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00:00Music
00:04Music
00:08Music
00:28Music
00:29what is it about the British and the corner shop the corner shop has always
00:34been there for us a British institution there are almost more corner shops than
00:43there are corners it was on the front line of what was happening in society
00:48from the 1940s to the 1990s it saved our bacon during the Second World War and it
00:57also became a rite of passage for new immigrants including my family I'm Babita Sharma and I'm the
01:05daughter of shopkeepers and for me the corner shop sits at the very heart of the community
01:11it's what mum and dad called the glory days and by that they meant a buzzing trade and I remember it
01:18really well the shop being absolutely packed full of customers and I would sit on the shop counter
01:24and see all walks of life come in through those front doors and you know everything about them
01:29the paper that they read their favorite box of cigarettes but above all else you know all the
01:36gossip in the town this is a local shop for local people there's nothing for you here this unsung
01:43hero has been at the center of ordinary lives for more than 70 years its death has been predicted many
01:49times but still it's soldiers on the last decade it's been said that the days of the corner shop
01:56are numbered so just how has it managed to survive
02:00from the traditions of open all hours to the idiosyncrasies of league of gentlemen
02:18everyone has their corner shop and a story to go with it well that'll be 97p love thank you oh
02:26as a journalist I'm interested in the role these small independent shops seem to have played in
02:41helping to shape Britain into a modern multicultural nation today I'm going back to our old corner shop
02:49VP superstores in Reading which was owned and run by my mum and dad
02:54it looks completely different it's not allowed it's not how we had it right
03:00the grocery shelves was here and then we had cakes on that side so the till the till was this side
03:08wasn't it no the same side yeah but it was I remember wasn't it coming out this this way no that
03:14we're okay because here was a bread and I remember us sitting sitting here right yeah yeah for me and
03:21my sisters this was our counter the shop was our home our library our play area what year did you buy the shop
03:29the corner shop was clearly in my dna but little did I know that I was being born into a much bigger history
03:46you often hear that phrase we're a nation of shopkeepers a nation that's been built on entrepreneurs and that wealth and that drive of ambition but I don't think I ever realized any of that when I was a kid here in this corner shop
03:50I didn't kind of realize that we were part of a much richer history history history that dates right back to the Victorian era
04:02in the 19th century suburbs were created to house an increasing urban population but they needed a local food supply
04:18and the victorians came up with an ingenious solution
04:29town planners created rows of houses and terraces in which the house on the corner of a junction of roads
04:37was designed specifically to be a shop it would often have a large window a door on the on the corner
04:43in order to attract the largest flow of traffic and to serve that local community
04:57corner shops became the backbone of the 1940s urban community but it seems their success was a product
05:05of circumstance we literally had no choice during the period of the second world war when most food
05:13is rationed people have to register with their local shop in order to receive their food and so
05:20this is a period where the local shop really thrives in part as a result of rationing added to that you
05:27have really much more restricted movement in part because of petrol rationing but also because men are away
05:34at war women are working and so people are spending less time traveling to the centers of town there's
05:39less money available and so the local shop really comes into its own at this time
05:51an old corner shop has been preserved at the folk and transport museum in northern ireland
05:56this is what it would have looked like during world war ii here we are this looks amazing
06:00chris wilson grew up in the belfast of the 1940s this to me is the late 1940s early 50s and all the
06:09sweets well in those days we didn't worry about our teeth but you see during the war sweets were on
06:14ration
06:19he regularly helped out as an errand boy in his corner shop off the shankill road
06:24because of course the war must have had a big impact on what the corner shop was selling yes it
06:31did have that is true and there were coupons you'd your ration book and you could only buy
06:38what your coupons allowed you to buy eggs were in ration cheese you had it you had a a cheese wire
06:45you lifted up the handle and the wire came down and cut the cheese really sharp yeah sometimes you cut
06:51your finger but then you didn't tell the customer there's blood on the cheese you just wrapped it
06:54up i could give it to them health and safety didn't exist in those days neither did the nhs but the
07:07corner shop stepped in to provide a myriad of cheap over-the-counter medicines i and all my friends in our
07:15little houses were lined up by our mothers on a saturday morning and we were given
07:21either liquid paraffin milk and magnesium or syrup of figs gosh that's a nice choice
07:28we didn't really have no see at once thank goodness but it was to give us moving experiences and to
07:32keep the bowels clear she would buy that in the corner shop and then on a tablespoon she would line
07:37up the wings and you open your mouth and you got it in and you got a piece of orange afterwards so the
07:42corner shop was kind of your pharmacy and your news agents and your bosses and your butchers yes
07:48literally you could buy anything in a corner shop morning mate great morning well what do you want
07:57a pair of pickled onion during the 1940s people shopped every day and the corner shop was where you came
