This portrait of Iain Duncan Smith’s uses images of those who died in his war on the poor – Pride’s Purge

Last Updated: December 29, 2014By

Reposted in its entirety from Pride’s Purge because this is a piece of genius:

Click on image to enlarge:

Iain-Duncan-Smith Mosaic05

 

His victims:

Edward Jacques:edward jacques

Graham Shawcross:graham shawcross

David Coupe:David-Coupe

David Groves:david groves

Trevor Drakard:Trevor-Drakard

David Clapson:david clapson1

Annette Francis:annette francis

Nick Barker:Nick-Barker1

Leanne Chambers:leanne-chambers

Robert Barlow:Robert-Barlow

Cecilia Burns:ceciliaburns

Mark and Helen Mullins:Mark_Helen_Mullins

Martin Hadfield:Martin-Hadfield

Paul Reekie:paul-reekie

Tim Salter:Tim-Salter

Colin Traynor:colin traynor

Brian McArdle:brian_mcardle

Mark Wood:Mark-Wood1

Linda Wootton:Linda-Wootton

Chris Smith:chris smith

Karen Sherlock:karen sherlock

.

With thanks – and apologies – to Joe Wezorek:

Given this image’s inflammatory nature, I posted it with a great deal of trepidation. I had a hard time deciding if it was the right thing to do and I am still not sure. No, I didn’t have the consent of the families of those pictured, and I apologize for any additional pain that this image causes them.

‘War Minister’ is meant to be a satirical commentary, informed by the whole project of using the innocent victims of the coalition government’s war on welfare as political propaganda. I’m not making a penny off the image, and never will attempt to do so.

I’d also like to point out that ‘War Minister’ is an image. It is not a textual statement or rhetorical argument. An image is like an empty room and any message that anyone reads in that room necessarily comes in the baggage he or she carries with them when they walk through the door.

Photo mosaic created using Andrea Mosaic

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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18 Comments

  1. Nigel Harman December 29, 2014 at 8:04 pm - Reply

    We will remember, even if they don’t !

  2. wildswimmerpete December 29, 2014 at 8:26 pm - Reply

    Wise choice Mike – I doubt the families will mind. More publicity before May 7th, after which hopefully Smith will be arraigned at The Hague together with his cronies including McVey.

  3. Roberta West December 29, 2014 at 9:30 pm - Reply

    Its amazing. If I were a relative I would take great pride in my family members inclusion in such a fine work of art that expresses the reality of what this government have done to so many innocent people. Art is what drives us to be better imho

  4. joanna may December 29, 2014 at 9:35 pm - Reply

    If it is in bad taste, and I think it is! The fault is not yours. Personally I think in a way, this is an insult to the incredibly brave victims, of this vindictive, sub-human’s, one man tyranny. Does the person who made this, really think this, is in Anyway respectful to the relatives left behind? If one of those people were my relative, I would see this, as a really sick joke! But then that is only my opinion.

    • Mike Sivier December 29, 2014 at 9:52 pm - Reply

      It seems you’re in a minority. I knew this one might be difficult for some readers but there is a precedent for it and it makes a serious point in a strong way.

  5. Barry Davies December 29, 2014 at 10:03 pm - Reply

    I can understand both sides of this Joanna and Mike neither of you is wrong just a different position on the artwork.

    • Mike Sivier December 29, 2014 at 10:26 pm - Reply

      Exactly. This one’s entirely in the eye of the beholder.

  6. joanna may December 29, 2014 at 10:12 pm - Reply

    I have always been in the minority, but even though I don’t like the picture, I think your words are spot on. Also my eyesight is not good so I can’t see the miniature pictures, even zoomed up to 400%

  7. Nick December 29, 2014 at 11:21 pm - Reply

    and don’t forget guys i look like mark wood so have to keep a low profile. i still have nightmares about this death for some reason and am very lucky in that i have my mp and legal team looking out after my interest but having said that i still feel afraid as i could be next

    if the phone goes or door bell i panic so cant be left alone i thought i was handling all these deaths well but my doctors say I’m not and will have to stay strong or have to go into hospital for permanent protection

  8. Mike Bird December 29, 2014 at 11:30 pm - Reply

    This is both a brilliant montage and at the same time heartrendingly sad. The victims have a lot in common with the inmates of the concentration camps of WW2 in the way they were demonised and then made a non-person before being exterminated by the state. The genius of IDS is that he doesn’t have to pay for the gas, just push them until they break. In my opinion, if there has ever been an UK citizen that can be compared with Eichmann in intent, then it has to be IDS.

  9. Landless Peasant December 30, 2014 at 1:09 am - Reply

    The only bad taste is that left by IDS.

  10. paulmac49 December 30, 2014 at 3:17 am - Reply

    It should go nationwide and let everyone know the truth about this parasite IDS.

    • Brian Eastment December 30, 2014 at 8:49 am - Reply

      #paulmac49. You speak very accurately and precisely for me. It’s such an indictment for a UK government to have such little regard for it’s citizens. I know we have been trending down and now it’s a spiral that’s out of control already.
      The Artwork, detail, imagination is quite incredible. I’m pleased I saw it at 2.00am this morning it’s got me as an old guy fired up.

    • chopale December 30, 2014 at 11:35 am - Reply

      It is nationwide. But it is up to each public beholder to “Pause” their selfish & greedy attitudes & see it through the very beholders it is “Punishing” R.I.P. the legacy of the “Coalitions ideology”.

  11. Neil Mac December 30, 2014 at 4:40 am - Reply

    A very powerful message and a permanent reminder of one of the criminals in our government.

