10th August 2022
The Commonwealth Games of 2022 have just ended.
I am not huge fan of athletics, but it was wonderful to see my home city of Birmingham being given the opportunity to show off.
A taste can be seen of the closing ceremony here:
There may be other cities in England that have more famous musical legacies – but Black Sabbath, the Electric Light Orchestra, Joan Armatrading, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, UB40, Duran Duran, Dexys Midnight Runners, and so on, ain’t bad.
We produced Ozzy Osbourne and Jeff Lynne, Paranoid and Mr Blue Sky.
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One thing about being a Brummie is that you learn very quickly that you and your city will get disparaged, and so you get your self-disparagement in first and quickly.
You meet people who want to say “Birmingham” in an accent which sounds Liverpudlian, or Welsh, or mildly deranged.
You hear the criticism of New Street Station – but you never let on that it is that ugly so that people are not tempted to get off the train and ruin it for the rest of us.
You learn that you can’t take things about your city too seriously for too long.
As Telly Savalas avers:
What makes that video especially wonderful is that Savalas did not visit Birmingham – indeed he may not have even seen the footage.
He did a voiceover gig from afar.
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There is not even that much of a fixed identity.
For example, because I was born before the 1973 county re-organisation, I used to say I was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire.
But pesky details meant I was wrong: I was born in Birmingham, Worcestershire – as Selly Oak was then the other side of a county line.
There were parts of Birmingham which were Staffordshire.
It didn’t matter, the industrial and residential city just sprawled out in all directions, regardless of lines on maps.
And people came to Birmingham from elsewhere in the British Isles and from abroad.
All ended up Brummies.
In terms of religion, it was varied – strong Anglicanism vs Freethinkers (for example with the Priestley riots), Cardinal Newman and the strong Irish contingent, and then religions from around the world.
All together.
And economically and commercially, there was not just one trade and business dominating – but all sorts, from the Jewellery Quarter to the Bournville chocolate factory and the Longbridge car plant.
All mixed.
Birmingham did not even formally become a city until 1889, when it was already one the largest urban areas in the then-empire.
And then without really realising it, Birmingham somehow became the second city of the United Kingdom.
This irks those from Manchester and other pretenders – which is pleasing, as it is plain how much this status would mean to them – but most Brummies are a little bewildered by it, to the extent they think about it at all.
A Birmingham football team even were once champions of Europe, which is also bewildering even for those of us who support it.
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From a law and policy perspective, coming from a big city that is not London is a useful corrective to a lot of the London-centric approach of the English government and British media.
Coming from a city that has grown and thrived on its own terms is a reminder that regions and localities have actual and potential power.
Birmingham did not become the second city because some people in London decided to generously “level up” a midlands town.
Birmingham – like many other cities – was just allowed to get on with it.
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Of course: there is a less pleasant side.
Birmingham grew on the back of slavery and colonialism – and, indeed, the city’s gunmakers and chain-makers were the main suppliers of slavers and imperialists.
One day there may perhaps be a Bristol-like reckoning of this, or perhaps not.
The city is also the home of those remarkable political creeds “liberal imperialism” and “liberal unionism” – which meant elevated rights for those fortunate enough to be on this island, and no rights if you were under this island’s power.
Now forgotten, those political ideas put Birmingham – and the house of Chamberlain in particular – at the heart of British politics for sixty years from c. 1880 to 1940.
And you can perhaps trace back British exceptionalism to the “liberal imperialism” and “liberal unionism” of Joseph Chamberlain and his supporters.
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So coming from Birmingham – like coming from any other non-London place – can give you a detached view of the law and politics, and the history, of the United Kingdom.
You may have a similar story and a similar view.
And the more it is realised that there is more to the United Kingdom than Westminster and Whitehall and the Square Mile, the better.
If the rest of the country is given its head – with independent access to resources and powers – then levelling-up may happen, and not at the behest of London.
And, who knows, another city could overtake us to become the second city.
We would have still have given the world heavy metal though.
And won the European Cup.
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You can always tell a Brummie…
…but you can’t him much :-)
Amusing still, the thousandth time you hear it
The Birmingham Political Union, founded by Thomas Attwood, was a key extra Parliamentary player in the passing of the 1832 Reform Act and an inspiration for the establishment of political unions the length and breadth of the country.
If you wish to learn more about the passing of the Act and the particular role of the people of Birmingham then you may do no better than read “REFORM! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act” by Edward Pearce.
Our A-level history teacher at Halesowen College told us often of “your very own Thomas Attwood”.
There is (or was) a reclining statue of him in Chamberlain square, which you can trip over of you are not careful…
My A Level History teacher taught us about the Act and its passing.
We also learnt about the Booth of Booth’s Farm, a forger who when caught was sentenced to death.
However, after cheating the hangman, twice, he was set free as we were told was the custom in such cases.
The area of Booth’s Farm is still on the map in Great Barr.
That one is back, I believe.
But the large Grade II listed statue by Peter Hollins – originally erected in Stephenson Place in 1859, near the Exchange; then moved to Calthorpe Park in 1925; and latterly at Larches Green from 1975, where it became horribly vandalised – is still in store, 14 years after it was removed to be restored. Based on photos of it still crated up in 2018, no work had been done (it still carried the graffiti from a decade or more before). I am sure the council has higher priorities, but perhaps it could eventually be put up somewhere in Attwood Green?
There is also the famous beach underneath Spaghetti Junction
https://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2008/01/31/spaghetti_junction_beach_feature.shtml
Stevie and Muff Winwood lived in Kingstanding.
And then there is the NEC. Crufts, Motor Show, etc.
Stevie Winwood went to The Comp in Great Barr as did Martin Shaw.
The NEC is in Solihull strictly speaking. Though I reckon most Silhillians believe it is Birmingham.
I paid to endure an Owen Jones ramble a few years back at a Constituency Labour Party event.
During it, he went on about Chartism and municipal Socialism and then laid into the Liberal Party.
He had not bothered to adapt his standard text to the fact he was in Birmingham, the home of the Chamberlains and their still very evident brand of municipal Socialism.
And the Birmingham Political Union did not even get a mention.
Of course, Jones when it suits him is from Oop North.
And if I were to give a talk in Manchester, I would no doubt commit the opposite blunder.
As an adopted Brummie, who moved here 30 years ago from London and just outside London, I loved the opening and closing ceremonies more than the sport.
It reminded me of why I loved the place so much when I first moved here to work. The people, always the people. Amazing, different colours, different languages and accents, different food, different shops. But all Brummies.
Going clubbing on a Thursday. Hating being mistaken for a Yam Yam. The looking for clues when the talk turned to football with a stranger. The canals, the pubs on the canals. My parents faces when they saw Broad Street on a Saturday night.
Dexy’s, one of the UB40s, Sabbath (although the propped up Ozzy was a bit of a worry) and Kashmir brought it all back.
And we tricked everyone by being sunny all the way through!
As an alumnus of Birmingham University and as my first place of work I have always considered it a second home . The self-deprecating wit of the locals is definitely under-appreciated.
I was able to attend a few of the events of the games which were all well organised and staffed by enthusiastic locals. I too felt a tinge of pride whilst watching the closing ceremony.
Well done to Brum.
My old geography teacher once described Birmingham as the city that made everything from tin-tacks to steam-rollers. He then went on to spoil it somewhat by pointing out that the former were actually made in Scunthorpe and the latter in Doncaster.
Very good, but not a patch on Balham! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RTWk9QIKS0
Birmingham can be rightly proud of being England’s Second City.
Coming second to Manchester is nothing to be ashamed of.
So many Mancunians resort to this very joke, it’s sweet
Bless
We’ve got to do something – it’s grim.
And wet.
“One thing about being a Brummie is that you learn very quickly that you and your city will get disparaged, and so you get your self-disparagement in first and quickly.”
Disparaged is a great word to say in a Brummie accent. Disparagement even better. As for the European Cup Winners, “Villa” can only be properly said in a football sense in that accent. I don’t know how Prince William pronounces it but I doubt it has the same power as the Brummie original.
I can identify with a lot of what you said. Although I was born and brought up in London, I went to uni in Loughborough. That was where I discovered the real world outside London. I also found out what it was like to be disparaged, as a soft southerner who supposedly liked weak beer. More importantly I discovered the warmth and friendliness of the locals outside the capital. It was a real eye-opener. So I saw things from both sides, as an outsider and then as a local. The Midlands is like a second home to me.
Thanks for reminding me of that glorious Telly Savalas Birmingham travelogue. It just shows how a famous voice can be totally so unconvincing and probably put people off visiting. It reminds me of the Peter Sellers’ audio sketch “Bal-ham, Gateway to the South” only that was meant to be funny.
Anyone for croquet or tennis?
Tennis has been around in various forms for centuries.
However, the modern game of tennis originated right here in Birmingham, in the English Midlands, in the late 19th century as lawn tennis.
Between 1859 and 1865, Major Harry Gem, a solicitor, and his friend Augurio Perera, a Spanish merchant, combined elements of the game of rackets and Basque pelota and played it on a croquet lawn in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham.
Then in 1872, Gem and Perera recruited two doctors and subsequently founded the world’s first tennis club in nearby Leamington Spa.
It’s still game, set and match to Birmingham, though!
The singles trophy that the winning player is allowed to hold after the final of the Women’s Tennis Association tournament held at Edgbaston every June is the cup brought back to Birmingham from Wimbledon by Maud Watson after her second singles title win there in 1885.
