Category: Political Issues

I first came across ‘Anonymous’ in 2008, at a protest the group organised against the Church of Scientology following attempts by the CoS to censor coverage of their activities on Internet sites, and also their attacks on their critics under a so-called ‘fair game’ policy which allowed them to carry out all sorts of dirty tricks on anyone they saw as an enemy of Scientology. Being anonymous then was important to avoid retaliation.

It was perhaps also important for a few to retain anonymity in the ‘Occupy’ movement although some suspect this was more the case for undercover police than the real protesters.  Certainly by then the identities of those who wore the ‘V for Vendetta’ mask as regular protesters were largely well-known to the police.

Although both ‘Occupy’ and ‘Anonymous’ linger on, they do appear to have lost the momentum they once had, and I wasn’t surprised to find only a relatively small crowd – perhaps around a hundred people – gathered in Trafalgar Square for their ‘March for Freedom UK’. Of course it lacked the obvious Guy Fawkes connection of the much larger Bonfire Night protest last November. But among the faces, both masked and unmasked, were many  familiar to me from Occupy London and other protests.

Charlie Chaplin is of course a face familiar to us all, and he was there too!

After a number of short speeches and a mime performance from Mr Chaplin, there was a suggestion it was time to march which was put to a public vote and appeared to be carried. Some set off immediately, while others took longer to organise themselves, but eventually almost everyone was waiting at the traffic lights at the southern edge of the square.

Rather curiously those at the front of the march did not seem very clear on what they were doing, and it was a police liaison officer who told them where to go.

It wasn’t really much like a march, more just a group of people going down the roadway, and it was perhaps only the masks that made it stand out.

Again as they reached Parliament, the protesters were unsure where to go, though this time they didn’t follow the police advice, but simply walked on and came to a stop outside Parliament where they held a rally.

Of course there is a great deal of common-sense in much of what they say. We do need to keep our National Health Service and to improve it rather than simply hand out lucrative contracts to private enterprise. We need reform to make our parliament reflect the needs of the people rather than the greed of a small minority, and so on. I’m not sure that this kind of event contributes much to achieving those aims, but at least it serves just a little to raise awareness of the problems.

More pictures at Anonymous March For Freedom UK.

Continue reading Whither Anonymous?

I don’t much like photographing protests at the Israeli Embassy. The actual embassy is hidden away down a private side street where photography and protests are forbidden, and protests take place on the busy roadway of High St Kensington. Sometimes there are problems with police not allowing photographers to stand in front of the protest pen, either telling you that you can’t walk along there, or opening up a narrow area for the public to walk through and telling photographers they have to keep moving.  Fortunately on this occasion they were not doing either, but allowing photographers reasonable access, but it still was to a narrow restricted area, with traffic moving past on the other side of a row of cones a couple of feet in front of the protest.

I actually like to work close to people when photographing, but this was at times just a little too close even for my taste, and your presence is always very much felt by the protesters. The actual pen is always fairly narrow too, so it gets very crowded inside, and its often tantalising to see an opportunity for a photograph but not being able to get the the right position to make it.

Although mostly I was using the wider end of the 16-35mm zoom (on the D700) there were also some pictures where by working up to the barriers and aiming the camera roughly along them I was able to get a little more distance – as the the picture above of the woman and the placards. Unfortunately it was a dull day and the 18-105mm seems to have been having a few problems with autofocus recently – and this image is not quite sharp on her face. Later I took a few more simiilar images – and there are some in Gaza Massacre 5th Anniversary – but as often happens, the first image was the one that I thought best – apart from its softness. I took it soon after I arrived and there were relatively few photographers (and protesters) present, but soon lots of other photographers were also photographing her and I think she got very concious about being photographed, and was smiling most of the time.

Another woman had a very nicely drawn poster and I wanted to photograph her holding it in the protest, but it was hard to get a picture I liked.  The plastic sheet over the poster was also a problem with reflections. I took a few working close to her, but they didn’t work – as it seldom does if you ask people to hold their poster or placard for a photograph. Later, from a little further back with the 18-105mm I made this one which was more what I wanted.

There is rather less of a problem in photographing people wearing ‘Anonymous’ masks in that their expression doesn’t change when they are aware of the camera. But it was still a better picture when I photographed this guy as he walked through the crowd rather than the posed image above.

