Shaker, Job Centres, Firefighters, Tube, Lambeth – On Wednesday 25th February I photographed a number of protests in London, starting in Westminster with the Free Shaker Aamer campaign, striking firefighters and welfare rights activists, then with tube workers at Edgware Road and finally outside Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton.
Free Shaker Aamer – Parliament Square
A protest opposite Parliament called for the urgent release of London resident Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo, where he has been held and regularly abused for 13 years without charge or trial.
The Free Shaker Aamer Campaign had been holding weekly protests opposite Parliament whenever it was in session to remind government of the need for act over his release. He had long been cleared for release but was still held in the illegal prison camp with both US and UK governments dragging their feet as his testimony would be embarrassing to their security agencies, making clear their involvement in torture.
The protest was longer than usual as an international event was taking place at the nearby QEII centre and they wanted to remind delegates there of Shaker’s torture and imprisonment. Eventually the long campaign of protests by this and other groups led the UK government they needed to back his release in practice and he was finally released on 30th October 2015.
Firefighters in England held a 24 hour strike on 25th Feb 2015 against the unworkable pension scheme the government intended to implement. They say that the devolved governments had recognised the problems in the scheme and made improvements but in England government ministers were refusing to talk with the union, simply ignoring requests for meetings. They accused the government of lies about the union, saying they were being labelled as militants despite them being ready and willing to enter into negotiations at any time.
After a rally in Westminster Central Hall, several thousand striking firefighters protested on the street outside Parliament before marching to Downing St. Their protest brought all traffic in the area to a standstill until they marched away.
They stopped outside Downing Street and refused to move, saying they would wait there until someone came out to talk to them. A senior police officer come to talk with Matt Wrack and the other FBU leaders there and was extrememly politie, taking Wrack’s mobile number before going away to see if anyone could be persuaded to come out from Downing St to meet the protesters.
I left them leaning on the barriers and looking into Downing Street waiting for someone to come and see them, though I doubted if anyone would ever emerge.
The Fire Service has also suffered like other public services from government cuts; in London these led to Mayor Boris Johnson making dangerous reductions, closing some fire stations and reducing equipment and staffing, which left the London Fire Brigade ill-equipped to deal with major disasters such as the Grenfell fire.
The FBU union later won a number of legal cases against the government over the changes that were made to the pensions scheme, leading to significant compensation for some members.
Welfare activists protested outside the Dept of Work & Pensions in Caxton Street as a part of the national day of action over the arrest of welfare rights activist Tony Cox. He had been arrested when he tried to accompany a vulnerable claimant to her job centre interview to argue for a fairer claimant agreement.
As well as several banners, one man was gagged in protest. By law claimants are allowed to have and adviser present with them at the interview, but when a claimant turned up with Cox, his interview was cancelled.
Cox and the claimant then left the job centre, but later in the day police arrived at his him and arrested him, charging him with threatening behaviour.
RMT protest Underground Job Cuts – Edgware Road Station (Bakerloo)
Around 20 RMT members handed out fliers at the busy Edgware Road Bakerloo Line station against the proposed 50% cut in station staffing and the closure of the ticket offices which they say will endanger the safety of both passengers and staff.
They got a very positive reception from many of the public going in and out of the station or walking past, although a PCSO came to harass and try to stop their picketing. Most of the public seemed to realise that staff do far more than sell tickets and offer service and protection to the travelling public.
Many promises were made to Underground staff and the public about how they would be protected when cuts were made, but most were later broken.
Lambeth against £90m cuts – Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton
After taking some photographs of the protesting RMT staff I got on the Underground there, changing at Oxford Circus to take me to the end of the Victoria Line at Brixton.
There I walked down to Lambeth Town Hall on the corner of Acre Land to join around a hundred trade unionists, pensioners, library and other council staff, social housing tenants and other residents who were gathering for a lively rally outside Lambeth Town Hall.
A lively rally took place urging councillors who were arriving for the council meeting to reject library closures and other £90 millon cuts which were being passed there by the large Labour majority on the council. Labour then held 59 of the 63 council seats. Among the speakers at the rally was the only Green Party councillor, Scott Ainslie, who was to vote against the cuts. The Green Party gained four more seats in the 2018 council elections but lost three of these in 2022. Right-wing Labour councillors still have an overwheming majority and the council continues its policies which fail the community.
