A real horror story for Halloween

A victim of the cult of paranoia

A day ago, reports emerged that two men have now been convicted of murder and are awaiting sentence. While always involving tragedy, this particular crime had a particularly nasty element to it.

To précis: Bijan Ebrahimi, a disabled man living on the outskirts of Bristol, thought that he saw local youngsters vandalising his flower baskets and decided to take pictures of them doing so. Evidence, you might think.

But a neighbour saw him and decided that it was obvious that photographing youngsters meant that he was a raving paedophile. And the neighbour then spread the word. And other neighbours fell for it – happy to believe that taking photographs of youngsters means you’re a kiddy fiddler.

Ebrahimi told the police about the vandalism – and about the harassment that had started, but he was the one who was arrested on suspicion of breaching the peace, as a mob cried ‘paedo, paedo’.

More rumours were running around, with claims that he’d been burned out of a previous home.

Released from police custody with absolutely no charge against him – and the police had checked his camera and his computer and found absolutely nothing of a dubious nature – he was dead within two days, after being beaten into a state of unconsciousness before white spirit was poured over him and he was set ablaze.

Lee James, a 24-year-old father, has admitted murder, and his neighbour, Stephen Norley, has admitted assisting in the crime.

Various police and call centre staff are being investigated for their role in the entire debacle, because they ignored Ebrahimi’s pleas for help.

And at the heart of this horrific series of events is the apparent reality that merely taking pictures of youngsters or children is now deemed, by some individuals – who then become the mob – as absolute proof of paedophilia.

It is difficult to know where to start with this.

Salem, the Nazis, McCarthyism – we never seem to learn.

A widespread climate of paranoia exists about child abuse – even after the Paulsgrove riots and the case of the Welsh paediatrician who was driven from her home because some intellectually challenged individuals ‘thought’ that paediatrician and paedophile were one and the same, and then further ‘thought’ that they should do something about it.

Or to be more accurate, this is paranoia about child abuse by strangers – so-called ‘stranger danger’.

Yet the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the abuse of children happens in the home and is perpetrated by family or friends.

Did you get that? The fact is that the vast majority of abuse is by someone known to the child – not a stranger.

So how do we deal with this? How do we stop it happening again?

Well, to start with, greater responsibility from mainstream news media would be welcome.

Part of the current culture of fear is down to sensationalist reporting of a very few cases where abduction has been involved. It can, at the least, create a perception of the dangers as being far more widespread than they are.

At worst, it helps to provide the climate in which the mob mentality can take over, and it can provide a sense of legitimacy for those who might want to move toward actual vigilantism.

But then we see much the same thing in coverage of other issues – not least at present, welfare.

As government has started a process of demonising the disabled and anyone else on benefits, so much of the media has been complicit: choosing, for ideological reasons, not to challenge statistics that, in some cases, have subsequently been shown to be fictions.

The joys of a ‘free’ press, eh?

Innocent people ‘monstered’ and demonised – dead as a result – and a point where merely pointing a camera at youngsters or children can see you branded a paedophile.

And the mob doesn’t even question it.

Indeed, some commenting online have sought to suggest that Ebrahimi was obviously ‘dodgy’ for photographing the youngsters or children from inside his house.

That’s right – blame the victim.

The police have categorically stated that there were no indecent pictures on his camera or computer, yet still people question why he was taking pictures at all – and suggesting that that in itself is now an inherently dubious thing to do.

What an utterly crazed idea. Do people really look at someone taking pictures in the street and think, if there’s a child anywhere near: ‘what’s that nonce doing?’

The facts of Ebrahimi’s death are hideous enough – and by god I hope that some people in that area are feeling some damned serious guilt and shame right now – but the fact that an entirely innocent action is being seen as an indicator of something as serious as child abuse is pretty nearly as sick.

The media need to show responsibility – but so do we, in stopping to actually think before we leap to conclusions based on anything the media tells us and anything any neighbour tells us as gossip.

And we need to constantly ask the question of why on earth anyone would imagine that pointing a camera is indicative of an act of abuse in the first place.

And we think we live in a civilised society?

