#migrants

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

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The cross of St George painted on a the door of a home at 11 Falcon Road,Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, the day before the Brexit Referendum in 2016.

Exodus 12:23 "And when He seeth the blood upon the lintel and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you."

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.

Police and citizens of Boston, Lincolnshire face off in the town centre over the Government's reluctance to trigger Article 50 and commence the formal process of the UK leaving the European Union. The town recorded the country's highest vote for Brexit in 2016 with over 76% expressing the wish to leave the union.