  12. Brian Eastment December 30, 2014 at 8:44 am - Reply

    Morning Mike,
    I have been agonising long and hard about the Artwork when I saw it at 2.00am this morning, I have no doubt about it’s correctness to be used as the story of all these deaths is is a point of no return.
    I will be short as I believe 38 Degrees need to motivate the 138,000 supporters to get this dreadful individual as of today not even to wait until tomorrow.
    As enclosed, the report I shared on my Facebook page.
    I’m not asking you to comment but should you choose too as professional writer I would recognise you will have an insight amateurs sadly lack, I am such an amateur.
    I am wordy and untutored in all things English language since leaving a Tech School in 1963. Correction, We did an English course as engineering apprentices on Day Release which ended in 1968.
    Having watched the decline of the original Welfare State that brought me up I a in some despair as to where these Tory Clowns, except it’s an insult to all proper clowns,etc…are allowing this proud nation to decline into an abyss and you regularly feature.
    My comment for my friends…. It does feature music and Art as I have very may friends in music as teachers and players. All my music is amateur…. 50% brass bands, 50% orchestra’s.
    My own note reads…..
    The construction of this image is quite wonderful and impresses me greatly by using technology and art together, it indirectly has a great deal of relevance for me. My personal thanks to the Artist.
    I make a comparison to the ceramic poppies, again technology and art together, at the Tower of London and the knowledge that WW2 robbed me of two really nice uncles.
    THE RED SEA OF POPPIES, ONE WAS FOR MY MUM BROTHER BRAM.
    ONE WAS FOR MY DAD’S BROTHER REG.
    BOTH OF MY GRANDMOTHER’S SUFFERED MENTALLY AS A RESULT OF HAVING A SON KILLED IN WORLD WAR TWO.
    Both uncles died before I was born and I’m convinced we would have been friends as well as relations both being great blokes as I was so often reminded. One key link with my two uncles we would been players in the same brass band.
    I would have been a player in a brass band with a dad, a granddad, two cousins and four uncles but that wasn’t to be due the dreadful Hitler and his cronies who caused so much unhappiness for wives, fiancees, and a cousin in my family.
    My first Bb trumpet was Uncle Reg’s instrument, although he wasn’t a bugler he bought his own trumpet to play at any military funerals to play the bugle calls if an official bugler wasn’t available. Eventually that trumpet was used for his own funeral when he was killed close to Brussels, by then he was the fallen comrade, it was his Comrades in Arms who attended his funeral who heard the bugle call. A call played for him as he had so many times had previously played for others.
    Thanks to a quite wonderful Red Shield Lady Captain of the Salvation Army who was in the area and received the news of Reg’s death being a member of the Salvation Army. It was a battle of wills as she demanded that she and not the Regimental Padre was going to officiate at a bandsman’s funeral.
    When the Captain returned to the UK she had obtained permission to collect Reg’s personal possessions which included the trumpet which then became my first instrument in 1954. A far superior and very playable instrument when compared the older instruments in the band cupboard given to kids 60 years ago.
    I can’t change the politics of the first half of the 20th Century but I can rattle on, adinfanitum while this misguided selfish dreadful man, Duncan Smith is allowing our citizens to die on a daily basis. I need to be less judgmental as I may well have criticized others in the past but for now it’s now my rules. This politician has made hurting benefit claimants into an art form and there should an outcry in Parliament to get this strange uncaring very rich and privileged man removed from his job immediately, today would be god Prime Minister before more people die which is on daily basis and could be stopped with the click of a mouse!
    Knowing that the Catholic church has held some due to some weird extreme views even in my time such as the Laundry Woman in Ireland and in Devon as it affected my family where I saw the ongoing abuse when I was a questioning teenager.
    Plus the long term international abuse by priests and nun’s of both sexes, certainly young boys and young men.
    This was happening on all continents I am doing my own soul searching for a way out but there is none

    Does this Conservative minister Duncan Smith have some misguided Catholic theory of theology or selfish power trip as a failed Conservative Party leader t hurt the weaker brethren as others have inculcated into his physche.
    Knowing he boasts a Catholic faith believing he is on a mission from the Almighty that every benefit claimant has apparently no right to life.
    All this at a time when children of the UK are going to school hungry, parents are starving themselves,
    I feared for the future of the DP and the moral compass of this Great Britain as I knew my country went to the dogs when Cameron acquiesced to keep this Work and Pensions minister in post because he demanded it when the Prime Minister wanted him out.
    The UK has a toothless tiger as our leader, with megaphone diplomacy over Europe, IDS keeps his job to keep the right wing in check and write of some Brits. Yes, it does have a comparison to the Third Reich where gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, criminals, Romanies were sent to concentration camps or the firing quads, thank goodness those don’t exist but other this aspects and justice, legal aid, the welfare State as it helped my grandparents, those values re so dead and buried, sadly. Double standards in public life came with Thatcher now apart from Dennis Skinner Jeremy Corbin and a small group of the Left of politics, Thatcher and Tebbitt destroyed this country and it’s value system.
    Britain has the Mother of parliament where the Westminster MPs can have an 11% pay increase because the Parliamentary wages award deems it proper but the NHS can’t have a 1% wage increase as their awarding body states because there is no money to pay Doctors, Nurses, Ambulance drivers.
    Come back the good days of the 1960/70’s where wages could be paid in accordance with awarding authorities for each industry.
    Not as the 2000’s as the bankers bonus’s didn’t rule the country or the politicians 50 years later!
    Surely if not enough good people protest the majority are “passing by on the other side” to paraphrase the Parable of the Good Samaritan as I understand it?
    With 2 days left of 2014 if I’ve missed a key point of theology I’m sure I will be corrected quite quickly. I’m all ears!

  13. Iaian duncan smith is a liar December 30, 2014 at 1:01 pm - Reply

    Love to see the gormless liar before a judge for murder me i detest him!

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