They're not the kind of people who usually make for television stars.

Wibsey is an unremarkable suburb of Bradford and the members of its Working Men's Club have the kind of lives which rarely grab the headlines. Work, when it's available, is usually found in the building trade and most have just about enough money to make ends meet and for a few pints down the pub.

However, when the BBC decided to commission a series of films on Britain's white working class in the 21st-century, Wibsey suddenly found itself in the spotlight.

The area with a 91 per cent white population may be just a few miles from the centre of multicultural Bradford, but it has remained largely untouched by the current regeneration scheme. Its struggle to keep the 102-year-old club open in the face of a declining membership no longer happy with weekly bingo sessions and a Sunday night "turn" is one that is being repeated up and down the country.

"The working class doesn't exist in America so I didn't have any preconceptions," says Last Orders filmmaker Henry Singer. "People said access would be very difficult, but they couldn't have been more welcoming and open, maybe because I was there to listen to what they had to say and that hasn't happened for a very long time.

"My previous film was The Falling Man telling the stories of those who had jumped from the World Trade Centre when the planes went into it. It seemed to me that their stories had been swept under the carpet and by the time I finished filming in Wibsey I had the same feeling."

The decision by the BBC to launch the White Season was partly a reaction against the usual portrayals of the white working class on television from Shameless's Frank Gallagher to Little Britain's Vicky Pollard. However, the various films are not simply an attempt to put the record straight, but also to explore uncomfortable issues as to why many feel marginalised and the rise of far Right politics.

Wibsey is no stranger to either. Many complain that cheap foreign labour has robbed them of steady employment and while the seat was regained by Labour from the BNP in the last local council elections, many feel their views are no longer represented by traditional party politics.

"I just wish I could be happy again," says Graham Anderson, a man who often seems to have a tear in his eye. "I have been betrayed. A lot of people think like that. I am not a political activist, but I feel betrayed by the Labour Party."

Much of that betrayal seems to centre on a belief that their desires and hopes for the future are being ignored in favour of the growing immigrant community. Many say they no longer feel any affinity with Bradford. There are the inevitable complaints that jobs once filled by the white working classes are being taken by outsiders and the establishment falls over itself to help these incomers with housing and benefits while they are left to struggle on.

It's a potentially incendiary line to tread, but Singer, like the club members themselves, says accusations of racism have masked the true problem.

"This is a culture that has taken a lot of hits," he says. "A generation ago, there was plenty of work, they had a political party that pushed their interests and they had a city they loved. Now all that seems to have gone away. They feel abandoned. Yes, they talked about immigration and race, but there was no sense of malice. What they were really talking about was fairness.

"I will have failed if people watch the programme and say, 'These are just a bunch of racists'."

In the three months he spent in Wibsey, Singer admits he felt a growing emotional attachment to the place, often finding himself coming to the club without his camera and genuinely looking forward to Sunday nights, the one time when the place is still busy. However, the film isn't some rose-tinted look at the white working class and it's clear it's not just the current political climate which has contribute to the declining fortunes of the club, which stands as a wider symbol of the changing face of Wibsey.

Cheap supermarket booze, the smoking ban and the inability of committee members to adapt have all played their part. One new member suggests they investigate how to reduce the loans owed to the brewery and look at allowing children into the club at weekends. After weeks of intransigence, he's had enough and resigns from the committee.

"In a way the film is a love letter to the club," he says. "It's a fantastic place where people still look out for one another, but it is struggling to deal with social changes. Some see Britain's changing class structure as an opportunity, as a chance to be aspirational, but for others it just creates a feeling of insecurity and alienation.

"In most of us there's a need to hang on to what was good about the past and when everything else seems to be going wrong, the club, which has been so much part of the members' lives, is the one thing they want to preserve even if it means losing money.

"I don't think they realise what would be lost if the club does close, but there are no easy decisions. Sundays may be the busiest night of the week, but it still loses money. What do you do, stop the bingo, which for a lot of the old ladies is the social highlight of their week, and try something else which might not work either?"

There are some genuinely moving movements in Last Orders and it's hard not to feel some sympathy for Ernest, afraid to challenge anti-social youths for fear the tyres of his mobility scooter will be slashed, or Eddie, the unemployed single father-of-four whose pride has been so clearly dented by having to borrow money for milk from his eldest son.

However, if some of the Wibsey old guard are resigned to their role as Labour's forgotten voters, many of the young white males are not about to go so quietly.

"The younger generation has grown up in a very different Bradford to their parents and grandparents," says Singer.

"It's easy to mythologise the past, but while a job in the mill was as tough as hell, when the first wave of Pakistani people came over they worked side by side with the city's indigenous population. However, when a city starts to fall apart and when economic deprivation is put
into the mix then that's when more radical views come to
the surface."

Bevan is considering joining the Army, not because of any particular desire to serve for Queen and country – he doesn't believe in the war in Iraq – but unable to get a job elsewhere he has come to the conclusion it's the only way of earning a decent wage, but it's Paul who is responsible for the film's most disturbing footage. Working occasionally as a scaffolder on housing projects he says aren't meant for "people like him", he warns the tensions between the communities are rising. "Give it five years for it to kick off," he says.

Last Orders is the kind of film those behind the current Bradford regeneration project would perhaps wish had never been made, but the decision to give Britain's white working class a voice was never going to be easy to watch.

Last Orders, BBC 2, Friday, 9pm.