Poll Tax Riots 1990

I can't let the anniversary of the Poll Tax uprising pass without some pics.

This was one of the best days I’ve ever spent taking pictures. I was watching in the square as the cops lost it early on. Just before this shot I’d been trying to shelter with three cops behind a pole. They were more scared than I was and the pole wasn’t entirely adequate as protection. Flattened a couple of times by testerical coppers I was nonetheless motoring well when Grand Buildings was torched by the anarchists, the flames adding to the festive atmosphere.

The Poll Tax had been a festering sore for what felt like an age and after earlier demos had been crushed by police action this one had really kicked off. I found it quite hard work. Before I even reached Trafalgar Square I’d had a shield driven edge on into my throat by a cop from the Downing Street cordon who ran across Whitehall at me for the privilege.

The air was crackling with energy. Random truncheonings, police vans driven into the crowd and charges by riot plod in their oversized babygrows had redoubled people's determination to force some democracy down Thatcher's throat. The air was rich with the smell of freedom and liberation. Laurence & Nij were smouldering with passion and swept away with the excitement of the day.

Laurence is three months pregnant here, later Nij was arrested but this photograph was used in his successful defence. Some months afterwards Nij overdosed and died but Laurence has a beautiful daughter.

By the end of the day the hair on one side of my head had been burnt off by an exploding motor bike, my knee mashed by a scaff clamp hurled from the top of the burning offices and had been tumbled a dozen times by cops, horses, rioters and vans. I’d never been happier.