Battle for Britain: Fighting the Tory Government’s Vile Ideology

In my first article about Boris Johnson since he became the almost unspeakably unsuitable Prime Minister of the UK, I look at his chronic failures, and also profile his chief advisor, the alarming maverick Dominic Cummings, enthusiastically promising to deliver a “no-deal” Brexit by October 31 – in his case, to fulfil some warped dream of destroying the entire British political establishment.

My review of this week’s WOMAD world music festival in Wiltshire, looking particularly at how, although it was a wonderful festival, the global environmental crisis hung over proceedings, as, to my mind, it hovers over everything these days, demanding that we get involved in bringing down the entire suicidal capitalist system that is destroying us.

An article in defence of social housing – and calling for a massive project of building new council homes – on the centenary of the 1919 Addington Act, introduced by the Liberal (and later Labour) politician Christopher Addison, which established the UK’s first major council-led homebuilding programme.

In this year’s article marking the summer solstice, I contrast how the free festival pioneers urged revellers to “leave no trace”, in contrast to today’s throwaway culture, and, looking at the bigger picture, I urge anyone interested in the cycle of the seasons that Stonehenge so vividly represents to urgently get involved in environmental activism to try to prevent the worst effects of an already unfolding and unprecedented man-made environmental crisis that requires the whole of humanity to grasp that, collectively, we must all work out how to “leave no trace” if we are to sustain our existence on earth.

It’s exactly two years since the Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 people people died because those responsible for their safety – from central government to the local council, the management company in charge of the towers, and various contractors involved in its fatal refurbishment – prioritised cost-cutting and profiteering instead. As survivors continue to call for justice, and housing reforms to protect those in social housing, I join those calls, reflecting on how, across London and the country as a whole, those in social housing continue to be treated as disposable, whether through living in towers with unsafe cladding, or living on estates that continue to be cynically demolished as part of the ‘regeneration’ industry that is actually a tool for social cleansing.

It’s 34 years since a truly disgraceful event in modern British history – the Battle of the Beanfield, when police under Margaret Thatcher violently decommissioned a convoy of modern-day nomads, environmental protestors and anarchists trying to get to Stonehenge to establish what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. 34 years on, I discuss a thread that runs from the free festival movement to Extinction Rebellion, the movement of now, which, powerfully but sadly, has an urgency that no previous protest movement has been able to call upon.

My analysis of the UK’s elections to the European Parliament, which took place on May 23, 2019, in which I look at why the Brexit Party’s performance is not as good as it might initially appear. I also congratulate the Green Party on their performance, thanks my fellow Londoners for voting the most sanely in England, and propose a few solutions to the ongoing Brexit deadlock.

To celebrate seven years of my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, in which I have been posting a photo a day for the last two years, from my archive of photos covering all 120 of the capital’s postcodes, here are my reflections on how the project began, and what it has come to mean.

My pledge of commitment to the struggle to save ourselves and much of life on earth from the worst effects of man-made catastrophic climate change and species extinction, which is already underway. With thanks to those who have recently led me to this commitment: Dahr Jamail, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. Please get involved!

On the eighth anniversary of when I was hospitalised with a rare blood disease, I recall how those dark days ended up inspiring me to cycle the whole of London taking photos, for what became my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’