The Multicultural Midlands 1526154528, 9781526154521

Citation preview

The multicultural Midlands

Multicultural Textualities Series editors: Amina Yaqin, Peter Morey, Rehana Ahmed, Claire Chambers, Anshuman Mondal and Stephen Morton This series will explore literary and cultural texts emerging from contexts in which majority/minority power dynamics operate, in the light of debates about contemporary multiculturalism. It will analyse texts marked by, or inscribing, a disequilibrium of power and/or cultural capital – such as the relations between majority white and BME communities in Britain and other countries of the West – addressing the experiences, issues and anxieties arising from the perceived clash of ideas and values. Its aim is to develop a collective body of scholarship offering new insights on literature produced by and about diasporic and minority communities that is situated in a contemporary landscape where notions of multicultural tolerance have been challenged by political and populist discourses at best wary of, and at worst directly hostile to, multiculturalism.

The multicultural Midlands Tom Kew

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Tom Kew 2023 The right of Tom Kew to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 1 5261 5452 1  hardback First published 2023 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Introduction: ‘a so what? sort of place’

page 1

Nottingham: writing the ‘rebel’ city Introduction 25 1 Performance poetry, COVID-19 and the new ‘public sphere’ 35 2 #rebelnotts: literary tourism in Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham 53 Coda: ‘Ode to a Raleigh Burner’ 71 Leicester: the ‘model’ multicultural city Introduction 77 3 Piri piri chicken: ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ in contemporary Leicester 91 4 #WeNeedDiverseBooks: diversity in Leicester’s Young Adult fiction 102 5 ‘Leicester, Leicester/ Fester, fester’: at home with Adrian Mole 115 Coda: brimful of Leicester 125 Birmingham: (re)building the second city Introduction 131 6 Is Birmingham a ‘non-place’? 147 7 ‘Double vision’ in Handsworth art 156 Coda: ‘our new layered city’ 174 The West Midlands: from Shakespeare to Syal Introduction 181 8 ‘Pathos, politics and paratha’: re-reading West Midlands, South Asian literature 186

vi Contents 9 The great ‘talent drain’ of the West Midlands: Lenny Henry, Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera Coda: desi pubs of the Black Country

204 226

The self-deprecating conclusion

230

Bibliography 239 Index 261

Introduction: ‘a so what? sort of place’

He turned back here. Anyone would. After The long romantic journey from the North To be faced with this. A so what? sort of place, A place that, like a mirror, makes you see. A scrubby ridge, impassive river, and beyond, The flats of Middle England. History waited To absorb him. Parliaments, dynasties, empires Lay beyond these turnip fields. Not what he wanted. (from U.A. Fanthorpe, ‘At Swarkestone’)1

The Midlands: so what? A region portrayed as the epicentre of nothing and epitomising parochialism. A flat, ‘scrubby’ land of ‘turnip fields’, positioned in stark contrast with the ‘parliaments’, ‘dynasties’ and ‘empires’ represented by the South of England. When Bonnie Prince Charlie made his daring raid towards the capital, he didn’t make it much further than Derby. Fanthorpe writes, ‘nobody could have stopped him … but this place did.’ 2 Although certainly penned with a humorous touch by Fanthorpe, this poem is one of only four representing the Midlands, out of 202 poems published in the 2009 anthology A Poet’s Guide to Great Britain, less than 2 percent of the total content. While this is only one anthology, it became a major BBC television series and is representative of a much wider problem. Elsewhere in the Penguin anthology, Phillip Larkin drily reflects on returning to his childhood home of Coventry: ‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.’ 3 Louis MacNeice observes the ‘fickle norms’ of Birmingham residents, who ‘endeavour to find God and score one over the neighbour’.4 Meanwhile, Duffy’s ‘Stafford Afternoons’ recalls an unwanted sexual encounter with a predatory old man and reflects, ‘in a cul-de-sac, a strange boy threw a stone.’ 5 The cul-de-sac location seems an apposite setting: at the bottom of a bag, in the middle of nowhere. Owen Sheers, the editor of A Poet’s Guide to Great Britain, wants his readership to imagine the collection as a ‘stroll around one large garden’ and a ‘shared conversation’.6 These are admirable aims but both reveal a fundamental oversight. If Britain is the garden around

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which the poets stroll, the middle is very much circumnavigated, leaving its creative voices out of the ‘shared conversation’ of canonical British writing. The Multicultural Midlands provides sustained analysis and cultural insight, to demonstrate how a consideration of the Midlands’ multicultural creative output requires us to think again about received ideas. The depiction of the region as the home of ‘turnip fields’, ‘cul-de-sacs’ and ‘fickle norms’ belies its true, diverse character. Such renditions lack finesse, in that they brush over the ‘scrubby’ surface of the Midlands with a superficial sweep that results in a confirmation bias: expecting, and therefore finding, nothing of significance. This book stakes new, level ground, in that it begins with an assumption of parity: that the Midlands are no more, or less, worthy a site of literary and cultural production than any other. Approaching multifarious texts using an even-handed analytical framework has facilitated the discovery of numerous, overlapping networks of influence and impact. These networks reveal how multiple mass migrations have shaped a vibrant region and the beating heart of multicultural Britain.

Defining the Midlands ‘The flats of Middle England’ may seem like an endless, bleak expanse but they do have definable boundaries. While these are fluid and open to multiple, contradicting interpretations, this study adopts the definition used by the UK government for statistical purposes. It consists of two ‘government office regions’ – now known simply as ‘regions’ – the East Midlands and the West Midlands.7 In adopting official boundaries, the book rejects the spatial ambiguity which has arguably hindered the dissemination of a recognisably Midlands cultural identity to wider audiences. Even when writing in praise of Midlands literature, the Wolverhampton-born author Sathnam Sanghera perpetuates this ambiguity; ‘It’s a part of the country that is formless, and, taking in Shropshire, Warwickshire, the Black Country and Leicestershire, notoriously hard to name.’ 8 While this book recognises the validity of this assertion, and indeed acknowledges such assessments as partial motivation for conducting this research, it starts with a clearly delineated area of study as outlined below. The West Midlands comprises: the metropolitan county of West Midlands; the non-metropolitan counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire; the unitary authorities of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Stoke-on-Trent and Telford and Wrekin. The East Midlands comprises: the non-metropolitan counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire; the unitary authorities of Derby, Leicester, Nottingham and Rutland.



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Adopting these governmental regions affords insight into official statistics such as census data. It also ensures that the area of study for the book correlates with how the nation is administered. When making a case for the Midlands as an expression of literary activism, it is important to work within recognised parameters to add credence to its potential application. The East and West Midlands regions have a combined population of 10,827,512 (2020 mid-year estimate), and an area of 11,053 square miles (28,630 km2).9 This constitutes 16 percent of the UK’s population – a surprisingly high figure given the lack of representation or recognition within the fields of literature, art and cultural production. Further justification for the geographical catchment area of the book ties the project in with local economic strategy designed to help secure outside investment for the region. ‘The Midlands Engine’ is the name for the strategic alliance of East and West Midlands, a project equivalent to the muchpublicised ‘Northern Powerhouse’ in the North of England. Chaired by Sir John Peace, the organisation recognises that the UK cannot rely on London alone to generate prosperity and propel economic growth.10 To present the Midlands as a unified entity empowers the sub-regions with the collective weight of the union. The book undertakes culturally, that which ‘The Midlands Engine’ aims to achieve economically: to present a unified region of collective significance to rival that of London.

Antiracism, multiculturalism and demotic cosmopolitanism Notable commentators on multiculturalism, such as Tariq Modood, Will Kymlicka, Steven Vertovec and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, facilitate critical dialogue between accounts of diversity as represented in Midlands writing and those presented at the official level by local government. Narratives of multiculturalism have, in some senses, replaced previous forms of antiracist rhetoric. This is problematic given that multiculturalism, as a concept, has been subjected to such wildly varying interpretations by persons and bodies from across the political spectrum. It may be more accurate to speak of multiculturalisms, plural, than of one single concept. As Powell states, ‘because these entities maintain such starkly different ideological agendas, any search for consensus almost immediately flounders on a sea of apparently ceaseless semantic flux.’ 11 To glimpse the turbulence of this ‘sea’ can destabilise our understanding of multiculturalism as an authentic lived experience. See, for example, Vertovec’s roundup of just some of the multiculturalisms theorised during the 1990s–2000s: A divergent set of civic programmes might be labelled as ‘radical multiculturalism’ or ‘polycentric multiculturalism’ (Shohat and Stam 1994), ‘insurgent

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The multicultural Midlands multiculturalism’ (Giroux 1994), ‘public space multiculturalism’ (Vertovec 1996), ‘difference multiculturalism’ (Turner 1993), ‘critical multiculturalism’ (Chicago Cultural Studies Group 1994), ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ multiculturalism (Grillo 2005). Indeed, Steven Vertovec (1998) has pointed to at least eight different kinds of multiculturalism while Garard Delanty (2003) suggests another list with nine types of multiculturalism.12

Such is the breadth of critical interpretations of ‘multiculturalism’, that Stuart Hall has branded it a ‘maddeningly spongy and imprecise discursive field.’ 13 Beyond the confines of academia, imprecise interpretations are perhaps the least of multiculturalism’s worries. The concept has been attacked and declared ‘dead’ on numerous occasions. Events as grave as the 7/7 London bombings (2005), or as relatively frivolous as the release of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine album (1998), have led commentators to this fatalistic conclusion.14 Vertovec and Wessendorf have extensively documented the critical and populist ‘backlash’ to multiculturalism. Detractors of the concept have variously claimed that it ‘fosters separateness’; ‘refuses common values’; ‘denies problems and supports reprehensible practices’.15 To be clear, this book refutes these claims outright. However, it does not exist to rehash old arguments about whether multiculturalism is – in theory – a good idea. Multiculturalism has long been an undeniable reality of everyday life in the Midlands’ cities. As the Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose so memorably sang: ‘it’s too late to turn back now.’ 16 Instead, the book undertakes a more practical approach; reading a wide array of Midlands culture in the hope of understanding how the undeniably diverse character of the region has manifest in unique forms of expression, including from white Britons. Brah’s ‘diaspora space’ provides a methodology for a textual selection process which seeks not to address some imagined grievance of under-representation for white British culture but rather one which acknowledges the lived reality of life in the multicultural Midlands. Steven Vertovec’s work on ‘superdiversity’ recognises that in recent years a ‘diversification of diversity’ has occurred, whereby many new variables interact, such as ‘differential immigration statuses’; ‘divergent labour market experiences, discrete gender and age profiles, patterns of spatial distribution, and mixed local area responses by service providers and residents.’ 17 In cities such as Leicester and Birmingham this phenomenon continues to alter and complexify any fixed understanding of diversity which may have been formed in the late twentieth century. Interpretations will always be influenced by individuals’ unique experiences within a society that has been shaped by colonialism. As a white British researcher, my own positionality is informed by everyday interactions and observations, yet is still inseparable from these colonial histories. While recognising the privilege inherent in my position, I hope that this book can



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advocate for under-represented Midlands culture and make an original contribution to the field of multicultural scholarship. In Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature (2010), Dave Gunning explores the role which literature can play in articulating resistance to racism. Reading the novels of Meera Syal, Gunning highlights how the author is able to ‘disturb received notions of the geography of black Britain’ by setting her debut Anita and Me (1997) in a rural Midlands locale.18 In doing so, Gunning pinpoints geographical setting as a key mode of literary resistance to the stereotype that Black Britain resides exclusively in London’s inner-city regions. Although not a central concern developed in Race and Antiracism, this notion of geographical ‘disruption’ provides a key starting point for my research. The decision to use literary texts in the exploration of Black British and Asian culture is necessarily one which literary studies must defend. Responding to Stuart Hall’s call for a critical mode which ‘locates itself inside a continuous struggle and politics around black representation’ while simultaneously being ‘able to open up a continuous critical discourse’, Gunning suggests that literature may well prove a valuable site of enquiry: Hall looks for the creation of a method of analysis that is able to examine its own conditions of existence, while simultaneously maintaining the capacity for resistance and transformation. The diverse subject positions that are staged in literature allow for just such self-reflective criticism; literary texts are able to participate within the construction of antiracist discourse and the experiential categories of race, but at the same time to adopt a position of distance from the automatic and possibly restrictive assumptions of antiracist practice.19

The ‘self-reflective’ dimensions of Black British and Asian fiction take on a new significance when read from the perspective of their geographical setting. This placed reading enables us to consider in parallel the literary output of Black and Asian Britons as both national and regional expressions of identity. In highlighting the ‘diverse subject positions’ found within Black British and Asian literature, Gunning touches on a common thread within much Midlands writing. Regional texts offer up wildly differing stances on multicultural issues and place themselves at varying degrees of distance from the stances taken at the official level by local authorities. As Leicester poet Carol Leeming has expressed in interview, there is a disaffection within regional literary cultures directed at fetishised, idealised narratives of multiculturalism. Leeming states ‘we constantly hear that Leicester is this hunky dory, homogenous, happy clappy, multicultural city – right – that’s one story.’ 20 This book sets out not to mount a critique of multiculturalism, either as a concept or as lived experience, but rather to emphasise the Midlands

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narratives which are obscured by the dominant discourses of successful multiculturalism. As Leeming asserts, ‘the other story of Leicester that I’m trying to highlight … is that actually, the ethnic minority communities have prescribed expressions.’ 21 In challenging the notion of multiculturalism as a revered, monolithic entity, Leeming is not alone among her Midlands literary peers. In his poem ‘I Have a Scheme’, Benjamin Zephaniah likens the doctrine of multiculturalism to a religious entity: Let me hear you say Multiculture Amen Let me hear you say Roti, Roti A women.22

Here, the humble roti bread becomes a tokenistic symbol of a superficial multicultural aesthetic. With trademark humour, Midlands writers are challenging ‘prescribed expressions’ and the ways in which their region is represented in official government narratives. Benjamin Zephaniah, the ironically self-professed ‘equal opportunities poet’, facetiously dubs these official discourses ‘the great book of multiculturalism’.23 Commentators on the political right have similarly called multiculturalism an ‘article of faith’ for liberals, albeit without Zephaniah’s warmth and humour.24 Avoiding an idealised approach, Midlands writers draw from lived experience of multiculture to produce incisive critical commentaries on mainstream discourses of multiculturalism. The officially endorsed – and as Zephaniah would have it, worshipped – strain of multiculturalism is not a productive means of approaching Midlands texts. As a working alternative approach to understanding diversity in literature, Paul Gilroy’s notion of ‘vulgar’ or ‘demotic’ cosmopolitanism is far more practical, defined by Gilroy as: [a] cosmopolitan attachment [that] finds civic and ethical value in the process of exposure to otherness. It glories in the ordinary virtues and ironies – listening, looking, discretion, friendship – that can be cultivated when mundane encounters with difference become rewarding.25

I would argue that the prevalence of this mode within Midlands literature is one of its greatest assets. However, ‘demotic’ literary voices can be drowned out by the loudhailer of civic discourse. For example, Manjula Sood, the first Asian female Lord Mayor, states that ‘globally [Leicester is] known as the best multicultural city on earth.’ 26 How could local creatives ever live up to such hype? The kinds of ‘demotic cosmpolitanism’ espoused by bestselling Leicester authors such as Sue Townsend and Bali Rai are perhaps considered too ordinary, too parochial, to warrant sustained critical attention.



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Within their socio-historic contexts, this study examines the interplay of official discourses and those renditions of multiculturalism contained within books, music and other cultural texts. These are often works of fiction, yet they offer us honest insights not permitted within the goal-oriented world of local politics.

The everyday and the exotic One of the central tenets of the book’s methodology is a devolved approach to literary study. The devolution of literary cultures has its origins in the 1960s and signifies not only a shift away from London but, in the context of the book, a shift away from more well-trodden textual selections and theoretical approaches also.27 The first strategy I deploy to enact this shift is to give sustained critical attention to contemporary Midlands literature. While the non-commercial literary form of poetry enjoys good regional distribution of poetry presses, the commercially viable novel form is still dominated by London-based publishers. This book not only destabilises the dominance of these publishers but also takes a refreshing detour from their blockbusters, which tend to receive the most critical attention. While the critical foundations of postcolonial studies were laid by Spivak, Bhabha and Said – whom Huggan has dubbed the field’s ‘three celebrity critics’ – the work of Brah, Hall, Huggan, Sivanandan, Gunning, Procter and Gilroy is more applicable to my readings of Midlands literature because it speaks directly to the demotic themes and aesthetics deployed by Midlands writers.28 Their devolved theoretical sensibilities accord with the devolved literary cultures under scrutiny here. My analysis elucidates these local characteristics and places them in the broader context of recent debates about literary devolution. Huggan’s assertion that ‘locally produced theories and methods might prove in the end to be more productive than the reliance on EuroAmerican philosophical trends and habits of thought’ is a truism at the heart of this book.29 This stance distinguishes the book in its field, deconstructing the misconception that critical theory is a sacrosanct product created in London, Oxbridge or the Ivy League Universities of North America, to be applied to cultural contexts far removed from the origin. In the Midlands, sociologist Avtar Brah is a prime example. Brah spent part of her career in Leicester and coined the invaluable critical term ‘diaspora space’, which acknowledges that diasporic regions are complex spaces of negotiation, encompassing resident ‘indigenous’ populations as well as those who have migrated more recently.30 This complicates assumptions about immigration changing otherwise white British areas and frames it as is a two-way process, which Brah articulates as ‘the homing of diaspora, the

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diasporising of home’ – an idea central to my understanding of Midlands literature.31 This book demonstrates how diverse literary cultures are in fact intertwined in the Midlands, often working co-operatively as ‘compatriots in craft’, to use Fred D’Aguiar’s terminology and indeed the application of this phrase to regional literatures as first demonstrated by Fowler in Postcolonial Manchester.32 This is not to suggest a naively utopian vision of the region’s literary cultures – contexts which are as susceptible to systemic racism as any other – but rather to set in motion localised debates which challenge literary categorisation along solely racial lines. The Multicultural Midlands works with the theoretical models of postcolonial critics, while also challenging their relevance in everyday Midlandsspecific literary contexts and offering new critical insights. In this vein, the research articulates the Midlands nuances of what James Procter calls ‘the postcolonial everyday’, an aesthetic mode found in literature, which not only privileges everyday people and situations but also demonstrates how absolutely compatible these quotidian frames of reference are with writing of Black British and Asian origin.33 The book’s approach to textual selection and analysis resists the lure of what Huggan calls ‘The Postcolonial Exotic’. Huggan flags up this reductive yet widespread literary-economic practice whereby diversity ‘is manipulated for the purpose of channeling difference into areas where it can be attractively packaged and, at the same time, safely contained.’ 34 This is what Yasmin Alibhai-Brown calls ‘3S’ multiculturalism: ‘steelbands, saris and samosas.’ 35 Exoticism, then, can be profitably disseminated to audiences who want a taste of diversity, while stopping short of absolute immersion. Midlands writing has no lack of diversity but – in keeping with the region’s underprivileged position both in relation to the national sense of geographical hierarchy and the economic realities of literary cultures outside of London – frequently deploys representational modes relating to the ordinary, the domestic and the everyday. These literary aesthetics are not the expression of a downtrodden community but rather the proud manifestation on paper of what it means to be a Midlander. Regional literary sensibility in Midlands literature is often expressed in the everyday dialects and languages of the region, and in describing the everyday lives of Midlands people from many different walks of life. Midlands texts not only express regional sensibility but are also every bit as relevant to discussions of contemporary literary culture as more frequently discussed, commercially prominent and better-known writing. This is not to detract from the merit of London literature by suggesting the attribution of literary prestige to be a mere postcode lottery, but rather to challenge the cultural dominance of literature with London connections and the ‘exoticising’ discourses which are often used by publishers and marketing agencies to sell self-consciously multicultural, London-centric fiction. This challenge to



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London’s critical and economic literary dominance is achieved by two methods: by comparison with London texts, but predominantly through readings of Midlands texts and their cultural contexts. In this manner the book seeks to challenge, and provide robust alternatives to, what Fowler has identified as ‘the commercial and cultural logic by which novels are coded as worthy of national and international readerships by corporate publishers and high street retail outlets.’ 36

Literary value In developing Procter’s notion of ‘the postcolonial everyday’, my approach to textual selection and analysis does not involve seeking out the mundane but rather challenging assumptions that have been made about Midlands literature. This involves questioning the means by which the contentious notion of ‘value’ is ascribed to literary texts. John Frow’s 1995 work on literary value is extremely useful here.37 When the traditional channels through which literary value flows – the publishing industry, reviewers, critics – become obstructed by misconceptions about the region from which a work emanates, or which the work represents and even celebrates, it becomes necessary to rethink what constitutes value and who exactly has the power to validate literary texts or, the ‘power to consecrate’ them, as Bourdieu puts it.38 I have touched upon the devolution of literary cultures but, in relation to literary value, this notion requires further interrogation. Many of the primary texts under consideration in this study do not receive validation through the traditional means of literary value: broadsheet newspaper reviews, literary prizes and academic articles. Writing at the end of the twentieth century, Frow identifies a ‘disrupted and uncertain universe of value’.39 Frow’s image of a ‘universe’ works well here as it emphasises the complexities of the myriad cultural constellations within which value is exchanged. It is within this universe that we find the optimum conditions for a radical reappraisal of how value is attributed, and by whom.40 The ‘disruption’ and ‘uncertainty’ which Frow describes has been accentuated throughout the first decades of the twenty-first century. As social and digital media replace traditional print forms of communication, the authority of traditional industry gatekeepers – reviewers, critics, journalists – diminishes, while the influence of informal ‘valuing communities’ who ascribe their own notions of value on cultural products, increases.41 This has proved to be particularly relevant in Nottingham, with informal ‘valuing communities’ supplying the lifeblood of the performance poetry scene and digital technologies galvanising new forms of literary tourism in the city. By unlocking alternative conceptions of value attribution, this book is well-positioned to demonstrate that Midlands

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literary cultures not only produce output which is worthy of critical attention, but furthermore that they are innovating to increase the reach and impact of their important work.

The Midlands as a cultural void The population of the Midlands currently sits just under 11 million. One in six of the UK’s 68 million citizens are therefore Midlanders.42 The book argues that this fact is not reflected by the attention which the region’s cultural output receives. Through their processes of selection and omission, critical accounts of English literature tend to mirror popular opinion, in that they assume the Midlands to be something of a cultural void. This stance is all the more bemusing considering its relatively recent genesis. Historically, the work of Midlands authors such as Shakespeare, George Eliot and Arnold Bennet has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. Why, then, is contemporary writing from the region not afforded equal significance? The problem appears to lie in the reputation – or lack thereof – of the region itself, rather than the literature it produces. This book explores the complexities of the literary landscape and how the Midlands have become a critical blind-spot. In the early 2010s, small steps were made towards redressing this balance, through anthologies such as Celebrate Wha? (2011) and Out of Bounds (2012), both of which provide a Midlands angle on Black and Asian British writing.43 These influential anthologies represented a tidemark in the critical appraisal and public dissemination of Midlands writing. They map a new geography of literature, taking readers on imagined journeys which show a breadth of material beyond London. The editors of Out of Bounds make the following claim for the originality of their collection: it is by moving beyond the bounds of London that this collection stakes its claim to occupy new ground. An earlier generation of settlers and visitors (from McKay to Bennett) strayed only rarely from the English metropolis in their poetry, but recent decades have seen a proliferation of poetry presented from the point of view of the national, regional and local realms beyond London.44

This approach is powerful for the re-evaluation of the nation’s poetic output but it can equally be applied to regional fiction. One potential pitfall when embarking on a study which privileges what Peter Barry calls the ‘loco specific’ – denoting poetry which refers to geographically specific locations – is the danger of specialising beyond the point of wider relevance.45 When considering this delicate balance, recourse to Out of Bounds provides a strong defence of regional literary sensibility: ‘this does not amount to a



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narrowing of vision, the regional as parochial; on the contrary it opens up the counties and countries of Britain to their postcolonial heritage.’ 46 This is a timely and progressive endeavour and one which appears to be slowly gaining traction in British culture. For example, David Olusoga’s historical documentary series Black and British: A Forgotten History which aired on BBC2 in 2016, presents a highly devolved postcolonial perspective on British history.47 This notion of ‘opening up’ can have a liberating effect on approaches to textual selection and appraisal; as the critical lens zooms in geographically, the wider optic simultaneously broadens as we become less fixated upon the hive of literary production and economy which can be found in London.

The North–South divide The Multicultural Midlands sets out to cast regional literature in a new light. The challenge of this reappraisal of Midlands culture is exacerbated by a North–South divide. England is often (mis)understood as comprising two vast, adjacent regions: the North and the South. These regions have no distinct geographical or administrative borders but are defined in fluid ways within popular culture and folk wisdom.48 The perceived differences between North and South are sometimes understood in economic terms, sometimes political, cultural or literary. Within the conceptual framework of this North–South divide, the Midlands are conspicuous only through their absence. Robert Shore has referred to the Midlands as the ‘hyphen’ within the nation’s North–South understanding of its constituent regions.49 While this positions the Midlands as unfavourably ‘stuck in the middle’ of postcolonial Britain, the human impulse to separate out North and South is perhaps more automatic than it is malicious. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel published ‘The Bridge and the Door’ which suggested that humans instinctively ‘separate what is related’ and ‘relate what is separate.’ 50 With such absolute – and, as this book argues, intellectually and critically distorting – categories as North and South, this separation is problematic. It is, however, as Simmel argues, an entirely natural and enduring human trait: ‘Things must first be separate in order to be together. Practically and logically, it would be senseless to relate that which was not separate, or to relate that which in some sense does not remain separate.51 Simmel’s argument transcends the abstract plane of philosophy and refers to logic and practicality; separation is here suggested to be necessary and even desirable, in order to make sense of the world. Although this book uses literature as its primary source material, it contextualises the debate within real life contexts. To test Simmel’s assertion in one such ‘logical’ and ‘practical’ application, take

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the UK’s road network as an example. Traversing the country’s motorways from North to South (or vice versa) will reinforce the notion that the Midlands do not exist, with huge signs declaring ‘THE NORTH’ or ‘THE SOUTH’ up ahead. Rarely is the Midlands referred to as its own discrete entity, running contrary to Simmel’s convincing theory that we as humans frequently separate things apart in order to understand them.52 If Simmel’s assertion were universally applicable, surely Britain would welcome a third, central region to separate out and further delineate the nation? Part of the denial of the Midlands’ autonomy seems to lie in the etymology. The English language often employs constructions which frame the ‘middle’ as average, nondescript or unappealing. For example, the idiom ‘fair to middling’ is defined by the Oxford dictionary as ‘slightly above average.’ 53 Then there is the ultimate expression of mediocrity, ‘middle of the road’, or the frustration of being ‘piggy in the middle’. Few people aspire to peak at ‘middle management’ within a corporate career. Linguistically, the nation seems to denigrate the middle through its use of idiom. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the binary opposition of North–South is so appealing; it cuts out the ‘middle man’ whom we have learnt to distrust through language and cultural discourse. As Robert Shore asserts, ‘the connections made at the verbal level are nothing short of lethal.’ 54 Verbal organisation has real-world effects. A team of researchers at the University of Sheffield have compiled a major study, ‘Changing UK: The Way We Live Now’, which not only reinforces the North–South divide but actualises it along a geographical line and actively denies the validity of the Midlands.55 The study states that ‘the country is best typified as being divided regionally between the North and the South … the idea of a Midlands region adds more confusion than light.’ 56 This dividing line is based on factors such as standardised mortality rates, income and house prices and is drawn diagonally from the Severn Estuary, splitting the Midlands en route to the Humber. By the logic of Dorling et al., Birmingham is in the North, while Leicester is in the South. Geographically, however, the reverse is true: Leicester is actually further North than Birmingham. Culturally, however, both of Dorling et al.’s statements are false. Birmingham and Leicester are uniquely Midlands cities. They have their own diverse populations and distinct identities. While statistics are being used at the national level to suggest a polarised country, writers in the Midlands are quietly working away with little regard for the purported sovereignty of the South or the North. I had the good fortune to interview Leicester author Carol Leeming, who echoes this assertion when speaking about cultural practitioners from the Midlands: ‘They’re from here. And what they write about, or make films about, what shapes them, is from here.’ 57 This kind of belief in the creative potential of the region is one of the key influences behind my research, and I use Frow’s alternative models



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of cultural value to draw attention to the hegemony of the South and the false binary of the North–South divide. One of the aims of this book is therefore to amplify these Midlands voices for critical ears.

Midlands geography Perhaps one of the reasons why the Midlands tends to be overlooked culturally is the landlocked and relatively flat character of its geography. The novelist Ferdinand Dennis’s 1988 travelogue Behind the Front Lines: Journey into Afro Britain offers a postcolonial and post-industrial optic on this landscape.58 In his chapter on Birmingham, Dennis recalls the geographical shifts as he approaches on the train: The uniform flatness of the Midlands landscape contributed to my drowsiness … consequently, much of the journey passed in a nether-world: unexciting blurred images … It was the sight of old, disused engine workshops in Derby which brought me back to the real world. As the countryside resumed, I realised I was feeling apprehensive about my next stop. Birmingham and I were no strangers. I had lived and worked there for almost a year. It had been a profoundly disturbing experience.59

The sharp contrast which Dennis draws between the otherworldliness of the Midlands countryside and its decidedly ‘real’ sites of post-industrial decay, is telling of a cognitive dissonance expressed in the region’s literature. This is a part of the country that is often understood as a liminal space, neither rural picturesque, nor – since the late twentieth century – excelling as an industrial centre. Dennis’s anthropological study delves into the inner city of 1980s’ Handsworth, examining issues of industrial legacy, youth crime and unemployment, and the impact of Rastafarianism. Behind the Frontlines is the book based on a BBC Radio 4 series of the same name, and is just one node in a network of resources which explore how the Midlands has been represented in the public domain. While Behind the Frontlines does achieve a more nuanced appraisal of the post-industrial Midlands than the above excerpt suggests, geography is, however, a recurring theme in negative appraisals of the Midlands and therefore within this book. Interviewing a woman from Chesterfield, Robert Shore highlights how even someone born and raised in Derbyshire, a region dependent on funding from the East Midlands Development Agency, can spurn the notion of belonging to the Midlands and pledge allegiance to the North. Perceptions of Midlands geography are at the heart of this belief: ‘I’m sorry, Robert, but Chesterfield is in the hills, and hills are Northern.’ ‘All of them? Exclusively?’

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The multicultural Midlands

‘All the proper ones, yes. I’m not including those slopes you go up and down when you’re coming into Nottingham, obviously. Sherwood Rise, ha!’ 60

Here the terrain of Nottingham becomes the subject of ridicule. The optic afforded by travel, presumably by car here, gives commentators an opportunity to observe geographical changes as they traverse the region. Just like Ferdinand Dennis above, Shore’s interviewee understands crossing the Midlands to be an intensely negative experience: ‘I took a train from Birmingham to Nottingham a few weeks ago and it nearly undermined my will to live.’ 61 This is all very Larkinesque. Geography is here understood in terms of a hierarchy, with elevated locations deemed literally ‘above’ those closer to sea level. This understanding overlooks the geographical diversity of the Midlands, which can indeed be seen to shift and change as one moves around the region. In looking at literary accounts of Midlands travel and the cultural significance of its train stations, this book obtains a traveller’s perspective, which oscillates between the familiar perspective of the Midlander and the othering gaze of newcomers to the landscape, for example Ferdinand Dennis quoted above. The Midlands transport network is deeply connected to its industrial heritage and consequently its regional identity. Even before World War II, literary accounts of the Midlands have fixated on the region’s transport networks. As far back as 1929, author Josephine Tey was drawing links between the identity of the Midlands and its public transport: Grant came out of the station into the drone and clamour of trams. If he had been asked what represented the Midlands in his mind, he would unhesitatingly have said trams … Grant never heard the far-away peculiar sing of an approaching tramcar without finding himself back in the dead, airless atmosphere of the Midland town where he had been born. The Midlanders did not hide away their trams in back streets; they trailed them proudly through their chiefest thoroughfares, partly from braggadocio, partly from a misplaced idea of utility.62

From the ‘dead atmosphere’ of the Midlands, the ‘misplaced utility’ of its transport, the ‘slopes’ masquerading as hills and as a ‘nether-world’ of ‘unexciting blurred images’, both fictional and non-fictional accounts of the region are often far from flattering. In his poem ‘Birmingham’, Louis MacNeice turned equally critical attention on Midlands trams, which ‘like vast sarcophagi move’.63 The lexis pertaining to death appears in some way a commentary on a slower pace of life but resoundingly carries negative connotations for the Midlands region. It is my intention to demonstrate that such misconceptions are not solely inspired by actual empirical observations but more rather demonstrate a cultural bias that makes commentators see the worst



Introduction: ‘a so what? sort of place’

15

in the Midlands. The firm self-identity of the North – although much-derided and parochialised – and the Capital-confidence of London can be held partly accountable for this denigration of the Midlands.

Overview of the book Nottingham: writing the ‘rebel’ city Chapter 1, ‘Performance poetry, COVID-19 and the new “public sphere”’, explores the fluid, adaptable nature of the art form and explores potential responses to the disruption of the pandemic. It documents the Nottingham spoken word culture and positions this within wider debates about class, literary value and the physicality of the performance. It studies the work of Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard – a Nottingham poet of dual Irish and Jamaican heritage – to understand how grassroots literature carves out its own spaces; how various forms of literary value are ascribed; and to examine the complex networks of gatekeepers and valuing communities which constitute contemporary performance poetry cultures in Nottingham. Poetry has often been the preserve of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’, considered an exclusive form of high art which requires middle-class credentials, such as a degree education or Received Pronunciation, in order to gain access. This chapter uses the seismic disruption of COVID-19 to map a new, more egalitarian ‘public sphere’ in which democratic principles of curation and delivery enable increasingly broad and diverse audiences to access the art form. Chapter 2, ‘#rebelnotts: literary tourism in Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham’, interrogates the ways in which digital technology is being creatively deployed to augment Sillitoe’s fiction and reposition his oeuvre as a body of interactive working-class writing in which the reader actualises the text in real time, on the streets of Nottingham. It examines the innovative ways in which Nottingham literature is marketed as rebellious in a bid to strengthen support for the city’s literary heritage, attract visitors and generate much-needed revenue. In an increasingly screen-based digital world, literary tourism is a refreshingly grounded cultural activity that deserves scholarly attention and regional funding. Perhaps considering the practice to be low-brow, many academics are quick to dismiss it in public, while indulging privately.64 In Nottingham, however, literary tourism is mapping exciting new routes through the city, using innovative technologies. This timely chapter coincides with Nottingham’s newly designated UNESCO City of Literature status and public efforts to celebrate the tradition of rebellion within Nottingham’s literary cultures, as galvanised by the hashtag #rebelnotts.

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The multicultural Midlands

Leicester: the ‘model’ multicultural city Chapter 3, ‘Piri piri chicken: “demotic cosmopolitanism” in contemporary Leicester’, looks firstly at an East-African Asian chicken shop to understand how history, heritage and humour intertwine in everyday multicultural Leicester. It then turns to the poetry of Leicester writer Carol Leeming and examines the ways in which her work complicates official representations of multiculturalism broadcast to the world.65 The stereotyped tropes of ‘steelbands, saris and samosas’ are challenged as Leicester texts are read in light of theoretical alternatives to civic multiculturalism.66 Chapter 4, ‘#WeNeedDiverseBooks: diversity in Leicester’s Young Adult fiction’, further develops the critique of official discourses of multicultural Leicester and applies it to the genre of Young Adult fiction. The writer Bali Rai is from the city and has a global reputation. He is signed to Penguin Random House and his debut novel has been translated into 11 languages worldwide. My interviews with Rai and close reading of his novels feed into broader debates about representations of diversity – whether in terms of race, gender or socioeconomic status – in books for young people. Rai’s fiction directly concerns the lived experience of young people living in Leicester and reflects upon how some of the challenges associated with multiculturalism impact on their lives. Leicester author Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ (1982) was the best-selling novel of the 1980s and forms the basis of Chapter 5, ‘“Leicester, Leicester/ Fester, fester”’: at home with Adrian Mole’.67 Through close reading of Townsend’s debut novel, I demonstrate that Leicester’s apparent ‘image problem’ has been both an obstacle and a boon for regional writers. Using little-known archival materials from Sue Townsend’s personal collection, this chapter unearths a secret history of the Secret Diary, to reveal how the city was erased from manuscript drafts and replaced with a nameless ‘anyplace’. This bland suburban backdrop for Adrian Mole’s comic exploits raises questions about national and regional identity, particularly when the teenage diarist starts to document the increasingly multicultural character of 1980s’ Leicester. This chapter takes innovative approaches to reading a well-loved text, and is among the first in-depth critical assessments of Sue Townsend, an iconic Midlands writer.

Birmingham: (re)building the second city With an ambitious post-war rebuilding project, and a subsequent propensity for tearing down and rebuilding, Birmingham has a reputation for foreboding concrete structures and a tangle of motorways. This has led some critics to see Britain’s second city as architecturally and culturally anonymous.



Introduction: ‘a so what? sort of place’

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Chapter 6 interrogates the notion of Birmingham as a ‘non-place’, seeking clarity on where this (mis)conception originates and emphasising the city’s unique creative aesthetics. It achieves this through close readings and original interviews with Costa prize-winning Irish-Brummie author Catherine O’Flynn. Her fictional representations of Birmingham are considered in parallel with the ‘grand narratives’ of the city as it developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, in order to understand how the personal sub-narratives of the city are both critical of, and informed by, the bigger vision. Chapter 7, ‘“Double vision” in Handsworth art’, explores how African Caribbean writers have written the urban landscape in original, political and often surreal ways. One creative response to dissatisfaction with one’s surroundings is to see within them an ‘elsewhere’ place of ancestral belonging, super-imposing layered images in a creative representation. This chapter explores poetry, art and music to better understand a Pan-African perspective on the Midlands articulated by Black creatives from the 1970s to the twentyfirst century. Alternative spatial conceptions of the inner-city are unlocked through readings that interrogate how racism and colonialism have shaped Handsworth, and how the place has, in turn, birthed waves of globally recognised art.

The West Midlands: from Shakespeare to Syal The final part of the book heads West to Wolverhampton, Dudley and the surrounding Black Country to unearth a literary history of industry, immigration and the cult of celebrity. Chapter 8, ‘“Pathos, politics and paratha”:68 re-reading West Midlands, South Asian literature’, examines the extent to which Midlands writers such as Meera Syal, Sathnam Sanghera and Huma Qureshi have been read in a fetishising context for marketing purposes. The title quote ‘Pathos, politics and paratha’ was chosen for its evocation of – and ultimately its deviation from – the ‘steelbands, saris and samosas’ cliche of a superficial kind of multiculturalism, particularly prevalent during the 1997–2001 period of New Labour governance in the UK.69 A celebratory mode of public discourse around multiculturalism at the time would elevate a select few Black and Asian voices into the literary mainstream. The chapter interrogates the legacy of so-called ‘3S multiculturalism’ by analysing how critical reviews have shifted their tone over time and whether these shifts mirror broader societal attitudes to multiculturalism. The chapter unpicks the entangled, fascinating relationships between the Midlands, its writers, the publishing industry, the book-buying public, and the multicultural identity politics at the core of British nationhood.

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The multicultural Midlands

Chapter 9, ‘The great “talent drain” of the West Midlands: Lenny Henry, Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera’ analyses the push and pull factors which cause creative people to relocate to London. While a select few West Midlands writers have gone on to achieve widespread acclaim and recognition within a London-centric literary infrastructure, some creatives from the region feel the local cultural ecosystem is not conducive to what educational psychologist Carol Dweck calls a ‘growth mindset’.70 (Mis)perceptions of the region as lacking in cultural prowess may in fact have real-world consequences for those Midlanders seeking careers in the creative industries – not only with regards scant external funding but also the extent to which personal advancement may be interpreted negatively at the local level. It is not the intention of this book to offer conclusive or authoritative statements as to the exact nature and characteristics of each constituent city’s literary culture, let alone the entire Midlands region as a cultural entity. However, in choosing a cross section of case studies for each major city, I offer new insights into the cultural, social, economic and historical facets of an overlooked part of the world. In doing so, I position my work alongside new creative anthologies outlined above and aim to make a contribution to the critical reassessment of a denigrated region which in fact produces a wealth of valuable cultural output.

Notes 1 Owen Sheers (ed.), A Poet’s Guide to Britain (London: Penguin, 2009), p. 85. 2 Ibid. 3 Phillip Larkin, ‘I Remember, I Remember’, in Sheers (ed.), p. 35. 4 Louis MacNeice, ‘Birmingham’, in Sheers (ed.), p. 36. 5 Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Stafford Afternoons’, in Sheers (ed.), p. 91. 6 Sheers (ed.), p. xxii. 7 Irene Hardill, Paul Benneworth, Mark Baker and Leslie Budd, The Rise of the English Regions? (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 173. 8 Sathnam Sanghera, ‘Top 10 Books of the Midlands’, Guardian, 9 July 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/09/top-10-midlands-stories-caitlin-moransathnam-sanghera (Accessed 6 November 2019). 9 Office for National Statistics, ‘Census Output Area Population Estimates – East and West Midlands, England’, www.ons.gov.uk/ (Accessed 25 Jan 2021). 10 Jonathan Walker, ‘Why the East Midlands and West Midlands Must Join Forces’, Birmingham Mail, 4 October 2016, www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlandsnews/east-midlands-west-midlands-must-11974315 (Accessed 6 November 2019). 11 Timothy B. Powell, ‘All Colors Flow into Rainbows and Nooses: The Struggle to Define Academic Multiculturalism’, Cultural Critique, 55 (2003), 152–181 (152).



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12 Steven Vertovec and Susanne Wessendorf, The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 2. 13 Stuart Hall, ‘The Multicultural Question’, Pavis Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Open University, 19 October 2000, www.open.ac.uk/library/digitalarchive/program/video:INHO10114 (Accessed 20 July 2022). 14 ‘Multiculturalism is Dead’, Daily Mail, 7 July 2006; Alex Denney, ‘Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and the Death of the Multicultural Dream’, Dazed, 16 June 2018, www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/40387/1/massive-attack-mezzanine-20thbirthday-retrospective (Accessed 23 May 2021). 15 Vertovec and Wessendorf. 16 Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, ‘Too Late to Turn Back Now’ (Platinum, 1970). 17 Steven Vertovec, ‘Super-Diversity and its Implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30:6 (2007), 1024–1054 (1025). 18 Dave Gunning, Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), p. 113; Meera Syal, Anita and Me (London: Flamingo, 1996). 19 Gunning, p. 13; Stuart Hall, ‘New Ethnicities’, in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 447. 20 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 21 Ibid. 22 Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘I Have a Scheme’, in Jackie Kay, James Procter and Gemma Robinson (eds), Out of Bounds: British Black and Asian Poets (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2012), pp. 211–212. 23 Zephaniah, ‘I Have a Scheme’, pp. 211–212. 24 Melanie Phillips, ‘The Country That Hates Itself’, Canada National Post, 16 June 2006. 25 Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 75. 26 BBC News, ‘City of Culture: Leicester “Disappointed but Defiant”’, 20 November 2013, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-25014214 (Accessed 1 September 2015). 27 Lynne Pearce, Corinne Fowler and Robert Crawshaw, Postcolonial Manchester: Diaspora Space and the Devolution of Literary Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 16. 28 Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 4. 29 Ibid., p. 3. 30 Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 181. 31 Brah, p. 190. 32 Fred D’Aguiar, ‘Have You Been Here Long? Black Poetry in Britain’, in Robert Hampson and Peter Barry (eds), New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 51–71 (p. 70).

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33 James Procter, ‘The Postcolonial Everyday’, New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, 58 (2006), 62–80. 34 Huggan, p. 24. 35 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, After Multiculturalism (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2000). 36 Corinne Fowler, ‘A Tale of Two Novels: Developing a Devolved Approach to Black British Writing’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 43:75 (2008), 75–94 (76). 37 John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 38 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 42. 39 Frow, p. 1. 40 Ibid. 41 Frow, p. 154. 42 Office for National Statistics ‘Dataset Finder – MYEDE Population Estimates for High Level Areas’, Office for National Statistics, www.ons.gov.uk/ (Accessed 18 April 2016). 43 Eric Doumerc and Roy McFarlane (eds), Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Middlesborough: Smokestack, 2011); Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds). 44 Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds), p. 15. 45 Peter Barry, Contemporary British Poetry and the City (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 3. 46 Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds), p. 15. 47 David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (London: BBC, 2016). 48 Helen M. Jewell, The North–South Divide: The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994). 49 Robert Shore, Bang in the Middle: A Journey Through the Midlands – The Most Underrated Place on Earth (London: The Friday Project, 2014). 50 Georg Simmel, ‘The Bridge and the Door’, in Chiara Briganti and Kathy Mezei (eds), The Domestic Space Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 249–251 (p. 249). 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 ‘Fair to Middling’, Oxford Dictionary, www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ american_english/fair-to-middling?q=fair+to+middling (Accessed 31 May 2021). 54 Shore, p. 12. 55 Danny Dorling, Dan Vickers, Bethan Thomas, John Pritchard and Dimitris Ballas, ‘Changing UK: The Way We Live Now’, Social and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) group, University of Sheffield, December 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/01_12_08_changinguk.pdf (Accessed 21 June 2016). 56 Dorling et al. 57 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 58 Ferdinand Dennis, Behind the Front Lines: Journey into Afro Britain (London: Victor Gollancz, 1988).

59 60 61 62

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21

Dennis, p. 90. Shore, pp. 37–38. Ibid., p. 38. Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue (Killer in the Crowd), Project Gutenburg Australia: [1929]; 2014, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900761h.html (Accessed 2 May 2016). 63 Louis MacNeice, ‘Birmingham’, in Sheers (ed.), p. 37. 64 Nicola Watson, The Literary Tourist (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 5. 65 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 66 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. 67 Sue Townsend, ‘Early Typescript Material Related to the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾’, ST/1/1/2, nd, University of Leicester Special Collections. 68 Mellisa Katsoulis, ‘Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera, Review’, Sunday Telegraph, 20 September 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/ fictionreviews/10318690/Marriage-Material-by-Sathnam-Sanghera-review.html (Accessed 27 August 2020). 69 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. 70 Carol Dweck, Mindset (London: Robinson, 2012).

Nottingham: writing the ‘rebel’ city

Nottingham: introduction

This chapter aims to shed light upon the post-war context of Nottingham’s multicultural, working-class communities, before exploring their dynamic, interactive and accessible literary creations. Particular emphasis is placed on African Caribbean and white British authors through readings of selected Nottingham texts. This introduction contextualises ‘Notts’ cultural expression as diverse as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958); a digital app that immerses walkers in the streets of Sillitoe’s fiction; the Afrocentric (out) spoken word collective ‘Blackdrop’; and a publicly funded campaign to celebrate the city’s literary rebels. By mapping a brief microhistory at the intersection of Nottingham’s white working-class and African Caribbean communities, the chapter explores how commonalities and differences of experience manifest in the city’s cohesive, yet heterogenous range of literary voices. It is important to note that there are many other large ethnic populations in Nottingham; at the 2011 census, 11 percent of Nottingham’s population was of Asian or British Asian heritage.1 However, in order to make the case for the connectivity of contemporary Black British poetry and Alan Sillitoe’s working-class fiction, a necessarily selective approach is applied in this specific context. The idiosyncrasies of Nottingham’s literature cannot be claimed to exist in isolation from regional, national and global forces yet they form part of a culture which is proudly independent and uniquely Midlands. Situated in the East Midlands, Nottingham is a post-industrial city with an ethnically and culturally diverse population. It was designated a ‘driver city’ by New Labour, with the intent to ‘drive’ wealth Northward beyond the South-East and create a more egalitarian, economically devolved nation.2 However, the austerity politics which followed the 2008 economic crash prevented the realisation of this goal. In economic terms, Nottingham is the seventh wealthiest city in the UK and yet it also ranks the eleventh most deprived district in England in the 2019 Indices of Multiple Deprivation.3 These statistics paint a picture of a city which, in financial terms at least, is deeply divided. This division is embedded in Nottingham myth. Robin

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Nottingham: writing the ‘rebel’ city

Hood’s mission to ‘steal from the rich and give to the poor’ was born of social inequality. Despite the prevalence of this myth in the popular imagination, such redistribution of wealth has yet to materialise in Nottingham. Yet the myth remains embedded in the city and its literature. Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard, a working-class Nottingham poet of Irish-Jamaican heritage, riffs on these themes in her poem ‘Take the Girl Out of Notts But You Can’t Take Notts Out of the Girl!’: Avoiding the Sherriff and his axe: I can’t afford my council tax! My house could never be Nottingham’s castle But I sit, happy, on my throne, without hassle.

The challenging situation faced by many residents is here rendered playful by the strong masculine rhyme of ‘axe’ and ‘tax’ and Hubbard emphasises that her serene, regal stance – ‘happy on my throne’ – is not dependent upon economic wealth. The poem elsewhere refers to Robin as a ‘hoody’, satirising the media hysteria of the early 2000s about hoods and anti-social behaviour, and places Hubbard’s work in a regional mythology of rebellion. This chapter demonstrates how low-income areas, with their links to industry, Commonwealth migration, trade unionism and working-class solidarity, produce literature which reaches far beyond their immediate surroundings. To be clear, I refute the correlation often drawn between poverty and creativity – see Hans Abbing’s Why Are Artists Poor? That being said, lower-income, multicultural areas such as St Ann’s, Meadows, Radford and Lenton certainly punch above their weight when it comes to prolific creativity.4 Producing creative work on their own terms and in their own authentic voices, Nottingham writers such as Hubbard, Panya Banjoko and Bridie Squires are unafraid to tackle the literary establishment head on, meanwhile carving out their own platforms and building their own diverse audiences. While Sillitoe’s working-class protagonists roamed the streets of Lenton, a once-thriving inner-city industrial district to the West of the city centre, it was St Ann’s to the East which became symbolic of the gulf between the rich and the poor. Historically situated next to the manufacturing hub of the Lace Market, St Ann’s provided low-income workers for the wealthy lace merchants. Today, it has a diverse population and is home to a wellestablished African Caribbean community. For many immigrants to Nottingham, St Ann’s has offered a starting point. Low rents have made it possible to build up a business with very little, ultimately leading to the possibility of relocating once financially able. For many others this trajectory has not been possible or indeed desirable.5 Strong family networks tie people



Nottingham: introduction

27

to places and in Nottingham urban myth there is ‘something in the water’ in the natural valley on which the estate was built.6 According to Experian’s 2019 profile, the area comprises predominantly ‘families with limited resources who have to budget to make ends meet’ and ‘single people privately renting low cost homes for the short term.’ 7 In the early twenty-first century, St Ann’s became associated with gun crime, as gangs clashed violently with rivals from the Meadows area. Writing in 2015, McKenzie observes how austerity, race and structural inequality have shaped the area: Loïc Wacquant might call St Ann’s today a ‘hyperghetto’, a place where those whose labour has no value live, and the buffer against the negative effects of poverty and class racism have declined through the state’s management of the poor.8

The intersection of race and class play out in the stories which emerge throughout this chapter. While the names of inner-city regions of Nottingham have been used as by-words for crime and disorder in the mainstream press, I argue that these dismissive representations are manifestations of the ‘class racism’ which McKenzie identifies. Writing off inner-city areas based on the actions of a small minority demonstrates a lack of awareness of, or an unwillingness to see, the warmth, humour and creativity which thrives despite – not because of – poverty and a lack of opportunity. Nottingham’s Black presence dates back to at least the seventeenth century, with pioneering Black entrepreneur George Africanus (1763–1834) being a notable citizen. During World War II, Nottingham was the nearest urban centre to rural training grounds where many Commonwealth soldiers were stationed. The city therefore became a familiar choice of settlement for many Windrush-era African Caribbean migrants, who numbered approximately 2,500 by 1958. Within a Midlands microcosm, the tense inter-cultural relations mirrored broader racist attitudes embedded in colonialism. As Mike and Trevor Phillips assert, ‘at the start of the fifties racial superiority had been an incontestable plank in the platform of ideas about the Empire and imperial destiny.’ 9 As Nottingham confronted the reality of its own multiculturalism, the ideal of a shared Commonwealth citizenship was largely ignored in favour of a reactionary response which sought to emphasise the ‘otherness’ of recent arrivals. Racially motivated crime against Black people was rife in 1950s Nottingham but 1958 saw a necessary resistance.10 Migrants faced a hostile environment characterised by exclusion from housing, employment and social life. To make matters worse, gangs of Teddy Boys wielding chains and knives represented the literal ‘cutting edge of a popular consensus’.11 These besuited and greased-back working-class white youths perpetrated routine violence against African Caribbean and South Asian

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Nottingham: writing the ‘rebel’ city

migrants. Influenced by Hollywood movies which glorified mob violence, Nottingham’s ‘Teds’ contributed to a tense, unwelcoming atmosphere, which culminated in the racially motivated riot of Saturday 23 August 1958.12 This date is infamous within Nottingham’s local history but is often overshadowed in post-war British history by disturbances in Notting Hill. Locally, the deprivation of Nottingham’s inner-city St Ann’s region became a catalyst for escalating conflict. Migrant communities had had enough. As Scobie reports in the Tribune of 5 September 1958: I saw small, cooped up terrace houses with decaying brick-work, broken windows and inadequate sanitary arrangements. In these hovels which are due to be pulled down under Nottingham’s slum clearance scheme, two thousand coloured [sic] tenants live in crowded, unhealthy conditions.13

These conditions form the grim backdrop against which the St Ann’s riots unfolded. In 1958, Nottingham was facing a local recession and factories were closing. Deepening deprivation appears to have exacerbated ‘fierce competition’ between hostile whites and the mostly male Jamaican migrants who sought the same jobs, housing and sometimes the same prospective partners.14 The ‘spark’ which ignited unrest on Saturday 23 August was an incident at the St Ann’s Inn. Two Jamaican men were socialising with white women. As they left, they were insulted by local Teddy Boys. The altercation continued outside the venue and within an hour, there were reportedly 1,000 people on the streets. According to the Nottingham Evening Post, ‘the whole place was like a slaughterhouse, and many people were stabbed.’ 15 While Teddy Boys had routinely escalated violence by brandishing knives and chains, eyewitness accounts suggest that on the night of the disturbances, they were met with comparable force. A Jamaican-born migrant to Nottingham, Calvin ‘Wally’ Wallace recalls that ‘a lot of [Teddy Boys] got “cut up” in St Ann’s during the riots’.16 So shocking was the impact on all sectors of the community, that locally the event marked a race-relations watershed. Tensions had reached boiling point and de-escalation was essential. Caribbean communities began to further organise and diplomatically assert their presence in a contested space. The subsequent disturbances in Notting Hill would eclipse those in St Ann’s in terms of media coverage, although both afforded opportunities for critics of multiculturalism – though it would not have been called that at the time – to scapegoat Black people. Collectively, the incidents of 1958 may have been instrumental in mobilising far-right elements within the British political ecosystem, and thus paving the way for the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962. Such an interpretation is flawed, however, for its replication of the prejudices which led to widespread unrest in the first place.



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Take, for example, Hilde Marchant’s 1956 Picture Post article, ‘ThirtyThousand Colour Problems’, which frames African Caribbean migrants as the ‘problem’ in a racist society.17 Salman Rushdie calls this ‘the worst, most insidious stereotype’, countering that ‘racism of course is not our problem … it is yours.’ 18 However, the rhetoric of scapegoating was persistent in the post-war Midlands, notably deployed by Enoch Powell, a decade later. Oswald George Powe was a Jamaican of Chinese African descent who arrived in the UK in 1943 while serving in the armed forces. As a trade unionist Powe was active in the AWIU (Afro-West Indian Union) and was acutely aware of the ‘divide and rule’ tactics deployed by the ruling elite to engender division among the working class. His 1956 pamphlet ‘Don’t Blame the Blacks’ is a valuable document of the struggles for class and race justice in Nottingham and expounds his desire that ‘coloured [sic] and white workers must join in the common struggle against capitalism.’ 19 In St Ann’s, the command room of this struggle was the radical book shop which Pat Jordan kept at 4 Dane Street. As Riley recalls, ‘trusted punters were given access to the complete works of Marx, Lenin, Engels, Trotsky and Castro, their books held back and half-wrapped, like pornography.’ 20 The back room was where the duplicator machine whirred constantly in the production of radical pamphlets. Many of these aimed to foster working-class solidarity across racial boundaries and the bookshop provided a safe space to facilitate progressive reading and conversation. While instances of intra-community organisation are well documented, achieving a degree of cultural autonomy was essential for the endurance of Nottingham’s resilient African Caribbean community. One strategy deployed was the building of an infrastructure which would create opportunities for entertainment and socialising through platforms such as the affirmatively named WINA (West Indian National Association), later renamed the ACNA (African Caribbean National Arts) Centre. As a vibrant community hub, the ACNA has hosted countless social events and exhibitions. It also serves as a music venue, hosing local and international sound systems, artists and reggae bands. The sound system culture of Nottingham has its roots in the fractious environment of 1950s’ St Ann’s, Radford and Meadows. The sound system owner and operator, who went by the name of ‘Doctor’, draws a direct link between his experiences of racism and the communitybuilding power of sound system culture: Inna di fifties it was terrible … teddy bwoys dem … oh God it was terrible … riot … Oh! Believe you me, it was terrible … an’ I said ‘alright, build a music’ [sound system], 1957, and I said ‘alright, I want this music, to get everybody to hear that, the Black and the white come together’, and that’s where I start from. My sound weh I build was called Count Melody, oh yeah, that’s my sound!21

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The contrast between the hostile street environment and the relative safety of the unlicensed ‘blues parties’ kept in private residences, in which sound systems such as Count Melody, V Rocket, Sir Clifton and later Quantro and Top Notch would perform, is a poignant example of how space was contested and divided up in Nottingham. In Sonja Niaah’s words, the dance is a ‘geography of refuge’ for sound system fans and ascribes them a form of agency, if only temporarily. The dance ‘has a purpose onto which the power of the gathering/group is centred: it attracts patrons (increases in appeal and effect) and therefore marshals power onto itself.’ 22 With vulgar displays of power in the form of white supremacy being commonplace in 1950s’ Nottingham, the need for safe spaces of solidarity and relaxation became urgent. In Doctor’s account above, the sound system is built with the intention of bringing people together across cultures and shows a commitment to multiculturalism which was not upheld by mainstream white society in 1957. As I argue in ‘Rebel Music in the Rebel City: The Performance Geography of the Nottingham “Blues Party”, 1957–1987’, the playing of loud, bass-heavy reggae and lovers’ rock has proved controversial in the city, often interpreted as a rebellious act.23 While Nottingham has a long history of rebellion and publicly celebrates rebel figures such as Robin Hood, Ned Ludd, Lord Byron and Alan Sillitoe, this rebel spirit is not universally appreciated when it is demonstrated by the entrepreneurial migrants who ‘kept blues’ – house parties with dancing, food and drink – in their homes. Cultural expression through ‘rebel music’ is just one facet of the multicultural ‘diaspora space’ which evolved in Nottingham throughout the latter part of the twentieth century.24 Some Caribbean migrants chose the more formal route of judicial or political careers, striving to effect positive change from within extant systems of governance. It was ironically the extrajudicial actions of the St Ann’s riots which would set in motion state-endorsed appointments of African Caribbean heritage officials in Nottingham. As the conflict spread, it caught international attention, resonating with struggles for racial justice internationally. The Jamaican Premier Norman Manley visited Nottingham on 10 September 1958 to re-assert the rights of his diasporic people from the podium of Nottingham’s grand Council House: ‘West Indians are here to stay! They have constitutional rights. They are British subjects with British passports!’ 25 The 1962 appointment by Nottingham City Council of Eric Irons – Britain’s first Black magistrate – suggested some progress, at least on a representational level. Irons played a pivotal role in bridging Black communities, unions and employers. Negotiating with the Nottingham and District Trades Council, for example, enabled Irons to make some progress with regards the exclusionary recruitment strategies common in Nottingham’s once-booming textiles industry and on Nottingham City Transport’s buses.26



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Dr Desmond Wilson was Nottingham’s first African Caribbean Lord Mayor from 2002 to 2003 and used the powers of his office to diminish prejudice within local government: Nottingham is a multicultural city. When requests came into the Civic Office from diverse communities, officers used to accept or ignore some requests. As mayor, I was not prepared to have this. I felt that there was not appropriate recognition across all sections of the community.27

This principled approach to office enabled Wilson to negotiate representation not only for his own African Caribbean community but for all those who might be disadvantaged by institutional racism in the local authority. Pioneering figureheads such as Irons and Wilson were instrumental in a gradual, yet still incomplete, integration of African Caribbean people into positions of authority in the Midlands. For female members of this community the struggle for representation has been compounded by the intersection of racism and misogyny, termed ‘misogynoir’ by Moya Bailey and Trudy.28 While this term has entered common circulation online in recent years, it is important to recognise its point of origin, or risk duplicating processes which the authors deem ‘plagiarism’ and the cultural erasure of Black women’s intellectual property. As Bailey states: ‘naming misogynoir was about noting both an historical anti-Black misogyny and a problematic intraracial gender dynamic that had wider implications in popular culture.’ 29 In the halls of Nottingham’s local governance, this dynamic plays out in the slower rate of appointment of Black female representatives. In England the average councillor is 59, white and male.30 Merlita Bryan, an African Caribbean woman and Lord Mayor of Nottingham 2013–2014, therefore saw her position in office as ‘proof enough that changes can and will come.’ 31 Progressing from a background in trade unions, Bryan initially became a councillor ‘to do something for my community here where I live.’ 32 Given that nationally only 14 percent of councillors are from Black, Asian or Ethnic minority backgrounds, the achievements of public officials like Irons, Wilson and Bryan in Nottingham are all the more significant.33 With the rapid decline of Nottingham’s hosiery and light manufacturing industries at the end of the century, employment for many African Caribbean workers was sought in sectors such as mining, healthcare and transport.34 Workplace conditions were often less than favourable, with long hours, low wages and institutional racism disproportionately affecting people of colour. Historian Norma Gregory has undertaken extensive research on Nottinghamshire miners of African Caribbean heritage. Through oral histories, curated exhibitions and published works, Gregory portrays an overlooked community of workers, whose efforts ensured local people had fuel sufficient to live. The most prominent example of industrial action

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in late twentieth-century Nottingham, the Miner’s Strike of 1984–1985 was supported by both Black and white miners, although it was arguably harder for Black miners to turn down paid work, due to the socio-economic pressures placed on them by a systemically racist society. As Jamaican miner Calvin ‘Wally’ Wallace recalls, ‘the men who did not work and were on strike lost their homes … the man who took them out on strike still had his home well secured.’ 35 This injustice impacted all those on strike, yet research such as the ‘Digging Deep’ project undertaken by Gregory shows us that while miners such as those at Gedling Colliery may all have been ‘brothers beneath the surface’, Nottinghamshire’s Black miners experienced racial as well as class prejudice in an already intense, dangerous working environment. Despite facing many challenges, African Caribbean communities became an integral part of Nottingham society and numbered nearly 4,000 by the 1991 census. In 2011, this figure had risen to 9,382 for those identifying as Black Caribbean and a further 12,166 identifying as mixed/dual-heritage white and Black Caribbean. Out of a total Nottingham City population of 305,680, 7.1 percent had at least one parent identifying as African Caribbean at the 2011 census.36 This fact would have been difficult to comprehend during the tensions of 1958 and demonstrates how far the community has come through organising, governing and defending their own rights and interests. In charting this microhistory of just one thread of Nottingham’s twentiethcentury history, I hope to have emphasised the interconnectivity of community narratives and demonstrated commonalities which form a starting point for the development of working-class literary voices in Nottingham.

