One Nation Under CCTV
One Nation Under CCTV
Year: 2007
Location:Newman street, London, England
One Nation Under CCTV appeared in 2007 on Newman Street in London, painted on the wall of a building used by the Royal Mail.
It depicts a child in a red hooded top painting “ONE NATION UNDER CCTV”, while being watched by a police officer and a dog. The mural was situated adjacent to a CCTV camera.
In 2008, the Westminster City Council ordered the removal of the work on the grounds that it was an unlicensed commercial.
This was one of Banksy’s largest mural done. It is still a mystery how the artist could manage to paint it as it necessitated 3 stores of scaffolding (behind a security fence), seemingly under the surveillance of a CCTV camera, which was positioned just to the right of this shot. The message of the graffiti is heavily ironic, given the context.