Victory in the Battle of Madeira Drive

The Reopen Madeira Drive Campaign - launched in early June by myself and my partner Laura King - has been victorious! Brighton & Hove City Council last night (Tuesday, 29 September 2020) voted to reopen the iconic seafront road in the way we proposed. . . in a wondrous U-turn and victory for common sense.

We started the Campaign after Madeira Drive was closed on the sly by the then Momentum-Labour-controlled Council with the support of the fanatical Green Party. 

I now understand that a group of senior Council officials, who are crazy about cycling, unscrupulously drove this agenda behind the scenes and persuaded lame-brained councillors to go along with it. If that is the case, it was a disgraceful abuse of their position as Council senior staff and public servants - and also speaks volumes about the gullibility and unsuitability of councillors in leadership positions.

Anyway, Madeira Drive is a very long, very wide and very quiet road, and it seemed to me that closing it because of the Covid-19 crisis was unjustified. 

There was plenty of room for walking, running and cycling as it was. Why shouldn't motorcyclists, scooterists and car drivers also use and enjoy the facilities? 

And, anyway, very few cyclists, runners and walkers chose to exercise there.

With Laura King's help, I started a petition on Brighton & Hove City Council's website, assuming - very naively - that Madeira Drive would be reopened fairly easily. 

How wrong I was! It quickly became apparent that the closure was not about Covid-19 at all, but was a symbolic gesture by the Hard Left to take out a road as a first step to making Brighton completely vehicle free. 

For four months, Laura and I have battled away. 

Our petition achieved nearly 11,000 signatures; four successful demonstrations were staged at Madeira Drive, uniting the Mods and the Rockers for the first time in half a century and attracting regional, national and international press coverage and even support from cyclists, and a war of words was waged in the Brighton Argus and on social media. 

And Laura's Reopen Madeira Drive to All Facebook group, moderated with the help of the tireless Tony Brighton, attracted more than 1,400 members and thousands of updates.

Moreover, Quadrophenia star Gary Shail even made a video backing the Campaign - and Specials star Neville Staple backed us online! Thanks, guys!

At last night's meeting of Brighton & Hove City Council's Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee (ETS), the decision to reopen it one way from Brighton Pier to the Mound was ratified, after being trumpeted well in advance by the Green Party's local leaders.

It is great that the Greens have changed their minds - and performed a neat U-turn. Listening to their spurious arguments at the previous ETS meeting and at a Special Full Council, to which Laura and I spoke and presented our petition, were thoroughly disturbing experiences. 

But I always knew that if we kept up the pressure, reality must eventually bite. With justice and the public on our side, we had to win eventually!

Throughout this Campaign, the South Coast Mods, of which I am proud to be a member, were amazing. 

In wind, rain and sun, they supported the four protests we organised, riding their beautiful classic Vespas and Lambrettas onto Madeira Drive despite the presence of Council stewards, and making some great speeches. 

The heroic Carl Bonner, who attracted BBC and ITV regional TV news crews, Diggers, Ralph and all the Mods were incredible! As were the Rockers, the cyclists and pedestrians who turned up to join the crusade.

And supporter Rob Arbery also did an incredible job at making the argument for disabled groups, who had been cut off from the disabled toilets by the changes, and bringing Brighton Palace Pier on side. The attack on the closure by the Pier's CEO was particularly good to see.

The Madeira Drive traders also gave us moral support with Trevor at the fish and chip shop also doing some spot-on media interviews, and Tarot card reader JJ Braiden making a cracking speech at one of the early rallies.

My partner Laura pushed the heritage angle - with the Madeira Terraces urgently needing restoration, which had been delayed by the closure. 

And the affable Councillor Lee Wares quickly understood the Madeira Drive issue and made some memorable speeches in Council meetings - against the hostile backdrop of tone-deaf Greens and Labour members.

But in the end, the compromise that we and Lee were backing has been accepted by the Greens, who had seized power halfway through this crisis and initially doubled down on Labour's unreasonable policy, but now, amusingly, are claiming credit for the idea.

I couldn't give a jot about that. What's important is that Council Leader Phelim Mac Cafferty has seen sense and found a way to persuade his zealot colleagues to reopen Madeira Drive.

Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle also, thankfully, started singing a different tune. 

