How many people do you think it will turn up today? – Well, we'll get probably about 200 today.
Oh there will be a queue, won't there?
There'll be a queue alright.
You've got no words for it, have you, really.
Why did you take the cereal out of the packet?
We can't afford to give them a full box.
We can't give them a full box.
We just haven't got enough.
We used to.
Have you not got mixed vegetables today?
And that's a problem that we're concerned about is the donations which are going down,
because people haven't got the money
and because the supermarkets don't have any surplus like they used to.
Grim and awkward, really, but I don't really like filming people of this level of need, you know.
But there again, this is the reality of it.
All those abstract words you hear, the cost of living and crisis and one kind or another,
well that's what it looks like.
Can we talk to you for a minute? – About what?
Life.
Life?
Yeah.
Life, what you mean? Commit innit.
Grimsby was right at the heart of that big political shift that began really
with the Brexit referendum of 2016
and climax with the general election in 2019 when we were last here
and with everything completely up in the air this seemed like a really good time to come back.
Go on Ron, I'll do it if you do it.
Go on!
How's life at the minute?
Financially more than anything else, I suppose.
Difficult. – Go on.
I've got two children that I've got to pay for child care and
feeding them ... – What's difficult in particular?
Having to say no, innit?
Yeah, that's the hardest thing for me because I'm a bit softy.
But, you know, that's the hardest thing, to say no to kids.
God that's such a sort of everyday thing, innit?
Yeah.
Days out with the kids, doing nice things with the kids.
We just can't afford to do it anymore.
I don't know what's gone wrong.
I try not to watch the news anymore because it makes me too nervous
and I think now I worry for my children more than I worry for myself
because I've had the help of my mum and dad
and I'm scared that I won't be able to help my kids the same way.
What's happening down here?
We're making a film about Grimsby.
How's your life at the minute?
It's OK, I've just had to close my business down so ...
You just closed your business down?
Yeah, I own the gym down there.
Go on.
Above there, we're just stripping it down now.
The electricity and the power situation ...
We just can't survive anymore so we've closed.
It's just the way it is.
Are you walking down there now?
I am, yeah.
I've lost a few friends to the Covid, that's been heartbreaking but ...
And as soon as we've gone through one thing, then to another one, do you know what I mean?
It's like something from an horror film.
I don't know why we are laughing.
I know, but it is that bad that you can't do ought else but laugh.
I suppose people have this idea that maybe we'd come out of the crash 15 years ago
and so, you know, things have changed and things get better
and then maybe out of Brexit and then the pandemic emerged from that.
Build back better and all that, do you remember that?
Yeah, it's a ...
The thing is it's like everybody's waiting, waiting, waiting.
I've stopped looking forward to things being over now,
I just started to accept that you should just be happy
and deal with the situation.
This is what's left of the gym.
There's an envelope there that says 'final demand'.
Right, it's now one o'clock.
Which is when the Rock foundation's food bank opens its doors.
It's not good, is it?
It's got a lot worse and I think it is about to get a lot worse.
Benefits not going up in line with inflation
and I think that's going to hit me a lot harder.
Grimsby's got a Tory MP.
And I'm ashamed to say that because of Brexit last time, I voted for Tory.
Only because I believe in democracy and we voted to leave so,
I mean and no nobody else was going to do that, you know,
and I did vote for Boris last time I'm ashamed to say,
but definitely not next time.
You haven't got enough money to eat effectively at the minute?
No, because otherwise I wouldn't wouldn't be using the food bank.
Obviously I'm a single parent,
one of my conditions is brain conditions so based on that it affects my mobility,
my nerves and everything like that.
So you've got no choice but to survive on benefits.
A lot of people are quite embarrassed
and feel ashamed to turn to food banks and that.
It's not just me and I know I'm not alone in on this.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's selfish for me to say it's just based on me
when I know there's so many thousands of people in this country
that are experiencing the same.
You came out the Army 13 years ago?
It's been hard to like, to get back into civilian life again.
What's your financial situation at the minute?
I ain't got no money, I ain't had no money for two months,
I've been in the dark, living with candles.
Because I'm ex army, I can survive.
