The riots weren’t scheduled to start until 8 o’clock but I thought it would be a good idea to get there early, about 6. Also, that was when Ben was getting there, and I didn’t want to miss him in any crowds. If there’s going to be trouble, Ben is the kind of person you want near you, as he knows about crowds and violence. I was a bit late in the end: I had noticed that the Sainsbury’s Local had shut early, so I went back to Waitrose, bought a bottle of wine for later, and, while I was at it, took off my nice watch and put on the cheap one, just in case. Why, I wondered, was Waitrose not shutting early? Did they think they were somehow immune from the rage of right-wing, anti-immigrant zealots?
It’s about a 15-minute walk from my place to the legal offices where the rioters were meant to be turning up. The nearer I got, the more shops were boarded up. Some stoutly, with chipboard; others with nothing but flattened cardboard boxes behind the glass. There was tension in the air. We had all seen what had happened the previous week.
Why was I going? I am not cut out for street fights. I am over 60, I have COPD, so I can’t run anywhere, I haven’t seen the inside of a gym since I left school and couldn’t punch my way out of a paper bag. I was also not exactly looking forward to being in the middle of a crowd who, if past demonstrations were anything to go by, would include a fair number of people calling for the death of Jews, for one reason or another. But I felt I had to at least bear witness: to be, however modestly, on the front line of history, and to show solidarity against what were, essentially, brainless fascists being manipulated by the forces of chaos and evil. (Read: Vladimir Putin, et al.) I wanted to help let the fash know that they are not welcome in Brighton. And come on: Brighton, of all places? I’m not sure they’d really thought this through.
I met up with Ben, his wife, whose first demo, astonishingly, this was, and a couple of friends of theirs.
“Nick’s a very famous writer,” said Ben, introducing me. I almost got angry.
“For f**k’s sake, Ben, I’m not even remotely famous.”
People were beginning to mill about. We were about a hundred yards or so up the road from the station. Ben, with years of experience at football grounds, was able to spot the opposition and point them out to me.
“See what they’re doing?” he said of one car driving down the road slowly. “They’re checking out the numbers.” Two men, who looked straight out of central casting for violent bigots, sat in front, scrutinising the growing crowd. On the other side of the road, a group of bald, burly men in tracksuits took photos of us. I took photos of them back, and of the car, once its number plates came into view. These might be useful as evidence later on, I thought, when the police recover the phone from my dead body.
We were joined by my friends D— and his wife N—. D— had been even more queasy than me about being in a crowd that might start chanting “From the river to the sea” at any moment so what he’d done was turn up in a black suit and a black fedora. The only way he could have looked more Jewish would have been if he’d been wearing ringlets.
The rest of the crowd were all sorts. I was by no means the oldest or even the weediest there. Placards were handed out: some from the Socialist Workers’ Party, who are to counter-demonstrations as ants are to picnics, and Stand Up to Racism, whose slogan included the words “No anti-Semitism” as well as “No Islamophobia”.
A man in a dayglo tabard with an official-sounding job title on the back and a megaphone came up to me.
“You’re Nicholas Lezard!” he said, and shook my hand. “Sorry, can’t stop, I’m rather busy, but you’re the first thing I read in the New Statesman.” He moved on. The crowd swelled. A bus stood in the middle of the road, abandoned by passengers and driver. Behind it were the rioters. There weren’t that many policemen to be seen. “Where’s Plod?” wondered Ben.
And then very quickly, as if by agreed signal, the mood changed. There was no way the anti-fascists were going to be outnumbered by the fascists. (“We remember Cable Street” said one small, neatly-lettered placard; this wasn’t going to be another Cable Street.) A man with a euphonium turned up. An absolutely huge bearded man, like a bear, came up to our group.
“You’re Nicholas Lezard! I don’t know if you remember me, I used to work for Searchlight.” He shook my hand. I hoped Ben’s friends were watching. We all started joining in chants of “There are very many more of us than you”. I felt the years rolling away: I was back at Victoria Park, aged 15, with an Anti-Nazi League badge. Another man who knew Ben joined us.
“And this is Nick Lezard,” said Ben. “He’s –”
“Yeah, I know who he is,” said the man, and looked away.
[See also: Even flying ants get more action than I do]
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This article appears in the 21 Aug 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Christian Comeback