Shoppers walk past an empty commercial unit in the central market square of Boston, England, Nov. 8, 2019.
Elliot Smith | CNBC
BOSTON, England — With Britain facing its
second general election
since the historic vote to leave the European Union in June 2016,
voters in the nation’s most pro-Brexit town are even more angry and
disillusioned than they were three years ago.
More than three
quarters of the people of Boston, in the county of Lincolnshire in the
East Midlands of England, voted to leave the EU.
According to the
most recent U.K. census in 2011, Boston also has the highest proportion
of eastern European immigrants of anywhere in the U.K., after an influx
of EU workers to the area’s agricultural sector, earning it the label of
Britain’s “most divided town.”
Between 2004 and 2014, the town’s
migrant population grew by 460%, and the proportion of residents of the
Borough of Boston born in EU accession countries such as Lithuania,
Poland and Latvia, stands at around 12%.
The center of the quaint
English farming town is a melting pot of local and eastern European
chatter as residents work, shop, visit the bank, the drug store, the
pub, and co-exist seemingly without incident.
Yet the first word out of the mouth of every local when asked about the difficulties facing the town is “immigration.”
St.
Botolph’s Church, known in typically blunt local parlance as the
“Boston Stump,” formerly served as a landmark to sailors arriving at the
town’s docks. In its neighboring Stump & Candle pub, cries of
“sh-t”, “fed up” and “p----d off” ring out when the current state of
British politics is mentioned.
Brexit, immigration and the death of hope
Slogans
like “will of the people” and “leave means leave” still dominate the
local lexicon, and almost to a man, the regulars will be voting for
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party
next month in the hope of getting Brexit over the line before the
extended deadline of January 31. The simmering frustration with
opposition lawmakers for their successful attempts to block a “no-deal”
Brexit in Parliament is palpable.
The constituency of Boston and
Skegness has been a safe Conservative seat since its inception in 1997,
and the party is almost certain to retain it in December after Brexit
Party leader Nigel Farage announced that he would not stand candidates
in seats carried by the Conservatives in 2017.
The River Witham and St. Botolph’s Church, known locally as the ‘Boston Stump’, in Boston, England, Nov. 8, 2019.
Elliot Smith | CNBC
This notwithstanding, nobody in Boston seems to believe that the upcoming general election will
resolve the country’s political divisions, and the tone is one of exasperation.
“I’m
not bothered if there’s a deal or no deal,” one regular says
indignantly. “Everybody’s frightened to death about what might happen,
but nobody knows what will happen. We should just go with the deal, but
the opposition are always going to block it.”
Some of the patrons
accuse migrants of “coming over here to claim benefits” while others
simultaneously allege that they have taken jobs and opportunity away
from low-skilled workers in the area.
Migrants from the eastern
European countries which joined the EU after 2004 are more likely to be
in work than British born working-age adults, according to the Migration
Advisory Committee.
Boston’s employment rate is comfortably
higher than the U.K. average and its percentage of out-of-work benefits
claimants sits at 2.7% compared to a national average of 2.9%, according
to the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics.
Boston’s
total population did grow by nearly 16% between 2001 and 2011, double
the national average, but around 42% of the town’s workforce is employed
in the categories of “process plant and machine operatives” or
“elementary occupations,” versus a national average of just below 17%.
Its
proportion of workers employed in managerial, professional or technical
occupations is 18.4% versus 47.1% across Great Britain. Median wages
are well below the national average.
The bottom 10% of earners are
more detrimentally affected by EU migration, but the change is
comparatively small compared to overall wage growth for U.K.-born
workers. So while low income U.K.-born workers experience more of the
negative impact of increased unskilled migration compared to higher
earners, this is outstripped by the average increase to their wages over
that same period.
An Oxford Economics study in 2018 estimated
that EU migrants’ annual net tax contributions are approximately £2,300
($2,960) more than the average U.K. adult.
A Union Jack flies from an apartment block against the backdrop of the ‘Boston Stump’ in Boston, England, Nov. 8, 2019.
Elliot Smith | CNBC
One
man in his sixties who spoke to CNBC in the Stump & Candle
attributed the disgruntlement not to the migrants themselves, but to a
lack of U.K. government spending to enable public services to deal with
the surging population.
“Did they give us more police, more
doctors, more hospitals, more schools, better roads? Did they give us
anything to cope with it? No. We got dumped on,” he says, adding that
Boston used to be a “beautiful little town and still could be,” but has
been reduced to an “empty shell.”
‘We’ve been robbed blind’
Contrary
to his peers, he welcomes the presence of migrant workers as a positive
for the area, but claims the presence of large supermarkets at the
expense of local businesses has “drawn the lifeblood” out of Boston.
“In
the old days, that money used to circulate in Boston, we all got a bit
of it. It would go round and round and round — now the money flies, it’s
gone, we never see anything,” he says.
The group paints a
dystopian picture of Boston’s decline, describing a wasteland of boarded
up windows, businesses closing down to be replaced by charity stores.
There
are indeed an increasing number of empty commercial units dotted
throughout the central shopping district, but as locals greet one
another gleefully on the sidewalk on a wintry Friday morning, it evokes
greater likeness to the archetypal sleepy, post-industrial East Midlands
town than the nightmare they are depicting.
