Original subtitles

- United Kingdom?

It's just basically an island about 26 miles from France.

By water.

But I wouldn't go in a rowing boat.

And I'd lock your lorry up if you're coming back.

- I voted to leave because I read a book once

and it said, it was about relationships.

And it said early in a relationship people

sometimes get an alarm bell ringing

that it's not working out but they choose to ignore it.

And I saw that happening with us being in the EU.

And it sounds ridiculous but it was about a cucumber.

See I read in the paper much to by amusement

that the EU was saying cucumbers were no longer,

the curly ones that were misshaped that wasn't acceptable.

They had to be a uniform shape and size.

And that was the beginning for me.

And little by little I started to notice

that sovereignty and democracy as I saw it was eroding.

- 2016 was a year that

that will go down in history as the year

that yet again the British destroyed the European Union.

2016 was a year

that finally the people got what they wanted.

And 2016 was a year that will go down in history

as the biggest democratic vote the UK's ever undertaken.

- Seems people are just struggling with

the circumstances that they are in themselves.

And they just desperately need somebody to blame.

- Brexit was an acronym for the words Britain exit

defining the case before Britain to leave

the European Union, happened in 2016 in the United Kingdom.

The vote was whether or not Britain should remain in the EU

and how that would affect the country and basically Europe.

It does not affect whether England would be

geographically on the map as many people would say

we are now out of Europe, that's just irrelevant.

We'll always be part of Europe

but not part of the European Union.

- Brexit was one of very rare opportunities

for people to say what they wanted to say or actually

it's one of these very rare opportunities

where they could say fuck off to the government.

- I didn't think that we'd leave.

I thought the overall luck would to be stay.

I was quite confused a little bit whether

have we made the right decision?

Have we made the wrong decision?

One of those kind of feelings.

Well I was quite surprised that brexit got the vote.

Very surprised indeed.

- I'm a pissed of Brit.

I'm Abraham Ishmael.

I'm a Muslim and proud.

I'm Boletornian.

I'm from Boletopia.

Where are we?

We're on a precipice at the moment.

And we can either fall or fly.

- If the remain vote was Project Fear

then in my opinion a one word

description of those who

voted to leave would be freedom lovers.

- A terrible shock when I got up in the morning.

Really through the house I just sat and cried.

I cried yeah.

- My heart said out.

But my head said in so I voted in.

- I'm Charlotte, I'm in London

and I voted for brexit and I support UKIP.

- People essentially want British money British funds

British work to stay in Britain for Brits.

And really you can't complain about that.

- History tells us that any empire

from the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire,

French Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Empire.

If an empire gets too big it implodes.

And I felt the European Union is too big

and it is going to implode.

- At this age it takes a lot to shock me.

It's like where were you when

President Kennedy was assassinated?

I'll always remember I was filling the kettle

and it said the vote is in and I went, my jaw dropped.

And I was so proud of my fellow voters.

And I thought that will show the politicians

who think that were a stupid bunch of shopkeepers

as Hitler said it that we've got a mind

and will only take so much and then it's no no.

- Scotland is fucking raging

over the EU referendum results.

You only have to look at the map of where

the results came from to see how Scotland voted

versus how other parts of the UK voted.

And this is a consistent chain that we're seeing

again and again as the UK votes collectively

on really quite urgent issues.

- Here we are in Plymouth, welcome to Plymouth.

And this is an area which would have voted

which did vote predominantly for exit.

It's a very easy area to

go out on a right wing sentiment of vote to push

to the right because it's economically very vulnerable.

It's very deprived.

There's a lot of people on zero hour contracts here.

There's a lot of people who are being

termed now the JAMS, he just about managing.

They are working essentially to pay for

food rent and bills and that's it.

- Whether they're right or wrong if you asked on the street

if what they think about the year the state of Britain

most people will say that it's declining.

So they'd look for a change whether it's something they know

as a definite or something it's just a chance.

- Unfortunately I was unable to vote

in the referendum as I am under the age of 18.

- I think people are still shocked about the

result in the end they didn't expect it.

They thought okay we'll put our opinions down

and then actually maybe obviously

the result turned out to be an exit

and it was quite a shock so it's going to be

a massive change in the country I think.

People are mainly not really decided

obviously what's gonna happen.

We don't know I mean we've left fair enough but officially

in a couple years time once everything gets settled down

I think there's going to be massive changes

where people haven't really thought about deeply

or haven't been told about of what actually it means.

- All change as far as I'm concerned

all change is really really good.

All change creates movement, creates new money,

creates new opportunities and that would be my personality

would be to just shut my eyes and jump and do it.

- We're just sick to the back teeth.

The politicians turning around

and saying to us oh you disagree with us?

We're not getting her point across.

Oh you don't understand the issues you've been lied to.

Well no the message is we do understand.

We're sick of your arrogance

we're sick of your not listening to us.

And by voting to get out of Europe

we hoped to get rid of at least one layer

of these arrogant parasites.

- And everybody thinks about

the world in a way of how it is now.

And things in the world have only really been stable.

And we've been lucky with that in relatively

pretty much just this century in fact not even that.

And I think everybody's got very comfortable

with the idea of stability.

And I suppose I had a question in the back of my mind of

what if the world becomes unstable?

And in that circumstance

I'd want a government

where they're accountable to the people

who've voted for them.

And I felt like the little man has more say

just to their own government

than a central giant European government

that's almost like a global conglomerate.

- I mean I got called uneducated.

I was a no name uneducated man by a lady in the office.

