THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:IT HAS A wonderfully sinister feel, this photograph. So uncompromising is the uniformed official's expression that he might be ushering people across the river to Hades instead of up a ramp into Dublin airport. The machine at his feet has a strange, sci-fi look. And the group of travellers with their backs to the camera are hunched and wary as they head off into a swirl of mist which wouldn't be out of place in a Sherlock Holmes movie.
Talk about capturing the zeitgeist. Gordon Standing’s page-one shot conveys with terrific immediacy the prevailing mood in the winter of 1967. A major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease had been under way in the UK for more than a month. The number of infected animals was mounting – more than 100,000 cattle and 40,000 sheep – and the Minister for Agriculture Neil Blaney decided it was time to impose some serious restrictions.
Everyone entering Ireland from the UK was to be disinfected – hence the clouds of spray at Dublin airport – and air and shipping services announced that there would be no extra services for Christmas, presumably to dissuade people from travelling.
All fairs were banned, and no one from the UK was allowed to visit Irish marts, co-ops, meat factories or creameries on pain of a fine or even a six-month prison sentence. The GAA cancelled all fixtures for the first weekend in December, and international sporting events were also affected.
“If we don’t get co-operation from the public or if the disease comes close to us, so that it appears that we cannot avoid getting it, then we will actively consider the closing of our ports,” was the minister’s grim pronouncement.
No wonder the people in the photo seem so – pardon the pun – cowed. Maybe they’re just cold. Or keeping their heads down to avoid getting a gob-ful of disinfectant. With hindsight, though, it’s impossible to see this picture without thinking of the hellish images of 2001, when – following our most recent outbreak of the disease – some seven million sheep and cattle were slaughtered in the UK, and their carcasses burned on giant bonfires.
Foot and mouth, sadly, appears to be one of our culture’s most reliable sources of nightmarish iconography.
Published on November 30th, 1967 photograph by Gordon Standing