Report of the case

'Is it here yet?'

‘Are all these people waiting to see the torch too, mummy?’

‘Yes, I think so, dear.’

‘Is it here; is the torch here yet, mummy?’

‘I think it’s coming … yes! Oh no. It’s lots of police. Look, they’re from the Met and they’re waving and being friendly, and – look, can you see? Some of them have got Wenlocks on their bikes.’

‘Is this it now?’

‘No, no – it’s a man collecting money for our soldiers. He’s got an inflatable torch – you see? – although he doesn’t really look very happy.’

‘Can you see it, mummy? Is it coming now?’

‘Almost! Oh, hang on. No; no. It’s a big blue lorry covered in … ah, it’s Samsung. There are lots of very happy young people though, and they seem to be giving away nice blue flags.’

‘Is this is coming now, mummy?’

‘It could well be … oh, no; not yet. It’s a big red lorry this time, with lots more young people handing out bottles of (non-diet, I see) Coke and something that might be a frisbee or a picnic plate.’

‘Is it here now, mummy?’

‘I’m not sure, maybe: no, it’s a big green bus from Lloyds Bank. There are lots more jolly young people – there are an awful lot of jolly young people today, aren’t there? This time, they’re handing out green streamer things.’

‘Is this is, mummy, is it coming now?’

‘Yes, dear … this is ... oh no. It’s a man on one of the mayor’s Barclay’s Bikes; he seems to be protesting about something. He has a notice on the front that says something about Barclays pensioners being duped.

‘I’m surprised he’s not been asked to leave the procession. I’m not sure this is the time or place for political statements.’

‘Is this the torch now, mummy? Is it here now?’

‘Yes dear, this is finally it. Can you see?’

‘Is that it, then, mummy?’

‘Well dear, you got a flag. What else can you want?’

Listen to a lullaby of old Broadway

Women buying olives on Broadway Market.

This last two weeks have, apparently, been Love Your Local Market fortnight. As is entirely my norm, I was a tad slovenly in arriving at this particular party. But never mind a case of 'better late than never', this mat be the perfect timing.

Because our local markets need our love for the other 50 weeks of the year too. Even when, up and down the country, markets are not staging special events to try to tempt shoppers away from the industrialised, metal-box experience that is the world of the supermarket.

As usual, yesterday morning I made my way the brief distance to Broadway Market in Hackney to do my main shop of the week. It's not strictly a farmers' market - although there are a few farmers around - but a 'fine food market' (don't ask me why).

And, as is far from unique, it is a new development. I say "new", but that means around eight years now, which is just over half the time I've lived in the area.

Before the regeneration started – which started in a way that I can barely put my finger on exactly – Broadway Market was on the critical list. A piece of local graffiti noted elegantly that it was "not so much a sinking ship as a submarine".

Henry Tidiman the butcher kept one of the few shops left from a past that really was a different century. A proper family butcher.

There was a lone chain bakery, Percy Ingle, the delightfully old-fashioned Bradbury's ironmongery, a couple of betting shops, a couple of junk/second-hand shops that had themselves seen considerably better days.

Eels – in various ways.

Let's not forget Cooke's, the pie and mash shop that has been an ever-present since late Victorian times, and a chemist at either end of the street.

There was Turkish Tony's general store next to the doctor's surgery and Tony Francesca's greasy spoon just a couple of doors down.

An electrical repair shop existed simply to give two men somewhere to sit all day, rather than actually repair anything.

If you went in, they never had a clue about whatever item you needed repairing.

Spirit's Caribbean shop sold a little fish, together with a selection of ingredients for that cuisine.

The perennially red-braced proprietor of Off Broadway sold pictures. Kenny's newsagent struggled along, selling papers and magazines and crisps and pop. A dry cleaner's seemed to have been cleaned out since we'd known the area.

The Cat and Mutton sat at the north end of the street, opposite London Fields, was the sort of dump where the carpet was sticky with stale beer. The Perseverance at the opposite seemed an entirely fitting book end.

The Market Garden on the middle closed about the time we arrived. The Dove remained open, a strange harbinger of what was to come, serving good pub grub and a wide selection of Belgian beers, and run, when we arrived, by a Manchester City-loving rocker and biker.

