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Over 20 years, Zoë Beaty has seen her hometown of Boston, Lincolnshire, spiral into devastating neglect. While a vote for Reform might be one of protest and false promises, the uncomfortable truth is that it has also become a party of hope
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here are plenty of things that my hometown – Boston, in Lincolnshire – is famous for. Sausages, for one, and the copious veg grown on its vast swathes of fertile land; those Jakemans throat sweets always by the tills in Boots. It’s famous for its landmarks – like St Botolph’s Church, or “the Stump”, as it’s known locally – and for the Puritanism running through its roots: the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed the Mayflower to the market town’s US namesake.
Twenty years ago, when I was at school, it was Boston’s teen pregnancies, its status as the town with the highest murder rate per capita, and its problem with obesity that attracted national headlines and became part of its precarious history.
