As a political artist Banksy manages to find the sweet spot and I'm so glad UK drone warfare is the subject of his latest piece; a fleet of Reaper drones placed on a STOP sign in Camberwell, South East London. Sited, pertinently, on Commercial Road, and close to a Funeral Director's.
He has made drones his subject before, raising 200 grand for the Campaign Against Arms Trade and Reprieve, with 'Civilian Drone Strike', (2017)
Having tagged along on a peace march back c. 2014 to the local RAF base where the drones are actually operated, I've found myself going back alone year on year to photograph the hedges that run alongside the perimeter fence. It's a few miles from town, pretty much nowhere, with the mundane traffic noise of a busy country road and the occasional spluttering of red grouse disturbed from ground cover the only sounds.
The drone operatives conduct mostly surveillance, accompanied by missile strikes at the rate of every 59 hours over the last ten years. If anyone else was blood-letting at that rate in this rural county I'd have hoped there might have been a police investigation. War is structural in the UK, and embedded into the national psyche as something we do. The MSM and seems the majority always regard militarism as being legitimate, patriotic, and there is or never will be a calling to account. Failing any real challenge to this state of affairs, I like to think this new Banksy achieving widespread press attention (more so as it was stolen in an hour) may give a moment's unease to those drone operatives as they watch the story unfold on breakfast TV before setting off to put another shift in at work.
