Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury – 2009

Climate Rush Green Fayre in Aylesbury: I’d met with Climate Rush at the start of their tour of South West England at Sipson, near Heathrow and had photographed both their procession to Heathrow and the Celebration of Community Resistance they held there on the Sipson Airplot. On Wednesday 9th September 2009 I went to Aylesbury, the furthest north of their horse-drawn tour, where they were holding a Green Fayre in the centre of the town.

Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury - 2009

Although it was September, the day was one of the best afternoons of the summer and there were people sitting outside cafés around the square and walking to the shops in this pedestrianised area.

Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury - 2009

Along with the Climate Rush the Green Euro-MP Caroline Lucas had come to speak at the event, along with celebrity cookery writer and TV performer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I’d photographed Caroline at quite a few events, but this was the first time I’d met Hugh, and have to admit I’ve never watched him on screen, having no interest in cookery programmes.

Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury - 2009

At the start of the event Tamsin Omond and some of the other Rushers made a tour of the nearby shopping streets with their ‘EQUITY’ banner to try to drum up trade. An actual drum would have helped, or event a megaphone, but Tamsin had a surprisingly loud voice, announcing the opportunity to meet both the TV Cook and one of their Euro MPs.

Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury - 2009
Tamsin Omond, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Caroline Lucas,

They went through the busy market square – Aylesbury was a market town in Saxon times – and back to Kingsbury, a triangular open space to the north of the Market Square surrounded by shops and pubs where the Green Fayre was being held. It was I think only my second visit to the town which now has a population of around 65,000.

Climate Rush Green Fayre, Aylesbury - 2009

During the afternoon quite a few people did stop to talk with Hugh and tell him how much they enjoyed his programme. Others just edged towards him, stopping a few yards away phone in hand to take a photo.

There were a few short speeches and people talked with the Rushers and some wrote notes about climate change and other environmental issues, posting these in a box to be sent to the local MP. A few children came to draw pictures.

The Aylesbury Museum provided some free pears and Aylesbury plums

Aylesbury Museum had come to join in the event with a stall, and brought apples and rare Aylesbury plums to give away – and these were delicious. Other gardeners also brought fruit and vegetables from their gardens and we all enjoyed eating some of these.

The screen was a bit blocked and gave an interestingly ‘distressed’ image

A water feature in the centre of the square came in useful for the screen-printing demonstration, printing a Climate Rush image onto t-shirts and washing the screen afterwards.

And on a hot afternoon a pint of real ale from one of the pubs was very welcome. It was a long, hot afternoon and I was sorry to have to leave.


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Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson – 2009

Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson: On Saturday 5th September 2009 I went to Hayes to join a small group of Climate Rushers at a service at the start of a walk by the London Churches Environmental Network. We joined the marchers for the first part of their walk to the Sipson Airplot, set up to oppose plans for a third runway at Heathrow, rushing back there to prepare for the Celebration of Community Resistance which took place in the afternoon.


Climate Rush on the Run – Hayes & Sipson

Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson - 2009

On My London Diary you can read more about the Climate Rush, a group of women who had come together to celebrate the centenary of the 1908 ‘Suffragette Rush‘. In 1908 more than 40 women were arrested in an attempt to rush into the Houses of Parliament, and on 13 Oct, 2008, at the end of a rally in Parliament Square Climate Rush again tried to rush in.

Their protest in 2008 called for “men and women alike” to stand together and support three key demands:

* No airport expansion.
* No new coal-fired power stations.
* The creation of policy in line with the most recent climate science and research.
Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson - 2009
The walk begins

Since then Climate Rush had organised and taken part in various other climate protests and in September 2009 were taking part in “a rollicking tour of South West England“, staging events, supporting campaigns and “entertaining the towns, villages and hamlets” on their route with “16 Climate Suffragettes, 3 horses and 2 glorious caravans“. The Airplot at Sipson was their starting point and I’d photographed their procession to Heathrow the previous day, and later photographed them at a Green Fayre in Aylesbury.

Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson - 2009

After a service at St Anselm’s Church, Hayes attended by several Climate Rushers we set off with the the London Churches Environmental Network to walk back to Sipson. We left the marchers at Cranford Park to take a shorter route to get back to the Airplot to prepare for the Celebration of Community Resistance taking place there in the afternoon.

Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson - 2009

Much more on My London Diary at Climate Rush On the Run!

Climate Rush: Celebration of Community Resistance – Sipson

Climate Rush in Hayes & Sipson - 2009
Tamsin plays the villain BAA while Geraldine talks about the NoTRAG campaign

Greenpeace had the idea of setting up the Airplot, an orchard in the centre of the village of Sipson, one of those under threat from Heathrow’s plans for expansion. They bought the site and created one metre square plots of land there and invited the public to become “beneficial owners“, I think paying one pound for the privilege and receiving a certificate of ownership. Somewhere I may still have mine, but here is one on Wikimedia.

Airplotcert

It had seemed a good idea which would make the development more complex, though I suspect would have had little or no effect in practice, but it was never put to the test as plans for the third runway were scrapped by the government in 2010 on environmental grounds – though they have since been revived.

The Airplot was the first stop on the Climate Rush tour and for the Celebration of Community Resistance they had invited activists from around the country to come and give short presentations on their campaigns.

The first example of community resistance we heard about was Radley Lakes at Didcot which npower wanted to fill in with pulverised fuel ash. Although some lakes had been filled, the campaign managed to save three of them. You can see more about them on the Radley Lakes Trust web site.

Next we heard about the scandal of opencast mining at Ffos-y-Fran, common land at Merthyr Tydfil. I photographed a Campaign Against Climate Change demonstration against this mine at the London offices of Argent Group plc in April 2008.

“Argent form half of Miller-Argent who run the UK’s largest opencast coal mine, Ffos-y-Fran in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. Just 36 metres from the nearest houses, extraction will continue for more than 15 years (perhaps as along as 40 years), producing coal that will add at least 30 million tons of CO2 to to our atmosphere. Scottish safety standards demand a minimum gap of 500 metres from housing, but the implementation of a 350 metres limit by the Welsh office has been delayed – allegedly to allow the Merthyr working to go ahead.”

Coal mining continued here until November 2023, and local residents say that the plans for the future of the site represent the “ultimate betrayal“.

Protesters had come earlier in the year from County Mayo in Ireland for a St Patrick’s Day protest at the Shell building against the Corrib Gas Project. We heard how the Rossport Solidarity Camp and the Shell to Sea campaign were fighting this against a corrupt government and thugs who protect the oil companies interest by illegal methods. While the protests failed to stop the project, the environmental groups involved continue to highlight related issues.

Cathy McCormack, a community activist in Glasgow Easterhouse was unable to attend but a colleague came to read her views on poverty and the financial crisis, and in particular the part played by the World Bank and the IMF.

Next we heard from two former Vestas workers who sat in their factory in Newport on the Isle of White when the company proposed the closure of what was then the UK’s only major wind turbine production site. Unfortunately they failed to prevent the closure.

The last group to talk were the No Third Runway Action Group (NoTRAG), and Geraldine described how they had opposed the BAA plans for airport expansion.

In the audience watching the presentation were local MP John McDonnell and airport campaigner John Stewart of HACAN. The campaigners won that round against Heathrow’s plans – and we celebrated in 2010, but today there are new plans – and a government which only plays lip-service to the coming environmental diaster seems sure to back either Heathrow’s own proposals or that from the Arora group, and the fight is on again.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at Celebration of Community Resistance.


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Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night – 2010

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night: Saturday 20th March 2010 was an unusual day for me, including protests in two parts of London I seldom visit, Hatton and Hampstead. It was also the start of a campaign on Oxford Street to get the London Living Wage for shop workers and there was a march to Downing Street against education cuts.


BA Cabin Crew at Heathrow – Hatton

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010

BA cabin crew on the first day of their 2-day strike at Heathrow held a rally outside Bedfont Football Club a short distance from Hatton Cross, where several hundred strikers came to listen to speakers, including Len McCluskey, Unite assistant general secretary, and show their determination to fight management plans to downgrade their conditions and make BA into a cut-price airline. Others kept up their pickets at gates around the airport.

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010

BA management under CEO Willie Walsh had refused to come to an agreement with the union, BASSA, and had threatened any workers who spoke at the meeting or appeared in media interviews with dismissal. So none of the strikers spoke at the meeting, but there was thunderous applause when speakers including local MP John McDonnell criticised BA management.

