>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Haiti – Man-Made Disaster

I’ve been wondering for a few days whether or not to write anything about Haiti. The plight of the people there has surely touched us all, and many of us have contributed towards helping them. Giving money may not be much, but for the moment it is what most of us can do, and people there need a lot of help.

Information from there of course flows across the web; in the first hours most of the first-hand broadcast reports relied on people using Skype as mobile services were down. And days later, much of the real information is coming from the web, with broadcasts lagging behind on picking up the stories about the kind of US military takeover which is holding up supplies getting to the people who need them.

The first reports came from journalists and photographers in Haiti when the quake happened, but many Haitian journalists were unable to work because of their own personal devastation – the subject of an appeal by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

After the quake, photographers flooded in to Haiti by various routes and we’ve seen many pictures – for example on the NPR site, in the Guardian (by David Levene) and the New York Times. And you can also look at work from agencies such as Panos and VII.

Magnum in contrast have a set of pictures from their files on Slate, the majority of which show it as an island paradise – especially for tourists – or take a rather romantic view of voodoo. Reality does creep in through some of the more recent work.

London-based photographer Jess Hurd decided to go because of her anger “as a human being and a journalist that this level of avoidable devastation [was] caused by an earthquake.” As she goes on to explain on her blog, Haiti has been impoverished by decades of corrupt and incompetent rule, supported by the USA and policies which have prevented positive development of the country for the people.

The earthquake was a natural event, but the disaster that it caused is largely man-made, a consequence of colonial policies that have impoverished the country and the people.

Report after report (especially outside the mass media) is telling us how the US Military insistence on taking military control of areas before food distribution occurs is stopping the supplies – which many of us have contributed to – to reaching the aid organisations and the people who so desperately need them.

Hurd describes her trip to Haiti as “the most harrowing story I have ever covered” and her pictures which are linked from her blog carry the disclaimer: Please view with caution, these images graphically depict the aftermath including decomposing bodies and a harrowing hospital operation. You can see more of her work from this and other stories at Report Digital.

Brighton Bash

Monday I took the train to Brighton, sometimes described as “London by the sea” which is pretty ludicrous as it has a very different feel to the capital. I did just glimpse the sea as the train rolled into the station – around a 45 minute journey from Clapham Junction, but that was it, as I was headed up into the hills to the north-east, a short bus ride away to Moulsecoomb Wild Park, an area of downland preserved as a park when it was bought by the Brighton and Hove Council in 1925.

I was there to photograph a protest against a weapons factory on an estate hidden behind the trees on the edge of a railway cutting. Parts from the factory there ended up in the bombs that were used in Operation Cast Lead. the 22 day Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1417 Palestinians and had ended exactly a year earlier. This demonstration was the latest in a whole series of protests against the arms manufacturer EDO MBM/ITT organised by the Brighton-based Smash Edo campaign over around the past five years, including the Carnival Against the Arms Trade I photographed in June 2008.

What was extremely civilised was that the meeting point for the demonstration was a café, and I walked in and ordered a mug of tea to find it full of photographers. We could have had a union meeting on the spot.

Those years of demonstration have also been years of confrontation and harassment by the police although during Monday’s demonstration the police did appear to be trying to adopt a less confrontational approach in some ways – and during the several hours I was taking pictures they clearly did not want to make any arrests – though they did make five after I left.

But they were clearly also not prepared to let the protesters get the the factory to demonstrate their, blocking off the road leading to it. And although the protesters more or less surrounded the factory estate during the protest they did not manage to break through the police protecting it.

This was an event when neither the police nor many of the protesters really want to be photographed – although the organisers of the protest do want press coverage and send out press releases. The organisers suggested that those taking part wear masks as both police and press would be taking photographs, and we were, in our rather different ways. At least one police officer was using a long telephoto on a Nikon DLSR to record pictures of individuals taking part, while others were using Sony camcorders to make a record of the action.

The march stopped on the main road where the demonstrators could see a strong police road block on the road leading up to the factory. I’d gone ahead at this point intending to photograph both the police block and then the marchers coming up towards it, and had climbed up about 20 feet on the roadside bank to get a good view. Unfortunately, at this point at least three quarters of the marchers decided to try to find another route, running up the hillside a few hundred yards behind me into the woods.

