Looking back, it was the best piece of advice I was never given. “Son,” no great sage of London journalism has ever told me, “you can get away with writing all sorts of rubbish in this business, but whatever else you do never attempt to build a social anthropological case about protest politics, cultural pieties and urban geography in a global city based on opposition to a high-end bakery”.
I’m glad no such wisdom was ever dispensed to me, because it means I haven’t had to feel bad about ignoring it while writing the 3,000 words that follow.
And be under no illusions – I would have written them anyway. Because if ever there was a case for building a social anthropological case about protest politics, cultural pieties and urban geography in a 21st century global city based on opposition to a high-end bakery, the hullabaloo over the imminent arrival of a branch of Gail’s in Walthamstow Village is it.
I mean, where do you start..?
WE PROTEST!
Let’s begin with the petition. It was launched on 23 July. Its headline plea of “Prevent Gail’s from Establishing a Store on our High Street” was directed at the Residents’ Association of Walthamstow Village and Waltham Forest Council. It’s worth noting at this point that neither of those organisations can make much difference: though described as “decision-makers”, their power to repel Gail’s, should they even wish to, is almost nil. Not even a change of use consent is required from the council’s planning committee, as the previous tenant of 25 Orford Road, E17, was an Italian restaurant.
Still, the value of the petition to those who’ve signed it – currently heading for 1,800 – is the platform it has provided for expressing their hostile views of Gail’s – views whose simultaneous variety and overlap provides their value to this article.
The petition’s creator, James Harvey, who reportedly breakfasts at an existing neighbourhood café most mornings, accompanied by his poodle, described the area as “vibrant” and “treasured for its collection of local, independent and family-run businesses”. The arrival of a Gail’s would, he argued, “bring a risk of overshadowing” these, “threatening their very existence and dismantling the character and diversity crucial to Walthamstow’s charm”. He continued: “Crucially, studies have shown that local businesses recycle a higher share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the entire community.”
Harvey’s anti-Gail’s pitch is of the familiar, conservationist kind you might expect were he a citizen of the type of village that is surrounded by fields and woodland rather than the streets of a London borough that has seen its population increase by around eight per cent in the past ten years. His argument about the relationship between local businesses and the communities they are based in is also often made elsewhere. It was a protest expressed in strictly localist terms: in short, a Walthamstow Village branch of Gail’s would be bad for Walthamstow Village and its villagers.
But the petition’s signatories have widened the parameters of objection. Predictably, the looming advent of a Gail’s was decried by some as an incursion of “gentrification”, a term long since taken as read in some circles as prefiguring the “social cleansing” of an area’s least affluent residents and their consequent replacement by “the rich”. Less typical of such sagas, yet somehow inevitable in London since last October’s Hamas pogrom, there was a link pejoratively made with Israel’s ferocious military response in Gaza.
How did that come about? Well, the very first Gail’s café was opened in Hampstead in 2005, growing out of a London-based wholesale bakery, The Bread Factory, which had been started in the 1990s by Israeli baker Gail Mejia. In 2003, Mejia’s fellow Israeli, Ran Avidan, who had come to London in 2000 to work for management consultants McKinsey, became co-owner of the firm. The first branch of Gail’s, co-founded by Avidan and his American business partner Tom Molnar, and named after Mejia, opened in Hampstead in 2005.
That backstory, however, has not formed a prominent part of the Gaza dimension of antipathy to Gail’s. After all, it is some time since it could plausibly be characterised as an Israeli enterprise. Both parts of the business, gathered under the portmanteau Bread Holdings, thrived. And in 2011 a management buyout of Bread Holdings was executed with the backing of a London-based private equity firm, Risk Capital Partners. Its co-founder is entrepreneur Luke Johnson, whose best known endeavour is probably his huge expansion during the 1990s, with business partner Hugh Osmond, of Pizza Express from 12 branches to over 250.