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010
Len McCluskey – We Offered Pay Cuts to keep BA Premium

I photographed the picket at Hatton Cross on my way to catch the Piccadilly line into central London.

More at BA Cabin Crew at Heathrow.


March Against Education Cuts

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010
Sitting down in Whitehall outside Downing Street

A couple of thousand teachers and students met outside Kings College in Strand to call for the reversal of planned education cuts which they say abandon a generation of students and will damage our economic recovery.

Cabin Crew, Education, Living Wage & Light Up the Night - 2010

Police had insisted that they march on the pavement, but the numbers and the banners made this impossible and after a hundred yards or so they moved onto the street. At Downing Street they filled both carriageways for several minutes with a short token sit-down before police and stewards persuaded everyone to move to one side of the road, but the crowd was still a little large for the space available and there seemed to be a few dangerous incidents – including a rather uncontrolled police horse – but fortunately no injuries as police appeared keen to get a lane of traffic moving past without due regard for public safety.

As speakers at the rally said, Labour had come into power on the mantra ‘Education, Education, Education‘ but 12 years later were proposing the largest cuts in education funding for a generation or more, estimated to lead to the loss of more than 20,000 jobs in Further Education, Higher Education and Adult Education. They will disproportionately affect the poorer and more disadvantaged in our society, in particular immigrants and young people who are unemployed or lacking in qualifications.

As Jenny Sutton, branch secretary of the UCU at the College of North East London pointed out the proposed cuts of £1.1 billion on education contrasted with the £21 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the £500 billion given to the banks, one of which, the 84% publicly owned RBS is now paying out £1.3 billion in bonuses.

In protest Sutton was standing against the then Education Minister David Lammy in the May 2010 election. Lammy kept his seat and she lost her deposit, but the election put a Tory-led coalition into power. Education suffered even worse in the following years.

March Against Education Cuts


London Living Wage Launch in Oxford St

The London Living Wage campaign began in 2001 and has had the support of all London mayors since. Calculated annually by the Greater London Authority it takes into account the higher living costs in London, and Living Wage employers also have to provide fair employment conditions including holiday and sick pay and allowing employees to belong to a trade union.

Although some of London’s larger employers have adopted the London Living Wage, the retail sector, one of the most profitable areas of business in London, still had many of many of its workers struggling on wages below this level.

London Citizens, a grassroots charity working for social, economic and environmental justice , has led the campaign for a London Living Wage, and held a training session for its members before coming to Oxford Circus. Here they took advantage of the recently introduced diagonal crossing system to cross and recross several times with their banners before going off in smaller groups to continue the campaign inside the larger stores on Oxford Street.

They intended to give letters to all the general managers of shops on the street inviting them to meet with London Citizens to discuss the Living Wage.

London Living Wage – Oxford St


Light Up the Night in Hampstead

The Commons‘ candidate for the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency Tamsin Omond had organised a ‘Light Up The Night‘ candlelit march to show community solidarity against violent crime and make the streets safe for women at night.

Around 30 people, mainly women, turned up outside the Hollybush pub in Hampstead for the march, where there was a short speech by Sam Roddick, noted for her campaigning on issues related to human rights, feminism, pornography and for taking Fair Trade into hitherto unexplored areas through Coco De Mer, her Covent Garden ‘erotic emporium.

Tamsin Omond

It was a wet and windy night and it was hard to to keep the candles alight as the marchers made their way down the hill from Hampstead and the streets were emptier than usual.

‘The Commons’ campaign hoped to reach people who are fed up with politicians and appeal to ordinary people, many of whom, like Roddick have never bothered with voting because they felt it made no difference. But it made little progress. The election was closely fought with Labour’s Glenda Jackson gaining a narrow victory by 42 votes over the Tory candidate, but Omond was over 17,000 votes behind both of them with only 123 votes and the turnout was low.

More at Light Up the Night in Hampstead.


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Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words 2008

Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words: In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and other women who believed that more direct action was needed to get votes for women founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto ‘Deeds not words‘.

Climate Rush - Deeds Not Words

In September 1908 together with Christabel Pankhurst and Flora Drummond, Emmeline Pankhurst issued a leaflet with the message:

Men and Women,
Help the Suffragettes to Rush the House of Commons,
on
Tuesday Evening, October 13th, at 7.30.

