Anti-Londoner graffiti and stickers have been met with mixed responses on a popular local Facebook page called, ‘Get the Easton look’. Late last night one group member posted a photo of graffiti in south Bristol with the message, ‘F*** off back to London BS3’ on the local page which is commonly used as a platform to joke about fly-tipping in the area by posting photos with amusing captions.
In the last six months stickers have been appearing in Easton and across Bristol with the message; ‘Refugees welcome, Londoners p*** off’. Several of these stickers can be found along St Marks Road among other locations in Easton. In April this year, Pedro Nash posted a photo of the "hilarious" sticker which he felt "captured the energy of Bristol as a whole" on the same local Facebook page.
The anonymous stickers which have an image of a man in a suit being hit by a rock, like the graffiti- are understood by many locals as carrying an anti-gentrification message - with Londoners who move to Bristol being blamed for the rising house prices. Before the coronavirus pandemic it was estimated as many as eighty Londoners a week were moving to Bristol.The man behind the graffiti told Bristol Live that the message he wrote next to the Bedminster Green development was his way of hitting back against the London based developers; Watkin Jones whose new flats will mostly be unaffordable to locals like himself.
