Kent: a divided county at the heart of our national story
Kent is England’s borderland facing out across the narrow stretch of water to the Continent. It’s where the majority of people and goods criss-cross between post-Brexit Britain and the countries of the EU. And it’s where so far this year some 23,000 migrants have been ferried in small boats across the Channel in search of footfall on the Kent coast.
Kent’s beaches have been at the heart of our national story. Roman legions clambered up them: Jutes from across the North Sea came ashore at Ebbsfleet, now an international train station en route to the Channel Tunnel. Saxons headed further east. Ever since the 11th century when the Kentish people resisted the Norman Conquest and gained a special administrative status thereafter, the county’s long coastline has more often than not been a dependable barrier against further invasions. But many coastal areas are now threatened by a different kind of invasion as sea levels rise and winter flooding worsens. Some forecasts suggest parts of Kent could be submerged by 2050 unless steps are taken to mitigate the local impact of climate change.
Huge as the climate challenge will be for Kent as elsewhere, it’s not the only challenge facing the fifth largest (by population) county in England. Kent is a vulnerable part of the country, economically, politically and, from September 2020, even medically, when a notorious variant of Covid was first detected there. Kent’s name was suddenly associated with this new and highly infectious variant which was later found in more than 80 countries.
Kent is an odd mixture of prosperity and comparative deprivation and poverty. It voted by a wide margin for Brexit whilst it suffered some of its early effects as lorries backed up on the M20 and parked all over local disused airfields. Kent is still the “Garden of England” and the gateway to London, but it is also still suffering economic failures – originating before Brexit – at its outer edges. It can moreover be a prickly place, unsurprising perhaps in the county that saw Wat Tyler lead the Peasants Revolt in pursuit of economic reforms in the 14th century.
Politically it is now almost wall-to-wall “Blue”; but in parts of the county, there are real problems in waiting. It’s not only the “Red Wall” in the north of England that is demanding government attention, so too are areas of the “Blue Wall” in the south of England, not least along the coastal peripheries of Kent. For a while, UKIP flourished in Kent more than anywhere else in the country. Nigel Farage thought a constituency in the Isle of Thanet offered him the best chance of entering Parliament. Though he failed to win one, Thanet Council was the only local council in Britain that UKIP came – in 2015 – to control. UKIP eventually imploded in Thanet as elsewhere, but the grievances that gave the party life there have not all gone away.
It used to be so very different. In the 19th century Kent’s agriculture flourished, locally-grown hops fed the breweries of London and the coastal towns became a magnet for visitors from London. Even before the advent of the railways, steamboats cut the journey time from London to Margate and Ramsgate from more than a day to just a few hours. The towns around the Isle of Thanet enchanted visitors. The much-travelled painter William (as he was then known) Turner, a frequent visitor to Margate, said the skies over Thanet were the most beautiful in Europe and Charles Dickens described Broadstairs as “our English watering place”. Even as late as the 1950s Margate still drew huge numbers of day-trippers and summer holidaymakers from London. Further up the coast, the Naval Dockyard at Chatham was a major employer as were Bowaters’ paper mills on the Swale opposite the Isle of Sheppey. But by the 1980s holidaymakers had opted to sun themselves on the Costa Brava whilst the dockyard and paper mills had closed.
Instead of holidaymakers the hotels and boarding houses in the coastal strip of Kent were accommodating challenged families on benefits, including an increasing number of migrants. The number of people on Income Support in Thanet was soon double the level to be found in the west of the county around Tonbridge and Sevenoaks. Health outcomes were becoming equally poor, falling below the average across England as well as compared to Tonbridge and points west.
Kent had become a divided county. West of the Medway and of Maidstone country towns and villages still flourished with white clapboard houses adorning village greens, whilst Tunbridge Wells continued to enjoy a regency afterglow. London commuters grew in number and added to the existing prosperity. Meanwhile, the east coast railway line to Canterbury and beyond remained comparatively slow and the towns along its route consequently less attractive. Whilst a new-age nuclear power station rose eerily on the shingle spit at Dungeness in the west, the remnants of the Kent coalfields at Betteshanger in the east, closed down. And all along the coast, the fishing industry shrank dramatically.
Who was to blame for the economic malaise at the edges of Kent? In truth, there was no simple explanation, but increasingly locals felt as “left behind” as did people in parts of the north of England. Many outside observers saw only the “Garden of England”, overlooking the growing weeds. UKIP discerned fertile ground for its anti-immigration and anti-EU messaging. Though they won control of Thanet Council, they failed to deliver on key local demands – notably for the development of Manston Airport – and after the Brexit referendum and the 2019 election UKIP were effectively finished as a political force in Kent as elsewhere in the country. The Conservatives replaced them and after the election, Kent was more politically “Blue” than ever; the party won every constituency except Canterbury which Labour held only by a slim majority.
Kent’s coastal towns have seen some resurgence over the past decade, even in a few cases some genuine renewal. The Turner Gallery in Margate is proving a local catalyst. Whitstable’s oysters and rows of pretty fishermen’s cottages have been drawing weekenders from London. Rye and the villages on and around Romney Marsh are sought after for second homes and weekend jaunts. Even Dungeness has made a flourish, helped by publicity for Derek Jarman’s bitumen-stained former fisherman’s cottage with its windswept garden. Aided by its proximity to the Channel Tunnel Folkestone has picked itself up and the charming houses in the backstreets of Deal have won admirers and purchasers from further afield. Restaurants of real quality have emerged as well. The Sportsman on the marshes near Seasalter was the first pub in Britain to gain a Michelin star and bookings now need to be made well in advance.
Economically, there are many variants in Kent. There are real success stories to be found, but there is genuine resentment at the deprivation still apparent in parts of the east of the county and especially along and near the coast. Much has been promised to communities there. If Brexit generates more than short-term local disruption, Kent will be a casualty. It would be sadly ironic if Brexit were to come back to bite a county that had supported it so strongly. Local people who were already caught up in larger economic trends – including the complexities of migration – would feel betrayed once more. The local economy would suffer further damage with the prospect of sea waters rising dramatically in the decades ahead compounding the problems.
“The Isle” of Thanet may feel economically isolated today, but on worst-case projections, by the middle of this century, it could revert to being a true island once more.