In the forty years to date of the Edgbaston tournament, many top ranked players, such as Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Ashleigh Barty and Ons Jabeur, have come well north of the Thames to play on the Ann Jones Centre Court.
That is Ann Jones of Kings Heath, who was Wimbledon Singles Champion in 1969.
The most surprising thing I observed on my first visit to Birmingham was a sign-post in the city centre indicating the direction of various local attractions, one of which was “The Custard Factory”. In what other city are you told where to obtain an emergency top-up of custard?
“You meet people who want to say “Birmingham” in an accent which sounds Liverpudlian, or Welsh, or mildly deranged.”
So true lol, and I’m probably guilty of that once or twice too.
Over from Ireland, my first summer job was with a law firm in St Philip’s Square, in 1991. I stayed out in Aston univ halls for a pittance, and caught the early bus into town. The place seemed enormous to me. There was a pizza shop near the Halls, and it made the best pizza this side of Naples. The people were lovely, and the nightlife unpretentious and fun. I think there was one nightclub that had an over-25s policy, but they let me in anyway. I had a great time. Then, when I started work in London, I couldn’t understand why so many people at work in the Square Mile would snigger about Birmingham, if it came up in conversation. Not in an especially nasty way, but there was a definite condescension. Irked, I used to defend the city, and people would look at me strangely, as if to say, “bumpkin – doesn’t know any better”. It was my first big move away from home, and I still have fond memoires of the city.
gah – “memories”
Thought Britain’s second city was Glazgee
London has been so dominant for so long, but if there is a need to identify a “second city” of the UK, Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_city_of_the_United_Kingdom – mentions, in order, Norwich (of England, before there was a UK), then Bristol, Dublin, Glasgow, and (most recently) Birmingham. But others claim the title, not least Manchester, and Edinburgh.
So well said. I spent ten happy years in Birmingham from my formative student years. I’ve travelled far and wide since but am always happy to return. Birmingham has no pretensions, it doesn’t need them, comfortable as it is in its own skin. Down to earth, matter of fact yet with a vision and some great, often unsung achievements behind it and with more to come in future! A great city.
Fabulous post about Birmingham
I concur that the fixation on London is not a good thing, for any of us.
And the Games were great. Such warm memories
Birmingham looked amazing , and it was.
And the Birmingham Lunar Society could lay claim to be one of the most important societies in history. It influenced industrialization, engineering, chemistry, evolutionary theory, paleontology and much more.
Compared to many other countries, the UK’s second/other cities are very small.
As we know the country isvey London centric…..
“As we know the country is very London centric…”
It isn’t. LONDON is very London centric.
The rest of us (including this Geordie) resent pretty much everything about Londoncentrism.
A great celebration of a wonderful place – as a fellow Brummie I feel obligated to make one point about the ‘levelling up’ point – “Birmingham – like many other cities – was just allowed to get on with it.”.
Birmingham and the wider Midlands was deliberately impeded in its growth as part of central government policy for period beginning around 1960 – https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/
That we do can look to see our city doing so well is a great pleasure. It was built on the burdens and struggles of many generations before us. As is the motto of the City of Birmingham: Forward!
Given how long it is since Ozzy retired on health grounds, it has to be likely that will end up being his last public performance. Which isn’t a bad way to go out, if so. But imagine. all those decades ago, being told he’d end up being an official National Treasure. I do hope he isn’t offended by that…
I am not a “Brummie”, but I am connected to Birmingham. My maternal grandmother lived in Olton. As a boy, I made frequent visits to see her, and to go into the City. Then, my older sister studied at Aston. My parents were overseas and I often found myself in transition in Birmingham, treated to a steak at “Long John Silver” in, or near (I forget which) the Bullring. Then I lost touch with the City as a result of my own travels. At a certain point in my career, I decided to live, not in Brum, but in the West Midlands, near Ludlow. My wife’s father, a true Brummie, who joined the Army as a boy, and travelled, told stories about the days in summer he and his friends would cycle from Birmingham to Ludlow. We were happy to become re-accquainted with the City when we stopped travelling, and to appreciate its metamorphosis into the modern city it now is. After many years based in Whitehall, I think I appreciated much more what Brimingham has to offer. Very little would tempt me now to revisit my old London haunts.But happy to go into Brum anytime.
I remember sitting on the settee, grasping my partner’s hand, all the way through that final. She doesn’t even like football, but knew how much it meant.
Some time ago, now.
Among others, you have the wonderful Adrian Lester and Julie Walters.
You would have thought that somebody, somewhere might have mentioned the canals … :-(.
More canals than Venice, I hear
More miles …
It is just that they are not all in the same place!
