Canada Day came to London a couple of weeks early. Although there are some celebrations taking place around Canada House as I write on July 1st, on 13 June we had not one but two protests against Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper taking place in Westminster.
It should be a matter of national shame that Harper was invited to address our Parliament when he came over on a lobbying mission to try to force Europe to take Canadian tar sands oil, the dirtiest of dirty fuels. Producing a barrel of tar sands oil creates three to four times more climate pollution than producing conventional crude oil in Canada or USA, and the amount already approved by the Canadian government for extraction in Alberta is enough to push the planet past the 6 degree global warming catastrophe level. And on top of that there area huge direct environmental effects, as well as tragedies for the indigenous population of the areas being devastated. Exploiting the tar sands presents a threat to the future of human existence that is hard to exaggerate and impossible to deny – all for the sake of short-term profits of the oil companies.
I didn’t find it an easy event to photograph, or perhaps I wasn’t at my best. I’d arrived a little late a few minutes after the event started which perhaps just didn’t help, and just as I arrived a photographer had started organising the protesters for a group picture, which seldom helps me – but perhaps he was desperate for an idea too.
I didn’t actually take a photograph of the whole group, partly because I seldom if ever find such things interesting, but here a row of ugly flagpoles in front of it didn’t help. I did try going back, but then there were too many photographers and other people in the way. So I’ve got a few little bits of the protesters in front of Big Ben. One or two aren’t bad, and press photographers only want one, but I like things to be happening and some kind of story to tell.
Perhaps I was just having an off day, but there are some times when I never quite seem to settle and find a subject that really interests me visually. Perhaps I need to try harder. Or I should have got out the 10.5mm, which stayed firmly in my bag. There does seem to be something about looking through that which makes me see differently, and I think engages me more in events, even if I don’t always get good pictures with that lens.
I’d actually got there earlier – a few minutes before the start time – to find nobody around, and wandered a little around the area. I saw what appeared to be a protest a couple of hundred yards down the road and went to investigate. These people didn’t look like your normal protesters.
They were members of Canada’s Foreign Service, members of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Workers, aggrieved because they get paid less than some others who they say do the same work. Perhaps you get more if you are a spy? Spread out along the edge of College Green they were at least on the route that Harper came to Parliament. They told me they thought he would arrive very soon, and I hung around a few minutes before giving up and going back to the Tar Sands event – where by now I was just a little late.
By the time the Tar Sands protesters had decided to go, the daily shift for the Save Shaker Aamer campaign had arrived, and I spent a few minutes talking to and then photographing them. Without great results, though I rather liked the red shoes of a woman walking past.
More pictures from all three protests:
Harper, we don’t want your dirty oil!
Canadian Foreign Service Protest
Shaker Aamer Daily Vigil Continues.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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