Before Supermarkets Ruled The Land

Tomorrow the government are expected to announce that there are no plans to
change the current English Sunday trading laws. These currently state that any
shop over 3,000 square feet can not open for more than six hours on the traditional
‘day of rest’, while allowing any smaller stores to open for as long as they
like.

If so, this decision will have been made despite the intense lobbying of retailers
such as Asda, Next, B&Q and IKEA. Their argument that changing the law would
give consumers more choice and create jobs has been countered by small businesses
who claim they might go out of business as a result.

The decision is a good one. Small businesses are vital for the economic and
social life of the country and need to be defended from corporate behemoths
such as Wal-Mart who are surely big enough already.

It has also caused some people to start crowing once again about the homogenisation
of British high streets – a topic very a la mode and favoured by the chattering
classes. Their argument runs along the lines that supermarkets and chain stores
are an evil empire that sell neutered ’soul-less’ produce. By flooding the market
with their stores, especially in out of town developments, and exploiting economies
of scale and the lobbying power of their vast wealth, they are responsible both
for the death of smaller more authentic local shops and for Britain’s high streets
all looking the same.

What annoys me intensely about this argument is that it is made by the very
people who originally abandoned their local shops back in (for arguments sake)
the early nineties in favour of the flood of then aspirational products like
extra virgin olive oil or sun dried tomatoes. They were frustrated by the parochialism,
blandness and lack of convenience afforded by their local stores. Having betrayed
their high street they now moan about the result, mythologizing ‘localness’
into a state of political, economic and cultural nirvana whereas 15-20 years
ago localness predominantly meant narrow-mindedness.

Those places that had access to culinary ‘luxuries’ such as focaccia at the
time were, and still are, affluent enough to be the exceptions that proved the
rule. Supermarkets have done a lot of good work in spreading half-decent, interesting
and new food around the entire country, not just in these pockets of cultural
and economic capital.

Supermarkets and other big chainstores do need to be kept in check, and the
line in the sand expected tomorrow is long overdue. But they are in essence
simple beasts – they respond only to money, which they have been over-fed by
the people currently in a self-righteous fluster. The fact that Tesco, the biggest
of the big, withdrew from the lobbying, due to concerns about adversely affecting
its image by doing so, shows that present concerns (and the money behind it)
are starting to be responded to.

Despite these moves in the ‘right’ direction it is now too late to turn the
clock back to the time before supermarkets and other chain stores ruled the
land. Judging from people’s current expectations of service and choice, I doubt
that many would actually want to if they could remember what it was like beforehand.