‘It’s like home’: Brixton market traders fight to stop site being sold to big business

Esme runs a fruit and veg shop she set up 22 years ago. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Esme runs a fruit and veg shop she set up 22 years ago. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian ‘It’s like home’: Brixton market traders fight to stop site being sold to big business Campaign hopes to buy site for community, fearing it could go same route of corporate gentrification as Camden and Old Spitalfields Traders at Brixton market say they are in a battle of “people over profit” after submitting a last-minute plan to stop the site being bought by a private equity firm which they fear could price out longstanding independent businesses. Those behind the Buy Back Brixton campaign said they are through to the second stage of a bidding process, competing against multinational companies to buy Brixton Village and Market Row for community ownership. They will find out within days whether their “once in a generation” bid to buy the market – which has been listed for £50m – is successful, after hundreds of people attended a rally in support of their plans. View image in fullscreen Carole Mourier, owner of Full Moon Designs in the market, said she felt the traders were ‘shaping history’ with their plans. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian “If the market changes any more than it already has, what has been built here will disappear. That’s what we’re fighting for,” said Meera Ghanshamdas, co-chair of the Brixton Traders Community Association (BTCA) and co-director of Roundtable Books in the market. “We want to make this people over profit. This is much more than a commercial space for us. Brixton has a huge cultural legacy, but it also has a resistance history. And people are coming out for that.” Known for being London’s most diverse market, it is home to vendors from more than 50 countries and has a strong African-Caribbean presence from the Windrush community who moved to the area in the 1940s and 50s. Market traders said they have faced rising rents and service charges in recent years, and they feared a new private equity owner would push costs up further to maximise profit from the site. “We have already seen the start of gentrification. Certain shops are not there any more. And there used to be music in every shop – Brazilian, Venezuelan, Jamaican reggae – but we’re not allowed to do that any more,” said Esme, who runs a fruit and vegetable stall she set up 22 years ago to cater to the Caribbean community who could not find produce from their home country. “I just want to know that everything we have here is secure for the next generation, for our children – that there’s still something for them to be a part of.” View image in fullscreen Meera Ghanshamdas is co-chair of the Brixton Traders Community Association (BTCA) and co-director of Roundtable Books in the market. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian The site is now owned by a company controlled by Texas millionaire businessman and DJ Taylor McWilliams, who had planned to redevelop