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!

• 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.

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.

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.

It made me angry. I had paid the dentist a sum of money (substantial) to install a titanium implant in my gum, a job too complex for my NHS dentist, but the only alternative to false teeth. But I did not pay him for a bottle of wine. It was my money. Why should he use it like that?

The incident encapsulates the behaviour of private medicine. Those involved have a powerful incentive to extend the treatment in any way they can – in my case sending me not once but twice to the laboratory making the new tooth to ensure a perfect match with its neighbour, and a lengthy period with a specially made plastic tooth ahead of the final product. What I wanted was a basic product that would do the job, delivered safely, quickly and efficiently. What I got was for sure a good product and plenty of personal attention – and a bottle of wine.

This is the underlying difficulty with much private medicine in America. The doctors and hospitals get paid for what they provide and have clear incentives to maximise it – offering extra tests, debatable procedures, expensive drugs. These they justify on the basis that they must minimise risks, take every precaution, and then provide the best – because if they are sued, even for not doing something that could have been done, the costs are potentially astronomical. By contrast in a system where money does not follow the patient the incentives are to get the work done, and the patient well and back at home, as quickly as possible. There can be problems here too, for example if the penalties levied on hospitals that discharge patients too early are inadequate. But the emphasis is – correctly – on effective treatment in the quickest safe time, not on pampering and fleecing the patients (and/or their insurance companies – which of course also complicit in this semi-corrupt system which gives them plenty of excuses to raise their premiums).

US health care has produced some breathtaking results, and pathbreaking research. But also too much surgery – e.g. for prostate cancers, or caesarean sections – and very weak controls over the costs of prescription drugs. It is a disaster for those without insurance or with minimal insurance cover.

Yet this is the model which, it appears, many in the Conservative Party and some of their doctor friends aspire to. Almost the first thing the new government did in regard to health was to remove the target times for being seen by a consultant, followed by reductions in the constraints that limit private practice in NHS hospitals. It has emerged that many of the NHS Foundation Trusts have plans for new buildings housing accommodation for private patients.

This is probably just the start. It is a short step from here to allowing hospitals freedom to create more expensive treatment packages for those who can pay, and for these trusts to leave the public sector entirely, either directly privatised and sold off to the highest bidders or indirectly via an intermediate stage as mutual organisations in the (supposedly) not for profit sector.

Where is the campaign against this? It is possible that some of the present managers in NHS trusts, appointed during Labour’s years in power, including many who are now the proud executives in state-of-the-art PFI-constructed hospitals, would welcome a move into the private sector. This was always a risk implicit in espousing private healthcare companies to get involved in the NHS. But that does not make it right. It leads, almost inexorably, to a two-tier health service – and could well bankrupt the NHS as a whole as the costs of treatments soar and shortages of doctors become acute.

Labour has fought back against the Tory plans for schools. Why is the equivalent campaigning against NHS privatisation so muted? And can I have my money back for my bottle of wine?

Andrew Coulson teaches at the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham, and is the former Chair of Birmingham Fabian Society.

Most elections end in anti-climax. You wake up the next morning (or afternoon) to discover that your most cherished policies will not be implemented for the time being, the people you most support are not in positions of influence, that many of your admired friends lost their seats or did not win them.

This time Labour escaped from the dead. Offered 256 MPs at the start of the campaign, the Leadership would have accepted them gladly. Even more so after the LibDems surged in the polls and looked certain to take large numbers of seats from the Tories. But in the final 48 hours, the LibDem vote collapsed, leaving Labour, realistically, unable to form a viable coalition. The Party is condemned to what could be a short period of Opposition, but could also be for many years.

There are pluses. The rout of the BNP, not only in Barking and Stoke but across the country. The survival of some of the most threatened MPs, showing that effective local campaigns can make a difference. The winning of councils, and council seats, in London, Liverpool, Coventry, Sheffield and elsewhere. The dignified and principled way in which Gordon Brown managed the last few days of the campaign and his subsequent resignation. But above all the fact that the LibDems have taken some of the extreme Tory policies out of play, at least for the time being, and forced them to accept a referendum on changing the voting system, opening up possibilities for realignments on the left  (or not if the referendum is lost or the Tory/LibDem alliance continues and strengthens.)

