‘I can’t stop smiling’: Booze, bingo and bunting at Barnsley Brexit celebrations

The Independent joins revellers toasting EU departure in South Yorkshire town – and finds them in party mood, writes Colin Drury

We’re alright, (Union) Jack: (from left) Jayne Hulme, Michelle Burton and Vicky Felton raise a celebratory glass (Pictures by Colin Drury/The Independent)

Brexit night in Barnsley and, at the Highstone Road Working Men’s Club, the celebrations include bingo, a live turn doing Sixties covers and industrial quantities of Union Jacks.

They do not, however, include the planned big screen showing the countdown to 11pm in Parliament Square.

Logistical difficulties have meant they can’t get a TV into the club’s main room to show the exact moment the UK departs the EU. There’s a couple out the back bar but the regulars there want Sky Sports News on.

Well, it is transfer deadline day after all.

“No matter,” says Vicky Felton, local councillor, organiser of tonight’s festivities and absolutely determined that nothing will dampen spirits. “I’ll just go on stage and use my watch for the countdown. It’s got an alarm and everything.”

The Independent is here in South Yorkshire because this is the biggest Brexit night party in a town that was one of the biggest supporters of Brexit.

Some 68.3 per cent of voters in Barnsley wanted out of the EU. When Nigel Farage came and spoke at this very club in November, it was packed out. Cllr Felton herself was the most successful Brexit Party candidate in December’s general election. She still lost – but did amass some 11,000 votes.

“Not bad, not bad at all for little Vicky from a Barnsley council estate,” the 36-year-old mother-of-two says tonight. “Nigel asked if I wanted to go to London for the celebrations and make a speech – just because I did so well – but my people can’t afford to be going down there and, tonight of all nights, I wanted to be spending it with them.”

So, here she is, as 11pm approaches, climbing onto the club’s stage – think Phoenix Nights and you have the right vibe – with a gin in one hand and a flag in the other, and, indeed, using her watch as she guides the cheering revellers through: Five-Four-Three-Two-One…

And then – massive cheer – we are a free nation!

“Happy Brexittttt,” comes the cry. “Happy Independence Day.”

There are hugs and kisses, and hands are grabbed and an impromptu rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” is belted out and up to the rafters. And, then, within 10 minutes, there’s the raffle draw.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for 47 years,” says Darren Duell – leaving the EU, he means, not the raffle. “We should never have joined, we should never have stayed and we should never have taken so long to act once we voted out.”

He’s so delighted, he says, he’s just had his first cigarette in six years to celebrate. How was it? “Disgusting actually – I’m not sure what I ever saw in it.”

Such parties were simultaneously taking place all across the country on Friday night, of course. In Dudley, revellers could attend an Independence Day Disco (“come in English fancy dress”); in Hebden Bridge, a Leavers of Britain pub crawl snaked around the town; and in Morley, there was the Big Brexit Bash – organised by Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns and MEP Lucy Harris, and widely touted in advance as the largest of the celebrations outside London.

In the event just 400 people showed up there – 50 of them from the media. Not even Ms Harris herself bothered with it. She sent a video message from the capital instead.

Similarly, turn out is not exactly overwhelming here in Barnsley – just 60 or so are here – and there's no avoiding the conclusion the atmosphere has, despite the balloons and bunting, just the slightest sense of anticlimax about it.

Darren Duell: ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for 47 years’ (Colin Drury/The Independent)

“I think we’ll talk about this for generations to come,” says Jayne Humle, a 50-year-old teacher looking resplendent in a Union Jack blouse. “And we can say we were here.”

What? At the Highstone Road WMC? “Where else would you rather be?”

As we speak, she’s just won £7 on the bingo – almost almost enough for two double gin and tonics here. So she has a point.

“I feel like… I don’t know how to describe it,” says Mick Carberry. “I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I think a lot of people had started to lose faith this would happen. We never thought we’d see the day.”

The 47-year-old was there with his ex-wife, Janine Parker, and her new husband, Glen.

“Well, why shouldn’t we all be friends?” asked the latter. “If the politicians could show the same maturity, we’d have been out the EU in 2016. All this squabbling. What good has it done?”

How would leaving the EU make a direct difference to their lives?

“In so many ways,” replies the 62-year-old taxi-driver, not really offering any of them. “It’s about democracy.”

Flag day: Janine Parker and Glen Parker (centre) with Mick Carberry (Colin Drury/The Independent)

There was much talk of this over the course of the night, as it goes: democracy, sovereignty and, um, fishing rights. For a town about as far away from the sea as it’s possible to be in the UK, the Brexiteers of Barnsley are really passionate about fishing rights.

“It’s indicative of how we surrendered to the EU,” says Mr Parker.

He remembers a time, he says, “when everyone had an income, everyone had a job, everyone was happy”.

Do you know when that was, he asks. “Before 1973,” he answers his own question.

As the drink flows up to a midnight last orders, such opinions become increasingly pronounced.

“We used to be called Great Britain,” says one older bloke, apparently ignoring the fact that the country is literally still called Great Britain. “And we will be again. Mark my words, we will be again.”

At the door, as things begin to wind up, Cllr Felton is waving everyone off. “I’m so happy,” she says. “I can’t wipe the smile off my face.”

A glass raised: “Here’s to the future.”