Hiroshima Day – sixth August
Whereas I used to be nonetheless educating full-time I used to be often away from London in August, usually in Paris or on vacation with buddies in several elements of England. However since 2004 I’ve often been in London on August sixth and attended and photographed the annual Hiroshima Day Ceremony organised by London CND near the Hiroshima Cherry Tree in Tavistock Sq.. The primary 12 months for which I used a digital digicam was 2004, when the occasion was compèred by native MP Jeremy Corbyn and amongst these attending had been Michael Foot and Tony Benn. There was a big non-attender too, Mordechai Vanunu had been invited to come back from Jerusalem the place he’s underneath home arrest for having made public Israel’s nuclear weapons, however was prevented from coming by the Israeli authorities.
Again then I feel the processing of digital information left one thing appreciable to be desired, and the photographs on-line are fairly uninteresting, although I feel may now be vastly improved if I discovered time to reprocess the uncooked information.
By the point photographed the ceremony in 2009, the photographs seemed significantly better. Jeremy Corbyn was once more introducing the audio system, who included CND stalwart Bruce Kent.
Bruce Kent spoke once more in 2011, as did Tony Benn, however the star of the occasion was Hetty Bower who had begun her marketing campaign in opposition to struggle in 1914 when she was a younger schoolgirl, virtually 9. Her’s was a remarkably highly effective efficiency from a 105 12 months previous who 97 years later was nonetheless participating in each main UK anti-war march.
Hetty Bower was there once more in 2013 and made a brief speech. Different audio system included Bruce Kent, Peter Tatchell, Jeremy Corbyn, Walter Wolfgang, amd Inexperienced Get together Chief Natalie Bennett in addition to a number of peace activists, amongst them Val Brown from the London Guantanamo Marketing campaign who talked about their work and the common protests on the US Embassy, and Nobo Ono who spoke concerning the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima and the weekly protests organised by Japanese In opposition to Nuclear UK.
In 2014 my prepare to London was held up and I arrived after the occasion started, when a speaker was reminding everybody of the lengthy life as a peace activist of Hetty Bower, and a a number of of these current had been carrying t-shirts together with her image.
As traditional, in the direction of the top of the occasion there was a interval of silence in reminiscence of the lifeless and wreaths and flowers had been laid on the Hioroshima Cherry Tree, planted within the backyard right here by the then Mayor of Camden in 1967.
In 2015, due to the Labour management contest, the occasion which often attracts solely a small handful of press was attended by a number of TV crews and a lot of photographers, lots of whom roughly ignored something however Jeremy Corbyn, seen in my image standing for a couple of moments in thought after laying a sunflower on the foot of the tree.
It was again to the standard lack of media curiosity in 2016, however the occasion was effectively attended with a variety of acquainted faces among the many audio system, performers and the viewers. Walter Wolfgang and Kate Hudson of CND, Mohammed Kozbar from Finsbury Park Mosque and Shahrar Ali from the Inexperienced Get together had been amongst those that spoke, and there have been fantastic and really totally different perfomances from opera singer Anthony Flaum, radical people singer Jim Radford and rap artist Potent Whisper, in addition to the Raised Voices choir who as traditional each carried out on their very own and led these on the occasion in singing some well-known peace songs.
Among the many extra memorable audio system in 2017 was author A L Kennedy – however as traditional all had been price listening to.
You may also see photos and browse the accounts from 2018, 2019 and 2021 on My London Diary.
I hope be once more in Tavistock Sq. for immediately’s London CND Hiroshima commemoration – Saturday sixth August 2022 – beginning at midday.
Tags: #Hiroshima, #HiroshimaDay, sixth August, atomic bomb, Bruce Kent, Buddhist Monk, Camden, Camden Mayor, CND, flowers, Gyoro Nagase, Hetty Bower, Hiroshima, Hiroshima Cherry Tree, Hiroshima Day, Jeremy Corbyn, London, London CND, Mayor of Camden, Nagasaki, No Extra Hiroshimas, nuclear disarmament, peace activists, peace marketing campaign, peter Marshall, Reverend Gyoro Nagase, Tony Benn, Walter Wolfgang, wreaths
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