I think this picture is a good example of why I like to get fairly close to people when I’m photographing them, with the hand and finger closer to the lens being emphasized. Though I wasn’t that close, using the 18-105mm on the D800E, where its 40mm setting as a more or less standard 60mm.
Soon after I took this picture – and others you can see in Muslims & Britain First Clash on My London Dairy, police moved me and other photographers away from the narrow strip of road at the edge of the pavement on the fairly busy Bayswater Road, effectively preventing us from taking decent pictures of the event.
The Inspector in charge told us it was because us standing there were putting his officers at risk from the traffic, but since they continued to stand in exactly the same positions after we were removed that hardly held water.
I and another photographer moved to a refuge in the middle of the road, a perfectly safe place designed for people to stand while crossing each carriageway separately. But again we were told we had to move – and for the same ludicrous reason.
I suggested to the Inspector that if he were worried about the safety of officers he might consider making use of the traffic cones that were present but totally ineffective on the edge of the pavement – as you can see in the picture above. Moving them out perhaps three feet to where the officers were standing would have provided safety for the officers – and a working space for photographers.
But police officers sometimes go into a curiously deaf mode where they refuse to listen to any advice or comment, however sensible. And he did, simply repeating over and over that I had to move from the refuge where I was talking to him in a very reasonable manner and go to the other side of the road.
After I’d been trying to talk to him for a minute or so, he grabbed hold of me – I pointed out he was committing an illegal assault – and pushed me across the road, causing cars to have to brake to avoid the two of us. Having pushed me onto the pavement, he then walked back into the road without looking, and a car had to do an emergency stop to miss him.
While I appreciate that police have a difficult job at times, this was no way to engage with the public, and certainly not in the spirit in which the police are supposed to cooperate with the press (and my suggestion to him was made in a spirit of cooperation.) Fortunately I’d had time before this officer started behaving stupidly to get the pictures I needed, and when a few minutes after this incident the Britain First protesters on the side of the road I’d been pushed to packed up and went home, I left too.
I later heard that after I left the Inspector had come to apologise to my colleague for moving him from the refuge, admitting he had been wrong to do so; perhaps if I’d stayed on I would have go an apology too.
This was a protest involving two fringe groups, neither of which I feel any sympathy with. The Islamist fringe associated with Anjem Choudary had a least come to protest with a genuine grievance over the arrest and attempted arrest of Sunni Muslim activists in Lebanon and were also more interesting visually, while Britain First I just found rather sad, apparently there only to insult the Muslims. Britain is still – at least in many respects – a free country and groups like both these have a right to protest, even though I think both stand for a society in which we would enjoy very little freedom.
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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 taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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