Turning the tables on tragedy
Since her daughter died in the crossfire of a gangland shooting, Beverley Thomas has dedicated her life to addressing the social conditions that give rise to violent crime. She tells Lydia Stockdale her story
Did that interview go OK?’ asks Beverley Thomas a few times as she takes us on a tour of Newtown, an inner-city area to the north of Birmingham city centre.
We’ve already sat down to discuss her role on the board of the Birmingham and Sandwell market renewal pathfinder Urban Living, and now we’re out on the streets in the area she’s lived in for more than 20 years, and where she raised her four children.
As we step outside community arts centre The Drum, the venue for the formal part of our meeting, Ms Thomas opens up, talking freely about everything around us. Gone are her concerns about saying the right things in the right way.
A tragic event led to Ms Thomas’s involvement, first directly within her community, and now on a more strategic level as a board member of Urban Living. The state-backed body is charged with renewing neighbourhoods, such as her own, that are blighted by low-demand housing.
At the beginning of January 2003, her 18-year-old daughter Charlene Ellis was caught in the crossfire of a gang-related drive-by shooting outside a new year’s eve party.
The killing took place in Aston, just up the road from where we are now. Ms Ellis and her friend Letisha Shakespeare, 17, both in the wrong place at the wrong time, died at the scene.
Ms Thomas’s other daughter, Ms Ellis’s twin sister Sophie was also injured.
Positive response
Quite how someone pulls themselves together after such a terrible thing happens to innocent members of their family is beyond comprehension. But instead of being dragged down by bitterness and hate, Ms Thomas and Ms Shakespeare’s mother, Marcia Shakespeare, have concentrated on doing something positive in their daughters’ memory.
In the aftermath of the tragedy they quickly established the Letisha and Charlene Educational Awards, which offer a year’s support to people in north west Birmingham of 16 or over who need financial help to continue their education. ‘It’s important to have a living memorial through education, because that’s what they were in,’ explains Ms Thomas.
Later, in 2008, the mothers founded victim support charity the New Year Shooting Memorial Trust. One of the first things it did was produce a booklet for parents outlining the practical steps they can take if they suspect their child is involved in gang culture.
Ms Thomas first got to know about Urban Living, funded by the Homes and Communities Agency, through its various community events. A couple of years ago the pathfinder financed a website for the Letisha and Charlene Educational Awards.
Then Sophia Coker, community cohesion and engagement executive at Urban Living, approached Ms Thomas about taking on a formal role with the organisation. In April this year she took her seat as one of five resident members on the board.
‘Beverley has an in-depth knowledge of the area. She’s aware of the issues and she’s very outspoken within the community. She’s the best person to be on the board ,’ says Ms Coker.
A matter of weeks into her new position, the language of urban regeneration is new to Ms Thomas. ‘Have I missed anything out?’ she double-checks with Tess Randles, Urban Living spokesperson, during our sit-down meeting. ‘I’ve only been on the board a couple of months, so it’s early days for me,’ she explains.
On her own territory, however, Ms Thomas needs no such reassurance. As we walk from one Urban Living project to the next (see box overleaf: New chapter for Newtown?), she gives personal opinions about former home secretary Jacqui Smith. She’s met the former Labour MP, who lost her seat in last month’s election, several times and says she showed genuine interest. ‘She remembers the things you’ve said,’ says Ms Thomas.
In-depth knowledge
Hearing the views of people who speak as they find, unencumbered by politics and bureaucracy, is exactly why resident board members are so important, according to Urban Living chair, Peter Latchford. Having so far attended just one board meeting, Ms Thomas may not have fully grasped housing and regeneration jargon, but she knows her own area and the people living there better than anyone.
‘The funds we have are not a gift from above, they’re public money. Really transforming disadvantaged areas depends on the extent to which people control their own lives,’ says Mr Latchford. ‘What is the point of having technically literate people who are able to conduct bureaucratic processes [making decisions] if they are failing to communicate with people on the ground?’
Ms Thomas, who refuses to give her age, is nobody’s fool. Her first job as a board member was to help assign £175,000 of funding for community cohesion projects. In the past, public money went to groups that worked in isolation. ‘There was no outcome, no result,’ reckons Ms Thomas. This time things needed to be different.
One project she particularly liked was in Smethwick, part of Sandwell. It’s a group that brings together newcomers to the area and supports those who don’t know their rights and could fall prey to bad landlords. ‘I wanted the money to go to activities that would build a stronger community and break down the barriers between different groups,’ she explains. ‘I had to make sure that it wasn’t going to be just one-off. It had to be sustainable.’
As an Urban Living board member, Ms Thomas’s ‘main priority’ is to give a voice to her own local community. ‘I want to be there to represent the Newtown community,’ she says. ‘I want to see that the regeneration of Newtown benefits residents here.’
Before her daughter’s death, Ms Thomas did not have a public profile. She worked for a local recruitment agency and had ‘an ordinary life’. ‘I was just an ordinary mum,’ she says.
‘To tell you the truth, I knew nothing about gangs until the incident happened,’ she continues. ‘But it did happen and I was forced to understand what was going on.’
Understanding how such a tragedy could occur was crucial. ‘Because of what happened, you learn about all the different issues that can cause the problems that lead people to turn to crime, and you just try to help the best way you can, really.’
Postcode lottery
Because of the media attention Ms Thomas and Ms Shakespeare received after the shooting, ‘[local] people know who we are,’ she says. ‘People come to me with their own problems. There have been other shootings, and people look for us to visit others. I’m sort of like a role model - I have understanding when it does happen.’
