London 1980 (2)

More black and white images I made in 1980 and which I posted day by day on Facebook a year or so ago, along with comments and stories

Mural, Vauxhall, Lambeth. 1980
23j-33: mural

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23j-33.htm

The mural announcing the presence of Vauxhall City Farm has I think long gone, and there has been considerable development of the buildings there. It now seems to me obviously to be a picture I should have taken in colour, and possibly I did, though quite likely I had only a single camera with me loaded with black and white film.

This picture was taken on a Minox EL, a tiny 35mm camera hardly large enough to take the film cassette, with plastic case whose front folded down pulling out the lens into position. Said to be the smallest 35mm camera in the world, it had a 35mm f2.8 lens, weighed only 200g and fitted into even a shirt pocket. For over 20 years one of these cameras (I got through 3 or four) went with me more or less everywhere.

They weren’t cheap (they were distributed by Leica in the UK) and were tricky to use, and the auto-exposure was often unreliable – later I found it worked better if you held the camera upside-down. The first one I bought just couldn’t take sharp pictures, and I sent it back to Leica, who wrote a rather snooty letter saying there were no performance specifications for the lens, but did exchange it for one that was tack-sharp. A few years later, that stopped working after it jumped out of my pocket when I was cycling to work and I got it replaced on insurance (and a hefty jump in premiums the following year.) When I had to send that one back to Leitz they said it was beyond economic repair but sold me a replacement at cost.

The Russians liked the Minox 35mm cameras so much they produced their own exact copy, the Kiev 35A, and I expect their spies still carry one on their visits to English cathedrals.

Duck pond, Vauxhall City Farm, Vauxhall, Lambeth. 1980
23j-33: ducks, pond, farm,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23j-46.htm

Rather more buildings along the riverside are now visible across Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens from Tyers St than when I took this picture, but the backs of the houses on Kennington Lane are still recognisable, and the shops along their front have changed only a little to reflect the increasing gentrification of the area – at had at least last time I walked along there from the station to take a camera in to Fixation. The buildings on the green have also been replaced by a newer block along Glyn St.

The area in the distance, where only two blocks of buildings appear has become one of the fastest growing areas in London. I think the block right of centre might be the Nine Elms Cold Store, closed in 1979 but not demolished until the late 1990s, but cannot identify the block at left. There are now high rise buildings covering almost the whole of Nine Elms with more still being built. Along with expensive flats for foreign investors there is also expensive student housing built to lower standards but equally tall.

I think the duck pond with its duck house (presumably less ornate than MPs can afford on their expenses) has also gone, with new building on the City Farm site and an expansion of the farm estate.

Jesus, Mornington Crescent, Camden, 1980
23l-65: graffiti, horse trough,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23l-65.htm

Another picture of the faded message on a horse trough which I wrote about in an earlier post.

Lillieshall Rd, Clapham, Wandsworth. 1980
23q-56: house,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23q-56.htm

The house here was clearly a corner shop in use as an off-licence and it can still be seen on the corner with North St, though now simply housing. The adverts, including that covering the window at right, are long gone.

It was that faded upper sign advertising ‘RADIO REPAIRS’, and under it what I think must have once been the word ‘EXPERTS’ above the blanked out doorway that attracted me to take the picture of what was otherwise a very ordinary Victorian working-class building, typical of the area.

I’m surprised I didn’t take a picture of the whole side of the building, which actually has three such doors in a row, only the central one in use, each with a window above. But probably only the window in my picture was covered by advertising, and I suspect that the lens on my Leica simply did not have a wide enough view to show all three.

I also failed to photograph the now listed former “Tim Bobbin” pub, just down Lillieshall road, named after the Lancastrian schoolmaster, caricaturist and dialect poet who called himself the Lancashire Hogarth, and was a schoolmaster and notorious drinker born in Urmston who lived and died in Milnrow on the edges of Rochdale, where he is buried in St Chad’s Churchyard, his gravestone carrying the epitaph “Jack of all trades…left to lie i’th dark” he wrote for himself minutes before his death.

I don’t know why he should be celebrated by a pub in Clapham (there is one in Burnley too) nor why the owners should have decided around ten years ago to change the name to ‘The Bobbin’ and replace his rather pleasant portrait on the pub sign to a rather less interesting silhouette.

Death to Fascism, Bus Shelter, Battersea, Wandsworth. 1980
23t-32: house, graffiti,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23t-32.htm

I can’t at this remove remember why I was wandering around South London taking pictures with the Minox on a day in April 1980, but I’m fairly sure I had not gone out with the main intention of taking pictures, otherwise I would have picked up the Leica or possibly my Olympus OM-1.

There must have been some other reason for my being there, and obviously having some time to spare. One possibility is that I had gone early and decided to walk from Queen’s Road Battersea to a meeting or exhibition at the Photo Co-op in Webbs Road in Clapham, which had started the previous year, rather than take the shorter walk from Clapham Junction.

