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Surbiton Festival 2006

Surbiton Festival: On Saturday 30th September 2006 I went to Surbiton to photograph the annual Surbiton Festival for the second time.

As a part of my photography of London I attended quite a few local events across London in the first decade of this century – in September 2004 I had photographed the Surbiton Festival and also the Angel Canal Festival, Walthamstow Festival, the City of London Flower Show, Lady Somerset Road Street Party, Brick Lane Festival, Thames Day, the Shoreditch Car Free Festival and Leytonstone Car-Free Festival, as well as several political protests and other events. I found it interesting how some of these reflected the different population of these areas.

But in 2006 I had another reason to go back to Surbiton, in that I was to appear with two other photographers, Mike Seaborne and Paul Baldesare in the exhibition Another London, at Kingston Museum in January 2007 and I wanted to include some pictures from the local area in my section of the show.

You can still see all 26 of my pictures from that show (and those by the other two. My set included pictures from both the Surbiton Festivals I attended, as well as one from the July 2006 Kingston Regatta, two from the September 2006 Kingston Festival and one of Koreans watching the World Cup in nearby New Malden.

Surbiton is centred around Surbiton Station, a classic 1930s Southern Railway modernist structure and an important commuter station with an incredibly frequent service – around ten trains an hour to Waterloo, the faster taking around 20 minutes.

When it was first developed in the 1840s it was called ‘Kingston-upon-Railway‘, only getting its current name in 1869 – although this is a name with medieval roots, with Suth Bere-tun being Old English for an outlying farm – then part of the Royal Manor of Kingston (Norbiton was closer to the centre.)

*Only one military vehicle joined this year’s parade – unless you count the model held out in the driver’s hand.*

Kingston is an ancient town – it was the town where Anglo-Saxon kings were crowned – but the Surbiton Festival is a modern tradition, begun by the Rotary Club a little over 25 years ago. It seems to have grown considerably since I went in 2006. The 2025 festival was last Saturday and though I considered briefly whether to go, I decided I had other things to do. Perhaps next year…

*Beavers, Cubs, scouts and guides were all present*

You can see a few more of the pictures I took in 2006 on My London Diary. The short text I wrote is a little hidden, so here it is in full – though there is more information in the picture captions.

The Annual Surbiton Festival seems still to be very much a local community based affair, and takes over one of the main shopping streets, still mainly lined by small shops. This year it’s centre was the station car park, with room for a brass band, morris dancing and other activities.

The day started with driving rain, but fortunately it stopped in time for the festival to start, opened by the Mayor of Kingston. I followed her for a while as she visited the stalls along the street, taking a real interest in what was going on.

The 10 am start meant that at first the streets were rather empty, but things began to fill up later. The parade was a little thinner than in previous years, and we [Paul Baldesare and myself] were disappointed not to see more.

After the parade I went back to watch the morris dancers perform a second set, but as it came on to rain, I decided it was time to take a train elsewhere

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North Woolwich Photos – 2006

North Woolwich Photos: My account of my day on Friday 16 June 2006 is rather short – and manages to include a mis-spelling: “I took a trip to North Woolich and made some pictures there.” And the 45 pictures I posted had only the additional heading “North Woolwich, Thames, Royal Docks & Silvertown” but no captions. I think they deserve more, so I’ll correct that for a few of them in this post.

The ferry is the James Newman, built in 1963 and named after a prominent local figure who was Mayor of Woolwich in 1923–25 and was taken out of service in 2018. But I hadn’t arrived on the ferry but had put my folding bike onto a Silverlink service on the North London Line which then ran from Richmond to North Woolwich Station (the section from Stratford to North Woolwich close at the end of 2006.)

The building in the background of the second image is North Woolwich Station, though it had by that date been abandoned by trains which stopped being used as a station in 1979, replaced by a considerably less grand and basic structure on its south side. For some years it was a museum and this fine 1854 building is now home to the New Covenant Church. My picture is taken from the riverside path.

Next came three pictures showing the reverside flats just past the Old Bargehouse Draw Dock and Causeway at the end of Bargehouse Road. Until the Woolwich Free Ferry was introduced in 1889 this was where ferries ran across the river to Woolwich. On this occasion I’d cycled past the remains of the Free Ferry without taking any pictures, probably because I had photographed them on several occasions before. You can see the other two pictures of the flats on My London Diary.

I took a few pictures looking across the River Thames most of which I didn’t post on My London Diary and then this one after I’d crossed the lock gates of the King George V Dock entrance and had come to the lock entrance to the Royal Albert Dock Basin. The building here has since been replaced by the flats of Lockside Way.

The riverside path – part of the Capital Way – continues north to an abrupt end close to Atlantis Avenue and this view from its end shows the remains of the jetty which brought coal to the Beckton Gas Works. I retraced my path, taking more pictures – some concrete pipe sections, a disused lock gate and a lorry park on My London Diary and then made my way to Woolwich Manor Way.

Here I could photograph across the dock. At the left are new flats built between the dock and University Way and in the foreground are two yellow towers carrying approach lights for the runway of London City Airport.

*A plane takes off from London City Airport*

The haze that you see in this picture, taken with a 300mm (equivalent) lens is a little more obvious than in the other pictures thanks to air pollution, which the airport contributes to.

