Nine months after Bob Hall, a 70-year-old retired miner in Sunderland, voted for Britain to leave the EU, the moment of triggering the exit process comes as “almost a relief”.
“We voted out. Brexit means Brexit. There have been too many people trying to hinder the decision,” he said, speaking in St Thomas’ St, where grand Victorian and Edwardian buildings are a reminder of the northern English city’s industrial heyday.
Sunderland embodies many of the contradictions behind the UK’s June vote to leave the EU. With 61.3 per cent of its citizens supporting Brexit, it gave the Leave side its first big win of that evening — even though Sunderland’s largest private sector employer, Nissan, exports the majority of the cars it builds to the EU.
For years to come, Sunderland will almost certainly be scrutinised as a test case for whether Brexit has helped to revive the fortunes of the city or added to its woes.
In the meantime, though, some locals would prefer to shed the Brexit mantle so that the city can be viewed on its own terms.
“Brexit has become the one story about Sunderland,” said Rebecca Ball, director of the local bid to become the 2021 UK City of Culture. “It feels wrong that it’s the whole story,” she added.
Since the vote many Brexiters have grown tired of the months of sniping and criticism over the result. “The sooner we get out of Europe the better,” said Jonathan Webster, a quality management consultant from Huddersfield visiting the North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC), a 14-acre site on a former shipyard on the River Wear.
“The difference in opinion from down south to up north is massive. People down south are so critical of us for voting out. If you live in London you are working with so many different nationalities,” he said.
But the anger in Sunderland that fired the vote, which saw the once-proud working class city keen to poke the establishment in the eye, has given way to cautious optimism among some Leave voters.
In the wake of assurances from the government and Nissan about the future of its plant, few believe that the car company will turn its back on the city. “They could move jobs away, but a lot of money has been invested here,” said Maureen Houghton, a cook in the BIC canteen.
Employment is a key concern. Sunderland, which saw its shipyards closed down at the end of the 1980s, had a higher unemployment rate in the year to last September, at 7 per cent, than the 4.9 per cent national average.
After Brexit, Ms Houghton said she hoped there would be more job prospects in sectors such as construction. “[Until now] they’ve employed people from eastern Europe on cheaper rates,” she said.
Control over immigration and a sense of self-determination are the two big prizes for leaving the EU, added other Leave voters.
“We’ve burnt our boats; we don’t produce anything. I would like to think we would become a nation of doers again. Let’s hope it brings in the winds of change,” said John Fothergill, a garage owner from Seaham.
“We’ve lost our way. There used to be a ship going out of Sunderland every day.”
“All the money we’re paying to be in the EU; why can’t we keep that in this country? It must be a good thing us not paying into the pot,” said John Hodgson, a maintenance worker at BIC.
Nissan itself has stayed out of the debate. But just outside its vast plant, which builds the electric Leaf car — among other models — is Zero Carbon Futures, an electric vehicle consultancy.
Nobody knows where Article 50’s triggering will lead us, said the managing director Colin Herron. “I don’t know who’s telling the truth; what’s going to happen.”
But he thinks Sunderland’s future challenge may not be so much about exporting goods but importing people. “Retaining knowledge is equally as important as exporting goods,” he said. “The biggest threat to this region with a falling population is not having access to bright young healthy people who want to live here and contribute.”
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