Posts Tagged ‘Stop the War’

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali – 2013

Saturday, February 15th, 2025

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali: As often when I had a long break between two events I took the opportunity to take an extensive walk in one of my favourite areas of London and on Friday 15th February I went to the Thames Path at Greenwich after a lunchtime protest at Lewisham Hospital. Then I went to Whitehall for a small protest against Western military intervention in Mali and Syria and a possible attack on Iran.

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali

Fight to Save Lewisham Hospital Continues

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali

A lunchtime rally at the war memorial opposite the Hospital made clear that the fight by the entire local community to save services at their hospital was continuing.

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali

As well as a legal challenge there were to be further mass demonstrations including a ‘Born in Lewisham Hospital’ protest the following month.

Lewisham Hospital, Greenwich Peninsula, Syria & Mali
Lewisham Mayor Sir Steve Bullock

People in the area and all concerned with the future of the NHS were appalled by Jeremy Hunt’s decision to accept to the proposals for closure, which are medically unsound and would lead to more patients dying, but they would result in a huge waste of public funds.

The financial problem that led to the proposal was caused not by Lewisham but by a disastrous PFI (private finance initiative) agreement to build a hospital a few miles away.

As I wroteL “Lewisham is a successful and financially sound hospital which has received sensible public investment to provide up to date services, and the services that will be cut there will have to be set up again and provided elsewhere by other hospitals. Closing Lewisham will not only incur high costs, but will result in the waste of the previous investment in its facilities.”

Louise Irvine, the Chair of Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign

In making his decision Hunt deliberately set out to mislead the public by describing the replacement of A&E as only a small reduction in A&E services. The proposed urgent care centre could only deal with around 30% of the cases currently being covered. Similar the replacement of the current maternity service by a midwife only unit could only deal with around 10% of current births – and life-threatening transfers would be necessary if complications rose in these.

You can read a fuller account of the protest and more pictures at Fight to Save Lewisham Hospital Continues.


Thames Path – North Greenwich – Greenwich

I took a bus to North Greenwich and tried to walk along the Thames Path, parts of which had reopened after a long closure. It was a warm day for February and started off sunny, though later the weather changed giving some dramatic skies.

The path from Delta Wharf and north to Drawdock Road was still vlosed but beyond that in both directions the path was open. I’m not sure what all the work taking place was about, but in part it was to provide a new section of the path, and to put in new breakwaters. Some time later of course there will be new riverside flats here, but for the moment these were being built closer to Greenwich.

One fairly recent addition to the path was the Greenwich meridian marker at the bottom centre of this picture, the line going along in the gap between two metal beams and pointing north across the river.

And a little further to the east is the sculpture A Slice of Reality by Richard Wilson. In the following year this was to become part of London’s first public art walk, The Line. It is a 30ft slice of the former sand dredger Arco Trent – Google’s AI gets it badly wrong by describing it as “an eighth-scale replica“. As the name suggests it is a slice of the actual ship.

As I turned back and walked towards Greenwich there were some dramatic skies and lighting, but also some slightly boring road walking where the path was diverted away from the river.

Soon I was able to return to the riverside path and walk through the surreal landscape of an aggregate wharf.

The final section of the walk on my way into Greenwich had been targeted by guerilla knitters.

I was getting short of time, and could only stop to make one panorama although the weather was perfect for it.

This view shows the riverside path at left going south at the left and north at the right – a view of over 180 degrees. The shoreline here highly curved was in reality straight. I think the image digitally combines half a dozen overlapping frames.

By then I was having to hurry to catch the train back into central London – and the light was falling.

Many more pictures from this walk at Thames Path Greenwich Partly Open.


Stop Western Intervention in Syria & Mali – Downing St

This protest had been called by Stop the War on the 10th anniversary of the march by 2 million against the Iraq war in 2003, the largest protest march ever seen in the UK (and with many others around the world also marching.)

On this occasion they were calling for a stop to Western intervention in Mali and Syria and against the possible attack on Iran but the numbers taking part were very much smaller, with only around a hundred turning up.

Among them were supporters of Syria’s President Assad and Stop the War had lost a great deal of support by opposing the help being given to groups against his regime, with many on the left calling for an end to his regime.

Stop Western Intervention in Syria & Mali


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

Saturday, January 25th, 2025

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square: On Wednesday 25th January 2012 I went up to London in the middle of the afternoon and continued to take photographs at various places and events for several hours.


