Category: Political Issues

It was back in 2006 that I first went to photograph a protest outside the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook immigration detention centres, just to the north of London’s Heathrow airport.  It’s an occasion I remember for several reasons. Perhaps most strongly the intense shame that I felt listening to some of those held inside speaking about how badly they were being treated – they were able to speak from inside on mobile phones, with their voices then amplified by holding a microphone to a phone at the protest outside the prisons.  I was ashamed that my country, which often prides itself on democracy, freedom and the rule of law was clearly behaving in such a clearly racist and unlawful manner – and then it was under a government of a party I had voted for, the party I had until then supported all of my life.

It was a protest with a strong police presence, with lots of barriers, and at one point a number of protesters who had walked down a public footpath to protest at one side of the site were surrounded by police and brought back to the main road outside. I stood on an earth bank with a couple of other photographers and photographed them, looking down.

One videographer was being held by the police inside the kettle (just visible between the uniforms above), and was showing his press card asking to be let out. But the police told him that it wasn’t a proper press card. Despite the statement on the back “The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland recognise the holder of this card as a bona fide newsgatherer” and a verification phone number, the police simply refused to acknowledge it. This was not at the time unusual, and it still happens now despite a long campaign.

The videographer appealed to the three of us for help, asking us to show them what a press card looked like to verify that his was genuine. It left me in a slightly awkward position, as when I arrived at the protest I’d noticed that my own press card had expired at the end of the previous month, and had got through the police line to take pictures with my thumb holding it by the corner so it covered the expiry date. Fortunately one of those next to me went and showed his card, and eventually after some further persuasion the officers released the man from the kettle.  The protesters were less fortunate, and were held until the end of the protest before being forced to give their names and addresses or be arrested, and were then escorted to their coach.

UK Press cards are issued by a number of bodies, including my union, the NUJ, acting for the UK Press Card Authority and there are continuing arguments about exactly who should qualify for them. I seldom take mine out of my pocket when working, but there are a few occasions when I need it access press areas or leave events through police lines without one. That doesn’t always work, though usually when one officer refuses to let me through I’ve simply walked a few yards down the line and tried again with success, only occasionally having to appeal to a more senior officer. I also wear it visibily on a few occasions where I think it will reassure the people I’m photographing – particularly at events involving children. But for the great majority of events it stays in my pocket, tied in a holder with a cord around my belt for security.

Protesters march up the drive towards the detention centre

I had a little argument with the security guards at the start of the protest Surround Harmondsworth 6 the latest in a new series of protests at Harmondsworth & Colnbrook (this year brought together under new private management and renamed Heathrow) when they tried to push me inside the barriers with the protesters.  Eventually we came to an arrangement that suited me, but I wanted to make the point for myself and the other photographer and TV crew that enabled us to work as we wanted.  I did mainly want to photograph inside with the protesters, but I don’t like being pushed around and wanted to take some pictures of the banners draped in front of them on the barriers.

There were really few photographic problems, though some of the stories from protesters who had previously been held in Harmondsworth or other detention centres of their treatment were shameful, and at one point I was working through tears steaming up my glasses making using the viewfinder difficult. Fortunately autofocus works even if you can’t see the image clearly.  But this was an emotional protest for those taking part and for me. I hope it shows in some of the pictures.

As usual at these protests there was a great deal of noise, and also a lot of dancing and movement. Although security and police kept the protesters to the front of the site, well away from the detention blocks, those inside were able to hear us, letting people know by phone, and thanking the protesters for coming.

16-35mm, 16mm
Working in the middle of the protesters, wide-angle lenses were often needed, and many of the pictures were taken at the wider end of the 16-35mm, and some too with the 16mm fisheye. As usual these were later processed with the Fisheye-Hemi plugin to give the less distracting cylindrical perspective. For images of people it produces a more normal result than an extreme wide rectilinear lens, where the elongation at edges and corners can seem very odd. It often gets noticeable at 16mm, but really gets objectionable in many images if I use the even wider 12-24mm Sigma – which although it covers the full frame is better used as a DX lens. The Nikon 16-35mm, with a similar range of focal lengths on FX to the Sigma on DX is also a  sharper lens, so there is really little point in my ever using the Sigma.

