Jerusalem Day

Writing on the day that the news is full of controversy over Ken Livingstone‘s continued suspension from holding office in the Labour Party, this protest and in particular the picture above seem rather appropriate. The Neturei Karta Jews shown in this picture waiting for the start of the Al Quds Day march are staunchly anti-Zionist, believing that ‘Torah demands ALL Palestine under Palestinian Sovereignty‘ and that ‘Judaism rejects the State of “Israel” and condemns its criminal seige & occupation‘.

They were marching with Palestinians and their supporters on Al Quds Day, an event began by the Iranian Imam Khomeini in 1979, who stated ‘Al Quds Day is a universal day to support the oppressed against the oppressor’, but its main purpose is to show solidarity with the Palestinians, in particular over the occupation of Jerusalem and to generally oppose Zionism and the Israeli state. Israel has its own Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim), celebrating their gaining control of the city after the June 1967 Six-Day War.

Back in the 1930s, which Livingstone’s comments concerned, Zionism was not universally popular among Jews, and the British government was against mass migration of Jews to Palestine. In 1917 when they had made the Balfour Declaration calling for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” the only Jewish member of cabinet, Edwin Samuel Montagu, had warned strongly against it, calling it “a capitulation to anti-Semitic bigotry” and warning of the dangers.

Livingstone’s comments were clearly based on historical fact. Hitler was never a Zionist, but he wanted the Jews out of Germany, and the Hitler government reacted positively to suggestions from the Zionist Federation of Germany and supported their efforts to encourage Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until it became impossible during the war. There were even Zionist training camps for settlers in Germany, where they were allowed to fly the Jewish national banner – now the familiar Israeli flag, though the Nazis still opposed the idea of a separate Israeli state.

It wasn’t politically astute to have said what he did when he did, but part of Livingstone’s appeal to me has always been a tendency to say what he thinks rather than think politically, and his comments have been manna to those opposed to the Corbyn leadership of the party. As an interview with Lord Levy on the Today programme this morning made plain, this is what is really behind the fuss over Livingstone’s alleged anti-Semitism.

Al Quds day is equally controversial, not least because the main organisation behind it in this country is the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which critics say is funded by Iran and which supports Hezbollah and Islamic extremism, and fails to criticize human rights abuses in Iran and some other Islamic states. My pictures over the years do show some supporters of Hezbollah on the marches, but whenever I’ve heard them, speakers have been clear that they are not anti-Semitic but firmly anti-Zionist, a distinction that their critics seem keen to dismiss.

Although IHRC is an imperfect organisation, it does useful and well-respected work in many areas, while most of those making the accusations are highly prejudiced and unreliable, and many of the details they state clearly fly in the face of facts.

At the end of the march, outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, the Al Quds Day marchers were welcomed by a rather smaller but very vocal group waving those Israeli flags, the Sussex Friends of Israel, Zionist Federation and the Israel Advocacy Movement who were holding their ‘It’s Time To Stop The Hate: Stand With Israel‘ rally. While police more or less kept the two groups apart and the bulk of the Al Quds Day marchers moved on to their really in front of the embassy, most of the Neturei Karta climbed on to one of the raised beds opposite the Stand with Israel protest.

The pro-Israeli protesters weren’t too keen to be photographed, but the police who were keeping the two groups separate refused the requests by some of them to prevent photographers working, though I was unable to stay as close as I would have preferred. Although they were all holding placards proclaiming ‘Peace Not Hate‘ there was soon a barrage of what can only be called anti-Semitic insults and pure hatred being screamed over my head towards the Neturei Karta, who responded vigorously in similar fashion.

Al Quds Day March
Supporters Stand Up for Israel

Continue reading Jerusalem Day

Interior America revisited

I was interested to read ‘A Second Look: Chauncey Hare’s Interior America‘ by Jörg M. Colberg on his Conscientious Photo Magazine, and I recommend it to you.  As might be expected, its a thoughtful and considered view of a man and a body of work which for various reasons the photographic world has rather forgotten and who himself gave up on photography and the institutions of photography to become a therapist.

I was introduced to Hare’s work by Lewis Balz when I went to a workshop Balz gave at the Photographer’ Place in Derbyshire a year or two after Interior America was published (Aperture 1978), and went to buy his book immediately after. It wasn’t that easy to find in London and I don’t think the Photographers Gallery had it in stock, but I managed to get a copy and both the pictures and the introductory essay by Hare made a great impression on me.

