The Real Truth About Our Market

Perhaps Jill Hope forgets that many of us were actually working on the market at that time, and can actually consult the records of our takings, most of which were a great deal higher than those of the present. Her first untruth is that it wasn't busy and thronged with people. It may not have had the glamour of a London market, because this was then still a county market town, but it was a very busy solid thriving market, packed with traders and crowded with people, and we have the old photographs to prove it.

On Saturdays it was so crowded that you couldn't carry a cup of tea across the main aisle without having to hold it above shoulder level, and you had to bustle your way good-naturedly through packed throngs of shoppers. Another of her untruths is the number of fruit and vegetable stalls Jill Hope thinks she remembers. In the seventies there were between 30 and 40 fruit and vegetable traders on Northampton market, if not more, and all of them busy. Some specialised in veg. alone, which you couldn't do today. Fruit and vegetables made up the biggest amount of trade stalls on the market. So don't give us rubbish about "a few fruit and veg stalls" Jill Hope; you obviously don't know what you are talking about.

The market in those days sold a far greater variety of household goods than it does today, and secondhand goods like records and books and clothes also did a thriving trade. In all it was a very busy market right into the eighties and nineties, and the council records of annual takings from traders will bear this out. Even in the nineties NBC were taking almost a million GBP in rent annually from the traders, the highest ever. So do check your facts first Jill, it's not difficult, and it does make for better journalism, although it might not be good for Lib-Dem propaganda.

There are some sensible deductions in the latter half of Jill Hope's article, which give it a few saving graces. The supermarkets have continued their unbridled expansion over the years, and they have certainly taken away the greatest percentage of the market trade, including fruit and vegetables. If people don't come in for fresh stuff, all the other trades, including secondhand trades, suffer from the drop in footfall. The pound shops have taken most of the trade away from the cheap household goods stalls, and the plethora of charity shops have killed much of the secondhand trade.

There are many other reasons for the gradual downfall of our market, and markets generally, and some areas are affected a great deal more adversely than others. Expensive market rents which are a great deal higher in proportion to takings now to what they were 40 years ago; expensive day-long car parking and unfriendly street wardens; town centre offices relocating outside town; destruction of highly-populated town centre terraced streets to make way for commercial properties; the development of shopping centres like the Grosvenor Centre which 'capture' a lot of the trade which comes in by bus and car; the development of huge retail shopping parks around the perimeter of towns generally, all have played their part in the decline of the town market, here and elsewhere.

The Liberal Democrats who swan their short reign here today are not solely responsible for the demise of Northampton Market, let that be quite clear. All political parties have played their part, and some reasons for its demise have little to do with politics at a local level. But the Liberal Democrats have moved the market about more than any other party, against the wishes of local traders and shoppers, and in foolish attempts to brighten up the Market Square are gradually kicking the market itself to death.

The more markets are moved about, the quicker they wither. Even when your stall is moved a few metres, your regular customers cannot find you, and they won't look around. It's rather like moving little shops. If you suddenly move half the shops in Mercers Row down to Marefair, who is going to find them? If a trader moves on the market, it can be 12 months before regular trade gets back to what it was before the move. In that time many traders may go bankrupt, and have to leave. We do not get bailed out by governments, like banks do.

If you want to do a proper article on Northampton market, Jill, and not an apologia for the present Liberal Democrat regime, come to the market and take the time to talk with the older traders and learn about how it actually was. We can also direct you to retired market managers from that period, who will tell you the same.

If you're too lazy to do social research, go to the NBC web site and download the report below by the Town Centre Commission about Northampton and its market. It has an appendix by the then market traders' committee which gives the history of the market itself, and it gives an appraisal of the many and varied reasons for the demise of Northampton Market, and covers far more ground than I can cover here. It was written before the Lib-Dems got in power, in 2006, so it won't bite you. Here's the link: