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Bring back Birmingham’s oligarchs Victorian bigwigs gave the city pride


November 12, 2024   7 mins

Birmingham has suffered low ebbs before. Finding themselves in hock to rail developers, 150 years ago, the town’s fathers carved up working-class areas, while rejecting gifts of land to be kept as parks: they would have been just too expensive to upkeep. The municipal provision in water, health and utilities was also falling behind those of other Victorian towns. Soon enough, both because of these problems and the area’s dubious tradition of counterfeiting, the sobriquet “Blackest Brummagem” had become popular in local taverns and pubs. Birmingham: home of iniquity and crime.

Modern parallels are easy to draw. Birmingham City Council’s effective bankruptcy has, after all, resulted in familiar levels of parsimony to the 19th century. Longer term issues centre on Whitehall cuts and a historic equal pay claim. That’s shadowed by more immediate problems, notably a botched IT upgrade and accusations of mismanagement. Estimates vary on the eventual bill but, as it stands, around £400 million in spending cuts are coming. Bin collections will be slashed, street lights dimmed, and youth services cut to ribbons. Libraries, too, are on the chopping block, as is culture. The council plans to take local arts funding down to zero. To make matters worse, residents face among the highest rent rises in England, a situation that’s exacerbated the city’s choking destitution: a new report shows that almost half of local children live in real, sustained poverty. 

Now, as then, a rail project, HS2, has carved up part of the city, cutting off one area from another. Concern over crime doesn’t centre on forgeries these days, but rather the kids as young as 10 sucked into drug running. “Blackest Brummagem” might be too anachronistic to cut through as an epithet for today’s Birmingham, in short, but Dylan Gray, a rapper in the Dickens mould, has his own line. “Brum’s shit,” he rapped on one recent track. “I only say what I see.” 

Gray is hardly the first Birmingham resident to see fault with his Midlands home. In the middle of the 19th century, a small network of monied notables thought the town could do with improvement. With their great industrial fortunes, gained through industry or the law, the city’s bourgeoisie rolled up their silk sleeves and got to work. Why? Partly ambition and self-promotion, with Joseph Chamberlain, industrial magnate and Birmingham’s mayor between 1873 and 1876, a monocle-wearing, orchid-collecting exemplar. 

Yet if making Birmingham a commercial success was obviously crucial here — explaining, among other things, the Victorian obsession with railways — that also dovetailed with philanthropy. Especially for Quakers like the Cadbury family, but also for more mainstream Christians, Birmingham’s elite saw themselves as public servants. Chamberlain’s mayoralty saw municipal services gas, water, provision of lighting all taken into the public realm and owned by the town. Before that, private concerns snatched profits away from locals, even as areas like sanitation were mostly ignored altogether. 

Nor was this merely an area of utility. “Forward” was the motto Birmingham’s civic leaders chose for their town, and nowhere was that aspiration clearer than in architecture. Council buildings were built like Venetian palaces; libraries like churches; central boulevards like Paris itself. “We were shouting that we’re a city-state like Florence,” reflects Professor Carl Chinn, an ex-broadcaster and activist, “a self-sustaining Birmingham”.

The arts were also central to the city’s civic ambitions. Sir Whitworth Wallis, a curator and director, began a best-in-class collection of Pre-Raphaelite works. Encompassing some 3,000 pieces — including stunning works by painters and designers like Edward Burne-Jones — it both bolstered and exemplified Birmingham’s thriving art scene. Wallis was also the first director of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Partly financed by industrialist cash, and founded in 1885, the council bypassed public funding laws by housing the nascent collection in its own buildings. It’s chutzpah you’d like to see today, though hardly unique for its era. 

Such bullishness could be seen across the public realm and sometimes the lower classes gained explicitly. Jesse Collings, Chamberlain’s successor, secured free libraries for the city, while the Birmingham and the Midland Institute was established to deliver education to the masses. No less striking, outsiders noticed these successes. Near the end of the century, the Magazine of Art called Birmingham’s collection “the handsomest” around. Harper’s Magazine, for its part, described Brum as the best-governed city on Earth.

By comparison, today’s landscape can feel like a fight for table scraps. Whitehall austerity has resulted in closures and efficiencies across the arts sector for the last 15 years. For Cheryl Jones, founder at the Grand Union gallery, yet another round of cuts risks giving the impression that Birmingham is a cultural wasteland. “We have to talk about the amazing stuff here,” she says, “because if people think there are no arts here, they won’t come.” 

Not that the situation is completely hopeless. At Grand Union, Jones explains how she rents out space for offices, and plans to open a new café. This entrepreneurial approach is clearly successful: the gallery has provided both nominees and judges to the Turner Prize, all without much in the way of council funding or support from some self-satisfied button manufacturer. 

