150,000 people took part in the Pro-Palestinian protest through Central London on Saturday. In solidarity with the Palestinian people, they were calling for freedom for Palestine and an end to Israel’s seige and military action in the Gaza Strip.
I was really pleased to have an interview by Steve Reeves published in the December issue of F/8 Documentary magazine. A now rare printed publication which somehow navigated it’s way through the postal system and landed on my doorstep.
Iranians in London are protesting in solidarity with the “Women’s Revolution” in Iran which started in September triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini who was detained by the morality police for not adhering to Iran’s dress code. Women are being beaten, jailed and killed for throwing off their compulsory headscarves and showing their hair.
So far nearly 15,000 protesters have been arrested and could now face the death penalty as the members of parliament have recently voted in favour of executing demonstrators.
More than 300 people, including at least 41 children, have been killed since the protests started. Thirty-two journalists have been arrested, and the two remaining social media apps, Instagram and WhatsApp, have been blocked.
The protests have grown into one of the largest sustained challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Demonstrators are calling for Western governments to put more pressure on the regime and to openly condemn the ruthless violence of the Iranian government.
“The disproportionality in the use of force against Black people adds to the irrefutable evidence of structural racism embedded in policing practices. ” (Deborah Coles, Director of INQUEST)
United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) held their 24th annual procession from Trafalgar Square to Downing Street.
UFFC is a coalition of those affected by deaths in police, prison and psychiatric custody. Initially established in1997 as a network of black families, in recent years the group has expanded to include families and friends of all those killed in custody.
On Saturday 29th October, relatives delivered a letter to Rishi Sunak calling for a meeting to discuss their concerns about the recurring issues in state-related deaths and demanding changes to the judicial process. Asking for: “truth, justice, accountability, change and an end to state killings”
Chris Kaba’s father Prosper and his mother Helen Nkama
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Marcia Rigg, sister of Sean Rigg, embraces Carole Duggan, aunt of Mark Duggan
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right: Chris Kaba’s cousin Jefferson Bosela
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Marvina Newton (r), founder of United for Black Lives .
The fatal shooting by a policeman of a 24 year old unarmed man, has reignited anger among the black community about institutional racism in the police.
On Monday 5th September (2022) Chris Kaba was being followed by a police car without lights or sirens. Two police cars then collided into Chris’s car on a residential street in South London. He was killed by a single shot to the head fired through the windscreen by an officer.
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According to the most recent statistics: Of the 1,239 people who died in police shootings or after custody, some 205 (16.5%) were people from the Black and Ethnic Minority community.
The Hive in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter: 45 Vittoria Street, B1 3PE (November 8th 2021 through January 7th 2022)
This installation exhibition was originally shown in 1979 at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. These are the original vintage prints and an adapted version of the original installation. I was very excited to discover that the 250 photographes lasted the 40 + years of storage.
It was an amazing opportunity to bring the photographs back to the West Midlands where they were taken and also to re-connect with those I photographed back in the late 1970s. Below are some links to reviews plus one to Andy Conway’s memories of being photographed as a schoolboy waiting for his dad to end his shift at the forge in 1978.
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45th year reunion with the Forge workers on the last afternoon of the exhibition.
They are coal miners working in a Staffordshire colliery where Janine Wiedel photographed them during a 2 year West Midlands Arts funded residency (between 1977 and 1979) documenting the rhythm, feel and grain of life in industrial workplaces across the region. Alongside them, arranged thematically by industry and geographical location, are portraits of workers and workplaces engaged in many other long established, world renown West Midlands trades. Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire more widely, is represented by its potters and steelmakers as well as the miners. The Black Country by Cradley Heath’s chainmakers and workers from Bilston’s steelworks. Birmingham enters the frame through a fascinating juxtaposition between the careful skill and precision of workers…
I was really please to have photographs included in two exhibitions in London over the summer:
“The Photographers’ Gallery at 50”
Poster and installation stills from “Vulcans Forge” Exhibition in 1979 …. I was particularly thrilled to be on a wall with Colin Jones, one of my favorite photographers.
