Brum Brum… Let’s Go!

Last weekend I was in Birmingham for the launch of the Worker’s Party of Britain.

I’d never been to Birmingham before, except through there on a National Express bus on the way from York back home to Tenby when I was 14, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. What I found surprised me. Birmingham is surprisingly pretty.

A quick walk round late on Friday night surprised me also, in that I was expecting to see homeless people in doorways everywhere. I didn’t see any. By Saturday morning however, there they were. I have no idea where they spent the night. Possibly in B&Bs as part of the governments so called answer to providing shelter for the homeless, lining the pockets of yet more landlords.

Perhaps they slept somewhere out of town for safety, but still rough and in the cold. I have no idea. It’s not like I’ve never seen homeless people before, but to see them in every third doorway was quite disconcerting. We were quite near the centre, so there were buskers, street stalls, everything you’d expect to see, though far more metropolitan than I’d expected. It hasn’t always been nice cafés with outside seating though, I’ve been told.

On the journey into the city, as I wasn’t driving (so you can’t report me to the council for my carbon footprint, ok?) I was able to look around and observe. Lines of Victorian detached and semi-detached housing gave way to heights of flats, and council tenements, right next to Edwardian architecture with gated cul-de-sacs.

All classes mixed in together, within feet of each other, but delineating lines at every opportunity; we are rich, you are poor, us on this side, you on that side. We have trees and red brickwork, you have scuffled grass and concrete paths.

The daylight sideshow of people trying to sleep or collect coins, surrounded by their meagre possessions and paltry blankets, emphasised things further. We are in the lovely café, you are in the doorway of the empty boarded up shop next door.

Such juxtaposition within the constant hum of the city triggered all sorts of indignation in me, especially as I’d spent the morning listening to inspiring speeches by the likes of Joti Brar and George Galloway.

I had class war on the mind, but here was class integration, dichotomy acceptance, run of the mill ordinariness. Ignoring each other, Never the twain shall meet.

The amount of security in Tesco Express belied the friendliness of the people holding doors open for each other on the car park stairs. The view from the back of the Travelodge was of an old industrial building, which to me looked like it used to be some kind of workhouse.

The front façade concreted over with bright signs, the back side with broken windows providing homes for the magpies and their Halal fries. Like the theatre, all fronts and no backs, an old world hidden, and replaced with the Bullring and light shows and Marks and Sparks, with constant advertisements on screens using more power per day than I use in a year.

The history of the place, the workers that built it, airbrushed away, kept in the distant flats. It all seemed very reminiscent of home, and then you realise that all places are essentially the same. Our industries were farming and farming. Now they’re subsidised farming, tourism, and caring for the ever ageing population of Pembrokeshire.

70% of jobs advertised locally are for care workers. Little wonder, when again we have a national newspaper, encouraging people to move to Pembs this week.

Not South Pembs though, says the Guardian. Go to North Pembs. Much less busy, because all the grockles are down south. This, to a local like me means one thing. That pretty soon, just like Tenby spread up to Narberth and made it touristy, South Pembs is going to spread North, and the grockles will be here too, and we’ll have no escape at all.

We already have villages in North Pembs where most homes are holiday homes, so let’s fill the rest with retirees from elsewhere, and keep the work going for all those careers that Pembrokeshire has.

I have nothing against people moving in from away per se, but what is really annoying, is that they sometimes do the same as they do when they move to somewhere like Benidorm,. They turn all the pubs British, put their flags up and shout at everyone in their own tones.

The middle class version is to complain to the council about local activity, insist that farmers don’t leave mud on the road, demanding the pot holes by their property are fixed and tarmacked immediately, and kick off about how slowly everything is happening for them, when they campaigned for their own private bridle track and it hasn’t yet happened.

Meanwhile, there is no industry and no work. The docks became marinas. Unless you can get into Valero or the LNG sites, which you won’t because most of their workers come from away, another reason our rents are so high.

It became so clear to me on Saturday, that the old class attitudes haven’t gone anywhere. It’s still the same old fight as it ever was, the only difference is that the class thing has been lost in the identity politics of neo-liberalism, and we’re all so busy thinking about all the wrong things, and worrying our little heads about Love Island, Rights for all, PC versus non PC, Brexit arguments, that real life has been forgotten.

The loneliness was the thing that struck me the most about the homeless people that I saw in Brum that day. And it was also what I saw in a lot of the people at the rally, including myself, all looking for something to believe in, and it was an irony not lost on me that the rally just happened to take place in a church, and there’s George Galloway orating like a trilby wearing king with a massive crucifix behind him.

I’m no religious believer, but I’m a believer in higher powers of some kind. The rally felt comfortable, like an old coat of people that I felt I’d met before, made up of leavers, remainers, left wing, right wing, no wing, ex-Communist party members, ex-UKIP members, ex-Labour members… everyone was represented. Many people spoke passionately and knowledgeably. It was the most inspired I’ve ever felt about politics.

We heard the truth about the NHS from Dr Ranjeet Brar, a surgeon, and Dr Bob Gill, a GP, harbingers of shocking truths. We also heard from working class poet Christopher McGlade, who had been getting abuse that morning on Twitter just for agreeing to turn up. Someone must be worried.

So many people have never voted because they see no point, because the parties are all the same. In that case, It’s time to get involved. It’s time to become the parties. And it doesn’t matter what party. Just get busy. Local elections are only two years away….

Being British, we’re not likely to set light to ourselves and fight the police like the French have been. But we’re very likely to read something, see something, get disgruntled with the injustice and write in to complain.

Let’s concentrate on complaining about the stuff that matters. The homeless, foodbank collections, the destruction of the NHS. Get incensed all you like, but get angry about things other than the fact that Pembrokeshire doesn’t yet have a Waitrose and you miss it.

Try compassion. Think about the people in this county, the poorest area in Northern Europe, the people whose county you are moving to. Respect that their industries have been destroyed, and that’s why you’re able to buy a “cheap” house here. Don’t complain about the farmers. Support them. Don’t judge the people who don’t have much. Understand them.

Otherwise, if all you want to do is recreate your city and push the nastiness backstage, there are other places probably more suitable.

Try Benidorm.