The photomontage “Photo Op”, made in 2005 by kennardphillipps, was promoting a joint show at the gallery for them and Iraqi artist Hanaa’ Malallah called “Iraq: How, Where, For Whom?”

A passenger at Green Park station complained directly to TFL’s commissioner and CBS Outdoor — the company in charge of advertising on the London Underground — was instructed to remove all 100 A3 posters just as they were being put up.

CBS Outdoor claimed the image was in breach of bylaws that prohibit imagery that “contain images or messages that relate to matters of public controversy and sensitivity are of a political nature calling for the support of a particular viewpoint, policy or action or attacking a member of policies of any legislative, central or local government authority [advertisements are acceptable which simply announce the time, date and place of social activities or of a meeting with the names of the speakers and the subjects to be discussed].”

This weekend, when asked about the ban, TFL’s press office claimed no knowledge of it and subsequently issued the following statement:

“Our advertising contractors, CBS Outdoor, were instructed to remove the posters as they depicted a prominent politician during the pre-election period. Should the organisation concerned wish to display the posters again now the election has been held, we would be happy to do so.”

However, nearly two weeks of negotiations between the Mosaic Rooms and CBS Outdoor / TFL had already transpired. This resulted in the creation of an alternate ad campaign design featuring former US President George Bush. When asked if the Mosaic Rooms can now run the entire campaign with the original Blair image, TFL replied “yes.”

Artist Peter Kennard, of kennardphillipps, said at the time of the ban “It seems that for TFL, the Iraq War is not for us to think about and [Tony] Blair is not only beyond criticism, but his actions while he was in office cannot even be acknowledged. What affords him such protection when he is now merely another multi-millionaire businessman amongst many?”

As a charity under the Qattan Foundation, the Mosaic Rooms are entitled to a heavily discounted advertising rate in the London Underground. They contended that their posters asked a question and that TFL’s actions were a “clear act of censorship which removes a poster on purely political grounds while undermining the principles of free artistic expression.”

By saying that the Mosaic Rooms can reinstate the original poster campaign featuring “Photo Op” after banning it on clear political grounds, TFL have shown that they are easily influenced by structures of power. A well-placed passenger with access to the right people in their company can get a campaign taken down — and were the ban not challenged it would have continued. As such, TFL may have set a precedent for other charities and designers seeking to use more political imagery in their work and may think twice before censoring creative expression.

At the time of this writing, CBS Outdoor have still not received instruction from TFL to reinstate the original poster campaign and have proceeded with mounting an alternate image.

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This article was first published in the Index on Censorship. Reprinted with permission of the author.

When it was established that the original idea [flying radio controlled helicopters and planes dropping leaflets about the human rights violations by the Syrian regime] was not “invading Syrian airspace”, I got cracking with documenting the Free Syria Air Force.

They folded up a thousand paper airplanes with the names of all the dead since the start of the most recent Syrian uprising written in Arabic. The process for that was painstaking…the artist who drew the names also watched corresponding videos of that martyr – sometimes it would be of them in death, sometimes in life, other times as life became death. The plan was to then launch these names – these crimes – back at Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

They also dragged down fifty black balloons and with the idea of releasing a black cloud over the Embassy.

The day of the action was a windy and rainy one – so the radio-controlled planes and helicopters could not fly. There was also some debate over the symbolism of flying them so – in the name of process – the idea was scrapped at the last minute. The rest of it – and the poignancy – remained.

At least, I hope so. Watch this for yourself:

…coming soon to a London Underground carriage near you….

Haywain with Cruise Missiles, ©Peter Kennard, 1980

Shhhhhhhhh. We may or may not have had something to do with the events that led to this diary entry in the Evening Standard:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/bbcs-hanging-offence-upsets-national-gallery-7706829.html

However, the Standard missed the point. It’s not just a TV stunt. It’s a TV stunt with a purpose and that is to highlight and criticise the National Gallery’s continuing acceptance of £30k per year from the world’s 8th largest arms manufacturer Finmeccanica – they earn over £19bn a year.

The National Gallery also hosted a dinner for DSEi delegates last September. DSEi are the world’s largest arms fair. Peter Kennard and I rocked up with a Haywain and a television crew back then [that got on a documentary series on Current TV called "Behind Rebel Lines" about arms trade protest and the Space Hijackers].