Photographers Gallery at 50 Exhibition Summer 2021
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The ICA: “War Inna Babylon”
“Ten years on from the UK-wide riots sparked by the police killing of Mark Duggan, this exhibition shines a light on the vast range of collective actions, resistance and grassroots activism undertaken by Black communities across the U.K in response to over seven decades of societal and institutional racism.”
Hundreds of Anti-Taliban British Afghans joined a protest through Central London asking for the Western nations to stop their proxy war and to restore peace.The protest began at Marble Arch, stopping at: the BBC, Downing Street, Parliament Square.
Afghan interpreters who served with the British army in Afghanistan plead for humanity at the Home Office in London. Their families stranded in Afghanistan are in immediate danger of being killed by the Taliban unless the UK government can evacuate them from Kabul before the deadline.
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Rafi Hottak (above left) :“The Afghan nation feels betrayed and let down. They deserved better….The Taliban will butcher every single one of them if they are left behind”
Brixton was locked down on Afrikan Emancipation Day for The Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings. A call for reparations for the past and justice for the Windrush Generation and their descendants.
The 1st of August is commemorated in the Caribbean and some parts of Africa marking the passing of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act, which came into force on 1 August 1834.
“Our people have been sold a lie about our life here in Britain. Now, after many of our foreparents have worked their butts off, they’re being deported.”
Ester Stanford-Xosei (above) explained: “This is not just about compensation, reparation is about repairing harm, and there’s a lot of harm going on today…….We are here today, honouring so-called Emancipation Day. But we’re also sending a key message to the British state and other European governments that we have not forgotten the injustices against our foreparents.”
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“We are not being heard in our demand for the UK Government to establish the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice “
Musician Koba Kane with black rights group FF Force ( Forever Family Force )
Pleased to have the following selection of photographs included in the on-line exhibition:ART AGAINST RACISM, Memorial.Monument.Movement
“An exhibition of individual artists and community groups in the United States and around the world of Black Lives Matter-inspired art made after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many other people of color by law enforcement.”
“A collection of artistic images documenting expressions of humanity, love and resistance to injustice and oppression.”
On Nabka Day, 150 thousand Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through Central London to the Israeli Embassy, protesting against Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and demanding immediate action from the UK Government to end the brutal violence against the people of Palestine.
This month it’s 37 years since ‘Black July’ 1983 when there was a Sinhalese led anti-Tamil Pogrom, riot and massacre in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese mobs targeted Tamil homes and businesses, looting and ransacking property.
Over 3,000 Tamils were murdered and over 150,000 people made homeless. It marked the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War between Tamil militants and the Government in Sri Lanka. Many Tamils were forced to flee to other countries forming Tamil diaspora communities. No one has yet been held accountable for the genocide.
I visited the Calais Jungle camp over the 6 months period prior to the brutal eviction of the residents and the total destruction of the site by the French authorities in October 2016.
The conditions that the refugees and migrants were forced to live in were truly dreadful, but their resilience,ingenuity and humanity were amazing. They had all lived through the horrors of the past but were holding on to hope and determination to fight for their right to a better future.
Prior to the eviction there were close to 10,000 migrants and refugees living in the Calais Jungle. Of these, 800 were unaccompanied minors for whom there were no provisions at the time of the eviction.
The majority were young men of diverse nationalities who had travelled for many months, leaving behind communities torn apart by war, bloodshed and torture. Their aim was to find a safe haven where they could get the education and jobs needed to provide a secure future.
Over the years the transitory residents of The Jungle managed to build up an incredible makeshift infrastructure which included: shops, advice centers, barbers, classrooms and places of worship. These were also important meeting places providing emergency accommodation, free meals, schooling and asylum advice.
Despite its size, it never gained legal status as a refugee camp and received very little official aid or humanitarian support. To fill the gap hundreds of humanitarian volunteers and human rights defenders arrived to help.
New arrivals created temporary homes which they hoped they would not have to live in for long. However, the increasingly dangerous and life threatening on-ward journey meant that many remained in the “Jungle” for months or even years.
Most felt that their ties to the UK, be they family or language, would provide the best chance to integrate and set up a new life.
