Everyone in Bristol should be very proud of yesterday's event, when a group of local people defied the police - including foreign officers imported from Wales - and told Tesco's that it wasn't wanted in Stokes Croft.
Stokes Croft is a Bohemian and forward-looking community in Bristol. It's a place of small local shops and sustainable initiatives. Yet multinational hippy supermarket Tesco decides it's the ideal location for one of its useless Express supermarkets. No need to ask the locals, what's it got to do with them?
So yesterday they paid the price. Decent Bristolians went out on a sultry evening and told Tesco's exactly what the community really thinks of them. The police, duffers that they are, totally misunderstood what was going on and decided to randomly strike out at locals looking on. What a chance for the Welsh to have a go at the English.
But of course what happened is that the heavyhandedness of the outsiders was splashed all over the media. Local heroes have ensured that not only will Tesco's NEVER open a shop in Stokes Croft but, hopefully, as a result of this sharp learning curve will NEVER do the same anywhere else.
Does this mean that all supermarkets are bad? Of course not! Here in Hartcliffe Morrisons opened a new store in a very run down part of the area giving locals a good place to shop, where most of us can walk to, and providing dozens of jobs in the area. They didn't take trade from anywhere else (apart from the ASDA in Whitchurch) and certainly nobody in Hartcliffe opposed it.
Of course in the long term all supermarkets will fail as the oil runs out, but hopefully the building itself will find a new role in the future, perhaps as an indoor market and bring and take centre.
And as for Tescos in Stokes Croft? Well this is what one of their spokespeople said (probably a 23 year old middle class prefect who seriously believes he'll be driving an electric car in 20 years' time) -
'we'll defy local resentment and reopen the supermarket'.
No you won't you hippy twat! 'Cos if you try the WHOLE of Bristol will chace you back to fucking London!
