Sun, sea and struggle: growing up in England’s coastal towns

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:10Today, Gen Z by the sea. Why is it so hard for young people on England's coast?

0:22So there, this is Golden Geese, the famous... Golden Geese. The Golden Geese, yeah. It's a warm summer evening on the Lancashire coast, and I find myself joining a band, fronted by a bunch of teenagers. This one's called Fix Yourself. We just wrote lyrics about aggressiveness, I think. I'm in Morecambe, in the town's West End, at one of the few remaining youth services here. It's called More Music, and it's a charity operating out of an old music hall, and it offers local people the chance to come and make music and form bands. I'm here for one of their youth nights. Places like these are rare and the fact that it is here in the middle of the West End, which is quite an underprivileged area, maybe I'm being a bit romantic about it, but it feels like a beacon, like a ray of light.

1:17This town is special to me. I grew up here. There are memories everywhere I go. On my On the way here I pass my first boyfriend's house, and the derelict sight of the fairground where we had our first date, holding hands on the slippery slip. There's the stone jetty where my friends and I used to drink cup-price bottles of cider, and an empty hollow where the outdoor swimming pool used to be. I was desperate to leave here growing up, but now I look back on my time here with a certain kind of fondness. I often think of it as it's got like echoes of happiness. There's echoes of what it used to be here, and you can see it with abandoned big stores or abandoned venues.

1:59Seaside towns have a bad rep these days. Growing up in places like Morecambe puts children at an immediate disadvantage. Job opportunities are lacking for most young people. I'm trying to get engineering jobs, and there's just none I could get, so my future's probably not going to stay here.

2:25Reform UK sees political opportunity in towns like Morecambe. But are they thinking of what young people want? To find out, I'm going on a tour of my hometown, meeting the young people who still call it home. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. Never mind the Red Wall. What about the Sea Wall and the young people who live there?

2:58I start my day in Morecambe in the West End, which is the poorest part of town. You can still buy a flat here for under£100 ,000. Slap bang on the prom, looking out across the bay at the Lakeland hills that I used to find so boring as a teenager. I'm heading a few blocks inland. Back in the day, before package holidays and cheap flights to the sun, this street was lined with B &Bs. Now, most have been turned into houses of multiple occupancy. Hello! Oh, you look gorgeous! When I called around asking for smart young people to talk to in Morecambe, three separate individuals said, you've got to meet Eleanor Adamson.

3:39So, here I am. Eleanor knew I was coming with a guardian photographer, Polly, and she's got a full face of immaculate makeup and is wearing an off-the-shoulder polka dot top. She lives alone in the attic flat and pays£500 a month rent out of her monthly salary of£1 ,500. She's 22 and works as a carer. I care for this really cool woman who's 63 called Geraldine. She's got MS, so she's in a wheelchair, but mainly we just have the best time and go out round town partying and meeting amazing people. She's quite a social person, so, yeah, it's been great fun. Eleanor has spent her whole life in Morecambe.

4:19Before becoming a carer, she grew up with her grandparents. It was pretty rocky growing up with my grandparents. We were taken from our mum and dad when we were about three years old due to drugs and domestic violence and emotional abuse and things. And so when I was 16, I went to live in the foyer in Morecambe for around a year. And tell me what the foyer is. The foyer is a homeless accommodation for kids from the age of 16 to 25 it was at the time which was pretty strange you know being a 16 year old girl on the same floor as 25 year old men. Individuals in there who were smoking weed and partying very loud and having fights sometimes so just found it hard to stay on the right tracks I suppose not going to bed at the right time not waking up at the right time and I'd feel so disappointed the whole day not going to six one because I so wanted to be yeah forensic scientist well well I was more interested in the criminology side really actually but yeah I did find it very difficult so I've been doing this job caring since I was 17 and I have found it pretty isolating because I don't meet people my own age.

