London

Thousands gather in London for far-right ‘unite the kingdom’ rally and counter-protest

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March expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, and will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe

Large crowds have begun marching across Westminster Bridge towards Whitehall, with various chants of “Tommy”, “Keir Starmer is a wanker”, “Who’s street? Our street” and “England”.
Some are holding signs in support of Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Thousands of counter-protesters [were] wrapped around one side of Russell Square, coming from trade unions and anti-racist groups including Stand Up to Racism. The crowd is chanting “refugees are welcome here” [ . . . ]

Continue at Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/sep/13/uk-politics-latest-news-unite-the-kingdom-march-far-right-rally-london-labour-keir-starmer

The Big Yin visits his fav London guitar shop

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Frailers couldn’t be more tucked away, but it is a favourite of Billy Connolly, the man known by his Scots nickname the Big Yin (“the Big One”)

 

By Jonathan Blackburn

It seems an unlikely place to find Billy Connolly’s favourite banjo shop, which couldn’t be more tucked away.

The term ‘hidden gem’ is overused, but if ever it were apt, Frailers is the place. On a quiet street lined by takeaways in the small industrial town of Runcorn, Cheshire, Frailers has had a host of famous faces come through the door.

The shop seems to go back forever, with rows upon rows of shimmering guitars and banjos, music memorabilia and photos of the many stars who have visited Frailers since it opened in 1979.

Photograph: Brian Smith / The Guardian

Glasgow’s favourite son has made six visits to Frailers, staying for hours at a time, according to Frank Murphy, 82, who opened the shop more than half a century ago and can still be found behind the counter six days a week. A signed picture of Billy takes pride of place on the wall, showing the the Big Yin strumming away in the shop’s banjo room, past shimmering rows of guitars.

Frank says Billy first visited the shop more than 25 years ago to have his famous banjo repaired at the recommendation of folk singer Mike Harding. Frank said: ”Billy came in and I thought, ‘I know this face.’

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Ken Russell’s Brilliant Photos of Teddy Girls from 1955

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Jean Rayner – “A fourteen year old, with her jeans and old jacket, still in the probationary stage of Teddyism. Later, she may smarten up to senior standards.” Picture Post, June 1955. “She had attitude by the truckload”, remembered Ken Russell. “No one paid much attention to the teddy girls before I did them, though there was plenty on teddy boys. They were tough, these kids, they’d been born in the war years and food rationing only ended in about 1954 – a year before I took these pictures. They were proud. They knew their worth. They just wore what they wore.” ©2006 TopFoto/Ken Russell.

“Teddy Clothes”, began a Picture Post article in June 1955, and illustrated by the 27 year old photographer Ken Russell, “can cover a multitude of sins – or juvenile delinquencies…”. However this wasn’t just another moral panic article about the hooligans and juvenile gangsters known as the Teddy Boys – a term first noticed in the British press only eighteen months previously. This time Picture Post were concentrating on the female angle and described Teddy Girls as “hard-working with a fashion sense which has brought a welcome flash of mass-elegance onto the British scene.”

The first mention of Teddy Girls in the press, and almost exactly a year before the Picture Post article, was in the Daily Express in June 1954. They were reporting, with a heavy emphasis on her appearance and her clothes, about a girl who had recently been arrested in Southsea: “She was auburn-haired and fifteen. She wore tight-fitting trousers, a sweater, and brightly coloured socks. And she carried a small dagger.” The Express continued, “she appeared at Portsmouth Children’s Court yesterday wearing a “split” skirt, a diaphanous blouse, and high heeled sandals. The policeman said she was in a fight at Southsea with other girls. It began when two girls called her a “Teddy Girl”.”

Iris Thornton “When I was 13 I started going to the Mayflower youth club every day after school. You could take classes in deportment and cookery, there was a hairdressers and sports activities to get involved in. One day, 2 years later, Ken Russell came and asked if there were any Teddy girls there to photograph. There weren’t many Teds in my area, just a few of us so we turned heads. You would walk past people on the street and hear them saying ‘Oh god, look at what they are wearing!’ Which made me chuckle. The photos were taken where I lived in Canning Town, this area was called the Docklands Settlement. I lived at home with my parents and older sister and brother, it was a prosperous working class area because of the docks on the River Thames. In 1955 I left school and went to work with my sister in a factory. At the time I was happy to leave, thought it was marvellous. But then after a little while I wished I has still been in school, work was so boring.” From an interview with Iris by Eve Dawoud. ©2006 TopFoto/Ken Russell

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Robert Frank

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Robert Frank (1924–2019) London, 1951–53

Soon after his emigration to New York in 1947, Alexey Brodovitch hired Frank as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. The position brought many occasions for travel, and Frank’s impressions of the United States, in comparison to other places, impacted his work. After receiving his first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955, Frank embarked on a two-year trip across America during which he took over 28,000 pictures. Eighty-three of those images were ultimately published in Frank’s groundbreaking monograph The Americans, first by Robert Delpire in 1958 in Paris, and a year later by Grove Press in the United States. Frank’s unorthodox cropping, lighting, and sense of focus attracted criticism. His work, however, was not without supporters. Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg felt a kinship with Frank and his interest in documenting the fabric of contemporary society. Eventually The Americans jettisoned Frank into a position of cultural prominence; he became the spokesperson for a generation of visual artists, musicians, and literary figures both in the United States and abroad.

Pace Gallery