In his second article, Alan Clawley wonders if Birmingham has been taken over while we weren’t looking.
Once in a while one sees a bit of Birmingham from a new angle that leaves one puzzled for a while. It happened to me whilst I was doing my duty as the (unpaid) election agent for Birmingham Green Party at the city council’s Elections Office which is now housed on the ground floor of the Council House.
One starts at the Main Reception in a small room on the right where documents are checked before being escorted through a number of secure doors, down a long corridor reminiscent of a Victorian hospital or mental health institution and into a room somewhere on the far corner of the building.
While the papers were being verified I gazed idly out of the window and was surprised to see a red flag flying from a pole projecting at a jaunty angle from a balcony of a baroque white stone building. I struggled to orientate myself after my Kafkaesque journey and assumed the building I could see was part of the Council House on the other side of the big internal courtyard.
Had the flag been hung out by some rebellious socialists in the council’s beleaguered workforce? Could it have been a celebration of Mayday organised by a cadre of communist councillors? I was too shy to ask.
The puzzle was solved some days later. On a building right opposite the Council House on the corner of Colmore Row flew the flag of the People’s Republic of China whose government has recently bought the building from the council.
Now for the socialists amongst us the sight of a red flag flying from a public building may set the pulse racing, but what about the blue-blooded capitalists and friends of Maggie Thatcher who celebrated communism’s death after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Don’t they worry about communists taking over the financial institutions in the heart of our capitalist city? Or are they more worried about the impact of immigration from former Soviet Union satellites like Romania and Poland?
Perhaps ‘collectivism’ is making a quiet comeback and is no longer feared. Or is it more likely that most people think China isn’t really communist at all. The article in this week’s Post by Jon Griffin headlined ‘China syndrome here to stay amid noise of Europe debate’ was also illustrated by a picture of an identical Chinese red flag flying next to the Union Jack over the MG factory in Longbridge. But, who will make a fuss when, as Griffin points out, “MG has been able to withstand millions of pounds of losses because it is backed by Chinese resources, supporting hundreds of West Midlands jobs”?