Lambeth’s finances were stretched by the development of a new Town Hall or Civic Centre the cost of which roughly doubled from the original contract of £55 million ot £104 million. Policies such as the closure of libraries and the demolition and sale of popular and well-built council estates like Cressingham Gardens had already produced a great deal of protest in the borough.
The £90 million cuts passed at the council meeting later that evening have had a disproportionate impact on children, old people and the disabled who always rely on local services more than the average person. Council employees at the rally opposed the cuts not only because they feared for their own jobs, but because they knew those that remain in post will not be able to offer the public the same quality of service that they do at present.
Sandy Suspended – SOAS Shut Down: SOAS management in 2015 made plans to slash £6.5million from the budget for the following academic year by cutting 184 courses and making staff redundant. The plans would also have seen outsourced staff given even worse contracts by the private companies employing them.
Management, headed by interim director Baroness Valerie Amos, a former adviser to Tony Blair were also attempting to bring the student union to implement the government’s divisive ‘prevent strategy’ and to stop the democratically agreed academic boycott of Israel and the appointment of a liberation co-President of the Students Union.
Students responded angrily after a leaked document revealed the extent of the cuts and began an occupation of the Brunei Suite on the SOAS site in early October 2015. The suite was not a part of the university’s educational programme, but a money-making business rented out for commercial uses and the students also wanted it to be used by and for the SOAS community.
During the occupation they used the suite for a number of talks, discussions and various creative events. Management responded by spending several thousand pounds a day on extra security – and when I visited SOAS the only way to enter was through windows and too athletic for me.
Amos accused the students and staff supporting the occupation of bullying and intimidating behaviour immediately before she then tried to intimidate them by suspending Unison branch secretary Sandy Nicoll over a totally untrue allegation that he had allowed students to occupy the suite.
Sandy Nicoll
The suspension brought an immediate angry response from staff and students at the university who called for a day of action on 29th October. Many teaching and administrative staff refused to cross a picket line and management locked the doors, cancelling lectures in the main building for the day while a long and spirited protest took place outside.
Around 60 Unison members and 20 from the UCU came outin an uofficial action to support him, along with many of the students including student union leaders. Messages of support for Sandy came from colleges and trade unions around the country. A long series of speakers also came to give their support in person.
There was tremendous warm support when Sandy Nicoll himself came up to speak, with people shouting out, cheering and clapping in a truly rapturous welcome. Sandy was suspended on an entirely false charge and there seems to be little chance of the university getting back to normal business until he is reinstated.
At the end of the rally, many of those present took part in the ‘Strikey-Strikey’ dance, a version of the hokey-cokey in a large circle where at the of each verse everyone runs like made into the centre. Afterwards, as I was leaving, people set off smoke flares and paraded with banners and a violin and drums.
Early in November Sandy was reinstated following a number of protests and unofficial walkouts. The huge solidarity he got from workers at the university was a response to his years of support for workers at SOAS and elsewhere, particularly in the long and eventually successful Justice for Cleaners campaign to get them brought back into direct employment.
I was pleased when one of my pictures from this protest of Ed Emery playing his fiddle was buried as a part of the SOAS centenary time capsule in 2016. I was there on the day it was buried but for a protest by the cleaners and left to do other things before the burial.
Climate, Malala, TUC, Workfare & Tax Cheats: Saturday 20th October 2012was a busy day for protests in London with a huge TUC march against austerity with various groups on its fringes and other smaller protests around.
Against Austerity For Climate Justice! – St Paul’s Cathedral
The climate block of the TUC ‘A Future That Works’ march held a rally on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral before marching to join the main TUC march.
The block was joined people from Occupy London and UK Uncut who made up a ‘No cuts, no tax-dodging’ block.
The main banner called for a ‘Massive Shift’ to invest in jobs and renewable energy and there were other banners, flags and placards with the Uncut logo calling for an end to tax evasion and tax avoidance.
I left them as they began to make their way to join the main TUC march, hurrying to Downing Street for an unconnected protest.
Members of the Edequal Foundation, an educational charity founded by Shahzad Ali and based in north London which supports teachers and students demonstrated in a show of support for Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban because of her campaigning for education for women.
She began her campaign in 2009 by writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC about life under Taliban control and was later filmed by the New York Times. She became well-known for these and other interviews and in 2011 was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and was nominated by Rev Desmond Tutu for the International Children’s Peace Prize.
Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban while returning by bus from an exam on 9th October 2012 and this made her the centre of international attention and support. After treatment in Pakistan she was transferred to hospital in Birmingham and after recovering settled there continuing her campaigning. She has since received other awards, becoming the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 when she was 17.
