Alex Snowdon interviews Heather Wood, an organiser of Women Against Pit Closures, about why support for far-right ideas has risen in areas that were once bastions of the labour movement

In July’s general election, Reform UK got some of its biggest vote shares in deindustrialised, largely working-class areas of north-east England. Similar areas were the scene of a number of racist riots just a few weeks later. Yet these areas once had a massive Labour vote and a strong labour movement.

The Easington constituency covers the eastern part of County Durham, including the towns of Seaham and Peterlee (to the south of Sunderland) and former pit villages like Easington itself. Reform UK picked up 30% of the votes in the general election, a little over double the national average.

Labour’s vote has declined massively. In 1997, the year of Tony Blair’s landslide, Labour won 80% of the vote share in Easington. But in this year’s election it was just 49%. Turnout has fallen from 67% in 1997 to 50% this year.

Easington and the other pit villages of east Durham were the inspiration for the film Billy Elliot (set during the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85) and, more recently, Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, which explores themes of poverty, racism and community.

Heather Wood, born in 1951, has lived her whole life in the area. She is a socialist, a former Labour Party member and one of the organisers of Women Against Pit Closures. Alex Snowdon asked her about the changes she has seen in Easington and the factors behind the rise in support for Reform UK.

What do you recall about growing up in Easington?

My dad worked at Easington pit. My grandma hadn’t wanted him to work there; my dad’s father had been killed at Shotton pit when my dad was only ten months old. In some ways we hated the pit when I was growing up because we knew what damage it did.

At home, socialism was preached by my mam and dad. My dad was a quiet socialist – he would discuss things with me at home and give me ideas. We were doing OK, but he told me never to forget the people who don’t have what we have. My mam had always gone out to work outside the home. She was always political – she made me an activist.

The community came together then for two reasons. One was that we all knew the fear, the danger. The men knew it from working down the pit and the women and children knew it too. But, at the same time, the pit brought the union – the NUM. The men paid their union dues and many were very active.

That provided us with an even more caring community. They built the welfare hall, they bought land for recreation, and long before I was born, they paid for a doctor. All the mining communities had those things. It made you realise that if you all work together you can do stuff. We policed ourselves – we didn’t need the police – and the young lads were tutored and helped by the older men, so they weren’t likely to turn to drugs or crime.

When did things start to change?

Things changed when Margaret Thatcher sent the police in during the Miners’ Strike. We became a community that were afraid of people who were meant to be looking after us. But the massive change was when the bulldozers came in after the pit shut. Thatcher wanted everything out of sight because Easington was one of the strongest pits.

Almost all the community was out that day and in tears. We were in tears for something that killed people and made them ill, but we knew what was coming. That killed the union. We have a Durham Miners’ Association and they try to do their best. But because there was nothing there to bind people together, things fell apart.

Can you describe some of the changes in communities like your own?

The church commissioners, who own a lot of the land that the colliery houses stand on, sold properties not only to sitting tenants, but to private landlords. At first it was local people, but then it was people from anywhere in Britain, then it was people who were living abroad – they had never seen the properties and didn’t care about the state they were in.

Hundreds of houses were vacant. They should have bulldozed them and started again with affordable social housing organised through the council or housing associations. What happened was that some people, a lot of them with complex problems from other areas, were encouraged to move in. They moved into rat-infested properties owned by private landlords living a long way away.

We don’t have the money or resources to accommodate people. I don’t have a problem with anyone. The problem is that they haven’t put the money in to invest in our communities.

Another thing is that – after the pits shut – people started moving away, looking for work. They didn’t come back here, so we are left with a massive elderly population and nobody to look after them. They rely on social care, but social care doesn’t have the money, so we now have lots of elderly people sitting in their houses seven days a week on their own.

Those people have nothing – and nobody. Even the pubs and the clubs have shut because people can’t afford to go. They are drinking at home. There is nowhere for people to gather. Even the churches are going – whether you are religious or not, at least they were a meeting place.

You were involved in Ken Loach’s film The Old Oak, which explores life in a working-class community in County Durham. What do you think that film shows about life in these communities?

It shows everything. I told Ken Loach when we were halfway through, ‘You have achieved what you set out to do.’ It shows exactly the problems we have got here, especially racism. You talk to people here and they say ‘They’ve taken over our primary school. There’s more black children in the school.’ I beg to differ. There’s a handful of refugee children who are going there. You get people posting things on Facebook where they are blaming Asians or Muslims for problems.

I remember during the Miners’ Strike taking a bus load of lads down to London. We were meeting up with an Indian community there so they could talk about their experiences of the police, while we could share our experiences. The lads were complaining when they got on the bus – I won’t repeat the words they called them. When they got back on the bus to come home, they said ‘Heather, they’re just like us, aren’t they?

The film did this – not just on screen, but in real life. We were having our lunch break when we did some filming. The Syrians were sat over one side of the hall and we were sat on the other side. I went over and said, ‘Come on, come and have your lunch with us.’ We started eating together and we listened to their stories about what they had been through in Aleppo.

These refugees have been vilified by people who have never even met them. They jump on a right-wing bandwagon. This is where the Left has failed – we have concentrated on big cities, but in the villages it is different. These right-wing ideas are getting a big hearing.

What has Labour done that has lost it votes? And why is Reform picking up support?

One reason is that people lost trust in Labour. Blair did very little for areas like ours. The Labour Party took people’s votes for granted. Those days have gone – you have to work for people’s votes. They have been very complacent – we now have a Labour Party that does virtually nothing in our communities.

What’s crept in is Farage and his gang. Farage promises people the earth. People with far-right ideas are getting into the colliery towns and villages and making empty promises: ‘We’ll get jobs’, ‘We’ll get better houses for you’, ‘We’ll get rid of these Asians, these Muslims – we’ll put them out.’

That’s why Reform are winning votes – they are out there doing stuff when Labour isn’t. Labour people are complacent and doing nothing to counteract it. We have got to start fighting back.

The riots have led to talk about those involved having ‘justifiable grievances’. What do you think about that?

In a way I totally understand. Hope is lacking in our villages and towns. You have young people, lads in particular, whose self-esteem is low, whose education is lacking, who do the only thing they know to get people to listen to them. They will smash things up.

Unless people can offer them something – not just say ‘You need to have hope’ but actually give them practical things that make things better – then you are going to get more of this. Years ago, when I was working in probation, I’d meet young people who had done something wrong. Once they were into the justice system, they would be tarred with a brush of being ‘bad people’ and they would play up to that.

What gives you hope?

Last week’s demonstrations and rallies, all around Britain, give me hope. Thousands of people out there, protesting against racism and fascism.

Coming out of the Labour Party has done me good. I am speaking to left-wing organisations, women’s gatherings, trade unions – and you realise how many people there are who see things the same way that you do. It was great when Jeremy Corbyn got elected and all those young people came forward and got involved. After Starmer and the right wing took over, many of them got disaffected and went away, but many of them have got stuck into other areas like the trade unions.

Younger people coming forward and getting into activism is great. Through Women Against Pit Closures, we have come into contact with the daughters and granddaughters of those of us who were active in 1984. I used to worry that when people like me died there might not be anyone to take over the fight, but now I have more hope.