The Day Birmingham City Council Deployed the State Against the Bin Workers

This is what happens when a local authority brings a bazooka to a bin fight, then pauses to check whether the bazooka complies with human rights law.

Just leaked into the hands of GRIT: a formal letter, dated 16 January 2026, marked OFFICIAL, sent by a cabinet member of Birmingham City Council to a senior police commander, asking what action might be taken to address union-backed bin workers whose protests were preventing refuse lorries from leaving council depots.

That sentence alone tells you almost everything you need to know.

This is the Birmingham bin strike.

This is a council under pressure.

And this is how institutional power behaves when it becomes uncomfortable.

Enter the letter

The document arrives on council letterhead, complete with crest, portrait, and a tone of earnest gravity. It is addressed not to a union, not to a mediator, and not to an employment tribunal, but to an Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police.

Its subject is straightforward enough: protests outside waste depots are disrupting rubbish collection across the city.

Its framing, however, suggests something closer to a matter of civic stability.

Lost productivity is cited.

Public expectation is invoked.

Weekly collection guarantees are lamented.

Supreme Court case law makes an appearance.

All of this because refuse vehicles are struggling to leave depots on time.

Bringing a bazooka to a bin fight

Industrial action is meant to disrupt. That is not a flaw, it is the point.

What gives this episode its distinctly Birmingham flavour is the response. Faced with low-paid bin workers standing outside depots, the council does not merely escalate. It escalates ceremonially.

A cabinet member writes formally.

A Supreme Court ruling is cited.

Senior police leadership is engaged.

This is what happens when a local authority brings a bazooka to a bin fight, then pauses to check whether the bazooka complies with human rights law.

The helpful lesson in protest law

The letter takes care to reference the Ziegler ruling, helpfully reminding the police that protest law requires balancing competing rights and that each case must be assessed on its own facts.

All correct.

Having established that there is no blanket power to intervene and that proportionality is paramount, the letter then pivots and asks what action can be taken to ensure protesters are “moved on quickly”.

This is where the document stops being analysis and becomes theatre.

It is not that the law is misunderstood. It is that the conclusion appears to have been drafted before the legal test was acknowledged.

Spare a thought for the Assistant Chief Constable

Somewhere in police headquarters, an Assistant Chief Constable is handed a stamped, headed letter marked OFFICIAL, from a cabinet councillor.

They read it carefully.

They note the legal references.

They note the union involvement.

They note the timing.

And then, with the quiet professionalism of someone who has handled politically awkward correspondence before, they do the sensible thing.

They pass it to Legal Services.

Not because the issue is dramatic, but because it is sensitive. Not because it is urgent, but because it is exposed. This is not panic. It is institutional self-preservation.

The police did not create this dispute, cannot resolve it, and are unlikely to volunteer themselves as the testing ground for someone else’s frustration.

When Labour escalates against labour

There is an irony here that does not need exaggeration.

A Labour-run council, facing union-backed industrial action by bin workers, responds not first with resolution but with escalation. Not across a table, but across institutions.

This is not ideology. It is managerial reflex.

When organisations feel pressed, they escalate vertically. When escalation fails, they document the escalation.

Preferably on official stationery.

The infinite wallet and the empty pocket

The letter never acknowledges the imbalance it represents.

The council has:

• Legal teams

• External advisers

• The ability to absorb litigation costs

• Time, salaries, and institutional continuity

The workers have:

• Their wages

• Their presence

• Their physical leverage

• And the knowledge that without disruption, they are invisible

Writing to the police does not level that imbalance. It makes it legible.

Timing is not a footnote

This correspondence lands during a period of heightened scrutiny of senior policing judgement and leadership decision-making.

In such an environment, no senior officer is eager to inherit a politically charged dispute involving organised labour, legal representation, and a document already marked OFFICIAL.

If the intention was to prompt swift enforcement, the likely effect is caution, distance, and meticulous process.

Which is to say, the opposite.

What this letter actually achieves

It does not:

• End the strike

• Remove the protesters

• Restore bin collections

What it does achieve is quieter.

It records institutional frustration.

It externalises responsibility.

It creates a paper trail.

And in doing so, it offers an unguarded glimpse into how power reacts when challenged by people with very little of it.

Conclusion: how not to read the room

This is not a scandal. It is a snapshot.

A city council confronted by bin workers on strike reaches for case law and senior policing correspondence.

A lawyer forgets that law is not a performance.

A police officer quietly files a problem they did not create.

And somewhere in Birmingham, the bins remain uncollected, while a letter sits in a file marked OFFICIAL, explaining far more than its author intended.

Editor’s Note

We have not named the councillor who wrote the letter or the senior police officer who received it.

The document is official, dated, and clear in its intent. Readers interested in identities can draw their own conclusions. Our focus here is not on personalities, but on what the letter reveals about how power is exercised when it becomes uncomfortable.

The police officer is not accused of wrongdoing and does not need to be part of the spectacle.