Birmingham’s UB40 band members back striking bin workers

Members of reggae group UB40 – Birmingham’s working class band that went on to become global superstars – have spoken out in support of the city’s striking bin workers.

Robin Campbell and Jimmy Brown told Ed James on BBC WM workers should be paid what they deserved.

The musicians, from the band that became aligned with left-wing ideals and was named after the government’s unemployment benefit form, said they were proud of their home city, even after negative headlines over its stacked-up bin bags in recent weeks.

Birmingham City Council is in a pay dispute with the union, Unite, and said it had made a fair offer – but UB40 star Campbell said the authority had not.

“Being a binman is a dirty job but someone has to do it,” he said, “and I think they should get paid whatever they’re worth.”

He said: “Isn’t that what everybody says when they’re negotiating a wage – we’ve made a fair offer? They haven’t, have they?”

Campbell said: “People need to get behind their unions. It’s how they got a fair living in the first place, and it’s how they’re going to get a fair living in the future.

“Support your union, stand up for your rights, otherwise you get trampled on.”

Brown, meanwhile, claimed the working class wage had “flatlined” since the 1970s. He said: “People with unions get paid better wages, shock, horror. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

Back in the 1970s, when the band was formed, the group became synonymous with social justice campaigns.

The UB40 website describes how their political convictions were cemented in place while attending marches protesting against the National Front and rallies organised by Rock Against Racism.

Campbell said they had come from a section of society that had its living standards raised to “reasonable” by the strength of unions, as Brown recalled how his father had worked at BSA (Birmingham Small Arms Company), which made firearms, bicycles and motorcycles, at its Small Heath factory.

He said: “He managed to raise three kids, buy his own house, run a car, have a holiday every year. We were not deprived and that was on one factory wage.”

Campbell added: “There was a time when normal working people could do that. Isn’t that amazing that that was actually possible a few decades ago? Now it isn’t.”

After discussions about the effect of the bin strike on Birmingham’s reputation, both band members agreed they could “never” be embarrassed by the city.

Brown described how they grew up in an inner city 1960s “multicultural melting pot”, adding: “On your doorstep, you could see the four corners of the world go by, and that was a better education than you could possibly have from any school.”

He described it as having been a privilege to have grown up in Birmingham and said that’s what the city gave people, a multicultural environment that expanded everybody’s minds.

“Anybody from Birmingham should count themselves privileged,” he said.

Campbell described it as “absolutely what produced UB40”.

He said: “We couldn’t exist as we are now, without having come from Birmingham.

“It produced us culturally, musically. In every way we’re a product of Birmingham. Why wouldn’t we be proud of that?”