Protests last month were a result of people feeling they were not being listened to - Sir Stephen Houghton

The rhetoric on those involved has been strong – ‘far right’, racists, criminals, thugs - and was justified.

However, it would be misguided to think these events were simply the result of the actions of a small number of hard right activists. They were not the first protests we have seen. These people only succeed, as we have seen in history, if the conditions are right for them.

Many participants may have been locked up but the underlying discontent which underpinned them has not.

The seeds of the discontent which exists in those places were sown decades ago and successive governments have failed to deal with them. Most, but not all, of the communities involved are those post-industrial places whose purpose was lost in the 1980s and 1990s. They have struggled to recover not only their sense of economic purpose but also their identity, and identity is a key driver in the current context.

The sense of identity in these places, along with the reference points people had in their lives has been changing rapidly. Things such as work, demography, social values now are very different. These things can, of course, be a force for good, but when they are accompanied with a decline in living standards they can be seen to be for the worse.

It is these situations those who seek to divide us try to exploit.

Those places I describe have had the worst of it in the last 30 years and particularly in the last 14 years of austerity.

The nature of employment has changed significantly. Much of it being low paid and insecure. This has not always attracted a local labour force. Consequently between 2010 and 2021, around 50 per cent of employment created in former mining communities went to foreign nationals according to research by the Industrial Communities Alliance.

Our most deprived communities have also borne the brunt of public sector cuts. The services which make communities worth living in have been drastically reduced if not removed altogether.

People services such as Sure Start and Youth Services have been downgraded or axed, as have most visible environmental activities.

These are the things that make life worth living and people feel trapped, unable to buy their way to somewhere better.

Economic inactivity is also higher in post-industrial towns, over five percentage points higher. Those on benefits here have also seen real terms pressure on incomes.

Health is another challenge, with life expectancy lower than the national average and healthy life expectancy even worse.

I could go on, housing, low educational attainment are challenges. White working-class boys have the poorest educational outcomes.

Little wonder these places voted 70 per cent for Brexit. They felt they had little to lose. They feel unheard and have become politically disengaged.

Turnouts in local elections in these communities can be as low as 15 per cent and in the general election 40 per cent did not vote. In Barnsley South 54 per cent of people stayed at home.

It is not the middle classes who are ignoring the franchise, it’s ordinary, working-class people. Politics has become a middle-class exercise.

Placing large numbers of migrants into such places was always going to be high risk. So why do it?

The current dispersal system is based on cost. Private companies with underfunded contracts looking for the cheapest accommodation, which happens to be in the places I describe. It means distribution is uneven across the country and local communities feeling ignored and put upon.

It has created a tipping point for the far right. Asking people in these conditions to be inclusive when they feel excluded is optimistic to say the least.

Of course, those committing offences represent a tiny element of those disaffected. We saw many more people looking to help clean up afterwards. But make no mistake, whilst condemning the protests, many more have sympathy with their objections to migration, which is in turn their own expression of loss and hostility to the changes which have beset them. They believe they are not valued by the political classes.

So, they embrace the reference points they have left and understand. The English Flag, their own sense of history and place and find common cause with people in similar situations. They turn inwards to what they know, not outwards to something new. So, what have we been doing locally?

In my borough, we work hard on community cohesion and our governance tries to support local needs and hear local voices. But it’s a struggle - changing the psychology of a place is not easy.

Investment has been made, but not enough. It’s short term in nature and competitive bidding pits the poor against each other. We tell people we care but then charge them more council tax and give them less services.

We now have the absurd position that because the local government council tax base has not been updated for 10 years and because of business rate retention, government grant, which should be providing vital services in poorer areas, is being used to subsidise council tax bills in more prosperous places.

In effect the poor are subsidising the better off. It’s perverse and needs to change.

These communities need to hear someone cares; and they need to hear it from national politicians and see political, as well as financial, investment in them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Cllr Sir Stephen Houghton is the leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council.