Technically Harmondsworth Immigration Detention Centre isn’t a prison, but people are still locked up there, some for many months on a stretch, though under different conditions to prison. They are locked up without trial and often get little recourse to justice. ‘Fast Track’ procedures were introduced because asylum seekers were making use of our justice system to appeal when refused asylum, and the Home Office decided that it would be better to deny them the chance to put their cases properly and whenever possible to get rid of them without proper consideration.

Handing the running of these immigration prisons to private companies has resulted in various corners being cut to increase profits. Conditions inside them have been strongly criticised by various reports, and led to hunger strikes. People are treated in a way that simply should not happen in any civilised society. We should all as a nation be ashamed of what happens inside them.

When I walked on to the site there were few protesters around and I and a couple of other photographers wandered up the drive to photograph the outside of the buildings. Workers coming out of the Colnbrook Detention Centre called out to one of the photographers, telling him that photography was not allowed there. They would like us to know nothing about these places or what goes in in them.

When the protest actually started, there were no problems with taking pictures, and the police had come to ask the protesters what they intended to do. The officer failed to get much of an answer, as nobody was in charge, but he told them that so long as they behaved sensibly the police would give them no problems.

Three police officers followed the protesters onto the road through the centre of the site –  with Harmondsworth Detention Centre on the left and Colnbrook on the right. It is a private road, though the barrier on it was raised and we walked past it. It leads at the end to a site belonging to BT, and the whole area was until 1966 the home of the Road Research Laboratory which I visited while in the sixth form.

The officers – and the two men in Serco jackets who joined them – kept their distance and watched the protesters, but didn’t interfere with the protest, even when there was a complaint that it was disturbing the airport security dogs in their kennels just to the north of the prison.  Last time I photographed a protest here, in November 2012,  when the protesters kept drumming on the tall prison fence they were told that they would be arrested if they continued, and then issued a warning that they were committing an aggravated trespass and would be arrested if they returned to the site within 3 months, but today the police just stood and watched.

Most of the drumming today came from a drum, and I didn’t see anyone kicking the fence, though it was attacked rather firmly by a frying pan, though even more effective was thumping it with palms, which made the whole structure resonate.

Those inside the prison responded to the protest, waving out of the windows. Phone calls to and from some of those inside told the protesters how pleased the inmates were to know that some people at least in the UK cared what was happening to them.

Few of the windows are visible except through a tall – roughly 12 ft  – fence, with fairly narrow gaps between the parallel wires that run along it. Auto-focus has no problems with focussing on the wire, but it is almost impossible to get it to auto-focus on the windows some distance behind.  I was using the 70-300mm at or close to the longer end on either the D700 or the D800E, and the images are cropped down, and depth of field was minimal.

Auto-focus is great, but one of the small problems with cameras that rely on it is that manual focus becomes rather more tricky. Focussing screens just aren’t made to work as well as they did when we relied on manual focus. But manual was the only way to get the hands at the window anything like sharp. I don’t think they clean the windows, and inside them I think there is also a rather dirty and sometimes scratched plastic pane. So people and hands were hard to see. But they certainly wanted to be seen.

I couldn’t really tell on the camera read screen if there was anything sharp on these frames. The raw files opened in Lightroom gave flat and rather indistinct images, and there were problems too with colour balance, as well as with the whole image being seen between those well out of focus wires.  Considerable post-processing was needed to get anything as distinct as you see here, and the horizontal wires and thicker vertical supports are still clearly visible over most of the image. What is rather surprising is the clarity of the designs on the shirts of two of the three men in the picture, although their hands and faces are still impressionistic.

On the west side of the prison, the car park stretches some way back, to a low bank covered with trees. Standing a little up this gave a clear view over the top of the fence of the top of the top floor windows. Reflections of the sky in the glass still made the  view far from clear, and quite a bit of post-processing, using the adjustment brush with various settings on different areas was needed.

You probably aren’t allowed to photograph here, but I’m sure there is an overriding public interest in making what is happening at places like this known.
Continue reading Prison Visit

I almost missed the International Workers (IWGB) cleaners protest at the Royal Opera House (ROH) in Covent Garden. I’d been told they would be there at 5pm and either the time had changed or whoever told me had got it wrong, and they were actually planning to start at 5.30pm.

But there was clearly nobody around, or at least no protesters when I arrived a little before 5pm, having been photographing a few other things on the way – a Rastafarian protest calling for the Restoration of the Ethiopian Monarchy (I couldn’t at all understand why they thought that would help in ‘Economic Liberation), then on my way back on the top deck of a double-decker bus I saw the weekly Anti-Fur Picket at Harvey Nichols and decided I had time to cover that on my way to finding a large crowd of Anglican women priests celebrating 20 years of Women Vicars. They were marching from a rally outside Church House, the Anglican HQ where the decision to allow them was taken (rather belatedly as some other Christians had allowed women to take a full part in their work many years earlier – even centuries ago.  Then, as so often when walking up Whitehall I’d come across another couple of protests, and photographed one of them, a token Baloch Hunger Strike in sympathy with that about to enter its second week in Karachi.

