Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Smash EDO

Brighton residents who had marched against the war in Iraq formed ‘Smash EDO‘ in 2004 when they learnt that a factory in their city, EDO (since taken over by ITT and now known as EDO/ITT) was responsible for making guidance systems and other components that made the bombing of Iraq possible. They began a continuing series of regular demonstrations against the company that was profiting from killing people there.

As well as regular weekly ‘noise’ demonstrations, they have organised other events and meetings around the country, and made a film, ‘On The Verge’ about the campaign. They successfully fought an injunction by EDO that would have prevented demonstrations and got the local council to pass a motion upholding their right to peaceful and lawful protest following some very questionable police activity and arrests during demonstrations.

Around 600 marchers walked and danced along the main road towards EDO

On Wednesday I went to Brighton to photograph the ‘Carnival Against the Arms Trade‘ which Smash EDO had organised. It started as a lively fun event, but got a little out of hand when police tried to stop the marchers before they had reached the EDO factory.

Police tried to stop marchers

The marchers pushed over the police barriers and past the police who made only token attempts to stop them at that point. At two other points in the remaining two hundred yards or so the police again made a rather half-hearted line across the road, delaying the march slightly until people again pushed through to the factory gates.

Batons were used

Although there had been a little pushing and shoving, and police had certainly extended and used their batons, I only saw banners rather the demonstrators being hit and in general tempers had remained fairly cool and behaviour relatively restrained, rather as if in a slightly unruly rugby scrum, although with rather more shouting. There were a lot of police, but most were just standing and watching their colleagues getting pushed back

Eventually around 300 of the marchers reached the gates (others had waited further down the hill or gone home), which were protected by a triple line of police, with more in reserve. I went back and up the hill to get an overall view and discussed the situation with some of the others around.

It looked like stalemate – but how wrong could I be!

The general opinion was that little further was likely to happen. The factory was surrounded by a high and secure fence and there were more than enough police to hold the demonstrators at bay, with now quite a few taking a rest further down the hill.

So I thought I’d more or less done all I could and walked down the hill to catch a bus. Maybe get home and file some pictures…

But apparently as soon as my back was turned, someone mysteriously opened a gate and demonstrators rushed in, soon followed by police. A few windows were broken and there was considerable violence, with police using batons and pepper spray as well as bringing in police dogs. It seems just a matter of good fortune that nobody appears to have been seriously injured.

Ten people were arrested, mainly for minor offences, though they were all held for 30 hours before being released on police bail without charges being laid, to return to the custody centre in early August. While they were being held, police raided a number of their homes and seized several computers, mobile phones and clothes.

You can see more of my view of the events on My London Dairy, and reports mainly about what happened after I left the scene early on Indymedia. I should have stayed until things were more obviously over, but it was a nice day and I had other things I wanted to do!

Seven Years in Parliament Square

Brian Haw started his one man protest in Parliament Square on 2 June, 2001. Despite police harassment and vigilante attacks (ignored or even encouraged by police) not to mention an Act of Parliament designed to get rid of him, he is still there seven years later.

I can’t remember when I first saw him there, or when I first photographed him, but I have many pictures from over the years. You can of course read more about him and the Parliament Square Peace Campaign on the Parliament Square web site.

I was among those who went along on Sunday afternoon to mark the occasion, joining him and his regular supporters in the square. Brian himself was marking it by fasting and praying until Monday 2nd.

You can see a few more pictures on My London Diary. It was a dull, drab day with not a lot happening – as must have so often have been the case over the 2561 (and counting) days that Brian has been there.

This was at the 5th anniversary in 2006:

2006 Parliament Square

And one from the 6th anniversary:

Over the years Brian has seen and taken part in many of the political protests in Parliament Square and around:

With peace protesters at the Cenotaph in 2004. Brian holds a placard “War Kills the Innocent” in front of Cenotaph in Whitehall, where the Code Pink wreath reads, “How Many Will Die in Iraq Today?”.

