Custody Deaths, Kurds, Abortion, Zombies & More: Saturday 27 October 2007 was an unusually busy day for me and the lengthy write-up on My London Diary reflects this. The main event as on every last Saturday of October this century was the annual rally by the United Families and Friends of those who have died in custody who meet in Trafalgar Square for a slow march down Whitehall to a rally outside Downing Street – and I hope to post something about yesterday’s event shortly.
But the stories and pictures from 2007 are a little hard to find at the bottom of a long web page, so here I’ll republish the post – with the usual minor corrections and changes with links to the pictures I took.
Then on Saturday, everything was happening. I had to run around to start with to collect my unsold pictures from the City People show at the Juggler in Hoxton. [Although this web site is stilll on line, that organisation is long since gone dissolved the following year.} Fortunately I’d sold one of my four pictures, so that made them easier to carry, but it was a rush to be back in the centre of London.
Pro-referendum on Europe Rally – Yard, Westminster
Campaigners were just leaving as I arrived and I more or less missed the demonstrators who wanted a referendum on the changes to the European Union.
Protest Against Custody Deaths – Trafalgar Square & Whitehall
Instead I really started at Trafalgar Square, where the annual event remembering those who have died in custody was taking place, organised by the families and friends of those concerned.
Its an occasion that always shocks me by the sheer number of people who have died in such disgraceful or suspicious circumstances, in police cells, in prisons and elsewhere. It’s an event i sometimes find it hard to photograph, both emotionally and physically – thankfully autofocus works even when your eyes are filling with tears.
[I returned to this protest later outside Downing Street – more below]
Kurds Demand – Stop Turkey – Trafalgar Square,
While the United Families protest is getting ready, a large crowd of Kurds swarms into Trafalgar Square and holds a short rally, protesting against the Turkish governments approval of incursions into northern Iraq to attack the PKK there. Both the Kurds and the Armenians have suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks (who in turn have been rather screwed by the EU over Cyprus,
It’s a typically exuberant performance, and one that I enjoy photographing, but rather a distraction from the family and friends event.
Anti-Abortion (Pro-Life) Rally – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
There seems to be hiatus at this point, so I catch a bus down Whitehall. Walking along to Old Palace Yard I pass a few of the pro-referendum demonstrators, though some others have stayed to join in the anti-abortion protest.
This is rather smaller than I’d expected, perhaps around 500 people, although it is the only event that makes the BBC news bulletins I hear when i get home later in the day.
Lloyd George – Parliament Square
I listen a little to the anti-abortion speeches but then go to parliament square to take a look at the new statue of Lloyd George – which fails to impress me. Of course he was long before my time – although I did have a landlady as a student in Manchester who had worked as a secretary for him – but somehow I feel the statue trivialises him, looking rather like an enlarged version of a plastic figure you might find in a box of cornflakes rather than a statue.
Peace Train – Parliament Square,
The peace train is beginning to form a protest in Parliament Square and I go along to talk to them and take a few pictures.
More from Protest Against Custody Deaths
I rejoin the ‘Families And Friends’ march by now making a considerable protest opposite Downing Street, where a delegation has permission to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister’s residence at no 10.
For some reason the police decide not to allow those with press cards into the street in the normal way. I don’t like going in – the security checks are a nuisance and being restricted to a pen on the other side of the street is normally hopeless. But I think as a matter of principle that access should not be unreasonably prevented – even if personally I don’t want to take advantage of it.
By the time the delegation emerge, the mood is getting rather angry. one young policeman is getting surrounded and insulted and is trying hard to ignore it.A few minutes later a motor-cyclist foolishly stays in the route of the march, and is soon surrounded by angry people. He has to be rescued by his colleagues.
There are police who are racist, who are thugs, who are bullies. Too many who have got away with murder, often thanks to covering up or a lack of diligence in investigation by their colleagues. If it were not so, there would be no demonstrations like this one. But there are also officers who do their best to carry out a difficult and necessary job in a decent, reasonable and even-handed way – even though they may sometimes get disciplined for doing so. Those who bear the brunt of considerable and understandable hate directed against the police at a demo like this are not necessarily the guilty.
Crawl of the Dead IV – City and Southwark
It’s time for me to leave and make my way to the City, where this year the zombies are starting their walk at a pub on Ludgate Hill. I go into the pub and talk to some of them and take photographs, and am gratified to find that quite a few have seen my pictures of them from around Oxford Street the previous year.
By the time they emerge from the pub it is getting dark, and my flash by now is refusing to work at all. I have to make do either with available light (and there isn’t a lot) or the pretty useless flash built into my camera, but I still manage to get a few decent pictures, even though some are rather noisier than I’d like.
There are quite a few people around as we go over the Millennium Bridge, and more in front of Tate Modern, where zombies decide to play dead for a while. Then we visit the famous crack in the Turbine Hall, coming out towards the Founder’s Arms, where I made my goodbyes and turned for home.
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