We were alerted on Tuesday by the Friends of the Lewes Arms group of an unholy alliance between two large English companies which are, with their aggressive dog-eat-dog marketing policies, both threatening to destroy the fabric of the town, and of many other towns and cities besides. The companies in question are Tesco and Greene King. Tesco, of course, are the pariahs of independent traders countrywide. Virtually unchecked by the Monopolies Commission, they are opening and enlarging stores over the country, using their corporate muscle to undercut competitors, while increasing the range of products they sell and turning once-thriving High Streets into sad, tatty and cultureless chain-and-charity-shop-filled Anywhereville thoroughfares.
Tesco, through their Clubcard scheme, have just teamed up with Greene King by offering their Clubcard members discounts in the increasing number of ‘dining locations’ the Suffolk-based brewery now own, ‘stretching from Yorkshire right down to the Isle of Wight’. Places, they add, where ‘you are guaranteed a warm welcome whatever the location’. Yeah right. Greene King, of course, have just helped destroy the best community pub in Lewes by refusing to back down over their decision to stop serving Harveys there, causing a bitter dispute which has led to the vast bulk of the pub’s formerly extremely loyal clientele refusing to enter through its doors. The whole sorry shambles is epitomised, somehow, by the hanging baskets outside the pub, once splendidly full of colour, now bland and empty, the flowers having been left to die. Greene King, it must be said, are the Tescos of the brewing world, and worse. The company has long ceased to be just a purveyor of real ales: it is responsible in many cases for closing down community pubs and long established breweries which they have bought up. They make fine bedfellows with their heavyweight corporate partners. Enjoy the week.