16mm, Fisheye-Hemi

I prefer to use the 16mm fisheye on the D700, usually keeping the 18-105mm DX on the D800E. The reason is file size, as using the Fisheye-Hemi plug in generates a 16 bit ProPhoto RGB Tiff file with 6 bytes per pixel from the Nikon NEF file.  With the 12Mp D700 (typically giving NEF files compressed to around 12Mb) this ends up at around 70Mb.

16-35mm, 18mm
As I write this, a month after Surround Harmondsworth 6, protests are taking place inside this and other detention centres, and there are a number of more spontaneous protests with groups arriving unannounced to protest outside. A number of aspects of the treatment of asylum seekers have been found to be illegal, and a parliamentary has called for changes. Inside the centres, the legal niceties and human rights continue to be abused, but there is certainly now some hope of real change, thanks largely to the publicity generated by protests inside and outside these immigration prisons.
Continue reading Surround Harmondsworth 6

At lunchtime on Jan 28th I was with the cleaners, but it was certainly very dirty weather. Bouts of driving rain and gusts that blew umbrellas inside out if not out of your hands. I was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a large open area now a public park, in the centre of London.  Not as well known as some others, but it is the largest public square in central London, and was first laid out around 1630, and many of the buildings around date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Dickins based his ‘Bleak House‘ on one of them, and the east side is formed by Lincoln’s Inn itself. For a long time filled with lawyers, the square is now being increasingly colonised by the London School of Economics, better known as the LSE. In the Thatcher era, when we first saw large numbers of people living on the streets in England, Lincoln’s Inn Fields became home to many of them, until in 1992 a tall fence was put around the grassed area of the square with gates that are locked at night to keep out the rough sleepers.

The Royal College of Surgeons of England moved here (as The Company of Surgeons) in 1797, though they built a new building in 1833 with a splendid portico, which still faces onto the square; most of the rest of the building was rebuilt after it was destroyed by a German incendiary bomb in 1941.

I was here because although the RCSE is “committed to enabling surgeons to achieve and maintain the highest standards of surgical practice and patient care” (according to its mission statement) it isn’t yet committed to paying its cleaners enough to live on.  Unison was here to protest for the London Living Wage, contractual sick pay and holidays for the people who clean the building, as well as for them to be treated with dignity and respect by their managers. Like many companies and organisations, the RCSE would almost certainly be ashamed of treating any of its own employees so shabbily, so they pay another company, Ocean, to do their dirty work for them.

Cleaners at the RCSE belong to Unison, and the protest was mainly by cleaners and supporters from other Unison branches, particularly in the University of London, including a number I’ve met and photographed before in Living Wage and  ‘3 Cosas’ campaigns.

Although I always carry a small folding umbrella in my camera bag (weather in the UK is often changeable) I hate to use it while actually taking pictures. But soon after the protest started the rain came down so hard there was no real choice.

It’s hard to hold both an umbrella and a camera to photograph in a high wind, and it was tiring on my left wrist. I had to stop quite a few times to turn the umbrella around after it had blown inside out to get the wind to blow it back again, and I didn’t stay very dry underneath it, but without it I would have got soaked, and there was nowhere nearby to shelter. A few images were ruined by drops of rain on the lens filter, though yet another thing in my left had was my microfibre cloth to keep wiping the lens clear with.

At times too, the gusts pushed the umbrella down and into my field of view. But I kept on taking pictures, and there were some compensations. The union flags held by some of the protesters blew well in the strong wind, and otherwise rather dreary areas of pavement look much better when wet, and sometimes have good reflections. And the rain also brought out the umbrellas in Unison (and other) colours.

But I was pleased when I had to leave, shortly before the scheduled end of the protest, as I was cold and wet, and it was good to get to some more sheltered places away from that large fairly open square. And as I did so the sun came out.

I met some of the same cleaners (and Unison reps and organiser) the following lunchtime at SOAS, where campaigns over the years supported by students and SOAS staff have resulted in some successes, but the cleaners still want parity of treatment with staff directly employed by the University.  They say ‘One Workplace, One Workforce’. Outsourcing adds complexity and extra layers of management and can only cut costs by cutting the pay and conditions of workers. Time to get rid of it.

