UCH | >Re-PHOTO

Free Syria & Keep the NHS Public: On Tuesday May 17th 2011 I photographed two protests, a march against the continuing privatisation of parts of our NHS and the Health & Social Care Bill then going through parliament, and a protest at Downing Street calling for the government to support the revolution against the Assad regime in Syria and work to end the bloodshed taking place there.

Fourteen years later the NHS is still under threat with more and more of its services being taken over by private healthcare companies, and although some changes have been made to the disastrous ‘reforms’ introduced under Andrew Lansley but implemented by Jeremy Hunt who later called the fragmentation that it caused ‘frankly, completely ridiculous’ and tried hard to ignore much of it.

What Hunt thought was the only successful part of the Act was that it established the independence of NHS England from the government. On 13th March 2025 the Labour government announced they were scropping NHS England, putting the NHS firmly under the control of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, two men who one of my Facebook friends posted should not be in charge of a first aid kit let alone the NHS. If only, many of us think, had Leanne Mohamad got another 529 votes in Ilforn North in 2024 and she had become the MP for Ilford North rather than Streeting. It was perhaps the greatest disappointment of that General Election.

Both Britain and the USA failed to support the Arab Spring in Syria with much more than weak words and when Russian put the forces behind Assad his survival was ensured until finally ousted by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and others after 13 years of brutal civil war in December 2024.

The US gave some support to the Kurds to enable them to defeat ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) despite the support ISIS received from our NATO ally Turkey. But by 2024 lamost half a million Syrians had been killed and around 6.7 million refugees had fled Syria with another 5 million internally displaced. And Turkey had taken advantage of the situation to invade and occupy some largely Kurdish areas.

In deference to Turkey, the UK government proscribed the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistani (PKK) or Kurdish Workers Party in 2001, later adding a whole list of other names it used, KADEK, Kongra Gele Kurdistan, Teyre Azadiye Kurdistan (TAK) and Hezen Parastina Gel (HPG). For some years the PKK had moved from fighting for an independent state of Kurdistan to calling for greater autonomy and civil rights for Kurds in Turkey and a few days ago at a PKK conference it announced it was to disband and disarm.

Keep The NHS Public – UCH Euston Road to Whitehall

Over a thousand people, including many medical professionals and medical students, marched through London to show their opposition to government reforms which threatens jobs and many feel would destroy the NHS.

After a rally at University College Hospital on Euston Road the march, the second large march in London aimed at saving the NHS and killing Andrew Lansley’s Health & Social Care Bill, set off for Westminster.

There was a brief ‘die-in’ at Cambridge Circus and a small ‘sit-in’ outside Downing Street before the marchers held a final rally in front of the Department of Health at Richmond House before dispersing.

You can read a fuller account of the protest and see many more pictures on My London Diary at Keep The NHS Public.

Syrians Ask For Support at Downing St

Syrians supporting the ‘People’s Revolution’ in their country called for support from the British people and government to support their demands for reform and to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

A large group of Syrians including Kurds from Northern Syria called for support from David Cameron and the British people for the Syrian people.

Since demonstrations for political and economic freedom and an end to the tyranny and bloodshed of the Assad regime started in Syria on March 15th 2011, more than 800 innocent protesters have been killed, over 2000 injured and many more detained.

Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad was president of Syria from 1971 until he died in 2000, and was responsible for many deaths and disappearances, including a massacre of 40,000 people at Hama in 1982. His son Bashar Al-Assad, nicknamed as ‘The Butcher’ continued the “arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, rape, and mass surveillance.”

More about the protest and many more pictures at Syrians Ask For Support.

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Minerva House, North Crescent, Chenies St, Camden, 1987 87-7f-21-positive_2400

Grade II listed Minerva House on the North Crescent of Chenies St , architect George Vernon, was built in 1912-3 for the Minerva Motor company which had begun in Belgium making bicylces before moving on to motorbikes and cars. One of its English dealers in 1903 was Charles Rolls, who the following year joined up with Henry Royce to sell his cars. In 1910 he became the first Briton to be killed in a crash by a powered aircraft when his Wright Flyer lost its tail during an air display in Bournemouth.

