‘If you don’t like it, don’t come’: proud locals bristle at Blackpool’s dark tourism reputation

On Saturdays, fast food shop and arcade owner Chris Higgitt battles a continuous queue for 10 hours straight. His fried fare is the cheapest in Blackpool. The effervescent Higgitt is the seaside town’s famous “£1 burger man”, a social media star.“There are two ways to do business,” he says, as we chat after the shutters come down on Thursday. “You can do high margin, low turnover, like posh coffee shops in Cornwall. I do low margin, high turnover. I feed people for a pound and they love it.”The season is nearing an end in the Lancashire town – population 140,000 – on the Fylde peninsula overlooking the Irish Sea. The amusement halls are half empty. The pony and trap rides infrequent. The thinned out crowds on the famous Golden Mile seafront enjoy a late burst of autumn sunshine as wind flutters their candy floss.Outsiders stereotype Blackpool as the epitome of faded seaside grandeur, a Victorian-Edwardian mix-mash that was once a British tourism mecca, its shine dulled by cheap Spanish resorts. Yet it still attracts up to 20 million visitors yearly.READ MORESome others see it as the epitome of Brexit Britain – its residents voted Leave by more than two to one – as well as an exemplar of the cliches of Northern English decline and deprivation. Proud locals, meanwhile, wax lyrical about its community spirit.“People are friendly here, they talk to you. If somebody down south dies in the middle of the street, they step over them,” says Higgitt.Blackpool still has all the sunny-day fun that draws in its mainly British working-class visitors: rollercoasters, crazy golf, cabaret shows, £2 pints. Yet the statistics also tell a tale. The council area tops local authority deprivation rankings in England. According to the official government list, seven of the top 10 most deprived wards in England are in Blackpool.Chris Higgitt pictured in the arcade attached to his burger bar in Blackpool. Photograph: Mark Paul Number one is Jaywick in Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s Essex patch. A ward in Hastings on the south coast is number seven, part of Rotherham is number 10. The rest are all in Blackpool, condensed near the town centre.“The centre is rotten from the inside out,” says Stephen Cheatley, a local photographer. He says Central Drive, the most notorious stretch, blighted by derelict buildings running almost to the commercial heart, is known locally as “Central Dive”.Central Drive in Blackpool. Photograph: Mark Paul Just a few blocks from the beach lies some of the worst slum housing in Britain – old seaside hotels converted into squalid bedsits. You can rent a flat in the shadow of Blackpool’s famous tower – a replica of the Eiffel tower in Paris – for £100 per week.Blackpool has the lowest life expectancy in Britain – men live on average to 73, six years less than the rest of England. Mental illness rates top almost anywhere else in England. Rates of alcoholism and drugs, joblessness and crime are all high above average.Many of Blackpool’s problems are highly visible in the large numbers of people roaming the centre, with appearances suggesting they have addiction issues or may be homeless. Scores of men and women could be seen strolling about this week carrying cans of beer, their faces weathered by the angst of clearly chaotic existences.As well as the fun-loving visitors who come to lick rock and play arcade games, Blackpool is also a hotspot for so-called “dark tourism”, visitors who revel in the grime. Videos of their visits are catnip on social media, drawing thousands of views.Blackpool is the Marmite of Britain. You love it or hate it— Chris HiggittMany locals, while acknowledging Blackpool has problems, bristle at this portrayal of their town. Higgitt says “everyone knows” locally that most of the addicts are not from Blackpool, but rather are ushered there by outside local authorities.He claims these troubled incomers are told “Blackpool will take care of you”, while many calculate the large numbers of holidaying visitors will be fruitful for begging. This is a view shared by several locals who spoke to The Irish Times.“There are so many transient people,” said one woman working in a card shop. “They come here thinking we have loads of money to give. But most locals are broke too.”“Blackpool is the Marmite of Britain. You love it or hate it,” says Higgitt.He loves it.A Telford, Shropshire, native who grew up on a tough council estate, he moved north to Blackpool 23 years ago. He is now a Blackpool evangelist, defensive of the area from outside criticism. Higgitt says has turned down offers to appear in television shows “negative” about Blackpool.“You can walk around any town and go up the local drug addicts or alcoholics, but Blackpool’s got the name. To me, Blackpool is salt of the earth, working class. Kiss me quick and sticks of rock, and a pound burger. People come here for escapism.”He says many visitors to Blackpool may have “mundane lives”.