I didn’t start going out to try and make work like his, but it did have an influence on me in terms of the wide-angle view that he used. Balz’s work also got me working with ultra-slow emulsions, though I never liked the isochromatic films he used, but worked instead with Kodak’s Technical Pan, a film with extended red sensitivity, and one of the most frustrating emulsions ever made. Developing it for pictorial use – at least until Kodak made its Technidol developer available was rather hit or miss, and you could get great almost grain-free and incredibly sharp negatives – but some films I pulled off the dev tank spiral straight into the bin as they contained only the ghosts of images.

But I couldn’t afford a quality wideangle for my 4×5 camera, and Technical Pan offered comparable quality from 35mm, if only at ISOs between ISO6 and ISO32 depending on your choice of developer and a little luck. And the Zuiko 21mm f/3.5 was a fine and affordable lens that became a ruglar part of my equipment.

Around 2000 I wrote a short note about Chauncey Hare for the web site I was then working for, where, among other things, I had a guide to several hundred photographers of note. It got updated a little after Hare himself got in touch with me, initially I think suggesting firmly I should remove it. We exchanged a few more e-mails, and I tried to get him to agree to my writing more about him and to include some of his pictures, but without success, but eventually I think he was reasonably content with the short note I wrote about him, which incorporated a little of what we had discussed in our messages. So here it is, from around 2002:

Chauncey Hare

Chauncey Hare is known for one set of work, and a chilling one at that. He qualified and worked for as an engineer for a large oil corporation for over 20 years, becoming increasingly alienated from his work and the attitudes it forced him to take and at the same time more involved in photography.

Eventually he quit the lab and began a journey into many people’s homes to photograph them in their rooms. Some were people he knew, others total strangers who allowed the photographer with his large format camera into their homes, thanks to credentials from various museums and the Guggenheim Foundation who supported his work. At times they were unaware they were in the view of the extreme wide-angle lens he used, while some others pose for the camera. Often they are caught awkwardly by the blast of a flash, pinned to a wall by their shadow.

These are pictures, as Theodore Roszak wrote in his note on the cover of Interior America, that chronicle not just the spiritual desolation at the heart of an industrial society, but also reflect Hare’s own despair.

We can also see in them echoes of other work in photography, perhaps most notably the interiors of Walker Evans some 40 years earlier. They give a fascinating if somewhat depressing insight into the psyche of a nation from a highly individual viewpoint.

Hare’s 1985 book ‘This Was Corporate America’ accompanied a touring exhibition of his work showing photographs of the Social Security Administration, subway riders in San Francisco, and people working in the electronic industry in silicon Valley. These pictures complemented his earlier work on people in their homes.

Although curators – including John Szarkowski of MOMA, NY – recognised Hare’s work for its formal qualities, they failed to respond to the need for changes in society the pictures made obvious. The galleries and the art world were a part of the problem, enmeshed in and supporting a sick corporate world that denied human potential.

Hare decided he needed to leave photography, as it no longer allowed him to make the statements he wanted to make, and to work on the problem in a more direct way. He is now a licensed family therapist and Co-director of Work and Family Resources, a not-for-profit community-based business offering “personal coaching” and group seminars for people who are, or have been, abused at work.

Today I might add a little on the end, mentioning of course the 2009 Steidl republication of his work, Protest Photographs, and perhaps articles like Two Slight Returns on Afterall, and articles elsewhere. THe LIbrary of Congress has 8 of his pictures, but none of them available on line, and their restricitons page has the message: “Publication and other forms of distribution:Restricted. Mr. Hare has stipulated that his photographs may not be copied by researchers in any way or for any purpose.”

You can however see an number of his images on line by going to Google and doing an image search on the name ‘Chauncey Hare’. Its generally pretty obvious which are his from the rather mixed set that is returned.

Around Brexit

Understandably the vote – by a considerable but narrow majority – to leave the European Union was dominating our minds and events on the street at the start of last July. I suspect I’ve already made my own views on it pretty clear – it was a shocking gamble by a Tory Prime Minister concerned only with his problems inside the party and not with the interests of the country, and was won by cynical politicians – again mainly Tory – making promises they knew there was no possibility of being achievable.

