Rural class structures are very misunderstood. A popular history I was taught was that these people migrated to cities to work. This is a little misleading as in fact that they migrated into industry to work, not all industry was city based, especially coal mining as any visit to the former coal mining villages of the Midlands, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland will reveal.
So in both Northumbria and Lincolnshire I see a reduction of income, hours and working opportunity for people as a direct result of government policy. Added to this is decreased job security and increased uncertainty combined with rising cost of living. Effectively all this is combining to increase hardship and poverty of working people.
