Arms Off Iraq, George Galloway & Tony Benn – Saturday 2nd March 2002 noticed an enormous protest towards Britain changing into concerned within the US plans to invade Iraq and depose Sadam Hussein.
It’s arduous to know what number of marched that day, although I believe there could have been round half one million of us on the streets of London,however it was definitely a really giant march although not fairly on the dimensions of that on sixteenth February 2003. Sadly I needed to miss that one as I had solely come out of hospital yesterday and will solely stroll just a few yards.
George Galloway, then Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, has come again into the information not too long ago by profitable the Rochdale by-election. He together with Tony Benn and others was one of many founders of Cease The Conflict following the US invasion of Afghanisatan and the coalition organised this and different protests towards the invasions of Iraq then being ready by the US Miitary. Galloway was and nonetheless is a flamboyant determine and a strong speaker, although I used to be quite extra interested in others within the motion corresponding to Tony Benn, who seems in additional of my footage.
However then as now, I wasn’t on the protest to {photograph} celebrities, however to inform the story of the occasion, primarily by means of images of the abnormal folks participating. After all my footage consider those that caught my consideration, typically by their expressions and actions, however extra usually by means of their banners and placards which hyperlink them to the trigger they have been marching for.
Though I’d been photographing protests for some years – often because the Seventies and extra intensively because the Nineties, my footage had merely gone into image libraries and some exhibitions and few had been used within the mass media.
Shortly after Indymedia, a worldwide community of unbiased information media was arrange in 1999 I started publishing work on the UK website – and a few of it could be nonetheless be out there on the now archived website. This was after all completely non-commercial, and had a really restricted readership on the left, amongst anarchists and the safety companies.
However I additionally arrange a brand new web page of my very own, My London Diary, which remains to be out there on-line, although its now a number of years since I’ve added new work. Though I’ve limitless internet area there’s a restrict to the variety of information my internet server can deal with, and I used to be very near this. Covid additionally performed its half in varied methods.
Within the early years of My London Diary I used to be nonetheless working with movie and solely had a black and white flatbed scanner. So the images for Arms Off Iraq on-line have been all in black and white, although I may even have taken some in color, however to this point I’ve digitised few color pictures from these years. The 24 black and white pictures on My London Diary could have been comprised of 8×10″ black and white press prints submitted to an image library and scanned on a flatbed scanner. In 2002 though many magazines have been printed in color the principle gross sales for information pictures have been nonetheless black and white, although issues have been quickly altering, and I used to be quickly to start transferring to working primarily in digital color.
Right here, with just a few corrections is the textual content I placed on line again in 2022 with these footage:
The Cease the Conflict, Arms off Iraq demonstration on 2 march was a big signal of public opinion. folks have been nonetheless leaving Hyde Park in the beginning of the march when Trafalgar Sq. was full to overflowing two and a half hours later.
Police estimates of the quantity have been risible as regular – and may solely mirror an try and marginalise the numerous physique of opinion against the battle or an entire mathematical incapacity on behalf of the police.
Tony Benn advised me and different photographers it wasn’t value taking his image – “it gained’t get within the papers except I am going and kick a policeman” however he didn’t and he was fairly proper.
