In 2016, on the day after the Brexit vote, my home town’s pub opened early and celebratory pints were drunk underneath union flags. I was in a rehearsal room in London surrounded by the shellshocked and outraged. The media I read on the tube home reiterated what I’d heard all day: these leave voters were ignorant and racist. My town voted just over 70% for leave. Three years later the constituency voted Conservative for the first time in its history. In a recent council election it voted Reform. There comes a time when the unthinkable becomes inevitable.
My town is in the East Midlands. Where it was once coal mining and manufacturing that provided work for many people, it is now a huge distribution warehouse for Sports Direct. Many eastern European people have made Shirebrook their home and work at the warehouse. I have been thinking about towns such as mine – and there are many of them – with the recent outpouring of anger and xenophobia towards asylum seekers and migrants.
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