Category: Political Issues

On Saturday I went to photograph the Southwark Youth Carnival Procession which was one of the attractions of ‘The Mix‘, a festival for Southwark Youth in Burgess Park.

Burgess park – one of London’s newer parks, part of the planning for a new London during the second World War and still unfinished –  is about a mile long and follows the course of the Camberwell branch of the Surrey Canal which I photographed along in the 1980s, around ten years after its closure. Rather more recently one of my sons shared a flat close to it, just off the Old Kent Road (and like many London photographers I’ve spent time photographing along there)  so it’s familiar ground to me.

The procession gathered on a public road that is a part of the park close to its south-east corner,  and was to march the along the roads to the east and north of the park to enter the festival from the west side, a little over a mile and a half.

It was a colourful and noisy procession, though most of the noise was musical, with the samba band ‘Uniao da Mocidade’ (Union of Youth)  and a marching band and dancers from Kinetika Bloco who had also run carnival workshops for groups to produce their costumes.

My favourite pictures came before the event, when some of the dancers were resting in the shade before the long walk – or rather dance – around the park. You can of course see more on My London Diary.

Although it was lively enough, I would have liked to see a procession that more strongly reflected the diversity of the borough and in particular the borough’s youth and was also more diverse in terms of ideas. And also something that was more local – this seemed like a generic event that could have happened almost anywhere.

Traditionally carnivals in this country have been supported by all kinds of groups and individuals contributing their own often eccentric contributions to the theme, and it was that amateur eclecticism that I found missing. It would have been good to see many more youth organisations and schools taking part.

I left the carnival as it turned off for the long stretch down Albany Road and hurried to catch a bus along Old Kent Road to the Elephant and on to visit friends. As I rushed along, still clutching camera and flash, a man sitting outside a shop called to me to take his picture – so I did – only to be stopped again by a couple of men a few doors down who also wanted to be photographed.

Of course I did so, and I still just managed to catch the bus.

Probably many people don’t even know where West Papua is, and the first time I photographed West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda in April 2008 I turned a handy globe around to show it:

Papua is the island just above Australia – and West Papua its left half

Benny escaped from jail in West Papua by crawling along a ventilation shaft and gained asylum in the UK. He had been arrested for raising the West Papua flag, a crime in his country which has  occupied by Indonesia since 1963.

West Papua was a Dutch colony, and as the Dutch were preparing to grant it independence, Indonesia cleverly played the cold war game and got the US to pressure the Netherlands into giving it to Indonesia to look after. The 1962 ‘New York Agreement‘ did provide for a one person one vote  referendum at a later date for the West Papuans to decide whether to become a part of Indonesia or become independent. but Indonesia reneged on this agreement, instead detaining a thousand ‘tribal chiefs’ for a month and forcing them to vote under threat of death for themselves and their families for union.

The country – at the time renamed ‘West Irian’ had few friends in the outside world, and the US in particular were happy to forget democracy because of their political and financial interests- Indonesia had given a US mining company a very profitable deal on the largest copper and gold mines in the world in West Papua. Despite overwhelming evidence that the vote did not reflect the will of the West Papuan people, it was approved by the UN General Assembly.

Now, Papuan interests are also being sacrificed for agrofuels. Its extensive tropical forests – where many of the tribes live – are  at risk. The West Papuans are calling for a free and fair election as promised.

Benny Wenda hands a Dutch diplomat a letter calling for a free election

The demonstration marking the anniversary of the New York Agreement, known to West Papuans as the Day of the Broken promises was tuneful but I couldn’t really find a great deal to photograph. There aren’t many West Papuans living in the UK (I was told most of them were there) and only one or two others turned up in support.

Friday lunchtime perhaps isn’t the most popular time for a demonstration, but even so it’s hard to understand the complete lack of support from the left for this event, which had been given some publicity. Britain does have an involvement in the issue, with  UK based Rio Tinto group having a share in those mines, and we were involved together with the USA in putting pressure on the Netherlands to betray the Papuans. We did a rather better job on “our half” of the island, with Australia looking after both British and German New Guinea after the First World War, and the united country being granted independence (though it was not entirely plain sailing) as Papua New Guinea in 1975.

More about West Papua and more pictures from the demonstration on My London Diary.

‘Welcome to Hell’ says the graffiti on the bridge over the Lea Navigation at Hackney Wick, at the side of the path which takes site workers onto the Olympic park there, and the rest of us across to the tow path. It’s perhaps a little of an overstatement, although the pit of photographers in the image on the blue fence at left is surely  one of Satan’s finest torments.

