The Battle of Stokes Croft

Mar 23, 2010 20:50

Coming in to Bristol on the A38, from the north, you pass along Gloucester Road. Gloucester Road has been called one of Britain's last high streets. It's filled with independent shops - butchers, bakers, grocers, specialist food shops and more - pubs, restaurants and bars. Not that it doesn't also have chain-store representatives - tesco, somerfield, sainsbury's, spar, boots, Miss Millie's. Past the arches railway bridge, the composition starts to change a little; fewer food shops, more houses, a shiny new block of flats where the old arts centre (and long-time squat) was, Colston Girl's School. Just off the Ashley road junction is Picton street, which sometimes seems closed off every other week for fairs, and the vegan Café Kino.

Past here, the road turns into Stokes Croft. There are still decent places - the famous Pie Minister Pies and Rita's Takeaway, for example - but now there are many more vacant buildings, including the imposing Carriage Works. Two nearby night shelters make Stokes Croft home to Bristol's highest concentration of tramps, and the lowest incomes of any inner part of the city. Walking along Stokes Croft you are guaranteed at least one of the following: to have someone ask you for money; to see someone wander out into the road without any regard for cars; to see some people having a fight in the middle of the road. You'll also see what is probably the city's best selection of graffiti, with regularly redone murals on most of the vacant, boarded-up properties. Stokes Croft has been branded by some of its residents as "Bristol's Cultural Quarter", and after years of neglect by the city council (for example the failure to compulsorily purchase the carriage works) they've tried to make something of the area. Whether they are successful, or what their own particular vision is the right one is a matter for debate.

Stokes Croft comes to an end as you pass underneath the bulk of the 210something flats and hit St James Barton roundabout, with its underpasses and bear pit.

Showing their characteristic garrulousness, Tesco have decided to make a bid for the most graffitied supermarket in the country, by siting a store on Cheltenham Road. This seems to have driven Bristol Evening Post readers into paroxysms of anger, after the paper headlined an article 'The Battle of Stokes Croft', an extraordinary outpouring of anger over a difference of a hundred metres or so.

It doesn't take much to get Evening Post (like most local papers, owned by the Daily Mail General Trust) readers worked up, and this story had plenty. On one side, Tesco, herald of progress, purveyor of reasonably priced foods and consumables, honest contributor to the exchequer, answer to the locals' prayers for redevelopment. On the other, a bunch of unwashed, work-shy hippies and students sponging off the state and ignoring the interests of genuine Stokes Croft residents. (Note: none of the statements in the last two sentences has been confirmed true.)

Last week ten protesters who had occupied the building, or at least the roof, were removed by bailiffs. With the assistance of a cherry picker, the bailiffs circumvented the squatters' defensive measures, which included barricades and one person superglued to a tripod. The road was closed off by police for the whole afternoon, as a crowd estimated at 300 people gathered.

BBC news had what looks like a decent (short) report (watch the clip if you can). The Guardian opted for a guy trying to go around all 18 Tesco stores in Bristol in an hour (there are already four within about ten minutes walk in the centre of town). This article is mostly pointless, but it does gather a few opinions from Tesco shoppers, which are all basically "it's quick and it's cheap."

The comments on the Evening Post site are filled with the right-wing viewpoints, but still have some interest, particularly in the interplay between them and the few anti-tesco commenters. It's surprising, and somewhat disheartening, how little impact the arguments against supermarkets seem to have made on people. Supermarkets can still get away with, as in the statement quoted on the BBC, saying their stores will create jobs, when the evidence suggests they destroy jobs in other shops. You might think that is a positive sign of efficiency, but that's another matter. People seem to defend smaller, independent shops, without explaining why they're so good (if they really are better, why do people go to supermarkets instead?), or how supermarkets use underhand and anti-competitive tactics to beat them.

Barring some great surprise, this Tesco store is going to open. Given the location, it will probably do pretty well, even if a fair proportion of the local population despise it. Even if it doesn't do so well, the company has big enough pockets to subsidise it until the competition starts to die-off. We'll have to wait and see what this does to the area.

supermarkets, bristol, economics

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