Of course the scarf makes a difference, but it is mainly the hand up to his mouth which produces something more immediate, and the people and placards around the figure work better.

I couldn’t stay for all of the protest, and was anxious to get off to go to another event. but one particular person was worrying me. He was one of the most noticeable of those protesting, and had appeared in more or less the first image I took, as well as several others. But I just wasn’t too happy with pictures like the one above; it wasn’t bad, but I felt there must be more I could do. I’d turned away and walked a few yards towards the tube, then turned back and decided to make one last effort. I took a short series of images ending up with the one below.

It didn’t look quite like that on the camera back – his face was in fairly deep shadow and the flag at top left was rather pale, with light shining through the thin material. But I felt I had essentially captured what I wanted and put my camera away. This really was the final frame I took of the protest.

Continue reading Gaza Anniversary

I don’t watch television. 45 years ago, when I was first married, we decided there were far too many other things to do in life to waste time on watching TV, and I’ve not owned a TV set since (though the other things have rather changed.) I do occasionally watch programmes after transmission on the computer, where you can select the short sections worth watching and quickly slide through most of the tedium. I seldom watch more than 10% of any programme.

So I’ve not watched a whole episode of Benefits St, let alone all those that have aired, but I have seen a few short clips and read a number of articles and some of the many comments on them. Most interesting were those from people who actually know or even have studied James Turner Street in Winson Green. The programme seems to me a cynical exploitation of the people featured with no attempt to examine the underlying causes or to treat the residents with appropriate respect or honesty.

The Birmingham Mail quoted one of those in the show who helped Love Films in making it, Dee Roberts as saying:

“They said they wanted to film for a TV show about how great community spirit is in the street. I participated in the show on that belief.

“But this programme has nothing to do with community, which you can tell from the title. It’s all about people in the street living off benefits, taking drugs and dossing around all day. It makes people out as complete scum.”

From what I’ve seen and heard, the values behind the programme seem to be entirely those of making ‘”good” – i.e. popular – television; the morality of the viewing figures. It’s perhaps what you would expect from a company noted for The Great British Bake Off, a kind of cultural lobotomy. Truly bread and circuses.

Photographically it wasn’t an easy event to cover as it seemed rather disorganised. Visually the most interesting aspect was perhaps a very short period of shouting slogans towards the Love Film office. But the protesters were standing very close to the front of the building and the photographers were behind them, though I managed to squeeze between protesters and the offices for the top picture (and a few similar) and some of those present didn’t really seem to be getting involved.  It was a protest where those taking part didn’t seem really sure what they were supposed to be doing.

Later things did get a little more organised, with a number of speeches, including those from campaigner Reverend Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty, no stranger to the ways of television as he was for 16 years until his retirement in 1999 the real Vicar of Dibley, or at least the church used in the filming of that series in Turville, Buckinghamshire.

As you can guess from this picture, by the time he was speaking it was raining fairly persistently, and the lighting in the narrow street surrounded by tall buildings had dropped considerably – and it had been dull at the start.

It’s always difficult to know how to adjust the colour balance in such circumstances, and I often find that the auto white balance gets things not quite right. It isn’t easy to know what is right, and it probably isn’t what is technically correct in most cases, but I found myself making more tweaks than usual in these pictures, mainly aiming to get believable skin colours.  The Rev Nicolson is red in parts on his face because of the light through the disposable red Unite Community rainwear, which is fine, but in the top image, I had to do a little brushing of the tint with Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush to bring a more healthy looking face to the woman shouting.

When taking pictures of speakers at event such as this, wherever possible I look for backgrounds which relate to the person and/or the event and provide some context – such as this placard with its message ‘Bankers are the real scroungers’.  Another of the placards read ‘Target the Tories Not the Poor’  and for the woman below, from Barnet Alliance for Public Services I like the out of focus word ‘Justice’ which can be made out from the Southwark Benefit Justice Campaign banner behind her.

Story and pictures at Benefits Street Protest at Love Films and there are a few from a smaller protest a week later at Channel 4’s Victoria offices, No More ‘Benefits Street’ Channel 4.

