Kevin Bean 1955 – 2024
Many people will be saddened to hear of the death of Dr Kevin Bean who died peacefully at home with his partner Pauline Hadaway next to him on October 12th. I knew him as a friend, activist and a member of Wavertree Constituency Labour Party. When Kevin first arrived at a Wavertree meeting the right wing didn’t really know what to make of him. They assumed that a well spoken, polite academic and member of the Irish Studies department at Liverpool University would not be the type to rock the boat and argue for socialism. No doubt their initial assessment was coloured by his conservative but elegant dress sense topped off with an Irish tweed jacket and stylish hat. He once told me of his plan to have a ceremonial burning of his jacket once he was fully retired.
At the time Kevin joined Wavertree CLP Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the party and the left for a short time were in the ascendency. Given his politics, administrative and communication skills he was elected as secretary of the CLP and played an exceptional role in setting up a weekly bulletin for members during the Covid lockdown. All members were invited to contribute to the bulletin but this outraged the Labour right wing as the last thing they wanted was any political discussion within the membership!
Kevin was a lifelong campaigner for Palestinian rights. His understanding of the Middle East was reinforced by a number of visits to Palestine. To ensure his unhindered access through Israeli immigration he had an excellent cover story: he was a pious Catholic pilgrim to the Holy Land and had a number of items in his luggage to demonstrate his intent, including a bible and rosary.
During his last visit he was nearly unmasked when he was part of a group who were chased through olive groves by the IDF and cannisters of tear gas. Kevin managed to evade the IDF but unfortunately not the thought police of the Labour party because in 2020 Kevin and three other members of the Party executive were suspended for criticising their MP Paula Barker who had written an article in the Jewish Telegraph, without any prior consultation with the executive officers. She wrote, among other things: “Luciana [Berger] leaving the Labour Party was a shock to many and I find it deeply regrettable that she felt she could no longer stay.” Luciana Berger MP, parachuted into the safe Labour seat for the 2010 general election, was one of the most vocal opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, who used her position as MP to publicly undermine and sabotage him at every opportunity. She helped to spread the lie that the Labour Party is overrun by antisemites and thereby fostered the current atmosphere, in which pro-Palestinian campaigners are regularly tarnished and vilified as antisemites – and she particularly singled out the Labour members in her own constituency. In the end she jumped ship and joined the Liberal Democrats, which really could not come as a “shock” to anybody who had followed her political trajectory. Tom Watson declared that she had been “forced out by racist thugs” in her CLP.
Barker, elected with the help of the left, including the Wavertree 4, supported that narrative in her article. The four members felt so concerned that they wrote a private letter to her, but she simply brushed their concerns aside. Without any decision-making CLP meetings taking place where they could have presented a motion, the four decided to publish their views in the weekly internal CLP bulletin, which had been functioning as a medium of debate and featured all sorts of local and national events during the Covid-19 lockdown. The four wrote: “Paula’s words will most certainly be taken to imply that we, as a CLP, were responsible [for Berger’s departure]. This accusation has been repeated by our political opponents, such as the anti-Corbyn Labour right and the Liberal Democrats on numerous occasions, culminating in Tom Watson’s calumny, under the protective cloak of parliamentary privilege. In the furore that followed, individual officers and members, were subjected to further abuse and false allegations in the media, all of which were designed to obscure the political differences between Ms Berger and the CLP.”
Kevin was eventually expelled from the Labour Party for being a “Communist”. I think he thought of this as a wonderful accolade from a party that has embraced neo-liberalism and suppressed freedom of speech. Yes Kevin was a Communist, a Marxist and active Trade Unionist. I used to describe Kevin as our secret agent on the left. Given his committment as a fighter for his class and his elevation to the status of a Communist by the Labour Party I presented with a fake KGB identity card which he loved.
Kevin played a key role in the UCU strikes of recent years. As chair of his branch he was respected by the membership not least because of his kindness but also because of his sharp intellect and humour. He was first into the Union office every strike day to organise effective picketing around the university campus and ensure a steady supply of tea, coffee and sanwiches for UCU pickets and their supporters.
Kevin was an expert on fine wines and extra strong European beers. He explained to me once that as we were unable in later life to drink lots of pints, strong bottled beers with a high alcohol content were “perfect for people of our age Phil”. As a connoisseur of fine food and drink he refused to allow the pandemic to interfere with his embrace of good food shared with friends. My partner Hazuan Hashim and I had a number of ‘zoom dinner parties’ which Kevin and his partner Pauline. Naturally kevin dressed up for the occasion.
Following his expulsion from the Labour Party Kevin became more politically active and was a regular supporting strike pickets as well as the weekly protest against Council cuts outside the former Wavertree One Stop Shop which was closed down by the Labour Council. Kevin aquired a carboard cut out of Keir Starmer; he would entertain fellow protesters by having imaginary conversations with him.
Kevin was later to meet Starmer in person when he turned up for lunch at a Liverpool restaurant. Kevin was part of the team who accompanied Audrey White who received a tip off about where the Labour leader would be having lunch following a brief morning visit to Liverpool to talk about ‘economic growth’. We called ourselves the ‘A’ team and the four of us booked a table half an hour before Starmer’s grand entrance. On his arrival Audrey sent a message to some fellow ‘A’ team members who were stationed in a pub just around the corner. Their job was to protest outside the restaurant as Hazuan Hashim and myself filmed Audrey and Starmer. It was a plan that could have gone wrong but the intelligence was good and everyone knew what their role was. Everything went happily according to plan. In fact it was a dream because Starmer and his colleagues sat at a table near us in front of a window looking onto the street where the protesters gathered. During the film – which has been viewed by millions – you can hear Kevin in the background commenting to a silent Starmer who hadn’t a clue what to do. In fact with my camera focused on Starmer I was squeezed between a table with a plain clothes police officer trying to pull me away on my left and Kevin on my right side holding me still so I could get the shot! Following the brief interuption to our meal we returned to our table to finish our meal which Kevin insisted on paying for.
Many people have been influenced by the teaching, kindness, genorisity and humour of Kevin Bean. His lasting legacy will be found in his writings. Kevin wrote many articles – all in long hand and in that sense was a bit of a dinosaur. For the purposes of research he viewed the internet with some suspicion and was always keen to point out that only a fraction of what has been published or written is actually available on the internet. His critically aclaimed book The New Politics of Sinn Féin is an assessment of the ideological and organizational development of Provisional republicanism since 1985. The book explores how the Republican movement has changed over the years and uses original research and interviews to consider the origins of what has become known as ‘New Sinn Fein’.
Kevin appeared in a film I made with Hazuan Hashim called ‘The Anatomy of a Witchunt’ in 2002. In it he spoke eloquently about the direction of travel of the Labour Party. He was a delight to have in the studio because his interview was done in one take!
During his illness Ann San, member of the Merseyside Pensioners Association and life long nurse, ensured everything was in place for Kevin as a terminally ill cancer patient. She told me that she “felt so glad that our paths crossed. He was far too young to leave this world and I do know how much he valued people. I wish I’d known him longer so that I could have had him for a friend for longer”.
Kevin is survived by his partner Pauline Hadaway, his sister Patsy, his children from his marriage to Susan – Kathleen, Bernadette, Teresa and James-Joseph – and by five grandchildren.
A celebration of the lives of Kevin Bean and Terry Harrison will be held on Friday 24th January 2025, from 6.00pm at the Casa Bar, Hope Street, Liverpool L1 9BP. All welcome.
Around Liverpool (65)
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Climate Change, Birds and Humans
The seagull in this image is a metaphor for what is happening to the climate in the world today. Although they appear to be thriving research has shown seagulls to be in rapid decline. In the UK they are on the red list – the highest level – for British bird species of concern, because their population has dropped by 72% in 55 years!
When I made this work I imagined the bird flying over Pacific Islands where climate change is an existential threat to the people living there that could lead to the risk of displacement and migration. This ‘forced’ migration means the loss of ancestral homelands, unique and lasting ties to land, and vital cultural identities.
It’s estimated that 49 million people in East Asia and the Pacific will be forced to flee their homes due to climate change by 2050.
It’s our world economic system – capitalism – that has brought this about. It’s a system that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing – hence the bar code on the seagulls wing.
Around Liverpool (62)
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Headphone Portrait
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Around Liverpool (61)
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138th Durham Miners Gala
This year is also the 40th anniversary of the miners strike and the battle of Orgreave and today is the 138th Durham Miners Gala.
In June Labour pledged they would hold an enquiry into what happened. Labour’s election manifesto promised “to ensure, through an investigation or inquiry, that the truth about the events at Orgreave comes to light”. Given the fact that Starmer has a track record of breaking promises and looking after the interests of the establishment, pressure needs to be maintained to achieve justice for the miners. It’s the first week of a Labour government and the signs are not good for the working class. The government seems more concerned with building armaments, maintaining austerity and continuing the privatisation of the NHS.
The annual Durham Miners’ Gala is a unique and inspiring spectacle. It is Europe’s biggest celebration of community, international solidarity, and working class culture. More than 200,000 people pack the streets of Durham to enjoy the sights and sounds of The Big Meeting. Hosted by the Durham Miners’ Association since 1871, the Big Meeting is a vibrant carnival of hope and unity. It is a living expression of the Durham Miners’ motto – ‘the past we inherit, the future we build’. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
Below are some photographs of previous celebrations and some historic photographs taken during the miners strike.
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Around Liverpool (59)
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Inequality
The image above was derived from three photographs. The background clouds are from Cambodia. The man in the suit was photographed in the financial district of the City of London and last but not least the boy carrying goods on his head was spotted weaving his way through a crowded street in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The boy – repeated 5 times provides a runway for the man. Both are oblivious to each other but are inextricably linked in terms of the way inequality is locked into the worlds economic system through the dependance of the accumulation of vast wealth – concentrated in the hands of a few – acrued from cheap labour and the pillaging of raw materials from poor countries. The world is vastly unequal, extreme wealth coexists with extreme poverty. The poorest 50% of the global population share just 8% of total income. At the same time, the richest 10% of the global population earn over 50% of total income.
Inequality is deadly. According to Oxfam International it contributes to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds. This is a highly conservative estimate for deaths resulting from hunger, lack of access to healthcare and climate breakdown in poor countries, as well as gender-based violence faced by women and rooted in patriarchy and sexist economic systems. Millions of people would still be alive today if they had had a Covid-19 vaccine—but they were denied a chance while big pharmaceutical corporations continue to hold monopoly control of these technologies.
Here’s a hard truth that the Covid-19 pandemic brought home to us. Inequality does not only create immense suffering: it contributes to the death of 1 person every 4 seconds.
Over the past two years, people have died when they contracted an infectious disease because they did not get vaccines in time. They have died of other illnesses because they could not afford private care. They have died of hunger because they could not afford to buy food. Women have died due to gender-based violence.
And while they died, the richest people in the world got richer than ever and some of the largest companies made unprecedented profits.
Inequality is not an abstract issue. It has devastating, real-world consequences. It has made the Covid-19 pandemic deadlier, more prolonged and more damaging. It is rigged into our economic systems and is tearing our societies apart.
