Category: Political Issues

‘Vedanta, the whole world is watching you‘ said one of the posters at the protest outside their AGM

but my own back was turned at the critical moment when protesters threw fake blood over another protesters covered with a white sheet on the steps leading to the AGM, and by the time I realised something was happening and had run the 20 yards or so to the scene those who had spilt it were fleeing stage left and stage right. They included two men dressed in suits who I assumed were Vedanta security men.

Even with the 16-35mm I couldn’t include all of the scene, and by the time I’d really realised what was happening it was over.  I was just a little annoyed that I hadn’t been warned something was about to take place.

I’d been busy photographing Bianca Jagger who was one of the protesters who have bought shares in the mining company so that they can attend the AGM and ask questions about the activities of this company ‘owned by billionaire Anil Agarwal, backed by the UK government but opposed by groups in India, Goa, Liberia, Namibia, South Africa and Ireland, Zambia and Sri Lanka for the environmental damage, pollution and human rights abuses caused by its mining of bauxite and other minerals.’

Wearing her white suit she had to pick her way very cautiously over the Kensington Gore on the steps; it is supposed to be non-staining, but I wouldn’t entirely rely on it.

What was needed was a hose to wash the theatrical blood away, but instead they sent out an inappropriately equipped black woman cleaner. I felt sorry for her as she tried to deal with the mess, supervised by a young woman in a smart black dress and heels in what seemed like a colonial parody.

The charges against Vedanta are horrendous and you can read more about them on My London Diary in Vedanta AGM Protest, and of course on web sites such as Foil Vedanta, where you can read a more accurate account, complete with pictures of the bloody incident.

But had the organisers thought to make sure the couple of press photographers present were watching when the event was going to happen, it would have got them rather more publicity.
Continue reading Vedanta – My Back Was Turned

As a former teacher I still have some interest in matters of education, and like many last month was appalled to hear that some exam boards, under pressure from the government and their regulatory body, had decided to change the marks needed to get a C grade for GCSE English between the January and June exams.

This meant that many students who got a mark that would have given them a ‘C’ grade in January were downgraded to a ‘D’, which is just unfair. A ‘C’ in English is a basic qualification for many further courses and something many employers insist on. Although not originally intended to be used in this way, a ‘C’ is a pass and a ‘D’ a de-facto fail, and the decision by the exam boards will blight the lives of many for years.

I’m not actually a great believer in examinations. Or more precisely I think that getting a good grade in examinations shows you are good at taking examinations rather than very much else. Because of the pressure that schools face with inspections and targets, teachers have become very good at getting pupils to do well in examinations, largely to the neglect of education. And unfortunately most of our examinations are very poor instruments for grading anything useful.

I taught quite a range of subjects over my teaching career covering various aspects of science, art and photography, business studies and computing. Two courses stood out for me. One was an intensely practical and vocational computer-based course, with on-screen learning and assessment coupled with various lab exercises, the Cisco Networking Academy programme. But although our educational establishment showed some interest in this initiative, it wasn’t really possible to integrate this into our education system. Even students who wanted to go on to study computer science could get no credit from the universities from following these courses.

But what I most enjoyed teaching was on the Art and Design courses we ran using photography as the medium. Although there were things called exams, basically the courses involved students in producing a portfolio of work. We worked to a fairly well structured course, making sure we taught the basics, but students showed their ability by their research and development of their own ideas in photographic projects to meet the briefs we wrote. The only difference for the exam was that the brief came from the exam board, and there were rather notional time limits.  Essentially this was a course where the portfolio that each student assembled was what mattered and the grades given by the board (based on our teacher assessment and external moderation) were simply a reflection of this.

The protest happened because of the anger of teachers at the way students they had taught had been penalised unfairly by the exam boards, and the disastrous consequences this would have for these individuals and also for many schools. The lower pass rate will give the government the excuse to take over many schools and impose their policies of increasing privatisation of education.

One young teacher in south London had decided on the Friday evening before the bank holiday weekend that teachers should take some action to show their outrage and had contacted others on Facebook. It wasn’t a good time to organise, with most teachers making the most of the last week of their summer vacation, and it was perhaps surprising to find almost 30 of them outside the Department of Education.

What I could have done without was another photographer who arrived a short time after me and decided he needed to organise them for a photograph. Fortunately after he had spent a few minutes doing so, things more or less returned to normal and the protest continued.