But everyone's entitled to their vote.

That's the beauty of the UK, the British government.

You're entitled to your vote and you have a right to vote

and it does matter whichever you vote for

but you've still got your own opinion.

- I think

remain voters are smarter then leave voters.

And that makes me a snob fine.

I think the leave vote was very enticing

because it's simultaneously rebellious and patriotic.

It tics a fuck load of boxes for someone

who's driven by emotion and doesn't

really understand what's going on.

I think

remain voters,

I think it's harder to come to a pro remain decision

because it takes more work it takes more reading.

Very few people have an emotional connection to the EU

because by definition it's this large

relatively faceless body because it's an administrative body

and that's what they like that's what they are.

- One of the crazy regulations that the EU

imposed on the sheep industry is the electronic tally.

And you will see the sheep behind us.

They have a tag in each ear.

The yellow one is an electronic chip with an individual ID.

The other tag is exactly the same without the chip.

Well one tag would have done.

We get problems with fly strike.

The tags fall out.

It's been successful in a way but one tags fine.

Two tags are so very unnecessary.

- Over 60% of the fish caught within the whole

of Europe is caught within British waters.

So this area this is area seven,

stretches from the Davis Straight

right round through to the Isle of Man.

And in that area the UK can take 12% of the catch.

So if you compare that with say France

who we share the English Channel with

and share these waters with

France can take 60% of the European shares.

So for a long time as fishermen

we felt that we had a very bad deal.

- Europeans living in the UK were not allowed to vote

in the referendum on brexit which is fine.

They're not held there.

They haven't got British passport.

They just guest coming an living and going that's fine.

If they were allowed to vote the result would be different.

If I was allowed to vote

I would vote to leave.

Funny enough.

- Before we went into Europe we was

the second richest country in the world.

Alls we ever do in this country

is give, give, give, give, give, give, give.

When were in the EU Poland's economy in factories is fried

and yet we're still given them like all that money,

millions and millions of pounds.

Every time something happens in the world Britain

helps out well why should we?

No one ever helps us.

- My parents came from Ghana and they came

when in the 20's and it was really really hard.

For them to, they hadn't didn't have many opportunities

and they worked really hard and worked the way up.

My mom's a teacher, my dad works in town planning.

And I can understand their reasons for voting out

because over the years they keep saying

how much easier it is for people who come over here

and go straight away on benefits.

They come over here and they don't

all they've got to do is get pregnant

and they get given a house whereas people

already in this country who need it don't get it.

So it was more the would I say the piss takers?

The ones that take the mickey out of the system

that's what's fueling my mum's reason for voting out.

- I wouldn't say that I'm a particular fan

of the European Union and that

is a neoliberal institution.

It isn't very good at supporting ordinary

working class people in their rights.

But it wasn't in it it wasn't an election

about whether I like it or not.

It was about an election whether we remain within it or not.

So I voted remain for a number of reasons

largely because the election as it ended up being

wasn't an election about whether

we remain or leave the European Union

but it became an election about immigration.

- Political correctness influenced the brexit vote

by making large sections of the population

who had perfectly reasonable concerns about immigration

feel as though they were not even able

to open their mouths to voice these opinions

for fear of being shouted down by their contemporaries,

for fear of possibly even being criminalized

if they express this on social media

or in any other published form.

And I think you have what is now really

the silent majority of the people who

want to say these things but feel so

restricted by the culture that we're living in

that they have no way to express their opinions.

- I think the UK as an open country

they don't want, we don't want to

and I'm gonna use it's white people aren't allowed to be

they're the only people that can be racist.

Everybody else can say what to think.

White people aren't allowed to say what they think

because they're gonna be a racist.

I think Britain, they don't want our freedom

and express freedom of expression of speech.

We can say what we like within reason obviously.

All of a sudden there's a lot of Muslim

people coming in who have different values.

They treat their women different.

They treat society different and people are afraid.

They're seeing because these people do not value life.

They value death.

I don't mean all of them I just mean those radicals.

People just feel their all radicals and they're not.

Whenever you're scared people would worry.

But no we like

personally as a Brit I like the royal family.

I like the pomp and circumstance.

I like the uniforms I like the military.

I just was always proud to be British

very proud to be British and it's being eroded away.

The fact that you have to go to Brussels to ask

can you do stuff.

I'm not

learned up enough on it to know what

give you a specific but

I just think somebody needs to be accountable

if something has cocked up if it goes wrong.

We can vote out if our government's not working.

We can vote them out and put somebody else in.

If Brussels cock up your stuck with them.

- The very next day after brexit we experienced

the backlash almost straightaway.

It was the very next morning driving to school.

Coming up to school is a busy rush.

The traffic is absolutely awful

and there was somebody behind me was trying to get passed.

I pulled over onto the side to help them get passed.

So then he pulled up alongside me, put his window down

and it was the absolute most foul abuse.

I thought if I had stepped out of the car

I thought I would get attacked.

And it was basically that we voted out

why are you still here in really awful terms.

But it was the first time that my daughter

has ever experienced racial abuse in her 12 years.

And she was absolutely horrified.

She was shaken to the core.

She didn't sleep for a good two,

three weeks properly afterwards.

She was very very, she was waking up

at night screaming having nightmares.

She wasn't sure what about but she knew

that she was feeling unsafe.

She'd heard things at school.

She had Polish friends, English friends, Asian friends

and nobody knew what was going to happen.

And because she had experienced this the very next day

and a number of occasions after that she

was absolutely traumatized.