Continue reading Benefits Street

I don’t like photo-calls. They usually end up with lots of photographers taking the same picture that someone else has thought up, and which is seldom of much interest. Like this one:

I took it with photographers to the left of me, photographers to the right of me, all taking more or less the same picture (though perhaps mainly a little wider, though that was even more boring and I couldn’t bring myself to process and publish that.)

Sometimes you can rescue something from these situations. In this image there was one person who stood out to me, looking out from a gap between the placards, and he looked to me like a man in a prison. It seemed appropriate for a protest about a man held in prisons without trial for 12 years, still in Guantanamo – more pictures and about the protest on 12 Years of Illegal Guantanámo Jail

If I was the kind of photographer who arranges and constructs images I would have moved the woman behind him (and I could easily have Photoshop-ed her out, cloning the wall behind into the space, as well as copying more placards into the areas at bottom left or right. It would have made for a neater and probably better picture. I probably could have arranged the picture rather better by asking people to move or to move their placards, setting up a more perfect view of my idea, but for me that would have taken the picture away from being news and more into publicity or advertising, a direction in which I don’t want to tread.

Setting it up for me would have been unethical, but it would also have meant that the 22 other photographers (no I didn’t really count them, but it was probably around that number) would have taken the same picture too, while perhaps I was the only photographer who saw the picture as I did. Life is full of warts after all.

But I’d already really got my picture, while the person organising the photocall, who had had the idea and got all the placards made, was getting people into position. For a few seconds only, the group in the orange suits and black hoods with their placards were arranged in a triangular formation, and there was my picture. I don’t think anyone else was in the right place to see it and take it,

I had to rush off quickly to another protest, Repeal Indian anti-Gay Law, and there nothing was happening, just people just standing around, a few with placards, but doing very little and that with no animation. I was even quite pleased when one of the protesters on seeing me arrive started to organise most of those who had placards into a group for pictures.

It didn’t make too exciting a picture, but it was better than just people standing around chatting with each other. It was a pity that the Indian flag wasn’t a little more cooperative, but there just wasn’t enough wind for it to fly.

But perhaps the better pictures were by picking a few individuals and photographing them with the posters or banners they were holding.

I’d been intending to go on to Tottenham Police Station, where the family of Mark Duggan were leading a vigil a few days after the curious inquest verdict, both apparently internally contradictory and also  to deny the evidence. But it was getting a little late, and I was also worried about the facilities that the press might get, and with good reason. I didn’t go, but friends told me they were corralled into a press area rather out of the way and unable to really get good pictures – and it showed in the work. Not a good way to handle the press.

Instead, I made for the Egyptian embassy, where there were two groups of protesters for the Eyptians coming to vote in their country’s constitutional referendum. Immediately outside the embassy on the pavement were supporters of the new constitution and the deoosing of Morsi, many waving pictures of General SiSi, while opposite them across the road was a protest almost entirely composed of Muslims, with posters, banners, balloons and cards with the four-finger ‘rabiaa’ gesture, now a symbol of pro-Morsi protest, calling on Egyptians to boycott the vote.

Both sides were noisy and animated, and although it was generally fairly clear from both the gestures and the posters (or the sweatshirts) who was in which protest, I decided it was easier to separate the two groups into two stories,  Free Egypt Alliance Urge Vote Boycott and  Sisi Supporters Oppose Boycott. 

With four stories to sort out the images for and then write up, it was around midnight or after by the time I got to the text about the two Egyptian groups, and  at first I managed to write up the stories but forgot to mention why both sides were there, and had to log on to both stories later and make things clear.
Continue reading Busy Saturday

Feeling against the police was running high and was expressed in placards and banners including one referring to the well-known song

Perhaps the police actually read my stories on Demotix  (usually very similar to those I post later with more pictures on My London Diary.) Actually I know some of them sometimes do, because I’ve had officers making comments to me about things I’ve written in the past. And I’ve recently sent in a Freedom of Information request and am waiting to hear what – if anything – they have about me on their files, or rather those files they are prepared to admit exist (they’ve been caught out a few times lying over such matters.)

The previous week, after Friday’s protest I’d written

I found it hard to see any reason for the large police presence and stopping them walking into Montague Place as they wanted. It did seem an incredible and pointless waste of public money, and it resulted in more inconvenience to the public than if the event had not been policed at all.