5:37And I have felt stuck because I so wanted to pursue education, but at the end of the day, I feel like I need to earn to keep a roof over my head. And tell me a bit about growing up in Morecambe as a place. I do find Morecambe to be such a beautiful place. No matter where I've ever been in the world, you never get the peninsula that you do on the horizon around here. It's just absolutely stunning. and I've never understood why, you know, when you go to Benidorm, you see a big crowded beach and, yeah, the weather's nice, but you look on the horizon and out there, but everyone's living it up, having a great time, having a party, and I always wondered why isn't there something like that here?

6:19And you need money for it, and we never had money growing up, so it was just a matter of going left or right on the prom and just longing to meet your friends, maybe meet the hot guys at Grammar. You know, that's sort of what you're thinking about with a young girl, isn't it? Some things don't change. we were always trying to meet fit lads from the boys grammar school and did you so when i when i was growing up in in morcom so 20 years before you there was more to do you still needed money though but there was a theme park a wild west theme park called frontierland which is where the big aldi is now there was an outdoor swimming pool called bubbles there was a music venue and it was called the morecam superdome yeah and i first proper gig was seeing blur i love blur yeah yeah they did the seaside torso when i was 14 i went and they were at the superdome and pulp played there as well it was like brit pop era no way they came to morecambe yeah you see what i love them guys yeah wow imagine that and isn't it such a fabulous place to have a place like that because, you know, on a good night, nothing better than having this live music and then popping over to the beach and having a fag with your mates and running around.

7:33Yeah, it's great. And having a fire all night. It's such a lovely place. But that's another aspect of being in Morecambe. The first thing you see when you arrive is that derelict bus shelter with a big massive knife bin in front of it. It's like, oh, there you go. Just that's your welcoming to Morecambe. And I see so many young people now more than ever off their head on drugs and pissed it's ket that's a problem that's killing our younger generation really it's more got a big problem with ketamine absolutely absolutely it does it is a distraction from reality it's a coping mechanism and it allows you to forget everything that's going on and past the time i've watched friends very quickly turn into taking it all the time not remembering the name not remembering anything and then you know the weighing out chunks of blood and it's horrendous and these are young people who are so bright and so wonderful and could add something to society but they just don't feel like they mustn't feel like they do I don't know it's a terrible addiction what would you want the government to know about Morecambe in terms of what they should spend money on in this community i'd like the government to know that like michael jackson children are the future come on like we need there needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel for young people if you want business to be booming incentivize young people to want to stay here and work and make this a better place other than that everyone's going and they're off looking for a better time I don't know how much attention you pay to politics, but the Reform Party, Nigel Farage's party, have kind of got their eyes on communities like Morecambe.

9:18And in the recent local elections, Lancashire County Council went reform and all of the local councillors here are now reform. If you talk to people, a lot of people would claim that a lot of the problems in society are due to immigrants taking jobs, getting the housing. And yet this is a community that's 96 % white. What do you make of that? I think it's absolutely disgusting, the reform party. I think it's really disgusting. I think it's fear-mongering. They're trying to scare the young people and if, God forbid, if war happens in our country and we have to face the things that these people who are coming here have been facing, wouldn't we like to go somewhere else?

9:59I don't think people are thinking about young people. I think people are distracting us to think that it's immigration that's the problem. And in terms of the future, what would you like to see change here? I would love for there to be a music venue where people come. I think it would just get the whole community buzzing. And I think a lot of young people are feeling that we're working very hard five days out of the week. And what have we got to do to look forward to? Do you see a future in Morecambe? I do, yes. Fortunately, I was walking through Morecambe Town and there's this college called PHX Training.

10:37and I just went in and if you earn under 25 grand a year you can do a teaching assistant course so I just completed that yesterday a four-week course but it was a big jump you know for living paycheck to paycheck not being able to work for four weeks was such a massive risk but you know I just had to take it so congratulations so you're so you're you can now apply for jobs as a teaching assistant can you? Yes and I am over the moon I've absolutely loved the college experience it's been great feeling like a student again yeah but in a much better mindset and much more stable it's been amazing for me.

11:13You must be a very determined person. Oh yes I am indeed I am indeed. Where do you think you get that from? I'm not sure just seeing a lot of my friends suffer and there not being many opportunities around here I think the community is so vibrant and I think something could happen here. People just need to come and see it.

