Speakers Corner | >Re-PHOTO

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace – 2009

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace: On Sunday 18th October 2009 I went to Dalston to support a Hackney education charity whose students have been harassed when making films in public places and then joined a small march in the UK which was part of a worldwide humanist movement for peace.

Ridley Road Market: Worldbytes Defends Right to Film

Freedom to Film & World March for Peace - 2009 — *Halal butcher in Ridley Road market, Dalston*

Worldwrite is a Hackney-based education charity founded in 1994 which gives young people free film and media training supporting them to produce alternative programmes for broadcast on WORLDbytes, the charity’s online alternative Citizen TV channel Worldbytes.org. You can read more about them on the web site where you can also see a very wide range of their videos, though I couldn’t find anything now on this 2009 event.

In 2009 their teams were “finding it increasingly difficult to film in public places in Hackney: security guards, community wardens and self-appointed ‘jobsworths’ are refusing us ‘permission’ to film on many of our streets.”

As they stated, “There is in fact NO LAW against filming or taking photographs in public places and permission or a licence is NOT required for gathering news for news programmes in public spaces.“

They had called for photographers and film-makers to go along and take pictures in support of their protest and I went to do so at Ridley Road Market in Dalston, where Worldbytes crews had been told they can’t film there, not by the stall holders or other market users, but by employees of Hackney Council.

I went there to support them and the right to photograph in public places, but also because I wanted to photograph the market. I had previously taken a few pictures there but only as I was passing and had not seriously photographed the market.

After talking to the Worldwite protesters I set about walking up and down the market taking photographs of the buildings and people, particularly some of the stallholders. As well as my post on My London Diary, I wrote about the event at greater length here on >Re:PHOTO a few days later. Here’s a short section of text from that article:

“I took some general views without asking anyone for permission, but as usual, where I wanted to take pictures including stallholders or other people I asked if I might. Not because I need to, but out of politeness, and I shrugged my shoulders and moved on if they refused. Of course at times I photograph people who don’t want to be photographed, but this wasn’t appropriate here.”

“As I was using flash most of the time, it was clear that I was taking pictures and some people asked me to photograph them who I might otherwise have walked by. At one place I did stop to argue after having been refused – and eventually managed to get permission to take a picture; at another I got profuse apologies from an employee who was obviously sorry that the stall owner had decided not to cooperate with Worldbytes.“

“The council employees didn’t turn up to stop filming while I was there; probably Sunday is their day off. But it’s very hard to understand why Hackney Council should allow or instruct their employees in this way. They should know the law after all.”

My use of flash – generally as a fairly weak fill-in – was deliberate to make sure that people knew I was taking photographs, though in some cases it helped with the pictures. After I’d spent around twenty minutes obviously taking pictures I was interviewed by the Worldbytes crew, though I rather hoped they would cut that from their video of the day.

My London Diary : Ridley Rd Market: Worldbytes Film Protest

Re:PHOTO: Worldbytes Defend the Freedom to Film

World March For Peace and Nonviolence

The World March For Peace and Nonviolence had begun in New Zealand on the 140th anniversary of Ghandi’s birth, October 2, 2009. It involved events around the world which ended at Punta de Vacas in the Andes Mountains in Argentina on January 2, 2010, where Silo (Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos) the founder of the Humanist Movement launched a new campaign for global nuclear disarmament in September 2006.

Volunteers from a base team of around a hundred went from New Zealand to Japan, Korea, Moscow, Rome, New York, and Costa Rica, attending events organised along the way to Argentina.

In London the march began with a vigil close to the Northwood Permanent Joint Forces / NATO Headquarters in Middlesex on Saturday morning, with speeches by World March UK co-ordinator Jon Swinden, Sonia Azad of Children Against War and organiser Daniel Viesnik, who also read out a message of support from John McDonnell MP.

Only around 50 people walked the whole way, but there were others around the world also marching. On the second day in London they began at Brent Town Hall in Wembley Park and I met them as they arrived at Marble Arch. They stopped for lunch at Speaker’s Corner where they then took part in the interactive play ‘Let The Artists Die’ on themes of peace, non-violence and the power of the imagination. It was written and directed by Charlie Wiseman who was also one of the three main actors.