SOAS Cleaners demand Dignity & Respect
Cleaners protest at Royal College of Surgeons
Continue reading Dirty Weather

Dame Vivienne Westwood: 18-105mm DX, 105mm (157mmmm)

I think I made some good images of the speakers at No Fracking Anywhere! in Old Palace Yard in front of Parliament on Jan 26, but despite this and my support for the issues, it wasn’t an event I really enjoyed covering. And although I’m on good terms with many of the photographers present and like to meet them while covering events, this was one of those times when there were just far, far too many of us.

Bianca Jagger: 18-105mm DX, 90mm (135mm)

The reason for the huge interest was undoubtedly the fact that two ‘celebrities’ were among the speakers, Bianca Jagger and Dame Vivienne Westwood, and once they had both spoken the ranks thinned out considerably, making life rather easier.

Caroline Lucas MP: 18-105mm DX, 38mm (57mm)

Fortunately when I saw that the speakers were to be using a relatively small trolley as a makeshift stage, along with a few other photographers I realised things were going to be very tight. Two rather large and tall press photographers had stationed themselves rather close to it and bang in the centre in front of the microphone, establishing where the front line of photographers would be, and I went and stood at their side. Ideally I would have liked to be a metre or so further back, but knew that if I moved back others would simply come in front of me.  I  was also glad they had chosen to stand in the middle, as I seldom if ever like to work from dead centre, not least because the microphone is then always in the way.

Soon there was a vidographer pressing on my right shoulder, and several rows of photographers behind. At one guy’s request I put my camera bag on the floor in front of me so he could work through the narrow gap between my thighs and those of the man on my left, whose shoulder I was being pushed into. Other photographers were poking lenses over both my shoulders, and there were others further back trying to take pictures over our heads,  easier over mine than the two six-footers to my left, though at least one photograph was up on his step ladder.

Joan Walley MP: 18-105mm DX, 66mm (99mm)

I don’t find it easy to stand in one place, hardly able to move an inch, difficult at times even to swivel my upper body around, for over an hour. Much of that time there was little or nothing taking place to be photographed, but having got a good position I didn’t want to move and lose it until things were over. But by the end of that time it was getting quite painful, suffering in both legs and my back.

Tina-Louise Rothery: D800e, 18-105mm DX, 18mm (27mm)

There were other photographers to the left of the ‘stage’, some actually sitting on it, though I think they will have had little opportunity to take photographs of the speakers, and would probably have been better off drifting away to photograph the rest of the protesters. But unless I wanted them in my pictures (and generally I didn’t) I couldn’t work with a very wide lens. Most if not all of the pictures I took in that hour and a quarter were with the 18-105mm lens, enabling me to show speakers from the waist up at the wider end to tightly framed heads at the long.

D800e, 18-105mm DX, 42mm (63mm)

There were fortunately a number of people with placards and banners, as the area of the Houses of Parliament behind the speakers from my position wasn’t really too exciting.

John Ashton, Former UK Government Special Representative for Climate Change: D800e, 18-105mm DX, 28mm (42mm)
There are quite a few more portraits of these and the other speakers, as well as other pictures from  the event at No Fracking Anywhere!

The only picture in this post with the D700 and 16-35mm – at 21mm
Many of the press photographers sped away to file their images of Dame Vivienne as soon as she ended her speech, making it a little easier to photograph the rest of the event – and I could even use my favourite 16-35mm wideangle.  I rather liked this group around the Greenpeace House, with Julian Huppert MP, Norman Baker MP, Bianca Jagger, Caroline Lucas MP and John Ashton, though the hand at the right of the image is perhaps a little annoying.
Continue reading Stuck in the right place

I’d like to make it entirely clear. I am against cruelty to animals. And the annual slaughter of dolphins at Taiji cove in Japan is repugnant. It should stop. Along with other barbaric activities like those than are integral to fur farming – cruelty for profit – and fox hunting – cruelty for fun, which seems particularly abhorrent. And while in principle I’m not against all farming of animals, I’d want it to always be done in an ethical and humane manner – which of course is so often not the case.