08:04to meet your neighbors hear all the local news and of course the local gossip and i believe quite about
08:10trouble yesterday too the corner shop was the social center of the two or three streets and people
08:19talked about things they talked they talked about interesting things have you heard about him he's off
08:24of so-and-so have you heard about her she's off of so-and-so have you heard about so-and-so she's
08:30lording us over us because she's got an artificial she's got an artificial fur coat you've got all that
08:34sort of talk so all this is happening as people would come in oh yes like this yes just be chatting
08:39away yeah well it was a social it was a social gathering of the area it was better local bbc it picked
08:46up all the news even well into the post-war era we shopped in this very personal way this shop is
08:54just a minute or two away from rotherham's main shopping center but people rely on it for anything
08:59from a packet of sugar to a paintbrush customers pop in for just one or two items
09:06the retail landscape in britain is completely different to what we know today you would go into
09:12an independent shop and one or two people would serve you reaching goods from behind a counter
09:18packaging them up and serving you it was a slow encounter it was a quite personal encounter
09:24farmhouse low yes and three pound of potatoes very few people have fridges in fact only 50
09:31of people have refrigerators in 1969 so the corner shop provides a local close by service to buy
09:39perishable goods god forbid if you forgot anything as the corner shop was closed on a saturday at midday
09:46and didn't open again until monday time you're off jen all right see ya good night good night
09:54that a shopping revolution was on the horizon and the little corner shop was about to face its first big
10:01threat a transatlantic phenomenon has at last made its mark in british shops the self-service storm
10:11its apprenticeship is over and according to the experts it's here to stay someone once compared the
10:16self-service store with a lending library and accept that you have to buy the goods that's the principle
10:21it works on choose for yourself there's no doubt that self-service completely revolutionized the way
10:27that we shop some people reported at the time that they felt less scrutinized they weren't being judged
10:33now it was often the case of people who were perhaps poorer or working class particularly if
10:37they hadn't been able to afford for many goods they would have felt more judged in the sort of
10:41environment of the small local shop in the supermarket you sort of wander freely because everything is on
10:47show and easy to reach housewives are finding shopping easier quicker and more convenient in 1950
10:54there are about 50 self-service shops by 1969 there's 3 400 self-service shops so it grows really quickly
11:05and housewives hope that it will cut out cubes the glamour and americana of self-service made the corner
11:11shop seem small parochial and outdated it was now engaged in a david and goliath battle with the supermarket
11:24many corner shop owners simply decided that they had had enough and that it was time to sell up
11:31so how was the corner shop going to survive
11:35fortunately help was at hand waiting in the wings were a new generation of proprietors including
11:41my parents mum came from delhi in 1971 to marry dad my great uncle convinced mum that she should take on
11:51a corner shop why did you want to do it have a shop because you were never there dad you were always
11:57at mars in the factory and he said you sitting home you're not doing anything yeah yeah he always said
12:03did you say actually i've got three kids to look after him she had to do something and he say okay he
12:08said why you don't do the small shop and when the customer comes the bell will ring then you know
12:16the customer go and serve the customer so hold on you're at the back of the shop yeah looking after
12:24me four months old and if the bell rings and you'll run and leave me charming so why did so many asians
12:33become shopkeepers at this time so i guess there's nothing there's no inherent link right there's no
12:40particular racial or cultural link between south asians and running shops what there is is a set
12:46of circumstances of historical circumstances a lot of the south asian migration to britain after world
12:52war ii comes because of a labor shortage in britain so we see obviously the northern mill towns there's
12:59huge recruitment from the subcontinent for workers and that's partly because the white laboring class
13:05in the north doesn't want to do that night shift so there's a bit of a reticence about doing that
13:09night shift so asians are recruited to do that work but this was the 1960s and if you were an immigrant
13:18the chances of gaining promotion was slim the labor market is much more difficult for asians and their
13:25white counterparts facing discrimination in the labor market one of the only options was to work for
13:31yourself and that's one of the reasons that asians did go into running corner shops the asian corner
13:38shop provided a wealth of exotic goods that couldn't be bought anywhere else
13:47but to be really successful depended on whether it could break out of a specialist market
13:53and take on the arc rights of this world we've never met i'm gupta oh well i'm sorry to hear that
14:02open all hours tackle this transition shopkeeper to shop you were looking a bit peaky i've got just
14:09the thing for you so here try this three times a day after meals the name is gupta albert gupta 74p albert
14:15don't get me wrong we're colleagues i'm in the same line of business me too i'm a yorkshire shopkeeper
14:25so what are you doing in these parts then i've been studying to make my little place just like this
14:32borderline seedy i've got this good steady indian clientele no bother at all it's the yorkshire customers
14:42they have very weird customers to crack between you and me sometimes i wish they'd all bug off back