They walked past the front of the US Embassy to the memorial to the British victims of 9/11 in Grosvenor Square, where it stopped to pay its respects. In Mayfair it was almost halted when a taxi driver deliberately drove into one of the marchers, but they continued to Trafalgar Square.

‘Heritage wardens’ stopped the march as it came down the steps in Trafalgar Square, telling them they could not walk through the square as they had not applied for permission.

After resting for a few minutes on the steps the march went around the side of the square and down Whitehall past “the Old War Office, and then the statues of famous generals outside the “Defence Ministry” (governments were more straightforward with language in the past)” and “the fortified gates of Downing Street and on to Parliament Square, where the march stopped at the permanent peace protest by Brian Haw there since 2 June 200l with the help of his supporters.”

I left the marchers there but they continued on to end at the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park.

More pictures at World March For Peace and Nonviolence.

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Corbyn Victory & Refugees Welcome – 2015

Corbyn Victory & Refugees Welcome: Saturday 12th September 2015 was a day of hope when Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership election with a landslide victory, getting more than three times the vote of his nearest rival, Andy Burnham. Several hundred Corbyn supporters met at Speakers’ Corner before the Refugees Welcome march to listen to the results of the Labour Leadership election.

Victory Party for Jeremy Corbyn – Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park,

Tension built as the Deputy Leader results came and then erupted with Jeremy Corbyn’s first round victory.

Corbyn had only been able to stand in the election because some Labour MPs who did not support him were prepared to nominate him so that the Labour left would have a candidate in the ballot and not feel it was rigged against them. They thought he would only get a miserably low percentage of the votes.

According to Wikipedia, the release of opinion polls before the election which showed Corbyn in the lead prompted “high-profile interventions by a number of prominent Labour figures including Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, David Miliband, and Alastair Campbell, among others” who felt Labour with Corbyn as leader would be unelectable.

These interventions almost certainly increased support for Corbyn, and although these and other Labour figures such as Peter Mandelson, along with most of the media and press did their best to try to get rid of Corbyn, including various plots and mass resignations from the Shadow Cabinet, he remained popular in the country.

The 2017 election turned out to be a much closer contest than most had imagined, and it was only due to deliberate sabotage by Labour party officials that Corbyn lost. A leaked report in 2020 which demonstrated this led to the setting up of the Forde report into Labour party factionalism which although it called the earlier report “factional” confirmed many of its suspicions and conclusions – as well as criticising both sides in the party – remained secret until July 2022.

What shocked many of us was the evident relief shown by some leading members of the party as the 2017 election results were coming out that their party had lost. And the witch-hunt against the left in the party continues unabated.

On the 12th September 12th 2015 there was much more media interest in the few hundred celebrating Corbyn’s victory than in the huge Refugees Welcome march which followed, and in the media scrum I got knocked flying and my equipment scattered, but managed to gather it up and continue work.

Victory Party for Jeremy Corbyn

Refugees Welcome Here Rally & March

From Speakers Corner I joined the huge crowd – at least 50,000 – filling Park Lane as far as I could see. This national march was a response to the many reports of refugees fleeing war and persecution, with people wanting to show their support for refugees facing death and hardship and their disgust at the lack of compassion and inadequate response of the British government.

On My London Diary is a list and photographs of some of the speakers before the march set off. I photographed the front of the march as it set up at the southern end of Park Lane and went with it for the first couple of hundred yards into Piccadilly, where I stopped to photograph the rest of the march as it came past.

The marchers were fairly densely packed and spread across the whole of the roadway (and sometimes on to the pavement too) and it took exactly an hour to go past me.

There were many at the protest who were not the usual protesters, people who said this was the first protest they had ever attended, as well as those that I knew from previous protests, and there were many interesting placards and banners to photograph – and many more pictures on My London Diary.

As the end of the march passed me I rushed into Green Park Station and took the tube to Westminster, arriving on Whitehall as it went very noisily past Downing Street.

I ran back to Parliament Square, and this soon filled up with people and banners. I sat down on the wall close to the Churchill statue, realising I was rather tired and hungry.

Many marchers left rather than stay and listen to the speeches, though the square was still crowded and I decided I would leave too.

