Dancing With the Devil
This Saturday 27th Feb at 11am there will be a community protest against Tesco outside their Streatham Hill Tesco Metro branch. It is in response to Tesco’s behaviour over the Streatham Hub project. For anyone who doesn’t already know about The Hub situation, in a nutshell, Tesco bought a huge swathe of land, which includes the leisure centre and ice rink, about ten years ago. They were granted planning permission to build a huge superstore, car park, and residential flats in return for also funding the building of a new leisure centre and ice rink. All these years later they have done nothing with the land and refuse to say when, if ever, they will start work. In the meantime the existing leisure centre has closed and the ice rink is crumbling. It is a sorry state of affairs, making Saturdays protest long overdue. However, as I researched other Tesco protests, what struck me was that all previous protests have either been by people opposed to Tesco’s business practices or by people opposed to the opening of a Tesco superstore in their town. Our protest must be unique in that it is by residents desperate for Tesco to come to town.
In many peoples eyes Tesco are the devil. Of course it’s understandable that we are so willing to dance with the devil. After all Streatham sold its soul long ago and now we’re just desperate to finally get something in return. However, if Tesco eventually do come good on their promise and turn that end of Streatham into Tesco land, we may still live to regret the whole sorry saga.
For a good overview on Tesco watch this Dispatches programme below.
or for a different take on Tesco’s empire building watch this excerpt from Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet.