14:48to york
14:55as it happened the very success of the supermarket revolution which so threatened the corner shop
15:01would now come to its aid
15:03the rise of the supermarket in the late 1960s and through to the 1970s is in part because of increased
15:14amounts of cars on the roads people can travel further to their supermarkets because working
15:19habits are changing women are working more and therefore doing one weekly shop makes life much
15:26easier but also because slowly people have refrigeration and therefore are able to shop
15:31less frequently this meant we still needed a local place to top up our shopping and buy our newspapers
15:40and events in east africa were about to change the corner shop forever
15:44on the 4th of august 1972 ugandan dictator idi ameen ordered the expulsion of the country's entire asian
16:02population asian have kept themselves apart as a closed community and have
16:14refused to integrate ameen condemned the asian minority calling them bloodsuckers
16:21uganda's asians with a business class making up only one percent of the population but controlling
16:28ninety percent of the wealth the reasons that the ugandan asians run a lot of the kind of trade and
16:35commerce was again it's not some inherent link it was part of a system of colonial governance
16:40so what we have in uganda is in the early colonial period there um africans are not allowed to go
16:45into trade they're banned by law and asians are not allowed to own land at that point so actually
16:51there's a kind of racial division of labor through colonial control that means that the ugandan asians
16:56that are finally expelled in 1972 and come to britain have experience in that trade
17:08a ready-made nation of shopkeepers was about to arrive on our doorstep
17:13among the first was abdul ghani ismail and his family
17:18abdul's father kasam was a successful shop owner he was one of the first people in uganda to own a
17:24mercedes and he employed over 200 workers he was a close friend of idi amin and his ministers so
17:32till the end he never thought he would get kicked out so your father thought yeah being a friend of
17:37idi amin he would be protected i'll be okay i'm a wealthy businessman here but actually that wasn't
17:42the case it didn't work and in the end the idi amin himself told him he said look i can't i can't
17:47control my generals and in the end my father decided that look we've got to get out and we only had
17:53seven days left before the deadline abdul's father abandoned the big house the servants the murk
17:59and came to london with six children to support and only 50 quid in his pocket we were
18:05well literally riches to rags you know overnight we were paupers
18:13we ended up in a refugee camp in somerset in a little village called watch it
18:18watch it was one of 15 rehousing camps set up by the government in an effort to showcase british
18:28culture and help assimilation they came up with some interesting entertainment
18:35good evening to you all tonight we have a different kind of entertainment from what we've had before
18:42mrs jones and her merrymakers from newbury portray the kind of songs that my grandfather and grandmother
18:51used to sing in uganda our lifestyle was good and here we are like on the begging bowl
19:07my mom washing up she had to wash the clothes dry them outside it's not easy in winter
19:12and yet in uganda she had housemaids servants that did everything cutting off the onions washing the
19:19clothes so overnight their life was more difficult than ours
19:28abdul and his family spent four months in the detention center
19:32but his father was determined to start again as a shopkeeper
19:39and my father was one of those guys he said you're not going on to the uh
19:43welfare system because i know if it gets into your blood
19:46you will never work you will enjoy it
19:53so in the end he said one day i'm going to start my own shop and he did
19:56eventually they saved up enough money to buy a small shop in eastern and bristol where rents were cheap
20:03and he would work from half past seven in the morning till half past one at night
20:06he would sell the milk bread in the morning at night the taxi drivers would finish and they would want
20:12their chicken pilau or biryani or there was there was nothing like uh what do you call uh onion
20:18bajis or chicken jalfrezis in those days it was what we ate in africa is what he cooked and people loved it
20:24but not everyone receives such a warm welcome during the early 1970s 27 000 asians came to the uk
20:40sparking a wave of protests from far-right groups we're taking a petition down to the home office and
20:48uh we're asking him to have some common sense about this we have a million unemployed uh we can't squeeze
20:54up anymore leicester council even took out an advert in the ugandan press warning migrants not to come
21:03as they were full where are you going to live when you get to prison london w12 and in fact i wouldn't
21:11go down to i wouldn't go down to south hall or leicester or some other places you know where there is
21:16already an influx of immigrants not everyone was so well informed
21:25actor knitting ganatra is a familiar face playing the character marsud in eastenders
21:30he grew up in a corner shop having arrived from kenya when he was just three years old
21:38his family moved to coventry but little did they know they were setting up shop next door to the national
21:44front when they first came over do you think they were accepted no we weren't accepted at all no we
21:51were the we were the first asians in the neighborhood and um there was a lot of racism that was at the
21:59time when the national front were based in coventry and uh so shops were targeted i remember the people
22:08throwing stuff at the shop trying to smash the shop down you know my mom being spat at my dad being
22:17beaten up i mean that was but but weirdly enough as you're growing up you kind of go well that's just
22:22normal right asian shops are particular targets for attacks oh i feel sorry for the shop there i don't
