The ‘left-behinds’: In communities like Mansfield and Dagenham, the blame game is the only one in town
One is a former mining stronghold north of Nottingham, the other – once home to a massive Ford plant – sits on the borders of east London and Essex. Both voted Leave in 2016, each has seen deprivation rise and immigration grow – and anger towards politicians explode. Nick Ryan hears strikingly similar stories
Some say that Mansfield sparkles in the sunlight, thanks to the sandstone in the local brick. But today the rain heaves down, darkening the already approaching dusk. Just a few travellers disembark from the branch line that serves Nottingham, the metropole lying half an hour to the south, to which this former mining community seems tethered like some half-forgotten satellite.
The station building is long closed. The only beacon is a nearby Costa Coffee, its giant windows framed against the failing light. Recent history has not been kind to Mansfield. A Nottinghamshire market town of about 100,000, it can boast a proud industrial heritage. Coal mines once dotted the nearby landscape. Textiles, engineering and brewing all offered substantial local employ. No more.
During the bitter miners’ strike of 1984, many of the pits here remained open. But that only staved off what was to come. At one time Nottinghamshire had 42 collieries and 40,000 miners, making it one of the most successful coalfields in Europe. All are now closed. The legacy of the mines is here, of course: in Mansfield’s statues, in the stories still shared by the men who once worked in the pits, and preserved for posterity in the town’s quirky museum. But the wealth coal once brought in? Gone.
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