Resistance

Conceived and co-curated by Steve McQueen, this exhibition explores how a century of protest from 1903 to 2003 shaped Britain, and the vital part photography played

Eddie Worth. An anti-fascist demonstrator is taken away under arrest after a mounted baton charge during the Battle of Cable Street, London, 4 October 1936. © Alamy.

Turner Contemporary, Margate
22 February – 1 June 2025

by BETH WILLIAMSON

How did protest shape Britain and how did photography shape protest? These are the two fundamental questions underpinning Resistance, a new exhibition conceived of and co-curated by Steve McQueen. Radical acts of resistance have long had a place in UK life and photography has had an important role in documenting that resistance and fuelling change. Focusing on a century of activism, the exhibition seeks to give voice to those underrepresented voices, look at the overlooked histories and shine light on the forgotten stories of this complex narrative of resistance. The century in question stretches from 1903 and the women’s suffrage movement to 2003 and the anti-Iraq war protest, the largest protest in British history. Bringing together works by well-known photographers and those less-well-known, or entirely unknown, from across this period, the exhibition also focuses in on a period before digital and phone cameras became ubiquitous, a period when we were all perhaps a little less camera-savvy and when such moments were less easily captured and therefore all the more important to record. There is a great deal of material in this exhibition, perhaps too much. Still, it is structured thematically within a loose chronology, which certainly helps make it more manageable. While it is only possible to touch on a number of highlights here, it is worth saying that the accompanying book of the same name allows viewers and readers the time and space to dig deeper.

Unknown photographer. Annie Kenney (an Oldham cotton mill worker) arrested in London, April 1913. © Alamy.

In 1913, Annie Kenney, an important figure in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), was photographed while being arrested during a protest in London. Her knowing smile to the press photographs is in contrast to the prostrate figure, three years earlier, of suffragette Ada Wright outside the Houses of Parliament on Black Friday, 18 November 1910. In another image, taken covertly two years earlier, we see leading women of the suffrage movement being sentenced to imprisonment for their actions. An early and little-known fight for disability rights is represented in the Blind March of 1920 while the Great Depression saw photography bear witness to the hunger marches throughout the 1930s protesting against unemployment and poverty. Mass protest and the historic Jarrow Crusade of 1936 were captured on the newly available 35mm film, helping to influence public opinion of events as they unfolded and winning the participants widespread sympathy. Humphrey Spender photographer for the Picture Post, the rise of popular press and changing camera technology together shifted how protest was pictured and represented. Edith Tudor-Hart’s photographs of the same period brought the plight of the miners of the Rhondda Valley in Wales to the fore in a different way. Tudor-Hart’s portrait of unemployment, poor housing and mining-related health issues was created from the inside as she lived within it, immersed in the community rather than observing from outside. Decades later, Tish Murtha’s Youth Unemployment series (1981) challenged mainstream media accounts, too, by recording hardship in a powerful fashion from within her Newcastle community.

Pam Isherwood. Stop Clause 28 march, Whitehall, London, 9 January 1988. © Bishopsgate Institute.

The 1930s and 1940s also saw the fight against fascism take hold. In October 1936, the Battle of Cable Street (when Sir Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists planned to march 3,000 Blackshirts through Jewish areas of London’s East End and a powerful countermovement emerged) was later echoed in the 1977 Battle of Lewisham when, 40 years on, the same battles were still being fought. This was the first time that police used riot shields in mainland Britain. In 1988, Section 28 of the Local Government Act brought the Gay Liberation Front and the Women’s Liberation Movement together to fight the law that was eventually repealed in the early 2000s.

Paul Trevor. Anti-racists gather to block route of National Front demonstration, New Cross Road, London, August 1977. © Paul Trevor.

Racism and the protests against it are a constant in this exhibition as grassroots movements repeatedly confront oppression. The year 1981 saw the Black People’s Day of Action after a housefire that claimed 13 young Black lives in south London. It was the photographs of this protest that firmly established the event as a landmark for Black civil rights in Britain. Other marginalised groups, such as the Bengali community in London’s East End, are given voice through the idea of community photography as a form of activism. Paul Trevor’s photographs of Brick Lane and East End Community school lend agency to such communities too.

Demonstrations against environmental destruction, anti-nuclear campaigns and advocating for peace all make for poignant contributions to the show. Interestingly, what we also get is an evolution of environmental protest, as well as other demonstrations, that together set the scene for contemporary climate change actions. Covering everything from the well-known Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (Janine Wiedel’s photo of Naomi Mitchison at Greenham, aged 88, is incredibly strong) to vociferous protests against the A30 Honiton Bypass in Devon in 1996, the exhibition touches on every aspect of life.

Andrew Testa. Allercombe tree village, on the route of the proposed A30 Honiton Bypass, Devon, December 1996. © Andrew Testa.

It would have been good to see more geographical diversity in the chosen material. Despite a few notable exceptions, the majority of the protests and acts of resistance shown across the entire period took place in London. I don’t know why that should be, but it feels unnecessarily skewed. Despite that, the material shared in this exhibition is fascinating. It helps to reveal how changes in camera technology altered the kinds of photographs that were taken. It reminds us that those resisting are sometimes oblivious to the camera but sometimes entirely conscious of it and how they can use it to aid their cause. There are shifts in who took the photographs too. The exhibition included known and unknown photographers. Perhaps more important is how it shows differences between professional press photographs and those taken by community-based photographers. The look and the feel are very different in each case. Photographing acts of resistance is one thing, but it is when photography itself is used as an act of witness and resistance, as in the work of Tish Murtha or Christine Voge, that it, and this exhibition, are at their strongest. These are the moments worth visiting for.