22:32really they're broken about six times all the asian shopkeepers we met were too scared to speak
22:40it is it's a shame really what what they do to him in there it was hardly the start knitting and his
22:45family imagined they'd have in prosperous britain far removed from the fairy tale there's no fairy tale
22:52about it we had no money my mom was wearing flip-flops in the snow we were catching the bus because we
22:57didn't have a car we were catching the bus to go to the cash and carry to fill up the shop to sell
23:03stuff i was old enough to carry a box of crisps that's about i was stronger i was about four or
23:08five years old and so it was really through sheer hard work there was no there was nothing romantic about
23:15it
23:21taking on a corner shop catapulted immigrants like nithin's family
23:26right onto the front line of racism in 1970s britain in the corner shop there was nowhere to
23:33hide so why did they do it it's in our dna we were born to do this the principle for most indians were
23:43now we're free of the colonials we're going to be our own masters we're not going to work for anyone
23:49else and it was a it's a very political it's a small emotional and political revolution for
23:55an indian mentality to to kind of push that that that through line all the way to have becoming an
24:02entrepreneur and being your own boss and having your own shop and and having your own business
24:07whether it be a shop whether whatever it is you are your own boss the way my father and would say
24:14in gujarati would be i don't want to be bending my knees to to anyone else
24:25i think i'll go on down the corner
24:35no matter where your shop was there was just one chance one chance to run a business and make it work
24:43for many like mum and dad it was tough but customers saw the benefit of having their corner shop back
24:48but how did we turn a profit when others had failed before us well we opened on a sunday but
24:57we also imported our own business model and that included uncosted free family labor
25:05in our shop in reading no one got out of doing a shift and there was no pay for all this hard work
25:11other than eating as many sweets as we could get our hands on in secret of course but my parents
25:18remember things a little differently we would do quite a lot in the shelves no the girls used to do
25:26in this shop we used to stack all the shelves um sometimes sometimes yeah we used to do the pedigree
25:36chums the toilet rolls the cigarettes embassy number one silver lambert and butler
25:48do you not remember that i wasn't the only one comedian sanjeev koly also grew up working in his
25:55family's glasgow shop it directly inspired his comedy it is ramesh maju here i am taking this
26:03opportunity to showcase in all my glory my small to medium retail concern yes my shop bags mags and bags
26:15come and meet the staff
26:19together with donald mccleary they write and record the radio for sitcom
26:23fags mags and bags which mimes the world of the corner shop for comic effect
26:30okay chaps okay give it a run through all right take one rolling away look that's sanji coming out
26:36now he's holding a box with a ribbon on it ah it is exciting a new addition to the lindsey firmament
26:43i mean the way we've written the show is basically uh my character is the dad dave who's donnie's
26:48character is basically the mum yeah and you've got the two sons and the family dynamic is something
26:53you've seen shops all the time can we get it dad can we get it can we get it can we get it sanjay
26:58who's the surly son who hates doing shifts in the shop um was certainly based on a shop near us where
27:04i went in once and there was really really loud drum and bass an incredibly surly 14 year old with a
27:09beanie hat like that hating his life hating his dad you know honestly just i'm surprised he sold
27:16anything this of course is my son and your great nephew sanjay i mean great in the genealogical sense
27:21says he's arrogant at best sanjay do not slouch india is watching where is your name tag sick
27:29sanjay one of the characters i couldn't believe this when i heard it he gets pocket money from his dad
27:34for doing shifts in the shop i mean i never got pocket money you get pocket money as a family
27:39we were we got we got an edict from radio 4 that uh that they said basically you have to give sanjay
27:44pocket money otherwise it's child exploitation that's not true yes we all know that that was a
27:50fair note yeah no that's not actually true though but uh yeah um yeah i i know you you never got you
27:55you basically pay whatever how many chocolate tools you cram in your mouth that was your payment
27:58yeah uh you know the rogue yorkie oh i did a york account there seems to be five missing
28:02and your mum would say that but she knew what happened it'd be straight down your gullet
28:06that was your payment oh what are you doing in those magnums plural of magnums is magna actually
28:12yes very good clever shoes ah come on boys we don't get high in our own supply you've taken
28:17those magna out of a child's mouth bags mags and bags is about the minutiae of the corner shop
28:24there it is to a dear auntie auntie there although it's a picture of a lion with some kind of degree
28:30the writers believe that what we buy tells the shopkeeper who we are as a shopkeeper you know
28:36people's business you can second guess their business from the stuff they buy from the magazines
28:39they buy from you know like we've always said if someone comes into your shop and buys uh isotonic
28:43lucasade and a word search it's a hospital visit they're going to visit someone hospital um yeah if
28:48they buy a bottle of scotch and the twix uh you need to do an intervention yeah anyway i wanted to show
28:55his bishopness your range of toilet wizards you always make a connection if you go to a shop every
29:01day even if you don't want to make a connection you have done because when you go to the supermarket
