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| An ode to Birmingham: how can the UK's second city fix its image problem? | An ode to Birmingham: how can the UK's second city fix its image problem? |
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| There was once a book called Birmingham Is Not a Boring City. On the title page, the word "Not" looked as though it had been added at the last minute in handwriting. More recently, there was a popular blog called birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk, the aim of which was to offer a counter-narrative to those who believed otherwise. | There was once a book called Birmingham Is Not a Boring City. On the title page, the word "Not" looked as though it had been added at the last minute in handwriting. More recently, there was a popular blog called birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk, the aim of which was to offer a counter-narrative to those who believed otherwise. |
| But in both cases there was a problem: each made it look like the city had a case to answer. Really, they suggested, there was more to Britain's second city than a risibly depressive adenoidal accent, a road system that Jeremy Clarkson alleged was diabolically devised to take you away from the cheerlessly brutalist post-industrial city, and a culinary speciality whose name was Urdu for bucket. But the counter-narrative often only served to highlight the original narrative. Birmingham's problem? It protests too much. | But in both cases there was a problem: each made it look like the city had a case to answer. Really, they suggested, there was more to Britain's second city than a risibly depressive adenoidal accent, a road system that Jeremy Clarkson alleged was diabolically devised to take you away from the cheerlessly brutalist post-industrial city, and a culinary speciality whose name was Urdu for bucket. But the counter-narrative often only served to highlight the original narrative. Birmingham's problem? It protests too much. |
| This year, though, it's got bigger problems. Thanks to the Trojan horse row and the investigation into the suspected hoax letters alleging that some city schools had been taken over by Islamist extremists, Birmingham schools have been made to seem a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. Thanks to the failings of the council's children's services department, which led Ofsted's chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw to call Birmingham "a national disgrace", the city seemed to have betrayed its responsibility to its most vulnerable. | |
| Thanks to Benefits Street, Channel 4's TV series widely derided as "poverty porn" and filmed in Winson Green, Birmingham seemed a magnet for economically unproductive burdens on – what's the Cameroonian expression? – hard-working Britons. | Thanks to Benefits Street, Channel 4's TV series widely derided as "poverty porn" and filmed in Winson Green, Birmingham seemed a magnet for economically unproductive burdens on – what's the Cameroonian expression? – hard-working Britons. |
| All three of these elements have added up to a picture suggesting that if Britain is broken, Birmingham is more so – it's not so much the great heart of England (as the marketing people once styled the city) as a catastrophe of 1.1 million people. | All three of these elements have added up to a picture suggesting that if Britain is broken, Birmingham is more so – it's not so much the great heart of England (as the marketing people once styled the city) as a catastrophe of 1.1 million people. |
| Birmingham's 2014 is about to get worse. The council leader, Albert Bore, tells me that he has to make a further £159m cuts for 2015/16 from the council's already decimated services. "There's no more scope for salami slicing," he says ominously, "we're going to have to cut in ways we haven't yet done." In October, he and his Labour colleagues will announce a list of the cuts they think the least damaging. | Birmingham's 2014 is about to get worse. The council leader, Albert Bore, tells me that he has to make a further £159m cuts for 2015/16 from the council's already decimated services. "There's no more scope for salami slicing," he says ominously, "we're going to have to cut in ways we haven't yet done." In October, he and his Labour colleagues will announce a list of the cuts they think the least damaging. |
| Bore argues the city is hard done by, not just by a coalition government that has imposed an austerity agenda on finances, but also from a media whose distortions have made life more difficult for its communities. "We're either trashed or ignored," he says. "It's just that for the past few months it's been the former." | Bore argues the city is hard done by, not just by a coalition government that has imposed an austerity agenda on finances, but also from a media whose distortions have made life more difficult for its communities. "We're either trashed or ignored," he says. "It's just that for the past few months it's been the former." |
