Every little helps � especially when you�re trying to block Tesco�s plans to build a giant supermarket in your Glasgow neighbourhood. Stephen Phelan reports on the street-level activism taking root in Partick.

WHEN the BBC set out to build their own mythical yet recognisable corner of Glasgow for a new Scottish soap opera five years ago, the place they imagined was Partick by another name. River City creator Stephen Greenhorn said at the time that he wanted to "tell a story about a working-class community swept up in all this development and gentrification, where some characters are embracing the change and others are quite fearful".

The synthesised neighbourhood of "Shieldinch" has actually remained more or less the same within the snowglobe universe of that show, but its real-life counterpart seems a little further altered every time you walk down Dumbarton Road - another downmarket shopfront boarded up, another franchise sandwich bar opened, another crane hanging over the tenements.

Another supermarket may be coming soon, and it will be much bigger and busier than anything else in the area if Tesco gets its way. It usually does, and for that reason some seem prepared to accept (though not exactly embrace) this particular sign of change. Others are so actively against it that they have organised.

All Tomorrow's Particks - whose comparative youth and postgraduate thinking is given away by the fact their name is a pun on the title of the UK's most self-conciously leftfield music festival All Tomorrow's Parties - are one such group, dedicated to the opposition of Tesco's plan to build a superstore on Beith Street, which now depends on a final Glasgow City Council decision that is likely to be made next month.

"We'll do whatever we can to stop this," says member Nic Green, when I meet three of their number on a very sunny day outside Partick's trusted Lismore pub. "Within limits," says her comrade James Kevinson. Legal limits? He smiles but doesn't answer, like a practised guerilla. (Kevinson isn't his real surname either - James is a cautious fellow indeed.) Theirs is still a fledgling rebellion, and their public activities so far have been restricted, if that's the word, to an inaugural event which set a world record for group massage.

A couple of weeks ago, on the nearby brownfield site where Tesco wants to build, 87bemusedvolunteers stood in a large circle rubbing each other's backs. "Most of those people lived and worked in Partick," says Green, "so we asked them what they would prefer to a Tesco. They had lots of ideas."

"A play-park," recalls fellow ATP member Laura Bradshaw, who organised the event. "A city farm. A council-run leisure centre."

"A gigantic ball-pit," adds Kevinson. "A city beach." "Some sort of green space" was such a popular answer that this group now plan to transform the site into an area of outstanding natural beauty by inviting residents to make their own "seed-bombs" - parcelling seeds up together with peat compost, under instruction from an expert in the manufacture of such harmless botanical ordinance - and fire them into the contended zone by use of a bespoke catapult device, causing flowers to bloom like delayed explosions.

It's a pleasing mental picture, and All Tomorrow's Particks will admit that they are idealists, but they also believe it is only practical to ask people what they want. "Put it this way," says Kevinson. "We're not sitting here having this conversation because the local community have said they want a big supermarket. Our idea is to facilitate a process for the community to make their own decisions. Progress, to me, is inclusive. And Tesco, to me, is not."

On the same sunny day, just the other side of Mansfield Park (the only part of Glasgow named after a Jane Austen novel, although the area's own characters and dialogue don't seem unduly influenced by her work), I meet two founder members of another organisation, Stop Tesco Owning Partick (Stop). Over coffee outside The Rio Café, which is itself a relatively new and benign symptom of a certain trendiness encroaching downhill from Hyndland, Stop chairman Dr Samer Bagaeen and press agent Gordon Bickerton explain how and why their group voted itself into existence.

"Officially," says Bagaeen, "Stop has been active since January. There was a public meeting at the Burgh Hall, where it became apparent that we needed to gather ourselves formally.Theyhavesinceproduceda written online constitution, elected four key office-bearers, appointed five further committee members, and enlisted a support base, in terms of letters and petition signatories, of over 2500 people. But there have been very strong feelings surrounding this development since the beginning ... "

Tesco's designs on Beith Street make for a long and opaque story, which turns on Byzantine points of construction codes and urban renewal procedures that could only be unpacked by someone with a doctorate in Planning Studies. Bagaeen is so qualified, which makes him an unusually well-armed, if eminently civil, resistance leader. "As far as I'm concerned," he says, "this is about the quality of what we do with the spaces available to us, and the question of how that space is compromised."

