The Lewisham Funeral for the NHS was a little disappointing, mainly because so few people came. I got off the bus at the hospital and there were perhaps 30 or 40 people in all gathered there, and both I and the organisers had hoped for rather more. The cuts to the NHS and the reorganisation are important to all of us who live in England, but perhaps a little heat was taken out of the opposition when the government announced they would consult and change the bill.
Not that I have much confidence that this really means a great deal. Despite the promises from Clegg and Cameron I remain convinced that the plan is still to stitch up the NHS into handy bite-sized packages so that the government’s mates in private provision can pick the easy cherries so that the state run services will necessarily become less and less economic and efficient and before long will cease to exist. Which was more or less the plot of the playlet that the group performed in the market in the centre of Lewisham, and the bonus was the singing of the ‘Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir‘, their name derived from one of William Morris’s most successful textile designs, incorporating thrushes and strawberries (though the actual berries in the pattern look rather more like raspberries to me) first produced at his Merton Abbey works around 1883. Morris was one of the great English socialists, and I think something of a hero for my father (Ruskin was another, but Dad generally kept quiet about his politics as my mother was a staunch Conservative) and like me I think he found ‘News From Nowhere‘ a stimulating utopian work.
But back to Lewisham, where I was finding it difficult to know what to photograph. The group started to march from the hospital into the centre of the town, but it seemed a very disorganised affair. One of the funeral props was a coffin, a little on the small side, white and labelled NHS, but it was being carried by one man on his own, who was staying on the pavement while the rest of the marchers were in the roadway.
There perhaps should be a guide for persons organising demonstrations, which should have an entry such as:
Coffins: These should be black, preferably coffin-shaped and always carried by at least four, preferably six, pall-bearers, dressed in black. They should be accompanied by suitable placards or banners relating to the subject who has died.
It just was not like this, though after a couple of hundred yards there was a short discussion and another of the protesters took over the carrying of the coffin and brought it within the procession, and was soon joined by another man to carry it. I took a few pictures, but still it wasn’t really working, and I broke one of my rules about photographing events.
I didn’t quite set things up, posing people and telling them to looks this or that way, but I did ask the woman in this picture if she wouldn’t mind walking with the coffin so I could take some pictures, and I took I think 3 frames, of which this was the best:
Not a perfect image or even a great one, but something that was beginning to make sense visually of what was otherwise something of a shamble along the road. After I’d taken the pictures I thanked her and she moved away from the coffin again. The angle I’d chosen made slightly better use fo the two NHS logos on the coffin, the lighting (mainly the little bit of flash on the figures) was better too. I was pleased that too that the man at the head of the coffin kept his eyes on the road ahead rather than look as me as the other two people were doing. Although there was a certain amount of arrangement involved it still I think retains the essential authenticity of the occasion.
Of course many protests would benefit from a little more thought about their visual effect – and again this was clear later when there was a short theatrical performance. Obviously a lot of thought had gone into the script, but little or none into the visual aspects, and it was saved for me simply by the performance of one of the women taking part.
Of course protests aren’t arranged for my convenience (something which some photographers seem sometimes to forget), but the kind of things that make some easy for me to photograph are also generally those that help them to communicate more generally and reach their intended audience.
It was a protest where I felt I had to work hard to get pictures, but in the end I found ones that told the story, as I hope you can see in Lewisham Funeral For the NHS.