St Valentine’s Day – Reclaim Love: St Valentine was a Roman Christian, possibly a bishop, who was known for his ministry to Christians who were under persecution by the Roman Empire and was martyred and buried near Rome possibly on February 14th 269 AD. Wikipedia has a lengthy entry which goes into the various other St Valentines and the legends associated with him.
The 14th February was established as the Feast of St Valentine of Rome by the then Pope in AD 496 and much later the celebration was also taken up by both Lutheran and Anglican churches. The day was dropped from the official Roman Catholic list in 1969.
The legends which associate St Valentine with romantic love came much later, probably beginning in the age of Chaucer in the late 14th century and invented by him and others around him. With many variations he was said to have fallen in love with the blind daughter of his jailer and shortly before he was executed to have cured her blindness and to have sent her a note. Like in the later traditions of Valentines cards this one was signed simply: “from your Valentine.”
St Valentine as well as being associated with lovers is also the patron saint of epileptics and beekeepers and those suffering mental illnesses and doubtless there are or were legends associated with these too. Parts allegedly of him are kept as relics in churches in Rome, Madrid, Dublin and around a dozen other places around Europe, including in the Gorbals in Glasgow and Birmingham Oratory.
The Reclaim Love Valentine street parties around the statue we wrongly call Eros at Piccadilly Circus were started by the remarkable Irish poet and activist Venus CuMara. They took place on the Saturday closest to the 14th and in 2009 it was actually on the 14th. In this post are a few of the pictures I took on 14th Feb 2009 at the party, and the text I wrote about the event.
This was the sixth annual Valentine Party at Piccadilly Circus, around the statue of Eros, organised by Venus to celebrate “to celebrate the Greatest thing on Earth and the Greatest thing we have inside…Yes, Love!!!” and it was the largest yet, filling the area around with people.
As well as the party at Picadilly Circus, at least 15 similar events were taking place around the world, in Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Iceland, Finland, Italy, Spain, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand …
The climax to the event was when all of those present formed a giant circle linking hands in the “Historic Annual Earth Healing Circle.” But for several hours we all enjoyed ourselves, dancing to the samba rhythms of resistance and other music, and enjoying the company of other people and remembering what is really important, not just on Valentine’s day but the whole of the year.
Eros may be dominated by those huge neon advertising hoardings the other 354 days of the year, but for one day at least it was surrounded by people dedicated to showing that the best things in life really are free
There are many more pictures on My London Diary at Reclaim Love 6
Tar Sands, Iran & Valentine Party – Three very different events on Saturday February 13th 2013 on the streets of London. First an Olympic-themed protest against one of the dirtiest fossil fuel projects, then a protest by Iranians 31 years after the revolution that brought the Islamic regime to power and finally a Valentine’s Day street party against the commercialisation of the annual event and celebrating the power of love.
Canadian Tar Sands Oily-Olympics – Trafalgar Square
February 13th 2010 was the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Canada, and protesters took advantage of this to stage their own ‘Oily Olympics’, with teams representing BP, Shell and RBS, competing in a ‘Race For the Tar Sands’, complete with a medal ceremony next to Canada House in Trafalgar Square.
The square was in use for an event celebrating the official Olympics complete with giant screens showing ski jumping and an ice sculpture of the Olympic rings. But the protesters set up on the side closest to Canada House for their tug-of-war, a curling event and a relay race for oil.
Getting oil from the tar sands in what is oddly called ‘The Sunrise Project’ uses a process called Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage which produces from 3-5 times the carbon dioxide of traditional oil extraction. Until recently BP considered it to be too economically and environmentally unpleasant, but high oil prices and new management had changed their mind.
As well as their huge carbon impact the UK Tar Sands Network say that extracting oil from the tar sands involves “mass deforestation, water pollution, risks to human health, a major threat to wildlife and the trampling of indigenous rights.”
The heritage wardens who patrol the square for the Mayor of London told the protesters they were not allowed to protest in the square, and called the police when they continued. Police came and talked to them but did not stop the event as it was obviously not causing any obstruction or public order problem. Some of the officers were clearly amused.
It was a fun event with a serious purpose, and most of those taking part were surprisingly competitive. I wrote: “It wasn’t at all clear on what basis the medals were awarded. For those that care about such things, BP got bronze, RBS the silver and Shell struck gold. And none of us were quite sure why there were two penguins present.”
Iran Opposition Rally in London – Parliament Square
The previous Thursday had been the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and had been marked there by both a large pro-government rally and also a ferocious clampdown on opposition groups by riot police, undercover security agents and hard-line militiamen.
The protest in London was by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). The NCRI is a coalition of Iranian dissident groups but is dominated by the PMOI, which was proscribed in the UK at the request of the Iranian Mullahs in 2001; the ban was lifted against the UK government’s wishes after they lost an EU court appeal in 2009.
