michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: To pull off its landslide victory in last week’s election, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party flipped dozens of districts long held by the Labour Party. Patrick Kingsley on what that historic realignment looked like in one small town. It’s Tuesday, December 17. Patrick, tell us about this road trip that you took back in November.

patrick kingsley

So in the run-up to the British general election, I went on a 900-mile drive, starting off in London but really aiming to get out of London, trying to get a sense of what people outside the capital were thinking about the election and, in particular, thinking about Brexit. And there was one place that I went to that really I felt evoked a lot of these themes —

patrick kingsley Just arriving in a town called Shirebrook.

patrick kingsley

— in a constituency called Bolsover.

patrick kingsley Pretty much the center of England.

patrick kingsley

It’s not a very important place on the face of things. It’s a place of 10,000 residents, perhaps, living in 20 or 30 streets of red brick, one-story houses. But nevertheless, it kind of represents the seismic economic and political changes that Britain has witnessed in the last generation.

gps voice You have arrived at your destination.

patrick kingsley

And in particular, I wanted to visit a gray, vast, quite dismal warehouse on the edge of town.

patrick kingsley I am in the car park outside the Sports Direct factory.

patrick kingsley

It’s a warehouse that stores sportswear, tracksuits for a British company called Sports Direct, which I understand may have an American equivalent in something like Dick’s Sporting Goods. And I wanted to visit this warehouse because it personifies all these economic and political changes that Britain has experienced, and also offers quite a big clue about why there was this surprising election result in Britain last week.

michael barbaro

So where does the story of this gray warehouse and this entire town begin?

patrick kingsley

Well, to piece all that together, I spent a few days meeting anyone I could.

speaker I’m a resident of Bolsover constituency. I’ve raised my family here.

patrick kingsley

Longtime residents. Teenagers.

speaker Soon to be 19.

patrick kingsley

Employees of the warehouse, and also, local politicians.

patrick kingsley Could you just say your name, and who you are, and where we are? mark fletcher Mark Fletcher, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Bolsover.

patrick kingsley

And it seems the story of the town of Shirebrook really begins in 1896, when there was no town and instead, a coal pit was dug on the edge of what is now Shirebrook.

archived recording Someone once said that Britain is an island built on coal and surrounded by fish.

patrick kingsley

The town then was built for the coal pit. It was built to house the coal miners who would go down the mine every day, digging coal that would power industrial England.

archived recording More and more, the nation is concerned with getting more and more coal from where it’s easiest to get.

patrick kingsley

For decades, the mine was the heart of the town. You were either working down the mine, or you were selling things to miners. And if you had children, they would likely go down the mine.

[music]

patrick kingsley What kind of a place was it like growing up? speaker All these places were hard places. There was nothing to do or anything like that. But then you start work at 15 anyway. You know, you went to the pit. Your dad did it. Your granddad did it. So just one of them things.

patrick kingsley

It’s dangerous work, but it’s also, eventually, reasonably well-paid work. And it also provides a job for life.

speaker I always used to say that the pit, the pit was like the mother, yeah? Sort of looked after everybody.

patrick kingsley

It fostered a strong union movement. And in the process of that, it also became a stronghold of the Labour Party, the left-wing political party that emerged from the union movement to represent workers and workers’ rights in Parliament. But as the decades go by, in the ‘60s moving to the ‘70s, coal is no longer such a central player in the British energy industry. You’ve got oil, suddenly, you’ve got gas. And you also have cheaper forms of coal from abroad. And all of a sudden, you’ve got politicians thinking, it doesn’t really make much sense to have this industry here in Britain. And so both Conservative and Labour governments tried to close the coal pits.

archived recording Friday, the 7th of January, the last shift at Armthorpe near Doncaster. And the beginning of the miners’ first national strike for nearly 50 years.

patrick kingsley

But they don’t do it that successfully, initially, because the unions and the mineworkers are too strong. They can go on strike, and they can deprive the country of coal and of energy and power. And so the government usually has to cave instead of closing so many coal pits. This sets off a cycle of turbulence and protests and governments trying to shut coal pits, and miners responding by going on strike. And all of this tumult, nationally, of course, deeply affects Shirebrook as a mining town. Most of the miners are part of the strike. They refuse to go down the mines. And during this strike —

archived recording (dennis skinner) Conflict continues. So we don’t run away from it.

patrick kingsley

The local Labour Party lawmaker, who is a former miner himself, plays a key role in supporting the miners in their struggle.

archived recording (dennis skinner) And I understand it as well as any, because I saw it in its harshest terms when I was down the pit.

patrick kingsley

And he’s called Dennis Skinner, nicknamed the “Beast of Bolsover.”

michael barbaro

What a great name. Why the Beast of Bolsover?

