>Re-PHOTO

Saturday was a bitty day for me. If I hadn’t been taking photographs I might have attended the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, although I wasn’t convinced it would be anything more than another talking shop with no real outcomes, and too many people defending the largely indefensible Labour Party. I don’t like photographing conferences, but I did go along and take a few pictures of the events around it, particularly at lunchtime when many of the few thousand attending came outside.

Some of the better known anarchist in the UK including Ian Bone at left

In fact there wasn’t a great deal happening. Anarchist blogger Ian Bone had called for a protest outside, but hadn’t managed to find more than a dozen or so people who could be bothered to come. Most of them spoke at a little rally, but they only arrived after most people had disappeared back into the conference sittings which were taking place inside Methodist Central Hall (MCH), and in a kind of tent outside and a hall around the corner to which any dissident voices – including Ken Loach – were exiled.

Two young men on a golfing pub crawl come to find out more
Occupy London people were also around, and visually rather more interesting than the anarchists, with Anonymous masks rather than cloth caps. There was a little vignette of farce when they net up with a couple of young men on a golfing pub crawl, but otherwise little to photograph.

Starting a quarter a mile down the road was a march by the English National Alliance, a small extreme right group – or ‘patriots’ as they prefer to call themselves. I’ve photographed their events before, and although I make clear I don’t share their views, I’ve tried to report them and the events clearly and accurately. I do so not just because of my ethical standards as a journalist, but because I think exposing their views and actions to the light makes clear to all what they stand for.

I walked up towards the meeting point and found a small group of photographers standing across the road looking at a few ENA protesters outside the pub. I asked if any of them had talked to the ENA, and no-one had, so I walked across the road towards them. I was warmly greeted and for the next ten minutes or so we talked and argued about what they felt was happening to our country and their feeling that they did not get a fair deal in the media. I doubt if they particularly liked what I wrote about the protest, but I think it was – as I assured them it would be – fair and accurate.

The left on the left and the right on the right – one in a brown jacket shouts and another gives a finger

There were only 11 of them – they had expected rather more, but eventually they decided not to wait and to carry out their march as planned. I think their decision to march directly in front of MCH where the People’s Assembly was being held was deliberately meant to provoke, and shouting – as some of them did – ‘No Surrender!’ seemed to be proof of that. A minute earlier, one of the younger protesters had boasted as we went along Tothill St that he wasn’t scared and that he could take on 25 of the ‘commies’. There were few people around outside the hall, mainly on several literature stall, and they heard the shouts and saw the ENA t-shirt worn by their leader and reacted, milling around and shouting ‘Racist Scum!’ and other similar insults, and shouting matches between the two groups ensued.

A woman on the ENA march points and shouts at a man who has called her a racist

I was surprised that the police had allowed them to turn down in front of MCH rather than continuing along the direct route. There were just not enough police present to keep the two groups apart, and I think it was an error of judgement to allow the ENA to proceed without further police reinforement – which did arrive after the trouble had started. But the situation would have been much easier to control had the ENA simply continued directly into Broad Sanctuary rather than confronting the leftists.

A woman police officer hold back an ENA protest while a leftist points and shouts at thim

There was quite a lot of pointing and one of the ENA giving the finger to the leftists and such like  but I didn’t see any  physical violence by any of the leftists, and the police pushed there way through them and kept pushing the ENA (and me) to keep them moving. The situation was pretty confused, but I did see one of the ENA trying to hit out at someone and being restrained by police. I was told one was arrested by police, though I don’t know for what offence and if he was charged. One of my photographer colleagues says she was hit by one of the ENA with his walking stick and came to ask me if I had got a picture of the assault, but I hadn’t seen it. My pictures show the left shouting but keeping back, and the police having to restrain some of the ENA, though mainly they were simply trying to keep them moving and get them away from the left.

It’s difficult to work and get decent pictures in situations like this, and I’m not too good at it. I was being pushed around, and was working at rather a low an ISO given the dull weather. At some point too, I got something on the camera filter which left a diffuse spot on the images – it wasn’t really visible in the viewfinder, but messes up many of the pictures. Possibly it was a finger mark when I was being pushed around. There was even a curious 10 seconds or so when everything I took was out of focus, despite using the 16-35mm on autofocus, and a camera setting which isn’t supposed to take a picture unless it has focussed.

