our protagonist: JUAN GONCALVEZ
The idea of using a racial motivated attack as the main storyline really appealed to us; it is something that we really feel strongly about, however, we werent really sure how to go about it. So, in the end, we used a portugese name and at the end of the product wrote an ‘in memory of’ dedication and used a voice over over the top to make sure that the audience know that he died because of this.
We thought that by doing this, it would show that we were representing a particular social group.
We thought that because portugese people immigrate to Boston constantly and there is still tension, this would be perfect; not only does it represent realism, but it reflects what things are like in our area. This is an article taken from the Guardian newspaper on 23rd Jan 2006:
Portuguese in Boston, Lincolnshire
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The following correction was printed in the Guardian’s Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday March 29 2006
In the article below, we said that the Boston Target had been reported to the Commission for Racial Equality for instigating racial tension in the area. The Target has asked us to point out that the CRE took no action against it, and that the paper was also found not to have breached the editors’ code of practice by the Press Complaints Commission
Estimated population 5,000
First arrived 1996
Centre Skirbeck and throughout Boston
On Skirbeck Road, in south-east Boston, Lincs, there is a pub called The Volunteer. Inside, the bar has been built in the shape of a boat, and they sell delicious cakes and pastries alongside the drinks. The doorway is decorated with blue and white tiles depicting seafaring scenes, four windows are boarded up, another six are smashed, and the wall is covered in grimy splats and dribbles. This is Boston’s Portuguese pub.
Now and again, some native Bostonians like to gather eggs and stones and drive past The Volunteer, hurling them as they pass. Portuguese, European and British flags have been stuck on the pub’s door, as if it might make a difference. In the poorer corners of rural Britain, this is how many immigrants still live – even the ones who are white, Christian and members of the EU.
“Yeah, it’s regular,” says Vasco de Mello, The Volunteer’s 45-year-old owner, who has lived in Boston since 2001. “If I change the windows today, tomorrow they’ll be broken again.”
Broken windows were the least of anyone’s worries in the summer of 2004. After England lost to France in the European championships, local youngsters rioted in the town centre, looting off-licences for bottles of spirits with which they torched two police cars. Police fought a long battle to keep the rioters away from Skirbeck Road.
Then, 11 days later, when England lost to Portugal, The Volunteer was besieged for much of the night. Once again, it was only a cordon of riot police that kept them out. “The police do a very nice job,” says De Mello appreciatively. “They always look after us.” He talks about this as if it was just a part of normal life.
“The feeling that I felt the first time I came here was that we were not welcome,” says De Mello’s assistant, Philip Sousa. “When I went to a shop, I felt like ET. Everybody goes, ‘Where do you come from?’ I felt less than a person.” Now 22, Sousa arrived in Boston three years ago, after the estate agent he worked for in Viseu, the capital of Portugal’s Dão wine region, went bust. He came here, after being told that he could find work in Boston, and then walked directly to The Volunteer. He’s been working for De Mello’s expanding empire – two pubs, a restaurant, a Portuguese food shop and a gang labour agency – ever since.
“Accommodation is hard to find if you are Portuguese,” Sousa continues. “And even then, a friend of mine just rented a house and the neighbours complained to the police about his dog making lots of noise. But he never had a dog.” Looking at the neighbourhood, in which rows of houses display St George’s flags in their back gardens, and one even has its shed painted with a red and white cross, this is not hard to imagine.
Most Bostonians, of course, are decent people. Their town is not an aberration; it is just old-fashioned and poor, with virtually no experience of immigration. At the last census, in 2001, there were 55,750 people living in Boston, among whom the largest non-white community was the Chinese, totalling 161 people. The town, in other words, is a reminder of what most of Britain used to be like. As it was for the Jamaicans in London 50 years ago, so it is for the Portuguese in Boston today, but with better policing.
Things are improving, though. “Nowadays it’s quite good,” Sousa goes as far as to say. “I think the English are getting used to the Portuguese community.” And how about him? Is he getting used to England? “I like England,” he says. “I quite enjoy fish and chips. I enjoy English TV.” How about supporting Boston United? “That is another step,” De Mello interrupts.