But did the New Labour project have to end this way? Was economic management and control of the banks all that it was about?  For this was by far the most lacklustre Labour campaign that I can remember – focussed almost entirely on one man and his ability to steer us through the economic crisis, and half-heartedly defending – almost apologising for – the policies of the previous 13 years.  Where was the credit for reducing class sizes in schools to 30 or less? For improved exam results and literacy and numeracy? For more nursery places? For Sure-Start? For unprecedented investment in school buildings? For improvements in the quality and nutrition of school meals?  Where was the credit for reduced waiting times, and a completely new and much more businesslike experience in A&E? Or for much quicker appointments with consultants? Or improvements in the recovery rates for cancers and heart diseases? Where was the credit for new approaches to the environment – much increased recycling, home insulation, wind energy, more fuel efficient vehicles, rising use of bicycles to get to work, free bus passes for the elderly, investments in parks, leisure centres, sports, museums and the arts? Why hardly any mention of the issues around inequality – the minimum wage, the quality homes investment in council housing, support for childcare, etc? Why no attempt to identify with the trade union campaigns against unreasonable working hours, reduced pension conditions, gender discrimination? Or to take credit for the Freedom of Information Act,  or the Human Rights Act? Why was Labour not sold as a team – with the differing talents of Harriet Harman, Alastair Darling, the Milibands, the Eagle sisters, Yvette Cooper and Andrew Adonis (to take but some, of the mostly younger rising stars)? Why was it not possible to get more endorsement from the worlds of business and the media?  And above all, was not the danger of over-reliance on economic management and attempts to raise fears of Tory cuts not realised, when Gordon Brown could not entirely distance himself from what had led to the current crisis, nor respond to the (predictable) cries from businessmen faced with tax increases? On the doorstep it led to candidates like me defending Labour as essentially the conservative party – better at managing risks, responding to international crises, avoiding cuts that would make a bad situation even worse. We were not given the clear scripts, or even the confidence, to answer questions from ordinary workers: what has Labour done for us? Or to deal with heartfelt fears about employment, immigration, housing.

No doubt focus groups pointed out that to raise any of the above would do more harm than good. That is a constant nagging danger with a rainbow party, and there are, and always have been, reactionary supporters of both the trades unions and the Labour Party.  But suppression of debate, and lowering to a basic minimal agenda, is no way to long term success for a party of the left, and no way to defend the interests of the majority of our people and our supporters.

Perhaps Labour was reluctant to defend its achievements because, aware of the impending economic crisis, it felt that in the future it would not be able to maintain them. If so the more the pity.

From experience on doorstep s in the Midlands, there were elephants in the room, and the absence of other policy discussions allowed them to quietly fester away and distract the core Labour vote. The biggest was immigration, closely related to unemployment. It was forgotton that only a few months earlier, in many parts of the country, it was not easy to find a plumber who was not Polish. We went from unprecedentedly high levels of employment and economic activity to the highest levels of unemployment since the 1980s in only a few months.  But there is a deeper problem here. Almost no-one in the Midlands believes that Britain can pay its way purely as a service economy without manufacturing most of the goods we buy in the shops. And to do something about that means far more than the paltry, and largely property-based, investments of the regional development corporations, or nods to high-tech or environmentally based industries. Discussions of immigration were also often related to discussions of housing, because there are not enough homes for rent at affordable rates or for purchases which ordinary people can afford. Labour should, long ago, have kickstarted new council house building on a grand scale. Nearly as common an issue for discussion was student fees – real doubt from low and middle income families about how they will pay for their children to go through university.

Progressive policies are key to mobilising and recruiting party members and workers. Ward and constituency structures of the Party are dying as I write, but without local groups of activists it will struggle to fight elections, or to keep in touch with local issues and controversy. We patronise our members by expecting hours of free time from them, offering them little in return. We need to recreate the link between policies and campaigning, and to recruit members who want to talk and challenge, not just to take orders, and to create, or at least influence, policy. We need to take the electorate much more seriously, realising that many change their political loyalties (some, as we have seen, on a daily basis), so that it is no longer just a matter of identifying a “Labour vote” and getting it to turn out on election day, but rather of having policies and ideas which our members and supporters will live for, and charismatic local candidates in touch with local issues who they and their friends will trust. The challenge which needs to be explored in the forthcoming leadership election is how to create a genuinely new Labour Party as a movement of activists committed to working at local and national levels to make real the political and economic changes which will not only make Britain a more humane and integrated place, but also enable it to prosper in a global world.

