Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking – 2018

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking: On Wednesday 12th September 2018 I went to Parliament Square where the Guantanamo Justice Campaign was holding a monthly vigil calling for an end to the illegal torture camp at Guantanamo and Nanas from Lancashire with others were calling for the government to end fracking. Later I went with the Nanas who marched to protest at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Victoria St.


Trump told to close Guantanamo

Parliament Square

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018
Baroness Jenny Jones came to visit the vigil

Another monthly vigil opposite Parliament called on UK Prime Minister Theresa May to make urgent representations to President Trump to close Guantanamo and end the brutality and torture which is continuing against the 40 men then still held there in indefinite detention.

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018

They demanded Trump respect human rights and internation law, saying the illegal camp is a legal and moral outrage and a symbol of US torture and injustice.

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018

The protesters were joined briefly by Green Party member of the House of Lords Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb.

Trump told to close Guantanamo


#100Women against fracking

Parliament Square

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018
Lancashire Nana Tina-Louise Rothery speaks at the protest

Following 3 months of “Love & Defiance” that took place from April-June in Lancashire by the Nanas they came to London to tell the government to stop ignoring science and the will of the people and ban fracking.

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018
Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018

As well as threatening the areas of the country in which it was taking place with earthquakes and pollution, fracking is also a threat to the future of the planet through its high level of carbon emissions.

Guantanamo & Nanas Against Fracking - 2018

Many of the protesters wore suffragette costumes to mark the 100th anniversary of women first getting the vote in 1918 and called on the government now to make voting mean something. The rally took place in front to the statue of suffragist campaigner Millicent Fawcett.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas

Speakers at the rally included Ruth George, Labour MP for High Peak, Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, Mike Amesbury, Labour MP for Weaver Vale, Lancashire Nana Tina-Louise Rothery, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green Party Deputy Leader Amelia Womack.

Also speaking at the rally were women against a proposed move of the statue of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, funded by suffragettes in 1930, from Victoria Tower Gardens next to the House of Lords to Regent’s Park, which they described as an “act of vandalism against women’s history“.

More pictures including most of the speakers at 100Women against fracking.


100Women protest at BEIS

Dept for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

Nanas sing in protest against fracking at the BEIS

At the end of the rally in Parliament Square, the anti-fracking women protesters in Suffragette dress marched around the square and on to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Victoria St for a noisy protest there.

Women get ready to march to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Victoria St
Outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

One woman climbed on the low wall in front of the delivery bay at the centre of the frontage and others followed with more moving inside behind to support them.

The protest continued between the two wings of the offices and on the pavement in front with much shouting and singing.

100Women protest at BEIS


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The Gambia & No Fracking – 2015

The Gambia & No Fracking: Two protests on Monday 26th January 2015 were both taking place at lunchtime in Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament. One was by Gambians against the brutal repression in The Gambia and the other a protest against government support for fracking.


Gambians protest brutal repression

Old Palace Yard

The Gambia is the smallest country in mainland Africa, a long strip around 10 miles on each bank of the Gambia River for around 200 miles inland from its Atlantic mouth, surrounded on land by Senegal. Originally colonised by the Portuguese traders it later became a part of the British Empire, while inland from the river was under French control. After the UK 1807 act to abolish the slave trade, ships from the Royal Navy brought slaves from ships they intercepted to settle on the river. The Gambia became independent in 1965.

A military coup in 1994 led to Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh becoming President, and under his dictatorship any opposition “faced exile, harassment, arbitrary imprisonment, murder, and forced disappearance.”

The protest in January 2015 took place after the arbitrary arrests, detentions, tortures and summary executions of those who took part in the 30th Dec uprising against dictator Yahya Jammeh – and their innocent family and friends.

Despite the severe repression in the country in the following year Jammeh lost the December 2016 presidential election; his reluctance to leave the post led to military intervention which resulted in the victor Adama Barrow assuming power.

Gambians protest brutal repression


No Fracking Anywhere!

Old Palace Yard

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas

Hundreds of campaigners from across the country protested as MPs were due to vote on a proposal to ban fracking and also on a controversial proposal to allow fracking under people’s homes without permission in the Government’s Infrastructure Bill.

Tina-Louise Rothery with a Frack Free Lancashire poster

The protest was two days before Lancashire County Council were due to decide on whether to give the go ahead for Cuadrilla to frack in Lancashire which would set a precedent for the rest of the UK. Tina-Louise Rothery from Frack Free Lancashire was one of those who had come to speak at the protest.

Bianca Jagger

There were many other speakers too, including Bianca Jagger, Vivienne Westwood and Caroline Lucas MP, Vanessa Vine, the Founder of Frack Free Sussex and BIFF! (Britain & Ireland Frack Free), John Ashton, the Former UK Government Special Representative for Climate Change, Hannah Martin of Reclaim the Power, Norman Baker MP amd Labour MP Joan Walley, chair of parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee which that morning had come out against fracking .

Norman Baker, Bianca Jagger, Caroline Lucas and John Ashton with the ‘Frack-free Home’

Greenpeace had come with their model ‘Frack-free Home’ and a petition with 361,736 signatures to Parliament.

Puppet monster Mr Frackhead in front of Parliament

Despite the widespread opposition t it took several more years of campaigning before the UK government finally announced a moratorium on fracking in November 2019.

More at No Fracking Anywhere!


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