The TUC march for ‘A Future That Works’ against austerity was impressively large with a reported 150,000 people taking part.
I’d gone to photograph the marchers going past Parliament and up Whitehall to Traflagar Square and Piccadilly Circus. I’d begun taking pictures about half an hour after the front of the march had passed, and two hours later people were still passing me in a dense mass, waving flags and carrying banners.
Most had come with trade union groups and there were many fine union banners, but there were also others taking part. Police generally stood well back and the march with just a few trade union stewards proceeded peacefully along the route.
Quite a few stopped for some minutes outside Downing Street to shout noisily in the direction of No 10, though I think Prime Minister David Cameron was miles away. Certainly the march had no effect on his policies.
There were a few police here and at other key points, but one group on the march got special attention, with a line of officers in blue caps walking in line on each side of around 200 black-clad anarchists. Earlier I had seen one small group of anarchists being chased by a police FIT team who called in other police to surround them while they attempted to take their photographs.
Boycott Workfare were “a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare.” They say that “Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage.”
Their campaign was supported by a wide range of organisations including a number of trade union branches and several hundred people turned up on Oxford Street for their protest, including a number dressed in black and masked with scarves or wearing ‘Anonymous’ masks.
They marched to protest at shops and businesses in the area which are taking part in workfare schemes which many of those unemployed had to work without pay or lose their benefits. Many of the shops closed as the protest went part and the protesters briefly occupied others.
Although this had been planned as a ‘a fun and family-friendly action’ and was led by a samba band, while it started peacefully a number of scuffles broke out when police tried to stop or arrest those taking part, and by the time it ended many on both sides were clearly angry.
There was a nasty moment after the protesters had crowded inside a hotel which uses people on workfare on Great Marlborough Street. They made some noise but there was no damage and they would almost certainly have moved on after a few minutes as there were other places to visit. Police entered and tried to forcibly push the protesters out, while police outside were preventing them from leaving. I fortunately avoided injury when pushed down the stairs by police.
From there they returned to Oxford Street and tried to rush into a number of shops known to be using workfare and some also known to be avoiding payment of huge amounts of UK tax. Some got their shutters down and police managed to get to others and block the entrance before the protesters arrived – doing the protesters job for them in closing the shop.
The Salvation Army, one of a number of charities involved in the scheme got a kid glove treatment – with just two protesters standing in the doorway and making short speeches before the protest moved on.
At Marble Arch the protester turned around to march back up towards Oxford Circus, and police tried to put a cordon across the street to stop them. But the gaps between officers were too large and most protesters simply walked through the gaps when officers grabbed one of two of them. Some of the police clearly lost their tempers and many protesters were shouting at them to calm down.
One officer who had tackled a protester was apparently injured and a group of police grabbed a protester and pushed him roughly down on the pavement in front of a shop. As I reported:
While several police forcefully pushed him to the ground, others stood around them. They seemed to see their main purpose as preventing photographers and others from seeing what was happening, with one woman officer in particular following my every move to block my view, while I could hear the protester on the ground shouting that he was not resisting and asking why they kept on hurting him. From the brief glimpses I got as police attempted to prevent me seeing what was happening they appeared to be using entirely unnecessary force.
The protest was continuing but I’d seen enough and taken as many pictures as I could over the day and it was time to go home.
European Social Forum & Rosary Crusade: Two very different things happened on the streets of London on Saturday 16th October 2004.
European Social Forum – Speakers’ Corner, Oxford St and Carnaby St
Saturday was the second day of the three day European Social Forum, held in London from 15-17 October 2004. This brought together trade unionists, socialists, peace campaigners and greens from all over Europe to demonstrate that “another europe is possible”, but apparently left many complaining about how the event had been organised and manipulated.
Code Pink protesters prepare at Speakers’ Corner
I chose not to attend the more serious sessions of talks but to photograph the more creative activities outside these on the streets of London.
On the Saturday people met at Speakers Corner before marching down Oxford Street, which I called “the Temple of Mammon” and commented it “must rank as about the most depressing place on earth”.
Street theatre on Oxford Street
I left them protesting on Oxford Street to go to the Rosary Crusade and then rejoined them on Carnaby Street where the GMB union were protesting together with the French CGT outside the Puma store because of their use of sweated Labour. More recently I’ve photographed protests outside Puma because of their support for Israel and teams from occupied Palestine in the Israel Football League.