Pathfinder Urban Living takes a ‘total place’ approach to regeneration. It works across two local authority areas - Birmingham and Sandwell - and looks beyond the postcodes assigned by the Royal Mail.
But around Newtown (B19) and Handsworth (B20), your postcode can dictate which gang you belong to, and subsequently, what you might die for. ‘Postcodes divide the gangs,’ explains Ms Thomas, quickly adding that she doesn’t want to misrepresent the scale of gang violence. ‘It’s quietened down quite a lot,’ she says.
Job creation is important in deterring young people from becoming involved in gang culture, believes Ms Thomas. And that means job opportunities for people of all ages, not just young people. ‘Their parents are their role models,’ she says.
‘I know a lot of parents who want to see good come out of their children, but living in an area like this, it’s kind of hard because of different influences,’ she adds. Urban Living has the creation of jobs and training opportunities written into its contracts with partners in the area, and so far has created 380 jobs across its whole patch.
Finding the good in people
Ms Thomas, who was a Midland Heart housing association tenant before moving into her mother’s owner-occupied property, says physical improvements are also important. ‘If you live in an area and it’s looking depressing, people feel depressed. Living in a good place gives people a lifted spirit, a bit more motivation, making it somewhere you want to live, rather than not want to live,’ she says. Attracting ‘new people with different backgrounds and aspirations’ into Newtown is crucial, as it creates ‘a sense of moving rather than standstill’, she adds.
Urban Living’s Mr Latchford believes that you can’t address social problems by ‘fixing structures’ alone. The pathfinder has budgeted to invest £1.3 million in community cohesion between 2008/11. Despite uncertainty about how public sector spending cuts will affect this, projects are going ahead as planned for the time being. ‘We’re two months into the current financial year and our programme is fully developed and being delivered,’ says chief executive Adnan Saif.
‘Community cohesion is about going out there with an open heart, finding the good in other people - and that’s what Beverley has done,’ concludes Mr Latchford. ‘We are trying to follow her lead as an organisation.’
‘Wait there, I’ve got to get this right,’ says Ms Thomas as she pauses to consider how to phrase an answer. But her caution is unfounded. When it comes to what’s right for Newtown, Ms Thomas, it seems, is invariably right.
A new chapter for Newtown?
When The Sun newspaper ran a series of articles on what it described as ‘our fractured society’ last autumn, it used Newtown as one of its examples of ‘Broken Britain’. ‘People are so poor they steal to eat,’ read the headline.
The abandoned housing with smashed windows, emptied and awaiting demolition using Urban Living funds, makes Newtown look like an area slipping further into decline. But these empty homes (pictured left) will soon be a thing of the past. In total, £80 million is being invested in the area by Urban Living, Birmingham Council, the Homes and Communities Agency and housing association Midland Heart. The pathfinder is contributing £16.9 million - 21 per cent of the total cost.
Exactly how these plans will be affected by cuts in public spending is not yet known. ‘How the cuts might effect us in Birmingham and Sandwell is not yet clear, but we are working with our partners and the HCA to minimise any potential adverse impact,’ says Adnan Saif, chief executive of Urban Living.
Like the other eight pathfinders across the midlands and north England, Urban Living was set up and funded by the Communities and Local Government department in 2002. It is a 15-year regeneration programme which aims to improve neighbourhoods where problems of low-demand housing are most acute.
The overarching aim is to make Newtown and its neighbouring areas a place where people want to live.
Judging by The Sun’s report, this is going to be difficult. It quotes resident James Maguire, who says: ‘There’s an invisible border around Newtown. Working families don’t want to live here, so the unemployed, anti-social kids and immigrants are housed here.’
Newtown was built in the late 1960s after the clearance of back-to-back slums. It falls under the constituency of Ladywood, which also encompasses Aston and Nechells along with Birmingham city centre, the skyline of which acts as a backdrop to the area.
The BBC’s economy tracker shows that Ladywood has the highest unemployment rate in the country. In April this year, 11.3 per cent of its population was unemployed. The national unemployment rate, recorded by the Office for National Statistics, stands at 8 per cent.
David Taylor, head of housing at Midland Heart, which manages 600 homes in Newtown, says that the development of Crocodile Works will be ‘a big catalyst for changing the perceptions of Newtown’. This £25 million, 168-home residential building is being developed by Midland Heart, Birmingham Council, the HCA, Urban Living and Midlands-based contractor and developer William Davis.
The first tenants will move in early next year, and the housing association is working with Birmingham Council to implement a lettings plan which will lead to ‘a good mix of people coming in, who add to the Newtown Community in a positive way and will not exacerbate issues that exist,’ says Mr Taylor.
Fifty per cent of the first tenants will either work or be enrolled on employment initiatives, training or education. Lettings will also favour people ‘who have a local connection with Newtown and a commitment to it’.
With its mix of flats and houses with housing association rents and intermediate rents, and those for affordable homeownership, it is hoped that Crocodile Works will help ‘stabilise the community’, explains Mr Taylor.
‘It’s about challenging the perceptions of the area,’ he says. People who live there like it - they’re settled and happy.’
‘Newtown is not a bad area to live in at all - it has a very strong community,’ agrees Beverley Thomas.
Now Newtown seems to have reached a positive turning point, it would be hard to see pressures on public sector spending halt further investment.
Now it’s being regenerated, there’s a massive plus for the area,’ she says.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment