Today I experienced what many, many other photographers have experienced in London (and elsewhere) in recent years.  I got stopped taking pictures by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about.  I was lucky, I wasn’t stopped by the police, I was just stopped by a member of TFL staff.

I was on my way home after work and got off at Hammersmith Station.  I decided to take a few pictures, nothing special just a few quick snaps.  I was stood in one spot, not in anyone’s way taking pictures for about thirty seconds before a member of staff came over and asked if I had a permit to take pictures.  I told her that as I wasn’t a professional and was only taking pictures for my own use I was not required to apply for a permit.  She disagreed and demanded I stop taking pictures.  I had had a long day and couldn’t be bothered arguing so after telling her she was wrong I just headed home.

But Transport for London’s website makes it quite clear that non-professional photography is allowed on the Tube as long as you do not use flash or a tripod.  Their website states - 

“If you are just passing through, you shouldn’t have a problem taking personal snaps, souvenir shots etc, although you must NOT use flash or lights on any of our platforms.  However, if you want to spend more than 10-15 minutes at any one station videoing or taking photos, or if they are for professional use, you MUST have a permit.”

Clearly the member of staff I encountered hadn’t bothered to read her own employers rules and regulations!  The reality is that this isn’t just a problem on London Underground.  Increasingly in the UK photography is being treated as a crime.  Hardly a week goes by without stories of press photographers being stopped by police when conducting their job.  Recent events like the G20 protests and the Climate Camp in Kent have shown the poor attitude the police have towards the police.  The Metropolitan Police have just released their updated guidelines on photography and the law which are extremely inadequate.  The situation has become so bad that the British Journal of Photography has launched a campaign called Not a Crime.  With their campaign they are hoping to change public perceptions about photography and raise awareness about the problem.  You can find out more about the campaign on their website.

Of course what happened to me today in no way compares to those photographers who have been stopped and searched by the police using anti-terrorism legislation, but it is symptomatic of the attitude towards photography in the UK today.  Anyway you might be wondering what pictures I was taking that caused me to be stopped – well here you go!

At 7pm this evening the trade union RMT started a 48 strike on the London Underground, effectively crippling the tube network and making it that much harder to get around the city. Now, on the face of it, that might not sound like too bad a thing, however when you look at the detail of today’s strike you find a Union leadership (Bob Crow) intent on causing as much disruption as possible, behaving completely unreasonably and living in cloud cuckoo land (in terms of their demands).  Now I have absolutely no problem with unionism or strikes, indeed I quite happily support the trade union movement and their right to strike and it can be used effectively against employers who treat their staff poorly.  But that simply is not the case here. London Underground staff are well paid – very well paid in fact, certainly better paid than I am, yet the RMT is not happy.  A strike should not be undertaken lightly, especially where it has such a massive impact, yet the RMT seem to be willing to strike at the drop of a hat.

Transport for London have been trying to engage the RMT in negotiations and have apparently even made a number of improved pay offers which the RMT have refused.  What Bob Crow seems to have forgotten is that we’re right in the middle of a pretty bad recession.  People from all different sectors are being laid off and companies are having to make cut backs to survive.  It’s not nice, but that’s the reality in 2009.  But Crow clearly doesn’t think the recession should apply to his members, so he is demanding pay rises (that are simply unachievable in the current economic climate) and a guarantee that there will be no forced redundancies over the next year. How can anyone expect these to be serious demands in the current economy.  

And if these issues weren’t enough Bob Crow apparently took it one step further last night. According to the media (if we can really consider thelondonpaper to be a decent media outlet) at the last minute negotiations that took place last night both sides were coming close to an agreement when the RMT decided to add another issue to their demands.  Their demand?  To reinstate two London Underground drivers who had been fired!  The RMT were seriously going to hold the whole city to ransom over two drivers!  And when you read about the two drivers you actually see no reason they shouldn’t have been fired.  One opened the doors of a train on the wrong side of the platform and then lied to TFL bosses about undertaking the required safety checks.  The second driver was fired for theft, which was clearly serious because the police were called in and the unnamed driver is currently awaiting trial.  So why on earth would the RMT demand these two were rehired or they would strike?

The RMT has long been seen as one of the more radical of the Trade Unions, and with a propensity for strikes, the next 48 hours won’t make that impression any better!

I travel on the Tube every day, whether its just to and from work or out and about during the weekend, its a regular part of my life.  I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the Tube, I hate how it always seems to be having problems when you’re running late, I hate it for just how busy it gets during the rush hour; I hate how people force their way on to the carriage when there is clearly absolutely no room left!   

Yet I still love the Tube.  Most people when travelling on the underground keep themselves to themselves, they keep their head’s in a book (or a rubbish free paper these days) and don’t look up until they reach their station.  But for me I like to watch people’s behaviour as they travel, I have done since taking up photography.  You get a great cross-section of London life on the Tube, most people in the city use it, so you see everyone from beggers, to kids on the way to school, to tourists, to people on their way to a fancy social event. 

When you’re travelling on the London Underground!  I’m fed up of Transport for London saying that there are no delays on trains when there clearly are!! Take today as a prime example.  I was at Kings Cross waiting for a Hammersmith and City Line train, the screen said it was one minute away but I waited nearly 10 minutes and no train.  It said 1 minute the whole time, and there were three tannoy announcements saying everything was fine!  Yet clearly it wasn’t.

Then later on I was waiting for a bus and the screen said two minutes, then all of a sudden it disappeared, and so did the next one!!  The bus after that wasn’t for another ten minutes.  I’m so fed up of delays like this, might not seem like much, but it happens all the time.  Last week I was stuck in the tunnel for nearly 30 minutes.

Some days I really hate the Underground!  Its taken me nearly an hour and a half to get home tonight, a journey that normally takes about 25 minutes.  To add insult to injury I’d been delayed getting to work this morning, and ended up being nearly 30 minutes late.