But people were not leaving, they were pouring in.
Just after dark, I was standing next to Cliffe Bridge. The crowd was several deep now. I had spent the afternoon studying my programme and the twelve-page pullout supplement in the Sussex Express, but still hadn’t got a clue what was about to happen. My understanding was that it might be an hour before the first parade. I asked a policeman if he knew. He shrugged. ‘It’s a massive mess,’ he said. ‘They do whatever they want and they get away with murder, basically.’
Moments later, the explosions became more intense, and from the top of School Hill there appeared several hundred marchers with firm tread, carrying burning crosses. It still seemed like Dixie, but now we were back in the 1930s and the Klansmen were marching across town to lynch themselves a few uppity suspects.
The sight was astonishing. And so was the sound. And that was only the start. The marching would go on for another four hours, and even then the night would be young. This was Bonfire Night in Lewes, perhaps the most gloriously individualistic town in England on what is emphatically its most gloriously individualistic night of the year. As the evening went on, I caught overtones of Remembrance Sunday, Mardi Gras, Saturnalia, Purim, the Gordon Riots of 1780, the Durham Miners’ Gala, the Mexican día de los muertos, the First Intifada, the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Wicker Man, Sherman’s March to the Sea, Up Helly Aa and the Northampton League of Pity fancy-dress party circa 1957. There is also a soupçon of April Fool’s Day since, in the weeks beforehand, the Sussex Express goes on to red alert about news tip-offs in the expectation of being hoaxed.
The one event to which it bears no resemblance is the sanitised, organised, municipalised, be-careful-dear-sparklers-can-be-dangerous Guy Fawkes celebrations that now take place almost everywhere else in the country as an afterthought to Americanised Halloween. In Lewes the actual fireworks displays are the least of the evening’s entertainment. It is nothing like an American Fourth of July, though there is a smidgen of Protestant Ulster marching on the Twelfth.
The burning crosses were just the start. They went on burning all night, along with the torches. Then came the bands. And the smugglers, all dressed in hooped jerseys (always called guernseys, but not alderneys or sarks) in the distinctive colours of the town’s six different Bonfire Societies. On top of everything else, it also looked a bit like The Pirates of Penzance, as directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The smugglers were followed by an assortment of Red Indians, Aztecs, Mounties, Confederates, Cavaliers, Roundheads, Zulus, Battle of Britain pilots, harlequins, serving wenches and Romans. At one point, the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men appeared, thrilled to be at an event where no one thought them remotely eccentric.
By now nearly every marcher, at least those over the age of ten, was carrying not a cross but a flaming torch which, when it got too hot to handle, was dumped on the ground to be picked up by a team of men with barrows. The bands competed against constant explosions, some of them inches from my ears. I was a bit puzzled where they all came from, until I saw one of the smugglers – probably a chartered accountant in real life – casually take a banger out of his pocket, set the fuse and toss it on the ground, as though he were discarding a sweet wrapper. Each society stopped at the war memorial to stage a sort of pastiche Poppy Day ceremony, which was a gesture towards respectability and solemnity. But only a gesture.
In theory, Lewes Bonfire is based on the fact that seventeen Protestant martyrs were burned here under Bloody Mary. Sensitive Catholics still get upset and believe that the ‘No Popery’ banner that hangs over Cliffe High Street for the night is a manifestation of lingering, atavistic anti-Catholicism. Likewise the burning of Paul V, who became Pope in 1605 and allegedly encouraged the Gunpowder Plot. This is complete tosh. Someone told me ‘No Popery’ is in fact a corruption of ‘No Pot-Pourri’ and constitutes a rejection of the profusion of twee gift shops. That is at least more convincing than the idea that Lewes cares one way or another about a pope dead for four centuries.
The night is partly a celebration of pyromania and mayhem. It is partly a celebration of ritual, far more fun than religion, more fashionable than Freemasonry: the officials of the Cliffe Bonfire Society include a Captain of Tableau, a Captain of Effigies, of Aerials, of Tar Barrels, of Torches, of Firesite, of Banners, of Bands, of Programmes, of Fiery Pieces, of Street Fireworks. There is also a safety officer, though he may not be the greatest power in the organisation.
