Uneasy allies

Went down to the opposing protests at the Scottish Parliament this afternoon. On one side the Scottish Defence League had organised a static demonstration (as they hadn't been given permission to march) and opposing them were a number of anti-fascist groups including Unite Against Fascism and the Communist Party. There were probably a couple of hundred on the SDL side of the barricades and the police cordon and two or three times that on the other side. The spokesman for the UAF (pictured here) spoke to the crowd, claiming the SDL had actually marched into position with a police escort despite the ban on a march, before everyone rushed to the barriers to hurl abuse at their opponents. And the SDL chanted back in reply. There was something of the atmosphere of a football match about the whole thing. A ritualised performance, like street theatre. Although I left before the two sides dispersed news reports said the afternoon passed off without incident and therefore vindicated the police approach of allowing protest to take place in a controlled manner. The whole thing seemed well organised and despite the passion on both sides, all very peaceful with the police in between the two sides. Quite a few photographers there and as I went straight to see the Napier photography degree show if you see any pictures in the media tomorrow they probably won't be mine as I suspect I filed them too late.
The exhibition was very interesting - some stuff I really liked, some stuff not to my taste. A set of large staged images rather in the style of Gregory Crewdson drew my eye. J's book about her grandparents, Cherry Compote was touching, and K's images made me think a bit. Bumped into one of my college tutors J there and a bit of an impromptu tutorial developed on the nature of photography and image capture with him and K, who was the student looking after the exhibition. Another ex-Stevenson student, B, was down from Aberdeen to see the exhibition and he also joined in the discussion later on - all most interesting! The exhibition is on for one more day tomorrow (Sunday) at the Napier Merchiston Campus so if you are in Edinburgh and fancy seeing some interesting work get yourself along. It will also be in London later in the month as part of Free Range.