Ian Tomlinson Killing & Sri Lanka Genocide: On Saturday 11th April 2009 people marched from Bethnal Green Police Station to the spot were news vendor died after an unprovoked attack by police officer Simon Harwood. I also photographed a much larger march by Tamils against the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka.
March in Memory of Ian Tomlinson – Bethnal Green Police Station & Bank
G20 Meltdown, the organisers of the protest at Bank on April 1st 2009 where police officer Simon Harwood attacked Ian Tomlinson leading to his death, had organised a memorial march from Bethnal Green Police Station to the place where he died a few yards away from the attack.
Police discuss the march with Chris Knight
Tomlinson was not involved in the protest, but simply trying to make his way home after having been working, selling newspapers in the City. The protest would probably have been over by the time he was killed, but police had turned what had been intended as a carnival party into something far more sinister, kettling and then attacking many demonstrators and killing Tomlinson. There were numerous injuries and one photographer had his teeth knocked out, but I had seen the kettle coming and had left the area to cover another event.
At the Tomlinson family’s request, the march was peaceful, silent and respectful. Before it started his stepson Paul King spoke briefly, describing the family’s trauma from the tragic death of his step-father, a “much-loved and warm-hearted man,” and pain at seeing the video of the assault, and he hoped that the investigation would be full and that “action will be taken against any police officer who contributed to Ian’s death through his conduct.”
Paul King
As usual the investigation was carried out by the IPCC and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge Harwood. After an inquest verdict of unlawful killing the CPS had to change their mind and charged him with manslaughter.
The sisters of Sean Rigg, murdered by police at Brixton the previous August were on the march
The jury was unable to hear evidence about his behaviour in previous incidents and was seriously misled both by some of Harwood’s own evidence and the evidence given by the first pathologist who had examined the body, Dr Freddy Patel. He had destroyed some vital evidence, puring away body fluids and had a long record of botched postmortems, having previously been suspended twice and finally was struck off the medical register in 2012.
After Harwood’s acquittal he was dismissed from the police. Tomlinson’s family took civil proceedings and in 2013, “the Metropolitan Police Service paid Tomlinson’s family an undisclosed sum and acknowledged that Harwood’s actions had caused Tomlinson’s death.
I left the march before it arrived at Bank, but returned the following day to photograph the flowers that had been left in Royal Exchange Buildings where the assault had taken place and a vigil was being held by Chris Knight, one of the G20 Meltdown organisers and a few others.
Tamils March – Stop Sri-Lanka Genocide – Temple to Hyde Park
A huge crowd had assembled on the Embankment at Temple, perhaps as many as 200,000, a very high proportion of Tamils in the UK who are thought to number around 300,000, around two thirds of them of Sri Lankan origin. It was a crowd with very few white faces.
Despite the size of the protest there appeared to be very little UK media interest and I saw no photographers or TV crews from major UK media covering the march to Hyde Park. Where there are usually a crowd of photographers in front at the start of large marches in London, for this one there was just me and three other freelances, none of whom get regular work for the mass media.
By April 2009 the civil war in Sri Lanka was clearly coming to an end, with the Tamil Tigers having been pushed back into a very small area. They had been defeated at a major battle at Aanandapuram on 5th April and the final assault by the government forces came at the end of the month with Sri Lanka declaring victory on May 16th.
Many of those taking part in the march were clearly supporting the “the LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. A few carried actual tigers, fortunately only large toys, but many more wore the colours or carried flags or portraits of the founder and leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Pirapaharan.“
The LTTE was proscribed in 2000 and they were clearly committing an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 by supporting the group or wearing clothing which arouses the “reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.” But clearly the Tamils were not intending to cause any serious trouble and police sensibly made no attempt to arrest them all. Only three arrests were reported.
The Tamils had lost in Sri Lanka and many both civilians and combatants were killed during the civil war – possibly almost 150,000 in the last 8 months of the civil war. Around 300,000 were transferred into special closed camps, described by many as concentration camps – they were slowly released and the camps were closed by the end of September 2012.