Branches of Gail’s began proliferating too, attracting further notice from investors. And in September 2021, a controlling interest in Bread Holdings was purchased by Boston-based Bain Capital Credit, an entity described by Sky News City editor Mark Kleinman at the time as “one of the world’s biggest buyout firms”. Johnson retained a stake, said to be about 15 per cent. Both he and Bain Capital, whose co-founder was US politician Mitt Romney, have come under fire from signatories of the Walthamstow petition because of their attitude to Israel.
Bain’s venture capital wing was among 500 such firms to sign a statement of support for Israel and its innovative tech sector following the Hamas atrocities. As for Johnson, he is on record as an admirer of Israel, describing it in a 2015 Sunday Times article, following a visit to the country, as “buzzing with energy and confidence” and “a cauldron of innovation”.
He ended his piece saying “Israel is not a perfect society,” going on to relate visiting the West Bank, where he saw “some of the challenges faced by the Palestinian community” and expressed the hope that “Israel’s ingenious entrepreneurs” might also find a political outcome “in which all religions live in harmony”. But neither that nor Bain Capital’s statement that its partners have “committed more than $1 million for humanitarian aid efforts” across the region have dissuaded some petition signatories from tying their dislike of Gail’s to their views about the Middle East by way of Bain’s and Johnson’s stances towards Israel.
You might have already read some of the more overarching remarks from the already extensive media coverage of this story. But they are still worth reflecting on. “Love independent bakeries and hate Zionist moguls,” declared one Londoner. “No to genocide, no to gentrification,” announced another. Hatred of Israel, disdain for chains and opposition to a neighbourhood moving upmarket all form part of the hostility to Gail’s, sometimes with those elements overlapping and combined. That’s a lot of rage against a bread retailer. We could be unpacking it all day.
APOCALYPSE NIGH?
The bulk of the petition opposition is driven by strongly-felt consumer preferences and firm beliefs about neighbourhood character. In line with James Harvey’s expostulation, it is convinced that a “chain store” will “ruin the area”, that “independent shops are what make this village thrive”, and that a Gail’s would “take money out of the community, hurting everyone in Walthamstow”.
The prospect of branded food outlets turning up in a street otherwise dominated by one-off, perhaps rather specialist, retailers of various kinds has spurred powerful reactions in comparable parts of London before.
Towards the end of the last century, inhabitants of Hampstead, who would later take Gail’s to their stomachs and hearts, rebelled fiercely when McDonalds calculated that many of their neighbours would relish the opportunity to pop down the road for a Big Mac. But this would “change the character of the High Street for the worse” railed residents and shopkeepers alike. “Burger off!” they cried.
Much more recently, another London street hailed as an urban village lifeblood artery was the scene of a comparable revolt. In 2008, locals flew to the barricades on Stoke Newington Church Street – core Diane Abbott country – seeking to repel the advance of Nando’s. Worries much like those now coming out of Walthamstow Village were reported, along with an invocation of Hackney’s “long history of non-conformism and dissent”.
But maybe the most relevant lessons of these affairs is that McDonalds and Nando’s set up shop anyway and that neither Hampstead High Street nor Stoke Newington Church Street expired as a result: Clown Ronald maintained a presence in preservationism’s heathland redoubt until 2013, when it sold its lease to…an upmarket bakery chain; Nando’s continues to cater to a clientele far more diverse, inclusive and representative of the population of Stoke Newington than the still-present bijou independent bistros and cafés some reckoned it would drive out.
There, is though, a difference between those two examples and the Walthamstow Village scenario, in that McDonalds Hampstead and Nando’s Stokie were appealing to quite different markets from other eateries and retailers on their respective patches. By contrast, walking down the relevant stretch of Orford Road yesterday morning, it isn’t hard to imagine the handful of existing cafés and bread vendors feeling nervous. Potentially, Gail’s will provide pretty direct competition for the sorts of customers apparently prepared to pay £8.50 for a salt beef bagel.
