Earlier this month, days after Brighton Pride, rainbow flags from one of the country’s best-known celebrations of LGBTQ culture continued to festoon the city’s train station and seafront. After all, this is a place that says it has “embraced and thrived on difference” and officially designated itself a “city of sanctuary” for refugees.

In 2010, it elected the UK’s first Green MP, and the party still holds the Brighton Pavilion constituency (with Siân Berry), and currently has eight local councillors. But not all communities feel that Brighton is a sanctuary.

In the almost two years since the Hamas attack on Israel, Brighton’s 2,500 Jews have seen their home become the stage for repeated anti-Israel marches, as well as vandalism, graffiti and a growing atmosphere of intimidation.

These incidents, say some in that Jewish community, have wrecked their relationship with their hometown.

Fiona Sharpe, a 59-year-old voluntary worker and activist, was born and raised in Brighton, and is well-placed to assess change in a city that has long promoted itself as a beacon of progressive values and tolerance.

The late 1970s and early 1980s, though synonymous with the activities of the racist National Front, “were so much more tolerant and open [than today], and it feels bizarre to say that,” she says.

Brighton’s Jewish community is centred on Palmeira Square in Hove, with the Brighton and Hove Reform Synagogue just around the corner. In the square, a temporary memorial to the hostages taken by Hamas was set up after October 7 2023. But that small plaque with flowers and messages has been vandalised more than 50 times since. On several occasions, it has been defaced with faeces.