Business News
Marching for victory: Servicemen and others parade through the heart of Birmingham watched by thousands of grateful residents
“…the earliest opportunity should be taken to restore the burden of taxation to more bearable proportions.” The remark, according to the Journal, drew applause from the assembled members. In a wide-ranging speech, the
President also spoke at length about helping soldiers return to civil life and take up a business
career; resuming the “former volume of export trade”, a theme brought home forcibly to Government ministers when they attended a Chamber event at the Town Hall; and the “great importance of transport and the “right of a trader to use his own vehicles in connection with his own business”.
King Edwards portrait: The proud 1944-45 Birmingham Lord Mayor, Alderman William Theophilus Wiggins-Davies
War is over: Thousands cram into New Street on VE Day
Lord Mayor saves VE Day blunder
A key figure in Birmingham’s VE Day celebrations was the Lord Mayor, Alderman William Theophilus Wiggins-Davies, also a foundation governor of the Schools of Kind Edwards VI. His portrait hangs to this day in the board room of the school as
testimony to the status this son of a railway worker reached. Alderman Wiggins-Davies, who died in 1960, became a successful
businessman as a stationery manufacturer and developed an interest in politics. He served the city as a councillor, Justice of the Peace and Lord Mayor, a position he held in 1944-45. He presided over the VE Day celebrations in Victoria Square with
great pride but they got off to a shaky start. The Birmingham Daily Gazette of 9 May, 1945, recounts the Mayor’s
desperate attempts to “retrieve a blunder”. It reported: “The tragedy of V-Day in Birmingham was that Victoria Square had not been equipped with loud-speakers. Just before three o’clock the Square was choc-a-bloc with thousands of people evidently expecting to hear a relay of the Premier’s [Churchill’s] speech.” Wiggins-Davies valiantly sprang to the rescue by propping open the
window to the Lord Mayor’s Parlour with a stool and placing his own wireless on the ledge in the hope that some of the crowd would hear the address. Few did, and in an attempt to raise spirits Wiggins-Davies led the crowd in community singing before heading off on a tour of the suburbs where he saw “an effigy of Hitler hanging on an lamp post in Blythe Street, Ladywood.” Despite the initial blunder, the City’s V Day celebrations went well
and the Lord Mayor was, apparently, pleased with how Brummies had conducted themselves. The Birmingham Gazette also reflected on how memorable the celebrations had been, adding that the Lord Mayor’s calls for “sober enthusiasm” had perhaps not been heeded by all. We are told that the statue of King Edward VII was found the
following morning wearing a red fez; Queen Victoria looked out on the square from under a trilby hat; and Sir Josiah Mason in Chamberlain Square sported a dustbin lid on his head. It would appear that Birmingham’s V-Day celebrations may have been a little less soberly than Lord Mayor Wiggins-Davies had hoped!
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