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Horseman’s Sunday, Wallenberg & Car-Free Festivals 2004

Thursday, September 19th, 2024

Horseman’s Sunday, Wallenberg & Car-Free Festivals: Sunday 19th September 2004 was a rather strange day for me with some very varied events across London.

Horseman’s Sunday

Horseman’s Sunday is apparently celebrated at several places in Surrey including Tattenham Corner at Epsom as well as in central London at the Church of St John’s, Hyde Park Crescent,where the The Hyde Park Pony Club met for the occasion.

Despite being ‘Horseman’s Sunday’ there were relatively few men taking part, mainly children and a few women along with the befrocked celebrants. As I noted on My London Diary, “fortunately the rite was Anglican, so everyone left the singing to the choir, avoiding scaring the horses.”

This was a curious example of the different world inhabited by the rich and priveleged in London. I’ve not felt moved to go back to photograph the event since.

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Raoul Wallenberg Memorial

Just around the the corner, a small group was remembering one of the heroes of the Second World War, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved perhaps a hundred thousand jews from the Nazi holocaust in Budapest, himself dying in a Russian jail.

There are monuments to him around the world including this one outside the West London Synagogue and close to the Swedish Embassy.

Hackney Mare De Gras Cancelled

I travelled out to Dalston, where I found a notice that the Hackney Mare De Gras Procession had been postponed because of a murder in Mare St.

Shoreditch Car Free Festival

I walked down Kingsland Road to Shoreditch where a festival and car-free day was getting underway, with the London School Of Samba dancing through the streets and other events including the Secretsundaze Sound System.

On the way I took a few pictures including some of the graffiti which by 2004 seemed to be covering most of the walls in Shoreditch.

On Curtain Road people were trying out various different designs of bicycles, particularly recumbents. Though these may be comfortable and efficient I’ve never been attracted to riding at the level of vehicle exhausts and feel the low riding position gives a very restricted view compared to a normal bike, dangerous in city traffic. Perhaps if I lived in a remote area with empty roads I’d try one.

Part of the street was a carpeted area with benches where you could sit and enjoy tea from an anarchist tea bar with a revolutionary tea urn.

The Shoreditch Golf Club was set up for a chess competition, though I didn’t see anyone actually playing chess, and there were various theatrical performances on the street – and of course more graffiti to photograph. I spent some time taking pictures there before tearing myself away to catch the tube from Liverpool St to Leytonstone.

Many more pictures on My London Diary.

Leytonstone Car-Free Festival

“Leytonstone was also enjoying a car-free day, and one of the highlights there was the Rinky Dink cycle-powered sound system, bringing back memories of April’s march to Aldermaston, where this accompanied us on the last few miles.“

There was more music too, as well as various a childrens’ arts project and entertainment, and a rather unrelated political element from protesters against the Chinese persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

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Tags:anarchist tea bar, bicycles, car-free day, Car-Free Festival, Dalston, Falun Gong, graffiti, Hackney Mare De Gras, Horseman's Sunday, Leytonstone, London, London School Of Samba, Nazi holocaust, peter Marshall, Raoul Wallenberg, recumbent, Rinky-Dink, Shoreditch, Shoreditch Car Free Festival, Shoreditch Golf Club, street theatre, Swedish diplomat, Wallenberg, West London Synagogue
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Adidas, Wallenberg, Iraq – 2012

Sunday, August 4th, 2024

Adidas, Wallenberg, Iraq – Three very different events on Saturday 4th August 2012. You may remember that we had the Olympics in London in 2012 and War on Want held an Olympic-themed protest against the official Olympic sportswear partner. People celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the great heroes of the last century and on the nearest Saturday to August 8th which Iraq celebrates as end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 there was an Iraq festival on the South Bank.

Adidas Stop Your Olympic Exploitation – Oxford St

War on Want came to Adidas in Oxford Street at the peak of the London Olympics to highlight their claims that workers making clothes for the official sportswear partner of London 2012 get poverty wages are not allowed to form unions and have little or no job security.

