Rage against the market: Bristol’s Tesco riot

Abstract

In April 2011, in the inner-city Stokes Croft area of Bristol, a riot broke out triggered by the heavy-handed policing of a sustained campaign opposed to the building of a Tesco store in the area. Stokes Croft is adjacent to the St Paul’s area where, thirty-one years ago, the first of the 1980s series of riots, across cities throughout Britain, took place. This piece examines the underlying background to the ‘Tesco riots’, including increasing gentrification, lack of housing and rising levels of inequality; the mixed and multicultural nature of the local population; and the inordinate power and control wielded by a giant corporation like Tesco. Was the Tesco riot a harbinger of a growing, subterranean mood of resistance? Was it one aspect of a new social movement?