THIS week Thurrock NubNews editor welcomed French journalist Joseph Confavreux to the borough for an afternoon. He was visiting the UK in the run up to Brexit's deadline day and wanted to meet the people of Thurrock who had voted to leave - in a bid to give readers of his news website, Mediapart, an insight into why the borough had played such a significant part in wanting to leave.

He met with editor Neil Speight who showed him around the borough and introduced him to some local people.

His article, published today on Mediapart (accessible via the red button below, was lengthy piece which included a visit to get a balance of opinion.

Here we reproduce his text relating to Thurrock (Please accept some of the translation produces grammatical anomalies but this is a translation direct from Joseph's site).

Mr Speight said: "It's fair to say Joseph didn't quite pick up the context of everything people said to him but fair play, his English is a million times better than my French, which is perhaps one of the representations in microcosm why we wanted out....

"I found it quite astonishing that it appears the perception in France and Europe is that we are a fiercely divided nation now on the brink of civil war over this. I tried to explain my view that my nation, unlike some of our more volatile European neighbours, is composed of people likely to 'Keep Calm and Carry on' than opt for violence and protest on the streets.

"Anyway, like all of us, Joseph is entitled to an opinion and I think this is an interesting read that is being shared in France today. Those who are interested will, i am sure, find the view from a foreign field on Mediapart very interesting."

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I'm leaving Europe tonight

JANUARY 31, 2020 BY JOSEPH CONFAVREUX

What is it like to leave the European Union, individually and collectively, psychologically and politically? Answers in Essex and Tottenham, at the time of the fateful moment.

"Sit in front of the Parliament, singing the European anthem as loud as possible"

"Drinking a glass of French wine and eating German sausage"

"Dress in mourning clothes"

"Watch them quarrel over who is the most British of them" ...

THE weekly The New European, launched just days after the June 2016 referendum, asked readers what they planned to do when the United Kingdom officially leaves the European Union, 47 years after its accession, in an unprecedented gesture for a Europe which had hitherto been thought of only as a continuous construction and not as a removable assembly.

Some of the answers are above.

The New European will be read relatively little in Essex, which voted over 70% against staying in the EU.

In a kingdom torn apart and exhausted by more than three years of debate, fighting and drama on the subject, what dominates today is first of all a certain weariness, especially since this departure is above all symbolic, since European laws and regulations will remain in force for at least another year, pending future negotiations.

When the House of Commons finally adopted the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on Wednesday, January 22 , the British press barely spoke about it, while the smallest details of the functioning of the Parliament of Westminster or the Supreme Court made the headlines.

Throughout the fall. And in recent weeks, the Megxit and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have generated more interest than Brexit.

Grays, the main town in the borough of Thurrock, in Essex, is located on the mouth of the Thames, a few dozen kilometers north-east of London. The streets of its small town centre are lined with shops selling everything for a pound, cell phone shops and shops for sale.

It did not often attract the spotlight, narrowly missing, yet with more than 72% of vote in favor of Leave , the title of "capital of Brexit", awarded to Boston, located 200 kilometres further north, in Lincolnshire , where more than 75% of the inhabitants have voted to leave the EU.

Last fall, however, the "horror truck" case shed light on Grays.

In the industrial area of the Waterglade Industrial Park, thirty-nine corpses of migrant victims of human trafficking were counted in the back of a truck registered in Bulgaria, just landed by the port of Purfleet and coming from Zeebrugge, Belgium.

Since this tragic October 23, the victims have been identified - all Vietnamese - the Irish driver of the truck has been arrested, the investigations are continuing, the migratory fantasies persist, and Grays has already "largely forgotten this story", notes Neil Speight.

"There is nothing permanent, not even a plaque to mark the memory of these dead. For the people here, this happened in Grays simply because we are in a port area. We had already found bodies in a container in the port two years ago."

The man arrived here 15 years ago to work for the local newspaper, Thurrock Gazette, before leaving and launching media outlets - Thurrock Independant and now Thurrock NubNews .

For him, the massive vote expressed here in favor of Brexit is due to a combination of classic factors: "We are in a working place, very poor, which was mainly populated by dockers, before this activity almost collapsed.

Immigration is strong, with an ancient and important Sikh community which is well integrated, many Nigerians and, more recently, many people from Eastern Europe. Insecurity continues to grow. The population is aging, young people do not stay in Thurrock. Public services are absent or deficient"

Jackie Doyle-Price, MP for Thurrock and moderate Conservative, says the UK voted so overwhelmingly for Leave because our media and our political world do not reflect the reality of the popular cities of the Midlands, north of England or Thurrock"

And according to the MP who planned to spend the exit Friday evening with "other members of the Conservative party in a local fish and chips to celebrate the fact that we are taking back control of our fishing" , Brexit can be a " opportunity " in her constituency, particularly in terms of port competitiveness.

Grays' anatomy, in social and political terms, thus resembles many of these popular spaces having accumulated industrial setbacks before offering, in the legislative elections last December, a comfortable majority to Boris Johnson to achieve Brexit.