Of course I am sometimes guilty of just a little arrangement myself. I did suggest to this woman she stand in front of the sign, and she is looking at me because I’ve just previously taken a picture using flash. And I did take advantage later of her waving the head and dunce’s cap around in front of the other protesters for that other photographer – who by that time had become a part of the situation I was photographing.

But the pictures I find more interesting are not to do with organising people (which should get any real news photographer fired) but those that simply happen and I manage to be in the right place at the right time.

It’s sometimes a thin line, but I try to stay on what I think is the right side of it. More pictures at Regrade GCSE English.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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Sean Rigg was killed by police in Brixton Police Station on 21 August 2008. It took almost 4 years for the inquest into his death to be held, and they jury were then denied the possibility of giving the verdict that they would have otherwise reached. Instead they gave a lengthy narrative verdict which made clear exactly how police actions led to his death, and also condemned the NHS for their failures before his arrest and killing. The Rigg family immediately called for the Crown Prosecution Service to bring criminal charges and for a public inquiry into deaths in custody, not just that of Sean Rigg, but of the many others who die as a result of police action – including many that for various reasons don’t make the official statistics,

I first met Sean’s sisters at the annual United Friends and Families Protest march along Whitehall to Downing St in October 2008, and was impressed by their determination to fight to find what really happened to their brother and to get justice. Their tenacity has resulted in an inquest that made clear the crimes that were committed, the cover-up by the police and the the complete failure of the IPCC to investigate what took place. But they – and the other families of the several thousand people who have died in suspicious circumstances by police actions or in police custody, in prisons or in other secure facilities have yet to see justice.

Samantha Rigg-David, 2008

Marcia Rigg-Samuel, 2008

From the start, the ‘Justice & Change’ campaign’ the family set up has been concerned not just with their brother’s death, but with the wider issues of justice and accountability of the police and our judicial system.

I’d arrived at the  Sean Rigg 4th Year Memorial in the large assembly hall inside Lambeth Town Hall on 21 August around 20 minutes before the start of the event and was in time to take a seat with several other photographers close to the middle aisle in the second row of the hall. I’d missed an official photocall a few minutes earlier with the family and the banner, but that isn’t the kind of thing I usually bother with. I had plenty of time to make a few test shots, hoping that the same main lights would be on for the meeting, and found I could just about get usable results without flash on the D800, working at around ISO 3200 with the Nikon 28-105mm wide open. It isn’t a fast lens, only f5.6 at the long end, and I probably should have brought the Sigma 24-70 f2.8, but I’d had to rush back from an outing, grab my bag and run out of the door to get to the event, and just hadn’t had time to think.  But I think the Nikon is sharper.

I did take some pictures with flash, but I don’t like to use it more than I have to, as when I’m attending meetings I find a lot of flash photography is disturbing. But for some pictures there just wasn’t enough light  without.

It was an interesting meeting, but perhaps went on a little too long  – over two hours, and some of the ‘questions’ from the floor turned out to be lengthy speeches. But I was really waiting for the march through Brixton that was to follow. It did eventually, but I think was held up by a number of people with video cameras stopping the leading figures and interviewing them.

Eventually everyone was lined up outside and the march started, going just a quarter of a mile down the road to the police station. It got very crowded around the memorial tree, and I got into an argument with a man with a camcorder who came and stood right in front of me after I put my hand on his shoulder to ask him to move. He became very angry, but fortunately everyone was keen to calm things down.

Unfortunately at this point my SB700 flash started refusing to work at all on the D700, and it was very dark. I couldn’t see any reason why, and it worked fine when I switched it over to the D800.  It’s the kind of annoying thing that can happen, and often the reason is simple and obvious once you sit down and take a look at things in good light, but is impossible to solve when you are frantically trying to work in darkness, as I was.

I swapped the 16-35mm to the SB-800 – it’s just a bit wider than the 18-105 – and continued working with flash. I was working at 1/60 at f6.3 with the flash, and it was so dark that to get any real contribution from ambient light and avoid an almost black background I needed to use ISO 6400.

This picture was taken at 17mm (around 25mm equiv) and the flash was I think set to underexpose by around 2/3 stop. I think I’m actually too close for flash to be reliable, but the main problems I was having were actually subject movement and focus.