At 5pm outside the ROH I really thought I’d had enough for the day, and thought about going home; but I’d promised the cleaners I would be there, and sat down in the sun to read a book and wait.

A lot of press photographers spend a lot of time waiting, often outside the homes of people who don’t want to be photographed, or outside courts during celebrity trials, opposite the door of 10 Downing St, and more. I don’t, partly because I’m not desperate for money, mainly because I don’t want to hound the innocent or glorify celebrities. And also because I’m very impatient (and not on payroll.) Anything over ten minutes is really beyond the call of duty for me.

But it was a nice May early evening, and I found a comfortable place in the sun – not then too hot to sit out in and was well into a chapter or two when I was suddenly disturbed by the unmistakable sound of iron-shod hooves and wheels on tarmac and got up to see a whole string of horses and traps approaching at a brisk trot.

I stood up and prepared to take pictures as they came past, but then the leading trap took a fast left turn down Floral St by the side of the Royal Opera House, and I had to run across and down the street to photograph them.

On Floral Street they soon slowed down as the leaders stopped to decide which way to go, before slowly turning to their right and parking up, appropriately by the Nags Head pub. Soon after I’d finished taking a few pictures of them – they included at least one cart rather like those my grandfather had a business making – and made my way back to the front of the ROH, a couple of the cleaners came round looking for people, and I found they were meeting up around the corner at 5.30pm.

A man in a funny suit gets angry – and the security guard steps in as he grabs IWGB leader Alberto Durango, who refuses to be provoked.

You can see more about their protest and read about why they were at the ROH in IWGB Cleaners at Royal Opera on My London Diary.

As often seems to be the case at the moment the police, when they arrived some time after the protest had started, seemed to be unsure whether they were present to defend the right to protest or to defend the interests of the wealthy – in this case the ROH and its clients. And at one point when a couple more vans had arrived, they simply seemed to lose the plot completely. It was just lucky those water cannons haven’t arrived yet.

I’m not an opera fan, though I often listen to bits of it as my wife is something of a singer, though her choir sings choral works rather than opera, and often listens to Radio 3 as well as going to some of the Proms and other classical concerts. My favourite singer is BillIe Holiday, who only puts in very rare appearances on Radio 3, though it does have the occasional jazz programme. I favour public subsidies for the arts but object to the fact so much of it goes to opera and in particular the huge £26m for the ROH*. More generally I think it’s time to give a finger to the star system and pay the ‘stars’ less. I think the BBC should take a lead too with truly drastic cuts in what they pay often rather dubious ‘talent’ and management. But if the odd fat lady or gentleman decides not to sing in London, it’s no great loss, and many of the ROH audience will fly abroad to see them in any case.

I’d certainly hope that any future Labour government would make it a requirement for any organisation that receives Arts Council funding in England (and any remaining parts of the UK still under Westminster control) to pay all employees (direct and indirect like the cleaners) a living wage and have decent conditions of employment.

* Disgruntled northerners may like to know that Opera North gets another £9.6m and these two organisations account for around 11% of the budget. The total grant of grants to 699 organisations is £339m, an average for each of £485,000.
Continue reading Protest at the Opera

Shad Thames, 1981

This weekend there is a festival taking place in Shad Thames, though I doubt if I will have the time to go there, and to do so always makes me feel a little sad. Though I wish the Shad Thames Area Management Partnership (STAMP) and the Shad Thanes Resident’s Association and their Local Eyes Festival  well, I can’t help feeling that the love for Shad Thames really came perhaps over thirty years too late.

St Saviour’s Dock, 1980

Shad Thames, like the rest of London’s Docklands, used to be completely off the radar for most Londoners, even though you could glimpse it from Tower Bridge. There was indeed a sense that even if there were no fences or walls the general public were not welcomed, and it looked – and was while it was still a working area – a rather dangerous place.

It’s perhaps hard to remember when it is now a tourist trap, that back in the 1970s and 1980s it hardly got a mention in even the more adventurous of the tourist guide books. Access to the south bank of the Thames east of London Bridge was then pretty limited, with no riverside walks and it was certainly not regarded as a desirable area to live. Few would have dared to go there at night.

Disused warehouses became homes for artists, inhabited by a Who’s Who of British artists, most of whom were forced to leave the area after a disastrous fire at Butler’s Wharf in 1979 alerted the authorities to their semi-official presence and the fire risk they posed, particularly as many were living in their studio spaces.

