:00:00. > :00:18.What is it about the British and the cornershop? The corner shop has
:00:19. > :00:26.always been there for us. A British institution.
:00:27. > :00:29.There are almost more corner shops than there are corners. It was on
:00:30. > :00:35.the frontline of what was happening in society from the 1940s to the
:00:36. > :00:38.1990s. It saved our bacon during the Second
:00:39. > :00:47.World War. It also became a rite of passage for
:00:48. > :00:52.new immigrants, including my family. I am The daughter of shopkeepers and
:00:53. > :00:56.for me the corner shop sits at the very heart of the community. It's
:00:57. > :00:59.what mum and dad called the glory days and by that they meant a
:01:00. > :01:04.buzzing trade and I remember it really well. The shop being
:01:05. > :01:09.absolutely packed full of customers. I would sit on the shop counterand
:01:10. > :01:12.see all walks of life come in through the front doors and you
:01:13. > :01:17.would know everything about them, the paper they read, their favourite
:01:18. > :01:20.box of cigarettes. Above all else, you would know all the gossip in the
:01:21. > :01:25.town. This is a local shop for local
:01:26. > :01:29.people, nothing for you here! This unsung hero has been at the centre
:01:30. > :01:34.of ordinary lives for more than 70 years. Its death has been predicted
:01:35. > :01:39.many times, but still it soldiers on. For the last decade it's been
:01:40. > :01:40.said that the days of the corner shop are numbered. So just how has
:01:41. > :02:01.it managed to survive? From the traditions of Open All
:02:02. > :02:06.Hours to League of Gentlemen, everyone has their corner shop and a
:02:07. > :02:11.story to go with it. That will be 97p, love. Thank you.
:02:12. > :02:20.Oh, don't bother about the 3p, you can owe it to me. Oh, right.
:02:21. > :02:24.As a journalist, I am interested in the role these small independent
:02:25. > :02:28.shops seem to have played in helping to shape Britain into a modern
:02:29. > :02:35.multicultural nation. Today, I am going back to our
:02:36. > :02:41.Oldcorner shop, VP Superstores in Reading owned and run by my mum and
:02:42. > :02:46.dad. It looks completely different. It's not how we had it, right? The
:02:47. > :02:51.grocery shelves were here. Then cakes on that side. The till was
:02:52. > :02:58.this side, wasn't it? No, the same side, here. But I remember, wasn't
:02:59. > :03:03.it out this way? No, that way. Oh, OK. I remember us sitting here,
:03:04. > :03:08.right? Yeah. For me and my sisters this was our
:03:09. > :03:15.counter. The shop was our home. Our library, our play area.
:03:16. > :03:19.What year did you buy the shop? 77. The year I was born you bought the
:03:20. > :03:26.shop? You were four months old. 77, yeah. The corner shop was clearly in
:03:27. > :03:29.my DNA. But little did I know that I was being born into a much bigger
:03:30. > :03:33.history. You often hear that phrase we are a
:03:34. > :03:36.nation of shopkeepers, a nation that's been built on entrepreneurs
:03:37. > :03:40.and that wealth and drive of ambition, but I don't think I ever
:03:41. > :03:45.realised any of that when I was a kid here in this corner shop. I
:03:46. > :03:47.didn't realise that we were part of a much richer history, a history
:03:48. > :03:56.that dates right back to the Victorian era.
:03:57. > :04:03.In the 19th century, suburbs were created to house an increasing urban
:04:04. > :04:13.population. But they needed a local food supply. And the Victorians came
:04:14. > :04:17.up with an ingenious solution. Town planners created rows of houses and
:04:18. > :04:20.terraces in which the house on the corner of a junction of roads was
:04:21. > :04:27.designed specifically to be a shop. It would often have a large window,
:04:28. > :04:33.a door on the corner, in order to attract the largest flow of traffic
:04:34. > :04:43.and to serve that local community. # On the corner of the street.
