An Experiment in Photojournalism
Photo essay from the pro-UK rally in George Square on 7 September 2024
For weeks, my friends on Instagram had been warning that pro-UK “fascists” were meeting in George Square. After the riots in England, there was a sense that Scotland might be next.
Fortunately, Stand Up to Racism was organising a counter-protest. It was going to be big. They were determined to put out a show of strength — so much so that I assumed no one from the other side would turn up. Surely they knew how outnumbered they were going to be?
When I arrived on Saturday morning, I was surprised to see around 100 pro-UK demonstrators. They looked shocked to be outnumbered by about 5 to 1. I realised that, like all of us, they live in filter bubbles and have no idea what is happening elsewhere online.
The protest was organised on Facebook by a taxi-driving poet, Stef Shaw, who calls himself the Glasgow Cabbie. It was promoted by Tommy Robinson and speakers included Alistair McConnachie, a man who has previously been accused of holocaust denial. It sounded bad and I was fully expecting a bunch of thugs, but it was mostly the same working-class people who turn up to anti-vax rallies and there was no threat in the air. Of course, the phalanx of police helped.
What I love about events like this is seeing people filled with the certainty of being on the right side of history. Would the world be a better place with no nations and no borders? I’m not sure, but I admire the optimism of those who shout the slogan.
Maybe, I thought, I should be like a photojournalist and capture the day’s spirit. But it’s hard to not create a simplistic narrative. One bad photo of an activist can be seen as condemnation. One good photo might seen as an endorsement. It’s tricky to represent the inherent weirdness of individual human beings.
I am a big fan of Andrew Callaghan, a journalist who became notorious for listening to protesters. His YouTube channel is much more revealing than conventional TV news, which relies on editors to fit ideas into digestible stories. The difference is that Callaghan and his associates get close up and talk to people, whereas I only had a long lens.
In Macbeth, Duncan says "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face". It’s easy to be deceived by appearances, but this is what I aspire to do as a photographer. I want to, at the very least, capture the mind at that moment. What follows is a document of what I saw at the protest.
For more on this story, check out The Ferret’s photo essay by Angela Catlin and Billy Briggs.
Also, I recommend
’s Substack for some raw photojournalism from New York.
Neil, I liked these quite a lot. Nicely ambiguous, ambivalent, humane. Here's the other shoe dropping: I'm not sure they are not too still. Your largely successful efforts to capture the humanity of the subjects tended to drain them of energy, or at least the energy I would expect at such an event. Does that make sense? BTW, many years ago, I innocently crossed an "Orange" parade in Glasgow -- now there was some energy! Anyway, keep up the good work.
Hey Neil, thanks for the shout out, great work as always!