Portobello’s market mustn’t be allowed to close

After reading Portobello Voices, I feel more strongly than ever that the unique Portobello market mustn’t be allowed to close. It gets over a million visitors a year and is one of London’s most frequented sites.

Blanche Girouard interviewed a cross-section of people involved with the market and has written up their recorded interviews verbatim, using their own voices. This has the effect of making the market feel very immediate and alive. And what a rich cross-section is here. There are antique dealers and the costermongers who have passed down their stalls from generation to generation; there are the obsessive collectors, who think that there are more bargains to be found now than ever before; new young entrepreneurs trying to start up businesses (after all, Peter Simon of Monsoon began here) and  recent arrivals, like the refuse-collector from Lithuania.

Even though you feel there is a real sense of camaraderie among the traders, one of them says that the fact that they are all so independent, and such individuals, makes it hard to organise any coherent, vocal, union-type group.