The PMOI were shabbily treated by the US after they signed a ceasefire agreement with them in 2003 for which they gave up most of their weapons and were confined to their camp in Iraq, leaving them at the doubtful mercy of the Iraq government when the US troops left.
In 1995 the NCRI announced their Charter of Fundamental Freedoms for Iran, which would uphold all international agreements on human rights such as “freedom of association, freedom of thought and expression, media, political parties, trade unions, councils, religions and denominations, freedom of profession, and prevention of any violation of individual and social rights and freedoms.”
They call for a republic based on popular vote, the abolition of the death penalty, gender equality, a modern legal system without cruel and degrading punishments, the recognition of private property, private investment and the market economy and a foreign policy of peaceful coexistence without nuclear weapons.
As well as many speeches the rally had a display of photograph of some of the 120,000 Iranians killed by the Iranian regime and pictures of people being attacked at demonstrations in Iraq, with a street theatre piece in which protesters were attacked by a bearded cleric and a militia man and dragged to a waiting hangman’s nooses.
Reclaim Love’s free Valentine Party around the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus was started by Irish poet and love activist Venus CuMara to reclaim St Valentine’s day from commercialism and to try to harness the power of love to save the world.
The event in 2010 was one of the largest, with people coming together not just around Eros where the event had begun six years earlier but there were events on this day at a total of 40 locations around the world – elsewhere in England, in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Pakistan, India, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Iceland, France, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, the USA, Canada and Australia – including surfers who were celebrating in the ocean off Perth, Australia.
The party began with the powerful drumming of Rhythms of Resistance which attracted a great deal of attention, including many tourists in the area who stopped to watch and some danced and took part.
A large supply of free ‘Reclaim Love’ t-shirts were handed out by Venus as an expression of the “more fearless-generous-sharing-Love-centred way of thinking” behind the event and others handed out free cakes and sweets and offered free hugs.
The climax of the event, celebrated around the world at 15.30 GMT was when people joined hands in a large circle around the area in an ‘Earth Healing Circle‘ and together repeated an ancient Indian prayer for peace in their own language. The English version “MAY ALL THE BEINGS IN ALL THE WORLDS BE HAPPY AND AT PEACE” people repeated here was also on the free t-shirts.
This year there were so many people at the event that in places around Piccadilly Circus the circle was two or three deep.
Venus hoped to keep building the ‘Reclaim Love’ movement and felt it would really have a tangible effect if there were 1.5 million or more people taking part, a number she hoped it would reach worldwide by 2015. Unfortunately for various reasons it never managed to reach that critical mass. The 16th ‘Reclaim Love’ free Valentine’s Day street party which took place in 2019 was I think the last, though I could be wrong. There is still a Facebook group, but this year there is only a single post on it, “Hi lovers are we doing anything this year on the 17th is it?” which has got no reply so far.
Kingsland High St, Dalston, London. Sat 9 Feb 2019
Extinction Rebellion, XR, was founded in May 2018 by a small group who met in Stroud, including Gail Bradbook, Simon Bramwell and Roger Hallam along with others from the direct action network Rising Up. I’d photographed some of these people before at protests against Heathrow expansion and over air pollution on the streets of London.
Roger Hallam in particular had played a leading role in the ‘Stop Killing Londoners’ protests which perhaps had some influence on getting Sadiq Khan to take some action on this with the setting up of low emission zones, whose planned extension to the whole of Greater London is now exciting considerable controversy. I’d also photographed him at his campaign to get King’s College to divest from fossil fuel companies and supporting the campaign for better pay and conditions for low paid workers at the LSE
Police arrest Roger Hallam for decorating the LSE, April 2017
Since helping to form XR, Hallam has gone on to take part in other high profile protests and spent time in prison over breaching bail conditions by holding a toy drone without batteries close to the airport. The whole plan to fly drones in the Heathrow exclusion area had been a publicity stunt, never a serious attempt to disrupt or endanger flights, but gained a huge amount of media publicity, which perhaps helped to increase public awareness of the contribution to climate change and pollution of air transport.
XR continues to attract wide support for its non-violent protests highlighting both the devastating effects of global heating and the continuing failure of governments including our own to take action on the scale needed to combat it. It’s large public protests began with a mass reading of its ‘Declaration of Rebellion‘ in Parliament Square in October 2018 with Greta Thunberg as one of the speakers and continued with mass protests in London and elsewhere, becoming a global movement.
Its announcement at the start of 2023 that it was taking a rest caused some consternation among its supporters, but XR soon made clear that this was for a ‘100 days’ campaign to prepare for ‘The Big One’ on 21 April 2023, https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/ when they intend that 100,000 people will gather outside the Houses of Parliament “To demand a fair society and a citizen-led end to the fossil fuel era.”
