Tom Jones is Councillor for Scotton and Lower Wensleydale and author of the Potemkin Village Idiot substack.
When I tell you that this article is about Birmingham and segregation, I will forgive you if your mind doesn’t immediately turn to the West Midlands.
Rather, you’re probably thinking of Birmingham Alabama, where Martin Luther King’s Birmingham Campaign of marches, sit-ins and boycotts prompted a violent overreach of State Police forces. That action led by Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor (who once told reporters that ‘I may not be able to stop the civil rights movement, but I’ll die trying) directly paved the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Apparently, even when a story emerges that has no direct involvement between the American Birmingham and the British Birmingham, or American segregation and British segregation, some of our political class are so America-brained it is impossible for them to not inject America in somehow.
As I has previously written, ‘Our common language and America’s power bedevils our politics; Westminster likes to think of itself as Washington-on-Thames’.
So when it was reported that leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick (who, for full disclosure, I have previously endorsed on this most august site) had called Birmingham a ‘segregated’ city, it was inevitable that someone would bring up America.
With tiresome predictability, John Rentoul argued these comments ‘are straight out of Trump’s playbook’. The now-stock phrase of ‘Trump playbook’ – much like ‘Tufton Street’ and ‘divisive rhetoric’ – has become a sure sign of impending midwittery, and a floating signifier for an argument that is set to offer little beyond ‘this is right-wing, Donald Trump is right wing and I don’t like either.’
And so it proved; Rentoul’s big argument, it seems, is that Jenrick’s comments are ‘reminiscent’ of Trump. Insightful!
One wonders if John Rentoul can smell a whiff of Trumpism from Birmingham City Council, too; in 2018, the council became so worried about segregation in the city that they launched a public consultation seeking advice on how to better integrate groups and, later, a ‘Community Cohesion Strategy’ to put this into action.
The snappily-titled report, which Rentoul presumably views as a prequel to Project 2025, specifically cited ‘the rapid pace of demographic change in some communities’ as a difficulty in creating community cohesion.
‘Over the past two decades’, the report read, ‘the increased pace of globalisation and new patterns of migration have brought more people and families from all over the world to settle in Birmingham, resulting in rapid changes in populations of some communities…There are vast differences in people’s experiences of housing, education, health, employment, and accessing public services, all of which can exacerbate inequality, create divisions between communities and threaten the cohesion of our city.’
As the report makes clear there are two types of segregation; spatial (the physical/geographic separation of certain groups), and social (groups living in the same geographic area but not interacting socially).
Since the report’s publication spatial segregation has actually been improving in Birmingham, but considering the huge rate of immigration this is to be expected, as ethnic minorities now make up half of Birmingham’s population – and this is highly unevenly distributed between areas.
However, it’s not clear that social segregation is improving.
Intercommunal tensions in Birmingham continue to be a problem; last year, Kings College London found the Midlands has the second lowest level of social trust in the UK. And there have been a drip feed of bad news; two years ago, 47 people were arrested during riots sparked by a cricket match between India and Pakistan. This year, West Midlands Police Superintendent Emlyn Richards stated in an interview that the force did not try to police rioters on advice from ‘community leaders’ they had met beforehand – even though many, it would turn out, were armed.
Just two weeks ago, ‘No whites allowed’ was spray painted in three separate locations.
It may feel good to decry Donald Trump, but – unbelievably – it must be pointed out that Britain is not America. It does no good to pretend that we are, trying to solve the problem we’d like to have instead of the problems we actually do.
Smearing a coherent comment on the state of community cohesion in Birmingham, which the Labour-led council broadly agrees with – as ‘straight out of Trump’s playbook’ is, as it turns out… ‘straight out of Trump’s playbook’.
Tom Jones is Councillor for Scotton and Lower Wensleydale and author of the Potemkin Village Idiot substack.
When I tell you that this article is about Birmingham and segregation, I will forgive you if your mind doesn’t immediately turn to the West Midlands.
Rather, you’re probably thinking of Birmingham Alabama, where Martin Luther King’s Birmingham Campaign of marches, sit-ins and boycotts prompted a violent overreach of State Police forces. That action led by Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor (who once told reporters that ‘I may not be able to stop the civil rights movement, but I’ll die trying) directly paved the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Apparently, even when a story emerges that has no direct involvement between the American Birmingham and the British Birmingham, or American segregation and British segregation, some of our political class are so America-brained it is impossible for them to not inject America in somehow.
As I has previously written, ‘Our common language and America’s power bedevils our politics; Westminster likes to think of itself as Washington-on-Thames’.
So when it was reported that leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick (who, for full disclosure, I have previously endorsed on this most august site) had called Birmingham a ‘segregated’ city, it was inevitable that someone would bring up America.
With tiresome predictability, John Rentoul argued these comments ‘are straight out of Trump’s playbook’. The now-stock phrase of ‘Trump playbook’ – much like ‘Tufton Street’ and ‘divisive rhetoric’ – has become a sure sign of impending midwittery, and a floating signifier for an argument that is set to offer little beyond ‘this is right-wing, Donald Trump is right wing and I don’t like either.’
And so it proved; Rentoul’s big argument, it seems, is that Jenrick’s comments are ‘reminiscent’ of Trump. Insightful!
One wonders if John Rentoul can smell a whiff of Trumpism from Birmingham City Council, too; in 2018, the council became so worried about segregation in the city that they launched a public consultation seeking advice on how to better integrate groups and, later, a ‘Community Cohesion Strategy’ to put this into action.
The snappily-titled report, which Rentoul presumably views as a prequel to Project 2025, specifically cited ‘the rapid pace of demographic change in some communities’ as a difficulty in creating community cohesion.
‘Over the past two decades’, the report read, ‘the increased pace of globalisation and new patterns of migration have brought more people and families from all over the world to settle in Birmingham, resulting in rapid changes in populations of some communities…There are vast differences in people’s experiences of housing, education, health, employment, and accessing public services, all of which can exacerbate inequality, create divisions between communities and threaten the cohesion of our city.’
As the report makes clear there are two types of segregation; spatial (the physical/geographic separation of certain groups), and social (groups living in the same geographic area but not interacting socially).
Since the report’s publication spatial segregation has actually been improving in Birmingham, but considering the huge rate of immigration this is to be expected, as ethnic minorities now make up half of Birmingham’s population – and this is highly unevenly distributed between areas.
However, it’s not clear that social segregation is improving.
Intercommunal tensions in Birmingham continue to be a problem; last year, Kings College London found the Midlands has the second lowest level of social trust in the UK. And there have been a drip feed of bad news; two years ago, 47 people were arrested during riots sparked by a cricket match between India and Pakistan. This year, West Midlands Police Superintendent Emlyn Richards stated in an interview that the force did not try to police rioters on advice from ‘community leaders’ they had met beforehand – even though many, it would turn out, were armed.
Just two weeks ago, ‘No whites allowed’ was spray painted in three separate locations.
It may feel good to decry Donald Trump, but – unbelievably – it must be pointed out that Britain is not America. It does no good to pretend that we are, trying to solve the problem we’d like to have instead of the problems we actually do.
Smearing a coherent comment on the state of community cohesion in Birmingham, which the Labour-led council broadly agrees with – as ‘straight out of Trump’s playbook’ is, as it turns out… ‘straight out of Trump’s playbook’.