[...and the last section. All this has reminded me that I really ought to join Liberty again]

“Lawrence Looi, 31, who has been a staff photographer with news agency News Team for the last three years, had been sent to cover a protest on public roads outside the International Conference Centre on Thursday morning when he was approached by a police constable who objected to having been photographed…Looi says he was then approached by a police sergeant who asked to view the photographs taken. Looi agreed to this, but refused a request from the sergeant for any photographs which showed identifiable police officers to be deleted…When Looi refused, the complaint says: “[the police sergeant] then threatened to take my camera from me to delete the photographs, to quote…‘Do it or I’ll do it myself’. He then grabbed hold of my camera with the intention of doing so”

In many situation there is at least a theoretical risk of tripping over one of those shin-high laws against ungentlemanly conduct, the non-application of which relies on the courts throwing out the odd sniggerworthy case to encourage the inherent decency of those who enforce them. Photographers have reportedly been pulled for ‘causing an obstruction’, ‘behaviour likely to lead to a breach of the peace’ (a good nebulous one, this) or any of a number of the nasty restrictions on the right of assembly and movement dating from the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and afterwards. It’s much harder to find convictions on these, but the threat of arrest (recorded, potentially recoverable from police records), a caution (ditto), or just a general belief that the police can do anything more than politely request that a photographer desist, may lead many natural cowards - step backward me - to put away the lens and politely thank the officer most kindly for his or her forbearance. Unfortunately, police (who are, let’s not forget, just as likely to be incompetent, potentially malicious, and out for an easy life as the rest of us), PCSOs and private security guards (who are, etc.) are not particularly likely to know the relevant laws, and may be willing to make claims unsupported by any likely court interpretation. Add in stop and search on suspicion of almost anything (including any number of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000), and the odd bit of alleged off-the-books manhandling, and it’s not entirely surprising that blower brushes are being squeezed nervously.

Besides the usual array of catch-alls for causing mild nuisance to a person in authority, photographers may also have to deal with specific claims based on two good things - privacy and child protection.

On privacy, this neat guide by Liberty has some interesting material. See particularly the discussion of media and privacy and the public interest.

On child protection - it’s neither illegal to photograph children without parental consent, nor to publish pictures of children without permission. Print and broadcast media in the Uk periodically swing towards compliance with codes of conduct (voluntary for press, potentially enforced by Ofcom/BBC governors for broadcast) that may stop them publishing some pictures some of the time without consent, until somebody else does. At the risk of being sucked into that cultural plughole where lurk the kind of horrors Phil Collins so kindly warned us about, I’ll at some point try to justify taking so many pictures of children. But more of that later. Legally there’s no reason not to, assuming it’s not pornographic or otherwise obscene(and I’m happy to leave that to the courts to interpret). Most of those ‘parents banned from taking pictures at watered-down nativity play - what is the world coming to?‘ stories will be down to jumpy schools interpreting their duty of care excessively. The same may go for private or voluntary organisations supervising children in a public place, and which may not take kindly to cameras mostly through fear of parental, rather than legal, censure. There are other situations where photography might be legal but potentially highly negligent e.g. identifiable child+name+separation+possessive dispossessed parent. Otherwise, while it’s clearly sometimes better not to, you can.

“There is no legal restriction on photography in public places and there is no presumption of privacy for individuals in a public place. It is for the Chief Constable to ensure that officers and PCSOs are acting appropriately with regards to photography in public places and any queries regarding this should be addressed to the Chief Constable. However decisions may be made locally to restrict photography, for example to protect children. Any questions on such local decisions should be addressed to the force concerned.”

Tony McNulty, Home Office Minister of State, in a (private) reply to an enquiry.

Which leaves me to ask why, with such a skimpy legal backing for photographer-bashing, street photography seems threatened, feels threatened. I’d like to rule out the possibility that the country is slipping into the kind of comfortably shabby nightmare depicted in this wonderfully British dystopia, where street photography would lead fairly rapidly to the Maidstone gulag. So, I fall back on social climate, a particular state of political slump in which much that’s good is under a dammit lazy hail of illiberal Molotov cocktails, fuelled by the usual high-octane guff and burning indignant rags. Reading the papers, it seems that, when given the space, polite opinion is, not unusually, willing to countenance anything deemed necessary to stamp out whatever moral failings, street crime, terrorism, immigrant and underclass misbehaviour, the old machine has on the go to distract from routine redistribution of all we thought we’d won back into the gated community of people who get to matter. I wouldn’t claim it’s necessarily examined and deliberate. Just that it suits, and that many of us are either overly willing to be persuaded, or lazy enough to go along with it.

“In May last year, Thames Valley Police rescinded a caution which was given to photographer Andy Handley, of the MK News in Milton Keynes, after he took pictures at a road accident scene”.

Grisly journalism, untidy, irritating, ugly, perhaps wrong, but, nevertheless, a minor victory.

I want to attribute this to someone clever, but can’t, because I made it up last night:

To defend what’s important, it’s not enough to defend what everyone agrees is important - it’s necessary to defend the unnecessary, the reprehensible, and the unpronounceable.

[For anyone in the US, this wonderful pdf guide, has some highly entertaining worked examples. I'm investigating the legal situation in Spain, and would be very interested in what's happening elsewhere.]