Tales of local life

BRIGHTON ROCKS - OR DOES IT?

Back at the end of last September, on the day the Labour Party Conference opened in Brighton, it rained and rained and rained.

Not much fun for the delegates, of course, but a great stroke of good fortune for the men and women of half a dozen police forces who had been drafted into Brighton for the occasion.

They were there to protect life, limb and property from the anticipated ravages of an ugly bunch of customers representing an assorted pot pourri of radical causes, whose idea of peaceful protest included seeking to destroy anything of which they disapproved.

They are self-appointed, of course, a bit like the Taliban come to think of it, and are greatly given to throwing things (peacefully, of course) and chanting simplistic, not to say simple-minded slogans.

The rain greatly reduced their numbers and their appetite for mayhem and the triumph of the anti- nearly everything brigade had to be delayed.

In its place a procession wended its wet and woeful way along the seafront, largely unseen and unheard save by the unfortunate police officers whose unhappy duty it was to escort the protesters and ensure they behaved themselves.

All this took place during the afternoon. Earlier, as I had driven up the London Road, preparations for the reception of these largely unwelcome visitors were proceeding apace.

Barriers had been erected and a number of police vans, bearing the insignia of a variety of forces and each with a contingent of dozen officers, were deployed over rather more than half a mile of the A23.

This, the main road out of Brighton, skirts the western edge of Preston Park, the largest and probably best known of the city's parks.

And it was in this park, seen dimly through swirling rain, not much more than a mile away from the conference centre but at least a hundred miles distant in all but strictly geographic terms, was a manifestation of quite a different Brighton.

There, proudly declining even to acknowledge the weather and dressed to kill in their "whites", were two dozen or more bowls players! Not just there, but playing unhurriedly and purposefully - or so it seemed from what one could see from the road!

Just to make this highly improbable occasion seem less likely to be nothing more than the workings of my over-excited imagination, it was the last day of September and, therefore, almost certainly the last day of the outdoor bowls season.

Perhaps they felt the weather, though quite frightful, was at least appropriate to so melancholy an occasion.

Perhaps, too, they recalled Sir Francis Drake's order of priorities when England faced peril from a different but no less dangerous quarter all those years ago.

Whatever emotion drove the bowls players to defy the elements, they reminded me that Brighton is a much more complex organism than our latter-day self-appointed publicists would have us believe.

Brighton, and to a lesser degree Hove, is not so much a monolithic entity as a collection of villages or parishes which, over time, have been brought together more by infilling gaps between them than fulfilling a coherent civic ambition.

Kemp Town, for example, is very different from Rottingdean (a majority of whose inhabitants would dearly love not to be part of Brighton!) as is Whitehawk from Hangleton and Brunswick from Preston Village.

In this respect - but only in this respect - Brighton resembles London. Please forget all this nonsense of Brighton being spoken of as "London-by-the-sea". It just simply ain't so.

Brighton is, and always has been, a provincial town (and now an equally provincial city) with delusions of grandeur.

It is long on self-deceit and short on reality. We have a theatre but one which can only guarantee decent audiences when it puts on established West End hits or pre-London productions with well known "names".

Our Philharmonic Society knew better than to stray too far from the established classics in order to keep its audience. To be sure we have an annual Arts Festival which, as its supporters never tire of telling us, is second only in size to Edinburgh.

Well, I'm sure they're right. Measured as significant events in the arts world, though, that seems like comparing a Sellers' plate at Plumpton with a major steeplechase at Cheltenham!

On the other hand, we do not need lessons in the desirability of diversity or inclusivity from the band of self-appointed, pontificating arrivistes which infest our town, or as one of them, with predictable lack of originality, insists on calling it, "this fair city of ours".

These people appear to believe that such concepts are new to us and that we need educating so that we may embrace them.

The problem is, the gay community is so well established that its programme of events seems about as exciting as those devised by the more daring of our WIs.

"There's a karaoke night at the Welldiggers Arms and on Saturday there's a Vicars and Tarts Dance at ..."

As for the army of celebrities allegedly fighting to get to this fair city of ours, most of them appear to be actors resting from their now defunct roles in EastEnders. And they are certainly as anxious to be spotted and, more importantly, to be recognised by the fans as the fans are to spot them.

Brighton, from its emergence from the poverty of a fishing village in the late eighteenth century, has had more than its fair share of rogues, vagabonds, cut-throats and confidence tricksters.

It has housed kings and their mistresses, as well as their queens, along with a right assortment of aristocrats, frauds, pimps and villains.

We really do know about diversity and inclusiveness, thank you very much - so please spare us the patronising lecture.

Oh, I almost forgot, since they seldom get a mention from our celebrity obsessed local trend- setters, we have been, and are still home to generations of ordinary, everyday folk. People who go about their daily affairs quietly, happily unaware of the club culture, the drug culture, the youth culture and all the other manifestations of media hype which clutter up our local airwaves.

Yes, we do have demonstrations and marches but, as I noted at the start, we also have some pretty gutsy bowls players. If push were ever come to shove, I know which I would rather have on my side.

by Michael Clarke

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