- I think we ended up leaving voting leave because

there were a lot more people in the country that live in

different circumstances than big cities.

Most of the big cities voted to remain.

But a lot of the people that live in smaller towns

and out in the country are really affected by

the recession and I think they blame

a lot of Europe for everything.

And a lot of them aren't cosmopolitan as big cities are.

And there is a lot of racism, and a lot of thinking that

the refugees and migrants and it's all that

in the press about them all coming over.

And I think that's why I think

they just didn't want them to come.

They thought that leaving Europe

would stop it, which isn't true.

- A lot of assumptions made about

people who voted to leave as well.

About it being predominantly a racist

anti-immigration xenophobic vote.

And I think that's been very misguided very ill though out.

And motivated by the fear that's been generated

quite deliberately by those who wanted us to stay in.

Now the reason why it's almost

it's badly motivated but it's

more importantly it's incorrect and that's

the important thing really is it's just plain wrong.

There are not 17 and a half million racists in Britain.

Just isn't true.

- Everyone's frightened, afraid of not haven't control

and not many people coming into the UK.

And it's making a big difference.

It's hitting the NHS.

It's hitting even just around here the dentists

and everything we can't get in

because if we can't cope with the influx of people.

- It's a very small country with a quite a large population

and the resources are just being stretched too much.

- It's all about territorial.

It's the same with animals isn't it?

If a dog is in its garden another dog

comes into the garden it's invading its territory.

It's the same kind of deal I think.

People are a bit afraid of it.

I must admit I'd be afraid of that meself, being invaded.

- In the Northeast I'm from a white

working class estate in the West End of Newcastle.

And everybody that lives there is still white I would argue.

And after the election I went and had a pint with my dad

in the working men's club and had a conversation there.

Nearly all voted to leave.

Why did you vote to leave?

Well because of all the immigrants coming here

taking our jobs and our houses.

And I said to them well what immigrant do you know?

I don't know any.

So who do has lost their house

or their job to an immigrant?

Well I don't know anyone.

Right okay so why have you lost your job?

Well because the place shut down.

Why did the place shut down?

Because of the recession.

What caused the recession?

Bankers.

Alright so it's bankers and not migrants

then that's caused this problem.

So I don't think it's a difficult argument

to have with working class communities.

- Now let's just say everyone in the EU out you go.

So that'd be two million jobs free.

Now the agencies take a lot of the money.

they pay the minimum wage and take

a huge amount of that person's money.

But British people won't put up with it.

So the agency has a choice.

I go into an agency and I say let's say in two years time

once that 50, paper 50 or article 50's been done

and I go to an agency and I say

I'm interested in that job in the window.

And they say okay well it's only paying the minimum wage.

You say nah I want eight quid an hour.

Well we can't pay that.

I say okay go and get a Polish person.

Oh shit you can't they're not here anymore.

They've all gone back.

- With things like immigration and influx of

people from Europe they probably are scared

that their home area where there isn't many immigrants

will become like London losing

its country's identity as it were because

let's be honest London is not an English town.

- London is a bit of a paradox.

London has some exceedingly wealthy people

living almost right across the street

from some exceedingly poor.

When I go to London I don't meet many Londoners anymore.

And that's a big shame and that's

also another reason for brexit I think

that people will want Britain to stay Britain

to stay England they don't want it to

become an amalgamation of the rest of Europe

where we are rightly very proud of the things that are here.

- We're very lucky where we are.

In Northumberland it's highly unlikely that

there's gonna be a terrorist attack up here.

But it has got a massive effect on people.

There was a lady that wouldn't,

she won't get on an airplane anymore.

So she goes on holiday she goes on a bus.

- I think it's been bubbling up for

a long long time for many years since

the day when I was about 10 or 11 and the 9/11 happened.

- Yeah the refugees are not all refugees we're seeing that

if they were all refugees you would have this

I would think you would have women, children, and men.

You see him them not so much children

but women and man you would have equal amounts.

The thought is we've seen the videos.

It's all males.

I would say in 30 not all but the vast majority of them.

And they aren't refugees.

What are they?

- They're the part of this,

I think they're a part of this Isis plan for to get

a strong foothold in Europe and then enter the UK.

And that's been proven.

- I think growing up in Northern Ireland

made me realize that

terrorism isn't something that brown people do exclusively.

That white people are also capable of terrorism.

I think that's important for the

rest of the world to realize.

It made me understand how communities

can be completely divided.

And why the state has an interest in dividing communities.

And how the division of different groups

of people actually helps the state

and a way the state encourages that.

- The important thing to remember is that

I don't have a political degree and neither does

millions of people that voted.

It's all about public opinion.

So if you can sway that by making people feel like they're

benefiting something or actually making it change

then it doesn't matter what they vote for

as long as they feel like they're making a difference.

- Last week there is a poll taken that said

that 33% of people feel the brexit is the most important

issue facing government over the next three years.

57% of people think it's the NHS.

And that should tell you something as well

about what using the NHS to manipulate

people during a referendum campaign,

what sort of impact that that would have.

And it's people's number one concern

and ironically it is probably not going to be addressed

in the next 10 years if we continue with

the plan to leave the European Union because government

somebody won't have time for any other priority.

- As a young person who supported UKIP who supports UKIP

and who voted for brexit in the referendum I feel that

I am not part of the norm for young people because

I don't listen to everything that the media tells me.

I've learnt to be skeptical about what the media says.

That pretty much includes all aspects of media

whether that be the Sun newspaper,

The Independent, The Guardian, Daily Mail.

