Immigrants, robots, and farmers | Inside the most Brexit town in Britain

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Published 2024-06-14
It wasn't a surprise when Boston in Lincolnshire voted for Brexit with the highest vote share of anywhere in the UK. The market town had seen immigration at a breakneck pace.

The town's immigrant population increased by 460% between 2004 and 2014, then multiplied by ten between 2011 and 2021. The town looked different too. Many locals said they didn’t recognise the place they had grown up in.

But since 76% of the town voted to leave the EU, not much has changed. Immigrants still come to the town in record numbers, attracted by the vacancies in Lincolnshire’s massive farming industry.

The lands around Boston are some of the most valuable farmland in Europe. Lincolnshire produces one eighth of the UK’s food and a huge amount of barley, wheat, oilseed rape and sugar beet.

Such a large industry requires a tonne of Labour. But Lincolnshire farmers have lamented how hard it is to fill vacancies on the farm. The work involves long hours and is physically demanding. Many English people just refuse to do it.

The solution for years has been to recruit Eastern Europeans, keen to work, leading to the huge numbers we’ve seen settling into Boston. But that might all change.

Ed Campbell went to Lincolnshire to explore the UK's changing farming industry and just what that might mean for Britain's most Brexit town.

Reporter: Ed Campbell
Camera: Harry Ainsworth
Producer: Laura Beveridge

But now, that might change.

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All Comments (21)
  • @PoliticsJOE
    Should we have more Proclaimers songs in videos?
  • @alexkat8297
    Brexit-voting Boston mayor who's originally from Morocco is against immigration. That's Monty Python stuff.
  • @kasper52173
    Dyson loves the UK so much he has left, got his Brexit and left lol.
  • @Christian-rn1ur
    'I supported Brexit to get our country back' says man not from this country
  • I think it's important to tell the whole story. Farmers can't find people to do the physical work for long hours FOR THE MONEY THEY OFFER.
  • should've asked the farmer what he pays those people. "brits don't want to do the work" usually means it just pays really badly for how much work it is.
  • The old mayor of Boston, who is an immigrant,now works in a cafe called Cafe Du Paris. Brilliant. Who wrote this???
  • @garymckeon5410
    i just dont understand why people wouldnt want to do a job thats hard work, long hours, shit pay ,no job security and no promotion possibility cos the boss wants to replace you to save money ....
  • @EdwardLindon
    I lived down the road from Boston until 1987. No Eastern or Central European immigrants back then, and it was already a poverty-stricken, racism-raddled pustule.
  • The EU Wasnt the problem it was our own politicians who we now have making our laws for their own benefit
  • I love the woman talking about her love of working alongside none English people. The farmer isn’t looking to give jobs to local English people. He’s looking to go automated. Yet people only want to criticise the immigrants ? It’s absolutely depressing. And he was complaining about using agency workers ? They get paid less than none agency workers so that’s his problem. What an awful man.
  • @Zenduri
    i'll copy and paste my post from the last video about boston.... I was born and raised in one of the roughest areas of Boston and i left for Uni as soon as i could rather than hang around in the sh*thole town. The locals all blame "the foreigners" for all the towns ill's. The true issue is that there's no jobs in the town aside from land work (as the area is heavily agricultural), factory work (linked to the land work) and retail and these are all relatively low paying jobs. The locals are either working and cant make ends meet or on benefits or are part of the large OAP populus in the area. With the pay and job opportunities in the area being so low, the low paid jobs have been filled by eastern Europeans who moved en masse to the area and in turn what was an aging, elderly population that’s stuck in its ways was transformed into a very varied populus that has shops and services that cater to the eastern European population. The xenophobic/racist element of the town then blames "the foreigners" for the towns decline as a convenient scape goat. The Tories have been in power for decades in this area, the money has been drained out the town on "mates deals" with Tory MP's and the town has seen no real development or injection of cash for the 30 odd years I’ve been alive. The services, dental, GP, social, care, NHS are all over worked and under funded and the town keeps growing as housing is fairly cheap compared to most parts of the country. I'm ashamed to be from Boston and my go to line when talking about it will always be " the best thing they could do to the town is burn it all down and plough it back into the land "
  • @AdamCiernicki
    Just worth pointing out: the optical sorting machines that farmer is talking about come with massive licensing costs which go straight to the pockets of hedge fund managers, venture capital groups etc.. with accounts somewhere in Caymans. Not a single penny of that is going back to the UK economy.
  • @maartenaalsmeer
    Rich folk telling the working class: 'that's the reason you're poor!' while pointing at an immigrant. And people keep falling for it, for years on end. While it's the rich that keep the working class poor.
  • @teeq985
    It's so strange hearing an obviously non-british accent talking about taking their country back... what.
  • @kerrydevlin
    The arrogance of this farmer is astounding! His workers a right there! I'll bet their wages are all pish!
  • @MackerelCat
    It’s not that the British aren’t willing to do that work, it’s that they aren’t willing to accept the abysmal wages. I worked with some Latvians for minimum wage and they told me it was still 4x what they could earn for the same work in Latvia. So all respect to those young people who made the choice to go out into the world to find work, but the consequence is that wages have been suppressed to the point that it is impossible for people to thrive.
  • Dani - who had to go to court for threatening people in 2022 - is from Morocco, but complains about other foreigners. I hate certain foreigners, too, but my hate for foreigners is limited to his exact kind: foreigners who hate foreigners who do the exact same thing they do. This is absolutely ridiculous. Luckily, he and his opinion do not matter.
  • @lydiahanke
    The woman in the green jacket, is so intelligent, compassionate and drops truth bombs one after another!
  • I worked on farms for years, circa 1980/90's, sorting spuds etc. Back then it was cash in hand, so young lads on the dole, students & older women from the village earning a bit of pocket money. This sort of work, fruit picking etc was often done by women from the cities who wanted a holiday in the country & to earn a few bob, but things change. A lot of older people can't abide the change &, to be honest are racist. They want the England of the 1970's, they forget the hardship & look back at the past through rose tinted glasses. Folk have always blamed immigrants, be that Huguenots, Jews, Caribbeans or whatever, it's human nature, tribal feudalism runs deep. Easier to find a scapegoat than try & analyse a complex issue. Personally I blame the bastards in power, I try to treat everyone the same whatever his religion or colour of his skin.