Crumbles Cafe, in Lowestoft. Credit: Sam Mellish / In Pictures via Getty

“It’s shit,” Dean fires back when I ask what he thinks of this place. “Gone totally downhill. It’s dying.” He takes another swig of his pint. It isn’t yet midday, but Dean (he doesn’t give me his surname) and a group of friends have already settled at a table outside the Wetherspoon’s pub by the railway station.
Lowestoft isn’t dead yet. But it is on life support. It’s hard to imagine, as you wander along its depleted high street and past the shabby facades looking out over the 19th-century harbour, that this town on the coast of sleepy Suffolk was once an industrial powerhouse. Until, that is, you begin to stumble upon the innumerable reminders – the museums and statues and faded signs on old maritime buildings – of its former status as a major fishing port. You can’t avoid them. And neither should you wish to. For you cannot understand any town without knowing its history.
But no place can survive on glories past. These days, Lowestoft is just one of our many battered and blighted former industrial towns, the sort that were once the pride of the nation but are now regarded by some among our political and cultural elites as a bit of an embarrassment. This old maritime jewel isn’t even treading water; it is slowly sinking.
Dean moved his family up from South East London 34 years ago. “I’d go back if I could.” I ask how things have changed. “The fishing industry has been destroyed. You used to be able to hop from boat to boat in the harbour. Now you’d drown.” What else? “Factories have closed. The main shops have gone. All we’ve got left is takeaways and charity shops. A lot more foreigners live here now. But I’m not prejudiced,” he swiftly assures me.
Almost everyone I speak to here says the same thing. Fishing destroyed. Factories closed. Shops gone. Town in decline.
In its heyday, Lowestoft was home to a fleet of over a thousand trawlers and drifters. Some vessels fished in waters as far afield as Norway. It is said that if you weren’t employed in the industry yourself, you knew someone who was. Fishing was later supplemented by the presence of major employers such as Shell, Sanyo, Boulton and Paul, and Eastern Coachworks.
The town benefitted additionally through its appeal as a holiday destination. Holidaymakers would flock here in summers past to enjoy the golden beaches and other attractions.
Today, the only trawler – the Mincarlo – doesn’t leave the harbour (it is a museum ship), and the big firms have decamped. The holidaymakers still come but, in truth, it’s hard to imagine Lowestoft as a resort of choice.
The belief that the European Union – and in particular the Common Fisheries Policy with its rigid quota system – is responsible for the town’s plight is widespread. There is much truth in it, of course. But it isn’t the only explanation. God knows successive British governments must take their share of responsibility for the evisceration of our industrial base.
Still, it’s no wonder that 63% of the electorate in this part of Suffolk voted Leave in the referendum and almost 40% for the Brexit Party in the recent European elections. The Remain campaign never really stood a chance here. The EU has become the symbol of all that has gone wrong in Lowestoft. Brave would be the politician who ventured into this town to tell people they got it wrong and must vote all over again.
Looking in at the Woodbine café (established 1895) near the entrance to the docks, I get talking to some locals. Christie Vorster and her family were forced out of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe when she was 13. Now, 17 years later, she is unemployed and in receipt of Universal Credit. She hunts daily for worthwhile employment. Her last job, at a day centre, didn’t offer enough hours. She isn’t hopeful of finding anything soon.
Her despair is justified. The most recent figures I could find reveal that 33% of the town’s population have no qualifications, and the number of young people in receipt of out-of-work benefits across the wider district is double the national average.
Those in work don’t have it much easier here. A report last year by the Low Pay Commission showed that the local authority has one of the highest rates of workers earning only the minimum wage across the whole of Britain.
“There’s just nothing for young people to do here,” Christie says.
We are joined in our conversation by 79-year-old Billy Crago. Billy fished out of these waters for half a century, eventually buying and operating his own trawlers. “Fishing was a huge industry here,” he tells me. “Everything depended on it. Other industries relied on it: boat-building, engineering works, dry docks. But they all went when fishing went.” I tell him I witnessed something similar when much of the Ford motor plant was closed in my hometown of Dagenham. I feel his pain.

“The fish market workers used to queue along the road to come in here when I was a little girl,’ says Rose Sinacola, who serves the teas and breakfasts in this place. ‘They would bring their urns with them. It would open at six o’clock in the morning. But everything’s changed now.”
“There’s a lot of violence,’ comes a voice from a table behind me. Christine McKensey-Stowe is sitting with a friend. She is 63 and in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance, surviving on £70-a-week. She says she is too ill to work and has been waiting for a home medical assessment for 14 months. ‘There’s a gang culture. And they’re starting young. I was abused by a nine-year-old in McDonald’s for telling him off for smoking.”
Christie and Christine begin swapping tales of violence and arson and other such lawlessness. I ask if they ever see police officers walking the beat. Christine looks at me with an equal measure of bewilderment and derision. I may as well have asked if Elvis comes to town for the occasional gig. She nods towards the high street. “It’s tough for old people when the shops close down. Most of them can’t work a computer, so they can’t shop online. It must be terrible for them.”
“And the rents are too high for young people,” Rose says. “Unless you’ve got a well-paid job, you can never expect to get your own place.”
I ask if any of them has faith in politicians to put things right. They don’t. “I’d chuck them all out and start again,” Christine says. “They don’t bother about people here. Everything’s being cut. I don’t know much about politics, but I know enough to know they don’t care about us.”
I get the sense that neither the modern Left’s preoccupation with identity politics and class war, nor the New Right’s zeal for free trade, nor the liberal cosmopolitanism of the so-called ‘centrists’ would resonate here at all. I doubt that any among Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg or Chuka Umunna would be welcomed as some knight in shining armour in this town.
Buzzwords such as ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and ‘inclusivity’ are far from the lips of people in Lowestoft. But speak about work and community and family, and the conversation comes alive. It is obvious that there is a hankering for something much more meaningful than that which is offered by the political mainstream, something rooted in the concepts of place and belonging and social solidarity.
These folk are atomised and disaffected for sure. But there is a residual community spirit that refuses to be extinguished. They are desperate to be proud of their town – if only it would let them.
Leaving the Woodbine, I head towards the war memorial near the entrance to South Pier. A collection of wreaths lie at the base of the granite obelisk. One displays the logo of Ukip. There is nothing from the other parties. I reflect on what the men immortalised here would think of their town today. They battled against fascism, of course. Real fascism. I wonder how they might react to their descendants being accused of enabling fascism for daring to vote for a return of the very national sovereignty they gave their lives to defend.
Before I depart, I take the short walk up to Ness Point, the most easterly point of the British Isles. This small headland juts out into the waves, as if straining to be joined with continental Europe, only to be reined back in by the rest of the country. Westminster is just over a hundred miles from here as the crow flies. It may as well be an ocean away.
Looking out across the grey, forbidding North Sea, I imagine the days when armadas of drifters and trawlers would leave this place, sometimes for weeks on end, to ply their trade on the unforgiving waves. I picture, too, the families of the fishermen sitting by oil lamps in their modest little cottages, anxiously awaiting the return of their loved ones. These days the anxieties of the townsfolk stem not from meteorological storms, but from those of globalisation and unfettered capitalism.
Heading back inland on the train as the light begins to dwindle, we are quickly into the Suffolk countryside. The spires and farms beyond the carriage window are evocative of A.E. Housman’s “Into my heart an air that kills” – his lament for a world lost and unrecoverable. There may be no blue remembered hills among these flatlands, but it is certainly a land of lost content. I see it shining plain.
For Lowestoft is a tale of our times. Its long, slow decline stands as a testament to the alienation and neglect of our post-industrial and coastal communities. Once confident and proud, they now fight to keep their head above the waterline. We should feel a sense of shame for having abandoned these places to their fate.
Yet, for all that, I didn’t detect a seething fury among the people I left behind. More a sense of resignation and acute disenchantment. A quiet anger and utter pessimism in the prospect of anything or anyone coming to their aid.
I don’t expect the good folk of Lowestoft to be hammering at the gates of parliament any time soon. But I do fear that, such is their cynicism in the entire political process and its ability to improve their lives, they will – if they haven’t done so already – disengage from it completely. Perhaps never vote again.
