The Climate Camp 2009 on Blackheath was just getting underway when we rolled up there yesterday evening. Much of the media presence seemed to have dissipated after the initial launch didn’t result in a bloody battle a la G20. There were quite a few snappers around though, lugging kit.
And there’s the rub as they say. I was out in mufti testing my new pinhole camera and what better place to test out this environmentally friendly little box made from managed/reclaimed teak wood? I also had the Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta with only three shots left on the roll so I wasn’t exactly prepared for photojournalism. Three shots, I wasn’t counting those left on the pinhole. So I had to make the best of them.
Climate Camper from Brighton
I think I did make the best of them, or at least one. I will go out on a limb and say that I think this is one of the best people photos I’ve ever taken (yeah, maybe the bar is low…). I like ambiguity and this has it in buckets. The expression on the woman’s face – the framed half-smile, her eyes slightly obscured by the fence, the fence itself, the tents, the walkie-talkie radio, they all make me want to ask questions. As I took the photo she said ‘…like those concentration camp photos?‘. Since I’ve been thinking a lot about Lee Miller’s 1944-45 war photos recently it must been subliminal because as soon as she said it, it was obvious.
This and the rest of the photos below come from the pinhole, all with 40-50 seconds exposure! You so don’t need a Nikon/Canon for photojournalism.
Now here is something tangential, the relevence of which will hopefully become clear. On Tuesday night West Ham and Millwall football supporters were fighting pitched-battles around Upton Park. For those unaware of English football tribalism there has never been very much love lost between these two clubs, it goes well beyond animosity (and the dumb-ass assertions by ill-informed journos that it is ‘South vs East London rivalry’. Millwall Football Club is in South-East London you fuckwits, South London is a different place. Just to confuse them more, Millwall the place is on the Isle of Dogs, East London).
The fixture had been scheduled for months so the Met police have had just a bit of notice to prepare for the inevitable.
Can we assume (a) they were not prepared for the obvious or (b) that they are quite happy for the two sets of supporters to beat the shit out of each other (thus saving them the trouble of wading in themselves to do the job) and subsequently pick them all off at leisure later from the CCTV (plus the covert filming and photography that they were up to as usual)? Or (c), The Tactical Support Group are a bunch of cowards and thugs who, when faced with a group of people that would and could fight back, hid away in their vans. If (a) they must be incompetent. If (b) it casts an interesting light on recent police actions at events such as the G20 where public safety was held up as one of the reasons for the para-military attacks on, among others, the climate campaigners. What about the public safety of the residents of Upton Park on Tuesday night? I think we can work that one out without spelling it out. Upton Park is not the City innit… Finally (c). Seems the most likely. There is of course an additional option (d) that suggests the ranks of the TSG are drawn from those two sets of football ‘supporters’, that they were there in civvies, keeping their hand in, and indulging in some vicious racism at the same time.
However, this is Blackheath where a lot of the people who work in The City live (they are among the few who can afford to live there), so in some perverse way somewhere it follows that the residents need to be protected, but in a new post G20 softly-softly cuddly way. However, it is still hard to avoid seeing the surveillance cameras on the 50 metre high gantry overlooking the camp which can presumably look up your arse as you are having a crap, or miss the ‘command centre’ around the corner. But most bizarre of all, the campers appear to have kettled themselves by bringing their own fences. I don’t think Wat Tyler did that…
But the bleeding obvious question is what exactly are they/we being protected against? Having been caught-up myself in a few ‘situations’ in the 1970s & 80s (including being kettled by police horses at a Man U/Liverpool match outside Old Trafford, before we had ever heard of the topical kettling, or wondering why the 159 bus failed to stop and pick me up during the 1981 Brixton riots which had gone off behind me) I know how frightening and intimidating large groups of fighting football supporters, rioters etc are. These are not the feelings I get at the climate camp which largely seems full of happy people. WTF is there to be frightened of?
The answer lies in the banner perhaps?
I will bet there are busloads of Tactical Support Group coppers waiting round the corner in case it ‘goes off’. Just waiting…
by skinnyvoice
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