More on My London Diary:
Rally Says Refugees Welcome Here
Refugees are welcome here march
Refugees Welcome march reaches Parliament

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For Refugee Rights and Against Trident

For Refugee Rights and Against Trident. I covered two marches in London on 27th February 2016, the first calling for safe passage for refugees seeking protection in Europe and following this a much larger march against government plans to waste £180 billion or more on replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons.

European March for Refugee Rights

The European March for Refugee Rights was part of a day of protests in cities across Europe demanding action by governments to provide secure safe passage routes for all refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection in Europe. They want an end to deaths at borders and drownings and for refugees to be allowed to keep their possessions and be reunited with their families.

Among those taking part were people who had been to aid refugees in Lesvos and at the Calais camps and others who had volunteered with Medicins Sans Frontiers in Syria. The protest was supported by many groups including the Syria Solidarity Campaign, Solidarity with Refugees, London2Calais, Migrants’ Rights Network, SOAS Solidarity with Refugees & Displaced People Soc, Wonder Foundation, Calais Action, UK Action for Refugees, Refugee Aid Initiative, No Borders and the Greece Solidarity Campaign.

This was a short march taking place unusually inside Hyde Park, gathering at Hyde Park Corner and walking up to Speakers Corner where there was a rally. This made it possible for those taking part to join the Stop Trident Rally which was starting from Marble Arch, and going down Park Lane on its way to Trafalgar Square. Some of the marchers decided to form a block to march in front of the main Stop Trident banner and march on to Trafalgar Square.

Stop Trident march stewards tried briefly to stop them but then gave up and halted their march for around ten minutes to create a gap between the two groups.

European March for Refugee Rights

Stop Trident March

According to CND there were 60,000 people marching from Marble Arch to a mass rally in Trafalgar Square, and although their estimate may have been a little on the high side, this was definitely a very large protest, starting with a densely packed crowd on Park Lane. When the rally began in Trafalgar Square the tail of the march was still around half a mile away, and I think many gave up before reaching the rally as the streets leading to it became blocked.

Few people outside the military and arms manufacturers – probably the most powerful of all lobbies in the country can really believe the expenditure of £180 billion or more on replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons is either necessary or cost-effective. The huge majority of nations in the world have no nuclear capability, and by December 2021, 59 states had ratified or acceded to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force on 22 January 2021.

*Lindsey German, Stop the War, Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, SNP First Minister, Scotland and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas hold the Stop Trident banner*

A national survey by Survation at the start of 2021 for CND showed 59% of the public supported the UK government signing up to the TPNW, including 50% of Conservative voters and 68% of Labour voters. An even higher 77% supported a ‘total ban on all nuclear weapons globally’ with majority support from young and old, in all regions of the country, from Conservative as well as Labour voters, leavers and remainers. The government remains resolutely opposed to the treaty.

This widespread opposition to nuclear weapons isn’t largely a matter of their cost but on both moral and pragmatic grounds. As CND say, using nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic global damage; these weapons of mass destruction don’t keep us safe and divert resources from essential spending on services like the NHS, schools and housing and “it is clearer than ever that real security for Britain requires addressing the risks posed by the climate emergency and pandemics on a global scale.“

Stop Trident March

Stop Trident Rally

Trafalgar square was unusually packed for the long rally that followed the march, with people listening and applauding a long list of speakers, including Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas, Leanne Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Bruce Kent, Christine Blower, Mark Serwotka and Tariq Ali, as well as many less well-known names. There were many marchers who found it impossible to get into the square.

*Nicola Sturgeon First Minister Scotland*

All the speakers opposed the spending of an estimated £180 billion or more on renewal of Trident which they dismissed as out of date, totally irrelevant to our defence and a complete waste of money which could be put to so much better use providing proper jobs and services.

It was a long wait, around two hours standing in the cold for the final speech by Jeremy Corbyn who had earlier in the day been speaking in Sheffield and whose train had been a little delayed. He was greeted by a tremendous response from the crowd, and gave a rousing speech to end the protest on a high note. Despite the dismissive remarks from many political commentators on the media, Corbyn is one of the most powerful political speakers of current years.

Stop Trident Rally