#migrants

Migrant workers harvesting cabbages near Boston, Lincolnshire during a rainstorm.

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A English flag painted on a the door of home in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire,UK

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A English flag painted on a the door of home in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire,UK

New Roots, Old Soil

Farm workers harvesting cabbages during a rain storm near Sibsey, Lincolnshire. Leafy vegetables like cabbages, kale and cauliflower are pulled in the early winter when the first frosts come. Known as the Brassica season, much of the working day is spent in the wet and cold.

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?Si Barber/07739 472 922 Field worker's accomodation in Lincolnshire.

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©Si Barber/07739 472 922 Field worker's accomodation in Lincolnshire.

A room (kolhata) to rent advertisement in a newsagents window. The text is in Russian cyrillic and deliberately designed to appeal to prospective East European migrants tenants of a certain age. Anyone who went to school within the USSR before its collapse 1991 learned Russian as part of the curriculum, and as part of the Soviet cultural domination of its occupied territories. Although widely loathed and abandoned after the fall of communism, the practise of having a common language proved useful for migrants when those countries joined the EU under the A8 accession rules in 2004 and they were given the right to come to live and work in the UK. That meant Czechs, Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovakians, Slovenians, Poles, Hungarians and Estonians could communicate with each other. Useful if you’re trying to make yourself heard on a factory floor or field in the Fens. Even today If you go into any of the East European shops in the town the transaction will often complete with the assistant exclaiming “spasiba”, the Russian word for thanks.

A demonstration in Boston, Lincolnshire, calling the invocation of Article 50, which would initiate the process of the UK leaving the EU. It was finally granted by PM Teresa May on 29th March 2017 sending a formal notification to the European Council, triggering the two-year period for withdrawal negotiations .