The three women were charged for this with inciting the public to undertake an illegal act. After speaking at a public meeting on 11th October they were instructed to attend Bow Street police station but defied this and a second request to report to police. They were arrested at 6pm on the 13th and so were unable to attend the Suffragette Rush they had called.

Climate Rush - Deeds Not Words

But despite this, 60,000 people came to Parliament Square and some attempts were made to rush through the 5,000 police cordon but failed. “Thirty-seven arrests were made, ten people were taken to hospital and seven police officers were placed on the sick list as a result of their injuries.”

Climate Rush - Deeds Not Words

One woman, MP Keir Hardie’s secretary, was working inside the building and ran into the chamber where MPs were debating, shouting ‘leave off discussing the children’s question and give votes to women first’ before being forcibly evicted.

Climate Rush - Deeds Not Words

The three leaders were tried and fined for conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace and sent to Holloway when they refused to pay their fines.

On 13th October 2008, the 100th anniversary of this Suffragette Rush, as I wrote, ‘women concerned with the lack of political action to tackle climate change organised and led a rally in Parliament Square, again calling for “men and women alike” to stand together.’

They were making three key demands – “no airport expansion“, “no new coal-fired power stations” and “The creation of policy in line with the most recent climate science and research.”

So far the repeated demands by Heathrow to expand have been resisted, but only by continued protests and helped by financial problems. But expansion remained Tory policy and having ruled it out set up a biased inquiry to reinstate it. The new Labour government has already shown support for expansion at London City Airport and seems likely to support new proposals at Heathrow.

Although the last coal-fired power station closed a few weeks ago, we now have an even more polluting and environmentally damaging wood-fired power station at Drax, which ridiculously receives green subsidies which in 2020 amounted to £832 million as well as “exemptions for taxes on carbon emissions, estimated at savings of £358 million“.

And although successive governments had paid lip-service to “the most recent climate science and research“, their actions and actual policies continue to show any of the urgency that this requires.

On 13th October 2008, the event began with a rally in Parliament Square with rather fewer attending than in 1908, around a thousand including many wearing white and dressing in the styles of a century earlier.

As the final speech by Green Party MEP and leader Caroline Lucas ended, “most of the crowd, led by Tamsin Omond and friends, walked and ran across the road towards the main door into Parliament, chanting the Suffragette slogan ‘Deeds Not Words’. Police “made only a token attempt to stop them on their way, falling back to protect the door itself with several lines of police, and preventing any protesters entering the building.

There was a long melee outside the door, with police picking up demonstrators and throwing them back. I saw no violence by demonstrators towards the police.” Eventually the whole area in front of the door was crowded with protesters and police held them to a standstill.

By the time I left around half an hour later a few people were also beginning to drift away. “Later I heard that around half a dozen people had been arrested, including Tamsin Omond, who was in breach of her bail conditions following the ‘Plane Stupid’ roof-top protest at the Houses of Parliament in February.”

You can read more about the protest in my account on My London Diary, which also has many more pictures: Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words.


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Climate Rush Protest Heathrow – 2009

Climate Rush Protest Heathrow: On 4th September 2009 I joined Climate Rush at Sipson, one of the villages immediately north of Heathrow under threat from the plans to build a third runway.

Climate Rush Protest Heathrow

Their 3 day stay here was their first stop on a one month tour of South West England and they were staying at the Sipson ‘Airplot’, bought by Greenpeace in what was planned to be the centre of the new runway. The legal owners of the plot were now “Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace UK.”

Climate Rush Protest Heathrow

Greenpeace had invited others to sign up to become ‘beneficial owners’ of small 1 metre square plots within the site and I was among the many who did so. They had hoped this would make it harder for the developers as they thought we would all need to be served with legal notices for the development to go ahead.

Climate Rush Protest Heathrow

I’d long been opposed to the expansion of Heathrow. It remains clear that this is an airport that was set up in the wrong place, to close to London in a fairly densely populated area and with flight paths over the centre of London. And with the increasing threat of climate change and global extinction one of the last things we should be doing is increasing the carbon emissions and pollution from aviation; instead we should be looking at ways to cut down both the number of flights and the pollution from traffic and congestion in the area surrounding the airport.

