No, Gail’s bakery is not ‘far right’

Not so long ago, I left my phone behind in a taxi late one night. Drink had been taken and it took me a while to notice my loss, by which time the cab in question was many miles away. I phoned my phone more out of form than hope that it wouldn’t already have been re-SIMmed and heading to an exciting new life. To my surprise and delight, a very well-spoken young man picked it up, and invited me to come to collect it the next morning from Walthamstow in east London.

Now here I was to be mistaken again. The word Walthamstow had a slightly menacing air to it for my generation. There’s a rumble of Cockney villainy to the word, shorthand for ‘amusingly dodgy’ in 1970s sitcoms. The kind of place Arthur Daley or Del Boy might pick up some ‘goods’. It was literally East 17. I’d been there once in the mid-1980s and had a shady memory of a shady borough.

But when I made my way there on that Sunday morning, I found the place thrumming with ‘nice’ middle-class people – with artisan this and boutique that, and an enormous, plentifully stocked farmers’ market purveying grass-fed organic beef and honey from ‘ethical’ beekeepers. It was the very acme of gentrification.

But apparently, no more. ¡No pasarán! Because the Walthamstovians are up in arms over the imminent arrival of (slightly) upmarket bakery-café chain Gail’s on its streets. A petition has been set up by one James Harvey that tells us: ‘Walthamstow Village, a vibrant local neighbourhood in London, UK, is treasured for its collection of local, independent and family-run businesses. Our high street, a spotlight for these coveted establishments, faces a threat to its uniqueness with the prospect of Gail’s, a large-scale bakery chain, setting up shop on it.’

What is this bakery-fresh rubbish? House prices in the Waltham Forest area have shot up by 101 per cent over the past decade. The place is full of men with man-buns and women with toy dogs. Complaining about gentrification now seems a little late. In truth, the petition seems to be about preserving the ‘indie’ aesthetic so beloved of the middle class. Gail’s will bring in the wrong sort, don’t you know.

This storm in a chai latte may have another factor behind it. The big investor in Gail’s is businessman Luke Johnson, who has made the terrible mistake of a) being a conservative (an actual one, not a Conservative Party one) and b) not being quiet about that on the socials. Johnson has made a sizeable bale of hay from – heaven forfend! – giving people what they want, having also been the chair of Pizza Express. He also has entirely ordinary and reasonable opinions about lockdown, the climate ‘crisis’ etc. I suspect it’s that which might be giving the Walthamites the vapours.

Walthamstow was, after all, one of the key locations supposedly earmarked by the ‘far right’ on the strange night last week that we were told they were planning a hundred riots. Thousands of Walthamstovians assembled, under the leadership of local MP Stella Creasy, to defend the borough from a race war, at which nobody but them turned up. The only trouble that seems to have arisen was when a Labour councillor was arrested and charged for allegedly advocating cutting the throats of the far right. This crowd was, of course, dotted with Palestinian flags and SWP placards, those eternal symbols of peace and racial harmony.

A piece in the Daily Mail by the gloriously named local, Michaela Twite, tells us:

‘Thousands of people turned up last week to drown out any would-be racists starting a riot. Apparently, a couple of them came out of the tube station, saw the crowd and ran straight back inside. Bye!’

I thank Michaela for prefacing this information with ‘Apparently’. More people should do this, as it sets the tone for what is called ‘fake news’ very nicely. If only the BBC did this – ‘Apparently, Israel has bombed a hospital’ or ‘Apparently, it’s the hottest June on record’ – we would then all know where we stand.

As always, this is all just about posh vibes. A barista at one of Walthamstow’s indie cafés told The Times: ‘We’ve just had this big, diverse counter-protest to protect Walthamstow from the far right, and I doubt Luke Johnson would support that. He is very different to the people here. His views are not the same.’ Oh well, if he apparently probably maybe possibly wants to start a race riot …

It’s so pitiful. And it always seems to settle around such trivia – scones and seeded bagels this time, but it could just as easily be young-adult books, sci-fi CDs or knitting.

Also, sourdough bread is horrible. People are just pretending to like it, as with a lot of midwit, middle-class tastes. What Walthamstow Village actually needs is a big bacon butty. And to shut up.

Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter and novelist, best known for his work on Doctor Who.