stop privatisation

Anti-Homeless Spikes & No More Austerity – 2014

Anti-Homeless Spikes & No More Austerity: On Saturday 21st June 2014 I photographed a small protest against anti-homeless spikes outside the Tesco Metro on Lower Regent Street on my way to a much larger protest against austerity meeting at the BBC in Portland Place and marching to a rally in Parliament Square.

Call for Nationwide Homeless Spikes Ban

Public disquiet was mounting against the increasing use of anti-homeless spikes on and around buildings, metal or concrete spikes used to make pavements, ledges and other horizontal surface impossible or very uncomfortable for people to lie down or sometimes even sit on, aimed in particular at stopping homeless people sleeping there.

These spikes and other ‘hostile measures’ are increasingly used to force homeless people out of public spaces – you can read more about it in a 2016 article on the Crisis web site as well as in various newspaper reports. ‘Defensive Architecture’ continues and you can read about a 2024 campaign against spikes by artist Stuart Semple and creative agency TBWA\MCR in Big Issue.

Call for Nationwide Homeless Spikes Ban

No More Austerity – Demand The Alternative

There was huge support for the march and rally by The People’s Assembly, trade unions and campaign groups calling for an end to austerity which gathered outside the BBC to march to a rally in Parliament Square.

Clearly the government cuts since 2010 were causing huge problems across the nation and were stifling economic growth. And while we were still wasting huge amounts on senseless projects such as Trident nuclear missiles, public services were being cut, public sector workers were getting cuts in pay through below inflation increases. Education was suffering, the NHS was being increasingly privatised and generally the interests of the majority were being sacrificed while the wealthy were getting even richer.

Measure such as 2012 bedroom tax and later the two child benefit cap brought in in 2017 plunged many of the poorest even deeper into poverty and there were continued attacks on disability benefits.

I put almost all of the pictures from the march on-line without captions with a promise to add them later but – as so often – later never came. But I think most of the pictures tell their own story,

Among them are a number of pictures of Class War – some of them carrying a banner which later became their manifesto for the 2015 general election – for which they became a political party and stood a handful of candidates – who each only received a handful of votes. But perhaps ‘DOUBLE DOLE – NO BEDROOM TAX – DOUBLE PENSIONS’ was never likely to be an entirely convincing alternative.

In 2017 we did have a real alternative and the Labour vote was up by 9.5% and it was only a deliberate and deceitful campaign by the party right who were in control of the party mechanism diverting resources from key marginals that stopped a Corbyn victory. They out-manoeuvred the left again in 2019 both to ensure defeat and for the key architect of the disastrous policy that lost them the vote as minister for Brexit to become party leader.

But people in 2024 still wanted change, and voted against the hopeless and hapless Tories who had blustered under Boris, wilted faster than lettuce under Truss and submerged under Sunak. But what we got was not chage but Tory-lite, even resurrecting the tired skeletons of Blair and Mandelson. It now seems more than likely that at the next election we may get change – but for the even worse.

I won’t bother to put any of the pictures of speakers at the rally on-line, though I photographed a long list of them – all on My London Diary.

Parliament Square was pretty full and people were still arriving at the square long after I made a picture of the crowd at the start of the rally.

More pictures:
People’s Assembly Rally
No more Austerity – demand the alternative

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PIP, NHS, Trident & Wood St Cleaners

PIP, NHS, Trident & Wood St Cleaners – On Wednesday 13th July 2016 I photographed two protests about the inadequate and badly run Personal Independence Payments for disabled people, a protest supporting a cross-party bill to save the NHS from privatisation, a party against replacing Trident and the longest running strike in the history of the City of London.

PIP Fightback at Vauxhall – Vauxhall

The hardest part of photographing the protest at the Vauxhall PIP Consultation Centre was actually finding the place, hidden away in a back street. This was one of around 20 protests around the country at the centres where ATOS carry out sham Personal Independence Payments ‘assessments’ on behalf of the DWP.

The assessments are almost solely designed to save money for the DWP, enabling them to ignore medical evidence of need and are carried out by people who are given a financial incentive to fail claimants. They often mean that genuine claimants lose essential benefits for months before they are restored on appeal. They have led to many becoming desperate, with some needing hospital treatment and a few have committed suicide after being failed.

PIP Fightback at Vauxhall

NHS Bill protest at Parliament – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Labour MP for Wirral West Margaret Greenwood was later in the day presenting a ‘Ten Minute Rule Bill’ with cross-party support to stop the privatisation of the NHS and return it to its founding principles.

People from various campaigns had come out to support the bill, which although it had no chance of progressing into law did lead to a greater awareness of the privatisation which is slowly but apparently inevitably putting our NHS into the hands of private, mainly American, health companies, and eroding its basic principles.

Among those who came out to speak was Shadow Health Minister Diane Abbott.

NHS Bill protest at Parliament

Disabled PIP Fightback blocks Westminster

Campaigners from Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN), Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Winvisible (Women with Invisible and Visible Disabilities) and other supporters met outside the Victoria St offices of Capita PLC, one of the companies along with ATOS responsible for carrying out the shoddy cash-saving PIP assessments.

