The camera never lies

(London, England)

Norfolk conjures up images of a traditional, rural lifestyle played out in small market towns, of a place unspoilt by the more pernicious aspects of the industrial revolution and certainly far removed from the post-industrial information holocaust. Here you can find Norwich, the greenest city in the UK and one of the most polite, or Sandringham, the beautiful royal estate set in 8,000 acres of stunning English countryside.

As it happens, Norwich has the highest number of internet users in the country, and shows itself to be a modern, cultured city. And nearby King’s Lynn also offers an ambiguous image, for this quiet rural haven was the first town in the country to have CCTV cameras installed, suggesting a population of thuggish ne’er-do-wells and an absence of law and order.

However, Norfolk is not alone in being tainted by the connotations of modern technology. Bournemouth, the sedate retirement town on the south coast and home to the Winter Gardens and The Royal Bath Hotel, suffered a similar fate in 1985 when it became the first town in the country to have these cameras installed on the streets, evoking images of wild lawlessness.

It is estimated that a generation later there are between four and five million public and private surveillance cameras (the government being by far the biggest operator), which in a population of approximately sixty million translates as one camera for every twelve to fifteen people. Not 12,000 to 15,000 or even 1,200 to 1,500 – one camera for every 12 to 15 people.

Norfolk is certainly a county which matches England’s view of itself and indeed for many years the view that the rest of the world had about the English – polite and calm, a fair-minded people with their emotions under control and a strong sense of right and wrong.

However, the visitor to the modern UK will surely be overwhelmed by a sense of panic on seeing the number of security cameras. And they are everywhere, on all forms of transport including taxis, all town centre buildings including shops and restaurants, and on every street corner be it city centre, urban outskirts or rural idyll. And now they are to be accompanied with Orwellian loudspeakers which utter anonymous, monotone instructions to the citizens as they go about their daily business.

How ironic, therefore, that those same cameras betrayed the forces of government oppression when they attempted to cover up their brutal murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. And how appropriate now that the people should use their camera-phones and video cameras to capture more examples of police brutality during the G20 protests, namely the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson and the assault on another young woman.

However, perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that the conservative population of middle England – whose representatives in blue have been found out in such an unequivocal way – will eventually suffer the consequences of ‘getting what they wished for’. An unsurprisingly high number of English people are in favour of the presence of constant surveillance to back up the popular ASBO court orders – it is part of the typically English desire to control every last movement of their neighbours and to be able to have that all-important last word by proving that their neighbours are indeed indulging in such anti-social behaviour as not putting their bins out in the correct way or parking on the kerb.

Having loudspeakers tell people what to do is the ultimate asexual fantasy of those who lurk behind net curtains and in the corner of bay windows, squinting at those awful people from across the road (or indeed across the seas). Barked orders and short, sharp shocks is what middle Englanders have always threatened to impose if they were ever made Prime Minister.

I have every sympathy for that young woman in London and for the family of Ian Tomlinson, people who tried to exercise the supposedly traditional English rights of free speech and freedom of movement but who became victims of the age-old English desire to oppress. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the conservative middle class who are hanging themselves with the electrical cables of their own CCTV.