Notes 1 Nottingham Insight, ‘Ward Headlines – Ethnicity – Nottingham City’, nd, nottinghaminsight.org.uk/research-areas/census-2011/ (Accessed 29 May 2021). 2 Lisa McKenzie, Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain (Bristol: Policy Press, 2015), p. 21. 3 Nottingham Insight, ‘Further information about Nottingham’s population’, nd, https://nottinghaminsight.org.uk/population/ (Accessed 25 March 2021). 4 Hans Abbing, Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002). 5 McKenzie, p. 31. 6 Ibid., p. 24. 7 Nottingham Insight, ‘St Ann’s – Ward Profile 2020’, www.nottinghaminsight.org.uk/d/ aSKEVvO (Accessed 29 May 2021).



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8 McKenzie, pp. 24–25. 9 Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 164. 10 Phillips and Phillips, p. 166; Norma Gregory, Jamaicans in Nottingham: Narratives and Reflections, Kindle edn (Hertford: Hansib, 2015), location 150. 11 Phillips and Phillips, p. 167. 12 Gregory, location 345. 13 Edward Scobie, Tribune, 5 September 1958. Cited in Phillips and Phillips, Windrush, p. 167. 14 Phillips and Phillips, p. 166; McKenzie, p. 33. 15 Nottingham Evening Post, 25 August 1958. Cited in McKenzie, p. 33. 16 Gregory, location 1004. 17 Hilde Marchant, ‘Thirty-Thousand Colour Problems’, Picture Post, Hulton’s National Weekly, 9 June 1956, 28–29, 38. 18 Salman Rushdie, quoted in Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Ravi Bhavnani, ‘Racism and Resistance in Britain’, in David Coates, Gordon Johnston and Ray Bush (eds), A Socialist Anatomy of Britain (Oxford: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 146–159. 19 George Powe, Don’t Blame the Blacks (Nottingham: Afro-West Indian Union, 1956), p. 8. 20 Sylvia Riley, cited in John Baird, ‘Literary Location #86: St Ann’s’, Nottingham: UNESCO City of Literature, 8 January 2021, https://nottinghamcityofliterature.com/ blog/literary-location-86-st-anns (Accessed 5 April 2021). 21 Doctor, interviewed by Michael McMillan for Rockers, Lovers and Soulheads: Sound Systems Back in da Day (Nottingham: New Art Exchange, 2015). 22 Sonjah Stanley Niaah, DanceHall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2010), p. xvii. 23 Tom Kew, ‘Rebel Music in the Rebel City: The Performance Geography of the Nottingham “Blues Party”, 1957–1987’, in William ‘Lez’ Henry and Matthew Worley (eds), Narratives from Beyond the UK Reggae Bassline: The System is Sound (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). 24 Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 181. 25 Quoted in Gregory, location 351. 26 Denise Amos, ‘Black Community History’, 20 July 2008, www.nottsheritagegateway. org.uk/people/blackcommunity.htm (Accessed 5 April 2021). 27 Quoted in Gregory, location 370. 28 Moya Bailey and Trudy, ‘On Misogynoir: Citation, Erasure, and Plagiarism’, Feminist Media Studies, 18:4 (2018). DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395. 29 Moya Bailey and Trudy, 1. 30 Local Government Association, ‘National Census of Local Authority Councillors 2018’, www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Councillors%27%20 Census%202018%20-%20report%20FINAL.pdf (Accessed 5 April 2021). 31 Quoted in Gregory, location 193. 32 Ibid., location 1562.

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33 Heba Yousef, ‘Data from Operation Black Vote’, 2019, https://cbjstar.co.uk/ 2019/05/31/meet-the-nottingham-city-councillors-paving-the-way-for-bamerepresentation/ (Accessed 5 April 2021). 34 Gregory. 35 Quoted in Gregory, location 924. 36 Amos.

1 Performance poetry, COVID-19 and the new ‘public sphere’ 1

The introduction of social distancing raises urgent questions for performance poetry: where does the art form now belong; how does it respond to space; and can it be recreated digitally? Ultimately, finding robust answers to these types of questions will be instrumental in mapping a new public sphere for performance poetry – one which is appropriately funded, egalitarian and progressive. In order to unpick some of these questions, it is valuable to first interrogate what exactly the ‘performance’ prefix means in the context of performance poetry, and what happens when the physicality of the poem is removed. At the time of writing, the ecosystem in which performance poetry once thrived is cordoned off until further notice. Unless we understand exactly what the unique appeal of the medium is, along with which factors have helped or hindered its development, it will be difficult to reconstruct and regrow. The exaggerated movement implied by the verb ‘to perform’ (in contrast with simply reading a poem) is something that Jamaican-born, long-time Leicesterbased poet Jean Breeze was careful to disassociate herself from. She recalls the disappointment of one programmer at a ‘very English event’ when she turned down the offer of an extra-long microphone cable, intended for her to leap around the stage with.2 The promoter had a set of expectations as to what a poetry performance entailed, yet these were incongruent with the artist’s own unique style. This small example is telling of a wider ignorance of the nuances of the genre, which, when extrapolated to the national level, fails to convert the validation of small-scale ‘valuing communities’ into wider critical recognition.3 Expectations based upon stereotyping can limit the reach and credibility of performance poetry, or ‘spoken word’ as it is often known. While the art form can utilise theatrics and dynamic movement, this is only one facet to a mode of expression which is as diverse as the people who communicate through it. If performance poetry is not compelled to be dynamic or to actively use the performance space, how does it differentiate itself from simply poetry read aloud? According to London-based agency Apples and Snakes,

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‘performance poetry means reading or declaiming poetry in a way that acknowledges the presence of an audience. This can be anything from a bit of eye-contact to fully blown histrionics.’ 4 In Breeze’s microphone cable example, the programmer was clearly expecting the latter. While there are reductive assumptions at play, this scenario touches upon a grain of truth with regards how audiences interact with a performance. The spatial, dynamic aspects bring a unique dimension to the experience. But how does the physicality of performance poetry translate to digital space? While a long microphone cable might allow the poet to move around the stage and engage a ‘live’ audience, such dynamism might be lost via web broadcast or pre-recorded poetry performance. Responding to the sudden global behavioural shift enforced due to COVID-19, this chapter sheds light upon, and aims to advocate for, performance poetry outside of London – considering issues of austerity and funding; class, regional accent and gatekeepers; and the nature of performance spaces, both physical and virtual. These social components of literary culture comprise what Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluger call a ‘proletarian’ or ‘counter-public sphere’, which may be galvanised by ‘historical fissures’ such as a pandemic.5 In the Marxist critical tradition, Kluger and Negt position this ‘proletarian public sphere’ in opposition to the ‘ruling’ or ‘bourgeois public sphere’. Performance poetry represents those ‘marginal’ or ‘isolated’ voices who seek out their own platforms: ‘counter-public spheres are discursive spaces that reflect and unify particular communities and contribute to their self-understanding and self formation’.6 In this regard, they align with Frow’s theoretical ‘valuing communities’: networks of creative exchange, constructive criticism and appreciation.7 Particularly in a time of crisis, these informal networks nourish and sustain performance poetry, when the state-funded ‘public sphere’ is unwilling or unable to do so. As British arts and culture are re-configured to factor in the risks posed by COVID-19, they must amplify the voices which are too often muted. From a literary-social perspective, it is difficult to envisage significant change without adequate financial support. In October 2020, £1.57 billion of public funds were issued by the government to rescue the UK’s cultural, arts and heritage institutions.8 The announcement was heralded with a fanfare of political hyperbole, with these sectors collectively described as ‘world-beating’ (Oliver Dowden), ‘world-renowned’ (Rishi Sunak) and ‘world-class’ (Boris Johnson). Corporeal metaphors were deployed to emphasise the sector’s importance as the ‘soul of our nation’ (Dowden), ‘the lifeblood of British culture’ (Sunak) and ‘the beating heart of this country’ (Johnson).9 Intended to evoke vigour and vitality, such language has been weaponised by critics of the proposed cash injection. A spokesperson for South London community



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venue Rye Wax stated, ‘it’s obvious this new package is a cure for a selfinflicted wound, COVID-19 or not’.10 The ‘wound’ implies the harm which the government’s initially contradictory stance on the cultural sector caused. The public were urged to stay at home, while venues were not mandated to close, meaning that they had no customers and no financial assistance. This scenario exacerbated the harm which austerity has caused, in part through city planning agendas that favour wealthy developers over grass-roots venues. Anxieties over shared space and noise are telling of the gulf which exists in the UK between the public sphere as represented by ‘world-beating’ institutions such as London’s West End and that of the counter-public sphere where performance poetry operates. Situated in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom, Nottingham provides a valuable backdrop against which to map the reimagining of a ‘public sphere’ in which performance poetry can thrive and grow. With its diverse communities of writers, performers and audiences, strong regional identity, and recent UNESCO World City of Literature status, Nottingham is an important literary centre. The city provides an ideal case study to understand how literary cultures have adapted to survive austerity and how they might adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter is based upon interviews with the Midlands’ performance poetry community – particularly working-class, female and Black performers – as they navigate their oftencontested space within the region’s cultural ecosystem. My analysis builds on work by Cornelia Gräbner, which traces the ‘countercultural’ thread of performance poetry back to 1960s’ Liverpool poets such as Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, who ‘wished to express themselves in ways that deviated from the “good culture” that informed governmental cultural policy’.11 The Liverpool scene inspired a new counter-public sphere ‘without support from the state and probably, in opposition to it.’ Unfortunately, this sphere replicated some of the deeprooted inequalities of wider British society, for example muting female poetic voices for use of ‘non-hierarchical conversational speech (often maligned as “chattiness”)’.12 The Liverpool scene was overwhelmingly white and male. In this regard, we must learn from historical mistakes and use this time of upheaval to rebuild in ways which broaden access and inclusivity. While retaining an emphasis on counterculture, Mark Morrison’s more overtly Marxist reading of performance poetry focuses on Australian workingclass poet Geoff Goodfellow, identifying the prisons, pubs, factories and construction sites where he performed, as ‘Counter-Public Spheres’.13 The above critical interpretations provide foundations for a rigorous investigation into how performance poetry has arrived at its current state and how it can develop. If the genre has historically existed in opposition to ‘bourgeois’ or

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‘good culture’ by creating its own fluid, independent spaces, how can these spaces be re-mapped to champion autonomous creative expression in a literary landscape which increasingly incorporates digital as well as physical arenas?

Funding, austerity and devolution For literary practitioners in the Midlands, the opportunities of London are out of reach, and the redistributing effects of devolution – derived from the Latin ‘to roll down’ – have not yet arrived.14 In interrogating the genesis of this situation through austerity, gatekeepers and the decline of physical performance spaces, it is conceivable to sketch a blueprint of how performance poetry might mobilise its diverse talent pool and carve a new ‘public sphere’ fit for purpose in the 2020s. With its nimble adaptivity and DIY ethos, performance poetry survived the 2010s: a decade defined by austerity. This is no small achievement for an art form once devalued as ‘comedy and cabaret’ or simply the ‘repetition of a right on Black statement’.15 While artistic independence is vital, sustainable projects require development and funding if they are to reach their intended audience(s). Devolution from London and towards more autonomous economic regions may, in the long term, prove beneficial to local cultural identity, attracting outside investment, touring performances and literary tourism. However, the process is incomplete, and austerity has muted the articulation of devolution in arts programming. Unlike the West Midlands, the East Midlands have not yet attained devolved status.16 Internecine conflict over the disparate needs of urban and rural constituents of a proposed tri-county coalition of Nottingham, Leicestershire and Derbyshire have thus far halted progress. For example, the cabinet member for Ashfield District Council, Matthew Relf, states in opposition to a proposed union: ‘we are unapologetically parochial’.17 Such parochialism feels incompatible with the cosmopolitan values of creative groups in Midlands cities. While devolution has the potential to empower regional voices and liberate the ‘public sphere’ from Whitehall bureaucracy, at present this is only manifest in cultural, rather than economic and administrative terms. ‘Arm’s length’ is the terminology attributed to funding bodies such as Arts Council England, signalling that while they receive government monies, they retain the autonomy to distribute them according to their own principles of eligibility. There has been a rebalancing, which now sees two thirds of Arts Council funds spent outside of London, funding projects such as the invaluable development agency Writing East Midlands.18 Despite this welcome move, cuts across all sectors of local government have put immense pressure on regional arts. For example, between 2010 and 2016 there was a 37 percent reduction in



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budget available to local authorities.19 The manifestation of a new public sphere for the arts appears not only desirable in terms of creative freedom, but vital on a practical level as traditional revenue streams dry up. The onus is increasingly on regional bodies to self-finance. To some extent, this has been facilitated via government directives such as the 2019 legislation allowing local authorities to retain 100 percent of their business rates income, or a 2 percent tax increase to cover social care.20 However, such gestures deflect responsibility away from central government to fund the arts. Indeed, they can be read as part of a wider laissez-faire neo-liberal ethos, which asserts that arts organisations must become ‘good businesses’ in order to survive. In 2018, 14 percent of Conservative MPs surveyed – in contrast with 0 percent of Labour MPs – ranked this as the single most important arts and culture policy issue facing the nation.21 If self-financing initiatives do initially ease the crisis that austerity has presented to the UK arts economy, longer-term they will have to contend with the unpredictable impact of Brexit and COVID-19. Turning now to the Nottingham creative communities who are navigating these uncertain times, Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard’s poem ‘Birth of Blackdrop’ chronicles the inception of a movement and articulates a set of guiding principles: The waters of a foreign ocean were broken And 500 years of long painful collective labour began Now, a strong community of midwives Stand by with positive encouragement And a hearty round of applause As we finally give birth to our voices22

These ‘midwives’ comprise a diverse group of literary practitioners engaged in ‘painful collective labour’: serious cultural work which by its very nature must be undertaken with a sense of autonomy. The intent behind this autonomy is not separatist but born of independence and a nurturing ethos. Frow’s somewhat dry theoretical concept of ‘valuing communities’ only partially captures the enriching collective processes being undertaken: the warm, corporeal interaction is ‘hearty’; the listenership is attentive, they ‘stand by’; and their outcome is life-affirming, to ‘give birth to our voices’. The need for such a circle of ‘midwives’ is suggested to be urgent; ‘500 years’ overdue. Legacies of slavery are interwoven with maternal imagery, the creative process ‘finally’ providing some comfort after ‘long painful collective labour’. So while Blackdrop is every bit a ‘valuing community’, it is important to emphasise that such ‘value’ relates to the most intimate depths of the participants’ selfhood – not simply economic, artistic or cultural value of the type which could be evidenced or measured by a funding body.

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Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard is a spoken word artist, educator and a founding member of Blackdrop. She is also a published author in her own right, but refuses to favour one side of the ‘stage or page’ divide.23 Hubbard’s own volumes include The Tapestry of a Black Woman and The Irish-Jamaican and she has published in anthologies such as Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands and Out of Bounds: British Black and Asian Poets. These collections assert the strength of richly varied Midlands voices by compiling them with a coherence that champions their shared tonal and textural qualities. While publication helps to disseminate poetry, it certainly cannot be relied upon for economic stability. A £75 grant during Black History Month 2003 was to be the full extent of the financial aid which the Blackdrop collective would receive.24 In spite of this, they continue to host successful regular events, showcasing local and international poets in small Nottingham venues and, since lockdown, online. In Nottingham, performance poetry is marginalised and under-funded, forced to achieve its aims through local networks of supportive performers and programmers. Hubbard offers her own interpretation as to why numerous funding applications were turned down: It’s because the application isn’t worded properly – not because we’re not doing what we say we’re doing. We are reaching audiences that other people can’t reach. We are attracting artists that other people can’t programme. That frustration makes me think ‘stuff it – keep your money.’ There is a pride in being independent and still surviving. We’ve been running for 11 years without funding, and we will be running for another 11 years without funding.25

This defiance towards external assistance is a stance that equipped Blackdrop well for the economic downturn of 2007–2009 and looks set to guide them through the uncertainty of the post-COVID-19 landscape. In Hubbard’s quotation, there is a clear sense of an emergent public sphere which ‘other people’ representing mainstream organisations, ‘can’t reach’ and ‘can’t programme’. She states this not to signal a closed-off, exclusive platform, but rather to assert the unique value of Blackdrop. Their outsider status reflects the prejudices of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ but equally signals the group’s adaptability. Organisations which had become dependent upon funding struggled to remain afloat when austerity targeted arts and culture in 2008, for example by removing roles such as Literature Development Officers – ‘animateurs whose role is to support writers, readers and others involved in Literature Development’.26 These officers were vital in developing the region’s literary cultures, because they knew what was happening on the ground, and recognised literary activity in gestation, indicating where seed funding could be helpful. Their loss means that those wishing to succeed must self-promote at grassroots level. As Dearden asserts, ‘the lack of a



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literature infrastructure in the East Midlands also means there are few opportunities for future promoters, publishers, producers and the kind of people who set up literature projects within community groups, to gain experience’.27 Writing in 2008, Dearden’s assessment represents a strong argument in favour of funded support roles for the arts, and the removal of these roles signals a public sphere shutting out those without the economic or cultural capital deemed necessary to participate.

Accent, gatekeepers and poetic form One of the obstacles to attracting funding for performance poetry may lie in the ways in which this has been (mis)interpreted as an exclusively Black, or so-called ‘urban’ art form. As Patience Agbabi stipulates, ‘I do think there’s often an assumption, with performance poetry, that the person’s got to be black, or of colour, or certainly not white English. There’s this perception that we do it better, because we’re more “natural performers”’.28 The racist assumptions which Agbabi highlights may be deeply engrained, but against this, there is evidence to suggest that the genre is becoming increasingly heterogenous. The Poetry Society identified the white British poet Kae Tempest as a major figure for the future of British poetry. Tempest has published poetry, prose and recordings, while touring extensively as a spoken word artist. They frequently appear at major festivals and have successfully bridged the literary and music industries. I would argue, however, that part of Tempest’s commercial appeal is the multi-racial associations of their South London accent. On record, one notices many similarities between Tempest’s intonation and that of contemporary Black spoken-word artists such as George the Poet. This is not to suggest that Tempest is in any way ‘putting it on’ – they were born and raised in South-East London and so speak with the local inflection – but rather to say that London dialects function as a quickly recognisable marker of cosmopolitan identity for poets who event programmers and publishers might problematically describe as ‘urban’.29 The Midlands accent has a different brand altogether, more frequently associated with the rural, the domestic and the mundane than the edginess of London life. The London-centric dimension of the bourgeois public sphere does arguably give voice to a select few working-class writers who are able to ‘make it’ and are selected for elevation onto national and international platforms. However, this same sphere simultaneously houses the nerve centres of the UK’s cultural elite: parliament, mainstream publishing houses, and the BBC. The cultural infrastructure is already in place to empower marginalised voices in a way not currently possible in the Midlands. The accent barrier to wider recognition is just one part of a complex problem which

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limits the reach and funding potential of Nottingham’s performance poetry culture. The accent of the East Midlands has a further stigma attached to it by more prestigious literary circles. Its flattened vowels and clipped consonants are far removed from Received Pronunciation and from popular perception of how poetry should sound. In ‘The Rise of English’, Terry Eagleton offers an explanation as to how early twentieth-century spoken poetry reacted against the ‘anaemic’ language of commercial society; ‘true English literature was verbally rich, complex, sensuous and particular, and the best poem, to caricature the case a little, was one which read aloud sounded rather like chewing an apple’.30 Just as the ‘Leavisite’ literary aficionados rebelled against commercial language, using one’s own vernacular is equally an expression and celebration of regional identity. As Leicester poet and playwright Carol Leeming succinctly puts it; ‘Yeah, up the Midlands!’ 31 Poetic gatekeepers who privilege non-regional accent in the recitation of poetry would do well to remember that their own style of recital was once marginalised by commercial society: ‘all bourgeois forms of the public sphere presuppose special training, both linguistic and mimetic’.32 This is one of the ways in which access to more prestigious literary circles is restricted. The development of a new public sphere must recognise this barrier to access and apply more egalitarian principles of event curation. Hubbard states in her poetry, ‘Nottingham flows through my veins and through my accent/ Like water down the murky blood of the River Trent’.33 Her connection to the region is presented as ancestral and biological. The murkiness of the waters eschews an idealised representation in favour of honest realism. When the dialect of the Midlands combines in the inner cities with transnational dialects such as Jamaican patois, the result is unique, distinct, and expressive. While Hubbard’s poetry is not written in dialect per se, the poetic voice is distinctly Midlands. The best way to experience her poetry is live on stage, the Irish-Jamaican’s Nottingham accent bringing a playful warmth to the delivery. On account of its associations with workingclass areas, however, the local hybrid dialect has caused Hubbard to feel excluded from literary events: There were some poetry events, which were called poetry readings, where it was about the way they were spoken … you felt that if your voice wasn’t clear enough, wasn’t ‘proper’ enough then you didn’t fit. You find yourself slipping into that [mentality] because you want to get yourself out there, but it feels a bit fake, like this wasn’t how it was supposed to sound.34

Hubbard’s achievements are all the more significant, given her apparent marginalisation at the hands of literary gatekeepers who run poetry readings. These events reinforce what Morrison calls the ‘comfortable, institutionalised



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distance between poetry reader and appreciative detached audience in typical university and bookshop readings’.35 The performance scene not only gives the literary enthusiasts of Nottingham an alternative, it cultivates ‘valuing communities’, which provide performers with feedback, contacts, professional opportunities and, most importantly, a platform for creative expression which might otherwise be out of reach.36 These circles are quantitatively different from the more ‘detached’ audiences at formal poetry events. For example, in 2014, Blackdrop collective took up residency in a Black-owned hot dog shop where I worked, in Nottingham’s student district of Lenton. The venue already looked radically different from a university room or book shop; we had reggae event posters and portraits from Jamaica by a local photographer adorning the walls. However, the space was further transformed on event nights with red and green lights to cut through the darkness, African instruments on the stage, and an opening drum call to evoke the ancestors. The subject matter at a Blackdrop event is unpredictable and free-ranging, often weaving serious statements of African consciousness with playful humour. Performers and audience members would momentarily leave the trance of the performance space to come up and order a hot dog, a cup of tea, or some curry mutton. This micro community exists to share these spaces and empower each other to write, perform or appreciate poetry. I interviewed Hubbard in the hot dog shop over coffee one day and was privileged to get her insights into a creative community where I felt like a curious, yet welcomed onlooker. In her role as programmer, as in her writing, Hubbard is cautious about the restrictions of form. It is a term the poet uses to describe both the formal elements of poetry itself, and the formal procedures (e.g. funding applications) associated with the literary economy. Hubbard believes that in the long term her refusal to adhere to form has benefitted the collective: ‘Blackdrop has never had a formal structure, but we believe that’s our success’.37 Hubbard’s poetry has often caught the attention of prestigious organisations, yet her refusal to label her craft has in turn come to exclude her. She recalls one particular encounter with a literary ‘gatekeeper’: Once upon a time in Nottingham, somebody asked me to perform at an event as he’d heard a particular piece that I’d done at the time, and I said ‘Yeah, I’ll do that, OK’ … He’d asked me because he liked this piece, but then got on this high poetry horse. He said to me ‘Is it a ballad? Is it a sonnet? Is it …’, so I said ‘It’s this,’ and I recited it to him. He replied ‘Yes, but would you call it …’, so I told him ‘I wouldn’t call it anything, it’s a poem.’ It was written for Brendon Lawrence that got killed at the time, and I’d been asked to perform it and have it published in a lot of things. It was that sort of, playing games with it, and thinking that it must be called something. He [the promoter] said, ‘Well, I’m afraid if you can’t tell me what it is, then I won’t be able to feature

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it’, so I said ‘Well that’s fine … if you are struggling with what to call it, and you don’t want me because of that, then I’m happy not to turn up.’ And he never got back to me because of that.38

Here, the ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ 39 articulates itself in the compartmentalisations, the proscribed forms of this public sphere, to exclude a poem memorialising sixteen-year-old Brendon Lawrence, fatally shot in St Ann’s, Nottingham in 2002. For the bereaved family and their community, the poem can be seen to take on an elegiac quality when read aloud, providing a focal point for the collective process of mourning. The prevalent desire to publish the work suggests a further act of memorialisation could take place in the printing, sharing and reading of Hubbard’s poem for Brendon. Despite its emotional significance, the piece is handled callously in the above scenario, where the tyranny of form results in the message of the poem being suppressed. Gatekeepers such as this promote an agenda where work which does not fit within a narrowly defined framework will not receive exposure, regardless of its profound cultural and personal significance. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of Taste is here instructive as it traces this exclusion back to uneven distribution of cultural capital: ‘there are relationships between groups maintaining different, even antagonistic, relations to culture, depending on the conditions in which they acquired their cultural capital and the markets in which they can derive most profit from it’.40 While the profit may not be large in relative economic terms, gatekeepers reinforce the dominant values of the bourgeois public sphere through the control exercised over who may enter and the terms on which they do so. This, in turn, galvanises the counter-public sphere by cementing a sense of identity as separate to, and excluded from, the mainstream. Yet rebellion alone cannot sustain creativity long-term. The dominant ideology erodes cultural expression over time by homogenising the acceptable parameters within which it can operate. In the case of the BBC, this process is funded by license fee payers. The ‘antagonistic relations to culture’ which Bourdieu identifies become manifest in whose stories are deemed worthy of public funding and exposure, and who is entitled to make such decisions. In Hubbard’s account, there are separate types of audiences for poetry. These communities may overlap, but overall, in a Bourdieusque understanding of taste, are divided as to which types of events they choose to frequent. Such stratification is restrictive and perpetuates a divisive class structure. If audiences are only exposed to performers who look and sound like them, the ensuing insularity stifles artistic development and entrenches bias, unconscious or otherwise. Viewed through Kluger and Negt’s ‘public sphere’ methodology, regional microhistories such as Blackdrop’s take on a new significance, not merely positioning the



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separate actors in relation to individual cultural capital, but in a wider sense showing the conditions of entry into the bourgeois public sphere and suggesting the potential for a new, inclusive public sphere open to all, particularly those from working-class and/or Black and minority ethnic backgrounds. While a straightforward Marxist reading emphasises class as the single most important structural discord between the poet and programmer cited above, there are nuances at play which are specific to debates around perceived quality, or lack thereof, within performance poetry. This is a problematic issue, which Corinne Fowler calls the ‘vexed issue of quality’, as traditional channels of literary validation – book sales, press reviews, critical attention – have little or no relevance within performance poetry.41 Arguably, social media exacerbates this by creating an almost infinite number of microaudiences for every possible niche interest; however, it only does so in a virtual context. Humans still crave contact and tangibility, especially since COVID-19 threatened these fundamental pleasures. Theoretically, the advance of regional distribution of funding in the UK could assist in achieving parity between the size of ‘valuing communities’ and the extent to which development for the arts is funded.42 If local authorities had access to sufficient funding, they could develop rich cultural programmes in consultation with the creators, curators and audiences who give life to the causes they advocate for.

Performance space and the digital public sphere While Apples and Snakes’ definition of performance poetry cited earlier in this chapter recognises the important connection between performer and audience, it can also be useful to broaden this out, to foreground the importance of the communal performance space. As we learn to live with COVID-19, this element will be crucial to an understanding of how to redevelop the art form, which, Gräbner asserts, ‘does not impose poetry and poetic language on a social or spatial environment but explores them – and sometimes, creates them – within an environment’.43 It is this symbiosis with place which has historically empowered performance poetry to reach where its published counterpart cannot, and which must now inform the negotiation of a new digital public sphere. The Australian poet Geoff Goodfellow performed at construction sites and prisons throughout his working life, not as backdrops for his poetry but as access points to those working-class audiences he wanted to reach: people who might only have one book in the house.44 Goodfellow showed that poetry need not be bound by traditional spatial conventions and that it can effect real change, for example when an abusive prison guard resigned after Goodfellow helped inmates communicate their abuse via poetry.45

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These workshops became so popular with inmates that Goodfellow was banned by some prisons whose wardens feared his visit would incite revolt: ‘we didn’t want him here – would you have him in your house?’ 46 Despite inevitable institutional pushback, there is immense untapped potential here in the UK to further deploy skilled practitioners in active, social, creative work such as this. Part of the job of the performance poet engaged in this kind of literary missionary work is to break down archaic assumptions about poetry and instead allow the performance to imbue a discursive or reflective mood which facilitates active audience engagement, participation – often in the form of workshops – and critical discussion. Taking poetry directly to sites of community activism, dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson was able to transcend proscribed notions of context and perform at the front lines of political resistance in 1980s’ London. The iconic black-and-white photograph which adorns the cover of Dread Beat An’ Blood shows Johnson using a loud hailer to address crowds with police officers standing by, illustrating the raw connective power which poetry can achieve when removed from the bourgeois public sphere of sites such as book shops and universities. The performance is not only an incitement to start a ‘Great Insohreckshan’, it is in itself a revolutionary act, blurring the poem and its context.47 In the lines ‘di plastic bullit an di waatah cannan / will bring a blam-blam […] nevah mine Scarman’, Johnson suggests direct action to be a more urgent and effective response to oppression than the bureaucratic lip service offered by government enquiries such as that conducted by Lord Scarman into the Brixton Riots of 1981.48 The dynamic, experiential qualities of the performance align with the street-level activism of working-class communities, inspired by and giving voice to people’s frustrations. Live poetry performance has been variously described as ‘transient’ (Breeze), ‘communal’, ‘intimate’ (Harrison), ‘evanescent’, ‘deliberative’ (Morrison) and ‘communitarian’ (Gräbner).49 These adjectives conjure a range of human experience which is physical, intellectual, temporal or social – ‘Communitarian processes refer to the ways in which the poetry performance embeds the poem and the author within a community’.50 The performance creates meaning through the communal experience of a unique ritual, as Breeze states, ‘I love the fact that whatever happened tonight, could not possibly happen tomorrow night. And why should I think that it should?’ 51 She positions herself as a conduit in a process just outside of her immediate control, going on to describe the experience of performance as ‘melting in a situation’. In doing so, Breeze tacitly aligns the poetry performance with Turner’s conceptualisation of public ritual as ‘communitas’.52 This intangible sense of togetherness, of empathy and, ultimately, of shared joy, underpins the art form of performance poetry. It is this visceral, experiential quality which differentiates performance from published poetry, the latter enforcing ‘the



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dominant perception of poetry […] of the poet as isolated, and the reader is isolated’.53 Print still has immense value, but in breaking this isolation, the ritual of performance elevates the words as written on the page, and reframes them in a dynamic, interpersonal context with genuine social benefit. Within an understanding of ritual informed by religious gatherings, the African Caribbean influence on contemporary performance poetry cannot be overlooked. Indeed, Jean Breeze’s mentor, Linton Kwesi Johnson, was himself inspired by Kamau Brathwaite, the Barbadian writer and activist whom Johnson dubs a ‘tap-natch Poet’.54 Brathwaite coined the term ‘congregational kinesis’, applying the biological concept of ‘kinesis’, meaning ‘a movement that lacks directional orientation and depends upon the intensity of stimulation’ to the connections, the chatter and buzz of human gatherings.55 In a scientific context, such a stimulus might be a change in light or temperature; however in Brathwaite’s rendition, the audience become one entity, responding to the performance. This image of communion is analogous with religious ritual, although religiosity inevitably imposes a ‘directional orientation’ on the congregation, often following a pre-determined agenda. While a sermon might expound ideas derived from a static, ancient religious text, performance poetry is unique in its real-time construction of a shared text, responding to space and audience. The stimulus, and the ensuing ‘congregational kinesis’ are co-authored by the performer and the audience. It is not just ‘stimulation’ which poet and crowd might derive from such an experience. As Nottingham performance poet Bridie Squires states, ‘poetry events are really loving, supportive places.’ 56 They offer company, community and togetherness but also constructive criticism and the opportunity to develop. Gräbner explains how, ‘during collective events poets listen to other poets, and good performers are attentive to the inarticulate, intangible shifts of energy among their listeners’.57 In this function, and simultaneously in the rich vein of African Caribbean influence on the work of the Blackdrop collective, the poetry performance space is comparable to the Jamaican dancehall space. It is a nurturing environment which Sonja Niaah calls a ‘geography of refuge’ for followers.58 Note how, within this spatial imagination, there is a sense of separation and protection from an external force; the dancehall community seeking ‘refuge’ from the harsh realities of an authoritarian public sphere which does not value their cultural expression. From Kingston, Jamaica to the Midlands of the UK, there is commonality in the ways in which community is enacted in counter-public spheres. Whether dancehall music or performance poetry, the performers and audience collaboratively enact an exchange which validates the participants while expressing resistance to mainstream ideologies which seek to exclude them. Organisations such as Blackdrop create safe spaces for diverse creatives who might not feel comfortable in the conditional spaces which constitute

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the bourgeois public sphere. In this regard, the poetry performance as a ‘geography of refuge’ also stands up as an example of a ‘counter-public sphere’.59 In situating Nottingham’s performance poetry scene within an African Caribbean critical tradition, it is possible to understand not only how the social-emotional dynamics of the performance space function, but also how this relates to the ‘dominant’ or ‘bourgeois public sphere’. While Gräbner identified the Liverpool poets as pioneers of countercultural performance poetry, a more nuanced historiography might situate contemporary performance poetry in a trajectory with Brathwaite and the Caribbean Artists Movement of the late 1960s. As Fred D’Aguiar attests, ‘I have not attended a single poetry slam without hearing Kamau’s influence’.60 Brathwaite is indeed a ‘towering figure’ and his legacy is bigger than his own body of work, demonstrating the power of collaborative, communal working. Communality is, however, under threat. Writing in June 2020, Jan Dalley asserts, ‘nothing could be more antithetical to live arts than social distancing.’ 61 Through a triumvirate of austerity, gatekeepers, and new social distancing measures, the bourgeois public sphere was more inaccessible than ever to proponents of performance poetry in Nottingham. That said, there may be some longer-term benefits arising from a shift towards digital spaces for creativity. Projects such as ‘Gobs Collective’, led by Nottingham spoken word artist Bridie Squires, were designed to create live event-based outputs for young people, especially from working-class backgrounds. Instead, this particular project was reconfigured so that the young people learned to record and edit poetry films. This enabled them to present the poetry they had developed throughout the project, as well as gaining new digital skills.62 A further potential benefit is the theoretically unlimited reach of digital platforms, which are far more flexible and accessible than a bricks-and-mortar event space. However accessible, though, digital channels do become saturated, and in the attention economy, competition is fierce. Audience members may not have positive reactions to the experiential qualities of engaging with performance digitally, as Studemann highlights, ‘swapping the free-flowing experience of rambling around an event, dipping in and out of conversations, with another chance to sit in front of a screen is quite a shift.’ 63 The ‘communal kinesis’ of a live event might struggle to make the same impact via digital conferencing software. Perhaps a digital ‘refuge’ for writers developing work is a feasible interim strategy to keep talents sharp when physical events are restricted. Despite the benefits, there is a danger that digital platforms for the arts will only exacerbate existing issues around class and accessibility. The Office for National Statistics states that in 2018, 10 percent of the UK’s adult population had not used the internet in the previous three months, or indeed ever at all. While the ethnicity gap in internet usage has narrowed as the



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UK becomes increasingly connected, there are still disparities. White British and African Caribbean ethnic groups have the lowest percentages of internet usage nationally.64 The ‘digital divide’ is linked to levels of income and education but even consumers with high levels of access may push back against the digitisation of culture. This stance has been reinforced by the behavioural shifts of the pandemic, as Jonty Claypole, director of arts at the BBC states: ‘we realise how important the live communal experience is and we crave it’.65 While he strikes a chord with the universal need for ‘communitas’, especially during those ‘historical fissures’ which Kluger and Negt pinpoint, Claypole has elsewhere portrayed a utopian rendition of how the performing arts have responded to COVID-19: ‘For me, a precious ray of sunshine has emerged in the clear determination of artists, performers, curators and producers to keep creating and connecting with audiences whatever the circumstances.’ 66 While this ‘clear determination’ is evident in the admirable creative response of the arts to the crisis of COVID-19, it is vital that powerful voices such as Jonty’s advocate for, and do not talk over, those who are unable to access the bourgeois public sphere he represents and, in part, curates. What is problematic here is the contradiction inherent in the BBC endorsing counter-cultural art forms. The BBC should do more to platform performance poetry, giving licence-payers access to an art form they might not otherwise engage with and providing TV commissioners with what they want: low-cost, high-impact programming. There is a danger, however, that as soon as performance poetry is accepted into the bourgeois public sphere, gatekeepers would co-opt the medium to satisfy an agenda set not by the creatives themselves, but by commissioners and strategists who are far removed from the lived experiences which inspire the art form. For those who do not have a privileged position of access to arts and culture, it is not always possible to create something ‘whatever the circumstances’, and in Nottingham the long-running Blackdrop events had to take a hiatus of nearly six months in 2019 due to a lack of funding and struggles to find an appropriate venue. As Sarah Brouillette has argued, neoliberal governments’ de-funding of the arts is counter-productive considering the increasingly vital role which they play in the economy.67 Policy makers need to move on from the tired stereotype of those in the arts sector as ‘poor relations who depend on others’ charity in order to survive’ but begin to see that investing in arts brings numerous benefits.68 If not immediately quantifiable in monetary terms, these enrich the cultural life of the city, increase its ability to attract visitors, and enhance the well-being of all of its citizens, not just an elite few.69 As the Blackdrop collective adapted once again to disruption, it emerged in 2020 with online ‘Zoomdrop’ sessions, ensuring that the group survives in some form, ready to emerge triumphant and carve out their own space in the new public sphere.

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Notes 1 This chapter originally appeared in Wasafiri, 105, 2021 2 Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Patience Agbabi, Jillian Tipene, Ruth Harrison and Vicki Bertram, ‘A Round-Table Discussion on Poetry in Performance’, Feminist Review, 62 (1999), 24−54, 40. 3 Frow, p. 154. 4 Niall O’Sullivan, ‘Remembering the Death of Performance Poetry’, 26 January 2014 http://niallosullivan.co.uk/remembering (Accessed 17 October 2020). 5 Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt, Public Sphere and Experience: Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, [1972]; 1993), xliii. 6 Kluger and Negt, p. 72. 7 Frow, p. 154. 8 Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, HM Treasury, Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak, ‘£1.57 Billion Investment to Protect Britain’s World-Class Cultural, Arts and Heritage Institutions’, 5 July 2020, www.gov.uk/government/ news/157-billion-investment-to-protect-britains-world-class-cultural-arts-andheritage-institutions (Accessed 6 July 2020). 9 Ibid. 10 Carlos Hawthorn, ‘Clubs and Venues Respond to UK’s £1.57 Billion Pandemic Package for the Arts’, Resident Advisor, 8 July 2020, www.residentadvisor.net/ news/72975 (Accessed 9 July 2020). 11 Cornelia Gräbner, ‘Poetry and Performance: The Mersey Poets, the International Poetry Incarnation and Performance Poetry’, in Edward Larrissy (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 68–81 (p. 68). 12 Gräbner, p. 78. 13 Mark Morrison, ‘Performance Poetry and Counter-Public Spheres: Geoff Goodfellow and Working-Class Voices’, Labour History, 79 (2000), 71–91. 14 James Mitchell, ‘Devolution’, in David Brown, Robert Crowcroft and Gordon Pentland (eds), Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 187. 15 Breeze et al., 43. 16 David Torrance, ‘Introduction to Devolution in the UK’, Briefing Paper CBP 8599, House of Commons Library, 19 June 2019. 17 Quoted in Kit Sandeman, ‘Government Support for Huge East Midlands Council that Could Rival Manchester and West Midlands’, Nottingham Post, 6 March 2020, www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/government-support-huge-eastmidlands-3923671 (Accessed 11 June 2020). 18 Darren Henley, ‘Letter: More Even Distribution of Funding is a Priority for Arts Council England’, Financial Times, 11 March 2020, www.ft.com/content/ eb8aba74-62bb-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 (Accessed 9 June 2020). 19 Ibid.



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20 Adrian Harvey, ‘Funding Arts and Culture in a Time of Austerity’, Arts Council England, 13 April 2016 www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/funding-arts-andculture-time-austerity (Accessed 8 June 2020). 21 Comres, Arts Council England – MPs Research, 2018, www.artscouncil.org.uk/ sites/default/files/downloadfile/Stakeholder_Research_MP_Research_2018_0.pdf (Accessed 11 June 2020). 22 Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard, ‘The Birth of Blackdrop’, The Tapestry of a Black Woman (Self-published, nd). 23 For a discussion of the page/stage divide, see Breeze et al. 24 Michelle Hubbard, author interview, 19 February 2014. 25 Ibid. 26 Arts Development UK, ‘Literature Development Officers’, Arts Development UK, nd, http://artsdevelopmentuk.org/resources/a-%E2%80%93-working-inthe-east-midlands/ (Accessed 14 April 2014). 27 Steve Dearden, Ten Years of Literature Development in the East Midlands (Loughborough: The Literature Network, 2008), p. 34. 28 Breeze et al., 42. 29 Ben Rampton, ‘“From ‘Multi-Ethnic Adolescent Heteroglossia” to “Contemporary Urban Vernaculars”’, Language & Communication, 31:4 (2011), 276–294. 30 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edn (Somerset, NJ: Wiley, 2011), p. 32. 31 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 32 Kluger and Negt, p. 45. 33 Michelle Hubbard ‘Take the Girl Out of Notts, But You Can’t Take Notts Out of the Girl!’, in Jackie Kay, James Procter and Gemma Robinson (eds), Out of Bounds: British Black and Asian Poets (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2012), p. 178. 34 Michelle Hubbard, author interview, 19 February 2014. 35 Morrison, 81. 36 Frow, p. 154. 37 Michelle Hubbard, author interview, 19 February 2014. 38 Ibid. 39 Kluger and Negt, p. xlvii. 40 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Aristocracy of Culture’, in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), pp. 11–17 (p. 11). 41 Lynne Pearce, Corinne Fowler and Robert Crawshaw, Postcolonial Manchester: Diaspora Space and the Devolution of Literary Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 83. 42 Frow, p. 154. 43 Gräbner, p. 79. 44 Morrison, 77. 45 Ibid., 85. 46 Quoted in Morrison, 86. 47 Linton Kwesi Johnson, ‘Di Great Insohreckshan’, Mi Revalueshanary Fren: Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2002), pp. 60–61 (p. 60).

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48 Ibid. 49 Breeze et al., 39; Harrison in Breeze et al., 40; Morrison 84; Gräbner, p. 70. 50 Gräbner, p. 70. 51 Breeze et al., 39. 52 Victor Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, IL: Alpine, 1969), pp. 94–113. 53 Breeze et al., 40. 54 Johnson, p. 95. 55 (Edward) Kamau Brathwaite, History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (London: New Beacon, 1984), p. 46; ‘Kinesis’, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kinesis (Accessed 17 June 2020). 56 Bridie Squires, author interview, 20 May 2020. 57 Gräbner, p. 77. 58 Niaah, p. 48. 59 Ibid.; Kluger and Negt, p. xliii. 60 Wasafiri Editor, ‘A Towering Figure: Tribute to Kamau Brathwaite (1930–2020)’, Wasafiri, 24 February 2020, www.wasafiri.org/article/a-towering-figure-tributeto-kamau-brathwaite-1930-2020/ (Accessed 24 June 2020). 61 Jan Dalley, ‘Light after the Lockdown – The Future of Performing Arts’, Financial Times, 1 May 2020, www.ft.com/content/ae1388b6-8a38-11ea-a01c-a28a3e3fbd33 (Accessed 16 June 2020). 62 Bridie Squires, author interview, 20 May 2020. 63 Frederick Studemann, ‘Literary Festivals – The Show Must Go Online’, Financial Times, 22 May 2020, www.ft.com/content/52c7fc06-9a70-11ea-adb 1-529f96d8a00b (Accessed 16 June 2020). 64 Office for National Statistics, ‘Exploring the UK’s Digital Divide’, 4 March 2019, www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/ homeinternetandsocialmediausage/articles/exploringtheuksdigitaldivide/2019-03-0 4 (Accessed 1 February 2022). 65 Cited in Sarah Hemming, ‘Culture in Quarantine: The Live Performance in Your Living Room’, Financial Times, 3 April 2020, www.ft.com/content/91efd99 4-7324-11ea-90ce-5fb6c07a27f2 (Accessed 9 June 2020). 66 Turner; Kluger and Negt, p. xliii; Marc Spiegler, ‘The Future of the Art World is Not Digital’, Financial Times, 13 June 2020, www.ft.com/content/7e4503e 8-aa55-11ea-a766-7c300513fe47 (Accessed 20 July 2020). 67 Sarah Brouillette, Literature and the Creative Economy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 68 Sam Mendes, ‘How We Can Save Our Theatres’, Financial Times, 5 June 2020, www.ft.com/content/643b7228-a3ef-11ea-92e2-cbd9b7e28ee6 (Accessed 9 June 2020). 69 Ibid.

2 #rebelnotts: literary tourism in Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham

‘What does this place stand for?’ is a question that can and should be asked of any place. Its import and urgency will vary between places (global cities may have more possibility in the sense of room for manoeuvre, and more possibility in the sense of the magnitude of their effects), but it is a question that makes each and every place a potential arena for political contest about its answer.1

By examining how the city’s historical literary legacies are intertwined with digital technologies in the contemporary literary tourism market, I offer a new way of reading Sillitoe’s texts, uniquely situating them as interactive works, which provide a vital linkage between the city’s industrial heyday and its contemporary service economy. In tandem, the critique of authority – from the local to global capitalist structures – which animated Sillitoe’s characters, is brought to bear on the contradictions and compromises that lie at the heart of any project designed to market countercultural art. During the latter years of the 2010s, stepping outside Nottingham train station revealed a colourful banner stretched across a large building on Station Street. Travellers to the city were met with portraits of Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence and Sillitoe, arranged under the heading of ‘Our Rebel Writers’. In the colloquial register of local cultural magazine LeftLion, the Rebel Writers installation is ‘a whacking great banner down on Station Street that’s celebrating our gobbiness’.2 The iconic local culture magazine goes some way towards capturing the common thread in a great deal of Nottingham history: that of being outspoken and rebelling against the status quo. The name LeftLion is derived from the left of the two stone lions which sit either side of the entrance to Nottingham’s Council House. The left lion has long been a landmark meeting point, interpreted by some to encode a sly political leaning. This sits in accordance with Massey’s notion of ‘political contest’ over what defines the city. Legendary figures, from Robin Hood to Ned Ludd, have achieved their notoriety through acts of rebellion and the Rebel Writers campaign selfconsciously attempts to extend the tradition of rebellion into the canonisation

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of Nottingham writers and the subsequent marketing of their cultural legacies. In an era of limited funding for literary culture, the banner represented the combined vision of two independent organisations: the Alan Sillitoe Committee and the Howie Smith Project. Besides its function of promoting literary tourism, the banner acknowledged the importance of these writers to the city’s heritage. In doing so, it reclaimed figures – ‘our writers’ – previously denigrated for homosexuality, pornography and vulgarity.3 Perhaps the most notorious example being D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). The novel was not sanctioned for general UK release until 1960. This chapter will examine how literary tourism functions in the modern city of Nottingham, with specific reference to ‘The Sillitoe Trail’, an interactive multimedia form of literary tourism. I will then focus on two of Sillitoe’s ‘loco specific’ literary manifestations of his home city, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and The Death of William Posters (1965).4 This study of Nottingham’s literary tourism industry comes at a crucial time of renewed interest in the city as a cultural destination. In December 2015 Nottingham became a UNESCO City of Literature, joining Norwich, Edinburgh, Dublin, Reykjavik, Iowa City, Krakow and Melbourne to become the eighth city of the UNESCO Creative Cities network.5 The bid towards this accolade set out to increase recognition of past literary achievements, but more importantly to encourage the next generation of Nottingham writers. Local playwright Stephen Lowe is one of the bid’s patrons and has highlighted a lack of literary awareness in the city. He states in an interview, ‘I don’t think that Nottingham recognises how extraordinary a place it really is for literature’.6 This forgotten, submerged literary heritage has perhaps necessitated recent investments in literary tourism. If Nottingham people are not aware of their own literary heritage, how can the city expect to attract literary tourists from further afield? Moves towards the development and commodification of Nottingham’s literary cultures can be seen as part of a wider approach at the national level developed by the New Labour government of the late 1990s, in Brouillette’s terms ‘the imagining of the arts as an offshoot of a branded heritage and tourism product’.7 Within this model, the arts must not only be self-sustaining financially but also profitable to wider society. Is there a dissonance between the ‘rebel’ creative output of Nottingham and the type of ‘heritage and tourism product’ suitable to fulfil the New Labour ideal? In questioning the compatibility of counterculture and commerce within a specifically Nottingham context, I transpose from the realm of postcolonial studies to post-war British writing, a debate articulated in Huggan’s The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (2001):



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What happens when marginal products, explicitly valued for their properties of ‘resistance’, are seconded to the mainstream as a means of reinvigorating mainstream culture? These questions are at the heart of postcolonial cultural politics; they also help us understand the dialectical processes of estrangement and familiarisation that are embedded in the valorised discourses of cultural otherness and difference today.8

Certainly ‘resistance’ is a key trope, not only within Sillitoe’s fiction but in the subsequent narratives used to market his legacy. The Rebel Writers banner on Station Street provides one key quote for each named author, with Sillitoe’s including the aphoristic ‘Once a rebel, always a rebel.’ This statement can be read as representative of the author’s – and indeed his protagonists’ – ‘estrangement’ from the values of a post-war industrial society which rewarded hard work with material betterment.9 The dominance of materialist discourse is outwardly tempered by the ‘valorisation’ of rebellion in public discourse.10 It is not my intention to deny Sillitoe’s rebel credentials nor to diminish the admirable combined efforts of the Alan Sillitoe Committee and the Howie Smith Project, but rather to call into question the relationship which Nottingham’s deceased Rebel Writers share with the modern city. I unpick these modern connections between commerce and counterculture in Sillitoe’s fiction and the subsequent legacy of multimedia literary tourism he has inspired, today galvanised under the social media hashtag of #rebelnotts. A reading of Sillitoe’s fiction in light of Nottingham’s literary tourism economy requires some foregrounding of this particular approach to textual analysis. The practice of literary tourism is not a new one, although its recognition within academia is both recent and divisive. In The Literary Tourist (2006), Watson observes how ‘the embarrassment palpable among professional literary scholars over the practice of literary pilgrimage co-exists within a marked willingness to indulge in it as a private or even communal vice’.11 Whether we admit to partaking or not, the literary pilgrimage has a well-documented history going back to the fifteenth century, when enthusiasts journeyed to Southern Europe to feel a greater connection with the poetry of Petrarch.12 British examples include Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, Jane Austen’s Chawton home and Mary Arden’s house in Stratford.13 Writings on the subject of literary tourism have traditionally been instructional in their purpose, rather than analytical. However, the twenty-first century has seen a proliferation of monographs that open up the potential for geographical sites themselves to be read as texts, with significant contributions to the field made by Herbert, Anderson and Robinson, C. Watson and Saunders, and N. Watson.14 These diverse studies mine sites of literary tourism for cultural significance, attempting to understand the behaviours of literary

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tourists and relate these back to the primary texts. This modern strand of research deviates from more traditional didactic volumes designed to instruct would-be tourists where to go and what to see, for example Drabble (1979), Ousby (1999), Struthers and Coe (2005) and Hahn and Robins (2008). In order to understand the multimedia forms of literary tourism gaining traction in contemporary Nottingham, it is necessary to look beyond the didactic and consider the wider impact of technological developments for the study of the city, its economy and literary heritage. Of course, the primary texts and the raison d’être of literary tourism are the works of fiction or poetry which lend the author, and associated geographical sites, their appeal. Without the mystique afforded by immortalisation on paper, literary tourism would not exist. The imbrication of fictional world and actual landscape entices the visitor, who wishes to explore how these two worlds collide. The primary text takes on new significance as the tourist retrospectively assigns the actualities of the landscape, the birthplace, the tombstone, and superimposes a newfound intimacy on a text previously understood as a standalone entity. The geographical text – the site of literary tourism – is equally afforded an intimacy. This comes in the form of the prior knowledge brought to the sight, gleaned by the reader in their own private dialogue with literary texts. If esteemed primary texts are the reason people make literary pilgrimages, the secondary texts of the tourist experience might be understood as the guidebooks and leaflets written to chaperone the visitor to their destination and illuminate the sights on offer. These texts can take on the tertiary function of indulging the vicarious literary tourist who wishes to experience some cultural heritage from the comfort of home. In addition to these secondary texts, the tourist may encounter a number of paratexts at the site itself, in the form of signs, maps, memorial engravings, inscriptions and plaques. The multiple strata of texts – primary, secondary, paratext – shape the literary tourist experience. While space and place certainly do inform literature, there is a symbiosis at play as literary works bring global audiences to sites that adapt – with varying degrees of subtlety – to being read ‘by the light of a book’.15 Digital technologies are increasingly becoming a mediator between the geographical site, the primary text and the literary tourist. As demonstrated by The Sillitoe Trail in Nottingham, or ‘Discover Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh’, one key way in which this occurs is through a curated trail of geographical sites delivered by mobile phone app technology. While this might seem at first an activity with appeal only to the dedicated literary enthusiast, it does in fact sit in line with more commercially accepted forms of tourism. As Anderson and Robinson argue, ‘trails encapsulate the packaging ideology that is at the heart of contemporary tourism and that we, as tourists, now innately recognize and come to expect’.16 If new technologies



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can further enhance this touristic ‘package’ by offering an immersive sensory experience, there is great potential to use digitally enhanced tourism as a ‘market mechanism’ to bring to life sites of non-canonical literary significance. As Anderson and Robinson state: Literary tourism is based on a dynamically evolving complex of sites, responding to and interacting with market demand, in line with fashion and with the ‘accepted’ canon. In the main one expects literary tourism to fall in line with that canon, providing an additional means of accumulating Bourdieusque literary cultural capital, but there is clear evidence that the market mechanisms can carve a space for literary heritage lying outside the (bourgeois) canon.17

The ‘carving’ of space for non-canonical literary tourism is a commendable mission, yet it necessitates the excavation of the past and all the controversies that can entail. The retelling of history, even the one fictionalised by Sillitoe, is highly subjective and should be approached with sensitivity. In Nottingham, the challenge for the curators of The Sillitoe Trail is twofold: firstly the relatively non-canonical status of their author might repel traditional literary tourists. Secondly, the sites covered are distinctly post-industrial. They have history, integrity and literary appeal but they are certainly not pretty. How then can tourists be drawn to inner-city regions, to view buildings often derelict or renovated beyond recognition? The answer lies in what Anderson and Robinson call the ‘literary hook’, where association with popular fiction transcends the physicality of the destination. This marketing device has been implemented ‘with varying degrees of success’ and will be considered below alongside attempts to modernise the branding of more canonical writers such as Byron and Lawrence.18 As literary pasts are packaged to ‘hook’ contemporary audiences, which stories are told and which are muted? Nottingham is, of course, not the only city in the UK with an active approach to generating literary tourism; as aforementioned, Edinburgh is another UNSECO City of Literature which is embracing mobile app technology to market its literary heritage. As a point of reference, however, the City of London has no pressing need to advertise the existence of attractions such as Poets’ Corner, as its status as a global tourist destination is well established. As Watson states, ‘this is the national literary canon sculpted in stone for the benefit of posterity’.19 When Byron died in 1823, Westminster Abbey initially refused his burial in Poet’s Corner, claiming his scandalous reputation would bring shame on the cemetery.20 Evidently there is a long and antagonistic relationship between Nottingham’s rebellious literary figureheads and the gatekeepers of the canon. Writers who once found themselves at loggerheads with the dominant establishments of their era have, over time, come to be co-opted by those some institutions.

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Nottingham’s literary cultures operate on a far smaller scale than those based in London. In 2019, Nottingham received 250,000 overseas visitors, compared to 21.71 million visiting London. Comparison to London casts very few major cities in a positive light, with the second most visited city in the UK, Edinburgh, receiving around 10 percent of the visitors that London counted in 2019.21 As cultural geographer Doreen Massey states, ‘In the United Kingdom, London increasingly overshadows everywhere else’.22 Within a wider Midlands context, Nottingham’s tourist numbers sit well below the median, trailing far behind Birmingham and Oxford but ahead of Leicester and Derby.23 Although the statistics do not delineate general and literary tourists, the Rebel Writers and The Sillitoe Trail projects have the potential to create correlation between the former and the latter. The Rebel Writers banner on Station Street created a focal point which was difficult for visitors to miss: a fact of particular significance in light of Network Rail’s recent £100m investment to turn Nottingham train station into a ‘gateway to Europe’.24 Such large-scale infrastructure regeneration can only have a positive effect on the city’s literary tourism, strengthening the pull of the ‘literary hook’ with ease of access for visitors.25 Outside the city centre, one of Nottingham’s key tourist destinations is Newstead Abbey, a stately home which once housed the ‘notorious’ Lord Byron.26 Amidst the ‘romance and mystery’ of the abbey, there are uncomfortable histories behind this seemingly benign literary tourism destination.27 Historical records reveal that Colonel Thomas Wildman – Napoleonic War officer and Nottingham landowner – restored the abbey using monies granted to him as compensation for the release of slaves. Wildman owned 241 slaves on his Quebec estate in St. Mary, Jamaica. Their mandatory emancipation earned him the modern equivalent of £227,000.28 Although Wildman’s occupation is not representative of Byron’s own ideologies, the historical connection to slavery serves as a stark reminder. Creativity is bound up in economics, and is not innocent of exploiting large groups of people to actualise the visions of a select few. Newstead’s slavery connection problematises not only its function as a ‘branded heritage and tourism product’, but also the marketing of Byron as a ‘rebel writer’.29 As with any brand, there is a clear impetus to represent selectively the most favourable assets. The danger here is that other important regional histories – in this case of displaced Africans – become submerged beneath the glamourised ideal of the independent, rebellious wordsmith. Once inside Newstead Abbey, Byron’s persona becomes the primary focus, narrated through his prized possessions. Guests can view the poet’s gilt bed, imported from his student quarters at Cambridge, witness the desk where the bulk of his work was composed, and read his private correspondence.



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The grandeur of the stately home may not suit the tastes of all literary tourists to the region. Those wishing to taste the salt of the earth and feel a geographical connection with the works of D.H. Lawrence can head to the former mining village of Eastwood, 10 miles north of the city centre. Here, they can visit the D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum or walk the blue line trail which highlights points of literary significance. Up until April 2016, the D.H. Lawrence Heritage Centre was located at Durban House, historically the office of the local coal owners, Barber, Walker & Co., where the young Lawrence would go to pick up his father’s wages. The building now houses a conference centre.30 According to Broxtowe Council, ‘there is no finer place for business meetings, conferences and special functions than Durban House – a magnificent setting, steeped in a wealth of history’.31 The physical attractiveness of the site is here recognised but the literary heritage has been reduced to a footnote on a conference centre’s website. There is an Orwellian aesthetic to this reappropriation of historical sites and recourse to Patrick Wright’s readings of Nineteen Eighty-Four remind us that dystopia does not always entail the erasure of history. Traces of the past can be absorbed and re-configured through the narratives of the contemporary dominant culture – in this case, the business conferencing sector absorbs a fragment of D.H. Lawrence’s childhood. Discussing physical traces of a bygone era in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Wright reflects, ‘such old presences as these are for the good; they are valued as residues of a more humane order of society.’ 32 Whether or not a coal mining office is straightforwardly humane is debatable, yet the humanity of the young Lawrence as he cultivated his artistic skill surely cannot be powerfully evoked by a plaque in a meeting room. The continuity afforded by heritage tourism is here disrupted and something is lost forever. As Wright states, ‘where the past is not undergoing constant erasure and rewriting, older and no longer synchronous meanings survive.’ 33 One of the most appealing aspects of blended digital visitor experiences is that they empower viewers to overlay delicate membranes of history onto the built environment. The asynchronous experience of past and present valourises both at once, rather than ‘erasing and rewriting’ in a way which denies our collective past. The ways in which consumers engage with tourism are changing, not only in line with technological advances but also with a dwindling local heritage economy. Traditional attractions such as listed historic buildings require constant staffing, specialist maintenance and costly utilities. A mobile phone app that guides tourists around residential streets is, by contrast, relatively inexpensive to maintain. This faintly countercultural approach to heritage consumption is being aligned with the city’s history of literary rebellion, while its more outwardly conservative outposts of

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culture are experiencing decline and even closure. Lawrence might have had strong words to say about a conference centre in Durban House, even if ‘there is no finer place for business meetings’.34 When artistic integrity meets commercial imperative, there is a sense of dissonance. While the commodification of heritage can create opportunities which extend access and preservation of the past, something intangible is inevitably lost in the process. The Sillitoe Trail has not single-handedly reversed the fortunes of a dwindling literary tourism industry but it does signal a sea change in the way people engage with the built environment. Art trails by companies such as Wild in Art have seen brightly painted sculptures pop up in cities around the UK. Participants are encouraged to map their own creative paths as they wander the city, hunting down unique works of art.35 Whereas this family-friendly format actively places attractions on the streets, The Sillitoe Trail takes a transhistorical approach akin to a rudimentary form of augmented reality. Their use may not have become widespread yet, but the development of Google Glasses signals an impulse to see more and, in the process of looking, to know more about the world around us. Such technology intervenes in a very human process of noticing, of ascribing significance to visual information based on our own desires, insecurities and cultural conditioning. Interactive, digitally driven trails force us to ‘doubletake’ as we experience history at the intersection of the familiar and the forgotten. Writing in 1985, Patrick Wright elucidates the gulf between history as packaged for consumption, and the version scribed in real time through the act of looking: As so few guide-books ever recognise, this [contemporary orientation towards the past] is not merely a matter of noticing old objects situated in a self-evident reality: the present meaning of historical traces such as these is only to be grasped if one takes account of the doubletake or second glance in which they are recognised.36

The very human reflex of ‘glancing’ is today mediated by a technological impetus towards direct, efficient travel. To simply stroll the city is to open oneself to the potential of countless ‘doubletakes’ as past ‘traces’ break through into the present moment. Augmented reality, or even the downward gaze of walking with Google Maps as your guide, removes the spontaneity inherent in noticing the world around you. As Wright argues, such an impulse is ‘subjective’ when meaning is created in the moment of looking, of looking again and arriving at our own conclusions. What are the implications, then, for The Sillitoe Trail? Do such interventions decrease the agency of the casual flâneur? Or can they open up the urban landscape in a seamless blending of fact and fiction, the literal and the literary?



