Whether you like it or not, the British public have voted to leave the European Union.
The margin of victory for the Leave side was just four points, and it’s clear that many Remain voters are angry with those who wanted the United Kingdom to withdraw from the EU.
It’s not clear exactly when (or even if) the government will activate Article 50 and begin the negotiations to leave the EU, but one thing that is clear is the divide between the two set of voters.
Leave campaigners feel that they have been unfairly portrayed as a bunch of idiotic racists by the media, which ignores the reality of the devastation that many parts of the country have felt since losing key industries and seeing unemployment rates skyrocket.
Independent filmmaker Sheena Sumaria sought to understand Leave voters better, so she set out for the town of Stainforth near Doncaster, where 69% of the people voted to leave the EU.
With the help of a social worker named Sheena Moore, the pair asked various residents of the Yorkshire town why they thought the area would be better off outside of the EU, and they quickly painted a picture of a region that felt ignored and where young people feel like they have no future.
“We see the south as being privileged. And we know there are poor pockets of deprivation in the south, but generally when you go to London you can see the wealth. You can absolutely see and feel the wealth. You certainly can’t see or feel the wealth here,” Moore says early on in the video.
“It’s an absolutely depressed area and Doncaster is surrounded by villages like this. They’ve been given a vote and they’ve put two fingers up the establishment.”
“They said ‘We’ve had enough and we want change. It can’t get any worse for us’. Job losses? We’ve had 40 years of job losses. And I don’t think the south understands the decimation in these areas. They’re putting out this racist narrative out that it’s about racism, it’s about class division.”
It’s an eye-opening message for anyone who doesn’t understand why more than half the country would vote to leave the EU, but for many of those who did vote out it is all too familiar a sight.
