Birmingham at its best

The Malt House pub at Brindleyplace, Birmingham, England. Photo by Lorentz Gullachsen

 

 

R otarian and tour boat operator Earle Wightman guides our canal boat through the Victorian heart of Birmingham, England. We glide past steps worn into the embankment by 240 years of passengers trudging up to higher land; the two towers that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings ; and factories transformed into outdoor cafes and lofts as part of the city’s ongoing renaissance. “Birmingham has more canals than Venice,” Wightman says.

Birmingham is full of such surprises. It has the biggest retail complex in Europe, a symphony hall ranked among the world’s finest for its high-tech acoustics,  and more than 200 restaurants featuring the cuisine of 27 countries. Once known solely for heavy industry, England’s second city is today a leading center for medical and environmental technology research and for artistic innovation. Birmingham’s leaders, who have included many Rotarians since their first club was chartered in 1914, have a tradition of reinventing the city so it will thrive in a changing world.

The Rotary Club of Birmingham meets at the modern Repertory Theatre, in an upper-level space with huge windows. The soothing sound of a viola fills the room – it’s in lieu of a guest speaker. The club president, John Ankcorn, is studying the viola and asked his teacher to perform. Ankcorn also supports a home for abused women and children. On my left is Beverly Lindsay, born in Jamaica and managing director of a travel agency, and on my right is Brian Fuller, the energetic chair of the Host Organization Committee and the city’s retired fire chief. After the performance, the room is loud with good-natured ribbing and raucous stories, including one whose central plot concerns rum. Guests at this meeting include a handful of prospective members in their early 30s.

Once the heart of the industrial revolution, Birmingham, population 1 million, is now the heart of England’s convention industry, hosting a G-8 summit, the International Red Cross, and Microsoft, among other groups. More than 30 million people visited in 2006. This makes it a fitting location for Rotary International’s 100th convention, to be held here 21-24 June.

Birmingham is a direct plane trip from more than 100 cities, and London is 90 minutes away on Virgin’s comfortable high-speed trains. The site of the convention, the National Exhibition Centre, is adjacent to both the train station and the airport.

Organizers expect that this convention, the first in Great Britain since 1997, will particularly attract Rotarians from the 53 British Commonwealth nations, such as India and Ghana, giving everyone a chance to meet many potential project partners. The convention will feature a massive House of Friendship recreating a Victorian village with its own pub, along with events such as an evening at Warwick Castle, England’s largest and best-preserved medieval fortification.

My first stop, on a fast-paced walking tour with Fuller, is police headquarters to meet Rotarian Paul Scott-Lee, who is chief constable for the West Midlands – and also a knight. Sir Paul is unpretentious and low-key but passionate about his city and the people who live there. “This is a very vibrant city,” he says.

“Birmingham is the safest city in England,” he tells me. Why? “We’re bloody good!” he declares. Since 2003, crime has dropped by 25 percent, he says. Scott-Lee has initiated vigilant community policing – “unashamedly” focusing on the few who commit crimes – reinforced by frequent canvassing. “Statistics don’t mean a thing if residents don’t feel comfortable in their homes,” he says, adding that the police here “come to work because they feel they can make a difference.”

Car-free living

Birmingham is a fine city for walking. One pedestrian-only street connects to another, then to one of the many plazas around town, then to yet another car-free street. Fuller points to a red-brick former warehouse, now lined with outdoor cafes overlooking a canal. “That was a mess with a vengeance.” Everywhere, it seems, buildings have been refurbished, remodeled, reborn. “Birmingham is investing £17 billion in city improvements over the next 10 years,” he says.

At “the Rep” – as the Repertory Theatre is known – we meet Rotarian Jerry Blackett, who heads the chamber of commerce. Blackett appears riding a bicycle and wearing a business suit. He zips inside, takes off his helmet, and quickly folds up his bike.

“We’re a city of rebels,” he says over lattes and orange squash drinks. “We are a young city, really, less than 200 years old, started by economic migrants looking to escape the rules of London. We are instinctively drawn to newcomers and visitors.” While Brumagen, as it was once called, dates back to 1086, Queen Victoria granted Birmingham city status in 1889.