Inequality is deadly for the future of our world. The extreme concentration of money, power, and influence of a few at the very top has pernicious effects on the rest of us. We all suffer from a heating planet when rich countries fail to address the effects of their responsibility for an estimated 92% of all excess historic emissions. We all lose out when the world’s wealthiest 1% use double the carbon emissions of the bottom 50%, or when a few powerful corporations are able to monopolize production over life-saving vaccines and treatments in a global pandemic.
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Around Liverpool (58)
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Market Trader
The load that this market trader was pulling reminded me of the food containers that are loaded onto aircraft. I imagined him flying through space with his goods ready to be sold on Whitechapel market – where I originally photographed him.
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Greek Gate
A a photographer I’ve always been aware of the innate beauty of ordinary things. This piece grew from a photograph I took recently in Greece of part of a metal gate. When I first saw it I was reminded of a Rothko colour field painting. Probably that was a good start for the development of this piece. My intervention with the two blue stripes were prompted by the arbitrary spots of blue that seemed to emerge from specs of rust on the gate. The composition was linked together by a collaged torn strip of paper from a yellow bag used in a bakery.
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World Streets (46 )
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Brick Lane Shopping
The woman in this work (photographed in 1983) could often been seen at the Sunday Brick Lane and Sclater Street market in the early 1980s. She would wheel her pushchair around the market looking for bargains. She was particularly fond of stuff left behind by stall holders. There wasn’t much of a working life left in the push chair when this photograph was taken.
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The Sea
One way or another we are all connected to the sea and dependent on it. On a recent visit to Kyparissi in the south of Greece I found myself relaxed by the sounds and movement of waves on the beach. It was an almost hypnotic experience and I thought about the way human activity is having a dreadful impact on the oceans of the world. The sea also links us to the moon and wider universe and is a constant reminder of our frailty and insignificance. I’ve tried to explore some of these ideas in this mixed media piece on paper.
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Around East London (22)
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Water And Sun
The mobile reflective rhythms of sunlight bouncing off water can have a calming and hypnotic influence on the mind. The same with watching the flames in a burning fire at night. Humans have been staring at such things from time immemorial and each second of the experience is unique to the viewer but also, paradoxically, part of a common visual heritage dating from ancient times. Fading tropical sunlight on a pool in Java was the inspiration for this piece.
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Whitechapel Dreams
Have you ever considered the millions of people who’ve walked down a particular street over the years? This piece attempts to explore that. The woman on Whitechapel Road (photographed in the 1980s) is no longer with us but I can easily imagine her when I walk down Whitechapel market in the East End of London. The image combines day and night and different decades. Imagination has its own special reality that is capable of exploding the concept of time. What is time anyway?
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World Streets (42)
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Hastings Beach
Hastings beach can be a thrill in so many different ways. Besides the magnificent sea, beach and fishing vessels it is also the graveyard for a good number of abandoned vehicles used to pull fishing boats onto the beach for repair. If you enjoy a scene that hints at a post apocalypse landscape without any art direction then you’ll enjoy the slowly corroding metal machines on Hastings beach; it’s like an open air museum for heavy duty internal combustion engines of the 20th century. One such machine with its circular geometry, dangling wires and rusting bolts was the inspiration for ‘Machine On Hastings Beach’.
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World Streets (41)
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Woman With A Cathode Ray Tube & Camera
In the 1960s, when public libraries were plentiful, I would spend hours at the central reference library in Coventry looking through service manuals for electrical appliances. I was fascinated by how Radios, TVs and tape recorders worked and I would bury my head into manuals containing circuit diagrams. On reflection I don’t think I was any the wiser regarding the science behind the appliances we all took for granted but I was drawn to the circuit diagrams and illustrations that were a guide to engineers who used to repair equipment before the era where everything was just thrown away and replaced with an ‘improved’ model. Probably the diagrams resonated with the technical drawing I was studying and attempting to do at school at the time.
I recently discovered a book – ‘Radio and TV Servicing 1970-71 Models’ at a nearby charity shop. It immediately pulled me back to my youth and my attraction to circuit diagrams. The 50p I paid for the book was the cheapest nostalgia trip I’ve experienced. Now I understand I was drawn to the strange beauty of the diagrams because they also reminded me of road maps and the mysterious inscriptions on ancient Egyptian monuments, tombs and buildings. I immediately went to work in incorporating the diagrams into some artwork.
The woman with the trolley bag is embellished with a major invention during her life time: the cathode ray tube to which which I’ve added the lens of an early 20th century camera (which preceded television). The short time, in historic terms, of the existence of beguiling electrical diagrams with valves and other pre miniaturised cicuitry hardly competes with the power of ancient Egyptian iconagraphy but it still has a visual allure which deserves the interest of artists.
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International Women’s Day 2024
Today is International Women’s day. These photographs celebrate women the world over. I hope they challenge the idea that progress is largely brought about by men. We still have a long way to go before injustice based purely on a persons sex is eradicated. This year’s global theme, ‘Women in the Changing World of Work’, celebrates the achievements of women in the workforce and draws attention to the impact of changes in the world of work on women, both in terms of opportunities, as well as growing concerns such as the informality of labour and instability of livelihoods and income. By unlocking the full potential of women in the world of work, we can strive towards ending poverty, promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, reducing inequalities within and between countries, and achievement gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls. “Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom.” – Rosa Luxemburg.
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Happy On Brick Lane
The woman depicted in this piece was a frequent visitor on Brick Lane in the early 1980s. She fascinated me because she always seemed to be in a world of her own and was very generous with her smiles. If she spoke it was usually to herself. I’ve attempted to show her in the alternative universe she seemed to inhabit.
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Revd Colin Oxenforth 1945 – 2024
Actor, activist, humanitarian and priest Colin Oxenforth touched the lives of many people. I had the good fortune to meet him in the 1970s when he was the vicar at St Margaret’s on Princess Avenue in Liverpool. I saw him very occasionally in church but more frequently in various gay establishments in town. On reflection I think of him as the man who provided pastoral care, humour and marvellous anecdotes to the LGBTQ+ community in the 70s – a time when homophobia was prevalent. When you met him he would ask you if you were OK and take an interest in what you were up to. Self effacing Colin never sought to be the centre of attention but he was a magnet to all kinds of people. His flamboyant, warm personality and humour drew people towards him. He loved Liverpool and was fond of repeating the hilarious conversations he had or ‘overheard’ on the bus, in the supermarket or church.
In his last parish (Christ Church with Saint John, Waterloo) his colleague Revd Gregor J Cuff described him as “an advocate for justice and inclusion” and said Colin had “a wonderful retirement ministry”. Those close to Colin knew that he would in reality never put his feet up and ‘retire’ and reluctantly gave up telling him to do so. He was always on the go, and loved to entertain people using his considerable skills as a cook and raconteur. His parties in the 70s and 80s were legendary and if he wasn’t the host he would light up any room he entered on any other occasion.
Born in Crosby he was a student at Merchant Taylors’ School before going to study theology at St Chad’s College in Durham. Having taken a keen interest in Drama at school he found plenty of opportunities to act at St Chad’s and was a leading member of the Drama Society.
As a priest in Toxteth he was held in high regard not just by his own parishoners but by the wider community. With his neighbour and friend, ward Councillor, Margaret Simey he was a fierce critic of Merseyside Police and it’s institutionalised racism.
The Toxteth riots of 1981 emerged during a recession with high unemployment and deep rooted tensions between the local population and the police. Revd Gregor J Cuff recalls how the local community protected Colin’s church and vicarage at that time and told people “This fella is on our side.”
The Merseyside police force had a particularly bad reputation in the area for stopping and searching black youths under the hated ‘sus’ laws. Chief constable Ken Oxford led a police force that regularly arrested and harassed black youth in Toxteth. His astonishing rants at the time speak volumes about the racism that permeated the police force then: “Policemen in general and detectives in particular, are not racialist, despite what many Black groups believe. … Yet they are the first to define the problem of half-castes in Liverpool. Many are the products of liaisons between black seamen and white prostitutes in Liverpool 8, the red-light district. Naturally, they do not grow up with any kind of recognisable home life. Worse still, after they have done the round of homes and institutions, they gradually realise they are nothing.” These comments infuriated Colin and I remember him on a march calling for the resignation of the Chief constable at the time.
Colin studied in Palestine in 1986 and since then has been a campaigner for Palestinian rights. He was always sending emails to people about various campaigns and he never held back from criticising his own church. When Archbishop Welby said he “would never have forgiven himself if he had not supported the Chief Rabbi’s dramatic warning about Jeremyy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the run-up to the 2019 general election”. Colin told me that many Christians were unhappy about this and saw it as part of the Church of England’s failure to challenge the suffering of Palestinians living under brutal Israeli military occupation and settler colonialism. He was equally robust in his criticism of the Church’s attitude towards LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2016 I asked Colin if he would be prepared to be interviewed for a film I was making with my partner Hazuan Hashim about Austerity. He agreed to do it without hesitation. You can see Colin’s powerful interview at the end of this blog.
Brendan G Carroll writes “I first met Colin Oxenforth in November 1976. He had just arrived in Liverpool to take over as Vicar of the Parish of St Margaret’s, on Princes Road in Toxteth. In those days, I was a music student and lived nearby.
By chance, I had heard that he happened to own a fine Steinway piano and as I needed an available piano of concert standard, on which to practise, I decided to get in touch. From our very first meeting, we bonded over our shared love of classical music and soon enough, practising on his piano became entirely incidental to our friendship. In fact, I don’t recall very much practise being done at all!
Colin already possessed a large record collection and whenever I visited him, he insisted my sitting down to listen to his latest ‘discovery’ or acquisition – along with an invitation to stay for either lunch or dinner – very often both! He was a formidable cook and as an impoverished student, I needed no persuasion to accept.
In the years that followed, we became very close friends, especially when he asked me if I would agree to become church organist at St Margaret’s. It had a fine, original 19th century Willis organ that had been silent for many years until Colin, somehow, raised the necessary funds to pay Rushworth & Dreaper to get it working again. Every Sunday therafter, I would preside at this beautiful old instrument for the morning services, and every Sunday I was inevitably invited to stay for lunch – a lunch that usually lasted until well into the evening.
It must have been around this time that he persuaded me to join the Liverpool Opera Circle, a society of very elderly music lovers (average age 80!) led by the redoubtable Miss Marjorie Hill, who had been its co-founder in 1935!
It met each month at the Royal Institution on Colquitt St and Colin and I were so much younger than the other members, we were referred to as ‘the boys’. The Opera Circle presented a regular programme of lectures about opera and inevitably, we were invited to give talks to this venerable group. On one memorable evening, we gave a talk together. Our chosen subject was to be an account of the great singers of early 20th century Vienna, to be fully illustrated with rare recordings from Colin’s collection – and a slide show of unique photos.
It was on this occasion that I discovered Colin’s penchant for impersonating famous old opera singers in full ‘drag’ and singing arias in falsetto, something he had been doing very successfully at parties ever since his teenage years.
He decided that we would play a trick on the sweet old ladies and gents of the Liverpool Opera Circle by inventing an entirely fictitious singer for the lecture, and I came up with her name: Madame Wilhelmina von Scheistermeyer who (we decided) had been an early star of the Bayreuth Festival and much married.