Although we can’t know what the end result will be, things are not looking good, and seem likely to get worse. While exit from the EU seems inevitable now that the process has started, it also seems inevitable that it will lead to a tremendous disillusion among those who voted for it, as they find it won’t lead to more jobs or fewer immigrants, more money for the NHS or any of the other ‘goodies’ dangled before their eyes in the referendum campaign. Given the incredible levels of mistrust of politicians by ordinary people across the whole political spectrum this can’t be healthy, and seems likely to lead to some kind of populist backlash.

My first assignment (or rather self-assignment) of the month was a rally in Islington against the reported rise in hate crime which followed the referendum result, with people from across the community coming to stand together against hate crime against racial, faith and other minorities. I wasn’t surprised to find among the speakers a local MP, Jeremy Corbyn, not just because it was in his constituency, but because of his anti-racist views he has always expressed.

Corbyn’s rise to become leader of the Labour Party was an expression of the growing disillusion among Labour Party members and supporters against the kind of politics that have dominated the party over the past twenty or more years – and which still runs the party mechanisms, which has led to the continuing conspiracies in the party against him. And what really worries the handful of ultra-wealthy who own our media (and the BBC which is also controlled by our ‘elites’) is that he and those moderate socialists (largely Keynsian rather than Marxist) who back him could well win, though were I a betting man I might consider it wiser to put my money on Farage. And even were Corbyn to win, I think the most likely outcome would be for us to find a little more about where power actually resides under our strange and unwritten constitution.

So I took my pictures of the event and the speakers, wrote my captions, all stressing the issues and filed my pictures. And I actually made a little money from them, but the story wasn’t about race hate, but about the jacket Corbyn was wearing, a ‘designer jacket’. Though I expect the reporters who wrote the story, like me, probably knew or strongly suspected that he been given it or had bought it in a charity shop. And of course when I took the picture I too was wearing a rather similar designer jacket; most clothing these days appears to be labeled in this way.
Love Islington – NO to Hate Crime

From Islington I rushed to Hyde Park Corner, where a March For Europe against Brexit was starting more or less as I arrived.  It was a large march, and it took well over an hour and a half for the fairly tightly-packed crowd to pass me as I walked up and down taking pictures of marchers and their placards before I walked briskly to the Underground for a train to Westminster, where the rally was taking place in Parliament Square.

Numbers are always difficult to estimate, but I think at least 5-600 people were going past me a minute, taking up the whole width of the road, and for over 90 minutes, giving an estimate of over 50,000 on the march.  Given the topicality of the issue and the numbers involved you might have expected some significant coverage in the media, but there was relatively little; it would have got more on the BBC had it been a protest against the government in Spain.

The Rally For Europe against Brexit had almost finished by the time I arrived – even though I’d come by tube, but I did catch a couple of the final speakers, including Bob Geldorf. There was a giant TV screen above the speakers relaying them to the large crowd in the square, many of whom would otherwise not have been able to see, and whoever was putting the image on to it was playing with some effects as Geldorf spoke, which made a more interesting background to my image of him. I found the slight delay – presumably due to the effect processing – between the two images interesting and you can see it in the different positions of his finger in the picture.

His was a speech that the content didn’t greatly detract from my concentration on the image, and I looked for ways to use the reflection  of the crowd in the mirror of his dark glasses – and found it when a suitable background came up on the screen behind.

The following day I was in Westminster again, photographing 16-17 Year olds demand the vote, a protest triggered by the referendum where they had no vote, despite being among those whose future would be most affected by it. Had they been able to vote it might have swung was was a fairly narrow margin (though I think it would have needed some of the other excluded groups too.)  Finally, after covering their rally in Parliament Square – rather smaller than that the day before,  I wandered over to the tribute to murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, the Jo Cox banner of love, to take a few pictures before going elsewhere to cover other protests.

Continue reading Around Brexit

The Struggle Continues…

It’s hard to cover events that keep on and on and try to produce images that look fresh and different, but sometimes important to do so. The Wood St strike by cleaners in the United Voices of the World was a good example, and at the end of June had reached its 22nd day.

I hadn’t of course been there every day, though the pickets had been, but this was my fourth visit on days when the union had decided to hold a special rally, this marking the fourth week of their strike. While the UVW and other unions have held one or two day strikes, the UVW say this is the first indefinite strike in the City of London, and it looked as if it would continue for some time, with the direct employers Thames Cleaning having taken an extremely hard line, going to court to try stop the strike and getting an injunction covering the union’s actions, the costs of which came close to bankrupting the union, and Thames apparently getting the uncritical backing of the company that runs the offices, CBRE.

