Birmingham’s grand Centenary Square was abuzz on Saturday afternoon amid blue skies and a spring verve. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK had harnessed the anger of its members at a huge rally around the corner the previous night. But this morning, bother seemed blissfully far away.
Walking tours gathered at the “Golden Boys of Birmingham” statue depicting the 18th-century men – Matthew Boulton, James Watt and William Murdoch – who revolutionised the steam engine in this proud city of science, turbocharging Britain’s industrial development in the process.
Across the square, fun-filled groups of teenagers with eyes only for their iPads choreographed dances for social media outside the stunning Library of Birmingham, one of the largest in Europe.
Culture, commerce and conviviality coalesced here, beneath the sun. As well as no bother, crucially there was also no rubbish. Birmingham’s bin workers have been on an all-out strike since March 11th in a bitter pay dispute, causing mountains of rat-infested detritus to pile up in parts of the city.
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There was little sign of the row in the city centre on Saturday. Not in front of the tourists. But you didn’t have to walk far to find evidence of the latest pips of angst to irk Birmingham and Britain.
A few minutes east of Centenary Square was another broad plaza, Victoria Square, in front of the town hall. There were protesters here, but not striking bin workers. They were socialists, some in wheelchairs, opposed to reductions in disability benefits that the government in Westminster chose to balance the nation’s barren books. They held aloft fists and a banner: “Crips against cuts.”
Birmingham’s city council in effect went bankrupt in 2023 due to its growing pay bills. The dispute with the bin workers didn’t just fall from the sky.
Keeping east, the pedestrian route went down New Street, past the sites of the IRA’s 1974 pub bombings and into the Bullring, the beating heart of the retail district. Shoppers swarmed every inch. Things began to deteriorate continuing southeast into Digbeth. The streets suddenly were dirtier.
Crowds of football fans in blue shirts were beginning to flow up the hill at Bordesley towards St Andrew’s, a grittier working-class area. Birmingham City were playing at home. They were top of the table – but in League One, English football’s third tier. Just over a decade ago, they were in the Premier League and won the League Cup and qualified for Europe. Now here they were, playing bottom-of-the-table Shrewsbury Town. It felt like another symptom of the recent travails of this proud city.
By now, rubbish was everywhere on the streets, as paper cartons and plastic bottles swirled in the warm breeze. Uncollected bin bags were piled up on every corner close to council houses. Residents could not open their windows due to the stench.
As of this week, there were 19,000 tonnes of uncollected rubbish on Birmingham’s streets. The council declared a “major incident” on Monday to allow it to marshal emergency resources. Adding to the row, Birmingham’s residents were also hit with a 7.5 per cent rise in council tax on Tuesday.
Farage’s Reform UK homed in on the city’s bin crisis at its rally last Friday, mocking up overflowing bins on the stage as an example of “Broken Britain”. It was easy to understand the anger among some in the crowd.
Past Bordesley and St Andrew’s and the Birmingham City football fans making their Saturday pilgrimage through the filth, I turned right on to Victoria Street into Small Heath, the most Islamic part of Birmingham. The piles of uncollected rubbish seemed to get even higher here, piled against walls plastered with graffiti in support of Palestine and decrying Israel.
At the bottom of Muntz Street, I turned right again on to Coventry Road, heading back in the direction of St Andrew’s. Reform UK’s anti-immigrant rhetoric often holds that there are areas of the country that are unrecognisable as being in Britain. Coventry Road, a cacophony of cultural and religious difference, may well have been on their minds.
Muslim families filled the street, buying food for Eid, the end of Ramadan, the following evening. Women, almost all of them in full Islamic veil, gathered around makeshift streetside stalls to have their hands decorated with henna. I did see not see any white Britons for at least 20 minutes. But just as I had in Bordesley, I saw plenty of uncollected rubbish and detritus strewn all over the streets.
Reform’s rhetoric plays up difference. From where I was standing, the working-class communities of Birmingham seemed to face similar problems – official neglect, the effects of maladministration and indifference to the plight of residents used as pawns in a dispute going on above their heads.
Meanwhile, as I got back nearer St Andrew’s, the atmosphere lifted. Birmingham City had beaten Shrewsbury 4-1. Promotion for the Blues looks assured. Perhaps the only way is up, after all.