11:36The problems young people face in Morecambe can be found in seaside towns all around the coastline. Cheap housing attracts vulnerable families, with poverty exacerbating pretty much every health condition. My mum was a psychiatrist in Morecambe and always used to say that no matter what she prescribed, she couldn't make poor people rich.

11:59I go for a wander around what is left of Morecambe Town Centre a depressing collection of charity shops, pound shops and bookmakers I'm just walking past the Arndale Shopping Centre when I spot one of Morecambe's most well-known faces Just looking at a sign, there's a big collage on the wall of all of Morecambe's famous people including Tyson Fury who's grimacing wearing some sort of kimono The world famous boxer was actually born in Manchester, but he's made Morecambe his home. And if you keep an eye out, or just look around for two minutes, you can spot his six foot nine frame hulking about the place.

12:38I'd never heard of Morecambe before, like Tyson Fury. I think my mum wanted to move to a seaside town and I think she heard of Morecambe because of Tyson Fury and then looked into it and it looked nice. Everybody's got a Tyson Fury story. I saw him in Aldi. I saw him in the Chinese. I saw him doing park run. He runs down the prom a lot, because when me and grandad are out with the dog, he always says, you know, good morning. And it's like, oh, I've just been said good morning to by a world-class boxer, it's really cool. I'm speaking to a bunch of 17-year-olds from my old school, Morecambe Bay Academy.

13:14Hiya, I'm Lucas. Hi, I'm Florence. Hi, I'm Eve. I'm Imogen. I'm Matthew. It's a comprehensive one block from the prom with a very mixed intake. I loved it there, and I was largely oblivious to the challenges of many of my classmates, even though I knew that some lived in caravans or B &Bs. These days, almost 40 % of pupils are eligible for free school meals, and a third have special educational needs, far higher than the England average. Morecambe is not unique. You see a similar picture in other seaside towns, with educational attainment lagging behind inland locations. I'm keen to hear how the teenagers view their hometown.

13:55Well, I've lived here all my life and a lot has changed in Morecambe. And the change really is that things have disappeared rather than appeared. It's gone into decline since planes became more accessible to everyone else. You know, like, my dad talks about how he used to play on the fairground and whatnot. Frontierland. Yeah, Frontierland, there you go. But no, it used to be a lot better. A lot of it just gets knocked down or they try to do it and it gets vandalised. What is there to do if you're under 18 in Morecambe now? Constantly raining in it, so it's like you go to the Arndale Centre and you can sit there with all the old ladies.

14:33I mean, there's a cinema. There's Jump Rush. Yeah, there's a trampoline park as well and there's a cinema which I spend a lot of my time in. But activity-wise, I mean, you can go take a picture with Eric Morecambe. Do you even know who Eric Morecambe is? Yeah, a comedian. I love Eric Morecambe. But there's really not a lot unless you go to Lancaster, really. And how much time are you spending out of school with your mates? None. Not often. Not often. Not often. So you two, you don't see your mates outside of school? Why? Well, we sometimes go out together, but it's not often. You only do the same thing.

15:12You either go for a walk or go bowling. There's nothing else for us to do. It's the same day out. So what do you do for fun? Do you go to Aldi? And is that part of the barrier that most things cost money? Yeah, definitely. I have a part-time job at Morecambe McDonald's. I earn£9.42 an hour and bus fare, like, there and back is£3. So£6. Yeah, so a lot of my last hour goes toward just getting home. If you live in Morecambe, the best paid jobs are in one of two places. The nuclear power stations, Heachan 1 and 2, which are reaching the end of their lives, or across the bay in Barrow, making nuclear submarines at BAE Systems.

15:59I ask the teenagers to imagine where they'll be when they're 30. I definitely hope to have settled down. I've already promised myself that I'm not having kids until I'm about 25. That's the plan I've had since I was about eight years old. because I'd like to live my life a little before I have kids and settle down. But when I'm 30, hopefully I'm working at crime scenes or being a project manager at BAE and living my best life. Hopefully, as well, I can get a house. But looking at what it's like at the minute, the possibility of that is actually dimming rather than going higher because of the prices of a house now is outrageous.