And I came to the conclusion that I came to

because I did my own research.

I looked at the UK policies.

I didn't just judged by what the headlines

were saying about UKIP because at the end of the day

the media is very sensationalist and it's designed

to get to build reactions out of people.

- When you're part of the EU any countries joining the EU

then you have to to allow these people in.

So on the pipeline was gonna be Turkey, Macedonia, Croatia.

I mean so how many people can you take?

How many jobs is there in this country?

How is the benefits and stuff like that?

Are they taking our benefits?

Are they taking our jobs?

- If they're born in Britain and be of British

parent parentage yes they've got a right to be here.

They've got a right to claim benefits.

But they also should have a right to the jobs.

Now they can't have the jobs if other people

from other other countries have taken them jobs.

So basically that's the only way

the open borders actually have any

ruling on who gets jobs.

Because if you got a load of foreigners

coming in the country and taking all the jobs

no job is left for the British.

Where does it leave the British people?

- So I have friends that

have been out of work for some time

or were out of work for some time.

And they'd always refused to work in a factory

or a sandwich packing plant or in a field

because they feel like it's the last type

because there's nowhere to go from that.

You can't go up and you can't gain qualifications

or you might not find a better place.

So they actively remain unemployed

in search of something better.

And then I have Eastern European friends

which has taken these jobs and then going back

to my first friends they said that they can't get a job

because that job in the field or a packing plant

might have been taken by an Eastern European.

- It'd be great to give everybody a job wouldn't it?

Give them self self worth to be

able to make their own money?

Maybe that's what they think about

when they think about coming to England.

Which is a dream isn't it hope?

What kept them people alive on those boats

that come across the channel in grease dying in the sea?

That bitter hope.

And let's give it to them if that's what they want.

You couldn't deny that to anyone could you?

- When you say there aren't any jobs anymore

It's not a matter of there aren't any jobs.

There isn't any pay.

And the reason there isn't any pay is because

the greed of the upper echelons, the elite.

The elite want to make more and more

and more and more money and the only way,

normally nine times out of 10 if you go back in history

and study this you'll find that in nine cases out of 10

the only way this is ever solved is

by a catastrophic world war.

- I feel like there is still a lot of hope in the world

because everyday people are able to connect with each other

in profound meaningful ways that before

we're only the preserve of the elite and major corporations.

Like now we can all network.

And myself as an artist, as a poet

I can find people all over the world

and I can connect with them and I can have

places to work and perform and there is a wonderful freedom

that I have that my ancestors never had.

And I feel incredibly lucky to be alive now

as a lesbian female Northern Irish person from a rural area.

Before there would be no possibility

of being able to exercise freedom within any of those roles.

So I actually feel really lucky to be alive right now

as opposed to any other any other time.

I guess maybe if you were like

a white heterosexual English man

this is maybe like a scary time to be alive

because other people are doing things

and that might be threatening for them.

But for me like it's great to be live now.

And I feel like all this fear mongering

is just a way to try and encourage people

to buy more stuff that they don't need.

- Are we clear?

We're clear?

Donald Trump is the President of the United States.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States.

- The reason I think it seems that it is white

straight possibly also working class men

who are critical of identity politics

or political correctness is because

they are the one identity group that is not

held to be necessary of any assistance.

They're not viewed as disadvantaged and in fact

they're quite commonly deemed to be the oppressor.

And I think if you are with relation to brexit

if you look at what's happened in America

I think this plays a massive part

in explaining what's going on.

White working class male people

have started playing the identity politics game.

They've realized that although they may have

very different agendas as a group they can,

they can they must work together to

form a coherent identity because this is how

the other side is playing the game.

- The world's changed so much since my youth even.

People used to be proud to be British.

They fought world wars to be British.

We had an empire that more or less ruled the world.

Now there's no empire.

There's no jobs.

We're no longer a strong nation.

So I can't say in the future

what the future holds for the country.

- What unites people in Britain my experience is that

everybody wants Britain to be back

to being mighty to being great again.

And I think we've had like the last 10, 11 years

we've just kind of come out of a recession.

It's been really hard.

Granted a lot of people have been hit hard.

In fact I don't really think other than

the ultimate uber rich I don't think there's anybody

that hasn't sort of had a knock in the last 10 years.

And I think that's great that we're all united

and want in the the nation to be awesome again.

And I think what divides people is how

we're going to be awesome again.

- There was a little bit inside me that thought

what if I'm wrong but my heart told me we've got to get out.

We can manage we're not a stupid nation.

We're a brave race of people and we can

think for ourselves and by God we will.

- I mean Britain was the biggest country in the world.

They dominated the world.

Yeah I guess it's coming back to haunt us now

because obviously we probably raped and pillaged

most countries all over the world

and now they want a bit, a piece of us back.

But that's not the point.

The point is is that we're still this little country

in the middle of the whatever the Atlantic Ocean

and we deserve to be this great nation

that why we're called Great Britain

because we are this great nation.

And we don't want to give it up so easily.

- Whoever had the biggest army

that's who decided who owned the land.

Invaders were a country of conquerors.

I think we've been invaded I don't know

how many times but were a country of conquerors.

It was might who decided who owns this land.

- I suspect hundreds and hundreds of years ago when

the Percy family took over the parish

around here which is a fairly big parish they stole it.

They murdered and thieved and stole it simple as that.

I'm not too sure that it'll happen again but it may.

It may be a peasant uprising.