The picketing and rallies present an embarrassment to CBRE, but also, along with the lack of proper cleaning (though doubtless Thames were trying their best to keep things going though their managers and non-striking cleaners) were building up pressure on CBRE from the people who work in the offices and the well-known companies they worked for. Just because these city workers are themselves very well paid doesn’t mean they don’t have sympathy for those who are badly paid – and who they know they rely on to keep their workplace pleasant, and many had taken the leaflets from the strikers and some expressed their support.

Publication of articles and pictures about the strike – even on the web and in the alternative press, but particularly when the story gets picked up my newspapers and TV stations disturb these powerful companies – and they put pressure on those they pay for office space who in turn dictate to the actual employers. CBRE are paying Thames and can and will in the end tell them to pipe down and come to an agreement with the UVW that will eventually end the strike – as they did around a month later. One new aspect which might have helped the strike get more publicity was the threat by on of the sacked workers to go on hunger strike.

While I try hard to ensure my coverage of the events keeps to the facts, the very fact that I and other journalists are there and covering them is important in uncovering injustice, to me one of the vital roles of a free press. Its news that should be published, even if most of the media ignores it most of the time, often in favour of trivia. And the presence of the media does sometimes appear to improve the behaviour of both security staff and police.

There is no doubt that low pay and the increasing inequality of our society is an important topic, and it is actions like this that help put it on the national agenda – so much so that even a Conservative government recently felt it had to introduce a “Living Wage”, even though this was largely an evasion, well below an actual Living Wage, particularly in London. The figures for the living wage are readily available, published annually, but ignored by then Chancellor George Osborne.

UVW Wood St Strike continues
Continue reading The Struggle Continues…

London Mix

Some days there are just too many things happening in London. Well all days there are, but I mean too many things that I have access to and am trying to photograph, and June 28th last year was one of them. And in the early evening there were three protests occurring simultaneously in the same area of Trafalgar Square and to make things worse it was raining steadily and fairly intensively.

Rain isn’t necessarily a bad thing for photographers, and umbrellas can offer some visual interest – I once published an article ‘The umbrella in photography’ looking at examples by a number of photographers including Kertesz, though I have to admit I’ve probably seen more than enough pictures made through rain-drenched windows to last several lifetimes.

But umbrellas in crowds are something of a problem. Unless you have an assistant holding a large one over your head, they become pretty impossible to use when using a camera. If you are alone in plenty of space and there is little wind it can be manageable to hold one tucked under your left arm and held up by your wrist as you hold a camera to your eye, but this becomes untenable in crowds, as you get buffeted by other brollies and yours will uncontrollably poke other people in their eyes.

Working without one, you get wet. Wetter than just the rain would make you, as those other umbrellas around direct the rain they protect the holders from onto you, and unless you are wearing a hood, unerringly down the back of your neck, making you sodden from inside your clothing. In winter I wear a good waterproof jacket with an integral hood, but even an expensive ‘breathable’ coat becomes unbearably hot in summer.

Cameras too suffer from water. Even those that are ‘weather-sealed’ will slowly drown, but lenses generally go first. You can keep wiping the front surface with a chamois or microfibre cloth (and I often walk around holding one in front of the lens), but you do have to remove it to make the exposure. Zoom lenses which alter their length pump moisture into their interior as you alter the zoom, and even those that only move internal elements had something of the same tendency. Something that seldom gets a mention in the manuals is that lens hoods, at least with telephoto lenses, are at their most useful in keeping the rain off.

I do have a kind of plastic raincoat for my camera, but its a real pain to use, and though it diverts the rain (except from the front lens surface) it doesn’t stop the moisture. Usually I put one camera away in my bag to keep dry, and keep the other under my jacket as much as possible – though that does mean leaving my jacket rather open so the rain (and those brolly drips) can enter too.

And when the lens clouds over due to condensation on its inner elements, I take the other camera out of the bag and work with that. Until it goes too. Usually I’ve at least one more dry lens in the bag to change to, though that may mean I end up taking far more pictures than I really should on the 16mm fisheye.

When all my cameras, lenses and clothes are sodden, its time to give up and go home. Though at such times I always remember what my father used to tell us kids when we complained about getting wet, ‘You’ve got a waterproof skin’.

You can read what the protests were about and see more pictures on ‘My London Diary’:

Act Up for Love
London Still Stays

The third protest was a group of four women protesting over the agreement between the South Korean and Japanese government over ‘comfort women’, the Koreans used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers in the second Worlad War – and I only used the one picture above.