The street party in Hackney on Saturday 9th February 2019 was rather smaller, with perhaps a thousand taking part. Unlike in some later protests the police decided to facilitate the event rather than try to block or disperse it, closing the road and setting up diversions for traffic as people blocked the usually busy A10 for two hours with speeches, music and spoken word performances, t-shirt printing, face painting and free food, with dancing to a samba band.
At the end of the two hour party after a brief march up and down a short section of the road, the protesters moved off the street to continue their protest party in Gillett Square, and shortly after this I went home.
Police after all do facilitate other large events which block our streets, in particular sporting events such as the London Marathon, some cycling events, the Chinese New Year, Notting Hill Carnival and more. But later XR protests have been more widespread and longer lasting and clearly the police’s political masters have put considerable pressure on the police to take a more draconian approach – and at times to go beyond the law to do so.
The response of the government has been to produce new laws. The Public Order Bill currently going through parliament gives much more extreme powers to police and courts, including Serious Disruption Prevention Orders which will restrict the movement of people, who they can meet and even their use of the internet, an expansion of stop and search powers, enabling them to search without any suspicion, various new protest-related offences, some vaguely defined allowing almost anything to be an offence and even police powers to shut down protests before they begin.
Free food at the party
The Public Order Bill re-introduces most of the amendments that were rejected by the House of Lords in January 2022 and so did not form part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
The march ended in Gillett Square, freeing the road for traffic
The texts from two posts from My London Diary for Saturday 12 Feb 2005, sixteen years ago. I’ve had to change the formatting a little to fit this site, but otherwise the text is identical. There are more pictures from each event on My London Diary.
Campaign against Climate Change Kyoto Climate March
London, 12 Feb, 2005
When i talked about the dangers of increasing co2 emission and the need to cut down use of fossil fuels 35 years ago, i was a crank. now everyone except the usa oil lobby and their political poodles recognises that climate change is for real. even blair has recognised it as the most vital issue facing us, threatening the future of the planet, although actually taking effective action still is a step too far for him. however he did call for a conference to examine the problem, which told him and us that we had perhaps ten years to take action before it would be to late.
Caroline Lucas
kyoto is history now thanks to the US boycott, (although it comes into effect this week), but it should have been the first inadequate step on the road to action. every journey has to start somehow, and even a half-hearted step is better than none, and would have led the way to others. what got in its way was texan oil interests, whose political face is george w bush.
i’ve photographed most of the campaign against climate change’s kyoto marches over the past few years. this one was probably the largest, and certainly excited more media interest, truly a sign that the issue has become news.
starting in lincoln’s inn fields, the march stopped first outside the uk offices of exxonmobil, on the corner of kingsway, for a brief declaration, then for a longer demonstration outside the australian high commission in aldwych (with guest appearances by ‘john howard’ and an australian ‘grim reaper’ with cork decorated hat), before making its way past trafalgar square and picadilly circus to the us embassy.
i left them in picadilly and returned to eros, where o-i-l, one in love, were organising a small gathering to “reclaim love” and “send love and healing to all the beings in the world” on the eve of valentine’s day. it’s something we could all do with, and it was good to see people enjoying themselves around the statue of eros, in what is usually one of the most depressing spots on london’s tourist circuit.
there was the samba band again, rhythms of resistance, (hi guys) and dancing and people generally being happy and friendly and free reclaim love t shirts and apart from the occasional showers it was harmless fun. rather to my surprise, the police either didn’t notice it or decided to ignore it, an unusually sensible strategy.
This year there can be no street party at Eros in Piccadilly Circus, but Venus CuMara invites you to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Operation Infinite Love, Global Annual Love and Peace Meditation/street party by joining her on her Youtube ‘love stream / live stream/ life stream’ Global Love Meditation at 3.33 pm on St Valentine’s Day, Sunday 14th February 2021.
“MAY ALL THE BEINGS IN ALL THE WORLDS BE HAPPY AND AT PEACE”
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.
My May Day started as usual with the march from Clerkenwell Green, dominated visually by members of the Turkish and Kurdish communities and with the usual mix of trade unionists and left-wing groups, perhaps even more international in nature than in previous years.
The march to Trafalgar Square was made a little livelier than usual by the presence of Class War and other anarchist and anti-capitalist protesters, some of whom took over the whole of the road rather than keep to one carriageway. Police tried hard to control them and made at least one arrest, which led to some scuffles.
One issue that dominated the rally in Trafalgar Square was the strike against privatisation at the National Gallery which overlooks the square, and in particular the victimisation by the management of Candy Udwin, the PCS rep there.
