So many people have been pillars of the pier

Adam Trimingham - The Argus Saturday, 11 September, 2004

WHATEVER happens to the West Pier in Brighton, it is time to recall some of the men and women who have fought hard to save it over the past 35 years, sometimes against impossible odds.

First of them was Peter Best, Mayor of Brighton and an unlikely rebel. A prudent and loyal Conservative, he showed spirit in voting against his party, then in ruling Brighton Council and producing effective arguments for saving the pier.

Then came John Lloyd, an antiquarian bookseller of mild disposition who started the We Want The West Pier campaign when the council sought to demolish the southern end.

Lloyd and colleagues produced a huge petition, which was enough to make the council change its mind.

An endearing, aggravating, bumbling and stubborn man, who habitually wore an overcoat even on the hottest days, Lloyd devoted his life to the pier. He never gave up his faith the pier would be revived, even in the dark days of 1975 when it closed its gates to the public for the last time.

Sadly, Lloyd did not live to see the pier restored. Neither did his successor Bryan Spielman, a teacher who also devoted himself full-time to the pier's salvation until his death from cancer.

It would be wrong to suggest that the campaign, later the West Pier Society and after that the current Trust, was a one-man band.

There were many different people passionately devoted to the pier in their different ways, among them Derek Burns and Jerome Abbo. Their arguments were often fierce but they all agreed the pier simply could not be left to rot.

Another Conservative councillor who was passionate about the pier was John Smith. His eloquence and dynamism did much to keep the Society going at times when no rescue seemed to be in sight.

Smith eventually moved to Gloucestershire but is still in touch with some of his Brighton friends and works as a management consultant.

Another great enthusiast for the pier was a man who had good cause to be ungrateful to it.

Ken Revis, a wartime bomb disposal expert, was seriously injured and blinded in 1943, when he attempted to remove one of the mines which could have damaged it. He survived those terrible injuries and was a frequent visitor to the pier in later years from his home near Oxford.

During the 20 years from 1975 until 1995, there were three separate attempts to restore the pier.

The first, by businessman Marc Turner, went nowhere because he failed to produce the necessary money.

Alan Hawes, a rumbustious and rollicking figure, had the track record of having restored the pier at Rhyl in Wales and had the idea of a giant Ferris wheel on the pier as a money-making attraction.

But when pressed, Hawes, too, did not have the millions needed to restore the pier and he disappeared from the scene,

The international company Merlin, with a track record of restoration in Australia and America, seemed a good bet - but it proved third time unlucky for the pier, as it hit financial problems just at the crucial time.

Prime Minister John Major said, in a Brighton speech in 1994, that the West Pier would be an ideal cause for the new National Lottery.

In the following year, the West Pier Trust was overhauled so it would be ready to meet the challenge and its reward, three years later, was to receive a large provisional Lottery grant of £14 million.

The key figures since then have been chief executive Geoff Lock-wood, general manager Rachel Clarke and chairman Admiral Sir Lindsay Bryson.

Three private sector partners have come and gone since then, each frustrated by bureaucracy, vandalism and lack of cash.

They have worked ceaselessly to promote the pier and it is not their fault that both English Heritage and the Heritage
Lottery Fund have now withdrawn their support.

There have been other celebrated supporters of the pier. Lord Attenborough filmed Oh What A Lovely War! there and has had the greatest affection for the pier.

Lord Briggs, former Vice Chancellor of Sussex University, says he has been proud to be associated with the struggle to save the pier.

Gavin Henderson, former director of the Brighton Festival, has loved the West Pier since he was a boy and has done his utmost to save it.

And we mustn't forget University of Sussex lecturer Fred Gray, whose book Walking On Water (West Pier Trust, £12) is the definitive history of the pier.

No one knows whether the pier will slip into a watery grave, be revived or be replaced by a modern structure.
What we do know is that without these stalwarts, the pier would surely have disappeared many years ago.