As part of the lecture, we had devised a slide show of rare photos of important singers accompanied by equally rare recordings. 99% were genuine, but right at the end, a sepia-toned photo of Mme von Scheistermeyer (in fact, Colin in full regalia) flashed on the screen while we played a cleverly produced, very scratchy, fake 78rpm shellac disc recording of Colin singing an aria by Handel in falsetto, accompanied (deliberately, very badly) by me on his piano.
We presented this as a unique recording from 1907 and the only known copy. The elderly audience, rapt with attention, accepted it all without question.
Afterwards there was a dinner in our honour and Colin could not resist revealing the ruse when we reached the coffee & liqueuers. After revealing our innocent deception to the guests, one of the sprightlier members said:
‘Well I’m not really surprised. When you showed the slide, I said to my husband ‘You know, there’s something very odd about that woman’s bust’!
Colin and I dined out on this story for decades!
I could fill many pages with memories of dear Colin. Our trips together to Germany to see opera, and so many visits to London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in the days when it was still possible to go to London and back in a day and even see an evening performance!
We would arrive late morning, visit all of the record shops, have a late lunch somewhere and finally see an opera in the evening, before catching the midnight train home, with Colin laden with carrier bags of new LPs that he had bought!
So many laughs, so much music, so many delicious meals, but above all, so much loving support to me that I can never forget, something he extended to all of his many friends and indeed to everyone he encountered.
While opera was his passion (and he was an absolute expert in the field) he was, first and foremost, a committed Christian and a much loved Minister in all of the parishes he served.
Much is written these days about ‘Christian values’ and ‘Christian ethics’ but I am not sure most people understand either, though many claim to practise them.
However, if anyone ever asked me what it means to be a Christian, I have always pointed to Colin Oxenforth. If anyone embodied a Christian life, well lived, it was him.
He was one of the most thoroughly good people that I have ever known. His humour, his uproarious & infectious laugh and above all, his immense kindness made him a cherished friend, whose loss leaves a void in my life that cannot be filled.
How I miss his daily phone calls, his emails, and inevitably, those weekly invitations to lunch.
Thank you for the music, the food and all the laughs, dear Colin. I will never forget you.
Anne San writes “Unfortunately, I had never met Colin before his last admission to Aintree Hospital but was more than happy to help and see him and give support to him and his friends in whatever way I could. I have been a nurse most of my adult life and am usually the go to person for a lot of people and always will try to help in any way I can.
The first time I called to see Colin he was bright and wide awake. I had been to the national Palestinian march in London and also the Liverpool march and rally for Palestine so I had lots of photos to show him and was able to tell him of the events that previous weekend I knew he was a supporter of the Palestinian cause and so we were able to have a good discussion on the current unfolding events. He was keen to know how the support was going and the size of the demos. We also learnt we both had mutual friends in Waterloo, small world, eh ?
The nurses that attended to Colin when I was there remarked that ‘you would never know he was there as he never asked for anything’ . I realised he was reluctant to tell them about his pain and didn’t want to bother the nurses as he said they worked very hard, and he was very grateful to them. He did agree to tell them when he was in pain …. not sure if he did though?
Even during his own serious illness his concern was for those looking after him and not for himself. I was able to witness the genuine kindness from Colin and the concern of the staff who looked after him. I will always remember us saying goodbye as we both said Ceasefire Now ! as I left the ward.
I wasn’t privy to knowing Colin long, but my own lasting impression was of a gentle, well-educated man, full of compassion for his fellow human beings and who wasn’t afraid to speak out when injustices were committed. When he did speak of his diagnosis his response was simple and humbling “I’m in Gods hands now”.
Colin, I wish I’d met you sooner, cos I would have known you longer. Rest in Peace my newest friend”.
Justice For The Miners!
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign includes ex-miners, Trades Unionists, activists and others who are determined to get justice for miners who were victims of police lies and cover ups at Orgreave in June 1984. Most of these photographs were taken during the time of the Miner’s strike.
Orgreave Coking Plant, now demolished, stood on the outskirts of Sheffield, just 8 miles from Hillsborough Stadium , scene of the Hillsborough disaster on 15th April 1989, in which 96 Liverpool supporters were, as the jury at the recent inquests determined, unlawfully killed. The plant supplied coke to the power station at Scunthorpe some 20 miles away.
On that day, 95 miners were arrested when thousands of police officers from across the country brutally assaulted miners striking to defend jobs and mining communities. At subsequent court cases the evidence presented by South Yorkshire Police was heavily discredited and 39 miners were later awarded out of court settlements.
Yet no police officers, some of whom were told not to write anything in their note books on June 18 were ever charged of any offence despite conclusive evidence of assault, perjury, preventing the course of justice and misconduct in public office. Five years later at Hillsborough, history repeated itself when police officers were also instructed not to write anything in their note books. Some of the same senior officers were involved in the aftermath of both scandals.
Striking miner John Dunn (below) told me how he was hit by a police truncheon, thrown onto the floor of a police van and denied medical attention to a wound on his head for hours. Subsequently he was found guilty of trumped up charges in court. All of the miners who were beaten and arrested at Orgreave are still waiting for justice. 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the miners strike.
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Night
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East End Markets
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World Streets (33)
To book a free studio and gallery visit to see Phil Maxwell’s work leave your contact details on the comment section below and we will be in touch.
World Streets (32)
To book a free studio and gallery visit to see Phil Maxwell’s work leave your contact details on the comment section below and we will be in touch.
Around The East End (22)
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Stripes
Viewing the organisation of a city next to the sea we witness the disappearance of the geometric certainties of urban architecture to the random fluctuations and movements of water. However we would be wrong to think that the sea lacks geometry and organisation. ‘Stripes’ explores the relationship between the land and the sea and the impact of human activity on the planet.
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Around Liverpool (48)
To book a free studio and gallery visit to see Phil Maxwell’s work leave your contact details on the comment section below and we will be in touch.
Aerial Map
The descriptions that the mainstream media use to describe the war on Palestine (they never call it that) have a computer game fantasy element to them. The so called ‘surgical strikes’ of the Israeli air force are illustrated with video footage capturing an exploding missile which somehow miraculously avoids civilian casualties or as the military spin doctors are fond of calling it ‘collateral damage’. Despite huge efforts by the IDF to prevent communications coming out of Gaza (they regularly target telecommunications infrastructure) citizen journalists with mobile phones gather video of what is really happening on the ground. They do this at great risk to themselves and many have been murdered by the IDF.
The first casualty in war is always the truth but thanks to the bravery of Al Jazeera journalists and others the horror of the daily genocide in Gaza is there for all to see. The pioneering journalism of these seekers of truth eclipses the digital imagery from drones and makes BBC reporters giving scripted reports from their hotel balconies in Jerusalem look pathetic.
I’ve often thought that the drone footage released by the Israelis resembles the surface of the moon; unsurprising really when you consider that much of Gaza has been raised to the ground. I’ve tried to reflect this in ‘Aerial Map’ but this lunar surface of genocide also has rivers of blood.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) is investigating all reports of journalists and media workers killed, injured, or missing in the war, which has led to the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992. Here is part of their report:
“As of January 17, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 83 journalists and media workers were among the more than 25,000 killed since the war began on October 7—with more than 24,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,200 deaths in Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Reuters and Agence France Press news agencies that it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists operating in the Gaza Strip, after they had sought assurances that their journalists would not be targeted by Israeli strikes, Reuters reported on October 27.
Journalists in Gaza face particularly?high?risks as they try to cover the conflict during the Israeli ground assault, including devastating Israeli airstrikes, disrupted communications, supply shortages, and extensive power outages.
As of January 17:
- 83 journalists and media workers were confirmed dead: 76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli, and 3 Lebanese.
- 16 journalists were reported injured.
- 3 journalists were reported missing.
- 25 journalists were reported arrested.
- Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.
CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes.
“CPJ emphasizes that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heart-breaking conflict. Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threats. Many have lost colleagues, families, and media facilities, and have fled seeking safety when there is no safe haven or exit.”
From The River To The Sea
As calls for a cease fire in Palestine echo around the world Gaza’s Health Ministry warns of a looming catastrophe for displaced Palestinians and a “triangle of death”: hunger, dehydration and disease.
The unprecedented suffering of the Palestinian people is difficult to comprehend in a world where the majority are against the actions of the Israeli apartheid state and their genociadal war against civilians. At one point in the UK some politicians were quoting the chant ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ as a phrase that was in some way illegal and an incitement to violence. I think of this poster as an incitement to Justice and Peace for the Palestinians.
Around The UK
Market Trader
The subject of this piece is a market trader I photographed early in the morning on Vallance Road in East London around 12 years ago. The collage beneath his feet represents the urban environment in Whitechapel with a solitary tree as the sole representative of the natural world as he heads towards whitechapel market with his heavy load to extract a living during a long day.
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Around East London (21)
On Picton Road
This piece ‘Woman with a trolley bag on Picton Road’ – is derived from two photographs. One taken at night on Picton Road and the other during the day on London road (both in Liverpool).
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World Streets (29)
Numbers
‘Numbers’ (mixed media on paper) attempts to examine the digital world as it is manifested through the mobile phone. I’ve deliberately placed the man (photographed in Liverpool) with his phone on a circle or a 0, a digital symbol. He’s captured by a digital gadget. The question is does his phone bring him closer to the world and his surrounding environment or seperate him from it?
Around Liverpool (47)
Nativity 2023
Today more than half a million people in Gaza, a quarter of the population, are starving, according to a report on Thursday by the United Nations and other agencies. The finding highlights the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas’s October 7 attack. This comes as the Gaza Health Ministry revealed that the Palestinian death toll had now topped 20,000 people. The extent of the population’s hunger eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report. The report warned that the risk of famine is “increasing each day,” blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza. “It doesn’t get any worse’,” said Arif Husain, chief economist for the UN’s World Food Programme. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.” Thursday’s report on the staggering scale of hunger in Gaza underscored the failure of the United States, one of the few remaining allies of Israel, to insist on a ceasefire. The world is watching genocide in real time on an unspeakable scale.
‘Nativity 2023’ is a photomontage of a traditional nativity scene where baby Jesus has been replaced by a dead baby wrapped in a bloodied white shroud. The backdrop is a bombed city in Gaza. There are no stars – just a threatening drone reaping destruction. From the river to the sea one day Palestine will be free.
World Streets (27)
Man With A Pram
In the early 1960s I remember using the wheels from old prams and push chairs to make a ‘trolley.’ All you needed was two sets of wheels nailed to a plank of wood. The front wheels were connected to a seperate piece of wood which steered the trolley (in theory) in the direction you wanted to go. There were no breaks and motion was secured by pulling your trolley up a pavement on an incline and letting gravity do it’s work at the top of the incline. Trolleys were a health and safety nightmare but great fun.
I remember thinking of my days on a trolley as I observed old men wandering around the East End with a battered trolley collecting useful scrap that had been discarded.
‘Man with a pram’ (mixed media on paper) is based on a photograph I took of one such man in Toynbee Street in the East End (see below).
Around East London (20)
Window portrait
This mixed media portrait was based on the photograph (see below) of a woman looking through the window of a fast food outlet on Bishopsgate opposite Liverpool Street Station. After eating her meal she decided to stay for a smoke and keep warm.
