UK politics

As the wretched Tory government of Boris Johnson irresponsibly prepares to lift all Covid restrictions, I look at how the delusions of Brexit, which is crippling British businesses, have fed into a political climate in which the Tories’ irresponsible and sometimes criminal response to Covid gets overlooked, and how Johnson and his Cabinet prioritise whatever will keep them in power — opening up sports events, for example, and cynically capitalising on England’s success in the Euro 2020 championships, while almost entirely abandoning the country’s cultural sector. I also look at how, under Priti Patel, almost all immigration has been shut down (despite job shortages that are making many businesses unviable), as this particularly vile home secretary also seeks to stamp out all political dissent, as well as criminalising the way of life of Gypsies and Travellers.

My thoughts on the summer solstice, 37 years after the last Stonehenge Free Festival, as ‘Managed Open Access’, in place since the 15-year exclusion zone came to an end in 2000, was cancelled for the second year running because of Covid (although some revellers turned up anyway). Also included: the video of last year’s ‘Virtual Stonehenge Free Festival’, organised by Neil Goodwin, in which videos of musicians who performed online last year during lockdown are interspersed with footage of the Stonehenge Free Festival, travellers and the Beanfield.

I remember the 72 people who lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire exactly four years ago, through profiteering and cost-cutting on the part of those responsible for their safety, and I also look at how, since then, the cladding scandal that became so apparent at Grenfell now involves millions of people in unsafe tower blocks across the country, many of them leaseholders, who bought their homes in good faith, but now find themselves in unsafe and worthless properties, abandoned by the government and the developers of their homes, and facing bills of up to £100,000 to remove the dangerous cladding that was installed through no fault of their own.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, when the police, under Margaret Thatcher, destroyed, with unprecedented violence, a convoy of vehicles containing men, women and children, as they tried to make their way to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Despite the trauma caused that day, the Tories continued to persecute Travellers, passing punitive legislation in 1986 and 1994, and now, under Priti Patel, are seeking to outlaw the entire nomadic way of life through a draconian clampdown on “trespass” in the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

A fundraiser marking nine years since I first began photographing London’s 120 postcodes by bike for my ongoing, reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever. Any donations you can make will be very gratefully received.

Video of my interview with the London-based activists of Team Assange, about the new UK police bill, the right to protest, Guantánamo and Julian Assange. Also included is an update regarding genuinely shocking incidents of police violence in Bristol over the last week in response to protests about the bill.

My assessment of the first year of Covid lockdowns, and how, on two occasions — last June, and last weekend — political protests have erupted, regarding racial oppression and women’s rights, when the logical limits of strict lockdowns have been reached. Plus a much more critical analysis of the parallel world of Covid denial.

My response to the police violence at the peaceful vigil for Sara Everard on Clapham Common, and its curious timing, coinciding with the second reading of home secretary Priti Patel’s horribly authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021, which seeks to legislate meaningful protest out of existence.

Marking 1,400 days since I began posting a photo a day, with accompanying text, on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’, from my nearly nine years of photos taken on daily bike rides throughout the capital, with particular reference to the last year that I have spent photographing and reporting on London under Covid.

As Judge Vanessa Baraitser denies bail to Julian Assange, I point out how necessary it is for the incoming Biden administration to conclude, as Barack Obama did, that prosecuting Assange poses too grave a threat to press freedoms to proceed with, and to drop the extradition request.