ABSTRACT
To the Conservative government, considering the location of new initiatives to make up the next phase of inner city policy that had opened in 1986, it must have been clear immediately that Birmingham had to be included. The city had experienced all the earlier forms of special programme, including community development projects, inner area studies, partnership committees and now city action teams. Unlike some other major cities-notoriously, Liverpool-these earlier initiatives had mostly taken root and delivered some useful outcomes. Various explanations have been offered for this; the relative lack of adversarial heat in local politics, even after the rift between local and central government had opened in the early 1980s; or the long-established willingness of the city authorities to work in close collaboration with local industry under administrations of all political colours, stretching back to the last century and Joseph Chamberlain’s version of municipal socialism. But perhaps most basic of all, Birmingham had to be included because no credible inner cities programme of action could conceivably have omitted the city which would be the test case of an employment-led regeneration policy.
