It's been a long time since Blackpool was a hip, chic seaside resort.

Hotels from the Victorian era with names like "Imperial" are still standing on the waterfront, while the sea is sizzling in the cold wind with huge gray waves.

The Blackpool Tower, 158 meters high, built in 1894 from steel frameworks, wanted to emulate the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Northern English middle-class and working-class families made the pilgrimage to Blackpool for a beach holiday, even if the water was actually always much too cold for bathing.

Philip Plickert

Business correspondent based in London.

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The heyday of tourism in Blackpool ended when cheap flights to the warm Mediterranean could be booked. Decades of decline have hit the city. In the past, both the Tories and Labor liked to hold their party congresses in the seaside resort; the Imperial, where Charles Dickens and Churchill once vacationed, housed the ministers and delegates, but they too don't come today. Down in the tower, in the large neo-baroque ballroom, undoubted dance couples still meet for afternoon tea, they indulge in nostalgic memories of happy times. It's pure dreariness outside.

Blackpool is one of the poorest cities in England, a socially deprived area, even if superficial tourists do not notice it.

The average life expectancy of the 140,000 inhabitants is about ten years less than life expectancy in London-Westminster.

In the national “Index of Multiple Deprivation”, a kind of misery barometer, Blackpool is in the sad last place of 317 municipalities in the kingdom.

Poverty, unemployment and violence characterize the districts that are only a few minutes' walk from the center.

29 percent of all children grow up in relative poverty, in some social blocks more than half.

The seaside resort alternates with the nearby town of Preston as the city with the highest suicide rate in the country.

Beggars sit on the sidewalk in front of a supermarket.

Rusty metal grilles bar up former souvenir shops.

As soon as the season is over, 2,000 people suddenly become unemployed.

Even the "Poundscratcher" business has closed.

The deserted casino on North Pier promises "family amusements", and inside, dreary slot machines flash.

The "Pleasure Beach" is deserted.

Now, in December, only a few show stages and musical theaters are open, they mainly attract old audiences.

Great social differences between the regions

Fifty meters behind the promenade you will find small, shabby hotels and bed and breakfasts in the shabby streets, as well as rows of tattoo and nail studios. The windows of some houses have been smashed and the windows are barricaded with plywood. Alcohol and drug addicts have moved into abandoned bed and breakfast houses, the room rent costs 60 pounds a week. The Ashley Foundation has a small office near the market square; it helps the homeless to find a roof over their heads. “Right now we're extremely busy,” says one employee.

Blackpool, with its decline in tourism, may be a special case, but cities across the north of England have been run down.

Decades of de-industrialization have left them economically far behind.

Chronic unemployment, poorer educational opportunities, less health - the list of social shortcomings is long.