General News Anarchists target cereal cafe in London

Shoreditch Cereal Killer Cafe targeted by anti-gentrification protesters | UK news | The Guardian

This has annoyed me.

Hundreds of violent and angry protesters have vandalised and intimidated a small independent cafe, why? Purely because the cafe sells cereal with a high-markup.

These people are idiots. Yes the owners of the cafe are charging a lot for cereal but: 1. they have a right in this country (as we have a free market) to cater to a demand to make a profit, 2. when you factor in premises cost, staffing and the fact many of the cereals are expensive imports they are hardly making millions here.

Why don't these anarchists target Costa or Starbucks who sell pence worth of coffee for pounds? Or top restaurants or bakeries doing similar? Or how about jewellers like Boodles selling jewellery for millions of pounds a mile or two away? Why not the Tate Modern selling mattresses for megabucks? Why target a small independent business set up by two young and eccentric chancers as a (very popular) novelty?

You can get quite a good idea of the people involved from their website:

Class War - Election Campaign 2015

Note the "kill the rich" poster it opens with, certainly not "classy".

As a low-income working class earner who cannot really afford a daily Starbucks and would not be forking out for a bowl of cereal, I readily accept we have inequality when it comes to wealth. That said I don't believe violence is the answer to this problem, nor do I begrudge people with more money than I do (many who have earned it through hard-work and talent) from spending their money on luxuries. I'm guessing these anarchists don't all live on smart-price bread and beans, and many are wearing nice clothes or hair dye - all relative luxuries they have decided to spend their relative wealth on. Somewhat hypocritical if you ask me.

N.B: As an aside I also disagree with their campaign against "poor doors". If you buy a £100,000 flat in a building, why should you expect the exact same level of luxury and service as someone paying for a multi-million pound one in the same building? People are ultimately paying a great premium for a quieter and fancier lobby. Now we can question the residents wealth sure, but I don't think the developers are necessarily wrong for catering to them. Really its like paying for the Travelodge and expecting The Ritz service!

 

It is the same with most capital cities though. Central Paris is ridiculously expensive, Manhattan is ridiculously expensive. Because rich people are prepared to pay vast sums of money to live there.

Now of course we could set caps on the number of property sales, but I don't see what this will achieve. Is it not better to let rich people spend their wealth, and then use the taxes generated through VAT/council tax etc to boost the economy and pay for more public services for all. Its not like we can really "cull" the rich - rich people exist regardless and will continue to exist, is it not better to attract them to one place so you can begin to leech of them?

Now of course I do appreciate the aspect of "uprooting" communities though, it is a tricky balance. Either way protests like this do nothing to help. Their website demands "double pension, double benefits, double the doll" - it is pure cloud cuckooland. Besides being impractical, living in a community with a lot of people more than happy to live on the doll (which apparently can buy you more than enough weed, booze and fags), I don't necessarily think a lot of them "need" or would even benefit from it being doubled.

I do doubt how much these protestors care about gentrification though. When you look on their website and see aggressive or borderline violent expressions like "Hipsters beware" and see the hateful effigy of the "hipster police" (clearly referencing Peter Swinger who has done absolutely nothing wrong except the crime of looking absolutely fabulous!) they clearly have another major agenda here. Generally speaking hipsters are hardly upper class, most are actually on low-middle salaries and working in creative fields.

Now you mentioned "social cleansing" - is that not exactly what these protesters are doing? They have latched on to a lifestyle and fashion they do not like and gone in for the kill. I think that is problematic and worrying, particularly as IMO attacks towards hipsters seem almost routed in the traditions of homophobia (attacked for their fashion, expression, difference, for being effete etc).

 

Just to come back to this I actually disagree, I think they mimic anarchists very much so.

They want change via aggressive tactics of violence and fear. Additionally their whole set-up is a throwback to anarchist (and even extremist) movements in the past - the use of swearing, bloody fonts (in an almost identical styling to the anarchistic "enclosed A"), the rebel attitude.

And when you have the masks and flaming torches, its almost KKK like. Seriously sinister and uncalled for, and I personally think there should have been arrests for causing public disturbance. The freedoms of speech and the rights to protest have their limits, it must be kept tolerant and peaceful.

They are clearly referencing anarchy, be it consciously or not.

Perhaps ceasing the vacant property exemption for council tax would be a start, it is not being asked for by this group though.

They really do strike me as the sort who love having something to hate who enjoy the thrill of being the "underdog".