That may suit some people, of course – those who privately regard voters in these communities with contempt and believe the country would be better off if their voices stayed unheard. But for the health of our democracy and civic life – and most importantly our sense of ourselves as one nation – the implications of that would, in the long run, be far more profound.
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SubscribeAre these the same US intelligence officials who thought they would be able to hold their Christmas party in Kabul?
WHAT? Are you kidding, mate? Christmas party cancelled?
WOW! Another example of cancel culture.
If anyone thinks the US is in a position to defend its supposed interests far from North America, think again. The era of American hegemony, roughly from 1945 until maybe 1975 (end of Vietnam war), or 1992 or so (First Gulf War), is over. Some historians say that the beginning of the end of the British Empire was the Boer War, to strike a parallel. The US has continuously had extremely bad leadership in this period and beyond, and now the only real issue is managing American decline. Make America Great Again? Maybe. But this is recognition that America is no longer great. Build Back Better? Maybe, because the US was allowed to completely fall apart over decades. America should actively prepare for war, but it will be a civil war where it rips itself apart.
Now will Russia invade Ukraine? Maybe. There are 8mm ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and they are, broadly sympathetic to Russian greatness. There is actually a similar situation among Baltic Russians, who enjoy living in the EU, but watch Russian TV, speak Russian almost exclusively, and are certainly share a Russian mentality that is heavy on paranoia. They would be sympathetic, at least initially, if Russia made a move.
Another point that is mentioned, briefly, is China. It seems quite clear that China will move to re-take Hong Kong and Taiwan–a question of when, not if. HK now seems a real part of China, with the new saying being “One country, one system,” and Taiwan has been an irritant for decades. China is in a position of economic and military (almost) parity, and they are much, much closer to HK and Taiwan than the US. It’s only a matter of time, even though Sleepy Joe has moved the US position on Taiwan from a position of “strategic ambiguity” to a new position of “strategic stupidity,” vowing, w/o telling anyone else, that the US would defend Taiwan. Ha!
But clearly the timetable is subject to change. If Russia invades Ukraine, look for China to make a move against HK or Taiwan. If China invades HK or Taiwan, look for Russia to move on Ukraine. Any hope of serious US intervention–and I’m not even sure this would be a good thing–is false hope.
I am sure China and Russia will coordinate their actions with perhaps Iran as well. If Hamas and Hezbolla attack Israel and Turkey moves on Greece, Biden could have a lot on his plate. Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk logistics. Spread the USA thinly across the globe and there is not the logistics to supply multiple locations.
The unknown quantity of all the armies is the combat effectiveness. How good are the offensive capabilities of Russia, Iran and China? Can officers at battalion level and lower think for themselves ?They are not Nazi Germany in 1940.
The ethnic Russians in the BalticStates are relatively recent arrivals, and the EU insisted on preserving their political and linguistic rights before joining the EU. I find it unlikely that the ethnic Russians would prefer the hardship of Russian rule to the western European life they now have.
Make no mistake about it. The US wants this war. If you haven’t noticed the US kleptocrats have used Ukraine as a money laundering operation including the Biden crime family!!! All that money they dumped in didn’t go to the Ukrainian people. If they can spark off a large Russian reaction they finally kill Nordstream 2 and can isolate Europe from Russian economic trade. Europe stays under the US thumb. They don’t care one iota about Ukraine… other than they need it to be an expoitable basket case since they lost Afghanistan and are close to losing Iraq.
Whether they care or not, it is not the US but Russia which has marched into parts of easter Ukraine – the first time a sovereign European nation has been invaded since WWII.
And it is Russia which is massing troops on the Ukraine border.
Yet, bizarrely, you accuse the States of suing for war.
I’m also extremely unsure what the strategy behind Russia’s recent actions are and I’m sure that is the aim of the game for Putin: to keep us guessing.
He could secure Ukraine in the blink of an eye. The USA isn’t fully committed to its defence and Europe is, quite simply, a useless bystander. However, I don’t think the ease or prospective success of a military operation is the dominant consideration for Putin.