I made some more photographs in North Woolwich – tthere was a Football World Cup taking place in Germany – England were eventually knocked out by Portugal in the quarter-finals.

London City Airport DLR station had opened in December 2005 and I was able to take photographs from there both of the Airport Terminal and of Tate & Lyle’s sugar refinery.

I took more pictures in Silvertown and Canning Town, some of which you can see on My London Diary, before making my way back to Central London. There I took some more pictures around Brick Lane, some of which I put on My London Diary in a seperate post. It had been a good day for me.

More pictures:
North Woolwich, Thames, Royal Docks & Silvertown
Brick Lane

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April 28th 2015 IWMD

April 28th 2015 IWMD; April 28th every year is International Workers Memorial Day, and last year here on >Re:PHOTO I wrote about this, beginning with a quote from the TUC web site:

Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don’t die of mystery ailments, or in tragic “accidents”. They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn’t that important a priority. International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD) 28 April commemorates those workers.
TUC – International Workers’ Memorial Day

I wrote more about it and illustrated the post with pictures taken mainly at previous years on Tower Hill. You can still read it at International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD).

This year there are events planned in Stratford, Barking and Walthamstow marking the event, as well as others around the country, and many workplaces will be holding a minute’s silence at 12 noon.

On Tuesday 28th April 2015 two of the three events I covered were related to IWMD, but I also went to Holloway Prison with protesters demanding the release of an immigration detainee being held there.

Qatar Slave Labour deaths – World Cup 2022 – Qatari Embassy, Mayfair

My working day began with trade unionists outside the Qatari embassy in Mayfair, where they attempted to deliver a letter on International Workers Memorial Day protesting the slaughter of migrant slave labour workers on World Cup building sites. At current death rates, over 4,000 migrant workers will die by 2022.

According to a Guardian report, on average one Nepalase worker there dies very two days, and including the deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers the death rate is most likely more than one every day. At least 964 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh died working in Qatar in 2012 and 2013.

Work had still to begin on eleven of the 12 stadiums needed for the 2022 World Cup and there are likely to be many more dying due to the appalling exploitation and abuse of these migrant workers.

The International Labour Organization had urged Qatar to “ensure without delay, access to justice for migrant workers, so that they can effectively assert their rights […] strengthening the complaints system and the labour inspection system”.

According to Amnesty many of the migrant workers have there passports confiscated when they arrive for work in Qatar and are forced to work long hours for very low pay day after day with no rest and are often physically and sexually abused.

Police moved the protesters away from the embassy to the other side of the road but allowed a small deputation to approch the doorway with a letter. A police officer went inside the embassy to ask if someone would come to the door to accept this from Gail Cartmail, Assistant General Secretary of Unite the Union. After a lengthy wait, a man came to the door and refused, and the protesters then left it on the doorstep.

In 2021 The Guardian revealed that “More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago“. A few days football came at a very bloody price.

Qatar Slave Labour deaths – World Cup 2022

Holloway protest for Yarl’s Wood protester Anna – Holloway Prison

From Mayfair I travelled to a very different area of London for a protest outside Holloway Prison, a Victorian prison in one of the poorer areas of North London which had housed only women prisoners since 1902 and was closed a year after this protest.

Anna, a detainee in Yarls Wood immigration detention prison, had been one of a group of women defending another detainee, a torture victim, who was about to be deported. Thirty guards rushed into the room and brutally assaulted them all, taking them to solitary confinement in the ‘Kingfisher’ isolation unit at Yarl’s Wood. Both Anna and another woman, Lillija, were threatened with prison, but only Anna was transferred to Holloway prison and was being held there although she was had not been charged with any offence.

Both women had been involved in a Channel 4 News exposure of the abuses of women by guards in Yarls Wood which had led to one guard being suspended.

Many of those at the emergency protest organised by Movement for Justice demanding Anna’s release had served time in Yarls Wood or other immigration prisons.

When a group of three prison employees came out to argue with the protesters that their protest simply upset women being held inside the jail they told them from their first hand experience how greatly they had welcomed knowing that there were people outside the prison who were aware of them and wanting to help.

Free Yarl’s Wood Anna from Holloway

Hotel Workers Rise Up on Workers Memorial Day

Finally I came back to central London and the Hilton London Metropole hotel on the Edgware Road in Bayswater and in another protest for International Workers’ Memorial Day against the exploitation of workers, mainly migrants organised by the Unite Hotel Workers branch. Workers at luxury hotels in portering and household services are employed by agencies on minimum wage, zero hours contracts and denied basic rights.

Several workers including former room attendant Barbara Pokryszka spoke at the protest, complaining of heavy workloads and abusive treatment by management, who fail to treat them as human beings, saying “We Are Not Machines”. As in other areas of work outsourcing to contractors who pay minimum wage and impose abysmal conditions is at the root of the abuse.

Luxury hotels have a world-wide reputation to maintain and this would be damaged if they were found to be treating staff on their payroll in such a disgusting way. A night’s stay for two in a room costs over £200 and housekeeping worker would usually have to clean between 12 and 20 rooms in an 8 hour shift. The worker’s pay for cleaning – before deductions would be around £85 while the hotel guests would be paying over £3000 for their stay. Hotels could surely pay more to their essential workers.

Hotel Workers – Workers Memorial Day