Also in Carnaby Street were members of ‘No Sweat‘, the grassroots campaign group which has highlighted the use of sweated labour to produce clothing sold in the UK including by Burberry. And providing some loud music to make sure the protests were noticed were a large samba band including many from both Sheffield and international guests, particularly from France.
The police began to get rather restless and I overheard one commenting to a member of the public “they’ve been pissing about for six hours and it’s time they went home”. And I wrote that “muscled officers in baggy black fighting gear were flexing muscles and grinning stupidly, obviously relishing the likely opportunity for a little action, as officers and demonstrators argued the toss.”
Eventually the police allowed the protest to keep moving and it returned to Oxford Street, for protests outside Niketown at Oxford Circus and then at the Virgin Megastore. I went inside expecting some of the protesters to follow, but left in a hurry as the store security on police advice lowered the shutters closing the place down as the demonstration arrived outside.
The previous day I and other photographers had been a little harassed by police and at this point I thought it sensible to slip away. The police were doing a great job of stopping all road traffic in the area with a large number of police vans blocking the road, but I was able to walk past along with shoppers still using Oxford Street shops and into the Underground. I had agreed to go for a meal with others at a Nepalese restaurant near Euston and didn’t want to be late.
More about the three days of protest for the European Social Forum on My London Diary.
Rosary Crusade of Reparation – Westminster Cathedral
A very different event was taking place outside Westminster Cathedral, where the annual Rosary Crusade Of Reparation procession was preparing to leave on its way to Brompton Oratory.
I talked with some of those taking part and was assured that “the future is latin”. Having masses the people can follow in their own language has not been popular with some traditionalists.
The event started with Bishop Fernando Arêas Rifan from Brazil intoning “Credo in Unum Deum” using the loudspeaker on a police van. The creed was continued by the congregation, led by several Knights of Malta and the traditional Catholic Family Alliance.
Jobs, Services & Education, Police Violence & More: My work on Saturday May 23rd 2009 began with a march in North London before coming down to a couple of protests at Downing Street and then a march from Trafalgar Square to New Scotland Yard against police violence.
March to Defend Jobs, Services and Education – Highbury Fields to Archway
Around 1500 jobs had been lost recently in North London, including around 550 mainly support workers from London Metropolitan University, 500 civil servants from Archway tower and more at City University, where adult education is under threat.
Trade unionists from the Islington National Union of Teachers, the Public & Commercial Services Union, London Metropolitan University Unison and the University and College Union and other local groups including GiK-DER Refugee Workers Cultural Association were marching from Highbury Fields to a rally at Archway in protest against these job cuts.
The cuts in education threaten courses and also the provisions including nurseries that enable many mature students who missed out on education to study and get qualifications later in life.
Speakers at the rally after the march included those from the UCU, CWU, London Metropolitan University, PCS, Islington Trades Council and local Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Southern Yemenis Demonstrate For a Separate State – Downing St
The state of Yemen has a long and complex history dating back to ancient times which is dealt with at some length on Wikipedia.
In the 19th century Britain attacked and occupied Aden and the surrounding region with the rest of the country being under the Ottoman Empire. In the 1960s a civil war in the north and a revolt against British rule in the south led to the foundation of two independent states, the Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the People’s Democractic Republic of Yemen in the south, who went to war with each other in 1972. After a ceasefire brokered by the Arab League and a further civil war the two countries were merged in 1990.
This London protest followed protests in Aden a week earlier on the 15th anniversary of an unsuccessful attempt by the southern Yemen leader Ali Salem al-Beidh to end the union with the north, which led to the 1994 civil war, lost by the South.
The protest was organised by Southern Yemenis from the Southern Democratic Assembly (TAJ), based in London who want an end to the union and accuse the Yemeni government of grabbing land and property and human rights abuses. They called for an end to the union with the north.
The Reverend Billy and his ‘Life After Shopping’ Gospel choir from New York were in London on their 2009 UK Shopocalypse Tour and gave a brief performance in front of the gates of Downing St.
Police were not impressed and obviously had no idea of who the Reverend was as in response to his questions the officer concerned was diagnosed by Billy as having a “shopping problem.”
The Church of Life After Shopping believes that we need to “back away from the product” and resist the way that advertising and the media persuade us to live only thorough consuming corporate products, and get down to experiencing life directly.
