The Lewes Rebel Army (continued)

On Saturday nights the streets rang with choruses from the growing number of youngsters who associated with the group… “Oh we’re the Lewes Rebel Army, la-la-la-la-la-la.” The LRA even had a political wing ‘Lewes Resists Apartheid’ who called a boycott on Clothkits goods when it was learnt that a handful of the company’s customers ordered their stripy jumpers from Johannesburg. The company responded by asking for a vote among their workers as to whether such action should be taken. They decided against it, and the campaign petered out.

Concerned letters were written to the Sussex Express about the menace affecting the town: the landlady of the pub in which the Army drank sent in a letter of her own, reporting anonymously that the group weren’t really a menace to anyone, just a bunch of disaffected youths having a bit of a laugh. This was the truth of the matter: pretty soon the laugh grew stale, the chants died down in the High Street, the manoeuvres stopped happening. After a year or so the LRA had, in effect, disbanded. Or had they? A year or two ago, on Castle Rise, a graffito mysteriously appeared on a fencepost, which is still visible. ‘The LRA is back, and back again’ it reads. In spirit, perhaps, they are. AL