“The communities that surround Durham are still defined by the legacy of coal and labor organizing. Most families have a connection to the pits: a father, or grandfather, who went down the mines.
“‘Some people say we focus too much on our mining heritage, but we ain’t got much else,’ says Darren McMahon, whose family arrived from Ireland in the 19th century to dig coal.
“The coal mines that powered Britain’s industrial revolution, though, are long gone. Many closed in the 1950s and 1960s. Others shut in the 1980s under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose protracted battle with mining unions made her a folk devil in pit villages. The last coal mine in County Durham, in operation for nearly two centuries, closed in 2020.
“By then, however, Labour’s strength [in the UK] had already begun to erode. After experiencing decades of decline in mining and other industries, as well as the failure of successive governments to revitalize working-class communities, locals are turning to populists on the right and left – those who promise to break with a creaking political order.”
“’You have an emotional reaction to feeling left out and unrecognized,’ says Mabel Berezin, a sociologist who directs Cornell University’s Institute for European Studies. ‘It’s not that people have suddenly become nationalist. ... The economic needs of populations are not being met.’”