by Andrew Coulson, former Chair of the Birmingham Fabian Society, who who got 3600 votes in Northfield Ward (but still came second)

The first time I saw Ed Miliband live was at Latitude Festival, where he and 10:10 founder Franny Armstrong were doing a Q&A on the response to the threat of climate change. At that time, I had only been a member of the party for a few months, and I don’t think I really appreciated how well he did, assuming this sort of event to be more popular among politicians than it is in reality. The questions came from dedicated environmental activists, and got right to the heart of areas where government policy just hadn’t quite reached yet. “Would you support a ban on domestic flight?” “How do we stop state-owned banks investing into companies that are devastating the Canadian oil sands?” “Must we go nuclear?”

Franny naturally encouraged people to challenge him, but at the end of the session, she made a couple of important points. Firstly, she highlighted the Britain’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, which detailed exactly how Britain would meet its legislated commitments to reduce emissions by 34% by 2020, and by 80% by 2050. She said that the assembled crowd should not underestimate how much of a step the Department of Energy and Climate Change, with Ed at the helm, had taken with these moves. She then remarked that Labour were clearly going to lose the next election (prescient). But she also remarked that in the next few years, climate change and sustainable living were going to creep up the agenda, as it would become harder and harder to ignore the effects of unpredictable weather and dwindling resources.

Turning to look at Ed, she said “in five years time, those factors could be what make you the next Prime Minister.”

From this vantage point, a Labour Prime Minister, Ed or anyone else, feels a long way off. Labour is at an interesting point, where the party needs to find a balance between embracing and enhancing the positive changes made under the New Labour project – while also acknowledging its failures, and in so doing, re-entrenching the progressive values that we all care about into the heart of our vision for the UK. I don’t think any of us are naive enough to think that we have nothing left to do with regards to eradicating inequalities in health, wealth and social capital (far from it) – or that we haven’t done things which have alienated people who we used to count on to support us.

We need a leader who not only understands that, but who won’t be afraid to make that argument, to hold people to account, and to do it with fire and passion. We also need someone who will draw us all together on the progressive left – someone who understands that a healthy exchange of different views that spring from the same values is a good thing, and not something that should tear us apart. I’m not saying that the other candidates don’t have some of these qualities, and others besides – but Ed has them all in abundance.

In the months since that Latitude Q&A, we have all seen the qualities in Ed that will make him an inspiring, capable leader. He listened to eco activists who told him to consult with the wonderful Professor David Mackay (author of ‘Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air’) on climate change policy, and ultimately hired him as an advisor. At Copenhagen, we saw him stay awake for days, and yet, he was sharp enough to act when he did to take control, halt proceedings, reassess the situation, and ultimately ensured that even though we didn’t get the deal we needed, we didn’t walk away with nothing, rather, we had something recognised and substantive to build on – plans for which were laid out in the ‘Beyond Copenhagen’ plan. When Gordon Brown was at his lowest ebb, Ed Miliband was among the first to leap to his defence, telling the circling sharks that people had underestimated Gordon his whole life, and that they shouldn’t make this mistake of doing it again.

And in the run-up to the election, the manifesto that he took a lead in authoring had real focus and ambition. This was notable in the area of welfare: “Are you for a residual welfare state that is just for the poor, which is the Tory position, or are you for a more inclusive welfare state? What the Tories are saying about child trust funds, child tax credits and Sure Start – they’re saying, ‘let’s residualise, let’s make the welfare state just for the poor’ but [this goes against] all the evidence in terms of maintaining public support [for the welfare state]. Why does Sure Start work as an institution? Because it brings people together.”

We have had some difficult weeks since we lost the election. But when Ed launched his leadership campaign, I was instantly assured of what I had known for some time – that Ed’s stall for Labour leader is already prepared: his brilliant track record – his willingness to listen, to evaluate and to act. And the early stages of his campaign – notably the launch of the Living Wage campaign – have assured me that he will practice what he preaches, and will take the entire movement with him.