Though Calais has currently slipped from the news agenda, it is estimated that there are now over 1,000 people living in the forests with 200 of these being unaccompanied children. Many are also forced to sleep under bridges and behind industrial buildings, often with little more than a sleeping bag for protection. French authorities are regularly destroying their tents and belongings in random acts of aggression. The demolition of the Jungle did not end the plight of the refugees and migrants but has made it far more difficult for charities to distribute food and aid. Covid 19 has made the situation even more critical.
“The march is led and organised by Black women for all women. We believe that ‘all oppression is connected’. We work together to create safe spaces, free from racism, fascism, discrimination and hate. When we demand an end to men’s violence against us, this includes calling for the dismantling of all oppressive structure that promote and facilitate everything from misogynoir through to ableism.” (a Million Women March)
“This is an opportunity for us to come together in sisterhood, solidarity, unity and upliftment…to march together, to feel the strength, exhilaration and power of being with other women, to celebrate ourselves, our differences and our diversity…to raise our voices and, if necessary, to mourn in silence.” (A Million Women March)
On India’s Republic Day, the Sikh and Kashmiri diaspora communities in Britain traveled to London despite an attempt by the Indian authorities to ban the protest. The aim was to inform the public of the ongoing crimes that the Indian State under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is committing against the Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Dalits.
Last August, the Muslim-majority area of Kashmir was stripped of its semi-autonomous status and demoted from a state into a federal territory. The Kashmir valley was put into a state of lock-down. Tens of thousands of troops were dispatched, landlines and cellular connections were suspended and internet services were cut. According to the NY Times it has been “the world’s longest internet shutdown in a democracy”. As many as eight million people have endured a punishing information blackout.
Foreign journalists and diplomats have been blocked from visiting and the government has arrested scores of Kashmiris, including former heads of state without disclosing charges.
This time the attempt to ban the march was stopped.
We must preserve the right to speak out and the right to protest.
Forty years on, I’ve been really pleased to have had two different opportunities to exhibit some of my industrial photographs back in their original locations in the West Midlands (UK).
In June, along with John Myers, I had an outdoor exhibition “Black Country Living” which was part of the Blast Festival. My chain-making photos from 1978 were mounted on hoardings and mobile advertising boards in West Bromwich.
Currently: My photographs from the Jewellery Quarter taken in 1977 are being shown along with more recent images of the area by Andy Pilsbury and Ines Elsa Dalal at the Iron House Gallery in Birmingham. Still: Stories from the Jewellery Quarter open 26th October – 10th November
Returning to the area after 40 years was an amazing experience. Turner and Simpson where I took most of the photographs no longer exists but it is good to see that there are still some craftspeople and workshops continuing to keep traditional skills alive in this historic area.
Below is Florence Alan who had been with Turner & Simpson for 35 years. She was the holder of a secret gilding formula which she was only going to reveal to her son on her death bed.
Above is Bill Spooner, a silversmith, age 70. He began working in the Jewellery Quarter at age ten.
Ten years on, Tamils gathered in London to remember the genocide of their people. On May 18th 2009, Sri Lankan forces finally defeated the Tamil Tigers in a brutal and indiscriminate military assault. The military’s intentional shelling of government-designated “No Fire Zones” was responsible for killing 70,000- 140,000 Tamil civilians and displacing at least 300,000.
Ten years on, there has been no accountability for the enormous loss of life, for war crimes and for human rights abuses.
“Exist, Resist, Return”. A global call for solidarity on Palestinian Land Day: a day which commemorates the unarmed protesters killed by the Israeli police and Defense Force in 1976, during demonstrations against Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land. This year, March 30th also marked the first anniversary of the start of the Great Return March demonstrations: weekly mobilisations calling for the Right to Return for Palestinian refugees and an end to the twelve-year siege of Gaza. Over one six-week period these demonstrations saw more than 110 unarmed Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Forces. The rally on Saturday echoed the demands of the Great Return Marches, in calling for an end to the siege and that the state of Israel acknowledge International Law on the right of return. Speakers also rejected suggestions that criticism of Israel could be seen as ‘antisemitic’.
Behind police barriers a small counter-demonstration, under both Israeli and Brazilian flags, expressed their enduring support for the state of Israel, and their criticism of Hamas.
