The Bristol riot

To my knowledge, representatives of UK Uncut have never claimed to speak for “the community”. Neither have they predicted or threatened vandalism or violence.

This anti-Tesco campaign is not a UK Uncut production. UK Uncut is a campaign against tax avoidance. That is all it is. Representatives of this campaign are (rightly or wrongly) scrupulous about only ever talking about that topic: their line is that UK Uncut has no opinion on anything other than tax avoidance; it is a campaign, not a pressure group or political party or “movement” or “community” or anything else.

The anti-Tesco campaign is not about tax avoidance, but about their domination of high streets and the impact of this on local employment levels, retail sector pay, diversity of available produce, and various other issues — in this case, one other issue is an ongoing grievance about a store that opened on a nearby greenfield site 18 years ago.

Of course the organisations whose activities are criticised by UK Uncut would like to associate UK Uncut with this riot. But why are you doing it?

I find it sad but not surprising that the Tesco issue only came to light in the mainstream press as a result of this.

It’s been a huge issue here for years however it has been an entirely peaceful campaign.

Anyone reading any British newspapers will now think these campaigners are just violent simpletons. That is simply not true, the violence that erupted was a frankly inevitable response to the actions of the police of landing in a neighbourhood in riot gear on a hot bank holiday evening and closing roads without explanation. Even then it could have ended amicably however it was what happened next that resulted in a riot and that has not been reported in any mainstream news report..

For some unknown reason the police pushed a small pocked of violence that begann on stokes croft high street almost a mile in to St. Pauls thereby waking people in a notorious area that would never have otherwise been involved. People came out of there houses to see other people being brutalised for what appeared to be no reason. This instigated a full scale riot.

This riot would never have happened if the police hadn’t made the decision to rampage across Bristol in the way they did. It is this decision which requires justification.

That seems like a reasonable report and analysis Chris. As you know I was there, which doesn’t give me much (if any) added insight, but just a few points:

– the police charged around on the night with little apparent plan. I was amongst a group who were chased up Nine Tree Hill for some reason. Having chased us up the hill the police then all went down again.

– the overall effect of this charging around was to get people excited and annoyed. I’m not condoning the use of violence, but the police tactics amounted to kicking over a series of wasps’ nests then standing around to see what would happen. If I were one of the coppers who’d been ordered to do this, I would have been a bit miffed at my commanders as the bottles subsequently rained down on me.

– I understand from seeing Cllr Jon Rogers on Points West just now that Tescos didn’t apply for planning permission. The Comedy Club applied for permission to turn the premises into a shop while they still owned the building. Which means the locals never had chance to object to an application from Tescos.

This anti-Tesco campaign is not a UK Uncut production. …The anti-Tesco campaign is not about tax avoidance, but about their domination of high streets and the impact of this on local employment levels, retail sector pay, diversity of available produce, and various other issues…

Perhaps UK Uncut had no involvement in this particular anti-Tesco campaign, but protest against “Tesco and supermarket brands” is part of their campaign against tax avoiders:

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/tax-dodgers/tesco-and-supermarket-brands

UK Uncut is a campaign against tax avoidance. That is all it is. Representatives of this campaign are (rightly or wrongly) scrupulous about only ever talking about that topic: their line is that UK Uncut has no opinion on anything other than tax avoidance…

But UK Uncut also has a campaign against banks which is distinct from its campaign against tax avoidance:

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/banks

a change of use to something “less harmful” (in planning terms) is automatically granted

Hadn’t heard this, although I had heard something similar; when a closed and boarded pub down the road from us was turned into YA Tesco, the story was that planning permission hadn’t been required because there hadn’t been any change of use, since both supermarkets and pubs are in the business of selling food and drink. I don’t know what the exact details are – but certainly planning law provides precious few toeholds for resistance to Tescopoly, and gives the supermarkets plenty of opportunities to reverse any decisions that do go against them.

As for whether the anti-supermarket movement will be tainted by association with what seems to have essentially been a rather half-arsed police riot, let’s just wait and see if it happens. I doubt it myself – locals will know what happened or know someone who does, and most of the rest of us only ever saw one news story about it.

