There is some confusion in the use of the term "West Midlands", as the name is also used for the much smallerWest Midlands county andWest Midlands conurbation which is in the central belt of the Midlands and on the eastern side of the West Midlands Region. It is also still used by various organisations within that area, such asWest Midlands Police andWest Midlands Fire Service.
The West Midlands is considerably more densely populated than the East Midlands, as can be seen on this map of cities and towns throughout the Midlands.
The West Midlands region contains several urban areas with populations of 100,000 or more in 2021, which include:[5]
James Glaisher in 1862 took a record balloon flight withHenry Tracey Coxwell for theBAAS near Wolverhampton. They reached 29,000 feet (8,800 m) the composition of the Earth's atmosphere until then was not understood; the altitude records for the UK have not been exceeded since;Project Excelsior in the US in 1960 would later reach 20 miles (110,000 ft).
Philip Lawley of Burton upon Trent was first person to realise thatchemical damage to DNA caused cancer (at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London) in the early 1960s.
Thecast iron Iron Bridge atCoalbrookdale, opened in January 1781, was the first large-scale object made out of cast iron; but cast iron is not reliably strong due to impurities.Wrought iron, where the carbon is hammered to remove the carbon and impurities is much stronger; the first large-scale wrought iron bridge was theBritannia Bridge over theMenai Strait, only possible due to its innovativebox girder design byRobert Stephenson.
Boulton, Watt and Murdoch, a 1956 statue on Broad Street in Birmingham; theSI unit of power is the watt, most commonly found as the kW, a replacement for the imperial measurement ofhorsepower.
Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewsbury was the firstiron-framed building in the world in 1797.Thomas Bolton & Sons ofFroghall, Staffordshire, made the world's firsttransatlantic telegraph cable in 1857, having supplied asubmarine cable across the English Channel in 1850. On 10 July 1890, a trunk circuit telephone line was opened between London and Birmingham by theNational Telephone Company; for the first time this allowed phone calls between the London and the north.[8] The world's firstcoaxial cable was laid between London and Birmingham in 1936 to give 40 channels for telephone traffic.[9] and brought into use in 1938, later extended to Manchester in 1940.
Alexander Parkes invented the first man-made plastic (thermoplastic) in Birmingham in 1856. Princess Square, Wolverhampton, was the site of Britain's first traffic lights in 1927. Infrared cameras were developed at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern (with EMI Electronics) in 1967. The world's firstMaglev train operated atBirmingham Airport in 1983. The tallest freestanding structure in the region was the chimney ofIronbridge power station at 673 ft.John Baskerville of Birmingham, a former stone carver, largely invented fonts, ortypefaces, for printing.
Much of the UK's car industry would be centred in Coventry and Birmingham; most of this has now gone.Midland Motor Cylinder (part ofBirmid Industries) of Smethwick was the largest producer of automobilecylinder blocks in Europe.Fort Dunlop was Europe's largest tyre plant.Metro-Cammell in Birmingham made most of the 1970s and 1980sLondon Underground trains.MG Rover (a company of Rover) closed in 2005 (from 1885), TheRyton plant, which made thePeugeot 206, closed at the end of 2006, with production moving toTrnava in Slovakia, and some to a plant atKolín in theCzech Republic.Alfred Herbert of Coventry was the largestmachine-tool manufacturer in the UK for many decades; it was brought down in the 1970s by advancing technology overseas, and complacent strategic decisions of the management, finally closing in 1982; many Midlands manufacturing companies followed similar fates in the 1970s and 1980s.
Henry Wiggin & Co of Hereford developed the metalalloys necessary for other Midlands' (and beyond) automotive and aerospace companies –Inconel,Incoloy andNimonic. It was the lack ofvanadium forhigh-melting point alloys, caused by Royal Navy action, that prevented GermanMe 262 engines being serviceable; had German Second World War engineers had a greater supply of vanadium andmolybdenum, the engine life (around 12 hours maximum, from entering service in April 1944 to the end of the war) of theirjet engine would have increased much more, which would have been significant to the war's outcome.Bristol Siddeley developed the rocket engines forBlack Arrow at Ansty; in fact all of R-R's rocket engines were developed and built there at R-R's Industrial and Marine Gas Turbine Division; Britain's smaller rocket engines for missiles were built byBristol Aerojet in what is nowNorth Somerset. High Duty Alloys at Redditch constructed (forged) the compressor and turbine blades for Whittle's first engines, and many of the early jet engines; it madeConcorde's airframe from theHiduminium R.R.58aluminium alloy.
Maxaret, the world's firstABSbraking system, was invented in Coventry by Dunlop in the early 1950s for aircraft;John Boyd Dunlop was a Scottish vet who had first produced the first pneumatictyres in 1889.Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, grandson of Matthew Boulton, and born in the area, invented theaileron, an importantflight control surface in 1868, decades before the first actual flight.Triumph Engineering was a famous motorbike firm in Meriden. About a quarter of all British WWI planes were built in Coventry. TheJensen Interceptor FF was the first production four-wheel-drive car in the world, designed by MajorTony Rolt, and built at their factory in West Bromwich.
