Video of the community Black Lives Matter peaceful protest in Leytonstone on Saturday 13th June at Linear Park on Grove Green Road.
The event was organised by Grove Green Ward Labour Party. A powerful speech was given by Grove Green Councillor Anna Mbachu. As a healthcare worker, Anna spoke movingly of how she has witnessed first-hand the devastating impact of Covid-19 on the BAME community. Tom Taylor from the local Labour Party, and organiser of the protest, spoke of the long heritage of anti-racism in East London going back to the Battle of Cable Street through to the Rock Against Racism Festival in Victoria Park in 1978. Hussain from the Waltham Forest Council of Mosques urged people to network within the community with like-minded people. Passing cars and buses beeped their horns in support, cyclists rang their bells. The names of black people who have lost their lives in racist attacks, after interactions with the police, from Covid-19, the Windrush Scandal, and in the Grenfell Tower Fire were read out whilst the protestors took the knee and observed a minute’s silence.
Social distancing was very well observed throughout with positions marked out on the pavement 3 metres apart and plenty of stewards were on hand to make sure the event passed safely. It was great to see so many families in attendance, including my youngest son who helped make this video.
A spontaneous protest was called after the news broke in the afternoon that the Queen had agreed to Boris Johnson’s request to suspend Parliament for five weeks, preventing MPs from debating Brexit in the run-up to 31st October deadline.
‘Stop the Coup’ was the dominant chant from the crowds in Parliament Square and on Whitehall outside 10 Downing Street. ‘When you shut down the Parliament, We shut down the Streets’ a song broke out near the Cenotaph in the dark.
A roadblock formed in Parliament Square leading to an initial angry volley from a cabbie who nearly ran me over. But after a while he settled down in his taxi scrolling through his phone, his smiling passengers departed on foot. The traffic backed up all the way along Whitehall, buses, cabs, cars, and coaches as the singing and dancing grew louder.
I went to a pub near Trafalgar Square and quickly edited the footage above and posted to YouTube. As I returned to Parliament Square at 10.30pm a small but committed group still blocked the road surrounded by fluro-jacketed Police. They look to be settled in for the long haul.
This is an interview I shot in December with Library worker Alan Wylie about the importance of Libraries and the threats they face due to government cuts.
References used in the video and further information Library cuts:
It was a bright, freezing cold Saturday lunchtime. Any doubts that the winds blowing in from Siberia would effect the turn-out of the protest against the proposed development of Walthamstow Town Square were dispelled as soon as I stepped onto the patch of grass that the Council want to bury beneath four mega blocks. A huge crowd were mustered in the square listening to speakers put forward the case against the development. There were even a couple of people swanning around dressed as cardboard tower blocks.
Waltham Forest Council have got it into their heads that they need to compete with Westfield Stratford just down the road, by giving planning permission to property behemoths Capital and Regional to build a new mall and four monster tower blocks of ‘luxury’ apartments, one the size of Centrepoint. They claim there’s no viable alternative.
The hundreds of local people in the Town Square heartily disagree. They want to see genuinely affordable homes and social housing. Just 20% of the homes in the new scheme will be classed ‘affordable’ – priced at up to 80% of market rates, in a new luxury development will mean they will be far from ‘affordable’ for the majority of local people in housing need.
The genuine question is, who benefits from this scheme? And why have Waltham Forest’s Labour Councillors enthusiastically endorsed such a plan when both Walthamstow and Leyton & Wanstead Labour Parties have passed motions calling for the plans to be reviewed and alternatives explored?
The Mall development shouldn’t become Waltham Forest’s HDV, but the dogmatic intransigence of a minority within the Council could see this campaign snowball into something much bigger if the strength of feeling on display Saturday is anything to judge by.
If you live in Waltham Forest and oppose the scheme please write to your local councillors – they’ll also be knocking on your door in the coming weeks canvassing for the local elections so ask if and why they support the Mall development.
Last Saturday I attended a protest to Stop the Haringey Development (HDV) – a joint venture between Haringey Council in North London and enormous multi-national property developer Lend Lease.
The scheme will see £2billion of public assets placed into the joint venture that will campaigners say will result in the destruction of thousands of homes and businesses.
The strength of feeling against the scheme was immediately apparent as I wandered among the crowds gathered on Tottenham Green, and then as we walked along West Green Road and down Green Lanes to Finsbury Park. Cars tooted their horns, people came out of shops to cheer the protestors along. Representatives from other housing campaigns from across London were there in support.
The Stop HDV campaign have successfully raised the funds to launch and legal challenge and force a judicial review over the legality of the scheme.
