BBC's bid to balance migrant picture leaves us sick at heart for Boston

Broadcasting’s big guns have again paid a call on Boston with a 30-minute programme called Lives in a landscape - a sound portrait of a visit by  reporter Alan Dein to explore “the simmering tensions caused by a large influx of migrant workers from Eastern Europe.”
The preamble to the programme, which aired on Monday morning, tells us: “On arriving in this traditional market town … Alan hears rumours of escalating crime, homelessness and enforced repatriations. Migration is without doubt the number one issue here - the population of this market town has swollen dramatically since the expansion of the EU, with workers drawn by the ready supply of agricultural work. Alan talks to Bostonians and migrant workers alike. He witnesses for himself the troubles in the town on a Saturday night, attempting to build up a balanced picture of the truth behind the rumours.”
Having listened, we’re not sure what sort of picture has been painted – although it is definitely of the Impressionist school..
The programme is fragmentary, and includes a visit to West Street to see migrant-owned shops, and where we hear from a woman whose daughter in Poland is ill and needs an operation - which is why she is working here, packing salads.
Dein talks to couple who have been teaching English as a foreign language in the town for several years, who admit that in Boston “you will hear any other language but English.”
Their first impression of the town was good, but changed as they lived here day by day
On a visit to Boston market, Alan Dein spoke with a fruit and vegetable stallholder who told him: “Eastern Europeans do most of the picking on the fields. They do it very well. Hard working people. Good luck to them.”
This, though was from someone who lives away from the town, with a vested interest in getting their veg delivered on time!
The familiar laments are trotted forward by interviewees who like the area but think that Boston has changed; who tell us that a lot of people don’t feel safe walking in the town centre at night - and there is mention of a recent murder and rumours of people getting beaten up.
Another local lamented that, when walking through town, you don’t hear an English voice.
After half a century of living here, he said he would recommend his children to move away - and wishes that he had done so years before.
“It’s like banging your head against a brick wall, talking to the local politicians,” was an-other complaint
On a visit to the Centrepoint - Bostons’s focus for the homeless - we learn that just over 50% of their visitors are Eastern European.
Then a 17 year-old tells us that opportunities for his generation “none at all,” and confesses that he could think of nothing he might say were he an ambassador for Boston and asked to describe what was good about it.
We meet another migrant who started out earning £60 a week - “two people in one room, on the floor” - but now drives a Mercedes.
He does not feel representative of his community, and would not recommend friends to come here now. “Many idiots around Boston, Latvians, Poles, Lithuanians - doing terrible things.”
Then we are in town on Saturday night, surrounded by groups of men in T shirts and tattoos ready for a night of drinking.
Just after 2am, four men walk across the road watching group of men watching them. One shouts, hits out, and a man tumbles to the ground. They start to fight until the police arrive to break things up.
No migrants are involved.
Back to another word from one of the Eastern Europeans interviewed earlier in the programme. “I would rather be somewhere else, because I can’t go on with this life forever.”
He says he wants to get away from the tension, which he feels will “build up and grow until it reaches breaking point.”
We close to the sound of beer cans and bottles - along with  empty half bottles of vodka  - that have been dropped on the ground being swept away -  right beside Boston Stump.
We came away from the programme with a heavy heart.
Whilst it had no agenda, it failed  to balance something that simply cannot be balanced.
The overwhelming weight of opinion from both migrants and non-migrants alike was that by and large, Boston is not the best place to live.
Make your own minds up -listen to the programme on the BBC iPlayer by clicking here

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