At the turn of the millennium, the space in question was owned by a company called Stannifer Development Ltd, who had applied to build a Class 1 retail unit where a long-gone scrapyard used to stand beside the River Kelvin. Consent was granted in 2000, but lapsed after a few years when the plan wasn't implemented. Then in 2005, Tesco and its Glasgow-based contractors The Development Planning Partnership (DPP) put in a bid for the land, and a building proposal for a vastly larger store of over 10,000 square metres, plus more than 1500 accomodation units. By Tesco's admission, the scale of that proposal was substantially reduced after early consultations.

"Their initial plan was outrageous," says Bagaeen, "and I think they knew it."

"In my opinion," adds Bickerton, a retired offshore worker whose home overlooks the site, "that's just how they operate. They deliberately ask for something massive, in the hope they'll get permission for something a bit smaller." If the outstanding application is approved in June, the resulting Tesco store will still be almost as large as a Class 1 retail structure is technically allowed to be, with 690 student rooms stacked above, as well as 225 private residences, and over 500 parking spaces underground.

It will cast a long shadow. It will also, according to Bagaeen, fail to comply with a number of different articles within Glasgow's official city plan - Policy SC 4 Retail Development and Policy DEV 1 on Quality and Design, among several others - and the Glasgow And Clyde Valley Structure Plan. Bickerton is obviously much more of a layman than his chairman, significantly older, and longer established in the city (Bagaeen is Italian-Jordanian, and relocated from London just over three years ago). As such, he seems more prone to a nostalgic concern for "the character of the place".

"I remember when Glasgow was a series of villages linked by trams," says Bickerton. "That's how old I am. And Partick was one of the best. People used to come here just because they liked it. They still do. That's why I came to live here myself, and I don't want to see it become another Victoria Road." Small businesses and foot traffic have virtually disappeared from the street he's referring to on the city's south side, a fact routinely attributed to the opening of a 24-hour Asda superstore in Toryglen.

The Federation Of Small Businesses has established that a new supermarket in any given area can make 75% of residents less inclined to shop in their own high street, leading to a downturn in trade for up to 90% of local retailers. There is no reason to believe that a Tesco superstore wouldn't have the same effect on Dumbarton Road. But while Stop express alarm about this, they are not spokespeople for small business, and it is not their only point of order.

Many other arguments are levelled against Britain's four big supermarket chains on social, aesthetic, economic or even moral grounds, perhaps best summarised by the popular philosopher Alain de Botton when he said recently that the growing omnipotence of Tesco, which is a function of its unmatched profits, "is based on all kinds of flaws in our nature".

"For example," continued de Botton, "it feeds off our selfish disregard for the suffering of other humans (the growers, the pickers, the stackers ...). It feeds off our appetite for food that is instantly satisfying but not necessarily good for us in the long term. And it feeds off our neglect for beauty, as its stores pay no attention to architectural merit and are almost wilfully ugly."

But agree though he might, and does, Bagaeen believes that the case against Tesco in Partick will be won or lost on its specifics. "There is a wider anti-supermarket movement which we are not necessarily a part of," he says. "We are hoping to be heard on the basis of quite material objections to Tesco's proposals for this particular site. There are serious implications on traffic to consider, and the impact on local business. But we are especially concerned about problems in the planning itself. I try to teach my students not to make the kind of mistakes that have been made here. To do things better. And if these mistakes are not taken into account, then there is something seriously wrong with our entire system for city planning."

To that end, Stop and their supporters want to know how Glasgow City Council can claim to be making an objective decision on this matter, given that it still owns strips of the requisite land, which Tesco will have to buy, and pay well for, if this application is successful.

They also want to know how traffic congestion will be improved by plans to route the store's prospective customers, most of whom will be drivers, through a mooted new one-way system around Partick Cross (designed by the council's Land Services department, financed by Tesco). "Mention that scheme to locals," says Bickerton, "and they will all tell you it won't work."

Also: why the Scottish Executive has not revisited this development since granting consent for an earlier and much smaller buildingplansevenyearsago,nor commissioned an Environmental Impact Assessment on the proposal as it now stands.

