Tesco, the supermarket that ate the high street

The supermarkets, for all their bogus we-buy-British campaigns, grow rich at the countryside's expense

There was a time when the great British sausage and the great British pint were regular themes of what used to be called why-oh-why columns. Why oh why is it impossible to buy sausages from the village butcher, just like they used to make them? Am I alone in thinking, in these troubled times, that the invasion of foreign, bottled beers represents a decline in the British way of life? And off they would go, the usual fat-bottomed pontificators, bemoaning the loss of small, traditional pleasures that we used to take for granted.

Either times have changed or I have, for suddenly I find myself in sympathy with these whiskery nostalgia-merchants. The news that those commercial titans of contemporary life, the supermarket chains, have turned their acquisitive attentions to the local shops of villages and small towns has depressed me strangely.

I live in a part of East Anglia where the progress of convenience shopping has had a visible effect on the quality of life. My nearest town, Diss, has two supermarkets, squatting on each side of the thoroughfare that passes near the town centre. One is adequate, the other cheap but hilariously awful. As a result of their presence, the main shopping street of a market town of 6,000 people consists almost entirely of charity shops, estate agents and, mysteriously, a number of greetings-card emporia. As they go out of business, the owners of small retailers complain that the life of the town is draining away, but the planning authorities remain unimpressed.

It has just been announced that Tesco has been given permission to build another vast superstore beside the main road. Until now, a sensible alternative to succumbing to the grim, strip-lit supermarket experience has been to patronise the small local shops that still survive away from the town. My local shop stays open from 7am to 10pm, offers an adequate variety of good – often local – produce and easy, friendly service. It may not be quite as cheap or convenient as a superstore, but visiting it is an agreeable part of everyday life.

The supermarkets, having spotted that not everyone enjoys impersonal convenience shopping, are seeking to extend their control of the retail market. Tesco announced this week that it has acquired 862 corner shops, most of which will become Tesco Express stores. The move, we are told, is to compete with similar initiatives from Sainsbury, the Co-op, Budgens and even Marks & Spencer; "changing customer lifestyles", apparently, now involve "top-up shopping" between the major expeditions to supermarkets.

It is easy to be oversentimental about village shops. Many are gloomy places that open late and close early, offering on their dusty shelves a range of products that suggest that rationing is still with us.

All the same, the convenience offered by the Tescofication of rural communities will come at a price. Ask any medium-sized farmer what it is like to negotiate with buyers working for the large supermarkets and – off the record, of course – they will tell the same gloomy story. Using as a bargaining counter imported foreign goods, frequently produced to lower standards of care and animal welfare than those in place here, they demand terms that only large agribusinesses and production-line farming can afford to meet. For all their bogus we-buy-British marketing campaigns, the supermarkets are growing rich at the expense of the countryside.

Perhaps resisting these changes is futile. Maybe the supermarkets are right to put the ease of low-price, one-stop shopping before other, less obvious considerations. In spite of all the talk about increased leisure time, we apparently lead increasingly busy lives – "convenience" is a great undisputed good of contemporary life. If the character of small towns and villages, and the ways of life in the countryside, fall under the influence of greedy business types whose only commitment is to profit, it could be argued that it is a price worth paying in return for being able to buy cheaper food.

Yet it is a worrying thought that the things that have always provided a messy, interesting variety and individuality in small communities – the local shop, the post office, the pub – are increasingly controlled by powerful financial interests based miles away. As they spread across the country, Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local and the rest will be bringing the soulless homogeneity of the supermarket to any town or village where money is to be made.

When it arrived in Diss, Safeway made a cultural contribution to the town: a large boulder was placed on a plinth by the main road where it now sits, like a reject from the Turner shortlist. The stone, which comes from somewhere in Scotland, is ugly and pointless. Nobody particularly likes it, but there it has remained, a grimly eloquent symbol of the supermarket culture that now plays such a powerful part in our lives.

terblacker@aol.com