Who, Really, Are the ‘Left Behinds’?

De-industrialisation has produced a distinctive social group that has become pivotal
to today’s politics, writes Chris Grey. But how are their interests to be served?

In recent years, like many people, I have been researching my family tree. The details aren’t of interest to anyone outside of my family, but the general picture has a wider currency.

For generations, almost all of my male ancestors were agricultural labourers and the females were engaged in homemaking, often alongside rural crafts such as straw-plaiting or lacemaking. Almost none of them moved further than a few villages from their birthplaces, mainly in the English Midlands or East Anglia.

Then, largely within the space of the last decade of the 19th Century, an almost total transformation occurred.