Climate Rush Protest Heathrow

I’ve lived most of my life close to Heathrow. As I wrote on My London Diary:

“I grew up under the main flight path in use for landing a couple of miles from touchdown. Although I was a plane spotter at an early age, all of us living there felt the disruption it caused in our lives, even back in the 1950s.

My teachers often had to stop and wait in mid-sentence for a plane to go over. We could often smell the fuel, and see and feel the oily grime although I don’t think the term “pollution” had then really entered normal vocabulary.

At a deeper level, I still sometimes have nightmares about planes going over in flames (as they sometimes did) and crashes, although since Terminal 4 blocked one of the existing runways (Heathrow was built with six though only two are now used) thankfully planes no longer shake my present house as they come in low on landing or take off. “

I wrote more about this back in 2009, as well as the continuing history of lies and deceit by which the airport was established and has since grown and grown. And also about the area as it was before the airport, rich agricultural land with market gardens and orchards. Of course I didn’t know it myself but my father did and cycled through it.

In the 1950s on my own bikes I cycled through the villages which would be destroyed by a third runway, particularly Harmondsworth which has retained much of its original charm, with a village green with a pub and church and, a few yards away, one of the finest medieval tithe barns (2 pictures at bottom of this page.) There is much more to read on My London Diary.

Climate Rush had organised a procession from the Sipson Airplot, led by local residents from NoTRAG, though most were at work today – more were expected later in the day and at the ‘Celebration of Community Resistance’ at Sipson the following day. “Suffragettes (including a ‘token’ male) wearing ‘Deeds Not Words ‘ and ‘Climate Rush’ red sashes carried three banners, Justice, Equity and Truth; Equity traveled on a horse-drawn cart along with a violinist.

The banners read:
JUSTICE: Rich Countries must recognise historic responsibility for climate change.
EQUITY: Emission quotas must be per capita; the rich have no more right to pollute than the poor.
TRUTH: Emission caps must be set in line with the latest climate science.

The procession went down the Heathrow and along the Northern Perimeter Road beside the perimeter fence, where we were joined by a police car, which stopped traffic for us before retuning to the Airplot.

There it was time to rest, and to eat some of the apples from the side of the plot. “A couple of the suffragettes climbed a tree to pick some more, but they turned out to be cookers. The kettle had been hanging over the embers of a wood fire and a few more sticks soon brought it to the boil for tea.”

I’d come to Sipson on the bike which I had ridden through there fifty years earlier – a present on my thirteenth birthday – and had got a puncture just a few hundred yards short of my destination.

I sat down to mend my puncture. Unfortunately I its a while since I checked the repair kit in my pannier, and having found two largish holes found I didn’t have a large enough patch to cover the two of them and the rubber solution had dried up. It was time for me to walk the six miles home.”

More about Heathrow and the procession at Climate Rush Procession Heathrow.
And on the following day, 5th September 2009:
Climate Rush On the Run! Sipson which has more about Climate Rush, and
Celebration of Community Resistance


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The Future For Aviation – 2014

The Future For Aviation: The protest at London City Airport on Monday 21st July 2014 by ‘The Future‘, a campaigning group set up to fight climate change and ecological devastation by non-violent protest along with some local residents addressed specific issues related to that airport, but also wider questions about the future of aviation, both still very much with us. A decision is expected shortly by our new Labour government on further expansion plans for the airport following a public inquiry which closed in February.

The Future For Aviation

The group used a painted circle around one eye as a symbol that the people are watching those in power, calling on politicians and others to take action rather than let themselves be bought by corporate interests. And they stated “we will judge them if they choose the toxicity of London City Airport over the health of local people and of London.”

The Future For Aviation

Ten years later, ‘The Future’ are forgotten, and while there has been nothing like enough action the growing signs of the coming catastrophe are just perhaps beginning to get some movement, though still too little and too late.

The Future For Aviation

It should now be clear to every thinking person that we have to find ways to reverse the growth in the aviation industry. To end airport expansion and increasing numbers of flights. Not ideas like changing to bio-fuels or specious calculations over planting trees to compensate for the CO2 generated by flights, nor on the pipe-dream of electric aircraft but quite simply reducing the number of flights.

The Future For Aviation

Quite how this can be done is a matter for discussion, but some measures, such as removing the subsidies for aviation and banning incentive schemes with air miles and discounts could be simply implemented.