He, like the USA is wondering what the Ukraine is really worth to him. Whatever happens, the message to Ukraine is: you are not an autonomous, self-determining nation. You are at the mercy of what the higher powers decide you mean to them. Maybe they are not “unconcerned” – but just realistic.
The real issue, I would think, is whether Putin considers the Ukraine to be part of greater Russia, just as the English consider Scotland to be part of the U.K. After all wasn’t part of Ukraine absorbed into Greater Russia in the 17th century, and then the rest of Ukraine, following the breakup of Poland, in the late 18th century?
In other words, the US has absolutely no business interfering in the Ukraine as it poses no security concern for either the European Nato countries or the US. Indeed, I would argue, that had the US not tried to interfere in Ukraine and help overthrow the previous regime, and had the US not tried to incorporate the Ukraine into Nato, there wouldn’t be an issue with Ukraine. In other words, the Russians, paranoid as they are and have always been, don’t wont a hostile forward position right at their southwestern border.
As for the Baltic states who have joined Nato, good luck to them if they expect article 5 to actually be invoked, given that most Americans (and I would wager most western europeans as well) couldn’t even point to Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia on a map.
Russia conquered Crimea in the 18th Century to prevent Muslim Tatars enslaving Russians which had taken place for centuries. Kruschev who had Ukrainian connections transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in the 1950s. Most of the Donbas region in the Ukraine was very lowly populated until the mid 19th Century when Russians migrated to work in coal mines and steel works. The USA and Europe is in danger of getting involved in a conflict about which we are clueless.
A few years ago I suggested to a retired diplomat and he agreed that The West should have insisted on the Finlandisation of former USSR territories. Finland post 1945 was free market democratic country but not politicaly or militarily aligned to communism or the West. Ukraine could have developed it’s agriculture and become a major food producer for the Middle East/North Africa.
The reality is that we have a opinion /ruling class who are basically ignorant of history, geography, religion, language, culture , etc and have never had leadership experience in foreign countries which is why conflicts spread. There is an Indian saying ” What could have been stopped by 300 men in the morning could not be stopped by 3000 in the afternoon”.
The conflcts post 1989 collapse of communism are due to the ruling classes ignorance; whether Conservative, Liberal or Labour, American, British or European. What is needed is to understand the divides between peoples and when they were created; if these go back 5,000 years then people need to know the history of the last 5,000 years. An example is Egypt whose borders have changed little in the last 5,000 years.
Spot on.
The port in Sevastopol was established under Catherine the Great in the late 1700s. The Charge of the Light brigade and the Nazi Crimea campaign make the Alamo look like a Sunday picnic. Westerners are propagandized to the point of complete stupidity
Still, one third of today’s Ukraine was Polish and Hungarian before 1945.
When Russia looks westwards, it sees a threat. You can dismiss this as “paranoia” but after Napoleon and Hitler, maybe they have a point. The EU empire has been trying to expand eastwards for many years, gobbling up Russia’s buffer states until it has reached its borders in Georgia and the Ukraine. It has hid behind NATO.
You could argue that Russia has nothing to fear because the EU is democratic and peaceful. But why does the EU need an army? And who will it potentially be used against? Maybe internally against Greeks who rebel against Brussels poverty-causing diktats? Or against foreign foes who are “undemocratic” and “abuse human rights”? (There is always the reason that sounds good behind the real reason.)
Russia could not conquer and hold down the Ukraine. But it could annex the eastern Russian-speaking bit. It could then pull the same trick and neutralise former possessions like Lithuania. Meanwhile the US has a much bigger threat in the Pacific with China so will not intervene. With Nordstream and continuing German war-guilt it looks like Russia has the EU where he wants them.
Russia is the largest European country, and hardly needs buffer states.
Why does the EU need army? Are you aware of how Russia’s former empire the Soviet Union acquired “Russia’s buffer states” in the first place?
I question the assertion that Russian stand-off munitions won the war for Azerbaijan. Most observers assert that it was cheap Turkish/Israeli drones which went through Armenia’s Russian-supplied tanks like a hot knife through butter.
The Ukrainian Army is more than a speed bump. Although they might ultimately lose, Ukraine can inflict significant casualties on any conventional Russian invasion. Putin can’t afford a lot of casualties, politically.