The walk along the top of the Northern Outfall Sewer through the site is also no longer the delight it used to be, with bored security men stationed every few yards along it and a fence restricting access to a fairly narrow path along it.  Here and there are a few bushes or small trees surrounded by plastic fencing and announcing they are to be preserved while the rest of the greenery on the ‘Greenway‘ is doubtless to be razed and replace by something much more domesticated – perhaps neatly trimmed grass. At the moment it still has the old sickly-sweet sewage smell, but doubtless there are plans to deal with that (perhaps with tons of those highly noxious air fresheners that make my eyes sting!)

The glory of the Greenway, and of the Bow Back Rivers to which we no longer have access, lay in their wildness and disorder, a little bit of nature reclaiming the polluted urban space in the gaps between productive industries with some remarkable degree of success.  After 2012 we can expect a similar process  to occur – but perhaps more slowly – around the acres of concrete white elephants that will be left.

At the moment the whole stretch of Greenway south of the railway to Stratford High Street is closed for the next few months, with a diversion around by Pudding Mill Lane DLR  station, and further closures are planned for other sections and the navigation tow path.

I was sorry to miss Hackney Wick’s great art events recently, but perhaps its most vital art is visible at any time, though I suspect it may at some point disappear under Olympic whitewash. Here’s a small sample:

You can see it larger, and some more examples and other pictures from the Olympic area in August 2009 on My London Diary, where you can also find pictures of the area from around 2003 on – and in particular something most months since Jan 2007. There are more pictures from 1983 to around 2005 on my Lea Valley – River Lea site (urgently in need of updating – I have so much more which should be on it.)

Channelsea River and Manor Gardens Allotments, 2005

[Reminder:

Most images on this blog are links to larger images elsewhere on the web. You can show them larger in Firefox by right-clicking and selecting ‘View Image’ from the menu. This is particularly useful for panoramic images, as the maximum width of 450 pixels makes them look rather small.]

The above scene seemed to me one of the most bizarre I’ve photographed for quite a while, although so much so that it needs explanation.

A man is being escorted by an armed policeman into his offices past smiling demonstrators whose sole weapon is a plastic boomerang (not visible in this image) being wielded by a small child. It’s hard to penetrate the mindset that finds such an escort necessary.

But then it’s also hard to understand how people can live with themselves and arrange arms fairs to sell the weapons that kill so many around the world – including two million children  in the ten years from 1986-96 (according to UNICEF.) Armed police may make him feel safe against people holding banners, but surely do little to salve the conscience.  Probably this man goes home after work to his own children.  But of course the children who die aren’t like the child in this picture, or his own kids, but are largely black and in strife-torn countries a long way away.

The protest was against Clarion Events, organisers of many events including the world’s largest arms fair, DSEi, which is taking place at the ExCeL centre in East London next month. The 2007 show boasted over 1300 companies from 40 countries exhibiting weapons and related equipment to over 26,000 visitors, although the Space Hijackers were denied entry when they wanted to sell their tank there.

The many people who work in the area and stopped to talk to the demonstrators were surprised to find the connection with the arms fair. But then why should they, as the three companies named in large type on the signs beside the door are all diamond companies – and there is no mention of Clarion Events. If Clarion really feel they are doing nothing below board why do they hide?

More about the picket and a few more pictures on My London Diary, where I comment:

Only a few years ago we prided ourselves that our police were not armed; now they seem to want guns even to help old ladies across the road.

Although the dropping of atomic bombs by the USA on Japan was surely one of the most significant events of the 20th century, in many respects changing our view of the world, the anniversaries of the two events that destroyed the cities and many of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pass almost without notice so far as the commercial mass media are concerned.

Flowers were laid during a short silence

Sixty-three years ago, at 8.15 am on August 6, 1946, the USAF B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic weapon to be used in war, code-named “Little Boy” on the Japanese town of Hiroshima. It took almost a minute to fall from over 30,000 feet to a height of 2000 ft where it was detonated. Around 75,0000 people – almost one in three of the population of the city – were killed immediately and roughly the same number were seriously injured. Two days later, on 8 August, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, resulting in at least 40,000 being killed immediately and possibly twice as many dying by the end of the year. Many more in both cities suffered from the effects of radiation and died later.

Around 200 people met in London at Thursday lunchtime, 6th August to remember the anniversary of the first use of atomic bombs. Similar ceremonies were also held in other cities around the world. The London Memorial Ceremony, organised by London CND, took place in Tavistock Square, next to the cherry tree planted there by the Mayor of Camden in 1967 to remember the victims of Hiroshima.

