You know, it's poetries everywhere right dear…
Is it?
Well, there's a story.
Storytelling is a big thing round here, isn't it?
Tell me the story of the last three years in Wigan.
Wigan?
Right.
It's a working-class town.
I think there's a lot of beauty, so is it our beautiful buildings…
The biggest thing is the people.
Wigan's modern story runs from deindustrialisation,
to being one of the areas of England hardest hit by austerity.
We need things around Wigan for us youngsters, you know what I mean?
There's nothing around here for us.
It was a universal credit pilot area, then it voted 64% for Brexit.
We're being hammered anyhow with this government, aren't we?
Some people might think we've heard enough from places like this.
For us, it feels like exactly the right place to be on the day
that Theresa May's deal once again hits the House of Commons.
You're just talking about Brexit?
Theresa May? I don't like her, me.
And what do you think about where the country has ended up?
I don't know.
Fur Clemt is a great food recycling project.
The name means, 'very hungry', in local slang.
As you can see, it's full.
There's so much food that goes to waste.
And we're just like, on the tip of the iceberg, really.
We are definitely not a poverty project, we're an environmental project
and there's a reason for that.
Everybody's got pride.
Why have we suddenly had to come round
to thinking about feeding people?
What's the answer?
Well the answer is, don't be in the situation where people need to rely on something.
It's where people can work towards their own sort of future.
Their own resilience…
You can't be resilient if you're hungry, you can't.
You know, when you look at Maslow's hierarchy and you look at all that,
and you look at what's at the very bottom of that,
food, shelter, warmth…
At the top, it's realising your own potential.
Something's gone very wrong there…
Something's gone very wrong.
It's always working-class people that try and put it right.
That's always us, isn't it?
It's always us because we see it.
Can I borrow you for a minute?
You see that square pan with the handle on there?
We've developed an acute talent for blaming the victims.
I hate it when I see programmes on the TV about Benefit Street and all that.
The people who are to blame are the people at the top who've got more than they need and won't…
…And they won't stop that blaming because it serves to blame.
You think people themselves feel the weight of that blame?
I think people do feel shame about the position they find themselves in
but they don't know a way out of it.
So then they get defensive.
So then they look a bit ballsy,
and they look a bit like, 'well I'm not bothered anyway'.
But how do we know if they are?
Because nobody asks those people, do they?
They point to them… they, you know, have a story about them,
that they don't really know,
but they don't actually talk to them.
But what if that story now is
that they are the people who were stupid enough to vote for Brexit?
Because you hear that, don't you?
Yeah, you do hear that.
Don't things have sort of been fused together?
Yeah.
They do, however, we weren't given the correct information about Brexit, really.
The number of people who've said to me,
what about the 250 million pound a week found for the NHS?
You're not going to turn that up, are you?
I thought that was one of the few bits of hope.
Yeah, it's positive.
But it has thrown anybody in the last 10 years.
Yeah.
Get your country back, get your NHS back on track,
stop giving these people who do nowt some money.
You know, it was all that kind of premise, wasn't it?
That story, again another story.
It's a good story.
Well, a very convincing one
because we all want to believe it, don't we?
Theresa May has urged MPs to back her EU withdrawal deal in a crucial vote this evening
or risk losing Brexit.
I wonder what you think about Brexit and where the country has ended up.
I don't watch all that crap.
It's easy to find people here who say things like this:
We voted for out.
Get out and repair the country.
That's my honest opinion.
But be open to what people have to say,
you might get to something deeper.
Well, they've done a lot of damage.
In the last few years.
Our government, they always do.
They need to pay a bit more attention to what we need.
Keep listening.
There's a lot of crime and it's down to the fact that people haven't got money.
Provide the money for the policing, the NHS…
You look around, there are shops shutting everywhere.
What's your job?
I deliver parcels for Amazon.
And do you make a living doing that?
I don't make a living doing it at all, no.
It's a job.
Excuse me asking, how much do you turn in the average week?
My top line would be about £500.
And then I've got to pay for my van and the fuel and everything out that as well.
So you're nominally self-employed.
Yes.
But you're not really.
No.
They dictate when we can work and the hours we have to work.
You don't worry about leaving, the economy will tank and we'll have even less money than we've got now?
No, no, because there's enough industry in this country.
Let's bring it back, build this country again.
Hour and a half, two hours, we've been talking to people.
