I love this city - but let's be honest, Birmingham's in trouble

Titled ‘City of the future’, the subheading ‘Birmingham was once an economic powerhouse with a proud civic identity. Today it is at the forefront of a battle for the new England’ suggests Sculthorp’s article is unlikely to be complimentary.

Though he engages in what appears to be the latest example of an outsider making a flying visit to Birmingham and writing a superficial view of the city’s current struggles in dealing with bankruptcy of the city council, failing public services and a general sense of decline, Sculthorp addresses some important issues.

In examining the likely future for Birmingham, a potpourri of diversity and culture, he seeks to draw conclusions as to what’s likely to be experienced by 2050 in the country at large by the succeeding generations whose “social mobility increasingly relies on accessing the competitive global services economy.”

Sculthorp recognises that Birmingham suffers from the blight of “nearly three in ten of its age 16–64 population are economically inactive” and that despite valiant attempts to shift the city’s away from its traditional focus on manufacturing towards services – adding more than £8 billion to the UK economy and being only second to London in attracting more inward – there’s still much work to do.

Indeed, data just published data by the Office from National Statistics (ONS) show that in the last eight years, productivity in the West Midlands – the Combined Authority area which is largely ‘driven’ by economic activity in Birmingham – has, relative to the average for the United Kingdom, fallen from minus 10% to minus 15%.

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By comparison, Greater Manchester’s Combined Authority area, led by Labour’s Andy Burnham since it’s formation in 2017, pretty much in the same position as Birmingham eight years ago, has improved to minus 5%.

That Birmingham has underlying problem seems obvious from such data.

In a statement that’s especially poignant, Sculthorp describes Birmingham in 2025 as an exemplar of a “living museum” for early 21st century to amuse, intrigue and horrify of visitors:

“All the nation’s drama and upheaval can be found in a ten-mile radius around a Blair-era shopping centre. This sprawl takes in some of the world-leading research and development establishments and the highest rates of absolute poverty lurking in prefab slums and forgotten estates.”

Curiously, Sculthorp begins his exploration of Birmingham by referring to the story which appeared on social media a few weeks ago of a bull running along the streets of Small Heath.

Though recognising the bull could have escaped from abattoir he repeats the rumour that it may have escaped a “ritual sacrifice from one of the city’s rapidly changing inner suburbs”.

I’m not sure exactly what this means but presume he’s referring to the fact that the demographic make-up of Birmingham’s inner-city suburbs have experienced transformation in recent years as a consequence of immigration from the 1960s onwards.

In the case of Small Heath where the bull was filmed trotting up Golden Hillock Road, according to AreaInSights, the area, consisting of a population of almost 22,200 residents, it predominantly Muslim (85.85%).

Small Heath is an area of the city I know reasonably well having spent the first eight years of my life living in neighbouring Sparkhill before we moved to Acocks Green.

There’s no doubt the Small Heath I recall from my childhood is now very different.

Relatively cheap housing there has a long tradition of attracting those drawn to Birmingham in search of employment and better prospects for them and their children.

As Birmingham rapidly developed during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, wealthy citizens financially benefitting from the output of factories built large houses in former farmland in Small Heath so beginning the expansion of what had hitherto been a not especially significant market town.

In order to cope with the need to improve housing for workers who’d been forced to live in the unsanitary ‘back-to-back’ dwellings clustered around the centre of Birmingham in areas such as Digbeth, developers constructed the terraced housing so characteristic of what are now identified as ‘inner areas’ in all major industrial towns and cities.

Subsequent development of suburbs, largely consisting of semi-detached houses built by developers in the period after the first world war, effectively ‘sandwiched’ areas like Small Heath in the concentric inner ring effect used by planners.

Accommodation was, of course, necessary for people arriving in Birmingham for jobs to as places to raise their families.

And in the case of Birmingham, these jobs were usually secured in factories built to supply voracious customers here in the Britain and overseas, especially in countries that were part of the Empire, wishing to purchase goods achieved using a combination of humans and machines; what’s become known as mass production.

A case in point was the Birmingham Small Arms factory which, until it was closed down in 1973 and subsequently demolished, was a very visible landmark on Golden Hillock Road.

Built in 1861 by fourteen gunsmith members of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association on 25 acres of land they’d purchased, this factory was emblematic of an ability of Brum’s craftsman and women in producing superior goods at a cost making them attractive to potential customers.

Though arms was the original intention, BSA went on to make bicycles, motorcycles, and a range of other engineered products including a dalliance with specialist cars.

Crucially, this led to employment for many thousands of workers, especially during the two world wars.

The now famous escaped bull Sculthorp refers to, trotted past the site on which the BSA once stood.

Sadly, the loss of BSA half a century ago, presaged what became a tsunami of closures of manufacturers in Birmingham including Lucas’s (for whom my late mother worked at the Shaftsmoor Lane plant until she retired in the mid 1990’s), British Leyland/Rover (my dad worked in the foundry at Longbridge until 1974) and GKN.

Such names are now a fading memory for older residents of Birmingham who either worked for them or whose parents, like mine, were employed by them.

I suspect that the majority of citizens of Birmingham born since the mid-1980s would struggle to name any of the city’s lost manufacturers.

Whilst it’s seductive to be sentimental about jobs in factories, frequently carried out in unpleasant, and until the advent of the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), unsafe or dangerous conditions, they were at least what used to be called ‘steady’ in offering decent wages for, if the holder wished, their entire working life.