Heathrow, Gaza & the Tamils: On Saturday 17th January 2009 I took a bus to Heathrow for a flash mob against a third runway, then the tube into Westminster for a protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza in Trafalgar Square which ended with a march to protest at Downing Street, where Tamils were protesting against the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka.
No Third Runway Decision Day Flashmob – Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport
Earlier in the week the Labour government under Gordon Brown had announced they were to press ahead with airport expansion and build a third runway at Heathrow despite the environmental consequences. Several hundred people turned up at Terminal 5 for a ‘flashmob’ protest at 12 noon.
“Attracting most press attention were four brave young ladies who had saved the ten quid for a red ‘STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION’ t-shirt and instead opted for red body paint with a black message across their midriffs, ‘Simply No Slaughter‘ and a pair of strategically placed gold sticking plasters proclaiming ‘art‘ and ‘port‘ (port was indeed on the left.)”
Local MP John McDonnell looks a little embarassed
Many local residents were there, some with their children, along with John Stewart of HACAN (Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise) the organisers of the event, and local MP John McDonnell who was being congratulated for his seizing the mace in the House of Commons when the announcement was made.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown had approved the airport expansion
The demonstrators chanted, thrown red balloons in the air, red tennis balls at an ‘Aunt Sally’ of Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon and conga’ed around the area while a large squad of photographers photographed and videoed.
The campaigners were surrounded in a loose ring by police and airport security who made no attempt to stop them, though police had made some searches before the event began. Some of them were clearly amused by the event as were a few passengers making their way through the departure area.
John Stewart of HACAN thanks everyone for coming
After almost three-quarters of an hour of protest John Stewart thanked everyone for coming and repeated the determination of all those involved to keep up the fight to ensure that, despite the decision, the runway will never be built. So far it has been prevented, though it seems likely that despite the increasingly obvious and critical environmental crisis our current Labour government will resurrect this enviornmental catastrophe, though it remains doubtful if the private finance required can be found.
A cheer for John McDonnell
And there was a cheer for John McDonnell’s action in Parliament and a final chance to pelt the Transport Secretary before we all left for buses or tube.
1000 Dead and Nothing Said – End the Slaughter of Gaza – Trafalgar Square
A man burns an Israeli flag in at the rally in Trafalgar Square
I was a little late arriving at the rally in Trafalgar Square but got there just in time to hear Tony Benn being announced and getting a huge greeting. As I commented he was “One of the greatest political figures of the last 50 years, [and} it’s a national tragedy that while he has so often been right on major issues, governments have seldom if ever followed his lead.”
An 11 year old Palestinian girl, now living in Manchester speaks
The square was fairly full with perhaps 5-10,000 protesters though there had been a much larger national protest in London a week earlier against the attacks on Gaza in previous weeks that had killed over a thousand Palestinians including more than 300 children.
Palestinian singer Reem Kelani spoke before singing a traditional song
After some more speeches a group of children all dressed in white robes marked with bloody red handprints who had been standing on the plinth came down and went with a deputation to take a letter from the rally to Downing St, calling for an immediate ceasefire and reparations for the war damage inflicted by the Israeli attacks.
I went with them down Whitehall to Downing St, where police led them into a pen close to the gates.
While Diane Abbott, MP, PSC General Secretary Betty Hunter and Lindsay German of Stop the War with others took the letter into Downing St, the children posed for pictures, at first while standing and then lying on the ground as if the innocent victims of an Israeli attack.
But unlike those 300 childen in Gaza, these children were just playing dead.
A few hours after this protest Israel announced a ceasefire on its own terms. The end of the killing was welcome, but there was no justice for Palestine.
Several hundred Tamils were densely packed into a pen opposite opposite Downing Street to draw attention to the continuing attacks on Tamil civilians, schools, hospitals and churches by the Sri Lankan Army and Air Force and to call for an independent Tamil state, Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka.
Tamils accuse the Sri Lankan government of genocide, and claim that in the past month alone over 300,000 Tamils have been forced to move out of their homes by the bombardment.
The decades long civil war which ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers had attracted relatively little attention in the mainstream media, but the assasination of leading Sri Lankan opposition newspaper editor Lasantha Wickramatunga on his way to work a week earlier and the publication of the obituary he had written for himself, And then they came for me, was the subject of a two page article in The Guardian on the day of this protest.