The ENA leader was wearing an ENA t-shirt with the St George’s flag and carrying flowers for the Cenotaph

I wasn’t too happy with the pictures I had taken, although at times I’d been in the right place, I think at times I was too close, and hadn’t taken the time to look around and see what else was going on. I do tend to get too involved in keeping taking pictures when at times it would be better to stand back a little. But then you might miss the picture, and once quite a few other photographers had joined us at MCH, if you step back two other people step forward into the space you have vacated. I’d also decided most of the time to keep with the leader of the ENA, because he was the only one with distinctive clothing that would show in pictures – an ENA t-shirt with the St George’s flag – and because of the bunch of flowers he was carrying. But some of the younger ENA were probably more likely to get physically involved.

The police pushed the ENA past the first confrontation, but by now others were aware of what was happening, and a larger group came to meet them and shout at them in front of the QEII Conference Hall. Again police tried to keep the ENA moving, and finally managed to get them out onto Broad Sanctuary and to hold most of the left back, though a few followed them and continued to shout at them from a distance.

By the time the ENA march reached Whitehall it seemed to be down to seven or eight from the original eleven. There was a brief pause while the flowers were laid at the Cenotaph, then they continued to Downing St, where some were to go in to deliver a letter for the Prime Minister. Earlier outside the pub I’d been given a copy of that letter and was able to give a summary of its contents in my article.  It was very long and I felt rather confused and said so, and repeated most of what had already been said in their previous letter to David Cameron. I didn’t go into Downing St to photograph the letter being handed over because I was on my way to a final event for the day. But I don’t like Downing St. It’s a pain having to empty your pockets to go through the metal detector and to have your bag searched, and the opportunities for taking pictures are very limited. They had planned on a rally afterwards, but I think had decided there were not enough of them.

More pictures  at:
People’s Assembly
Action Not Talk?
Anonymous Occupy the Grass
ENA Meet Left Opposition

Continue reading Anarchists, Anonymous and ENA

The protest at the Turkish Embassy on Friday 21st was called by the London Taksim Solidarity Committee and the trade unions, including international trade unions and the TUC, and I think there was relatively little overlap between these protesters and those I had photographed the previous Sunday. As well as international unions including the  ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) and IUF (International Union of Food workers), there were also people from Unite, RMT, PCS, UCU and NUT at the protest, several of whom spoke, and the main attraction for the bunch of photographers present was Frances O’Grady, the TUC General Secretary.

I’ve photographed her a number of times, and unlike some other public figures she is always a pleasure to photograph, going out of her way to make sure photographers get their pictures. And the group of trade unionists and others going across the road with their arms linked to take a letter to the Turkish Embassy certainly made a good picture of solidarity. I’d watched (and photographed) them getting ready for it, but it wasn’t until they were halfway across the road that I got a clear picture of the whole line without anyone standing between me and them, and by then it seemed a little less dynamic, and as they got closer my frame was filled by other photographers running across in front of me to get close to the embassy door.

I moved back and slightly to the side. The second image is full frame and you can see one photographer’s foot at the extreme left, but I don’t think it was in the viewfinder and I wouldn’t normally hesitate to crop it out.  But I was in a rush to get the images on-line after the event and didn’t, nor as you can see did I get rid of the slight red cast that the Nikon autobalance has given the image.  O’Grady stands out in part as the only woman in the line of nine, but also because of the forward lean of her body, almost as if she is pulling the rest of them forward, and the white rectangle of the letter she is holding.

After this there were a few moments of confusion as the group unlinked arms; the police on duty decided that only one person should go up the steps to deliver the letter. And up she went, the press moving behind her to the bottom of the steps as she rang the bell.

I’d been about the first photographer on the spot and had chosen my position well (and with a little luck) looking at the door and the brass plate and where she would stand, but really it was her performance and the sheer delight she had in it that I think makes the image. Though it didn’t make the Turks inside come to the door! Which gave us plenty of time for some more pictures, and for her to play up to the cameras.

Of course public figures like her share a common interest with the press, but they don’t always seem to recognise this. I’m lucky not to want to photograph pop stars.

Of course there were others at the protest, and my favourite images came from some of the Turks from Halk Cephesi, variously translated as ‘Popular Front’ or ‘People’s Front’, though I’m not sure either gives the right impression in English.