I trust him absolutely with our future, and will support his campaign every step of the way.

by Claire Spencer, Chair of the Birmingham Fabian Society.

There were two failures. Some polling districts ran out of ballot papers. This is not unheard of – and usually remedied by borrowing some from the next polling station. But that is not possible if the turnout is high everywhere. It costs almost nothing to print more ballot papers. It is a straightforward administrative failure. It is completely unacceptable, and should never happen again.

The second failure is more profound. Returning officers (those who plan elections, usually Chief Executives or Heads of Law of district councils) underestimated either how long it would take to process voters, or how many would want to vote, or both, and did not ensure that there was sufficient capacity to process all who wanted to vote..

Several factors conspired to make this worse. In most places where there were problems there were two simultaneous ballots, one for the general election and the other for the local council election – with large numbers of candidates on each ballot paper. Presiding Officers (responsible for each polling station) often had to explain to confused voters why they were getting two ballot papers, and those voters then had to work out who they were to vote for from a long list of candidates. A significant number ended up putting blank ballot papers into the box for the council elections. But others took a long time to make up their minds, and blocked the voting booths. With UKIP, the BNP and the Green Party standing in large numbers of places, alongside independent candidates and candidates from the mainstream parties, it was common to have seven or eight names on ballot papers – the days of just three or four candidates are long behind us. The fact that candidates who get very small numbers of votes no longer lose deposits has also encouraged more people to stand.

Then there was the stress of the high turnout on the presiding officers. They are expected to report for duty at 6.30am or earlier, to open the polls at 7.00, and they will still be there after 10.00pm to undertake the formalities at the end of the election and seal the ballot boxes. It is a long day with no provision for breaks. If the polling station is busy, it is stressful throughout. Each elector is required to identify himself or herself to one official, who reads out their number on the electoral roll so that the other official can carefully underline it in the official register. If this is done incorrectly, chaos can easily result if some tries to vote who has apparently already voted. Towards the end of a long day, tiredness sets in and the tasks become every more stressful.

There are complications with postal votes. Ahead of the election these are marked on the register, to prevent individuals voting twice. But some forget to post their vote – and get annoyed when they are debarred from voting at the polling station. Others bring the postal vote with them, in which case there are special procedures which allow them to vote, but take time. (There are other problems with postal voting, such as the difficulties people have in working out how to put the ballot papers into the rather strange envelopes, and then the verification procedures to check that those voting are the same people who applied for the postal votes. These problems may delay the count, but they should not cause problems at polling stations.)

A more fundamental problem is the quality of the electoral rolls. Electoral rolls have got more unreliable over the years, partly because some people do not want to be on them (knowing that they are increasingly used for marketing and market research purposes), but more because less resources are devoted to visiting residences to improve the accuracy of the rolls. They are particularly weak for young people, houses in multiple occupation, and single people who frequently move addresses. There are further problems when names are very similar, and especially in big families originally from the Asian sub-continent. The result is that people turn up to vote who are not on the electoral roll – and the process of checking that this is indeed the case, e.g. that they are not very late registrations, and explaining that they cannot vote, takes time and energy. Even more so if English is a second or third language.

It is easy to underestimate how strange voting is to people who have not done it before – i.e. large numbers of young or fairly young people. I had to carefully explain that you go to the polling station, identify yourself, get given two ballot papers, mark each with a cross (or even a tick), put them in the ballot boxes – and walk out. On one estate near where I live a local activist organised a “walking bus” of young mothers who, with their young children, would together walk to the polling station to vote – because they had never done it before and thought it would be easier in a group rather than individually.

The situation was made worse by voters who turned up at 6.00pm or 7.00pm and saw the queues, so decided to come back later when would be quiet. That, combined with effective “knocking up” by the political parties, either on the phone or on the doorstep, to identify those who had not yet voted and persuade them to go, led to a surge right at the end of the day. The law is clear on this – anyone who has not been identified and marked on the register by the close of the poll is not permitted to vote. So what has happened in South Africa, or Iraq, where polling stations were allowed to remain open longer to enable everyone to vote, was not permissible. Individuals unable to vote were very angry, but their only remedy is a petition to the election court, which is costly, and where they would have to prove that their inability to vote could have affected the outcome of the election, in which case it would be re-run. Realistically only political parties can organise this, and so far no-one has taken that step, even for the council elections where results are often extremely close.