And, to be fair, there is some investment elsewhere too. Officially, the city is excited about the big-ticket development of new BBC studios, just around the corner from where many galleries are housed. But Jones argues this worries “those who are here already” — especially when the Beeb’s arrival will probably mean higher rents nearby. Not to be downbeat, Jones has tried to become an artistic partner to the BBC, with the hope of deepening links with big, flashier projects, and ultimately securing financing over the long-term. All the same, Jones feels future development needs to be planned with the smaller organisations it affects. As she puts it: “That wouldn’t cost much.”

Unlike in the age of the great Victorian oligarchs it can feel like everything from arts to services are an afterthought in Birmingham. Some here feel the council’s ambitions start and end with property development, with little appreciation for what that actually means for the people who live here. Plans for an apartment and retail megapolis, worth some £2 billion, have recently been approved despite sitting on top of historic wholesale markets, and the exact spot where Birmingham was born.

“Unlike the great Victorian oligarchs, arts and services are an afterthought in Birmingham today”

Elsewhere, the historically significant Ringway Centre was recently signed off for demolition, with new towers due to replace the Brutalist giant. It’s fair to say that the Ringway isn’t universally adored, but it does nonetheless represent another era of civic ambition. Half-finished and car-centric projects they may have been but the city’s erstwhile social democratic leaders still equipped the Ringway Centre with a library. Chinn feels such focus on shiny new private flats is out of kilter with Birmingham’s need for social housing, deepening a split between the city’s administrative class and the people they serve. “The poor get pushed further out and I fear our council bows down to developers,” he says. “We lose our distinctiveness as a city.” 

To be fair, we shouldn’t fully romanticise Chamberlain’s era. As Chinn says, Chamberlain’s developments brought disease through public water, even as his new boulevard pushed out the poor and raised rents. “Chamberlain’s legacy is mixed,” he concedes. “The poor are excluded, and while the great Victorian industrialists did care about Birmingham, it was the place, not the people. That said, since Chamberlain, we’ve not had someone at the top table fighting for Birmingham.”

Yet if we shouldn’t idolise Birmimgham’s imperial heyday, could today’s council learn something from the erstwhile Workshop of the World? Chinn believes so. If, he says, Birmingham once again owned its own water company, its own gas company, its own electric company, it could “stick two fingers up” to London bureaucrats when they arrived demanding spending cuts. 

In this hypothetical Birmingham, certainly, desperately needed public services would stand more of a chance, as would its famed art collection. No wonder other councils are trialling just this approach. One good example here is Preston, with its community wealth-building initiatives. For this to work, though, Chinn believes Birmingham would need a strong leader, fiercely determined to improve the lives of everyday people. They’d also need an ego comparable to Joseph Chamberlain’s, a lover of fresh orchids in his lapel and boasting a supremely unclubbable nature. Yet instead of a Midlands Leviathan, willing to take on the Whitehall establishment, Birmingham’s finances are currently run by a government-imposed overseer. The one councillor to publicly criticise library cuts, for their part, was suspended.

Nor are contemporary businessmen likely to come to the rescue either. Manufacturing, the industry that made Chamberlain rich, still has a presence in Birmingham. But the biggest firms now take money elsewhere: Cadbury is now Mondelez and Jaguar Land Rover is owned by an Indian billionaire. The funding paradigm has changed too. In the second half of the 19th century, local wealth could finance the arts at will, with Birmingham Victorian culture dictating it be donated to the city. Chamberlain himself gave the equivalent of £140,000 in cash to Birmingham’s art gallery. 

But funding and power is more complex now. The many ways Victorian political leaders could raise serious cash for ambitious projects, artistic or otherwise, are effectively forestalled by private business interests or political powers beyond the city’s boundaries. Spending power in Birmingham has fallen 60% since 2010, not least because money from London has dropped off too. In Birmingham specifically, a young population piles pressure on services. With municipal services no longer in the public realm, council tax is one of the few sources of local income. But in the city, that tax is already set to rise by over 20%, while pushing up business rates would heap even more pressure on hard-up local firms. And such a deprived corner of the country, there’s only so far people can be pushed. That’s echoed by other factors beyond the council’s control — not least the suffocating power of the Green Belt.

It’s easy to see how all this could, once more, foster a retreat from both civic ambition and self. We Brummies risk retreating even further into our Midlands home, lost in a pointless fight with Manchester over London’s attention. Speak to locals, at any rate, and you certainly sense fatigue. “People don’t believe it’s going to change,” Chinn says. “Isn’t that terrible?” But here, at this low ebb, there’s also a grassroots resistance, with arts and culture playing a central role. The city saw a bipartisan backlash after a BBC article framed Birmingham’s £451 million art collection as a saleable escape from our financial pickle. As Anooshka Rawden, a cultural heritage professional, told the Museums Association: “These are assets that belong to the city, not a local authority, and once gone, they’re gone forever.”

