Back to Basildon: What my hometown taught me about class, belonging and pride

Looking beyond the flags to find beauty and pride where you least expect it.

I went back to Basildon to visit family over the weekend. It’s where I grew up, went to school, and spent my teenage years counting down the days until I could leave.

Basildon has always had a bit of a reputation. Labelled a “concrete jungle” and voted “the most depressing town in Essex.” It’s grey, rough around the edges, and the butt of a thousand Essex jokes.

When I was a kid, I saw only the bleakness and the sense that nothing good ever really happened there. I used to sit in class and count down the days until I turned sixteen and could move in with my dad in West Sussex, a place that felt lighter & full of opportunity.

But visiting now as an adult, something has shifted and I see it all differently. There’s a strange kind of beauty in Basildon’s grit - in the humour, the warmth, the small acts of care that carry people through. It’s a town full of contradictions: cynical but kind, run-down but resilient, defiant in its pride even as it’s been hollowed out by decades of inequality and neglect.

The infamous “Basildon” sign on the hill is currently covered in England flags. And standing there looking at it, I felt a sadness I couldn’t quite name. Because it would be too easy to roll our eyes and say: “Ugh, look at the state of it.” But that misses the point.

When you grow up in places like Basildon, you learn quickly that identity is survival.
These flags aren’t just political symbols. They’re cries for belonging, for recognition, for something to hold onto in a world that’s stripped so much away.

Basildon ranks among the most deprived areas in the country. Second worst in Essex for income and employment deprivation. A town where opportunity feels like something that happens elsewhere.

And yet, the people there are lovely. Truly! Funny, resourceful, generous. They just want to be seen and given a fair shot.

It’s easy for those of us who’ve “escaped” to forget that. To get comfortable in our bubbles and see the flags, the cynicism, the politics of despair and mistake them for moral failings rather than symptoms of a much deeper sickness.

Lava La Rue has been sharing some hard truths recently; “The people who are falling for this movement are people you should care about. It’s your local postman, your florist, your taxi driver… They’re still part of your local community. We’ve already lost the culture war if we reject the fact that people want to be part of their British identity.”

They nailed it there. The far right isn’t “winning” because their ideas are better, they’re winning because they’re offering people something the left too often forgets to: a sense of belonging, of pride, of purpose.

Meanwhile, the left spends so much time debating the purity of compassion - who deserves it, where it starts and ends - that we’ve lost sight of the basics. We’ve stopped meeting people where they are.

Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, is one of the few people doing this well right now. He’s out there meeting people where they are - not talking down, not pandering, but showing what true pride in being British can look like: a melting pot of ethnicities, cultures and communities who actually care about one another and this place we all call home.

That’s the kind of pride we need to reclaim.

Because I understand Basildon now in a way I never did as a teenager. The flags, the frustration, the nostalgia… they’re all rooted in loss. Loss of opportunity. Loss of identity. Loss of trust.

And if we want to change that, to rebuild something fairer and more hopeful then we have to start by understanding where people are coming from. From listening, not lecturing. From solidarity, not superiority.

Left to right: My mum's council flat in Basildon, a severe flood required residents in tower block of flats to be evacuated

We need to reclaim what pride means. We need to show that community, care and fairness are values just as “British” as anything the right wraps itself in. We need to give people something real to belong to again.

Because beneath those flags, beneath the cynicism, there’s still so much love for this country. not the version built on exclusion, but the version that believes everyone deserves dignity.

Before heading home, I stopped by Robin’s Pie & Mash in the town centre -an Essex institution since 1929! A proper family-run spot that’s been serving the same pie, mash and liquor for five generations. I used to spend my (limited) pocket money there, grabbing a sneaky pie between my two buses home from school. It was also the place I had my first ever date.

I walked in and it was all still there - the loud laughs, the piss-taking across the counter, the queue of locals snaking out the door, and that unmistakable hit of parsley liquor in the air (Basildon’s own holy nectar). The chef clocked my partner’s tattoos, came over for a proper nose, swapped a few stories, and wished us well like we’d known him for years.

This is community and pride. It’s not loud or performative. It’s simple, human. and it still exists, even in a town people love to write off.

I drove away thinking less about how much I wanted to leave, and more about how much this place still matters. Because it’s proof of what’s been forgotten and what’s still worth fighting for.