And they really want to know why a Tesco-contracted wrecking crew was allowed to demolish the old Partick Railway ticket office on January 28 of this year. "That is one of the most emotive things about all this," says Bickerton, "The Three Judges a pub on the corner of Partick Cross is my local, and after the station was destroyed, I remember the barmaid saying that she didn't mind the idea of a Tesco until they did that. She loved that building. It was a link to the past. She was raging, and she's not the only one."

The decision was at least questionable, as the structure had been recommended for a listing by Historic Scotland. It was possibly even actionable, because the relevant building warrant appears to have only permitted the razing of unspecified properties on Castlebank Street, and included no reference to the ticket office, which was on Benalder Street. Tesco has since suggested it was acting on counsel from West End Police and doing the public a favour, as the derelict structure had become an unsafe haven for vandals and graffiti-taggers.

The public, for its part, seems less than grateful. But getting answers to the above has not been as straightforward as Bagaeen thinks it should be. When he put in a request under the Freedom Of Information Act to see official correspondences between city planners and Tesco representatives, it was refused on the grounds that it might prejudice "the free exchange of ideas between planners and developers". When he asked to see that offending building warrant, he was told it would cost £90. Partick councillor Aileen Colleran, who has endorsed Bagaeen's objections to this development since even before Stop was formed, gave him a copy for free.

Colleran is, in fact, the sole member of Glasgow City Council who will comment for the purposes of this article - the relevant departments cannot, I am told, because a "planning decision is pending" - but only in her capacity as a local elected member and concerned private citizen. She is not, she stresses, a GCC spokesperson. So when she describes the destruction of the Partick ticket office as "architectural vandalism", this is just her own opinion. Colleran does think that certain aspects of opposition to the plan have been inflated or simplified by speculation.

"There have been wild statements about £15 million that the council hopes to make from selling the land to Tesco," she says, "or that we're so desperate to get rid of that land, we'll do anything to make the sale. It's actually prime land, and the city council only owns a very small part of it."

She also, however, rejects Tesco's claims that a new hypermarket will be in any way regenerative. "This is not some local, walk-in store. It's a megastore for people to drive to. There are parts of the city where that is appropriate. It seems to work well in Springburn. But it's far too big for Partick. It will be a traffic disaster, it will negatively impact on local business, and it has not been designed to benefit the whole community."

The eventful recent election has resulted in far fewer Labour members being returned as local councillors. This may mean a slight "hiatus", while new appointees are given statutory training in the responsibilities of sitting on the planning and development application committee which will soon make the final decision. Such committees, says Colleran, operate on a "quasi-judicial level, under a very serious code of conduct". "And based on the facts, as regards planning, there is a very strong case for refusing this application."

The supermarket could, of course, just begin work on the parts of land it already owns, and worry about consequences later. According to Andrew Simms's recent book Tescopoly, they've done it before. "That would be very foolish," says Colleran. "Tesco will say that many people like its shops, or want them, or need them. That's all nice and well and good, but it shouldn't think that gives it carte blanche."

Tesco and The Development Planning Partnership are not keen to say that much at all on this case, citing recent and verifiable inaccuracies in reporting of their intentions. They do, however, provide a co-ordinated fact sheet - which quotes retail impact assessments showing that Partick is currently suffering a "leakage" of locals who go elsewhere to shop - and a written statement through their Scotland representative Nick Gellaty.

"This is a landmark regeneration project," says Gellaty, "which will open up the west end and link it to Glasgow harbour. Glasgow is a pioneer of regeneration and this is another piece in that jigsaw. It's an exciting project and we're proud be part of it campaigners have a right to oppose us, but it has suited them to misrepresent our proposals, which isn't fair to local people. We have listened to what local people have told us, and reduced the scale of our initial plans to reflect those views and to develop an application which addresses the needs of the local area."

TescoagreeswithAllTomorrow's Particks,then,as to the importance of asking people what they want. While I am talking to those ATP campaigners at the Lismore, a local overhears our conversation and interrupts to put it this way: "Ask any Partick person what they think, and they'll tell you." We didn't ask him, but he tells us anyway. He thinks All Tomorrow's Particks should "get more Scottish people involved". (The three members I speak to are all English, and have chosen to live in Glasgow after completing their university degrees here. This, argues Nic Green, makes them all the more determined to "give something back".) And he wants a Tesco, he says, but "a little Tesco", which will allow him to continue buying his meat and fruit from small local retailers.