A Turkish barber did business alongside a Turkish-run offy: the former appeared in the David Cronenberg picture about Russian mafioso in this part of London, Eastern Promises.

With the exception of one further small general store, that was about it.

Ah: from Tuesday to Saturday, John would pull a barrow out into the middle of the street and sell a selection of fruit and veg.

That makes it sound busy, but really, it was far from it. On most weekdays, it was nearly deserted. There were times you half expected to see tumbleweeds rolling past.

Yet it had not always been like that.

More than one person I've spoken to over the last decade or so describes something quite different.

There had been proper grocers, fishmongers, bakers and more butchers. In the plural.

So what had happened?

The one thing that always comes up when I ask that question is supermarkets. And no, I don't plant that idea. There's no need.

How did it happen, then?

One man I've talked to, of about my age, had been born at the back of the Dove and started his working life on the street, learning his trade in one of the butchers. But he didn't last long because the local butchers were already starting to struggle.

It happened, he said, when a Tesco opened locally.

At first, what they did was massively undercut the price of the fruit and vegetables sold locally. So the housewives went there to buy their greens.

And then, he explains, while the women were there, they thought they might as well pick up the Sunday joint at the same time. And the fish for supper. And the bread.

And so it began.

A street, once the hub of a community, became battered and nearly broken.

A bit of local Hackney colour.

It has taken the eastwards-moving gentrification process to change things. Although, in the case of this part of Hackney, it's more a process of trendification; a slightly safe Bohemianism.

The street started picking up slowly. If memory serves, a hairdresser was one of the first new businesses to open.

Now it's a thriving place: go up there on any day and the will be people at the cafes having coffee; conversing; reading papers; eyes down on laptops. In the evenings too, people flock to the bars and the caves and the restaurants.

Spirit lost out to the developer Roger Wratten, in - let's call them – dubious circumstances. The same for Tony Francesca.

But little else that was viable has gone.

Stephane opened La Bouche around seven years ago in small premises, and moved a few doors down when he could, as the business expanded. He's pessimistic though.

He says, with a Gallic shrug, that eventually landlords will drive the independents out and replace them with franchises - just as happened in Stoke Newington. I can't help thinking that it wouldn't happen in Paris.

Not all the old businesses were happy when the Saturday market started. Henry embraced it - and all of them have benefitted.

Not all the locals were happy either, although given the little that had been lost and the great deal that was gained, it's difficult to really feel a deal of sympathy.

However, much of their displeasure is about something deeper; the massive changes that have affected the area in the last 30-40 years.

The market itself has actually given locals more choice than they have had for many a year.

If people still want to wander along to any one of the seemingly millions of Tescos (and not a few Sainsbury's) that are dotted around the area - three of the former on nearby Hackney Road alone - then they can. There are more of them now than eight years ago.

Of the basic food shops that had managed to survive until the revival began, all but Spirit are still with us. So nothing has been lost in that sense.

The local ultra-left didn't like the market either, claiming that local people wanted a community centre instead. This was disingenuous claptrap, since nobody had been offered any 'alternative', and while the council had had some involvement in getting the market up and running, it is largely run by a group of private individuals.

But in spite of all that, here it is, nearly a decade down the line.

And there are plenty of young people who work on the market - many of them living locally. I know, because one of the joys of the market, for me, is the human inaction.

A week ago yesterday, I was stocking up on peas and broad beans at my main green grocery stall, helped by a delightful young woman that I have now been chatting with for some years.

"Hurrumph!" hurrumphed a woman standing nearby. "I've been waiting for ages..." and flounced off.

Selecting lemons.

Well, actually she hadn't been waiting that long. We joked about it. Why come to such a market if you want instant service? That's why Tesco exists.

Yesterday, I was at the same stall, and two young men, rather well spoken (that's code for 'posh') were commenting on the bunches of gorgeous young carrots - you could see how freshly-picked they were from the state of the fronds that topped them.

The pair were noting that 'they wouldn't last long'. The young man who was serving them pointed out that that was because they 'hadn't been dipped in brine' to preserve them.