Heathrow and London City Airport also pose other problems, generating pollution and noise pollution both from their flight and from the traffic and congestion they generate in urban areas of our heavily polluted city.

The history of London City Airport is a case-study in how the aviation industry has operated by deception. When set up it was to be a low traffic site providing limited services between European capitals for business travellers from the nearby Canary Wharf and the City of London using small, quiet aircraft specially built for short take-off and landing.

Even so the Greater London Council opposed its setting up in the former Royal Docks in Newham, surrounded by densely populated areas but were overruled by central government.

Those initial promises have been long been superseded and by 2014 passenger numbers were 25 times as great with the airport no a a major commercial airport, its runway extended to allow use by larger and far more noisy aircraft, including some scheduled trans-Atlantic flights. From a handful of flights a day there were by then around 15 per hour in its allowed operation times. And more new housing in the surrounding areas had made the airport’s site even less tenable.

The airport was then about to make a planning application for further expansion. Then London Mayor Boris Johnson directed Newham Council to turn this down, but in 2016 transport secretary Chris Grayling and communities secretary Sajid Javid overrode the decision and gave the £344 million scheme the go-ahead.

In 2023, Newham Council again turned down further expansion plans but the airport again appealed. A public inquiry took place in December 2023 to February 2024, and a decision was expected by 23rd July 2024. But the general election means that the decision will now be made by our new Labour government. It will be a key indicator in demonstrating if our new government is really serious in its announced intentions to combat climate change and pollution.

More about the protest at ‘The Future’ at London City Airport.


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The Big Gay Flashmob – 2010

The Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ – Millbank, London. Sunday 11 April 2010

The Big Gay Flashmob
Kiss-In – Tamsin Omond and Peter Tatchell

In 2010 as a General Election was approaching, Tamsin Omond had begun the ‘To the Commons‘ campaign which made this statement:

“The Commons is you and me. It’s the kid on the skateboard, the woman struggling with her shopping, and the guy who serves us coffee in the morning. The Commons is about having our say and getting our voices heard. It’s about looking out for each other, our neighbourhoods, and our environment. Yes we’re a political party but we’re not about politics. We’re about people.”

The Big Gay Flashmob

The message on the web ended “Vote for Tamsin Omond for Hampstead and Kilburn” where she was standing as a candidate. It wasn’t a hugely succesful campaign, and she ended up with only 123 votes, against 17, 332 for Labour’s Glenda Jackson in what was one of the closest races in 2010, with the Tory only 42 votes behind and the Lib Dems a close third. We have an electoral system and a media that is incredibly stacked against candidates from outside the major parties, who only win in exceptional circumstances – such as electing Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London, or if Corbyn was to leave Labour to stand in his constituency at the next election.

The Big Gay Flashmob

As a part of her campaign, Omond had organised the ‘Big Gay Flashmob’, advertising the event on Facebook and getting Peter Tatchell of Outrage! (and later of the the Peter Tatchell Foundation) to work with her to publicise it. Over 1500 had signed up to attend the event and a fairly large proportion of them turned up on the day.

The Big Gay Flashmob

In the morning Omond and Tatchell had gone to a meeting with George Osborne, who had been shadow chancellor and was the Conservative Campaign manager. The Tory party has a long record of homophobia and of voting against gay rights, and many Tory MPs voted against the full repeal in 2003 of Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 infamous ‘Section 28’ which banned local authorities from “promoting homosexuality.”

Sister Angel Popstitute, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence from the London House of Common Sluts

Recently too, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling had suggested that Bed and Breakfast owners should be able to refuse gay couples, and there was still a very strong and vocal anti-gay element in the Tory party despite there being many gay members and gay Tory MPs. The great majority of the roughly 50 who voted against civil partnerships in 2004 were Tory MPs and party leader David Cameron was against the possibility of gay marriage.

So the flash mob was scheduled to take place outside Tory Party HQ, then on Millbank in the Millbank Tower. There were speeches, much loud chanting and a number of kiss-ins which everyone seemed to enjoy.

More pictures at Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ.


Bikes Alive Say Stop Killing Cyclists

Bikes Alive Say Stop Killing Cyclists
At Kings Cross wiaiting for the protest to begin

On the evening of Monday 9th January 2012 cyclists and pedestrians protested at Kings Cross in the evening rush hour calling for an end to the killing of cyclists on city roads.

