Fort Dunlop was once one of the largest factories in the world. Described at times as a small city with its own internal railway system, it was a powerful symbol of British manufacturing – its imposing structure looming over the Birmingham landscape. At its peak the rubber plant employed 10,000 people. But three years ago this symbol of Erdington’s rich industrial past, in decline since the 1980s, closed indefinitely. The site was bought up by a development company, Urban Splash, and is now a shopping centre with a hotel and offices.

“There was a marked change when Fort Dunlop started to close,” says Kay Van Kesterson, who lives in Erdington, an inner-city Birmingham suburb home to a mix of cultures, ethnicities and architecture. “It wasn’t just jobs that were lost, but the younger ones left and locals now shop there. Some people my age still say they are going down to the village when they pop to the local shops, but it is just habit. The high street has disappeared. Shops have gone and nothing has replaced them.”

Van Kesterson, who is married to a Dutch engineer and moved here from Watford more than 40 years ago, was a member of the Erdington Local History Society for two decades and at 76 remains fascinated by the area’s quirks and characters.

Collette Elliott, an author who identifies as a “proud Erdingtonian”, lives a few streets away. A few years ago Elliott, 39, published her memoirs: the daughter of a sex worker, she was abused as a child by a pimp and failed by the local authority, which did not take her into care – in 2013 she won a £20,000 payout from Birmingham city council. She knows every crack den, drug pusher and which vulnerable young girls are likely to fall through the same gaps that she did.

Elliott’s and Van Kesterson’s lives have been very different, but when I talk to these women for the first in this series of dispatches from Erdington in the run-up to the election, both have similar thoughts. And despite being lifelong Labour supporters – Erdington has been Labour since its inception in 1974 – both are considering turning their backs on the party.

At Erdington’s heart is the high street, a once booming shopping area that has had a mass exodus in recent years. When we asked Guardian readers from the area to tell us about the issues that would decide how they voted, many – like Van Kesterton and Elliott – said the decline of the high street was among their concerns, alongside worries about segregation, failing services and homelessness.

Van Kesterson’s numerous local photography projects, census records and meticulously kept arefacts of Erdington’s history tell a story of a sleeping hamlet turned into modern, urban degeneration.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Local historian Kay Van Kesterton Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

For Elliott, who has lived here all her life, the perceived decline of the area feels personal. For her version of Erdington, Elliott peels back the facade of Victorian grandeur to reveal the drug haunts. She knows where the dealers get their drugs. And she knows which young kids are lining up to take them.

We take a tour of Erdington together, into deserted squares that were once thriving shopping areas and are now empty cut-throughs to car parks, past closed businesses. During the hours that we spend together, there is a sentence that repeatedly passes Elliott’s lips: “This used to be a … but now it’s closed.” Like others in the suburb, she feels abandoned.

When I ask about her dealings with the current MP, Labour’s Jack Dromey, there is a pause followed by a long sigh. “I don’t feel like I have much of a choice. Most people around here won’t vote. I would like to vote Labour but things aren’t changing so I feel like I can’t.”

Through Elliott’s eyes, Erdington is increasingly segregated with stark ethnic divides. We walk on to Slade Road, which lies to the south of Erdington in Stockland Green, and on a notepad Elliott divides it into sections where people of different ethnicities live side by side but do not, she says, mix. It is a “tinder box” waiting to be lit, she claims, with tensions between the Polish, Muslim and African-Caribbean communities.

The 2011 census recorded 2% of Erdington’s population as speaking Polish as their first language, and 2015 figures suggest the proportion may be closer to 4%. It has been described in some media as “Little Poland”. After the EU referendum vote, in which Erdington voted 63% in favour of Brexit, TV crews descended on the suburb and recorded people voicing their angst about the eastern European community.

Gerard Goshawk, a minister of Erdington Six Ways Baptist church, was at home watching TV when he heard a leave voter give a withering verdict of Erdington on the BBC’s Panorama programme. He decided to show that the community was not as divided as was being suggested. The result was #EverythingErdington, a community celebration that culminated in more than 100 people from many of the town’s nationalities – including English, Polish, Bulgarian, Nigerian and Ghanaian – holding hands along the high street in a show of solidarity.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour candidate Jack Dromey campaigning in the Erdington where he has been the Birmingham constituency’s MP since 2010. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Dromey, cites the same Slade Road that Elliott describes as “a kettle waiting to boil” as a perfect example of a diverse community in action, with families living side by side.

On a blustery Wednesday night I join him as he campaigns on George Street opposite the lakes of Brookvale Park. Dromey stops in between canvassing votes to point towards the top of Stockland Green and talk about the rich cultural diversity of the area. “Slade Road is an up-and-coming part of Erdington. There are Kashmiri families living next to Polish and white Irish families. All of this makes for an incredibly diverse street with new businesses and families settling in the area. It is something we are proud of.”

Amid these differing opinions, there is one certainty: political disaffection is rife. In my conversations with Van Kesterson and Elliott, it becomes clear that both are dissatisfied with the political status quo and there is a possibility that they may not vote at all. Their concerns are not about national politicians — Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn remain absent from all our conversations – but rather about local issues.



“Things have changed so much since I moved here in 1976,” Van Kesterson says. “I do worry about the young people – work is hard to get and many parents round here have to see their children on those zero-hour contracts or with no jobs at all.” We are talking before the West Midlands mayoral election, in which she says she will vote for Andy Street, who goes on to win the election. “He has some business sense, exactly what we need in an area where shops close all the time and people need work. It doesn’t really matter to me which party they are from any more as long as they can make things better,” Van Kesterson says.

Both women see the problems of their “dying suburb” in the same way – Van Kesterson from her Edwardian sitting room and Elliott from the living room of her housing association home.



“The party is not what matters,” says Van Kesterson. “It is about personality and character – which one of them will stick around after the cameras have disappeared, the photo opportunities have stopped.”

Main image by Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

• Do you live in Erdington? Help shape this reporting by letting us know which issues are important this election