Clearly, then, the city’s Pre-Raphaelites can still, at the margins, foster a collective sense of civic ambition. But for that to convert into an actual political programme, Chinn says Brummies should abandon their quixotic campaign for second-city status, and instead focus on what the city can offer in the here-and-now. “The finest stained glass in the world,” Chinn says, “is from Burne-Jones — a Brummie!” Birmingham’s arts cuts have seemingly galvanised interest in Brum’s cultural impact. A recent Observer article, penned by erstwhile Birmingham resident Nathalie Olah, listed the city’s impact on dance, theatre, literature and music. 

Inside the ring road, meanwhile, there are green shoots of progress. Library cuts are being fought by volunteers from kitchen tables, while Jones cheers some collaboration with the council on small artistic projects. Among other things, that involves pioneering a public lighting scheme, pointing locals towards businesses and arts organisations affected by HS2. Chamberlain, who plotted for Birmingham to have publicly-owned streetlights, would surely be proud. “If we can bring different sectors and people together,” Jones believes, “there’s a sense of joint pride and ownership over the place,” adding that various funding pots, notably set aside from HS2 funding, are available for galleries or museums.

These efforts may yet bear fruit. Yet in the short term, what comes next for Birmingham seems depressingly clear. No Victorian funding model, or rich industrialist saviour, seem to be forthcoming. For now, then, Birmingham’s harried population might need to take on their city’s fortunes themselves, like Gray having the courage to state when their city is shit — then take the fight to their equally putrid political masters.


Dan Cave is a journalist and writer based in Birmingham. He usually writes about the West Midlands, city life, culture and the nature of modern work.


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Nell Clover
Nell Clover
27 days ago

The author is so typical of the freelance media worker. Left wing, anti-Trump, anti-gentrification, anti-development, pro-government intervention. But also aware the past was better in at least some cases with an inkling that something isn’t working and curious enough to question what’s going on. However…

“acccusations of mismanagement”? These weren’t accusations. The council itself issued the Section 114 bankruptcy notice citing (amongst many things) its loss of control over transactions. It couldn’t be certain what it was spending nor how big its deficit was. If that’s not mismanagement I don’t know what it is.

“HS2, has carved up part of the city, cutting off one area from another”. HS2 parallels the existing railway into Birmingham, which already divides the city. Currently precisely two roads are temporarily closed for construction of HS2. This is hardly carving up the city like the first railways did.

“historically significant Ringway Centre”? Significant to whom? Ordinary people hate it. Historic England went so far as to issue a certificate of immunity *from* listing because the Ringway Centre was just another indentikit modern construction of no aesthetic or historical note.

“The poor get pushed further out”. Further? Birmingham has gone from modest relative wealth to the 7th most deprived local authority out of England׳s 317 authorities. The poor haven’t been pushed out. Quite the opposite: the poor have moved in and the better off have moved away. If Birmingham is going to stop being a money sponge it is going to need a lot more wealthier people than it has attracted in the last five decades.

“In Birmingham specifically, a young population piles pressure on services”. Misleading by omission. Birmingham has been a magnet for low and no skill immigration that has generated ever more workless and low income households dependent on government services. The rising pressure is now all due to past and current immigration of net dependents.

“If… Birmingham once again owned its own water company, its own gas company, its own electric company, it could “stick two fingers up” to London” is a quote selected by the author without a hint of sarcasm. And sarcasm it deserves. A local authority that has tens of thousands of untraceable transactions causing its own bankruptcy isn’t going to be capable of running a water, gas or electricity company. Trying to do so would land local taxpayers with even more liabilities exactly like such left-wing ideology has for residents of Nottingham forced to write off £38m after its own left wing council’s attempt at running an electricity company predictably went *very* wrong.

Frankly, this isn’t a Birmingham problem. It’s true of all regional cities in the UK. It’s even now true of the South East, most parts of London, and across many parts of Europe too. We are becoming relatively poorer every year, in absolute real terms per capita, living way beyond our means, unwilling and unable to compete in global markets, paying for everything by financialisation of our assets built in more ruthless times and operating a population ponzi scheme to inflate the numerator and hide the awful debt dynamics.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
27 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Nicely eviscerated.

One other point the author raises: the so-called “competition” with Manchester to be “the second city”.

There is no competition: Manchester wins hands down (not that it matters) and the huge white elephant of HS2 not extending further north makes no difference, since HS2 will make no difference to Birmingham either. (The author, as you note, complains about it.)

