Niall McCrae
If you haven’t been to Brighton for a while, you won’t have seen the lofty column that broods over the shoreline. It’s difficult to think of a structure more befitting of the label ‘concrete monstrosity’ (although readers may know of competitors). And now Brighton i360, an observation tower, has closed to the public.
Brighton was once famous for its twin promontories: the Palace Pier and the West Pier. The latter, with its grand ballroom at the end, was destroyed by fire decades ago, what remains of the cast iron structure is left to seagulls and flocks of starlings. The i360 was built at the former entrance to the pier, but what a contrast in aesthetics!
This 162-metre neo-brutalist monolith began in 2014, when Brighton & Hove Council secured funding from the government’s Public Loans Fund. The owner, with sponsorship from British Airways, opened the tower in 2016. It was initially successful, but the novelty faded. With mounting debt to the council, the company decided to close i360 at the end of last year. Lost revenue was blamed on the ‘pandemic’, although local people know the real reason: there is a limit to the number of people willing to pay £18.50 just to see the city from a height.
Brighton and its environs are not the same attraction for a bird’s eye view as you get from the London Eye or Shard, which overlook Buckingham Palace, the River Thames, Tower Bridge among a catalogue of iconic places. With its silly ‘i’ instead of the proper spelling, and an all-round view that includes 180 degrees of nothing but sea, the i360 is underwhelming. Points of interest are the Brighton & Hove Albion football stadium, the incinerator at Southwick, and perhaps a ferry leaving Newhaven. There was no need for a rotating viewing platform.
I am writing after the announcement that the tower has been rescued by an upmarket cocktail bar chain. Sarah Willingham, founder and CEO of Nightcap, said: –
‘We pass the i360 every day and were as disappointed as everyone else when it went into administration and no buyer was found. The impact of the change would have been catastrophic on our local businesses, and a blemish on this important part of the Brighton seafront.’
The reopening tower will share with the pier a sense of affluence and exclusivity. I shudder at the likely price of drinks atop the pillar. Brightonians are not short of money, though. Dubbed ‘London-by-the-Sea’, the city is heavily populated by the privileged metropolitan class, as well as radical students on a passing stage to jobs in the professional-managerial bureaucracy.
Decidedly Woke and Green, unlike the conservative seaside resort of the past (before the Mods and Rockers arrived), the affluent culture of Brighton is hostile to anyone of traditional or patriotic outlook. The lavishly funded Pride dogmatism is imposed to Maoist degree. It was strictly observant of the covid-19 regime (as I experienced in a pub in 2021). The new investors must hope that another pandemic won’t strike, as the worried well of Brighton would surely don masks and maintain social distancing, leaving the cocktail bar bereft.
There are some critical thinkers in Brighton, however. I have spoken at the Free Speech Society, but such activity is often targeted by zealous Lefties. A recent event was stopped by the pub management after threats from Antifa types. But the freedom fighters persevere and I’ll be speaking there again in March.
My first visit to Brighton was in 1988, when I came down to watch a hip-hop gig at the Brighton Conference Centre by Public Enemy and Run DMC. The American rappers had performed at Brixton on the previous night, and the white teenagers of Sussex must have seemed rather innocent. Nowadays Brighton looks down on its surroundings, believing itself to be cutting edge.
Many of its pubs take card payment only. Ask the barman why cash isn’t accepted and he’ll look at you as if you’re stupid. Alongside squalid streets inhabited by hundreds of homeless beggars are overpriced restaurants. The North Laine, in the past full of antique shops selling all kinds of memorabilia, is now one vegan café after another.
The i360, Brighton’s faulty tower, symbolises the rise and fall of the former seaside town.
Whether in use or not, it’s an unholy eyesore, and I choose those words carefully. The i360 is Brighton’s folly, a Tower of Babel reaching in futility to claim heaven for Sodom and Gomorrah – and Mammon.