Population pyramid of the West Midlands by ethnicity in 2021UK born and foreign born population pyramid in the West Midlands in 2021
The West Midlands is the second most ethnically diverse region of the UK (London being the most diverse). This is in large part due to theWest Midlands conurbation, which is highly diverse. The ethnic makeup of the West Midlands as a whole as measured by the 2011 census was as follows:
For top-tier authorities in the West Midlands, Stoke-on-Trent has the highestteenage pregnancy rate. For council districts,Nuneaton and Bedworth in Warwickshire has the highest rate closely followed byTamworth. For top-tier authorities, Shropshire has the lowest rate, and for council districtsMalvern Hills has the lowest rate.
The region, from studies of multiple deprivation, shows similarities withYorkshire and the Humber, and is more deprived than the neighbouring East Midlands. From theIndices of deprivation 2007, it can be seen that, in common withNorthern England, the region has moreLower Area Super Output Areas in the 20% most deprived districts than in the 20% least deprived districts.[20] The region's most deprived council districts, in descending order, are Birmingham (10th highest in England), Sandwell (14th), Stoke-on-Trent (16th), Wolverhampton (28th), Walsall (45th), Coventry (61st), and Dudley (100th).[21]
The least deprived districts in 2007 (before Shropshire became a unitary authority in 2009) were Bromsgrove, South Staffordshire, Warwick, Wychavon, and Lichfield. At county level, the least deprived areas, in descending order, were Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Solihull, Staffordshire, and Shropshire.
In March 2011 the region had the second highest overallunemployment claimant count in England at 4.7%, second toNorth East England. The highest in the region was Wolverhampton at 7.7%, the joint second highest (with Manchester) unemployment rate in England. Next is Sandwell with 7.1%, Birmingham with 7.0%, and Walsall with 6.4%. The lowest rate in the region is the district ofStratford-on-Avon, with 1.6% – one of the lowest unemployment rates in England.[22]
The official representative body of the region is theWest Midlands Leaders Board which has limited administrative functions such as regional planning and economic development. The board is not an elected body, but is made up of members appointed from local councils across the region and is known as aquango. It is based onEdward Street in Birmingham, near theNational Indoor Arena. From March 2010, the funding decisions at regional level were taken over byAdvantage West Midlands, theRegional Development Agency.
In the2015 general election, the Conservatives gained the largest share of the region by popular vote and took control of the number of seats, with 42% of the region's electorate voting Conservative, 33% Labour, 16% UKIP, 6% Liberal Democrat and 3% Green. The Conservatives gained 2 seats with virtually no swing from Labour to Conservative.[23]
Although having a slightly smaller percentage of the vote than the neighbouringEast Midlands, the geographic area of the West Midlands is more Conservative, due to Labour's vote now consigned to the urban areas of Birmingham, Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent. The number of seats is more favoured towards Labour than the geographic spread, with 35 Conservative seats and 24 Labour. All of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire is now Conservative.
The West Midlands' population accounts for almost 11% of England's overall population. 49.36% of the region's population resides in the West Midlands county, 20.17% in Staffordshire, 10.49% in Worcestershire, 9.91% in Warwickshire, 8.56% in Shropshire, and 3.37% in Herefordshire.
Selective schools are in low numbers as follows: Birmingham (8), Walsall (2), Wolverhampton (1), Warwickshire (6), Stoke-on-Trent (1), and Telford and Wrekin (2). The highest proportion per head therefore is Warwickshire (its population is between 550,000 and 600,000 people). The other counties and metropolitan boroughs have none, their public education systems are comprehensive in intake. The grammar and independent schools tend to produce pass-rate examination results among the top twenty ranked regionally. Many pupils compete for entrance examinations to attend such long-establishedGrammar Schools and most have significant parent sponsorship. In 2016 two of the top ten such schools nationally were in Warwickshire, where in theCV37 postal district prices were 34% higher than the county as a whole.[31]
AtGCSE based on % of entrants' pass rates, the best performing local government area in 2010 wasSolihull, closely followed by Warwickshire and Shropshire. Dudley, Herefordshire, Telford and Wrekin, Birmingham and Staffordshire (in descending order) are above the English average, at which rate, is approximately Worcestershire. The area consistently having fewest passes isSandwell, followed by Stoke-on-Trent. Struggling pupils in Wolverhampton and Walsall also attain fewer passes than the English average in most GCSE years, sometimes by a very narrow margin. For metropolitan boroughs, Solihull then Dudley perform best. Dudley is the best metropolitan borough at A-level passes and has a consistent post-2000 history of being better than Solihull.[citation needed]
According toThe Guardian, schools have beenoff-rolling pupils.[32] Pupils likely to perform poorly in examinations are expelled before the examinations to improve the school performance in league tables. Expelled pupils then disproportionately get involved in gangs and in crime. Knife crime in the West Midlands is the highest outside London.[33]
In 2010, regionally in persistenttruancy at secondary school, Sandwell had the highest rate at 6.9%;Bromsgrove had the lowest at 2.3%.[34][needs update]
The University of Birmingham is the main university in the region[37] and has the most funding. It has a large research grant, as does the University of Warwick, which is the next largest in terms of funding. Birmingham and Warwick are members of theRussell Group of public research universities. Keele and Aston have a moderate research grant, but none of the other universities do. Keele, although having the largest campus in the UK (by area), is one of the smallest universities in the region. There are medical schools atWarwick,Keele andBirmingham. Birmingham and Warwick receive more than twice as much total income than any other university in the region – around £400 million each.