This is the best summary of the incident that I have read, and the background regarding the planning application laws is very illuminating. Neurobonker’s point about the police decision to push the crowds down Ashley Road and into St Pauls is key to understanding the escalation of the violence. It brought the scenes to the attention of a lot of people, especially teenagers, who saw an opportunity to get away with smashing stuff up. I imagine that many if not all of those who actually vandalised the Tesco store had no particular views on Tescopoly. They weren’t protestors, they were just kids up for a ruck and to their delight they also discovered an abandoned police van and trailer full of riot gear for them to smash up and pillage. This fact makes a nonsense of claims that if “the community” isn’t listened to, there will be violence. I’m convinced that much of the violence was perpetrated by people in “the community” who had hitherto shown no interest in the issues.

Anyone can apply for planning permission on a property, even one they don’t own

Wow. The practical joke potential of this one is immense.

Riot distempered by oligarchy

sorry – couldn’t resist.

Reading Laurie Penny’s report on the riots I can’t see where she sounded off “about how the incident proved the correctness of their views about everything”? Yes, it’s reported in the context of her own politics, (you get a bit of a Socialist Worker vibe there) but she’s not in full rant mode like the rightwing example, Stephen Pollard. A bit of false equivalency there?

And if she got the eviction wrong, so did almost everybody else in the direct aftermath of the riots, which seems to be more a result of the confused state of affairs in Bristol rather than mendacity.

Tom, I believe it because Tesco sells what the People want cheaply, rather than what Crooked Timber contributors think they should want more expensively.

Mike —
Thanks, I’d forgotten about the bank bail-in campaign. I should have said that UK Uncut is concerned with the government’s austerity measures in relation to banking practice and tax avoidance, not with general critique of corporations.

Tom–
If you’re interested in the reasons why some people in the UK are concerned about Tesco and supermarkets in general (other than tax avoidance), then the best place to start is the Tescopoly website.
And their targetting of Tesco is purely about tax avoidance

What exactly is deplorable about the domination of the UK high street by Tesco?

The “Impacts” section of tescopoly.org has a summary that looks like a reasonable place to start:

http://www.tescopoly.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=4&Itemid=176

In the case of Stokes Croft, I gather the opposition has more to do with the character of the area – very arty-bohemian-activist with a lot of small independent shops and cafes. That’s how I’d describe it, anyway – I have a friend who lives up the road, although I haven’t visited for a year or so.

I live in the US, and I would dearly love to have a Tesco open in my neighbourhood. If it were like the ones in the UK, it would be much preferable to any of the available supermarket offerings. The UK Tescos I’ve been in have impressed me with the variety and value of goods on sale, relative to American supermarkets.

I like shopping at a number of small locally-owned shops that feature unique products. But for generic goods I have to consider who has the best price.

We have a Fresh & Easy (owned by Tesco) here, but it is not really a standout in consumer value. They seem to have gone in to neighbourhoods that didn’t have any convenient supermarket already. It is a different shopping experience than Safeway but in the end you don’t feel that much better off.

I’ve been hearing about this particular Bristol Tesco for a few weeks now, so it seems that there is more going on here than just the simple story.

Feh, this is what you get mixing testosterone and alcohol. Mind you it does seem that some of the testosterone was in the coppers too – which is not unusual (they’re young men too).

Hmm, reducing people’s behaviour to their hormones is always a classy move in debate, but the testosterone/ aggression link is pretty much nonsense.

“I have spoken to the police and they have told me that they feel they were too heavy handed and that they have a responsibility for the violence that took place. ” – Oli Conner, organiser of a (now cancelled) follow-up protest in Stokes Croft.

http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/704248

Every time the police show up in my neighborhood I have an irresistible urge to drop bricks on their heads.

Huh. Funny, that. Most people don’t get that kind of urge until they see something like police officers in riot gear shutting down street access and roughing up peaceful protesters or bystanders. (And hey, most people don’t get that kind of urge even then — just a handful of unusually indignant or belligerent folks, whose example you almost certainly shouldn’t follow, unless you have unusually good reason to be completely confident that your action will force an end to whatever abuse is taking place instead of just encouraging or exacerbating it.)

As a safer and saner alternative means for expressing your irrestistible urges, I suggest something like underhand-lofting empty plastic soda bottles in the police’s general direction, and/or shouting mildly offensive things to them, e.g. “don’t taze me, bro!” And if they push you for no reason, maybe push back. In other words, I suggest you try to act a lot more like the average “violent” Bristol protester last Thursday night…

Do we really want planning law that differs depending on who the owner is?

It’s possible to write, and has made a difference in San Francisco.

