Despite being the UK's second-largest city, Birmingham has never quite believed in itself nor reached its full potential – yet
If there were ever a city that needed a mayor, it's Birmingham; not that most Brummies would be all that keen on the idea. I once mentioned to a fellow Brummie that the phrase I'd probably heard most in my 18 years spent growing up in the city was: "I think it's dis-goo-sting" – sharp emphasis on the hard "g" – "soom-body should do soom-thing abou'd it." The second was "I think it's a lowd o' rubbish", with "No, sorry, I'm norr' interestid" a close third.
With Liam Byrne, Siôn Simon and Gisela Stuart, three high-profile local politicians are already vying to stand as Birmingham's first elected mayor. They have their work cut out, both in getting the city behind them and in getting the city behind itself. It's the only British city outside the capital with a seven-figure population, yet it consistently allows Manchester and other, smaller cities to grab Westminster's attention and money.
I've lived virtually all my life in two cities: the first half in Birmingham; the second half in London. London bigs itself up; Birmingham does itself down. You go to London to get a buzz; a buzz in Birmingham is something you get if you want to visit your nan in Yardley. Its lack of hubris is both refreshing and, in terms of its collective under-confidence, self-fulfilling.
The city had its years of post-industrial flail under the council leader Dick Knowles: we went for the Olympics (Barcelona won) and attempted reinvention as a Le Mans motor-city with the Superprix car tournament, when, with more miles – moiles – of canal than Venice, it would have made more sense to have a boat race. Birmingham has a history of not quite getting it right and then telling itself "I told you so". Manchester knows how to talk itself up without the need for a mayor. Liverpool, its own republic, needs a president.
By far the most palpable benefit to Londoners of having a mayor has been the vast improvement to the city's public transport system. A city of Birmingham's size needs an underground, or at least an extensive tram network, yet it's Manchester, the squeaky wheel, along with Sheffield and Nottingham, which has the latter and, as the Guardian recently reported, nearly got the former back in 1972 after Whitehall initially agreed to put up the cost.
Birmingham stretches nearly a dozen miles in every direction, yet its outer reaches take nearly an hour to get to on inadequate bus services. It's at the heart of a conurbation exceeding 5 million people, yet all the fastest train routes are the ones bolting to Euston and Marylebone. What does that say about us? That we want to get away from it as quick as we can?
While at Birmingham University's groundbreaking Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, founded and run by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall, the sociologist Angela McRobbie found evidence of what she described as the "hermetically sealed" nature of life – particularly working-class life – in Birmingham. She notes that in service-led cities such as Glasgow, Liverpool and London an overlap occurs, especially in pubs, where lefties, students, trade unionists and workers can be found talking to and arguing with each other.
No such thing has tended to happen in Birmingham, as far as McRobbie could tell and as far as it has ever seemed to outsiders. That said, it is an analysis that risks overlooking Birmingham as the site of significant political flashpoints, such as the closing of Saltley coke plant by its workers in 1972 and, unfortunately, Enoch Powell's fetid "rivers of blood" speech in 1968.
Birmingham to me means equal parts garrulous warmth and chilly indifference, a fine civic infrastructure hacked half to death by roads, amazing cross-cultural communication and miserable, dead-eyed racism. Its most outstanding citizen, as of August 2011, is Tariq Jahan, whose son was killed in the riots and who refused to speak of Handsworth as a place where violence and enmity between races was inevitable.
I love it, but going back often makes me angry; though, as John Lydon sang, anger is an energy. Any mayor of Birmingham won't get far on positivity alone: they'll need rage – at injustice, at inequality, at Brummies' own determination to do themselves down, and at the rest of the country for ignoring them – in buckets if they're to get anything done.
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