After I had finished in the Banksy: Limitless exhibition in South Kensington I jumped back on the Victoria Line to take me to Leicester Square where I jumped out and wandered over through Piccadilly and then onto Trafalgar Square where a protest organised by Defend Our Juries was due to take place. Previous protests had focussed on stopping the war in Gaza and some protestors holding up signs supporting Palestine Action ( A UK Government proscribed terrorist organisation) had been arrested. As a result of these previous arrests, some of elderly people campaigning quietly, the Police had been told that they must enforce the law. This means that anyone holding a sign stating their support for the proscribed organisation could be arrested.
Defend Our Juries is an organisation that wants to stand for the right to protest and had organised a large crowd of people willing to be arrested if needed. The police and government had asked them to postpone it due to the Police needing to be elsewhere protecting Mosques and Synagogues after the attack in Manchester midweek. Their spokesperson was on Radio 4 on the Friday as I travelled down to London and they were adamant that they’d be protesting. I wandered into the square underneath the imposing Doric column holding aloft Lord Nelson and sat with my Leica Q3 and fixed 28mm lens on the edge of the fountain to see what the score was.
A person sat near me was there for their first time to be arrested and explained to another protestor that they had a burner phone with them, meaning that they didn’t want to risk their own smart phone being intercepted by the police. Another guy sat on a camping chair pouring tea into a china cup was then reading out Dylan Thomas to this other person alone, loudly proclaiming “Do not go gentle into that good night”.
Another elderly lady with her partner close by was writing on her sign “I Oppose Genocide, I Support” and had left remaining words off there until it was time to begin as a group. She was interviewed by a film crew and I’m pretty sure there were more people holding cameras (me being one) than there were people protesting.
Sitting on the edge of the fountain being soaked now and again by the windy driving of the water into my back, I was listening and looking. It was planned to begin at 13:00 hours and people started preparing the large banners but most of the “troublesome” signs were A3 or A2 in size, some prepared before travelling and some at the location.
At 1pm the area went quiet and people were sat around finishing their signs off before the many crowds of police officers made their way into the throngs. Some held video cameras, and the rest all worked slowly and methodically to surround a protestor, explain to them what was happening before being hoisted aloft by 5 or 6 officers and carried to the pen to be dealt with, before being loaded into vans for transport to a nearby police station for processing.
I saw many people being arrested and carried away, to the cheers and applause of others, whilst the organisers asked them to keep it down. It was a quiet protest so as not to give anyone an excuse to liven it up with some violence. As I bore witness to the events there were also people from the political right walking around shouting things like “lock him up, go on, filthy criminals”. One of them stood near me was noticed by a young man in the crowd, who asked him and his security bodyguards if he could get a selfie with him. There was also another similarly opinionated counter protestor with security who was engaging in arguments with the more left wing members of the crowds.
I stood in silence keeping away from microphones and talked to nobody at all, to remain in a neutral position with an objective eye, that I should keep seeing as I’m a member of the Union Of Journalists. The photos I was capturing on my camera were to document the events, not to side with the police, the protestors or the counter protestors.
There were many vans leaving the area and I continued to take photos as protestors were ferried off for processing elsewhere, some of the arrested people waved and some gave rude hand gestures to the police outside the smoked windows.
It was an interesting event with seemingly very well controlled and prepared protestors, welfare people, and official witnesses patrolling around to ensure there were no breaks in the civility. I kind of wish I’d made it to the Unite The Kingdom protest the previous month so I could compare the two and see the differences between the methods and procedures.
I understand the seeming unfairness of arresting people for quietly sitting holding a sign, but it is the law and the police have no choice but to follow the orders of the Home Secretary. ( I know the line about “just following orders” seems scary). The fact that we have the right to protest and a right of free speech in the UK is a special right that not every country in the world has access to, some protestors were claiming that it is being eroded by these laws. We’ll see how this progresses over time, and once quiet protests might turn ugly if the populous starts feeling repressed. The right-leaning counter protestors who also joined the march a few weeks prior also enjoy the free speech and also get upset that “hate speech” laws prevent them from broadcasting their views as clearly as they’d perhaps like to. It is an awkward balance for the government to maintain a fairness that deals with different angles in a consistent manner and I do not envy them at all.
I aim to keep this blog politically neutral and don’t often mention politics for fear of passing on ill-informed opinions that might be incorrect. One thing I can say is that I am proud that people in the UK can deal with difficult situations with a decorum and grown up attitude that is not often seen elsewhere.
Sometimes I was uncomfortable with what I saw and heard, from both sides of the political spectrum, but it was intereesting to get in there with a camera to document what might be a turning point in the ability to protest in the UK. Using the Leica Q3 with it’s flippy screen meant I could lift it above the crowd to capture stories hidden underneath the melee of the polci officers surrounding a protestor as well as go low level to capture the scene of a woman holding a sign up whilst seeing the firm fists of the police officers confronting her. It’s easy to see how images can be used to “spin” a situation to a particular political viewpoint but I hope that my photos and reporting above are factual and honest represnatins of what I saw unfold.
Once I’d finished documenting the struggles of the police and the crowds I walked off towards the tube at Leicester Square again to make my way over towards Tate Britain on the Millbank near Vauxhall Bridge where I would be visiting the Lee Miller Exhibition. This will be available in the next post I write on here, thanks for reading this and any more you tune into.
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