Continue reading London Mix

Hull Photos: 23/3/17-29/3/17

23 March 2017

These railway tracks ran into the Neptune St Goods station of the Hull & Barnsley railway which opened in 1885. The company, full name The Hull Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company had been backed by Hull Corporation to compete with the monopoly of the North Eastern Railway on traffic to the city and the docks. It opened its new Alexandra Dock the same year. After financial difficulties towards the end of the century it agreed to work with the NER over the building of a new jointly owned dock, opened in 1914 as the King George V Dock, and it merged with the NER in 1922, shortly before the 1923 grouping when this became part of the LNER.

The goods station was closed around 1960 and the yard was taken over Drapers to cut up steam locomotives for scrap around 1967 when they moved there from the old HBR Sculcoates Goods; around 578 engines ended their days at the two locations, and the pile of scrap past the wagons is probably some of their remains.

The large brick building left of centre is the HBR good shed and it and some of the Neptune St buildings remain. There is still a bridge, though completely rebuilt in concrete as a part of the construction of Clive Sullivan Way. The white building at left is the AJK Ltd (Andrew Johnson Knudtzon) Neptune Street bulk cold storage warehouse, 36,613 cubic metres of space for your frozen seafood, meat and other products close to Albert Dock.


28v41 Rail tracks under bridge to William Wright Dock, Goulton St, 1981 – Docks

24 March

Brenda’s Cafe was on a street corner somewhere on or close to Goulton St, but appears to have been boarded up when I took this picture, and I have no recollection of exactly where it was located. Almost certainly like most of the housing in this area it will have been demolished shortly after I made this and a second photograph concentrating on the message ‘THIS IS BRENDA’S CAFE’.

I liked the underlined ‘THIS IS’, written on a slant and then the careful alignment to the brick courses of ‘BRENDA’S CAFE’, provided with a correct apostrophe and a full stop but no acute accent. But I imagine Brenda’s was a cafe rather than a café.


28v42: Brenda’s Cafe, Goulton St area, 1981

Also:

28v43: Brenda’s Cafe, Goulton St area, 1981

25 March 2017

Above the doorway of the 1930’s brick building of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen’s Queen Mary Hostel (a building that is now the Hull Training Business Academy) in the 3 layers of stone facing above the stone door surround was a fairly lightly scratched bas-relief of two fishermen hauling nets aboard a small planked boat. The section at bottom right had suffered somewhat from erosion and the wheelhouse of the boat at top left was almost invisible.

I think my focus was possibly slightly out on this image, but the stone was also rather worn. A few years later this sculpture was painted to make the details clearer, but when I made this I think it was bare stone. When I last saw it, most of the paint had faded or flaked off and the work was reverting to its former state.

The building is a few yards to the west of the junction with Boulevard and on the north side of Goulton St.


28v44: Fishermen bas-relief, National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Goulton St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

26 March 2017

This statue, I think in fibreglass, of a fisherman was in the reception area of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen., and could be seen clearly through the glass door and window, though the fine wire grid in the toughened glass.

I made several near-identical exposures through the right-hand window, and can be seen doing so in a reflection at the left of the picture, apparently from an interior glass divider.

I have been unable to find any information about this sculpture, or about its current location, though doubtless some people in Hull will know.


28v46: Fisherman, National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Goulton St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

27 March 2017

Although my note on the contact sheet states ‘Boulevard’, I think this fine doorway was almost certainly in Coltman St, another of the streets I walked down on my way to Hessle Rd. You can still see a very similar example at the end of a row in Coltman St (I think at 194) on the west side fairly close to Anlaby Rd. There is a gap where two properties have been demolished, possibly following fire damage, a rather common fate for various reasons with derelict properties, particularly when listed. This may well have been one of those now missing.

There are around 15 houses in the street which were Grade II listed in 1973, and this example must surely have been one of these. The street was named after the Coltman family who owned the land and developed it from around 1840 starting at the south end on Hessle Rd, and it includes a number of houses in a ‘Greek Revival’ style from the 1850s.


28v53: Doorway, probably Coltman St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

28 March 2017

I photographed this shop window on several occasions. A small general store and sweet shop on Church St I think I went in and bought the occasional Mars Bar or can of drink to keep me going in an otherwise rather desolate area. The normal window was simply a few drink cans thrown in randomly and this was a special effort for the Royal Wedding , with the tray and carefully arranged cans.