Dangleway Revisited, Tamils Protest Killings: On Tuesday 23rd July 2013 I revisited the Museum of Docklands and then took the DLR to Royal Victoria for another ride on the Arab Emirates cableway in a detour on my way into central London to photograph a rally by Tamils at Downing Street.
Another Dangleway Ride – Royal Victoria Dock to North Greenwich
It was only a few weeks since my first ride on London’s cable car across the River Thames, but I was in docklands for a second visit to the ‘Estuary’ show at the Museum of Docklands. As one of those featured in the show I had been at the opening, but that was more about meeting people than seeing the work, though I had taken a short look at it all.
The dangleway is fairly pointless in terms of transport, but is one of London’s cheaper tourist attractions, and though short it joins two areas of some interest. I suppose the views might not be to everyone’s interest, though I found them fascinating, and its certainly the cheapest way to do a little aerial photography.
Tamils have long been the subject of discrimination in Sri Lanka, and the Civil War there from 1983 to 2009 against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam resulted in around 100,000 Tamil civilain deaths, as well as around 50,000 fighters on each side. The figures are unclear as the Sri Lankan government has always refused independent, international investigation to ascertain the full impact of the war.
According to Wikipedia, “Since the end of the civil war, the Sri Lankan state has been subject to much global criticism for violating human rights as a result of committing war crimes through bombing civilian targets, usage of heavy weaponry, the abduction and massacres of Sri Lankan Tamils and sexual violence.”
The Tamil Tigers also became notorious for attacks on civilians, suicide bombings. assassinations and the use of child soldiers. The final stages of the war in 2006-9 were particularly bloody, and ended in a total defeat of the LTTE.
The British Tamil Forum at had come to Downing St on the 30th anniversary of the 1983 Black July when 3000 Tamils died in riots across Sri Lanka in an anti-Tamil pogrom orchestrated by the government.
This was not the first anti-Tamil pogrom, but its unprecedented frenzy of violence was a turning point after which Tamils knew they could never be safe in a state dominated by the Sinhalese.
In the four years since the Mullivaikkal Massacre of 2009 Tamils claim that an estimated 147,000 Tamils are either dead or missing, and they see the only solution as the formation of an independent Tamil state – ‘Tamil Eelam.’
The protest called on the UK to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM 2013) in November 2013 hosted by Sri Lanka. They see this as legitimising a state which has been severley criticised by the UN and human rights organisation for the atrocities it has been committing.
People at the protest signed letters and cards calling on HRH The Prince of Wales to uphold the values of the Commonwealth and reconsider his decision to attend CHOGM 2013.
Highgate Hill Murugan Chariot Festival: Back in the first decade of this century my work covered a wider range of cultural events than now, including many religious events on the streets of London. The 2010 election which put into power a Tory-led government dedicated to making the poor poorer and themselves and their friends richer changed that for me, leading to 14 years dominated by covering protests – something which had only been one strand of my work before. I’m currently not sure if our recent election will change my work which for the last months has been completely dominated by Palestine.
I didn’t entirely stop photographing religious festivals and on Sunday 10th July 2011 went to Highgate where the annual Highgate Hill Murugan Chariot Festival was taking place.
Here I’ll copy what I wrote about it in 2011 with a few of the many pictures I made at the event. You can see more pictures on My London Diary.
Murugan is a popular Hindu God in Tamil areas and the patronal god of the Tamil homeland Tamil Nadu. As God of war Murugan with six heads has a divine lance and other weapons and rides a peacock.
In the Chariot Festival people make offerings to Murugan of baskets of fruits, particularly coconuts, which are blessed and returned.
Men on one side and women on the other pull on the long ropes to take the chariot around the neighbourhood, while a conch shell gives an audible warning of its movement; other women carry kavadi (burdens) offered to Murugan, chanting and carrying of pots, possibly of coconut milk on their heads.
Some men roll half-naked along the ground behind the chariot holding coconuts. People sweep the road to make their progress less painful, and others anoint them with sacred ashes.
Highgate Hill Murugan Temple is one of the oldest and most famous in the UK, but the celebrations here seemed to be a little more restrained than those I’ve photographed at some other London Murugan temples.
