LIVE24SEVEN // Best Of Birmingham
Digby Lord Jones THOUGHTS FOR JUNE 2016
Have you ever wondered, Dear Reader, why Birmingham grew and developed as an industrial city when it is the only European City (or one of very few) that doesn't have a river running through it? The railway connected existing industrial bases and Birmingham, high up on the Midlands Plateau (stand by the bells atop Quinton Church and if it wasn't for the curvature of the earth you would see the Ural Mountains), was, in the 1840s, already established enough to be one of the first major railway bases. Why?
Usually you needed a river to grow a business base; it provided transport, water and sewage disposal. Birmingham (with respect to the River Rea) didn't have one. They had to build the longest canal lock flight in the country (at Tardebigge) to get raw materials in from, and finished goods out to, the River Severn, the Bristol docks and thence the New World. Why did they go to all that bother?
Because the word had gone out many years before, all around Europe, that there was a city in England that didn't discriminate on any basis other than skill. Whether you were a Catholic from Italy or a Jew from the pogroms of Eastern Europe, Birmingham didn't care. The cry was that regardless of the colour of your skin or the God you worship, come to Brum, bring your skill, work hard, live in peace and make yourself and the city richer. The City of a Thousand Trades was actually built on (to exaggerate to make the point) a Thousand Races. It was a truly Open City.
The immigration of the past few generations has been mainly from other parts of the world; from Ireland, then the Caribbean and subsequently from the Indian sub-continent, but the principal is still the same... and the famed adaptability of Birmingham is the result. As one sector fades, another grows. Volume commodity car production has been over for Brum for a few decades now, but there has been no cry of the victim, no demand for subsidising this and grant-aiding that; Birmingham has just adapted to the value-added, innovative, quality, branded end of the scale which is Route One (indeed the only route) to sustained success in a brutally competitive globalised economy where India wants your lunch and China wants your dinner.
Cars are not only still made in Birmingham and its environs, but are done so with fabulous success; Jaguar Land Rover is a global success story and then some...but every vehicle off the production line is at the value-added, innovative end of the scale; they're not cheap, but they are the best and they're made in Birmingham. The city adapted.
Back in the eighties, Sir Dick Knowles and Sir Bernard Zissman (with a ton of help from that bright young thing, Sir Albert Bore!) left their political party tribalism at the door and developed the International Convention Centre, Symphony Hall and Brindley Place long before
/ 56
of Birmingham
other cities north of Watford were even talking of regeneration. So Birmingham grew into the major European Centre for Business Tourism it is today. The city adapted.
HSBC could have chosen anywhere in the country to locate its UK Headquarters – it chose Birmingham. Deutsche Bank could have placed its, literally thousands, of non-London jobs anywhere – it chose Birmingham. So Brum has become a centre for Financial Services. The city adapted.
The anchor hallmark has told the world for centuries that precious metal has been tested, is genuine and can be trusted. Nowhere else on earth can use the anchor hallmark except the good women and men of the Jewellery Quarter in Hockley. They've met global competition head on, invested in new kit and a wonderful new Assay Office to deliver competitive, value-added innovation. The city has adapted.
However, there is a big challenge ‘out there’ that Birmingham must meet and beat. If entrepreneurship and small business growth in the 19th century developed around transport (the canals and then the railway) and in the 20th century around the original equipment manufacturer, then in the 21st century, Asia's century, the value will only be added, innovation will only thrive, quality in making things or delivering services will only be guaranteed around the nurturing, the transfer and the exploitation of knowledge. It is the education and training of the next generation that will make the difference. From the primary schools to the (excellent) universities, from the academies to the colleges of education, if Birmingham does not concentrate on an unrelenting pursuit of a better-skilled reservoir of available labour, then its brilliance displayed over the decades and centuries at adapting to tomorrow instead of wishing for subsidised yesterday will be gone forever.
Globalisation doesn't take prisoners; the pace it is setting is frightening, but Birmingham has the people, an adaptability in its DNA, hewn out of centuries of immigration and a perfect location, to deliver success. Whether it addresses its relatively low (although steadily improving) skills base will dictate success or failure in the years ahead.
Lord Digby Jones
Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham KB has been a cross-bench Peer since 2007. He is the only Minister of Government in the history of the UK not to belong to the Party of Government.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156