patrick kingsley

Well, Bolsover is the name of the wider area. And “beast” because, yeah, he’s a fiery person. He’s like a tiger on behalf of these miners. He pays a portion of his salary to miners’ support groups. He comes and joins the miners and their protests. And he becomes a real icon to the community of Shirebrook and the mining towns around it.

archived recording (dennis skinner) I think about the hacking away, the injuries, the mauling, the class conflict. That should sustain us all.

patrick kingsley

And he kind of represents how the Labour Party was very strongly tied to the union movement.

archived recording (margaret thatcher) No one wishes to have young people without work. You’ll note, too, that unemployment has afflicted Europe.

patrick kingsley

This all comes to a head with the premiership of Margaret Thatcher —

archived recording (margaret thatcher) If you want more jobs, we’ve got to win more customers. There’s only one way to win more customers — good design, competitive prices.

patrick kingsley

— a Conservative prime minister who comes to power in 1979 with the aim of putting to an end all of this mayhem.

michael barbaro

But what exactly is her message? How is she going to end this cycle of protest, given the power that the coal miners have in places like Shirebrook?

patrick kingsley

Well, Thatcher’s main message is that she wants to completely liberalize the British economy.

archived recording (margaret thatcher) We want a very prosperous coal industry and reasonable-priced coal that can be sold to electricity here and could be sold overseas. That’s what I have in mind. But you can’t do it by failing to invest in the new and by clinging to the old, and having —

patrick kingsley

And it all comes to this big showdown in the mid-1980s.

archived recording By 7:00 a.m., 4,000 miners were at Orgreave waiting for the coke lorries to arrive. Police have been expecting them. They equal the number of pickets.

patrick kingsley

When, as usual, the Conservative government threatened to close some coal pits, and as usual, the mining unions went on strike. What was different this time was that Thatcher was determined to win this one. And so her government had stockpiled a lot of coal, which meant that when the miners stopped producing coal from the pits, the government had a reserve to draw upon. And it meant that the country could go on being powered. And so the strike goes on for a year, but the government still doesn’t give in to the strikers, because it doesn’t really need to now. And it ends in 1984 with the government having won, with Thatcher having won, and the miners having lost.

michael barbaro

Wow. So Thatcher basically called the miners’ bluff? And she wins?

patrick kingsley

Exactly. It’s a pivotal moment of her premiership, maybe the most emblematic moment of her time in power.

michael barbaro

So Patrick, at this point, just so I understand the political lay of the land, the Conservative Party under Thatcher is positioning itself as a foe of organized labor, of the kind of miners in Shirebrook. And Shirebrook is a Labour town.

patrick kingsley

Exactly. Almost everyone would have voted Labour in Shirebrook.

michael barbaro

So what ends up happening after Thatcher succeeds in effectively breaking the back of the miners’ union in this standoff?

patrick kingsley

Well, it happened slowly, but basically, the coal industry starts to die.

speaker Well, when pits were closed, it were heart-wrenching. You know what I mean?

patrick kingsley

Hundreds of coal mines closed across the country. And the Shirebrook coal mine itself closes in 1993. It was a complete devastation. Around 2,000 people’s jobs were lost. And that is what it was like for the next decade. People were out of work. There was no major source of local industry that could employ people. So a huge vacuum is created in the absence of the coal mine. There’s no work. There’s no alternative employment. This was a town built for mining, and now, there’s nothing to replace it. And then, in 2005, something does come along. It’s this warehouse for Sports Direct, which is built literally on top of the site of the old coal pit. And it’s a game changer, but not necessarily in the way that the town had hoped.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Patrick Kingsley, what changes in Shirebrook once Sports Direct comes into town?

patrick kingsley

Well, initially, it seems like something positive. For the first time in 12 years, there is a major source of employment in the town. 3,500 jobs, which is more than the 2,000 jobs that the mine had previously provided.

michael barbaro

Right.

[music]

patrick kingsley

But it quickly becomes apparent that this isn’t the savior that people thought it might be, because what it’s offering is a very different kind of work to the work that was offered at the mine. The mine was dangerous, but at least it gave secure work. Work at the warehouse is insecure. It doesn’t offer benefits. It’s not full-time work. It doesn’t offer a full-time contract. You don’t get a pension. You don’t get sick pay. You don’t get holiday pay. It’s also paid at the minimum wage, or actually, when all is said and done, below the minimum wage. There was even a government inquiry into the practices of this warehouse a few years ago, and they found that people were getting penalized even for taking breaks to drink water. And in the most notorious example, there was a woman who, apparently so terrified that she was going to lose her job if she didn’t turn up to work, who actually gave birth in the warehouse and left the baby in a bathroom.

michael barbaro

Because she feared that if she acknowledged she was about to have a baby, that what would happen?