:04:44. > :04:48.Corner shops became the backbone of the 1940s urban community. But it
:04:49. > :04:53.seems their success was a product of circumstances, we literally had no
:04:54. > :04:58.choice. Dooring the Second World War when
:04:59. > :05:03.most food is rationed people have to register with their local shop in
:05:04. > :05:07.order to receive their food. This is a period where the local shop really
:05:08. > :05:11.thrives, in part, as a result of rationing. Added to that, you have
:05:12. > :05:15.really much more restricted movement, in part, because of petrol
:05:16. > :05:20.rationing, but also because men are away at war, women are working and
:05:21. > :05:24.so people are spending less time travelling to the centres of town,
:05:25. > :05:34.there is less money available. So the local shop comes into its own at
:05:35. > :05:40.this time. An Oldcorner shop has been preserved
:05:41. > :05:44.at the Folk and Transport Museum in Northern Ireland. This is what it
:05:45. > :05:49.would have looked like. Chris Wilson grew up in the Belfast of the 1940s.
:05:50. > :05:54.This to me is the late 1940s, early 50s. All the sweets!
:05:55. > :06:02.In those days we didn't worry about our teeth. During the war sweets
:06:03. > :06:06.were on ration. He regularly helped out as anner and
:06:07. > :06:10.boy in his corner shop of the Shankill road.
:06:11. > :06:14.Because of course the war must have had a big impact on what the corner
:06:15. > :06:21.shop was selling. Yes, it did have, that's true. There were coupons, you
:06:22. > :06:26.had a ration book and you could only buy what the coupons allowed you to
:06:27. > :06:30.buy, eggs were in ration, cheese, you had a cheese wire you lifted up
:06:31. > :06:34.the handle and the wire came down and cut the cheese. Really sharp.
:06:35. > :06:41.Sometimes you cut your finger. You didn't tell the customer there was
:06:42. > :06:47.blood on the cheese, you just wrapped it up!
:06:48. > :06:53.Health and safety didn't exist in those days, neither did the NHS. But
:06:54. > :06:57.the corner shop stepped in to provide a myriad of cheap over the
:06:58. > :07:03.countermedicines. I and all my friends in little houses were lined
:07:04. > :07:16.up by our mothers on a Saturday morning and we were given either
:07:17. > :07:22.liquid paraffin, milk of milk mag nesia or syrup of figures. On a
:07:23. > :07:30.tablespoon line up the wee ones and you got it and a piece of orange
:07:31. > :07:35.after. The corner shop was kind of a pharmacy and news agency and
:07:36. > :07:39.Butchers. Yes, you could buy anything in a corner shop. Morning,
:07:40. > :07:43.well, what do you want? A pound of pickled onions.
:07:44. > :07:47.During the 1940s people shopped every day and the corner shop was
:07:48. > :07:52.where you came to meet your neighbours, hear all the local news,
:07:53. > :07:59.and, of course, the local gossip. I believe a bit of trouble yesterday.
:08:00. > :08:03.There was. The corner shop was the social centre of two or three
:08:04. > :08:06.streets. People talked about things. They talked about interesting
:08:07. > :08:11.things, have you heard about him, he is off with so and so, have you
:08:12. > :08:15.heard about her? Have you heard about so and so, she's lording it
:08:16. > :08:19.over us because she's an artificial fur coat. All that sort of talk. All
:08:20. > :08:25.this is happening as people would come in to a place like this and be
:08:26. > :08:28.chatting away. It was a social gathering of the area. It was better
:08:29. > :08:32.than the local BBC, it picked up all the news. Even well into the
:08:33. > :08:38.post-war era we shopped into this very personal way.
:08:39. > :08:43.This shop is a minute from the main shopping centre in Rotherham. People
:08:44. > :08:50.rely on it from anything from sugar to a paintbrush. Customers pop in
:08:51. > :08:53.for one or two items. The retail landscape in Britain is completely
:08:54. > :08:58.different to what we know today. You would go into an independent shop
:08:59. > :09:02.and one or two people would serve you, reaching goods from behind a
:09:03. > :09:10.counterand packaging them up and serving you, it was a slow
:09:11. > :09:15.encounter, a personal encounter. And three pounds of potatoes, please.
:09:16. > :09:21.Few people have fridges, only 50% of people have fridges in 1969 so the
:09:22. > :09:25.corner shop provides a local close by service to buy perishable goods.
:09:26. > :09:30.God forbid if you forgot anything as the corner shop was closed on
:09:31. > :09:36.Saturday at midday and didn't open again until Monday. Time you were
:09:37. > :09:41.off. Right, see you. Good night. A shopping revolution was on the
:09:42. > :09:51.horizon. The little corner shop was about to face its first big threat.