But will it bring about their demise? The obvious riposte to accusations that it will is that if the existing places are so loved and admired, no one will want to go to the Gail’s in the first place. What, then, is the problem, other than an arguably snobbish disapproval of anything that is popular with the masses, albeit that sub-section of the masses prepared to pay £4.10 for an unconventional sort of sausage roll? And if Gail’s is a success – and the long-since gentrified tone of the village suggests very strongly that a hospitable climate exists – a resulting overall increase in Orford Road footfall might be good news for the Eat 17 “artisan Spar” and the vintagey boutique along the road. Existing food joints, if they play their cards right, might benefit as well.
Further evidence that these things tend not to be zero sum games can be found in The Parable of the Lower Clapton Tesco Express. Back in 2010 came news that a Tesco Express was to open almost next door to a warmly-regarded independent mini-market a short walk from my front door. A demo by local Guardian-readers was reported by a local Guardian writer (me, at that time). A local councillor explored every planning policy avenue to block it, to no avail. There were dire predictions: the dreaded chain would “suck the life out of the community” with its bland offerings and ruthless economies of scale.
It never happened. The mini-market tweaked its offer (more posh coffee and bread, a bigger deli) the Tesco Express, with its lower prices and more predictable products, was welcomed by people with less money to spend, and I, to this day, shop at both. A subsequent newcomer on the block has been accommodated too, a stripped-down bread-and-coffee emporium that has punters we might loosely stereotype as hipsters sometimes queuing down the street for its wares.
Why wait in line for a cappuccino when you can get one more quickly next door? What’s so extra-special about their bread? I really ought to go in there some time. But my point is that all three shops, each attracting a different core demographic, are co-existing and perhaps helping each other too. Maybe that will happen in Orford Road. And actually, to be a tiny bit mean, if you like living in the sort of place that attracts a branch of Gail’s, don’t complain if a branch of Gail’s arrives.
DO INDEPENDENTS REALLY KEEP WEALTH IN COMMUNITIES?
The argument that the turnover of local independent retailers nourishes the economies of their localities to a greater degree than those of larger companies has always puzzled me. The part about profits going to far-away shareholders makes sense, but where do those of independents go? What if they go into private pension funds or second homes in Tuscany? Who says local businesses keep more wealth in “the community”? What exactly do they mean? Are they right? Who defines “the community” in the first place?
Three years ago, when the pandemic brought a new focus on local shopping, Vaughan Allen, chief executive of Manchester’s City Centre Management Company and BID, scratched the same itch. Do ubiquitous claims along the lines of “63 pence of every pound spent in a local shop stays in the local economy compared to much less spend with a bigger business” really stack up?
Allen identified their source as a piece of research done for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) by the think-tank Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) covering 2012/13 (possibly updating something earlier) and informed by the “local multiplier” model of another think tank, the New Economics Foundation. Having dug into this research, he contended that, among other things, “there is no evidence that consumer spend in a smaller retailer is better for the local economy than spending it in a national retailer, big supermarket etc.”
He also pointed out that CLES is the originator of what it called The Preston Model, which has been widely hailed on the left of the political spectrum as the progressive alternative to towns and cities seeking inward investment to strengthen their economies. Instead, they implement a principle known as “community wealth building“. Allen underlined that the CLES study paper for the FSB, from which widely recycled claims about local businesses recycling revenue locally appear to stem, did not, in fact, address, local consumer spending at all. It was actually about the priorities of local authority spending with small businesses, and says so right at the start:
“When the effects of local spend are broken down and analysed, every £1 spent by a participating local authority with local SMEs generated an additional 63p of benefit for their local economy, compared to just 40p generated by large local firms.” (my emphasis)
There seems to be a perfectly good case for local authorities prioritising local suppliers to help sectors of local economies in need of it along with, for that matter, other public bodies. It’s going on across London with wide range of such “anchor institutions” and others involved. But is it legitimate to read across from such examples a comparable effect if a resident of Walthamstow Village forsakes Gail’s for tea and cake to stick with an Orford Road independent instead?
