WE ALL have to go some time. But few of us would appreciate the grave-diggers starting work while we’re still up and receiving visitors. Coming face to face with the reality of our eventual demise is never easy. Which is why my heart went out to the greengrocer’s I visited recently in Cheshire.
The shop in which I bought my mid-afternoon banana was a delight. It was a family concern with deep roots in the community and had a defined local personality, reflecting the owner’s pleasure in serving those among whom he lived. But that pleasure is likely to be short-lived. Directly opposite the corner where he has plied his trade for a generation, work has started on a Tesco Metro.
The success of Tesco is one of the phenomena of our age. The dominance of this supermarket chain reflects the hard work and vision of an immensely talented team relentlessly focused on giving the customer what he wants at the lowest possible cost. But Tesco’s success does not occur in a vacuum. It may stimulate demand for new products where none existed before. There certainly wasn’t much call for bresaola in the butcher’s my mum used to get the Sunday lunch from. But Tesco’s success in providing so many human wants under one roof has also meant the demise of many human-scale businesses within parking distance of its doors. The arrival of the Tesco Metro seems to lead, ineluctably, to the departure of the local butcher, baker and candlestick maker. For many of us, the charm of shopping in the local family store can’t match the convenience of buying everything the family needs, from olive ciabatta to Madagascar prawns, in one easy, Clubcard-point-earning, cashback-providing, open-all-hours transaction.
Of course, supermarkets have been eating away at the position of smaller outlets for years. And there have been lively controversies about the way in which out-of-town megastores have been sucking the shoppers, and the life, out of urban centres.
Lately, the reach of the supermarket chains has become even greater. With Tesco in the vanguard, the big chains have opened their smaller, boutique outlets in those areas where independent retailers still had a foothold. Sainsbury’s has its version of the Metro formula and, with its Simply Food outlets, the much- derided Marks & Spencer has shown that it retains the capacity to ride a lucrative trend when it sees one.
For most of us time-poor, work-life-imbalanced, knackered Noughties professionals, the provision of greater convenience in our lives is hugely welcome. But there is a sense in which Tesco has become too successful in giving us what we want. Market researchers are aware that the brand has begun to attract negatives. The connection between the arrival of Metro-style stores and the disappearance of independent retailers plays on the middle-class conscience. Even as we give quiet thanks for the ease with which we can acquire all the ingredients for an instant supper party in 20 minutes, no matter how late we have left the office, the conversation over the chicken in tarragon often turns to the increasingly impersonal and homogenised environment in which we all now live. We’re aware that supermarket shopping leaves a heavy ecological footprint.
Tesco and others know that the blame we might direct at the supermarket chains contains more than a hint of hypocrisy. The retailers, by definition, are responding to our wishes, not dictating them. But they still recognise the need to convince us that they are thinking about how to combine market efficiency with social responsibility. Readers of consumer opinion differ over whether supermarkets such as Tesco should simply be more robust about the benefits they bring, such as jobs, greater choice for the poor and development in areas that have previously been left behind, or whether the company needs to show that it is increasingly attentive to the needs of smaller and independent suppliers, the environment and the neighbourhood commercial concerns it can displace.
The questions that Tesco and its supermarket sisters are grappling with are not just the preserve of big business. They have an application to politics, too. On one level, supermarket success goes to the heart of a key public-policy question: how do you balance the vibrancy that these highly competitive players can bring with the need to respect the human, the local and the diverse? But on another level, the debate in which the supermarkets are engaged mirrors discussions within the two major political parties. New Labour may seem closer to Tesco in some ways, as the market leader of the moment, with the Conservatives perhaps closer to Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury’s, a classic brand still in a period of transition. But both political organisations are debating internally whether to make the case for what has been successful in the past with greater robustness, or whether to acknowledge that the model that has worked historically needs to be adjusted for a generation that is simultaneously more consumerist and more conscience-stricken.
I suspect that there’s no going back to the high-street environment in which I grew up. I believe that consumers increasingly want to make an ethical statement, as well as worrying about the bank statement when they buy. Considerations such as a company’s position on trade justice, environmental protection and loyalty to small suppliers will influence how it is seen. And the store that makes ethical consumption as convenient as the rest of the retail experience is on to a winner. Just as the future will belong to the political party which shows that it also understands how to make markets serve rather than trample over our social consciences.
Reviving good reads
I’M IMMENSELY grateful to the torrent of suggestions from you for neglected novels which deserve to be resurrected for holiday reading.
Clearly, there are hundreds of Times readers who share my exasperation with the 3-for-2 offers of the literary supermarkets and see the virtue in rediscovering gloriously unfashionable authors.
Following up on my enthusiasm for the superior Thirties crime writer Ngaio Marsh, a number of you championed Margery Allingham, creator of the classic Mayfair dilettante detective Albert Campion, and there was a heartening level of support for the old-school charms of clubland authors such as Sapper and Dornford Yates.
Given my desire to promote undervalued writers whose style, and terms of reference, were quintessentially English I was also pleased by the frequency with which two names recurred. There was a flurry of recommendations for Simon Raven, whose Alms for Oblivion sequence is a favourite, decadent, treat of mine. I was also delighted by the strong level of support for C. P. Snow, whose Strangers and Brothers series takes the mid-20th century Establishment apart as effectively as Trollope anatomised mid-19th century elites.
The good news for all of us who believe that fashion isn’t necessarily the best guide to fiction is that there is now a publishing house almost perfectly designed for our needs. A recently established concern called House of Stratus publishes Sapper, Dornford Yates, Simon Raven and C. P. Snow in modern paperback form, alongside other joys such as G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories and John Buchan’s historical works. Most good bookshops are cottoning on to the appeal of House of Stratus’s list, but should you have trouble tracking them down, try the London outlets Heywood Hill or John Sandoe, neither part of any chain.
Accidental pleasure
IT WAS only a matter of time. And this weekend I lived down to all my wife’s fears, and had my first driving accident. There were no injuries, apart from bruising to the ego. But there was one new pleasure in the whole experience. Dealing with the AA. Its man turned up exactly on time, did a repair job with minimal fuss, responded to my ignorance of all things automotive with perfect charm and made no attempt to pile on extra charges, blind me with detail, look pityingly at the damage or patronise me with technicalities. I was left wondering whether it might be possible for the AA to take over British Gas, NTL, Southern Electric, BT and Britain’s independent network of plumbers, and staff and run every financial-services call-centre.
JOIN THE DEBATE
Send your comments via www.timesonline.co.uk/debate