So I had to run up the hill too, and it was a pretty steep climb, and I began to feel my age. There were a couple of younger photographers with me but I soon decided to take my own time rather than try and keep up with them as we climbed perhaps a hundred feet. Then I was on my own in the middle of the wood and having to choose paths, trying to work out a likely route that would intercept the way the protesters would go. Not too easy as I’d never been here before, but I decided that since there were around 250 of them that they would get pretty spread out – mostly the paths were only wide enough for a single file – and I would be bound to come across them.

© 2010, Peter Marshall
The front of the long column marching through the woods
Eventually, about seven minutes later I did, and I think I’d found a more direct route as I saw the head of the long and spread out column coming towards me. For the next ten minutes or so we wandered single file through the woods, passing quietly behind one group of police horses waiting on the edge but then we were seen by a group of police with dogs in the wood in front of us. They shouted from around 50 yards away and told us to go back or we would get bitten, and although they were too far away behind trees and bushes to get a picture I didn’t feel inclined to go closer. Although police recognise and sometimes respect a press card, police dogs don’t.

The protesters were even less keen to continue than me, and took a path away from dogs and out of the wood on the other side, where more police were waiting. For the next half hour or so, police and protesters seemed to be playing a game of some sort, with the police letting protesters through then chasing them back and finally stopping them on a path close to the factory. A couple of times the police brought in their horses to disperse the demonstrators, and the dogs were used again to threaten demonstrators who had entered a factory site next to the arms factory under a fence. There were a couple of major scrimmages, and police armed with riots shield also lent a hand. One protester was injured slightly by a baton to the head, but otherwise it was mainly a matter of pushing and shoving. Really the only thing missing was a ball.

And of course I and all the other photographers were trying to take photographs. At times there was rather a crush of photographers on some narrow paths, and tree branches really did get in the way of pictures. I did get pushed rather a lot by police, although I took care as always to keep out of the way. But a few police do sometimes seem to have a mindset that says that anyone with a camera is by definition in the way. And couple of times a police photographer gave me a fairly hefty shove so he could get a shot – where normally photographers would have respected that I was there first!

Eventually the demonstrators tired and decided it was time to go back to meet up with the rest of the protesters, and we walked back through the woods, this time accompanied by a few police officers, and down the hill to the road into Brighton.

By this time I was rather tired, and my feet were hurting. I hadn’t bargained for all the hill-climbing and off-road walking and so hadn’t worn suitable footwear. So I wasn’t pleased to find that the protesters were setting off to march back the couple of miles into Brighton, and nor were the police. A quarter of a mile down the road they tried to block the road, but chose a bad place as many of the marchers simply walked through a car park and around the block. Their second attempt wasn’t a great deal better either, and it wasn’t until the march was almost in the town centre that they did manage to stop it fairly effectively.

However it was obviously too late. The march could hardly be kept where it was blocking a major road, and once let to go on it could not be controlled in the open space of The Level and the city streets leading away from it. Issuing a Section 14 order stating it could not proceed into the city centre was surely a waste of time. As the police withdrew and came to a wider space officers rather stupidly grabbed the odd protester and others simply walked past – and eventually all had to be allowed to proceed.

I’d had enough by this time and went to the station for a train back to London and home. I think it had been an effective demonstration, getting considerable publicity in the local paper and another step in the fight to close down the arms factory. Pictures and stories – including mine front-paged on Demotix – published elsewhere helped to raise the profile of the campaign outside tle local area. You can see the pictures from the day on My London Diary.

More Culture

If you’re in a rush (as I so often seem to be) it’s dangerous to visit Lens Culture, where a new issue is now on line. There is a ten-minute interview with Roger Ballen about his work, nicely done and one of the earliest of a new video series, Lens Culture: Conversations with Photographers, though perhaps the music was just a little overdone. There is another with Simon Roberts too.

Completely new to me were the black and white portraits of kids at play by which Jim Caspar found in a contest at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado that he was asked to judge. Some of Donna Pinckley‘s pictures have a quality that reminded me of Diane Arbus‘s kid with a hand grenade, (see the contacts and read more about Colin Wood, interviewed 41 years after the exposure in the San Francisco Chronicle.)

There is also a feature Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography, a review of the book accompanying the show of 40 contemporary Korean photographers at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. With 13 images it gives what can only be a very partial idea of the work but may whet your appetite; if so, the book Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography (ISBN: 0300157533 / 0-300-15753-3, Tucker, Anne Wilkes; Sinsheimer, Karen; Koo, Bohnchang is available for around £18 including delivery from the cheaper UK suppliers.