Birmingham, long known as the City of a Thousand Trades, is now one of England’s six Science Cities, recognized for its research and development successes, Blackett tells me, adding, “Innovation is in our DNA.” The city lured some great minds of the 18th century, including James Watt, who perfected the steam engine; Mathew Boulton, an innovative manufacturer; and William Murdock, the inventor of gas lighting, who are immortalized in the city statue known as The Golden Boys .

He reels off some of the city’s cultural attractions: the Jewellery Quarter, a historic district where 40 percent of England’s jewelry is crafted; the Ikon Gallery, which features contemporary art; the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, a small museum with works by Degas, Monet, and Renoir, among others; and the National Sea Life Centre, where visitors can explore a 360-degree glass viewing tunnel.

He tells me that Birmingham’s population is Europe’s youngest, with about 25 percent under the age of 16. “But many are poorly educated. It’s our remaining challenge.” In 1985, the city suffered devastating racial riots, triggered by unemployment rates up to 43 percent, but Birmingham rebounded. “Today, it’s peaceful, multicultural, multifaith. Birmingham or Leicester will have the first nonwhite majority [in the United Kingdom] by 2012, which makes this a very interesting and an excellent place to be,” he says.

As Fuller and I continue walking, he tells me about the city and the convention. On 23 June, he says, Birmingham will host a night out, with street performers and vendors from top restaurants, and a choice of three cultural events, including performances at Symphony Hall and the recently renovated Town Hall, where Charles Dickens read A Christmas Carol and Charles Darwin lectured.

Our tour takes us through the city center, a blend of Victorian and contemporary architecture, along with traces of the medieval era. We pass the iconic Selfridges department store, with its glimmering metallic façade. “They sell everything there, even chocolate-covered spiders,” he says. At the grand Victoria Square, anchored by the Council House, he points to a massive sculpture called The River , featuring a nude woman reclining in a fountain. “That’s the Floozie in the Jacuzzi ,” he grins. Birmingham is a city that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Rebuilding history

The next day, I catch a train to Coventry. Peter Offer, Host Committee vice chair, picks me up in his Jaguar – built here in Coventry – and we park at the country’s first pedestrian mall. “This area was totally flattened during the war,” he says. The heart of Coventry, once among England’s best-preserved medieval cities, was obliterated during repeated German bombings. City leaders used the devastation as an opportunity to support pioneering architecture and city planning.

Offer is a bit like Coventry: down-to-earth, genial. He also has a history of commitment to Rotary causes. As 2006-07 president of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland, he led two projects instead of the usual one. He helped to generate £275,000 for a medical train in India – he’s just returned from its inauguration – and to provide wheelchairs to 16,000 people in developing countries through the Wheelchair Foundation.

Our first stop is the statue of Lady Godiva, who founded the city in 1043. You will remember that she is famous for protesting a tax imposed by her husband, Earl Leofric, by riding around town naked. Her legend also is notable for its first mention of Peeping Tom.

Next, we visit St. Mary’s Guildhall, where Rotary will hold the Bequest Society reception for Rotarians who commit US$10,000 to The Rotary Foundation through estate plans. Considered England’s finest medieval guildhall, it houses the room where Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in 1569 and a Great Hall, where King Henry VI held court during the Wars of the Roses.

During World War II, Coventry’s factories were turned over to arms manufacturing, making the city a prime target for Nazi bombers. On 14 November 1940, an air raid destroyed much of the central city, including St. Michael’s Cathedral, dating to the late 14th century. Only the exterior walls and the spire survived. The day after the carnage, the people of Coventry held a service amid the wreckage and vowed reconciliation, not revenge. The city preserved the ruins as a memorial. At the altar stand two charred medieval timbers that were nailed into a cross in the months after the attack. The words “Father Forgive” were chalked behind the cross.

As we cross from the old cathedral, a massive stained-glass window announces the new cathedral, designed by Basil Spence and consecrated in 1962. The church’s commitment to interreligious healing led to the creation of the International Centre for Reconciliation, which now has more than 180 affiliates worldwide, including Muslim centers in Nigeria and Palestine. Inside the church, a woman pastor at the altar intones, “We pray … especially for the people of Burma, China, Zimbabwe, and Tibet … take away the spirit that makes war.” The spirit of reconciliation has spread across the city, which now commemorates the bombing with a Peace Month. Coventry University also established a leading peace research center.

