Every year the list is the same, but every year it still comes as a shock. Of the ten richest people onearth, five have the same surname. It's not Gates, or Murdoch, or Rockefeller, but Walton.[1] They are the heirsand trustees of the supermarket chain Wal-Mart. Between them they are worth $100bn.[2]
Considering how the press fawns on the ultra-rich, we hear remarkably little about them. Perhaps this isbecause their position is rather embarrassing. The company which enriches them trades on the idea that it isthe friend of the common man and woman, distributing rather than concentrating wealth.
Over the past 20 years, two world-shaking social transformations have taken place. The first, the effectivecollapse of the proletariat as a political force, has been well-documented. The second, the disappearance ofthe petit bourgeoisie as an economic force, rather less so. The near-elimination of the small businessessupplying and running the retail trade is in some ways as consequential as the withering of organised labourin heavy industry and the coalmines. The global monopolisation of the sector has destroyed the livelihoods oftens of millions of small proprietors and their employees. But, because this workforce was dispersed, theeffects are rather harder to see.
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A couple of weeks ago, I went to buy some fruit trees. I travelled to the world's most unprepossessingcentre of biodiversity: Langley, on the outskirts of Slough. In the first half of the 20th century, most ofLondon's fruit and vegetables were grown round there. The farms were supplied by specialist nurseries, whichensured that Britain possessed a wider variety of temperate fruit trees than any other nation. Two weeks ago,only one of them was left. In the 1940s, JC Allgrove's kept 1000 varieties of apple trees. It is still listedin the directories as one of Britain's great growers. But I was among its last customers.
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Since the owner died two years ago, the business has been run by a volunteer, Nick Houston. "There arebits of ground here where no one's been for 20 years," he told me. Recently, scrabbling beneath the ivywhich now covers the orchards, he found a fruit he had never seen before. It was a Baumann's Reinette: thehorticultural equivalent of a Faberge egg. "But I had no idea which bloody tree it had fallen off".Somewhere in the nursery there should be two varieties - King Harry and St Augustine's Orange - which even thenational fruit collection doesn't possess, but he hasn't been able to find them yet. The land is to be sold.Nick will salvage what he can and run a business of his own, under the old name, to try to keep the rarebreeds growing.
He gave a one-word answer when I asked him what had happened to the business. "Supermarkets".Today the apples they buy are landing three miles from JC Allgrove's. Heathrow's first runway was built onstrawberry farms and orchards. From the air, you can still see derelict greenhouses and the parallel lines onthe land where fruit trees once grew. Richard Cox, the man who bred the world's favourite apple, is buriedbeside St Mary's Church in Harmondsworth, [3] which will be flattened if a third runway is built atHeathrow.[4]
The superstores have used their buying power to force the world's farmers to compete directly with eachother. Yesterday I spoke to a fruit grower in Gloucestershire, who told me that to stay in the game he mustsometimes sell coxes for as little as 57p a kilo, less than his cost of production. [5] The supermarkets thensell the same apples for between pounds1.60 and 1.80. They can buy them for even less from Chile, New Zealandand South Africa, where labour is cheap and the farms are huge. This would present no threat to the growershere, had the superstores not used their political power to ensure that fuel costs stay low, and the docks andairports keep expanding.
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These companies are now strolling over the battlefield, dispatching the last of the wounded. A few daysago, Verdict Research published a report on the takeover of Britain's cornershops. The big chains have movedinto the suburbs, where they are closing down the competition. "Now smaller retailers can no longer hidein the neighbourhood," Verdict reports. "A major shake-out is inevitable". [6]
Wal-Mart, which owns the British chain Asda, is now the biggest company on earth. In the last financialyear it took $245bn. It is successful partly because it is one of the most ruthless employers in the westernworld.
In the US its sales clerks made an average of $13,861 in 2001, almost $800 below the federal poverty linefor a family of three.[7] It is reported to have told new employees how to apply for food stamps so that theydon't starve to death.[8] In November, the police found hundreds of illegal immigrants working as cleaners inits stores. Some of them claimed that they were obliged to work seven nights a week, without overtime,insurance or benefits.[9]
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By forcing down the prices of the goods they buy, the superstores encourage even more repressive conditionsin the companies which supply them. A recent study by Oxfam documents the systematic abuse of workers in thefactories and farms they buy from.[10] The Waltons are so rich because others are so poor.
Beside this, the destruction of our horticultural diversity looks trivial. But both are manifestations ofthe same problem. As the superstores capture the market, they shut down all our choices: about where we shop,what we buy, who we work for. This, of course, is what all monopolies seek to do.
We might have hoped that governments would treat them as such. Indeed, there was a time when they did. In1936, a federal anti-trust act was passed in the US to protect small shops from the Great Atlantic &Pacific Tea Company.[11] But governments were braver then. In Britain, the Office of Fair Trading and theCompetition Commission seem to spend their time devising new excuses. They continue to insist, for example,that big stores and corner shops are separate markets.[12] Tesco might sell 25% of all Britain's groceries, butit owns "only" 6% of the convenience store market, so it should be allowed to expand in that sectoras it pleases. Last month the OFT admitted that its voluntary code of practice, which is supposed to protectfarmers from the excessive power of the superstores, isn't working. By way of remedy it proposed "moreresearch".[13]
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In response, the MPs Andrew George and David Drew were planning to launch an early day motion in parliamenton March 16,calling for a legally binding code of practice and a supermarket watchdog.[14] But Tony Blair seems to be asfrightened of the superstores as he is of the tabloid press.
Nick couldn't find me any of the rarest varieties. He sold me an Adam's Pearmain, a Charles Ross, a SturmerPippin and a Cornish Aromatic. I would have bought the names even if the trees weren't attached to them. Ifthey survive my clumsy handling and fruit, I will regard every apple they produce as a minor act ofinsurrection.
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References:
1. Forbes
2. ibid.
3. Lucinda Lambton, 15th March 2003. Historic Departures. The Daily Telegraph
4. Hillingdon.gov.uk
5. The grower asked me not to reveal his name. Most of the superstores’ suppliers are afraid to speak outpublicly against them.
6. Verdict Research, March 2004. Press release: A Multiple-Led Local Renaissance Coming to Small StoresNear You!
7. Anthony Bianco and Wendy Zellner, 6th October 2003. Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful? Business Week
8. Andrew Gumbel, 6th November 2003. Wal-Mart Faces Prosecution Over Use of Illegal Workers. TheIndependent.
9. ibid.
10. Oxfam, 2004. Trading Away Our Rights: Women Working in Global Supply Chains.
11. Anthony Bianco and Wendy Zellner, ibid.
12. Eg Verdict Research, ibid.
13. Office of Fair Trading, February 2004. The Supermarkets Code Of Practice.
14. Andrew George David Drew, 11th March 2004. EDM 817. Supermarket Code of Practice.