This is one of several images that I particularly liked, I think here because of the almost symmetrical figure in the middle with arms over each other in front of his body. But the head disappearing into the red flags and apron at the left is important, and almost balanced by the third head in the image at right. It’s a nice touch to have some blue at both edges – and also the blue shirt of the central figure.  There are a couple more I rather like on My London Diary, along with other pictures that help to round out the story, TUC Support for Turkish Protests. There are some others of Frances O’Grady I like too.
Continue reading Trade Union Turks Protest

I hadn’t known what to expect when I turned up at Piccadilly Circus to photograph a protest calling for the closure of all slaughterhouses. I’m not a vegetarian and certainly not a vegan, though I’m very much against cruelty to animals, and on environmental grounds think that most people eat too much meat. At home we eat quite a lot of vegetarian food, but I still like to have a varied diet, and although the protest took place at lunchtime, and I was feeling a little hungry, I waited until I’d gone elsewhere before getting out my ham sandwiches!

I arrived more or less dead on time (oh dear), and for a few minutes it looked as if this was going to be a rather small and not too interesting protest.  But more people arrived, including a few that I knew, and one told me that if I was lucky there would soon be some scantily dressed women arriving. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking.

But soon I saw a woman sitting down on some large sheets of white card and removing her modelling gown to reveal she was dressed only in bra and pants.  Soon she was lying down and a man in a white suite labelled as a ‘Demon Butcher’ was dribbling fake blood over her before two others wrapped her in cling film and slapped on a large label with a bar code, ‘HUMAN MEAT’. Then a second woman was getting the same treatment.

I took quite a few pictures trying to work out the best approach. Getting in close and cropping the torso to use the white background;  taking the picture wider to show the pavement around, or including the protesters behind – and a few other variations – you can see some on ‘Human Meat’ – Close Slaughterhouses.

For a protest in the centre of London there were surprisingly few photographers, and even the many tourists around seemed a little shy about taking pictures.

The posters and placards you can see in the pictures certainly show some terrible scenes of animal cruelty, and they protesters say there is no such thing as humane slaughter and call the attitude that allows us to treat animals differently to humans ‘speciesist’. I can’t agree, because I do think we have a special relationship with others of our own species.  People do matter more than animals. But of course we shouldn’t be cruel to animals, although many animals are terribly cruel to other animals, killing them to eat in the only way that they know. We humans know better and should do better. If that’s ‘speciesist’ I’m proud to be so.

I enjoyed my ham sandwich on the bus on my way to the next protest. I hope the pig lived a decent life and was slaughtered humanely, though I can’t be sure. Though of course the pig only had a life because it was going to be eaten at the end of it.

Continue reading Human Meat

I’ve photographed Canary Wharf on and off since the mid-1980s when the old West India docks were being demolished. On the ground during building the new area, and even  from the top looking down in the late 90s, when the office space in the tower was mainly still empty.

Canary Wharf station and Cabot Square

Since then I’ve been back various times, taken several photography workshops there as well as going to take pictures, and although I’ve got stopped a couple of times by security while taking pictures not really had a great deal of trouble.  I’ve photographed several protests there, most recently with the cleaners, and not been troubled by security while doing so.

So although I know people have had problems photographing on this huge private estate with its own security force impersonating police, I didn’t share the fears voiced by some that the ‘They Owe Us’  “creative civil disobedience”  there “in one of London’s economic power centres” was likely to end in trouble, though they were promising “an element of surprise that will be revealed on the day” though of course you can never be sure what will happen.

At least it was a nice bright sunny day, though rather windy, but perhaps the heavy-handed policing on Tuesday had put people off, and numbers were rather fewer than I’d expected.  Things eventually began to happen in the area in front of the tube entrance, with two adjacent areas with public address systems, one with some political speeches and performances, and the other more serious workshops and lectures, though visually neither was hugely interesting.

There were some seriously large banners, and in a creative area two large tripods were erected to fly the main banner – with the event’s title ‘They Owe Us’ – between.  Ultra-wide lenses were useful for these big banners, and in particular the 10.5mm fisheye let me not only show the banner but also in some pictures the tops of the high buildings to the south and north of the area.  The pictures with this seemed far more satisfying to me than those taken with longer lenses. With all those buildings with their rectangular arrays of window around almost all the fisheye images looked better after processing using the Fisheye-Hemi plugin,  which straightens the vertical lines (I’ve looked at alternatives to this, but it remains the best I’ve found.)