:09:52. > :09:56.A transatlantic phenomenon has made itsz mark in British shops, the
:09:57. > :10:00.self-service store. According to experts it's here to stay. Someone
:10:01. > :10:03.once compared the self-service store with a lending library and you have
:10:04. > :10:08.to buy the goods, that's the principle it works on. Choose for
:10:09. > :10:11.yourself. There is no doubt self-service completely
:10:12. > :10:14.revolutionised the way that we shop. Some people reported at the time
:10:15. > :10:17.they felt less scrutinised, they weren't being judged. Now it was
:10:18. > :10:20.often the case with people who were perhaps poorer or working-class.
:10:21. > :10:23.Particularly if they haven't been able to afford many goods, they
:10:24. > :10:28.would have felt more judged in the environment of the small local shop.
:10:29. > :10:33.In the supermarket, you sort of wander freely. Because everything is
:10:34. > :10:38.on show and easy to reach housewives are finding shopping easier, quicker
:10:39. > :10:47.and more convenient. There are about 50 in 1950. By 1969 there is 3400.
:10:48. > :10:56.It grows really quickly. Housewives hope that it will cut out queues.
:10:57. > :11:03.The glamour of self-service made the corner shop seem small and outdated.
:11:04. > :11:08.It's now engaged in a David and Goliath battle with the supermarket.
:11:09. > :11:13.Many corner shop owners simply decided that they had had enough and
:11:14. > :11:17.that it was time to sell up. How was the corner shop going to
:11:18. > :11:24.survive? Fortunately help was at hand,
:11:25. > :11:30.waiting in the wings were a new generation of proprietors, including
:11:31. > :11:35.my parents. Mum came from Dehli in 1971 to marry dad. A great uncle
:11:36. > :11:38.convinced mum she should take on a corner shop. Why did you want to
:11:39. > :11:44.have a shop, you were never there, dad. You were always in the factory.
:11:45. > :11:48.He said, you sit at home, you are not doing anything! Did you say I
:11:49. > :11:56.have three kids to look after? She had to do something. OK, why you
:11:57. > :12:02.don't do a small shop and when the customers comes the bell will ring
:12:03. > :12:06.and you know the customer, go and serve. Serve the customer. Hold on,
:12:07. > :12:10.you are at the back of the shop looking after me, four months old
:12:11. > :12:17.and if the bell rings you will run and leave me! Charming!
:12:18. > :12:25.So, why did so many Asians become shop keepers at this time? So, I
:12:26. > :12:29.guess there is no inherent link between south Asians and running
:12:30. > :12:34.shops. There is a set of circumstances that have historical
:12:35. > :12:37.circumstances. A lot of the migration to Britain after World War
:12:38. > :12:41.II comes because of a labour shortage in Britain. We see
:12:42. > :12:46.obviously the northern Milltowns, huge recruitment from the
:12:47. > :12:50.subcontinent for workers. That's partly because the white labour
:12:51. > :12:56.class in the north doesn't want to do that night shift. There is a -
:12:57. > :13:03.Asians are recruited to do that work. But this was the 1960s. If you
:13:04. > :13:07.were an immigrant the chances of gaining promotion were slim. The
:13:08. > :13:11.labour market is much more difficult for Asians than their white
:13:12. > :13:14.counterparts. Facing discrimination in the labour market, one of the
:13:15. > :13:17.only options was to work for yourselves, that's one of the
:13:18. > :13:24.reasons Asians did go into running corner shops. The Asian corner shop
:13:25. > :13:31.provided a wealth of exotic goods that couldn't be bought anywhere
:13:32. > :13:40.else. But to be really successful depended on whether it could break
:13:41. > :13:48.out of a specialist market and take on the Arkwrights of this world. We
:13:49. > :13:50.have never met. Open All Hours tackled this transition
:13:51. > :13:56.shopkeeper-to-shopkeeper. I have just the thing for you. Try this.
:13:57. > :14:02.Three times a day after meals. The name is... 74p.
:14:03. > :14:07.Don't don't get me wrong. We are colleagues. I am in the same line of
:14:08. > :14:13.business. Me too, I am a Yorkshire shopkeeper.