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Any augmented reality experience must involve an intermediary. Whether an individual or an organisation, someone must curate and manage the interface between the user and the world. The process is therefore inherently subjective. The Sillitoe Trail positions the author as intermediary, so we see the streets of Nottingham not only as they are now, but also as Sillitoe envisioned them in the 1950s. One of the trail’s curators, Paul Fillingham of the Alan Sillitoe Committee, tells the BBC: The app enables you to visit the locations and when you’re on location, because you’re using a mobile device, you’ll be able to read the text, you’ll be able to look at vintage photographs, and you’ll also be able to listen to contemporary Nottingham writers, who are revisiting the themes that were covered in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.37

This hands-on format places absolute control with the user. Perhaps those drawn to the rebellious writings of Sillitoe would feel less inclined to enter a didactic visitor experience as offered at Newstead Abbey or Lawrence’s Easton. In the process of walking the city, the user is able to feel a sense of connection perhaps unattainable by viewing artefacts behind a glass screen or velvet rope. The interaction enabled by the app mirrors the behaviour of Arthur Seaton, trudging the inner-city streets in search of stimulation. Moreover, the autonomy and agency of the rebel is granted to the tourist. The perceived edginess of urban exploration combines with the reputation of the postcodes covered by Sillitoe’s fiction to create a user experience which feels both structured and subversive at the same time. The rebellious characteristics of Sillitoe’s protagonists have often been read in a Marxist context.38 In reality, politics are not a central concern in Sillitoe’s hedonistic working-class narratives. As Gindin asserts, ‘no Sillitoe characters talk of Brotherhood or United Action; they simply recognise others are caught the same way they are.’ 39 The claustrophobic sense of being ‘caught’ in the city helps to inform an understanding of Sillitoe’s Nottingham, a world in which the working-class characters feel trapped by a repetitive cycle of manual labour, pubs, fights and casual sex. A space and place reading of the novels Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and The Death of William Posters (1965) will enable Sillitoe’s work to be placed within a wider Nottingham tradition of rebellion, which has its roots in medieval history and extends into contemporary society as represented by the hashtag #rebelnotts (primary texts are referred to hereafter parenthetically by initials SNSM/DOWP and page number). William Posters is a figment of the imagination of Frank Dawley, the central protagonist of Sillitoe’s 1965 novel. The alias ‘represents the archetype of the man killed by the inhumanity of modern industrialism, yet who becomes responsible for the resurgence of someone far greater than himself’

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(DOWP, 1).’ 40 Understanding the ‘greatness’ of the protagonist necessitates reading his delusions of grandeur within a colourful history of Nottingham rebels: Bill Posters has been infamous in these streets for generations, bandit Posters, as well known or maybe scorned and scoffed at as Robin Hood, justly celebrated in that hundred verse ‘Ballad of Bill Posters’ recited for generations in Nottingham streets and pubs. His existence explains many puzzles. Who was General Ludd? None other than the shadowy William Posters, stockinger, leading on his gallant companies of Nottingham lads to smash all that machinery. In any case didn’t Lord Byron make a stirring speech in the House of Lords about a certain William Posters sentenced to death in his absence for urging a crowd to resist the yeomanry? Who set fire to Nottingham Castle during the Chartist riots? Later, who spat in Lord Roberts’ face when he led the victory parade in Nottingham after the Boer War? Who looted those shops in the General Strike? (DOWP, 18)

Posters is eager to assert his place in the history of his city, which he achieves by superimposing his alter ego onto some of the major historical figures Nottingham has produced. In Poster’s rant above, as in Sillitoe’s fiction more generally, the city appears as a palimpsest, revealing traces of its former inscriptions.41 The green of Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood, for example, are the chosen livery for Nottingham’s buses and lamp posts (SNSM, 108) and in the names of the city’s public houses, Robin Hood, Lord Roberts, Ned Ludd and Lord Byron all live on. While these are gentle tributes to Nottingham’s rebellious history, Poster’s monologue above is breathless, frenetic and charged with pent-up aggression. His frustration in mid-twentieth-century inner-city Nottingham is transposed onto an unreliable local history characterised by ‘smashing’, ‘stirring’, ‘spitting’ and ‘looting’. The themes of violence and civil disobedience are recurrent throughout DOWP and SNSM and reveal a resentment towards the city and its structures of authority. This stance sits uncomfortably with the ‘Queen of the Midlands’ branding that local authorities promoted in the early twentieth century, and is equally incongruent with the modern #rebelnotts campaign.42 The latter is, after all, designed to attract tourists and shore up civic pride. Can this remit be flexible enough to accommodate the seething rage of Silltoe’s angry young men? Tropes of violence within Sillitoe’s novels problematise not only the spatial politics of official representations of Nottingham, they also assail the aesthetics of rebellion. Nottingham writers are posthumously being coerced into an uneasy solidarity with the city. For example, the literary depiction of Arthur Seaton blowing up Nottingham Castle with dynamite (SNSM, 72) is an extreme expression of anti-authoritarian ideology, manifest as terrorism, yet since 2012 tourists to the city have been guided to the very



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site of his literary deviance by an Arts Council-funded app. The marketing of rebellion is evidently a contradictory endeavour, and one which may spark divergent responses to Massey’s question of ‘What does this place stand for?’ 43 Frequent references in SNSM to the violent destruction of sites of Nottingham authority, such as the Castle and Council House, appear to stem from the protagonist’s feeling of claustrophobia. Castle Rock, the mount on which Nottingham Castle sits, is anthropomorphised by Sillitoe, lending it a disturbing sense of agency over Nottingham’s residents: ‘a crowned brownstone shaggy lion-head slouching its big snout out of the city, poised as if to gobble up uncouth suburbs hemmed in by an elbow of the turgid Trent’ (SNSM, 71). The dichotomy of man-made developments (‘uncouth suburbs’) versus natural geological features is suggestive of the terrain actively resisting its own urban development, in parallel with the protagonist’s denigration of urban expansion. The aggressive power of the rock is manifest as elastic energy, working conspiratorially with the hard alliteration of ‘turgid Trent’; ‘poised’ to threaten suburbia. Arthur Seaton appears to have an intrinsic sense of connection with the Midlands’ landscape, although it is rarely expressed in positive terms: he turned around and saw the squat front-end of the castle still sneering at him. I hate that castle, he said to himself, more than I’ve ever hated owt in my life before, and I’d like to plant a thousand tons of bone-dry TNT in the tunnel called Mortimer’s Hole and send it to Kingdom Cum, so’s nob’dy ’ud ever see it again. (SNSM, 72)

There is a sense of anger within the novel but also fear directed at architectural monuments of authority. A contemporary of Sillitoe, author and poet Derrick Buttress recalls his own personal relationship with Nottingham’s Council House, a stop on The Sillitoe Trail: ‘I found it intimidating too. This was where authority lived and most children were taught, by parents and teachers, to be scared of it’.44 In bridging the gap between imposing authority and accessible heritage, the Howie Smith Project is part of a broader demystification of local authority. This is perhaps indicative of the extent to which late capitalism has become enmeshed in the very fabric of our collective existence. Rebellious, working-class literature poses no threat to the status quo and can therefore be safely co-opted into the canon of acceptable Nottingham literature. Sillitoe’s disdain for monuments of authority sits in continuity with folk heroes, luddites and rebels. Today these are all cherished components of our collective DNA and, towards the very end of his life, Alan Sillitoe was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Nottingham. ‘It really is an honour’, Sillitoe said of the award. ‘It’s something I never thought I’d get. I’m staggered’.45

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Having placed my selected texts within a popular folk history of the city, I now wish to explore the ways in which the novels self-consciously place themselves within a literary tradition, before going on to discuss their wider dissemination in the literary marketplace. In doing so, I hope to address the relative rarity of a Nottingham novel achieving international acclaim and the controversial nature of its ascent. The characters of Arthur Seaton (SNSM) and Frank Dawley (DOWP) are both young and impulsive working-class men from Nottingham. They share the same disdain for authority and love for bawdy culture. Indeed, for the first hundred pages of DOWP’s genesis, Sillitoe did not have a name for his new protagonist; he simply called him Arthur Seaton.46 Within the confines of his Radford terraced house, Frank Dawley offers the reader a glimpse into his own library, and in doing so places DOWP within Nottingham’s literary canon: He looked along his row of books: Camp on Blood Island, Schweik, Sons and Lovers, War of the Worlds, Dr Zhivago – to pick out the best, books he had read and enjoyed but finally didn’t trust. Lady Chatterley’s Lover should have been there, but he’d thrown it on the fire in anger and disappointment. (DOWP, 12)

The author here stereotypes his protagonist, making a sly jibe at those readers who would have been lured towards Lawrence’s controversial title by the promise of raunchy entertainment. SNSM was re-issued by Great Pan in 1960, to coincide with the success of the film adaptation directed by Karel Reisz that same year. The new edition became the first Pan title to sell a million copies, by an imprint which was, according to Daniels and Rycroft, ‘regarded in contrast to Penguin, as a distinctly low-brow publisher, marketed in the lurid ‘sex and violence’ style associated with American pulp fiction and sold largely from the racks of newsagents’.47 In this context, Sillitoe was explicitly marketed as the descendant of Lawrence, another rebel writer who ‘shook the bookshops’.48 Pan’s blurb states, ‘from the Lawrence country comes a new author, with a hero that might have startled Lawrence himself.’ 49 Whether ‘shaking’ or ‘startling’, Nottingham writers are here being represented as controversial rebellious figures, for the sole purpose of increasing sales. The depiction of cramped terraced houses on the front cover, coupled with the sexually provocative imagery from Reisz’s film which adorned the back, represented a distinctly seedy vision of ‘the Queen of the Midlands’ to a global audience. Sillitoe seems to delight in courting controversy through his protagonist Dawley in DOWP. On discovering a copy of William Boroughs’ Naked Lunch, he muses: ‘I hope they banned it. It’ll make the bloke who wrote



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it a lot of money. I reckon they should ban every book that comes out so that more people would read’ (DOWP, 60). Herewithin lies partial explanation of the success of marketing rebellious art. The facetious remarks of Dawley speak volumes about not only the #rebelnotts campaign but also the much wider trend for commercial consumption of countercultural goods. In Scandalous Fictions (2006), Morrison and Watkins identify ‘the proliferating myth of banned texts’, a marketplace phenomenon which they observe with controversial novels such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover.50 Audiences invest heavily in forbidden titles, their curiosity piqued by material fit to offend the censors. Instances such as these, involving financially stable authors with access to strong legal and PR support, threaten to obscure the majority of censorship cases, which are extremely harmful to the careers of less established authors. This point is raised to highlight how rebellious literature can be perceived as the natural expression of a writer’s opposition to the oppressive regulation of art. In positioning Nottingham as a city of rebel writers, the Howie Smith Project is not only celebrating the literature as subversive, but also as a bastion of freedom of speech. At the time of its 1958 release, one Nottingham councillor did appeal for SNSM to be banned, fearing that it would tarnish his city’s reputation.51 This may have helped sales figures once the ban was lifted, but the success of the Pan edition alone is testament to the public appetite for salacious content. From a literary tourism perspective, there are long-term rewards to be reaped from this controversy. Sites on The Sillitoe Trail include the pubs where Arthur Seaton binge drank, brawled and womanised; in Seaton’s words ‘a cosy world of pubs and noisy tarts’ (SNSM, 39). The gradual demise of the British pub as community centre has rendered this vision obsolete, so it remains to be seen whether future visitors to the city will continue to seek out the fragmented remains of a misogynistic working-class Midlands culture. There are limitations in the wholesale endorsement of Sillitoe’s message; for all its well-intentioned political content, it is still very much a product of its time and cannot be claimed to give fair representation to its female characters. In this regard, we see echoes in Sillitoe’s 1950s’ fiction of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The protagonist Winston observes the ‘prole’ women with a sense of detachment which borders on dehumanising. As Wright observes: If there is some portrayal of endless drudgery here, there is also more than a little of that iconography which features working-class women so easily as ‘tarts’, ‘crones’ and ‘old bags.’ These creatures of labour and blind generation exist as they are objectified in the eye of an observer from a different part of town.52

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Although without the touristic gaze of Winston – and perhaps by extension the Eton-educated Orwell – Sillitoe, too, draws upon this lexis in constructing for his reader the working-class neighbourhoods of Nottingham. Sillitoe is very much native to these environments, yet viewed through twenty-firstcentury eyes, his representations of women fall short of those we might today expect from a ‘freeman of the city’. As with Byron and the associated legacies of slavery, any tourism product must be carefully branded to entice potential customers. Historically, Sillitoe’ s fiction has defied, and continues to defy, categorisation on what Daniels and Rycroft call the ‘vertical axis’ of culture, reaching audiences for whom the newsagent was a valuable source of literary material as well as those who would favour the bookshop.53 The spatial metaphor of ‘vertical axis’ describes the hierarchical ranking of culture into high-, middle- and low-brow forms. The author was able to straddle any such categories and appeal to a global readership, making major inroads into the Soviet Union’s literary marketplace.54 The global reach of his oeuvre is fitting for an author obsessed with geography, his success demonstrating that the regional scope of ‘loco specific’ texts can translate to audiences well beyond the geographical settings of the novels.55 International recognition is testament to the universality of Sillitoe’s characters, whose appeal the young author could not have predicted, poring over maps and aerial photographs as he plotted out the Nottingham streets for his future audience. Sillitoe states that he ‘latched onto maps in order to pull [himself] into the more rarefied and satisfying air of education and expansion of spirit’.56 For all his attachment to Nottingham, he confesses that ‘the first time I saw a map I wanted to leave home’.57 This became a medical necessity when the writer contracted tuberculosis and convalesced in the Mediterranean. In fact, the geographical remove from Nottingham at which SNSM was written, enabled Sillitoe to gain the same vantage point proffered by his beloved maps; ‘The factory and its surrounding area ascended with a clarity that might not have been so intense had I not looked out over olive groves, lemons and orange orchards … under a clear Mediterranean sky’.58 Regardless of his love for travel in later life, the lived experience of childhood and young adulthood left an indelible impression on the mature author. As a result of The Sillitoe Trail, his legacy is not confined to dusty bookshelves. His fiction will continue to be read, reinterpreted and relived by his readers in the spaces of the city which shaped an entire world view. To draw together the threads of this argument concerning Nottingham’s literary tourism industry, a broader look at the relationship between art and economics is helpful. In her recent work Literature and the Creative Economy, Sarah Brouillette states that ‘the social world has been shaped



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by the split between art and commerce that bohemia solidified and valorized’.59 This apparent divide has narrowed in the literary case studies presented above. The anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian working-class ethos epitomised by the iconic phrase ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down’, is today reimagined and reclaimed by a relatively liberal cultural elite and packaged for digital consumption. In the New Labour vision of the creative industries, art and commerce are interdependent. However, in Sillitoe’s case, the same nonconformist ideologies which enforced that historical ‘split between art and commerce’ are the catalyst for their reunion under the banner of #rebelnotts.60 This is not to say that this cause is not a noble one – any campaign which raises awareness of Nottingham and its literature is worthwhile indeed – however the irony inherent in marketing rebellion is worthy of note. It would be false to claim Sillitoe as a bohemian writer, and his no-nonsense protagonist Arthur Seaton may have reacted violently to such a label. What is more difficult to deny, however, is the correlation between the spirit of the bohemian movement and the way in which rebellion is being marketed in the city today. As Hans Abbing states, ‘Anti-market behaviour can be profitable. Sometimes, the more anti-commercial artists and intermediaries present themselves, the higher their status and incomes are.’ 61 This may appear a cynical reading – and I certainly do not wish to imply Sillitoe was motivated solely by money – but at some level the Rebel Writers and the present-day intermediaries who market their legacy are aware of this profitability. The most important point about the #rebelnotts campaign and the innovation around Sillitoe’s legacy is perhaps not about whose cultural property his ideologies become but rather how they can collectively benefit Nottingham and its people. Travel was a major influence on Sillitoe’s fiction, so it is apposite that generations of new, digital readers map their own routes through his city and, in turn, place Nottingham on the literary map. In the wider geographical context of the Midlands, cultural anonymity is a very real danger. Critics are too quick to dismiss the region as a void at the heart of the country, focusing instead on the polarised notion of a country split along a North–South divide and the highly visible cultural activities of cities such as London and Edinburgh. The Midlands disappears in this imaginary axis. However, by identifying a common thread which unites the legacies of some of Nottingham’s great writers, the #rebelnotts campaign under the direction of the Howie Smith Project is forging a solid literary identity for Nottingham. In parallel with the UNESCO accreditation as a City of Literature and the emergence of interactive literary attractions, the passion and dedication of a small number of individuals is demonstrating the potential to stand out in a crowded literary tourism marketplace while still retaining a strong rebellious ethos.

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Notes 1 Doreen Massey, World City (London: Polity, 2007), p. 10. 2 Mark Shotter interviewed by Neil Fullwood, ‘Our Rebel Writers Trail’, LeftLion, 30 March 2014. 3 Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend (London: John Murray, 2002). 4 Barry, p. 3. 5 ‘Nottingham named UNESCO City of Literature’, Nottingham Post, 11 December 2015, https://bit.ly/3D9Ix1W (Accessed 11 December 2015). 6 Ibid. 7 Brouillette, p. 3. 8 Huggan, p. 20. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Watson, p. 5. 12 Nicky van Es, ‘About Literary Tourism’, Locating Imagination, https:// web.archive.org/web/20170302063706/www.locatingimagination.com/literarytourism (Accessed 24 September 2015). 13 ‘Things to do’, Visit England, www.visitengland.com/things-to-do/literary-inspiredweekend (Accessed 9 January 2017). 14 D. Herbert, ‘Literary Places, Tourism and the Heritage Experience’, Annals of Tourism Research, 28 (2) (2001), 312–333; Hans-Christian Anderson and Mike Robinson (eds), Literature and Tourism: Reading and Writing Tourism Texts (London: Continuum, 2002); C. Watson and R. Saunders, ‘The Production of Literary Landscapes’, in M. Robinson and D. Picard (eds), Conference Proceedings Tourism and Literature: Travel, Imagination and Myth, 22–26 July 2004, Harrogate (Sheffield: Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change); Nicola Watson, The Literary Tourist (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 15 Watson, p. 7. 16 Anderson and Robinson (eds), p. 22. 17 Ibid., p. 31. 18 Ibid., p. 30. 19 Watson, p. 23. 20 Jerome McGann, ‘Byron, George Gordon Noel, Sixth Baron Byron (1788–1824)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, DOI: 10.1093/ref:odnb/4279 21 Georgia-Rose Johnson, ‘UK Tourism Statistics’, 17 November 2020, www.finder. com/uk/inbound-tourism-statistics#the-most-popular-cities-to-visit-in-the-uk (Accessed 4 February 2022). 22 Massey, p. 16. 23 ‘Should Nottingham be Attracting More Tourists?’ Nottingham Post, 13 May 2014. 24 The Big Wheel, nd, www.thebigwheel.org.uk/news-events/major-transport-schemes/ nottingham-train-station/ (Accessed 30 May 2014). 25 Anderson and Robinson (eds), p. 30.



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26 Nottingham City Council, ‘Newstead Abbey’, https://web.archive.org/web/ 20150702102002/www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/article/22179/Newstead-Abbey (Accessed 30 May 2014). 27 Ibid. 28 Bill Norton, ‘Lieut. Col. Thomas Wildman, Profile & Legacies Summary: 1787–20th Sep 1859’, nd, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/18594 (Accessed 29 September 2014). 29 Brouillette, p. 3. 30 Broxtowe Council, ‘Durban House’, nd, www.broxtowe.gov.uk/CHttpHandler. ashx?id=15940 (Accessed 22 August 2016). 31 Ibid. 32 Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 199. 33 Wright, p. 201. 34 Broxtowe Council, ‘Durban House’. 35 Wild in Art, ‘About’, www.wildinart.co.uk/about-wild-in-art/ (Accessed 6 February 2022). 36 Wright, p. 212. 37 Ibid. 38 Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (London: Harper, [1958]; 2008); Alan Sillitoe, The Death of William Posters (London: W.H. Allen, 1965); Gareth Evans, ‘British Working Class and Socialist Writing: A Bibliography of Critical Material’, The Radical Teacher, 48 (1996), 17–20. 39 James Gindin, ‘Alan Sillitoe’s Jungle’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 4:1 (1962), 35–48 (38). 40 The Death of William Posters, p. 1. Subsequent references given in parentheses within the main body text. 41 Barry, p. 165. 42 Cited in Stephen Daniels and Simon Rycroft, ‘Mapping the Modern City: Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham Novels’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18:4 (1993), 460–480 (p. 468). 43 Massey, p. 10. 44 Derrick Buttress, ‘Childhood Memories’, Sillitoe Trail,, nd, www.sillitoetrail.com/ square-memories-derrick-buttress (Accessed 30 May 2020). 45 Visit Nottinghamshire, ‘Alan Sillitoe’, www.visit-nottinghamshire.co.uk/ideasand-inspiration/famous-people/literary-heroes/alan-sillitoe (Accessed 7 February 2022). 46 Stanley S. Atherton, Alan Sillitoe: A Critical Assessment (London: W.H. Allen, 1979), p. 162. 47 James Walker and Paul Fillingham, Dawn of the Unread (Nottinghamshire: Dawn of the Unread, 2015), p. 16; Daniels and Rycroft, p. 471. 48 Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (London: Pan, 1960). 49 Ibid. 50 Jago Morrison and Susan Watkins (eds), Scandalous Fictions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 21.

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51 Walker and Fillingham, p. 8. 52 Wright, p. 200. 53 Daniels and Rycroft, p. 467. 54 Richard Bradford, ‘Alan Sillitoe Obituary’, Guardian, 25 April 2010, www. theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/25/alan-sillitoe-obituary (Accessed 14 April 2014). 55 Barry, p. 3. 56 Alan Sillitoe, Raw Material (London: W.H. Allen, 1972), p. 98. 57 Ibid. 58 Alan Sillitoe, ‘Alan Sillitoe’, in Author (Autumn 1983), 28–30 (30). 59 Brouillette, p. 17. 60 Ibid. 61 Abbing, p. 48.

Coda: ‘ode to a Raleigh Burner’

The preceding chapters have added to current debates about migration, cultural value, literary devolution, heritage tourism and the reimagining of the ‘public sphere’. I have interrogated these concepts through diverse case studies, to provide a snapshot of Nottingham’s literary cultures during a time of economic, cultural and technological transition. In living memory, ‘Notts’ has changed almost beyond recognition. Its medieval lanes were demolished to make way for the brutal 1970s’ architecture of the Broadmarsh shopping centre which, as I type this, is being flattened. Plans for a rebuilt modern retail and entertainment complex were scrapped when COVID-19 laid waste to Intel Properties Plc, the real estate investment trust which owned the Broadmarsh shopping centre. The pandemic swayed the developers to give up on trying to force a second large, Americanised ‘mall’ on a small East Midlands city – only the sixteenth largest in the UK and yet the 11th most economically deprived. Instead, ambitious plans have been presented by Heatherwick Studios, which would suggest a utopian green space. The architect states, ‘rather than demolish the structure, we are proposing to keep the frame and breathe new life into it, creating a place that can hold the diversity and vibrancy that is so lacking from many city centres.’ 1 This ties in with Nottingham’s mission to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2028, as newbuild construction is extremely carbon intensive. In Heatherwick’s vision, the steel skeleton of the shopping centre is adorned with vines, as if rewilding the fragments of the failed retail destination. Children bounce on a trampoline stretched between girders, while parents watch from an idyllic dining area below. An elderly lady kneels by the community allotments, cradling a baby while harvesting leafy greens. In the computer-generated mock-ups, a happy, diverse populace strolls in a dreamscape which glows with soft golden light – a far cry from the imposing grey façade and motorcentric thoroughfare of the old Broadmarsh centre. Just a minute’s walk to the West, Maid Marian Way forms the Western portion of Nottingham’s ‘concrete collar’, a restrictive band of tarmac which cuts through the city centre.2 When preservationists decried the destructive

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installation of this road, which necessitated the bulldozing of historic architecture, town planner Alderman Bowles took an authoritarian stance, yet one seemingly informed by ideals of service and utility: We are not making this road 80 feet wide with double carriageways each 22 feet wide with a ten-foot wide island in the centre and 13-foot wide causeways on either side just for the benefit of those who own property on either side. We are making it for the benefit of Nottingham.3

This approach to governance is far from consultative: the population will be told what is of benefit to them. The road cuts through what was once the historic gateway to Nottingham Castle, now separating the Market Square from the city centre’s major landmark, which has just undergone a £30 million Castle Redevelopment Project to develop a ‘world-class visitor attraction’.4 It is on the ‘antiquarian calamity’ of Maid Marian Way, allegedly called the ‘ugliest street in Europe’, that I conclude this Nottingham section.5 This point of departure is not designed for wallowing in a smug sense of historical hindsight, nor to condemn those post-war city planners whose automotive mindset was the height of modernity in their day. Instead, it uses this strip of tower-block hotels, casinos and curry houses to map a lineage between Nottingham’s medieval heritage, its twentieth-century industrial heyday and the twenty-first-century contemporary writers who make the city such a vital creative hub. Nottingham’s transition from preindustrial, to industrial and then post-industrial economy has been administered largely without sentiment by town planners. Chapters of architectural history have been erased, yet evocative traces remain. These traces re-emerge through the generations. For example, both the Robin Hood colour and ethos were evident in 1950s’ Radford and Lenton. It was apparent which areas were occupied by Raleigh Bicycle employees as the fences and guttering were painted with stolen tins of the company’s trademark Robin Hood green.6 There is an appealing cheekiness in these snippets of ‘Notts’ history but I hope to have demonstrated above that a fuller understanding of the city necessitates attention paid to those who have not featured prominently in the official narratives. Raleigh was a major employer in the city and created a global brand of immense and enduring impact. The iconic crane logo resides in some of the fondest childhood memories of several generations of budding cyclists. Yet the tell-tale green railings which gave away the Raleigh workers were not common outside the homes of Nottingham’s Black workers. This is due to the colour bar which the factory enforced for many years. Linking back to the literature, even the unglamorous work which Sillitoe’s protagonists undertook was inaccessible unless the applicant was white. Shortly after the St Ann’s riots of 1958, the situation in Nottingham came to the attention of Jamaican



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Premier Norman Manley, whose response was swift and unequivocal: to demand Commonwealth citizens in Britain be granted the citizenship which is their birth right. Seizing the logistics by which Raleigh made profit in the former colonies, Manley sent containers full of Raleigh bikes back from the ports of the Caribbean.7 Milton Crosdale, a former Raleigh employee from Jamaica, recalls; ‘it was only when these leaders spoke up and economic sanctions began to “bite” British manufacturers, that companies changed their policies.’ 8 Raleigh did lift their colour bar in response and the gradual, transformational impact of rebellious acts such as these has shaped the city as it is today. Like many British cities, Nottingham has endured a difficult transition from the manufacturing economy of the late twentieth century to a retail and service-oriented economy in the twenty-first. Even this relatively new landscape may now be radically altered by the impacts of COVID-19. In her poem ‘Ode to a Raleigh Burner’, Nottingham writer Bridie Squires traverses time on her vintage BMX bike while making a routine commute to work in the new industries of the city: I hold your charmingly marred handle bars, burning arse and thighs, up steep inclines of Maid Marian, to the factories we now brand call centres, the places pumping throaty sighs, scripts of clever lies and waits for 5pm a time when you carry me.9

Orated from a park bench and posted to YouTube, the recitation takes on a cyclical quality as the refrain of ‘you carry me’ recurs at the end of each stanza, creating a resonant effect. The gulf between outward and return journeys up or down the ‘steep inclines’ is immense. With the dread of clocking into her call centre ‘factory’, the narrator must expel energy, ‘burning’ against her better judgement up the inner ring road towards the district of call centres which now links the city centre to Sillitoe’s Radford and Lenton, once home to factories such as Raleigh’s and John Player’s Cigarettes. The pistons of industry are replaced by the ‘pumping throaty sighs’, encapsulating at once the efficiency and utter soullessness of the workplace. The bodily tension is released in the suggestion of 5pm and the journey reverses. Their weight lifted, the persona can now rely on their trusty Burner to take them out of the new industrial nightmare: ‘you carry me’. This motif is extended in the next stanza, ‘when you will lift my weight and we will fly down Fletcher Gate’, bringing the rider in latitude with Nottingham’s ‘squat’ and ‘sneering’ castle back to the newly demolished site of the Broadmarsh centre.10

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The reader, or listener, has come full circle. As late capitalism reveals the recklessness of tethering public space to fluctuating, artificially stimulated markets, the levelled ground represent a choice for local leaders deciding the future of the city. They have the capabilities to create something new for all of Nottingham’s citizens or to keep reproducing the structures of inequity which historically have divided them.

Notes 1 BBC News, ‘Nottingham Broadmarsh Transformation Vision Unveiled’, 7 December 2021, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-59560948 (Accessed 10 February 2022). 2 Nick Corbett, ‘Breaking the Concrete Collar’, Transforming Cities, 18 July 2013, www.transformingcities.co.uk/breaking-the-concrete-collar/ (Accessed 7 April 2021). 3 Quoted in Andy Smart, ‘The History of Maid Marian Way – “Europe’s Ugliest Street”’, Nottingham Post, 11 February 2018, www.nottinghampost.com/news/ history/look-back-history-maid-marian-1198903 (Accessed 7 April 2021). 4 ‘About the Trust’, www.nottinghamcastle.org.uk/about-the-trust/ (Accessed 7 April 2021). 5 Smart. 6 Walker and Fillingham, p. 17. 7 Gregory, location 436. 8 Ibid., location 433. 9 Bridie Squires, ‘Ode to a Raleigh Burner’, 4 January 2020, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=NZiLArspJow (Accessed 7 April 2021). 10 Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, p. 72.

Leicester: the ‘model’ multicultural city

Leicester: introduction

Adrian Mole might have satirised Leicester with his unpublishable novel Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland, and J.B. Priestley dismissed it as ‘lacking in character’, but the city has transformed dramatically and repeatedly during the past two centuries.1 It cuts something of a rogue figure: an outlier city with the industrial heritage of the Northern mill cities and a diversity of peoples, opinions and creativity more typically found in large metropolitan centres such as London. By the mid-nineteenth century, Leicester was known as the ‘metropolis of dissent’ due to the many Nonconformist places of worship in the city.2 That spirit extended beyond the theological realm, with political liberalism thriving into the twentieth century. Gunn and Hyde characterise Leicester as ‘the epitome of liberal England’.3 This encapsulates the predominant left-wing ethos of the city, while also signalling its propensity to be designated the ‘epitome’ of various phenomena. Due in part to its medium size – with an urban population around 440,000 in 2021 – and its landlocked location in the centre of England, Leicester attracts characterisation as an ‘anyplace’ capable of symbolising broader national trends: religious nonconformism, liberalism (de)industrialisation and multiculturalism.4 While Mole’s teenage diaries would have us believe that Leicester is parochial and mundane, the chapters that follow give a fuller, more nuanced picture of the ‘metropolis of dissent’.5 Making a case for the significance of Leicester as a site of multicultural creativity requires an even-handed approach. To understand holistically the blueprint for the city’s success story, it is important to challenge the ways in which it has been told, and by whom. This microhistory seeks to overview some of the key moments in the development of multicultural Leicester from the post-war years through to the early twenty-first century. It does so in order to foreground the conditions conducive for the wealth of literary talent which emanates from the city and which, in the case of writers such as Sue Townsend, Bali Rai, Nina Stibbe and Joe Orton, has achieved mainstream success nationally and internationally. The multicultural character of Leicester is often (mis) understood solely in terms of large South Asian in-migration since the late

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1960s. This is a vastly important part of Leicester’s story, although it does not give a fully representative picture. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the city received ‘successive waves of Irish and Jewish migration’ and in the 1930s, Jewish refugees arrived.6 With the rebuilding of England’s cities in the post-war years came the invitation for Commonwealth workers to replenish the depleted workforce. The arrival of African Caribbeans in Leicester during the 1950s marked the first point at which multiculturalism became visibly manifest in the city’s streets and public spaces. In contrast with neighbouring Nottingham, relations between Commonwealth citizens and local white British were relatively stable. Perhaps due to an abundance of employment opportunities in the shoemaking and textiles industries, the large-scale 1958 disturbances in Nottingham and Notting Hill did not trouble Leicester. While Nottingham’s African Caribbean population numbered approximately 2,500 by 1958, it was not until 1971 that Leicester recorded a comparable figure of 2,920, roughly 1 percent of the total population.7 The total Black population was just above 3 percent in the 2001 census, rising above 6 percent in 2011. This increase is accounted for largely by the arrival of African communities in early twenty-first-century Leicester, particularly those of Somali heritage.8 Between 2001 and 2011 the African Caribbean population remained stable at around 1.5 percent of the total. As Leicester poet Carol Leeming has argued, the relatively small size of this community in the city can result in a sense of feeling ‘muted’ in terms of representation and creative expression.9 It is important to consider the diversity inherent within a city as diverse as Leicester, remembering that any narrative which seeks to celebrate inclusivity, is susceptible to errors of omission. Leicester’s reputation as a ‘model’ multiculturalism city has its origins in the late twentieth century.10 As Jones asserts, this reputation ‘stems primarily from the migration of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains in the 1970s and 1980s.’ 11 The industrial sector of the city was a pull factor and has been substantially supported by Black and Asian labour. A 1969 report in The Times presents a snapshot of a ‘great industrial town’: ‘the variety of trades in Leicester and district, spearheaded by a thrusting engineering industry, assures a continuance of conditions which make it one of the busiest and most prosperous cities in Britain.’ 12 A 1971 survey extended this claim, asserting that Leicester ‘is the richest city in the United Kingdom and the second richest city in Europe after Lille’.13 Such an image of Midlands prosperity is appealing, yet historians Hyde and Gunn remind us that it is ‘difficult to substantiate’ and, even in 1971, it may have been outdated. The claim ‘seems to have had its roots in the inter-war period when the city avoided the worst effects of economic depression.’ 14 Nonetheless, the city projected success for as long as its manufacturing industry held together



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– even if only by a thread. While the two main strands of Leicester’s late twentieth-century history are large-scale in-migration and the decimation of the manufacturing industry, it is important to understand these two processes as concurrent but not causal. On the contrary, Black and Asian workers contributed to the longevity of industries which would have declined faster without their hard work and entrepreneurial flair. The largest ethnic group to settle in Leicester in the late 1960s and early 1970s was political refugees, not economic migrants.15 Following the expulsion of people of Asian descent from Kenya in 1965 and Uganda in 1972, Leicester became home to a large East African Asian population.16 Idi Amin, the unelected leader of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, declared in 1972 that people of Asian heritage had ninety days to evacuate the country as part of his aggressively nationalist Africanisation policies.17 That Amin was a brutal dictator ‘of extraordinary cruelty’ is widely documented, yet British collusion in engineering his ascent to power in Uganda cannot be overlooked. Amin’s rival, Obote, was on the cusp of nationalising British colonial assets when he was overthrown in a military coup.18 Amin’s loyalists seized Asian businesses and subsequently mismanaged them to financial ruin. Whether directly or indirectly, British influence precipitated mass immigration to Britain in the 1970s. The number of arrivals from East Africa exceeded those arriving from India by the 1981 census, the former ranking a close second since the 1960s.19 Indentured workers from the South Asian subcontinent were transported to East Africa en masse during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them to work on the Ugandan–Kenyan railway, and often experiencing living conditions only slightly better than slavery.20 Tied into this history is the hierarchical mindset which defined the British Empire. During the nineteenth century, the British engineered the transportation of South Asians, to what was then the Ugandan Protectorate, an outpost of the Empire. The Asians were expected to ‘serve as a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce and administration.’ 21 This conferred middle-class status necessitated the development of administrative skills and business acumen, which would become fundamental in the development of twentieth-century Leicester.22 For better or worse, this transcontinental narrative reveals the lasting impact of the British colonial project. While the positive influence of immigration is now evident in Leicester, the city has not always been receptive to migration at the administrative level. An infamous notice posted by Leicester City Council in the Uganda Argus in 1972 sent a clear message to forced migrants who might have heard the city was a welcome new home. The advert attempted to dissuade people from coming to Leicester, using stretched facilities as a veil for racial discrimination. City councillor Sundip Meghani would later call the advert

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‘foolish and crude.’ 23 Ultimately, it had the opposite effect to that intended, serving only to plant the name Leicester – a place with large migrant communities to provide support networks – in the minds of the forced migrants. Crucially, and divergent from South Asian immigration of the 1960s–1970s to Northern cities such as Bradford and Oldham, the East African Asians often came as families, not chains.24 The chain migration model involves a single family member travelling alone initially – typically an economically active male – who then sends for partners, children, parents in a successive chain. One possible by-product of this model, as demonstrated in St Ann’s, Nottingham, in the 1950s, is the perceived economic threat which lone males might pose to the job stability of white working-class locals. This is complicated further when multiple groups are competing for limited resources. Despite its relative prosperity, access to jobs and housing has also caused tensions in Leicester, as Clayton asserts: In mostly centrally located areas, inter-ethnic tensions and negotiations of coexistence were played out around key sites of encounter. This was particularly the case in terms of the relationships between communities at different stages of settlement in the area.25

Key to the understanding of this process as part of the development of multicultural Leicester is the comprehension of ‘different stages’ which migrant communities progress through. In the early 1970s, Leicester was still ‘the shoe capital of the world’ and a prolific producer of textiles and hosiery, along with neighbouring Nottingham.26 By entering these trades and developing the retail sector, it is estimated that Ugandan Asians generated some 30,000 new jobs in Leicester between 1972 and 2002, proving their contribution to the city to be economic as well as cultural.27 Asian communities became localised around industry, particularly in inner-city regions such as Highfields, and established themselves for longevity. As Gunn and Hyde emphasise, ‘Leicester’s neighbourhoods fostered family, social and business networks that stretched over several generations.’ 28 This rendition suggests the success of strategic partnerships within close-knit communities. What it does not account for, however, is the turbulence wrought by industrial decline. Between 1973 and 1976, Leicester’s manufacturing industry lost 9,000 jobs. During this period, engineering jobs fell by 25 percent to a level below that of 1958.29 Viewed within the long British tradition of scapegoating migrant communities for domestic problems, this data offers partial explanation for the popularity of the far-right National Front Party, who obtained 17,000 votes in the 1973 City Council elections and 14,000 in 1976.30 Speaking after the 1976 result, which heralded a rare Conservative-controlled council, local Labour leader Reverend Ken Middleton suggested that ‘fear of the somewhat unknown,



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strange people surrounding folk in Leicester’ was a factor. Middleton added, ‘fear of course is irrational and I think this is a somewhat irrational vote.’ 31 The apologist tone here suggests a politician keen to appease those who had exercised their ‘irrational’ vote in support of the National Front. The newly elected Conservative leader Michael Cufflin spoke in equally sympathetic terms of the National Front’s white nationalist agenda. By contrast, Tara Mukherjee, a spokesperson for Leicester’s Asian community, showed an understanding of voters’ motivations, while articulating the threat which the result suggested: Leicester has one of the largest concentrations of Her Majesty’s coloured subjects and it is quite easy to play on people’s fear when they are confronted with a culture that is foreign in their daily life and I believe that while nationalism is the most important pre-requisite for the progress of a nation, blind adherence to nationalism as prescribed by the National Front, is a dangerous thing.32

While the voter turnout was interpreted by commentators on the left as ‘irrational’ or ‘blind’, the result was achieved through careful manipulation. The National Front ran a campaign with 150,000 leaflets, designed to play into fears of immigration and build on a disaffected white working-class member base which consisted of one third females.33 I emphasise this moment in history not to suggest an outright rejection of growing multiculturalism by Leicester’s white population but rather to give a fuller picture of a city whose diversity has been held up as a model for others to follow. As Peter Hall wrote in 1973, ‘every writer on Leicester seems to conclude by stressing its unproblematic character.’ 34 Buoyed by economic success, the thriving mid-twentieth-century Leicester had honed a self-image which would require some uncomfortable re-examination as de-industrialisation gathered pace throughout the 1970s. The interplay of race and industry in Leicester came to national attention during a May Day protest in 1974, which would become ‘a piece of neglected Black history’.35 Thirty-nine South Asian workers walked out of their jobs at the Imperial Typewriter factory and began industrial action. As Tariq Ali asserts, ‘it was a strike about representation, against exclusion, against bad working conditions and against the failure of the union on the shopfloor to actually defend non-white workers’.36 They were soon joined by 500 colleagues, and a three-month campaign of publicity, picketing and mass meetings ensued, variously attracting 600 National Front protesters, 4000 antifascists and 1300 police officers.37 While many white people did turn out in solidarity with the strikers, this was symbolically a coming together of Leicester’s Black and Asian workers. As Leicester activist and academic Carlton Howson recalls, ‘what the Imperial strikers did, was to say this is not just about us, this is about all of us.’ 38 He adds that the display of

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unity – attracting radical public figures such as Darcus Howe and Farrukh Dhondy – was particularly significant due to its location: ‘we expect the Civil Rights movement to be taking place in such places [as America] but to see it in sleepy Leicester, that was not expected.’ 39 Echoing this geographical incongruity, Tariq Ali also ascribes special significance to Leicester as a nucleus for ‘rising political consciousness amongst Asian workers’, which would manifest in trade bodies such as the Indian Workers’ Association. Ali suggests that ‘to see it in a relatively small English town, in a tiny factory, proved a much larger case: that this is the only way forward.’ 40 Many of the activists involved had considerable experience from their time in the Indian Communist Party. They utilised this in a powerful display of nonviolent resistance to the institutional and working-class white racism against people of colour in 1970s Leicester. Ali emphasises the symbolic importance of Imperial’s output: ‘the typewriter was a very important weapon for us.’ 41 While this ‘weapon’ was instrumental in articulating and disseminating a radical Black consciousness, achieving racial equality in industry would prove extremely difficult without meaningful support from the trade unions. The Transport and General Workers Union, one of the largest and most progressive, took the official stance that all members would be supported equally. The dispute at Imperial proved this to be an empty promise. Sujata Aurora understands this lack of union support to be part of a ‘very shameful history’, in which ‘unions pick and choose what they want to celebrate – it’s not always honest.’ 42 In exposing a process of ‘whitewashing’ Britain’s industrial history by trade unionists, Aurora tacitly aligns herself with thinkers such as Paul Gilroy and Ambalavaner Sivanandan, both vocal critics of the racism exhibited by white-majority unions.43 Satnam Virdee, on the other hand, complicates this position by emphasising inter-racial solidarity and arguing that the unions were not wholly representative of the white working classes.44 Oral histories of industrial Leicester reinforce notions of solidarity, for example Imperial Typewriters employee Lalit Sudra who ‘can’t forget’ the ‘very interesting and jolly life’ he enjoyed during his tenure at the firm. For Sudra, the economic self-sufficiency was highly rewarding: ‘we were looking forward to going to work on Monday and finish on Friday with a pay packet, having paan in your mouth.’ 45 Employment empowered workers not merely to pay the bills but Sudra recalls being able to save five or six pounds each week, equivalent to approximately fifty pounds in 2021. Many households had two or more incomes at this level.46 For Prabha Pankhania, an office worker, ‘the one thing [she] will remember, is men singing on the floor.’ 47 This simple act of expression communicates joy amidst the mundanity of the everyday work environment – remarkable given the racist employment practices. For Pankhania, the singing evoked fond memories of home: ‘it was so nice because in those days we didn’t have so many radios



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… we only had one Asian television programme’.48 These recollections are powerful not because they suggest a straightforwardly positive experience for Leicester’s Asian workers but moreover the resilience demonstrated in the face of prejudice and resourcefulness in collectively navigating struggles. The outcome of the strike was ‘victory with a bitter ending’; without proper union support many strikers were sacked, others reappointed with their demands met, but ultimately the factory closed down the following year. However, locally and nationally the strikers’ legacy cannot be understated. Their courageous defiance had long-term policy implications, as assembly line worker Leo Ismail asserts: I think our younger generation need to know, that the older generation actually fought for the changes that have happened in Leicester. The implications of the strike, the amendments and the Equalities Act that came forth from the struggles at the time, it has benefited our communities overall.49

Broader processes of globalisation rendered localised labour less vital and the dispute may have catalysed an inevitable outcome at Imperial. The action was by no means in vain though, sparking the 1976−1978 Grunwick strike. At the London photo processing plant, Jayaben Desai led two years of industrial action against racist employment practises, in the process ‘exploding the stereotype of the passive Asian woman.’ 50 While Black and Asian workers were fighting for more equitable treatment, de-industrialisation gathered pace as forces beyond their control saw manufacturing increasingly outsourced and goods imported. Throughout the 1980s, economic decline moved in close step with the piecemeal closure of Leicester’s industries. The peak of the recession early in the decade saw unemployment reach 15 percent across the economically active male population of Leicester. However, figures as high as 38 percent and 45 percent among Asian and African Caribbean youth respectively demonstrate the disproportionate impact on Leicester’s Black and Asian citizens.51 Countering these trends, South Asian communities developed their own businesses, particularly in retail and textiles, breathing new life into Leicester’s economy. Belgrave Road became known as the ‘Golden Mile’, a major national hub for the Asian business sector. Part of the commercial success of this entrepreneurial group was its refusal to rely solely on a male workforce. Interestingly, the unemployment figure for economically active women in 1983 sat at 6.6 percent – much lower than their male counterparts.52 This may be due in part to high female representation in the expanding service sector, the growth of which would mitigate some of the worst economic effects of deindustrialisation. By 1987 women made up 48 percent of the workforce in a city which had redefined how it did business.53 Diversification into the service and retail sectors enabled Leicester to offset some of the harm caused

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by factory closures. In 1992 Leicester City Council spoke tentatively of ‘de-industrialisation’ – being careful to place the term in inverted commas – and recognising that unemployment rates sat 5 percent above the national average.54 The multicultural character of the city helped to mitigate economic ruin but could not protect it entirely. Critics of multiculturalism often cite economic concerns stemming from competition over limited resources. Leicester, however, provides a case study which suggests that a diverse population brings with it a diversity of economic opportunity. In keeping with its historical political allegiances, Leicester remained a stronghold for the Labour Party during the latter part of the twentieth century.55 It would be easy to attribute the relatively harmonious inter- and intra-ethnic relations within the city to the tolerant ideals of left liberalism. However, the reality may not be so utopian. As Gurharpal Singh articulates, a system of political patronage developed from the 1980s, which co-opted ethnic minority support for the Labour Party using inner-city development funds.56 This has contributed towards the development of ‘one-party dominance’ in the city, with direct policy implications. As Singh observes, ‘Leicester’s dramatic transformation from the “most racist city in Britain” to a model of multiculturalism was accomplished largely by the domination of the Labour Party from 1979 and continuity in leadership.’ 57 Singh’s characterisation of Labour ‘domination’ is accurate, in that the party has maintained control except for 2003–2007 where no overall control was achieved.58 The ‘hung’ council of those years arguably encouraged ‘more genuine debate and more intelligent decision-making’, as former Liberal Democrat councillor Bob Pritchard asserts, ‘the behaviour of the city council has little to do with the fact that it is Labour-controlled and everything to do with the fact that it is a secure majority dictatorship.’ 59 In a Labour stronghold such as Leicester, it is important that diversity of population is not mistaken for diversity of political thought and leadership. Singh’s rendition of Labour ‘domination’ and Pritchard’s ‘dictatorship’ each imply an authoritarian bent which is at odds with what Jones calls Leicester’s ‘consultative multiculturalism’.60 The latter model has seen Black and Asian MPs and councillors take office and has relied upon ongoing consultation with community leaders in the administration of local affairs. Commentators, including Ash Amin, have suggested that this model, combined with the socio-economic standing of Leicester’s East African Asians, has helped Leicester to avoid some of the tensions which led to the 2001 uprisings in Northern cities such as Bradford, Burnley and Oldham.61 In those cities, historians note that the predominant in-migration during the late twentieth century consisted of many working-class Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Comparisons have been drawn between the ‘failure’ of these Northern cities and the ‘success’ of Leicester.62 This assertion is problematic for its obeisance to



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the clichéd dichotomy of good immigrant/ bad immigrant.63 Furthermore, it draws parallels between heterogeneous groups of people with Asian heritage while perpetuating the stereotype whereby Leicester’s Asian communities ‘were perceived to be fairly silent and passive’.64 The Imperial Typewriters dispute showed this to be false and prompted what Howson calls ‘a change in terms of an outward expression of challenging inequalities in a way that we had not seen before in this city.’ 65 In Leicester, challenging these inequalities has taken the form of mass non-violent protest and industrial action. However, this is not to say that the radical grassroots community activism of Leicester should be co-opted into the mainstream narrative of successful multiculturalism. Strikes were the product of racism, the type demonstrated by the local authority when placing their ‘Leicester is full’ advert in the Ugandan Argus. It is entirely possible to celebrate the relatively harmonious character of Leicester without denigrating the conduct witnessed in other locales where tensions are more overt, such as the aforementioned Northern towns and cities. While the ‘consultative’ model opens up channels of communication and allows community-specific issues onto the agenda of local governance, critics of the model stress that it worsens existing inequalities within ethnic minority communities. For example, Leicester community leaders have tended to be older men, reinforcing patriarchal structures and leaving female citizens of colour under-represented in local government. As Jones observes, ‘a common complaint within the ethnographic research sites visited for this study was that “the younger generation is missing” from almost all participatory governance networks.’ 66 Robina Mohammad asserts that ‘exclusion and invisibility from the arenas of institutional politics and government’, denies women ‘full participatory citizenship.’ 67 This is particularly problematic for the future of multiculturalism in Leicester and participation will need to broaden radically if this model is to survive. Leicester is resolutely multi-faith and this multiplicity has shaped its development.68 Over time, religious groups have developed many organisations to represent their interests and engender harmonious cohabitation of this urban conurbation. The Federation of Muslim Organisations, for example, aims to meet the needs of many diverse Muslim communities in Leicester. Founded in 1983, it helps bridge communities with the private and public sectors. In 1992, collaboration between the City Council and local Muslim groups resulted in the construction of Leicester’s Central Mosque, the land for which was sold by the council at a quarter of its market value to expedite construction.69 Individual co-operative instances such as these contribute to a broader picture of ‘consultative multiculturalism’ in the city of Leicester. Inter-faith tensions are mediated by initiatives such as Leicester Council of Faiths and, as one of the most-established faith cultures in the city, the

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Church of England has opened its doors to people of all faiths.70 As former Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens states, the church offers ‘not quite neutral space but it’s unthreatening space’.71 For example, Leicester’s cathedral hosts multi-faith services based around an Anglican template. As Jones asserts, ‘It is perhaps not too much of an exaggeration to say that established Anglo-multi-faithism has become the city’s ‘civil religion’.72 Seemingly the Christian values of tolerance do extend to all faiths in Leicester, although a more cynical reading might query the privilege inherent in playing host as the ‘native’ faith welcoming newcomers. There is perhaps an unintentional performativity to the hosting of multi-faith ceremonies in Christian places of worship. By and large, a multi-faith approach is one of the great strengths of Leicester’s coveted band of multiculturalism. It provides an excellent, mainstream, public relations platform and the ‘not quite neutral’ Anglican context helps to package Leicester’s diversity as assimilated, manageable and non-threatening. This was exemplified in 2012 when Leicester was chosen as the starting location for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Within the recognisably British context of Leicester Cathedral, a host of multicultural art forms were exhibited: Sikh dhol drummers; a brass band; Chinese dancers; Hindu Holi festival dancers; and a Zimbabwean women’s choir. As Jones asserts, ‘the visit seemed to have been designed not just to illustrate how Britain has changed since the Queen’s enthronement in 1952, but also to convey a message about the inclusiveness of present-day Britain.’ 73 If this is true, the calculated decision is testament to Leicester’s multicultural success story. This story, however, has already been told many times. My job here is to articulate an alternative narrative of Leicester. Through original interviews, archival research and close reading, I present below some alternative visions of Leicester which are shaped by, and respond imaginatively to, the official discourses of the ‘model multicultural city’.74

Notes 1 Sue Townsend, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (New York: Avon, 1986), p. 147; J.B. Priestley quoted in Gurharpal Singh, ‘A City of Surprises: Urban Multiculturalism and the “Leicester Model”’, in Salman Sayyid, Nasreen Ali and Virinder S. Kalra (eds), A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain (London: Hurst, 2006), p. 292. 2 Robert Guy Waddington, Leicester: The Making of a Modern City (Leicester: Geo Gibbons, 1932), p. 144.



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3 Simon Gunn and Colin Hyde, ‘Post-Industrial Place, Multicultural Space: The Transformation of Leicester, c. 1970–1990’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, 8:2 (2013), 94–111 (95), DOI: 10.1179/2051453013Z.0000000008. 4 Population UK, ‘Leicester Population 2021’, www.ukpopulation.org/leicesterpopulation/ (Accessed 31 May 2021). 5 Waddington, p. 144. 6 N. Jewson (ed), Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions (University of Leicester: Centre for Urban History, 1995); Lorna Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority: Making Black Community in Britain (London: Routledge, 2000). 7 Gunn and Hyde, 101; Norma Gregory, Jamaicans in Nottingham: Narratives and Reflections, Kindle edn (Hertford: Hansib, 2015), location 150. 8 Runnymede Trust, ‘Leicester Migration Stories’, 2012, www.makinghistories.org.uk/ uploads/Leicester%20Migration%20Stories%20210x210%2028pp%20v6.pdf (Accessed 16 February 2022). 9 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 10 McLoughlin, Seán, ‘Discrepant Representations of Multi-Asian Leicester: Institutional Discourse and Everyday Life in the “Model” Multicultural City’, in Writing the City in British Asian Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2014). 11 Stephen H. Jones, ‘The “Metropolis Of dissent”: Muslim Participation in Leicester and the “Failure” of Multiculturalism in Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38:11 (2015), 1969–1985 (1973), DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2014.936891. 12 The Times, 15 December 1969. Cited in Gunn and Hyde, p. 96. 13 W.K. Smigielski, Leicester Today and Tomorrow (Leicester: Pyramid, 1971), p. 37. 14 Gunn and Hyde, 68. 15 Valerie Marrett, Immigrants Settling in the City (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989). 16 Donald Rothchild, ‘Kenya’s Africanization Program: Priorities of Development and Equity’, American Political Science Review, 64:3 (1970), 737–753, DOI: 10.2307/1953460. 17 Pippa Virdee, ‘From the Belgrave Road to the Golden Mile: The Transformation of Asians in Leicester’, 2009, p. 2, https://bit.ly/3SXSS6y (Accessed 28 August 2015). 18 Pat Hutton and Jonathan Block, ‘The Making of Idi Amin’, New African, 393 (2001), 38–43. 19 Virdee, p. 4 20 Jan Jelmert Jørgensen, Uganda: A Modern History (London: Taylor & Francis, 1981). 21 Jørgensen, p. 285. 22 McLoughlin, p. 3. 23 BBC News, ‘Ugandan Asians Advert “Foolish”, Says Leicester Councillor’, 8 August 2012, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-19165216 (Accessed 12 June 2015). 24 Richard Bonney and William Le Goff, ‘Leicester’s Cultural Diversity in the Context of the British Debate on Multiculturalism’, The International

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Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 6:6 (2007), 45–58. 25 John Clayton, ‘Living the Multicultural City: Acceptance, Belonging and Young Identities in the City of Leicester, England’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35:9 (2012), 1673–1693 (1682), DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.605457. 26 Tracey Joseph cited in Penny Walker, We are South Highfields (Leicester: Near Neighbours, 2012), p. 64. 27 Paul Harris, ‘They Fled with Nothing but Built a New Empire’, The Observer, 11 August 2002, www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/aug/11/race.world (Accessed 28 August 2015). 28 Gunn and Hyde, 98. 29 C.R. Harrison, A.R. Sills and M.T. Roper, The Economic Structure and Performance of Leicester: Monitoring Report (Leicester: Leicester City Council Planning Department, 1980). 30 David Nash and David Reeder (eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud: Sutton, 1993), pp. 107–108. 31 ATV Today, ‘National Front in Leicester’, 26 May 1976, www.macearchive.org/ films/atv-today-26051976-national-front-leicester (Accessed 15 April 2021). 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Peter Hall, ‘Leicester and Leicestershire’, in Peter Hall, Harry Gracey, Roy Drewett and Ray Thomas, The Containment of Urban England Vol. I, Urban and Metropolitan Growth Processes: Or Megalopolis Denied, Political and Economic Planning (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973). 35 Sujata Aurora, ‘Reflections: Remembering the Strike at Imperial Typewriters’, B3 Media, nd, https://vimeo.com/342121798 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 36 Tariq Ali, ‘Reflections: Remembering the strike at Imperial Typewriters’, B3 Media, nd, https://vimeo.com/342130505 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 37 ATV Today. 38 Carlton Howson, ‘Reflections: Remembering the Strike at Imperial Typewriters’, nd, https://vimeo.com/342098885 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 39 Ibid. 40 Tariq Ali, ‘Reflections: Remembering the Strike at Imperial Typewriters’, B3 Media, nd, https://vimeo.com/342130505 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 41 Ibid. 42 Sujata Aurora, ‘Reflections: Remembering the Strike at Imperial Typewriters’, B3 Media, nd, https://vimeo.com/342121798 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 43 Paul Gilroy, ‘You Can’t Fool the Youths … Race and Class Formation in the 1980s’, Race & Class, 23:2/3 (1981/1982), 207–222; Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Routledge, 2002); Ambalavaner Sivanandan, ‘The Liberation of the Black Intellectual’, Literary Review, 34:1 (1990); Ambalavaner Sivanandan, A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance (London: Pluto, 1982). 44 Satnam Virdee, ‘A Marxist Critique of Black Radical Theories of Trade-Union Racism’, Sociology, 34:3 (2000), 545–565.



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45 B3 Media, ‘How the Dispute Changed Us: Video 10 of 12 – Victory with a Bitter Ending?’, nd, https://vimeo.com/341999184 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Linda McDowell, Sundari Anitha and Ruth Pearson, ‘Striking Narratives: Class, Gender and Ethnicity in the “Great Grunwick Strike”, London, UK, 1976–1978’, Women’s History Review, 23:4 (2014), 595–619; Noemí Pereira-Ares, ‘Meera Syal’s “The Traveller”: Its Feminist Allegory and Later Echoes’, Atlantis, 42:1 (2020), 1–19. 51 Leicester City Council, Survey of Leicester 1983: Initial Report (Leicester 1983), p. 53. 52 Ibid., pp. 38–39. 53 Nash and Reeder, p. 84. 54 John Dean, City of Leicester Local Plan (Leicester City Council, 1992), 55–56. 55 Jones, 1973. 56 Singh. 57 Singh, p. 302. 58 ‘Council Compositions’, The Elections Centre, www.electionscentre.co.uk/?page_ id=3802 (Accessed 18 April 2021). 59 Bob Pritchard, ‘Why a Hung Council is a Strong Council’, Independent, 24 March 1997, www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-a-hung-council-is-a-strongcouncil-1274824.html (Accessed 20 April 2021). 60 Jones, 1971. 61 Ash Amin, ‘Unruly Strangers? The 2001 Urban Riots in Britain’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27:2 (2003), 460–463. 62 Ted Cantle, Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team (London: Home Office, 2001), p. 15. 63 See for discussion Nikesh Shukla (ed.), The Good Immigrant (London: Unbound, 2016), esp. Musa Okwonga quoted p. 18. 64 Carlton Howson, ‘Reflections: Remembering the Strike at Imperial Typewriters’, nd, https://vimeo.com/342098885 (Accessed 16 April 2021). 65 Ibid. 66 Jones, 1978. 67 Robina Mohammad, ‘The Cinderella Complex – Narrating Spanish Women’s History, the Home and Visions of Equality: Developing New Margins’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30 (2005), 248–261 (250). 68 Jones, 1973. 69 Richard Gale and Simon Naylor, ‘Religion, Planning and the City: The Spatial Politics of Ethnic Minority Expression in British Cities and Towns’, Ethnicities, 2:3 (2002), 387–409 (402), DOI: 10.1177/14687968020020030601. 70 Rachael Chapman and Vivien Lowndes, ‘Faith in Governance? The Potential and Pitfalls of Involving Faith Groups in Urban Governance’, Planning, Practice and Research, 23:1 (2008), 57–75.