Don’t fly out to Houston as Chaotic Harmony closed there earlier this month; but the page is still worth visiting for the audio there. Still showing in Houston is Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea continues until Feb 14th – and you can see an interesting presentation on it on their site. Chaotic Harmony will be on show at Santa Barbara from July 3 – September 19, 2010.

Too much more of interest to mention, and I have to get down to some other work. If you’ve got any time to spare don’t miss Lens Culture.

Join the Heathrow Airplot

I have a personal interest in Heathrow Airplot. Not just because I live near Heathrow Airport and am very much opposed to its expansion – for years I’ve been arguing that we should be running it down and eventually closing it to make better use of the land.

Almost since the start I have been one of the now over 60,000 “beneficial owners” of this former orchard in the centre of the Middlesex village of Sipson which would be wiped off the map if the third runway goes ahead. Although I suspect that a way would be found to overcome the legal obstacles that Greenpeace hope that the existence of so many owners would put in the way of compulsory purchase of the Airplot I still think that joining the Airplot is a useful way of supporting the campaign. It’s quick and free and I urge you to take a look at it and join if you support it – and you can do so wherever you live around the world.

I first photographed the campaign in 2003 when we marched from Sipson to a meeting on the village green at Harmondsworth on a beautiful June afternoon. After the speeches I went to walk around inside the wonderful medieval Tithe Barn at the side of the church, specially opened for the day, and then into the Five Bells to sample a pint (or two) of a beer specially brewed to support the campaign.

Since then I’ve photographed a number of other events organised by NoTRAG and other groups opposing the expansion, and last September I was at the Airplot itself for a couple of days when the Climate Rush was camping there at the start of their march with caravans to the West Country and held a Celebration of Community Resistance involving groups from around the British Isles.

Tent City – Jason Parkinson

I first met Jason Parkinson when he was filming a demonstration outside Harmondsworth Detention Centre – one of our special prisons for immigrants – a few years ago, when he was getting a bit of harassment from the police who were refusing to believe his UK Press Card was genuine ( a too common police trick), and since then I’ve come across him filming at many of the protests I’ve covered. He’s one of those guys who manages to get in the right places to film, stands up to people and asks awkward questions, and is also an excellent film editor.

© 2010, Peter Marshall
Hank Roberts on the roof at ‘Tent City’ protest
You can see his trailer for the 30-minute documentary Tent City Occupation on YouTube, where there are also links to some of the other short clips he has posted over the more than two years he has spent investigating the setting up of a privately funded City Academy in Wembley. His work has laid bare much of the shady dealing behind the story as well as showing the fight put up against the scheme, led by local teachers who realised the issues involved. This is a story that should become a national scandal and I hope that Jason’s film will make it so.

I visited the occupation on the site for the new Academy in July 2008 and here in part is what I wrote about it then:

Teachers in the London Borough of Brent are among those who have been taking to the tents in the occupation of Wembley Park Sports Ground, just a hammer throw or two from the well-known stadium. They know that the government’s program to establish City Academies has failed to deliver the promised results, and that putting one in the area will only damage the exisiting three good schools in the area. Wembley doesn’t need a new school – and if it did, handing £30 million of public – our – money over to private enterprise to run one simply crazy.

The area is also one of the more congested parts of London. More school places will mean more school runs, especially from the southern areas of Brent where there is a shortage of space. The sports ground is also used by local groups, including a nursery school, sports groups (a football practice was taking place while I was taking pictures) an three small businesses creating local employment, all of which will find it hard to find alternative venues and are likely to close.

It’s also hard to know why a political party that campaigned against the academy in the elections which got it into power in Brent should perform a sudden about-turn and not only decide it has to be done, but that even though the site won’t be ready for several years it has to start straight away in substandard accommodation. It is a change of policy that has encouraged allegations of illegality – and may be challenged in court.

Do watch the trailer – and vote for it on YouTube. You can read the whole of my account and see more pictures on My London Diary.

Rainy Day in London Town

Yesterday was too wet for a die-in. The International Solidarity Movement had hoped to get 1417 people to lie down on the paving in Trafalgar Square as a graphic reminder of the 1417 men, women and children killed during ‘Operation Cast Lead‘, the 22 days of Israeli attacks on Gaza a year ago.