- But what I'd like to say about what Gary said before

about when we used to rule the world

what people like me and Gary should remember is

in them days the working class

didn't get a slice of that either.

We were still treated as badly as

we will be if we rule the world again.

- Me I think class is relevant.

I don't think we can all be the same.

Or we'd finish up like like China for instance.

Communism, all one level, everybody the same

and socialism and I don't think that would work.

You need someone with brains I should think at the top.

- The gap between the rich and the poor now

is the greatest that's ever been in history.

Now you don't need to do anything to make money.

If you inherit money you will actually make more money

by doing nothing then you will by working.

I think the long term future of Northern Ireland

lies with the Republic as opposed to

a part of the United Kingdom.

That's obviously gonna be a very

another sort of minefield whenever that happens but

I think no, I think Britain,

I've never thought Britain was a great country.

I think it's been throughout its history been an aggressor.

I think now it's

smaller and weaker than it ever has been.

And I look forward to Scotland leaving them.

I look forward to Northern Ireland leaving it.

And once that does happen my attitude

would be to hell with Britain.

- You're proud, proud to be British.

Everyone looks at the British

and how would they solve this problem?

It's about passion we've got a lot

of passion in the UK and Britain.

And everything we do we do full hearted.

- I'm a Patriot because I grew up

loving and respecting my country.

I love the Queen.

I love our culture.

I love our location.

And it's the place where I've lived since I was born.

I've always loved that.

- I don't believe the country's influenced me in my life

possibly just from me own, took me own life

in me own hands and made me own destiny.

- And problems are always things like national identity

Those are the problems.

Governments are the problems because they're

the only ones who are pushing this concept

of a national identity.

I mean you're working class might.

People working might say yeah this is what

it means to be British, this is what it means to be British.

It's just like you're just trying to grab on

to a collective identity because you're fucking alone.

Because you're busy all the time you've got nothing.

There's no hope it's just constant revolving

work, work, work, family blah blah blah.

Kind of irresponsible to be honest.

- In Britain we feel like we're better

I suppose that's what it's always been.

I consider myself to be European.

I consider myself to be part of the continent of Europe.

Not many people share this view.

I don't know why people are proud to be British.

You cannot be proud of something that you haven't done.

- I personally struggle with ideas of national identity.

I'm from Wales but I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm Welsh

because when you say either English, Welsh,

Scottish, Irish, whatever there's

a lot of imagery that's codified into that.

As I like to say in a bit of a jokey fashion

I don't care about rugby so clearly I'm not all that Welsh.

- I'm a like many Welsh Welshman a rugby fan

and the song that symbolizes I think my favorite rugby team

the team which is known throughout the world as having

beaten the All Blacks namely The Llanelli Scarlets.

And they're known as The Boys of Sospan.

And there is a song which is known as

and it goes like this.

- England's my home country.

If you go to any other foreign country you'll see

their flags flying all the time.

Now in England you're a racist if you fly you're own flag.

- I think English is, and I'm not,

English is that color.

British can be any color you want.

- You cannot say that.

I have nothing to do with that last statement.

- To feel unwelcome here after giving so much

to being here, being part of it

feeling it's a part of me, because that's the main

because I feel I belong I feel like I'm part of it.

Then all of a sudden to have that taken

away from you is a feeling of not belonging

not having a place of being alienated.

It's marginalizing a huge amount of people

that are all of a sudden saying that

you aren't actually supposed to be here.

Where are we supposed to be?

Simply because of our ancestry that

all of a sudden we don't belong.

Simply because of the color of our skin

that all of a sudden we don't belong it doesn't make sense.

Women, specifically women, specifically Muslim women

who wear the hijab who wear the niqab who wear the burkas

they've been targeted as vulnerable people.

And as a Muslim woman sometimes

I wear hijab sometimes I don't and for my children

for my daughters I have two daughters.

I feel desperately unsafe,

desperately unhappy.

- I think we've always had a problem

of racism in this society but I think

because of the press and the way that politicians

talked about issues of race and migration

during the election campaign it began to legitimize

public racism on a scale that we haven't seen for a while.

So you can't deny it because we've seen a massive

increase in hate crimes since the election results.

So it's obviously done something.

I don't think it's that we suddenly just

become more racist think it's always been there

but people now have a legitimate reason

to behave and talk the way that they probably

previously felt was unacceptable.

- Until perhaps even five years ago

it was very easy to see very distinct

and concrete comparisons between the industrial

Northern England and the Central Belt of Scotland.

They had very similar cultures

and cultures suffering from the decline of industrialization

cultures borderline decimated by conservative policy

that ruined job prospects and income for so many people.

However there is now in 2016 one

crucial difference between those two areas.

In 2014 in Scotland citizens went through

a huge constitutional debate for the independence referendum

and during that time we were pushed

and we found ourselves hosting

the most incredible discussions about politics.

So instead of saying what party you voted for

or what politician will you support this time?

We were asking questions like what currency should we have?

What rules makes a society just?

We were starting from the bottom up

and as a result I think Scotland

although the vote didn't turn out the way

I'd hoped it would and had a political makeover if you like

whereby citizens became engaged on an unprecedented level

and I would argue we've got one of the most sophisticated

and clued in electorate that's going at the moment.

- I live in a mining, or should I say

an ex-mining town in County Durham, place called Horden.

Used to be the biggest,

used to have the biggest coal mine in Europe.

- The industries of Elham it was base around

the steelworks so the area where we are now

would have once been the steelworks.