Using the 16-35 at 16mm on the D800 (24mm equiv)

I was a little reluctant to follow the group who went inside the police station to photograph there, but soon realised that I needed to as everyone else pushed in. Inside the lobby there was a decent light level and I could work without flash, but it was so squashed there wasn’t really room to change lenses. I had the the 10.5mm onto the D700, so was only getting the 5Mp or so files that DX lenses give on that camera. I had the DX body set on ISO 3200, and once processed in Lightroom 4, the quality isn’t bad.  When the Superintendent came to a side door to talk to the crowd I was on the other side of the lobby, but with the camera held as high as I could reach I managed to get a picture that I thought worked OK.

The lighting for this is helped by someone using a video light, though I’ve  not quite got the colour balance optimised. But LED lighting is now feasible with still cameras too, working at fairly close distances and high ISO, and I’m thinking of buying a powerful and portable unit. I do have a very cheap unit, but it hasn’t enough power to be useful, except perhaps for reading in bed.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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I don’t like photographing the EDL, and they certainly don’t like being photographed, but I think it is important that their activities are recorded, and I try to do so with care and accuracy. If they emerge from my pictures or text looking bad, it isn’t because of how I photograph them, but because of what they say and do.

I didn’t set this picture up, but just started taking pictures of the group drinking in the beer garden of the pub in Chelmsford a couple of weeks ago from the street outside. When one of the other people I was taking pictures of complained to a police officer about me photographing him without his consent, I was pleased that the officer told him that I have every right to photograph, whether he wanted to have his picture taken or not. Though after I had taken a few pictures he did ask me very politely if I would mind moving away as it was getting them worked up (I could be wrong when I remember him saying I was disturbing the animals.)  I’d taken several pictures like the above, and didn’t think I would get anything more so I was happy to oblige.

As I walked past the small group of EDL around the pub door, one of them pointed me out to the others and said “He’s OK” while pointing out another photographer walking with me as someone who should be chased away. It isn’t up to them to decide who should and shouldn’t be allowed to photograph them.

But perhaps because of this, later, when I moved close to the banner at the front of the march I wasn’t asked to move away, although other photographers had been cleared across the road by the police. Though I think it was really more my ability to merge with the background and be unobtrusive when I want to.

Eventually the march moved off, and I photographed as it went past me. One rather large man walked towards me, though I wasn’t too worried as there were several police within a couple of yards. He moved in close and said  “I hope all your family die of cancer.”

I stopped to note down his exact words and then continued to photograph. Unlike most marches where I like to get in the middle of things, I had to work largely from the pavement, as I was getting some pretty hostile comments as I was working.  Fortunately their was some good lighting and I think some of the pictures work well.

I didn’t have my voice recorder running during the event, but what I heard from many on the protest seemed to me to be full of hate against Muslims (and photographers!)

As the front of the march reached the turning for their rally outside the town hall I went back to the centre of the shopping district where ‘Essex Unite Against Fascism’ had been holding their rally, noticing on my way that the police had sealed off the area with some high fencing and large cordons.  The counter-march was all ready to go, but was being held until the EDL were safely surrounded by police.

There were just over three times as many people, and a huge difference in atmosphere. Rather than hate it was a welcome that came out from the crowd, with everyone pleased to talk and be photographed and looking so much happier. And everyone was entirely sober. It was a pleasure to photograph them rather than a duty.

Of course there was some anger expressed in some of the Essex UAF’s chants, such as  “E-D-L go to hell! Take your Nazi mates as well!” and “Follow your leader, shoot yourself like Adolf Hitler!” but the second at least was shouted with a certain  humour, with some breaking into laughter afterwards. Other chants were more affirmative, such as “We’re black, white, Asian and we’re Jew!”

I think my text and pictures on EDL Outnumbered in Chelmsford portray both groups accurately, although the view of the EDL is perhaps too kind to them, and I perhaps did a better job of making good images. Sometimes a little of a challenge helps.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Men at at Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain rally in Hyde Park in 2004

It was back in 2004 that I first came across Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, which I described then as “an independent Islamic political party dedicated to re-establishing the Islamic way of life under an Islamic caliphate (Khilifah.) The repetition of the word ‘Islamic’ was of course deliberate and intended to mirror the relentess and repetitive approach of the speeches and the visual effect, with its large banners, black characters on intense orange.

Hizb ut-Tahrir march against ‘Busharraf’, 2004
There were very few journalists and photographers at that event, and I remember talking to one of them, a man who had been researching and following the movement for some time and who considered it to be a dangerous and influential fundamentalist movement which governments would be wise to proscribe.

