Birmingham vs Black Country: How industry built two proud but different cultures

I’m reminded of this in considering the supposed differences that exist between Birmingham and the Black Country, most especially in terms of their citizens.

Whilst language, which I’ll consider shortly, and, of course, culture, are vitally important when considering what constitutes the essence of people, the geographical and/or resources that attracted inhabitants to a particular location must also be recognised.

Like Birmingham, the dominant city in the West Midlands region, what we accept to be the Black Country is widely accepted to be largely defined by the 30-foot seam of coal which is close to or, indeed, comes to the surface.

As such, this would include West Bromwich, Coseley, Oldbury, Blackheath, Cradley Heath, Old Hill, Bilston, Dudley, Tipton, Wednesbury, and parts of Halesowen, Walsall and Smethwick (formerly Warley).

Wolverhampton, which gained city status in 2000, is considered to be in the Black Country precisely because of its critical influence on the trade and industry resulting from the industrial revolution.

The Industrial Revolution, the origins of which are due to the invention of the steam engine using coal –what is known as ‘Newcomen Engine’ was constructed near Dudley in 1712 to pump water from coal mines belonging to Lord Dudley – utterly defines the history of the Black Country.

From the latter part of the 1700s, the abundance of coal as well as iron deposits became the vital elements of the generation of products and wealth that was to ensure employment and growth in the area for the next two centuries.

However, production of coal, coke (made by heating coal in the absence of air), iron, glass, bricks and steel produced high levels of soot and air pollution which, unsurprisingly, made everything, including, all too frequently, people, look dirty and black and led to the area’s name.

The first use of ‘Black Country’ was in the Staffordshire Advertiser as a consequence of the town clerk to Lichfield who, when addressing a Reformer's meeting on 24th November, described a visit he’d made to the "black country" of Staffordshire, Wolverhampton, Bilston and Tipton.

It’s notable that Gavin Jones writing in the Black Country Bugle in April 2013, describes a  travelogue originally published in 1860 in which the author explains that the expression ‘Black Country’ as it’s "eminently descriptive, for blackness everywhere prevails; the ground is black, the atmosphere is black, and the underground is honeycombed by mining galleries stretching in utter blackness for many a league."

Equally notably, Elihu Burritt, the American Consul to Birmingham in 1862, described what he saw in the Black Country as “Black by day and red by night.”

This attests to the fact that demand for products made in the Black Country, such as locks for security, nails, chains of all sorts – including those for the Titanic manufactured in Netherton by N. Hingley & Sons Ltd in Netherton – fire clay products, and enamelware was so intense that production continued late into the evening.

Easy access to clay allowed bricks to be produced which, given the rate of building required for housing for workers and new factories springing up, were much in demand.

To be fair, Birmingham at a similar time would not have looked that much cleaner as it was also burning prodigious amounts of coal and its vast number of factories would have been producing equally noxious fumes and pollution.

I’ve seen pictures taken in the centre of Birmingham in the early 1960s looking towards the suburbs clearly showing a grey haze over the inner city in which the majority of factories were located.

Factories in both Birmingham and the Black Country created ‘magnets’ drawing in those in search of regular employment that was viewed as a preferable alternative to the seasonal and subsistence income from ‘working the land’.

Pointedly, towns in the Black Country and Birmingham developed rapidly as demand for products being produced increased exponentially; the experiences of the vast majority of citizens occurred separately.

Whilst the arrival of trains made travel much easier, for most workers in either place, six-day working and the mandatory requirement to attend church on a Sunday meant that there was little time or inclination to travel.

Remember, though The Bank Holidays Act 1871 created the right for workers to have such days off; most workers had to do so without pay.

The right of workers to be able to have one week's holiday with pay only commenced with the passing of Holidays with Pay Act 1938.

Consequently, any mixing between the vast majority of citizens of either Birmingham or the Black Country was so limited as to mean that entirely separate cultures flourished.

And as any sociologist will contend, a major part of culture is language.

As Laura Clark explains in ‘Birmingham vs. Black Country Dialects’

“While Birmingham and the Black Country are geographically close, their dialects exhibit distinct characteristics that reflect their unique histories and cultural identities. Both dialects enrich the linguistic diversity of the West Midlands, offering a fascinating glimpse into the region’s cultural tapestry.”

There are, she continues, pronunciation differences whereby Brummies tend to make the letter r non-rhotic and i is often “oy” whereas those in the Black Country retain the letter r (making it rhotic).

Clark believes Black Country speech to frequently be characterised by being “broader and more rounded compared to Brummie.”

Fascinatingly, she states her view that there is a difference between citizens of Birmingham and the Black Country in intonation and rhythm; the former tending to have a downward inflection making “statements sound like questions to non-locals” and the latter speaking in a way that’s “more musical [when] compared to the Brummie accent, giving it a unique cadence that stands out even within the West Midlands.”

Of course, words or expressions used in each area provide a very useful indicator of which part of the West Midlands the person speaking is from.

Once again Clark explains that though both are characterised by the tendency to drop consonants.

So, according to her, Brummies drop the g from words ending in ing and those from The Black Country have a tendency to drop the h from words beginning with this letter.

To provide a list of all common words and expressions would create an extremely long one.

But it’s useful to present some selected examples from Birmingham and the Black Country which, as you’ll see, have occasional commonality.

Common Birmingham words/phrases

Bostin': Amazing, great, or brilliant

Bab/Babby: A term of endearment, or a baby.

