Dear readers — for the past 825 years, every Shrove Tuesday, the good people of Atherstone beat each other up over a ball. It’s a simple game, with only one real rule: whoever has the ball after two hours is the winner. Injuries are par for the course, as are knocks on the door from police officers in the days after when a few eager Atherstonians take things a little too far. Who better to send along then than our very own Samuel McIlhagga, who put his steel-toed boots on especially. Thanks also to Christian Cross for the beautifully moody black-and-white photos of small-town violence. Enjoy!
Brum in Brief
✂️ The second of two rounds of drastic cuts has been voted through at Birmingham City Council since it announced effective bankruptcy in 2023. At a meeting on Tuesday, councillors confirmed £148m will be severed from the budget. Much of the pain will be felt in adult and children's social care, which will lose a combined £82m. Four of nine adult day centres will close, support for young adults leaving care will be cut, community libraries shuttered and opening hours reduced. The material impact on the day-to-day lives of people across the city will be huge. Yesterday morning, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Council House on Victoria Square, calling for the cuts to be cancelled. As the meeting got going, a voice shouted from the public gallery “Give us our money back, you!” before about 15 striking bin workers entered the audience. One tried to address the chamber during tributes to the late former councillor Dennis Minnis but was silenced by the Deputy Lord Mayor Chaman Lal. In his speech, council leader John Cotton apologised for the impact of the last two years on residents but described the redesign of services as an “opportunity” to build better services and create more homes, jobs, and better transport links for everyone in the city. This drew short shrift from Conservative leader Robert Alden, who called Labour’s plans a “double whammy” of higher taxes and fewer services, and said their financial plan lacked “credibility”.
⛔ Today, Labour councillors have voted down an attempt by three opposition parties and two of their own members to reverse cuts to libraries. Conservative Councillor Timothy Huxtable said: “Their plans mean that so many community activities that take place in our libraries – the beating heart of our communities – will no longer have a home.”
🐂 The Dispatch has discovered that Birmingham’s lead commissioner may have been asked to leave his previous role because of allegations of bullying. Max ‘the axe’ Caller was made lead commissioner of Slough Borough Council in 2021 but, according to a statement released at the time, in 2023 he decided to step back from public life. Three well-placed sources, including two Slough Borough councillors of different political parties, have told us the real reason Caller left the authority was because senior officers complained about his bullying behaviour. One Slough Labour councillor told us that while they got on with Caller “ok”, he was “impatient with the speed at which officers were dealing with directions.” They added: “He’s a bull in a china shop; thinks he knows everything.” Another councillor tells us Caller was “nudged” out the door. Caller meanwhile, is adamant this isn’t the case, telling The Dispatch “it is totally incorrect to say that I was asked to leave Slough by either the [government] Department or the Council.”
🎞️ The Electric Cinema on Station Street, which closed suddenly to public outcry early last year, will not be given listed status, it has been announced. Campaigners had hoped the iconic picture house would be awarded a listing by the conservation body Historic England to protect the building from potential redevelopment or demolition. The Dispatch understands that Historic England concluded the 115-year-old building (which has undergone many modifications and the erosion of historic elements) lacks enough architectural significance to qualify for listing. Some, like Birmingham Liberal Democrat leader Roger Harmer, have blamed a “lack of vision in this city for arts, culture and heritage” while others say there is still hope for the Electric. The director of Flatpack Film Festival, Ian Francis, is leading an independent feasibility study to determine the best route to keeping a cinema on the site. He told us the lack of listing “isn’t necessarily terrible news” as without those restrictions, there are potentially more options when thinking about what the cinema might become. In a blog post published on Flatpack’s website, he gives a preview of what the study has found so far, from over a thousand responses to a recent public survey: that people want to see a film venue that makes meaningful space for community development “at a time when filmgoing is increasingly perceived as a luxury” while being sustainable for many years to come. He adds that among the developers, the local authority and the combined authority, there is an appetite to make the most out of “unique” Station Street as a cultural hub and to give it a “new lease of life”. The next phase of the study will delve into how best this can be achieved.
On Shrove Tuesday in Atherstone: ‘bollocks is all that matters’
It’s one of the first days of Spring. The sun is shining. I look up — there are masses of limbs, blood and sweat, crowds in chaotic movement, grimaces and profanities. A huge leather ball strikes the ground, pints spill, cigarette smoke fills the air. A man emerges from the crowd with several streaks of blood running across his face — he looks like a boxer in the final round or that photo of Terry Butcher in an England shirt. Usually, this scene would be cause for concern in an English market town early on a Tuesday afternoon. But in Atherstone, on Shrove Tuesday, it’s par for the course.
It’s been almost 100 years since the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term ‘carnivalesque’, describing the riotous, topsy-turvy, feasting, fighting, dancing and music-making accompanying a change in the seasons in medieval Europe. Importantly, for Bakhtin, a truly ‘carnivalesque’ event had to feature some sort of absurd inversion of authority, frenetic energy and breaking of social rules.
I was lucky enough to get a taste of carnivalesque growing up. First in Lewes, where men dressed as samurai, medieval knights and nuns threw firecrackers in my direction (probably aiming to maim) on Bonfire Night. Then, at university in Scotland, students would run, stark naked and blind drunk, into the freezing North Sea on the 1st of May. Both events heralded the changing of seasons and upheaval in social relations: out with the nosy council and strict policemen, in with rule-breaking, petty violence and lots, and lots, of drinking.
Arguably the most carnivalesque (as Bakhtin would have imagined it) event in the British calendar is in a small West Midlands market town tucked between Tamworth and Nuneaton. Here, in Atherstone, amidst an elegant high street of red brick Georgian and Victorian shop frontages and hidden alleyway pubs, a violent purge of winter’s gloom is played out over two hours, with a huge leather football, innumerable pints, and thousands of sweaty men.
This is the, increasingly famous, Atherstone Ball Game — a local version of Shrovetide football. The rules of the game are simple: you have two hours from 3 pm to 5 pm to play the game, form teams as you will, you can use your hands or your feet, violence is fine (just don’t kill anyone and don’t use weapons), let the kids have a go, and whoever has the ball when the bell rings is the winner. After last year’s match, the police released images of six men they wanted to speak to — that’s probably a good year.