Manchester is thriving, in relative terms. I take an active part in the arts scene. Independent galleries, plus bars, restaurants (some high class) new theatres etc are opening with regularity. There’s a real buzz in the air. Of course, there are urban problems too like any other major city, but by and large, the council do their job just by keeping out of the way. We’ve also retained the basic £2 bus fare for any journey whilst Labour’s budget has raised it elsewhere. Local mayor Andy Burnham has his faults, but some credit where it’s due, too.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
27 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

How much of Manchesters relative success got to do with having had a Tony Wilson figure to promote it. And a world famous football club.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
27 days ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

And another famous football club.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
27 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

This is a very helpful summary. I was aware of the historic pay dispute but not the mismanagement.
The world has changed since Victorian times, so I wonder at the writer’s focus on libraries. Art is important to society but I’m yet to be convinced that it needs to be funded by the state. Indeed, hanging onto to valuable works of art during a bankruptcy seems extraordinary.
The writer believes that the Birmingham City Council is responsible for the quality of its citizens lives. I disagree, individuals are responsible for their own lives, the role of the state is to provide the basic infrastructure that people cannot reasonably provide for themselves.
We have lived through almost thirty years of social democracy and what has it done for us? Fair play, at least in London, public transport has improved. I can’t think of much else.

Michael Lynch
Michael Lynch
27 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Sad to hear about the decline in Brum….Born and brought up in NW London, I went there as a 19-year-old undergraduate to study English at Birmingham University in 1976 and had a terrific three years. Really enjoyed the city, the nightclubs (Barbarellas et al) the pubs, going to the Blues, the Villa or the Baggies , to Edgbaston for the cricket. I had a couple of terms living in Bearwood before resuming the Selly Oak/Mosely/Kings Heath/Kings Norton carousel where most of us students lived. A place full of character and characters (although not keen on spaghetti junction and the bull ring) and the fact that you could get to the races at Stratford Warwick and Worcester pretty easily an added bonus. I moved to Oz in 1987 and had not been back until going to an old friend’s funeral in Harborne this year when back on holiday. I thought Harborne and surrounds looked fine, but I didn’t get to other parts of the city..

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
27 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Most excellent riposte, far far better than the original article, which just does not get what has gone wrong (and is seriously adrift on facts; e.g. HS2 parallels an existing road and railway line, it does not divide the city up).
The core problem here and across the UK – Manchester is a very rare exception – is surely the extremely low quality of local government: untalented people, contempt for citizens, driven by spite and dogma. The C19th city fathers knew what they were doing and treated every £ spent as if were their own

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
27 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Excellent comment once again

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
26 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

A quite brilliant measured and fulsome response to this dreadful article.

niall crowley
niall crowley
26 days ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Here’s another view. I’ve just written two articles about Birmingham history and what went wrong over the last couple of decades. https://niallcrowley.substack.com/p/all-concrete-and-crossroads-or-capital

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
27 days ago

Ah yes, we really need some “get-go” spirit but then will describe anyone who makes good and gives back in the name of public art as “self-satisfied”. No mention of the criminal mismanagement of the public finances by successive local administrations being the reason for Whitehall being the “overseer” and demanding finacial probity. Everything I read and hear about Birmingham (most of my colleagues were from that part of the world) never makes me think that I would enjoy it. Being second city to London is certainly a prize worth fighting for, Berlin isn’t even the second city of Germany (eclipsed by Munich and Hamburg).

niall crowley
niall crowley
26 days ago
Reply to  Milton Gibbon

Interesting article. I’ve just written two pieces on Birmingham history and what’s gone wrong over the last couple of decades. I think mostly my emphasis is quite different to this article.
https://niallcrowley.substack.com/p/all-concrete-and-crossroads-or-capital

Peter B
Peter B
27 days ago

Birmingham’s “harried population” voted for the clowns and incompetents (and perhaps worse) that created all these problems. They have no one else to blame but themselves.
Does the author think that the rest of the country should bail them out ?
How about focusing on getting competent people running the place and staying within budget ?
Usual emotional vastly exaggerated claims about “half the children live in real, sustained poverty”.
Depressing class warfare undercurrent to the article.

David Ginsberg
David Ginsberg
27 days ago

I think what is missing from all the pieces about Victorian altruists building up the cities of the Industrial Revolution is that they weren’t taxed into the stone age like nowadays. Private individuals had more of their own money and encouraged by the fashion and mores of the day invested and gave freely to their communities. One the whole they appeared far better at using their wealth to improve the world around them than the local bureaucracies we have created nowadays funded through general and local taxation. If councils are providing less services then local taxation should fall rather than rise inexorably year on year.

Peter B
Peter B
27 days ago
Reply to  David Ginsberg

Indeed. There are (or were) 660 Carnegie libraries in the UK.

Jack Martin Leith
Jack Martin Leith
27 days ago

“Now, as then, a rail project, HS2, has carved up part of the city, cutting off one area from another.”
Not true. It parallels an existing rail corridor from Water Orton to Duddeston Mill Road, from whence it runs alongside the River Rea before entering the throat of Curzon Street station.