At the crack of dawn on Monday December 12, comrades from the Birmingham party branch travelled to support local workers of the multinational retailing company, Arcadia, that staged a picket to demand better wages from their tight-fisted boss, Philip Green, who was recently in the news for stealing BHS workers’ pensions while pretentiously sailing around in his £100 million luxury yacht (his third one nonetheless)!
Party comrades, aside from joining in on the picket, distributed propaganda to the workers to promote socialist ideas. Additionally, we made a donation towards the hardship fund and distributed some satirical placards depicting Philip Green adorned with the slogan “Billionaire. Parasite. Capitalist.”, a fitting description!
Green’s antics have turn a lot of society against him, not even the Daily Mail has found anything good to say about him. Given his unpopularity, it is strange that the only people on the left that showed any solidarity with the workers was GMB who had organised the picket and the CPGB-ML which, as was mentioned earlier, handed out placards and made a donation to the hardship fund.
The picket was well received by passers who beeped their vehicles in support of those fighting for better wages.