Are you listening, Westminster?

What do Southend, Ramsgate, Grimsby and Blackpool have in common? Score a point if you say that they are all on the coast but actually real answer is that they’re all fed up to the back teeth of austerity.

Just days before the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, with its threat of further years of austerity economics, two in three people are telling us enough is enough of cuts. But is anybody in SW1 listening?

These towns are also all stops along the way for the People United, the union-backed tour of some of the forgotten bits of our country.

Anybody who caught the recent `Towns’ series on the BBC will be familiar with why these places matter to our country’s well-being. Despite the dominance of our big cities in the media, most of us live in towns. And while towns have not been able to resist the relentless consumption of their high streets by the same big mega-brands, they do retain a fierce civic pride. We can learn about communities from our towns.

So we surveyed some fourteen English towns, asking them what makes them proud of where they live, what they would change and what they want government to do for the good of the nation. These towns are ‘everyday England’; their views matter.

Two thirds of people from towns such as Hastings and Hartlepool told us – in the poll conducted by independent pollster Survation – that they want the government to concentrate on investing in growth and jobs, even if it is at the expense of deficit reduction. With forty percent reporting either money troubles or job worries, far from the ‘green shoots’ of recovery of government claims, economic uncertainty stalks our streets.

People are wilting under the increasing cost of living, with their chief concern rising energy bills. Just over a third (35 percent) pointed to low wages and 11 percent said they were suffering from benefit cuts.

So we know that the picture for people in bleak. Money is thin on the ground and getting thinner. There is a distinct sense that confidence, away from the London heat, is very low. The question is, what do we in this movement do about it?

In Unite we are getting out of our comfort zone. We stepping out of the workplaces to meet with the people who are not members of our union. Under the banner of People United – a coalition of unions including Unite, Unison, GMB, PCS and CWU – our two loud and proud buses set off from the People’s Assembly in Westminster on Saturday on a mission to meet the people.

Over the next two weeks, the buses will criss-cross England. Who knows what we will find in in towns like Ramsgate and Dover where unemployment rate has doubled in the last five years – from 3.5 percent in Ramsgate in April 2008 to 8.3 percent in April this year, and from 1.9 percent in Dover to 3.8 percent in the same period, and where anger at being forgotten by Westminster is finding expression in growing support for the right-wing UKIP.

These are towns where those with the least are being hit the hardest. In Ramsgate some 7,700 have been hit by cuts to local housing allowances and 17,000 by reductions to child benefit. In Dover, it is 3,500 for the housing allowances and 13,100 for child benefit. These are staggering figures. Can you imagine the pain these cuts inflicts on those local economies?

We will be offering support and advice and asking people for their ideas for a People’s Manifesto of positive ideas to create jobs and decent wages, protect the NHS, invest in our young people and nurture our high streets back to life.

Of course we will be taking the message that collective action is the bedrock of the common good. But we will be learning too. These are towns that show a fierce pride in their identity – the people of Leicester tell us that they are proud of where they live, in Coventry they tell us that they like their architecture, while in Hastings they want a town revamp.

There is something going on. People are proud of and want better for where they live, but feel little faith in the policies of central government.

Ed Miliband needs to ponder this. His message over the weekend that a future Labour government will need to be economically creative as it attempts to rebuild our battered country with no extra money may not be met with the same fervour on the streets of Hull where one in three fears for their job as it does in the pages of the right-wing media.

The people of Hull, Hastings, Grimbsby and Blackpool, their views matter. In 2015, their votes will matter even more – let’s give them something to come out for.

Steve Turner is the Executive Director of Unite. You can follow the People United tour of 25 towns here. The full report can viewed here.