A cosmopolitan city built on fresh faces

The issue of race has been put back on the national agenda following the publication last week of reports into the development of community cohesion in northern towns scarred by race riots in 2001.

In the first of a three-part series looking at multi-racial Birmingham, Neil Connor explores how immigration has helped make the city into one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in the world...

There is little in modern Birmingham which has not been originated, influenced or developed by immigrants.

If you read The Birmingham Post, support Aston Villa, or enjoy the power chords of the city's most successful rock band, Black Sabbath, it is Birmingham's long history of welcoming foreign visitors that you have to thank.

This very newspaper was founded by Irishman John Frederick Feeney in 1857.

Birmingham's first daily was followed by the Birmingham Daily Mail, which later became The Birmingham Mail, in 1869. That newspaper was launched by Feeney's son.

The Feeney family's control over what would become The Birmingham Post and Mail would last until the inter-war years.

But the impact of the Irish in Birmingham was, by this time, already well entrenched.

Like most other industrial centres in Britain, Birmingham had attracted an Irish community since the early 19th century and, by 1871, it numbered 9,076.

Many Irishmen worked as labourers. However, a large proportion had joined Birmingham City Police by the turn of the century. There were 64 officers from Ireland out of a force of 950 in 1909.

More Irish immigrants came to Birmingham in the 1930s and 40s. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, many Irishmen arrived as servicemen, or to work in the factories which had switched over to war production.

By 1951 there were 36,000 Irish-born people in Birmingham, and ten years later this figure had risen to 58,000. By 1981, just over one in ten residents of Sparkhill, Erdington, Fox Hollies, Sparkbrook and Acocks Green was Irish.

Most of these people came in search of work in Birmingham's factories.

However, Digbeth remains the epicentre of Irish activity in Birmingham, with its Irish Centre, welfare offices and Irish pubs. Another Catholic community that had already found a home in Birmingham by the 1840s was the Italians, who gathered in the Park Street area.

This location, just behind Moor Street station, was close to the Catholic St Michael's church and the Bull Ring market place, where immigrant musicians would earn a living by playing to the crowds of shoppers.

The tradition of Italian musicians was carried on by Black Sabbath guitarist and pioneer of heavy metal riffing, Tony Iommi. Italian men and women were also involved in selling ice cream and laying terrazzo floors and making walls of mosaic.

There was much intermarriage between English and Italians, who have lived in the Digbeth Italian quarter for much of the last 100 years. Many of the Italians were fleeing rural poverty in their home country.

As the Industrial Revolution continued to see Birmingham expand and grow, the city also witnessed the growth of a small, but significant, Jewish community.

By 1766 a Jewish cemetery had been created in Granville Street and at the turn of the 19th century there were about 130 Jewish people in Birmingham.

There was a major increase in migration to the UK of Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms and discrimination in the 19th and early 20th century.

However, Birmingham never witnessed the emergence of a large Jewish district like many other major UK cities.

This was mainly because many Jewish people were tailors and settled in centres of the textile industry, such as London's East End, Manchester and Glasgow.

However, by 1900, Birmingham's Jewish population was an estimated 3,200 people.

The Jewish community congregated around Ellis Street, near Holloway Head, because it was only yards from the Singer's Hill Synagogue in Blucher Street.

Birmingham also attracted many people from Scotland and Wales.

Many Welsh workers stayed in Birmingham after they completed work on the Town Hall in the 1830s. The building was made from Anglesey marble, which meant construction was dependent on skilled workers from North Wales.

By 1951 there were 25,000 people in Birmingham who were Welsh born - fewer than the number of Irish, but greater than the Scots.

Aston Villa's early success was, in many ways, attributable to Scotsmen including George Ramsay, a fine dribbler, who would later become club secretary and negotiated the club's move to Villa Park.

Another Scotsman, William McGregor, was a committee member of Villa and a draper in Summer Lane. It was his vision which saw the creation of the English Football League in 1888.

The Second World War, and the redrawing of national boundaries that followed, saw many East and Central European communities come to Birmingham.

However, it was the postwar years that witnessed the most radical transformation of Birmingham's racial landscape.

After the United States passed laws that restricted West Indian immigration in the 1950s, the British Government encouraged people from the islands to move to towns and cities in the UK, where jobs were plentiful.

Many of them chose to settle in the Handsworth, Birchfield and East Sparkbrook areas where large Victorian houses had been turned into premises for multi-occupation.

By 1961 the population of Afro-Caribbeans in Birmingham had increased to 16,000, compared to just 500 ten years before.

There were instances of racial prejudice during the early years of black immigration.

In 1954 the majority of bus workers at Birmingham Transport Department objected to their employment with the company. But 257 black and South Asian people were working in public transport by the end of that year.

There were almost 50,000 Afro-Caribbeans in Birmingham in the early 1990s; there are probably more than 60,000 now.

Their numbers have contributed greatly to all areas of city life and have provided us with sports stars, including Mark Walters and Darius Vassell, and also Jamaican music-influenced bands, such as UB40 and The Beat.

Jazz saxophonist Andy Hamilton moved to the city from Jamaica in 1949.

The Chinese arrived in Britain in the 1960s and 70s, mainly from the farming communities of the New Territories of Hong Kong.

There has been more immigration from other areas of China in recent years.

Although there are many shops and restaurants around the Hurst Street area, few people live there.

South Asian Muslims arrived in the city before the Second World War, and opened a mosque on Speedwell Road, Edgbaston in 1944.

Large-scale immigration from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh did not start until the late 1950s. They sought work in the factories, but the recession in the early 1980s saw many men shift into retail, groceries, catering and taxis.

Pakistani communities from Campblepur have gathered in Sparkhill, and Pathans have settled in Saltley, Alum Rock, Sparkhill and Small Heath.

In 1952 it was estimated that Birmingham had a population of 2,500 Pakistanis and 500 Sikhs and Indians.

Many Indians fled to Britain from Uganda in the 1970s as Idi Amin rolled out his Africanisation campaign.

The Hindu population in Birmingham is concentrated around the Soho Road in Handsworth and Stratford Road in Sparkhill.

Hindus and Sikhs are also prominent in the professions, and are particularly well represented in the top positions within the health service.

The immigration of communities from Britain's Commonwealth sparked one of the most controversial moments in Britain's multi-cultural history in 1968.

On April 20, Enoch Powell, then MP for Wolverhampton South West, gave a speech to the West Midlands Conservative Political Centre at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham.

The speech was about the Labour Government's introduction of anti-discrimination legislation.

However, he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued immigration to Britain from the Commonwealth.

The "Rivers of Blood" speech led to Powell being sacked from Edward Heath's Shadow Cabinet and sparked widespread debate across the country.

That debate has resurfaced in recent years because of a new wave of immigration from people fleeing wars and oppression, particularly in Eastern Europe and East Africa.

Large communities of Bosnians and Kosovans settled in Handsworth following the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, while Kurdish and Somalian communities have settled in the Sparkbrook area after fleeing brutal civil wars.