As ever at Christmas, I've headed back to the parents' house to eat some Quality Street and play with the dog. I also like to check in on the market town's High Street (I'm going to shorten this to HS), to see how thing's changed since I was last there. During my school years, I saw the local HS curl up and die. In response to the redevelopment of the indoor shopping precinct (and the last-but-one recession), the main stores moved from the Victorian HS, and those units filled with charity shops and pound stores. Only in the mid-Nineties, when a local campus became a part of Luton University, did the HS awaken, albeit as a slightly-downmarket run of studenty pubs and kebab shops, thereby supplying the small-town needs of booze, meat fat and somewhere to fight.
Earlier this month, Queen of Shops, Mary Portas (try not to think of a ginger Liza Minnelli from Cabaret) released her review of the future of HS across the land. Firstly, I should say that I think she's largely right. HS cannot, and should not try to, compete with the brute-force selling power of large chain retailers, and the internet. No-one benefits from dead and deserted town centres and HS.
However, I found her My Struggle prose rather over-the-top. Portas wants to represent her commentary as a non-governmental and therefore independent and therefore personal and therefore unbiased and therefore accurate telling of how things really are. 'The only hope our high streets have of surviving in the future,' she intones, 'is to recognise what’s happened and deliver something new'. Our plucky HS have become cognisant - it is for them to be sentient and understand their past and future. Help us, Obi Wan Kenobi.
Portas then indulges in a classic sophomoric essay technique, exploring a variety of meanings of a key term, in this case 'heart' (the centre of something / life-giving / strength of feeling / expression of fidelity / emotional engagement / love etc etc). She emotes:
High streets are the heart of towns and communities. They have been for centuries. People are passionate about high streets. They may have different views on what’s wrong and what’s right, but I don’t believe anyone can put their hand on their heart and say they don’t care.
[my, laboured, emphases]
(No, I don't)
In addition to (relentlessly) demonstrating her strength of faith (repeating 'believe' eleven times in the three-side Foreword), there's also a 'vision' which aims 'to find and nurture tomorrow's innovators and ideas that will create the new sustainable high streets of the future'. Yuk. The not-quite-heroic hyperbole continues with the underwhelming claim to have 'visited many high streets to see what the situation is for myself...'. Wow! Such dedication to the Noble Cause. Literally several!
Anyway. The niceties of her text are not (supposed to be) the point. Rather, the focus is on her 28 concluding recommendations for revitalising HS. There're some technical taxation / land 'use class' thoughts (the latter aiming to reduce the rash of betting shops), and a 'visionary' benign dictatorship of 'Town Teams' seeking to make it all better. Another of her proposals is to encourage local markets, and 'establish a new "National Market Day" where budding shopkeepers can try their hand at operating a low-cost retail business'. A nation of shopkeepers, indeed. But I suspect that Portas means something none-too-glamorous: she elsewhere suggested that HS should host car boot sales. Indeed a 'low-cost retail business'. Hmm. Lucky HS.
Furthermore, in my experience, markets fall into two categories. Firstly, the cheapo back-of-a-lorry 'spectatulars' to be found in most towns, somewhere near the bus station and some cafés serving OAP Specials on Wednesdays. Whilst there may be a romantic view of salt-of-the-earth traders, there's also the risk of crap quality, knock-off goods, and no hope of redress from a stall you might never see again.
The other contemporary manifestation of the market comes in the tedious cabal of Famers' Markets, where the aspirational classes joyfully subscribe to the pretence of 'authentic' and 'better' 'rural' food by buying an £8 quiche from a 'farmer' / man in a Barbour jacket outside Putney Tube station (cf the 'Organic Duck Fat Is Good For You Because It's Expensive' syndrome).
And the middle ground? It's chain supermarkets. That's why they are so popular. They're a place to find half-decent veg and half-decent meat at half-decent prices, without fear of being ripped-off by a Del Boy or financing a Fearnley-Whittingstall's third Jag. It may not be particularly good food, but it's hygienically packaged, and there's no need to interact with a grubby man with a common accent (cf the 'Waitrose Cows Make Posher Milk Than The Ones Who Work For Morrisons' syndrome). Perfect. Well, perfect enough.
Anyway. Portas' ideas are nice enough, provided there is a critical mass of genuinely useful services provided along the HS - an actual reason to go there, and overcome the challenges of congestion, inadequate parking, swathes of betting shops, etc. I can see this 'vision' working in affluent areas. For example, SW11's Northcote Road already supports independent artisanal breadmakers, Brio-heavy toy shops, and music stores specialising in instruments for under-elevens. However, being near the well-to-do sub-suburb of Wandsworth Common (which is in Balham), and the country's busiest rail station, Clapham Junction (which is in Battersea), cannot hurt. I just can't see those with less disposable incoming being in a position to stop taking advantage of the bulk-buying economies of supermarkets and the .coms to financially support local traders.
What Portas' Manifesto does do well, is open the debate. HS are dying, and retail parks are thriving, because of our choices. We'd much prefer to blame someone else (cf the 'It's The Bank's Fault They Gave Me A 110% Mortgage And Now I'm In Negative Equity' syndrome). But we have opted to turn our backs on small stores, and embrace the convenience of the internet and plastic sheds on ring roads.
As a final note, when Googling 'Mary Portas', the first hits are ads for her brands at places like House of Fraser, Clarks and (I don't want to think about her gusset) Mytights.com. It's as if all this bluster about HS might actually, and quite coincidentally, make Ms Portas some money.
From online retail. Hmm.
Perhaps Ms Portas should consider Greenwich; not povertous soon-to-be Royal Borough of Greenwich but Greenwich proper; in slightly fashionable (read surprisingly expensive) SE10.
ReplyDeleteIt has green space (a Royal park), excellent transport links (Fast train, DLR and tube line), attractions (the architectural magnificence of the Old Naval College and several world famous museums) and upscale properties priced well above average for SE London. And of most relevance to your blog, it has a covered market filled with independent traders. Sounds almost too good to be true?
That’s because it is. Greenwich also has 2 run down high streets; one surrounds the market itself and is throbbing with tourists. Yet it is grotty and full of horrible shops and cheap noodle restaurants. The other High Street stretches to the east and despite the occasional boutique-style shop (which vanish almost as suddenly they appear), is full of boarded-up properties and retail at the lowest end of the market. Why is this when so many ‘boxes’ for success are ticked in Greenwich yet the High Streets wallow in depression?
One reason is that Greenwich is for the most part owned by a charity. By charity they mean private equity looking to make cash from its holdings. This organisation seems to be waging war on the market by seeking redevelopment to encompass the standard clone shops that litter most of the country’s high streets. They have even blamed the market for sucking consumers away from the High Street retailers. This would seem to be at odds with Portas’ recommendations.
I could rant for hours at this point about how the market is good and that most of the retailers (and restaurants) on the High Street simply can’t compete given their inferior quality, but I suspect the answer is more complex. Either way Greenwich proves the point that Portas’ recommendations are not that clear cut. I suspect there are lots of High Streets like Greenwich; huge potential but failing to deliver. It’s also not all about the (admittedly hopeless) council whose powers are limited, especially when a business/charity owns most of the freeholds.
Still there is hope. Another of Greenwich’s High Streets is on the (inside) up - the O2 Greenwich has just announced that it will build a retail outlet ‘village’ inside the dome. Time will tell what effect this will have on the High Streets..