Bitterness on Barnsley's streets

By Rob Broomby
BBC News

Barnsley Town Hall - a soaring white stone structure with classical columns and an imposing clock tower - is a testament to past civic pride and a community built on the coal industry and traditional manual labour.

Barnsley is in a traditional Labour area

But most of the mines have gone, the boom came and went leaving few lasting traces here and now recession, the growing scandal over the abuse of MPs' expenses and concern over immigration is fuelling a frustration with the mainstream parties and even the entire political class.

Amongst the workless gathered at the job centre the resentment towards the influx of foreign workers is palpable.

"There's no jobs," says one man.

"I don't want to be racist", he adds, "but the immigrants really are taking all our jobs".

A fork lift driver by trade, he has seen the supply of jobs in the area dry up.

"We've lived in Barnsley all our lives but if we can't get jobs because the Polish and Romanians are having them we are going to think strongly about it aren't we".

This was once Old Labour territory but New Labour with its once slick presentation and free market language left some here feeling cold and neglected. This was after all, the stamping ground of the former miner's leader Arthur Scargill.

British National Party

But the pungent cocktail of grievances could see voters here shifting to the fringe parties, even the anti-immigration British National Party (BNP).

"I don't understand Labour at all now," says Kim Haywood, who lost his job a few weeks ago, "Labour was supposed to be for the working people".

He feels the party has lost its roots. Now he is considering voting for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) or the BNP.

The country is going to the dogs and it's the government's to blame for it - they just exploit the working man Jean Marshall

"I'll be quite honest, I've thought about voting for them," he says. "There's a good chance of it, yes".

His sentiments are echoed by others around him.

In Barnsley's Miner's Hall emblazoned with Union banners from conflicts past Chris Skidmore, chairman of the Yorkshire area National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), says the NUM's "repeated warnings" about the BNP have been ignored by MPs.

The BNP "feeds on despair" and "abandonment," he says in doom-laden tones.

The BNP, which campaigns for preference in the jobs market to be given to "native Britons", says it is standing up for the nation's "indigenous people".

Internet cafe

The party could take a seat in the massive North West of England European Parliament constituency, where its leader Nick Griffin is standing.

Taking Yorkshire and Humberside, where Barnsley is, would require a bigger climb but it is not impossible.

In better times, British workers in Barnsley could not be persuaded to take some of the lower paid local jobs on offer here. Now others have taken their places.

New Labour left some traditional party supporters cold

Regina Trepczyk runs a local internet cafe. She is one of very few black people in Barnsley.

She came from Ghana eighteen years ago, married a British with man of Polish ancestry and set up a business.

When she started she had seven English workers but they never stayed and "It didn't work" she says.

She says she was forced to turn to Polish staff.

"They were the longest who stayed," she explains.

Polish workers

She is not the first entrepreneur to recognise the merits of the new Eastern European staff.

But although Polish workers may have rescued her café, even she thinks mistakes were made in allowing so many workers into the country.

"Everything went so quick, now who do you send back?," she asks with a sense of foreboding.

"You can't do that. We all have to work like a community".

In the battered market the sense of disappointment with government is tangible, but not all disillusioned votes are turning to the anti-immigration BNP.

Jess Marshall, a baker and stall holder, says he will probably vote for the UKIP, which advocates withdrawal from the EU, or the Greens.

She says: "We had big expectations of New Labour but to be quite honest I don't think they have done anything."

"The country is going to the dogs and it's the government's to blame for it. They just exploit the working man."

Faith in conventional politics has been shaken here and that may assist the fringe parties.

The political storm clouds are gathering, but like a confused weather system the outcome is harder to predict.