Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Notting Hill – I went home early on purpose

There are two kinds of photographers when it comes to covering violent or potentially violent events, those like to keep safe and those who seem to hunt out trouble. I found out which I was pretty definitively on May Day in 2000, when I was in the middle of a surging crowd in Whitehall and a few yards away people started smashing the windows of that well-known fast food shop.

May 1, 2000
A woman shouts at demonstrators from behind a police line

My immediate thought wasn’t to rush and push my way through the packed bodies to get pictures, but to think whether I wanted to take pictures that might incriminate those involved. And I pointed my lens away and photographed instead some of the reactions to the event, including those of the police who after giving the demonstrators time to trash the place decided to move in, incidentally with a an entirely gratuitous violent assault by one officer on a photographer standing close to me – unfortunately my picture of the event too blurred to provide any evidence.

May1, 2000
Police charge – but I missed a picture of a photographer close to me being hit by a baton

Looking back, it was the wrong decision, and certainly when the police charged I should have followed them rather than deciding it was time to go home rather than risk being detained by the police for several hours. Now I think I would react differently – and certainly now being an union member with a press card and an emergency support number helps a little. But I’m still a cautious (or sometimes rather timid) kind of guy.

So although I’ve been to Notting Hill Carnival for around 20 years I’ve never photographed any violence there. For me it’s a great event with hundreds of thousands of people enjoying themselves, while the press coverage this year gave almost as much attention to the 40 youths who had a minor rampage and threw bottles at the police on Ladbroke Grove as to the three-quarters of a million who danced along there earlier. (In the coverage from Sky on at the Times it is hard to see any rioters at all, though the streets are full of police.)

By 5pm I’d been photographing carnival for five hours and felt it was enough. All my pictures are about carnival and not about a violent few, and deliberately so, and I certainly left with a feeling that things might get at least rather lively later. I missed the violence because as always I went home long before it started as darkness fell.

On Ladbroke Grove where the incidents occurred several hours later

One of my friends was still there later taking pictures (probably including some of those that made the papers), but I prefer the film coverage, at least for the actual scenes it shows from the street, where the viewer can get a better idea of the extent of the problem and make their own judgements. Still photography can sometimes catch a moment that has a particular intensity or that somehow represents a situation or an event, but if anyone did that here I’ve yet to see it. And even with cameras like the Nikon D3, video still seems to have an advantage in very low light, perhaps because sharpness is far less important in moving images.

One thing I find surprising is the apparent slowness of the police to respond to the youths, who they say were making trouble for two hours. There were after all reported to be 40 youths and 11,000 police, including a number with riot shields and the full gear – including, according to my photographer friend, tazers which were used on some of the youths, although this gets no mention in the press coverage I’ve seen.

There was a sickening predictability to the coverage of the event by some of our newspapers. Ridiculous comparisons made to the Notting Hill riots of 1958 when white racist thugs threw petrol bombs into the homes of black families, or the 1976 battle when the 3000 police on duty decided to close down carnival and were repulsed by those taking part. (Thanks to the web you can now access material published in 1976 by the Times (see Times Archive box at left, some way down the page, the BBC and others.)

Others used the small disturbances as a pretext to call for an end (or at least an emasculation) of carnival, something the police and some administrators have long wanted – with calls in 1976 by the then Commissioner of the Met, Sir Robert Mark,called for the event to be held in a stadium. Although carnival over the years I’ve been going has become in some ways more restrained and ordered, it is still a long way from that kind of sanitised display, with crowds behind barriers rather than taking part.

You can see my pictures of the carnival from Notting Hill on My London Diary.

Free Hackney Carry On Protest Torch

As billions around the world were being fed images of the Olympic Flag passing from the Mayor of Beijing to our local glove muppet (it’s just so embarrassing to be emborised) in another important ceremony more or less totally unobserved by the commercial media, the Olympic baton of protest was passed from the Free Tibet movement to the Free Hackney campaign.