World Streets (26)
Centenerian Portrait
I was delighted to meet this centenerian woman in Sylhet, Bangladesh in 1992. She was the great grandmother of a friend. I photographed her in her garden and was impressed with her energy as she was still looking after the plants she’d nurtured over many years. This image is a photomontage of a painting of her and the original portrait photograph. I wanted to emphasize her stunning eyes.
Around Liverpool (46)
Digital Exclusion
This illustration was used to illustrate an article on ‘digital exclusion’ for the manifesto of the Merseyside Pensioners Association (MPA). Older people for a variety of reasons are often excluded from the digital world many of us take for granted. The MPA campaigns to ensure that older people are not excluded from mainstream society.
Mystery Woman In The Mystery
This work combines two images. One of a woman walking along Brick Lane in London in 1983 and another of the Mystery Park in Liverpool.
The ghostly park with its colourful surreal lighting provides a strangely welcoming environment for the woman photographed in black and white from the past. People will know doubt ask me what my favourite work is in my current exhibition. I normally reply, “I don’t have a favourite”. However if I were forced to choose one it would be the mystery woman in the mystery. I love her, possibly because I’ve been looking at her image for many decades.
World Streets (24)
Under The Bridge On Brick Lane
This image was derived from a photograph I took of a woman as she walked under the railway bridge in Brick Lane. It was published in my book of the same name. To make this image I first printed the photograph on a piece of old paper from a bible printed in 1860. I then worked on the image using acrylic wash and chalk.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-art-of-resistance-exhibition-and-print-sale-tickets-745932663677?aff=oddtdtcreator
Around Liverpool (45)
Dancing On Brick Lane
Based around a photograph I took of a man on Brick Lane a few years ago this mixed media collage also employs two stills of a dancer I photographed at the Venice dance biennial in 2006. You can see the original in my current exhibition (see below).
World Streets (23)
Place Distance & Time
This image makes use of a number of photographs to explore the idea of place, distance and time. The woman on the left is a market trader in Laos (2018). The central figure was photographed in a cafe in Whitechapel in the 1980s and the man with a walking stick was photographed about the same time walking along Brick Lane.
World Streets (21)
Walking In Berlin
This image was made from four sequential photographs of a man walking across a road in Berlin in February 2023.
Around Liverpool (44)
I’ve always thought that one of the easiest ways to see a city anywhere in the world is from a bus. Here are some photos I took whilst on the 79 bus.
Ceasefire In Gaza Now!
The conditions at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza are horrific. There’s no electricity. People are buried and dieing in the grounds. Babies are wrapped in blankets when they need incubators. Despite all the evidence that a catastrophic human tragedy is unfolding, that the apartheid state of Israel is involved in genocide – Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer only echoes the policy of the United States and calls for a ‘humanitarian pause’.
One child dies in Gaza every 10 minutes & 2 are injured. There is no safe place in Gaza. There must be a ceasefire now. Starmer has no moral compass and thinks it’s all about media games and career advancement. Starmer has blood on his hands. If your local MP is not willing to back a ceasefire at this point, they don’t deserve your vote.
Peaceful Call For A Ceasefire In Gaza
At 6:30 last night Lime Street Station in Liverpool was extra busy due to a peaceful sit down protest by hundreds calling for a cease fire in Gaza, freedom for the Palestinian people and an end to Israeli apartheid. A number of different groups came together for the occupation of the station including the Merseyside Pensioners Association, Stop The War, Liverpool Friends Of Palestine, the RMT, NEU and Unite Community.
Since a sit down protest at grand central station in New York on October 28th similar protests have occurred around the world. The New York Police Department said it had arrested at least 200 protesters at the rally, which led to the temporary closure of the station. The anti-war group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which organised the demonstration, put the number of arrests at more than 300. JVP said thousands had taken part in what it described as an “emergency sit-in”.
“HUNDREDS OF JEWS AND ALLIES ARE GETTING ARRESTED IN WHAT IS LIKELY THE BIGGEST MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE NYC HAS SEEN IN TWO DECADES,” the group wrote in a post on Instagram.
Similar protests in central London have led to arrests after Transport Secretary Mark Harper gave an order to allow the Met Police to stop demonstrations under section 14a of the Public Order Act. It follows an increased attempt by the government to criminalise pro-Palestinian protests.
No one was arrested in Liverpool.
Around Liverpool (43)
Around Liverpool (42)
World Streets (22)
Around Liverpool (41)
Freedom For Palestine
‘In March this year, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied territories determined that the “political system of entrenched rule” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip “satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid”. In November, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing reached the same conclusion in relation to Israel’s policies of home demolitions. Some states, including South Africa, condemned Israeli apartheid, echoing statements by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations. Despite this growing recognition, Israel continued to enjoy impunity thanks to the support of its key allies.
In October, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, concluded that the occupation of the OPT is unlawful due to its permanence and Israel’s measures to annex Palestinian land in law and in practice. In 2022, such measures included retroactive authorization of settlement outposts, including by the Israeli Supreme Court (Amnesty International).’
This is the background to the current war. America the UK and other countries supply the arms to Israel that are now being used by Israel, in breach of international law to kill thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Since the start of the war of terror on Gaza, people have demonstrated and marched in support of the Palestinians around the world. These photographs were taken in Liverpool on Sunday October 29th 2023.
When questioned about the demonstrations, after an emergency COBRA meeting chaired by Rishi Sunak, Home secretary Ms Braverman said: “To my mind there is only one way to describe those marches: they are hate marches.” As these photographs show, Braverman is a Liar.
Around The East End (37)
Around The East End (36)
Watney Market East London (6)
Watney Market East London (5)
World Streets (20)
Around The East End (35)
Man on Brick Lane
This image started it’s life as a photograph in my book ‘Brick Lane’. The man pulling his trolley bag was photographed around 1984. He’s most likely dead now but my brief encounter with him courtesy of my camera means I remember him in my mind very clearly. I often have a strange empathy with my street subjects. Although I’ve usually not spoken to any of them I often speculate about their lives and ask myself what are they doing now?
The image is actually derived from two photographs the second was taken at night of the river in Melaka, Malaysia. Colourful lights reflected in the water were regularly disrupted by passing boats creating a magnificent and serene dance of colours that probably mimicked the movement of the unseen fish beneath the water. So, my man with his walking stick is now walking on water.
Over forty years ago I had good mobility and could even run fast! I feel as if I’ve grown closer to the deceased subject as today I can certainly identify with the mobility problems he had! I’m pleased I’ve updated my memory of the ‘Man On Brick Lane’.
Underground Rickshaw
Bicycle rickshaws are the most popular modes of transport in Bangladesh and are available for hire throughout the country including the capital city Dhaka, known as the “Rickshaw Capital of the World“. Rickshaws are the most popular means of transportation in Bangladesh. In the capital Dhaka there are over 600,000 competing for passengers. The rickshaws carry passengers but they are often adapted to transport all sorts of goods. Because of inflation and unemployment in the rural areas, people from villages move to the cities to become rickshaw drivers, locally called the riksha-wala.
On my first visit to Bangladesh I became fascinated by Rickshaws. I viewed them as mobile works of art as they (when traffic jams were absent) flew through the streets thanks to the strenuous efforts and skill of the riksha-wala. Used to travelling in London on the Underground I relished a ride on a Rickshaw in Bangladesh. There can be no better way to see Bangladesh than from the passenger seat of a rickshaw. This piece imagines two modes of transport combined: the underground and the Rickshaw.
Rickshaws are covered with paintings of rural scenes, animals, film stars, the rich and the famous, great monuments and religious symbols. Scores of people are employed to paint and decorate this popular form of human powered transport. In recent years computer generated images have joined hand painted patterns. The main aim of rickshaw art is to attract the attention of potential passengers.
Comparing travelling underground in a sealed tube full of commuters is like prison compared to the Rickshaw. Nevertheless I’ve been photographing the underground for decades as it provides a brilliant opportunity for human observation. Sadly pollution in Dhaka compares to the pollution on the underground.
There is a battle between rickshaws and cars in Dhaka. Rickshaws are blamed for traffic congestion. However, rickshaws are safe, environmentally friendly and do not rely on fossil fuels. Many people rely on rickshaws. The industry employs people from 38 different professions.
Perhaps the two women in the rickshaw are travelling with a driver searching for a place untroubled by pollution, global warming and the stress of ‘modern’ living.
Ban The Barge!
The Government sees asylum seekers as a useful tool to divert attention attention from the cost of living crisis and the corruption they are steeped in. They’ve always shown contempt for human rights when it comes to refugees.
People risk their lives in small boats crossing the channel because they are denied a safe and legal route to apply for asylum in the UK.
In the 1980s the Liberal Democrat Council in Tower Hamlets attempted to house homeless Bangladeshi families on a disused boat on the river Thames. The idea scheme was put forward by a Lib Dem councillor who was also a Lloyds underwriter. Following a public outcry and campaign the idea was quietly dropped. I never thought that decades later the idea of putting vulnerable people on a barge would be embraced by the govenment of the day.
After being condemned as a fire risk the first Refugees were put on the vessel in Portland Port despite the fact that test results for Legionella in the water were positive.
Following a Home Office “incident management meeting” on 17th August officials concluded that no one else would be moved onto the Bibby Stockholm while a risk assessment was carried out, and it was then decided to move all 39 asylum seekers off the barge. The government has refused to answer questions about why all this was allowed to happen.
The cruelty and inhumanity of the government seems to have no limits. The ‘Stop the boats’ policy diguises an unwillingness to meet the bare minimum of the govenments responsibilities under international law towards refugees.
The government hopes eventually to ‘house’ 500 men on the barge. We all need to raise our voices to “BAN THE BARGE”.
Mixed Media Collage
Forty five years ago I aquired a copy stand which I’ve only started to appreciate in recent years. It’s great for photographing art work or items that can be incorporated into work later. This mixed media collage began life as a discarded and dismembered cigarette packet which I photographed on the stand.
The photograph of the cigarette packet was the framework for the development of the piece. On top of the packet you can find luminous advertising boards from an East London subway, candlelight seen through a disused blue gin bottle and blurred street lighting from down town Marrakech. Your eyes may notice more!
Around Liverpool (39)
World Streets (18)
World Streets (17)
Around Liverpool (40)
Around Liverpool (39)
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Around Liverpool (38)
World Streets (13)
Mother & Child In Laos
When I first started work as a photo journalist magazine editors would routinely annoy me by cropping my images before publication. All those decades ago I would never have dreamt that I would eventually end up tearing up and collaging different photographs together as well as scribbling and painting on them! The work below developed from four photographs I took of a woman and child in a market in Laos. The powerful subject was caring for her baby as well as selling food on a stall.
I began by printing an image on card and then rapidly over painting it with white acrylic paint. The image was then rephotographed and colour was added digitally. The finished images were then collaged together and the collage was printed on canvas. Finally I over painted different parts of the canvas.
This work involved a lot of experimentation and trial and error; I was never really sure of the direction the work was taking. It was a rewarding organic process that breathed extra life and possibilities into the original photographs.