And I’m certainly unhappy about capturing and keeping dolphins in restricted spaces, training them to do tricks to entertain the public and would like them to live instead unhindered in the oceans.  But while I have a basic sympathy with these protesters and their protest I also have some reservations.

I do sometimes feel that the issues about human rights and their abuse are event more important, and wish that all these people would also be as enthusiastic about them, coming out on the streets to protest. Of course some do (and I recognised a few from other events), but I think they are relatively few. And it worries me.

We are – at least in some respects – a nation of animal lovers. A society where animal welfare charities get massive support, both in donations and in the adulation of the media, who at the same time are demonising human beings who need support as scroungers.

It’s a strange world in which we humanise animals to make them into appealing stories for children – most of whom will never actually meet these or other real animals. Real bears don’t eat marmalade sandwiches and nature is often red in tooth and claw. And if dolphins aren’t cuddly it is perhaps a strange paradox that it is largely through their performances in dolphinariums around the world that they have acquired the kind of public image which is now exploited in the imagery of the protesters who are so desperate to save them.

Yesterday while waiting for my train I watched a rat scurrying around on a patch of waste ground. From a distance it looked quite cuddly, but this was vermin. Most people would happily shoot or poison it. The squirrels in our garden are more appealing, with their acrobatic skills and fluffy tails, but until 1957 you could get a bounty (begun as 6d, it had risen by then to a florin or perhaps half a crown) for taking their tails to a police station – it was only abandoned when it was decided poisoning was more effective than shooting. There are still plans for a huge cull, seen as the only way to save our native red squirrels, and opposed by animal charities.  I’m not sure where I stand on that one, but given the way the pigeons eat the crops in our garden I might well favour a cull of them.

More pictures at  Carnival March to End Taiji Dolphin Massacre

Continue reading Dolphins on the March

After the March for Homes on Saturday, which ended in a rally outside City Hall, next to Tower Bridge, I was cold, wet and tired and wasn’t feeling at my best. So I got on a bus and made my way home, despite it being obvious that quite a large group of the protesters were clearly intent on other actions. I missed an opportunity for some interesting pictures, but there are times when I feel I just have to stop. It wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of other photographers around to take pictures.

When I started photographing at protests, it was partly because so few others were doing so, outside of the really big events. Even now there are some where I’m the only photographer present – and my presence there and getting their story out becomes more important. But of course even if there are no photographers, almost every protester now has a phone and is taking pictures. Sometimes its hard to photograph events because so many of those taking part are either themselves taking photographs or looking at the photographs they have already taken rather than taking an active part in the protest.

The March for Homes was against the current redevelopments taking place in London, building expensive flats which are mainly sold abroad to overseas investors, many of whom leave them empty most or all of the year. Buying for investment pushes up the price of properties across London, and is making it impossible for most Londoners to buy or increasingly even to rent a place to live.

Councils across London, many Labour run, are selling off estates with realtively low rent accomodation, particulary the large council estates built shortly after the second World War to meet the housing needs of Londoners. One of the larger schemes so far was the Heygate Estate, a well-planned award-winning estate at Elephant & Castle. Over the years the estate had been neglected and needed repairs, and had deliberately been used to house anti-social tenants, many with drug and mental health problems. ut most who lived there liked the area; they would have liked to council to do more for the estate, but the council decided the site was an asset they could realise.

Of course they got it wrong. The costs of moving out tenants and leaseholders who didn’t want to move turned out to be much higher than they anticipated, and took many years longer than they had bargained, despite compensation for owners mostly at around half the market value. Individual councillors may well have benefitted from sale, and there were certainly treats from the developers, who ended up getting the site at perhaps a fifth of the true market value, but the council lost a large amount on the sale.

But the real losers were of course the people who had lived on the Heygate, some now in estates at the far-flung ends of Southwark, others in inferior private accomodation at higher rents, and leaseholders either having to take on large mortgages or move to the fringes of London. And the many thousands on the waiting list for social housing with the stock available greatly reduced by the demolition.

It isn’t correct to talk of the new Elephant Park that is now being built as a luxury development, though certainly the new properties will be expensive. But they will probably be less spacious and no more luxurious than those that they replaced, and are likely to have a shorter life-span.

