Twenty-one members of the public turned out yesterday evening for a stroll from Picardy Place to just north of Pilrig Street.

Part parade, part demonstration of solidarity, the event was an impromptu end to the Leith Flag Festival, and arose at short notice in response to racist abuse and threats of violence hurled at businessman Keith Hales (Breaking news, 14.8.13). St George's Cross bunting outside his barber shop on Leith Walk was torn down last week – hardly the best start to what was intended by Leith Business Association (LBA) as a celebration of locals’ diverse and multi-ethnic backgrounds.

Every continent except Antarctica was represented on the walk, which included locals, children, politicians and a basset hound. The basset hound carried various sandwich boxes and chip wrappers rather than a flag demonstrating his nationality or culture of origin.

Julian Siann (right) of Rosslyn Crescent attended. He hails originally from South Africa, where he was involved in anti-apartheid campaigns at the time of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. He didn't equate recent events in Leith with that degree of horror, but did say it had left him determined to resist racism whenever and wherever it raised its head.

George Lamb attended in a wheelchair. As eloquently expressed here on 16 August, he sees close parallels between racism and the kind of intolerance and discrimination suffered routinely by many disabled people.

Ward 12’s Councillor Nick Gardner (right) said he was delighted at the 'intergenerational as well as intercontinental' turnout. 'Dismal events at the moment in Egypt, Turkey and Burma underline the need,' he said, 'for us all to get along. Life's too short for this nonsense.'

A party of 10 bussed up from the Roseleaf bar and café on Sandport Place. Their collection of staff, customers and family included people from Australia, England, Ireland, Poland and Scotland. 'Everyone's welcome in Scotland, wherever they're from' said one, before adding 'except Nazis'.

Keith Hales (right) – the current vice-chair of Leith Business Association, whose experience last week elicited widespread alarm, sympathy and outrage – enjoyed last night's event, but conceded that the response to the weekend’s Flag Festival as a whole had been underwhelming.

He suggested many people from ethnic minorities had felt too intimidated to draw attention to themselves.

However, he hopes the event will continue on a yearly basis, perhaps with a flag-walk featuring as part of the Leith Festival parade.

Not everyone was so approving. Alan Rudland (below right), a former chair of the Leith Business Association, observed the start of the walk from a distance. He says it has not been planned or approved by the LBA. 'As such', he told Spurtle, 'it constitutes a procedural abuse of privilege'. 

Rudland questioned the wisdom of Mr Hales’s timing in putting up St George’s Cross bunting on the eve of an England v Scotland football match, and went further on Twitter, later in the evening. ‘One individual has hijacked and politicized [the event] to make a personal statement,’ he said.

Criticising the presence of ‘eight police officers, a CCTV and riot van all for a handful of marchers’, he hoped the LBA would not be billed for ‘one man’s pet project’ (see updated Reactions here). 

Rudland was by no means alone in raising an eyebrow at the level of the Police presence. However, given the quantity and nature of the abuse suffered by Mr Hales earlier, it was at least understandable that the authorities should have erred on the side of caution.

Also on Twitter, Gordon Burgess (right) – ‘Leith. Edinburgh. Scotland. But mostly Leith’ according to his profile – branded the event a waste of public money and ‘a poorly supported farce’.

In separate communications, one correspondent emailed Spurtle suggesting that the response to Hales’s treatment had been a ‘scary and over the top reaction’ by the powerful ‘English lobby’. In the run-up to the Independence Referendum, she worried that this demonstration might actually polarise opinions and make some moderate Scots turn into extremists.

Another expressed disquiet at the ‘nationalist/patriotic’ element of parading flags. This was a point Spurtle put to Malcolm Chisholm MSP, who attended last night’s walk bearing a Scottish saltire. He understood the feeling behind it, but insisted that displaying different flags at the same time conveyed a very different and inclusive kind of message.

He expressed satisfaction with the day’s proceedings, and hoped something bigger would grow next year from these modest beginnings. 

Was last night's flag parade an over-the-top, even incendiary reaction or a waste of public money or a necessary gesture of defiance to the bigots? Tell us what you think by email spurtle@hotmail.co.uk on Facebook Broughton Spurtle or Twitter @theSpurtle  

Reaction

@theSpurtle Dictatorial attitudes & non-representative membership mean I now disavow the individuals and organization calling itself the LBA

@theSpurtle it's a shame it ended up like this, but it's great these events are happening. I'd like see more