Top Shop Oxford Street London

Mid-day on a Saturday in Topshop at Oxford Circus, amid the sea of cheap fashion and trinkets and before a bemused; supportive; sometimes hostile crowd of Saturday shoppersthe cry of “PAY YOUR TAX!” went up and the many activists on the shopfloor revealed themselves and started to raise hell.

Why? The UK Uncut network, billing itself as ‘The Big Society Revenue and Customs (BSRC)’ called us to action to protest the fact that Philip Green, the boss of the Arcadia Group that owns Topshop and many other Oxford Street stores paid a dividend to his wife from the group, who because of her residency in Monaco, avoided paying £300 million to the British Exchequor.

Activists got thrown out by heavy security, and preceeded to blockade the entrances, continuing for sometime, a decision was then taken to wander up to BHS, then onto Dorothy Perkins and even wondering into a passing Boots, to shout and cause a nuisance about that companies offshore activities, much to the delight of the staff!

The crowd of 300-odd finished the day back at the entrances to Topshop, with Police making repeated attempts to unblock the doorway from seated activists. But the spirits remained high, the passers by generally supportive and the message was got across, there will be no business as usual today!

When other anti-cuts protests and demos happen in the coming months an imaginative combination of mass demonstrations, strike action and direct action of this kind right across London (or maybe a mass UK Uncut action all down Oxford Street on the day of the TUC demo?), can defeat this bunch of dangerous, corrupt, millionaire lunatics currently attempting to wreck our welfare state; we are the self-preservation society!