Primark – followthethings.com

Posted on August 28, 2024February 4, 2025 by Ian Cook

Primark – On The Rack

"A little deeper into the squalour and another rung down the ladder of exploitation. Children. Several young boys working on the same Primark vest we saw those women sewing earlier...
... one could be as young as 9 or 10. They're testing the stitching so the sequins don't end up falling off in the hands of customers back in Britain. When we asked their ages, their manager kept silent."
[The film then briefly shows the vest's 'atmosphere' label. This is a Primark band promising customers affordable fresh fashion]

followthethings.com
Fashion

“Primark – on the rack“
A documentary film presented by Tom Heap & produced by Frank Simmonds with Dan McDougall for BBC TV’s Panorama series.
Screenshot slideshow of the contested scene embedded above. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

The BBC produces an exposé of cheap clothing retailer Primark. It finds children making its clothes, and sewing and testing their sequins, in factories, slums and refugee camps in India. Primark is asked to contribute to the film before it’s shown. Instead, they decide to cut ties with the supply chains featured, then launch a website to counter the film’s claims. They research the film’s research to pick apart its claims, and then complain to the BBC that one 45 second scene (the one in the screenshots above) is fake. Their critic-silencing strategy has mixed success. The BBC is forced to admit that it cannot be 100% sure that the scene wasn’t faked, and the Panorama team are forced to hand back an award they were given for the film. But Primark’s persistent public attempts to silence this investigative journalism draws attention – for years – to the company’s reputation as the ‘poster boy of child labour in the UK’. Supporters of the film highlight the other 3,555 minutes of the film that Primark didn’t claim the producers had faked? Then, 5 years after the film was broadcast, the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapses and over a thousand garments workers are crushed to death making high street clothes. Journalists, filmmakers and others keep this tragedy relentlessly in the news. UK newspaper headlines refer to this as the ‘Primark factory’. There’s no way that this footage is fake. Primark has to react differently this time.

Page reference: Kate Adley, Richard Keeble, Pippa Russell, Noora Stenholm, William Strang and Tuuli Valo (2025) Primark – on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 124 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

No Pride In Primark

followthethings.com
Fashion | Gifts & Seasonal

REDUCE DISCRIMINATION

WASH IT WITH WOKENESS

“No Pride In Primark“
Popular activist campaign against Primark’s ‘Pride’ clothing & accessories made in anti-LGBTQ+ countries.
To see what sparked this, watch Primark’s promotional video above.

UK LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall collaborates with high street fashion retailer Primark on its 2018 ‘Pride’ range of clothing and accessories. They will be sold throughout Europe and North America and 20% of their profits will go to Stonewall. But none of the proceeds will go to the organisers of Pride celebrations, some of whom are struggling for money. And many of the countries in which this ‘Pride’ merch is being made – like Turkey, Myanmar & China – ban LGBTQ+ events and NGOs and imprison people for homosexuality. So what should Primark & Stonewall do? Where should people shopping for Pride merch go? And what’s it like to be an LGBTQ+ worker in Turkey, Myanmar or China making t-shirts and other merch that ‘celebrates what you are not allowed to be’? These are the questions asked by social media critics and the journalists who pick up their criticisms. It’s not a huge orchestrated campaign. No NGO or other organisation orchestrates it. Nevertheless, it becomes a notorious case of a high street brand ‘pink-washing’ (a form of ‘woke-washing’) their supply chain operations. In the wake of these criticisms, Primark continues to support LGBTQ+ organisations in many countries, but has it addressed the crackdowns on LGBTQ people in those countries where its rainbow merch is made? Should it withdraw its orders from these countries? Or keep working there, supporting – via Stonewall and other organisations – the LGBTQ+ organisations and workers who need it? Does it do so? And how can it convince the media, activists and consumers that it’s doing so? LGBTQ+ people represent a big market for clothing sales.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) No Pride In Primark (taster). followthethings.com/no-pride-in-primark.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 27, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Accord On Fire & Building Safety In Bangladesh

followthethings.com
Fashion

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

HAVE A THEORY OF CHANGE

FIND THE UNIONS

JOIN WITH OTHERS

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

“The Accord On Fire & Building Safety In Bangladesh“
An independent legally binding global framework agreement between fashion brands, retailers & trade unions.
Click the screengrabs to read the agreement on IndustriALL Global Union’s website.

What if brands, retailers and labour unions could agree on a ways to ensure the safety of millions of people working in garment factories to prevent the factory fires and collapses that have killed and injured so many? They did, in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory complex collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh in April 2013 where more than 1,100 garment workers making clothes for Western high street brands were crushed to death. Under this agreement, health and safety committees would be democratically elected in all factories and would identify and take action relating to concerns they identified. Factories would have independent safety inspections. The results and corrective actions outlined in these reports would be made public. The brands signing the agreement would continue to have their clothes made in the unsafe factories and would fund the corrective actions to make them safer. And factory workers would be trained in health and safety, could make complaints without fear of reprisal and could refuse to work in unsafe conditions. Wow! Could this work? Would brands sign up? Would workers see the benefits? What would happen 5 years later, when the agreement ran out? Could workers in other countries benefit from the same kind of agreement?

