As a new law comes into place that restricts how people can demonstrate across the UK, we look at some of the images and moments that reshaped the nation
• Tomorrow: 48 protest pictures that changed the world
I often say I didn’t choose photography, it chose me. At 20 I came out of the Royal Air Force, where I had failed my trade test to become a photographer (I was never good at being tested – I’d even failed my 11-plus). I had a camera I’d bought in Nairobi and never properly used, until by chance I got some work at the Observer in 1959.
Two years later, the paper put me on a retainer for two days a week. I was earning very little money – 15 guineas a week – but gaining a great deal of knowledge about England. I was sent to every corner, to cover coalmining strikes, byelections,
