South Yorkshire is one of the poorest regions in Northern European, especially Doncaster and especially Denaby Main where my mum and dad live in their cute Council bungalow. This area was militant and socialist but in 2019 became a conservative area.
Why did people vote to leave the E.U? Are these borrowed votes? I don’t think so.
In the earlier 2000s many people in the region were angry seeing low skilled industries and jobs relocate to other European states with E.U funded grants. I haven’t researched this in depth and people have critiqued me online for describing this as a reason but this is what people have expressed to me. Manufacturing jobs have been replaced with call centres and warehouse work with little union presence, often reliant on agency workers.
In the norties I always remember people got paid decent money for low skilled factory jobs. Like £18 per hour in factory work (it was a nightshift).
For the sake of this piece of writing let’s focus on one of the smaller Doncaster factories, not the chemical plants, railways or pits. It’s on a street called Wheatley Hall Road during the 1980s, there were around 10,000 jobs in this area alone. It’s now been replaced by a housing estate and retail park.
International Harvester operated a plant on Wheatley Hall Road from 1930 and the Doncaster plant helped shape the company into a world renowned brand. In 1985 International sold its agricultural division to Tenneco, who then merged with Case. Tractor production continued at the site until 2007 when the factory closed and production was moved to Italy by its new owners, ARGO spa, and 77 years of tractor production in Doncaster came to an end.
Here’s an article in the finical times about EU Grants and Relocations in 2010 if you wish to did deeper https://www.ft.com/content/74ab02a6-fd85-11df-a049-00144feab49a
Many continue to praised the money from the E.U that built new infrastructure and roads but the shiny business innovation centre and the multi floored office next to the train station for easy commutes to London have been empty for years.
Despite the money that came into Doncaster from E.U grants, little was felt on the ground in post industrial communities. No matter how much money came into area, all the promises, all the professionals. Most people would express: “things have gone from bad to worse”.
Others will say: what are these people complaining about? There’s STILL work?
A quick drive around Doncaster will show how much the local economy relies on the distribution industry. These jobs have a high turn-around of staff, often agency or temp work which means no long term job security. You can (if you work hard enough) get a contract and more job security but in a team of 30, there will be a few permanent opportunities. The precious agency work, keeps people in a demoralising cycle. How can anyone build a future if your work is not secure and does not give you a decent living? How can you provide for the people you care about, without the constant fear of being laid off?
I didn’t work in a Warehouse myself but I know the reality of trying to survive on low income in that world. It’s unfair and people don’t give care Warehouse workers. I once met a middle class women who was wearing an E.U remain badge at the same time expressing “isn’t it great I can get my dungarees next day delivery from ASOS’”. No love, it’s not.
The problem is nobody cares, especially ASOS who make millions in profit and treats its workers badly. Again, I heard all about the working conditions, the low ceilings, bad air ventilation the sweat, the migrant women workers crying on the stair ways in fear of being laid off. Of course, I’m my fathers daughter and in 2015 I wanted to channel my anger into making a banner and standing outside but I was told, “I need to work” “we just need the money” and yes that was our truth. I didn’t do anything.
Shockingly, I do remember the pay packet at the end of the weeks, something like £170. after tax, after uniforms, after getting up at 4am to drive him to work because there was no transport there. ASOS makes millions in profit, I read their financial reports. I’ve never bought anything from there since. Because guess what ASOS? When you don’t pay your workers or your taxes, you are stealing money from the economy and we all suffer.
Pits vs ASOS
ASOS in Goldthorpe, was built on the site of the pit. The miners like my dad were earning much more in the 1980s than today. I’ve not researched this properly nobody is paying to speak my truth but I will dig one of my dads pay slips out one day out because god bless him he was so proud of what he earnt in his laters years as a miner.
Goldthorpe is also the is village that famously burned an effigy of Margret Thatcher. I recently went through the area, and saw “Free Tommy Robinson””We need another Trump Here” scrawled on the wall next to the dual carriage.
What’s it like in the Labour Heartlands?
For many, life on the sharp-end of austerity and low pay, is tough and humiliating. People have seen there the safety and comfort of communities decline. The back drop to all this, centralisation of power moved from local government to London and Brussels’s.
Nothings changed since Brexit. The pandemic, austerity, cost of living crisis, drug wars and now another recession. Many people can’t articulate the complexities, I’ve been writing this piece for years. What I hate more than anything is the crap journalism that comes out of London. Soundbites, T.V interviews edited and framed in particular way to make local people sound stupid or focus purely on immigration. The elite are wining they are diving us. Grinding us down.
Our areas were self-organised, self-educated, militant proud working class labour heartlands. They knew exactly want was going on in the economy and they held the government to account. I draw a a lot of strength from this history.
Their world is pretty much dead now. The older generation remember, they know what was lost. We might have gained, mobile phones, and T.V but the solidarity and care that held these communities together is thread bare.
I spoke to an ex-miner about this issue. He’s from Dunscroft a mining village in Doncaster. He left the area before the recession in 2009. He told me:
“My heart falls into my boots when I see Dunscroft, as remember what it was like before“
He is one of the most intelligent political aware man I know. Is has an MA in Industrial Studies & Trade Union Law from John Ruskin College. He voted to leave the EU.
