On Sunday the 8th March, student activists froze along the entrance of Topshop’s doorway in the Bull Ring in Birmingham to protest about Topshop’s and the rest of the Arcadia Group’s lack of commitment to join the Ethical Trade Initiative. A crowd of surprised shoppers gathered to stare at the protesters, who were posing as statues along the doorway, wearing signs which said, ‘join the Ethical Trading Initiative, and ‘Stop Topshop’s Sweatshops.’ Although the protesters were peaceful and not obstructive allowing for people to easily pass through the doorway, they were dragged out by security guards extremely violently after only a couple of minutes. The efforts by security to remove the protesters served to draw an even larger crowd of curious onlookers to the scene.

The protest was held by students from the People and Planet society, which is a national student organisation, running a Redress Fashion Campaign to put pressure on Topshop to join the Ethical Trading Initiative. This is only a very first basic step in committing to improving labour standards for people who are working in garment factories all over the Global South. Arcadia is the largest high street retailer not to have joined the ETI. Although Topshop would maintain that they are making progress in the area of labour rights, thy have as yet not mapped out any long-term commitment to improving labour rights, and many of their initiatives have been ‘research projects.’ Although they have collaborated with Next, they have not entered into any multi-stakeholder agreements such as the Ethical Trading Initiative, which is one of the most important recommendations for improving labour rights.

The aim of the protest was to make more people aware of Topshop’s lack of commitment to reform its labour practices and to encourage Topshop customers to challenge the company about the consequences of its actions for people’s quality of life and health. One protester said, ‘It is completely unacceptable and disgusting that our cheap clothes are really being paid for through the exploitation of thousands of people on the other side of the world. We are trying to encourage consumers to engage with the shops where they are buying clothes, and to make sure they know what is really going on.’

For more information the campaign and Topshop’s trading standards visit:

 http://www.cleanupfashion.co.uk/images/pdf/letscleanupfashion2008.pdf

 http://peopleandplanet.org/redressfashion/topshop