Church St used to lead to St Peter’s Church, the parish church of Drypool a large building which replaced and incorporated parts of the earlier church in 1823, with seating for a thousand worshippers. This was destroyed by bombing in 1941, though its former churchyard is still there across from where Church St meets Great Union St. The site of the church is now occupied by Humber Galvanising and its car park.


28×12 Royal Wedding Window Display, Church St, 1981 – East Hull

29 March 2017

Like St Peter’s Church nearby, the Clarence Flour Mill was badly damaged during wartime bombing, with only the silo remaining from the original 1891 flour mill, but it was rebuilt and reopened in 1952, continuing in operation until 2005.

Hull’s most prominent landmark, it was demolished in 2015, supposedly to allow a remarkably ugly replacement, the Radisson Blu hotel, to be built in time for the 2017 City of Culture. When I walked past a month ago the site was still just an empty gap of ground-level rubble and brick, with no building work having started.

Joseph Rank was born on Holderness Rd, Hull into a milling family in 1854 and was running a small rented windmill by the time he was 21, but it failed to make money. He invested in a larger windmill which was profitable and a few years later after seeing them in action at another mill he realised the potential of using steel rollers and mechanical power to greatly increase output, building his Alexandra Mill in Williamson St off Holderness Rd in 1885, the first mill of its type in the UK.

The Clarence Flour Mill, as well as having roller mills with high capacity also led in other areas of technology, including the bulk handling of flour, discharging it in into barges on the River Hull.

As well as the large ‘JOSEPH’ at the top of the picture, my attention was also drawn to the much smaller message across two of the ground floor window panes, ‘HELP ME’. My younger son, Joseph, then three, may well have been with me when I made the exposure, and I certainly pointed out his name to him on various occasions as we went past, and I may well have felt in need of help myself. But somewhere inside this huge building, with its hundreds of panes of glass there was someone who felt trapped.

While now it would have been trivial to correct the perspective using a wider lens and computer software, it wasn’t possible to get it right in camera with a shift lens, nor to correct the slight distortion, and I have left these more or less as taken.


28×23: Joseph Rank’s Clarence Flour Mill, Clarence St, 1981 – River Hull

You can see the new pictures added each day at Hull Photos, and I post them with the short comments above on Facebook.
Comments and corrections to captions are welcome here or on Facebook.
Continue reading Hull Photos: 23/3/17-29/3/17

February 2017 at last

Finally I’ve managed to finish the month of February on My London Diary. It’s been hard going, partly because I spent 5 days away from home and taking pictures, working on a new Hull project in the 22017 UK City of Culture. The Hull pictures took a long time to process because I was mainly taking panoramas, which end up as files a little over 200Mb. They are slow to take as it’s essential to get the camera level in two dimensions as well as setting the framing at the edges. It is possible to make very slight corrections on the computer, but anything more than a small tad is destined for the bit bucket.

My time was also occupied in getting files ready for the show ‘All About the Lea‘ which opened at Cody Dock in West Ham last weekend and is open from 11am till 5pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays until 23 April. Cody Dock arranged the printing and hung the show, but I had to work on the files to get the 28 pictures ready, as well as checking up on locations and dates for the captions.

March also saw a rare appearance for me speaking in public on a discussion panel at Battersea Arts Centre after a performance of ‘E15’ there, a verbatim play based largely on the protests by the group of young mothers from the Stratford Focus E15 hostel. The play was a slightly strange experience, re-living for me the experience of a number of their protests that I had photographed (and you can find the pictures on My London Dairy by searching on ‘E15’.)

I don’t often speak in public, and I spent some time worrying beforehand (as well as doing a certain amount of preparation), but it went well on the night, and I was sorry when we ran out of time – though most of the panel and the cast had an enjoyable discussion over a few glasses afterwards.

