[URBAN NOTE] "'Please God! Let us be out': Portrait of a fishing town's 'Brexit' debate"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC's Margaret Evans reports from the eastern English fishing community of Boston on Euroskepticism there. Knowing what the demographics of communities like these are like in Atlantic Canada, I would think Bostonians would be grateful for an actual influx of people.

An impeccably dressed woman in her 70s with carefully turned out hair sits on a sunny terrace not far from the famed tower of St. Botolph's Church in the English town of Boston, making a fervent wish.

"I want to be out. I want, want, want, want — please God! — let us be out."

This is Yvonne Stevens, a local councillor for the U.K. Independence Party or UKIP. Its roots date back to the 1990s and British opposition to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty enshrining key tenets of European integration.

[. . .]

Stevens says the town doesn't have the schools or health-care services needed to cope with the added numbers. She insists she's not a racist.

"Let's have people coming in who have a specific qualification that we need, not just people that are going to stand around drinking, defecating, urinating in our town and throwing all their rubbish," she says. "I'm not saying English people don't also throw some rubbish, but I think we've been trained a bit more to put our rubbish in the bins."

For the record, we noticed no defecating immigrants during our visit. And the Poles we did meet said they hadn't been faced with unwelcoming attitudes from local residents, although there are clearly tensions between communities.

Critics accuse EU migrants from the east of undercutting wages in the fields and packaging plants where many find employment when they arrive.