Page reference: Chris Crane, Alex Danvers, Robbie Foley, Will Kelleher, Mike Stanton & Adam Williams (2013) The Accord On Fire & Building Safety In Bangladesh (taster). followthethings.com/the-accord-on-fire-building-safety-in-bangladesh.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Cries For Help Found In Primark Clothes (a.k.a. ‘Labelgate’)

Label found by Rebecca Jones
Label found by Rebecca Gallagher
Letter found by Karen Wisinska

followthethings.com
Fashion

“Cries For Help Found In Primark Clothes (a.k.a. ‘Labelgate’)”
Social media posts by Rebecca Jones, Rebecca Gallagher, and Amnesty International Northern Ireland.
Label photos originally posted online embedded above.

Shoppers Rebecca Jones and Rebecca Gallagher find an extra label in dresses they buy from Primark stores in South Wales. One says ‘Forced to work exhausting hours’, the other ‘Degrading sweatshop conditions’. Belfast shopper Karen Wisinska then finds a letter in the pocket of some Primark shorts. It’s written in Chinese, but starts ‘SOS! SOS! SOS!’. It seems to be a coincidence. Rebecca, Rebecca and Karen post them online to share what they have found with their friends and followers. Their posts set off an international ‘whodunnit?’ which makes the national news and ties the company’s PR department in knots. Are they genuine? Are they mischief-making of an artist or activist? Either way, is what they say true?

Will Kelleher & Ian Cook (2014) Cries for help found in Primark clothes (a.k.a. ‘labelgate’). followthethings.com/cries-for-help-found-in-primark-clothes.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 93 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024January 28, 2025 by Mark

The Eternal Embrace

followthethings.com
Fashion

“The Eternal Embrace“
A photograph by Taslima Akhter.
Photo blurred due to sensitive content. Available online.

Bangladeshi photographer and activist Taslima Akhter visits the ruins of the collapsed Rana Plaza factory. On April 24th 2013, over 1,100 garment workers were crushed to death there as they made clothes for high street brands including GAP, Primark and H&M. In the rubble, she spots two dead factory workers – a woman and a man – who appear to have died in each other’s arms. Her head is tipped back and a bloody tear has fallen from his eye. She takes a photo and posts it online. There are thousands of press photos of the disaster, but this one is said by many to be the most heart-wrenching and haunting. Commentators are repelled and drawn to its horror and beauty in equal measure. What were the final moments of these garment workers’ lives like? What was their relationship? What caused them to be killed like this? What impacts can a photo like this have on people who buy clothes made in factories like this? It’s profound.

Page reference: Nancy Scotford (2013) The Eternal Embrace. followthethings.com/the-eternal-embrace.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 47 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024March 11, 2025 by Mark

UDITA (ARISE)

followthethings.com
Fashion

“UDITA (ARISE)“
A documentary film directed by Hannan Majid & Richard York of the Rainbow Collective.
Available in full on YouTube (embedded above).

The women who work in garment factories in the Global South are often seen by factory bosses as docile and nimble fingered and by Global North journalists and activists as victims in need of saving from capitalist exploitation. But what if there was a film about their work, lives and struggles that was told from their perspectives? Watch UDITA (ASRISE)! Filmed in Dhaka, Bangladesh over five years – starting before and ending after the Rana Plaza factory collapse which killed so many women like them (including their friends and relatives) – Hannah Majid & Richard York show garment workers as an organised body of people teaching, learning and fighting for their labour rights through the campaigning and strike action of Bangladesh’s National Garment Workers’ Federation. There’s no Western filmmaker narrating their quest to find out who made their clothes. There’s no voiceover at all. The only voices are those of the women themselves. They are less interested in what ‘guilty’ consumers in the Global North can do to help them, and more interested in what they can do to help each other. So, who would want to see a film like this? Who was it made for? What are audiences supposed to take away from it? One answer is to appreciate how garment workers in the Global South have powerful collective agency. This is a fundamental, but often neglected, principle in trade justice activism. An important move for audiences to make, as the philosopher Iris Marion Young has put it, ‘from guilt to solidarity’.

Page reference: Theo Barker, Joe Collier, Annabel Baker, Lizzie Coppen & Henry Eve (2025) UDITA (ARISE). followthethings.com/udita.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 66 minutes.

Label found by Rebecca Jones

Label found by Rebecca Gallagher

Letter found by Karen Wisinska