Having made a shameful mess of Heygate, Southwark have now begun the same process on the neighbouring Aylesbury Estate. Its a larger estate and lacks the architectural quality of the Heygate, and again has been allowed (or encouraged) to deteriorate. Initial plans for ‘regeneration’ under the ‘New Deal for Communities’ (NDC) set up by Laboin 1998 led to a ballot across the estate in 2001 in which a 73% majority among those living there wanted to keep the whole estate as council housing. The story around Aylesbury is complex, and you can read more about it on the Southwark Notes blog.

From City Hall, protesters went on the briefly sit down on Tower Bridge and to protest inside the expensive flats currently being erected next to it. Some then marched down to the former Heygate estate and then on to the Aylesbury estate where they re-opened and occupied a part of a block, Chartridge, that had been cleared for demolition.

Although I haven’t yet made it to the occupation as I’m not yet entirely fit after my exertions on Saturday, I have been around the Heygate and Aylesbury estates several times in the past, most recently on a guided tour Walking the Rip-Off in 2012, from which the pictures here mainly come.

On that tour we went inside a few properties on the Aylesbury Estate, and the flats were well-designed and relatively spacious, rather more so than those of the new properties planned to replace them.

Musical Poor Doors October 18, 2014

Last year I photographed a whole series of protest outside one of London’s prestige blocks, One Commercial St. Organised by Class War, these started small, with less than a dozen protesters at the end of July, but built up week by week to around a hundred, with a couple of larger events in October and November.

Wet night at Poor Doors October 29, 2014

I didn’t quite go to every one of the protests, missing I think two of the weekly Wednesday evenings when there were events elsewhere I felt it more important to cover at the same hour. But I was pleased when it seemed in November that the new owner of the block had agreed to talks and it seemed wanted to resolve the issue. Not just because it seemed to be a victory for the protest against social segregation, but also because travelling across London for the hour’s protest every Wednesday was having too much of an imposition on my life and work.

Travelling there for the 6.00 pm start to the protests by bus in the rush hour was slow. Tube would have been faster, but whenever possible I like to use the bus, and it cuts my expenses as I travel free on it, but have to pay on the tube. It isn’t that expensive, but this was a long project for which I expected little financial return. At first, getting back by bus was fast, but for later events traffic in the city was completely disrupted by evening road works, and on one occasion when I was in a hurry I got off the bus and walked and ran the last couple of miles.

And while in July the protests were taking place in daylight, by October and November it was dark throughout. We had a lot of wet weather too, which didn’t make life as a photographer easier.

Poor Doors Guy Fawkes burn Boris November 5, 2014.

But perhaps the hardest thing, especially for the regular weekly protests, was going there and striving to produce something different every week. It was helped at times by the protesters, who also felt a need to do something new. Class War does like to have a little fun at its protests. So there was a special celebration on November 5th, complete with a guy, Boris Johnson, who mysteriously burst into flames and burnt for a surprising length of time, and at the final protest in the series what was billed as an attempt to get into the Guinness World Book of Records with large numbers of their notorious posters of leading politicians, and when, along with Lisa Mackenzie from Class War, I got a tour of the two areas inside the building.

Class War Women in Red November 12, 2014

The initial meeting between the protesters and the owner was encouraging, and he seemed keen to resolve the issue, and there were apparently discussions with those living in both the expensive and ‘affordable’ sections of the property about how a resolution could be achieved. It didn’t seem to me to be an insoluble problem – as I had found when taken for a tour by one of the residents, there was no problem in accessing the ‘poor’ side of the building from the ‘rich’ area by a separate lift from the ground floor.

‘Bye Bye Redrow’ Poor Doors Street Party November 19, 2014

It would perhaps have required a little interior redesign to allow all residents to enter the building the same way and then have the separation between the two groups inside the building, but I think it would have been possible.

But a few days ago, the protesters met with the owner again, and were told there were to be no changes to the arrangements for a separate ‘poor door’ in the dingy side alley. It looks almost certain that the protests will soon begin again, though it isn’t clear what form they will take. Perhaps I will find myself being busy on Wednesday evenings again, but I rather hope it will be something a little different.

Continue reading Poor Doors Again