As usual at the time I have no record of exactly where I was, and this street is fairly typical of many of the wider streets in the area, with its late Victorian housing. Only the main roads are this wide and have a pavement where I could get back far enough to make a picture like this with the 35mm lens.

I suspect I will have waited some time, not for the bus, but for people at the bus stop to arrange themselves rather better in the frames provided, but with little luck, and I think made this exposure as the bus the bus was about to arrive, knowing they would board.

Obviously it was the graffiti that attracted my attention. The large white letters of ‘DEATH TO FASCISM’ are easy to read in this small image but the smaller black ‘Kill A BLACK TODAY’ is perhaps harder to read.

House, Battersea, Wandsworth. 1980
23t-51: house,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23t-51.htm

This is a section of a terrace somewhere in the Park Town estate in Battersea, around Queenstown Road, built up from the 1860s by James Knowles junior, one of London’s early organised and managed estates. Though well conceived it was not a great financial success, as the middle-classes for whom it was intended rather looked down on the pollution from the adjoining railways to north and east, and the estate was then re-purposed towards more working class artisan tenants.

Probably this property – a ‘six-roomed’ house – with external decoration to make it look rather grander than it was – was built as the three flats the doorbells now indicate, one on each floor. Much has been written about the estate, which led down to the rather grander buildings of Cedars Road and the North Side of Clapham Common.

Broughton St, Battersea, Wandsworth. 1980
23t-53: house, pub, church, hall

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23t-53.htm

This corner of Broughton St and St Philip St, looking towards Queenstown Road is still recognisable, though the Market House pub is now a private house and the RIdley Hall at the right of the picture has been rebuilt as Ridley Hall Evangelical Church, though in a similar design.

I took two frames with the Minox, with a fairly similar composition, but while the other was a little more upright, this is sharper. They were obviously taken within a few seconds, though the film wind on the camera was rather difficult to do at any speed, as neither the two men on the street corner or the group further down the street appear to have moved, but the cars are a few yards further down the road in the other image.

The ladders on the handcart reminded me of my father who often used a similar conveyance to take his ladders, paint, tools and occasionally beehives around Hounslow (and sometimes further afield) until his retirement in the late 1960s. By 1979 this was becoming rather less common, though one still saw window cleaners and others who had not yet acquired vans.

To be continued…

London 1980 (1)

It may not have escaped your notice that we are approaching Christmas and the New Year. This is a time when I may not be at a keyboard every day and will be concentrating on other things than writing posts for this site. But also when those of you who read it (and about 4,500 pages are currently read each day) will perhaps want something to entertain you when suffering from an excess of Turkey and mince pies.

Those of you who follow me on Facebook will know that for some time I have been posting an image and its story from my black and white work in the 1970s and 80s each day. But FB is pretty ephemeral, although it keeps a record of everything we post, comment or like to aid its profit-making activites, anything we posted more than a few minutes ago soon becomes hard to find. So as I’ve done previously I’ll post a series of digests here on >Re:PHOTO, where it is always easy to search the archives, and search engines should be able to find content. So here we go with the first set from 1980.

Jesus, Mornington Crescent, Camden, 1980
23i-15 factory, graffiti, horse-trough,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-15.htm

I didn’t see this graffiti until it was faint, though its message was still clear, on the southern corner of Mornington Crescent. The wall is still there, though I can see no trace of ‘JESUS’, and the wall is now kept in better condition, doubtless having been painted several times since – and there is now a gate at its left.

The game ‘Mornington Crescent’ had made its first appearance on ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ in August 1978, around 18 months before I made this picture, and it was doubtless in my mind on my wandering walk from Central London via St Pancras in February 1980 which took me to the street from which the Underground station and the great game were named.

The wall is at the end of the ‘Black Cat factory’, the former Arcadia Works of the Carreras Cigarette Factory, one of the finest remaining Art Deco buldings in London, controversially built between 1926-8 on the communal garden of Mornington Crescent. Designed by M.E and O.H Collins and A.G Porri, the long building (168m) was where Craven ‘A’ cigarettes were made, and the logo of the company, a rather domestic looking black cat, was reflected in two large Egyptian cats on each side of its entrance. High along the frontage, above the Egyptian-style pillars were a row of the trademark-style black whiskered moggies. But back when I made this picture, the factory was in a poor state, the decorations stripped when it had been converted to offices in 1961. The two giant Egyptian cats, representations of the Egyptian cat god Bast had been shipped out when the factory closed in 1959 to stand in front of other Carreras factories in Basildon and Spanish Town Jamaica. Apparently Carreras had originally planned to call the factory after Bast (aka Bastet) but then realised that everyone would refer to it as Bastard House.

Years later I got a shock when sitting on a bus going up the Hampstead Road, and had to rub my eyes and pinch myself to be sure I was not dreaming as I passed the factory restored to its former glory (almost) and with two black cats again guarding its entrance. The factory had been bought by a new company in 1996 who had restored it to an excellent replica of its Art Deco original. And had doubtless painted out any remaining traces of ‘JESUS’.