Protest opposite Bangladesh High Commission supporting Rohingya, 2012

There have I think been a few minor changes over the past 8 years, at least presentationally, although the protests still look much the same, but I think the speakers are a little less strident (though I only understand those who speak in English) and some have been careful to point out that they are not aiming at the overthrow and replacement of the British state and that their ambition is for the Khilfah to replace the current corrupt and largely dictatorial rulers of the Muslim states. Although their removal seems an excellent idea, I’m certainly not convinced that I would want to live under the rule of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and I still find some aspects of their protests unsettling.

One of a number of women speaking as Hizb ut-Tahrir women protested the French veil ban, 2010

One is the separation between men and women at their protests; it isn’t the actual segregation I find so disturbing but that women seem often to be treated as second-class citizens, off to one side of where the real action (in this case the speeches and the loudspeakers relaying them) was taking place, with none of the speakers being women.  Many of them were so far away along the road that they could not see or even hear properly what was going on. The only time I’ve seen the women of Hizb ut-Tahir ever fully taking part in a protest was at a ‘women only’ protest over the French ban on Islamic face veils.

Women protest separately at one side of the protest in support of Rohingya, 2012

The protest on 11th August was at the Bangladeshi High Commission in a wide and fairly empty street in Kensington, not far from the Natural History Museum and the Albert Hall.  Although some of their protests over the years have attracted the attention of many photographers, again this was not one of them, and when I arrived a few minutes after the time the protest was to start, I seemed to be almost the only journalist or photographer present other than the organisation’s own people (and of course many in the protest were taking pictures with their phones.)

I like to get to events on time, if not at least a few minutes early. Often the most interesting situations happen as people are arriving and things are being set up, though I also generally stay on as long as I can. Years ago, when I first went to photograph a number of carnivals with a few friends, I was surprised that as soon as the actual procession started they would put their cameras away and go to the pub, but usually they were right, many events are essentially over for the photographer once they have started. Others – and perhaps this protest was one – never really begin.

My lateness was simply a result of London traffic and my decision to take a bus to the protest. Buses are my favourite method of travel around London, giving a great view of the city from the upper deck, but like cars and taxis they are unreliable. On this occasion I’d had far too long to enjoy the view of Fulham Broadway on my way to Kensington.

The only really reliable way to get around London is on a bike, or for shorter distances, feet. But I don’t like taking my bike to protests, as finding a good place to use my heavyweight lock can be difficult, and even the best locks only deter the more casual thieves and don’t protect against vandalism. They are also a nuisance with marches, when you have to go back to the start to collect them. But had I thought, I would have ridden to this static protest in a posh area on a sunny day when traffic was likely to be bad, especially with various large sporting events in the city. But I’m getting old and lazy and have a free bus pass I like to use!

Hizb ut-Tahrir Supports Rohingya, 2012

The still photograph can’t convey the actual words that people say, but it can show something of the mood and I concentrate on the expressions and gestures of the protesters and in particular the speakers. Words and images may come from placards and banners, which are also very important in photographing protests.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Supports Rohingya, 2012

Photographers are very attracted by sounds at protests, whether those of people chanting, shouting or speaking or (absent from this event) music or drumming etc. If you are working with video, the sounds are often the most important part of the event, but as a still photographer you need to keep reminding yourself that they don’t record in your images. You have to work to try and catch the feeling of the moment. It’s a start to be seeing and hearing the excitement – it suggests you are somewhere near the right place – but you have to work hard to make it show in your images.

Of course it’s important to be honest about the event you are photographing, while obviously your photographs will also present your own point of view. I’m often unhappy about the way that single images are used in the press which often give a very distorted view of events, and I’m far happier presenting my own work through sites like Demotix or My London Dairy where I can tell a story in some depth, both in pictures and text.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Supports Rohingya, 2012

Although I often share the concerns of Hizb ut-Tahrir which they express in protests – as in this case over the terrible oppression of the Rohingya people in Burma, caught up in the long-running dispute between Burma and neighbouring Bangladesh, with its origins going back into the British rule of India (more on this – and more pictures – in Hizb ut-Tahrir Supports Rohingya on My London Diary), like that journalist I talked to I find the movement disturbing. It seems to represents an extremism which I find chilling, just as I do that of the extremist Christian and political groups I’ve photographed.  But unlike many extremist groups, Hizb ut-Tahrir welcome media attention and are always attentive (sometimes perhaps a little too attentive) to journalists and photographers. I don’t think they should be banned but I do wish that more mainstream and moderate Muslim organisations were more vocal both about them and the wider issues that they address.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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