A stroll around Stoke (the town, not the City of Stoke-on-Trent) is a stark reminder of why so many of Britain's urban centres are festering sores of Brexit-coloured resentment. An entire population of skilled, hard-working and cultured people were just abandoned as global capitalism conspired to shift their jobs to an automated factory somewhere else. The political class, largely indistinguishable from those who live on dividends rather than wages, sat by and talked about UK Plc or some such, while the worst of them diverted the blame: to foreigners, immigrants, socialists, environmentalists, black people or do-gooders. The city deteriorates. The middle-classes flee to the suburbs or the countryside. Jobs dry up. Health plummets. Drug addiction soars. The occasional lottery-funded shiny new building goes up but there's still no answer to the question of how 200,000 can meaningfully use the time between birth and death when there's no interest amongst the rulers in developing an economic, social and cultural model. When the rulers don't come from anywhere like this, never meet people from here, don't attend the same schools, workplaces, clubs or universities. The population voted Brexit because it promised a false clarity, an easy target. If they think Westminster cares for them more than Brussels did, they're utterly deluded. It has no faith in politicians: those who vote, vote for whichever cynic offers them the simplest, most vicious lies because 'it's complicated' never won an election. And the place – like so many others – rots away.
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| The mighty Trent |
Am I angry? Yes. I live in another battered post-industrial city where it's assumed that the poor have no higher aspirations, to beauty, art, clean air or nice things. So they don't get any of them. Not long ago I was leafletting for the Labour Party in an area near my house. More than once I realised that the abandoned houses, cardboard where the window glass should have been, were in fact occupied, owned by distant landlords who just didn't care as long as the rent arrived. We lost that election. Perhaps we should have. At least the Tories don't pretend to care about the losers in the social-Darwinist struggle, but Labour had its chance and still these places existed as a rebuke to its disconnection.
These photos aren't ruin porn. They're angry. They're about the struggle between pride and degradation. There's a lot of talk now about regeneration, about human-centred cities, guaranteed incomes and dignity. I wish I believed that any of it will last longer than the next polling statistics.
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