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71 Quoted in Jones, 1979. 72 Jones, 1980; ‘civil religion’ coined by Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 73 Jones, 1969. 74 McLoughlin.

3 Piri piri chicken: ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ in contemporary Leicester

In the words of Tara Mukherjee, Chairman of the European Multicultural Foundation: ‘Leicester epitomises what Multiculturalism is all about.’ 1 This would seem a fantastic accolade for the city, and for the most part, it is. But what effect does this have on the city’s literature? Can the official narratives of multiculturalism become a representative burden for those who work in its creative industries? As Lucie Gillet has argued, prescribed forms of expression can be stifling to writers.2 The ‘burden of representation’ threatens to limit what writers are expected to write about, with reference to their ethnicity or faith communities. In reality, Leicester writers take their influence from all kinds of sources, not least the city itself. Gilroy’s concept of ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ might therefore be a more useful critical mode than ‘multiculturalism’ in the study of Leicester and its literature.3 Gilroy’s concept concerns everyday modes of interaction, ‘when mundane encounters with difference become rewarding’, and therefore speaks directly to many of the Leicester literary examples in this part of the book.4 Throughout my analysis below, ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ provides a focal point for alternative readings of Leicester’s diversity, as expressed through its creative output. They are alternative ways of reading, in that they provide working alternatives to the official narratives which seek to frame Leicester in superlatives: as the ‘premier’, the ‘greatest’ multicultural city, which ‘epitomises what Multiculturalism is all about.’ 5 Multiculturalism has become Leicester’s unique selling point. Taken in isolation, this appears to be a highly desirable aspect of the city. As Gunning stated in 2010, ‘the dominant mode of antiracism in Britain continues to be multiculturalism, even if it has been contested in recent years.’ 6 Leicester’s official discourses of multiculturalism are undoubtedly celebratory and largely positive narratives. However, the rhetoric of public representation is removed from the realities of urban Leicester life. Any serious academic enquiry into the region’s literary cultures must be mindful of this juxtaposition and sensitive to the ways in which contested narratives of multiculturalism play out on the page.

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Tariq Modood suggests that the problem with the term ‘multiculturalism’ is its conflation of race, religion and nationality: The ‘multi’ does not merely refer to the fact that a number of minority groups are within the frame but also to the fact that different kinds of groups are being referred to. Some groups are defined by ‘race’ or ‘colour’ (e.g. black or Asian), some by national origins (e.g. Indian or Pakistani), some by religion (e.g. Sikh or Muslim) and so on.7

The need for clarity is apparent when terminology has the power to group together, or divide, huge numbers of people. There is often a focus on commonality in the Leicester literature which this chapter explores. Of relevance here is Modood’s concept of ‘multicultural citizenship’, which emphasises shared traits around a common goal. This celebratory model stands in opposition to the segregated vision of multiculturalism identified by Amartya Sen as ‘plural monoculturalism’, whereby communities are adjacent but insular.8 Citizenship demands active participation from all communities: it is antithetical to the notion of insular, closed hubs which are separate from each other.9 With recourse to a unified ‘Leicester citizenship’ comes a way of imagining a diverse city with shared aims and aspirations. As Modood states, ‘where there is “difference” there must also be commonality. That commonality is citizenship, a citizenship that is seen in a plural and dispersed way.’ 10 Along with the privileges of this citizenship come responsibilities. Unless citizens are to surrender all agency to the state, they must co-operate within their fluid communities and in their collective interest. Mutual engagement with problems at the grassroots level is the ultimate expression of demotic cosmopolitanism, a goal-focused approach to everyday belonging. John Thompson emphasises the contrast between cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism: There are profound differences between a multicultural and a cosmopolitan society. For a start, multiculturalism is based on preserving inherent differences while cosmopolitanism is based on bridging them. Multiculturalism implies separate and real (or assumed) status based on collectivism – groups of people having power because of their background and associations.11

The idea of power is relevant in terms of cultural representation – whose culture is put forward as the official vision of multicultural Leicester? This debate will be picked up later on through interviews with Leicester poet and playwright Carol Leeming. My intention now is to explore, at ground level, how this notion of cosmopolitanism manifests itself in Leicester literature, and how this relates to public discourses of the ‘premier multicultural city in Europe’.12 This examination of demotic cosmopolitanism in Leicester’s literary cultures begins on London Road. Stretching south from the city centre, the A6 was



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once a major national transport route, running from Carlisle down to Luton, passing through Leicester where it now provides access to both the city’s universities, the train station and Highfields. The stretch closest to the city centre is a nucleus where divergent demographics intersect. This space and place analysis uses Gilroy’s theory to consider whether the ‘demotic’ or ‘vulgar’ cosmopolitanism represented in Leeming’s poem ‘Valley Dreamers’ espouses a ‘convivial’ account of contemporary Leicester.13 In doing so, it seeks to challenge the metanarrative of Leicester as the ‘model’ multicultural city and explore alternative narratives.14

‘You’ve tried the cowboys … now try the Indians’ On London Road, a takeaway named ‘McIndians’ pastiches Western fast-food culture with its name and playful invitation in the window: ‘you’ve tried the cowboys now come and try the Indians.’ McIndians’ facetious use of racially charged terminology brings to mind the late Prince Phillip. While touring a factory in Edinburgh in 1999, he peered at a fuse box and remarked, ‘this looks like it was put in by Indians’. He later backtracked, claiming, ‘I meant to say cowboys’ but the racial connotations were embarrassingly clear.15 The context on London Road is very different. The ‘cowboys versus Indians’ invocation by Leicester’s modern Asian businesspeople is a lighthearted example of what Gilroy calls ‘vulgar’ or ‘demotic’ cosmopolitanism. The humour is rooted in colonial histories but also the quotidian practices of contemporary Britain; ‘It glories in the ordinary virtues and ironies’.16 Ironic use of racial terms must be handled carefully and should only be attempted by people from within the ethnic group concerned. The McIndians pull it off convincingly, raising a smile amongst passers-by while cheekily informing that their takeaway trumps any lacklustre competitors. In the case of McIndians, one of the ‘ordinary ironies’ at play is the origin of the cuisine on offer: the venue claims to be ‘the home’ of ‘the authentic African Piri piri chicken … often imitated never matched.’ 17 Fully aware that their cuisine bears a complex colonial history, the proprietors offer visitors to their website a condensed version: The origins of our Piri piri chicken date back from Mozambique. Our ancestors passed through Beira on their travels through Southern Africa a long, long time ago and discovered the Piri piri chicken. The recipe was refined and brought to life with a blend of eastern spices and this is the same recipe used by us.18

Evoking their culinary heritage and tracing their cuisine through ancestral journeys, McIndians demonstrate the multiplicity of their influences. Their

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‘refining’ process communicates a confidence which could see them one day take on Nando’s – a chain whose cultural authenticity is far less of a selling point than their low prices and ubiquitous shopping centre locations. The gutsy approach of the local underdog retailers has proved highly successful, with multiple outlets in the city and a ‘pop up’ retail unit in the University of Leicester’s student union, alongside corporate giants such as Starbucks. The colonial histories of Leicester help us to understand the sheer breadth and complexity of its diverse twenty-first century population. The geographical spread of multi-stage South Asian migration alone is evidence of the diverse cultural influences that ‘twice’ and ‘thrice’ migrants bring to a city such as Leicester. As Gilroy states, ‘racial and ethnic identities have been nowhere near as stable or fixed as their accompanying rhetoric would have us believe.’ 19 The McIndians example demonstrates this fluidity of cultural identity, particularly when subjected to the destabilising forces of colonialism, yet it also deploys the kind of ‘fixed’ racial rhetoric which Gilroy critiques. The role-playing ‘cowboys and Indians’ game enacted by small children is here transposed into an adult business enterprise; it is the very slogan by which they successfully trade. The McIndians tongue-in-cheek approach to cosmopolitanism is an example of the ‘convivial’ or ‘attractive vernacular style’, which Gilroy identifies in contemporary Britain.20 But what makes it attractive? In this instance the appropriation of racial rhetoric by migrant communities removes some of its power to shock. By evoking the cowboys and Indians game, McIndians suggest racial rhetoric to be ridiculous. Seemingly everyday, ‘vulgar’ manifestations of colonial histories expose the fundamental ignorance of the Imperial project. Through close reading of Leeming’s ‘Valley Dreamers’ I now intend to demonstrate how this ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ breathes life into contemporary literary representations of the city.

‘Valley Dreamers’ Leeming is a Leicester-born poet and playwright of African and Caribbean heritage. She has a successful career in writing for performance and radio, and in 2012 two of her poems were included in Bloodaxe’s Out of Bounds anthology. From a Midlands perspective, the publication was ground-breaking. Poetry from this overlooked region was published alongside established writers from the North and South of England, as well as Wales, Ireland and Scotland. As Leeming states, ‘one of the great things about Out of Bounds – it put us on the map!’ 21 The anthologised poem ‘Valley Dreamers’ provides a key access point to the demotic cosmopolitanism of Leicester literature and is conspicuously centred on the aforementioned major thoroughfare of London Road. ‘Valley Dreamers’ is therefore a modern example



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of what Barry calls ‘loco specific’ poetry.22 The mode is not a new poetic phenomenon – the Romantic poets, for instance, revelled in naming their geographical muses – but it is being deployed to entirely different ends in twenty-first-century Midlands poetry. Before close reading ‘Valley Dreamers’, Wordsworth’s ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’ is a useful frame of reference for ‘loco-specific’ poetry set in London.23 Wordsworth’s poem opens with the kind of hyperbole the capital city so frequently inspires; ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’ and the subsequent description of his vista follows suit.24 In parallel with the practicalities of literary production and dissemination outside of London, representations of the Midlands in the region’s literature are characteristically understated. Leeming’s focus on Leicester’s ‘dreamers’ who are ‘sunk deep’ reveals a quotidian mode more fascinated with the everyday interactions of ordinary people than grand exclamations of civic pride.25 Personification provides Wordsworth with a means to convey London’s elegance and supposedly effortless affinity with nature, ‘This City now doth, like a garment, wear/ The beauty of the morning’.26 For Leeming, this rhetorical device communicates a completely different set of characteristics: ‘below, a city/ glowers on with neon/ prickly pollen beams/ awhirl.’ 27 The gulf of two centuries between the two depictions is inescapable, yet there is something timeless about the enduring ‘personalities’ of the two conurbations. London’s port location facilitates a sense of transnational possibility, from the merchant ships which inspired Wordsworth, to the capital’s status as the contemporary home of the modern postcolonial British novel. It is my intention in this chapter to demonstrate that Leicester’s own contribution to contemporary British fiction and poetry is equally significant and worthy of sustained critical and commercial attention. The region’s literature ties into the same national and global concerns – postcolonialism, multiculturalism, nationhood – as does much London literature and, were it not for the commercial limitations of provincial publishing houses, might receive the same critical treatment. Carol Leeming’s ‘Valley Dreamers’ is an unconventional love letter to her city. Wordsworthian hyperbole is nowhere to be seen. Leeming’s city does not wear its beauty ‘like a garment’ but instead places the reader up high, ‘fly eyed’, to take in the sights below and form their own impressions: On London Road fly eyed to view Old John’s ruins distant in braggy peak below, a city glowers on with neon prickly pollen beams

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The choice of an insectoid viewpoint lends the poem a unique sense of perspective: the fly is elevated physically despite traditionally being considered a low-status creature. There is consequently a feeling of detachment from social belonging perhaps unattainable via the use of a more recognisably human persona. Furthermore, the compound eyes of a fly do not generate an image in the manner of the lens of a mammalian eye, but rather a ‘neural picture’ is amalgamated from the numerous inputs.29 This expansive optic is redolent of the multiplicity of the poem and indeed the city, where a ‘vibrant mix of cultures’ constitute a shifting, composite image of modern Leicester.30 Scientific lexis lends ‘Valley Dreamers’ the feel of a technological dystopia, ‘gasps of traffic’ suggesting malaise. Technological tropes jostle alongside vernacular evocations of historic Leicester with the reference to ‘braggy peak’ – the colloquial local name for the 850 acres of parkland to the north of the city.31 This is explicitly ‘loco-specific’ poetry which the reader can enact and experience, further enhancing their interaction with the poem.32 If one walks or drives down London Road, there is a natural high point near Victoria Park, where the University of Leicester is situated. Looking down London Road in the direction of the city centre, one can see the hills of Bradgate Park in the distance. From this standpoint, the different parts of Leicester and its different kinds of landscape – both urban and rural – form a visible juxtaposition. In Leeming’s poem, this is not necessarily framed as a harmonious relationship but rather antagonistic. This antagonism is complicated by the controlling spatial metaphor: Leicester is sunk in the valley bowl with ‘neon/ prickly pollen beams/ awhirl’. This compound vision of the built environment reveals the organic elements that constitute even the rush hour traffic. The alliterative ‘prickly pollen’ is – in the natural world – barbed for effective reproduction yet also irritates modern city dwellers for whom pollen is a common allergen.33 There is a sense of sickliness as the technological ‘whirl’ of the city advances but Leeming is also commenting on the metanarratives of the city. Progress



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evidently comes at a social cost as economic advancement moves quickly but unevenly over Leicester. Corporeal lexis is deployed to anthropomorphise the built environment with as much life as the ancient oaks in Charnwood forest. In place of the calm temperament of the trees, however, is the distinctly ‘peaky’ body of the city; one which ‘glowers’ and ‘gasps’ but cannot ‘swallow.’ Bradgate Park counterpoints the high-tech imagery of city traffic in the valley below. With the elevation and historical context afforded by ‘braggy peak’, the hollow bowl of the valley appears claustrophobic and even dystopian by contrast.34 Leeming’s decision to use the vernacular term ‘braggy peak’ demonstrates both her sense of belonging and desire to propagate the region’s idiosyncrasies: ‘I champion Leicester dialect.’ 35 Much in the way that regional cuisine evokes strong feelings of identity, demotic language carries the same weight of implication. Used freely in a poem elsewhere deploying technical terminology such as ‘glossolalia’ and ‘gesticulations’, the flattened vowel sounds of the ‘Lestar’ dialect allow Leeming to express herself in terms shared between many local residents of diverse heritage. This vernacular mode opens up access to ideas of multicultural citizenship without tacit recourse to racial categorisation.36 As Leeming states: ‘I know I belong here. I know how I like my tea. I know what football I like.’ 37 Demotic expressions of culture such as these provide a platform for intercultural exchange, as opposed to the pluralism suggested by multiculturalism. Exchange is a key component of Leicester’s literary cultures. Within both the working practices and the literary output of these creative communities can be observed the actualisation of Brah’s ‘diaspora space’ concept.38 Leicester’s literary landscape is profoundly shaped by cultural exchange, which influences writers of colour and their white British peers alike. The ‘rising glossolalia’ of the city evokes a multitude of tongues competing for dominance. Amidst the cacophony, we sense Leeming’s reservations about the way in which multicultural Leicester has been ‘written’ by local government agencies. Certainly many voices can be heard in the city but do they complement or drown one another out? As a member of Leicester’s African Caribbean community, Leeming questions the perceived credibility of her own community’s voices amongst a ‘rising’ chorus of others: The ‘rising glossolalia’ is that we are the United Nations here, but actually we are funnelled in. There’s a dominant narrative about the city and a particular mindset about which minorities are represented. It tends to be the Asians because they are the majority. Because the African and Caribbean communities (and all the other BME communities) are smaller, we are quite muted and not part of the bigger story that’s always rolled out.39

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The uneven nature of representation here is suggestive of postcolonial ‘melancholia’ rather than the ‘convivial culture’ portrayed in official accounts of the city.40 This invariably has a trickle-down effect to the level of literary cultures. Opportunities for writers to develop and publish their work have been severely limited by austerity measures. This appears to be the case especially for Black and Minority Ethnic writers. Leeming acknowledges that the proliferation of diverse voices heard in Leicester is inevitable: ‘“rising glossolalia” just states that this is going to carry on and we’re just going to have to get over it.’ 41 Beyond this base level of acceptance, she identifies positive attributes to linguistic diversification, which are more in line with the metanarrative of ‘the premier multicultural city in Europe’: ‘I also think it’s quite a beautiful thing; a loquaciousness of communication.’ 42 ‘Valley Dreamers’ positions this virtue as part of the upward rise out of the valley, a powerful momentum which cannot be ‘swallowed’ by cynicism or separatism. The ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ depicted in Leeming’s poem does not comply uncritically, however, with official discourses.43 Her representation of the city captures the ‘ordinary virtues and ironies’ of modern Leicester.44 She says of the ubiquitous metanarratives: ‘we constantly hear that Leicester is this hunky dory, homogenous, happy clappy, multicultural city … right … that’s one story.’ 45 At this level of representation the quotidian interactions of ordinary Leicester people are obscured. This is a fairy tale narrative which cannot accommodate the politically incorrect humour of the McIndians Restaurant. At the level of metanarrative, Leicester’s multiculturalism becomes detached from the demotic mode which gives it vitality and is reduced to the symbolism of ‘steelbands, saris and samosas’.46 So while Leeming paints a city of ‘loquacious’ cultural expression, she makes certain that this expression does not appear to exist in a vacuum: ‘the other story of Leicester that I’m trying to highlight in Valley Dreamers is that actually, the ethnic minority communities have prescribed expressions.’ 47 If cultures are being represented in this compartmentalised manner, can Leicester truly be a site of fluid, vernacular modes of cultural expression? There appears to be a contradiction here. Whether ‘wild gesticulations’ or ‘rude music’, the creative expressions depicted in ‘Valley Dreamers’ appear spontaneous rather than ‘prescribed’. Indeed, if Leeming’s poem states that no one can ‘hamper’ or ‘temper’ these phenomena, surely they exist outside of the constraints of the grand narratives of ‘official’ multiculturalism? The terminology is perhaps part of the burden. As soon as a cultural product, whether it be bhangra dancing (‘wild gesticulations’), dhol drumming, ‘rude boy’ fashion, or Jamaican Ska (‘rude music’), is adopted by agencies wishing to propagate multiculturalism, not for the benefit of the city’s population but for commercial or touristic ends, the demotic, organic qualities are lost.



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It becomes less about everyday citizenship and more about the rhetoric of representation, removed from those it claims to represent. Demotic cosmopolitanism, then, as opposed to multiculturalism, can be closely tied with the idea of citizenship and the rights and responsibilities that accompany it. The official line of multiculturalism has faced recent challenges, as Leeming observes: ‘There are different strands of multiculturalism, and that’s got worse with cuts and rising anxiety about new arrivals.’ 48 Cosmopolitanism as a means of bridging, not reifying difference, could prove an effective antidote to the ‘silos’ which Leeming observes in her home city, weaving together the disparate strands of multiculturalism.49 The final lines of ‘Valley Dreamers’ position the discussions of multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and citizenship within a broader Midlands context. The spatial metaphor opens up, the valley bowl becoming a launch pad of potential success for all its inhabitants: ‘a world’s there/ ready to launch/ its valley dreamers/ long sunk deep/ in a curve of earth/ unbound from “middle lands”’. In a poem elsewhere alive with the whirring mechanics of the modern city, this coda harks back to the ancient aesthetic evoked by ‘braggy peak’, with echoes of Tolkien – another Midlands writer – in the archaic ‘middle lands’. The wider positioning of the Midlands as a cultural void is challenged, with the region’s diversity framed as an engine of opportunity: ‘a world’s there’. The implied stagnation of ‘sunk deep’ is counterbalanced by this explosive energy, just waiting for the right combination of factors to set it off. Leeming suggests the climate in which this might occur: ‘for me the key word going into the twenty-first century is “intercultural” working. Britain shouldn’t just be about multiculturalism, that pluralism thing, it should be about inter and intra working.’ 50 A great deal of empathy and patience may well be required to ease into a process as seemingly challenging as the one outlined by Leeming; there are, after all, many historical wounds. The real transformative power lies in the everyday exchanges of ordinary Leicester people. The seemingly throwaway example of the Piri piri chicken vendors is redolent here. A sense of pride and knowledge of one’s postcolonial heritage is handled with a light touch to invite others to share in the ordinary encounters which constitute demotic, devolved cosmopolitanism in Leicester today.

Notes 1 ‘University of Leicester Hosts International Multiculturalism Celebration’, 25 February 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20150601013306/www2.le.ac.uk/ offices/press/press-releases/2014/february/university-of-leicester-hosts-internationalmulticulturalism-celebration (Accessed 8 September 2015).

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2 Lucie Gillet, ‘Literature in a Multicultural Society: The “Burden of Representation” vs. Artistic Freedom’, EACLALS Triennial Conference. Try Freedom: Rewriting Rights in/through Postcolonial Literatures (Venice: 2008). 3 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 4 Ibid. 5 ‘University of Leicester Hosts International Multiculturalism Celebration’. 6 Gunning, p. 150. 7 Tariq Modood, Still Not Easy Being British: Struggles for a Multicultural Citizenship (Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2010), pp. 8–9. 8 Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London: Penguin, 2007), p. 158. 9 Modood, p. 5. 10 Ibid. 11 John Thompson, ‘Multiculturalism vs. Cosmopolitanism’, Development and Globalization, 9 June 2003, https://developmentandglobalization.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/ multiculturalism-vs-cosmopolitanism-by-john-thompson-060903/ (Accessed 10 September 2015). 12 Gurharpal Singh and Darshan Singh Tatla, Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community (London: Zed, 2006) p. 143. 13 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 14 McLoughlin. 15 BBC News, ‘Apology Over Race Remark’, 10 August 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/uk/416297.stm (Accessed 10 September 2015). 16 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 17 www.mcindians.com (Accessed 28 October 2014). 18 Ibid. 19 Gilroy, p. 31. 20 Ibid., p. 75. 21 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 22 Barry, p. 3. 23 Ibid. 24 William Wordsworth, ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802’ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45514/composed-upon-westminsterbridge-september-3-1802 (Accessed 7 November 2016). 25 Carol Leeming, ‘Valley Dreamers’, in Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds), p. 186. 26 Wordsworth, ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’. 27 Carol Leeming, ‘Valley Dreamers’. 28 Ibid. 29 Martin Giurfa and Randolf Menzel, ‘Insect Visual Perception: Complex Abilities of Simple Nervous Systems’, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 7:4 (1997), 505–513. 30 Amy Bell, ‘Reflection’, Grassroutes Writer’s Gallery, www.transculturalwriting.com/ Grassroutes/content/Amy_Bell.htm (Accessed 20 July 2022). 31 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 32 Barry, p. 3.



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33 H. Cogan, ‘Hayfever: A Modern Condition’, Occupational Health, 45:5 (1993), 166–168. 34 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 35 Ibid. 36 Modood, p. 5. 37 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 38 Brah, p. 181. 39 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 40 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 41 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 42 Ibid. 43 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 44 Ibid. 45 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 46 Modood, p. 1. 47 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

4 #WeNeedDiverseBooks: diversity in Leicester’s Young Adult fiction

This chapter reads Young Adult fiction (hereon referred to as YA) in light of critical theories of diversity.1 I examine texts from Leicester authors marketed at teenagers and set in a city hailed for its diversity, to consider how these narratives fit into global concerns about representation in YA. There are no strict criteria for inclusion in the YA genre, which is increasingly read by adults as well as the traditional teenage market. I use the term YA to describe material with teenagers and young adults as its central concern. As Leicester author Bali Rai states, ‘I just write about teenagers, I don’t write for them.’ Placing particular emphasis on Rai’s fiction, my analysis here extends beyond the concerns of multiculturalism to consider the broad diversity of YA written in, and written about, Leicester. I argue that Leicester YA offers a literary expression of what Brah calls ‘diaspora space’ and suggest the format is uniquely positioned to reach younger readers beyond the Midlands.2 Spaces in which migrant communities settle create unique processes of interaction which may affect so-called ‘native’ or white British citizens as profoundly as the migrants. For this reason, Leicester is a fertile region for YA which does not always conform to national and international literary trends. The demand for diverse books does not simply mean a demand for more characters and authors of colour; it is a much broader call for children’s and YA stories to actually represent the world as experienced by their readers. In this analysis, literary representations which challenge dominant discourses – of class, heteronormativity, gender roles and differing levels of physical and mental ability – will all be held up to scrutiny. In order to interrogate the popular representation of Leicester as the ‘premier multicultural city’, this section looks at a range of YA titles through the lens of critical approaches to diversity, multiculturalism, race and gender.3 Some historical foregrounding of the YA genre is essential before considering its diversity in contemporary Leicester. The aim here is not to offer a comprehensive chronology of YA but rather to foreground this study of diversity in the genre. Although a relatively recent category, YA’s origins lie



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in an era when popular culture in the UK and USA was arguably much less diverse than today: When the term first found common usage in the late 1960s, it referred to realistic fiction that was set in the real (as opposed to imagined), contemporary world and addressed problems, issues, and life circumstances of interest to young readers aged approximately 12–18.4

The assignment of an age range is at once helpful and restrictive to our understanding of YA. Certainly, there is a sizeable adult market for YA. One only has to think of the re-packaged ‘grown up’ editions of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to realise the commercial potential. Equally, there are children’s books – for the purposes of this study I use this term to denote books aimed primarily at under 12s – which appeal to teens and adults as well. To proceed into this analysis with clear parameters, however, it is necessary to understand YA, and Rai’s fiction especially, in terms of a core readership aged 12–18. This demographic forms Rai’s largest market. While touring the secondary schools of the UK and internationally Rai talks about diversity to young people of similar age to his fictional characters.5 The YA genre has its roots in fiction which may originally have been received as adults’, or even children’s literature. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937), for example, was initially branded as ‘juvenile fiction’, with Tolkien awarded the Carnegie Medal for that category.6 Later texts, such as J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967) are now all considered seminal YA texts but were understood as adult fiction at the time of their release, despite their ‘coming of age’ narratives. These texts predated ‘the golden age’ of YA in the 1970s, when authors began to write with that 12−18 demographic in mind and a global industry began to grow. This growth continued into the 1990s, when critics state that the genre became tired and formulaic, ‘consisting of little more than problem novels and romances.’ 7 A second ‘golden age’ came just before the turn of the millennium, which Cart defines in terms of ‘artistic innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking.’ 8 The global success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) launched one of the world’s largest literary franchises, with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2005) and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008) achieving comparable acclaim. Meanwhile, in Leicester, Rai’s fiction came to public attention in 2001 with the publication of Unarranged Marriage. Unlike the YA titles listed above, Rai favoured a social realist style from the outset of his literary career and uses his fiction to probe issues relating to diversity in the UK. He connects with his audience firsthand and while many of the trademark features of YA are present – teen problems, the coming-of-age trope and romance – he tackles these issues

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with a gritty realism that portrays multicultural England with accuracy and sensitivity. Due to the affinity many young readers have with digital texts and media, my analysis of contemporary YA literature necessitates looking beyond the printed word. Much in the way that the digital #rebelnotts campaign provided a useful signpost to understand Nottingham’s published output, I draw on the online activism galvanised by the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks, which has transcended its American origins to become a worldwide movement. In the words of the campaign organisers, ‘We Need Diverse Books is a grassroots organisation created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. Our mission is to promote or amplify diversification efforts and increase visibility for diverse books and authors with a goal of empowering a wide range of readers in the process.’ 9 Building upon this mission statement, my own goal here is to examine how literature from a multicultural Midlands city conveys multiple and divergent forms of identity in selected YA texts, and in turn to reflect on how these represent Leicester. The age-old wisdom on judging a book by its cover is perhaps even more problematic in YA than in adult fiction. As the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign highlights, ‘kids might not judge a book by its cover, but they will judge themselves by a book’s cover’.10 An abundance of white, heteronormative images greets the prospective reader from the shelves of book shops, or the best-seller lists of online retailers. By stark contrast, Rai’s The Whisper features a hooded, shadowed figure of indeterminate race, stalking a graffiti-covered alleyway at night. The notion of racial ambiguity is prevalent throughout the novel, suggesting the irrelevance of racial categories in the diverse inner-city environment. One particular exchange between two youths highlights this: ‘“You see whether dem Asian or black or what?” I tried to picture them. I could see the caps on their heads and the sportswear but I couldn’t really make out the faces.’ 11 The subtitle declares the novel ‘as tough and uncompromising as the city streets it depicts’ but Rai achieves this aim with a sense of duty and respect for his subject matter. As he states in interview, ‘I wanted to represent those inner-city kids that I grew up with – the ones that are negatively stereotyped and ignored by the media until they do something illegal.’ 12 Rai’s characters are sensitive and intelligent, often forming meaningful friendships across lines of race and gender. The Whisper is set in Highfields and North Evington, two inner-city regions of Leicester with multicultural populations and relatively low socio-economic positioning. Protagonist Billy offers an insight into Leicester’s social geography, which also speaks to global debates about diversity in YA: The library was being refurbished, and was due to re-open in a year – not that many of the youths in the area ever used it for anything other than stealing



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the CDs. For some reason I had a flashback to when I was eight, holding Nanny’s hand as he led me into the children’s book section and sat with me as I read from the pages of books that always seemed to be about the same things.13

The area’s young population is not cast in a positive light here, but the effect is to demonstrate, by contrast, the protagonist’s early passion for reading and the support of his stepfather, Nanny. In this regard, they are cast as a minority of library users, with the wider ‘youths in the area’ presented as ‘reluctant readers’.14 This terminology is often used to describe teenage boys, but more specifically it has been used to indicate a lack of interest in reading amongst young Black and Minority Ethnic males.15 The #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign both recognises and challenges this disparity, featuring in its campaign materials a group portrait of Black students holding up a banner which states, ‘We are NOT reluctant readers!’ 16 Alongside frequent allusions to socially conscious, Garveyite reggae music, Rai adorns his novels with references to cultural products and practices which challenge negative stereotypes about inner-city residents. With the example of the local library, the importance of strong parenting becomes foregrounded in the novel’s discussion of young adult literacy. Billy’s stepfather Nanny is a devout Rastafarian and pillar of the local community: ‘He’s like the ghetto professor and everyone knows him. Sometimes me and the rest of the Crew listen to him for hours.’ 17 When describing his stepfather’s way of life, Billy is careful to position him as a ‘true Rasta’: ‘Not like the ones that you see stereotyped in Hollywood films, all high on crack and shooting people and shit.’ 18 Instead, Nanny is portrayed as a supportive parental figure, not just to the crew, but to ‘the youths in the area’ as well: ‘one time he took about sixteen young lads up to Victoria Park with a football and got them to settle their differences over an eighta-side game’.19 With the encouragement of Nanny, Billy develops a life-long passion for reading, which influences the way he perceives his lived experience and the vocabulary with which he articulates it. Rai has created a protagonist who subverts the ‘reluctant reader’ stereotype, and through which he can critique the lack of diversity in children’s and YA fiction. In a childhood flashback, Billy recalls the barriers he experienced when engaging with stories in the books in the local library: The kids in them lived in country villages or visited family in big old houses and there was never anything in their lives that they had to worry about. They got into scrapes with smugglers and villains but things were always fine by the end.20

Billy cannot relate to the idyllic settings he finds in the library books. The mono-cultural tales of pirates and country houses seem to deny his own

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experience as a young boy of mixed Asian and African Caribbean heritage living in inner-city Leicester. It is a problem of unequal representation that is not detrimental solely to Black and Asian readers. As Rudine Sims Bishop states, ‘children from dominant social groups have always found their mirrors in books, but they, too, have suffered from the lack of availability of books about others.’ 21 The success of Rai’s fiction is an indicator of small, incremental steps towards progress in this regard. Rai’s title Rani and Sukh has opened doors for him to speak at schools and events all over Europe. As Rai states on his website, ‘In 2010 Rani and Sukh became a set-text for GCSE, something that I never thought would happen. My aim has always been to write the sort of books me and my mates (many of whom didn’t read) would have loved at school.’ 22 He is unafraid of exposing racism in his fiction, and in person he is an outspoken critic of intolerance. Scholars of children’s literature, such as Bishop, are wary of diversity for its own sake, but for Rai representing the ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ of multiracial Leicester is about communicating truth.23 As Rai states, ‘any story set in Highfields would have to deal with the reality of life for the local people, otherwise it would be dishonest.’ 24 So there is a dual functionality to Rai’s fiction when aligned with the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign. His YA books serve to demonstrate to readers from other areas and cultural backgrounds what inner-city life entails – an optic which Bishop terms a ‘window’ to those outside that culture – and also to provide innercity readers with a ‘mirror’ to reflect their own lives.25 Rai personally feels that the situation developing for YA audiences was one from which he was excluded as a young reader. His own views on this echo those of the protagonist Billy in The Whisper: As a teen, there was so little fiction that dealt with the lives of ordinary, everyday people, that I got frustrated searching for it. Nearly every character was middle-class and white, and my city was the complete opposite. So when I started to write, it was always going to be based in the city, and about the people that I saw around me. I wanted to represent real multiculturalism as opposed to the media version.26

In all of his novels, Asian and Black British characters feature heavily, nearly always in leading roles. However, the ‘real’ multiculturalism depicted in Rai’s fiction contradicts official narratives of a harmonious Leicester. There are often tensions depicted between various faith and ethnic groups but there are also frequent instances of friendship and loyalty across these lines. Rai’s YA fiction complicates the diversity debate in that it depicts the everyday lived experience of teenagers in a modern, multicultural city. In this way, Rai’s fiction can be said to fulfil a demand for social realist writing amongst



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young adults; as his profile in the Grassroutes Writers’ Gallery states, ‘Bali hopes his novels capture Britain’s unique multi-racial mix in a range of provincial settings.’ 27 Rai’s fiction is born out of desire to fill a gap in the market for young readers. The difference between diversity in Rai’s writing and diversity for its own sake is that Rai’s representations of race are incidental; the characters are ethnically diverse because the Leicester population is; they are not engineered that way for tokenistic or narratological purposes. This unobtrusive narrative approach to race makes an important statement about the ‘diaspora space’ of Highfields, Leicester. Away from public-facing discourses of multiculturalist politics, Rai emphasises the importance and dignity of everyday lives in Leicester. The city’s diversity has shaped all of its communities, with international influences spreading out across complex networks. Rai writes challenging novels which prompt young people to think hard about their own views and behaviours and those of their peers. The Last Taboo (2006) is set in modern day Leicester. It is the story of a British Asian schoolgirl who falls in love with a Black boy. Deep-rooted prejudice is exposed as the wrath of the Asian family unfolds, leading to shame, exclusion and extreme violence against the young lovers. This is problematic ‘multiculturalism’ as Gilroy understands it, far removed from the ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’, which he espouses as a workable alternative. The streets of Leicester are represented as a contradictory space where Gilroy’s ‘convivial’ culture sits alongside ‘melancholia’ when ethnic groups fail to co-operate.28 The following example from The Last Taboo demonstrates how racial and linguistic categories become blurred in a heated exchange between liberal and conservative British Asian cousins: ‘He’s my best mate from when we was yout’s – you unnerstan’?’ ‘The bwoi even chats like him black,’ shouted Inderjit from behind me. ‘An’ what accent was that you were putting on, you knob?’ I said, turning to glare at him.29

Here, racial identity is hotly contested in an inner-city environment which facilitates cultural hybridity. Caribbean renderings of English words – ‘bwoi’ and ‘yout’s’ – and syntax borrowed from Jamaican patois – ‘chats like him black’ – demonstrate the fluidity of ethno-linguistic identities in Leicester. Inderjit, however, demonstrates hypocrisy in his approaches to racial identity. His calls for ethnic absolutism are voiced in a slang which reveals the futility of such an agenda. He calls out cultural appropriation yet does so in a Caribbean-inflected dialect. After the exchange of stylised speech designed to intimidate and provoke, there is a note of bathos in the italicised, distinctly

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British colloquialism, ‘knob’. As crude as it may be at times, English is the primary shared language here and it reduces the discussion to the lowest common denominator. The lead female protagonist, Simran, says of Inderjit and his friends, ‘They’re what I call “typical bhangra-muffins” – all macho, and thick with it and, to be honest, I don’t really speak to them if I can help it.’ 30 The portmanteau ‘bhangra-muffins’ references the hybrid identity where Asian bhangra culture meets Jamaican ‘raggamuffin’ – the gold-chained, string-vested machismo of the dancehall music scene. While aesthetic and linguistic styles are borrowed from Jamaican culture, the separatist Asian youths in Rai’s fiction deny a hybrid identity, defining themselves as ‘Indian’ rather than ‘British Asian’. This, in effect, substitutes their geographical birthplace in favour of an ancestral place of belonging. Simran and her brother David – note his distinctly English name – are born of liberal Punjabi parents, who are themselves shunned within their community for their ‘love marriage’, a union which they chose over arranged marriages to the dismay of their families. For the more conservative, Indian family members, the bonds of blood are considered sacred. This is a point of difference which leads to conflict: I laughed. ‘His father’s sister … how many times removed is that?’ I asked. ‘That’s some white boy shit you’re chattin’, he told me. ‘Indian man don’t see it that way.’ ‘Good job I’m English then,’ I replied, knowing that it would wind him up.31

While the racism is here directed at white people, there is still the inflection of Jamaican syntax, ‘you’re chattin’. The concept of family bonds being ‘twice removed’ is deemed a ‘white boy’ concept, alien to the automatic loyalty which a blood bond inspires in the ‘Indian man’. As explored in The Whisper, there is no Punjabi word for ‘cousin’, only ‘brother’, a linguistic fact which is used to emphasise the loyalty between family members.32 David’s identification as English does ‘wind his cousin up’, out of a dual sense of perceived disloyalty to the ancestral homeland of India but also the polluting or corrupting influence of Western/English morality. David here declares himself to be English in order to agitate his cousin’s sense of Indian nationalism. In making this claim to Englishness, David threatens his cousin’s claim to an Indian identity, reminding him that they were both born and raised in the East Midlands. As the above example suggests, diversity in Rai’s YA is never a twodimensional component of the narrative. Rai reveals the full complexity of interactions between different racial groups and the divides that can occur within them. His protagonists are usually progressive. More conservative



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characters and ideologies provide the obstacles which the lead characters must overcome. If there is one connecting thread in Rai’s YA novels, it is that of a motivated, conscientious central protagonist fighting for what they believe to be morally right, against a backdrop of conservative opposition. As with a great deal of YA, love interests are also central to narrative development, the twist in Rai’s fiction being the complicating factor of inter-racial and inter-faith partnerships. ‘Tradition’ is often used to excuse or mask racism in such situations. Racist characters refer to the values inherited from parents and grandparents, using the longevity of their views as a form of validation. This analysis will now turn to female agency in Rai’s novel The Crew and its sequel The Whisper, two gritty teenage crime thrillers set in the inner-city regions of Highfields and North Evington. I examine these YA novels using Judith Halberstam’s concept of ‘female masculinity: masculinity without men’.33 Antero Garcia states that ‘Female identity in YA texts can be constructed subtly or overtly. Notions of beauty, attraction, and expected behaviour of girls in books define for readers what is considered normal.’ 34 The success of the Sweet Valley High series in 1980s’ America is a prime example of this, as the microcosm of the high school social hierarchy is enacted on the page. YA literature has, in the past, been a repository for ‘gender essentialism’.35 YA can be said to respond to the commercial pressures of the popular fiction marketplace and has therefore not always been used as a vehicle for positive social change. This position provides a starting point from which Rai’s novels make radical departures. Leicester’s inner-city streets are depicted as hostile environments in which females need to be as streetwise, imposing and often aggressive as their male counterparts in order to survive. It is significant to note that the inner-city ‘ghetto’ is not gendered as a male space in Rai’s fiction. From the ever-present sex workers, through to the strong mother figures and outgoing young women, the female presence in the neighbourhood is constant. The ubiquitous gangs do not express the social dominance of any perceivable social group over another. Instead, Rai presents a world of ‘Young crews, old crews. Male gangs, female gangs.’ 36 The eponymous ‘crew’ are self-proclaimed anti-racists and practise gender equality in a way which many larger and more structured organisations should envy. This analysis necessarily intersects a gender reading with consideration of race. It is impossible to completely separate these categories when reading fiction that is so self-consciously concerned with both. The reader is never left in any doubt as to the ethnicity of a given character. When the strong female character Della is introduced, we are told that ‘her hair was braided and her legs were a polished caramel colour.’ 37 Della has many traditionally feminine characteristics, but I argue that she represents ‘female masculinity’

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as a self-defence mechanism in her urban environment. Halbersam’s concept of female masculinity works on the premise that, as a society, we often think of masculinity as inexorably linked to the male body. However, Halberstam argues that masculinity can exist without being tethered to the male physical form, and that understanding the trait in these terms can help to avoid prescriptive binary models of gender identity. In Rai’s fiction, Della provides a fully functioning model for Halberstam’s theory. The reader’s first impression of Della is a childhood memory recalled by the narrator: Della is fifteen – sixteen next month – and she’s wild. I met her years back when she was only nine, taxing some boys down the end of my street. One of her victims knew her and made a comment about her dad. He paid for it. Trainers, gold chain and two loose front teeth.38

Della’s dominance over men is immediate and frightening. A nine-year-old girl capable of mugging and injuring multiple males is a serious threat to the patriarchy. There is something particularly emasculating, and perhaps humorous, about Della removing her victim’s footwear, leaving him barefoot in the street. Della’s gender deviance earns her respect amongst her peers and her character may also be highly desirable to young readers, both male and female, whose consumption of YA has helped them to conceptualise females as empowered individuals. This is an evolved position from the gossipy Sweet Valley High model outlined above. Using that 1980s’ teen series as a point of contrast to 2008’s The Hunger Games, enormous progress can be observed in terms of gender representation. Katniss Everdeen is the heroine of The Hunger Games and, in the crudest literal rendering of girl power, systematically kills her male opponents in a dystopian fight to the death. As Garcia states, ‘in YA texts, women are fighting, leading, and generally kicking a lot more ass than traditional readers might expect in today’s books.’ 39 Encouragingly, this trend can be observed as clearly in Rai’s Leicester fiction as in the international best-sellers of the YA genre. Ultimately, Rai’s ability to reach audiences is dependent upon a select number of industry gatekeepers. The diversity that characterises Rai’s fiction is not a defining characteristic among the publishers who disseminate it: The people who write, edit, publish, sell, loan, market, blog and review books come, predominantly, from the same social background. They have the same culture – a middle-class way of life that doesn’t exist in the inner cities, or the poorer towns and suburbs. Thus, anything written by and/or about people who aren’t part of this culture is seen as niche or simply ignored. And even when it is published, like mine has been, it is because someone from the predominant cultural group has deigned that it is acceptable.40

This is by no means to say that the publishers Rai works with are not doing an excellent job. They are actively championing his work and helping



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it to reach a wider audience. These middle-class professionals are no less qualified or equipped for the task because of their background but it is vital to challenge the power structure of an industry that has continued to produce predominantly white, middle-class oriented titles in the UK despite rapidly changing demographics. Rai’s Black and Asian characters are by no means tokenistic, but there is a danger that the inclusion of Black and Asian writers on the lists of major publishers will remain so until the industry diversifies. Hybridity of culture, the rise of ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ and broadening definitions of ‘Britishness’ all led to increased demand for Black and Asian narratives to the reading population at large in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.41 Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the global surge of the Black Lives Matter movement has further increased demand for texts which articulate Black experiences, often to a white readership.42 A coalition of more than 100 writers subsequently assembled to form the Black Writers Guild (BWG), penning a letter to the ‘big five’ publishers Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan. The BWG includes writers such as Bernardine Evaristo, Malorie Blackman, Paul Gilroy, Sir Lenny Henry and Benjamin Zephaniah, and the group exists to address the fact that ‘British publishers are raising awareness of racial inequality without significantly addressing their own’.43 Among their proposed solutions are increased transparency of data on submission-to-acceptance ratios for Black writers, their financial advances and shakeup of how decision-making processes operate at all levels of the industry. There is a desire for devolution here also, evident in the BWG’s request to ‘build a network of black literary agents and talent scouts for emerging black talent that reaches beyond London into black communities in the nations and regions.’ 44 This ambitious yet urgent remit flagged up a blind spot in my own research. While advocating for ‘the regions’, I have thus far neglected to consider fully the importance of ‘the nations’ – Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – in providing a holistic view of under-represented UK writing. Such expansive and diverse literary locales may well share common ground with the Midlands in that they too are often overlooked by a London-centric culture industry. For Bali Rai in Leicester, dialogue with the publishing industry necessitates speaking not only across lines of class and race but of class geography too: I’ve been in the ludicrous position where I’ve had to defend my choice of inner-city idioms against a public-school educated, white, Surrey-based editor, who seemed to think her grasp of ‘street’ was more authentic than mine.45

This is a clear example of what Gunning has flagged up as ‘the dangers of ethnic cultures becoming defined externally in the service of national

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improvement through cultural diversity.’ 46 The sense of entitlement felt by the editor seeks to over-ride the authentic lived experience of the author, which is itself a thorny issue, as being a professional author necessitates a degree of remove from the inner-city street culture. The patronising exchange above is about more than a clash of egos; it is a telling example of how far the publishing industry has to go before it reaches a state of equality. Even as someone who has grown up in Highfields and North Evington, Rai is assumed to have less grasp of his subject matter than a highly educated outsider. If editors continue to be disproportionately pooled from white, middle-class communities it remains probable that published output will parallel this. This situation is not acceptable for the diverse readers across the UK, who will continue to be denied self-validation and identity confirmation through their reading. I have demonstrated the ways in which Rai champions diversity through his fiction, and in doing so have come to two conclusions. Firstly, that as a product of multicultural Leicester, the content of Rai’s fiction goes against the national trend of homogeneity in YA which sparked the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign. His success as an author is an encouraging sign of the genre’s diversification, but publishers need to do more to redress the balance of representation for people of colour. Secondly, Rai depicts diversity as a problematic issue. Inter- and intra-ethnic tensions and violence are depicted in a refreshingly open and frank manner. Rai frequently breaks the ‘wall of silence’ which he feels can stifle discussions about issues of race, faith and gender in Leicester’s British Asian communities.47 Rai’s commitment to creating convincing diverse characters is perhaps one of the major driving forces behind his international success. His novels give readers around the world an insight into the lived experience of young people in Leicester, which challenge official representations of a harmonious, multicultural city.

Notes 1 2 3 4

Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. Brah, p. 181. Singh and Tatla, p. 143. Michael Cart, ‘The Value of Young Adult Literature’, January 2008, www.ala.org/ yalsa/guidelines/whitepapers/yalit (Accessed 10 September 2015). 5 Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. 6 The Tolkien Society, www.tolkiensociety.org/author/faq/ (Accessed 10 September 2015). 7 Cart.



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8 Ibid. 9 Miranda Paul, #WeNeedDiverseBooks Slideshow, nd, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=n8X66KCwTY (Accessed 8 August 2015). 10 Paul. 11 Bali Rai, The Whisper (London: Random House Children’s Books, 2005), p. 37. 12 Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. 13 Rai, The Whisper, p. 47. 14 Paul. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Bali Rai, The Crew (London: Random House, 2003), p. 21. 18 Ibid., p. 19. 19 Ibid., p. 17. 20 Rai, The Whisper, p. 47. 21 Rudine Sims Bishop, ‘Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors’, Perspectives, 6:3 (1990), ix–xi. 22 www.balirai.co.uk/ (Accessed 1 September 2015). 23 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 24 Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. 25 Bishop. 26 Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. 27 Bali Rai Profile, ‘Grassroutes Writers’ Gallery’, www.transculturalwriting.com/ Grassroutes/content/Bali_Rai.htm (Accessed 8 September 2015). 28 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 29 Bali Rai, The Last Taboo (London: Corgi Children’s, 2006), p. 66. 30 Ibid., p. 13. 31 Ibid., p. 132 32 Rai, The Whisper, p. 55. 33 Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 34 Garcia, p. 79. 35 Butler Judith, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal, 40:4 (1988), 519–531 (p. 528). 36 Rai, The Whisper, p. 7. 37 Ibid., p. 3. 38 Ibid., p. 9. 39 Garcia, p. 77. 40 Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. 41 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 42 Sian Cain, ‘Black Writers’ Guild Calls for Sweeping Change in UK Publishing’, Guardian, June 15 2020, www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/15/blackwriters-guild-calls-for-sweeping-change-in-uk-publishing (Accessed 10 April 2021).

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43 Ibid. 44 The Black Writers Guild, ‘Our Letter in Full’, www.theblackwritersguild.com/ about (Accessed 10 April 2021). 45 Bali Rai, author interview, 11 March 2015. 46 Gunning, p. 115. 47 Bali Rai, Killing Honour (London: Corgi Children’s, 2011), p. 148.

5 ‘Leicester, Leicester/ Fester, fester’: at home with Adrian Mole1

Adrian Mole is a Leicester lad. He’s just 13 and three quarters and though he has literary pretensions and spots, he’s going to be a big success.2

Sue Townsend was one of the best-selling authors of the 1980s. Her debut novel The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ (1982) [hereafter TSDAM] introduced the world to the ‘Leicester lad’ who became an enduring literary icon.3 In the above 1982 quotation from the Leicester Mercury, the sense of regional pride is immediate. Its affirmative, punchy opening line leaves the reader in no doubt as to the novel’s provenance. Despite hints of geographical setting, Leicester is, however, conspicuous in its absence from TSDAM and, when present, is constructed largely through negative representations of everyday life. These are inexorably linked with the Midlands’ reputation as a mundane region that typifies white British suburban monotony. As I have demonstrated, this is not an accurate representation as it negates Leicester’s diversity. A modern reading of this 1980s’ classic requires a more robust framework. Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’ is directly applicable to Townsend’s work and Leicester. It refers to space which is inhabited not only by those who have migrated and their descendants but equally by those who are constructed and represented as ‘indigenous’.4 In literary terms, ‘diaspora space’ can be understood as the site of what James Procter has called the ‘postcolonial everyday’, a term he uses to describe an aesthetic which rejects the marketable ‘postcolonial exotic’ in favour of ‘the mundane, the clichéd, the everyday.’ 5 As a ‘diaspora space’ and increasingly prominent site of the ‘postcolonial everyday’, Leicester specifically, and the Midlands generally, were important cultural pre-conditions for TSDAM’s creation. However, the novel’s commercial appeal relied on Townsend retrospectively excising conspicuous regional markers from the novel to construct an anonymous anyplace. This effacement of Leicester took place in the drafting process of Townsend’s debut novel, a decision evidenced in manuscripts held in Townsend’s previously under-researched archives at the University of Leicester.6

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This chapter explores the connections between regionalism and the everyday, working on the hypothesis that although removing Leicester from TSDAM broadens its appeal to a national and global audience, the mundane everyday life which the novel depicts has a specific regional quality. Erasing local colour from her writing appears uncharacteristic from an author known in Leicester for her civic pride and extensive charity work, suggesting either that Townsend’s relationship with Leicester was more complex than previously thought, or that she was responding to external pressures. Sue was committed to Leicester social causes throughout her life, redistributing some of her literary earnings into the local community via charitable organisations.7 The muted vision of Leicester revealed in TSDAM must be understood in its 1980s context, prior to the commercial and cultural valorisation of Leicester as a hub of vibrant multiculturalism. In Townsend’s 1980s novels, Leicester is portrayed as a stagnant outlying region, detached from the nucleus of London. I demonstrate that the success of TSDAM was dependent upon two conflicting positions within the novel. Firstly, I suggest that the interchangeability of the novel’s setting appealed to Methuen, a large London-based publishing house. Methuen took a risk on a relatively unknown Midlands writer yet were able to confidently market her debut novel to a wide audience who related to the novel’s relative geographical anonymity and could substitute their own experiences for those of its eponymous diarist. Secondly, I argue that the Midlands, specifically Leicester, are imperative pre-conditions for TSDAM’s creation. The interplay between the specific and the generic for any commercially viable piece of fiction is a delicate balance and, while many of the finer details could place the novel in any regional suburb, Leicester is instrumental in the development and dissemination of TSDAM.

The regional everyday The parochial nature of the novel’s setting is entwined with the circumstances of its creation. Despite her eventual (and reluctant) rise to celebrity status, Townsend’s own writing background and the genesis of TSDAM are deeply rooted in the mundane, everyday aspects of the Midlands. The author’s success is a rags-to-riches narrative: ‘it is the fable of a literary Cinderella who suddenly found herself at the ball.’ 8 This success has often been framed against Townsend’s Midlands background, as if that very fact made her achievement remarkable. In an interview, one reviewer commented on Townsend’s ‘inner-city Midlands pessimism’, suggesting this character trait to be regionally unique and culturally established.9



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Pessimism aside, the novel’s development is rooted in Leicester’s inner-city district of Highfields, the neighbourhood which would later inspire Bali Rai’s The Crew (2003) and The Whisper (2005). Highfields was also the home of the theorist Avtar Brah, whose notion of ‘diaspora space’ is inspired by the region. When Townsend began her writing career, the literary centre of London entered into a commercial correspondence with an unlikely literary figure on the geographical periphery. The author’s archive reveals a refreshingly ordinary human being. Townsend wrote her shopping lists on the back of letters from her publisher Methuen. Misspelt entries such as ‘toilet roles’ sit amongst the most mundane items of everyday domesticity. In her archive, conversations with Methuen appear one sided. We only see the correspondence that Townsend received, but Geoffrey Strachan’s lively responses animate Townsend and give readers a feel for her style – direct, warm and personable. As the thread develops, we see the genesis of a multi-million selling novel. The name of the protagonist changes from Nigel, to Malcolm and finally Adrian Mole. In an intense 10 months between January and October 1982, Adrian Mole morphed from a series of notes, to radio plays, then a fully-fledged novel. In March 1983, only five months after the release of TSDAM, Townsend received significant royalties from her literary agents. Her postal address was no longer in Highfields, but in the leafier suburb of Stoneygate, with its ‘tree-lined streets of bulbous Victorian semis, corduroyed lecturers in cafés, dusty bookshops and curry houses.’ 10 Although in later life Adrian would move to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a small market town in north Leicestershire, he spent his formative years in suburban Leicester. For Townsend, the setting is a natural extension of her Leicester identity. As archival correspondence reveals, she was inspired by studying her own everyday life in Leicester in the 1980s; ‘I wrote the book for myself, from my own observations of when I’ve worked in youth clubs and on adventure playgrounds.’ 11 While the Adrian Mole novels are Leicester(shire) texts, their minimal geographical detail facilitates a non-regional understanding of their contexts. A recent newspaper article helps to put this into a national picture, ‘life in suburban Leicester can safely be assumed to be like that in pretty much any British town – but Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole summed it up the best.’12 This notion of a ‘safe assumption’ is telling of a general lack of willingness to dig deeper into the nuances of the region. Contemporary reviewers resisted reading TSDAM as a Leicester novel.13 Perhaps with an eye on marketability, Townsend played into this by pastiching her suburban setting, rather than making her novels an earnest expression of civic pride. In Townsend’s fiction, the suburbs are sheltered from the realities of the ‘real world’ beyond. As Adrian states in The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, ‘I have never seen a dead body or a female nipple. This is what comes

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from living in a cul-de-sac.’ 14 In the context of Adrian’s inexperience, both sights are equally shocking; both dangerous and unknown; both alien to his sheltered life. Townsend’s lightness of touch and the humour of her prose ensure that the most mundane details of Adrian’s life transcend the regional and connect with readers globally. The relative geographical anonymity of Townsend’s early novels serves not to eradicate the Midlands entirely but does perhaps help her publishers to reach beyond a provincial audience. As Rita Felski states in ‘The Invention of Everyday Life’: While everyday life expresses a specific sense of time, it does not convey a particular sense of space. In fact, everyday life is usually distinguished by an absence of boundaries, and thus a lack of clear spatial differentiation.15

With regards to Felski’s assertion about time, the Mole diaries exemplify this perfectly, with dates and days of the week for all of Mole’s diary entries. His teenage jottings are juxtaposed with the global and historical events printed in his diary (e.g. ‘Lincoln’s birthday’ (16) or ‘Septuagesima’ (18). When there is an entry missing, Mole writes to apologise for this in advance, and so readers retain a very concrete sense of how his life moves in a linear progression. This same clarity cannot be attributed to the geographical aspect of the novel. TSDAM’s identity as a Midlands text is constructed subtly. In the sequel, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1986), the diarist signs off a passionate letter as ‘The poet of the Midlands’, revealing a distinct regional sensibility but also a sense that Townsend is highlighting the apparent incongruity of ‘poetry’ and ‘Midlands’.16 She includes as an epigraph a quotation from D.H. Lawrence. Immediately the novel is placed in a Midlands literary tradition, while pastiching the notion of literary prestige by juxtaposing supposedly ‘high’ art with the popular, comic literature which follows. When Mole is returning home on a train from Scotland, there is a sense of the Midlands’ boundaries. A fellow traveller strikes up a conversation with Mole but he is glad when she does not continue her journey into the heart of the Midlands: ‘It was nag, nag, nag. But thank God she got off at Chesterfield’ (44). When Mole gets a new bike for Christmas, he is made to feel inferior by his friend Nigel, whose own bike was ‘made by a craftsman in Nottingham’ (118). Mole boasts about riding to nearby Leicestershire market town Melton Mowbray, claiming he ‘did it in 5 hours’ (116). This is a Midlands in-joke at Mole’s expense. The journey is just under twenty miles, which would mean that Mole averaged four miles an hour on his bike, equivalent to a slow walking pace. In these examples, Leicester is only suggested, never named explicitly. In this way, Townsend enables readers to sense the environs while retaining a generic British, suburban post-war setting.



