On 8th April 1971 the first World Roma Congress met at Chelsfield in southeast London. It called for Roma self-determination and international unity and the delegates unanimously rejected all of the names given to them by outsiders, including Gypsy (or Gipsy), still often used in English, which the community viewed as insulting. Both Rom and Romany have also been in use in English since the 19th Century, but throughout Europe the term Roma is now officially used, though in German-speaking countries the name Sinti is common.
Waiting for the march outside St James Piccadilly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people Linguistic and more recent DNA studies show that Roma originated in northwestern India around 1500 years ago and later migrated to Europe, reaching the Balkans around 900 years ago. They have long been subject to persecution and in some central and east European countries were slaves until the 1840s and 50s.
In 1930s Germany Roma in Germany were stripped of their citizenship and many were interned and there was a programme of compulsory sterilisation. In 1942 the Porajmos or Romani Holocaust began, with Roma being sent to extermination camps. Estimates vary wildly of the number killed in Germany and German occupied territories, between 200,000 and 1,500,000.
Roma as well as Jews were victims in the Holocaust
Roma still suffer considerable persecution in some countries including Romania, and the end of communist control has led to an increase in prejudice and persecution there and elsewhere. And across all countries including our own there is still widespread denial about the persecution they still face.
8th April, the day of the first congress, was adopted in 1990 as the International Roma Day of Action. Perhaps because of that denial it has not received much attention.
Roma have generally taken on the predominant religions of the countries they have settled in and the London action began with a church service at St Jame’s Piccadilly before marching through central London. I photographed them outside the church and on the march, ending my pictures as they went up Charing Cross Road.
In my account on My London Diary in 2005 I used the term gypsy as this was still almost always used in the media and Roma was not widely understood. Commonly too, Roma are called ‘travellers’ although many Roma are settled and most ‘travellers‘ are not Roma. Here’s what I wrote in 2005:
After a church service commemorating the 500,000 Roma murdered in the Nazi holocaust, Roma from several countries marched across London against the ethnic-cleansing of 30,000 gypsies from their own land and in protest over threatened evictions at Dale Farm, Essex, Smithy Fen, Cambridgeshire, and elsewhere.
After the march, gypsy Richard Sheridan was to announce that he was standing against sitting Tory MP John Baron at Billericay in the general election on 5th May 2005 in order to make the travellers’ voice heard. [He did not actually stand, but did attract some media attention to the cause.]
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: Bicentenary. Events on Sunday 25th March 2007 commemorated the 200th anniversary of the passing of an Act of Parliament to end the slave trade. The previous day I had photographed a Church of England walk of witness to mark the abolition, but on Sunday I covered events in Brixton and Clapham. Sunday was the actual anniversary of the Act which marked a change from Britain being a major partner in the slave trade to opposing slavery worldwide, though it was not until 26 years later in 1833 that slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. The text below is basically what I wrote in 2007 accompanied by a few of the pictures I made.
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: Bicentenary
There is no escaping that all of us who live in Britain – whatever the colour of our skin or our personal history – are now benefiting from the proceeds of the trafficking of African people and their forced labour in our colonies over around four centuries. Fortunes made from slavery helped to build many of the institutions from which we still benefit, including our many of our great galleries and museums. Slavery founded many of our banks and breweries and other great industries, and made Britain a wealthy nation.
But it is also true that the same wealthy elite that treated Africans so callously exploited the poor in Britain. My ancestors were thrown off their land and probably some were imprisoned for their religious beliefs by these same elites. Almost certainly my forebears were a part of the movement that campaigned against slavery and called for an end to the trade in human beings, although equally certainly they had little or no political power at the time, and probably no vote.
Of course that in no way diminishes the horror of the trade, but it does colour my personal attitude to the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the abolition. The abolition movement was an important turning point in the history of our empire and the world leading to the act banning the trade in people and later in 1833 the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire. The abolition movement changed Britain from being a country that enslaved millions in its own colonies to one that opposed slavery worldwide.
Slavery of course still exists, even in Britain, and we still need to oppose it in all its forms. Much of present day slavery here only flourishes because of our current immigration policies and their implementation, which makes many immigrants illegal, and impoverishes them, denying them human rights or making them afraid to claim them.
Clapham Commemoration Walk
One of the three groups at the probable site of the African Academy
For the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Slave Trade Act on 25 March 2007, I went to Clapham, the spiritual and physical home of the abolition movement, where the London Borough of Lambeth had organised a commemoration walk. This started at Holy Trinity Church, where the Clapham Sect at the centre of the movement, including William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, John and Henry Thornton, John Venn, Zachary Macaulay and others had worshipped.
Holy Trinity, Clapham, the home of the Clapham Sect
Steve Martin, our guide for the walk emphasised that Clapham was also home to many who had made fortunes from the trade and opposed the abolition, with both sides worshipping in the same parish church.