Initially, shoot-from-the-lip Lloyd wanted a permanent closure for Madeira Drive, but later he conceded that a compromise was needed and motorcyclists and scooterists should be allowed to use it! 

Fair play! I admire anyone who has the guts and honesty to admit they were wrong.

Madeira Drive is a cultural gem, the spiritual home of Mods and Rockers, and a place for all to enjoy.

We chipped away at the Red-Green Wall, first winning a pledge to reopen Madeira Drive for events, then getting it reopened from the Mound to the Marina, then reopening the other half for the Mod Weekender on the August Bank Holiday. And Laura managed to place an excellent piece in Private Eye magazine about how the closure was affecting the restoration of Madeira Terraces. After all that, perhaps it was inevitable that Madeira Drive would be permanently reopened.

Looking back on the past four months, doing media interviews about them and reviewing the blog posts I kept up, I can see how many people helped me develop the Campaign - and get a successful outcome for Brighton & Hove.

Initially, I focused on the most outrageous aspects of what the Council had done - the discrimination against disabled people and the damage that it was doing the businesses of the traders on the Madeira Drive parade at a time when they were most vulnerable.

But my cyclist friend Gordon, who owns the magnificent G-Whizz Cycles on the street I live, made me see that I should not only be fighting other people's battles for them while downplaying my own particular interest.

Supporter Rob Arbery took up the cudgels for the disabled groups and the traders did what they could, considering that the Council is their belligerent and uncaring landlord, and I focused on the Mods and motorcyclists being deprived of their right to gather at Madeira Drive. It worked! The media loved the story, and both regional ITV and BBC TV, covered it, interviewing me, other Mods and Rockers, and the traders who rely on their business.

Broadly, I have always been a supporter of environmental aims - but this Campaign made me realise just how out of touch and unecological the current generation of Green politicians has become.

It did not bother them that the closure of Madeira Drive and the subsequent draconian cycle lane on the seafront road going up from Brighton Palace Pier were causing congestion and pollution - and actually damaging the environment far more than the previous arrangements.

Science simply did not come into it. The ideology of closing a road, and the symbolism of this unplanned act of rebellion, was the goal in itself - worth damaging the environment for, as far as the Brighton & Hove Greens and local far-left Momentum Labour parties were concerned.

They also appeared to play down discrimination against the disabled, when they were asked about it. 

For the Council leadership, it was as if combating racism is enough, and the other -isms, no longer mattered to them. Strange! And this attitude to those most in need has now resulted in Brighton & Hove City Council being investigated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. I hope they throw the book at them!

Once again, Momentum-Labour and the Green Party have brought shame onto the great city of Brighton & Hove.

I hope that Green and Labour leaders in Brighton & Hove will reflect seriously on the Madeira Drive debacle and realise that they do not always know best - and that genuine consultation with all user groups is vital before making any major road changes.

In particular, they need to consider if the councillors put in charge of the important areas of transport, environment and sustainability have the experience and competence for the job. 

For instance, someone with an obsession about one form of transport and a strong dislike of other forms is unlikely to do a good job for all the people of Brighton & Hove.

In truth, there was never any need to close Madeira Drive. 

Even during full lockdown, few cars were using it and there was plenty of room for cycling, running and walking. There always is. Madeira Drive has been a great source of parking revenue for Brighton & Hove City Council over the years but, ironically, it has never been a busy road. 

So, closing it achieved nothing, except costing the Council, which has a gaping hole in its finances of more than £20million, more than £1million in lost revenue, unpaid rents of traders and the totally unwarranted £12,000-a-month cost of Madeira Drive stewards (next time Phelim calls for a Council Tax increase, he needs to be reminded of this wanton waste of our money!)

And dividing the people of Brighton & Hove, pitting Mod & motorcyclist against cyclist, when they are all natural friends on two wheels, and causing additional upset and angst at a time when elected officials and leaders like Nancy Platts and Phelim Mac Cafferty should have been trying to unite the people of their fair city, already struggling from the economic impact and stress of the prolonged Covid-19 crisis.

For too long they put their ideology before the common good. . . and it was a disaster! Let that be a lesson for iterations of Brighton & Hove City Council going forward!

* Latest TV Special on the Victory of Madeira Drive.