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Townsend is a rare success story for the Midlands. This sense of regional accomplishment cannot, however, be claimed for the publication and distribution of TSDAM, which were undertaken by Methuen and later Penguin, both big London publishing houses. Townsend made regular visits to the capital to facilitate the publication of her work but chose to remain living in Leicester all her life, earning a very good living from royalties accrued.17 Her fictional hero does not have the same fortunes with his own literary endeavours. Adrian’s poetic aspirations are thwarted by industry gatekeepers at the BBC. His dialogue with the institution frames the dichotomy of London as the geographical centre and the provinces as peripheral. Mole holds the capital in high esteem. Even a rejection letter from the BBC becomes an object of near-sacred importance, fawned over by his parents and passed around at school. The letter humorously symbolises the marginalisation of Midlands writing in opposition to the ‘centre’ of London, where the cultural gatekeepers are concentrated. In having Adrian sign off letters as ‘The poet of the Midlands’, and later writing an unpublished – and indeed unpublishable – novel entitled Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, Townsend satirises her own literary region.18 Mole functions as an everyman and just as De Certeau frames the everyman as ‘niemand – nobody’, the Midlands is here framed as nowhere; a literary wasteland.19 In manuscript drafts of TSDAM, Mole says ‘I have been asking around but nobody knows where intellectuals go in Leicester.’ 20 This perception appears to be one held about the Midlands more generally, with Townsend’s barbed humour echoing comments made by novelist Graham Greene after a brief stint living in Nottingham; ‘an educated person in Nottingham is as precious and rare a find as jam in a wartime doughnut!’ 21 Born into an influential family in the Home Counties and educated at Oxford, Greene’s sense of superiority is here palpable. The novelist lived and worked in Nottingham for only four months, making his lack of intellectual connection to the place perhaps understandable.22 Townsend’s connection to the Midlands is well-established yet she plays into the same stereotypes as Greene. Reference to manuscript drafts reveals Nigel Mole (pre-Adrian) writing a regional poem he hopes to publish in a Leicester magazine: Leicester, Leicester Fester, fester Nigel Mole is no court jester.23

Even in the drafting stage, this material is perhaps deemed too inflammatory and is immediately crossed out. The purported cultural stagnation and dearth of intellectuality is enacted in the juvenile rhyme of ‘Leicester’ and

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‘Fester’. The amateur poet then distances himself from this uninspiring milieu, reminding readers that unlike his fellow citizens, he is ‘no court jester.’ The poem is nowhere to be seen in the published version of TSDAM. In this instance, neutralising regional colour was perhaps a wise move to avoid the wrath of Leicester’s population; being immortalised in print is not always a compliment. In ‘The Postcolonial Everyday’, Procter observes how life in provincial towns and cities provided the prominent artistic representation of postcolonial life at the start of the twenty-first century: see, for example, Billy Elliot (2000) or Bend it Like Beckham (2002). The relevance of Procter’s work to TSDAM becomes apparent when observing Townsend’s literary representations of multiculturalism in 1980s’ Leicester. Townsend depicts racist characters and thus suggests the narratives of harmonious multiculturalism to be more recent constructions. In the case of Adrian Mole, it is his cantankerous grandmother who represents the prejudices of the older generation: Bert and Mr. and Mrs. Singh and all the little Singhs came in asking for sanctuary. Their telly had broken down! My Grandma tightened her lips, she is not keen on black, brown, yellow, Irish, Jewish or foreign people. My father let them all in, then took Grandma home in the car. The Singhs and Bert gathered round the television talking in Hindi. (72)

In this scene, The Singhs are seeking ‘sanctuary’ to watch the royal wedding of Charles and Diana. Neighbourly solidarity cements a shared sense of Britishness and community. However, Grandma is being taken away from the gathering because her views are considered politically incorrect by consensus. Her opinions are perhaps not challenged verbally because they are rationalised by the younger generations of the Mole family as an outof-date, product-of-the-time ideology. This is humorously undermined, however, when Bert Baxter, a white British pensioner of similar age to Grandma Mole, casually and fluently converses in Hindi with the Singhs. Bert is an unlikely embodiment of Gilroy’s ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’.24 This is in sharp contrast to the overall impression of his character as drunken and surly. The scene activates Procter’s ‘postcolonial everyday’ through the ordinary, casual nature of communication between Bert and the Singhs. In multicultural Leicester there is nothing unusual about inter-cultural exchange, as evidenced by Townsend’s own ethnically diverse family. Accounts of her funeral reveal that Townsend’s immediate family and friends were representative of Leicester’s diversity.25 For the writer, multiculturalism was a reality of everyday life, and her fiction shows us its successes and failures through the confessions of Adrian Mole. As established in my study of Piri piri chicken above, food can be a powerful signifier of cultural identity and one of the chief sites where the



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notion of ‘authenticity’ can be defined or contested. Food is also a useful literary device to catalyse discussion of these issues. In the following example, a Vesta curry provides a humorous point of difference between Asian and white British residents as the serious notion of cultural appropriation is raised: Had Vesta curry and rice for dinner, during which Mrs Singh came round and talked Hindi to Bert. She seemed to find our curry very funny, she kept pointing to it and laughing. Sometimes I think I am the only person in the world who still has manners. (92–93)

The Moles’ dinner is to Adrian a source of prestige, worthy of special mention in his diary. To Mrs Singh, however, this attempt at South Asian cuisine is laughable. Food critic Brandon Robshaw recalls his experience of Vesta curries; ‘Made of powdered chemicals, they taste of powdered chemicals.’ 26 The geographical and colonial connotations of real Asian spices, along with the ancestral memory of selecting and preparing them, makes the pre-packaged Vesta curry seem ridiculous to Mrs Singh. It is a Westernised, artificial version of her national dish. A 2002 newspaper survey of British food and drink history sheds some light on the contested authenticity of the Vesta curry: ‘They may have been the height of exoticism in the 1960s, but this suspiciously shiny brown goo tasted more of Worcestershire sauce than anything from the Indian subcontinent. Then again, we didn’t know any better.’ 27 Concurrently, the Moles’ ignorance appears to be the source of Mrs Singh’s amusement. The Vesta curry is here emblematic of bland suburbia yet, for the Moles, it represents aspirational consumption. The interlocutor of Mrs Singh, an ‘authentic’ ambassador of South Asian cuisine and culture, is powerfully evocative of Leicester’s geographical history. South Asian families have long had the socioeconomic prowess to purchase property in the Leicester suburbs and their interaction with white British Leicester has shaped the shared culture of the region. This interaction forms the basis of Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’, which is ‘“inhabited” not only by those who have migrated and their descendants but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous.’ 28 Townsend’s 1980s’ depictions of multicultural Leicester pre-empted the humorous tone with which films such as East is East (1999) and the sketch comedy Goodness Gracious Me (1998–2015) would tackle serious issues of race, class and Britishness. Despite her lightness of touch, Townsend’s writing never portrays a ‘happy-clappy multicultural Leicester’.29 Elsewhere in TSDAM, geographical divisions in Leicester mirror racial segregation and reveal the prejudices of the diarist. In contrast to the safe ‘cul-de-sacs’ of the suburbs, Adrian fears the inner-city parts of Leicester, which he associates with crime. Referring to his school teacher, we are told that ‘Miss Elf lives with a West Indian in

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a terraced house in the town’ (112). Her lifestyle is implied to be dangerous: ‘I have made a Blue Peter oven glove for Miss Elf, but in order to give it to her in time for Christmas I will have to go into the ghetto and risk getting mugged’ (113). The misconception of mugging as a crime perpetrated by young Black men has been circulated widely. This injustice is explored by Stuart Hall et al. in the influential work of cultural theory, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order.30 Mole’s suburban upbringing in a cul-de-sac appears to have left him with a sense of superiority, an acute sensitivity to his own perceived hardship and an apparent intolerance of difference. The diary entries of TSDAM suggest that everyday life in 1980s’ Leicester is a very uneven experience, and one which dramatically alters between postcodes. While the first-person narrator often gives a skewed perspective of everyday life – for example, when Mole is expressing intolerance – Townsend frequently subverts the opinions of her diarist. Readers might ‘see through’ Mole’s neuroses to comprehend Townsend’s parodying of his utterances. Mikhael Bakhtin’s theories of discourse in the novel help to identify this as a form of hybridisation, ‘a mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance’.31 The language of Mole’s diary, confessional, melodramatic and at times conceited, is manipulated by Townsend to gently ‘poke fun’ at the hurdles of teenage emotional development. In this way, TSDAM is host to ‘two different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation or by some other factor’.32 A prime example of this relates again to the social geography of Leicester: School was closed this morning because the teachers couldn’t manage to get in on time because of the snow. That will teach them to live in old mill houses and windmills out in the country! (112)

The idea that the teachers will be ‘taught a lesson’ by their day off work, cosy in their homes, is laughable to readers because of Mole’s blinkered perspective, yet the studious, naive diarist writes with an earnestness that is sharply undercut by the author’s lexical choices. Using the ‘double’ or ‘hybrid’ narrative style, Townsend can make the minutiae appeal to the masses. She conveys the mundane and the everyday with humour and is able to use hybridisation of voice to put Adrian’s jottings in the contexts of broader debates around class and race. Hybridity and multiplicity of voice extends from Leicester writing and far across the city. Author Lydia Towsey has said of Leicester’s geography that it becomes ‘new, dynamic and specific by virtue of being in a number of places at the same time.’ 33 So for Bert Baxter happily conversing with Mrs Singh in Hindi, the postcolonial everyday is the creation of a new lived experience from the multiple geographies of diaspora. Leicester – although it became gradually less geographically



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recognisable as TSDAM was edited – was an important precondition for the novel because the region’s postcolonialism was then, and remains, very much part of the mundane, everyday experience, as epitomised by the Moles’ beloved cul-de-sac cuisine, the Vesta curry.

Notes 1 Townsend, ‘Early Typescript Material Related to the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾’. 2 ‘Adrian is Pure Delight’, Leicester Mercury, 7 October 1982. 3 ‘Adrian Mole is Tops for Author’, Leicester Mercury, 10 July 1989; Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ (London: Methuen, 1982). 4 Brah, p. 181. 5 Procter, ‘The Postcolonial Everyday’, p. 62. 6 Sue Townsend, Holograph manuscript of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, ST/1/1/1, University of Leicester Special Collections. 7 For example, ‘Sue Picks Hospice as such a Worthy Cause’, Leicester Mercury, 8 June 1987, The Leicester Mercury Archive, University of Leicester Special Collections. 8 Sue Townsend, Scrap Book 1, ST/25, Sue Townsend Archive, University of Leicester Special Collections. 9 Cyndi Pain, ‘Mole Means Millions’, Leicester Mercury, 4 December 1984. 10 Tom Dyckhoff, ‘Let’s Move to Clarendon Park and Stoneygate, Leicester’, Guardian, 12 August 2011, www.theguardian.com/money/2011/aug/12/letsmove-to-clarendon-park-stoneygate-leicester (Accessed 11 May 2015). 11 ‘Adrian is Pure Delight’. 12 ‘Adrian Mole: Quotes and Musings on Life in Suburban Leicester’, Western Daily Press, 11 April 2014. 13 Sue Townsend, Scrap Book, ST/25. 14 Sue Townsend, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (New York: Avon, 1986), p. 155. 15 Rita Felski, ‘The Invention of Everyday Life’, New Formations, 39 (1999), 15–31 (22). 16 Townsend, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, p. 147. 17 Pain. 18 Townsend, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, p. 147; Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years (London: Methuen, 1993). 19 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 2. 20 Townsend, ‘Early Typescript Material Related to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾’. 21 Cited in Alison Emm, ‘Graham Greene and the Cinema’, LeftLion, 2 February 2011, www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/graham-greene-and-the-cinema/id/3429 (Accessed 6 July 2015).

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22 Ibid. 23 Townsend, ‘Early Typescript Material Related to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾’. 24 Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 25 Sue Townsend, Scrap Book 1, ST/25, Sue Townsend Archive, University of Leicester Special Collections. 26 Brandon Robshaw, ‘New BBC Series Savours Half a Century of Food in Britain, from Vesta Curries to Nouvelle Cuisine’, Independent, 1 March 2015, www. independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/new-bbc-series-savourshalf-a-century-of-food-in-britain-from-vesta-curries-to-nouvelle-cuisine10071775.html (Accessed 29 April 2015). 27 Fiona Beckett, Joanna Blythman, Richard Ehrlich, Matthew Fort, Malcolm Gluck and Roger Protz, ‘Noshtalgia’, Guardian, 29 June 2002, www.theguardian.com/ lifeandstyle/2002/jun/29/foodanddrink.shopping1 (Accessed 21 April 2015). 28 Brah, p. 181. 29 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 30 Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (London: Macmillan, 1978). 31 Mikhael Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (London: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 358. 32 Ibid. 33 Lydia Towsey, ‘Reflection’, Grassroutes Writers Gallery, www.transculturalwriting. com/Grassroutes/content/Lydia_Towsey.htm (Accessed 7 July 2015).

Coda: brimful of Leicester

Aged 10, I rushed to Grantham’s branch of Woolworths on a Saturday morning. The mission: to obtain my first ever music purchase, a copy of Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha on cassette, at any cost. Thankfully, the single was only 99p. At the time, though, this represented the best part of a week’s pocket money and it was worth every penny. On the A-side, the slow, hypnotic guitar groove was immediately recognisable from the previous night’s Top of the Pops. The B-side was an altogether more unfamiliar affair. The frantic, sped-up tape loops and big beat sensibilities of Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, were a step too far from the diet of Britpop, Beatles and Bob Marley on which I had been raised. The rest of the country would wholeheartedly disagree with me and, today, this remix is streamed seven times for every one play of the original.1 Cook, an industry-savvy Southerner, catapulted the young Midlands band into the mainstream. As Alexis Petridis recalls, ‘Cornershop looked as if their world had fallen apart.’ 2 The unexpected success had taken them away from where they wanted to be. Wolverhampton-born Tjinder Singh formed Cornershop in Leicester in 1991, with his brother Avtar, and friends Ben Ayres and David Chambers. The band’s name poked fun at stereotypes about what Asians in Britain could do for a living: it was well established that they could operate convenience stores, but could they make experimental, multicultural indie music? The influence of creative pioneers in this fluid, British Asian aesthetic was acknowledged in the song ‘Hanif Kureishi Scene’ on Cornershop’s In the Days of Ford Cortina (1993).3 Despite experiencing similar discrimination and racism, Kureishi at least had the advantage of the London metropolis to contextualise his writerly art. While carving out their niche as an iconic Midlands band with a global impact, Cornershop would maintain a sense of humour in their output. Their debut EP, for example, was released on limited edition ‘curry coloured vinyl’.4 The title of their 2012 release Urban Turban: The Singhles Club, revisited self-deprecating Midlands humour with a South Asian twist, which from a 2021 perspective, also seems to be internalising racism.5 In mashing together their influences, though, the band

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were resolutely not trying to be ‘hybrid’. When, in 1996, journalist Andrew Beaujon described Cornershop as ‘bhangra punk’, this resonated more as a statement of intent than some quirky East-meets-West fusion concept.6 While their music was often playful, mellow, or downright psychedelic, their attitude was resolutely punk. For Singh and Cornershop, an early and very public expression of this punk ethic was a 1992 Melody Maker photoshoot in which they burned a poster of Morrissey, on Manchester Street in Westminster.7 Earlier that year, the ex-Smiths frontman had waved a Union Jack around onstage at a Madness gig in Finsbury Park. At that performance, Morrissey also posed in front of a backdrop depicting two white skinhead girls, an act which could be seen to promote white nationalism. Others felt Morrissey himself was the victim, due to homophobic taunts from neo-fascists in the crowd.8 Either way, Cornershop jumped at the opportunity to distance themselves from the flag-waving and Morrissey’s increasingly anti-immigrant lyrical output. As Singh recalls, ‘It was hard for [us] to make our stand then, because we were pulling a lot of disparate things together.’ 9 During the photoshoot, white drummer David Chambers wore a ‘Token Honky’ T-shirt: a joke which would not land so well in today’s tense social media ecosystem. There are certainly a lot of layers to this photograph, an image which Singh states ‘hasn’t gone away’ with the passage of time.10 Nor has Cornershop’s antiestablishment stance. They continue to make intelligent counter-cultural commentary on the state of the nation, 2020’s England is a Garden LP proving their vitality and longevity. The Union Jack became an icon of Britpop and the wider ‘Cool Britannia’ moment of the late 1990s. Noel Gallagher’s flag-adorned Epiphone guitar and Geri Halliwell’s dress are emblematic of this. Inspired perhaps by the mod branding of The Who, or the Kinks’ notion of a ‘village green preservation society’, bands and journalists jumped onto a feelgood patriotic aesthetic, which seemed to chime with the relatively youthful ideals of the incoming New Labour administration. After all, Tony Blair famously hosted Noel Gallagher at 10 Downing Street. While this nationalistic visual trend may have been for the most part innocuous, outspoken music critic Alex Bond has drawn a direct line to the Brexit vote of 2016: ‘all those self-regarding white kids forming bands and trying to reinvent The Kinks laid the emotional and cultural ground for all those emotional appeals to an idea of England that never existed.’ 11 This is undeniably an extreme position. It requires an almighty leap of the imagination to get from Damon Albarn singing ‘Clover Over Dover’ to Nigel Farage standing guard with his camera crew at the white cliffs, on a self-appointed mission to condemn desperate migrants. As much as they were an ethnic and cultural minority within mainstream British music of the 1990s, I will resist the temptation to position Cornershop



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as the archenemy of flag-waving white-led Britpop. They got on well with Oasis, supporting the band on a major US tour and subsequently recording ‘Spectral Mornings’ with Noel Gallagher, who added electric guitar parts to a fourteen-minute sitar and tabla workout. Singh later remarked, ‘it’s quite a brave thing for a white chap to do’.12 Their collaborative spirit distinguished Cornershop as pioneers of an inclusive, yet never diluted, 1990s’ multiculturalism. Their music was an authentic expression of South Asian and white British roots made manifest in a working-class Midlands aesthetic It is worth noting that Cornershop’s breakthrough coincided with the rapid rise of Kula Shaker. This upper-middle-class white band from the South of England held a deep fascination with Indian culture. Their debut album K (1996) rocketed to the top of the UK album charts. It was not a universal hit within Britain’s South Asian population. As writer Nikesh Shukla recalls: Years before, I sat in an Indian restaurant round the corner. It’s called Oh! Calcutta! I found the exclamation mark alarming. The place was owned by a white guy. As I sat with my best friend and his then girlfriend, staring at the disco lights, I listened to Kula Shaker sing about ‘Taatva’, about ‘Govinda jai jai, gopala jai jai’.13

As part of a chapter entitled ‘Namaste’ for his edited volume The Good Immigrant, Shukla’s recollection here expresses concern about the appropriation of his South Asian heritage by young white revellers in the Bristol party scene. If Morrissey’s later support for the anti-Islam, climate-denying Britain First Party was one extreme offshoot of the optimistic 1990s’ popular embrace of multiculturalism, perhaps Oh! Calcutta! benchmarks nearly as problematic a movement in the opposite direction.14 Whereas some have been able to define their Britishness only in opposition to multiculturalism, others have embraced it with an enthusiasm which suffocates difference. The line between cultural appreciation and appropriation is a fine and fluid one, yet the point I want to make here regarding Cornershop is how the Midlands provided fertile ground for cultural exchange which felt sincere, mutual and respectful. While Kula Shaker were commercially successful, they were critically unpopular and polarised the British public with their Sanskrit lyrics and cod Indian mysticism. Cornershop had tasted commercial success but preferred experimentation, for example singing a cover of ‘Norwegian Wood’, which was recorded in Punjabi and garnered imprimaturs from Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney. Singh was heavily influenced by Punjabi folk, particularly the Bhujhangy Group from Handsworth, Birmingham.15 His enduring music legacy and his politics are deeply rooted in the Midlands, for better or worse. While Bond sees Britpop flag-waving as a precursor to 2016’s EU

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referendum result, Singh understands the genesis in a more historically anchored, Midlands-centric vein: ‘Enoch Powell was Brexit: Part One and now we’ve got Brexit 2.0.’ 16 As the consequences of this landmark decision unfold, it feels certain that Cornershop will continue to make unashamedly political music with little regard for commercial viability. After all, Norman Cook’s bouncy remix has left a legacy which ensures critical attention and, it is to be hoped, well-earned royalties for the Leicester lads for the rest of their careers.

Notes 1 Spotify (Accessed 28 May 2021). 2 Alexis Petridis, ‘Rock Around the Shop’, Guardian, 29 March 2002, www. theguardian.com/music/2002/mar/29/popandrock.shopping (Accessed 28 May 2021). 3 Cornershop, In the Days of Ford Cortina (Wiiija Records, 1993). 4 Peter Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock (London: Rough Guides, 2003), pp. 229–230. 5 Cornershop, Urban Turban: The Singhles Club (Ample Play Records, 2012). 6 Andrew Beaujon, ‘Cornershop: Bhangra Punk!’, CMJ New Music Monthly (February 1996), p. 20. 7 Tjinder Singh quoted in Gary Ryan, ‘Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – Tjinder Singh, Cornershop’, NME, 6 March 2020, www.nme.com/features/does-rock-nroll-kill-braincells-tjinder-singh-cornershop-2620802 (Accessed 25 May 2021). 8 BBC, ‘Morrissey: Biography’, Living Icons, 2 September 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/ arts/livingicons/bio08.shtml (Accessed 28 May 2021). 9 Tjinder Singh quoted in Ryan. 10 Ibid. 11 Colin Bond, ‘The Good, The Bad and The Queen – Merrie Land (Warner Music)’, God is in the TV, 14 November 2018, www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2018/11/14/ the-good-the-bad-and-the-queen-merrie-land-warner-music/ (Accessed 26 May 2021). 12 Tjinder Singh quoted in Ryan. 13 Nikesh Shukla (ed.), The Good Immigrant (London: Unbound, 2016), pp. 23–24. 14 Roisin O’Connor, ‘Morrissey Reaffirms Support for Far-Right Party and Claims “Everyone Prefers their Own Race”’, Independent, 25 June 2019, www. independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/morrissey-interview-far-rightfor-britain-racist-brexit-nigel-farage-a8973276.html (Accessed 28 May 2021). 15 Jude Rogers, ‘Cornershop’s Tjinder Singh: “My Dad Said, ‘They’ll Not Always Want You Here’”. That Stuck’, Guardian, 1 March 2020, www.theguardian.com/ music/2020/mar/01/cornershop-tjinder-singh-brexit-morrissey-music-englandgarden (Accessed 21 May 2021). 16 Tjinder Singh quoted in Ryan.

Birmingham: (re)building the second city

Birmingham: introduction

This study of selected post-war texts from Birmingham looks to the built environment to better understand the development of a unique, multi-faceted literary aesthetic. Perhaps more than any other city within the pages of this book, Birmingham tears down and rebuilds; funds and defunds; nurtures and neglects. This introduction interrogates the interplay between the evolution of the physical fabric of the city and the ‘super-diversity’ of the communities who inhabit it.1 In doing so, it establishes the sociohistorical contexts which are preconditions for the wealth of vibrant literature inspired by multicultural Birmingham. ‘The City of a Thousand Trades’ has historically been defined by its manufacturing prowess rather than its literary or cultural output.2 Following the Industrial Revolution, Birmingham became a key component of the world’s infrastructure. Producing finely crafted goods such as buttons, glass and guns, Birmingham became known as ‘the workshop of the world.’ 3 In 1868, historian Willey portrayed Birmingham as a ‘hive of industry’ with its busy workers occupied in all kinds of skilled trades: The manufactures of Birmingham are almost infinite in their variety. Almost all articles of utility or ornament are manufactured in the town. From a pin to a steam engine, from pens to swords and guns, from ‘cheap and nasty’ wares sold at country fairs by ‘cheap Johns’ to the exquisitely beautiful and elaborate gold and silver services which adorn mansions of the rich … all things are made in this hive of industry, and give employment to its thousands of men, women, and children.4

Willey’s depiction suggests an artisan culture – crafting ‘exquisitely beautiful’ articles of ‘ornament’ – which appears to be the preserve of the wealthy elite. However, like the modern retail giant Amazon, Victorian Birmingham also understood the necessity of low-value items traded in volume. The frenetic activity is portrayed as restless yet productive and ‘employment for its thousands’ suggests genuine social benefit to the working-class people of the city. This is, however, just one interpretation of history. In 1894,

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Dent published a quotation from an earlier, undated text, Hints for a History of Birmingham, which emphasised the sinister utility of locally made goods: In the primeval forests of America the Birmingham axes struck down the old trees; the cattle pastures of Australia rang with the sound of Birmingham bells; in East India and the West they tended the fields of sugar cane with Birmingham hoes.5

In these echoes of brutal colonialism, we hear the repetitive sound of tools put to grim work as human oppression and environmental destruction unfold in tandem. Here is Birmingham’s colonial legacy rendered in cast iron. The price of a slave was often reckoned to be equivalent to ‘one Birmingham gun’.6 The city’s industry therefore gave the world a benchmark for exploitation. Yet the lowly paid workers who forged these items in the Midlands, while spared the indignity of shackles, were still exploited by the ruling classes who employed them. It was the chain-making women of the Black Country who formed the country’s first ever trade union, over pay and conditions during The Cradley Heath Chain Makers’ Strike of 1910.7 The Midlands is steeped in proud industrial history but must also face up to its complicity in colonialism. As Myers and Grosvenor state, ‘the black presence in the West Midlands significantly predated the accepted picture of post-war immigration’ and yet for centuries, Birmingham guns and chains played their ugly role in wars and slavery.8 There is a contradiction between the city as a diverse, free-trading centre for commerce, and the city as a maker of shackles. Although these local industries are now defunct, the descendants of those colonised or enslaved now form an undeniable part of modern Birmingham. This introduction explores how the city housed former commonwealth subjects in the post-war years; how immigration and de-industrialisation altered the urban fabric; and how postcolonial literature, music and art responds to place and the trauma of history. To understand Birmingham’s emergence as a modern global city, we must look for clues in the built environment. As a legacy of its central role in the Industrial Revolution, Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice.9 I would argue that this is where the comparison with Venice ends, yet critics have looked to mainland Europe to better understand Birmingham’s defining characteristics. As Edward Glaeser states, ‘the streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance and the streets of Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution … wandering these cities … is to study nothing less than human progress.’ 10 Despite their commonalities on paper, it is obvious that there are major differences between cities such as Florence and Venice, and Birmingham. The unglamorous aesthetics of late twentieth-century Birmingham seem to have rubbed off on the way Brummies – and indeed the world beyond – see the city’s cultural output. In reality, Birmingham writers are earning international recognition and collecting – even turning down – major prizes. I am referring



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here to Benjamin Zephaniah who rejected the Order of the British Empire. The poet explained, ‘I get angry when I hear that word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality … of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.’ 11 In this nexus, the ‘human progress’ we see mapped on the streets of the city has come at great cost. Progress is deeply subjective in this context and while benefiting some, it has horrifically exploited others. Birmingham’s motto is ‘Forward!’ and in terms of industry, architecture and infrastructure, the local authorities use this as a guiding principle. The motto was not officially granted to the city but was merely assumed at the local level. Although the exact date of its usage is contested, historians estimate that the ‘Forward’ motto was assumed around 1838.12 With such focus at the civic level on progress, the city’s personal narratives are often shaped, and yet obscured, by the bigger picture. This is what Irish-Birmingham novelist Catherine O’Flynn describes as Birmingham’s ‘oppressive top-down culture’.13 The impact of this culture often materialises along racial lines. Take, for example, the diversion of funds away from economically deprived and ethnically diverse inner-city areas to develop middle-class conferencing facilities during a drive to make Birmingham the ‘meeting place of Europe’.14 The intertwined relationships between the city’s racial dynamics and its built environment are long and complex. In this introduction, I map out a brief, selective overview of the architectural development of Birmingham from the post-war period to the 1970s, deploying a select few case studies to emphasise the connectivity of race and urban space which is so vital for the development of multicultural Birmingham literature. Birmingham’s architecture presents a visible continuum of overlapping epochs. Historic relics of industrialisation include buildings such as Aston Hall, Sarehole Mill, Bournville, the Jewish jewellery quarter and more parks than any city in Europe.15 These assets are some of the few to have survived a city planning policy which has repeatedly torn down to rebuild anew. While this approach may appear ruthless, it was born of necessity. The devastation of air raids wrought destruction upon Birmingham but also brought new opportunities to clearly define its identity as a built environment. As Cherry asserts, ‘the scars of war would be healed and the squalor of old building replaced by new.’ 16 The man responsible for this urban ‘healing’ was Herbert Manzoni, Civil Engineer from 1935 to 1963. An accomplished architect and powerful visionary for Birmingham, Manzoni nonetheless attracted derision for his unsentimental approach. In a famous quotation he outlines his ethos: I have never been very certain as to the value of tangible links with the past. They are often more sentimental than valuable … As to Birmingham’s buildings, there is little of real worth in our architecture. Its replacement should be an

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improvement … As for future generations, I think they will be better occupied in applying their thoughts and energies to forging ahead, rather than looking backward.17

Against Manzoni’s wishes, I seek to ‘look backward’ at the post-war period of Birmingham’s development. This is not to indulge in nostalgia but to better understand how this chapter of history has shaped the modern city. In the late 1940s, a collectivist state emerged from the disarray of war, heralding a ‘brighter, nobler future for its citizen.’ 18 As Cherry succinctly summarises: ‘order would replace disorder’.19 We can see this thirst for ‘order’ in Manzoni’s agenda. As appealing as authoritarian rhetoric may have seemed in a time of chaos and depleted resources, Manzoni’s forwardmarching vision could not accommodate all of Birmingham’s citizens. The development of a collectivist state was reified with the passing of several milestone Acts: Family Allowances (1945), National Health (1946), National Insurance (1946) and National Assistance (1948). While these acts sought to make life more equitable among British citizens, it was the British Nationality Act (1948) which would accelerate the growth of the multicultural Midlands. This landmark legislation expanded the geographical catchment of British citizenship to the colonies. In Birmingham, this profoundly impacted the development of the cityscape. As Chan asserts, ‘both the presence and the absence of new British citizens were a persistent part of the rebuilding of the city’.20 Even when they were not physically present, the rhetoric of fear attached to Commonwealth Britons proved just as effective in motivating conservative urban planners. To understand how immigration impacted urban planning, it is necessary to envision the Britain which planners articulated in their post-war designs: ‘low population density, de-congested suburban spaces and isolated gardens.’ 21 This utopian vision of a garden of England was perceived to be under threat from immigration, which Manzoni and his peers equated with congestion. In an ‘empty vessel’ conception of space, planners aspired toward the most efficient uses of available terrain around urban centres.22 Sprawl was to be avoided and cities would be enclosed within green belts. Growing populations would be housed in neat suburbs and purpose-built garden cities.23 In order to actualise these visions, The West Midland Group of city planners, of which Manzoni was a key member, concluded that population should increase ‘naturally’ – only by the excess of births over deaths – not by in-migration of new British citizens. While ‘natural increase’ was much larger than net migration, it was the latter, the planners concluded, that needed to be capped.24 Birmingham’s Black and Asian population pre-dates Windrush by centuries but numbers were relatively small. In creating a blueprint for Birmingham intended to



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accommodate the ‘normative’ population of white British residents, the planners were perhaps responding in fear of those who had not yet arrived. As Hesse argues, ‘Black and Asian people are crucial to the existence of “white society”’.25 In Birmingham, this position is further complicated by the presence of large Irish communities who, despite their white ethnicity, have historically been ‘othered’ and excluded.26 The creative interplay between their stories and those of Birmingham’s Black and Asian residents shapes a diverse body of cultural and literary expression whose legacy counters the single-minded approach of Manzoni and The West Midlands Group of urban planners. Manzoni’s priority after World War II was residential properties and he executed rapid building programmes which demolished Victorian housing stock in favour of both low- and high-rise new builds in five self-contained new towns: Lee Bank, Ladywood, Highgate, Newtown and Nechells Green.27 This process took time, however, and the ameliorating effects of modern building projects were not felt by all citizens equally. The Victorian housing stock which was, in Manzoni’s view, of ‘little real worth’ was inhabited by Birmingham’s poorest residents. Among these were ‘minority white’ Irish communities, many of whom had settled in Birmingham due to the great famine of the nineteenth century.28 In the twentieth century, the economic fortunes of Birmingham as one of the ‘centres of developing light industry in the Midlands’ made it an appealing destination for Irish workers.29 Within the wider history of Irish migration to England, the concentrated period of post-war migration to Birmingham can be viewed as part of what historian Delaney calls the ‘second great wave of Irish migrants to England in the 1940s and 50s’.30 These migrants left behind what Inglis calls an ‘isolated, insular, Catholic rural society revolving around agriculture’, in favour of ‘a more open, liberal-individualistic, secular urban society.’ 31 In contrast to Ireland, this may well have been the impression which Birmingham gave, although it is important to recognise the constraints of such a large city rebuilding to fit the planner’s perspective of just a select few white, male visionaries. Post-war Irish migration coincided with the arrival of African Caribbean workers in Birmingham and this simultaneity provided the starting point for a complex series of intertwined community narratives as Black, and Irish settlers made Birmingham their home. The historical artefact of placards on rental accommodation articulating variations of ‘No Blacks, no Irish’, speaks to a shared experience of racism but also signals the territorialisation of working-class Birmingham – among other UK cities – whereby race and class were demarcated on the built environment. In the 1950s, the local press sensationalised accounts of the city’s growing diversity. Inner-city regions, such as Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath were reported to be ‘problem areas’ and described in racially absolute terms in local newspaper headlines:

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‘The “Little Harlems” Must Go’; ‘It’s Live and Let Live in Britain’s Harlem’; ‘Give Balsall Heath to the City Coloured!’ 32 The populist press was eager to capitalise upon, and in turn agitate, the fears and prejudices of some white residents. As witnessed in St Ann’s, Nottingham, friction at the intersections of race and class can be exacerbated by perceived competition within the jobs market. While in twentieth-century Nottingham the hosiery industry was largely contained within the elegant Victorian red brick structures of the Lace Market, Birmingham took a more functional approach in allocating new spaces for industry. There were caveats to the city’s pro-business agenda, however, and Manzoni was characteristically vocal about who should be allocated commercial land in his ambitious City of Birmingham Development Plan: This important generative factor [of land for new industry] must be fostered, but it cannot be fostered if the space required is occupied by firms moving in the city from elsewhere … In fact, their establishment inevitably results in people being imported into the city from wherever they are available, very often from Ireland or from the agricultural areas.33

The dismissive anonymity of ‘elsewhere’ or ‘wherever’ sits in sharp contrast with the specificity of his vision for Birmingham. The civic pride of the planner is admirable, when contrasted with Delaney’s rendition of Birmingham as an ‘anonymous industrial centre’ to which Irish workers were drawn.34 Yet Manzoni dehumanises the migrant workforce with a pragmatism which, although morally dubious, is perhaps unsurprising for a mid-twentieth-century civil engineer. As Hubbard et al. have argued, a ‘planner-eye gaze’ is inherently detached and distanced from the everyday experience of citizens on the ground.35 While a planner’s remit is entirely quantitative, concerned with accommodating projected populations, my analysis takes a far more qualitative approach. The ‘available’ workers, rendered purely functional in the quotation above, would become a vital part of Birmingham’s cultural identity. They, and their descendants, would develop a uniquely Irish-Brum aesthetic, which became manifest in literature, music and art. Birmingham’s bustling urban spaces were being ringfenced by local authorities as early as 1917.36 Blueprints for a series of ring roads were at this time revolutionary and informed an excited vision of a modern urban centre. The concentric circles of earth which ancient Britons constructed found their twentieth century counterpart and the motorcar became the focus of urban planning. Not until the post-war years would the ring roads be fully realised – providing mobility to those who could afford motorcars, yet simultaneously constricting the land and the people within. If this sounds macabre, the context in which these developments occurred must be taken into consideration. By the 1960s the British press talked of the ‘Birmingham



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problem’: the fastest-rising population in the country; rapidly expanding industry; a chronic shortage of labour. A study conducted in the early 1960s recommended that half a million people be ‘decanted’ from the region to avoid overcrowding.37 While this extreme outcome did not materialise, planners had to respond robustly. As Sutcliffe and Smith assert: ‘Birmingham underwent a policy shift from expansionism to retrenchment’.38 As the city morphed into the spaces delineated by ring roads, Manzoni and his team faced the urgent task of preventing ‘congestion’ in the built environment. They therefore took influence from modernism and built to accommodate as many people as possible within the available urban space. One material perhaps more than any other assisted toward this goal: concrete. Cheap, efficient and divisive, the grey stuff defines Birmingham’s post-war development. The inner ring road – opened with great fanfare in 1971 – became known as a ‘concrete collar’, proving controversial due to the demolition of Victorian housing, the delineation of pedestrian and motorcar space, and the ‘choking’ of the city by restricting economic growth.39 The supremacy of the car at this time, evidenced not only by the investment in roads but the vast scale of the local motorcar industry, gave Birmingham an icon by which to be recognised nationally. As journalist Jonathan Meades would have it, ‘other than the car, there is no short-hand for Brum, no archetype’.40 This modernist trope takes us from the post-war car industry, which was a major employer, to the tangled overpasses of the Gravelly Hill interchange, affectionately known as ‘Spaghetti Junction’. Constructed between 1968 and 1972, it occupies 30 acres, consisting of 559 concrete columns which elevate 13.5 miles of motorway above two rivers, two railway lines and three canals. Poet Jo Shapcott encapsulates the dystopian feel and inherent danger of this infamous landmark: ‘Ranting, belted up and bitter … the traffic jam, the blue light, the stretcher … the hiss of oxy-acetylene/ cutting the ditched wreck open’.41 Designed to enhance quality of life, Birmingham’s built environment has historically shared a double-edged relationship with its citizens. City planners identify a problem and pursue its resolution in a typically paternalistic manner. The human cost seems to be an after-thought in the administration of a ruthlessly efficient planning agenda. The 1960s were a time of disorienting change and the decade in which Birmingham cemented its reputation as a true ‘concrete jungle’, a trope to which Black British poets such as Moqapi Selassie would later respond creatively.42 In 1960, the post-war rebuilding began in earnest and the first official planning agenda was published: the City of Birmingham Development Plan;43 1964 saw the development of the Bullring shopping centre, a vast concrete structure served by a gyratory road system. The city was trying to cater for the motorised middle classes but in doing so had caused irreparable

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damage to the vision of Birmingham which nineteenth-century industrialists strived towards. The motorisation of the city proved controversial, interpreted by some commentators as an act of historical vandalism.44 As Flatman states, ‘the city’s robust Victorian urban fabric had been carved up and replaced not by a utopia, but by a dysfunctional terrain of urban motorways, concrete underpasses and undistinguished architectural tat.’ 45 This dismissive rendering of the process might be more constructively expressed as the modernist phase of Birmingham’s architectural development. Buildings such as the Alpha Tower are defining landmarks of this historic period, due to their angular outlines, uniform facades and bold impact on the skyline. Arguably, these landmarks were the showpieces of a white professional class. The city’s Black, Asian and Irish communities tended to be concentrated in dilapidated Victorian terraced housing in areas such as Sparkbrook and Handsworth.56 Therefore a divide emerges in the rebuilding of the city. Modernist precinct designs were ‘based on the perhaps illusory idea of a modern, relaxed and “time-rich” pedestrian.’ 47 This is an idealised vision which excludes those who must work long hours to survive and whose daily negotiation of a systemically racist society is far from ‘relaxing’. As Birmingham became increasingly diverse, this diversity was hidden from the public stage of the city centre’s landmark developments. As Kieron Connell asserts, ‘housing authorities wanted to cordon off the immigrants and not let them mix with the larger population.’ 48 While this intent is hard to prove, Census data shows the impact clearly in the geographical concentration of diverse minority communities in specific areas of Birmingham.49 Throughout the 1960s, Victorian housing stock deteriorated in the poorest parts of Birmingham. The city centre became increasingly defined through brutalist architecture, with architect John Madin championing this aesthetic.50 It is the controversial and ephemeral nature of Birmingham’s brutalist structures which inspire Catherine O’Flynn’s second novel, The News Where You Are (2010). The Royal Society of British Architects state that they ‘consider Brutalism as architecture in the raw’ yet this rawness often offends.51 It is a style with its origins in the work of French architect Le Corbusier, defined by the prominence of concrete, straight lines and bold proportions.52 In a twenty-first-century cityscape dominated by the glass and mixed materials of modern retail developments, brutalist structures appear primitive and monolithic by contrast, evoking ancient stone structures. King Charles once said of one of John Madin’s iconic buildings, Birmingham’s now-demolished Central Library, that ‘it looks more like a place for burning books than keeping them.’ 53 The vast, inverted ziggurat structure was torn down in 2016. The BBC released footage of the demolition captured by drone. The clouds of dust, torn concrete and twisted steel make the video reminiscent of distressing 2016 drone footage showing bomb-damaged Syria.54



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The disconcerting, panning optic of the airborne camera lens renders the disfigured brutalist structure vulnerable, yet Birmingham is a city with little sentimentality for its recent history. Mason highlights a ‘lust for demolition and reinvention’, asserting that ‘the Central Library no longer has a place in Birmingham’s vision of itself.’ 55 It is vital to interrogate the homogeneity of this vision, and to continuously question who has the privilege to articulate what this looks like, who it benefits and whether the vision is broad enough to accommodate the diverse needs of Birmingham’s heterogeneous communities. The Bull Ring shopping centre was opened by Herbert Manzoni in 1964.56 This beacon of consumerism was built on the historic site which saw chartist riots in the nineteenth century.57 Writing in the Daily Herald, Elizabeth Prosser described the futuristic, covered mall as a ‘new woman’s world’ and ‘the answer to every maiden’s prayer’.58 I would argue that the centre is another example of what Adams calls Birmingham’s ‘internal expert-driven and paternalist approach to planning’.59 Prioritising the motorcar, the planners had envisioned a drive-in experience whereby shoppers drove directly into the centre’s car parks and walked into the shopping areas. Remaining at all times undercover, visitors could bypass the unpredictable Midlands weather. While well-intentioned, this motor-centric approach made access via public transport much more difficult and oral history interviews reveal some female shoppers avoiding the centre and remaining in their inner-city neighbourhoods. As Birmingham resident Dorothy recalls, ‘in the circles we mixed, ordinary working class; women didn’t have ownership of a car.’ 60 Broadening out this specific issue of class and access, Birmingham’s recent arrivals from South Asia had to negotiate further complexities of racial dynamics in the ‘paternalistic’ city space. As Robina Mohammad argues, ‘feminine spatialities have historically been naturalised as a mark of cultural and/or ethnic difference, yet this difference is produced through a range of border-marking strategies that work through the division and regulation of space’.61 Such strategies are by no means exclusive to Birmingham’s ethnic minority populations. Indeed, to identify ‘border-marking’ as a display of otherness is to overlook the tacit gender and class demarcations enacted by architects and developers from the dominant white culture. The power inherent in their office marks their actions as normative, whereas perhaps their agenda is simply the one with the most financial backing. As the twentieth century progressed, Birmingham city centre would come to be seen by some as neutral space and a visible manifestation of Manzoni’s ‘intention to create … a balanced community’.62 However, this ‘balance’ did not manifest city-wide, and the ‘border-marking strategies’ which Mohammad articulates can be understood in terms of ‘soft’, economic borders. On the one hand there is the magnetism of community which

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draws Birmingham Muslims together, on the other, a very rational fear of exclusion from neighbourhoods with a predominantly white British population. If the task of the planner is to create a built environment for the equal enjoyment and utility of all its citizens, this endeavour may prove nigh-on impossible as subsequent generations of diverse inhabitants reinterpret the space through the lens of their own requirements. Mohammad states that ‘the public environment has been perceived by diasporic South Asian Muslims as challenging for the maintenance of the Muslim social order.’ 63 This social order has adapted to meet the lived realities of Birmingham’s cityscape while simultaneously appropriating certain areas for the maintenance of a more traditional, Pakistani Muslim social order. Looking beyond the city centre, residential enclaves such as Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Balsall Heath, Small Heath, Alum Rock and Aston have long been inhabited by migrants to Birmingham. Once home to many Irish, these neighbourhoods are now collectively referred to as ‘Little Pakistan’ by some residents and academic commentators.64 The concentration of Muslim communities in these areas is not coincidental: it has been shaped over decades by discriminatory housing policy, surveillance and the unequal distribution of funds.65 Police Operation Champion, for example, saw the installation of 218 ‘spy cameras’ in the largely Muslim areas of Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook in 2010.66 Such displays of institutional racism help to foment the street-level racism of a British far-right which has increasingly turned its scrutiny on Muslims in a post-9/11 world. This is perhaps unsurprising given that official responses to the presence of Muslims in Birmingham have often contradicted narratives designed to celebrate the city’s diversity. This double standard has been mapped out not only in housing policy but equally in the ways in which religious buildings have been permitted, and proscribed, in the perpetually developing urban fabric of multicultural Birmingham. The story of Birmingham’s Central Mosque – while only one thread of a richly varied and diverse community story spanning multiple decades – offers valuable insights into the ways in which the local authorities have responded to cultural difference in their planning agenda. The Muslim population across Birmingham is in itself incredibly diverse, and so negotiations of land, planning permission and neighbourly relations have historically been managed at intra- and inter-faith levels. The Central Mosque is a white-domed, cross-denominational place of worship which sits by the six often-congested carriageways of Belgrave Middleway, which connect the city centre with Balsall Heath. In establishing this site in the 1960s, the president of the committee reports that ‘the City Council was very co-operative’.67 In allocating the Muslim committee a ‘prime piece of land’, he explains, the council desired in return ‘a landmark for the city.’ 68 This desire was later interpreted by Gale as ‘the aesthetic appropriation of



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the mosque as a symbol of Birmingham’s social and multicultural diversity’.69 While, on one level, celebrating diversity in this way is commendable, the approach sits uncomfortably alongside concurrent strategies which disrupted the settlement of Birmingham Muslims. As a former treasurer of the mosque recalls: in the 1960s the majority of the Muslims were in the Balsall Heath area, and so the people who purchased, who were thinking to build up the mosque, were thinking of that area. But they did not know – the planners should have told them – that after about 10, 15 years, we Muslim population won’t be living near there, because the houses would be demolished and rebuilt and the Council would not necessarily give them back to those who were living there.70

This exemplifies the double-edged nature of Birmingham’s planning agenda, which has at times attempted to facilitate, and at others suppressed, the organic development of a multicultural cityscape. Even the fabric of the building suggests this, through council stipulations that it be built of red brick – in keeping with the surrounding buildings, yet aesthetically discordant with the typically light, rendered exteriors of South Asian and Middle Eastern Mosques.71 In Birmingham, cultural acceptance is available but often conditional. In the early 1980s, a planning application to erect a minaret over the building was met with restrictions from the council and vocal objections from some neighbouring white British residents. One such opponent of the proposal drew on questionable claims of ethnic absolutism to make their case to the council: ‘since when has a foreign language and culture been allowed to override the wishes of the indigenous people of this country?’ 72 Despite such opposition, the minaret was ultimately approved, albeit with the caveat that amplified calls to prayer may not be broadcast from the structure and that it was architecturally sympathetic to the existing structure.73 In this way, the letter and not the spirit of the request was accepted. The primary purpose of an Islamic minaret is the call to prayer or adhan, yet only the secondary function as a visual focal point was initially permitted by local authorities. The Birmingham Central Mosque is today a welcoming centre for all faiths, as evidenced by their ‘Best of British’ tea party hosted in 2017 to counter far-right demonstrations taking place in the city. Chairman Muhammad Afzal said: ‘When the English Defence League is protesting and trying to divide the community, we are holding this party just to prove to them that Birmingham is a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-faith community.’ 74 At the event, Chief Superintendent Chris Johnson took a selfie with Makhdoom Ahmed Chishti and a distinctly ‘convivial’ brand of multiculturalism was defended from the divisive rhetoric of the EDL march, as seen on

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banners declaring ‘No More Mosques’.75 A cross-party statement was issued stating: ‘The English Defence League is not welcome in Birmingham.’ 76 The most iconic document of Saturday 8 April 2017, however, was a photo of Saffiyah Khan, a young South Asian woman, calmly staring down a middleaged white, male EDL follower. Wearing a Bhindi, denim jacket and a Specials T-shirt, Khan’s defiant image went viral and she was invited to record a track with the Coventry Two Tone band in a satisfyingly Midlands display of intercultural solidarity. Covering Jamaican ska pioneer Prince Buster’s misogynistic ‘Ten Commandments’, Khan turns the lyrics on their head in a firm statement of her equal rights: ‘I shall be seen and I will be heard.’ 77 In her stance of active, yet non-violent resistance, Khan signals all that is good in multicultural Birmingham. The chapters which follow will build on the architectural foundations established above, to articulate a grounded approach to reading multicultural Birmingham literature from the post-war years to the early twenty-first century.

Notes 1 Vertovec. 2 John Murray Brown, ‘Birmingham, City of a Thousand Trades, Enjoys a Renaissance’, Financial Times, 28 September 2015, www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0f26ac5c-5d3 c-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz4B51tHUp9 (Accessed 8 June 2016). 3 Centre for West Midlands History, ‘Birmingham: The Workshop of the World’, University of Birmingham, nd, www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/cwmh/ research/birmingham-the-workshop-of-the-world.aspx (Accessed 8 June 2016). 4 William Willey, Willey’s History and Guide to Birmingham etc. (Birmingham: 1868). 5 R.K. Dent, The Making of Modern Birmingham, Being a History of the Rise and Growth of the Midlands Metropolis (Birmingham, 1894), p. 147. Dent, in turn, is quoting from Hints for a History of Birmingham (nd). 6 Ian Grosvenor, Rita McLean and Sián Roberts (eds), Making Connections: Birmingham Black International History (Birmingham: Black Pasts, Birmingham Futures, 2002), p. 48. 7 University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, ‘“Rouse, Ye Women”: The Cradley Heath Chain Makers’ Strike, 1910’, nd, www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/ library/mrc/explorefurther/images/cradleyheath (Accessed 9 November 2016). 8 Kevin Myers and Ian Grosvenor, ‘Birmingham Stories: Local Histories of Migration and Settlement and the Practice of History’, Midland History, 36:2 (2011), 149–62 (152); Grosvenor, McLean and Roberts (eds), p. 48. 9 Birmingham City Council, ‘Canals in Birmingam’, www.birmingham.gov.uk/ canals (Accessed 10 June 2016).



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10 Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City (London: Pan Macmillan, 2011), p. 6. 1 Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘Me? I Thought, OBE Me? Up Yours, I Thought’, Guardian, 27 November 2003, www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/27/poetry.monarchy (Accessed May 2021). 12 The Library of Birmingham Archives, ‘“Forward” The Birmingham Motto’, 1876, LS4/10. 13 Catherine O’Flynn, author interview, 27 May 2016. 14 Cheryl McEwan, Jane Pollard and Nick Henry, ‘The “Global” in the City Economy: Multicultural Economic Development in Birmingham’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29:4 (2005), 916–933. 15 John Cattel, Sheila Ely and Barry Jones, The Birmingham Jewellery Quarter: An Architectural Survey of the Manufactories (London: English Heritage, 2002); Best of Birmingham: A Guide for Teachers and Social Workers (London: Guardian/ Birmingham City Council, 2015), p. 38. 16 Gordon E. Cherry, Town Planning in Britain since 1900: The Rise and Fall of the Planning Ideal (London: John Wiley, 1996), p. 146. 17 Quoted in Andy Foster, Birmingham: Pevsner Architectural Guides, 2nd edn (London: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 197. 18 Cherry, p. 146. 19 Ibid. 20 Wun Fung Chan, ‘Planning at the Limit: Immigration and Post-War Birmingham’, Journal of Historical Geography, 31:3 (2005), 513–527 (514). 21 Chan, 523. 22 Michael J. Dear, The Postmodern Urban Condition (Chichester: John Wiley, 2001). 23 Brett Clark, ‘Ebenezer Howard and the Marriage of Town and Country: An Introduction to Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow (Selections)’, Organization & Environment, 16:1 (2003), 87–97. 24 Chan, 520. 25 Barnor Hesse, ‘Black to Front and Black Again: Racialization Through Contested Times and Spaces’, in Michael Keith and Steve Pile (eds), Place and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 174. 26 Tom Inglis, ‘Are the Irish Different? Theories and Methods in Irish Studies’, Irish Review, 46 (2013), 41–51. 27 Nicholas Bullock, Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 234; David Adams, ‘Everyday Experiences of the Modern City: Remembering the Post-War Reconstruction of Birmingham’, Planning Perspectives, 26:2 (2011), 237–260 (248). 28 Enda Delaney, The Irish in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 1. 29 John Archer Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 21. 30 Delaney, p. 1. 31 Tom Inglis, Global Ireland (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 7.

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32 ‘The “Little Harlems” Must Go’, Evening Despatch, 25 February 1955; ‘It’s Live And Let Live in Britain’s Harlem’, Daily Herald, 4 November 1955; ‘Give Balsall Heath to the City Coloured!’, Evening Despatch, 18 July 1958. 33 Herbert Manzoni, ‘The City’s Development Plan Reviewed’, Birmingham Post, January 1952. 34 Delaney, p. 1. 35 P. Hubbard, L. Faire and K.D. Lilley, ‘Remembering Post-war Reconstruction: Modernism and City Planning in Coventry 1940–1962’, Planning History 24 (2002), 7–20; P. Hubbard, L. Faire and K.D. Lilley, ‘Contesting the Modern City: Reconstruction and Everyday Life in Post-war Coventry’, Planning Perspectives, 18 (2003), 377–397. 36 Anthony Sutcliffe and Roger R. Smith, Birmingham 1939–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). 37 Merryn Somerset Webb, ‘Why Birmingham is Now one of Europe’s Best Cities for Investors’, Financial Times, 22 May 2015, www.ft.com/content/26c293d c-fe12-11e4-8efb-00144feabdc0 (Accessed 9 May 2021). 38 Sutcliffe and Smith. 39 Corbett; Andy Bounds, ‘Birmingham Replaces the Brutal Old with Urban Meadows and Fountains’, Financial Times, 28 September 2015, www.ft.com/ cms/s/2/0fa94dce-5d3c-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#ixzz3yqpyiLUj (Both accessed 31 January 2016). 40 Jonathan Meades, Heart By-Pass: Jonathan Meades in Birmingham, BBC Two, 31 May 1998. 41 Jo Shapcott, ‘Spaghetti Junction’, My Life Asleep (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 42. 42 Ben Flatman, Birmingham: Shaping the City (London: Riba, 2008), p. 38. 43 Chan, 517. 44 Bullock, p. 7. 45 Ibid., p. 28. 46 John Rex and Robert Moore, Race, Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). 47 David Adams, ‘Everyday Experiences of the Modern City: Remembering the Post-War Reconstruction of Birmingham’, Planning Perspectives, 26:2 (2011), 237–260 (248). 48 Homa Khaleeli, ‘“The Wickedest Road in Britain”: The Photos that Told the Truth about Red Light Birmingham’, Guardian, 11 January 2016, www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2016/jan/11/wickedest-road-in-britain-photographer-janetmendelsohn-varna-road-birmingham (Accessed 9 May 2021). 49 Birmingham City Council, ‘Ethnic Groups’, www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/ download/2019/ethnic_groups (Accessed 9 May 2021). 50 Elain Harwood, ‘John Madin obituary’, Guardian, 19 January 2012, www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/jan/19/john-madin (Accessed 9 November 2016). 51 Suzanne Waters, ‘Brutalism’, British Architectural Library, RIBA, https://bit.ly/ 3CzS8gS (Accessed 13 June 2016).



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52 Ibid. 53 Josh Allen, ‘Birmingham is Demolishing its Brutalist Public Buildings – Just as They Come Back into Fashion’, City Metric, 24 February 2015, www.citymetric.com/ skylines/birmingham-demolishing-its-brutalist-public-buildings-just-they-comeback-fashion-767 (Accessed 20 January 2016). 54 BBC News, ‘Birmingham Central Library Demolition Captured by Drone’, 5 April 2016, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-35969542 (Accessed 13 June 2016). 55 John Mason, ‘Paradise Lost: Birmingham’s Central Library and the Battle over Brutalism’, Failed Architecture, 26 February 2014, www.failedarchitecture.com/ paradise-lost-birminghams-central-library-and-the-battle-over-brutalism/ (Accessed 13 June 2016). 56 Adams, 251. 57 Michael Weaver, ‘The Birmingham Bull Ring Riots of 1839: Variations on a Theme of Class Conflict’, Social Science Quarterly, 78:1 (1997), 137–148. 58 Daily Herald, 29 May 1964. Cited in David Adams, ‘Everyday experiences of the modern city: remembering the post-war reconstruction of Birmingham’, Planning Perspectives, 26:2 (2011), 237–260 (253). 59 Adams, 238. 60 Dorothy quoted in Adams, 253. 61 Robina Mohammad, ‘Making Gender Ma(r)king Place: Youthful British Pakistani Muslim Women’s Narratives of Urban Space’, Environment and Planning A, 45 (2013), 1802–1822 (1803). 62 Birmingham City Council, ‘The Redevelopment of the Central Areas’, unpublished notes for professional visitors (Birmingham: City Council, 1957). 63 Mohammad, 1805. 64 Ibid., 1807. 65 Noha Nasser, ‘Metropolitan Borderlands: The Formation of BrAsian Landscapes’, in Salman Sayyid, Nasreen Ali and Virinder S. Kalra (eds), A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain (London: Hurst, 2006), pp. 374–391. 66 BBC News, ‘Birmingham Project Champion “Spy” Cameras Being Removed’, 9 May 2011, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-13331161 (Accessed 9 May 2021). 67 Quoted in Richard Gale, ‘The Multicultural City and the Politics of Religious Architecture: Urban Planning, Mosques and Meaning-Making in Birmingham, UK’, Built Environment, 30:1 (2004), 30–44 (32). 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Central Mosque Treasurer, cited in Gale, 32–33. 71 Mandana Saniei and Ali Delavar, ‘Communicational Role of Mosques Architecture’, Asian Social Science, 8:3 (2012), 137–141. 72 Quoted in Gale, 34. 73 See Gale. 74 Fionn Hargreaves, ‘Mosque in Britain’s “Jihadi Capital” Opens its Doors for “Best of British” Tea Party to Counter EDL’s “Hate and Division”’, Daily Mail,

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8 April 2017, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4393160/Birmingham-mosqueopens-doors-tea-party.html (Accessed 8 May 2021). 75 Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 75. 76 Ashitha Nagesh, ‘EDL March in Birmingham Upstaged by Really Nice Tea Party’, Metro, 8 April 2017, https://metro.co.uk/2017/04/08/edl-march-in-birminghamupstaged-by-really-nice-tea-party-6562919/ (Accessed 8 May 2021). 77 The Specials and Saffiyah Khan, ‘Ten Commandments’ (Universal Music, 2019).

6 Is Birmingham a ‘non-place’?

This chapter reads the novels of Irish-Birmingham author Catherine O’Flynn to understand how literature responds creatively to the (mis)conception of Birmingham as a ‘non-place’. Marc Augé coined the term in 1992, stating that ‘the place/non-place pairing is an instrument for measuring the degree of sociality and symbolization of a given space.’ 1 The British film industry has long been aware of the symbolic power of Birmingham’s post-war, post-industrial landscapes, frequently using them as filming locations which could be anywhere. For example, Brassed Off (1996) is set in Yorkshire but uses Birmingham locations. Even when the band appear to perform in London’s Albert Hall, it is actually Birmingham Town Hall.2 As Edgar states, ‘it is easy to see this robust concrete city in cinematic terms; it lends itself to a cinematic imagination.’ 3 On the screen, as well as in Birmingham literature, the urban generic brings to the fore unglamorous yet honest human stories. These stories are important because they reflect a dimension of Birmingham – and by extension the Midlands – often obscured by the second city’s very public quest for architectural and economic advancement. This impulse is perhaps most explicitly exemplified by the city’s ‘Forward!’ motto and provides an overarching narrative, against which countercultural literature makes small yet significant statements of Midlands identity. At the administrative level, the city’s emphasis on progress, renewal and urban regeneration could be responsible for the surface appearance of Birmingham as a ‘non-place’. It was conceptualised as a ‘transatlantic city’ offering a ‘glimpse into the future’ with its ‘gleaming new buildings … its expressways … its hustle and bustle and enterprise’.4 Birmingham’s conference centres and shopping malls might appear the epitome of a modern, globalised city, yet they cast long, figurative shadows over huge swathes of the city. The public metanarratives obscure highly personal sub-narratives and it is the latter which provide valuable access points for the purpose of this analysis. What are the stories of multicultural Birmingham and how are they told by the city’s own literary voices? O’Flynn’s debut novel, What Was Lost (hereafter WWL), was published in 2007 by the not-for-profit, Birmingham-based Tindall Street Press.

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The now-defunct press depended on support from the Arts Council. The dedication of Tindall Street set O’Flynn’s career in motion and she has gone on to achieve international success, with her debut translated into twenty-five languages. In this regard, O’Flynn’s fiction has achieved some of the impact of Townsend’s Adrian Mole series, albeit on a smaller scale. Whereas Townsend edited out any specific reference to Leicester, O’Flynn’s novels are distinctly of the Midlands.5 However, both novelists draw on the idea of their respective cities as ‘non-places’. I examine two of O’Flynn’s novels and consider what light they can shed on Birmingham from the post-war years to the present day. WWL and The News Where You Are (2010; hereafter NWYA) offer readers two distinct visions of the city, the former focusing on post-industrial retail and consumerism and the latter on Birmingham’s post-war architectural development. The first section of this chapter, ‘Forward! Birmingham’, considers how literature responds to the ever-changing architecture of Birmingham, which seems to tear down and rebuild ‘with a zeal unwitnessed in any other British city.’ 6 The second section, ‘Retail Birmingham’, explores the dramatic expansion of the retail and service sectors onto brownfield sites of former Midlands industry. In this pursuit, the chapter creeps westward in its latter part, pre-empting this book’s final section on the West Midlands. By applying Augé’s concept of ‘non-place’ to these two very different sites of reinvention and renewal, I aim to demonstrate how Birmingham literature actively engages with, and challenges assumptions about, the development of the region as deindustrialisation and the ravages of late capitalism take hold.

Forward! Birmingham I have made the claim that the overarching narratives of Birmingham’s development tend to obscure the individual narratives that they ultimately shape. Birmingham’s grand narrative is, in one sense, uniquely its own. Viewed through a broader lens, however, we see in Birmingham the story of Britain’s modernity actualised in the urban fabric, a concrete palimpsest revealing traces of history, some erased more completely than others. Barry’s notion of the city as palimpsest – a document which is repeatedly erased and over-written, with marks visible from previous drafts – has proved consistently useful in reading contemporary urban literature. However, it is far from the only critical approach relevant to reading and interpreting the fabric of the modern city.7 Jean Starobinski’s analogy of modernity as a musical bass line also finds relevance in the Birmingham literature discussed in this chapter: the possibility of a polyphony in which the virtually infinite interlacing of destinies, actions, thoughts and reminiscences would rest on a bass line that



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chimed the hours of the terrestrial day, and marked the position that used to be (and could still be) occupied there by ancient ritual.8

This ‘bass line’ is the temporal rhythm which connects the private narratives of Birmingham people with the grand narrative of their city. From the ‘ancient rituals’ of the Beorma people, who first inhabited the settlement of Brummagem in Medieval times, to the rhythms of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, which have been brought to the city from overseas, there is a continuity which is threatened and sometimes disrupted by the physical upheaval of Birmingham’s built environment.9 Commenting on Starobinski’s ‘bass line’ analogy, Augé observes how ‘the expression Starobinski employs to evoke ancient places and rhythms is significant; modernity does not obliterate them but pushes them into the background.’ 10 In reading Birmingham’s civic narratives in parallel with O’Flynn’s, I observe how the public discourse of modernity dominates and the ‘ancient’ rhythms of the city’s ordinary people are often drowned out. The public dimension of O’Flynn’s writing demonstrates the connectivity between the small and the grand narratives of the city. The characters cling to their own personal visions of Birmingham as the authorities lurch towards a vision of what Augé calls ‘supermodernity’, defined by ‘excessive information and excessive space’.11 When small and grand narratives are considered in parallel, we gain a more holistic understanding of how Birmingham has developed since World War II and how that development is represented in literature. O’Flynn weaves the urban fabric of Birmingham into her second novel, The News Where You Are. The poignant narrative follows Frank, a tragicomic local news presenter and the ‘unfunniest Man on God’s Earth’ (NWYA, 23). Throughout the novel the reader navigates a disorientating architectural tour of post-war Birmingham, as seen through Frank’s memories of his late father, a once-respected modernist architect. The links between Frank’s narrative, the city of Birmingham and the aspirations of Frank’s father unfold as his buildings are torn down one by one. NWYA is therefore a highly personal novel of family, love and loss but it is also explicitly public. O’Flynn compares urban renewal to ‘wiping clean’, as if the city centre were a kitchen worktop. According to O’Flynn’s narrator, this desire for civic sanitation is a defining characteristic of Birmingham: the craving to wipe clean and start again wouldn’t die; it was too deeply ingrained in the city’s character. The target had merely shifted. Now it was the turn of the post-war buildings, the clean lines and concrete which had replaced the Victorian ornamentation. The future that Frank’s father had spent his life building was being shown as little sentimentality as the Victorian past he had tried to replace. (NWYA, 53)

This excerpt links the quest for modernity with a necessary callousness on behalf of the city planners. The choice of ‘target’ here suggests a hunt for

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antiquated structures; tracked down and bulldozed with impunity. The short-sightedness of this approach is evident in its cyclical nature. Here is a city which makes very public mistakes, erasing and rewriting its history on a regular basis, or, as journalist Stewart Jeffries puts it: ‘all-too-visibly, in an eternal struggle with itself.’ 12 From the ‘targeting’ of old buildings, to the ‘struggle’ with self-identity, Birmingham’s post-war development has been characterised as an on-going conflict. In the excerpt above, one of the victims of this conflict is Frank’s father. As an architect, his own proud narrative of civic progress is erased by the grand narrative enacted by city planners. O’Flynn applies the lexis of aggression not only to demolition but equally to the creation of new structures which rise up and shape the skyline. Her fictional architect’s designs are described in terms which posit the buildings themselves as combatants: Built in 1971, it was an uncompromising, thuggish-looking block, clad in pre-cast concrete panels and devoid of all exterior decoration. Despite its height it appeared squat and defensive, occupying a large plot on the corner of Carlton Street and Newman Row, glowering down on the few Georgian blocks still remaining in the centre. (NYWA, 5)

Although the street names have been fictionalised, O’Flynn here gives a true-to-life representation of the architectural juxtaposition found in contemporary Birmingham. ‘Uncompromising’ defines not only the block but equally the ethos of urban renewal which inspired it. The brutalists’ material of choice was always concrete, a signature look referenced in the very name ‘brutalism’. Le Corbusier’s original name for the style was béton brut (raw concrete).13 The utilitarian and uniform qualities of concrete do not, to use Augé’s phrase, ‘symbolise’ a unique regional expression, instead reinforcing the notion of Birmingham as ‘non-place’.14 Just as brutalist architecture is being rediscovered and revalued, these iconic buildings are now themselves being demolished.15 The cyclical nature of architectural fashion and the irony inherent in destroying that which was once revered is apparent in the constant redevelopment of Birmingham.