FEARFUL TIMES
Unless Gail’s decide it isn’t worth the aggravation, it looks very much as if James Harvey and those of his neighbours who have signed his petition are going to have to put up with the chain seeking their custom very soon. Harvey himself has said as much, updating his petition last week with the news that “Gail’s has put up vinyls” on the shop’s windows, “suggesting they are moving ahead”. He added that he had contacted the residents’ association which, as far as I can see, has taken no public position.
Perhaps its members are reserving judgement. If so, that might be wise. A drawback with insisting that chains are unwanted is that, by general definition, they aren’t. Starbucks, which faced a wave of criticism on a number of perturbing grounds a dozen and more years ago (and still does), remains a huge and global brand. Chains proliferate in response to demand for what they offer. We will know soon enough how great is that demand in a niche neighbourhood of east London. If it is substantial, don’t be surprised.
But the campaign against it has come to reflect something more than a desire to protect local small businesses, a relatable reaction against high street uniformity and a – perhaps sometimes sententious – assertion that favouring Gail’s is a capitulation to inauthenticity, a betrayal of community and a failure of taste. Initially a product of the media “silly season” fuelled by Britons’ enduring appetite for culture kerfuffles over social class lifestyle clashes, it has been recruited to the service of larger and fiercely political projects.
It is deliciously symbolic that Gail’s has planted its Walthamstow flag quite literally next door to the Walthamstow Labour Party’s constituency office. Local MP Stella Creasy retained the seat at last month’s general election with a tidy majority of 18,000, but her vote share was down by 16.6 per cent compared with 2019. By contrast, the Green candidate, in a clear second place, saw an increase in her party’s share of almost exactly the same amount.
Since Keir Starmer remodelled Labour into a party of national government and Jeremy Corbyn was first marginalised then expelled, the Greens in London have increasingly resembled the Corbnyite, Momentum wing of Labour in their rhetoric and choice of foreground issues. In Hackney, they have announced a collaboration with councillors who resigned from Labour over, among other things, the Labour group’s position on discussing the Gaza situation, in an attempt to win two council by-elections next month.
Such swings and that Hackney alliance are manifestations of more widespread reconfigurations of political loyalties across much of north and east London, as erstwhile Labour voters have looked elsewhere. Corbyn’s victory as an Independent in Islington North was just the headline recent example from the general election in those parts of the capital. The plight of Palestinians has refreshed a long-running theme of London’s protest politics, and dismay about it is helping to fuel the formation of new oppositional hybrids. They may be fragmentary, they may turn out to be fleeting, but for now at least they have re-drawn a large section of London’s political map.
At one level, the furore over Gail’s and Walthamstow Village is absurd, the latest example of gentrifiers railing against the textbook next stage of a gentrification sequence they, by their very presence, have created the conditions for. At another, it has drawn into the light intertwining of strands of left-populism, lurking conspiracism and dark fury that do not lend themselves to levity.
Luke Johnson, whose late father Paul Johnson, an editor of the New Statesman who underwent a spectacular conversion to Thatcherism, is easily depicted a right-wing twat, what with his approval of Brexit and lockdown scepticism. But “Zionist mogul” for having a financial stake in a popular bakery with North London Jewish origins? To most that might seem a bit of a stretch. But not to all. One petition signatory is from Paris. He added a two-word comment: “Free Palestine.”
The Gail’s Walthamstow Village furore may turn out to be short, superficial and exaggerated. But it has already opened a window onto an evolving cultural and political landscape in parts of London and elsewhere. These are excitable times, angry times, polarised times, and fearful times too. The Gail’s story is a part of them. And here I rest my case.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Dave Hill’s novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times, written as John Vane, is available here.