My photos of ‘Not One Day More’, a Huge Protest Against Theresa May in London, July 1, 2017

See my photos on Flickr here!
Please also, if you can, consider supporting my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator.

Today (July 1, 2017), I cycled into central London with my son Tyler to support the ‘Not One Day More’ protest called by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, and to take photos. We caught the march on Whitehall, as the tens of thousands of protestors who had marched from BBC HQ in Portland Place advanced on Parliament Square, and it was exhilarating to stand by the Monument to the Women of World War II in the middle of Whitehall, near 10 Downing Street, as a wave of protestors advanced, chanting, “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” and “Tories, Tories, Tories, out, out, out.”

Many of the placards, understandably, dealt with the Grenfell Tower disaster two weeks ago, when an untold number of residents died in an inferno that should never have happened, but that was entirely due to the greed and exploitation of the poorer members of society that is central to the Tories’ austerity agenda, waged relentlessly over the last seven years, and the neo-liberalism — insanely, unstoppably greedy, and utterly indifferent to the value of human lives — that has been driving politics since the 1980s.

The Guardian noted, “When the march reached Parliament Square, a minute’s silence was held ‘in memory and respect’ to the victims of Grenfell Tower. Tributes were also paid to the emergency services who responded to the fire with a minute’s applause.” Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said, “To the victims of Grenfell Tower we pledge now, we will stand with you and your families all the way through. We bring you sympathy but more importantly we bring you solidarity. We will not rest until every one of those families is properly housed within the community in which they want to live. Grenfell Tower symbolised for many everything that’s gone wrong in this country since austerity was imposed upon us.” He also “slammed the Tories for praising the emergency services ‘every time there’s a tragedy’ but then cutting jobs and wages.”

Jeremy Corbyn also addressed the crowd, saying, “We are the people, we are united and we are determined, we are not going to be divided or let austerity divide us. We are increasing in support and we are determined to force another election as soon as we can.” He also said, “Fewer working class young people are applying to university. Let’s end the debt burden and scrap tuition fees!”

These are positive developments, but there is an elephant in the room — Brexit. At present, the Tories, severely damaged by Theresa May’s decision to call a General Election at which she then performed so dismally that she lost her majority, is clinging onto power, and is still responsible for the nationwide car crash that is Brexit, but if the Labour Party is to take power, Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters need to be sure that his intention is to stop Brexit and not to insist that it must take place because that is the “will of the people.” As I have stated repeatedly, the referendum result was only advisory, the majority was too slim for a referendum involving major constitutional change, and leaving the EU will be an act of economic suicide on such a scale that it will destroy whoever is responsible for implementing it. I believe it can — and must — be stopped, or else all Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to reinvigorate public sector spending will be impossible, as the economy collapses.

More on this soon. In the meantime, please check out the photos, which you can also see below:

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).