Fire Engine, Mornington Crescent area, Camden, 1980
23i-21: graffiti,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-21.htm

Situsec seems to be a company which supplied asphalt and similar materials and made road repairs, but I can’t remember exactly where this picture of one of their yards was taken, though earlier in my walk I had been on Phoenix Road in Somers Town and a couple of frames later I was photographing painting on a fence on a corner site on Mornington Place for the Albert St Carnival. This yard was somewhere in my wandering between the two.

The walls are tall and thick, with buttresses; that in the foreground appears to have been built up with a thinner extension, which can also be seen on the rear wall, above which another brick structure, with arches roughly doubles the height to something like 20 ft, suggesting a building on a truly giant scale, which in this area suggests it was a part of some major work connected with the railways, either around St Pancras or Euston.

Clearly the wall on which the fire engine was painted has been fairly crudely breached since it was painted to provide or widen the entrance to the yard, where some cars are parked and notices on the wall read ‘Soft Sand’ and (I think ‘Sharp Sand’, though only a couple of letters of this are visible.)

Is Innocent O.K., Mornington Crescent area, Camden, 1980
23i-22: graffiti, shop,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-22.htm

In 1974 the message ‘G Davis is Innocent, OK’ began to appear on walls, bridges and elsewhere across the country, protesting the innocence of the east London minicab driver jailed for his part in an armed robbery. Police were caught out as having lied to get his conviction, making up a statement he was alleged to have made, fiddling the results of ID parades, deliberately ignoring evidence. His conviction was clearly unsafe, and almost certainly he was innocent of that particular robbery at the London Electricity Board’s offices in Ilford for which the police had fitted him up – and for which he was the only man convicted.

Of course, though innocent of this particular crime, Davis was a villain, and within a couple of years of his release in 1976 by Royal prerogative he was back in jail again, this time admitting his guilt, for an armed robbery at the Bank of Cyprus on the Holloway Rd.

The graffiti in this picture was clearly inspired by this case, though who was innocent I clearly intended to remain anonymous, with only the final ‘OUS’ of the name in frame, next to the former shop at no. 54. Which street this was on is also something of a mystery, and I think the house in question has probably been so altered as to be unrecognisable.

Circus, Mornington Buildings, Camden, 1980
23i-24: graffiti,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-24.htm

Mornington Buildings were on Mornington Place, I think at its corner with Mornington Terrace, and were in process of demolition when I photographed this painted fence. At its left are two posters for the ‘Albert St Carnival’, too small for the details to be clearly read, but which had I think been on the 14th July, probably from the previous year, 1979, and for which I assumed the painting had taken place.

The 2nd Earl of Mornington was the elder brother of the Duke of Wellington and became Governor-General of India, defeating the French there and making it a part of the British Empire. During the Napoleonic wars, by now Marquess Wellesley, he became ambassdor to Spain. By the time this estate was being developed in the 1820s he was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

FB comment by Ken Bates: There was 2 separate blocks for Mornington Buildings, the larger block was on Mornington Terrace (now Clarkson Row), this block went right up to the corner with Mornington Place. There was then a gateway into the grass area behind it before the smaller block that was in Mornington Place.

Corner Cafe, Phoenix Rd/Midland Rd, Camden, 1980
23i-32: cafe,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-32.htm

It should be easy to locate an image which contains a street sign and a street number, but although the street sign says Phoenix Road NW1, this is misleading, and this picture was made at the corner of what is now Brill Place and Midland Rd. The 1894 OS map actually calls the road Phoenix St, and shows a railway line crossing it – which I think the arch at extreme left was supporting – leading to the goods yard now the site of the British Library and Francis Crick Institute.

The Brill was the area between Euston Square and Kings Cross Station, getting its name from a tavern there and had a Sunday market where the many navvies in the area would come to buy their boots and clothing. Why the pub was called ‘The Brill’ seems a mystery; perhaps it was from the fish of the same name, or some connection with the Buckinghamshire village (there is a Brill in Cornwall too as well as Den Briel in the Netherlands, and it is also a Dutch family name) or was the word ‘brilliant’ just too long to fit on the inn sign?

Corner Cafe, Phoenix Rd/Midland Rd and gas holders, Camden, 1980
23i-33: cafe, gas holders, traffic light,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-33.htm

A second picture of the Corner Cafe makes its position clear, showing both the gas holders on the corner of Wharf Rd and Cambridge St (now Camley St) and the road under the railway lines from Midland Rd that led to them, though the scene has now changed completely with the rebuilding of St Pancras Station to provide a shopping precinct which makes the walk from the Underground platform to get on a train much longer, something I curse every time I use the station.

The site of the cafe is now a rather neglected piece of land at the edge of the parking area for Neville Close. The gasholders are no longer on their original site and have flats inside them and St Pancras station now extend much further to the north.

Shop fitting, Camden, 1980
23i-52: plastic sheet,

http://londonphotographs.co.uk/london/1980/23i-52.htm

Much of what people think of as central London is a part of the London borough of Camden and I think this shop being fitted out was somewhere in the area roughly between Trafalgar Square and Monmouth St, and the next frame on the contact sheet (not shown on this site) is in Monmouth St, with the name board for ‘Neon’ and the ‘ghost sign’ next door for B Flegg, saddlers. This picture could well also have been in Monmouth St.

