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Stop the War March – 2001

Stop the War March: The Stop the War march in London on Saturday 13th October 2001 was the first protest where I put more than a handful of pictures on My London Diary. They were all black and white, although I took pictures in colour as well I didn’t at the time have any way to produce good quality digital images from the negatives.

I printed some of the black and white images in the darkrom and took 10x8s to a picture library and a few have been published in print since then, but the colour negatives simply went into my files, though I usually made contact sheets or, if the film was trade processed, got enprints.

The black and white pictures I put on My London Diary at the time were usually scanned from prints made in the darkroom, scanned using a black and white flatbed scanner. It was only later that I got a decent film scanner and a colour flatbed. The main commercial demand for work was still black and white – though I made many colour prints in my darkroom. And because most people then still accessed the internet through slow dial-up connections, I posted images on line at small sizes and greatly compressed – these image files are only 20-40 Kb each, while now I might post files 50 times larger.

A little over a year after taking these pictures I got my first digital camera capable of professional work, though I’d been playing with consumer digitals for several years. The move to being completely digital took me a few years, mainly because I had specialised film cameras that could let me work in ways that were not then possible with digital.

I didn’t in 2001 write anything directly about these pictures, or about the protest which was against invading Iraq, one of a whole series by Stop the War I photographed. The only major London protest against the Iraq invasion I missed was the huge one in February 2023, when I had only come out of hospital the day before and was still too weak to work.

But the US decision to invade Iraq – already actually made when this protest took place although the invasion only took place in March 2003 – was a response to the September 2001 attacks by Al Queda when two planes were flown into and destroyed the Twin Towers in New York.

I was in 2001 working for a New York based web site, though writing my content here in England. I was also teaching part-time and had ended a lesson and was getting ready to leave for home when a distressed colleague in tears called me into her office and we watched together as the attack unfolded on the news on her PC. She had lived and worked in New York not far from where it was taking place.

Just over a month later, with these pictures I posted some of my thoughts. I had earlier written about the photographs of the events in a feature which had attracted over a million views on-line overnight. The pictures and videos taken by people as they fled down the stairways or watched in shock from outside had a raw power that was often enhanced by their flaws. Anyway, here is what I wrote in 2011, which I think is still relevant.

September 11 actually had a serious impact on my work. Most of the people who read my features are in the USA and I had to think carefully about what to do. I was asked to write a piece about the photography of the event and spent a long time looking at the pictures and writing.

Justice is perhaps the most important of concepts to get to grips with. I have a firm belief that in a just society things like the WTC horror would not happen. I’m not a pacifist – I think there are times when non-violence is an effective tactic and other occasions where it just will not work. However I think that there were many more avenues to be explored before anyone could be justified in starting a military attack. Not only is the actual attack likely to be counter-productive, but it will result in the USA and its allies taking their eyes off the real ball.

And that is not in Afghanistan but in the Middle East, in Jerusalem and in Gaza.

More pictures from the 2001 protest begin here on My London Diary.

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End Iraq Invasion – 2003

End Iraq Invasion: Saturday 12 April 2003 saw another protest (there had been one a week earlier) against the invasion of Iraq which had begun on 20th March 2003 with US troops supported by those from the UK, Australia and a few from Poland.

Before the invasion UN weapons inspectors had reported that they had found no evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq. But US and British politicians still insisted Iraq had these, but had just hidden them well. We now know that there were none. It was an invasion and war fought on known lies.

Almost certainly both the US and UK authorities at the time of invasion knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq, but the US had been planning and working up to the invasion for several years and were not going to let the facts get in the way of their war. The US had also carried out a long campaign to link Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks although there was no evidence for this and later “assertions of operational links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have largely been discredited by the intelligence community.”

End Iraq Invasion - 2003 Bruce Kent — *Bruce Kent*

The British public were also clear we should not go to war, with the largest protest ever in London in February 2023 demanding we not not invade Iraq. This had followed a unprecedented long campaign across the country with many local groups out on the streets in protest.

There were similar protests in other countries, with the largest of all in Rome where over three million took to the streets – roughly twice as many as in London.

