tourist attraction

Israel, Ripper & Zimbabwe 2017

Israel, Ripper & Zimbabwe: On Saturday 14th October 2017 I began work in Mayfair where a protest calling for a restaurant owner and chef not to break the cultural boycott of Israel was opposed by Zionists before going to Cable Street for a protest at the Ripper ‘Museum’ and ending at a celebration of 15 years of the Zimbabwe Embassy vigil.

Little Social don’t break the cultural boycott – Mayfair

The owner of the Little Social Restuarant and his head chef were going to take part in the Brand Israel culinary event ‘Round Tables’ in Tel Aviv in November 2017 and human rights group Inminds had come to plead with them not to break the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel.

Events such as these are a part of the Israeli government’s Public Relations efforts to distract from its policies of occupation and apartheid. The event was sponsored by Dan Hotels who have a branch built on stolen Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem.

Police arrived and talked with the protesters who included several Palestinians and Jews. They assured police they would do nothing illegal, and continued getting out their flags and banners.

A few people arrived to put on a counter-protest. One man assured me that everything the people protesting in support of Palestine said and had on their banners was lies, and tried to justify all of Israel’s actions, including the then recent attacks on Gaza. He tried to talk with the protesters but they told him they were not interested in hearing his lies.

I told him how my friend had been attacked by settlers in Palestine and who came and stole the olives from the farm – and that Israel’s attacks on Gaza were entirely disproportionate to the rocket attacks on Israel which he said provoked and claimed justified them, and that Israel should respect the United Nations resolutions. He continued to blame the Palestinians for everything and later I was defamed as “a noted anti-Semitic photographer” in a report on this event for my coverage of and other protests over Palestine and by the “wrong type of Jews.”

Little Social don’t break the cultural boycott.

Class War return to Ripper “Museum” – Cable Street

Class War returned with London 4th Wave Feminists to protest peacefuly outside the so-called “museum’ in Cable St displaying exhibits glorifying the brutal series of 19th century murders and exhibiting materials relating to the horrific deaths of working class women.

They came after Tower Hamlets council had failed to enforce the planning decisions against the shop, only given planning permission under the false pretence it would celebrate the history of women in the East End.

They stood with their ‘Womens Death Brigade‘ banner on the pavement in front of the tourist shop and symbolically attacked it and its illegal metal shutters and signage with plastic inflatable hammers.

Police led in a few tourists who had come to visit the shop past the protesters, who refused to move away. Some went away after talking when they heard why people were protesting about the exhibition, and others who went inside came out and told them that they thought the “museum’s” publicity was misleading and they had been very disappointed by the display.

Not much is known about some of the victims, but they were all women struggling to make a living, some with dependents. People from some of their families still live in London and are disgusted at the displays in this tourist attraction.

One of the 4th Wave Feminists read a message from a member of one of those families, complaining about the voyeuristic exploitation of her ancestor in the displays. We were told was known about the unfortunate victims, reminding us that they were real people and should not be exploited in this way by a toruist rip-off.

More pictures at Class War r eturn to Ripper “Museum”

Zimbabwe democracy vigil celebrates 15 years – Zimbabwe Embassy, Strand

The first weekly vigil was held on 12th October 2002 and there have been around 780 every Saturday since then.

They intend to continue to protest until there are free and fair elections and an end the human rights abuses of the Mugabe regime. Their vigils are in solidarity with courageous and inspiring human rights defenders in Zimbabwe who risk life and liberty to demand democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Among those present were a number who had been at that first vigil, including human rights activist Peter Tatchell who was badly beaten when he attempted a citizen’s arrest on Mugabe in Brussels in 2001. He cut the celebratory cake with others from the vigil.

Since then Mugabe has gone but the human rights situation in Zimbabwe is still dire and vigils continue, now both virtually and twice monthly in person. It “will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe.”

Zimbabwe vigil celebrates 15 years

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

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

Cable Car, Victoria Dock, Olympic Site & Torture 2013

Cable Car, Victoria Dock, Olympic Site & Torture: I was coming to London to photograph the ‘Say No to Torture‘ protest on the evening of Wednesday 26th June, but as it was a nice day and I came up a few hours earlier to take a ride on London’s cable car and then to take a few pictures around Victoria Dock and Silvertown before making quick visit to the Greenway to see what progress was being made in opening up the former Olympic site.