I walked around this are fairly often when visiting the Photographers’ Gallery, then on Great Newport St. In 1980 it acquired a second space a couple of doors down from the original premises. As well as showing some great photography (and particularly in later years some rather less great) it also had a cafe where you could sit and look at one of the shows, as well as meeting people.

Somehow it seemed a much friendlier place than the much improved new premises on Ramillies St, and I often met people – staff and other visitors I knew there, and it seemed rather easier to talk with strangers, who were always a part of a wider photographic community.

As well as visiting to see the shows, as entry was always free you could drop in while passing for another look – or just to have a coffee or even just use the toilets – I also used to go with some of my pictures to a ‘young photographers’ group which met regularly there and to which sell-established photographers often dropped in to give their opinions too. Though we learnt much and enjoyed it, these meetings were clearly something the gallery’s education officer, who was responsible for them found an ordeal, with much questioning of some of the gallery’s practices and more. When London Independent Photography came along in 1987 she clutched to them as a lifebelt to end the group.

To be continued…

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.

Not My Prime Minister

I’ve long believed it was time to reform our voting system, and recent events have reinforced that conviction.

The total UK population is thought to be around 67.7 million, of which around 53 million are old enough to vote, but only around 47.6 million are registered to vote. The other 5.4 million either are not eligible for some reason or can’t or haven’t bothered to register. Only 32million actually voted – 67.3% or roughly 2/3 of those registered. The number who voted in what the media calls a landslide for the Conservatives was just under 14million. Just over a quarter of the adult population.

It was of course more votes than the Labour party, though the actual number of MPs hugely overestimates the difference because of the way in which voters are distributed around the seats. Labour’s seats roughly represent their 32% share of the votes, while the Tories got around 28% more seats than their vote would suggest.

While the Conservatives benefit hugely from our voting system, and Labour don’t fare to badly, the smaller parties in England lose out hugely. The Lib Dems got 11.5% of the votes and only 1.7% of the seats and the Green Party with a 2.7% vote share only have 1 MP rather than the 17 or 18 that a fair share would give. Added to this is the fact that many people who might well vote for the Greens or Lib-Dems in a fair system know that a vote for them is wasted and instead vote for one of the major parties.

On 24th July the protest was not about the results of a general election, but of a Prime Minister who had been selected as the result of votes by Conservative MPs and then members of the Conservative Party alone, less than a hundred thousand people in all. It was difficult to argue against the conviction of the protesters that he had no mandate from the people.

Among those who spoke was the then Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and while I agreed with most of what he said, it was hard not to think that the reason we have such an unfair electoral system is that both major parties rather like its unfairness. It is rather harder for Labour to get MPs because of it, but it does mean that they have a better chance of an overall majority in those elections where they do well.

Of course the electoral system is only one factor that makes politics in this country unfair. We also have a system that allows the wealthy still to make huge political donations (and Labour benefits from the support of some trade unions, though on a smaller scale.) More important still is the way that we have a so-called ‘free press’ which is largely owned by a small group of billionaires who are allowed to get away with lies and misinformation about political parties, their policies and personalities.

It was Neil Kinnock, the Labour Party leader in 1992 who blamed The Sun as a major factor in his losing the 1992 election – it ended a long and relentless campaign of what he named as “misinformation and disinformation” with the famous election day headline, “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.” And at the following election when The Sun had changed sides to back Tony Blair, the paper again made its claim “It’s The Sun Wot Won It“.

And while it isn’t hard to think of fairer alternatives to the current electoral system – including some that retain a constituency connection for most MPs with a list approach to redresses most of the electoral imbalances, it is rather harder to think of some way to redress the irresponsibly used power of the press. It would be nice perhaps to have some kind of publicly funded media organisation (perhaps through a licence fee) which devoted itself to fair and unbiased editing and reporting! Unfortunately Lord Reith is long dead.

The rally in Russell Square was extremely crowded and I got very tired, and went home rather than face the march to Downing St, where the protest got rather more interesting (and certainly even more photogenic.)

I’d been to Downing St earlier and things had been very quiet, and protesters I’d expected to see there had already left. If I’d been thinking clearly I would have realised that they would return later and taken the tube back to Whitehall rather than missing out on the action there.

More at Boris J is not our Prime Minister

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

London’s big Italian festival which takes place every July in the streets around St Peter’s Italian Church in Clerkenwell is alway an interesting event, and one that although it has changed over the years since I first photographed it in the 1990s, still retains much of the same atmosphere and feel.

I always enjoy both the procession and the festival that accompanies it, which is apparently a much more recent addition to the event. When the festival first began in the 19th century – and special permission was needed for this Catholic procession – the area around the church had a large Italian population.

Now that population has moved away, with many in the suburbs or outside London and Italian communities come to the event from places like Watford, Luton and Woking, and the Sagra provides them with something to eat and drink and to meet people they may only see once a year at the event. And to dance.

