After the week of violent unrest other parts of the country have experienced, the fear that pervaded Brighton on Wednesday night was understandable, Argus reporter Patrick Barlow writes.
Rumours that a gang of rioters are coming to your city intent on smashing, grabbing and causing terror are not an everyday occurrence, and as whispers grew on social media that fear grew into more of a tense frenzy.
As reporters, part of our job is to take these social media whispers and work out what is real and what is not. It is a task which, as we have seen this week, is becoming more and more important in tackling disinformation online.
Watching businesses in Brighton board up their windows for fear of attack, it was difficult to judge whether all the preparation would prove necessary or whether the anger on display in other parts of the UK would penetrate its way into a city which prides itself on its tolerance.
Frankly, we did not know exactly what would greet us in Queens Road. What we found was the clear community spirit of the city.
As I made my way down to the site, what was abundantly clear as early as 6pm, two hours before the protest was expected to begin, was that any of the notional rioters would be vastly outnumbered.
Despite this, the atmosphere was certainly tense, and it took just one flare-up to ignite a tinder box of pent-up anti-racist anger from the last week and beyond.
Credit has to go to several people for their involvement in the protest – not least the police who held the line and managed the tension and let it dissipate in favour of a more celebratory atmosphere.
And my personal thoughts particularly go to the driver of the number 7 bus who had an unwitting front-row seat to the protest for hours on end while just trying to do his job.
But ultimately, the plaudits must go to the crowd of protesters who achieved what they set out to achieve: send a clear message that racism and fear-mongering is not welcome in Brighton.
The aerial shots of the protest possibly do not do the crowd justice. While impressive in their own right, you do not get a sense of how generally well-natured the protest evolved.
Some of the city’s leaders have shared their pride at seeing Wednesday’s protest unfold, and that comes down to the multitude of people in Queen’s Road showing all the positives of the protest.
Vocal in their message but largely peaceful in their execution, the protesters filled Queens Road with music, dancing and kindness as much as they did with placards and chanting.
As the small group of men who are believed to be mostly anti-immigration protesters were bundled into a police van and the crowds slowly dissipated, I can’t help but think that it will be a long time before any far-right protesters would even dream of approaching this part of the Sussex coast.
You simply cannot justify hatred, looting and violence when confronted with that type of response.
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