Nearby, at 5 The Pavement, now occupied by an ‘Evans’ shop, an LCC plaque marks the home of Zachary Macaulay, and also of his more famous son, Lord Macaulay.
Zachary was a former plantation manager in Jamaica and governor of Sierra Leone who had become an abolitionist. As a part of a project to return freed Africans to Sierra Leone he brought 21 boys and 4 girls back from Sierra Leone and set up an African Academy in Clapham to educate them to return to run their country. The walk took us to two possible sites for this school, as well as to a nearby church cemetery, as unfortunately many of them died of measles and were buried there.
Measles killed most of the African students who were buried in this churchyard.
Down Matrimony Place we came to Wandsworth Road, and turned along it to a former brewery and the pub next door. One local family that had made considerable fortune from plantations worked by slave labour were the Barclays (later they became abolitionists and freed their slaves much to the anger of other plantation owners.) When they sold their plantations, the money went into businesses including breweries and banks.
At the Hibbert Almshouses
One of those most prominent in the campaign against abolition was George Hibbert, chairman of the West India Dock Company which profited hugely as the slaving ships brought back the produce of the plantations to London. The Hibbert Almshouses on Wandsworth Road were built to house elderly poor residents of Clapham by his two daughters.
At the end of the walk there was some argument about whether the Tate fortunes depended on slavery
As we turned back up towards Clapham Common, Steve informed us that the street along which we walked had been built on what were once the back gardens of the houses of these wealthy traders in human beings who lived in the extensive houses facing the common on Clapham Northside. The tour ended outside no 29, once the home of George Hibbert (Robert Barclay lived next door at 31), a couple of hundred yards from Holy Trinity, where our walk had started.
Across the middle of the Clapham Common is of course a dividing line – between the London boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth. It would have prolonged our walk to take in the plaque to Wilberforce in Broomwood Road (Broomfield where he lived was demolished in 1904) or to Battersea Rise, the ‘home’ of the Clapham Sect where he lived earlier with his friend and fellow MP Henry Thornton (the house there was demolished in 1908 despite a campaign and public appeal to save it because of its connection with the abolition movement.)
I could find no mention of the bicentenary on the London Borough of Wandsworth site, although the mayor was to attend a church service at All Saints organised by the local churches on 31 march. One of the bas-reliefs on Wandsworth Town Hall shows Wilberforce with the act in his hand, next to Macaulay. Rather to my surprise I found Wandsworth Museum, instead of celebrating its contribution to abolition, was currently showing a Museum Of London travelling show, ‘Queer Is Here’ which in their words included “Peter Marshall’s dynamic black and white photographs capturing a decade of the annual London gay pride event” – which you can still see on line on My London Diary.
Brixton Commemoration – Windrush Square
Earlier in the day I’d been at another Lambeth event, in the centre of Brixton, outside the Tate Library.
At the end of the Clapham walk there had been a fairly intense argument about whether Tate’s sugar fortunes had come, at least in part, from slave labour on Brazilian plantations after the abolition in the British Empire.
Sozo House of Praise Gospel Choir performing.
Organised by the Brixton Society, the commemoration of the abolition took place next to Windrush Square and the site of the proposed Black Cultural History Centre in Raleigh Hall. It was opened by an African drummer and singers from the Sozo House Of Praise gospel choir. There were then some speeches mainly concerned with commemorating the abolition of slavery from the Mayor of Lambeth, Cllr Liz Atkinson, local MP Keith Hill, and Superintendent Paul Wilson for Metropolitan Police in Lambeth.
A woman with a remarkable record as a foster parent speaking
Those present were then invited to plant bulbs in the grass as a permanent memorial, after which Rev Stephen Sichel of St Matthew’s with St Judes across the road led prayers.
Dr Floella Benjamin, OBEplants a bulb
Norma Williamson, the treasurer of the Brixton Society introduced a the next section celebrating the contribution of those of Black Afro-Caribbean origin to life and culture in Britain now. Floella Benjamin, OBE gave a very powerful address particularly stressing the need for black kids to get educated to empower themselves. It was a hard act for Derrick Anderson, CBE, Lambeth’s chief executive, and Devon Thomas, the chair of Brixton Business Forum to follow.
Linda Bellos, former leader of the Labour group on Lambeth council, but rejected by the party as a candidate for a local parliamentary seat gave another powerful performance, putting the issue strongly into its political perspective. Power isn’t just about race, it’s also about class, and gender. The event closed with more fine gospel singing from the Sozo House Of Praise choir.
