Spirit of Place: Conservative Party Conference Part 3

Goodness, sometimes I feel that it's just me who perceives the utterly welcoming yet strangely stabby spirit of Birmingham, but over this weekend lots of other people have too.

Just to reiterate the spirit as delineated by William Hutton, Birmingham's first historian:

'Were I to enter upon a dedication, I should certainly address myself, "To the Inhabitants of Birmingham." For to them I not only owe much, but all; and I think, among that congregated mass, there is not one person to whom I wish ill. I have the pleasure of calling many of those inhabitants Friends, and some of them share my warm affections equally with myself. Birmingham, like a compassionate nurse, not only draws our persons, but our esteem, from the place of our nativity, and fixes it upon herself: I might add, I was hungry, and she fed me; thirsty, and she gave me drink; a stranger, and she took me in. I approached her with reluctance, because I did not know her; I shall leave her with reluctance, because I do.' (From his History of Birmingham, 'Preface', http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13926/13926-h/13926-h.htm)

He comments on the welcome Birmingham affords the visitor and particularly the poor:

It is singular, that a predilection for Birmingham, is entertained by every denomination of visitants, from Edward Duke of York, who saw us in 1765, down to the presuming quack, who, griped with necessity, boldly discharges his filth from the stage. A paviour, of the name of Obrien, assured me in 1750, that he only meant to sleep one night in Birmingham, in his way from London to Dublin. But instead of pursuing his journey next morning, as intended, he had continued in the place thirty-five years: and though fortune had never elevated him above the pebbles of the street, yet he had never repented his stay.

'It has already been remarked that I first saw Birmingham in 1741, accidentally cast into those regions of civility; equally unknown to every inhabitant, nor having the least idea of becoming one myself. Though the reflections of an untaught youth of seventeen cannot be striking, yet, as they were purely natural, permit me to describe them.

'I had been before acquainted with two or three principal towns. The environs of all I had seen were composed of wretched dwellings, replete with dirt and poverty; but the buildings in the exterior of Birmingham rose in a style of elegance. Thatch, so plentiful in other towns, was not to be met with in this. I was surprised at the place, but more so at the people: They were a species I had never seen: They possessed a vivacity I had never beheld: I had been among dreamers, but now I saw men awake: Their very step along the street showed alacrity: Every man seemed to know and prosecute his own affairs: The town was large, and full of inhabitants, and those inhabitants full of industry. I had seen faces elsewhere tinctured with an idle gloom void of meaning, but here, with a pleasing alertness: Their appearance was strongly marked with the modes of civil life: I mixed a variety of company, chiefly of the lower ranks, and rather as a silent spectator: I was treated with an easy freedom by all, and with marks of favour by some: Hospitality seemed to claim this happy people for her own, though I knew not at that time from what cause.' (Ibid)

But of course there is the other side because if Birmingham reads you and welcomes you it also reads you and spits you out. This is why you meet people who love the place and people who loathe it, but it's not the place, it's the way it reads you and treats you accordingly. I sometimes feel like I'm making this up but this has even communicated itself to others over the weekend.

While I sat on a wall on the Pershore Road for a rest while walking home and a man came up to check I was ok, the haunted Victorian Toilet did a walk past the council house and got strongly heckled. I got one side of Birmingham, he got the other. But the strange thing is it feels like everyone else has picked this up.

Perhaps they'll have the next one in Dunwich.