Perhaps surprisingly, in Sri Lanka Murugan is also revered by Sinhalese Buddhists.
On the ‘History‘ page of the Highgatehill Murugan Temple web site you can read how the Hindu association of Great Britain was founded in London on 23rd October 1966, and in 1977 was able to buy a spacious freehold property at 200A, Archway Road, Highgate Hill. Here they built the Temple which includes a library, two Concert Halls, a prayer hall and a Priest’s flat which was opened in 1979, with a three storey Temple added a few years later. It was the first Sri Llankan Hindu Temple in the UK.
Nakba, NHS, Guantánamo, Sri Lanka: On Saturday 18th May 2013 I began work outside Parliament at a protest against Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, then went across the Thames to the Festival Hall for the start of a march to defend the NHS before going the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square for a ‘murder scene’ in solidarity with hunger strikers at Guantánamo. There I also photographed a woman protesting for the release of her husband arrested 9 years ago by US forces in Iraq. Finally I met a march by several thousands of Tamils calling for and end to the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. You will find much more detail (and many more pictures) on each of these protests at links below to My London Diary.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when Israel was created, Palestinians call for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
Several hundred people came to the protest, including a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism, as well as many of Jewish or Palestinian origin. As well as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign the protest was also supported by many other groups – a long list on My London Diary – and speeches were continuing when I left for another event.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
Thousands had gathered by the Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, including many groups opposed to hospital closures around London, trade unionists and others concerned the the government is ending the NHS.
An unprecedented coalition of Londoners, including medical staff, trade unions, health campaigners, patients and others have been alarmed at what they see as an attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
You can read more about the crisis in the NHS in 2013 in the post on My London Diary, but of course this has continued and is still making the news. Despite their protestations it seems clear that the Tories are trying hard to run down the NHS so that the population lose its trust and love for our universal free public – and would allow them to eventually replace it with US-style insurance based healthcare which would greatly increase costs and generate huge profits for private health companies.
I went with the march across Waterloo Bridge and down Strand to Charing Cross, leaving it as it was waiting to enter Whitehall for a rally there.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
As I arrived there were 8 black-hooded ‘prisoners’ in orange suits lying on the pavement, the number of prisoners who have died there in suspicious circumstances who had previously taken part in sustained hunger strikes. At least seven of them had the cause of death reported as ‘suicide’.
Other protesters drew lines around the bodies on the ground and surrounded the area with ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Enter‘ incident tape. The bodies then stood up and there was a short enactment of forced feeding by a man wearing an Obama mask.
Others held placards and posters, some including quotations from Thomas Jefferson and other historic and prominent Americans, and there were speeches about the events in Guantanamo, where British resident Shaker Aamer was still held despite having been cleared for release. You can read more, including a statement by one of the organisers, on My London Diary.
As I left some of the poems written in Guantánamo by Shaker Aamer were being read.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Also protesting outside the embassy as she has for a number of weekends was Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when held by them, and his now being tortured by the Iraqis. He is also on hunger strike. His young daughter Zeinab came and spoke briefly to the Guantanamo protesters, telling them that she wanted her daddy to be released.
Later she was joined by a small group of Muslim men and boys who stood with her.
It was a busy day for protests at at the US Embassy were a small group of supporters of Syrian President Assad, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) who had come to protest against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
Finally I rushed away to join thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK who were marching through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre. Many were dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka and some wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Tamils are disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place and is still continuing in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax. I noted on My London Diary that I could see no other non-Tamil photographers covering the event.
On My London Diary you can read a statement by the British Tamil Forum who had organised the march. I left as the rally in Waterloo Place was about to start, partly because I was tired but also because I thought few of the speeches would be in English.
DPAC – Stop & Scrap Universal Credit: A couple of days ago the media were carrying news of a report by the Resolution Foundation on the working of the Universal Credit benefit first introduced in 2013. This found that seven in 10 (71%) families on UC were worse off in real terms now than they would have been under the previous benefits, and that out of work people with disabilities were those likely to have lost most.