Shad Thames, 1980

I first went there shortly after the fire in 1980, when plans were being made to turn the area into something that one local councillor described as “like a zoo where you come to gawp at the jet set” with Terence Conran taking the lead in a scheme described by Southwark Notes as “The perfect plonking down overnight of the Conran dream. Timeless and spectacular with a winter Dickens chill and fog off The Thames but nary a boat to be seen. Just the clanking of coinage and the rustle of 20’s” and by the perpetrators as ‘a combination of luxury apartments and offices and to make it a gastronomic destination‘.

Shad Thames, 1980

Although the area still retains many of the original buildings (though some are just façades) much of the detail that gave the area and the street Shad Thames in particular with its many seemingly chaotic bridges across the narrow street between the tall buildings its character was taken away, in part replaced with bland replicas. Replica is far too kind a word, as no attempt seems to have been made to reproduce the originals and their variety. Poor pastiche would be more accurate.

Reed’s Wharf, 1980

Recently I put together a small book of some of my pictures from Southwark and Bermondsey taken in 1974-84. Much of it is work that I first published on line in small images on the web site ‘London’s Industrial Heritage‘ around 15 years ago, and some has been exhibited a few times in various places. I wrote more about it here a few weeks ago where you can see a preview of the book and a link to buy it as a PDF or a print version.

Shad Thames 1980

If you are going to Shad Thames for the Local Eyes Festival, you may like to download a copy of the PDF of ‘Southwark and Bermondsey’ and take it with you on your tablet or notebook and see something of what has been lost. Perhaps then ‘Local Eyes‘ will cry with mine. Though of course there are still things that remain and are worth groups like the Shad Thames Resident’s Association fighting to keep.

Frances O’Grady talks to Bob Crow’s partner Nicky Hoarau

May Day is a big day for the left around the world and in London in particular for some of London’s ethnic communities – most of whom are British and were born in London, but still very much relate to the countries where their parents or grandparents were born, and where May Day is celebrated more widely than the UK.

Turkish worker’s newspaper journalist Suliman Yete was killed in a Turkish prison in 1999 – MKLP

The traditional British left does take part, but for most people in the UK, May 1 is a normal working day. While I was working as a full-time teacher, it was only when May 1 fell at a weekend that I was normally able to go to the march, but now as a photographer I go every year and it is very much a working day for me.

Turkish People’s Front – Halk Cephesi

May Day, 1 May is a public holiday in many countries around the world, but in the UK we instead have (since a Labour Government couldn’t quite bring itself to back anything as socialist as May Day in 1978) a bank holiday on the first Monday in May. Because May 1 is usually a working day, support for May Day celebrations such as the annual London march from UK trade unionists has generally been limited, although of course the march gets official support – and some trade union leaders take part.

Among the regular marchers have been Bob Crow of the RMT and veteran of the left Tony Benn. This year’s march was dedicated to both of them, with their faces and the message from a telegram sent by union activist Joe Hill shortly before his execution in 1915, “Don’t Mourn, Organaise” took pride of place on the official banners and placards as the theme for this year’s march along with its three ‘constant calls’ – trade union rights, human rights, international solidarity.

This is a London march, and it reflects the nature of London now, as the statement from the organising committee shows:

The London May Day has been a unique bringing together of trade unionists, workers from the many international communities in London, pensioners, anti-globalisation organisations, students, political bodies and many others in a show of working class unity (see our supporters list). The whole theme of May Day is unity and solidarity – across the city, across the country, across the world. Three constant calls have been made – trade union rights, human rights, international solidarity. We have been proud that a vital and major part of the March are workers from the different international communities in London – a practical expression of working class solidarity.

In the list of supporters referred to among others it lists “organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, Nigerian migrant workers & communities plus many other trade union & community organisations” and it is certainly a lively and at times rather confusing event, particularly for a photographer weaving his way though the crowded Clerkenwell Green where the marchers meet up and mingle. Sorting out quite who is from which group is a problem both while taking pictures and when captioning, and I as usual have to apologise in advance for any I’ve got wrong.

Matt Wrack, Terry Hutt and Frances O’Grady

The main press interest was in the family of Bob Crow who were among those at the head of the march, along with TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady. I was pleased to get a few pictures of her talking with someone I’ve photographed at many protests and still going strong as a pensioner, Terry Hutt, though photographers often call him Terry ‘Hat’ for his headgear over the years, which is now a badge covered cap threatening to rival the one that Brian Haw wore in Parliament Square for his epic almost ten-year protest

Brian Haw in Parliament Square in 2006

There is a lot to photograph on May Day, and I try hard to show as many of the banners and placards as possible as well as the people. It’s an event where I take a great many pictures and I think something important to record, so there are well over a hundred images on line from Clerkenwell Green and the march at May Day March for Bob Crow & Tony Benn.

Continue reading London May Day March