The targetting of Topshop and the rest of Philip Green’s Arcadia empire is a triumph of organisation by anti-cuts and tax avoidance activists through website UK Uncut. These are the people who have been targetting Vodaphone, closing over 30 Vodafone stores repeatedly from Glasgow to Plymouth in protest at their £6bn tax dodge. In a “National Day of Action Against Corporate Tax-avoiders”, protesters will now also target the Arcadia group outlets (Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores), explaining as follows:
In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.
Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint.
The action tomorrow (Saturday 4 December) takes places in all the places below — click on the place name for more information. It is sugested that you:
- Tell your friends, family, local cuts groups, student groups, unions, local political parties, pensioners alliances, disabled rights groups and anti-poverty groups
- Start a pass-it-on text
- Email any lists you’re on
- Set up a Facebook event
- Tweet using the #ukuncut hashtag
- Take flyers, posters and letters to workers, a banner or two and “mischievous ideas“