Slavery, Cruelty to Animals & Afrin: On Saturday 27th January 2018 I photographed a protest against the imprisonment, torture and slavery of African migrants in Libya and their slavery in Dubai, the continuing protests against animal cruelty outside the Canada Goose store and a march by Kurds calling for an end to attacks by Turkish forces on Afrin. That protest took the same route as last Saturday’s protest against the attacks on Kurds in Syria, now by the Syrian army.
End UAE Support For Slavery In Libya
UAE Embassy
The protest outside the UAE Embassy had not been well advertised and was rather smaller than the organisers had hoped or the police had planned for. The United Arab Emireates was targeted as they fund armed groups in Libya which imprison, torture and kill African migrants and sell them as slaves.
One placard reminded us of the anti-slavery campaign over 200 years ago with the 1787 slogan ‘AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER’
African migrants are also trafficked to be slaves in Dubai, the largest city and capital of the UAE and the protest called for an end to this and for help to be given for slavery victims in Dubai to return to their families in Africa.
Protesters outside the Canada Goose store with a toy dog and a banner with bloody fur
Protesters continue their regular protests outside the Canada Goose flagship store in Regent St calling on shoppers to boycott the store because of the horrific cruelty involved in trapping dogs for fur and raising birds for the down used in the company’s clothing.
Their activities have been restricted by injunctions obtained by the store but they were still protesting every Saturday and on at least one other day each week.
They say ‘Canada Goose Murders Dogs’ . The clothing they sell uses fur from wild dogs caught in traps; caught in the traps and wounded by them, they slowly bleed to death and may be attacked and eaten by predators while still alive before the trappers return. Some of those caught gnaw through their own legs to escape and die slowly elsewhere.
Several thousand, mainly Kurds took part in the march calling for an end to the attacks by Turkish forces on the Afrin Canton of Northern Syria, now a part of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) or Rojava, a de-facto autonomous region in northern Syria since the 2011 revolution.
Many see Rojava and its democratic constitution which treats all ethnic groups – which include Arabs, Assyrians, Syrian Turkmen and Yazidis as well as Kurds – equally and liberates women as a model for the future of this and other multi-ethnic areas.
Turkey has long been engaged in a fight against the Kurds inside Turkey and was now attempting to eliminate those in areas close to its border with Syria. The PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish nationalist organisation regarded by Turkey and its allies as a terrorist organisation, has been in armed conflict with Turkey since 1984, demanding equal rights and Kurdish autonomy in Turkey.
It was Kurdish forces, with the help of US air support that defeated ISIS in Syria, while Turkey was aiding ISIS in smuggling out the oil which financed their activities. But Turkey has the largest military forces in the area including weapons sold to them by the UK, France and USA as a member of NATO.
The PKK is a proscribed group in the UK and the police apparently seized a few PKK flags at the start of the march. It’s leader Abdullah Ocalan has been held largely in isolation in a Turkish jail since 1999, though in 2025 he called for the PKK to dissolve itself and announced an end to their insurgency against Turkey.
End Slave Auctions in Libya: On Sunday 26th November 2017 a large protest outside the Libyan Embassy in Knightsbridge called for an end to the slave auctions of Black African migrants in Libya.
The protest came following a number of reports earlier in the year showing migrants being sold as slaves in Libya. The situation had worsened since the EU clampdown on migration across the Mediterranean, working with the Libyan authorities to intercept and tow migrant boats back to be detained in Libya.
This clampdown had resulted in around 20,000 people, mainly from the Afgrican continent being detained in inhumane conditions in Libya, where many were being held with ransom demands being made from their families and others sold into slavery.
As Wikipedia notes, Libya has a history of slavery dating back into antiquity with slaves from across the Sahara being sold there along with Berbers (the pre-Arab residents of the area), Jews and Europeans captured in Barbary slaving raids around the Mediterranean and as far north as Ireland, Scotland and even Iceland.
The slave trade was made illegal by a decree in Tripoli in 1857, but this had little practical effect for many years and it was only under Italian rule in the 1930s that it was largely brought to an end.
As I wrote in 2017, “Many at the protest saw the situation in Libya as part of a continuing neo-colonialist attempt to control Africa’s natural resources which results in the instability and mass migration from African countries, and that the current Libyan regime are western puppets installed though Western intervention to replace the genuinely nationalist Gaddafi regime and are engaged in a process of de-Africanisation and elimination of Black Libyans, of which slave auctions are a logical extension.”
Glenroy Watson of the Global African Congress and RMT
As Wikipedia points out, since Gaddafi was brought down in 2011, Libya “has been plagued by disorder, leaving migrants with little cash and no papers vulnerable.“
Slaves in the past were kidnapped by raiders, but now they pay people smugglers to be brought to Libya, lured by the promise of being taken to a new life in Europe, but once in Libya are detained by the smugglers and local militias and subjected to torture, forced labour and sexual violence.
