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Tuesday, 07 August 2007 |
Published in Hackney Gazette 2 August 2007
[The Gazette] article “Alarm Bells Ring on Broadway”, suggested that the Saturday market has been a “catalyst for regeneration”. If it was genuine regeneration, there would be tangible benefits for the wider community.
This latest invasion of Hackney doesn’t even have the apologetic stance of gentrification, which would at least give a nod to the underlying conflict and tension for those excluded from the “benefits” of the process. This one-day-a-week public exhibition of over-priced over-consumption is an affront to ordinary, working people.
It is more like outright colonisation by over-paid white, middle-class yuppies who have nothing better to do than fritter their sizable wage packets (sorry, “salaries”) on items of food that cost the equivalent of most people’s weekly food bill.
They obstruct the pavements with their selfish appropriation of what should be shared public space for walking so that they can pretend that they are part of some upmarket pavement café culture and they relentlessly wheel or ride their bikes on the pavement to the detriment of anyone who foolishly thinks they are meant for ordinary Hackney pedestrians.
Then, of course, there are the yummy mummies brushing aside anyone in their way with their over-size baby buggies or causing a bottleneck while they stop to yatter about their stressful day of shopping and eating, without any thought for anyone else.
Even more overtly indicating a double standard are the pub groups sitting on the pavements as if the market is their private beach, while, of course, if the local youth (particularly if they were black) behaved in this way, there would be mutterings about intimidating groups of young people, police cars would be called and no doubt Asbos issued.
Six days of the week this is a street that has very little to offer the ordinary shopper, apart from the local supermarkets now having to compete with the chains that can undercut them and the (ordinary) vegetable stall which comes one day a week – but how long before the snobs stop this. The market has no facilities for the local community, no youth club or community centre or meeting place for pensioners, and it is unfortunate that the “improvement” to London Fields only echoes this cultural and class divide.
This isn’t regeneration, this is a perfect example of the divided Britain that Blair has left us, a corner of Hackney where society is stratified into race and class divisions – and celebrated as a success.
J Walker
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