We time travel outside the center with a short walk to the Whittle Arch, a giant winged sculpture honoring Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine. We pass through to the free Coventry Transport Museum, highlighting the city’s 150-year history as the birthplace of the British bicycle, motorcycle, and automobile. The museum includes  Field Marshal “Monty” Montgomery’s victory car, a Ford Model T (celebrating its 100th birthday), and a Mini, the once hugely popular car invented here during the 1969 oil crisis, and now on the upswing here and in the United States.

I also learn that Coventry’s craft-based, highly skilled car makers found it tough to compete with the mass production forces of Henry Ford. But they went on to produce the Jaguar and other high-end cars, inventing a great deal of technology along the way. At the museum you can sit in a simulation of the 763-mph Thrust SSC Land Speed, which first broke the sound barrier in 1997 in Nevada, USA, thanks to Coventry ingenuity.

Outside the museum, Lady Godiva dances up, exclaiming, “Hello, Peter!” This is Rotarian Pru Porretta, who travels the world, telling the story of the real Lady Godiva. Coventry first honored Lady Godiva by holding a procession in 1678, Porretta tells me, “to raise spirits and make people feel better. The first Lady Godiva was a boy,” she adds. In 1982, the city decided to revive the tradition. Coventry was suffering from high unemployment, racial unrest, and miner strikes.

Porretta researched the real Lady Godiva and won the job. “Godiva was a mother, a grandmother, a great benefactor,” she says. By the 1,000-year-old priory wall, she tells Godiva’s story. “One day I noticed something very odd,” she says dramatically. “Children were without clothes, hungry and crying, naked, mothers naked too. A child came from behind my skirts and said, ‘It’s Leofric who’s done this to us.’ He demanded a tax. I promised that I would do something.”

Porretta became a Rotarian because Offer asked – repeatedly. “I realized how much in common Rotary and Lady Godiva have,” she says.

Crenulations and grisly capital crimes  

We leave Coventry to follow part of the “Paul Harris trail” – Rotary’s founder visited England in June 1928. Harris toured Birmingham, Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, and other sites in the area. Warwick, one of the world’s best-preserved medieval castles, will be closed to the public for one night during the RI Convention. Guests will be treated to private tours, jousters, falconry demonstrations, medieval fare, fire-eaters, and the launch of a trebuchet, the world’s largest siege machine.

Rotarian Rachel Hinton is a tour guide at Warwick Castle. On a red-cushioned window seat, with a royal view of the Avon River below, she tells me about the history of the castle, dating to 914 A.D. (William the Conqueror built the first fort in 1068.) Her dulcet-toned voice rises with excitement when she tells some of the castle’s more grisly tales, among them the execution of the king’s male lover in 1312, the execution for treason of the Earl of Warwick in 1449, and the murder by a manservant of Sir Fulke Greville in 1628 (his ghost is said to haunt a tower). Her favorite expression seems to be “he suffered a long, lingering death!” On our way out of the castle, she tells me that her club is small but active, sponsoring a quiz night at a local pub to raise money for an orphanage in Namibia.

Following in the footsteps of Paul Harris, we visit Shakespeare’s home at Stratford-upon-Avon and stop for a pint at a pub overlooking the Avon River. Offer points to the area around us and says, “Last year, this was all under water from the flooding. Rotarians raised £1 million to help the victims.” He tells me he’s brought his son and daughter-in-law into Rotary recently, and that he’s happy they’ll be carrying on the tradition in Coventry. Raised in Folkestone, Kent, he came here to run the Godiva Theatre, then met his wife. “There’s an expression: ‘He’s been sent to Coventry.’ I tell people my wife sent me to Coventry!”

The expression apparently started hundreds of years ago, when Royalists were imprisoned here and treated poorly by the locals. Being sent to Coventry was something of a punishment. “But no worries about that now,” he smiles. Like Fuller, he’s seen his city reinvent itself to face the changing times, while honoring historic traditions. Both cities have chosen peace and reconciliation over hatred, embracing people of all faiths and cultures – not unlike Rotary itself.