Excessive consumption is clearly at the root of climate change and the demand for incessant economic growth is clearly a long term impossibility in a finite planet. We need to be planning for a fairer sharing of resources between rich and majority worlds and an economy based on sustainability rather than growth – which will clearly mean lower levels of wasteful consumption and a concentration on necessities rather than luxuries.
As Billy made clear, following the G20 summit and the pathetic waste and greed shown in the continuing parliamentary allowances scandal, our government and MPs are clearly in need of the Life After Shopping Gospel.
National Demonstration against Police Violence – Trafalgar Square to New Scotland Yard.
The United Campaign Against Police Violence was set up following the G20 demonstration in London when Ian Tomlinson, a man not taking part in the demonstration, was assaulted by police and died. Many protesters and some press were also attacked by police during the protest.
It brought together trade unionists and activists involved in organising the G20 Meltdown demonstration as well as campaigners against deaths in police custody particularly those in the United Families & Friends Campaign, UFFC, including the families of two men who died in Brixton Police Station, Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg.
The protest was led by a coffin with a brass plate “FOR ALL OUR LOVED ONES WHO DIED IN POLICE CUSTODY”, and included a giant red figure representing one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – who led the four marches that converged on the Bank of England in the G20 demonstration. Prominent in the march and rally were Professor Chris Knight and Sean Rigg’s two sisters, Marcia and Samantha and the Rev Billy added his voice through a giant megaphone.
At the rally outside New Scotland Yard on Victoria Street there were speeches and a minute of silence for those who had died before the release of black balloons to represent the dead.
The police had until almost the end of the event acted on their best behaviour, arranging for the safe movement of the protest and joking with press and talking calmly with the protesters. The protesters were clearly angry about police violence but the protest was restrained and orderly
But as the rally was about to draw to a close in front of the police headquarters a police van drove up and a woman officer interrupted proceedings to read a statement telling everyone their presence was illegal. It seemed inexplicable other than as a deliberate attempt to try to provoke a violent reaction from the peaceful crowd, but the organisers managed to quieten things down and the rally continued.
End outsourcing at University of London: Five years ago, on Wednesday 25th April 2018 I was with workers from the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain – IWGB on the first day of a two day strike at the University of London central administration by over 100 cleaners, porters, security officers, receptionists, gardeners, post room staff and audiovisual staff.
They were calling for an end to the outsourcing of their jobs in the university to various contracting companies and demanding to be directly employed by the University, and receive the same conditions and benefits as directly employed colleagues. As well as the workers, academics, students and other trade unionists came to support them in a lively rally outside the gates to Stewart House in Russell Square..
The rally was part of a successful campaign led by the IWGB which began in 2010 and ten years later the university central administration changed to directly employ porters, receptionists, post room and audio visual technicians, with cleaners following shortly after in November 2020.
The IWGB are still campaigning to bring workers in-house in other universities in London, including UCL, and they and other unions have been successful elsewhere. United Voices of the World are one of these and some of their members had come to the rally to show their support.
Cleaners and security staff at universities across London are organising for equality with directly-employed staff!
Outsourced workers suffer from far worse terms and conditions than directly-employed colleagues, facing no sick pay, bare minimum holiday entitlement and meagre pensions. Bullying, mismanagement and discrimination by unaccountable outsourced managers are common.
Workers in the IWGB union are leading the fightback. Through public campaigning and strike action we can end outsourcing at London universities!
Among the speakers at the gates of Senate House was Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell who also brought support from Jeremy Corbyn and promised a Labour government would bring in new trade union laws and end the unfairness of outsourcing. Unfortunately should we now get a Labour government at the next election its policies will be more about protecting company profits than protecting workers.
There were plenty of others as well as IWGB members who spoke, and one was a woman from UCU at Goldsmiths University who had come with a large donation from them to the strike fund.
Billy Bragg came to give his support, singing three songs, and got us joining in on some of them, and Archie Shuttlebrace sang with Rebecca Wade Morris. Chip Hamer (Grim Chip) and another of the poets from Poetry on the Picket Line performed some of their work.
Then it was time for a march around Russell Square, with over 200 people briefly holding up traffic. The march was lead by the yellow Precarious Workers Mobile three-wheeler and a samba band.
They returned to the gates of Stewart House and the rally continued with more music, poetry and dancing.
December 5th 2012 was a fine winter’s day and I took advantage of the weather to try and walk around the area which had been fenced off for the London Olympics for around 5 years. In the evening I joined a protest in Westminster against the continuing cuts being aimed at the poorest and most vulnerable by George Osborne and the Conservative-led government.