patrick kingsley

That she might get fired. That seems to be the implication, yes. So if you think about it, the warehouse really didn’t offer anything like what the mine used to offer the town of Shirebrook. The mine meant a job for life, whereas the warehouse basically offers temporary work from which you could get fired at any point at very short notice. And the mine provided pride to the community. It provided the coal that powered the nation, whereas the warehouse just stores mostly polyester tracksuits that get shipped around the country.

michael barbaro

So it sounds like everything about this work is just shallower and less meaningful?

patrick kingsley

Exactly. And because of that, local residents in Shirebrook, and indeed from across Britain, didn’t fancy doing this kind of work, because it was humiliating, and for Britain, quite badly paid. But there were plenty of people elsewhere in the European Union who, because they were members of the European Union, were able to come and work in Britain and earn what they believed was actually quite good money, and in conditions that they didn’t feel were particularly humiliating as a result. So you had lots of people from Poland and Romania coming to places like Shirebrook, and indeed across England, and working in warehouses like Sports Direct. And as a result, they changed the social fabric of Shirebrook.

michael barbaro

And what does that change look like on the ground?

speaker You can go around to every house and knock on every door and 99.9 percent of people will say to you, Polish people take our jobs. And then people moan about it.

patrick kingsley

Well, it starts to create a lot of resentment. Residents start to believe that their town is being, quote, unquote, “invaded by foreigners.”

speaker These factories are supposed to be for the locals. But if you — I mean, to me, if you live in the area, you’re a local. You’ve got a lot of Eastern Europeans around here.

patrick kingsley

But when I actually spoke to people, and I said, did you want to do these jobs? Have you ever done these jobs? They would actually say, no, we wouldn’t want to do something like that.

speaker And the English people moan about Polish people taking their jobs. But it’s not that. It’s just that the English people are lazy. And they didn’t even really want the jobs. But now that the jobs are taken, they want to moan about it.

michael barbaro

So what you’re hearing is a group of people mourning their past, the kind of work that’s no longer available in this town.

patrick kingsley

Yes. You’re right. They are mourning just the passing of a way of life. They’re mourning the passing of a more secure form of employment. And when suddenly, no one had any secure work any longer, their instinctive reaction is that the town started coming apart primarily because of the arrival of all these European immigrants who are taking everyone’s jobs.

archived recording (david cameron) Three years ago, I committed to the British people that I would renegotiate our position in the European Union and hold an in-out referendum.

patrick kingsley

And that’s why, in 2016, when a referendum arrives on the horizon —

archived recording (david cameron) On Monday, I will go to Parliament and propose that the British people decide our future in Europe. The choice is in your hands.

patrick kingsley

— it gives people in Britain the choice: Do you want to stay part of Europe, or do you want to leave it? The people in Shirebrook and, indeed, the surrounding constituency vote by one of the highest proportions in the country to leave the European Union. And what makes this interesting is that you have a very strongly Labour town voting in accordance with a measure that is supported by the majority of the Conservative Party.

michael barbaro

Right.

patrick kingsley

So for the first time in the town’s history, the population of the town are kind of drifting away from the political moorings that they had been tied to for all of the 20th century.

michael barbaro

And what did the people in Shirebrook see Brexit as suddenly giving them, given the situation they’re in?

patrick kingsley

I think the people in Shirebrook — first and foremost, it’s something that would stop all this immigration. And by proxy, it would be something that might restore pride and energy to a once-bustling town that has seen better days.

michael barbaro

Right. Because one of the things that Brexit promises is an end to this open borders system by which anyone in Europe can come into Britain and work in Britain, in a place like Sports Direct in Shirebrook.

patrick kingsley

Exactly.

michael barbaro

And of course, Brexit passes. By a narrow margin, but it passes.

patrick kingsley

Right. And so, for the first time in a generation, people in a town like Shirebrook have experienced a win.

michael barbaro

And we know that that win didn’t last very long, because three years go by and Brexit doesn’t happen, despite the fact that it’s supposed to have happened. It still hasn’t happened.

patrick kingsley

Exactly. And as a result, in places like Shirebrook, what I was hearing when I went up, there was deep, deep frustration.

speaker For the last three and a half years, I’ve been watching the mess that is Brexit. And we’re just livid that this vote hasn’t been delivered.

patrick kingsley

Which brings us to last week —

archived recording Good evening. And welcome to another night in which the future of our country hangs in the balance.

patrick kingsley

— when we had a general election in Britain that was basically a quasi-second referendum. But instead of voting on a question of whether to leave Europe, you had to vote for a political party.

archived recording This is the most important U.K. general election in a generation. Britain is heading to the polls to elect a government in the hope of finding a solution to that Brexit crisis. Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party have a simple message: Get Brexit done. In 2017, Labour did unexpectedly well, but they still ended up the minority party. Their Brexit policy is less clear-cut than others.