My favourite picture of him was taken during the rally against the replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles in March 2007.

Brian Haw

Brian’s T-shirt in this picture carries the message “Find Your Courage; Share Your Vision; Change Your World” which seems so appropriate. It – and the quote – was produced by US disablement activist Dan Wilkins, who was delighted to see Brian wearing it when I sent him a copy of the picture.

Humans say NO to Heathrow

NO to a third runway at Heathrow

I took this picture with one hand on the camera, the other holding a large sheet just like those in the picture, taking part with around 2600 others in the large human ‘NO’ that was being recorded live on BBC News TV when I made this picture. I checked to make sure that my own ‘NO’ was the correct way up, but not everyone was so careful, not that you could have seen in the view from the cherry-picker or helicopter.

It was an event at which most of the protesters were local people, many who will lose homes if the runway goes ahead. Of course they will get compensation, but the terms are often far from fair financially. Some have long links with the area, many with parents or spouses and other relatives buried in the Cherry Lane Cemetery, opened in 1936, which may be covered by a spur road to the airport if plans go ahead.

Activists on the march from Hatton Cross to Sipson

The march and rally attracted support from MPs of all parties with constituencies under the flightpath. Surprisingly one of the closest boroughs to Heathrow, Spelthorne (until 1995 boundary changes it included the site of Terminal 5) where I live supports the development – along with its MP. This will probably change once the plans for the fourth Runway through its centre are leaked!

MPs Justine Greening (Con, Putney), John McDonnell (Lab, Hayes & Harlington), and Susan Kramer (LibDem, Richmond Park) at the front of the march in Sipson
I’ve written about the proposed development and Saturday’s demonstration on My London Diary as usual.

No Third Runway

Today I photographed a demonstration against the continuing expansion of London Heathrow, certainly one of the worst located airports in the developed world.

I grew up under its flightpath. In my back garden in Hounslow I would imagine myself reaching up and touching the planes as they passed overhead. It wouldn’t have needed very long arms. I dreamed (or nightmared) of them passing over in flames (though sometime it was true) and jumping across the sky as flaming fragments.

Heathrow was established by deception – as a miltary airstrip for which there was no military purpose. It has grown by lies. The third terminal was all the airport would ever want, but as soon as planning permission was obtained, in went the application for a fourth. Of course that would be enough. But somehow we have a fifth, and the sixth will soon be with us unless we stop the madness.

The quiet Middlesex villages I cycled through as a child – and by the time I was ten I was roaming through them all on my bicycle and further afield – are either already gone or under threat. Longford, Sipson, Harlington, Harmondsworth and more.

Harmondsworth, 2003

Harmondsworth, 2003

Look at the placard at the right of the picture. Here is a detail from another frame that states clearly what the BAA, responsible for Heathrow, promised about the possibility of a third runway there:

Detail of BAA's view of a third runway at Heathrow
Rule out third runway say BAA

I hope today’s demonstration – in which over 3000 people gave a resounding ‘No’ to the idea of a third runway will cause even our un-green government to think again. It has been clear to anyone who took a careful and balanced view that Heathrow was in the wrong place since the 1950s – if not before. Government after government has refused to grasp the nettle and start to develop another London airport on a more suitable site. We now have a different situation, with increasing oil prices as we go past ‘peak oil’ as well as an much greater appreciation of the catastrophe approaching through climate change. From every point of view – even a strict economic one that ignores environmental issues – Heathrow needs to shrink rather than expand.

I’ll post some of my own pictures of today’s demonstration shortly. For the moment you can see a few my pictures from the march from Sipson to Harmondsworth in June 2003, and you can also see the BBC’s video coverage of the event, in which I appear rather too prominently, immediately after the huge ‘NO’, taken from a cherry picker, as a photographer in a blue check shirt, first walking towards the camera and then walking back into the frame to take another picture.

