Dear old Brighton. For all its faults, we like it a lot. Love it? That might be going a bit too far. But it remains dependably likeable and it's rare that a trip down there does not prove to be enjoyable. This weekend? No exception. Plenty of sufficiently eye-catching new (or new to me) graffiti, street art and whatnot to warrant the constant snap-snap of the trusty SLR (see results below); and, as ever, the people-watching was decent, the seaside city's residents and visitors combining to create an interesting mix... tough girls with generously-filled leggings stretched over hi-vis thongs; quasi-bohemian media monkeys with their iPads, Bugaboos and Birkenstocks; loudly chattering gaggles of excitable ragazzi, burdened by the branded backpacks of EuroTrash Language Centres.
All of this was the normal seaside stuff. Different, though, was learning on the drive down that our kiss-me-quick Sunday was to be affected to some degree by the presence of literally tens of dismal pricks, mixing their fearful fug with the better notes of fish, chips and beachy ozone. You see, as we were feeding a hungry car park ticket machine and looking forward to some family fun, a supposed March for England was getting underway down on the seafront. Various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds associated with this event would have you believe that the intention was nothing more sinister than a display of pride in Englishness, timed to occur as close as possible to St. George's Day. So you'd expect a bit of morris dancing, right? A sort of Jubilee street party vibe... tea and cakes... bunting... all that stuff. Well, not so much. Instead, Brighton was treated to repurposed football songs, badly done casual gear and artless tattoos. The March for England, you see, however much its participants may try to protest to the contrary, is a confection cooked up among the rabble this country's chaotic and mercifully short-handed far-right groups. MFE is the alphabet soup you get when you mix up ingredients such as EDL, EVF and maybe even a dash of BNP.
Of course, one of the really charming things about this mob is their insistence on provocation. The nonsense about merely celebrating their patron saint's day (What's racist about that? No one minds St. Patrick's day or bloody Diwali etc. etc.) is so obviously disingenuous because of the location of the march. Its two Tory MPs notwithstanding, the city of Brighton and Hove is home to many left-leaning folk and the atmosphere of the city is certainly sold as one of cosmopolitanism, diversity and tolerance. Whether these values are truly at the heart of the experience of living there is probably something only a resident could tell you for sure. But the reputation is there. Throw in good-sized contingents of local anarchists, anti-fascists and all that and there you have it: the perfect destination for the far-right's bickering street gangs when they're looking for their preferred kind of seaside day out. They want a hostile reception. They want to leverage that hostility when attempting to add some weight to their specious and incoherent arguments. If they didn't want to court disapproval, presumably they would go marching somewhere well-stocked with ideological fellow travellers.
No close-up shots of these charmers here, I'm afraid. No video footage of the bits and pieces of trouble that are meant to have broken out during the day. How come? Well, when you've got a 7-year old kid in tow and you're in town for the rides on the pier and a quick round of crazy golf, you're disinclined to get into the firing line of potential missile throwers or fist wielders on either side of barricades. So for proper details on what went down, and for the inevitably slanted accounts of the marchers on one hand and the much more numerous anti-march protesters on the other, you can do a bit of Googling. But don't get excited, you'll soon find that the whole thing was a bit of a damp squib. It was hardly Cable Street 2.0.
That said, we were not a zillion miles from what passed for action. Take it from me, navigating the pitted green concrete of a crazy golf course just a couple of hundred yards from all the chanting and whistling and general hoo-ha is a weird experience - not least while attempting a kid-friendly explanation of the point of the march, the nature of the marchers and the presence of so many heavily-armoured police officers. By the time we were attempting a tricky shot under a sad-looking windmill, we had, if I remember rightly, got so far into the ensuing discussion that the topic blowing the nipper's mind was the business of why his great grandma had had to run away from Germany in the 1930s. If nothing else, it was educational.
But tears looked imminent when it seemed that the repeatedly promised visit to the pier and its rides would be delayed, if not made altogether impossible. Happily, however, there was a viable route onto the pier via steps up from beach. This route, though, took our kid within close proximity of a particularly malevolent-looking fellow who seemed to have become separated from the lads with the St. George's flags and the fear of change. It was a nothing moment, really. But there was something a bit chilling about it. Yes, you might argue that when we heard about the shenanigans going on that day we should have aborted our plans for a bit of harmless family fun. But you hear that line about not letting the terrorists terrorise us out of living the lives we want to live, right? You know the kind of thing: if we become so fearful that our daily lives become constricted then we've let them win. Well, in Brighton on Sunday, we felt a bit like that about the EDL et. al. not stopping our kid from enjoying the day out we'd promised him.
Once we'd braved the creaking, rusting log flume (AKA Wild River) and the loopy Galaxia (which the Mrs. really endured rather than enjoyed), we headed back along the planks for dry land to find that the marchers had been loaded onto coaches. The last of these was pulling away as we made it up onto King's Road. What fun it was to see rows of contorted, bloated faces snarling and sneering at us from a forest of v-signs and raised middle digits. Another fun memory for the kid to treasure forever!
After that, it was just blissfully normal Brighton stuff. Meeting up with an old friend. Getting stuck into a good supper. Snapping a few more pics. The nonsense had blown over. As seems to have been the case for the last few years, the March for England had generated a bit of noise, got a few of the locals very annoyed but ultimately left Brighton unchanged and unimpressed.
Anyway, here are those street art pics:
