Chatterton Hey

There's something very frightening about an angry mob, very frightening.  When I first saw Chimps rip another Chimp apart I was shocked, maybe it's due to being part of that generation that grew up watching Chimps making tea and pushing pianos upstairs?  But we humans are doing it too.

I remember seeing news footage of 2 plain clothed soldiers driving into a mourning mob of IRA members/sympathisers, they were extracted from their car and brutally killed, absolutely shocking.  And I'm pretty sure it'll be a long long time before this kind of behaviour ceases in our species.

Nowadays nothing gets a mob angrier than a paedophile.  During the early part of last decade a paediatrician was driven out of her home in South Wales by brainless yobs who mis-understood what a paediatrician is, wrecking her home and spraying "Pedo" on her walls.

There's a big kafuffle in Ramsbottom at the moment and a group of protesters are trying to encourage other residents to sign a petition to prevent sex offenders being housed in a local residency.  I don't know anything about the statistics on how many sex offenders re-offend but I know we live in a society where we try and "fix" people, should we trust the mechanisms of rehabilitation?

The organisation states that "Child Sex Offenders" will not be housed at the residency and since this photo the protesters have changed their banner, however the rehabilitators have already been branded with the "Child Sex Offenders" badge in the protestors last banner campaign.

I’m not making any judgement here, partly because I’m simply a humble photographer, partly because I don’t want chasing out of town by a mob, and if people want to join the campaign they can find more details on Facebook on the “Say No to Chatterton Hey” page.

As a photographical experiment I made a slight change to the previous poster.