Bikes Alive Say Stop Killing Cyclists
Ghost bike’ for Deep Lee killed here in October 2011

Bikes Alive wanted Transport for London to make changes in their policies which are leading to too many cyclists being killed on London’s Streets and were taking more direct but peaceful action to put pressure on them to make cycling in the city safer.

Bikes Alive Say Stop Killing Cyclists
Jenny Jones holds her at right

Kings Cross was chosen as one of the most dangerous areas for cyclists with major roads including Euston Road, Pentonville Road, Caledonian Road, Kings Cross Road all meeting in a gyratory system of confusing one-way streets.

In particular they want changes at all major road junctions with longer gaps between different phases that would allow both pedestrians and cyclists to clear junctions before traffic from other directions dashes across, as well as changes that will lead to reductions in private car use in London and an increase in bike use.

Tamsin and a man with a bike block traffic for the ride to start

Similar protests in later years have been organised by Stop Killing Cyclists who began with a major ‘die-in’ protest outside TfL’s HQ in November 2013.

Cyclists take to the road

I arrived early for the Bikes Alive protest and found a group of friends of cyclist Deep Lee (Min Joo Lee), a 24-year old student who was killed riding her bike there on 3 Oct 2011 came to put fresh flowers on the ‘ghost bike’ which is chained to a lamp post at the centre of the junction.

and some people on foot

Others soon began to arrive on bikes and on foot, gathering on the wide pavement in front of Kings Cross Station, including a dozen or so police officers on bikes. As well as Bikes Alive spokesperson Albert Beale who had said that this protest “is the first step in a campaign to stop – by whatever nonviolent means needed – the completely unnecessary level of deaths, injuries and fear inflicted by motorists on the more vulnerable“.

The ride goes past the ‘ghost bike’

Green Party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones took part, stating “London’s roads must be fixed urgently if we are to make them safe for cyclists and all other road users. This is the Mayor’s responsibility, and I hope that if we make a statement through peaceful, direct action he will start to listen.”

The protest blocks the box junction and Tamsin leads some chanting

Also present was Tamsin Omond of Climate Rush, who have organised several cycle protests, including one in July 2011 against London’s terrible air quality with briefly blocked a junction a little to the west of tonight’s protest.

Jenny Jones

Eventually the protester began to cycle slowly, accompanied by protesters on foot on the roads around the junction, turning up York Way and then returning back down Caledonian Road and returning to Kings Cross where some stopped to block the box junction. When police came and told them they had to move they made a few circuits along a short section of the Euston Road in front of Kings Cross, making a ‘U’ turn at the traffic lights and going back east along the road to go around the one-way system again. By the time they were on their second or third circuit I felt I had seen enough and left.

London’s roads eleven years later remain dangerous for cyclists, and this junction in particular was among the three still named as the most dangerous of 22 that the London Cycling Campaign named in parliament in November 2022 as needing urgent action. There have been some improvements, with new cycle ‘super-highways’ and changes in traffic light phasing, but much more still needs to be done to make the city safer, with huge benefits in public health as many more people who would cycle if they felt safe. Unfortunately some London councils, partly thanks to lobbying from taxi drivers and others, still have virulent anti-cycling policies.

More at Bikes Alive – End Killing Of Cyclists.


Bhopal: Drop Dow From London Olympics

Earlier that day I had photographed another protest, where Farah Edwards, a survivor of the Bhopal Disaster, challenged Lord Coe, and Mayor Boris Johnson, to taste some Bhopal drinking water, bottled as ‘B’eauPal’ mineral water. 200 days before the start of the London Olympics they called for London to drop Dow Chemicals as a major sponsor, as thousand of families in Bhopal are still being poisoned by the Bhopal disaster, when Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals, released a huge dense cloud of lethal gas from their plant on the night of December 2-3, 1984.

Barry Gardiner MP holds a bottle of contaminated Bhopal water in Trafalgar Square

Government estimates say more than 3,700 died immediately and since deaths have risen to between 8,000 and 25,000 people. Around 100,000 to 200,000 people are thought to have permanent injuries and the number continues to grow as much of the contamination produced by the disaster has not been cleaned up.