I do recall that there was some attempt by those concerned about the promotional value of the claim to have it removed from publicity material.
And out of typical Brummie humility no mention of the world challenging importance and of the Lunar / Lunatick society whose members were not only responsible for so much of the first industrial revolution but so much of our modern and inductive scientific thought without which our contemporary life would be unthinkable. An old Black Country saying: “If in doubt mek it stout out of things you know about”. That’s why we have 1810 brick canal bridges that are capable of bearing the the weight of 40 tonne artic lorries. Proud to have been born in Brum, Worcs from nearby Beoley a couple of miles from global needle / fishing hook precision engineering centre Redditch.
I don’t have the accent myself but it is the comfortable aural environment of my childhood and as powerful a reminiscence of time and place as smell and I love it. Who could not wallow in the sentiment of a parishioner ventilating to my father in those inimitable Brummie rising inflexions: “well now vicah, yow woodn’t creditt itt wood yow?”
Good on yer. Just shows how many layers of self-identity we’re all made from. Which is why pure Brexit English nationalism is so repulsive.
Yes – that’s a metropolitan view. Not so much in towns, villages and the countryside.
Does the fact that – in your opinion – it’s a metropolitan view make it wrong?
If not, then who should change: the metropolitans or the provincials?
And in response to Kijiri, I feel the same kind of attachment to London as non-Londoners do to other places. I don’t exclude other people’s feelings but London will always be my home!
I have no problem with London.
I DO have a problem with Londoncentrism – I’ve been on the crappy end of that unfair imbalance for 60+ years.
I also admit to being utterly baffled by the idea of pride in a complete accident of birth like where someone is born or brought up.
For example, I’m HAPPY to be a Geordie – it’s a fact of my life which I don’t find objectionable – but the notion of being PROUD to be a Geordie bewilders me, because the achievements of other people from this part of the world aren’t MY achievements, so how do they reflect well on me?
Moreover, it’s a mindset which strikes me as being perilously close to the kind of irrational nationalistic jingoism routinely (and rightly) derived here and elsewhere.
In my view there are more layers of self-identity in cities than town villages or the open country. You may disagree which is fine.
The opportunity to mix is far greater in urban situations.
In the FT Edwin Heathcote asks-
“Can a city be redesigned for the new world of work?”
About much more than work of course but all about opportunities for interchange
From my own experience I don’t agree. Although at heart a Londoner, I lived for a few years on Dungeness and am now in Hastings and people in both places are as attached and proud as any other Londoners I’ve met.
Is that a fact, Simon? Or just your assumption?
Only an opinion based on the number of interactions possible in Cities. It was sparked by the comment about Brexit and English nationalism. I think the Referendum voting supports the view that Cities predominantly voted for Remain. Doesn’t prove anything of course.
Not sure how our blogger can write a post that details Birmingham’s extensive contribution to music and not reference the city’s greatest living singer….Jasper Carrott.
‘The Magic Roundabout’ was a classic
Is it wrong to admit I can sing the whole of ‘Funky Moped’?
Probably :-)
JC had some great comedy songs – I have been known to perform Bastity Chelt, Day Trip to Blackpool and The Bantam Cock (it was Carrott who introduced me to the wonders of Jake Thackray, for which I will be eternally grateful). But not convinced that Funky Moped counts :)
“We produced Ozzy Osbourne and Jeff Lynne, Paranoia and Mr Blue Sky.”
er.. “Paranoid”, shurely?
Sorry.. long time lurker and reader of your most excellent output, it seems wrong for my first comment to be a minor correction. But it did jar so very much
Sorry for that, and typo corrected.
Wonderful piece. Presume you saw this, I found it fascinating. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f3xf
Two things:
The Lunar Society was a central point of enlightenment and science based in and around Birmingham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham
My Dad always considered himself posher than my Mum as he was from Bearwood, which he considered to be Worcestershire, and she was Smethwick, which he considered to be Staffordshire.
Kijiri – “I DO have a problem with Londoncentrism … I also admit to being utterly baffled by the idea of pride in a complete accident of birth … a mindset … perilously close to … irrational nationalistic jingoism.”
I could not agree with you more!
Excellent article as always. As a long exiled Brummie in Newcastle I always feel a strong swell of pride when Birmingham does something truly magical, i.e the Games.
Often I feel like I am defending Birmingham against outdated attitudes that never held true, and a great deal of racism about those who live in the city. People from fairly monocultural places often denigrate Birmingham because it is truly diverse. Idiots the lot of them.
I recall the 90s and the pubs round Aston University, the Que Club, the couldn’t give an arse attitude – a quality which I still possess.
I still have the accent and therefore the mockers, to which I always reply ‘what makes you think you don’t t sound stupid?’. Speaking southern or northern does not confer intelligence or grittiness – it’s an accent just like any other.