:14:14. > :14:19.As it happened, the very success of the supermarket revolution, which so
:14:20. > :14:27.threatened the corner shop, would now come to its age... The rise of
:14:28. > :14:32.the supermarket in the late 1960s and through to the 1970s is, in
:14:33. > :14:37.part, because of increased amounts to cars on the roads, people can
:14:38. > :14:41.travel further to their supermarkets, a cause working habits
:14:42. > :14:45.are changing. Women work more, and doing one weekly shop makes life
:14:46. > :14:50.much easier and because slowly people have refrigeration and are
:14:51. > :14:55.able to shop less frequently. This meant we still needed a local place
:14:56. > :15:00.to top up our shopping and buy our newspapers. Events in East Africa
:15:01. > :15:12.were about to change the corner shop for ever...
:15:13. > :15:21.On the 4th of August 1972, is Uganda dictator idiom Moeen ordered the
:15:22. > :15:31.expulsion of the country's entire Asian population... They have kept
:15:32. > :15:37.themselves apart, as a closed community and have refused to
:15:38. > :15:44.integrate. He condemned the Asian minority, calling them
:15:45. > :15:51."Bloodsuckers". They made up only 1% of the population, but controlling
:15:52. > :15:54.90% of the wealth. The reasons the Ugandan Asians Rhaney lot of the
:15:55. > :16:01.trade and commerce was not inherent link but part of the system of
:16:02. > :16:05.colonial garment. In Uganda, in the early colonial period, Africans were
:16:06. > :16:10.not allowed to go into trade, banned by law, and Asians were not allowed
:16:11. > :16:13.to land at that point. There was a racial division of labour through
:16:14. > :16:18.colonial control, meaning the Ugandan Asians expelled in 1972 and
:16:19. > :16:29.who came to Britain have experience in the trade. A ready-made nation of
:16:30. > :16:37.shopkeepers was about to arrive on our doorstep. Among the first was
:16:38. > :16:41.Abdul, and his family. His father was a successful shop owner, and he
:16:42. > :16:45.was one of the first people in Uganda to own a Mercedes and he
:16:46. > :16:51.employed over 200 workers. He was a close friend of idiom Moeen, he
:16:52. > :16:56.never thought that he would be kicked out... Your father thought
:16:57. > :17:02.that being a friend of him he would be protected and OK, I am a wealthy
:17:03. > :17:07.businessman, but that did not matter... He told him himself, I
:17:08. > :17:12.cannot control my generals. In the end, my father decided that we had
:17:13. > :17:18.to get out. We only had seven days left before the deadline. They
:17:19. > :17:25.abandoned everything and came to London with six children to support,
:17:26. > :17:31.and only ?50 in their pockets. We were literally riches to rags,
:17:32. > :17:43.overnight. We ended up in a refugee camp in Somerset. In a little
:17:44. > :17:47.village. It was one of 15 rehousing camp set up by the government, in an
:17:48. > :17:53.effort to show British culture and help assimilation, they came up with
:17:54. > :17:56.some interesting entertainment. Good evening to you all, tonight we have
:17:57. > :18:03.a different kind of entertainment from what we've had before... Mrs
:18:04. > :18:08.Jones and her merrymakers from Newbury portray the kind of songs
:18:09. > :18:22.that my grandfather and grandmother used to sing.
:18:23. > :18:28.# Henry VIII I am, I am In Uganda our lifestyle was good.
:18:29. > :18:35.But here we were, on the begging bowl. It was not easy drying clothes
:18:36. > :18:39.in winter but in Uganda, she had servants doing everything. Cutting
:18:40. > :18:42.onions, washing clothes. Overnight, their lives were more difficult than
:18:43. > :18:48.ours. # I am Henry VIII I am #
:18:49. > :18:54.. Abdullah and his family spent four months in the detention centre and
:18:55. > :19:00.his father was determined to start again as a shopkeeper. My father was
:19:01. > :19:03.one of those guys who said, you are not going on to the welfare system.
:19:04. > :19:15.I know if it gets into your blood, you will never work. You will enjoy
:19:16. > :19:20.it. He said one day, I'll start my own job, and he did. They got enough
:19:21. > :19:23.money to rent a small shop in Bristol where rents were cheap. He
:19:24. > :19:26.would work from half past seven in the morning until half past one at
:19:27. > :19:31.night. He would Selma canned bread in the
:19:32. > :19:40.morning, then at night, taxi drivers would want their chicken Palau or
:19:41. > :19:46.biryani. There were no onion bhajis. What we ate in Africa was what he
:19:47. > :19:54.could and people loved it. -- what he cooked. But not everybody
:19:55. > :19:59.received such a warm welcome. During the early 1970s, 27,000 Asians came
:20:00. > :20:05.to the UK, sparking a wave of protests from far right groups. We
:20:06. > :20:11.have taken our petition to the Home Office. We are asking for some
:20:12. > :20:16.common sense about this. We have many unemployed, we cannot
:20:17. > :20:20.squeeze in any more. Leicester City Council took out an advert in the
:20:21. > :20:27.Ugandan press, warning migrants not to come as they were full. Where
:20:28. > :20:34.will you live? Ireland, or W 12, London. I will not go to Southall
:20:35. > :20:43.Lester, other places, where there is an influx already of immigrants. Not
:20:44. > :20:47.everybody was so well-informed... This actress is a familiar face
:20:48. > :20:51.playing character Massoud in East Enders.