More about the London memorial event and more pictures on My London Diary.

Press TV gets its funding from the Iranian government and despite its claims of independence has towed the Iran government line closely over events since the election there, ignoring or misreporting them.  Ofcom have just given it a rap on the knuckles for two programmes hosted by George Galloway which they ruled that Press TV breached the broadcasting code on impartiality over the Palestinian issue, and I hope will at some time also respond to complaints over their coverage of the Iranian elections and their aftermath.  But even more I hope for a change in Iran and the replacement of the Islamic republic by “a society where all human beings are free & equal without exploitation” as one of the banners at Sunday’s demonstration demanded.

I was glad I’d taken the underground out to Hanger Lane for this demonstration by UK and Iranian socialists and trade unionists outside the Press TV studio on Sunday afternoon, not least because there were very few photographers there. It isn’t the kind of event likely to interest the commercial press, and several of the other photographers who might have otherwise covered it were camping on the Isle of Wight for the Vestas occupation there.

Events like this – you can see more pictures and read more about it on My London Diary – are simply “not news” for the mainstream press, and so I was particularly pleased to see that my report and pictures was one of the four stories that made the front page on Demotix (the full story is here) and was still featured there over a day later. And of course I put it on Indymedia too.

I rather liked being able to show Neda Agha-Soltan holding a placard! Though her hand is just a little on the large side. Here is another example of the t-shirt:

(If you need a clue about the 8 March, this page from 2004 will help. )

The demonstration at the French Embassy on Monday was perhaps most interesting for the curiously mixed actions of the police, both toward the demonstrators and the press.

The Embassy is on the corner of Knightbridge and Albert Gate, with its entrance a few yards down Albert Gate. Police wanted the demonstrators to stand in a pen on the other side of Knightsbridge a few yards to the west, where they could only see the Embassy across 4 lanes of traffic. They decided not to comply as it was too far away for their protest to be effective – those in the Embassy would probably not be able to see or hear much of the demonstration, and the protest continued for around an hour and a half in Albert Gate.

One officer came and told a couple of demonstrators standing on the pavement in the centre of the road with a large banner they had to move because they were causing an obstruction. Clearly they were carefully positioned out of the way of anyone, but in the end they decided to move and asked her where they could stand and not cause an obstruction. She then told them they would be OK to stand on the roadway right in front of the embassy entrance  porch,  much to the consternation of the police who were standing there.

The same woman officer also took one of the demonstrators to the door of the embassy and arranged for one of the diplomats to come out and talk to her as she wanted to hand the leaflet in to the embassy.  He came out and they stood for five minutes or so talking on the embassy steps.

At one point while I was photographing the two of them one of the officers standing on the steps deliberately came and stood in front of my lens. I moved to one side and he moved to keep my view blocked. We went back and forth perhaps a dozen times, he obviously thinking it was a fun game. Since his reactions were a little slow I was still able to get some pictures, but this isn’t the kind of cooperation the police are expected to give the press.

He hasn’t yet noticed I’ve moved to the right…

I should have made a complaint to the senior officer present, but by that time I would have missed the pictures, so having got a few from that position I moved elsewhere to continue taking pictures.

Another curious incident came when I was talking to another photographer in the middle of the road, and he noticed the police photographer who had been hiding behind a police van come out and point his telephoto lens directly at us rather than the protesters. We went across to him and asked him why he was taking pictures of the press and he denied strongly that he was, saying he had no interest in us at all.  I suppose it’s some kind of progress. Other than these two incidents, so far as I’m aware, photographers had no issues at all with police behaviour.

A few minutes before the demonstration, which had been entirely peaceful throughout, was due to finish at 2pm, a van load or two of  police dressed in blue overalls and some carrying tasers arrived and began to look at the demonstrators in a very menacing way.

One masked protester who had been annoying the police photographer was then warned under Section 14 of the 1986 Public Order act and then arrested. The other demonstrators were then warned under the same act that they would also be arrested if they didn’t move across the road to the pen, and eventually decided to go. Once they reached the other side of the road they decided that since they had been demonstrating for over an hour and a half it was time to leave.

More about Calais and this demonstration – and of course more pictures – on My London Diary.

There isn’t a great deal I can say about sex workers from personal experience. I’d suggest than its worth reading the preliminary report of a project, Migrant Workers in the UK Sex Industry from the Economic and Social Research Council of London Metropolitan University which appeared recently.  Of course not all sex workers are migrant workers, but many are, and current government thinking on making laws in this area are very much based on the need to take action against the trafficking of women for sex.