Notably, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, jobs in manufacturing peaked at around a quarter of a million, roughly half of citizens employed in Birmingham and accounted for over half of males working in the city.

People of my parents’ generation depended on manufacturing to pay for their homes, schooling for their children, holidays and, if you were lucky and saved enough, car.

The city Sculthorp examines in his article has undergone traumatic change in the 50 years in weaning itself off its dependency on manufacturing to provide plentiful jobs and prosperity.

According to statistics published by Birmingham City Council in ‘Workplace Employment in Birmingham 2022’, though “Manufacturing still remains a key sector locally employing 33,000 (6%)”, this represents a phenomenal decline of over 87% from the heady peak of half a century ago.

Significantly, Sculthorp highlights in that population growth in Birmingham in the last two decades has been 15% “driven almost entirely by immigration”.

As the University of Birmingham proudly proclaims on its website, the city is the youngest in Europe with nearly 40% of the population under 25.

In Small Heath the average age is 31.4 years old.

As Sculthorp acknowledges, attracting inward investment to provide opportunities for the city’s next generation is a major challenge politicians and leaders.

That many of the young people are being brough up in areas in which deprivation is endemic and educational attainment lags behind national averages only makes the challenge even greater.

Data shows that last year, over 40% of Birmingham’s residents live in the most deprived areas of England (60% living in areas with multiple deprivation).

There are higher rates of preventable death in Birmingham than the rest of the West Midlands (which is higher than the most affluent areas of England).

Appallingly, 46% of Birmingham’s children live in poverty, more than twice the national average.

Sculthorp highlights the fact that its most recent economic review of Birmingham the Resolution Foundation contends that in order to reduce the city’s productivity gap – six years ago being 37% less productive than the capital – there’s a pressing need to continue the transformation from manufacturing to services.

This requires a skilled workforce which, given the levels of deprivation noted above, is not going to be easy, especially as employers are able to attain ‘oven ready’ employees from elsewhere.

Moreover, the next industrial revolution based in AI (Autonomous Intelligence) may mean such roles are no longer required.

Sculthorp explains, that in order to “fully realise the returns on past and planned investment”, already amongst the lowest in Europe, Birmingham is believed to need increase by 165,000 people.

In his analysis he points out how toxic immigration has been and has led a dramatic rise in support for Reform UK.

Many commentators recognise the immense difficulty of attracting even more people to Birmingham given there are many thousands of citizens currently suffering substandard social housing, underperforming schools.

Birmingham health services are barely able to cope with vastly increased demand and the city is not assisted by a creaking infrastructure that can barely.

Add to the mix many communities disillusioned with the Labour government on a range of issues, most particularly on the question of Gaza, who are increasingly switching to support for independent politicians, and there’s a discernible transition from the ‘consensus’ politics which served Birmingham so well in the past.

Accordingly, as Sculthorp suggests, division and ‘otherness’ which appears to be growing endemic in Birmingham, with inevitable consequences for community harmony and cohesion, potentially suggests an extremely worrying portent for the future of the UK in general.

Ultimately, in his sweeping analysis of Birmingham, Sculthorp, a journalist, seeks to exemplify what will appear sensational and present a compelling narrative.

The somewhat dystopian future alluded to in his article certainly does not build on the wonderful tradition the second city for inclusiveness and willingness to welcome those willing to work hard to improve their families’ lives in order to achieve collective prosperity.

That current problems being experienced in Birmingham’s should indicate what may become the norm for the rest of country need to be countered.

As I’ve written extensively in recent years, it’s incumbent on our leaders to provide a message of hope for a better future and, of course, to deliver the resources (investment) that will make all of our lives better.

In witnessing the rapid decline of the manufacturing capability that made Birmingham the fabled city of a thousand trades and produced goods gleefully purchased across the world, there’s a need to ensure that jobs of the future offer decent money and opportunity to advance.

Relying on the service sector is all very well but not if it shifts well-paid workers from elsewhere in the country and merely provides jobs in hospitality for young people locally.

Critically, what’s urgently required from our local politicians and leaders is to desist from propagating messages based on promoting the interests of particular sections of our community.

The evidence of division and the sectarianism observed by Sculthorp – and made plain during last year’s general election key constituencies – will likely be exacerbated in next year’s local elections.

More worryingly, as comments of many of those Sculthorp interviewed make clear, what we’re likely to see next May may provide indicate the sort of bitter hostility that will characterise politics nationally.

Birmingham deserves better.

Separateness and the ‘beggar my neighbour principle’ will cement divisiveness and undermine community cohesion.

Instead, Birmingham’s leaders must redouble their effort to ensuring everyone works together in order to achieve the amazing things that’ve occurred in the past.

Indeed, Sculthorp quotes ex-mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street in referring to the incredible spirit so evident during the Commonwealth Games held in Birmingham three years ago this month and which, according to a report published in 2023 by the Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, contributed almost 1.2billion to the UK economy.

That’s the sort of future we want for Birmingham.

Dr Steven McCabe

Steve is Professor and Pro Vice Chancellor, DoctorateHub.

Previously, having worked for Birmingham City Council, he spent the last 35 years as an academic at Birmingham City University teaching and researching economics, management and business. Additionally, he has written extensively for edited texts examining economics and politics.

He regularly writes and comments regularly in the national and international media on politics and the economy and has published texts on quality management, benchmarking, ‘Brexit’ and its economic and social impact, the green economy and manufacturing, house prices and India’s progress since independence.