More than three quarters of the people of Boston, in the county of Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of England, voted to leave the EU.
According to the most recent U.K. census in 2011, Boston also has the highest proportion of eastern European immigrants of anywhere in the U.K., after an influx of EU workers to the area's agricultural sector, earning it the label of Britain's "most divided town."
St. Botolph's Church, known in typically blunt local parlance as the "Boston Stump," formerly served as a landmark to sailors arriving at the town's docks. In its neighboring Stump & Candle pub, cries of "sh-t", "fed up" and "p----d off" ring out when the current state of British politics is mentioned.
Some of the patrons accuse migrants of "coming over here to claim benefits" while others simultaneously allege that they have taken jobs and opportunity away from low-skilled workers in the area. Its proportion of workers employed in managerial, professional or technical occupations is 18.4% versus 47.1% across Great Britain. Median wages are well below the national average.
"Did they give us more police, more doctors, more hospitals, more schools, better roads? Did they give us anything to cope with it? No. We got dumped on," he says, adding that Boston used to be a "beautiful little town and still could be," but has been reduced to an "empty shell.
"When you come up from London and you see the roads in London, and then you see from Peterborough to here, they don't spend any money on any of it," the man points out indignantly. A burly man in his late fifties says the local NHS is "overwhelmed" and "you can't get a doctor's appointment," while the gaunt man angrily claims that he has been waiting over a year for a pacemaker.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, which runs the Pilgrim, has racked up almost £4 million in fines for missing key waiting time targets over the last four years. A young woman nearby confirms that she will vote Conservative, but is not sure how it will help, or whether anything will change in Boston, regardless of the result.Contrary to the bleak representation of the town given in the Stump & Candle, the Bulgarian grocery store neighboring it is bustling with activity, and the two female clerks chat jovially in native dialect to customers and a group of men congregated by the store room.
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