THE ELECTION
BRAVE NEW BRUM
Richard West visits the
crumbling home of Roy Hattersley and Spaghetti Junction
AS NEIL Kinnock arrived at Birmingham City Hall to launch the Labour Party's General Election campaign, a coven of feminists from the local government unions shrilled this complaint:
Birmingham City Needs a Women's Committee (repeat)
Startled to hear that Birmingham City does not have a Women's Committee, together with black, disabled and lesbian sub- committees, I took out my notebook and started to write. A West Indian man asked, severely: 'Did you get that statement by the blond-haired woman when Kinnock arrived? Well, if you weren't on the spot, no way am I going to repeat it to you. That was a scoop and a half for you.' Whatever the blond-haired lady said, Kinnock has little reason to fear the dotty element of his party here in the West Midlands. The feminist harpies, the proselytising homosexuals and white-hating race fana- tics have not obtained the power in the Labour Party which they have in London, Liverpool and Manchester. When the loonies took over the Labour Party in nearby Walsall, they so antagonised most of the town that the Tories won in this month's local elections.
The Labour Party in Birmingham has tried but failed to appear as champion of the immigrants, who form some ten per cent of the population. The seriousness of the problem posed by immigrants was all too, apparent on Monday at Edgbaston, where England just defeated the visiting Pakistan team. To television viewers, it seemed that Pakistan was the home team. Brown faces and green flags were promin- ent in the crowd; Urdu as well as English came from the public address system; Pakistani supporters invaded the pitch at the fall of Gower's wicket. Next day we read that this match had produced the first major outbreak of cricket hooliganism and riot. A Pakistani supporter was almost killed by a broken bottle. It was the worst day in Birmingham since the Handsworth riots, when young West Indians looted and burned the shops and homes of the Asians.
Race relations fanatics in London tend to confound all people of Asian or African stock as 'blacks', who have all been grievously wronged by the 'whites'. Birm- ingham people are less sentimental and better informed on race relations. Most ordinary whites know the difference bet- ween the 'Pakis', mosts of them from Kashmir, the Sikhs, the Bangladeshis and the Indians. All these groups are to some extent mutually antipathetic. Similarly, the Brummies differentiate between old- fashioned church-going West Indians and the more troublesome Rastas. A group of West Indians set up a company called `Golliwogs' for the repair of exhaust-pipes, and flatly refused to change the name at the request of race relations officials.
The first wave of immigrants in the Fifties and Sixties, were mostly manual workers and tended towards the Labour Party. However they owe it no allegiance. Last week the chairman ' of one of the Sparkbrook ward parties, Mahammad Yussuf, resigned, saying that Hattersley, the Labour deputy leader, had used the seat 'as if he was Governor-General of India'. Next day more prominent Asians left posts in the Labour Party and said they would vote for the Tory election candidate, who is a fellow Muslim. The mullahs in Sparkbrook have called on the faithful to vote Conservative. These Asians complain that over the years in Sparkbrook, the standard of housing and education has gone down. A local restaurant owner, Sam Chowdhury, told the Daily Mail: 'Labour has done nothing for us. I've lived here 32 years, and I've seen the area decline, mainly, I believe, due to the big spending by the Labour Council.' If Mr Hattersley ate more of his dinners at Mr Chowdhury's restaurant, and fewer at those which appear in the Good Food Guide, he might acquire some of his host's political wisdom.
The steady decline in housing, education and employment is partly the fault of trade unions; partly of Westminster politicians; but most of all because of decades of big spending by Labour councils. All the zeal that ought to have gone into manufacture, was wasted instead on the demolition and then in the gimcrack reconstruction of physical Birmingham. A great many con- tractors, council employees and Labour politicians grew very rich, and some, though not nearly enough, went to prison. By the end of the 1960s, tens of thousands of Brummies had been forced out of their sturdy, brick homes and re-housed in shoddy, impersonal tower blocks. The City of Birmingham had become the largest landlord in Europe.
Now the highways and the motorways, like the monstrous 'Spaghetti Junction', are constantly under repair at prodigious cost to the tax-payers and rate-payers. After the slightest shower of rain, the water pours through the ring road into the car park beneath. Everywhere, the mosaic peels off the walls, the pavements are broken and cracks appear in balustrades. Already the tower blocks are having to come down. Many more are under scaf- folding. Still more would be getting much needed repairs if the council had not brought in a clause to ban all building firms with South African connections. The Con- servatives, in their manifesto, have prom- ised that council tenants will have a chance to buy their property or at least change landlords. This would be impossible in most of the 400 or so Birmingham tower blocks. The flats are not in a fit state for sale. The cost of repair would in most cases be more than the cost of demolition, and repayment of the original loan.
The politicians of Birmingham persist in their greed and folly. Last summer I witnessed the motor car race in the city centre. This week, the taxi driver advised me: 'Prepare yourself for a shock when you see Broad Street' — a centre of workshops and homes and breweries from the 18th century, when Dr Johnson knew the city. A placard announced: 'The First UK Pur- pose Built Convention Centre To Rival Anything In The World'. Behind the post- er lay devastation. A few old buildings, such as a glassworks and the brewmaster's house, remain as listed monuments, though shuttered and forlorn. Already there are a few drab high-rise blocks including the Sergeant Yorke Casino, with a cement frieze in neo-Aztec style. Beside the canal is one of the largest holes in the earth I have seen outside Kimberley, in the diamond fields. Hundreds of thousands of tons of reddish rock sand have been removed to make way for the Convention Centre. Curious visitors may have asked themselves what happened to all that earth. The answer is still more odd. The rock sand has somehow found its way from the Broad Street convention site to a British Rail property at Winson Green, beside the line to Wolverhampton. How and why and at whose Cost, this vast mound of earth has travelled across the city, might well be questions to ask the politicians of Birmingham.
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