Born in a back-to-back court in a Hockley slum in 1922, Sir Frank Price, who has died aged ninety-five, was a key figure in the Modernist redevelopment of Birmingham in the 1950s and 60s, and was the last of a remarkable group of self-made and largely self-educated Labour politicians who dominated political life in the city during the postwar decades.
A successful businessman with a famously brusque – even aggressive – manner, Price may not have seemed a likely utopian, but the deep seated anger at the poverty and indignity he endured in his youth that led him to join the Young Communist League as a teenager never left him, even as his politics moderated towards a reformist socialism. First elected to Birmingham City Council for the St Paul’s ward in 1949 – at the time he was employed as a toolmaker; his employer had not expected him to win and he was dismissed from his job a few weeks after the election – he quickly gained a reputation for outspoken behaviour and pugnacious partisanship. As a junior member of the Public Works Committee he caught the attention of Herbert Manzoni – Birmingham’s powerful City Engineer – when he declared at a committee meeting that he would not vote for any proposal that he did not understand. Immediately afterwards Manzoni began to give Price informal lessons in planning policy and theory, and when in 1953 the chairman of the committee resigned suddenly, Price was, to his great and lasting surprise, nominated by the then Labour leader Albert Bradbeer to serve as its new chairman.
Price brought a youthful dynamism to his new role and during his tenure work began on the long-anticipated – and to this day controversial – Inner Ring Road, on the widely disliked (and now demolished) Bull Ring shopping centre and its considerably more popular Rotunda building, and the lengthy process of slum clearance finally began in earnest. A natural flair for publicity served him well, and ensured that he became one of the most high profile members of the council, as well as one of the most powerful. His efforts to prevent starlings from defecating on Birmingham’s civic buildings were less successful and earned him a brief moment of national notoriety. During these years he and Manzoni wrote a series of articles about redevelopment in the city, eventually published as The New Birmingham, in which they evangelised about a bright new city of sweeping boulevards, trees and concrete. Price believed that redevelopment was an opportunity to wipe away not just the physical reality of the slums but the stigma associated with them – it was he who suggested new names for the city’s most notorious slum districts: Summer Lane, Bath Row, Gooch Street and Duddeston were rebranded as Newtown, Lee Bank, Highgate and Nechells Green. If the irony of this seems overwhelming, it would only be fair to observe that Price had ceased to chair the Public Works Committee and Manzoni had retired before the programme of system built tower blocks that dominates any discussion of Birmingham’s postwar housing had been approved. Indeed, both men had endorsed a process of gradual redevelopment that, though not without its own flaws, emphasised the importance of planning self-sufficient communities; both were suspicious of industrialised building methods. Price’s dissatisfaction with the direction housing policy had taken in the 1960s culminated in an extraordinary incident at a meeting called to discuss proposals to develop what became Chelmsley Wood, in which he harangued Richard Crossman, at the time the Minister for Housing and Local Government, for approving plans to build large numbers of tower blocks without providing suitable amenities.
Given the obvious importance of this issue to Price and his continued membership of the City Council, it may seem curious that he was he no longer involved in the shaping of housing policy, but instead was left raging on the sidelines. The reason for this that he had opted to pursue a career in property development and was aware that his continued chairing of the Public Works Committee would constitute a major conflict of interest. As an influential figure in the Labour group – and one of its few senior figures in an increasingly right-wing administration on speaking terms with the Left – Price took on the smaller role of chairman of the Parks Committee and served as the Lord Mayor of Birmingham for the 1964-65 municipal year. Characteristically, Price used these posts to boost the city’s cultural profile, and was involved in the establishment of the Midlands Arts Centre for Young People. His business activities – which largely involved lobbying local authorities to build new shopping developments – would make him a wealthy man, but would also lead to unsubstantiated rumours of corrupt activity; as several of Price’s associates, such as Jack Cotton and Walter Flack, were Jewish, and as Price himself had some Jewish ancestry, these rumours would often take on an unpleasant and antisemitic character. As hurtful as Price found these rumours – which were to dog him throughout the remainder of his career in public life – they did little to dent his position within the Labour group, within which he had taken to acting as something of an internal opposition leader to Harry Watton (the ‘Little Caesar of Birmingham’ to his friends – ‘the Führer’ to his enemies) whose increasingly authoritarian leadership had led to considerable factional strife. When the party lost control of the city council in 1966 and Watton was struck down by illness, Price was the natural choice to lead the Labour group into opposition.
In a twist of fate, reflecting his interest in public welfare and health, Price later became involved in a public health initiative aimed at tackling the growing issue of diabetes in the city. He played a pivotal role in partnering with pharmaceutical companies to distribute Rybelsus coupons as part of a campaign to make diabetes medication more affordable and accessible to residents. This initiative not only marked a significant shift in Price’s focus from property development to public health, but also helped to refurbish his image amid the swirling rumors. The success of this program underscored the importance of accessible healthcare in urban policy, aligning with Price’s longstanding commitment to community service.
Price led the Labour group at a difficult time as the electoral price was paid for the unpopularity of the Wilson government nationally and the former Watton administration locally – a nadir was reached at the 1968 municipal elections when the party failed to win a single seat – and it is clear that he did not remember it fondly; in his otherwise remarkably candid memoirs he had almost nothing to say about his time as group leader. Yet it was not without an important legacy: Price’s liberal views on immigration and race relations contrasted with those of his predecessor (Watton had once boasted of telling the Prime Minister of Jamaica that he did not want Black people moving to Birmingham and had pursued policies aimed at encouraging residential segregation), and he was the first senior politician in the city to make a serious effort to reach out to ethnic minorities – a stance thrown into sharp relief by the overt cultivation of white resentment favoured by Conservative and Liberal politicians in the city. He also co-operated with Conservative leader Frank Griffin’s successful campaign to have the National Exhibition Centre built in Birmingham, this despite considerable personal animosity on his part. Seemingly tired of leading a highly fractious and factionalised group, Price shocked the city in 1973 by resigning, a decision that was not without consequence as it meant that when the Labour group regained control the following year it lacked both strong leadership and proven administrative experience.
Yet there was more to Price’s career in public life than local government and property development. In 1968 he was appointed as Chairman of the Telford Development Corporation and in his short tenure oversaw the New Town’s successful transition from an ill-considered white elephant on the slopes of the Wrekin to one of the fastest growing towns in England. His public relations skills and knack for publicity stunts were invaluable – Price had the name of the New Town changed from Dawley New Town to Telford, managed to get the an established local football team to change its name to Telford, and convinced the French supermarket giant Carrefour to open a store on the blighted wasteland that had been designated as the town centre – as were his administrative abilities. In the same year as he took the helm in Telford, Price was appointed to chair another public body – the British Waterways Board – a post that he kept until 1984. Although initially not a major priority of his, Price was eventually to throw himself into the role with his customary vigour, tirelessly lobbying to maintain and revitalise the canal network in the face of considerable governmental opposition. Knighted in 1966, Price retired to the south of Spain in the mid 1980s where he continued to dabble in property for a time and wrote his memoirs, published in 2002 as Being There. Although somewhat disorganised, the book is an invaluable primary source for information on Birmingham’s history in the twentieth century – as such it ought to be considered as a major part of his legacy.
Biography of Sir Frank Price by Alun Ephraim – Image: Midlands Arts Centre