| He wanted to tell different stories: such as eulogising one of the most ethnically rich cities in the world with its Bangladeshi, Irish, Pakistanis, Caribbeans, Chinese, African communities, all rubbing along with white Britons; or that of a council creatively responding to the central-government strictures with private sector partnerships, to ensure that the impoverished are least hit by cuts. | He wanted to tell different stories: such as eulogising one of the most ethnically rich cities in the world with its Bangladeshi, Irish, Pakistanis, Caribbeans, Chinese, African communities, all rubbing along with white Britons; or that of a council creatively responding to the central-government strictures with private sector partnerships, to ensure that the impoverished are least hit by cuts. |
| Such stories don't get traction in the national media, though. There's more mileage in presenting Brummies as benefits scroungers lying sofa-bound in their own filth and/or terrorists who won't rest until the black flag of an Islamic caliphate flies over Joe Chamberlain's Victorian Council House. | Such stories don't get traction in the national media, though. There's more mileage in presenting Brummies as benefits scroungers lying sofa-bound in their own filth and/or terrorists who won't rest until the black flag of an Islamic caliphate flies over Joe Chamberlain's Victorian Council House. |
| Bore can't bear his city being traduced thus. "Take diversity. If Birmingham does not celebrate the diversity of the city, then it's in trouble. This is why, for us, Trojan horse is such a tragedy. What we've got is the whole of this city tarred with this Muslim extremism brush." | Bore can't bear his city being traduced thus. "Take diversity. If Birmingham does not celebrate the diversity of the city, then it's in trouble. This is why, for us, Trojan horse is such a tragedy. What we've got is the whole of this city tarred with this Muslim extremism brush." |
| But aren't there problems with some Birmingham schools – isn't that why six of them have been put into special measures? "I can pretty reliably tell you that what's going to come from these new investigations is not that we've got Muslim radicalism in schools. This is not about extremism in schools. It's governors doing things they shouldn't have been doing. Is it organised? Not to a major extent." | But aren't there problems with some Birmingham schools – isn't that why six of them have been put into special measures? "I can pretty reliably tell you that what's going to come from these new investigations is not that we've got Muslim radicalism in schools. This is not about extremism in schools. It's governors doing things they shouldn't have been doing. Is it organised? Not to a major extent." |
| Bore goes on: "Out there in the Muslim community it's bloody difficult because they feel they're being pilloried, they feel they are being treated very differently from the rest of society." And they're not wrong to feel that way, he suggests. "I have a case in a very white area of the city where evangelical Christians tried to do something very similar – tried to change the ethos of the school from within by putting governors in there." But Christians aren't being castigated by the media, education secretary or Ofsted for infiltrating school governing bodies. Muslims are. | Bore goes on: "Out there in the Muslim community it's bloody difficult because they feel they're being pilloried, they feel they are being treated very differently from the rest of society." And they're not wrong to feel that way, he suggests. "I have a case in a very white area of the city where evangelical Christians tried to do something very similar – tried to change the ethos of the school from within by putting governors in there." But Christians aren't being castigated by the media, education secretary or Ofsted for infiltrating school governing bodies. Muslims are. |
| Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood says that her old school in Small Heath is one of 21 under investigation by Ofsted. "Most of the pupils at the school are Muslim, which is probably the sole reason it got dragged into the whole Trojan horse debacle in the first place." | Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood says that her old school in Small Heath is one of 21 under investigation by Ofsted. "Most of the pupils at the school are Muslim, which is probably the sole reason it got dragged into the whole Trojan horse debacle in the first place." |
| Like Bore, Mahmood doesn't buy the Islamic extremist conspiracy line: "If there was really evidence that the central charge laid at the doors of these schools – that there was an organised and successful attempt to radicalise the children of this city – then don't you think Ofsted would have found it? Twenty-one inspections and the central charge remains unproven." In lieu of evidence for radicalisation, she says, is a lazy interchange in public discourse between the words "Muslim" and "extremist". | Like Bore, Mahmood doesn't buy the Islamic extremist conspiracy line: "If there was really evidence that the central charge laid at the doors of these schools – that there was an organised and successful attempt to radicalise the children of this city – then don't you think Ofsted would have found it? Twenty-one inspections and the central charge remains unproven." In lieu of evidence for radicalisation, she says, is a lazy interchange in public discourse between the words "Muslim" and "extremist". |
| Imran Awan, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, is examining the real-world consequences of this semantic slippage. He's poised to publish research into how the Trojan horse affair has made different ethnic groups in the city mutually suspicious. "I've found from my interviews Muslims whose neighbours no longer talk to them, and others who have had rubbish dumped in their front gardens. All because of Trojan horse." | Imran Awan, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, is examining the real-world consequences of this semantic slippage. He's poised to publish research into how the Trojan horse affair has made different ethnic groups in the city mutually suspicious. "I've found from my interviews Muslims whose neighbours no longer talk to them, and others who have had rubbish dumped in their front gardens. All because of Trojan horse." |
| The comedian Jasper Carrott recently worried about ethnic tensions in his native city in an interview with the Birmingham Mail: "Ten years ago we didn't have racial problems in Birmingham because different communities have always got on. I am starting to see that change now, which is very sad. Communities are becoming more enclosed in themselves. If we are not careful, the city might start to get ghettoised. That's the great danger." | The comedian Jasper Carrott recently worried about ethnic tensions in his native city in an interview with the Birmingham Mail: "Ten years ago we didn't have racial problems in Birmingham because different communities have always got on. I am starting to see that change now, which is very sad. Communities are becoming more enclosed in themselves. If we are not careful, the city might start to get ghettoised. That's the great danger." |
| Awan similarly worries that the demonisation of Muslims will make them turn away from the city and become more enclosed in themselves. "Muslims are feeling increasingly like the Irish did in the 1970s – they're treated as a suspicious community." In Birmingham, history repeats itself depressingly: its Irish population was, as I remember from living in the city during the 1970s, subject to racist attacks following the 1974 pub bombings. Many demonised Muslims live in Sparkbrook, the same inner-city district where the demonised Irish lived 40 years ago. | Awan similarly worries that the demonisation of Muslims will make them turn away from the city and become more enclosed in themselves. "Muslims are feeling increasingly like the Irish did in the 1970s – they're treated as a suspicious community." In Birmingham, history repeats itself depressingly: its Irish population was, as I remember from living in the city during the 1970s, subject to racist attacks following the 1974 pub bombings. Many demonised Muslims live in Sparkbrook, the same inner-city district where the demonised Irish lived 40 years ago. |
| Awan argues that Trojan horse was used politically to smear the city, and its Muslim community in particular, nowhere more clearly than when the government appointed former national head of counter-terrorism Peter Clarke to investigate the claims of schools being taken over by an extreme Islamist agenda – a move that even the West Midlands police chief constable Chris Sims called "desperately unfortunate". | Awan argues that Trojan horse was used politically to smear the city, and its Muslim community in particular, nowhere more clearly than when the government appointed former national head of counter-terrorism Peter Clarke to investigate the claims of schools being taken over by an extreme Islamist agenda – a move that even the West Midlands police chief constable Chris Sims called "desperately unfortunate". |
| "We need," says Awan, "a counter-narrative to all that." In arguing thus, Awan is a true Brummie. Brummies have always sought counter-narratives as redress against an outside world that misrepresents and misunderstands them. Awan's view is echoed by Birmingham council's chief executive, Mark Rogers, who says the city needs to "take on those who talk us down without doing anything to help". | "We need," says Awan, "a counter-narrative to all that." In arguing thus, Awan is a true Brummie. Brummies have always sought counter-narratives as redress against an outside world that misrepresents and misunderstands them. Awan's view is echoed by Birmingham council's chief executive, Mark Rogers, who says the city needs to "take on those who talk us down without doing anything to help". |
| In his blog, Rogers tries to do just that. Did you know, for instance, that Birmingham was recently named the most entrepreneurial city in the UK outside the capital, and a "start-up hotspot", by StartUp Britain? That Birmingham attracted more international visits last year than ever before according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with almost one million visits (941,000)? That this year Birmingham was ranked as having the highest quality of life of any UK city outside London by the Mercer Quality of Living report, proving Birmingham is as nice to live in as Rome, and better than Los Angeles or Dubai? | In his blog, Rogers tries to do just that. Did you know, for instance, that Birmingham was recently named the most entrepreneurial city in the UK outside the capital, and a "start-up hotspot", by StartUp Britain? That Birmingham attracted more international visits last year than ever before according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with almost one million visits (941,000)? That this year Birmingham was ranked as having the highest quality of life of any UK city outside London by the Mercer Quality of Living report, proving Birmingham is as nice to live in as Rome, and better than Los Angeles or Dubai? |
| Such civic tub-thumping is a traditional Brummie vice (or maybe a virtue); one that the city has indulged since Chamberlain was the mayor from 1873 to 1876. It was in those Brummie wonder years that sections of the second city began a hubristic strut that has never ceased. Chamberlain imposed on the city then the Civic Gospel that non-conformist preacher George Dawson had extolled from the pulpit. Dawson said that "a town is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man's moral nature". What that meant for Chamberlain was clearing slums, hostile takeovers of gas and water companies and building schools, swimming pools and libraries. The result? His biographer Peter Marsh wrote: "Under his guidance Birmingham was known as the best-governed city in the industrial world." | Such civic tub-thumping is a traditional Brummie vice (or maybe a virtue); one that the city has indulged since Chamberlain was the mayor from 1873 to 1876. It was in those Brummie wonder years that sections of the second city began a hubristic strut that has never ceased. Chamberlain imposed on the city then the Civic Gospel that non-conformist preacher George Dawson had extolled from the pulpit. Dawson said that "a town is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man's moral nature". What that meant for Chamberlain was clearing slums, hostile takeovers of gas and water companies and building schools, swimming pools and libraries. The result? His biographer Peter Marsh wrote: "Under his guidance Birmingham was known as the best-governed city in the industrial world." |
| It isn't now, but could it be again? Echoes of that Civic Gospel can be heard in the pride with which Brummies speak of the new library of Birmingham, which opened last year to great acclaim, the biggest in Europe; or in the prospects for the city's ability to draw manufacturing and digital industries if the HS2 rail link to London opens at the currently derelict Curzon Street station in 2026. | It isn't now, but could it be again? Echoes of that Civic Gospel can be heard in the pride with which Brummies speak of the new library of Birmingham, which opened last year to great acclaim, the biggest in Europe; or in the prospects for the city's ability to draw manufacturing and digital industries if the HS2 rail link to London opens at the currently derelict Curzon Street station in 2026. |
| Here, then, is the most bravura counter-narrative of all. Bore thinks that Birmingham's Civic Gospel can be revived for the 21st century even as the council is getting a public drubbing for poorly managing education, children's services and keeping the streets clean. Speaking at a conference earlier this month, which marks the 100th anniversary of Chamberlain's death, Bore said: "What I do think we can resurrect from the Civic Gospel is the idea of the city as a community and a driver of national prosperity, and the idea that the city must have a powerful, autonomous government that actively seeks to improve the lives of its citizens." But the autonomy Chamberlain had that enabled him to fashion Birmingham according to that gospel is something that eludes Bore. | Here, then, is the most bravura counter-narrative of all. Bore thinks that Birmingham's Civic Gospel can be revived for the 21st century even as the council is getting a public drubbing for poorly managing education, children's services and keeping the streets clean. Speaking at a conference earlier this month, which marks the 100th anniversary of Chamberlain's death, Bore said: "What I do think we can resurrect from the Civic Gospel is the idea of the city as a community and a driver of national prosperity, and the idea that the city must have a powerful, autonomous government that actively seeks to improve the lives of its citizens." But the autonomy Chamberlain had that enabled him to fashion Birmingham according to that gospel is something that eludes Bore. |
| Another counter-narrative comes from Jon Hickman, one of the clever media studies theorists whose birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk blog recently mutated into paradisecircus.com. Why the name change? "Well, the original site was a response to the official story of Birmingham – you know, the marketing one where people are always saying it's got more miles of canals than Venice and there are pictures of men in crisp, white shirts drinking Peroni and girls eating salad al fresco in luxury apartments. Then we got co-opted – the people we were satirising started linking to us, so we had to change the name." | Another counter-narrative comes from Jon Hickman, one of the clever media studies theorists whose birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk blog recently mutated into paradisecircus.com. Why the name change? "Well, the original site was a response to the official story of Birmingham – you know, the marketing one where people are always saying it's got more miles of canals than Venice and there are pictures of men in crisp, white shirts drinking Peroni and girls eating salad al fresco in luxury apartments. Then we got co-opted – the people we were satirising started linking to us, so we had to change the name." |
| Now, Hickman often satirises journalists on day trips from London who come to write articles about the city, countering their narratives about a city they don't get. "They always start with that Jane Austen quote: 'One has no great hopes of Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound." And go on to say how pleasantly surprised they were to find out it's not as shit as they thought. Patronising bastards." | Now, Hickman often satirises journalists on day trips from London who come to write articles about the city, countering their narratives about a city they don't get. "They always start with that Jane Austen quote: 'One has no great hopes of Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound." And go on to say how pleasantly surprised they were to find out it's not as shit as they thought. Patronising bastards." |
| But if Birmingham isn't shit, what is it? "A bit more gentle and accommodating at best. We were once asking what it is to be Brummie. The answer, I think, is inclusive. It's like: 'If you want to be a Brummie that's all right with us, bab,'" Hickman says. "Nowhere else is that inclusive." | But if Birmingham isn't shit, what is it? "A bit more gentle and accommodating at best. We were once asking what it is to be Brummie. The answer, I think, is inclusive. It's like: 'If you want to be a Brummie that's all right with us, bab,'" Hickman says. "Nowhere else is that inclusive." |
| There is one final counter-narrative to the woeful story of Birmingham in 2014. Joanna Skelt emails me some poems she's written about the city during her year as Birmingham's poet laureate. One of them, Connected Journeys, which she wrote for National Holocaust Day on 25 January, and which will be published in September, begins indicting the city for once colluding in the making of "slave chains and armaments". But then she goes on to write about the city's diversity in a way Albert Bore might like: | There is one final counter-narrative to the woeful story of Birmingham in 2014. Joanna Skelt emails me some poems she's written about the city during her year as Birmingham's poet laureate. One of them, Connected Journeys, which she wrote for National Holocaust Day on 25 January, and which will be published in September, begins indicting the city for once colluding in the making of "slave chains and armaments". But then she goes on to write about the city's diversity in a way Albert Bore might like: |
| Each December inhabitants from every creed/And quarter marvel at the German market/All of us making what we can of it, of this time/Our mixed-race, mixed-heritage children/A testament to the glorious and extraordinary/Merging and transcending of difference/A testament to peace/Which must surely be the kernel that drives us on. | Each December inhabitants from every creed/And quarter marvel at the German market/All of us making what we can of it, of this time/Our mixed-race, mixed-heritage children/A testament to the glorious and extraordinary/Merging and transcending of difference/A testament to peace/Which must surely be the kernel that drives us on. |
| In the final verse, standing below the city's ferris wheel, Skelt writes: | In the final verse, standing below the city's ferris wheel, Skelt writes: |
| Let this be a turning point, a brand new year/The city all around us, these pillars/ The mosaic spectacle of tower block/The city a kaleidoscope, a daring embroidery/Spread out like spokes, a web, itself a giant wheel/Encompassing, each of us carrying/Wrapped inside ourselves/Our own threads and journeys/Each one of us an infinitesimal part/Such that every wrong, tear or break is ours too/Stitched into the very tapestry of us. | Let this be a turning point, a brand new year/The city all around us, these pillars/ The mosaic spectacle of tower block/The city a kaleidoscope, a daring embroidery/Spread out like spokes, a web, itself a giant wheel/Encompassing, each of us carrying/Wrapped inside ourselves/Our own threads and journeys/Each one of us an infinitesimal part/Such that every wrong, tear or break is ours too/Stitched into the very tapestry of us. |
| She's writing a series of poems about the representation of the Muslim Pakistani community in Alum Rock. Just a little thing, a stitch, to keep her city – that "daring embroidery" – from unravelling. Perhaps in such gestures, as much as grandstanding libraries and high-speed rail links, is the kind of Civic Gospel Birmingham needs today. | She's writing a series of poems about the representation of the Muslim Pakistani community in Alum Rock. Just a little thing, a stitch, to keep her city – that "daring embroidery" – from unravelling. Perhaps in such gestures, as much as grandstanding libraries and high-speed rail links, is the kind of Civic Gospel Birmingham needs today. |
| • This article was updated on 12 July 2014. Imran Awan's name was originally spelled as Imran Awar. This has been corrected. The article was further amended on 14 July 2014. An earlier version incorrectly attributed a remark branding Birmingham "a national disgrace" to Norman Warner. |