But I think in this particular case I wasn’t the only journalist make the obvious clear, and perhaps even some of the police themselves may have realised that the heavy-handed policing of protests against a police presence on campus is counter-productive.

Other banners were less contentious – such as ‘Make Love not Student Debt’

So, unlike the previous week, where they came in force to London University, for the Cops Off Campus National Student Protest in exactly the same place they sensibly kept out of sight, and the protest passed off more or less peacefully, with far less mayhem than if they had turned up.

The Book Block with shields bearing the names of well-known titles for protection

There was a little damage to the gates of Senate House, and later, in an event I thought was probably staged for the press, to the doors into the entrance area of the building, when a few students attacked them using rubbish bins as battering rams. But there was no real violence and no attempt to occupy parts of the university, which would have broken the High Court injunction.

A clown mimes taking my photograph – and is caught by my flash

The protest was about a serious matter, and one which raises questions about the nature and purpose of universities that deserve proper debate, it was also an enjoyable and at times exhilarating event, with various groups enjoying themselves in their different ways, and ended with those taking part feeling a sense of achievement. It seems clear that the attempt by the London University management to stifle protest and freedom of speech and assembly has failed.

Two major issues remain to be settled; the future of the University of London Union and the proper treatment of low paid workers at the university who deserve decent conditions of work and pay. Until the management behave reasonably over these issues, protests will continue.

The book shields were useful in pushing against the gates

Photographically there were few problems, and it was largely a matter of being in the right place at the right time. When the students decided to go through the gates of the Senate House I had to move out of their way, and it was too crowded to get a really good view, though the fisheye did help a little.

There were some interesting faces in the crowd, and as well as taking pictures of the speakers I also took some of those listening to speeches.

After I left to go home there were further protests around central London by some of the students, where the police did show up (if sometimes rather late) including at the Royal Courts of Justice where the inquest into the shooting by police of Mark Duggan which sparked riots in Tottenham and elsewhere was taking place. It’s always difficult to know when to leave.

Cops Off Campus National Student Protest
Continue reading Peace as Police Stay Away

International Human Rights Day, 10th December, commemorates the day in 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This has become politically controversial here in the UK, as our government, while claiming still to be in support of the declaration is rather noisily and busily trying to find ways to get around some of its consequences. There seem to be some groups – such as prisoners and suspected terrorists – that they don’t feel qualify for human rights.

The Syria Peace & Justice group were told they can’t protest directly outside the UNHCR offices.
But this is a pilgrimage not a protest they told the commissionaire.

As Herman and Chomsky pointed out 25 years ago in their classic book ‘Manufacturing Consent‘ there are ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims in the eyes of our politicians and dominant media, and many in power would like to restrict these universal rights only to those they consider ‘worthy’.

Given the political climate it perhaps is unsurprising that International Human Rights Day passes unobserved officially in the UK and those who rely on mainstream media would be totally unaware of it.

But the Syria Peace & Justice group chose the day to try to highlight the desperate situation in Syria and to call for an end to all human rights abuses there. They began the day by making a pilgrimage around as many as possible of the embassies of countries who are in some way or other involved in Syria, as well as the UN High Commission for Refugees offices and our own government offices and ended with a candlelit vigil on the pavement outside the Syrian Embassy. It wasn’t a huge protest – the group is a small London-based grass-roots one only formed a couple of months ago, which includes people of various nationalities and backgrounds united in their desire to see peace and justice. But many others would support their aims.

Because of the large number of embassies and other places involved the pilgrimage was split into two groups who met up in late afternoon outside the US embassy. This presented my first dilemma in covering the event, as I couldn’t split myself in two! I decided to start with the group at the UNHCR as it was the UN’s day, and to go with them at least as far as Downing St and the Foreign Office, before trying to join the second group who had started in Kensington.

The Syria Peace & Justice group were joined by several others as they posed in front of the Houses of Parliament.

At Downing St, one of the pilgrims had permission to take their letter in, but they arrived late, and had to wait for a suitable gap, and rather than waiting with her I went on with the rest of the group to take photographs outside the foreign office and in Parliament Square. From there I took the tube to Hyde Park Corner and rang the leader of the second group to find out where they were. They were heading for the Iraqi embassy, but by the time I got arrived there had already moved on. Two buses later I finally caught up with them outside the former Iranian Embassy which was closed by William Hague threw out the Iranian Embassy in 2011 after the UK’s embassy in Tehran was attacked and looted. It now appears to be a part of the Omani embassy.

