Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

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

The Toff Wins

Class War and other London anarchists were going to protest whoever won the London Mayoral Election. One banner said:

NO TO
THE CROOK
THE TOFF
THE FASCIST
OR COP

and since only 45% of the electorate bothered to vote for any of the ten candidates they may feel that London followed their advice, althought the 55% majority was surely more for apathy than anarchy.

Police watched the demonstration (if with some obvious frustration) for around 35 minutes, taking no action. Then Fitwatch sprang into action, holding their banner in front of the police photographers who had been having a field day photographing demonstrators, photographers, anyone with a beard or reading a book etc. One FIT team were surrounded on the barriers set up around City Hall, hemmed in by both Fitwatch and the many photographers present, and began to look extremely worried, if only about beiong made to look rather silly.

So along came their mates from the TSG to the rescue, pushing everyone out of the area and coralling a few of the demonstrators in waiting pens. Most made their escape thanks to a rather slow response by the police, stopping briefly to display their banner on a balcony overlooking the scene before making for the pub.

Surprisingly the anarchists were the only organised group of protesters on the day. There had been rumours that the BNP would be along to celebrate, but if so they will still hiding under the stones when I left for home.

No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop

Just Shares

It doesn’t really seem very long ago that I was photographing the closing event of Jubillee 2000, with Ann Pettifor on the stage at Trafalgar Square, but the fact that I took most of the pictures in black and white is a reminder of how much things have changes since then.

The candlelit march up Whitehall in Dec 2000

Jubilee 2000 did get things moving on debt relief, although there is still a long way to go, and since then we’ve had other campaigns – such as ‘Make Poverty History‘ which have added to the impetus.

Applause for Nelson Mandela in a packed Trafalgar Square, Feb 2005

Ann Pettifor is now working for Advocacy International, which works with “low-income country governments, and with organisations working to promote positive development, investment and environmental sustainability in those countries” and Operation Noah, a Christian-based climate-change campaign.

I went to hear her speak at a rally and seminar organised by ‘Just Share‘, “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice.” Just Share is based at a city church (St Mary-le-Bow of bells fame) and the rally was held bang in the middle of the city, at Bank, in front of the Royal Exchange, with the Bank of England to one side and the Mansion House across the road. Speaking along with her was Larry Elliott, economics editor of The Guardian for the last 11 or so years.

Listening to Ann Pettifor speaking at Royal Exchange.
Larry Elliott waits to speak at right.

I’m not an economist, but as I understand it, Pettifor argued that our present ‘Credit Crisis’ is a symptom of a deeper structural problem in our economy, the creation of money by the banks in a way that is no longer linked to reserves and production, but entirely dependent on trust. Once people lose faith in the banks, we have a problem.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the link that she made with this and the traditional Christian teaching against usury, which seems to me something rather different. But I have to admit that I haven’t read her book on the subject that might make things more clear.

What I think she also argued was that the current model has allowed the exponential growth of money – and as we know, exponential growth of anything can only ever be a short-term process in a finite world.

More pictures from the event – and also information about Ann Pettifor’s book in Just Shares Take on The Bank in My London Diary

May Day, May Fayre

Perhaps the silliest of our Bank Holidays is the early May one, introduced in 1978 by the the Callaghan Labour government as a sop to the unions who had wanted a holiday on May Day, celebrated in many countries around the world as International Workers’ Day. But they bowed to pressure from business who didn’t like the idea of a holiday that might be on any day of the week, and instead of May 1, made it the first Monday of the year. So Britain’s workers either have to take a day off work or miss May Day celebrations except in those years where it happens to fall on a Monday.

This year it was a Thursday, and most of the unions – whose participation has always been half-hearted – wanted to forget the whole thing in favour of the local elections on the same day, including those of the London Mayor. But in the end it went ahead – probably because the Turks, the Kurds and a few others would have marched whatever – but with very little support from the unions.

As usual Clerkenwell Green was awash with red uniforms, and there were banners with images of Karl Marx and other communist notables – including a large painting of Joseph Stalin. One of my earliest memories is the newspaper and radio coverage of the death of ‘Uncle Jo’, but now we know rather more about him.

As the march left Clerkenwell Green I committed a grave sin and actually set up a picture:

Without a little arrangement it was impossible to see all of the five pictures which were being carried in line. But everything else on My London Diary is as it was.

From Clerkenwell Green I walked down to Farringdon with some other photographers and took the tube to Green Park, where the Space Hijackers were gathering to hold a May Fayre in Mayfair – from where it had been banned in 1708 when the area started going up in the world. However unlike the original it was only going to last a few hours rather than 15 days.

On the way to Shepherd Market

When the Olympic Torch was in London (largely surrounded by Chinese thugs when not hidden on the coach) police made a distinction in the way they policed those who wanted to celebrate China’s human rights record compared to those who wanted to demonstrate in favour of the Beijing Olympics. Human rights protesters were penned behind barriers and kept at a distance, while pro-Chinese demonstrators were allowed to line the route.

Police justified this by saying that they didn’t stop people celebrating – but that demonstrations were covered by the Public Order Act. So the May Fayre wasn’t a demonstration but a celebration, and whatever the police thought about this they stood back and let it happen, if keeping the event under a very watchful eye.

Although police stood across the roads leading into Shepherd Market, at least while I was there they didn’t stop anyone entering or leaving on foot, although most cars were turned away. And while those in charge didn’t seem amused, many of the officers watching obviously enjoyed watching the partying, even though they were not allowed to take part – except in the ritual encounter between FIT and Fitwatch.

A May Day entertainment

More pictures on My London Diary.

Black Friday?

Keep the Far-Right out of London Government – see My London Diary

London waits the count of yesterday’s election, expected this evening, but woke up this morning to the news of terrible results for Labour around the country and predictions of all the pundits that Ken Livingstone would lose his bid to be re-elected as mayor.

On Saturday I went to hear Ken speak in Whitechapel, and after the meeting we travelled away on the same underground train, and I talked to him briefly before taking a few pictures.

A defeat for Ken will be a very black day for the future of London – a set-back similar to that inflicted by Thatcher when she abolished to GLC, a decision from which London was at last recovering. Cities can’t be run effectively without a proper city authority, nor by one led by a buffoon like Boris.

There are Conservatives who I could imagine making a decent throw of it, but he isn’t one – and none of those who could do the job would have attracted the media publicity that has led to Boris’s poll ratings.

I’m still hoping that the pundits got it wrong. Although I’ve not agreed with everything Ken has said and done he has got most of the real basics right, making London a much better place to live and become a cosmopolitan capital. It will be a very sad day for Londoners if he loses.

And, as I wrote for My London Diary on Sunday:

My photographs of London owe a great deal to Ken Livingstone and his transport policies at the GLC in the 1980s that made a quantum change in transport across the capital. It’s hard now to imagine the difficulties and of getting around the city before the Travelcard – assuming you aren’t in the class that always travels by taxi.