Emirates ‘Airline’ – Arab Dangleway – North Greenwich – Victoria Dock.

Now known officially since 2022 as the IFS Cloud Cable Car, the dangleway was never a viable transport system, with longer journey time and costing more than alternative routes on almost every conceivable journey.

It doesn’t quite connect up with the rest of Transport for London’s system, the south terminal being a short and slightly confusing walk from North Greenwich Jubilee and bus station, and another fairly short walk on the North bank to Royal Victoria DLR. Completed in June 2012 its cost of £60m made it the most expensive cable car system ever built.

As I noted “it should be promoted as one of London’s cheaper and more interesting tourist attractions” giving great views along the River Thames, although the journey is a relatively short on at 7-10 minutes. with London in the distance, Canary Wharf and the Olympic site a little closer and Bow Creek, Silvertown and the Dome both nearly underneath.

To my surprise, 11 years later the service is still running and TfL say that with the sponsorship deals it actually makes a profit.

Emirates ‘Airline’ – Arab Dangleway

Victoria Dock and Silvertown

I think the more interesting parts of the Thames shoreline here are not yet publicly accessible, but you can – at least most of the time – walk along by Royal Victoria Dock and across the high level bridge for some more interesting views. The area and bridge get closed off when they are flogging illegal arms at the Excel Centre fairs (if you represent a despotic government you’ll have a ticket to that anyway.)

Most of the pictures here were taken from that high level walkway across the dock, but I think I walked on to the stations on the DLR line to Woolwich (then only to North Woolwich) which are elevated and also give some interesting views.

Victoria Dock and Silvertown

Stratford Greenway Olympic Revisit – Stratford Marsh

I took the DLR to Canning Town, changed to the JUbilee to Stratford then back to the DLR for the short ride to Puddling Mill Lane, and walked up onto the Greenway, where I’d photogaphed many times in the past.

Progress in releasing the Olympic site to the public appeared to be very slow and there sre still routes closed off in 2024.

Stratford Greenway Olympic Revisit

Say No To Torture – Trafalgar Square

It was the ‘International Day in Support of Victims of Torture‘, the anniversary of the UN Convention Against Torture on 26 June 1987, and the London Guantanamo Campaign had organised a protest in Trafalgar Square.

The London Guantanamo Campaign had been active in calling for the closure of Guantanamo and other torture prisons including Bagram in Afghanistan since 2006. In particular the protest was to draw attention to Shaker Aamer, one of the 166 prisoners still held in Guantanamo. A London resident he was captured by bandits in Afghanistan where he was working for a medical charity and sold to the American forces, who tortured him – with the cooperation of the British Secret Service in Bagram, before illegally rendering him to Guantanamo where he continues to be tortured despite having been cleared for release.

In 2013 he was in very poor health having been – along with the majority of the other prisoners there – on hunger strike for 141 days. It was not until 30 October 2015 that he was finally released to the UK.

The US response to the hunger strike had been regular beatings, keeping those taking part in solitary confinement in bare cells and to use forcible feeding, strapping them into a special chair and forcing a feeding tube up a nostril and down into their stomach. The procedure is extremely painful and both this and the sensory deprivation of solitary confinement in bare cells also constitute torture under the UN definitions.

Many of those taking part wore orange Guanatanamo-style jump suits and black hoods and they held up banners an placards saying ‘No To Torture‘ in 30 languages. Some of those taking part were regular protesters with the ‘Save Shaker Aamer Campaign‘ which has been holding daily lunchtime vigils opposite the House of Commons to put pressure on the UK government to release him. Many think his continued imprisonment is because his testimony would embarrass both the UK and US security services who were clearly involved in his torture.

Others were also protesting against torture, with Balochs in Pakistan being subject to arrests and other human rights violations including torture by the Pakistan authorities for campaigning for independence. The protesters held pictures of a number of Baloch activists who have simply disappeared, believed to be held or possibly killed by Pakistani forces.

And protesters also drew attention to the US treatment of award-winning British poet and translator Talha Ahsan who suffers from Aspergers syndrome. He was extradited from the UK and was currently awaiting trial in solitary confinement in a high-security state prison in Connecticut because of alleged association with an Islamic web site and publishing house said to have links with terrorism. He was eventually released after 8 years following a plea bargain in December 2013 when time already served in the UK and US prisons was ‘time already served.’