Retail Birmingham Meet the Midlands city with a £1bn annual retail spend!16

I believe we have already met, although there is a cognitive dissonance here between the Birmingham known as the ‘city of a thousand trades’, ‘the workshop of the world’, and the unfamiliar consumerist destination suggested by this quotation.17 Taken from an estate agent’s sales pitch, it is designed



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to lure traders to the new LinkStreet development – essentially an elevated, windowless, tubular tunnel between the Bullring shopping centre and New Street station. The potential ‘pop up’ applicant will surely want to set up shop ‘where bright ideas meet bright young things’, in the city which has the youngest population in Europe.18 As exciting as this youthful population is for the future of the city, Harris argues they are ‘only an asset if they are equipped with the skills and opportunities they need to succeed as they enter the local workforce.’ 19 Is Birmingham able to create these opportunities? If so, will barriers to access prevent young people of all communities from benefiting? Seeking to learn from history, how have a lack of opportunities developed key narratives about multicultural Birmingham? Locally, there is also resistance to the commercialisation of Birmingham. In 2003, protests were staged against the newly stylised branding of ‘Bullring’, a single word brand to describe the new indoor mall. Traditionalists felt the brand was a bastardisation of the ‘historic spelling’: the ‘Bull Ring.’ 20 Perhaps the name change painfully reminded them of how much the city had changed over time. The shift from producer to consumer has pushed Birmingham towards ‘supermodernity’, characterised by excessive information and space.21 Certainly in the heavily branded retail environments of the Midlands, information is ubiquitous. While space may seem to be at a premium in city centre sites such as Bullring and Grand Central, it is much more widely available in the outlying regions of Birmingham. Here, the sites of former industry are converted into highly synthetic retail developments, for example the Merry Hill complex near Dudley. Focusing initially on the Green Oaks shopping centre which dominates O’Flynn’s debut novel, I then look back to unearth the industrial past of the developed land and consider how this transition has played out within a Birmingham literary context. In novels such as WWL and NWYA, O’Flynn writes about the physical, economic and cultural impact which the decline of Birmingham’s industries has had on the city. WWL reinscribes the Midlands’ reputation for being a ‘non-place’ by setting the story in one of its many shopping centres. This accords with my research on Sue Townsend in the East Midlands. Townsend used the anonymous Midlands suburbs to add humorous bathos to Mole’s stories and O’Flynn, too, is aware of the power of the Midlands symbolism, even when it symbolises nothingness or ‘non-place’. Green Oaks is the monolithic centre of O’Flynn’s debut novel. We are informed that ‘the centre was built at a time when the idea of turning a shopping centre into some larger leisure experience was just beginning to gain currency in Europe’ (WWL, 89). This positions the construction of Green Oaks at the fulcrum of Birmingham’s rapid transition from a producer to a consumer city in the 1980s.22 While it could be argued that this transition benefits only a select few, public discourse is obliged to paint this as a force for good. As Steven

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Miles states, ‘the city of production is a city of the past. The city of consumption is an aspirational city: a city of the present and of the future.’ 23 By this logic, globalisation and mass production lead to homogeneity. In order to become ‘supermodern’, cities turn to consumption and retail, yet in doing so they risk losing their unique character and becoming yet another ‘non-place’. Although never explicitly named, the ‘Green Oaks’ shopping centre which is the setting for WWL is inspired by Merry Hill near Dudley where O’Flynn worked as a record store manager in her early career. The centre is colloquially known as ‘Merry Hell’ by some locals and its history is directly linked to the demise of manufacturing in Birmingham in the 1980s.24 Although the impact was enormous, Birmingham was able to delay the collapse of its traditional industries until long after its Northern counterparts: Unlike the North of England, the Midlands continued as an economic and industrial powerhouse well into the 1970s and Birmingham remained relatively wealthy and successful. Throughout the 1970s the city continued to see itself as much closer to the more affluent Southeast than the declining North of England, but by the early 1980s the collapse in manufacturing had begun to necessitate a fundamental change of direction.25

Birmingham shares similarities with Leicester in its ability to stave off economic decline in the late twentieth century, if only by a decade or two. Having argued elsewhere in this book for the acknowledgement of the Midlands as a discrete cultural entity, it is interesting to note how the author here, Ben Flatman, proudly links Birmingham with the South in this Birmingham City Council-funded publication. The ‘change of direction’ encompasses a huge spectrum of civic regeneration and a widespread shift to the service and retail sectors. Thatcherite entrepreneurial policies enabled Urban Enterprise Zones to irreversibly change the character of Greater Birmingham: on the one hand providing viable alternatives to declining heavy industry but, on the other, extending the feel of ‘non-place’ beyond the city centre and into once-rural neighbourhoods. In WWL, the reader learns about Green Oaks’ encroachment of industrial space via the security guard Kurt. As a boy, Kurt would play truant and explore the post-industrial sites in his area, until they were developed: ‘his secret places and all his silent industrial playgrounds were going’ (WWL, 106). In sharp contrast to the bustling crowds at the shopping centre, these sites fulfil a spiritual need for isolation, prompting fantasies of survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. We learn that Kurt ‘loved how he felt he was the last person alive on earth, shouting strange words at the peeling walls’ (WWL, 105). In one nostalgic scene, he recalls exploring a deep, abandoned shaft and finding himself in complete darkness, deep under the earth, an



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experience he interprets as being akin to death. Alone, down a dark hole, O’Flynn presents an extreme rendering of ‘non-place’. For the young boy, the industrial landscape of his forefathers is a site of curiosity and intrigue because it is barren and has ceased to function. Like the modern Green Oaks development, this eerie space exerts a magnetic pull: the silent remnants of industry that surrounded his estate: the gas holders of the old gas works, the cooling towers, the empty factories, the strange-coloured pools, the black brick huts, the canal, the embankment without a railway line … These were the places where Kurt’s father and the other men from the estate had grown up and worked; their absence imbued the landscape with a melancholy that Kurt was drawn to. (WWL, 104)

The absence of human activity lends this scene an uncanny quality. The silence is intensified in an area which would once have been alive with the sounds of industry. The incomplete demolition and clearance of the site suggests an abandoned project, cut short by market forces beyond the control of the workers. Recalled through the distant childhood memories of the security guard, the site seems to exude the supernatural. Traces of the past remain in the soil beneath Green Oaks. By weaving together fact and fiction, O’Flynn’s literature sensitively excavates the hidden personal narratives of the West Midlands. In real life Brierley Hill, the Round Oak Steelworks, a likely source of inspiration for O’Flynn’s novel, saw a sharp decline in demand for their product during the 1970s. From its peak of 3,000 employees, the workforce fell by more than half by the time of its closure in 1982. This closure was perhaps expedited when the surrounding farmland was designated an Enterprise Zone a year earlier.26 The designation was typical of an era in which public–private partnerships were heavily incentivised by Thatcher’s government. The aim was to create a climate of easy economic growth for private investors, in ‘areas with problems of marked economic decline and physical decay.’ 27 While the physical decay is appealing to the young explorer Kurt, his own private narrative of happy isolation is disrupted by the dominant narrative of commercial development. For ambitious businesspeople of the 1980s, the appeal of developing post-industrial wasteland was an attractive package of tax breaks, reduced legislative responsibility and a ten-year exemption from business rates.28 Thatcher created havens for the kind of hasty developments typified by Merry Hill shopping centre. Quick-return retail and service investment was the chosen antidote to the frighteningly fast decline of Britain’s manufacturing sector. As Tallon states, ‘it took over 100 years from 1851 to 1951 for technology and foreign competition to halve the numbers employed in agriculture, but it took only 13 years from 1971 to 1983 to cut manufacturing jobs by a third.’ 29 In terms of the

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direction of travel for the ‘Forward!’ city, this economic downturn necessitated drastic action, resulting in what Chris Arnot calls ‘the last major change of direction’ for Birmingham.30 This economic jump-start is pinpointed by Arnot to ‘the late 1980s when the decision was made to build a sustainable service economy to offset all those lost jobs in manufacturing.’ 31 If the service economy had been afforded the luxury of time to grow organically, it may not have developed the ‘oppressive, top-down culture’ which O’Flynn identifies.32 A socioeconomic environment that developed so quickly will inevitably lack attention to detail, lack character and history. While the built environment of the city centre shows at least some layering of architectural traces, the new brownfield sites saw vast monolithic structures placed hastily onto the landscape. To build up a place which symbolises the people who live there, takes generations, but a ‘non-place’ can be erected relatively quickly with the help of a little outside investment.

Notes 1 Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2008), viii. 2 Graham Young, ‘20 Movies Filmed in Birmingham’, 16 December 2016, www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/18-movies-filmed-inbirmingham-9418666 (Accessed 31 May 2021). 3 Justin Edgar, ‘Take Me Higher’, in Liam Kennedy (ed.), Remaking Birmingham: The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 113–117 (p. 114). 4 Sutcliffe and Smith. 5 Barry, p. 3. 6 Kennedy (ed.), p. 1. 7 Barry, p. 165. 8 Jean Starobinski, ‘Les Cheminees et les Clochers’, Magazine Litteraire, 280 (1990), translated in Augé, p. 61. 9 Steven Bassett, ‘Birmingham Before The Bull Ring’ (unpublished, Birmingham University). 10 Augé, p. 62. 11 Augé, pp. 24–25. 12 Stuart Jeffries, ‘Spin City’, Guardian, 22 January 2000, www.theguardian.com/ travel/2000/jan/22/birmingham.unitedkingdom.shortbreaks (Accessed 10 February 2017). 13 Philippe Potié, Le Corbusier: The Monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2001). 14 Augé, 1992. 15 Juliana Kei, ‘New Brutalism, Again’, Architecture and Culture, 7:2 (2019), 271–290.



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16 Appear Here, ‘Bullring – LinkStreet Kiosk’, www.appearhere.co.uk/spaces/ bullring-linkstreet-unit-k1-available-19-sept-16 (Accessed 8 June 2016). 17 Brown. 18 Catherine Harris, ‘The Birmingham Economic Review 2017: Population and Employment’, University of Birmingham, https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cityredi/thebirmingham-economic-review-2017-population-and-employment/ (Accessed 15 May 2021). 19 Ibid. 20 ‘“I’ve Just Two Words For It!” Name Change Protest’, Birmingham Evening Mail, 29 August 2003. 21 Augé, pp. 24–25. 22 Flatman, p. 27. 23 Steven Miles, Spaces for Consumption: Pleasure and Placelessness in the PostIndustrial City (London: Sage, 2010), p. 5. 24 Trip Advisor, ‘User Review, Merry Hill Shopping Centre’, 2013–2022, www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g187065-d2460349-r169993612-Merry_ Hill-Dudley_West_Midlands_England.html (Accessed 26 December 2015). 25 Flatman, p. 27. 26 Dan Shaw, ‘Reminders of Closure of Road Oak Steel Works – Thirty Years Ago’, Black Country Bugle, 13 December 2012. 27 Tallon, p. 49. 28 Ibid. 29 Tallon, p. 12. 30 Chris Arnot, ‘Introduction’, in Best of Birmingham: A Guide for Teachers and Social Workers (London: Guardian/ Birmingham City Council, 2015), p. 3. 31 Ibid. 32 Catherine O’Flynn, author interview, 27 May 2016.

7 ‘Double vision’ in Handsworth art

And it must be known That all scientific studies have shown that Brummies are at home with new horizons And a multi-layered concept of place.1

This chapter is about the inner-city Handsworth region of Birmingham and the imaginative ways in which its Black British citizens have portrayed their area in poetry, visual art and music. Through engagement with these documents of lived experience, I pick up Lisa Palmer’s argument that during the 1970s and 1980s, Handsworth was an important ‘site of anti-imperial and anti-colonial, self-organised Pan-African activism and knowledge production.’ 2 In this vein, the following pages add to a growing discourse which frames Handsworth as a vibrant centre of ‘black intellectual life’, meanwhile scrutinising the ‘pathological narratives and “common-sense” racist imagery’ characteristic of what Palmer calls ‘white sociology’ writing on the area.3 To be clear, as a white researcher, I make no claim of ‘insider’ status by conducting this research but hope to reflect on an alternative vision of Handsworth as told by its own Black creatives through word, sound and power. The colonial histories entwined with Handsworth’s heritage mean that the perspectives shared by poets such as Benjamin Zephaniah and Moqapi Selassie, photographer Vanley Burke, film director John Akomfrah, or the reggae band Steel Pulse, are often marked by duality of vision: seeing at once in the present and the past. This poetic process is described by Peter Barry in Contemporary British Poetry and the City (2000): ‘What I am calling ‘double visioning’ is the attainment of a multi-layered chronological perspective which typically superimposes one historical period onto another, so that the viewed entity becomes radically trans-historical.’ 4 ‘Double visioning’ can be understood as infusing the present moment with history. Barry’s lexical choice ‘chronological’ could be misleading in that it implies a linear sequence of events. However, I interpret ‘double visioning’ to refer to any number of historically informed poetic visions which amalgamate to form



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a composite image. In this chapter I consider the radically different ways in which the ‘energy laden creators’ of Handsworth have looked to ancestral memory of Africa and colonial histories to understand their present environs in terms of ‘double visioning’.5 By layering up the city in this way, we see an alternative representation of Handsworth in the creative arts. The importance of this way of seeing serves creative expression but can also be considered a node within ‘Black counterhegemonic circuits of knowledge in the UK’.6 These ‘circuits’ were vital given that ‘race relations’ literature, notably Brown’s Shades of Grey: A Report on Police–West Indian Relations in Handsworth (1977) and Rex and Tomlinson’s Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis (1979), adopted a patronising, even pathologising tone.7 While more even-handed studies followed, for example Grosvenor and Chapman’s West Africa, West Indies, West Midlands (1982), it is within the direct literary expression of Black Handsworth creatives that their truth can be heard, first-hand.8 Such was the degree of community self-organisation that in 1976, Handsworth delegates participated in the Pan African Congress in Tanzania. A spokesperson articulated the Handsworth delegates’ frustration at being theorised by a white society which does not address the root cause of their problems: Every kind of social scientist has studied us and told us that the areas in which we live are ‘socially deprived.’ Urban planners, housing experts and architects have studied the areas in which we live and they tell us that we are deprived in terms of housing. But most of all, we are deprived of the political power to initiate positive changes in our conditions and all these ‘deprivations’ depend upon the original deprivation of job opportunities and decent wages.9

The inertia of a range of external ‘experts’ suggests the gulf between intention and impact in ‘official’ interactions with the region. This is the effect of the detached ‘planner-eye gaze’ in Birmingham.10 The Pan-African delegates do not need outside forces to inform them of their situation; they need the economic self-sufficiency to improve it. Rather than thinking about Handsworth solely in terms of deprivation, this chapter considers trans-historical ways of seeing which, in the short-term at least, enabled creatives to see beyond the limitations of ‘political powerlessness’ and manifest a Pan-African consciousness in the urban fabric of the inner city. In Birmingham the urban fabric is multi-layered. Again we see the city as a ‘palimpsest’; physical traces of the past, such as the damage caused by civil unrest, occupy the present environment.11 For example, in Ferdinand Dennis’s 1988 travelogue, Behind the Front Lines: Journey into Afro Britain, the author states that ‘Handsworth still bears the scars of September ’85 when that conflict exploded, when the mutual resentment of blacks was given violent expression.’ 12 This is a literal expression of ‘double visioning’:

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the traces of the past are actual and physical. Dennis’s work takes its cues from the built environment and historical events. This example is particularly apposite, as the uprisings of 1981 and 1985 have shaped the subsequent creative output of the region. The creativity that surges from Handsworth, however, requires a broader, more figurative understanding of how past and present, here and elsewhere, can interact. There is far more to Handsworth literature than riot poems and expressions of anti-authoritarian sentiment. For the purposes of my analysis, I broaden Barry’s notion of ‘double visioning’ as the attainment of a ‘multi-layered chronological perspective’, to incorporate what Handsworth-born poet Benjamin Zephaniah calls ‘a multi-layered concept of place.’ 13 This optic is relevant not only to those whose families migrated to the city in living memory, but also the white British inhabitants of the city.14 For those who identify their heritage as African or African Caribbean, the layering of place can evoke a ‘double vision’ of two seemingly disparate ‘layers’, where the West Midlands meets the African continent. In the discourse of Jamaican political leader Marcus Garvey, the trope of repatriation ‘back to Africa’ is fundamental, and this filters down to the Handsworth poets and songwriters whose ‘double vision’ of their immediate surroundings incorporates idealised notions of Africa.15 These visions often look back in time to make sense of the present. As Gunning asserts, ‘the Afrocentric viewpoint relies on the beliefs that the individuals must understand their experiences through reference to models inherited from an ancestral past’.16 In this way, ‘double visioning’ can superimpose remote scenes onto present day Handsworth, historically, as well as geographically. The result is a surreal, impressionistic trans-geographic, trans-historical vision. Before considering the literary output of the area, it is necessary to contextualise this material by examining in more depth the history of Handsworth, with particular focus on how it became a hub for migration in the twentieth century. The recorded history of Handsworth goes back to the Domesday Book.17 It has not always been the bustling and diverse region it is today; in 1086 the population consisted of ‘14 villains [free common villagers] and 4 bordars [feudal tenants with a cottage and some land but bound to menial service]’.18 Handsworth remained largely rural until 1800 when industrialisation began to shape the region. In the 1790s Matthew Boulton opened a steam engine factory in the locale, employing 1,000 people. Throughout the nineteenth century, Handsworth ‘remained a better-off and fashionable suburb’.19 With Birmingham’s famous jewellery quarter just to the South, Victorian Handsworth was home to the wealthy jewellers who wanted a leafy suburb removed from their place of business yet still within easy travelling distance. In the late 1800s, public transport began to shape Handsworth’s demography, with the introduction of the tram bringing 10,000



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artisans by 1890. The turn of the twentieth century saw huge population growth in the region and by 1911 Handsworth was incorporated into Birmingham. In the post-war period, whereas neighbouring areas were scheduled for ‘redevelopment’ – otherwise known as demolition – Handsworth was set for ‘improvement’. Clearly the mercantile investment in Handsworth had left a legacy of high-quality housing stock deemed worthy of repair.20 However, during the post-war period of unprecedented levels of migration from Commonwealth nations, Birmingham City Council contributed to an exclusionary policy which abandoned immigrants to the perils of the open market. As Cherry asserts: Birmingham’s housing allocation policy … implied that the Council could assist in the housing of only part of its population. The open market was available for the remainder, but for coloured immigrants this posed a major difficulty. The only houses they could buy were the late Victorian and Edwardian terrace houses – which they proceeded to sublet.21

In Handsworth, the large, dilapidated merchant homes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were no longer economically viable to upkeep as single-occupancy dwellings. These buildings were carved up into flats which were inhabited beyond their intended capacity, often by large groups of former Commonwealth citizens.22 These market conditions made tenants vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous landlords, with few checks in place. Concurrently, a period of ‘white flight’ saw the mansion houses’ earlier occupants moving to wealthier, whiter suburbs. Between 1950 and 1970, the Soho ward of Handsworth experienced a 95 percent turnover of occupants in the lodging houses.23 This short-tenancy, close-quarters living soon became associated with migrant tenants, particularly of Irish, African Caribbean and South Asian heritage. In the period 1961–1971, under the scrutiny of white sociologists, ‘Handsworth became regarded as a problem area’. As Rex and Tomlinson state: suddenly, then, ‘Handsworth’ (meaning the four wards) had become a ‘Black’ area in the eyes of Birmingham and the terms ‘Black’ or ‘immigrant’ came to mean ‘undesirable’, combining all the characteristics of both West Indian and Asian areas considered to be problematic.24

The assumption here is that ‘Birmingham’ denotes a normative white population and ‘Handsworth’ a racialised ‘other’. The scapegoating of Handsworth as a ‘problem area’ prompted a series of official probes and accompanying narratives which understood the area as a ‘race relations capital.’ 25 This dubious badge threatens to conceal the power structures at play. Steinberg suggests that ‘racial oppression’ is a more accurate way of thinking about

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the inter- and intra-racial politics in locations such as Handsworth: ‘the race relations model assumes that racial prejudice arises out of a natural antipathy between groups on the basis of difference, “racial oppression” locates the source of the problem within the structure of society.’ 26 In the creative examples below, Handsworth’s voices speak over and above the restrictive frameworks of ‘relations’ or ‘oppression’. The expression enabled by art and literature affords a momentary freedom from such labels and allows for an intimate expression of personal, ancestral or spiritual themes.

Rastafari visions of a ‘concrete jungle’ This section concerns a mode of poetic ‘double visioning’ whereby the inner city is understood as a concrete jungle: the grey antithesis of idealised visions of lush, green Africa.27 The prevalence of Rastafari in 1970s’ and 1980s’ Handsworth is a direct result of the numbers of young people of African Caribbean descent in the area at a time when the movement went ‘outernational’ or global. As Lisa Palmer states: ‘this rising globalised Black consciousness could be witnessed in Black popular culture through the circuits of roots reggae music, sound system culture and Rastafari discourses on overstanding Babylon “shitstym”’.28 The electrifying potential of these ‘circuits’ galvanised the Black community in Handsworth and contributed to the growth of overlapping Black Power and Rastafarian organisations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, Black consciousness also made inroads within formalised education settings which otherwise presented a Eurocentric Colonial curriculum. Responding to ‘the need to provide teaching materials which documented the emergence of multicultural Britain’, The Afro-Caribbean Teaching Unit produced a series of posters for schools which celebrated Black heroes, including Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King Jr. In partnership with the Afro-Caribbean Teachers’ Association, they developed an approved ‘O Level’ syllabus in West African and Caribbean History, which was successfully run at some secondary schools.29 On Grove Lane, Handsworth, the Harriet Tubman bookshop provided not only a priceless deposit of Afrocentric knowledge, but also functioned as a nerve centre offering training and support to the local community.30 A theme of Marcus Garvey’s rhetoric, which was subsequently expressed in Black Handsworth art, is the prophesy of deep unrest and conflict in the West, leading ultimately to mass exodus and repatriation to Africa.31 One example is Steel Pulse’s Handsworth Revolution (1978), where the biblical trope of judgement day evokes a future-tense ‘double vision’.32 The crumbling of the inner city is linked to the collapse of ‘Babylon’ – the colonial and



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capitalist ideological structures of the West – and juxtaposed with the strength of Handsworth: Babylon is falling It was foolish to build it on the sand Handsworth shall stand, firm – like Jah rock – fighting back We once beggars are now choosers No intention to be losers Striving forward with ambition And if it takes ammunition We rebel in Handsworth revolution Dread town, dread town, dread town33

This verse seems eerily prophetic considering the rebellions which would follow in 1981 and 1985. In this Rasta vision, Handsworth ‘stands firm’ while Babylon ‘falls’. Here, the wider Birmingham cityscape is no different from the rest of ‘Babylon’: a hostile and transitory space inhabited only in the interim between birth and liberation to the metaphysical resting place of ‘Zion’.34 The cover art adorning the 1978 album is an explicit visual rendering of the ‘double visioning’ optic. The wreckage of concrete tower blocks, shells of houses and burnt-out cars frame the image. At its centre is a crop of luscious vegetation pushing through the rubble. A group of Black children, some naked, some in tribal garments and some in Western clothing, stand as if looking directly at the viewer. In their hands are djembe drums and an African stringed instrument. The goat skin stretched across one drum bears the inscription ‘Rev 17’. This appears to reference The Bible, Revelations 17, which speaks of ‘Mystery Babylon’.35 This allusion is heightened by the echoes of the Tower of Babel, through the accentuated wide base and tapered structure of the tower blocks.36 Despite the implicit condemnation of Babylon, there is a redemptive image of new growth breaking through the concrete. This is not an apocalyptic vision of Babylon burning, but an artistic expression of the creative possibilities unleashed through rebellion. When contrasted with Tony McDermott’s cover art for Michael Prophet’s 1980 LP, Righteous are the Conqueror, the regenerative possibilities of Handsworth Revolution are accentuated. In McDermott’s artwork, a ruined city scape burns, plumes of smoke filling the blood red sky. A family of Rastafarians in cultural dress can be seen walking with all their belongings – and a goat – away from the scene.37 This point of reference highlights the trope of regrowth and new life in Handsworth Revolution. From within the concrete jungle, there may be destruction but African Caribbean creators are attributed with the potential to nurture new shoots and metaphorically re-wild the urban fabric.

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Understanding urban space as a ‘concrete jungle’ has become a mainstream turn of phrase. It is believed to originate in Desmond Morris’s 1969 book The Human Zoo, which states, ‘the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.’ 38 It was ingrained into the Rastafarian lexicon, and indeed a global reggae-consuming public’s consciousness, via Bob Marley’s 1973 track of the same name.39 ‘Concrete Jungle’ critiqued the conditions of life in ‘downtown’ West Kingston. The comparison to a ‘jungle’ denotes a dense tangle of structures but also connotes the political climate of the Jamaican inner city. As Colin Clarke states, ‘a major problem for all Kingstonians, not simply those who live there, has been the deep politicization – indeed the word “tribalization” is not too extreme – of the ghetto.’ 40 The ‘tribalization’ is caused, in part, by a system of political clientelism whereby votes are ‘bought’ with the promise of protection from politically endorsed violence and dissent is punished with violence, ‘a vicious circle of gangs, guns and ganja evolved in downtown Kingston that, [as we have seen …] was appropriated by party politics.’ 41 Although relatively harmonious by comparison, Handsworth nonetheless functions as a ‘concrete jungle’ for those excluded from its structures of power. For an inner-city area in the Midlands, Handsworth has entered the global Rastafarian consciousness via poets such as Zephaniah and the reggae band Steel Pulse. A Pan-African nexus has inspired cultural output from Handsworth, which in turn has been disseminated worldwide. The longing for a return to rural Africa is echoed in the lyrical content of Handsworth Revolution, with vocalist David Hinds singing ‘give I back I witch doctor/ give I back I Black ruler.’ 42 This lyrical protest against colonialism calls for a return to the practices of rural Africa, a trope recurrent throughout Rastafari discourse. During a 1969 interview, one Rasta in Kingston states, ‘we object to white medicine … the white man invade Africa and bring in their white medicine and white disease’.43 A semantic field of impurity is here linked with Western intrusion and the destruction of natural order. In this frame of mind, the protruding vegetation of the Handsworth Revolution artwork is progressive: re-wilding the inner city and marking a return to a habitat long since lost. In Rastafarian lexicon the preposition ‘forward’ is used to communicate this idea of returning. Linguistically, Rastafari and the city authorities of ‘Forward!’ Birmingham may have more in common than meets the eye. Never wanting to regress, Rastas might express a desire to move ‘forward to basics’, not ‘back to basics’.44 This linguistic creativity is one of the many tactics used by adherents of the lifestyle or ‘livity’, to liberate language from its oppressive colonial connotations. The rejection of Western medicine and Western government parallels the way in which the cityscape is imagined. ‘Concrete jungle’ defines the Western city in opposition to nature. The lush deciduous forests familiar



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to the ancient Beorma people are gone. Attempting to advance ‘forward’ to motorised modernity, Birmingham has in fact gone backwards in terms of its precious ecology. Representations of Handsworth as a concrete jungle have their origins in the 1970s but have been sustained into the twenty-first century through the works of poets such as Moqapi Selassie. In his poem ‘Tellin de Stori’, the poet riffs on the theme of the ‘concrete jungle’ and suggests a mythic alternative to the grey reality in which he finds himself: Natty Dread wi livin innah concrete jungle ’igh rise ghettoes houses in di skies   no one cyan tell I dat dis is paradise mi get up in di marnin wot ah bam bam guh fi ketch a lif   di lif outtah hackshan di way dem bill deze playsiz its like a pris’n Coz Natty   Handsworth Aston Ladywood Edgbaston Kings Heath   Balsall Heath Sparkbrook Small Heath Evvrywheh Iman guh All I see is concrete   Cum mek wi step it Uppah freeman street45

5

10

15

20

25

Just like the teetering concrete Tower of Babel on the sleeve of Handsworth Revolution, there are negative correlations drawn here between housing and oppressive governmental authority. In stating that ‘no one cyan tell I/ dat dis is paradise’ (lines 6–7), Selassie appears to be indirectly addressing an external figure of authority. For Manzoni and his city planners, the concrete blocks embodied socialist modernity. As Cedric Hugh asserts: ‘a high-rise block is represented by architects and professionals as a “technological masterpiece” of the Twentieth Century.’ 46 Selassie here offers the contrasting view. His

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direct address to an unnamed ‘Natty’ (15) suggests a street-level reasoning in Birmingham’s inner city. There is a personal warmth and immediacy to the poet’s tone, undercutting the cold, detached perspective of the town planners. Local authorities and architects are reduced to the collective pronoun ‘dem’, an othering device with which Selassie likens these professionals to jailors: ‘di way dem bill deze / playsiz / its like a pris’n’ (lines 12–14). The dichotomy of ‘us and them’ recurs throughout oral accounts of the causes of the rebellions of 1981 in 1985. As one Handsworth youth worker states: The housing is terrible – this is one of the major things. Ever since birth Black people have been put into bad areas. Our preferences are ignored. They put all the troublesome families in Tower Blocks – they are always putting women with children in tower blocks. Two women with children (over three years) have jumped with their children.’ 47

The passive mood of ‘have been put’ conveys the lack of agency felt by Black residents of Handsworth at this time. The sense of claustrophobia in tower blocks is palpable, both in the quotation above and in the poem ‘Tellin de Stori’. Extending the metaphor of the concrete jungle, the tower blocks enforce a reverse vertical hierarchy, with those deemed ‘troublesome’ placed highest in the blocks. A 1985 review corroborates this assertion, stating that ‘Black people […] are more likely to occupy older flats, terraced houses and upper stories of high rise blocks, and “West Indians” more frequently live in Council or Housing Association property’.48 The poetic expressions of ‘elsewhere’ which Barry calls ‘double visioning’ appear in Handsworth art in response to the conditions experienced by the local Black community.49 When the essentials of daily life are regulated by agencies with a bias against Black families, the escapism of Selassie’s ‘freeman street’ (line 27) seems an appealing alternative. As the Mighty Diamonds sang, ‘I need a roof over my head/ and bread on my table’. When these basics are denied, the prophecies of Marcus Garvey will be fulfilled: ‘Time a go dread ya/ Everybody a go run deh’.50 The Black people of Handsworth were not prepared to tolerate such conditions for long and some would seek resolution through direct action. The links between poor housing conditions and unrest in the Handsworth region can be historically evidenced. Housing was listed as the foremost indicator of deprivation in the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police’s report on the causes of civil unrest in Handsworth and Lozells, September 1985. At a time when deprivation was deemed to affect 70 percent of the Handsworth population, versus 50 percent city wide, feelings of isolation and resentment grew.51 Moqapi Selassie’s poem ‘Tellin de Stori’ was written thirty years later, suggesting that in some regards the situation had not



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improved. The ‘double visioning’ employed by Rastafarian poets and writers is, to some degree, symptomatic of the abuses they have suffered at the hands of local authorities. The way in which the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police wrote about the situation in 1985 is indicative of a tense relationship: ‘the black section of the community and in particular the Rastafarian cult, complains of increased police activity amounting to harassment in the weeks leading up to the disturbances.’ 52 As a choice of wording, ‘the black section’ seems to belittle and separate, while the term ‘cult’ is also contentious. It has previously been used in a 1969 anthropological study, ‘Protest and Mysticism: The Rastafari Cult of Jamaica’. This word suggests a negative bias in the context of the 1985 police report. The Chief Constable frames the ‘cult’ as a nuisance rather than a community with a valid grievance. The grounds on which the report identifies and classifies adherents of this group are equally dubious. As Fazakarley asserts, ‘it is notable that many stories in the popular press concerning Rastafarians and their beliefs focus extensively on physical appearance.’ 53 See, for example, this 1983 excerpt from the Daily Mail: The Queen Mother swayed in a gentle dance when one of three steel bands began playing a lilting reggae tune. Five yards away, swaying with her, were a group of Rastafarians wearing the red, yellow and green tea cosy hats which are the badge of their pot-smoking set.54

The juxtaposition in this scene suggests a sense of danger for the Queen Mother. The elderly white woman becomes not only a beacon of tolerance, her ‘gentle dance’ suggesting a restrained enjoyment of the performance; she is also made to appear vulnerable. The close proximity of the Rastafarians – ‘five yards away’ – is suggested to be dangerous through the journalists’ reading of their attire. The ‘tea cosy hats’, mockingly compared to a soft, domestic item with quintessentially British connotations, are used to suggest the wearers’ status as drug users: a ‘pot-smoking set’. This is the cultural climate of mid-1980s Britain, in which not only the right-wing press, but also the elected authorities, feel able to express openly racist opinions in public. Looking north of Birmingham to a city equally troubled by racial tensions, Bradford’s Detective Superintendent Dick Holland said in 1981 that targeting those of ‘typical Rastafarian appearance’ is ‘the sort of discrimination and prejudice we want from police officers. That is what clears up the crime.’ 55 Twenty years after this shocking statement, the UK police have still not fully gained the trust of Black communities. A 2020 government survey showed that 36 percent of Black respondents had no confidence in their local police, versus only 26 percent of white respondents.56 Holland’s statement would today have cost him his job, but systemic racism remains entrenched.

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Only one positive representation of a Rastafarian appears in the Chief Constable’s report of the 1985 Handsworth disturbances. Constable Dear writes, ‘a spokesman for the Rastafarian factions offered to tour the district in cars requesting groups of marauding black youths to leave the streets.’ 57 This image suggests the ‘spokesman’ to be a community leader for the youths, who are dehumanised here by the term ‘marauding.’ Looking beyond official reports, reference to contemporary local press can unearth some surprisingly even-handed reportage. The Birmingham Mail wrote, ‘local Rastafarian Nigel Heath appealed for calm and walked up and down the streets pleading through a loud hailer for people to “cool it” and return to their homes.’ 58 This glimmer of empathy within media discourse can be seen as embryonic of the role which some Rastafarians would go on to play as peacekeepers in twenty-first-century Handsworth, patrolling alongside police officers to maintain peaceful relations under the banner of the Haile Selassie Peace Foundation.59

Benjamin Zephaniah: Handsworth was a ‘cold suburb of Kingston Jamaica’ The spotlight now shines on a poet whose work deals not with detachment from, but investment in, Handsworth. Dr Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah was born in Handsworth and spent time growing up in Jamaica before coming of age in Birmingham and going on to travel all over the world as a writer. In his poem ‘The Big Bang’, Zephaniah uses the city’s early history to locate his own origins within a longer Anglo-Saxon tradition, interwoven with colonial images and personal recollections: I was born where the Beorma people made home, Handsworth, in Brummagem. For many of my early years I thought of this town to be a cold suburb Of Kingston, Jamaica.                 5 My then girlfriend Jasvinder Basra Thought it to be a cold suburb of Jullunder, India, And we were both right. We, in our puppy love innocence Knew that it was only a matter of time and space,    10 We Dark Matter grew up holding hands Listening to Reggae and Bhangra Eating channa and ackee, And playing doctors and nurses somewhere in the future.

This stanza perfectly illustrates Barry’s trope of ‘double visioning’.60 Zephaniah’s opening statement about his birthplace does not at first glance appear



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to be ‘radically trans-historical’, yet there is a self-conscious interplay of colonial and Anglo Saxon histories.61 As a Rastafarian and poet who turned down the offer of an OBE, one might expect Zephaniah to distance his own roots from those of the Anglo-Saxon people. Birmingham is, however, the ‘centre of the universe’ for Zephaniah.62 The mundane image of the ‘suburb’ (line 4), when applied to Jamaica or India, has the effect of satirising the British Empire. The grandeur of an Empire on which the sun never sets is skewered by the bathos inherent in annexing cold, grey inner-city Birmingham as a ‘suburb’ (line 4) of distant, tropical climes. This is the creativity of expression afforded to Zephaniah’s characters. If they choose to ‘double vision’ Handsworth and imaginatively super-impose their own realities onto it, those realities can be just as real as the geographical fact of inner-city Birmingham: ‘we were both right’ (line 8). More importantly, the poem situates Birmingham at the heart of an imperial nexus, evoking the era when the price of an African slave was equivalent to ‘one Birmingham gun’.63 Zephaniah’s representation of Birmingham is expansive, and its diasporic vision reaches in many directions. Moving way beyond parochialism, Zephaniah borrows cosmological terms to create the backdrop against which his characters can connect despite racial difference, stating it was ‘only a matter of time and space’ (line 10). An international, interplanetary optic allows Zephaniah to convey the depth of his conviction in universal human empathy and love. The first stanza of ‘The Big Bang’ closes with a trio of paired images, ‘Reggae and Bhangra’ (line 12); ‘channa and ackee (line 13)’; ‘doctors and nurses’ (line 14). The first two pairs are designed to convey a shared postcolonial identity. African Caribbean and Asian people often collectively self-identified as ‘Black’ in late twentieth-century Britain. As Sivanandan conceptualised it: ‘Black is the colour of our politics, not the colour of our skins.’ 64 In referring to ‘we dark matter’, Zephaniah captures the essence of this stance of solidarity, while simultaneously riffing on his interplanetary theme. The poet alludes to juvenile sexual experimentation with the phrase ‘playing doctors and nurses’, but perhaps also to the induction of many Black British and Asian migrants into the medical professions, including the poet’s own mother who worked as a nurse.65 ‘Doctors and nurses’ positions the two youngsters as medics for postcolonial Britain, healing divisions through their natural and non-sectarian affection.

‘African heart deep in my Brummie chest’ Thus far, Barry’s concept of ‘double visioning’ and archival materials on Handsworth have informed close reading of poems, songs and visual arts from the region. I have shown how the Rastafarian ideology enables poetic

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perspectives which simultaneously see visions of Africa and ‘Babylon’ – amalgamations of various inner-city regions into one homogenous concrete jungle. In looking at Zephaniah’s poetry, I have demonstrated how colonial histories can shape the way in which the offspring of Commonwealth migrants see their British birthplace, often with imaginative and creative results. Envisioning Africa or the Caribbean projected onto the West Midlands is a literary response to colonialism and a cultural and socioeconomic climate which often proves hostile to its Black and Asian British inhabitants. Having examined poetry and lyrics which look outwards, to Africa, India or the Caribbean, this section will now conclude by examining a mode of inward ‘double visioning’. Many Black British and Asian poets celebrate the everyday fact of being at once from ‘here’ and yet having roots ‘elsewhere’. There is a mode of belonging expressed by Black British writers via tropes as commonplace as loyalty to the local football team. Take, for example, Caryl Phillips talking about growing up in Leeds: Leeds was my city, and I slowly developed a great pride in it, a pride that was enhanced by the existence of Leeds United Football Club in their spotlessly white kit, a team who tormented their opposition with industrial efficiency and bestowed upon me, and countless tens of thousands of others, a reason to walk tall and declare, ‘We are Leeds.’ 66

Elsewhere in Phillip’s account of Leeds, he talks about local pubs which still enforced a colour bar, racist abuse and the endless grey skies of Northern England. His is clearly not an idealised expression of belonging. However, the football club provides a unifying cause to rally round, expressed in the collective pronoun ‘we are Leeds’. Zephaniah communicates a similar civic sporting pride in his poem ‘Knowing Me’, while simultaneously emphasising his African Caribbean and Brummie heritage: At least once a week I watch television With my Jamaican hand on my Ethiopian heart The African heart deep in my Brummie chest, And I chant, Aston Villa, Aston Villa, Aston Villa, Believe me I know my stuff. I am not wandering drunk into the rootless future Nor am I going back in time to find somewhere to live.67

Famous for his lightness of touch, Zephaniah here fuses the African oral tradition and British football chants to emphasise the ‘tribalism’ of football fandom. Traditionally, Rastafarians reject modern technology, particularly television, or ‘tell-lie-vision’ as it sometimes known.68 Zephaniah is perhaps asserting that as well as being a Rasta with an African consciousness, he is also a regular Brummie bloke who watches television ‘at least once a week.’



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These two identities are in no way conflicting and this poem relaxes into the authentic simultaneity – not hybridity – of them both. Zephaniah is, after all, more recently known for his role in Peaky Blinders, showing he is at home in so-called ‘mainstream’ and more literary media environments. The layering, or superimposing effect which Barry identifies as ‘double visioning’ is expressed quite differently in this poem. While the same geographical regions are invoked for their importance in defining the poet’s heritage, they are not imagined as literal geographical regions. Instead, their centrality to the poet’s identity is made explicit by constituting physical parts of his anatomy, layer upon layer: the hand, on the heart, in the chest. His awareness grounds him, preventing him from ‘wandering drunk into the rootless future.’ Zephaniah is rooted and comfortable with who he is, and equally who his community are, ‘we are all Brummies.’ 69 This excerpt also speaks to the theme of repatriation to Africa, as examined above through the lyrics of Steel Pulse. For Zephaniah, this impulse to ‘go back in time’ seems to hold no appeal. If this is the case, his views align with fellow poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who ‘didn’t think the wholesale repatriation to Africa was either practicable or desirable as a political project.’ 70 Johnson’s rejection of the literal interpretation of core Rastafarian beliefs is simultaneously an acceptance of a Black British identity with multiple facets and lines of influence. Multiplicity of identity (African, Ethiopian, Jamaican, Brummie) is not problematic for Zephaniah, who insists: I am not half a poet shivering in the cold Waiting for a culture shock to warm my long lost drum rhythm, I am here and now, I am all that Britain is about I’m happening as we speak. Honestly, I don’t have an identity crisis.71

Whereas the ‘double visioning’ used by Steel Pulse or Moqapi Selassie evokes a mythic, ancestral past, Zephaniah emphasises the ‘here and now’ to express how a playful, multiplicitous approach to his poetic self-identity celebrates ‘all that Britain is about’. A semantic field of warmth and cold is deployed to demonstrate that the poet is not in need of a deeper cultural connection to ‘warm’ him, providing respite from the supposed ‘shivering’ of feeling incomplete or alienated in one’s environment. On the contrary, Zephaniah’s poem is optimistic. The potential it suggests is analogous to green shoots in the concrete jungle. ‘Knowing Me’ is a prime example of what Leicester writer Carol Leeming calls ‘Black British writing that doesn’t apologise.’ 72 Much like Zephaniah and Phillips, Leeming has also utilised football as a metonym for Britishness: ‘I know I belong here. I know how

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I like my tea. I know what football I like.’ 73 Contemporary Black and Asian British poets do not necessarily share the ‘double visioning’ optic which was prevalent in Rastafarian cultural expression in the 1970s and 1980s, although the influence of these times cannot be underestimated. As I have shown with reference to the Handsworth disturbances of 1985, the disenfranchisement of Rasta cultural practitioners was perhaps inevitable in a society which marginalised and oppressed them. As values shift between the mid-twentieth-century Commonwealth migrants and their British-born descendants, Black and Asian British writers take their reference points from the UK as well as overseas. The emergent generation of writers from the Midlands, regardless of their heritage, may take inspiration from the nuances of their multicultural surroundings, to produce a uniquely regional sensibility.

Notes 1 Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘The Big Bang’, in Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds), p. 194. 2 Lisa Amanda Palmer, ‘“Each One Teach One”: Visualising Black Intellectual life in Handsworth beyond the Epistemology of “White Sociology”’, Identities, 27:1 (2020), 91–113 (92). 3 Palmer, 91. 4 Barry, p. 46. 5 Zephaniah, ‘The Big Bang’, p. 194. 6 Palmer, 98. 7 John Brown, Shades of Grey: A Report on Police–West Indian Relations in Handsworth (Bedford: Cranfield Institute of Technology, 1977); John Rex and Sally Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City: a Class Analysis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). 8 Ian Grosvenor and Rob Chapman, West Africa, West Indies, West Midlands (Sandwell: Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, Department of Education, 1982). 9 Pan African Congress, Resolutions and Selected Speeches from the Sixth Pan African Congress (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1976), p. 60. 10 Hubbard, Faire and Lilley. 11 Barry, p. 46. 12 Dennis, p. 98. 13 Barry, p. 46; Zephaniah, ‘The Big Bang’, p. 194. 14 Bassett. 15 Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890–1910 (London: Yale University Press, 1969). 16 Gunning, p. 20. 17 Rex and Tomlinson, p. 72. 18 Ibid.



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19 Rex and Tomlinson, p. 72. 20 Ibid. 21 Gordon E. Cherry, Birmingham: A Study in Geography, History & Planning (John Wiley: Chichester, 1994), p. 187. 22 R. Woods, ‘Ethnic Segregation in Birmingham in the 1960s and 1970s’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2:4 (1979), 455–476 (458). 23 Ibid. 24 Rex and Tomlinson, p. 75. 25 Ibid., p. 70. 26 Stephen Steinberg, ‘“Race Relations”: The Problem with the Wrong Name’, New Politics, 3:2 (2001), 1–6. 27 Barry, p. 46. 28 Palmer, 98. 29 Myers and Grosvenor, 152. 30 Palmer, 99. 31 Christine Graham, ‘Repatriation: Africa in the Horizon’, The Dread Library, nd, https://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/graham.html (Accessed 19 September 2015). 32 Barry, p. 46. 33 Steel Pulse, Handsworth Revolution (Mango Records, 1978). 34 Ferdinand Dennis, Behind the Front Lines: Journey into Afro Britain (London: Victor Gollancz, 1988). 35 Revelation 17: 8–18. The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001). 36 Steel Pulse, Handsworth Revolution. 37 Michael Prophet, Righteous Are the Conqueror (Greensleeves Records, 1980). 38 Cited in James A. Clapp, The City: A Dictionary of Quotable Thoughts on Cities and Urban Life, 2nd edn (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2014), p. 251. 39 Bob Marley and the Wailers, Burnin’ (Island Records, 1973). 40 Colin Clarke, Decolonizing the Colonial City: Urbanization and Stratification in Kingston, Jamaica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 209. 41 Clarke, p. 218. 42 Steel Pulse, Handsworth Revolution. 43 Sheila Kitzinger, ‘Protest and Mysticism: The Rastafari Cult of Jamaica’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 8:2 (1969), 240–262 (255). 44 Velma Pollard, Dread Talk: The Language of the Rastafari (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1999). 45 Moqapi Selassie, ‘Tellin de Stori’, in Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds), pp. 190–191. 46 Cedric Pugh, ‘The Height of Ignorance in Housing’, Philosophy and Social Action, 14:1 (1988), 27–40. 47 Reena Bhavnani, Juliet Coke, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Herman Ouseley and Keith Vaz, A Different Reality: An Account of Black People’s Experiences and their Grievances before and after the Handsworth Rebellions of September 1985,

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Report of the Review Panel (Birmingham: West Midlands County Council, 1986), p. 23. 48 Cited in Bhavnani et al., p. 23. 49 Barry, p. 46. 50 The Mighty Diamonds, I Need a Roof (Channel One Records, 1975). 51 Geoffrey Dear, ‘Report of the Chief Constable West Midlands Police: Handsworth/ Lozells – September 1985’, Library of Birmingham Special Collections, LF42.01, p. 2. 52 Dear, p. 54. 53 Jed Fazakarley, ‘Racisms “Old” and “New” at Handsworth, 1985’, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (2009–10), 6. 54 Daily Mail, 21 April 1983. Cited in Gilroy, p. 43. 55 Wolverhampton Express and Star, 14 September 1981. 56 Gov.UK Ethnicity Facts and Figures, ‘Confidence in The Local Police’, 12 May 2021, www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/ confidence-in-the-local-police/latest (Accessed 13 February 2022). 57 Dear, p. 65. 58 Anuji Varma, ‘The Handsworth Riots 25 Years On’, Birmingham Mail, 9 September 2010, www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/the-handsworthriots-25-years-on-131492 (Accessed 20 November 2015). 59 BBC Birmingham, ‘One Love in the Community’, Faith in Your Community, 13 November 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2005/07/15/ haile_selassie_peace_foundation_feature.shtml (Accessed 20 November 2015). 60 Barry, p. 46. 61 Ibid. 62 BBC: Your Community, ‘A Picture of Birmingham – Benjamin Zephaniah – People’s Poet’, 22 April 2008, www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2005/05/11/ picture_of_birmingham_benjamin_zephaniah_feature.shtml (Accessed 21 September 2015). 63 Grosvenor, McLean and Roberts (eds), p. 48. 64 Ambalavaner Sivanandan, ‘Catching History on the Wing’, Institute of Race Relations, 1 November 2008, https://irr.org.uk/article/catching-history-on-the-wing/ (Accessed 21 May 2021). 65 Interview by Nikki Spencer, ‘My Family Values: Benjamin Zephaniah, Poet’, Guardian, 4 July 2009, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/04/benjaminzephaniah-family-values (Accessed 10 November 2016). 66 ‘Northern Soul: Caryl Phillips Returns to Leeds to See How the City of his Youth has Changed’, Guardian, 22 October 2005, www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2005/oct/22/photography.communities (Accessed 17 September 2015). 67 Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘Knowing Me’, in Kay, Procter and Robinson (eds), pp. 196–197. 68 Melchezidek, Comment on thread ‘WW3’, Sent: 21 March 2022 2:06:40 AM, https://jah-rastafari.com/forum/message-view.asp?message_group=7633&start_ row=51 (Accessed 20 July 2022).



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69 Zephaniah, ‘The Big Bang’, p. 194. 70 Linton Kwesi Johnson, interviewed by Nicholas Wroe, ‘I Did My Own Thing’, Guardian, 8 March 2008, www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/08/ featuresreviews.guardianreview11 (Accessed 20 March 2014). 71 Zephaniah, ‘Knowing Me’, p. 196. 72 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 73 Ibid.

Coda: ‘our new layered city’

I have focused on the ‘Forward!’ impulse of Birmingham and suggested that the process of the slogan’s enactment is highly uneven, with certain areas and demographics enjoying the benefits more than others. To conclude my discussions on Birmingham, I look now at an alternative, inclusive vision of the city. There is a publicly run gallery and art space in Digbeth called Eastside Projects, who have published a number of ‘user manuals’. Their latest version is entitled ‘The Artist and the Engineer’, in reference to the two figures depicted on Birmingham’s crest. The antagonistic relationship between them is reconciled in a surreal, visual manifestation of the city’s conflicting impulses: The City is shaped by the Hammer. The Hammer’s motto is Forward! The Hammer has two supporters. They are the Artist and the Engineer. Each day they put the city together. But at the end of each day The Hammer cries ‘Forward!’ The Hammer clears away the city. He buries and flattens. He makes a new foundation. The next day, The Artist and The Engineer put together a new city. One night after The Hammer has cleared the city, The Engineer sees something left over. The Artist has an idea. The Artist and The Engineer imagine a new way of building with leftovers and layers. Can they persuade The Hammer not to flatten the city? The Artist says, ‘We could build on top of, around, over, and through.’ The Engineer says ‘We could recycle and upcycle.’ The Engineer says ‘We could build a city with a memory.’ The Artist says ‘To do this we will need a new motto.’ They talk all night with The Hammer. One thousand ideas! One hundred ideas! One idea!



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The next morning they are ready to make their announcement to the city. The new motto for the city is ‘Layered!’ Welcome to our new layered city.1

Literature is represented here by ‘the Artist’ and we see a call for the urban fabric to mirror what literature has long achieved – a progressive, accumulative approach to culture. Birmingham literature is that cultural ‘palimpsest’ which ‘layers’ up the city’s ever-changing visions of itself and renders them imaginatively, for posterity.2 When Benjamin Zephaniah declares that he is ‘of Brummagem’ he evokes that Medieval settlement and reminds us that ‘Brummies are at home with new horizons/ And a multi-layered concept of place.’ 3 When Moqapi Selassie observes in Birmingham a ‘concrete jungle’, he is layering the ancient forests of Mercia with his ancestral homeland of Africa and superimposing them upon the brutalist structures which rose out of necessity in the mid-twentieth century.4 Writers have responded to Birmingham’s ‘hammer’ in truly imaginative and rebellious ways. Birmingham writers continue to inscribe the literary ‘palimpsest’ of their city in ways that planners and developers could not have foreseen and may not approve of. If Birmingham wishes to build a supermodern shopping mall, Catherine O’Flynn will imagine what goes on in the abandoned service corridors at night.5 If the city tears down a tower block, she imagines what happens to the people who might get trapped inside.6 This should not be understood as an antagonistic relationship of the city versus its creatives. Birmingham is beginning to see real value in the creative industries and is learning the value of supporting them. As Jonathan Davidson states, ‘in the place once known as “the city of a thousand trades”, the creative industries are becoming increasingly important’.7 The local authorities are beginning to see the economic value of creativity and are beginning to ‘layer’ that dimension of the city with its commercial and industrial sectors. One important way this can happen is through funding for the arts. Although it was sadly unable to keep competing with the big London publishing houses, Tindall Street Press was helped along the way by the financial support of Birmingham City Council.8 The ‘Creative Quarter’ of Digbeth could not have flourished without the start-up grant that allowed the Custard Factory to be developed in 1993.9 Perhaps one of the reasons why Birmingham’s brutalist old Central Library ‘no longer has a place in Birmingham’s vision of itself’ is because it evokes a time when creativity was not nurtured in the city. The ‘oppressive top-down culture’ had a visual analogue in the inverted ziggurat structure which once loomed over Paradise Place.10 Contemporary Birmingham, more than ever, seems to be ‘a writers’ city’ and a place where the arts can flourish.11

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Author Jim Crace says of Birmingham that it is ‘a city where the future is being probed and practised rather than one of those scrubbed, historic tourist cities where the past is cossetted and replayed.’ 12 The layers where we see the failed attempts of ‘probing’ and ‘practising’ all stack up to form the vast literary ‘palimpsest’ of contemporary Birmingham.13 O’Flynn says of the city that ‘it’s very transient, you see all the layers’. The drive for renewal attuned her awareness of place and has benefited her immensely as a writer: Growing up here has informed a lot of my writing, my books have all started talking about place and I think that’s all down to growing up in Birmingham and in Nechells in particular that was demolished and rebuilt – I get a lot of inspiration from that which I’m not sure I would if I lived somewhere beautiful and historic.14

Irish-Brum O’Flynn grew up in one of the five ‘new towns’ and experienced life as part of a ‘suspect community’ in the wake of the Birmingham Pub bombings in 1974.15 There are many dark chapters of Birmingham’s history, sitting alongside much worth celebrating. The city has its pretty and historic parts, for example Bournville, but overall these quarters do not define the public image of the city. This single fact alienates and even angers outside commentators such as King Charles. They demand a city which is immediately accessible to them, straightforwardly pretty and highly functional without showing any of its working parts. But such a place does not, and will never, exist on the land which was christened ‘Brummagem’.16 It is perhaps a blessing in disguise that critics have been so vocally condescending about Birmingham. The popular (mis)conception of Birmingham as an aesthetically displeasing city helps to keep rents affordable and enables a creative economy. As Crace jokes, ‘it helps that our city values neighbourliness and the place is affordable, even for writers.’ 17 It is important to remember that Crace and Davidson do have a commercial agenda in publicising Birmingham and that the correlation between cost of living and creativity is very difficult to evidence. However, the more competitive and individualistic nature of London, coupled with its extortionate cost of living, could never provide the sense of community which Birmingham affords to creatives. Davidson states, ‘It’s a city that actively welcomes writers. New arrivals tend to comment on how easy it is to begin to be part of the city’s writing life.’ 18 Hopefully the local authorities and investors will continue to see the economic and cultural benefits of this reputation. Birmingham’s authors play a crucial role in building ‘a city with memory’ as they are not only attuned to observe, but also form an integral part of, the ‘new layered city’ of Birmingham.



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Notes 1 Eastside Projects, The Engineer and The Artist: Eastside Projects User’s Manual, Draft 6, 2013, https://issuu.com/eastsideprojects/docs/manual (Accessed 20 June 2016). 2 Barry, p. 165. 3 Zephaniah, ‘The Big Bang’, p. 194. 4 Selassie, ‘Tellin de Stori’, pp. 190–191. 5 Catherine O’Flynn, What Was Lost (Birmingham: Tindall Street, 2007). 6 Catherine O’Flynn, The News Where You Are (London: Viking, 2010), p. 7. 7 Jonathan Davidson, ‘The Writers’ Side of Birmingham: Literary, Lyrical and Lively’, Guardian, 9 September 2015, www.theguardian.com/best-of-birmingham/2015/ sep/09/the-writers-side-of-birmingham-literary-lyrical-and-lively (Accessed 20 June 2016). 8 O’Flynn, What Was Lost. 9 ‘Custard Factory’, https://digbeth.com/spaces/custard-factory (Accessed 20 June 2016). 10 Mason. 11 Davidson, p. 27. 12 Jim Crace, cited in Davidson, p. 27 13 Barry, p. 165. 14 Catherine O’Flynn, author interview, 27 May 2016. 15 Catherine O’Flynn, ‘Suspect Communities’, 2 Octoberb 2014, www.catherineoflynn. com/2014/10/suspect-communities/ (Accessed 20 July 2021). 16 Bassett. 17 Crace, cited in Davidson, p. 3. 18 Davidson, p. 27.

The West Midlands: from Shakespeare to Syal

The West Midlands: introduction

Before we proceed on foot into the Black Country – defined by local folklore within a radius of ‘an hour’s weary trudge’ from Dudley castle – anyone doubting the region’s poetic beauty must first consult some mandatory reading from W.H. Auden: But let me say before it has to go, It’s the most lovely country that I know; Clearer than Scafell Pike, my heart has stamped on The view from Birmingham to Wolverhampton.1

For Auden, the landscape evokes a visual impact more striking than the highest mountain in the UK. So unforgettable is this West Midlands idyll, it becomes ‘stamped’ on his heart. As impassioned as Auden’s tribute may be, I would argue that his is not a view widely held. Within the surreal remit of a letter to the ghost of Lord Byron, the Birmingham-raised Auden penned this heartfelt tribute to the Midlands while visiting Iceland in 1936. Placing these two canonical Midlands authors in dialogue, albeit one-sided, is not only humorous for the centuries between them or the light and airy verse which Auden deploys: it serves as a reminder that the Midlands have produced some of English literature’s most celebrated figures. A reminder needed, perhaps, when the region has failed to fully capitalise even on Shakespeare, who is rarely seen as a Midlands writer. For clarity, the West Midlands comprises: the metropolitan county of West Midlands, the nonmetropolitan counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, the unitary authorities of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Stoke-on-Trent and Telford and Wrekin. The Black, Country, however, is a fluidly defined area of industrial heritage, ‘where the coal seam comes to the surface’.2 Boundaries are contested, although one local articulates a fail-safe definition: ‘The Blackcountry is where a Blackcountry man says it is an [sic] woe betide anybody who says any different’.3 While I have no desire to interfere in this regard, I will make the case that the characterful region – birthplace of Lenny Henry, Sathnam Sangherra and Meera Syal – has cultural capital to

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match its rich natural resources. The Black Country and wider West Midlands produce a wealth of high-quality literary output but are considered primarily industrial and therefore innately unpoetic. This interpretation is at odds with Shakespeare’s philosophy that the poet’s pen connects the intangible to the regional; the writing process ‘gives to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name.’ 4 Whether these lines were inspired by the Midlands is far from certain, yet the process of reifying the intangible through manifestation in the ‘local habitation’ is a vital first step for regional creatives of all kinds. While modern critical assessments might overlook the West Midlands, a lack of regional brand identity was clearly not on Auden’s mind when he sang the praises of the ‘most lovely’ region. Before exploring the diverse and exciting literature which emanates from the West Midlands, I will first interrogate how London cannily adopted Stratford-upon-Avon’s most famous son; why the West Midlands struggles to take ownership of its cultural legacies; and how ‘tall poppy syndrome’ may contribute to talented writers leaving the Midlands for London. Is the aspiration of a Midlands writer to be, as Auden wryly reflects, ‘like some valley cheese/ local, but prized elsewhere’?5 Without regular Arts Council or other state funding, The Shakespeare Globe Trust’s deft management of the iconic theatre and visitor attraction at London’s Bankside ensured footfall in excess of a million annual visitors pre COVID-19.6 The attraction helps to narrate the bard’s life story via the capital. Shakespeare’s professional prowess is exhibited in London, with the Globe firmly established as his platform for worldwide recognition. The 1998 cinematic reimagining of the bard’s life, Shakespeare in Love, capitalised effectively on the romance of this London narrative. If London can be seen to articulate this marketable ‘sexiness’ of Shakespeare during his ascendancy, his West Midlands roots present a different picture. Stratford-upon-Avon promotes a twee and homely rendition of Shakespeare’s formative years: Tudor frontages; hanging baskets; and ‘gin cruises’ on the river.7 The quaint Heart of England domain in which Shakespeare’s local Midlands legacy resides is a far cry from the excitement of the cheap seats down at the Globe. Shakespeare as imagined from a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon is a very different writer. Indeed, Stratford is an entirely different milieu to a busy city, whether in early modern or contemporary times. The town is not quintessentially Midlands in appearance or character. The (post)industrial aesthetics of the nearby Black Country seem a world away, let alone the concentrated economic activity of Wolverhampton and Birmingham. While these centres would become a ‘hive’ of employment and manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare’s pre-industrial creative career led him directly to London, albeit at a slower pace than today’s M40



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motorway.8 During his ‘dark’ or ‘lost’ years, 1584–1592, he makes a radical transition from young provincial father to famous London playwright.9 Unpicking the historical evidence as to Shakespeare’s whereabouts during this period is best left to professional Shakespearians such as Robert E. Burkhart or Arthur Acheson.10 For the purposes of my argument, however, I am interested in the divergence between the start and end points of this period. This is because, long before the installation of the London–Midland train line, Shakespeare trod a nascent career path which would be walked by generations of creative professionals for centuries, continuing to the present day.11 To better understand the unique regional dynamics which would drive a talented playwright away from the West Midlands, I spoke to Rebecca Atkinson-Lord. She is a celebrated writer and director, having toured her work internationally; received critical acclaim from the New York Times, and directed a vampire screenplay which was then optioned by Nicole Kidman.12 Her autobiographical play, The Class Project, scrutinises the very British dynamics of social mobility, belonging and ‘not sounding like where you come from’.13 As a working-class scholarship girl at a boarding school outside Wolverhampton, growing into a professional adult meant leaving behind elements of herself: ‘everything I was taught at that Midlands school was designed to teach me that success could only be achieved if I didn’t look and sound like I came from there.’ 14 This is the self-loathing of the Midlands, intersecting the upper-class fixation with Received Pronunciation. Growing up in what Atkinson-Lord calls ‘Tory Heartland’ required adapting and ‘mimicking the ruling class’.15 Today, she speaks with a middle-class, non-regional dialect, the result of elocution lessons during school days and a career spent largely in London’s off-West-End theatrical world. During our conversation, especially around topics of home, Atkinson-Lord’s West Midlands accent begins to surface, as it does when she is reconnected with her family. Yet outside of Midlands circles, Atkinson-Lord recalls the contempt she has experienced towards the West Midlands accent. It is a disapproval, she claims, which is reserved not only for our accents, but the values of Midlands people: For a long time people raised in the Midlands were taught that their taste, and what they valued, wasn’t the right thing to value. I think it’s taken lots of unlearning. I think it is changing but I understand why people leave.16

It is important to note that this denigration of Midlands values is not solely an external force. Internalised feelings of cultural irrelevance are perhaps a component of the complex issues which may hinder the Midlands creative communities in seeking a national audience. To caricature the case,

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Atkinson-Lord highlights how, in popular culture, people from the North ‘stride purposefully across moors’ – she does a pretty convincing Yorkshire accent here – whereas in the Midlands, ‘there is no nobility in the stories told about us, or the stories we tell […] how have we not claimed Shakespeare?!’ 17 Humility is, I would argue, a perennially attractive character trait, yet it is one perhaps increasingly at odds with a world of self ‘branding’ and the continual projection of success via social media. Within this technological frame of reference, our penchant for self-deprecation may be hindering the development and dispersal of creative ideas from the Midlands. The following chapters interrogates these dynamics, while celebrating the creativity of the West Midlands. In doing so, it redresses what AtkinsonLord calls a lack of ‘nobility in the stories we tell about ourselves’, meanwhile recognising that having your story heard often means leaving behind your Midlands roots. In mapping a unique creative culture which is arguably subservient to London, the following explorations of West Midlands’ literature and its cultural practitioners aim to articulate a distinctly regional aesthetic which deserves more widespread recognition.