Even though he voted to leave the EU, Neil Speight nevertheless considers the Prime Minister as "not a clown - what he plays may be what he is - but a man capable of spoiling the opportunity of Brexit that could transform our whole political system."

Mr Speight comes from the north of England which he says is "in very bad shape" and he believes the degraded state of the public health service and of transport infrastructures shows that the national interest of the United Kingdom has not been sufficiently taken into account by the EU.

He says: "We have contributed massively to the European budget, we have helped small countries, the British are always ready to be generous, but we do not want unelected bodies to spend their time telling us what to do.

"I was 13 years old when the United Kingdom joined Europe [in 1973 ] which was then only a common market, and it was a good thing. This whole issue of Brexit is linked to the desire to regain control."

Neil, whose son has voted to stay in the EU and whose reasons he "understands" , does not plan anything specific for the very moment of Brexit, except to have a drink at the club run by the local association of the Royal Air Force, where this military history enthusiast occasionally works.

One of the local figures is called Ramon John Willans, born in Grays 87 years ago. &34;I grew up there under the bombs of World War II, because we were near a military arsenal regularly targeted by the Germans," smiles the man who approaches a mustache still conquering, several decorations and the tie of the Royal Air Force, in which he spent forty years.

He "rejoiced" at the departure of the United Kingdom, even judging that his country should not have joined what was then the EEC, 47 years ago: "It made us waste a lot of time, energy and money. At the time we were unable to vote."

For the retired soldier, who defines himself as an "Aboriginal Briton", this departure will allow him to "recover our sovereignty and have a truly independent government. No matter how much I voted for this or that MP, he was surrounded by European constraints. Europe has destroyed our fishing, our agriculture. We have lost almost all of our auto industry which is now reduced to a skeleton "

The man adds two more personal considerations to these criticisms frequently addressed to the EU: "I have a loyalty to the Crown and the monarchy, which I hardly find elsewhere in Europe, not to mention what you did, you in France. And, in terms of national security, I am also wary.

When we fought the Argentines during the Falklands War in 1982, they were equipped with French missiles, the Exocets. "

Will he celebrate the moment of Brexit? "At my age, I have to be careful, but I will allow myself a little libation. I do not overflow with joy, my feelings are mixed. My grandfather fought for Europe during the First World War, my father during the Second, and I regret that the Europeans did not show more gratitude towards us."

Clive Broad, 67, giant build, steel blue eyes and full beard, is determined to celebrate this moment which he calls "wonderful". I'm going to "fire up fireworks in my garden and drink a glass of champagne," he laughs.

A French wine for such an occasion?

"Originally, champagne is an English wine" says the man who runs a company manufacturing windows , whose premises are punctuated with stickers from the Brexit Party and UKIP, which he supported financially and for which he was a candidate locally.

Above all, he wants to give visitors a book. The Great European Rip-Off, which can be translated as "The Great European Scam". The subtitle is just as self-explanatory: How the corrupt and wasteful European Union took control of our lives.

He holds that we also look at a small booklet entitled "101 reasons why we should leave the EU", where it is accused of every conceivable evils, including the fact that the EU wants to "abolish all national identities."

For Clive Broad, the main reason for his hatred of the EU is the financial cost to his country. But he also sings all the themes dear to the anti-European extreme right: gangs from Eastern Europe, the growing insecurity which forces us to avoid certain places in the borough at night, colander borders…

What does leaving the EU then concretely change in this area according to him?

"This will allow us to put an end to terrorism and the drug problems, since we will regain control of our migration policies" , assures the man who says he supports the reinstatement of the death penalty, "rather than paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to keep criminals in jail. "

In Grays, it is therefore not easy to find people who voted to stay in the EU, but Sayize Kaya is one of them.

She was born in London, to a family from the Turkish part of Cyprus who returned to the Mediterranean island when she was a child.

She relocated to Britain once she reached adulthood, and has been working for six months in a Turkish restaurant in the center of Grays.

Does she think Brexit will change her life? "Impossible to say. Before this happens, no one really knows what's going to happen. Sometimes I tell myself that it's better to leave, sometimes it's the opposite. I remain undecided even if I voted for the Remain in 2016, probably because I am not a true Englishwoman, even if I have British nationality," she explains.

And does she plan to do something special at the same time? "No, nothing special. I'm going to sit on the street and see if something happens."

In the streets of Grays, for the time being, there is not much remarkable to see, with the exception of the Dell, one of the first concrete constructions in the country, built on the initiative of the naturalist and biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who lived in this city between 1872 and 1876 and was the co-inventor of the theory of natural selection with Charles Darwin.

But for the moment, no passer-by deigns to take a look at the building, even if many, in the United Kingdom, fear the accentuation of social Darwinism with a Brexit led by convinced conservatives, for a large fraction of 'between them, that it was necessary to break with the EU because of the too many rules it still imposed on free enterprise and the free market ...

As the night begins to fall on Grays, one can imagine having more desire to leave this place than Europe.