Former Guardian picture editor Eamonn McCabes TV series Britain in Focus has been graphing the history of photography in the UK. Here, Irvine Welsh, Sadiq Khan, Jeanette Winterson, Nadav Kander and others pick the fires that sum up Britishness for them
A astonishing miner, Orgreave, 1984
Luke Wright, poet
This rich, beautiful photo by Don McPhee pictures striking miner( Striking? Hes perfectly spectacular !) George Geordie Brealey( privilege) and policeman Paul Castle( far left) at Orgreave on 18 June 1984. What followed, known as the Battle of Orgreave, was one of the severest crashes in recent British civil record, as 6,000 police officers and 5,000 miners faced off at the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire.
Brealey was said to have form for joking and comedian with police officers on the picket line. Wearing a childs bobbies helmet, he would pretend to inspect the lines. Here is one serviceman, sarcastically incognito, facing an infinite militarised police force. Brealey is at once brave, good-humoured and anti-establishment a British hero.
I was two in 1984, so this event is beyond my living memory, but it seems increasingly relevant to the splits of contemporary Britain. Orgreave distinguished a turning point in the 1984 -8 5 miners ten-strike, and for labour relations in the UK. Zero-hours contracts, the left-behind, the fractions of Brexit they point back to a moment like this.
The Boy With the Flag, 1970
David Lammy, Labour MP
Vanley Burkes image imparts the promise of second-generation immigrants born in Britain after their parents had landed on our shores on the Windrush in 1948. My mothers were part of the Windrush generation, so this photo has a particular poignancy for me. Long before Linford Christie or Jessica Ennis prevailed gold medals for Britain and wrapped themselves in the British flag, these young men and women began to identify with the country that was their alone home.
Of course, this was the beginning of a bittersweet period for ethnic minorities in Britain: Enoch Powell, unfriendly police sus rules, neglecting schools and the emerging discord of inner-city life for immigrant communities. But the committee is also captures the proposed establishment of multicultural Britain and transmit a feel of hope and opportunity. This generation of ethnic minorities would go on to stimulate significant myriad contributions to Britain, from the rebirth of the NHS to the transformation of the Premier League. Nothing would be quite the same again.
Didcot power station, 27 July 2014
Joan Bakewell, broadcaster
I affection these chilling towers at Didcot in Oxfordshire[ which were demolished in July 2014] they were circumstances of real elegance. Whenever I passed on the civilize, I would put down my work to experience them. They had great sweeping curves and in all weathers turned a different look to the world. We preserve windmills and steam develops, so why not these?
There is something poignant about the deaths among buildings: industrial ones signal the be removed from one age of technology to another. Their extermination celebrates the happen of experience, of one way of looking and being into another that we cant yet imagine. The minute when they fall to the dirt markers a moment in history disappeared for ever. No meditate beings gaze in shock when that happens.
VE festivities, 8 May 1945
Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner
This photograph captures the pleasure of one of the most important moments of the 20 th century the succes over autocracy in 1945. It too symbolises the huge steps reached for gender equality in the second world war. Maidens penetrated previously all-male occupancies: without their struggle effort, we might not have triumphed over nazism.
The second world war was Britain at its better. It was the peoples crusade, where ordinary citizens proved firmnes and sacrifice beyond our modern resources. It had confirmed that nation intervention and a socialised economy can work.
Privilege and profiteering were seen disgraceful. The common good came firstly. People of all first-class, hastens and commonwealths joined to protect Britain against the Nazis. We welcomed refugees and allied with subjugated Europeans. The is necessary to a fairer, more equal culture was the social consensus.
The wartime Common Wealth defendant was the equivalent of the anti-Tory partnership we need today: it united progressives, liberals and independents. Well to the left of Jeremy Corbyn, it attained progressive programs favourite and won wartime byelections.
Social justice had mass entreaty in the second world war. The beings demanded, and later attained, public ownership of major industries and the creation of the NHS and social security. They acquired social right in 1945. Why cant we acquire it is currently?
Photograph: Wigmore/ Finn/ Splash News
Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, 12 November 2016
Irvine Welsh, author
This picture of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage says so much about our new age of politics: an American millionaires tax-dodging son and an English investment banker celebrate the realisation of their nightmares. The American gets to run the world. The Englishman goes nothing but the happy gratification of playing tribunal jester to the American, in this new world order he has undeniably helped are carrying out. The dispirited and defeated former aristocrats of labour in the post-industrial American and UK barrens, their unions smashed, their wages lowered, vanquished by 30 years of neoliberalism, get two wealthy mortals posing outside a golden elevation. And the strong one has a team scheming 24/7 about how to reduce them to farther penury and serfdom. The Thatcher-Reagan era was the reign of the 1 %. This scene represents the official coronation of the new toytown monarches and their hapless dolls, and the rubber-stamping of medieval, autocratic politics in a hi-tech nature.
Northumbrian coalminer and his wife, 1937
Eamonn McCabe, photographer
In 1937, German-born Bill Brandt travelled to the north of England where he would be the first to blend forms from art and photojournalism. As a native, he returned a impartial, foreigners perspective, claiming that he wasnt making a political level, but his videos have become the defining images of the Great Depression.
Brandt likewise wanted to fetching his highly stylised approaching to photograph uncompromising photographs of the people who lived and operated in these industrial parishes like this shot Brandts most celebrated picture from his northern wander take place within 1937, of a Northumbrian miner snacking his tea, watched over by his wife.
Although for me there is a sense that Brandt has carefully constituted this slide, sending the characters and setting the situate, does this detract from the strength of the persona? Brandts northern employment never obliged him fund and was published only later. But what he had achieved with these videos was an unprecedented coming together of forms to create a striking and vivid eyesight of Britain never seen before.
