After 30 Years 

Still Getting Away With Murder

30 years ago this month, PC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead whilst on duty outside the Libyan embassy in London, and nobody has been charged with her murder. It must be so hard for her family, friends and colleagues who gathered together in St James Square for a memorial service on 17th April, the same day she was killed back in 1984.

The photograph I took on the Time cover is the policewoman's hat, not the men leaving the embassy. The whole area was cordoned off very quickly after the event, but I remember being given access to a corner of the square very briefly. I saw what I thought was Yvonne's hat still lying on the ground. It was a long way away from where I stood, so I put on the longest lens I had, a 300mm, and no doubt added a converter to extend it a little more. I remember that the hat was still very small in the frame, but managed to squeeze off a few frames. Film would have been Kodak Ektachrome 200 slide film pushed one or two stops. Not a very good film, and even worse pushed! I was working for an agency in Parish called 'Gamma' at that time, so the film would have been shipped unprocessed. The image you see would have been pulled up quite a bit, but it worked, and helped to tell the story.