They say thousands of workers making closing for Adidas in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and China are not paid enough to cover basic essentials like housing, food, education and health care. Wages are so low that workers often need to work far longer hours than are legal – up to 90 hour weeks and are told if they try to organise trade unions to defend their rights, they face harassment or they will be fired.

Because of the pressures of the Olympics, Oxford Street was being policed by Scottish officers who objected to the protest involving games including badminton and a hurdles race on the grounds that people walking past might be injured by the players.

War on Want protesters moved a few yards onto a side street to continue their protest, but then came back onto Oxford Street to continue the hurdles races, with two runners making their way over the hurdles of ‘POVERTY WAGES’, ‘UNION BUSTING’ and ’90 HOUR WEEK’. The police let them play for a few minutes before telling them they had to stop as Adidas had complained – and they owned the area pavement in front of the store.

A woman from Adidas’s PR agency came to talk to me as I was beginning to take photographs and later sent me a detailed statement in which they denied War on Want’s claims but only provided any evidence based on activities in Bangladesh rather than the countries War on Want was protesting about. War on Want also published a press release giving detailed evidence on which their protest was based.

The protest was still continuing when I had to leave well over an hour after it began, with people still handing out leaflets including a freepost postcard to Herbert Hainer, the CEO of Adidas, care of War on Want, calling for Adidas to end the exploitation of workers.

More pictures at Adidas Stop Your Olympic Exploitation.

Raoul Wallenberg 100th Anniversary – Great Cumberland Place

People around the world were celebrating Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who working in Budapest during the Second World War saved over 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps by issuing them with ‘protective passports’ identifying their bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation.

Although these had no legal status, they looked impressive and, sometimes with the aid of a little bribery, saved the bearers from deportation.

Wallenberg was born in Sweden on 4th August 1912 and was detained by Russian Security Services SMERSH during the siege of Budapest as a suspected spy on 17 January 1945 and taken to Moscow where he was most probably executed in the Lubyanka prison in 1947.

The London ceremony took place around the monument to him in Great Cumberland Place, outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in 1997. The statue by sculptor Philip Jackson, shows shows Wallenberg standing in front a a large wall made of stacks of the passports with his name inscribed high on it.

There were readings of Psalms, an address by Rector Michael Persson from the Swedish Church in London about Wallenberg, whose actions followed the Lutheran ideal of living, a calling to be yourself and to do good for other people. Wreaths were laid and there were a number of speeches with the event ending with a choir from the Swedish church singing.

Raoul Wallenberg 100th Anniversary

Iraq Day Festival, Queen’s Walk, South Bank

The festival had been “organized to celebrate the games with a hint of Iraq flavor” by the Iraqi Culture Centre in London and sponsored by Bayt Al Hekima- Baghdad in conjunction with Local Leader London 2012 program.

There was Iraqi music, art and food, although since it was taking place in Ramadan many of the Iraqis at the festival were fasting and unable to eat during the event.

*These Kurdish musicians were told they had to leave and another group of Iraqi musicians replaced them*

Although there was much of interest things didn’t go smoothly, either with the weather where there were some heavy showers or between the organisers and some of the performers.

One woman angrily stormed off the platform, furious at what she felt was cultural discrimination against the Kurds. And after I had been asked to photograph a fashion show that was to start in two minutes there was a loud and bitter argument between its director and the organisers, and an hour later when I went home it had yet to start.

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Tags:Adidas, badminton, China, exploitation, festival, hurdles, Indonesia, Iraq Day, Iraq Day Festival, Kurds, London, London Photos, Lutheran, official sportswear partner, Olympic exploitation, Oxford St, peter Marshall, police, poverty wages, protective passports, protest, Ramadan, Raoul Wallenberg, SMERSH, South Bank, Sri Lanka, sweatshop exploitation, Swedich Church, Swedish Ambassador, Swedish diplomat, trade union rights, Wallenberg, War on Want, Western Marble Arch Synagogue
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A Hero Remembered, Olympics and Iraq

Wednesday, August 4th, 2021

Some photographers love to travel, but I relish the great variety of events I have been able to photograph in London, (as well as the city itself.) Saturday 4th August 2012 demonstrates that well.

