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Keep Louth Special
Why supermarkets are
yesterday’s vision
“Louth
should move with the times.” That is what those
who want to swamp the town with giant new
supermarkets often tell us. It is a curious
idea, isn’t it? That somehow huge soulless
hangars full of pre-packaged goods trucked
hundreds of miles and sometimes flown thousands
of miles represent some lofty idea of progress.
In what sense it is progress for Louth when you
pick over shelves of identical tasteless carrots
and shrink-wrapped leeks without a speck of
soil, and can’t find a single item grown here,
in this most agricultural of British counties?
Those who subscribe to that odd idea of progress
would if residents of Venice have demanded
filling in of the canals and the building of
motorways. Progress in my view implies heading
towards a desired destination, not change for
its own sake.
Supermarkets for the 1980s
In fact
the supermarket represents a 1980s version of
the future, where petrol is forever cheap and
no-one needs to walk, and where big is beautiful
(but don’t mention obesity). Sam Walton, who
founded Wal-Mart (the parent company of Asda) in
the 1950s was the ultimate supermarket pioneer.
He dreamed of a country where you just drove to
the nearest highway intersection and into a
gigantic parking lot, entered an air-conditioned
metal box the size of a football field, bought
everything you needed for a week or two, dumped
it in the boot of the car, and drove home
without ever having to exchange a greeting with
anyone. In the United States you can see that
vision writ large, a future where you can’t buy
a newspaper or an apple without a three mile
trip in the SUV. In large parts of the U.S.
there are no small town centres, just boarded-up
shops, and wind-blown vacant lots which are
quiet by day and deserted and dangerous by
night. Business has migrated to the inter-state
highways, where strip malls of national chains
have exterminated every business, even the mom
and pop diners which were so famous. In most
places the iconic ‘Breakfast in America’ now
means a choice between Denny’s, Burger King or
McDonalds. You can’t walk from one business to
the next because there is no pavement. Even a
city the size of Memphis doesn’t have a single
food shop in its central square mile. I know,
because I tried to find one.
His
dream, our nightmare
Sam
Walton’s dream is my nightmare, and I’m glad to
say the nightmare of many thousands of those who
live or shop in Louth and signed the Keep Louth
Special petition.
At the
core of our campaign is community, the social
and economic interaction of people who live
together in a town, and though rooted in our
past, community is a very 21st
century idea too. Genuine communities have lower
crime, less anti-social behaviour, more walking
and cycling, better health and are happier
places than those places where no-one feels they
belong.
While
our aims accord with broad government policies,
we don’t see community in the abstract. We like
the idea that a shopkeeper knows your name, and
perhaps keeps by a special cut of meat because
he knows you normally drop by on a Friday,
someone who’ll help pack your bags if you are a
little infirm, and help carry that sack of spuds
to the car. We like the idea that the fishmonger
at St Peter’s Fish in the Newmarket Hall gets up
to personally to select the best from Grimsby
market. We like the idea that in a tiny cheese
shop in Louth you get a choice of over 100
cheeses, many of which even the largest Tesco
doesn’t stock.
The
lifeblood of community
In a
time of recession, above all, we should need no
reminding that circulating our money within our
community helps keep us all in work. I can’t
forget when I was canvassing in the town for the
petition, a few young women in some of the
clothes and shoe shops in Louth said they did
all their shopping in Grimsby and Cleethorpes.
“It’s a good job not everyone thinks that way,
isn’t it?” I said. “You wouldn’t have a job or
any money to spend if it wasn’t for those people
who do shop here.”
Keep
Louth Special isn’t about preserving the town in
aspic, as some claim. It’s about generating the
conditions in which the town’s unique
attractions are able to prosper. It’s not about
any one business, but the inter-dependence of
the ‘business ecology’. So the presence of a
bread shop helps sell cheese next door, and the
poultry shops does well aided by the greengrocer
across the way. The shopping experience is more
than the sum of its parts. It’s just like the
life found on a coral reef, and as we’ve seen
across the country, just as easily damaged by
clumsy development.
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