I was cooking dinner on the fire pit in the garden.
Where were you getting your food from?
The food bank but they only do it once a day,
so I just had to just starve a few days,
like two days, without food and then one day on.
I need to get a phone so they can contact me,
but I can't get a phone because I sold it for food.
You haven't got a mobile either?
I've had to sell it for food otherwise I'd be dead.
I'm off to sell a coat for some food, unless I've got everything I need in here.
I'm not even joking.
I mean, for anybody that's an impossible way to live
and it shouldn't happen.
But I'm ex army.
But that's what I find particularly shocking
is that having been in the army, you shouldn't be having to live like this,
You know what I mean?
That's what I mean.
Well, it don't matter, does it?
It does matter.
People think I'm talking crap.
it's all gone very, very wrong, all this, innit?
Somehow politics can sort of carry on
using the sort of vapid language that it does and all that.
You get a very strong sense here, good people who deserve something better.
'This country will be able to take back control of a massive industry
once we get Brexit done in January
and there's a potential to do really well for UK fishing ...'
Why'd you do it?
Freedom.
We've come to meet Darren Canyon from Fastline Shellfish,
one of Grimsby's few remaining fishermen.
So you've been talking to people like me for donkeys years.
I've been doing it years now and you know what happens.
There you go.
Nothing seems to change.
What effect did Brexit have on your trade?
Well, Brexit, we all thought it was going to be good, you know,
we all voted and, you know, we thought we was going to get our waters back
and this, that and the other.
Well, we got led down the path again didn't we?
We did.
We was worse off when it came out, we got less fish
and then Boris come along and he give us a little bite of hope.
Oh, he's good at speaking.
So it changed the vote overnight, we all voted for Boris.
You come to Grimsby ...
How do you feel about that now?
Well, I won't vote for anybody.
You're alright, mate? It's not the police.
Your sizes I've just got about two or three and that's it.
I'll take three.
No you're not messing me about.
I'll take four.
No you're not.
I'll take Twenty.
Go and have a look they're ain't any in there.
I'll have a look.
Where do you deliver to?
Billy's gate.
How's trading at the minute? – Tough.
Why is it tough?
Because we are not getting enough products, we're fighting everything, the price,
the weather, everything, so that's what we're doing.
Brexit? – Absolutely.
Not helping.
Mate, Darren will tell you, we'll tell you that at beginning we were like everybody's root for it,
nothing's happened.
Farage was going down the river Thames with this flotilla of fishing boats saying,
I'm here to rescue the British fishing industry. – Listen it's all bullshit.
Guys take care. – Thank you.
So years ago, you'd have been banging, clattering, men shouting 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
Well, now it's just silent. – Yeah, this is it what it's like after dinner.
And it's horrible.
If you weren't here anymore, it's almost like Grimsby means less.
It's just a little tiny town now at the end of a motorway.
We try and take the long view, right, and really, you know, Liz Truss' meltdown
and the fact that the economy is tanked and that Brexit has turned out to be far from what
people were told, that's part of a much longer story than that, right?
Well it's just the latest part of it.
Yeah but that's all about 100 years of economic history
and the fact loads of places had stuff taken away and they weren't giving much back.
Don't forget what we said in 2016, right, it turned out Britain was so imbalanced it had fallen over.
I think we're still sort of lying on the floor moaning, really.
I think we're still in shock.
Grimsby has received some Levelling Up money, the council spent a lot of it buying the town's
ailing shopping centre and is now waiting on the outcome of other bids.
In the meantime, more shops have closed on the High Street.
This is a Friday, look, where's the customers?
The footfall is disappearing and it's going to disappear more.
There are sort of two sides to the town centre here.
Just down there is Abbeygate, it's quite a small sort of shopping arcade,
but there are a handful of really good independent businesses, right, and then you walk
about 30 seconds and you hit the traditional old high street which is just full of empty retail units.
This is where all the Level Up focus what there is of it, is on this.
It's peculiar.
So you don't vote? – No.
Who should I vote for?
Me.
One liar after another.
People choose to come and trade here as a preference to other places around the world.
Right, but you also want to create a UK where everyone can afford to eat.
Tories out!
