Police, Public Sector & Peace Campaign – Thursday 10th May 2012 saw two rather different marches by workers taking place in London, with a large protest by police and a day of public sector strikes with trade unionists marching to a rally. I also visited the Parliament Square Peace Campaign. Police March Against Cuts and Winsor An estimated 20,000 police from all 43 forces in England & Wales marched through central London in protest at 20% cuts in police budget and proposed restructuring following the Winsor review. Other groups including Occupy and Right To Protest and others joined ..read more

Canary Wharf Workshop – On Sunday May 9th 2004 I led a small workshop group of photographers on a walk which started at Canary Wharf and then went to Canning Town and the River Thames. Although photography is theoretically banned on the Canary Wharf estate we had no problems with security, probably because we kept to obviously public areas and I had asked those taking part not to use tripods. I was never a fan of the redevelopment of London’s docklands under Michael Heseltine and the London Docklands Development Corporation set up in 1981. Of course development was needed after the docks beca ..read more

More from Hedon Rd, Hull – More of my photographs on Hedon Road made in August 1989. The previous post on Hull was More Around Popple Street, Hull – 1989 Works, Hedon Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8o-41 This section of Hedon Road was bypassed by the building of Roger Millward Way and most of the buildings on it have been demolished, with just a few short sections of brick walls remaining. Back in 1989 much of it was lined with buildings which appeared to be disused. This section attracted me for its large entrances, probably built for horse-drawn wagons carrying timber to the saw mills and the smaller bu ..read more

VE Day 60 Years On: I was born a few days after VE day, the end of the Second World War in Europe which took place on Wednesday 8th May 1945. In 2005 celebrations of the event in the UK took place over the weekend of 7-8th May. Here is the piece I wrote in 2005 for My London Diary (with the usual minor corrections) and some of the pictures I took on those days. VE Day Commemorated – Ilford 60 Years ago, my view of the world was dark, wet and warm and I was almost certainly unaware of what was happening outside, and I think my mother’s part in the VE day celebrations will have been fairly mute ..read more

Rochdale – Although I lived for seven years not far away in Manchester, and spent a few months teaching at a school only six miles away, I had never visited Rochdale before. On 6th May 2017 I was there for an anniversary event and in the afternoon we were offered a guided tour of the city, which took us around the town centre and into the foyer of the splendid town hall. Before my visit I hadn’t realised there was a River Roch. It was presumably power from this and other local rivers that made the town an important textile area before its growth in the age of steam-powered mills. Rochdale We ..read more

Croydon, Abortion & Windrush – I began work on Saturday 5th of May with a late May Day march in Croydon, then came to Westminster where abortion rights protesters were meeting to oppose a ‘March for Life’ anti-abortion march and rally. At Downing Street there was a rally against the racist attacks by Theresa May against the Windrush generation, which later marched to continue at the Home Office, where I ended the day after photographing the anti-abortion march. Croydon march for May Day – Saturday 5th May 2018 Although International Workers Day is celebrated internationally on May 1st, in ..read more

Strangers Into Citizens – Strangers into Citizens held a march and rally on Monday 4th May 2009 calling for long term irregular migrants living in the UK to be provided with a way to earn indefinite leave to remain here. There are thought now around 800,000 people living in the UK without a legal permit to do so. Accurate figures are impossible to find as these people obviously do not want to be recorded by the authorities. Many are working and carrying out work that others do not want to so but are essential to keep our economy running. One of the reasons why the UK is attractive to migrant ..read more

Baltimore to Brixton – Black Lives Matter! The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was first used on Twitter on 12th July 2013 but only became common in 2014 after the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice in 2014, reaching a peak when it was announced nobody wold be prosecuted over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. According to a list published by Twitter on the tenth anniversary of the platform in 2016 #BlackLivesMatter was the third most used hashtag in those ten years, beaten by #Ferguson at number one and #LoveWins, celebrating the US Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage ..read more

Sweeps Festival – Rochester, Kent: I’d always avoided festivals like the Dickens Festival and Sweeps Festival at Rochester. Somehow these events seemed to be synthetic rather than authentic unlike the older carnivals, some of which still take place, though there are far fewer than twenty or thirty years ago – when my local carnival petered out. The Rochester festivals are very much recent sponsored promotions of tourism to the town and the Medway area, although the Sweeps festival claims to dates back over 400 years, when child chimney sweeps celebrated May Day, said to have been their one da ..read more

May Day 2004 – One of the many advantages of giving up full-time teaching around 2000 was that I was able to go to various events that previously took place when I was at work. And one of these was the London May Day celebrations taking place on May 1st – previously I could only take part in these when May Day fell on day I was not at work. I hope to be taking pictures of today’s march and rally as usual from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square gathering at noon. Back in 1978, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan introduced an early May bank holiday, but rather than making May Day – Intern ..read more