Notes 1 W.H. Auden, ‘Letter to Lord Byron’, in W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, Letters from Iceland (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), p. 49. 2 BBC Local History, ‘What and Where is the Black Country?’, 24 September 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/blackcountry/content/articles/2005/03/15/where_is_the_ black_country_feature.shtml (Accessed 12 March 2021). 3 Ibid. 4 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, line 1846. 5 W.H. Auden, ‘Shorts II’, cited in Susan Ratcliffe (ed), Oxford Essential Quotations, 5th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 6 Shakespeare’s Globe, ‘Annual Review 2019’, https://cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/ uploads/2020/04/2019-Annual-Review.pdf (Accessed 5 March 2021). 7 Visit Stratford-upon-Avon, www.visitstratforduponavon.co.uk/ (Accessed 5 March 2021). 8 Willey. 9 Robert E Burkhart, ‘Finding Shakespeare’s “Lost Years”’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 29:1 (1978), 77–79, DOI: 10.2307/2869172. 10 Arthur Acheson, Shakespeare’s Lost Years in London, 1586–1592 (Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg, 2008). 11 Network Rail, ‘Upgrading the Midland Main Line’, nd, www.networkrail.co.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Midland-Main-Line-Leaflet.pdf (Accessed 12 March 2021).



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12 Justin Kroll, ‘Nicole Kidman to Adapt Off-Broadway Vampire Drama Cuddles’, Variety, 25 May 2016, https://variety.com/2016/film/news/nicole-kidman-cuddlesmovie-adaptation-vampire-play-1201782913/ (Accessed 5 March 2021). 13 Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, author interview, 28 July 2020. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.

8 ‘Pathos, politics and paratha’:1 re-reading West Midlands, South Asian literature

Many reviews of South Asian literature are problematic in that they tacitly align themselves with what Yasmin Alibhai-Brown calls ‘3S’ multiculturalism, drawing on clichés of ‘steelbands, saris and samosas.’ 2 These three symbolic components, read individually, are important aspects of Caribbean and South Asian culture. Collectively, however, they have come to symbolise an approach to diversity which is not only dated but embarrassingly superficial. This chapter situates this cultural phenomenon within the early years of the New Labour government, then re-reads a timeline of Midlands texts and their contemporary reviews: Meera Syal, Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999); Sathnam Sanghera, The Boy with the Topknot (2008), Marriage Material (2013); and Huma Qureshi, How We Met (2021). In doing so it maps the ways in which the tone of critical responses modulates in step with shifting attitudes to multiculturalism over time. Like many commentators, Will Kymlicka rejects a ‘caricature of multiculturalism as the uncritical celebration of diversity at the expense of addressing grave societal problems’.3 As short-sighted as such an approach may be, this ‘caricature’ of multiculturalism has found some considerable currency in UK society, informing which cultural products are marketed for mass consumption. Stanley Fish offers up the terminology ‘boutique multiculturalism’ to frame superficial engagements with ‘otherness’ as a lifestyle product to be consumed.4 This concept is extended by Claire Chambers who frames it as ‘wafer-thin multiculturalism’.5 Just like the ‘wafer-thin’ morsel of food in the infamous Monty Python sketch, such a conception of cultural difference may be difficult to stomach for contemporary readers of multicultural texts. Yet in the 1990s, there was a demonstrable appetite in the UK’s book-buying public to consume representations of South Asian culture which foregrounded food and culinary imagery. I emphasise ‘appetite’ not solely for the groaning pun but also to make a serious point in flagging up the relevance of Huggan’s work on ‘consuming’ culture. He argues that ‘India is more available than ever for consumption; and more prevalent than ever are the gastronomic images through which the nation is to be consumed.’ 6 This consumption has proved voracious,



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with select British Asian texts propelled to become best-sellers by the welloiled marketing machine of London’s major publishing houses. Remarkably, some Midlands writers have managed to thrive in this competitive arena – the Asian-ness of their manuscripts being perhaps more immediately observable to commissioning editors than their Midlands-ness, as it were. Do writers feel compelled to emphasise certain points of difference, even subconsciously, when writing with a commercial audience in mind? For readers, clearly there is an immense appeal in absorbing narratives which offer a different perspective from one’s own immediate sphere. While such cultural tourism may seem innocuous, there is a more nefarious dimension to the relationship between the producers and the consumers of multicultural texts. For the latter, part of these texts’ appeal can be understood through Juliet Hess’s concept of ‘the politics of self-congratulation’. As an educator and a scholar of so-called ‘world’ music, Hess is attuned to the othering which this title enacts: When a dominant body encounters another culture, are notions of Western accomplishments and discourses of superiority always pervasive in the mind? This self-congratulation – the knowing of oneself through the assumption of the inferiority of the Other and the applauding of oneself for being a ‘culturally “tolerant” cosmopolitan’ white subject is what I term the politics of self-congratulation.7

Hess’s self-awareness informs her pedagogy but it also opens up useful tools for critically (re)reading British South Asian literature and the contemporary reviews used to market key texts. As I will demonstrate below, there is a self-congratulatory tone to certain reviews on book jackets, utilising reductive ‘3S’ tropes to neatly package the complex, unruly narratives being spun on the pages within. These tropes can be seen as shortcuts to a broader understanding of the heterogenous cultures being represented in novel or memoir form. The West Midlands’ large South Asian population has helped to make it a prolific literary region, with authors such as Meera Syal and Sathnam Sanghera frequently troubling the London-centric best-seller charts with their hugely popular books, journalism and screen writing. Their work originates from points of reference far removed – culturally and geographically – not only from the London-based industries which mediate their works but also the audiences who engage with them.

New Labour’s ‘prawn cocktail offensive’ 8 Having suggested that ‘3S’ multiculture is ‘embarrassing’, it is important to interrogate why it evokes such discomfort, if society is to avoid repeating

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past mistakes. With the financial crash of 2008 and the election of a Lib-Con coalition in 2010, the last embers of not-so-New Labour’s optimism were extinguished. The nation emerged, sore-headed after the excesses of Blair’s party, with only distant fond memories of the ‘cuddly’ 1990s.9 The numerous atrocities of the outgoing administration, perhaps most notably the illegal war on Iraq, had obscured the optimism of their early years.10 Sound-tracked by D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, May 1997 marked a landslide victory for Tony Blair and a sharp detour from the conservative agenda which had defined the previous 18 years of British politics.11 Blair’s election anthem was originally released in 1992, but would go on to encapsulate the more commercially anthemic side of Britpop and cool Britannia as it waned in the late 1990s. That D:Ream disbanded the year Blair was elected is surely coincidental. Regardless, it did nothing to diminish the optimism of a nation which felt on the cusp of genuine positive change. Coupled with relative economic prosperity, these conditions proved fertile for the marketing of aspirational consumer goods. As journalist Angus Harrison recalls: This cuddly New Britain also coincided with new aspirations. To grow up under Blair’s watch was to anticipate an adulthood of salmon fillets and large three-beds with wooden floorboards. A world in which you could drive two reliable cars and England made the quarterfinals of most major tournaments.12

Although facetious, these utopian benchmarks do signify levels of socioeconomic stability and home ownership, which have failed to materialise for many of ‘Blair’s children’.13 This is perhaps inevitable given that the aspirations were unrealistic. They were founded upon contradiction. Such physical markers of wealth – salmon fillets and floorboards – signal the extent to which New Labour had moved away from the party’s socialist roots. Further to the deletion from the party’s constitution of Clause IV, which advocated the ‘common ownership of the means of production’,14 New Labour unleashed what the press would call a ‘prawn-cocktail offensive’. Referencing the once-popular seafood starter, this culinary catchphrase sneeringly characterised Labour’s campaign to court the banking classes. By schmoozing donors at lavish lunches, they cultivated a ‘neoliberal consensus’ which, as Rhian Jones argues, ‘retained the market fundamentalism of Thatcher, but presented itself as socially liberal and more in tune with alternative cultures’.15 This contradictory state of being partially explains how white British society can simultaneously ascribe value to multicultural products while failing to extend full and equal citizenship to the ethnic communities from which they originate. While 1997 saw the election of six Asian heritage and four Black Labour MPs, this landmark should not be mistaken as symbolic of a wholly accepting and tolerant society.16 The Tottenham MP Bernie Grant received death



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threats from the far-right hate group ‘Combat 18’.17 This is just one incident in a long history of intimidation tactics used against MPs of colour.18 Although the early years of the New Labour era heralded progress on some fronts, the 1997 election promise of ‘one nation with Labour’, resurrected by the ill-fated Ed Milliband in 2014, now sounds as abstract as the title of Funkadelic’s spaced-out 1978 LP, ‘One Nation Under a Groove’.19 In the late 1990s, however, a key component of New Labour’s ‘groove’ was its public celebration of the virtues of multiculturalism. The literary world, arguably, does not exist in a vacuum and the trajectory of critical readings therefore moves in approximate tandem with broader societal shifts. Around the turn of the millennium, Modood recalls ‘a certain kind of modest, communitarian, ethno-religious multiculturalism, self-consciously incorporating and building on ideas of institutional racism and anti-discrimination’.20 He identifies the zenith of this progressive agenda as 1999–2001, with key outcomes including: the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999); the Parekh Report (2000); the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000); and the inclusion for the first time, of a ‘religion’ section on the 2001 census. The latter prompted more than 390,000 respondents to declare themselves Jedi Knights.21 In more serious terms, though, the census request reflected a period of British history where the narratives around immigration, citizenship and equality were more tolerant, more progressive and ultimately more optimistic than the subsequent years which would be defined politically by austerity, Brexit and COVID-19. I want to make the case that this optimism, however concocted it may have been, radiated from the world of politics, into society and then to literary culture. Optimism informed the critical reception of such era-defining novels as Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), which arrived at the turn of the millennium and excited book reviewers with its accessible, sparky dialogue and multicultural cast of characters. At the time of its release, New York Times reviewer Anthony Quinn interpreted White Teeth as announcing the arrival of a ‘New England’, noting how within the novel; ‘Both families, the Joneses and the Iqbals, make their home in the tatty but vibrant suburb of Willesden in northwest London, a melting pot of race and color that is maintained by and large at an amiable simmer.’ 22 This utopian ‘outsider’ reading, in the year 2000, finds its antithesis in 2006, when British critic Susie Thomas observed how ‘White Teeth appeared at just the right time, when Smith’s brand of undemanding multiculturalism could serve as an anthem for the complacent self-image of London as the harmonious melting pot.’ 23 In referencing these two divergent readings of the same text, I aim to highlight a shift in the rhetoric around multicultural texts and demonstrate how changing attitudes to multiculturalism impact their marketing and critical reception.

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I turn now to the West Midlands, the spiritual home of Blair’s mythic ‘Mondeo man’. This everyman figure supposedly possessed the power to bring Labour success at the polls. He was inspired by a trip to Stoke-on-Trent, whereupon Blair laid eyes on a suburban man washing his Ford Mondeo. Characteristically, this demographic mascot had not recently voted labour, although he used to, and his parents did. Having established himself as a homeowner, Mondeo man now wants to ‘get on in life’ and so votes Tory. After all, he is ‘doing very nicely’ in Blair’s words.24 New Labour’s mission was to mobilise these swing voters. Beyond the alliteration, ‘Mondeo man’ is a powerful cultural shorthand. In the late 1990s, the Mondeo was desirable, still a relatively new model, yet in this context it suggests the banality of the owner’s aspiration. The car becomes symbolic of lower-middle-class aspiration, a cultural signifier rendered all the more potent as it gleams against the grey anonymity of a Stoke-on-Trent driveway. Sticking with this material theme, I will now examine the cultural signifiers which Syal, Sanghera and Qureshi place in their books. Just as the eye darts to a label or logo when a product placement appears in a film, my critical attention is drawn to the material stuff lying around in these texts. Reviewers love these literary titbits. They carefully extract them and give them pride of place in their review. The publisher is delighted with a quotable excerpt, places it front and centre on the beautifully designed book sleeve. These help to drive sales and, over time, a rhetoric around cultural artefacts, often South Asian food, spices or clothing, accretes around the marketing of literature by British authors of that heritage, as Huggan and Maxey have argued.25 The symbolism which is at the heart of ‘3S multiculturalism’ becomes a form of currency for authors, publishers and reviewers. I add new insight and context to this debate by re-reading key texts and their reviews against the backdrop of a rapidly changing political landscape.

‘Spicy’ Meera Syal26 The authors under discussion in this chapter are ascribed playful nicknames, cited from contemporary reviews of their work. In replicating these descriptors, I intend to signal the bizarre, sometimes humorous ways of reading which ‘3S’ multiculturalism enacts. This subtitling convention is deployed in the spirit of critical engagement with, and absolute respect for, each of the authors referenced. When it comes to the abundance of food imagery served up for fans of British South Asian literature, there are divergent ways of reading. As Maxey asserts, on the one hand there is ‘the pre-eminence of food in the South Asian diaspora as a rich, complex means of cultural expression and



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economic survival’;27 on the other, ‘the problematic, loaded relationship between originality and stereotype associated with food in a South Asian diasporic context’.28 For writers, weaving deftly between their gastronomic cultural heritage and the pitfalls of cliché could present a challenge but Meera Syal rises to it with skill and a good deal of humour. Described by Hussain as ‘possibly the most influential South Asian woman in the British media’, Syal has artfully deployed food iconography throughout her varied career.29 Whether screenwriting Tandoori Knights (1987); Bhaji on The Beach (1993); or the timeless ‘going for an English’ sketch in Goodness Gracious Me (1998), Syal utilises food as a site to explore cultural difference, to evoke humour and often to articulate a serious point. Her robust literary–culinary approach does not, however, shield her from reviewers’ penchant for awkward food tropes. She magazine’s review appeared on the cover of Syal’s 1999 novel, Life Isn’t all Ha Ha Hee Hee (hereafter referred to as Life), declaring it: A magical mosaic of friendship, betrayal and cross-cultural incongruities. By turns spicy, hilarious and sad, it unfolds the ties that bind young women to their East End Punjabi roots even as they head west for trendy careers, café bars and sexual freedom.30

Deploying what Maxey might call a ‘tired means’ of writing about South Asian culture, the reviewer here identifies Life’s ‘spiciness’ as something which manifests only when the novel is not being ‘hilarious’ or ‘sad’.31 The ‘mosaic’ appears ‘magical’ perhaps because the images are fragmented, unfamiliar shards for the audience to piece together. The ‘ties that bind’ such seemingly disparate lifestyles are at once specific to a South Asian British experience but also speak to a wider, universalising narrative of friendship and female solidarity. This might help some readers navigate what She magazine calls the novel’s ‘cross-cultural incongruities’, as they consume stories at once strange yet familiar.32 While less commercially successful than Anita & Me, Syal’s follow-up novel was able to capture the zeitgeist of early New Labour optimism. Perhaps it is the overlap between the cultural iconography in the text and the relative visibility of Asian cultural products at the time which prompted the reviewer to pluck the adjective ‘spicy’ from the air, but it is not entirely clear what it means, beyond the fact that signalling texts in this way aligns them with marketable tropes of Asian-ness. This fetishising tendency is echoed in the memoirs of Hardeep Singh Kohli: ‘as a child, the only aspect of being Indian which wider society seemed to celebrate was our food’.33 The popularity of the texts under discussion in this chapter would suggest that ‘wider’ – implied white – society has since progressed beyond consuming South Asian culture solely at the dinner table. Images of food are self-consciously deployed by writers as a shorthand for narratives which

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might otherwise be comprehended only by people of South Asian heritage. When the author cannot assume the reader has direct lived experience of the issues which texts explore, cultural shorthand may be a necessary means of distilling complex ideas into something pithier and more quotable. To be clear, I am not making the claim that Syal wrote with this in mind. Rather, that ways of marketing and receiving the text correlated with the aesthetic of ‘steelbands, saris and samosas’ and therefore played up to received notions of cultural difference. I will now consider two of the main characters in Life, Tania and Chila, and attempt to understand how their radically different personalities are signposted using culinary reference points. The juxtaposed characters have been close friends since childhood. Their friendship is tested, however, when Tania produces an unflattering video documentary of her friends’ domestic lives. Sensing the potential for career advancement, Tania is encouraged to offer salacious renditions of South Asian culture to her arrogant white boss, Jonathan. She must pitch ideas which fit with his ‘boutique multiculturalism’ modus operandi, otherwise he dismisses her work as having ‘a touch of the earnest ghetto’ about it.34 The aftermath of Tania’s betrayal, exacerbated by her affair with Chila’s husband, shapes the whole novel. Life therefore positions the marketability of South Asian culture centrally in its narrative. Syal tackles the issues head on, positioning herself as an interlocutor in debates around representation in the 1990s, which are just as relevant today. The character of Tania provides Syal with the opportunity to critique the TV media landscape and lampoon its expectations. Tania’s discomfort in certain professional environments becomes physical in its effect: she had sat tight-lipped and buttocks clenched as Rupert or Donald or Angus nibbled on ciabatta and explained to her what it meant to be Asian and British, at least for the purposes of television.35

Ciabatta has been called ‘the Mother’s Pride of the middle classes’ and works well here to signal the aesthetic preferences of a ‘panel of fortysomething white men’.36 Their names, too, are chosen to signify their whiteness and, in this case, the social gulf between them and Tania. In her memoir, Huma Qureshi is equally attuned to the politics of naming when she swaps emails with her future husband: ‘it is in his name that all the small differences between us lie. I should be meeting someone called Rehan or Rahim or Raiyan, not Richard.’ 37 What is in a name? The Slavic name ‘Tania’, short for Tatiana, does nothing to align the character’s creative ideas with those of the Ciabatta nibblers. A bizarre element of pantomime is evoked in the phrase ‘for the purposes of television’, suggesting a stylised symbolic representation with the anatomical accuracy of a two-person panto horse. Uncomfortably, the perceived authenticity of cultural representation is here



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suggested to lie in the audience’s expectations, rather than the lived experience of the director. The ‘Ruperts’ position themselves as vectors of public opinion. Tania therefore finds herself navigating a difficult career path as she craves freedom of artistic expression yet finds herself censored by the industry gatekeepers whom she must appease to reach a wider audience. At the heart of this power struggle are ideas around cultural authenticity, yet the power to ascribe is unevenly distributed. As Tania asserts, ‘only anyone not Asian would assume that wearing mini-skirts and liking Italian food meant I was in ethnic denial.’ 38 Syal deploys Tania’s razor-sharp wit to push back against contentious assumptions, which are informed by a smug ‘3S’ multiculturalism, circulating in the late 1990s’ media world she inhabits. Chila is the perfect counterpoint to Tania in Life. Whereas Tania might grab a quick Italian lunch, with wine, between business meetings, Chila is more likely to put considerable time and effort into preparing a home-made feast. The novel is heaving with ‘mountains’ of food.39 This phrase, appearing on three separate occasions, pastiches a cultural tendency towards generous hospitality. As Maxey has argued, ‘writers […] use food to illustrate the tension between preserving one’s ancestral heritage and the formation of new cultural and social identities.’ 40 Chila, whom Gunning dubs the ‘idiot savant’ of Life, can be seen to embody ‘ancestral heritage’, with her proud domesticity and mastery of South Asian cuisine. By contrast, Tania is a more Westernised fictional rendition of British Asian womanhood; one which takes its cultural cues from Italian food, short skirts and 4x4s.41 Their juxtaposition is perhaps starkest when they socialise together. While Tania envisages a night on the town, her friend has prepared for a big night in: Chila stood in the doorway, flustered by the honking of Tania’s horn. She glanced behind her at her new glass coffee table in the centre of the through lounge, groaning under the weight of plates of sweetmeats, freshly fried samosas and a just unwrapped Black Forest Gateau.42

At the threshold between two very different worlds, Chila experiences corporeal sensations of discomfort. Having suggested above that Life is ‘heaving’ with food imagery, the idea manifests physically here, exerting its downward force on Chila’s expensive coffee table. Indeed, everything in Chila’s vast home is of the highest quality. Her guilty, unfaithful husband Deepak makes sure of this. The 1990s’ chic glass table is here rendered fragile and precarious, liable to shatter as it ‘groans’ under the weight of Chila’s domestic efforts. Clearly the samosas are not here as a mere multicultural garnish to the narrative. They symbolise the divide between the two friends’ priorities. There is a sadness to this scene: the sheer effort of the cook versus the indifference of the intended recipient. In ‘High on Chai and Samosa’, Sadaf Hussain recalls a comparable dynamic when their Grandmother ‘felt

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stressed to see all these samosas, not knowing what to do with them, or how to find enough people to eat so many of the crisp delicacies’.43 These savoury parcels contain more than simply meat or vegetables, they are filled with a sincere generosity. Values passed down generations cannot be embodied solely by inanimate foodstuffs, yet such cultural markers do have a vital role to play in literature. Here they symbolise the human dimension, the warmth and the worries of everyday domesticity, in a relatable form that has found an audience in readers of multicultural texts in the UK.

‘Delectable’ Sathnam Sanghera44 Media outlets reviewing The Boy With the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton (2008) indulged in acts of cultural voyeurism. Radio 4’s Francis Gilbert peeked through ‘a wonderful window into a completely different culture […] completely different from anything we’ve ever seen before in literature’.45 Installing such ‘windows’ can prove highly lucrative for publishers, as Huggan and Brouillette have argued.46 The practice is also problematic, weighing a burden of representation upon authors to package their lived experience in a way that emphasises difference. Readers’ voyeuristic tendencies are based around expectations: what the viewer expects to see through the window, and what the subject inside feels they are expected to display. As Hess articulates, ‘who is allowed to know and who is known is determined by dynamics reliant on inequity.’ 47 Net curtains were popular for good reason. Having the space to express oneself authentically without obligation to ‘put on a show’ has become synonymous with privilege. Balvinder Banga argues that this privilege is denied to British Asian writers, suggesting that ‘the key to improving the quality of British Asian fiction coming through is to break its subservience to marketability, to enable it to take risks.’ 48 Such risks might involve experimentations in form or subject matter, creative deviations away from the prescriptive conventions of ethnicity-packaged-as-genre. The Bangladeshi-British author Monica Ali experienced what she called an ‘obliteration of the self’ when her 2011 novel Untold Story was met with ‘bafflement’ from critics. The book’s reimagining of the Princess Diana saga was described by one critic as ‘a curious marriage of author and subject matter’. The clear implication is that writers of colour, or from immigrant backgrounds, are expected to re-tell that specific story for their readership. Ali finds this suffocating and reflects, ‘I think I was really naive in thinking that I could write about whatever I wanted, like a white male writer can.’ 49 The real-world impacts of these stifling expectations can be immense. Ali claims to have experienced 10 years of depression as a result.50



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Writer Kavita Bhanot is strongly opposed to writing which appeases ‘cultural gatekeepers’.51 She recognises the unfairness inherent in their power to judge work by ‘writers who come from the cultural margins, who have not always had the time, the freedom, the cultural capital to write “literature” as defined by the elite.’ 52 There is a danger that if British Asian writers pander to the expectations of a largely white readership, they may misrepresent the broad and often contradictory range of experiences and identities within their ethnic communities. I would argue that between 1999 and 2021 – the chronological range of texts in this chapter – there has been some progress made in opening up the remit which publishers, reviewers and readers place upon British Asian writers. While the Midlands texts discussed here are by no means a representative, nor exhaustive sample, they signal a subtle shift away from ‘3S’ multiculturalism and towards a more honest mode of reading and marketing texts, one that treats the author as an individual intellect, rather than a spokesperson for any particular demographic. The shift is demonstrable in the reception of Sanghera’s Marriage Material (2013). Katsoulis’ review in The Telegraph suggests that the tone of the dialogue had progressed somewhat since Syal’s fiction was branded ‘spicy’ in 1999: This story of race and caste in the Midlands is a satirical masterpiece […] Sanghera is such an engaging and versatile writer that the pages fly by in a flurry of pathos, politics and paratha with extra butter. Not many readers will recognise this satirical mini-masterpiece as a reworking of the 1908 Arnold Bennett novel The Old Wives’ Tale, but everyone will feel richer for its uncompromising take on race relations in the Black Country.53

What is satisfyingly nuanced about this reading is the firm regional emphasis. In Katsoulis’s reading, Sanghera becomes a Midlands writer, momentarily shaking off the ‘British Asian’ tag which frustrates him. Despite its regional emphasis, this chapter is guilty of making connections between authors with very different backgrounds and experiences, yet it does so with the intention of better understanding how marketing categories emerge and what can be done to challenge them. Certainly, reading from a regional perspective is a good start. Sanghera has expressed the desire to be compared with white Midlands authors such as Jonathan Coe.54 Katsoulis, however, foregrounds the text’s Asian-ness when she writes of ‘pathos, politics and paratha with extra butter’. While there is validity in this analogy, the reviewer only hits the mark two times out of three. As an author, Sanghera does indeed evoke ‘pathos’ with his tender descriptions of everyday family life, the arguments, the jokes, working through loss and grief together. The ‘politics’ are present through the local agitators, The National Front and the Indian Workers’ Association.55 The novel also contains historically contextualising sections

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about Enoch Powell, more on whom later. The addition of ‘paratha’ serves not only to create alliteration, it also emphasises domestic family life but frames it via a symbolic marker of outward-facing multiculturalism. This reinforces the concept of the British Asian text as providing a ‘wonderful window’ through which white readers can peer without fear of anyone looking back. Moving beyond the complimentary snippets which adorn book covers, nuance emerges in the debates around multicultural texts when critics engage constructively with texts. Khavita Bhanot is notable in this regard for her highly critical reading of the ‘whiteness’ of Sanghera’s work, which is explored in more depth in the next chapter.56 While exoticising discourses can be seen to co-opt multicultural texts for their publishers’ commercial advantage, it is important to note that the one-way analogy of a ‘window’ is not a catch-all for the breadth of critical readings publicly available. Bhanot demonstrates that readings from within the Sikh community may arrive at radically different conclusions to those in the business of reviewing books commercially. For the Guardian’s review of Marriage Material, the newspaper called on none other than Meera Syal herself. Unsurprisingly, food metaphors were nowhere to be seen. Instead, Syal unearthed the West Midlands mining heritage with a geological semantic field: ‘mining rich veins’; a ‘flinty’ love; ‘layered with the sediment of intergenerational secrets’.57 Syal reminds us that the best reviews, while undertaking a job of work, can still shimmer with the luminescence of skilled prose writing. Using perhaps more typical language of the book review format, Lisa Appignanesi calls Marriage Material ‘a comic feast, full of delectable matter.’ 58 While the imagery of consumption had clearly perpetuated into reviews as late as the 2010s, the exoticising impulse is here diminished. Rather than focusing on the symbolism of ‘3S’ multiculturalism, Appignanesi instead foregrounds the connection she experiences as a reader: ‘I felt I knew Sathnam Sanghera’s characters intimately and felt so warmly about them, I didn’t want them to go: no mean feat, given that I’ve never been into a Wolverhampton corner shop’.59 The reviewer indicates the book’s ‘otherness’, yet does so by signalling her own unfamiliarity with its milieu. This frames the primacy of the text as an authentic representation of lived experience, rather than suggesting the text’s value lies in its deviation from the reader’s sphere of experience. Even the Daily Mail calls Marriage Material ‘a thoughtful examination of the complexities of modern Britain’.60 This rings true on re-reading Topknot, the 2008 memoir which propelled Sanghera to wider public recognition.61 The prose is thoughtful and exploratory, and resonates with the ‘complexities’ of his upbringing. While it conveys warmth and respect for his family, Sanghera’s memoir is also resistant to straightforwardly celebratory modes of multiculturalism. The common trope of food is not absent from his writing, though it is packaged in terms which move beyond



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an uncritical literary tribute. Food evokes childhood, maternity and domesticity in Topknot but also serves as an unwelcome marker of the young Sathnam’s difference from his school peers: While the other kids who had packed lunches came with neatly packed sandwiches, Mum gave me omelette sandwiches and aloo gobi parathas, which stank out the packed lunch area so much that I sometimes ate alone outside.62

Written into this recollection is the food envy of the child, stemming from a desire to fit it and be like the ‘other kids’. While their lunches are ‘neatly packed’, by contrast Sathnam’s is implied to be messy and therefore likely to draw attention. The potato and cauliflower flatbreads, which are lovingly prepared, result in an unforeseen embarrassment. Sanghera seems to reflect some of the other children’s judgement in his choice of wording: the parathas ‘stank out’ the lunch area. His fear of standing out results in the sad situation of eating ‘alone outside’. Showing deference to white British prejudice is perhaps an uncomfortable component of Sanghera’s autobiographical writing. It is certainly not a representative trait of South Asian fiction. Abdullah Hussein’s novel Émigré Journeys (2000) was branded ‘startlingly authentic’ by The Telegraph, perhaps for the challenge it mounts on British intolerance via the second-generation teenager Parvin: ‘I said to them at school that our food was not like the half-boiled cattlefeed that they ate, colourless, tasteless and odourless like themselves.’ 63 The jibes of racist whites are inverted in this multi-sensory attack. Parvin takes ownership of her ‘colour’, ‘taste’ and ‘smell’, meanwhile suggesting an absence of all three to be far worse. While such an approach may not have won Sanghera many friends at school, it is nonetheless worthwhile observing how writers present a divergent range of cultural responses to food, identity and belonging. An author’s ability, or willingness, to explore these tropes in their literature may have implications for their text’s success in a marketplace which ascribes economic value to symbolic representations of otherness.

‘Quiet’ Huma Qureshi64 The third and final writer under discussion in this chapter comes from Walsall, near Birmingham. The inclusion of Qureshi’s How We Met (2021) adds breadth to the timeline of texts analysed, meanwhile signalling a critical departure from the language of food as a marketing tool. In this context, the text serves to demonstrate both the timelessness of food imagery in representations of South Asian family life, and the decreasing relevance of ‘3S’ multiculturalism as a commercial aesthetic. Ignoring their literary tastebuds momentarily, reviewers of Qureshi’s memoir chose instead to

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listen as they read. The Guardian’s Sukhdev Sandhu found ‘the quiet tone of her book … almost shocking.’ 65 For Saima Mir it was ‘a beautiful book of quiet confidence’.66 For Ami Rao, it was a tactile reading experience: ‘there are books that touch you. Then there are the books that open up their arms and straight out hug you – How We Met is this second kind of book.’ 67 All of these assessments engage with the text on terms which emphasise the individual skill of the writer, rather than the marketable stereotypes of her heritage. This should, of course, be unremarkable: a default mode of reading. Yet for British authors of South Asian heritage, having their books genuinely read – without the stigma of stereotypes – has taken time to achieve. The exoticising impulse was, and arguably still is, deeply ingrained. As the climate crisis has demonstrated across wider society, unethical practices which are profitable are not quickly abandoned. Qureshi engages with food on her own terms. It is not a central theme in her memoir. However, served sparingly, its power as a narrative device is all the more potent. The love story at the heart of How We Met involves the author, a British Asian Muslim, and her white British husband-to-be, Richard. Their union initially shocks Qureshi’s family. It is far from the more formalised matchmaking which she envisages during her childhood and early adulthood. When articulating to her reader what that process might have looked like, food and drink become a natural means of expression for Qureshi: That one day a family might come to visit and then ask my parents for my hand in marriage for their son over cups of tea and a tray of samosas was as much a fact of my life as eating breakfast, reading books, watching Neighbours after school.68

Here, the foodstuff, which became a shorthand for conspicuous displays of cultural difference, resumes its place as the centrepiece of this traditional matchmaking ceremony. The simple facticity of the arrangement is situated for the reader with reference to the mundane daily repetition of eating breakfast or reading. This is reinforced by cross-referencing the Australian soap opera which was a household staple for so many people in the UK – a comfortable daily benchmark in the passing of contented, domestic time. Qureshi’s delicate handling of the everyday justifies the critic’s assessment of her ‘quiet confidence’. She holds her reader’s attention with a measured, gently assertive prose: offering not a vicarious ‘window’ into her culture, more an honest conversation at the doorstep. It is food, once again, which commands centre-stage when the memoir’s most tense encounter takes place. Huma takes Richard to meet her mother for the first time, painfully aware that her family disapproved of her white partner. The atmosphere is initially frosty and it does not seem that Huma’s



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mother will thaw. It takes the visual prompt of the food she has prepared to help Huma realise that her mother really does wish happiness for her daughter: I see the table is overflowing with piles of naans and platters of rice and at least four different rich, homemade curries swimming in bowls. It’s only the three of us, but there’s so much food and I’m about to ask her why on earth she’s made so much but as I take it all in, it hits me that this is her, trying her best.69

From ‘groaning’ coffee tables piled with food in Syal’s Life, to the ‘swimming’ curries here as part of this home-made feast, food in West Midlands Asian texts is actively engaged in shaping the landscape of domestic life; communicating unspoken sentiments; bringing the characters together; smoothing over any tensions. For the ‘outsider’ Richard – notably not a ‘Rehan’ or ‘Rahim’ – the moment of acceptance from the Qureshi matriarch arrives with a gentle command across the dinner table: ‘Come now, you must try a bit of everything.’ 70 In reading three very different British Asian authors from the West Midlands, I have demonstrated that food imagery is deployed to serve a range of literary functions and how that usage has changed over time. Each writer expresses their own relationship with food in individual terms, although there is a unity of purpose and vision which weaves their heterogenous narratives together. The giving of food is an emotional gesture. With each offering, the intent is subtly different, yet the concept of love is rarely off the table. Conversely, when reviewers attempt to deploy a culinary lexicon, it is economic, rather than emotional currency which is evoked. This is not to discredit the valuable work of reviewers in the life cycle of a book publication; rather to signal the uncomfortable relationship between the emotional and the economic. Experiences are relayed to the page, then reviewed and finally packaged for consumption. It is both a creative practice and a business model. The danger inherent in this process is one of misinterpretation and a preponderance of literature which satisfies mainstream tastes. The ‘3S’ model of understanding diverse cultures is not a uniquely British phenomenon and can be seen to tie into global postcolonial dynamics. Bannerji has written on the Canadian situation, in terms which could easily have been written about the UK: As long as ‘multiculturalism’ only skims the surface of society, expressing itself as traditional ethics, such as arranged marriages, and ethnic food, clothes, songs, and dances (thus facilitating tourism), it is tolerated by the state and ‘Canadians’ as non-threatening.71

In line with Chambers’ ‘wafer-thin’ analogy, the multiculturalism under scrutiny here is scant, insubstantial and liable to tear under the slightest

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strain of interrogation. Although Syal, Sanghera and Qureshi have had their work interpreted – to varying degrees – in terms of Asian food stereotypes, they all resist the ‘non-threatening’ tropes of ‘3S’ multiculturalism. Instead, their writing adds continuity to a long history of cultural expression as a form of resistance. In a society which systematically privileges white aesthetic preferences, asserting cultural difference can at once be a rebellious and also a lucrative act. The work under discussion exemplifies what Maxey has called ‘the pre-eminence of food in the South Asian diaspora as a rich, complex means of cultural expression and economic survival.’ 72 Complexity is key here, yet inevitably some processes of simplification must take place when texts are packaged for retail and adorned with attention-grabbing quotes. That British South Asian texts have been marketed along culinary lines says more about how the publishing industry perceives the demands of their customer base, than it does the ability of food imagery alone to give a robust rendition of the complex, multi-layered Midlands texts discussed in this chapter.

Notes 1 Katsoulis. 2 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, After Multiculturalism (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2000). 3 Will Kymlicka, ‘Multiculturalism: Success, Failure, and the Future’ (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2012). 4 Stanley Fish, ‘Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech’, Critical Inquiry, 23:2 (1997), 378–395. 5 Claire Chambers, Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 152. 6 Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (Abingdon: Routledge 2001), p. 154. 7 Juliet Hess, ‘Performing Tolerance and Curriculum: The Politics of SelfCongratulation, Identity Formation, and Pedagogy in World Music Education’, Philosophy of Music Education Review, 21:1 (2013), 66–91 (72). 8 This phrase was widely used by the press. While its origins are unknown, the first published usage I could trace was: Lisa Buckingham and Sarah Whitebloom, ‘Tories Preach Capital Heresy’, Guardian, 12 March 1994. 9 Angus Harrison, ‘Growing Up with Tony Blair, the Embarrassing Dad of UK Politics’, Vice, 3 May 2017, www.vice.com/en/article/qkgdv3/growingup-with-tony-blair-the-embarrassing-dad-of-uk-politics (Accessed 21 January 2021). 10 Gerry Simpson, ‘The War in Iraq and International Law’, Melbourne Journal of International Law, 6:1 (2005), 167–188.



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11 D:Ream, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ (Magnet Records, 1992). 12 Harrison. 13 Ibid. 14 Aisha Gani, ‘Clause IV: A Brief History’, Guardian, 9 August 2015, www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/09/clause-iv-of-labour-party-constitutionwhat-is-all-the-fuss-about-reinstating-it (Accessed 12 February 2021). 15 Rhian E. Jones, ‘Music, Politics and Identity: From Cool Britannia to Grime4Corbyn’, Soundings, 67 (2017), 50–61 (54). 16 BBC Politics ’97, ‘The Election. The Statistics. How the UK voted on May 1st’, nd, www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/news/05/0505/stats.shtml (Accessed 29 January 2021). 17 Voice, ‘Time of Terror’, 3 May 1999, https://berniegrantarchive.org.uk/showcase/ (Accessed 21 January 2021). 18 See Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski, Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 19 Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove (Warner Bros Records, 1978). 20 Modood, p. 117. 21 Office for National Statistics, ‘2001 Census Aggregate Data’, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5257/census/aggregate-2001-2 (Accessed 11 February 2020). 22 Anthony Quinn, ‘The New England: A Young Novelist Chronicles Two Families who Bring a Patchwork of Cultures to the London of the 21st century’, New York Times, 30 April 2000, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/ 30/reviews/000430.30quinnt.html?mcubz=0 (Accessed 3 September 2020). 23 Susie Thomas, ‘Zadie Smith’s False Teeth: The Marketing of Multiculturalism’, Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London, 4:1 (2006), www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/march2006/thomas.html (Accessed 31 May 2021). 24 James Morris, ‘The “Mondeo Man” Myth’, Spectator, 21 September 2019, www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-mondeo-man-myth (Accessed 29 January 2021). 25 Huggan, 2001; Ruth Maxey, ‘“Mangoes and Coconuts and Grandmothers”: Food in Transatlantic South Asian Writing’, in South Asian Atlantic Literature, 1970–2010 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), pp. 163–208. 26 She Magazine Review – front cover, Meera Syal, Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee (London: Anchor, 1999). 27 Maxey, p. 185. 28 Maxey, p. 164. 29 Yasmin Hussain, Writing Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture and Ethnicity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2005), p. 15. 30 She Magazine Review. 31 Maxey, p. 163. 32 She Magazine Review. 33 Hardeep Singh Kohli, Indian Takeaway: A Very British Story (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2008), p. 44. 34 Syal, Life, p. 85. 35 Ibid., p. 63.

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36 Fiona Beckett, Joanna Blythman, Richard Ehrlich, Matthew Fort, Malcolm Gluck and Roger Protz, ‘Noshtalgia’, Guardian, 29 June 2002, www.theguardian.com/ lifeandstyle/2002/jun/29/foodanddrink.shopping1 (Accessed 21 April 2015); Ibid. 37 Qureshi, pp. 12–13. 38 Syal, Life, p. 204. 39 Ibid., p. 31; p. 188; p. 393. 40 Maxey, p. 164. 41 Syal, Life, p. 50. 42 Ibid., p. 68. 43 Sadaf Hussain, ‘High on Chai and Samosa’, in Claire Chambers (ed.), Desi Delicacies: Food Writing from Muslim South Asia (New Delhi: Picador India, 2021), pp. 92–101 (p. 95). 44 Lisa Appignanesi, Review – inner sleeve, Sathnam Sanghera, Marriage Material (London: Windmill Books, 2013). 45 Francis Gilbert, ‘A Good Read’, BBC Radio 4, 17 November 2009, www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b00nvfmz (Accessed 5 September 2015). 46 Huggan, 2001; Sarah Brouillette, Post-Colonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 47 Hess, 69. 48 Kavita Bhanot and Balvinder Banga, ‘Writers Kavita Bhanot and Balvinder Banga in Conversation: South Asian Diasporic Literature, Culture and Politics’, South Asian Popular Culture, 12:2 (2014), 123–132, DOI: 10.1080/14746689.2014.937025. 49 Maya Wolfe-Robinson, ‘Monica Ali Says Reaction to Previous Novel Caused 10 Years of Depression’, Guardian, 7 February 2022, www.theguardian.com/ books/2022/feb/07/monica-ali-says-reaction-to-previous-novel-caused-10-yearsof-depression (Accessed 14 February 2022). 50 Ibid. 51 Bhanot and Banga. 52 Ibid. 53 Katsoulis. 54 Sanghera, ‘Top 10 Books of the Midlands’. 55 Sanghera, Marriage Material, p. 48. 56 Kavita Bhanot, ‘Reading the Whiteness of British Asian Literature: A Reading of Sathnam Sanghera’s The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 55:2 (2020), 204–227 (206). 57 Meera Syal, ‘Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera, Review’, Guardian, 21 September 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/21/marriage-materialsathnam-sanghera-review (Accessed 16 February 2022). 58 Lisa Appignanesi, Review – inner sleeve, Sanghera, Marriage Material. 59 Cited at www.sathnam.com/novel/ (Accessed 12 February 2020). 60 Ibid. 61 Sathnam Sanghera, The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton (London: Penguin, 2008). 62 Sanghera, Topknot, p. 437.



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63 Abdullah Hussein, Émigré Journeys (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000), p. 96. 64 Sukhdev Sandhu, ‘How We Met by Huma Qureshi Review – What Makes a Good Marriage?’, Guardian, 6 January 2021, www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/06/ how-we-met-by-huma-qureshi-review-what-makes-a-good-marriage (Accessed 14 February 2021). 65 Ibid. 66 Cited in Huma Qureshi, How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures, Kindle edn (London: Elliot and Thompson, 2021), p. 1. 67 Ibid. 68 Qureshi, pp. 13–14. 69 Ibid., p. 107. 70 Ibid., p. 108. 71 Himani Bannerji, ‘Geography Lessons: On Being an Insider/Outsider to the Canadian Nation’, in Leslie Roman and Linda Eyre (eds), Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 35. 72 Maxey, p. 185.

9 The great ‘talent drain’ of the West Midlands: Lenny Henry, Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera The West Midlands has a problem with ‘talent drain’. This term, derived from the Royal Society’s 1963 report on ‘brain drain’, was initially used to describe the phenomenon of British academics and scientists emigrating to the USA throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.1 In the three biographical case studies that follow, I consider why the Midlands struggles to retain talent and why the bright lights of London’s media industry keep ensnaring some of the multicultural Midlands’ best writers from under-represented sections of society. Professionals with diverse media skills in writing, stand-up, producing, acting, activism and fundraising – skillsets which the Midlands cultural industries need for their own longevity – are drawn to what Zangwill calls the ‘auriferous character of London pavements’.2 This economic pilgrimage resides in the national imagination as the Dick Whittington story does. This chapter explores a media landscape built with London as its centre of gravity; assessing the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors which led Lenny Henry, Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera to pursue careers there. Their autobiographical accounts of Midlands life establish ‘home’ as a starting point on a trajectory that ultimately sees success manifested only after leaving. At the individual level these are celebratory stories of success in the face of much prejudice and adversity – and this book celebrates Midlands talent wherever it may reside. However, collectively they indicate uneven distribution of cultural capital in the UK, suggesting a troublesome future for the Midlands’ regional identity. It would seem that the region suffers from ‘tall poppy syndrome’. As defined by Sternberg, ‘the phenomenon whereby people who stand out in some way – typically, those who are high status – become targets to be resented, attacked, severely criticised and often ostracised.’ 3 Based on the group psychology that assumes people should grow together in a synchronised, egalitarian manner, ‘tall poppy syndrome’ is a rather poetic term for the social equivalent of cutting the head off anyone who grows taller than their peers. It is not a uniquely Midlands concept. In Jamaica, the proverbial equivalent states that, ‘the higher the monkey climb, the more him backside



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expose’. In other words, ‘the further an unsuitable person is promoted, the more obvious his inadequacies become.’ 4 But who exactly, constitutes an unsuitable person? Low aspirations in certain areas may cast everyone as ‘unsuitable’, due to systematic inequalities determined before birth. In regions with a dearth of career opportunities, the element of competition is intensified. The gradual re-distribution of public monies, allocated through arms-length organisations such as Arts Council England, may in time bring a renewed creative confidence to regions previously under-funded and overlooked. While, in the short term, increased funding opportunities may alleviate the creative compromise which comes with writing for a commercial audience, an over-reliance on funding can be equally restrictive, as Bhanot and Banga argue.5 For pioneering young Midlanders such as Henry, Sanghera and Moran, waiting around for local opportunities was not an option. In the case studies below, I explore how three West Midlands heavyweights negotiated their creative and commercial impulses as they navigated a way out of the region.

Lenny Henry, born Dudley 1958 Long before a young Lenworth ‘Lenny’ Henry moved from the West Midlands town of Dudley to London where he would act on programmes such as The Fosters (1976–1977) and The Lenny Henry Show (1984–2004), his mother had already embarked upon a significant relocation of her own – from the West Indies to the West Midlands. Henry suggests that his parents’ journey is inseparable from his own narrative, at once profound yet ordinary: My story is an immigrant story … of people moving from one country thousands of miles away to another and forming new links, new family and new relationships. And that’s just what it is. It’s not illicit, it’s not salacious in any way. It’s a life thing.6

This everyday life story aligns with Gilroy’s concept of ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’.7 Long-distance international migration is portrayed as a commonplace occurrence, framing the comic’s subsequent relocation to London as local by comparison. That Henry needs to defend his family’s journey (‘not illicit … not salacious’) suggests it has been misrepresented by those who contest their belonging. A sense of conditional acceptance informed the strategies which the Henry family deployed as they adjusted to West Midlands life in the 1960s. On Henry’s sixtieth birthday, in 2018, Trevor McDonald would interview him to reflect on the period which the comedian dubs ‘project h’integration’. Henry enacted the crossing of cultural thresholds on national

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television, physically leaping across the stage to indicate code-switching between Jamaican patois inside the home, and a Black Country accent at the doorstep when his white friends came to call. He recalls the ‘legendary’ day, shortly after Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968, when he and his siblings were lined up by their mother and briefed on ‘project h’integration’.8 The remit was, as Mrs Henry put it, to ‘fit een wid di Dugley people dem.’ 9 Her advice instilled in young Len an ‘over-eagerness to be everyone’s friend and to be liked’, which he sees as ‘a common trope in comedians.’ 10 To understand the localised social climate of the time, reference to Conservative Peter Griffiths’ vile 1964 election slogan is instructive: ‘If you want a [N-word] for a neighbour, vote Labour.’ 11 In 1964, Griffiths gave voice to a majority of voters in the neighbouring constituency of Smethwick. While he only served one term, his appointment fomented racial antagonism in the region. As Henry recalls, ‘I was racially abused for quite a long period […] every day someone would call you a name and try to instigate a fight.’ 12 While his situation was sadly far from unique, it ultimately shaped his comedy as he began dealing with themes of race through a trademark blend of slapstick and gallows humour. Henry uses comedy to advocate for equality and diversity in the media. As George Orwell noted, a joke can act as a ‘tiny revolution’.13 Even if Henry’s early impersonations would not change the world, the process of artistic development was invaluable. Gavin Schaffer observes how comedy can ‘support struggling communities by boosting morale and allowing for tension release’.14 In this way, the young comic was building bridges within his own multicultural Midlands community, while tentatively mapping a route to London. In 1965 Smethwick received an urgent visit from African American civil rights activist Malcolm X, in response to attempts by white residents to segregate Marshall Street.15 The juxtaposition of person and place was conspicuous. As Henry recalls, ‘things were so bad in the West Midlands, that the baddest Black dude in America flew on his own dime and walked around – “Orite Maaalcolm!”’ 16 The arrival in the West Midlands of a global public figure with a ‘genius for attracting press attention’, was a powerful symbol.17 While it suggests Malcolm X’s Pan-African empathy and genuine political concern for people of colour everywhere, the incident is frequently ignored by his biographers.18 Goldman is a notable exception in this field, highlighting the significance of the visit as the last time the civil rights icon actually enjoyed himself, shortly before his assassination.19 It seems that within the darkest chapters of Midlands history, solidarity can engender fun and laughter to momentarily soothe and ease tensions. Looking now at the ways in which the metropolitan media represent the Midlands histories which shaped Lenny Henry, the BBC misread the national mood in 2018 when they decided to unlock Enoch Powell’s racist rhetoric



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from the vaults: 50 years after its original reading, the full ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was reproduced by actor Ian McDiarmid.20 As the show’s presenter Amol Rajan enthused via Twitter, ‘for 1st time EVER, Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech will be read in full on UK radio […] amazing production job. Great guests too’.21 One of these ‘great guests’, Shirin Hirsch, was so disgusted by the celebratory, sensationalist tenor of the marketing, that she asked for her contribution to be edited out. It seemed the BBC were glorifying the speech, an allegation Radio 4 Controller, Mohit Bakaya, countered by defending a ‘rigorous journalistic analysis of a historical political speech […] not an endorsement of the controversial views’.22 For parity, Powell’s replicated speech was interspersed with commentary from across the political spectrum, yet still the exercise suggested the corporation was out of touch with those impacted by Powell and the ideologies he represented. While 1968 polls suggested that 67–82 percent of the population backed the immigration curbs proposed by Powell, these figures should be interpreted cautiously: they are not wholly representative of the nation’s attitudes to race.23 According to Schwarz, the postcard poll by the Wolverhampton Express and Star was conducted ‘entirely within the terms defined by Powell’, in that the local media adopted and thus validated his ideological stance.24 In this vein, the paper reported 79 percent support for Powell but they also cultivated that stance in their reporting over time, encouraging their readership to share their own biases. As Hirsch states, ‘it’s important to talk about that history of racism, but also to talk about the antiracism – it’s not true that in Wolverhampton everybody supported Powell.’ 25 Such counter-histories as Henry’s are therefore vital to unlock a more nuanced understanding of the Midlands’ cultural identity. For the aspiring comic, Dudley was both a place of intercultural friendship and of violent prejudice. Committed to his mother’s mission, humour became a powerful tool to establish his voice. Project ‘h’integration’ would be gradual, sometimes painful and absolutely conditional on the expectations of white Midlanders. Malik and Newton see ‘humour and laughter as sites of struggle in multicultural British society’.26 For Henry, this struggle was initially an internal one. His early success ‘in working men’s clubs all over the Midlands and beyond’ came at a cost as he positioned himself as the butt of his own jokes.27 Early routines frequently deployed racist material, in order to pre-empt and deflect potential heckles from the white, working-class, provincial 1970s’ audiences he faced. A typical gag formed part of his 1975 television debut on the New Faces talent show: ‘If you’re wondering about the slightly permanent suntan, it all started when Betty got me a job as a salesman for Ambre Solaire – it’s not funny, I only put a teaspoonful on and I can’t get it off now’.28 Looking back on this footage, watching the TV audience roar with laughter evokes a more literal reading – it really isn’t funny. As the

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comic recalls, ‘I had fallen down a rabbit hole of complacency, laziness and fulfilling the audience’s expectations.’ 29 Henry became adept at delivering ‘a stupid, self-deprecating joke about Blackness’ which often relied on a physical stunt to illicit a timely, predictable laugh: ‘(wiping sweat from my brow) “I’m leaking …” (tasting it) “It’s chocolate!”’.30 Read sympathetically as a survival strategy for a young performer out of his depth, such jokes can be seen as reflective of attitudes in the 1970s and a far cry from the activism which would later define his career. As Alexei Sayle recalls, ‘it’s impossible to describe what a bleak comedic landscape it was’.31 A less sympathetic reading might interpret a comic contributing to, or even capitalising upon, the overt racism of the time period. Henry’s schooling in this ‘bleak landscape’ forced him to adapt and mimic, skills which would later equip him for the London media industry. From stand-up shows in working men’s clubs, Henry entered the dubious world of 1970s’ variety entertainment, touring with The Black and White Minstrel Show. Here, his ability to laugh at himself was pushed to uncomfortable extremes and the limits of the Midlands’ self-deprecating humour became all-too-visible: One of the things that’s admired in the UK is being able to laugh at yourself. ‘You don’t want to have a chip on your shoulder, lad. You gotta be able to take a joke. If you can’t, you’ll never make it as a comic.’ 32

That the young Black performer had so naturally taken to sending himself up is telling not only of the regional propensity for self-effacing humour, but also a problematic mode of representing his African Caribbean heritage in the public domain. The phrase ‘chip on your shoulder’ is loaded with connotation, implying that racism is the recipient’s problem and avoidable if they could simply ‘take a joke.’ Contemporary representations of race on British TV perpetuated racist stereotypes with sitcoms such as Curry and Chips (1969, LWT), It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (1974–1981, BBC), and Mind Your Language (1977–1986), deploying blackface and crude, divisive humour. This is one facet of the bleak media industry into which Henry emerges and navigates his personal transition from the regions to the metropolis. While the landscape of racial prejudice was by no means confined to the West Midlands, London gave Henry opportunities such as The Fosters (1976–1977, BBC), which Schaffer calls ‘a gentle, family-friendly comedy’, that ‘tried to emphasise the ordinary nature of Black British families, stressing the extent to which London was now a functioning multicultural space.’ 33 Whether or not it was fully successful in this mission, The Fosters initiated Henry into London’s television industry. This era represented a seismic shift not only in his own career, but also in the general tenor of representations of race and gender in comedy. The clubland humour of the 1970s was



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ageing fast and the foundations were being laid at the University of Manchester by a group of aspiring actors and comedians who would become instrumental in the development of ‘alternative comedy’ in the UK. With the advent of alternative comedy in 1979, Henry found his own voice in a new scene where ‘racist and sexist’ was off-limits but ‘racy and sexy’ were in vogue.34 Concurrent with the rise of the punk movement in 1979, comedians such as Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders established a new arena for creative expression, one which both fascinated Lenny Henry and would in time welcome him as a collaborator, friend and even husband. Significantly, this cultural development coincided with the creation of a ‘third space’ in the TV media. As Malik and Newton state, ‘lobbying and debates about training and access for Britain’s Black cultural workers helped to prepare the ground for the formation of Channel 4’.35 The new channel would air the flagship alternative comedy vehicle, The Comic Strip, on its opening night, with an episode entitled ‘Five go Mad in Dorset’. Lenny Henry was cast as a railway porter, at whom the ‘Famous Five’ remark: ‘that man looks foreign’, ‘I expect his name is golliwog’, ‘or Tarzan!’ 36 Even with ironic intent, this material has aged terribly. As progressive as its aims may have been, the alternative comedy scene fell short of fully reshaping the entertainment landscape. As alternative comedian Jenny Lecoat quips, ‘If you really want to change the world, you don’t go into comedy – you learn to fire a gun and you go to fight in El Salvador’.37 While non-violent resistance was consistently Henry’s weapon of choice, Lecoat is right to say that comedy has limitations as a vehicle for social change and Henry has pursued a composite strategy in his activism. The comedian adapts and code-switches; one minute he is the codpiece-clad Comic Relief superstar, Theophilus P. Wildebeeste, in a charity sing-off with Tom Jones; the next, a Shakespearean actor performing at the National Theatre. Whatever the role, he retains the integrity and tenacity of Sir Lenny Henry MBE, PhD, who delivered the 2014 BAFTA lecture condemning the ongoing lack of diversity in the industry.38 While his Dudley accent has mellowed over time, the comedian can now reflect on his formative Midlands years with pride: ‘[I was] in a place where there are toxic elements that you think would be an obstacle to my progress in life. But, actually, I think those things are part of what makes us stronger.’ 39

Caitlin Moran, born 1975, Wolverhampton If Lenny Henry is part of the Baby Boomer generation, Caitlin Moran is a distinctly Gen X Midlander. She entered the London media world after

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winning The Observer’s Young Reporter of the Year award aged 15, going on to write for Melody Maker and hosting Channel 4’s Naked City as part of the nascent Britpop scene of the early 1990s.40 These achievements are all the more significant considering Moran grew up on a Wolverhampton council estate as the eldest of eight children, an experience she likens to The Hunger Games.41 Moran moved to London on her eighteenth birthday and has managed to thrive in the overwhelmingly middle-class, maledominated London media sphere. She understood early on in her career that becoming famous was vital in order to really monetise her writing skills.42 Presenting on Channel 4 – a station which at 10 years old in 1992 was giving opportunities to a more diverse talent pool than more traditional broadcasters – helped her to achieve the right exposure. The station then needed to expand its remit as a ‘third space’ by facilitating greater diversity in the media.43 This mission has, in part, been successful: 25 years later, a 2017 survey reports that Channel 4 has the highest number of female employees at 59 percent – the highest of any UK broadcaster. The 2018 appointment of Caroline Hollick, a relatively young Black British woman, as Head of Drama would seem to reinforce Hollick’s own assessment of Channel 4 as being ‘synonymous with diversity, risk-taking and innovation.’ 44 Despite this progressive agenda, women only occupy 36 percent of senior roles at Channel 4.45 Representation is even lower in newsrooms: in a 2020 survey, only 26 percent of The Times front page stories were written by female journalists and only 15 percent of the people quoted were women. Worryingly, these numbers are in line with gender representation across the UK press.46 In a media scene with a distinctly Southern English inflection, part of Caitlin Moran’s unique appeal is her no-nonsense Midlands humour. Moran writes columns for The Times and has published a series of best-selling books: How to Be a Woman (2011), Moranthology (2012), How to Build a Girl (2014), Moranifesto (2016), How to be Famous (2018) and More than a Woman (2020). How to Build a Girl would go on to become a major motion picture, again demonstrating Moran’s mastery of utilising the multiple platforms of the London-based media infrastructure to reach the largest audience possible. With an outsider worldview informed by growing up as ‘the only hippies in Wolverhampton’, Moran understands how to package her narrative, for example in the series Raised By Wolves (Channel 4, 2013–2016), which turns her childhood into a semi-fictional working-class sitcom. The world play of ‘wolves’ and ‘Wolverhampton’ has long been deployed by the local football team and, just as their nickname aims to evoke a highly organised pack of lethal hunters, so too Moran calls upon a feral, collective Midlands strength with her autobiographical sitcom.