The fact that national institutions that preserve and display art of cultural and historical significance are easily bought for the price of a few thousand pounds and the cost of a room hire is disgusting. Finmeccanica make things that shoot people – I shoot things that help people. The campaign continues.

For more information, contact the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Disarm the Gallery.

A look at the situation in Syria a year after the government’s crackdown on pro-reform protests began.
Directed and edited by me, translation by Noor al-Bazzaz. Research and interviews by Amnesty International.
Art by me. Sorry Peter, you ended up on the cutting room floor.

Don’t forget to check out the amazing Eyes on Syria map that crowdsources and independently confirms actions, activism, human rights violations and stories in and around Syria.

I popped down to an NHS vigil this evening. And because the last chap who tried to burn down Parliament got into a spot of bother, I made this instead:

So demos happened. And the previously cloaked evil that guides Bashar Al-Assad’s regime shone through the mesh.
One year on, I was asked by Amnesty International to make a film. That will come up soon. But using one of the images I made and shot for the film – a burning calendar – I decided to have a stab at making an image. Here’s the rough.

This was the first Random Act I shot for Channel 4’s late night arts strand. It’s pretty special that it’s of and with some of the best people you could ever meet on either side of the Atlantic.

The 80 people living at the St Paul’s site and the 40-50 living at an abandoned school building near Old Street were greeted in the small hours of the morning with police vans, bailiffs, riot cops and a gaggle of press photographers. Supporters received text messages and tweets from people on site and those who could make the post-midnight journey came down to stand in support or rubberneck over the police lines set up around it. Occupy’s tech team began a long night of tweeting and livestream broadcasts. As the sun rose over a hazy London, the bulldozers arrived at the School of Ideas and before most people had finished their breakfasts and set off on their morning commutes, the abandoned Islington school was no more. And St Paul’s was, for the first time since 15 October 2011, clear of tents and banners.

After a decision from the Court of Appeal was passed to prevent an appeal for protesters to remain encamped on the St Paul’s site, life there began to show signs of strain. The weekend before the eviction, most of the residential tents were still in place but some of the larger structures at the side of the cathedral were taken down or relocated. People were pre-empting a “dawn raid” — as in the way the Parliament Square anti-war encampments were evicted. It was no longer a case of if, but when.

So when the floodlights arrived just after midnight with its chorus of riot police and neon-vested bailiffs, they were expected. Some people chose to wear their tents instead of have them destroyed, and others built a structure out of pallets and stood on it in token resistance to the eviction. Police arrested 23 protesters but for the most part, people decamped to the remaining Occupy site at Finsbury Square and began the process of asking “what now?”

The High Court’s decision in favour of the City of London Corporation was an attempt to put the nail in the coffin of the Occupy movement’s protest and dissent. The swathe of evictions across all Occupy sites is the state’s way of trying to bury it. Ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the erection of tents and the possession of sleeping equipment on Olympic sites were declared unlawful. Reports that government ministers are drafting legislation loosely based on part 3 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and that they will invoke the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 to protect Olympic branding and sponsors make this government’s position on what matters crystal clear. This is legislation for the short term that will carry the weight of precedent against your human right to protest in the long term. Do not mess with the money machine. You can have “peaceful protest” but the minute you start cutting near the bone, you will be stopped. Your free speech ends where the profit margin begins.

The bleary eyes of the occupiers are dead today. Their bodies are slumped in exhaustion on a muddy plot of land next to a car park and the Bloomberg building. But their heels are digging into the soil as they vow to carry on.

It matters little what you personally feel about the global Occupy Movement and London’s part in it. You could be devoted to it as a zeitgeist, you can maintain that occupation should be a political tactic used to achieve tangible change or you could say that the sight of riot police on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral at 2am was the most radical thing to come out of that plot of land. The truth is this — gambling by financial institutions around the world has crippled the many for the benefit of the few. The blind eye turned by governments to this wanton destruction of lives shows that our will as the people to form the basis of authority of government has been raped. We are no longer equal before the law.

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship. Published with permission from the author [me].