The figure is disputed and comes from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, with the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem giving a slightly lower figure of 1387 and official Palestinian and Israeli sources differing rather more. But a great many certainly were killed, and the great majority of them – over a thousand – were non-combatants. Again the two more believable sources give figures of 313 or 320 children in the overall figure. By contrast there were 13 Israeli deaths, including three soldiers killed by “friendly fire.”

(The figure of around 1400 is in one respect an underestimate, in that Palestinians are dying all through the year as a result of the Israeli blockade limiting their access to medical treatment; deaths due to this cause in the 22 days are not included in the estimates.)

Unfortunately due partly to the lousy weather with heavy rain rather fewer than expected turned up. Well under half of those who had signed up on Facebook as coming actually turned up to collect the names they had been allotted, though fortunately there were quite a few who for one reason or another hadn’t signed up. But for whatever reason the event was still well over a thousand people short. Although it seemed quite a sizable crowd in a corner of the North Terrace, it was still perhaps only a fifth or less of the number who died in Gaza.

Not only was it too wet to lie down on the pavement, it was also really too wet for photography, at least as the event started. I was walking around holding up an umbrella with one hand and a camera with the other. An umbrella is a real pain, particularly in even slightly crowded situations for the way it limits your mobility. Photography, or at least this kind of photography, is all about getting into the right place to take pictures. Well at least that’s the sine qua non. “F8 and be there” is all very well (so long as you realise that being there sometimes needs almost millimetric precision) but you still need to release the shutter at the right time.

You need to learn how to get through small gaps in crowds fast, to slide into positions, to duck and weave to where you need to be, but really it’s impossible when you are holding an umbrella, and particularly so when everyone else is.

And then there’s the lack of a third hand to hold and use the cloth that you will need – even under an umbrella – to wipe the drops of rain off the filter. I use a microfibre cloth that isn’t bad, but really a genuine chamois leather is still better, though it costs several times as much. I went for the false economy and regret it every time it rains.

Fortunately the rain stopped for the speeches

I think almost all of the pictures were taken on program setting, though several times I used the “flexible program” facility, turning the handy thumb wheel to change the aperture or shutter speed. I was also working on ‘”Auto ISO” with the camera ISO set as ISO 800. The light was dim but changing, giving some quite varied settings. There were rather too many frames where the Sigma 24-70 was wide open at f2.8, and slightly higher lower ISO setting might have been better. The lens is usable wide open, but noticeably better at f4. I would welcome the ability to set a maximum lens aperture at which the ISO starts to increase when in Auto-ISO mode. With this lens for normal use I’d like it to start increasing ISO at f4 and only open up to f2.8 once the upper ISO limit had been reached.

I had thought wrongly that AutoISO worked with the set ISO as the minimum and was surprised to find some of the pictures I took had used a lower ISO – down as low as 320 in at least one case. In fact the vast majority of images were taken at ISO 800, although according to the manual the lower limit when using AutoISO is always ISO 200. But ISO 800 was a better base to work from under the light conditions, so I’m pleased it seems to do so, though mystified why it chose to use lower values for these particular frames rather than simply alter the aperture and shutter settings as it could have done.

Incidentally Nikon did release a firmware update for the D700 recently, which I’ve downloaded and applied and recommend; if you have a D700 you should now be using Firmware Version 1.02.

Céline Clanet

I was looking at Céline Clanet’s web site – her work was recently featured in The Independent – a few days ago and meant to comment about it here but it slipped my mind . What I had meant to say was that if you want snow pictures, you could look at her work rather than bother to get cold going out and taking them during the recent white winter we’ve been having here in the UK. Lapland, as her pictures show, can do it rather better.

And mainly I did take my own advice and keep indoors and keep warm, though I did take my camera when I needed to visit the local shops, and even took a slightly longer route than usual to walk there, taking a few snaps on the way. But I don’t think I’ll be posting them on line, though some may find their way to Alamy or another library when I get round to it.

Back to Céline Clanet, a freelance photographer and graphic designer who was born in Chambéry, France and lives and works in Paris, the series I find more interesting on her site are not from Lapland but the other works, Une mélodie japonaise, Un mince vernis de réalité and Leur(s) petite(s) histoire(s). Her site gives the English translations, A Japanese Melody, A Thin Layer of Reality and Their short (Hi)story(ies). But perhaps its just because I don’t like snow.