Parliament Square Peace Camp

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

I began with a brief visit to the Peace Camp – as I often had over the years – but found that Barbara Tucker was busy tidying up in anticipation of yet another police raid in their long campaign of harassment of her and here supporters and on this occasion didn’t have time to talk. So I just took a couple of pictures and then walked up to Trafalgar Square. On May 10th 2012 the protest had been 4000 Days in Parliament Square but was evicted shortly after.


Congolese Keep Up Protests – Trafalgar Square

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

In Trafalgar Square I found a small group of Congolese protesters in a pen on the pavement outside South Africa House, calling on South Africa to put pressure on the Congo regime. They called on South Africa to free political prisoners and recognise opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba as the duly elected President of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 2011 elections were widely regarded as having been fixed and it is unclear whether he or the incumbent Joseph Kabila whose election was confirmed by the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo actually got more votes.

The protesters told me that more people were expected to arrive for the protest soon and I promised to return. But I got a little held up elsewhere and by the time I returned everyone had left.


Peace For Iran – No To War – Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Whitehall

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

I walked back along Whitehall to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in King Charles St where a small group were protesting against going to war with Iran, calling for peace.

I waited with the protesters who told me they expected more to arrive, but had to leave after around 20 minutes. I think few were coming as a large protest was to happen a few days later (you can see my report and pictures on this at No War Against Iran & Syria)


Egyptians Protest Against SCAF – Egyptian Embassy

Peace, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Bikers, Trafalgar Square… 2012

I had to leave to go to the main event I had come into London to report, the protest by Egyptians on the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. Egypt was then suffering under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and they called for the revolution to continue and an end to military rule.

This was an energetic and protest by over a hundred Egyptians in solidarity with the estimated 300,000 who had marched to Tahrir Square earlier in the day.

A few from the British left had come to give their support, including Chris Nuneham of Stop the War who was one of those who spoke.

The speakers urged solidarity with the Egyptian people and also with the other revolutions of the Arab Spring, and called for an end to the Western attempts to enforce an agenda on the Arab nations.

They voiced their opposition to the increasingly likely military action against Iran, and called on those present to join the No War Against Iran & Syria protest at the US Embassy on the following Saturday.

Many more pictures from the Egyptian Embassy protest on My London Diary.


Westminster Bikers First Olympic Jubilee Demo Ride – Trafalgar Square

I returned to Trafalgar Square for a protest by motorbike riders, incensed by the so-called experimental parking charges for powered two wheelers.

‘No To the Bike Parking Tax’ see the parking charges introduced by Westminster Council as a simple money-making racket and have been making regular Wednesday protests against it as well as lobbying and making a legal challenge.

The daily fee for parking in a solo motorcycle bay is now only £1, and bikers can move from bay to bay.

More pictures


Around Trafalgar Square

After the bikers rode away I took a few pictures in Trafalgar Square under its dramatic red lighting then walked away. There had been a traffic accident on Northumberland Avenue which seemed to have involved two bikers and a cyclist and the police were now in attendance. I took a single frame as I approached but I didn’t investigate this further, walking down Whitehall.

Opposite Downing St a small protest was taking place calling for Freedom for Syria from the Assad regime, but nothing much was happening there and after making a couple of pictures I moved on, now in a hurry to get home and have something to eat.

You can read and see more pictures of these events on the January 2012 page of My London Diary


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

Tuesday, December 10th, 2024

National March for Palestine: On 30th November 2024 I photographed yet another large march through London calling for an end to the continuing attacks by Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank.

National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

As usual there was a strong Jewish presence on the march – and it was opposed by a much smaller counter-demonstration by largely Jewish protesters, many calling for the release of the hostages still held in Gaza.

National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

Many of those on the main march also want the hostages to be released, but see the only way to acheive this is not to continue the devastation and genocide in Gaza, but a ceasefire with serious negotiations towards a long-term peace in Palestine and Israel.

National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

Last week over 200 Israelis living in the UK signed a letter to Keir Starmer and David Lammy urging them to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvit and Bezalel Smotrich, asking others living in the UK with Israeli citizenship to add their signatures.

In part this stated their opposition to the hateful and dangerous rhetoric of these two miniters which they say “endangers lives, obstructs the possibility of a hostage deal , and endorses calls for ethnic cleansing.”