World Streets (12)
We Dare To Defend Our Rights
Riots are often sparked off by some deep seated social injustice. The Toxteth riots of 1981 emerged during a recession with high unemployment and deep rooted tensions between the local population and the police.
The Merseyside police force at the time had a particularly bad reputation in the area for stopping and searching black youths under the hated ‘sus’ laws. Chief constable Ken Oxford led a police force that regularly arrested and harassed black youth in Toxteth. His astonishing rants at the time speak volumes about the racism that permeated the police force then: “Policemen in general and detectives in particular, are not racialist, despite what many Black groups believe. … Yet they are the first to define the problem of half-castes in Liverpool. Many are the products of liaisons between black seamen and white prostitutes in Liverpool 8, the red-light district. Naturally, they do not grow up with any kind of recognizable home life. Worse still, after they have done the round of homes and institutions, they gradually realize they are nothing.”
The main image in the work below was built around a photograph I took of a demonstration calling for the resignation of the then Chief Constable Ken Oxford. Standing beneath the banner of the ‘Liverpool 8 Defence Committee’ the boy with the placard ‘We dare to defend our rights’ stared dirtectly into the camera. The police behind him were taken from a number of images from a demonstration I covered in 1985 organised by the Newham 7 campaign in East London.
Shortly after the above was photo was taken the police, carrying riot shields, swept the park and expelled everyone. I used one of the images taken shortly after this one for the police behind the boy.
This work will feature in ‘The Art Of Resistance’ summer show (details to follow).
World Streets (11)
World Streets (10)
Walking under the bridge in Brick Lane
I photographed the woman featured in the work below twice as she wandered slowly under the bridge in Brick Lane in 1983. I’ve returned to the two photographs a number of times to make a number of mixed media works. She strikes me as a woman who has experienced a great deal in her life and has many tales to to tell.
Not My King
I was born in 1953 the year of the coronation of the late Queen Elizabeth. As a child I was taught history that was awash with kings, queens and rich people. It was an entirely skewed and perverse form of history given the fact the majority of people who’ve inhabited the planet were none of the above. I was also brought up with the idea that ‘Brittania’ ruled or owned most of the world. We were brainwashed to believe the British ruled everywhere, invented most things and were generally superior to everyone else. It didn’t take long for me to realise that this was all bullshit.
In 1910 Irish freedom fighter and republican James Connolly in response to a visit of of King George V described the British monarchy in the following terms:
“All political and social positions should be open to all men and women. What is monarchy? From whence does it derive its sanction? What has been its gift to humanity? Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities.
Every class in society save royalty, and especially British royalty, has through some of its members contributed something to the elevation of the race. But neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement of mankind. But that royal family has opposed every forward move, fought every reform, persecuted every patriot, and intrigued against every good cause. Slandering every friend of the people, it has befriended every oppressor. Eulogised today by misguided clerics, it has been notorious in history for the revolting nature of its crimes. Murder, treachery, adultery, incest, theft, perjury – every crime known to man has been committed by some one or other of the race of monarchs from whom King George is proud to trace his descent.”
The idea of an unelected head of state is ludicrous and the toxic sycophancy of the mainstream media around the coronation of King Charles demonstrates that democracy is not alive and well in the UK in 2023. The arrest of over 60 demonstrators illustrates the governments intention to suppress the right to protest with new powers to clamp down on peaceful demonstrations.
The coronation was a convenient diversion for the Tory government at a time when millions in the UK are suffering from poverty caused by a failing economic system that puts the pursuit of profit before the needs of society.
The site of an unelected head of state trundling through the streets of London in a gold coach with his unelected queen when homeless people are dying on the streets is surely a metaphor for the state of the UK today.
The photomontage below is my contribution to ‘The Big Help Out’. Vive la republique!
World Streets (9)
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World Streets (8)
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World Streets (4)
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Cheshire Street London
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Sky, Trees & Leaves
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Around The East End (35)
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Hanoi Vietnam (8)
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You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
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Faces at the Melaka Night Market
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Hanoi Vietnam (6)
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You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
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You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
International Women’s Day 2023
Today is International Women’s day. These photographs celebrate women the world over. I hope they challenge the idea that progress is largely brought about by men. We still have a long way to go before injustice based purely on a persons sex is eradicated. “Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom.” – Rosa Luxemburg.
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On Strike On International Women’s Day
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Chairs In Barcelona, London, Naples & Paris
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Hanoi Vietnam
Around Liverpool (37)
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Fighting Racism In 1994
Following the election of a British National Party councillor in Millwall, East London and the escalation in racist attacks in the area, the TUC joined with a broad platform of anti-racist organisations in a Unite Against Racism demonstration in Tower Hamlets on 19 March, 1994. The BNP candidate was defeated in the subsequent local elections and a Labour Council returned to power in the borough. I photographed the demonstration which attracted over 50,000 people. The art work below is made from two images I took on the march.
I believe photographs have an inherent historical value but I also view my archive as a resource where images can be re-imagined sometimes (as is in this case) to restate an idea. The fight against racism is ongoing. This image captures the anger of of those who’ve been subjected to it. It’s an anger that is reflected in the Black Lives Matter movement around the world today.
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Walking In A New World
In the 1980s I remember getting annoyed with editors when they cropped my photographs. Who would have thought that forty years later I would be harvesting different figures from images and creating new compositions!
The image below was made from three different files. Everyone I photograph on the street are in their own world. What are they thinking? Where are they going? Where have they been? What will happen to them in the future? These are some of the questions that occur to me when I review my street photographs of people frozen in time. I think the image below represents my curiosity about the individuals and my speculation about their lives.
I’ve always believed that all humans are linked together in a number of ways despite cultural, class or economic circumstances. These two individuals may have a lot in common although it’s likely their paths will never cross; both were photographed in different cities. The work therefore also explores the element of chance in all our lives.
They’ve been placed in an imaginary landscape which is a detail from a painting I made on the inside of a discarded corn flake box. Once the assembled image was printed I then worked on it with watercolour and pencil. Ultimately I’m attempting to get the viewer to look at the two subjects more closely unfettered by the street environment I photographed them in individually.
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Around Liverpool (36)
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Around Liverpool (35)
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Food Bank Britain
During the recent nurses strike I spoke to a number of strikers who knew of colleagues using food banks or were using them themselves. As the cost of living soars more than half of NHS trusts and health boards are either providing or planning food banks for staff.
According to the Royal College of Nursing their members on average work an extra 6 hours for no extra pay each week. During the pandemic politicians lined up to have their photographs taken as they clapped for NHS workers. Now they are refusing to pay them a living wage for the incredible life saving work they do.
I hope the photomontage below expresses the outrage that millions of people in the UK feel about the lying, corrupt and hypocritical political class that rules over us. No one should have to use a food bank in the sixth richest economy in the world. Solidarity with everyone fighting back against the economic system that has brought a wretched poverty and life to millions in food bank Britain.
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The Bridge
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Around Liverpool (34)
You can purchase a print of any of the thousands of photographs on this blog. Just send the date of the blog and the caption on the print. All images printed on high quality acid free A3 (£30) or A4 paper (£15) with a border – perfect for framing. Send your order through the comments section below the blog and include your name and address.
Around Liverpool (33)
You can purchase a print of any of the thousands of photographs on this blog. Just send the date of the blog and the caption on the print. All images printed on high quality acid free A3 (£30) or A4 paper (£15) with a border – perfect for framing. Send your order through the comments section below the blog and include your name and address.
World Streets (3)
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Smiles & Bikes
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World Streets (2)
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Dhaka & London
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People, Offices & Cranes
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Bricks, Mortar and Flowers
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World Markets
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World Streets
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Underground in Berlin, London & New York
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In The Hood
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Berlin, Hanoi, London & New York
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Market Trading
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The Sun
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Invasion?
You would be right in thinking that the last successful invasion of the UK was in 1066. Home secretary Suella Braverman thinks another invasion is underway. With reference to refugees seeking asylum in the UK she recently told the House of Commons that the country was being subjected to an “invasion”. This was the day after a man with links to the far right threw firebombs at a Dover immigration centre. After an investigation, counter-terrorism police announced they had found evidence that the attack was motivated by an “extreme rightwing” terrorist ideology.
Apparently the home secretary’s first priority is to protect the security of the UK and the safety of its citizens. However her use of language stirs up hostility and racism towards refugees and others.
As well as harbouring fantasies about “invasion” she used her speech at the Tory Party conference to stir up hostility: “I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession,” Braverman said. She added that she would like to see the flight before Christmas. Braverman then used her conference speech to promise a blanket ban on anyone who enters Britain “irregularly” – including on small boats across the Channel.
People fleeing war, poverty and climate chaos are very unlikely to use anything but “irregular” methods given the lack of official ways to come to Britain. Using government figures the Refugee Council points out that 76% of initial asylum decisions made in the year to June 2022 have been grants of protection, meaning they have been awarded refugee status or humanitarian protection. Currently there are 117,945 awaiting an initial decision about their status.
The Government’s attitude towards refugees is barbaric. This photomontage “Invasion” challenges the untruthful rhetoric directed at incredibly vulnerable people.
I’ve used a number of different images including the tender and powerful painting of the ‘Virgin and Child’ by the 15th century Dutch painter Dieric Bouts. The beach was photographed in Deal. Thanks to activist Hazuan Hashim for displaying the message welcoming refugees!
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Cycling, Pushing & Pulling
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Books, Petitions & Conversation
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Around Liverpool (32)
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‘Looking East’. Mixed media collage
The mixed media collage (above) is based on the urban landscape of the City of London viewed from Whitechapel. The neat graphic sky line (2019) contrasts with the well worn coat of the smoking woman who appeared on the front cover of my book ‘Old Ladies of Whitechapel’ – published by Cafe Royal books. I photographed her in 1982 walking down Cheshire Street on a Sunday morning.
Two different eras are frozen in time. The woman can be viewed as a dogged survivor of a continuously shifting urban landscape that cares little for the inhabitants of the East End and more for the financial prowess of the City.
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Imagining Liz Truss
Given the self serving vanity of most politicians I usually relish producing satirical images of them. Nevertheless, the process requires a degree of awkward research of videos that can be used to grab images that can be manipulated. Liz Truss was particularly awkward because it meant I had to watch her grandstanding and promising everything to the Tory membership in order to gain votes in the leadership election. It was a nauseating experience that reminded me of a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s superb 1971 dystopian crime film ‘A Clockwork Orange‘. Malcolm McDowell played a sadistic gangleader who agrees to volunteer for a ‘conduct-aversion experiment’; at one point McDowell is seen strapped to a chair with his eyes tortured using a brutal device that clamped his eyes open as he watched a screen. I remember covering my eyes when I first saw the film in the 1970s.
You may conclude that I am not a fan of Liz Truss. I viewed all the footage I’d gathered of Truss with some horror. Lenin said that “fascism is capitalism in decay” and it certainly is the case that capitalism is in a deep crisis around the world. With two ideas in my head – horror and fascism – I arrived at the Liz Truss you see below. A sadistic face holds a bloodied knife; the Prime Minister becomes a ghoul starring in a horror movie presiding over cuts that will inevitably lead to the death of vulnerable UK citizens.