To mark the transfer, rather than eight minutes of puke-inducing performance that made me sad to be English, the Free Hackney campaign brought their ‘tank’ to the ‘street party’ in Hoxton St that celebrated our considerably more sensible approach to the 1948 event. Perhaps because of the lack of money it was probably the last Olympics to have any real connection with the spirit of the modern Olympic movement, celebrated in the words of its founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin: “L’important n’est pas de gagner, mais de participer.” Tell anyone remotely connected with Team Britain or the rest of our sports industry that what is important isn’t winning but taking part and they will look on you as a lunatic.

The ‘tank’ – some kind of small and lightly armoured personnel carrier – was manned and womanned by some familiar faces from earlier ‘Space Hijackers‘ events, including a tank commander I last saw in charge of a rather larger ‘tank’ being auctioned at (or rather just outside) thanks to over-keen co-operation between police and the arms traffickers, at the the East London Arms Fair at Canning Town’s EXCEL centre.

The vehicle carried several ‘Free Hackney‘ flags which have a familiar yellow, blue and red sun motif, as well as a considerably more meaningful adaptation of the Olympic logo.

As ‘Free Hackney’ point out, London 2012 presents a great opportunity for property developers to rip us off and make obscene profits building luxury flats in the area, while at the same time restricting public access, closing down the existing free facilities and demolishing social housing and local businesses.

Next to the tank the ‘austerity Olympics’ were taking place on a small section of Hoxton St, with events such as a slow walking race creating considerable hilarity. Unfortunately the event in 2012 promises to be rather more painful.

(Based on a story posted by me to Indymedia on 24 Aug.)

Olympic Gold for Brompton

The one bright spot in the otherwise intensely puerile 8 minutes of the London presentation for the Olympic closing ceremony was the appearance of a Brompton.

Hackney Handover - Brompton
Hackney Handover- Brompton at extreme right.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that this quirky and clever British invention – and probably now the only vehicle of any kind designed and manufactured in England – should be made the official vehicle of London 2012. Because that might suggest that these would at have some pretension to being a green Olympics, an impression the organisers have so far gone to some lengths to avoid by removing the Manor Gardens ‘Olympic’ allotments from the site.

The Brompton became quickly one of my favourite photographic accessories when I bought one at the end of 2002. You can take it on trains, on the underground, get off, unfold it in 15 seconds and ride it away. The front bag is a good place to carry cameras, and you can stop anywhere to take pictures, unlike a car where by the time you have found a place to park you may face a long walk to the location – or have missed the chance of a picture.

It’s also handy when parked against a fence or wall, adding up to a couple of feet to your height to see over obstacles – one foot on the saddle and one on the handlebars for maximum lift, enabling you to climb up easily on walls and look over fences. It’s almost like having a short step-ladder with you.

If necessary you can walk with it, and it carries your kit like a trolley. You can climb up footbridges with it on your shoulder, set it down and ride away and it can also take you reasonable distances at a decent speed. It’s not a good off-road choice, but on a decent surface can travel at a good pace, and I’ve often covered 20 or 30 miles, occasionally more.

But its real forte is rush-hour traffic, when I’ve made journeys across London in minutes that would have taken at least twice as long in car or taxi or by underground. With a Brompton, London seems much smaller – even if, like me, you usually stop at red traffic lights and keep to the correct direction on one-way streets – and its short wheelbase makes weaving in and out of cars held up in traffic easy.

It’s only real down-side is that it’s a powerful magnet for thieves, with a high second-hand value getting quick sales at on-line auction sites and on dodgy market stalls. Forget D-locks, heavy chains, it’s never safe to leave it locked- you just have to take it everywhere with you, which can occasionally be a problem even though it folds pretty small.

Prison Justice – Paula Campbell

Prison Justice Day, August 10, started in Canada in the 1970s. On August 10, 1974, Eddie Nalon bled to death in solitary confinement, and on that day a year later prisoner in the jail held a one-day hunger strike and a memorial service – and were themselves put in solitary for doing so. By August 10, 1976, there were two deaths being remembered by the prisoners, and thousands of prisoners in jails across Canada took part in a hunger strike, with Prison Justice Day Committees in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia organising events in the outside community.

In 1983, prisoners in France joined in, calling for the day to be an international event and by the mid 1990s those in Germany, England and the US were also involved. You can read the details of the history on the Prison Justice web site.