National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

Reported here in the Jewish press but I think ignored by the BBC and the rest of the UK press, the letter accuses the two ministers of “doing all they can to prevent a hostage and ceasefire deal and instead focusing their entire energies on their messianic aims: annexing the West Bank and settling the Gaza strip.”

The letter makes clear that the two “do not speak for us” and that opinion “polls in Israel reveal that the majority of the public supports a hostage deal and seeks an end to the war.”

National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

Earlier the Jewish News had reported on a campaign by British Jewish organisation “Yachad, who advocate for peace and equality for Israelis and Palestinans“, also calling for sanctions against the two men, and the media more widely covered both David Cameron stating his government had been planning sanctions against these ministers and on Starmer and Lammy “mulling over” sanctions. By now these seem well overmulled.

As with all the previous marches and events calling for an end to the attacks on Gaza, the protest was entirely peaceful, with a complete absence of any antisemitism – unless you define calling for freedom for Palestine and Palestinians as antisemitic.

I wrote in my captions “As the death toll from Israel’s attacks in Gaza is now over 43,000 and many now face starvation with every hospital having been bombed and with virtually no medical supplies, and the UK is still complicit in the genocide, thousands including many Jews, marched in yet another entirely peaceful mass protest in solidarity. They call for an immediate ceasefire with the release of hostages and prisoners and for negotiations to secure a long-term just peace in the area.

That figure of 43,000 is sadly out of date and the true figure is now considerably higher, with many bodies still buried under rubble and an increasing number of deaths from the disease and starvation caused by the continuing attacks and the deliberate denial of food, fuel and medicine. Israeli forces have destroyed much of the infrastructure as well as the organisation of society which was of course largely provided by Hamas.

We are witnessing – despite the banning of the international press from any effective access to Gaza – the large scale collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza. And the detailed reported and conclusion “that following 7 October 2023, Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” by Amnesty International confirms what has been clear to almost everyone for many months

All the pictures here are from the march through London on 30th November 2024. You can see many more here in my album on the event.


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation – 2008

Friday, June 21st, 2024

Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation: Saturday 21st June, 2006. A Love Music Hate Racism/Unite Against Fascism march, a visit to the replacement allotments for the Manor Gardening Society and a curiously legal protest against deporting refugees to Iraq.


Stop the Fascist BNP – LMHR/UAF – Tooley St – Trafalgar Square

Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation

The Love Music Hate Racism/Unite Against Fascism “Stop the Fascist BNP” march turned out to be a little of a damp squib, although a fairly colourful one, as only 2-3,000 people turned up to march from Tooley Street in Bermondsey to Trafalgar Square.

Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation

Perhaps Stop the War’s failure to capitalise on the mass following it gained with the largest ever demonstration in the UK in 2003 had discredited the idea of huge marches. Like Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism was seen by many as being largely a front for the Socialist Workers Party. The anti-fascist magazine Searchlight had disaffiliated from them in 2005, arguing for the need for new tactics and in particular to work in communities where the BNP were exploiting real problems rather than just opposing them on the streets and calling them fascists.

Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation

A bigger march would have been better, but more importantly for the audience which Love Music Hate Racism was attempting to reach it needed to be much more of a free and fun event.

Stop the BNP, Olympic Allotments, End Deportation

The band who played at the start of the march were restricted to a single number, when they could well have played much more, and there was hardly any music on the march – I only saw one small marching band. Where were the great sound systems for people to dance behind?

And as I wrote, “I was frankly appalled by the attitudes of the stewards towards photographers, almost as if the event was trying to hide from publicity. I’ve had less hassle when photographing the BNP.”

More pictures at Stop the Fascist BNP – LMHR/UAF.


Manor Gardening Society – New Allotments – Marsh Lane, Leyton

The Manor Gardens Allotments fight to stay in place for the 2012 had failed. The gardens had presented the opportunity for the Olympics to show a real commitment to green ideas – and of course they had zero interest in really doing so. Green publicity stunts and lies yes, but Green actions and real content you had to be joking.

As I wrote “London in 1948 did really put the modern Olympics back on course, and it did so on vision and a shoestring – and even ended up making a profit. 2012 will be different in every respect. A commitment to corporate profit at high cost to the public purse appears to be the only vision on display, and a legacy of debt and environmental disaster seem to be the most likely outcomes.

All tenants were evicted in late 2007 and the allotments were moved onto some common land in Leyton at a cost of £1.8 million, but the job was done terribly badly. They even took soil from the allotment site, but heat-treated it, killing all the life in it. Healthy soil is full of life – and as well as killing weed the treatment has killed off the microorganisms it needs, as well as larger creatures such as worms.

