‘This part of Birmingham is not a no-go area – that’s a nasty thing to say’

Following comments by Tory MP Paul Skully singling out the Sparkhill area, residents paint a very different picture

In the last remaining pub in Sparkhill, the after-work crowd is beginning to gather. If the Guinness signs weren’t enough to guide you towards an afternoon thirst quencher, the message painted in gold above the door should be. “Licensed to sell intoxicating liquor of all descriptions.” That’s clear then. “There used to be 23 pubs in Sparkhill and this is the last one that remains,” says the landlord Mark McDwyer.
His family have owned pubs in the area “all our lives”. They bought McDwyers in 1997. Since then, the area has changed. “It was a different place. It used to be a majority Irish area but people move away and die off.” 
The pub is still doing well, but you get the sense that may be because there isn’t exactly a wealth of competition. These days, if you live in this area and want to find a pint on your doorstep, the options are few and far between. The building opposite may offer some clue as to why.
The IBN Salah Al-Shahrazuri mosque is one of five in Sparkhill, to the south of Birmingham city centre, which is now home to a predominantly Muslim population.
This week, the area has found itself at the centre of controversy after Paul Scully MP singled it out as one of a number of religious “no-go areas” which needed “to be addressed” in modern Britain.
In many ways Scully, who has since apologised for his remarks, was weighing in on a row that wasn’t his own. Lee Anderson, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman, was suspended on Saturday after he refused to apologise for saying Islamists had “got control of” Sadiq Khan. Discussing the row on BBC London, Scully said people had been “concerned” about their “neighbourhoods changing” for years. “The point I’m trying to make is, if you look at parts of Tower Hamlets, for example, where there are no-go areas, parts of Birmingham, Sparkhill, where there are no-go areas, mainly because of doctrine, people [are] using, abusing in many ways, their religion. Because it’s not the doctrine of this land, to espouse what some of these people are saying.” 
Downing Street said it disagreed with the comments. Andy Street, the Conservative Mayor for the West Midlands, dismissed them as ridiculous. “It really is time for those in Westminster to stop the nonsense slurs and experience the real world,” he wrote on X. “I for one am proud to lead the most diverse place in Britain.”
Diverse it undoubtedly is. The main artery running through Sparkhill is Stratford Road, a mile of shops and restaurants that serve the local community. During the working day, it doesn’t empty out as so many British high streets do – it is fizzing with life. Mothers push prams in and out of convenience stores and bakeries, barbers are filled with men having a chat over a trim.
In the Azad Supermarket, most of the items serve the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities that live here. “But we’ve got food for the whole community,” says Rani Zahira, behind the till. “Even vegan. Vegan is in high demand.” 
Zahira, 44, has lived here for 20 years. “Most of our customers are Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Arabic. English people come here too,” she says, “but mainly the people that have been here a long time.” The white community in Sparkhill, she explains, are older.
Brian Tough is one such older resident. At 81, he has lived here 28 years. “It’s changed a bit,” he says, nursing a pint of cider in McDwyers. The shift in demographics doesn’t bother him. “I’ll be here until I die.”
There are more subtle signs of the change Sparkhill has undergone, too. On a quiet residential road off the high street, a women-only gym caters predominantly for women whose traditional backgrounds mean they feel more comfortable working-out in a female space.
“When it comes to religious reasons, they don’t need to worry about modest coverings because it’s women only,” says Habiba Yafe, who works behind reception.
In inner-city Birmingham in 2024, there is nothing all that unusual about the make-up of Sparkhill. Over 60 per cent of the ward is Pakistani, around 5 per cent Bangladeshi, 5 per cent Indian and 8 per cent white. In the 2021 Birmingham census, nearly 30 per cent of the city’s population described themselves as Muslim, up from 21 per cent in 2011. When asked where they were born, Pakistan was the second most represented country of origin.
Why Scully singled out Sparkhill as a “no-go” isn’t entirely clear to the people that live and work here. If he meant to cast it as dangerous, then the latest crime figures show the area is no more marred by crime than many others around Birmingham. To walk around, it doesn’t feel tense or volatile.
In December, there were 265 crimes reported in Sparkhill, 116 of which were categorised as violent or sexual offences. In Kingstanding, a predominantly white area to the north of the city, there were 253 crimes reported in the same month, 129 of them violent. 
Some can understand why it might initially seem like a no-go area from the outside. 
When Alana Thomas first started working in Sparkhill five years ago, she felt conspicuous as a white woman walking through the streets. It was a hangover, she suspects, from her childhood when her parents would “lock the doors” whenever they drove through the area from nearby Solihull.
Does she ever feel aware of herself walking to work from the bus stop? “When I first started working here I felt that,” she says. “But I’ve been working here for five years and I’m happy to walk around.” 
Thomas, 27, works in a primary school in the thick of Sparkhill. “I have a lot of Muslim colleagues who worry about my safety walking around. They’ll say ‘Are you getting a lift? If not, do you want to come to mine and wait?’ There’s a lot of apprehension on my behalf.” 
She suspects that is more a cultural thing – they worry because she’s a woman, not necessarily because she is white, or genuinely in danger.
These days, she feels comfortable waiting at the bus stop after work, but can see why others might not. “I can understand from an outward perspective because a street like this can look intimidating. There are stalls we’re not used to, and there’s some litter. But it’s not unwelcoming.”
Sparkhill feels run down and overcrowded, like many inner-city areas. It’s fair to say as a white woman I am in the minority, but I’m either ignored or met with a smile. The community here is “friendly”, says Thomas. It’s also more diverse than it might seem. “At the bus stop there are people from all backgrounds.” 
There is no escaping the fact the area has shifted, and that change hasn’t been without tension. In 2022, bricks and stones were thrown through a mosque’s windows during morning prayer. 
Ijaz Ahmed remembers what Sparkhill was like in 1975 when he first moved here from Pakistan. “When we came, it was mostly English and Irish. A lot of my friends were Irish. The Catholic school on the Stafford Road you could only get in if you were Irish. But now there are Asians, Polish, East Europeans. All my children went to that school. Now they all have their degrees.”
Ahmed, 67, who has run a garage here since 1989, wouldn’t call this a no-go area, but he does say crime has grown “a little bit worse in the last two to three years”.
“The main thing I can think of is [that] a lot of people don’t educate their children on what to do, how to behave,” says Ahmed, proudly wearing a Liverpool FC beanie. 
He waves to his wife, Allamara, on her way back from the shops. Does she feel safe here? “Cars are stolen, young kids race around with their cars,” she says, brushing off the idea that things are particularly bad here. What about violence? “No,” she says, shaking her head.
Christine Lovegrove was born in Sparkbrook, the neighbouring ward. Now 75, she has noted how much the demographics have shifted over the years. “It’s altered a great deal,” says Lovegrove, a retired carer.
The shops are “different”, but it “isn’t right” to say it’s a no-go – that, she says, would discount all the people who have lived here all their lives. “They’ve always lived here. These are their roots.” 
“To see it now, so multicultural, it’s a new life,” she says. She doesn’t approve of Scully’s characterisation. “It’s a nasty thing to say.”