The Crimea had a high percentage of ethnic Russians to help out when the Russians came. The Donbass similarly has a lot of Russian speakers. Invading the rest of Ukraine runs into an indigestible percentage of Ukrainians who will fight, and have fought in the past.
The Union of Mothers of Soldiers of Russia will protest vigorously any mass casualty event. The Russian Army has a lot of draftees, and comparatively few professional soldiers. Putin would have significant political unrest if he started a high casualty war in Ukraine.
The purpose of the buildup is probably to put more pressure on Ukraine’s government to spend money it doesn’t have on weapons. It will weaken the government. It will also show the US and the EU to be impotent. The EU will insist on the Nordstream Pipeline, particularly because the US is no longer producing enough natural gas for export. Everybody will want to appease the Russians. No invasion required.
The US has bigger fish to fry in the East. Why on earth would it commit time and resource to the Ukraine, especially given that the EU relies on soft power rather than being able to defend with military force the territories it has absorbed.
Should Putin invade it will be a well thought out surgical strike, akin to the Crimea. There will be talk and gesturing from the EU but I fail to see how they can realistically respond forcefully.
Game, set and match to Russia, at a moment of its choosing.
Incredibly poor analysis. Western writers should at least try and understand the Russian point of view and Nato’s involvement in the crisis before trying to analyze current events. Nato and the USA want to use Ukraine as a flash point to demonize Russia and prevent any Russian peace and trade with European countries such as Nord Stream 2. More conflict is good for military budgets as an added bonus. Ukaine is desperate for more money and support and is disregarding the Minsk agreement and trying to spark a Russian reaction. They want Russia to invade but only the Donbass region. They know Russia is committed to defending them and if they can get a full scale invasion they can get more money and support. Russia wants to maintain the status quo but Ukraine, Nato, and the USA are making this impossible. I do believe Ukraine will build up enough to threaten a breakthrough with Nato supplied wespons. Russia will strike back with overwhelming force. They will have targeted strikes in Kiev. Russia will make Kiev pay a heavy price. They will take more land but only the areas with large Russian speaking populations in the East. They will leave the rest of the country broken and cometely dependent on Nato and the US. Russua will have to bite the bullet and deal with the negative reaction in Europe. In other words expect another playout of Crimea where Russia was forced to protect Crimea after a US bavked coup in Kiev put anti Russian leadership in charge threatening to kick the Russian Navy out of Sevastopol. Anybody with the slightest knowledge of Crimea was not surprised at Russia taking Crimea back. Not even Kiev. Kiev and the US have used it for propaganda to support their anti Russian positions. Kiev is not going to like the outcome but they are so desperate for more support this is probably the only way to get more Western money
Everyone seems to have forgotten that the large Russian troop movements started after Zelensky passed a law authorising him to take back Crimea. A week later Russian troops had flocked to the land border with Crimea. Sad to think of the millions paid to the defense bodies, the think tanks and the influencers in the media who have never connected the two things. And apart from the famous US Defence Dept brightly coloured map showing Russian troops massed in Belarus and NW Russia,, there is no evidence yet of any otherRussian plan but to defend their annexed Crimea.
And the population of Crimea want them to do so. 80% of the Crimean population speak Russian as their first language and voted to return to Russia rather than continue to be part of Ukraine, a failing state.
Russia is involved in supporting the people of the Donbass. They want Kiev to follow the Minsk agreement. They will protect them if the US backed Kiev regime builds up a large enough force to break through rebel lines. Russia is committed to this. Invading Crimea? Don’t make me laugh. Not going to happen. Kiev knows this too. They need Russia to react so in the aftermath they will get a flood of more Western money and support. The corrupt Kiev regime is near collapse. That is what is driving this. The US and Nato want it too so they can demonize Russia and end Nordstream 2 and any future economic cooperation. Russia wants the status quo but will defend the Donbass if the Kiev regime attacks.
I think Putin is waiting and preparing for the USA to be engaged with China/Taiwan and/or Iran. Then he will be poised to take Ukraine, by force or threat, and then press Russian influence on other countries in the “near abroad”. He doesn’t have to win, just causing trouble for the West is sufficient.