The soil was dead – and would take years to recover. Over much of the site it had been heavily compacted by heavy machinery working on the road andhad almost zero drainage. Whole areas were waterlogged. The only healthy crops I saw were in grow-bags.

I commented: “Of course it doesn’t look like the old Manor Gardens – more like some kind of prison camp, but I was pleased to see again many of those from the old site, making a good job of getting things growing again. One thing that hadn’t changed was the community spirit and the welcome – and the splendid salad and other food.”

The New Lamas Lands Defence Committee had campaigned against the loss of common land, but were assured it was only temporary – but there is now a permanent site there. In 2016 some of the tenants of the Manor Gardening Society were allowed to return to a small site at Pudding Mill, on the Bridgewater Road in Stratford. Two thirds of this site is now under threat from a development proposed by the London Legacy Development Corporation along its southeast which will put it under permanent shade.

Manor Gardening Society – New Allotments


Tent City – Stop Deporting Iraqis – Parliament Square

Voices UK had organised a 24-hour ‘Tent City’ starting at noon on 21 June, Midsummer Day as a deliberately illegal demonstration in Parliament Square, at the centre of the SOCPA restricted zone.

Much to their surprise, 4 days before it began they received an e-mail from a police office with its subject “Tent City Demonstration” and the message “I would like to inform you that an application has been received for this demonstration and it will be duly authorised“.

They had not made an application and could only think that the police had themselves applied rather than have to police an intentionally illiegal protest. Although it was now legal under SOCPA, the protest was still in breach of Westminster City Council by-laws and a couple of their heritage wardens came out to give letters telling them so – apparently accompanied by the police officer who had sent the email.

Fighting is still taking place in Iraq involving various factions as well as the occupying US and UK forces. Many Iraqis will still be at risk of their lives if they are returned.

But for the Home Office – then under Labour Home Secretary John Reid, deportations are largely a matter of numbers, not of people. Things of course got even worse in later years under Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and James Cleverly, but I expect little change whoever wins our current election.

Tent City – Stop Deporting Iraqis


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


March of the Human Rights Jukebox – 2007

Sunday, June 16th, 2024

March of the Human Rights Jukebox: On Saturday 16th June I went to South London to photograph this event and put many pictures and a fairly long text on-line on My London Diary.

March of the Human Rights Jukebox

Here I’ll share the text (with some corrections and links added) and just a few of the pictures – you can see many more of these on My London Diary. You can read about the Human Rights Juke Box on the South London Gallery site, and on Isa Suarez’s web site.

March of the Human Rights Jukebox

So this is what I wrote in 2007:

I joined the ‘Human Rights Jukebox’ in its progress from the Camberwell Magistrates Court to Peckham on Saturday 16th June. An event in the Camberwell Arts Week, the ‘March Of The Human Rights Jukebox’ was organised by Isa Suarez, who had a one-year artists residency in Southwark in 2006.

March of the Human Rights Jukebox

The juke box included thoughts on people’s rights from many residents and diverse groups in Southwark, some of whom marched with banners along with it.

March of the Human Rights Jukebox

At the start of the event, the Dulwich Choral Society performed a specially composed piece by Suarez, using words from the ‘jukebox’. On Clerkenwell Green we stopped for a impassioned recital (in French) by a Black African poet, and in front of the old baths in Artichoke Place (now the Leisure Centre) there was a long performance by Deadbeat International as well as a short song by three musicians that left us wanting more.

Deadbeat International also performed at various other points on route, including another energetic set at Peckham Library. The march was led into Peckham by a rapper, with some forthright views on human rights.

Accompanying the jukebox were the live art group ‘mmmmm‘, Adrian Fisher & Luna Montengro, covered from head to foot in sheets of paper containing the complete text of the UN Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, in both English and Spanish as well as the pages of a world atlas.

In front of the library at Peckham, mmmmm completed the event by unpinning the sheets from each other one by one, reading the clauses and feeding the sheets into a shredder (and when this gave up, tearing them up.)

Each then poured cold water over the other and threw the shredded papers, so that they stuck to the wet clothes and skin. Finally we were all invited (in what we were informed was an Argentine custom) to jump once into the air for each of the 30 clauses of the declaration.

