How the supplier of your fish became a classist joke

The tragic story of Grimsby, and the wider tragedy of Northern England as a whole

Grimsby. What first comes to your mind when you hear the name ‘Grimsby’? To anyone not from the UK or Canada, the name might seem rather crude and funny. People might say “wow, is there a town really called that?” To those in the UK, they might scoff at ‘Grimsby’, or find its inhabitants uncouth. To those in London, they may never have known that a town called Grimsby even exists, despite the fact these same people may be lobbying for policies that directly affect the people of the town.

This is the story of the town I was born in, grew up in, and apart from a couple years in London, have spent my whole life in, and sadly, it’s another tragic tale to add to the pile of tragic tales in the North: Rotherham, Rochdale, Sheffield, Bradford, Leicester, Grimsby.

Tucked away in a corner of the country you’d never come to unless you were a lorry or a local, Grimsby once upon a time, used to be the world’s biggest and proudest fishing port.

If you ate any fish in the UK, or even abroad perhaps, a hundred years ago, chances are that fish was brought to land at Grimsby. Like many other Northern England towns, the town was built around 1 industry, which in Grimsby’s case was fishing.

The town had a deep and proud fishing heritage. Almost everyone in the town used to be employed in the fishing trade, and Grimsby’s fisherman were some of the most ‘hard on the outside, soft on the inside’ blokes you could ever meet. A real heartland town of England, far away from politics and the bourgeois aristocracy, with regional accents abound.

I say all this in the past tense, because for the entirety of my life, I’ve never known that Grimsby. I’ve only ever known an echo of it, whispered in romantic reminisces of a time when Grimsby used to deserve it’s title of ‘Great Grimsby’.

Now, the town is a shithole (a common trait among Norf FC towns), and it’s not the grimbarians fault.

Many rightfully point out the decline of the town is due to the cod wars. After world war 2, there was a dispute for fishing rights between Iceland and the UK, and the UK lost, giving up most of the UK’s North Sea fishing rights to Iceland. A tragic tale of a war tragically lost, and the sorrows that brought. However, that’s not where our tale ends.

For you see, it could’ve just stayed as that: a town tragically fallen to the ruins of war. But no. The classist upper middle classes in this country just couldn’t resist. Their hatred for the white working class gammon of Grimsby and ‘the norf’ was just too much, and they couldn’t control themselves.

Grimsby is the town equivalent of a wheelchair bound veteran: destroyed by war, but still somehow wheeling on. So what do the liberal intelligencia do? They laugh at the wheelchair bound veteran, mocking him for not being able to walk. This is what we got with the reaction to the Sacha Baron Cohen film ‘Grimsby’ that came out in the 2010s.

Now, I’m not one to turn down a good laugh. The film is objectively funny, because it’s poking fun at genuine stereotypes that exist in droves in this town. It’s the sneering undertones that came from the reaction to this film that cemented ‘Grimsby’ as a synonym for low class idiots, and more importantly, the home of the ‘gammon’. To say you were from Grimsby, after this film came out, would often follow with polite, or sometimes less polite, giggles, the implication being “you’re from ‘that’ town?”

Grimsby I think is the number one case of classism in Britain at the moment. If it was just the funny movie that people thought was funny, that’s fine. It’s the fact it’s accompanied by admissions that they either didn’t know Grimsby existed before this movie, or just, implicitly or otherwise, thought everyone from there was some kind of low life scum, that is the real kicker.

The town that had hoards of men working gruelling hours in the North Sea to make sure you were fed on a Friday night, is now the butt of everyone’s joke, and not only that, but a joke built upon a genuine hatred for the white working classes: a hatred we have seen show it’s true colours in 2024 with #twotierkier . That’s where my frustration comes from.

A good laugh is a good laugh, and no one knows how to laugh at themselves more than the north. However, at what point does it stop being funny? For me, that point was when it was made clear that the civil servant class hated us with a burning passion, had no respect for the fish Grimsby used to supply to their dinner tables, and on-top of that, knew that we existed, but decided we wasn’t worth a dime of investment money.

Sometimes laughing at a guy in a wheelchair is funny. He can’t walk! How quaint? But at what point does the joke become sour? Grimsby reached that point after the Grimsby film, and like the rest of the north right now, resentment is brewing among the grimbarians about the absolute state you’ve left our town to decay into. Not only that, just leaving us to wallow in poverty wasn’t enough for the liberal intelligencia. Now, Grimsby has to take it’s fair share of migrants too.

A man in a wheelchair is funny. Calling the man in a wheelchair a low life thug, pissing in his open mouth that he can’t close due to a broken jaw, punching him off his wheelchair and giving his wheelchair to an able bodied young black man, is not funny. I don’t support the 2024 riots going on, but only a narcissist or the wilfully blind could not see why they’re happening right now.