“Maybe they have no money. For one week a year they can come to a bigger, brighter town, drive down the M55, see the tower, do the donkey derby, the bingo, and come to me because they’ve seen me on YouTube. When the queue stops, I shut for the day. I own me own house, I’ve a good life. If you don’t like it, don’t come.”Local resident Deborah Contessa Hargreaves in Victorian gothic garb. Photograph: Mark Paul Deborah Contessa Hargreaves, a lifelong resident, is a local historian who works in education and also does voluntary tours at a cemetery in Blackpool. Quick-witted and warm, her sideline is dressing up in full Victorian gothic gear to lead Blackpool ghost walks and haunted history tours.She only uses ‘Hargreaves’ in her day job. Everyone in Blackpool knows her as Deborah Contessa. She giggles as she explains her parents moved to the town from Burnley – her mother had been married to her father’s cousin, but ran off to Blackpool with her father.“I can say it now because they’re both dead,” says Contessa.“There is deprivation. I see it in my day job in the faces of the kids and some of their parents. But there is more to Blackpool than that. I live in Layton, a 10-minute walk from the seafront. Nice place, parks, good community.”[ Andy Burnham has a mission. Now he needs a mandate to deliver itOpens in new window ]In the town centre while giving tours, Contessa says, she encounters stag and hen parties, and “young farmers” in from rural Lancashire for which Blackpool is notorious.“They’re all okay. Yeah, they give it. You give it back. But the locals here are mostly interesting, nice people. It’s a rich place – but not always in money. It can richly fill your soul if you are with the right people.”Cheatley, who chronicles the streetscapes of Blackpool on his Walk on the Wild Side web pages, points to northerly enclaves such as Warbreck and Lytham and St Anne’s to the south as evidence that Blackpool has nice neighbourhoods.“Central Drive is what drags Blackpool down,” he says. The local council plans a £300 million regeneration project near the area, part-funded with UK government money. Bloomfield, near the town’s famous tangerine football club, is another black spot.“If you want to find deprivation, you will,” says Cheatley. “It’s easy to go up to a guy drinking a can of Stella on the street and ask him what he thinks of Blackpool. He’s not well, doesn’t eat right, maybe depressed. What do you think he’s going to say?”Later that evening, I take another walk around town centre black spots as it gets dark. I meet a couple rowing, as the man calls the clearly frightened woman a “f**king slag”.I have a brief conversation with a loud but friendly young woman and her daughter at Primark at closing time. She is clearly high. Another intoxicated woman tries to accost me at the entrance to what seems to be a gay sauna. “You’ll get freebies,” she says.But I also see smiling faces, happy holidaymakers, couples, families. Blackpool is at once gloriously simple in its tourism offer, but socially complex in its character.Coin machines in an amusement arcade on the Promenade in Blackpool, north west England. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images 'Unicorn' Sylvia waits for customers on Blackpool seafront Then there is politics. Farage’s Reform sees Blackpool, once staunch Labour, as a potential stronghold. A local privately owned pub, The Talbot, is marketed tongue-in-cheek as an “official” Reform pub, painted in the party’s turquoise livery.North of the centre lies the Claremont electoral ward, which runs a mile or so inland from the North Pier. Much of it lies in the patch ranked sixth on England’s overall deprivation rankings, just in front of that ward in Hastings.There is a council byelection in Claremont on the day I visit. Ivan Taylor (86) died this summer after almost 60 years as a councillor, winning 17 elections in a row.Local Reform social media bigwig, Mark Butcher, a restaurateur who also runs a soup kitchen, has run a strong campaign warning of a local crime wave, with the aim of wrenching the seat from Labour. He claims the neglected area is like “the Bronx”.“I didn’t like it when he said that, but he’s also a friend of mine,” says the £1 burger man, Higgitt, a working-class Tory who believes Farage’s party is “too far to the right”.“Mark will win that seat hands down,” says Higgitt. Before Labour’s Andy Burnham bounce, many would have agreed it was nailed on for Reform.A few hours after I leave Blackpool, it is announced that Labour’s candidate, Katie Donnelli-Hunn, has held the seat for Burnham’s party. He had recorded a campaign video for her straight after his big speech at the Labour conference in Liverpool.Blackpool continues to confound the uninitiated.