International Women's Day
block Oxford St
Fortress Europe Greek Embassy protest
Brixton Rally says end deportations
Million Women Rise 2020
Uniqlo Cheat Indonesian garment workers
Staines Walk
Other sites with my pictures include
london pictures
londons industrial history
hull photos
lea valley / river lea
and at my
>Re:PHOTO blog you can read
my thoughts on photography.
Although I began to photograph some protests again from May Day 2021 I've not felt able to return to regular posting here.
Although I have unlimited storage space in my web space, there is a technical limit on the number of files it can contain, and I am now rather close to that limit. So My London Diary cannot continue for ever. One solution would be to take some previous years off line, or to edit the number of pictures for some events - which would be time-consuming.I also have the problem that I cannot load Dreamweaver, the software I have used to write this site since 2002, onto my current computer, or at least not without taking out an expensive monthly subscription. Writing pages for the site without this is not impossible, but takes time I don't have. I am currently testing free software to take the place of Dreamweaver - and have so far put online the one protest I photographed between March 8th 2020 and May 1st 2021.
London Women's Strike Assembly gathers at Cavendish Square to march to Oxford St in solidarity with sisters and siblings across the world who face exploitation and violence from a system meant to silence and oppress.
Many were from some of London's ethnic communities and grass roots
trade unionists. While celebrities marched along Whitehall to a rally
in Parliament Square, they took part in a livlier and considerably
more political event.
From a brief rally in Cavendish Square they marched to Oxford St for
their main rally and a free clothes swap, stopping the traffic for the
event. Police arrived 3/4 hour later but were too few to have any
effect and the protest was continuing with a large group of women
performing the Chilean anti-rape anthem and blocking both carriageways
blocked when I left.
more pictures
Protesters opposite the Greek Embassy called on the EU to end its policy of closing borders to those most in need and to demand justice for refugees.
The protest came after videos showed Greek coastguard officers trying to capsize a boat full of refugees at sea and others with right-wing fascist thugs attacking refugees.
The situation has worsened since Turkey recently opened their border
with Greece. The EU had come to an agreement with Turkey in 2016
restricting the movement of refugees to Europe that the UNHCR and many
NGOs says violates international law.
more pictures
Movement for Justice and Lambeth Black Workers held a rally in Brixton Market calling for the Home Office to end charter flights to deport immigrants and close detention centres.
One detainee who was refused medical treatment for a broken ankle for several days by detention centre staff spoke over a phone link and a man who the courts had ruled could not be deported told in person how he was taken in a van to the airport and held in it for 14 hours in a compartment only just large enough for him to stand.
Protests and legal action had saved over half of those selected from
deportation on the most recent charter flight to Jamaica. Shortly
after this protest a long-delayed report on the Home Office and its
handling of Windrush families was released. Although the words
'institutional racism' were censored from an earlier version it
remained a damning indictment of racism by the Home Office over
immigration issues, showing clearly that it was institutionally
racist. Unfortunately it seems unlikely that this will change under
the current government, who are clearly committed to bringing in more
racist immigration controls as a part of Brexit.
more pictures
Hundreds of women meet for an all-women march against male violence through Central London to a rally in Trafalgar Square.
Among those present were many from London's Latin American and Turkish/Kurdish communities as well as from anti-rape and other womens' groups around the country.
I left as the march was about to start to go elsewhere, and as men
are not welcome during the march and rally.
more pictures
People from the Clean Clothes Campaign and Labour Behind the Label protest outside the Uniqlo flagship store in Oxford St against Japanese fast fashion company Uniqglo which is cheating workers who made clothes it sold.
The protest featured a man wearing a giant head of CEO Tadashi Yanai, the 31st richest person in the world who explained how he got rich by not paying 2,000 Indonesian women garment workers who made clothes which were sold in Uniqlo after their factory went bankrupt in 2015. The workers have not been paid for making them.
Their legally required severance pay is $5.5million and most have
been unable to find other work and are living in dire poverty. The
protest called for him to pay up the debt to the workers of the Jaba
Garmindo factory.
more pictures
We went for a short walk as the sun went down.
I'd been too tired after several busy days to go out to photograph events and had been sitting in front of a computer most of the day and needed to get some fresh air.
Staines is in the borough of Spelthorne, an area which should have become part of Greater London in 1985 but local conservatives from the posher end of the area revolted against the idea of being joined with Hounslow and instead it became a part of Surrey. Though never real Surrey, and it is still often forgotten by those who run Surrey.
I think the borough is roughly two-thirds water, with rivers including the Thames (usually its south and west boundary) and Colne, huge reservoirs and many worked out gravel pits. It's cheaper for the gravel companies not to reclaim these but to leave them for various other 'uses', often completely disused. Some close to the centre of Staines are now a nature park, and we walked through this between the lakes.
We had meant to go under the Staines Bypass and walk across a field
to Moor Lane, but found this field was waterlogged, and instead took a
shorter route along a metalled path towards Moor Lane, leaving it
shortly before there to go down a footpath to Vicarage Lane and then
across to Church St. By the time we reached there the sun had gone
down and it was getting dark.
more pictures
I took very few pictures except those of the few events I went up to
London to photograph - and have only these three I'll share with you,
the last of the moon taken as I reached home.