On the way to the event, I’d jumped off the bus at the Oval, where ‘Stop The War’ and other demonstrators were protesting. Gordon Brown was apparently expected to arrive at 12.00 to watch some kind of game there. It was a very different kind of action to the ‘jukebox’ though both were political and art in their different ways, although only one gets Arts Council funding.

Also dropping in at Peckham Library were a group of young cyclists from the go-kart track in nearby Burgess Park. They were a lively crew and everyone seemed to want to be photographed.

More pictures:
Stop The War Demo
March of the Human Rights Jukebox


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Extremists and Mob Rule

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

Extremists and Mob Rule: Last Saturday I walked along with around 450,000 others from Hyde Park to the US Embassy in Nine Elms calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli genocide. The IDF has now killed over 30,000 people, mainly women and children and many more are threatened with starvation and disease as Israel continues only allow a trickle of the food and medicines needed into Gaza.

Extremists and Mob Rule

Humanitarian agencies including UNRWA are ready to distribute aid, but far too little is coming across the borders and the Israeli army are disrupting their activities, while Israeli spokesmen continue to produce lies which even the BBC now feels it has to challenge. The pictures here all come from this march.

Extremists and Mob Rule

Of course it wasn’t a mob, but a peaceful protest. It wasn’t Islamists taking over the streets of London, though there may well have been a few taking part among the more than 99% of us who were protesting because of the terrible scenes we have seen on even the limited reporting which has been allowed to come from Gaza – where Israel still prevents the international press from reporting. And because many of us believe that we should have a peaceful solution which gives freedom to both Palestine and Israel.

Extremists and Mob Rule

It wasn’t one of of my better days. I was feeling a little weak and walked twice as far as I should have done. The march may only have been around two and a half miles, but photographing it I walked at least twice that, going back and forth. And after collapsing for a short rest beside the Thames opposite the US Embassy I walked back to the middle of Vauxhall Bridge. From there I could see almost the length of Vauxhall Bridge Road, around three quarters of a mile still packed with marchers and no end in sight. But I was tired and turned back and took the train home from Vauxhall station.

Extremists and Mob Rule

Later today the UK Government is expected to announce its new definition of extremism, which is expected to be something along the lines of:

promotion or advancement of ideology based on hatred, intolerance or violence or undermining or overturning the rights or freedoms of others, or of undermining democracy itself

The point behind this re-definition is to enable the government to list organisations which it considers extremist and to ban these from meetings with ministers and elected officials or receiving public money and ban individuals who belong to them from serving on government boards.

It is clear that it will be used by the current government to list a wide range of organisations that are seen as left-wing in an attempt to embarrass the Labour Party, including those that support the Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation, and with Sunak’s crazed accusations of “mob rule” could be applied to any organisation that supports large protests on any issue, but particularly calling for freedom for Palestine. And I expect to see Stop The War and CND on that list along with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain and the Palestinian Forum in Britain.

Peter Tatchell

Reports suggest that the largest Muslim group in the UK, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), as well as Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) and Palestine Action will be on the list and any other groups opposed to the UK’s Prevent programme. Government departments have boycotted the MCB since 2009.

Listing will not ban these groups, though it might deny funding to some organisations which many might feel important in maintaining effective democracy. And if this wretched government remains in power much longer we will certainly see further powers given to the police particularly over the policing of protests, probably giving them much greater control over the activities of listed groups.

It will almost certainly be used to stigmatise groups which campaign against the monarchy, and perhaps also those calling for changes to our parliamentary system such as the abolition or reform of the House of Lords or proportional voting systems. And groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil will surely be there.

Michael Gove has apparently rejected suggestions that trans rights activists will be among those listed, but suspicions remain that these and some gay rights groups might also be targeted.

Perhaps too, human rights organisations that launch legal cases against government legislation might feature, and when we have had government ministers in recent years labelling the Supreme Court as anti-democratic it is hard to see where this definition might end.

Like many recent statements from the government, this one from Gove seems dangerous and divisive. It might even itself be seen as “undermining democracy itself.