Well, that's a cliche now.
It feels like people are saying we've got to leave the European Union because this country's in a bad way
and I'm a remain voter so I'd say, well if we leave it'll be in an even worse way
but that's not the way people are thinking.
Secondly, there's this idea that the wheels are all falling off with Brexit,
and yet my impression very strongly here is that,
people would vote leave again.
In just the same numbers that they've voted leave last time.
Nothing has changed.
Yeah, let's talk to these.
Excuse me!
I'm finding it quite difficult to get a job, get a home,
put down a mortgage, just basically be the 23-year-old that
my mum was at 23.
Purely because of the state of the country and the state of Labour towns like this that we live in.
Manchester's like a bit of a social hub, really…
You feel that people judge you for being from here a bit?
Yeah.
A completely, well it's not unrelated question, it's a related question:
I wonder what you think about Brexit? There's this big vote in parliament tonight…
Let's absolutely not leave.
I feel like it will be detrimental to our economy,
and just detrimental to Britain in general.
I think it's a really bad decision.
But you know about 65% of people in Wigan voted for it?
I do, I do, and I am quite annoyed.
I do think there's hope, I mean, our generation we're quite…
We know what's wrong and we don't really know how to fix it yet.
It's lunchtime back at Fur Clemt.
Thank you! Don't forget the bucket, please.
I'm so glad that I'm Czech.
So I've got freedom to go to Europe.
Are you going to stay?
Yeah.
If they kick us out, I'll move to Spain.
I personally disagree with it, but there is the vote, it's a democracy
and the value of the votes of the people.
I'm trying to get a sense from people about how they think Wigan is doing.
It's doing very well, it's a universal credit rollout area
you know that, don't you?
Yeah, go on.
I've been on it for about five months,
I'm living for 19 days off no money.
Jesus.
How come?
Well, when I went on it in November, I had to take out £600
that five-week thingy, so I'm paying that back.
£540, I've got to pay £425 in me rent,
and about £50 for me electric.
You're left with about a tenner.
To live off, for a month.
And what's the nature of your disability? Excuse me asking.
I had polio when I was born.
Charlie is now volunteering in the warehouse here.
I need to keep active.
The last time you worked, what did you do?
I was team leader at Asda – 18 years.
I was made redundant and I thought with my CV, I was gonna walk straight into a job.
But I'm applying for jobs and there's a thousand people applying for that job.
Coming to the end of the month, I get that £540 and it's not like I can go out and have a blowout.
I'll take some carrots home, I've got an onion at home,
I'll make a batch of soup up and I'll freeze it.
She keeps laughing because I've still got my team leader brain on me.
We've got the sausages then for the hampers.
That's what gets me through every month.
Can I ask you a strange question?
Did you vote in the referendum three years ago?
Yeah, I voted to leave.
Tell me why you voted for leave.
Hopefully, we can get some jobs back in.
That was in your head when you voted leave?
Yeah.
Somehow it would mean that might be more for a town like this?
You must have heard this a thousand times, people say that when
we leave the country will be even poorer.
No, I know. Well, you can't have it poorer.
Rees-Mogg, he's been paid 1.7 million ...
Brexit is his project! He's not bothered about us.
They are the people leading us out of the European Union and you voted for their thing.
Do you not think you were had?
No, we voted for one thing,
and Theresa May has turned it into her thing.
You don't think you were had, that you were lied to?
I do think that we were lied to
because they can't found that red bus now in London, that's gone missing.
That one for 350 million pounds.
Totally.
But if I put a ballot paper in front of you now,
with all you know now, with leave or remain on it…
I would leave.
You'd still vote for leave?
I think it's all broken, not just the system.
There's still industry in Wigan and some of it is quite iconic.
Well, just seen this quite by chance.
A factory that makes Uncle Joe's mint balls.
Oh hello, we're journalists, we work for the Guardian, the newspaper.
And I grew up in the north-west so I didn't even know Uncle Joe's mint balls was here.
Has it always been here?
Since 1919.
You've been making all these mint balls in this building for all them years?
Well, in 1898 we started, we would like to be here for another 100 years.
Brexit…
You mentioned Brexit, I didn't mention Brexit.
No, it was brought in before!
We don't know how it's going to affect transport links,
we don't know how it's gonna affect tariffs, staffing,
and if we knew what we're dealing with, we can deal with it.