But above all it is a celebration of Lewes. Even on the other 364 days, it is, as a town, decidedly up itself. Lewes is still primarily a place of small shops, not all of them selling pot-pourri. It loves a fight, usually about far more relevant matters than Protestant martyrs. In 2006, when the mighty corporation that now owns the Lewes Arms stopped selling locally brewed Harvey’s Bitter, there was a mass boycott until it caved in. When East Sussex County Council brought in a new parking regime, some of the more ardent pyrotechnicians began stuffing fireworks into the parking meter slots to sabotage them. The great eighteenth-century troublemaker Tom Paine was a regular in the White Hart on the High Street, spouting sedition. And his spirit lives on.
Bonfire is sustained by a unique alliance between local traditionalists, zealous youngsters and subversive academics. ‘There’s no corporate sponsorship, no council involvement,’ enthused one resident. ‘I think that’s the heart of it – the people of Lewes doing it for themselves.’ And the town does engage with it. The windows were being boarded up to guard against stray explosions, not looting. The women in Waitrose were saying ‘Mad!’ not ‘Nightmare!’ And, though the shops shut, the pubs stayed open with relish. It is hardly the ideal bonfire for small children. And my Brighton friend Paul Weaver stopped going the year some bloke came up to him in the street and started cuffing him about the temples. Paul understandably tried to thump him back. ‘Don’t be a cunt,’ replied his tormentor. ‘Your head’s on fire.’
Bonfire Night in Lewes must be the only time and place in Britain where one can get attacked in the street for one’s own good. Some dog owners regard it with genuine loathing; but even the police recognise they are up against superior forces. In the 1990s they tried to gain control by setting up loudspeakers. One year they threatened to arrest anyone who dropped a banger. They have given up and stand back, waiting – I suspect – for something to happen that would prove their instincts right so they can ban it all.
Just as the Harvey’s might really be taking hold, the crowds disperse to the different bonfire sites on the edge of town where they burn their effigies: Guy, Paul V and their chosen enemy of the moment. Those on display this time included a very popular model of Rupert Murdoch and his henchwoman Rebekah Brooks, plus a banker with a four-foot prick, all the better to screw everyone. I went to the Cliffe fire-site, where they had opted for the recently deceased Colonel Gaddafi, who was packed with fireworks and supposed to self-destruct, though, as in real life, he proved very stubborn.
The guns finally fell silent around 2 a.m.; by dawn about a million broken bottles and spent fireworks had already been cleared away. Of an estimated crowd of 60,000, two people were seriously hurt with head injuries, not including anyone whose head hurt because of a hangover. There were fifteen arrests, mainly for possession of drugs, and drunken behaviour, in both cases a very small fraction of the total eligible. And Bonfire marches on, until the pope resumes his dominion over this realm, hell freezes over or the town incinerates itself.
This is not wholly a one-off, a demonstration of Lewes’ indomitable and anarchic spirit. The bonfire season in East Sussex starts in September, so that a dozen different towns can stage their own smaller-scale versions before converging on Lewes as if it were staging some sporting grand final. Many parts of England maintain resistance to outside authority as part of their self-image. It is 99 per cent bluster, of course. And even Lewes lost its battle over parking charges: the council just redesigned the machines. But in Sussex the spirit of passive resistance lies deep. ‘We won’t be druv,’ goes the l
ocal saying.
‘There is no peasant in the world,’ wrote Hilaire Belloc, ‘so rooted in his customs and so determined to maintain them as is the Sussex peasant.’ Belloc’s book The County of Sussex, published in 1936, is largely an elegy for a dialect and a way of life that was already dying. But the bolshiness had not gone completely: ‘Those who know Sussex and its people take a secret delight in observing that power of resistance still painfully at work,’ he said. And it has not disappeared yet. Belloc thought it was strongest in West Sussex, the bit furthest from London. That’s outdated now. The centre of defiance has clearly moved east to Brighton and Lewes. Some people who muddle fact and fiction and have little else to do argue whether Walmington-on-Sea, home of Dad’s Army, is in Kent or Sussex. Stupid boys. It is obviously in Sussex. Walmington is the epitome of not being druv. I like to think Sussex was every bit as humorously obstreperous when the Conqueror arrived.
