{"id":942585,"date":"2026-05-06T23:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942585\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T23:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:38:20","slug":"pendle-englands-broken-bellwether","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942585\/","title":{"rendered":"Pendle: England\u2019s broken bellwether"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best place for taking in the whole of England\u2019s most divided constituency is from its highest point: Pendle Hill. Even the Lord God thought so. Back in 1652, he sent George Fox clambering up its flowered banks to have a vision: that, down below, there was a great people to be gathered. Fox rushed back down and founded the Quaker movement.<\/p>\n

Fox believed that England could be a united and peaceable land, almost a preview to heaven. But some four centuries on, we have Pendle instead. A council area in eastern-most Lancashire, it contains all the failings of modern Britain. In the top 10% of most deprived areas in the country, it also suffers a 53% employment rate. Yet as it elects new councilors today, its story is anything but local. Its atomization and apathy portents, perhaps, of England\u2019s future too.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Mail called Pendle \u201cBritain\u2019s valley of strangers\u201d, mostly on account of the town at its center. Nelson is a place with one pub and 19 mosques. The high-street shops are either shuttered or bear Urdu script (38% of the borough\u2019s residents speak little-to-no English). And yet drive a mile or two out of the town, towards the hill, and it\u2019s quixotically different \u2014 an \u201cundiscovered\u201d Cotswolds, frequented by travel supplements, with \u201cquaint\u201d limestone cottages and \u201ccozy\u201d inns.<\/p>\n

This was once a placidly apolitical bellwether seat, a testament to the two-party system. But today, its fractured political landscape houses everyone from middle-class Starmerites and Restore-curious farmhands to long-established British Asians and more recent migrants \u2014 to say nothing of Nelson\u2019s beleaguered white working class. Out of work and in despair, the latter are often in the town\u2019s last remaining pub: the Station Hotel, a detached and convoluted late Victorian building on the edge of a carpark.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a dying town,\u201d Sean tells me, dragging on his cigarette in the pub\u2019s carpeted portico. It\u2019s mid-afternoon on a Friday, and it\u2019s raining emetically. Sean has lived in Nelson all his life and eagerly rehearses the statistics of its decline. \u201cLoads of mills, 13 pubs, and six nightclubs,\u201d the best of which hosted the Stones, Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix. Now there\u2019s only karaoke night at the Station. \u201cCan\u2019t hate them for it, but Asians don\u2019t drink,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s why there\u2019s no pubs or nightclubs and so many mosques. Getting robbed of our culture; I don\u2019t mean it nasty.\u201d He drops his cigarette on the carpet, and slouches inside towards the bar. \u201cThis place is just too old to bother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Nelson is home to 19 mosques. (Cosmo Adair)<\/p>\n

Sean was born in 1960, by which point Nelson had already stopped bothering. The town, which had sprung up to accommodate local millworkers in the mid-19th century, had little to offer once the mills closed. And as Britain\u2019s cotton industry died, the number of looms in Nelson dwindled in sympathy, from 22,000 to 10,000 in the half-decade to 1964. To cut costs, the few remaining jobs were filled by an influx of lower-wage, skilled laborers from Gujrat in Pakistan, who moved here in the Sixties for a better life. All that remains of Nelson\u2019s former glory is a statue of a weaving shuttle, which some kids scrutinize like an alien object. \u201cIt\u2019s a pencil,\u201d one says. \u201cNo, it\u2019s a Muslim thing,\u201d chimes another. According to the 2021 census<\/a>, certain wards in Nelson have populations over 85% British Asian.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether I would use the term \u2018divided constituency\u2019,\u201d Jonathan Hinder, the local MP, tells me as we walk through Nelson. Almost everything we pass \u2014 the mall, the roads, even the pavements \u2014 is scaffolded, awaiting demolition, or else under construction. Hinder was born on the other side of the hill, in a village near Clitheroe. He\u2019s still getting to know Nelson, but Nelson resists knowing him. Only one man, who works at the train station, stops him to talk, grumbling about the timetables.<\/p>\n

Whatever Hinder might claim, that struggle to be heard hints at Nelson\u2019s deep divisions. With the town already split between a demoralized white rump, and the Sixties Pakistanis and their children, the past 15 years has seen even greater change. Between 2011 and 2021, Nelson\u2019s population increased by 14.8%, its Asian population climbing especially. This growth was largely driven by newcomers the locals call \u201cEuropeans\u201d \u2014 migrants of Pakistani heritage, who moved from Portugal, Italy and elsewhere in southern Europe to join their families in the last days of EU free movement.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018All that remains of Nelson\u2019s former glory is a statue of a weaving shuttle.\u2019 (Cosmo Adair)<\/p>\n

These latest arrivals were not met kindly by the more longstanding British Asian community, yet another tear in Nelson\u2019s social fabric. \u201cThey are nothing,\u201d says Fozia, 44, who sells pakoras in Nelson Plaza, one of two neighboring bazaars on Scotland Road. \u201cThey are originally from Pakistan, but they\u2019re not really educated people\u2026 They are claiming new benefits in the UK, which is not fair on us.\u201d They have, she insists, changed the character of the town. \u201cIt used to be more like an English town,\u201d Fozia says, \u201cnow it\u2019s more like an Asian one.\u201d According to the 2021 census<\/a>, certain wards in Nelson have populations over 85% British Asian, which accounts for the number of mosques in the town \u2014 one of which is the Masjid Sunnah Nelson, attended until recently by the Manchester synagogue attacker Jihad al-Shamie. In 2024, it was reported for \u201cfuelling antisemitism\u201d after the imam Abul Abbaas Naveed linked the Gaza conflict to \u201cthe plotting of the kuffar against Islam\u201d.<\/p>\n