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Around The East End (34)
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London & Paris
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Around The East End (33)
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Around The East End (32)
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Around The East End (31)
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Berlin, Dhaka, Hanoi, London and Tamil Nadu
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Dhaka and London
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Escape
As a teenager at school I had a range of different jobs from paper boy and potato picking to stacking supermarket shelves. Then as a student teacher I worked during the holidays as a gardener and as a labourer on the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham. None of these jobs were particularly challenging from an intellectual point of view but in some ways I probably learnt more about real life than I did from the books I had to read.
During my labouring job I learnt how to let my mind wander. These days I note that the workers who have to cycle around delivering food and wait outside restauraunts similarly may have wandering minds. Perhaps they dream of escaping from the tedium of their precarious low paid work; hence the title of the above image of a cyclist on a mission in a dream like landscape: ‘Escape’.
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Around Liverpool (31)
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Around The East End (30)
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Around The East End (29)
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Cave Paintings Are Not ‘Primitive’
The cave paintings in Lescaux in France made some 17,000 years ago are sometimes referred to as ‘primitive art’. The caves contain nearly 6,000 figures and were discovered in 1940 by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat when his dog, Robot, fell in a hole!
The cave complex was opened to the public on 14 July 1948, and initial archaeological investigations began a year later, focusing on the Shaft. By 1955, carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, and other contaminants produced by 1,200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings. As air condition deteriorated, fungi and lichen increasingly infested the walls. Consequently, the cave was closed to the public in 1963, the paintings were restored to their original state, and a monitoring system on a daily basis was introduced. Replicas of the paintings have been made at different sites.
Seeing photographs of the many paintings I’ve never considered them to be primitive in any sense. They strike me as a sophisticated celebration of the world as it existed then by the people who occupied the caves. Walking up Wavertree high street the other day I took a photograph of a disgarded McDonald’s carton and for some reason thought about what humans of that era would think of fast food and the consequences the industry has in wrecking the environment of the world today.
By placing the logo on one of the paintings I’m asking the question is the world advancing or are we facing an environmental catastrophe? I’m certain of one thing: the humans who existed in those caves were artistic, survived through cooperation and were in no sense ‘primitive’. We can learn a lot from those early human communities. As Bertrand Russell once said: “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation”.
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International Street Photography (7)
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Conversations (8)
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Conversations (7)
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Around The East End (28)
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Homeless – Photomontage
People become homeless for lots of different reasons. There are social causes of homelessness, such as a lack of affordable housing, poverty and unemployment; and life events which push people into homelessness. People are forced into homelessness when they leave prison, care or the army with no home to go to. Many women experiencing homelessness have escaped a violent or abusive relationship. Many people become homeless because they can no longer afford the rent. Not everyone who becomes homeless ends up on the street. Many homeless people are hidden because they are living in over crowded conditions or sleeping on a friends couch.
There’s a severe housing crisis in the UK and many people will never be able to buy their own house. Decent housing is a basic human right and this photomontage addresses the issue in terms of street homelessness. Seven different images make up the final composition – including a lake in Cambodia.
The average age of death for people experiencing homelessness is 45 for men and 43 for women. People sleeping on the street are almost 17 times more likely to have been victims of violence. More than one in three people sleeping rough have been deliberately hit or kicked or experienced some other form of violence whilst homeless.
Homeless people are over nine times more likely to take their own life than the general population.
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Conversations (6)
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Conversations (5)
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Conversations (4)
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Terry Sullivan 1948 – 2022
Terry Sullivan was born on July 17th 1948 – 12 days after The NHS came into operation; it guaranteed free health care from the ‘cradle to grave’ with treatment offered according to medical need rather than the ability to pay. As a life long Trade Unionist, Terry understood that his parents generation had to fight for the NHS and knew that, in the words of Nye Bevan, “Our NHS will last while there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”. Sadly Terry has left us at a time when the new NHS privatisation bill is waiting royal assent. He was an NHS baby and enjoyed his entire life when universal health care was guaranteed by law.
In his later years Terry benefited from an NHS that treated his cancer. I remember him describing the “marvellous” treatment he received at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. An experience and hospital we both shared.
I first met Terry at a Labour Party meeting held in the former Bethnal Green Town Hall in Patriot Square. The building has now been turned into an upmarket hotel reflecting the gentrification that has blighted the East End in recent decades. Instead of public services and debate the Town Hall now offers “A relaxed post-work cocktail or a pre-dinner aperitivo”. I’ve never shared either of those drinks with Terry but I remember sharing many a pint with him at the ‘Approach’ pub a short walk from the town hall. Indeed I think I’ve shared pints with him in many different pubs around the East End! Terry had a difficult relationship with alcohol and mentioned it to me, in the pub, on a number of occasions.
I was fortunate to be elected to Tower Hamlets Council at the same time as Terry. We were both used to campaigning outside the Town Hall against the cuts rather than being ‘on the inside’ in the Council Chamber. Naturally we became political soulmates and supported each other. Terry was often a speaker representing the Transport & General Workers Union (now Unite) in some disagreement with Tower Hamlets Council. It was not uncommon to see him with shop stewards like John Peters on a platform with fellow Trade Unionists lambasting Councillors as they arrived at the town hall for a Council meeting.
The 1980s was an interesting time politically for a newly elected Councillor. Unfortunately Labour was not in control of Tower Hamlets but the party membership was acutely aware of the growing battle between Labour Councils and Margaret Thatcher. As a supporter of the Militant newspaper Terry believed it was the job of Labour Councillors to fight the cuts rather than implement them on behalf of the Tories. There was little chance of this happening in Tower Hamlets as the Liberal democrats had overall control. In opposition Terry never tired of reminding the Council leadership that they were stooges for the Tories.
In 1983 six months before the general election, Margaret Thatcher was at rock bottom in the polls. Nevertheless, thanks to the jingoism that accompanied the Falklands war and the formation of the right wing Social Democratic Party (which helped to divide the traditional Labour vote) she was re-elected. This was the signal to the ruling class to take back all the gains made since the 1945 Labour victory.
Terry Sullivan was elected a Councillor in 1986 and was on board for the agreed Labour party conference policy for all Labour controlled local authorities to support a campaign of opposition to Thatcher and the cuts in local authority expenditure. Previously in 1984 Ken Livingstone declared his support for a policy of outright opposition to the Thatcher government. As things turned out Livingstone’s declaration was not matched with deeds. I recall a flying visit to Tower Hamlets by Livingstone in 1985 to commemorate the victory of Poplar Councillors who ended up in jail for refusing to set a rate in order to protect the poor. By this time Livingstone had caved in and a legal rate was set by the GLC and the crowd assembled to hear Livingstones words were annoyed with him.
Under the leadership of George Lansbury Poplar council was faced with the prospect of a huge increase in the rates but decided to hold them down by not collecting the precepts. The councillors clashed with a decision of the High Court ordering them to implement the rate increases. Instead they organised a procession of thousands of supporters under the banner reading “Poplar Borough Council marching to the High Court and possibly to prison”. Thirty councillors, including six women were sent to prison for contempt of court. Under the leadership of George Lansbury the councillors adopted the slogan “Better to break the law than break the poor”.
The Poplar revolt received wide public support. Lansbury addressed crowds that regularly gathered outside, through the prison bars. Neighbouring councils threatened to take similar action. Trade unions passed resolutions of support and collected funds for the councillors’ families. After six weeks’ imprisonment, the court responded to public opinion and released the councillors.
Never fearful of speaking the truth Terry Sullivan spoke immediately after Ken Livingstone’s speech and reminded the crowd of the slogan of Poplar Councillors: ‘Better to break the law than break the poor’. This slogan was later embraced by the 47 Liverpool councillors who stuck by the decision of opposing cuts. In the end they were the only council to succeed in extracting extra funding from the government. I remember thinking after Terry spoke what a shame it was that Livingstone missed Terry’s excellent contribution!
As a Trade Unionist who knew the value of solidarity Terry threw himself into the campaign to support striking miners. Bethnal Green and Stepney Labour Party twinned with the Kiveton Park colliery in South Yorkshire. Albert Bownes the NUM secretary of the colliery visited Tower Hamlets and spoke at a number of meetings Terry helped to organise. He was instrumental in collecting food and money for the striking miners and their families.
I remember travelling with Terry and Sue Carlyle to Kiveton Park in 1984. We took with us food, money and supplies donated by people from Tower Hamlets.
The day after our visit miners from Kiveton went to Orgreave. Since then the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign was established. The campaign includes ex-miners, trades unionists, activists and others who are determined to get justice for miners who were victims of police lies and cover ups at Orgreave in June 1984.
The miners strike began in 1984 when the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher broke an agreement with the NUM and decided to shut down Cortonwood colliery in Yorkshire. From the outset Terry Sullivan threw himself into the campaign to support the miners. Thatcher was a powerful warrior for the ruling class and wanted to break the NUM and had built up oil and coal reserves to mitigate the impact of any strike by miners in opposition to pit closures. Arch strike breaker Ian McGregor, who made a career out of attacking Trade Unions, was made chairman of the National Coal Board to break the NUM. The strike led by Arthur Scargill drew support from rank & file trade unionists & communities across the UK. Labour parties twinned with individual pitts. At the time Terry was a member of Bethnal Green & Stepney Labour party and we twinned with Kiveton Park colliery in South Yorkshire. Miners from Kiveton joined us as we collected money for striking miners and their families during the strike. Each Saturday Terry would stand outside the supermarket in Watney Market and collect money and food for Kiveton Park as well as handing out leaflets. Once we had enough food we hired a van and drove to South Yorkshire with the food and money. The hospitality we gave the miners when they stayed with us in the East End of London was reciprocated in Kiveton. We were entertained, and educated about the real meaning of struggle.
The miners were really up against the forces of the state. The police were retrained to break strikes and given extraordinary powers. Picket’s cars were stopped and turned back. Villages and districts were cordoned off. The president of the NUM Arthur Scargill was demonised by the press and media. Just as, in recent times, Jeremy Corbyn was demonised by the mainstream media.
Ultimately the miners were defeated but I think in one sense they were victorious. Terry Sullivan always made the point that the Tories were diverted and stopped in their tracks for a year. Women were liberated and became central to every aspect of the management of the strike. That included standing on picket lines. Attitudes changed.
The solidarity that exploded during the strike gave us a glimpse of the way the world could be organised. The strike lasted as long as it did because of co-operation between different communities. Terry understood that Trade Union rights were the human rights that the state was trying to destroy. He understood that Socialism was the alternative to Capitalism. During the strike he lived and breathed the oxygen of solidarity and knew that another world is possible and it’s not just a dream.
Terry Sullivan played an important role in organising the 50th anniversary celebration of the historic battle of Cable Street when the working class rose up to stop Oswald Mosley’s 3,000 fascist Blackshirts marching through Whitechapel.
Cable Street turned the tide of pre-war public opinion when support for fascism in Britain began to decline. Mosley’s planned march from Tower Hill through Whitechapel was seen as provocation against the East End’s largely Jewish community.
Although Terry played an important role as a member of the Tower Hamlets Trades Council in supporting anti racist initiatives he was probably more comfortable when he was able to familiarise fascists with his boot size.