Let’s explore another mining area in Doncaster
Dunscroft like many former mining communities is a council estate, built to serve the local pits. These are huge, three and four bedroom homes, with big gardens, much better than new builds today. These communities would have seemed like utopia compared the the two-up two down terrace houses where large families would have been cramped together with small yards and outdoor toilets.
Designed to serve the community, the miner’s themselves were part of committees deciding on the design of these homes. They included green spaces, allotments, bungalows for the elderly too. Like the ones my parents live in now. We could learn a lot from the way these communities self-organised and created their model and way of village life.
During the early 00s in that particular area saw several factories relocatedto mainland Europe with EU grants. No more pits, no more industry no more manufacturing jobs.
Why do I care?
Whilst in Doncaster I was been living on the front-line of austerity. Before that I lived a transient, shared occupancy lifestyle in London. This means I full know the reality of Generation Rent and all its trappings. Yet much worse than that was moving back to Doncaster and experienced first hand the effects broken Britain on working class communities.
Back in 2010
There was a time when all the lads I hung-out with were unemployed and had been for sometime. They drank cider, smoked weed, tried to figure out ways to keep sane. One of them was in his early 20s he’d never worked. The rest did work but had been been laid off during the recession.
One had a young family and couldn’t afford to provide for his girlfriend. He offered to repair my phone but sold -it-on to make some quick cash. At the time I was really pissed at him, for doing that. This is what being poor does it makes you ill and desperate. Whenever I saw him from that point on, I shunned him. I regret this looking back. Soon after, his girlfriend left him, then he committed suicide.
When meeting young men like this in Doncaster, all they want to do is provide for their partners and girlfriends, the want to be men in a traditional ways. They want to be able to live in a nice home, go on holiday, even if that’s a caravan in Skegness (also known as Skegvas in our local lexicon). They want to work hard, feel a sense of identity and pride. Low pay Britain has stripped many of this.
Low pay Britain has ruined young families. Insecure work often means for a mother you are better off on benefits than in a dysfunctional relationship with an unemployed partner losing his mind. I understand it’s a survival instinct. They put their kids first. I’ve had this conversation with women I love and respect. “If I left him, I’m better off on benefits”. Young men are then alone and depressed, it leads them to crime, drug misuse, anything to remedy the rejection and pain from their lives.
The Downwards Spiral.
Another young man I met in Doncaster at the start to the recession in 2010 seemed to have everything, a decent trades job, young baby, partner of 8 years, a semi detached house they’d saved for. I could see their lives were different to mine, they were young happy, they had a family a solid lives ahead. This was so different from my life in London, sat around dinner tables in Hamstead pontificating about the north south divide. This young couple had something magical about them. Honest, humbling, fun and affectionate. I felt they were really living life, whilst I’d spent my earlier years intellectualising the human condition.
This couple would never ask me about my London life, only that they didn’t like it, it meant nothing too them. The same way that the North means nothing to Londoners.
What I did, or where I’d lived or travelled didn’t matter to this young couple. Could I crack jokes? Was I a laugh? That mattered.
It was a culture shock for me to be around them, but tried I embrace their world and let go of all the pretentiousness London instilled on me. I am thankful I met this couple at their best, they changed me for the better, even if I only new them for a short time, when life was good to them.
Slowly over the next seven years I watched this couples world disintegrate, the recession took his trades job. Trying to stay a float he started dealing weed, then the mortgage payments couldn’t be met, they had to leave their house. They broke up badly. He wasn’t allowed to see his daughter. Depression, debt, bankruptcy, agency work in a Warehouse, more depression, a suicide attempt, dealing harder drugs. He started getting involved with gangs in Manchester, then ended up in prison the following year. I heard he had resorted to dealing crack some point. And when he came out of prison he was smoking spice. This was a hard working family that had everything taken from them. Every time I see these men, I think, were you like him? Did you get everything taken from you?
Back to Brexit
The only thing that could have helped is if low paid jobs paid more and offered more long term security. When living in Doncaster, I lived in an Eastern European Community because working class people on low income wages live most closely with migrant communities and guess what we mostly get on fine but non-unionised labour is not good. It’s continued to drive wages down.
For an Eastern European worker in Doncaster, I get it, this could mean your salary could be five times you wage in your home country. If you are stuck here in the U.K in a warehouse, it might seem like a prison sentence. A low paid life with little promotion or training opportunities. That’s not to say you can’t make the most of what we have here in Britain but the odds are sacked against you. If it’s not depression, it will be the hernia that will get you laid off work. Despite the fact you are working hard to reach your targets and you’ve taught yourself Polish to chat with you work mates.
On the night of the referdenmum results, we were drinking polish beer from our local Eastern European Shop, with his Polish work mates from the Warehouse. I was loosing my mind with anger and was told to calm down by everyone. I knew why people wanted to live but I knew it things wouldn’t get better.
There’s more to add to this, I’ll come back to it. For now, I’m dedicating this article to B & A. If you ever read this. None of this was your fault. It’s easy to make bad choices in a broken system that doesn’t give two fu*cks.
ARTIST RACHEL HORNE 