Ash Wednesday, Charcoal and Condi Rice – footage from Ash Wednesday in London on sixth February 2008, with an Ash Wednesday Witness and prayer in opposition to Struggle on the Ministry of Defence and a Downing Road protest in opposition to a go to by US warmonger after which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Per week tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday Wednesday 14th February 2024, Pax Christi along with Christian CND and others will once more be assembly at 3.30pm for the same witness in opposition to battle.
Ash Wednesday Liturgy of Repentance and Resistance – Ministry of Defence, Whitehall
Pax Christi, Catholic Peace Motion and Christian CND started their an annual liturgy of Repentance and Resistance across the Ministry of Defence in protest in opposition to the continued reliance on nuclear weapons on Ash Wednesday 1982, 42 years in the past, and the 2008 occasion was their twenty sixth.
Wanting again on the footage I made in 2008 has a selected resonance for me, in that two of these in them are those who I knew who’ve died previously couple of years. One was the well-known peace campaigner Bruce Kent who I’d photographed at numerous occasions since round 1990 if not earlier and although I didn’t know him effectively we frequently exchanged a couple of phrases once I took his {photograph} and had a bit of joke in recent times. Bruce died in June 2022 and in March 2023 I photographed Jeremy Corbyn planting a memorial tree to him in Finsbury Park.
The opposite was a household buddy who died lately and we have been upset different appointments meant we weren’t be capable of go to his funeral final week. He additionally seems in a a few of my pictures of this and different peace occasions, typically singing within the Raised Voices choir.
Though the ministry and close by buildings such because the Previous Struggle Workplace have been surrounded by police – moderately as in the event that they have been anticipating a large assault, the police made no try and disperse what was undoubtedly an unlawful unauthorised protest below the phrases of SOCPA. They did maintain a few folks they caught writing on the partitions of the Previous Struggle Workplace, and have been not less than threatening to cost considered one of them with inflicting injury to the constructing, however in any other case watched benignly, not less than till I left to catch my prepare shortly earlier than the liturgy had completed.
Essentially the most shifting a part of the liturgy was outdoors the Defence Ministry, the place a wood cross was laid on sackcloth. Ashes have been sprinkled on it, after which whereas these current chanted a ‘litany of the martyrs’, together with the names of Franz Jaegerstaetter, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero and Mary Lampard, 21 ‘Theses for at present’s church’ by Philip Berrigan have been learn after which nailed to the cross.
A few hundred ‘Cease the Struggle’ demonstrators have been on the pavement going through Downing Road. That they had include a transparent message to present Condoleezza Rice, that it was time for the US to get out of different folks’s affairs in different international locations.
Nonetheless there was no signal of Condi, who had clearly averted utilizing the entrance entrance to overlook the protesters, both getting into by the again entrance or by way of one other Authorities constructing, probably making use of the intensive community of tunnels beneath Whitehall.
A big crowd of press photographers have been additionally ready impatiently reverse the entrance door of Quantity 10, ready for her to look for a press name together with Gordon Brown, however I feel they have been ready till after the protesters dispersed.
I may have joined them, however though the press likes to make use of footage taken in entrance of the well-known door I discover the nice majority of them supremely boring. And I don’t carry the lengthy heavy lenses you really want for the scenario to take the one in 1,000,000 pictures that has some curiosity. It’s been years since I bothered to undergo the safety verify and into Downing Road.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February sixth, 2024 at 09:09 am and is filed below My Personal Work, Political Points. You may comply with any responses to this entry by way of the RSS 2.0 feed.