United Families & Friends Campaign take part in the 20th annual remembrance procession down Whitehall in London.
On Saturday, members of the UFFC, a coalition of family and friends of individuals who have died in the custody of police, prison officers and other authorities, delivered a petition to 10 Downing Street.
In 2017/2018, twenty-three people died in or following police custody, the highest number in 10 years.
Above left and below: Remembering Kevin Clark who died in southeast London last month after being restrained by up to 9 police officer while having a mental health crisis.
So far there has never been a successful prosecution for manslaughter following a death in custody, despite unlawful killing verdicts in coroner’s inquests. The last time a police officer was successfully prosecuted for the death of somebody in custody was in 1969.
Seni Lewis’s mother Ajibola. In 2010, Olaseni Lewis, a 23-year-old IT graduate, collapsed at Bethlem Royal Hospital after being restrained by 11 police officers. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead three days later.
In October 2017, six cops were cleared of any wrong doing. After the coroner ruled out a finding of unlawful killing, the jury identified a litany of failures by both police and medical staff that contributed to Lewis’s death. “The excessive force, pain compliance techniques and multiple mechanical restraints were disproportionate and unreasonable. On the balance of probability, this contributed to the cause of death”.
top left: Nuno Cardoso, a law student, died in a police van after he was arrested in Oxford last year.
bottom left: Lisa, the sister of Mark Cole who died when police tasered him in Falmouth in 2017.
right: Leroy Junior Medford, father of seven, died in police custody in Reading on April 2. 2017.
Mark Cole, 30 yrs old and father of two, died after being tasered in 2017.
Raj Mahay (left) thirty years on is still campaigning for a fresh investigation into the death of his mother Kishni Mahay who was killed by a speeding police car in 1989.
I was very pleased to have my photograph win the ‘Historic’ category of The British Life Photography Awards and to have another image “highly commended” .
The exhibition and book were launched this week and will be on view at The Royal Albert Hall until the end of February and then go on tour.
Alan and fellow workers on midday break at Sandy Lane pub in Aston, Birmingham.
I took above in 1978 as part of a two year documentary project on industries in the West Midland. Everyday at midday the drop hammers at Smith’s Forgings stopped and the forge became silent for an hour. All the workers vacated to the pub round the corner. It was the only other building still standing amongst the encroaching urban decline in the shadows of Spaghetti junction.
This second image was taken in at The Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company in Sudbury, West Suffolk in the 1990s.
The sounds and atmosphere transported me back 100 years. The mill was founded in 1903, during the diaspora of overtaxed weavers from the East End of London. Today it’s one of the few remaining commercial silk mills in England and is still using the original Hattersley looms.
Hundreds protested outside the Libyan Embassy, calling for the British Government to put pressure on Libya to end slavery and the inhumane treatment of migrants.
Libya, the main transit point for refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe by sea, is estimated to have tens of thousands currently being held in camps, as well as being detained by people smugglers and armed militia.
Conditions in the centers have been described as “horrific,” and among other abuses, migrants are vulnerable to being sold off as laborers in slave auctions. As Leonard Doyle (Director of Media and Communications for the IOM in Geneva) said “they become commodities to be bought, sold and discarded when they have no more value,”
The United Security Council expressed grave concern about the recent reports from Tripoli amounting to the “heinous abuses of human rights”.
Whilst slavery has a long history in Libya, the recent CNN footage has sparked worldwide outrage and brought the issue to the forefront in the media as it is considered to be the first hard evidence of 21st-century slave trade in Africa. Parliament is due to debate the petition on December 18th. Let’s not allow this abuse to be ignored !!!
Very pleased to have another book published this month by Cafe Royal Books
These photos were originally part of 2 year project “Vulcan’s Forge” which became an exhibition and book. In 1978, I was funded by West Midlands Arts to document the industries of the area.
Smiths’ Forgings, in the Aston area of Birmingham, was a typical small firm. It began in 1910 and by the ’70s was producing the majority of ‘male-female couplings’ for British articulated lorries. Most of the workers had been there for their entire working lives and many were from the same family.