Nadav Kander on China

Nadav Kander wasn’t my choice for the 2009 Prix Pictet that he won, although I was only judging on the few pictures from his project that were then shown, along with those from the other 11 short listed photographers that were presented on Lens Culture.

But looking at his web site, (it needs Flash – use this link to avoid it messing up your browser by opening a new window – never in my opinion a good thing) where you can see 48 pictures from the winning project, Yangtze, the Long River, it would be hard not be impressed. There is also some fine work in other projects, and I enjoyed reading his biography, which starts with a picture of him wearing a bib in a high chair.

Thanks to the A Photo Student blog, I’ve just spent a very pleasant 10 minutes while drinking my morning coffee watching a video on YouTube listening to Kander talking sensitively about his pictures. Made in collaboration with the Royal College of Art in London, it gives you time to see the pictures and isn’t afraid to put up a black screen when Kander starts talking.

There aren’t any fancy effects to detract from the pictures, and though sometimes the picture fades are little slow for my taste, they go briefly to black between images with none of that annoying overlap that we had to endure in the early years of AV productions and still sometimes see on film (of course one time in a thousand it had some real point – just the other 999 that really turned me off.) It is a video at a pace that allows you to think, made about a series of images that stimulate thought and with some illuminating comments by the photographer.

USA – 8 Years of Shame

Yesterday, 11 January 2010, was 8 years since the USA set up the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, although some of the prisoners have been held longer in various black holes around the world either by the US or on their behalf by others. The choice of the site showed a disregard for international law, and the treatment of the detainees flouted the international conventions. You can read more about Guantánamo on Andy Worthington‘s site and book.

I’ve already posted pictures and text about the event on Demotix (where it made the front page), Indymedia and of course with more pictures on My London Diary so I don’t need to recount the details here. This was the picture that Demotix put on the front page:

Visually, the eagle is the obvious thing to include in the picture (and it would have been nice to have more of the flag too, but the lack of wind wasn’t really cooperating.) Obviously a symbol of USAmerica – why they put it there. But also a symbol of power and of freedom, the freedom to soar like an eagle, which the detainees don’t have. Instead of being free to spread their wings, their arms are manacled, and hands drawn back in, onto the hooded face. I liked the symmetry of the pose and I think I got the cropping just under the arms – and rather fortunately of the chain – just about right.

Another image I liked was of one of the speakers, Chloe Davies of Reprieve, which has provided legal defence for many of the detainees, over 50 of their clients have already been released- although over 30 are still held. I saw I could more or less line up the end of the megaphone she was holding with an appropriate message held by another of the protesters, “Release all innocent people” and it was almost as if this message was emerging from the megaphone.

I had to work very quickly, and wasn’t helped when I was trying to get in the exact right position when another person with a camera came and stood in front of me. So it could have been improved a little.

Most of these pictures were taken with the Sigma f2.8 24-70mm which continues to impress me both with its performance and its weight! But I also took a few mainly portraits with the older lightweight 55-200mm DX format Sigma. Apart from just a little vignetting at the wider end (cropped in some images) it really does a grand job. I’m not sure Joy Hurcombe will thank me (or Sigma) for this, but the full size original is really biting sharp and detailed, with not the slightest hint of camera shake despite being taken at 1/100s at 200mm focal length.

Some Tech stuff

Taking the pictures wasn’t a great problem, other than that while the guys in the orange jump suits were posing there was a bit of a scrum of press and others. And it was one of the dullest days you can imagine, though that was hardly a problem – I simply set the base ISO to 800 and the minimum shutter speed to 1/100th using auto-ISO on the D700. I had the camera on aperture priority at f8 and the I’d chosen ISO 2000 as the maximum ISO. So nearly all the non-flash pictures were taken at 1/100th at f8, though there we just a couple where even ISO 2000 wasn’t quite enough and they were exposed at 1/80.

Adding the SB800 flash appears to peg the ISO at the lower setting of the auto-iso limits m- in my case ISO800, while in aperture priority mode you of course set the aperture (and I left this at f8 the.). In aperture priority (or program mode) the slowest allowed shutter speed is set by custom function e1 – and I had that set to its fastest possible value, 1/60s (a shame it doesn’t let you set 1/125.) It was used for almost all the flash pictures, with just one or two having sufficient light to use a faster speed.