There are nine bullet points in the initial report which says that most migrant sex workers were not forced or trafficked, but take up sex work because other work they can get is very poorly paid. The main problems they face are their stigmatisation as sex workers and the lack of official documentation that opens them to abuse and violence. They report that most of their contacts with clients involve mutual respect and consent.

In Soho, many women work from their own or shared flats, and Westminster Council has been trying to get rid of these. The local community association – the Soho Society – and local people, including the rector of St Anne’s, Soho, have supported the women. Working from a flat is much safer than working on the street and also creates less nuisance.

The parade was in part to thank the people of Soho for their support, but also to oppose the  Policing & Crime Bill currently going through parliament which will criminalise clients and also make it easier for the police to persecute sex workers. It was organised by the ‘Soho Working Girls‘ and the ‘English Collective of Prostitutes‘, who state “We are mothers, daughters, sisters, grannies, aunties struggling to support ourselves and our families, just like other women.”

Those taking part in the parade were masked (although I saw many of them before they put their masks on) but otherwise they seemed very little different to any group of women one might meet on the streets of London, as this statement suggests. Although it’s a story that has attracted a great deal of interest because of the subject matter, in fact there was very little titillating about the event, though the masks and costumes made it fun to watch and photograph.

You can read more about it and see many more pictures as usual on My London Diary.

The trough is at the bottom of the steps to the Royal Exchange in London, at the very centre of the City of London. I’m lying down a couple of steps higher and looking through the viewfinder to take a picture of three guys with pig masks with ‘Miss Piggy’ looking on. In the trough is pig swill, or rather a mix of flour and water and scanned copies of fivers with a pig over the Queen on them.

It’s perhaps a more interesting protest than most, organised by Chris Knight and others from the G20 meltdown team to mark the fact that obscene bonuses have returned to the City of London.  The taxpayers put millions into the banks and now the banks are rewarding the guys responsible for losing millions with silly amounts – for some more than the lifetime earnings of ordinary workers for a year’s gambling on the markets.

Photographically there were a couple of problems. Pig swill did fly around rather, and a number of my shots were ruined by  lumps of it on the front glass.  I kept checking and wiping the lenses, but soon decided to put the Sigma 12-24mm away. I’ve just collected it a couple of days ago from a repair at Fixation (my preferred repair firm, located in Vauxhall) when they replaced the front element that had got damaged over several years of abuse.

The Sigma 12-24mm is a great lens. It isn’t particularly small or light, but despite being so wide has relatively little distortion, at least when used on DX cameras like the Nikon D300. Straight lines stay pretty well straight and unless you are doing architectural work really never need correction. It works well on autofocus, which isn’t always the case for extreme wide-angles, and I’ve come to rely on it for a lot of my work.

But I bought it around five years ago, soon after it first came out, and the one problem with the design is that the bulbous front element made it impossible to fit a protective UV filter.  Over the years that front element got more and more marks and little scratches, and eventually I started to find that pictures taken into the light showed excessive flair.

I asked the guy at Sigma, and he said, no problem – we can replace the front element, so I took it into Fixation. They did the job, though it took over a month for Sigma actually to supply them with the necessary glass, and I collected a shiny as-new lens a couple of weeks ago.

One of the reasons I bought the Sigma rather than the Nikon 12-24 was that it can cover the full 24x36mm frame. Although five years ago Nikon was still saying it would never produce a ‘full-frame’ camera I wasn’t convinced. Although technically it probably wasn’t necessary, I thought that perhaps marketing pressure would push them into it – and I turned out to be right.

So I can either use the 12-24 on the D700 – where 12mm is really very very wide, or use it on my D300 where it works as an 18-36mm equivalent, a great focal length range and also even better quality as it’s using just the central part of the lens.

Sigma build quality on the EX lenses seems to me to be considerably better than that of the Nikon lenses I’ve used – mainly from the cheaper range. This and the 24-70 HSM – with which the picture above was taken, the 12-24 having been stowed away safely in my bag – feel really solid. The 12-24mm has a built-in fixed petal lens hood, but the 24-70 is removable, but considerably sturdier than the hood on my Nikon 18-200, which seems nasty cheap plastic.

The picture needed a little fill-flash, supplied by a Nikon SB800, quite simply the best flash I’ve ever used, though not quite up to hard usage. I’d only just collected that from Fixation also, having had to have a new flash tube fitted. Labour cost around three times the price of the part, but I’m told that Nikon charge considerably more for the job.

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary as usual.