It closed down I think 60's or 70's maybe

and now this is an industrial estate

and there's lots of different industries here now.

Obviously you can see there's containers.

The building Port of Salford just down the road so

that's going to bring a lot of

new industry and new work here

with shipping containers that sort of thing.

In the past there was margarine works,

dye works, salt works, match works

but most of that's gone now and it's kind of like

more like head offices and things like that.

- The Tory government actually closed

the coal mines, they close to shipyards.

They've just gotten rid of the steel industry.

So basically there's no heavy industries.

Britain was always run on heavy industries

and that's why it was so self sufficient.

Other countries used to rely on us.

Now we rely on other countries.

- You heard a lot talk about globalization

and it's been going on for many many years

that the world's got closer and closer.

And in the beginning it was great.

We all had cheap products and we all thought

it is wonderful trainers have never been so cheap,

and clothes have never been so cheap.

It's brought inflation down, it's been a good thing.

Globalization has been a good thing and well I think

we've got to the point where now it's starting affect,

it's starting to affect people on the ground

within the countries more particularly

probably the wealthier countries.

The standard of living is dropping and I think we're seeing,

I think we need to get to the root

of what problems we're seeing and

how we're going to deal with it.

- I'd hate to be leaving school now.

'Cause you can't get a job.

When we left school Gary's five six years younger than me.

We could just walk into jobs.

Left school, I left school with no qualifications at fifteen

and straight into an engineering apprenticeship.

You can't do that now.

You've got to stay in school till you're 18

then you go to university get a silly degree.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying everyone who goes to university

gets a silly degree but there are silly degrees out there.

And then people's waste so much of their lives

and then they can't get a job.

- No that's right.

- Not everybody leaves university these days and gets a job

and not everybody just falls into luck

just that easily anymore especially for me.

I think it's been a bit of a wake up.

I'm the youngest of four and it's been a wake up call

with me that it's not just been that easy for me

in the economy that I came out of university

just to make a success of meself.

There's not that many opportunities

and to be quite honest I would have been better off

not having gone to university and of studying a vocation.

In my opinion I would have got a lot further.

- The younger generation today don't seem to be as

into owning a home as maybe my parents generation where.

It was the norm it's what you did.

You bought a house you got married you had a kid.

I think the younger generation are kind of

having to accept that they're gonna have to rent.

People live with the parents still a lot later these days

which is a bit of a shame really that

they can't get out on their own

because rent is even ridiculously high.

People struggle to rent.

And again like there's no social housing so

if you can't afford to rent and you can't afford to buy

and there's no council houses I mean where do you live?

- There's been a lot of cuts and we've seen it in our jobs.

There's people losing their jobs

and council jobs and stuff like that but

people's gotta lose their jobs for the country

to go forward because they've got to save money

and to be honest that's life.

If you lose your job you've got to go find another one.

There's work out there.

We go back to the days when they was saying

there's no work there's no work but there's always been work

if you want to go find a job there's a job there.

- Jobs are freedom.

Jobs are also self esteem.

One of the big problems in this area

and with every area of unemployment is people who are

emotionally downtrodden.

When you don't have a job you don't have purpose.

Having purpose I consider is just

as important as having an income.

- I visited a hen, an egg operation in Scotland last year.

And it produces a million and a quarter eggs a day.

And it was a huge packing station manned by robots.

Not many people and very efficient.

So it'll carry on and leave us old codgers behind.

- As a taxi driver in regards to to growth of technology

I'm not worried about a self driving car

otherwise known as a pilotless car.

People climb into a taxi be it

a hackney carriage or a private higher car

to drive home with someone that knows the roads

someone that's friendly, talkative.

We take home after a night out

vulnerable young ladies who are drunk.

We ensure they get through the door that they're safe.

An automated car can't do that.

It's a machine it has no emotion

it doesn't think that extra mile that a human can think.

While an automated car is good for delivering parcels

using an arm drop it outside the door

it fails at being able to knock on the door

to let you know the parcel's there.

- I don't believe and their doom mongering

that we're going to be replaced by robots

and no one's gonna have a job anymore.

But maybe this technology can mean that we can move towards

a society where we only work three or four days a week.

And people have more social time.

But that means that wages are going to have to go up

so people can afford to live on working four days a week.

And you see some of those experiments

happening across Europe you see it in

some of the Scandinavian countries

people having a citizen's wage.

So I'm not scared of technology.

I think there's some real benefits to be had

in the uses and development of technology

so long as it's utilized to support people

rather than to just make money.

- I think it's so sad that we're getting rid

of people to give those jobs to robots.

'Cause in the 50's we got people over from

the West Indies to do the jobs that we couldn't.

We couldn't fill the jobs in the NHS

without these people being brought over

so to now render their children unemployed.

I mean what's the future if we don't give young people jobs?

They need to be working otherwise they're

just gonna be rampaging the streets

as some of them are doing at the moment.

- The robots will do everything.

We'll have robots that can make the robots.

So then what happens?

People might as well be extinct.

The whole world might as well just lie down and die.

Give North Korea the the power and just

let them press the button and blow the bloody world up.

- I think the right people are right to think

that we're heading towards the end.

I think it could be eminently close.

It could be eminently within the next couple of decades.

But I could give you strong evidence

that's biblical evidence that it could be 300 years away.

But it's not centuries and centuries away.

There is very good reason for believing

that we're getting to that critical mass time.

Call it a biblical prophecy.

I don't want us to be part of the 10 nations

that are going to rise out of federal Europe.