Around 45% of students are from the region, and 35% from other parts of the UK, while 20% are from overseas. The region attracts students fromSouth East England owing to good access via theM40 and theWest Coast Main Line, but there is a good mix from other regions too, except the North East (especially) and Yorkshire. Students native to the West Midlands are most likely to study in the region (40%), then theEast Midlands (12%), theNorth West (11%), and then Yorkshire (9%). Very few go to theEast of England or theNorth East. The region has a net export of university students to other regions.
At time of graduation in 2010 almost 60% of graduates remained in the West Midlands, with 10% going to London, 7% to the South-East, and around 5% to the East Midlands. Very few go to Yorkshire, the North-East, or even (neighbouring) Wales.
The longest elevated road viaduct in the UK is the 3 miles (4,779 m) section from Gravelly Hill to Castle Bromwich on the M6, opened on 24 May 1972; the 3.5 miles (5.6 km)Bromford Viaduct is the longest viaduct in the UK. The section of the A45 in Coventry fromWillenhall to Allesley in 1939 was one of the UK's first ever large planned road schemes; road schemes on that scale had not been previously built, with few large road schemes outside of London, or were piecemeal.
Princes Square in Wolverhampton had Britain's first automatic traffic lights on 5 November 1927.[citation needed] On 13 January 2012, 34-year-old Ben Westwood of Wednesfield, was caught by the police, when speeding at 180 mph, in anAudi RS5 with aLamborghini engine, from Wolverhampton up to Stafford on the M6, and back again. He was travelling so fast that he was outpacing theCentral Counties Air Operations UnitEurocopter helicopter. He and the vehicle had been in fifteensmash and grab raids and he was jailed for nine years atWolverhampton Crown Court in August 2012.[38]
As part of the transport planning system, the Regional Assembly is under statutory requirement to produce aregional transport strategy (RTS) to provide long term planning for transport in the region. This involves region-wide transport schemes such as those carried out byHighways England andNetwork Rail.[39]
TheTough Guy Competition, now a widespread sport competition in the US, began in 1987 on a farm atPerton in Staffordshire. The main British athletics championships are held in Birmingham in late June. TheOlympic Movement started atMuch Wenlock, and also to the east of region, whereBaron de Coubertin formulated his ideas for sport and the Olympics atRugby School in 1883, with the headmasterThomas Arnold, whose son would be the famous poetMatthew Arnold and whose great-grandson would beAldous Huxley.
Britain's first tennis club was founded in 1872 inLeamington Spa. The modern rules of lawn tennis were developed in 1874 by Leamington Tennis Club. Tennis was pioneered in Edgbaston in 1859, andEdgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society also claims to be the oldest tennis club in the world, where tennis was invented by MajorHarry Gem and the SpaniardAugurio Perera.[citation needed]
^Rootes, Chris (1995)."Britain: Greens in a Cold Climate". The Green Challenge: The Development of Green Parties in Europe. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 66–90.
^McCulloch, Alistair (1992)."The Green Party in England and Wales: Structure and Development: The Early Years". Environmental Politics 1 (3). pp. 418–436.
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Donnelly, Tom, Jason Begley, and Clive Collis. "The West Midlands automotive industry: the road downhill."Business History 59.1 (2017): 56–74online.
Finberg, H.P.R.The early charters of the West Midlands (Leicester University Press, 1972).
Gelling, Margaret.The West Midlands in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester UP, 1992).
Hilton, R. H.A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (1987)online review
Jones, Peter M.Industrial Enlightenment: Science, technology and culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (2017)online.
Money, John.Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester University Press, 1977).
Money, John. "Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1793: Politics and Regional Identity in the English Provinces in the Later Eighteenth Century."Midland History 1.1 (1971): 1–19.
Rowlands, Marie B.The West Midlands from AD 1000 (3 vol, Longman, 1987).
Somerset, Alan. "New Historicism: Old History Writ Large? Carnival, Festivity and Popular Culture in the West Midlands."Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 5 (1991): 245–255.online
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