Justice for Darfur

The genocide in Darfur has being going on for so long that it seldom makes the news, which is perhaps why none of the newspapers could be bothered to send anyone to cover the demonstration in London calling for ‘Justice for Darfur’ and for those accused of war crimes there to be sent for trial at the International Criminal Court.

Although over 50 people haven been listed for investigation, so far as I am aware only two arrest warrants have been issued. Ahmad Haroun is a minister in the Sudanese government, and rather than send him for trial, the government response has been to promote him. Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb was actually being held by the police in Sudan on other charges when the warrant was issued, but they have since released him without charge.

As I said to one of those on the demonstration and march, it is hard to see why an event like this isn’t news when celebrities only need to sneeze to make the front page. As so often to find out what is really going on you have to look on the Internet rather than rely on what the commercial press thinks we want to know – or wants to tell us. I’m a great supporter of press freedom, but at the moment most of the press is hardly worth fighting for, and we often have to rely on non-commercial news media such as Indymedia for news.

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary

Journey to Justice

Sunday I was a demonstrator with a camera rather than a reporter, going with a coachload of others from a church a few miles away to Birmingham. Ten years ago I’d made a similar journey to form a human chain around the conference centre where heads of government from around the world were meeting; I think the 70,000 of us were the first major demonstration at a G8 meeting, and we put Debt Relief very firmly on the political agenda.

Methodists from Worcester caught in the chains of debt, Birmingham, 2008

Digital showed its strength again, when we went into the rally in the same conference centre that the G8 had used. The lighting in the hall wasn’t bright, but I was still able to take some nice sharp images with the 20mm from my seat, although it was a pity that the 18-200mm VR lens had jammed the previous day. The picture below, taken without VR, was at 1/125th on a Sigma 55-200mm lens at 200mm (300mm equiv) full aperture, ISO 1600, and is sharp and relatively noise-free.

Ann Pettifor (Advocacy International and Operation Noah, previously of Jubilee 2000)

It was a long day – but interesting, although the final demonstration proved a bit of a challenge – a human pie chart to illustrate that 20% of debt has been dropped but 80% still remains. Here’s my best effort.

Taken to the Cleaners

London Cleaners at AON

It’s hard not to sympathise with the cleaners when you compare the rates they get paid for cleaning the London offices of some of the richest companies in the world with the ridiculous amounts paid to some of those who work there. They certainly deserve enough to live on – and the current minimum wage isn’t enough to survive on in London. Their demand is for a living wage – currently set at £7.20 an hour – as well as some basic rights as workers.

Their campaign aims to shame the companies by making a fuss, with demonstrations that are highly visible and audible. It was one event where I was glad I had a set of ear plugs in my pocket as they blew their whistles pretty mightily. The red t-shirts and flags make them stand out, particularly in the financial area where dull suits abound.

I’d like my pictures to be as powerful as possible, but it was hard to produce anything really dramatic – and even harder to get anyone interested in publishing them. More pictures and more about the campaign on My London Diary.

Anyone for Morris?

I’m never quite sure that I want to photograph Morris Dancing. Partly I think because it seems to be such a popular subject with amateur photographers – the kind of event that gets listed under ‘photo opportunities‘ in the amateur magazines. Fortunately I don’t think these have got onto May Queens yet. But it does seem to be a general rule that whenever something is listed whether on a press release or elsewhere as a ‘photo-op’ it is almost certain to be boring. You, along with 27 other photographers are presented with someone else’s idea (almost always a word person’s idea) of what would make a good photograph, typically some posed group, and its always hard work – if not impossible – to make a different and more interesting picture.

Of course Morris isn’t like that, but it does come with lots of wacky coloured clothes, stripy waistcoats, flowery hats and knee-bells that make it ‘photogenic‘ – another of my least favourite words, committed as I am to the proposition that it’s photographers who make photographs. Photogenic just means more clichés to struggle against, and all too often my doggy paddle can’t breast the stream.

