Glyn Robbins draws parallels between the neglect and urban decay experienced in the 1970s by The Bronx, a New York City neighborhood, and what many parts of the United Kingdom are now facing following years of cuts to public services and falling local government funding. He writes that, like New York City 50 years ago, the current fiscal crisis facing UK communities like Birmingham, and the precarity at home and work that this brings, could spark a long period of political disillusionment and social rupture.
In October 1975, amid an unprecedented urban crisis, the city government of New York nearly went bust. Over the years, many other US cities have run out of money, but until recently, this was unusual in the UK. However, in September 2023, the local authority which runs Birmingham, the second biggest city in the country, declared itself bankrupt and scores of local councils are under threat of following in Birmingham’s footsteps.
Direct parallels are tricky, but there are some important similarities between New York City fifty years ago and what’s happening in the UK now. Both were the culmination of years of cuts to public services, a shrinking of local government and acute economic downturns, reflected in rising inflation, interest rates and poverty. Ignoring these issues, the UK government blames “woeful mismanagement” for Birmingham’s troubles. In 1975, President Ford, with a similar suggestion of dismissiveness, was accused of telling NYC to “drop dead”.
What the Bronx of the 1970s can tell us about the UK of today
In his 2010 book “The Fires”, Joe Flood describes the complex web of greed and negligence that led to a virtual state of civic breakdown in the South Bronx and other working class, multi-ethnic NYC neighborhoods. When private landlords torched their buildings to claim insurance, the fire service was unable to respond because of budget cuts and thousands of people were displaced. Notoriously, some policy makers described this as “benign neglect”, or “planned shrinkage”, implying that social and physical reconfiguration were a necessary adaptation to economic restructuring.
Living in the Bronx in 2021, I became aware the borough was still carrying the physical and mental scars of the 1970s. Walking along Simpson Street to Third Avenue, relatively new buildings stood out, slightly incongruous alongside the more traditional early 20th century apartment blocks. Talking to locals, I was told some of this was proto-gentrification, but mostly the legacy of when “the Bronx was burning”. The new buildings had been built on the hundreds of sites where apartment blocks had been destroyed by fire, creating a warscape unique for an urban area in peace time.
The full impact on Birmingham of what’s coming remains to be seen. But the budget cuts passed by the council on March 6th are described as “the worst ever”. As well as a 21 percent increase in local taxation (Council Tax), libraries, youth clubs and day care services for vulnerable people are under threat, along with 600 jobs and a total closedown of the council’s arts and cultural programs. As in 1970s NYC, these measures follow years of underinvestment, arguably dating back to the 1980s, but certainly biting hard in the name of post-2010 “austerity”.
Housing is at the center of the crisis
The tipping point for Birmingham was its failure to address the gender-based pay gap in its workforce. However, this is only one of the structural inequalities that lies behind the current UK fiscal crisis in local government. The single biggest factor is housing. I am currently providing academic support to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) inquiry into the state and future of council housing (similar to US public housing), now the only truly affordable and secure form of rented housing in the UK. The inquiry has been gathering evidence from around the country about a crisis long in the making, now reaching catastrophic proportions. Some councils are spending half their annual budget dealing with the rising tide of homelessness. In the aftermath of COVID-19 and the lifting of the eviction moratorium, 300 people a week were going to Birmingham City Council for emergency housing assistance. Manchester, the third biggest UK city, is spending £5 million a year on providing temporary accommodation, with a national total approaching £2 billion. There are warnings that 40 percent of councils could be driven to bankruptcy over the next five years, unless central government increases funding to municipalities and changes its housing and welfare policy.
National Archives and Records Administration , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It is important to add, particularly for US readers, that the places facing these problems are not only “traditional” areas of deprivation. The housing crisis and its consequences are now reaching every part of the UK, including what might be thought of as leafy, Tory-voting towns and villages.
Downward spirals of despair and tragedy
New York City’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s catalyzed a prolonged period of social rupture. Something similar could be in store for the UK. As in the Bronx 50 years ago, the withdrawal of local services could lead to a downward spiral. During another period of urban neglect in the early 1980s, Birmingham was one of several UK cities that experienced riots. It will be no surprise if it happens again. Already, the UK is recording increasing numbers of “deaths of despair”, some of them caused by the growing use of synthetic opioids, a direct similarity with the US. Working class communities are struggling with a “cost of living” crisis graphically illustrated by ever increasing demand for food banks, a phenomenon virtually unheard of a generation ago. In an eerie echo of the Bronx, there has also been a worrying spike in domestic fires, as a time when fire brigade trade unions have warned about under-funding. Some of these may be caused by people using candles because they can’t afford energy bills. Others reflect more features of our increasingly polarized society, with the failed housing system again a prime culprit.
On March 5th 2023, a fire broke out at Maddocks House in east London, in which Mizanur Rahman died. He was one of at least 18 men sharing a three-bedroom former council home, for which they each paid £100 a week to a private landlord who had purchased the apartment through Margaret Thatcher’s “Right to Buy” scheme. Mr Rahman and his fellow residents were from Bangladesh, several of them working as delivery riders. The charging battery of one of their e-bikes appears to have started the fire.
“Everything’s broken”
Such precarity, at home and work, has become the norm for millions of UK citizens, fueling another insidious and concerning malaise that bears more comparison with the US: a deep sense of political disillusionment. Overall voter participation and trust in politicians has fallen steadily since the 1980s and a report from the House of Commons library identifies several other forms of political disengagement, including some sharp inter-generational cleavages. Among other worrying scenarios, this could lead to a rise of the far right and populism. As Alice Sibley has written for the LSE British Politics blog, what may once have been seen as fascistic political platforms, are adapting their message to directly appeal to a deficit in mainstream politics.
Amidst growing discontent – and in reaction to it – the UK government is introducing a wave of measures that could restrict legitimate political protest and freedom of expression. In its 2023 report, Human Rights Watch stated that the UK government has “repeatedly sought to damage and undermine human rights protections”, while also failing to meet basic social welfare standards and take measures to ensure an adequate standard of living. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation acutely observes that: “It has been almost 20 years and six prime ministers since the last prolonged period of falling poverty” in the UK.
Credit: Author
It is now quite common to hear people in the UK say that “everything’s broken”, referring to grievances ranging from potholes in the roads and crumbling public transport infrastructure, to the state of the National Health Service. For many, a vivid symbol of NYC’s troubles in the 1970s was the city’s graffiti covered subway trains, spurring a moral panic associated with Hip-Hop culture, which began in the Bronx. Last week, I boarded a Central Line train on the London Underground covered in spray paint designs and I’ve seen several more since. This could be a portent.
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