By leaving we'll avoid that.

Whether you believe biblical prophecy or not check it out.

It's been 100% accurate so far.

The future?

No reason to doubt that it won't come to pass.

But until these circumstances fall into place

nothing is gonna happen.

- I don't think the country will ever

come back to its former glories because

especially in the area where I live because

there's not enough investment there's not enough facilities.

There's basically just nothing.

- You've got one third of the country

people in the country live in the Southeast of the country.

And that's where everything,

all the work and everything is towards.

Brexit doesn't matter 'cause we've got nothing anyhow.

- When you've lost Democratic control

you can blame it on the experts.

But it's not the experts who created the policies that's

basically the business world and the corporate sector.

What's happening is opposition to policies.

The policies are imposed by self appointed experts.

So opposition to the policies may take the form

of opposition to expertise but that's not what it is.

In a democratic society not everybody becomes an expert.

- One feature of our current condition

is that we have on the one hand managed

to generate truly extraordinary complexities,

complexities that demand multiple systems of knowledge.

In all of that also lie extraordinary capacities

to generate brutalities that are simple.

- Neoliberalism is the ideal

hegemonic ideology of globalization.

It's basically saying we must liberalize

all markets, make them open markets.

We must commodify everything.

That means make them all subject to market forces

and market prices turning the commons

into part of the market society

and most importantly privatize everything.

So privatize the health service.

Privatize your education system.

Privatize the occupational life.

Privatize all public services.

And that agenda means they also are very hostile

to all institutions that stand against the market.

Trades Unions, collective bargaining,

NGO's, form of institutions,

the education system as an independent entity.

And they've been dismantling those and weakening those

systematically for the past 30 years.

- A new liberalism as a system worked for some time

but it's now collapsed and since 2008 effectively

what we've seen is government's trying

reinstate neoliberalism through austerity.

But this has failed as well.

We haven't seen a return to economic growth.

We're continuing to see wages stagnate.

We're continuing to see income inequality rise.

And we're continuing to see people suffer.

I think brexit if anything is

a reaction against neoliberalism.

Now we don't have anything to replace it yet.

And I think this is why today feels so chaotic at the moment

effectively we don't have a system that will yet

replace neoliberalism even as we start to see

attempts by the right through Donald Trump, Theresa May

to assert some sort of authoritarian post liberal order.

Whether or not this will be successful is yet to be seen.

- What's wrong with neoliberal democracy is

first of all that it undermines democracy.

That's explicit when you introduce privatization,

marketization and so on that's taking decisions

away from people and placing them

in the hands of private power.

That in itself is anti democratic and it also

turns out to be harmful to much of the population.

Joseph Stiglitz a Noble Laureate in Economics

later Chief Economist for the World Bank

warned against what he called following

the religion that markets know best.

They may know best about the price of shoes

but there's a lot of things they don't know best about.

And that's been demonstrated

and people are suffering from it.

Bernie Sanders talked about a political revolution

but if you look at his policies

they wouldn't have surprised to Dwight Eisenhower.

Well these are signs of how far everything

is shifted to the right during the neoliberal period.

- Let's be honest.

We have newspapers owned by ex-Soviet spies,

mainstream newspaper in Britain.

We have billionaire plutocrats dominating our media.

No government in Britain has won since 1974

without the active support of Rupert Murdoch, no government.

And Rupert Murdoch backed brexit

and he got his Sun newspaper and Sky and others

to come out in favor of brexit peddling many of the lies

that the brexit campaigners were putting out.

And he won.

He was on the winning side as always in British politics.

And Rupert Murdoch was asked by

the press why he supported brexit?

Very revealing answer.

He must be getting old.

His answer was

because when I go to Downing Street they do as I tell them.

When I go to Brussels no one takes any notice.

- The shocking thing about this neoliberal moment

where we see racism on the rise and so openly expressed

is that I would have never expected to see

far right politicians given the platform that they have.

On television we see Nigel Farage for you UKIP

sitting there on the same platform as

the bona fide traditional political parties.

We see all across Europe the far right

and whether it's Wilders or Le Pen

having an open platform to say racist things

and then claim what I'm saying is the truth,

what I'm saying is I'm honest.

They're saying it isn't racist to be racist.

By having this huge scapegoating

when capitalism is in its point of crisis

this project now needs to find somebody

and we use the word scapegoating

and it might seem like a cliche but it is so evident

that you cannot believe it's actually

happening in front of your eyes.

- What does a plastic bottle water have in common

with a migrant arriving at the shores of Europe?

Well the water bottle, that water comes from far away.

Big complex corporate arrangements were made for us to get

that little bottle of plastic with water in it.

It's Coca Cola, it's Nestle, and about 20 other bottlers.

They go in they often buy or simply grab

a huge piece of land and they begin to extract the water.

The water was extracted from a large piece of land

that used to be the land that produced a livelihood

and good nice fresh vegetables for small communities

and small growers small farmers.

They have lost their habitats because we got our water.

Think of the millions and millions of people

who are expelled by those processes.

So at our borders we get our plastic bottle of water

and we get our migrants, we never see the connection.

- So the question of brexit was

the question of Britishness in a sense.

And at the same time the question of foreignness.

What is a foreign, who is a foreign, and what is

the relationship we have to have with the foreign?

The idea of brexit was not that the UK was to leave Europe

but it was the Europe had to leave the UK.

So it's not about the UK coming out of Europe

but it's about expelling Europe from the UK.

Now what is Europe?