Raoul Wallenberg was clearly one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, and played a huge role while working as a Swedish diplomat in Budapest in 1944-5. Historians now question the popular claims that he saved as many as 100,000 Jews and suggest the actual figure may be between 4,500 and 9,000, but as one of them commented, his “fame was certainly justified by his extraordinary exploits.”

Wallenberg and his fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger issued thousand of official-looking “protective passports” identifying the bearers as Swedish citizens and rented over 30 buildings in Budapest which he declared to be Swedish territory. According to Wikipedia these eventually housed almost 10,000 people. The money for these came from the American Red Cross and it was apparently at US request that Wallenberg was posted to Budapest.

Wallenberg was not the only diplomat in Budapest issuing protective passports to save Jews, with others being provided with Swiss, Spanish and Portuguese documents. He is also said to have persuaded the Germans not to blow up the Budapest ghetto and kill its 70,000 inhabitants, though the Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca who was posing as the Spanish consul-general claims that it was his intervention that saved them

*Swedish Ambassador Nicola Clase speaks about Wallenberg*

Wallenberg disappeared on 17th January 1945 after being summoned to see the commander of the Russian forces encircling the city to answer charges he was involved in espionage. He was taken to Moscow and little definite is known about him after than although the Soviet Government in 1957 released a document stating he had died in prison, probably of a heart attack on 17 July 1947. But there were later reported sightings of him. Documents released in 1996 by the CIA show he was working with their wartime predecessor.

Wallenberg was born on August 4th 1912, and a ceremony took place in his honour around the Wallenberg memorial, sculpted by Philip Jackson outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. It was a moving event, led by Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld with Rector Michael Persson from the Swedish Church in London reading Psalm 121 and giving an address about Wallenburg who he called an ordinary man who was brave when the time came and had followed the Lutheran ideal of living, a calling to be yourself and to do good for other people. The Swedish ambassador also spoke about him.

Earlier I had been at the Olympics. Not the thing on Stratford Marsh, but a rather smaller event organised by War on Want outside Adidas on Oxford St, claiming that workers making clothes for the official sportswear partner of London 2012 get poverty wages are not allowed to form unions and have little or no job security.

War on Want point out that around the world thousands of workers producing clothes for Adidas are working for poverty wages that do not cover basic essentials like housing, food, education and healthcare. Many have to work beyond legal limits, up to 15 hours a day to scrape a living. And workers who try to organise trade unions face harassment and sacking.

The games began with badminton, and then moved on to hurdles, but police told them it was too dangerous on the pavement in Oxford St. They were made to move around the corner. Adidas sent along someone from their PR Agency to give misinformation to the press, but there was damning information on the War on Want web site on wages and conditions in factories in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and China producing goods for Adidas. I don’t expect things have changed that much for these workers since 2012.

Finally I made my way to Iraq Day 2012, “organized to celebrate the games with a hint of Iraq flavor” by the Iraqi Culture Centre in London and sponsored by Bayt Al Hekima- Baghdad in conjunction with the Local Leader London 2012 program.

There were some unplanned and fairly dramatic events on stage, and one of the performers stormed off the platform, furious at what she felt was cultural discrimination against the Kurds, and a group of Kurdish musicians were told they had to leave the stage, but generally it lacked much interest for me.

I was sorry for the many Iraqis and others who were unable to eat the Iraqi food that was on offer – for this event was taking place during Ramadan. I had been asked to photograph a fashion show that was a part of the programme, but for some reason it didn’t take place when it should have, and I had to leave before it happened.

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