It also provides something of a day out for myself and a few photographer friends, who take advantage of the cheap and reasonably priced Italian wine and sometimes the food too. THough rather more the wine!

I was a little disappointed this year by the release of the doves, which for the last few years has been done by three clergy who were each given a dove to hold in their hands before releasing them more or less together. It was something they so obviously enjoyed. This year there were again three of the clergy, but all they did was stand behind the basket and watch as the lid was opened and the birds made their own way out.

It is always something of a challenge to capture the moment the doves fly, though I’ve usually managed to do so. It is of course made much easier with digital cameras, where you can use rapid sequences of exposures. Back in the days of film, few of us had motordrives, and we needed to wind on after each exposure. This meant you only had a single chance to get the picture, as by the time you had wound on the film the doves would usually have been high in the sky.

This year I took the picture with the Olympus E-M5MarkII using the 14-150mm lens at its widest setting, equivalent to 28mm. It was a bright sunny summer day and I set the camera to ISO 640 to get both a fast shutter speed to stop motion (1/400s) and a small aperture (f10) to get plenty of depth of field so that the background float with its statue of Our Lady would also be sharp. I say I set them, but in fact the camera was on ‘P’ setting and I simply checked it had suitable settings. As the moment approached I changed the camera into sequential shooting mode. I used the high setting which gives around ten frames a second.

One bird came out first and was several feet in the air before the other two emerged. The frame at the top of the post was my sixth and the last to show all three doves. There were I think 5 further frames with the last two doves, and the Exif data shows that I had taken 11 frames in just over a second. Using film I could have got at most two, though I would have hoped to get one that showed the peak of the action, I could well have missed it. Once the doves get going they can move extremely fast.

More pictures and text:
Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Sagra

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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Jane Evelyn Atwood

My daily e-mail from The Eye of Photography (l’Œil de la Photographie) today reminded me of a documentary photographer I’ve long been aware of with their post Jane Evelyn Atwood : On prostitution, Paris 1976 – 1979, which includes ten pictures from her forthcoming show at the Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau from 25 January to 21 April 2020.

If you are in Paris in those months, the short excursion to Gentilly just outside the southern boundary of the city will be worth making. I’ve not been there for some years, but found both the gallery and the place interesting, as well as our walk back into Paris itself, when rather than go to the nearest station (or catch a bus) we wandered the mile or two back to the Place d’Italie.

Atwood does have a web site, but it is perhaps curiously opaque, if not secretive and the only pictures I could see were small thumbnails of book covers. She is represented by Contact Press in the US, with a short bio and a web page that – at least to my browser – displays seven blank images, though in their achive you can see ‘War Never Ends‘, a feature with photographs by her and Lori Grinker.

The best on-line presentation of her work I’ve found is at l’Agence Vu, which has sections including her portfolio, portraits, books, awards and exhibitions as well as series which includes her remarkable documentary work on The Blind, Women in Prison, Land Mines and Haiti.

Remainers march

Back in July there still was hope that we might be able to avoid the huge mistake of Brexit, and thousands came to march in support of staying in Europe. And while the recent election makes it almost certain we will leave – and leave on terms that will be very damaging to the country, I still suspect that in a few years time we will be begging Europe to let us back in, or at least to come to some much closer arrangement than is likely to result from negotiations by the current government.

Like the referendum, the election campaign was marked by an enormous amount of misinformation and lies, mainly from the Conservative Party; First Draft checked out the ads from both parties on Facebook from Dec1 to Dec 4, and, according to Full Fact, ” found that a majority of the Conservative ads during this period included or linked to claims that Full Fact has questioned“. First Draft give a figure: ” 88% (5,952) of the most widely promoted ads featured claims about the NHS, income tax cuts, and the Labour Party which had already been labelled misleading by Full Fact.

Labour put out far fewer FB ads during this time and for technical reasons the first report by Full Fact missed any misleading claims in them; later they updated the figure to say that of their 104 ads during the same period only 6.7% contained or linked to misleading data.

The Brexit referendum was similarly marked by deliberate misleading by the ‘Leave’ campaign, including the figure on the side of their bus. But perhaps even more importantly we were told that leaving Europe would be a simple process, and the public were given the impression that once they had voted it would all be over within a few months.

But the politicians are only a part of the story, and the huge misinformation campaign of both referendum and election is largely driven by the media, both newspapers and broadcasting. The Sun has previously boasted of having determined the results of UK elections, and certainly it and the other newspapers, mainly owned by a handful of billionaires, have played a vital role. Most of the broadcast media, with the exception of the BBC are also similarly controlled.

The BBC is a special case, and has long been under attack by both the left and right in politics for failing to be impartial. Unfortunately this doesn’t imply that it is getting the balance right, as the two sides attack it for very different reasons. Many Tories have long wanted to close it down largely because it is a public service and as such not making money for them and their friends, but at the same time have been very effective in getting members of a highly conservative establishment into positions of power within it. Labour have seen in taking up the anti-Labour views of the press and collaborating with the opposition to Jeremy Corbyn, conspiring with some Labour MPs opposed to him and even inventing fake news to discredit him and the party.