patrick kingsley

And so that gave voters in Shirebrook this very difficult choice between voting for a party that their parents had voted for, that their grandparents had voted for, that was very closely tied to the history of their town, and whose candidate, Dennis Skinner, the Beast of Bolsover, is this local hero lionized by basically every household, as far as I could see. And on the other side, the party that had, in the local consciousness, destroyed Shirebrook, destroyed the mine, destroyed the unions, destroyed the social fabric, but which was resolutely pro-Brexit. And people had to decide, do they go with the party they’d always voted for, or do they go with the party that supported Brexit?

michael barbaro

In a sense, do they vote their heritage, or do they vote their future?

patrick kingsley

Exactly.

archived recording (sarah sternberg) Here we go, then. I, Sarah Sternberg, the deputy returning officer at this election, give you the following results.

michael barbaro

And once the votes were tallied, we know that Conservatives, and by extension, Brexit, won a huge percentage of the vote. So what did the local results look like in Shirebrook?

patrick kingsley

Well, for the first time ever, the local constituency returned a Conservative lawmaker.

archived recording And I do hereby declare that Mark Peter Fletcher is elected to serve as member of Parliament for the constituency of Bolsover.

patrick kingsley

And Dennis Skinner —

archived recording The man they called the Beast of Bolsover, the man who nobody could remember without that constituency, Dennis Skinner there, pushed into second place.

patrick kingsley

— is out of Parliament for the first time in 49 years.

michael barbaro

Wow.

archived recording It’s that kind of moment, when you’ve forgotten all the rest of the detail from these sorts of nights, it’s the moments like Bolsover that you’ll remember. It was an extraordinary change.

patrick kingsley

Huge swaths of the country that for years, for decades, supported Labour have suddenly voted Conservative. And that’s how the Conservatives won last week’s election.

michael barbaro

Because, essentially, of Brexit.

patrick kingsley

Because of Brexit. But also because of all the things that led to Brexit. Because of the destruction of the main center of employment in the town, because of the loss of the pride and the purpose in the community that came hand in hand with that place of employment. And because of the warehouse that came to replace it.

michael barbaro

And the people who came to work in that warehouse.

patrick kingsley

And the people who came to work there. Yeah.

michael barbaro

Patrick, I spoke with our colleague Mark Landler ahead of the general election, and he predicted that this political realignment would happen in towns like this, that Labour strongholds would fall to the Conservative Party. And he said the great danger for voters who conflated this election with a vote on Brexit is that Brexit may not mean, over time, what they think it will, that it might not bring the restoration of a life that many people are still mourning in Britain. So with that in mind, what does this election outcome seem to mean for Shirebrook and its economy?

patrick kingsley

Well, if you take an optimistic position on Brexit, you believe that, sure, there’ll be a bit of turbulence as Britain comes out of Europe, but that will spark a kind of national revival that regenerates British trade and British industry. And Britain, alone, on its own, will be forced to come up with creative solutions to many problems that have just been allowed to fester during Britain’s membership of the European Union.

[music]

patrick kingsley

But the pessimistic take on Brexit is that once Britain leaves the European Union, it becomes less of an attractive proposition for foreign companies to base their factories and their businesses. And so in order to keep foreign investors coming into Britain and in order to attract new ones, the government is going to have to slash regulations, make it even easier to hire and fire people, and in the process, make it easier to set up a warehouse like Sports Direct. And so there is a scenario in which post-Brexit Britain looks a lot more like Shirebrook in 2019 rather than less like it.

michael barbaro

Which would not, of course, be the outcome that the people in Shirebrook are looking for.

patrick kingsley

Absolutely not.

michael barbaro

Patrick, thank you.

patrick kingsley

Thank you. It’s great to chat.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee formally presented its case for impeaching President Trump to the entire House of Representatives, saying that he, quote, “betrayed the nation by abusing his office.” That report is expected to become the basis for a historic vote on Wednesday in which the House will impeach the president and trigger a trial in the Senate.

archived recording (chuck schumer) So in the coming weeks, senators, particularly Republican senators, will have a choice. Do they want a fair, honest trial that examines all the facts? Or they do they want a trial that doesn’t let the facts come out?

michael barbaro

In a news conference on Monday, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, demanded that Senate Republicans hold a trial that calls new witnesses from the Trump administration and produces new documents from the White House, something that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has resisted.

archived recording (chuck schumer) Trials have witnesses. That’s what trials are all about. And documents. If Leader McConnell doesn’t hold a full and fair trial, the American people will rightly ask, what are you, Leader McConnell, and what is President Trump hiding?

michael barbaro