Terry Sullivan was a one off and will be remembered with affection by many. He leaves three children – Joanne, Paul and Rosy who were with him together with his companion Bertie Dangerfield when he died.
Evolution
Anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago. Since then how far has the human race advanced? This photomontage asks the question.
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Conversations (3)
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Global Village?
The word ‘Globalisation’, describes the interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. I remember it becoming a popular word twenty five years ago when politicians were using it to describe what they perceived to be the benefits of world trade and international links. An accompanying phrase was ‘global village’ which was used to describe what some politicians and economists described as a bright new future bought about by advances in transportation and digital communication technology. I always disliked the phrase as it seemed to imply a bright new world where humanity was wrapped in a cosy blanket of innovation and development that would benefit everyone.
The photomontage ‘Global Village’ examines the veracity of the global village concept. Despite advances in technology and communication globalisation has reinforced structural inequalities around the world. We live in a world and economic system that pepetuates the poverty of billions across the planet. A world where power is concentrated into the hands of corporations and their shareholders who yield power with disasterous consequences for the environment and humanity.
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Conversations (2)
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Street Conversations
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Around The East End (27)
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A World Without Mobile Phones?
What kind of impact has digital technology had on our lives? Do mobile phones bring human beings closer together or do we become isolated in our own digital world? Are we closer to the natural environment of the planet or are we disconnected from it? These are some of the questions I’ve tried to address in this photomontage which is made from seven separate images. Three were taken in Liverpool. Two in London. The man on the scooter was captured in Berlin and the mountains surround the village of Kyparissi in Greece.
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Jogjakarta
Yogyakarta is a city on the Indonesian island of Java known for its traditional arts and cultural heritage. It’s well worth a visit!
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Earth On Fire
Since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels (like coal, oil and gas), which produces heat-trapping gases. Since 1870, global sea levels have risen by about 8 inches. Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.
This photomontage is designed to illustrate the serious impact human activity has had on the environment. In his excellent book ‘Ecocide’ David Whyte, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Liverpool, argues that corporations are a critical yet neglected cause of our global environmental crisis. The problems they create are wired into their DNA of shareholder primacy and profit or wealth maximisation – a phenomenon now acknowledged widely as financialisation. Furthermore, the corporate veil of limited liability and responsibility, and their concentration of political and structural power, enables corporations to shop between jurisdictions, playing a game of tax, offshore secrecy and regulatory arbitrage to evade environmental responsibility.
The climate crisis reflects the failure of economics as capitalism is actually the cause of the problem and climate change merely a symptom. The fight against global warming is inevitably a fight against capitalism. David Whyte ends his book on ecocide with these stark words: “We have to kill the corporation before it kills us.” The guiding idea of contemporary capitalism is to maximize short-term profitability, a posture that contradicts the kind of approach that would protect the natural habitat against the ravages wrought by contemporary capitalism.
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Around The East End (26)
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Stop The War
Has art driven major social and political change in the 21st century? Possibly not, but it has certainly provided an alternative to the status quo support for war and a system that upholds discrimination, social and climate injustice. Art is a powerful tool for communicating an alternative vision of the world and accelerating change. I remember in the 1960s and 70s having a visceral fear of the threat of nuclear war. I never believed the rhetoric of those who’ve argued that nuclear weapons have kept us all safe from war. Nuclear weapons have never protected the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Palestine from war.
In January 2022 the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight. At that time, they called out Ukraine as a potential flashpoint in an increasingly tense international security landscape. For many years, they have warned that the most likely way nuclear weapons might be used is through an unwanted or unintended escalation from a conventional conflict. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought this nightmare scenario to life, with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to elevate nuclear alert levels and even first use of nuclear weapons if NATO steps in to help Ukraine. This is what 100 seconds to midnight looks like.
This Photomontage uses an x-ray photograph of an acient Egyptian skull that has been mummified. Mummification was designed to enable members of the Egyptian elite to survive death and enjoy the afterlife. Nuclear war will signal the death of all life on earth. The idea of surviving a nuclear war resonates with the same mytholygy of ancient Egypt. Nuclear bunkers for the super rich will only ensure a slow lingering death. I made this work as a contribution to the anti-war movement.
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International Street Photography (5)
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Rising East
‘Rising East’ – a mixed media piece on canvas was based on two photographs I took of children from Fieldgate Mansions in Stepney in 1983. One of the images was published as a post card and another ended up on the cover of ‘Rising East’ The Journal of East London Studies in 1999.
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Around The East End (25)
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Precarious working
Millions of workers in the UK are working on the minimum wage or below without any job security and very few employment rights. This lack of financial security causes a loss of dignity at work, and the inability to progress in a career or train to leave. They work long hours and are often living in poor housing.
This photomontage is a tribute to the millions of people world wide who cycle around delivering food and shopping to customers. Their long working hours and financial hardship can lead to social isolation and depression. The main reason workers take on this work is because it is the only form
available. Fortunately many precarious workers are coming together, joining unions to organise for better pay and conditions.
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Around The East End (24)
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Around The East End (23)
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Around Liverpool (30)
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Women Of Bangladesh
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International Street Photography (4)
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Cellular Data Brains
This photomontage combines seven different images. The man wearing a mask is a cleaner in a shopping Mall in Liverpool. He’s the only person who appears aware of his surroundings. The subjects are united by the space they share, the sky, rather than ground they occupy individually. The phone signals bounce around the metaverse; their reality is virtual.
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Around The East End (22)
You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
Mobile Phone City
What kind of impact has digital technology had on our lives? Do mobile phones bring human beings closer together or do we become isolated in our own digital world? Are we closer to the natural environment of the planet or are we disconnected from it? These are some of the questions I’ve tried to address in this photomontage which is made from five separate images.
You can purchase this print and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
Around Liverpool (29)
You can purchase prints and art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/
London In A Rice Field
During the 19th century London grew rapidly. It was the largest city in the world from about 1825, the world’s largest port, and the heart of international finance and trade. Nevertheless Whitechapel was still quite rural at the start of the 19th century. Early engravings and paintings of the Whitechapel hospital show it surrounded by fields. Viewing those images and taking into account how London has depended on immigration I decided to combine an image from Bangladesh with a view of the city taken from a tower block in Whitechapel. I started combining images from different countries in 2009. I do this to emphasise how humanity is connected worldwide. The links between Bangladesh and East London are manifold.
You can purchase prints and art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/
Around Liverpool (28)
You can purchase prints and art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/
Ecocide
This piece was made during the COP26 negotiations last year. It combines three photographs of a man wearing a mask walking toward the viewer with a coal powered power station in the distance. The garish colours represent a bleak and desolate landscape.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) brought together 120 world leaders and over 40,000 registered participants, including 22,274 party delegates, 14.124 observers and 3.886 media representatives. Many of the registered participants represented the global interests of oil and fossil fuel companies and their shareholders.
“The approved texts are a compromise,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today. They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.”
The title was inspired by the excellent book ‘Ecocide’ by David Whyte. In it he argues that we have to “kill the corporation before it kills us”. He maps out a plan to end the corporation’s death-watch over us.
You can buy ‘Ecoside’ and other work by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/product/ecocide
Around The East End (21)
You can buy prints and original art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/
Mobile Discobolus & Digital Wellbeing
I remember first seeing a photograph of the statue of the discus thrower in a book in 1971 and unsurprisingly the image has remained with me ever since.
The The Discobolus of Myron (“discus thrower“, Greek: Diskobólos) is a Greek sculpture completed at the start of the Classical period at around 460–450 BC. The sculpture depicts a youthful male athlete throwing a discus. The original Greek bronze is lost but the work is known through numerous Roman copies.
The athlete depicted in the statue would not be familiar with the concept of ‘digital wellbeing’. I’ve transposed the athlete into the 21st century and replaced the discuss with a mobile phone and given him headphones. The statue is no longer a celebration of athleticism. It asks who are we today and how different are we from the ancient Greeks? What would the ancient Greeks think of 21st century, consumerism and digital communication? Would they consider our pervasive digital connection to the world a false reality? Would they see a mobile phone and it’s demand for attention as a threat to genuine communication between people? Would they throw the phone away?
Buy a signed print here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/product/mobile-discobolus
International Street Photography
View the latest programme I’ve made with Hazuan Hashim here:
Around Liverpool (27)
View the latest programme I’ve made with Hazuan Hashim here:
Around Liverpool (26)
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Smoking
The focal point of this print is a cigarette seller I photographed in Java. He is flanked to his right by a couple photographed on Brick Lane; the man is rolling himself a cigarette. On his left is a woman photographed using her phone and having a smoke outside Shoreditch station.
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Smoking And Reading In Liverpool Street Station
On The Road
These images were printed on old road atlas paper. They examine issues of time place and mortality.
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Abstract Rhythms, Ancient & Modern
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Outside & Inside The Golden Heart
Here are some photos of the last time I was in the Golden Heart pub, in September 2019. I’m looking forward to my next visit!
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The Golden Heart Pub Spitalfields
The Golden Heart Pub Spitalfields
Phil Maxwell & Sandra Esqulant, Photographer & Muse
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Rickshaw On The Underground
This image explores time, place and globalisation. It combines a photograph of a Rickshaw driver and his passengers taken in Bangladesh and a desolate underground station in London.
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My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
They Shall Not Pass
This collage on canvas has a starting point from a page of a calender I was commisioned to make using my photographs in 1999. The page used features a photograph taken in 1994 of an anti-racist demo in East London in 1994. Elements from the image are then repeated in positive and negative form. The words ‘They Shall Not Pass’ are made from a banner that was made for the 50th anniversary of the Battle Of Cable Street in English and Bengali.
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The Faces Of The Battle Of Cable Street (2)
‘They Did Not Pass. 80th Anniversary Of The Battle Of Cable Street’
‘Banners Of The Battle Of Cable Street’
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Around The East End (20)
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Cheshire Street East London 2017
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Abstract
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Abstract Rhythms, Ancient & Modern
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Catastrophic Antartica Meltdown
Antarctica is headed for a climate tipping point by 2060, with catastrophic melting if carbon emissions aren’t cut quickly. The idea that some kind of new technology in the future will save the planet from the impact of climate change is a pipe dream. This work is based on photographs of several trees in Liverpool collaged together with the addition of numbered buttons photographed from a derelict cash machine in the same city.
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Liverpool Proud City Of Protest
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim. You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Around Liverpool (25)
These photographs were taken in November 2019.
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My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim.
You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
On Brick Lane
The piece below was based on a photograph I took of the subject in 1983 on Brick Lane. She was one of those ‘characters’ who brightened up the streets of Whitechapel with her perpetual smile. She seemed to be living in a world of her own and could often be seen talking to herself.
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My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim.
You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Whitechapel Station
The piece below was based on a photograph I took of the subject in 1982. He was a common site around whitechapel in the early 1980s. He could often be seen standing up and seemingly asleep in a corner of the entrance to Whitechapel station. I was always impressed by his stoicism and dignity.
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A Cup Of Tea In Cheshire Street
Whitechapel Station 1983 – 2018
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim.
