If you listen to the elite in their bubble in Westminster or the student digs around London, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Leeds, York et al, 68% of the Barnsley electorate, where I live, are ill-educated, xenophobic racists. To boot, many of us now regret the way we voted so there should be a re-run of the referendum – any maybe another after that if that doesn’t deliver the result the ‘right-on’ brigade wish?
Barnsley is a predominantly white working class area and so the stereotypes of the establishment must hold true – especially when, after the result was known, the media interviewed for TV a ‘cross-section’ of people in Barnsley town centre and some of their ‘cross-section’ just happened to include the type of people who fit their narrow image of white working class people north of Watford.
Let us not fool ourselves – a minority of white working class British people in Barnsley and beyond are racist and xenophobic and ill-educated. I stress the word MINORITY. I’d like to try and be the voice of the silent MAJORITY. A majority who are being made to feel ashamed of their vote for fear of being painted with the thick racist label.
I voted to leave and I don’t regret my vote. I’m not racist (as my past posts will evidence) and I have a first class honours degree in mathematics and physics, so don’t class myself as ill-educated either. My decision was based on weeks of soul searching and reading. Not the literature the two campaigns churned out – I have no interest in reading biased literature. No I took the time out to buy a couple of unbiased books (based on reviews etc) and read them. My decision was more to do with the centralised, bureaucratic and undemocratic nature of the EU. An organisation where laws and decisions are made by unelected commissioners and ratified by MEPs. An organisation that wants to centralise power rather than distribute it. An organisation that is happy to spend millions of euros, every month, transporting the European Parliament – the whole kit and caboodle – from Brussels to Strasbourg for a week just to pacify the French. I came to the conclusion that this organisation, in its current form, is both unable and unwilling to reform itself and so, I decided to vote to leave. The concerns of many who voted to leave were immigration based and it would be wrong of me not to accept this. I do accept this and most importantly I totally understand it. However the language being used around this aspect is inflammatory and unnecessary.
Let us be clear – we should have no issue with and no bad words for Eastern European people who come here to try and provide a better life for their families. Every single one of us would do exactly the same thing in their place. The blame should lie with employers and ‘gang-masters’ who allow the undercutting of wages, pricing the indigenous workforce out of the market onto the dole queue and further ferment disharmony to their fellow man. Blame the rogue landlords who provide substandard private housing and a government that stubbornly refuse to build enough adequate, affordable and decent housing. Blame also past and present governments for dispersing immigrants to parts of the country whose infrastructure and cohesion was already at breaking point and not investing further in it and expecting them to just ‘get on with it’. Do not scapegoat immigrants – blame the government and the leeches that feed off immigrants. Membership of the EU without significant reform would just exacerbate these problems.
The fact that 70% of the Barnsley electorate turned out to vote when less that 60% turned out in each of the last four general elections says much. For the first time in a long time Barnsley people (and people in similar towns and cities across the country) have got off their backsides, down to the polling station and voted en masse. The one thing the elite have got right is this vote is a massive vote of no confidence not just in the EU but in our national leadership. The question is will our leaders listen and do something this time? Please Barnsley, Huddersfield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Scarborough, Oldham, Sunderland, West Bromwich, Chesterfield, Grimsby and others – do not be a silent majority. Don’t scapegoat immigrants – lay the responsibility at the doors of those who make policy. Speak up and demand action from them and hold them to account at the ballot box – it is the only way they will listen.
The View from Pengeston 
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