johninnit

LabourStart’s photo group on flickr is a great resource for unions and activists looking to illustrate internationally focused communications work. It’s a group of more than 3,000 mostly Creative Commons licensed photographs of unions at work (mostly marching to and fro with flags to be honest, but that gets better pics than branch meetings I guess). Check it out at flickr.com/groups/union

To promote the group and union activity online in general, they’ve hit upon a great idea of a photo contest, awarding flickr account goodies to the winning photos. If you want to enter a pic, you don’t have long left to do so. Go visit flickr.com/groups/labourphotos now and upload your best shot – good luck!

It’s only taken me 6 years to have almost forgotten I once had a life outside London, such do I love it here. Luckily for me I’ve not gone totally native yet though. It’s nice to still have a shred of perspective once in a while.

A most unexpected burst of sunshine made Saturday’s demo for the NHS into a pretty enjoyable way to spend a few hours. It wasn’t your run-of-the-(trouble-at)-mill union demonstration either – the attendance of a whole bunch of carnival artists really jolted people out of the traditional slump you’re likely to get halfway round a march. It’s hard not to be jolly when you’re walking next to a couple of giant lobsters on stilts.

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A lunchtime spent in the company of union colleagues from TUC, ATL, NASUWT, PCS, Unite and the ZCTU, ACTSA supporters and Zimbabwean expats outside Zimbabwe House on the Strand, protesting in support of the ZCTU’s 2 day stay away from work. (more…)

A rather cramped demo on the pavement opposite the Iranian Embassy today. The Embassy is set back from the road and has a big wall built in the way to keep us out, but the police needn’t really have bothered to squash us into so tight a corral, as it looked like they weren’t home anyway, with the doors firmly closed and shutters rolled down.

Very different from the demo planned in Tehran, where 5 more members of the Bus Workers Union were arrested today, and police surrounded the demo venue of Mansour Osanloo’s house, threatening to arrest anyone who turned up.

Mahmood Salehi has managed to get a message out from his cell in Sanadaj prison, which is displayed on the web here. Very selflessly he uses the message to ask for campaigning support for another group of workers who have been sentenced to prison or whipping over their roles in the May Day celebrations, and says he’s currently on a one day hunger strike to protest their treatment.

Anyway here are a few pics from the event:

Most of the demonstrators were with the ITF (the yellow tabards), or ex-pat Iranians, but also a presence from Unison and GMB.

Nice to see Peter Tatchell there, who gave a good speech to the crowd on the need for solidarity across the human rights agenda – If you come for one of us, we’ll all come for you (much more concise than most union demo speeches!) .

David Cockroft gives an update to the cameras on this morning’s crackdown in Iran.

First outing for the Unite banners at the London May Day march – something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot of these (more…)