Six years ago, DPAC were already pointing this out and on Wednesday 18th April 2018 campaigners from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), MHRN (Mental Health Resistance Network), Black Triangle, Winvisible and others began a nationwide day of action against Universal Credit in London with a rally in Old Palace Yard and a protest inside Parliament.
Security meant I was unable to cover their protest inside the Houses of Parliament but I met those who had been protesting inside when they came out to join those protesting outside and held a rally in Old Palace Yard.
As that rally ended the campaigners marched into Parliament Square where they blocked the roadway for around half an hour before ending their protest.
DPAC and others say that Universal Credit has so many flaws it must be scrapped, calling it “an economic and political disaster bringing further distress and impoverishment to those forced to endure it“.
Back in 2018 they pointed out it has been particularly disastrous for disabled people. The removal of Severe and Enhanced Disability Premiums means single disabled people lose around £2,000 per year and a disabled couple over £4,000.
There have been some changes in Universal Credit since 2018, but these have mainly been administrative and have not affected the basic unfairness towards the disabled. The Resolution Foundation report suggests that a single person with a long-term disability which prevents them from working would now be £2,800 per year worse off than under the old benefits system.
Their report suggests overall cost of Universal Credit in 2028 will be about £86bn a year, while under the previous system it would have been £100bn, a saving of £14bn, which is being made to the cost of those disabled and others out of work – the poorest groups in our society. In contrast those working and also claiming UC will be a little better off than under to previous benefits system.
As always police found dealing with disabled protesters difficult. It doesn’t look good to be harassing them in the way they would normally act to protesters, and they have a great problem in making arrests of people in wheel chairs or on mobility vehicles. Apparently the Met have only one vehicle which can safely carry either – and only in limited numbers, perahps one at a time.
As well as this protest there was also a large protest in Parliament Square by Kashmiris and Indians from many sections of the community including Tamils, Sikhs, Ravidass, Dalits, Muslims and others against the visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and smaller groups supporting him and his ultra-right Hindu supremacist policies. Indians protest President Modi’s visit Hindus support Modi Save Girl, Educate Girl
And in late afternoon I went to join Environmental group Biofuelwatch holding their ‘Time to Twig’ Masked Ball Forest Flashmob outside the Marylebone hotel where the largest international biomass conference was taking place. ‘Time to Twig’ Masked Ball
My day in London on Saturday 11th October 2008 – 14 years ago
100 Days to stop Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab! Shell Centre
The ‘Hands of Iraqi Oil’ coalition including Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and supported by the Stop the War Coalition protested at the Shell Centre against plans to had over most of Iraq’s oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.
From 1961 on the Iraqi government took increasing control of the oil industry in Iraq, finally nationalising it it 1970. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq it provided 95% of the government’s revenues.
Any lingering doubts about the true reason behind the US-led invasion were dispelled by the grab for the country’s key national resource, a move strongly supported by expert consultants supplied by the UK and US who previously worked at a high level for companies like Shell and BP who drafted the bill for the giveaway which is opposed by Iraqi trade unions and oil experts.
The protest took place at the start of the final 100 days of George W Bush’s administration and began at Shell’s UK headquarters on the South Bank before the samba band, ‘oil workers’ and other demonstrators with a huge and grotesque US Vice President Dick Chaney set off to make their way to BP’s HQ in St James’s Square and on to the US Embassy. But I needed to go to another protest.
Freedom not Fear 2008 – New Scotland Yard, Victoria St
Freedom not fear 2008 events were taking place in over 20 countries to demonstrate against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organisations.
In the UK the main event was at New Scotland Yard in London, opposed to the restriction of the right to demonstrate under SOCPA, the intimidatory use of photography by police FIT squads, the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.
Although police handed out notifications under the SOCPA legislation warning them that protesting in the zone around Westminster they were in was illegal, neither the police nor the demonstrators seemed to be taking this very seriously in the 45 minutes or so I was there or when I briefly returned an hour later.
Rosary Crusade of Reparation – Westminster Cathedral
Half a mile or so up the road people were gathering outside the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation, one of the larger walks of public witness by Catholics in London.
The Rosary campaign was begun in Austria in 1947 by Franciscan Fr Petrus Pavlicek who prayed for his country to be freed from its communist occupiers and it attracted half a million supporters. The first annual parade with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima wasin 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12. This feast celebrated the defeat in 1683 of Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.
