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Let's be friendsPeaceful Topshop protesters get 'arrested' by Topshop store manager
Five People & Planet activists from Edinburgh University were falsely imprisoned by a Topshop store manager in Edinburgh on Friday, allegedly as part of a national strategy of detaining peaceful protesters.
Student models embarassing truth
The students were demonstrating as part of a national day of action against the documented abuses in Topshop’s supply chain. Topshop and its parent company Arcadia are the only leading high street retailer not to sign up to the Ethical Trading Initiative.
Students reported that staff at the store manhandled five of the peaceful protesters and detained them in the basement against their will for over an hour until police arrived and released them. The store manager stated that they had been warned to expect protests in a document he showed to the activists, entitled “Protest escalation procedure”. He also said that the reason that he was detaining them against their will was that he’d been told by ‘people higher up than me’ to deal with protests in that way.
Police who arrived at the store said that it was wrong to use force to detain peaceful protesters, that the shop ought to discriminate between violent criminals and peaceful protesters and that it was very clear that they weren’t violent.
Daniel Abrahams, one of the students, said
I can’t believe I was falsely imprisoned for over an hour and half by Topshop for simply trying to promote the rights of workers. I am shocked and saddened that Topshop reverts to these unwarranted and repressive tactics of imprisoning people who criticise their treatment of workers in their supply chain. We are not demanding the impossible. Most other high street retailers have signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative and at least made some attempts to clean up their act.
Students model problems at Topshop