Well in the perspective of brexit as in the perspective of

the majority of the people that voted for brexit

Europe was this strange hybrid.

Europe was the bureaucratic elites the fat cats in Brussels.

And at the same time it was the kind of dirty immigrants.

So it's a strange combination of this

cosmopolitan extravagant elitist world

and it's dirty dangerous criminal underworld.

- We have had two major migrant subjects, the refugee

and there is an international law that allows us

to recognize the refugee when she stands at our borders.

And then we have the immigrant.

the immigrant is a strong subject.

It's extraordinary actually when you think about it

how few people become immigrants

given a world with such unequal chances.

When she appears at our borders there is national law

which is very messy law by the way.

But there is law that recognizes her.

I see in today's epoch really just the last five

maybe at most in certain areas 10 years

a third subject who is invisible to the eye of the law.

And one very sort of brief and a bit exaggerated

way of putting it is she's the refugee

of a certain mode of economic development.

Land grabs, mining, et cetera et cetera.

In the measures that countries use to measure

how their economy is doing when a plantation

when a mine replaces millions of small holders

of small agricultural people that reads as a positive.

It shows as GDP per capita growth.

It does not measure the fact of these millions

who are expelled who then reappear at the edges of Europe.

So we are dealing with a very complex cycle

that connects the destruction of the environment

which produces a loss of habitat.

The fact that how we measure that destruction

of the habitats, we measure it as a positive.

And the invisibility of this third emergent subject

that is the subject of our modernity, this modernity.

- It's often lamented that there aren't enough jobs.

Of course this is ironic as in the fact that

there aren't enough jobs should be a good sign.

As in if jobs are supposed to be

activities that we do to cater for people's needs.

And needs are of course these horrible

thing that we have to get rid of.

We have this pressing urging need

and what we want to do is to get rid of it.

Like we are thirsty we drink.

Then the fact that there aren't enough jobs

means that there aren't enough

unsatisfied needs that we need to satisfy.

So logically you would say it is a good thing.

It becomes a bad thing when not having enough jobs

becomes not having enough income.

The reason why there aren't enough jobs has to do with

transformations in the productive

systems the increasing automation.

Over the last 100 years there was this

continuous discussion about the fact that automation

would reduce working hours in a good way.

It would require us to work less and less and less.

In fact that has not happened.

We work now more than we used to work before.

The working year of a medieval peasant was actually less

full than the working year of a collar worker today.

- So often times when we think about automation

we think about big industrial robots on the assembly line.

But actually the self driving car

is a better model for automation today.

The self driving car, little is 10 years ago

people were confidently predicting

that it was basically impossible.

We would never have a self driving car.

Now obviously that's not the case.

the important part about this is that

there are millions of people working in driving jobs.

Whether it be truck drivers or delivery drivers

or taxi drivers if you look at America about 80%

of the states truck driving is the most popular job.

So this is a huge huge job sector

which is going to be impacted by a very

large amount by this wave of automation.

So I think a lot of the images of future

that are offered today oftentimes rely upon the past.

When we look to mainstream social democratic parties

when we look to trade unions, when we look to what

a lot of social movements are offering the idea of

the future that they offer is simply 1960's capitalism.

It's Keynesian it's the welfare state and social democracy

but this isn't actually an image of the future

so much as an image of a nostalgic past.

I think a lot of the slogans around making

America great again or returning the great to Great Britain

a lot of these are highly racialized slogans which

actually have an image of a very white sort of country.

And what they want in fact it's not necessarily

a return to some previous period of glory

but instead they want to return to what

they see as being their white country.

- But I think it's really important to talk about

the distinctions amongst whiteness.

Because there's the white working class

and then there's the white middle class

and then there's the elite and the super elite

and each one embodies and holds a different form of power.

So even though the skin color may seem the same

they are absolutely situated in

a different part of the social structure.

And how they relate to each other

is important to understanding the dynamics of brexit

because actually you have the empowered elite

and the middle classes voting to remain.

And you have the working class

and the abject poor and even within that

some black working class voting to leave.

And they feel they want their sovereignty back.

They want a love of the nation.

They want to reassert their Britishness, all the things

that actually smooth the wheels for the political elite.

Because nationalism is the endgame of capitalism.

It is the structure of the state that allows the elite

to gain wealth and status and assert a certain kind

of white privilege over the white working class.

And there you have within this heady mixture

you have the black working class and the migrant groups

as the kind of cog in the wheel

that links the white working class to the elite.

Because by hating and despising the migrant

you're not looking at the people that are truly

oppressing you and taking away your benefits

and removing your industrial base

so that you are no longer employed

and not building any houses for the working class.

No you're not looking at that.

You're looking at your neighbor who is black and saying

get out of here which is what happened.

The moment the brexit vote happened

a rise of racism and the verbal abuse

that happened on the streets was horrendous.

I mean it happened to me.

I was walking down the street the day after brexit

and an elderly white man told me to go back home.

This is my home I am black and British.

So we have a sense in which the idea

that all white bodies are the same

is something that we need to disentangle

because different meanings can stick to different bodies.

- What I find so almost harrowing

about the current condition is how much of it is invisible.

Brexit is partly a cry of help.

It's a cry, there's pain in the success of brexit.

It represents pain.

And that is the people who were left behind.

And to put the burden of brexit

on a sort of mindless nationalism

of those types of workers and families and cities

that have lost so much ground because of the financializing,

the corporatizing, and the internationalizing

of our national economies that is truly unfair.

More importantly perhaps that doesn't get us anywhere.