The London procession takes place on the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the final appearance of Our Lady at Fatima in October 1917, close to the end of the First World War. Those present saw the sun dancing around in the sky, and she promised peace and an end to war if men showed contrition for their sins and changed their lives.
This was the 25th annual procession in London, starting from Westminster Cathedral and making its way to a service at Brompton Oratory. The statue of Our Lady of Fatima was carried by the Catholic Police Guild and two thousand or more Catholics walked behind saying Rosary and singing hymns devoted to Mary.
This year’s procession had as its special theme atonement for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill then passing through Parliament.
I left the procession as it started off and walked back past New Scotland Yard to Parliament Square, where several protests were taking place. Tamils were calling for an end to genocide in Sri Lanka and for an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of Sri Lanka.
In the centre of the square was a small protest by London Against Detention demanding an end to the detention of asylum seekers and the closure of immigration detention centres.
And Ben and Ben of ‘Still Human Still Here” were approaching the end of their two week protest in Parliament Square over the scandalous treatment of asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country. They spent two weeks in a tent in the square living on the emergency rations that the Red Cross will supply to these inhumanely treated asylum seekers.
Brian Haw was then still in the square, then in his seventh year of long-term protest. As usual I went to talk to him, and was there when a man came up to laugh at him and insult him. He smelt strongly of alcohol, was talking nonsense and acting unpredictably. One of Brian’s supporters stood between him and Brian who was filming him. I put down my bag as I took photographs in case I needed to step in and help, but fortunately he eventually moved away.
Danny was lying on the grass and called out to me as I walked past after talking to Brian. He told me he had been on hunger strike for two weeks demanding a proper investigation into his case. He claims to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother but I found it hard to make much sense of his allegations.
While I had been talking to Danny I’d seen a group of people on the street opposite carrying placards go up Parliament Street and I’d later caught up with them at the top of Whitehall. I found they were Obama supporters hoping to find and persuade Americans here to register and vote in the election.
Families Separated, Gaza, Ghouta and Sri Lanka – On Saturday 23rd August 2014 I photographed four protests in Westminster, one against an aspect of our racist immigration policies, the second against the UK selling arms to Israel which have been used in attacks on Gaza (along with a counter demonstration), the anniversary of chemical attacks by the Syrian regime and a protest calling for UK support against the continuing genocide of the Tamil nation.
Divided Families protest over cruelty – Downing St
The cruel and unfair immigration rules set up by the Home Office under Theresa May mean that anyone earning less than £18,600 was unable to bring a non-EU spouse into the country (Brexit means that similar rules now apply to most EU countries.)
This income requirement discriminates against women, the retired and disabled young and many minority ethnic people who have on average lower incomes than the general population. For couples with children, the income limit is even higher, and to secure visas for a spouse and two children you would need an income of £24,800.
Fees for applications are also expensive – from £1048 to £1538 per person and applicants may also need to pay a healthcare premium of from £1560 to £3120 for adults and around three-quarters of this for each child. For applications made in the UK there is an extra £800 if you want a faster decision. And applicants also need to supply a great deal of documentation.
The policy, which also includes tougher English Language tests, a proof of greater attachment to the UK than of any other country and extending the probationary period from two to five years, is in direct contradiction of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which states:
‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.’
Universal Declaration on Human Rights
People at the protests included many whose families were divided as they were unable to meet the income levels, as well as a number of parents and friends of divided families.
Many carried placards with images of the divided families, along with captions such as ‘I WANT MY DADDY TO CUDDLE ME NOT SKYPE ME’. I felt deeply for those caught by what seem to be vindictive, unnecessary and totally insupportable polices. It was impossible not to agree with the placards with messages such as ‘WHY IS LOVE DIVIDED BY LAW? THERESA MAY HAS NO HEART!!! THE LAW NEEDS TO CHANGE….’
A large rally at Downing St called on the UK to stop selling arms to Israel, and for an end to Israeli war crimes. Among the protesters were many Jews from various Jewish groups, including the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta who had walked down from north London to support the protest.