In this country, one of the best known campaigners for justice in our prisons was Pauline Campbell. After the death of her daughter in Styal Prison in 2003, she put all her considerable energy and organisational skills into a constant campaign against deaths in prison. I first met her later that year in Trafalgar Square at the annual United Friends and Family Campaign Remembrance demonstration, where her story moved me to tears.

Pauline Campbell speaking in 2003

I photographed her on several occasions after that and got to know her rather better this January at a protest outside Holloway jail in London, in memory of Jaime Pearce, a 24 year old who died there the previous month, aged 24, the eighth woman to die in jail in 2007. From then on – like many journalists – I received regular emails from her about her protests, as well as frequent personal messages about my own work.

Pauline assaulted
Pauline Campbell assaulted by a police officer outside Holloway, Jan 2008

Like others who knew her I was deeply shocked (but not surprised) at the news of her suicide at her daughter’s graveside in May this year. So I was sorry to miss the demonstration for Prisoner Justice Day organised by the group No More Prison outside HMP Styal on August 10 to show solidarity with women in prison and pay tribute to Pauline Campbell, who we remember as a fearless campaigner and a remarkable person.

Police States – Hoo and Beijing

I’ve been in Scotland for the past couple of weeks, visiting Glasgow and Iona, and missing much of what’s been happening both actually and in the media – though I did see a few seconds of the Olympics when I walked through a lounge on a ferry near Oban.

In a previous post I wrote about the rally at Rochester and the march to the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth in Kent on August 3, but I left the march after a couple of miles to come back, make that post, then pack for Scotland. The few press reports and radio news items I heard in the next week weren’t at all informative about what was actually happening at the camp, with no mention at all of the workshops, talks and other educational events taking place, and very little about the activities of the police.

In Rochester, the police were, so far as I could see, doing what they should do, having regard for the safety of the protesters on the march and allowing the rally and protest to proceed while also ensuring that those not involved in it could carry on with their activities with minimal disruption. While I was present, press and others photographing or reporting on the event were not impeded in any way.

Down the road and later in the week things appear to be very different, as you can see from the reports on various blogs. One of the best is Jason N Parkinson’s, with a number of reports including one with a video showing the police searching journalists – including Jason himself and Marc Vallée, who also has some powerful images. Although some situations might justify such searches, this would not appear to be one, and the length of time for which they were detained seems totally unjustifiable and the incident seems a clear attempt by police to restrict press freedom.

For the week, this part of Kent – the Hoo Peninsula – became a police state, apparently under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice Act, which police appear to interpret as giving them the power to do “anything they like” – including – as Marina Pepper describes, for male police officers to touch her in a way that in any other circumstances would have had her “pressing charges for sexual assault and expect justice to be done.” They also confiscated her grandmother’s table cloth as an offensive weapon and then lost it.

Section 60, intended by Parliament to give police powers to deal with football hooligans or others who might be ‘tooled up’ for trouble, should only be used where there is a reasonable belief by a senior police officer of incidents involving serious violence taking place. Few actual occasions where the police have used Section 60 orders would appear to meet this condition, and the intentions of the climate campers were largely if not entirely peaceable. Does trespass and the possibility of some damage through direct action qualify legally as ‘serious violence’? I would have hardly thought so, but then I’m not a lawyer.

Section 60 gives police the power to “stop any person or vehicle and make any search he thinks fit” whether or not he has any grounds for suspicion, and to seize articles which “he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be an offensive weapon.” This means “anything made or adapted for use for causing injury to persons” or “intended by the person having it with him for such use by him or by some other person.” It seems highly unlikely that that there could ever be reasonable grounds for seizing a table cloth.

The police have often if not always pushed laws beyond what Parliament intended in defence of the status quo, often knowing that if and when things come to court there may be a fair trial and the case will then be thrown out or lost – as has happened frequently in recent years. Perhaps one day we will get a government that believes in freedom and attempts to rein in the force, but I’m not holding my breath.

As we have all seen, in China these things are simpler, and journalists covering the protests at the Olympics have been prevented from photographing, assaulted and in some cases detained, despite the promises of press freedom given by the authorities to obtain the Games. Among those assaulted was the Guardian’s Dan Chung, and his pictures as well as those of him being attacked are on the Guardian site along with a video of ITN News correspondent John Ray being taken away in a van. There is link to another video of the event on the PDN Pulse site.