16:43So fingers crossed that I have a house when I'm dirty. I think I just felt trapped here for quite a while. So I think it'd be nice to just go out and experience the world more. Anything else that you would like to see built or brought to Morecambe? I think it would be more of a sense of a place for people to go. So an example of it was just outside the skate park, There's a bus station, it used to be a bus station, but they got made into a youth centre. The first few days I was like, oh my God, this is amazing, somewhere to go where it's raining and you can just sit there and hang out with your mates for a minute.

17:18And all the windows got smashed the first week, it got spread painted all over, fires lit in it, and there's nowhere to go. It's either you sit in spoons or you get wet. It just seems that we are just disregarded and nobody cares, really, what's happening around here. And if the government really did care about places like Morecambe, why the hell isn't the Eden Project here yet?

17:48Everyone I spoke to in Morecambe mentioned the Eden Project. You can't avoid it. If you've ever been to the Eden Project in Cornwall, this will be its seaside sister, with a shell-shaped biodome surrounded by interconnected gardens. Already, there are Eden B &Bs, an Eden Cafe, an Eden Record Shop, all waiting for it to be built and fulfil its promise of reimagining the seaside resort for the 21st century. It's basically an eco-tourist attraction that will sit right on Morecambe Prom, where the outdoor swimming pool and Superdome music venue used to be. And it doesn't come cheap. £100 million is the latest price estimate.

18:25I first reported on Eden North back in 2018. But seven years later, shovels are not yet in the ground, and people are losing hope that it'll ever see the light of day. But ask Morecambe's leaders about the future for the town's young people, and Eden often seems to be their only answer. Is anyone offering more?

18:53Coming up, they swept the board at the council elections, but does Reform UK have a vision for Morecambe's youth?

19:11It's a month or so since I met those students from my old school and I am back in Morecambe on what could turn out to be a very sad day for the town. With the latest for Lancashire, I'm Alex Worsick. Morecambe Football Club could face closure today after a weekend where no programme... Because our local football club, the mighty Shrimps of Morecambe, looks very much at risk of shutting down today after more than 100 years. I just turned on Radio Lancashire, as I always do when I come home, and this is what I heard.

19:53I'm back in Morecambe today in a place called Bear, like Bear Naked Ladies, and I'm going to see another former pupil of my old school. His name is Russell Walsh and in May he became a local councillor for this area for Reform UK. Seaside towns are turning to reform perhaps out of a hope for something different. Nigel Farage won his seat in Clacton on the Essex coast and there's a reform MP in Skegness in Lincolnshire too. Reform are now in charge of Lancashire County Council which means they have the responsibility for youth services. They are the ones who decide whether to rebuild the youth club the students were talking about, the one that burned down, or whether to plough money into the music venue that Eleanor is dreaming of.

20:34I meet Russell in the barber shop he runs. Hello, hi, how's it going? Very good, nice to see you. Nice to see you. Talking to the young people in Morecambe, there was a consistent theme, I would say, of loss. This idea that even in their lifetimes, and these are kids who are like 17, 18, early 20s, They've seen things disappear from Morecambe and that there's just nothing for them to do. Do you think that that's fair? Do you know, it probably, it might seem to be, but then everybody changes as to what they want. I mean, I used to just disappear for hours on my bike, come back, you go back home and the streetlights come on.

21:10So you kind of made your own entertainment, really. We used to have youth clubs. My God, I sound like an old man. There'd even be youth clubs where you'd go off and you'd be playing table tennis or ping pong, or I'd go off and play tennis. You know, there's lots of different things like that going on, which does start to raise the question as to when investment comes into Morecambe, what other facilities can we have and supply, you know, for them. And what's Reform UK got to offer young people in Morecambe? That's a very good question. That's a very good question. I mean, we're definitely pro-development for, we're in favour of Eden and we're definitely looking on with interest as to what's going to happen in Frontierland.