Israel had carried out air strikes on Gaza in July 2014 following a number of incidents including the shooting by the IDF of two Palestinian teenagers and the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. There were other incidents including house demolitions and the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian youth. Hamas replied to air strikes with rocket fire on Israel.
The Israeli invasion of Gaza began in earnest on 20th July and the ground war was still continuing though on a lesser scale when this protest took place, with a ceasefire being agreed and coming into effect on 26th August.
There are more details about the invasion in the Wikipedia Timeline, which states “2,256 Palestinians and 85 Israelis died, while 17,125 Palestinians, and 2,639 Israelis suffered injuries.”
At the protest there was a row of black boxes representing coffins and the names of children killed, and some people carried ‘bloodstained’ bundles representing dead children
Three people came to wave Israeli flags across the road and were led away for safety by police.
Earlier one of the Palestinian protesters had tried to seize one of the flags and was dragged away by police. At the end of the rally opposite Downing St some of the protesters marched around London and I went with them as far as Trafalgar Square where I had another event to cover.
Syria Chemical Massacre Anniversary – Trafalgar Square
A rally marked a year after the Ghouta massacre of 21/08/2013 when Assad regime forces outraged the world by using Sarin gas, killing 1,477 residents including over 400 children in this Damascus suburb. The world failed to act against Assad.
One man was wearing wolf head with bloody hands and placard ‘I AM CHEMICAL BASHAR AL ASSAD AND ONE YEAR ON I AM STILL GASSING SYRIAN CHILDREN. THANK YOU FOR UN VETO’
After an hour-long rally in Trafalgar Square the protesters, who were mainly Syrians, marched along the pavements to Richmond Terrace, opposite Downing St, where they laid flowers in memory of the dead.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan rapes & killing – Downing St
Also present when I returned to Downing St were Tamils protesting over the continuing genocide of the Tamil nation, calling for a UN investigation and referendum on Tamil Eelam.
Placards called for an end to the use of rape to destroy their nation and sexual violence against children.
NakNakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils – Saturday 18th May 2013 was another busy day for protests in London and I covered a number of demonstrations.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when the state of Israel was created, Palestinians and their supporters protested outside parliament calling for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
There had been protests in Jerusalem earlier in the week on Nabka Day against the continuing sanctions against Palestinians that have crowded them into an ever-decreasing area of land, diminishing almost daily as new Israeli settlements are created and new restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinians. Many of those protesting in London from Jewish or Palestinian backgrounds and as usual these included a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who had walked down from North London; they see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
On the opposite side of the River Thames thousands were gathering by the Royal Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, alarmed at the attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
Nine years later we are seeing the effect of these policies with ambulance services unable to cope with demand, lengthy delays in treating people in A&E, delays in diagnosing cancers leading to increased deaths and more. And although it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic like Covid, and exercises had shown what needed to be done to prepare for this, the NHS had not been given the resources to prepare for this, leading to much higher death rates than some comparable countries.
Part of the problems of the NHS come from disastrous PFI agreements pushed through under the Labour government, landing NHS trusts with huge debts that will continue for many years. This forced NHS trusts into disastrous hospital closure plans, some of which were defeated by huge public campaigns. Many of those marching were those involved in these campaigns at Lewisham, Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex, Whittington and other hospitals around London.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Other protesters outside the US Embassy included Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when they held him and was now being tortured by the Iraqis and also was on hunger strike. She has protested with her daughter Zeinab outside the US Embassy for a number of weekends and on this occasion was joined by a small group of Muslims who had come to protest against Guantanamo, appalled by the actions of the US waging a war against Islam and Muslims.
Shawki Ahmed Omar is still held in Iraq; before he died in 2021 former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded a video calling for his release which was posted to YouTube in with the comment by another US lawyer “This case is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.”
A few yards away, kept separate by police, a group of supporters of the Syrian regime, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was also holding a protest in favour of the Assad regime and against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
I met thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK as they marched through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre, many dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. Many wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Although it was a large protest, with perhaps around 5,000 marchers I think it received absolutely no coverage in UK media, and I seemed to be the only non-Tamil photographer present. Tamils were rightly disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax.
