The press pack in full cry
IT MUST have been one of the biggest gatherings of photographers that even London has seen when more than 300 staged a mass protest outside the Metropolitan Police HQ at Scotland Yard against a new law which they say could stop them taking pictures of the police.
It was the day the Counter Terrorism Act came into force, making it an offence in the UK to take pictures of police or security personnel that are “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. The penalty could be ten years in prison.
The Home Office says the law is designed to protect counter-terrorism officers from attack but the NUJ, which organised the protest, said it could be used to harass photographers working legitimately.
The photographers took mass photos of the police to make their point. Some wore masks and fancy dress, while others wore stickers that said: “I am a photographer – not a terrorist.”
Comedian Mark Thomas was at the protest and told Press Gazette: “I am an NUJ member and a citizen – that’s why I’m here. The greater threat isn’t photographers – it’s police breaking the law at protests, denying citizens of their rights.”
Marc Vallee, protest co-organiser and a photographer well-known for covering protests, said: “Photographers are trying to do their job in a professional way and the counter-terrorism laws are being used against them.”
SUPPORT for the photographers’ cause came from two unexpected sources. The Metropolitan Police Federation, representing officers in London, said its members did not want to harass journalists.
“Police and photographers share the streets and the Met Federation earnestly wants to see them doing so harmoniously,” it said in a statement. “As things stand, there is a real risk of photographers being hampered in carrying out their legitimate work and of police officers facing opprobrium for carrying out what they genuinely, if mistakenly, believe are duties imposed on them by the law.”
The federation has agreed to a meeting with NUJ freelance organiser John Toner to discuss the working relationship between photographers and the police.
EVEN MORE startling was an interview given the same day by Stella Rimington, the former head of the secret service MI5, in which she accused the government of unnecessarily restricting liberty in the name of counter-terrorism.
She said: “It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism.”
Union Vice-President NUJ Pete Murray, who attended the event, asked jokingly: “If the police officer isn’t doing anything wrong then what are they worried about?”