29:06you very rarely get served by the same person yeah in fact you probably never do i'm not really that
29:10bothered mrs b no your hatness if someone of your stature is going to bear his you know bum bum to the
29:16toilet and there's going to be possible splashback issues then you should be able to choose the flavor
29:23it's hard hitting social commentary that's what we're all about yeah
29:36by the 1980s 50 percent of independent corner shops were taken over by asian families the traditional
29:59corner shop had now evolved into something completely more diverse the asian shopkeeper
30:05was now a key figure at the heart of the community that paved the way for a new generation of migrants
30:11to take on the corner shop revolution in iran would propel another wave of migrants onto the british high
30:19street yesterday yesterday saw the world clashes in the streets of ferran for several weeks
30:26where are you god i thought you're married by now farad and his son arzang escaped the revolution and
30:33went straight into the corner shop business in wolverhampton all right do you remember the first day
30:40that you opened up this shop uh yes i remember it was 22nd of june 1987 the first customer came and
30:53asked for half an ounce of golden virginia i didn't have a clue what he was asking for when i served the
31:03customers and said what is it this is a tobacco they roll it and they smoke it that's how it started
31:11after six months i knew every single name of nearly 1300 items in the shop and staying true to corner
31:20shop tradition the shock waves of world events were discussed over the shop counter
31:25the news agent is where you went to get your news so people would start to immerse themselves in
31:32conversation you know all you have to do is pick up a copy of a newspaper it was about immigrants or
31:38lesbians and they'd have their tuppence with oh bloody immigrants bloody lesbians that would then
31:42stimulate debate with the shopkeeper and if the shopkeeper happened to be half iranian half english
31:46like i was or iranian like dad um you know it would kind of broaden the horizons both of yourself and the
31:53person that was talking to you but i think it's just the idea of it being a community hub for the
31:58news agents in this country the corner shop or the news agents as arzang calls it was more than just a
32:04shop sometimes running one called for special personal skills i had a customer who was a very very
32:12educated man well spoken one day he came and said tom what is the matter you look very upset and sad
32:20he started crying and i came around and i put my hand very very proud man i put my hands around his
32:32shoulder i said what is the matter tom and he put his head on my shoulder and he started crying and he
32:42said betty died that he was his wife that is a part of life that is a part of my life which i'll never ever
32:56forget i'm not only a shopkeeper i'm a part of community
33:03but during the 1980s many of these communities faced tough times the people's march for jobs reached
33:15a climax this afternoon with a march through central london
33:31i ain't got a window and i ain't got a job britain was in the grip of a recession and the country was
33:38buckling under the strain of mass unemployment in growing social divisions
33:43the tory government needed good news stories the corner shop owner became the poster boy for the new
33:49entrepreneurial society championed by margaret thatcher mrs thatcher's larder is stocked as
33:55prosaically as any housewives and she wondered in anticipation if there weren't a couple of useful
34:01shops around the corner from ken downing street now salad or brown bread new zealand butter ending
34:09asian shopkeepers have been incredibly useful to the tory party the image of the shopkeeper is a
34:15powerful one and the image of the asian shopkeeper is very useful across the political spectrum
34:19as a symbol of something like hard work or aspiration
34:22but it's also a very convenient way of suggesting that uh we live in a meritocracy that we don't live in
34:33right so that um it's used as a way to suggest to working class that you should be able to pull yourself
34:41up by your bootstraps and so i think the idea of the successful asian shopkeeper has been really useful
34:46politically for that reason one success story was lord dollar poppet he arrived from uganda penniless
34:59he started working as a shopkeeper became a multi-millionaire and is now a member of the house of lords
35:08i think mrs thatcher made a big difference she herself was a shopkeeper's daughter
35:12and she realized she understood uh small businesses very well she encouraged small businesses so i
35:18think there was some recognition of these east african british indians coming into this country running
35:24a shop how hard work they are and they realized that they she realized that our values of hard work
35:32education enterprise family were the values of the conservative party
35:35in the 1980s you were seven times more likely to be a millionaire if your name was patel than if your
35:48name was smith shops was the starting point to become a successful businessman shop is where you do
35:56your own buying you do on selling you do your own vat return you do your own accounts and the longer
36:02dollars you put in a shop the more money you can make the more the family helps came in the less
36:11the wage cost the higher the profit the more the banks want to lend you money and expand and grow
36:15for a second shop third shop and move on
36:22by the mid-1980s dollar had built a business empire but for him it wasn't just about making money
36:28i think one thing it did help us which is very very important it helped us to integrate you know we
36:37learned the the art of talking to people engaging with people learning english and to make a success
36:45in this country integration is key in difficult economic times self-made millionaires like dollar
36:52poppad were the exception rather than the rule but a stereotype had been born
36:59ladies and gentlemen may i please have your attention my name is