21:49and specifically for young people do you know i'm not actually too sure that doesn't bode very well does it if these young people are listening that you're their local counsellor yeah i know well specifically for young people i mean you want to encourage activities you want to encourage growth mental stimulation i'd have to come back to you because when i look at reform uk's offering if i go on like your facebook site or your fellow councillors the focus seems to be and correct me if I'm wrong on this it's opposing development so opposing houses that are going to be built housing is something that young people will definitely tell you is a concern of theirs the other one would be filling in potholes young people around here quite a lot of them do drive so I guess they probably do care about that but beyond that I was struggling to see on the literature of Reform UK around here what the offering is for young people yeah you're right yeah yeah you've caught me out yeah and do you think I mean does that shame you slightly like do you do you think that because obviously people do come to the seaside to retire but you want young people to be seeing their future here don't you yeah absolutely does it shame me no it just it's just something else which I need to turn around and put on the list for us definitely to attack

23:03I leave Russell's barbershop scratching my head a bit I was pretty surprised that he couldn't come up with anything to offer young people. Lancashire County Council is responsible for youth services, so it absolutely is in his remit. A few days later, he gets in touch to apologise and offers to connect me to reform as a young people's champion. But I'm also keen to hear what the Labour Party has to say. In last year's general election, Morecambe went Labour for the first time in 14 years. I called up Catherine Potter, a Labour councillor in Heasham, near the nuclear power stations. So Catherine, the young people that I have spoken to in Morecambe feel that it has become a place that loses out, kind of a place where things shut rather than open and also a place to leave rather than stay.

23:48Do you understand why they feel that way? Yes, and if I was them, I'd probably feel the same. Every seaside town up and down the country, with the exception of a few on the south coast, has struggled these last few decades after the whole holiday business has changed. But I actually think Morecambe is in a really, really good position. We've had the Bay Gateway link in the last few years, which has basically connected us up to the rest of the world. So this is a road, isn't it? Yes. So just explain to people what that is. So basically, I think it was in 2016, massive amount of investment, every£100 million of taxpayers' money was put into connecting Morecambe directly to the M6 and the motorway network.

24:34And it means that you can get to Manchester now, or people from Manchester, perhaps more importantly, can get to Morecambe in not much more than an hour. So that's been a really good investment. And then, of course, we've got the news about Eden. But as I say, I do understand how people feel. I think we've had a difficult 10 years or so with the lack of investment in public services. And you just mentioned the Eden Project there. I have to say there was very widespread recognition among the young people I spoke to about the project, but also widespread scepticism that it will ever see the light of day.

25:07Because in their minds, they heard about it when they were still in primary school, right? It was seven years ago when it was first announced. How confident are you that it will actually be built? I am 100 % confident. But major capital projects, and it's£50 million of taxpayers' money that's going to go into this, it really is important that the proper diligence takes place and that it's a good form of expenditure of public money. But we've been through that process. It was slower than any of us wanted it to be. But I am as good as 100 % sure that it's going to happen. So people need not worry.

25:43And it will be a great employer for young people from Morecambe. And what would you say to the young people beyond Eden to persuade them that they've got a future, a bright future in Morecambe? Well, I think we've had 14 years of the country being run by the Conservatives. And during that 14 years, we've seen nothing but a decline in public services. services and zero hours contracts have sprung up out of the ether, which we never knew before. And it's made work insecure. Hourly pay has been deflated. But Labour is absolutely committed to changing all of those things. It's already increased quite considerably the minimum wage.

26:26and in particular for people under the age of 18 and apprentices, the minimum wages, I worked it out earlier, has gone up 18 % because it's so important that for all of us, if you're going out for work, work should pay. And in terms of Morecambe-specific things, when I asked Russell Walsh, who's one of the reform councillors, what his party had to offer young people, he was stumped, to be honest. He couldn't really think of anything. I know that you're not in power in County Hall or indeed in Lancaster City Council, but what's Labour got to offer beyond the minimum wage increasing young people in Morecambe?