Well, this firm's survived the Great Depression.
Two wars, one Great Depression,
one economic crash and you're still here.
We're still here, yeah.
So Brexit is nothing.
We can cope with that, easy.
Well, thank you for these.
Enjoy!
Radio presenter: uncharted territory, Margaret Beckett. Where do you think we are heading?
Radio presenter: completely uncharted territory, I think, I hope very much that we're headed
for a defeat for the prime minister and there's some slight indications that for the first time,
she might actually take some notice.
That's what we miss.
That's what passes for nightlife now.
That's what we miss.
We've got a bottle of vodka.
A bottle of Vodka and a Bluetooth speaker.
Yeah.
That's what we've had to resort to.
Obviously the Orwell was shut down so, we're about to resort to this and this.
Do you know what I mean?
My nan used to work in that pub there and she used to be one of the managers there, in the pub.
And in the kitchen and she used to clean up.
But it shut down, and they need to start it back up.
This has been empty for 10 years?
And it was one of the best pubs ever.
It were the best!
This was where everybody met each other and you just had a good time, you just enjoyed yourself
instead of going out on the streets, getting yourself in trouble.
What do you think about Brexit?
I really don't follow it, really don't follow it.
And your future?
My future…
Next five or 10 years?
I want to be a midwife, I want to work with children.
But I want to move out of Wigan first,
so I want to emigrate to Australia,
where my dad's sister lives.
To be honest, I actually have my own business.
I'm a landscape gardener and I do property maintenance.
But my father killed himself in February
so I've never got back on, I've never… do you know what I mean?
My head's not got back to it.
Believe it or not, we are actually homeless.
Where are you staying at night?
Here, there and everywhere.
Because there's nothing left in Wigan.
What you're sofa-surfing, as they call it?
No, we stay on the streets outside.
Do you?
If we make enough money we can go to a hotel.
Straight up?
Yeah.
To be honest, we made nearly enough for a hotel today, you know,
but we didn't made enough, so we just thought, we'll have a good night.
By doing what?
Help people out with stuff and that.
Like, help people out and they just give us a few quid.
What do you mean, odd jobs, kind of thing?
Yeah.
And then you stay in a hotel?
What, three of you in a room?
It's sort of hard to avoid the conclusion, quite frequently, that this country is sort
of falling apart in all sorts of ways.
And MPs and the media are falling over themselves to get worked up about something, but it's not that,
it's not homelessness or the fact that young people are itinerant because
there's no opportunities and that owning a home is a distant prospect,
or that the fellow we met today is working for Amazon for effectively less
than the minimum wage.
Or that universal credit doesn't work, and people can't afford to eat.
Right now, as I'm standing here, the Houses of Parliament is tearing itself to pieces
about whether we're going to leave the European Union and what Jacob Rees-Mogg wants.
I think the word for that is displacement activity.
Rather than watch the vote in the Commons unfold,
we decide to spend the evening in a rather more uplifting way.
I'm at choir practice in Wigan.
MPs started going into the aye and no lobbies
to do this latest meaningful vote on Theresa May's deal.
Can't get any more Anywhere but Westminster than this.
This is a fledgling local charity called Living with Life
that helps families deal with bereavement.
Well, hahaha, MPs reject May's Brexit deal for the second time by a majority of 149.
The choir is filled full of people who come from all different walks of life.
We've all got stuff that's going on that's really tough to deal with and to be able
to get your own mental health in order by coming together for a common purpose.
Early mental health preventative treatment…
Because at the minute, the way we deal with bereavement,
even when we know it's gonna happen, we just come in after it happened.
So if people have lived life really well and they've said
everything that they need to say and they said goodbye to the family as well,
you're left with less regrets.
The question I've been asking people all day is, what does Wigan need?
Me, as a single mum,
I work two part-time jobs at the minute to make Living with Life happen
for people within the Wigan community.
They've got the ideas, the only thing that they're lacking at the minute is the funding.
For me, I believe that our idea literally could change the world.
Wigan is still waiting for some kind of answer to what it told politicians back in June 2016.
But the tragedy of Brexit is that the problems of places like this
have been all but forgotten amongst all the Westminster drama.
More than ever, they have things to tell us.
We ought to listen.
Radio presenter: In the past hour, MPs have voted overwhelmingly to reject the prime minister's
revised Brexit deal for the second time,
17 days before Britain is due to leave the EU.