Episode Two - Bradford, Yorkshire, UK
Over my first few days I met people from all walks of life. Politicians from both sides of the political divide, the working class white English, Asians and Eastern Europeans. What I learned was this; there may have been great poverty, but as we say in English, there wasn’t poverty of mind. People were deeply informed and profoundly honest.
I walked down an old paved street, overgrown as nature seemed to be reclaiming it. It was empty of life but full of litter and dirt - as though people had given up. A man came out of his house to talk to me. He was trying desperately to sell his home and move to a new area. He had lived there for forty years - but since the eastern European migrants have moved in, house prices had crashed by 40%. He said, ‘I worked for 51 years and finally retired. And now I have nothing left’. We have a saying, ‘An englishman’s home is his castle’. It was difficult to argue as I looked around at the filthy street, that this man didn’t have the right to be resentful.
John Pennington is the Conservative Councillor for Bradford. He is a Brexiteer. In his words ‘The sooner we get out of Europe and take back control, the better. As a nation we have a history of coming together through adversity, there is absolutely no reason why we won’t make a success of this’. I wanted to say, ‘Yes, but what about the fact that Europe has finally been at peace for 70 years?’ but he said his goodbyes before I could speak, and started knocking on people’s doors, campaigning for the local elections. Politicians know when to leave.
Everyone I spoke with was fed up with the media, and it’s clear from the conversations I had with people, that what were reading and hearing from news channels, was simply not the truth. When I was in Afghanistan, reporters would fly in for three days, make a song and dance about what was really happening there, and then fly back to their ‘ivory tower’ in New York or whatever. I used to hate them; they had their story planned before they ever arrived - they were just part of some great elitist proxy. That's how it felt to me anyway, and it was how people here felt.
There are times when I miss my country, the subtle stuff that you can’t see or hear, but you feel it because you are the same. And I understood my people. I really felt their anger. Because it was an intelligent anger. When I listen to how the European media reports on Brexit, I sometimes find that anger rising in me, and I become even more English as a result. It was the same message again and again from the people I met, ‘we don’t trust the Government, we don’t trust big business and we don’t trust Europe’ - and here’s the weird thing, when I questioned them, they responded like professors of political science and you were knocked over by their knowledge. And maybe it’s why I stopped listening to politicians and the news years ago.
I think I became in danger of being confused and annoyed in those first few days. After so many conversations, I was beginning to see Brexit differently. Living in a nice apartment in Paris, protects you from the truth of the lives of ordinary working class people. I felt unsure.
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