Cob: A bread roll

Tara-a-bit: See you later/goodbye

Island: A roundabout

Gambol: A forward roll

Gully/Entry: An alleyway

Wench: An affectionate term for a young woman

Pop/Fizzy Pop: Soft drink/soda

Council Pop: Tap water

Outdoor: An off-licence

Mither/Myther: To pester or bother someone

Having a Benny: Throwing a temper tantrum or strop

Yampy: Silly or acting crazy

Donnies: Hands (usually used with children, "give us your donnies")

Shrapnel: Loose change/small coins

"Round the Wrekin": Taking a long, roundabout way to a destination

"This ain't gettin' the babby a frock and pinny": This is getting us nowhere/wasting time

"It's raining in": Rain is coming through a window or door.

Key Aspects of the Dialect

Mom: Used instead of "mum" for mother

"Ee-yar": Here you are

"Leg it": Run away

"Rezza": The reservoir (often refers to Edgbaston Reservoir)

"The Cut": The canal

"Chobble": To chew loudly, or "don't chobble yer rocks"

"Slummocking": Standing or walking in a lazy/slovenly way

"Riling": Fidgeting or rolling around

"Wag": To skip school

Common Black Country words/phrases

Bostin’: Excellent, great

Bost: Broken

Cob: A bread roll

Fizzog: Face

Wommal: Dog

Blartin’: Crying or sobbing

Fittle: Food

Gulley: A small alleyway or gap between houses

The Cut: The canal network

Pikelet: A crumpet

Yampy: Silly or daft

Saft: Soft, silly

Gorra cob on: In a bad mood/angry

Ow bist: How are you?

Ta-ra-a-bit: See you later

I bay gooin’: I am not going

Cor be bovvered: Cannot be bothered

All around the Wrekin: Going the long way round

Key Pronunciation and Grammatical Features

"I am" often becomes "I bay"

"Baby" is pronounced "Babby"

"No" is often said as "Nahhhh!"

"My" can become "me" (e.g., "taking me flirtter")

"Hand" is pronounced "Ond"

"Don't" becomes "Doe"

Though there’s still a sense of pride in the distinctiveness of the two areas, there’s much which equally unites them.

Indeed, the creation of the metropolitan county of the West Midlands on 1st April 1974, consisting of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall, and Wolverhampton, would achieve homogeneity in strategic approach borne of a belief that consistency in dealing with all parts of the area would be beneficial.

As a footnote, the headquarters of West Midlands County Council was 1 Lancaster Circus, which had been a storage depot for a major motor car spares and cycle retailer but was converted to offices and served this purpose until the organisation was abolished in 1986 (then being used by Birmingham City Council until 2022 when it was sold off).

The creation of a county for the West Midlands in the 1970s was not welcomed by all those arguing that attempting to create, no matter how well-meaning, consistency and continuity in the way industry and commerce were encouraged and supported could potentially represent a dilution of the very places which created wealth and opportunity in both Birmingham and the Black Country.

The fact that the West Midlands County Council lasted only 12 years, abolished as representing another unnecessarily bureaucratic layer of local government under the Thatcher administration, tells its own story even though it has been partly recreated under another Conservative government as the West Midlands Combined Authority tells another.

The 1970s were, as is now recognised, the halcyon days of the manufacturing sector that had created so many amazing products and, crucially, opportunities for employment and advancement in this region.

Though manufacturing, particularly in so-called ‘metal bashing’ that had been characteristic of the Black Country, had already started to decline, the election of a neoliberal approach under Margaret Thatcher in May 1979 hastened a rise in the number of factory closures which, as well as inevitably increasing unemployment and social deprivation and hollowing out of communities, created a bleak and scarred landscape all too obvious to those travelling through the Black Country, most especially on trains passing through Wolverhampton as I did when going to and from Manchester, where I was attending university.

Birmingham, whilst suffering a similar decline, appeared, initially at least, to be coping better and the scarring, arguably less obvious.

However, and whilst I acknowledge the danger of engaging in misty-eyed sentimentality about the loss of factories that could be dangerous and grimy places to work, they at least offered regular and reasonably well-paid jobs that have, in large part, not been replaced; certainly not in the ‘gig economy’.

The shiny office buildings and retail parks will, I predict, not be remembered with the same fondness as factories currently are by those who often spent a large proportion of their adult life working in them.

Both my parents worked in factories here in Birmingham and could attest to the social bonds and friendships they formed whilst working in manufacturing.

Sadly, you would have to be outrageously optimistic to believe that the manufacturing sector in Birmingham and the Black Country will ever experience a renaissance that would ensure levels of employment that used to exist half a century ago.

Worse, it would appear, the newer forms of employment are equally at risk from changing consumer patterns and the rapidly developing AI (artificial intelligence).

So, as a way of conclusion, it may be that the very differences that exist in place and people between Birmingham and the Black Country should be jointly celebrated as representing the basis of future development and opportunity.

Culture, I’d suggest, is the new ‘rock ‘n’ roll’; visitors are attracted by history and imbued with the experience of those who contributed to ensuring this region was the cradle of the industrial revolution and is noted as having created products that were the envy of the world.

Those in charge of the West Midlands Combined Authority, who face an immense challenge in ensuring economic and social growth, should consider building more museums, though, in the current climate, even keeping the existing ones remains a priority.

Culture, I stress, is precious, and it is philistines who disregard this maxim.

Dr Steve McCabe

Steve is Professor and Pro Vice Chancellor, DoctorateHub.

Previously, having worked for Birmingham City Council, he spent the last 35 years as an academic at Birmingham City University teaching and researching economics, management and business. Additionally, he has written extensively for edited texts examining economics and politics.

He regularly writes and comments regularly in the national and international media on politics and the economy and has published texts on quality management, benchmarking, ‘Brexit’ and its economic and social impact, the green economy and manufacturing, house prices and India’s progress since independence.