The original South Saxons were largely cut off, by marshes to the east and west, by the Downs to the north and the Channel to the south. Nowadays, much of the county appears to have been Surreyised, at least to those without an especially keen eye for dew ponds, fingerposts and Wealden hall houses. But Sussex has a much gladder heart. Most of Surrey, wrote Ian Nairn in his introduction to the Sussex Pevsner, ‘is fatally turned towards London’. Sussex, however, can look south, to the Downs and the sea, so its relationship with the capital ‘becomes a kind of contract between equals rather than Surrey’s meek subjugation’. The tile-hung cottages, the red-brick pubs and the flinty churches all seem that little bit more welcoming than in the county next door. It is possible, if not always easy, to find contemplative silence. However, the spirit that creates Lewes Bonfire has another, more sombre side.
Beachy Head is a short drive or bus ride out of Eastbourne. Few place names are as instantly evocative. It conjures up heroic images of wartime dogfights and of healthy walks over the springy turf: on a very clear day it is said you can see east to Dungeness and west to the Isle of Wight.
I was there on Guy Fawkes morning: it was a touch misty, though with a stiff breeze coming off the Downs. But there were shafts of sunlight out to sea: the water was calm, turquoise in patches, beautiful. Sussex looked lovely too; the breeze was fresh and it seemed impossible to feel anything but joie de vivre. Beachy Head, however, also conjures up suicide.
The chalk face, up to 530 feet high, is said to be the third most popular suicide destination in the world, after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Aokigahara Woods at the base of Mount Fuji (though these figures are inherently unreliable). Jumping off the Golden Gate sounds like a typically showy Californian thing to do, and a predilection for suicide lies deep in Japanese culture. But why here?
Some people – policemen, even – have talked about a mystical force that draws you towards the edge. Yet the vast majority of visitors are taking the air, walking their dogs, heading for the gift shop or pub – the Beachy Head, known locally as the Last Stop. At intervals along the edge there are crosses, placed by relatives left behind: the most bereft of all the bereft. One had a lone carnation lashed to it, buffeted by the wind. Nearby is a memorial to PC Harry Ward, until 1966 the Downs Ranger, who patrolled the cliffs on horseback. ‘On numerous occasions he risked his life to save others,’ says the inscription. Another stone offers Psalm 93, verse 4, in the inelegant 2001 translation: ‘Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord is high and mighty’, adding that ‘God is always greater than all of our troubles’. I am not sure either bit helps. By the bus stop, next to the Mr Whippy van, is a sign with the Samaritans’ number. Mobile signals up here are uncertain.
Outside the Coastguard Centre is the 4×4 belonging to the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team, perhaps the only vehicle in the country with flashing lights that constitute a cry of ‘Let me through, I’m a Christian.’ Patrols prowl the downland and six miles of cliff edge, looking for suicides. Their strike rate is very high. The chaplains issue terse reports detailing the number of searches each week, month and year, the number of ‘despondent persons’ found, plus – though they make this bit less obvious – the number of bodies recovered. The publicly available records go back to April 2010, and I could not find a month without a body. It would have been a record year for activity in 2010 but for the harsh winter weather that rendered the Downs almost inaccessible. The chaplaincy does not like talking to the media, for fear of increasing the numbers still further. On the other hand, it needs more volunteers. One can see the dilemma.
The volunteers do, however, like speaking to people on the cliffs, especially those who look like potential clients. And I suppose I fitted the profile: alone, wandering with no obvious purpose, a bit furtive. The young woman on duty in a red chaplaincy anorak seemed very pleasant and I felt my main duty was to reassure her. To begin with, I was on my way to my first Lewes Bonfire and wouldn’t miss it for anything. What’s more, I couldn’t bring myself to go anywhere near the cliff edge: my legs turned to mush at the thought. They still do, as I write this paragraph, more than a hundred miles away. Mystical force, indeed.
But I felt later there was an unexpected connection between Beachy Head and Bonfire. Beachy Head has the odd sign warning of the dangers of falling. Parts of the cliff are roped off, with a single strand, because they are considered unstable, but the rope would not deter a potential suicide for a second. At other points there is nothing at all. One moment you are on springy open turf, then there is the drop.