If ransoms are not paid they may be left to starve to death in detention. State security forces are also responsible for similar crimes against humanity for those returned from boats setting out across the Mediterranean, and the EU contributes by giving support to these forces.
Although the fate of migrants has seldom featured in our news media since 2017, little if anything has changed, as the 2025 report, The Scandal of a Slave Market in Libya from the Human Rights Research Center makes clear.
Sukant Chandan, a coordinator at the Malcolm X Movement, speaks from his experience in working with the opposition forces in Libya, and says how those currently in power in Libya have long carried out a policy of getting rid of Black Africans. He calls them a puppet government put into power to protest Western interests in Libya’s mineral wealth.
The area outside the Libyan Embassy soon became very crowded, with people lining the pavement for some distance in each direction and some spilling out onto the busy road. When I had to leave after approaching an hour and a half there were people still arriving and it took me several minutes to make my way through the crowd. I took a final picture of a woman holding a large poster on the edge of the protest on my way to Hyde Park Corner.
On My London Diary you can see more pictures, including some of the other speakers at the event.
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act: Bicentenary: On Sunday 25th March 2007 I was in Brixton and Clapham where commemorations were taking place on the 200th anniversary of the bill to abolish the Atlantic slave trade being given royal assent by King George III on 25 March 1807. It was a great step forward but despite this bill, slavery “remained legal in most of the British Empire until the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.”
The previous day I had photographed the “Anglican Church’s walk of witness to mark the abolition. The Church Of England has much to repent, with many of those who profited greatly from the ships that transported some 12 million African people over the years being pillars of the church and supporting it financially.“
As I continued on My London Dairy:
“When Christopher Codrington died in 1710 he left his Barbados plantations to its missionary society, who at least at first continued his regime of forced hard labour, punishment with the lash, iron collar and straight-jacket, and, at least for some years to brand its enslaved Africans across their chest with the word “society”. Even though the church claimed to have made various improvements in conditions, 4 of every 10 Africans bought by the society still died in their first 3 years there in 1740. Despite the efforts of abolitionists, slavery continued until made illegal by the 1833 act, which provided the church with a very large financial reward in compensation.”
This procession had been accompanied from its opening service in Whitehall Place by a small group who had walked from Hull, the birthplace of William Wilberforce who had led the fight for the abolition in Parliament. They had taken turns to march in a yoke and chains and ended their walk in Victoria Gardens at the Buxton Memorial Fountain erected in 1865 to mark the ending of slavery in the British Empire in 1834.
Drexel Gomez, the Archbishop of the West Indies, symbolically removes the yoke
After photographing a ceremony on Lambeth Bridge acknowledging the 2704 ships that left the port of London to carry enslaved Africans the march then continued in a silent remembrance of those who died in the ocean crossings to Kennington Park. I left them to photograph a second march coming to join them from Holy Trinity, Clapham.
The walk from Holy Trinity Clapham was just coming into Stockwell when I joined it.
On Sunday 25th I began at Windrush Square in Brixton where another commemorative event was taking place, organised by the Brixton Society. After drumming, gospel music and speeches about the abolition people planted bulbs in the grass and there were prayers, The event then moved on to celebrating the contribution of those of black Afro-Caribbean origin to life and culture in Britain now with a number of speeches and then more gospel singing.
Planting bulbs
After a lunchtime walk by the Thames I went to Clapham, the spiritual and physical home of the abolition movement, where the London Borough of Lambeth had organised a commemorative walk.
Holy Trinity, Clapham, the home of the Clapham Sect which was the centre of the abolition movement.
This started at Holy Trinity Church, where the Clapham Sect at the centre of the movement, including William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, John and Henry Thornton, John Venn, Zachary Macaulay and others had worshipped. But as tour guide Steve Martin pointed out Clapham was also home to many who had made fortunes from the trade and opposed the abolition, with both sides worshipping in the same parish church.
One of the three groups of walkers at the probable site of the African Academy
You can read much more about these events on My London Diary, and I won’t copy it all here, but here are my two opening paragraphs:
There is no escaping that all of us who live in Britain – whatever the colour of our skin or our personal history – are now benefiting from the proceeds of the trafficking of African people and their forced labour in our colonies over around four centuries. Fortunes made from slavery helped to build many of the institutions from which we still benefit, including many of our great galleries and museums. Slavery founded many of our banks and breweries and other great industries, and made Britain a wealthy nation.
But it is also true that the same wealthy elite that treated Africans so callously exploited the poor in Britain. My ancestors were thrown off their land and probably some were imprisoned for their religious beliefs by these same elites. Almost certainly some of my forebears were a part of the movement that campaigned against slavery and called for and end to the trade in human beings, although equally certainly they had little or no political power at the time, and probably no vote.
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.
