Made in Brighton
From the Grand to the Gutter: Modern Britain as seen from beside the sea
Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven

Nicky Charlish
posted 30 May 2007

Going for a tour of Britain to get a finger on its pulse had been a common path trodden by commentators since Cobbett went on his rural rides. Here, two authors put their best feet forward in the same quest, but by staying put. How much about the state of the nation can they tell us from life in this famous south coast resort which is also their adopted home?

With its long-standing status as a home to gangsters, gays and showbiz types, Brighton is a sort of Soho-on-Sea, making it look glitzily unpromising as a source for many nationally applicable norms (other than Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim – more of him in a moment). But the couple are able to mine plenty of noteworthy or uncomfortable nuggets of national truths from their seaside home.

Burchill is well-known as a no-nonsense toughie, giving no quarter and expecting none in return. She’s straight in, dealing with the long-running tensions between native working-class Brightonians and successive generations of incoming middle-class tourists and settlers. She is vociferous in her defence of chavs: ‘My people, right or wrong, sicking up all over their shell suits and loving it’. Some anti-chav attitudes are snobbish: their middle-class detractors might ask themselves if their own declining standards have helped the rise of the bling and baseball-cap brigade (a certain public school-educated politician who affects a glottal-stop when wishing to appear a man of the people comes to mind). But, in this case, Burchill might have been advised to pause before clicking the send button: her spirited defence might carry more weight had she not given us her own well-chronicled escape from chavdom, a period when she fanced herself a teenage Dorothy Parker and set out from Bristol for a deservedly successful hand-over hand climb up the slopes of the bright lights, big city of ‘Eighties’ London media-land. She also quotes examples of working-class anti-chav sentiments which somewhat undermine her case, such as a working-class Northern gay man who refers to a group of Southern-working class people as a ‘chavalanche’. Her own career shows what should be regarded as a national truth: class doesn’t have to hold you back. Admittedly not everyone can end up as queen of the Groucho but, if you come from the lower reaches of society, putting in a bit of self-education – Burchill eagerly haunted her local library as a child – can free you from supposed predestination as a shelf-stacking slave.

Burchill more than makes up for this misjudgement. On some ramifications of sex, she gloriously throws PC pieties to the winds. Discussing the career of Brighton glamour girl Jordan and accusations that she’s let women down, Burchill points out that ‘Most women would opt for a country with porn and equal rights legislation than no porn and stoning to death for adultery and the living death of the burka’. Jordan isn’t a victim-culture ‘Strong Woman’, who’s always picking at her emotional scars, but a ‘Hard Woman’ like Barbara Windsor, Joan Collins and Kylie Minogue, bouncing back from what life throws at them, But as the stiff upper lip is no longer fashionable, their toughness ‘threatens the touchy-feely status-quo’. The strand of misogyny that can be found within a certain section of gay male culture comes in for well-deserved criticism, as does the concept of gay – or any other tribe – pride itself: ‘if everyone from blacks to gays to women can say they are “proud” to be so, doesn’t it apply equally that people can, equally pathetically, be proud to be white, heterosexual or men?’

Burchill’s also good on New Labour and its seeming desertion of Old Labour’s traditional concerns (this isn’t a new position for her, but the damascene conversion in support of Tony Blair that she underwent when the present Iraq conflict started seems to have been forgotten). People want decent public services such as good healthcare, housing and education. Instead, Brighton’s New Labour council has expended much time and treasure pursuing city status for the sake of – yes, yes, tell me, tell me – image. Yet this ‘city’ has the lowest wages in the South-East, while Brighton council employees work under a well-publicised culture of bullying and harrassment. Burchill will raise a cheer among fellow library enthusiasts when she condemns the ‘local-council logic that sells books out of libraries while subsidising the internet – what lonely outsider wants to read novels, after all, when he could be learning to make nail bombs instead?’

The internet neatly brings us to Burchill’s fellow contributor. In contrast with Burchill, her husband Daniel Raven – a tester/proofreader for an ‘e-learning’ provider – is a comparative novice to the writing game (he’s written short stories for his own amusement, but this is his first published work). Raven is no Luddite, but he shows that the computer brings mixed blessings to society. Examining the world of the new media businesses recently established in Brighton enables him to show that ‘new media jargon is often an active barrier to good communication because nobody is ever absolutely sure what any of it means’, whilst the use of email within offices leads to a breakdown of human communication; ‘Damaging conflicts are left unresolved… you find it less and less easy to actually tell people, in person, what you really think’. Circumlocution in human relationships is nothing new, of course, but email doesn’t help in making it easier. Meanwhile, the town can’t absorb vast amounts of new media businesses and needs more – you’ve guessed it – plumbers. Nationally, while new media hasn’t had its day, over-reliance in it as a source of jobs is ill-advised.

Raven is more fun when he gives a short history of the past 50 years of Brighton’s pop/rock scene. Punk’s supposed power to effect cultural change was undermined by its own externals, which lent themselves to easy, deadly mockery on prime-time TV comedy shows such as The Two Ronnies and Not The Nine O’Clock News. The slagging-off by Brighton’s hipsters of DJ Norman Cook when he achieved mainstream success exposes a traditional British hatred of success, which is not the same thing as necessary, healthy scepticism. Raven probably speaks for many when he pillories the tedium of 1990s rave music – the anti-rave legislation which described it as ‘a succession of repetitive beats’ was spot-on – and its attendant squalid parties. He wanted the sort of upbeat vocal tracks played in Brighton’s gay clubs instead. Perhaps it’s this musical greyness that helps account for the current lack of youth cults, not only in Brighton – as Raven points out – but nationally. Gone are the days when youths could choose to be Mods, Rockers, Preppies, Skinheads, Punks, New Romantics, Goths, Sloane Rangers or Young Fogies. Only Goths survive today as an antidote to Hoodies, few gays are blind with mascara and dumb with lipstick, and the small Hoxton flamboyant club scene has yet to achieve the status its New Romantic ancestors achieved 25 years ago (a hit record or two emerging from its ranks might change this).

Raven has made a promising debut as a cultural commentator. But what of Burchill? According to the book’s blurb, she hopes to become a full-time theology student and voluntary worker. Let’s hope that, once in a while, she lays aside her New Testament Greek Lexicon and keeps some love-it-or-shove-it comments flowing from her keyboard. She’s not only entertaining but stimulating, making you think even if you don’t end up thinking her thoughts. Her writing is worth reading, and her life has provided aspiring journalists with a game-plan for success. Praise the Lord, Julie, but keep the copy coming!