:20:52. > :20:58.-- character. He arrived in Kenya at the age of just three. His family
:20:59. > :21:01.moved to Coventry, but little did they know that they were setting up
:21:02. > :21:09.shop next door to the National Front... When they first came over,
:21:10. > :21:16.were they accepted? No, not at all. We were the first Asians in the
:21:17. > :21:20.neighbourhood. And there was a lot of races, that was at the time when
:21:21. > :21:27.the National Front were based in Coventry. -- a lot of racism. Shops
:21:28. > :21:33.were targeted and I remember people throwing staff at the shop, trying
:21:34. > :21:38.to smash it down. My mother was spat at, my dad was beaten up... Witty
:21:39. > :21:47.enough, as you grow up, you go, that is just normal, right? -- strangely
:21:48. > :21:51.enough. Asian shops are particular targets for attacks... I feel sorry
:21:52. > :21:58.for the little shop man. They'd been targeted six times. The Asian
:21:59. > :22:01.shopkeepers that we met were too scared to speak. It is a shame what
:22:02. > :22:09.they do to them in there. It was hardly the start that Nitin and his
:22:10. > :22:13.family believe they would have in Britain, far from the fairy tale.
:22:14. > :22:20.There was no fairy tale, we had no money. Mum was wearing flip-flops in
:22:21. > :22:23.winter, we were catching the bus to go to the cash and carry to fill up
:22:24. > :22:28.the shop with stuff. I was four or five years old and
:22:29. > :22:37.would be carrying boxes of crisps. It was through sheer hard work.
:22:38. > :22:45.There is nothing romantic about it. Taking on a corner shop catapulted
:22:46. > :22:51.immigrants like Nitin's family onto the front line of racism in 1970s
:22:52. > :22:56.Britain. In the corner shop there was nowhere to hide, so why do they
:22:57. > :23:01.do it? It is in our DNA, we were born to do this. The principle for
:23:02. > :23:06.most Indians were that now we are free of the colonials, we will be
:23:07. > :23:13.our own masters. We will not work for anyone else. It is a small,
:23:14. > :23:19.emotional and political revolution for an Indian mentality, to push
:23:20. > :23:23.that through line all the way through to becoming an entrepreneur
:23:24. > :23:27.and being your own boss. And having your own shop? And having your own
:23:28. > :23:33.business, whether a shop... Whatever it is, you are your own boss and the
:23:34. > :23:39.way that my father would say in Gujarati, I do not want to be
:23:40. > :23:44.bending my knees to anyone else... But how did we turn a profit when
:23:45. > :23:49.others had failed before us? Well, we opened on Sunday. We also
:23:50. > :24:00.imported our business model which included and costed free family
:24:01. > :24:05.labour. -- uncosted. In our shopping Reading, nobody got out of doing a
:24:06. > :24:10.shift and there was no pay in doing this work, other than eating as many
:24:11. > :24:13.sweets as we could, in secret of course! But my parents remember
:24:14. > :24:22.things a bit differently... I did a lot in this shop, stacking the
:24:23. > :24:25.shelves... No, the girls didn't. In this shop we stacked all of the
:24:26. > :24:35.shelves! Sometimes... But we would do pedigree Charms... Toilet rolls,
:24:36. > :24:50.cigarettes... Silk cut, Lambert and Butler... Do you not remember that?
:24:51. > :24:55.So, that was how my childhood was spent in my parent's Cornershop. In
:24:56. > :24:57.the next part I pick up the story from the 1980s and a new generation
:24:58. > :25:33.of corner shop owners. We have some great weather out there
:25:34. > :25:36.today, certainly good enough to go about for a nice stroll in the crisp
:25:37. > :25:37.sunshine, especially if you