A vacant furnishing store in Boston, England, Nov. 8, 2019.
Elliot Smith | CNBC
Much
of the anger which fueled the Brexit vote seems to stem from a sense of
neglect by consecutive British governments, rather than any
long-running gripe with the EU itself.
“When you come up from
London and you see the roads in London, and then you see from
Peterborough to here, they don’t spend any money on any of it,” the man
points out indignantly.
“We’re stuck out here in the Wash, nearly in the North Sea, and they don’t even know we’re here. That’s what it’s all about.”
Responses vary with regards to what Brexit will achieve, however.
“We
don’t want to be dictated to!” one elderly gentlemen yells from across
the room, which by now has escalated from a quiet midday hum to a
bellowing cacophony. “I’m not bothered, as long as we’re out!” a gaunt,
wild-eyed man shouts, adding that “it’ll get rid of the foreigners.”
“It’s
not going to solve anything,” the first man sighs, “because we’ve got
no pull on government, we’ve got no voice, we’ve got nothing to help
us.”
He points out to his friend that Boston will still need EU
migrant labor on the farms and in the packhouses, but says the money
which once circulated within the local economy will still “fly away” and
the town will continue to be “robbed blind.”
Strained public services
Financial
pressures on the U.K.’s national health service (NHS) are, aside from
Brexit, one of the pre-eminent battlegrounds in British politics.
A
burly man in his late fifties says the local NHS is “overwhelmed” and
“you can’t get a doctor’s appointment,” while the gaunt man angrily
claims that he has been waiting over a year for a pacemaker.
Out
in the central market square, Pat, a 74-year-old former secretary at
Boston’s flagship Pilgrim Hospital, claims it is no longer “fit for
purpose.”
“We can’t blame the foreigners for everything but our
services are stretched to the limit and have been for a good few years
due to the influx of people coming here,” she says, adding that the
“schools are packed to capacity” and “English children are having to be
held back” due to the growing proportion of non-English speaking pupils.
NHS
trusts across the country are spending more than they are bringing in,
and the NHS was asked several years ago to find £22 billion in savings
by 2020, prompting further cuts.
A commercial unit sits empty beside a pawn shop in Boston, England, Nov. 8, 2019.
Elliot Smith | CNBC
United
Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, which runs the Pilgrim, has racked up
almost £4 million in fines for missing key waiting time targets over the
last four years.
Meanwhile, EU immigrants make up about 5% of
English NHS staff and about 5% of the English population, according to
the best available data. Across the U.K., EU immigrants make up 10% of
registered doctors and 4% of registered nurses.
Pat does not think
the election will help to heal the nation’s divisions, and suggests
lawmakers on both sides of the aisle need to “get round the table and
work together.”
She empathizes with ousted former Prime Minister
Theresa May and complains that under Johnson, the country is “two steps
back from where we were” on Brexit. “We’ve become the laughing stock of
the world,” she says, adding that she is unsure which way she’ll vote in
December.
A young woman nearby confirms that she will vote
Conservative, but is not sure how it will help, or whether anything will
change in Boston, regardless of the result.
‘Everyone is going home’
Contrary
to the bleak representation of the town given in the Stump &
Candle, the Bulgarian grocery store neighboring it is bustling with
activity, and the two female clerks chat jovially in native dialect to
customers and a group of men congregated by the store room.
Beside
them are a string of Western Union posters headlined “Know Your Rights”
and containing a string of advice for migrants on how to avoid
exploitation and discrimination.
“It is your right to be treated honestly and fairly,” the top bullet point reads.
Graffiti on the wall of a private car park in Boston, England. Nov. 8, 2019
Elliot Smith | CNBC
Interaction
between Bostonian and Eastern European residents seems minimal at best.
One 28-year-old employee at a Romanian butchers has lived here for six
years and says that while she has found the locals to be generally
friendly, her community very much keeps to itself.
Over on the
less postcard-worthy side of the River Witham, West Street, a long,
straight road toward the railway station, is lined on both sides with
Eastern European stores, in an area which once hosted more empty units
than occupied ones.
Romas Latvenas, a grocery and protein
supplement store owner who moved to Boston from Lithuania in 2004, says
despite the relative prosperity they have enjoyed in Boston, Brexit is
forcing EU migrants to consider relocating, while already driving up
food prices for businesses.
Eastern European shops on West Street, Boston, England, Nov. 8, 2019.
Elliot Smith
“Our
businesses are already being affected, and it is not just European
shops, but everything. People who are working in the factories, the
Lithuanians, Polish, Latvians, everyone is going home, or they are going
to Germany, Holland or Belgium,” he says.
“The currency going
down means that people can just move to mainland Europe and it is the
same, and now look around — the shop is empty, the streets are empty.”
Romas also says his own family is considering moving, despite having lived in Boston for over a decade.
“With
fewer people, fewer workers, the local economy is going off a cliff.
Fifteen years ago, these shops were empty — there was maybe one European
shop and that was it, the windows and houses and estate agents were
boarded up,” he says.
“We all come here to work, we pay our taxes,
and I don’t know what the English people think will happen. The big
people in London do not care about this place, they do not care about us
— it is very bad for us now.”