In particular these assessments are unfair on many claimants whose conditions vary day to day including many with mental health issues. The assessments make no allowances for this and fail to take any account of the medical evidence in coming to their conclusions.

After protesting for some time on the very busy pavement where there were a number of speakers, Paula Peters of DPAC led the group out into the the middle of Victoria Street where they stood with banners and in wheelchairs blocking traffic.

They then marched the short distance to the DWP headquarters in Caxton St, holding a further protest with speakers in the road outside.

Finally they marched past the Houses of Parliament to College Green where the media had set up their ‘Westminster village’ crowded with cameras for Theresa May becoming Prime Minister. Police stopped them as they tried to go onto the grass in front of the TV cameras, and for some time they stood along the side before finally ignoring the police and going on to the green. Where the TV crews ignored the protest.

Disabled PIP Fightback blocks Westminster

Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party – Parliament Square

CND members and supporters were today lobbying MPs against plans to replace Trident at a cost of at least £205 billion.

In Parliament Square they had organised a ‘Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party’ and there were various Christian groups with placards placards stating the opposition by churches of the different denominations to the replacement, with Buddhists from the Battersea Peace Pagoda adding their support.

Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party

Solidarity for Wood St Cleaners – City of London

Finally I went to the heart of the CIty of London where a rally was taking place in support of cleaners belonging to the United Voices of the World union employed by anti-union cleaning contractor Thames Cleaning at the 100 Wood St offices managed by CBRE.

By 13th July this had already become the longest-running strike ever in the City of London and it continued into August. The UVW say:

As days became weeks, the inconvenience for white-collar workers at 100 Wood Street rightly turned into a major embarrassment for their employers, and especially for CBRE, the managers of the building. City of London police were called many times, security staff were intimidating, and the tenants were barely coping with a trickle of the former cleaning operation. Eventually, after a surprise flashmob in the CBRE’s lobby, and then a big march to mark the 50th consecutive day, the decision was taken after 61 days to raise all their pay to the London Living Wage!
https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/en/campaigns/100-wood-street/

Many more pictures at Solidarity for Wood St cleaners.

Peoples March Against NHS Privatisation 2014

Almost all of my life has been lived under the NHS, although the free orange juice and cod liver oil from our local clinic just predated it. But it’s been there through my life when I needed it whether for minor complaints or more serious including a heart attack and diabetes.

When it began, everything was free – except for dental treatment which never became fully a part of the system, though I still get NHS dental treatment, but for many years there have been large areas of the country where it is almost impossible to do so. It was a Labour government that made the introduction of prescription charges possible – something that led Aneurin Bevan to resign from government, but they were actually introduced by the Conservatives in 1952.

Currently those not exempt pay £9.35 for each item on a prescription, and surveys show that around a third of those who have to pay have failed to collect items because of the cost. I’ve been exempt since my diagnosis of diabetes – and would have been so a few years later when I reached the age of 60, just as well as last week I collected 8 items from my local chemist that otherwise would have cost me around £75, though for those who can afford it would be cheaper to pay for a season ticket (PPC) at £108.10 for 12 months.

Increasingly parts of our NHS are being provided not by the NHS itself but by commercial providers. Some of these are the simpler treatments for patients – such as the annual photograph of my eyes or routine surgery. This leaves the more difficult (and expensive) work being carried out by the NHS – who also take over from private hospitals when more difficult or intensive procedures are required.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 opened up the entire NHS to this backdoor privatisation, and it is now estimated by the Kings Fune that approximately a quarter of NHS spending goes on the private sector, though probably Covid has led to an increase.

There have been some spectacular failures in this privatisation, notably Hinchingbrooke Hospital, franchised to private company Circle under New Labour in 2019. After they were put into special measures as a result of significant failures in care – and were failing to make sufficient profits – they walked away in 2015, leaving the NHS to clear up the mess.

The People’s March for the NHS was set up to oppose the continuing privatisation of the NHS, and was inspired by the 1936 Jarrow Crusade when 200 men marched to London in protest against unemployment and poverty. Rather fewer made the whole distance in 2014, but they were met by supporters who marched with them for parts of the way, and by several thousands when they arrived in London on the last section of their route on Saturday 6th September 2014.

Their message was simple:
The NHS is ours.
We built it, we own it, we use it.
It’s under attack and if we don’t fight for it, we’ll lose it.

The current proposals for NHS reform leaked in February 2021 recognise some of the failures of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act but leave its core elements in place, while giving central government greater powers to meddle. As the authors of the NHS Reinstatement Bill commented:

These proposals are incoherent, de-regulatory, off-target, and badly timed. They will do next to nothing to remedy the serious shortcomings highlighted by the pandemic: a depleted NHS, a privatised social care system, with over-centralised, fragmented and part-privatised communicable disease control and public health systems. Joined-up legislation is needed to revitalise local authorities and to rebuild public services.

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.