Just out of interest – so what exactly is the official complaint about Tesco

In general? Pretty much “yeah, bunch of assholes, end of small farming, etc”. They’re not particularly singled out as an object of protest in the UK . Supermarkets in general get some pressure from greens and various farming organisations, and there’s been a move to ban big out-of-town superstores but I don’t know how it compares with, say, the level of objection to Wal-Mart in the US. UKuncut has picked up on the tax avoidance a few times, but there’s been a sense that supermarkets are too useful to ordinary people to make good targets.

In Bristol? They tried to open a branch in the middle of an area full of small shops, greens, and anticapitalists. How much the locals object probably depends on who counts as “local” – I’d guess a high proportion in the adjacent streets and a much lower proportion in a ten-minute walking radius. But like Chris says, it was a police riot and not primarily an anti-Tesco thing.

The other thing that might not be obvious is that there are at least two or three other supermarkets nearby – my friend in Bristol says there’s actually another Tesco six minutes’ walk away – so there’s no sense that Stokes Croft is being deprived of low-cost groceries if it closes.

Meanwhile, according to Twitter, tonight Bristol police are moving in force to try to prevent a open-air film show that includes footage from the riot. It doesn’t sound like they’ve really understood where they went wrong. Some details here – latest seems to be that the screening is going ahead despite roadblocks, helicopters, and threats of arrest:

http://www.stwerburghs.org/index.php?section=news&story=occasional_Cinema_stopped_by_police_in_Mina_Rd_Park.txt

it just seems like they’re pretty good at being a capitalist enterprise in a capitalist economy

And therefore any objection to the specific forms this success takes, or to specific problems caused by it, is invalid unless the objector is opposed to capitalism in all its forms?

^ just want to clarify again the above. i’m young and not an economist by any means. i would like to be convinced otherwise – i’m not a market fanatic and i’m not just brushing off the downsides of the shift to supermarkets, like some are wont to do. but i’m just not seeing a way to fairly change the situation. it’s totally legal, and it seems like the store is decreasing prices and making food more affordable for a lot of people. if they were terrible at what they do, and they weren’t a monopoly, i can’t see why they wouldn’t fail as a business. i get that there’s a human cost to their success, obviously – low wages – but I’m in favor of welfare/workfare in order to bring people up to acceptable levels rather than junking the benefits. i’m just struggling with efficient, fair ways to change this situation.

I actually went in that Tescos for a bit of shopping a few days before this riot. It was full of great, normal food, and I came out of there with a couple of bagfuls and change from a £20 note- which doesn’t happen in the dingy, overpriced corner shops that only sell ethnic food and cheap crap.

Personally I think these people are idiots, it’s just a damn shop- get over yourselves. For me it means I just have to walk a bit further to get some decent food instead of going round the corner. Whatever.

Personally, I don’t mind higher prices for better product. But not everyone has that luxury.

Trust me, that’s not what this argument is about. It’s not about shutting down all the supermarkets, either – if every branch that opened in the last five years closed tomorrow, there would still be plenty of Tesco’s.

There is a kind of balance at the moment, in many places, between local independent shops (which don’t all trade on ultra-high quality and aren’t all expensive) and supermarkets; there’s enough room for both of them to exist and make profits. Nobody is going to go broke, and hardly anyone will lose any choice, if Tesco’s don’t open another supermarket. People may go broke, and other people may lose a lot of choice, if they do. (Also, of course, what’s most likely to make a reality of the false dichotomy you started with – what pushes independent shops into the ‘luxury goods’ niche – is the arrival of YA supermarket.)

all market outcomes have some downsides for some participants – to justify intervening, i think there has to be a really compelling reason, otherwise intervention simply becomes a case of “well, i didn’t like this outcome.”

OK, define ‘intervening’. Choosing to shop elsewhere? That’s obviously OK. Choosing to shop elsewhere for political reasons? Well, the Invisible Hand can’t see into your heart, so that’s OK too. How about encouraging other people to shop elsewhere for political reasons? If that’s legitimate, then you’ve got no objection to the Tescopoly campaign. If not, I don’t think I live in your world.

And today, police in London raided five long-term squats in London on a variety of pretexts:

http://londonist.com/2011/04/police-raid-squats-across-london.php

…including this warrant, which is for an intelligence-trawl related to March 26th:

http://pix0.london.indymedia.org/system/photo/2011/04/28/7079/offmarket_squat_3.jpg

So it’s possible that the Bristol arrests may have been part of a general move to intimidate activists in the run-up to the wedding tomorrow. At the very least, I can imagine the police deciding to move activists and counter-culture types higher up their priority list.