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"Two main reasons: to stop the illegal immigrants coming in and to get our justice system back."

Those are the reasons Maria Williams gave for voting to leave the European Union.

Maria is from Ebbw Vale in Blaenau Gwent, the Welsh local authority which voted most heavily in favour of Brexit. 62% of people voted to leave, while just 38% voted to remain.

Today, as a result of similar voting patterns around the UK nine months ago, Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, officially informing the European Union of the UK's desire to leave.

Shortly before Article 50's triggering - which sets the UK's withdrawal in motion - Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, went to Ebbw Vale for BBC Newsnight to find out why people voted to leave or remain.

This is what people who live there told him.

George Maund

(Image: BBC Newsnight)

"I voted to get out of Brexit. I'd like to put the 'great' back in Great Britain because we're not governing ourselves. We're governed by people that we don't know."

Maria Williams

(Image: BBC Newsnight)

"I voted out of Brexit for two main reasons - to stop the illegal immigrants coming in and to get our justice system back."

Maureen Windmill

(Image: BBC Newsnight)

"I voted out - for Brexit - one of the main reasons being any monies we've received from Europe to be spent on our town were spent on the wrong things."

Has the money been spent on the right things?

Phil Edwards, leader of the Ebbw Vale Business Forum, was asked what he thought of the things the EU money had been spent on. One example of what people feel is misspent EU money is a dragon statue now standing in the town centre. Another is a £2.5 million lift that takes you up the side of what was once a slagheap from the steelworks on which the town was built. The steelworks was closed down and demolished 15 years ago.

Mr Edwards said: "You can't complain about it in one sense. But it is pretty, that's all it is, it's cosmetic. If someone is dying you don't give them cosmetic surgery to keep them alive, that's not going to help. The town is dying, the borough is dying and it needs employment. It doesn't need pretty bollards and wonderful-looking dragons and a clock that doesn't tell the right time."

Immigration

In a pub in an arcade (refurbished with EU money), people told Mr Clegg that immigration was a key reason they voted to leave, despite only 2% of the population of Ebbw Vale being foreign-born. One woman told him: "I disagree with immigration, and that was the biggest worry."

(Image: BBC Newsnight)

"I know you can't stop a certain amount but hospitals need nurses and doctors and things like that, but then all the others that have come here, and the Romanians and that, I know you shouldn't be prejudiced. I'd just like our country back, I know it never will be back to what it was."

Another man said of immigration: "Personally for me it's not a big deal but I can understand where people are coming from. Jobs are being undermined, they're being taken, wages are being undermined and I understand that. I totally understand that."

(Image: BBC Newsnight)

What young people said

Mr Clegg asked a group of politics students at the (part EU-funded) sixth form college how they felt about immigration. One said: "It's not that immigration affects our area, it's the fear of immigration. It's a feeling, an emotion. It's what people see in London, in Birmingham, but there's no immigration here."

(Image: WalesOnline)

Another said: "You've got a few people, from Poland, Turkey, Romania, but I feel like if they've got better qualifications than some of the people who live here then they should have the jobs because it's all about the best-qualified. I feel we should all be treated equally."

What Nick Clegg thought

(Image: BBC Newsnight)

Mr Clegg said: "To any casual visitor, Ebbw Vale doesn't superficially look or feel like one of the hardest hit areas of Britain. The old steelworks has recently been redeveloped at a cost of £350 million, creating new schools and colleges, a new hospital and state of the art facilities, not to mention all the construction work involved in building new road and rail links into town.

(Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

"I've also never been to a place with so many blue EU flags, adorning all these new buildings. They're literally everywhere. That's because the EU has funded a sizeable part of all the regeneration here. A whopping £1.8 billion has been invested by the EU in Wales since 2014. Yet, in the Brexit referendum, 62% of people here voted to leave, the highest proportion in Wales.

(Image: Matt Cardy, Getty Images)

"Those same people, those who've lived here all their lives, they feel the EU funding that's been invested into the local community to help hasn't really made the difference that they want. It hasn't created jobs, it's created shiny buildings, it's been used to fund street art, it's made cosmetic changes but nothing to really help people find work.

"Having spent some time here in Ebbw Vale, I'm much clearer in my own mind about why people voted for Brexit in such large numbers, particularly the older voters. How much money was spent by the EU on this shiny building or that project, all of that paled in significance to the feeling, the longing, for a return to past certainties, when the steelworks were open, when people had jobs, money in their pockets.

"But the past isn't going to return and it's difficult not to feel a sense of foreboding that should Brexit fail to meet people's hopes, dissatisfaction could turn into real rage. And, as we're seeing elsewhere in the world, that can quickly be seized upon by political movements offering ever more divisive and angry visions of the future."

You can watch Nick Clegg's piece in full here .