Not that I’m against Morris at all. It’s a great tradition and guys like Cecil Sharp and the others who recorded and resuscitated its dying embers at the turn of the nineteenth century did a great job. If I didn’t have a life and two left feet I’d happily join up and spend more time with them studying real ale. I’m even on record as saying that the stupidest, most arrogant and wrong-headed decision the English Arts Council ever made was not to fund Morris Dancers; “Over my dead body” on of its more illustrious leaders was reported to have said in a rare pause from shovelling money into the bottomless pit of London’s Royal Opera House.

Sword dancers at Embankment Steps, Westminster, London

The Westminster Day of Dance is rather a splendid event, organised by the “world famous Westminster Morris Men” who dress in tabards with a portcullis motif which makes me think of council employees (perhaps why I seem to have edited them completely out of the pictures I’ve put on line) though they do have a rather fine unicorn.

There were four locations where groups of dancers were putting in an early morning session before coming together in Trafalgar Square, and I decided that the River Thames would make for a more interesting London background, so started off at Embankment steps, with the view across the river, including the London Eye – see above. Shortly before the session ended I rushed down to Victoria Gardens, where I hoped that the Houses of Parliament and Rodin’s Burghers of Calais might form suitable backgrounds, though I didn’t really get either to work.

After a brief and pointless journey on the tube to photograph another event (on arrival I found it wasn’t starting until three hours after the time I’d found on the web) I went to see the Morris Men (and I think they were all men, although there are women Morris Dancers, following in the footsteps of the suffragette Esperance Working Girls Club of 1906) in Trafalgar Square, where they were competing rather successfully for the attention of tourists with Falun Dafa, celebrating its 16th anniversary and protesters against the slaughter of seals. The dancing continued at various sites around Westminster after lunch, but by then I was with the May Queens in rural suburbia.

There is a tendency for us to look back and see the interest in and revival of folk traditions – including both Morris and the May Queens around the end of the Victorian era as a conservative movement in political terms. There were actually strong links with the radical movements of the day both in the arts – the Arts and Craft movement – and in politics, including both socialism and the emancipation of women.

Photography as Intimidation

In October 2004 I wrote the following on My London Diary while covering the European Creative Social Forum‘s London Underwater 2050 Tour of the G8 Climate Criminals:

worrying was the deliberate police use of photography as intimidation, with the police photographer going out of his way to confront demonstrators, aided by two other officers.

i worry because i think it is an attempt to attack civil liberties, but also because such behaviour makes all photographers suspect. i can only work effectively if i gain the trust and cooperation of those whose pictures i take. perhaps it helps that photography is one of the activities that also arouses suspicion and intimidation by the police.

as i walked away at the end of the demonstration, this team ran 50 yards down the road and caught up with me, one calling “excuse me, sir” and tapping on my shoulder. i turned to face him, and found myself looking into the lens of the police photographer, who took my picture as his colleague started to question me about who i was taking pictures for. it seemed clear and deliberate harassment, intended to intimidate a photographer acting entirely lawfully, photographing on the public highway.

This was the first time that I’d come across the police use of photography in this way, and I was worried by it. Now it’s commonplace and few demonstrations take place without police harassing demonstrators in this way, without Fitwatch confronting the police FIT teams, and without police harassing photographers.

Fitwatch confronts the police FIT team at City Hall, May 2008

Like Marc Vallée, I was also photographed by police at the City Hall demonstration last Friday, while I was engaged in the subversive act of sitting on a wall and reading a book. I ignored them, but he had a long stand-off, camera in front of his face before the event, and also found the police camera pointed at him from close range later in the event. You can see his pictures on his blog.

An e-mail today pointed out to me a Guardian article: Police should harass young thugs – Smith by political editor Patrick Wintour, in which he reports home secretary, Jacqui Smith as urging police forces across the country to mount “frame and shame” operations stopping and photographing “identified persistent offenders on problem estates.”