To be fair what I think is the bigger concern here (and one affecting the UK as a whole) is inadequate compensation from council compulsary purchase orders. There are times when unfortunately, yes it is in the interests of a community that some residents be moved (obviously not in all cases). In my area I've witnessed people moved to make a road which will greatly improve transport and the industrial network. Of course this can have a huge impact but I think the real crime is people not getting a fair deal financially from the upheaval.

Regardless, again this is not something this group is actively countering. They are ignoring councils and residential developers, instead strangely going for a small independent commercial start-up which ironically is probably in a sense anti-gentrification and pro-"bohemian" (for serious want of a better word!). It is actually very in keeping with the area - it has always been quite hippy and hipster. The people buying the million pound flats are hardly likely to want to frequent a café selling £4 cereal are they? They are more likely to be found (if they are in London!) in 5 star restaurants and designer outlets. The cereal café's clientèle is far more likely to be made up of tourists to the city, students and young people - not the upper class or super rich. Again, why are these protesters not targeting the London Dungeons or Nandos if tourist and student venues are a concern?

 

Yes they are.

What is important to realise is they sell a lot of imported cereal which is harder to come by over here (like Lucky Charms which were banned I believe due to the E-numbers!).

My town used to have a shop selling the actual boxes for I believe something like £5-10 so this really isn't that different.

It is all a novelty, going out to eat cereal, it is a bit of fun. Plus these guys do have to pay extortionate rent, bills, stock costs, wages etc so there does need to be a bit of markup. s it really that different than going to a greasy-spoon and having some tea and toast when you could make that yourself at home for a fraction of the price?

Edit: Just look at this picture of the cafe. Not one of those cereals is readily available in UK stores, so they are kind of "special interest" and command quite a price. Golden Grahams for example, hard to find now as I believe their high sugar content caused them trouble. Delicious though.

Its very similar to sweets (candy to you yanks!). Nerds (mmmm) were once phased out and their price sky-rocketed from about £0.50p to £4.00-£5.00 odd from fancy stores like Selfridges (sold as a novelty). Now they are back in some supermarket "international aisles" for about £1 (still more expensive then they used to be).

 

I think that's the issue, the target was all wrong and it highlights that their cause is not as just as made out to be, in fact more an attack on a subculture (hipsterism).

Yes there is gentrification and ghettoization occurring in London, but the cafe is neither the cause or even the symptom of the problem:

1. As a commercial property on a commercial street (complete with other shops and stores) they have nothing to do with residential property development. It is not the cafe owners fault the council have designated the premises as a commercial unit, in fact they are helping the community by utilising it.
2. Secondly, why should we begrudge them making a profit as a business when all other shops do the same?
3. Why are they painted as "scum" (as their windows were graffitied with) or obscene for selling pricey bowls of novelty cereal in a novelty cafe. As the capital London is a tourist town, and tourist catering ventures are found everywhere. Yes we do have plenty of foodbanks in the UK, but why are these protesters not protesting supermarkets like Tesco who sell pricey luxury items like champagne, lobster, fine chocolates, expensive coffees etc? It is because a. they are likely hypocrites who enjoy luxury in their own lives*, and b. they don't genuinely care for the poor, they are more interested in rioting and hooliganism.

*As an aside I have worked a lot with people in financial difficulty in this country. You do find people living on the absolute breadline but it would probably surprise you how many people get into this mess due to naive financial choices and consumption of luxuries. You get many people in debt with cable TV, who only use brand name products, who eat expensive treat foods like chocolate everyday, who consume luxury drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Now that is not to blame or shame them (they still have my sympathy and they still need help and support), but just to say it is wrong blaming other people for consuming luxuries like pricey cereal when most of us (be us in debt, financially stable, or rich) have this in common.

 

Indeed, we are lucky in this country that we have the right to peaceful protest. But for that we must make them relevant and meaningfull. In this instance those involved should have petitioned the government, local council authorities or Mayor's office, and/or staged peaceful protests at the aforementioned.

Nope, what kicked the 2011 riots off was a police shooting similar in a sense to the Ferguson shooting, although in this case the victim (Mark Duggan) was indeed armed (and potentially dangerous).

Some viewed it as pure police brutality (IMO I think the police were a bit trigger happy but did have a strong enough argument for self defence) and began a initially peaceful protest. It then descended into madness with opportunists looting and causing criminal damage, trying to pass their actions off as being connected to the cause, when of course they were just looking for any excuse.

Some will be, the owners probably are. It seems their main clientèle are students though, probably best categorised as "scenesters" wanting a bit of a novelty experience (to be fair its cheaper than going to a restaurant/the pub/cinema - pubs in London charge £5 for a pint in places!) and something for their instagram/facebook feeds. That and tourists.