcoming. Anyone who has grown up white in the UK has obviously benefited from the historic proceeds of slavery (as so do those of any other origin living here) but I’m fairly sure that my ancestors were not among those carrying out and profiting from the trade. They will have been being exploited by that same class that was enslaving Africans; some thrown off their lands by the Highland Clearances to make way for sheep. Others will I think have been at the heart of the emancipation movement. They will have received nothing of the huge financial compensation that was paid to the enslaving class, which created a debt which members of the British public were paying off through taxation until 2015.
This year the march was divided into 9 blocs, although in practice there was a great deal of overlap. One of these was the Ubuntu – Non-Afrikan Allies Bloc which included Extinction Rebellion XR Connecting Communities.
While I think there is a firm moral case for reparations, I think the demands are unlikely to impress European or American governments, certainly not on the scale being claimed. And I wonder if the demand actually deflects from a more important need for decolonisation of Africa and the Caribbean as well as other areas of the majority world, reclaiming national assets from the various multi-nationals that are now continuing the exploitation of the continent.
I left the march as it made its way through Brixton towards Parliament where there was to be another protest rally in Parliament Square.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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