Olympic Area Slightly Open – Stratford Marsh. Wed 5 Dec 2012
It was around April 2007 that an 11 mile long blue fence went up around the whole of the London Olympic site at Stratford, barring access to the whole site except for those working on it. Parts were replaced in 2012 with a 5,000 volt 4m tall electrified perimeter fence in 2012 for the games itself.
St Thomas’ Creek still blocked to boats
Even the public footpath along the Northern Sewage Outfall, the Greenway, had been closed in May 2012, but after I heard this had reopened on December 1st I had been wanting to visit the area again to walk along it.
Crossrail works
The View Tube, a cafe and viewing area set up on the Greenway had also reopened, under new management, and it was only signs for this that kept me going past a maze of fencing and hostile signage. The Greenway was still closed between Stratford High Street and the main railway lines because of ongoing work for Crossrail, and roads north of the railway were still fenced off.
Wire fences and yellow fences have replaced the blue
Despite it being a fine afternoon for a walk I was the only customer to enter the View Tube while I was there and the Greenway, normally a useful through route for cyclists and pedestrians, was still deserted.
I could see no signs of work going on to bring the area back into use. Ten years later the area is still largely a desert and most of the promises about the ‘Olympic Legacy’ have been reneged on. This is still an Olympic waste; though the developers have done well out of it, the people haven’t.
I walked along the Greenway, finding there was no access from it to any part of the area, with those electric wire fences still in place, and made my way along the Lea Navigation to Hackney Wick, making a number of pictures on my way.
Osborne’s Budget Cuts – Strand to Westminster, Wed 5 Dec 2012
I around 200 people outside Kings College at Aldwych who were meeting to march to join the rally at Downing St where Stop the War and CND were protesting against Osborne’s attacks on the vulnerable, continued in his autumn statement.
The march had been called by the UCU London Region, and was joined by students, trade unionists, socialists and others, and went down the Strand and into Whitehall shouting slogans against public service cuts, the rich, David Cameron and George Osborne in particular to join a similar number already protesting at Downing St.
Speakers at the rally pointed out the huge cost of military expenditure which was being poured into futile projects – and the pockets of the arms manufacturers:
“The Afghanistan war — which everyone knows is futile and lost — is costing around £6 billion a year. The yearly maintenance costs for Trident are £2.2 billion a year. The cost of renewing the Trident system — which this government is committed to do — would cost up to £130 billion. Two aircraft carriers are being built at a cost of £7 billion. Then there’s the £15 billion to be spent buying 150 F-35 jets from the US, each of which will cost £85 million plus an extra £16 million for the engine.”
John McDonnell MP
By now it was freezing, and when the speeches began the speakers were asked to cut their contributions short because of the extreme cold. Among those who spoke were John McDonnell MP, Kate Hudson of CND, author Owen Jones, Andy Greene of DPAC and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett.
Kate Hudson CND
We heard from a nurse about the campaign to keep Lewisham hospital open, where a few days earlier 15,000 had marched and formed a human chain around the hospital. The hospital is successful and well run, but huge PFI debts from another hospital in the area threaten its future.
Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett
A NUT member talked about the problems the cuts were making in education and campaigners had come from Connaught School in Waltham Forest where they are striking against the decision by school governors to pursue academy status despite the opposition of the teachers, parents, the local MP and councillors.
A speaker from UK Uncut urged people to join the protests against Starbucks the following Saturday and many of those who spoke called for trade unions to take action against the cuts, calling on union leaders to stop simply speaking against them and start organising strike action.
Key Workers were protesting in London on Wednesday 2nd December 2015, but their protests were ignored by government and then Tory Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Since then we have seen that the warnings of the protesters were real and the consequences of Tory policies have led to disaster. It’s a failure of our system of government that allows dogmatism and class interests to pursue such irresponsible policies at both local and national level, and one hugely facilitated by a media largely controlled by a handful of billionaires.
Firefighters say cuts endanger London – City Hall, Wednesday 2nd December 2015
Firefighters and supporters protested at City Hall against plans to get rid of 13 fire engines and slash 184 firefighters in the London Fire Brigade. These came on top of previous cuts and station closures which have already led to increases in the time taken for firefighters to arrive at fires which have lead to people who would otherwise have been rescued dying in fires.