Feb 2017

Hounslow Heath
Dubs Now – let the children in


25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre
Stop Unfair Eviction by Guinness
Picturehouse recognition & living wage
Shut race-hate LD50 gallery
End homophobic bullying at LSE

Hull 2017 City of Culture
Sculcoates & River Hull
City Centre & Beverley Rd
Ropery St & St Mark’s Square


St Andrew’s Dock
Hessle Rd
Gipsyville
Beverley and Nellie’s


Around the Town
The Deep
More Hull Panoramic
Wincolmlee and Lime St
Evening in the City
Old Town
A ride on Scale Lane Bridge
Around the City Centre
Hullywood Opening
East Hull & Garden Village
Old Town & City Centre
River Hull
Night in the Old Town
Victoria Dock Promenade

Show Culture some Love
Willesden Green Wassail
Kensal Rise to Willesden Green
ANAL squat in Belgravia
Invest in Cycling – Stop Killing Cyclists


Dubs Now – Shame on May


King’s College Divest Oil & Gas Now!
Court support for Heathrow protesters
No Muslim Ban, No State Visit

London Images

Continue reading February 2017 at last

Keep Corbyn


A grinning Piers Corbyn among thousands who turned up to support his younger brother

I can’t remember when I first photographed Jeremy Corbyn, but it must have been more than 20 years ago, and I’ve listened to him speaking at many events and often exchanged the odd word with him. He has always seemed to me to stand for the ideas and approach that are central to the Labour Party and which clearly differentiate it from the Conservatives, and states his views lucidly without a great deal of histrionics, but not without a certain passion and clearly a man of principle. If I had to pick a single word to represent him, it would be ‘reasonable’.

Like most, I was surprised when his name was put forward as a possible leader of the Labour Party, because he has never played the kind of politics that takes you to the top of political parties. It was perhaps precisely this that got him put forward as a candidate by the left of the party, as someone few MPs would be particularly antagonised by and who they would not feel had any chance of success – and so could be persuaded to back his nomination.

But it was also just this quality that appealed to many grass-roots members and supporters of the party who had become disillusioned with the politicians and who found a decent honourable man who clearly stood for the traditional values of the labour movement something which gave them hope for the future. Many joined the party to support him, though most existing members also backed him and were voting for change.

I’m not a fan of Corbynmania, but he was a man whose time had come, and I think rightly so. Most of the policies that Corbyn supports – for example in his recent ‘10 pledges to rebuild and transform Britain‘ enjoy wide popular support, even among many Conservative voters, but nothing in the press or media coverage reflects this. They seldom actually report on his policies, but spend a great deal of time on irrelevances or even truly ‘fake news’ such as a recent story over his tax returns which was patently untrue from the start, and simply showed the reporters had not bothered to read the document they were criticising. It’s a sign that those who really run the country are very worried that Corbyn could win.

It seemed obvious to me at the time he became leader that the same kind of reasons that led to his popularity also represented the only hope that Labour have of getting re-elected in our next general election – probably in 2020. But also obvious that this will only happen if Labour MPs get in line with the party as a whole and get behind him. Which unfortunately seems unlikely, and many of those MPs who continue to plot against him will lose their seats as a result.

But Labour MPs are not alonge; today with Theresa May delivering her Brexit letter to Europe we have another reminder that shooting ourselves in the foot now appears to be our overwhelming national characteristic.

Back last June I covered two protests by supporters of Corbyn, one rather small and the other rather large when some right-wing Labour MPs attempted a coup against him. At the larger of these events another photographer asked me how many days I thought it would be before Corbyn resigned. I told him he had been reading too many newspapers and there was no chance he would go. And nine months later he is still leader, having won a second decisive contest with over 60% of the vote in September.

Pictures from both events:
Keep Corbyn – No Coup
Thousands rally to Keep Corbyn

Continue reading Keep Corbyn

Pride 2016

I first photographed Pride back in 1992 and since then I think I’ve been every year except 2005 when I was out of the country, but I was wondering whether I could be bothered in 2016. It really has become so much of a corporate and commercial event that it has lost much of the interest it had for me. This year was the first for many that I didn’t bother to apply for accreditation, which given the large crowds and strict control of the procession and main events by stewards and police makes covering the event rather easier.

I’m not a great believer in accreditation for events. It often seems to be a way of controlling access to a small group of people known to the organisers – often including many who don’t have a press card. But at least accreditation for Pride is straightforward and I’ve never been refused when I have applied, unlike a few other events. But generally I feel a press card should be enough – and even that is usually unnecessary for the kind of events I want to cover and the way I like to cover them.

In the end I decided to go again largely because Movement for Justice had organised a Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride march to join the main Pride event. They gathered on Oxford St, a smallish group including London in Solidarity with Istanbul LGBTI Pride, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants and others who feel as I do that ‘ the official event has been taken over by corporate sponsors such as Barclays and BAE systems and is a parade rather than a protest, no longer representing its roots.’