The police have already used such tactics to photograph 14 young poeple “known to the force” on estates in Basildon. Wintour quotes a police spokesman:

“The aim is to target a small group of persistent offenders by openly filming them, knocking on their doors, following them on the estate and repeatedly searching them, as well as warning them in no uncertain terms that local people have identified them as lawbreakers.”

Smith is quoted as saying she wants “to create an environment where there is nowhere to hide.” I immediately think of Orwell’s ‘1984‘, although current-day surveillance techniques have perhaps outstripped anything he envisaged. As the article says, there may be “human rights issues about such tough tactics, especially if those harassed by the police have not been found guilty of any criminal offence.”

Marc Vallée receives medical attention after being injured by police in Parliament Square, October 2006.

Photography is not yet a criminal offence, indeed I have a letter from an officer of the Metropolitan Police confirming my right to photograph in public, written after a rather unpleasant encounter when two police threatened to fit me up around ten years ago. So far as I’m aware, Marc’s only offence has been to allow himself to be assaulted and injured by police, for which he received an out of court settlement earlier in the year.

Orphan Works

The US at at it again with an Orphan Works Bill, or two to be precise. You can read a thorough examination of what this means for photographers in Why the Orphan Works Act is Uncle Sam’s thieves’ charter by Tony Sleep on EPUK.

Basically this seeks to upturn the Berne Convention on copyright and make your photographs an open house for theives – unless you have paid for them to be entered in private registers certified by the US Copyright Office.

In particular any work on the Internet will be at danger, and if this is passed into law I think the only protection we will have will be to overprint every image we put on the web with a large visible copyright notice. I’ve always been against this approach as I think it severely damages the value of putting images on-line.

It is hard to see the rest of the world accepting this US usurpation of intellectual property and we may expect to see some retaliatory action if either of these bills becomes an act – as it seems likely to do with the end of term coming up for President Bush.

It’s also worth reading ‘A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing‘ on Photo Business News which makes clearer some of the problems. What is surprising is the support for the proposal from the ASMP, in a feature that contains the astonishing statement “In a nutshell, we see little financial harm to creators from the non-profit and non-fiction uses of orphaned images.” In other words they think we don’t – or shouldn’t – make money from “Uses in works of non-fiction, such as books, articles or documentary films or videos” and “Uses by non-profit educational institutions, libraries, museums or archives“, while they want to alter the bill to make sure that commercial users can’t use it as a “free pass to profit from infringements.”

For many of us this seems to imply we should be happy to give away a large chunk of our income. The APA (Advertising Photographers of America) seems rather more clued up when it comments “If left unchanged, this legislation has the potential to destroy the businesses and livelihoods of thousands of photographers, other visual artists, as well as the collateral small businesses that serve the industry, and are dependent on, creators.” It is also worth looking at the Stock Artists Alliance site – they too are also calling for major changes in the bill.

If you want to take action – whether you are a US citizen or not – the Illustrators Partnership page has some useful suggestions.

Of course there is a real problem with s0-called ‘Orphan Works’ although its perhaps not surprising that the Canadian approach – which instead talks about ‘Unlocatable Copyright Owners’ offers a solution far more favourable to creators. Simply, if you wish to use a copyright work and can satisfy the Canadian Copyright board you have made reasonable efforts to locate the copyright owner, they will grant you a licence and pay a fee to a collective copyright society. These fees can be claimed by the copyright owner up to 5 years after the end of the licence, but otherwise would be distributed to members in a similar way to the fees we can now receive for the photocopying of our work.

This system allows users to make use of such works for reasonable fees – but not free of charge, and also passes on fees to creators. There is a balance about it totally missing from the US proposals. I hope that other countries will take up similar proposals – and also take suitable retaliatory action against the US if they pass an Orphan Works act that effectively gets rid of copyright protection for works not registered in the US