‘There’s no jobs’: struggle and regret in a Welsh town that backed Brexit

A stray sheep outside the Goldworks, or Gwaithaur, a coworking and business support hub. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian View image in fullscreen A stray sheep outside the Goldworks, or Gwaithaur, a coworking and business support hub. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian ‘There’s no jobs’: struggle and regret in a Welsh town that backed Brexit Ten years ago Ebbw Vale had the highest proportion of leave voters in Wales despite huge EU funding, which has not been fully replaced W here Ebbw Vale’s steelworks once stood is now a cluster of gleaming modern buildings including a hospital, a leisure centre and a college. Over the past decade, these public facilities have been joined by a public-private cybersecurity research centre and two tech firms. A new railway station opened at the site in 2015. Yet, during the Guardian’s visit to the Welsh valleys town last week, the area was quiet. Nearly as many sheep as people appeared to be using the new facilities: a ewe and three lambs, escaped from somewhere, busied themselves in a strip of rewilded land next to the tech buildings. “We don’t get as many visitors as we would like,” said John Edwards, 77, a volunteer at the Ebbw Vale Works Museum, an archive of the area’s coal, iron and steelmaking past in the steel mill’s former general offices.“The train station is busy in the mornings, it’s packed with people going to Cardiff. We’ve become a commuter town.” View image in fullscreen John Edwards: ‘We don’t get as many visitors as we would like.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian After the Ebbw Vale steelworks closed in 2002, Blaenau Gwent received the maximum amount of EU funding available for structural and regional development programmes. Much of the money went towards the regeneration projects on the old site. Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales voted leave in the 2016 EU referendum, although research suggests the Welsh result may have been skewed by retired English people . In Ebbw Vale, support for Brexit was strong: 62% of voters in the town of 18,000 people voted leave, the highest proportion in Wales, despite the huge amount of EU money the town received. View image in fullscreen Claire Jones on Ebbw Vale’s high street. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian Out shopping on the high street, Claire Jones, 52, winced as she recalled the Brexit vote. “It was shocking so many people voted leave when you just had to look around to see how much help we got from the EU – the flag was on signs everywhere,” she said. “Either people didn’t care or they didn’t know, or they believed what [the leave campaign] said about immigration.” Lindsay Whittle, a Plaid Cymru representative for the constituency in the Welsh Senedd, said: “What the Brexit vote showed was the depth of despair and how people felt left behind. I think now, with more information available and a lot more engagement on the subject, a lot of people here now regret that decision.” Ebbw Vale and the wide