The last time I attended Labour Party Conference was also at Brighton but in 2000. I wrote and performed an ensemble political cabaret show at The Greys pub to an audience of party delegates and apparatchiks escaping the conference proper. Among the cast of 4 of The Soapbox Cabaret that night was a young up-and-coming comedian, Russell Brand.
So it was fitting that on my return to Conference that Russell should be there – but this time not performing The Song of the Spin Doctor dressed half in drag, but speaking soberly at a morning meeting about Addiction alongside Labour’s Shadow Health Spokesperson John Ashworth. The most notable thing that has changed in those 17 years though, wasn’t me or Russell, but the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.
Admittedly I avoided the actual Conference and stuck to Momentum’s brilliant fringe event, The World Transformed. Even the most tedious sounding events had queues stretching around the block like a gig by the hot new band or the release of a Triple A console game – except it was a bunch of people you’d barely heard of debating how to build stronger links with the Trade Unions. Chunky Mark, The Artist Taxi Driver, said “it’s a Conference but it’s like a f*cking festival mate”, when I interviewed him in the street outside a massively oversubscribed event where scores of people were turned away.
At an evening event, Governing from the Radical Left, John McDonnell was greeted onstage with a standing ovation. Paul Mason prowled the space like a glowering rock star. McDonnell summed it up best when he said the Party felt optimistic once more (when was the last time?).
When I’d decided to max out my credit card all those years ago to take a comedy show to the Labour Party Conference (I ran the show for a week in Bournemouth the previous year, 1999, also starring Russell) it came out of the frustration of my first Conference in 1997 as an international delegate. The first Conference after the landslide General Election victory that had returned Labour to power after 18 dismal, divisive, bitter years. It should have been a massive party, a celebration – there should have been a sense of optimism. But there was none – just a dampening of expectations. On Monday it felt like the carnival had finally arrived in Brighton, 20 years late, not to celebrate a victory, but to prepare for one.
Two men stood with their backs to the police cordon across Lancaster Road, the burnt out shell of Grenfell Tower behind them. They both held large laminated photos – one with three small girls, the other their parents and grandmother. “I am the Uncle to these three girls”, he told me, Mierna Choukair, Fatima Choukair, Zainab Choukair, “here’s my sister Nadia, that’s her husband Bassem, and at the end is my Mum”. He had received no information from the authorities about them, he still doesn’t know if they survived the horrific fire that as of 4pm on Saturday 17th June the police are saying has claimed 58 lives. The crowd that had gathered earlier on Friday evening at Kensinton and Chelsea Town Hall put the death toll much higher. The BBC’s legendary reporter John Sweeney told me that 100 people had died, when I approached him with my camera on the march between the Town Hall and Grenfell Tower, described by some local residents as “the scene of the crime”.
The man’s brother holding the photos of Nadia, Bassem, and Sirria read out the text messages Bassem had sent from his flat while the fire consumed Grenfell Tower. “At 1.15am Bassem sent a message to his workplace saying ‘Morning guys there is a fire in my building on the 4th Floor and I’m living on the 22nd Floor we are not able to leave the building and don’t know what is going to happen. Sorry guys for letting you down.”
“At 2.41 my sister sent a message to me, a voice message saying ‘Hello Nabil there is a fire in our building we are sitting in our flat, ok bye’, and that was it”. He hasn’t heard from them since and the authorities and hospitals aren’t telling them anything.
The sense among the crowd that had gathered at Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall was one being abandoned, not just in the face of this horrific tragedy, but over years. Of being ignored and maligned. But although there was a sense of anguished grief and anger there was an overwhelming message of unity and togetherness. We stand together in our call for answers and justice, was the popular refrain.
Making our way along Kensington Church Street, Holland Park Ave and Ladbroke Grove, cars and buses trapped in traffic brought to a standstill beeped their horns in support, bus drivers reached out to shake the hands of passing protestors calmly walking up the street. One person directed my camera towards the stalled 328 bus bound for ‘Chelsea World’s End’.
As the crowds gathered at the end of Lancaster Road with Grenfell Tower looming behind a lady handed me a bottle of water. She returned a couple of minutes later with a Tuna and Cucumber sandwich. A teenage boy worked through the throng handing out cartons of Capri Sun. Looking at the photocopied pictures of the missing persons taped to the walls and doors of Notting Hill Methodist Church I had to choke back the tears. What has happened here is too terrible to comprehend.
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On Monday 19th June I joined people gathered for a vigil in Parliament Square, Westminster to remember the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.