At the Kuwaiti embassy they let someone in to deliver the letter calling for peace and human rights.

I walked down with the group to the Kuwaiti and French embassies and then left them to go to the US Embassy where I found the other group had arrived. Taking pictures there was a little tricky as it was now dark, and they were in a particularly badly lit area. I tried both using ISO 3200 and available light and adding flash, but neither worked too well with the pilgrims being rather spread out. You can see these and more pictures from earlier in the two pilgrimages at Human Rights Day Pilgrimages for Syria.

There was another event I wanted to cover a couple of miles away and I left them to take the tube there, returning for the candlelit vigil an hour and a half later outside the Syrian embassy.

Flash enabled me to bring out the Buddhist monk in a dark background area.

Candles provide enough light to illuminate a very small area, and the pavement outside the embassy had a little ambient light from the street lighting, but it wasn’t really enough to fill in the shadows. I got the best results by just adding a little flash fill, using ISO3200 with the candles as the main light source and a mix of flash and ambient in the shadow areas.

Peace pilgrim ‘Earthian’, a “citizen of the earth” made a peace pilgrimage to the Middle East on foot without a passport

I used the built-in wide-flash diffuser screen on the flash and also the small white bounce card, generally angling the flash head up at 45 degrees. Where there were subjects close to the camera on one side, I angled the flash away from them to reduce the coverage (even with the wide-flash adapter there is a lot of fall off at the edges with the 16mm.)

I worked with shutter priority, setting a speed of between 1/25 and 1/60s (with a certain random element from my habitual finger-fiddling) and adjusting both exposure bias and more often flash level to get the results I wanted, checking on the rear screen. The ambient levels varied considerably in different areas of the vigil, and the headlights of cars driving by also occasionally added a contribution.

More pictures from the candlelit vigil at Human Rights Day Candlelit Vigil for Syria.
Continue reading Human Rights & Syria

Tibetans walk backwards in front or Parliament in human rights protest

I spend quite a lot of my time covering protests walking backwards, and have the bruises and scars to prove it from various encounters with curbs, vehicles, lamp posts and other street furniture. Fortunately none of these occasions has been seriously damaging, other than to my dignity, long since a lost cause.

Human rights for Tibetans in Tibet also seems increasingly to be a lost cause, as Western nations eager for business with China put their own national interests in profit above higher concerns. Of course its always been so, and we even once went to war with China to force it to allow our drug traders to operate.

So while the west has made noises about human rights violations by China since the invasion of Tibet in 1959, these noises have been getting softer and softer over recent years and are now a mere formality, while China has ramped up its efforts to completely eradicate Tibetan culture, committing atrocities against the Tibetan people – with over 1.2 million deaths. In recent years around 130 desperate Tibetans have set fire to themselves in protest, and the Chinese response has been to arrest and torture family members, charging them with abetting self-immolation.

They started to protest in Parliament Square but were soon told to leave by the GLC’s ‘heritage wardens’

Human rights are indeed going backwards in Tibet, and Tibetans decided to march backwards in London past the Houses of Parliament to Downing St to highlight what is happening there and as a direct response to China becoming a member of the UN Human Rights Council, despite its own terrible human rights record and its record of support for human rights violations by other countries.

Blue, white, red, yellow and a little green in the flags – and one man wears a Union flag as well

Protests by Tibetans are always colourful, with so many of them wearing or carrying the brightly coloured Tibetan flag – something that would rapidly lead to arrest and torture in Tibet. At times the colours tend to dominate the pictures and I sometimes find it overpowering. Visually you can have too much of a good thing.

They are walking backwards but it isn’t very obvious.

It was also a slight problem to convey the fact that people were walking backwards in a still image. People walking backwards do look rather similar to people walking forwards, and it’s something that makes far more impact in a moving image than a still. There is something about the postures in the images from a distance, but working close, I don’t think it is possible to tell.

Walking backwards in Whitehall – but impossible to tell.

However it was a welcome change to be able to walk forward while taking the photographs!
More about the protest at Tibetans Walk Backwards for Human Rights.
Continue reading Walking Backwards for Tibet