37:05i am wanting to tell you the story of my success it all began when i was a little boy
37:12my mother said to me don't bump my son go out and buy a corner shop
37:18behind the counter of a corner shop making a trillion
37:26it was at this time that a loaded term entered our vocabulary
37:32it's even acceptable to use it on prime time tv what's the point all the animals will be dead
37:40won't be able to grow nothing because all the earth will be contaminated
37:44where are we gonna get something to eat bound to be a little packy shop open somewhere
37:53i think that it's probably not uncommon for there to be plenty of communities still in the uk
37:58where it's completely normal to refer to it as the packy shop where does that come from that term
38:03i think it comes from the fact that lots of asians own corner shops
38:07what i never understood about the expression was the logic of it
38:09i would call something a paki shop if a i thought paki was an acceptable shortening of pakistani
38:16which it isn't because yeah you can call an australian an aussie the reason for that is is
38:21that you don't see aussies go home on a brick wall you see pakis go home on a brick wall it just attained
38:25that connotation just by osmosis but also what exactly is pakistani about the shop okay the brillo
38:32pads aren't pakistani the cup of soups are pakistani the bin bags aren't pakistani why can't you just
38:37say the corner shop or the shop i never understood what the ethnicity of the family that ran had
38:43anything to do with it it was completely irrelevant it didn't you know what i mean that that's what got
38:47me and for farhad his ethnicity was also irrelevant this slur had become a catch-all term to throw at
38:55any successful shopkeeper who wasn't white what would they say to you when you said there were
39:00names rude names yeah bloody paki what are you doing here and the usual thing how did you deal with
39:08that how did you deal with the racism he's not pakistani for starters which is always interesting yeah
39:14as soon as they told me i said hang on you want to wait and listen or do you want to continue to say
39:21what you want to say well go off or bugger off if you want to know i'm not pakistani stars repeat but
39:29i'm persian not pakistani verbal abuse at times escalated into violent confrontation sunday after
39:40sunday white youths encouraged by the atmosphere created by the national front went on the rampage
39:45breaking shop windows and attacking passing nations the sight of the shopkeeper apparently
39:52doing well during era of recession lit the touch paper among far-right groups
40:00in the east end of london the openly racist british national party take to the streets
40:07the bmp want all non-whites to leave britain
40:09and they're marching in an area where racial attacks mostly on asians have tripled in two years
40:17asians say it's a provocation that can lead to violence
40:22the idea of the successful uh asian shopkeeper bred some resentment
40:29the 1985 film my beautiful laundrette shakes this dangerous cocktail
40:34leave it out why are you working for these people packis
40:43it's work that's why i want to do some work for a change instead of all this hanging around what you're
40:48jealous no i'm angry johnny i don't like to see one of our blokes groveling to packis
40:54look they came over here to work for us that's why we brought them over okay the asian shopkeeper is
41:00attacked partly as a symbol of a kind of working class resentment of people who seem to be making
41:07money in time of national crisis
41:15don't cut yourself off from your own people
41:17having a corner shop was the dream for many migrants in the 1960s and 70s but the dream is
41:33beginning to tarnish the corner shop was increasingly seen as a soft target a vulnerable space with little
41:41security and wide open to attack violent attacks on staff at small local shops have risen dramatically
41:49over the past year convenience stores are increasingly being seen as easy targets a shopkeeper has been
41:54talking about the moment he fought off a masked robber who fired a crossbow at him
42:00the corner shop owner often had to defuse very tricky situations
42:04even in dangerous moments where on a sunday morning there's been banging on the door at 4am and there's
42:12been guys who have been who are high on ecstasy and drunk who are banging on the door going ah yeah open
42:19the shop open the shop and my brother does and i'm standing there going oh this is going to kick off
42:25and my brother will go and there'll be this air this really palpable tension where then my brother will go
42:34hello robert how's your mom and then this robert guy would just go oh hi charlie and go you okay
42:42you're gonna get home all right yeah i'm fine but you think it was going to kick off because it could
42:47it could go either way but my brother's just brilliant at being able to dissipate that having
42:52said that you know he's seen seen his fair share of grief from and racial abuse from lots of people
42:59from kids to adults yeah the success of the shop could often depend on the personality of the
43:05shopkeeper something exploited in the cult comedy still game me am i the crazy man here
43:16it tapped into the stereotype of the asian shopkeeper who only had his wits to protect him
43:22i'm not listening to you either i'm listening to my ipod we're talking to somebody who gives that to us
43:28the character was played by none other than fags mags and bags writer sanjeev koly
43:36for very good socio-economic reasons um a lot of uh mostly asian families uh run shops uh all over
43:43the uk and in scotland uh and they're in sometimes pretty poor areas there's going to be envy i mean they're
43:49the guys driving the tan mercs uh so they have to develop their own kind of shield to avarice and
43:56envy and violence frankly uh and you know you can't take a baseball bat to every kid that comes in and
44:02tries to steal from you or or you call your racist names so what you do is you develop sarcasm to