Of course not everything can be straight, and the sweep around of the paving slabs clearly shows this – and the buildings at left and right of the picture actually face each other.

A bit of tilt was needed to get the tops of the towers in the picture, and I was perhaps just a little too close for this picture – stepping back a few feet would have let me see more of the tripods, but I had to be more or less where I was to get the background ‘Power to the People’ banner in the image as well.

The two images above show the difference between a normal ultra-wide and the fisheye. The lower image was made with the 16-35 zoom at 23mm, about the widest for a rectilinear lens before the edge elongation becomes noticeable – the horizontal angle of view is a little over 75 degrees.  The upper image, taken from just very slightly to the left and a few second apart is almost half as wide again and gives a better impression both of the event and the surroundings.

But of course there are times when you do want to want to concentrate on a smaller part of the subject, and here is a third image taken a short time before the previous two. I was possibly just slightly closer, and moved down onto my knees to put the display of exchange rates and share prices which was travelling around the building behind the speaker.  The equivalent focal length using the 18-105mm DX lens was 120mm, and at f14 the rate is almost sharp – and you can count the speaker’s eyelashes, although theoretically diffraction is dragging the performance down a little it doesn’t seem to show on the original.

Finally, a reminder of what the protest was about. Canary Wharf, Pig Trough of the 1%, is in one of London’s most deprived boroughs, stolen from it and given over to the ultra-rich greedy pigs. In Tower Hamlets outside this private fiefdom, 1 in 4 children are living in poverty.  Getting balloons to point the right way on windy days wasn’t easy, as you can see in some of the other pictures on ‘They Owe Us’ G8 Protest on My London Diary.
Continue reading They Owe Us

Canada Day came to London a couple of weeks early. Although there are some celebrations taking place around Canada House as I write on July 1st, on 13 June we had not one but two protests against Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper taking place in Westminster.

It should be a matter of national shame that Harper was invited to address our Parliament when he came over on a lobbying mission to try to force Europe to take Canadian tar sands oil, the dirtiest of dirty fuels.  Producing a barrel of tar sands oil creates three to four times more climate pollution than producing conventional crude oil in Canada or USA, and the amount already approved by the Canadian government for extraction in Alberta is enough to push the planet past the 6 degree global warming catastrophe level. And on top of that there area huge direct environmental effects, as well as tragedies for the indigenous population of the areas being devastated.  Exploiting the tar sands presents a threat to the future of human existence that is hard to exaggerate and impossible to deny – all for the sake of short-term profits of the oil companies.

I didn’t find it an easy event to photograph, or perhaps I wasn’t at my best. I’d arrived a little late a few minutes after the event started which perhaps just didn’t help, and just  as I arrived a photographer had started organising the protesters for a group picture, which seldom helps me – but perhaps he was desperate for an idea too.

I didn’t actually take a photograph of the whole group, partly because I seldom if ever find such things interesting, but here a row of ugly flagpoles in front of it didn’t help. I did try going back, but then there were too many photographers and other people in the way. So I’ve got a few little bits of the protesters in front of Big Ben. One or two aren’t bad, and press photographers only want one, but I like things to be happening and some kind of story to tell.

Perhaps I was just having an off day, but there are some times when I never quite seem to settle and find a subject that really interests me visually. Perhaps I need to try harder. Or I should have got out the 10.5mm, which stayed firmly in my bag. There does seem to be something about looking through that which makes me see differently, and I think engages me more in events, even if I don’t always get good pictures with that lens.

I’d actually got there earlier – a few minutes before the start time – to find nobody around, and wandered a little around the area. I saw what appeared to be a protest a couple of hundred yards down the road and went to investigate.  These people didn’t look like your normal protesters.

They were members of Canada’s Foreign Service, members of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Workers, aggrieved because they get paid less than some others who they say do the same work.  Perhaps you get more if you are a spy? Spread out along the edge of College Green they were at least on the route that Harper came to Parliament. They told me they thought he would arrive very soon, and I hung around a few minutes before giving up and going back to the Tar Sands event – where by now I was just a little late.

By the time the Tar Sands protesters had decided to go, the daily shift for the Save Shaker Aamer campaign had arrived, and I spent a few minutes talking to and then photographing them.  Without great results, though I rather liked the red shoes of a woman walking past.