One of the challenges of making these films which always sits right at the centre of our thoughts is how to make
films about inequality, of crisis while not reducing places to cliches, right?
What's the good stuff about Grimsby?
What do you like about it?
Fish.
It's a small community so mainly everyone knows each other.
I've lived here all my life so I know quite a lot of people growing up around here.
Family is really important to people growing up around here.
I love living here, there's real pockets of community and some of the most deprived areas, but yeah ,
a really good sense of community.
I think you do an absolutely fantastic job and
it's just magic, I mean, it was all through walking when you got made redundant and seeing the mess ...
I needed to do something.
It throws the deprivation of the inequality into sharper relief
because you're saying, well, if only somewhere really had the chance, imagine what could happen.
Pam Hodge is the embodiment of that potential and what holds Grimsby together.
These people here have had enough of false promises.
When we do something, we make sure that we never close it down, we keep it going, we grow on it.
She started the Rock Foundation to help her son and other people with learning disabilities.
My eldest son has disabilities
and then when I was looking around to see what's going to be available for them,
I was absolutely horrified.
I went ahead and I started with two and
I started at an old ice, what was called an old ice house it's just around the corner here.
And today we've got around about 90 students.
The Foundation has grown to meet need wherever she sees it.
From a group that supports former fishermen.
Would you like to join our crew?
What happened to the fishing trade in Grimsby? What's the story?
To a brilliant supported living project that she thinks could
revolutionise adult social care.
Have you had a busy afternoon? – Yes.
We were just saying about funding ...
I know, we are desperate, aren't we?
So these are the bedrooms?
God, that's brilliant.
We've worked hard.
That's amazing.
Every single time you're thinking, oh my goodness, now what's going to happen?
Where are we going to be cut this time?
What we're going to do? You know and what more can we do to try
and make ourselves more sustainable?
What about you?
Well, I'm very rarely happy.
I'm happy now. Happy now!
The last stop on our tour is the location for Pam's next vision, a disused public toilet.
So this is going to be copied now a food bank plus.
People there to look at that, to look at housing, there'll be all sorts of different courses going on,
it's going to be a community kitchen up there, probably there to
help with CVs, all sorts of things will be going, anything we can to help people.
We've got to get this done by Christmas. – By Christmas?
You know what's coming, don't you?
The chancellor is going to announce further spending cuts which will hit Grimsby like a hammer.
It's going to hit everybody, it's gonna hit us. Yeah, it's gonna be shocking.
It's taking Pam a year to take over the building during which time the place has been broken into.
They've taken all the wiring out. They've broken in, they came through the roof, they smashed all the windows.
OK, you're waiting all the time, it's like if we'd only had this a year ago, we should have had it,
we would have been ready for this crisis.
But isn't that the sort of general condition of a lot of people here?
It is. – Is that they are waiting, waiting, waiting.
Government says it wants tax cuts for entrepreneurs and all of that stuff.
But what you don't hear talked about is people like you.
You effectively are holding places together, really.
Yeah, we work all hours
because we care about the community.
We're trying our best here on the ground and it would be nice to have some support.
God knows it's the easiest thing in the world, isn't it, to say politics is sort of out of touch
but there are also times that it becomes painfully true and just watching this sort of pantomime at the top, you know?
Another instalment of who's going to have the top job and all these ambitious
people falling over each other to get it.
It has nothing to do with what we're in the midst of here.
People voted the way they did in the 2016 Brexit referendum and at the 2019 election because
they felt that by choosing to leave the EU and voting conservative, a lot of people might not
be saying this and I feel a bit uncomfortable saying it but it's true doing those things,
somehow they were going to get change right and the great sort of tragedy of this crisis were in
the middle of now is I think people's sense now that that change isn't coming.
As always.
Because there are there are some people, amazing people, who just aren't prepared
to wait, quite rightly.
They understand the urgency of what they're faced with them.
They need to do something.
I feel we need politics that it's much more based around things like that.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that enables and assists people and encourages them
rather than this sense that the best you can hope for is to sit and wait for someone hundreds of miles over there
to deign to help you out.
I think what this crisis proves is that that idea of things is finished.
On the street the dogs are barking.