But of course the idea that Lord Coe or Johnson would worry for even a split second about taking dirty money for the Olympic project was ridiculous.

Bhopal: Drop Dow From London Olympics


October 13th 2001-2015

Thinking about events I had photographed on October 13th I found rather a lot over the years – so here are links to some of them from 2001-2015.

There are just a few black and white pictures from the October 2001 Stop The War March in London. Back in 2001 I was still working on film, and although I had taken pictures in both black and white and colour I only had a black and white scanner.


By 2003 I was working with a digital camera, a Nikon D100, and on the 13th October I joined another thousand or so people from around the country to say ‘No to GMO’. Most of the work being done on genetic modification was aimed at increasing the profits of companies and at locking farmers into using patented seeds which had to be purchased from them and which required expensive chemical inputs and would penalise or even lead to prosecutions of those who continued with traditional methods, particularly organic farmers, and severely reduce bio-diversity. The protesters were largely concerned about the possible risks of genetic modifications that were not being subjected to thorough long-term testing. The government seemed simply to be preparing to give way to commercial pressures.

The protesters went first to the National Farmers Union, then to Downing Street (or rather outside the gates to Downing Street) then on past the Houses of Parliament to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in Smith Square. The digital pictures I was making then seem rather dark and muted and processing software then was still rather poor.


It was 2007 before I photographed anything at all relevant on 13 October again, and this time I was on a walk about The Romance of Bethnal Green, a book by Cathy Ross, which had included a number of my pictures from the 1980s.

In 2008 came ‘Climate Rush – Deeds Not Words’:


Exactly 100 years ago, more than 40 women were arrested in the ‘Suffragete Rush’ as they attempted to enter The Houses of Parliament. To mark this centenary, women concerned with the lack of political action to tackle climate change organised and led a rally in Parliament Square, calling for “men and women alike” to stand together and support three key demands:

  No airport expansion.
  No new coal-fired power stations.
  The creation of policy in line with the most recent climate science and research.

Those attending were asked to wear white, and many dressed in ways that reflected the styles of a century ago, and wore red sashes with the words ‘Reform Climate Policy’, ‘No New Coal’ ‘Climate Code Red’ and ‘No Airport Expansion’, with campaigners against a second runway at Stansted having their own ‘Suffrajets’ design. We were also offered fairy buns with ‘Deeds Not Words’ and ‘Climate Bill Now’

It was a protest that brought together some fairly diverse groups, including the Women’s Institute and the Green Party as well as Climate Rush, who, led by Tamsin Omond tried to storm their way in to the Houses of Parliament like their Suffragette predecessors, but were stopped by police. She was later arrested, not for this action but for breach of her bail conditions from the ‘Plane Stupid’ roof-top protest at the Houses of Parliament 8 months earlier.


On 13th October 2012, Zombies invaded London in a charity event, to “raise the dead and some dough in aid of St. Mungo’s“, a charity which reaches out to rough sleepers and helps them off the streets.

I went on from there to the steps of St Pauls, where on the first anniversary of their attempt to occupy the Stock Exchange, Occupy London joined a worldwide day of protest, #GlobalNoise, by the Occupy movement, to target the “political and financial elites who are held responsible for destroying our communities and the planet, resonating the ongoing wave of anti-austerity protests in Europe and around the world. At the same time #GlobalNoise is a symbol of hope and unity, building on a wide variety of struggles for global justice and solidarity, assuring that together we will create another world.

From a rally at St Paul’s they went on to sit down at a few places around the City, before crossing London Bridge heading for an undisclosed location to occupy for the weekend. Some wanted to occupy the ‘Scoop’ next to City Hall, but others felt it wasn’t suitable. A group went on to block Tower Bridge, but then returned to join others at Scoop.

In 2015 the Zionist Federation organised a protest outside the Palestinian Authority UK Mission against the stabbings of Jews in Israel. Jewish and other groups supporting Palestinian resistance to occupation and Israeli terror came along to protest against all violence against both Jews and Palestinians in Israel and for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.


I left while the two protests were continuing to shout at each other to join the candlelit vigil at Parliament by Citizens UK calling for 1000 Syrian refugees to be resettled in the UK before Christmas and 10,000 a year for the next 5 years. Six children froze to death in the camps last year and many in the UK have offered homes and support.