More pictures from all three protests:

Harper, we don’t want your dirty oil!
Canadian Foreign Service Protest
Shaker Aamer Daily Vigil Continues.

 

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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There are times when the police reaction to protests is so clearly disproportionate that even they seem shocked by it – or perhaps by the public reaction to it.

Despite the occasional efforts of the ‘black bloc’ at protests here we don’t have a great tradition – at least not recently – of violence by protesters at protests. Almost all of the incidents in recent years, for example during the student protests in 2011, were either provoked by police attacks on protesters or probably engineered by the police actions, aided by undercover police.

A few of them have been caught out, with incriminating incidents captured on video as ‘agents provocateurs’ flash their warrant cards to their uniformed mates to get through police lines or evidence comes out in trials and otherwise. Much that was already known or rumoured in activist circles about undercover policing has come out into the wider media in recent weeks, along with some new information, particularly in The Guardian, who have also revealed that police have records on around 9,000 political activists in the UK, despite the fact that they have committed no crime. Being a political activist seems to me to be a civic duty rather than a reason for the police to keep tags on you (or me!)

Several times in the past few years senior officers of the Met have given interviews to the press in advance of protests spreading rumours of violence and mayhem, drumming up panic which they then use to justify draconian police measures. Ahead of one protest they spread rumours that protesters would use catapults, and on the day thoughtfully provided these dropped in the area in a black bin bag.

The police rationale for the huge exercise against a squat in Beak St, Soho on the morning of the first day of four of activities ahead of the G8 seemed particularly lame, even to the tamer of the media outlets. That there were rumours that some activists might be intending to use paint or paintballs seemed hardly a justification for closing down a large area of London with hundreds of police, and for the violent storming of the social centre that was acting as the ‘convergence centre’ for the protests.

Not that I approve of protesters throwing paint – and particularly not at me as happened in March 2011 while I was photographing the protests on Oxford St. But both the manner and extent of the police action seemed completely over the top, though like the rest of the press I was kept well away from the action. There was a small press area along the street east of the building, too far away to get any real view of the action. The public were being allowed roughly the same distance to the west, and from there you could see just a little more.  But the picture here was still taken at the long end of the 75-300mm using DX format – a 450mm equivalent lens.

Of course there are good reasons why the press – and the public – sometimes have to be kept back from events. Here it seemed to me more about trying to prevent people seeing what was happening than public safety or getting in the way of the police.

Since it seemed unlikely I had any real chance of seeing anything worth photographing I moved away an joined those who had managed to make it to Piccadilly Circus for the ‘J11 Carnival against Capitalism’. On my way I saw a number of people being searched on the street. One woman had just been put in a police van because a pen had been found in her handbag.

As the protesters walked with a samba band down Piccadilly, groups of police rushed into the crowd and grabbed a couple of them. Other protesters tried to grab them back from the police and there were scuffles, and police formed a ring around one of those who had been grabbed. he was on the ground and two officers appeared to be greatly enjoying punching him, but a senior officer pushed me back as I tried to get a clear view and photograph what was happening. I moved a little around the ring and managed to get a picture holding my camera up over the police heads before being pushed back. The police really did not want people to see what was happening. Eventually I went down on my knees and managed to get a picture between the legs of two of the officers before I had to move away.

Elsewhere officers were threatening other protesters with arrest, and some of them ran down a side-street. There followed a chase around some of the side-streets of Mayfair, with again police grabbing a protester and making an arrest for no apparent reason. Eventually we emerged by Green Park Station and there were further searches and arrests. Throughout all this (and afterwards) as I report in J11 Carnival against Capitalism, ‘I saw no attacks on property and no unprovoked violence by the protesters.’  There was a great deal of shouting and some name-calling directed against the police, but all of the actual physical scuffles began when police grabbed a protester.

Later in the day the police seem to have calmed down a little and perhaps orders had gone out to stop harassing the protesters. They stood and watched and didn’t interfere as the protest continued on Piccadilly, on then Regent St.

There was a little moment of farce as a ‘Police Liaison Officer’ came and warned the samba band they were breaking a City of Westminster bye-law by playing music on the street without a licence as they protested outside the offices of arms company Lockheed Martin (above),  and a few minute later police seemed close to panic as the protesters approached BP, but  really there was not a lot happening.

It seemed time to go home, and I did.
Continue reading Police Go Over the Top