The London Evening Standard launched a campaign in March 2006 called 'Save Our Small Shops'. Its aim is simple - to preserve London's small shops in districts across the capital. Here are some of the editorials the Evening Standard has penned for their campaign.

Click here to show your support for the Evening Standard's campaign.

- Tesco's Retreat (May 100, 2006)
- Save our Shops (March 14, 2006)

May 10, 2006
Tesco's Retreat

Tesco is listening. That, at any rate, is the message the giant retailer is now trying to send as it backs down from a campaign to secure maximum trading hours on Sundays. The move comes the day after the Office of Fair Trading referred the big supermarkets to the Competition Commission for an investigation into their grip on Britain's high streets - and at a time when the Evening Standard's Save Our Small Shops campaign has attracted nearly 20,000 expressions of support for independent retailers. The Conservative Leader, David Cameron, picked up the concerns felt by many when he warned this week of the danger that big chains can price small competitors in a town out of business, only to push up prices once their rivals have disappeared.
The supermarket chains realise that attitudes towards them are changing, just as they did towards McDonald's, which has encountered a backlash against junk food. So Tesco's chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, is promising more dialogue with local residents over new Tesco sites, more emphasis on sustainability when sourcing food, and support for sport. It all sounds good. However shoppers will want to look at the detail of what Tesco actually delivers. For example, the company still believes customers want more than six hours of shopping on Sundays; it has dropped only its call for complete deregulation. Nor has Tesco abandoned its plans to expand rapidly. The message from Tesco's move is that even the biggest companies can be forced to take notice of campaigns by ordinary consumers and small businesses. Nevertheless, shoppers would do well to judge Tesco on what it does, rather than what it says.

March 14, 2006
Save our Shops

The cloning of our high streets now threatens London more than any provincial city. The inexorable growth of chain stores and supermarkets has resulted in the closure of increasing numbers of small, independent shops. That is why this paper is today launching a campaign to save our small shops. In four years, between 2001-2005, more than 7,000 independent shops closed around Britain, more than 1,000 of them in London, where rents have risen sharply in response to increased property costs. In two years, the market share of specialist shops such as grocers and bakers has declined from eight per cent to just two per cent of the market. Indeed in great stretches of London, it is now impossible to find an independent butcher or fishmonger. They simply cannot compete against the buying power of the large chains and supermarkets and their vast economies of scale. They also have to bear an increasing burden from local government. The unequal contest between the chains and the independent retailers is not in shoppers' interests - the Office of Fair Trading recently warned that the huge power of the supermarkets "could recently be suspected to distort competition and harm consumers". We need concerted action to support small independent shops if they are not to be crushed by a combination of exorbitant rents, increasing rates and parking policies which deter shoppers. That is why we are asking readers to support our petition to give small shops a better chance of survival. We are calling for the establishment of business conservation areas, where rents would be capped at a level that independent retailers could bear, a change in the law to stop massive rent rises for small shops and new planning rules to ensure that essential retailers such as butchers and bakers are not lost to a community. But creating fairer conditions for small shops is only half the battle - they need the support of individual shoppers, which is why we would urge readers to spend £10 a week extra in local shops. Their survival is down to all of us.