When I took this picture Minerva House was the Combined Training School for University College Hospital, training around 300 nurses a year. Since Minerva was the Roman Goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, strategic warfare, commerce, weaving, and the crafts this seems appropriate. She was also supposed to have created the olive tree and invented the flute and numbers. Minerva House is now the London home of global media agency OMD.

At right is the bleak Chenies Street concrete blockhouse entrance to the deep-level air raid shelter built in 1942, currently called ‘The Eisenhower Centre’ though it had no real wartime connection to the General. Before the war Minerva House looked out onto gardens.

Pembridge Gardens, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987 87-7f-24-positive_2400

19 Pembridge Gardens was obviously in rather poor condition in 1987 when I took this picture, with peeling paint and trees growing up in odd places. The house was empty, its front door secured by two padlocks. It had been Grade II listed three years before I photographed it.

It looks in rather better condition now, and it should be as it appears to be home to a firm of “well-established Expert decorators.” Though I think it a shame not to have retained what is I think an illuminated house number above the door.

Pembridge Gardens, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987 87-7f-25-positive_2400

It’s hard to count the number of bells at the left of the door to this house just a couple of doors up from the house in previous picture, but then obviously in rather better condition. There are 15 of them on the five floors of this house. Built in the mid 19th century (with a later top floor) it was also Grade II listed in 1974.

A Davey, Builder, ghost sign, Portobello Rd, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987 87-7f-52-positive_2400

A neatly aligned sign indented in the rendering on the wall of an end terrace house in Portobello road still informs us

A. DAVEY.
BUILDER.
M A N U F A C T U R E R O F
EVERY DESCRIPTION OF INSIDE
AND OUTSIDE WINDOW BLINDS.
UPHOLSTERER AND DECORATER
ESTABLISHED 1851.

though I’m sure he was well gone from the premises when I photographed them 136 years later.

Davey the builder was probably one of the original occupiers of this long purpose-built terrace of shops which were developed in 1848-9 by the Rev Brooke Edward Bridges and Thomas Pocock who had bought the land for ‘Portobello Terrace’ from Felix Ladbroke; they were built by various local builders to a similar plan, with a ground floor shop and two floors above for the shopkeeper and his family. More recently extra doors have been added and the upper floors are largely let as expensive flats.

Looking at the text of the sign I think the lettering was probably stamped out while the rendering was still damp rather than cut out. It has certainly lasted well and can hardly be called a ‘ghost sign’. Fitting in some of the longer text was obviously rather tricky and there are just a few places where the letter spacing seems not to be optimal. Though generally rather better than my crude attempt above.

Dodo, Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987 87-7f-64-positive_2400

Dodo and this sign were at 185 Westbourne Grove, no longer something Antiques but now occupied by American Vintage, but Dodo is certainly no longer at 3 Denbigh Rd, a short distance to the west just off Westbourne Grove. You can see a picture of this row of shops with Dodo in place on the RBK Local Studies web site which takes a photographic stroll down Westbourn Grove and comments rather inaccurately “In the centre of the picture a shop called Dodo Designs, wholesalers of fancy goods.”

Dodo, set up by “London’s acknowledged queen of advertising ephemera” Liz Farrow has been “selling genuine vintage advertising posters since 1960” and is still doing so through the Dodo Posters web site.

Ledbury Rd, Notting Hill, Kensington & Chelsea, 1987 87-7f-65-positive_2400

Just around the corner in Ledbury Rd is this row of shops with an entry to Ledbury Mews North. This whole area had a large number of antique shops but now seems largely devoted to fashion.

No 38 to the right of the mews entrance is certainly an attractive building, but I think what particularly attracted me is the lion on the pavement in front of Lacy Gallery – which has of course gone with the Gallery, that shop now split back into two different businesses.

More from Page 5 of 1987 London Photos in another post.

Tag: UCH

A Goddess, Doors, a Dodo and a Lion