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

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.’

Today marks 25 days until the UK is supposed to leave the EU, and my band The Four Fathers are taking the opportunity to release — via Bandcamp — our anti-Brexit anthem, ‘I Want My Country Back (From The People Who Wanted Their Country Back)’, which has become something of a live favourite over the last few years.

On my birthday, my reflections on the destruction of all the trees in the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, a community garden that I have been fighting to save as part of a local campaign, which reflects a London-wide and countrywide struggle against a cynical ‘regeneration’ industry facilitated by Labour and Tory councils.

As Daesh’s would-be Caliphate crumbles in Syria, I express my disgust at UK home secretary Sajid Javid’s cynical and unacceptable decision to strip the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum, who was just 15 when she travelled to Syria, and also look at other countries’ responses, including those of the US.

A link to, and discussion of the Dissident Island Radio show I took part in with filmmaker Nikita Woolfe, to promote ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, the documentary about the housing crisis, directed by Niki, which I narrate, and ‘Inspire2Resist’, the new handbook to assist those facing ‘regeneration.’