Say No To Torture.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

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

Rip Down the Ripper Facade! – 2016

Rip Down the Ripper Facade! On Sunday 19th June 2016 after the ‘Jack the Ripper Museum’ tourist attraction on Cable St had not yet complied with the planning decision against its facade and shutter, Class War and supporters, including London Fourth Wave Feminists in cat masks, protested outside with toy plastic hammers offering to take it down for them.

The so-called museum is a tacky tourist attraction that glorifies the killing of working class women but got planning permission and attracted support for promising to provide a museum promoting the history of East End women.

Before going to the protest I’d been to a temporary exhibition being held in nearby St George in the East church, which shows some of the real history of women in the area, and was rather more interesting than the gory speculation for prurient tourists in the shop.

I photographed the Class War protesters, led by women carrying the Class War Womens Death Brigade banner as they marched to the shop. Several were carrying inflatable plastic hammers but the threat to remove the shutters was purely symbolic.

They crowded around the facade with their banner and several stuck Class War Womens Death Brigade stickers on the facade where police were protecting the doorway and stopping them from entering.

Several black-clad protesters then arrived and the scene was enveloped in bright red smoke.

I moved back both because taking pictures inside the smoke seldom works very well and also the smoke was getting in my lungs and it didn’t feel good.

Unlike at previous protests there was no sign of the shop owner, but the two women staff he had employed to run the shop watched out of the windows. But one of the protesters was wearing a mask of his face.

London Fourth Wave Feminists were wearing cat masks but also held posters expressing their opposition to the shop and calling for an end to male violence against women.

There had been a billboard opposite the shop which advertising the real exhibition about the lives of East End women but this had been vandalised, perhaps by friends of the ‘museum’.

It wasn’t then clear when or how (or even if) Tower Hamlets council intended to enforce their planning decision, and their stated opposition to the grisly shop seems to have been rather half-hearted.

Although police had come to protect the shop against this protest, and had stopped any of the protesters from entering, they had largely stood and watched, and at times some officers appeared rather amused by what was happening. By the time the protest finished the windows were fairly well covered by stickers and egg had been thrown onto one of the signs the shop had been asked to remove.

More pictures on My London Diary at Rip Down the Ripper Facade!

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

Jack the Ripoff

Tower Hamlets council were pleased to apporpve a planning application in 2014 to convert an empty Victorian building in Cable St into a ‘Museum of Women’s History’, particularly since Whitechapel’s Women’s Library had closed the previous year. Owner Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe’s application featured pictures of suffragettes and trade union campaigners and promised the museum would be “the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history” and “recognise and celebrate the women of the East End who have shaped history, telling the story of how they have been instrumental in changing society. It will analyse the social, political and domestic experience from the Victorian period to the present day.” (Quoted in Wikipedia.)

On the basis of these promises the architects were persuaded to carry out the work for a lower than normal fee, and various others provided consultancy services at no cost. All, including the council, where shocked and felt duped when the covers were removed from the site in 2015 to reveal instead a ‘Jack the Ripper’ museum glorifying the unknown murderer of a number of working class women in the East End in 1888.

There were various protests organised outside the museum including some backed by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, who found his council unable to take any real action over the deception, various women’s groups and Class War. Finally the local council did refuse retrospective planning permission for the shop front and ordered changes to the shop’s signage and the removal of a metal roller shutter installed after a window was broken during protests in 2015. The shop owner appealed against the decision and lost. The projecting sign was removed at some time in 2017-8 but I think the shop has failed to comply with some other aspects.

On Sunday 19 June 2016 Class War and supporters including London Fourth Wave Feminists in cat masks, protested outside with toy plastic hammers offering to take down the shutter which had been declared illegal.

Police guarded the shop and prevented the protesters going inside but seemed generally fairly relaxed about the protest, with at least one making clear his distaste for the tacky tourist attraction they were having to protect. At one point they and the protesters were engulfed in red smoke after a couple of black-clad men arrived to join the protest, quickly fading away as the smoke cleared, with the protest then continuing in good spirits.

The good news is that the shop was put up for sale in April 2021 and is expected to close and take on some new use once sold. I’m not aware of any plans for its use and it will quite likely end up as some kind of offices, but it would be rather more satisfactory if it were bought and actually opened as a ‘Museum of Women’s History’. As I write it appears to still be unsold.

Rip Down the Ripper Facade!

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.