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In the press photos she holds a big wolf-like dog on a short lead. While on the one hand this could be seen to play up to metropolitan stereotypes of the Midlands as some far-off wasteland, there is also an affection in Moran’s presentation of the region and its influence on her writing. Receiving only a cursory secondary education at home, she spent her childhood in Warstones Library, Wolverhampton. In her forties, when given the opportunity to bring significant items as talking points on the Penguin Podcast, Moran chose a Wolverhampton library book ticket and spoke passionately of the importance of public libraries for young women.47 While her reminiscences of home are happy, Moran has honed the established self-deprecating style of writing about the Midlands. Attuned to the region’s mundane status in the national imagination, it becomes a humorous device with which to satirise her younger journalistic prowess in Moranthology: The reviews editor calls me the next day and asks me to do a test review of a local gig. When it’s printed, I get £28.42, and become the freelance stringer for the Midlands area: Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley and Derby. If there’s a band who’ve sold around 2,000 records playing in the backroom of a pub within twenty miles of Spaghetti Junction, I am all over it. I am now, vaguely, in charge of indie in West Mercia.48

The detail in Moran’s autobiographical output is nuanced, meticulously situating popular cultural phenomena in their historic contexts to bring her reader into a shared space of familiar memories. Here, details such as the exact fee offered, the number of records sold, and the radius of her journalistic ‘patch’ all combine to paint a humorous vision of a budding writer’s first assignment. Her wry and colloquial reflection, ‘I am all over it’, suggests both enthusiasm and inexperience. This grandiose account culminates in a final flourish of bathos: the ‘pub backroom’ opens up and we find ourselves in the ancient kingdom of Mercia. Historical connotations of swords and conquests are conjured from the eager pen of the ‘freelance stringer’, creating masterpieces which emanate from the iconic concrete ramps of the Spaghetti Junction, via the alliterative twin peaks of domesticity – ‘Dudley and Derby’ – to a receptive readership in the metropolis beyond. For Moran, writing to London established a viable route to live and work in the capital. While Moran deploys the Midlands as a cultural shorthand for mediocrity, she balances the impulse to satirise with an understanding that life in the poorer parts of ‘Mercia’ can be anything but mythical. The poverty of her upbringing is a recurrent theme in later writing; see the chapter entitled ‘I know what it’s like to be poor: They took away the TV, we cried.’ 49 Writing now from a place of relative luxury – ‘I know I’m rich because I’ve got underfloor heating, and could afford to eat out at Pizza Express up to three

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times a week’ – Moran recognises that journalism spared her from the other careers preordained to her:50 As a resident of a housing project in Wolverhampton, this seemed to leave me with a grand total of three future employment options: 1) prostitution, 2) working the check-out at the Gateway supermarket, Warstones Drive, or, 3) becoming a writer: an option I only knew of because that was what Jo March in Little Women, and Mother in The Railway Children, had done when they also fell upon hard times.

Moran’s love of reading is well-documented and has clearly equipped her well to pursue option 3). Early literacy is vital not only for the skills acquired, which are precursors for most employment, but also as a vehicle for social mobility; it broadens horizons. In Midlands ‘housing projects’ or estates, Lynsey Hanley identifies a metaphorical ‘wall in the head’ that obscures the world of opportunities beyond the estate. Expanding a concept which came into parlance following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hanley’s rendition of the ‘wall in the head’ describes a mental barrier ‘unbroken throughout every estate in the land […] heavy and strong, and as thickly invisible as Pyrex.’ 51 For Moran, Wolverhampton’s public facilities proved instrumental in dismantling this obstacle: ‘Once I could read and write, that was it. I lived in the public library.’ 52 In pursuing a self-directed literary education, Moran was tapping into frames of reference far beyond the confines of her immediate lived experience. This developed an independence of thought and motivation which enable her to overcome any perceived ‘walls’, meanwhile equipping her with vital skills for a career as freelance writer. Many children read prolifically, but how does one persuade adult, metropolitan gatekeepers to grant them access to London’s media elite? Despite her precocious independence, Moran’s source material was relatively scarce. At age 16, she recalls, ‘I couldn’t write about my own life, because I haven’t done anything’. Moran claims that she knew ‘absolutely nothing about the world’.53 Art must fill the gap, then, for the aspiring writer who has little experience of life. Commensurate with literature, music can suggest an alternative beyond the confines of the teenage bedroom, enthusing the listener with the potential of a mythic Everyplace or a glamorous capital city. For Hanley, and a large portion of Generation X, it was synthpop duo The Pet Shop Boys who became unlikely messengers of life beyond the Midlands, when they ‘sang a song about the West End of London and made it sound like the most exciting place in the world’.54 She recounts how their lyrics were ‘as valuable to [her] as books’, suggestive of ‘the kinds of lives in which you had the choice of becoming a pop star, a writer, a composer or a revolutionary.’ 55 Contrast ‘West End Girls’ (1985) with perhaps the most



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iconic West Midlands equivalent – The Specials’ apocalyptic ‘Ghost Town’ (1981) – and the difference is striking.56 If the Pet Shop Boys inspire glittering London careers, the Specials’ visions of Coventry, Wolverhampton or indeed any Thatcher-era, post-industrial region, are more in line with Moran’s housing project career options cited above. She chose the option with the potential to take her out of the council estate. Hanley, herself an estate escapee, explains how ‘the trick is to find a crack in it [the wall in the head] and whittle out a little escape route, but that takes strength from your side and help from the other’.57 Through independent reading, Moran had built up sufficient strength to make her bid for freedom. The help from the other side came from fellow West-Midlander Lenny Henry. At just 13 years old, Moran applied for the role of Managing Director at Comic Relief. Her cover letter explained how looking after her seven siblings made her ‘pretty organised’, equipping her well for the role, along with qualities such as ‘nobility’ and ‘liking funny stuff’.58 She received a hand-written reply from Lenny Henry, stating ‘you are far too special to do something as boring as this, I believe you that you are going to fly like a comet through British society’.59 The impact on the young writer was transformative; it ‘literally changed the makeup of my brain’. In a moment of Midlands solidarity, Henry had given Moran the self-belief to pursue a career in the media: ‘he’s written back to you, he’s seen you; a letter can go from Wolverhampton to London, it just felt like a hand had been extended out.’ 60 Analogous with the aide on the other side of the wall, Henry occupies a unique insider/outsider position here; he is at once of the Midlands and London. Perhaps mindful of his own struggle to enter the industry – ‘for a working-class black kid from Dudley show business was a locked door’ – Henry passes on the kindness shown to him by his own mentors and attempts to inspire a young working-class West-Midlander just as he was; ‘I’d just been offered two keys’.61 From a regional perspective, there is a bitter-sweet quality to this scenario. The mutual support and solidarity shown is lifeaffirming, but the Midlands suffers yet another instance of talent drain as a result. The ‘extended hand’ is warm and encouraging, yet it pulls only in one direction, away from the Midlands and towards London. Moran writes of a council estate life where rules are bent and small-scale corruption is commonplace. While moving to London brings more opportunities, it does not signal an escape from corruption. It simply means larger-scale corruption, as Moran explains: In Wolverhampton, when you needed dodgy inspection papers for the car, an uncle’s mate would be given a tenner ‘for a pint,’ and an exhaust pipe would magically appear out of somewhere – to the ultimate financial detriment of the garage it had been lifted from, but hey-ho.

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Now I’m in London, friends of friends recommend good accountants who will ‘sort out’ your VAT problem for a pint-equivalent fee – to the ultimate economic detriment of the country, but hey-ho.62

This recollection is designed to do two different things. It suggests casual criminality to be commonplace in Wolverhampton, while emphasising that wealthier London circles are guilty of much worse white-collar crimes. As Moran would have it, ‘everyone cheerfully plays the system they find themselves in.’ 63 While I am not doubting the truth of either scenario above, it is worth noting that among the ‘VAT problem’ social circles, consisting by default of at least £80,000 plus perks, a writer such as Moran can gain cultural currency by playing up to stereotypes of the roughness of Wolverhampton and the Midlands, significant for their marked difference from the London media landscape. While marking the author out as unique and authentic, this strategy can go either way though. Theatre director Rebecca Atkinson-Lord recalls a Southern boyfriend ‘acting like she’d just vomited’ when she reverted to her Wolverhampton accent in his presence.64 For Midlands cultural practitioners, there is a fine line to be walked between reaping rewards for showcasing our unique regional culture and attracting reproach from those who do not recognise or respect it. Moran has clearly embraced the vibrancy and opportunities of London life. For her, the capital represents economic stability – ‘Pizza Express three times a week’ – while Wolverhampton evokes memories of poverty.65 Despite her facetious benchmark of chain-restaurant dining, Moran’s conception of the capital is one of movement, progress and self-improvement. She associates Wolverhampton with poverty and stasis: ‘you’ve never even been to your neighbouring town – it’s too far away.’ The ‘heaviness’ of poverty delays action and, paralysed, ‘you sit still’.66 Statistics reinforce Moran’s representation, with Wolverhampton ranking among 6 percent of the most deprived places in the UK, with nearly one in three children in the city living in poverty.67 Midlands-wide, the picture is even bleaker, with Birmingham (42.33 percent), Leicester (40.59 percent) and Nottingham (38.23 percent) all having alarmingly high levels of child poverty.68 Comparison with London is not straightforwardly favourable to the capital city. The poorest individual borough nationwide, Tower Hamlets, and nine other London boroughs, rank in the top 25 poorest parts of England. The transition from Wolverhampton to London is not in itself an escape route from poverty. However, the opportunities afforded by London’s concentrated media industry enable a select few to build sustainable careers. For a Midlands writer, an outsider, continued acceptance in London’s media industry can appear conditional on not speaking ill of the capital. While working as a regular columnist for The Observer in the early 1990s,



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Moran wrote a piece ‘all about how awful London is.’ 69 In her ‘polished, even poetic’ style, she dared bite the hand that feeds by describing London as a squalid place where ‘Rats danced a Morse code of panic on the Tube line’.70 The Observer refused to publish it for four weeks, at which point Moran withdrew and took it to The Independent. The writer can successfully leverage her reputation to ensure creative freedom and renumeration for her work, operating as an insider/outsider who critiques the city, while successfully navigating spaces usually reserved for older, university-educated journalists. The economic lure of the capital is suggested to be the primary pull factor for the teenage Moran: ‘At my age now [19], I suppose I’d be first-year college, in the ordinary way of things, getting marks out of 10 for my thousand-word essay. Instead I get £500 for every thousand-word newspaper essay. Which would you choose?’ 71 It seems the writer is attuned to opportunities when they present themselves, perhaps because she grew up with so few. While her initial move was strategic, the young Moran did suggest an ambition which she has not yet realised: ‘I think I’ll give it another 10 years, then I’ll leave London for good. I want to live by the seaside, and have lots of children and a really huge Aga.’ 72 The grass, it would seem, is always greener.

Sathnam Sanghera, born 1976, Wolverhampton During the era in which journalist Sathnam Sanghera was born, Wolverhampton had, according to the local Express and Star, become ‘a sad byword for racial injustice and intolerance in many parts of the world.’ 73 This references the heated debates around immigration which were aired locally and broadcast globally. Second-generation British Asian, Sanghera has steeped his novel, Marriage Material (2013), in the multicultural history of Wolverhampton, referencing landmarks such as the turban dispute of 1967. In this high-profile case, Tarsem Singh Sandhu asserted his right to wear a turban and beard as a bus driver for Wolverhampton Transport Committee, where 50 percent of employees were Indian.74 The case became emblematic of wider social dynamics playing out nationally; all eyes were on Wolverhampton. As Collins recalls, ‘the nation’s racial tensions and identity politics played out on Black Country double-deckers.’ 75 The incongruity of this statement reaffirms the idea of the Midlands as representative of the mundane, and therefore an unlikely stage for national identity struggles. Yet, in fact, the region was a powerhouse of industry with an organised workforce. Shunned by white-led trade unions, South Asian employees rallied around the Indian Workers’ Association, which was founded in Coventry in 1937 to fight for better working and living standards for its members. Branches

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were formed nationally, with Birmingham representing the interests of the South Asian workforce concentrated around the transport industry, factories and foundries of the West Midlands.76 Their struggles have secured lasting change and left a legacy which Sanghera evokes in Marriage Material. Historically contextualising scenes are presented with ambivalence, the narrator dismissing ‘The National Front and the Indian Workers’ Association, both as unreasonable as each other’.77 Sanghera is not partisan towards leftist causes; nor is he a regional advocate of Midlands culture. This is, of course, a writer’s prerogative, yet the case study which follows illustrates how individual choices feed into the wider problem of talent drain from the Midlands. Do writers have any kind of duty to the places that raised them, or is the writer’s responsibility, as novelist William Faulkner insists, ‘only to his art?’ 78 Sanghera’s path to the inner circles of London’s media industry has been paved, in part, by the publication of his commercially successful memoir. The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton (2008) was met with critical fervour: ‘one of the most important books written in the last 10 years’, Francis Gilbert enthused, ‘it’s going to be part of the canon of how Britain sees itself.’ 79 Throughout Topknot, the author grows apart from the more traditional Punjabi Sikh lifestyle of his parents in Wolverhampton, towards a metropolitan worldview. The latter is given form by cultural touchpoints such as collecting Wham! Records; receiving an Oxbridge education; writing for The Times newspaper; and culminating in a comfortably middle-class London life. It is this redemptive narrative trajectory which leads Midlands novelist Jonathan Coe to reassure potential readers of The Boy with the Topknot that this is ‘not just another misery memoir, or provincial coming-of-age story’.80 Indeed, the subtitle, A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, disappears from subsequent reprints, effacing the regional dimension which Coe is eager to downplay.81 So complete is Sanghera’s de-regionalisation of identity, that he internalises a London-centric worldview. For example, being asked to go for a drink back in Wolverhampton necessitates ‘ignoring the voice of the Londoner in my head saying: “The only white wine they serve at the Glassy Inn is a Chardonnay.”’ 82 This snippet is indicative of the book’s intended readership; expected to know that this particular variety of wine was unfashionable and also to suspect that a Wolverhampton landlord would be ignorant to such metropolitan consumer trends. Topknot does deal sensitively with issues of mental health in the South Asian community and was awarded Mind Book of the Year 2009 for its honest representation of schizophrenia.83 However, representation is a thorny issue and Kavita Bhanot suggests a problematic relationship between Sanghera and



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the ethnic community he portrays in his writing: ‘the memoir’s representations of the other do not disrupt dominant ideological assumptions […] they confirm racist stereotypes.84 These stereotypes are presented in the context of the writer’s Punjabi Sikh family but they are also tied to regional associations of the Midlands. Several reviewers of Topknot and Marriage Material pick up on the interplay of racial and regional dynamics as the narratives move between Wolverhampton – ‘dead end’ (Katsoulis); ‘provincial’, ‘tight knit’ (Morrison); ‘cloistered’, ‘uneducated’ (Alkayat) – and London: ‘urban’, ‘modern’ (Alkayat), ‘pluralistic’ (Morrison).85 It is the kind of polarised reading of place which Sanghera invites, for example in Topknot; ‘I swayed on the spot, psyching myself up for what was to come: the switch from West to East, South to North, English to Punjabi, rationality to superstition, smoked almonds to salted peanuts’.86 Here the shock of transition manifests in a queasy corporeal sensation as the writer sways, requiring all his moral fortitude to bridge the ‘uncomfortable’ gap back home: ‘travelling the 124 miles to Wolverhampton after a month or two often felt like flying in from a different continent.’ 87 Perhaps jetlagged after this inter-continental journey, undertaken at one point in a canary yellow Porsche 911 Turbo, test-driven for his ‘ridiculously perfect job’, Sanghera arrives back in the Midlands disorientated, on one occasion needing ‘neat vodka’ to come back down to earth.88 The memoir is successful in portraying the conflicting emotions associated with home. While it may not be flattering, it is at least honest. A writer feigning enthusiasm for their hometown would make for uncomfortable reading reminiscent of a tourist brochure. While the author may not relish the emotional baggage associated with home, he does gain some cultural currency from his Midlands roots. He recalls how people he met in London parties ‘used to listen to my stories of Wolverhampton with the kind of suspended disbelief others reserve for stories of the Wild West – the fascination of someone who had never travelled further north than Oxford’.89 The ignorance of untravelled people is here suggested to transcend class boundaries, and the media elites are simply ‘fascinated’ rather than ashamed of having never experienced the Midlands first-hand. As Moran observes, poverty induces stasis, but it seems comfort can have an equivalent effect. Speaking from a South Asian perspective, Kavita Bhanot deploys Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the ‘native informant’ to Sanghera’s authorial stance, suggesting he sells a dramatised version of his cultural background to a largely white publishing industry.90 There is also a strong regional dimension to Sanghera’s ‘informant’ status. Not only do his ‘Wild West’ stories attract rapt attention at London parties, they also, I would argue, help to sell books. The common cultural trope of the Midlands as the ‘butt’ of regional jokes, is taken to the literal extreme when Sanghera pursues a crude corporeal

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analogy for his home town, telescoping his critical eye outwards to please a London-centric readership: ‘I once again found myself in Wolverhampton, the arse of the Black Country, in itself the bumcrack of the West Midlands, in itself the backside of Great Britain.’ 91 Here, the neoliberal, Oxbridgeeducated, London-centric journalist shows us an uglier side of his multifaceted creative persona. Commentary such as this helps to cement the idea that staying in the Midlands to pursue a career could only ever be a compromise; that anyone with any sense would leave the regions behind as soon as possible. Sanghera’s rendition of Wolverhampton is all the more problematic given that he admires the more measured approach adopted by Midlands writers such as Catherine O’Flynn – ‘her teasing never veers into mockery’.92 Why, then, is Sanghera willing to publish such puerile remarks about his home town? Is this Midlands humour at its most self-deprecating, or something more overtly critical from a London-centric perspective? The Midlands must write back. Bhanot identifies Topknot as a ‘product and propagator of neoliberalism’, which is ‘not anchored in collective experience’, containing ‘little critique of structural racism’.93 While these claims might suggest a high individual burden of representation on any writer of South Asian heritage, Bhanot also positions Sanghera as the victim of a larger system: ‘capitalism has absorbed the resistance of the marginal memoir’.94 Perhaps it is not the duty of the author to present such resistance. However, there is an uncomfortable contradiction here: despite Sanghera’s protestations— ‘I’d rather have my face rubbed in dirty nappies than read a misery memoir’ – his work is marketed and consumed according to established forms readily understood by publishers and consumers.95 Therefore, whether or not he is doing so deliberately, Bhanot highlights how, ‘Sanghera is writing his text (and consequentially himself) into the British Asian and misery memoir genres, interpreting his life according to these marketing categories and performing his self according to the requirements of these marketable genres.’ 96 Bhanot’s objections to this performative act stem from feelings of betrayal towards the South Asian community, sentiments echoed by Punjabi Sikh readers of Topknot.97 Yet Sanghera rejects the burden of representation, stating that he would rather be considered alongside white Midlands authors such as Jonathon Coe and George Eliot than as a British Asian writer.98 Writing before Bhanot’s categorisation of Topknot as a ‘misery memoir’, Sanghera reveals the moral ambivalence at the heart of his writing practice: ‘It’s not that I don’t care. I just find depressing things … depressing.’ 99 Having endured years of child labour, Sanghera is perhaps more entitled than most writers to critique a setting as apparently bleak as Wolverhampton: ‘The scene depressed me in a thousand ways at once’.100 There is a fine line, however, between honest representation of the Midlands on the one hand,



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and on the other, the kind of regionalist mudslinging which might amuse readers in the leafy suburbs of London. While there is an economic incentive to perpetuate anti-Midlands sentiment and perform London-centric values in the creation of literature, I believe Sanghera’s primary objective is to purge himself of the poverty he associates with Wolverhampton, both physically and mentally. This journey out of poverty meant not only leaving behind his cultural heritage but also his regional roots. He justifies this in terms of catharsis: ‘my main reason for writing the book was therapeutic – to draw a line under it all and forget about it.’ 101 Do the means justify the end? As William Faulkner states of the artist who ‘has a dream’, ‘It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it.’ 102 It seems that for Sanghera, the need to purge personal demons must take priority over any sense of regional advocacy. In Sanghera’s individualistic, neoliberal worldview, perhaps the writer’s only responsibility is not to his art, but to himself. In each of the above case studies, talented people leave the Midlands to pursue career advancement in the capital city. Taken individually, each is an affirmative story of a Midlander from an under-represented segment of British society: achieving economic stability; accessing platforms for creative expression; and receiving wider recognition via the national and international media. Collectively, they signal the ‘talent drain’ of the Midlands, a region lacking the cultural infrastructure to serve the ambitions of the creative people born here. The primary pull factor of London is economic. Writing in 1932, economist John Hicks observed that ‘differences in net economic advantages, chiefly differences in wages, are the main causes of migration’.103 Almost a century later, this still rings true, yet the situation in London is more complex. The charity Trust for London publishes statistics which show net migration to or from London and the rest of England, by age group. The data for 2019–2020, even with the disruption of COVID-19 accounted for, shows negative net migration in every age group except 20–29. In 2019, London experienced a net migration of –77,433, which increased to –99,708 during 2020 as people sought more space, in response to lockdowns and new work-from-home lifestyles.104 The data resonates with the case studies in this chapter, demonstrating that young adults aged 20–24 move into London en masse – 43,005 in 2019–2020 – to start their careers. These numbers problematise assumptions about the superiority of London life, however, when viewed in context across the full range of age brackets. As we move towards the second quarter of the twenty-first century, migration away from London looks set to keep rising in line with already exorbitant house prices. London life is undoubtedly more expensive than the rest of the UK. A 2017 survey suggests four in ten Londoners cannot afford a ‘decent’ standard

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of living, and it costs households 18–56 percent more to achieve this standard in the capital.105 London does, however, bring an earnings potential beyond that available to creatives in the Midlands. For Lenny Henry, the financial stability which came with media success was, of course, welcomed: ‘everybody’s shoulders could relax because we weren’t living on the breadline anymore.’ 106 What this doesn’t communicate is the conflicting, often conditional manner in which these Midlanders were welcomed into the metropolitan sphere. In Henry’s example above, this economic surety came at the expense of his dignity – the money was earned in The Black and White Minstrel Show – and the change in how his mother treated him once he became successful was traumatising.107 For Moran and Sanghera, the opportunity to give voice to their Midlands experiences only came with acceptance into the London media. To speak of the periphery – and be heard – one must first occupy the centre. There are countless lives of equal merit and significance whose stories are not published. The attractions of moving to London, such as economic advancement, breadth of opportunity, and platforms for exposure can be broadly grouped as agglomeration effects, ‘where an individual worker’s productivity is enhanced by being near to or working with many other skilled workers in similar sectors or occupations.’ 108 Rather than increasing competition between the organisations these workers serve, for example production houses, the agglomeration of TV producers in London both attracts, and is accelerated by, a wealth of ‘complementary specialised inputs and providers’, such as studios.109 Because these entities are competing nationally, not just for a local London audience, their immediate proximity to each other does not limit but rather expands the potential for collaboration, cross-pollination and individual career progression. While agglomeration is beginning to occur outside of London, for example MediaCityUK in Salford or Channel 4’s Majestic Building in Leeds, a pattern is beginning to emerge which only exacerbates a binary North–South distribution of wealth and opportunity in the UK. The broadcaster placed a banner on the side of their grand new media hub – ‘Didn’t think Channel 4 knew there was life outside the M25’ – to announce their arrival in West Yorkshire.110 While this represents a positive step for devolution of the culture industries in the UK, it may be some time yet before the forgotten middle lands are deemed worthy of equivalent development. Push factors cited above include racial discrimination, poverty, boredom and a narrow range of career prospects. While many of these issues linger in forgotten corners of the region, it is, however, important to note that this chapter documents a period of the Midlands’ recent history which was particularly turbulent. While cultural provision may have improved, reputation and legacy are tenacious constructs, and inspiring future generations to



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keep their talent in the Midlands might prove difficult and of questionable benefit to the individuals if the infrastructure is not in place to support them. As of 2019, Wolverhampton had a population of 263,357, while London’s was 8.982 million: London is 34 times larger than Wolverhampton, so a disparity in infrastructure is to be expected.111 Regardless of which region you were born in, for women and people of colour entering the media, the odds are already stacked against you. If moving to London helped to improve those odds even slightly, one would naturally make the transition. While regional identity matters and must not only be celebrated but nurtured through policy making, the creative practitioners under analysis here are all too often viewed through a lens of difference that is more immediate than regional nuance. While London is approximately 40 percent Black and Asian Minority Ethnic, in the TV industry the figure sits around 5.4 percent.112 The ‘makers’ and ‘pickers’ of televised entertainment are mostly white men, and the burden of effecting lasting change lies largely at the gates they keep so closely guarded. Until greater equality of representation is achieved, London will remain the frontline of battles for recognition within the media and those wishing to enlist will have to put their regional allegiances to one side, for now.

Notes 1 Brian Balmer, Matthew Godwin and Jane Gregory, ‘The Royal Society and the “Brain Drain”: Natural Scientists Meet Social Science’, Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 63 (2009), 339–353, DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2008.0053. 2 Israel Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People, ed. Mari-Jane Rochelson (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998), p. 16. 3 Robert J. Sternberg, ‘Why the Tall-Poppy Syndrome is Becoming Worse in the Creative Professions’, Studies in Psychology, 40:3 (2019), 497–525, DOI: 10.1080/02109395.2019.1655218. 4 John Simpson and Jennifer Speake (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 5th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 5 Bhanot and Banga. 6 Lanre Blake, ‘The G2 Interview, Lenny Henry: “I Wish Somebody Had Taught Me How to Defend Myself”’, Guardian, 21 October 2019, www.theguardian.com/ culture/2019/oct/21/lenny-henry-wish-somebody-taught-me-to-defend-myself (Accessed 31 May 2021). 7 Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 75. 8 For a comprehensive study of this vile speech and its legacy, see Shirin Hirsch, In the shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).

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9 ‘The Lenny Henry Birthday Show’, BBC 1 (22 August 2018). 10 Lenny Henry and Louis Theroux, ‘Grounded with Louis Theroux: Lenny Henry’, BBC Radio 4 (30 May 2020). 11 Cited in Eddie Chambers, Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), p. 179. 12 Henry and Theroux. 13 George Orwell, As I Please: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 3 (London: Penguin, 1970), p. 325. 14 Gavin Schaffer, ‘Framing The Fosters: Jokes, Racism and Black and Asian Voices in British Comedy Television’, in Sarita Malik and Darrell M. Newton (eds), Adjusting the Contrast: British Television and Constructs of Race (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 176–195 (177). 15 Rohit Kachroo, ‘Revisiting the Smethwick Street Malcolm X Said was Worse than America’, ITV News, 18 June 2020, www.itv.com/news/2020-06-18/ revisiting-the-birmingham-street-malcolm-x-said-is-worse-than-america (Accessed 16 November 2020). 16 Henry and Theroux. 17 Joe Street, ‘Malcolm X, Smethwick, and the Influence of the African American Freedom Struggle on British Race Relations in the 1960s’, Journal of Black Studies, 38:6 (2008), 932–950 (934). 18 Ibid. 19 Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois, 1973). 20 Mohit Bakaya, ‘50 Years On: Rivers of Blood’, BBC Blog, 12 April 2018, https://bbc.in/3m8LhRo (Accessed 15 November 2020). 21 Amol Rajan, Twitter, 12 April 2018, https://bit.ly/2W37JRg (Accessed 8 December 2020). 22 Bakaya. 23 Bill Schwarz, The White Man’s World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 48. 24 Ibid. 25 Shirin Hirsch, ‘Interview with West Midlands’ First Black MP Eleanor Smith’, Getty Images, 1 November 2017, www.gettyimages.co.nz/detail/video/interviewwith-west-midlands-first-black-mp-eleanor-smith-news-footage/871231612 (Accessed 17 November 2020). 26 Malik and Newton (eds), p. 17. 27 Lenny Henry, Who Am I, Again? Ebook edn (London: Faber and Faber, 2020), p. 301. 28 New Faces, Series 3, ATV, 1975. 29 Henry, Who Am I, Again?, pp. 658–659. 30 Ibid., p. 659. 31 Alexei Sayle, quoted in The 80s: Ten Years That Changed Britain, Channel 4 (10 January 2016). 32 Henry, Who Am I, Again?, p. 429. 33 Schaffer in Malik and Newton (eds), p. 184.



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Henry and Theroux. Malik and Newton (eds), p. 8. The Comic Strip, ‘Five Go Mad in Dorset’, Channel 4 (2 November 1982). Roger Wilmut and Peter Rosengard, Didn’t You Kill My Mother-in-Law? The Story of Alternative Comedy in Britain from the Comedy Store to Saturday Live (London: Methuen, 1989), p. 273. 38 Lenny Henry, Bafta Lecture, 17 March 2014, www.bafta.org/media-centre/ transcripts/bafta-television-lecture-lenny-henry-cbe (Accessed 10 December 2020). 39 Lanre Blake, ‘The G2 Interview, Lenny Henry’. 40 Caitlin Moran, ‘My Glorious Career? I Won it in a Competition’, The Times, 26 November 2007. 41 ‘My Teenage Diary’, BBC Radio 4 (4 July 2012). 42 Ibid. 43 Malik and Newton (eds), p. 8. 44 Kaltrina Bylykbashi, ‘C4 Appoints Red’s Caroline Hollick as Drama Head’, 21 August 2018, https://tbivision.com/2018/08/21/c4-appoints-reds-carolinehollick-as-drama-head/ (Accessed 12 March 2021). 45 Ofcom, ‘Diversity of UK Television Industry Revealed’, 14 September 2017, www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2017/diversity-uktelevision-industry (Accessed 9 December 2020). 46 Kim Darrah, ‘A Week in British News: How Diverse are the UK’s Newsrooms?’, Women in Journalism, nd, www.womeninjournalism.co.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2020/09/WIJ-2020-full-report.pdf (Accessed 9 December 2020). 47 Caitlin Moran and David Baddiel, The Penguin Podcast, Spotify, 18 July 2020 (Accessed 23 November 2020). 48 Caitlin Moran, Moranthology (London: Random House, 2012), p. 37. 49 Ibid., p. 463 50 Ibid., p. 464. 51 Lynsey Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History, new edn (London: Granta, 2017), p. 149. 52 Hunter Davies, ‘Atrocious Mess, Precocious Mind: Meet Caitlin Moran, Newspaper Columnist, Television Presenter, Novelist, Screenwriter, Pop Music Pundit … and Typical Teenage Slob’, Independent, 17 May 1994. 53 Moran, Moranthology, p. 35. 54 Hanley, p. 154. 55 Ibid. 56 The Pet Shop Boys, ‘West End Girls’ (EMI/Parlophone, 1985); The Specials, ‘Ghost Town’ (Two Tone/Chrysalis, 1981). 57 Hanley, p. 149. 58 The Penguin Podcast: Caitlin Moran with David Baddiel. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Henry, Who Am I, Again?, p. 181. 62 Moran, Moranthology, pp. 464–465.

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63 Ibid., p. 464. 64 Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, author interview, August 2020. 65 Moran, Moranthology, p. 464. 66 Ibid., pp. 467–468. 67 Wolverhampton Children’s Trust, ‘Wolverhampton Children Young People & Families Plan 2015–2025’, www.wolverhampton.gov.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/ CYPF_booklet_amended_7-15.pdf (Accessed 30 November 2020). 68 National Children’s Bureau, ‘More Than Half of Children Now Living in Poverty in Some Parts of the UK’, 23 January 2013, www.ncb.org.uk/about-us/ media-centre/news-opinion/more-half-children-now-living-poverty-some-parts-uk (Accessed 30 November 2020) 69 Hunter Davies. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Cited in Sanghera, Marriage Material, p. 99. 74 Riyah Collins, ‘The Turban-Wearing British Bus Driver Who Changed the Law’, BBC News, 30 April 2019, https://bbc.in/2JQOic1 (Accessed 1 December 2020). 75 Ibid. 76 Sasha Josephides, Towards a History of the Indian Workers’ Association (University of Warwick, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, 1991). 77 Sanghera, Marriage Material, p. 48. 78 Jean Stein, ‘William Faulkner – The Art of Fiction No. 12’, Paris Review, 12 (1956) 28–52, www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no12-william-faulkner (Accessed 31 May 2021). 79 Gilbert. 80 Sanghera, Topknot, p. 8. 81 See Penguin’s 2009 edn. 82 Sanghera, Topknot, p. 51. 83 Blake Morrison, ‘Review – The Boy with the Topknot’, 2009, www.sathnam.com/ memoir (Accessed 10 December 2020). 84 Bhanot, 206. 85 Katsoulis; Zena Alkayat, ‘Review: The Boy with the Topknot’, Metro, cited in Topknot, p. 12; Morrison’. 86 Sanghera, Topknot, pp. 37–38. 87 Ibid., p. 74. 88 Ibid., p. 18. 89 Ibid., p. 157. 90 Cited in Bhanot, 205. 91 Sanghera, Topknot, p. 140. 92 Sathnam Sanghera, ‘Top 10 Books of the Midlands’. 93 Bhanot, 209. 94 Ibid., 210. 95 Sanghera, Topknot, p. 70.



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96 Bhanot, 211. 97 The Langar Hall, ‘Sikh Author Wins Mind Book of the Year Award’ (2009), cited in Bhanot, 207. 98 Sathnam Sanghera, ‘Top 10 Books of the Midlands’. 99 Sanghera, Topknot, p. 70. 100 Sanghera, Marriage Material, p. 26. 101 David Batt, ‘Sathnam Sanghera: Interview’, Time Out, 5 March 2008. 102 Jean Stein, ‘William Faulkner – The Art of Fiction No. 12’. 103 John Hicks, The Theory of Wages (London: Macmillan, [1932]; 1976), p. 76. 104 Trust for London, ‘Net Migration to or From London and the Rest of England by Age (2019 and 2020)’, www.trustforlondon.org.uk/data/migration-and-outlondon/ (Accessed 16 February 2022). 105 Trust for London, ‘4 in 10 Londoners can’t afford a decent standard of living’, nd, www.trustforlondon.org.uk/news/4-10-londoners-cant-afford-decent-standardliving/ (Accessed 16 February 2022). 106 Henry and Theroux. 107 Ibid. 108 Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr, Çağlar Özden and Christopher Parsons, ‘Global Talent Flows’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30:4 (2016), 83–106 (92), www.jstor.org/stable/44028259 (Accessed 2 December 2020). 109 Ibid. 110 Nathan Townsend, ‘Channel 4 in Leeds: A New Hub to Unlock Creativity in the UK’s Nations and Regions’, The Conversation, 24 August 2020, https:// theconversation.com/channel-4-in-leeds-a-new-hub-to-unlock-creativity-in-theuks-nations-and-regions-144636 (Accessed 2 December 2020). 111 Office for National Statistics, ‘Subnational Population Projections for England: 2018-Based’, https://bit.ly/3crffAP (Accessed 19 July 2022). 112 Lenny Henry, Bafta Lecture, 17 March 2014, www.bafta.org/media-centre/ transcripts/bafta-television-lecture-lenny-henry-cbe (Accessed 10 December 2020).

Coda: desi pubs of the Black Country

The pub culture of the Midlands should be one of its proudest assets. Burton upon Trent is the historic home of the pale ale, and so favourable is its natural water for brewing, that the verb ‘to Burtonise’ has entered the industry lexicon. It is the chemical process of altering water to mimic the smooth, soft profile which quenches the Midlands town. In the West Midlands’ industrial heyday, copious pints of bitter or mild would be used daily by workers, to wash down the toxic dust and generally take the edge off. As a pub landlord and lecturer in hospitality management, I have been immersed in the Midlands pub culture for years. From behind the bar, you see many different faces and almost all of them are white. In the city centre pub I ran, it is commonplace to see a Jamaican train driver arguing with an African-Scottish doctor about which type of craft beer is the best being served today by the Bangladeshi-British bar tender. However, this is not a representative picture. Midlands pubs are overwhelmingly white and male and can be unwelcoming spaces for people not matching that description. In recent decades, city centres have diversified their hospitality offering and it is now commonplace to see people from diverse backgrounds enjoying contemporary bars, gastropubs and entertainment venues, with plentiful non-alcoholic options. Yet the Midlands ‘boozer’ is a stubborn tradition. Lenny Henry recalls an early youth spent drinking and socialising with white friends: We went to pubs all over the Midlands. There was a weird yokel-style attitude going on in some of these places. We walked into one pub and there were all these raddled old white dudes inside. Greg went up to the bar to get the drinks in, and I went to check out the jukebox; there then followed a lull, a small silence, during which a man’s voice could be heard saying, ‘We don’t get many of ’um darkies in here.’ 1

Unfamiliar with the adjective ‘raddled’, I located two subtly different definitions. Firstly, ‘being in a state of confusion, lacking composure’; and second, ‘broken-down, worn’.2 Either one could apply in this scenario – perhaps



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both – and contribute to the alien landscape which Henry experiences on entry. Conversely, the appearance of a young Black man in this stereotypically white context, shocks the patrons. It presents an unwelcome break, perhaps, from the predictable monotony of their alcoholism. Faced with this assortment of ‘old white dudes’ sat absolutely still, almost gathering dust in the palpable silence, we are reminded that the English pub has been allowed to function as a time capsule for historic racism. Take, for example, the 2018 case of the The White Hart in Grays, Essex, which refused to comply with requests to remove ‘golliwog’ dolls hanging from a beam behind the bar. Thurrock council took no action, as they deemed that no breach of the Licensing Act (2003) had taken place. As a licence holder, I would contend that the licensing objectives of ‘preventing public harm’ and ‘nuisance’ are not being satisfied at this establishment.3 The publicisation of the case prompted people to send in more such dolls in a display of solidarity with the publican, and so the grim shrine to racism expanded.4 This is just one example of the ways in which people of colour have been made to feel excluded from the traditional British pub. One solution adopted by South Asian communities in the UK was to establish their own licensed premises. Particularly in the West Midlands, the concept of the ‘desi pub’ has gained much traction. ‘Desi’ comes from the Sankrit word ‘desh’ meaning land or country and is used to describe something which is authentically Indian.5 Sooree Pillay describes these venues as ‘classic English pubs that now serve traditional Punjabi food alongside their ales. Faithful both to their Black Country and Punjabi roots, they have redefined pub culture in Smethwick, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton and Walsall.’ 6 As the number of South Asian workers increased during the 1950s and 1960s, so too did the demand for a refreshing pint after a hard foundry shift. Yet some white publicans would only allow Asian customers in certain rooms of their pubs, and others barred them outright.7 While the Indian Workers’ Association was coordinating a protracted campaign for equal pay and conditions in the foundries and factories, ‘so the battle on the streets also demanded Izzat – respect, finding new places for these spirited new arrivals to express their passion, creativity and drive – without prejudice, and with an open heart.’ 8 The ‘spirit’ of these venues were the landlords, larger-than-life figureheads within their communities. Their ‘desi pubs’ became hubs not just for food and drink but also sports – football and the South Asian team sport Kabaddi9 – bhangra dance and dhol drumming classes. They are family-friendly venues, welcoming a diverse clientele; ‘juke boxes ringing out with Western, Punjabi and Hindi film tracks.’ 10 In creating these remarkable spaces, South Asian licensees took economic power away from those white British peers who would exclude their community. Furthermore, that these entrepreneurs successfully engaged with the convoluted licensing

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procedures of this country to become authorised publicans, demonstrates a tenacity of spirit and a civic accountability which is admirable considering the racism they experienced. That ‘desi’ publicans extend a warm welcome beyond their South Asian clientele is testament to an ‘open hearted’ approach to hospitality: one from which the wider industry could learn a great deal. For all their cultural significance, it is important not to romanticise ‘desi pubs’, which are as susceptible to the same pitfalls of alcohol retail and consumption as any other licensed premises. Writer Sathnam Sanghera finds it ‘weird’ that Punjabi Sikhs ‘have one of the highest rates of alcohol-related disease in Britain’, because he does not find Wolverhampton’s ‘desi pubs’ to be conducive to imbibing: You’d think it’d put you off booze for life. The lighting is fluorescent and of the unremitting kind you might see in a hospital operating theatre. The tables resemble the kind you might see in an abattoir or butchery, the menu offers nothing more than chicken and samosas, the wine list extends to two varieties (red or white), and the staff and clientele are indistinguishable – overweight Asian men displaying absolutely no pleasure in what they’re doing.11

For the London-based Sanghera, these venues do not conjure the community spirit which surely is the lifeblood of any good local pub. Visually, he has taken a clinical aesthetic and exaggerated this to arrive at the foreboding image of an ‘abattoir’. While there may be a grain of truth in Sangera’s assessment – some ‘desi pubs’ are essentially sports bars with large screens and heavily branded point-of-sale displays – others deploy a softer décor, which pays homage to the traditional pubs that once occupied the buildings. The Desi Pubs project by Creative Black Country further enhanced the aesthetics of venues such as The Red Cow and The Ivy Bush, by commissioning hand-painted signs, stained glass windows, and photographic homages which celebrated their proud Asian and British heritage. On the other hand, Sanghera sets the dramatic denouement of his 2013 novel Marriage Material in ‘Singhfellows, an imposing and off-putting pub’.12 The protagonist finds himself unconscious on the toilet floor as a sinister case of family honour turns violent and potentially homicidal. This is, of course, a fictional account and Sanghera’s positioning of the venue ties into perceptions of the Midlands as unsophisticated. His enjoyment of good wine and a London media lifestyle is well-documented, and the writer holds little sentimentality for the Black Country of his youth. However, these establishments were never created to carry an extensive wine list or to showcase cutting edge interior design trends. Today, there are more than fifty ‘desi pubs’ in the West Midlands. They continue the proud heritage of the Midlands pub, taking the best elements of British pub culture and infusing the warmth, inclusivity and innovative spirit of their Punjabi hospitality.



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Notes 1 Lenny Henry, Who Am I, Again?, p. 129. 2 ‘Raddled’, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raddled (Accessed 28 May 2021). 3 Licensing Act 2003, www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/contents (Accessed 29 May 2021). 4 Sarah Turnnidge, ‘No Action by Thurrock Council Over Golliwog Pub Controversy’, Thurrock and South Essex Independent, 29 March 2018, https://bit.ly/3Tp7jk3 (Accessed 28 May 2021). 5 Sooree Pillay, Creative Black Country, Desi Pubs: Black Country Pubs from the Punjab (Birmingham: Rope Press, nd, c. 2015), p. 1. 6 Ibid. 7 Pillay, p. 1. 8 Pillay, p. 2. 9 Kabaddi: ‘a sport originally from South Asia for teams of seven players. A player from one team runs around and tries to catch players from the other team, and must hold his or her breath while doing so’, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/english/kabaddi (Accessed 29 May 2021). 10 Pillay, p. 11. 11 Sanghera, Marriage Material, p. 112. 12 Ibid., p. 26.

The self-deprecating conclusion

This book has championed multicultural Midlands creativity, from intimate performances through to international television specials and global bestsellers. In surveying a wide, although by no means exhaustive, array of Midlands culture, the book has highlighted the sheer breadth and diversity of voice, style and format in which the region expresses itself. It has interrogated the Midlands’ underdog status and evidenced empirically where disparities lie in terms of funding, reach and reception of regional creative output. It has emphasised the immense strengths of a place which has grown up, talking itself down. Conversing with some of the people who make and consume this art, however, it seems that the entrenched rhetoric of selfdeprecation, which is so at home in Midlands, might have outstayed its welcome. Clearly, the mode has its comic value, as Leicester writer Nina Stibbe muses: ‘because self-aggrandisement is seen as ridiculous it follows that self-deprecation is funny.’ 1 Our most self-aggrandising son, Adrian Mole, was aware that in order to fulfil his heart’s desires, he would have to visit ‘the world’ and return a changed man: When I came back from the world I would be tall, brown and full of ironical experiences and Pandora would cry because of the chance she missed to be Mrs Pandora Mole. I would qualify to be a vet in record time then I would buy a farmhouse. I would covert one room into a study so that I could have somewhere quiet to be an intellectual in.2

This fantasy presents Mole’s aspirations for our gentle derision. In this adolescent vision, his awkward stature and complexion are improved; Pandora’s indifference is ‘fixed’; and his life can now be devoted to the luxurious pursuit of intellectualism: all because he briefly left the Midlands. The conditional ‘would’ is constant here. Mole would do all these things but feels held back by the poor hand life has dealt him. The reader laughs, in the knowledge that the neurotic teenager’s Midlands life, although mundane, is comfortable. He just can’t see it.



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Sue Townsend, on the other hand, was extremely uncomfortable with the attention her character generated: ‘I enjoy the publicity for Mole, but I hate it for myself. I don’t think authors should have the limelight, they should merge into their background.’ 3 Such was Townsend’s self-deprecation, that initially she did not want her name printing on her books. Despite Mole’s cult status, she avoided publicity as far as possible.4 This did nothing to hinder her success but should not be taken as a model of best practice for aspiring writers. Nina Stibbe, whom Caitlin Moran dubbed ‘the true heir to Sue Townsend’, is cautious of such self-deprecation: ‘I’m slightly wary of it … especially with female characters. It can sometimes feel uncomfortable.’ 5 While the teenage Mole was very much the butt of Townsend’s jokes, Stibbe’s young protagonist, Lizzy Vogel, is razor sharp and draws out the humour in the world around her.6 Stibbe’s bright, lucid prose shows us how good comic writing can find fun in the everyday, without making fun of individuals or groups of people. Stibbe is justifiably suspicious of self-deprecation; female writers have been undervalued for so long that even ironic attempts to self-deprecate may fall flat. This book has considered how, in the development of British performance poetry, female poetic voices were dismissed as being too ‘chatty’.7 Self-deprecation, then, appears a risky strategy for those whose standing in society must be fought for. In this vein, self-deprecation can prove problematic for Black creatives trying to build up their profile. I discussed how Lenny Henry had initially found acceptance in the Midlands’ working men’s clubs by deploying anti-Black jokes at his own expense. As Henry recalls, ‘that becomes a currency too. But there’s a danger: if you adopt the self-deprecating path, it has to be carefully negotiated so that you don’t end up in a depressing spiral of self-perceived worthlessness.’ 8 A systematically racist society does enough to efface Black voices, without Black comics contributing to the problem: an issue the comic has discussed at length.9 In choosing to steer clear of the ‘self-deprecating path’, Henry has empowered not only himself but all those who have been touched by his activism. Despite her reluctant celebrity status, Sue Townsend’s power also lies in her influence and impact on the Midlands and far beyond. As Stibbe recalls, ‘Sue Townsend had a profound effect on me when I was young and beginning to write. She proved that people living unremarkable lives in ordinary places could be as compelling and funny as aristocrats and movie stars.’ 10 While reality TV and social media have more recently pushed this concept to its limits, Midlands literature pioneered a socio-cultural optic that emphasises the beauty of the everyday. As the region became home to increasingly diverse populations throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, the richness and breadth of these everyday representations increased exponentially.

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To conclude the book, I now summarise my key findings for each of the places discussed. I then draw out the commonalities across the region, before reflecting on the policy implications of these findings; and finally considering the future of literature, and the wider creative economy in the Midlands.

Nottingham Since the 2008 recession, Nottingham has witnessed a decline in local authority-funded literary infrastructure such as Literature Development Officers.11 This scarcity of official funding and associated media exposure places particular importance on the informal ‘valuing communities’ which accumulate enthusiastically around Nottingham’s performance poetry scene.12 This informal, fluid performance culture sits in opposition to more formal poetry events which Morrison calls ‘typical university and bookshop readings’.13 Restricted access and gatekeepers are therefore relevant in the city’s literary networks, although the disruption of COVID-19 has the potential to radically reconfigure the established order. I suggest that performance poetry, with its ‘nimble adaptivity’, may be well-positioned to negotiate a less regimented ‘public sphere’ as cultural events gradually return. Beyond the multifarious networks which exist to promote Nottingham’s literary cultures locally, there is an outward-facing dimension equally linked to local authority funding, or a lack thereof. The nature of literary tourism is changing. Digital technology is being used in the form of The Sillitoe Trail, while more traditional heritage attractions – such as Durban house – are closing due to low footfall.14 With reduced public funding for literature, independent non-governmental organisations such as the Howie Smith Project are promoting Nottingham literature through campaigns such as #rebelnotts.15 The rebellious ethos of historical Nottingham figures such as Robin Hood and Ned Ludd is today being marketed as a defining feature of Nottingham’s literary heritage, as exemplified by Byron, Lawrence and Sillitoe.16 While marketing rebellion is a contradictory activity, the spirit of rebellion continues through independent literary communities in Nottingham. The achievement of UNESCO status acknowledges the importance of the city as a literary destination; it now remains to be seen whether this will stimulate the support of local authorities and ultimately generate much-needed funding to develop the next generation of Nottingham writers.

Leicester My research suggests that the public narratives of successful multiculturalism threaten to obscure alternative narratives about diversity in the city. Gilroy’s



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notion of ‘demotic cosmopolitanism’ provides a more useful model for understanding Leicester literature than reference to official accounts of the ‘premier multicultural city’.17 According to prominent Leicester writer Carol Leeming, there are ‘silos’ within the city’s literary cultures which suggest pluralism rather than exchange between cultures, and therefore challenge the credibility of the multicultural success story.18 In the words of former Leicester resident Brah, the city is a ‘diaspora space’ and its writers should be considered as what D’Aguiar calls ‘compatriots in craft’.19 These devolved literary perspectives suggest that regional nuance is a more coherent factor than ethnicity when considering the work of Midlands writers. I found that, globally, people are campaigning for greater ethnic representation in books for young people, using the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. Against this backdrop of a global Young Adult fiction market which privileges white characters, Leicester author Rai has achieved international success with stories of everyday diversity in his home city. By conspicuously setting the novels in Leicester, Rai develops and expands the work of his mentor, the late Sue Townsend. As a best-selling author, Townsend was an exceptional figure within the Leicester literary landscape but manuscript evidence shows that she effaced specific reference to Leicester from her debut novel.20 The Adrian Mole franchise therefore demonstrates that Leicester, Ashby-de-laZouch and the Midlands generally, function as a kind of anonymous ‘anyplace’ in the popular imagination. As an individual, Townsend personified the self-deprecating Midlander, meaning her literary success can be directly attributed to the universal appeal of her characters, rather than the cultivation of a popular media persona.

Birmingham Once famed for its manufacturing, Birmingham is now a post-industrial centre for retail with a £1bn annual spend.21 The city is a prime example of what Augé calls a site of ‘supermodernity’, characterised by an excess of space and time and typified by large-scale modern developments such as airports, motorways and shopping centres.22 The mismatched post-war architecture of Birmingham, and the city’s constant urban development, causes it to be perceived by some as a ‘non-place’ which lacks a fixed identity. Novels such as O’Flynn’s What Was Lost reinscribe the city’s status as a ‘non-place’ by placing the narrative in a mundane, soulless retail environment. Inherent in the literary representations of these dystopian sites lies a critique of the late capitalist veneration of consumption over production. This is particularly poignant when retail destinations are built on the graveyards of defunct Midlands industry.

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At the administrative level, apparent mismanagement of public funds has hindered the biggest recent investment in literary infrastructure, the Library of Birmingham. The library cost £188.8 million to build but, due to a funding shortfall and a costly legal claim made by under-paid female workers, half of its 188 staff were made redundant and consequently its doors never open to the public before 11am.23 Small publishing houses such as Tindall Street have been unable to survive in what O’Flynn identifies as Birmingham’s ‘oppressive top-down culture’.24 Black British poets have depicted Birmingham as a ‘concrete jungle’, a reputation now tinged with some irony considering the large-scale demolition of mid-twentieth-century concrete structures which is now taking place. Poets such as Moqapi Selassie, Benjamin Zephaniah and the reggae band Steel Pulse all employ what Barry calls poetic ‘double visioning’ to understand their city as part of a global network connected to colonial histories of injustice.25 Due in part to inequalities in housing provision in post-war Birmingham, there are many creative overlaps between the Black and Irish communities in the city, and authors such as Zephaniah and O’Flynn achieved considerable commercial success. These authors reach beyond local ‘valuing communities’ to receive the opprobrium of conventional ‘agents of legitimation’ such as major publishers, critics and prizes.26 Their perspectives on the city emphasise a ‘multi-layered concept of place’, both in terms of the shared histories migrant communities have brought to the city and the physical layering which urban renewal enacts.27 Overall, Birmingham is a ‘layered city’ with an ever-changing built environment. Its diverse literary cultures provide alternatives to the very public narrative of a city ‘all-too-visibly, in an eternal struggle with itself.’ 28

The West Midlands For a region which can rightfully claim Shakespeare as its own, I found that in the West Midlands, self-deprecation was manifest in the lack of public celebration of the region’s literary heritage. I interviewed the prominent Wolverhampton-born theatre director Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, who suggests that a ‘tall poppy syndrome’ may contribute to a collective lack of desire to self-promote.29 The West Midlands has a strong British Asian literary presence, as seen in the work of Meera Syal, Sathnam Sanghera and Huma Qureshi, among others. I examined the ways in which these writers have been interpreted at the national level. The Midlands nuances of their work have historically been overlooked, in favour of stereotypical ways of reading which rely on



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exoticising discourses and even ‘the politics of self-congratulation.’ 30 My survey of newspaper reviews over time does, however, suggest that this situation is slowly improving. Reading the autobiographies of famous West-Midlanders Lenny Henry, Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera led me to identify a problem of ‘talent drain’ affecting the region. The pull of London, with its concentrated media infrastructure, and the push of an under-funded creative sector in the West Midlands, is causing talented people to leave and not return. In order for a sustainable creative future to be developed, clearly more must be done to develop the regions beyond London.

The Midlands It has become clear during my research that the dominant spatial conception of North–South Britain has shaped literary cultures in the Midlands. From the broad-brush dismissal of any literary cultures outside of London, to the ‘stuck in the middle’ effect of sitting between the giants of the North and the South, the Midlands’ geographical and cultural positioning have evidently had adverse effects on the region’s literary profile. While binary North–South perceptions of the nation may have limited effect in terms of local authority funding, they have effectively restricted authors’ access to the career opportunities which come with the support of big publishing houses. This restriction could take the practical form of fewer opportunities for writers’ development available in the area; fewer literary agencies; fewer networking events. However, the secondary form of career restriction boils down to regional sensibility and subject material. Writing from London may be perceived as more cutting edge; more universally relevant; more marketable. Monica Ali, Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy all have publications which rank in the top 100 best-selling books of all time. Almost one third of the 66 authors who penned the 100 best-sellers are from the South of England, while only two were born in the Midlands.31 While Tolkien can fairly be claimed as a Birmingham writer, he was in fact born in South Africa.32 The fact that many of the names on this list belong to celebrity chefs, dieticians, comedians and sports personalities is some indicator that it should not be used as a benchmark of literary achievement. That being said, these celebrity figures do further reinforce the South of England’s cultural hegemony: a phenomenon which affects popular culture as much as so-called ‘high art’. While the picture is undeniably bleak for the Midlands at the level of multi-million unit publishing, this book has demonstrated an abundance of regional fiction with proven global reach. The devolution of literary cultures since the 1960s

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The multicultural Midlands

has activated new, more egalitarian modes of understanding literary cultures in the UK. In this book, I have surveyed a wide range of diverse texts from the multicultural Midlands. The region operates at every level of literary and creative activity. Having identified a scarcity of critical and commercial validation attributed to Midlands literature, I have addressed a gap in the study of literary cultures by demonstrating that not only are there major commercial success stories for Midlands literature, but that regional valuing communities sustain the culture even in the absence of national recognition. In 1995 Frow identified a ‘disrupted and uncertain universe of value’ yet arguably, in the early 2020s, this universe is more disrupted and more uncertain than ever, with Brexit, political populism and COVID-19 threatening the consensus established since the post-war years.33 I have shown the imaginative and creative ways in which diverse cultural practitioners are thriving in this often-harsh climate and have illustrated the historical foundations on which their success was built. The Midlands’ strength as a creative base owes much to the ideas imported into the region from the former Commonwealth nations. Its mission now must be to build a social order which recognises the strength of its diversity and acknowledges the debt of this international influence. Whether by lobbying central government for a more devolved approach to funding the arts, or through select partnerships within the private sector, the Midlands must now foster a more supportive, egalitarian approach to further develop its own unique regional culture. As a creative ecosystem, the multicultural Midlands must do more to recognise the phenomenal strength of our internal components. Self-deprecation may well have a place in the Midlands ‘brand’ which we present to the wider world, but this must only be one part of a much fuller and richer vision. The creative imagination of the multicultural Midlands has deep roots in a complex global heritage; a rich local literary tradition; and the fiery, unpredictable power of the underdog.

Notes 1 Nina Stibbe, author interview, 12 November 2020. 2 Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, p. 32. 3 ‘Sue’s pimply hero brings even more unwelcomed limelight’, Leicester Mercury, 9 August 1984. 4 Ibid. 5 Caitlin Moran, quoted on the back cover of Nina Stibbe, Paradise Lodge (London: Penguin 2017); Nina Stibbe, author interview, 12 November 2020.



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6 See Nina Stibbe, Paradise Lodge and Man at the Helm (London: Viking, 2014). 7 Cornelia Gräbner, ‘Poetry and Performance: The Mersey Poets, the International Poetry Incarnation and Performance Poetry’, in Edward Larrissy (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 68–81 (p. 78). 8 Henry, Who Am I, Again?, p. 429. 9 Henry and Theroux. 10 Nina Stibbe, author interview, 12 November 2020. 11 Steve Dearden, Ten Years of Literature Development in the East Midlands (Loughborough: The Literature Network, 2008), p. 1 12 John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 154. 13 Morrison, 81. 14 Broxtowe Council, ‘Durban House’. 15 ‘The Howie Smith Project: A PhD Study in Regeneration and the Creative Community’, http://howie-smith.org.uk/ (Accessed 17 January 2016). 16 Ibid. 17 Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 75; Gurharpal Singh and Darshan Singh Tatla, Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community (London: Zed Books, 2006) p. 143. 18 Carol Leeming, author interview, 10 November 2014. 19 Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 181; Fred D’Aguiar, ‘Have You Been Here Long? Black Poetry in Britain’, in Robert Hampson and Peter Barry (eds), New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 51–71 (p. 70). 20 Townsend, ‘Early Typescript Material Related to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾’. 21 Appear Here, ‘Bullring – LinkStreet Kiosk’. 22 Augé, pp. 24–25. 23 Birmingham City Council, ‘Library of Birmingham’, nd, www.birmingham.gov.uk/ info/50132/visiting_the_library_of_birmingham/1412/about_the_library_of_ birmingham/9; BBC News, ‘Birmingham Library Opening Hours Nearly Halved’, 10 February 2015, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-31354592 (Both accessed 16 February 2022). 24 Catherine O’Flynn, author interview, 27 May 2016. 25 Selassie, ‘Tellin de Stori’, pp. 190–191. 26 Frow, p. 154. 27 Zephaniah, ‘The Big Bang’, p. 194. 28 Jeffries. 29 Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, author interview, 28 July 2020. 30 Juliet Hess, ‘Performing Tolerance and Curriculum: The Politics of SelfCongratulation, Identity Formation, and Pedagogy in World Music Education’, Philosophy of Music Education Review, 21:1 (2013), 66–91 (72).

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31 Sales data published by Nielsen Book Scan, nd, https://docs.google.com/ spreadsheets/d/1dhxblR1Vl7PbVP_mNhwEa3_lfUWiF__xSODLq1W83CA/ edit#gid=0 (Accessed 23 January 2017). 32 David Doughan, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch’, nd, www.tolkiensociety.org/ author/biography/ (Accessed 23 January 2017). 33 Frow, p. 1.

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Index

Africa 79, 93, 158, 160, 162, 168, 169 Amin, Idi 79 antiracism 3, 5, 207 architecture 71–72, 133, 138, 148, 150, 233 Arts Council 38, 148, 205 Atkinson-Lord, Rebecca 183–184, 214, 234 Birmingham 131–176, 233–234 Black British comedy 206–209 music 29–30, 156, 160–163 poetry 35–49, 94–99, 163–164, 166–170 Black Country, The 181–182, 206, 214, 218, 226–228 Brah, Avtar 7, 117, 233 Brathwaite, Kamau 47 Breeze, Jean ‘Binta’ 35–36, 46–47 British Asian fiction 102–112, 186– 200, 215–221 Britpop 125–128 Byron, Lord 53, 57, 58, 62, 181 Cornershop 125–128 COVID-19 36–39 desi pubs 226–229 Gilroy, Paul 6, 82, 94, 107, 111 Halberstam, Judith “Jack” 109–110 Handsworth, Birmingham 156–170 Hanley, Lynsey 212–213 Henry, Lenny 205–209, 213 Hubbard, Michelle ‘Mother’ 26, 39–44

Irish Birmingham 133, 135, 136, 138, 140, 176, 234 Leeds 168, 220 Leeming, Carol 5–6, 12, 42, 78, 94–99, 124, 233 Leicester 77–128, 214, 230, 232–233 literary tourism 53–67 London 83, 95, 116–117, 119, 182–183, 189, 204, 208 Manzoni, Herbert 133–139, 163 Mole, Adrian 115–123 Moran, Caitlin 209–215 Morrissey 126 North-South divide 11–13, 67 Nottingham 25–74 O’Flynn, Catherine 133, 138, 147– 154, 175–176, 218, 234 pan-Africanism 156–157, 162, 206 performance poetry 35–49, 231, 232 Piri piri chicken 93–94, 99, 120–121 Poet’s Corner 57 Qureshi, Huma 192, 197–200 Rai, Bali 6, 16, 102–112 Raleigh bicycles 72–73, 118 Rastafarian 160–166, 167–170 reggae 29–30, 105, 156, 160–162, 165–167 repatriation 158, 160, 169 Sanghera, Sathnam 195, 197, 200, 215–219

262 Index Selassie, Moqapi 137, 156, 163–164, 240 Shakespeare, William 181–184, 234 Sillitoe, Alan 26, 53–67 Specials, The 142, 213 Squires, Bridie 47, 48, 73 Steel Pulse 160, 162, 169, 234 Stratford-upon-Avon 182 supermodernity 149, 151, 233 Syal, Meera 5, 184, 190–194 talent drain 204, 219–221 tall poppy syndrome 182, 204, 234 Tempest, Kae 41 Townsend, Sue 6, 16, 115–123, 231, 233

Uganda 79 urban planning 134–136, 157 UNESCO 15, 37, 54, 67, 232 West Midlands 181–228, 234–235 Wolverhampton 2, 17, 125, 181–183, 194–200, 207, 209–221, 227–228, 234 Young Adult literature 102–112 Zephaniah, Benjamin 111, 133, 156, 158, 162, 166–170