44:07develop humor develop patter bants and uh so many people probably triple figures now have said oh did the
44:15boys base naveed on our shopkeeper well yes and no they based it on one particular shopkeeper but
44:22it's a generation of shopkeepers that like i say have this fantastic hybrid accent for start which
44:27is a joy to play i mean i based it in the sort of govern hill area glasgow which i can't really
44:31bother because it's a place i know very well you know um my dad doesn't speak like that but naveed
44:36looks a bit like my dad because my dad is a turban seik so as soon as i straighten my back and push my
44:40gut out i feel like my my dad speaks more like this you know but i do think that humor thing is very
44:44very important i mean i'm playing very deadpan but actually a lot of sheep shopkeepers that i know
44:57they are it's almost like don't want to give anything away it's almost like they're prowling
45:01so you've done said no does you do before it huh that kind of thing the body language almost
45:05becomes like this huh or what are you doing so it kind of becomes that anyway and a lot of
45:10shopkeepers adopt that body language and that kind of attitude bubblicious 25p
45:19snickers 40p
45:26i don't even have to smell your breath cheesy watch it's 25p
45:30i'm sorry about this mr harit ah these things happen kids will be kids
45:38you dirty bastard poppets 30p
45:57the kids nicking things from the shop was the least of your worries in the early 1990s out of nowhere a
46:03bigger threat loomed sunday trading let's be honest corner shops have been exploiting a loophole in a
46:11very unclear law what you couldn't couldn't buy according to the 1950 shop act was completely bizarre
46:18there's a famous saying that you could buy pornography on a sunday but not a bible
46:23and corner shops many of them like ours for 40 years traded illegally on a sunday
46:29but that all changed in 1994 the big supermarket said enough is enough they wanted to cash in on
46:35the money that corner shops are making and they too wanted to open up on a sunday sunday in england
46:42and wales will never be the same again after last night's commons vote the government plans to
46:47turn sunday into a family shopping day i think the main people who will benefit from this are the millions
46:52of people who already shop on sundays there was a warm welcome for the vote by the big out-of-town
46:58stores small shopkeepers say they'll be trampled by the giants it's devastating the reaction of sunday
47:04opening has not only took the customers away from us it's half the day's trading and i feel if this
47:11carries on much longer all the small businesses will go to the wall overnight the corner shop profit margin
47:20dropped drastically up to 50 percent of weekly takings had been made on a sunday the corner shop now
47:27felt the full blast of corporate competition by the 1990s many corner shop owners including mum and dad
47:35were getting out a great british institution the asian corner shop could soon be a thing of the past
47:42new research suggests up to 4 000 have disappeared over the past decade now the face of britain is
47:47changing tonight we wanted to mourn the passing of one british tradition the asian corner shop once
47:53open all hours according to the british retail consortium the last one will be gone by 2015.
48:06perhaps that was a bit over dramatic but for my family it was indeed the end of the road
48:11for some the shop was just a means to an end to educate their children and make money but for
48:18others such as our family it was a way of life what was going through your mind when you decided to
48:24sell it was getting a bit too much plus we were tired very tired that's time to sell the show
48:34for you said when i go to to the town if i see all my customers they say hello mrs sharma we missing you
48:45how are you and the children they say oh that's mrs sharma you know then i felt something you know yeah
48:54like my parents farhad worked 14 hours a day almost seven days a week he was completely exhausted but
49:03worried about the future of his shop because it's a small corner shop and you are so connected to your
49:11community you couldn't leave the shop with anybody unless you made sure your ideology your principle
49:23it carried on but there was a problem my generation born and brought up in the uk didn't want to take
49:34on the shop arzang became a playwright i think the the hours the physical strain of actually running in
49:43a shop were immense i mean there were 14 hour days you know they were huge days i became a journalist
49:50sanjeev became a comedian what you've got now is a next generation who have options and uh you know
49:59it's hard work and the whole point was to educate the kids so they didn't have to work in shop so that's
50:05why they don't want a part of it anymore and yeah the fact is they because they can become optometrists
50:10and they can work on the makeup counter boots and their options you know this this kind of low return
50:15retail thing as lucrative as it can be it's a lot of hours and it's a lot of graft so it's no surprise
50:21that there's a generation that aren't interested in taking over i mean i do know genuinely of a family
50:26where uh there was a son who was a lawyer and their daughter was a doctor and they still did shifts in
50:30the shop now i'm assuming that's not what their dad wanted for them um but that is what happened uh so
50:37it's it's a it's a strange tension
50:42nittin became an actor but his family are hanging on we've still got the shop and my mom and dad still
50:49get up uh at 3 30 in the morning and do the papers with my brother who runs the shop on for my dad and
50:57when i go back i do the same sort of stuff having worked so hard to make the shop a success and make
51:03it the focal point of the community nittin's family were not ready to let it go it's a tricky situation
51:09my brother provides a service that supermarkets won't provide which is a personal service he knows