What we are left in now is a real mess. A country which would now almost certainly vote to remain being taken out of the EU, on the basis of a promise made by a former Prime Minister over a non-binding referendum. A referendum result that had it been binding would almost certainly have been challenged and rendered invalid in the courts. Scotland looking increasingly likely to break away and rejoin the EU after we have left. A border in the Irish Sea that makes the reunification of Ireland seem much closer (perhaps the only positive outcome of the whole sad business.) And a country that is going to become much poorer and more unequal. But most important of all will be the failure to take action over the climate crisis.

No to Boris, Yes to Europe

Protesting in the rain

Protests, particularly those over climate change, seem to rather often take place in the rain, and it causes problems both for protesters and photographers. Bad weather cuts down the number of people who come out to protest, leaving only the hard core; few of us like getting wet or cold or both and those who are wondering whether they should make the effort to take part are likely to take a look out of the window and think to themselves that perhaps they will go on the next protest and give this one a miss.

And of course photographers like myself do sometimes check the weather forecast and if its an event I’m wondering whether or not to cover it can be the deciding factor. I don’t like the cold or the wet, and I don’t really like working in the dark either, though I’m prepared to go out and do my best if I think it is really important.

Protesters can sometimes shelter under umbrellas, though it can be hard to carry a placard or poster as well as a brolly. It has to be pretty extreme before I’ll try to hold one while I’m taking photographs; really I need both hands for the cameras and an umbrella just gets in the way too much. It’s an accessory that really needs to come with an assistant to hold it.

While printed placards normally stand up to the rain, hand-made ones, usually of more interest, often have images or messages that run, or glued on letters or pictures that fall off. Most of the cameras I use are reasonably weatherproof, and some of the lenses are also said to be so.

I’ve tried using various kinds of plastic bags to keep cameras dry, including those manufactured and sold for the purpose, but have never found them much use. And of course you can’t put them over the part that really matters, the front surface of the lens.

I generally now work holding a chamois leather (vegans could try a microfibre cloth but they don’t work as well) balled up in my hand pressed against the front surface, taking it out immediately before I want to take a picture, and replacing it after I’ve pressed the shutter. But it’s surprising how often a rain drop can fall while you are focussing and composing the image.

When I know there is to be prolonged heavy rain I’ll think about wearing a poncho and then it’s easy to simply lift out the camera and take a picture then put it back in the dry. But my bag isn’t big enough to hold the poncho and I don’t like having it hanging around my waist. Usually I have a jacket and can put one camera inside on my chest, though it does mean opening the zip enough so I get a bit wet.

Lens hoods help too, at least with long lenses, but those on wideangles and most zooms give little protection against rain falling on the front element.

Something I’ve not heard much talk about, but has often been a real problem for me in wet weather is condensation on the inside of the lens. I can’t really understand why this is such a great problem for me, as I would only expect it to happen when warmer air saturated with moisture meets a cold glass surface. But it seems to happen whenever I’m working for a long period in wet conditions, at first simply giving flare and reducing contrast in all or part of the image and then when it gets worse making the lens unusable until I spend some time in a warmer place and it evaporates.

By the time we had got from Parliament Square to Piccadilly Circus, both the lenses I was using were beginning to steam up, and I decided it was time to get somewhere warmer and dry if I was going to cover the second event in my diary. This was in Kensington and fortunately my the time I had travelled there with a little help the lenses were clear again. One of the lenses changed its length when it zoomed, and so pulled air in an out helping the drying – and I also wiped any moisture off the lens barrel that became exposed when zooming out.

Students march for climate

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

Requiem for a Dead Planet

The Daily Mail was banned by Wikipedia as an ‘unreliable’ source in 2017, and fact checking sites and organisations regularly find that it published materail that is known to be untrue. But of course there are stories in it that are factually correct, though even these often have misleading and sensational headlines.

It has a long history of support for extreme right views and its proprieter in the early 1930s Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere was a friend of both Hitler and Mussolini and ensured his papers published articles in support of the fascists and in 1934 wrote and published an article ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ urging young men to join Mosley’s thugs. The family still have a controlling share in the Mail group, which includes the Mail on Sunday and the daily free Metro. Northcliffe House in Kensington where this protest took place is now also the home of Independent, London Live and the Evening Standard.

Extinction Rebellion had organised the protest to urge the press to stop publishing denials of climate change and to tell the truth about the climate emergency. They want the press to “put the full resources of their papers behind saving humanity from climate catastrophe and ecological collapse, and protect what is left of the natural world. “

As well as stopping publishing fake science, this would also mean changing the content of the papers to remove advertising and editorial material that promotes high-carbon lifestyles, whether about fashion, travel, food or other consumerist content and so enabling government can take the drastic action needed.

It was a protest where a great deal of thought and effort had gone into visual material, including skeletons, banners and lilies, as well as having classical music from XRBaroque who performed inside a large gazebo.