Incidentally Ray says he was detained by the Chinese for about 30 minutes, ten minutes less than the photographers stopped in Hoo.

Climate Camp – Kingsnorth

Photographers – including my own union, the NUJ – have again complained about the media policy at this year’s climate camp which started today at Kingsnorth on the Isle of Grain in Kent, the proposed site of a new coal-fired power station. Last year I decided I wasn’t prepared to work within the restrictions that the organisers had set, and only covered a little of the actions outside the camp on the final day.

This year, my reasons for not covering the camp are simpler – I have to be in Scotland while it is taking place, but I was able to photograph the ‘No New Coal’ march from Rochester to the camp, or at least the rally in Rochester and the first couple of miles of the march.

Climate Caravan arrives in Rochester from Heathrow

Rochester is certainly a historic city (or an historic one) and I think we were perhaps making history there today in an action – along with those against a third runway at Heathrow that may come to be seen as a turning point for our government – and our planet. Unless we move beyond green rhetoric to green action now, the opportunity to save the world may be missed.

There is no such thing as clean coal. If a new coal burning station is built at Kingsnorth this single plant will add more pollution than many whole countries currently produce. The company and our government talk about carbon capture and storage, but Kingsnorth will not incorporate these (just be ‘ready’ for them.) It is far from certain that these technologies will ever be developed and even less likely if so that they will be economic.

The nettle that we have to grasp is that of decreasing energy use. So far we have cut emissions simply by exporting the industries we used to have to other countries. We still actually use the products of the energy, but the pollution counts against the producing countries not us.

‘No New Coal’ march sets off from Rochester

Some things would be relatively easy to cut. We could travel less, and do more of it by less polluting methods – using rail or ship rather than air, possibly developing the use of slower but more fuel-efficient methods such as airships rather than aircraft. Increasingly better on-line communications should be cutting down the need for travel to meetings, but in fact we seem to be travelling more despite using them.

Renewable methods of power generation would cut down emissions, although we also need to cut down the use of power and also of water. A shift to more local methods of power generation rather than increasing reliance on large power stations could have a very useful effect.

But importantly people need to be persuaded that you can live better while using less energy and less resources.

The ‘No New Coal’ march goes over the Medway towards Kingsnorth

So although I still have reservations about the media policy (and there is considerable interest from the media in the camp) I hope it will be successful. Because I’ll be away it will be rather longer than usual before more pictures appear on My London Diary.

A Bitter Birthday

Yesterday was my elder son’s 32nd birthday, but he wasn’t at home – I expect to see him later today when he comes back home. But yesterday I went to another birthday party, for a young man exactly two years younger than my son. His family, a few miles away in London, haven’t seen him since 2002 and may never see him again.

Fair Tiral?

Binyam Mohamed, born in Ethiopia but lived in London and was given refugee status in 1994 was in Afghanistan in 2002 and fled across the border to Pakistan when the fighting started . There he was kidnapped and handed over to the CIA becoming one of the many subject to “illegal rendition”. First they flew him to Morocco, where he was tortured for 18 months. At times he was shackled in excruciatingly painful positions, sometimes hanging, for hours or days in darkness, unable to move to relieve the pain, often with headphones blasting music at ear-splitting volume into his head. Other abuses included regular razor cuts to his genitals. The torture continued at Kabul’s Dark Prison where he was rendered next, before going on to Guantanamo. You can read more about his treatment on the Reprieve website, at the National Guantanamo Coalition or on You Tube (and related videos there.)

The US now intend to put Binyam in front of a military tribunal, calling for the death penalty. The “evidence” was produced during his torture and none would be admissible in any proper court.

The London Guantánamo Campaign had organised a six day vigil at the US embassy calling for Binyam’s release and return home, which culminated in a protest party on Whitehall, urging our Government to do more to get the US to release him. I hope that Gordon will talk to Obama about it too when they meet tonight. Earlier this year I photographed a day of demonstrations in London on the 6th anniversary of the setting up of the illegal prison camp at Guantánamo, with events organised by Amnesty, the London Guantánamo Campaign, London Catholic Workers and ending with a rally in Parliament Square by Cageprisoners / Guantánamo Campaign, at which Binyam’s case was raised.