I spend the rest of the afternoon vox-popping Partick on the subject, and don't meet anyone else who claims to "want" or "need" Tesco. Shopkeepers in particular (including the operators of the superbly named Partick-Ular dry cleaners, who fear that any new superstore will provide its own version of the same service) strike a distinctive tone between recalcitrance and resignation. "Tesco is not good for small business," says a florist and greengrocer called Abdullah from behind the counter at Fruit Pads & Thanks A Bunch on Dumbarton Road. "But they got the power. Everything is money. If they want to build, they will build."

The staff of W Bishop Quality Butchers say almost exactly the same thing, but also that their business remains unaffected by very close proximity to a large Morrison's supermarket with a long in-house meat counter. The same, they say, will go for Tesco. "We've been here 40 years. We've got our regulars. We must be doing something right."

Not all shoppers are so loyal to every retailer along Dumbarton Road. "The shops down here," says Partick resident Angus McKinnon, who is smoking outside the Hayburn Vaults, "are all crap. Charity shops, amusement arcades. Tesco won't affect them anyway. The only real problem I've got with it is the traffic. It's already nose to tail, and Tesco will make it worse."

Alex and Di, drinking afternoon pints at Fiddler's Bar, have bigger problems. "I object to the fact that Tesco is buying up land all over the place," says Alex. "It seems so unneccessary somewhere like Partick Cross, which is a small community, reasonably quiet, where a lot of elderly people live. It's only people driving through that are going to benefit. This Tesco is not going to be for local people who want to walk about, or need to."

"Everyone in a car," says Di. "In a wee tin box. Running around, running over people."

"I'm not against change," says Alex, "but there is something essential about Partick that we need to keep." It doesn't seem fanciful to suggest that this community exerts its own agreeable psychic pull on residents and visitors alike, nor to worry about how another, bigger, more impersonal supermarket in the area will affect its appeal. And given that nobody involved canpredictthefinaldecisionofthe planning and development application committee, it cannot hurt to consult a local expert in a more esoteric field.

Mishka, who has her ownself-titledshop on Partick's Hayburn Street,doesnotcall herself a fortune teller (unliketheprevious tenant of this property, a friend and peer of Mishka's who advertised as Carla Kinsella: Fortune Tella). She is, however, willing and able to consider the prospects of a new Tesco on the basis of star-chart and tarot card readings. Mishka is not personally in favour of the development, and advises me that her professional opinion, while objective, is highly dependent on intuitive interpretation, and so cannot be received as "definitive". I give her as much information as possible about Tesco's proposal, and she does her best.

We begin with the astrological reading, which Mishka conducts on an electronic star planner, entering Partick's longitude and latitude. "I'm perceiving a big building," she says sadly, "with extensions on to that building." She shows me the digital chart, and its vectors do seem to form some kind of structural shape. Next, she invites me to shuffle the tarot deck, reminding me to think of Tesco as I do.

The resulting circular spread of 12 cards - there's the three of cups, the ace of pentangles, the wheel of fortune - suggest to Mishka that "Tesco are going to get what they want, and they're going to be celebrating". Finally, because this has been an unusual request, she opens a pack of "universe cards" that she has never used before. With myrighthand,whichrepresentsthe rational, I draw a card which shows a brown dwarf planet beside Jupiter. Below the picture is the word "failure". "It feels to me," says Mishka, "that this may not mean Tesco's failure, but a failureto sway the powers that be. I'd love to think it will work out the other way, but I don't think so."

And with my left hand, representing intuition, I draw a photograph of dark matter, which signifies "mystery". Mishka reads at length from her guidebook to this deck, explaining that while scientists still don't know what dark matter is made of, they now think there may be enough of it to ensure that the universe continues expanding forever. "Expanding," asks Mishka, "like Tesco? You can see, in this case, that Tesco could easily be the universe."

www.tescopoly.org www.stoptesco.info www.alltomorrowsparticks.org www.tesco.com