The march had started from Hyde Park, and I caught up with it on Piccadilly and went with it taking photographs to Waterloo Place where there was to be a rally. But it had been a long day for me and I left just before this started.
It was the start of the final 100 days of the Bush adminstration and the ‘Hands off Iraqi Oil’ coalition whose members included Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want and was supported by the Stop the War Coalition and others had come to Shell’s UK headquarters at Waterloo to protest against plans by Britain and the USA for Iraq to hand over most of the country’s oil reserves to foreign companies, particularly Shell and BP.
Iraq had nationalised its oil by 1972, and it provided 95% of its government income. Many had seen the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK (along with Australia and Poland) as largely driven by the desire to gain control of Iraq’s huge oil reserves and the US had engaged consultants to help it write a new oil law which it got the Iraqi cabinet to approive in 2007 which would give foreign oil companies – including Shell and BP, long-term contracts within a safe legal framework. But large-scale popular opposition meant the Iraqi parliament failed to approve the new law. But in June 2008, the Iraqi Oil Ministry went ahead with short-term no-bid contracts to the major foreign oil companies – including Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Total and Chevron and later these and other contracts were made more favourable to the oil companies.
After the protest at Shell’s offices the protesters marched to protest outside the BP HQ in St James’s Square and then to the US Embassy, and I left to cover the London Freedom not fear 2008 event outside New Scotland Yard. Similar protests were taking place in over 20 countries to demonstrate against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses, organised by a broad movement of campaigners and organizations.
The London event highlighted the restrictions of the right to demonstrate under the Labour government’s The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005, (SOCPA),, the intimidatory use of photography by police Forward Intelligence squads (FIT), the proposed introduction of ID cards, the increasing centralisation of personal data held by government, including the DNA database held by police, the incredible growth in surveillance cameras, ‘terrorist’ legislation and other measures which have affected our individual freedom and human rights.
For something completely different I walked a quarter of a mile down Victoria Street to Westminster Cathedral where people were assembling for the Rosary Crusade of Reparation, one of the larger walks of public witness by Catholics in London.
This tradition began in Austria in 1947 with the roasary campaign begun by a priest praying for his country to be freed from the communist occupiers. The first annual parade with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima took place in 1948 in Vienna on the feast of the Name of Mary, Sept 12, which had been established by Pope Innocent XI in 1683 when Turkish invaders surrounding Vienna were defeated by Christian armies who had prayed to the Blessed Virgin.
As the procession to a service at Brompton Oratory began I walked back up Victoria St to Parliament Square, where a number of other small protests were in evidence. All over the centre of London there were people giving out leaflets about the growing problems faced by Tamils in Sri Lanka, where they allege a program of ethnic cleansing is being carried out by the government. International media are banned from the Tamil areas of the country and NGOs have been ordered out of some areas, so there are few reports of the war. Worse was to come and in 2009 in the final stages of the war conservative estimates are that 70,000 civilians were killed in the the Mullivaikkal massacre.
Others in the square were protesting against the UK’s scandalous treatment of asylum seekers and calling for the asylum detention centres to be closed down.
Brian Haw was still there, and I wrote:
Facing Parliament, Brian Haw‘s peace protest continues – he has been there for almost 2700 days – over 7 years – and it will soon be his 60th birthday. Brian says that now the police seem to have largely abandoned attempts to get rid of him legally there have been a number of odd attacks against him and others in the square – which the police have ignored. I took some time talking to a man who smelt of alcohol, was talking nonsense and acting unpredictably – and who then went and started to insult Brian. One of the other demonstrators stood between him and Brian who was filming him. I put down my bag as I took photographs in case I needed to step in and help, but fortunately he eventually moved away.
There were others protesting in Parliament Square, including one man who asked me to take his picture. He told me his name was Danny and that he had been there on hunger strike for two weeks, protesting over his failure to get his case investigated. He claimed to have been abused by police and social services following an incident in which as a seven year old child in Llanelli he was implicated in the death of a baby brother. I was unable to find any more information about his case.
Finally I saw a group of people walking past holding leafelts with the the word CHANGE on them and rushed after them to find they were Obama supporters hoping to persuade Americans they met to register and vote in the election. It was time for me to go home.
