‘A horrible place’: This gloomy town shows why angry voters are lurching to the right |
‘A horrible place’: This gloomy town shows why angry voters are lurching to the right
May 11, 2026 — 11:55am
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Wigan: The first thing I hear when I get to Wigan is that there’s been a stabbing in the centre of town.
There’s a helicopter overhead, tracking the assailant, and there are five police officers searching an alleyway for the knife, lifting the lids on the garbage bins. The lights are flashing on the police cars outside the Ladbroke’s betting shop on Market Place.
The attack wasn’t fatal, says the man in the convenience store when I buy the local paper, but it’s another scare for the community. “It’s the end times,” he says, with a shake of his head.
The times were never easy in Wigan, the English town made famous by George Orwell when he met its coal miners and struggling families in 1936. He witnessed women so desperate for heating that they scrounged for fragments of coal, and he described crushing poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier when it came out in 1937.
But times are not so easy now, either. Wigan, halfway between Manchester and Liverpool, has been left behind since the coal mines closed in the 1980s. When I visit at lunchtime on Friday, the small central plaza is quiet apart from the men lounging on the council benches and the drinkers at the Wetherspoons, the pub chain with the cheapest pints.
“This town was never like this,” says Carol Pidgeon, a retiree doing her shopping. “I’m only here because I’ve not got my grandchildren with me. I don’t want to bring my grandchildren in because I don’t want them looking around seeing the homeless people.
“I think it’s a horrible place, with the decline of the town. My children, who are now grown up, used to go to the nightlife in King Street, and now it’s an absolute dump. It’s a disgrace.”
There is a powerful sense of decline in this town – so its voters are making themselves heard. Wigan was a Labour stronghold for generations, built by union muscle, but it flipped in the council elections last Thursday. Angry with Labour, the town rallied to populist leader Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party.
Of the 25 seats up for election in the district of Wigan and Leigh, 24........