They harrumphed too - and walked away.

No. Broadway Market is not for them. Or for that woman who was so impatient. But it is many things - and that includes being a place where you can find a human shopping experience and an humane shopping experience.

And, of course, it is also a place to find great food and drink.

There are issues around such markets - but it's inverted snobbery to suggest that they're they're 'middle class' - and therefore bad (and besides, isn't social mobility supposed to be good?).

Everyone should have access to good food. And Broadway Market - like many another of it's ilk - does increase that possibility.

As I said, there are issues: but the basic reality of a revitalised street is not itself the problem.

On a wider level, if you yourself either want to preserve or revive your own local market - then don't leave it until it's two late. Think about what you want: a range of shopping choices - or just a question of which tin box with poorly-paid staff and no real skills or choice.

In a way, I've been lucky, in that I've seen the before and the after of a dying market come alive.

And while the idea behind the Love Your Local Market fortnight is wonderful, markets, just like puppy dogs, are not just for a couple of weeks, but for life.

So go on: love your local market. It's worth it. And so are you.


* You can follow the markets campaign on Twitter  

@loveurlocalmkt.

The art of the flâneur

The French have a word for it.

Well … they would, wouldn’t they? And it comes resplendent with the sort of deeper meaning (suggesting sophistication) that is so much of the reason that so many of us love (and secretly envy) the French.

For 19th-century French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, the flâneur was a stroller – someone who walks the streets of a city, not simply as way of getting from A to B, but in leisurely manner so as to appreciate and experience that city.

The word was initially associated with Paris, but has come to be applied to any leisurely pedestrian exploration of urban streets.

Almost inevitably, given Baudelaire’s idea of the flâneur as “a botanist of the sidewalk”, it has been linked with street photography.

In her 1977 essay On Photography, Susan Sontag noted: “The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world ‘picturesque’.”

Back in 1962, Cornelia Otis Skinner had described it thus in Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals: “There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell’s dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate.

“There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city.”

Quite accidentally, about two years ago, I ‘discovered’ street photography. There I was, innocently ‘flâneuring’ away a lunch hour in Russell Square in the centre of London, camera around my neck as I looked for interesting things to snap, when I spotted the doorman from a nearby hotel.

He’d walked around the corner, possibly looking for cabs to hail or possibly just taking a few moments break. But there he was, bowler hatted and with white gloves, shoes polished to a mirror-like shine and a red carnation in his lapel, leaning back against a bollard.

Street photography has been around for a long time – it’s apotheosis, probably Henri Cartier Bresson.

But that porter was my personal introduction. As though some deep instinct kicked in, I became an animal stalking my prey, knowing instinctively how this target needed capturing.

And I keep doing it. Yesterday, I shocked friends by snapping a man right opposite me on a train. Now he was reading a paper, which I think made quite an interesting shot in its own right, with the emphasis on the solitary hand that you can see. But the friends in question were convinced that he’d have been aware, given how near I was – or rather that I'd get my proverbial lights punched out if someone realised that I was snapping them in such a fashion.

But, for me at least, there is no intention to deprecate. This is about capturing the moment.

There are claims that flâneurs are essentially shy people, who have to conquer that in order to get off their shots. Perhaps that’s true.

But it is amazing how few people realise that they’re being photographed – even though you’re wandering around pointing a camera in their general direction.

It is, however, a hunt. And the resultant trophies, at their best, are magnificent, as though you have somehow managed to ensnare a little bit of life itself.

Some time ago, I had an online debate about this with a fellow snapper, who was doing faux outrage over the invasion of privacy that he claimed my personal efforts entailed. He was utterly unable (or unwilling) to grasp the value of stopping time; of capturing these ephemeral moments.

And street photographers – sorry, flâneurs – will continue to stalk and snap their prey, and to capture the life of the city for posterity. And they’ll try to get nearer and nearer to their targets; to capture life more closely than ever, and to test themselves and their hunting skills. Just how near can I get?

* The picture at the top of this post was taken in the home of flânerie, Paris, in December 2007.