The People of Shoreditch Say… Bozo Don’t take or Fire Engine Away! – Bozo the Clown of County Hall’
Trade unionists and others came to support the firefighters and some spoke at the rally along with speakers from the FBU. It took only a little persuasion to get George Galloway to speak. Members of the London Assembly had put forward an alternative plan to make savings and avoid the loss of the fire engines but these were dismissed by London Mayor Boris Johnson.
George Galloway came to show support
One of the consequences of the cuts to London’s fire services came sadly and disastrously with the loss of 72 lives at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. We found then that London simply didn’t have a single fire engine capable of dealing with a fire in the upper floors of the building. Fortunately Surrey, although it has far fewer high rise buildings had kept one which could be called in to help, or the death toll would have been even higher.
Save NHS Student Bursaries – Dept of Health, Whitehall, Wednesday 2nd December 2015
George Osborne had decided to scrap NHS student bursaries from 2017. Nurses and other healthcare students have to spend around 50% or their time working in hospitals for the NHS during training and so are largely unable to take on part-time work as many other students do. They only payment they get for this work is through the bursaries.
It seems totally unfair to ask them to take out student loans and work for the NHS for nothing as well. And since many of the jobs they go into are not particularly well-paid, it makes little financial sense as many would probably never fully repay their loans.
Always plenty of money for our arms manufacturers
But what nurses said it would do was to lead to a reduction of students applying for healthcare courses, particularly the many single mothers and more matures students who are enabled to take the courses by the bursaries. And to take this action at a time when there was a critical shortage of medical staff was sheer lunacy.
Of course they were right. The situation in the NHS is even worse now partly due to this axing of bursaries. Of course there are other factors too – including a racist immigration policy which has been made much worse with Brexit. And the continually increasing privatisation taking place.
The NHS has so far suffered various areas of breakdown caused of exacerbated by various government policies – including some under New Labour who promoted disastrous PFI schemes that have brought some hospital trusts to financial ruin. Covid was another savage test and things look set to get far worse in the coming winter months. And given the years of below inflation pay offers its hardly suprising that nurses are now about to strike.
The problems with scrapping the student bursary were so intense that the government was forced to set up a new bursary scheme in 2020. But while the previous scheme had a maximum of £16,454 a year, with a minimum of £10,000, the new scheme was considerably less generous, at a standard £5000, with additions for shortage areas and childcare giving a maximum of £8000.
Southall Black Sisters Protest Racist UKBA – Eaton House, Hounslow – Thu 24th Oct 2013
Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters speaking in front of the Hounslow Reporting Centre
Although I grew up in Hounslow, ten miles west of the centre of London, I’ve not often returned there in recent years, and the protest organised by Southall Black Sisters outside the Hounslow Reporting Centre on Thursday 24th October 2013 was the only one I’ve so far photographed in the town.
The UK Borders Agency reporting centre is at the western edge of the town, opposite Hounslow Heath where highwaymen once roamed and was the aerodrome from where the British Empire’s first scheduled daily international commercial flights took off in 1919. The large brick block once housed the UK laboratory and factory of US chemical manufacture Parke-Davis, once the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, now a subsidiary of Pfizer, who had set up a dyestuffs factory here before the first world war, though the Research and Administration building in front of which the protest was held only dates from 1954.
Southall Black Sisters (SBS) say that after the Refugee & Migrant Forum East London (RAMFEL) succeeded in its legal challenge over Theresa May’s Home Office advertising vans (which were also criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority) “the UKBA has shifted the ’Go Home’ message to reporting centres in Glasgow, Croydon and Hounslow.”
Their protest against the Government’s anti-immigration campaigns outside the Hounslow reporting centre stated “We will not tolerate underhand tactics used to instil fear and divide us. Let us return to the streets and make our voices heard. We need to fight for our rights.”
I joined the group of around 30 people, mainly SBS members, most wearing t-shirts with the message ‘Do I look illegal?’, but they were joined by others from Sol-Fed and other groups who had brought a large banner with the message ‘F**K ALL RACISM – NO ONE IS ILLEGAL’.
And no person is illegal, but those called it lack permission to be here, though many will in time be granted it. In France, such people are said to be ‘without papers’, but none of us in the UK needs papers to live here, so an appropriate but less biased term might be ‘without status’. The term ‘illegal immigrants’, a deliberately biased description of people who do not currently have a legal right to live in this country.
The protesters blew plastic horns and whistles and generally made a lot of noise, as well as shouting a number of chants including ‘Theresa May, drop the pretence, Go home vans cause offence’, ‘We are humans not illegal, We want justice for our people’ and ‘Money for jobs and education, Not for racist deportation.’
