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| Mr Champaneria |
Seeing the Crown Buildings wrapped around the corner of Washwood Heath and Alum Rock Road at Saltley Gate up for auction prompted me to use a blog to capture social change and everyday life in the Alum Rock area of East Birmingham.
The last tenant to vacate one of the eleven premises up for sale was also one of the long-standing reference points that defines any neighbourhood. The owner of “Mr News”, Hasmukh Champaneria, retired at the end of February 2011 after more than thirty years as a newsagent at Saltley Gate.
Born in Gujarat, India, Mr Champaneria came to England in 1975 and worked for several years in the Black Country before deciding to open a business.
In 1980 prior to the demolition of the Gate pub and adjacent stores to make way for the large roundabout, Mr Champaneria took over an existing newsagents at Number 14 Washwood Heath Road and renamed it “Geeta News” after his wife.
Born in Gujarat, India, Mr Champaneria came to England in 1975 and worked for several years in the Black Country before deciding to open a business.
In 1980 prior to the demolition of the Gate pub and adjacent stores to make way for the large roundabout, Mr Champaneria took over an existing newsagents at Number 14 Washwood Heath Road and renamed it “Geeta News” after his wife.
Mr Champaneria explains how the business developed in the 1980s:
“Customer communication is more important than anything else. Business is only how you talk, how you give service to people. People come, they don’t care too much about money, service is important. I’ve always been a talking person, I’ll talk anything with customers, sports, whatever, I will talk with customers, make more friendliness with people. Word is always passed on. If you give good service, if you come into my shop once and find there is a warm welcome in here, you will say, ‘This chap is very nice, why not stop here next time?’ and that’s why the business built.”
With several large factories still operating nearby in the 1980s Geeta News opened at 5 a.m. every day – “customers knew I would be there at 5 o’clock and they would always be waiting for me”.
When the Washwood Heath Road properties were demolished to widen the road Mr Champaneria was determined to stay in the area:
“The business was doing well. Also you were getting on with the community as well. Society accepted me, so once your name’s there, you are established, and your business will be stable. I was looking for somewhere in any empty property in Alum Rock Road”.
The change of location to Number 4 Alum Rock Road in October 1989 brought a change of name:
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| Number 4 Alum Rock Road |
“The thinking was a different image, rather than ‘Geeta News’, ‘Mr News’, something which when you go to the High Street, something which attracts people. People know and say ‘Mr News’.”.
In the last few months of Mr News’s existence I was able to see at first hand the three things this apparently ordinary newsagents offered the Alum Rock Road:
First, Mr Champaneria was not only a source of newspapers, sweets and cigarettes. More than most businesses a newsagents both responds to and shapes the rhythms of local life. For several decades Mr News witnessed the modest addictions, compulsions, little rewards, political views, consumer desires and global connections sustained by what we purchase in newsagents. His was a familiar face whose friendly demeanour defused many a row and often mediated between the different generations and diverse cultural backgrounds of the area. As Mr Champaneria remarked:
“I used to explain to the parents – ‘Your children have changed, you have to change your ways, you have to change to modern life, you can’t always do things in your way, you have to loose, you have to loosen your grip, give freedoms’. But whatever freedom, don’t abuse it, so when the children came to talk with me, I always said, ‘Parents give you freedom, you should respect it. If you do something wrong, your parents tell somebody else, you’re damaging other children’s lives. So if you have the freedom, accept the freedom, don’t do anything wrong’ ”.
Second, for many years the store was a trusted Western Union money transfer station. Dozens of people a week would come from all over Birmingham to send money to the Caribbean and Africa in particular. The corner of Alum Rock Road was linked to Jamaica, St Kitts, Nevis, Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Senegal as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Third, even for those who’d grown up in Alum Rock but moved away, Mr News’s continued presence offered a reassurance that part of their childhood remained:
“No matter how far away they went, they always came. I had some customers 30 years, they come themselves, their children came as well, and when I finished the last day, they said Goodbye, and they said they don’t think they will come on this road again, so you can see how communication is there. People came until the last day of my shop”.
Now Mr News is no more the residents of Alum Rock realise how important it was, particularly when they seek out lottery tickets or reliable money transfer services. Mr Champaneria himself experienced this sense of loss on the day he travelled to meet me:
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| Mr News prior to closure |
“Even today, I came [to the Alum Rock Road] at 11 o’clock, everybody talking, everybody asking, ‘Where have you moved to?’, even one Afro-Caribbean woman stopped me and said ‘Where have you moved to? I’ve been looking for you’, I said, ‘I’ve not moved anywhere’. And she said, ‘I miss your shop, it doesn’t matter what you say’. It made me cry, if the people are like that, it makes me cry, yes, society, they did accept me”.
He has hopes for the future of the area:
He has hopes for the future of the area:
"I think the area is still brilliant. It could improve more, if the City Council made some sort of change round. They should look at putting out a new image for the area. I have prayed to God that some developer buys the Crown Buildings, and brings a different image, and different way to the building, it will bring people in".