So what should be done for the future? There are proposals to completely alter the system, e.g. by computerised voting. But there is much to be said in favour of the traditional British ballot box – it is transparent, simple to understand, and (outside some of the issues relating to postal voting) largely free from fraud. So the points below are about the existing system, not some replacement.

It goes without saying that there should be sufficient ballot papers. There should also be sufficient voting booths – generally more than at present. There should also be sufficient presiding officers – four rather than two wherever possible and wherever large turnouts are expected. There should also be more backup teams, so that if a problem starts to emerge during the day, extra staff can be quickly brought in (this is easier said than done – staff have to be trained and it is often hard to get sufficient volunteers as it is). More resources should be devoted to improving the electoral rolls, and there should be more basic information on how to vote. At the end of the day, this is our electoral system and if we want it to be taken seriously we have to resource it properly.

By Andrew Coulson (photograph by Ruth_W)

Of course, when it comes to voter ID (or, as we call it, #labourdoorstep), there is a certain detached practicality to the whole process, necessarily so, but it can (and must) have other value. And in my experience, in good campaigns with dedicated activists, it often does – the listening, the bit where we ask “are there any issues you would like to raise?” can often reveal seams of concern and discontent, issues that need to be resolved, by us. I’ve been on the doorstep with Kerry McCarthy’s team in Bristol East on two occasions, and both times, I was really glad to see how dedicated her team were to following up these issues – recorded, and initial actions (even if it’s just a letter or a second visit) laid out then and there. In Gisela Stuart’s campaign in Birmingham Edgbaston, they have been doing likewise – several people I know in the constituency have remarked on the fact that, if you raise issues with Gisela, you always get a response, a dialogue, solutions.

They recognise, as I like to think I do, that it’s all about that relationship – if it the person on the doorstep feels let down by their public servant and their neighbourhood, then the onus is on you to change that. It’s also about consistency – if someone raises an issue on the doorstep, note it, make sure it gets to the right people, and keep them in the loop. You don’t have to have all the answers – indeed, you may have to come back and give them an answer that they don’t much like. What is important is that you come back, and keep coming back. Hopefully there are numerous examples of this in your constituencies that you have been carried out and/or been inspired by.

However, the manner of your response is as important as the fact you are doing it, and for that, you need to get to know your constituency, its people, and their commonalities and tensions. In the my constituency, the new Birmingham Hall Green,  a number of wards, with very different personalities, cultures and levels of civic-mindedness have been thrown together. Look at the graph below, (produced by Chamberlain Forum, the think tank I am working with), which plots the position of all Birmingham’s Priority Neighbourhoods, the most deprived neighbourhoods in the city. Note NI4, which represents the percentage of people that feel they can influence local decisions. Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook are both part of my constituency, but as you can see, their residents feel very differently about how much influence they have over their neighbourhoods. Add to these the much wealthier areas of Hall Green, Moseley and Kings Heath, all of which score quite highly on both NI4 and NI5, and you get an impression of the diversity of wealth, perception of influence, and general satisfaction with where they live.

I’ve seen this potential for tension in microcosm in one road in the constituency, where a mosque has been established in a terraced, residential street. Its use has expanded greatly in recent years, the street flooded with cars at times of worship and learning, and this is where tension has arisen between the people who use the space for living, and those who use it for worship. Long since abandoned by the local councillors, the relationship has been left to fester, with all parties feeling as though their road is a worse place to be. When we spoke to residents about this on the doorstep, myself and the Labour council candidate decided to act, but in a particular way. This couldn’t be an “us” and “them”, both groups use and value the space, and the solution must be collaborative, not combative. So we’re going to organise a small meeting, with both sides able to express their perceptions, and us present as mediators, to facilitate the flow of practical, inexpensive and mutually agreeable solutions.

I really think we can succeed, and I hope that we do – but even if we fail, we’re not going to slink off, never to be seen again. We’re going back to explain why we failed, to try again, and to maintain the relationship between us (as activists and public servants) and the people we hope to represent.

By Claire Spencer, Chair of the Birmingham Fabian Society

This post was originally published on the Young Fabians blog.