You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
Palestinian Flags Flood Liverpool
Yesterday hundreds of protesters took to the streets to show solidarity with the Palestinian people. Yesterday was also the anniversary of the ‘Nakba’ (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’), when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes and land to make room for the creation of the new nation of Israel.
The protest was organised by Merseyside Stop The War and supported by Liverpool Friends Of Palestine, Liverpool Trades Council, Merseyside BLM alliance and Merseyside Pensioners Association.
Since the Conservative government was elected in May 2015 the UK has licensed over £400 million worth of arms to Israeli forces. The actual level of exports will be significantly higher, as there have also been 43 Open Licences in this period. The arms industry is corrupt and unstable but the government subsidises it. This means we as tax payers are conscripted into supporting the merchants of death that have visited so much misery on the Palestinians for decades.
The speakers at the rally called for an end to oppressive actions of the Israeli apartheid state and condemned the mainstream media for it’s bias against Palestinians.
Yesterday a block in Gaza destroyed by the Israeli air strike also housed the offices of the Associated Press (AP) news agency. Here’s a statement from its president and CEO, Gary Pruitt:
” We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.
This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time.
The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.”
One Liverpool MP, Ian Byrne spoke at the rally and called for an end to arm sales to Israel. Kim Johnson MP sent a message of solidarity.
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International Women’s Day 2021
You can support MPATV by donation here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7RMMX47QZVR72
The Scream
I’ve always been drawn to the light produced by candles. The portrait below of Hazuan Hashim was made with two images shot in candle light.
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A Cup Of Tea In Cheshire Street
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Around Liverpool (24)
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On The Waterfront In Liverpool
My latest programme for MPATV, produced by Hazuan Hashim.
Berlin (2)
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A Cup Of Tea In Cheshire Street
The work below is based on a photograph I took in a cafe in Cheshire Street, East London in the 1980s. The subject was eating a plate of chips during the Sunday afternoon Brick Lane market. I would photograph the market regularly most Sundays and would often take a break for a cup of tea. The cafe was always full of interesting characters. In those day you could get a cup of tea for 20p.
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Around Liverpool (23)
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Spitalfields Rooftops
This image is based on a photograph I took on the roof of some flats in Hanbury Street near to Brick Lane in the early 1980s. Since then the view has changed considerably with the encroachment of City offices into the area.
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Brick Lane Portraits
The collage below is made from two pages torn from my book ‘Brick Lane’. During the lockdown I was self isolating and unable to indulge my passion for street photography. I found myself digging into my archive, revisiting images and experimenting with collage. I’ve been collaging since the 1970s but lately it’s become a major feature of my practice. I remember getting annoyed with picture editors when they cropped my photographs back in the 1980s. Now I’m tearing images up, painting over them and altering them in many different ways. It’s been quite a journey!
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Around Liverpool (22)
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The statue of Menkaure and Queen Khamerernebty II
The serene Egyptian statue of Menkaure and Queen Khamerernebty II was unearthed on January 18, 1910 and is the inspiration for the above work. A sense of eternity and immortality flows from the statue so I decided to incorporate electric pylons and a Moroccan woman on her phone into the composition. The nearly life size statue dates from 2490–2472 B.C.E.
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Around The East End (19)
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Around The East End (18)
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Aldgate East
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Around Liverpool (21)
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Joan Lauder – Cat Lady Of Spitalfields
The art work below is based on a photograph I took of Joan Lauder – known as ‘the cat lady of Spitalfields’ – in the early 1980s on Brick Lane.
You can find out more about Joan in the Spitalfields Life post here:
Around Liverpool (20)
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Around Liverpool (19)
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Around The East End (17)
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Vallance Road 1984 – 2017
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Sleep
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Berlin
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Hanoi Vietnam (13)
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Next To The Beigal Shop Brick Lane
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Around The East End (13)
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Around The East End (12)
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Around The East End (11)
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Subterranean
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Around Liverpool (18)
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The Last Two Trees In New York
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Around East London (19)
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Midnight Portrait
Around Liverpool (17)
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In The Beginning
Homeless
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Untitled
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Around East London (18)
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Herd Immunity
The government no longer uses the phrase ‘Her Immunity’. I wonder why?
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Around East London (17)
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Pandemic Portrait
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Live Music At The Phil
The last time I heard live music was in March when I listened to a musician playing the Gamelan in Java. Yesterday I listened to the Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra playing music by Rossini, Stravinsky and Beethoven. It’s strange wearing a mask to a concert and stranger being socially distanced. We are proud to have one of the finest orchestras in the world in Liverpool and normally concerts are packed but during the pandemic the maximum audience size is 240.
Because of travel restrictions the usual conductor Vasily Petrenko was replaced by Joshua Weilerstein. He told us how pleased he was to see the audience and how important it was for musicians to play before a live audience. It’s extraordinary that orchestras are still playing because since the start of the pandemic many self-employed musicians have received little or no financial support. A survey undertaken by the Musician’s Union in September, found that a third (34%) of musicians are considering abandoning the industry completely, directly due to financial hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Listening to ‘the Phil’ today I realised just how important live music is especially at times like this. Rishi Sunak thinks people working in the arts sector should retrain and seek new opportunities. History records that when JS Bach was appointed organist of the Neukirche in Arnstadt at the age of 18 he was helped into the post by his father’s cousin. As part of his duties, he had to examine the new organ in Neukirche. His fees came out of the town’s tax on beer. Remembering this progressive tax, I thought of the government’s inability to collect Tax from the rich. Can you imagine Rishi Sunak taxing the rich to pay for the arts? If he was to put a tax on beer to pay for orchestras it would probably be outsourced to Serco and Weatherspoons who would no doubt cream off a tidy sum.
The government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund has made little impact on the lives of musicians who are now facing the worst recession in living memory. The Tories clearly believe that their profession is no longer “viable” and they should retrain for other occupations. Musicians provide sheer joy to millions as well as a huge contribution to culture and the economy. They need to be protected during the pandemic not thrown on the scrap heap. The government is overseeing the decimation of the arts.
Schools are now spending less time on art, drama and music lessons. The curriculum has been stripped of any meaningful cultural content.
We are heading towards a cultural desert where the concept of ‘Arts for all’ will become a distant memory. As I sat applauding the musician’s yesterday, I thought how long will this last?
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Around Liverpool (16)
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Changing Brick Lane (21)
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Liverpool Trolley Bags
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Mask Portrait (2)
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The Cat Lady On Brick Lane
You may also like this account of the Cat Lady by the Gentle Author in Spitalfields Life:
Hanoi Vietnam (11)
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Electric Blue
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Liverpool Climate Strike 2019
Hundreds of school students, Trade Unionists, and unemployed workers took to the streets of Liverpool last September. Scientists believe the world is currently heading for more than 3C of warming, though the Paris Agreement commits them to curb temperatures to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Young speakers in Liverpool made it clear that they want system change to avoid climate change. Protesters marched from St Georges Hall through the city to Derby square where speakers demanded an end to a polluting economy based on profit rather than the needs of the majority.
UK Student Climate Network said more than 200 events had been organised across the country. In London Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told young people at a rally: “You and a whole generation have brought climate change centre stage and I am absolutely delighted about that. If we’re going to sustain this planet we need to get to net zero emissions a lot, lot quicker than 2050 the government’s target.” He wants every country to sign up to the Paris Agreement, which commits signatory nations to keeping global temperatures “well below” 2.0C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times. Referring to President Donald Trump, Mr Corbyn said it was “disgraceful when you get a president of a major country like the US” who says they will walk away.
Around 1.4 million students took to the streets across the world back in April 2019 to urge governments to act on climate change. The September 2019 protest took place in 150 countries in what is believed to be the largest climate protest in history.
Resistance. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
Crowds gather at St Georges’ Hall. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
Cool message at St Georges’ Hall. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
The Sea Is Rising. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
A rebel at St Georges’ Hall. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
Zero Carbon. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
No more time to waste. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
Protect Liverpool’s Green Space. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
System Change Not Climate Change. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
Learn to change or learn to swim. Liverpool, Friday September 20th.
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The Art Of Self Isolation (36)
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Jewish Museum Berlin
The Jewish Museum Berlin is one of the largest Jewish Museums in Europe. Opened to the public in 2001 it exhibits the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, explicitly presenting and integrating, for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions of the Holocaust. The amazing building was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind a year before the fall of the Berlin wall. The design was based on three insights: “it is impossible to understand the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous contributions made by its Jewish citizens; the meaning of the Holocaust must be integrated into the consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin; and, finally, for its future, the City of Berlin and the country of Germany must acknowledge the erasure of Jewish life in its history.”
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The Changing East End (48)
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On The Phone In Rome
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Man With A Pram
Liverpool August 2019 (6)
Hanoi Art
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On The Phone In Java
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Second Hand In The East End
Underground In The East End
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The Changing East End (46)
Mask Portrait
This is the first of a series of portraits featuring people wearing masks. I was in Malaysia and Java in March and it was commonplace to see people wearing masks to protect themselves and others from the Coronavirus. It was a shock to return to the UK and witness the absence of masks. The first portrait is of Hazuan Hashim.
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Around East London (10)
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On The Bus In Bangladesh & East London
Liverpool May 2018 (6)
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On The Bus In Liverpool (16)
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Pub Talk Liverpool
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Merseyside Pubs Before Lockdown (2)
In The Pub In The East End & Liverpool
Vallance Road East London
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Liverpool July 2019 (5)
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Mobile Phone Cameras in Prague
Around Liverpool (3)
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Liverpool July 2018 (7)
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MELA Hanbury Street 1984
In 1984 the MELA, as usual, was based in Hanbury Street. The organisers recognised that most people lived on the Chicksand Estate. If it rained then music etc could be resumed in the Montefiore Centre. It was a community event organised by locals unlike the commercial MELA we’ve seen on Brick Lane in recent years.
The Art Of Self Isolation (28)
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East End Pubs Before Lockdown
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Save Oglet Shore In Liverpool
I’m reposting this blog from June 2018 as the issues raised in it are as important today as they were two years ago.
The Oglet Shore (Anglo Saxon: “oak by the water”), is a magnificent designated green belt area in Liverpool. It is now under threat because of plans to cover much of it with concrete in order to extend the runway at the loss making John Lennon airport. If the plans go ahead it will destroy the habitats of wildlife including bats, barn owls and many ‘red list’, endangered, farmland birds. Peel holdings, who own the land are keen to develop the runway. Liverpool City Council have pledged to protect our parks and green spaces and also have a duty to protect and preserve this important coastal habitat, so why threaten it in the vain hope the airport will become profitable?
Last Monday evening I was invited to join a group of locals and bat expert Charlie Liggett to explore this magnificent threatened habit of wildlife. Charlie, the Chair of Merseyside & West Lancashire Bat Group, was able to confirm the presence of bats.
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On The Waterfront In Liverpool
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Merseyside Pubs Before Lockdown (2)
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East End Streets Before Lock Down (7)
Merseyside Pubs Before Lockdown
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A Liverpool Pub before Lockdown
One of Liverpool’s best kept secrets is the Irish music session at the Edinburgh pub (the ‘Eddy’) in Sandown Lane, Wavertree. Held every Monday evening you never leave disappointed! I miss this pub so much. My final drink there before the lockdown was on March 11th.
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