There is, of course, a good reason that thousands of Portuguese people have come to Boston: work, specifically gang labour, which is always plentiful. Mostly, this involves picking, grading, packing and preparing the nation’s supermarket food, the kind of honest but uninteresting work that only attracts those who really need it.
Marco Moreira, 24, is from Porto. He began working for the Boston Potato Company three years ago, along with his parents, as part of De Mello’s gang. Like many Portuguese, he has now moved on to a permanent contract, driving a forklift truck for £5.50 an hour. He works from 6am to 2pm each day, shifting endless piles of Vivaldi potatoes – “the potato for all seasons”, but better known as a Sainsbury’s premium white.
“My country at the moment is no good,” says Moreira. “The factories are closing, there is no money. So I changed countries because I wanted a good life, a new life.” Does he plan to stay? “No, no, because it’s not my country,” he answers immediately. “Just make some money and go back to Portugal again.” He laughs at this for some reason, but not bitterly. And what would he do back in Portugal? “Open a bar.” In Porto? “Yes, my city.” This is spoken with wistful pride.
Moreira twirls his machine impressively around the loading bay, where several Sainsbury’s trucks are waiting. Moving potatoes and saving money may not be the most thrilling way to spend one’s early 20s, but he seems confident that better times are ahead. How about the locals, have they been unwelcoming? “A little,” he concedes. “Not in my job, where everybody talks to me and I talk to them, but outside. Sometimes I pass someone in the street and they will follow me and say, ‘Go back to your country.'” Is he not worried that they will attack him? “No, because I don’t answer.”
“People are ignorant,” says factory manager Matthew Nunn. “They don’t realise that Marco is here legally, paying all his taxes, staying in a house where he pays council tax. He goes and buys clothes and food locally, so he’s contributing to the community, too. And he’s creating jobs for other people. Without these guys, we wouldn’t have been able to expand to where we are now.”
Moreira has an enlightened employer in the Boston Potato Company, which provides free English lessons at Boston college for all employees, but many do much worse. “I used to work in a factory where we were forbidden from speaking our language,” says Ligia Ferreira from Lisbon. Ferreira first came to Boston because she wanted to travel around Europe. She shared a room with two other women, but tells me there were 12 in the men’s bedroom.
“At first it was OK because we didn’t have any major issues,” she says, “but then some people were using drugs – heavy stuff – and it became quite difficult because we couldn’t lock our bedroom. You used to go to work and you wouldn’t know if you would still have things in your bedroom when you came back home. And I couldn’t open a bank account, so I had to keep all my money with me. We didn’t have a kitchen either. Some factories had a canteen, so we used to eat there, or just had loads of chocolates and Red Bull.” These days, she says, few Portuguese have to live like this.
The community’s problems have attracted plenty of comment, little of it sympathetic. “The local press instigated a lot of the tension,” says Ferreira, singling out the Boston Target, whose letters page has previously been referred to the Commission for Racial Equality by the Lincolnshire Racial Equality Council. And a TV reporter even showed up in Boston last year. “She posed as wanting to do a positive programme about why migrant workers come here,” says Ferreira with a sigh, “and in the end the programme was all about how Portuguese people sell false IDs to Brazilian people.”
Ferreira now has a good job at the city library, establishing relationships with Boston’s new communities, and lives in the town with her boyfriend and young daughter. In her work, she regularly sees cases of families brought over to Britain by the promise of work, and then abandoned. They have no job, no home, no idea what to do next, and no English with which to find out, so they end up at the library talking to her. The situation is improving, she says, although Ferreira herself is still shouted at on the street – the last time was a week ago. A close friend was also badly beaten in his own block of flats because he had a foreign accent. “This might seem ridiculous to you, but it happens in Boston. It’s normal.” She sighs, angry but resigned. “I have to be optimistic, otherwise I might as well give up my job now”.
Andrea Arnold is an acclaimed director. We have studied two of her films during our course: Wasp (a short film winning an oscar in 2005) and Fish Tank. Both of which represent social realism, therefore it applies to our work fairly well. It is interesting to know that she grew up as the eldest of fouur children in a council house in Dartford. This could be the reason and inspiration behind her award winning, short film Wasp, and even the ideas behind that of Fish Tank.
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