The work was tough. Red-hot furnaces heated the raw metal, which was then placed under a 35-hundredweight hammer; a rope released the ratchet, and the hammer dropped about nine feet to stamp the metal into shape. There were nine hammers, the oldest of which was seventy years old, the youngest thirty-five. The noise was deafening. Accidents occurred, but the men had no thought of changing jobs. The hammers were referred to as “Jim’s” or “Bob’s”. They belonged to the men who worked them, a testament to the closeness felt for their company and work. “We do things in the old fashioned way here,” they said with pride, “there are a great many things that only a man over fifty still understands… Any child could work in the modern forges, but we are the real stampers.”
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had been assassinated and Black radicalism had taken over from the non-violent Civil Rights Movement. America’s urban black population were faced by rising unemployment, disintegrating public services, pervasive and systematic racism and police brutality. They decided to fight back: we shall overcome ” became “we shall overrun”.
Kathleen Cleaver with Peco (on her right) and Emory Douglas, minister of culture (on her right). Black Panther Rally, Oakland California 1969
On now at Gallery 101: The International Salvation Army Headquarters
photographs by Jacky Chapman and myself
With both the Calais Jungle and the Grande Synthe camp now razed to the ground, the 10,000 plus refugees/migrants have been disperse across France. Without the support and communal infrastructure they had managed to build in the camps they now face an even more precarious and vulnerable future.
Hopefully our photographs will provide a lasting record of the ingenuity and humanity of those who having been forced to leave their homelands in order to find a place of safety, were able to form an alternative community and an environment that could help them survive with some dignity (including places of worship, shops, and schools).
All this now destroyed!
…”In Transit’s considerable power emerges through the effective interweaving of multiple dimensions. From the general to the intimate, from the distant to the near and from the graphic to the human, the photographs offer a carefully balanced range of perspectives. In so doing they build towards a sensitive, and much needed, recovery of a time and place whose memory, and one-time residents, now seem vulnerable to multiple modes of disappearance. This recovery eschews both nostalgia for and dismissal of what has been lost. The squalor and implied violence of the camps are here, but theirs is the sotto voice. The emphasis instead falls upon glimpses of lives carried on through adversity. In this sense the exhibition seems underwritten by the motto which one photograph shows written on the wall a young man from Darfur’s room: ‘never give up’… review by Erica Zimmermann in Photomonitor
Over a thousand Yemeni-Americans closed down their bodegas (24 hr grocery stores) in protest against Donald Trump’s executive order banning US entry to travelers from Yemen and six other predominantly Muslim countries. Around 5,000 supporters gathered at Borough House in Brooklyn (New York City) to show their patriotism to the USA and their anger at the immigration ban. The “shut down” aimed to demonstration to the public the important contribution the Yemeni community makes to the economic and social fabric of the city.
At 5.30 as the sun set, the crowd fell silent and hundreds lined up for prayer.
Every week UK charter flights carrying deportees and guards depart for Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Movement for Justice marched through Brixton protesting the targeting of long-established African, Asian and Caribbean communities in Britain – dividing families and deporting people who have built lives in the UK, who have parents, partners and children here, people who have lived most of their lives in Britain, students who have not finished their courses, those who have sought asylum and protection, people with serious health problems and others who are long-term carers to elderly and disabled relatives.
The targeting of so many people who are integrated members of their communities and wider society is a divisive act of racist discrimination.
“The UK continues to make political deportation deals with governments of its former colonies and war zones. Almost 2,000 people a year are still loaded onto secretive night flights from Stansted airport, handcuffed by private security ‘escorts’, in one of the most brutal facets of the detention and deportation regime…….. https://corporatewatch.org/news/2017/jan/06/deportation-charter-flights-collective-expulsion-2017
Though Calais has currently slipped from the news agenda, it is estimated that there are now over 1,000 people living in the forests with 200 of these being unaccompanied children. Many are also forced to sleep under bridges and behind industrial buildings, often with little more than a sleeping bag for protection. French authorities are regularly destroying their tents and belongings in random acts of aggression. The demolition of the Jungle did not end the plight of the refugees and migrants but has made it far more difficult for charities to distribute food and aid. Covid 19 has made the situation even more critical.
Janine Wiedel photo Blog 