It was still raining most of the time, heavy at times, but Northcliffe House has a large projecting porch over its entrance which kept the rain off most of the protesters, and at least some of the time from photographers too. And it meant that most of those who took part in the die-in had a fairly dry pavement to lie down on. But there were still times like the die-in when to stand where I needed to take pictures meant standing in the rain. My lenses had dried out on the journey from Piccadilly Circus, but after taking pictures for an hour or so here I was having trouble with condensation.

Since it was ‘A Requiem for a dead Planet‘ some of those attending had come in suitably funereal dress, including one man in black with a black hat and dark glasses. I noticed these were reflecting some of the banners on the floor and as he moved around the white XR symbols on a black banner werem at times reflected in the lenses. There was a short period of time when there was a suitable banner behind him too, with skulls, and I took a whole series of pictures trying to get the effect I wanted. It would have been tricky to even set this up and I was pleased to get one frame with exactly the effect I wanted. People who were there have said to me “I didn’t see he was wearing glasses with the XR symbol on them” and I’ve just smiled.

More pictures at Requiem for a Dead Planet at Daily Mail

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

Tax Rebellion

Travelling around London as I do is often frustrating, with traffic often blocking the streets rather than moving through them. If I had any sense I would have picked up my folding bike, a Brompton, and took it with me to get to this protest at City Hall, the home of the Greater London Authority, more or less next to Tower Bridge.

My journey had started badly, with my train into London arriving around 25 minutes late – impressive for a journey which normally only takes 35 minutes. If I’d brought the bike I could have jumped on it and still got to City Hall on time, and if I’d been thinking more clearly I would have rushed down to the Jubilee line station to take a train to London Bridge, leaving me with just a short walk.

But when I’d planned the journey I’d given myself plenty of time, and the bus had two advantages. First my National bus pass meant it was free, and secondly it took me almost to the doorstep of where I was going so I decided to keep to my plan and take a bus. It was a bad call, and as I waited longer and longer at the stop I wondered whether to give up and go back for the tube, but finally the bus arrived and I got on. The first half mile was fine, but then we hit more traffic.

I ran up the path towards the protest, and saw the die-in starting from a couple of hundred yards away. I hadn’t missed it completely but it would have been rather better to have arrived and been available to photograph the start of the event.

The protest was to declare a tax strike against the Greater London Authority, withholding the GLA element of their council tax until they abandon projects which will cause environmental degradation and hasten ecological collapse. They want a citizen’s assembly to re-write the London Plan to stop all infrastructure projects polluting London’s air and invest in measures to cut carbon emissions and encourage healthier lifestyles

Many of London’s problems were made much worse by the abolition of the GLC by Margaret Thatcher back in 1986, leaving the city without any proper overall authority. The GLC under Ken Livingstone had made a good start in improving public transport in the city, but things more or less came to a halt, only to pick up again when he returned as Mayor with the newly formed GLA in 2000. Rail privatisation in 1994 made matters worse, with so many different companies responsible for overground services in the area – and recent franchisees seem even less competent than their predecessors.

The development of London in most respects also took a setback with the election of Boris Johnson as Mayor, who was able to claim the kudos for Livingstone’s cycle hire scheme, but was generally ineffectual, as well as wasting time and considerable money on a garden bridge that served no purpose and few wanted.

Progress with better cycling facilities has been slow, though much of the blame for this lies with the boroughs rather than the GLA. Some boroughs have been clearly anti-cyclist, and a strong lobby from cab drivers organisations has opposed innovation. Progress has been very piecemeal.

The Green Party has of course been pushing for better cycle facilities and other changes that would make London a healthier place, and both Sian Berry and Caroline Russell spoke. There were also protesters against the Silvertown Tunnel, which will greatly increase traffic on both sides of the river, particularly in Greenwich. This has now been given the go-ahead by Mayor Sadiq Khan who seems to have rather less concern for the environment even than his predecessor.

I don’t know how successful – if at all – the tax boycott has been, but I’ve heard nothing about it since. I think it would take rather more than this single protest, where many of those present will not have been London council tax payers, to get such a boycott going on a scale large enough to have any real effect.

XR London Tax rebellion

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

120 years

My father, were he still alive would be 120 today, born in December 1899, just before the start of the 20th century (though for mathematicians that only started on 1st January 1901) and I often reflect on the changes he saw in his lifetime, and even more since his death 34 years ago.

Dad grew up in Hounslow, not far from the barracks of what was an important military town. The cavalary barracks there were the first of 40 new barracks built following the French revolution when there were strong fears both of the population here rising up in a similar manner and of a French invasion. Many of the buildings on the site, currently occupied by the Irish Guards, are listed and are expected to be retained when the site is redeveloped for housing in a few years time.

But Hounslow was also important as a coaching town, its High St allegedly lined by a hundred pubs, with the Bell junction being where the road from London to Bath and that to the Southwest diverged. Of course the coach traffic had gone by his birth, taken to rail, but these were still busy roads, though busy with horse and carts, with motorised vehicles only just begining to appear. Dad’s father had a business making horse-drawn carts, and the motor vehicles killed both his business and him when he turned right into the house gateway in front of a car whose driver pleaded he had been unable to stop.