In a funny way, I approve of this. In a country that has submitted itself to successive governments that have behaved more like governesses, Lewes Bonfire represents one gesture of defiance. And the invitation offered at Beachy Head also constitutes a rare recognition that, in the end, adults in a free society must exercise their own free will. Happily, most despondent persons – even those who get as far as the edge – are looking primarily for a way back into life, not a way out. But there will always be those who have come to Beachy Head, rationally, determinedly, having made a choice which cannot be argued away by a pleasant woman in a red anorak. It’s a horrific choice, but a legitimate one.
Sussex is so varied and so enticing that it is full of fascinating places, not all of them as obvious as Beachy Head. Chanctonbury Ring, the ancient hill fort on top of the Downs near Washington, can be seen from Box Hill, though it’s easy to miss the sign off the road to Steyning. All my road atlases ignore it, preferring nearby Cissbury Ring, probably because the name’s shorter.
Belloc complained that even at Chanctonbury ‘you may hear the machine-gun fire of a motor bicycle’. But a bikie would get set upon here these days (provided he did not have a hundred of his mates with him) and it is a quiet, contemplative place, reached through primeval woodlands. Most of the beech trees were savaged by the 1987 hurricane; their replacements are progressing slowly, to be threatened only by the next twice-a-millennium storm, now expected about twice a year. But on a Sunday afternoon, the only hint of a threat came from the gliders, circling like buzzards but neither as noisy nor as predatory. The gliders would have terrified the Iron Age defenders; up here, not much else could have perturbed them.
More secretive still is Pooh Bridge in the Ashdown Forest, close to A. A. Milne’s home at Hartfield, whence he would set out on walks with Christopher Robin. The bridge is the Wembley Stadium of Poohsticks, a game with an important place in the national tapestry, because Milne’s stories represented the perfect idealisation of English childhood, at least until Disney acquired the rights and turned them into something entirely different.
I tramped nearly a couple of miles from the main road, past signs that were tiny, unconvincing and – at crucial moments – completely absent. There were plenty of other signs, hinting that we were now dangerously close to the Surrey border: ‘NO PARKING’, ‘NO TURNING’, ‘NO PICNICS’, ‘NO DOGS’. Even the Pooh Corner gift shop in the village had signs warning visitors off this journey. The residents, too old for Poohst
icks, many of them living in ‘cottages’ about half the size of Versailles, evidently get pleasure at the sight of baffled Japanese tourists going round in circles.
Reassured by passing dog walkers, I finally found myself at a brook spanned by what was evocatively described as East Sussex County Council Bridge no. 8022. There was no other marker. It was a pretty spot, with hazels growing aslant the brook and a nearby oak turning autumn-fiery. I threw two twigs in the water and they set off, skilfully evading what looked like a container of motor oil, in the direction, one assumes, of East Sussex County Council Bridge no. 8023.
From a lower branch of the oak a rope dangled. It was over the fence in obviously private land but easily reachable by an adventurous child keen to swing across the brook. A nice gesture, perhaps. But I am inclined to think it was placed there by a refugee from Surrey and it was meant to persuade them to hang or drown themselves.
The jewels of Sussex are undoubtedly on the coast, in the pendant of shingly resorts that runs from Hastings to Bognor, each of them strange in its own particular way. Belloc loathed them: ‘There is little of Sussex about them; they have not the Sussex method of building nor any of the lingering Sussex habits.’ As a nautical man, he was inclined to make an exception for Hastings, ‘a necessary sea-town’. But he was behind the times even then. Hastings, having been the chief of the Cinque Ports, was declining by the thirteenth century, according to Pevsner, got sacked twice by the French by the fourteenth and ‘never recovered’.
It gets worse. I was greeted by the following sign on the A21: ‘Hastings – Birthplace of television. Town Centre cameras in 24-hour operation’. The claim may have a sliver of truth in that John Logie Baird lived in Hastings in the early 1920s and clearly worked on his invention there. But the town otherwise made nothing of it. There was no museum or anything, just a plaque. So what on earth was the council trying to suggest? That visitors will arrive and say: ‘Yippee! Let’s get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow and see the TV cameras!’?
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