There are louder tensions too. The noise starts at 6pm most days: a murder of sportscars rumbling down Regent Street. Sometimes, there\u2019s drag races, other times it\u2019s just showboating. Pete, lounging at the bar in the Station Hotel, shrugs: \u201cFerraris, Lamborghinis \u2014 I don\u2019t know where they get them, but they hire them and scream around.\u201d In the past few weeks alone, two Lamborghinis have crashed \u2014 one in Nelson, the other in nearby Blackburn. Pete says he could cope if it were just the cars, but it\u2019s not. A little \u00a0later the fireworks start. \u201cIt\u2019s not meant to aggravate anybody,\u201d Pete says, as he explains that they\u2019re being let off at wedding parties. Others disagree. \u201cIt\u2019s the younger Asians,\u201d says 64-year-old Karl. \u201cThey have no respect for their own culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past few weeks alone, two Lamborghinis have crashed \u2014 one in Nelson, the other in nearby Blackburn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little wonder, given such animosity, that Hinder believes controlled borders are essential if Britain\u2019s fragile civic nationalism is to endure. But he worries: this town has challenged his previous faith in integration. He describes how he sometimes knocks on doors in Nelson which are opened by young Asian women who can\u2019t speak English. \u201cA young Asian woman,\u201d he says, hesitantly. \u201cThat\u2019s the key thing for me; it\u2019s not the elderly, who you might be more\u2026 kind of\u2026expecting to be\u2026 kind of\u2026 unable to speak English or whatever. It\u2019s people that are more recent\u2026 um\u2026 who have come over and haven\u2019t necessarily\u2026 really\u2026 kind of\u2026 integrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pendle\u2019s politics splits sharply along the community fractures. Since 2024, the local council has been run by Gaza independents in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which seems likely to remain the case after today\u2019s elections. Before that, though, it was the last stronghold of the BNP, with councillor Brian Parker presiding over the Marsden ward for 12 years until 2018. More recently, it\u2019s been flagged as one of the places in Britain most vulnerable to Right-wing extremism.<\/p>\n

Today, though, there\u2019s little sense of a pending nationalist revolt in the town of Nelson. A solitary St George\u2019s cross hangs limply from a streetlight on Scotland Road. Most people I meet are like John, a former publican who hasn\u2019t voted since the Nineties. He tells me that they\u2019re all the same \u2014 even Reform, which is \u201ccorrupt\u201d and \u201cpiss in the same pot\u201d. Few people I speak to seem unaware local elections are on. Even fewer know Hinder is their local MP.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Pendle\u2019s politics splits sharply along the community fractures.\u2019 (Cosmo Adair)<\/p>\n

But not everyone in this valley is similarly apathetic. Five miles from Nelson, in the hilltop village of Trawden, locals are struggling with a profusion of boy racers. A blacked-out BMW nips past the Trawden Arms, a community-owned pub that serves smoked pheasant chips. One man, an army veteran, spills his pint as he angrily launches himself from his picnic table to chase after the car, shouting: \u201cFuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!\u201d He then returns to his seat, only to be set off again by another passing car. He won\u2019t say his name, but he does tell me that Nigel Farage is a \u201cfaggot\u201d. (He tells me I\u2019m one too.)<\/p>\n

Strikingly, though, people here seem energized by politics. The former soldier tells me he\u2019d like Rupert Lowe to be the prime minister because he\u2019d bring back \u201changings for murderers and rapists\u201d. He smiles. \u201cBetter make sure I don\u2019t kill someone myself then.\u201d Once a predictably Tory electorate, Trawden\u2019s wealthier voters now split between the Liberal Democrats and Restore Britain. There is, though, a begrudging acceptance of the area\u2019s British Asian community. \u201cThere\u2019s not hatred here,\u201d says one man at the Trawden Arms. \u201cJust two ways of life.\u201d One woman\u00a0said that Nelson\u2019s existence was handy. After all, it means there\u2019s a supermarket open on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Hinder does have some grudging supporters \u2014 or his party does anyway. These centrist dads can be found at \u2014 where else? \u2014 the Parkrun on the hill above Colne, a well-to-do town up the road from Nelson. One run marshal, stretching by the course, is bemused by the clash between Nelson\u2019s longer-standing migrants. It\u2019s always been the same, he tells me. \u201cPeople always complain about migrants taking their jobs.\u201d Having said that, he never goes there. When I press him, he explains: \u201cbecause of the shops. They have their own shops.\u201d He doesn\u2019t know who he\u2019d vote for if Labour axed Starmer. Maybe the Lib Dems, he says over his shoulder as he trots off.<\/p>\n

In his 1977 essay \u201cThe English Enigma\u201d, Tom Nairn foresaw the death of Britain\u2019s ancien r\u00e9gime, squeezed between the \u201ccombined pressures of external collapse (e.g., breakdown of currency) and internal upheaval (whether as national or as social revolt, or as the two at once)\u201d. But what Pendle suggests is something more concerning \u2014 that the ancien r\u00e9gime will stumble on for some time yet. More than that, it\u2019ll be bolstered by the very upheavals Nairn foresaw: sequestered communities, begrudgingly tolerating one another, their flirtations with radical politics canceled out by their neighbors. Come the General Election, it seems unlikely that any single politician will muster the popular strength to patch together enough support to rule these varied and intractable tribes \u2014 whether in Pendle or anywhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best place for taking in the whole of England\u2019s most divided constituency is from its highest point:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,263257,1804,104915,263258,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-942585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-jonathan-hinder","12":"tag-lancashire","13":"tag-multiculturalism","14":"tag-pendle","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116530270998691528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}