3 Cosas Defy London University Protest Ban – Senate House, Thu 24th Oct 2013
The ‘3 Cosas’ campaign is for sickpay, holidays and pensions for all workers at the University of London, where many low paid workers are outsourced to companies who employ them often in the legal minimum wage and conditions of service, and also often employ bullying managers to overwork staff. They often fail to provide proper safety equipment to do the job.
The workers, many of whom are Spanish speaking, have for some years been demanding they should be directly employed by the university where they work rather than these contracting companies, and there have by now been many long and successful campaigns to achieve this.
The University management in 2013 had responded to their campaign with a ban of protests in and around Senate House, and threatened to bring police onto campus to prevent further protests and to bring charges of trespass against any protesters. This was seen by workers and staff and students as an attempt to prevent free speech and freedom of assembly at the university similar to that of of authoritarian regimes overseas, rightly condemned across academia and the rest of society.
On Thursday 24th October, staff students, the IWGB (Independent Workers of Great Britain) trade union which represents many cleaners and other trade unionists defied University management ban of protests by holding a noisy protest in and around Senate House.
After protesting on the streets around the Senate House, some of the protesters walked in around another building while others scaled the gates to protest at the bottom of Senate House. Eventually police came and tried to stop them walking out. But there were too few of them to be effective. The protesters walked out and ended their protest in front of SOAS.
Saturday 12th October 2019 was a rainy day in London, but that didn’t stop people coming to take part in Extinction Rebellion’s Strength in Grief procession from Marble Arch to Russell Square, although probably it rather kept the numbers rather lower. I don’t like photographing in the rain, but in London you have to be prepared for it, though I still have problems.
While you can try to keep cameras dry, you can’t take pictures without exposing the front of the lens to the weather. It’s less of a problem if you work with long lenses that have lens hoods that help to keep raindrops off the lens, but if like me you mainly use wide-angles anything that would help much to keep the lens surface dry would be in the picture.
I work clutching a cloth or chamois leather in my hand and try to wipe off any drops immediately before taking each picture, but still a proportion of them are ruined as rain falls before I press the shutter release. But worse still, with humidity high lenses steam up on inner elements and become unusable – zoom lenses more so as zooming draws in or expresses air from the lens. On some occasions I’ve been left only able to use a fixed focal length fisheye, or simply have to go somewhere warm and dry for to restore lenses to use.
Trade Unionists join the Rebellion – Trafalgar Square
Ian Hodson, National President of the Baker’s Union BFAWU
My working day began in Trafalgar Square, where trade unionists were holding a rally to show their solidarity with Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikers. Unlike the government they recognise that the climate and ecological emergency means that the very future of life on this planet is at stake and we need to take radical action without delay to avoid catastrophe.
They joined the huge number of scientists and others in what Liz Truss has now stigmatised as the ‘anti-growth coalition’ of those who haven’t firmly buried their heads in the ground to realise that we need deeds not words urgently. As David Attenborough put it, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planate is either mad, or an economist.” Though a shortsighted economist. Many of those present went on to join XR’s procession later.
Also in Trafalgar Square were protesters from the 3million organisation who had come to express their love for the UK and to remind the Prime Minister of the broken promise made to them on 1 June 2016 when Vote Leave had stated “There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.”
Instead they have had to apply for permission to remain, and many who have applied have not been granted settled status. Recently Government minister Brandon Lewis had stated that they are at risk of deportation.
They had come prepared for the weather with ponchos in the blue and yellow colours of the European flag. They held up copies of Vote Leave’s broken promise and tore it up.
October 12th is the Day of Indigenous Resistance on the anniversary of Colombus’s landing in the Americas. The procession began with a rally at Marble Arch where speakers included those from various indigenous communities and women from the Global Women’s Strike who spoke about the climate crisis which is already killing thousands in the Global South as well as others who spoke on the power of grief.
Eventually the funeral procession set off past Marble Arch and along Oxford St, led by XR’s Red Brigade.
Behind them came skeletons, a jazz funeral band and many people carrying coffins, banners and placards and expressing their profound grief at the extinction of species taking place due to global warming and which threatens the future of human life.
I began at the head of the procession, then stopped on Oxford Street to photograph the rest of the marchers as they came along the street.
By now I was wet, my cameras were getting wet, and I was getting cold and I decided to leave rather than continue with the procession to its final rally in Russell Square.