You can read more about the protest march last Saturday, 9th March 2024 and see another seventy or so of my pictures at End Gaza Genocide Massive March To US Embassy


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

Saturday, March 2nd, 2024

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn – Saturday 2nd March 2002 saw a huge protest against Britain becoming involved in the US plans to invade Iraq and depose Sadam Hussein.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

It’s hard to know how many marched that day, though I think there may have been around half a million of us on the streets of London,but it was certainly a very large march though not quite on the scale of that on 16th February 2003. Unfortunately I had to miss that one as I had only come out of hospital the previous day and could only walk a few yards.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

George Galloway, then Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, has come back into the news recently by winning the Rochdale by-election. He along with Tony Benn and others was one of the founders of Stop The War following the US invasion of Afghanisatan and the coalition organised this and other protests against the invasions of Iraq then being prepared by the US Miitary. Galloway was and still is a flamboyant figure and a powerful speaker, though I was rather more attracted to others in the movement such as Tony Benn, who appears in more of my pictures.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

But then as now, I wasn’t at the protest to photograph celebrities, but to tell the story of the event, mainly through photographs of the ordinary people taking part. Of course my pictures concentrate on those who caught my attention, sometimes by their expressions and actions, but more often through their banners and placards which link them to the cause they were marching for.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

Although I’d been photographing protests for some years – occasionally since the 1970s and more intensively since the 1990s, my pictures had simply gone into picture libraries and a few exhibitions and few had been used in the mass media.

Hands Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn

Shortly after Indymedia, a global network of independent news media was set up in 1999 I began publishing work on the UK site – and some of it may be still be available on the now archived site. This was of course entirely non-commercial, and had a very limited readership on the left, among anarchists and the security services.

But I also set up a new web site of my own, My London Diary, which is still available online, though its now several years since I have added new work. Although I have unlimited web space there is a limit to the number of files my web server can handle, and I was very close to this. Covid also played its part in various ways.

In the early years of My London Diary I was still working with film and only had a black and white flatbed scanner. So the pictures for Hands Off Iraq online were all in black and white, though I will also have taken some in colour, but so far I’ve digitised few colour images from these years. The 24 black and white images on My London Diary will have been made from 8×10″ black and white press prints submitted to a picture library and scanned on a flatbed scanner. In 2002 although many magazines were printed in colour the main sales for news images were still black and white, though things were rapidly changing, and I was soon to begin moving to working mainly in digital colour.

Here, with a few corrections is the text I put on line back in 2022 with these pictures:

The Stop the War, Hands off Iraq demonstration on 2 march was a large sign of public opinion. people were still leaving Hyde Park at the start of the march when Trafalgar Square was full to overflowing two and a half hours later.

Police estimates of the number were risible as usual – and can only reflect an attempt to marginalise the significant body of opinion opposed to the war or a complete mathematical inability on behalf of the police.

Tony Benn told me and other photographers it wasn’t worth taking his picture – “it won’t get in the papers unless I go and kick a policeman” but he didn’t and he was quite right.

More pictures on My London Diary


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Gaza March in London 3rd Feb 2024

Friday, February 9th, 2024

Gaza March in London – Another huge march through central London called for an immediate ceasefire and for an end to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Gaza March in London
London, UK. 3 Feb 2024

I didn’t hear any news reports of the march, and over the past few days other events have largely pushed reporting over the continuing genocide to the edges of coverage.

Gaza March in London
London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

If anything the deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza appears to have increased since the ICJ ruling calling on Israel to do all it can to prevent genocide in the area.

Gaza March in London
London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

Israel is still keeping international journalists out of Gaza and feeding the world’s press with misleading information. The BBC have some good reporters but they cannot work in Gaza. They have had interviews with some families and doctors in Gaza – some now killed. Papers such as The Guardian also carry reports from people in Gaza – such as Mondays Gaza diary part 44: ‘The angel of death is roaming the skies, nonstop’. But to get real information about what is actually happening on the ground you need to also go to alternative news sources.

Gaza March in London
London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

One of those is Double Down News, who say “Far too many Journalists sit comfortably trapped in their own bubble of privilege and power, talking to each other and the so-called political class, rather than serving the people they’re meant to inform.” They aim to “prioritise people, ideas, evidence and community above all.” DDN carries no advertising but is supported by over fourteen thousand of subscribers who give what they can afford rather than being owned by governments or billionaires. And you can be one and become a part of the community equally with the others.

London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

One of their latest videos is ‘Israel’s AI Killing Machine‘ by Palestinian-American lawyer and activist Lara Elborno which exposes by how Israel is using modern technology to target civilians across Gaza. Like other videos on the platform it provides a chilling insight missing in the mass media.

London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

Before writing this a few days ago I read Al Jazeera’s Israel War on Gaza coverage, with its list of key events on day 123 published on Tuesday 6th February. Under the Humanitarian crisis in Gaza it begins its report with “At least 27,478 people have been killed and 66,835 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.

