We were privileged to work with John 'Hoppy' Hopkins as part of Brighton Photo Biennial 2012. Here we look back on issue 19 of Photoworks magazine where he called for acts of imagination in our resistance of tyranny.
Freedom is a Career
Some people think that the 60s were a golden age, remembering when you could parade down Whitehall with a poet in a coffin, held shoulder high, on LSD.
Some people recall, after the Stones were busted, a sit down in Fleet street. It held up News of the World distribution vans; it cost them plenty.
Some people remember Spies for Peace, they exposed a country-wide network of secret bunkers, reserved for the Government after a nuclear war.
These were acts of imagination of resistance. Try this today and get beaten by armed cops, kettled by the riot squads, arrested for reading out dead soldier’s names.
Yes, two million of us marched against the war, and it counted for nothing. The corruption of Government is complete.
Here are images of a more gentle past, but let us not pretend. The iron fist was still waiting in the velvet glove, the wheel of state always ready to crush the butterfly of liberty.
We must regain our civil liberties; by guile, by cunning, by acts of imagination, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, defeating the forces of tyranny.
This is our message to the digital dervishes of the future: No one can be free while others are oppressed. There is no recipe for freedom. Freedom is a career. You must spy about you with sharp eyes, like a tiger with insatiable craving; against tyranny.
Buy Photoworks issue 19