Later in the afternoon anti-capitalist protesters met up at Tower Hill, and led by lass War and their Lucy Parsons banner went on to block Tower Bridge this afternoon and blocked traffic, calling for social housing rather than social cleansing for Londoners and an end to cuts in foundation courses and other aspects of education. It was a lively event, and I left them when they marched off along Tooley St past London Bridge to protest in Westminster.
I walked back across Tower Bridge and on to Aldgate where Class War were organising their ‘Reclaim the Beats’ “epic street party” outside the tower block where they had held around 30 weekly ‘Poor Doors’ protests against the separate entrance down a side alley for the social housing tenants in the block.
A huge cheer went up as they unfurled a new banner showing leading politicians with the message “All Fucking Wankers”, a replacement for that seized by police at an earlier protest. Although it had later been judged to be an acceptable political comment, the police contrived to lose it rather than face the indignity of returning it to Class War.
A few minutes later a mobile sound system in the form of a small house on wheels with ‘Affordable Housing’ across its roof and the party really kicked off. After a few minutes people moved out to block the main road and then to march off to protest at Tower Bridge and in Bermondsey. I was too tired to go with them and instead went down the stairs into Aldgate East tube.
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.
Like everyone else at this year’s Reclaim Love street party I was delighted that Venus CuMara, who founded this remarkable annual street party back in 2004 was there, and to hug her and to hear her speak.
I missed that first event in 2004 as I was in Paris with my wife for Valentine’s Day and her birthday a few days later. This year was the 16th ‘Reclaim Love’ free Valentine’s Day street party and like all except I think the first which began in Trafalgar Square, took place around the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, with drumming, music, dancing poetry to celebrate reclaim love as a manifestation of the human spirit from the sleazy commercialisation which has taken over Valentine’s Day as a festival of profit.
Many of us still have the free t-shirts which were handed out to all who wanted them at several of these events, with their message “MAY ALL THE BEINGS IN ALL THE WORLDS BE HAPPY AND AT PEACE, though mine is now a little stained and doesn’t often get worn.
It was this same mantra that was repeated as those present made a large circle around Piccadilly Circus to share Venus’s message of peace and love around the world. Venus called it a “Massive Healing Reclaim Love Meditation Circle beaming Love and Happiness and our Vision for world peace out into the cosmos“.
Police stood back and watched this unofficial event each year, sometimes coming to persuade those who had climbed up onto the top of the fountain to come down. I think the only more serious intervention came when one year everyone went to the sacred grove of trees in Green Park to make the large circle there, and the police in the park were definitely not amused.
Beginning in 2005, I’ve photographed the street party almost every year and shared the pictures on-line, both on Facebook and on My London Diary. I missed 2016, when I was too ill to go, and 2017 when I was in Hull (both celbrating the city of culture and again my wife’s birthday.)
Venus and I have talked on several occasions about bringing out a book with my pictures of the events and her poems and reflections, but haven’t got around to making it happen.
A couple of years ago we were shocked to hear that Venus was suffering from cancer, and she missed the 2018 party at a retreat in Indonesia. But this year she was back again, though with the cancer still spreading through her body, speaking about it and about how we should all hug ourselves and each other. Her cancer has made her even more determined to spread her message of love.
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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.
Extinction Rebellion are of course right in their analysis of the situation, that we face an unprecedented challenge to the future of human life on earth, and that governments around the world are failing to take this seriously enough. The scientific evidence keeps stacking up but politicians either deny or let themselves be diverted from real action by the lobbyists from companies still making huge profits from polluting.
What is less clear is whether the actions they are taking will lead to the drastic changes which are clearly needed. They face huge opposition from extremely wealthy and powerful companies and the many ultra-rich who are doing very nicely thank you from our status quo and have yet to realise that there is little point in laughing all the way to the bank in a dying world.
Clearly too, as my pictures I think show, XR’s appeal is still largely to an educated middle class (though my apologies to the minority who will be insulted by this description.) The crowd that gathered on Kingsland High Street for the protest was very different from that thronging the adjoining Ridley Road market.
XR have attracted much flak from parts of the left, particularly for their attitude to the police and arrests, particularly for encouraging people to be arrested and to cooperate with the police, to treat them as friends. For many on the left, ACAB is a matter of faith, and sometimes of bitter experience. Certainly the police seem too ready to act as agents of the state, even where this means perverting justice – and parts of our legal system encourage this.
But at least XR are doing something, and their activities in recent months have begun a shift in the media and perhaps even in our currently Brexit-obsessed politics. While their keyboard critics have nothing to show. The Hackney Street Party may have been just a pleasant event on a nice day causing a little congestion as traffic was diverted by police around it, it was a small step in raising awareness – and part of a much larger campaign, aiming to build a wider movement. Perhaps XR will at some point be overtaken by other more radical actions, with backing from political parties, trade unions and the working class, but at the moment there is little sign of them even putting on their running shoes let alone coming to the starting blocks.
There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.
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.