London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

It goes on to give other significant news on the humanitarian crisis, before news on Regional tensions and diplomacy and on what is happening in the Occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera was the first independent news channel in the Arab world and is funded by the Qatari state.

London, UK. 3 Feb 2024.

All pictures here are from the march in London on Saturday 3rd February 2024 which was I think uneventful. It was certainly large and several streets around the BBC were densely crowded before the start. I photographed the start and then slowly went down Regent Street with the marchers, stopping a number of times to photograph them as they walked past me.

London, UK. 3 Feb 2024. ‘Sunak’ and dead babies.

At Piccadilly Circus I decide to wait until the end of the march arrived there, and it was a long wait. It was almost two hours after the start of the march before the end arrived, and most of that time the streets were crowded across both carriageways with slowly moving people.

London, UK. 3 Feb 2024. London Mothers and Children Say Stop Killing Babies.

It was too late to be worth trying to get to the rally on Whitehall and so I began my journey home. I uploaded 35 images to Alamy but later put these and around 35 more into an online album Ceasefire Now – Stop The Genocide In Gaza.


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice – 2008

Tuesday, February 6th, 2024

Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice – pictures from Ash Wednesday in London on 6th February 2008, with an Ash Wednesday Witness and prayer against War at the Ministry of Defence and a Downing Street protest against a visit by US warmonger and then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A week tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday Wednesday 14th February 2024, Pax Christi together with Christian CND and others will again be meeting at 3.30pm for a similar witness against war.


Ash Wednesday Liturgy of Repentance and Resistance – Ministry of Defence, Whitehall

Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice

Pax Christi, Catholic Peace Action and Christian CND began their an annual liturgy of Repentance and Resistance around the Ministry of Defence in protest against the continued reliance on nuclear weapons on Ash Wednesday 1982, 42 years ago, and the 2008 event was their 26th.

Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice

Looking back at the pictures I made in 2008 has a particular resonance for me, in that two of those in them are people that I knew who have died in the past couple of years. One was the well-known peace campaigner Bruce Kent who I’d photographed at various events since around 1990 if not earlier and though I didn’t know him well we often exchanged a few words when I took his photograph and had a little joke in recent years. Bruce died in June 2022 and in March 2023 I photographed Jeremy Corbyn planting a memorial tree to him in Finsbury Park.

Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice

The other was a family friend who died recently and we were disappointed other appointments meant we were not be able to go to his funeral last week. He also appears in a some of my photographs of this and other peace events, sometimes singing in the Raised Voices choir.

Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice

Here is the description of the event I wrote in 2008, although the story is mainly told in the pictures and their captions on My London Diary:

Although the ministry and nearby buildings such as the Old War Office were surrounded by police – rather as if they were expecting a massive attack, the police made no attempt to disperse what was undoubtedly an illegal unauthorised protest under the terms of SOCPA. They did hold a couple of people they caught writing on the walls of the Old War Office, and were at least threatening to charge one of them with causing damage to the building, but otherwise watched benignly, at least until I left to catch my train shortly before the liturgy had finished.

The most moving part of the liturgy was outside the Defence Ministry, where a wooden cross was laid on sackcloth. Ashes were sprinkled on it, and then while those present chanted a ‘litany of the martyrs’, including the names of Franz Jaegerstaetter, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero and Mary Lampard, 21 ‘Theses for today’s church’ by Philip Berrigan were read and then nailed to the cross.

Ash Wednesday Liturgy of Repentance and Resistance


Protest at Condi Rice’s London Visit – Downing St

A couple of hundred ‘Stop the War’ demonstrators were on the pavement facing Downing Street. They had come with a clear message to give Condoleezza Rice, that it was time for the US to get out of other people’s affairs in other countries.

However there was no sign of Condi, who had obviously avoided using the front entrance to miss the protesters, either entering by the back entrance or through another Government building, possibly making use of the extensive network of tunnels underneath Whitehall.

A large crowd of press photographers were also waiting impatiently opposite the front door of Number 10, waiting for her to appear for a press call along with Gordon Brown, but I think they were waiting until after the protesters dispersed.

I could have joined them, but although the press likes to use pictures taken in front of the famous door I find the great majority of them supremely boring. And I don’t carry the long heavy lenses you really need for the situation to take the one in a million images that has some interest. It’s been years since I bothered to go through the security check and into Downing Street.

Welcome for Condi Rice


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.


Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria – 2012

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria: On Saturday 28th January 2012 I photographed two major protests in London, with disabled protesters calling for the dropping of the Welfare Reform Bill and later several groups of protesters outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square arguing for various reasons against US or Western Intervention in Iran or Syria.


Disabled Welfare Reform Road Block – Oxford Circus

Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria - 2012

Disabled People Against Cuts, DPAC, protested at Oxford Circus, chaining wheelchairs together & calling for the dropping of Welfare Reform Bill, urging savings cutting tax evasion by the rich rather than penalising the poor and disabled.

Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria - 2012

I met with some of the protesters outside Holborn Station and others who had arrived by taxi at Great Portland Street. I’m not sure why they had chosen these two meeting points as they are both – like most Central London stations – without step-free access. London Underground has been painfully slow in providing disabled access.

Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria - 2012

I went with them from Great Portland Street to Oxford Circus where they met up with others who had just begun to block the road, going in a line across the end of Regent Street when the lights changed to allow pedestrians to cross and passing a chain through their wheelchairs which they locked to posts on each side.

Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria - 2012

Others walked on the road with placards and banners to support them, but there were enough police in the area to enable them to stop the protesters blocking Oxford Street.

Selma James speaking

Among groups supporting DPAC’s protest were UK Uncut, the Greater London Pensioners and the women’s groups from the Crossroads Centre in north London who had brought their public address system.

Shortly after the street band Rhythms of Resistance turned up and added their sounds to the protest.

Police had quickly managed to divert traffic on streets to get around the protest and were having discussions about how to handle the protest. A FIT team had arrived to photograph everyone (press included) and TSG officers were standing nearby with bolt cutters. But arresting people in wheelchairs is difficult as police need to supply suitable safe transport.

Eventually the officer in charge read out a statement telling the protesters their presence on the road is breaking the law – as of course they knew. He and other officers then went to ask the protesters if they would move. They didn’t and some got out their own handcuffs to handcuff themselves to the chain.

Police kept smiling and talking to the protesters, waiting for them to leave rather than trying to move or arrest them. Eventually after about an hour and a half they did so, having decided they had made their point successfully and it was time to pack up. Probably too nature was beginning to call!

The protest attracted a great deal of coverage in the press for the campaign, while earlier efforts to get their arguments against the bill including earlier less active protests have received very little publicity.

More pictures at Disabled Welfare Reform Road Block.


No War Against Iran & Syria – US Embassy

Tony Benn started the speeches. Jeremy Corbyn waits to speak

I’d left a few minutes before the DPAC protest ended to walk to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square where Stop the War were holding a protest against sanctions and war on Iran and Syria.

When I arrived I found a very confusing situation with several groups of protesters and some noisy heckling with scuffles with the Stop the War stewards.

I think everyone there was against US or Western Intervention in Iran or Syria, but some noisy protests which came to a head while Abbas Eddalat of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran was speaking, from protesters representing the Free Iran ‘Green Movement’ who wanted to make a clear statement of their opposition to the current Iranian regime with its religious bigotry and persecution.

The stewards first tried to argue with them but soon became physical, pushing them roughly away from the protest. Supporters of the Iranian regime joined in along with supporters of Syrian President Asad.

Police seemed bewildered as they tried to sort out the various groups – and there were also some Kurds with a large Iraqi Kurdistan flag.

Eventually the Free Iran protesters were persuaded to hold their own separate protest a few yards away in front of the embassy, though some of them rejoined the Stop the War protest later. Another group, Hands Off the People of Iran were also present and handing out leaflets, against Stop the War which has favoured links with supporters of the regimes in both Syria and Iran.

Police briefly held one young man who was wearing the current Iraqi flag but then released him, with a police officer trying to prevent press taking pictures, saying “He has a right to privacy” – which clearly as I told the officer he has not under UK law when protesting on the public street.

Then there were ‘Anonymous’ in their ‘V for Vendetta’ masks protesting on the other side of the hedge around the gardens to the main protest, and later Stop the War stewards again sprung into action to stop the free expression of dissent when pro-Asad Syrians began their own protest.

Various speakers including Tony Benn, Lindsey German, John McDonnell and others made a clear case against any Western intervention at the main rally – and I give some of their arguments on My London Diary.

More at No War Against Iran & Syria.


FlickrFacebookMy London DiaryHull PhotosLea ValleyParis
London’s Industrial HeritageLondon Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.