Many of our allies also came out against the invasion – including France, Germany, Canada and New Zealand, but Prime Minister Tony Blair was determined to support the invasion – using misleading claims and lies to persuade MPs to back it – including that infamous ‘dodgy dossier’.

End Iraq Invasion - 2003 Jeremy Corbyn — *Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn*

By April 12th Baghdad and Kirkuk had been captured, and on May 1st President Bush announced the end of “major combat operations’ although the war continued with an insurgency against the occupying forces and the new US-backed Iranian government.

The insurgency continued after the US pulled out of Iraq in 2011, eventually resulting in the rise of ISIS. Various studies and experts conclude that the invasion and occupation resulted in a huge rise in Islamic terrorism and the global Juhadist movement.

In 2004 “UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the invasion illegal under international law, as a breach of the UN Charter.” It was an event that showed the US’s contempt for a rules-based international order or at least their assertion that the rules did not apply to them, operating under the simpler principle that US might is US right.

All pictures from Saturday 12 April 2003.

Wedding ‘Die-In’ Against Afghanistan Massacres

Wedding ‘Die-In’ Against Afghanistan Massacres: It was a cool and damp morning when I got on my bike to cycle the 19 or so miles to Northwood station on Wednesday 27th May 2009, my route though the outer western suburbs of London. I locked my bike at the Metropolitan line station and joined around 30 protesters, including two couples dressed as bride and groom waiting for the start of the march, watched by rather more police.

Two years earlier, on 27th May 2009, US forces had bombed a wedding party at Haji Nabu in Afghanistan killing 47 civilians; this was just one of a number of wedding parties massacred by NATO or US forces who killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan – and three weeks before the protest another attack in Farah province had killed around 120 people, mainly women and children. Gatherings of civilians for any reason were too often misinterpreted as a threat to the occupying forces.

‘HMS Warrior’, the land-based Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood in London is the command centre for British and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Voices in the Wilderness UK, Justice Not Vengeance and London and Oxford Catholic Workers had planned a ‘die-in’ as an act of non-violent civil disobedience at its main entrance.

Negotiations with police took place and eventually the police allowed the marchers to proceed along the roads towards the military base. The marchers were stopped several times on the way and had to threaten to block the road with a die-in if they were not allowed to proceed.

Around 200 metres from the main gate the road was firmly blocked by a line of police and the organisers decided to hold the die-in on the road there. Around half the protesters lay down on the road. Fortunately the organisers had come with a supply of black bin bags to put on the wet surface, but it was still cold and uncomfortable, and the rain, although light, was steady.

The rest of the protesters stayed on the wide verge and began reading out the names of civilians killed in Afghanistan. Among those taking part in the protest were Maya Evans and Milan Rai who were arrested in 2005 for reading out the names of Iraqis and British soldiers killed in the Iraq War, opposite the Cenotaph in Whitehall. For this Rai became the first person to be convicted under SOCPA for organising an unauthorised demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament. Also at the protest was Hillingdon MP John McDonnell.

Hertfordshire police had previously given the protesters a warning under Section 14 of the Public Order Act. They gave a further warning once people had ‘died’ on the roadway, but stood watching. After around 15 minutes, a second officer gave a warning that unless people cleared the road they would be moved, and said that they had 5 minutes to decide.

Twenty minutes later a final warning was issued, and then groups of police moved to each protester on the road in turn. Each was told they were committing an offence and that unless they moved they would be carried to the side of the road, and that if they attempted to move back on to the road they would be arrested.

At this point some protesters got up an moved, but most waited for the police to remove them. Most went limp and were fairly carefully lifted and deposited on the verge with a warning they would be arrested should they return to the road. I saw one man being arrested and taken away when he did so and was later told that there were five other arrests.

When the road was clear the press was also threatened with arrest and could only cover the event from the side of the road. Previously we had been allowed to cover the event without much interference, as I commented “For once I was only told to get out of the way when I was really in the way. There were some FIT officers from the Met present – let’s hope they take some intelligence back to their force about how to police protest.”

The protesters had only intended for the die-in to last an hour, and it was three-quarters of an hour before the road was finally cleared. After a short delay the police allowed the remaining protesters to march back down the road to the station. It was still raining as I unlocked my bike and rode home.