With local and regional journalists facing their own cuts and constraints, over many years, resulting in limitations on investigative journalism, the Birmingham Live report – A Child Poverty Emergency, released on 20th September, 2024, is a very welcome body of work.
The damning evidence, in what the author Journalist Jane Haynes, describes as a landmark report in which Birmingham Live ‘expose the scandalous impact of social inequality and poverty on our cherished children,’ gives Socialists, trade union and community activists a basis in fact to continue, and pick up the struggle to end cuts and austerity which blights the lives of the citizens of Birmingham and of course beyond.
This does not have to be the ‘pandemic that’s out of control’. Where there is political will there is a way. Sadly, that will does not exist in the Labour controlled council, which is now putting all 14 of the city’s Youth Centres up for sale.
The report starkly details the huge rise in child poverty, up from 27% in 2015 to 46% today. 68,745 to 104,433 amongst whom 2 in 3 are from working families.
The report concludes that local wage rates are badly lagging behind the cost of living, including food and rent, despite the council declaring Birmingham a Living Wage city. Where previously Brum had a reputation for its 10,000s well paid manufacturing jobs, their replacement with retail, hospitality and distribution work has led to low pay becoming the norm.
Child poverty is an issue which was callously ignored by the main parties during the General Election, and which will face a muted response from the Labour government and its MPs and Councillors in Birmingham.
They have been virtually silent, so it is to the credit of Birmingham Live that they have worked with Charities and community groups to assess what they perceive to be the changes that can turn the tide:
These actions provide a starting point but can only begin to do so with vastly increased and enduring funding.
The crisis in housing adds to child poverty and poverty for all. The report shows that there has been an 831% increase in families living in temporary accommodation since 2009. Austerity for the many, while often unscrupulous landlords have grossly enriched themselves
The report echoes the seminal work of Friederich Engels, The Conditions of the Working Class in England, where it states that children living in the 10% most deprived parts of England are more than twice as likely to die in infancy. A BBC report on 21st April 2021 said that Birmingham had one of the highest rates of infant mortality in England with the highest rates in Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage families. The City Council set up a task force to halve the rate but has not come close to achieving its aim.
Couple the above with the fact that children in those deprived areas are ‘73% more likely to be dragged in to crime and receive, reprimands, warnings and convictions’ makes it plain that the deprived and forgotten children of our city are in a vicious cycle.
A heart-breaking paragraph stands out in the report:
‘In our two-month probe we found Birmingham children stuck in cramped, cockroach infested B&Bs for months, hospitalised from the effects of damp and mould on their asthma, going hungry and cold in overcrowded homes and exploited by criminals, with poverty the common thread.’
Ten years ago, Birmingham had the 8th highest level of child poverty in the UK, now it is 3rd.
Birmingham Live says that Birmingham City Council must answer why it has failed so badly compared to other local authorities on this measure.
Jane Haynes attended Labour Conference to press the case for the changes the report argues for, with Ministers, local MPs and Councillors…… ‘to help heed our plea for action’.
At the time of writing it is not known if anything concrete emerged from those discussions.
However, none of us who have campaigned for decades on the impact of austerity and cuts, and who, have crucially pointed to the crisis in working class representation, have any faith in those who are complicit in allowing poverty to reach pandemic proportions.
There has been a headlong rush to settle pay disputes by the Starmer government. Low pay and, working poverty pay, remain live issues around which new disputes are inevitable.
This report is extremely welcome as is the campaign led by this work of Birmingham Live journalists. That campaign, more detailed work and the development of demands which place pressure on Councillors, MPs and government to act cannot be left at the level of journalists and community activists alone.
Trade Unions, which represent the very working poor in the report, have a responsibility to discuss this report in union branches and amongst members in their developing response to the cuts to services lined up by the Labour council. In both the public and private sectors they are best placed to unite working class communities within Birmingham to fight for secure and well paid jobs, affordable housing and fully funded services for all. This could include:
It's clear from the actions of Labour, who have taken it upon themselves to implement the cuts, and the Green Party who's two Birmingham councillors have been largely absent from the fight against austerity in Brum that there is no mass party willing to fight for these things. That's why Socialist Party members are campaigning in the trade unions and among working class campaigns to build such a party that can challenge the pro-austerity parties at the ballot box, starting with the next round of council elections in 2026.