Birmingham Fabian Society

I would like to give you all notice of the Birmingham Fabian Society AGM, which will be taking place on Friday February 25th at 7pm. As usual, we do not charge for meetings – but any donation to room hire will be gratefully accepted.

We are delighted to welcome the brilliant Professor Karen Rowlingson, who will be leading the discussion on ‘The deserving rich?’ Her University of Birmingham website links to some of her work, but I would particularly like to draw your attention to ‘How to defend inheritance tax‘ (£), which she co-wrote for the main Fabian Society. This is definitely a discussion for now – while ordinary people lose their jobs, pay more for less, and see public services decimated, the banks get the equivalent of a tax cut. Now more than ever, the wealthy, particularly those that reaped the largest rewards from the years of unsustainable plenty, ought to be paying their share.

We will also be trying to extend the current Birmingham Fabian executive – so if you fancy taking on a role, do attend and speak up! We will also be examining CLP affiliations.

If you would like to come, fill in the form below to let me know that you are coming:

Also, I would like to draw your attention to the Birmingham Fabian Society Google Calendar. This is for events that we might be interested in attending – so if you’re putting something on, or know of something, email me, and I’ll add it to the calendar.

Please invite anyone who you think would be interested – looking forward to the discussion, and to seeing you all again!

We now have a number of meetings for you to put in your diaries, and I will be looking forward to the discussions, and perhaps more importantly, the actions we take together after those discussions. All of the meetings will be held in our usual venue, the Birmingham & Midlands Institute on Margaret Street, and there will be tea & coffee provided.

• October 15th: Secondary Education, with speakers Sir Dexter Hutt (until recently Head of Ninestiles School, now Chief Executive of Ninestiles Plus, its improvement arm which helps schools around the country) & Professor Rick Hatcher (Director of Research in Education at Birmingham City University).
• November 4th: Higher & Further Education, with speaker Professor Kathryn Ecclestone (Professor of Education and Social Exclusion at the University of Birmingham).
• December 6th: The Probation Service: What kind of future? With speaker Mike Maiden (Chief Probation Officer, Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust).

We are also planning another meeting, to continue on from September’s excellent discussion on how we can become a more meaningful part of Birmingham’s democracy – specifically concerning how we might feed into policy creation and development. Please let us know if you would be interested in contributing to such a discussion – we can be contacted via birminghamfabiansociety@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Just a quick post to draw your attention to this article in the Guardian, which concerns the possibility of Birmingham City Council selling off some of its assets to sovereign wealth funds. They called upon Andrew Coulson, former Chair of the Birmingham Fabian Society, in his capacity as a lecturer with the University of Birmingham, to comment.

Andrew Coulson, a senior lecturer in local government at the Institute of Local Government Studies in Birmingham, said there would be some “nostalgia” amongst local people if such assets were to be sold. He doubted they would be sold off, not least because in these straitened times they would not fetch particularly good prices.

Coulson thought the people of Birmingham would be “pragmatic” about investment from the Middle East. “They may wonder what’s going on but I don’t think they’d be lying in front of the buildings to stop them being bought.”

Very sensible. There are certain assets that should remain under local government control because they are part of a core service. But what would I prefer – BCC owning the NIA, or having enough social housing? Something to keep a close eye on.

Many thanks to those of you who made it to the last meeting of the Birmingham Fabian Society, in which we discussed the sort of organisation we would like to become, and where we could fit into Birmingham’s democracy. I believe that there were eleven of us in total, and we came up with a few broad areas that we would like to work on.

Policy development and scrutiny

Not every meeting will necessarily lead to a clear policy idea, or a fully laid-out criticism of existing policies/approaches. But in the event that we have a discussion, or series of discussions that generate really promising ideas, we want to be in a position to get these to the right people, in the right way. One really good suggestion was that we might ask Rob Pocock to talk to us about the policy meetings that Birmingham Labour Group has, and any other way we might usefully contribute outside of those times to policy in Birmingham. In particular, I know that several people are very keen on the idea of producing our own literature, and it would be good to know to have a list of people that we could trust to read and consider such literature!

We also discussed the idea that having a series of discussions (such as the one Andrew Coulson has put together on education in October & November) could really be of value, and would make us more able to develop ideas. Several topics were put forward – housing, mayoral election, transport, co-operative business models (allowing us to link more strongly with the Midlands Western branch of the Coop Party), and more broadly, the idea of implementing policy against the backdrop of severe cuts and a shrinking state. In the last one, we intend to extract as much optimism as possible – the idea being to crystallise what we CAN do (via what we can’t).

We also want to make sure that our speakers are drawn from a wide base – basically, no being put off by people who are members of other political parties, or indeed, not party political. And if we disagree – well, good. It’s healthy to have to defend your views!

Finally – linking more often with other local groups. Birmingham Feminists, The Coop Party, Chamberlain Forum (who I work for), Compass WM – we have loads of people that we could do events and literature with. And we should! So I will keep my ear to the ground for opportunities to do so, and if you would all do the same, that would be super.

Meetings and general awareness

Meetings always have a respectable attendance, thanks to years of diligence, but plenty of people express interest…and then do not attend. These things happen – life happens! But I want to make sure that I am doing everything I can to keep people in the loop.

A big part of this will be the website www.birminghamfabiansociety.org.uk – we can promote meetings via it, but also, we would speakers and members to write regular posts for it. This can be as and when, although it would be good to have reflections relating to discussions both before and after they occur. So we intend to ask every speaker whether they would write us a blog post, or to perhaps give us their speech if they do not have the time. I’ll ask people to contribute with every meeting notification/reminder.

Bob also highlighted how great Rosa was at getting reminders out just before the meeting – so we will make sure that this happens for all meetings (I’m aware that I didn’t do it for the meeting on the 7th, my apologies). We will also try to get some formal advertising into the New Statesman – and perhaps even local press, if we are feeling bold. We can also carry on using Facebook to create events, which again, Rosa generally did, and could attract new people.

We might also do a bit more…hmmm, outreach, I suppose. Bob and I are going to Bewdley BLP at the beginning of October to talk to them about the Birmingham Fabian Society, and it would be good to talk to other branches too.

Group governance

We are in a bit of a hole with regards to named officers. I’m currently what feels like Chair and half a Secretary, which probably isn’t ideal. We also have Bob as Vice Chair, and Andrew Hussey as Treasurer, and the other half of the Secretary. Long story short, we need to split up the work, otherwise things won’t get done. Part of this will involve Andrew Hussey deciding which role he would like to have, or whether he would like to job share (no pressure Andy… ), and then we can allocate what remains, and formalise it at the next AGM. So if you would like to help in the nuts and bolts of making things run smoothly, then let me know, and I’ll pull together a committee meeting.

My feeling on speakers is that people should come freely with their ideas, and we can consider everything.

Let me know your thoughts, and our next meeting (Oct 15, 7pm, BMI) is on Secondary Education, with Sir Dexter Hutt.