51:15what you want he knows what you like he knows what paper you read when my when customers come in it's
51:21already on the counter and he has a conversation with you but my brother's been working in that shop
51:28since he was a kid and he's he's gonna he's you know he's 60 so i worry for him my brother hasn't
51:35had a holiday i think he's had a holiday three times in 40 years yeah we didn't really get many
51:42holidays no because it's again the papers need to be done well seven days a week so yeah and seven days a
51:47week there were other reasons why the next generation were wary the supermarkets which had earlier
52:05abandoned the town center were back muscling in on the corner shop's traditional turf the high street
52:12this fairly recent phenomenon of the supermarket now moving on to the high street with much smaller
52:22stores is really interesting and i think it's reflects something about how people are changing
52:27their shopping habits so although people still do a big shop they are often picking up the odd
52:35sort of special item or topping up their shopping so i think it's partly to do that it's also partly to do
52:40with you know more people living singly or in you know not in family households but living in sort of
52:46mixed households in urban areas not wanting to do a great big job it takes entrepreneurial guile to take
52:55on the supermarket giants and many corner shops have decided to call it a day or become part of an
53:02independent franchise like spa or nissa sweetmart in bristol started life as a small corner shop in
53:101969 but a few years ago abdul was ready to shut up shop from here you can see tesco anywhere one
53:18of the supermarkets on the other side you've got sainsbury four or five years ago i really thought
53:22we would have to wind up and close and forget it you know the supermarkets were getting stronger we
53:28were weaker um we didn't have enough stuff but sweetmart now seemed to have a winning formula
53:35luring customers with bespoke offerings from local organics to homemade curries
53:43come here i'll show you aladdin's cave aladdin's cave all the all the foods you can buy from the
53:49world all the spices people want to eat healthy you know recession can come and go there's one thing
53:55people won't cut too much is on food so you've got all the Indian vegetables all different vegetables
54:02this is what you're on about isn't it gorilla gorilla my favorite and the chilies that you
54:07the chilies are there um all different types 40 years ago if if i had an english customer and there was
54:14a couple of chilies left in the basket i would say you can have it and they would turn around and say no
54:18no no no no no no no we don't eat that today we've got english customers who will buy a kilo and
54:24they'll ask you or do you have bullet chilies you know people have changed they they they know a lot
54:30more they know what kind of spices to buy this truly is spice heaven isn't it this is where we do
54:38different kind of spices which you won't get in supermarkets for example zulu's fire spice
54:43oh what is this probably blow your socks off is it really yeah it's quite hot then moroccan harissa
54:52spice people travel a lot air travel is cheaper if you've been abroad you've eaten something you want
54:57to try it at home we've got it over here you've got west african dried fish and prawns oh yeah gosh
55:05and this is this is world famous now we're known for it bombay duck it's actually dried fish
55:13okay not sure about the dried fish but amdul's tactic has proved successful they now own the whole
55:21row so we're still the old corner shop but we're we're an extended corner shop and they have a strong
55:29local following as well how can you come here and not to like some of the other supermarkets because
55:34it's got everything we're just looking around and i've never seen so many spices and vegetables yeah
55:40and yeah basically if you want to create anything exotic and exciting for dinner
55:53sweetmart is not alone there is an emerging trend of specialized corner shops
55:59in fact the corner shop market is expected to increase by 17 to 44 billion pounds over the next five years
56:10but is this really the corner shop as we have known it if we were to transport ourselves back to the
56:171950s and to walk into a local corner shop convenience store at that time i think what we would be struck
56:24by is the very limited range of foods available and that has clearly completely transformed within living
56:31memory and so now what you see is that people are you know obsessed with food our travel has meant that
56:38we're much more adventurous about what we will eat and what we won't eat um and also the population has
56:45changed and the changing population has completely transformed uh the corner shop landscape
56:51the corner shop has constantly reinvented itself since the 1940s in the way that only small independent
57:03retailers can it's been a rite of passage for migrants who have made our community more diverse
57:18and for the past decade we've seen the rise of holy shops latvian delis all selling their own
57:25specialized products in this new brexit era there are those who would say that the corner shop and
57:34its diversity may come under threat but i don't see it like that the corner shop is too much a part of
57:42everyone's way of life we can't seem to get the corner shop out of our minds it's always been there for
57:49us whether we're buying a box of milk tray or a bag of bombay mix and today's shopkeepers well they're
57:56just like mum and dad they're a new wave of immigrants reflecting a changing face of britain and i can see
58:03it i can see it right now my history repeating itself it's a special little place a trusted friend
58:13place where we can celebrate the local and i just hope that it stays for generations to come
58:26to the scottish highlands next and the royals most private of residences balmoral a history here on bbc4
58:34there's dancing behind movie scenes behind the movie scene
58:47you
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