As a two-year old he will have seen the new Electric tram which was extended to Hounslow, and later came to run past the house he lived in on the Staines Road. In 1935 the trams were replaced by trolley buses, and then these In a few years time the buses which now run there will again be electric.

At five he will have seen the building of a grand new Council House, Public Library and Swimming Baths in Treaty Road, and he lived long enough to see a new civic centre built in 1975, dying around the time the grand Edwardian buildings were demolished to build a rather undistinguished shopping centre. Now the civic centre is being redeveloped for housing and the council have moved into a rather snazzy new building on the Bath Road close to The Bell.

Just down the road from their house was Hounslow Heath, the site of one of London’s first airports. Dad and the other kids used to go down to watch the early aircraft take off and land, and always claimed to have seen Bleriot there and to have been told off by him for touching his plane. I doubt it was really Bleriot, but there were certainly other early aviators there in 1909 and later years.

Then came the war. At the start Dad was too young and worked in the drawing office of a munitions factory (women did the real work) and I think in a few other factories, but eventually when old enough decided army life would be easier. He wasn’t conscripted – I think because he was a skilled worker – but decided to volunteer. At the medical the officer who examined him told him his complete deafness in one ear (probably a result of factory work) meant he should fail him, but if he wanted to enlist he would ignore it.

After army training where he narrowly missed being court-martialled and probably shot for insuborordination the army got rid of him to the Royal Flying Corps and he went to France mending planes and finally running the stores in a camp in Germany (by now in the RAF) after the war had ended, again getting himself in a little trouble, this time for fraternising with the enemy.

I think he was probably back in Hounslow for when the first commercial flights took place from Hounslow Heath in 1919, and certainly for later in the year when the daily services began. In 1919 it was the only airport in the UK with customs facilities and there were regular flights to Paris, Amsterdam and Leeds.

By the time the BBC was established in 1922, Dad and his brother were listening-in on their crystal sets – and soon a primitive radio powered by a Daniell cell, which still I found in his workshop when I was young.

I doubt if Dad was there on 30th May 1925 when King George V cut the ceremonial ribbon to open the newly completed Great West Road, half a mile or so to the north of his home, the first of a number of new road schemes designed for motor vehicles – though also provided with separate cycle tracks in both directions, but he certainly rode on the cycle tracks and, on a motorbike, on the roads.

Dad cycled everywhere, except when he walked. West Middlesex still had plenty of country lanes in the 1930s, including those through the orchards of Heathrow, a small hamlet south of the Bath Road. When he had a young family he bolted a sidecar onto his push-bike to carry the kids, though by the time I was around the sidecar was rusting in the shed. The motorbike had long gone too, and he never owned a car. He had a hand-cart which he used to carry ladders, building materials, bee hives and other heavy goods for his various jobs.

He cycled all over Middlesex during the Second World War inspecting bee hives for foul brood; people were encouraged to take up bee-keeping as part of the campaign to grow more food at home, and had to be taught to keep their hives disease-free. We grew up self-sufficient for vegetables, from our own garden, his mother’s garden and an allotment, together with a wide range of fruit, apples, pears, plums, raspberries, blackberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and more peaches than we could eat from a couple of trees he grew from stones. And of course honey. I took my turn at the handle of the extractor watching it flow into the 28lb tins. At home it often came with the odd bees leg or wing in it, doubtless adding to the flavour.

Heathrow Airport was established towards the end of the war with the industry telling the lie it was needed for military purposes, when all the time it was being established to be London’s civil airport. At first it was small, a few tents on the Bath Road, but in the fifties it grew and larger, heavier and noiser planes began to use it. Replacing the DC3s with large propellor aircraft was not too bad, and I stood in my back garden crossing off their numbers in my aircraft spotters book. But when the jets came in you needed ear protectors. More lies were told to get each stage of expansion. Terminal 4 would be the last terminal ever needed. Then came T5 and the ‘third runway’. But by around 1971 Dad had had enough of the noise and been driven away. Away from so many people and places he knew.

After the war (when he also did his bit fire-watching) came the welfare state – the NHS and free education which I and my siblings benefitted from. NHS dentistry came too late for Dad, who together with his bride had been given a “full set” as a wedding present back in 1932. I was born before the NHS, but did get regular visits to the clinic with free orange juice and cod liver oil once it began.

Things have of course continued to change since then. We got a washing machine to replace the old boiler and mangle. Dad put in a hot water system with an immersion heater, though in winter it was still heated by the coal fire in the living room – which now had to burn smokeless fuel. The old stone sink went, to be replaced by a stainless steel sink unit. A fridge – our first was gas powered. Finally we got a television though Dad still preferred the radio (and so do I – we don’t have TV at home now.) A record player (mainly for me and bought on HP).

Later came computers; the Internet and World Wide Web and mobile phones. But by then Dad was no longer with us.

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.