‘There’s no life here’: a journey into Britain’s precarious future

Author James Bloodworth spent six months investigating our changing economy. In Ebbw Vale, he finds the human cost of the end of heavy industry and asks what the next upheaval will bring

At the Ebbw Vale steelworks in the south Wales valleys, thousands of men once laboured to produce the steel that helped to drive Britain’s industrial revolution. The steelworks closed for good 15 years ago, and today a familiar fare decorates the town’s mournful high street: pound shops, arcades, bookies. On the brief walk from one end to the other, I count three pawnbrokers.

“It ain’t worth looking for any work up here,” Rob Smyth, a youth worker tells me. “I tell you what – I’m glad I’m old because if I was young now I’d be struggling, you know? I know people who’ve got degrees and all the rest of it, and they can’t get work. You’ve got to settle somewhere else and make a life for yourself. There’s no life up here, no life at all. I only live here because it’s cheap, and it’s close to where I work.”

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Continue reading... December 17, 2017 at 04:00AM