And they joined on the main Pride march at the end, where other political groups are generally marginalised. As they moved forwards to join in the march I walked back to the tube and left.

You can see some of my pictures from Pride in 1993-2002 in Ten Years of Pride based on the  work shown as a part of the exhibition Queer is Here at the Museum of London, Feb 2006 and touring.

More text and pictures:
Pride London 2016
Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride
Continue reading Pride 2016

Brexit shock

The Brexit vote came as a shock to most of us, not least to David Cameron who had planned the whole referendum as a way of keeping his even more right wing chums in Parliament quiet, certainly the biggest political mistake so far of this century. Though it was one which his colleague who succeeded him seems determined to worsen by refusing to make the kind of compromises over our divorce from Europe that might have made the split bearable.

The referendum result, although it confounded the media and the opinion pollsters, didn’t come as a huge surprise to those of us who had been following the campaign, and in particular the way it had been reported in the media, and in particular the BBC. While we had seen for years a hate campaign against Europe and migrants in the whole of the popular press, it was rather a shock to us that the BBC made such a determined effort to promote Nigel Farage and his delusional opinions (along with his mates from the Conservative Party) in the run up to the vote.

There were of course some at the BBC who tried to present the facts rather than the UKIP spin, but they seemed to have little effect on the news coverage, which gloried in reporting the ridiculous lies of the Leave campaign as if they made any sense, while failing to report at all much of the more sensible aspects of what was overall a rather lacklustre Remain campaign.

One contribution to this BBC failure was of course their continuing campaign to belittle Jeremy Corbyn, whose many appearances around the country arguing Labour’s nuanced campaign to remain in the EU hardly got a mention. But as on some other issues, BBC ideas about ‘balance’ also prevented a truly unbiased coverage – as when they give equal prominence to the views of those few climate sceptics as to the huge majority of scientific evidence for the man-made contribution to climate change.

So while the fairly narrow vote to leave the EU came as a shock, it was hardly a surprise, and its consequences almost certainly disastrous. That such a small majority should lead to such a momentous decision still seems an unbelievable idiocy on Cameron’s part to many of us. It should have been made clear when the vote was set up that a simple small majority would not be binding on the government.

Defend All Migrants was a reaction to this shock, and it was one that brought home to me the reality of ‘Fake News’, seeing an ultra-right US ‘news’ site operating at first hand. Their team at the protest had clearly not come along to report on the event, but to try and provoke a reaction by the way they behaved and the questions they asked.

While it might have been more sensible for the protesters to have ignored them it was actually inevitable that they would provoke some reaction – which was why they had come there. And as usual when trouble-makers try to protest and stir up the situation, eventually the police strongly advised them to leave. I’m not sure if they actually escorted them out of the park, but I’m fairly sure they would have done if they didn’t go without an escort.

Behaviour like this by people who pose as journalists but are really political activists threatens all of us who work as journalists. I was disturbed that some colleagues took the side of these fake reporters whose activities are a real threat to the freedom of the press. Those of us who were there as genuine journalists faced no problems in reporting this event, but when people come along posing as journalists and acting provocatively it makes our job more difficult.

The rally proceeded and it was good to hear speakers from a wide range of organisations, all speaking up to defend migrants at a time when many were coming under attack after the vote to leave the EU – which had been widely seen as a way of cutting down migration to the UK. It isn’t likely to have a great effect on levels of migration, as we will still need people to come here to staff our hospitals, to work in old peoples homes, on our building sites, as agricultural workers etc – to do all the jobs that there are not enough people here qualified or willing to do.

And we will still have refugees seeking asylum, particularly while this country and companies based here encourage, fund and take part in perpetuating war and famine in countries around the world.

After the rally, many of those present took part in a march, which was to go to News International, home of The Sun and The Times, both of which have spread lies and scapegoated immigrants. As I wrote in a caption, ‘Murdoch hates Europe because unlike UK governments they don’t do what he tells them.’

Although it’s destination was clear, the route the marchers took certainly wasn’t, and those leading it turned down a side street on seeing more police ahead, and then got rather lost. There was much looking at maps on phones by those at the front and I began to wonder if they would ever find their way or keep wandering through the back streets of the city for ever.

I knew exactly where I was and decided I had walked far enough and was beginning to get hungry. When the march turned to the north, walking in exactly the opposite direction to its destination I decided I’d had enough and caught a bus for the station and my train home.

Defend All Migrants

Continue reading Brexit shock