In fact the easiest way to use the flash is to work in manual mode, where you set both aperture and shutter speed, but if you want to switch rapidly from working with and without flash you then need to alter the manual settings or switch to another exposure mode as you switch the flash off – and it’s all too easy to forget.

One very simple mistake – which I made to start with but immediately noticed – is not to slide the flash quite all the way into the flash shoe. You can do this and still manage to turn the lock, and the flash will still fire, but I think on full power, usually resulting in severe overexposure.

Nikon doesn’t actually give much information about how the accessory flash units actually work with the camera in either the camera or flash manuals. But usually it just does work.

Actually the picture above was underexposed. I’d thought that the matrix metering would compensate for the largish area of sky, but it didn’t. Added to the -2/3 stop of exposure compensation I’d dialled in on an earlier shot to avoid clipping highlights, it was really a little too far under for comfort, but a little tweaking in Lightroom restored it to reasonable health.

Bright orange jumpsuits are a bit of a challenge, and Adobe’s standard camera profile doesn’t handle them well. I made my job much easier by using the “untwisted” profiles I wrote about a couple of months ago.

Ban on Islam4UK

This morning’s announcement of the banning of Islam4UK came as a little – but not much – of a surprise to me, and is another sign of a growing loss of our traditional British acceptance of eccentricity and the more lunatic fringes of thought. Although perhaps the suggestion by Home Secretary Alan Johnson that this group of a very few men (and I think they were mainly men) possessed with the kind of peculiar delusions that were demonstrated in their plans for a revamped Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace (now sadly removed from their website) were a real terrorist threat are probably equally delusional. It is rather as if Parliament had decided to ban engineering in the UK and announced a ban on the works of Heath Robinson.

Islam4UK is a group I’ve twice missed photographing, once when I got tired and went home before a confrontation between them and several hundred in the ‘One Law for All’ campaign last March, and then last October when they cancelled their ‘March for Sharia‘ through central London, but a counter demonstration by both moderate and right wing groups still went ahead.

Al-Muhajiroun was quite probably more of a serious threat, along with Omar Bakri Muhammad (and both were banned some years ago.) But although Islam4UK claimed to be its successor (and its leader Anjem Choudary was previously one of Al-Muhajiroun’s leaders) it appears to have attracted little support and almost universal condemnation from British Muslims – but considerable attention for its media-grabbing proposals from the UK press. “Mad Muslims” seem always to be good for circulation.

In the BBC news bulletin that carried the announcement seconds after it was made public, the suggestion was made that another Islamic group, Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, should also be banned. Bakri split away from this group in the 1990s, having helped to build it up, because he found its policies insufficiently radical.

I’ve photographed quite a few of their public events in London since a 2004 when they held a rally and march by a thousand or two supporters to the Pakistani High Commission against Presidents Bush and Musharraf, calling for a caliphate in Pakistan. They were back at the embassy again (now its Obama and Zardari) on 5th December last year but I was busy with other things.

In 2005 I photographed their “March For Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir And Chechnya … Before They Make It A Crime” which also opposed the extradition of Babar Ahmad* to the USA, the prescription of non-violent Islamic organisations (including Hiszb Ut-Tahrir Britain,) and other measures that attempt to silence legitimate political dissent.

Obviously Hizb ut-Tahrir is a considerably more serious political organisation, but although it aims to restore a Caliphate in the Muslim world, its states that it “does not work in the West to change the system of government, but works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society and engages in dialogue with Western thinkers, policymakers and academics.”

While I would not want to live in the kind of Islamic state proposed by Hizb ut-Tahrir and find some of their views inconsistent with my own understanding of human rights and equality (as some of those of more extreme Christian groups and others also are) I am not aware of any justification for banning their activities here in the UK, although I’m sure it would be a popular decision in Pakistan.

* Babar Ahmad, arrested and brutally assaulted by the Met Police in December 2003 (the High Court concluded he was the subject of a “serious, gratuitous and prolonged” attack and they paid uyp £60,000 compensation) has been held in prison without trial since the USA applied for his extradition on charges of being involved in web sites supporting Chechen and Afghan insurgents. A decision is expected shortly on the review by The European Court of Human Rights of his extradition case.