Brandt never stopped pushing the borders of his art and he is rightly considered one of the most important point photographers to have worked in Britain. He would also go on to work on a groundbreaking new publication that photographed every aspect of British life. On 1 October 1938, the Picture Post was propelled, a weekly magazine fitted with image on every sheet, its mission word to make a visual register of British parties at home, at work and at performance.
David Weir, Paralympic Games, 2012
Melanie C, singer
This shot is incredible. David Weir with his mark moan is on the line in his succes constitute, arms spread wide-ranging and his challengers blurred in the background. We have celebrated Olympic contestants for a very long time, but genuinely the people who are achieving stunning circumstances against the report is our Paralympians, who for so long were overlooked.
When it came to beings with disabilities, I used to feel unsure about the etiquette, but the most difficult act that we gained from 2012 s Paralympics was the way it changed stances in general. It was a really special day and it shifted families attitudes for ever. Weir retained titles. He won the marathon. He triumphed four ambers in 2012.
Britain has a reputation for being a bit negative, a little bit bleak. But that summer we showed the world how to do it. Everyone pulled together and it was a positive time to be in London. This image, along with so many others, reminds me of a year in which I experienced so lucky to live in the capital. It was a wonderful season, and, for me, this image communicates so much better power, forte, finding everything that the Paralympics was. ( As told to Harriet Gibsone )
Battle of Cable Street, 5 October 1936
Sadiq Khan, mayor of London
More than 80 years ago in October 1936 thousands of courageous and gallant souls, women and children gathered to oppose autocracy in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street.
That day, Mosleys tyrants were forced into a demeaning retreat something achieved only through the superpower of people and communities grouped together. A bloc was organize of Jewish East Enders, Irish dockworkers, trade unionists, Labour party members and many more coming together in solidarity to scorn dictatorship and everything associated with it.
This was a historic turning point, a succes that had lasting repercussions because it showed that autocracy could be defied through communities merging something that should continue to stimulate us.
Last October, the 80 th commemoration of Cable Street, I was proud to join another alliance of politicians, the Jewish parish , labor union, anti-racist organisations, Bangladeshi associations and many others , not only to honour and recollect the gallant people who fought against dictatorship in 1936, but to show our commitment and resolve to sustain that contend. To say: where reference is appreciate something that is contentious, go against our British costs and are just basically wrong, we must call them out; well never tell dictatorship, intolerance or racism reign. These are prices that ring true in London, more than anywhere in the world.
Womens March, London, 21 January 2017
Kate Nash, vocalist
Whats so cool about this video is that you have an iconic British statue alongside a message on gender equality. There were a loads of mansions at the status of women march in London its become really popular to get creative with them.
There has been a predilection within history in general for women to be small, to cross their leg and touch their fuzz. Even in the music industry, husbands have tried to quieten me down and pack me differently. Now girls want to express themselves and be a part of things. Its about grouped together to stand up for reasons we believe in, and being intersectional in our feminism. This placard has such a strong letter its unapologetic, its fierce. Its not going to be tamed by anybody. Nobodys going to tell a lion to shut up theyd be ingested!
It appears as if someone has left this sign there at the end of the marching. It is a piece of art it remains on telling a narrative even when youve got on the Tube and gone home. ( As told to Leah Harper )
A Line Induced By Walking, 1967
Nadav Kander, photographer
I has actually envisage having this photograph in my house and it intending different things to me at different moments in my life. Its a draw thats so grown-up. Before you understand what it depicts, its such a nourishing, simple image. Then, when you read that this was a line that Richard Long composed himself, by treading up and down, up and down theres something so figurative and subtle about it.
I love photography in which the artist can be seen in the likenes. Long has registered his own pres on the planet and the road he colonizes his surrounds with this photograph. That act of making art is beautiful to me; it ever obligates me incredibly happy.
I first saw this image when I was a photographers auxiliary in the West End of London. I used to visit Adrian Ensor, the printer in Fitzrovia who used to etch Richards work. For me, this image is like a Matisse drawing of a face, where the charcoal hasnt been lifted from the working paper and yet you feel as if you might know the girl depicted. Its that various kinds of elegance and prowess that I love.
Sometimes, when an creator intervenes in their prowes, I find it improbably heavy-handed its so obvious, like an interior design periodical. But with Longs work is featherlight and nuanced. The party behind the image always interests me as much as the picture itself and I like to see their fingerprint in the performance of their duties. ( As told to Leah Harper )
David Cameron, June 2015
Jeanette Winterson, writer
This photograph though taken in 2015 was on the front extend of the Financial Times immediately after Brexit. Theres David Cameron, the legalised gambling, potting Britain on the roulette wheel, confident the projectile would invent softly back to pitch-black. Instead, the economic austerity measures that drove the UK deeper and deeper into the blood-red made certain that the play itself would end on crimson. Red alert. Red faces. The reptilian psyche of the Tory party gratified they had been allowed to bet the country on a deluded dream of an island empire. And those inexpensive scams, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, thrilling to an outcome that would work in the services offered of their personal ambition.
That nauseating nighttime, as the roulette wheel slowed, the count was in, and the UK was out of Europe. Cameron and George Osborne never believed it could happen. Arrogant luxury boys out of touch with the miseries its own policy had operated. No plan for what would does happen. Cameron resigned. I believe he thought that was noble. He should have been forced to clean up his own mess. Not hanging in there to obligate millions.
But he hadnt lost his coin, or his home, or his future. He saved that for the little parties. The people his government had been gambling with all along. Unexpectedly there was a chance for the little beings to spin the wheel. No one “ve told them” that once again they could only fail.
The final chapter of Britain in Focus: A Photographic History is on BBC4 on Monday 20 March at 9pm. <a
Read more: www.theguardian.com
