Suffragettes leading a procession away from Holloway Prison after members are released, 1908 (Pic: Wikimedia Commons)
Resistance, edited by Steve McQueen, tells the story of working class struggle in Britain from 1903 to 2003.
The book corresponds with the popular exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate, which closed this month.
The book compiles essays and photographs that trace movements for women’s suffrage and against racism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, war and poverty.
The opening photographs show the ways photography was used in the surveillance of the suffragettes. And as the book goes on we see the ways in which people have harnessed the power of photography for their own means.
Essays discuss the high points of struggle in Britain, but are not uncritical. There are debates on white feminism, the marginalisation of the disabled movement and the importance of recognising women’s role in struggles.
As well as tracking our resistance, this book shows the ways the state employs the police to oppress us.
From the police assaulting suffragettes to anti-fascists being dragged away during the Battle of Cable Street, the police violently try to smother revolt.
But people’s defiance always comes through. There is an incredible photograph of a black man walking in defiance on the streets of London, as a march by the National Front walks behind him. The man’s stance is so purposeful, he is unwavering in his knowledge that he belongs here.
Though some of the photographs are familiar, there are stunning photographs that were entirely new to me. A beautiful portrait of Jayaben Desai standing up to the police on the Grunwick pickets. As well as these, many contributors to the book speak about how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement raised people’s consciousness.
But there is a marked lack of mention of the Palestine movement in the book—even in the articles on the anti-war movement of the early 2000s.
The omission emphasises the political choices that have been made by the curators about what images feature and what images don’t.
In the opening essay Gary Younge says, “However rebellious children may be, they have their parents genes.” He implies that the British people, unlike the American or French, are complacent and never rebel. That we are the children of academics and inaction.
But this book shows that we stand in the tradition of the docks and factory floors, the streets of Toxteth, the collieries and the H block. We are the working class, and our history is one of resistance.