As I walked away I felt for Binyam and for his family. When I see my son tonight I’ll remember them again.

You couldn’t make it up

My pool picture ban over paedophile fears is a real headline from the Metro and tells the story of an 82year old woman who was stopped while taking pictures of an empty paddling pool on a common in Southhampton. A council employee told the widow to put her camera away because she might be a paedophile.

Of course she was in a public place and carrying out a perfectly legal act. Even if the pool had been swarming with children she would still have been within her legal rights to take photographs, although it would be a brave woman (and a much braver man) that would insist on those legal rights in the current perverted climate.

Although Southampton council have apologised, they stated: ‘It is appropriate that our staff are aware of who is taking photos.’ This confuses the act of taking photographs (whether or not they include children) with a potential risk of sexual offending against children. In practice it seems rather unlikely that potential offenders will draw attention to themselves by using a camera in this way in a public place, and council staff would probably be more sensibly employed giving greater attention to any adults without cameras – and in particular those who loiter without cameras around where children play.

With or without a camera people can behave in ways that may be suspicious – approaching children, talking to them, following them etc, and although they may of course be perfectly innocent I think most of us would agree it a good idea if council workers and others kept an eye on their actions. But people in any position of authority, however slight, need proper training, and part of it should be to learn that photography in public places is not an offence and no more a suspicious activity than walking a dog – probably considerably less so given that many children are attracted to animals.

There is a poll (‘The Big Vote’) on the Metro page (at the right of the page) which asks readers to vote on whether they think the council worker’s action was over the top. I was flabbergasted to find when I voted that there was a whole 6% of people who didn’t.

Local Government workers ask for a fair pay deal

Unison and Unite were the main unions involved in a two-day strike in protest at the pay deal the Government is imposing on most workers in local government, which will mean most of them get increases that are less than the current rate of inflation – pay that is worth less.

Various pickets and marches were organised across the country, and I photographed a march by a couple of thousand trade unionists in central London on Wednesday.

Local Govt march

I’m in favour of fairness over pay, and the public sector has always taken a knock when the government finds the financial going tough – and never makes things up when the economy booms. However I couldn’t help reflecting as I was taking pictures that many of the photographers there are scraping by on a fraction of what most local government workers earn, with fees for freelance work generally being much the same as they were 10 or even 20 years ago. The minimum wage doesn’t apply to freelances, and many would be financially better off in any full-time employment.

Many if not most people who try to make a living through photography fail. Often they spend a few years trying, then either give up completely or discover some other source of income to support them while they continue. I’ve known photographers whose living comes from renting property, from selling stuff on e-bay, from delivering milk, from gardening jobs, part-time teaching, waitressing and more. Many rely on partners who have regular paying jobs – some even in local government.

Tent City

“Tent City“, the occupation of the Wembley Sports Ground in opposition to the building of a city academy on the site was finally brought to an end early last Friday morning, when specialist bailiffs acting for Brent Council turned up and removed Hank Roberts, the local secretary of the two major teaching unions, the NUT and the ATL who had locked himself to the flagpole on the top of the changing room block.

Hank Roberts (left) talks to another protester on the roof – with Wembley Stadium in the background

Although I wasn’t there for the eviction, I had climbed the ladders up to the roof to talk to Hank and some of the other protesters on Wednesday, when he was continuing the protest despite a court injunction against him personally and the protest in general. The fight to stop the academy will continue, but the plans to house 200 children in portable classrooms on the site for next September now seem likely to go ahead, despite the poor educational experience this seems almost certain to provide.

I also wrote a complaint to the BBC about their biased reporting of the occupation, which highlighted the comments of a Brent Council representative and failed to mention the educational reasons for the action or that Roberts was a teacher and union secretary. As yet I have not received a reply.

I was very glad I could climb down after half and hour or so, as I have no head for heights, perhaps because my father used to take me up on roofs that he was repairing. Our ideas about ‘Health & Safety’ were very different then and there were times when he had to look after a small child and earn a living.

You can read more about the ‘Tent City’ protest and see more pictures on My London Diary