Starring Adam Clifford as Jacoob Rees Mogg and Jane Nicholl as Mother Hysteria the cast got together in a pub a short walk from the London Palladium where a full house of mugs were paying £38 a head to come and listen to Mogg.
Together with a small team of supporters the pair walked down to the Palladium, where early comers were queing to get into to the show and told them what they had come to see – and evening with a religious extremist.
It was almost certainly more entertaining than anything that was coming later in the evening when they got inside the theatre, but there were a few in the queue who got a little upset at Class War. The police too showed they lacked a sense of humour and were soon insisting that Class War move further away to the other side of the road.
The protest continued there, with some longer speeches from a few of those present, including a well-known Whitechapel anarchist, although I wasn’t sure how many of those largely out-of-town punters across the road would appreciate the rhyming slang of his placard, ‘Jacob Rees-Joey Ronce.’
Nor for that matter, its accuracy. ‘Mogg-Tax Dodging Snob’ on another placard was however doubly to the point. Behind his backing for Brexit is undoubtedly both the fact that he stands to make millions if not billions from it, and as another placard pointed out, he is truly ‘Lord Snooty’ personified.
The evening then descended further into farce as the police threatened Mother Hysteria with arrest for possession of offensive weapons in the form of some novelty stink bombs. They took her to one side and held her against the wall and searched her, after which the sergeant concerned retreated into a nearby shop and spent at least 20 minutes trying to think of something to put on the notice for her that didn’t sound entirely ridiculous.
I took a lot of pictures, but not all of them were usable. It was yet another occasion when the many buttons and the two control dials on my Nikon cameras attracted my wandering digits, and I found myself suddenly having taken a series of exposures at far too high a shutter speed for the lighting or too slow for the subject movement. I had problems too with flash, and one of my cameras had a problem with the hot shoe, which I think was not making proper contact with the flash resulting in it firing at full output and totally overexposing some frames.
But as you can see at Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show, plenty came out OK.
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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