The tiny library at Bartley Green boasts two commemorative plaques on its walls. One pays tribute to the Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who put up the money for the building; the other remembers Jane Bunford, who at 7ft 9in was the world’s tallest woman at the time of her death in 1922, and led a solitary and sometimes bullied life.
At the bus stop close to where the gentle, red-haired giant lived, Gloria Abedune says she has never noticed the memorial before: “It’s funny you don’t see what’s in front of you sometimes.” The same thought has occurred in relation to the extraordinary events of the past week.
“Everyone said they were not against immigration,” Abedune says, “that they were not racist. I am shocked. I am disgusted. I look at everyone: ‘Did you do this?’ I thought this was a strong Labour community, not a Ukip place – people were concerned for each other. Now I don’t trust my neighbour, and I have lived here in this place for 30 years.”
She isn’t happy with Jeremy Corbyn and thinks he should go: “That man never had his heart in it, did he?” But she has no idea about a replacement. “Wouldn’t know any of them if they sat down on the number 18 bus.”
Bartley Green is a ward of local authority-style terraced houses and flats in the Edgbaston constituency of Birmingham, staunchly Labour, with nine of its 10 MPs from the party. The city bucked the national trend last year with a landslide victory for Labour in local authority elections, moving the council’s leader, John Clancy, to declare: “This is a Labour city and will stay a Labour city.”
But there are longstanding problems with housing and basic services, and the council, which is cutting 1,000 jobs, has to make £250m savings in its budget over the next four years. It will be a huge challenge for Labour to keep poorer voters on side, illustrated starkly by the polarisation of the referendum.
Edgbaston as a whole voted 52.7% for Remain despite the MP, Labour’s Gisela Stuart, being the chair of the Vote Leave campaign. Stuart declared her party’s position to be the “biggest recruiting agent for Ukip I can think of”. Bartley Green voted 66.5% for Leave. Stuart has attacked Corbyn as being willing to tear the party apart, although has not yet directly called for him to stand down.
Jean Wright is 78 and a lifelong Labour voter with some sympathy for Corbyn, although she admits she is not impressed with him as leader. “Very weak. I’m Labour through and through – my husband used to go out and do the leaflets for them, so both lifelong Labour, yes. I don’t know what they’re up to down there. They voted Corbyn in, and what did they do that for if they weren’t going to give him a chance? I think he’s a good enough man – he just doesn’t come over very well, that’s his problem. Now I just don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us, any of it. It’s a mess.”
She rolls her eyes. “And it’s us have to just get on with it.”
Edgbaston also includes the University of Birmingham, where students such as Jeevan Jones had been actively campaigning around campus and now fear the fallout for Labour will alienate young people, once so energised by the Corbyn promise. “There is a lot of support for him. What MPs don’t like, many young people do.
“There’s a real sense of disbelief at the level of incompetence that’s being shown in Westminster – it’s astounding,” he adds. “For a huge amount of people in Birmingham, they had nothing to lose when they voted – that’s where the Labour party should have stepped in and made the case. But we didn’t and we have to accept what people said, and accept no free movement of people is what the issue was. I was for Andy Burnham the last time; this time I don’t know. Corbyn does have to go. I can’t believe he hasn’t.”
Jack Dromey, another Labour Birmingham MP whose constituency voted against him, and who warned of the unleashing of “a tidal wave of racial abuse and attacks”, was among the first frontbenchers to offer his resignation and call for Corbyn, his friend of 40 years standing, to resign. Writing to Corbyn, he said: “I believe we may now be on the brink of a catastrophic defeat from which Labour may never recover.”
He concluded: “I would urge you, therefore, as the decent and principled man that you are to put the working people of Britain first. I want history to record that my old friend Jeremy put principle before self.”
At Bartley Green, Alex and Stephen are heading into One Stop for post-school supplies. “I read the papers about it,” says Alex, 15. “Mum wanted to vote Ukip but we told her they were just racists so she votes Labour. I’d vote Labour because I think if the MPs don’t like their leader and people do, then he is doing something right.”
Stephen, 14, isn’t so sure. He doesn’t know the name of any Labour politicians – although he is standing next to a newsstand where Corbyn’s glares out of the headlines: “I wouldn’t vote for any of them, don’t see what they’re for.”
No photographs exist of Bartley Green’s almost forgotten former resident Jane Bunford, but in a scandal only uncovered 90 years after her death, it emerged that her coffin was buried empty, and her skeleton kept by the university without even her name being recorded alongside it.
As her bus arrives, Gloria Abedune sees the story as having resonance. “That’s the story of working people, is it not? Good people get run over – they are not left with even dignity.” She thinks people are too tired of politics to engage with Labour’s squabbling.
“If I don’t trust you, and you are my neighbour, then what are our chances?” she asks, adding the same went for Labour. “Why should I vote at all?”
